{"text":"Singapore is grappling with a controversy that refuses to go away, a month after rainwater flooded a tunnel of its mass rapid transit (MRT) service, leading to the partial suspension of train runs at weekends. A rare public apology by top transit executives and an assurance from the government that the cause was clear and the fix not complicated have done little to appease the public that has come to expect glitch-free efficiency. The front page of the state-owned Straits Times newspaper this week featured a photo of grim-faced top transit executives in the gallery of parliament as the transport minister said they had to do better and could face pay cuts. The facts of the 7 October incident are not complicated, and the cause of the incident is clear, Minister Khaw Boon Wan said, adding that poor maintenance and neglect of duties by transit managers were to blame. It is the responsibility of management to set the right culture of professionalism and excellence. It begins from the top. And if there is poor culture, the CEO is responsible. The scrutiny of the disruption, which in most cities would be considered minor and barely newsworthy, reflected the pressure on the government to explain how it had failed to deliver a near-perfect public service. Singapore residents are highly dependent on public transport. It is one of the world s most expensive places to own a vehicle and it recently announced that it will not allow any growth in its car population from February. Voter discontent with public services can be particularly alarming to the ruling party which saw its worst election showing in 2011 when 40 percent of voters went against it, partly in dismay over the growing strains on public transport. The People s Action Party has ruled Singapore, one of the richest and most stable countries in the world, without interruption since independence in 1965. Transit operator SMRT chief Desmond Kuek was quoted in an email to staff as saying this week should have been a celebration marking the 30-year anniversary of the subway operations. Instead, we were awash in collective shame because a few of our staff had let us down, Kuek said in the email, according to the Straits Times.","label":0}
{"text":"As an example of just how much the left hates Donald J. Trump, after becoming enraged because football great Jim Brown expressed kind words for Trump, a writer for SportingNews. com decided that Brown's decades of work for civil rights was erased merely because the Hall of Famer was nice to Trump. [SportingNews writer David Steele began his January 18 piece noting that the Cleveland Browns star has been a candidate for the \"Mount Rushmore of social, political and activism. \" \"If Jim Brown is not on the Mount Rushmore of social, political and activism by athletes in our time (up there with, at least, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos) he's on the short list waiting for a vacancy,\" Steele wrote. But that adulation came to an abrupt end. \"He was, that is,\" Steele continued. \"Jim Brown himself is now the vacancy. \" How could a man who spent nearly 50 years at the forefront of the civil rights movement be toppled from that place with just one action? He said nice things about Donald Trump. \"Those are the consequences when you insert yourself into a feud between John Lewis and Donald Trump \u2014 and take the side of Trump while insulting Lewis,\" Steele proclaimed. Steele, who once wrote for the Baltimore Sun, went on to \"explain\" his \"reasons\" for erasing 50 years of civil rights advocacy work, \"There is simply no way to reconcile Brown's words, and all the others he has spouted in defense of the man who has spent the week insulting an icon of the movement, and this image, of the meeting Brown himself adjourned on behalf of Ali 50 years ago, when the same forces Lewis was fighting were coming after Ali's resistance to the draft. \" So, because Jim Brown said a few nice things about Donald Trump and opposed the hateful attacks Congressman John Lewis launched against Trump, including the outright lie that he never missed a past inaugural when he in fact skipped George W. Bush's for the same \"he's illegitimate\" reason, Brown's decades of good work has become meaningless. Brown has done a lot for his community, and was universally praised by civil rights activists for organizing sports figures to come to the aide of boxing great Muhammad Ali when his title was stripped from him for refusing service in the Vietnam War in 1967. The NFL great also founded the Black Economic Union to help promote business in the nation's inner cities. But his founding of the Foundation has done the most good, after he spent years trying to mitigate the gang culture. \"I was doing economic development for minorities. I was getting black folks to use their dollars to help each other. I looked up and saw black men killing each other over red and blue. Until we did something about that, there was no use for economic development,\" Brown recently told the New York Daily News. Since its founding nearly 25 years ago, has improved the lives of gang members, prison inmates, kids and thousands of other people in more than a dozen states across the nation. The heart of is a course Brown created which helps train young blacks to gain control of their emotions in order to lead useful, productive lives. The program he developed helps youth learn to keep a job, raise a family, and go back to school. But to David Steele, all that is meaningless. \"That Jim Brown is dead,\" Steele says at the tail of his hyperventilating and biased attack on Brown. In the end, though, one might doubt that a man who has 60 years of fame and achievement under his belt will be much bothered by the words of a man with a failed newspaper career and who now writes for a sports website. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.","label":0}
{"text":"Exposing Huma Abedin, Rigged Election Computers & the Man Behind the Rigged Silver Market Posted on Home \u00bb Silver \u00bb Silver News \u00bb Exposing Huma Abedin, Rigged Election Computers & the Man Behind the Rigged Silver Market  Is it finally time to EXPOSE the rigging of the Gold and Silver markets? The rising silver price today may be our clue to that mystery:  From Bix Weir :  As I've said before \u2013 this battle is way more complicated and has deeper implications than just the Presidential Election. This is about taking down the Bad Guys and all their embedded moles in the government and in the financial institutions.  So here we go with exposing just WHO Hillary Clinton trusted with all our \"State Secrets.\"  A quick introduction to Huma Abedin\u2026  But the Bad Guys still have power over the rigged electronic voting machines so it may have to come down to an armed STREET WAR unless the Bad Guys stand down.  It's getting more and more likely that there will BE NO ELECTION on November 8th unless the Good Guys better unleash EVERYTHING they have on the emails before we get too close to election day.  Also, I have noticed a lot of talk about the Clinton's relationship with Marc Rich again. Is it finally time to EXPOSE the rigging of the Gold and Silver markets? The rising silver price today may be our clue to that mystery!","label":1}
{"text":"Nancy Pelosi just flunked Constitutional Law! Pelosi repeated her request that the National Park Service deny a permit to an alleged alt-right demonstration called Patriot Prayer. Pelosi said not allow these elements to use a national park to spew forth their venom. She then said that protecting people was the Park Service s first responsibility. This is a trend of the left lately they claim stopping free speech, protests and removing statues have become homeland security issues. Jeh Johnson just commented this week that we must remove statues because they ve become a homeland security issue. See where this is going? The left claims to be for free speech but in reality they aren t for anyone on the opposing side speaking out. This is getting into dangerous territory but not because of what the right is doing IronicJEH JOHNSON SUDDENLY THINKS CONFEDERATE STATUES ARE A THREAT TO HOMELAND SECURITY: This is rich! The guy who opened our borders to criminals during the Obama era is now telling us that statues are a homeland security threat? Former Obama administration official Jeh Johnson said on This Week with Martha Raditz that the removal of Confederate statues was a matter of public safety and homeland security on Sunday Oh brother!According to David French of National Review:Where to begin? First, It s flat-out unconstitutional for the park service to deny a permit to any group simply because public officials deem the group s speech venomous. Even if their speech is truly vile, they have the same right of access to the park as any other expressive organization.Second, while we want law enforcement to protect people, it is also required to protect liberty. Any police force that maintains security without also protecting liberty has failed in its core constitutional function.Third, the quote is wrong. She s obviously referring to Oliver Wendell Holmes s famous statement in Schenck v. United States that The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. Fire. Wolf. Whatever. It s not important compared to the next point below.Fourth, anyone who quotes Schenck is quoting bad law. In fact, it s one of the most odious free speech decisions in the Court s history. The court upheld the Espionage Act conviction of the secretary of the Socialist Party of America for writing and distributing a pamphlet opposing the draft during World War I. Schenck could never be sent to jail for this conduct today.","label":1}
{"text":"A Tennessee woman has obviously bought into the left s playbook to act as crazy as possible when at a town hall The ironic thing in what she did is she now cannot vote. Felons can t vote LOL!WEAKELY COUNTY, Tenn. A Weakely County woman was arrested after reportedly following Congressman David Kustoff and then threatening him.Police say Wendi Wright followed a car down Highway 45 Monday afternoon. Inside the car were Congressman Kustoff and aide Marianne Dunavant. Wright reportedly followed the car after it left a town hall on the UT Martin campus.THIS WOMAN LEFT THE TOWN HALL AND ENDANGERED THE LIVES OF THE CONGRESSMAN AND HIS PASSENGER! WHO DOES THAT?A police report states Kustoff and Dunavant felt they were in danger of being forced off the road.When they pulled into the driveway of someone they know, Wright reportedly ran to the car and screamed while banging on the car and reaching in.She then reportedly blocked the car until police were called and she ran away.Wright later posted about the incident on her Facebook account.She is charged with felony reckless endangerment.This incident is such a sign of the times we re in. The left is so out of control and so angry.THIS CONGRESSMAN HAS A WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN!The main stream media and Democrat politicians are guilty of feeding this anger and hate with all of their lies and inflammatory language. Shame on them!","label":1}
{"text":"It s no wonder Trump is losing and losing badly with women. A new poll from McClatchy-Marist shows Clinton leading Trump by 24 points among registered female voters (58 percent to 34 percent), and 23 points among likely female voters. Remember, Mitt Romney lost the female vote by 11 points, and John McCain by 13 points.While the Trump campaign and his supporters scratch their heads as to why he s performing so poorly with the demographic that makes up the majority of the country, the Clinton campaign is reminding them why.A new (and brutal) ad has just been released from the Clinton camp. Asking voters if Trump is the president we want for our daughters? the ad, titled Mirrors, uses the Donald s deplorable, sexist, offensive and objectifying words against women against him. From, I d look her right in that ugly face of hers, to A person who s flat-chested is very hard for them to be a 10, Mirrors showcases women all across the country looking at themselves their bodies, appearance at their phones, wondering if they are worthy, as Trump s disgusting words echo off the screen.When talking about Kim Kardashian, Trump thought it would be a good idea to talk about her famous asset: Does she have a good body? No. Does she have a fat ass? Absolutely. So presidential.The most damning part comes at the end, when Howard Stern asks Trump, So you treat women with respect? Trump s answer? No, I can t say that either. This ad is so powerful. Trump, who is well known to be a serial misogynist, sexist, and all around pig, should be ashamed of the way he regards women, their appearances, and livelihoods. No wonder his first wife cited cruel and inhumane treatment as the grounds for their divorce, and called him a chauvinist on TV.Little girls, and indeed little boys, are watching. Their parents have a choice: do we elect a man who has a proven track record of demeaning women he doesn t even know, or do we elect a woman who wants to tap everyone s potential, no matter who they are or what they look like.Watch the powerful ad that showcases just how much of a pig Donald Trump is:","label":1}
{"text":"The human rights situation in Turkey is unacceptable, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on Thursday, adding European Union leaders had asked their executive arm to look at cutting pre-accession aid to Ankara in a responsible way . Merkel urged her fellow leaders on Thursday to cut European Union funds to Turkey that are linked to Ankara s bid to join the bloc. She was supported by Belgium and the Netherlands. But speaking to journalists after the a dinner at which leaders discussed relations with Turkey, Merkel said she wanted a common EU position on the accession talks and said dialogue with Turkey had to continue. She also said she did not foresee talks with Ankara on expanding a customs union with the EU.","label":0}
{"text":"Sunday on ABC's \"This Week,\" while discussing the current House Republican bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, News One Now host Roland Martin said President Donald Trump \" hoodwinked,\" \"bamboozled\" and \"led astray\" white voters. Partial transcript as follows: STEPHANOPOULOS: He is working it hard because they know the cost of losing in the House. The president can't lose \u2026 MARTIN: And he can work it as hard as he wants to, but as I'm watching the town halls. I'm thinking about Malcolm X, you've been had, you've been took, you've been hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok. To watch these white, voters upset and mad saying, I voted for you. And I'm going 'we tried to tell you this is what the man said he was going to do.' Now they're faced with the backlash of, now they love the Affordable Care Act and now Republicans are in a box. The number has gone up 20 points this last year. STEPHANOPOULOS: Even though the numbers don't work, they want to believe the president on this. Follow Pam Key On Twitter @pamkeyNEN","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump would favor Senate Republicans changing voting rules to allow a simple majority of the Senate to approve his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court if Democrats block his choice, he said in an interview airing on Thursday. \"I would. We have obstructionists,\" Trump told Fox News, referring to possible use of the so-called nuclear option that would overturn Senate rules requiring 60 votes to overcome a procedural hurdle, or filibuster, for Supreme Court nominees. There are currently 52 Republican senators in the 100-seat chamber. Trump plans next week to announce his choice to fill the vacancy caused by the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016. His nominee could restore the decades-long conservative majority on the court. Democrats are seething over the Republican-led Senate's refusal last year to consider Democratic President Barack Obama's nomination of appeals court Judge Merrick Garland for the lifetime post, an action with little precedent in U.S. history. Trump told Fox News anchor Sean Hannity that he had made his choice. \"I have made my decision pretty much in my mind, yes. That's subject to change at the last moment.\" Among the front-runners are three conservative jurists: Neil Gorsuch, a judge on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; Thomas Hardiman, who serves on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; and William Pryor, on the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. On Tuesday, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he told Trump that Democrats would fight any nominee they consider to be outside the mainstream. Assuming all 52 Senate Republicans back Trump's nominee, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would either need to lure eight Democrats to his side or change the rules and ban the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. Despite the nuclear option threat, Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, which tracks judicial nominations, said in an email to Reuters that a Democratic filibuster \"would still be far better than what Republicans did to Merrick Garland.\" More than three years ago, Democrats used their then-majority in the Senate to ban filibusters against presidential nominees other than for the Supreme Court. The move came after Republicans blocked several key Obama nominees. Vice President Mike Pence told Republican lawmakers on Thursday that Trump would nominate a \"strict constructionist\" to the court, referring to the literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution's text without regard to changes in American society.","label":0}
{"text":"Here are highlights of the Reuters Oval Office interview with U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday. ON WHETHER HE WAS AWARE HIS SON DONALD TRUMP JR. WAS MEETING WITH A RUSSIAN LAWYER \"No. That I didn't know. Until a couple of days ago, when I heard about this. No I didn't know about that.\" ON WHETHER HE WISHED HE HAD KNOWN HIS SON WAS HAVING THE MEETING \"Look - that campaign ... I actually always thought I'd win, to be honest with you, because I've been winning my whole life, to be honest with you, but we started a campaign as a non-politician, and many people were skeptical. Some weren't, some people who know me weren't ... but many were skeptical. And it was a wild time. And we would meet with many people.\" \"That same meeting: a person comes in, sits, leaves, quickly. It was a 20-minute meeting, I guess, from what I'm hearing. Many people, and many political pros, said everybody would do that. If you got a call and said, 'Listen I have information on Hillary and the DNC,' or whatever it was they said, most people are going to take that meeting, I think.\" \"I think many people would have held that meeting.\" \"And you have to understand, when that took place, this was before Russia fever. There was no Russia fever back then, that was at the beginning of the campaign, more or less. There was no Russia fever.\" \"Most of the phony politicians who are Democrats who I watched over the last couple of days \u2013 most of those phonies that act holier-than-thou, if the same thing happened to them, they would have taken that meeting in a heartbeat.\" \"First question - first 20, 25 minutes - I said, 'Did you do it?' He said, 'No, I did not, absolutely not.' I then asked him a second time, in a totally different way. He said, 'Absolutely not.'\" \"Somebody did say if he did do it, you wouldn't have found out about it. Which is a very interesting point.\" \"Look: Something happened and we have to find out what it is, because we can't allow a thing like that to happen to our election process. So something happened, and we have to find out what it is.\" \"We have to find out and get to the bottom of what's going on, because we can't have even the slightest suspicion about our election process.\" \"Now, everybody agrees that there was no impact on the votes in this election, which is very important to say, but we have to make sure that nothing could ever happen to our election process.\" \"Do I feel I can trust anybody, OK? I'm a very suspicious person. I am not a person that goes around trusting lots of people. But he's the leader of Russia. It is the second most powerful nuclear power on earth. I am the leader of the United States. I love my country. He loves his country. He's for Russia. President Xi \u2013 I had a long meeting with him too, 2-1\/2 hours, great relationship. He's for China, I'm for the United States. They're for their countries. But I do things the way I do things, and it's just worked out.\" \"But we had a very productive meeting. Including the fact that I think we have a good shot at piece by piece getting Syria to stop fighting. Ultimately Ukraine. And other things, including the destruction of terrorists as we know them.\" \"So I'm sitting with Putin, and we had a very good - we were there two hours and 15 minutes - we had a very good meeting. One of the things brought up was a ceasefire. I said, 'We've got to solve this problem in Syria. And Ukraine by the way.' And what happened is we sat down and we worked out a ceasefire, which is by the way, as of 20 minutes ago, totally holding, and that's four days. Four days doesn't sound like a lot, but they've never had a ceasefire that lasted at all. That's because Putin told them, as opposed to somebody that nobody ever heard of. Putin and I agreed to it, and we have a four-day ceasefire. That means many lives have already been saved because of four days. But it's going to go on for a while, and things are going to go better.\" \"I was very tough with President Putin. We have a very important relationship. It's going to be a relationship where lots of lives could be saved, like as an example with the ceasefire, which nobody else could have gotten but me.\" \"I campaigned on strong military, strong borders, and low oil prices.\" \"Look what I've done \u2013 oil prices have been driven down. We're sending LNG to Poland, massive shipments to Poland. That's not what Putin wants. And for the military, we've got $56 billion more of equipment than anybody ever thought of, in the last budget. Putin doesn't want that \u2013 so why would Putin want me?\" \"It's really the one question I wish I would have asked Putin: Were you actually supporting me?\" \"I'm very big on energy, and that's not good for Russia, because Russia makes its money with energy. That drives the price of energy down. I also am very strong on the military, very, very strong on the military. I'm also very strong on cyber.\" \"I would bet that inwardly Putin would have been against me.\" \"The mood in the White House is fantastic.\" \"We have done more in five months than practically any president in history.\" \"If you look at Iraq and if you look at Syria and you see the progress we've made with ISIS, it's been almost complete.\" \"The White House is functioning beautifully. The stock market has hit a new high. Job numbers are the best they've been in 16 years. We have a Supreme Court judge already confirmed. Energy is doing levels that we've never done before. Our military is doing well. We're knocking the hell out of ISIS, which Obama wasn't. There's not a thing that we're not doing well in. The White House is functioning beautifully, despite the hoax made up by the Democrats.\" \"The problem is, I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. This isn't a question of defense. I didn't do anything. I had no relationship to Russia. So I said, what can the legal team do?\" \"The only frustration is that this Russia story is a hoax made up by the Democrats as an excuse for losing an election that they should have won because it's almost impossible for a Republican to win the Electoral College.\" \"There was zero coordination. It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. There's no coordination, this was a hoax, this was made up by the Democrats.\" \"This is the greatest con job in history, where a party sits down the day after they got their ass kicked, and they say, 'Huh, what's our excuse?'\" \"It just continues and continues, and honestly it's a disgrace, and it's very bad for our country. And the Russians must be laughing, because this narrative is so bad for us as a country.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Comedy Central s roasts of various celebrities are well known by this point, and it s just as well known is that the roasts almost never focus exclusively on the person being roasted. This year s roast is all about Rob Lowe, and the roasters do go after him quite heartily and gleefully. However, it seems that Ann Coulter is also inexplicably a roaster this year, and the other roasters decided to burn her about as bad as they did Rob Lowe.Coulter is a Trump fangirl. She s also just about the most racist and hateful public figure in all of existence. She takes all of Trump s bizarre rhetoric 700 steps farther than it needs to go, while calling him out for not going far enough. These comedians don t really seem to like her all that much, and neither did the audience. They actually booed her for using her appearance there to promote her most recent book, In Trump We Trust. Oh, please.Variety did us all a favor and captured the following zingers delivered at Coulter s expense:Nikki Glaser: The only person you will ever make happy is the Mexican who digs your grave. Peyton Manning: I m not the only athlete up here. As you know, earlier this year, Ann Coulter won the Kentucky Derby. Davidson: If you are here, Ann, who is scaring the crows away from our crops? Lowe: After seeing your set tonight, we ve seen the first bombing you can t blame on a Muslim. Jeff Ross: Ann is against gay marriage. What is your thinking on that? If I can t get a husband, they can t either? Jewel: I do want to say as a feminist that I can t support everything that s been said tonight. But as someone who hates Ann Coulter, I m delighted. Rob Riggle: If Ann Coulter is here, someone must have said her name three times. Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! And perhaps the harshest, from Jimmy Carr: Ann is one of the most repugnant, hateful, hatchet-face bitches alive. It s not too late to change, Ann. You could kill yourself. Coulter herself tried to play comedian, too, and threw out this, ahem, gem, which was probably the only gem she uttered all night: I want to welcome everybody to the Ann Coulter roast with Rob Lowe. That s about the only thing she s ever gotten even close to right, even if she did solidify the idea that this roast is all about her. Everything she thinks is twisted, bigoted, false, and delusional. As the old clich goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Coulter, however, is right considerably less frequently than that.These are just a few of the jokes various Rob Lowe roasters shot her way, despite the fact that she was likewise a roaster, but has no connection to Lowe. Lowe explained her appearance by saying that they need all flavors at these roasts in order to make them work, and that s why she was there.Whatever the reason, though, Variety insinuates that her entire performance fell far more flat than anybody else s. Poor, poor Ann. Our hearts bleed for her and how stupid she ll look on Labor Day, which is when this will air.Featured image by Christopher Polk\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"News, information and analysis from the black left. Black Agenda Radio for Week of Nov 21, 2016 Submitted by Nellie Bailey a... on Mon, 11\/21\/2016 - 20:44 2016 presidential campaign Green Party: Part of the Solution  \"I fully expected that we were going to get at least five percent of the vote,\" said Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka . \"I suspect that when push came to shove, particularly in those swing states, people held their nose and voted for the lesser evil.\" Nevertheless, it is essential that the Greens continue to put forward \"transitional demands that are meant to galvanize people and win concessions from the state, but also that you keep people focused on the fact the real objective is to transform this system, to take power from the capitalist state.\" No World War, But Plenty of Domestic Oppression  \"I think the threat of World War Three has receded significantly,\" said author, activist and historian Paul Street . However, \"I don't know if I'll think that of Trump in two years,\" he added. \"The more immediate dangers seem to be: police statist assaults on undocumented Latino immigrants, a registry of Muslims, and a potential designation of Black Lives Matter and civil rights activists as quasi-terrorists. The other great, existential threat is runaway climate change because Trump has pledged to thoroughly deregulate energy.\" Saving Mumia and Others from a Curable Disease  Activists in the Free Mumia movement plan a rally on December 9, in Philadelphia, to pressure prison officials to treat the political prisoner and thousands of other inmates suffering from hepatitis C. \"Healthwise, Mumia is not doing good at all,\" said Pam Africa , of Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal. \"He has the appearance of good health, but he's itching all over\" and \"his health is declining.\" A judge ruled that Pennsylvania prison officials are obligated to treat Abu Jamal, but he used a technicality to avoid ordering that the cure actually be administered. Pam Africa said next month's rally will also highlight unsafe, blackish water in prisons. At one facility, she said, \"young people coming into the prison are losing their hair.\" U.S. Election Ran on \"Fear\" and \"Betrayal\"  \"It is accurate to say that economic discontent played a part\" in Hillary Clinton's defeat at the polls, said Mumia Abu Jamal . But he thinks other factors were at least as important. \"The Trump campaign represented, not just fear, but profound paranoia, and also white revenge for the darkening of America.\" However, \"if Trumpism represented vengeance, then Clintonism represented betrayal,\" because the Democrats failed to stand up on issues vital to their base constituencies. Torture, Anyone?  Former Kansas Republican congressman Mike Pompeo is likely to be named CIA director in the Trump administration. \"He's a big fan of torture,\" said Ray McGovern , a former CIA analyst who now spends most of his time trying to rein in the national security state. McGovern told Paul Jay, of The Real News Network, that Pompeo \"visited Guantanamo, he said it was great, and then said, \"As far as I can see, those prisoners are gaining weight.'\" President Obama must share the blame. \"If Obama had the strength of his convictions, he would have gotten rid of the torturers in the CIA,\" said McGovern. \"He let them stay, and now they're having a celebration.\" Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.","label":1}
{"text":"President-elect Donald Trump will hold a series of meetings on Sunday in New Jersey as he continues to put together a team for his incoming administration, Trump spokesmen said. They said Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence will meet with: talent agent Ari Emanuel; civil rights attorney Peter Kirsanow; Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach; Black Entertainment Television founder Robert Johnson; Bridgewater Associates President David McCormick; and retired Marine Corps General John Kelly. Trump and Pence will also meet with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; U.S. Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers; Speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives T.W. Shannon; American investor Wilbur Ross; and Jonathan Gray, global head of real estate at Blackstone Group, they added during a call with reporters.","label":0}
{"text":"President Barack Obama said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of a personal email server was a mistake, but that U.S. national security hadn't been endangered. In his first extensive remarks on the controversy that has roiled the Democratic presidential primary, Mr. Obama said on CBS's \"60 Minutes\" program that questions about Mrs. Clinton's email arrangement were legitimate. \"It is important for her to answer these questions to the satisfaction of the American public,\" Mr. Obama said.","label":0}
{"text":"There are no winners among Iraq s Kurds, just weeks after Kurdish president Masoud Barzani gambled away his people s autonomy in a defiant independence referendum. The losing bet has come at a steep price for everyone involved. Barzani has had to give up the presidency, his Kurdish political foes have angered their popular base, and the Kurdish people, who overwhelmingly voted to break away from Iraq, feel further than ever from their lifelong dream of independence. The ultimate winner, analysts say, is Iran, widely believed to have backed and orchestrated Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in his Oct. 16 offensive to recapture Kurdish held-areas, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The Iranians outwitted the Americans; they were the driving force behind the deal to hand over Kirkuk, said Hassan Shaaban, a political commentator and rights activist in Baghdad. The balance of power has been transformed in the north of Iraq, exposing the limited hand the Kurds have to play in future negotiations. It has also exposed the dominant role Iran played in transforming the fate of the Kurdish region. Iran is poised to exploit the political aftermath, pushing to move the centre of power from the regional capital Erbil, where the Barzanis and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) have dominated, to its Kurdish allies in the city of Sulaimaniya. Iran was always one step ahead on the referendum, said Renad Mansour, an Iraq expert at the Chatham House think-tank. They knew Barzani was never going to postpone the vote, he said, adding: The U.S. was left scrambling while the Iranians were plotting. A senior Iranian official said Tehran had advised Barzani against the referendum but he would not listen. We tried to stop this referendum because it was not in their interest. But unfortunately Mr Barzani miscalculated his social base among Kurds and went ahead with the vote, Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran s National Security Council, was quoted as saying by Mehr news agency on Tuesday. Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani has for years been allied to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the main rival of Barzani s KDP. But the referendum has drawn the powerful Iranian commander even closer to Kurdish politics, and shown how far Iran s reach has extended beyond the central government in Baghdad. Ahead of the vote, Soleimani warned Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq to withdraw their forces from Kirkuk or face a fiery onslaught by Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed fighters, according to Kurdish and Iraqi officials. The warning prompted Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to withdraw from most areas, and deepened the split between Barzani s power base in Erbil, and the rival Talabani clan in Sulaimaniya, long allied with Iran. Iraqi politicians have voiced concern about the growing influence of Iran, despite praising Abadi for reining in Kurdish ambitions. We feel worried seeing the octopus arms stretching deeper in the north, said Ahmed Asi al-Obeidi, a Sunni tribal sheikh and a member of Kirkuk s tribal council. We all have seen the problems Iranian meddling has caused in other parts of Iraq, including mainly Sunni areas, and if the same amount of interference is repeated in Kurdish areas, then the worst is coming and instability will prevail. Addressing his people, demoralized by humiliating territorial defeats, Barzani said on Sunday that he would step down, just one month after the vote he championed in the face of regional and international opposition. He accused his enemies of committing high treason in surrendering Kirkuk to Iraqi forces without a fight, while his rivals have directed the same accusation against him for holding the referendum in the first place. The vote and its ensuing political and military retribution from Baghdad - backed by Iran and Turkey - demolished the position of relative strength the Kurds had enjoyed for years. The blame has been placed on Barzani s shoulders, both by his political opponents, notably the rival Talabani clan allied to Iran, and his Western allies, who were angered by his insistence on holding the vote against their advice. On Sunday, Kurdish lawmakers agreed to divide Barzani s presidential powers between parliament, the judiciary and the government, in the absence of imminent presidential elections and a named successor. Barzani remains head of the KDP, which dominates parliament and government, and will still sit on the High Political Council, an opaque non-governmental body which emerged after the referendum. He will thus retain his ability to influence policy. Barzani could therefore mitigate the mounting political chaos. But his position instead highlights the lack of clarity over who is in charge as crucial negotiations with Baghdad get underway over the region s future. Dominant since he became president in 2005, Barzani has consolidated the power of his office, and boosted his family members political profiles. Before the referendum, Barzani s son Masrour was his likely successor, but he has been damaged by his backing for the vote. Instead, Nechirvan Barzani, Masoud s nephew and the regional prime minister, has moved to the fore. He has gained some of Barzani s newly devolved presidential powers, and maintained ties with the Kurdish opposition, making him a more palatable candidate to mend regional fences. He also enjoys a close relationship with Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan. On Monday, the United States commended Barzani for stepping down and said it would actively engage with Nechirvan, and his deputy, Qubad Talabani, a member of the rival political faction with whom he maintains a good relationship. Who emerges as the next leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government is anything but straightforward. In addition to an intra-Kurdish compromise, the influence of Baghdad and Iran will have to be considered. Senior Kurdish officials from both the KDP and PUK say their best bet is to present a united front in negotiations with Baghdad. But that now seems all but impossible. Iraqi forces, including the Iran-backed Shi ite militias, now control border crossings in the north, vital trade routes for the Kurds. The military capitulation in Kirkuk was a crushing blow to the Kurds, both morally and financially, halving the region s oil export revenue overnight. Now the Talabanis are facing their own succession crisis, following the death of former president Jalal Talabani. Iran saw the disintegration of their Kurdish ally in Talabani, said Mansour, who added Iran needed a clear successor to ensure its continued influence. Another set of sons and nephews are vying for leadership in the aftermath of the referendum. But the PUK base has expressed more widespread disappointment with how their leadership handled the Kirkuk crisis. We were betrayed by our leaders in Kirkuk, who stopped us from fighting the (Iraqi Shi ite) militias, said a PUK-allied Peshmerga commander who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. They sold us to Iran for their own benefit. For a graphic on Iaq's Kurdish zone, click tmsnrt.rs\/2yXRWcI","label":0}
{"text":"Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) is the physical embodiment of the anti-Trump resistance in Congress. She has openly called for the orange one to be impeached on multiple occasions, and rails against him on national television at every opportunity. Her latest attack on The Donald comes via his own favorite platform Twitter.Of course, Rep. Waters participated in the Tax Day marches that were designed to pressure Trump to release his tax returns as every president and presidential candidate has done for decades. Of course, Trump broke all the rules of politics and still managed to get elected. So, the breaking of this particular tradition should come as no surprise.Well, Rep. Waters has had enough of Trump s lies and lack of transparency, so she took to Twitter to rail Trump once again:Trump will not release his taxes b\/c he has something to hide. He's only out to enrich himself, his wealthy cabinet, & White House swamp Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) April 18, 2017It can't be lost in the chaos that Trump's campaign is still under FBI investigation for colluding w\/ Russians to undermine our democracy Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) April 18, 2017Nothing in the past two weeks has changed anything about what we've learned about Manafort, C. Page, & the rest of Trump's #KremlinKlan Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) April 18, 2017The President is a liar, his actions are contemptible, & I'm going to fight everyday until he's impeached. Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) April 18, 2017Rep. Waters is correct. Trump is a liar. He isn t releasing his taxes because he s hiding god only knows what. Further, we can t let him distract us with missiles and bombs. We must know what he is hiding and who he is working for, and we must know if he colluded with Russia to win this election.Keep on fighting, Auntie Maxine. We need good, strong Democrats like you to derail Trump s hateful agenda.","label":1}
{"text":"Marine Corps Veteran Frank Biggio appreciates your recognition of his services, but he doesn t want it anymore. This year is far too important. Instead, he says, he wants you to vote and he wants you to vote for Hillary Clinton.In an op-ed in Cleveland.com, Biggio outlined strong differences between the two major party candidates, and for him, Trump is unacceptable:One of our options includes a man who has glibly spoken about using nuclear weapons in Europe and the Middle East and seems unconcerned about nuclear proliferation by other countries simply because it is going to happen anyway; who fails to comprehend the deterrent effect of U.S. troops in South Korea against increasingly belligerent threats by North Korea; who would allow NATO member states on Russia s western border to fall to Kremlin aggressions unless they pay up; and who has denigrated the family of an Army captain killed in action while serving his country.This is a mercurial man who will have almost unchecked authority to put uniformed men and women in harm s way, but whose understanding of foreign affairs and military strategy is based almost solely on his instincts rather than analysis.Biggio goes on to say that he has served under many commanders and none of them have resorted to primitive and distracting antics like belligerent shouting or chest thumping. He also wrote about how every commander he s served under is humble with victories and takes responsibility for failures. Trump, he said, would never credit his team for success and he d never take blame for failure. Instead, Biggio compared Trump to the fictional Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny :Trump is no Eisenhower. He s more like the fictional Captain Queeg played by Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny paranoid, erratic, condescending and ultimately incompetent. There are many other apt analogies, but each is equally frightening when thinking of Trump directing the deployment of our military to today s ambiguous front lines, perhaps just to prove that he can.Biggio is concerned for the 2.2 million members of the military if Trump is elected:Will we elect a man who, without offering any clarity, boasts that he will be so good at the military, your head will spin, as if his high school graduation from a military academy validates that claim, and hopes that the electorate will simply trust that will be so? Whose behavior and public comments cause a collective group of 50 foreign policy experts, most of whom are from the Republican Party and have at one time sat in the White House Situation Room and contemplated the implications and repercussions of deploying our military, to publicly denounce him and the security and foreign policy positions he has proposed?Biggio agrees with many that Clinton is not without flaws (who is?), but he admires and respects her experience, her pragmatism and the fact that she knows when to be decisive and when to exhibit restraint:This Election Day, please thank me for my service by voting for Hillary Clinton as our president and commander in chief.We will, Major Biggio.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump's failure to fill dozens of senior-level positions at the Pentagon is making it difficult for defense contractors to forecast business. Defense company officials, speaking on conference calls after their just-reported quarterly earnings, did not blame Trump directly, but said the lack of appointments to key positions at the Pentagon had slowed contract awards and created uncertainty. \"The still-high number of unfilled leadership appointments and the approaching government physical year-end continue to serve as headwinds,\" said Roger Krone, chief executive of Leidos Holdings Inc (LDOS.N), on an Aug. 3 call with analysts. Krone, whose company is one of the largest providers of services to U.S. armed forces, said those open posts have slowed the awarding of government contracts. The Department of Defense said it has 42 unfilled top-level posts that require Senate confirmation, including general counsel, inspector general and other important roles like secretary of the Army and undersecretary of the Navy. The Pentagon referred a request for comment on its unfilled posts to the White House. A White House official said: \"Democrat obstruction has played a key role in jamming up the president's agenda.\" Of the 42 open positions that require Senate confirmation, 29 have no nominee identified, while 13 have nominees awaiting confirmation. For two of the largest U.S. defense companies, General Dynamics Corp (GD.N) and L3 Technologies Inc (LLL.N), thin staffing at their largest customer was a talking point with investors. The Defense Department is \"working on filling several positions in the Pentagon and that has definitely resulted in a slowdown,\" said Ralph D'Ambrosio, chief financial officer of L3, a prime contractor for surveillance, security and detection systems. Because of the slowdown, the quarter just ended was the lowest second-quarter spending level on record at $62.5 billion, according to a report by data analysis firm Govini, seen by Reuters. The report said \"federal procurement resources are stretched thinner than they ever have been.\" Leidos' Krone pointed to the expected one-year delay of the Navy's $3.5 billion NMCI NextGen program to update the intranet used by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps as an example of a big contract delay. Defense spending for the 2018 fiscal year and beyond was unclear, said Byron Callan, a defense analyst at Capital Alpha Partners, noting that few companies have changed their long-term profit expectations, suggesting that uncertainty has made forecasting more difficult. \"The fact that we didn't have an enacted (fiscal year) 2017 budget until the early part of May, which was seven months into the fiscal year, has definitely slowed down the contracting activity and the obligation activity within the Department of Defense,\" said D'Ambrosio. Some of the positions have been difficult to fill. Two of Trump's nominees for Army secretary, its top professional civilian position, withdrew their names from consideration. The White House then nominated Raytheon Co (RTN.N) lobbyist Mark Esper, and he is awaiting a vote on his confirmation. General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic said during her company's conference call that \"without these appointments, it is difficult to process contracts\" and to make progress on defense-related projects. Novakovic's information systems and technology business unit has thousands of shorter sales-cycle service contracts which can reflect delays quickly.","label":0}
{"text":"On January 29, the U.S. State Department announced that the agency had identified 37 pages of top secret emails among the 55,000 pages of emails contained on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s private email server.Not surprisingly, Clinton s GOP rivals went straight to work spreading half-truths and misinformation about the announcement.As former Chair of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein pointed out in a statement on Friday, several key facts are being left out of the narrative surrounding the announcement.For starters, the 37 pages of top secret communication actually involve only seven chain emails. Each of these seven emails was sent to a larger group of recipients, including the former Secretary of State.None of the top secret emails were sent from Hillary Clinton s private server.All of the emails originated from within the State Department s unclassified system. None of them contained the mandatory top secret label which is required for all classified communication.During a press conference on Friday, State Dept. spokesperson John Kirby told reporters that the emails were being withheld because they meet the definition of top secret communication now.Kirby also stressed that the emails were not marked classified at the time that they were sent. Was the information contained in the emails considered classified at the time they were sent? Keep in mind that all 55,000 of Clinton s emails were sent between March 2009 and February 2013. Since the State Department regularly raises the status of unclassified material to the level of classified, it s more than likely the content of these seven emails was not considered classified when it was sent.According to Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon, in at least one case, the emails appear to involve information from a published news article. The last time the GOP went wild with claims that Clinton had top secret emails on her private server, we later found out that the information had been retroactively classified by the FBI.To summarize:In other words, this is not the huge scandal republicans were hoping for. Instead, it s just another baseless right wing attack on Hillary Clinton that falls apart under even the slightest amount of scrutiny.Featured image credit: Pixabay","label":1}
{"text":"While Trump's edge is just 1 point \u2014 which is well within the margin of error \u2014 the Republican candidate has made up 13 points in under two weeks. Trump \u2014 who used to read off every poll he led during rallies but had begun to call them inaccurate after he started to decline \u2014 has decided he likes them again, or at least he likes this one. But not everyone wants to capitalize on the poll. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich called the new poll an \"absurdity.\" At this point in 2012, Mitt Romney led President Obama by 1 point. The daily tracking poll was conducted Oct. 27-30, 2016, and included 1,128 likely voters. The margin of error is 3 points.","label":0}
{"text":"GOP congressman Steve King (R-IA) had endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump after Ted Cruz ended his presidential campaign, but a recent statement of his is raising some eyebrows he actually praised Trump s rival in a speech!On Thursday, King told a crowd at the Iowa State Fair that he and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton can barely see eye to eye on anything and if he were to be re-elected, he ll break out of my shell if I have to do battle with an agenda that Iowans reject. However, King said the former Secretary of State is somebody I can work with if she were to win this election. King s full statement to the audience, as quoted by the Des Moines Register s Jason Noble, was: If it s Hillary Clinton, we don t agree on very much. So you ll probably see me become a vocal member of Congress if you should elect me to go back to Washington after November.But I also know that I ve sat across the table with Hillary Clinton eye-to-eye, and when you re working outside of staff and outside of press, she is somebody I can work with. You can listen to King s remarks below:That almost sounds like resignation to the fact that Trump is destroying his campaign and dragging the GOP down with him. Coming from an elected Republican like King, this is a pretty powerful statement especially considering all that the Republican Party has done to smear Clinton s name. Of course, King is still going to vote for Trump in November, but it sounds like he s coming around to accepting Clinton as the probable next president of the United States.Clinton has been smart in recognizing that so many anti-Trump moderate GOPers are looking for their place in this election, and she is positioning herself as someone who can unite people. Clearly, it is working. As Trump continues to grow more insane and violent in his rhetoric, we can only expect to see more statements like this coming from prominent GOPers.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump s ties to Vladimir Putin have been questioned again and again, and for good reason. Trump has previously said good things about Putin and has done so once again, but not before he released the holiday letter he received from the Vladimir.Putin wrote the letter to Donald just over a week ago, on December 15th, saying: I hope that after you assume the position of the President of the United States of America, we will be able by acting in a constructive and pragmatic manner to take real steps to restore the framework of bilateral cooperation in different areas as well as bring our level of collaboration on the international scene to a qualitatively new level. In the letter he also wished the Trump family happiness and success.During his annual news conference Putin suggested that America and Russia should discuss ways to normalize our relations. During his election campaign, Trump said it would be proper to normalize and it can t be worse, and I agree with him. Putin has also tweeted about his hopes to ally with the US:On the first meeting with Trump: We will discuss how to put Russia-US relations back on track President of Russia (@KremlinRussia_E) December 23, 2016Trump responded in a short statement: A very nice letter from Vladimir Putin; his thoughts are so correct, I hope both sides are able to live up to these thoughts, and we do not have to travel an alternate path. However, Trump s tweets say he s definitely willing to travel down an alternate path. Yesterday, on the 22nd, Donald Trump tweeted The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 22, 2016He also made a statement to Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all, So it s certain that Trump is perfectly fine with starting an arms race, even though that generally leads to war. Trump probably doesn t have enough knowledge of history to know that though.What will happen between these superpowers remains unclear, but hopefully it doesn t involve nuclear war, and with it the destruction of the world as we know it.","label":1}
{"text":"Comments  Republicans are fond of blaming the media for their troubles, but never blaming voters for utterly rejecting their party's platform of racism, hatred and economic inequality. To some Republican voters, it will even come as a surprise that Donald Trump loses next week's election, but the signs were all there and here's an excerpt from just one of the rare Fox News stories that admits it: \" 'Sleeping Giant' awake and roaring \u2013 early voting shows high Latino turnout \":  The tens of millions of early votes cast point to strength from Democratic-leaning Latino voters, potentially giving Clinton a significant advantage in Nevada and Colorado. With more than half the votes already cast in those states, Democrats are matching if not exceeding their successful 2012 pace, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.  Latinos, another group that Democrats have been banking on, are turning out in larger numbers than anticipated, and they very well may be the ones who give the party's presidential nominee the margin of victory. \"We are seeing the trajectory of the election change in some states, but Democrats are also making up ground,\" said Michael McDonald, a University of Florida professor and expert in voter turnout.  They don't let Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs on to Fox News Latino, which is probably why it actually publishes some factual stories, unlike Fox News or Fox Business, who just today had to retract an entirely false story about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.  Meanwhile, Univision exit polling is showing that Latinos have the same high level of regard for Hillary Clinton in Florida that they have for President Barack Obama. This level of support is considered key to the Democratic nominee's strategy to win the Sunshine State, which would act as a firewall, closing almost all of the Republican nominee's paths to the presidency. The Miami Herald reports :  Hillary Clinton has hit a key marker among Florida Hispanics, according to a new poll: She's reached the level of popularity that helped President Barack Obama win the nation's largest battleground state in 2012.  Sixty percent of Florida Latinos favor Clinton, the Univision News poll shows. That's the same number that voted for Obama four years ago, according to exit polls from that election.  The polls further indicate that Hillary Clinton will probably get at least 60% of the latino vote in Florida, but there's 9% of the sample that is still not decided, so it could be much higher by the time election day finishes.  Politico is reporting that the Democratic nominee's 30-point lead amongst Latino voters in Florida isn't just a problem for Trump, but that for the entire GOP it's a \"terrifying\" prospect. For the wing of the Republican party that likes to win elections, this poll is probably invoking the moment where they see their party's entire electoral history as the party of Lincoln flash before its eyes, which can only mean that the end of the decadently twisted Grand Old Party is near.  Republicans wrote an autopsy of their party after their politics of division, hatred and the 47% blew the 2012 election, which declared the GOP dead in the water. Particularly, the report cited the Tea Party's radical anti-immigration policies, racist dog whistles and the war on women.  Luckily, that spurred the rank and file GOP voters in 2016 to pick an orange zombie Presidential candidate, a man who has turned off women and latinos like a switch, and added muslims, finished off black people and finally convinced college educated voters to trust that the Democratic party is the only rational political actor that can be trusted.  Donald Trump's \"safe zone\"\u2013 THE Fox News Network \u2013 is reporting a massive turnout in the latino communities the Republican candidate so despises.  Now, there is absolutely no way he can claim that the election is rigged next Tuesday night when all of the major news networks pronounce his campaign dead, and the Republican Party along with it.","label":1}
{"text":"The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that \"anti-Cuban\" actions recently announced by Washington were regrettable and that Moscow confirmed its solidarity with Havana. The ministry also said that the new approach toward Cuba by the U.S. administration resembles a \"Cold war rhetoric\". U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday ordered tighter restrictions on Americans traveling to Cuba and a clampdown on U.S. business dealings with the Caribbean island's military, saying he was cancelling former President Barack Obama's \"terrible and misguided deal\" liberalizing ties with Havana.","label":0}
{"text":"Is it Hillary s political privilege that allows her to go unpunished for her criminal activity? Hillary was just given a pass to run for the highest office in our nation by the FBI after sending an untold number of highly classified emails from her personal server, while a Marine who served four tours of duty overseas sent one classified email from his personal server in an effort the save the lives of his fellow Marines and he is forced out of the military. But then again, the Clinton Crime Family is never subject to the same rules as We The Peasants The deck is stacked in favor of those at the top. Everyday Americans need a champion. -Hillary ClintonU.S. Marine Corps Captain Jason C. Brezler, a decorated Marine officer who has deployed four times, faces being discharged from the Corps he loves because he used his personal email to send a single classified report as an urgent warning when lives were at stake.Meanwhile Intelligence Inspectors General (IGs) found two top secret documents out of a randomly-picked set of forty from Hillary Clinton s emails and she is being allowed to continue her campaign with little or a no consequence and, generally, the story is being ignored by the mainstream media.As reported by the left-wing Daily Beast, on July 25, 2012, U.S. Marine Corps Captain Jason C. Brezler was in the U.S. attending grad school. In fact, he was in class when received an email about Sarwar Jan, the former police chief who Brezler helped to remove from office. The email was from Marine Major Andrew Terrell, who served with Brezler in 2010. Jan, as police chief, was a notorious drug and weapons trafficker and a friend of the Taliban who ran a child kidnapping\/rape ring on the side. Terrell s email said that the former police chief had returned to the area where they served, near FOB Delhi in Afghanistan. The accompanying message from Terrell read, Jason, I just got an email from one of my friends in Afghanistan; he just met Sarwar Jan. He is looking for anything we have on him. Do you still have that paper Larissa wrote on this guy in Now Zad? It could be very helpful. Anything you can think of would be useful. Thanks brother, Andrew. Larissa Mihalisko was a Marine intelligence officer who had prepared a report on Jan with information provided by Brezler and Terrell. Brezler had kept a copy along with other necessary operation reports on the personal laptop he used in the war zone, the Marines not having provided him one.Now, in the moments after he received the urgent message from Terrell, Brezler decided it was great luck that he had downloaded the hard drive from that laptop onto his new one. I immediately typed search and Sarwar Jan and uploaded the document, he would recall in court papers.In the next instant, he sent the report to the email address that Terrell had provided for another Marine in Afghanistan. He gave no thought to the document s classification. Major Jason Brezler s email with the classified information sent to FOB Delhi was meant to be an alarm about Sarwar Jan but, it was ignored. Soon after, three Marines working out at the base s gym were shot and killed by an Afghan teen brought on the base by the same corrupt and double-dealing pedophile police chief whom Brezler had declared to be an immediate threat. Marine Maj. Jason Brezler sent an email to 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines (stationed at FOB Delhi) before the shootings about a corrupt Afghan cop named Sarwar Jan, who was allegedly raping Ainuddin before the 2012 murders. SARWAR JAN IS BACK In 2012 Major Brian Donlon was a captain, serving as 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines operations officer in Afghanistan. According to an email chain obtained by Blue Force Tracker, Donlon sent an email to Captain Andrew Terrell on July 23, 2012 18 days before the FOB Delhi shootings requesting information about Sarwar Jan. Do you remember the Now Zad DCOP, Sarwar Jan? Donlon wrote. If yes, tell me about him. He just showed up. Brian, I sent this request out to Jason Brezler my civil affairs officer for Now Zad. He has some of the detailed reports we submitted on this guy (Sarwar Jan). The short version is he is extremely corrupt, only serves himself, has a proven record of failure [ ] He (Sarwar Jan) has sold out to the Taliban several times before, I would not trust him with anything. After Terrell sent the request for additional information to Brezler, he contacted Donlon to update him on the request:On July 24, 2012, Brezler logged into his Yahoo email account; he was attending graduate school in Oklahoma at the time. He saw an email from Terrell titled: IMPORTANT! Sarwar Jan is back! Brezler hurriedly responded to Donlon with all the information he had on Jan inadvertently including classified information about the Afghan police chief in the email sent from his unsecured Yahoo account.Donlon, in turn, replied to Terrell that he would have to report Brezler for violating the military s rules on classified information spillage. I am going to have to report this to our OPSEC guy, Donlon wrote. Dammit, I know he was just trying to help but shit, he can t have this stuff on there. Donlon s reply to Terrell, however, made no mention of the actual content of Brezler s warning about Jan, nor did he say whether he had forwarded Brezler s warning on to units at FOB Delhi.After Donlon questioned Brezler about sending the classified document over an unsecure network, Brezler reported his offense to his superiors. A Naval Criminal Investigation was launched into the classified data spillage. Brezler cooperated with NCIS investigators, turning over his laptop and materials, which, he claimed he accidently took home following a 2010 deployment to Afghanistan. At that time in Afghanistan, Brezler said, Marines had to use their own personal computers to handle classified material due to limited resourcesBrezler knew the document had been classified, but he figured that had likely changed with the passage of time. And he was only passing on to a fellow Marine what he and Terrell had reported in the first place. But he could tell that the other Marine [who received his email] was taking it as a breach of security. Brezler had still been in class during all this. He continued to live by the Naval Academy honor code, and he used the lunch break to call a Marine higher-up to report himself.Brezler was later referred to a board of inquiry for sending his warning about Jan, which included classified information, over an unclassified network. Although a subsequent Marine Corps investigation determined that Jan did not play a direct role in the 2012 murders, Buckley s family and platoon mates still think Jan was culpable and are pressing to discover whether Brezler s warning was either ignored or overlooked at a time when the threat of green on blue attacks on U.S. and NATO military personnel in Afghanistan was at the highest point of the war.Here s the sick part. The only one who is being punished for that act is U.S. Marine Corps Captain Jason C. Brezler, a decorated Marine officer who has deployed four times, who now faces being discharged from the Corps he loves because he used his personal email to send a single classified report as an urgent warning when lives were at stake and who followed up by self-reporting his breaking of rules.At first, his only punishment was a reprimand, but when the families of the three marines murdered in the gym began to complain that they were being told nothing about the death of their loved ones, Captain Brezler reached out to Rep. Peter King (R-NY) for help.Suddenly, some of the Marine brass decided that a reprimand was not enough. Brezler could not help but notice that nobody was being investigated for failing to act on the report itself. I do not know, and cannot understand, how Jan was ever permitted to operate again with, in proximity to, Marine forces, let alone assume a command on a Marine FOB with an entourage of chai boys, Brezler said in court papers. Had senior Marine commanders paid attention to the dossier we prepared when we expelled Jan from Now Zad, or the Marine commanders responsible for FOB Delhi acted on the warning I sent in response to their urgent request, I believe the Marines murdered on FOB Delhi would be alive today. The commanders who messed up weren t punished, but the Captain who loved being a Marine is being drummed out of the Corps, unless Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus sets the decision aside.Now, compare the case of Captain Brezler to that of Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. As Secretary of State, against the rules, she used a private email server so she could keep all the emails to herself. Over that private server, she sent classified information. When others discovered the private server, she denied it ever held classified information, and she selected which emails to turn over and then had her server wiped clean. After months of refusing, Ms. Clinton finally turned her server over the FBI. So far, she is getting off without even a reprimand and the mainstream media is protecting her.Captain Brezler, on the other hand, sent one classified document in an attempt to save the lives of other Marines. When he realized his mistake, he reported himself. As soon as he was asked, he turned his computer and thumb drive to his superiors. And, when the subject of the three marines who were killed was brought up by their grieving families, he didn t go talk to them, he spoke to a U.S. Congressman who had clearance because he was on the intelligence committee. Now, Captain Brezler is being forced out of the Marine Corps the loves.As the author of the Daily Beast piece concludes:Brezler has continued to serve with distinction as a member of Rescue 2 of the FDNY. A retired firefighter named Jimmy Boyle ran into him the other day and called out a question many are asking. Hey, Jason, what did you do that Hillary didn t?","label":1}
{"text":"President Trump turned the power of the White House against the news media on Friday, escalating his attacks on journalists as \"the enemy of the people\" and berating members of his own F. B. I. as \"leakers\" who he said were putting the nation at risk. In a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mr. Trump criticized as \"fake news\" organizations that publish anonymously sourced reports that reflect poorly on him. And in a series of Twitter posts, he assailed the F. B. I. as a dangerously porous agency, condemning unauthorized revelations of classified information from within its ranks and calling for an immediate hunt for leakers. Hours after the speech, as if to demonstrate Mr. Trump's determination to punish reporters whose coverage he dislikes, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, barred journalists from The New York Times and several other news organizations from attending his daily briefing, a highly unusual breach of relations between the White House and its press corps. Mr. Trump's barrage against the news media continued well into Friday night. \"FAKE NEWS media knowingly doesn't tell the truth,\" he wrote on Twitter shortly after 10 p. m. singling out The Times and CNN. \"A great danger to our country. \" The moves underscored the degree to which Mr. Trump and members of his inner circle are eager to use the prerogatives of the presidency to undercut those who scrutinize him, dismissing negative stories as lies and confining press access at the White House to a few chosen news organizations considered friendly. The Trump White House has also vowed new efforts to punish leakers. Mr. Trump's attacks on the press came as the White House pushed back on a report by CNN on Thursday night that a White House official had asked the F. B. I. to rebut a New York Times article last week detailing contacts between Mr. Trump's associates and Russian intelligence officials. The report asserted that a senior White House official had called top leaders at the F. B. I. to request that they contact reporters to dispute the Times's account. \"The fake news doesn't tell the truth,\" Mr. Trump said to the delight of the conservatives packed into the main ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center just south of Washington. \"It doesn't represent the people, it doesn't and never will represent the people, and we're going to do something about it. \" In the West Wing less than three hours later, the consequences were becoming clear. Mr. Spicer told a handpicked group of reporters in a briefing in his spacious office that the White House would relentlessly counter coverage it considered inaccurate. \"We're going to aggressively push back,\" he said, according to a recording of the session provided by a reporter who was allowed to attend. \"We're just not going to sit back and let, you know, false narratives, false stories, inaccurate facts get out there. \" Reporters from The Times, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times, Politico, the BBC and The Huffington Post were among those shut out of the briefing. Aides to Mr. Spicer admitted only reporters from a group of news organizations that, the White House said, had been previously confirmed. Those organizations included Breitbart News, the One America News Network and The Washington Times, all with conservative leanings. Journalists from ABC, CBS, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Fox News also attended. Reporters from The Associated Press and Time magazine, who were set to be allowed in, chose not to attend the briefing in protest of the White House's actions. The Washington Post did not send a reporter to the session. \"Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties,\" Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement. \"We strongly protest the exclusion of The New York Times and the other news organizations. Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest. \" Marty Baron, the Post's editor, called Mr. Spicer's decision to exclude some news organizations from a scheduled briefing \"appalling. \" \"This is an undemocratic path that the administration is traveling,\" Mr. Baron said. \"There is nothing to be gained from the White House restricting the public's access to information. \" The White House played down the drama surrounding Friday's briefing. \"We invited the pool, so everyone was represented,\" Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary, said in an email Friday afternoon, referring to the small group of reporters on hand at the White House each day to follow the president and send reports to the broader press corps. \"We decided to add a couple of additional people beyond the pool. Nothing more than that. \" The White House Correspondents' Association, which represents the press corps, also protested the decision. But Jeff Mason, the organization's president, pointed out that the White House had provided briefings and accepted questions from a variety of news outlets since Mr. Trump took office. \"We're not happy with how things went today,\" Mr. Mason said in an interview. \"But it's important to keep in mind the context of how things have gone up until now. \" He added: \"I don't think that people should rush to judgment to suggest that this is the start of a big crackdown on media access. \" Still, the Committee to Protect Journalists, which typically advocates press rights in countries with despotic regimes, issued an alarmed statement on Friday about Mr. Trump's escalating language. \"It is not the job of political leaders to determine how journalists should conduct their work, and sets a terrible example for the rest of the world,\" said the group's executive director, Joel Simon. \"The U. S. should be promoting press freedom and access to information. \" Mr. Trump, in his attack on the news media at the conservative gathering, complained at length about the use of anonymous sources in news stories, charging that some reporters were fabricating unnamed sources to level unfair charges against him. \"They shouldn't be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody's name,\" Mr. Trump said. \"Let their name be put out there. \" At another point, he said, \"A few days ago, I called the fake news the enemy of the people because they have no sources \u2014 they just make it up. \" He added that his \"enemy of the people\" label applied only to \"dishonest\" reporters and editors. Those comments came shortly after his own aides had held a briefing for the White House press pool on the condition of anonymity to deny CNN's story suggesting there had been improper contact between the White House and the F. B. I. regarding the Times article on Russian contacts. Later, in the briefing from which the Times was excluded, Mr. Spicer said that it was top F. B. I. officials \u2014 first Andrew G. McCabe, the deputy director, and later James B. Comey, the director \u2014 who approached Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, the day after the article appeared to say that it was false. Mr. Priebus then asked the two F. B. I. officials what they could do to rebut it publicly. They apologized and said they were unable to issue a statement or otherwise comment on the matter, Mr. Spicer said. \"They came to us and said the story is not true. We said, 'Great, could you tell people that? '\" Mr. Spicer said, describing the discussions between Mr. Priebus and F. B. I. officials. The F. B. I. on Friday declined to provide its account of those conversations. On Thursday night an F. B. I. official said that the White House had asked last week for the bureau's help disputing the article, and that senior F. B. I. officials had rejected the request, citing the investigation into Russian efforts to affect the election. The article reported that current and former American officials said that phone records and intercepted calls showed that members of Mr. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election. The intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. Last week the White House declined to comment on the Times article and referred reporters back to Mr. Spicer's previous assertions that Mr. Trump's campaign had no contact with the Russian government. Mr. Baquet said on Friday that The Times \"had numerous sources confirming this story. \" \"Attacking it does not make it less true,\" Mr. Baquet added. Mr. Spicer's Friday session, known as a gaggle, was scheduled as an event, less formal than his usual briefings that are carried live on cable news. But past administrations have not selected outlets that can attend such sessions. Representatives of the barred news organizations made clear that they believed the White House's actions were punitive. \"Apparently this is how they retaliate when you report facts they don't like,\" CNN said in a statement. Tensions always emerge between an administration and the reporters who cover it, and it is not unusual for a White House to single out groups of journalists for special briefings outside of the daily session. The Obama White House was harshly criticized by members of the press corps after it tried to exclude Fox News from interviews with top administration officials. But press relations in the Trump White House have taken on a tinderbox dynamic, with journalists and press aides highly suspicious of each other's motives. \"The grass is dry on both sides,\" said Ari Fleischer, who was press secretary to George W. Bush, \"so it only takes a very small match to light it on fire. \"","label":0}
{"text":"This is either really funny or a dangerous escalation. A group of armed patriots that have been showing up to mosques to terrorize Muslims going to pray were scared off by a larger group of armed African American counter-protesters:Racial tensions in South Dallas almost exploded at an anti-mosque protest Saturday afternoon before quickly dissolving when the protesters retreated.A few hundred South Dallas residents, mostly black, flooded Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to oppose a planned demonstration by a mostly white group that routinely protests outside mosques.Both sides were armed.The mosque in question was a predominately black one and the counter-protesters were chanting Black Power at the Murikan protesters.Unfortunately, the counter-protesters included members of the New Black Panther Party. If that name doesn t ring a bell, it s a group of pretenders to the legacy of the Black Panthers that spread anti-white bigotry, something the Black Panthers did not do (much). This is why a counter-protest to protect a mosque became racialized. While I have no doubt most of the protesters were racist as well as anti-Muslim, shifting the focus away from the religious bigotry to racism doesn t help Muslims in the long run. It does, however, help the NBPP and their message of anti-white hate.But although I don t approve of the bigotry, I do approve of the counter-protest. Ammosexuals have been terrorizing people for far too long and it was nice to see them show their true colors when their victims have guns, too. Liberals have been not-exactly-joking that black people need to start carrying rifles to push back against the targeting of their communities and, unsurprisingly, it worked.The problem is that Fox News and right wing media is going to explode over this. Nothing gets ratings like scary black people threatening innocent whites just defending their country blablabla. The racism will flow thick and heavy and some people will ask if this is the beginning of Sharia Law in America and the ISIS takeover.The original protesters, BAIR (the Bureau of American Islamic Relations, a silly play on CAIR, a Muslim group) is going to scream persecution and beg for help fighting the evil Muslims\/scary black people. The next protest will be far larger, with more guns and filled with people just aching for a gun fight to break out. The potential for bloodshed will be a nightmare for the police.Keep an eye on Texas, this could get real ugly, real quick.Here s the video:","label":1}
{"text":"November 1, 2016 Obama's Israel Surprise?  The Middle East has few bright spots these days, but one is the budding rapprochement between Israel and its Sunni Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, thanks to shared threats from Iran and Islamic State. Now the Obama Administration may have plans to wreck even that.","label":1}
{"text":"It may be legal to lobby delegates, but will Donald Trump use his luxurious properties to woo delegates leading up to the Republican Convention in July? And if other candidates before him have used the same tactics, should Donald Trump be criticized because his success allows him to offer more 5-star perks?West Virginia looks perfect for Donald Trump: a struggling working-class state filled with the types of voters who have backed him elsewhere and could deliver one of his biggest victories.But a sweep there might not matter. That s because as many as 34 delegates the entire contingent may be free to back whomever they want at the Republican National Convention.Much the same is true in Pennsylvania, home to a hotly contested April 26 primary, where there are 54 uncommitted delegates. Other states and territories, from Colorado to Wyoming to Guam, will also send squads of unbound representatives.These are the swing voters of the GOP nominating contest, nearly 200 activists and elected leaders beholden to nothing except their personal judgment and empowered to make or break candidacies.If Trump arrives at the July convention in Cleveland just shy of the 1,237 delegates required to secure the nomination outright, these unbound delegates could decide to push him over the top or force a contested convention with successive rounds of balloting. It s the wildcatter of delegate selection, said Ed Brookover, a senior adviser to Trump, who drew an analogy to risk-taking oilmen who drill in unexplored land.The three remaining candidates are identifying these delegates, researching their proclivities and beginning to cajole them. The law surrounding them is so unclear that Trump could conceivably fly them to Florida for a weekend of luxuriating at Mar-a-Lago, his gold-adorned and palm-lined private club where, naturally, they could be subjected to personal lobbying to support Trump.Brookover did not rule out the Trump campaign entertaining delegates at one of Trump s properties or paying for their travel costs to Cleveland. But he added: You certainly can t offer anything which would be considered a bribe. We can t give them $100,000. Charlie Black, who is helping lead Ohio Gov. John Kasich s delegate strategy, recalled working on Ronald Reagan s insurgent campaign in 1976 and struggling to court delegates as industriously as then-President Gerald Ford. People got to stay at the White House, fly on Air Force One and meet Queen Elizabeth, Black said.Federal rules do not provide clear guidance about whether delegates can accept items of value from a campaign, other than reimbursement for their travel expenses. Campaign finance lawyers are divided over whether federal or state anti-bribery statutes would apply to delegates who are not elected officials and if so, what kinds of perks or inducements could be illegal.","label":1}
{"text":"0 5 0 0 Field tests on the device are expected to begin in 2017.  WASHINGTON (Sputnik) \u2014 A device being developed will attach to a soldier's upper and lower legs to generate electricity that is needed to power a growing array of high-tech gadgets in a soldier's backpack, the US Army announced in a press release on Wednesday. \"Just by walking, soldiers could generate power,\" the Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center's Project Engineer Noel Soto said in the release. \"We are converting the movement of the knees when you walk into useful power.\"  Field tests on the device are expected to begin in 2017, the release explained. Progressive Soft Exoskeleton: as Comfortable as Everyday Pants (VIDEO) \"The goal is to reduce the amount of batteries used by soldiers, or to be able to extend the mission with the same load,\" Soto noted. \"Soldiers are carrying a heavy load and a lot of that weight, 16 to 20 pounds for a 72-hour mission, is due to batteries.\" Soldiers now carry multiple electronic devices that aid in strategy, communication and navigation, including computers, radios, mobile phones, battlefield situational displays and navigation tools, according to the release. ...","label":1}
{"text":"In the simplest of terms, one way to describe Donald Trump supporters would be to call them interesting. However, not interesting in a way where they have profound things to say and should be respected for all the things they do, but rather interesting in a way like when you visit a circus and wonder how so many clowns can fit into one car. That would, in fact, be interesting to find out.Catching up with a few of these interesting people was none other than Jimmy Kimmel s team on his late night show. He interviewed a number of them on the street in Hollywood and told them that it s Hillary Clinton s birthday. He then asked if they could say at least one nice thing about her for her birthday. The replies were, let s just say, less than kind.One woman said: I can t say anything positive. I d ask her if it s truly her birthday or if she s lying about that too. Another guy said: Happy birthday, Hillary. I hope you get arrested. One woman did muster up the strength to compliment Hillary s hair, but she wasn t happy about saying it.It definitely seems like there s a lot of anger coming out of the Trump campaign and their supporters, along with a lot of false information. Here s hoping they will be able to find happiness in life even when Hillary becomes president.Watch the segment and all their weird hatred towards Hillary here:","label":1}
{"text":"\"Hey Rhona!\" Donald J. Trump screamed from behind his desk on the 26th floor of Trump Tower one day last summer, before he won the presidency. Moments later, Rhona Graff, Mr. Trump's longtime executive assistant, popped in from her adjacent corner office. \"How long have you worked for me, Rhona?\" Mr. Trump asked. \"A couple of dozen years \u2014 I was 10 years old at the time \u2014 I was a child prodigy,\" Ms. Graff joked. \"Mr. Trump discovered me. \" \"Many of the people who are with me have been with me for a long time,\" Mr. Trump explained. In business, as a candidate and now as president, Mr. Trump has valued loyalty as the defining attribute in family, aides or Republicans in Congress. He does not always get it, as the defection of the Freedom Caucus last week on the health bill he was trying to pass made abundantly clear. But Mr. Trump can always count on Ms. Graff's allegiance, and that has made Ms. Graff, from her office in Trump Tower, a major figure in the operations of the White House for a simple reason: She is believed to have a direct line to the president. With her deep Queens accent and unerring deference to her boss (she has always referred to him as Mr. Trump or, usually, as Mr. T) Ms. Graff, 64, is a familiar voice to New York's business leaders, the nation's political reporters and now old associates hoping to circumvent the normal channels of communication to reach Mr. Trump. Ms. Graff is a senior vice president of the Trump Organization, and her unofficial role as a back channel to the president raises questions about whether Mr. Trump is skirting the Federal Records Act, which governs the preservation of schedules and correspondence from the president, something the White House denied in response to questions about her role from Politico. Reached on Sunday, Ms. Graff declined to comment. \"I like staying behind the scenes,\" she said in a conversation last year in which she rejected a reporter's proposal to shadow her for a day because so much private campaign, business and personal information crossed her desk. \"We're so intertwined when he's here,\" she said. Or, as she once put it to Real Estate Weekly, \"Everybody knows in order to get through to him they have to go through me. \" Ms. Graff, a Queens College graduate with a master's degree in psychology, left a sports marketing job after college to spend more time at home with her ailing mother. Eventually in search of another job, she heard about an opening in Mr. Trump's office, and in 1987 called cold. They hit it off. Since entering the Trump Organization's secretarial pool, Ms. Graff has acted as Mr. Trump's media liaison, scheduler, sometimes spokeswoman, planner, \"Apprentice\" and Miss Teen USA judge. And regardless of who is taking Mr. Trump's calls in Washington, it is Ms. Graff who occupies a more central space in the Trump orbit. In 1991, during Mr. Trump's brush with going broke, it was Ms. Graff, \"my very loyal secretary,\" as he put it in \"The Art of the Comeback,\" who came into his office to tell him that his estranged wife, Ivana, was on the phone with the message, as he put it in the book, \"I vant my money now. \" In 1993, Mayor David N. Dinkins presided at the wedding of Ms. Graff to Lucius Joseph Riccio, the city's transportation commissioner, and later nicknamed Professor Pothole by The New Yorker for pioneering the field of pothole analytics at Columbia University. For decades, Ms. Graff worked under the tutelage of Mr. Trump's longtime personal assistant, Norma Infante Foerderer, who died in 2013 from a heart attack after a difficult eye surgery. \"She'd still be here if she didn't have that problem,\" Ms. Graff lamented in Mr. Trump's office last year. \"A disaster,\" Mr. Trump agreed. But by 2005, the year Ms. Foerderer retired, Ms. Graff was already ascendant in an office that loomed large among the nation's secretaries. (A poll of secretaries by a staple company showed that Mr. Trump trailed only President George W. Bush when it came to the country's imagined toughest bosses.) In 2004, Ms. Graff became a recurring character on \"The Apprentice,\" and in 2008, she was briefly listed as the secretary for a luxury golf course in Scotland before a Trump confidant, George Sorial, replaced her. In 2013, she attained boldfaced name status in Page Six of The New York Post as \"Donald Trump's right hand. \" Since Mr. Trump has technically stopped running the Trump Organization, Ms. Graff now forwards messages to Mr. Trump's personal assistant in the White House, Madeleine Westerhout, whom Ms. Graff helped train. Sometimes she forwards messages to Katie Walsh, one of the deputy chiefs of staff a White House spokeswoman maintained that messages are routinely sent to an official point of contact, instead of directly to the president. Mr. Trump's dedication to his secretary and hers to him is much like the relationship Fred C. Trump, his father, had with his secretary, Amy Luerssen, treating her like family. He once had workers carry her up 12 flights of stairs when her elevator stopped working, lent her nephew his wife's pink Cadillac when his car was stolen and would see her off at the airport when she went on a trip. When Ms. Luerssen's niece, Kathy Quigley, tried to bring her aging aunt down to Florida, she said Donald Trump and his brother, Robert, insisted that Ms. Luerssen stay until she was senile. \"It was a little bit of a battle because I was thinking, 'Gee, I'd really like her to be down here with me,'\" Ms. Quigley said. \"But she was very happy. \" When her aunt died in 2006, a death notice appeared in The New York Times that read, \"The Trump family mourns the passing of our beloved Amy, a trusted and loyal friend and employee for over 65 years. \" Mr. Trump compared his father's dedication to Ms. Luerssen to his own loyalty to Ms. Graff. \"My father was very loyal to people,\" he said last summer. \"I think I am too. \" Ms. Graff was clearly touched. \"Well thank you boss,\" she said. \"Well it works both ways obviously. I'd never leave him. \"","label":0}
{"text":"House Speaker Ryan should resign his post, says Lou Dobbs, the radio host, and anchor of Lou Dobbs Tonight on Fox Business Network. [Dobbs Tweeted his resignation call Tuesday morning after Breitbart posted a recording of Ryan saying he would never defend President Donald Trump, and as multiple GOP legislators walked away from Ryan's Obamacare replacement proposal, the American Health Care Act. Ryan Should Resign: Exclusive \u2014 Audio of Ryan Abandoning @realDonaldTrump https: . #MAGA @POTUS #TrumpTrain #Dobbs, \u2014 Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) March 14, 2017, In the audiotape, recorded Oct. 10, 2016, Ryan told his fellow GOP legislators that \"\"I am not going to defend Donald Trump \u2014 not now, not in the future. \" Ryan spoke shortly after the public heard the Access Hollywood tape of Trump's conversation in which he said about women that \"when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. \" Dobbs followed up his call for Ryan's resignation with two Tweets calling for the full repeal of Obamacare. One Tweet describes Ryan's proposed alternative as \"RyanCare,\" and said it is failing. RyanCare Fail: Ryan's Obamacare replacement bill could die on Thursday https: . #MAGA @POTUS #TrumpTrain #AmericaFirst #Dobbs, \u2014 Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) March 14, 2017, We Must Keep Our Promise to Fully Repeal Obamacare https: . \u2014 Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) March 14, 2017, According to the leaked audiotape, Ryan said about his reaction to Trump's comments: There are basically two things that I want to make really clear, as for myself as your Speaker. I am not going to defend Donald Trump \u2014 not now, not in the future. As you probably heard, I disinvited him from my first congressional district GOP event this weekend \u2014 a thing I do every year. And I'm not going to be campaigning with him over the next 30 days \u2026 I talked to a bunch of you over the last 72 hours and here is basically my takeaway. To everyone on this call, this is going to be a turbulent month. Many of you on this call are facing tough reelections. Some of you are not. But with respect to Donald Trump, I would encourage you to do what you think is best and do what you feel you need to do. Personally, you need to decide what's best for you. And you all know what's best for you where you are.","label":0}
{"text":"When Hillary Clinton called about half of Donald Trump s supporters a basket of deplorables, she was a bit off-base not because she insulted them by calling them what they are, but because half is far too generous.Recently, a seven-year-old girl in Aleppo that s the place Gary Johnson doesn t know about has been getting quite a bit of attention with her tweets about the horrors of her existence. Bana, like many others, is trapped in the Eastern part of the city with dwindling supplies and a constant fear of death and her tweets about her daily reality are both horrifying and endearing.Tonight we have no house, it's bombed & I got in rubble. I saw deaths and I almost died. Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com\/arGYZaZqjg Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) November 27, 2016Under heavy bombardments now. In between death and life now, please keep praying for us. #Aleppo Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) November 28, 2016We have no home now. I got minor injury. I didn't sleep since yesterday, I am hungry. I want to live, I don't want to die. Bana #Aleppo Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) November 28, 2016This is our house, My beloved dolls died in the bombing of our house. I am very sad but happy to be alive.- Bana pic.twitter.com\/9i0xxJrQtD Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) November 29, 2016This is my reading place where I wanted to start reading Harry Potter but it's bombed. I will never forget. Bana pic.twitter.com\/6fXX2Me8ZB Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) November 29, 2016On Sunday, the little girl disappeared from social media, leaving an ominous message behind indicating that she is not safe. But fortunately, the BBC reports that she and her mother, who often tweets on her behalf, managed to escape to an undisclosed location. Bana s story has touched many, including J.K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter series Bana loves, and the world is in awe at the child s bravery well, aside from ISIS and the American Right. They don t like her too much at all.While many have expressed sympathy for Bana s plight and have left messages of love and hope, the Basket has been relentlessly trolling the little girl because they really aren t joking when they call them selves Deplorable Dave and other appropriated insults. They wear the title give to them by the former Secretary of State as a badge of honor.@VivaSyrianAA @AlabedBana Her father won't let her have a good life. Uses her as a Wahhabi terrorist propaganda ploy. Sick Jewish Russophile (@JewRussophile) December 2, 2016@AlabedBana death is always sad but looks more like honor killing muslims r always parading the dead bodies of strap bombs2kids Laurinda Cole (@apostlelaurinda) November 26, 2016@TheHerbalRose @AlabedBana these r innocent kids that will b used as bombs, human shields & sold in2sexual slavery by parents&islam Laurinda Cole (@apostlelaurinda) November 28, 2016@BobHenriqurs @AlabedBana Bana you really need to talk to your terrorist mates and get them to stopkilling children steve wright (@stewrigh) November 26, 2016@AlabedBana STOP USING THIS CHILD FOR BULLSHIT PROPAGANDA A D (@dm7474) December 5, 2016@AlabedBana what an attention seekerStop pretending you are dying every couple of daysEveryone knows this is a fake psyop account Chelsea Lopez (@justfake) December 5, 2016@AlabedBana how about you crawl back into the bombed out building you came out to tweet BS. Blazing Fury (@FuryBlazing) December 5, 2016@AlabedBana your a fake, no child would have climbed this rubble to get a picture like this..your a rebel or isis Life is illusions (@Bman4101973) November 29, 2016.@AdamNeira @HKX07 Whatever al Qaeda pic.twitter.com\/FVXIfSw5C1 Porkchan (@MostPerfectLord) November 30, 2016@AlabedBana What propaganda ! Nice plug for jk rowling who retweets you. How you have internet connection ? New phone ? Clean clothes etc? DeplorableDave (@ThePhantomPain1) November 29, 2016@AlabedBana Lolololo! I now come here daily for a good laugh. Thinking about having my dog open an acct & 'he'll' Tweet from Mars. Calamity Jane (@AmandaKavanagh5) November 29, 2016@AlabedBana you are another gay girl in Damascus . A hoax just like this is. DeplorableDave (@ThePhantomPain1) November 29, 2016@AlabedBana where are you taking these pictures from Bana? You're like 3 floors up. Trump Supporter (@Trump201611) November 29, 2016@AlabedBana cut the B.S. this is sheer propoganda. Vanna (@vannanancy) November 29, 2016@AlabedBana I hope you were able to shave your beard John Smith (@999100cn) November 29, 2016This little girl is suffering, and her plight has been well-documented, but Trump fans don t care. All they know is that she s a Muslim, which means she s not human enough for anything approaching whatever level of compassion of which they are capable.Watch an interview with Bana below:","label":1}
{"text":"Three women suffered severe, permanent eye damage after stem cells were injected into their eyes, in an unproven treatment at a loosely regulated clinic in Florida, doctors reported in an article published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. One, 72, went completely blind from the injections, and the others, 78 and 88, lost much of their eyesight. Before the procedure, all had some visual impairment but could see well enough to drive. The cases expose gaps in the ability of government health agencies to protect consumers from unproven treatments offered by entrepreneurs who promote the supposed healing power of stem cells. The women had macular degeneration, an eye disease that causes vision loss, and they paid $5, 000 each to receive injections in 2015 at a private clinic in Sunrise, Fla. The clinic was part of a company then called Bioheart, now called U. S. Stem Cell. Staff members there used liposuction to suck fat out of the women's bellies, and then extracted stem cells from the fat to inject into the women's eyes. The disastrous results were described in detail in the journal article, by doctors who were not connected to U. S. Stem Cell and treated the patients within days of the injections. An accompanying article by scientists from the Food and Drug Administration warned that stem cells from fat \"are being used in practice on the basis of minimal clinical evidence of safety or efficacy, sometimes with the claims that they constitute revolutionary treatments for various conditions. \" Kristin C. Comella, the chief science officer of U. S. Stem Cell, said in an interview that the clinic did not need F. D. A. approval because it was treating patients with their own cells, which are not a drug. She said the treatments were comparable to patients' receiving grafts of their own skin \u2014 a procedure not a drug. Two of the eye patients sued the clinic and settled, but it has faced no other penalties. Ms. Comella said it no longer treats eyes, but continues to treat five to 20 patients a week for other problems like torn knee cartilage and degenerating spinal discs. All three women found U. S. Stem Cell because it had listed a study on a government website, clinicaltrials. gov \u2014 provided by the National Institutes of Health. Two later told doctors they thought they were participating in research. But no study ever took place, and the proposed study on the site had no government endorsement. Clinical trials do not need government approval to be listed on the website. Legitimate research rarely, if ever, charges patients to participate, scientists say, so the fees should have been a red flag. But many people do not know that. Promising research in eye disease and other conditions is taking place. But researchers and health officials have been warning for years that patients are at risk from hundreds of private clinics that have sprung up around the United States and overseas, offering treatments for all manner of ailments, like injured knees, damaged spinal discs, neurological diseases and heart failure. Businesses promising \"regenerative medicine\" have multiplied, with little or no regulation. Stem cells, which can develop into many different types of cells, are thought to have tremendous potential to repair or replace tissue damaged by disease, injury or aging. But so far, the F. D. A. has approved only a few products to treat certain blood disorders. The women in Florida suffered detached retinas, in which the thin layer of cells that send signals to the optic nerve pulls away from the back of the eye \u2014 a condition that usually needs prompt surgery to prevent blindness. Doctors who examined the patients said they suspected that the stem cells had grown onto the retina and then contracted, pulling it off the eyeball. One woman had such high pressure inside her eyes \u2014 about three times the normal level \u2014 that it may have damaged her optic nerves. Doctors operated quickly to relieve the pressure, but she became blind. \"The really horrible thing about this is that you would never, nobody practicing good medicine would ever do an experimental procedure on a patient on both eyes on the same day,\" said Dr. Thomas A. Albini, an author of the article who saw two of the patients, at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Standard practice, he said, is to treat one eye at a time, usually the worse eye first, so that if something goes wrong at least the patient still has one eye left with some vision. Dr. Albini said his team alerted the F. D. A. after the second patient showed up. \"They did send an investigator who took statements from us,\" he said. \"They apparently wrote up a report, which as far as I know is still not finished or available for public consumption. \" Andrea Fischer, a spokeswoman for the F. D. A. said the agency could not comment on whether an investigation had been conducted. Two of the women were not available for interviews because their lawsuit settlements in 2016 included nondisclosure agreements, according to their lawyer, Andrew B. Yaffa, of Coral Gables, Fla. He also was barred from discussing the case, but a publicly available complaint he filed in July 2016 details one patient's story, and states that the injections were performed by a nurse practitioner who was introduced as a physician. The third patient did not sue, but did not respond to a request for an interview made through her doctor. (The patients were not named in the journal article.) Ms. Comella, from U. S. Stem Cell, said that an independent review board had approved the proposed eye study, including the plan to treat both eyes at once. She said a total of three patients ever received eye injections at the clinic, and were not part of a trial. She declined to confirm that they were the same three patients described in the journal article, but the article links the women to the clinic. Ms. Comella said a trial never did begin, because the first three cases \"ended the way they ended, so we decided not to go forward with any additional patients. \" She declined to discuss the cases further, citing the nondisclosure agreement. But she said that U. S. Stem Cell had successfully treated thousands of patients for other conditions, and that it was misleading to draw attention to \"a handful of adverse events. \" U. S. Stem Cell also makes money by training doctors to extract stem cells from fat. And in a blog post on Tuesday its chief executive, Mike Tom\u00e1s, said the company expected to open clinics throughout the Middle East, in Kuwait, Dubai and Qatar. But the company, which is a penny stock, is struggling financially, and as recently as last fall warned investors that its poor financial situation put it at risk of going out of business. Clinics like U. S. Stem Cell that extract stem cells from fat fall into a gray zone. Regulations say stem cells do not have to be F. D. A. approved if they are the patient's own and are \"minimally manipulated\" \u2014 but some clinics may stretch that term to suit their own purposes. The F. D. A. website has a page that warns \"the hope that patients have for cures not yet available may leave them vulnerable to unscrupulous providers of treatments that are illegal and potentially harmful. \" The F. D. A. article in The New England Journal of Medicine suggested that adverse events from treatments \"are probably much more common than is appreciated, because there is no reporting requirement when these therapies are administered outside clinical investigations. \" Like the Florida patients, people who consult clinicaltrials. gov may assume that the studies listed there have been approved by the F. D. A. or the National Institutes of Health, but that is not necessarily the case, Renate Myles, an N. I. H. spokeswoman, said. In an email, Ms. Myles said, \"The information on ClinicalTrials. gov is provided by the study sponsor or principal investigator and posting on ClinicalTrials. gov does not necessarily reflect endorsement by the N. I. H. ClinicalTrials. gov does not independently verify the scientific validity or relevance of the trial itself beyond a limited quality control review. \" Ms. Myles said that the site urges patients to consult their own doctors about joining studies and includes caveats in multiple places. \"However, we agree that such caveats need to be clearer to all users and will be adding a more prominent disclaimer in the near future,\" she added.","label":0}
{"text":"They were young men caught between cultures, sons of immigrant families, feeling lost or rejected \u2014 and angry about wars. Online they encountered the recruiters of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, who said their first loyalty should be not to their nation but to Islam. Then they plotted sensational violence. In the weekend bombings in New York and New Jersey and stabbings at a mall in Minnesota, the suspected perpetrators fit the same rough pattern as in previous attacks at the Boston Marathon in 2013 in San Bernardino, Calif. in 2015 and in Orlando, Fla. in June, as well as in the terrorist assaults in Paris and Brussels. A rich recruiting pool for Al Qaeda and the Islamic State includes what psychologists call \"\" young adults whose identities have not yet solidified. Their uncertainty makes them vulnerable, said J. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego. \"It allows the individual to attach his identity to something that is larger and inflates his sense of himself,\" he said. The uncomfortable status can be especially acute for those with recent immigrant roots. Living in two cultures at once is very enriching for most people but very unsettling for others, said Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. For some Muslim immigrants, he said, \"You have a message at home that's very conservative, and a completely different message from the society around you when you're growing up. \" The full history of Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, the naturalized American of Afghan birth who is accused of planting bombs in Manhattan and New Jersey, is not yet known. But his 2014 arrest in an alleged stabbing in a family dispute suggests a young man adrift his scribbling in a notebook the names of Osama bin Laden, Abu Muhammad \u2014 an Islamic State leader \u2014 and Anwar the Qaeda recruiter, appeared to reflect a embrace of jihadism. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a Chechen immigrant and the older of the two Boston Marathon bombers, turned to Islamist extremism when his hopes for a boxing career dimmed. He was 26 at the time of the attack. Omar Mateen, the son of an Afghan immigrant with outspoken political views, was 29 when he opened fire at an Orlando nightclub, killing 49 people. He had been dismissed from training as a prison guard after making disturbing remarks about weapons, and ended up as a private security guard. Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, the son of immigrants from Pakistan, found work as a health inspector but had spent years searching for dates and a mate before meeting Tashfeen Malik online and marrying her in Saudi Arabia. Together, the couple attacked a luncheon attended by Mr. Farook's colleagues last December, killing 14 people. \"When you dig into these cases, you find the 'why' is a very complex question,\" said Peter Bergen, the director of the security program at New America, a research group, and author of \"United States of Jihad. \" Personal disappointment, perceptions of discrimination, anger about American foreign policy and the desire \"to become a hero in one's own story\" are all at play in addition to jihadist ideology, he said. \"Many of them just take their grievances and dress them up in the garb of Islam,\" Mr. Bergen said. That has become easy in the age of the internet. The attackers in San Bernardino, Orlando and New York all had expressed support for the Islamic State, and they and the Boston bombers were devotees of the voluminous online work of Mr. Awlaki, who was killed in an American drone strike in 2011. His arguments remain highly popular on the web, where he urged Western Muslims to reject even the friendliest neighbors, whom he called \"Sally Soccer Mom and Joe . \" Mr. Rahami wrote in his journal that \"Sheikh Anwar,\" as well as Mr. Adnani of the Islamic State, had \"said it clearly\": \"Attack the kuffar,\" or \"in their backyard. \" Farhad Khosrokhavar, a sociologist at the \u00c9cole des Hautes \u00c9tudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the author of \"Radicalization,\" said Muslims in Europe more often than those in America felt \"frontally rejected\" by the larger society. He said he had often seen in his research individuals who felt neither French nor Arab. \"In France, they are blamed for not being French enough, and when they go to their parents' country of origin, they are blamed for not being Arab enough,\" Mr. Khosrokhavar said. \"That double denial can push them to adhere to a radical version of Islam, as a kind of lifeline: Since I am neither French nor Arab, neither American nor Afghan, I am Muslim and to hell with you all,\" he added. These roots of radicalization do not make immigrants in general a danger. In the United States, immigrants have a lower rate of crime and violence than other Americans. Converts to Islam are disproportionately represented among Americans and Europeans drawn to extremism, and other ideologies also motivate mass violence \u2014 as in the case of Dylann Roof, who was 21 when he fatally shot nine black people last year at a church in Charleston, S. C. in the name of white supremacy. \"The actual content of the ideology is secondary,\" said Mr. Meloy, the psychologist. \"What's important is the identification and fixation. \" But the Islamist terrorist groups target the particular anxieties of Western Muslims from immigrant backgrounds, posing recruitment as a religious loyalty test. They call on supporters to reject the nations where they live and embrace instead a devotion to the ummah, the global community of Muslims. The West is at war with Islam, they say, and you must strike out to defend your fellow Muslims. That message has been delivered with particular power by Mr. Awlaki, often reinforcing the newer propaganda efforts of the Islamic State. As an imam who counseled immigrants at three American mosques, and as a who had lived in both countries and in Britain, Mr. Awlaki understood the worries of Muslims in the West. When he joined Al Qaeda, he did his best to open a gulf between them and their neighbors. \"The important lesson to learn here is: Never, ever trust a kuffar,\" Mr. Awlaki said in a 2003 lecture in London that was captured on video and remains a YouTube favorite. \"Now, you might argue and say: 'But my neighbor is such a nice person. My classmates are very nice. My \u2014 they're just fabulous people, they're so decent and honest. '\" Yet these can never be relied upon, he said. Later, after moving to Yemen, he spoke not only of shunning but also of attacking them. In a 2010 video, he tried to shame his listeners into choosing his brand of religion over their country. \"To the Muslims in America I have this to say: How can your conscience allow you to live in peaceful coexistence with a nation that is responsible for the tyranny and crimes committed against your own brothers and sisters?\" he said. \"How can you have your loyalty to a government that is leading the war against Islam and Muslims?\" He has led many people down the jihadist path, and not just in countries. The Counter Extremism Project, an advocacy group based in Washington, said Wednesday that it had counted 88 \"extremists\" who had been influenced by Mr. Awlaki: 54 in the United States and 34 in Europe. Most such jihadist recruits are the children of immigrants, said Olivier Roy, a professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and the author of \"Globalized Islam. \" His research shows that 65 percent of Muslim extremists in France and Belgium are from this second generation. \"These young people have broken away from their parents, who they blame for many things \u2014 for practicing the wrong Islam, for having brought them to the West, for having failed in life,\" Mr. Roy said, noting that Mr. Rahami reportedly had clashed with his father. But such conflicts pass. Few jihadists are from the third generation, the grandchildren of immigrants, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Friday, 4 November 2016 Brad, sticking it to the Ruskies  The 2016 presidential election has been full of talk about Russian involvement. WikiLeaks released repeated batches of emails related to the Democratic Party. U.S. intelligence agencies traced the leaks to Russian hackers sanctioned by the Russian government.  While no evidence emerged showing Russian hackers able to directly meddle with voting, hackers have been found to be electronically \"sniffing\" around election databases in multiple states. Experts speculate Russia may be planning something disruptive related to the election itself.  This activity has left the public on edge about Russia and what its intentions are. Well, American citizens can rest easy on at least one front.  Moscow had one plan to reduce voter turnout on Tuesday, November 8th that backfired biggly. It seems to be getting MORE people out to vote.  Intelligence agencies recently found evidence of an extensive subliminal message campaign. Cleverly hidden in the background of internet memes about funny cats and fast food tray liners have been messages encouraging people not to vote.  The hidden phrases include \"Vote nyet,\"\"Don't vote,\"\"No Vote,\" and \"Vote no mas.\"  The operation produced the opposite result.  Under anonymity an U.S. agent explained, \"We are seeing unusually large turnout in all populations targeted by this campaign.\"  \"We have two main theories to explain this.  One, those reading the message don't register the negative in the statement and keep seeing the word \"Vote\". Kind of like ordering someone to not think of an elephant, and then all they can do is think of elephants.  The second theory is that the Russians totally misread American culture. Americans harbor a deeply ingrained reaction against being told what to do. No American wants to be bullied into anything.  As a result, the Russians are getting exactly what they didn't want, people are actually getting themselves to the polls in record numbers.\"  When Brad Johnson, one of the many who found himself inexplicably voting early, heard all of this he said,  \"Well, heck, that makes me sort of proud. I was just sticking it to the Ruskies.\" Make pinkwalrus's","label":1}
{"text":"A third Republican U.S. senator on Tuesday said she could not back any legislation to repeal Obamacare without a replacement plan, effectively blocking Republican leaders' efforts to bring up a narrower repeal-only bill after earlier legislation collapsed. \"To repeal there has to be a replacement. There's enough chaos already, and this would just contribute to it,\" Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters, saying she would vote no on any effort to take up legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010 under former President Barack Obama.","label":0}
{"text":"France should not interfere in Iran s missile program, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Iran s supreme leader, said on Saturday according to state media. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday that Tehran should be less aggressive in the region and should clarify the strategy around its ballistic missile program. It does not benefit Mr. Macron and France to interfere on the missile issue and the strategic affairs of the Islamic Republic, which we have great sensitivities about, Velayati said. What does this issue have to do with Mr. Macron? Who is he at all to interfere? If he wants relations between Iran and France to grow then he should try not to interfere in these issues. U.S. President Donald Trump has said Iranian missile activity should be curbed. Iranian officials have repeatedly said the Islamic Republic s missile program is for defense purposes and is not up for negotiation. The program was not part of the 2015 nuclear deal with Western powers under which Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of some sanctions. France said on Wednesday it wanted an uncompromising dialogue with Iran about its ballistic missile program and a possible negotiation over the issue separate from Tehran s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Justice Department is scaling back its request to obtain a broad swath of data in connection with an anti-Trump website, after critics accused the department of trampling the free speech rights of political dissidents. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia had previously issued a broader search warrant in July to DreamHost, a Los Angeles-based web hosting company, to obtain data about visitors to website disruptj20.org. Disruptj20 is home to a coalition of political activists who organized disruptive protests during President Donald Trump's inauguration. The Justice Department said it sought the records connected to the site amid concerns that it helped facilitate the planning of violent riots on Inauguration Day in which more than 200 people were arrested for rioting and vandalizing businesses in downtown Washington. DreamHost resisted the request, saying the scope of the warrant was too broad and trampled on the rights of 1.3 million visitors to the site, many of whom were simply exercising their First Amendment rights to express their political views. The Justice Department on Tuesday proposed amending the scope of its warrant in a filing with the Superior Court of the District of Columbia Criminal Division, which is slated to hold a hearing over the dispute on Thursday morning. \"The warrant - like the criminal investigation - is singularly focused on criminal activity. It will not be used for any other purpose,\" it wrote. \"The government has no interest in records relating to the 1.3 million IP addresses that are mentioned in DreamHost's numerous press releases and opposition brief.\" The department proposed asking the court to amend the warrant, and said that DreamHost \"should not disclose the contents of unpublished draft publications\" or \"HTTP request and error logs.\" An attorney for DreamHost called the Justice Department's action \"a tremendous win for DreamHost, its users and the public.\" But in a statement, DreamHost counsel Raymond Aghaian added: \"There remains, unfortunately, other privacy and First and Fourth Amendment issues with the search warrant, which we will address in a separate filing and at the hearing Thursday morning.\"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Senator Rob Portman, commenting on the possible lifting of sanctions on Russia by President Donald Trump, said on Friday lifting them for any reason other than a change of Russian behavior would send the world \"a dangerous message.\" Portman, a founder and co-chairman of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, said the Senate should work to put sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Ukraine into law. \"We must stand by our allies in the region, including Ukraine,\" the Republican said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"Three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups will exercise together in the Western Pacific in the coming days in a rare show of force as President Donald Trump visits Asia with warnings about the nuclear threat from North Korea, U.S. officials say. The drill will include the USS Nimitz, the Ronald Reagan, the Theodore Roosevelt and their accompanying warships, the first time three U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups have exercised together in the region in a decade. A Japanese destroyer, the Inazuma, will join the armada, two Japanese government officials said, following a separate three-day exercise with the Reagan and two Indian warships in the Sea of Japan that ended Monday. U.S. officials have previously said the drill was under consideration and that planning was under way. The decision to soon go forward with the exercise in the Western Pacific has not been previously published. The four U.S. officials and two Japanese sources who discussed the drill with Reuters spoke on condition of anonymity, and did not disclose the precise date or location of the exercise. The Pentagon and the Navy's Pacific Fleet declined comment on future operations. Reuters was not aware of any plans for Trump to visit the carriers. Trump has reiterated his tough rhetoric against North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs since starting a 12-day trip to Asia on Sunday. Speaking in Tokyo on Monday, Trump renewed his warning that the \"era of strategic patience\" with North Korea was over. The U.S. leader, who began a visit South Korea on Tuesday, has rattled some allies with his vow to \"totally destroy\" North Korea if necessary to defend the United States or its allies, and with his dismissal of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a \"rocket man\" on a suicide mission. Kim has called Trump a \"mentally deranged U.S. dotard.\" The last time three U.S. carrier strike groups exercised together was in 2007, when the Nimitz, along with the John C. Stennis and Kitty Hawk carrier strike groups participated in drills near Guam. Such large-scale drills serve as a potent reminder of the U.S. ability to rapidly mobilize military force, a capability the Trump administration has been keen to emphasize as Pyongyang races ahead with tests to build a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the United States. Since taking office, Trump has vowed to expand the fleet of U.S. carriers, even as some military strategists and experts believe the massive ships would be increasingly vulnerable to modern Chinese and Russian weapons in any conflict. Singapore-based military expert Tim Huxley said the presence of the U.S. carriers still sent an unmistakable message, with each one carrying 70-odd aircraft. \"Beyond the capability to project military power at great range, their ability to project political and psychological power is arguably unmatched, and we are seeing that play out,\" said Huxley, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. \"While in a war against China, U.S. carriers might be vulnerable, they wouldn't be in any conflict against North Korea...and three U.S. carriers can deliver a tremendous amount of airpower.\" Carrier commanders say the strike groups are kept combat ready at all times, with jet fighters and surveillance planes flying constantly from their flight decks to maintain a protective screen. U.S. defense officials noted recently the presence of the three U.S. carriers in the region was reassuring allies, even though it was long scheduled. \"It does demonstrate a capability that no other nation in the world can do,\" Joint Staff Director Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie Jr said earlier this month. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called for restraint during a regular news briefing on Tuesday when asked about the carriers, saying the situation on the Korean peninsula was complex and severe. \"All relevant sides should exercise restraint, avoid irritating each other, dedicate themselves to lowering the tense situation on the peninsula, and at the same time make positive efforts to get the North Korean nuclear issue back on a track to a resolution via talks as soon as possible,\" Hua said, reiterating the long-held Chinese position. The CIA has said North Korea could be only months away from developing the ability to hit the United States with nuclear weapons, a scenario Trump has vowed to prevent. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, on a trip late last month to South Korea, was at pains to stress that diplomacy was America's preferred course to get North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. Still, he warned Pyongyang that its military was no match for the U.S.-South Korean alliance, and that diplomacy was most effective \"when backed by credible military force.\"","label":0}
{"text":"THERE S NO INDICATION OF A MOTIVE IN THE CASE: This is one sick puppy! A man went around spraying produce with poison but we don t know why yet. Ann Arbor, Michigan is home to the University of Michigan and several upscale grocery stores like Whole Foods and Plum Market.The FBI has arrested a Michigan man for allegedly spraying a poisonous mixture of chemicals on food at three grocery stores in Ann Arbor, Michigan.The FBI and Michigan Health Department are now looking at whether anyone was seriously ill from the low-scale chemical attack to contaminate food.Authorities believe the unidentified suspect targeted at least three grocery stores in the past two weeks: Whole Foods, Meijer and Plum Market. Law enforcement officials are also now trying to determine whether he victimized other stores with his toxic mixture of hand-cleaner, water and Tomcat mice poison. What if he s been doing this for weeks, or months, or even years, and just suddenly someone saw him? one concerned citizen said. Makes you think about everything you buy all the time. The suspect may have mental health issues, and so far there is no indication of terrorism, sources said.","label":1}
{"text":"It s like a day doesn t go by without some backwoods, right-wing jackass threatening the life of the President.Donald Baker of the Anchorage Fire Department was suspended after issuing threats to the President on social media. The controversy began when a reader sent a screenshot of the remark to WHAS11. Under an article titled Obama Hijacks Memorial With Sick Message (apparently from right-wing garbage pile America s Freedom Fighters), Baker wrote that someone should please put a bullet in this f*cker s head, referring to worthless piece of sh*t Obama:When the station contacted Baker s employer, an investigation was launched. Chief William Rockwood confirmed on Thursday that the post was being investigated, and that he had suspended Baker while he determines if the department s social media policy was violated by this direct threat to the President: The Anchorage Fire Protection District finds this post extremely troubling and inappropriate. The District does not condone or allow the use of inappropriate conduct or language by its employees in person or through instant technology. Sadly, Baker is finding a lot of support on WHAS11 s Facebook page: Some of his more vocal supporters have their own thoughts on the President: Perhaps it s time for the Secret Service to pay Mr. Baker a visit. All too often we see threats against the President go completely unanswered a dangerous thing when right-wing terrorism is on the rise.At minimum, Baker should definitely lose his job. After all, can he really be trusted to do his job to the best of his ability if he pulls up to a fire at a house with Democratic political signs in the yard? How deep does his bigotry go? Does it extend to all African-Americans? We are still awaiting the results of the investigation, but hopefully the Department does the right thing. Free speech is important, but it can and does have consequences.","label":1}
{"text":"New Jersey Governor Christie said on Friday the state would begin taxing income earned by people who work in New Jersey but live in Pennsylvania, ending a long-standing arrangement with the neighboring state. Pulling out of the nearly 40-year old \"reciprocity\" agreement would allow New Jersey to raise more revenue starting Jan. 1. Christie, a close ally of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, said in a statement that he was forced to act because the Democrat-controlled legislature created a $250 million budget hole in June by relying on public employee health insurance cuts they have not yet made. If lawmakers come back next week and cut health costs, Christie could consider \"revising\" his termination of the reciprocal tax pact. \"I will not raise state taxes, cut property tax relief, reduce aid to education or our hospitals, or reduce the state's record pension payment to cover for this blunder by the legislature,\" Christie said. Jeff Sheridan, press secretary to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, said Christie \"erred significantly in his decision to unnecessarily punish 125,000 Pennsylvanians and cost the commonwealth $5 million annually.\" He said Wolf, a Democrat, was hopeful Christie would change his mind. However, Christie seems committed to making Pennsylvania \"suffer the consequences of his failure to enact a responsible budget in a bipartisan way,\" Sheridan said. Pennsylvanians pay a flat 3.07 percent income tax rate with no personal exemptions. New Jerseyans pay higher rates the more they make, with progressive rates increasing from 1.4 percent to 8.97 percent. The reciprocal agreement is advantageous for high-income Pennsylvania residents who work in New Jersey, because they pay their state's lower tax rate. It is also good for low-income New Jerseyans who work across the border because of New Jersey's progressive tax system. New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney said in a statement that ending the scheme is \"the wrong decision for our state\" and that more than 100,000 New Jersey residents will pay almost $1,000 per year in additional income tax. \"The burden falls completely on working families in New Jersey, especially those in South Jersey who work in Philadelphia, and will have a very real impact on their quality of life,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"The 11 countries committed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership are considering amendments to the trade deal, three sources said on Tuesday, as officials meet in Sydney for talks to re-energize the stalled agreement. Among the areas being discussed, Vietnam has raised the prospect of changes to labor rights and intellectual property (IP) provisions in the original pact, one source familiar with the talks told Reuters. Vietnam had been one of the countries expected to enjoy the biggest economic benefits from TPP through greater access to U.S. markets. However, the original 12-member TPP, which aims to cut trade barriers in some of Asia s fastest-growing economies, was thrown into limbo in January when U.S. President Trump withdrew from the agreement. Trump s move fulfilled a campaign pledge to put America first - a policy that aimed to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. Although the remaining members have publicly said they remain committed to the deal, implementation of the agreement linking 11 countries with a combined GDP of $12.4 trillion has stalled - raising fears that other countries will follow the U.S. lead and withdraw. Eager to keep all members onboard, representatives from the remaining countries are considering changes to the original TPP deal, three sources familiar with the talks said. We re all open to evaluating what we can do and what viable alternatives there may be, Edgar Vasquez, Peru s deputy trade minister, told Reuters. While no agreement is expected at the end of the three-day meeting, Vietnam s desire to shelve the IP provisions around pharmaceutical data is likely to win broad support, with Japanese and New Zealand officials also indicating their support for the change, two other sources said. The original TPP agreement was seen as particularly onerous on Vietnam, which be forced to make significant reforms, analysts said. There s not much sense to agree to provisions they don t really want such as stronger monopolies on medicines if they are not going to get access to the U.S. market, said Patricia Ranald, research associate, University of Sydney. The original TPP offered an eight-year window before competitors can have access to proprietary pharmaceutical data, which critics said would impede development of cheap generics. Potential amendments, however, require delicate positioning. While Trump has said he will not change his mind on TPP, the remaining members are hopeful a future U.S. president will commit to the agreement, a cornerstone of former President Barack Obama s pivot to Asia. But analysts said wholesale changes, while ensuring the support of smaller members, would repel the United States. The more you change the agreement, it is going to be harder to get the U.S. to sign on when it is ready to, said Shiro Armstrong, research fellow at the Crawford School of Economics in Canberra.","label":0}
{"text":"Trisha & Garth didn't marry until 2005. This has to be in reference to the break up of his first marriage. You should fact check before you print.","label":1}
{"text":"The results of the disappointing 2016 presidential election aren t even official yet, but Vice President Joe Biden is already making noise about 2020. Known for bucking the rules and speaking from his gut, the outgoing vice-president hinted that he might be up for another fight four years from now.CNN asked him jokingly if he planned to run for office again. Yeah, I am. I m going to run in 2020, Biden responded.When asked for what position, Biden responded, For president. What the hell, man. When CNN told Biden it was planning to publish his quotes, the vice president responded, That s okay. No, I ve enjoyed every minutes of my time here in the Senate. It s a great feeling to come back. I love this place. Biden later clarified, I m not committing not to run. I m not committing to anything. I learned a long time ago fate has a strange way of intervening. Biden is leaving office one of the most popular political figures in America, and that popularity is even higher among Democrats. Biden is seen by many as a Democrat who excels at speaking to working class families across the racial spectrum, but still has a history of legislative experience as success as a Senator from Delaware and then as a two-term Vice President.Biden would likely be able to tap into existing Democratic donors if he ran, as he has near 100% name recognition domestically and internationally. Besides First Lady Michelle Obama, he would probably be the public figure to benefit most from an association with President Obama.Biden considered running in the 2016 election, but decided against it after the tragic death of his son Beau Biden. Since then, President Obama has put Biden in charge of the moon shot effort to find a cure for cancer, while Biden endorsed and heavily campaigned for Secretary Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.","label":1}
{"text":"Swedish satire \"The Square\" a of political correctness and the confused identity of the modern male, won the Palme d'Or top prize at the Cannes film festival Sunday. [In a stunning upset, the jury led by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar and including Hollywood stars Jessica Chastain and Will Smith awarded the trophy to the movie's director, Ruben Ostlund. \"Oh my God, oh my God!\" Ostlund shouted from the stage after besting a raft of favourites for one of global cinema's most coveted honours. In a 70th anniversary edition marked by raging debate over sexism in the movie industry, Sofia Coppola became only the second woman in history to win best director for her thriller \"The Beguiled\" with Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell. Kidman, who appeared in four different projects at the festival, accepted a special 70th anniversary award from the jury. Diane Kruger clinched best actress for her first film role in her native German as a devastated mother who has lost her family in a Hamburg terror attack, in Fatih Akin's \"In the Fade\". \"I cannot accept this award without thinking of everyone who has been touched by an act of terrorism \u2026 you have not been forgotten,\" the clearly moved actress said. Oscar nominee Joaquin Phoenix nabbed best actor for his turn as a hitman in the ultraviolent thriller \"You Were Never Really Here\". \"Any work that I did was linked to the work of Lynne Ramsay,\" the film's British director, Phoenix said, before apologising for his look at the gala ceremony. \"I don't wear leather,\" the committed vegetarian explained. \u2014 'So much courage' \u2014 Greece's Yorgos Lantimos shared the best screenplay award with Ramsay for \"The Killing of a Sacred Deer\" an icy thriller set in a wealthy American suburb and starring Kidman and Farrell. The Grand Prix went to moving French drama \"120 Beats Per Minute\" about the radical activists who helped shame the world into action on AIDS. \"This film is an homage to those who died but also those who survived and are still alive, who had so much courage,\" said the movie's director, former ACT UP member Robin Campillo. Campillo also wrote the screenplay for \"The Class\" a drama about a multicultural Paris high school that scooped the Palme d'Or in 2008 as well as an Oscar nomination. \"Loveless\" by Andrey Zvyagintsev, a wrenching drama about moral rot eating away at Russian society under Vladimir Putin, took the third place jury prize. \u2014 Magic of big screen \u2014 \"The Square\" coming in at two hours and 20 minutes, is an often hilarious art world satire exploring creative liberty, free speech and the blurred lines between the sexes. Danish actor Claes Bang plays a museum director and divorced father of two young daughters who finds himself in an increasingly absurd set of predicaments. The movie features Elisabeth Moss (\"Mad Men\") and Dominic West (\"The Wire\") in small roles viciously lampooning the art world. One featuring a wild, man performing as an ape wreaking havoc at a posh gala dinner entered festival legend. Cannes' 12 days of screenings and soirees \u2014 which were somewhat muted by the Manchester bombing \u2014 were marked by unprecedented measures and a raging row over how technology is shaping the future of the movie industry. Netflix had two movies in competition for the first time but faced blowback from critics who argue that online streaming is destroying cinema distribution and with it the magic of the experience.","label":0}
{"text":"On January 19, 2016, the city of Oakland, California, agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a wrongful death suit, filed by the family of Hernan Jaramillo, a 51-year-old man who was killed while being restrained by police.The Contra Costa Times obtained video of the moments before Jaramillo s death. The video shows the man repeatedly crying out for help, saying, They re killing me! and I can t breathe. As one officer pressed his knee into Jaramillo s back, four others used their weight to hold the man down on the sidewalk. When Jaramillo cries out to his sister again, saying They re killing me, one officer responds No-one s killing you. Before becoming unresponsive, Jaramillo again tells his sister They know what they re doing. They re killing me. Jaramillo did not have a criminal record. Worse, he was not even accused of a crime at the time of his death.According to the family, Jaramillo s sister called police to report that her brother was being attacked by an intruder. When police arrived, they found him alone in his room.Although Jaramillo s sister insisted that he was not the intruder, police handcuffed him and led him to a waiting squad car.The officers claim that they wanted to take him in for a mental health assessment, but he resisted as they tried to get him into the police car. That s when they threw him to the sidewalk, compressing his body under their combined weight, until he stopped calling for help.Although Oakland police never released the footage, which was captured by one of the officers body cameras, the video was leaked to Contra Costa Times this week. It was later published to YouTube by US Uncut.Watch the footage below.While the city of Oakland will pay $450,000 to settle the wrongful death suit filed by Jaramillo s family, the officers involved in this incident will never be held accountable.That s because the Alameda County District Attorney does not investigate in-custody deaths unless they involve officer shootings.This insane policy gives cops the green light to murder citizens, just as long as they don t use their guns to do it.The victim repeatedly told the officers that he couldn t breathe. Still they continued to press down on him, until he finally became unresponsive.At best, the officers involved in the death of Hernan Jaramillo are guilty of negligent homicide and reckless endangerment, if not deliberate murder. But the policies of the Alameda County DA s office enabled them to get away with it.Featured image credit: video screen capture via US Uncut","label":1}
{"text":"This is what having no freedom of speech looks like This guy is awesome! I use whatever flag I want because I am free. I am not a hypocrite, not like all the Cubans marching yesterday [the 2016 May Day march] all those Cubans are hypocrites, he told his detractors. He went on to praise the U.S. flag as the pride of the Americans and assert, I don t fear the government. Daniel Llorente is the brave pro-American Cuban dissident who interrupted Monday s May Day parade in Havana, running in front of the marching throngs waving an American flag. A communist mob attacked him, beating him and dragging him away.The man, identified as Daniel Llorente, has previously waged similar protests against the communist regime of dictator Ra l Castro and has expressed vocally his support for the American government.Video of the incident shows that Llorente took off running in front of the throngs, waving an American flag before the likeness of mass murderer Ernesto Che Guevara in the Plaza of the Revolution, waiting to march just moments before the May Day parade was to begin, shouting anti-government slogans. A group of men waiting on the sidelines, who have not been identified in reports, restrained, beat, and dragged Llorente away. Every major Cuban government leader, including dictator Castro, was in attendance.The Miami-based outlet Mart Noticias identified the man as Llorente, a freelance cab driver and dissident, but does not belong to any dissident organizations. Instead, he has used his American flag to protest on previous occasions by waving it before public congregations. A year ago, Llorente protested before a crowd awaiting the first American cruise ship s arrival in Havana, the Adonia. Llorente greeted the ship waving an American flag and shouting Yes we can! , the famous slogan of President Barack Obama s first presidential campaign. The government organized a rabble to berate Llorente with racial epithets, and Llorente responded by asserting his freedom.","label":1}
{"text":"In the ambitious business of New York bridge building, it has been a tragic consequence of the work: More than 20 people, including the bridge's lead engineer, lost their lives during the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. As workers raised the Bridge in the 1960s, three people paid the ultimate price. And during construction of the original Tappan Zee Bridge in the 1950s, a worker fell to his death. But when a large crane being used to construct what will eventually be the aging Tappan Zee's replacement came toppling down on Tuesday, landing squarely across the roadway, something astounding happened: Nobody died. \"This was nothing short of a miracle,\" Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said at an afternoon news conference in Tarrytown at the base of the bridge, citing the lack of serious injuries from the accident. At least four people received minor injuries in the collapse, including three motorists who were trying to avoid the crane, officials said. A construction worker was also injured, officials said. The crane, one of 28 being used in the construction of the bridge's $3. 9 billion replacement \u2014 what is being called the largest infrastructure project in the country \u2014 fell around noon on the Rockland County side of the bridge, the authorities said. No vehicles were struck by the crane, the authorities said. Irving Martinez, a truck driver from New Haven, was heading home after delivering a load of cars in Blauvelt, N. Y. when, from about a quarter of a mile away, he saw the crane list and topple. \"The crane was rotating normally and then it just suddenly fell sideways onto the highway,\" Mr. Martinez, 25, said. \"It was out of nowhere. \" While most drivers hit the brakes, he said, others accelerated to avoid the crash. \"You know New Yorkers,\" he quipped. \"Always in a hurry. \" Aerial images showed the crane draped across all lanes of the bridge, its frame splintered into pieces as traffic was brought to a standstill. With the bridge blocked, many motorists were stranded for several hours. Some took to social media to document the travail. The collapse raised concerns about the integrity of the Tappan Zee Bridge, the state's longest, which is used by 138, 000 vehicles traveling between Rockland and Westchester Counties on weekdays. Built on the cheap, it was designed to last for only 50 years. And it also snarled traffic along the New York State Thruway, which traverses the bridge, and feeder roads. Traffic was blocked on Interstate 287 heading west toward Rockland at least as far as the Sprain Brook Parkway exit, as well as on the Thruway heading east toward Westchester. The Tappan Zee Express Bus Service, which transports commuters between Westchester and Rockland, was suspended, as officials rearranged transit schedules and other road availabilities. But after officials inspected the bridge, they gradually reopened all of its lanes except for one southbound lane. Mr. Cuomo described the damage to that lane as significant but not extensive, saying it could take days to repair. Officials said the crane, which was new, was engaged in a routine task \u2014 wielding a vibratory hammer to install pilings. \"This was not one of the operations of bridge building,\" Mr. Cuomo said. Jeff J. Loughlin, the business manager of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 137, which represents the crane's operator, said the crane was an MLC 300 manufactured by Manitowoc Cranes. An official said the crane's boom was 256 feet long. Mr. Loughlin said the operator remained at the scene with a union representative, and was expected to undergo drug and alcohol testing. \"It's a miracle that the boom fell across six lanes of traffic, cars that are doing 60 to 70 miles an hour, and not one car was hit by the boom,\" Mr. Loughlin said. Officials said they were investigating the cause of the crane's crash. But they ruled out the wind. There have been no deaths or serious injuries involving bridge workers since construction began on the new Tappan Zee Bridge in 2013. Mr. Cuomo said that the project's track record had been extraordinary for an undertaking of its size but noted that \"things happen. \" \"Somebody will drop a hammer,\" he said. While Mr. Cuomo said that four people were injured in Tuesday's accident, Ed Day, the Rockland County executive, said that five people suffered minor injuries. The crane's collapse drew new focus to the construction of the new Tappan Zee Bridge. The bridge, which is being built just north of the old bridge and is scheduled to be completed in 2018, has been mentioned by Mr. Cuomo as well as President Obama as an exemplary infrastructure project. On Monday during an event in Brooklyn, Mr. Cuomo praised the process used to contract the bridge's construction out to private companies. But Mr. Cuomo said on Tuesday afternoon that the accident did not jeopardize the new bridge's construction or its time frame for completion. He said it was a lucky break that the crane fell in the middle of the day when traffic was lighter. Victor Fargas, 57, a glass worker from the Bronx who had to delay some of his jobs after getting stuck in the traffic, decided to pass the time by taking a nap in his truck. \"Now I'm doing all I can do,\" he said, \"patiently waiting and praying to the traffic gods. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Wall Township High School in Wall, New Jersey, has recently come under fire from the parents of three students for erasing references to Donald Trump in the school s most recent yearbook.Whether it was cropping or photoshopping items of clothing with Trump s campaign slogan in student photos or refusing to print statements by the president submitted by another student as her yearbook quote, the parents of those affected are claiming their children s first amendment rights have been violated, although they are acting more like it was they themselves who have been silenced. The school has not only been accused of censorship, but the parents of three students want the yearbooks to be reprinted with an apology or, at the very least, an explanation.One such student is Grant Berardo, a junior at Wall High, who wore a TRUMP: Make America Great Again t-shirt for his school photo, only for the slogan to be digitally removed from his yearbook picture. He was disappointed. This was the first election he has been interested in, said Grant s father, Joseph Berardo. I want the yearbooks to be reissued and I want a letter from the administration explaining why they are reissuing the yearbook Grant Berardo was probably only interested in an election for the first time simply due to his age and it also sounds like his father is trying to push his own political agenda, but Grant wasn t the only student affected. Another junior, Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago, had his photo cropped so the Trump logo on his vest was cut out and his sister, Montana, had a Trump quote removed from her photo as freshman class president. Montana Dobrovich-Fago wanted to have printed under her picture the Donald Trump quote, I like thinking big. If you are going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big, but when she opened the yearbook, the space below the photo was blank. I want to know who thought it was okay to do this, said Janet Dobrovich-Fago, mother of the two teenagers and another parent who appears to be living vicariously through her kids. I want the school to seek disciplinary action and to be held accountable. Parents received a letter from Wall Township Public Schools Superintendent Cheryl Dyer on June 9, stating that she was looking into the matter because, although the school s dress code does prohibit references to illegal activities such as drugs, alcohol, and weapons, there is nothing stating that students can t show political affiliation.","label":1}
{"text":"Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier discussed the need to improve ties between their countries and take mutual steps to that end during a phone call on Wednesday, Turkish presidential sources said. Aside from bilateral relations, the sources said, Erdogan also briefed Steinmeier about a summit on Syria s conflict held by Turkey, Russia and Iran in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Nov. 22.","label":0}
{"text":"In the time since Justice Antonin Scalia's passing on Saturday, the hard-working folks at The Monkey Cage have already done some yeoman work, offering up five separate posts about the politics of it. The Volokh Conspiracy, not to be outdone, has 10 posts up on the topic. With apologies to all of them, their takeaway message is: I don't disagree with a single thing that Mike Bailey wrote at The Monkey Cage or that SCOTUSblog's Tom Goldstein wrote about how to game out the strategies of both Obama and Republican senators. It all makes sense. It's all very savvy and very political. [Supreme Court nomination process sure to be an epic debate] Reading through them, however, there was just one small, teeny, tiny detail that kept nagging at me: No matter how this plays out, the Supreme Court loses. The hard-working staff here at Spoiler Alerts has been banging on periodically about the erosion of trust in American political institutions. The Supreme Court has not been immune to that trend. Here's the General Social Survey data: To be fair, the Supreme Court is still more widely respected than either Congress or President Obama. But if you think about it, that's a really low bar. The sources of this decline are likely myriad, but a big part of it is that the court is increasingly viewed through a partisan lens, and no partisan has liked the Roberts court in recent years. Indeed, the combination of divided government and political polarization forced the Supreme Court into a more overtly political role, thereby guaranteeing it would serve as a wedge issue going forward. Democrats didn't love this court because Republicans appointed a majority of the justices, leading to rulings like Citizens United and Heller. Republicans didn't love this court because its rulings on gay marriage and Obamacare shifting the political status quo to the left. We're at the point in this country where partisanship is now the last socially approved form of discrimination. As Paul Waldman noted over at The Plum Line, the trend on Senate confirmation votes of Supreme Court justices sustains this point: [Clarence Thomas excepted], through the Clinton administration, justices got near-unanimous votes. Then things changed starting with the George W. Bush administration. While Democrats did their best to find some dirt on John Roberts and Samuel Alito and Republicans did the same to Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, none of it amounted to much of anything. Yet in all those cases, most of the opposition party voted against the nominee. And it's likely to get even worse. The GOP Senate caucus's immediate reaction to Scalia's passing is simply the latest iteration of this dynamic. Whether due merely to partisan sorting or true ideological polarization, the erosion of trust in the Supreme Court reflects decades-long trends, so the flapdoodles and argle-bargle of the past few days were probably inevitable. But as Dara Lind noted over at Vox, it's a shame that political leaders haven't focused a wee bit more on one of Scalia's more gracious attributes. Scalia was clearly able to separate the political from the personal. His close friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Ralph to his Sam, attests to that. As Lind concludes: I get why this seat is such a high-stakes political battle for everyone involved. Politics ain't beanbag. But the battle that is about to ensue over Scalia's seat is going to be nasty. It's part of a secular trend that will only further the erosion of public trust in the Supreme Court. And that's the bigger problem with how this will play out.","label":0}
{"text":"What the f*ck is wrong with our country? Republicans may say that racism ended with Rosa Parks (they actually say this), but a lot of people s words and actions seems weirdly racist given the complete lack of it in our society.An African-American man posted a video of an exchange he had with a white driver after he passed the apparently aggressive Caucasian man in traffic. This is a prime example of why you should get out and vote! Guy got heated and decided to share w\/ me what him and his family thinks about me and my people because I didn t allow him to speed up and stop me from changing lanes in traffic, a man identifying himself as Skye Lev wrote on Facebook. I could ve ended up doing 20 to life over this but instead I decided to show him respect, that he clearly didn t deserve, because I have children to be here for. Lord thank you for this patience and self-control that you blessed me with! GET OUT AND VOTE PEOPLE!!!! The video is just horrible. After Mr. White man apparently called Lev a n*gger, the African-American gentleman turned on his camera. Trump, Trump all the way, Trump, Trump, Mr. Deplorable says as the video begins. He then informs the gentleman that Black lives don t matter. There ain t no proof. The white gentleman claims that Lev cut him off in traffic and made him slam on his breaks. And that makes you a n*gger, Mr. Cracker says. That proves that black lives don t matter. The white gentleman then explains that he doesn t have a social media account because white lives matter (it probably sounded better in his head).Now if you thought that was bad, wait till you hear him teach this gentleman about black people! We won t spoil it for you. Watch it below:","label":1}
{"text":"Brazilian Felipe Massa completed two and a half race distances and put his Williams team on top of the timesheets as Formula One's final pre-season test got underway in Barcelona on Tuesday. Massa, brought back in January after his former team mate Valtteri Bottas moved to Mercedes as replacement for retired world champion Nico Rosberg, completed 168 laps of the Circuit de Catalunya. His eye-catching tally was matched only by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel, who ended up third fastest (1:19.906) behind Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo (1:19.900). \"I don't remember before doing a day with 168 laps in my career,\" said the 35-year-old Massa, whose fastest was one minute 19.726 seconds. \"It was a lot of laps and I can feel it a bit on my body, but I am good. I feel in good shape for the new season,\" he added. Triple world champion Lewis Hamilton, the bookmakers' favorite for a fourth title this year, was fourth fastest with a total of 49 laps. Bottas, who took over the car in the afternoon, did 86 and was fifth. \"I think Ferrari are possibly the favorites,\" said Hamilton, whose running was cut short after the champions discovered damage to the floor of the car. \"We can't take our eyes off them because they have been doing such a great job at the moment. \"Red Bull look like they have gone quite quick today as well. We'll see over the next days and, most importantly, over the next weeks, but it's going to be close in the first race, that's for sure.\" The season starts in Australia on March 26. Ferrari failed to win a race last season, when they finished third overall, and have not been constructors' champions since 2008. McLaren's woes continued, with an electrical issue on the power unit of Belgian rookie Stoffel Vandoorne's car forcing Honda to replace it, costing the team more track time after a difficult first week. \"Based on this testing we can expect to have a few engine changes, but they (Honda) will have addressed this before the start of the season or at least quickly into the season,\" said McLaren Racing Director Eric Boullier. Vandoorne completed 80 laps but was more than two seconds off the pace. Renault's Jolyon Palmer managed only 15 laps due to a power unit problem but he handed over to team mate Nico Hulkenberg who completed 58 in the afternoon.","label":0}
{"text":"The Trump administration is considering tightening the vetting process for women and children seeking to enter the United States as refugees, a proposal that if adopted would bring security checks closer to those for adult men, three sources with knowledge of the plan told Reuters. The plan could slow down refugee admissions even after the end of a 120-day ban on most refugees instituted by the Trump administration while it reviews vetting procedures. The vetting review is set to end on Oct. 24. President Donald Trump came into office in January with a goal of sharply cutting refugee admissions, in line with the hard-line immigration policies that were a focal point of the Republican's 2016 election campaign. Trump quickly issued temporary bans on refugees and travelers from some Middle Eastern and African countries that were challenged in court. A U.S. official told reporters last month that the administration is \"considering a wide range of potential measures and enhancements\" to vetting. Refugees currently undergo differing levels of security checks when applying for admission to the United States, depending on the perceived risk they might present, including running their biographic and biometric data against law enforcement and intelligence databases. Women and young children go through a lower level of security screening than men, said the three sources with knowledge of the proposal, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The proposed changes would bring their security checks more in line with what is required for adult male refugees. Successive Republican and Democratic administrations have focused most of their attention on adult men who tend to join militant groups such as al Qaeda and Islamic State in greater numbers than women. A State Department official declined to comment on any refugee vetting processes while the review is underway. The government is taking steps to \"further intensify\" refugee screening \"to uphold the safety of the American people,\" the official said. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Dave Lapan declined to comment, and said the administration is \"finalizing security enhancement recommendations as part of the 120-day review.\" A White House spokeswoman said there were \"no announcements at this time.\" All refugees referred for resettlement in the United States are run through a database with watch-list information, called the Consular Lookout and Support System, or CLASS. Refugees can be singled out for a higher level of review based on their age, nationality, or gender. Syrian refugees, for instance, undergo extra checks. Of the nearly 85,000 refugees admitted to the United States in the 2016 fiscal year, about 72 percent were women or children, according to the State Department. Total processing time for refugees to enter the United States now averages about 18 to 24 months, according to the State Department. Trump's order to halt refugee admissions so his administration could determine whether additional checks are necessary was suspended for months by federal judges. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually allowed it to go in effect for all refugees except those with close ties to the United States. Trump also lowered the maximum number of refugees to be allowed into the United States in 2017 to 50,000 from the 110,000 originally set by former President Barack Obama, a Democrat. The 2018 level has been set at 45,000, the lowest number in decades.","label":0}
{"text":"The Russian police arrested hundreds of people in nationwide protests on Sunday, including the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny in Moscow, where thousands gathered for the biggest demonstration in five years against President Vladimir V. Putin. The protest in the capital took the form of a synchronized walk along a major shopping street to avoid a ban on unsanctioned stationary gatherings. It was one of 99 similar rallies in cities and towns across the country \u2014 from Vladivostok in the far east to Kaliningrad in the west \u2014 according to the organizer, Mr. Navalny's foundation. All but 17 of these, the foundation said, had been declared illegal by the authorities. In Moscow, some protesters tried to block security vans with cars, and the authorities deployed the riot police and surveillance helicopters. But they mostly avoided the brutal measures used in neighboring Belarus on Saturday against protesters in the capital, Minsk, and other cities. The police in Belarus beat and arrested hundreds of people who tried to gather for the latest in demonstrations against President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994. But while less than in Belarus, whose president is often referred to as \"Europe's last dictator,\" the police crackdown in Moscow could still complicate efforts by President Trump to deliver on pledges to \"get along\" with Mr. Putin. In a statement on Sunday that reflected widespread wariness of the Russian leader in Washington, Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said: \"Putin's thugocracy is on full display. The United States government cannot be silent about Russia's crackdown on peaceful protesters. Free speech is what we're all about and Americans expect our leaders to call out thugs who trample the basic human rights of speech, press, assembly and protest. \" Shortly after the senator's statement, Mark Toner, the acting spokesman for the State Department in Washington, said the United States \"strongly condemns the detention of hundreds of peaceful protesters throughout Russia on Sunday\" and called for their immediate release. \"Detaining peaceful protesters, human rights observers, and journalists is an affront to core democratic values,\" he added. The protests in Russia on Sunday \u2014 nominally against corruption but also a rare show of public defiance against Mr. Putin, who has found a fierce and enduring critic in Mr. Navalny \u2014 were the largest coordinated display of public dissatisfaction since demonstrations in 2011 and 2012, after an election that was tainted by fraud. Protesters tried to prevent a police van from taking Mr. Navalny away and chanted: \"This is our city. This is our city. \" Others shouted, \"Russia without Putin,\" and held up pieces of paper denouncing the Russian president and his allies as thieves. In a Twitter post, Mr. Navalny urged his followers to continue with the demonstration after he was grabbed by police officers as he tried to join the crowds along Tverskaya Street in the center of Moscow. \"Guys, I'm O. K.,\" he wrote in a message in Russian. \"No need to fight to get me out. Walk along Tverskaya. Our topic of the day is the fight against corruption. \" The Moscow Police Department said on its website that \"around 500\" people had been arrested in the city for taking part in an \"unapproved public event. \" a group that monitors arrests, said the number of arrests in Moscow was at least 1, 000. Instead of waving big banners with antigovernment slogans as in previous protests, most of those who joined Sunday's walk on Tverskaya Street displayed their feelings discreetly. Some waved Russian flags, cloaking their opposition in the same patriotism that Mr. Putin has used so successfully to boost his popularity. Others carried easily hidden signs featuring pictures of ducks, a reference to a claim by Mr. Navalny that corrupt officials even build houses for their ducks. Among those arrested in Moscow were Russian and foreign journalists, the leader of a small opposition party, Nikolai Lyaskin \u2014 who said he was hit around the head by police officers and taken to a hospital \u2014 and a British student, Gregory Hill, 17. Demoralized and divided since the election protests, which fizzled amid a wave of arrests, Russia's opposition has struggled to make its voice heard over a din of sentiment on television, which invariably presents opponents of Mr. Putin as traitors in cahoots with the West. But Mr. Navalny, a charismatic campaigner who helped lead the protests, has shown a knack for turning repressive action against him and his followers to his own advantage. When an assailant doused him in a green liquid in Siberia last week, he exulted that his face made him look like a superhero. Instead of directly attacking Mr. Putin, who is hugely popular outside more cities like Moscow, Mr. Navalny has focused on rallying support by exposing corruption, an issue that alarms even many of Mr. Putin's supporters. Mr. Putin, who is widely expected to seek another term as president in elections next year, has ruled Russia as president or prime minister since the former president, Boris N. Yeltsin, resigned on Dec. 31, 1999. He faces no credible opposition other than that mobilized by Mr. Navalny, the founder and leader of the Foundation for Fighting Corruption. The opposition leader has declared his intention to run in the 2018 presidential race, despite a criminal conviction in February on fraud charges that made him ineligible to compete but was widely viewed as a political ploy to keep him out of the race. Even if Mr. Navalny manages to compete for the presidency, he has little chance of winning. But his presence on the ballot would end what since 2000 have been a series of tightly choreographed presidential contests that resembled coronations. Dmitri Charishnikov, a web designer who answered Mr. Navalny's call to walk up and down Tverskaya Street, said protests would change nothing as most Russians \"believe what they see on television\" and strongly support Mr. Putin. But he added that he still wanted to show that \"another Russia still exists. \" Nearby, a police officer shouted through a bullhorn that all those walking in the area were \"participants in an unsanctioned gathering\" and must immediately disperse or risk prosecution. State television, the main source of news for most Russians, responded to the protests by ignoring them. In a report published this month, Mr. Navalny detailed how Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, a close ally of Mr. Putin's, had built a lavish empire of mansions, country estates, luxury yachts, an Italian vineyard and an palace near St. Petersburg. Mr. Navalny called for the protests after Russia's Parliament, which is dominated by United Russia \u2014 a political party loyal to Mr. Putin \u2014 ignored demands for an investigation into accusations of corruption by senior government officials. By dusk on Sunday, the protests in Moscow had wound down after sporadic scuffles between the police and protesters. Russian news media reported at least one police officer was taken to a hospital in Moscow with head injuries. A spokesman for the interior ministry in St. Petersburg denied reports one of its officers had died after being beaten by protesters.","label":0}
{"text":"Shaqueana Peoples's mother quit on her when she was 15. She had been told by a doctor earlier in 2005 that she had Type 2 diabetes, but her mother ignored doctor's orders meant to help improve her daughter's health. She continued to order takeout for dinner, bought frozen meals and did not make sure her daughter took her medicine. Ms. Peoples's health rapidly deteriorated. She was rushed to the hospital nearly 20 times that year because of medical emergencies. Sick and not attending school, she was assigned a social worker, who also looked for signs of possible parental neglect. Then, during one of a series of routine hospitalizations, hospital employees suggested that her mother place her in the foster care system. \"I didn't have a choice,\" Ms. Peoples recalled. \"I felt abandoned, like my mother had given up on me. Looking back, she didn't know how to deal with me as well as her other two kids. She didn't show me the same kind of love as the others, and I'd been in a rage for years. \" As the middle child, Ms. Peoples had often felt left out, as her mother favored her older brother and younger sister. She said she was rebellious as a teenager, and often got into explosive fights with her mother. Contentious family life was all she knew. Then she was moved into the foster care system. \"I was nervous. I was crying. I was conflicted,\" she said. \"I'd been with my family all my life. I didn't know how to live with someone that wasn't part of my family. \" A month after entering an group home in Brooklyn, Ms. Peoples ran away. Over the next six years, she moved through one group home and six family placements, carrying her belongings from one home to the next in a suitcase provided by her social worker. She preferred to live in a household with other foster children, and not with biological children, because she was treated more fairly, she said. Her frequent moves meant enrolling in different schools and meeting new teachers, and she fell further behind in school with every relocation. She eventually dropped out of school in 10th grade, when she was 17. She became too old for the foster care system at 21. The Children's Aid Society, one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, was there with her during all the moves and has continued to provide her with help since she entered the system 11 years ago. At one point, Children's Aid helped place Ms. Peoples in a facility in Virginia for children with disabilities, to have her diabetes monitored. The Children's Aid Society also helped ease her transition out of the foster care system, through a program that provides housing assistance and job training. She learned to drive, enrolled in high school equivalency classes, obtained licenses in certified nursing and home health treatment, applied for subsidized housing and put money into savings. Social workers at the Children's Aid Society guided her through every step, she said. When she graduated from the Borough of Manhattan Community College with an associate degree in community health, the Children's Aid Society provided her with $100 in Neediest Cases funds to buy a dress for the graduation ceremony. Ms. Peoples now attends Hunter College, where she receives financial aid through academic scholarships. She qualified for assistance through a program for foster children that supplies $753 a month for school and living expenses. Ms. Peoples also receives Medicaid, $190 in food stamps and a $200 monthly stipend for living expenses from Children's Aid, provided to foster children attending college. Children's Aid also used $457 in Neediest Cases funds toward two months in rent arrears. In 2014 the organization used $1, 098 in Neediest Cases funds to cover rent and living expenses, as well as a MetroCard to travel to class. On a recent November day, walking along the college's colorful indoor bridge that connects buildings across Lexington Avenue, Ms. Peoples, now 27, spoke animatedly about majoring in biology. Her bright smile carried through a conversation about her darkest moments entering the foster care system and about the pride she felt celebrating her first graduation this summer. Dressed in a floral jacket and black leather boots and carting a snakeskin bag filled with schoolbooks and healthy snacks, she said she was working to take care of herself, both inside and out. \"I wanted to better understand and monitor my diabetes,\" Ms. Peoples said about deciding on her major. \"Not just to go to the doctor to get information but to know how the food I eat interacts with my body. \" She recently became a member at a gym, has started taking Zumba and yoga classes at school and is rollerblading at a park in her Bronx neighborhood. She also cooks most of her food \u2014 baked chicken is a frequent meal \u2014 and incorporates whole wheat into her diet. Because of her lifestyle changes, she is now off all diabetes medication and can maintain normal blood sugar levels with diet and exercise. She has lost more than 50 pounds in the last six months. Now she would like to help others in impoverished communities make healthy dietary decisions, she said. She is pursuing a career in social work. Specifically, after seeing the effects of poverty in the Bronx, she has turned her attention to the plight of the homeless. \"Having a support system through hardship is so important,\" she said. \"And oftentimes the homeless don't have that. The situation of the homeless lays heavy on my heart. That's where I see my chance to help others. \"","label":0}
{"text":"A once-fringe separatist movement in Cameroon s Anglophone regions is gaining ground after a year of state repression that has undermined moderate voices and raised concerns the majority French-speaking nation may face a prolonged period of violence. Soldiers shot dead at least eight people and wounded others in the two English-speaking regions on Sunday, the anniversary of Anglophone Cameroon s independence from Britain. Amnesty International said on Monday at least 17 people had died in the clashes. The growing influence of the separatists, who include armed radical elements, is one of the most serious threats to stability in the central African oil producer since President Paul Biya took power 35 years ago. Last year, separatists couldn t rally people on the streets. But people have seen family members arrested and killed, and they have switched over, said Tapang Ivo Tanku, an Anglophone activist based in the United States. Like many moderates who say they are marginalized by Biya s Francophone-dominated government, Tanku has campaigned for a peaceful solution: a two-state federation - one French speaking, the other Anglophone - under one president. I am in the minority now, he told Reuters from New York. The strife began in November, when English-speaking teachers and lawyers in the Northwest and Southwest regions, frustrated with having to work in French, took to the streets calling for reforms and greater autonomy. Six people were killed in those protests, and in the months that followed, the government deployed thousands of police and elite soldiers, implemented a blanket internet blackout and arrested dozens of activists, dubbing them terrorists . The thousands who protested on Sunday around the country were no longer calling for reform, but for a separate state for Cameroon s nearly five million English speakers. We told them our problems. They responded with force, killing us, said a young student in Bamenda, one of the largest Anglophone cities. We need our own country. The true size and influence of the movement remains hard to gauge. Many leaders are in jail or exile, and it s unclear how strong alliances are between a multitude of factions with competing visions of how to achieve their goals. Few analysts believe a split is imminent. There is no doubt the separatists popularity and ability to stir turmoil has grown, however. Separatists told Reuters that they were responsible for an improvised bomb that last month wounded three policemen in Bamenda. Nothing great can be achieved by using verbal excesses, street violence and defying authority. Lasting solutions to problems can be found only through peaceful dialogue, Biya said in a statement on Twitter following Sunday s violence. An uprising by Biafran separatists in neighboring Nigeria in the 1960s sparked a civil war that killed around 1 million. The roots of the divisions go back a century to the League of Nations decision to split the former German colony of Kamerun between the allied French and British victors at the end of World War One. The French Cameroons gained their independence in 1960 and the British Cameroons voted in 1961 to reunite with them under a federal government. The federation was abandoned a decade later, however, after a referendum most Anglophones considered a sham. A separatist movement existed for decades underground, with activists sometimes communicating by passing notes to bus drivers going through different towns. It simmered but never gained widespread popular support - until now. Southern Cameroons political activist Mark Bareta said government arrests of key organizers in January and February have pushed independent separatist coalitions, many of which are run by diaspora Cameroonians, together to form the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF). SCACUF and other groups are busily laying the groundwork for a new state, coordinating protests, gaining support on the ground, and - in some cases - orchestrating violent attacks. They have printed thousands of light blue passports for Ambazonia - the Anglophones aspirational independent homeland - designed a currency and written a national anthem, five members told Reuters. In May, they set up their own satellite television network, the Southern Cameroons Broadcasting Corporation, which reaches up to 500,000 people, said SCBC board member Derric Ndim. Its satellite transmission is not affected by government-enforced internet cuts, he said. We are working to make a new country, and we are ready, said Nigeria-based Julius Ayuk Tabe, chairman of the Governing Council of Ambazonia, which is spearheading the movement. The cries of the people are getting louder.","label":0}
{"text":"The leader of Egypt s Muslim Brotherhood movement, Mohamed Badie, lost his appeal on Wednesday against a life sentence for his role in violent clashes during political turmoil in 2013, judicial sources said. The judgment by the court of cassation against the sentence, handed out in 2016, cannot be appealed. Badie, 74, was convicted for his role in violence that broke out in the Suez Canal city of Ismailia days after the army, led by then General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, toppled President Mohamed Mursi, a member of the Brotherhood, following mass demonstrations against him. Sisi was elected president the following year. In the same case, the court on Wednesday also upheld life sentences against seven other people and handed 10-year sentences to 39 and three-year sentences to 19 others. They were charged with killing three people and attempting to kill 16 others, thuggery, and vandalizing public property among other offences, related to the clashes in Ismailia in July 2013. Authorities outlawed the Brotherhood after Mursi was ousted, and arrested thousands of its supporters. They also dissolved its Freedom and Justice Party, which Mursi led. Mass life and death sentences have been common since then in what rights groups call an unprecedented crackdown by the government of Sisi, who promised during campaigning for the presidency to wipe out the Brotherhood. Badie has also been sentenced to life in eight other cases, only one of which has been confirmed. Two were canceled, two are pending appeal and three the subject of retrials.","label":0}
{"text":"Washington (CNN) Donald Trump will become the 45th president of the United States, CNN projects, a historic victory for outsiders that represents a stunning repudiation of Washington's political establishment. The billionaire real estate magnate and former reality star needed an almost perfect run through the swing states -- and he got it, winning Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. The Republican swept to victory over Hillary Clinton in the ultimate triumph for a campaign that repeatedly shattered the conventions of politics to pull off a remarkable upset. Clinton conceded to Trump in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Speaking at a victory party in New York, Trump was gracious toward Clinton and called for unity. \"We owe (Clinton) a very major debt of gratitude to her for her service to our country,\" Trump said. \"I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.\" He added: \"I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans.\" Trump won with 289 electoral votes compared to 218 for Clinton, according to CNN projections. Trump's supporters embraced his plainspoken style, assault on political correctness and vow to crush what he portrayed in the final days of his campaign as a corrupt, globalized elite -- epitomized by the Clintons -- that he claimed conspired to keep hard-working Americans down. His winning coalition of largely white, working-class voters suggests a populace desperate for change and disillusioned with an entire generation of political leaders and the economic and political system itself. Now, Trump faces the task of uniting a nation traumatized by the ugliest campaign in modern history and ripped apart by political divides exacerbated by his own explosive rhetoric -- often along the most tender national fault lines such as race and gender. Trump is sure to follow his own playbook Trump will be the first president to enter the White House with no political, diplomatic or military executive experience. His victory will send shockwaves around the world, given his sparse foreign policy knowledge, haziness over nuclear doctrine, vow to curtail Muslim immigration and disdain for US alliances that have been the bedrock of the post-World War II foreign policy. His promises to renegotiate or dump trade deals such as NAFTA and to brand China a currency manipulator risk triggering immediate economic shocks around the globe. Trump, 70, will be the oldest president ever sworn in for a first term and will take the helm of a nation left deeply divided by his scorched-earth campaign. His victory was built on fierce anger at the Washington establishment and political elites among his grass-roots voters, many of whom feel they are the victims of a globalized economy that has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs. His victory ends Clinton's crusade to become the first woman to ever rise to the nation's highest office. It's a humiliating chapter in the long political career of Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Trump's win also deals a painful rebuke to President Barack Obama, whom he pursued for years with his birtherism campaign built on the false premise that Obama was born outside the United States. Now Trump will have the power to eviscerate Obama's political legacy -- including the Affordable Care Act, the latter's proudest domestic achievement. But there are deeper, more fundamental questions about Trump's presidency that will be key to his capacity to unify a deeply divided country and appeal to Americans who will feel outraged and disgusted by his victory. He's got the attention of the whole world Trump's campaign was built on rage, falsehoods and singling out culprits for the ills of modern America, including undocumented migrants, foreign nations such as China and Muslim immigrants. He mocked a disabled New York Times reporter, vowed to use the power of the presidency to put Clinton in jail and pledged to sue women who accused him of sexual assault. Trump has promised to build a wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it, and to deport undocumented migrants. He has vowed to reintroduce interrogation methods for terror suspects that are more extreme than waterboarding. So the demeanor that Trump will adopt as president and the manner in which he will behave will be closely watched -- not just in the United States, but among nervous leaders abroad. One of the many uncertainties about Trump's coming presidency is how his White House will interact with Republicans in Congress \u2014 and whether he and GOP leaders will heal their rift from the campaign. Republicans repelled a Democratic bid to recapture the Senate, giving the GOP control over Capitol Hill and the White House. That means it would fall to the GOP either to rubber stamp policies likely to mark a break from conservative orthodoxy or to provide a check on the power of Trump, who has shown every sign he will use executive power aggressively. House Speaker Paul Ryan will face intense pressure from pro-Trump members of his own coalition to cooperate with the new president. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, are likely to hold Trump's feet to the fire to ensure he lives up to his promise to appoint justices who could ensure a generational conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. Clinton apparently failed to reassemble the diverse coalition that helped Obama win the presidency in 2008 and 2012. The events of Clinton's terrible final week on the campaign -- the revival of her email controversy by FBI Chief James Comey and a damaging drip, drip, drip of revelations by WikiLeaks which her campaign says was orchestrated by Russian intelligence -- could have helped consign her to defeat. There also is the question of Trump's temperament. Clinton repeatedly warned that he was unfit to control the nuclear codes because he could be baited with a tweet. Obama passionately denounced Trump as intellectually and temperamentally unfit to succeed him in the Oval Office. But now, he will be forced to greet his successor on the morning of Inauguration Day in January, and look on while he is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.","label":0}
{"text":"We hope these women realize they were being used by George Soros and other leftists to protest Trump instead of to celebrate women!","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump raised North Korea s missile tests during talks on Monday with the prime ministers of Japan and Australia, and said a lot of progress had been made in negotiations on trade. On the sidelines of a summit of East and Southeast Asian leaders in Manila, Trump met with Japan s Shinzo Abe and Australia s Malcolm Turnbull, and said discussions at the meeting would include tensions on the Korean Peninsula and trade. In brief remarks prior to news media being ushered out of the meeting, Turnbull said North Korea s recklessness needed to be stopped, while Abe said the most immediate challenge was to ensure regional peace and stability. Following the meeting, the White House said the three leaders reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining maximum pressure on North Korea in the effort to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. They also discussed expanded security cooperation for enhanced deterrence and defense against North Korean aggression, the White House said in a statement. The three men also discussed the need for free and open trade in the Indo-Pacific region and the need to pursue fair and reciprocal trade, the White House added. Trump, who campaigned heavily on U.S. trade issues, made pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Asian trade deal one of his first acts in office. His administration has instead pledged to reach bilateral pacts with individual nations. Countries remaining in the pact have said the deal is advancing without the United States.","label":0}
{"text":"This is a HUGE condemnation of the Republican Party.Ever since Donald Trump kicked off his campaign for the presidency, Republicans have cowered before him endorsing him one by one even after saying that they disagree with him and despise the divisive and hateful rhetoric he spews.But former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson put his writing skills to use on Thursday to pen an epic rebuke of Donald Trump and the Republicans who support him. Trump pretty much represents the negation of everything I ve argued about politics and ideology for the last 30 years, Gerson wrote on Facebook.What he is attacking is not just the establishment. He is attacking a way of doing politics based on persuasion, consensus, compassion and inclusion. Those who argue that conservatism is fundamentally at odds with these values know nothing of conservatism. But Trump represents the confirmation of the worse conservative and Republican caricatures a belief that cultural and religious minorities are threats, a belief that America should abandon its deepest values in the conduct of global affairs, a belief that the values and institutions of our government have failed, and that the times require a strong hand.Gerson continued ripping Trump for wanting to tear down what makes America great.At its best (and, God knows, it has not always been at its best) America shows a welcoming spirit, an example of how a great nation can be united by ideals instead of bloodlines, a place, as George Washington said, where there shall be none to make him afraid. We should love American traditions and institutions enough to repair them, not hand them over to an authoritarian wannabe, who is too ignorant to even understand the inheritance he is casting away.And then he really let Trump have it.Trump s magical policy thinking, setting goals with no serious thought of how they might be achieved; his menacing encouragement of political violence; his disdain for ethnic and religious minorities, which has unleashed and emboldened racists and anti-Semites of every sort; his penchant for conspiracy theories, including a very dangerous vaccine denialism; his promises to conduct the war on terrorism by ordering war crimes, which would set up a constitutional crisis when the US military honorably refuses; his cynical manipulation of gullible religious leaders with tactics that border on blasphemy; his casual use of lies, which he defends even when exposed.Gerson then turned his focus toward the GOP and slammed them for supporting Trump even though he represents the destruction of all the progress America had made since gaining independence from Great Britain and damned them to regret it for all of time.How does any of this return lost greatness to our nation? Sometimes I want to shake people (intellectually,not physically) who favor political disruption and ask: Disruption in favor of what? Look at what you are doing! Look at what you have done! The Republican Party is now firmly harnessed to the wild, uncontrollable horses of fear and exclusion. It has already sustained damage with Latino voters that may take a generation to undo. And now many Republicans will find rationalizations to support Trump. That is natural the reality of politics in every time. Many people simply go with the winner. But this isn t a normal time. I believe that the decision to support Trump, like an embarrassing tattoo, will follow them the rest of their lives. Republicans are not merely making a choice; they are looking into the abyss.Here s the full post via Facebook.\/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&#038;version=v2.3\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); \/\/ ]]&gt;I feel bad, on one hand, to be so focused on (some would say, obsessed by) the Trump phenomenon. And it is my intention Posted by Michael J. Gerson on Thursday, March 17, 2016Gerson ended his post by leaving a link to an op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post in which he says Republicans are staining themselves by supporting Trump and that perhaps one of the only honorable option left to save themselves from being forever remembered as the party that destroyed America is to vote for Hillary Clinton.Seriously, Republicans. Listen to Michael Gerson. His advice may just save your party from killing itself.Featured image: Cagle","label":1}
{"text":"Waking Times  Browsing through history, it's very clear that the world has undergone many monumental shifts in society that have uprooted it's very foundation in place of new seed.  A paradigm shift is a fundamental change in approach or underlining assumptions. For example, when Pythagoras proposed that the Earth was round instead of flat, the foundation of science and people's understanding of the world was completely changed. Similarly, when the Industrial Revolution took place there was a complete shift in manufacturing, lifestyle, and economics.  A paradigm shift can literally shake a society to its core, taking it off its current path and putting it on a brand new one. Though it might appear the opposite in the corporate controlled mainstream news, it appears that the entire world is in the very early stages of a paradigm shift. These shifts take place in many of the worlds most basic elements and redefine how life functions.  Here are 8 signs the world is undergoing a paradigm shift: 1. The Power of the Internet and the Age of Information  The Internet is arguably the greatest invention in the history of man. Never in our known history has man had access to such a broad range of diverse information from all over the world at the tips of his fingers. Many forget that the Internet has only really been commercialized in the west since the early 1990's and its spread across the world hasn't even come close to peaking yet. The Internet is undoubtedly giving rise to the Age of Information as people become more awake to what's really going on in the world.  A multitude of information is now accessible if one knows where to look. People can now learn new skills or hear different versions of the truth in mere minutes. The Internet is not only giving rise to an open access of information, but communication is almost instantaneous all over the world. It is paramount that the Internet remain an open decentralized system in which everyone can freely add and operate if this paradigm shift is to continue. It feeds almost all other shifts. 2. The Ascent Of the Independent Non-Corporate Online Media  Thanks solely to the Internet, the rise in independent journalism has taken off. Alternative media has become an increasingly popular choice for those wishing to stay truly informed, especially younger generations. People are continually switching off cable news ( cable TV all together ), and instead resorting to online sources. While mainstream news is still the number one source of current world events for the masses, the tide is slowly changing as people are awakening to the fact that corporate sponsored media is mostly propaganda and half-truths.  War is becoming much harder to justify as independent journalists have shined the light on what the powers that be never wanted anyone to see. A prime example is the conflict in Syria in which the establishment, despite the lack of popular support, so desperately wanted to start a war that when the rebels they were funding used chemical weapons, it was then blamed on the Assad government to protect their investment and design. Thanks to independent journalists, a war has so far been averted since it was revealed that the U.S. was in bed with the rebel groups and it was the rebels who used the chemical weapons . This new faction of journalism will give peace a legitimate chance as all dirty laundry is now being aired and corrupt alliances exposed. This in turn has allowed many people to deprogram from the countless media they have taken in over the years and see the world through a clearer lens in which the truth is more evident. 3. A Global Monetary Reshuffling  Though it will never be broadcast on mainstream news, the real threat of a U.S. dollar collapse as the world reserve currency is very real. The paradigm of central bank controlled economies that can issue credit and zero percent interest rates through nearly unlimited printing of money backed by nothing is an illusion that is beginning to break down. It's not just the U.S. dollar that's under threat, but many other central currencies such as the Euro and Yen. Massive equity bubbles are being blown up by this cheap credit along with massive debt that will be nearly impossible to pay back with the current economies in which only the very elite benefit.  Many countries are waking up to the fact that, like all other bubbles, these bubbles will burst and they are beginning to break away from the dollar. Examples include the buildup of a new central bank in the emerging economy of the BRICS group, the countless countries passing trade agreements in which bypassing the U.S. dollar (including agreements in oil), and the persistent selling of treasury stocks by the Chinese government who quite often are the last resort buyer of U.S. debt. Not only has there been a shift in the pecking order of fiat paper currencies, but decentralized crypto-currencies like Bitcoin are threatening the very system of fiat money and the centralized control a select few elite have on that system through central banks. This would shift power worldwide. 4. The Rise of the Peer-to-Peer Economy  A Peer-to-Peer (P20) Economy is a de-centralized model whereby two individuals interact to buy or sell goods and services directly with each other, without intermediation by a third-party, or without the use of a company or business. We see this being used by companies like Air BnB, Uber, Craigslist, Sidecar, and Dogvacay among others. Often referred to as a sharing economy, there is no centralized control of power, allowing people to more directly profit from their goods\/services rather than pay unnecessary middlemen along the way.  This is a trend that is sure to grow as technology makes it easier for people to make it on their own and allows for people to own their means of production and finished goods, instead of just being paid in the production process. The peer-to-peer economy is also possible through the abundance of goods already out there, allowing for goods to be shared and recycled rather than thrown away and reproduced. Not only is the peer-to-peer economy growing, but many young people are ditching the career 9-5 jobs and branching off into independent careers or job hopping . The top down business model in economics has now found a legitimate system in which a decentralized bottom up approach gives the power back to the people. 5. The Shift Towards Renewable Energy  The shift towards renewable energy is a forgone conclusion as renewable energy is the way of the future. In fact, the shift looks to be happening faster than people realize. According to the Global Energy Initiative , \"Numerous scenarios projected levels of renewable energy for 2020 that already were surpassed by 2010.\" The IEA states that, \"In 2012, the world relied on renewable sources for around 13.2% of its total primary energy supply, and in 2013 renewables accounted for almost 22% of global electricity generation.\"  With increased technological capabilities along with ever-growing concern over the state of the environment, the world is beginning to not only shift towards renewables, but the power over energy supplies and grids is decentralizing. For example, home solar panels or the new Tesla Powerwall , would enable people to access their own energy directly from the sun without going through middlemen. Another example is a local city like Burlington, VT being the first city in the U.S. to use 100% renewable energy; even whole countries like Paraguay, Iceland and Norway being 100% renewable . Cheap localized energy is on the horizon along with the very real possibility Nikola Tesla once envisioned, which is a world of free energy . 6. A Return to Organic Food  The reemergence of organic food is not only on the rise, but the use of farmers markets and locally grown food is on the rise as well. According to the Non GMO project , \"In more than 60 countries around the world, including Australia, Japan, and all of the countries in the European Union, there are significant restrictions or outright bans on the production and sale of GMOs .\" The rise is so strong that according to the Organic Trade Association, \"Supply shortages [of organics] are one of the greatest challenges facing the industry today. Despite continued growth in production, handlers are not able to keep up with demand.\"  Thanks in large part to the Internet and non-corporate sponsored research, people are beginning to understand the importance behind knowing exactly what's in the food one consumes and how it directly correlates to health. This has put mounting pressure on food businesses to adapt. The signs are already evident as Chipotle sees their profits increase while operating completely Non-GMO , while sales giants such as McDonalds see profits continue to decrease amidst health concerns over their food. Many are beginning to truly care what goes into their body and the rise of localized non-organic food in this country is a direct result of this health-conscious shift. 7. The Understanding Of a World of Abundance  As Gandhi famously said, \"The world has enough for every man's needs, but not for every man's greed.\" People are finally awaking to the fact that there is enough to go around, just not with the current systems in place. No one is saying there is enough for everyone to live at current western consumption rates, however with adoption of renewable energy, new forms of decentralized government and economics, and the increase in the usage of technological capabilities, there is more than enough for everyone in the world to live happily. For example, the world produces enough food for 10 billion people, yet many go starving as a result of faulty systems of distribution. Another example is water; there is more than enough water on the planet, but it's the economic systems that get in the way of technology.  The notion of scarcity has long haunted the systems of government and economics, but now a new paradigm of abundance is beginning to take root in the minds of people. The Venus project is a prime example of an alternative resource based economy in which sustainability and resource supply are taken into account. A world of abundance with zero emission is no longer just a pipe dream, but could very well become a reality as people think in terms of abundance. 8. The Global Consciousness Shift  Finally a consciousness shift is underway in which people are starting to see themselves as more than just individual people operating in an isolated bubble, but instead as a connected piece in the collective consciousness of planet Earth. The Internet, along with the increased capacity for travel, has allowed people from all over the world to connect. So many parts of the global society have become interconnected and people are beginning to take notice of not only their own country, but countries abroad.  Many are beginning to realize that one group of people suffering means everyone is suffering. This interconnection to everything has given rise to practices such as meditation, yoga, and travel, as well as the continued global acceptance towards mind altering organic substances like marijuana and mushrooms . People are beginning to emotionally connect to life all over the world and not just their immediate home and surroundings. This new reality is showing people that there is more to life than money, as connection to all living things is equally, if not more, valuable.  As one can see, the world is very much in the early stages of a shift in consciousness and design. These shifts are leading to a growing decentralization movement in which the power controls of society are taken from the few and given to the many. Obviously, there is a very strong force at play that is fighting against this paradigm shift. This force is fighting for centralization of power in almost all facets of life. There can be no doubt of the presence of this resistance when one examines the ever-increasing wealth and power gap that is out of control in this country.  The actions taken by these elite organizations are getting more radical and desperate by the day. With all that being said, the global paradigm shift has one advantage that I believe will be the game changer, and that's the will of the people. This is not just the people of a a single country, but internationally, as united global movements such as Occupy Wall street , the Arab Spring, and March Against Monsanto are happening simultaneously all over the world around central causes. So wake-up and participate, for we are in the early stages of a revolutionary paradigm shift in the consciousness of the masses that can truly change society for the better. About the Author  An avid free-thinker, Tim has set out on a mission in search of the truth in whatever form it may come. Ever since his awakening several years ago, his passion for knowledge and justice has led him on a journey into deep research, cultural travel, and complete expansion of the mind. Tim feels as if the information freely flowing into the hands of the public, due to the dawn of the Internet, cannot be stopped at this point, so he has made it his goal to help facilitate and breakdown this complex stream of information, so that others can accelerate their own awakening and be part of the inevitable change happening in society.  You can connect with Tim at:","label":1}
{"text":"As he brags that he is turning down millions of dollars for his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has leveled a steady line of attack against his rivals: that they are too cozy with big-money super PACs and may be breaking the law by coordinating with them. \"You know the nice part about me?\" he told reporters in Iowa in August. \"I don't need anybody's money.\" What Trump doesn't say is that he and his top campaign aide have connections to a super PAC collecting large checks to support his candidacy \u2014 a group viewed by people familiar with his campaign as the sanctioned outlet for wealthy donors. This summer, Trump appeared at at least two events for the Make America Great Again PAC, which took his campaign slogan as its name and received financing from his daughter's mother-in-law. A consultant for the super PAC is a Republican operative who has previously worked with Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, according to several people with direct knowledge of their ties. The Trump campaign's links to the low-profile group could undercut the candidate's posture as the only Republican in the race who has not sought to curry favor with wealthy donors, a central part of his anti-establishment message. Lewandowski denied that Trump or the campaign had given the green light to Make America Great Again. \"Unlike other campaigns, we don't have a quote-unquote designated super PAC that we tell people to give money to,\" he said. In a later interview, he threatened to file a lawsuit if The Washington Post reported that Trump had given the group his blessing. \"I want to be crystal clear,\" Lewandowski said. \"There is no sanctioned super PAC.\" Trump did not respond to requests for comments made through Lewandowski and communications director Hope Hicks. [Voters are mad about mega-donors, and it's helping Trump and Sanders] There are a number of links between the real estate tycoon's political operation and the Make America Great Again PAC. Mike Ciletti, a Colorado-based operative who told Politico in August that he is a consultant for the super PAC, was at the Trump campaign offices repeatedly in May and June, according to two people familiar with the visits. WizBang Solutions, the small Commerce City, Colo., printing company where Ciletti serves as a director, is a vendor to the campaign, collecting more than $56,000 in payments so far, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The Trump campaign has paid Ciletti's printing firm since April, with the most recently reported payment on Sept. 18. Since July, Ciletti has been serving as the super PAC's consultant. Such an arrangement with a common vendor is permissible under federal rules only if the firm has a strict firewall in place to prevent coordination. Neither Ciletti nor the company's president returned repeated requests for comment. In one of several interviews with The Post, Lewandowski first denied knowing Ciletti or anyone connected to the super PAC. \"I don't know him,\" Lewandowski said. Two days later, when confronted with the campaign's payments to Ciletti's firm, Lewandowski acknowledged he was familiar with Ciletti. \"I know a lot of people,\" he said. \"I know of Mike Ciletti.\" After being pressed for more details, he hung up. As Trump has soared to the top of the GOP field, he has vehemently criticized the influence of rich contributors, expressing disgust at the proliferation of super PACs and their close ties to other presidential contenders. While candidates are not supposed to collaborate directly with super PACs, they have found creative ways to work in concert. In a recent interview with The Washington Post, the New York tycoon said he planned to go after his opponents for pushing the limits of federal coordination rules. \"They're in total cahoots with their [super] PACs, which they're not allowed to be,\" Trump told The Post earlier this month. \"They're all in total cahoots. They put their friends in there. One good thing about me: I'm not.\" [The 2016 presidential contenders and their big-money backers] Trump has been pressing that argument at his rallies, recently going after former Florida governor Jeb Bush and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. \"You know the candidate's not allowed to talk to the PAC, right?\" Trump asked a crowd in the Atlanta suburb of Norcross on Oct. 10. \"They're not allowed to talk to the PAC. You think that Bush is talking to his PAC?\" \"You think that Hillary is talking to her PAC?\" \"Not allowed to, by the way, not allowed to,\" Trump continued. \"I don't.\" Bush spokeswoman Allie Brandenburger dismissed Trump's comments as a \"baseless attack,\" saying the campaign \"fully complies with all federal campaign compliance and finance laws and regulations.\" A Clinton spokesman declined to comment. Since Trump's candidacy has taken off, a dozen super PACs with names such as Art of the Deal PAC and Let's Trump Politics have sprung up to support him. But only one is viewed as operating with his blessing, according to four people familiar with the internal dynamics who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Sources say that the groundwork for the PAC was laid in the spring. As he drew close to announcing his candidacy, Trump talked privately with friends and advisers about the benefits of having an allied super PAC to help cover expenses, according to three people familiar with the conversations. He and his aides were also said to have been worried that unscrupulous individuals could create scam PACs that would take advantage of Trump supporters, and they are said to have talked about the need to have a reputable entity in place. The discussions are said to have occurred before Trump became an official candidate, after which he faced restrictions on how he could interact with an outside group. Lewandowski denied that such conversations occurred. \"Mr. Trump has $10 billion,\" he said. \"He doesn't care about a super PAC.\" [Inside the fabulous world of Donald Trump, where money is no problem] At the time, Ciletti was already helping the Trump team. He had previously worked with Lewandowski when the latter was a top official at the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, which used Ciletti's company, WizBang Solutions, as a vendor, according to people familiar with their relationship. Americans for Prosperity reported in FEC filings paying WizBang $46,000 in the 2014 elections for mailers in Colorado, North Carolina and North Dakota. The Trump campaign first paid WizBang in April to print T-shirts and business cards \u2014 two months before Trump declared his candidacy \u2014 and has paid the firm every month since, campaign finance filings show. Lewandowski gave conflicting statements to The Post about whether he had made the decision to hire Ciletti, at first saying he had not and then in a subsequent conversation saying he did not remember. He declined to say how he knew the Colorado consultant. \"I know of a lot of people,\" he said. \"I have been in politics for 25 years.\" Ciletti, who was a consultant for now-Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.)'s 2010 congressional bid, is listed in corporate filings as the director of WizBang Solutions, which is headquartered in an industrial park off the interstate in Commerce City outside of Denver. Although WizBang Solutions offers some marketing services, it's best known locally for its printing shop, which produces glossy mailers, signs and other items. The firm's president, Marty Soudani, did not respond to requests for comment. Ciletti began working with Trump's team in the run-up to his June 16 announcement and visited the Trump Tower offices multiple times, according to two people who saw him there. By July, he was fielding pitches from vendors who wished to do work for the PAC, according to a consultant who did a presentation for Ciletti. The Make America Great Again PAC was registered with the FEC on July 1. A Denver lawyer named Jon Anderson sent in the paperwork. He did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The super PAC's Web site prominently features a photo of Trump and his quotes, as well as news articles about his campaign. \"We believe in the conservative principles America was founded upon and know that with the right leadership the citizens of this country will come together to help Make America Great Again,\" reads a statement on the site. A nonprofit group called Make America Great Again that shares the same treasurer as the super PAC was also registered by Anderson, who submitted the incorporation papers in August with the Colorado secretary of state. Like super PACs, nonprofit groups can accept unlimited donations, but they are not required to disclose their contributors. Such organizations, set up under Section 501(c)(4) of the tax code, can do some political activity but that cannot be their primary purpose. Over the summer, Trump attended at least two events for the Make America Great Again PAC: one in Manhattan in July at the home of a woman who is a longtime Trump business associate, as first reported by Politico, and another in August at the New Jersey beachfront mansion of Seryl and Charles Kushner, his daughter Ivanka's in-laws, as CNN reported. Guests did not have to donate to the super PAC to attend the Kushners' event, but they were given information about how to make a contribution, and many wrote checks for various amounts, according to a person familiar with the situation. Seryl Kushner also contributed $100,000 to the Make America Great Again PAC, according to a Kushner family spokesman, who said Trump did not solicit the donation. Under FEC rules, candidates are allowed to appear at fundraisers for super PACs but they cannot request donations of more than $5,000. Lewandowski said the two gatherings that Trump attended were not fundraisers, calling the party at the Kushner estate \"a family event.\" When asked whether Trump knew the receptions were organized by the super PAC, Lewandowski did not respond directly. \"They were both just a meet-and-greet,\" he said. \"He gave brief remarks and then left.\" Make America Great Again PAC has not yet reported making any expenditures. The group will not have to disclose any information about its donors until Jan. 31, the day before the Iowa caucuses. On the trail, Trump has maintained that he has no idea who is setting up super PACs on his behalf. When asked by a reporter in New Hampshire last week whether he would call on such groups to cease raising money, Trump responded: \"I know nothing about them, because I have nothing to do with them. I don't even know the people running them.\" Alice Crites, Anu Narayanswamy and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.","label":0}
{"text":"A Shi ite Muslim judge abducted in eastern Saudi Arabia a year ago has been killed by his kidnappers, the Saudi state news agency SPA reported on Monday. Sheikh Mohammed al-Jirani disappeared last December from outside his home in the Qatif region, which is home to about one million Shi ite Muslims in the predominantly Sunni Muslim kingdom. SPA said a security officer and one of the kidnappers were killed in a clash on Dec. 19 and a second kidnapper was arrested. It also said the judge s body had been found in the remote farming district of Awamiya but did not say when he had been killed. Authorities said earlier this year that three men being sought in connection with the abduction were already on a wanted list for their suspected involvement in terrorist attacks in eastern Saudi Arabia. Since 2011 the region has been shaken by frequent, though mostly peaceful, protests by the Shi ite minority. However, Shi ite militants, angry over what they say is repression of their community, have sometimes attacked Saudi security forces in the oil-producing Eastern Province where Qatif is located.","label":0}
{"text":"The parliament group for Lebanon s Hezbollah said in a statement on Thursday that Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri s return from abroad and his positive statements signal a possible return to normality in Lebanon, al-Mayadin TV channel reported. Hariri resigned abruptly while in Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4, sparking a political crisis in Lebanon, but returned to Beirut late on Tuesday and shelved his resignation.","label":0}
{"text":"Informal mining in Brazil is seen by many as a scourge polluting the Amazon rainforest, poisoning indigenous tribes and robbing the nation of its wealth. For others it is a way of life. Brazilian garimpos, or wildcat mines, are operated by small crews of men, often caked in red-brown mud and working with rudimentary pans, shovels and sluice boxes that have been used for centuries. More sophisticated operations use water cannons and boats sucking mud from the bottoms of rivers. Regardless of the method, searching for gold and other minerals like cassiterite and niobium is dirty, dangerous and often illegal. Looking for gold is like playing in a casino, said a 48-year-old miner. Miners asked not to be named, saying they feared the police as much of their work is illegal. He started in the wildcat mines as a teenager in the area around Crepurizao a ramshackle frontier town of 5,000 with a dirt landing strip that is a gateway for informal mining in the region. Garimpos are in the spotlight as Brazil debates opening an area known as Renca in the northern Amazon forest to mining, which has met with stiff resistance from environmentalists. Mines and Energy Minister Fernando Coelho Filho argues that licensed mining will be an improvement over the estimated 1,000 people currently mining in the reserve illegally. Crepurizao lies hundreds of miles south of Renca, but gives a window into life in the garimpos caught up in the debate. Living in makeshift homes of wood and plastic, miners in the area ship some 60 kilograms (132 lbs) of gold per month, according to traders. That much pure gold is worth millions of dollars on the global market, but high costs and layers of traders in the local market leave most miners living on the brink of poverty. Basic staples can cost four or five times the price in the nearest city, an eight-hour bus ride away. Fuel stations, a general store, a bar, an evangelical church and prostitutes vie for the income and attention of the miners, known as garimpeiros, when they aren t working or lazing in hammocks. There are 2,113 licensed garimpo sites in Brazil, according to ministry data, but environmental experts and two government officials, who asked not to be named, said far more small-scale mines skip the licensing and ignore regulations altogether. In Crepurizao, where mines often cluster close together, it was unclear which operations were licensed. The total area worked by garimpeiros in Brazil is thought to be small. But chemicals like mercury, which miners in Crepurizao dump to separate gold from grit, can leave a large footprint of contamination. In March last year, a government-backed study of indigenous villages in the northern state of Roraima revealed alarming levels of mercury. One group of villagers had more than double the level of mercury considered to be a serious health risk - such as damage to the central nervous system, kidneys, heart and reproductive process - detected in their hair. The Mining and Energy Ministry said a new oversight agency created in a decree by President Michel Temer, now pending congressional approval, would allow more effective government coordination and inspections to restrict illegal mining. Congressman Leonardo Quintao, who sits on the committee considering the new agency, said it will be able to raise more funding for oversight. He said the regulations target licensed miners, while illegal mining remains a matter for the police. Still, one Ibama enforcement officer, who was not authorized to speak to the media, said the government had left miners like those in Crepurizao in a precarious limbo. You can t just pull them out of the garimpos and the cities that are living off gold. And the government does not offer them structure and decent conditions, said the officer. So they re stranded there without the minimum conditions for survival. (Click on reut.rs\/2f6E5c2 for related photo essay)","label":0}
{"text":"Saturday night s debate saw Donald Trump and Ted Cruz going at each other repeatedly. More specifically, it saw them calling one another liars. Now, Trump has gone on record saying that Cruz is the biggest liar he s ever known. In fact, Trump seems to believe that these alleged lies on the part of Ted Cruz is enough to bring a lawsuit against the Texas Senator. Watch Trump seem to lose his mind as he repeats the same line over and over like a crazy parrot: So we will bring a lawsuit if he doesn t straighten his act out. He s a lying guy, a really lying guy. Some people misrepresent. This guy s just a plain out liar. In fact, I felt better because Marco Rubio called him a liar the other night on stage. I felt so much better. I said good, politician calls a politician? Now I can actually call him a liar. Well considering that Donald Trump has a pretty tenuous relationship with the truth himself, this isn t really saying a whole lot. That whole field of GOP clowns lies through their teeth for sport, so it s really just hypocrisy at its finest. But hey, at least it s great for entertainment.Watch the video below, as posted to Facebook by Fox News:\/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&#038;version=v2.3\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); \/\/ ]]&gt; We will bring a lawsuit if he doesn t straighten his act out [Ted Cruz] is a lying guy. Donald J. TrumpPosted by Fox News on Monday, February 15, 2016Featured image from video screen capture","label":1}
{"text":"Hmmm .If we didn t know better, we d almost think Obama and Valerie Jarrett had a hand in writing this whacked out script. Don t let some hot-headed member of Congress screw this up. ???This propaganda piece was clearly created for the low information voter A group of celebrities and public figures have come together in a new video to get behind the Obama administration s nuclear deal with Iran, urging the public not to let Congress sabotage the agreement.Actors Morgan Freeman and Jack Black joined forces with Queen Noor of Jordan and former US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Pickering to suggest that the result of the Iran deal falling through would have dangerous consequences.The video was produced by Global Zero, a non-profit organization with the stated mission of the elimination of all nuclear weapons. It would be like a really dark unpleasant cloud of death, Black says, referring to the possibility of a nuclear attack on the United States in a tongue-in-cheek manner.Queen Noor makes it clear that paranoia about Armageddon isn t what they are selling, though. We re not actually worried about Iran dropping a nuclear weapon on the United States, she says. It is true that if Congress sabotages this deal, there would be nothing stopping Iran from getting the bomb, Pickering adds. That would likely spark an arms race throughout the region. Ultimately, we could be forced into a war with Iran, another dangerous, drawn-out and expensive conflict in the Middle East with many lives lost, says Freeman.Meanwhile, Natasha Lyonne from the popular Orange is the New Black TV show chimes in with: Don t let some hot-headed member of Congress screw this up. Since they were nice enough to give you Congress phone number, we re going to do the same: 877-630-4032. We re going to ask that you make the call and DEMAND Congress STOPS Obama from making a reckless deal with Iran, a country who is still chanting Death to America! There s a reason we don t negotiate with terrorists and it s not because we don t want peace it s because we understand that a peaceful resolution can never be reached with people who only want to see your country wiped off the map","label":1}
{"text":"The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) is closing most of its 37 cholera treatment centers in Yemen, saying the epidemic appears to have peaked. Some 884,368 suspected cholera cases have been recorded in the war-torn country in the past six months, including 2,184 deaths, according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO). The case fatality rate is now 0.25 percent. The number of cholera cases reported in MSF treatment centers has significantly decreased since the peak of the outbreak. As a result, the medical organization is closing the majority of its cholera treatment centers or reducing their capacity, MSF said in a statement late on Monday. Some 567 new patients sought treatment for suspected cholera at MSF s centers in nine governorates of Yemen during the second week of October, down from 11,139 at the peak in the third week in June, it said. Only 9 percent of patients admitted by MSF last week needed to be hospitalized and a limited number of patients have symptoms that correspond with the cholera case definition (acute watery diarrhea with or without vomiting), it said. The remaining cases are believed to be due to other pathogens. Ghassan Abou Chaar, MSF head of mission in Yemen, said: The cholera outbreak is not over but it is no longer our medical priority in Yemen. However, this should not eclipse the dire health situation of millions of Yemenis who are unable to access basic primary healthcare. Civil war in Yemen has killed more than 10,000 people since it began in March 2015. Yemen s war pits the armed Houthi movement that controls the capital against the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition that has launched thousands of air strikes to restore him to power. Cholera epidemics usually subside once the disease passes through a population, but aid agencies say the Yemen epidemic lasted longer and spread wider than they initially expected because of the war s toll on health care. U.N. humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock said on Sunday that an aid effort by the World Health Organization, United Nations Children s Fund UNICEF, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) and other agencies had managed to largely contain the devastating cholera epidemic , but warned it could flare up again without urgent investment in health, water and sanitation. ICRC said last month that the humanitarian situation in Yemen is a catastrophe , and cholera cases could reach a million by the end of the year. Alexandre Faite, head of the ICRC delegation in Yemen, said at the time that the health sector is really on its knees in Yemen ... the health staff is on its knees as well because they are not paid. Preventable illnesses and deaths are increasing in Yemen, and this can be partly attributed to the salary crisis, MSF said, noting that doctors, nurses and other public health workers had not been paid in 13 months.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump is strongly committed to working with the European Union toward common objectives of peace and prosperity, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Monday. \"Today is my privilege on behalf of President Trump to express the strong commitment of the United States to continue cooperation and partnership with the European Union,\" Pence said in a statement read out after his meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk. \"Whatever our differences, our two continents share the same heritage, the same values and above all, the same purpose to promote peace and prosperity through freedom, democracy and the rule of law. And to those objectives we will remain committed,\" he continued.","label":0}
{"text":"A new version of a Trump administration travel ban will not stop green card residency holders or travelers already on planes from entering the United States, U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security John Kelly said on Saturday. U.S. President Donald Trump's initial attempt to clamp down for security reasons on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and on refugees snarled to a halt amid a judicial backlash and chaos at airports. \"The president is contemplating releasing a tighter, more streamlined version of the first (order). And I will have opportunity to work (on) a rollout plan, in particular to make sure that there's no one in a sense caught in the system of moving from overseas to our airports,\" Kelly said at the Munich Security Conference. Asked whether green card residency permit holders would be allowed in, Kelly said: \"It's a good assumption and, as far as the visas go, ... if they're in motion from some distant land to the United States, when they arrive they will be allowed in.\" He promised \"a short phase-in period to make sure that people on the other end don't get on airplanes. But if they're on an airplane and inbound, they'll be allowed to enter the country.\" A draft of the replacement executive order shows that the administration aims to put restrictions on citizens of the same seven Muslim-majority countries covered by the initial order, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites an internal State Department memo. The replacement order could be issued as early as Tuesday, the Journal reported, citing a U.S. government official. The administration would seek to implement the new order a week to two weeks after it is signed, and covers citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, the Journal said. Trump's original order, which he said was meant to head off attacks by Islamist militants, barred people from those same countries from entering for 90 days and excluded all refugees for 120 days, except those from Syria, who were banned indefinitely. The abrupt implementation of the order last month plunged the immigration system into chaos, sparking a wave of criticism from the countries affected, and from Western allies and some of America's leading corporations, especially technology firms.","label":0}
{"text":"Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a commanding 6 to 1 lead over other Democrats heading into the 2016 presidential campaign, while the Republican field is deeply divided with no clear front-runner, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Clinton trounces her potential primary rivals with 73 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, reinforcing a narrative of inevitability around her nomination if she runs. Vice President Biden is second with 12 percent, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) is third with 8 percent. Although Clinton's favorability rating has fallen since she stepped down as secretary of state a year ago, she has broad Democratic support across ideological, gender, ethnic and class lines. Her lead is the largest recorded in an early primary matchup in at least 30 years of Post-ABC polling. The race for the Republican nomination, in contrast, is wide open, with six prospective candidates registering 10 percent to 20 percent support. No candidate has broad backing from both tea party activists and mainline Republicans, signaling potential fissures when the GOP picks a standard-bearer in 2016. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was at or near the top of the Republican field in many public opinion surveys last year, appears to have suffered politically from the bridge-traffic scandal engulfing his administration. The new survey puts Christie in third place \u2014 with the support of 13 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents \u2014 behind Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) with 20 percent and former Florida governor Jeb Bush at 18 percent. The rest of the scattered pack includes Sens. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Rand Paul (Ky.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), who are at 12, 11 and 10 percent, respectively. Among strong backers of the tea party \u2014 who make up about one-fifth of the Republicans polled \u2014 Cruz has a big lead, with 28 percent, followed by Ryan, at 18 percent. But Cruz, an iconoclastic freshman senator who rose to prominence during last fall's partial government shutdown, registers just 4 percent among those who oppose or have no opinion of the tea party. Christie is weakest among the strong tea party set, winning 6 percent of that group, but he has the backing of 15 percent of other Republicans. Bush's base of support comes from self-identified Republicans, while Ryan's strength comes from white evangelical Protestants, young voters and less conservative wings of the party. Rubio does particularly well among Republicans with college degrees. Christie has benefited from the perception that he has unique appeal among independents and some Democrats, a reputation the governor burnished with his 2013 reelection in his strongly Democratic state. But that image has been tarnished, the survey finds. More Democrats now view Christie unfavorably than favorably, with independents divided. Republicans, meanwhile, have a lukewarm opinion, with 43 percent viewing him favorably and 33 percent unfavorably. Overall, 35 percent of Americans see him favorably and 40 percent unfavorably. Christie's administration is under investigation for a plot last fall to shut down local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge and cause four days of gridlock in Fort Lee, N.J., in an act of apparent political retribution against a Democratic mayor. Among the public, 46 percent say they consider the bridge episode a \"sign of broader problems\" with Christie's leadership, while 43 percent say they think it was an \"isolated incident.\" Most Republicans give Christie the benefit of the doubt, with 57 percent saying the bridge incident is isolated. Sixty percent of Democrats say it is indicative of broader problems, while independents are almost evenly split. The 2016 presidential campaign is not likely to start taking shape until the end of this year, when candidates are expected to begin declaring their intentions. Among the Republicans, Ryan and Bush appear to be the most ambivalent about a campaign. Other Republicans not named in the poll, such as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, could gain steam as potential candidates. On the Democratic side, Warren has said she will not run, although she has a loyal following among some liberal groups hoping to draft an alternative to Clinton. Polling this far out in the cycle is poor at forecasting winners of party nomination battles, but it offers important clues about current voter attitudes. Major fundraisers and party activists in particular look to such polls as indications of potential candidates' strengths and weaknesses on the national stage as they begin to pick their horses. In a theoretical head-to-head general-election matchup, Clinton leads Christie among registered voters, 53 percent to 41 percent. This is a far larger deficit than Republicans had in the popular vote in the past two presidential elections. In 2012, President Obama beat Mitt Romney by 51 percent to 47 percent, and he beat John McCain by 53 percent to 46 percent in 2008. Christie is hurt by weak support among independents \u2014 trailing Clinton by 48 percent to 43 percent \u2014 as well as by a less consolidated party base. Although 90 percent of Democrats say they would back Clinton, only 79 percent of Republicans say they would support Christie. By contrast, Romney beat Obama among independents by five percentage points, and he won 93 percent of Republican votes. Clinton, who would become the first female president if elected, shows enormous strength among women in the new poll. She leads Christie among female voters by 59 percent to 34 percent \u2014 more than double the 11-point margin Obama held over Romney. Christie tops Clinton by a slender three points among men, 49 percent to 46 percent; Romney won men by seven percentage points. Clinton is buoyed by net-positive favorability ratings and by the intense loyalty of her supporters. Fifty-eight percent view her favorably , including 32 percent who are \"strongly\" favorable, while 38 percent have an unfavorable view of her. This marks a decline from a Post-ABC poll last January, as Clinton prepared to leave the State Department. At the time, 67 percent said they viewed her favorably. The drop can be attributed to declining support among independents and Republicans, as Clinton inched back into partisan politics and the news media stopped covering her as a globe-trotting diplomat and focused on her presidential ambitions. Still, Clinton's current popularity is as high or higher than at any point during her eight-year tenure as a U.S. senator from New York, when her favorable rating in Post-ABC polling mostly hovered in the high 40s or low 50s. Although Clinton was the front-runner heading into the 2008 primary season, she barely tipped over 50 percent in two Post-ABC surveys. Clinton's standing heading into the 2016 Democratic primaries is considerably stronger. The poll shows her with remarkable strength across demographic groups. She wins nearly three-quarters of men and women, whites and nonwhites, young and old, as well as lower- and higher- income voters. The Post-ABC poll was conducted Jan. 20-23 among a random national sample of 1,003 adults, including interviews on conventional telephones and with cellphone-only respondents. The overall margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.","label":0}
{"text":"A Democratic bid to transfer the highly coveted political power of drawing legislative boundaries from state lawmakers to the Democratically controlled Illinois Supreme Court overwhelmingly passed the state House of Representatives on Tuesday. The proposed amendment to Illinois' constitution sailed through the House on a 105-7 vote and now must be approved by a three-fifths majority in the state Senate by Friday in order to be placed on the Nov. 8 general election ballot. Since Democrats controlled the state legislature and the governor's office after the 2010 census, they won the once-a-decade right to draw new legislative district boundaries. The process enabled the party to build super-majorities in both the Senate and House. \"The power we presently have is only to protect incumbents,\" said Representative Jack Franks, a Democrat from Chicago's far northwest suburbs who sponsored the amendment. Republican Governor Bruce Rauner campaigned to take away legislative redistricting responsibilities from the General Assembly but instead backs a different proposal. Under Franks' plan, the Illinois Supreme Court would appoint an eight-member redistricting commission to oversee the drawing of 118 House districts and 59 state Senate districts beginning with the 2022 elections. Critics disliked how Franks' amendment mutes the General Assembly's voice in the process. \"What's dangerous about what we're doing (is that) we as a legislative branch are ceding our authority to a co-equal branch of government,\" said Representative Christian Mitchell, a Chicago Democrat who voted against the amendment. If the plan clears the Senate, the result could be two competing redistricting proposals on the fall ballot, a scenario Rauner has warned would confuse voters. The initiative Rauner backs is being pushed by a bipartisan coalition that includes Republican former Governor Jim Edgar and former White House Chief of Staff William Daley, brother and son of two of Chicago's longest-serving Democratic mayors. That group, known as Independent Maps, proposes a system where a bi-partisan, 11-member commission would be stocked through a random and public screening process overseen by the state auditor general from a pool of 100 finalists.","label":0}
{"text":"Whether or not Richard Cordray stays as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) until his term ends in July, the agency's ability to rein in Wall Street will be severely weakened, political insiders, lawyers and consumer advocates said. Doubts are growing that the Democratic director of America's top consumer watchdog will leave his post to run for Ohio governor, as had been widely speculated, after a lackluster Labor Day speech sparked anxiety over his campaign appeal, according to some party insiders. Cordray, whose term at the CFPB ends in July 2018, is not expected to announce any decision to run until the regulator releases long-awaited rules restricting payday lenders, which are expected within weeks, according to multiple sources. Cordray has evaded questions from the Republican chairman on the House of Representatives Financial Services committee, Jeb Hensarling, about his plans, writing in a recent letter: \"At this time, I have no further insights to provide on that subject.\" Even if Cordray stays, he will not enjoy a reprieve from Republican efforts to defang the agency which they believe is too powerful and restricts the flow of credit. \"He has been under constant attack in his position because of the threat he poses to the status quo on Wall Street,\" said Karl Frisch, executive director of Allied Progress, a consumer advocacy group which has called for Cordray to stay on. \"I would imagine that would continue regardless of how long he stays in the job.\" Some Republicans, including Hensarling, have introduced legislation to weaken and even dismantle the agency which was created as part of the post-crisis Dodd Frank Act. While those bills have not gotten far, Cordray will still have to play defense against a Republican-dominated Congress poised to suffocate new CFPB rules using the Congressional Review Act, a mechanism already used to kill 14 Obama-era regulations. Lawmakers are also considering amending the government budget to bring the CFPB's funding, currently provided by the independent Federal Reserve, under the control of Congress, potentially allowing Republicans to starve the agency of resources. President Donald Trump could also take the more extreme step of intervening to remove Cordray. A court ruling last year said the president should be able to fire the CFPB director without cause, which the CFPB is appealing. Even if the CFPB is victorious, Trump may still seek to use causes allowed by the law, such as inefficiency or neglect of duty, to get Cordray out of the way, according to legal experts. The CFPB has declined to comment multiple times on Cordray's plans, possible successors or how it would operate in his absence. Since Trump came to power, the CFPB has raced to finish outstanding rule proposals and taken numerous enforcement actions, hoping to lock in its work in case Trump appoints a pro-Wall Street replacement, said Quyen Truong, a partner at law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, who was the assistant director and deputy general counsel for the CFPB until early 2016. If Cordray quits or is removed, Dodd-Frank requires his deputy to step up temporarily but lawyers say the legitimacy of that step could be challenged. The act may be superseded by a law that allows the president to temporarily fill vacancies. Alan Kaplinsky, head of the Consumer Financial Services Group at law firm Ballard Spahr and a Cordray critic, said the White House is widely expected to appoint Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin as an interim replacement, who would then delegate his duties to lower-ranking officials. Scrapping a new rule allowing bank and credit-card customers to band together in class-action lawsuits and tougher regulation of payday lenders will likely be a Trump appointee's first moves, Kaplinsky said. This could be done by delaying the rule's effective date for further study, a common Washington tactic used to stall the implementation of regulation indefinitely. An acting director could also dramatically scale back the consumer complaint database, a key tool the CFPB uses to resolve disputes for individuals and to identify corporate malfeasance, Truong said. Meanwhile, she said, the agency will continue pursuing enforcement cases, but those will likely be much smaller in scope. Jeff Emerson, a spokesperson for Hensarling, said any new director would naturally be bound by the law, but this person would have \"a lot of discretion\" to make changes.","label":0}
{"text":"Decade-old audio exposes then-Senator Hillary Clinton saying the US should have manipulated Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006 to prevent a Hamas victory. The presidential candidate lamented that the US didn't \"determine who was going to win.\" \"I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,\" then-New York Senator Clinton told the Jewish Press, a New York-based weekly newspaper, several months after the January election. \"And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,\" she said. Until Friday, the comment Clinton made on September 5, 2006, only existed on a private audio cassette belonging to journalist Eli Chomsky. An editor and a staff writer for the Jewish Press, he interviewed Clinton at the newspaper's office in Brooklyn. Chomsky, who shared and played the tape for the Observer, says it is the only existing copy of that meeting with Clinton, during which the Palestinian parliamentary election was among top topics. The comments have been posted on SoundCloud. Speaking to the news portal, he recalled being confused by the fact that \"anyone could support the idea \u2014 offered by a national political leader, no less \u2014 that the US should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.\" The interview took place nine months after the Hamas movement claimed 76 of the 132 parliamentary seats, pushing aside the US-favored Fatah movement and securing the right to form a new cabinet. That victory was neither welcomed in Israel, nor in the US. In Washington, where Hamas is considered a terrorist organization, officials repeatedly stated that they would not work with a Palestinian Authority that included Hamas. Then-President George W. Bush spoke of the elections as symbolizing the \"power of democracy,\" but refused to deal with Hamas as long as it opposed Israel's existence and espoused violence. That day in September 2006, Clinton made \"odd and controversial comments,\" all now saved on the 45-minute record that Chomsky \"held onto all these years.\" \"I went to my bosses at the time,\" Chomsky told the Observer. \"The Jewish Press had this mindset that they would not want to say anything offensive about anybody \u2014 even a direct quote from anyone \u2014 in a position of influence because they might need them down the road. My bosses didn't think it was newsworthy at the time. I was convinced that it was and I held onto it all these years.\" Source","label":1}
{"text":"According to Reuters:  \"The new emails turned up as FBI investigators were examining electronic devices used by former Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner in connection with an alleged \"sexting\" scandal. Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a Clinton confidante.\"  According to two law enforcement sources, there is a group of investigators within the FBI's New York Field Office \u2013 the office that discovered the recent Anthony Weiner emails \u2013 that are hostile toward Clinton \u2013 and it is believed that this faction is behind the recent media leaks about the ongoing Clinton Foundation investigation.  One thing is for sure \u2013 if Clinton wins the election on Tuesday, the Democratic Party will undoubtedly be launching an investigation into the FBI, and it would be more than ironic if the most memorable scandal of the 2016 election ends up being about the FBI, instead of Clinton's emails.  Apparently, Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani \u2013 the former mayor of New York City \u2013 might have some involvement in it as well:  It is a clear violation of the law by these FBI agents in an attempt to influence a presidential election. If any Democrats were thinking about staying home on election day, this should really inspire them to do the opposite.  Clinton needs every vote now, as people are going to ridiculous lengths to make this election work for Trump, who is currently losing in the polls. Clinton is facing more opposition and obstacles than any presidential candidate has ever dealt with, and even those in power are abusing their authority to get her insane opponent into the White House.","label":1}
{"text":"A new report from RealClearPolitics is detailing what might be another illegal endeavor of Donald Trump at the behest of his charitable foundation (which has already been caught illegally using funds to pay off lawsuits).From 2011 to 2014, leading up to his presidential announcement (and speculation in 2012), the Trump Foundation donated nearly $300,000 to various conservative groups and organizations.IRS laws clearly state that charity executives may not use a foundation funds to finance personal endeavors that benefit said executives.In 2011, Trump met with South Carolina conservative activist Oran Smith with the intent for, as Smith puts it, laying the foundation for a campaign. After the meeting between the two, Trump, using foundation money, donated $10,000 to Smith s organization, the Palmetto Family Council.According to RealClearPolitics:In many cases, this flow of money corresponded to prime speaking slots or endorsements that aided Trump as he sought to recast himself as a plausible Republican candidate for president. Although sources familiar with the thinking behind the donations cautioned that Trump did not explicitly ask for favors in return for the money, they said the contributions were part of a deliberate effort by Trump to ingratiate himself with influential conservatives and brighten his political prospects.Talk about real pay-for-play.Using Foundation money to monetarily influence, even slightly, those who could (and would) catapult his political career (a personal endeavor) is still illegal under IRS laws no matter how many technicalities Trump and his lawyers want to argue.In almost all instances, these conservative organizations, with considerable political influence, invited the billionaire mogul and provided endorsements after he donated thousands of dollars to their cause.Another high profile donation was made to The Family Leader organization, a socially conservative think tank that featured Trump as a keynote speaker at one of their most prestigious events in 2013. Trump was featured as the keynote speaker after giving $10,000 like he did with the Palmetto Family Council. RealClearPolitics points out that Trump may have broken IRS rules by giving directly to the organization and not its affiliated nonprofit branch, thus pitting Trump in a double whammy on unethical, illegal political meanderings.After Trump donated $100,000 to Citizens United, a Koch-backed political entity:In April 2014, when Citizens United hosted a cattle call of would-be Republican candidates for president in New Hampshire, Trump was there. In January 2015, at Citizens United s Freedom Summit in Iowa, Trump was again on the program.This won t bode well, especially for a guy who s under audit from the IRS. We now know why, apparently.While Republicans try to find something, anything, to pit Clinton against her foundation, the GOP is ignoring the obvious abuses of Trump and his. This double standard from the right should not surprise anyone their candidate is failing and they need to divert any negative attention away from him. This is the party of Christian values at work.","label":1}
{"text":"Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), fresh off a brain cancer diagnosis that he is statistically unlikely to beat, is apparently all out of f*cks to give. Today, he tweeted an article in the opinion section of the Washington Post, calling it a must-read. The article in question? Trump s breathtaking surrender to Russia. And the op-ed holds absolutely nothing back. Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts from the piece:But once again, President Trump after extended personal contact with Vladimir Putin and the complete surrender to Russian interests in Syria acts precisely as though he has been bought and sold by a strategic rival. The ignoble cutoff of aid to American proxies means that Putin won in Syria, as an administration official was quoted by The Post. Concessions without reciprocation, made against the better judgment of foreign policy advisers, smack more of payoff than outreach. If this is what Trump s version of winning looks like, what might further victory entail? The re- creation of the Warsaw Pact? The reversion of Alaska to Russian control? There is nothing normal about an American president s subservience to Russia s interests and worldview. It is not the result of some bold, secret, Nixonian foreign policy stratagem the most laughable possible explanation. Does it come from Trump s bad case of authoritarianism envy? A fundamental sympathy with European right-wing, anti-democratic populism? An exposure to pressure from his checkered financial history? There are no benign explanations, and the worst ones seem the most plausible. The problem is the damage to U.S. interests done in the meantime. It now seems that the Russians by meddling in a presidential election and by playing down such aggression have achieved an intelligence coup beyond the dreams of the Soviet era. The result is an America strategically and morally disarmed.The fact that John McCain is posting such a strongly worded article about Trump s surrender to Russia is extremely telling, and begs the question: Behind closed doors, how many other Republicans feel this way? In public, it s obvious that Republicans feel they must present a united front against the Democratic Party and forces of the left. However, despite recent silence from #NeverTrump conservatives, it wasn t even a year ago that leadership figures such as Paul Ryan were dead set against him. Given the fact they are spineless, how much pressure will it take to get them to turn against him?If Donald Trump s numbers keep dropping, primarily among Republicans, I think you ll see it happen. And if that s the case, it might not take until 2018 to bring him down.Here s Senator McCain s tweet:Must-read @MJGerson @washingtonpost: Trump s breathtaking surrender to #Russia https:\/\/t.co\/SkWocuF8dM John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) July 21, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"The nation's most powerful labor leader, vowing to defeat President Obama's key trade legislation in the House next month, warned Hillary Clinton of serious political consequences if she fails to take a stand against the Pacific trade pact that the president is campaigning for as a major part of his legacy. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, predicted that no more than 20 House Democrats would vote for Trade Promotion Authority, the \"fast-track\" bill that on Friday passed the Senate. \"Thirteen Democrats left their base,\" he said of the Senate vote in an interview with Capital Download. \"They decided to pass something that was going to cost jobs and lower wages, and they're going to have to answer to their constituencies for that.\" He added: \"They'll be held accountable; there's no question about that.\" Organized labor has been waging a fierce battle against the legislation, which would require Congress to approve or reject without amendments the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal among the United States and 12 other Pacific Rim nations. Many labor unions have frozen campaign donations as they lobby against it. The battle between two customary allies \u2014 a Democratic president and the country's biggest labor federation \u2014 underscores the complicated politics of Obama's attempts to pass legislation through a Republican-controlled Congress during the final two years of his tenure. It also exposes challenges ahead for Clinton, who praised the emerging Pacific pact as \"the gold standard\" in her memoirs as secretary of State but has avoided declaring her view of it since becoming a presidential candidate. \"Unfortunately, it falls far short of being the gold standard,\" Trumka told USA TODAY's video newsmaker series in an interview at AFL-CIO headquarters, just across Lafayette Square from the White House. \"It's not silver. I'm not sure it's copper or some other form of metal, but it's not gold, because it's going to cost us jobs and it's going to lower wages in this country.\" Trumka said he didn't know where Clinton now stood on the issue. \"She's going to have to answer that,\" he said. \"I think she won't be able to go through a campaign without answering that and people will take it seriously and it will affect whether they vote for her or don't vote for her.\" If Clinton backs the trade pact and the fast-track authority, there will be costs, he cautioned. \"It will be tougher to mobilize working people. It'll be tougher to get them to come out excited and work to do door-knocking and leafleting and phone-banking and all the things that are going to be necessary if she is the candidate and we endorse her to get elected. It will make it far more difficult.\" It even is \"conceivable\" that the AFL-CIO wouldn't endorse a presidential candidate, he said, \"if both candidates weren't interested in raising wages and creating jobs.\" Asked whether Obama's presidency had been good for working Americans, Trumka paused. \"The president's been seriously handicapped in his ability to deliver things for the American public, because you've got a determined opposition in the Republican Party that will actually hurt the country to deny him a victory,\" he began. But he added, \"I wish he would have fought for some of the things that are needed as hard as he's fighting for fast track and TPP.\" In the Senate vote, Trumka said he was surprised to have lost the support of Democratic senators Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, Chris Coons of Delaware and Patty Murray of Washington state. When the interviewer commented that it's hard to defeat a president, he replied: \"We'll see.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Patrice Munsel, a coloratura soprano who as a teenager became one of the Metropolitan Opera's youngest stars and later crossed over into television and musical theater, died on Aug. 4 at her home in Schroon Lake, N. Y. She was 91. Her death was confirmed on Wednesday by her daughter Heidi Schuler Bright. Ms. Munsel was 17 when, in March 1943, she won a Met contract and $1, 000 after tying for first place in the eighth annual Metropolitan Auditions of the Air, a precursor to the Met's National Council Auditions, a program to discover promising young opera singers and nurture their careers. (The other winner was Christine Johnson, who originated the role of Nettie Fowler in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical \"Carousel\" when it opened on Broadway in 1945.) By November Ms. Munsel had signed a contract with the impresario Sol Hurok for a guaranteed $120, 000. On Dec. 4, at 18, she made her Met debut as the temptress Philine in Ambroise Thomas's \"Mignon,\" wearing a ring and a crown lent to her by the soprano Lily Pons. The audience gave Ms. Munsel a standing ovation of several minutes. The critics were generally less kind. \"For this part her voice is neither sufficiently big, or developed, or brilliant enough,\" the critic Olin Downes wrote in The New York Times. \"In plain words,\" he said, \"she was cruelly miscast, in this, one of the most exacting roles in the coloratura soprano's repertory. \" More than 40 years later, in a Los Angeles Times interview, Ms. Munsel said simply, \"I didn't have a clue as to what the part was about. \" She performed a total of 225 times at the Met, excelling as the maid Adele in Strauss's \"Die Fledermaus\" and earning praise from Downes for her \"virtuoso singing\" and \"very amusing acting. \" He declared her born for the role \"by personality, wit, temperament. \" Rudolf Bing, the company's general manager during Ms. Munsel's tenure, is said to have called her \"a superb soubrette. \" But Ms. Munsel had given up touring the moment she became engaged to Robert C. Schuler, an adman turned television producer, whom she married in 1952. Not long after returning from their European honeymoon, she did a star turn on movie screens as Dame Nellie Melba, the Australian soprano, in the 1953 biopic \"Melba,\" produced by the Hollywood legend Sam Spiegel. From there, she strutted her way into the Las Vegas nightclub scene, peeling off a voluminous silk skirt at the New Frontier in 1955 to reveal a halter and bejeweled pink capris. Two years later, Ms. Munsel embarked on a television career with \"The Patrice Munsel Show,\" a variety series on ABC, joining guests like Eddie Albert, Andy Williams, Tony Bennett and John Raitt in a mix of light opera and pop, though she admitted to hating \" lyrics. \" It was canceled after one season. Ms. Munsel last performed at the Met in 1958 as Mimi in \"La Boh\u00e8me,\" a role she had long coveted. She then focused on motherhood, traveling and musical comedies, performing splits in the 1965 Lincoln Center Theater presentation of \"The Merry Widow\" and occasionally turning productions of \"The Sound of Music\" and \"The King and I\" into family affairs with her four children. Besides her daughter Heidi, two other children survive: another daughter, Nicole Schuler, and a son, Scott Schuler, as well as two grandsons and two . Her husband, who in 2005 chronicled his marriage to Ms. Munsel in the book \"The Diva I: My Life with Metropolitan Opera Star Patrice Munsel,\" died in 2007. Their son Rhett Carroll Schuler died in 2005. Patrice Beverly Munsil was born on May 14, 1925, in Spokane, Wash. (She later changed the spelling of her surname to Munsel at the Metropolitan Opera's request.) Her father, Dr. Audley J. Munsil, was a dental surgeon her mother, Eunice Munsil, was a homemaker and an accomplished piano player. Ms. Munsel had a lifelong comedic streak. \"I'm sure when I emerged from my mother's womb, the doctor slapped me, I hit a high C and slapped him back,\" she wrote in a biographical sketch on her website. She began studying ballet and tap at 6 and soon, inspired by Walt Disney, decided that she wanted to be a professional whistler. \"There were always birds whistling in the background\" of films like \"Cinderella\" and \"Snow White,\" she explained, \"so I decided to whistle my way to Hollywood. \" Her parents, eager to encourage any and all of her artistic aspirations, managed to find her a whistling teacher. But it wasn't long before listening to Met radio broadcasts convinced her that her true destiny was to become an opera star. By 15 she had moved with her mother to New York, where voice lessons were supplemented with piano, harmony, theory, French and Italian classes, as well as fencing lessons and gym workouts three times a week. Within two years Ms. Munsel's vocal coach, Giacomo Spadoni, urged her to audition at the Met, where he was chorus master, and she agreed. \"After all, at the age of 17, how long can one wait?\" Ms. Munsel wrote. \"I stepped on the stage and sang my first aria on the Metropolitan Auditions of the Air without a nerve in my body. I won, and I was on my way to fame and stardom. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Four days after James T. Hodgkinson opened fire on a group of Republican congressmen at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, Trinity Professor Johnny Eric Williams sided with anonymous blogger Son of Baldwin, who proposed that black emergency personnel should let wounded white people die rather than lend assistance. Baldwin posted his opinions under the hashtag, #LetThemFuckingDie.Professor Williams linked Son of Baldwin s statement, adopted the hashtag as his own, and posted some additional denunciations of white Americans for their destructive mythology of whiteness and their white supremacy system. Referring to all self-identified whites, he wrote, The time is now to confront these inhuman assholes and end this now. When Campus Reform broke the story on June 20, it rapidly spread through the media. Trinity College put Professor Williams on leave, beginning June 26.But after Trinity Dean and Vice President Tom Cresswell reviewed Williams statements, he returned with a 31-page report that found his Facebook posts were extramural utterances protected by Trinity College s policy of academic freedom. Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney endorsed Dean Cresswell s findings, and added that she doesn t condone the hashtag which offend[s] me personally and contradicts our fundamental institutional values. Nevertheless, Williams has been reinstated in good standing.Trinity reached the decision because, like many other colleges, it has failed to draw meaningful lines between valid and invalid claims on academic freedom. That failure plunges colleges ever deeper into the mire of ethnic chauvinism, categorical hatreds, anti-intellectual diatribe, mind-deadening vulgarity, and psychopathology. Worse, we are getting used to this mire and finding it harder to defend essential distinctions. If we are at the point where #LetThemFuckingDie is upheld as a wholesome exercise in extra-mural academic speech, we are in serious trouble. The FederalistThe hate-filled anti-white professor s disgusting Facebook comments didn t come without a price. Trinity College has reported to have lost 16 students and $200,000 in donations as a result of sociology professor Johnny Eric Williams.Washington Times Trinity College President Joanne Berger-Sweeney sent a letter to school community members on Monday that detailed financial losses attributable to a Mr. Williams racial tirade. He attracted national media attention after calling white people inhuman a-holes who need to die just days after a gunman critically wounded Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise and targeted other Republican lawmakers for assassination. We can and will recover from the financial cost of this incident; the work before us now is to heal as a community, Ms. Berger-Sweeney wrote, the Hartford Courant reported Tuesday. The official said that she was disappointed in the wake of decisions by angry donors and former students, but offered respect and hope that those individuals ultimately will see that there continue to be many good reasons to invest in Trinity. If you see [white people] drowning. If you see them in a burning building. If they are bleeding out in an emergency room. If the ground is crumbling beneath them. If they are in a park and they turn their weapons on each other: do nothing, a June 16 article by Son of Baldwin says. Let. Them. F-ing. Die. And smile a bit when you do, an article shared on the professor s Facebook page on June 18 said.Mr. Williams was placed on leave after the scandal broke, but a report issued July 14 reinstated him and paved the way for a January 2018 return to the classroom.The Federalist Trinity s dilemma is in large part a matter of a double standard, created to coddle black radicals on campus. The prevailing view among colleges and universities is that robust declarations of racial resentment by African-American professors or students should be considered within the bounds of academic freedom. This allowance is a one-way street. Similarly abusive language from a white or Asian professor would almost certainly be met with severe sanctions.Trinity s decision is but one incident of many in which college officials granted a pass to hate speech by radical professors. In 2015, Boston University Professor Saida Grundy received a slap on the wrist after tweeting: Why is America so reluctant to identify white college males as a population problem? Earlier this year, Texas A&M Professor Tommy Curry quietly skirted dismissal after an interview emerged in which he said look, in order to be equal, in order to be liberated, some white people may have to die. Students too get a pass.Gordon Barnes, editor-in-chief of The Advocate, the CUNY graduate student newspaper, published an editorial in fall 2014 In Support of Violence. Barnes declared, The time for peace has passed; indeed it never existed in this country. He specifically called for violence against the police: Violence directed towards state representatives is not only warranted, it is necessary. CUNY apparently thought nothing amiss in Barnes extra-mural utterances. To the contrary, in 2017 the CUNY Graduate Center featured Barnes for a Ph.D. Snapshot to advertise its history program.Remarks by a faculty member or a graduate student advocating violence against racial groups might well be reasonable grounds for strong sanctions, including possible dismissal. But this hasn t happened because colleges and universities have appointed so many faculty members who present themselves as authentic voices of black rage. It is plainly difficult to call someone to account for doing exactly what he was hired to do. Rage-filled black professors are not going to lose their positions for expressing rage.This situation grew out of decades in which colleges went out of their way to appoint black faculty members who held separatist views and who affected angry attitudes as a badge of authenticity. The initial impetus for such appointments came from liberal white professors who argued that recruiting in this vein would help the colleges retain black students, many of whom couldn t seem to come to grips with the traditional curriculum and the mostly white faculty that taught it.We saw this reflected in the Faculty Minutes of Bowdoin College, when we were researching the study that became What Does Bowdoin Teach? Faced with the skepticism of his colleagues, Professor Daniel Levine pushed for the immediate creation of Afro-American Studies in 1969. Bowdoin had no one qualified to teach the program. Levin responded by insisting, over and over, It must be so! He got his way. Bowdoin dived head first into creating a program grounded in angry politics, rather than scholarship.","label":1}
{"text":"Turkey s nationalist opposition will seek support from the ruling AK Party to lower a 10 percent threshold to enter parliament, a party official said on Thursday, in a sign that a new rival political party could shake up Turkish politics. Former interior minister Meral Aksener broke with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and formed her own Iyi Parti ( Good Party ) last month, posing a challenge to the MHP and to President Tayyip Erdogan s AK Party. Speaking to reporters in Ankara, MHP Deputy Chairman Semih Yalcin said his party, which could fall below the threshold if Iyi Parti s apparent early popularity is sustained, would push to lower the barrier. The MHP has preparations regarding the (threshold) electoral law, and this will be discussed depending on the offers we receive (from the AK Party), Yalcin said, a day after MHP leader Devlet Bahceli called the threshold too harsh . Since 1982, political parties in Turkey have needed to win at least 10 percent of votes to be represented in the 550-seat parliament. The country faces presidential and parliamentary elections in 2019. A recent poll suggested that Aksener s party could overtake the main opposition secular CHP and push the MHP and pro-Kurdish opposition HDP out of parliament by forcing their share of the vote below the current threshold. It would also cut into the AK Party share of the vote. The Islamist-rooted AK Party, led by Erdogan, is a broad organization, counting among its ranks nationalists and religious conservatives. Will they (Iyi) win 20 percent or one percent? We will see... Everyone will see how they hold up after they stand in front of the people in 2019, Yalcin said of the Iyi Parti. The MHP won as much as 18 percent of votes in a 1999 parliamentary election but slipped below the threshold at 9.5 percent in 2002. It has exceeded 10 percent since then. Under an executive presidential system approved in an April referendum, the president will be given expanded powers. The number of MPs will be increased from 550 to 600, while the parliament s authority will be reduced. Critics argue that lowering the threshold, and the resulting change in the composition of parliament, would not have any great impact under the new presidential system. The AK Party, founded by Erdogan, has dominated Turkish politics since 2002, holding a majority in parliament for 15 years. After winning almost 50 percent of votes in the latest parliamentary elections in 2015, Erdogan and party officials said they aimed to win more than half the votes in 2019.","label":0}
{"text":"Spanish authorities on Sunday pursued efforts to block an independence vote in Catalonia, seizing campaign materials as the chief prosecutor said jailing the region s top politician could not be ruled out. The government in the northeastern region is intent on holding a referendum on October 1 that will ask voters whether they support secession from Spain, a ballot Madrid has declared illegal. In a raid on a warehouse in the province of Barcelona on Sunday, police confiscated around 1.3 million leaflets and other campaign materials promoting the vote issued by the Catalan government. The haul was the largest in a series of similar raids, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Spanish prosecutors, who have ordered police to investigate any efforts to promote the plebiscite, said last week that officials engaged in any preparations for it could be charged with civil disobedience, abuse of office and misuse of public funds. More than 700 Catalan mayors gathered in Barcelona on Saturday to affirm their support for it. Asked if arresting regional government head Carles Puigdemont was an option if preparations continued, Spain s chief public prosecutor said in an interview: We could consider it because the principal objective is to stop the referendum going ahead. I won t rule out completely the option of seeking jail terms... It could happen under certain circumstances, Jose Manuel Maza was quoted as also telling Sunday s edition of newspaper El Mundo. The Catalan parliament passed a law enabling the referendum early last month, but Spain s Constitutional Court suspended it the next day. Pro-independence activists have said they plan to distribute campaign leaflets promoting the referendum on Sunday evening in Barcelona. Although polls show less than half of Catalonia s 5.5 million voters support independence, most in the wealthy northeastern region want the chance to vote on the issue.","label":0}
{"text":"A U.S. judge on Monday appeared skeptical toward a request from several states that want him to order the administration of Republican President Donald Trump to continue payments to health insurers under Obamacare. At a hearing in San Francisco federal court, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said he aimed to issue a ruling on Tuesday. The Trump administration earlier this month terminated the payments, which help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses for low-income Americans, as part of several moves to dismantle the signature healthcare law of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump had threatened to cut off the subsidies for months, prompting health insurers such as Anthem Inc, Humana Inc, UnitedHealth Group Inc and Aetna Inc to raise premiums or exit insurance markets. Democratic attorneys general from 18 states and the District of Columbia sued the federal government and asked for an immediate order halting Trump's move while the case is being litigated and argued that terminating the payments harmed customers by raising insurance rates. But Chhabria on Monday suggested that California and other states had anticipated Trump's move and worked with insurers to make sure most consumers would not be harmed. That weakens the case for a court order forcing the payments, Chhabria said. \"Why should I be ordering the administration to make these payments in the next few months while we get the case adjudicated?\" Chhabria asked. Since cutting off the payments, Trump has alternately supported, and dismissed, an effort by Republican and Democratic senators that would reinstate the subsidies for two years until a broader replacement to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, can be negotiated. While Democrats accused Trump of sabotaging Obamacare, the president argued that the subsidies made insurance companies \"rich.\" In a court filing on Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice pointed to a prior ruling from a Washington, D.C. federal court that said Congress had never appropriated the money for the subsidies. An appeal of that ruling is currently on hold. Either side could appeal Chhabria's ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is weighted with Democratic-appointed judges. From there, any further appeal would go to the U.S. Supreme Court.","label":0}
{"text":"South Sudan is hiking fees for humanitarians and blocking them from reaching hungry families, even as the oil-rich country appeals for nearly 2 billion dollars to help avert starvation amid a civil war, five aid groups told Reuters. The government and the United Nations announced on Wednesday that South Sudan needs $1.7 billion in aid next year to help 6 million people half its population cope with the effects of war, hunger and economic decline. But aid groups said bureaucracy, violence and rocketing government fees were stopping their work, despite a promise from President Salva Kiir to allow unhindered access after the United States threatened to pull support to the government in October. All the aid workers spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of expulsion from the country. Alain Noudehou, the U.N. s top humanitarian official in the country, said the increased fees are a major concern. [It] will take away from the resources we have to address the crisis, Noudehou, humanitarian coordinator for the U.N. Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), said on Wednesday. Juba announced plans in March to charge each foreign aid worker $10,000 per annual permit but later dropped them. It revised the fees steeply upwards last month, however, requiring some foreign aid workers to pay $4,000 for a permit 16 times the old rate. At least two aid groups have paid, they told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Humanitarian Affairs Minister Hussein Mar Nyout said on Wednesday he had received many complaints over the new fees and restrictions on travel for some aid workers. This is not in the spirit of the president and we are going to implement the order of the president, he said in response to questions at a news conference. About one-third of South Sudan s 12 million population have fled their homes since the civil war began in 2013, two years after it won independence from Sudan. The United Nations describes the violence as ethnic cleansing. Earlier this year, pockets of the country plunged briefly into famine. The economy has nosedived, there is hyperinflation, and the government is unable to pay civil servants and soldiers because oil production has collapsed and official corruption is rampant. The confusion over permits delays aid, organizations said. Nobody understands who is giving directives and who is supposed to implement, said the head of one international aid group in South Sudan. He said customs have seized his organization s IT equipment, despite an import tax waiver for aid groups. Last week, a team of doctors said they were denied permission to travel outside the capital because they had not received work permits they had paid for. Another aid group said it is unable to bring in foreign medical staff to complete a government-approved project because authorities said even a consultant visiting South Sudan for a week had to pay $4,000 for a permit that takes months to obtain. The first issue is the inherent absurdity and impracticality of the rules, said an employee of the aid group. The second is that laws are being tried inconsistently by four government agencies that are at loggerheads. South Sudan expelled the Norwegian Refugee Council s country director last year, while some 28 aid workers have been killed this year, with nine shot dead in November alone, according to the United Nations. UNMISS staff are exempt from the work permit requirement but the government has forced some contractors to pay, in violation of an agreement with the U.N., an UNMISS spokeswoman said. Juba is not honoring a similar treaty exempting aid agencies receiving U.S. funding, a Western diplomat said.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald J. Trump spent his first week in office repeating the lie that between three million and five million people had voted illegally in the November election, first to members of Congress, then on Twitter, then in an ABC News interview, then again on Twitter on Friday, citing an unsubstantiated claim popular in conspiracy circles. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump had announced in a pair of tweets that he would be asking for a \"major investigation\" into voter fraud, \"including those registered to vote in two states. \" Since then, a variety of news organizations have found that several members of Mr. Trump's inner circle were registered in more than one state during the election. Several still are. There is no evidence that any of them voted twice. \u2022 Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump's strategist, was registered to vote in Florida and New York, the Sarasota found. \u2022 Tiffany Trump, Mr. Trump's youngest daughter, was registered in Pennsylvania and New York, NBC News reported. \u2022 Sean Spicer, his press secretary, was registered in both Virginia and Rhode Island, according to The Washington Post. \u2022 Jared Kushner, his and close adviser, was registered in New York and New Jersey, according to The Washington Post. \u2022 Steven Mnuchin, who is nominated to lead the Treasury Department, was registered in New York and California, CNN found. Not really. Have you ever moved to a new state? And did you call up the people in charge of voting in your old state to tell them to go ahead and take you off their list? Probably not. Neither, apparently, did some members of the Trump family and his White House. \"There is nothing illegal about that,\" Fred Voigt, the deputy election commissioner for Philadelphia, told Heat Street, the News Corp. conservative and libertarian site, which reported Ms. Trump's double registration. \"The illegality only occurs if one votes in two places, not if you're registered in both. \" State authorities regularly purge their voter rolls of people who move or die. Mr. Bannon's case is a little different. A Guardian report last summer found that Mr. Bannon was registered at a vacant home he had previously rented for his but that he had never lived there himself. Shortly after that report, the Guardian said, Mr. Bannon changed his registered address to the home of a Breitbart writer, also in Florida. When he voted in November's election, he did so by absentee ballot in New York, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections confirmed. On Wednesday, after widespread news reports of his double registration, Sarasota County removed Mr. Bannon from the rolls, The Herald Tribune reported. As the reports of double registrations grew, Kellyanne Conway, one of Mr. Trump's senior advisers, appeared on NBC's \"Today\" show on Thursday and denied that members of Mr. Trump's inner circle were registered in more than one place. \"I talked last night to Tiffany Trump, and she said it is flatly false that she is registered in two states,\" she said. But NBC had confirmed that Ms. Trump, in fact, was.","label":0}
{"text":"It's a tradition for politicians to deny any interest in the vice presidency. But this year, with the possibility of Donald J. Trump as the Republican nominee, they really mean it. \"Never,\" said Chris Schrimpf, a spokesman for Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who is still running against Mr. Trump. \"No chance. \" \"Hahahahahahahahaha,\" wrote Sally Bradshaw, a senior adviser to Jeb Bush, when asked if he would consider it. \"Scott Walker has a visceral negative reaction to Trump's character,\" said Ed Goeas, a longtime adviser to the Wisconsin governor. Or, as Senator Lindsey Graham put it, \"That's like buying a ticket on the Titanic. \" A remarkable range of leading Republicans, including Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, have been emphatic publicly or with their advisers and allies that they do not want to be considered as Mr. Trump's running mate. The recoiling amounts to a rare rebuke for a : Politicians usually signal that they are not interested politely through back channels, or submit to the selection process, if only to burnish their national profiles. But Mr. Trump has a singular track record of picking fights with obvious potential running mates like Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who has indicated a lack of interest in the vice presidency generally and has yet to reconcile with Mr. Trump publicly. Ms. Haley and another potential pick, Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico, have sharply criticized Mr. Trump at recent party gatherings and do not want to be associated with his tone, according to advisers and close associates who have spoken with these Republicans. Several Republican consultants said their clients were concerned that Mr. Trump's unusually high unfavorable ratings with all voters and his unpopularity among women and Hispanics could doom him as a general election candidate and damage their own future political prospects if they were on his ticket. Still, elected officials do have a way of coming around to the vice presidency, and Mr. Trump said in an interview on Saturday that he was in the early stages of mending fences and building deeper relationships with leading Republicans. And in a sign of growing acceptance that Mr. Trump is their likely nominee, several Republicans made it clear that they would join him on the ticket because they think he can win, or because they regard the call to serve as their duty. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, as well as Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama and the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, said in interviews that they would consider joining the ticket if Mr. Trump offered. Two governors, Chris Christie of New Jersey and Mary Fallin of Oklahoma, have also told allies that they were open to being Mr. Trump's running mate. \"If a potential president says I need you, it would be very hard for a patriotic citizen to say no,\" Mr. Gingrich said. \"People can criticize a nominee, but ultimately there are very few examples of people turning down the vice presidency. \" Mr. Trump, who could well become the presumptive Republican nominee on Tuesday by winning the Indiana primary, is just starting to mull prospects and has no favorite in mind, he said in the interview. Mr. Trump said he wanted someone with \"a strong political background, who was well respected on the Hill, who can help me with legislation, and who could be a great president. \" He declined to discuss potential picks in any detail, but he briefly praised three governors as possible contenders \u2014 Mr. Kasich, Mr. Christie and Rick Scott of Florida \u2014 and said he would also consider candidates who were women, black or Hispanic. (A spokeswoman for Mr. Scott said he was focused on being governor.) Asked if he was surprised about the array of Republicans who are uncomfortable being his running mate, Mr. Trump said: \"I don't care. Whether people support or endorse me or not, it makes zero influence on the voters. Historically, people don't vote based on who is vice president. I want someone who can help me govern. \" A cross section of leading Republicans agree that his most sensible choice would be an experienced female governor or senator, given that he would most likely face Hillary Clinton in November and need support from a majority of white women to offset her strong support among blacks and Hispanics. Yet Mrs. Clinton is currently ahead of Mr. Trump with white women by percentages, according to a recent CBS poll. The pool of Republican women in major offices is relatively small, and Mr. Trump has already alienated some of them. Governor Haley denounced him for not quickly disavowing support from the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, and Governor Martinez has criticized his remarks about Hispanics. Both governors endorsed Senator Rubio for president a Martinez spokesman said she \"isn't interested in serving as vice president,\" while a Haley spokesman declined to comment. \"There are some Republicans who would've said yes to running with Romney or McCain or Bush but would say no to Trump,\" said Curt Anderson, a Republican strategist, referring to the party's last three presidential nominees. \"The issue is, no one knows what we're dealing with here. Is it possible that Trump faces a historic landslide loss? Sure. Is it possible he beats the hell out of Clinton? Sure. No one knows \u2014 no one has predicted Trump right for a long time. \" Even Governor Fallin of Oklahoma, who has not ruled out running with Mr. Trump, has expressed uncertainty about what he would be like as a leader, according to close associates who have spoken to her. Ms. Fallin, in a brief statement, would not discuss Mr. Trump, but said the nation's challenges were too great for \"business as usual\" political solutions. \"Any discussion of other service I might be asked to offer to my country is flattering but premature,\" she said. David Winston, a veteran Republican pollster, said Mr. Trump's first challenge in finding a running mate was lowering his unfavorability ratings of 60 percent or more, because prominent politicians would not want to join his ticket if he cannot turn those figures around. Mr. Winston dismissed the notion \u2014 put forward by some Trump advisers \u2014 that the candidate could improve his ratings by picking a woman, a Hispanic, or other figure with demographic appeal. \"He simply won't be able to convince any candidate to run with him if he can't get those unfavorable numbers down,\" Mr. Winston said. Mr. Trump's best hope may be Republican enmity for Mrs. Clinton, some Republicans strategists said. They predicted that Mr. Trump would ultimately have more options than his skeptics might assume because Republicans will ultimately unify in June and July with a deep and shared determination to beat her, and the traditional thrill of being considered for vice president could then kick in. \"I think he may have more choices than many people would suspect, because a lot of people will be flattered to be asked,\" said Russ Schriefer, a Republican adviser to the Romney campaign in 2012 and to Mr. Christie during his 2016 presidential bid. Mr. Schriefer emphasized that he had not talked to Mr. Christie about the vice presidency, but other Christie confidants said that he supported Mr. Trump strongly and would be willing to consider the No. 2 spot. A Christie spokesman, asked about the governor's willingness, pointed to Mr. Christie's response about the vice presidency at a recent news conference, where he said he would evaluate the offer \"for any position in government. \" As a political novice, Mr. Trump will be widely judged on whom he chooses \u2014 and how and why he chooses the person \u2014 because voters and other Republican leaders will look to his pick to evaluate his priorities for the kind of advisers he would want as president. \"This is a big deal because it's the first major decision he'll be making as the nominee, and it's important that the American public see his process and how he goes through making such a big decision,\" said Scott W. Reed, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce's senior strategist. Other than elected officials, Mr. Trump also said he was open to people with deep national security experience \u2014 which some Republicans think should be his top criterion. \"What Donald Trump needs is the most experienced, most qualified foreign policy mind in Washington, and somebody that would immediately bring calm to the choppy political waters that always seem to be around him,\" said Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida who now hosts \"Morning Joe\" on MSNBC. He suggested Robert M. Gates, the former defense secretary, but was more circumspect when asked if he was willing to be Mr. Trump's running mate himself. \"I definitely have a lot of strong opinions about who it should be. (Not me! !),\" wrote Mr. Scarborough, who served on the House Armed Services Committee and who has a good relationship with Mr. Trump. Other Republicans were more open about joining Mr. Trump on the ticket. Senator Sessions, who is advising Mr. Trump on foreign policy, said he would send his personal tax information to the Trump campaign if it wanted to vet him. Mr. Carson, who was a Republican presidential candidate and battled with Mr. Trump before dropping out and endorsing him, said he would prefer to remain an outside adviser to Mr. Trump, but added that he was willing to join the ticket if he would \"bring something that other people wouldn't bring. \" For others, the singular experience of being vice president in a Trump administration is still hard to imagine. Buttonholed on Capitol Hill last week, two prominent Republican senators, Tim Scott of South Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine, almost giggled when asked if they would be Mr. Trump's running mate. \"I'm not waiting by my phone,\" Ms. Collins said. Mr. Scott, whose appeal as a black Republican could be an advantage for Mr. Trump, repeatedly sidestepped whether he would be willing to run with Mr. Trump. Finally, asked if he would not rule himself out, he replied, \"I'm not ruling myself in. \"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said on Tuesday that amendments were necessary to a Puerto Rico debt bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said would be voted on by next week. Reid, speaking to reporters, said changes were needed to the federal board overseeing the restructuring of Puerto Rico's $70 billion debt under the bill, but he did not say whether Democrats would be successful in making any changes. The House of Representatives passed a Puerto Rico debt relief bill on June 9, following months of internal debate. Supporters hope the Senate passes that bill, without any amendment, before July 1, when Puerto Rico faces a deadline for making a $1.9 billion debt payment. The Caribbean island, which is a U.S. territory, is suffering a poverty rate of about 45 percent and has been hobbled by worsening debt problems. Some schools and medical facilities are closing and thousands of residents are relocating to the U.S. mainland, further shrinking Puerto Rico's tax base. While Reid said he had \"some serious concerns\" with the current bill, which was negotiated by the Obama administration and lawmakers in the House, he did not say whether he expected any amendments to succeed in the Senate. A Senate debate over amendments could simply help put Democrats on record registering their concerns with the legislation. \"At the very minimum, we need some amendments to make sure that people understand what is not in that bill,\" Reid said. Democrats in both chambers have voiced concerns over some potential minimum-wage reductions for young workers that Republicans included in the House bill. They also have said the federal oversight board, to be appointed by Washington, might not have Puerto Rico's best interests in mind. Supporters of the bill have argued it is the best measure that can pass the Republican-controlled Congress and that Puerto Rico could slip into chaos without action.","label":0}
{"text":"As an American of Polish descent, I am proud to see Poland taking a stand against an invasion of Muslims who seek to forever change the culture and destroy the rich history European nations have enjoyed for centuries. While other European nations sit back and wring their hands over the rape, sodomy and molestation of their citizens, Poland is taking a strong stand by letting the Muslim migrants know, they are not welcome to invade their country.One of Poland s most popular weekly magazines has splashed a graphic depiction of the rape of Europe s women by migrants on its front cover. The image may be one of the most politically incorrect illustrations of the migrant crisis to date.While Poland is generally much more relaxed about expressing itself than the self censoring tendencies of western and northern Europe, the cover of the latest wSieci (The Network) conservative magazine has already prompted reaction just 24 hours after release, being beamed around the continent by social media.Featuring a personification of Europa being pawed at by dark hands what the German media would perhaps euphemistically term southern or Mediterranean the headline decries the Islamic Rape of Europe .Making perfectly clear the intention of the edition, the edition features articles titled Does Europe Want to Commit Suicide? and The Hell of Europe . The news-stand blurb declares: In the new issue of the weekly Network, a report about what the media and Brussels elite are hiding from the citizens of the European Union .Opening the cover article, Aleksandra Rybinska writes: The people of old Europe after the events of New Year s Eve in Cologne painfully realised the problems arising from the massive influx of immigrants. The first signs that things were going wrong, however, were there a lot earlier. They were still ignored or were minimised in significance in the name of tolerance and political correctness .Outlining the fundamental differences between eastern Islam and western Christianity culture, architecture, music, gastronomy, dress the editorial explains these two worlds have been at war over the last 14 centuries and the world is now witnessing a colossal clash of two civilisations in the countries of old Europe . This clash is brought by Muslims who come to Europe and carry conflict with the Western world as part of the collective consciousness , as the journalist marks the inevitability of conflict between native Europeans and their new guests.The collapse of the West in the face of this Islamic rape was not inevitable though, as Rybinska quoted British historian Arnold Toynbee: Civilisations die from suicide, not by murder .","label":1}
{"text":"Senate Democrats To FBI: Put Up Or Shut Up About Emails (TWEETS) By Darrell Lucus on October 30, 2016 Subscribe  If there was any doubt that FBI Director James Comey's announcement that the FBI was reviewing potential evidence in the Hillary Clinton email affair backfired spectacularly, it was erased on Saturday night. Four top Senate Democrats gave Comey an ultimatum \u2013give us a full accounting of what you know about this, and do so by Monday.  Senators Dianne Feinstein, Patrick Leahy, Tom Carper, and Ben Cardin fired off a \"what the hell is going on here?\" letter to Comey and his nominal boss, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, demanding answers about Comey's \"vaguely worded\" letter on Friday afternoon. They are the ranking members of the Senate committees that were most involved in the email server investigation\u2013Intelligence (Feinstein), Judiciary (Leahy), Homeland Security (Carper), and Foreign Relations (Cardin).  Read the full letter here, courtesy Cardin's Twitter feed.  \u2014 Senator Ben Cardin (@SenatorCardin) October 30, 2016  In a colossal understatement, they pointed out that the letter didn't answer any questions, but in fact left a lot of them unanswered. For one thing, Comey's letter didn't clarify whether the FBI even had the emails in its custody, let alone had a chance to review them. Comey also didn't say whether Hillary sent the emails, or if they even had anything to do with the investigation. Additionally, it represented a radical departure from FBI and Justice Department policy against doing anything that could potentially influence an election.  The Senators also noted that Comey had told his own troops that he didn't know just how significant those emails were, and that there was a possibility that his letter would be \"misunderstood.\" In light of the fact that this letter has already been misunderstood, Feinstein, Carper, Leahy, and Cardin want Comey and Lynch\u2013in truth, Comey\u2013to give the Senate \"detailed information\" about the FBI's actions no later than the close of business on Monday. To not do so, they add, \"would be irresponsible and a disservice to the American people.\"  There were already a number of reasons why Comey should be very afraid. For one thing, at the time, the FBI had not even obtained a warrant for the emails it discovered on the laptop of longtime Hillary aide Huma Abedin while investigating her estranged husband, Anthony Weiner, for inappropriate texts with a teenager. So Comey felt the need to alert the House and Senate about these emails, when his people hadn't even asked a court to review them.  We also know that Comey's rumored excuse\u2013that the emails were likely to be leaked unless he told Congress about them first\u2013doesn't wash. Judge Jeanine Pirro , no fan of Hillary, thinks Comey could have easily solved that problem by privately notifying the committee chairmen and putting them on notice that he would know who was behind any leaks.  But on Sunday afternoon, The Washington Post reported that the FBI hadn't gotten a warrant for those emails despite knowing for at least a month that those messages were potentially relevant to the email server case. It finally obtained a warrant on Sunday night. How is Comey going to explain that to the Senate, especially since he knew how explosive this could have been?  It's no wonder that Comey's own troops are steaming mad at him, according to Newsweek and Vanity Fair's Kurt Eichenwald. Here's what Eichenwald has learned, by way of review. Word from inside @FBI . FURIOUS at Comey, think he's mishandled public revelations from get go. \"Outrageous incompetence\" one agent told me.  \u2014 Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 \u2026his original decision to lay out info on clinton case, then opine on what it meant outside of criminal findings, infuriated these folks..  \u2014 Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 Re: anger within @FBI at Comey. I am getting this at the Special Agent, ASAC and SAC level. Those are the troops. (Most of em GOPrs)\u2026.  \u2014 Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 \u2026for Comey to have so angered ppl at the field office level is really, really bad.  \u2014 Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016 If Comey's improper comment on ongoing investigation changes polls, @FBI reputation as apolitical will never recover cause of his screwup.  \u2014 Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 29, 2016  While Feinstein, Leahy, Carper, and Cardin played good cop, their boss, Minority Leader Harry Reid, played bad cop, accusing Comey of breaking the Hatch Act . I wouldn't quite go that far. But when the best-case scenario is that Comey was grossly incompetent, that isn't good.  Comey's actions may not have risen to the level of criminal conduct. However, it is clear beyond any doubt that he cannot lead. Eichenwald has talked to a number of DOJ officials from both parties who feel the same way. Every current\/former Dept. of Justice official I speak 2, GOP or Dem, says Comey must resign\/be fired 4 election interference. All outraged.  \u2014 Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) October 30, 2016  Unless Comey has a very good explanation for this\u2013and frankly, I doubt there is one\u2013we need to hear only two things from him after he briefs the Senate. He needs to apologize to the American people, and he needs to resign.  ( featured image courtesy FBI Flickr feed, part of public domain) About Darrell Lucus  Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC . Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook . Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello. Connect","label":1}
{"text":"MONTGOMERY, Ala. \u2014 Gov. Robert Bentley resigned Monday, his power and popularity diminished by a sex scandal that staggered the state, brought him to the brink of impeachment and prompted a series of criminal investigations. Ellen Brooks, a special prosecutor, said Mr. Bentley quit in connection with a plea agreement on two misdemeanor charges: failing to file a major contribution report and knowingly converting campaign contributions to personal use. He pleaded guilty Monday afternoon. It was a stunning downfall for the governor, a Republican who acknowledged in March 2016 that he had made sexually charged remarks to his senior political adviser, Rebekah Caldwell Mason. \"I have decided it is time for me to step down as Alabama's governor,\" Mr. Bentley said at the State Capitol. He did not mention the charges to which he pleaded guilty, or the deal with prosecutors that mandated his resignation. His exit from government and guilty pleas followed mounting calls for his resignation, especially after a report that was made public on Friday said he had fostered \"an atmosphere of intimidation\" and compelled state employees to help him cover up his relationship with Ms. Mason. Impeachment hearings \u2014 the first in Alabama in more than a century \u2014 began Monday morning, when the State House was consumed by rumors that the governor would soon quit. Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey succeeded Mr. Bentley. A former state treasurer, she is the second woman to hold the office. She is a graduate of Auburn University and was a high school teacher and a bank officer before working for the Legislature. \"The Ivey administration will be open, it will be transparent and it will be honest,\" Ms. Ivey said. Mr. Bentley, 74, repeatedly denied having a physical relationship with Ms. Mason and long insisted that he had not broken any laws, but he was a subject of multiple investigations, including reviews by the F. B. I. and the Alabama attorney general's office. On Wednesday, the Alabama Ethics Commission said it had probable cause to find that Mr. Bentley had committed felonies, and it asked a district attorney to consider prosecuting him. Two days later, a lawyer hired by the Alabama House of Representatives released a report portraying Mr. Bentley as deceitful and desperate before his relationship with Ms. Mason made him a punch line. The report said Mr. Bentley had offered little cooperation to legislative investigators, and it alleged that the governor's critics had been subjected to coercion, including harassing messages and the threat of prosecution. The report described how Mr. Bentley tried to use a member of his security detail to break up with Ms. Mason on his behalf and how he demanded that Ms. Mason be allowed to travel in official vehicles after she left the state's payroll. It also explored Mr. Bentley's efforts to keep audio recordings of suggestive conversations with Ms. Mason from the public. In one such conversation, which rippled across the internet last year, the governor described embracing Ms. Mason and placing his hands on her breasts. By the weekend, legislative leaders had demanded that the governor quit, echoing a faction of members in his own party who spent months vocally opposing him. On Sunday night, the steering committee of the Alabama Republican Party made a similar call. And by sunset Monday, Mr. Bentley was out of power. In court documents, the Alabama attorney general's office said Mr. Bentley had failed to disclose a $50, 000 personal loan to his campaign account. The office also said Mr. Bentley had allowed nearly $9, 000 of campaign money to be used for Ms. Mason's lawyers. Mr. Bentley was sentenced to a suspended jail term, fined $7, 000, placed on probation and ordered to complete community service. In an email on Monday, Ms. Mason declined to comment. Yet until Mr. Bentley's court appearance, it was unclear that he would actually abandon the job to which he was easily in 2014. Hours before the special counsel's report became public on Friday, Mr. Bentley repeated his familiar pledge not to resign, and he pleaded for an end to the debate that stemmed from his personal conduct. \"The people of this state have never asked to be told of or shown the intimate and embarrassing details of my personal life and my personal struggles,\" the governor said outside the Capitol. \"Those who are taking pleasure in humiliating and in shaming me, shaming my family, shaming my friends, well, I really don't understand why they want to do that. \" Within days, Mr. Bentley resigned. The decision punctuated a sordid drama that exploded last year, prompting renewed scrutiny of his 2015 divorce from Dianne Bentley, his wife of 50 years. Mr. Bentley's complaints and apologies over more than a year did little to quell public outrage in Alabama, where he had cultivated a reputation as an ethically sound public official. Now, he is the first Alabama governor to quit since 1837, when Clement Comer Clay left Montgomery to become a United States senator. (In 1993, Guy Hunt was automatically removed from office after being convicted of an ethics charge he was later pardoned.) Mr. Bentley's resignation is the third major transfer of power in Alabama government since June, when the House speaker, Michael G. Hubbard, was convicted of ethics charges and forced from office. Later in the year, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore was suspended for the balance of his term for violating judicial ethics standards. Mr. Bentley, a dermatologist, was a legislative backbencher until he stunned Alabama with his successful campaign for governor in 2010. In the early months of his tenure, he was widely praised for his response to a tornado outbreak that devastated much of the state. His policy legacy, at least among many Republicans, will be mixed. He opposed marriage and, within months of taking office, approved what was then one of the country's most aggressive immigration laws. But he also called for higher taxes and, in 2015, surprised many people when he unilaterally ordered four Confederate flags lowered on the grounds of the State Capitol. He also refused to endorse Donald J. Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign. But Mr. Bentley's personal conduct placed some of the greatest stress on his ties to members of his own party, and those conflicts worsened as he clung to power. \"It's sad watching anyone fall,\" State Representative Corey Harbison, a Republican, said Monday. \"I hate that it all happened, but I'm thankful that the governor stepped aside. We can begin to put this behind us. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Mexico's finance ministry will evaluate whether to make fiscal changes in response to the U.S. tax reform, according to a document seen by Reuters on Friday. In the document, the ministry said Mexico would not make changes that left it with a higher public sector deficit. \"Nevertheless, there will be an assessment of whether modifications should be made to Mexico's fiscal framework,\" the document said.","label":0}
{"text":"The Central Intelligence Agency thought for months that it had mistakenly shredded a massive U.S. Senate report on its use of waterboarding and other \"enhanced interrogation techniques\" before suddenly discovering that its copy had not been lost after all, an agency official said on Tuesday. \"It's embarrassing and I have apologized,\" Christopher Sharpley, the acting CIA Inspector General, told the Senate Intelligence Committee during his confirmation hearing as President Donald Trump's nominee for the position. Championed by Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein when she chaired the Senate panel, the \"torture report,\" as it is known, is the result of a six-year investigation into so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush. The report has been the subject of disputes between the agency and committee Democrats, as well as Democrats and Republicans, over issues including whether it should be declassified and whether investigators broke the law as they assembled it. Feinstein wants the 6,700-page document declassified. But Republican Senator Richard Burr, her successor as committee chairman, has resisted its release and asked for the return of copies distributed to government agencies under Democratic President Barack Obama. Sharpley said the CIA received the report in December 2014 on a computer disk, which was then uploaded into a classified system. Shortly thereafter, he said, the agency was told to delete it because of ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. An email was sent saying the disk should not be destroyed, but Sharpley said he was told months later it could not be found and that an employee said it had been shredded. But he said the disk was discovered later, after the FOIA litigation concluded that the report was a \"congressional\" document not subject to FOIA requests. Sharpley said around that time, Burr asked him to return the disk and he did so. The committee's Democrats appeared frustrated by Sharpley's account. \"The point of distributing it to the departments was in the hope that they would read it - not look at it as some poison document - and learn from it,\" Feinstein said, noting that to her knowledge, not a single fact in the report has been refuted. Sharpley said he had not read the report, only an unclassified executive summary. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden announced after the hearing that he would not support Sharpley's nomination because he had handed the report over to Burr, although there was no legal requirement to do so. Sharpley also would not commit to protecting any future reports, such as one related to the committee's probe of potential links between Trump's campaign and Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. \"I think your highest duty here is to follow the law. The notion that the chairman asked for it and that's all that governed your judgment isn't acceptable to me,\" Wyden said during the hearing. Obama ended the use of \"enhanced interrogation techniques\" via executive order in January 2009. Led by Feinstein and Republican Senator John McCain, Congress has since passed legislation outlawing their use. Burr said he planned a vote on Sharpley's nomination next week and looked forward to supporting him.","label":0}
{"text":"An Argentine TV station is lampooning U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump's comments about illegal immigration from Latin America to promote next month's regional Copa America soccer tournament in the United States. \"Our country is in serious trouble!\" Trump says to ominous music in the commercial made by TyC Sports channel, which will broadcast the June 3-26 centenary tournament in the soccer-obsessed South American country. \"We are having people coming in through the border that are not people that we want,\" the candidate adds, against images of Lionel Messi and other top Argentine players descending from a plane and fans massed in national blue-and-white colors. The comments used in the advertisement are taken from Trump's speeches. His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the 71-second spot. The billionaire real estate mogul has caused indignation south of the U.S. border with his views on immigration and promise to build a \"great wall\" along the Mexican border. \"They're coming from South America,\" Trump says in another clip from his speeches used by TyC, against a backdrop of Argentine stars from Sergio Aguero to Gonzalo Higuain pounding in goals against stumbling defenders. \"These are total killers,\" Trump says as the spot shows a close-up of Messi looking mean on the field. \"These are not the nice, sweet little people that you think. We have no protection.\" Argentina, which has not won the Copa America since 1993, is among the teams favored to win the tournament, as are Brazil and Chile. \"They're unchecked, and then they're being sent all over the United States,\" Trump intones while the names of tournament host cities like Seattle and Houston flash on the screen. At the end, the TyC ad shows a line of text, also in blue and white, that teasingly aligns itself with Trump: \"It's true. The best thing you can do is not let them in.\" This is the first year the tournament, referred to in English as the 2016 Centennial Copa America, will be hosted outside of South America. It also marks the 100th anniversary of the world's oldest international soccer competition. Former reality television star Trump won a commanding victory in Indiana's Republican primary on Tuesday, forcing his main rival, Ted Cruz, to drop out of the race. The presidential election will be held in November. The spot can be seen here","label":0}
{"text":"Any decision not to hold a U.S. Senate hearing on President Barack Obama's eventual Supreme Court nominee would be unprecedented, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Tuesday. \"This would be a historic and unprecedented acceleration of politicizing a branch of government,\" Earnest told reporters as top Senate Republicans vowed not to hold a hearing for any Obama choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.","label":0}
{"text":"President Barack Obama said on Monday that the United States and Southeast Asian nations can advance a shared vision of rules and norms for resolving maritime disputes peacefully. Obama made the reference to the South China Sea, where China and several Southeast Asian states have conflicting and overlapping claims, at the beginning of a summit with leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).","label":0}
{"text":"America Is The Loneliest Country In The World \u2013 Is It Because We've Abandoned The Traditional Family Structure? 13th, 2013  Of all the nations on the entire planet, the United States is the most lonely place to be. We have the highest percentage of one person households on the entire globe, and the average size of our households has been steadily decreasing. Studies have shown that the number of close friends that Americans have is falling, and we have the highest divorce rate in the world by a wide margin. So why is this happening? Does this have anything to do with the fact that America is abandoning the traditional family structure? Back in the 1960s, the \"sexual revolution\" fundamentally changed the way that millions of Americans viewed sex and love. By throwing out all of the old boundaries, many Americans believed that they would ultimately be able to have more sex and more love. Today, this manifests itself in a \"hookup culture\" that is constantly being promoted as \"healthy\" in our popular music, in our television shows and in our movies. But instead of this \"hookup culture\" resulting in more sex and more love, most Americans are discovering that it leads to just the opposite. We have become a nation of desperately lonely people that have very few real ties to others.  Never in the history of our nation have Americans been so isolated from one another. Most people get up in the morning, drive to work or school, perhaps do a little shopping afterwards, and then drive home again. The rest of the evening is typically spent in front of the television or on some sort of electronic device.  In addition, most Americans spend precious little time attending social gatherings of any sort these days. Church attendance is at historic lows , and most people don't take the time or the effort to get involved in other types of social groups.  And even when Americans do go out and try to meet people, the relationships that are formed are very much \"on the surface\" at best. The truth is that most Americans have very few \"close friends\". Just take a moment and consider how many people outside your immediate family actually \"love you\" and would be there for you no matter what. For most Americans that number is depressingly low.  In a desperate attempt for human love and interaction, an increasing number of Americans have turned to social networking websites such as Facebook to fill that void. For the desperately lonely, some human contact is better than none. In fact, a growing number of people are so desperate for people to talk with them that they will pretend to be someone else online. Many will even use an attractive picture of someone else in an attempt to try to lure others. This has become so common that this phenomenon has even been given a name. It is known as \" catfishing \", and it has grown to epidemic levels.  Other Americans deal with their loneliness by recklessly indulging in food, drugs, gambling, shopping or other addictions. We are a fundamentally unhappy nation, and this is reflected in the fact that we lead the world in antidepressant use. In fact, the total number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled between 1996 and 2005.  Could a lot of this have been avoided if we would have just fully embraced the traditional family structure as a nation?  Wouldn't most of us be doing a lot better if we lived in homes that were filled with happy, healthy families?  Just consider what the consequences of \"free love\" and the \"hookup culture\" have been for America\u2026  *At 26 percent, America has the highest percentage of one person households on the entire planet.  *100 years ago, 4.52 were living in the average U.S. household, but now the average U.S. household only consists of 2.59 people .  *Back in 1950, 78 percent of all households in the United States contained a married couple. Today, that number has declined to 48 percent .  *The marriage rate in the United States has fallen to an all-time low. Right now it is sitting at a yearly rate of 6.8 marriages per 1000 people .  *Today, an all-time low 44.2 percent of Americans in the 25 to 34 year old age bracket are married.  *According to the Pew Research Center, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married. Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.  *In the United States today, more than half of all couples \"move in together\" before they get married.  *The divorce rate for couples that live together first is significantly higher than for those that do not.  *America has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.  *In 1970, the average woman had her first child when she was 21.4 years old . Now the average woman has her first child when she is 25.6 years old .  *The birth rate for American women in the 20 to 24 year old age bracket has fallen to 85.3 births per 1,000 women . That is a new all-time record low.  *Approximately one out of every three children in the United States lives in a home without a father.  *For women under the age of 30 living in the United States today, more than half of all babies are being born out of wedlock.  For most Americans, marriage has come to be viewed as a temporary agreement that can be abandoned the moment that it no longer makes them happy any longer. This \"me-centered\" approach to love and marriage has had a whole host of negative consequences for us as a nation.  As the National Marriage Project puts it, a marriage in America now \"depends for its survival on the happiness of both spouses\"\u2026  Over the last four decades, many Americans have moved away from identifying with an \"institutional\" model of marriage, which seeks to integrate sex, parenthood, economic cooperation, and emotional intimacy in a permanent union. This model has been overwritten by the \"soul mate\" model, which sees marriage as primarily a couple-centered vehicle for personal growth, emotional intimacy, and shared consumption that depends for its survival on the happiness of both spouses. Thus where marriage used to serve as the gateway to responsible adulthood, it has come to be increasingly seen as a capstone of sorts that signals couples have arrived, both financially and emotionally\u2014or are on the cusp of arriving.  And our young people are no longer taught to value marriage. Instead, they are told to put off marriage and to go out and \"have some fun\". This message is constantly being reinforced by popular culture. For example, posted below is an actual pro-Obamacare ad . Yes, I know that this ad is almost too bizarre to be true, but it is actually a real ad. And as you can see, the messages that it is sending to our young people are not very subtle at all\u2026  We have become a nation where \"anything goes\", and most Americans seem to like it that way.  So what do you think?  Is America the loneliest country in the world because we've abandoned the traditional family structure?  Please feel free to share your opinion by posting a comment below\u2026 What Are The Off-White Boxes That Are Going Up On Utility Poles All Over Seattle? \u00bb K  The lack of family structure is part of it. But there is something far more basic, that has died in this Country. The dog eat dog business attitude, the money is the most important thing attitude,and the I come before everyone else attitude, All these things killed this precious concept. What is it? Trust. You can not have a good marriage, or friendship without it. Ask yourself, how many people you know, would you trust with your life? For most it is a rather small number. Sadly for some the number is 0. ISA  o here. I dont trust, nor really care for, most any of you. I learned this in childhood, by watching the true nature of adults. Adult Humans are the virus of the World, of rotting flesh, that is a parasite. This can be proven empirically. Aston Martin  Adult humans except \"# Godschosenones?\" because saying that all humans are viruses inclusing the shoes is # antisemitic? I see where you are going.. rbolo29 .  It's because of the apathy of realizing there is no God; so the children play and do what they want. Kim  Probably why so many people attach themselves to their animals. I know people that treat their dog like their child. It's because it's all they have. ISA  Some dont treat their animals that way out of loneliness, but a dog just makes a better friend than Humans. Thats the truth. Take it or leave it. Humans are rather crappy things. Kim  Some humans, not all of them. Don't get me wrong, I love my pet as much as anybody. But some people go overboard. A Dodgy Bloke  I think a number of components go into this. A big one is the sexual revolution I have seen personally how it's a great thing for guys but a disaster for women. The tragic part is most women don't see it, the want the same sexual freedom as men, but ignore the damage done. The damage is kids with no father, and a woman who has several children by different guys. The woman wakes up forty alone, has no control over her life dependent on welfare but has ultimate responsibility for what happens under her roof. Everybody wants to be loved in one form or another. I think the culture produces high expectations in what people want or expect in a spouse. Men want somebody young good looking with no issues. Woman are looking foe the same, but some have a attraction to bad boys who they find exciting. People don't get to and know each other before they wind up in bed. They get caught up in the newness get married and wake up one morning look at their spouse and wonder 'What did I see in you.\" But I have hope that the coming hard times will reverse this because people will have to adapt, or not survive. rbolo29 .  It really doesn't matter; because we all die in the end and if there is no God to save us; then it's a total lost cause to even try to be moral and good. Some Dude  fix yourself and become the change you seek in others for those others are all the reflections of the changes you made from within, granting them the permission to let their own light shine.  only then will humanity rise above the din of the dark ages that still reigns with a rationale leading it only to extinction Dedalius Stanton  About to graduate from college within a short timeframe, this fearsome yet truthful article details some chilling events experienced in my academic career. Up unto this point, many of students within my campus follow a self-centered, selfish attitude, unaware that their destructive attitudes harm only but themselves. The idea of \"STFU and leave me alone\" concept continues to be pushed forth by faculty, peers, and the social environment. Having lived in the dorms, I've been through numerous roommates who refuse to talk to anyone, especially to me, stating that I'm too weird or someone who should just drop dead, yet later claim they have no friends and spend most of their time wasting it away, allowing their academic careers reach at a stag point. The same applies to my classes. I know about 70 students by name who will graduate this semester, but how many do I personally know and trust? Sadly, that number is zero. This is not because I don't engage in conversations, but it's rather the experiences that others around me only care only for themselves, while ignoring those that may be able to provide lasting friendships and improving the overall quality of life. rbolo29 .  It's ok; because they will graduate and find there are no jobs waiting for them; except being a manager at McDonalds. Jim Davis  Asst. Manager at best. Aston Martin  The gullible femaleist women from colelge will probably go on dating websites to find elderly rich and wealthy men who are desperate enough to date goods which were expired a long time ago.  I agree I had similar experiences. Most people had their own little groups of friends and never really mingled with others. I think the problem is too, many people don't know HOW to make friends. Everyone is so self-absorbed. MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse  I am sorry to hear that you had such negative experiences with roommates. Finding a good roommate these days can be a real challenge. I am glad that I don't have to worry about that anymore.  Michael John Doe  71 percent of young men between the ages of 18 to 34 in America are not interested in marriage:  71% of young men in America do not want to get married  I guess feminism killed marriage. Kim  They can't afford it. They are barely scraping by on their own. Ditto  Bingo. I live just as the fine article says: I get up in the morning, drive 28 miles to work, drive 28 miles home again, do some shopping, then spend the other three or four hours of my day watching TV or surfing the web. No time or money for anything else. MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse  You probably burn up a lot of gas money too. I certainly don't miss the days when I had very long commutes to work.  Michael ISA  Cant afford it, and who would want to be married today? Even the boomer generation is throwing in the towel. If Americans can evolve, which they cant, then its over with soon. You all are still stuck in the model of 60 years ago, if not more, and are dying on the inside.  Good riddance. Lars Lonte  I totally agree with you \u2013 just compare Women from Eastern Europa or even Asia with the average Women from the East Coast or Europe (especially (West-) Germany and Great Britain as most US like states and cultures\u2026.there is a reason, why Eastern European men usually do not want to marry women from western Germany\u2026. King Mercury  Because American women have literally priced themselves out of the dating market! American women show that they want only guys with big, wide luxury sports Ferraris with all of the latest technology, gigantic mc mansions at least 5 times the size of the Home Alone house, three quarter million dollar or higher incomes, a growing number of them are even going for gangsters and thugs that get that kind of luxury through violent crime and illegal drugs. Jonathan  Women are uncooperative, don't care, too busy, incompetent at love and domestic life and think it's cool to emotionally, psychologically, financially, and in every way abuse men and never receive any reciprocation for their bad behavior, nor offer any reciprocation for men's gifts. The egomania in women has exploded, and the genie can no longer fit in the bottle. rwinkel  It's a no brainer. Lookup \"hisanic paradox\" on wikipedia. The abuse of infants in this country is an important factor in the rise of sociopathy and broken families. Infants imprint just like every other mammal on the planet, and American obstetrics is unique in its disregard for children's dignity and human rights. P.F.  America is in this state because it has turned to sin rather than YAHWEH'S HOLY LAW. Only in our LORD JESUS\/YESHUA do we find fulfillment, peace, and joy. When people are filled with joy they share truth and love\u2013when people are moaning miserably inside they become cold and detached. You can't depend on people to bring you happiness first\u2014you have to seek JESUS\/YESHUA who teaches us how to love one another the right way, and then, and only then, will people know joy. america depends on itself to create its own happiness and you're seeing the negative effects. Back in the 1950's Biblical values were held strongly in the homes. That's why you see your grandparents who were married during that time either still alive and married and buried next to each other. What you'll see in the coming years are old ladies and men wondering around alone who are not married and who will be buried in single graves while the children carry on the negative tradition of their failed ways. Way to go america, you're doing just fine. David McElroy  Sad, but true, P.F. If it weren't for hope in Jesus, there'd be no hope at all! MichaelfromTheEconomicCollapse  Michael David McElroy  As the oldest of 12 children from an Irish father who stayed married to our mother, I can testify as to the merciless bombardments of anti-family messages delivered to us. My mother was urged to abort many of my siblings. Teachers and other \"counselors\" urged us not to spend so much time together, as we were \"clannish\". I fell for the encouragement to go to college and make something of myself and \"get ahead\" before marriage and children. Even our church was discouraging, openly saying we took too much pew space and gave too little money. (Even though we physically labored to help build the building!) I went to college, became a journalist and, after a disasterous cohabitation I thought would lead to marriage, eventually a chaplain. But I also ended up an old bachelor who thought he would have a wife and grandkids by now. My computer is my companion! CollGen2  You are a wonderful person. Your parent's stuck together. That is the way God's original design was. Your writing touched my heart today, thank you! All things will work out for good to those who LOVE God and are called according to HIS purpose. HE created each one of us and He also beckons us. He put an end to sin by being the perfect sacrifice on that cross. He beckoned me and I did it my way\u2026..til trouble hit! I have a husband, 3 children and 4 grandchildren. I am alone most of the time at home, answering the phone for my small business. But, most of the time, I am immersing myself in the King James Bible and fellowshipping with my Father. He is the only one who will never leave me nor forsake me. How do I know that? I was in a coma many years ago when He beckoned me. I have tried to do things the \"me\" way but every road was a disaster until I surrendered my life to Him! The suffering I go through here is nothing compared to the GLORY that awaits me.\"! Tim  There are good, faithful men out there who want a family. David McElroy  I'm with Tim, I was one of those guys who wanted to be a faithful husband and father. But I made the mistake of being smitten with a conniving woman who had no maternal domestic interests, being the \"modern\" sort. Jenn  I'm sorry that happened to you. Not all of us women are that way, but many of them seem to be these days. :-( Aston Martin  Modern westernized women are victims of the you-know-who\u2026.research who founded and promoted the femaleist movement and the truth shall make you afraid while you struggle to set free of the international bankers. SafetyViking  Good. Why buy the book when there's a library in town? godozo  Ugly analogy. Knowledge is meant to be shared, women\u2026not. Even the Founding Fathers and many of the old-school Robber Barons would agree (Carnegie anyone? He funded a nation's worth of libraries.).  Try \"Why buy the cow when the milk is free?\". Lifelong Mates (both male and female) ARE a limited resource, and like milk is worth paying for to keep (or keep the flow coming, depending on the item). wombleranger  I don't like to be the one to say this but\u2026.if you remove spirituality and morals from a society you end up with the western world. America isn't the only western power suffering this condition come to Canada where anyone with a problem gets a Prozac prescription and it's free!!! We would be wise to remember the former Soviet Union and it's devastation of the churches and religions. Now we must ask ourselves are we staring to become a communist nation? To quote William Penn \" .Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants\"-certainly is food for thought! A lonely mind is a dangerous mind. Eileen Kuch  Very well put, wombleranger. Indeed, if you remove spirituality and morals from a society, that society starts to fragment. Just look at America today. It's barely recognizable as the God-fearing nation it used to be.  I don't know about your Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, but Barack Obama is the worst Presidents we ever had. He's hell-bent on destroying the old America and turning it into a USSA, a near image of the early 20th Century USSR, where Orthodox Christian Churches were devastated and the religion driven underground.  Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants \u2013 William Penn  Great quote, too. wombleranger  Thanks Eileen. It's comforting to see there are still moral people in this world, now we just need to wake-up the good souls from the deep sleep. It's an uphill battle to be sure, but as long as i breath i will never forsake my dignity, morals and most of all my God. nilro  Too many nut cases out there, Animals are a better bet. Truman Golden","label":1}
{"text":"Al Gore is back again to warn about the dangers of climate change in the first trailer for An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, the to his 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. [\"Storms get stronger and more destructive. Watch the water splash off the city,\" the former vice president and climate change activist warns in the trailer as newsreel footage of severe weather plays in the background. \"This is global warming. \" \"Despair can be paralyzing,\" he adds, \"but this, to me, is the most exciting new development. We're seeing a tremendous amount of positive change. The basis is there. But it's still not enough. \" The trailer also features several brief excerpts of President Donald Trump's comments on global warming, and shows Gore delivering lectures and traveling around the world to survey damage up close. Inconvenient 2 premiered as the opening night film at the Sundance Film Festival in January, reportedly drawing a standing ovation after the screening from the audience in Park City. \"This movie gives me an extra burst of hope because I think \u2026 it really effectively tells the story of how much hope is out there for transforming our energy system to become much more efficient,\" Gore said at the screening, according to Variety. \"We are going to win this. \" The trailer's release came the same day President Donald Trump signed an executive order that will roll back several key energy industry regulations signed into law by former President Barack Obama. An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, with original director Davis Guggenheim returning as executive producer. Paramount Pictures will release the film on July 28. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum","label":0}
{"text":"Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis, Fvnk$oul and Randy J (ACR & 21WIRE contributors) for the hundred and forty first episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs, analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social rejects club.On this episode of Boiler Room the social rejects club meets for the final shebang of 2017. We ll be discussing John McAfee s twitter account being hacked to promote a low value crypto-currency, silicon valley censorship in social media, year end wrap ups and 2018 predictions.Direct Download Episode #141 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:","label":1}
{"text":"South Africa s ruling African National Congress (ANC) needs to put an end to scandals that are tarnishing its image, an ANC official said, after a court ruling that paved the way for President Jacob Zuma to face nearly 800 counts of corruption. Zweli Mkhize, one of the ANC s top six leaders, also called for an end to factionalism within the party at a public lecture late on Friday, saying it was playing into the hands of the opposition. Mkhize is in the running to replace Zuma as ANC leader at the party s elective conference in December, and his campaign has been gathering momentum in recent weeks. The battle between the two frontrunners for ANC leader - Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, an ex-wife of Zuma and former chairwoman of the African Union - has bitterly divided the party that has governed South Africa since the end of white minority rule in 1994. Affable and a long-serving cadre, Mkhize is touted as a compromise candidate who could soothe tensions between the party s primary factions. He is also well-liked by investors unnerved by the party s swing toward populist policies. We see fractions and divisions in the regions, at the national level. And you ve got court cases all over, Mkhize told ANC supporters packed into a hall in the Kagiso township to the west of Johannesburg. We need to say to each other enough is enough. ... The image of the African National Congress rests on the behaviour of its own leaders, Mkhize said. Earlier on Friday, South Africa s Supreme Court of Appeal upheld a High Court ruling reinstating 783 corruption charges against Zuma from before he became president. Zuma, who has denied numerous other corruption allegations since taking office, has asked prosecutors to consider representations before deciding whether to proceed against him. Mkhize avoided mentioning Zuma by name in his speech in Kagiso. He hails from Zuma s home province of Kwa-Zulu Natal and was formerly a staunch Zuma supporter. Asked whether Zuma should step down as president after a new ANC leader is elected in December, Mkhize said that would be up to the party to decide. Zuma s term as president ends in 2019, when South Africa next holds a general election, but his predecessor Thabo Mbeki was ousted before the end of his term in 2008 after losing out in a power struggle with Zuma. We believe the ANC is strong enough to survive all of this, and we want to be able to show that the ANC is serious about acting on corruption, Mkhize said.","label":0}
{"text":"British scientists have created an artificial intelligence program that can allegedly predict when a patient with heart problems will die. [The program, which was developed by the MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences (LMS) reportedly has an 80% accuracy rate, with researchers claiming that it could be vital in discovering how \"aggressive\" a patient's treatment needs to be. \"The researchers' programme assessed the outlook of 250 patients based on blood test results and MRI scans of their hearts,\" explained the International Business Times. \"It then used the data to create a virtual 3D heart of each patient which, combined with the health records of 'hundreds' of previous patients, allowed it to learn which characteristics indicated fatal heart failure within five years. \" \"The LMS scientists claim that the software was able to accurately predict patients who would still be alive after a year around 80% of the time,\" they continued. \"The computer was able to analyse patients 'in seconds' promising to dramatically reduce the time it takes doctors to identify the most individuals and ensure they 'give the right treatment to the right patients, at the right time. '\" LMS lead researcher Dr. Declan O'Regan claimed it could \"transform\" the way patients are treated. \"This is the first time computers have interpreted heart scans to accurately predict how long patients will live. It could transform the way doctors treat heart patients,\" he proclaimed. \"A doctor equipped with this new cardiac imaging approach would therefore be able to make more informed judgements about outcome than if they were relying only on current ways to investigate patient data. \" \"We would like to develop the technology so it can be used in many heart conditions to complement how doctors interpret the results of medical tests,\" added Tim Dawes, who who created the program's algorithms. \"The goal is to see if better predictions can guide treatment to help people to live longer. \" The researchers are now planning to test the program in London hospitals in an attempt to verify their results. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"By Hrafnkell Haraldsson on Tue, Nov 1st, 2016 at 8:00 am \"Last spring...New York had to take legal action to collect $8,578 in unpaid taxes on the Trump-owned company that owns the trademark Boeing 757\"  We looked yesterday at Kurt Eichenwald's revelation that Donald Trump put off investigators for six months while busily destroying emails. That is hardly Trump's only misdeed, but how many people realize that Donald Trump, at this moment, has 75 \u2013 SEVENTY-FIVE \u2013 legal issues hanging over his head.  He's lying 20 to 35 times a day and has his followers \u2013 and with much less excuse, the mainstream media \u2013 thoroughly distracted by the Clinton email nonstory so he can divert their attention away from his own legally questionable activities.  USA TODAY reported at the end of October that \"Just two weeks before Election Day, at least 75 of the 4,000-plus lawsuits involving Trump and his businesses remain open, according to an ongoing, nationwide analysis of state and federal court records by USA TODAY.\"  It will surprise no one, because Trump is already deadbeating on his own pollster , that \"One Trump case, over non-payment of tips to caterers at Trump SoHo Hotel in New York City, is scheduled to go to trial a week before Election Day.\"  If one thing has become clear throughout this election it is that Trump does not pay his bills. Earlier, we had covered an incident where he had declined to finish paying a Florida contractor for work it did on one of his resorts, having decided that the contractor had been \"paid enough,\" even though it wasn't the agreed-upon amount. Trump got nailed by the court for $300K in attorney's fees in that case.  Just a few examples from USA TODAY's investigation:  Trump faces significant open litigation tied to his businesses: angry members at his Jupiter, Fla. golf course say they were cheated out of refunds on their dues and a former employee at the same club claims she was fired after reporting sexual harassment. There's a fraud case brought by Trump University students who say the mogul's company ripped them off for tens of thousands in tuition for a sham real estate course. Trump is also defending lawsuits tied to his campaign. A disgruntled GOP political consultant sued for $4 million saying Trump defamed her. Another suit, a class action, says the campaign violated consumer protection laws by sending unsolicited text messages.  As pointed out by USA TODAY's Nick Penzenstadler and John Kelly, these lawsuits will dog Trump into the White House, should he win. He will have no immunity because he is president. And America \u2013 and the world \u2013 will be treated to the spectacle of the President of the United States having to make trip after trip to the court to settle his highly questionable personal and business affairs.  There are harassment cases, sex discrimination lawsuits, fraud, unpaid bills, racist comments, defamation, cases involving Trump University. As USA TODAY notes, \"as recently as last spring\u2026New York had to take legal action to collect $8,578 in unpaid taxes on the Trump-owned company that owns the trademark Boeing 757 that jetted the mogul to campaign rallies across the country.\"  And those 75 cases will likely grow.  Trump has promised, after all, to sue The New York Times and each of the women \u2013 NYMag maintains an exhaustive list \u2013 who have accused him of sexual assault.  USA Today says it spent six months researching court records. \"The exclusive analysis,\" they say, \"found an unprecedented mountain of legal battles for a presidential candidate, ranging from skirmishes with pageant contestants to multimillion dollar real estate lawsuits. The cases offer clues to the leadership style the billionaire would bring to the White House.\"  Donald Trump claims Clinton is tainted. He claims Clinton's emails are bigger than Watergate. The other day tweeted , \"We must not let #CrookedHillary take her CRIMINAL SCHEME into the Oval Office. #DrainTheSwamp.\"  This comes from the man who would turn the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into a morality No-Go Zone.  All the facts \u2013 including the new disclosures about Trump's ties to a Russian server and his potentially illegal ploy to avoid paying taxes \u2013 make it clear that if Trump the deadbeat liar drains the swamp, he will be the first one down the drain.","label":1}
{"text":"On Tuesday, Republican front-runner Donald Trump shocked everyone by announcing that he was boycotting the Fox News GOP debate on Thursday, as it was being moderated by his nemesis, Megyn Kelly. And in his childish haste to get back at Fox News for giving Kelly another chance to make him look like an idiot, Trump sent the network a message of blatant disrespect: he would be throwing a competing event: a benefit for America s veterans on the very same day as the GOP debate.On Trump s event page for veterans and wounded warriors, the front-runner promised to raise money for the men and women who have been treated so horribly by our all-talk, no-action politicians . Well, it turns out that veterans have a message for Trump: We don t want your donations.On Wednesday, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America founder Paul Rieckhoff announced that his organization would not accept any contributions that came from Trump s event. He tweeted:TwitterTwo other veterans groups have also decided they want nothing to do with Trump s publicity stunt. The Wounded Warrior Project, which has recently come under fire for using its donation money for wasteful purposes, has denied having any awareness of Trump s efforts to fundraise for the organization. VoteVets.org, however, was willing to send a more direct message to the GOPer. The organization, which boasts that it is America s largest progressive veterans group, issued a statement that said Don t hide from Megyn Kelly behind us. Iraq War veteran and chairman of the organization absolutely burned The Donald: Let me put this in language Donald Trump understands. You re a loser. You re a third-rate politician, who clearly doesn t understand issues, and is so scared of Megyn Kelly exposing it, that you re looking to use veterans to protect you from facing her questions. The veterans scorn is honestly well-deserved a look into Trump s past can easily prove that this is just a stunt for Trump and there s no sincerity in his charity event. The GOP front-runner has actually been whining about homeless veterans for decades, complaining that they bring his property values down. And before he ran for president, Trump actually wanted to get rid of America s troops. So don t be fooled by Trump s benefit for vets he doesn t care about them and is just using them to gain more support.","label":1}
{"text":"Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is in \"overall very good health,\" with no limitations on his work as a U.S. senator, his physician said in a letter released on Thursday. The letter from Brian Monahan, the attending physician for Congress, detailed the health of the Vermont senator, who is vying with Hillary Clinton for his party's nomination to the November 2016 presidential election. \"You are in overall very good health and active in your professional work, and recreational lifestyle without limitation,\" said the Jan. 20 letter posted on Sanders' campaign website. Presidential candidates often release such statements to assure voters that they are fit for the presidency. The race between Clinton and Sanders, 74, has tightened in recent weeks, and polls show the two in a statistical dead heat for the Iowa caucus on Feb. 1. The letter notes that Sanders has, over the years, been treated for conditions ranging from gout to hypothyroidism to diverticulitis. He has also had surgery to repair hernias and excise a vocal cord cyst, the letter said. The senator also takes levothyroxine daily and indomethacin occasionally, it added. Levothyroxine is used to treat hypothyroidism, and indomethacin is used treat stiffness and pain from osteoarthritis, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Sanders' main Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, released a statement from her own doctor last year giving her a clean bill of health. (Reporting by Luciana Lopez; Editing by Richard Chang) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency.","label":0}
{"text":"Meanwhile, a Muslim boy with a radical activist father and a history of discipline issues can bring a fake bomb to school on 9-11 and is an instant hero with the Left You just can t make this up.A 13-year-old Oregon boy was disciplined by his school for wearing the battlefield cross on his shirt.Alan Holmes, a student at Dexter McCarty Middle School, wore a shirt that displays the image of a rifle propped up with a helmet perched on top and boots below. It s commonly referred to as a battlefield cross for fallen soldiers and is meant as a a sign of support for the troops. The shirt read Standing for those who stood for us. The Military Times is reporting the Gresham-Barlow School District has a dress code policy that prohibits weapons. District spokeswoman Athena Vadnals wrote Weapons on a shirt are not appropriate in a school setting. It s not standing for violence, I tell you that much, Holmes said. It s standing for the memorial for the soldiers, who have died for us and our freedom, and I 100 percent support them because they re supporting us. Holmes said he was told by the vice principal to put on a different shirt or take an in-school suspension. He decided to keep the shirt on and call his mom.The story has gone viral and the family is fighting back against the school and the district.","label":1}
{"text":"Former NBC television host Billy Bush accused U.S. President Donald Trump of \"indulging in some revisionist history\" for reportedly telling allies it was not his voice making lewd remarks as the men waited to film a segment for \"Access Hollywood\" in 2005. \"He said it. 'Grab 'em by the pussy,'\" Bush wrote in an editorial published in the New York Times on Sunday. The New York Times reported last month that Trump has been privately telling aides and allies, including at least one U.S. senator, that the voice on the recording was not his. That would be a reversal from his immediate acknowledgement of responsibility after the tape surfaced weeks ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Trump said: \"I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.\" Reuters has not been able to verify the Times report that he has been privately telling allies a different story. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Bush's remarks. But White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders played down the Times report at a White House briefing on Nov. 27. \"The President hasn't changed his position. I think if anything that the president questions, it's the media's reporting on that accuracy,\" Sanders said. Bush laughed on the video as Trump spoke and he lost his job as a host of NBC's flagship morning \"Today\" show after the tape was leaked to the media in October, upending Trump's campaign to become president.","label":0}
{"text":"Subscribe  In politics, the Third Way is a position that tries to reconcile right-wing Republican Party and left-wing Democratic Party politics by advocating a synthesis of right-wing economic and left-wing social policies. It was created as a re-evaluation of center-left political ideals in response to international doubt regarding the viability of interventionist (Keynesian) economic policies versus the economic libertarianism of the New Right. The Third Way is promoted by some social democratic and liberal movements.  One of the significant factors concerning the 2016 Democratic Party presidential race is that corporate Democrats are scared of Bernie Sanders' quick rise in popularity in the Democratic Party. This explains why corporate Democrats support Hillary Clinton.  In political campaigns, you have to follow the money. Third Way has been very secretive about where its think tank funding comes from. However, several investigative journalists have uncovered some of the donors and they are not surprising: The Chamber of Commerce The Business Round Table AT&T  These are just a few donors to the Third Way. There is also a laundry list of hedge funds that are donating money. The bottom line is that Third Way is backed by Wall Street titans, corporate money, congressional allies, and corporate Democrats like Hillary Clinton. It is important to note that these same corporate factions also donate to the Republican Party. The existence of Third Way should not come as a surprise. There are essentially no economic differences between a corporate Democrat and a Republican. 'Third Way' Members Are Backroom-Cigar-Smoking Wall Street Types.  Third Way and its members would like to see politicians like Bernie Sanders (D-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) disappear. Why do Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party scare the hell out of corporate Democrats?  There is the issue of labels in modern day politics. The Third Way Democrats, the Blue-Dog Democrats, the Wall Street Democrats are all centrist in their ideology. It begs the question: Who is in charge of the Democratic Party right now?  Until something drastic happens like electing a Democratic Socialist non-establishment politician like Bernie Sanders, the truth is the Democratic Party is controlled by Wall Street just like the Republican Party. There is much talk how the Republican Party is falling apart. The Tea Party has taken over, and the fringe is now the GOP mainstream.  There is a similar fight taking place in the Democratic party between people who care (like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), who are concerned about the middle class and working people of America, and corporate centrist Democrats like Hillary Clinton whose economic policies are not much different than the Republicans.  Third Way President Jonathan Cowan , who claims he is a Democrat, is joined at the hip with Wall Street and is a poster boy for the right wing-oriented Chamber of Commerce. He and his Third Way organization have done nothing for labor unions. This guy is a Republican in a Democrat's clothing.  The 2016 Democratic presidential race will go a long way in determining if the Democrats reject this corporate agenda. The corporate Democratic Party think tank has submitted over 70 policy proposals they want corporate Democrat Hillary Clinton to take up. The new populist movement by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is not welcomed by corporate centrist Democrats. Third Way are trying as hard as they can to force Bernie Sanders out of the race. They have tried to put a muzzle on Elizabeth Warren.  Third Way's position is that someone who is left of center (a Democratic Socialist, liberal, or progressive) will lose by a landslide in the general election. What is ironic is that every major poll right now shows that Bernie Sanders would beat Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, and Ted Cruz. Moreover, these polls show Bernie Sanders beating these flavor-of-the-week Republicans by a larger margin than the centrist corporate choice Hillary Clinton in the swing states .  Bernie Sanders' campaign has the potential to change the dynamics of the entire electorate. His campaign is getting young voters' attention and more importantly, getting them involved in the political process. Bernie has already gotten the endorsement from the American Postal Service Workers Union . Several African American politicians are backing Sanders. Independent voters are choosing Sanders over Hillary Clinton by a wide margin. The truth is Bernie Sanders' voting base is growing while the corporate centrist Democratic base is stagnant at best.  These facts have caused the Democratic Party Wall Street types to panic and to start attacking Bernie Sanders on being too far left . Plus, who better to lead the charge than pre-ordained corporate Democrat Hillary Clinton?  One of the major problems the Democratic Party has faced is that huge blocks of potential Democratic voters have become disenfranchised from the voting process because they feel there is no real difference between the two parties. They feel that elections are rigged, and their votes don't count . What Bernie Sanders' run for president has re-energized these voting blocks.  Polls have shown 60 percent of Americans feel Hillary Clinton is untrustworthy and dishonest . Many liberal progressive Democrats don't trust Hillary Clinton at all.  Granted, there are some major social issues where there is a stark contrast between the two parties. But with issues that deal with low- and middle-earning families being able to feed their children and everyday Americans having a better quality of life, it is fair to say there are no real differences between the Republican Party and the corporate Democrats.  One of the main reasons for this paradox is organizations like Third Way. Corporate Democrats like Hillary Clinton want that Wall Street money. Their belief is you cannot win if you don't have Wall Street donors and Super Pacs. Bernie Sanders' campaign is proving that this assumption is not true. Barack Obama's campaign in 2008 showed this wasn't true. There is little doubt in this writer's mind that Hillary Clinton and her corporate Democrat buddies are feeling 2008 deja vu all over again.  Featured Image By DonkeyHotey via Flickr available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. About Johnny Hill  Johnny Hill is a freelance writer who has extensive experience in writing for sales, marketing and advertising. He has a background in radio broadcasting which is showcased in the music mixes he creates for his Facebook page, \"One Nation Under the Groove.\" Johnny has been an avid and life long student of politics . He is the founder of the House of Public Discourse Political Organization, which he created as a platform for his progressive liberal ideology. You can follow Johnny on Twitter, @hillj60. Connect","label":1}
{"text":"On Monday, Donald Trump gave interviews to reporters on his plane, and naturally the subject of the presidential debates against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton came up. As expected, Trump s responses were nothing short of moronic and unbelievable, and show just how unprepared Trump is to be president.As reporters threw different questions at Trump about his strategy to beat Clinton, Trump gave responses that should have his supporters worried sick about how he s going to win. Trump told reporters that he is barely doing any debate prep in stark contrast to most presidential candidates. With a dismissive attitude, the ignorant business mogul revealed that he has not planned on mock debates, saying he d pretty much rather wing it: I ve seen people do so much prep work when they get out there, they can t speak. I ve seen that. Then when Trump was asked if he d actually follow through with the debates, Trump gave an even more surprising answer.Trump said, As of this moment, yeah a strange response for sure. And then he said that only hurricanes and natural disasters would stop him from debating the former Secretary of State. He said: I expect to do all three. I look forward to the debates. You can watch this bizarre interview below:Hilariously, Trump also said that it was his obligation to debate Clinton and that presidential debates are an important element of what we re doing. He said: I did them with the other, you know, the other cases. We had, I guess 11 debates. Obviously, I did well in the debates. Obviously, according to the polls, the online polls they did right after the debates. And I think I m doing the same thing. Trump must have forgotten that he actually skipped one of the GOP debates, and also backed out of the debate that he challenged Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to. And there are ongoing rumors that Trump is going to somehow find an excuse to back out of his debates with Clinton as well. Judging from this interview alone, we would not be surprised.Featured image is a screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"NORRISTOWN, Pa. \u2014 She was a rising Democratic star. She was the first in her party to be elected state attorney general. She was one of the most powerful women in Pennsylvania. But on Monday night, Kathleen G. Kane, the state's top prosecutor, became a convicted criminal. Update: Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane resigned Tuesday. A jury found Ms. Kane, 50, guilty of nine criminal charges, including perjury and criminal conspiracy, convicting her of leaking grand jury information, and then lying about it, in an effort to discredit a political rival. Ms. Kane was caught up in a web of scandal and counterscandal, threaded with lewd emails, political rivalries and alleged leaks. It has cost other state officials, including two State Supreme Court justices, their jobs and Ms. Kane her law license, although she has remained on the job as attorney general. Ms. Kane stared straight ahead as the word \"guilty,\" uttered decisively by a juror in a flowered dress, echoed nine times around the courtroom. The lawyers immediately went into a private conference with the judge, leaving Ms. Kane, who campaigned on a promise to uncover political interference in Pennsylvania, alone at the defense table. And when Judge Wendy returned to the courtroom, she turned directly to Ms. Kane with a stern warning, her words slicing through the silence. \"There is to be absolutely no retaliation of any kind against any witness in this case, either by your own devices, from your own mouth or your hand, or directing anybody to do anything,\" the judge said. She threatened Ms. Kane, who is currently free on bail, with immediate incarceration if she failed to comply. \"Is that clear, Ms. Kane?\" the judge asked. \"Yes it is, your honor,\" Ms. Kane said. After the verdict, Gov. Tom Wolf immediately renewed his call for her to step down. \"The Office of Attorney General and its employees, as well as the people of Pennsylvania deserve to move on,\" Mr. Wolf said in a statement. Gerald Shargel, a lawyer for Ms. Kane, said a decision about her job would be made in the coming days. Ms. Kane was elected in 2012. The first half of her tenure was marked with moments that she claimed as successes, like closing a loophole in gun laws. But she soon became embroiled in scandal, in a state with a rich history of them. \"It turns on the perception that she abused her power. She is the chief law enforcement officer for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,\" said David Zellis, a former prosecutor in Bucks County who has observed the trial but is not involved. He added, \"I think that it's turned the whole criminal justice system in the state upside down. \" To her detractors, she had abused her power and broken the law to her supporters, she had rousted the state's ' network and become a victim herself. But in court, she was silent: Though her defense team the prosecution's witnesses, it rested without calling a single one of its own. Ms. Kane, who faced nine charges, including two felony perjury counts, criminal conspiracy and obstruction, was accused of leaking secret grand jury documents to the news media in an effort to discredit the prosecutor Frank Fina, and then lying to cover it up. \"'This is war,' the defendant's words,\" said the lead prosecutor, Kevin Steele, in reference to an email written by Ms. Kane. \"Wars have casualties. Wars leave scars. \" Earlier Monday, in a nearly closing statement, wrought with text messages, newspaper front pages and grand jury testimony, Mr. Steele painted a picture of Ms. Kane trying to \"go on the offensive\" after a newspaper article that criticized her for shutting down an undercover investigation into possible corruption by Democratic state representatives. Prosecutors say she believed Mr. Fina was behind the story. Ms. Kane, he said, sought to leak details from a 2009 grand jury investigation into the financial affairs of J. Whyatt Mondesire, a former leader of the N. A. A. C. P. because she wanted residents to know that Mr. Fina had chosen not to prosecute. She then lied about it when a grand jury investigated, Mr. Steele said. A defense lawyer, Seth Farber, said the state had not proved its case, urging the jurors not to take Ms. Kane's words out of context. \"Things that the commonwealth says do not hold up to scrutiny when you look at the actual evidence,\" Mr. Farber said, and cast blame instead on two prosecution witnesses: Adrian King, a former deputy to Ms. Kane, and Josh Morrow, a political strategist who was given immunity to testify. \"Those are two witnesses who will say whatever they need to in order to protect themselves,\" Mr. Farber said, adding, \"You would not even buy a used car from one of them. \" Ms. Kane was elected after she campaigned with a promise to review the investigation into Jerry Sandusky, the assistant football coach for Penn State who was convicted of sexual abuse, which was led by the attorney general at the time, Tom Corbett, and Mr. Fina. She did not find evidence of political interference, but Ms. Kane did find that lewd and racist emails had been exchanged by state officials, and began to release them to the news media. She has said that some in the state's political establishment have concocted her political difficulties to retaliate for the disclosures and to prevent more emails from being leaked. Judge limited discussion of those emails at the request of prosecutors \u2014 a point to which Ms. Kane's lead attorney, Mr. Shargel, seemed to allude after he left the courtroom. \"We have been denied the opportunity to mount a full defense,\" said Mr. Shargel. Outside the courthouse, Michelle Henry, a prosecutor in the case, said she was \"offended\" by Ms. Kane's crimes. \"What she did while she was attorney general \u2014 the fact that she committed criminal acts when she's the top prosecutor \u2014 is a disgrace,\" Ms. Henry said. The judge has not yet set a sentencing hearing, but Ms. Kane could face prison time. The two felony perjury charges alone each carry up to seven years in prison.","label":0}
{"text":"Unidentified militants planned to sabotage an annual beer festival canceled this week by authorities in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur who cited political sensitivities for the move, police said on Thursday. On Monday, the authorities scrapped the two-day event, now in its sixth year, after an Islamist party objected on the grounds that it could lead to criminal acts, rape and free sex. Around 6,000 people had been expected to attend the Better Beer Festival , showcasing craft beers from at least 11 countries, according to posts on social media site Facebook by the organizers and domestic news reports. Protests against events considered Western and unIslamic are common in Muslim-majority Malaysia, and are usually led by the opposition Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS) and conservative Islamist NGOs. There was information that exposed plans by militants who would carry out sabotage on the festival, because it is deemed as something that goes against their struggles, said Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun. To avoid any incident beyond our control, the police had to be proactive, by objecting to the organizing of the festival, he added in a brief statement, without naming any suspected groups. Since 2013, Malaysia has detained more than 300 people with suspected links to Islamic State in its crackdown on militancy. The police have arrested seven Philippine men on suspicion of involvement in the activities of the Abu Sayyaf militant group, which has pledged loyalty to Islamic State.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald J. Trump met in the last week in his office at Trump Tower with three Indian business partners who are building a luxury apartment complex south of Mumbai, raising new questions about how he will separate his business dealings from the work of the government once he is in the White House. A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump described the meeting as a courtesy call by the three Indian real estate executives, who flew from India to congratulate Mr. Trump on his election victory. In a picture posted on Twitter, all four men are smiling and giving a . \"It was not a formal meeting of any kind,\" Breanna Butler, a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, said when asked about the meeting on Saturday. One of the businessmen, Sagar Chordia, posted photographs on Facebook on Wednesday showing that he also met with Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump. Mr. Trump's children are helping to run his businesses as they play a part in the presidential transition. Ms. Butler and Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, declined to comment when asked on Saturday if the meeting with the Trump family members included any discussion of Trump businesses in India or expanding that business. The three Indian executives \u2014 Sagar Chordia, Atul Chordia, and Kalpesh Mehta \u2014 have been quoted in Indian newspapers, including The Economic Times, as saying they have discussed expanding their partnership with the Trump Organization now that Mr. Trump is . Sagar Chordia did not respond to a request for a telephone interview. But in a series of text messages with The New York Times early Sunday, he confirmed that the meeting with Mr. Trump and members of his family had taken place, and that an article written about it in the Indian newspaper, which reported that one of his partners said they had discussed the desire to expand the deals with the Trump family, was accurate. Washington ethics lawyers said that a meeting with Indian real estate partners, regardless of what was discussed, raised conflict of interest questions for Mr. Trump, who could be perceived as using the presidency to advance his business interests. \"There may be people for whom this looks O. K.,\" said Robert L. Walker, the former chief counsel of the Senate Ethics Committee, who advises corporations and members of Congress on government ethics issues. \"But for a large part of the American public, it is not going to be O. K. His role as should dictate that someone else handles business matters. \" In an account of the meeting that appeared in The Economic Times, Mr. Trump was quoted as praising the United States' relationship with India and its prime minister, Narendra Modi. The Economic Times reported that the meeting occurred on Tuesday. A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization would not confirm the day of the meeting. Internationally, many properties that bear Mr. Trump's name are the result of marketing deals \u2014 like the one in India \u2014 in which he is paid by someone for the use of his name but does not actually own the underlying property. He has such marketing agreements in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, the Philippines and Turkey, according to a list published by his company. Atul Chordia and Sagar Chordia are figures in real estate in Pune, a city of about three million people in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. Their father, Ishwardas Chordia, was born into a family of sugar traders, but as a young man forged a close friendship with Sharad Pawar, who became an important politician in Maharashtra and now sits in the upper house of India's Parliament. Beginning in the 1990s, Chordia businesses built luxury hotels, corporate parks and residential projects in upscale neighborhoods in Pune. The third executive at the meeting, Mr. Mehta, is the managing partner of a firm named Tribeca, which is also a part of the Trump projects in India, which go by names including Trump Towers Pune and Trump Towers Mumbai. Dave Besseling, a former deputy editor at GQ India, hosted an event at Sagar Chordia's hotel during the 2016 presidential campaign and said Mr. Chordia expressed \"elation\" about Mr. Trump's candidacy and the opportunities it would bring. The same week, Mr. Trump's daughter Ivanka \u2014 an executive at the Trump Organization hotel chain \u2014 attended a meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan. The move drew criticism from former State Department officials, given that Ms. Trump does not have security clearance and is helping run the family business enterprises. Separately, The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the recently opened Trump International Hotel in Washington invited representatives from local embassies to the hotel after the election to encourage them to use it when leaders from their countries visited Washington. Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a liberal government watchdog group in Washington, said the meeting at Trump Tower was inappropriate even if there had not been conversation about business. \"Donald Trump's children and have been deeply involved in the transition and selecting who will be part of his administration,\" Mr. Bookbinder said. \"At the same time they are deeply involved in the business. There does not seem to be any sign of a meaningful separation of Trump government operations and his business operations. \" Ms. Butler, the spokeswoman for the Trump Organization, said the family was moving to try to formally separate Mr. Trump from his family's business ventures. \"Mr. Trump is not going to have dealings in the business of that organization,\" she said. Another spokeswoman for the Trump Organization added in a written statement that \"the structure that is ultimately selected will comply with all applicable rules and regulations. \" Asked if such a separation had already taken place in the aftermath of the election, she said she did not know.","label":0}
{"text":"Things didn t go as well as Nicholle had hoped and now, she s lashing out at the owner of the billboard company who was inundated with calls from angry residents.Rouse & Revolt owner Nicholle Lewis told Newsweek that she didn t sleep much last night. Her phone wouldn t stop going off with the persistent buzzing of death threats for her sign, which stylizes the number 45 into a swastika and features Trump posed in a Hitler-esque stance. I m living in a small, podunk red town and I m already getting death threats, said Lewis, whose store is in right-leaning Chico, population 90,000. My business has completely floundered. Overnight I had more one-star reviews than all the reviews I ve received in a year. The sign was up for less than 24 hours before Stott Outdoor Advertising took it down amid a backlash that featured online attacks.But Lewis said she s standing behind her beliefs. I don t necessarily think that just because I m a business doesn t mean I can t mix my beliefs, Lewis said. That s a common misconception that you can t mix politics and business. I have a platform and I m going to use it. Lewis has used the billboard at the corner of Third Avenue and Mangrove Avenue all year, though this is the first time she s made it political. He is not presidential, he is not a president, Lewis said. He is a celebrity who was born into money. And he s a Nazi sympathizer. I am going to stand behind my beliefs regardless. Lewis said she has been getting some support, too.Lewis got slammed by bad reviews on her store, Rouse and Revolt Facebook page, as well as her personal Facebook page, where she posted this video. In the video, Lewis pleas with liberals to make false claims against the sign company, as a payback because she s been hit with bad reviews. That s called liberal logic, in case you re not familiar with how liberal operate.Watch, as angry liberal Nicholle Haber Lewis threatens the sign company with a lawsuit while simultaneously asking libs to help her destroy his business.(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.10\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));Posted by Nicholle Haber Lewis on Friday, October 6, 2017The general manager of Stott Outdoor Advertising replied to Newsweek:Jim Moravec, the general manager of Stott Outdoor Advertising, told Newsweek that the company took it down because a lot of people misinterpreted the billboard and who the speaker was. I should have not accepted the ad in the first place, Moravec said, adding that the sign looked more like a call for action than an ad for the clothing store. Newsweek","label":1}
{"text":"Accuracy in Media \u2013 by Cliff Kincaid  In one of her secret speeches, Hillary Clinton said, \"My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders\u2026\" Before this comment was revealed, Adam Taylor of The Washington Post tried to assure everyone that the idea of a North American Union, like the meddlesome and bureaucratic European Union, was dead. Such talk, he said, emanated from \"fringe websites\" and \"conspiracy theorists.\"  The Hillary speech was made to a Brazilian bank known as Ita\u00fa BBA, which describes itself as \"Latin America's largest Corporate & Investment Bank\" and part of the Ita\u00fa Unibanco group, \"one of the world's largest financial conglomerates.\"  The problem for Taylor and other faux journalists is that there is a whole body of research on the topic of a \" North American Law Project ,\" designed to integrate the legal systems of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The project is run out of American University's Center for North American Studies, where students can concentrate in North American Studies . As a matter of fact, such degrees are being offered by several different colleges and universities, including Canada's McGill University .  Passed in 1993, NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, began the process of harmonizing laws among the U.S., Canada and Mexico. But the Council on Foreign Relations admits that the U.S.-Mexico trade balance swung from a $1.7 billion U.S. surplus in 1993 to a $54 billion deficit by 2014. This has led to a loss of about 600,000 jobs.  In addition to shipping jobs to Mexico, NAFTA constituted subversion of our constitutional system. President Clinton submitted NAFTA as an agreement, requiring only a majority of votes in both Houses of Congress for passage, and not a treaty, which would have required a two-thirds vote in favor in the Senate. NAFTA passed by votes of 234-200 in the House and 61-38 in the Senate.  A money crash soon followed in 1995 as Mexico was hit by a peso crisis, and a U.S. bailout was arranged. Congress would not bail out Mexico, so Clinton arranged for loans and guarantees to Mexico totaling almost $40 billion through the International Monetary Fund and the \"Exchange Stabilization Fund.\"  Meanwhile, pressure has been building for the creation of a \"North American Community\"\u2014also known as a \"North American Union\"\u2014with regular meetings involving the leaders of the three countries. On June 29, 2016, the Obama White House issued a fact sheet on this year's \"North American Leaders' Summit.\" It said, \"The economies of the United States, Canada, and Mexico are deeply integrated. Canada and Mexico are our second and third largest trading partners. Our trade with them exceeds $1.2 trillion dollars annually.\"  The leaders of these countries agreed to establish a \"North American Caucus\" to \"more effectively work in concert on regional and global issues by holding semi-annual coordination meetings among our foreign ministries.\" One item on the agenda was for the leaders to reaffirm \"North America's strong support for [Colombian] President Santos's efforts to finalize a peace accord with the FARC guerrillas.\" That fell apart on October 2 when a \"peace deal\" with the communist terrorists was voted down by the people of Colombia.  But notice how these leaders claim to speak for \"North America.\"  Going global, they also declared, \"North America is committed to joint and coordinated actions to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda.\"  This is U.N.-speak for global taxes and other forms of foreign aid from the U.S. to the rest of the world.  We noted in a column last year that the American people, through their elected representatives, have had absolutely no input in developing the new global agenda that President Obama has tried to implement without the input or approval of Congress.  Interestingly, one of those deeply involved in this global agenda, as we noted at the time, was John Podesta, the chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign who previously served as counselor to Obama. Podesta's emails are at the center of the WikiLeaks disclosures about the operations of the Clinton campaign, the Clinton Foundation and the Democratic Party.  Podesta, founder of the George Soros-funded Center for American Progress and a member of the elitist Trilateral Commission , went to work for Obama as a senior policy consultant on climate change. A liberal Catholic, he has been a professor at Georgetown Law School. One of the leaked emails shows Podesta saying that he applauds the work of Pope Francis on climate change and that \"all my Jesuit friends say the Pope is the real deal.\"  Podesta was picked by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to be a member of the \"high-level panel\" of \"eminent persons\" planning the future of the globe. This so-called \"High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda\" released an 81-page report titled, \"A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development.\"  \"In simplest terms,\" explains Patrick Wood, author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation , \"Sustainable Development is a replacement economic system for capitalism and free enterprise. It is a system based on resource allocation and usage rather than on supply and demand and free economic market forces.\"  In this context, Wood argues that the major significance of the transfer of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is not the immediate need by the U.N. or some countries to censor websites, but to generate revenue for global purposes. ICANN will do this, he argues, through management of the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), the links between the Internet and networks, electronic devices and embedded technology with IP addresses. \"IoT are the connections between inanimate objects and the humans that depend upon them,\" he notes. To accomplish this, ICANN has devised a new IP numbering system called IPV6, described as the \" vital expansion \" of the Internet.  \"In terms of 'follow the money,' IoT is expected to generate upwards of $3 trillion by 2025 and is growing at a rate of at least 30 percent per year,\" Wood argues . \"In other words, it is a huge market and money is flying everywhere. If the UN can figure out a way to tax this market, and they will, it will provide a windfall of income and perhaps enough to make it self-perpetuating.\"  He adds, \"Congress never understood this when they passively let Obama fail to renew our contract with ICANN. However, Obama and his globalist handlers understood it perfectly well, which makes the deception and treachery of it even worse.\"  Under the cover of \"sustainable development,\" Wood predicts the Internet will be used to construct a massive database on human activities, in order to monitor and control nations' and peoples' access to resources. It will constitute ultimate socialist control and a form of \"digital slavery,\" from which he warns there may be no return.  Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org. View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid .","label":1}
{"text":"Sarah Silverman and Bill Maher destroyed the so-called Fox Republican debates in what Maher described as completely fact free. They both wondered why Hillary and Bernie couldn t debate the Republican candidates right now. This, they agreed, would at least inject some facts in the debates since the Fox moderators refused to do so. Megyn Kelly, if you re such a serious person, said Maher, ask one question about the environment. [youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=DNYjzvy5zuA]Sarah Silverman also let loose on the candidates and their supporters saying, Only at a Republican-only debate can you be trying to win over the audience by saying I m going to cut education. She s right! It s something out of the Twilight Zone, where candidates are trying to outdo each other to see who s more likely to destroy the middle class.It s also quite crazy that the candidates weren t asked why the Republicans want to cut funding for the very water agency that could have stopped the water problem before the poisoning of the children of Flint, Michigan. The water poisoning of course was done under the watch of a Republican governor. It s alarming that Fox moderators didn t address this issue, especially since the debates were in Detroit.It seems as though the Fox moderators showed little interest in fact checking and the idea that Fox moderators are hard on Trump or any other Republican candidates is ludicrous.","label":1}
{"text":"Veteran Venezuelan opposition leader Antonio Ledezma, under house arrest since 2015 for alleged coup plotting, escaped across the border to Colombia on Friday and later flew to Spain. With a 2018 presidential election looming, an array of major Venezuelan opposition figures are now in exile, detention or are barred from holding office. They say Maduro has turned Venezuela into a dictatorship, while the government accuses them of joining forces with a U.S.-led global plot to topple him. Ledezma, the best-known detained opponent of leftist President Nicolas Maduro after Leopoldo Lopez, had spearheaded street protests against Maduro in 2014 that led to months of violence and 43 deaths. In Spain today I feel free, he said at Madrid s Barajas airport, where he arrived in the early hours of Saturday. He was cheered by a small crowd including his wife and two daughters, who were already in Spain. Supporters chanted the Venezuelan anthem. Let s not permit that Venezuela dies in our hands, he also said, adding that he would soon meet with Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. The 62-year-old former Caracas metropolitan mayor said he had gone past 29 police and army controls during a clandestine, overland journey that he kept secret from his loved ones. I ask my wife and daughters to understand. They have suffered long hours of anguish without knowing where I was, he told reporters in the Colombian border town of Cucuta after crossing a bridge from San Antonio in Venezuela. It was my decision alone. Welcome to freedom! tweeted former Colombian President Andres Pastrana, who is close to Venezuela s opposition and the families of other jailed activists. Ledezma was mocked by Maduro as The Vampire, and accused by officials of helping violent hardliners, including dissident military officers plotting to topple the president via air strikes. Ledezma said those charges were trumped up. I hope they never send him back, they can keep the Vampire, Maduro said on Friday evening. The people of Madrid will have to be careful at night, the Vampire (is going) to Madrid. Before boarding a private plane to Bogota, Ledezma said he was planning a global pilgrimage to fight for political freedom in Venezuela. He thanked Colombia s government, which also recently gave asylum to another high-profile Venezuelan dissident, former state prosecutor Luisa Ortega. It s time for him (Maduro) to step aside and allow a transition government, said Ledezma. Maduro cannot keep torturing the Venezuelan people, he s killing Venezuelans with hunger. The OPEC nation of 30 million people is suffering a fourth year of brutal recession, with the highest inflation in the world, shortages of food and medicines, and many people having to skip meals or suffering preventable illnesses. Government supporters have long vilified Ledezma for supporting a brief 2002 coup and accused him of corruption. State media repeatedly show a video where a jailed student radical lauds him as an old fox ... the politician who most supported the resistance. Ledezma, along with another opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, has been part of the more militant wing of Venezuela s opposition coalition. Both oppose a planned new political dialogue between the opposition and government scheduled for early December in the Dominican Republic. I left my flag with Maria Corina Machado, in whom I trust completely, Ledezma told reporters. Ledezma won the Caracas mayoralty in 2008, but some of his functions and funding were quickly transferred to a new, pro-government office. Upstaged by younger opposition leaders, Ledezma was not viewed as a future presidential candidate. Intelligence agents took him from his office in Caracas in February 2015. He was originally held at the Ramo Verde military prison before being granted house arrest. Machado told reporters Ledezma had been under increasing pressure from authorities and had faced threats to return him to Ramo Verde due to his opposition to the political dialogue. We believe in real negotiations, but only ones that lead to the exit of the dictatorship, she told reporters.","label":0}
{"text":"Kellyanne Conway: I think the biggest fake news was that Donald Trump couldn t win. pic.twitter.com\/T5i68K0gW4 Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 2, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"When the two men plunged into the unforgiving wilderness of the Adirondacks, they had scant experience and supplies better suited to boys running away from home than to convicted killers fleeing a prison: pepperoni sticks, toilet paper, a cache of black pepper, an electric shaver and 40 granola bars, all packed in a cloth guitar case. But they managed to avoid capture for three weeks in the rugged northernmost reaches of New York State. Navigating by the stars and using evasion tactics gleaned from Vietnam War movies, they pillaged peanut butter and pasta \u2014 as well as moonshine and marijuana \u2014 from remote hunting cabins. They stole sleep by the hour and tracked their pursuers' movements via news reports on a purloined transistor radio. In the end, feet worn bloody by flight, they argued and went their separate ways before their bids for freedom ended \u2014 one in capture, one in death. The escape of David Sweat and Richard W. Matt in June 2015 from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N. Y. captivated the nation. And much of the tale has since been told: how they patiently planned their escape how they manipulated the affections of a female prison employee how they broke out of the prison, one of the state's toughest. But little has been disclosed about what it was actually like for the two hunted men during their slog in the deep woods between the prison and the Canadian border. The survivor, Mr. Sweat, has told their story in novelistic detail \u2014 it reads like a new twist on a grand wilderness adventure \u2014 to investigators from the New York State Police, the state inspector general's office and the state prison agency in a series of interviews that began from his hospital bed the day he was captured. It is contained in more than 500 pages of transcripts. It is the drama as seen from the vantage point of the hunted, the police and dogs always just one step behind, hopscotching from rural roads to rutted mountainsides, dragging themselves through swamps and up and down steep inclines. The men cobbled together their supplies from what was available inside the prison \u2014 \"You plan for the worst, hope for the best,\" Mr. Sweat said \u2014 amassing a supply of black pepper he later used to throw dogs off his scent, along with a shaver so they would not look like bearded fugitives. Much of the time the two men spent cold, wet, shivering nights sleeping on the ground or in elevated hunting blinds, platforms hidden high in the trees from which hunters stalk and shoot their prey, a perch from which Mr. Sweat said in one instance he could identify the search area by watching helicopters and planes above. But they also spent some time in cabins used by hunters, at least some of which belong to state corrections officers who work in the prisons like Clinton, Mr. Sweat said. It was in one cabin that they found the moonshine and marijuana, which, along with a propane heater and an ample supply of food, would allow them to stay for two nights. In another officer's camp, they found a shotgun, which they took, and uniform jackets belonging to the corrections officers, which they apparently did not. \"I found their weed and everything,\" Mr. Sweat, 36, told his interrogators, referring to the first cabin. \"I was laughing my ass \u2014 because I like to smoke weed every once in a while. It mellows me out, keeps me calm. \" A senior investigator with the State Police asked if they had smoked any that night. \"Yes, we got high as hell for like two nights,\" he said, adding that they also drank the moonshine. \"So you know we'd drink, get high and hang out because there ain't nobody coming up here during the week. \" The two convicted killers practically played house. \"We'd turn the heaters on and we'd cook,\" Mr. Sweat recalled. \"We made pasta and everything else because they had pasta there, because we didn't care \u2014 it was the C. O. s,'\" he said, using the shorthand for corrections officers, noting they were unlikely to report the because of the marijuana. The transcripts of the interviews were obtained under the state's Freedom of Information Law. They reveal Mr. Sweat as an enthusiastic raconteur, eager to regale his questioners with his backwoods accomplishments and his skills of improvisation. He was also quick to vent his apparent frustration with what he characterized as his sluggish, foolhardy and sometimes drunken fellow escapee, Mr. Matt. \"I got in an argument with him because every place we'd go, he'd get drunk,\" Mr. Sweat complained. \"And he would drink when we were moving. I'm like, 'Dude, you can't be drunk when we're moving you've got to be sober. '\" The two men found the transistor radio and a refrigerator full of beer at another cabin, Mr. Sweat told the investigators. And in addition to helping them keep track of where the authorities were searching for them, the radio also provided some measure of entertainment and satisfaction. \"It was actually kind of a running joke between him and me because on the radio they're like, 'Oh they're not woodsmen, this and that,'\" Mr. Sweat said. \"And we'd laugh about it. It's funny \u2026 we're not woodsmen and we've been in the woods for weeks. \" Then he gloated. \"They can't catch us. But we're not woodsmen. \" Mr. Sweat said Mr. Matt, 49, had reckless ideas \u2014 shooting troopers, carjacking on the rural roads or sticking people up in their homes and taking their money and cars. After two weeks, Mr. Matt began to wear on him. With their hunters in hot pursuit, Mr. Sweat left him behind. \"I said, you know what, I hate to do it to him, but I kept my part of the deal, I got him out,\" he said, \"and I bolted on him. \" On June 26, a drunken Mr. Matt was confronted by a United States Border Patrol tactical unit, and, the authorities say, pointed a shotgun at one of its members. A federal agent shot him twice in the head and once in the neck. Two days later, Mr. Sweat was walking on a rural road just a mile and a half from the Canadian border when a sergeant in a State Police car approached him. Mr. Sweat believed the sergeant was confused because Mr. Sweat had shaved the night before as part of his plan for not looking like a haggard convict on the run. Mr. Sweat started to cross a field of alfalfa, heading for the tree line on the opposite side. The sergeant tried to call Mr. Sweat back to the road, saying, \"Come here. \" But Mr. Sweat responded with, \"No, I'm good,\" and kept walking. He started moving faster. The sergeant swore at him. \"He started running behind me,\" Mr. Sweat recalled. \"I took off. The next thing he says: 'I'm going to shoot you. If you don't stop, I'm going to shoot you.' I said: 'I ain't got no weapons. I don't have no weapons. '\" Mr. Sweat said he held his hands up so the trooper could see he was unarmed, but he kept running. The tree line got closer. He dropped the bag he was carrying. The sergeant got down on one knee, carefully set up his shot and fired. \"He hit me twice and it was \u2014 the first one hit me in the shoulder the top,\" Mr. Sweat said. \"It killed this whole arm. I couldn't move it. And the other one was on the other side. I thought, 'Man, I'm going to hit the ground,' and just started spitting blood up. He hit my lung. \" After Mr. Sweat recovered, he pleaded guilty to escape and promotion of prison contraband and was sentenced to three and a half to seven years in prison, on top of his sentence for the 2002 killing of a Broome County sheriff's deputy. He is currently in the Special Housing Unit at Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, N. Y. the state's newest prison. Portions of Mr. Sweat's account could not be corroborated, with Mr. Matt, the only other witness to many of the events, dead. And while a report this summer by the state inspector general, Catherine detailing the prison lapses that led to the escape in some measure relied on Mr. Sweat's account of the breakout itself, it acknowledged that questions would arise about his motivation and credibility. But the report noted that information he provided under oath had been corroborated, wherever possible, by other evidence, adding, \"In instances where no independent corroboration exists, the inspector general has found Sweat's account credible and consistent with other known facts. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Airplane manufacturer Boeing is set to start testing vehicles according to new reports. [The Independent reports that Boeing will soon be testing planes, possibly utilizing artificial intelligence to make decisions usually left up to human pilots. Boeing's aim is to develop an aircraft that can operate entirely with minimal human interaction. Planes can already take off, cruise, and land without much interaction from human pilots, so the idea of a fully functioning artificial plane is not too far fetched. Mike Sinnett, Boeing's vice president of product development, told Reuters, \"When I look at the future I see a need for you know 41, 000 commercial jet airplanes over the course of the next 20 years. And that means we're going to need something like six hundred and seventeen thousand more pilots. That's a lot of pilots. \" He continued to say, \"so one of the ways that may be solved is by having some type of autonomous behaviour and that could be anything from taking instead of five pilots on a long haul flight down to three or two, taking two pilots down to one in a freight situation, or in some cases going from one to none. \" \"So one of the ways that may be solved is by having some type of autonomous behaviour and that could be anything from taking instead of five pilots on a long haul flight down to three or two, taking two pilots down to one in a freight situation, or in some cases going from one to none,\" he explained. Starting this summer, Boeing will use advanced cockpit simulators used in the training of pilots to test the new technology before implementing it in an actual aircraft. Boeing isn't the only airplane manufacturer looking at automated travel: Airbus is currently working on flying cars and will be testing flying taxis by the end of 2017 with the aim of rolling out further access to the taxis in 2021. Airbus, however, is looking to develop an system while Boeing seems to be focusing on long haul, large passenger flights. Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"Forty former U.S. diplomats and national security officials urged Secretary of State Rex Tillerson not to eliminate the State Department office that handles refugees in a letter seen by Reuters on Monday. The letter argued that a Trump administration proposal to transfer the responsibilities of the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) to other agencies would undercut U.S. diplomatic leverage in grappling with foreign crises. Among the retired officials who signed the letter were former Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, former Under Secretaries of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and Wendy Sherman and former Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross. \"Whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kenya, Turkey or South Sudan, the Department of State's efforts to address humanitarian crises must include the tightest coordination of diplomatic engagement and emergency assistance,\" the letter, which was also signed by 18 executives with non-governmental aid agencies, said. \"We are convinced that the elimination of PRM's assistance functions would have profound and negative implications for the Secretary of State's capacity to influence policy issues of key concern to the United States,\" the letter said. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Tillerson \"has no preconceived notions about the outcome of the transformation process he has begun at the State Department.\" She added that Tillerson viewed the work of both the Bureau of Consular Affairs and the PRM as \"essential to the Department's mission to secure our borders and protect the American people.\" A memo to the Office of Management and Budget seen by Reuters proposes giving PRM's responsibility for the U.S. Refugee Admission Program, which helps resettle refugees in the United States, to the Department of Homeland Security. The memo, which was first reported by CNN on June 30 and which a former official said was prepared by the White House's domestic policy council, proposes transferring its other responsibilities elsewhere and eliminating the bureau. The memo and the letter from the former officials appear to be part of a wider struggle over refugee and immigration policy. This includes executive orders signed by President Donald Trump and challenged in court temporarily banning most refugees and most citizens from some Muslim-majority countries from entering, an internal debate over the cost of resettling refugees and a crackdown on illegal immigration. The issue may come up at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing at 5 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Monday where Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan is scheduled to testify about the State Department's reorganization plans.","label":0}
{"text":"The White House is declining to offer public support for draft legislation that would empower judges to require technology companies such as Apple Inc to help law enforcement crack encrypted data, sources familiar with the discussions said. The decision all but assures that the years-long political impasse over encryption will continue even in the wake of the high-profile effort by the Department of Justice to force Apple to break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last December's shootings in San Bernardino, California. President Obama suggested in remarks last month that he had come around to the view that law enforcement agencies needed to have a way to gain access to encrypted information on smartphones. But the administration remains deeply divided on the issue, the sources said. The draft legislation from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the Republican chair and top Democrat respectively of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is expected to be introduced as soon as this week. The bill gives federal judges broad authority to order tech companies to help the government but does not spell out what companies might have to do or the circumstances under which they could be ordered to help, according to sources familiar with the text. It also does not create specific penalties for noncompliance. Although the White House has reviewed the text and offered feedback, it is expected to provide minimal public input, if any, the sources said. Its stance is partly a reflection of a political calculus that any encryption bill would be controversial and is unlikely to go far in a gridlocked Congress during an election year, sources said. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the pending legislation, but referred to White House press secretary Josh Earnest's statements on encryption legislation. Last month Earnest said the administration is \"skeptical\" of lawmakers' ability to resolve the encryption debate given their difficulty in tackling \"simple things.\" Tech companies and civil liberties advocates have opposed encryption legislation, arguing that mandating law enforcement access to tech products will undermine security for everyone. Several lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat, have vowed to oppose any attempt to limit encryption protections in U.S. technology products. Even some intelligence officials worry that enabling law enforcement agencies to override encryption will create more problems than it solves by opening the door to hackers and foreign intelligence services. Some also say it is unnecessary because the government has other means of getting the information it needs. The Justice Department dropped its legal action against Apple last week, saying it had found a way to hack into the phone. The White House last year backed away from pursuing legislation that would require U.S. technology firms to provide a \"back door\" to access encrypted data. The backpedaling resembled a retreat by President Bill Clinton's administration in the 1990s on efforts to require a special computer chip in phones to give the U.S. government a way to monitor encrypted conversations. But the desire for encryption legislation among some intelligence and law enforcement officials has never gone away, and it gained new life after the Islamist militant-inspired attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. Obama, speaking at the South by Southwest entertainment festival in Austin, Texas, last month, warned against \"fetishizing our phones\" and said that doing nothing to address law enforcement's encryption challenges \"can't be the right answer.\" Obama, however, also cautioned against Congress taking any action that would be \"sloppy and rushed.\" Apple and others have called on Congress to help find a solution to the problem of criminals and terrorists using encryption to avoid surveillance. A separate proposal to form a national encryption commission to further study the issue is also not expected to be enacted this year. Meanwhile, tech companies are stepping up their efforts to implement encryption and other security measures. The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp announced this week that it had implemented complete encryption of its service - and now cannot get access to customer messages even if was ordered to by a court.","label":0}
{"text":"by Peter Schiff, Schiff Gold :  Next to Donald Trump's economic policies, one of the most spirited economic debates at the moment involves which direction the dollar will move in the coming months. While Goldman Sachs is predicting the dollar and euro will reach a value equivalency by Q4 of 2017, other analysts see the greenback trending downward next year.  The dollar has risen 4.4% against the euro and 2% against a basket of world currencies since Trump's win on November 8, according to Fortune. Big moves within securities and bonds markets since Trump's victory are creating a general sense of uncertainty, making predicting anything a difficult task.  But for market veterans like Jim Paulsen of Wells Capital Management and Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital, the dollar's demise is clear given inflationary anticipations mixed with short and long-term interest rate increases.  Paulsen recently described the weakening dollar as \"the big wild card in 2017,\" according to CNBC, and stating, \"As inflation expectations go north, that's a deterrent and a negative for the US dollar,\" he said. Underpinning Paulsen's theory are historical trends in funds rate increases. \"There [have] been five major increases in the funds rates since the 1970s, and every one of them, when the Fed raised rates, the dollar came down.\"  Schiff said he sees higher interest rates, stemming from inflationary pressures, as detrimental to the dollar. Despite the spike in bond yields, investors seem to be looking to Trump's fiscal stimulus and tax cuts to provide demand side pressure, increasing consumer spending. Schiff explains: \"So far the stock market is remaining oblivious to the spike in bond yields because they think the stimulus that might result from tax cuts and spending increases will be enough to offset the drag of higher interest rates. I think they are woefully mistaken.\"  Paulsen also sees at a weak dollar providing a good opportunity for international investments. A weak dollar means US exports will be less competitive. Overseas markets could benefit as a result. Paulsen provides his analysis:  \"I think those markets are under-owned, they've under-performed for several years \u2026 They're better relative values,\" Paulsen said. \"They have younger earnings cycles than the more mature cycle in the United States. They're going to have longer policy support than the United States will.\"  A weak dollar will mean gold is likely to grow in value. Schiff thinks the recent drop if bullion's price is only a head fake, stating: \"people who are betting on the dollar and betting against gold have no idea the impact of higher interest rates. Buying gold and silver in the coming weeks could put investors looking to diversify their portfolio ahead of the curve.","label":1}
{"text":"The day before the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, sent a letter to Congress announcing that new evidence had been discovered that might be related to the completed Hillary Clinton email investigation, the Justice Department strongly discouraged the step and told him that he would be breaking with longstanding policy, three law enforcement officials said on Saturday. Senior Justice Department officials did not move to stop him from sending the letter, officials said, but they did everything short of it, pointing to policies against talking about current criminal investigations or being seen as meddling in elections. That Mr. Comey moved ahead despite those protestations underscores the unusual nature of Friday's revelations, which added a dramatic twist to the final days of the presidential campaign. His action reignited a firestorm that Mrs. Clinton believed she had put behind her when the F. B. I. decided in July not to charge anyone in the investigation into the handling of classified information on her private email server. Mr. Comey's letter did not reopen that inquiry, even as he promised to review the new information, which was discovered in an unrelated investigation into the disgraced former congressman Anthony D. Weiner. Senior Justice Department officials, career prosecutors and even some at the F. B. I. were at a loss on Saturday as to what would happen next. Would Mr. Comey provide a accounting of the F. B. I. 's steps until Election Day? Did he plan further announcements? Or did he intend, after shaking up the election with his letter, to remain silent about the facts until the presidential votes had been tallied? The F. B. I. offered no comment, and Justice Department officials said they had no idea what Mr. Comey saw as his next move. Justice Department officials were particularly puzzled about why Mr. Comey had alerted Congress \u2014 and by extension, the public \u2014 before agents even began reading the newly discovered emails to determine whether they contained classified information or added new facts to the case. Law enforcement officials have begun the process to get court authority to read the emails, officials said. How soon they will get that is unclear, but there is no chance that the review will be completed before Election Day, several law enforcement officials said. Many of the emails are most likely copies of messages that the F. B. I. has already read, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Despite the Justice Department's concerns, Mr. Comey felt obligated to send the letter. But it opened him up to fierce criticism not only from Democrats but also from current and former officials at the F. B. I. and the Justice Department, including Republicans. \"There's a longstanding policy of not doing anything that could influence an election,\" said George J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general under President George Bush. \"Those guidelines exist for a reason. Sometimes, that makes for hard decisions. But bypassing them has consequences. \" He added, \"There's a difference between being independent and flying solo. \" After reports surfaced late last month that Mr. Weiner had sent illicit text messages to a girl in North Carolina, top prosecutors in Charlotte and Manhattan jockeyed for the case. Senior officials in the Justice Department decided that if there were a prosecution, it would take place in New York under the supervision of the United States attorney there, Preet Bharara. Almost immediately, it became clear to investigators that the Weiner case might reignite the Clinton inquiry. Mr. Weiner's estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, and F. B. I. agents in the earlier investigation had interviewed her and reviewed her emails looking for classified information. On Oct. 3, F. B. I. agents seized several electronic devices from Mr. Weiner: a laptop, his iPhone and an iPad that was in large measure used by his son to watch cartoons, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Days later, F. B. I. agents also confiscated a router that could identify any other devices that had been used, the person said. While searching the laptop, the agents discovered the existence of tens of thousands of emails, some of them sent between Ms. Abedin and other Clinton aides, according to senior law enforcement officials. It is not clear if Ms. Abedin downloaded the emails to the laptop or if they were automatically backed up there. The emails dated back years, the officials said. Ms. Abedin has testified that she did not routinely delete her emails. Because of the age of the emails, many could be outside the scope of the Clinton inquiry, investigators said. And while many are probably duplicative, some would be worth reading, the F. B. I. concluded. In conversations this month, senior Justice Department and F. B. I. officials agreed that the matter was worth pursuing. By law, though, agents and prosecutors in the Clinton investigation could not immediately read the new emails without court authority. The authorities decided only recently to seek that approval. They do not know whether the emails contain classified information or, if they do, whether that would change their determination that nobody should be charged with mishandling it. So Justice Department officials were surprised on Thursday afternoon to receive notice of Mr. Comey's intention to send the letter to Congress. The letter, issued as early voting was underway in some states, guaranteed a new round of questions for Mrs. Clinton just before Election Day. The Justice Department and the F. B. I. have a longstanding policy against discussing current criminal investigations. Another Justice Department policy, restated each election cycle, declares that politics should play no role in investigative decisions. Both Democratic and Republican administrations have interpreted that policy broadly to cover any steps that might give even an impression of partisanship. \"We must be particularly sensitive to safeguarding the department's reputation for fairness, neutrality and nonpartisanship,\" said a 2012 memo from the attorney general's office that restated the policy. But although Mr. Comey told Congress this summer that the Clinton investigation was complete, he believed that if word of the new emails leaked out \u2014 and it was sure to leak out, he concluded \u2014 he risked being accused of misleading Congress and the public ahead of an election, colleagues said. Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch did not directly speak with Mr. Comey about the matter, officials said, but senior Justice Department officials sent word of her concerns. Though Ms. Lynch is technically Mr. Comey's boss, she, too, faced a dilemma. If she ordered Mr. Comey not to send the letter, it could appear that she was trying to withhold information from Congress. After hearing the Justice Department's argument, Mr. Comey concluded that the ramifications of not telling Congress far outweighed concerns about the department guidelines, one senior law enforcement official said. On Friday, Mr. Comey sent Congress the letter, which said emails had surfaced in a case unrelated to the Clinton case. Mr. Comey said that the F. B. I. would review the emails to determine if they improperly contained classified information, adding that the emails \"appear to be pertinent. \" It was the latest example of a sometimes strained relationship between the Justice Department and Mr. Comey, who \u2014 on issues of race, encryption, policing and, most notably, the Clinton investigation \u2014 has branded himself as someone who operates outside Washington's typical chain of command. The letter rankled Mrs. Clinton's supporters in part because Mr. Comey has been circumspect in his remarks about another federal investigation, this one involving allegations of Russian meddling in the election. American officials believe that Russian intelligence agents are behind the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails, which have embarrassed the Clinton campaign. Senior Democrats have called on the F. B. I. to investigate whether any of Donald J. Trump's aides are colluding with Russia. Some of his aides have ties to Russian interests, but they have denied any wrongdoing. While Mr. Comey told Congress last month that he would not confirm the existence of any investigation into people associated with Mr. Trump, he said he felt compelled to discuss details of the Clinton investigation because it involved \"exceptional circumstances where the public needed information. \" Matthew Miller, a Democrat and former Justice Department spokesman who has criticized Mr. Comey's handling of the email investigation, said the F. B. I. director should not pick and choose when to follow the guidelines. \"You can't apply the usual standard to one candidate and an entirely different set of rules for the other,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Oroville Dam's spillway was forced to reopen at maximum flow as over 50, 000 cubic feet per second of water careened into the lake and weather scientists warned of an impending 7 to heatwave that could cause flooding from an accelerated snowmelt. [Water inflow at Lake Oroville on April 14 at 3 p. m. was a stunning 51, 378 cubic feet per second, up from 15, 000 cubic feet just 48 hours earlier. With the water level rising to 865. 84 feet, just 4. 14 feet from the danger zone, California Department of Water Resources engineers opened the dam's gates and started continuously releasing water at down the spillway at its top rate of 35, 069 cubic feet per second. Breitbart News reported that the Northern Sierras on April 13 set an record of 89. 7 inches of precipitation for the water year. We warned that a new series of Northern California storms through the Easter holidays was expected to bring heavy rain and hail to the lower elevations, and up to 6 inches of new snow above level. Breitbart News also reported that Eldridge M. Moores, California's preeminent expert regarding tectonic plate movements in mountain belts, told KQED that the main reason Oroville Dam's spillway failed and almost took down the dam itself was due to the structural flaw of using deteriorating incompetent rock ago to anchor the spillway, rather than fresh rock granite that could have lasted up to a 1, 000 years. The California Department of Water Resources declared a very significant risk if repairs to the damaged spillways were not completed and both spillways for the next rainy season that begins on November 1. The large construction crew that has been feverishly trying to repair the spillway, was removed just hours before it reopened. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency now forecasts that the strong heating pattern in of the equatorial Pacific Ocean will develop this summer into an El Ni\u00f1o, creating a high probability of a wet water year that begins on November 1. In another dangerous development, UCLA climate scientist and author of the Water West blog, Daniel Swain, posted images taken from space by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Global Forecast Satellite System that has identified a high probability of a potential 7 to heat wave bearing down on northern California. Swain warned that of a major snowmelt across the Sierras. He warned that a Hurricane flood risk could develop along eastern slopes of Sierra Nevada Mountains over the coming weeks. He highlighted that that the melting snowpack on the Nevada side could send 500 billion gallons of water into the swollen Walker and Carson rivers.","label":0}
{"text":"Russian cyber operatives have attacked Britain s media, telecommunications and energy sectors over the past year, according to prepared remarks by the head of the government s main cyber defense agency. Ciaran Martin, chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), declined to provide any details on the attacks in a speech scheduled for Wednesday in London. The remarks follow comments on Monday from Prime Minister Theresa May in which she accused Russia of spreading disinformation and meddling in elections, echoing a heated debate in the United States over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Russian has strongly denied any election interference in the United States. The Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond when asked after normal business hours for comment on Martin s remarks. The NCSC, a branch of the GCHQ, Britain s main signals intelligence agency, has been in operation for a year and is charged with shoring up cyber security by working with a wide range of stakeholders. Martin said in his prepared remarks: I can confirm that Russian interference, seen by the National Cyber Security Centre over the past the year, has included attacks on the UK media, telecommunication and energy sectors. The agency was actively engaging with international partners, industry and civil society to tackle the threat from Russia, he said. Martin echoed May s comments that Russia was trying to undermine the international system with information warfare and cyber attacks. Cyber security experts have long worried about attacks on electrical grids in particular, but Martin offered no evidence that the alleged Russian attacks succeeded in penetrating power systems or other critical infrastructure in the UK. ( This story has been refiled to fix transposed letters in acronym in 5th paragraph)","label":0}
{"text":"When did Americans decide they were okay with Democrats exempting themselves from the same laws everyone else is required to follow? Fox News reporter Leland Vittert had a brief exchange with Al Sharpton and Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.Vittert said he wanted Rawlings-Blake to answer a number of questions about the rioting over the past few days in the wake of Freddie Gray s death. He said he asked: What do you have to say to the number of officers injured, and what do you have to say to businesses that were looted during a reported stand down order? Why can t we ask questions? Vittert asked.Rawlings-Blake remained silent while Sharpton said they d answer questions at the press conference.Vittert added that he asked officers who shoved [him] out of the way why they were protecting the mayor from simple questions, yet decided not to protect businesses from rioters.","label":1}
{"text":"The far left is up in arms again, this time over a hacked tape of Hillary Clinton at a fundraiser in a wealthy Virginia suburb. There I was, watching college football and the Ryder Cup as my daughter sat next to me on the couch drawing Rapunzel and Ariel. Halftime of the game I was watching came so I moseyed over to my office to look in on the political world, expecting not much new at 5 o'clock on a Saturday. Didn't see much at first. And then... oh, what's this? Something about basement dwellers. And Hillary. Making fun of people living in basements? What? Oh Christ. Here we go again. Backstory: The Intercept, the (I think it's fair to say) anti-Clinton-though-by-no-means-pro-Trump web site, got a tape of a talk Clinton gave at a private fundraiser in McLean, Virginia, back in February. No, check that. It looks like the Washington Free Beacon got it first and posted it Tuesday. But the conservative Beacon, reflecting house priorities, led with the fact that Clinton evidently said on the tape that she wouldn't upgrade the nuclear arsenal, which for the Beacon indicates of course that she wants America to lose. After that I'm not certain what happened but it seems as if after the Beacon published the audio, a couple Intercept reporters were the first people on the left who got around to listening to it. The Intercept account, as you might guess, didn't give a rat's pooper about the nuclear arsenal but led with the fact that Clinton said, somewhat unfortunately\u2014but in context only somewhat, for reasons I'll explain\u2014that she occupies the \"center-left to the center-right.\" That was a responsible and, for the Intercept, predictable and understandable way to play the story. But then, by the time it got to the Twittersphere, Clinton was somehow making fun of Sanderistas, mocking them for being such losers that they're living in their parent's basements. The hashtag #basementdwellers was trending like mad when I checked in, and I'd imagine it'll be going strong all night. I read a few of them, which boiled down to fuck you, Hillary, you corporate hack, this is why we need the revolution and you're going to be the first to face the firing squad (although I thought I smelled a lot of trolling from the deplorable caucus too). Of all the arrant bullshit I've seen on Twitter this election, this is easily the bullshittiest. She insulted no one. In fact quite the opposite\u2014for someone speaking behind closed doors to ardent supporters, she was not only restrained, but she openly and directly asked her supporters to be patient with the impatient; that is, to understand the views and motivations of the younger people who wanted more radical change. It is important to recognize what's going on in this election. Everybody who's ever been in an election that I'm aware of is quite bewildered because there is a strain of, on the one hand, the kind of populist, nationalist, xenophobic, discriminatory kind of approach that we hear too much of from the Republican candidates. And on the other side, there's just a deep desire to believe that we can have free college, free healthcare, that what we've done hasn't gone far enough, and that we just need to, you know, go as far as, you know, Scandinavia, whatever that means, and half the people don't know what that means, but it's something that they deeply feel. So as a friend of mine said the other day, I am occupying from the center-left to the center-right. And I don't have much company there. Because it is difficult when you're running to be president, and you understand how hard the job is\u2014I don't want to overpromise. I don't want to tell people things that I know we cannot do. Some are new to politics completely. They're children of the Great Recession. And they are living in their parents' basement. They feel they got their education and the jobs that are available to them are not at all what they envisioned for themselves. And they don't see much of a future. I met with a group of young black millennials today and you know one of the young women said, \"You know, none of us feel that we have the job that we should have gotten out of college. And we don't believe the job market is going to give us much of a chance.\" So that is a mindset that is really affecting their politics. And so if you're feeling like you're consigned to, you know, being a barista, or you know, some other job that doesn't pay a lot, and doesn't have some other ladder of opportunity attached to it, then the idea that maybe, just maybe, you could be part of a political revolution is pretty appealing. So I think we should all be really understanding of that and should try to do the best we can not to be, you know, a wet blanket on idealism. We want people to be idealistic. We want them to set big goals. But to take what we can achieve now and try to present them as bigger goals. All right. Let's parse them. In the first quote, the first sentence is just an opener, and the second critiques the Trump movement. The third sentence critiques the Sanders people, but there's nothing condescending in it. Maybe that \"whatever that means\" after the mention of Scandinavia is a little dismissive. But really. Now we're at the point where we're not permitting people speaking in private the occasional verbal tic of the sort we all employ? Then comes center-left and center-right. It's the mention of \"center-right\" that the Intercept meant to rub in her face, and in a perfect world I'd rather she'd not said it. But it's quite obvious that she is contrasting herself with the movements to her left and to her right\u2014the very two movements she had just described. So she was really just saying, I'm in between those two. And who knows\u2014there were probably Republicans in the room. It was McLean. She may have been trying to reassure them and get them to tell their friends, \"You know, we can live with her.\" No, that's not pandering. It's politics. If she weren't chasing responsible Republican votes, she'd be an idiot. Now, the second and \"offending\" graf. How in the world these words can offend anyone is just absurd. OK, baristas. But I'm sure even most baristas have higher aspirations in life. But the main thing is that when she says \"they are living in their parents' basement,\" she's obviously not making fun of them. She's just describing them. Indeed, she is explaining to these rich people in one of America's richest towns, hey, take a minute to understand where these folks are coming from. And she's doing so the week after Sanders throttled her in New Hampshire\u2014a point in time when, if anything, she'd have been prone to lash out at them. There's nothing patronizing about any of this. I also saw a bunch of people on Twitter saying in effect for the life of me, I don't see what the big deal is here. I retweeted a guy who said the #basementdwellers \"controversy\" is proof enough of the reason why she didn't release her speech transcripts. Amen to that.","label":0}
{"text":"Germany's center-left chancellor candidate Martin Schulz has criticized U.S. President Donald Trump's policies as \"un-American\" and warned against lifting sanctions imposed against Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis. In one of the sharpest remarks yet by a senior German politician since the new American leader took office, Schulz told the Funke media group in an interview published on Wednesday that Europe had to stand up to defend liberal values. \"What Trump is doing is un-American,\" Schulz said, adding that the United States like no other country in the world stood for enlightenment, democracy and freedom. \"If Trump is now driving a wrecking ball through this set of values, then I will tell him as chancellor: That's not the policy of Germany and Europe,\" Schulz added. Germany's Social Democrats last week nominated former European Parliament president Schulz to run against Chancellor Angela Merkel in a federal election in September, and the surprise move has boosted popular support for the centre-left party. Merkel said on Monday the global fight against terrorism does not warrant putting groups of people under suspicion, adding Trump's order to restrict people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States violates the spirit of international cooperation. Turning to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Ukraine conflict, Schulz said that sanctions imposed against Russia could only be lifted after both sides had implemented the so-called Minsk peace plan. \"As long as the Minsk peace agreement is not fully implemented, the sanctions cannot be lifted. We must tell Putin very clearly that Russia is obliged to respect and defend international law,\" Schulz said. Schulz' comments bring more clarity about his stance on Russia after some leading Social Democrats have voiced support for a partial lifting of sanctions as long as Russia is implementing some aspects of the plan. Merkel, one of the architects of the peace deal, has repeatedly said that sanctions against Russia can only be lifted once the Minsk agreement has been fully implemented.","label":0}
{"text":"Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday told foreign journalists to roam the country and report more, even as five global news organisations found themselves without invitations to cover his speech. The BBC, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Guardian and The New York Times were not invited to the event where Xi introduced his new leadership line-up following a once-in-five-years Communist Party Congress, the Foreign Correspondents Club of China (FCCC) said. Two Reuters journalists were invited. We encourage reporters to travel and see more of China... to learn about and continue to report on more aspects of China, Xi told a gathering of Chinese and international journalists. He did not take questions. We do not need lavish praise from others. However, we do welcome objective reporting and constructive suggestions. Under Xi, China has stepped up censorship and tightened controls on the internet and various aspects of civil society. Reporting conditions for foreign journalists in China have deteriorated in recent years, according to media watchdog groups, with areas of the country including Tibet effectively off-limits. The FCCC criticized the exclusion of the Western news organisations. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that these media organisations have been singled out to send a message, the FCCC said in a statement posted on Twitter. Using media access as a tool to punish journalists whose coverage the Chinese authorities disapprove of is a gross violation of the principles of press freedom. The Beijing bureau chiefs at the Economist and Financial Times both confirmed to Reuters that they had not received invitations. The New York Times had applied for and not received an invitation, a spokesperson said in an email. We are disappointed that we were denied access to President Xi s press conference. The BBC will continue to report fairly and objectively on the stories of China, the BBC said in a statement. The Guardian published a story saying it was among those organisations excluded. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang referred specific questions about the congress to the press center but said foreign reporters were welcome to cover the gathering. We handle foreign reporter applications according to rules and regulations, he told reporters. An official at the press center told Reuters that it had organized many events that foreign media could and did attend. The Standing Committee unveiling venue had limited space and so there was no guarantee all foreign media who applied could attend, the official said. We hope that foreign media can really pay attention to China s development and objectively and fairly report on China and the Communist Party, said the official, who asked not be named. There were more than 3,000 reporters covering the congress, according to state media, and the leadership announcement was held in a side room at Beijing s Great Hall of the People, not in the cavernous main auditorium.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump will hold telephone calls with the leaders of Russia, Germany, and France on Saturday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a tweet on Friday. The Kremlin earlier said Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump would speak. Separately, a source in Berlin said Chancellor Angela Merkel would talk with Trump, although Merkel's spokeswoman declined to comment. French President Francois Hollande and Merkel held a joint news conference earlier on Friday.","label":0}
{"text":"If you need reassurance that someone is truly fighting for your best interests in Congress, look no further than Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). She has been fighting for justice for the American people against a corrupt financial system since before she even took office. She is a champion for the unheard American voice that all too often gets drowned out by corporate cash and lobbying efforts from big banks.Republicans, of course, fall in line behind these lobbyists and take what they can get. They then turn around and vote in favor of those who crashed our economy rather than those who elected them into office the people.No greater example of this is than what just happened on the floor of the House of Representatives. A vote was taken (HR766) to let fraudulent bankers off the hook and make it harder for them to be investigated and held accountable. Take a guess how Republicans responded Warren did NOT hold back in her disgust of what was happening before our very eyes:It s not equal justice when a kid gets thrown in jail for stealing a car, while a CEO gets a huge raise when his company steals billions. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016The American people remember who broke our economy & who made out like bandits and they didn t send us here to help the bandits. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016If anyone in Congress thinks they can make it harder to crack down on corporate criminals, I promise you: The American people are watching. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2016Systematic fraud on Wall St helped spark the 2008 financial crisis but not a single Wall St executive went to jail. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016You d think big banks would be happy with enforcement so tepid that they could just bake fines into the cost of doing business, right? Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016Nope right now on the House floor, Wall St buddies are pushing a bill to make it tougher to prosecute bank fraud. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016You read that right: The House is just minutes away from voting on a bill to make it tougher to investigate & prosecute bank fraud. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016So she urged everyone to tell Congress to hold Wall Street accountable and vote NO :Tell Congress: They work for the American people not Wall Street banks that break the law. Vote NO on HR 766. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016And this is how House Republicans responded:Every single House Republican who came to work today just voted to make it harder to hold big banks accountable for fraud. Shameful. Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 4, 2016It is remarkably shameful, corrupt and disgusting. Thank goodness for voices like Senator Warren and Senator Sanders for being in the Senate to call these corrupt politicians out and shine a huge spotlight on where Republican loyalties truly are. To know we live in a nation where people of color are locked up for minor offenses or even killed where they stand, but these corrupt bankers are allowed to destroy our economy as well as people s lives and not be held accountable is beyond shameful, it s reprehensible. Thank you for fighting for us, Senator Warren. Thank you.Video\/Featured image: YouTube","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump is truly pathetic.Trump has reportedly not been able to contact Steve Bannon since signing off on his firing on Friday.Calls for Bannon s removal only increased after Trump s refusal to condemn Nazis in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.So, Trump decided to reach out to Bannon on Twitter and thanked his top white supremacist deputy for his service. But Trump did more than just thank Bannon.Trump also insulted Hillary Clinton in a clear demonstration that he does not care about the civility associated with the office of the presidency.I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton it was great! Thanks S Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 19, 2017This obsession with Hillary Clinton needs to stop. More Americans voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 than did for Trump. When Trump insults her, he insults the millions of Americans who voted for her.That s the kind of divisive rhetoric that presidents avoid, and it s the rhetoric that has emboldened Nazis and white supremacists.Many Twitter users took aim at Trump.I did Nazi that coming! Alt Sarah H. Sanders (@AltUSPressSec) August 19, 2017pic.twitter.com\/Ea24ZPoOHp Tonneke (@ton566) August 19, 2017You will be Tweeting terrible things about Bannon within a couple weeks when the Breitbart Anti-Trump machine kicks in. Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) August 19, 2017The only thing crooked is your fake presidency. News View (@NewsView100) August 19, 2017pic.twitter.com\/QHJZD8Eaes Vassilis Ntousas (@VNtousas) August 19, 2017At least Hillary isn t a White Nationalist like yours truly. pic.twitter.com\/VhvS8GjOUb The Tweetwit (@TheTweetwit) August 19, 2017A bigoted, hateful man like Steve Bannon should have never been in the administration. Anirvan Ghosh (@anirvanghosh) August 19, 2017Remember to thank him for all the white supremacy he brought to the White House. You must be so proud of that achievement. Mike P Williams ? (@Mike_P_Williams) August 19, 2017Last time I checked it wasn t her accused of treason, racism and nepotism and under several federal investigations Mr HipsterPharmacist (@PhilP85) August 19, 2017Donald Trump is a divisive racist who should be impeached. His presidency has been a train wreck from day one and it s only going to get worse unless Congress does something to stop him.Featured Image: Alex Wong\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Newtown, Connecticut was the site of one of the most horrific mass shootings in United States history at Sandy Hook Elementary School. On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza brutally murdered 20 children in first grade, in addition to six school staff members, before he committed suicide.A new documentary, Newtown, discusses in depth the aftermath and wake the mass shooting left. The film s World Premiere was featured at the Sundance Film Festival this past January, and is continuing along the film festival circuit, with the next screenings scheduled for the Cleveland International Film Festival later this month. Filmed over the course of three years, the documentary features interviews with family members of those who were lost, first responders, and school staff members, as the event changed the course of all their lives forever.Despite the incitement caused by the tragedy in Newtown for government legislators to make policy changes which would help prevent future Adam Lanzas from committing similar horrible crimes, those calls fell on deaf ears in Congress. Instead, mass shootings continue to occur across the United States, while no action is taken to decrease their frequencies. Instead, states like Texas, West Virginia, Florida, and most other states in the country allow open carry guns without any sort of special permit. As calls for gun control increased from the public, the NRA and their lobbyists have reacted by pushing for gun ownership to become the norm.In a July 2015 interview, President Barack Obama told the BBC, The one area that I feel I ve been most frustrated and most stymied is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient, common sense gun safety laws, even in the sense of repeated mass killings.","label":1}
{"text":"Romanian lawmakers voted on Tuesday to enact judicial changes that critics say will undermine graft investigations by weakening the president s oversight. The move brings the country, ranked as one of the bloc s most corrupt, in line with eastern European Union peers Hungary and Poland in defying EU concerns over the independence of judiciaries and the rule of law. Ruling Social Democrat senators approved the bill by 80-0 with all opposition groupings boycotting the vote. It now goes to the president, who has expresses scepticism about it. He can sign it or send it back for more discussion. The opposition, however, has already said it plans to contest the bill at the constitutional court, which could prolong its adoption by early 2018. Contested elements of the bill include weakening the president s right to vet prosecutor candidates, as well as amending the definition of prosecutors activity to exclude the word independent. The president can refuse to appoint (prosecutors) only once..., reads the bill. Prosecutors carry out their work according to the principles of legality, impartiality, hierarchical control, under the authority of justice minister. Prosecutors are independent in proposing solutions, the bill stipulates. Critics say this amounts to political control. The bill also refers to the finance ministry s obligation to recoup losses triggered by a judicial error from the judge who issued the sentence, instead of from state funds. Experts have said this would could distort court judgments. The bill is are part of a wider judiciary overhaul that has triggered street protests across the country in recent weeks. Romanian prosecutors have investigated thousands of public officials in an unprecedented crackdown on graft in recent years. The lower house and senate speakers, both leaders of the ruling coalition, are on trial in separate cases.","label":0}
{"text":"Be aware and be ready to push back on this effort by the State Department and the United Nations to spread seed communities (their term) all over the U.S. Pretty soon we ll be covered up in refugees who are mostly (90%) muslim. We already have millions of illegals from Central America that we cannot and should not support. We now know that small towns across America like Athens, GA and Spartanburg, SC are being targeted for a influx of muslim refugees. Because it s very secretive (for obvious reasons), you need to keep your ear to the ground and push back like Athens and Spartanburg. Below is a fantastic piece that will fill you in on what s REALLY going on:With Muslim immigrants streaming into the United States at a rate of 100,000 per year, some of the communities targeted for new arrivals are seeking information on their new neighbors, only to be frustrated by federal bureaucrats and their hired contractors.How does a city get on the U.S. State Department s list of 190 communities selected for refugee resettlement? How can cities find out who will be coming and when? What services will they use, and what will be the cost to taxpayers?And, the granddaddy of all questions: Can the communities be assured that foreign nationals with ties to ISIS, al-Shabab and other Islamic terrorist groups won t slip through the government s porous screening process posing as refugees ?The answers to these questions are simple. Very little information is available. And there are no guarantees that some very bad apples won t arrive in your town, says a leading expert on the refugee resettlement program. One community that is trying to get information right now is Spartanburg, South Carolina.On March 16, Ann Corcoran, author of the Refugee Resettlement Watch blog, spoke at a national security summit in Columbia, South Carolina, hosted by former Defense Department analyst Frank Gaffney. A few days before that conference, on March 9, a story broke in the local Spartanburg newspaper that World Relief, one of the nine resettlement agencies that works under contract with the federal government, was planning to open an office in Spartanburg.When an agency like World Relief opens an office in a city, it means refugees will be arriving soon. There are no public hearings or announcements in local media, Corcoran said. Typically a story will appear in the local newspaper just before or after the first arrivals appear in town.Corcoran met some activists at Gaffney s conference who wanted to find out more about the plans for resettling United Nations-certified refugees in their city. It is like pulling teeth to get any information, Corcoran said. And these are long-term grassroots activists who know how to get information. One of the activists is Christina Jeffrey, a political science professor and former U.S. House of Representatives historian who ran against Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., in last year s Republican primary. Gowdy is now chairman of the House subcommittee on immigration and refugees. He is chair of this committee, and so they want to set up a refugee office in his home district, and we still can t get any information, Corcoran said.Jeffrey has asked the federal government to prepare a comprehensive impact statement, detailing the impact the refugees will have on Spartanburg s public services. Schools, health facilities, housing, the job market and public welfare programs will all be affected, but so far nobody is saying to what extent.The mayor of Athens, Georgia, who asked for the same type of report last year, encountered the same blackout of information.St. Cloud, Minnesota, residents have also inquired about how many more Somali refugees will be arriving in light of recent problems with Somali student protests at a local community college. Dozens of other Somalis have either left the country to fight for al-Shabab or ISIS while others have been charged and convicted with sending material support to overseas terrorist organizations. They re trying to get information because residents have heard the rumor that there are 1,500 more Somalis getting ready to be resettled there in St. Cloud, Corcoran said.The resettlement agencies hold lots of meetings and place lots of phone calls with stakeholders in the targeted communities, but these collaborative efforts almost always occur outside of the public spotlight. The term stakeholders does not apply to you, the taxpayer footing the bill for all of this, Corcoran said.According to a March 8 article in the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, a partnership of faith leaders called Come Closer Spartanburg issued an invitation more than a year ago to World Relief to open a refugee office in Spartanburg. The March 8 article was the first public revelation of this effort even though World Relief had been working behind the scenes with stakeholders for a year. An initial group of 65 refugees will arrive this year, starting in April or May, from Congo, Bhutan and Syria.Jeffrey, in a March 30 op-ed in the local newspaper, shed more light on the group, Come Closer Spartanburg, and its goals: On its website, Come Closer Spartanburg describes the city of Spartanburg as home to what has been identified as the fifth most dangerous neighborhood in the United States. We have extremely high rates of unemployment, poverty and domestic violence. Overall, we were recently listed as the fourth most miserable city to live in our country. It does not take long to realize that we are a city in need of transformation. Jeffrey discovered that the objective is to plant a seed community in Spartanburg that will eventually blossom and transform the city. The federal government is creating communities within communities often pitted against each other economically and culturally.It s the same tactic that has been used for decades in Europe. Looking at other U.S. cities with new refugee communities, it appears that contractors often keep sending refugees to the same place until there is a community within a community. Unassimilated communities have created problems in Europe, and we are beginning to have similar problems here in the United States (witness Milwaukee, Wis., and Lewiston, Maine), Jeffrey writes.Corcoran said the word assimilation is no longer used by the resettlement agencies and their friends in the federal government. Rather, the new buzzword is integration. The goal of integration is to have a multitude of diverse cultures living side by side in coexistence but never assimilating.President Obama issued an executive memorandum dated Nov. 21, 2014, to all federal agencies directing them on Creating Welcoming Communities and Fully Integrated Immigrants and Refugees. This sort of backroom dealing between the federal government, its hired resettlement contractors and local officials is not designed to provide information to the people who live and work in the targeted refugee cities, Corcoran said. They don t like this whole idea that their town is being secretly selected, she said. This has been going on for over a year now in Spartanburg, and the refugees are now due to start arriving in a month or so. And these people have no information until it s actually upon them. The mayor of Athens, Nancy Denson, requested a plan. The city of Spartanburg is asking for the same consideration. That s what these people in Spartanburg are asking for, and they are asking that when you have a plan that you present it publicly at a public hearing, Corcoran said. They don t want to have to show any of that to the public. They re saying it s only 65; well, it s only 65 for the first year. It will continue to be more every year afterward once you become a seed community. Of the more than 500 Syrian refugees brought to the U.S. so far this past year, 90 percent of them have been Muslim, Corcoran said.","label":1}
{"text":"Email  Well, here we are, gang.  This morning America woke up and found we'd elected as president an overgrown bully, a huckster without a drop of decency in his pizza-dough body. \"How the heck did we get here?\" I'll bet you wondered. \"What the heck happened?\" Well, there's a lot we don't know yet about this election, but I'll tell you this: Maybe you shouldn't have made fun of my exclamation point.  Yeah, remember the exclamation point? The big 'n' red mark plopped next to my serifed-up name like a trout on the counter? We put that logo out, and you people laughed. Oh, how you laughed. \"Hey, looks like ol' Wonder Bread Jeb's trying to squeeze some enthusiasm out of his limp little campaign!\" You think I didn't hear you? You think I didn't see what you wrote? Of course I did. The taunts, the memes, the novelty Twitter handles, typed with a sneer. I saw all of it, and it hurt me. It hurt Jeb.  You turned me and my exclamation mark into a big dippy joke, and look what it got you. Dread. Defeat. Humiliation. Feel that despair in your gut today, and now imagine if you had \"JEB!\" in your life right now, splashed across every TV and touchscreen. Hey, there's some punctuation that'd put pep in your step! But nope, the guy who sticks his neck out to make electoral politics just a keystroke more exciting gets ribbed, roasted, raked over the coals, and hung out to dry.  Look, I wasn't a perfect candidate. I know that. But that doesn't mean you had to steer this country straight into a xenophobic hellhole.  That exclamation point was plain fun. It stood out from the pack. It even looked nice on a T-shirt or a coozy. You made a huge mistake the moment you collectively decided to rip my exclamation point to shreds.  I was up all night coming up with it, you know. That \"!\" was a John Ellis Bush original. I'd already tried out a question mark (too uncertain), an ellipsis (too ambiguous), even two exclamation points (too forceful), so when I hit on the idea of an exclamation point I really thought I had something special. I was so excited to share my excitement with you. Turns out I might as well have slapped my thick, pink matte dick into my hand and waggled it all over Facebook Live like a dang date palm frond, for all the love you gave me.  Look, I wasn't a perfect candidate. I know that. But that doesn't mean you had to steer this country straight into a xenophobic hellhole. All you had to do was be nice about that exclamation point for a few months. But you couldn't leave it alone, could you? You just could not resist having a good, old laugh! Well, take a look around and tell me what you see. A divided nation headed for the falls with a dipshit at the helm, belting out one last drunken shanty before it all goes to chunks and splinters. You bullies deserve it all.  Goodbye, America. I would have been delightful.","label":1}
{"text":"Such a nice young man. He was just hearing voices in his head. You mean like Mohamed s voice? Of course CAIR says he was likely just showing off Because that s how Muslim men who live in America show off ???? Not only did this Dearborn Muslim plot to shoot up a Detroit church, but he kept a sword in his car and said that it was his dream to behead someone. Khalil Abu-Rayyan said he wanted to burn people alive, tie them up, cut their tongues. As for the church shooting, Abu-Rayyan said, Honestly, I regret not doing it. If I can t go do jihad at the Middle East I would do a jihad over here. But Abu-Rayyan will not be prosecuted for terrorism; not in Dearborn, he won t. To prosecute him for terrorism would be islamofauxbic. Any time a jihadi gets caught plotting mass murder of the kuffar, it s the FBI that gets the blame: entrapment. The case against Abu-Rayyan has focused on his alleged threats of violence and has raised questions, including whether the government successfully thwarted Abu-Rayyan s alleged plan for a terrorist attack on a Metro Detroit church, or whether the FBI s undercover agent radicalized a vulnerable young man with no criminal past until 2015. Shooting and death makes me excited. I love to hear people scream and beg. I wish I had my gun, Abu-Rayyan told the FBI undercover agent in a text message.The FBI is being accused of radicalizing this savage. Not the Islamic texts and teachings that incite to jihad, not his Muslim brothers waging holy war in the cause of Islam the FBI.Wait, it get worse. The FBI is being criticized for arresting him, as opposed to pursuing other options, such as going to the family.Asked whether they explored other options before arresting Abu-Rayyan, U.S. Attorney spokeswoman Gina Balaya said: Although intervention with a family is appropriate in some cases, when a defendant poses a specific threat of violence, we need take action that protects public safety. Go to the family? The family is usually in on it. Look at San Bernardino. Khalil plotted to shoot up a church. There are no other options but arrest. How can the FBI do its job when it is expected to adhere to sharia law and sanction jihad?","label":1}
{"text":"The sudden and shocking death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia opened a new and incendiary front in the already red-hot 2016 presidential race, one that promises to divide Democrats and Republicans and, perhaps, Republicans from themselves. The vacancy on the court, which is now evenly split 4-4 between its conservative and liberal wings, had Republicans calling on President Barack Obama to refrain from choosing a successor to the right-leaning Scalia while Democrats urged Obama to do as the U.S. Constitution requires and put forward a candidate to face confirmation in an albeit hostile Senate. The prospect of such a battle drew swift and furious comment from candidates vying to be elected president in November. Facing off in a debate only hours after the 79-year-old Scalia's death was announced, some Republican presidential candidates seized the moment to caution voters that their party's front-runner, billionaire businessman Donald Trump, could not be trusted to nominate a stalwart conservative. \"If Donald Trump is president, he will appoint liberals,\" charged U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas during the debate in South Carolina, which holds a Republican nominating contest next Saturday. \"Two branches of government hang in the balance, not just the presidency, but the Supreme Court,\" Cruz said. \"If we get this wrong, if we nominate the wrong candidate, the Second Amendment, life, marriage, religious liberty, every one of those hangs in the balance.\" Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina also took a shot at Trump. \"Donald Trump is not a conservative, so I don't trust him to pick a judge,\" Graham said before the debate. A real estate mogul, Trump has supported Democratic politicians in the past. Trump, who also has taken several positions at odds with Republican orthodoxy, joined other candidates at the debate in insisting that Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican majority leader in the Senate, stand by his promise to block any Obama high court choice. \"It's up to Mitch McConnell and everyone else to stop it,\" Trump, a former reality TV show host, said. \"It's called delay, delay, delay.\" Under the U.S. system, the president nominates justices for the nine-member court and the Senate confirms them. The last justice to be approved by the Senate of the opposite party during an election year was Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988. Obama has already indicated that he intends to send a choice to the Senate in coming weeks, meaning that the nominee will be heavily scrutinized by presidential candidates in both parties - and more than likely be opposed by the majority of Republicans. \"The court may genuinely be a major issue this year,\" said David Axelrod, a former top political adviser to Obama. \"It will be a hell of a fight.\" Criticism of the court, which in recent years has upheld Obama's sweeping healthcare plan and legalized same-sex marriage, has already been a thread running through several Republican candidates' campaigns. The conservative majority on the court had appeared poised to invalidate Obama's immigration and climate-change policies. The loss of Scalia, considered to be a lodestar of conservative legal thought, and the potential swing of the court to the left, ensures that whatever drama plays out in the Senate this year will be mirrored on the campaign trail. \"There is no more clarifying debate in politics these days than when it comes to Supreme Court nominees,\" said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. \"This now is for all the marbles.\" Reid was majority leader of the Senate when it confirmed previous Obama court nominees Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Manley called McConnell's threat not to allow a vote on a potential Scalia replacement \"completely beyond the pale.\" Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton seemed inclined to make McConnell's threat a campaign issue. \"The Republicans in the Senate and on the campaign trail who are calling for Justice Scalia's seat to remain vacant dishonor our Constitution,\" Clinton said in a statement. Axelrod said that the issue could help Clinton, locked in a tight race with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. \"I think it will make electability and experience in this realm more important,\" he said. Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a longtime observer of the Supreme Court nomination process, said Obama likely has two options. \"He could nominate a more liberal candidate who would have no real chance of getting through a Republican Senate - in which case this would become a salient political issue in 2016,\" Hasen said. Or he could nominate a more moderate candidate who might gain enough Republican support to gain approval, he said. There are risks to both approaches: A Republican obstruction of a liberal nominee would animate the Democratic Party's progressive base in an election year but would leave the court without a potentially tie-breaking vote for perhaps a year. That same Democratic base might view a moderate nominee as a betrayal, while conservative Republican voters likely would frown on any senator who voted to approve an Obama choice. Manley said that McConnell has already shown that he is unwilling to support any choice made by Obama and that the White House must act aggressively. \"The president should go forward and nominate the most liberal candidate possible,\" he said. Given the need to fire up its most passionate voters, that might just be exactly what Republican candidates want as well. (This version of the story was refiled to fix the mistyped word \"then\" to \"than\" in paragraph 16.) (Writing by James Oliphant; Reporting by Ginger Gibson and James Oliphant; Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Editing by Howard Goller) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters' editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.","label":0}
{"text":"The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has launched a crackdown against \"blasphemy\" on social media, and Facebook and Twitter are doing little to stop it. According to government sources, Facebook is even assisting Pakistan in removing \"blasphemous\" content. [Late last week, government officials in Pakistan informed the Islamabad High Court that \"almost 85 percent\" of \"blasphemous\" material on Facebook had been taken down at the request of the government. Facebook has yet to publicly confirm or deny this claim from the Pakistani government. However, earlier this month, Facebook \u2014 which claims to be \"founded\" on \"principles of free expression,\" dispatched a delegation to Pakistan to address the government's demand for religious censorship. At the time of writing, Facebook did not reply to an inquiry from Breitbart News asking the company if they had removed \"blasphemous\" material to satisfy Pakistan. Pakistan, a country which once harboured Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden within its borders, recently launched a crackdown on social media blasphemy. The country's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif has ordered authorities to take urgent steps to remove blasphemous content on social media and apprehend those who post it. Last week, three Pakistani bloggers were arrested on suspicion of blasphemy, and had their laptops seized. If convicted, they could face the death penalty. Pakistan wants social media companies to help identify anonymous posters of blapshemous content, and has announced that it will seek the extradition of any Pakistanis who post blasphemous content from abroad. International affairs magazine The Diplomat has branded the crackdown a \"war on atheism. \" Meanwhile, on Twitter, a hashtag calling for the execution of one of the arrested \"blapshemers,\" '#HangAyazNizami,' trended in Pakistan as Muslim users took to the platform to call for the blood of heretics. Fuck with freedom of speech hang this fucker asap. \ud83d\ude0f #HangAyazNizami, \u2014 Sardar Waqar (@Engrr_vicky) March 25, 2017, Call us terrorist or extremist or what everbut he must be hanged #hangayaznizami, \u2014 Daniyal Ahmed (@daniyalaahmed) March 25, 2017, He must be drag in the streets then hanged #HangAyazNizami, \u2014 Nida Ahmed (@nidaa214) March 25, 2017, Western Twitter users reacted strongly against the trend. Some users pointed out the hypocrisy of Twitter allowing these open calls for religious murder on their platform, while cracking down on peaceful western conservative users. Dear @twitter Those posting pro #hangayazNizami tweets are far more dangerous than Milo. https: . \u2014 Christina Sommers (@CHSommers) March 27, 2017, Thousands of muslims who AREN'T terrorists want to hang a blogger for \"blasphemy\" and some still want mass Muslim migration #HangAyazNizami, \u2014 Joseph (@JosephBrowno) March 27, 2017, Those tweeting #HangAyazNizami for \"blasphemy\" are insecure, petty, weak little cowards. @Jack @Twitter should take note. \u2014 Maajid (@MaajidNawaz) March 26, 2017, See this hashtag #HangAyazNizami learn what ordinary Pakistanis want done to a secular blogger now in serious peril. This is NOT a fringe. https: . \u2014 Ali A. Rizvi (@aliamjadrizvi) March 26, 2017, I'm wondering if prominent Muslim voices such as @lsarsour will publicly condemn this #HangAyazNizami, or if she'll completely ignore it. \u2014 Child Of Kekistan (@ChildofKekistan) March 27, 2017, Twitter has yet to respond to an enquiry from Breitbart News, which asked the company why calls for violence against a blogger remain on the platform, and whether such posts violate the platform's guidelines on \"hate content. \" You can follow Allum Bokhari on Twitter and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to abokhari@breitbart. com.","label":0}
{"text":"Kenya s main opposition leader said on Thursday that anger over last month s presidential election ran so deep it threatened to tear the country apart. Raila Odinga boycotted the Oct. 25 election because he said it would be unfair, leaving President Uhuru Kenyatta to win with 98 percent of the vote. The Supreme Court called the poll after it annulled a first presidential election held in August on procedural grounds. Mainstream Kenyans feel so deeply cheated they are openly toying with the idea of secession, Odinga told an audience in Washington, D.C. His speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank, was broadcast live on Kenyan television. The biggest problem in Kenya right now is exclusion ... unless they (the problems) are addressed they will tear the country apart, he said. As things stand now, anger and radicalization is growing by the day. A small number of politicians in Odinga s opposition alliance have discussed the idea of his strongholds seceding from Kenya but the idea has not gained wide popularity. Odinga s supporter base is concentrated along Kenya s coast, in city slums and in his western strongholds, areas that have traditionally felt excluded from political power and the opportunities for patronage it offers. Odinga s supporters are currently boycotting three companies they say are backing the government. The opposition has called for protests on Friday. In his speech, Odinga noted Kenya s four presidents since independence had all come from the Kikuyu or Kalenjin communities, even though the country had 44 recognized ethnic groups. Kenyatta is a Kikuyu and his deputy, who has made clear his intention to run in the next election, is a Kalenjin. Earlier this week, Odinga told Reuters he wanted a caretaker government for six months while preparations were made for new elections. Government officials reject the idea, saying Odinga had his chance to compete in October. The Supreme Court is due to start hearing petitions on the legality of the October elections next week.","label":0}
{"text":"But Is Threatening Trump On Social Media Considered A Serious Crime? Will he be locked up? (Read below to find answer to this question)Matt Harrigan at PacketsledMatt Harrigan is the CEO of PacketSled and Critical Assets and a board member for OWASP is calling for an assassination. Call the police, FBI, and the Secret Service! RIGHTVia Reddit The Donald:Harrigan wants Trump dead.Here are screen shots of his messages on social media:Harrigan later posted an apology on Facebook:My recent facebook comment was intended to be a joke, in the context of a larger conversation, and only privately shared as such. Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not engage in this form of rhetoric with any level of seriousness and the comment most certainly does not represent my real personal views in any regard. I apologize if anything that I said was either taken seriously, was offensive, or caused any legitimate concern. Best Regards, Matt Harrigan GPTwo weeks before the 2008 election, a California man left a vicious message about Barack Obama on a Yahoo finance message board. Re: Obama fk the niggar, he will have a 50 cal in the head soon. He followed it up with another ugly post, which began simply: Shoot the nig. There was more to come. On Election Day, the same poster sent disturbing emails about shooting someone that, as one court put it, would appear to confirm the malevolent nature of the previous statements as well as the poster s own malignant nature. One of the message board participants reported the initial postings, and the Secret Service investigated. With Yahoo s help, it traced the messages to the home computer of Walter Bagdasarian, now 49, a resident of La Mesa, Calif. When agents searched his house, they found that he had weapons in his home, including a .50 caliber muzzle-loading rifle the caliber of bullet the post said would soon be in Obama s head.In July of 2009, Bagdasarian was convicted of violating 18 USC s 879(a)(3), a federal law that makes it a felony to threaten a major presidential candidate with death or bodily harm. Last week, a federal appeals court in California reversed his conviction which had gotten him sentenced to 60 days in a halfway house ruling that his posts did not fall under the law, and that his speech was protected by the first amendment.United States v. Bagdasarian was the latest attempt by the federal courts to police the blurry line between criminal threats and protected speech a line that has become more important than ever as the Internet has given rage-filled people unprecedented opportunities to spew hate.Regardless of how offensive it can often get, the courts are rightly reluctant to let political speech be criminalized. To be convicted under 879(a)(3), it is not enough that someone has made menacing statements. They have to have intended to threaten injury or death, and people viewing the words objectively have to regard them as threatening. In addition to these requirements under 879(a)(3), there is a separate first amendment test: the speaker s words must be a true threat which in this case the court defined as a statement which, in the entire context and under all the circumstances, a reasonable person would foresee would be interpreted by those to whom the statement is communicated as a serious expression of intent to inflict bodily harm upon that person. The San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled, by a 2-1 vote, that Bagdasarian s posts did not meet these tests. The majority was deeply unhappy with Bagdasarian an especially unpleasant fellow, the court said and his words. But the judges in the majority also insisted that the posts were not illegal. There was not enough evidence, they said, to find that Bagdasarian actually intended to put Obama at risk, or that a reasonable observer would think that he did. What s more, the posts were not true threats. The court contrasted Bagdasarian s words with those from another case, in which an enraged discharged employee posted threats like I will kill you and I will personally send you back to the hell from where you came.","label":1}
{"text":"Ireland needs Britain to provide significantly more clarity on its plans for the Irish border, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday, denting hopes that London was on the verge of a deal to move on to the second phase of Brexit talks. But British Prime Minister Theresa May s room to offer additional concessions to Dublin appeared extremely limited as the Northern Ireland party propping up her government hinted it might withdraw its support if she gives too much. Avoiding a so-called hard border on the island of Ireland is the last major hurdle before Brexit talks can move to negotiations on Britain s future trade relationship with the EU and a possible two-year Brexit transition deal. A mis-step by May could bring down the British government or spook British businesses fearful of a cliff-edge Brexit without a transition deal. We are looking for significantly more clarity than we currently have from the British negotiating team, Coveney told parliament in Dublin, adding that constructive ambiguity from Britain would not suffice. Hopefully we will make progress that will allow us to move on to Phase 2 in the middle of December, he said. If it is not possible to do that, so be it. Britain in the coming days needs to demonstrate sufficient progress on three key EU conditions a financial settlement, rights of expatriate citizens and the Irish border for leaders to give a green light to trade talks at a summit on Dec. 14-15. With significant progress on the financial settlement and citizen rights, a deal on the Irish border would pave the way for Brussels to offer British Prime Minister Theresa May a transition deal as early as January. Britain s Times newspaper, without citing a source, said London was close to a deal after a proposal to devolve more powers to the government of its province of Northern Ireland so that it could ensure regulations there did not diverge from the EU rules in place south of the border across the island. The border between EU-member Ireland and the British region of Northern Ireland will be the UK s only land frontier with the bloc after Brexit, and Dublin fears a hard border could disrupt 20 years of delicate peace in Northern Ireland. Ireland has called on Britain to provide details of how it will ensure there is no regulatory divergence after Brexit in March 2019 that would require physical border infrastructure. But any attempt at a solution will have to convince Northern Ireland s pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party, whose 10 members of parliament are propping up May s government. The party ratcheted up the pressure on Thursday by suggesting it might withdraw its support for May s government. If there is any hint that in order to placate Dublin and the EU they re prepared to have Northern Ireland treated differently to the rest of the United Kingdom, then they can t rely on our vote, DUP member of parliament Sammy Wilson said in an interview with the BBC. European Council President Donald Tusk, who last week set an absolute deadline of Monday for May to demonstrate sufficient progress on the three issues, is due to fly to Dublin on Friday for talks with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar in a bid to break the deadlock. May will then hold talks in Brussels on Monday with EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker and his chief Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, and will hope to secure a green light to trade talks at a summit on Dec. 14-15. Barnier said on Wednesday the summit would be able to discuss a transition period and that the EU would define a framework next year of the new partnership with Britain that would follow the transition. May has insisted she wants any new offers to be met with simultaneous assurances from the EU that it will maintain the open trading relationship which businesses are demanding to know soon if they are to maintain investment levels in Britain.","label":0}
{"text":"Florida s insurance and reinsurance market is well equipped to handle hurricane losses, but Irma could strain the state s coverage market depending on the extent it makes landfall in Florida, according to rating agencies. Irma, the second major hurricane to approach the United States in two weeks, is expected to make landfall in south Florida on Sunday morning. Fitch said if the storm were to produce insured losses greater than $75 billion, some Florida insurers and reinsurers could experience notable financial strain . Irma hit the Dominican Republic and Haiti on Friday, heading for Cuba and the Bahamas. The projected path and severity of Irma creates the potential for economic and insured losses to significantly exceed those experienced in Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Fitch said. Strong capitalization of the insurance and reinsurance sector will help mitigate the impact of Irma, S&P Global Ratings said.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Vice President Mike Pence put North Korea on notice on Monday that neither the United States nor South Korea would tolerate further missile or nuclear tests by the reclusive state, with the U.S. attack on Syria showing its resolve. Pence and South Korean acting president Hwang Kyo-ahn expressed disappointment over China's retaliatory actions against South Korea in response to the deployment of U.S. missile defense system THAAD in the South, but reaffirmed their plan to go ahead with its deployment.","label":0}
{"text":"They re President Trump s #1 fans and they ve been with him from the start of his campaign. The wildly popular, hilarious and outspoken Diamond and Silk duo have been hitting it out of the park on YouTube with their videos that rely entirely on pro-Trump commentary. They never use vulgarity or threats and their videos are always G-rated (Well, okay, a few of their videos may be PG-13). Apparently supporting the President of the United States now violates YouTube s monetization policies. Their videos have received millions of hits and had such an effect on liberals that Youtube recently made the decision to pull 95% of their revenue.Conservative Trump supporters Lynnette Hardway and Rochelle Richardson of North Carolina, know they re never going to get an invitation to leftist The View show, so, by using a few special effects, Diamond and Silk have decided to make a surprise visit to The View hags and give them a piece of their mind. The result is hilarious!Watch, as Diamond and Silk school Whoopie, Joy Behar and the rest of the liberal hags on The View about who is, and who is not our President, and remind them of what the President s role is and what is expected of Congress.Enjoy:.@DiamondandSilk have been anxious to get Whoopi & the ladies from The View straighten out because they've gotten a lot of stuff twisted. pic.twitter.com\/ddkgKcW7yF Diamond and Silk (@DiamondandSilk) September 9, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Catalonia s regional parliament declared independence from Spain on Friday in a disputed vote that is now likely to be declared illegal by Spain s constitutional court. The independence motion was passed in the 135-strong assembly with 70 votes in favor, 10 against and 2 blank ballots, the assembly s speaker said. Lawmakers from the Socialist Party, the People s Party (PP) and Ciudadanos had left the chamber before the vote in protest.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S.-backed militias expect to push all Islamic State fighters out of their former Syrian headquarters of Raqqa in less than a month, a Kurdish commander told Reuters on Monday. Under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the militias have hemmed the jihadists into a few districts in the north of the city. The Kurdish and Arab militias pushed into the city in June after fighting for months to encircle it with the help of U.S.-led jets and special forces. As the noose tightens, the reaction of Daesh gets fiercer, said Jihan Sheikh Ahmed, spokeswoman for the Raqqa offensive, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State. In the coming days, the battles will be at their most intense... We expect, under our plan, that we will be able to liberate Raqqa in less than a month. Islamic State has lost much of its territory in Syria this year under separate offensives by the SDF and the Russia-backed Syrian military. Its fighters have fallen back to its last major footholds, the cities and towns in the fertile strip along the Euphrates river downstream of Raqqa. The SDF said last week that, after seizing 80 percent of Raqqa, the battle for the city had entered its final stages. With the Kurdish YPG militia at its forefront, the SDF has closed in from three directions. Islamic State militants put up tough resistance, planting scores of mines around their districts, Ahmed said. SDF forces sought to meet up from several axes to squeeze the Islamic State enclave, said a field commander in the northeast of Raqqa. Shefkar Hemo said his fighters had faced fewer mortar shells and car bombs recently, with the jihadists relying more heavily on snipers. The breach of enemy lines is clear on the ground... Daesh are hiding behind civilians, he said. Another field commander in the city said the latest phase of the battle had proved difficult. SDF officials estimate that 700-1,000 Islamic State fighters are holed up in a pocket in the city. Ahmed said she did not expect them to surrender and the SDF would never allow them passage out. Thousands of civilians remain trapped there too, and Ahmed accused Islamic State snipers of targeting them. Daesh is also entrenched in the National Hospital, which they consider a main position, she said. Our forces besieged the hospital, but were being cautious to avoid damaging it, she said. Earlier this month, Physicians for Human Rights said that poorly-equipped hospital was the last medical facility operating in the city. The New York-based group said intense bombing by the U.S.-led coalition had hit civilian facilities. The coalition says it is careful to avoid civilian casualties during bombing runs in Syria and neighboring Iraq. The caliphate that Islamic State declared in 2014, spanning both countries, lost its de-facto Iraqi capital of Mosul in July when Iraqi forces took the city.","label":0}
{"text":"If there s one thing anyone needs to know about the First Family, it s don t f**k with Michelle Obama, and really don t go after her man. Which is a lesson Donald Trump has yet to learn.Responding to the debate and the topic of President Obama s birth certificate where Trump seemed rather proud of himself for Obama revealing it, even though he continued pressing the topic, Michelle Obama struck back.She said: There are those who question and continue to question for the past eight years, whether my husband was even born in this country. And let me say; hurtful, deceitful questions deliberately designed to undermine his presidency. Questions that can not be blamed on others or swept under the rug by an insincere sentence uttered at a press conference. Then, visibly angry and insulted, she says: Let me take a moment. She then continued: But during his time in office, I think Barack has answered this questions with the example he set and the dignity he s shown by going high when they go low. Which is exactly what the Obama s have always done because they are the epitome of class and grace that we should all aspire to be.Watch Michelle go after Trump here: Michelle Obama on birther claims: Pres. Obama showed dignity by going high when they go low https:\/\/t.co\/vhFCCpkHBa CNN (@CNN) September 28, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"Emboldened by the Republican sweep of last week's American elections, members of the Israeli government have called anew for the abandonment of a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. \"The combination of changes in the United States, in Europe and in the region provide Israel with a unique opportunity to reset and rethink everything,\" Naftali Bennett, Israel's education minister and the leader of the Jewish Home party, told a gathering of the Foreign Press Association in Jerusalem on Monday. Mr. Bennett, who advocates annexing 60 percent of the occupied West Bank to Israel, exulted on the morning after Donald J. Trump's victory: \"The era of a Palestinian state is over. \" That sentiment was only amplified when Jason Greenblatt, a lawyer and of the Trump campaign's Israel Advisory Committee, told Israel's Army Radio that Mr. Trump did not consider West Bank settlements to be an obstacle to peace, in a stark reversal of longstanding American policy. Members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and other rightist politicians jumped to make hay of the change. Yoav Kish, a Likud member of Parliament, called for the expansion of Israeli sovereignty into the West Bank Meir Turgeman, the chairman of Jerusalem's municipal planning committee, said he would now bring plans for thousands of Jewish homes in the fiercely contested eastern part of the city up for approval. Aryeh Deri, the interior minister, who is hailed Mr. Trump's victory as a miracle, asserting it would lessen the influence of liberal, streams of Judaism popular in America. He added, \"We must truly be in Messianic times when everything will turn out favorably for the people of Israel. \" Mr. Netanyahu, whose previous three terms in office all coincided with Democratic administrations in the United States, has been more cautious. Adding to his troubles, Israel's Supreme Court on Monday rejected a government request for a delay of the demolition of an illegal West Bank outpost built on privately owned Palestinian land. The demolition is slated for Dec. 25, and the government had argued for the delay in part to temper a potentially violent settler response. On Sunday, a ministerial committee of rightists within the Likud party and the governing coalition approved a contentious bill to retroactively legalize illegal settlement on privately owned Palestinian land. Prompted by the effort to salvage the Amona outpost, it may be a precursor of things to come. Although the camp was promoting the bill long before Mr. Trump's victory, the decision was taken, unusually, over Mr. Netanyahu's vehement objections and despite his exhortations for it to be postponed. Tzipi Livni, a centrist former foreign minister and justice minister who now sits in the Parliamentary opposition, denounced the settlement bill, writing on Twitter that it constitutes \"major damage to the rule of law at home, damage to Israel abroad, and primarily conveys a message that might makes right, when faced with a weak prime minister. \" Mr. Netanyahu warmly welcomed Mr. Trump's victory, calling him \"a true friend\" of Israel. But Mr. Netanyahu has also since instructed his ministers and legislators to be discreet, saying the incoming administration should be allowed \"to formulate \u2014 together with us \u2014 its policy Israel and the region through accepted and quiet channels, and not via interviews and statements. \" Mr. Netanyahu endorsed the principle of a Palestinian state in 2009, under American pressure and with caveats. Since then, he has tried to balance between world opinion and his constituency by declaring support for a solution based on two states for two peoples without going out of his way to advance it. Israeli analysts point out that the Trump campaign has spread contradictory messages. While many here assume that he will have more pressing priorities than the conflict, Mr. Trump told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that he would like to seal an peace agreement, calling it the \"ultimate deal. \" Mr. Netanyahu's critics on the right, however, assume a Trump administration will at least give Israel a freer hand in areas like settlement construction. They say Mr. Netanyahu will have to decide which side he is on. Acknowledging that Mr. Trump's positions are not entirely clear, Mr. Bennett, the leader of Jewish Home, said, \"We have to say what we want first. \" Amit Segal, a political commentator for Israel's popular Channel 2 News, said that during the tenures of Presidents Clinton and Obama, Mr. Netanyahu could \"disguise his worldview. \" The Obama administration's sharp condemnation of all settlement activity gave Mr. Netanyahu \"the ultimate excuse\" for not building with abandon in the West Bank, Mr. Segal said in an interview, adding, \"I am not sure that the right wing, with its appetite, will be prepared to suffer another few years of that. \" Asked what Mr. Netanyahu would probably be rooting for, Israelis who generally reflect the prime minister's thinking said he was unlikely to forswear the solution. \"Israel has its own interest in reaching a negotiated solution with its neighbors,\" said Dore Gold, a longtime Netanyahu adviser who recently resigned from his position as director general of Israel's foreign ministry. \"This is not a function of pressure or . Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that this is his goal. \" But Mr. Gold suggested that a Trump administration was likely to roll back the demand that Israel withdraw to the 1967 lines and support borders that are more accommodating to Israel. \"Trump's policy paper spoke about Israel having defensible borders, which are clearly different from the 1967 lines,\" he said. Michael B. Oren, a deputy minister in the prime minister's office and a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, told Israel Radio: \"We have to ask ourselves what is in Israel's interests. The interest of the Israelis and, in my view, of the government, is indeed to achieve peace with the Palestinians through direct negotiations, without preconditions, at any time, in order to get to a solution of two states for two peoples. \" Gilead Sher, an Israeli former peace negotiator under the governments of Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin, noted that although most of the Israeli governments over the past four decades had been \"never has one of them annexed one square inch of the West Bank. \" Mr. Sher, now a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, is also of Blue White Future, an Israeli group advocating a solution, by unilateral means if necessary. Of the rejoicing on the Israeli right, he said, \"Most joyful moments are provisional and temporary. \"","label":0}
{"text":"George Ciccariello-Maher | November 9, 2016  The final election results are not in, but one thing is crystal clear: Hillary Clinton is a failure. And so is the neoliberal establishment.  Even if she narrowly manages to defeat Donald Trump, she has still lost. Her failure is not individual, however, but a failure of Clintonism, the Democratic Party, and decades of failed economic policies. According to some exit polls, Clinton is losing half of union households and getting routed in a rust belt abandoned by Clintonism: in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a state that she took so much for granted that she didn't make a single campaign stop there .  All this against a racist misogynist with no ground game, hemorrhaging the support of his own party leadership, with far fewer resources and a thousand character flaws and weaknesses to be exploited. All polls show that even many Trump voters doubted his qualifications and character, but they voted for him anyway.  Confronted with this reality, Clintonite liberals have been willfully ignorant, managing to both write poor whites off as racist deplorables while simultaneously underestimating their potential to swing to the Right. Neglecting poor whites, Clintonism holds Black and Latino Americans hostage, offering no solution to police murder and promising more deportations to boot.  The blame game is already in full swing: Democratic apparatchiks are already preparing to blame FBI director James Comey, third party candidates, and it wouldn't be surprising to hear Vladimir Putin's name come up\u2014the Red Scare never gets old. But the ire of a wounded Clintonism will no doubt be directed above all at the Left.  But the liberal establishment and its neoliberal economic policies have failed, and it's time for liberals to own that. The pundits, the talking heads, the press, and the pollsters are admitting that they had no idea what they were talking about and flailing for explanations. Maybe if liberal and conservative elites alike don't have answers, it's time to build a fighting left that can offer real solutions.  The left needs to directly confront the racism that Trump harnessed, but it also needs to better understand what caused the Trump phenomenon to begin with. For all of his flaws, Bernie Sanders did the second, and you don't have to like Sanders to admit that there's no way he would have fucked this up so bad.  But Sanders' failure to capture the Democratic Party was no accident. If Trump wins, the same Democratic Party has been calling him a fascist and would-be dictator will demand that we recognize his legitimacy. They will suddenly discover that, instead of fighting back, they can reach across the aisle and work with this eccentric leader.  But the reality is this: if you really believe that Trump is a fascist, you'd better be prepared to do more than just vote.  George Ciccariello-Maher is an organizer, radical political theorist, and professor at Drexel University. Follow him on Twitter @ciccmaher .","label":1}
{"text":"Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen called on the United States on Friday to withdraw Peace Corps volunteers in an escalating row over accusations that U.S. agents conspired with an opposition leader to plot treason. Hun Sen was responding after the U.S. embassy in Phnom Penh issued a travel warning that urged citizens to show caution amid anti-American rhetoric by officials . Are you scaring Cambodians? Hun Sen said of the United States in an address to garment workers at factories which export much of their production to the United States. Are you prepared to invade Cambodia and that s why you told Americans to be careful? It s good if you pull out the Peace Corps, Hun Sen said. The U.S. embassy declined to comment. It has previously dismissed the accusations of collusion with opposition leader Kem Sokha and called for his release. On Friday, the embassy was swearing in 71 new volunteers from the Peace Corps, which sends Americans abroad to help with local projects with the stated goal of promoting mutual understanding. Hun Sen said on Friday that he had ordered an investigation into whether any Americans were involved with Kem Sokha. Opponents of Hun Sen accuse him of arresting Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) leader Kem Sokha and cracking down on independent media and other critics ahead of a general election next year. The evidence presented against Kem Sokha is a video recorded in 2013 in which he discusses a strategy to win power with the help of unspecified Americans. Hun Sen, a close ally of China, has taken a series of measures against U.S. interests this year from ending joint military exercises to expelling a naval aid unit to forcing a U.S.-funded pro-democracy group to leave. On Thursday, Hun Sen said he was suspending cooperation with Washington to find the remains of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. According to the U.S Embassy, more than 500 Peace Corps volunteers have served and worked in Cambodia since 2006, providing English teaching and teacher training as well as community health education. U.S. President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961 to promote world peace and friendship.","label":0}
{"text":"One of Donald Trump s favorite morons you know, the poorly educated as he calls them managed to pick a fight he couldn t win with a 12-year-old boy outside a city council meeting in Huntington Park, California on Tuesday.The boy had just finished speaking to the city council when an angry man wearing a Trump flag asked him if he was an American. I was born here, but I am also half-Mexican, Joseph Moreno replied. Then Mr. MAGA learned that typical talking points he and his exceptionally stupid friends regularly throw at people on Twitter don t work when the target is twelve.Calling the preteen brainwashed, the Trump follower began angrily demanding to know if the boy, who (once again) is twelve, if he can vote in Mexico. So you can vote over there? the man asks. I. Am. Twelve. Years. Old, the kid says, emphasizing every word as though he was talking to a Trump voter (oh, wait, he was). I can t even vote here if I wanted to. Can you vote over there, the man repeated. I can t right now because I m 12, the kid replies.This is just one gem in a treasure trove of stupid, which you can watch below if you need a good laugh:(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));MUST WATCH! love this boy so much! . He gave an amazing speech at the podium at Huntington Park City Council Meeting. Mark my words.. he is a future leader! ?? Posted by Veronica Tomas on Tuesday, June 6, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Turkey s Justice Ministry said on Tuesday it had canceled a planned study visit to the United States due to the widening diplomatic row between the countries over the issuing of visas. Local media earlier reported that U.S. authorities had rejected visa requests from members of the delegation, but the Justice Ministry said it had taken the initiative and canceled the trip. Due to the recent visa crisis between the two countries, the visit was canceled by our Ministry, it said in a statement, adding that there were no visa applications to be rejected. The delegation had planned a study visit to the United States, at the invitation of U.S. authorities, between Oct. 29 and Nov. 4, the ministry said. The pro-government Daily Sabah newspaper said the delegation had planned to study the U.S. penal system and visit American prisons. Washington this month stopped issuing visas at its missions in Turkey, citing safety concerns for its staff following the arrest of two U.S. consular staff, both Turkish nationals. The crisis has weighed on the lira currency and alarmed some investors. On Tuesday, a group of leading Turkish and U.S. businesses urged both governments to resolve the dispute. In May, a translator at the U.S. consulate in the southern province of Adana was arrested and, more recently, a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) worker was detained in Istanbul. Both are accused of links to last year failed coup. The U.S. embassy has said the accusations are baseless. Turkish police want to question a third worker based in Istanbul. His wife and daughter were detained over alleged links to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for orchestrating the abortive putsch. They were later released. Turkey has been angered by what it sees as U.S. reluctance to hand over the cleric Gulen, who has lived in Pennsylvania since 1999. U.S. officials have said its courts require sufficient evidence to order his extradition Gulen denies any involvement in the failed coup. More than 150,000 people in the police, civil service and private sector have been sacked or suspended from their jobs in the crackdown that followed the failed putsch. Some 50,000 have been detained. Rights groups and Turkey s Western allies have expressed concern that Turkey using the coup as a pretext to quash dissent. Ankara says the measures are necessary, given the extent of the security threat it faces. Turkey has also been enraged by Washington s support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia in the fight against Islamic State. Turkey regards the YPG as an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).","label":0}
{"text":"Clinton Foundation drew intense protests for scheduling the wife of a Palestinian terrorist to speak at a Clinton Global Initiative dinner. The foundation saw nothing wrong with this and defended their decision: Hanan al-Hroub is a beacon of hope in a part of the world that is very dear to me and in desperate need of more hope, said Haim Saban, a major Clinton Foundation donor, according to The Wall Street Journal. I only wish more people honored her and the cause that she embodies. Haim Saban has deep roots in Egypt and is a controversial figure who totally bought access to the Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State:Between 2009 and 2013, as Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state, the Saban Family Foundation paid the Clinton Foundation more than $7 million, and listed $30.5 million in grants and contributions approved for future payment, according to nonprofit records filed with the Internal Revenue Service. It s unclear whether there was any overlap between the $7 million paid and $30.5 million committed to the Clinton Foundation in those years.What kind of message does this send to the people of Israel who had six of their citizens murdered by the acts of this woman s husband? Hanan al-Hroub, this year s winner of the Global Teacher Prize, is scheduled to speak at the dinner despite the fact that her husband, Omar, served 10 years in an Israeli prison for providing chemicals used in a 1980 terror bombing attack that killed six Israelis. This was apparently no big deal to the Clinton Foundation even as the U.S. investigates the weekend bombings in New Jersey and New York, as well as the stabbing spree that occurred in a Minnesota mall. The decision to honor the wife of a terrorist by Hillary Clinton s foundation shows a complete lack of judgment and a callousness that should disqualify her from holding the presidency. Foundation donors were quick to defend the invitation of al-Hroub.","label":1}
{"text":"By Jameson Parker Feminist Issues , News October 26, 2016 Congressman Who Said He Couldn't Look His Daughter In The Eye And Endorse Trump Is Voting Trump 9143 Google Pinterest Digg Linkedin Reddit Stumbleupon Print Delicious Pocket Tumblr  Thumb through the pages of the dictionary until you find the word \"craven\" and a picture of Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz's picture will probably greet you. In a year full of pathetic spinelessness from Republicans, his efforts seem to stand out.  It's hard to imagine a congressman doing more damage to his lasting reputation than Chaffetz pulled off on October 26th, 2016 \u2013 a date that will live in infamy. First, news broke that Chaffetz was already prepping for a Clinton White House by pre-planning two years worth of senseless investigations in a shameless attempt to destroy any chance of her \u2013 or congress \u2013 accomplishing anything. And yet sadly that story was only half of the reason why Chaffetz singlehandedly proved Mark Twain wasn't kidding when he quipped \"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress, but then I repeat myself.\" Congressman Chaffetz is a very big idiot.  A little over one week after Chaffetz tried to score some cheap political points by unendorsing Donald Trump following the release of an audio tape in which the Republican nominee bragged about sexual assault, he sent out a tweet clarifying that when he said he wouldn't endorse or defend Trump, he never said he wouldn't vote for him. I will not defend or endorse @realDonaldTrump , but I am voting for him. HRC is that bad. HRC is bad for the USA.  \u2014 Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) October 27, 2016  What's the distinction between \"endorsing\" and \"voting for\" you ask? Well, for Jason Chaffetz it's like when you want to bake a cake but you also want to eat it too. See? Simple. Chaffetz is a very, very big idiot.  Making Chaffetz's cowardice all the more apparent is the reason why he said he was unendorsing Trump in the first place. Like the rest of the country, he heard Trump's boasts about grabbing women's genitals and found it abhorrent. He also said he couldn't face his 15-year-old daughter and support a potential sexual predator like Trump.  \"I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine. My wife and I, we have a 15-year-old daughter, and if I can't look her in the eye and tell her these things, I can't endorse this person.\"  So to be perfectly clear, Jason Chaffetz, Republican congressman from Utah, can't look his daughter in the eye and endorse Donald Trump, but he can stare her straight in the face and say \"Dad just voted for this monster.\"  Nice work, Jason. You pathetic, small man. I'm forwarding your congressional photo to Webster's.","label":1}
{"text":"Britain s interior minister said a claim by U.S. President Donald Trump that the culprits behind a bombing on a London train were in the sights of the police, made on Twitter shortly after the attack, had been nothing more than speculation. It s never helpful to have speculation about an ongoing operation and I would include the president of the United States in that comment, Amber Rudd told BBC television on Sunday. It is pure speculation, absolutely. Rudd s comments echoed those of British Prime Minister Theresa May who said on Friday it was not helpful for anyone to speculate on investigations.","label":0}
{"text":"The Syrian army and its allies launched air strikes against rebels north of the city of Hama on Thursday after recapturing villages lost to the insurgents in an attack earlier in the week, a war monitor said. A series of strikes after midnight hit areas in rebel-held Khan Sheikhoun, Kafr Nabil, Kafr Zeita and Maarat al-Numan, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The offensive by jihadist and other insurgent groups this week was their biggest near Hama since March, but the army late on Wednesday retook the villages it lost in the attack, the Observatory said. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has gained momentum in the six-year war since driving rebels from Aleppo in December. He has been aided by Russia s air force and Iran-backed Shi ite militias including Lebanon s Hezbollah. However, insurgents still hold large, populous areas in northwest and southwest Syria and smaller pockets elsewhere in the country. Tuesday s attack north of Hama revived hostilities in the northwestern area near the Turkish border that has been relatively calm in recent months as Russian-led diplomacy seeks to shore up ceasefires across western Syria.","label":0}
{"text":"At least six farmers protesting the removal of coca crops, the base ingredient in cocaine, were killed during a confrontation in rural southwestern Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Friday. Santos ordered further investigation into the event, which took place on Thursday and also injured 19 people. The incident occurred in Narino province, near Tumaco, a key zone for coca growing. Reports on how exactly the six people died were contradictory. The defense ministry said on Thursday that a dissident group of ex-fighters from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group forced farmers to protest against police who were removing coca crops. The dissidents then fired on the officers and launched home-made missiles, hitting the farmers, the ministry said. But regional farmers organizations accused the police and army of firing at the civilians to break up the protest and clear the way for the manual eradication of the crops. The majority of FARC fighters demobilized under a peace deal signed last year, but some dissident units remain involved in drug trafficking and illegal mining. The FARC, now a political party, has distanced itself from the dissidents. We are verifying the exact way in which things occurred, Santos said during a press conference. We are investigating, I don t want to tie myself to any version of events until these investigations give us total clarity about what happened. The events underlined the significant challenge that the drug trade represents to the peace process with the FARC, the head of the United Nations mission in Colombia said. The events reinforce our conviction at the United Nations of the necessity of giving coca farmers in affected regions all the means to escape the terrible choice between extreme poverty and illegality, mission chief Jean Arnault told journalists. Subsistence farmers have often been obliged by rebel groups, paramilitaries and crime gangs to plant and harvest coca. Some also choose to grow the crop because illegal groups will pay more for it than farmers can earn at market with other products - a tempting possibility amid dire poverty. Coca cultivation reached levels not seen for a decade last year after the government banned aerial fumigation with glyphosate, an herbicide that has been linked to cancer. The prohibition has sparked criticism from the United States, which is set to give the Andean country more than $400 million in funding help for the FARC deal. Coca is cultivated on about 188,000 hectares (464,000 acres) across Colombia. The government wants to manually eradicate 100,000 hectares this year.","label":0}
{"text":"Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) Monday accused President Donald Trump of having a tendency to target women and people of color for his ire.Waters spoke uninterrupted for almost four minutes on MSNBC s The Beat about the Trump Administration s handling of the aftermath of Army Sgt. La David Johnson s death in Niger. She called on Trump and his Chief of Staff John Kelly to apologize to widow Myeshia Johnson and Rep. Frederica Wilson (D., Fla.), going on to criticize Trump s disrespect for women and minorities in general. He seems to have this tendency to talk down to people of color, to treat them with disrespect, and I think this adds to it, Waters said. First of all, he called [Wilson] wacky. Secondly, that he didn t back down, that he simply talked about her in a way that was not respectful I think that yes, I think this adds to the suspicion of him and the way that he thinks about minorities and black people in particular. She said Kelly was also wrong in her criticism of Wilson s 2015 speech, and she said she had the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus in saying the Trump Administration needs to do more to respect black women. All of the women of the Congressional Black Caucus have come together and we re demanding an apology, she said. We re sick and tired of women being undermined, dismissed, and black women, in particular, being called names. Waters also criticized Trump s overall leadership. He has the most distorted leadership of any president I ve ever known or heard about, Waters said. Here he had the opportunity to make the condolence call, to do it properly, to recognize this family and their grieving, and also to know the name of the soldier who had been killed. It is so unconscionable in the way that he manages his leadership, she added.Waters also said Kelly s credibility has been damaged. General Kelly has had a good career, and to have his career basically undermined by the president of the United States because he s trying to protect the president and stand up for the president when the president did not deserve to be stood up for, now he s damaged himself, Waters said. He needs to call the congresswoman and apologize.","label":1}
{"text":"ST. JOSEPH, Minn. \u2014 White ribbons flutter along a grade school's fence here in memory of Jacob E. Wetterling, whose remains were found this month nearly 27 years after he was abducted on a country road. A fresh vase of flowers sits at the spot on the road, silent but for crickets and the whoosh of wind through rows of corn, where Jacob was grabbed so many years ago. And though it is the middle of the day, at the house where Jacob lived, the porch light still is on, just as it has been over a matter of decades \u2014 here and at homes across Minnesota \u2014 to guide him home. The disappearance of Jacob in 1989 shattered this city of fewer than 7, 000 people, as well as so many other tiny central Minnesota towns in a region of farm fields and ranch homes. \"It changed a lot,\" Lee Meyer, 94, said. A generation of parents suddenly kept their children close, and a generation of children learned to worry. \"To tell the truth,\" said Robert Devore, 42, who was in his teens when Jacob vanished, \"I'm still looking over my shoulder to this day. \" Long before an age of Amber Alerts and elaborate tracking of sex offenders, Jacob's case opened a new conversation in Minnesota about child sexual abuse and abduction. His story helped lead to a significant national policy change: Jacob's name was on the first federal law in 1994 that required states to keep registries of convicted sex offenders. And, over all the years, the hope here for Jacob's return never seemed to fade, in large part because of the work of his mother, Patty, who has become one of the nation's prominent advocates on behalf of missing and exploited children. As a reporter covering the Midwest for more than a decade, I have focused at times on shifting policies regarding sexual predators \u2014 from local bans on where they can live to controversial programs in which states hold offenders, even after they complete criminal sentences, and the legal challenges that have followed. And I have long followed Jacob's case, and often thought of the grinning boy in the yellow sweater in a frequently reprinted photo as the real stakes in any policy debate. As a parent, I could never shake the impossibly painful details of the case: a masked, armed man had grabbed Jacob, 11, and his best friend and his brother before ordering the friend and brother to run into the darkness and never look back. I watched as Patty Wetterling created a foundation with her husband, Jerry, dedicated to helping other missing children and preventing abuse served on the board of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children expressed nuanced views on offender registries and ran for the House of Representatives twice \u2014 even as she waited, with Midwestern resoluteness, for Jacob. But now it seems the answers were close by all along. Jacob was buried in a farm field in this very county, kidnapped and killed not by someone who had crossed state lines or vanished into the anonymity of some faraway locale, but by Danny Heinrich, who lived about 30 miles away and had first been interviewed by investigators about the case, court records show, within weeks of Jacob's disappearance. This month Mr. Heinrich, 53, admitted assaulting and killing Jacob Wetterling on the night he kidnapped him, in October 1989. He had also been investigated months before Jacob's disappearance in a similar sexual attack on a boy in a nearby town amid a rash of earlier assaults on young boys in Paynesville, another town near St. Joseph. When Mr. Heinrich was questioned not long after Jacob's disappearance, he denied it all, court documents show, and was not charged. The allegations left this city reeling. \"I have boys around that same age \u2014 13, 11 and 8 \u2014 and what's happened to Jacob just makes you cry,\" said Tracy Omann Smith, who owns the local flower shop, where a sign last week read, \"Jacob Let Your Light Shine Bright. \" \"You have to understand, the family had left everything as it was,\" she said. \"They never moved from the house, never changed their phone number. They really believed he was coming back, and maybe we all did. \" On Oct. 22, 1989, Jacob and the two other boys were confronted by a man on a darkened road as they rode their bikes back from a convenience store, where they had picked out a movie. The attacker ordered them into a ditch, asked the boys their ages, then sent two of them scrambling off into the woods and threatened to shoot them if they looked back. He handcuffed Jacob and drove him to a pit near Paynesville, where he attacked him, then shot him. After Mr. Heinrich's confession in court this month, an emotional Ms. Wetterling thanked law enforcement officials. She also praised a local blogger and another assault victim of Mr. Heinrich's, for \"stirring this pot\" the last few years until the truth came out. Then she said her family was not yet ready to speak publicly about the case. \"For us Jacob was alive until we found him,\" Ms. Wetterling said. \"We need to heal. \" In an unusual plea agreement, Mr. Heinrich agreed to admit to the killing and directed the authorities to Jacob's remains, buried in a shallow grave in a pasture. But he will not be charged in the killing or the earlier assault on the victim who survived. He pleaded guilty to a federal pornography count, and is expected to serve 20 years in prison. The authorities have raised the possibility that he could be held beyond that, under civil commitment procedures aimed at the most dangerous sex offenders. He told a hushed courtroom what Jacob had asked that night: \"What did I do wrong?\" Some here say they have grown skeptical about police work on the case, given the years it took to solve it, the early questioning of Mr. Heinrich that did not result in charges, and the unsolved assaults of young boys in nearby towns over several years before Jacob's abduction. A new investigative podcast series by American Public Media, \"In the Dark,\" is examining law enforcement's handling of the case. At least eight cases involving boys who were groped or attacked occurred from 1986 to 1988 in tiny Paynesville, where Mr. Heinrich lived at that time, court documents show. The descriptions of the attacker often sounded similar: a husky, short man with a mask and a raspy voice. At points, the local authorities said Mr. Heinrich should be considered a suspect in those cases, though he was never charged. Jacob's was a case that drew enormous law enforcement resources to this city. National Guard members were dispatched. Rewards were offered. Thousands of tips poured in. Would Sheriff John L. Sanner of Stearns County do anything differently in the investigation given everything? \"My response has always been the same,\" Sheriff Sanner said. \"Our energy needs to stay focused on what we can control and not wasted on things we have no control over. \" Much has changed since Jacob Wetterling vanished \u2014 from DNA technology to an internet revolution that allows people to know almost instantly when a child disappears, but that also gives predators new ways to reach children without even stepping outdoors. But in a way, this small city has stood still, waiting, like the lights outside the Wetterlings' home. Trina Faber, 45, a manager at Bo Diddley's sandwich shop, grew up around here. Patty Wetterling sometimes comes in for sandwiches. And Jerry Wetterling, the local chiropractor, whose office remains just down the street, has treated Ms. Faber's back from time to time. So when she heard that Jacob's remains had at last been found, she burst into tears. \"There has been so much to it for so long,\" she said. \"In a way I was relieved. He was in peace. But it also meant it was the end. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Libya s coastal guard has rescued more than 250 illegal migrants trying to leave the North African country in small boats bound for Italy, officials said on Saturday. Libya s western shores are the main departure point for migrants mainly from sub-Saharan countries fleeing poverty and conflict trying to reach Europe. Arrivals to Italy have fallen by two-thirds since July from the same period last year after officials working for the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, Italy s partner, managed to cut back human smuggling in the city of Sabratha west of the capital. That has pushed the trade further east, with the coast guard intercepting several boats off the coast near Qaraboulli and Zliten, two towns located east of Tripoli. The naval forces Ibn Ouf vessel rescued (on Friday) illegal migrants including women, children and men ... they are from different sub-Saharan and Arab countries, Coast Guard Captain Abdulhadi Fakhal told Reuters. They were rescued off Qaraboulli and Zliten towns ... and they are about 250 to 270 persons, Fakhal said. Libya has plunged into chaos since the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in a NATO-backed uprising. A U.N.-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli has been trying to gain control of territory.","label":0}
{"text":"Dr. MacDonald & Dr. Duke Expose the Vicious War on Trump by the Jewish Establishment! November 10, 2016 at 11:25 am  Dr. MacDonald & Dr. Duke Expose the Vicious War on Trump by the Jewish Establishment!  Today Dr. Duke had Professor Kevin MacDonald as his guest for the hour. They discussed the importance of the Trump victory as well as what needs to be done. They agreed that regarding immigration, the most important thing in the long term is repealing the 1965 Act.  They also pointed out the phenomenon of whites voting their ethnic interests. While we have been hearing that white women were going to vote against Trump, they wound up supporting him by a 10% margin. Even almost half of white women with a college education supported Trump, despite the years of Jewish indoctrination at college. The same can be said for white millennials.  This is an important show in terms of showing the path forward. Please share it widely.  Our show is aired live at 11 am replayed at ET 4pm Eastern and 4am Eastern.  Click on Image to Donate!  And please spread this message to others.","label":1}
{"text":"During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump was thrilled when Great Britain voted to leave the European Union. Now that he s on his first world trip as BLOTUS and after calling one of our greatest allies bad, very bad, he finally fessed up his real beef with the European Union, and if you haven t guessed, it s that it s too hard for him to get richer.While Trump did love one thing about Europe, the Belgian chocolates, which he called the best, which is high praise coming from the man who claims to know a lot about chocolate, at least in cake form.Our national laughing stock didn t leave it there, though. He admitted that the real problem he has with Europe has nothing to do with global economics or even immigration. Trump s problem with Europe is that it takes him too long to open golf courses.According to one source to The Guardian: He made a lot of references to his personal journey. He explained, for example, the functioning of Europe on the basis of his difficulties in doing business in Ireland, one source told the Francophone paper.A second source told the newspaper: Every time we talk about a country, he remembered the things he had done. Scotland? He said he had opened a club. Ireland? He said it took him two and a half years to get a licence and that did not give him a very good image of the European Union. One feels that he wants a system where everything can be realised very quickly and without formalities. This, in a nutshell, perfectly encapsulates most of what is wrong with Trump. While he s playing the role of world leader, in reality, his world view is so small that if it s not directly about him, he tunes out. He won t even read his national security briefings unless the authors pepper his name frequently throughout. Even then, the briefings have to be short and it s best if they contain pictures.Even beyond that, Trump is a businessman, and regardless of the fact that he technically works for us, he s still only working to enrich himself.","label":1}
{"text":"All 10 US Navy sailors detained by Iran after drifting into its territorial waters have been released, the US and Iran said Wednesday. Could the juvenile suspects in the Tennessee wildfires be tried as adults? Detained American Navy sailors shown in an undisclosed location in Iran. Iranian state television reported that all 10 U.S. sailors detained by Iran after entering its territorial waters have been released. Iran's Revolutionary Guard said the sailors were released Wednesday after it was determined that their entry was not intentional. All 10 U.S. Navy sailors detained by Iran after drifting into its territorial waters a day earlier have been freed, the U.S. and Iran said Wednesday. The Navy said the American crew members returned safely and there were no indications they had been harmed while in custody. The nine men and one woman were held at an Iranian base on Farsi Island in the Persian Gulf after they were detained nearby on Tuesday. The tiny outpost has been used as a base for Revolutionary Guard speedboats as far back as the 1980s. The sailors departed the island at 0843 GMT aboard the boats they were detained with, the Navy said. They were picked up by Navy aircraft and other sailors took control of their boats for the return voyage to Bahrain, where the U.S. 5th Fleet is based. The Navy added that it \"will investigate the circumstances that led to the sailors' presence in Iran.\" The Revolutionary Guard's official website published images of the detained U.S. sailors before their release, showing them sitting on the floor of a room. They look mostly bored or annoyed, though at least one of the sailors appears to be smiling. The sole woman had her hair covered by a brown cloth. The pictures also showed what appeared to be their two boats. \"After determining that their entry into Iran's territorial waters was not intentional and their apology, the detained American sailors were released in international waters,\" a statement posted online by the Guard said Wednesday. US Vice President Joe Biden says that America did not apologize to Iran over U.S. sailors allegedly entering Iranian territorial waters. Biden made the comments Wednesday in an interview with \"CBS This Morning.\" The vice president said: \"There's nothing to apologize for. When you have a problem with the boat you apologize the boat had a problem? No, and there was no looking for any apology. This was just standard nautical practice.\" Biden said that the Iranians realized the U.S. sailors \"were there in distress and said they would release them and released them like ordinary nations would do.\" Gen. Ali Fadavi, the navy chief of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard, was quoted earlier Wednesday by Iranian state TV as saying that an investigation had shown the Americans entered Iranian territorial waters because of \"mechanical problems in their navigation system.\" U.S. officials also blamed mechanical trouble for the incident. They had said on Tuesday that Tehran assured them the crew and vessels would be returned safely and promptly. Fadavi said the American boats had shown \"unprofessional acts\" for 40 minutes before being picked up by Iranian forces after entering the country's territorial waters. He said Tehran did not consider the U.S. Navy boats violating Iranian territorial waters as an \"innocent passage.\" The sailors were nonetheless allowed to make contact with the U.S. military, based on Iran's \"responsibilities and Islamic mercy\" late Tuesday, he said. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who forged a personal relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif during the three years of nuclear negotiations, called his Iranian counterpart immediately on learning of the incident, according to a senior U.S. official. Kerry \"personally engaged\" with Zarif on the issue, said the official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Kerry said in a statement Wednesday: \"That this issue was resolved peacefully and efficiently is a testament to the critical role diplomacy plays in keeping our country safe, secure and strong.\" Kerry has a close relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif after the recent nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and world powers. Kerry learned of the incident around 12:30 p.m. EST as he and U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter were meeting their Filipino counterparts at the State Department, the official said. Fadavi said Zarif \"had a firm stance\" during the telephone conversation with Kerry about the sailors' presence in Iran's territorial waters and \"said they should not have come and should apologize.\" Carter said he was pleased with the sailors' release and he thanked Kerry for his diplomatic efforts. \"Around the world, the U.S. Navy routinely provides assistance to foreign sailors in distress, and we appreciate the timely way in which this situation was resolved,\" Carter said. The Guard's 200,000-strong force is different from the regular Iranian military and is charged with protecting the ruling system. Its naval forces are heavily dependent on armed speedboats that can be used in teams to swarm much larger vessels. The incident came amid heightened tensions with Iran, and only hours before President Barack Obama gave his final State of the Union address to Congress and the public. It set off a dramatic series of calls and meetings as U.S. officials tried to determine the exact status of the crew and reach out to Iranian leaders. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told The Associated Press late Tuesday U.S. time that the sailors' boats were moving between Kuwait and Bahrain when the U.S. lost contact with them. The sailors were part of Riverine Squadron 1 based in San Diego and were deployed to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain. When the U.S. lost contact with the boats, ships attached to the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier strike group began searching the area, along with aircraft flying off the Truman. The Riverine boats were not part of the carrier strike group, and were on a training mission, the officials said. The craft are not considered high-tech and don't contain any sensitive equipment, so there were no concerns about the Iranians gaining access to them, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive incident publicly. In an earlier incident, in late December, Iran launched a rocket test near U.S. warships and boats passing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the route for about a fifth of the world's oil. Last February, Iran sank a replica of a U.S. aircraft carrier near the strait and has said it is testing \"suicide drones\" that could conduct kamikaze missions on naval ships. It has also challenged foreign cargo ships operating in the Gulf, opening fire on at least two in April and May. In one of those incidents, Iran temporarily seized a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship over what it said was a commercial dispute before releasing it with its crew more than a week later. Meanwhile, Iran was expected to satisfy the terms of last summer's nuclear deal in just days. Once the U.N. nuclear agency confirms Iran's actions to roll back its program, the United States and other Western powers are obliged to suspend wide-ranging oil, trade and financial sanctions on Tehran. Kerry recently said the deal's implementation was \"days away.\" Schreck reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Lolita C. Baldor, Bradley Klapper and Richard Lardner in Washington, Jon Gambrell in Dubai and Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.","label":0}
{"text":"A campaign ad for Donald Trump attacking rival Republican presidential candidate John Kasich has been pulled off the air in Ohio for violating federal election law.The ad, John Kasich All Talk No Action Politician, is designed to cut into the lead of Kasich, the current sitting governor in the state and the odds-on favorite to win the Republican primary coming up there.But it won t be seen on TV, and it is because the people employed by Trump s presidential campaign are very inept at their jobs.https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=iibsiauLgOoNew Day for America, the super PAC supporting Mr. Kasich, sent complaints to stations about the ad, saying that it was falsely attacking Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and that it did not comply with federal regulations for political advertising. No disclaimer appears at the end of the advertisement paid for by Donald Trump, Matt Carle, executive director of New Day for America, wrote in the complaint. Consequently, this advertisement is in violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, and it must be removed from the air. It is amazing in this day and age, when almost any sort of political advertising is allowed for the highest bidder, that an ad would get pulled like this.As the New York Times explains:The Federal Election Commission says that political ads must include a clearly readable written statement that appears at their end for a period of at least four seconds with a reasonable degree of color contrast between the background and the disclaimer statement.This is a standard thing to do for any real, serious presidential campaign, but it is a symptom of the sort of basic failure that happens every day with Trump.His campaign often issues conflicting positions on basic issues, contradicting what is said in a speech with a press release or a statement by a campaign spokesperson on TV. They issue inaccurate press releases, with wrong or misspelled names and locations, and the candidate himself has often misstated the dates and times when instructing his supporters on where and when they should be voting.Trump is already months into his campaign and still making amateur hour screw-ups. He has such a lead on the rest of the Republicans, this won t hurt. But if he makes these kinds of mistakes in the fall against the Democrats, it will weaken his already shaky campaign.","label":1}
{"text":"Wary of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s ambition for closer European Union integration, right-wing politicians in the EU s eastern wing are touting her weak election victory as a vindication of their concerns. Eurosceptic governments in Poland and Hungary have been vocal in criticizing Merkel s open-door approach to migration and opposing EU reforms that would transfer more power to the Brussels institutions at the expense of national governments. Poland s foreign minister said Germany s Sept. 24 election, in which Merkel s conservative bloc won the lowest number of votes since 1949, was proof that Berlin would have to heed the concerns of eastern member states. She should focus on maintaining the unity of the European Union, Witold Waszczykowski told Polska the Times newspaper. Mrs Merkel will have to look for new allies and this in turn opens room for maneuver for Polish diplomacy. Today, there is no climate for federalization and there won t be one in the nearest future. Merkel is expected to take months to build a new coalition government, reducing German pressure on Warsaw and Budapest to comply with EU standards. Her most likely coalition allies are the increasingly eurosceptic, pro-business Free Democrats and the Greens - but she also faces a more divided Bundestag lower house, where the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the third biggest party. Nationalist politicians in the EU s eastern member states hope the rise of the AfD, the first far-right party to enter the Bundestag in decades, will force Merkel to harden her stance on immigration after Germany admitted more than one million migrants and refugees, mostly Muslims, in 2015-16. Hungary has already said German politicians since the election have endorsed its measures to beef up its border security to discourage migrants from entering the EU. About some aspects of illegal migration we are still in debate, but there is full agreement on the principal issue that the protection of the external borders of Europe is very important, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said after meeting senior German lawmakers in the city of Stuttgart last week. The head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has invited the leaders of the four Visegrad states - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - to a dinner in Brussels on Oct. 18, ahead of an EU summit, to try to ease tensions between them and wealthier western Europe. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban s Fidesz party and Merkel s CDU-CSU are in the same political family in the European Parliament, and despite Berlin s criticism of his record in government, has welcomed Merkel s election victory. Let s quietly pray every evening for the extension of the mandate of the current chancellor, he said before the election. Orban himself faces an election next April in which he will seek a third consecutive term, and he probably does not want to tackle EU reform issues head-on now, analysts said. Orban s objective is to keep the margin of maneuver open as long as possible: he does not want to face yes-or-no questions like whether to take Hungary into the euro zone or stay on the periphery anytime soon, Botond Feledy, senior fellow at the Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy in Budapest. GERMAN-FRENCH AXIS But once Merkel has bedded down a new coalition in Berlin, Budapest and Warsaw can expect a resumption of pressure over their record on democracy and rule of law from a reinvigorated partnership between Germany and Emmanuel Macron s France. Analysts said Merkel and Macron, both keen to overcome EU disunity, may try to pick off more cooperative eastern states such as Slovakia and the Czech Republic in order to concentrate pressure on Poland and Hungary to comply with EU rules. Merkel may also in due course revive her demands on the eastern states to take in more migrants as she seeks to blunt the allure of the AfD at home for conservative German voters. Warsaw, currently under an unprecedented EU investigation over its rule of law standards, is bracing for renewed criticism. We are expecting Merkel to get tough on Poland - definitely not in the next few months while the new government is being formed, but after the domestic dust has settled, a Polish government source added.","label":0}
{"text":"He boasted about himself in the third person. He sneered at the opponents he had vanquished. He disparaged journalists and invited angry chants from the crowd, grinning broadly at calls of \"lock her up\" and \"build the wall. \" He ridiculed the government's leaders as stupid and dishonest failures. In his first major address since winning the presidency three weeks ago, Donald J. Trump soaked up the adulation of thousands of his supporters at a rally here, unabashedly gloating about the \"great\" victory he had secured. If there were any question about whether his evolution to would temper his presentation or moderate his tone, the rally offered a forceful answer: Not a chance. Kicking off what was billed as a \"thank you\" tour, Mr. Trump was incendiary and prideful, hopeful and indicting, vengeful and determined. His staff said the rally was the first of several he will hold before his inauguration next month. His tour is an unusual move for a most of whom do not return so quickly to the campaign trail, especially while key cabinet positions remain unfilled. Mr. Trump, who has been mostly cloistered in Trump Tower as he tries to assemble a government, was said to be eager to reconnect with voters. Connect he did, whipping the partially filled arena into a frenzy by reprising the rhetoric from his campaign. He repeated pledges to suspend immigration from countries with a history of terrorism, repeal the Affordable Care Act, lower taxes, end unfair trade and \"drain the swamp\" of corruption. But while he at times stuck to the script on his teleprompter, Mr. Trump came alive when he veered from it to talk about himself and demean those who had opposed him. \"We had a lot of fun fighting Hillary Clinton,\" he said, smiling knowingly as the crowd chanted \"Lock her up!\" but offering no indication that he intended to do so. In the middle of a scripted part of the speech about lower taxes for businesses, he shifted abruptly to note the magnitude of his wins. \"How about North Carolina \u2014 how well did we do in North Carolina? Remember when they said he cannot win North Carolina?\" Mr. Trump said, adding a moment later: \"Donald Trump can't break the blue wall, right? We didn't break it, we shattered that sucker. We shattered it, man. That poor wall is busted up. \" And he reserved special bile for the \"extremely dishonest press,\" provoking boos as he lashed out \u2014 without naming her \u2014 at a network anchor who he said had cried on television on election night when she realized he was going to win the presidency. \"You know what she doesn't understand, things are going to be much better now,\" he said. \"I love this stuff,\" he said after a nearly discussion of his electoral prowess and his critique of the news media. \"Should I go on with this for just a little bit longer? I love it. \" He did go on, shifting back and forth between his prepared remarks and his extemporaneous walk down the memory lane of victory. During the prepared parts of the speech, Mr. Trump seemed eager to reach out to the people who had opposed his candidacy. He said the new government would \"seek a truly inclusive society,\" and he proclaimed that \"we condemn bigotry and hatred in all of its forms. \" On the economy, he vowed to \"reverse the stagnation and usher in a period of prosperity and growth,\" even as he promised to overcome the partisan gridlock that has led to stalemate in Congress during much of the past eight years. \"We'll compete in the world, we want to compete in the world, but we're going to compete in the world where it's a road, not a road,\" Mr. Trump vowed. \"The advantages are going to come back to our country, and they haven't for many, many years. \" Speaking in Ohio just days after a Somali refugee wounded several people with a knife at Ohio State University, Mr. Trump essentially attributed the attack to programs to admit refugees \"stupidly created by our very stupid politicians. \" \"We will suspend immigration from regions where it cannot be safely processed,\" he said, echoing some of his most effective campaign rhetoric. But he sometimes veered from his prepared remarks in the middle of a sentence. A discussion of what his administration would do if a company wanted to move jobs overseas reminded him again of his victories. And that discussion of winning several states led directly into a diatribe against reporters, who he said had never seen his victories coming. Then, when he mentioned Utah, he railed against a candidate who before Election Day had seemed poised to do well. \"Remember when they said Donald Trump is going to lose to some guy I've never even heard of?\" he said, laughing. \"The people of Utah were amazing, and we trounced them. Hillary came in second, and that guy came in third. What the hell was he trying to prove?\" Mr. Trump offered both an olive branch and a warning to Democrats in Washington, saying he believed that \"they want to get together\" but reminded them that they had lost \"because the people are angry. \" He delivered his promise through the prism of a federal government. \"Our victory was so great, we have the House, we have the Senate,\" Mr. Trump said, his last words drowned out with cheers. He smiled and paused, before offering some tepid reassurance that \"we want to get them on board. \" Mr. Trump opened his rally with a familiar trope: gawking at the crowd and lamenting the difficulty that supporters were having traveling to the arena. \"So I didn't know what came with this position, and I didn't know that they closed down the roads around the stadium for an hour and a half,\" he said, thanking the crowd \"for being so patient. \" Before he spoke, a familiar scene developed at the arena, with hundreds of Mr. Trump's supporters lined up, some clad in red shirts handing out \" \" signs. The prerally soundtrack, heavy on Elton John and the Rolling Stones, rotated through the songs heard during the campaign. The main difference this time: the lectern at center stage, which now had a big, bold \"USA\" where the name \"TRUMP\" used to be. As Mr. Trump has at times seemed frustrated by criticism of his business conflicts and his loss by more than two million ballots in the popular vote. But at the rally, Mr. Trump was once again in good spirits, feeding off the fervor in the crowd. He had just come from Indianapolis, where he celebrated his involvement in Carrier's decision to keep roughly 1, 000 jobs in Indiana. Mr. Trump seemed to relish toying with the news media, at one point announcing that he had chosen James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, to be his secretary of defense \u2014 even though his spokesman had said four hours earlier that no decision had been made. \"I gave up a little secret,\" Mr. Trump said, urging the crowd not to \"let it out of this room. \" But nothing seemed to fire up the as much as recalling his victories in the campaign, each made so much sweeter, he repeatedly said, because the media and his opponents had never seen them coming. \"We had a lot of fun,\" he said, adding: \"The bottom line is, we won. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The spoiled son of a New York millionaire went full affluenza on an Uber driver, calling him a minimum wage f*ggot on camera in a fit of privilege that has to be seen to be believed.As Heavy.com reports:Jake Croman, son of New York City landlord Steven Croman, is seen in a video verbally harassing Uber driver Artur Zawada after Zawada canceled a ride on the University of Michigan frat bro.The video was posted on March 23 and quickly went viral with more than 300,000 views.In the video, Croman, a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon, is seen berating Zawada along with frat brothers. But Croman is the ringleader of the harassment, calling Zawada a f*ck and a f**got. He continues, You wanna kick me off? Kick me off, you little piece of sh*t. You re an Uber driver! Go f*cking drive, you little f*ck! He then proceeds to call Zawada a minimum wage f*ck before storming off with his cronies.The footage is astonishing because it lays bare the sense of entitlement and privilege of these trust fund frat bros. While their wealth is no more than an accident of birth, they strut about as if they invented the light bulb. Worse, they actually scoff about the fact that Zawada will spend the rest of the day working while they sit on their a** and watch TV. Newsflash fellas: Zawada is worth ten of you.But clearly, these are values Croman and his cronies learned at home. According to the NY Daily News, the frat bro s father has been branded a slumlord, found to be using illegal tactics to force out rent-stabilized tenants. His latest scam, reports Crains New York, is to undertake highly disruptive renovation works in efforts to force out tenants, making way for those he can charge higher rents.Little wonder then, that his son shows so little respect for his fellow New Yorkers.Croman s fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon, has released a statement announcing their own investigation of the incident. It reads: At the conclusion of our swift, thorough investigation, we will handle the situation with appropriate action, Depending on the details of the investigation, this could include the expulsion of membership. Something tells us that this is not going to be enough to correct Croman s attitude. An attitude which stems from an unacceptable wealth gap, which rewards this spoiled boy s father for abusing those without the financial clout to fight back.","label":1}
{"text":"A man deliberately drove his car into a group of people outside a school near Toulouse in southern France on Friday, injuring three Chinese students, police sources said. The driver of the vehicle, a 28-year-old man, was known to police for committing minor offences but was not on a terrorism watchlist, the sources said. He was arrested at the scene. One of the students, a young woman, was being treated for serious head injuries. For the moment, it is not being looked at as a terrorist incident although it is also not ruled out, the Toulouse prosecutor said in a statement. The driver has long suffered from psychological problems and was hospitalized until Dec. 2016, the prosecutor said. More than 240 people have been killed in France since early 2015 in attacks by Islamist militants or assailants inspired by the Islamic State group. Monday will mark the second anniversary of attacks in Paris that killed more than 130 people. Earlier this week, French police arrested nine people and another was arrested in Switzerland in coordinated counter-terrorism swoops.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Monday urged China to implement economic reforms that will help ensure fairness for U.S. exporters. In a call with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang, Lew called on Bejing to liberalize its investment environment, reduce excess industrial capacity in its metals sector, and establish a new set of official export credit disciplines to \"create a level playing field\" for U.S. exporters, Treasury said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"The Bavarian sister party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has said her conservative bloc must agree policies on immigration, pensions and healthcare before opening coalition negotiations with two other parties. Leaders of Bavaria s Christian Social Union (CSU) - stung by a drop in support of more than 10 percent in the Sept. 24 election - have redoubled their push for a 200,000 per year cap on immigration, a demand that Merkel has rejected, complicating her efforts to form a new government. Merkel s bloc of the CDU and CSU, which have worked as partners for decades, hung onto their position as the largest group in parliament after a Sept. 24 vote, despite seeing their combined support fall to its lowest since 1949. They must find coalition partners to build a government, with the most likely path toward a majority being an alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens. CSU leader Horst Seehofer said the conservative allies could not begin negotiating with the other parties until they resolved their own position on major issues, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Monday. It quoted the Bavarian premier, who is fending off calls for his own resignation, as saying the two parties faced their biggest challenge since 1976 - when his predecessor Franz-Josef Strauss threatened for weeks to break up the alliance. Seehofer, whose biggest challenger is Bavarian finance minister Markus Soeder, a hardliner on immigration, will meet Merkel and other top officials on Sunday, with top officials in Merkel s CDU split on the need for a rightward shift. The conflict inside the conservative camp is straining Merkel s already difficult task of bringing together parties with big differences on energy, Europe, migration and taxes. Armin Laschet, premier of Germany s most populous region, North Rhine-Westphalia, told the Handelsblatt newspaper that the migrant cap sought by CSU leaders was unacceptable. But he suggested a compromise could be found that included some ballpark figures. Laschet also said the Greens would have to step back from some of their hardline environmentalist demands. The CDU s leader in the eastern state of Thuringia on Monday argued against the rightward shift demanded by the CSU and the conservative premiers of two states - Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt - where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party made big gains in Sunday s national elections. Our job is to fence ourselves off against the left and the right, Mike Mohring told Reuters. Manfred Weber, deputy leader of the CSU and head of the center-right group in the EU Parliament, told Deutschlandfunk radio it was important to avoid setting red lines before the coalition talks, given the urgent need to win back AfD voters. Weber said he expected all mainstream parties to focus on preventing the anti-immigrant AfD from gaining a permanent foothold in the German parliament. He said a three-way coalition among conservatives, Greens and the FDP, dubbed a Jamaica coalition since the parties colors match those of the Black, Green and Yellow Jamaican flag, offered a chance to build consensus on other issues such as energy and agriculture. Jamaica offers us a chance ... to embark on a new start, he said. The CSU is ready to do that. Merkel has sought to keep the door open for a renewal of her grand coalition with the Social Democrats that has ruled for the past four years, but the SPD is determined to stay in opposition after suffering its worst result since 1933. We got 20.5 percent of the vote. That is not a mandate to govern, SPD Secretary General Hubertus Heil told broadcaster ARD on Monday. He accused the other parties of stalling coalition talks until after a state election due on Oct. 15 in Lower Saxony. They want to govern, now they should govern, he said. A new poll by the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper showed the CDU and SPD nearly tied in Lower Saxony, with 33.1 percent and 32.8 percent, respectively.","label":0}
{"text":"Germany s Free Democrats (FDP) would want the finance ministry in exchange for joining Chancellor Angela Merkel in the country s next coalition government, a member of the party s executive said. Setting out conditions days before federal elections that Merkel is almost certain to win, albeit short of an absolute majority, the FDP also ruled out partnering her conservatives if she supported French plans to deepen fiscal integration in the euro zone. Often viewed as Merkel s natural allies, the socially liberal FDP were part of her second government from 2009 to 2013. They crashed out of parliament that year but are hoping to re-enter the legislature on Sunday as the third-largest party. Current Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, of Merkel s Christian Democrats (CDU), has held the post since 2009 and is the most high-profile member of her cabinet. But Alexander Hahn, a member of the FDP s national executive, said the ministry should go to someone from his party. The FDP should enter no government in which it cannot name a finance minister, Hahn told mass-market daily Bild in remarks published on Monday. On Sunday, FDP leader Christian Lindner said setting the agenda for Europe was the most important issue for his party in any coalition talks with the conservatives after the Sept. 24 vote. I fear that Ms Merkel has already agreed to new funding mechanisms (for the EU) with (French President Emmanuel) Macron, he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. Everything that goes in the direction of financial transfer on the European level, be it a euro zone budget or a banking union, is a red line for us . Macron, who is to present his views on the future of the euro zone on Sept. 26, has called for a finance minister and a standalone budget for the bloc, while European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday urged EU governments to use economic recovery as a springboard toward closer union. Merkel has said she would work with Macron on strengthening the euro zone. But Germany remains insistent that member states should take primary responsibility for their own economic problems, a principle whose prime exponent has been Schaeuble. He is revered by a significant part of the conservative voter base who see him as a guardian of their austerity-oriented interests in the euro zone. The FDP, who held the foreign minister in their last union with the conservatives, have reinvented themselves under Lindner, who preaches a hard line on Europe. They are polling 8 to 10 percent in surveys, while Merkel s conservatives are on around 37 percent, leaving their combined forces just short of a majority. Analysts say completing a banking union and creating a euro zone budget would provide more stability for the currency bloc, and that a conservative\/FDP coalition might threaten such plans. I fear there could be a strong reaction on bond markets should the FDP push for a literal enforcement of fiscal rules or for an expulsion of Greece as part of a future ruling coalition, said Martin Lueck of asset manager BlackRock. A grand coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel s current partners and polling around 23 percent, would make it much easier for the chancellor to work with Macron on overhauling the euro zone. The centre-left SPD have often criticized Schaeuble s tough stance on Greece and have even backed the idea of common euro zone debt. The FDP are fighting for third spot against the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is forecast to enter parliament for the first time.","label":0}
{"text":"After Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was finally publicly outed after decades of alleged sexual abuses toward women, a #metoo hashtag formed and a dam broke. Suddenly it seemed that every time we turned on our computers, every time we received a phone alert, it was yet another man outed as an abuser.The worst of the worst of sexual abusers, though, are those who abuse children. Roy Moore, the right-wing Christian nut-job who s running for Senate in Alabama has been accused of doing just that. Five women have now come forward alleging that Moore dated them and worse while they were teens and he was in his 30s.This all began almost a year to the day after an audio tape of Donald Trump bragging about how he s such a big star he can just grab women s pussies. Is it possible, though, that Trump is as bad, if not worse, than Moore?While liberals and Democrats have decried the alleged abusers, regardless of ideology or party affiliation, Republicans have taken a *shall we say* more nuanced stance when it comes to Moore. They have invoked the Bible, saying that the Virgin Mary was a teenager when Jesus was born. Of course, much like they forget the well regulated militia part of the Second Amendment, these men who would slut shame their own sisters if they were Democrats who wanted birth control, suddenly forgot the first part of Mary s moniker. They also defended Moore by saying that he was just a fragile young buck of 32, who couldn t have possibly known better, while his alleged victims were well on their way to adulthood at 14 and 16.Donald Trump has been surprisingly mum about the Moore allegations, but spokesperson Kellyanne Conway carefully straddled the line by saying that if the allegations were true, Moore should resign. Trump, though, had something interesting to say about the subject of statutory rape three years ago. In a tweet, Trump called it talent to date a woman who s young enough to be his daughter. Note: he was married to Melania at the time.@rexrode_lisa \"@realDonaldTrump you date girls young enough to be your daughter.That's perverted\" Dated. No, that's talent. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2013 This wasn t the first time Trump expressed interest in young girls. At least twice, Trump was heard saying that he would soon be dating girls who, at the time, were very underaged.Donald Trump once told 14-year-old girls, 'In a couple of years, I'll be dating you' https:\/\/t.co\/nslYeqp8dg pic.twitter.com\/ayDeW6nGNz L.A. Times Politics (@latimespolitics) October 13, 2016 In 1992, he said about a 10-year-old girl that he would be dating her in 10 years. Here s the video:All of this, of course, was out there before the election and Trump voters didn t care. Trump voters in Alabama don t care about the allegations against Moore either. A poll taken after the accusations began to surface showed Moore with a 10 point lead against his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones. If we haven t thrown in the moral towel as a country, Republicans certainly have. Jerry Falwell s moral majority has turned into an immoral minority of right-wing ideologues who would pimp out their own daughters if it meant putting another Republican in Congress.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and other top White House officials urged conservative activists on Thursday to set aside differences and unite behind President Donald Trump's agenda stressing tough trade and immigration policies. Addressing the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, in suburban Maryland, outside Washington, Pence rallied the large group of Republicans who helped elect Trump on Nov. 8. \"My friends, this is our time. This is the chance we've worked so hard for so long to see. This is the time to prove again that our answers are the right answers for America,\" Pence said. Trump was due to address CPAC on Friday. Earlier on Thursday, Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, known as a forceful influence in the White House, made a rare public appearance to appeal for support for the Republican president. \"We want you to have our back\" in upcoming battles, Bannon told the gathering, denouncing media criticism of Trump. He appeared onstage along with White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. The early days of the new administration have been marked by deep post-election divisions between Trump backers and liberals over the president's temporary travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, as well as moves to increase deportations of illegal immigrants and build a wall on the border with Mexico. While conservatives celebrate Trump's role in delivering them victory in November's election, his agenda veers from traditional right-wing principles like limited government and open trade. Republicans who control the White House and Congress are also arguing over how to dismantle and replace former Democratic President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare law. Bannon and Priebus both sought to dispel a sense of disorder in the White House portrayed in media accounts. Referring to media criticism of Trump and echoing the president's attacks on the media, Bannon warned: \"It's going to get worse every day\" as Trump presses forward with his 2016 campaign promises. \"If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight you are sadly mistaken,\" said Bannon, who formerly ran the confrontational right-wing website Breitbart News. He blamed the \"corporatist, globalist media that are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda\" under Trump. The CPAC conference, once a fringe event but now decidedly in the Republican mainstream, is being attended by an estimated 10,000 activists. White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, in remarks to the group, credited Trump with revitalizing the Republican Party's right wing. \"Every great movement ends up being a little bit sclerotic and dusty after a time, and I think they (conservatives) need an infusion of energy,\" Conway said. CPAC organizers are trying to steer clear of controversy over the alt-right movement, a loose grouping that includes neo-Nazis, white supremacists and anti-Semites whom Trump has been slow to denounce. Breitbart has a following among some of those groups and Bannon in the past had called the media organization a platform for the movement. Some Breitbart staffers were scheduled to participate in CPAC panel discussions. \"We don't think there's any role for the alt-right in the conservative movement,\" Matt Schlapp, head of the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, said in a phone interview. Just a month into his presidency, Trump is already being compared by some conservatives to their hero, former President Ronald Reagan, who swept into office in 1981 with a small-government, free-trade, tax-cutting agenda that energized the Republican right wing and molded the views of many of the CPAC faithful. Trump so far has been \"pitch-perfect with conservatives as he starts his administration,\" said Schlapp. Even so, some conservatives, including some at CPAC, are nervously watching Trump. Trump has proposed a major expansion of government to police immigration. He has already canceled a trade deal with Asia-Pacific neighbors and sharply criticized one among the United States, Mexico and Canada. \"I always worry any discussion about trade competition and tariffs ... misdirects the focus,\" said CPAC stalwart Grover Norquist, a powerful advocate of low taxes and small government. On taxes, Trump has backed cuts in rates, but his position on a Republican tax package under debate in Congress is unclear. Schlapp credited Trump with naming the most conservative Cabinet in a half-century and nominating a Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch, who has conservatives' blessings. Trump has also thrilled conservatives by working hand in glove with congressional Republicans on overturning or gutting a handful of Obama-era regulations, including one that prevented coal companies from dumping waste into rivers and streams.","label":0}
{"text":"So now if you enter a contest, you need to worry about your political affiliation if you re a Republican? The left continues to show that they are the most intolerant of anyone who s across the aisle from them. It s getting uglier and uglier out there. What happened to the accepting leftists who claim they re ok with all people? WE HAVE A SUGGESTION: Please message Gypsy on Twitter or Instagram It might also be a good idea to contact Kat Von D Beauty. Light Up Social Media!The Wichita Eagle reported that Gypsy Freeman was declared the winner of a national art contest sponsored by Kat Von D Beauty and was set to receive a prize package worth about $2,100. That is, until an Instagram user found a post on her page supporting Donald Trump. Once that was made known to the company, Freeman reportedly received a message from Kat Von D s Instagram account informing her that she was disqualified.PLEASE SEND A MESSAGE OF ENCOURAGEMENT TO GYPSY FREEMAN VIA TWITTERAccording to the Eagle:When Freeman was announced as the winner, curious Instagrammers went to her page and found a pro-Trump post from Election Day last year.That evening, she received a direct message from Kat Von D s personal Instagram account, telling her the celebrity had drawn a personal line in the sand between myself and anyone who supports that man, according to screenshots of the conversation. My launch party [and my brand] celebrates many things that Trump is against, the celebrity went on to say, according to the screenshots. And I just need you to know that I personally have a hard time with inviting anyone who would support such an anti-feminist, anti-homosexual\/LGBT, anti-immigrant, and anti-climate change fascist such as Trump. According to the screenshots, Freeman replied: I won t be upset with you if you can t have us there for these reasons, and I wish you the best. We would love to be there, of course, but I sincerely do understand if you decide to replace us with someone who supports the candidate you support. This woman is so talented! It should be about the work and not about politics. This is a shame but Gypsy will get much more publicity from this than she would have otherwise. Her website is amazing! The winning image is below:","label":1}
{"text":"As U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday to propose close military coordination in Syria, the White House and Pentagon offered lukewarm support for the plan and demanded that Moscow show it was serious about fighting Islamic State, not just propping up President Bashar al-Assad.Kerry himself took a tough line after his meeting on Thursday with Putin, State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters in Moscow. \"Secretary Kerry emphasized that absent concrete, near-term steps, diplomatic efforts could not continue indefinitely,\" Kirby said. Kerry's proposal would create a new center where U.S. and Russian militaries would share intelligence and coordinate air strikes against Islamic State and the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate. The move has angered U.S. military and intelligence officers and diplomats who argue that Russia has proved repeatedly that it cannot be trusted. Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Defense Secretary Ash Carter supported Kerry's efforts to encourage Moscow to \"do the right thing\" in Syria. But he added that Carter has experience dealing with Moscow and maintains a \"healthy dose of skepticism\" about Russia's aims in the conflict. \"The secretary supports Secretary Kerry's effort ... but he has also said that he's had questions about the Russian activities up to this point,\" Cook told reporters. \"If the Russians are prepared to do the right thing in Syria, then the secretary of defense would be open to that conversation,\" he said. \"But we're waiting to see what's going on. ... It's not clear that we'll ever reach an agreement.\" WHITE HOUSE SAYS IT'S UP TO RUSSIA At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest's response was similarly cautious. \"It's time for Russia to make serious decisions about how they want to use their influence inside of Syria both when it comes to their diplomatic influence, but also when it comes to their military capabilities,\" Earnest told a daily briefing on Thursday at the White House, \"They have to decide if they're going to use the military to prop up the Assad regime or if they're going to use their military to go after extremists,\" Earnest said, \"Our case is you can't do both.\" Kerry has expressed growing frustration with the lack of progress in ending Syria's five-year civil war despite agreements with Russia to secure a lasting nationwide cessation of hostilities and ensure that humanitarian aid reaches besieged communities. U.N.-led efforts to bring the warring sides together to negotiate a political transition also have failed. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau acknowledged a \"very robust and very vigorous conversation\" among government agencies over Kerry's plan. Asked whether Kerry's visit had the full backing of the White House, she added: \"I'm not going to characterize that for the White House, but I would say that the secretary is going to ... have discussions in Moscow that present the administration's views.\" Anger Within the Administration But U.S. military and intelligence officers and diplomats involved in Syria policy expressed anger about Kerry's proposal, which several called naive. The Russians, said one official, had known for weeks about Kerry's upcoming visit to Moscow, yet two days before he was due to arrive they bombed a remote camp near Syria's border with Jordan used by U.S.-backed rebels. \"That is consistent with what the Russians have been doing all along,\" said a U.S. military official, who like others spoke anonymously to criticize administration policy. \"More of it has been to us, not with us, and the message has been clear all along: 'When our interests differ from yours, ours win.\" \"They've violated every cessation of hostilities agreement they've ever agreed to, sometimes within hours,\" the official said. Another American official, who has helped train members of the Free Syrian Army rebel alliance, said the U.S.-backed opposition forces have been asking why the administration keeps seeking Russian help and are growing increasingly bitter, their anger compounded by what they complain is a lack of American military support. Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford expressed deep skepticism with Kerry's plan, saying Russian air strikes have primarily targeted U.S-supported moderate opposition groups. \"How serious are they (Russia) about defeating terrorism, as opposed to bolstering Assad's position at the center? How are we to assume that they are going to do better if they work with the Americans?\" Ford told Reuters. Ford said that Russia has been unable to get its \"obstreperous client\" Assad to make any political concessions, allow significant humanitarian assistance into numerous rebel-held enclaves or abide by a cessation of hostilities agreement. \"I don't think the Russians can deliver,\" he said. \"I don't see how this American-Russian condominium on the Islamic State can help bring about a negotiated solution to the broader Syrian conflict. It will make it less likely that Assad will make concessions that will bring the broader civil war to an end.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Implicated in five corruption scandals since the 1990s but never convicted, the speaker of Indonesia s parliament Setya Novanto is a political survivor. Last week Novanto was detained by anti-corruption investigators over the biggest graft scandal to hit Indonesia s legislature. The 62-year-old political powerbroker was defiant, denying any wrongdoing and urging parliament and the political party he leads not to unseat him. His lawyer, Fredrich Yunadi, expressed confidence that Novanto would be cleared. In every court we always win, Yunadi told Reuters. But the latest allegations against Novanto have reinforced the perception among Indonesians that their parliament, long regarded as riddled with entrenched corruption, is a failing institution. Politicians and analysts say that is unlikely to change, whatever the outcome of the case. Before Setya Novanto, there were many, many MPs who were put in jail and it didn t have an effect, said Eva Sundari, a member of parliament from the PDI-P party, which sits in the ruling coalition alongside Novanto s Golkar. A Corruption Eradication Commission, known by its Indonesian initials KPK, was established in 2002 after the demise of authoritarian president Suharto. Fiercely independent and able to wiretap suspects without a warrant, it has been a thorn in the side of the country s establishment. But Bob Lowry, an Indonesia analyst at the Australian Institute of International Affairs, said that - the KPK aside - there has never been a systemic approach to tackling corruption that he says runs through all layers of government and politics. You are not dealing with individuals, you are dealing with an entire structure and culture. he said. Novanto is accused of orchestrating a scheme to plunder $173 million, or almost 40 percent of the entire budget for the project, from a government contract to introduce a national electronic identity card. Novanto denies any wrongdoing, writing a letter to other parliament leaders after he was detained asking them to give me an opportunity to prove that I wasn t involved . According to an indictment filed against Novanto s alleged bagman, businessman Andi Agustinus, they stood to be personally enriched to the tune of $42 million. Agustinus has not yet commented on the allegations or entered any plea. He is due to appear in court this week to answer the charges. The rest of the money was funneled to as many as 60 lawmakers, as well as officials, party chiefs, parliamentary staffers and tenderers, according to the KPK, which alleges some of the cash was brazenly divided up in parliamentary meeting rooms. In August a witness in the probe, a U.S.-based consultant to a company that won a contract to supply biometric technology for the identity cards - ironically aimed, in part, at curbing graft - shot himself after a stand-off with police in Los Angeles. Before his death, Johannes Marliem told KPK officers about meeting Novanto at his Jakarta home in 2011, according to a declaration to a court in Minnesota by a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent, at which the parliament speaker negotiated a discount under which he and Agustinus would get a 40 percent share of a contract worth more than $50 million. Marliem is also alleged to have said he had brought Novanto a $135,000 Richard Mille watch and showed the agent a photo of Novanto wearing it. A consummate political operator, Novanto is a key link between parliament and the government of President Joko Widodo, who is expected to seek re-election in 2019, said Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft. He gained a measure of international prominence in September 2015 when Donald Trump, then a U.S. presidential candidate, hailed him as an amazing man at a news conference in Trump Tower in New York. Two months later he resigned from the speaker s post after a recording of a meeting emerged in which he was alleged to have attempted to extort $4 billion of shares from the U.S. mining giant Freeport McMoRan. The case got blanket media coverage and hearings were televised live. Within a year, however, Novanto was speaker again after the Constitutional Court ruled the recording inadmissible. Novanto s detention last week came after months of declining to answer summonses for questioning by the KPK. The allegations have once more gripped Indonesia, with newspaper front pages splashing the story and memes mocking Novanto trending on social media. Indonesia was ranked last year at 90 out of 176 countries on Transparency International s corruption perception index. The watchdog has singled out parliament as Indonesia s most corrupt institution, and in July called on President Widodo to protect the KPK against attempts by the legislature to weaken the commission s powers. Critics inside and outside the parliament say the root problem is money politics, which is underpinned by an open-ticket electoral system and campaign financing laws. These laws allow only tiny amounts of public funding, and do not require public disclosure of individual donors, which some lawmakers say perpetuates a system of funding from illicit sources and financial patronage for favors. The open-ticket voting system encourages candidates to spread largesse to voters and community leaders and then recoup the expenditure if they reach parliament, says the PDI-P s Sundari. Lawmaker Aryo Djojohadikusumo told Reuters that, with members of parliament holding the power to micromanage and approve the budgets of individual projects, the temptation to engage in pork-barrel politics is extremely high . However, he believes that parliament s reputation as corrupt has been magnified by the KPK s zeal in going after politicians, who make more headlines than low-level bureaucrats. Critics say many members of parliament are so focused on raising money for future campaigns and personal enrichment that the legislature is not doing its job. According to watchdog Concerned Citizens for the Indonesian Legislature (Formappi), lawmakers in Southeast Asia s biggest economy have ratified just five of 50 priority bills this year. If you want to see Indonesia free of corruption, Fahri Hamzah, one of parliament s vice speakers, told Reuters, you have to start tackling the political financing.","label":0}
{"text":"Joe Biden once again demonstrated why the American people love him so much.During her confirmation hearing, Betsy DeVos was grilled by the Senate. Her lack of qualifications and opposition to public education made it clear that she should not be the Secretary of Education. But her family has bought politicians over the years so it s surprise that she had enough Republicans in her pocket to narrowly get confirmed.One of the big questions DeVos refused to answer was about sexual assault on college campuses. Under the Obama Administration, Title IX was interpreted to also mean that colleges must work to stop sexual assault on campus. When asked about this, Devos balked. Senator, I know that there s a lot of conflicting ideas and opinions around that guidance and if confirmed I would look forward to working with you and your colleagues and understand the range of opinion and understand the issues from the higher-ed institutions that are charged with resolving these and addressing them and I would look forward to working together to find some resolutions, DeVos said.After being pressed to answer, DeVos replied, It would be premature for me to do that today. After being confirmed, she finally answered the question by revoking the guidance set up by President Obama and declared on the Department of Education website, This is an issue best solved at the state and local level. In other words, DeVos is perfectly happy to continue letting rape culture continue on college campuses. She won t lift a finger to help women.And that makes Joe Biden angry. It bothers me most if Secretary DeVos is going to really dumb down Title IX enforcement, Biden told Teen Vogue. The real message, the real frightening message you re going to send out is, our culture says it s OK. You know, the major reason why women drop out of college when they re a freshman is because of sexual assault. Not their grades, sexual assault. And so, it would be devastating. Biden went on to slam DeVos for enabling rapists and said parents should not have to worry about safety on college campuses.No father or mother should drop their kid off this late August, early September at their first day at college and drive away worried [if she is] going to be safe. Parents don t drive away saying, Is she going to do all right in school? Is she academically qualified? Will she show up for class? How well is she going to do? That s not the conversation going on. The conversation that s going on is, is she going to be safe? That is an obligation of the school, and Title IX is the vehicle, and when Secretary DeVos by her silence didn t affirm that rape and sexual assault are forms of sexual discrimination God, if anything is sexual discrimination, it s rape and assault. And that s why schools have an obligation under Title IX to prevent this from happening.Indeed, parents should only have to worry about how well their daughters will do in school, not about if some asshole is going to violate their bodies.By ignoring sexual assault on college campuses, Betsy DeVos is part of the problem. And when young women are raped and the rapists get away with it, DeVos should be held responsible. She is in a position of power to do something about this and if she won t do it she should be dragged into court alongside the rapist.Featured Image: Mark Wilson\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"A California federal judge on Friday strongly questioned the U.S. Justice Department over whether to suspend an order by President Donald Trump to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities for immigrants. U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick III questioned the purpose of the president's order as he heard arguments from two large California counties and the Justice Department in San Francisco federal court. Both counties have asked for a nationwide preliminary injunction to the order. As part of a larger plan to transform how the United States deals with immigration and national security, Trump in January signed an order targeting cities and counties that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Sanctuary cities in general offer safe harbor to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Sanctuary city is not an official designation. Santa Clara County, which includes the city of San Jose and several smaller Silicon Valley communities, sued in February, saying Trump's plan to withhold federal funds is unconstitutional. San Francisco filed a similar lawsuit. On Friday, the counties described the order as a \"weapon to cancel all funding to jurisdictions,\" said John Keker, an attorney representing Santa Clara County. \"All around the country, including here, people are having to deal with this right now.\" Santa Clara County receives roughly $1.7 billion in federal and federally dependent funds annually, about 35 percent of its total revenues. The county argued that every day it is owed millions of dollars of federal funding, and its budgetary planning process had been thrown into disarray by the order. The Justice Department said the counties had taken an overly broad interpretation of the president's order, which would impact only Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security funds, a fraction of the grant money received by the counties. The government also argued that there had been no enforcement action to date, and it was unclear what actions against the counties would entail. Judge Orrick asked the government what was the purpose of an executive order, if it only impacted a small amount of county funding. Attorneys for the government said the order had highlighted issues that the Trump Administration deeply cared about and a national policy priority. To win a nationwide injunction, local governments must demonstrate a high level of harm, the Justice Department noted in court filings last month.","label":0}
{"text":"A litany of celebrities braved temperatures to attend President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama's final party at the White House on Friday. [The crowd at the Obama's farewell bash included George and Amal Clooney, Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg, Stevie Wonder, David Letterman, George Lucas, Paul McCartney, and many more. Cell phones were reportedly confiscated, forcing stars to snap and post photos and videos to their social media accounts from outside the White House. \"Stumbling out of the White House at 4am after an incredible night celebrating 8 incredible years,\" wrote actress Olivia Wilde in a Twitter post in which she was posing next to her partner, actor Jason Sudeikis. Stumbling out of the White House at 4am after an incredible night celebrating 8 incredible years. \ud83d\ude2d A photo posted by Olivia Wilde (@oliviawilde) on Jan 7, 2017 at 2:10am PST, \"The one party we'll wait in line to get into,\" wrote Dj Cassidy in an Instagram post featuring Singer John Legend and his wife, model Chrissy Teigen, and Jerry Seinfeld and his wife. The one party we'll wait in line to get into \u2026 @johnlegend @chrissyteigen @jerryseinfeld @jessseinfeld @mimisam28 #whitehouse, A photo posted by djcassidy (@djcassidy) on Jan 7, 2017 at 2:20am PST, Musicians Usher, Kelly Rowland, and Wale, who often collaborated with Michelle Obama on her high education initiative, posed for a photo alongside Saturday Night Live alum Jay Pharoah and TV personality La La Anthony. When the squad takes over The White House #squadgoals \ud83d\udcaa\ud83c\udffd A photo posted by LaLa (@lala) on Jan 7, 2017 at 9:22am PST, Bruce Springsteen, Bradley Cooper, J. J. Abrams, Oprah, Gloria Estefan, Tyler Perry, Robert De Niro, Jon Hamm, Ken Burns, Al Roker, Chris Rock, and Lena Dunham were also in attendance. Sports mogul Magic Johnson, fashion icon Anna Wintour, Hollywood super producer Harvey Weinstein, and Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels also made an appearance at Friday night's bash, which lasted well into the night. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson.","label":0}
{"text":"The cockpit voice recorder from the EgyptAir flight that crashed in the Mediterranean last month has been recovered, according to a statement Thursday by Egyptian investigators. The recovery of the black box came a day after the Egyptian Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee announced that searchers had found wreckage from the doomed Flight 804 scattered along the seabed. The French Bureau of Investigations and Analyses at the civil aviation authority confirmed that the cockpit voice recorder had been found. All 66 people aboard the Airbus A320 jetliner bound for Cairo from Paris were killed in the crash on May 19, as the plane was near the end of its trip, in Egyptian airspace. The investigation committee said in a statement that the cockpit voice recorder had been found in a \"damaged state. \" A team aboard the search vessel John Lethbridge, owned by Deep Ocean Search, was able to recover parts of the recorder, including its memory card. The statement said that the device would be sent to prosecutors and investigators in Alexandria, Egypt, and then to the investigative committee's lab for analysis. Investigators are expected to spend the coming days removing, drying and testing the circuits of the voice recorder's flash memory chip before trying to download its contents for analysis. If the recordings are readable, investigators can begin transcribing the conversations of the crew and other cockpit sounds captured \u2014 roughly two hours of data, which could provide clues about what happened during the plane's descent. Air traffic controllers have said the crew did not communicate any emergency to the ground before radio contact was lost and the plane disappeared from their radar screens. Underwater search teams will also continue to scour the wreckage for the second black box, the flight data recorder, which tracks more than 1, 000 different data points, including the plane's position, speed, altitude and direction when it began to experience difficulties. Investigators located the cockpit voice recorder, along with several sections of aircraft wreckage, less than two weeks after search teams first detected signals from its underwater beacons, which emit a distinctive metronomic \"ping. \" Provided the second recorder is found undamaged, investigators can try to synchronize its data with the voice recorder's to make a timeline of what happened in the flight's final moments. Since the start of the underwater search, however, investigators have only been able to isolate the pings of a single recorder, suggesting that the beacon on the flight data recorder either may not be emitting a signal, or that something \u2014 perhaps a large piece of wreckage or rock formations on the seabed \u2014 is muting or obstructing its propagation. Egyptian investigators have said that the batteries powering the EgyptAir jet's beacons should last until around June 24. The chairman of EgyptAir, Safwat Musallam, said Thursday that \"the search team has not picked up anything from the flight data recorder,\" but he welcomed the news of the recovery of the cockpit voice recorder. \"Of course, thank God, they found something,\" Mr. Musallam said. \"I was worried they wouldn't, but I just want quick results. I just want to know what caused this. \" Mr. Musallam also said that he had been in touch regularly with the families of the passengers aboard Flight 804 and that after the discovery Thursday, they are \"doing better after this, more or less. \" Wagdy Gerges, a relative of one of the victims, said families were hoping that the information from the voice recorder would \"settle things and help them process what happened. \" \"We want to know what will be heard,\" Mr. Gerges said. \"Was it a bomb? The exact details don't matter to us because they are all gone. We just want to know the main cause. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The plot thickens with the saga of the IT workers who worked for Democrats like Debbie Wasserman Schultz. They had access to congressional emails and were quite shady. They made millions just disappear. Is this a case of money laundering to fund terrorism?The Daily Caller s Luke Rosiak described it best with this tweet: Need to take $100k in Hezbollah-linked cash while you can read intelligence committee members emails, as their IT guy? Set up a used car dealership with fake staff, launder it from Iraq thru realtors commissions, and lie about it on House disclosures. Daily Caller reports:The used car dealership known as CIA never seemed like an ordinary car dealership, with inventory, staff and expenses.On its Facebook page, CIA s staff were fake personalities such as James Falls O Brien, whose photo was taken from a hairstyle model catalog, and Jade Julia, whose image came from a web page called Beautiful Girls Wallpaper. If a customer showed up looking to buy a car from Cars International A, often referred to as CIA, Abid Awan who was managing partner of the dealership while also earning $160,000 handling IT for House Democrats would frequently simply go across the street to longstanding dealership called AAA Motors and get one. If AAA borrows a car to Cars International and they have a customer, it was simply take the car across the street and sell it, and then later on give the profit back or not, Nasir Khattak, who ran the longstanding AAA dealership, testified in a lawsuit. There was no documentation which is write every transaction that takes place. If you go and try to dissect, you will not be able to make any sense out of them because there were many, dozens and dozens, of cars transferred between the two dealerships and between other people. Khattak did not explain why he would ruin his existing business to help the Awans. All of those transactions was to support Cars International A from AAA Motors, he testified. That s why I did not make any money from my dealership because my resources were supporting Cars International A. He said only Imran Awan knew what became of the money. It was Imram, [Abid] Awan s brother, who was running the business in full control, he said.Imran Awan and his family members were congressional IT aides who investigators said made unauthorized access to the House Democratic Caucus server thousands of times. At the same time as they worked for and could read all the emails of members of the House intelligence, homeland security and foreign affairs committees, they also ran a car dealership that took money from a Hezbollah-linked fugitive and whose financial books were indecipherable and business patterns bizarre, according to testimony in court records.While Imran and Abid Awan ran their car dealership in Falls Church, Va. in the early part of the decade, Drug Enforcement Agency officials a few miles away in Chantilly were learning that the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism, according to an explosive new Politico expose.The money that disappeared between the Awans dealership, some $7 million in congressional pay, the equipment suspected of disappearing from Congress under their watch, and their other side businesses all while they displayed few signs of wealth and frequently haggled in court over small amounts of money raise questions about whether the Awans might have been laundering money or sending it to a third party.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. immigration officials have kicked off a new round of raids intended to deport hundreds of Central American mothers and children who have entered the country illegally, according to a legal group that works with the immigrants. Immigration enforcement officers as of Friday had arrested about 40 women and children encompassing at least 18 Central American family groups in Texas, North Carolina, South Dakota and possibly other states, said Laura Lichter, an immigration lawyer and a former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Reuters reported on May 12 that the raids were planned for May and June and likely would be the largest deportation sweep targeting immigrant families by the administration of President Barack Obama this year after similar raids in which 121 people were arrested over two days in January. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea declined to confirm that the new round of raids had begun but defended the administration's deportation operations as a whole. \"We stress that these operations are limited to those who were apprehended at the border after January 1, 2014, have been ordered removed by an immigration court, and have no pending appeal or pending claim for asylum,\" Elzea said. The immigrants arrested in the latest raids have been sent to two ICE detention centers in Texas, according to Belle Woods, a spokeswoman for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The deportation operations are intended to deter illegal immigration from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and curb crossings of the U.S.-Mexican border by Central Americans, U.S. officials have said. Lichter said ICE was not following its own policy in the raids. \"It's the same thing we saw in January. These people deserve asylum, but didn't get a proper chance to have their cases heard,\" Lichter said. The issue of illegal immigration has figured prominently in the U.S. presidential campaign, with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump promising to deport all roughly 11 million people who are in the United States illegally. The White House on May 13 defended its deportation policy after complaints from Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and congressional leaders that the sweep targeting Central American illegal immigrants is inhumane. \"I'm against large-scale raids that tear families apart and sow fear in communities,\" Clinton said at the time.","label":0}
{"text":"When Johnathan Smith resigned from the U.S. Justice Department on Inauguration Day, he looked forward to spending time with his infant son, but that plan unraveled a week later when President Donald Trump unveiled his explosive foreign travel ban. Within two weeks, Smith had a new job as legal director of civil rights group Muslim Advocates and was drafting briefs for a successful court challenge to the ban, joining other former top Obama administration lawyers now fighting Trump. It is not surprising that Smith and some of his colleagues, political appointees of Democratic President Barack Obama, would leave the Justice Department now led by Republicans. What is unusual is how fast they have signed up to be Trump adversaries. Some Republican lawyers say they were less hasty in moving into oppositional roles post-election. George Terwilliger, a senior Justice Department official under President George H.W. Bush, described the Obama lawyers' actions as \"unprecedented to my memory \u2013 and really bad form.\" One reason for the Obama lawyers' quick moves, some of them said, was Trump's aggressive use of executive authority from day one, which was guaranteed to attract court challenges. Obama faced legal fights over executive power and some of his challengers were formerly lawyers for President George W. Bush, over issues such as immigration and Obamacare. But those came later in Obama's presidency. Besides Smith, other lawyers who have jumped into the fray include former Attorney General Eric Holder, who is advising California's legislature on challenging Trump over immigration, environmental regulations and healthcare; and former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, who is helping Hawaii contest Trump's revised travel ban. Influential Manhattan prosecutor Preet Bharara and another 45 Obama-era U.S. attorneys are out of jobs after the Trump administration asked them to resign on Friday. Many of the Obama lawyers keep in touch, but reject the notion, proffered by some Republicans, that Obama is behind resistance efforts. Some of the lawyers credit their rapid transition to Trump's hardline positions on key issues and to ethical concerns about his presidency and business interests. \"There's a unique threat to our democracy and Constitution that we see in the assault the president is mounting on the Muslim community,\" said Smith, who worked on religious discrimination issues at the Justice Department. Norman Eisen, who was Obama's top ethics lawyer and later ambassador to the Czech Republic, had expected to focus on his work at a think tank after Trump's election. But instead, he said, \"the ethics emergency of constitutional dimensions has galvanized me back into my initial Obama role.\" Eisen is now also chairing Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group he co-founded. The group has already sued Trump over alleged ethics violations. Other Obama appointees taking on Trump include former White House lawyer Ian Bassin who has founded United to Protect Democracy, a new group probing Trump over ethics; and James Cadogan, who worked with Smith at the Justice Department, and is now at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, a civil rights group already clashing with the new administration. Some career government lawyers, who are not political appointees and normally do not resign in power shifts, have also resigned to oppose Trump. One is Sharon McGowan, who worked on LGBT issues at the Justice Department. On Inauguration Day, she was offered a job as director of strategy at Lambda Legal, an LGBT advocacy group. McGowan said she decided to leave Justice when Trump named Jeff Sessions, a hardline conservative Alabama senator, to be attorney general. That was a \"game-changer,\" she said. \"I knew there would be no chance for me to preserve what I've been working on so hard.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Whales, elephants of the deep with fins the size of sheds and flukes prepared to consecrate nearby trollers.  Queen of clubs, thin, black hair razored at edges slinking hats and vests, Fells Point.  A hat, Napoleonic or Yellowbeard typhoon, skink darting palmettos, hummingbird at Roth's feeder hanging above the lake house deck just before, just before its earth curved beak injects ink into twilight, just before the tightly wound shatters the silence, just before wings crackle and refuel themselves, of Italian cabinet members misbehaving with washer women, just before a tumor threatened civilization as we know it, just before the curtain was made of iron, just before we found the bomb and the bomb found the money, or was it the other way around?  with new technology: tape recorders, answering machines and Pentagon Papers; governments took things for granted, until things got out of hand Most are regrouping, reincorporating, in hopes of positive returns on their investments.  You didn't think they were complete idiots, now, did you?","label":1}
{"text":"Austria s new coalition government of conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party will be sworn in on Monday at 11 a.m. (1000 GMT), President Alexander Van der Bellen s office said on Saturday.","label":0}
{"text":"What do you think? Do you agree with Rick Santorum, or should we allow illegal aliens to enjoy all of the same benefits as American citizens simply because they or their parents made it across our US border without getting caught?Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) can t speak to whether President-elect Donald Trump plans to deport undocumented immigrants en masse beginning next year, but he has made one thing clear: People who came to the U.S. illegally as children, also known as Dreamers, should just leave the U.S. if they re worried about their immigration status.Elizabeth Vilchis, a mechanical engineer who said she came to the U.S. from Mexico when she was 7 years old, asked Santorum about Trump s immigration plans on Tuesday night during a town hall event with CNN s Van Jones. She asked Santorum how he would advise her to plan for her future.He began his reply by talking about his father, who left Mussolini s Italy to come to the U.S. when he was 7 years old even though, Santorum said, he wasn t allowed to come because of the immigration laws at the time. Then he began to address Vilchis specifically. What most people in America feel is that you ve been given a tremendous benefit by being here in this country, Santorum said, adding that he imagined she wouldn t have had to opportunities to accomplish what you have in her country of origin. My final point is that you have the ability to go to any other country right now and apply those wares, and be successful, and reapply to come back to America, Santorum added. Go and make the world a better place. CNN contributor Ana Navarro butted in. First of all, this is your country, she said. No matter what he says, no matter what anybody else says, this is your country. That s not what the law says, Santorum replied. As much as I m sympathetic to you, you should recognize the gift that America has given you and that you can give to the world. HP@Jorgesays @RickSantorum I'll chip in good money to send Santorum to another country. Any country. Cindy Hargest (@CindyHargest) December 7, 2016No decent country would take him. Lyle (@lyledal) December 7, 2016This broke my heart. \"You got your education, now get out.\" This woman is as American as you Rick. Dave Harrell (@daveharrell16) December 7, 2016Send disgusting @RickSantorum back to Italy. iburl (@iburl) December 7, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"Share on Twitter  YouTube sensation Eugenia Cooney is being slammed by many of her near 900,000 fans for \"negatively influencing\" followers with her frail frame.  In fact, a Change.org petition was recently created to temporarily ban Cooney from YouTube due to her thinness \"triggering her fan base.\"  The petition has garnered over 9,000 signatures and explains that it wasn't created to insult her, rather, people are hoping she takes a break from YouTube to get the help she needs.  It reads , in part:  \"Eugenia Cooney has a serious medical condition and needs to seek help. She has been influencing her viewers by her serious underweight condition. She has not been getting better since the day she started YouTube, she's getting more and more sick each day. And it's honestly like she does this bodily harm to herself and shows young girls, such as her viewers on social media that it is 'okay', to be suffering from a medical condition such as Anorexia-Nervosa. It is physically & medically to be that skinny without denying treatment such as she does. She has not got any treatment. And is triggering her fan base.  She may not be intentionally influencing her viewers, but showing more than 50% of her body in her videos and pictures are not helping girls with Anorexia or any eating disorder.\" A photo posted by Eugenia Cooney (@eugeniacooney) on Sep 23, 2016 at 6:24pm PDT  What's more heartbreaking is the fact nearly all comments on her YouTube videos and social media pages are negative.  Here are just a few of the jabs made at Cooney on her most recent video, uploaded October 26th:  \"I just realized she can't make her thighs touch no matter how hard she tries.\"  \"She's so skinny her butt cheeks don't even touch each other.\"  \"No...just, no. I'm sorry but I can't look at you anymore. You need help! You're actually scaring me!\"  \"Wow! That's the most realistic skeleton costume ever!\"  Cooney responded to the negative comments last week in a video title, \"I'm Sorry.\" She explained that she's used to getting a lot of hate on the Internet, but lately, it seems like she's upsetting a lot of people:  \"It really sucks, a lot, to feel like a lot of the Internet really hates you.\" A photo posted by Eugenia Cooney (@eugeniacooney) on Oct 18, 2016 at 9:28am PDT  Cooney added in the description box the following statement:  \"I just wanted to make this because I'm really sorry to everyone who is angry or upset with me and I'm really not trying to do anything wrong! I've never tried to influence anyone badly and I never encourage people to try to look like me or to look like anyone so that's why I'm making this video since some people are saying that about me which can be really upsetting.  I love you guys and everyone who does support me and who is nice on here, you guys mean so much to me! I just wish people would be less hateful and be more positive and everyone who is positive you guys are so great. Thank you to the people who care about me though, I definitely am fine and am not dead or anything like that! Haha I love you guys!\"  According to the Change.org petition , her fan base consists of primarily 12- to 21-year-olds, who allegedly \"thrive\" on photos of her thin body. A photo posted by Eugenia Cooney (@eugeniacooney) on Aug 24, 2016 at 12:33pm PDT  Erin Hillard, program manager of the University of Notre Dame's Body Image and Eating Disorder Lab, told Yahoo Beauty that even if she's not intentionally \"promoting\" her lifestyle, her audience is likely seeking to emulate her look:  \"We know that media images have the power to influence girls' eating behaviors and feelings about their body, and it does seem as though YouTube is more and more becoming another form of media that pushes products and lifestyles on young girls. I think it's reasonable to be concerned that viewing her channel could have a negative impact on girls who may already be struggling with body image issues. The life of a YouTube celebrity is often presented as very glamorous and fabulous, and young girls may look up to that and think that Eugenia's appearance is something they should be striving for to achieve her level of success.\" A photo posted by Eugenia Cooney (@eugeniacooney) on Oct 25, 2016 at 4:02pm PDT  Researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health found eating disorders frequently occur during teenage years, with women 2.5 times more likely to suffer from eating disorders than their male counterparts.","label":1}
{"text":"A man died at an apartment party on early Saturday morning in Brooklyn after falling through a screen window on the building's fourth floor, the police said. It was the second falling death of the night in Brooklyn. Earlier, a boy died and another boy was injured after falling from the rooftop of a building nearby in Bushwick. The police said the two boys may have been trying to jump from one building to another. The man, Wyatt Tyler, had fallen after leaning against the screen window in an apartment on Metropolitan Avenue between Olive and Catherine Streets in the East Williamsburg neighborhood, officials said. He lived nearby on the same street. The police said they received a 911 call around 2:30 a. m. and arrived to find Mr. Tyler unconscious and unresponsive on the street. Emergency medical technicians took him to Woodhull Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. The falling death involving the teenager happened around 5:30 p. m. on Friday at 57 Grove Street, a multistory building about two miles away near Bushwick Avenue, the police said. The boys were found in the back of the building. The police previously reported the episode happened around 4:30 p. m. The police said one of the teenagers was unconscious and had severe trauma to his head and body. The other was semiconscious and had injuries to his pelvis. The first boy was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital Center, and the other was conscious and alert, the police said. Their names were not immediately made available. In January last year, a girl died after she tried to jump from one rooftop to another in Midtown Manhattan and fell five stories, the police said.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to allow national monument designations to be rescinded or reduce the size of sites as the administration pushes to open up more federal land to drilling, mining and other development. Trump's order is part of an effort to reverse many of the environmental protections implemented by his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama that Trump said were hobbling economic growth. Trump's agenda is being cheered by industry but enraging conservationists. Legal challenges are expected because no president has ever rescinded a monument designation. In announcing the order on Wednesday Republican Trump said Obama's use of the 1906 Antiquities Act to create monuments was an \"egregious abuse of federal power\" that allowed the federal government to \"lock up\" millions of acres of land and water. The Antiquities Act gives a president the authority to create national monuments from federal lands to protect significant natural, cultural, or scientific features. \"Today we're putting the states back in charge,\" Trump said, adding that they should decide which land is protected and which is open for development. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told reporters late Tuesday the order requires him to review about 30 national monuments created over the past two decades, and recommend which designations should be lifted or altered. The monuments covered under the review will range from the Grand Staircase created by President Bill Clinton in 1996 to the Bears Ears created by Obama in December 2016, both in Utah. Zinke said he will seek local feedback before making recommendations, adding that reversing a monument designation could be tricky. \"It is untested, as you know, whether the president can do that,\" Zinke said. President Woodrow Wilson reduced the size of Washington state's Mount Olympus National Monument in 1915, arguing there was an urgent need for timber at the time. Zinke said he will review the Bears Ears monument first and make a recommendation to the president in 45 days. He has 120 days to issue a full report on all monuments to the president. Bears Ears protects Native American cultural heritage and sacred sites. Obama created the Bears Ears monument in the final days of his administration. Utah's governor and the state's congressional delegation opposed the designation, saying it was done against the wishes of citizens eager for development. Utah Governor Gary Herbert, and Senators Mike Lee and Orin Hatch, all Republicans, stood beside Trump as he signed the order. Trump said the lawmakers lobbied him for the order. Bears Ears is near where Texas-based EOG Resources Inc has been approved to drill. Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan praised the order. \"I commend the Trump administration for stopping this cycle of executive abuse and beginning a review of past designations,\" he said. Conservation and tribal groups were critical. \"With this review, the Trump Administration is walking into a legal, political and moral mine field,\" said Kate Kelly, public lands director for the Center for American Progress. Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva of Arizona, ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee, warned Zinke not to make an \"ideological\" decision. He said previous monuments were decided \"after years of close federal consultation with multiple local stakeholders.\" The five Native American tribes that pushed to create the Bears Ears monument to protect ancestral land said they will fight to protect it. The Outdoor Industry Association, the trade group of the recreation industry, also attacked the order. The group has estimated the outdoor recreation economy generates over $887 billion in consumer spending and creates 7.6 million jobs. \"Less than 24 hours after joining with our industry to celebrate the economic power of outdoor recreation, in a hypocritical move, the Trump administration took unprecedented steps that could result in the removal of protections for treasured public lands,\" said Rose Marcario, chief executive of outdoor gear retailer Patagonia. On Friday, before the close of Trump's first 100 days in office, he is expected to sign an executive order that would review offshore areas available for offshore oil and gas exploration that have been restricted by previous presidents. (This version of the story has been refiled to delete extraneous text in paragraph 17)","label":0}
{"text":"Newborn Baby Kidnapped from Alabama Hospital After Parents Decline Birth Certificate and SSN Christian and Danielle Holm \u2013 on a mountaintop in 2015. Photo source: Christian Holm's Facebook page .  by Health Impact News\/MedicalKidnap.com Staff  Theirs was a spiritual journey of getting back to nature and rejecting the materialism that they felt held them in bondage. Christian and Danielle Holm began their journey together in early 2016 as itinerant missionaries, traveling across the country and speaking to churches as they sought to live simply and biblically.  The last thing that they expected was for Child Protective Services to seize their 1 day old baby literally off of his mother's breast in an Alabama hospital. What started out as an apparent case of mistaken identity has turned into a nightmare that the family cannot wake up from. They don't understand why their baby was taken from them, or why he still remains in state custody in foster care while social workers continue to challenge their religious beliefs.  According to a close family friend who contacted Health Impact News , the couple are grieving.  The most sacred thing to Danielle and Christian is the bond of male and female coming together and giving life with God. This bonding process in the beginning of a baby's life has been stolen from them.  There was never any reason for their baby to be taken from them to begin with, and even now, they have adequate housing and anything else that could ever be needed and they still don't have their baby back. Story Reported in Local Media  The Anniston Star first reported their story on October 13, 2016, just days after the couple's baby was born on Monday, October 10. Excerpt:  Just out of Regional Medical Center, Danielle has a belly still swollen from a pregnancy that ended Monday with the birth of a healthy baby boy.  Her arms, however, are empty. Her son was taken from her the day after he was born and is in the custody of the Cleburne County Department of Human Resources pending a hearing at Cleburne County Courthouse this morning.  \"We told them that we were going to do whatever we could,\" she said as tears ran down her face. \"I'm his mother. I'm supposed to be nourishing and bonding with him right now and I can't.\" Judge Issues Gag Order, Family Friend Contacts Health Impact News  Shortly after the story was reported, District Judge Melody Walker of the Cleburne County Circuit Court issued a gag order on the couple, forbidding them to speak about their case.  Since that time, Health Impact News was contacted by a close family friend who talked to us about the couple and their story. The source, who asked not to be named, made it clear that the information that she gave us was from conversations which occurred before the gag order was placed on Danielle and Christian Holm.  She communicated that the Holms want to cooperate with DHR to do everything that they can to get their baby back. They are heartbroken, and they are scared. The source is concerned that the couple may have unwittingly stumbled into a great deal of corruption, and their baby could be an innocent victim of some sort of trafficking ring. Couple Chooses to Leave Materialism Behind, Pursue Spirituality  Though their simple lifestyle of hiking and backpacking through state parks may suggest otherwise, the Holms come from a background of means and education. 32 year old Danielle holds a triple bachelor's degree in psychology, sociology, and biology. She has worked as a nurse, chiropractic assistant, child and adolescent mental health counselor, personal trainer, and was a group leader for Special Needs children at a youth center. Her husband Christian, 35, comes from a very well-off, politically connected family. He spent several years caring for his ailing grandparents before their deaths.  They met and fell in love after finding common ground online. They decided to make a life together in August of 2015 and moved to New Hampshire together. Both increasingly felt that possessions and materialism were holding them in bondage. After they married in February, they made the conscious decision to give away their possessions to charity and live simply, traveling as itinerant missionaries and getting closer to nature.  Excerpt from The Anniston Star :  The process of surrendering is difficult, though. It took them until May to start travelling, and even then they were driving, he said. They only recently left their car in a storage unit in Montgomery and started walking.  They found the journey amazing; people they met along the way would give them money, food and water to keep going, they said. On the way they stopped at probably 30 churches to talk with people and minister to them, Christian said.  They travelled about five miles a day and ended up camping at Cheaha State Park a few days ago, Christian said. Pulpit Rock at Cheaha State Park. Photo Source: Alabama State Parks They Wanted as Close to Natural Birth as Possible  The expectant couple reportedly sought prenatal care and preparation along the way from midwives, doulas, ob-gyns, and lactation consultants. They researched and read and asked questions.  They considered seeking a midwife in Alabama, since they expected to be in the state when the baby was born, but they found information that told them that midwifery is illegal in Alabama. However, the only reference in the Alabama code to non-nurse-midwifery is in the section governing nurse-midwives, Al Code 34-19-3 (b):  (b) Nothing in subsection (a) of this section shall be construed as to prevent lay midwives holding valid health department permits from engaging in the practice of lay midwifery as heretofore provided until such time as the permit may be revoked by the county board of health.  There is no definition of lay or other non-nurse midwives, such as traditional midwives, in the Alabama statutes. Because of conflicting information in the media and online, the Holms did not know that having a traditional midwife was an option open to them. Instead, they prepared for an unassisted, husband-coached, natural lotus birth, planning to birth as closely to nature as possible.  When Danielle went into labor, they had been camping for several days at Cheaha State Park in Cleburne County, Alabama. After 2 days of labor, they reportedly became concerned about some bleeding and decided to call an ambulance, which took them to Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center (RMC). Danielle gave birth to a baby boy the next morning, and he was \"perfectly healthy\" according to a family friend. Simple Lifestyle Conflicts with Standard Protocols  The couple wished to adhere to their religious beliefs and remain as natural as possible, declining any unnecessary hospital interventions. They agreed to allow eye ointment in their baby's eyes, but declined the other typical interventions, including the hospital security band on the baby's leg. They reasoned that, since there was never a need for the baby to be out of his parents' sight while he was at the hospital, there was no need for the hospital security band. Danielle chose to breastfeed her baby.  The couple were able to bask briefly in the beauty of their new son, but their joy was short-lived. Danielle with her new baby at the hospital. Photo source: Christian Holm's Facebook page .  The source close to the family reports that Danielle and Christian sensed that the hospital staff got a bit nervous when the parents declined a birth certificate and social security number for their baby.  There were 2 reasons for their declining the documents. Christian and Danielle felt that the naming of their baby is a spiritual experience. They wanted to wait to decide on a name for their baby until they first had time to bond with and get to know their baby to see what name would be the most appropriate. They also believed that the decision as to whether or not to have a social security number was one that should be left up to the child to make when he is older.  Because they sensed that the hospital staff was uncomfortable with their philosophy, which is rooted in their spiritual beliefs, the family friend states that Christian pro-actively decided to approach the hospital social worker \"on his own terms,\" to ensure that there were no issues and that they would be in compliance with applicable laws.  Instead of answering, the social worker reportedly left to seek more information. A short time later, she returned to their room with an intern from DHR, the Department of Human Resources, Alabama's Child Protective Services. The DHR representative reportedly questioned the couple about their religious beliefs. The Holms reportedly stated that they wanted to \"live as close to nature as possible, just like their native American ancestors.\"  When Christian asked, \"What is the most simple way we can live without being harassed?\" the DHR worker reportedly told him she had never been asked that before, and that she would consult her supervisor. Baby Snatched from Mother's Nursing Breast Danielle and Christian loved the simple life. This photo was taken atop Mt. Percival. Photo source: Christian Holm's Facebook page .  The family friend explained that Christian has a house in his name, but it is currently tied up in a family trust. Despite their journey of walking through nature, camping wherever they found themselves, the couple has been in process of trying to move into the house, but there have been complications, causing those plans to fall through. The friend reported that Christian had hoped to discuss this with the social worker, but he did not get the opportunity, because the hospital social worker and the DHR intern returned to the hospital room with 4 police officers, a detective from the sheriff's department, and a hospital security guard.  After Christian was escorted to another room, Danielle was shocked when the sheriff's detective allegedly reached down and pulled the baby literally off of his mother's breast where he was latched on.  As she cried out, asking, \"Why?\" and telling them she has done nothing wrong, the detective told her that they had reason to believe that they were not who they said they were. He reportedly told her that the baby was now in state custody. Case of Mistaken Identity Has Devastating Consequences  The detective reportedly began a barrage of questions aimed at the confused new mother, demanding \"her real name.\" Danielle thought that the confusion could be from her previous married name. Her ex-husband was Holmes, and her current husband is Holm, so she simply deleted 2 letters from her last name. That was apparently not the source of the confusion.  The detective asked Danielle if she was really Daniella Ruiz, and asked her about her involvement in human and drug trafficking in Arizona. She asked if she had ever been arrested in Arizona, and when she had crossed the border into Mexico.  None of this reportedly made any sense to Danielle, who had spent a short amount of time in Arizona as she and Christian were on their journey, but she had never been to Mexico, never been arrested, and had never been in any trouble at all. The name Daniella Ruiz meant nothing to her.  They asked if Christian had ever gone by another name, which he had. His middle name is Clarke, and that is the name he went by growing up.  Both Danielle and Christian readily showed the detective their IDs. In addition to her New Hampshire drivers license, she showed her social security card and her passport, which did not show any trips to Mexico. Christian reportedly showed his New Hampshire drivers license, social security card, and a federal ID.  It was not enough. DHR took their baby into custody, and they were only able to see their baby once more before they left the hospital, and that visit was under the watchful eyes of a nurse and a police officer.  Christian Holm later posted an article on his Facebook page that he found about the criminals that the Cleburne County officials apparently thought they were. Though the comment has since been deleted, Christian had this to say:  So this is who the investigating officer said that my wife and I are after giving her three forms of identification from both of us showing that we are not these people. She was not satisfied with that and told me that these can be faked. They really need an oops button in these situations when an infant and or innocence is involved to give child back. Swallow the pride and stop destroying lives for your view on life. We are children of God being attacked by the ones influenced by the devil. They know not what they do.  The criminals arrested in Arizona were Daniella Ruiz of Tuscon, Arizona, and Richard Christian Holm of Nogales, Arizona. There are several news stories which appear to originate from the same source which simply describe 2 separate incidents in the same article, such as this article that Christian Clarke Holm found:  Though both people arrested have similar names to the couple traveling in Alabama, the Arizona duo do not appear to be connected even to each other. They were arrested on 2 different days in 2 separate incidents. Is Violation of the 4th Amendment Standard Practice in Alabama?  According to the Holms' friend, there was no court order or warrant to seize the baby, nor was there an emergency situation. This is consistent with what other Alabama parents have reported to Health Impact News . Earlier this year, Shelby County DHR social worker Ahzshaka Evans told a 14 year old rape victim:  There are two people who don't need a court order or a warrant: the Department of Human Resources and law enforcement. (See story .)  Shelby County police officer Edmunson told the Prince family in June that DHR didn't need a court order or warrant to take a child. All they needed was a pickup order from DHR.  Haly Boothe's 3 day old baby was taken in May from a Birmingham hospital without a court order or warrant. (See story .)  Several parents have reported being told that the state legislature has given authority to DHR to seize children with only a \"DHR pickup order,\" which may apparently be merely verbal, not necessarily written. Parents are told that the court hearing within 72 hours meets the standard of search and seizure laws.  However, this practice stand in direct conflict with the 4th Amendment of the Constitution:  The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. New Mother Denied Basic Care After Baby Seized  In another disturbing similarity between the Holms' story and others of mothers whose newborn babies are taken from them at the hospital, basic medical care was reportedly withheld from Danielle after her baby was seized by DHR. She was given no discharge instructions. There was no counsel or handout given about what signs of infection to watch for or how to care for her stitches, even though she was a first-time mother.  Ordinarily, all patients checking out of hospitals are escorted out in a wheelchair. Not so with many mothers whose babies are taken from them by the state. Despite their pain and grief, they are singled out to walk out of the hospital on their own strength. Orders Given to Put Baby on Formula Against the Wish of Parents  The family member reports that Danielle is still pumping her milk for her baby, even though the Anniston Star reports that the Holms have no idea whether or not their baby is receiving the breastmilk, and that there were orders given at the hospital for the baby to be given formula.  This is especially hard for mothers to deal with who know the myriad of benefits of breastfeeding and the multitude of health risks that formula-feeding carries. Feeding their baby his mother's own milk in the natural way that God designed was a very important value to Danielle and Christian Holm, according to their friend, and knowing that their baby is being fed formula from the hands of a stranger is yet another tragic aspect of their baby's kidnapping.  The couple are also reportedly very concerned about the emotional and psychological well-being of their baby, because they understand that separation of mother and baby, especially in the early weeks and months, can have a devastating psychological impact on the growing baby. Danielle celebrated freedom on Mt. Washington. Where is that freedom now? Photo source: Christian Holm's Facebook page . Gag Order Issued  The Anniston Star reported that the Holms were issued a gag order after the publication brought the story to public attention. In their article dated October 18, some important considerations are raised. Gag order ensures privacy, but at a cost, experts say  Excerpts:  Courts can use gag orders to protect the interests of children or victims, but some attorneys say the instrument does so at the cost of other constitutional rights. Gag orders are not a black-and-white issue, though, and they can be challenged, said Andy Olree, professor of law at Faulkner Law in Montgomery. Gag orders can be an infringement on constitutional rights, Olree said.The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects citizens' right to express themselves and the public's right to hear discussions of issues of value to them, but that right is not absolute, Olree said.  See also: Family Court Judges' Unconstitutional Gag Orders On Parents  DHR has questioned the intelligence of ordinary citizens with regard to understanding the meaning of confidentiality. According to the Anniston Star :  All juvenile dependency cases, those in which a child's custody is decided, are confidential cases by state law, Cleburne County Judge Melody Walker said Monday. Tony Hamlin, attorney for the Department of Human Resources, said a judge could issue a gag order because lay people don't always understand what confidential means. Alabama Attorney \u2013 Confidentiality Laws Not Designed to Silence Parents Birmingham-area attorney Lisa Chasteen disagrees. She told Health Impact News that the Alabama law regarding confidentiality of juvenile cases is often misused by the system to tell parents that they cannot talk about their own cases, but that is not the way the law is written. Alabama Code \u00a7 12-15-133(g) states: Except for the purposes permitted and in the manner provided by this section, whoever discloses or makes use of or knowingly permits the use of information identifying a child, or the family of a child, who is or was under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court, where this information is directly or indirectly derived from the records of the juvenile court or acquired in the course of official duties , [emphasis added] upon conviction thereof, shall be guilty of a Class A misdemeanor under the jurisdiction of the juvenile court and also may be subject to civil sanctions. Provided, however, that nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit or otherwise limit counsel from disclosing confidential information obtained from the juvenile court file of the child as needed to investigate the case of the client or prepare a defense for that client, provided that the disclosure is in furtherance of counsel's representation of the party.  Chasteen asserts that the confidentiality laws were designed to protect the family from the people working on their case disclosing information to the public. They do not apply to the families themselves talking about their case with friends, family, or the media.  Attorneys, GALs, social workers, or any other agent working for the state could \"acquire\" information about the case \"in the course of official duties,\" and are thus bound by confidentiality laws, but the family members are not.  She cites KR v. LAUDERDALE COUNTY DEPT. OF HUMAN, 133 So. 3d 396 \u2013 Ala: Court of Civil Appeals 2013 , which clarifies that the information that law 12-15-133 refers to is that which is \"derived from the records of the juvenile court.\" The findings of the Appeals Court further state that \"\u00a7 12-15-133 is intended to protect the identity of juveniles, not DHR employees, guardians ad litem, or juvenile-court judges\u2026.\"  Though this law is often cited to parents simply as the \"confidentiality law\" and is often used in the attempt to bully and silence parents from discussing their case with the media, attorney Lisa Chasteen maintains that this was not the intent of the law at all. The family has the right to discuss their story with whomever they wish. She made these points in a meeting last year with other attorneys and DHR state commissioner Nancy Buckner, and reports that no one refuted her that day.  Law Professor Jenny Carroll notes issues of concern with gag orders, reports the Anniston Star :  An additional problem with a gag order in the Holmses' case is that the public has no information about what steps the state is taking to protect the child and if the parents' rights are being protected through the proceedings, said University of Alabama School of Law Professor Jenny Carroll. It is, she noted, the parental rights that are in question in the case.  \"The public has a right to check if actions being taken in our names are in fact correct,\" Carroll said.  The courts are public forums, she said. If they are insulated to the point that the public is excluded it makes it very difficult to know that everyone involved is being treated fairly. That's not how our courts are supposed to work, she said. Land of the Free?  Because of the gag orders and threats about confidentiality, Danielle and Christian Holms are reportedly afraid to speak out about the injustices that their friend says are happening to them. The lifestyle they are leading appears to be similar to that of John the Baptist or some of the Old Testament prophets. Many of the patriarchs of the Judeo-Christian faiths, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, lived relatively nomadic lifestyles. While Jesus told his disciples to \"Follow Me,\" He also said:  Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. (Luke 9:58, NIV)  The Holms' friend doesn't understand how America, \"the land of the free,\" can take someone's newborn baby away from them for choosing to follow their religious beliefs and living a life that is not like the mainstream. Yet, Danielle and Christian Holm are stuck in a state they were simply passing through, engaged in the fight of their lives for their baby. How You Can Help the Holms  Call Alabama Governor Robert Bentley's office at 334-242-7100. He may also be contacted here . He is also on Facebook .  Senator Gerald Dial is the Senator for Cleburne County. He may be reached at 334-242-7874, or contacted here .  Representative Richard Lindsay represents their district. He may be reached at 334-242-7713, or contacted here . According to the Alabama Family Rights Association , ALFRA: Alabama has a nine-member task force created to examine the work of the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR). If you have issues or concerns about DHR services, your best plan of action is to contact the following legislators\/lawmakers and committee members: Connie Rowe, State Representative, has replaced Mac McCutcheon as the Task Force Chair \/ 334-242-7600\/ email here . Chris England, State Representative \/ 334-242-7703 \/ 205-535-4859 \/ email here . Greg Reed, State Senator \/ 334-242-7894 \/ he is on Facebook . The complete list of committee Members can be found here: Executive Order Number 11 Comment on this article at MedicalKidnap.com. Support the cause of Medical Kidnapping by purchasing our new book! If you know people who are skeptical and cannot believe that medical kidnapping happens in the U.S. today, this is the book for them! Backed with solid references and real life examples, they will not be able to deny the plain evidence before them, and will become better educated on this topic that is destroying the American family. 1 Book \u2013 228 pages","label":1}
{"text":"Happiness levels in Britain have inched up to reach their highest rate since measurements of wellbeing began in 2011, despite the political uncertainty since last year s Brexit vote, the statistics office said. The average level of happiness for the 12 months to March this year rose slightly among the roughly 150,000 people polled to 7.51 out of 10 after leveling off in the previous two years at slightly below 7.50. Today s figures may surprise some, showing a small increase in both reported happiness and life satisfaction during a period that has seen political change and uncertainty, ONS statistician Matthew Steel said. Higher employment rates and perceived improvement in personal finances could explain some of the rise, he added. A narrow majority of Britons who took part in the country s European Union membership referendum in June last year voted to leave the EU. Shortly afterwards, David Cameron resigned as prime minister and was replaced by Theresa May. Despite the political shock, Britain s economy held up in 2016 although it slowed sharply in the first six months of 2017. A monthly survey of consumer sentiment published by research firm GfK on Aug. 31 showed households were their most pessimistic in a year in July before a slight improvement in August.","label":0}
{"text":"The international community must do more to persuade the Syrian government to negotiate in U.N.-led talks, which were in great danger , the head of the opposition delegation said after an eighth round ended in failure in Geneva on Thursday. Opposition negotiator Nasr Hariri told a news conference that the government of President Bashar al-Assad hated the talks process and rejected all negotiations, and although there was pressure from its ally Russia, another state was putting obstacles in the path of the Geneva talks.","label":0}
{"text":"In case you haven t heard, Donald Trump is due in federal court next month just after he may be elected President to answer charges that he raped a 13-year-old girl in 1994 and threatened to harm her and her family if she told anyone about it.The victim, Jane Doe, is seeking $75,000 in damages. The lawsuit was originally filed in California but was thrown out because the original complaint did not state any specific civil rights violations. She refiled in New York in June, dropping some of the harder-to-prove claims and replacing them with two new witnesses. Both witnesses claim they worked as party planners for Trump s pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein, who threw them some cash to attract adolescent women to the billionaire s mansion.One witness says she lured Jane Doe to a party by promising her cash and modeling contracts but instead the 13-year-old child was forced to have sex with Trump and Epstein, both of whom knew how young she was. I personally witnessed four sexual encounters that the Plaintiff was forced to have with Mr. Trump during this period, including the fourth of these encounters where Mr. Trump forcibly raped her despite her pleas to stop, Tiffany Doe says, adding that she also witnessed Doe and a 12-year-old girl named Maria being forced to perform oral sex on Trump, with the 2016 GOP nominee physically abusing both children afterward all of this as part of her job duties that required her to personally witness and supervise encounters between the underage girls that Mr. Epstein hired and his guests. Both Trump and Epstein threatened to hurt Doe if she told anyone about the horrific assaults, with Trump adding a very Trump-like threat: I personally witnessed Defendant Trump telling the Plaintiff that she shouldn t ever say anything if she didn t want to disappear like the 12-year-old female Maria, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed. Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and served 13 months in prison but Trump went on to find himself one goose-step away from being the leader of the free world.While this might seem unbelievable, Trump hasn t exactly hidden his lust for children over the years, going on about how hot Paris Hilton was when she was 12, creeping on underage models in their dressing rooms, and repeatedly talking about how much he wants to have sex with his daughter, Ivanka.You can read the allegations below: Donald Trump & Jeffrey Epstein Rape Lawsuit and Affidavits by davidbix on Scribd","label":1}
{"text":"It's a topsy-turvy world when law-breakers \u2014 those who illegally enter and stay in the United States \u2014 are sacred cows, while those who criticize the law-breakers are ostracized and demonized.  On June 16, 2015, when Donald Trump announced that he's entering the crowded race to become the 2016 Republican presidential nominee, he made some remarks about illegal immigration which brought the wrath of the PC Left on his head. Trump said:  \"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're sending people that have lots of problems. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. I will build a great wall \u2013 and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me \u2013 and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.\"  For saying that, one business after another severed their ties with Trump. Univision and Comcast's NBCUniversal cancelled plans to broadcast Trump's Miss Universe beauty pageant. Mattress giant Serta said it will stop selling Trump-branded products. Department store giant Macy's also cut its ties with Trump.  Such righteous indignation! You would think Trump were a heinous mass murderer or a child-molester or serial rapist or bestialist!  But Macy's anti-Trump move has backfired.  TMZ reports, July 13, 2015:  Macy's is paying the price for sacking Donald Trump, because we've learned thousands of customers are cutting up their Macy's credit card in protest.  Sources connected to the department store tell TMZ, Macy's has received complaints from approximately 30,000 customers since ending its relationship with Trump nearly 2 weeks ago.  We're told the store has been \"inundated with complaints\" from customers who believe the department store is unfairly punishing Trump for his views on immigration.  Our sources say thousands of customers have vowed never to shop at Macy's again and many of them say they're cutting up their Macy's credit card to make a statement.  We're told the complaints have come in various ways, including phone, Facebook and email. A Macy's spokesperson would only say, \"Our Facebook page is often times used by our customers to express their feelings or points of view. Many times it does not correlate to any action.\" Join the boycott against Macy's!","label":1}
{"text":"Kenya s opposition leader Raila Odinga said on Tuesday he wants an interim government to run the country for six months while the constitution is reviewed to curb the president s authority. Odinga told Reuters in an interview that he was open to talks with President Uhuru Kenyatta over a constitutional review aimed at lowering the risk of violence from minority groups who feel excluded from power. Kenyatta was re-elected with 98 percent of the vote on Oct. 26 after Odinga boycotted the election, saying it would not be fair. The repeat presidential vote followed an election in August, which Kenyatta also won but which was nullified by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds. Odinga s supporters have repeatedly protested against the results, and at least 51 people have been killed in the turmoil since August, generating an atmosphere of uncertainty in East Africa s richest economy. A pure presidential system enhances ethnicity because each community believes that they are not safe unless their man is at the top, Odinga said in the interview in his office. Three of Kenya s presidents since independence from Britain in 1963 have been from the Kikuyu ethnic group and one has been from the Kalenjin group, although there are 44 recognized ethnic groups in the nation. The current president is a Kikuyu and his deputy is a Kalenjin, and many of Odinga s supporters, who are largely drawn from other ethnic groups, say they feel excluded from power. The 2010 constitution devolved some power and money to Kenya s 47 counties, spreading the opportunities for power and political patronage. But most of the budget and the power is still in the hands of the central government, something Odinga wants to change. We had a new constitution that we enacted in 2010; we think that now it is time to revisit it, he said. A constitutional review could strengthen institutions like the election board and cut down the powers of the presidency, he said. We think that maybe six months will be required to carry out all these changes that we need in this country. Odinga served as prime minister in a coalition government that was crafted in 2008 after two months of violence following a disputed election killed 1,200 people. After the Oct. 26 election, Odinga s opposition alliance called for civil disobedience, including protests and a boycott of products and services by firms friendly to Kenyatta s government, to force reforms. The opposition did not challenge Kenyatta s Oct. 26 victory at the Supreme Court and there has been no protest action, but voter and rights activists lodged cases on Monday. The court has 14 days to review them.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump said the Justice Department will win an appeal filed late Saturday of a judge's order lifting a travel ban he had imposed on citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries. \"We'll win. For the safety of the country, we'll win,\" he told reporters at his private Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, shortly after the Justice Department filed a notice that it intends to appeal the order. Trump's personal attack on U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle went too far for some who said the president was undermining an institution designed to check the power of the White House and Congress. \"The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!\" Trump said on Twitter early on Saturday. Trump has said \"extreme vetting\" of refugees and immigrants is needed to prevent terrorist attacks. Throughout the day, Trump continued to criticize the decision in tweets. Late Saturday, Trump showed no signs of backing down. \"The judge opens up our country to potential terrorists and others that do not have our best interests at heart. Bad people are very happy!\" he tweeted. As the ban lifted, refugees and thousands of travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen who had been stopped in their tracks last weekend by Trump's executive order scrambled to get flights to quickly enter the United States. The Justice Department did not say when it would file its appeal with the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals of the ruling made by Robart late on Friday that also lifted Trump's temporary ban imposed on refugee admissions. The judge appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush questioned the constitutionality of Trump's order. The three-judge panel that will decide whether to immediately block the ruling includes appointees of George W. Bush and two former Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. Trump's tweets criticizing the judge's decision could make it tougher for Justice Department attorneys as they seek to defend the executive order in Washington state and other courts, said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, adding that presidents are usually circumspect about commenting on government litigation. \"It's hard for the president to demand that courts respect his inherent authority when he is disrespecting the inherent authority of the judiciary. That certainly tends to poison the well for litigation,\" Turley said. U.S. immigration advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and International Refugee Assistance Project on Saturday in a joint statement urged those with now valid visas from the seven nations \"to consider rebooking travel to the United States immediately\" because the ruling could be overturned or put on hold. A U.S. State Department email reviewed by Reuters said the department is working to begin admitting refugees including Syrians as soon as Monday. It is unusual for a president to attack a member of the judiciary, which the U.S. Constitution designates as a check to the power of the executive branch and Congress. Reached by email Saturday, Robart declined comment on Trump's tweets. Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said in a statement Saturday that Trump's \"hostility toward the rule of law is not just embarrassing, it is dangerous. He seems intent on precipitating a constitutional crisis.\" \"Read the 'so-called' Constitution,\" tweeted Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee. In an interview with ABC scheduled to air on Sunday, Vice President Mike Pence said he did not think that Trump's criticisms of the judge undermined the separation of powers. \"I think the American people are very accustomed to this president speaking his mind and speaking very straight with them,\" Pence said, according to an excerpt of the interview. The court ruling was the first move in what could be months of legal challenges to Trump's push to clamp down on immigration. His order set off chaos last week at airports across the United States where travelers were stranded and thousands of people gathered to protest. Americans are divided over Trump's order. A Reuters\/Ipsos poll this week showed 49 percent favored it while 41 percent did not. Wes Parker, a retiree from Long Beach, California, held a sign saying \"Trump is love\" at the Los Angeles International Airport, and said he supported the tighter measures. \"We just have to support the travel pause,\" said Parker, 62. \"If you were a new president coming in, wouldn't you want what you feel safe with?\" Rights groups, Democrats and U.S. allies have condemned the travel ban as discriminatory. On Saturday, there were protests against the immigrant curb in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and other cities. At the White House, hundreds of protesters chanted \"Donald, Donald can't you see? You're not welcome in D.C.\" The sudden reversal of the ban catapulted would-be immigrants back to airports, with uncertainty over how long the window to enter the United States will remain open. In Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, Fuad Sharef and his family prepared to fly on Saturday to Istanbul and then New York before starting a new life in Nashville, Tennessee. \"I am very happy that we are going to travel today. Finally, we made it,\" said Sharef, who was stopped from boarding a New York-bound flight last week. The Department of Homeland Security said on Saturday it would return to its normal procedures for screening travelers but that the Justice Department would file for an emergency stay of the order \"at the earliest possible time.\" Some travelers told Reuters they were cautious about the sudden change. \"I will not say if I have hope or not. I wait, watch and then I build my hopes,\" said Josephine Abu Assaleh, 60, who was stopped from entering the United States after landing in Philadelphia last week with five members of her family. \"We left the matter with the lawyers. When they tell us the decision has been canceled, we will decide whether to go back or not,\" she told Reuters in Damascus, speaking by telephone. Virtually all refugees also were barred by Trump's order, upending the lives of thousands of people who have spent years seeking asylum in the United States. Friday night's court decision sent refugee advocacy and resettlement agencies scrambling to help people in the pipeline. Iraqi refugee Nizar al-Qassab, 52, told Reuters in Lebanon that his family had been due to travel to the United States for resettlement on Jan. 31. The trip was canceled two days before that and he was now waiting for a phone call from U.N. officials overseeing their case. \"It's in God's hands,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Ted Cruz is so hated that even his home state newspapers will endorse anyone but him and what they had to say about him is absolutely embarrassing.Despite being the only presidential candidate from the Lone Star State, the three major newspapers in Texas refused to endorse the Tea Party Senator, citing his dangerous agenda.According to the San Antonio Express-News, The freshman senator has demonstrated a frightening willingness to push the American economy to the brink of disaster to pursue his ideological agenda even when he clearly does not have the votes to get his way The freshman senator s methodical run for the White House is obviously well-planned, but Cruz s self-centered approach has thoroughly alienated even his Republican Senate colleagues. And that is obviously a recipe for a weak, unsuccessful administration. He lacks the temperament to be president.Instead, the newspaper reluctantly endorsed Jeb Bush, writing that he s not the flashiest candidate in the crowded Republican presidential field. And he lacks the mischievous charm that his older brother, George W. Bush, used to navigate his way through campaign obstacles. That really sounds like a ringing endorsement, doesn t it?The Dallas Morning News also rejected Cruz, writing in their endorsement of crusty and irritable Ohio Governor John Kasich that, As much as we d like to see a Texan in the White House, we fear that Cruz s brand of politics is more about disruption than governing and threatens to take the Republican Party to a dark place. As we ve written before, continuing obstructionist paths might excite primary voters, but it won t benefit the nation or the conservative cause. The Houston Chronicle echoed their rival newspapers, piling on the criticism of Ted Cruz while joining the San Antonio Express-News by endorsing Bush as well. He may not be a great candidate, the Chronicle conceded, but he would be a great nominee and a capable president, the paper continued in an obviously desperate bid to endorse anyone but Cruz, whom they slammed as disastrous for the Republican Party, disastrous for the nation. Jeb Bush and John Kasich are currently polling in single digits nationally as Cruz and Trump continue to lead the field with their brand of conservative lunacy that appeals to a large swath of right-wing voters who just want to light a match and watch the country burn.But it s truly hilarious that even Texas newspapers don t have the stomach to endorse to Cruz. It should be embarrassing for him, but he hates the free press so he probably doesn t care. Hopefully voters will care enough to stop supporting him.Featured Image: Nation of Change","label":1}
{"text":"The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a letter to lawmakers on Tuesday that it supported the Republican healthcare bill that could come up for a vote in the House of Representatives as early as Thursday. The chamber said it would consider how lawmakers vote on the bill in its annual \"How They Voted Scorecard,\" which could put pressure on members of Congress to support the legislation.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump talked trade with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc during a White House visit on Wednesday and welcomed the signing of business deals worth billions of dollars and the jobs they would create. The U.S. Commerce Department announced 13 new transactions with Vietnam worth $8 billion, including $3 billion worth of U.S.-produced content that would support more than 23,000 American jobs. These include deals for General Electric Co (GE.N) worth $5.58 billion for power generation, aircraft engines and services, its largest-ever combined sale in Vietnam. Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N) and its dealer in Vietnam also agreed to provide generator management technology for more than 100 generators in Vietnam, the company said. \"They (Vietnam) just made a very large order in the United States - and we appreciate that - for many billions of dollars, which means jobs for the United States and great, great equipment for Vietnam,\" Trump told reporters at the White House. The Commerce Department estimate of the deals was considerably less than the $15 billion figure given by Phuc during a speech at the Heritage Foundation, adding that most of the total involved the import of U.S. equipment. Communist Vietnam has gone from being a Cold War enemy to an important partner for the United States in the Asia-Pacific, where both countries share concerns about China's rising power. Phuc told Trump the relationship had undergone \"significant upheavals in history\" but that the two countries were now \"comprehensive partners.\" Phuc's meeting with Trump makes him the first Southeast Asian leader to visit the White House under the new administration. However, while Hanoi and Washington have stepped up security cooperation in recent years, trade has become a potential irritant, with a deficit widening steadily in Vietnam's favor, reaching $32 billion last year, compared with $7 billion a decade earlier. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said it was important to shrink the U.S. trade deficit with Vietnam but noted that the southeast Asian country of 80 million people was the fastest-growing market for U.S. exports, rising 77 percent since 2014 to $4.4 billion. \"The growth of the middle class and the increasing purchasing power in Vietnam are further incentives to strengthening our long-term trade and investment relationship,\" Ross said. Trump, who has had strong words for countries with large trade surpluses with the United States, said he would be discussing trade with Phuc, as well as North Korea. Washington has been seeking support to pressure North Korea to drop its nuclear and missile programs, which have become an increasing threat to the United States. Hanoi has said it shares concerns about North Korea. In his Heritage speech, Phuc welcomed Trump's plans to attend the November APEC summit in Hanoi. He called it a sign of U.S. commitment to the region and \"an important occasion for the United States to assert its positive role.\" In a reference to somewhat warmer ties between Washington and Beijing under Trump, who has been courting China's support on North Korea, Phuc said Vietnam welcomed good relations between the two powers, but hoped these would serve the interest of other nations in the region too. He urged Washington and Beijing \"to act with full transparency and in a responsible manner so as not to impact negatively the region and relations among other nations.\" Vietnam's government said on its website Trump and Phuc had agreed to promote defense ties and discussed the possibility of U.S. vessels, including aircraft carriers, visiting Vietnamese ports. It said they had expressed concern about the South China Sea, where Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Brunei are involved in maritime disputes with China, which claims nearly all the strategic waterway. Taiwan also stakes a claim. \"They emphasized that parties must not take actions accelerating tension such as the militarization of disputed structures,\" it said, an apparent reference to China's construction work. Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asia expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that while the Trump administration welcomed new business deals with Vietnam, its view was they were \"nice, but not enough.\" \"They want Vietnam to bring some ideas about how to tackle the surplus on an ongoing basis,\" he said. On Tuesday, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer expressed concern about the rapid growth of the deficit with Vietnam. He said it was a new challenge for the two countries and he was looking to Phuc to help address it. The deficit is Washington's sixth largest and reflects growing imports of Vietnamese semiconductors and other electronics products in addition to more traditional sectors such as footwear, apparel and furniture. On Tuesday Vietnam's trade minister, Tran Tuan Anh, presented Lighthizer with suggestions to address some U.S. concerns, such as advertising on U.S. social media, electronic payment services and imports of information security and farm products, Vietnam's trade ministry said. Vietnam was disappointed when Trump ditched the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, of which Hanoi was expected to be one of the main beneficiaries, and focused U.S. trade policy on reducing deficits.","label":0}
{"text":"A few dozen Paul backers -- many of whom donned red \"Stand With Rand\" T-shirts -- quietly made their way down the middle aisle and out the door during Bush's speech. Once outside the main ballroom at the Gaylord National Convention Center, where Bush was speaking, they rowdily gathered and denounced the man many see as the Republican Party's leading candidate for president in 2016. \"We're here at CPAC, and I almost think it's a joke having Jeb Bush here because he doesn't stand for conservative principles,\" said Timothy Simons, 21, the Connecticut chairman of Young Americans for Liberty and one of the Paul supporters who walked out. \"I was part of the walkout, and I'll tell you why,\" said Allen Skillicorn, vice chairman of the Kane County Republican Party in Illinois. \"If Jeb Bush is nominated, Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. ... How is he any different?\" \"I barely know any Jeb Bush supporters that are our age,\" said Charlton, who was decked out in Paul gear. \"No one our age is getting out there and saying, 'Jeb Bush is the one who will help us bring freedom back to America.'\" Ben Levitt, 23, said he came to Washington all the way from Canada just to check out CPAC. He said he may live an hour from the U.S. border, but he has plenty of views about Jeb Bush and why he's no different than his brother and father. \"More wars, more debt, more government,\" Levitt said of what the Bushes are about. \"I mean, a fiscal conservative can't really say, 'Oh, I really love George W. Bush.' You just can't. I loved it for eight years. I loved the Iraq war and all that. I finally saw the light, so to speak, and got really into Ron Paul and that message.\" Inside the auditorium, Bush was well aware that many young conservatives were hostile to him, a fact that was underscored by the tough questions he got from moderator Sean Hannity. Bush refused to cede potential voters, however, saying of those who were booing, \"I'm marking them down as neutral. I want to be your second choice.\" His session was dedicated almost entirely to domestic policy, a departure from many of the other speeches by would-be 2016 presidential candidates at CPAC. Bush touted Florida's economic growth under his leadership from 1999-2007, and gave examples of policies he had enacted that would please conservatives. On immigration, Bush stressed the importance of securing the U.S. border, and he emphasized that immigration policy should be focused on \"economic-driven immigrants\" who bring specialized skills. He also spoke frankly about the need to create a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. \"The simple fact is that there is no plan to deport 11 million people,\" Bush said. \"We should give them a path to legal status where they work \u2026 and contribute to our society.\" Some in the crowd cheered, but there were plenty of boos, too.","label":0}
{"text":"Alex Jones breaks down the overwhelming evidence of election fraud as well as threats made by democratic operatives and what they plan to do if Donald Trump wins the election. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles Download on your mobile device now for free. Today on the Show Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars crew. From the store Featured Videos FEATURED VIDEOS Donald Trump Has Won The 2016 Presidential Election - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . BREAKING: Michael Moore Admits Trump Is Right - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . ILLUSTRATION How much will your healthcare premiums rise in 2017?","label":1}
{"text":"The breaking point is fast approaching in a divided America Obama couldn t have hoped for a better outcome in the final year of his failed presidency. Americans fighting Americans over race, religion and sexual orientation. Violence and threats are being used against anyone who disagrees with the Left, while Alinsky trained activists continue to be inspired by radicals like Obama and funded by radicals like Communist George Soros. The first meeting of Portland State University s Students for Trump group was loudly interrupted and shut down by anti-Trump protesters, who barged into the group s meeting on Thursday evening.A video released by the students shows Anti-Trump protesters causing a significant disruption at the meeting, which was a closed event for members of the club.Although the conversation was initially civil, it eventually progressed into name-calling and shouting. An Anti-Trump protester threatened a student that was filming the scene: Point that f**king camera at me Wait til that camera is not there do you want to get f**ked up by a f**king faggot? After a protester took to standing on top of a table to address the crowd, a pro-Trump student suggested that starting a Students Against Trump group would have been a more productive way to combat pro-Trump students at PSU. The only way to combat this shit is to join an organization that has an anti-racist, anti-capitalist stance, another protester claimed. You need to get out of the fucking way and let people of color let these people organize themselves. Despite the meeting being a closed event for the club, the protesters demanded the right to speak. When a few pro-Trump students tried to calm down a protester yelling from atop a table, another protester yelled, If you don t let her talk, I will f**k shit up. Although the disruption primarily led to shouting and name-calling, there were some productive discussions that happened amongst the chaos. One pro-Trump student explained that his own parents had gone through a lot to immigrate legally: My family are immigrants, they paid thousands and thousands of dollars, they waited years. I don t see why it s fair to let anyone we don t know who they are, they could be criminals, they could anything just waltz through the country with no repercussions. Although most listened respectfully as the student explained his support of Trump, one student responded that he was disappointed that a minority could support Trump: People of color Trump supporters make me so sad.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump said he expects construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall to start within months and that planning is already underway, according to excerpts of an interview with ABC News released on Wednesday. Trump told the television network that while U.S. taxpayers would have to initially fund the wall, Mexico would ultimately pay for it, adding that negotiations for the reimbursement would start \"relatively soon.\"","label":0}
{"text":"\u2014 Liars Never Win (@liars_never_win) October 28, 2016  It's hard not to think \"frail old lady\" when you think of Hillary Clinton, but today, she proved that she's still got a little spring in her step: Reporters seeking comment on the email investigation got only a quick wave from @HillaryClinton pic.twitter.com\/0m87gIOY8c  \u2014 Colleen Nelson (@ColleenMNelson) October 28, 2016 Wow! Thats the fastest #Hillary has EVER moved! Avoiding questions about James Comey and The FBI reopening the email investigation\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/arLj9G7yav  \u2014 Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) October 28, 2016  So, is that what it takes to get her movin'? @TimRunsHisMouth @anna12061 amazing how fast she can haul it when she's trying to avoid the press finally asking her relevant questions.  Just look at her go! @TimRunsHisMouth Suddenly got a rush of #STAMINA  \u2014 Sellrite Deals (@SellriteDeals) October 28, 2016 @TimRunsHisMouth AMAZING SHE WAS ALMOST RUNNING  \u2014 NOBODY HOME ON LI !! (@shadozmom) October 28, 2016 @TimRunsHisMouth The amazing part is that she was able to get in without help.  \u2014 Heeeere's Jonny (@jonsgardner) October 28, 2016  And look glamorous doing it. Thanks, apparently, to a photoshoot she'd wrapped up just moments earlier: It appears Clinton was doing an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot when the FBI news broke #2016 https:\/\/t.co\/dofjBK6t9i  \u2014 Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) October 28, 2016  Oh, how fun! Clinton delay on tarmac wasn't about the FBI, it turns out. Pool report notes that Annie Leibovitz came off after, likely had a photo shoot. pic.twitter.com\/xE5pm3ITRC  \u2014 Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) October 28, 2016 The American Empire in its twilight glow: https:\/\/t.co\/jl0HSu38uG","label":1}
{"text":"Black activists, responding to calls for a nationwide protest against racial injustice, staged demonstrations in London and several other cities across Britain on Friday, in their boldest show of support to date for the emerging Black Lives Matter movement here. Black Lives Matter U. K. had called for a nationwide \"shutdown\" to protest an array of injustices, including police brutality racial disparities in arrests, convictions and sentencing the treatment of immigrants in detention inadequate mental health services and a reported increase in hate crimes since Britain's decision, in a June 23 referendum, to leave the European Union. \"We are here because we have no choice,\" Wail Qasim, an activist and journalist who took part in a protest near Heathrow Airport, which serves London, wrote on Twitter. \"We are here because this is a crisis. \" The Black Lives Matter movement, which emerged in the United States in 2013, has spread to several countries, including Britain, Canada and France. On Friday morning, activists unfurled a giant banner and lay down on an access road near Heathrow, bringing traffic to a standstill for several hours. The police arrested 10 people. Five more people were arrested in Birmingham, Britain's populous city, after blocking traffic leading to the airport. Four activists were arrested in Nottingham, a city of more than 300, 000 in the Midlands, after protesters blocked trams and buses by lying down in front of the Theatre Royal. The demonstrations were peaceful but powerful in several cases, the authorities had to use special equipment to cut through the tubes the protesters had used to link their arms. The demonstrations were timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary, on Thursday, of the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan, a unarmed black man, in the Tottenham section of London. His death touched off riots in poorer sections of the capital, as well as in cities including Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool. In January 2014, an inquest jury found that the killing of Mr. Duggan had been justified, finding it more likely than not that he had tossed a firearm from a taxi shortly before he was shot. But in October, a judge granted Mr. Duggan's family the right to appeal those findings. The 2011 riots echoed disturbances that shook the Brixton neighborhood of London no fewer than three times \u2014 in 1981, 1985 and 1995 \u2014 in response to anger at police treatment of black residents. The activists have been upset by three recent deaths of black Britons: Mzee Mohammed, 18, who died last month after he was arrested in Liverpool Sarah Reed, a with a history of mental illness, who died in a jail in North London in January and had previously been the victim of police brutality and Jermaine Baker, 28, who was fatally shot by the police in North London in December, after he tried to free a convict from a police van. \"In the U. K. we have exactly the same problems as in America, but in America they're far worse,\" Kehinde Andrews, an associate professor of sociology and head of the black studies program at Birmingham City University, said in a phone interview. \"You're three times more likely to be killed by the police if you're black, but the police don't kill that many people in Britain in general. \" So far this year, the police in Britain have shot and killed two people, compared with 571 in the United States. Britain has the largest prison population in Western Europe, and blacks are overrepresented. But even so, the incarceration rate is far lower than in the United States. Gun violence is also relatively rare in Britain handguns were effectively prohibited after a 1996 massacre at a school in Scotland. Most police officers in the country do not carry guns. Because deadly encounters with the police are fairly rare, activists in Britain have tended to focus more on the treatment of black people in custody, like Sean Rigg, a musician who had schizophrenia and who died in a police station in Brixton in 2008 and Kingsley Burrell, a student who died in police custody in Birmingham in 2011. Hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrated in London last month after the police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota. When she took office as Britain's prime minister on July 13, Theresa May pledged to fight \"burning injustice\" and to \"make Britain a country that works for everyone,\" noting that \"if you're black, you're treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white. \" In her previous position, as home secretary, Ms. May reduced the prevalence of \"stop and search\" (what Americans call \"stop and frisk\") a policing practice that she denounced as ineffective and unjust, saying that people were often subject to scrutiny on no other basis than their skin color. But Gus John, a black educator and activist who immigrated to Britain from Grenada as a young man, described Ms. May's speech as \"a bit rich,\" noting that she was in charge of domestic security and policing when Mr. Duggan died. \"If society tacitly endorses racial injustice, and doesn't see the matter as one that faces the country as a whole but simply as episodes that the black community has got to deal with, it is not just legitimate but necessary to take the struggle to them,\" Mr. John said, adding that he \"absolutely\" supported the protests. Blacks account for about 3 percent of Britain's population, compared with nearly 13 percent in the United States. While people of African origin have lived in Britain for centuries, black migration began with people from the Caribbean after World War II, followed by an influx from former British colonies in Africa, especially Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe.","label":0}
{"text":"If one were to best describe Donald Trump, especially at one of his campaign rallies, he would be the living embodiment of a Fox News Facebook comment section just full of vile, fear-filled, xenophobic, racist, hate-filled rhetoric.Making sure he lives up to this reputation while on the campaign trail in Delaware, Trump decided he would tell people about his experiences with call centers, primarily those that are overseas. And while these call centers are taking away American jobs, the people who work in these centers overseas are human beings trying to make an honest day s wage for themselves, and should be treated as such.However, Trump decided to do what he always does, and with no regard for who s he s throwing under the bus because he has a point to make, decided to imitate a call center worker from India.Trump said that he called the center to pretend he was checking on his credit card, then asked the worker, Where are you from? and that s when he did the impression, saying We are from India, in his disgusting attempt to pander to his racist and xenophobic crowd. Trump then supposedly said to the call center, Oh, great. That s wonderful. Thank you very much, that s all I need to know, and proceeds to pretend to hang up the phone.Did he make this story up? Probably, but it doesn t make it any less racist.Here s the thing, Trump doesn t care who he s offending as long as he s winning. He s fanning the flames of racism and hatred everywhere he goes, because it s clearly working, and that should terrify all of us.We need to make sure Trump gets nowhere near the Oval Office come November. He s not only bad for the nation, but it would be devastating for the entire world.Donald Trump says he called his credit-card company just to see if an Indian call center answered https:\/\/t.co\/Cdv0korqNo ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) April 22, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"He has been attacked over countless issues in partisan Washington, but U.S. President Barack Obama drew the line at this one: the idea that he is responsible for the rise of Donald Trump and the attendant Republican Party disarray. \"I have been blamed by Republicans for a lot of things, but being blamed for their primaries and who they're selecting for their party (nominee) is novel,\" Obama told a news conference on Thursday. \"What I'm not going to do is to validate some notion that the Republican crack-up that's been taking place is ... a consequence of actions that I've taken,\" the Democratic president said. Obama had been asked how he viewed being identified as the cause of Trump's ascent to front-runner in the Republican race to pick a presidential candidate for the Nov. 8 election. Obama seemed to relish the question, replying with both serious criticism of Republicans and some pointed mockery of Trump. The New York billionaire is well ahead in the Republican race after the first six weeks of primary nominating contests but his bombastic style and statements on Muslims, immigrants and trade have dismayed many in the party establishment. Many party leaders worry Trump would lose to the eventual Democratic nominee in November's election to replace Obama. Obama, whose White House tenure has been marked by steady resistance to most of his policies by Republicans in Congress, has said previously he regretted not being able to reduce the polarization between the two parties in Washington. But he scoffed on Thursday at the suggestion that his presidency had fueled the chaos among the Republicans. Conservative news outlets on television, radio and the Internet had convinced the Republican political base for seven years that cooperation with him was a \"betrayal\" and that \"maximalist absolutist\" positions were advantageous, Obama said. He was holding a joint news conference with visiting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In a clear dig at Trump, Obama said he had not prompted critics to question his U.S. citizenship or birth in Hawaii. Before he launched his longshot presidential run last year, Trump was a high-profile leader of the so-called \"birther\" movement, which believed Obama was born abroad and not eligible to be president, until he produced his Hawaii birth certificate to put the issue to rest. \"What you're seeing within the Republican Party is, to some degree, all those efforts over a course of time creating an environment where somebody like a Donald Trump can thrive,\" Obama said. For good measure, he took a swipe at two of Trump's rivals for the Republican nomination, saying the real estate magnate's position on immigration was not much different from that of U.S. Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Obama urged conservatives who were troubled by the party's position to \"reflect on what it is about the politics they've engaged in that allows the circus we've been seeing to transpire.\" (Additional reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Frances Kerry) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.","label":0}
{"text":"I wonder how many of J.B. Pritzker s children or grandchildren will be forced to share locker rooms or bathrooms at the country club with men or women of the opposite sex? This election has brought out a never-ending supply of elitist liberals with big mouths, who have all kinds of great ideas for the little people to implement A billionaire Democratic megadonor, who is exploring a run for governor, encouraged men to use women s bathrooms on Wednesday sparking criticism from transgender advocates and politicians.J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire heir whose father co-founded Hyatt hotels, floated the idea of switching bathrooms in the wake of President Donald Trump s executive order reversing an Obama policy that could have stripped federal funds from schools that maintain separate bathroom facilities based on sex. As a protest against Trump s rescinding protections for trans kids, everyone should use the other gender s bathroom today! he tweeted at 8:36 a.m.As a protest against Trump's rescinding protections for trans kids, everyone should use the other gender's bathroom today! #protecttranskids JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) February 23, 2017Not everyone on Twitter agreed with Pritzker. Some on the right even used (gasp!) facts to bolster their argument. Like the fact that, a TINY .01% of the population are actually affected by a federal transgender bathroom law:Draconian federal regulation is unneeded. We're talking about a TINY .01% of population. Let schools deal with this directly! Nicole4Trump (@niteowlmom3) February 23, 2017The tweet immediately provoked criticism from liberals. Illinois State Rep. Will Guzzardi (D., Chicago), a supporter of the Obama rule, said that Pritzker s tweet was insensitive and mischaracterized the transgender bathroom and locker room debate. No disrespect @JBPritzker but it s actually about precisely *not* that. We just want to let kids use their own gender s bathroom, Guzzardi tweeted in response. Your idea suggests that we support ppl going into opposite-gender bathrooms, which plays right into transphobic rhetoric. Pritzker has been called the other mayor of Chicago for his political influence and massive campaign spending on behalf of Democratic candidates such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel. He has close ties to the Clintons, having served as the national co-chair of Hillary Clinton s failed 2008 presidential bid, as well as the Obama administration. His sister, Penny Pritzker, served as Secretary of Commerce under President Obama from 2013 until he left office. J.B. Pritzker and his wife were two of the largest individual spenders in the 2016 election, shelling out more than $21 million to elect Clinton and other Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.Pritzker has now set his sights on the Illinois governor s mansion and is exploring the idea of self-funding a campaign. Rauner self-financed a $40 million campaign run in 2014, which helped him overcome steep Democratic advantages in the deep blue state.Other Democrats vying for the nomination were quick to criticize Pritzker s protest idea. Tom Elliot, communications director for Chicago Alderman Ameya Pawar s gubernatorial campaign, accused the billionaire of missing the point entirely Telling people to use the other gender s bathroom is missing the point entirely and a terrible idea. @JBPritzker #protecttranskids, Elliot replied. WFBTelling people to use the other gender's bathroom is missing the point entirely and a terrible idea. @JBPritzker #protecttranskids Tom Elliott (@trelliott) February 23, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"A raucous Republican Party debate on Thursday drew the biggest audience for a televised U.S. presidential match-up in 2016, according to early ratings data, but viewership was well below the record set last August. The Fox News Channel (FOXA.O) debate among Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and John Kasich drew 16.9 million viewers, according to early Nielsen data provided by the network on Friday. That was higher than the last Republican Party debate, which aired on cable channel CNN and Telemundo on Feb. 25 and brought in a TV audience of 14.5 million. Republican debates have drawn much higher TV audiences in this U.S. presidential cycle than those involving Democrats. The debate was the four remaining candidates' first face-to-face encounter since Super Tuesday nominating contests this week gave extra momentum to Trump but did not knock out his rivals.[L2N16C03W] Fox News holds the record for the largest audience for a non-sports cable TV program. Some 24 million Americans tuned in when it hosted the first of the U.S. presidential debates in August 2015. Thursday's debate in Detroit was the second-highest rated telecast in network history, Fox said. At Thursday's debate, Trump's rivals assailed him for shifting positions on the issues but said in the end they would reluctantly support him if he were their party's nominee. (Reporting by Jill Serjeant and Emily Stephenson; Editing by Alistair Bell and Bill Trott; For more on the 2016 U.S. presidential race and to learn about the undecided voters who determine elections, visit the Reuters website.; here) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump kept up his criticism of Mexico on Friday, saying it \"has taken advantage of the U.S. for long enough,\" as a crisis over border security and trade deepened. \"Massive trade deficits & little help on the very weak border must change NOW!\" Trump wrote on Twitter. On Thursday, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto scrapped a planned trip to Washington to meet Trump, who has repeatedly demanded that Mexico pay for a wall on the U.S. border to halt illegal immigration. The White House also suggested on Thursday that the United States could impose a 20 percent tax on goods from Mexico to pay for the wall, sending the peso tumbling. Speaking about the scrapped summit, senior Trump aide Kellyanne Conway on Friday told Fox News that \"the relationship was not imploded. This one meeting has been canceled and that was a mutual cancellation.\" In a separate interview on CBS News, she said the tax was one funding possibility and waved off the chance of Mexican retaliation that could cost American jobs, telling CBS News: \"They can do what they want.\" \"Mexico should pay for that wall because they get an awful lot from this country,\" Conway told CBS. The White House has said its tax proposal is in the early stages. A plan being weighed by House Republicans would exempt export revenues from taxation but impose a 20 percent tax on imported goods. The idea, known as a border adjustment tax, would be a significant change from current U.S. policy. Retailers and other businesses that sell imported goods are not keen on the idea, and some lawmakers have expressed concern about its impact on U.S. consumers. \"The costs for everything from groceries, to cars, to office supplies would go up by 20 (percent), making it harder for middle class families to pay for things they need every day,\" Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"According to the NRA, we have nothing to fear from gun-toting individuals who have completed a safety course. There is no way, if properly trained, that they can present a danger to themselves or others. Unfortunately, one Texas teenager s family learned the hard way that sending their child off to receive firearms training then giving him a gun probably isn t the best way to go about life.Weatherford High School senior Brennan Weikel dreamed of playing football in college. Unfortunately, he will never be able to do that because his stepfather gave the inexperienced 17-year-old a weapon and took him out in the middle of the night for what was supposed to be a fun Spring Break hog hunting trip. I know everybody says, Oh, my kid s perfect. He really was. He was a good kid, said stepfather James Chambers. Chambers took Weikel out hunting just five days after the teenager had completed a gun safety course one that gives him the legal right to hunt under Texas law, regardless of the amount of experience he has. Chambers also left Weikel by himself to hunt, according to the Weatherford Democrat: They were placed in individual ground blinds, the little wooden ones, [Game Warden Penny Nixon] said. His stepfather shot a hog and called the victim to ask him to help retrieve it. And the stepfather reported that immediately upon hanging up with the stepson, just seconds later, he heard a shot. It came from the blind where the young victim was. After getting no response to a text asking about the shot, the Weikel s stepfather, who was approximately 300 yards away, went over to the stand and found the teen crumpled up in the corner, his feet tangled up in a chair, according to Wise County Sheriff Lane Akin. There may have been some hunter inexperience involved, Nixon explained.Akin says that the teen leaned over the rifle, which had a round chambered and the safety off, when he stood up after receiving his stepfather s text. When he reached for the grip of the rifle, he accidentally squeezed the trigger and fired a single round into his head. It was instantly fatal, Nixon said. It s a real tragedy. Yes, it is a real tragedy but the NRA and its acolytes will simply view this as an accident rather than a symptom of the problem that is gun culture in America. Simply put, this would have never happened if the teen s family had made the responsible decision not to place a gun in his hands. This would have never happened if the NRA and its Republican allies did not present arming teenagers as normal. This would have never happened if we would take reasonable steps to place age restrictions on firearm use, if we required more than a minimal amount of training, or if Weikel s stepfather had at least stayed by his side to make sure that he was using the gun properly.Contrary to the NRA s rhetoric, guns do not keep us safe. If they did, Weikel would still be playing football.Watch a report on the shooting below:","label":1}
{"text":"COLUMBUS, Ohio \u2014 So here we are, nearing the end of 2016's race to the bottom. Through it all, through his ugly caricatures of Mexicans and Muslims, through her pretzel contortions to explain her emails, through the Russian hacking and the 3 a. m. Twitter rants and the rest, this was always going to be a \"hold your nose and vote\" election. But at Tommy's Diner, a colorful Columbus institution in a neighborhood once known as The Bottoms, \"hold your nose and vote\" is giving way, for some people, to \"hold your nose and don't vote. \" The distaste for the presidential election is obvious almost anywhere you look here in the capital of a swing state where in July 2015 Gov. John Kasich of Ohio (remember him?) became the 16th of 17 Republicans who hoped to succeed President Obama. Aaron Burnside, 23, a law student at Ohio State University, was at the student union that day, listening with optimism as Mr. Kasich declared that \"the sun is rising\" in America \u2014 words that now seem so quaint. Never for a minute did Mr. Burnside, who described himself as a \" fiscally conservative, socially liberal\" Republican, imagine himself not casting a ballot on Election Day. But on Thursday, with early voting underway here and Mr. Trump and President Obama in town, Mr. Burnside had no idea whether he would vote for president. \"It depends on how I feel that morning,\" he said. He will go to the polls \u2014 it's his civic duty \u2014 to back his party in races Senator Rob Portman, a Republican, is fending off a challenge from Ted Strickland, a Democrat and former governor. Mrs. Clinton seems too far to the left for him, he said never a Trump fan, he found the Republican nominee's vulgar boasts of grabbing women's genitals \"disgusting. \" So he feels stuck, as do many voters. As early voting begins in Ohio and elsewhere, many Americans are approaching the election with a sense of dread. In a CBS News poll released earlier this month, just 46 percent of likely voters said they were very enthusiastic about going to the polls, down from 62 percent in late October 2012, according to a New York News poll. What's uncertain this year is how many people will cast reluctant votes and how many won't vote at all. At the diner, Tommy is a gregarious Greek immigrant and American citizen named Tom Pappas, who loves politics but keeps his business nonpartisan. The walls are covered with photos of Democrats and Republicans in equal numbers, and of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Tommy's grandchildren and Ohio State football stars. Mr. Pappas, 63, and his wife Kathy, 57, have owned the diner for 28 years. Kathy Pappas, who bakes the baklava and bread pudding, pays little heed to politics (she leaves that to Tommy) but this year finds it impossible to escape. \"I turn on the radio, looking for the traffic or the weather,\" she said, \"and what do they talk about?\" Mrs. Pappas said she has always voted. \"But I don't know if I'm going to this year,\" she said. \"I just don't care for either one, and I don't trust either one. There's just not a good feeling either way you look, and that's sad. \" Every day 400 to 500 people pass through Tommy's customers run the gamut. Breakfast on Thursday brought a group of retirees, white men in red who had spent the morning building tables and chairs at a furniture bank for the needy two retired social studies teachers with their daughter, an acupuncturist (also an herbalist) and her boyfriend, a tattoo artist a group of bus drivers a retired firefighter, plus the usual smattering of lawyers and state workers. The acupuncturist, Keri Ondrus, 31, has given up on voting altogether she has taught English in Costa Rica, and was involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, describing herself as a \"total idealist\" and ''anarchist'' who feels there must be another way to repair the world. Her parents, Charlotte and Bill Ondrus, the retired teachers, will vote for Mrs. Clinton. \"You guys are not enthusiastic about Hillary,\" their daughter said. \"I know,\" her mother replied, \"but I'm scared to death of Donald Trump. \" Lunchtime brought a team of bail bondsmen an Air Force veteran and gun rights enthusiast wearing one of Mr. Trump's \"Make America Great Again\" ball caps and a pistol in a sleek, black Velcro case on his belt and a young artists, preparing for a show at Wright State University in Dayton. \"Why would I waste my time?\" Kyle Steed, 23, a composer with the group, said of voting, adding that he would rather spend his time helping the homeless as a volunteer. His friend Shamere Griffin, 21, another of the artists, shook her head wordlessly, seeming to fight back tears. She said she could never vote for Mr. Trump, given his characterizations of blacks, Muslims, Mexicans and women. She wants an America in which she doesn't have to remind \"my little brother, when he walks down the street, to walk with his hood down,\" and has no confidence that Mrs. Clinton can deliver that. She will stay home. \"Let's just be real,\" Ms. Griffin said. \"What has she done for us? That's what I want to know. What has she done for my people?\" Ohio is politically engaged in 2012, when President Obama ran against Mitt Romney, 70. 5 percent of registered voters cast ballots, compared with 57. 5 percent nationwide, and one in three voted early. Some election offices reported long lines when early voting began here Wednesday David Pepper, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, called Mr. Trump a \"turnout machine\" for Democrats. But an Street Journal poll released Thursday \u2014 and conducted after the emergence of a videotape showing Mr. Trump saying he groped women \u2014 found the Ohio race virtually tied. \"I'm very motivated,\" declared Robert Tannous, a lawyer in a dark blue suit, as he navigated his way around a waitress during the lunchtime rush. Motivated to vote for whom? \"Hillary Clinton,\" Mr. Tannous said. \"And the sad thing is, I'm a lifelong Republican. \" George Wolf, a 73, a retired firefighter who owns a small heating and air conditioning business here, comes to Tommy's every morning for the crispy corned beef and a dose of friendship. A longtime Republican, he says he \"cannot allow Hillary Clinton to get in,\" and proceeds to tick off the reasons. \"When you mention Benghazi, I get really upset,\" he said, referring to the 2012 attack on a United States diplomatic mission in Libya. \"Four people died she doesn't seem to care. \" Then there are her emails. And her paid speeches: \"I just don't like the fact that a politician is out to make money,\" Mr. Wolf said, adding that he would vote for Mr. Trump, which he views as better than not voting at all. He does not feel good about it. \"He went bankrupt as a man, that doesn't help me pay my bills,\" said Mr. Wolf, who added that he did not like Mr. Trump's nasty nicknames \u2014 \"Crooked Hillary,\" for example. \"That's a child talking,\" Mr. Wolf said. He backed Mr. Kasich in the primary, but came around to Mr. Trump after the Ohio governor dropped out of the race. Roughly a third of all Clinton and Trump backers say the main reason for their choice is that they oppose the other candidate, a recent Pew Research Center survey found. Millennial voters, ages 18 to 29, are especially discouraged and looking for a political outsider who can inspire them \u2014 one reason they rallied around Mrs. Clinton's primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Picking at his chili and sandwich, Mr. Burnside sounded absolutely deflated. His dining partner was his mentor, Steve Fitch, 68, a Clinton supporter. They were talking about Mr. Fitch's work as a commercial litigator Mr. Burnside was seeking guidance on how he could use a career in law to \"resolve conflicts. \" The 2016 campaign seemed antithetical to the younger man's dreams. Mr. Burnside was asked if he ever thought about that. \"Oh,\" he said. \"All the time. \"","label":0}
{"text":"A car bomb exploded outside the Somali capital Mogadishu on Friday killing the driver, police said, and a witness said there were at least two bodies. The explosion happened around noon in the village of Markaz, just over 20 km (12 miles) northwest of Mogadishu, Police Major Nur Ali told Reuters, adding that police had not reached the scene which he called an area inhabited by hardline Islamists . A witness in the village who gave his name as Ahmed told Reuters by telephone that he had seen two dead bodies. The car was ruined and the dead bodies were cut in halves, he said. The number killed in twin bombings in the Somali capital Mogadishu last weekend has risen to 358, the government said late on Friday. It was the deadliest attack in the country s history. The Islamist insurgency al Shabaab was blamed for Saturday s blasts, which happened when a car bomb and a truck bomb headed for the airport detonated prematurely.","label":0}
{"text":"Deadly ethnic fighting in Central African Republic could descend into a much larger-scale conflict if nothing is done to disarm combatants and defuse tensions, a U.N. report said on Friday. With a fifth of the population displaced since the mainly Muslim Seleka rebels ousted the president in 2013, provoking a backlash from Christian anti-balaka militias, U.N. peacekeepers are struggling to contain simmering violence. The U.N. human rights working group on mercenaries and foreign fighters said it strongly senses that the possibility of another armed conflict is likely, if foreign armed actors, along with local armed groups, are not effectively dismantled and suppressed. National security forces are too weak to tackle armed groups and counter the spillover from conflicts in neighboring countries, and U.N. military personnel, who number just over 10,000, have failed to convince locals that they can protect them, the report said. Ugandan and U.S. forces pulled out earlier this year, declaring success against the Lord s Resistance Army, a regional militia notorious for two decades of abducting children to use as fighters and sex slaves. On Thursday, Amnesty International issued its own report detailing what it said was the systematic rape and murder of civilians in ethnic fighting. If the U.N. s mandate in the Central African Republic is to mean anything, civilians must be better protected, the rights group s Joanne Mariner said. U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said the U.N. mission in Central African Republic (MINUSCA) had to make changes and was slightly short of the necessary personnel. We have currently a troop ceiling which we think is slightly under what we would need, he said on Friday. MINUSCA s mandate authorizes it to have 10,750 military personnel, a recent U.N. report said there were 10,098 on the ground. We are seeing a surge in ... very negative and antagonistic messages to the effect that foreigners should be eliminated, putting one ethnic or religious component of this country against the other, Lacroix told reporters in Geneva. The working group report said the word foreigners was constantly used to label Muslims.","label":0}
{"text":"When you are Black in America, getting pulled over by a cop even for the smallest infraction is a very scary thing. As we have seen repeatedly, this could cost you your life. Usually, when that happens, the cop in question faces no real consequences. Generally, the police department investigates itself and finds it did nothing wrong, naturally. So, to that end, Black Americans tend to act with extreme compliance when it comes to interactions with police. Not being that way could cost us our lives. However, one brave black driver who was pulled over for not using his turn signal properly decided that he s had enough, and confronted the cop who pulled him over and approached with a drawn gun.The whole incident was caught on video, as the man goes all in on the cop, saying: Big f*cking crime right? Big crime. A crime enough for you to come with your fucking gun pulled out, right? A turn signal not made is a big enough crime for you to need to take out your service pistol. Do you have no conscience? You just don t give a f*ck right? Because I would have been just another dead black motherf*cker right? the man tells the officer. And you would have just gone about your business, right? Luckily, the officer didn t shoot, and just accepted this rightfully outraged driver reading him the goods on his racist behavior. It s too bad more encounters with racist cops making unfounded assumptions about the supposed dangerous criminality of Black Americans can t end this way.Now, time to find out who this cop is.Watch the priceless video evidence of America s racist policing problem below:Cop pulls over a black man for failure to signal, walks to his car with his gun drawn Black dude is my fucking hero????????????????????? pic.twitter.com\/S8ef8Mx4Kk SIX_FOOT_5 (@Choco_Optimus) September 10, 2017The ending of black dude going ham on cop Left him looking stupid as fuck! ? pic.twitter.com\/9oCHBbCBRi SIX_FOOT_5 (@Choco_Optimus) September 10, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Maybe it s time for Muslim citizens and immigrants to start assimilating. What a concept Texas has just made a move that is sure to have many people cheering, and a select few angry. As the march to Sharia Law presses on, it appears Texas is fighting back.Over the past few years, Texas has been quick to take a stand against President Obama and implement the laws necessary to protect its citizens. Now, the Texas legislature has just passed a law designed to permanent bar Muslims from instituting Sharia Law in the Lone Star State.While State Sen. Donna Campbell doesn t specific measure Islamic law in the bill, her measure guarantees that no laws from foreign courts will be admissible by Texas civil court judges. It s just to provide some belt and suspenders to make sure that, with judicial discretion, we don t trump Texas law, American law, with a foreign law regarding family law, Campbell told reporters.Muslim groups have already criticized the bill, calling it a solution looking for a problem. They also argue that the bill will only perpetuate Islamophobia. What do you think? Do you support the measure?","label":1}
{"text":"NEW WIKILEAK : Top Clinton Operative Believes \"BLACK VOTERS ARE STUPID\" NEW WIKILEAK : Top Clinton Operative Believes \"BLACK VOTERS ARE STUPID\" Videos By TruthFeedNews November 2, 2016  A new email released as part of the Wikileaks Podesta dump features Clinton ally Brent Budowsky exposing Hillary operative David Brock of having a plan that relied upon black voters being \"stupid.\"  Why is their ZERO reporting of this on mainstream news?  Watch the video:  Support the Trump Movement and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter.","label":1}
{"text":"A Colombian judge sentenced a former vice-minister of transport to five years and two months in prison on Tuesday after the ex-official admitted to taking millions of dollars in bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. Gabriel Garcia Morales, who served under former President Alvaro Uribe, accepted $6.5 million in pay-offs to help Odebrecht [ODBES.UL] win a 2010 road construction contract valued at over $1 billion, the attorney general s press office told Reuters. Garcia Morales has promised to testify against other public officials who received bribes, the attorney general s office said on Twitter. The Brazilian firm is at the center of one of the largest corruption scandals in Latin America, and has admitted paying bribes from Peru to Panama. Ecuador jailed its vice president over the scandal and last year the company agreed to pay $3.5 billion in settlements in the United States, Brazil and Switzerland. Colombia s attorney general said Odebrecht paid more than $27 million in bribes in the Andean country. One former and one current lawmaker, the former director of the national infrastructure agency, and others have also been arrested in connection with the case. Morales, who was also fined $21,000, was originally sentenced to 10 years but the sentence was reduced because he accepted responsibility.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump: Minnesota Has 'Suffered Enough' Accepting Refugees Tessa Berenson, TIME, November 6, 2016  In a pitch to suspend the nation's Syrian refugee program , Donald Trump said Minnesotans have \"suffered enough\" from accepting Somali immigrants into their state.  \"Here in Minnesota you have seen firsthand the problems caused with faulty refugee vetting, with large numbers of Somali refugees coming into your state, without your knowledge, without your support or approval,\" Trump said at a Minneapolis rally Sunday afternoon.  He said his administration would suspend the Syrian refugee program and not resettle refugees anywhere in the United States without support from the communities, while Hillary Clinton's \"plan will import generations of terrorism, extremism and radicalism into your schools and throughout your communities.\"  {snip}","label":1}
{"text":"LAUSANNE, Switzerland \u2014 Talks among the United States, Russia and critical Middle East states aimed at brokering a new pause in Syria's war broke up after a few hours on Saturday without signs of progress, or a break in the Syrian government's ferocious assault on parts of the city of Aleppo. Secretary of State John Kerry began the talks in the Swiss lakeside city of Lausanne, meeting one on one with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov. Their encounter, described as \"businesslike\" by a State Department spokesman, John Kirby, came 12 days after Washington suspended bilateral contacts with Moscow and called for a war crimes investigation into Russian actions in Syria. Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lavrov then headed into talks with the foreign ministers from regional powers involved in the conflict, including Iran, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, along with the United Nations mediator, Staffan de Mistura. The diplomats left about four hours later with terse comments that gave away nothing of substance. Before the talks began, both sides played down prospects of a breakthrough. Mr. Kerry, who was expected to leave Sunday for talks in London with the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, told reporters that discussions with Russia and the Middle Eastern states would resume on Monday. Mr. Lavrov went into the talks saying he would focus on fulfilling an earlier agreement that called for separating rebels in Syria from jihadist groups like the Nusra Front, which is linked to Al Qaeda and now calls itself the Levant Conquest Front. He emerged from the meetings saying only that the parties had discussed \"some ideas\" and had agreed to meet in coming days, \"expecting certain agreements which would help promote\" a settlement, the news agency reported. That brought no prospect of early relief for the beleaguered quarter of a million residents of eastern Aleppo, who are facing what international aid agencies have called the heaviest bombardment since the collapse of a truce three weeks ago. Syrian and Russian aircraft bombed four hospitals in Aleppo on Friday, causing severe damage to a major trauma facility, Doctors Without Borders reported, calling it the worst damage inflicted on already battered health facilities since the end of September. An ambulance driver was killed and two doctors were wounded on Friday, Doctors Without Borders said. At least 62 people were killed, and more than 465 people were wounded in the bombing and shelling over the previous three days, the group said. United Nations agencies say several hundred residents of eastern Aleppo desperately need medical evacuation, and the agencies have prepared hospitals in Syria and Turkey to receive them. However, efforts to get the wounded and sick out, or to provide the city with food and medical supplies, have been blocked by the fighting. \"The indiscriminate bombing campaign has taken a clear turn for the worse,\" Carlos Francisco, the head of the Syria mission for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement on Saturday. \"By damaging the few remaining places where lives can be saved, it is clear that Syria and Russia are squeezing the life out of eastern Aleppo. \"","label":0}
{"text":".@Nigel_Farage tells the #CPAC2017 crowd his favourite part of 2016. https:\/\/t.co\/DLpxYP8rPW CPAC 2017 (@CPAC) February 24, 2017FULL SPEECH:","label":1}
{"text":"Hillary and Bill Clinton have no shame! They ve both been lying to the American people for 30 years! From Bill s sexual exploits to Hillary s e-mails, they both have told the BIGGEST WHOOPERS that would have gotten any normal person in much more trouble! It s like the Clintons get a pass and that the rules don t apply to them ever! Sooo fast forward to Hillary s DNC acceptance speech where she tells yet another tall tale. You won t believe how she basically throws a town under the bus to make herself look like a compassionate humanitarian. The problem is that some sharp people busted her for the lie LOL! From The New Bedford Standard Times April 17, 2015 in an article by Steve Urbon:The idealistic young woman with the long hair and huge eyeglasses had just graduated from Yale Law School, the future holding nothing but potential. But instead of shipping off to a New York or Washington law firm, she joined Marian Wright Edelman s fledgling Children s Defense Fund (which Edelman, Yale Law Class of 1963, still leads).Hillary Rodham Clinton apparently would have you believe that, in 1973 she had forgone a career at a lucrative Washington D.C. law firm to instead, serve the public at Yale University s Children s Defense Fund (CDF). Not exactly the truth..but that s not the whopper I speak of yet. While she did indeed work at the CDF in New Bedford in 1973, it seemed more like Plan B than her passion, but this was her fate and it served her well. Hillary Rodham actually went for the big bucks at that dreamy law firm in D.C .but she failed to pass her bar exams in the District of Columbia, instead eventually passed them in Arkansas. In last night s acceptance speech, Secretary Clinton told a story of her experience on the South Coast of Massachusetts in the City of New Bedford as an attorney for the CDF that didn t all add up according to my radio colleague Chris McCarthy: My mother, Dorothy, was abandoned by her parents as a young girl. She ended up on her own at 14, working as a housemaid. She was saved by the kindness of others. Her first-grade teacher saw she had nothing to eat at lunch and brought extra food to share the entire year. The lesson she passed on to me, years later, stuck with me: No one gets through life alone. We have to look out for each other and lift each other up. And she made sure I learned the words from our Methodist faith: Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can. So, I went to work for the Children s Defense Fund, going door-to-door in New Bedford, Mass., on behalf of children with disabilities who were denied the chance to go to school. I remember meeting a young girl in a wheelchair on the small back porch of her house. She told me how badly she wanted to go to school it just didn t seem possible in those days. And I couldn t stop thinking of my mother and what she d gone through as a child. It became clear to me that simply caring is not enough. To drive real progress, you have to change both hearts and laws. You need both understanding and action. So we gathered facts. We built a coalition. And our work helped convince Congress to ensure access to education for all students with disabilities. Of all the mill cities in all the world..she had to pick on ours? As Chris McCarthy observed, this story has B.S. written all over it . I was coming to WBSM a bit late from my Boston Herald Radio appearance earlier this morning and by the time I had pulled into the parking lot at 10:07 a.m., Chris opened the show and had already impeached the WHOLE Hillary whale of a story (New Bedford is known as the Whaling City).Now, Chris is extremely sharp and the local reference in her story caught his attention as he watched her speak last night. We hashed over the odds of plausibility an possibilities over the next two hours. When we departed, I decided to investigate. You may see Chris on national tv later on this weekend or next week. Who knows? Here s what I learned; The Mayor of New Bedford in 1973 was a guy I happen to know, Mayor John Markey (81 years old and a lifelong Democrat now living in Dartmouth, MA. Mayor Markey is also a retired judge and a man whose credibility and character are beyond reproach. Jack as he is known, is eligible for both court and municipal pension but only accepts one. He is not one to double dip . I called Jack and asked him a few questions about handicap services in 1973 at the New Bedford Public Schools, including wheelchair accessibility. I took over as Mayor in January of 1973. We had a budget for vans with drivers and provided services to students with disabilities. It was Tremblay Bus. They would pick them up and drop them off at their homes. Now, they may not have been able to go to the local school, depending on whether or not the schools were accessible for wheelchairs but there were many schools then which could and did accommodate our handicapped students in wheelchairs . In fact, we had a local guy who was a paraplegic, injured in a diving accident who came to my office many times to advocate for the disabled and I actually spent an entire day in 1973 in a wheelchair to better understand the challenges they face everyday. Soon after that we were cutting out sidewalks for wheelchairs and doing things in New Bedford before the laws ever compelled us to. So despite the progressive and good works of the New Bedford leadership in 1973 to make the city schools and streets more handicap accessible, Hillary (no pun intended) rolled New Bedford local government under the bus last night in front of the world. And needed to lie to do it. It just didn t seem possible in those days Hillary, because it wasn t true in 1973 New Bedford. *While she did important work to expose the needs not yet met in some school districts, this was not a city without wheelchair accessible schools and services to get the students to the schools. Maybe today s Mayor Jon Mitchell will offer to find this girl in the wheelchair on that porch as he did when challenging MA Governor Charlie Baker s New Bedford anecdotal about a New Bedford fisherman, a mountain of a man who last made Baker cry. with a hardship story..which turned out to actually be true. And you thought she changed silly you.","label":1}
{"text":"Wednesday was not a good day to be Donald Trump. In the aftermath of the disastrous Comey hearing where it was confirmed that The Donald s team was indeed being investigated and of Rep. Nunes decision to skip informing his fellow congressional Russia investigators of perfectly legal incidental collection of information about Trump associates and possibly the President* himself and run to The Donald with it instead Trump has been flailing, attempting to distract from the whole Russia thing as much as possible.That s going to be very hard now, as U.S. officials have now confirmed that the facts suggest that members of his team were indeed working with the enemy. CNN reports:The FBI has information that indicates associates of President Donald Trump communicated with suspected Russian operatives to possibly coordinate the release of information damaging to Hillary Clinton s campaign, US officials told CNN.","label":1}
{"text":"Brazilian police on Friday said they arrested former minister Geddel Vieira Lima on new charges after a corruption probe found his fingerprints in bags hiding more than 51 million reais ($16.52 million) in cash. Vieira Lima was in charge of President Michel Temer s relations with Congress until November. He had been under house arrest since July, accused of obstruction of justice for allegedly trying to deter entrepreneur L cio Funaro, who worked for politicians close to Temer, from striking a plea bargain deal with prosecutors. Judge Vallisney de Souza Oliveira said in a ruling authorizing the arrest that it was necessary to stop Lima from committing other crimes. Police took hours to calculate the exact amount of money found in boxes and bags earlier this week at an apartment in Salvador, in the nation s biggest-ever cash seizure. When Lima resigned from his cabinet post in November, he was the fifth minister to leave the administration over graft allegations. Temer himself was later charged by the country s top prosecutor of corruption, an accusation he managed to defeat through a lower house vote in August. Lima s lawyer, Gamil Foppel, said his client had no access to the court documents about the evidence found by police, in clear violation of the law. ($1 = 3.0875 reais)","label":0}
{"text":"Top officials of the Cruz campaign are convinced there is one specific step that could have stopped Trump -- and they blame Sen. Marco Rubio for not taking that step. In early March, it became clear that Trump was well on his way to the nomination and would even likely defeat Rubio in his home state of Florida's March 15 primary. According to several sources close to Cruz, the Cruz campaign conducted several secret polls to see what the impact would be if Rubio joined Cruz as his running mate, with Cruz at the top of the ticket. Politico reported in March that Rubio rejected the idea of a \"unity ticket.\" But the sources close to Cruz and Rubio are now offering a much fuller picture of the extent of Cruz's polling, the reasons why Rubio said no, and the resentment the Cruz people have about Rubio's rejection of the idea. The Cruz campaign polled in three March 15 primary states, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina -- though not in Ohio, home to Kasich, or in Florida. They also tested the matchup in a poll in Arizona, which would hold its contest on March 22, and in Wisconsin, which would hold its primary on April 5. What did polls suggest a Cruz-Rubio ticket would do in those states? \"Blowout,\" said a source close to Cruz. \"65%-35%,\" with Trump losing. Through friends and emissaries, the Cruz campaign tried to get Rubio on board. But Cruz could not reach him on the phone, and others reported back to the Cruz campaign that Rubio did not seem interested in having a discussion about this at all. \"He went off the grid,\" said a source close to Cruz. Cruz campaign officials speculated that Rubio was interested in preserving his political viability for a contested GOP convention or the 2020 race. A source familiar with Rubio's thinking says there never really was a concrete offer from the Cruz campaign to team up -- just vague discussions from donors about polls and the potential for such a move -- but either way, he was not interested. For one, the source said, Rubio thought the notion of two senators from Washington, D.C., teaming up against Trump would fit all too easily into the Trump outsider narrative. Second, Rubio was concerned that as a fellow Cuban-American freshman senator, he didn't think he complemented Cruz particularly well. Lastly, Rubio felt that the nominee should have the freedom to pick whomever he or she wants at the convention to help win in November and not be bound to a short-term decision made in the thick of the primaries. The lack of bounce after Cruz attempted such a move with Carly Fiorina reinforced his belief that he was right, the source said. A source close to Kasich reported that the Ohio governor tried to broach the subject with Rubio as well, and the campaigns discussed it as well, before and after the March 8 Michigan primary. Kasich's team did not conduct any polling but they are also convinced if the two men had teamed up, \"we would have swept the rest of the primaries.\" What the result would have been in these alternate universes where a Cruz-Rubio ticket was on the ballot, or a Kasich-Rubio team, is unknown. Trump, in this reality went on to win in Florida, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, and Arizona. He was not stopped.","label":0}
{"text":"On Friday's broadcast of HBO's \"Real Time,\" Jane Fonda stated she won't call President Donald Trump \"by his name. I call him the . \" Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett","label":0}
{"text":"We are 308 days into 2017, and so far there have been 378 mass shootings most done by angry white men with too many guns and with domestic violence issues. It s difficult to spin that fact in any way that doesn t spit in the face of our nation s gun lust, but conservatives try. One even says it s a good thing.Donald Trump called it a mental health issue, one that has no proposed solutions, just days after he called for a complete policy change after an ISIS connected terrorist plowed into people in New York.Even Trump s tone-deaf reaction seemed compassionate compared to a conservative blogger and Lutheran pastor who says that God was answering the victims prayers by taking them to heaven.Hans Fiene wrote his column in The Federalist in response to liberals who say that thoughts and prayers are not enough to quell the mass shooting epidemic. God wanted them dead, he said, and that s what prayer is all about.When we pray these words, we are certainly praying that God would deliver us from evil temporally that is, in this earthly life. Through these words, we are asking God to send his holy angels to guard us from those who would seek to destroy us with knives and bombs and bullets. It may seem, on the surface, that God was refusing to give such protection to his Texan children. But we are also praying that God would deliver us from evil eternally. Through these same words, we are asking God to deliver us out of this evil world and into his heavenly glory, where no violence, persecution, cruelty, or hatred will ever afflict us again. Just like those who put Christ to death, and just like those who have brought violence to believers in every generation, this man only succeeded in being the means through which God delivered his children from this evil world into an eternity of righteousness and peace. Perhaps instead of eternal damnation, the shooter who murdered 26 parishioners should receive sainthood.","label":1}
{"text":"On May 9, Pastor David Reynolds, formerly of Cornerstone Bible Fellowship Church in Sherwood, Arkansas, was arrested on 70 counts of child pornography.According to the Sherwood Police Department, Reynolds arrest followed a lengthy investigation which began with a tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in December.KARK reports that Reynolds had at least three social media accounts which were registered under assumed names. He used those accounts to distribute and receive child pornography.Sgt. Keith Wilson of the Sherwood Police Department told KARK that police also found a large number of pictures on Reynolds computer. One of the photos was of a 13-year-old girl who was identified as a member of Reynold s church. The girl was able to help police identify other children who were in photos stored on Reynold s computer.Reynolds was removed from all duties with the church on March 7, after he admitted to church members that he had a problem with pornography. Church elders released a statement regarding his removal, saying:On March 7th the elders of Cornerstone removed Dave Reynolds from all responsibility at Cornerstone. Dave had informed two of the elders that he was engaged in pornography and thought the elders might learn of this from another party, hence he decided to inform us of his involvement in this sin. Those two elders specifically asked Dave if he had viewed under age pornography to which he replied that he had not knowingly done so.Reynolds plead not guilty to the charges and is currently being held on a $250,000 bond.Queerty reports that Reynolds sermons were often vehemently anti-gay. According to the website, the former pastor preached against same-sex marriage and consensual same-sex relationships of any kind, saying that all LGBTQ relationships are sin. How anyone can preach that a relationship between two consenting adults is sin while at the same time sending and receiving images of innocent children for their own sick sexual gratification is beyond comprehension.Image credit: Marine Glisovic KATV via Twitter","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump is trying to determine how keeping his promise to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem could affect his hopes of brokering a peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians, his secretary of state said on Sunday. Since taking office in January, Trump has shown signs of shelving his campaign pledge to move the embassy from Tel Aviv, while vowing to do what is necessary to clinch a Middle East peace agreement. \"The president is being very careful to understand how such a decision would impact a peace process,\" Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told NBC's \"Meet the Press.\" He spoke just days before Trump starts a Middle East trip that includes meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Israel regards Jerusalem as its eternal and indivisible capital and wants all foreign countries to base their embassies there. The relocation is strongly opposed by many U.S. allies as the Palestinians also claim the city as their capital. Tillerson said Trump's decision would depend greatly on how it is seen by governments in the region, including \"whether Israel views it as being helpful to a peace initiative or perhaps a distraction.\" His comments drew a quick response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. \"Israel's position has been stated many times before to the American administration and the world,\" Netanyahu's office said in a statement. \"Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem will not harm the peace process, it will do the opposite. It will advance it by righting a historical wrong and by shattering the Palestinian fantasy that Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Well, as a Catholic the act of the Pope of my church accepting a gruesome hammer and sickle with Christ affixed to the front was wholly offensive Pope Francis has said he wasn t offended by the communist crucifix given to him by Bolivian president Evo Morales during his South American pilgrimage.Morales surprised the pontiff with the unusual gift, a crucifix attached to a hammer and sickle, when Francis arrived in La Paz on Wednesday.The crucifix was a replica of one designed by a Jesuit priest, the Reverend Lu s Espinal, who was tortured and killed by Bolivian paramilitary squads in 1980. Francis prayed at the site of Espinal s assassination upon his arrival in Bolivia.The modified crucifix immediately raised eyebrows, with some questioning whether Morales, whose socialist and anti-church rhetoric is well-known, was trying to score a political point with a questionable, and possibly sacrilegious, melding of faith and ideology.Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, said Espinal was well-known among his fellow Jesuits as a proponent of the Marxist strain of liberation theology. The Vatican opposed it, fearing that Marxists were using liberation theology s preferential option for the poor as a call for armed revolution against oppressive rightwing regimes that were in power in much of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s.During a news conference en route home to Rome on Sunday, Francis said he interpreted Morales gift through the prism of Espinal s Marxist bent and viewed it as protest art.After taking into consideration the time in which he lived, Francis said: I understand this work. For me it wasn t an offense. Francis added that he brought the crucifix home with him.","label":1}
{"text":"Saudi Arabia s King Salman will begin a visit to Russia on Thursday at the invitation of President Vladimir Putin, Saudi state news agency SPA said, the Gulf ruler s first trip to Moscow since becoming king in 2015. During the visit the two countries plan to set up a $1 billion fund to invest in energy projects as part of efforts by two of the world s biggest oil producers to expand cooperation, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said earlier on Monday. SPA said the two leaders would discuss bilateral and regional issues, but gave no details. Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and Russia helped forge a deal between OPEC and other producers to cut output by 1.8 million barrels per day from January to lift crude prices.","label":0}
{"text":"Get short URL 0 5 0 0 A strong energy sector will serve as an economic driver for the UK's economy, Britain's former minister for energy and climate change told Sputnik.  MOSCOW (Sputnik) \u2014 The United Kingdom is interested in a strong energy sector as an economic driver for the whole British economy, and consequently in the stabilization of prices on the global oil market, Charles Hendry , a former UK Minister for Energy and Climate Change, told Sputnik on Wednesday. \"Oil consumers have enjoyed low oil prices, that's been good, but ultimately we need strong oil and gas sector because the economic driver which it creates and provides. So for the United Kingdom we have seen both the upside and the downside. \u2026 There is a beginning consensus of people [in the United Kingdom] recognizing that action needs to be taken [to stabilize oil market],\" Hendry said.  He added, however, that few countries could take steps that would contribute to stability of the global oil market, among them are Saudi Arabia and Russia . \u00a9 AP Photo\/ Vahid Salemi Russian Companies Set to Get a Slice of Iranian Oil Pie The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), which comprises Saudi Arabia among other 13 major oil producers, is in ongoing consultations on finalizing a preliminary agreement on oil output cuts reached in late September and aimed at stabilizing oil prices, that may see non-OPEC oil producers also joining the deal. The agreement, which is expected to be finalized on November 30 during OPEC's next meeting in Vienna, was reached against the backdrop of decline in oil prices, which have dropped from some $110 a barrel to the below-$50 mark since mid-2014. ...","label":1}
{"text":"ONLY two of the reporters who covered the presidential campaign for The New York Times were black. None were Latino or Asian. That's less diversity than you'll find in Donald Trump's cabinet thus far. Of The Times's newly named White House team, all six are white, as is most everyone in the Washington bureau. Traveling to other departments, Metro has only three Latinos among its 42 reporters, in a city with the second largest Hispanic population in the country. Sports has one Asian man, two Hispanics and no among its 21 reporters, yet blacks are plentiful among the teams they cover and the audience they serve. In the Styles section, every writer is white, while American culture is anything but. The executive editor, Dean Baquet, is . The other editors on his masthead are white. The staff with the most diversity? The news assistants, who mostly do administrative jobs and get paid the least. The Times can be relentless in questioning the diversity at other institutions it has written about the white ranks of the technology sector, public schools, police departments, Oscar nominees, law firms, legislatures, the major leagues and the Ivy League. Fixing its own problems comes less easily. The newsroom's blinding whiteness hit me when I walked in the door six months ago. It's hardly a new problem here, but it's one that persists even as the country grows more diverse and The Times grows more global. The head of that global expansion, Lydia Polgreen, was one of The Times's editors until she left last week to lead The Huffington Post. Her departure hit the whole newsroom hard, but it was especially a blow to many minority journalists here. In the past three months, I have interviewed people across the newsroom about the issue of race (and to some degree gender, which I'll address in a future column). I've spoken with journalists of all racial and ethnic identities, in jobs high and low: white men and black women, editors and reporters, department heads and news assistants. It left me believing there is a level of frustration bordering on anger that would be institutionally reckless not to address. Many journalists hoped a new era was beginning two and a half years ago, when Baquet became the first to oversee the newsroom. But whatever progress has been made is only beginning to show up on a scorecard. Overall, newsroom diversity is at 22 percent, up slightly but below newsrooms in most big metropolitan areas. And of those who head departments here, only three are people of color. I asked Baquet what he believes minorities in the newsroom would say about his senior team's dedication to diversity. \"I think they'd say we have a problem,\" he said. \"We're not diverse enough. But I think they'd say I have a commitment to it and that it's gotten better in the past year. \" He added, \"My effort to diversify has been intense and persistent. \" By that, Baquet particularly means the handful of prominent black journalists he's helped attract or promote, stars like Nikole Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, all coveted by The Times's competitors. Their writing styles offer a refreshing break from The Times's rather institutional voice, which \u2014 as one black editor put it to me \u2014 is older, white, male, Ivy League and authoritative. \"That's who The Times is at a dinner party,\" she said. Many of those I spoke with, including Latinos and Asians, said the arrival of a few stars can take the focus away from the real issue of bringing in and retaining diversity across the room. In other words, while big names are rightfully celebrated, they can give the appearance of more diversity than there really is. What's more, just because an is at the helm, it doesn't mean all is well in the newsroom he runs. \"We can't look to Dean as proof that everything is O. K. and we also can't look solely to him for solutions,\" said Nikita Stewart, a Metro staff reporter. When you ask managers about the issue individually, everyone genuinely seems to care. Collectively, however, not much changes. They begin by saying this is an industrywide problem, not just a New York Times problem. That is true, unquestionably. On the other hand, it's also true that data from the American Society of News Editors shows that The Times is less diverse than large papers like The Washington Post (31 percent) The Los Angeles Times (34 percent) and The Miami Herald (41 percent). The Times is more diverse than The Boston Globe (17 percent) and The Philadelphia Inquirer (14 percent). Given The Times's ambitions across global cultures and languages, it would seem that instead of being a lagger, it would insist on being a leader \u2014 and make that an explicit goal. I see no sign that this is happening. Nor do I get the impression from many journalists of color I spoke with that they believe progress is on the horizon. \"There's always a reason for such little diversity in newsrooms. Over the course of time, the reasons always change, but the underrepresentation never does,\" said who writes for the Times Magazine, one of the few notably diverse staffs in the building. Ernesto Londo\u00f1o, who sits on The Times's editorial board \u2014 and on an Opinion staff lacking both gender and racial diversity \u2014 believes the problem lies in a failure of editors to step outside their circles. \"It takes a concerted effort to break out of that habit and tap talent pools that are more diverse,\" Londo\u00f1o said. Which means that unless the pattern breaks, the whiter the newsroom is, the whiter it will stay. Mark Thompson, The Times chief executive officer, told a group of top leaders across the corporate and news sides last spring that managers could face dismissal if they failed to diversify their staffs. Baquet, who was at the meeting, didn't sound that militant in our conversation, saying that his editors feel the most pressure through a stringent expectation to bring forth a diverse applicant pool for every job opening. No one has been punished, he says. I can tell diversity isn't a priority here by looking at what is. Think digital transition or global expansion or subscriber growth or visual innovation. Those are mandates that really power up the engines. Diversity is not at that level, at least yet. This issue has challenged most every newsroom manager, myself included. The newsroom I came from, The Washington Post, is quite diverse, but its leadership is heavily white and male. At The Times, on the other hand, people of color seem shut out of all sorts of coveted jobs: the top digital strategists, the top managers, the precious ranks of cultural critics, the White House press corps, the opinion columnists, the national politics jobs \u2014 all are overwhelmingly white. It is possible to change this. But The Times will need more humility, introspection and openness than has been its habit in the past. Note: This column explores The Times's diversity crisis, primarily through race. Future columns will address the struggles to fix this issue, news coverage, the widening gender gap, and the limited geographic, religious and ideological diversity. Stay tuned.","label":0}
{"text":"Mike Hagan has a used car dealership and repair shop in Rochester, New Hampshire and is running a very odd and frankly irresponsible promotion. He s offering a free AR-15 to people who come buy a car from him, because Murika.Hagan is a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan. He knows what these kinds of guns can do, and yet, according to WFTV 9, he s not worried about whether any of these guns might be used to murder people later on. Thus far, he s given away four of the weapons, along with a 9mm Beretta, which is an alternative for people who don t want an AR-15, and he thinks his promotion is a wild success.This kind of promotion is bad enough, and to refuse to end it following a horrific tragedy like Orlando is just plain insensitive and cruel. The gun nuts apparently don t see it that way, though. They ve taken to Facebook to celebrate Hagan s promotion, lest the evil libruls finally come to confiscate everyone s guns. There has been some backlash, though, not just on social media, but also from a couple of people that NH1 TV spoke to. At least there are least still some sane people out there: To me that s just getting more of the nut jobs out there doing harm to more people that don t deserve it. My opinion, military and police are the only ones that should have them. Hagan has partnered with a local gun dealer to run his promotion, and customers have to go there to go through a background check and get the weapons. Apparently, that makes it all okay because it means he knows he can t give them out like they re candy.Besides that, he believes that the people who take advantage of this promotion will be fully responsible, because everyone knows that all the people who obtain their guns legally are very responsible gun owners oh wait. Omar Mateen, and so many other mass shooters, bought their guns legally, not to mention all the idiots who have no clue what gun safety is, and end up accidentally shooting someone to death.Hagan claims he won t extend the offer to someone from whom he gets a bad feeling. So, what, he s telepathic and knows who has bad intentions? Horse hockey. This is still sick, it s still irresponsible, and it s still cruel and insensitive. It also demonstrates just how sick as a society we ve become where this kind of thing is seen as something to celebrate by so many.","label":1}
{"text":"Facebook is appealing an order to impose Austria's social media laws against hate speech on the platform worldwide. [\"The court case involves comments posted to Facebook about the leader of Austria's Green Party, which the party claims are illegal under the country's hate speech laws,\" reported Fortune. \"An appeals court in Vienna agreed and ordered Facebook to take them down not just in Austria but everywhere else as well. \" According to Reuters, the court also said that \"merely blocking them in Austria without deleting them for users abroad was not sufficient. \" The order would mean that citizens of other countries where \"hate speech\" laws are could have their free speech restricted under Austrian law to stop negative posts being made and shared. \"Should Facebook comply globally with Russia's laws, or Thailand's laws against insulting the king, or Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws?\" asked Daphne Keller, a lawyer at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford University. \"Would Austria want those laws to dictate what speech its citizens can share online? This ruling sends a signal to courts around the world that they, too, can enforce their national laws to ban speech around the world. \" Keller also added that since the post was a political comment, the court order is particularly \"troubling,\" raising questions as to whether political censorship is being enforced. \"There is no place for hate speech on Facebook and this post was removed from our platform last year as requested,\" said a Facebook spokesman to Fortune. \"However, we will appeal this particular case before the Austrian Supreme Court to have better legal clarity around this specific post and the categorization as 'unlawful' as the new decision substantially reversed the original court decision. \" Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"President Trump hinted that it is \"possible\" that the FBI's top post will be filled by Friday, according to a White House press pool report released Saturday. [Trump mentioned that he might even make the final decision on who gets the top FBI post before he leaves for Saudi Arabia Friday, saying \"even that is possible. \" \"We can make a fast decision,\" Trump said, explaining the FBI's vetting process. Trump spoke highly of the candidates for the position, describing them as \"very \" and \" \" people with a lot of talent, according to the pool report. The president did not say whether these candidates are being vetted for the interim director or permanent director position. \"Almost all of them are very well known,\" he said. \"They've been vetted over their lifetime, essentially. But very well known, highly respected, really talented people. And that's what we want for the FBI. \" Four candidates for the permanent position to replace former FBI director James Comey are being interviewed Saturday by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, Fox News reported. The four candidates include Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, Sen. John Cornyn ( ) and New York Court of Appeals Judge Michael J. Garcia. Trump said he would have fired Comey \"regardless\" of the recommendations he received from Sessions and Rosenstein in an interview with NBC Nightly News Thursday. The White House told Breitbart News Wednesday that Comey's inability to handle the FBI's tendency to leak to the media \"was one of many\" reasons why Trump was dissatisfied with his performance.","label":0}
{"text":"Jesse Jackson thinks he s Heaven s gatekeeper The arrogant reverend proclaimed that President Trump might not qualify to enter Jesus Kingdom. How dare he!Jackson made the comments at the Ministers March for Justice : Trump says you must be able to speak the language of English, be qualified, and have a job skill. Jesus would not qualify to come in Trump s country he would not qualify to get into Jesus kingdom. Jackson used religion to bash Trump during the event: He quoted part of a passage from the gospel of Matthew: I was hungry, you fed me; naked, you clothed me; captive, you set me free. Jackson was referring to the fact that he believes in open borders and welcoming arms for everyone. Nice try, it s just not true that a nation can survive without borders. This is typical of the pandering reverend who s been using minorities his entire life to profit off of. He s a grifter along with Sharpton who was in attendance of course. These shysters detest Trump because they know he s the real deal and will REALLY help all Americans.","label":1}
{"text":"In this image provided by the Pairi Daiza park, giant panda holds her newborn baby in her mouth at the park in Brugelette, Belgium, on June 2, 2016. \u00a9 AP  Belgium and China have celebrated 45 years of diplomatic relations with a panda themed painting contest. An award ceremony marked the 45th anniversary of bilateral relationship between China and Belgium as well as the birth of a giant panda in the latter.  The ceremony held by Belgium Pairi Daiza Zoo included a contest on giant panda-themed artworks to strengthen friendship and people-to-people exchange between the 2 countries.  After speeches circling around Sino-Belgian relations, the event concluded by announcing the 10 winners of the contest. The competition had accepted 980 entries including 431 paintings and 549 photos of outstanding artistic quality. Loading ...","label":1}
{"text":"DAVAO CITY, Philippines \u2014 President Rodrigo Duterte relishes the image of . He boasts of killing criminals with his own hand. On occasion, he calls for mass murder. Speaking of the drug addicts he says are destroying the Philippines, he said, \"I would be happy to slaughter them. \" Mr. Duterte and his friends have long cultivated legends of his sadistic exploits, like throwing a drug lord from a helicopter and forcing a tourist who violated a smoking ban to eat his cigarette butt at gunpoint. It is a thuggish image that Mr. Duterte embraces. Whether Mr. Duterte has done what he says \u2014 the killings he claims to have carried out are impossible to verify \u2014 he has realized his gory vision in national policy. First as a mayor, now as president of the Philippines, he has encouraged the police and vigilantes to kill thousands of people with impunity. While his draconian justice and coarse manner have earned him widespread condemnation outside the Philippines, an look at his rise to power and interviews with many people close to him reveal a man of multiple contradictions. He has alienated many with outrageous comments and irrational behavior, yet remains wildly popular. He is an antidrug crusader, yet has struggled with drug abuse himself. And he grew up a child of privilege, the son of a provincial governor, yet was subjected to regular beatings. His mother whipped him so often for his misbehavior that she wore out her horsewhip, according to his brother, Emmanuel Duterte. At parochial school, he was caned by Jesuit priests and, the president says, molested by one. By his teenage years, he was known as a street brawler. \"Violence in the house, violence in the school and violence in the neighborhood,\" Emmanuel Duterte said. \"That is why he is always angry. Because if you have pain when you are young, you are angry all the time. \" Years later, a psychological assessment of Mr. Duterte, prepared in 1998 for the annulment of his marriage, concluded that he had \"narcissistic personality disorder\" and a \"pervasive tendency to demean, humiliate others and violate their rights. \" Nonetheless, his ailing campaigned for his presidential bid last year. That act of devotion only begins to unravel the paradox that is Mr. Duterte. Behind his brutish caricature, according to interviews with dozens of Mr. Duterte's friends, family members, allies and critics, is a man who can be charming and engaging. He has many loyal friends and a soft spot for sick children. As mayor of Davao City, he was known to help people in need by digging into his pocket and handing them a wad of cash. To many, his vulgar jokes only burnish his bona fides as a man of the people. When he appears in public, he is swarmed by adoring fans. Still, the bodies have been piling up. Since Mr. Duterte took office last June and declared a \"war\" on drugs, the police and unknown assassins have killed more than 3, 600 people, the police say, mostly in the slums of Philippine cities. Some put the toll at more than 7, 000. \"I might go down in the history as the butcher,\" he acknowledged unapologetically in January. In less than nine months, he has already surpassed the death toll of President Ferdinand Marcos, whose forces killed about 3, 300 political opponents and activists during his harsh rule. Yet his gangland approach to combating crime and drugs has largely endeared him to Filipinos who have suffered high rates of violent crime and who see him as a refreshing change from the sophisticated but elite who have ruled this country for most of the last three decades. The dissonance between the image of the gentle, caring grandfather and the brutal strongman spilling blood on the streets is just one of many in a president who was born to the elite and has lived a life surrounded by violence. Rodrigo Roa Duterte grew up in Davao City, in the southern Philippines, the oldest son of the governor of Davao Province. As a teenager, he hung out with the toughest kids, got into fights and learned the rude expressions he uses today. By 15, he was carrying a gun, his brother said. As a freshman at the Ateneo de Davao high school, he was fondled by an American priest, an experience he revealed only in 2015. He identified the priest as the Rev. Mark Falvey, who later moved to California and died in 1975. The Jesuit order agreed in 2007 to pay $16 million to nine people Father Falvey molested as children at a Hollywood church. Mr. Duterte retaliated against another priest who had punished him by filling a squirt gun with ink and spraying the priest's white cassock, his siblings said. For that, he was expelled. He often skipped classes and likes to tell audiences that it took him seven years to finish high school. His misbehavior was often overlooked because of his status, family members say. \"He was known as the governor's son,\" said his older sister, Eleanor Duterte. A daredevil, he took flying lessons at 16. On his first solo flight, he buzzed the family home and hit a treetop with the wheel of his Piper Cub, Emmanuel Duterte said. Later, a car accident put him in a coma for two days, his sister Jocellyn Duterte said. The first time he killed a man, he says, was in a drunken beach brawl at age 17. \"Maybe I stabbed somebody to death,\" he told an interviewer two years ago. His reputation as a womanizer is well founded, but it was often women who sought him out. \"Being the governor's son,\" Jocellyn Duterte said, \"the women were always available. \" His father told him that since he was always in trouble, he could save legal fees by becoming a lawyer, his brother recalled, so Rodrigo went to law school. In his final year, he shot and wounded a fellow student whom he accused of bullying him. Mr. Duterte graduated anyway and became a prosecutor. \"One thing about my brother is he is hardheaded,\" Emmanuel Duterte said. \"The more you tell him not to do it, the more he will do it. He needs to tone down on his anger. He needs anger management. \" In the 1980s, his mother led frequent marches against President Marcos's dictatorial rule. After his ouster, President Corazon Aquino offered her the post of Davao's vice mayor. She asked that Rodrigo be appointed instead, friends and family said. Two years later, in 1988, he ran for mayor and won, starting a lifelong streak in which he has never lost an election. When he took office, much of Davao was a war zone. The iron rule of the Marcos era had ended, and Communist rebels held a large part of the city. Armed groups operated with impunity and assassinations of police officers were common. Making the city safe was Mr. Duterte's biggest challenge, and one he accepted personally. Jesus G. Dureza, a high school friend who is now a adviser, recalls seeing him late one night in the taxi he often drove to patrol the city. Mr. Duterte said he was hunting for a man who had been robbing cabdrivers. Mr. Dureza noticed that his pistol was cocked. \"He had a death wish,\" Mr. Dureza said. Shortly after he became mayor, crime suspects started turning up dead on Davao's streets. Mr. Duterte and his supporters have long denied the existence of a death squad in Davao City. But in September, Edgar Matobato, 57, came forward and told a Senate committee that he worked as an assassin on the squad for 24 years, killing about 50 people. In an interview with The New York Times, he said the death squad was founded in 1988 at a lunch he attended at the old Menseng Hotel with Mr. Duterte, several police officers and six other recruits. They were told their job was to hunt down criminals. A police officer passed around a covered basket, and each recruit took out a weapon. Mr. Matobato considered it good fortune that he drew a . 45. \"The only one who could command the Davao Death Squad was Mayor Duterte,\" he told The Times. \"If there was an order to kill, it had to be with his clearance. Without his orders, we kill no one. \" Mr. Duterte took part in at least one killing, Mr. Matobato said. In 2007, a chance encounter on the road with a man named Vicente Amisola led to a shootout. After Mr. Amisola ran out of ammunition, Mr. Matobato said, Mr. Duterte arrived, grabbed an Uzi and emptied two magazines at the defenseless Mr. Amisola. When they checked Mr. Amisola's body, the squad discovered that he worked for the National Bureau of Investigation. Arnold Rosales, the bureau's acting regional director in Davao, said that Mr. Matobato's account of Mr. Amisola's killing matched the findings of the bureau's investigation except for one detail: the allegation of Mr. Duterte's involvement. Investigators concluded that the death was a result of miscommunication, and no charges were filed, Mr. Rosales said. The investigative report is missing, he said. In February, a former police officer, Arthur Lasca\u00f1as, 56, came forward and confessed to having led the death squad. He said that he received orders to kill directly from Mr. Duterte and that he had killed 200 people. \"All the killings that we committed in Davao City, whether they were buried or thrown in the sea, were paid for by Mayor Duterte,\" he said. Of the more than 1, 400 people the Davao Death Squad is believed to have killed, at least one was not a crime suspect. Jun Pala, a journalist and outspoken critic of Mr. Duterte's, was gunned down near his home in 2003. Mr. Lasca\u00f1as said the mayor ordered the killing, and that Mr. Lasca\u00f1as helped carry it out. Mr. Duterte has never directly addressed the accusations made by Mr. Matobato or Mr. Lasca\u00f1as, and he declined to be interviewed for this article. After Mr. Matobato's testimony, Mr. Duterte accused the senator who led the committee of taking payoffs from drug lords. She was arrested and jailed last month. Mr. Duterte's personal death toll is harder to substantiate. If he stabbed someone on the beach, there is no record of it. In boasting that he hunted down suspects by night, he offered no specifics. His claim to have killed \"about three people\" probably refers to a 1988 hostage raid in which he says he fired an at three kidnappers. But he recently acknowledged, \"I may have hit them all or none at all. \" Becoming president has been an adjustment for Mr. Duterte, who is 71. For months, he still thought of himself as mayor and often called himself that. He prefers to go home to Davao City rather than stay in the sprawling presidential palace complex in Manila. In a land that is notoriously corrupt and where government officials often live like kings, he has lived for decades in the same modest house where he only recently installed . Pomilda Daniel, a neighbor, calls him \"a simple man. \" She said that Mr. Duterte once admired her large new television and asked if he could have it if it ever broke so that he could fix it and use it. Yet when he discovered during a visit to the House of Hope, a child cancer treatment center in Davao, that the children had no televisions, he returned the same day with nine TV sets and had them installed, said Dr. Mae Dolendo, a pediatric oncologist who heads the center. \"He is very, very compassionate,\" she said. \"We have had presidents who conducted themselves like we would expect presidents to conduct themselves, but they haven't solved the country's problems. He's not perfect. He curses. But he gets things done. \" Mr. Duterte has no official first lady and boasted during his campaign that he had two wives and two girlfriends. Later, he said that he should give Pfizer an award for creating Viagra. In 1973, he eloped with Elizabeth Zimmerman, a former flight attendant, after courting her for a month. The marriage lasted until 2000, when it was annulled. The psychological assessment of Mr. Duterte prepared for the annulment, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, was based on an examination of Ms. Duterte and is not a diagnosis. In addition to the finding of narcissism, it described Mr. Duterte as a \"control freak\" and womanizer who began having affairs soon after he was married and flaunted his infidelity by bringing girlfriends to public functions. While still married, Mr. Duterte met Cielito Avance\u00f1a, a teenage contestant in a beauty pageant who goes by Honeylet. She is 25 years his junior. He has described her as his second wife, although they never married. Ms. Duterte and Ms. Avance\u00f1a declined to be interviewed. Perhaps some of the president's mercurial behavior stems from the constant pain he suffers and his use of narcotics to treat it. Mr. Duterte has made a political career of fighting drugs but acknowledged in December that he had been abusing the opioid fentanyl, the powerful and addictive drug that killed the musician Prince last April. Mr. Duterte began using fentanyl to treat back pain and migraines from a spinal injury, apparently a result of a motorcycle accident a few years ago. His doctor prescribed a quarter of a fentanyl skin patch, the president said, but he began using an entire patch at a time. When his doctor discovered that, he ordered him to quit. \"He said: 'Stop it. The first thing that you would lose is your cognitive ability,'\" the president recounted. \"'You are, you know, abusing the drug. '\" Mr. Duterte has not said publicly when he started using fentanyl or whether he has stopped. In December, he denied being addicted. His communications director, Martin Andanar, said that Mr. Duterte had stopped using fentanyl \"way before he was elected president\" last May. But a person with knowledge of his condition told The Times in September that Mr. Duterte was using the drug then. Mr. Duterte's energy and hair belie his age, but his afflictions have taken their toll. During public appearances, he often presses his fingers against a nerve on the side of his face to reduce the pain. He has skipped several public events because of illness. In his speeches, he sometimes suggests he will not live to serve out his term. He has not explained why. Decades ago, Mr. Duterte learned that he had two rare conditions, Barrett's esophagus and Buerger's disease, which prompted him to quit drinking and smoking. As mayor, he enforced a strict public smoking ban, and he is now considering a similar measure nationwide. He dislikes being questioned about his health. After a reporter asked for his medical report, he publicly rebuked the journalist, demanding, \"How is your wife's vagina?\" Mr. Duterte's outrageous remarks have left many with the impression that he is unhinged. He says God speaks to him and made him president of this heavily Roman Catholic country. He has compared himself to Hitler. He used a term that translates as \"son of a whore\" to describe both Pope Francis and President Barack Obama. Antonio Trillanes, a senator, recalled that when they met in 2015 to discuss a political alliance, Mr. Duterte only wanted to talk about people he had killed and \"how the brains were splattered all over the place, gangland style. \" He seems never to have questioned the proposition that shooting people on the street is the best remedy for crime and addiction. \"I have my own political philosophy,\" he said recently. \"Do not destroy my country, because I will kill you. \" He scoffs at complaints about lack of due process for people killed by his police force and has threatened to kill human rights activists. On numerous occasions, his aides have had to walk back his comments. Press secretary Ernesto Abella cautioned journalists that they should use their \"creative imagination\" to understand him and not be \"too literal. \" That Mr. Duterte's violent boasts should not always be taken literally matters little to his zealous supporters and is of little consolation to the families of the thousands killed by his policies. \"He is a child of privilege, but he became a champion of the little guy,\" said Ken Angeles, Mr. Duterte's college roommate and lifelong friend. \"He's a very passionate guy. \" Senator Trillanes, now a leading critic of Mr. Duterte, has another name for him: \"mass murderer. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Another disturbing teen melee broke out inside a Brooklyn McDonald s Friday, and this time, the brawlers turned their violence on an innocent man trying to break the fracas up and on employees of the fast food joint.The brutality began at the McDonald s on Flatbush Avenue Extension in Downtown Brooklyn at about 3 p.m., just as schools were letting out. In the video, a teen girl can be seen standing on a table taking off her top, apparently preparing herself for the fight.Two young girls begin trading blows, and people try to tear them apart. An older gentleman in a hat tries to diffuse the situation, but is turned on by the teen boys crowding around, who seemed to have been enjoying the fight. The narrator, Don Balmain, can be heard gleefully yelling, Kill him! interspersed with laughs.Total chaos breaks out in the restaurant, with teens fighting with cashiers over the counter.The teens eventually chase the older man outside, with the goon behind the camera screaming, Kill him right now! A woman stands in front of him to shield him from the mob. The cameraman shouts, They can t help you! Balmain later posted the video on his Facebook page and sardonically commented, They put that old man in the hospital I feel bad for telling them to kill him. 911 was called, and a woman was taken to Brooklyn Hospital, officials told PIX11. Another man was aided at the scene, but refused medical attention.","label":1}
{"text":"Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has been the object of some serious concern in the White House due to her potential as a 2020 presidential challenger, despite the fact she has said she will not run.The White House is teaming up with the Republican National Committee (RNC) to dig up whatever they can on Warren and whatever they can fabricate so they can circulate condemning memos to reporters.Meanwhile, aides in the White House are keeping tabs on Warren s criticism of Trump and have used the media to aggressively hit back. Last month The Hill published the Senator s criticism of America s largest non-nuclear bomb being dropped in Afghanistan, the White House quickly scrambled with a rebuttal an unusually high level of concern over one senator. As somebody who is probably, in the hearts and minds of liberal activists, a leader of the party, that voice carries some weight, and we have to respond, said a White House official who wishes to remain anonymous.In an effort to put down the Senator, Trump brought back his favorite and most offensive Warren insults last month, referring to her as Pocahontas while delivering a speech to the National Rifle Associate. I have a feeling that in the next election, you re going to be swamped with candidates, said Trump. It may be Pocahontas, remember that. Many see Warren as a likely 2020 presidential candidate, and when Trump can t find legitimated faults with his adversaries, he cowardly resorts to racial insults as attempts to make them look bad. Warren has abstained from engaging in name calling, despite what the Trump administration has to say about her. Elizabeth Warren is the perfect foil for the Trump administration, says former Trump aide Sam Nunberg. I always thought she would be the new Rosie [O Donnell]. Our base hates her; we think she s a joke. She s somebody to galvanize us. It was very smart for the president to bring her up at the NRA. The White House claims they are focused on governing but believe they also need to brand the Massachusetts Senator as out of touch and unfit for the presidency, while she holds a 56 percent approval rating nationwide in a recent survey by Morning Consult.It seems the White House isn t very good at hiding the fact they are seriously afraid of Warren s momentum and her potential to reach the blue-collar voters who backed Trump. Luckily, Trump s racist name calling makes him look bad, not her.Photo by Alex Wong\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Former Fox News \"talent\" Megyn Kelly revealed in interviews before the debut of her new NBC show that she has always felt that she was \"born\" to be a mainstream media personality. \"I understand what that show is. That show is a show I was born to do,\" she told the New York Times while promoting her Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly show, which could not even beat a 60 Minutes rerun in its debut. Kelly made similar comments at NBC's upfront presentations last month. She bluntly told Politico during her round of interviews, \"I was not born to be a political news anchor. \" \"The audience enjoyed the show and I'm grateful for it,\" she said of her Fox News primetime show. \"But it wasn't who I was and it isn't who I am. \" Kelly told the Daily Beast that cable news offers \"no time for wining and dining you gotta get right to it. \" Her new show, though, will allow her time for more nuance and relationship building with her guests. Her show, she says, has \"allowed me to open up more and show more of who I am\" and \"show a range of emotion and personality and sides of me that wasn't possible when I was in cable news. \" Like many others who used their positions at outlets to get adoration from the mainstream press to eventually land a mainstream media gig, Kelly got the requisite pats on the head from The Opposition Party's members during the 2016 presidential campaign. Using the prominent platform she somehow got on Fox News, Kelly attacked and attempted to kneecap Trump, most egregiously during a GOP presidential debate when she took Trump's comments out of context in order to paint him as a sexist pig. The mainstream media howled their approval. And in hindsight, it seems as if Kelly, who conservatives always suspected was more liberal than she let on, was auditioning for them. As for Trump, Kelly told the Daily Beast that she \"wouldn't say no to a sit down\" with him but \"it's not something I am pursuing right now. \" \"It's just nice to not be at the pointy point of the spear for every news story he generated,\" she told the Times. But Kelly said she was excited to do what she feels she was \"born to do. \" She told the Daily Beast that she has learned it was \"extremely hard to be a mother. \" \"I was driving the housekeeper crazy. Poor Carla. Nobody was as happy as Carla was when I went back to work,\" she said. When news of NBC's hiring of Kelly broke, one executive reportedly told CNN that \"the degree of difficulty\" would be \"extremely high\" for Kelly and if she does not succeed, \"she could end up fading into obscurity. \" Kelly's first two programs have failed to beat reruns of 60 Minutes. Her last even lost to a rerun of America's Funniest Home Videos. NBC News is reportedly \"freaking out\" over the \"ratings disaster\" that is Kelly.","label":0}
{"text":"Punishment Is Violent And Counterproductive By Robert J Burrowes  Punishment is a popular pastime for humans. Parents punish children. Teachers punish students. Employers punish workers. Courts punish lawbreakers. People punish each other. Governments punish 'enemies'. And, according to some, God punishes evildoers. What is 'punishment'? Punishment is the infliction of violence as revenge on a person who is judged to have behaved inappropriately. It is a key word we use when we want to obscure from ourselves that we are being violent. The violence inflicted as punishment can take many forms, depending on the context. It might involve inflicting physical injury and\/or pain, withdrawal of approval or love, confinement\/imprisonment, a financial penalty, dismissal, withdrawal of rights\/privileges, denial of promised rewards, an order to perform a service, banishment, torture or death, among others. Given the human preoccupation with punishment, it is perhaps surprising that this behaviour is not subjected to more widespread scrutiny. Mind you, I can think of many human behaviours that get less scrutiny than would be useful. Anyway, because I am committed to facilitating functional human behaviour, I want to explain why using violence to 'punish' people is highly dysfunctional and virtually guarantees an outcome opposite to that intended. Punishment is usually inflicted by someone who makes a judgment that another person has behaved 'badly' or 'wrongly'. At its most basic, disobedience (that is, failure to comply with elite imposed norms) is often judged in this way, whether by parents, teachers, religious figures, lawmakers or national governments. But is obedience functional or even appropriate? Consider this. In order to behave optimally, the human organism requires that all mental functions \u2013 feelings, thoughts, memory, conscience, sensory perception (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste), truth register, intuition \u2013 must be developed and readily involved, without interference, in our life. If this happens, then all of these individual functions will play an integrated role in determining our behaviour in any given circumstance. This is a very sophisticated mental apparatus that has evolved over billions of years and if it was allowed to function without interference in each individual, human beings would indeed be highly functional. So where does obedience fit into all of this? It doesn't. A child is genetically programmed to seek to meet their own needs, not obey the will of another. And they will behave functionally in endeavouring to meet these needs unless terrorized out of doing so. Moreover, they will learn to meet their own needs, by acting individually in some circumstances and by cooperating with others when appropriate, if their social environment models this. However, if a child is terrorized into being obedient \u2013 including by being punished when they are not \u2013 then the child will have no choice but to suppress their awareness of the innate mental capacities that evolved over billions of years to guide their behaviour until they have 'learned' what they must do to avoid being punished. For a fuller explanation of this, see 'Why Violence?' http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/whyviolence and 'Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice'. http:\/\/anitamckone.wordpress.com\/articles-2\/fearless-and-fearful-psychology\/ Unfortunately, as you can probably readily perceive, this process of terrorizing a child into suppressing their awareness of what they want to do so that they do what someone else directs is highly problematical. And it leads to a virtually infinite variety of dysfunctional behaviours, even for those who appear to have been successfully 'socialized' into performing effectively in their society. This is readily illustrated. Perhaps the central problem of terrorizing individuals into obedience of conventions, commands, rules and the law is that once the individual has been so terrorized, it is virtually impossible for them to change their behaviour because they are now terrified of doing so. If the obedient behaviours were functional in the circumstances then, apart from the obviously enormous damage suffered by the individual, there would be no other adverse social or environmental consequences. Unfortunately, when all humans have been terrorized into behaving dysfunctionally on a routine basis (in the Western context, for example, by engaging in over-consumption) then changing their behaviour, even in the direction of functionality, is now unconsciously associated with the fear of violence (in the form of punishment) and so desirable behavioural change (in the direction of reduced consumption, for example) is much more difficult. It is not just that many Western humans are reluctant to reduce their consumption in line with environmental (including climatic) imperatives, they are unconsciously terrified of doing so. By now you might be able to see the wider ramifications of using violence and threats of violence to force children into being obedient. Apart from terrorizing each child into suppressing their awareness of their innate mental capacities, we create individuals whose entire (unconscious) 'understanding' of human existence is limited to the notion that violence, mislabeled 'punishment', drives socialization and society. As just one result, for example, most people consider punishment to be appropriate in the context of the legal system: they expect courts to inflict legally-sanctioned violence on those 'guilty' of disobeying the law. As in the case of the punishment of children, how many people ask 'Does violence restore functional behaviour? Or does it simply inflict violence as revenge? What do we really want to achieve? And how will we achieve that?' Fundamentally, the flaw with violence as punishment is that violence terrifies people. And you cannot terrorize someone into behaving functionally. At very best, you can terrorize someone into changing their behaviour in an extremely limited context and\/or for an extremely limited period of time. But if you want functional and lasting change in an individual's behaviour, then considerable emotional healing will be necessary. This will allow the suppressed fear, anger, sadness and other feelings resulting from childhood terrorization to safely resurface and be expressed so that the individual can perceive their own needs and identify ways of fulfilling them (which does not mean that they will be obedient). For an explanation of what is required, see 'Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening' which is referenced in 'My Promise to Children'. https:\/\/nonviolentstrategy.wordpress.com\/strategywheel\/constructive-program\/my-promise-to-children\/ So next time you hear a political leader or corporate executive advocating or using violence (such as war, the curtailment of civil liberties, an economically exploitative and\/or ecologically destructive initiative), remember that you are observing a highly dysfunctionalized individual. Moreover, this dysfunctional individual is a logical product of our society's unrelenting use of violence, much of it in the form of what is euphemistically called 'punishment', against our children in the delusional belief that it will give us obedience and hence social control. Or next time you hear a public official, judge, terrorist or police officer promising 'justice' (that is, retribution), remember that you are listening to an emotionally damaged individual who suffered enormous violence as a child and internalized the delusional message that 'punishment works'. You might also ponder how bad it could be if we didn't require obedience and use punishment to get it, but loved and nurtured children, by listening to them deeply, to become the unique, enormously loving and powerful individuals for which evolution genetically programmed them. I am well aware that what I am suggesting will take an enormous amount of societal rethinking and a profound reallocation of resources away from violent and highly profitable police, legal, prison and military systems. But, as I wrote above, I am committed to facilitating functional human behaviour. I can also think of some useful ways that we could allocate the resources if we didn't waste them on violence. If you share this commitment and working towards this world appeals to you too, then you are welcome to consider participating in the fifteen-year strategy outlined in 'The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth' http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/flametree and to consider signing the online pledge of 'The People's Charter to Create a Nonviolent World'. http:\/\/thepeoplesnonviolencecharter.wordpress.com Punishment can sometimes appear to get you the outcome you want in the short term. The cost is that it always moves you further away from any desirable outcome in the long run. Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of 'Why Violence?' http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/whyviolence His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is at http:\/\/robertjburrowes.wordpress.com","label":1}
{"text":"LOL! Remember When Obama Told Trump He'd Never Be President? (VIDEO) shares  Just a few weeks ago on Jimmy Kimmel's show, Obama mocked Donald Trump saying he'd never be president. The audience laughed and cheered. Everyone was so sure Obama was right.  The Daily Beast reported:  Obama Fires Back at Trump's Mean Tweets on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live'  For the second time in two years, Obama read some \"mean tweets\" about himself on Jimmy Kimmel Live, including one that called him \"the Nickelback of presidents\" and another that compared him to Sharknado: \"Loud, stupid and over-hyped!\"  But the inevitable kicker came when Obama read one from Donald Trump. \"President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!\" Trump once wrote of the president. \"Really? Well, @realDonaldTrump, at least I will go down as a president,\" Obama replied.  Here's the video:  Things look a little different now, don't they? shares","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump finally signed the Countering America s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act on Wednesday. This bill strengthens and expands sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The legislation also blocks Trump from easing those sanctions for his good buddy Vladimir Putin.Some questioned if Trump would try to use his veto power even though the bill had passed both the House and Senate with overwhelming support. Such an effort would have been futile, as there was clearly enough support to override the veto. But still, it was a possibility since nothing is ever off the table with this administration. And as time drug on (the bill landed on Trump s desk Friday morning), we all began to wonder if Trump was actually going to sign it.When he finally did, Senator John McCain had a brutal response that was absolutely perfect. He started by explaining what this legislation would accomplish. I welcome President Trump s decision to sign legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The enactment of this legislation, which enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support in both houses of Congress, sends a strong message to friend and foe alike that the United States will hold nations accountable for aggressive and destabilizing behavior that threatens our national interests and those of our allies and partners, McCain wrote. The concerns expressed in the President s signing statement are hardly surprising, though misplaced. The Framers of our Constitution made the Congress and the President coequal branches of government. This bill has already proven the wisdom of that choice. Then McCain called Trump out for his continued hypocritical support of Russia. While the American people surely hope for better relations with Russia, what this legislation truly represents is their insistence that Vladimir Putin and his regime must pay a real price for attacking our democracy, violating human rights, occupying Crimea, and destabilizing Ukraine. On this critical issue of national security policy, it was the Congress that acted in the spirit of national unity to carry out the will of the American people. And that is why it is critical that the President comply with the letter and spirit of this legislation and fully implement all of its provisions. Going forward, I hope the President will be as vocal about Russia s aggressive behavior as he was about his concerns with this legislation. Boom!Sorry McCain, but I wouldn t count on Trump to stand up to Putin any time soon. Our president has proven time and time again that he will happily choose Russia over the United States and the American people. Trump s admiration for the Russian dictator and his murderous rule is as obvious as it is nauseating. Personally, I don t think that is likely to change. Trump is in so deep with Putin that he couldn t get out even if he wanted to.","label":1}
{"text":"Russian TV personality Ksenia Sobchak said on Wednesday she planned to run in next year s presidential election, offering liberal voters unhappy with President Vladimir Putin s rule someone to back, though she has little prospect of winning. Opinion polls show Putin, who has dominated Russian politics for nearly two decades, will comfortably win re-election if, as most observers expect, he decides to seek what would be his fourth term in March. However, a significant minority of voters accuse the Kremlin chief of overseeing a corrupt system that has isolated Russia from the outside world, and many of them have taken part in mass protests organized by Putin critic Alexei Navalny. Russian officials say Navalny is ineligible to run for president due to a criminal conviction he says was fabricated. Sobchak, who has been described by Vogue magazine as the Russian version of U.S. socialite Paris Hilton and is the daughter of Putin s former mentor, said she had decided to run because she was tired of the same politicians, including Putin, running year after year. In a video clip posted online on Wednesday evening, Sobchak, 35, said she had the right to run for Russia s top political job under the country s constitution, which stipulates that all candidates must be 35 or older. I decided to exercise that right because I am against all of those (candidates) who usually exercise that right, she said. When I was 18 and was studying in university, Vladimir Putin became president of Russia. Children who were born that year will go and vote themselves this year. Just think about that. But some Russian liberals fear Sobchak s participation will play into the Kremlin s hands by splitting the opposition vote. LIBERAL LAUGHING-STOCK Last month, commenting on rumors that Sobchak would run, Navalny complained that she was being used by the Kremlin as a safe lightning conductor for voters dissatisfaction. She was being drawn into this fairly loathsome Kremlin game that goes by the title of: Let s put a liberal laughing-stock up for the elections in order to distract attention, said Navalny. Sobchak told the opposition-leaning TV broadcaster Rain she had told Putin in advance of her intention to run, adding it had seemed to her that he had not liked her decision. The Kremlin has said she is eligible to run in the election. Sobchak is the daughter of Anatoly Sobchak, the reformist former mayor of St Petersburg who hired Putin as an official in City Hall in the 1990s. Sobchak, who died in 2000, became a mentor to Putin. Sobchak s mother, Lyudmila Narusova, sits in the upper house of the Russian parliament. Ksenia Sobchak s Instagram account, often featuring photographs of her dressed in designer outfits and appearing at glitzy society events, has 5.2 million followers. After graduating from the prestigious MGIMO university in Moscow, she became a nationwide celebrity when she hosted a Russian reality TV show called Dom 2. She became active in opposition politics around the time that Putin, in 2012, was re-elected to the presidency after stepping down for four years to comply with constitutional term limits. She appeared at opposition rallies, spoke out against the Kremlin on social media, and recast herself as a news anchor for the Rain broadcaster.","label":0}
{"text":"I m Not Ashamed To Say I m Voting For Donald Trump Black Trump supporter Brandon Tatum delivers a powerful and brave message to Black Lives Matter rioters on his YouTube channel. The excerpt from his video was posted on Twitter and can be seen here:https:\/\/twitter.com\/AlysiaStern\/status\/779129805816094720The entire video can be seen here. We promise it s worth watching. Enjoy:","label":1}
{"text":"Posted on October 30, 2016 by Pamela Geller  This criminal gang must be thrown out of power on November 8. \"Congress: Attorney General Lynch 'Pleads Fifth' on Secret Iran 'Ransom' Payments,\" by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon , October 28, 2016:  Attorney General Loretta Lynch is declining to comply with an investigation by leading members of Congress about the Obama administration's secret efforts to send Iran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year, prompting accusations that Lynch has \"pleaded the Fifth\" Amendment to avoid incriminating herself over these payments, according to lawmakers and communications exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon .  Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) initially presented Lynch in October with a series of questions about how the cash payment to Iran was approved and delivered.  In an Oct. 24 response , Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik responded on Lynch's behalf, refusing to answer the questions and informing the lawmakers that they are barred from publicly disclosing any details about the cash payment, which was bound up in a ransom deal aimed at freeing several American hostages from Iran.  The response from the attorney general's office is \"unacceptable\" and provides evidence that Lynch has chosen to \"essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries regarding [her] role in providing cash to the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism,\" Rubio and Pompeo wrote on Friday in a follow-up letter to Lynch, according to a copy obtained by the Free Beacon .  The inquiry launched by the lawmakers is just one of several concurrent ongoing congressional probes aimed at unearthing a full accounting of the administration's secret negotiations with Iran.  \"It is frankly unacceptable that your department refuses to answer straightforward questions from the people's elected representatives in Congress about an important national security issue,\" the lawmakers wrote. \"Your staff failed to address any of our questions, and instead provided a copy of public testimony and a lecture about the sensitivity of information associated with this issue.\"  \"As the United States' chief law enforcement officer, it is outrageous that you would essentially plead the fifth and refuse to respond to inquiries,\" they stated. \"The actions of your department come at time when Iran continues to hold Americans hostage and unjustly sentence them to prison.\"  The lawmakers included a copy of their previous 13 questions and are requesting that Lynch provide answers by Nov. 4.  When asked about Lynch's efforts to avoid answering questions about the cash payment, Pompeo told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration has blocked Congress at every turn as lawmakers attempt to investigate the payments to Iran.  \"Who knew that simple questions regarding Attorney General Lynch's approval of billions of dollars in payments to Iran could be so controversial that she would refuse to answer them?\" Pompeo said. \"This has become the Obama administration's coping mechanism for anything related to the Islamic Republic of Iran\u2014hide information, obfuscate details, and deny answers to Congress and the American people.\"  \"They know this isn't a sustainable strategy, however, and I trust they will start to take their professional, and moral, obligations seriously,\" the lawmaker added\u2026.  Courtesy of Pamela Geller","label":1}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says It s called Tykables. A disturbing number of stories have been emerging of late documenting what can only be seen as our complete cultural and societal collapse A top feminist author has described the rise of transgender mania as a symptom of cultural collapse, a robotics professor has warned that sex robots will stop people forming relationships with normal people , and now we bring you news of a daycare opening in Chicago that is specifically for adults to attend who want to wear diapers and act like babies.The need for such a daycare is evidence of both the growing infantilization of adults and the widespread prevalence of severe psychological problems in Western populations.Instead of politically fighting against the ever increasing encroachment on our freedoms and constant drive to new wars, adults are spending their time cheering on sports teams and literally sitting around in diapers.Here is a somewhat disturbing promotional video from Tykables: MORE ON WESTERN CULTURE : 21st Century Wire Culture Files","label":1}
{"text":"David Duke Slams the NFL and Black Lives Matter in Monday NIght Football Game Senate Campaign Ads \u2013NFL Bosses cringe. November 7, 2016 at 8:40 pm  \"David Duke Slams the NFL and Black Lives Matter in Monday NIght Football Game Senate Campaign Ads. NFL Bosses cringe.\"  During the middle of Monday Night Football, Senate candidate Slams NFL for their salute to Black Panthers and Black Lives Matter in Superbowl which incited Black racist shootings in Dallas and our own Baton Rouge.  Thank God, under campaign rules, there is still some freedom of speech in America!  Don't you love it!","label":1}
{"text":"What the heck! Hillary and Bill really are the grifters I ve always said they were. Here s proof:Hillary Clinton bristled during Saturday s Democratic debate when she was asked about her role as First Lady, which put her in charge of the Clinton administration s White House floral and dining arrangements.But perhaps this Christmas season Clinton could actually return some of the items that she and her husband walked off with during their departure in 2001.As the White House s keyboards were losing their W buttons, so too was the First Lady making off with an historic haul in the form of gifts and presents from friends. Some actual White House artifacts ended up being part of the loot, according to Sally Bedell Smith, author of the 2007 book, For Love Of Politics. [The Clintons ] financial-disclosure forms revealed that they walked away with $190,027 worth of furniture, china, flatware, art, and other gifts, nearly half of it acquired in their final year. It also turned out that they took some property that actually belonged to the permanent White House collection. How did Clinton obtain these gifts, despite the fact that she was legally banned, as a United States Senator, from taking gifts over $50?She took advantage of her status as First Lady to get around the rules, and claimed that she got the gifts at White House during Christmas time, days before she was sworn in to the Senate.The Associated Press reported in 2001 that as A Senator, Mrs. Clinton Is Prohibited From Accepting Most Gifts Worth More Than $50. But Since The Presents Arrived While She Still Was First Lady, No Such Limit Applied.","label":1}
{"text":"THE END GAME closes in on the Clintons as the deep state turns... massive collection of criminally damning evidence about to be revealed that will bring down the Clinton crime family forever  Wednesday, November 02, 2016 Tags: deep state , Clinton cartel , damning evidence (NaturalNews) My fellow Americans, we are watching history unfold before us with such sound and fury that we are likely to never witness comparable events again in our lifetime. As of today, I am now convinced that the deep state has turned on Hillary Clinton and will unveil damning evidence in the next few days that will end the Clintons' reign of terror over America and collapse her bid for the presidency.The mainstream media, of course, will never report this news for the simple reason that they are the propaganda arm of the criminal Clinton cartel. As such, they will lie to the public to the bitter end, even as the Clinton Titanic sinks with all of them on board (in deep, frigid waters, no less, with no more lifeboats to be found).The so-called \"deep state\" -- the powerful insiders who really run the intelligence services and inner layers of untouchable bureaucracy -- has decided Hillary Clinton is too damaged to defend any longer . Even if she were to win by stealing the election, she would be so mired in criminal investigations and political illegitimacy that she would rip the nation to shreds while fighting for her own political survival.It has now been decided, I believe, that Hillary Clinton will be taken out of power by releasing criminally damaging emails which have long been held by the NSA and FBI. This will likely happen before the coming weekend. Once that is accomplished, the next goal will be to wait for President Trump to take office, then destroy the U.S. economy through a controlled, global debt collapse so that Trump can be blamed for the near collapse of western economies. (Remember: The deep state isn't pro-Trump. They're still all about defending the establishment. But Hillary is one bridge too far for even the statists to stomach...)Instead of allowing Hillary Clinton to take power and destroy America from the top, in other words, deep state power brokers have reverted to \"Plan B\" which is to let Trump take the White House, then destroy America through the controlled demolition of its currency and economy. This is simpler than it sounds. Bringing down the debt pyramid of a nation carrying nearly $20 trillion in national debt isn't exactly rocket science. All they have to do is stand back and stop manipulating the markets and stop printing new money for a few months while raising interest rates. Monetary gravity will do the rest...In the mean time, Hillary Clinton and a long list of her co-conspirators are going to find themselves charged with obstruction of justice , lying under oath, destruction of evidence, conspiracy, corruption and other serious charges that will lead to serious prison time for many.The criminal racket of the Clintons is about to implode. The participants will be charged under the RICO Act for \"racketeering\" activities, for which ample evidence already exists. A new video from Steve Pieczenik describes some of this In this video, intelligence insider Steve Pieczenik lays out how high-level intelligence insiders are now working in concert to \"reverse the Clinton coup\" that's attempting to take over America and destroy it from within.Even if you don't believe Pieczenik -- and I fully realize he's controversial in his own way -- this short video is a very important \"must watch\" explanation to know what people in the intelligence community are doing... \"we've initiated a counter-coup...\" The Clintons are going to go \"full murder\" in a last ditch, desperate effort to save themselves Beware of what may yet unfold in the coming days. Like a cornered wild animal, the Clintons are extremely dangerous when they realize they have nothing to lose by going \"full murder\" in an attempt to save themselves.I will not be surprised the least bit if bodies of people in high places start piling up over the next week. Watch for news reports of mysterious car crashes, swimming pool accidents or \"natural\" deaths involving people like James Comey, who'd better have armed security personnel around him at all times.Look for desperate measures such as the Clintons attempting to blackmail Obama, Comey or anyone who they think might serve as leverage to save their own skins. We might also see desperate false flag attacks unfold in the next few days, although that's increasingly unlikely since it seems the Clintons are now on their own (they would need the assistance of Obama to pull off another Sandy Hook, you see). A deal has already been struck with Obama Most likely, deep state operatives have already struck a deal with Obama to avoid prosecuting him for his own serious crimes as long as he stays out of the way as Hillary Clinton's head is served up on a platter. This likely explains why Obama is now publicly saying he trusts Comey (and refuses to go to bat for Hillary). There's no love lost between Obama and the Clintons (remember 2008?).As all this is going down, the propaganda ministry of the Clinton regime -- CNN, NYT, Washington Post, etc. -- is going to explode into an all-out \"bat-s##t crazy\" conspiracy theory phase where they blame the Russians, extraterrestrials, Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster for everything that's imploding around the Clintons. Mainstream media news reports are going to increasingly sound like sociopathic babble from crazy people grasping at whatever outlandish theories they can invoke. Maybe crop circles were created by the Russians as a secret code to Wikileaks and Donald Trump, eh?Meanwhile, conspiratorial operatives like George Stephanopoulos fully realize they are probably going to jail for collusion and sedition , so they have nothing left to lose by desperately trying to put Hillary in the White House via any means at their disposal, including totally faking negative news against Donald Trump (which is, of course, the entire news mission of CNN at this point, a disgraced propaganda network run by anti-American traitors). If the vote is stolen for Hillary Clinton, all hell breaks loose Should the globalist Soros operators manage to steal the vote, bribe the electoral voters or rig the black box voting machines sufficiently to place Hillary Clinton in the White House, all Hell breaks loose across America :\u2022 The FBI goes into full indictment mode to push criminal charges for the Clinton criminal regime.\u2022 Donald Trump launches a massive legal challenge to the election outcome, dispatching an army of lawyers to level a vast assortment of charges involving coordinated voter fraud, the rigging of voting machines, the attempted bribery of Electoral voters and so on.\u2022 The U.S. military revs up its plans for an armed military coup to depose Clinton and restore democracy. This one should be especially entertaining to watch unfold if it gets activated... (and yes, YOU will beg for a short-term military dictatorship as long as they promise to depose Clinton and restore open, fair and free elections).\u2022 Armed U.S. citizens prepare for a massive march on Washington to take back their democracy and restore a lawful society where the political elite don't get away with corruption, fraud and murder. Expect this march to be joined by police officers and federal law enforcement officials of all kinds.\u2022 The NSA likely goes into \"full dump\" mode to unleash every scrap of damning criminal evidence against Hillary Clinton. This will likely be joined by CIA assets who already have the goods on the Clintons and their \"Lolita Express\" pedo joy rides.\u2022 Wikileaks, Anonymous and every former NSA analyst goes into \"destroy the Clintons\" mode and begins to hack and expose every last shred of email evidence ever possessed by the Clintons and anyone close to them. Anonymous alone has enough technical clout to accomplish this with little or no outside help. (I expect Kim Dotcom to be aiding this entire effort as well, as he rightly holds extreme hatred toward Hillary Clinton... as do we all, come to think of it.)\u2022 The establishment Republicans in the U.S. Congress will, as usual, meekly surrender to the democrats, pulls down their britches and bend over to prepare to take it in the rear because that's what they do best when the going gets tough. Totally useless politicrats like John McCain can't get their pants around their ankles quickly enough when democrats start accusing them of something. These useless heaps of human baggage will be tossed out of Washington as the revolution unfolds, replaced with individuals who actually honor the U.S. Constitution (like Rep. Louie Gohmert). I root for all groups working to save America and expose the criminal politicians Bring out the marshmallows and weiners, folks: This is going to be the most bizarre campfire front row seat to U.S. history that anyone has witnessed in over 200 years. Try not to trip and \"face plant\" into the flames as all this unfolds. It might be a smart idea to have some preparedness supplies at the ready, since no one really knows just how nasty this is all going to get. (And thank God Hillary doesn't have her fingers on the nuclear launch codes, or she'd probably launch them just to change the narrative...)As for me, I'm with anybody who's trying to save America , restore democracy and throw the establishment criminals in prison. Like almost everybody else, I've had enough of the lies, the corruption, the media deceptions and the incessant blood sucking parasites in Washington D.C. who are too arrogant and stupid to realize just how much they're universally despised. The revolution is ON. Anonymous, Wikileaks, Project Veritas, the FBI and the NSA have all been activated. There's no stopping them now, and all the details of all the crimes of the Clintons are about to spill onto the stage of history, dirty deeds and all.Be warned, you are probably not psychologically prepared for the truth about what the Clintons really are. You will probably vomit. Health Ranger Approved AquaTru Water Filter Back in Stock  I've secured 500 units of the amazing AquaTru at $100 off for Natural News readers (while supplies last).  Breakthrough filter removes nearly 100% of hundreds of contaminants. No plumbing needed. SHIPS TODAY .","label":1}
{"text":"Sunday night at the Route 91 Harvest Festival 2017, two unknown shooters began gunning down police officers and at least one bodyguard from what appeared to be the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.The country music festival was just concluding for the weekend, with the last performer, Jason Aldean, wrapping up his performance for a sold-out crowd of 12,000 people.Twitter was the first place information began to emerge on the shooters and what was happening: pic.twitter.com\/4ZhhGiqeDL kenny terhune jr (@kenny_terhune) October 2, 2017My sister in law just texted me this. They are staying at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Vegas where there was just an active shooter. pic.twitter.com\/ldkWUo1NdJ Brittany Michelle (@britmgarcia) October 2, 2017Per police scanner: Multiple casualties, officer shot in neck possibly another officer dead. #MandalayBay jordan ghoul ? ? (@JordanUhl) October 2, 2017There was footage from nearby:Shooting in Las Vegas. People fleeing (video from the Mandalay Bay hotel) pic.twitter.com\/hs98J5uK6T Eiki Hrafnsson (@EirikurH) October 2, 2017And it appears the police scanner was confirming that at least one officer had been hit:?Active shooter?Shots fired at Mandalay Bay Reports one officer has been shot#LasVegas#MandalayBayShooting pic.twitter.com\/TUHeekdn7t DeDeKim (@ZDeDeKim) October 2, 2017The following video clip contains audio of what is clearly an automatic weapon, so sensitive readers please be warned.Active shooter Las Vegas strip I'm ok locked in my room lights off windows closed. Shooter is directly across the street. Shots heard on vid pic.twitter.com\/Z4mz3E3bmE Bryan Heifner (@HBryanBHHS) October 2, 2017News 3 Las Vegas has a crew on the way to the scene and we are awaiting further information. We will update as it becomes available.UPDATE, 12:24 AM PSTPolice are now confirming that 2 are dead, 24 injured, 12 in critical condition.One shooter is down according to Las Vegas PoliceConfirming that one suspect is down. This is an active investigation. Again, please do not head down to the Strip at this time. LVMPD (@LVMPD) October 2, 2017The identity of the shooter who is down has not been released.Reports are also coming in of a suspicious device nearby as well.UPDATE, 12:34 AM PSTUniversity Medical Center is the Level One response center for this situation; it appears to be full at this time. Sunset Medical Center is the Level Two. Flights in and out of McCarran Airport have been grounded, and Interstate 15 is locked down. All guests in every hotel on the Las Vegas strip are being instructed to shelter in place.UPDATE, 12:44 AM PSTAt this time we do not believe there are any more shooters. More information to come shortly from @Sheriff_LVMPD. LVMPD (@LVMPD) October 2, 2017We will update with any new information from LVMPD.UPDATE, 1:59 AM PSTThe Las Vegas Sheriff has just given a press conference to news crews on the scene. Information so far indicates a sole actor who is a local resident.Police confirmed the shooter was on the 32nd floor of the hotel. He is now dead. The shooter was a local resident of the Las Vegas area, and police are searching for another person of interest. She is an Asian woman, 4 -11 , 111 lbs, named Marilou Danley, also a local resident.Police are searching for two vehicles, both of unknown color: A Hyundai Tucson, license plate 114-B40, and a Chrysler Pacifica Touring, license plate 19D401.The Sheriff indicated that over 100 people are injured, and more than 20 people have now died.There are no known ties to terrorism at this time.Several off-duty police officers from nearby Bakersfield, California were in attendance at the concert, at least one of whom was shot.The woman being searched for has allegedly been identified on Twitter:.@LVMPD are searching for the shooters companion, please share? pic.twitter.com\/EZXuSrCS0l Rogue CPI (@RogueCPI) October 2, 2017The LV Sheriff has confirmed via Twitter that the image is of her, which makes this her Facebook page. Any new information will be updated in the morning.UPDATE, 7:07 AM PSTThe now-deceased shooter has been identified as 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock of Mesquite, Nevada. Paddock took his own life before police could reach him. Still no known ties to terrorist groups. The following picture was recovered from Marilou Danley s Facebook page:At least 50 people were killed and more than 400 wounded. This is the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Police found 10 or more weapons inside Paddock s hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino.Gun laws in Nevada are among the most relaxed in the nation. Open carry is legal without a permit, silencers are legal, there is no waiting period to purchase a firearm, private gun sales are unregulated, it is legal to carry an assault rifle, and there is no magazine capacity limit.Paddock s brother, Eric, told NBC News that the family was dumbfounded by the act.We will continue to update with any pertinent information.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump is practically a mirror image of the Fox News psyche. Most of his speeches consist of repackaged stupidities plucked right out of the conservative mediascape. It's kind of brilliant, really. Trump knows his audience, and he beams back at them every idiotic thing they want to hear. Which, of course, is exactly what Fox News does. The wonderful irony of all this is that the conservative media have ruined conservative politics, far more than liberals ever did. And the results speak for themselves. It's true that Fox News has promoted the conservative brand and very likely energized grass-roots conservatism in some sense, but at what cost? The GOP, increasingly, is no longer a national party \u2013 it's confined more and more to the South and to pockets of rural America. The Republicans have had their share of electoral successes in recent years, and Fox News surely aided in that, but if you look closely you'll see that the political success of conservatives have not led to policy successes. On the contrary, liberalism is winning. Obama, for instance, has been one of the most consequential presidents in modern American history. Both politically and culturally, the country is more liberal today than it was a decade ago. And this has happened in spite of the triumph of Fox News and conservative media. Conservatism, as a practical political philosophy, is dead in this country. Sure, there are intelligent conservative voices in the whirlwind, but they've been overwhelmed by the xenophobic hysteria peddled by the likes of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. These are the people who define conservatism today. These are the people who've poisoned the conservative brand, made it synonymous with backwardness and cultural isolation. And Fox News has been their most significant stage, the ultimate echo chamber. As a consequence, conservatives (on the whole) are now dumber, angrier and more divorced from the facts. To the extent that Fox News has nurtured the idiocy Trump represents, they're responsible for his political life \u2013 they made it possible. The bile spewed by Trump might as well be Fox News talking points; it's the kind of garbage you hear every day on their programs. And because so many conservatives get their news from Fox, Republican policymakers are forced to parrot those arguments to voters. This plays well with the base, but it alienates most of the country \u2013 as it should. It will be fascinating to watch how Fox News handles Trump, particularly as we move along in the process. It will be a delicate balancing act. The longer Trump hangs around, the more ridiculous the Republicans look. At the same time, Trump is a boon for ratings; the delightful dolts on Fox and Friends can't get enough of him. Which makes perfect sense. The right-wing media machine \u2013 led by Fox News \u2013 has created a demand for his insane ramblings. As the chief supplier, Fox News has an interest in covering Trump, in extending his ruse for as long as possible. Promoting Trump is a disaster for the GOP, though. His bombast, left unchecked, will undermine the Republican primaries and jeopardize their shot at the White House. How Fox News manages Trump's ascendance will therefore tell you all you need to know (if you didn't already) about where their loyalties lie. I suspect we'll discover what most observers have long known: Fox News cares about conservatism about as much as it cares about the news.","label":0}
{"text":"Michiganders in Flint may be literally dying thanks to the GOP s horrific cost-saving measures, but people in nearby Houghton Lake got to enjoy the lowest gas prices in more than a decade on Sunday. Prices at two businesses dropped below a half-dollar per gallon, while another nearby station was pumping out fuel for less than a dollar a gallon. There have been long lines at the stations for most of the weekend, according to the three stations, with police officers directing traffic in the area due to the congestion, CNBC reports. Prices at a Marathon station hit 46 cents per gallon, while the Beacon & Bridge gas station was as low as 47 cents. The third station dropped its prices to 95 cents a gallon.These drops were the result of a price war between the three stations, but thanks to the President s hard work with the Iran deal, fuel prices are reaching record lows. The Huffington Post reports that oil prices dipped down past a 2003 low of $28 per barrel on Monday as Iran prepares to flood the market after the lifting of sanctions over the weekend:Worries about Iran s return to an already oversupplied oil market drove down Brent crude LCOc1 to $27.67 a barrel early on Monday, its lowest since 2003. The benchmark was down 12 cents at $28.82 by 1537 GMT.U.S. crude CLc1 was down 27 cents at $29.15 a barrel, not far from a 2003 low of $28.36 hit earlier in the session. Iran s return to the oil market has been on the agenda for some time and therefore does not really come as any great surprise, Commerzbank senior analyst Carsten Fritsch said of the situation. Nonetheless, prices were bound to react negatively in the short term in view of the negative market sentiment. It is expected that Iran will increase oil on the market by an extra 500,000 barrels per day in the short term, but Tehran says it will add 1 million barrels per day to its current output by the end of the year.While some, particularly investors in the oil market, may cringe at this new reality in the oil market, average Americans will enjoy not having to mortgage their homes to drive to work. Normally, it would be uncouth to blame a President for high gas prices (or credit one with low prices) but Republicans have repeatedly reminded us that President Barack Hussein Soetoro Obama, socialist dictator, owns the Iran deal.Watch a report on these historic prices below:","label":1}
{"text":"Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Sunday the choice offered to voters in the U.S. presidential election was between \"bad and worse\" and that harsh exchanges in the debates pointed to a lack of morality in America, Tehran's arch adversary. \"America claims it has more than 200 years of democracy, and they have had 50 presidential elections, but there is no morality in that country,\" Rouhani said in a speech, carried live by state television. \"You saw the presidential debates, how they talk..., how they accuse and mock (each other),\" Rouhani told a crowd gathered at a stadium during his visit to the central city of Arak. Rouhani said a head of state had asked him during his visit to the United Nations in September about who he preferred between Republican candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. \"I said should I prefer bad over worse or worse over bad?,\" said Rouhani, a pragmatist politician and cleric who may run for reelection in Iran's presidential polls in May 2017. He did not say to which candidate his descriptions referred.","label":0}
{"text":"This is not how Ted Cruz must have envisioned his campaign would end up heading into the nation s very first caucus in Iowa on Monday. His Cruzin to Victory tour bus wasn t exactly the epitome of its name, either. While he visited the Johnson County Fairgrounds earlier, it needed to be towed after getting stuck in the mud.This is very ironic, indeed. Just a bit over a week ago Ted Cruz was quoted as saying, I m not going into the mud with personal insults and attacks (on Donald Trump). Well, Senator, you just went into the mud, quite literally.Pic via InstagramAccording to a report by Phillip Elliott from Time magazine, Cruz had to hitch a ride with aides to his next tour stop while his bus was towed. That s not the kind of image you want to project just before the voters of Iowa nominate the next future President of The United States. It certainly can t be good public relations; draw as many analogies as you must.Pic via Twitter.Cruz needs every bit of good press he can get right now. Virtually every poll shows Donald Trump having a huge lead on him. And Cruz can t afford that. Whoever wins Iowa would get a must needed head start in the race. With Trump up in practically every state, Iowa is the momentum Cruz has been desperately seeking. Unfortunately, the only momentum Cruz is getting right now is coming from the back of tow truck.You d think the Cruz campaign would, at least, try to play damage control and be the first to report it, instead of being outed by the media. It s possible they could have made a joke out of it but they didn t. They didn t even mention it. That s no way to run a campaign. Featured image from Facebook.","label":1}
{"text":"The technician who helped manage Hillary Clinton's private email server for her work as secretary of state has given security logs to investigators that he said show no signs of foreign hacking, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Bryan Pagliano is cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's criminal inquiry into the email setup in exchange for limited immunity by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to the Times, citing unnamed people who know about the investigation. With limited immunity, his testimony cannot be used in a prosecution against him, the Times said. The investigation has overshadowed Hillary Clinton's campaign to become the Democratic Party's candidate in the November presidential election. Clinton has apologized for the arrangement but says she did nothing wrong and that she believes the government will vindicate her. Pagliano, who helped set up and run the email system in Clinton's New York home, told investigators that the logs he handed over indicated that no intrusion occurred, the Times said. The security logs show who accessed the server and when, though they may not capture more sophisticated hacking, the Times said. Pagliano was still working at the State Department's Bureau of Information Resource Management as recently as last September, but has since left, a department spokesman said on Monday. The spokesman declined to say when he left or why. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is doing its own analysis of whether the server was attacked, according to media reports. FBI agents plan to seek interviews with Clinton's aides in coming weeks and would like to interview Clinton herself as their investigation enters a new phase, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing two people familiar with the inquiry. The interviews would look into how the server was set up and used and what precautions were taken to protect sensitive data, according to the people, who described the matter on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing, Bloomberg News said. Investigators were almost finished examining computers and other physical evidence as part of the inquiry, which is focused on whether Clinton's use of private email while serving as the nation's top diplomat led to the improper handling of classified information, according to the people. Pagliano previously worked on Clinton's failed 2008 presidential campaign, and ended up joining her at the State Department in 2009 as a political appointee, working as a technology specialist and maintaining Clinton's email server. His employment ended with Clinton in February 2013, but he stayed on as a contractor. More than 2,000 of Clinton's emails contain classified information that could harm national security if leaked, according to the State Department. The government forbids sending or storing such information outside secure, government-controlled channels, and has prosecuted people for breaches. The FBI and the Justice Department have declined to comment on their investigation, including who might be its target, beyond confirming its existence. Pagliano's lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. A Clinton spokesman said the campaign is pleased that Pagliano is cooperating, but declined to respond to questions. For more on the 2016 presidential race, see the Reuters blog, \"Tales from the Trail\" (here). (Reporting by Jonathan Allen, additional reporting by Mark Hosenball; Editing by David Gregorio and Andrew Hay) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.","label":0}
{"text":"Youths who were brought to the United States illegally and gained protection under the Obama administration should not worry about their immigration status during the next six months before the program ends, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday. \"For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about - No action!\" Trump said in a post on Twitter, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.","label":0}
{"text":"More than 4 million homes and businesses have lost power in Florida, major utilities said on Sunday, as Hurricane Irma pummeled the state. Most outages were in Florida Power & Light s service area in the southern and eastern parts of the state. FPL, the state s biggest power company, said more than 3.3 million of its customers were without service. As the storm moved up the coast, Duke Energy s outages steadily climbed. Irma hit Florida on Sunday morning as a dangerous Category 4 storm, the second highest level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. It weakened as it moved up the state s west coast and by late evening, it was a Category 2 with maximum sustained winds of 105 miles per hour (169 kph). FPL is a unit of NextEra Energy Inc (NEE.N). Other big power utilities in Florida are units of Duke Energy Corp (DUK.N), Southern Co (SO.N) and Emera Inc (EMA.TO).","label":0}
{"text":"Chinese authorities on Monday arrested a Japanese citizen suspected of spying, local state media said. The arrest was made in the port city of Dalian in the northeastern Liaoning province, which borders North Korea, the official Dalian Daily s online report said. The report said Ken Higuchi was being investigated by the Dalian City National Security Bureau on suspicion of spying against China, and that prosecutors had approved his arrest. The character given for Higuchi s first name could also be the names Takeshi or Takeru. It was unclear from the report, however, whether Higuchi was a new case or whether he had been detained earlier, and the latest development was his formal arrest. China detained six Japanese nationals in March on suspicion of illegal activities. Four of the six returned to Japan in July, three of whom were there doing geological research into hotsprings, according to their employer. China s foreign ministry also in July said that a single Japanese citizen was being investigated on suspicion of harming China s national security. Reuters was unable to contact Japan s foreign ministry by telephone. Monday was a national holiday in Japan. China s relationship with Japan has been strained for decades over the legacy of Japan s wartime aggression, while a maritime territorial dispute over small islands in the East China Sea has in recent years added to the suspicion between the two sides. In 2010, four Japanese nationals were detained in China on suspicion of entering a military zone and taking photographs without permission. At least two Japanese citizens were arrested on suspicion of espionage in 2015. Last year, China said it was investigating a Japanese citizen on suspicion of endangering national security.","label":0}
{"text":"Britain's foreign minister Boris Johnson has arrived in the United States to meet close advisers to President-elect Donald Trump and senior Congressional leaders to discuss ties between the countries. Last June's vote to leave the European Union has left Britain facing some of the most complicated negotiations since World War Two, with the country keen to deepen ties with the United States and other nations to show that Brexit will not diminish its standing in the world. Johnson's visit, which was not flagged in advance, is part of Prime Minister Theresa May's strategy to improve relations with Trump's team after the president-elect irritated the government by saying that outspoken anti-EU campaigner Nigel Farage would be a good choice for Britain's ambassador to Washington. May's two most senior aides made a secret trip to the United States last month. \"Following the successful meeting last month between the Prime Minister's chiefs of staff and President-elect Donald Trump's team, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is undertaking a short visit to the U.S. for meetings with close advisers to the president-elect and senior Congressional leaders,\" a spokesman for Britain's foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday. \"The discussions will be focused on UK-U.S. relations and other foreign policy matters.\" May had told Sky News earlier in the day that she was sure that Britain and the United States would build on their close ties and that their \"special relationship\" would endure despite describing some of his comments about women as \"unacceptable\".","label":0}
{"text":"European Union states will this month debate increasing pressure on Poland to uphold the rule of law, sources said, as the next stage in a process that could see its government formally denounced as anti-democratic. The nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government in Warsaw has pushed through reforms to the judiciary and media that critics within the EU say have weakened the democratic order. PiS rejects the criticism, accuses Brussels of overstepping its mandate and says it has broad backing for its reforms within Poland, a country of 38 million and formerly communist eastern Europe s dominant economy. After more than a year of growing pressure from the European Commission, the executive on Wednesday asked the bloc s 28 EU affairs ministers to discuss its concerns on Sept. 25, the day after national elections in Germany. The Commission s deputy head Frans Timmermans will brief the ministers on his so far futile efforts to persuade Warsaw to shift its position, the sources said. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has joined the growing chorus of those calling for firmer action on Poland and discussed the matter with the Commission s chief, Jean-Claude Juncker. Should Warsaw remain adamant, it eventually risks losing generous EU handouts if it continues to upset its wealthier peers that chip in for the funds, a debate gradually heating up in the bloc. For now, the EU has limited firepower at its disposal. But it could trigger Article 7 proceedings under which it would ask the other 27 EU states to formally state that the rule of law was under threat in Poland - an action unprecedented in EU history. Timmermans has set a clear red line by saying that Article 7 would be opened should Warsaw start to fire the country s Supreme Court judges under the judicial overhaul. The dispute highlights Warsaw s growing isolation in the EU since the eurosceptic PiS won power there in 2015, but also a growing east-west divide within the bloc. Launching Article 7 would be a major embarrassment for Poland, but its regional ally Hungary - whose leader Viktor Orban also has a track record of crossing swords with Brussels - has made clear it would block any sanctions against it under the punitive procedure. In the west, increasingly frustrated with multiplying feuds with Warsaw that also touch on migration and environmental issues, some express renewed doubts about the 2004 EU enlargement that added eight ex-communist countries to the bloc. In Poland, opposition parties sound alarm that PiS is reneging on fundamental EU values and could eventually risk sabotaging Poland s EU membership, which gave the country billions of euros and anchored it in the western world after decades of the Moscow-imposed communism after World War Two. But PiS has largely been successful in rallying its supporters around what it presents as standing up for Poland s national interests against the EU dictate, just as Orban has portrayed his own feuds with the bloc to his voters. The more immediate effect is that Warsaw is hemorrhaging political influence in the EU and has less capacity to shape the bloc s policies despite being the sixth largest state by population, and the fifth one after Britain leaves.","label":0}
{"text":"We re paying so much attention to Donald Trump, Comedian Margaret Cho told Addicting Info in a phone interview. Ms. Cho has openly endorsed Bernie Sanders, but has applauded Hillary Clinton s political efforts as well. What he has done to politics is a travesty. It s a real embarrassment to the nature of politics in America. This was a dignified profession. There is a circus element to him. It s almost like we re looking at Nero. Nero is infamously known as the most tyrannical and insane emperor s Rome ever had. After taking the throne at the age of 17, Nero had his mother killed, was known for overt self-indulging and had anyone who dissented against him killed. For leisure, Nero would wander the streets of Rome and murder people at random. After a fire burned most of Rome to the ground, Nero pointed the finger at Christians, which began a reign of persecuting and torturing anyone associated with the religion, similar to the rhetoric from Donald Trump against Muslims. A few years later, Rome finally rebelled against Nero s tyrannical rule, and Nero committed suicide, leaving no heir to the throne and a free for all among Rome s military generals to seize power.The rise of Donald Trump has invoked similar fears that such a tyrannical ruler could become President of the United States. Although, it is incredibly unlikely Donald Trump would ever reach the extent Nero did, with the support of a GOP majority in Congress, Donald Trump would likely reverse decades of progressive reforms Democrats have worked endlessly to push into legislation. The Supreme Court could possibly receive a judge incredibly unfit to be serving in such a capacity. Groups such as those who identify with the Muslim religion would be in even greater danger of their rights being taken away as Donald Trump has made proposals similar to those enacted by Adolf Hitler preceding the Holocaust during World War II. The comparisons to Hitler are not that far off, added Ms. Cho. It s a very dangerous time. Senator Ted Cruz doesn t offer any better of an option for Republicans, who may face a brokered convention as many leaders in the party don t want Donald Trump or Ted Cruz as their nominee either.","label":1}
{"text":"Conway: Called Delusional on \"The View\" November 03, 2016 Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway for U.S.... Campaign manager Kellyanne Conway for U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to the media at Trump Tower in the...  The women of \"The View\" called Donald Trump's campaign manager \"delusional\", but barely let her speak.  Kellyanne Conway appeared on ABC's \"The View\" Wednesday only to be called \"delusional\" when she attempted to answer a question about Donald Trump's and nuclear weapons. Joy Behar commented that Trump's \"rhetoric about nuclear weapons is reckless\", but when Conway tried to respond she was interrupted repeatedly and eventually called \"delusional\". The back and forth banter was more like an aggressive approach to dumb down Conway's answers and of course limit any negative talk about the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, who is under intense legal scrutiny just days before election. The women also stated that they did not care if Donald Trump \"ever came back on the show\". Remains to be seen if they will say the same thing if he wins the nomination.","label":1}
{"text":"The funeral of Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned as Archbishop of Boston 15 years ago after covering up years of sexual abuse of children by priests, was held in the Vatican on Thursday without a mention of what led to his downfall. About 200 people attended the funeral Mass in a chapel in the apse of St. Peter s Basilica and presided over by a senior cardinal, Angelo Sodano. The wooden coffin lay on the floor with an open book of the gospels resting on it. Pope Francis entered the chapel for a few minutes after the Mass to bless the coffin and conduct a brief service known as the Final Commendation and Farewell - which he does for all cardinals who die in Rome. He dedicated his whole life to the Church, Sodano said in his homily in praise of Law, who died on Wednesday. Sodano listed the stages of Law s clerical life and said the late Pope John Paul had called him to Rome to be archpriest of a Rome basilica. But Sodano made no mention of the reason why he left Boston. Unfortunately, each of us can sometimes be lacking in our mission, Sodano said. The pope read out a Latin prayer, part of which reads: May he be given a merciful judgement . About 15 cardinals attended, though not Law s successor in Boston, Cardinal Sean O Malley. O Malley said on Wednesday that Law served at a time when the Church failed seriously in its responsibilities ... Law was Archbishop of Boston for 18 years when he resigned on Dec. 13, 2002, climaxing a tumultuous year that sparked the greatest crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church. A succession of devastating news stories by Boston Globe reporters showed how priests who sexually abused children had been moved from parish to parish for years under Law s tenure without parishioners or law authorities being informed. Victims groups have expressed outrage that Law s funeral was being in St. Peter s and that he would be buried in a crypt in a chapel of the Rome Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where he served as archpriest. Survivors of child sexual assault in Boston, who were first betrayed by Law s cover-up of sex crimes and then doubly betrayed by his subsequent promotion to Rome, were those most hurt, SNAP, a victim s group, said in a statement on Wednesday. After Pope Francis left Thursday s funeral, two nuns in brown robes knelt by the coffin and arched over it to pray. After the funeral, Cardinal Franc Rode of Slovenia praised Law as a good man with good intentions . All these provisions about paedophilia were not as severe as they are now so one can t say that he made that many mistakes, Rode told Reuters Television, saying it was another era . He did not elaborate. About a half dozen ambassadors attended. The United States official representative was Louis Bono, the current chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican. U.S. Ambassador-designate Callista Gingrich and her husband Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, attended in a private capacity. Callista Gingrich officially becomes ambassador on Friday.","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says It appears that Putin has had enough with being accused of tampering with the US election process this year. The Russian President s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, pointed out that it was indecent of the US to accuse Russia of tampering with its election. Remember: On Thursday evening CNN reported that Barack Obama vowed to retaliate against Russia for the hack that has not been verified by any independent sources nor has it provided a shred of evidence to support the claim Tyler Durden Zero HedgePutin has had enough of the relentless barrage of US accusations that he, personally, hacked the US presidential election. The Russian president s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that the US must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its elections or prove it. Peskov said it was indecent of the United States to groundlessly accuse Russia of intervention in its elections. You need to either stop talking about it, or finally show some kind of proof. Otherwise it just looks very indecent , Peskov told Reporters in Tokyo where Putin is meeting with Japan PM Abe, responding to the latest accusations that Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.Peskov also warned that Obama s threat to retaliate to the alleged Russian hack is against both American and international law , hinting at open-ended escalation should Obama take the podium today at 2:15pm to officially launch cyberwar against Russia.Previously, on Thursday, Peskov told the AP the report was laughable nonsense , while Russian foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova accused Western media of being a shill and a mouthpiece of various power groups , and added that it s not the general public who s being manipulated, Zakharova said. the general public nowadays can distinguish the truth. It s the mass media that is manipulating themselves. Meanwhile, on Friday Sergei Lavrov, Russia s foreign minister told state television network, Russia 24, he was dumbstruck by the NBC report which alleges that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in an election hack.The report cited U.S. intelligence officials that now believe with a high level of confidence that Putin became personally involved in a secret campaign to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. I think this is just silly, and the futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious, Lavrov added, according to the news outlet.As a reminder, last night Obama vowed retaliatory action against Russia for its meddling in the US presidential election last month. I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing, Obama told National Public Radio.US intelligence agencies in October pinned blame on Russia for election-related hacking. At the time, the White House vowed a proportional response to the cyberactivity, though declined to preview what that response might entail. Meanwhile, both President-elect Donald Trump, the FBI,and the ODNI have dismissed the CIA s intelligence community s assessment, for the the same reason Putin finally lashed out at Obama: there is no proof.That, however, has never stopped the US from escalating a geopolitical conflict to the point of war, or beyond, so pay close attention to what Obama says this afternoon.According to an NBC report, a team of analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Friday that they believe the outgoing administration is likely to take action which could result in a significant barrier for Trump s team once he takes office in January. It is unlikely that U.S. intelligence reports will change Trump s intention to initiate a rapprochement with Moscow, but the congressional response following its own investigations could obstruct the new administration s effort, Eurasia Group analysts added.Continue the story at Zero HedgeREAD MORE MSM LIES AT: 21st Century Wire MSM Watch Files","label":1}
{"text":"The White House has eliminated nearly 60 requirements for agencies to submit paperwork that it has deemed out of date or unnecessary in a bid to begin making the federal government operate more efficiently, U.S. budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Thursday. The Office of Management and Budget, which Mulvaney heads, has directed agencies to come up with plans to streamline their operations. As a part of this push, the budget office reviewed 253 of its guidance and policy documents and found that 59 were no longer needed. President Donald Trump has pledged to reorganize the federal government and to do away with onerous rules and policies that slow down administration priorities and increase the cost of governing. Some of the paperwork that the budget office deemed unnecessary included old requirements for submitting plans for Y2K, the effort to get computer systems up to date for the year 2000. Another scrapped requirement was that agencies develop 10 to 15 page business plans for contracts over $50 million. Under a new process, agencies will use a three-page template. The White House has directed agencies outside of OMB to conduct reviews of their own paperwork obligations to see what can be removed. Mulvaney also said the White House would begin assessing the various government reports to Congress that are required by statutes to develop a list of those that lawmakers should consider rescinding.","label":0}
{"text":"When two Libyans hijacked a passenger jetliner on Friday and forced it to land in Malta, they claimed to be acting in the name of the country's former ruler, Col. Muammar . They were ripping a page from history as they did it: During his 42 years in power, Colonel Qaddafi sponsored numerous acts of international airline terrorism, including hijackings and the bombing of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie in 1988 that killed 270 people. Yet unlike most airline dramas, this one was resolved easily. Within hours of landing in Malta, the two hijackers had released the other 115 people aboard and had surrendered peacefully to the Maltese authorities. Their weapons \u2014 a pistol and a grenade \u2014 turned out to be replicas. Libyan officials said the two men had asked for visas to Europe. But the hijacking, and its stated inspiration, did point to the enduring chaos of Libya, a country with three rival governments that, despite United peace efforts, remains fragile and deeply unstable five years after Colonel Qaddafi's death. After forcing the plane to land in Malta, one of the hijackers emerged with a flag in the green that symbolized Colonel Qaddafi's rule, and claimed to have established a new political party honoring the autocrat. The episode started early Friday when an Airbus A320 operated by the Libyan state airline, Afriqiyah Airways, took off from the desert town of Sabha, heading north to the capital, Tripoli. Before it could land, the hijackers, whom officials identified as Subah Mussa and Ahmed Ali, seized control of the plane and diverted it to Malta, about 200 miles off the Libyan coast. They had initially demanded to be taken to Rome, but the pilot said there was only enough fuel to reach Malta. The hijackers threatened to detonate a grenade if their demands were not met. Aboard the plane were 109 passengers and six crew members. (Maltese officials initially said there was seven crew members.) The hijackers claimed to represent a new political party called Al Fateh Al Jadeed \u2014 a reference to the 1969 military coup in Libya that brought Colonel Qaddafi to power. \"We did this to announce and publicize our new party,\" one of the men said in a telephone interview with a Libyan news outlet. Libyan officials, though, believed the hijackers had more personal goals. A senior official with Afriqiyah, Capt. Abdelatif Ali Kablan, said they had demanded Schengen visas to travel in Europe. They did not seem to be linked to any of the radical Islamist groups, like Islamic State, that operate in Libya, he added. \"We feared they might be some of those ideological people, but that seems not to be the case,\" Captain Kablan said by phone from Libya. Throughout the crisis, Malta's prime minister, Joseph Muscat, used Twitter to provide a running feed of information about the security operation, the orderly release of the passengers in batches of 25 and the eventual surrender of the two hijackers. In a news conference later, Mr. Muscat said his security forces had found a pistol and a grenade on the hijackers, and discovered a second pistol in a subsequent search of the airplane, raising questions about security standards in Libyan airports. Later, though, Mr. Muscat posted that the weapons were replicas. It was the second hijacking this year of a passenger jet in the Mediterranean region. In March, an Egyptian man commandeered a domestic EgyptAir flight en route to Cairo and forced it to land in Cyprus, where he demanded the release of political prisoners in Egypt and a meeting with his estranged wife. The crisis ended hours later with the surrender of the hijacker, Seif Eldin Mustafa, who turned out to be wearing a fake explosive vest fashioned from mobile phone cases that had been taped together. Some news outlets later nicknamed him the \"lovejacker. \" In September, a court in Cyprus ordered the deportation of Mr. Mustafa to Egypt. His lawyers are resisting the order and seeking asylum for Mr. Mustafa, claiming that he could be tortured if sent home. As well as supporting the Pan Am bombing in 1988, Colonel Qaddafi was also linked to the bombing of a French aircraft over Niger in 1989 that left 170 dead and the hijacking of a Pan Am flight to New York from Karachi in 1986 by a Palestinian splinter group that ended with a deadly siege. Today, many senior officials from his government live in exile in Cairo, Tunis or Europe. There is no significant movement inside Libya, although the dominant military commander in the east, Gen. Khalifa Hifter, has often been said to harbor strongman ambitions similar to those of Colonel Qaddafi. Many Libyans, though, say in private that they yearn for the order and prosperity of the Qaddafi era. Rival militias and political factions have carved the country into zones of influence, causing a sharp decline in the country's oil production and a severe economic crisis that has caused hardship for most Libyans.","label":0}
{"text":"Macedonia hopes it has done enough to convince the European Union to start accession talks while a quarter-of-a-century-long row with neighbouring Greece rumbles on, its foreign minister said on Wednesday. Greece has vetoed the ex-Yugoslav republic s attempts to join both the EU and NATO because it says the name Macedonia implies a territorial claim over Greece s own northerly region of Macedonia. Macedonia s suggestion last month to use the name the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia as it does at other international bodies was not immediately embraced by Greece, Macedonia s Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov told Reuters. The two sides are set to meet again later this month at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. Whatever the outcome, Macedonia wants the EU to agree that accession talks - which could take years - can at least get under way. If we have enough in terms of reform at home, we hope we will reach that stage (to start EU accession talks) and deal with the name issue in parallel, Dimitrov said. The time it takes to go through the EU membership process might give Greece, which has previously insisted that Skopje use a compound name such as New or Upper Macedonia, enough comfort that process can be halted if needed. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker gave a boost to Macedonia s EU hopes, and those of Serbia, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia and Kosovo, saying on Wednesday: We must maintain a credible enlargement perspective for the Western Balkans. Joining NATO is more clear cut, meaning that for now there is unlikely to be much leeway from Greece. We cannot fight our way into the NATO alliance, we have to talk our way in, Dimitrov said. We need to be seen in Athens as an ally ... In the long run it is also in the Greek interest to have a law-governed neighbour to their northern border. Macedonia, a small ex-Yugoslav republic of about 2 million people, declared independence in 1991 and avoided the violence that accompanied much of the breakup of Yugoslavia. It was later rocked by an insurgency among its large ethnic Albanian minority that almost tore the country apart in 2001 and it has just emerged from two years of political turmoil after a wiretapping scandal brought down the previous ruling nationalist VMRO-DPMNE party bloc in 2015. Tensions boiled over again in April when protesters stormed parliament and assaulted the country s now prime minister after his party and ethnic Albanian allies voted to elect an Albanian as parliament speaker. Macedonia s position just above Greece meant it was also on the key Syrian refugee and north African migrant transit route to northern Europe until the EU and Turkey struck a deal to stem the flow. Turkey is due in the coming months to receive a tranche of the money that came with the deal and Dimitrov said it was important the arrangement remained firm. We think it is very important for Europe to continue to assist Turkey. I think closing the Balkan route and the Turkish-EU (financial) deal together helped both Europe and the refugees have a more organised approach to the problem so both are very important and we need both to stay in place. (This version of the story removes wrongly attributed acronym from paragraph 3)","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump agreed in principle to scrap a warhead weight limit on South Korea s missiles in the wake of North Korea s sixth nuclear test, the White House said on Monday. During a call with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Trump also gave conceptual approval for South Korea to buy billions of dollars of weapons from the United States, the White House said in a statement. Separately, South Korea s presidential office said the two leaders had agreed to scrap the weight limit and to apply the strongest sanctions and pressure on North Korea through the United Nations. In a separate phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin also on Monday, Moon said the U.N. Security Council should seek ways to sever North Korea s foreign currency income, including from its workers employed abroad and oil shipments, according to the South Korean statement. Under the existing missile pact between the United States and South Korea, Seoul s warheads currently face a cap of 500 kg (1100 lb). The agreement, last amended in 2012, was in the process of being changed in the wake of a series of missile tests by North Korea this year after Moon took office in May, including two intercontinental ballistic missile launches. North Korea said it tested an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile on Sunday, prompting global condemnation and a U.S. warning of a massive military response if it or its allies were threatened. An unlimited warhead weight allowance would enable the South to strike North Korea with greater force in the event of a military conflict. The missiles would still be bound by a flight range cap of 800 km. No changes to the flight range were mentioned in the Blue House statement. Most analysts and policymakers agree cutting off supplies of oil to North Korea would hurt its economy. It remains to be seen whether China, the North s biggest ally and trade partner, would cooperate. South Korea said earlier in the day it was talking to the United States about deploying aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula after signs North Korea might launch more missiles.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican infighting over the fate of immigrants brought illegally to the United States as children could be so vitriolic that the party loses control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year, Steve Bannon, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, said in an interview airing on Sunday. Bannon, whose far-right views on immigration, climate and trade helped shape Trump's presidential campaign and his first months in office, was fired by the Republican president last month in a push to end factional fights within the White House. In an interview with the CBS program \"60 Minutes,\" Bannon predicted Republicans could lose control in the House in the 2018 congressional elections because of a looming battle over what to do about 800,000 immigrants known as \"Dreamers.\" Trump said last week he would scrap a program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that allowed the young immigrants to live and work in America. Bannon supported ending the program, which had been put in place by Democratic former President Barack Obama. Trump gave the Republican-controlled Congress six months to come up with an alternative, saying he would \"revisit this issue\" if lawmakers could not agree. \"I'm worried about losing the House now because of this,\" Bannon told CBS. \"If this goes all the way down to its logical conclusion, in February and March it will be a civil war inside the Republican Party,\" he said. \"And to me, doing that in the springboard of primary season for 2018 is extremely unwise.\" Republicans are divided over the Dreamers. Some believe they are illegal immigrants who are taking American jobs, while others say they contribute to the country and deserve compassion. Bannon, who said he left the White House on his own terms, lashed out against \"establishment\" Republicans who have at times grappled with Trump, a real estate celebrity who had never before held elected office. \"The Republican establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election,\" Bannon said, saying it was an \"open secret on Capitol Hill\" that many Republicans did not support Trump's agenda, and singling out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan for criticism. \"They do not want Donald Trump's populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented,\" Bannon said. He called Republican national security officials who had served in the George W. Bush administration \"idiots,\" including former secretaries of state Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, and former Vice President Dick Cheney. \"I hold these people in contempt, total and complete contempt,\" Bannon said, blaming them for U.S. trade problems with China and involvement in Iraq. \"They're idiots, and they've gotten us in this situation, and they question a good man like Donald Trump,\" Bannon said.","label":0}
{"text":"Your forthcoming book, \"Tears We Cannot Stop,\" is subtitled \"A Sermon to White America. \" Which part of white America do you envision reading it? I envision the audience to be that ocean of white folk I encounter who are deeply empathetic to the struggles of minorities \u2014 they are the ones who ask me, \"What can I do, as a white person?\" This is my attempt to address them in the most useful and, hopefully, edifying manner. What's your strategy for getting through to the white people who may not be particularly sympathetic? What I've seen under the wonderful presidency of Barack Obama is the tendency to not tell white people the truth, for obvious reasons \u2014 they don't vote for you. But I'm not a politician. I don't have that power or influence, but what I do wield is a different kind of bully pulpit. We have to have enough belief in white people to tell them the truth. They are grown! There are a lot of areas within race relations that seem like less of a conversation and more of an attempt to prove to white people that these issues \u2014 police brutality, for instance \u2014 are a real and present danger. I open this book with horror stories about my engagement with the police. These are the stories that have shaped me, that join me to the mass of people who, regardless of our station in life, regardless of educational attainment and achievement, have felt this. The president of the United States has these stories, the former attorney general has these stories and a prominent black intellectual like me has these stories. The reality is that this is part and parcel of what it means to be black in America, and I wanted to spend time talking and thinking about it from a number of different perspectives to show white brothers and sisters that we aren't making this up. This is not fabricated. I can't help but think that if the same levels of police brutality were happening to white people, we would just disband the police. Police brutality would not be seen as the price of keeping our society safe. Recently, I was outside of Ben's Chili Bowl in Washington at 3 a. m. and a young white kid is cursing the police, and I'm going, \"Oh, my God, they're going to shoot him. \" And then it occurred to me that they wouldn't \u2014 he's a white kid. And what did I hear the police say? \"Now, son, you're clearly inebriated. You need to go home and sleep this off. \" And I said to myself: \"My God! This is what we want!\" We can't even afford a display of anger that many white people have. At the end of your sermon, you do a \"benediction\" section, in which you talk about making reparations on the local and individual level: donating to groups like the United Negro College Fund or a scholarship program, but also, to cite your example from the book, paying \"the black person who cuts your grass double what you might ordinarily pay. \" That gave me pause! Good! I used to say in church, \"If the sermon ain't making you a little bit uncomfortable, it ain't effective. \" Look, if it doesn't cost you anything, you're not really engaging in change you're engaging in convenience. You're engaged in the overflow. I'm asking you to do stuff you wouldn't ordinarily do. I'm asking you to think more seriously and strategically about why you possess what you possess. I agree with reparations, but maybe this is my white privilege speaking: I can't imagine actually doing that. That is what I meant by an I. R. A.: an individual reparations account. You ain't got to ask the government, you don't have to ask your local politician \u2014 this is what you, an individual, conscientious, \"woke\" citizen can do. But charity can't be the end of it, right? The Koch brothers gave the United Negro College Fund $25 million, but I doubt you would consider them \"woke. \" No. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that charity is a poor substitute for justice. But I ain't turning $25 million down.","label":0}
{"text":"First lady Michelle Obama and representatives from nine former presidential families led a bipartisan gathering of politicians and celebrities in paying memorial tribute to Nancy Reagan, whose love for her late husband, Ronald Reagan, was hailed as a romance \"for the ages.\" In an invitation-only funeral for about 1,000 guests to her husband's presidential library in Southern California, the onetime Hollywood actress turned first lady was remembered for the fierce devotion she accorded her spouse during their White House years and his long struggle with Alzheimer's disease. \"Theirs was a love story for the ages,\" former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said of the couple, during a service that organizers say Nancy Reagan herself helped plan in advance. \"They had style, they had grace and they had class.\" Former White House chief of staff James Baker called Nancy Reagan the \"consummate political wife and first lady,\" and a figure whose support, encouragement and political savvy were indispensable to her husband's political success. After her husband's death at age 93 in 2004, she \"dedicated herself to his memory and his place in history,\" Baker said. The funeral brought together prominent Republicans and Democrats alike in salute of a woman especially admired by political conservatives at a time when deep partisan rancor has reverberated through Washington and the 2016 presidential campaign. The list of VIPs attending the memorial was headed by President Barack Obama's wife, who sat beside former President George W. Bush and his spouse, Laura, and two fellow former first ladies - Jimmy Carter's wife, Rosalynn, and the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 presidential race, Hillary Clinton. Seated nearby were the Reagans' daughter Patti Davis and son Ron Jr., - both of whom eulogized their mother - along with Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John Kennedy, and children of his three immediate successors - Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Davis described her mother and father as \"two halves of a circle, closed tight\" while her brother, Ron, said that \"as a couple, they were more than the sum of their parts.\" She was to the president, Baker recalled, \"absolutely without a doubt his closest advisor,\" adding she was particularly adept at knowing who was truly loyal to her spouse and who was not. He credited Nancy Reagan with prodding her husband to open a dialogue with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a relationship that helped ease Cold War tensions. She could be \"tough as a Marine drill sergeant ... when things weren't going well,\" Baker said, recounting he only saw Nancy Reagan lose her cool once - the day in March 1980 when her husband was wounded by gunfire from a would-be assassin. \"She was devastated, and in fact, she fell apart,\" he said, adding that she returned with her husband to the White House after his discharge from the hospital \"with a fierce determination to protect him in every way she possibly could.\" Rain began to fall over the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, north of Los Angeles, as the service ended and a military honor guard carried the flower-bedecked mahogany casket from the memorial gathering beneath a large white tent to a nearby grave site on the grounds. Nancy Reagan, who died on Sunday of congestive heart failure at age 94 [nL1N16E06K], was to be buried beside her husband later on Friday, though no family members planned to attend, having already \"said their goodbyes,\" according to library spokeswoman Melissa Giller. Others dignitaries among the funeral guests were broadcast journalists Diane Sawyer and Tom Brokaw, California Governor Jerry Brown, former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, U.S. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, as well as such showbiz figures as Oscar-winning actress Anjelica Huston and singer Wayne Newton. Even the actor known as Mr. T, a well-known supporter of Nancy Reagan's \"Just Say No\" anti-drug campaign, was in attendance, wearing an American flag bandanna on his head.","label":0}
{"text":"Failure to ratify the U.S.-led sweeping trade pact TPP would hand China \"the keys to the castle\" on globalization and do nothing to solve the real problems underlying American anxiety over jobs, the top U.S. trade official said Thursday. The tariff-slashing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has turned into a hot-button topic in the run-up to the Nov. 8 U.S. election, threatening to dampen support from lawmakers needed to pass a deal critics condemn as a job-killer. U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said he was still optimistic Congress would pass the 12-member TPP, in part because China has been moving ahead with a trade deal of its own, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), that would boost its exports and let it set labor and environmental standards in the fast-growing Asia Pacific region. \"We're one vote away from either cementing our leadership in this region and in the global trading system or ceding it to China,\" Froman told reporters in Lima after attending the inauguration of Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. \"At the end of the day I don't think Congress wants to be responsible for handing the keys to the castle to China.\" Froman's defense of the TPP follows weeks of heated attacks on the deal as anti-TPP chants and signs have peppered the Republican and Democratic conventions. Republican nominee Donald Trump has called the TPP a \"death blow\" for manufacturing jobs and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton has firmed up her opposition to it in recent days. Froman declined to comment on the candidates but said the TPP had become a \"scapegoat\" for legitimate concerns over income inequality, stagnant wages and jobs lost to automation. \"You don't get to vote on the next generation of robots,\" he said, \"you get to vote on trade agreements\". But the debate over TPP has also helped broaden support for domestic policies, such as infrastructure development and educational programs, to help Americans adapt to rapid economic change, Froman said. U.S. President Barack Obama wants the TPP passed this year. Froman ruled out renegotiating the \"carefully balanced\" text, but said issues were being solved by working on country implementation plans. He cited pork producers, dairy farmers and financial services as once-reluctant stakeholders that now back the TPP. \"The last major issue outstanding has to do with biologics and intellectual property rights,\" Froman said. \"We're having good constructive conversations\" with members of Congress.","label":0}
{"text":"Is it possible that Bill s latest move could ve just sealed Hillary s fate? It actually makes perfect sense. Bill and Hillary Clinton have spent their entire lives trying to figure out how to game the system. Is it possible that Bill has actually one-upped Hillary this time, putting the kibosh on her political aspirations, leaving him with millions from her Wall Street speeches and their home in Chappaqua, New York; minus his cantankerous, scheming, lying, screeching and (according to former secret service agents) sometimes violent wife?Back in April, Slate s Michelle Goldberg offered the Hillary Clinton campaign some sage advice: Fire Bill Clinton. The Clinton campaign declined to take her suggestion, but perhaps they should give it another look.Bill Clinton is one of the most talented politicians of the past century, but his infallible skills continue to fail him when put in the service of someone other than himself.On Monday, Clinton was on a tarmac in Phoenix when he learned that the attorney general, Loretta Lynch, would soon be on the same tarmac. He delayed his flight so he could try to meet with her. He asked for a meeting, boarded her plane and chatted for about 30 minutes.On Friday, MSNBC s Jonathan Capehart asked Lynch if there was one important thing she wished former Attorney General Eric Holder had told her. Where the lock on the plane door was, Lynch deadpanned.(Meanwhile, Republicans are calling for an independent prosecutor, which is rich: there isn t enough time to confirm a Supreme Court justice, but plenty of time for Ken Starr to ride into town again.)On its face, it was wrong to do, and Democrats would be savaging Republicans if the situation were reversed. It raises one of two possibilities: Either Bill Clinton is an idiot or he wants his wife to lose. I wonder if there s a part of Bill Clinton that doesn t really want Hillary Clinton to become president, particularly if she has to distance herself from his legacy to do so, wondered Goldberg back in April, listing a bill of idiotic particulars. How else to explain why one of the world s most talented and agile politicians is so consistently flat-footed and destructive when advocating on his wife s behalf? The fallout from the meeting was predictable: Lynch has said she regrets sitting down with Clinton and wouldn t do it again, given a do-over. And she has said that she will not overrule career prosecutors if they recommend an indictment. Whatever decision the Justice Department ends up making is now clouded in (even more) suspicion.And perhaps the greatest damage was done to Lynch. It must be awfully difficult to turn down a meeting request from a former president, the spouse of the likely future president, especially for somebody who may have future political ambitions. Did Lynch have aspirations for the Supreme Court? If so, what Clinton just did casts a pall over whatever chance she had.","label":1}
{"text":"Libyan forces fighting in Benghazi have lost four men and seen 10 wounded so far in December, five months after declaring victory in a campaign to control the eastern city, a medical source said on Monday. Three of the dead from the Libyan National Army (LNA) were killed by snipers and one by a landmine as it faces resistance from a group of fighters in the Benghazi district of Khreibish. There have been daily clashes in the area and occasional air strikes. LNA commander Khalifa Haftar declared victory in a three-year military campaign against an array of Islamist militants and other fighters in Benghazi in early July. The fighting is part of a broader conflict that developed following the 2011 fall of strongman Muammar Gaddafi. Haftar has opposed a U.N.-backed government based in the capital, Tripoli, as he has gradually strengthened his position on the ground.","label":0}
{"text":"Is google and YouTube in the Hillary's purse? page: 1 link After I posted my opening post (OP) on \"Hillary Clinton Wants a Strong Russia. Wait, what did she say?\" , mysteriously, my YouTube account gets wiped out. The next thing I notice, is that the youtube video that I used in my OP, www.abovetopsecret.com... suddenly won't work. Has anyone else experienced this bizarre behavior before? Is this what we are to expect if Hillary becomes POTUS? I went to the Youtube site and the video is available. www.youtube.com... I frankly, don't know what to think about this. link a reply to: Violater1 yes, so is almost all the major media, magazines (that are left), most of hollywood, GOP kinda, most of the bush's. Who else? Google is pro clinton like drudge is pro trump without a doubt Just about every news story under google news is pro hillary and negative towards trump. If I recall correctly they even advice her campaign edit on 511031America\/ChicagoThu, 27 Oct 2016 21:51:09 -05 p3142 by interupt42 because: (no reason given) Is the dead link the same as the good one in the following reply? Same vid#? No errors? link I'm getting the feeling that the gun control,Hillary as dictator,is not unlike Obamacare,forced on us,this is socialism and being the Corporations own the candidates,they want this we have no choice,they have the UN,plus a bunch of immigrants to join the UN forces to attack the american freedom fighters,you may think I'm crazy but they said I was crazy when I said 9\/11 was a controlled demolition,look at the past,put common sense to it,the big ball is rolling,too much money at stake here thats the goal rich get richer,no more middle class,upper middle class,those making like 1 or 2 million a year,will be joining the crowd,unless your a member of the party,Known many an immigrant who lived under communist rule,all storys kind of same,all bad,no sense of identity","label":1}
{"text":"November 6, 2016 at 3:35 pm  Easy way to join the illuminati brotherhood in the world.  Kindly contact Mr Hazzard Wallace the illuminati online registrations officer in USA through their email now: and you shall be given an ideal chance to visit the satan and his representative after registrations is completed by you, no sacrifice or human life needed, illuminati brotherhood brings along wealth and famous in life, you have a full access to eridicate poverty away from your life now. So contact Mr Hazzard Wallace the online registrar at: or Via moblie +17402028608 or +17128239585 and +14432034680","label":1}
{"text":"Go to Article  This has to be one of the stupidest things we've ever seen. It's probably connected to George Soros since he is the sugar daddy to almost all of the paid anti-Trump protests.  Here's an example of a Soros employee literally \"posing\" as a protester. Not all that \"grass roots.\"  In this case, a Craigslist ad in Los Angeles shows that activists are wanted to block traffic in the heavy traffic intersection of Highlands and Hollywood.  This an idiotic move for multiple reasons. First of all, California did go for Hillary and Hollywood in particular is a very liberal city. So what on earth do you gain protesting Trump by pissing off your own liberals by blocking traffic? They will probably inspire some pissed of Angelenos to join the Trump Train while they are annoyed the road is blocked.  Here is a screen shot of the ad.  Support the Trump Presidency and help us fight Liberal Media Bias. Please LIKE and SHARE this story on Facebook or Twitter.","label":1}
{"text":"Nikki Haley, U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, has penned a blistering targeting the controversial U. N. Human Rights Council. She uses her toughest language yet and slams the body as a \"haven for dictators\" ahead of a visit to its headquarters in Switzerland next week. [\"When the world's preeminent human rights body is turned into a haven for dictators, the idea of international cooperation in support of human dignity is discredited,\" she says in an for the Washington Post, published Friday. Haley is due to address the Council in Geneva on June 6 \u2014 the address to the Council by a U. S. Permanent Representative \u2014 before she then travels to Israel, where she will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and visit a number of Israeli historical sites. The visit to Switzerland is likely to be a tense one. The Trump administration has reportedly contemplated an exit from the Council over its bias and its questionable membership, which includes countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia. A Senate subcommittee met last month to assess if the U. S. should remain a member of the body. The U. S. boycotted the Council's opening session in March over the agenda before it, and Haley herself has called the Council \"so corrupt\" and filled with \"bad actors,\" using it to protect their own behavior. In her piece for the Post, titled \"The U. N. Human Rights Council whitewashes brutality,\" Haley notes that the Council has done good work in places such as North Korea but says that it also allows countries on the Council, such as Venezuela and Cuba, to have their abuses ignored: Venezuela is a member of the council despite the systematic destruction of civil society by the government of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro through arbitrary detention, torture and blatant violations of freedom of the press and expression. Mothers are forced to dig through trash cans to feed their children. This is a crisis that has been 18 years in the making. And yet, not once has the Human Rights Council seen fit to condemn Venezuela. Calling on the U. N. to \"reclaim the legitimacy of this organization,\" Haley says she will outline the needed changes when she visits the Council. Those changes include competitive voting for membership on the council \u2014 to keep \"the worst human rights abusers from obtaining seats\" and end the practice of singling out Israel for criticism. \"When the council passes more than 70 resolutions against Israel, a country with a strong human rights record, and just seven resolutions against Iran, a country with an abysmal human rights record, you know something is seriously wrong,\" she says. Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.","label":0}
{"text":"In other transition news: \u25a0 A auction for coffee with the future first daughter Ivanka Trump appears to have been canceled, as criticism mounted that the Trumps were selling access. \u25a0 Donald J. Trump's told business leaders in New York that Mr. Trump will be pushing a $1 trillion infrastructure plan closer to the ideal of Democrats than Republicans. At the same event, Senator Chuck Schumer, the incoming minority leader, sounded similarly conciliatory. \u25a0 Mr. Trump took to Twitter on Friday to again play down Russian interference in the elections \u2014 this time, seemingly praising one of the cyberattacks for the revelations it contained. The Trump family on Friday appears to have canceled a charity auction that featured the 's daughter Ivanka, as criticism mounted that the future first family's charitable solicitation risked opening the White House to special interests seeking to pay for access. The auction for a chance to spend up to 45 minutes with Ms. Trump over coffee at either Trump Tower in New York or the recently opened Trump International Hotel in Washington was to continue for another three days. As of Friday morning, the high bid was $72, 888. But then the auction disappeared from the Charitybuzz website that had been hosting it, along with details on all the bids that had been offered since it opened on Dec. 5. \"The loser is St. Jude, and the winner I'm not exactly sure,\" one of the bidders, the restaurateur Russell Ybarra, wrote in an email, referring to the Tennessee children's hospital, which stood to reap the proceeds. Eric Trump, in an interview Thursday, had said he was considering terminating the auction, after The New York Times raised questions about it. The Trump Organization and Charitybuzz did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment. The Obama family has not directly participated in any solicitation efforts since President Obama took office to avoid the impression that donations would allow the donor to get special access, said Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics lawyer. The 's and close adviser, Jared Kushner, told New York business leaders on Friday that Mr. Trump's vision for a federal infrastructure program was \"closer\" to Senator Chuck Schumer's, the incoming minority leader, than to the majority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell's. Mr. Kushner made the remarks at an event hosted by the Partnership for New York City, just after an appearance by Mr. Schumer, the New York senator. This week at a news conference in Washington, Mr. McConnell said he was not interested in \" stimulus\" to finance any infrastructure plan, setting up what could be the first of many clashes with a Trump White House that will not always hew to Republican orthodoxy. The Trump campaign floated a $1 trillion infrastructure plan that would depend on private investors raising money and building the projects with the aid of some form of tax credit. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's chief strategist, said shortly after the election that a huge infrastructure plan would be in the offing, but the form was not clear. Democrats have long said they want an infrastructure plan that has plentiful direct federal funding, something Mr. Schumer has said repeatedly, not tax credits for rich developers. This does not excite Mr. McConnell who, like most Republicans, recalls President Obama's early stimulus plan unfavorably. That plan came in the middle of the worst recession since the Depression. Mr. Trump inherits an economy that is healthy enough that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates Wednesday to head off overheating. The Fed has made it clear that if Mr. Trump insists on pumping money into the economy, it will hasten rate increases to stave off inflation. \"We need to do this carefully and correctly, and the issue of how to pay for it needs to be dealt with responsibly,\" Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky senator, said this week. Senate watchers used to the obstructionist stance that the Republican leader, Mr. McConnell, took with President Obama for eight years have been waiting for signs of the kind of minority leader that Mr. Schumer will be when he takes over as Democratic leader. The Democratic senator sent a big flashing of conciliation on Friday. Mr. Schumer praised Mr. Trump's call with the president of Taiwan, which drew objections from both sides of the aisle, as a shrewd move that sent a signal to China of a change in direction. Mr. Schumer made the remarks at the same annual meeting of the Partnership for New York City that Mr. Kushner spoke at, according to two people in attendance. Those attendees interpreted the comments as aligning Mr. Schumer with Mr. Trump on a diplomatic issue that has been met with consternation by the Obama White House. Mr. Schumer described the call that Mr. Trump took roughly two weeks ago as shrewd, and not necessarily indicating that it was a reflection of his view of the \"One China\" policy, the two attendees said. An aide to Mr. Schumer did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment. Mr. Schumer has been a critic of China as a currency manipulator over the years. At the breakfast, where he was followed by Mr. Kushner, Mr. Schumer suggested that Democrats lost in part because the election was about a change in course, and Hillary Clinton ran as a continuation of the Obama administration's direction. The took to Twitter on Friday to again dismiss the significance of Russia's meddling in the election \u2014 but with a new twist. This time, he seemed to praise the revelations of one of the cyberattacks. The post seems to refer to an email stolen from the Democratic National Committee and given to WikiLeaks that came from a Democratic strategist, Donna Brazile, before a CNN Democratic primary debate in Flint, Mich. Ms. Brazile's subject line: \"One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash. \" \"Her family has lead poison and she will ask what, if anything, will Hillary do as president to help the ppl of Flint,\" Ms. Brazile wrote to John D. Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman, and Jennifer Palmieri, the candidate's communications director. That might seem like a pretty obvious question, given that the debate was in Flint to address the crisis over the city's water. But it cost Ms. Brazile her commentator's job at CNN, and it helped to fuel Mr. Trump's accusation during the campaign that the election was \"rigged\" in Hillary Clinton's favor. A new CBS News poll found that 46 percent of Americans are excited or optimistic about Donald J. Trump's presidency, about the percentage who voted for him. But 53 percent say they are concerned or scared. With the inauguration about a month away, a solid majority \u2014 62 percent \u2014 say the will bring real change to the way Washington works. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing probably depends on your party. Some 58 percent say they believe he will divide rather than unite people. The announcement on Thursday that David M. Friedman, Mr. Trump's bankruptcy lawyer, would be nominated to be the United States ambassador to Israel, is likely to roil an American Jewish community that sided overwhelmingly with Hillary Clinton and is already at sea in the wake of the 2016 election. Divisions remain among Jewish people over President Obama's policies, especially his nuclear deal with Iran. And Mr. Friedman is not likely to unify the community. Confronting the liberal Jewish group J Street, which largely opposes the policies of Israel's conservative prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Friedman once leveled one of the worst insults possible to a Jew. He compared the group to kapos, the Jewish collaborators who enforced Nazi edict in the World War II concentration camps. \"Are J Street supporters really as bad as kapos? The answer, actually, is no. They are far worse than kapos \u2014 Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps,\" Mr. Friedman said. J Street reacted almost immediately to news of Mr. Friedman's nomination, calling on the Senate to reject him. \"As someone who has been a leading American friend of the settlement movement, who lacks any diplomatic or policy credentials and who has attacked liberal Jews who support two states as 'worse than kapos' Friedman should be beyond the pale for senators considering who should represent the United States in Israel,\" the group said in a statement. The Republican Jewish Coalition was all praise: A Trump economic adviser, Stephen Moore, caused quite a kerfuffle in Detroit on Thursday when in a fit of excitement, he announced that the economic commentator Larry Kudlow would be named chairman of Mr. Trump's White House Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Kudlow, while certainly versed in economics, is not an economist. He has an undergraduate degree in history. The council chairman has traditionally been pulled from the highest echelons of academia to advise the president, not to lobby or persuade. Moreover, Mr. Kudlow is an ardent free trader and was openly critical of Mr. Trump's position on trade during the campaign, even as he enthusiastically backed the candidate. The announcement would have also come as a surprise to Peter Navarro, a professor of economics at the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Navarro is widely considered the for the post, and his views on trade are more in line with the 's. After the Democrats sent out their reactions, and the news media came alive, Mr. Moore sheepishly admitted that, while he is pulling for his friend Mr. Kudlow, the deal is not done. \"Larry is the obvious choice, because he has all the connections with the key players on Capitol Hill, and there's nobody that can articulate the conservative economic message better than Larry can,\" he said. But he admitted he had jumped the gun.","label":0}
{"text":"Spanish lender Sabadell decided on Thursday to transfer its legal base from Catalonia to Alicante, a bank spokeswoman said. The decision by Banco Sabadell, Spain s fifth biggest lender, comes as businesses in the wealthy northeastern region are growing increasingly worried about political upheaval there as the Catalan parliament considers whether to press ahead with a plan to unilaterally declare independence from Spain.","label":0}
{"text":"A lot of the food that I transfer from fork to mouth is complicated. Some of it dazzles me, some doesn't, and I write my reviews accordingly. As time passes, though, it's the less frenetic stuff that tends to stand out in my memory. The juicy slab of roast beef, the egg on toast served Mumbai style, the \u00eele flottante that vanished on my tongue leaving behind just a memory of transient happiness \u2014 these are some of my favorite dishes from new restaurants in New York, listed here in no particular order. EGGS KEJRIWAL AT PAOWALLA It's a fried egg on toast under melted Cheddar that stands out from all others because of a green chutney that has a glossy underpinning of coconut oil: 195 Spring Street, SoHo paowalla. com. PHEASANT AT LE COUCOU Oh, just beautifully juicy pheasant breast, a little meatball of braised pheasant leg cooked in cabbage, and enough wobbly foie gras to make you forget that the United States recently held an election: 138 Lafayette Street, SoHo lecoucou. com. HONEY MESQUITE CAKE AT PONDICHERI Flour from almonds and ground mesquite pods, seasoned purposefully with ginger, make this a morning pastry without precedent: 15 West 27th Street, NoMad pondichericafe. . FROZEN YOGURT AT OLMSTED A heap of lavender cream whipped to stiff peaks sits on and blends in with the yogurt in this wonderfully uncomplicated duet for dairy products: 659 Vanderbilt Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn olmstednyc. com. CLAM PIZZA AT PASQUALE JONES Small refinements on the New Haven favorite, like marinating littlenecks in garlic and dribbling cream on the pie, make more difference than you'd suppose: 187 Mulberry Street, Little Italy no phone pasqualejones. com. \u00ceLE FLOTTANTE AT LE COQ RICO A cr\u00e8me Anglaise made with very yellow, very dense egg yolks is the foundation for a sphere of meringue like a snowman's head. It's dusted with hard grains of caramel that crackle between your teeth as the meringue collapses: 30 East 20th Street, Flatiron district lecoqriconyc. com. ROAST BEEF AT MR. DONAHUE'S The flavor is less like the sandwich meat of delis and bodegas than it is like a great slab of rib roast served on your favorite holiday: 203 Mott Street, NoLIta mrdonahues. com. CLASSIC BURGER AT SALVATION BURGER This is the pure stuff of hungry roadside American daydreams, with all the most qualities singled out and amplified: 230 East 51st Street, Midtown East salvationburger. com. CACIO E PEPE FRITELLE AT LILIA Reconfiguring the great and elemental Roman pasta dish as a fried bar snack is an even more clever idea than it sounds: 567 Union Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn lilianewyork. com. BUCATINI WITH SQUID AND MUSSELS AT HIGH STREET ON HUDSON Seaweed in the noodles and orange curls of cured lobster coral on top give this pasta an oceanic pull as strong as a riptide: 637 Hudson Street, West Village highstreetonhudson. com.","label":0}
{"text":"Say goodbye to your economy, traditions and culture. The caliphate has come to Germany on steroids Leftists hold a rally to welcome tens of thousands of refugees to Germany.Migrant Muslims were seen on video singing jihadist songs at their refugee center. The ignorant German volunteers applauded. Via Les Observateurs: (Rough Translation)It s in the air, broadcast of 14 October 2015. The Iraqi and Syrian Christians were isolated in special reception centers after being continually harassed. One of Iraqi Christians tells France 5: At our previous center, volunteers were sitting listening to music, the Arabs sand jihadi songs and the German volunteers clapped their hands without understanding. The image sums up the situation: the Arabs install Islamism, leftists not understanding what is happening rejoice in living together that exists only in their fantasy world. Carnage to follow.","label":1}
{"text":"Conservatives alongside right-wing media outlets are trying desperately to spin the gun debate in their favor. They know that the majority of Americans support President Obama s executive actions on guns, so they need to make it look like people don t want them.One conservative media outlet, Breitbart, decided to run an article with this title: OBAMA S QUANDARY: NRA GAINING SUPPORT, GUN CONTROL LOSING IT Screengrab via BreitbartHowever, within the text of the article they try to piece together some sort of magic way of showing Americans support the NRA, but instead fail miserably, stating: In 1987, twenty-seven percent of Americans strongly supported the NRA. In December 2015, that number had risen to 38 percent. In order words, over one-in-three Americans strongly support the NRA. In other other words, two-in-three Americans do NOT support the NRA. It doesn t seem smart to write an article about how terribly Obama is doing and then point out with numbers how more than half the nation is actually on his side and not yours. Bravo for that. Well done.They also point out: In addition to these things, the American people are voting with their feet by walking into gun stores all around the country and buying firearms at a record pace. Figures from the FBI show that 2015 set a record for the number of background checks performed in a single year, with 23,141,970 checks performed. But then reiterate: So the NRA enjoys the [strong] support of more than one-in-three Americans while support for gun control is losing ground. WSJ suggests that this put Obama in a position where he had to go it alone. No, the NRA enjoys the reward of paying off members of Congress to make sure President Obama and the rest of America doesn t get the chance to hurt gun profits. Oh, and all this hysteria over FBI background checks really proves is a strong amount of paranoia from the one-third of Americans who actually think guns are a solution or are deceived into thinking they ll lose their firearms.In regards to actual support for stricter gun laws, data proves that is actually up drastically with more than 55% of Americans saying they want laws on gun sales more strict:There are facts, and then there s how one interprets facts. Breitbart chose to report only one-third of Americans strongly support the NRA, but anyone with a rationally thinking brain can decipher that this also means that two-thirds of Americans don t. They also want you to believe citizens don t want stricter gun laws, but, in fact, they do.Truth is, we need stricter laws on gun sales to make sure the wrong people don t get their hands on guns. This includes mental health background checks. If you re a law-abiding citizen without a history of mental illness, guess what NONE of your rights will be infringed because you ll still be able to purchase your precious paranoia machines firearms. And just like laws regarding cars and driving don t stop every accident, they sure as hell prevent a lot, just like better gun laws would prevent unnecessary deaths as well.Featured image: Gage Skidmore (flickr)","label":1}
{"text":"The Czech parliament revoked an election of a Communist-era policeman to a police oversight job on Tuesday after some lawmakers claimed the vote was manipulated. Earlier, the lower chamber entrusted oversight of the police force to Zdenek Ondracek, former member of a Communist-era special unit which tried to crush the peaceful 1989 uprising that helped to bring down Communist rule. The unprecedented appointment of a Communist lawmaker as chairman of parliament s General Inspection of Security Forces commission appeared to be part of complex maneuvering by the new prime minister, billionaire businessman Andrej Babis, and his ANO party to get backing for a minority government. After the secret ballot, some lawmakers challenged the result with claims that it was unclear how many in the 200-seat lower chamber actually participated in the election. Ondracek received 95 votes, but due to the uncertainty it was impossible to determine whether he got the required majority. Speaker of the house, ANO s Radek Vondracek, then declared the vote confused and said that it would be repeated in January. The ANO has 78 seats in the new 200-seat lower house. Babis is seeking support or at least acquiescence from lawmakers of the other eight parties in parliament. The far-left Communists with 15 seats, and far-right, anti-European Union SPD party with 22, have lent support in initial parliamentary votes in return for committee posts, but no deal has been announced on their backing for an ANO cabinet. The secret ballot vote on Tuesday to appoint Ondracek was the first time the Communist party has gained such a post in nearly three decades since the fall of communism. In 1989 his police unit used water cannon, clubs and dogs to disperse anti-regime protests. The demonstrations eventually led to the peaceful overthrow of Communist dictatorship in what became known as the Velvet Revolution. A video from 1989, posted on YouTube, shows Ondracek defending police actions in an interview with state television. It is sad that it happened only one day after we remembered the anniversary of (late president and leading anti-Communist dissident) Vaclav Havel s passing. The times have changed, said Vit Rakusan, deputy chairman of the Mayors and Independents party. Communist party deputy chairman Jiri Dolejs, however, defended the appointment. Police work should be scrutinized by those who understand it, he told reporters. In October, the Communist party suffered the worst election result in its nearly 100-year history. Still, it is the only faction so far to say it could back the ANO government. Direct or indirect support might also come from the SPD party of Czech-Japanese businessman Tomio Okamura. Other parties have shunned Babis, mainly due to pending police charges against him over allegations he concealed his company s ownership of a farm and conference center a decade ago to illegally obtain a 2 million-euro European Union subsidy. Babis denies wrongdoing. Babis, who was appointed prime minister this month and whose cabinet took power last week, has until mid-January to win a confidence vote. President Milos Zeman has said Babis will get a second try if his first attempt to form a government fails.","label":0}
{"text":"Killer Mike Proves Real Leaders are Truth-Tellers by Saying What Most People Won't Nov 21, 2016 0 0  Politics in America has devolved into a contest of personalities, where policy, history, and reality are rejected in favor of style, skin color, gender and celebrity factor. This is unsurprising, though, in a nation that has for generations been weened on television and state indoctrination. We've been trained to look to politicians for leadership, but the real heroes and change makers in our world are the fearless truth-tellers who work to free our minds and inspire us to greatness by setting an example with their words and deeds.  As we stare down the barrel of a critically divided society under the thumb of an all-powerful government and police state, righteous voices of non-partisan, no-bullshit truth who apply logic, common sense, and critical-thinking in defense of community and humanity are needed now more than ever. One such example is hip-hop artist, civic leader, social activist, and entrepreneur Michael Render, aka Killer Mike . His articulation of the problems we all face, accompanied with real ideas for meaningful action, make for an excellent reminder of what true leadership can look like.  He's done a ton of interviews in recent years, and although he mentions being a conservative, even advocating for the 2nd Amendment in response to public shootings, he played a big role in Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic nomination in an effort to help educate and awaken black voters. Consider the following clips of Killer Mike speaking on a number of today's critical issues.  Firstly, he talks to TMZ about the importance of participating in local elections and in using your vote to hold political parties accountable, while helping to see through the phony logic of voting for the lesser of two evils.  \"Scaring me with the boogie man is not going to work as effectively as giving my community something that helps.\" ~Killer Mike  In his song, ' Reagan, ' he rails against Obama, along with all the other authoritarian presidents we've had, as a member of an organization of war and profit, saying what so many Obama supporters are afraid to acknowledge.  \"Ronald Reagan was an actor, not at all a factor Just an employee of the country's real masters Just like the Bushes, Clinton and Obama Just another talking head telling lies on teleprompters If you don't believe the theory, then argue with this logic Why did Reagan and Obama both go after Qaddafi We invaded sovereign soil, going after oil Taking countries is a hobby paid for by the oil lobby Same as in Iraq, and Afghanistan And Ahmadinejad say they coming for Iran They only love the rich, and how they loathe the poor If I say any more they might be at my door\"  ~Killer Mike, Reagan  As a leader in the black community, he is keenly aware of the affects of racism and police brutality today, but rather than advocating for protests or riots as an expression of justifiable anger, he breaks down how black people can overcome systemic corruption and racism by using the one weapon that is most effective in a capitalist culture: money.  Furthermore, on the Bill Maher show on HBO , he goes into relationship between politicians and police, pointing out how politicians themselves use police as pawns. Final Thoughts  The President of the United States of America is the figurehead of an authoritarian and corporatized organization that masquerades as benevolent, but POTUS is a puppet, not a leader. As Americans go at each other's throats over about the election, it may serve us well to remember that individuals are the true leaders in our community and in our world.  \"My criteria is probably Libertarian views, where you just let the free market reign, you let people do what they want to, and the government takes care of protecting us from foreign interests and one another.\" ~ Killer Mike  About the Author  Dylan Charles is a student and teacher of Shaolin Kung Fu, Tai Chi and Qi Gong, a practitioner of Yoga and Taoist arts, and an activist and idealist passionately engaged in the struggle for a more sustainable and just world for future generations. He is the editor of WakingTimes.com , the proprietor of OffgridOutpost.com , a grateful father and a man who seeks to enlighten others with the power of inspiring information and action. He may be contacted at [email protected] . This article ( Killer Mike Proves Real Leaders are Truth-Tellers by Saying What Most People Won't ) was originally created and published by Waking Times and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Dylan Charles and WakingTimes.com . Vote Up","label":1}
{"text":"Turkish academic Fikret Baskaya was briefly detained on Monday as part of an operation targeting members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, state-run Anadolu news agency said. Twelve other suspects were detained along with Baskaya, it said. Further information about the other suspects status was not immediately available. Baris Yarkadas, a lawmaker from the main opposition CHP, wrote on Twitter that Baskaya, 77, had been detained at his home in the capital Ankara at 6.30 am (0330 GMT) and that police had seized some of his personal possessions. Baskaya, who is an author and university lecturer, was later released after giving a statement to police, another CHP lawmaker, Murat Emir, said in a tweet. He added that Baskaya was detained over an article he wrote on Nov. 7, called Real Terror is State Terror, in which Baskaya said Turkey s Kurds suffered oppression at the hands of authorities. The investigation is ongoing despite Baskaya s release, Emir said. Anadolu said arrest warrants had been issued for a total of 17 people on allegations of aiding the PKK and spreading the group s propaganda on social media. Operations to detain the other suspects were ongoing. The PKK launched a separatist insurgency in southeast Turkey in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. It is designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union.","label":0}
{"text":"Neutral Switzerland is in touch with Spain and Catalonia about resolving a row over the region s moves towards independence but conditions for promoting talks are not yet ripe, the foreign ministry in Bern said on Friday. Facilitation can only be provided if both parties request it. Switzerland is in contact with both parties, but the conditions for facilitation are not in place at this stage, a spokesman said by email in response to a query. He described the situation in Catalonia as an internal Spanish political matter and said Switzerland respected the sovereignty of Spain.","label":0}
{"text":"Michele Bachmann has been pretty quiet since leaving office under a cloud of scandal and that was a damn shame. She was one of the most perfect examples of how utterly hate-filled and detached from reality the right-wing has become. But apparently Bachmann has remembered that it was her GAWD!-given mission to warn America about all the threats the voices in her head have been making up for years.Last week, Michele warned us about Obama s status as the Anti-Christ and his plan to cancel the elections and crown himself King. This week, GAWD! has told her that the evil Muslims. I kid you not, made up the entire Syrian civil war: This clearly is an invasion, Bachmann said. This is a planned invasion, not only in Europe but also in the United States, I believe for the specific purpose of destroying Western Christendom. The solution, of course, is to close all the borders to people with brown skin immigrants just to be safe. And for those of you who are about to say I m race-baiting, during her rant, Bachmann insisted that we needed to pause immigration just like Calvin Coolidge did in 1924. That pause , incidentally, was targeted specifically to preserve the ideal of American homogeneity (AKA White Supremacy ) by allowing in good immigrants from Western Europe but keeping out the bad ones from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. That s what Michele Bachmann thinks is a solution. Why? Because she s a fucking racist like a great deal of the American right-wing.If this fact upsets you, too bad.But Bachmann wasn t done being a total asshole:Bachmann said that countries with large Muslim minorities like France now experience Islamic jihad 24\/7, terrorist bloodbath attacks 24\/7, warning that the same thing is coming to the U.S. unless we decide to have no more immigration into the United States. I m sure this will come as a surprise to France. They ll be wondering why they haven t heard about these 24\/7 bloodbaths. Maybe they re only happening in the mythical no go zones? Bachmann continues: The more that come in, the more they act upon their religious convictions and their stated religious convictions, she said. The imams from the original countries that they come from, they recruit and send these guys to come in and to bring about this destruction. Right now in Europe it s called a rape culture that s coming into Sweden and Germany and all across Europe for the specific purpose of Islamizing these countries, and they are falling. I wish I could be surprised that a conservative like Bachmann will only acknowledge the existence of rape culture as long as she can blame it on Muslims. Islamists have a plan, Bachmann later added. They have a plan to destroy Western Christendom. It s called civilization jihad. By bringing Islamists into our country and destroying us from in, they don t need to just have a nuclear bomb. If they send their invading army into our countries and if young men are doing what they did on New Year s Eve in Cologne, Germany, and other places where they are literally sexually attacking and raping and groping women and causing them to fear, we are looking at a completely ramped-up level of invasion one like we have never seen before. There are days that I truly and profoundly wish I wasn t an atheist. Why? Because it would give me great comfort to believe that after she dies, Jesus Christ will personally walk up to Bachmann in the afterlife and, after explaining to her exactly how horrible of a human being she was in life, send her to Hell along with most of the Republican Party.Hey, a man can dream, right?Featured image courtesy of Newsweek","label":1}
{"text":"NBC is holding \"crisis meetings\" as the network has come under intense pressure to pull anchor Megyn Kelly's upcoming interview with controversial InfoWars founder and radio host Alex Jones, according to a report. [The planned interview \u2014 in which Kelly questions Jones about his previous assertion that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre was a hoax \u2014 is scheduled to air on Sunday June 18 as part of the anchor's new show, Sunday Night With Megyn Kelly. However, NBC has faced pressure from social media users \u2014 including some relatives of the victims of the Sandy Hook attack \u2014 to cancel the interview. In the wake of the controversy, J. P Morgan Chase reportedly decided to temporarily pull its advertising from the network. Nevertheless, the network has pledged to move ahead with the interview, with NBC News Chairman Andy Lack saying the interview will be edited to provide sensitivity to the Sandy Hook victims. \"No one expected sponsors to pull out, but this is why they hired Megyn. They expect to lose and gain viewers and they want the buzz,\" one source told Page Six. Next Sunday, I sit down with conservative radio host @RealAlexJones to discuss controversies and conspiracies #SundayNight June 18 on NBC pic. twitter. \u2014 Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 11, 2017, However, Page Six reported that the network held multiple meetings Wednesday to discuss its response to the criticism, with some employees urging the network to axe the interview. \"It's a sh*t show. No one wants to withstand a whole week of criticism over this. There are a number of people who want to pull the interview,\" an unnamed source told the outlet. In a statement posted to her Twitter account Tuesday, Kelly said: \"I find Alex Jones' suggestion that Sandy Hook was 'a hoax' as personally revolting as every other rational person does. It left me, and many other Americans, asking the very question that prompted this interview: How does Jones, who traffics in these outrageous conspiracy theories, have the respect of the president of the United States and a growing audience of millions?\" As a result of the controversy, Kelly has agreed to step down as host of a gun violence prevention fundraiser being held Wednesday by Sandy Hook Promise, a group that was founded after the 2012 attack. \"What I think we're doing is journalism,\" she said. \"The bottom line is that while it's not always popular, it's important. I would submit to you that neither I nor NBC News has elevated Alex Jones in any way. He's been elevated by 5 or 6 million viewers or listeners, and by the president of the United States. As you know, journalists don't get the choice over who has power or influence in our country. \" You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"On Sunday, at the great Paris rally, the whole world was Charlie. By Tuesday, the veneer of solidarity was exposed as tissue thin. It began dissolving as soon as the real, remaining Charlie Hebdo put out its post-massacre issue featuring a Muhammad cover that, as the New York Times put it, \"reignited the debate pitting free speech against religious sensitivities.\" Again? Already? Had not 4 million marchers and 44 foreign leaders just turned out on the streets of France to declare \"No\" to intimidation, and pledging solidarity, indeed identification (\"Je suis Charlie\") with a satirical weekly specializing in the most outrageous and often tasteless portrayals of Muhammad? And yet, within 48 hours, the new Charlie Hebdo issue featuring the image of Muhammad \u2014 albeit a sorrowful, indeed sympathetic Muhammad \u2014 sparked new protests, denunciations and threats of violence, which in turn evinced another round of doubt and self-flagellation in the West about the propriety and limits of free expression. Hopeless. As for President Obama, he never was Charlie, not even for those 48 hours. From the day of the massacre, he has been practically invisible. At the interstices of various political rallies, he issued bits of muted, mealy-mouthed boilerplate. Followed by the now-famous absence of any high-ranking U.S. official at the Paris rally, an abdication of moral and political leadership for which the White House has already admitted error. But this was no mere error of judgment or optics or, most absurdly, of communications in which we are supposed to believe that the president was not informed by staff about the magnitude, both actual and symbolic, of the demonstration he ignored. (He needed to be told?) On the contrary, the no-show, following the near silence, precisely reflected the president's profound ambivalence about the very idea of the war on terror. Obama began his administration by purging the phrase from the lexicon of official Washington. He has ever since shuttled between saying that (a) the war must end because of the damage \"keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing\" was doing to us, and (b) the war has already ended, as he suggested repeatedly during the 2012 campaign, with bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda \"on the run.\" Hence his call in a major address at the National Defense University to \"refine and ultimately repeal\" Congress' 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, the very legal basis for the war on terror. Hence his accelerating release of Gitmo inmates \u2014 five more announced Wednesday \u2014 fully knowing that up to 30 percent have returned to the battlefield (17 percent confirmed, up to 12 percent suspected but not verified). Which is why, since about the Neolithic era, POWs tend to be released after a war is over. Paris shows that this war is not. On the contrary. As it rages, it is entering an ominous third phase. The first, circa 9\/11, involved sending Middle Eastern terrorists abroad to attack the infidel West. Then came the lone wolf \u2014 local individuals inspired by foreign jihadists launching one-off attacks, as seen most recently in Quebec, Ottawa and Sydney. Paris marks Phase 3: coordinated commando strikes by homegrown native-speaking Islamists activated and instructed from abroad. (Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo killings, while the kosher-grocery shooter proclaimed allegiance to the Islamic State.) They develop and flourish in Europe's no-go zones where sharia reigns and legitimate state authorities dare not tread. To call them lone wolves, as did our hapless attorney general, is to define jihadism down. It makes them the equivalent of the pitiable, mentally unstable Sydney hostage taker. The Paris killers were well-trained, thoroughly radicalized, clear-eyed jihadist warriors. They cannot be dismissed as lone loons. Worse, they represent a growing generation of alienated European Muslims whose sheer number is approaching critical mass. The war on terror 2015 is at a new phase with a new geography. At the core are parallel would-be caliphates: in Syria and Iraq, the Islamic State; in Sub-Saharan Africa, now spilling out of Nigeria into Cameroon, a near-sovereign Boko Haram; in the badlands of Yemen, AQAP, the most dangerous of all al-Qaeda affiliates. And beyond lie not just a cast of mini-caliphates embedded in the most ungovernable parts of the Third World from Libya to Somalia to the borderlands of Pakistan, but an archipelago of no-go Islamist islands embedded in the heart of Europe. This is serious. In both size and reach it is growing. Our president will not say it. Fine. But does he even see it? Read more from Charles Krauthammer's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"On Tuesday night, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo attended a NYC fundraiser on his 59th birthday, and took the time to comment on the election s disastrous outcome.In speaking to his audience, Cuomo took a somber tone and spoke to Democrats specifically on what we should be taking away from President-elect Donald Trump s win. Cuomo said: There is a lesson in what happened in the election, and I believe when you get knocked on your tuchus, you should at least learn the lesson of what happened.I don t believe that Trump won. I believe that we lost that election. Noting that the Democratic Party had some soul searching over the next few years in order to get back on track, Cuomo suggested that the loss was not so much an open embrace of Trump as it was a disconnection in messaging from the Left. I think what it said to the Democrats is there is a middle class that we have not been attentive to and it s a middle class that s been suffering for a long time. Cuomo advised that New York and its citizens cannot stay silent when Trump s tide of negativity is encouraging others to discriminate and act out of fear and hate. Cuomo said: If you want to make America strong again then remember what made America strong in the first place. It s tolerance. It s brotherhood. It s acceptance. It s community. That is the way forward. Cuomo also said he was concerned about the intolerance and bigotry that was now resonating all across this country, stating that there have since been many racial incidents in New York since Trump s election. Specifically, Cuomo spoke about an incident that happened just this week, in which a Muslim MTA worker had been attacked. These comments resonate with something Cuomo said about Trump a year ago, when Cuomo said Trump was fanning the flames of hate with his Islamophobic rhetoric.Cuomo, who has been rumored to be a 2020 contender, has been a solid voice in standing up to Trump s rhetoric and vowed to protect minorities in New York after Trump won the election.","label":1}
{"text":"The president of the European Commission said on Wednesday he saw no prospect of Turkey joining the EU in the foreseeable future but he had a more optimistic message for six Western Balkan nations also seeking membership. The European Union has become increasingly critical of Turkey s decades-long membership drive after President Tayyip Erdogan launched a major crackdown on critics - including journalists and academics - after a failed 2016 coup. Turkey has been taking giant strides away from the European Union for some time, Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the executive Commission, said in his annual keynote speech to the European Parliament on the state of the bloc. Accession candidates must give the rule of law, justice and fundamental rights utmost priority. This rules out EU membership for Turkey for the foreseeable future. Juncker referred to a war of words between Berlin and Ankara, in which Erdogan accused Berlin of Nazi-like tactics, prompting Chancellor Angela Merkel to call for an end to Turkey s membership talks, despite it being a crucial NATO ally. Journalists belong in newsrooms not in prisons. They belong where freedom of expression reigns, Juncker said. Stop insulting our member states by comparing their leaders to fascists and Nazis. Formally ending Turkey s accession negotiations would require unanimity among EU states, which is lacking, though majority backing is enough to suspend them. EU leaders will discuss Turkey at a summit in Brussels in October, though any formal decision may not come before next spring. Juncker put a final stamp on the EU s recently-revived engagement in the Balkans, where Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Kosovo all want to join the EU one day. If we want more stability in our neighborhood, then we must maintain a credible enlargement perspective for the Western Balkans, Juncker said. The region on the EU s south-eastern edge, still scarred by the wars fought along political, ethnic and religious lines in the 1990s, is important for the bloc for issues from controlling immigration to countering security threats. Earlier this year, the EU accused Russia of seeking to destabilize the Western Balkans - which Moscow denied - and its concerns have led to a renewed engagement in the region. With Britain now scheduled to exit the EU in 2019, Juncker said he saw no new enlargement of the bloc before 2020. But thereafter the European Union will be greater than 27 in number, he added. EU officials say Serbia, Albania and Macedonia could be closest to joining, possibly allowing for an EU of 30 states by around 2025, though they avoid setting any firm deadlines. Juncker s comments came in a speech in which he urged the EU to catch the wind in its sails after years of battling crises from the euro zone to migration to Brexit.","label":0}
{"text":"Secret Service agents rushed Donald trump offstage on Saturday evening during a rally in Reno, Nevada after they determined a protester in the audience posed a threat to the Republican presidential candidate. Go! Go! agents shouted as they whisked him away and a combination of local police and private security wrestled the suspect to the ground. Thousands of people scattered like a sea of bodies, screams rang out and authorities dragged the man away as he kicked and strained after someone shouted gun in the audience, causing the ensuing chaos.","label":1}
{"text":"They are Louisiana horsemen, Keith and Kent Desormeaux, who, as soon as they were able to walk, were strapped atop quarter horses and inexpensive thoroughbreds to race at bush tracks named Cajun Downs and Quarter Pole. Their father, uncles and neighbors placed bets on them while their mamas and aunts fingered rosary beads, praying they would not get hurt. They mostly came home safe, and when it was time to continue their racetrack education, they worked their way through their home tracks, Evangeline and Jefferson Downs, and bounced around other minor league outposts until they landed here in Maryland \u2014 Keith as an aspiring trainer, and Kent hoping to be a jockey. So it felt right here Saturday when Keith gave Kent a leg up on a colt by the name of Exaggerator that has run his heart out with enough regularity to have won four of his 10 starts, but lately had been chasing the back end and the legend of a horse named Nyquist. In four previous races, Kent and Exaggerator had failed to get by Nyquist. That was nothing to be ashamed of \u2014 Nyquist was the reigning champion, and he rolled into the 141st running of the Preakness Stakes undefeated in eight races. Not this time. Exaggerator outran Cherry Wine, who finished second, and Nyquist, who was third, to win the Preakness on a track and end Nyquist's bid for a Triple Crown. The Desormeaux brothers knew that this time, things were going to be different. It was a miserable day at Pimlico Race Course, as a cold mist descended on an already drenched oval, transforming the racetrack into a soupy gumbo that was every bit as haunting as the swamps that they grew up near in southwest Louisiana. They loved it because in three previous races, Exaggerator had taken to a muddy track like \u2026 well \u2026 a duck to water. He had won two stakes on wet tracks. So when Kent Desormeaux, a Hall of Famer, edged his colt into the No. 5 gate, glanced inside and saw Mario Gutierrez aboard Nyquist, he knew that muddy track or not, his brother Keith had Exaggerator geared up and ready to go. This was only the second leg of the Triple Crown, but Nyquist had been so dominant in a brief but gaudy career that his camp, especially the trainer Doug O'Neill, was confident that they were pulling into New York three weeks from now intent on cracking into the history books alongside American Pharoah, last year's Triple Crown champion. The Desormeaux brothers, however, were not the only ones determined to make Nyquist earn his honors \u2014 from the Fernando Perez aboard Uncle Lino and Jevian Toledo aboard Awesome Speed harassed Gutierrez into pushing Nyquist to go faster than the colt wanted. \"They had him surrounded,\" said Kent Desormeaux, who had Exaggerator skipping over the puddles like a water scooter while Nyquist was fighting off his challengers through a wicked of 46. 56 seconds and a taxing of a mile in 1 minute 11. 97 seconds. Then something remarkable happened: Desormeaux saw a sliver of space along the rail turn into a highway. The riders ahead of him were moving their horses outside. So Desormeaux squirted Exaggerator inside, and the colt shimmied up the backstretch like a seal, utterly enjoying it. In the clubhouse, Keith Desormeaux felt his heart drop. No, he felt worse than that. After decades of sharp words and bloodied knuckles, familial diplomacy had long been retired. \"I wanted to strangle him,\" he said of his brother. \"All day, everyone was riding outside, and he's taking my horse right into the quagmire. \" But Kent had done his homework in and had determined not only that the rail offered the shortest distance between two points, but that the footing was firm and fast. When his rider asked Exaggerator to go, the colt looked as if he had grown a motor as he whipped around the far turn. A calming breath returned to Keith. \"He is a Hall of Famer,\" Keith conceded. As the contenders turned for home, Gutierrez felt Nyquist's legs go out from underneath him. \"I could feel Exaggerator coming,\" he said. He asked for more, but the colt was wobbling. \"There was nothing I could do,\" Gutierrez said. So Kent Desormeaux vaulted his colt to the outside and rushed past Nyquist as if he were on a conveyor belt. The sight of another horse passing Nyquist roused the colt, and he fought back, mounting one last push. O'Neill locked in on his colt and prepared for a stretch battle. For an instant, he thought Nyquist might come back. There was no chance. Desormeaux crossed his reins, chirped in Exaggerator's ear and held on as his colt took off. It was over. Not only was Nyquist not catching Exaggerator, he was unable to hold off the Cherry Wine for second place. \"I didn't think we could get beat,\" O'Neill said. The Desormeaux brothers, on the other hand, knew they could not lose. The record will show Exaggerator completed the race in 1:58. 31 and earned a $900, 000 check for his owners, Big Chief Racing L. L. C. and raised his career earnings to nearly $3 million. Those who believed in the colt collected $7. 20 for a $2 bet. But that was nothing to the charge that the result put into two brothers who had blossomed from the bush tracks of Louisiana to the old racetrack that had given them their first taste of the big time. It was hardly old hat for Kent \u2014 even if this was his third Preakness victory \u2014 but it was the first Triple Crown win for his brother. Neither Kent nor Keith is an affectionate sort, and by their own admission, they bicker and fight more than they share kind words and warm embraces. \"I got a fist pump,\" Keith said of their postrace celebration. \"When you know the type of love we have in our family,\" he added, \"you really don't have to show it. \"","label":0}
{"text":"November 6, 2016 Greatest Basketball Player Of Our Era To Help First Woman President Beat Biggest Asshole Of All Time Google Pinterest Digg Linkedin Reddit Stumbleupon Print Delicious Pocket Tumblr  He is perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, certainly of the current era, and he's with her.  Cleveland's LeBron James has announced that he will be stumping for Hillary when she makes a stop in the crucial city in one of the most hotly contested battleground states in the country. James and Clinton will appear together at a get-out-the-vote rally at the Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio in the late afternoon. This will be James's first appearance with Clinton. In fact, a source says, the two have never met. James \u2013 a hero to many Ohio sports fans, especially in the African American community \u2013 could prove helpful to Clinton's effort to win the state's 18 electoral votes. While Clinton is handily beating Donald Trump among African American voters, she is struggling to gin up enthusiasm. According to the 2010 census, 53 percent of Clevelanders are African American.  The stakes could not be higher. If Clinton can win Ohio, there is almost no scenario in which Trump can win. If Ohio goes for Trump, then he has a real shot of becoming president. As Ohio's biggest star (sorry, John Kasich), James has a lot of power to motivate people to get out and vote. It could be a difference-maker in a tight election.  James' decision to stump with Hillary comes after other big-name celebrities publicly expressed their support for her campaign. Just days ago, musical power couple Beyonce and Jay Z held a concert in support of Clinton. The star power has spooked Trump's campaign, as evidenced by the fact that they are claiming the celebrities backing Hillary give her an \"unfair\" advantage. Trump, a man who once okay'd a DJ calling his daughter a \"piece of ass\" and who bragged about grabbing women \"by the pussy,\" went so far as to lament the language used in some of Jay Z's songs.  \"He used every word in the book last night,\" Trump said. \"He used language last night that was so bad and then Hillary said, 'I did not like Donald Trump's lewd language.' My lewd language. I tell you what, I've never said what he said in my life.\"  Eye roll.  Meanwhile, in related news, Trump will be campaigning with his own star power tonight. The cream of the crop. The best of the best. The A-lister\u2026Ted Nugent. A man who once \" joked \" about shooting Hillary Clinton with a machine gun.  \"Obama, he's a piece of shit. I told him to suck on my machine gun. Hey Hillary,\" he continued. \"You might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch.\"  Yeah, Trump sure seems concerned about what language musicians use.","label":1}
{"text":"Attorney General Jeff Sessions hit back against any implication of improper meetings with Russian officials in a prepared opening to his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Tuesday. [\"Let me state this clearly colleagues. I have never met with or had any conversation with any Russian or any foreign officials concerning any type of interference with any campaign or election in the United States,\" Sessions told the committee. \"Further, I have no knowledge of any such conversations by anyone connected to the Trump campaign. \" He then became more indignant, saying: The suggestion that I participated in any collusion or that I was aware of any collusion with the Russian government to hurt this country, which I have served with honor for 35 years, or to undermine the integrity of our democratic process, is an appalling and detestable lie. The attorney general has been dogged by implications of dishonesty and impropriety regarding his supposed contacts with the Russians since it became clear he neglected to mention meeting Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak at the Republican National Convention during his confirmation hearings. Some Democrats have even called for Sessions to resign over the matter. Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Mark Warner ( ) opened the hearing imputing a possible additional meeting between Sessions and Kisylak at the Mayflower Hotel in April 2016. Sessions countered this suggestion. His prepared remarks insisted: I did not have any private meetings nor do I recall any conversations with any Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel. I did not attend any meetings at that event. Prior to the speech, I attended a reception with my staff that included at least two dozen people and President Trump. Though I do recall several conversations I had during that reception, I do not have any recollection of meeting or talking to the Russian Ambassador or any other Russian officials. If any brief interaction occurred in passing with the Russian Ambassador during that reception, I do not remember it. After the speech, I was interviewed by the news media, which had gathered as I remember in a different room, and then I left the hotel. As for the confirmed meeting between the pair at the RNC, which became the basis of his alleged \"lie\" at his confirmation hearing, Sessions was equally unconvinced. \"There is the assertion that I did not answer Senator Franken's question honestly at my confirmation hearing. Colleagues, that is false,\" Sessions said to his fellow senators, smiling as he corrected himself. \"I can't say colleagues anymore \u2026 former colleagues. \" \"This is what happened,\" Sessions continued: Senator Franken asked me a rambling question after some six hours of testimony that included dramatic, new allegations that the United States intelligence community, the U. S. intelligence community, had advised Trump that \"there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump's surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government. \" I was taken aback by that explosive allegation, which he said was being reported as breaking news that very day and which I had not heard. I wanted to refute \u2014 immediately \u2014 any suggestion that I was part of such activity. I replied, quote, \"Senator Franken, I'm not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn't have \u2014 did not have communications with the Russians, and I'm unable to comment on it,\" end quote. That was the context in which I was asked the question and in that context it was a fair and accurate response to the charge as I understood it. Session explicitly acknowledged the meetings between him an Kislyak, one at his Senate office and the other after a speech Sessions delivered at the RNC last July, but told the committee, \"Not one thing happened that was improper in any one of these meetings. \" But Sessions also took issue with the entire idea his seeing the Russian ambassador had anything to do with the investigation into Russian election interference that ostensibly is the subject of Tuesday's hearing. \"Whether I ever attended a reception where the Russian Ambassador was also present is entirely beside the point of this investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 campaigns,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Iraq s top Shi ite cleric opposes the secession of the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq, his representative said in a Friday sermon on his behalf, in the religious leader s first comments on the Kurds decision to back independence in a referendum. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a reclusive octogenarian, is revered by millions of Shi ite Muslims in Iraq and abroad. Sistani believes that any attempt to make secession an accomplished fact will lead to undesired consequences affecting Kurdish citizens , his representative Ahmed al-Safi said in the sermon in the holy Shi ite city of Kerbala, south of Baghdad. He urged the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to return to the constitutional path in solving disputes such as self-determination for the Kurdish people, Safi said. It is the first direct political sermon by Sistani since early 2016, in a clear sign that he attaches importance to the crisis pitting the KRG against Baghdad and Iraq s neighbors. Sistani stopped making direct political comments in Feb. 2016, in protest at the widespread and deep-rooted corruption within Iraqi government institutions. Most Iraqi Kurds are Sunni Muslims but Kurdish northern Iraq is also home to some Shi ite Turkmens and Arabs. The Shi ite-led government in Baghdad is set to impose a ban on international flights to and from Iraq s Kurdistan region from 6 p.m. (1500 GMT) on Friday, in retaliation for the vote. Masoud Barzani s KRG says Monday s referendum, which delivered an overwhelming yes for independence, was meant to pave the way for a peaceful secession from Iraq, through talks with Baghdad and neighboring states Turkey and Iran. Barzani said last week one reason for holding the referendum was because he feared Iraq, split between a Shi ite majority and Sunni minority, was becoming a sectarian-based theocracy , not a proper democracy as promised after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted veteran ruler Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi government has rejected any talks with the KRG and demanded that the Kurdish leadership cancel the result in order to avoid sanctions, international isolation and possibly a military intervention.","label":0}
{"text":"When U.S. President Donald Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, their summit will be marked not only by deep policy divisions but a clash of personalities between America's brash \"tweeter-in-chief\" and Beijing's cautious, calculating leader. They may have one thing in common: their rhetoric about restoring their nations to greatness. But the two men differ in almost every other respect, from their political styles to their diplomatic experience, adding uncertainty to what has been called the world's most important bilateral relationship. Five months after his election on a stridently anti-China platform, Trump appears to have set himself on a course for collision rather than conciliation with Xi, raising doubts as to whether the world's two biggest economies can find common ground. Topping the agenda at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida will be whether he will make good on his threat to use crucial U.S.-China trade ties to pressure Beijing to do more to rein in its nuclear-armed neighbor North Korea, which is working to develop missiles capable of hitting the United States. Trump, a 70-year-old former real estate magnate with no foreign policy experience before entering the White House, has tweeted that it will be a \"very difficult\" meeting with the veteran Communist Party leader seven years his junior, given Chinese trade practices he says are killing U.S. jobs. He has also demanded that Beijing do more to \"solve\" the North Korean problem \u2013 his biggest national security challenge - or he will act alone to deal with Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs. Some White House aides believe Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner could be an influential moderating voice on how he handles Xi in their talks on Thursday and Friday. Contacts between Kushner and China's U.S. envoy helped smooth the way for the meeting, according to current and former U.S. officials. Even so, what worries the protocol-conscious Chinese more than policy clashes is the risk that the unpredictable Trump could publicly embarrass Xi, after several foreign leaders experienced awkward moments with the new U.S. president. \"Ensuring President Xi does not lose face is a top priority for China,\" a Chinese official said. U.S. presidents' meetings with their Chinese counterparts are usually more tightly scripted than with other foreign leaders, something Chinese officials insist on to make sure they are treated with the decorum they believe befits a global power. This summit should offer a study in contrasts: Trump impatient, outspoken and prone to angry tweet-storms; Xi, outwardly calm and measured, with no known social media presence. Their shared nationalist tendencies could aggravate friction between their countries, which are increasingly global rivals. Trump insists the United States has been cheated economically for decades by countries like China and must regain its luster, while Xi wants China, once an ancient empire, to be able to flex its muscles on the world stage. \"Xi and Trump are not natural friends,\" said a former senior U.S. official specializing in Asia. \"The question is when Trump's 'Make America Great Again' hits Xi's 'Chinese Dream', what's the result?\" It remains unclear how far Trump will go in translating populist rhetoric into policy that steps up pressure on China, given the risk of a trade war neither country can afford. But aides say he won't pull his punches, especially on trade, on which he has held an outspoken view for decades. This adds to doubts as to whether the two leaders can find common ground on North Korea and China's expansive claims in the South China Sea. Some analysts question whether Trump can get the better of Xi, who was born into a life of politics and has a reputation for being a tough tactician. \"Xi's performed pretty well in these types of environments,\" said Christopher Johnson, a China expert and former CIA analyst at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies. While Trump has been in office little more than 10 weeks, Xi has honed his U.S. strategy since assuming the Chinese leadership in 2013. The son of a revolutionary leader, Xi has sought to project the image internationally of a strong advocate of globalization at a time when Trump has stoked fears of U.S. protectionism. Still, Chinese officials are mindful of the pitfalls if Trump veers off-script. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe found himself in a long, uncomfortable handshake at the White House in February, and Trump appeared to ignore German Chancellor Angela Merkel's offer of a handshake during their meeting last month. An acrimonious call between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull caused particular concern in Beijing, officials there say. Still, the decision to hold a summit so early in Trump's presidency suggests both Washington and Beijing see the value of trying to build a personal relationship between the two leaders. Trump goes into the meeting with significant gaps in his team of Asia advisers and his China policy still not fully formulated. Hardliners like trade adviser Peter Navarro, who authored a book \"Death by China,\" have feuded over the administration's approach to China with more pragmatic aides such as economic adviser Gary Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs president, current and former U.S. officials say. Administration officials argue Trump can use his \"Art of the Deal\" sales techniques to convince Xi that China needs the United States more than the United States needs China, especially when it comes to market access. But analysts say the Chinese are shrewd enough at geopolitics to fend off U.S. demands. Xi may also see Trump politically weakened by his high-profile legislative failure on healthcare as well as his low public approval ratings. Trump has already backed down on China's most sensitive issue - Taiwan - having first infuriated Beijing by suggesting he might not abide by Washington's long-standing \"one China\" policy. Trump may now feel he is owed a favor in return. A fence-mending phone call in February was arranged by Kushner and China's U.S. ambassador, Cui Tiankai, officials say, after Cui invited Trump's daughter Ivanka to the Chinese Embassy's Lunar New Year reception, where her daughter sang in Mandarin. Both sides are keeping expectations low for tangible outcomes from the summit, billed as informal \"get to know you\" meetings similar to the 2013 Sunnylands summit in California between Xi and Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama. And whatever else, unlike Abe's February visit to Mar-a-Lago, there will be no golf diplomacy: China's Communist Party associates golf with shady dealings and has sought to stop officials from playing it as part of Xi's fight against corruption.","label":0}
{"text":"posted by Eddie A burial slab believed to have held the body of Jesus Christ before he was resurrected has been uncovered for the first time in centuries by a restoration team in Jerusalem. The original limestone shelf, known as a \"burial bed,\" was exposed during the restoration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after being covered by marble since at least 1555 A.D. \"It will be a long scientific analysis, but we will finally be able to see the original rock surface on which, according to tradition, the body of Christ was laid,\" Fredrik Hiebert, an archaeologist involved in the discovery, told National Geographic . According to scripture, Jesus Christ was laid on the shelf in the tomb after dying at the crucifixion around 33 A.D. After three days his remains were discovered to be missing and Jesus was said to have appeared over a span of 40 days before ascending into heaven. The discovery was made by a team of scientists from the National Technical University of Athens (NTU) who were making restorations to the Edicule ( \"little house\" ), a structure which had been built around the tomb. Researchers now hope to study the original surface to better understand the original tomb and how it evolved to become one of the most sacred sites in Christendom. \"We are at the critical moment for rehabilitating the Edicule,\" Chief Scientific Supervisor Professor Antonia Moropoulou told National Geographic. \"The techniques we're using to document this unique monument will enable the world to study our findings as if they themselves were in the tomb of Christ.\" The newly-uncovered surface was described as having a grey-beige stone surface. Also known as the Church of the Resurrection, its custody is shared between six Christian sects including the Greek Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the Armenian Orthodox Church, whom together invited the NTU to undertake the restoration. At a cost of US$4 million, (\u20ac3.7 million) the restoration was not cheap, with major donors including Jordan's King Abdullah II and Mica Ertegun, widow of Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun. From Around the Web Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie ( 8899 Posts )  Eddie L. is the founder and owner of WorldTruth.TV. and Womansvibe.com. Both website are dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 36+ years researching Bible, History, Alternative Health, Secret Societies, Symbolism and many other topics that are not reported by mainstream media.","label":1}
{"text":"John Moore has an interesting political background. Currently, he is serving Assembly District 8 (AD8) as a Republican and has changed parties to seek re-election as a Libertarian for the November 8, 2016, legislative election. Moreover, before he was a right-wing politician, he ran for office as Democrat. One could certainly question where this candidate's allegiances lie. John Moore's Legislative Candidacies This election marks the third time Moore has sought election for Nevada's Legislative office. In 2012, Moore ran for office as a Democrat. He competed against the incumbent, Jason Frierson and lost in the primary race to the incumbent. His loss was 32.4 percent of the vote to Frierson's 67.6. In 2014 Moore sought the office once again, this time, he ran as a Republican. His opponent was incumbent Democrat, Frierson. Moore barely won his bid in the general election. He won with a 40 vote lead; he garnered 50.2 percent versus the incumbent's 49.8. Interestingly, he never officially changed parties. After winning the election, as a Republican, he was still listed as a Democrat with the Secretary of State. As a Libertarian in the 2016 race, he is the Republican incumbent. AD8 has three men seeking to serve Nevadans in Carson City. The assemblyman's opponents are Republican Norm Ross and Democrat Jason Frierson. The assemblyman in the only minor-party incumbent on the November ballot. When he changed his party in January 2016, his explanation was that he locked horns with many of his Republican counterparts. He further explained his party affiliation move to Libertarian as his desire to be an in-the-middle candidate and to avoid pandering to any individual party, according to Las Vegas Review-Journal. John Moore's History During the 2015 Legislative Session As with any Republican, Moore ran on the promise of no new taxes for Nevada. Unfortunately, for the Republican-held Assembly, the state's Governor, Brain Sandoval (R) and lobbyists had a different agenda. Due to his health problems, Moore missed several crucial votes. In fact, the Conservative Scorecard indicates that during the general session in 2015 he cast two votes and missed eight \u2013 or 20 percent. However, when he managed to be present and cast his ballot, his choices did not support the GOP party-line. His two votes were on the following pro-conservation bills. There was a special session in December 2015. Moore voted his consent to give a foreign corporation a tax break. An electric car manufacturer called Faraday Future received $335 million in incentives to bring the Chinese-backed American start-up company specializing in technology to Nevada. In a special session during October 2016, Moore cast a yes vote on the Stadium bill. While constituents opinions are split about the stadium being built in Las Vegas, Republicans typically do not vote to increase taxes. Norm Ross, one of his 2016 opponents, states that Moore supports open borders, as evident with his vote to give money to a foreign-owned company. Furthermore, the incumbent assemblyman calls himself a conservative Libertarian, which is essentially an oxymoron. John L. Smith chastised the assemblyman's past. He pointed out that the assemblyman-elect appeared to be a sharp dresser who looks as though he could succeed in Carson City. Whereas, he looked less sure of himself in the wanted poster issued by the Las Vegas City Marshal's Office. Smith pointed out that the fine was $792, and it was almost the same amount he spent on his campaign; $800. Moore has been called a lawmaker and a lawbreaker. He appears to change parties on a whim, but there may be underlying reasons or deals that encourage his allegiance discrepancies. Perhaps he merely wants to win no matter the consequences. The question remains: Who is John Moore and which ideology does he truly believe? By Cathy Milne Sources: Ballotpedia: John Moore (Nevada) Las Vegas Sun: New taxes pass Assembly; no-tax Republicans can't undermine Sandoval Las Vegas Review-Journal: Nevada's independent, minor party candidates face long odds USA Today: Nevada lands $1 billion Faraday electric car plant Conservation Scorecard: 2014 Assembly Scorecard Las Vegas Review-Journal: THIS NEW LAWMAKER IS A LAW BREAKER Image Courtesy of Gage Skidmore's moore","label":1}
{"text":"Rapper T. I. unloaded on black celebrities who met with Donald Trump after the election, saying they failed to challenge the president for disrespecting and degrading black voters during the campaign. [The Atlanta \u2014 based artist told the of The View Thursday that he took issue with talk show host Steve Harvey, Kanye West, and football Hall of Famer and civil rights champion Jim Brown meeting with Trump. \"Before you stand and smile and say this is a good man and take pictures, what about addressing the disrespect and disregard for our community that was done?\" T. I. said, adding \"And what about him being the poster child for white supremacy and standing for the people who look to devalue our lives?\" The star of the VH1 reality show T. I. Tiny: The Family Hustle also defended fellow rapper Snoop Dogg, who recently starred in a music video that sees the \"Doggystyle\" rapper pull a gun on and \"shoot\" a parody clown version of President Donald Trump. \"Whatever Snoop said, he had the right to say. He's protected by the Constitution in saying it,\" T. I. said. \"We have to protect our legends. We have to protect our heroes and the people who mean something to us and our community and our culture. \" The View Sunny Hostin suggested that Trump advisor Omarosa Manigault has stated the administration's intention to \"bridge the gap\" between the White House and the black community, to which T. I. responded with a personal insult. \"She can't even bridge the gap in her teeth,\" the rapper said. T. I. had originally defended Snoop Dogg and his controversial video in an Instagram message, calling Trump a \"f*cking tangerine tanned muskrat scrotum skin, lacefront possum fur wig wearing, alternative fact, atomic dog diarrhea face ass man [sic]. \" Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter: @JeromeEHudson","label":0}
{"text":"It has been three weeks since Democrats gathered for their convention, and Hillary Clinton still holds a large and consistent lead in national and battleground state polls. Her national lead over Donald J. Trump of seven to eight percentage points could slip a bit over the next few weeks. But it has been long enough that much of her expected convention \"bounce\" should have faded. It leaves Mr. Trump in an unenviable position: No modern candidate who has trailed by this much a few weeks after the conventions has gone on to win the presidency. On that basis, you can expect a wave of articles about how the presidential race is basically \"over. \" That's probably a bit too strong, at least from a historical point of view. The Upshot's model gives Mrs. Clinton an 88 percent chance of winning. It's about the same probability of hitting a field goal from the line. That's a pretty good way to think about it. If Mrs. Clinton ultimately wins, we will probably look back and say she had more or less already won it by this point. If she loses, these next two months will be talked about for decades. The analogy has one big weakness: She may win this by a lot more than a field goal. The possibility of a landslide victory for Mrs. Clinton \u2014 one larger than any since 1984 in the national popular vote \u2014 is larger than the chance that Mr. Trump will pull it out. According to The Upshot model, Mrs. Clinton has a better shot at winning the red state of South Carolina than Mr. Trump has at winning the presidency. In that sense, perhaps Mrs. Clinton's position is more like having a lead at the beginning of the third quarter. At this point, it's probably fair to say that Mrs. Clinton's lead is real and durable. Gallup data indicates that the bounce is largely over: Both Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton's favorability ratings have returned to where they were before the conventions. Mrs. Clinton's gains have proved relatively durable in part because they've come from voters who seem unlikely to defect to Mr. Trump. Recent polls have shown her with the support of up to 90 percent of Bernie Sanders's supporters, and more than 90 percent of Democrats. There is one key respect in which Mrs. Clinton's big lead doesn't look so durable, at least in historical terms: She holds only around 48 percent of the vote, and has a commanding lead only because Mr. Trump is stuck around 40 percent. In today's polarized electorate, he can be polling so low only because he hasn't unified voters who traditionally lean Republican in presidential elections. Astonishingly, several surveys have shown Mr. Trump with less than 70 percent of Republican voters. This type of disunity is the basic story behind two of the biggest comebacks in modern history, Hubert Humphrey's late surge in 1968 and Gerald Ford's in 1976. Both candidates had divisive conventions, and they left without fully unified parties. Both trailed by double digits in August and September polls, often with less than 35 percent of the vote. But in the end, the Republican faithful returned to Mr. Ford, and most Northern Democrats returned to Mr. Humphrey. Mr. Ford lost by just two percentage points, and Mr. Humphrey by less than one point. The elections ended up as two of the three closest presidential contests of the 20th century. If you're a fan of Mr. Trump looking for hope and a relevant precedent for a comeback, this is my best comparison. No, Mr. Humphrey and Mr. Ford didn't win. But clearly they could have. The problem, though, is that there are unusually good reasons to question whether Mr. Trump will ever reunify voters. Many Republican voters have an unfavorable impression of him \u2014 worse still, many don't even think he has the knowledge, temperament or qualifications to be president, according to polling. The most obvious sign that this year is different is the behavior of Republican politicians: Seven Senate Republicans have not yet endorsed Mr. Trump. This is highly unusual. It's also a problem that could get worse. More Republicans could abandon him, especially if his big deficit in the polls holds, perhaps making it even more acceptable for Republican voters to follow suit. None of this information is incorporated into the statistical models used by The Upshot or other sites, like FiveThirtyEight. To extend the football analogy, the model has no idea whether the quarterback of the trailing team is Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf. If Mr. Trump can't reunify voters, Mrs. Clinton really could win in a landslide. Perhaps many Republicans would skip the presidential race on the ballot, vote for a candidate, or even stay home. A small but important number would vote for Mrs. Clinton. Maybe she could win by something like 54 to 42, and squeak out a win in South Carolina. But if Mr. Trump could make progress in reunifying Republicans, Mrs. Clinton would quickly find herself in a tighter race. She would still have the advantage \u2014 that 48 percent she currently holds in the polls doesn't leave Mr. Trump very much room. To squeak out a win, Mr. Trump would need to win over enough white voters, particularly white men without a degree, to compensate for his weakness among voters and Hispanic and especially women. This is what the polls showed when Mr. Trump was in a close race or even ahead \u2014 as was the case in May or in July. Historically, neither a Clinton landslide nor a close Trump win can be ruled out with days to go. Then again, historically \u2014 based on fundamentals like the \"time for a change\" theory of presidential elections \u2014 one would expect the Republicans to be or even slight favorites to win this election. They are not favored anymore, in no small part because Mr. Trump has been performing a lot more like Mr. Leaf than Mr. Manning. If he keeps doing so over these final months, he could close off what few opportunities he might have left.","label":0}
{"text":"A Republican senator leading the charge on updating little-known investment rules designed to protect national security said that he will soon introduce a bill aimed at reining in potentially dangerous deals done by China. Senator John Cornyn, a member of the Republican leadership who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the Council on Foreign Relations on Thursday that he was concerned by China's attempts to ensure that its military catches up to the U.S. Defense Department in terms of technology. \"China is using every tool at its disposal to close the technology gap between the United States and that country, and in the process, to eliminate our military's technological advantage,\" he said in his speech. Cornyn's office provided Reuters with a copy of the address on Monday. To combat this, Cornyn plans to introduce a bill in Congress that would update the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, an interagency panel led by the Treasury Department that reviews proposed transactions to ensure they do not pose a challenge to national security. The law firm Covington and Burling LLP, which follows CFIUS, said in a note after the speech that it believed that Cornyn's proposed legislation \"may ultimately become law.\" \"Senator Cornyn is among the most influential members of the Senate, and there appears to be an emerging bipartisan consensus that CFIUS should be strengthened,\" the firm said in an analysis on Friday. Cornyn said the legislation would be called the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, and would ensure that CFIUS focuses its investigations on countries which pose the biggest threat to the United States. It would also give CFIUS the authority to look at a broader range of deals, including joint ventures based outside the United States and smaller, minority-position investments which would give the investing companies access to sensitive information, Cornyn said. Cornyn's office did not respond to a query on Monday regarding when the bill would be introduced. CFIUS already has a reputation for being tough on high-tech deals, and has been known in particular to block transactions that involve sophisticated semiconductors. The bill will not expand the committee, which will disappoint those who had pushed for the Agriculture Department to become a member of the panel.","label":0}
{"text":"Wells Fargo's board said on Monday that it would claw back an additional $75 million in compensation from the two executives on whom it pinned most of the blame for the company's scandal over fraudulent accounts: the bank's former chief executive, John G. Stumpf, and its former head of community banking, Carrie L. Tolstedt. The clawbacks \u2014 or forced return of pay and stock grants \u2014 are the largest in banking history and among the largest in corporate America. A committee of Wells Fargo's directors investigated the extensive fraud. Wells Fargo's board said in a report issued on Monday that Mr. Stumpf had turned a blind eye to the fraudulent accounts being created under his nose and that Ms. Tolstedt, who ran the branch system, had focused obsessively on sales targets and withheld information from her boss and the board. Wells Fargo's misdeeds, which came to light in September, have at least temporarily become a more widely recognized symbol of the bank than its signature stagecoach. Bankers across Wells Fargo's giant branch system were tacitly encouraged to meet their sales goals by committing fraud opening unwanted or unneeded accounts in customers' names and, sometimes, moving money into and out of the sham accounts. While the amount of money customers lost was relatively small \u2014 the company has refunded $3. 2 million \u2014 the scope of the fraud was huge: 5, 300 bankers were fired for creating as many as two million unwanted bank and credit card accounts. In one detail revealed by the report, a branch manager had a teenage daughter with 24 accounts and a husband with 21. The warning signs were glaring and could be traced back at least to 2004, the investigators said. Ms. Tolstedt, who ran the national network of Wells Fargo branches, set up ruthless sales goals that even she acknowledged were unreachable. Mr. Stumpf, who had a long and trusting relationship with Ms. Tolstedt, left her on her own to run her department, the investigators said in the scathing report. Neither Ms. Tolstedt, who was allowed to retire in July but was subsequently fired, nor Mr. Stumpf, who was permitted to retire in October after being castigated during congressional hearings on the scandal, was available on Monday to comment. Mr. Stumpf cooperated with the board's investigation Ms. Tolstedt declined to be interviewed. All told, Mr. Stumpf will surrender $69 million, and Ms. Tolstedt will lose $67 million, including stock options that they forfeited last year. While those figures are bigger than any previous bank clawback, they fall far short of the largest clawback in corporate history. In 2007, William W. McGuire of UnitedHealthGroup was forced to give back $618 million over backdating options. Ms. Tolstedt's lawyer, Enu Mainigi of the Washington firm Williams Connolly, issued a statement challenging the board's findings. \"We strongly disagree with the report and its attempt to lay blame with Ms. Tolstedt,\" Ms. Mainigi said. \"A full and fair examination of the facts will produce a different conclusion. \" The board's report, compiled by the law firm Shearman Sterling after interviews with 100 current and former employees and a review of 35 million documents, said it was obvious where the problems lay. Structurally, the bank was too decentralized, with department heads like Ms. Tolstedt given the mantra of \"run it like you own it\" and granted broad authority to shake off questions from superiors, subordinates or lateral colleagues. Many things collectively should have raised suspicion, the report said. Customers were failing to fund, or put money into, their new accounts at alarming rates. Regional managers were imploring their bosses to drop sales goals, saying they were unrealistic and bad for customers. Particularly in Arizona and Los Angeles, where the toxic culture was most pronounced, some managers explicitly told subordinates to sell people accounts even if they did not need them. Because of the bank's decentralized structure, the problem went unnoticed for a long time. When it finally came to light \u2014 thanks in part to an investigation by The Los Angeles Times \u2014 the bank was slow to take action. Mr. Stumpf was warned as early as 2012 about \"numerous\" complaints about the company's sales tactics \u2014 from both customers and employees \u2014 but he ignored growing evidence that the problem was pervasive, the board said in its report. Much of the climate, the report said, stemmed from Ms. Tolstedt, who led Wells Fargo's retail branch network for eight years. The report casts her as a powerful and insular leader who set unreasonable targets, castigated those who criticized them and actively ignored signs that some managers and employees were cheating to meet them. \"She resisted and rejected the near unanimous view of senior regional bank leaders that the sales goals were unreasonable and led to negative outcomes and improper behavior,\" the report said. Timothy J. Sloan, who succeeded Mr. Stumpf as chief executive, was largely exonerated by the report, even though he was also a career Wells Fargo executive. As president and chief operating officer, he became Ms. Tolstedt's immediate supervisor in November 2015. At that point, the report said, he \"assessed her performance over several months before deciding that she should not continue to lead the community bank. \" Mr. Stumpf, who retired in October, exercised all of his remaining options and converted them to stock \u2014 which he retained \u2014 in the months before Wells Fargo announced its $185 million settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Los Angeles city attorney in September. He held 2. 5 million shares as of late February, currently valued at $137 million. Asked about the timing of Mr. Stumpf's options exercise, Stephen W. Sanger, the board's chairman and the leader of its investigation, said at a news conference on Monday that it was a routine move that did not raise concern. The $28 million that the board is taking back from Mr. Stumpf \u2014 the proceeds of a 2013 equity grant \u2014 will be deducted from his retirement plan payouts, Mr. Sanger said. Nearly all public companies have clawback provisions, but boards are typically loath to invoke them. Wells Fargo's example may inspire future directors, said Charles M. Elson, a professor of finance at the University of Delaware and an expert on corporate governance. \"I welcome the move,\" he said. \"I'm a shareholder of Wells Fargo, and I'm glad they did it. \" Mr. Sanger took over as the board's chairman from Mr. Stumpf. All four members of Wells Fargo's independent investigation group were on the board before the settlement was announced. The report depicted the board as hoodwinked by bank executives who withheld important facts. It praised the changes the bank had made recently, which include ending sales goals for its retail bank employees. Such conclusions are unlikely to quiet the bank's critics. Better Markets, a nonprofit organization that advocates stricter regulation of Wall Street, called the report a compendium of \" cosmetic actions\" and called on shareholders to oust all of Wells Fargo's board members at the company's annual meeting on April 25. Two influential advisory firms have also recommended significant changes to the company's board. Mr. Sanger said that the report issued on Monday concluded nearly all of the bank's investigation and that no further terminations or clawbacks were expected. But other investigations \u2014 including criminal inquiries by the Justice Department and several state attorneys general \u2014 remain in progress, raising the possibility of criminal charges. The board's law firm is still looking into reports that the bank retaliated against former employees who tried to blow the whistle on its wrongdoing. Last week, a federal regulator, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the Labor Department, ordered Wells Fargo to rehire and pay $5. 4 million to a former employee who said he was fired after making internal complaints about wrongdoing that he had observed. The agency has also warned Wells Fargo that it is likely to order the bank to reinstate another worker who said she was fired in 2011 after trying to call her supervisors' attention to accounts that she said had been fraudulently created. So far, Shearman Sterling has found no evidence of retaliation, said Stuart J. Baskin, a partner at the firm. \"We still have a few loose ends, but we don't think it's likely to change any findings,\" he said. Wells Fargo is eager to put its sales scandal behind it, but customers are not quite so willing to move on. The number of consumer checking accounts opened in February dropped 43 percent compared with a year earlier, and credit card applications declined 55 percent. The financial damage caused to customers by Wells Fargo's fraudulent acts was relatively minimal, but the issue has loomed large in the public imagination in part because the bank's transgressions were so blatant \u2014 and so simple. \"People getting accounts they didn't sign up for?\" said Stephen Beck, the founder of CG42, a strategy company that studies banks' brand perception. \"I don't need an M. B. A. in finance to understand that's wrong. Our expectation is that it is going to take quite a bit of time for Wells to recover. You can't just advertise 'Trust me,' which is what they've tried to do so far. \" Mr. Sloan, the bank president, said at a news conference after the report was issued that he had some regrets about how the bank's leadership \u2014 and he in particular \u2014 had handled the years of warnings. \"In hindsight, I wish we would have taken more action and would have done things more quickly,\" he said. The bank's sales incentives should have been eliminated sooner, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"On Wednesday, Senator John McCain responded to White House Press Secretary s claim that the massively failed raid in Yemen that left 30 civilians and a Navy SEAL dead, didn t achieve its primary objective, and managed to recover copies of three videos that have been on YouTube for about a decade, a huge success. According to Spicer, any criticism of the raid which Trump authorized over dinner without adequate planning, preparation, or backup after his staffers goaded him with claims that Obama would not have the cajones to do it is a disservice to the dead. The life of chief Ryan Owens was done in service to his country and we owe him and his family a great debt for the information we received during that raid, Spicer said. Any suggestion otherwise is a disservice to his courageous life and the actions he took. Full stop. McCain disagrees: Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! Trump tweeted. He s been losing so long he doesn t know how to win anymore, just look at the mess our country is in bogged down in conflict all over the place. Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! He's been losing so . Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017 long he doesn't know how to win anymore, just look at the mess our country is in bogged down in conflict all over the place. Our hero.. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017..Ryan died on a winning mission ( according to General Mattis), not a \"failure.\" Time for the U.S. to get smart and start winning again! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 9, 2017You know what emboldens the enemy? Failing to kill him. While he did manage to mow down women and children wholesale, Trump s raid missed al Qaeda leader Qassim al-Rimi, the primary target. Since the raid, al-Rimi has been taunting and mocking Trump in his propaganda videos. Our hero Ryan died on a winning mission ( according to General Mattis), not a failure.' Trump concluded triumphantly. Time for the U.S. to get smart and start winning again! It is probably past time for us to get smart and start winning again, but it seems that we will need to wait four years for that. The raid killed about double the number of civilians as it did militants, the important, game-changing intelligence recovered turned out to be decade-old YouTube videos, he missed his primary target, and Yemen revoked our permission to conduct anti-terrorism operations within their borders.If this is winning in Trump s America, it is time for all of us to be frightened. Fortunately, The Internet is here to let Trump know what they think of his new, GREAT America where losing is winning and the Ku Klux Klan is not an extremist group.This won t be the last time Trump gets people killed with his impulsive ego-driven mistakes. @realDonaldTrump https:\/\/t.co\/fmu26DyHHI Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) February 9, 2017.@realDonaldTrump ryan died because you screwed up. his blood and the blood of the american girl who died is on your hands. you did that. Oliver Willis (@owillis) February 9, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Donald, maybe if you pay attention during briefings instead of tweeting about Ivanka's shoes fewer people will die. Bess Kalb (@bessbell) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump There is no greater tribute to a fallen US soldier than for the idiot who got him killed to use his name in a Twitter fight Jon Bershad (@JonBershad) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Jesus Christ. These tweets make you look like a fucking lunatic. BenDavid Grabinski (@bdgrabinski) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump you consider the death of one of your soldiers a \"win\"? Brilliant. Ben Pearce (@BenPearceDJ) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Ryan may have acted heroically but the mission (u decided to send him on over dinner) was an awful failure. https:\/\/t.co\/m2eb2fpcv2 Tim Guinee (@TimGuinee) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Winning! pic.twitter.com\/UAP0CLThAN Letters of Note (@LettersOfNote) February 9, 2017Someone died. Have some humanity. Stop using him as a prop piece for your rhetoric. @realDonaldTrump PORP (@TheOfficialPORP) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Just imagine if Hillary had called Benghazi a \"winning mission\" BenDavid Grabinski (@bdgrabinski) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump how dare you politicize the death of a fallen hero I already had a low opinion of you but I'm absolutely disgusted Rob Gorski (@The_Autism_Dad) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump how dare you not even use his full name, show some respect. You killed Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens. coganut (@Coganuts) February 9, 2017.@realDonaldTrump my god, if that's what's considered \"winning\" or \"successful\" I think the whole world would prefer you to stop, NOW! Eloise-at-midnight (@moonatmidnight) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump There is nothing as shameful as a lying draft dodger sending a hero to his death strictly to feed his ego. You disgust us. Stupid Should Hurt? (@stophrtngusa) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump STOP. TWEETING. YOU sent Ryan on a bad mission. It's on you now when our heroes die. J Throw (@mamathrow) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump nah man you killed a soldier, 30 civilians, and got banned from the country Dolly Doldrums (@_Philosophica) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump While you were asleep in bed. Your incompetence got a Seal killed and you couldn't care enough to be in Situation Room. ECMadTown (@ECmadtown) February 9, 2017And to think @realDonaldTrump signed the order at dinner, never monitored op from SitRoom, and was in bed tweeting when it went down. LOSER! D E V I N (@DevinMillington) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump an 8 year old was shot in the neck and bled out because of you Derek: Dream Hipster (@AnarchistPrince) February 9, 2017.@realDonaldTrump You killed 30 civilians, including an American citizen, AND slaughtered an American soldier AND MISSED YOUR TARGET! Liar Carl Allan Salonen (@CarlASalonen) February 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump How was that a winning mission? You missed your target, who is now mocking you, & we lost a soldier. You failed #WhyIResist FarmersCubed (@FarmersCubed) February 9, 2017William Ryan Owens was a hero exactly the sort of hero who deserves a Commander-in-Chief who cares about the lives of our men and women in uniform, a leader who will not place them in unnecessarily dangerous scenarios just to satisfy his ego. If this is winning, there is only one solution: we need to stop winning. Now.","label":1}
{"text":"It hasn t been a very good time for Ben Carson s campaign to become America s first Black Republican President. But his very public meltdown after getting trashed in Iowa might suggest that he has no place anywhere near the red button anyway.Carson crashed badly in Iowa, picking up just 9% of the vote, leaving him in fourth place behind Ted Cruz (28%), Donald Trump (24%) and Marco Rubio (23%). His explanation? According to Carson, it s all a big conspiracy to keep him out of the race for President. He told supporters in a speech which felt rather more like a public nervous breakdown: I was reasonably happy today until I discovered the dirty tricks that were going on. And people spreading rumors that I had dropped out and that people should caucus for somebody else, he continued. I mean, do you think that that is something that s acceptable? Apparently, Carson is arguing that people didn t vote for him because Ted Cruz told them not to.The candidate insisted his campaign was not over, and yet boarded an early flight home to Florida for rest meanwhile, the other candidates headed straight to New Hampshire or South Carolina to battle the next stage of the Primaries.So while his opponents were off developing their strategy for the next battleground states, Carson decided to write an email to his supporters, and continue his meltdown in public. For months, my campaign has survived the lies and dirty tricks from opponents who profess to to detest the games of the political class, but in reality are masters at it, he wrote. Even tonight, my opponents resorted to political tricks by tweeting, texting and telling precinct captains to announce that I had suspended my campaign in some cases asking caucus goers to change their votes. What is considerably more certain than this conspiracy theory, is that Mr. Carson will be making that exiting from the race announcement soon. Hopefully with a little more grace than he could muster in Iowa. Featured Image via screen capture","label":1}
{"text":"Sam Sifton emails readers of Cooking five days a week to talk about food and suggest recipes. That email also appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. Good morning. I have a column in The Times Magazine today about a recipe for roasted potato hash that I've been messing around with for years now. It makes a superlative bed for eggs and an excellent side dish for steak. You could eat it with a mess of saut\u00e9ed greens and be happy without the animal protein. You should make it entirely your own. Perhaps you could make it for lunch? And then for dinner tonight, you could try the recipe for braised chicken legs that I learned from the teachings of the California chef Cal Peternell, and sop up the sauce with Julia Moskin's recipe for grilled garlic bread. On Monday night, you might go meatless and Balkan, mixing up David Tanis's recipe for a Greek tomato salad and adding some crumbled feta if you like to make it really sing. Or you could go Brazilian in honor of the Olympic Games, with 10 recipes from that nation's larder. For sure on Tuesday you could give Martha Rose Shulman's recipe for shrimp with spicy greens a try. Serve it with Kim Severson's can' rice and then settle in to see what the Olympics have to offer. (You're not, like, in Rio, are you? If you are, or just want to imagine that you are, Florence Fabricant has a fine guide to the city's best restaurant options.) Wednesday night could be good for a steak seared in a pan and served with a platter of saut\u00e9ed summer squash with red pepper and onion, along with leftover rice or a baguette and butter. Then on Thursday night just order a pizza and make Melissa's recipe for eggplant with lamb, tomato and pine nuts while or after you eat it, in advance of serving a really incredible dish \u2014 one that benefits from overnight resting \u2014 on Friday night, as we head into the weekend. Thus fortified, you can wake up on Saturday morning, head to the market and return home to make jam. Go look around on Cooking to discover other things to cook this week. (This recipe for pork chops puttanesca, for instance.) And, if you like, tell us about what you make. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest, where we use and applaud the hashtag #NYTCooking. If you run into problems along the way, don't hesitate to ask for help: cookingcare@nytimes. com. Or if you have a particular question about food or cooking, kitchens or life in and around them, submit it to foodeditor@nytimes. com. I'll be collecting the best of them to answer in a forthcoming \"Hey, Mr. Food Editor\" column for Men's Style. Now, see if you can't find an actual print copy of The Times today. In it we have a beautiful special section devoted to an excerpt from Colson Whitehead's new novel, \"The Underground Railroad. \" Or, if you want to stay online only, try this fascinating account of life as a paramedic in the border town of Laredo, Tex. in California Sunday. Watch the trailer for \"Little Men. \" Read Tessa Hadley's new short story, \"Dido's Lament,\" in The New Yorker. And watch Melissa cook the \"impossible meat\" that you may have been hearing about, on Facebook. See you tomorrow.","label":0}
{"text":"The United States is not coordinating its military operations in Syria with Russia, the White House said on Thursday. \"At present, the United States is not conducting or coordinating military operations with Russia,\" White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a news briefing. \"I know there's some speculation that an agreement may be reached to do so, but it's not clear that will happen.\"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday called on his fellow conservatives to unify in an election year, warning them to refrain from the kind of infighting that frustrated and eventually drove out his predecessor, the more moderate John Boehner. Ryan, in remarks to Heritage Action, one of the influential conservative groups that vexed Boehner with constant demands for more spending curbs and smaller government, said divisions among Republicans played into the hands of Democrats. \"Let's not fight over tactics. Don't impugn people's motives,\" said Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who took over the top post in the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives last October. But as he spoke, discontent was brewing among conservative Republicans in the House over the U.S. budget for the coming year. Late last year, more than 160 Republicans out of 246 voted against a two-year budget deal Boehner reached with the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama. On Wednesday, Ryan did not mention Boehner by name. He urged conservatives not to use their disagreements, including over appropriations, as a litmus test for supporting each other. \"It's fine if you disagree ... But we can't let how someone votes on an amendment to an appropriations bill define what it means to be a conservative,\" Ryan said. He cautioned conservatives against standing in \"a circular firing squad.\" Heritage Action is an affiliate of the conservative Heritage Foundation research group. Boehner blamed such outside groups for pushing him into a 16-day government shutdown in 2013. He retired last September, weary from fighting with more conservative members who have increased their numbers in the chamber in the past few years. Ryan could soon see Republican unity tested over decisions on fiscal policy, also a theme in the campaign for the November presidential election. The budget deal reached late last year exceeded strict spending caps by $80 billion over two years, to pump up defense and domestic programs. It is to be used as a framework for budget and appropriations legislation this year. Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus did not vote for it. Ryan, trying to allay concerns, hosted the Freedom Caucus in his office Tuesday evening for \"'budget and beers,'\" a spokeswoman said. Freedom Caucus member Representative John Fleming of Louisiana said the meeting was cordial, with Ryan listening to the group's objections to higher spending. \"We didn't walk out with any agreements,\" Fleming said. Also on Tuesday, Obama and Ryan had their first formal meeting as they search for areas where they may be able to overcome policy differences.","label":0}
{"text":"American tourist Nicholas Burkhead said he d be happy to return to his latest holiday destination, with its beautiful scenery, great food and friendly people. The problem is, the destination was North Korea and a U.S. State Department ban on travel to the isolated country takes effect on Friday. Burkhead, a 35-year-old resident of Virginia, was among the last American tourists to leave North Korea, landing on Thursday in Beijing. I was surprised at how friendly everyone was, Burkhead said after stepping off the last scheduled flight to Beijing from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, before the U.S. travel ban kicks in. It was very relaxing - beautiful scenery and they fed us very well in the restaurants there, but the exchange rate wasn t too good for the local won, he told a waiting scrum of reporters. Burkhead arrived in Beijing on North Korea s state-owned Air Koryo after visiting Pyongyang as well as the city of Kaesong near the heavily armed border with South Korea. His five-day tour cost 1,850 euros ($2,200). Other Americans on the flight included two aid workers as well as Jamie Banfill, 32, who had led tours to North Korea but was visiting this time as a tourist. Banfill, who had made the trip to say goodbyes after regularly traveling to the North for a decade, said the travel ban short-sighted. It s an extremely complex situation on the Korean peninsula and they oversimplified it, he said. The United States last month announced a ban on U.S. passport holders from traveling to North Korea, effective Sept. 1. Journalists and humanitarian workers are allowed to apply for exemptions under the ban, which is similar to previous U.S. restrictions on travel to Iraq and Libya. Heidi Linton, director of Christian Friends of Korea, who has been working in North Korea for more than 20 years, told reporters she worried about the people her aid group helped, if her exemption was not granted soon. We started a hepatitis B program and we have 705 patients that have been started on life-saving medicine, that if they go off that medicine then their lives are in danger, she said. It was not immediately clear how many Americans had sought, or been granted, exemptions or how many were still in North Korea. An official at the state department said it was not able to give an estimate on the number of U.S. citizens there. North Korea is under growing international pressure over its nuclear tests and repeated ballistic missile launches, including one this week that flew over northern Japan. The U.S. ban on travel to North Korea followed the death of U.S. college student Otto Warmbier, who was jailed during a tour last year. Warmbier, who was sentenced to 15 years hard labor for trying to steal a propaganda sign, was returned to the United States in a coma in June and died six days later. The circumstances surrounding his death are not clear, including why he fell into a coma. Warmbier had been detained leaving the airport in Pyongyang. I was expecting a strict security check on exit but there was nothing like that, Burkhead said. The State Department declared U.S. passports invalid for travel to, in or through North Korea. The restriction applies for one year unless extended or revoked by the secretary of state. North Korean state media has described the ban as a sordid attempt to limit human exchanges. North Korea is currently holding two Korean-American academics and a missionary, as well as three South Korean nationals who were doing missionary work. This month, North Korea released a Canadian pastor who had been imprisoned there for more than two years. Hundreds of Americans are among the 4,000 to 5,000 Western tourists who visit North Korea annually, according to U.S. lawmaker Joe Wilson.","label":0}
{"text":"And the winner is the Anti-Billionaire or the guy who detests rich people or how about the guy who made a LOT of people rich during his campaign, but did absolutely nothing for the less fortunate with his windfall. In fact, we reported about hundreds of homeless people who were kicked out of a venue they used as a warming hut on the coldest night of the year because socialist Bernie Sanders (who cares so much for the poor and underprivileged) was about to host a rally in that venue. Oh well the show must go on who has time for homeless people who likely won t vote .right hypocrite Bernie?The small-dollar fundraising juggernaut that has kept Bernie Sanders s insurgent White House bid afloat far longer than anticipated has generated another unexpected impact: a financial windfall for his team of Washington consultants.As donations surged this year, the Sanders campaign ratcheted up its spending each month, racing through an astounding $45 million in March alone.By the end of March, the self-described democratic socialist senator from Vermont had spent nearly $166 million on his campaign more than any other 2016 presidential contender, including rival Hillary Clinton. More than $91 million went to a small group of admakers and media buyers who produced a swarm of commercials and placed them on television, radio and online, according to a Washington Post analysis of Federal Election Commission reports.While the vast majority of that money was passed along to television stations and websites to pay for the advertising, millions in fees were kept by the companies, The Post calculated. While it is impossible to determine precisely how much the top consultants have earned, FEC filings indicate the top three media firms have reaped payments of seven figures.Sanders s money blitz, fueled by a $27 average donation that he repeatedly touts, has improbably made the anti-billionaire populist the biggest spender so far in the election cycle. The campaign s wealth has been a surprising boon for vendors across the county who signed on to his long-shot bid.The large profits stem in part from the fact that no one in Sanders s campaign imagined he would generate such enormous financial support. So unlike Clinton, he did not cap how much his consultants could earn in commissions from what was expected to be a bare-bones operation, according to campaign officials.A campaign spokesman declined to comment on whether Sanders feels the high fees earned by his media consultants are appropriate.","label":1}
{"text":"Infowars uncovered a bombshell when they discovered the Facebook page of one of Judge Roy Moore s accusers, Debbie Gibson, who came out in a Washington Post article to accuse him of sexual misconduct that allegedly took place 36 years ago.Debbie Wesson Gibson says that she was 17 in the spring of 1981 when Moore spoke to her Etowah High School civics class about serving as the assistant district attorney. She says that when he asked her out, she asked her mother what she would say if she wanted to date a 34-year-old man. Gibson says her mother asked her who the man was, and when Gibson said Roy Moore, her mother said, I d say you were the luckiest girl in the world. Among locals in Gadsden, a town of about 47,000 back then, Moore had this godlike, almost deity status he was a hometown boy made good, Gibson says, West Point and so forth. Gibson says that they dated for two to three months, and that he took her to his house, read her poetry and played his guitar. She says he kissed her once in his bedroom and once by the pool at a local country club. Looking back, I m glad nothing bad happened, says Gibson, who now lives in Florida. As a mother of daughters, I realize that our age difference at that time made our dating inappropriate. Debbie Gibson hates Donald Trump, but that s not all, she s pretty fond of Judge Roy Moore s opponent, Doug Ross for US Senate In Alabama as well Here are a few anti-Trump posts that were found on Gibson s Facebook page: One of senatorial candidate Roy Moore s accusers is apparently a fervent Democrat who has worked for the DNC as a sign language interpreter for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, a revelation which the Washington Post never included in its original report.The accuser, Debbie Gibson, had also publically supported Moore s opponent Doug Jones before the accusations came to light.Gibson openly bragged about signing for Hillary during a campaign appearance. On a side note, we re not sure who she s signing for. The crowd behind Hillary, that is usually packed with the Democrats hand-picked diverse crowd, appears to be pretty thin.Here s a post from Gibson s page proving that she s supporting Judge Roy Moore s Democrat opponent for US Senate:She even posted a video of Moore s opponent, Doug Jones to promote him to her friends on Facebook. The screenshot below shows the post on her page. Interestingly, when attacking Moore ally Steve Bannon for suggesting the Washington Post was politically motivated in its reporting, the newspaper implied that Gibson wasn t down with Democratic propaganda, a statement which seemingly conflicts with Gibson s political activism:That s not what the photos say The Washington Post reported: According to campaign reports, none of the women has donated to or worked for Moore s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, or his rivals in the Republican primary But notice the precise wording; it s lawyer-speak. It might very well be true that Gibson didn t donate or work for Doug Jones, but according to her Facebook profile, she did actively campaign for him, which doesn t help her credibility and it should have been reported yet the Washington Post conveniently left it out.","label":1}
{"text":"Fox is not only number one with racists, the network is apparently number one at hiring racists as well.After a video of a school valedictorian went viral because Mayte Lara Ibarra told the audience that she is an undocumented immigrant during her speech, a Fox Sports reporter simply could not accept that a Latino is smart enough to be at the top of the class.During a Barstool Rundown associated with Republican nominee Donald Trump and his plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, Fox reporter Emily Austen openly questions the intelligence of Mexicans and made racist comments about Asians and Jews. I didn t even know Mexicans were that smart, Austen said. She also derided Jews as stingy and claimed the Chinese guy is always the smartest guy in math class. Here s the video via Vimeo. Austen s remarks begin at the 24 minute mark.Well, while racist Trump supporters probably appreciated Austen s comments, they didn t go down well with her bosses at Fox Sports, who promptly removed her from the air for the time being.Fox Sports General Manager Steve Tello condemned Austen s comments and quickly made it clear that Fox Sports had nothing to do with them. We were made aware that Emily Austen appeared in a social media video unaffiliated with Fox Sports in which she made insensitive and derogatory comments. She was not speaking on behalf of Fox Sports, nor do we condone any of the statements she made in the video. Emily has been advised that her comments were unacceptable, and she is not scheduled to appear on any upcoming Fox Sports Florida or Fox Sports Sun broadcasts. These kinds of stereotypical precepts have no place in our society, but this is the kind of America that Donald Trump is hoping to create. As a public media figure, Austen should have known better. It would like someone saying that all blondes are dumb. However, that stereotype appears to be true in Austen s case.","label":1}
{"text":"Before Donald Trump's put-downs and the stumbles in presidential debates, and before the profound frustration of voters became so unmistakably apparent, Jeb Bush appeared to be best positioned to win back the White House for Republicans in 2016. He amassed a $150 million war chest in 2015, surrounded himself with some of the best minds in the party, had a famous last name and attracted the support of the party establishment. And yet, after a dismal finish in South Carolina, Bush dropped out of the race on Saturday with an emotional speech. \"I firmly believe the American people must entrust this office to someone who understands that whoever holds it is the servant, not the master, someone who will commit to that service with honor and decency,\" he said. How Bush found himself out of the race after just the third nominating contest of 2016 is a cautionary tale of political miscalculation and strategic errors, according to interviews with a dozen Republican operatives, many with close ties to the Bush campaign and others who worked for the last two Republican presidential nominees, conducted during the last days of his campaign. From the start, they said, Bush appeared to misjudge the mood of the Republican base. In December 2014, for instance, Bush gathered his senior aides and a small group of national political operatives for a meeting in Miami to talk about his coming candidacy. A survey to gauge the national mood of the party was dismissed by Bush and his aides as unnecessary. Such polling, a participant said, would have made clear to Bush the rebellious sentiment of the conservative base of the party. \"They missed the boat,\" the participant said. The polling may have also helped the campaign spot the threat of Trump, a billionaire and political outsider who tapped into that anti-establishment anger and stormed to the top of the polls. The Bush campaign disputed the charge as inaccurate. \"He has shared the frustration of voters from the outset and he has not strayed from that,\" said spokeswoman Kristy Campbell. \"He has presented a hopeful, optimistic message that is based on the belief that he has the leadership skills to get the job done.\" Viewing Trump as a summer fad who would fade given his outrageous comments, the campaign was slow to respond to the billionaire when he first blasted Bush last August as \"low-energy.\" Bush maintained his above-the-fray strategy and focused on his policy proposals instead of mixing it up with Trump. Trump relentlessly and bluntly attacked Bush in speeches and on Twitter, portraying him as tired, weak and out of touch with the party. Trump has mentioned Bush on Twitter hundreds of times, far more than any other Republican candidate. \"There was a decision made that he was not a serious person and would fade away,\" said one Republican strategist close to the Bush camp, who asked to remain anonymous. \"You don't want to dignify somebody who wasn't a serious candidate. It wasn't just Jeb. Nobody thought he was.\" When the \"low energy\" attacks on Bush started to take hold and his poll numbers began dropping, he went out of his way to insist he had plenty of energy to be president, talking of working 16-hour days, putting in feistier appearances on the stump and hitting back at Trump hard. Behind the scenes, though, donors said they fretted that too much time had gone by before he took the problem seriously. Some confidants of the former Florida governor seethed for weeks at Trump's taunts and urged the campaign to shift to a more aggressive posture. \"They made a horrendous miscalculation in not understanding the intent of the low-energy attack, which was designed to emasculate Bush, to make him look weak,\" said Steve Schmidt, who was campaign manager to 2008 Republican nominee John McCain. \"Defining him as weak denied him the ability to make the argument that by resume, competence and experience he was the most fit to command,\" said Schmidt. When Bush launched his campaign in June, he was the clear frontrunner among Republicans, polling at nearly 18 percent in a crowded field. Roughly six weeks later Trump had taken a commanding lead with 26 percent and Bush had dropped to around 12 percent, according to Reuters\/Ipsos polling. Today Trump stands at 38 percent. But Trump was hardly Bush's only obstacle. Perhaps his biggest misstep was one of his own making, when he spent days trying to explain whether he would have launched the Iraq war begun by his brother, former President George W. Bush. Even George W. Bush has admitted mistakes were made in the 2003 conflict. But for a week last May, Jeb Bush was flummoxed by the question. The trouble began when he told Fox News that \"I would have\" launched the invasion even knowing what is now known - that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction. While Bush said he did not understand the question, his response began days of controversy that fed a narrative pushed by Democrats that he was little different from his brother when it came to Iraq. Some of Bush's foreign policy advisers were surprised that Bush did not have an answer prepared for the inevitable question. There was a disagreement among his advisers on how best to respond, \"a genuine amount of confusion and upsetness about the whole thing,\" said one outside adviser to the campaign, who asked to be anonymous. Not wanting to be disloyal to his brother, Bush spent days trying to articulate a position until he finally disavowed the statement and declared he would not have ordered the war. \"The fact that we went through this anguished process of several days and several kinds of answers was quite astonishing,\" the adviser said. Finally, George W. Bush told his brother he did not need to defend decisions made back in 2003. Jeb Bush had an on-again, off-again strategy to embrace the family name, but finally took full advantage of his family in New Hampshire and especially in South Carolina, where the Bush family name remains a valuable brand. For the first time in the campaign former President George W. Bush hit the campaign trail in South Carolina for his brother, addressing thousands of Republicans at a rally. \"I know campaigns are stressful and taxing,\" he said. \"But they should be. Because the job of the president is much harder than the campaign.\" The challenges of the campaign were driven home two days later when Jeb Bush learned that South Carolina's governor, Nikki Haley, would endorse Rubio. It was a double blow for Bush: not only did he fail to secure the backing of a popular governor, it went instead to Rubio, his one-time political prot\u00e9g\u00e9 who has been the target of stinging attacks from Bush. His allied Super PAC, Right to Rise USA, spent at least $12.5 million on advertising opposing Rubio, according to Federal Election Commission data. Bush learned about the endorsement at a town hall meeting in Summerville, South Carolina, where some members of the audience gave him advice on how to run his campaign. He summed up the news briskly. \"Disappointed,\" he said. By Saturday night, less than two hours after the polls had closed, Bush had called it quits. (Additional reporting by Grant Smith, Melissa Fares and Chris Kahn; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Ross Colvin) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.","label":0}
{"text":"Philippine troops rescued a catholic priest held hostage for almost four months by Islamic State-linked rebels after an offensive that captured a stronghold of the militants in southern Marawi City, defense officials said on Monday. Marawi s vicar-general Father Teresito Chito Soganub was kidnapped along with other Christians as militants rampaged through the city on May 23, burning churches and schools, releasing prisoners and seizing arms in a well-planned assault. Soganub, flanked by Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and military chief General Eduardo Ano, appeared to be in good health and high spirits when he was presented to the media in Manila. He expressed his thanks but gave no statement. Our troops gained the upper hand, the terrorists were forced to withdraw to nearby structures on the periphery of the mosque, Lorenzana told a media briefing in Manila, referring to the Bato mosque held by the rebels for 117 days. Troops had opportunity to snatch Father Chito... The appearance of Soganub is some rare good news for a military that has suffered a string of setbacks in Marawi, from deadly accidents during a controversial campaign of air strikes to repeatedly missing deadlines on when the battle would be won. The siege of the city by an alliance of rebels from the island of Mindanao, and numerous foreign fighters, has been the biggest internal security crisis in years for the Philippines, a country used to separatist and communist rebellions. Soganub made an appearance under duress in a militant propaganda video about a week after his capture, urging the government to stop the military operation in Marawi in exchange for sparing lives of hostages. The priest was among scores held by militants at the Bato mosque, one of Marawi s largest, which troops captured on Saturday afternoon. He was rescued along with another hostage, Lordvin Ocopio. The rebels who laid siege to Marawi are from an extremist faction of the Abu Sayyaf group, led by Isnilon Hapilon, the so-called emir of Southeast Asia, and members of the militant Maute family, which has deep clan connections in the lakeside town and surrounding areas. Military chief Ano said about 10 foreigners were still in the battle among some 50-60 rebels, who were holding 45-50 hostages. Hapilon was among those still fighting but several of the Maute brothers were likely dead, Ano added, citing information provided by civilians who escaped and some captured rebels. As of Monday, 149 members of government forces had died in combat, along with 47 civilians. More than 670 militants have been killed, according to a military estimate of bodies recovered and targets hit.","label":0}
{"text":"The draft bill introduced in the U.S. Congress on Tuesday to steer Puerto Rico through its economic crisis represents a constructive, good-faith effort but could be improved, the White House said on Wednesday. At a daily briefing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters the bill would benefit from improvements to a mechanism to boost oversight of Puerto Rico's government and by expanding the earned income tax credit. (This story corrects to say improvements to pre-existing mechanism needed, not the bill, in paragraph 2)","label":0}
{"text":"Tax-policy writers in the U.S. House of Representatives are considering legislation to bring tax relief to businesses and individuals affected by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the top House lawmaker on tax issues said on Tuesday. Representative Kevin Brady, Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said staff was working with lawmakers from affected states to craft a bill that would help lessen the blow of property losses, facilitate access to retirement savings and encourage charitable giving. He said the committee could act on legislation before Oct 1. \"They're really looking at how do we get our small businesses back up and running, how do we get customers to them and how do we help families and communities rebuild,\" Brady told reporters. In past years, aides say Congress has sought to help disaster victims through a number of tax innovations including special tax credits for low-income housing, tax deferrals on gains from insurance payments and special refunds on tax filings from past years. Irma has caused widespread damage in Florida, weeks after Harvey inundated Houston and southeast Texas with record flooding last month.","label":0}
{"text":"Any tax reform plan that includes a border adjustment tax would likely not pass the U.S. Senate, its Republican Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Tuesday. McConnell added that any tax plan would also have to be revenue neutral.","label":0}
{"text":"The prime ministers of Bulgaria, Greece and Romania gave their support to their Balkan neighbor Serbia s bid to join the European Union on Tuesday, saying the integration of the western Balkans would guarantee regional peace and stability. Serbia, which in the 1990s was seen as pariah of Western Balkans for its central role in wars that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia, expects to complete negotiations on EU membership by 2019. All of us know that the natural place of Serbia is in the European Union, Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said after a four-party summit in the Black Sea city of Varna with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose and Serbian President Alexander Vucic. Borissov said that the three EU members would work to speed up the process to the advantage of peace and stability in the Balkans and Europe generally. Bulgaria takes over the rotating six-month EU presidency in January while Romania will take over in 2019. Many Serbs, however, remain skeptical about joining the bloc and view Western European countries as outspoken advocates of the 1999 NATO bombing to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians in the former province of Kosovo, in which thousands of civilians had been killed. Vucic accused the European Union of using double standards by refusing to accept the Catalan independence referendum while largely welcoming a separate Kosovo. We support Spain, it is our friendly country, said Vucic. But the European Commission responded in a different way (over Kosovo) and it was against my people and my state. Kosovo s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 was accepted by Washington and most EU states, but rejected by Belgrade and its allies. Kosovo gained independence without even holding a referendum but Catalonia ... cannot get anything like that, Vucic said. Sometimes, we, the Serbs, are asking ourselves why we should have been the victim of double standards? Serbia s position on Kosovo has been one of the main stumbling blocks in its own bid to join the European Union. Brussels has said it needs to improve relations with the authorities in Pristina and stop trying to block their efforts to join international bodies.","label":0}
{"text":"I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two. Just the kind of person we need running our country a lying, corrupt and crooked woman; who feels she deserves the highest office in our nation because she comes equipped with the proper genitalia Any woman (or man) who supports this common criminal should be hanging their head in shame:","label":1}
{"text":"Dakota Access Pipeline: More Than 100 Arrested as Protesters Ousted From Camp 11\/01\/2016  NBC NEWS  Authorities used pepper spray and fired bean bags at activists demonstrating against a controversial North Dakota oil pipeline as the standoff there reached a new peak Thursday, according to officials.  Armed soldiers and police in riot gear removed the demonstrators using trucks, military Humvees, and buses Thursday afternoon, according to The Associated Press. Two helicopters and an airplane scanned the operation from the air.  At least 141 protesters were arrested as of midnight Thursday (1 a.m. ET) after law enforcement slowly closed in and tensions escalated, the Morton County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.  Seven protesters used \"sleeping dragon\" devices, which typically involve PVC or other pipe, to attach themselves to items, and fires were set on a highway and improvised fire bombs were thrown at law enforcement, the Morton County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.  One woman allegedly fired three shots from a revolver at police, an emergency services official said. No one was hit.  The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe criticized law enforcement's \"militarized\" response to the camp and called for demonstrations to remain peaceful, but stressed that activists would not give up their cause.  \"Militarized law enforcement agencies moved in on water protectors with tanks and riot gear today. We continue to pray for peace,\" Dave Archambault II said in a statement Thursday evening.  \"We won't step down from this fight,\" he added. \"As peoples of this earth, we all need water. This is about our water, our rights, and our dignity as human beings.\"  Archambault also called on activists to \"remain in peace and prayer.\"\"Any act of violence hurts our case and is not welcome here,\" he said.  Law enforcement were holding a line north of the Backwater Bridge early Friday morning, the sheriff's department.  A woman who was being arrested pulled a .38 caliber revolver and fired three shots at law enforcement, \"narrowly missing a sheriff's deputy,\" North Dakota State Emergency Services Spokeswoman Cecily Fong told NBC News. The woman was taken into custody and no shots were fired by law enforcement, she said.  The protesters were ousted from the camp that authorities said was on private property in the path of the pipeline late Thursday afternoon, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier told the AP.  The sheriff said that while the camp was secure, officers were still dealing with protesters in the surrounding area, according to the AP. Kirchmeier added that authorities would maintain a presence in the area for the time being to keep protesters off the land. Fong confirmed to NBC News that the camp was cleared.  Protesters allegedly started two fires on the Backwater Bridge protest site and threw Molotov cocktails at law enforcement Thursday night, Fong said.  About 250 protesters had gathered at the camp and another 80 demonstrators with a dozen horses were at the site of a county road, according to a statement from the Morton County Sheriff's Department.  Protesters on horseback galloped toward the law enforcement line before wheeling around and some had begun throwing objects at the officers, Fong said. Demonstrators also allegedly set four DAPL construction vehicles ablaze, Fong said Thursday evening.  \"They've definitely escalated, they're throwing rocks and debris,\" she said. A handful of officers suffered minor injuries, she said.  Officers fired bean bag rounds and used pepper spray on protesters, Fong said.  Authorities also used a long-range acoustic device with a high-pitched tone to disperse the protesters, who set tires on fire on the highway Thursday afternoon, according to a post on the Morton County Sheriff's Department Facebook page . Demonstrators stand next to burning tires as armed soldiers and law enforcement officers assemble on Oct. 27, 2016, to force Dakota Access pipeline protesters off private land where they had camped to block construction. The pipeline is to carry oil from western North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Ill. Mike McCleary \/ The Bismarck Tribune via AP  The department said they repeatedly told the demonstrators they were \"free to go,\" asking them to move to a separate camp further south and let authorities put out the flames.  The protesters also set an area on fire near a bridge on a county road, according to a statement from the sheriff's department.  The protesters, comprised of a group that includes Native Americans and environmental activists, had been camped on private property since Sunday near the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, near the town of Cannon Ball.  The 1,172-mile pipeline would run within a half-mile of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Opponents of the project say the pipeline could adversely impact drinking water and would disturb sacred burial sites.  Hundreds of protesters from Standing Rock and other tribes have set up camp for months in protest a few miles away from where Thursday's confrontation occurred, close to where the Missouri and Cannonball rivers meet.  Thursday's incident came less than a week after more than 80 people were arrested and authorities used pepper spray on demonstrators. The arrests came during a five-hour conflict with police and around 300 protesters, some of whom stubbornly parked cars on the highway near the camp to block authorities from reaching them, according to the AP. They also set a small fire at one of two blockades they set up on the highway.  The majority of the protesters were retreating from the area of confrontation on the highway outside the camp, but had not fully left the area of private land, according to the AP. About 200 protesters remained in the area, listening to tribal elders speak and praying as authorities continued to approach. Play  Authorities used pepper spray and fired bean bags at activists demonstrating against a controversial North Dakota oil pipeline as the standoff there reached a new peak Thursday, according to officials.  Armed soldiers and police in riot gear removed the demonstrators using trucks, military Humvees, and buses Thursday afternoon, according to The Associated Press. Two helicopters and an airplane scanned the operation from the air.  At least 141 protesters were arrested as of midnight Thursday (1 a.m. ET) after law enforcement slowly closed in and tensions escalated, the Morton County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.  Seven protesters used \"sleeping dragon\" devices, which typically involve PVC or other pipe, to attach themselves to items, and fires were set on a highway and improvised fire bombs were thrown at law enforcement, the Morton County Sheriff's Department said in a statement.  One woman allegedly fired three shots from a revolver at police, an emergency services official said. No one was hit.  The chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe criticized law enforcement's \"militarized\" response to the camp and called for demonstrations to remain peaceful, but stressed that activists would not give up their cause.  \"Militarized law enforcement agencies moved in on water protectors with tanks and riot gear today. We continue to pray for peace,\" Dave Archambault II said in a statement Thursday evening.  \"We won't step down from this fight,\" he added. \"As peoples of this earth, we all need water. This is about our water, our rights, and our dignity as human beings.\"  Archambault also called on activists to \"remain in peace and prayer.\"\"Any act of violence hurts our case and is not welcome here,\" he said.  Law enforcement were holding a line north of the Backwater Bridge early Friday morning, the sheriff's department.  A woman who was being arrested pulled a .38 caliber revolver and fired three shots at law enforcement, \"narrowly missing a sheriff's deputy,\" North Dakota State Emergency Services Spokeswoman Cecily Fong told NBC News. The woman was taken into custody and no shots were fired by law enforcement, she said.  The protesters were ousted from the camp that authorities said was on private property in the path of the pipeline late Thursday afternoon, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier told the AP.  The sheriff said that while the camp was secure, officers were still dealing with protesters in the surrounding area, according to the AP. Kirchmeier added that authorities would maintain a presence in the area for the time being to keep protesters off the land. Fong confirmed to NBC News that the camp was cleared. Play  Protesters allegedly started two fires on the Backwater Bridge protest site and threw Molotov cocktails at law enforcement Thursday night, Fong said.  About 250 protesters had gathered at the camp and another 80 demonstrators with a dozen horses were at the site of a county road, according to a statement from the Morton County Sheriff's Department.  Protesters on horseback galloped toward the law enforcement line before wheeling around and some had begun throwing objects at the officers, Fong said. Demonstrators also allegedly set four DAPL construction vehicles ablaze, Fong said Thursday evening.  \"They've definitely escalated, they're throwing rocks and debris,\" she said. A handful of officers suffered minor injuries, she said.  Officers fired bean bag rounds and used pepper spray on protesters, Fong said.  Authorities also used a long-range acoustic device with a high-pitched tone to disperse the protesters, who set tires on fire on the highway Thursday afternoon, according to a post on the Morton County Sheriff's Department Facebook page . Demonstrators stand next to burning tires as armed soldiers and law enforcement officers assemble on Oct. 27, 2016, to force Dakota Access pipeline protesters off private land where they had camped to block construction. The pipeline is to carry oil from western North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to an existing pipeline in Patoka, Ill. Mike McCleary \/ The Bismarck Tribune via AP  The department said they repeatedly told the demonstrators they were \"free to go,\" asking them to move to a separate camp further south and let authorities put out the flames.  The protesters also set an area on fire near a bridge on a county road, according to a statement from the sheriff's department.  The protesters, comprised of a group that includes Native Americans and environmental activists, had been camped on private property since Sunday near the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, near the town of Cannon Ball.  The 1,172-mile pipeline would run within a half-mile of the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. Opponents of the project say the pipeline could adversely impact drinking water and would disturb sacred burial sites.  Hundreds of protesters from Standing Rock and other tribes have set up camp for months in protest a few miles away from where Thursday's confrontation occurred, close to where the Missouri and Cannonball rivers meet.  Thursday's incident came less than a week after more than 80 people were arrested and authorities used pepper spray on demonstrators. The arrests came during a five-hour conflict with police and around 300 protesters, some of whom stubbornly parked cars on the highway near the camp to block authorities from reaching them, according to the AP. They also set a small fire at one of two blockades they set up on the highway.  The majority of the protesters were retreating from the area of confrontation on the highway outside the camp, but had not fully left the area of private land, according to the AP. About 200 protesters remained in the area, listening to tribal elders speak and praying as authorities continued to approach. Play  Law enforcement officials began taking steps to remove roadblocks and protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline near Highway 1806 at around 11:15 a.m. local time (12:15 p.m. ET), Kirchmeier said in a statement.  \"Protesters' escalated unlawful behavior this weekend by setting up illegal roadblocks, trespassing onto private property and establishing an encampment, has forced law enforcement to respond at this time,\" he said in the statement.  \"I can't stress it enough, this is a public safety issue,\" the sheriff said. \"We cannot have protesters blocking county roads, blocking state highways, or trespassing on private property.\"  The protesters had created a camp in the pipeline's path on private property known as the Cannonball Ranch on the side of the highway and set up the roadblocks along on Sunday, according to the statement.  Highway 1806 remained closed Thursday between Fort Rice and Cannonball, according to the sheriff department's statement. Various counties, cities, state agencies and out-of-state law enforcement were helping the Morton County Sheriff's Department, the statement said.  Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign weighed in on the protests Thursday evening.  \"From the beginning of this campaign, Secretary Clinton has been clear that she thinks all voices should be heard and all views considered in federal infrastructure projects,\" Spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement.  \"Now, all of the parties involved \u2014 including the federal government, the pipeline company and contractors, the state of North Dakota, and the tribes \u2014 need to find a path forward that serves the broadest public interest,\" Hinojosa said. \"As that happens, it's important that on the ground in North Dakota, everyone respects demonstrators' rights to protest peacefully, and workers' rights to do their jobs safely.\"  Protest camp coordinator Mekasi Horinek told NBC affiliate KFYR on Wednesday that the protesters had no plans of leaving their encampment.  \"We don't have any plans on retreating. If they're going to come in here and they're going to arrest one of us, they're going to arrest every one of us,\" Horinek said. \"We're going to stand in unity, we're going to stand in prayer, we're going to stand in peace.\"  Standing Rock Sioux Tribe chairman Dave Archambault II told NBC News on Sunday the tribe had asked the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene in the escalating situation with law enforcement.  \"The DOJ should be enlisted and expected to investigate the overwhelming reports and videos demonstrating clear strong-arm tactics, abuses and unlawful arrests by law enforcement,\" Chairman Dave Archambault II said.","label":1}
{"text":"Chip Somodevilla The Wildfire is an opinion platform and any opinions or information put forth by contributors are exclusive to them and do not represent the views of IJR.  Hillary Clinton advisers Cheryl Mills and Robbie Mook provide one of the most revealing looks inside the campaign yet, courtesy of a WikiLeaks hacked email.  In the email , Robbie Mooks argues that Hillary Clinton would be making a mistake to run on her gender as an argument for her suitability to be president:  \"In fact, I think running on her gender would be the SAME mistake as 2008, ie having a message at odds with what voters ultimately want. She ran on experience when voters wanted change...and sure there was plenty of data in marks polls with voters saying her experience appealed to them. But that was missing the larger point\u2014voters wanted change.  Same deal here\u2014lots of people are going to say it would be neat for a woman to be president but that doesn't mean that's actually WHY they will vote for her. That's likely to be how she will handle the economy and relate to the middle class.  It's also risky because injecting gender makes her candidacy about HER and not the voters and making their lives better.  That said I would not be surprised if this is a powerful message for donor and activist engagement (vs persuadable voters).\" Image Credit: Michael Buckner\/Getty Images  Then, Mills responds:  Interesting how hard this narrative is being pushed.  A friend shared this article with you from The Washington Post:  Embrace being a woman running for president..  http:\/\/wapo.st\/1dbwtNo  The link is to a Chris Cillizza article on \"How Hillary Clinton can correct the biggest mistake she made in 2008.\"  But one of the most fascinating tidbits is Mooks' suggestive off-hand reference to getting a \"third party spoiler\":  \"Just need a third party spoiler and we'll be all set!  I think the chatterers will dissect and criticize whatever she chooses to do but it's going to be so important that the research drive it. I often felt in 08 that the research was being used to back up a premise instead of genuinely find the right target.\"  To which Mills replied cryptically:  \"WJC redux of 1992\"  WJC is a common acronym for former President William Jefferson Clinton. The reference is to the three-man race in 1992 between George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. Contrary to what is widely believed, there is fairly convincing evidence that Perot did not \"cost\" Bush the 1992 election.  Trump supporters have mused if presidential candidates Gary Johnson and independent Evan McMullin are in the 2016 race for the sole purpose of sabotaging the Republican presidential nominee. Image Credit: George Frey\/Getty Images  Johnson, who is running at about six percent in the polls, is running on the Libertarian Party ticket. For historical context, the Libertarians have sent up a presidential candidate every year for the last 44 years . Libertarians have plenty to disagree about regarding Trump's plan for the United States, whether it be on national security, immigration or trade.  That leads us to Evan McMullin, a man whose name recently caught fire on Twitter due to the so-called \" Mormon mafia \" started by Mitt Romney. Lou Dobbs, an ardent Trump advocate, coined the phrase while labeling McMullin... \u2014 Lou Dobbs (@LouDobbs) October 23, 2016  McMullin was indeed a Mormon missionary, but reports of him belonging to a \"mafia\" remain unconfirmed. The candidate was a CIA operative and an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, which has fueled speculation and conspiracy theories about his run.  Interestingly, the candidate is currently surging in Utah and his support may be underestimated . If McMullin could pull off a victory, it would launch an improbable scenario that could see the election thrown to the House of Representatives and an all-out scramble to nominate a president and vice president of the Congress's choosing.  This potential monkey wrench in Trump's plans has fueled outrage and concern among supporters: Team Hillary is all set: Ex-CIA Evan McMullin is the expert covert spoiler. Drink up, #Utah , the Kool-Aid tastes fine! | #RedNationRising pic.twitter.com\/nMVR1fqehz \u2014 RNR Ohio (@RNROhio) October 27, 2016 Evan McMullin is a tool of the entrenched corrupt DC politicians, this is a spoiler campaign, nothing sincere about it. #ldschurch #mormon","label":1}
{"text":"My health insurance company sent my notice for my 2017 health care plan. Guess how much my premium is going up?  EIGHTY PERCENT. Yep. A big fat 80%. Fortunately, my deductible remains at $14,300 (obvious sarc) .  Starting next year, my monthly plan will cost MORE than 50% of my take-home pay.  And I'm not the only one facing this type of an increase.  Remember this at the polls on November 8 th .  DCG","label":1}
{"text":"Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez on Wednesday edged ahead of his TV star rival in a contentious vote count that has dragged on for three days. With 81.77 percent of the ballot boxes counted, the election tribunal said both Hernandez and opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla had won 42.17 percent of the vote, though the incumbent had an advantage of 40 votes.","label":0}
{"text":"The 'Islamic ' Notre Dame hammer attacker was allegedly radicalised in Sweden and awarded a \"Journalist Prize Against Discrimination\" by the European Union (EU) for writing articles during his time there. [The Algerian suspected jihadist Farid Ikken, 40, was given the award in 2009 by the European Commission, the EU's unelected executive branch, for a report about asylum seekers claiming healthcare in Sweden, Expressen reports. The \"EU Commission's National Journalist Prize Against Discrimination\" was awarded to him for an article dealing with \"asylum seekers who are not entitled to medical care and who are therefore forced to seek medical care, as well as healthcare staff and others who still provide health care to asylum seekers,\" the Commission wrote in a statement. Eight years later, this Tuesday, the journalist cried \"this is for Syria\" while hitting a policeman with a hammer in front of France's most iconic cathedral. The highly educated, jihadi was shot in the chest and is currently recovering in hospital. He also left a video claiming allegiance to the Islamic State group, according to The Times. VIDEO van de aanval met hamer op politieagent nabij de . (LCI) pic. twitter. \u2014 Terreur Nieuws (@DreigingNL) June 7, 2017, The future terrorist came to Sweden to study for a master's degree, LIC reports, where he had a Swedish wife before getting a divorce. His nephew, Sofiane Ikken, claims he was radicalised during his time. \"I think he started to take an interest in religion during his stay in Sweden,\" he told a Algerian site. After graduating from university in the Swedish capital Stockholm, he worked as a freelance journalist for various papers and radio stations between 2009 and 2010, when he wrote his article. He then returned to his native Algeria after the 2011 Arab uprising, where he set up a regional news site and worked on Al Watan, a national newspaper, before moving to France in 2013 to study for a PhD. Mr. Ikken regularly wrote about terror and jihad during this time. Describing his work at the Algerian news site, he wrote on his Linkedin profile: \"I headed up a small team composed of two permanent journalists, two freelancers and a translator for two years. \"My main task was to ensure that the content of our website was updated continuously, and to edit material sent by correspondents or written by journalists. \" He added: \"The processing of press releases, the call to civil protection services, hospitals, public institutions and institutions, the translation of Arabic and English content and the correction of texts were also part of my duties. \"I also assisted in the writing of news articles and the editorial regularly. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Enough is enough. It s time for Donald Trump to condemn this racist violence or be forced to end his campaign.For the second time in a week, video footage has revealed yet another incident of violent racism at the same Trump rally in North Carolina where an old white redneck sucker-punched a young black protester in the head as he was being escorted out the building by police.78-year-old John McGraw has since been arrested by law enforcement, but now it looks like police are going to have to hunt down and arrest another white racist who assaulted a different black person who, despite not doing anything wrong, was escorted out with other African-American attendees by officers who roughed some of them up for no reason.East Carolina University student Adedayo Adeniyi caught the terrifying experience on his cell phone camera on Wednesday as officers began scuffling with other black people in the stands around him. Hey that s not me, that s them, Adeniyi says on the video in reference to being told he has to leave even though he wasn t even protesting. I don t even know them! The cops, who are white, wrestle one protester to the ground and cuff him before leading him off. As Adeniyi is also led off down the aisle, an old white KKK wannabe tells him Hey, f*ck you, baby, f*ck you! And then physically assaults him by slapping him, and police didn t seem to care about that at all.Here s the video via YouTube.Afterwards, Adeniyi remarked that the incident made him fear for the future of America because it definitely looks like the country is embracing hate and bigotry. These are presidential candidate rallies, he told the New York Daily News. I m not at a KKK rally. The fact that I experienced hate at a candidate rally tells you everything you need to know about Donald Trump and the people that support him. People will act more hateful and racist in environments that they feel not only encouraged to do it, but accept it as normal. The man at the end of the video is a moment I ll never forget. The hate in his eyes. The words. The hate in those words. The slap. It was disgusting and sad. At that moment I believed that America will stay and continue to be a hateful and bigoted country. Donald Trump s rallies are nothing more than glorified white supremacist rallies that are an embarrassment to this nation and those around the world. The fact that any candidate for political office here in 21st century America actually condones and encourages violence and racism against black people is sickening The fact that the police are serving as Trump s own personal guard and are allowing these acts of violence to occur and in some cases even joining in is just as disgusting. This is not the America any of us should want, but it s the one we ll get if people do not vote in November.","label":1}
{"text":"Amira al-Qassab and her family flitted from one Iraqi city to another fleeing Islamic State, then waited three years in Beirut until they were cleared to move to the United States. But their plans to fly out last week were derailed after U.S. President Donald Trump froze refugee arrivals. \"We were so surprised and unsettled. It was chaos,\" Amira, 45, said. \"I didn't even unpack our clothes.\" Amira had taken her two youngest children out of school, the others had quit their jobs, and their suitcases had remained packed for weeks before a U.S. judge temporarily suspended the travel ban. As the family left for Michigan on Wednesday lugging 10 suitcases, they hoped to end a long road \u2014 still fraught with fear \u2014 to resettling as refugees in the United States. \"Everything's been ready, we had just been waiting for a phone call. They told us to go to the airport at midnight,\" Amira said. A federal judge last week blocked Trump's order temporarily barring refugees and nationals from seven mainly Muslim countries, including Iraq and Syria. The ruling opened a brief window for travelers who had been waylaid to rush to the United States while the legal limbo continues. \"We're quite afraid President Trump will halt travels again,\" Amira said as she prepared to board a flight with four of her children, aged 7 to 22. The Trump administration has said the ban would help prevent terrorism but opponents assailed it as unconstitutional. A U.S. federal appeals court heard arguments on Tuesday over whether to restore Trump's order. The case may ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court. The ban led to protests across U.S. cities and chaos at airports overseas after visa holders were kept from boarding flights, detained at American airports or denied entry. \"We were really happy we would travel\" but it was bittersweet, said Amira, whose husband Nizar was denied resettlement to the United States twice. This marked the first time they have been apart since they married nearly 30 years ago and they did not know when or where they would meet again. \"I don't know what my fate will be,\" said Nizar, 52, whose two brothers resettled in Michigan about four years ago. In Beirut, the family lived in a small, dingy apartment in a suburb. Nizar was not able to find a job, he said. Their son, 22, worked at a factory to make rent while their daughter, 18, worked to cover food and living expenses. \"We had waited a long time, and our situation here is really bad,\" he said. \"My children don't have a future here. So I was forced to let them go.\" Last year, the United States set a quota to take in 2,500 refugees of all nationalities living in Lebanon, UNHCR spokeswoman Dana Sleiman said. Trump's order also sought to prioritize refugees fleeing religious persecution, a move he said separately was aimed at helping Christians fleeing the war in Syria. The Qassab family, Iraqi Christians from Mosul, first left their home when unidentified men tried to kidnap Amira at the school where she worked as a janitor. \"Daesh came and kicked us out, so we fled further to the north,\" said Nizar, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. They trekked through Iraq, staying in Erbil and Dohuk, and ended up in Beirut in 2014. \"I feared for my wife and children. We sold everything we had and came here,\" he said. The family had barely gotten some respite from the instability of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq before the threat of Islamic State militants emerged, Nizar said. They no longer cared where they ended up, his wife added, they just wanted to find some peace. \"My children are drained. They worked just to pay the rent. We barely made a living,\" Nizar added. \"I can't go to America anymore. I don't know why...I'm parting with my family,\" said Nizar , bursting into tears. \"How am I going to live alone?\" The Qassabs' eldest son Rami, 26, had already resettled to Michigan two months earlier to find them all an apartment. \"He told us America is beautiful,\" Amira said. \"But it takes some time to settle in.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Ethnic clashes killed 11 people this week in Ethiopia s Oromiya region, a regional government official said on Sunday, the latest unrest in a province that was wracked by violence in 2015 and 2016. Nearly 700 people died last year during one period of the violence in Ethiopia s largest region and other areas, according to a parliament-mandated investigation. The unrest forced the government to impose a nine-month state of emergency that was finally lifted in August. Sporadic protests have taken place since then. Violence broke out this week in two districts in the province s west after protests led to clashes between ethnic Oromos and Amharas, the spokesman for the region s administration said on Sunday. Eight Oromos and three Amharas died, spokesman Addisu Arega Kitessa said in a statement. The previous unrest was provoked by a development scheme for the capital, Addis Ababa, that dissidents said amounted to land grabs. Broader anti-government demonstrations followed, over politics and human rights abuses. The violence included attacks on businesses, many of them foreign-owned, including farms growing flowers for export. Separately, clashes along the border between the country s Oromiya and Somali regions last month also displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The area has been plagued by sporadic violence for decades. A referendum held in 2004 to determine the status of disputed settlements failed to ease tensions. Those clashes have fueled fears about security in Ethiopia, the region s biggest economy and a staunch Western ally.","label":0}
{"text":"Senator Dianne Feinstein went on Fox News this Sunday and ripped President Trump a new one.Pointing out the rank hypocrisy over Trump s executive actions and how Republicans treated President Obama, Feinstein called on the president to unite the country. Instead of uniting, Feinstein said, he s splitting it apart even more:You ve got people in the streets here. This president has not brought this nation together. He says he s working for his base. Well, there are a majority of people who are outside of that base. My best advice has been, and I was able to say this to him directly, Please Mr. President, you have to bring this country together. What he s doing is splitting it apart.Currently, the majority of the United States has an unfavorable view of Trump, who set a record for quickest descent into net negative approval ratings over 50 percent. In contrast, it took President Obama almost 1,000 days to reach that point. Trump did it in eight.Feinstein also blasted Trump for his immigration ban, telling Chris Wallace that he is not a dictator and that the Supreme Court will ultimately decide if his executive action is unconstitutional.Similarly, the majority of Americans are sharply disapproving of his immigration executive order, and his handling of terrorism, national security, and immigrant, all key tenets to his 2016 campaign.The most shocking statistic comes from Public Policy Polling, which found 40 percent of the American public wants to impeach President Trump. That number is up 5 points from a similar question asked just a week ago. In comparison, it took 16 months after Watergate for the American public to reach that number in support of Nixon s resignation. Trump s done it in two weeks.Not surprisingly, 88-92 percent of Republicans support of the job President Trump is doing. Only 7-10 percent of Democrats believe so. And every major poll has shown independent voters to be sharply divided, with all polls tilting negative.Senator Feinstein is right: President Trump is splitting this country apart all to appease the small minority who voted for him. All his promises of being the president who bridges the two Americas has completely fallen flat.","label":1}
{"text":"It s no secret that the comedic host of HBO s Real Time, Bill Maher, is no fan of religion. In fact, it s safe to say that he really pretty much hates the practice. He is one of America s most outspoken celebrity atheists, and Friday night s edition of his show saw him once again ripping religion for the amusement of his largely secular audience. What Maher had to say this time, though, wasn t just making fun of people who believe in god(s). He actually called for the Internal Revenue Service to make these institutions pay taxes.During his New Rules segment, Maher began: Why, in heaven s name, don t we tax religion? A sexist, homophobic magic act that s been used to justify everything from genital mutilation to genocide. You want to raise the tax on tobacco so kids don t get cancer, OK. But let s put one on Sunday school so they don t get stupid. Maher went on to say that the fact these churches owned billions in property got him, quote, hopping mad. He also pointed out something that likely has most religious people either panicking or in complete denial: religious belief is largely on the decline in the United States, which is traditionally seen as the most religious country in the developed western world. In fact, the youngest generation of Americans Millennials largely not only aren t actively religious, but they are uncomfortable with most mainstream religion, mostly due to the homophobia, misogyny, and other harmful ideas and practices therein.Maher continued on his rant: Almost a quarter of us are being forced to subsidize a myth that we re not buying into. Why am I subsidizing their Sunday morning hobby? They don t subsidize mine. After that brilliant closer, Maher flashed a photo of himself getting high with a friend on what is presumably one Sunday morning.The thing is, Bill Maher is right. We shouldn t be subsidizing churches. These people push all kinds of horrible things, including lobbying, at least indirectly, to enshrine bigotry into law against people they believe to be sinners. Our tax dollars should not be spent to uphold religion. People can believe what they like, but the rest of us shouldn t be paying for it.Thank you, Mr. Maher, for another hilariously brilliant and oh so true monologue on the truth about the tax-free status of America s religious institutions.Watch the video below, via Raw Story:https:\/\/youtu.be\/Mw8MLub4siU","label":1}
{"text":"It could take years to learn how long men infected with Zika are capable of sexually transmitting the virus, which can cause crippling birth defects and other serious neurological disorders. In the meantime, health officials have warned couples to refrain from unprotected sex for six months after a male partner is infected. The extraordinary recommendation, based on a single report of Zika surviving 62 days in semen, could affect millions. The grave risks associated with Zika, along with its potential reach, are driving U.S. health authorities to pursue research even though funding is mired in Congressional gridlock. A study of sexual transmission risk is one example of science that health officials said can't wait for politics. Borrowing money earmarked for other programs, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has started enrolling men infected with Zika in Brazil and Colombia in the study to determine how long the virus remains transmittable in semen. The study could take years to complete, but interim results could help public health officials fine-tune their recommendations on sex. \"We are going out on a limb, but we have to,\" Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. institute, said in an interview. \"We can't say we're going to wait until we get all the money.\" Public health officials are alarmed by Zika's transmission versatility, which has the potential to expand its reach. It is primarily spread by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, as are the dengue and chikungunya viruses. But at least 10 countries, including the United States and France, have reported Zika infections in people who had not traveled to an outbreak area but whose sexual partners had. This ability to spread through sex could help Zika gain a further foothold outside the warm habitats of its most effective agent, the mosquito. To protect women who are pregnant or trying to conceive, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended couples refrain from unprotected sex for six months - triple the 62 days the virus survived in the semen in one British case study. The World Health Organization recently issued similar guidance. But such strict advice is not ideal, Dr. Anne Schuchat, a CDC deputy director, said in an interview. \"To tell people not to have sex until we get back to you is not a very satisfying recommendation,\" she said. \"We would like to have some more understanding of the sexual risk.\" In the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where more than 2,100 cases of infection have been reported since the start of the year, health officials are passing out Zika protection kits that include bug spray and condoms, along with the recommendation. But the warning against unprotected sex isn't going over very well, said Dr. Chris Prue, a CDC behavioral scientist who has studied the response. \"Condoms are not popular in a lot places,\" she said. \"There's religious and personal preferences and lots of personal factors in that.\" U.S. lawmakers deadlocked over funding to fight the Zika virus on Tuesday, as Senate Democrats blocked a Republican proposal they said fell short of the challenge posed by the virus and hurt other health priorities. It was unclear when Congress would revisit the request by President Barack Obama for $1.9 billion. In the meantime, the White House has diverted more than $500 million earmarked for other projects for urgent Zika initiatives, including those where scientific opportunities will be lost if not acted upon immediately. One such study will follow children born to women infected with Zika to identify the development of any disabilities not detected at birth. Other projects on the priority list include vaccine development and mosquito eradication. One study underway will assess whether the risk of transmission is greater from men who experience Zika infection symptoms, such as fever and rash, than from those who don't. This information is considered vital since most people experience no symptoms. The study of infected men in Brazil and Colombia will test semen from thousands of men over time to determine how long Zika poses a risk to sexual partners. As long the virus can be grown in a laboratory from semen cell samples, infectious disease experts believe it is potentially contagious. Zika typically clears the bloodstream about a week after infection, but it has been detected in urine for at least twice as long. Its persistence in semen in the British case study has caused some researchers to draw comparisons to other viruses. HIV can last in blood and semen indefinitely, and the mosquito-borne West Nile virus can reside in the kidneys and urine for years, researchers said. One patient who survived the deadly Ebola outbreak had evidence of that virus in his semen for 18 months. \"We got very surprised by Ebola that it was hanging around for so long,\" said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. \"One of the big questions we have to ask is does Zika also cause a similar type of latency?\"","label":0}
{"text":"Final results in last weekend s banned Catalan referendum on independence from Spain showed yes votes winning 90.18 percent of votes cast against 7.83 percent of no votes, the Catalan regional government said. The Catalan government put voter turnout at nearly 2.3 million people, or around 43 percent of registered voters. The referendum was declared illegal by the Spanish government and courts. Catalans who favor remaining part of Spain mainly boycotted the ballot and many polling stations were closed.","label":0}
{"text":"For much of the summer, the F. B. I. pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign. Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead \u2014 which they ultimately came to doubt \u2014 about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank. Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F. B. I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump. Hillary Clinton's supporters, angry over what they regard as a lack of scrutiny of Mr. Trump by law enforcement officials, pushed for these investigations. In recent days they have also demanded that James B. Comey, the director of the F. B. I. discuss them publicly, as he did last week when he announced that a new batch of emails possibly connected to Mrs. Clinton had been discovered. Supporters of Mrs. Clinton have argued that Mr. Trump's evident affinity for Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin \u2014 Mr. Trump has called him a great leader and echoed his policies toward NATO, Ukraine and the war in Syria \u2014 and the hacks of leading Democrats like John D. Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign, are clear indications that Russia has taken sides in the presidential race and that voters should know what the F. B. I. has found. The F. B. I. 's inquiries into Russia's possible role continue, as does the investigation into the emails involving Mrs. Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, on a computer she shared with her estranged husband, Anthony D. Weiner. Mrs. Clinton's supporters argue that voters have as much right to know what the F. B. I. has found in Mr. Trump's case, even if the findings are not yet conclusive. \"You do not hear the director talking about any other investigation he is involved in,\" Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Democrat of New York, said after Mr. Comey's letter to Congress was made public. \"Is he investigating the Trump Foundation? Is he looking into the Russians hacking into all of our emails? Is he looking into and deciding what is going on with regards to other allegations of the Trump Organization?\" Mr. Comey would not even confirm the existence of any investigation of Mr. Trump's aides when asked during an appearance in September before Congress. In the Obama administration's internal deliberations over identifying the Russians as the source of the hacks, Mr. Comey also argued against doing so and succeeded in keeping the F. B. I. 's imprimatur off the formal findings, a law enforcement official said. His stance was first reported by CNBC. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader, responded angrily on Sunday with a letter accusing the F. B. I. of not being forthcoming about Mr. Trump's alleged ties with Moscow. \"It has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisers, and the Russian government \u2014 a foreign interest openly hostile to the United States, which Trump praises at every opportunity,\" Mr. Reid wrote. \"The public has a right to know this information. \" F. B. I. officials declined to comment on Monday. Intelligence officials have said in interviews over the last six weeks that apparent connections between some of Mr. Trump's aides and Moscow originally compelled them to open a broad investigation into possible links between the Russian government and the Republican presidential candidate. Still, they have said that Mr. Trump himself has not become a target. And no evidence has emerged that would link him or anyone else in his business or political circle directly to Russia's election operations. At least one part of the investigation has involved Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's campaign chairman for much of the year. Mr. Manafort, a veteran Republican political strategist, has had extensive business ties in Russia and other former Soviet states, especially Ukraine, where he served as an adviser to that country's ousted president, Viktor F. Yanukovych. But the focus in that case was on Mr. Manafort's ties with a kleptocratic government in Ukraine \u2014 and whether he had declared the income in the United States \u2014 and not necessarily on any Russian influence over Mr. Trump's campaign, one official said. In classified sessions in August and September, intelligence officials also briefed congressional leaders on the possibility of financial ties between Russians and people connected to Mr. Trump. They focused particular attention on what cyberexperts said appeared to be a mysterious computer back channel between the Trump Organization and the Alfa Bank, which is one of Russia's biggest banks and whose owners have longstanding ties to Mr. Putin. F. B. I. officials spent weeks examining computer data showing an odd stream of activity to a Trump Organization server and Alfa Bank. Computer logs obtained by The New York Times show that two servers at Alfa Bank sent more than 2, 700 \" \" messages \u2014 a first step for one system's computers to talk to another \u2014 to a server beginning in the spring. But the F. B. I. ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts. The most serious part of the F. B. I. 's investigation has focused on the computer hacks that the Obama administration now formally blames on Russia. That investigation also involves numerous officials from the intelligence agencies. Investigators, the officials said, have become increasingly confident, based on the evidence they have uncovered, that Russia's direct goal is not to support the election of Mr. Trump, as many Democrats have asserted, but rather to disrupt the integrity of the political system and undermine America's standing in the world more broadly. The hacking, they said, reflected an intensification of operations that never entirely abated after the Cold War but that have become more aggressive in recent years as relations with Mr. Putin's Russia have soured. A senior intelligence official, who like the others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing national security investigation, said the Russians had become adept at exploiting computer vulnerabilities created by the relative openness of and reliance on the internet. Election officials in several states have reported what appeared to be cyberintrusions from Russia, and while many doubt that an Election Day hack could alter the outcome of the election, the F. B. I. agencies across the government are on alert for potential disruptions that could wreak havoc with the voting process itself. \"It isn't about the election,\" a second senior official said, referring to the aims of Russia's interference. \"It's about a threat to democracy. \" The investigation has treated it as a counterintelligence operation as much as a criminal one, though agents are also focusing on whether anyone in the United States was involved. The officials declined to discuss any individual targets of the investigation, even when assured of anonymity. As has been the case with the investigation into Mrs. Clinton, the F. B. I. has come under intense partisan political pressure \u2014 something the bureau's leaders have long sought to avoid. Supporters of both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump have been equally impassioned in calling for investigations \u2014 and even in providing leads for investigators to follow. Mr. Reid, in a letter to Mr. Comey in August, asserted that Mr. Trump's campaign \"has employed a number of individuals with significant and disturbing ties to the Russia and the Kremlin. \" Although Mr. Reid cited no evidence and offered no names explicitly, he clearly referred to one of Mr. Trump's earlier campaign advisers, Carter Page. Mr. Page, a former Merrill Lynch banker who founded an investment company in New York, Global Energy Capital, drew attention during the summer for a speech in which he criticized the United States and other Western nations for a \"hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change\" in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Mr. Page responded with his own letter to Mr. Comey, denying wrongdoing and calling Mr. Reid's accusations \"a witch hunt. \" In an interview, he said that he had never been contacted by the F. B. I. and that the accusations were baseless and purely partisan because of his policy views on Russia. \"These people really seem to be grasping at straws,\" he said. Democrats have also accused another Republican strategist and Trump confidant, Roger Stone, of being a conduit between the Russian hackers and WikiLeaks, which has published the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Mr. Podesta, the Clinton campaign manager. Mr. Stone boasted of having contacts with the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and appeared to predict the hacking of Mr. Podesta's account, though he later denied having any prior knowledge. Mr. Stone derided the accusations and those raised by Michael J. Morell, a former C. I. A. director and a Clinton supporter, who has called Mr. Trump \"an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation. \" In an article on the conservative news site Breitbart, Mr. Stone denied having links to Russians and called the accusations \"the new McCarthyism. \"","label":0}
{"text":"One would think that conservatives would have figured out by now that they can t get people to turn out for their marches and protests. That seems to be especially true with Trump in office. So many more people are against him than for him, yet these delusional Trumpkins still think they re some kind of majority in this country.Witness their enthusiasm for today s March 4 Trump. It was supposed to be a counter to the Women s March on Washington that happened all over the world the day after Trump s inauguration. The Women s March drew well more than two million people just in the U.S. The March 4 Trump must have been overwhelming then, given all that support Trump and his loyal subjects think they have.And overwhelming these marches were, in their own way the lack of support they showed for Trump is actually what was overwhelming. Most of these protests drew dozens, rather than the thousands they seemed to think they were going to get. For instance, in Orlando, roughly 200 people showed up, compared to the 5,000 that showed up in January for the Women s March.Denver had just dozens, where 145,000 had marched in January. In our nation s capital, Trumpers were hoping that they could draw more than half a million, which would rival the Women s March there. They drew a few thousand at best, despite Trump s claim that marches for him would be the biggest marches of all:Here at the yuge rally for Trump at the White House pic.twitter.com\/aJ5gcMicyr Brian Tashman (@briantashman) March 4, 2017The #TrumpTrain is in town and standing strong for @POTUS.I will be articulating the case for #Trump shortly, friends.#March4Trump pic.twitter.com\/zdH682s7Vk Michael Johns (@michaeljohns) March 4, 2017Here s the march at Trump Tower in New York City:Literally the March 4 Trump pic.twitter.com\/Of8vChB8NQ Eric Grant (@ericgrant) March 4, 2017Small crowd at the March 4 Trump. pic.twitter.com\/LxPMcYtBO3 Eric Grant (@ericgrant) March 4, 2017Crowds were just as pathetic elsewhere, too:#March4Trump draws about 200 people to Voinovich Park, plus about 100 counter protestors pic.twitter.com\/Jfq3GL05ar Kabir Bhatia (@KabirBhatiaTime) March 4, 2017#NoMorein614 march in Columbus, OH. #BlackLivesMatter #NoBanBoWall #organizeCBUS #JaronThomas @614Unity @soit_goes @marymad @OhioPJP pic.twitter.com\/du1EdboKfd SURJ Columbus (@SURJColumbusOH) March 4, 2017At #March4Trump rally in Springfield,IL pic.twitter.com\/WFvZLkSn25 James B (@JebLadat) March 4, 2017We are live from Denver where black bloc is confronting March 4 Trump DPD ready with police tape line https:\/\/t.co\/RxJlYm2jkM pic.twitter.com\/2817ZMkUq4 Unicorn Riot (@UR_Ninja) March 4, 2017A better view of just how empty the Plaza is for this pro-Trump rally. Sad! pic.twitter.com\/Ji78hNXJBD Cari Wade Gervin (@carigervin) March 4, 2017This is embarrassing for them. Trump supporters keep trying to tell the resistance to get over it, and give up, and ultimately call us treasonous for daring to oppose a dangerous orange despot in the White House. If they truly had the love and support they think, their protests would blow anti-Trump protests out of the water every time. Doesn t look like we re the ones who need to get over anything.","label":1}
{"text":"There's something about the cooler fall weather that makes my family want to huddle up indoors and eat sweets. Humans are likely programmed to do just this, but let's not let a change of seasons derail our healthy eating. Here are 5 modified classic fall recipes that will still make your house smell amazing and satisfy your sweet tooth\u2014all without packing on the pounds. 5 Favorite Fall Recipes \u2013 the Healthy Way! 1. Pumpkin Pie Pumpkin pie defines the Thanksgiving holiday in my household\u2014we eat it as a dessert, but we also eat the leftovers for breakfast. This version adds in rolled oats for fiber and has healthy ground flax, but the full-fat coconut milk means a rich, creamy pie that satisfies. Ingredients:  1 can (15oz) pumpkin puree 1 (13.5oz) can full-fat coconut milk 1\/4 cup gluten-free rolled oats 2 tbsp ground flax 1\/4 cup coconut sugar 2 tbsp molasses 2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice 1\/2 tsp salt 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract Instructions:  Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix the above ingredients together, then pour into a prepared pie crust in a 10-inch round pan. Bake for 30 minutes (it might still appear undercooked\u2014don't worry!). Let your pie cool, then refrigerate for at least 5 hours. 2. Apple Cider Ingredients:  6 cups of organic apple juice 1\/4 cups of real maple syrup (you can use even less \u2013 let's face it, apple juice is sweet on its own) 2 cinnamon sticks 6 whole cloves 6 whole allspice berries (optional)* 1 orange peel, cut into strips (optional)* 1 lemon peel, cut into strips (optional)* *Remember, the richness of flavor makes up for a lack of sugar\u2014I'd rather have a spicier cider than one that is too syrupy sweet\u2026 Instructions:  Pour the apple juice and maple syrup into a large stainless steel saucepan. Place the cinnamon sticks, cloves, allspice berries, orange peel and lemon peel in the center of a washed square of cheesecloth; fold up the sides of the cheesecloth to enclose the bundle, then tie it up with a length of kitchen string. Drop the spice bundle into the cider mixture. I'm not that concerned if it all sits in the broth loose \u2013 just be careful not to pour it into your mugs when you serve it. Place the saucepan over moderate heat for 5 to 10 minutes, or until the cider is very hot but not boiling. You can leave it on the lowest simmer during a party. Remove the cider from the heat. Discard the spice bundle. Ladle the cider into big cups or mugs, adding a fresh cinnamon stick to each serving if desired. 3. Slow Cooker Baked Apples I love using my slow cooker, especially during autumn. It's so nice to throw some ingredients in during the morning and then to come home to a house that smells amazing. This simple dessert makes use of the natural sweetness of apples and leaves out much of the sugar. Ingredients:  5 cups sliced peeled Granny Smith apples (4 medium) 5 cups sliced peeled Braeburn apples (4 medium) \u00bc cup margarine (optional) 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice \u00bc cup packed brown sugar (you can even use less or leave it out entirely\u2014experiment to see what works the best for you) 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon \u00bc cup apple cider Instructions:  Simply mix all ingredients and cook on low for 3-4 hours. If you're going to be out all day make sure to set the timer on your slow cooker so the apples don't get mushy. 4. Spiced Pear Cake This spiced pear cake is a crowd pleaser and a great way to use up your canned pears. We're leaving off the icing in order to make this a healthier choice, but see this recipe for a richer, more decadent version. Ingredients  For cake: 1 quart-size jar of canned spiced pears , drained (about 3 cups) 3 large eggs 1 1\/2 cups of maple syrup 1 1\u20444 cups coconut oil 3 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 1\/4 cup walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped 2 teaspoons vanilla extract Instructions Preheat oven to 350\u00b0. In a large mixing bowl, beat eggs, 2 cups sugar, and oil until blended. Combine flour, salt, and baking soda, and add to egg mixture, stir slowly until blended. Fold in pears, chopped nuts, and vanilla extract. Pour batter into a greased and floured 10-inch Bundt pan. Bake at 350\u00b0 for 1 hour or until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. 5. Pumpkin Spice Waffles Adding a little pumpkin spice is a surefire way to savor the fall weather (just ask Starbucks!). Working pumpkin into this traditional waffle recipe (and then tweaking to make it healthier) is a great way to make your breakfasts festive for the fall. Ingredients  3\/4 cup maple syrup 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1-1\/4 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour 1-1\/2 teaspoon baking powder 1\/2 teaspoon sea salt 2 teaspoon cinnamon 2 teaspoon ginger 1\/4 teaspoon cloves 1\/2 teaspoon nutmeg 2 large eggs 1 cup 2% milk 1 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and warm Instructions:  Lightly oil and preheat waffle iron. In a large bowl, combine brown sugar and cornstarch in a large bowl. Whisk together to break apart the cornstarch and blend. Add the remaining dry ingredients, and whisk to blend. Separate eggs: yolks go in a medium sized bowl and whites get set aside in a smaller bowl. In a medium bowl, add pumpkin, milk and egg yolks. Whisk to blend. In a small bowl, whip egg whites with a hand mixer on high until stiff peaks form. Set aside. Pour melted butter into pumpkin mixture. As you pour, whisk to combine. Add the pumpkin mixture to the dry ingredients, and mix together until just combined. Slide the whipped egg whites out of the bowl and onto the mixture you just prepared. Gently fold them in until completely mixed. Once the waffle iron is heated, pour batter and press down until ready \u2013 about 3 minutes. Pamela Bofferding is a native Texan who now lives with her husband and sons in New York City. She enjoys hiking, traveling, and playing with her dogs. This information has been made available by Ready Nutrition  Originally published November 9th, 2016 Pumpkin Spice Waffles Spiced Pear Cake Warm Drinks for the Chilly Season 8 Delicious Things to Make With Pumpkin Guilt-Free Chocolate Fudge Brownies {gluten free and paleo}","label":1}
{"text":"Militia fighters in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo attacked a U.N. peacekeeping base on Friday, triggering clashes that left two of the fighters dead and two peacekeepers slightly wounded, the U.N. mission said. Thirty-four rebels from a Mai-Mai militia have been killed in fighting with Congo s army in the past week, local army spokesman Jules Ngongo said, a spike in violence he attributed to an army crackdown on the militia s harassment of local residents. Friday s attack, in which two rebels were also wounded, was a rare frontal assault on U.N. forces charged with protecting civilians in Congo s east, where dozens of armed groups exploit mineral resources and prey on local residents. Very early this morning, about 30 Mai-Mai attacked, mission spokeswoman Florence Marchal told Reuters, adding that U.N. forces drove off the assailants. It was not immediately clear which Mai-Mai group attacked nor what their objective was. The Mai-Mai comprise a number of armed bands that originally formed to resist Rwandan invasions in the 1990s. They have since morphed into a wide variety of ethnic-based militia, smuggling networks and protection rackets. Congo s mineral-rich eastern borderlands are a tinderbox of ethnic tensions and for more than two decades have been racked by violence that has often spilled across the country s borders. President Joseph Kabila s refusal to step down at the end of his constitutional mandate last December has fueled further unrest in the country s east, where wars between 1996-2003 killed millions, and center, where an insurgency against the central government has killed thousands since last August. Last week, U.N. forces in east Congo s South Kivu province intervened with helicopters and heavy machine guns to help beat back an advance by a separate rebel group on the strategic city of Uvira. The U.N. mission in Congo, known as MONUSCO, is the world s largest with some 18,000 uniformed personnel and a more than $1 billion annual budget.","label":0}
{"text":"Obama shouldn t think for one moment that America doesn t see through he and Hillary s disgusting plan to divide us by color, social class, sexual orientation and religion.Here are a few black conservatives offering some choice words for our Divider In Chief and they are awesome!The outspoken Sheriff Clarke nails it with this tweet:American needs Obama to get out of bed & address Dallas situation NOW. He poured gas on this situation with his dog whistle message earlier. David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) July 8, 2016Pastor Manning is furious with our first black President who was given a golden opportunity and totally blew it:https:\/\/twitter.com\/WDFx2EU2\/status\/751287310184902657Of course our Divider In Chief is either on the phone with Black Lives Matter organizers doing damage control or sleeping soundly and not giving the war he has started on law enforcement in America a second thought:It's now 5 dead officers. Will somebody wake up the president?#Dallas Larry Elder (@larryelder) July 8, 2016The brilliant Sheriff Clarke has a few choice words for Hillary as well:Mrs. Bill Clinton earlier showed support for Black LIES Matter. Let's see if this cop hater shows the same empathy for police in Dallas. David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) July 8, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"The U. S. Senate approved Elaine Chao's nomination to serve as the new secretary of transportation in Donald Trump's administration by a vote of on Tuesday. [Chao, who served in the cabinet of George W. Bush as secretary of labor in two successive administrations, will oversee important changes in transportation over coming years, such as the development of cars, as well as Donald Trump's $1 trillion plan to comprehensively upgrade the country's transportation infrastructure. In her hearing, Chao said that excessive regulation \"dampens the basic creativity and innovation of our country,\" and promised to avoid a \"patchwork\" of regulation in the rollout of cars. \"The Department of Transportation has a key role to play in modernizing our transportation systems, strengthening our country's competitiveness, and improving our quality of life. I look forward to working with you to rebuild, refurbish and revitalize America's infrastructure, so our economy can continue to grow, create good paying jobs for America's working families and enhance our quality of life,\" Chao said at her first confirmation hearing last week. However, financial disclosure forms released last week showed Chao could collect up to $5 million in Wells Fargo preferred stock after assuming her new role in the Trump administration. Chao, who was born in Taiwan, is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. She becomes the fifth member of Donald Trump's cabinet to be confirmed. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"AZUSA, Calif. \u2014 A gunman with a rifle was found dead inside a home in a suburb of Los Angeles on Tuesday after shooting at police officers who responded to a report of gunfire and found one person fatally shot and two others critically injured, the authorities said. It was not clear if the gunman \u2014 a man whose identity was not immediately known \u2014 died of a gunshot wound or had been shot by the police, Lt. John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said at a news conference. \"We're in the process of trying to figure out why this happened and who this person is and what exactly made him snap,\" he said. The victim who was fatally shot was a man, but no details were immediately available about him. The two other victims, women ages 65 and 59, were in \"really critical\" condition, Lieutenant Corina said. \"We don't know what's going to happen to them,\" he said. The episode, which unfolded around 2 p. m. in Azusa, a city about 25 miles east of Los Angeles, took several confusing and conflicting turns as the authorities tried to sort out what happened and to whom. The acting chief of the Azusa Police Department, Steve Hunt, had said at a news conference earlier on Tuesday that the person who did the shooting was a woman armed with a rifle and that the dead victim was also a woman. Asked about the inconsistencies with earlier accounts, Lieutenant Corina said, \"With something like this there are a lot of rumors flying around and a lot of misinformation going out. \" He added that \"so far we have found no evidence\" of an accomplice in the shooting but emphasized that the police were searching for anyone else who might be injured, dead or hiding. The shooting unfolded as five Azusa police officers and one from nearby Irwindale responded to a report of gunfire on Fourth Street. Chief Hunt said that officers found \"multiple victims\" and that as they were tending to them, the officers came under fire. They had to be extracted by armored vehicles. All of the officers who were pinned down by gunfire were \"accounted for, safe and rescued,\" the department said on Twitter. The gunman went back into a home and was barricaded there until tactical units entered the house and found him dead. Lieutenant Corina said that the police were obtaining a search warrant to look through the house. The victim who was fatally shot was lying in a doorway outside the home. What set off the shooting remained a mystery. \"We're still trying to figure it out ourselves,\" Lieutenant Corina said. After the shooting, two schools were locked down and two polling sites \u2014 at Memorial Park and Dalton Elementary \u2014 were closed, with Memorial Park shut for the rest of the day. \"Voters should avoid the area and, if necessary, cast a ballot at an alternate polling location,\" Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County and county clerk, said on Twitter. The police said the shooting did not appear to have any connection to the polling sites or Election Day. Alfonso Mendez, 42, who lives in the neighborhood, said he saw two vehicles crash at the intersection of North Angeleno Avenue and Third Street. \"A big van and a white car were in an accident,\" Mr. Mendez said. He said an occupant \"ran out of the car and started shooting at the cops. \" Chief Hunt said there was no pursuit by the police leading up to the shooting. The lieutenant said it was not clear how \u2014 or if the crash \u2014 was related to the shooting.","label":0}
{"text":"Last Tuesday, Georgia held a special election for its Atlanta House seat, which was vacated by Tom Price, who joined the Trump administration. Price won the seat in 2016 by nearly 24 percent, but still, Democrats were hoping that it would be a referendum on the Trump administration and Democrats would pull it out. They didn t. Ossoff lost to anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ ber-Christian businesswoman, Karen Handel. The margin, though, was a slim 3.8 percent.Narrowing that gap by more than 20 percent didn t keep liberals from hand-wringing and doling out blame. Democrats blamed Nancy Pelosi, who has very little input over congressional candidates, but was nonetheless subjected to right-wing misogynistic and anti-gay smears (Pelosi is straight but, according to right-wingers, she has San Francisco values. )Ossoff s loss, some say, is a sign that Democrats are doomed in 2018. Democrats have bad candidates and we need a new message, say others.While it s true that Ossoff was somewhat less than inspiring (come on, not every candidate can be Barack Obama or even Bernie Sanders), Democrats favorite hobby of self-flagellation is a bit unwarranted. The turnout numbers are in and they are one of the most encouraging numbers we ve seen in years.One of the arguments of doom and gloom include the fact that Ossoff got nearly the same vote as Hillary Clinton, which somehow must mean that absolutely nothing has changed in the 150 plus days Trump has been in office. While that statistic, in a vacuum, is quite discouraging, it s apples and oranges. Special elections tend to have very low turnouts. Democrats tend to have the lowest turnouts partly because of voter suppression (which Georgia had in spades) and partly because we re lazy, we cynically refuse to vote for candidates who are less than perfect and we re generally disengaged.In Georgia, though, Democrats had the largest off-year election turnout in over a decade. It even broke recent mid-term records, which is pretty amazing for a special election.The records indicate that past Democratic primary voters turned out at nearly the same rate as past Republican primary voters (Primary vote history is the most readily available measure of partisanship in a state without party registration, like Georgia.)Over all, 75 percent of voters who last voted in a Democratic primary turned out in the second round of voting, compared with 76 percent of those who last voted in a Republican primary. The turnout rate among voters who have never voted in a primary was 34 percent.This might not sound like a great Democratic turnout, but it is pretty rare for the Democratic turnout rate to roughly match the Republican turnout rate, at least in a high-turnout election. Certainly, that s been true in Georgia s Sixth: In 2014, Republican primary voters turned out at an eight-point higher rate than Democratic primary voters did, 77 percent to 69 percent. In the 2016 election, it was a three-point gap, 89 percent to 86 percent.Source: Washington PostThat trend isn t just in Georgia either. Percentage of Democratic turnout is rivaling Republican turnout in all the special elections.No, we have not had good luck in the special elections, but all of them have been in heavily red districts. Do you really think Paul Ryan would let Trump take one of his Congressmen if he didn t think Republicans would hold on to that seat? We were supposed to lose that election. It s Republicans who should be sweating because as the numbers prove, Democratic mobilization is working. Just wait till there s an election in a competitive district.","label":1}
{"text":"It was only a matter of time before this happened. The very first instance of an American presidential candidate in the modern age dropping the f-bomb during a stump speech occurred this week. And, naturally, it was Donald Trump who broke through the taboo then backed over it just to make sure it s dead.Indeed, Trump let fly with the f-word on Friday during one of his stream-of-consciousness rants that pass for stump speeches. And, frankly, I don t know whether to scowl or cheer. In spite of Trump s general awfulness, I m leaning cheer. We re gonna bring businesses back. We re gonna have businesses that used to be in New Hampshire, that are now in Mexico, come back to New Hampshire, and you can tell them to go f*ck themselves! Because they let you down, and they left![youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kr-_Nwi2FyY&w=560&h=315]Yes, let s tell corporations that send jobs to places like Mexico and China to go f*ck themselves. You know, corporations like Trump s.There s something particularly exciting when f*ck becomes demystified. It should be. It s just a word. We can t say it on non-pay cable or on the radio or on websites because advertisers don t like it but we can show unspeakable scenes of violence and other horrors all the time. There s something perverse and unjust about that. So, in that regard, Trump can feel free to let the expletives fly. But if he s elected, I wonder if his FCC appointees will be equally lenient. On the other hand, Trump s use of f*ck is another step away from presidential decorum on the Republican side, and one step closer to amateur-hour composed of reality show hacks running for the highest office in the land. I m honestly torn.For the record, Trump has said f*ck in public before, but not during a presidential stump speech.","label":1}
{"text":"UPDATE: ANTHONY WEINER JUST DELETED HIS TWITTER ACCOUNT AFTER THE PHOTOS AND TWEETS WERE PUBLISHED. Is this guy Bill Clinton s twin separated at birth or what? Both of these men are just total pervs! Weiner resigned from Congress over his last escapade with sexting women. This time Weiner is even more disgusting in his messages to a beautiful brunette. He brags about his manhood and even says: I d put someone s eye out with this thing. This is baby-sitting Anthony Weiner-style.While his wife, Huma Abedin, travels the country campaigning for Hillary Clinton, the disgraced ex-congressman has been sexting with a busty brunette out West and even sent her a lurid crotch shot with his toddler son in the picture.The stay-at-home cad shot the revealing photo while discussing massage parlors near my old apartment shortly after 3 a.m. on July 31, 2015, a screenshot of the exchange shows. Weiner was clearly aroused by his conversation with the 40-something divorcee when he abruptly changed the subject. Someone just climbed into my bed, Weiner wrote. Really? she responded.Weiner then hit Send on the cringe-inducing image, which shows a bulge in his white, Jockey-brand boxer briefs and his son cuddled up to his left, wrapped in a light-green blanket. You do realize you can see you[r] Weiner in that pic?? the woman wrote.Moments after forwarding the photo, Weiner freaked out over the possibility he had accidentally posted it publicly just as he did during the infamous episode that forced him to resign from Congress in 2011. Ooooooh . . . I was scared. For half a second I thought I posted something. Stop looking at my crotch, Weiner wrote back. Whatever. You did it on purpose, she replied.","label":1}
{"text":"Spin Doctors \u2013 How the Media Reports on Medicine    In a study of the dietary advice given by newspapers in the UK, \"no credible scientific basis\" was found for most claims. The \"[m]isreporting of dietary advice\" was found to be \"widespread and may contribute to public misconceptions about food and health.\" And, potentially, not just the public.  Scientists like to think they're not influenced by popular media, but this study decided to put that to the test. Each week, The New York Times reports on scientific research, and the studies they report on end up being cited more often than those they don't report on. Ah, so, the popular press does have an impact.  Not so fast. That's just one potential explanation. Maybe, outstanding articles are both more likely to be picked up by media, and independently more likely to be cited. Maybe, the newspaper was just earmarking important science, and their publicity didn't really have any effect on future studies.  How could you disentangle the two? An event in 1978 made it possible. There was a three-month strike, in which they continued to print copies, but could not sell them to the public. So, a natural experiment was set up. If the paper was just earmarking important articles, then the strike would have no effect on the studies' impact. But, that's not what happened. The studies highlighted during the strike months, when no one could read them, appeared to have no impact.  The next question, of course, is: are they just amplifying the medical information to the medical community, or distorting it, as well?  Systematic studies suggest that many stories about new medicines, for example, tend to overstate benefits, understate risks and costs, and fail to disclose relevant financial ties. Overly rosy coverage of drugs may also result from financial ties between drug companies and the journalists themselves, who may be susceptible to Big Pharma perks.  Scientists and physicians often blame the press. In fact, the famous physician William Osler was quoted as saying, \"Believe nothing that you see in the newspapers\" and \"If you see anything in them that you know is true, begin to doubt it at once.\"  But, both parties share in the blame. Reporters may only have an hour or two to put together a story; and so, they may rely on press releases. And, it's not hard to imagine how drug company press releases might be biased. But, surely, press releases from the scientists themselves, and their institutions, would present the facts fairly, and without spin, right? Researchers decided to put it to the test.  Critics blame the media. But, where do you think they're getting the information from? One might assume that press releases from prestigious academic medical centers would be measured, unexaggerated\u2014but suffer from the same problems: downplaying side-effects, conflicts of interest, study limitations, and promoting research that has uncertain relevance to human health.  For example, most laboratory or animal studies explicitly claimed relevance to human health\u2014yet lacked caveats about extrapolating results to people. For example, a release about a study of ultrasound reducing tumors in mice, was titled \"Researchers study the use of ultrasound for treatment of cancer\"\u2014failing to note \"for your pet mouse.\"  Apparently, it's been estimated that less than ten percent of animal research ever succeeds in being translated to human clinical use. Overselling the results of lab animal studies as a promised cure potentially confuses readers, and might contribute to disillusionment with science.  Although it's common to blame the media for exaggerations, most times they don't just make it up. That's what the research institutions are sending out in their own press releases. And, medical journals, too. Sometimes, medical journal press releases do more harm than good. An analysis of press releases from some of the most prestigious medical journals found the same litany of problems.  I don't think most people realize that journals sell what are called reprints, copies of the articles they print, to drug companies, which can bring in big bucks. Like, drug companies may buy a million copies of a favorable article. Sometimes, the company will submit an article, and promise to buy a certain number in advance\u2014which is effectively a bribe, notes a long-time editor-in-chief at the prestigious British Medical Journal . He remembers once when a woman from a public relations company rang him up, and stopped just short of saying she would go to bed with him if they published the paper.  Another medical journal conflict of interest relates to advertising\u2014a major source of income for many journals. Most of the advertising comes from pharmaceutical companies. And, so, if they don't like a study, they can threaten to withdraw their advertising\u2014potentially leaving editors faced with the stark choice of agreeing to bury a particular piece, or seeing their journal die.  Even if journalists have time to skip the press releases, and go straight to the source, and try to read the studies themselves, they may find them utterly incomprehensible gobbledygook. But, even if they do understand them, scientific articles are not simply reports of facts. Authors often have many opportunities to add \"spin\" to their scientific reports\u2014defined as ways that can distort the interpretation of results, and mislead readers, either unconsciously, or with willful intent to deceive.  What these researchers did was look at randomized controlled trials with statistically nonsignificant results\u2014meaning some drug, for example, was compared to a sugar pill, and the difference between the newfangled treatment and placebo was essentially nonexistent. Would the researchers just lay out the truth, and be, like, well, we spent all this time and money, and in terms of our primary outcome, we got nothing. Or, would they try to spin it? In 68% of cases, they spun. There was spin in the abstract, which is like the summary of the article. And this is particularly alarming, because the abstract is often the only part of an article people actually read.  And so, no wonder the media often gets it wrong. Spin in the abstracts can turn into spin in the press releases, and results in spin in the news. Therefore, even if journalists are doing their due diligence, using the original abstract conclusion in good faith, they still run the risk of deceiving their readers.  Researchers presenting new findings could always be careful to stress how preliminary the findings may be. But, let's be serious, powerful self-interests may prevail.  Finally, though, I think the biggest problem with the way media reports on medicine is the choice as to which stories are covered. In 2003, SARS and bioterrorism killed less than a dozen people, yet generated over a hundred thousand media reports\u2014far more than those covering the actual greatest threats to our lives and health.  In fact, ironically, the more people that die, the less it appears something is covered. Our leading #1 killer is heart disease. Yet, it can be prevented, treated, and even reversed with diet and lifestyle changes. Now that is something that deserves to be on the front page.   Close Sources Video Sources","label":1}
{"text":"Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF on Monday officially notified President Robert Mugabe of his removal as party president and will on Tuesday table a motion to impeach him after a deadline it set for his resignation passed, spokesman Simon Moyo said. ZANU-PF on Sunday removed Mugabe, who has led the party since 1977 and been in power for 37 years. The party also fired his wife Grace, capping a dramatic week after the military seized power on Wednesday.","label":0}
{"text":"What a bizarre exchange between a reporter and Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi! She is asked during a press conference what her relationship is with President Trump and she laughed. What s even stranger is she mocked the way Trump says DACA .It s as if she detests the president so much that she can t bring herself to speak his name. Notice how she talks in disjointed sentences and stops suddenly to think. She cannot even form a complete thought! This is yet another example of the strange behavior of Pelosi that is ignored by the main stream media like an enabling spouse.Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) chuckled Thursday when asked to characterize her relationship with President Donald Trump, saying there is a good rapport there but mainly focusing on their stark disagreement over tax reform.After a reporter asked the question, Pelosi paused and smiled, appearing to gather her thoughts for a diplomatic response given her strong criticism of the administration. I think we have a good rapport, Pelosi said. I don t think we ve accomplished much together. Pelosi said she and Trump could find a path together on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, although she gently mocked his pronunciation of DACA.","label":1}
{"text":"Ireland s Deputy Prime Minister has to resign or else she will force a snap election next month, a senior member of the opposition party propping up the country s minority government said on Monday. I think the Tanaiste (deputy prime minister) should recognize that unless she does stand aside, she is going to force this country into an election nobody wants, that nobody needs and is not in the country s interests, Fianna Fail s Jim O Callaghan told national broadcaster RTE. I don t see any other method out of this.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump has been positioning himself as an outsider who is going to clean up the corruption that is rampant in the United States government. That is, of course, absolute hogwash. It is the billionaire class that has ushered in our current era of oligarchical rule. On Sunday, CNN political analyst Van Jones informed one of Trump s surrogates that he is a billionaire who manipulates the tax code for his benefit and thus is the corruption he claims to be fighting.During Sunday s broadcast of CNN s State of the Union, the show s host Jake Tapper questioned Trump super fan Rachel Campos-Duffy on the New York Times revelation that Trump may have used the tax code in a way to get out of paying income taxes for two decades. She dodged his question and said that President Obama is the epitome of cronyism. Jones then called out Campos-Duffy for evading the question, saying That s a good pivot. That s when Jones let Campos-Duffy have it. He lambasted her and Trump for championing his tax manipulation. It is, in fact, true if Donald Trump lost a billion dollars, think about this, lost a billion dollars, he could wind up as a winner legally in his taxes for a generation. Is that because he s a genius? Jones asked incredulously. It s because billionaires have armies of lobbyists to write the rules. Here s the deal: If you re obeying horrible rules that you helped to write, that doesn t make you a genius. It makes you a part of the corruption. That s exactly what every Trump supporter needs to understand. Trump is not the answer to the problems that are facing the nation. By electing Trump as president, all they are doing is taking the middle man out of the corrupt political process. Instead of electing officials who take orders from the wealthy, they would just be electing the wealthy to the office directly. The segment is one of the best that has come out of a political talk show this election season. Van Jones masterfully expresses what so many who have been fighting against Trump since he was crowned with Republican presidential nomination. What s more, Center for American Progress CEO Neera Tanden explains exactly why it is so important for Trump to release his tax returns. If he did so, he could prove that he is as honest as he says he is. However, he won t. He has broken from decades of tradition and only offers pathetic excuses as to why he won t release his returns. It does not appear that he will do so even now. That s because he has something to hide. The moment he does his campaign will be effectively over. If one snippet of info from his 1995 returns can be as damaging as they have so far been, one can only imagine the skeletons he is hiding.You can watch the segment below in full.Featured image from video screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, famed as a staunch gay rights advocate and a champion of progressive causes, has been accused of sexually molesting several teenaged boys 30 years ago, reports have revealed. [A trio of men came forward to allege that Murray had sex with them decades ago when they were underage. At least one said he was 15 when the mayor molested him back in the 1980s, according to the Seattle Times. A man identified only as \"D. H. \" now 46, filed a lawsuit against the Murray alleging that the famed mayor and activist began molesting him when he was only 15 and exacerbated problems he had during his life starting when he was a teen. He also claims that Murray was fully aware of his underage status. D. H. claims that he has been \"dealing with this for over 30 years,\" and filed the lawsuit as part of the \"healing process. \" The accuser said he hoped the lawsuit would help him to repair his mental issues after years of \"the shame, the embarrassment, the guilt, the humiliation that I put myself through and that he put me through. \" The plaintiff also alleged that he took money from Murray for the sexual encounters up to 50 times over a four or five year period. After the lawsuit had been made public, Murray issued a press release calling the accusations false: These false accusations are intended to damage a prominent elected official who has been a defender of vulnerable populations for decades. It is not a coincidence that this shakedown effort comes within weeks of the campaign filing deadline. These unsubstantiated assertions, dating back three decades, are categorically false. Mayor Murray has never engaged in an inappropriate relationship with any minor. \u2026 Mayor Murray will vigorously fight these allegations in court. Murray also pledged to continue his bid for as the city's Mayor. The Seattle mayor has been the subject of such allegations in the past, with one case going as far back as 1984. Jeff Simpson came forward decades ago alleging that he met Murray in a Portland center for troubled children and was later molested for an extended period by the man who would become mayor. A police investigation was launched in the 80s, but no charges were ever filed. \"I don't necessarily think that he destroyed my life,\" Simpson said about his experience, \"But I believe a lot of the problems I have stemmed from this. \" Simpson's story was buttressed by Lloyd Anderson, another man who claims to have been molested by Murray back in the 1980s. \"Look, the guy took advantage of my situation,\" Anderson said of his experience in the 1980s. \"I was young, I was homeless and doing drugs and everything. \" Mayor Murray characterized some of the allegations as a \" \" attack on his career. \"The two older accusations were promoted by extreme activists in the midst of the marriage equality campaign, and were thoroughly investigated and dismissed by both law enforcement authorities and the media,\" he said in a statement. Murray insists that these lawsuits and allegations are politically motivated. The mayor has a long history of fighting for progressive causes. When he was in the state legislature, for instance, he led the fight for the state to recognize gay marriage. And once elected Seattle's mayor, Murray launched a campaign to push the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. Murray has also been a leading opponent of President Donald Trump favoring efforts to torpedo the president's immigration policies. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com","label":0}
{"text":"Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) chairwoman Rita Makarau resigned on Friday, months before a vote whose credibility is crucial to the new army-backed government s efforts to re-engage international lenders and lure investors, a senior government source said. Makarau, seen as an ally of 93-year-old former president Robert Mugabe, gave no reason for her resignation, the official, who declined to be named, said. President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was sworn in two weeks ago in the wake of the de facto military coup that ended Mugabe s 37-year rule, pledged to hold elections as scheduled next year. Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa mentioned the credibility of the elections at least five times in a budget speech on Thursday, a sign of the vote s importance in shoring up Harare s democratic legitimacy. Opposition parties have demanded reforms to an electoral system they say is skewed in the ruling ZANU-PF party s favor. Makarau, who has been accused of being partisan, was overseeing an overhaul of the voters roll, which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change has described as shambolic . Makarau did not answer her mobile phone. A spokesman for the ZEC was unable to confirm Makarau s departure.","label":0}
{"text":"There are big scandals like Trump s ties to Russia, his repeated flaunting of conflict of interest violations, the nepotism and then there are small ones. It s the small ones that are most disturbing because of how completely avoidable they are. The Trump family just assumes you re too stupid to notice.Here s a particularly galling example:Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump released a family photo during Passover. That, in and of itself, wouldn t be newsworthy except for the fact that it was a much-needed break from the Trump administration s repugnant treatment of the Jewish community. Kushner s Jewish faith is extremely important to Trump because his staff is rife with anti-Semitic thinkers.Trump s advisor Steve Bannon is a life-long anti-Semite, whose own wife once said he refused to allow his daughters to attend a school with Jewish kids. Trump s Press Secretary Sean Spicer went on a nonsensical Holocaust denial rant and only apologized hours later when the nation of Israel openly said he needed to resign. Trump s inner circle includes a guy who pledged an oath of loyalty to a pro-fascist Nazi-allied group. In the middle of all of this, Trump no-showed on a Passover seder dinner the White House hosted.So a photograph of Trump s daughter and son-in-law, two key members of his team, celebrating a Jewish holiday might send a positive message to the country. However, like clockwork, even Kushner s Passover family photo quickly turned into something offensive.It turns out that the photo was not, in fact, taken during his Passover celebration. It is an old photo taken on what seems like the Sunday after the inauguration. CNN s Betsy Klein noticed that fact when she realized the entire Trump clan was wearing the same outfits they were photographed in during services at the National Cathedral.It appears the Passover Trump-Kushner family photo was taken the Sunday after inauguration following services at the National Cathedral: pic.twitter.com\/p0htM7V8Pi Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) April 13, 2017Just so incredibly lazy. And unfortunately, that s the message they are sending.","label":1}
{"text":"Don t turn off your paid internet service quite yet. If you have a job and contribute to our tax base, you won t qualify. You also have to be living in cities the Obama regime considers worthy of free internet service. Those cities have likely provided some form of support for Obama s radical agenda for America.Because internet service is a human right or something like that Calling the Internet a 21st century necessity, President Barack Obama on Wednesday unveiled a program to bring faster Internet connections to more low-income households, particularly to help students living in public and assisted housing stay ahead in school.Under ConnectHome, the public, private and nonprofit sectors have pledged to work together to provide high-speed connections and digital devices to more families at lower cost.More than 90 percent of households headed by a college graduate have Internet access, Obama said. But fewer than half of low-income households have similar access.In this day and age, Obama said the digital divide puts these individuals at a disadvantage by limiting their educational and economic opportunities because the Internet is increasingly needed to find a job, finish homework or keep in touch with family and friends. In this digital age, when you can apply for a job, take a course, pay your bills with a tap of your phone, the Internet is not a luxury. It s a necessity, Obama said in Durant, Oklahoma, on the first day of a two-day visit to the state. You cannot connect with today s economy without having access to the Internet, he said.ConnectHome is similar to ConnectEd, a federal program that Obama said is on track to wire 99 percent of K-12 classrooms and libraries with high-speed Internet by the end of 2017.ConnectHome will begin in 27 cities and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, which is headquartered in Durant. With about 200,000 members spread across much of southeastern Oklahoma, the Choctaw Nation is the nation s third-largest Native American tribe.The Choctaw Nation was also among the administration s first Promise Zones, a designation that makes it eligible for tax incentives and grants to help fight poverty.The only federal money expected to be spent on ConnectHome is a $50,000 Agriculture Department grant to the Choctaw Nation, officials said.The 27 cities the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development selected for ConnectHome are: Albany, Georgia; Atlanta; Baltimore; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Boston; Camden, New Jersey; Cleveland; Denver; Durham, North Carolina; Fresno, California; Kansas City, Missouri; Little Rock, Arkansas; Los Angeles; Macon, Georgia; Memphis, Tennessee; Meriden, Connecticut; Nashville, Tennessee; New Orleans; New York; Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia; Rockford, Illinois; San Antonio; Seattle; Springfield, Massachusetts; Tampa, Florida; and the District of Columbia.Obama was spending the night in Oklahoma and on Thursday continuing a weeklong focus on making the criminal justice system fairer.He planned to meet Thursday with law enforcement officials and inmates during a historic tour of the El Reno Federal Correctional Institution, a medium-security facility west of Oklahoma City that holds about 1,300 male offenders. I will be the first sitting president to visit a federal prison, Obama said in a speech Tuesday to the NAACP meeting in Philadelphia.","label":1}
{"text":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The end came quickly, and somewhat mercifully, for the Islanders, who acquitted themselves well even as they will lament two overtime home losses in their Eastern conference semifinal series against the Tampa Bay Lightning. But amid the quiet, clipped answers in the Islanders' locker room and clatter of team gear being packed, the haunting facts remained. After winning Game 1 here at Amalie Arena, the Islanders lost the next four games, swept aside by a combination of superior Tampa Bay talent and tough luck. It culminated in a shutout in Game 5 on Sunday that ended the Islanders' longest playoff run in 23 years and lifted the Lightning to their second consecutive appearance in the Eastern Conference finals. Tampa Bay will face the winner of the series for a chance to reach the Stanley Cup finals. \"The difference in the series was, offensively, they took advantage of their opportunities, and we couldn't find a way these last few games to score some goals,\" Islanders Coach Jack Capuano said. \"If there's one thing that you have to look back on, it is the inability and ineffectiveness to get some offense. \" The Islanders were shut out for the first time this postseason. They had clicked offensively while knocking off the Florida Panthers, the No. 2 seed, in a riveting series, and after a victory here in Game 1, a magical run appeared to be possible. \"We had an incredible run and were on the fun side of things,\" Islanders center Frans Nielsen said. \"We've seen the brutal side of it, too. \" As the series wore on, the Islanders could not crack Tampa Bay goaltender Ben Bishop, who stopped 28 shots on Sunday, turning aside a few chances early in the game that could have swung momentum to the Islanders. The Islanders' Thomas Greiss made 21 saves, but he appeared to be under constant siege compared with Bishop's play. \"Once you've tasted it, the highs and the lows and everything that goes with it, you want to get back again,\" Lightning Coach Jon Cooper said of his team's determination to close out the Islanders and return to the conference finals. Victor Hedman scored two goals, and Brian Boyle had one as the Lightning took a lead into the third period. After Tampa Bay's Nikita Kucherov scored on a breakaway at 4 minutes 40 seconds of the third period, the thunderous celebration at Amalie Arena only grew louder as the crowd serenaded the Islanders, singing \"Hey, hey, hey, goodbye!\" \"It's the way playoff hockey is,\" the Islanders' Matt Martin said. \"They found a way to win games, and we didn't, but we'll learn from it. It's a credit to them. They are a very good hockey team. They were in the Cup finals last year for a reason. \" The Lightning opened a lead in the first period on goals by Hedman at 13:49 and Boyle at 18:41. Both players simply outworked defenders. With two Islanders converging on Kucherov behind the net, the puck came free directly in front of Greiss. Hedman poked it away from Kyle Okposo, quickly pirouetted and fired a wrist shot that beat Greiss on his glove side. Boyle's goal also originated behind the net, where Matt Carle was being chased. The Islanders' eyes were still on Carle when Boyle appeared from the opposite direction and seemed to steal the puck from his teammate. Boyle wheeled around the net and took aim, and as the Islanders turned their heads, he fired high over Greiss's right shoulder. Hedman quickly capitalized on a power play for his second goal at 4:22 of the second, scoring on a slap shot 42 seconds after Travis Hamonic had been called for roughing. \"Start to finish, we played really well,\" Boyle said. \"We were hard on the pucks. We made sure we got the puck in deep. We didn't turn it over in the neutral zone and give them opportunities. We played a great game. \" That the Islanders' captain, John Tavares, was frustrated by Hedman and other Lightning defenders illustrated how the Islanders lost control of the series. Tavares had only one shot in Tampa Bay's overtime victory in Game 4 and managed one again on Sunday. He also spent four minutes in the penalty box on a double minor following a skirmish late in the second period. \"We obviously played some good hockey at times, but we just let those two games at home slip away, and that put us behind the eight ball,\" Tavares said. \"We got off to an O. K. start, but they came back hard and capitalized on a couple opportunities. \" The overtime losses in Games 3 and 4 had a lingering effect on the Islanders, who appeared deflated after the Lightning took a lead and were continually demoralized by Bishop. \"You don't want to go dry at this time of the year,\" Capuano said. \"You look at Games 3 and 4 and the opportunities that we had to score, the a couple other chances that we had that could have turned the series the other way. But you can't look back. Tampa Bay played a great series. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Supporters of the rule of law crashed a pro-illegal rally on August 4, 2017 at San Bernardino City Hall. This was a reaction to San Bernardino getting a letter from Jeff Sessions threatening to withhold their federal funds. Using the left s tactics on them is pretty great:Did you listen to the rhetoric coming from the speakers who were pushing open borders? Shame on them for using religion to break the law! The SEIU has been called Obama s Purple Army so they bussed in protesters for the protest They are usually paid to attend protests. They are more like Obama s useful idiots because they lose if more illegals come to take their jobs.The Press Enterprise reported:Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcement that San Bernardino would not be eligible for crime-reduction funding spurred a demonstration outside San Bernardino City Hall on Friday, Aug. 4.On Thursday, Aug. 3, Sessions sent letters to four cities struggling with gun violence, including San Bernardino, telling them they would not be eligible for a program that provides money to combat drug trafficking and gang crime unless they confirm their cooperation with immigration officials.The letter asks if correctional and detention facilities will honor a written request from the Department of Homeland Security to hold a foreign national for up to 48 hours beyond the scheduled release date.In San Bernardino, that s up to the San Bernardino County Sheriff s Department, not the city. Regardless, the Sheriff s Department, in a statement, said it can t comply because it would be unconstitutional. San Bernardino is not going to be bullied, said Kesha McGee, a lead organizer with Inland Congregations United for Change, at the planned demonstration.McGee said the interfaith group wanted to show support for the San Bernardino immigrant community. We are a community of unity, she said. We all deserve to be here. Religious leaders from tInland Congregations United for Change and immigrant rights activists from the Inland area planned the Friday press conference outside City Hall to condemn Sessions announcement. Assemblywoman Eloise Reyes, D-San Bernardino, was at the event.","label":1}
{"text":"The Democratic National Committee is offering all sorts of perks at next year's presidential nominating convention in Philadelphia in return for whopping contributions.","label":0}
{"text":"November 14, 2016  After yesterday's Wikileaks revelations, Nicolas Sarkozy has today confirmed that the \"French language\" is indeed a one thousand year old hoax. The president of France revealed that what purported to be his native tongue was in fact complete gibberish, admitting the French really speak English, except in the presence of the British. This comes as Wikileaks published cables sent by French diplomats to countries such as Spain, China and Russia which were all found to be written in English.  During a speech given in received pronunciation, the French President came clean, stating that it all started off as a joke during William the Conquerer's invasion to make the aggressors seem a bit more exotic. \"What was initially a prank snowballed and after a few years we realised we'd look silly revealing the truth, so we had to keep up the fa\u00e7ade,\" said the Premier. \"In the company of any Brits we would try to make convincingly \"French\" sounds, a mixture of guttural grunts and rapid-fire syllables.  But as soon as we were on our own we'd all heave a huge sigh of relief and revert to English. We developed a heavy reliance on hand gestures to cover up when we ran out of likely noises, and the shrug was a particular boon if inspiration dried up. In the end we became quite the raconteurs, with an impressive array of supposed vocabulary. So what began as a game for the \u00e9lites, became a hobby across all levels of society, and it shocked us that the Brits were so na\u00efve as to not see through the charade.\"  Sarkozy claims Wikileaks will soon expose a number of other \"languages\". \"I mean, seriously guys, has anyone ever actually listened to \"Arabic\"? Je ne sais pas\u2026..\"  16 February 2011","label":1}
{"text":"A prominent Syrian opposition leader said on Thursday U.N. mediation to end the country s six-year conflict has failed and the revolution would continue. Riyad Hijab, chairman of the Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee (HNC), rejected comments by U.N. special envoy Staffan de Mistura that President Bashar al-Assad s opponents must accept they have not won the war. De Mistura s statements reflect the defeat of U.N. mediation, Hijab wrote on Twitter. The Syrian revolution continues, he said. De Mistura had repeatedly made un-studied remarks on the conflict, he said. Hijab, a former Syrian prime minister under Assad, called for a new a U.N. approach on the Syrian issue , without elaborating. Assad has won a series of military victories but rebel groups still hold large parts of the northwest of the country and substantial enclaves in the southwest, in Homs province and near Damascus. De Mistura said on Wednesday the opposition must be unified and realistic in accepting it had not won the war. He did not say Assad was victorious. Victory can only be if there is a sustainable political long-term solution, de Mistura said, suggesting the conflict was almost over because many countries were involved principally to defeat Islamic State and a national ceasefire should follow. The remarks come ahead of a round of Syria talks between Damascus allies Russia and Iran and opposition backer Turkey in Astana next week. Several rounds of negotiations in Astana and a separate U.N.-sponsored track in Geneva between the government and the HNC have produced no visible progress on ending the war that broke out after a popular uprising in 2011. Russia and Iran have stood by Assad. Some Western countries have softened their initial stance that he should leave power immediately, saying he could be part of a transitional period.","label":0}
{"text":"On Friday, Donald Trump decided to distract from revelations that intelligence agencies had identified the individual Russians who delivered hacked documents to Wikileaks on behalf of The Donald s best friend Vladimir Putin by proving to the world that what he lacks in his desire to attend intelligence briefings he makes up for in his adherence to the principle that ratings aree everything. Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got swamped (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for . Trump tweeted. Nine minutes later, he added, being a movie star-and that was season 1 compared to season 14. Now compare him to my season 1. But who cares, he supported Kasich & Hillary. Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got \"swamped\" (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for . Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got \"swamped\" (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT. So much for . Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2017While it is true that Celebrity Apprentice debuted with low numbers 44 percent down from the last year Trump hosted, this probably has more to do with the fact that the President-elect is still listed as executive producer for the show than any other factor. After all, more than half the country wants nothing to do with him as President, or as part of a television show that has been steadily dropping in ratings for years.\"Executive Producer Donald J. Trump\" pic.twitter.com\/4MNvPlmi7J Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) January 3, 2017Naturally, as The Donald has spent more time b*tching about Celebrity Apprentice than attending intelligence briefings like Fridays, where he gets to learn the identity of the Russians who delivered the information Trump says they didn t get from a hack ordered by Vladimir Putin to rapist-in-hiding Julian Assange s shady website. Twitter, naturally, descended on The Donald, brutally mocking him for, well, just being him..@realDonaldTrump Sir: how can you find time to tweet on Apprentice ratings but not receive an intelligence briefing? West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump Kind of like getting beat by almost 3 million votes when running for president? Aaron Gouveia (@DaddyFiles) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump It must be exhausting to be this petty. Mark Pytlik (@markpytlik) January 6, 2017His show ratings tanked bigly after the first season. Sad! @Green_Footballs @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com\/a2ZRpyhvBI Vicious Babushka (@viciousbabushka) January 6, 2017.@realDonaldTrump respectfully Mr. President elect.. you are a real dipshit. (Excited to see the comments on this). David Sugarman (@SugarmanSpeaks) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump Donald,Brush your teeth, make your bed and go to the security briefing. Mommy doesn't have time to talk reality tv. Mike Kelton (@mikekelton) January 6, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Another great presidential tweet. But how'd you do compared to duck dynasty? For the love of God, get off Twitter. Now. Dr. Craig Malkin (@DrCraigMalkin) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump holy fuck. C'mon America, please stop this madness. Ralph Midnight (@Cooksphere) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump You call out your own name in bed. Am I right? Rhys Muldoon (@rhysam) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump arent u still exec producer of @ApprenticeNBC? If you root against ur own show, will u also be rooting against own country? Ashvin Lad (@ashvinlad) January 6, 2017 Ratings are bad bc Americans are boycotting the show & your brand, you slow bully! @realDonaldTrump @lovealaska1105 https:\/\/t.co\/ZPQIwQNKad Sonia Mota (@SoniaKatiMota) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump Read an intelligence briefing, not a Nielsen briefing Jason Solomon (@solomonster) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump if you just added \"nanny nanny boo boo. I'm rubber, you're glue!\" that tweet would be complete. #unpresidented #maga Kristine Schachinger (@schachin) January 6, 2017@realDonaldTrump Ratings machine? History Revisionist. First season was OK at 7 spot. Down hill from there. So sad pic.twitter.com\/GvTCs9fL7w Subvert Trump (@_Robespierre__) January 6, 2017Trump may be tweeting about ratings, but he surely has a lot on his mind with the intelligence briefing. After all, he has maintained for months that he had secret information that proves Vladimir Putin s gang didn t hack his political enemies for him. He has repeatedly attacked our intelligence agencies for bringing it to light. As ABC reports, the proof that Trump was lying to the American people is quite strong:Overnight just hours after President Barack Obama received the report new details emerged of just what is contained in the secret document.A senior official briefed on the intelligence sources, methods and assessments in the report that Trump will receive this morning told ABC News that the findings are clear: the evidence points directly to the Kremlin and to Russian President Vladimir Putin in what one official described as multiple streams and types of intelligence collection, not just forensic examinations of the hacked systems. Those various streams of information gathered by U.S. spy agencies include signals intelligence such as intercepts of communications between Russian officials in which they implicated the Kremlin s own espionage, as ABC News reported last month.The Washington Post reported late on Thursday that the eavesdropping caught senior Russian officials actually cheering Trump s surprise victory in November as a success of the Kremlin s intelligence program.And Vice President Joe Biden who was privy to the classified briefing that Trump will receive today told the PBS NewsHour that, there s overwhelming consensus in the community and overwhelming evidence supplied by the community that Russia did engage in an effort to impact on the elections. There is clear evidence that they in fact were engaged in activities designed to try and impact in the outcome of the election, Biden said, while noting there was no evidence that they actually tampered with voting booths or tampered with voting rolls. Referring to parts of the report which will be made public next week, Biden said: It will state clearly that the Russians did as a matter of policy attempt to discredit the US electoral process and attempt to hurt Mrs. Clinton. Contrary to Trump s public bloviations Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, says that the attacks were approved at the highest level of government in Russia and by that, he means that the highest is President Putin. Recently, Barack Obama expelled more than 30 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the country. Vladimir Putin responded by saying he would wait to respond until his puppet sorry, Trump was officially President.","label":1}
{"text":"Be careful what you ask for Watch: FBI Director James Comey testified Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Hillary Clinton emails containing classified information were forwarded to the computer of Anthony Weiner, the former congressman, by his wife, Clinton aide Huma Abedin.Comey also strongly defended himself on Capitol Hill for his Oct. 28 letter notifying Congress of newly discovered emails appearing pertinent to Clinton s private server investigation, arguing it would have been catastrophic to conceal such a revelation.He explained that his investigative team informed him in late October of metadata from Weiner s computer showing thousands of Clinton s emails on that device, including what they thought might be the missing emails from her first three months at the State Department.Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 over a sexting scandal and saw a 2013 mayoral run in New York City go up in flames for similar reasons. The investigation that led to Comey s letter concerned his sexting with an underage girl. WFB","label":1}
{"text":"On Friday's broadcast of MSNBC's \"All In,\" MSNBC anchor Joy Reid argued that the \"bread and circuses\" for President Trump's base, \"includes the persecution of people they fear, the persecution of Muslims is part of the bread and circuses, the persecution of the immigrants, throwing out DREAMers from the country, people that it's easy for his base to hate and to fear. \" Reid said, \"[T]he most cynical thing he's done so far, is to say, I have to ban people from these seven Muslim countries. It's urgent. I've got to do it now. And then, when it gets rejected by the courts, the 2nd version of this ban, actually can wait because he's getting lauded by the press. And so, while he's being applauded, it's not so urgent. It can wait now. \" She added, \"[T]he bread and circuses for his base includes the persecution of people they fear, the persecution of Muslims is part of the bread and circuses, the persecution of the immigrants, throwing out DREAMers from the country, people that it's easy for his base to hate and to fear. That is part of the show he gives them instead of giving them substantive things like, I don't know, health care. \" ( Grabien) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett","label":0}
{"text":"Maybe it was the unexpected warmth of the gesture, the sheer enveloping display of affection. Maybe it was his response, the beatific expression on his face, eyes almost closed, head tilted toward her shoulder. Maybe it was the moment: tenderness at a time when presidential politics has become a festival of cruelty. But when Michelle Obama hugged former President George W. Bush on Saturday, at a ceremony to open the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the image quickly took flight online. However one chose to interpret it \u2014 and overinterpretation is a hazard in such exercises \u2014 it became an instant metaphor. Some saw the lost virtue of civility in politics others, the unlikely friendships that blossom at the rarefied heights of public life. To critics on the left, it was a shameful case of political amnesia by the wife of a president who spent years cleaning up the mess left by his predecessor. Mrs. Obama and Mr. Bush have had a few such memorable moments. In July in Dallas at a memorial service for five police officers killed by an Army veteran, the two held hands while singing \"The Battle Hymn of the Republic. \" When Mr. Bush began swaying to the music, Mrs. Obama gamely let him swing her arm back and forth. At one point, as the choir sang \"glory, glory hallelujah,\" he turned to her in a burst of enthusiasm, causing the first lady to crack up, despite the solemnity of the occasion. In June 2012, when Mr. Bush returned to the White House for the unveiling of his official portrait, he aimed a few wisecracks at President Obama. But he saved his best material for Mrs. Obama, reminding her that when British soldiers set fire to the White House in 1814, another first lady, Dolley Madison, rescued the portrait of the first George W. \u2014 as in Washington. \"Now, Michelle,\" he said, gesturing to his own painting, \"if anything happens, there's your man. \" Some of these encounters are explained by proximity. When the Obamas and the Bushes appear in public together, protocol dictates that Mrs. Obama stand next to Mr. Bush. Some of it is a function of the former president's playful manner, which by all accounts has become more playful in his retirement. But some of it also has to do with the relationship between the couples, which current and former officials say has deepened over the past seven and a half years, both because of the shared bond of living in the White House and because of Mr. Bush's decorum as an . \"President Bush was very gracious to us during the transition, and he has been unfailingly gracious and respectful since,\" said David Axelrod, a former adviser to Mr. Obama. He recalled the president telling him that the Bushes \"had taught him lessons in how to be a former president. \" Mr. Bush has studiously avoided criticizing Mr. Obama or his policies. And Mr. Bush has lent his presence to occasions that meant a lot to the president, like the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march in Selma, Ala. when Mr. Obama delivered what some believe was the finest speech of his presidency, on race relations in the United States. Mrs. Obama sat next to Mr. Bush on that day, too, frequently leaning over to talk or share a laugh with him. Mrs. Obama's rapport with Laura Bush is less playful, but Mrs. Obama's aides say it is no less genuine. In early 2009, Mrs. Bush invited Mrs. Obama to visit the White House with her daughters, Malia and Sasha, for a private tour before her husband's inauguration. Mrs. Bush's daughters, Barbara and Jenna, showed the girls their new home, including good hiding places and banisters made for sliding. The two first ladies have appeared together regularly since, including this month at a conference at the National Archives to promote support for families of service members. In 2013, in Tanzania, Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Bush bonded during a conference on education for women and girls. \"I like this woman,\" the first lady said of Mrs. Bush. Mrs. Obama added that \"it's hard to find people who know what you're going through, who understand the burdens and the fears and the challenges. \" \"It's sort of a club,\" Mrs. Bush replied. \"A sorority, I guess. \" The fraternity of presidents is well documented, though some members are closer than others. Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush became famously chummy, with Mr. Bush inviting the man who defeated him to the family compound in Kennebunkport, Me. to \"play golf, spend the night\" and \"hurdle the waves at breakneck speed,\" according to the book \"The President's Club,\" by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. Mr. Clinton's relationship with Mr. Obama took longer to thaw, largely as a consequence of the bitter 2008 primary race between Mr. Obama and Hillary Clinton. There were a few golf games, an lunch at an Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village, and, above all, Mr. Clinton's memorable speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 defending the president's economic record, after which Mr. Obama took to calling Mr. Clinton his \"secretary of explaining stuff. \" Now, Mr. Obama is campaigning vigorously for Mrs. Clinton to succeed him, cementing the political alliance between them. Paradoxically, Mr. Obama's relationship with the younger Mr. Bush has always seemed less complicated. Though Mr. Obama ran on his opposition to the war in Iraq \u2014 and has never stopped deploring that war \u2014 he appears to have an easy rapport with his predecessor. After the ceremony at the museum on Saturday, Mr. Bush was trying to take a photograph of himself with a family, only to find he could not fit everyone in the frame. The solution? He tapped Mr. Obama on the back, handed him the phone, and asked him to take the picture. As Mr. Obama was wrapping up his speech, he could not resist a gentle poke at his predecessor, who is known for his restlessness, laying odds on the length of his own remarks. \"Enough talk,\" Mr. Obama said. \"President Bush was timing me. He had the at 25\" minutes.","label":0}
{"text":"As much as many conservatives would like to believe that the Bundy militia were merely innocent victims of the government, a picture is emerging that makes it clear the now-deceased LaVoy Finicum intentionally provoked a reaction from the law enforcement officers after trying to flee arrest.Finicum was part of a large group of the Bundy militants who were stopped by the FBI en route to yet another propaganda appearance in a nearby town. Rather than simply let the group go unimpeded, the authorities finally decided to act. It was a long time coming. The group had occupied a federal wildlife refuge for over a month, and with no end in sight and violent, paranoid extremists flooding into the region the situation was getting more out of hand by the moment.Sadly, it was not entirely surprising to learn that it was Finicum who resisted arrest. He had frequently claimed that he would rather die in a shootout than be arrested. Whether that was his intention on the night of his death is unclear, but his hostility towards law enforcement and his paranoia certainly contributed.Not everyone is convinced, however. Almost immediately after Finicum s death was announced, right-wing sympathizers began spinning a conspiracy that he had been executed with his hands up while his fellow patriots watched. The myth wasn t relegated to the backwaters of the internet, either. Soon, even sitting Republican politicians and Bundy s own Facebook page were repeating the tale.Michele Fiore, an anti-government conservative who hypocritically happens to work as a state representative in Nevada, repeated the lie to her Twitter followers.My heart & prays go out to LaVoy Finicum's family he was just murdered with his hands up in Burns OR.Ryan Bundy has been shot in the arm Michele Fiore (@VoteFiore) January 27, 2016Jim Hoft, a conservative blogger who has been labeled the Stupidest Man on the Internet for consistently posting misinformation, ran with the story, repeating Cliven Bundy s baseless claim: LaVoy Finicum was murdered. Cold-blooded murder. They shot him with his hands up. Unfortunately for this convenient narrative, witnesses of the arrest say Finicum was the provoker. Melvin Lee was behind the Bundy convoy during the arrest. He recounts how Finicum tried to flee, and the wound up charging the officers. There happened to be some arguments between the guys in the truck. Somehow they got Ryan Payne pulled out of the truck, apparently. LaVoy had took off he ended up hitting a snowbank, I guess, trying to get around the blockade. After he hit that snowbank, he came out of that truck and he charged at the law enforcement, as I understand it. A bodyguard of Ammon s said that Finicum crashed his car, then jumped out and began charging at the agents. He also concluded that this was entirely in Finicum s character. He was not on his knees, none of that. He was none of that nonsense. You know, that was a miscommunication on somebody else s part. But he went after them. He charged them. You know, LaVoy was very passionate about what he was doing up here. Finicum is said to have been radicalized by the Bundy s during the Nevada ranch showdown. In an interview, he once said that Cliven asked him to be the first cowboy to show up to what would become the standoff. I said Cliven, don t let them take your cows, Finicum recalled in an interview with OPB. He says saddle up your horse and be here early in the morning. I was the first cowboy to show up in the dark. In fall 2015, Finicum followed in Bundy s footsteps and chose to stop complying with his lease contract with the Bureau of Land Management, in spite of a long positive relationship with the agency.His death was the culmination of years of right-wing paranoia being relentlessly hurled at him from conservative politicians and media figures. They exploited his anxieties and played on his fears until eventually he decided to take action. There s no question that Finicum died believing he was in a struggle with a tyrannical government. His charge at authorities confirms that. Perhaps that is why the right-wing so desperately wants to prove that his hands were up. If he was innocent, than so are they.But he wasn t.","label":1}
{"text":"posted by Eddie Most school kids watch the clock during the last few classes of the day, watching the time steadily tick until they can run home and play, hang out, or sleep, depending on the age. Watching the clock is not a sign of immaturity since we understand it can sometimes be difficult to sit in one place and concentrate on difficult tasks for an extended period of time. This habit often follows us through life as we settle into jobs and careers. It could be that we love our work, but around three and four o'clock, we begin to fidget. We start thinking about the things we will have to do when we get home, like shop, go to the gym, make dinner, or attend a special event. The last two hours tick away more slowly than the first two. This innovative Swedish company has found the solution to this problem. You will be so jealous! The 6 Hour Work Day for Sweden Filimundus is a Swedish mobile app developer where this idea was originated. The board of directors analyzed their employees and noted the difficulties in maintaining efficiency and concentration for eight hours. It was almost impossible for most of the workers. They had to take breaks to clear their heads and try to muster up more focus for the remainder of the day. This wasted a lot of potentially productive time.  The board of directors found the perfect solution, a six hour work day, with wages left unaffected. They tried it out and discovered that the employees could complete the same amount of work within six hours which they were originally doing within eight. This new practice increased their efficiency at their jobs and left more time and strength for their home life. Overall, the employees agreed that they felt happier and more successful with this new arrangement. The Ripple Effect  This newly improved schedule is being looked into by medical workers of some clinics . That is no surprise figuring how exhausting their job must be. According to The Independent , the six-hour working day will soon be implemented in the whole country. (1) 6 Hour Day for America?  For most employees who have the 9 to 5 shift, not all of that time is optimized for working. According to studies from The Atlantic , an estimated 1.5 to 3 hours per day is used for online shopping, checking social media and emails, personal phone calls, and chatting with colleagues. It seems that the average employee works a solid six hours anyway, but without the benefits of enjoying free time and rest. A shortened work day means less stress, and we all know how important that is for our health. (2) We would all appreciate a shorter work day, but most of us are not moving to Sweden, and no one should hold their breath for this new schedule to come to their office anytime soon. Sources: (1) Bright Side brightside.me Published: September 5, 2016. Accessed: October 27, 2016. (2) S. Kumar. What the U.S. could learn from Sweden's 6-hour work day fortune.com Published: October 6, 2015. Accessed: October 27, 2016. From Around the Web Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie ( 8938 Posts )  Eddie L. is the founder and owner of www.WorldTruth.TV. and www.Womansvibe.com. Both website are dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 36+ years researching Bible, History, Alternative Health, Secret Societies, Symbolism and many other topics that are not reported by mainstream media.","label":1}
{"text":"An elderly Jewish woman living in Paris was not even safe in her own apartment from a Muslim man who scaled the wall of her apartment and violently murdered her. While the authorities have not yet named the motive, it s highly likely the Muslim man who killed the Orthodox Jewish woman while yelling, Alluha Akbar may have been motivated to commit such a hateful crime by the religion of peace In a violent attack causing trepidation amongst Paris Jewish community, a 66-year-old Orthodox woman, Sarah Halimi, was murdered to the cry of Allahu Akbar early Tuesday morning, pushed from the window of her top-floor apartment in Paris 11th arrondissement.The accused, a 27-year-old of Muslim origin known to police for a string of offenses, had broken into the apartment of his victim reportedly scaling the exterior wall from the floor below where he lived with his parents to stab his victim before throwing her to her death.The lifeless body of Ms. Halimi was found on the ground beneath her apartment, having been pushed to her death from her third story window during the attack which took place at approximately 4:30am.Three armed police were on the scene prior to the murder, according to neighbors, who also reported hearing the cry of Allahu Akbar at the moment of the crime. Unconfirmed reports circulating on social media also suggest that Ms. Halimi had previously been harassed by a relative of the accused, and that she had been subjected to verbal abuse in the days leading up to the incident. Neighbors claim that the accused had been radicalized and that police were waiting for an anti-terrorist unit to deal with the situation.French media have been covering the event with limited reference to the background of either the victim or the accused, instead characterizing the crime as the act of an unhinged individual. Further details of the incident have been emerging in the local Jewish media, with the story now gaining traction in Israel.Whilst the motives behind this crime are not yet 100% clear, it represents a growing phenomenon of criminal acts being preceded by cries of Allahu Akbar ( Our God is Greater ) consistently explained by French media as the acts of d s quilibr s , the unbalanced a word fast entering the lexicon for such circumstances. Gateway Pundit","label":1}
{"text":"Duterte Calls US Admin 'Monkeys' for Halting Arms Sales November 02, 2016 Duterte Calls US Admin 'Monkeys' for Halting Arms Sales  (MANILA) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte chided the United States on Wednesday for halting the planned sale of 26,000 rifles to his country, calling those behind the decision \"fools\" and \"monkeys\" and indicating he might turn to Russia and China instead. Duterte's tirades against the former colonial power are routine during his speeches and he said on Wednesday he once believed in Washington, but had since lost respect for what is the Philippines' biggest ally. The U.S. State Department halted the sale of the assault rifles to the Philippine police after U.S. Senator Ben Cardin said he would oppose it, Senate aides told Reuters on Monday. Aides said Cardin, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was reluctant for the United States to provide the weapons given concern about human rights violations in the Philippines during Duterte's bloody, four-month-old war on drugs.  \"Look at these monkeys, the 26,000 firearms we wanted to buy, they don't want to sell,\" Dutertesaid during a televised speech.  \"Son of a b***h, we have many home-made guns here. These American fools.\"  More than 2,300 people have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes as part of Duterte's anti-narcotics campaign, which was the lynchpin of his election campaign.  Duterte has vented his anger at the United States for raising concerns about the extra-judicial killings.  \"That's why I was rude at them, because they were rude at me,\" he said.  According to procedures in Washington, the State Department informs Congress when international weapons sales are in the works. Aides said the State Department had been informed Cardin would oppose the deal during the prenotification process, thus halting the sale.  U.S. State Department officials did not comment.  The Philippine police chief, Ronald dela Rosa, on Tuesday expressed disappointment that police would not get the M4 rifles, which he said were reliable.  Duterte reiterated that Russia and China had shown willingness to sell arms to the Philippines, but he would wait to see if his military wanted to continue using U.S. weapons.  \"Russia, they are inviting us. China also. China is open, anything you want, they sent me brochure saying we select there, we'll give you.  \"But I am holding off because I was asking the military if they have any problem. Because if you have, if you want to stick to America, fine.  \"But, look closely and balance the situation, they are rude to us.\" Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news  We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Wednesday slammed what he said were absolutely false media reports asserting that President Donald Trump had called for an increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. This kind of erroneous reporting is irresponsible, Mattis said in a written statement. NBC had reported that Trump sought a tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, something Trump had already denied.","label":0}
{"text":"GOP vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said Friday he has a \"lot of respect\" for First Lady Michelle Obama, but he doesn't understand \"the basis of her claim\" in a her speech Thursday condemning Donald Trump for using what she called sexually predatory language in a conversation caught on a hot-mic in 2005. \"I have a lot of respect for the first lady and the job she has done for the American people over the last seven-and-a-half years,\" the Indiana governor told the \"CBS This Morning\" host Charlie Rose, continuing that he does not believe the language described sexually predatory actions. \"I already spoke about my concerns about the language he used in that 11-year-old video,\" said Pence. \"But what he has made clear is that was talk, regrettable talk on his part. But that there were no actions.\" Further, Trump has \"categorically denied these last unsubstantiated allegations\" that were made this week from at least five women who claimed Trump groped and kissed them against their will in years past. \"Frankly, I think before the day is out the allegations will be questioned,\" said Pence. \"The same reporters who wrote a similar story six months ago for The New York Times have written this story and that story was completely discredited.\" Pence told Fox News' \"Fox & Friends\" the Trump campaign is working to bring out evidence that will disprove the allegations being made about him, and said during an interview with NBC's \"Today\" show that evidence \"is coming in, frankly, a matter of hours.\" He told \"Today\" show hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie that Melania Trump has already contacted People Magazine for a retraction of its story about Trump, but Lauer commented that was different than showing evidence. \"Just say tuned,\" Pence told the \"Today\" show. \"There is more information coming forward. But Donald Trump has made very clear that he's categorically denied these allegations. Yet, he can't be more definitive than that. \"And the difficulty is that at this point in a campaign, it is astonishing to see, with all due respect, the enormous coverage of these really unfounded allegations, unestablished allegations, compared to an avalanche of emails coming out of Hillary Clinton's years as secretary of state.\" Pence said he agrees that allegations such as those being made against Trump \"should always\" be taken \"seriously and respectfully, but in the case of Bill Clinton, he actually admitted to being involved with a 23-year-old intern at the White House named Monica Lewinsky when he was president. Bill Clinton actually paid a settlement of over $800,000 to one of those women [Paula Jones].\" \"The remarkable thing, as the media goes chasing after unsubstantiated allegations, coming from a newspaper that six months ago, did a massive similar story that was utterly discredited by the same reporters,\" Pence told Fox News. \"It's remarkable to me they continue to literally ignore the hard evidence that's flowing out of Hillary Clinton's years as secretary of state and the Clinton Foundation, whether it's a speech supporting socialized medicine in Canada, a paid speech supporting open borders in Brazil.\" He said the \"most concerning\" to him was the news that Clinton's aides, while she was secretary of state, were \"directing contracts for the rebuilding of Haiti, after the earthquake, to friends of the Clintons. I mean, this is exactly the kind of pay-to-play politics the American people are tired of. It's going to end when Donald Trump becomes president of the United States.\" Pence told CBS that as the father of two daughters and as a public person, he does take allegations like those facing Trump seriously, but also noted the GOP presidential nominee \"categorically denied\" the claims against him. Further, the Indiana governor said he urged Trump to apologize, which he has. He also questioned the timing of the news against Trump, as \"we have hard evidence flowing out of the Clinton Foundation [and] the Clinton years, but the \"unsubstantiated claims are dominating the news.\" Pence said he's spoken with Trump over the allegations being made about him, and he believes the presidential candidate. \"Donald Trump has asserted that all of these recent unsubstantiated allegations are categorically false and I believe him,\" said Pence. \"The Donald Trump as I come to know, and my family has come to know and spent considerable amount of time, is someone who has a long record of not only loving his family and lifting his family up, but employing and promoting women in positions of authority in this company.\" And, Pence told Rose, he gave up a job he loves as governor of Indiana, a state he loves, to join the Trump race \"because I think this country is in a lot of trouble,\" and he thinks it's time to return the issues and move away from the scandals. The Trump scandals have caused many to question his character, but Pence said he has found Trump's response to be \"extraordinary.\" \"He apologized for what he said 11 years ago,\" said Pence. \"He showed humility, he showed heart. He focused that national presidential debate back on the issues that really affect the American people at home and abroad.\" Meanwhile, he pointed out that the \"avalanche\" of emails from Clinton's accounts continue to emerge. \"Clinton was advocating open borders when she was giving a speech in Brazil, advocating socialized medicine when she gave a speech in Canada,\" said Pence. \"The Haitian issue to me is the biggest one . . . The friends of the Clinton's were given preference shall treatment for contracts for the reconstruction of Haiti after an earthquake.\" Also on Friday, Pence commented on Trump's claims that the upcoming election may be rigged, and he agrees that voter fraud has been an issue. \"We are currently involved in a pretty vigorous investigation in the state of Indiana over voter fraud,\" said Pence. \"It is in the interest of everybody on every side of the spectrum to defend the one vote, one principle. \"The way elections are managed at the state level is to become involved as a poll-watcher and poll volunteer and we consistently encourage people to do that.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Two officers have been acquitted. Another had a deadlocked jury. And on Thursday, prosecutors in a courtroom here began their fourth attempt to convict a police officer in the fatal arrest of Freddie Gray, the black man who died of a spinal cord injury he suffered while in police custody last year. This time, the defendant is Lt. Brian Rice, the officer present at Mr. Gray's arrest, who, prosecutors said, knew the rules and \"needlessly risked Mr. Gray's safety and life\" by failing to put a seatbelt on him in a police van that morning. \"Because of the decisions that Lieutenant Rice made, Mr. Gray is dead,\" said Michael Schatzow, the chief deputy state's attorney for Baltimore City, in an opening argument that legal experts said did not introduce significant new details to a narrative that has so far failed to win any convictions. Mr. Gray's death in April 2015 prompted violent protests here and put this city at the center of a national reckoning over race and policing that took on renewed intensity this week after killings of men by police officers in Baton Rouge, La. and Falcon Heights, Minn. But it is rare that police officers are brought to trial, and even more so to convict them. Lieutenant Rice's trial began with doubts that prosecutors had the evidence to secure convictions against any of the six officers charged in Mr. Gray's death \u2014 especially after the acquittal last month of Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr. the driver of the van in which Mr. Gray broke his neck, who had been charged with murder. On the morning of April 12, 2015, as he was walking through a downtrodden section of West Baltimore with two friends, Mr. Gray began running after seeing Lieutenant Rice. The officer called for assistance to help chase Mr. Gray, who was arrested and loaded into a transport vehicle as a crowd formed. Mr. Gray was later found with a broken neck inside the van, after it had made several stops throughout the neighborhood. \"This defendant is not an inexperienced officer who was ignorant of the rules that governed his conduct,\" said Mr. Schatzow, the prosecutor, who said Lieutenant Rice was criminally negligent when he helped put a shackled and handcuffed Mr. Gray into the van at its second stop, but did not put a seatbelt on him, as Mr. Schatzow said, duty required. \"He knew it, and he ignored it. \" Lieutenant Rice, 42, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter, assault, reckless endangerment and misconduct in office. A second charge of misconduct was dropped by prosecutors on Thursday morning. Chaz Ball, a defense lawyer for Lieutenant Rice, described his client as an veteran of the Baltimore police force with an interest in community policing. He cited what he called the \"three Cs\" of the case \u2014 \"The crowd, the combativeness of Mr. Gray, and the confined space of the wagon\" \u2014 and said that Lieutenant Rice had acted reasonably. \"The assessment that it was too dangerous to try to force Mr. Gray into a seatbelt wasn't criminal negligence,\" Mr. Ball said. \"The evidence,\" he added, \"will show that Mr. Gray's death was a tragic, freak accident nobody could have foreseen. \" Lieutenant Rice, like Officers Edward M. Nero, who was acquitted in May, and Officer Goodson, chose to waive his right to a jury trial and place his fate in the hands of Judge Barry G. Williams, once a police prosecutor himself. The judge ruled in Officer Goodson's trial that there was insufficient evidence to show that his failure to place a seatbelt on Mr. Gray created serious risk to Mr. Gray's life and led to his death. \"I think the state is on notice that they're going to have to work pretty hard to show that an officer's failure to follow and ensure that someone is buckled in alone is enough to satisfy criminal negligence,\" said David Jaros, an associate professor of law at the University of Baltimore who has been following the cases. \"And we haven't heard, in the opening anyway, about how they're going to fill that evidence gap,\" Mr. Jaros added. It was quiet outside the courthouse as defense lawyers concluded their opening arguments, where Arthur Johnson, a retired steelworker, stood on the sidewalk with a tattered sign reading \"Justice for Freddie Gray. \" A stranger in a white walked by and looked at Mr. Johnson's sign. \"They just had another senseless shooting,\" the man said, and Mr. Johnson said that he, too, was feeling a sense of d\u00e8j\u00e1 vu. \"I hear it's the same old, same old \u2014 it's going to be the same result,\" Mr. Johnson said of the proceedings in the courtroom. \"All these people being victimized, and nobody being held accountable. It's hard to be optimistic. \"","label":0}
{"text":"This is a very big development. We all knew the GOP establishment has been pandering to pro-amnesty corporations and the Chamber of Commerce, but this is a new low, even for the GOP establishment There is a bigger controversy about to break wide-open that s potentially far more significant than Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell approving Nikki Haley s non-subtle attack on GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. That bigger controversy is the Spanish version of the GOP State of the Union rebuttal containing an amnesty pledge .As this is written, Governor Nikki Haley is trying to get out ahead of the building expose . Haley just gave a DC press conference claiming she does not support amnesty ; however, against her earlier admission of Speaker Ryan and Leader McConnell approving her script the Spanish version must have held similar approvals.Governor Haley gave the English version, Miami Representative and party-insider Mario Diaz-Barlat delivered it in Spanish.ENGLISH:SPANISH:Here s a (paragraph by paragraph) comparison as translated by the Miami Herald (emphasis mine): English (Via Haley): No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.Spanish (Via Diaz-Barlat): No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws, and love the United States should ever feel unwelcome in this country. It s not who we are. English: At the same time, that does not mean we just flat out open our borders. We can t do that. We cannot continue to allow immigrants to come here illegally. And in this age of terrorism, we must not let in refugees whose intentions cannot be determined.Spanish: At the same time, it s obvious that our immigration system needs to be reformed. The current system puts our national security at risk and is an obstacle for our economy. English: We must fix our broken immigration system. That means stopping illegal immigration. And it means welcoming properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion. Just like we have for centuries.Spanish: It s essential that we find a legislative solution to protect our nation, defend our borders, offer a permanent and human solution to those who live in the shadows, respect the rule of law, modernize the visa system and push the economy forward. English: I have no doubt that if we act with proper focus, we can protect our borders, our sovereignty and our citizens, all while remaining true to America s noblest legacies.Spanish: I have no doubt that if we work together, we can achieve this and continue to be faithful to the noblest legacies of the United States.It is important to remember the backdrop to this current dual narrative (one the GOPe leadership want to say publicly and one they wish to keep hidden).Back in June 2014 Speaker John Boehner was only two days away from calling up the vote on the Senate gang-of-eight amnesty bill, when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was defeated in the Virginia Primary.Mario Diaz Balart along with Paul Ryan and Luis V. Gutierrez were in secret negotiations throughout the spring\/summer of 2014 planning the pathway for comprehensive immigration reform. John Boehner asked Kevin McCarthy to whip the house and identify if they had votes for passage:[ ] On Tuesday June 10th Speaker Boehner, Eric Cantor (Majority Leader) and Kevin McCarthy (Majority Whip) had lunch together discussing timing the vote Thursday night or Friday Morning.However, later that same night the results from the 2014 Virginia primary showed an unknown conservative outsider, Dave Brat, had defeated (primaried) Eric Cantor. At 7:00pm Tuesday night the first word went out that Cantor had lost.~ Full Back StorySo this hidden narrative within the 2016 Republican State of the Union Rebuttal should come as no surprise. Comprehensive Immigration Reform is the GOPe agenda they continue to hide from the electorate.","label":1}
{"text":"The White House is beginning to panic. At least that s the most logical conclusion from their latest jaw-dropping move. In an order that s pretty much unprecedented (wouldn t it be nice if we had just one day without something unprecedented coming from this White House?), the Trump White House has told various government departments that they are not to cooperate with Democrats period.Reportedly, this has been happening since Trump took office. They have formulated a policy that says that agencies are only allowed to respond to committee chairs. Republicans hold both houses of Congress, so every committee is chaired by a Republican.The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president. You have Republicans leading the House, the Senate and the White House, a White House official said. I don t think you d have the Democrats responding to every minority member request if they were in the same position. A White House spokeswoman said the policy of the administration is to accommodate the requests of chairmen, regardless of their political party. There are no Democratic chairmen, as Congress is controlled by Republicans.Source: PoliticoThe information blackout, at least according to White House officials, isn t toward every request from Democrats, just the requests from oversight committees. Whew, that should make us all feel so much better. It s only the agencies that are tagged with making sure laws are followed that are being hobbled.While Obama s White House didn t answer every request from Republicans (admittedly, many are meant to back the opposition into a corner), there was never an explicit policy.Now, of course, while the agencies are under the executive umbrella, they work for the office of the presidency, not for the president personally. For Trump, though, that seems to be far too nuanced a distinction. While agencies are legally free (and some would argue ethically obligated) to abide by oversight requests, even from the minority party, Trump has proven that he will fire anyone who steps out of line.This could certainly backfire, though. If Trump is still in office by the time midterms roll around, and if he keeps destroying the Republican Party, we could see a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress. That would give Democrats committee chairs. While the White House could still ignore Democrats requests, there would be no way around the word obstruction.","label":1}
{"text":"After the Chinese authorities blocked the Canadian beauty queen Anastasia Lin from attending the 65th annual Miss World pageant in China last year, the event's British organizers offered her a consolation prize, of sorts: They promised to allow her a chance to compete in the 2016 finals, which are currently underway in suburban Washington. What they did not tell her was that she could smile but not speak out publicly during the event, which is largely sponsored by Chinese companies. Over the past three weeks, as she and her fellow contestants have rehearsed for Tuesday's finale, Ms. Lin, 26 \u2014 an actress, classically trained pianist and outspoken critic of Chinese human rights abuses \u2014 has been barred from speaking to the news media, friends and relatives said. They said that officials with the pageant have also refused to allow Ms. Lin to attend the American premiere of a movie in which she appears. The film, \"The Bleeding Edge,\" has angered Beijing with its dramatization of what human rights advocates describe as programs that harvest the organs of Chinese prisoners of conscience. And last week, when a State Department official requested a meeting with Ms. Lin, to discuss the continuing harassment of her father in China, pageant executives refused to let her go, a State Department official said. They relented only after Ms. Lin agreed to be accompanied by a pageant employee, who insisted on attending the meeting. The chaperone later turned down a State Department request to post a photo of the meeting on Twitter. Jacob Wallenberg, a friend who has spoken to Ms. Lin by phone, said pageant employees warned her that she would be ejected from the competition if she spoke to reporters. \"They have specifically told her not to talk about human rights during the pageant, even though that is her official platform,\" he said. \"She is very frustrated. \" The Miss World organization declined to answer questions about the restrictions it has placed on Ms. Lin, but friends say they have little doubt about its motivations: Pageant officials, they said, are simply doing the bidding of the Chinese government, which has spent the past year trying to silence Ms. Lin, who was born in China but emigrated to Canada at 13. Since 2003, the Miss World pageant has been held six times in Sanya, a tropical city in southern China, and Chinese companies have become the main sponsors of the competition. The local government has spent $31 million to upgrade infrastructure for the competition, according to the Chinese media. Last year, after the Chinese authorities refused to issue Ms. Lin a visa to attend the finals, she flew to Hong Kong, hoping to obtain a visa at the border. She was turned away, and her photo disappeared from the pageant's official website. \"Why is a powerful country like China so afraid of a beauty queen?\" she said at the time. Beijing's efforts to silence Ms. Lin appear to have had the opposite effect. In the year since she was barred from the competition, she has been invited to speak at Oxford University, the National Press Club in Washington and the Oslo Freedom Forum. Ms. Lin has been especially outspoken on the repression of Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that is banned in mainland China. Ms. Lin is a practitioner of Falun Gong, which the Chinese government has deemed \"an evil cult. \" Sophie Richardson, the China director of Human Rights Watch, said that Beijing's attempt to muzzle Ms. Lin highlighted its increasingly aggressive campaign to shape global public opinion about a government that takes a dim view of liberties. \"Whether it's choosing what movies you get to see or what information can be censored online, Chinese authorities are increasingly trying to insist that the restrictions they impose at home become the norm abroad,\" she said. \"That they deem it necessary to try to manipulate international beauty pageants would be puzzling or quirky if it weren't indicative of a far more serious pathology. \" In Ms. Lin's case, the attempted manipulation has taken a sinister turn. In an earlier interview, she described how public security officials harassed her father, the owner of a medical supply company in China, and forced customers to withdraw their business, pushing him into bankruptcy. Family members said Chinese officials had also refused to allow him to travel to Washington for the finals. The Miss World Organization has been aggressive in its effort to prevent reporters from speaking to Ms. Lin. Two weeks ago, pageant officials interrupted an interview she was giving to Jeff Jacoby, a Boston Globe columnist, at a hotel. \"Two of them hustled Lin from the lobby, angrily accusing her of breaching the rules and causing trouble,\" he wrote. \"The third blocked me from talking to Lin, and assured me that my interview would be scheduled the next day. It wasn't, of course. \" Such restrictions apparently do not apply to the Chinese media. Over the past few weeks, reporters from two Chinese media outlets have been given free rein to interview contestants. Marion Smith, the executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a organization that is sponsoring the premiere of Ms. Lin's film on Wednesday, said he felt deceived by Miss World officials, who he said had assured him they were relaying messages to her about the upcoming event. \"Turns out Anastasia never got any of them,\" he said. Over the past year, Mr. Smith said he had become increasingly alarmed by the growing reach of the Chinese government. Cyberattacks that the F. B. I. say originated in China have repeatedly brought down the organization's website, he said, and in June a teleconference symposium on the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 was disrupted by hackers. \"At this point, nothing should surprise us when it comes to China,\" he said, \"but the fact that the Chinese Communist Party is so threatened by a Canadian beauty queen that they would subvert the operations of an international organization supposedly dedicated to greater global understanding and the free exchange of views is very disappointing. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Most are familiar with the \"Jaywalking\" quizzes Jay Leno regularly did on the streets of Universal Studios. They often included American civics questions. The answers were often laughably pathetic. Unfortunately, they are representative of the general citizenry's knowledge. According to studies byAnnenberg Public Policy Center, only about a third (38 percent) of Americans can name the three branches of America's government (executive, legislative and judicial), much less explain what each does. Also surprisingly, only 32 percent of Americans could correctly identify the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land, according to the Xavier Center for the Study of the American Dream. According to this same study, only 32 percent of Americans knew how many U.S. Senators there were (100), and only 29 percent knew the length of a U.S. Senator's term in office (six years). Voter turnout for the 2014 national election was the lowest it has been since World War II according to the United States Election Project. In a country that is supposed to be thegold standard for democracy this is simply unacceptable. Why is this happening? One reason is the lack of emphasis put on civics education in our educational curricula. Voters don't vote because they don't understand the process or the power that comes from their votes. These jarring facts are why I have been actively involved in Utah's successful effort to pass the American Civics Education Initiative in Utah's recently concluded legislative session. If you don't know it takes four balls for a walk and three strikes for a strike out in baseball, it's not likely you're a baseball fan. If you don't know the basics in American civics, you're not likely to be interested in voting. The American Civics Education Initiative is simple in concept: Students must pass a test from the 100 basic facts of U.S. history and civics taken from the same test all potential citizens must master before becoming American citizens. This legislation, now enacted in Utah, as well as Arizona, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota, allows students to take the test any time during their high school career and as many times as necessary to pass. By using this well-established test and the study materials that are already easily available online for free, this legislation has nearly no implementation costs. Some 91 percent of immigrants applying for citizenship pass the civics test on their first try. I recently attended a citizenship swearing-in ceremony at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City (an appropriately named place for this inspiring event). New citizens swore an oath of allegiance to our Republic dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I saw firsthand how excited these new citizens were to become Americans, as well as the sense of pride they had in having passed the test. They knewtheir stuff. Utah high school students will now be able to share in that satisfaction of accomplishment. As I travel around Utah to meet with students, I see how bright, enthusiastic and capable they are. I hope that they are also inspired to participate in our democracy. When leaving Independence Hall at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked, \"Well, Doctor, what have we got \u2014 a republic or a monarchy?\" Franklin responded, \"A republic, if you can keep it.\" The question is how do we keep it? Our republic depends on an informed, engaged citizenry. When so many of our fellow citizens don't know how our government works \u2014 and even fewer vote \u2014 power becomes concentrated in the hands of the few. We put the bedrock concept of \"We the People\" at risk. If our students don't know how our democracy works and who we are as a people, their participation ourgovernment will continue to wane. We can't risk that. As Representative Steve Eliason, one of the sponsors of Utah's law, aptly said during the legislative debate, \"The American Civics Education Initiative is chicken soup for our ailing civic soul.\" Utah has taken an important first step in helping bolster American civics education. Legislators across the country need to follow suit and pass similar American civics education legislation in their own states. Only then will the phrase \"We the People\" live up to its original intent. Jonathan Johnson is the chairman of Overstock.com, Inc. and the co-chairman of the Civics Education Initiative in Utah.","label":0}
{"text":"Vice President Joe Biden, in Germany this weekend to help reach a diplomatic solution to Russian aggression in Ukraine, said Ukrainians \"have a right to defend themselves\" but did not address the possibility of the United States sending weapons to them. Biden is in Munich with Secretary of State John Kerry to back the German-French diplomatic effort, which he says is \"very much worth the attempt.\" Biden said he and other U.S. leaders think they should \"attempt an honorable peace\" but that they also believe the Ukrainian people \"have a right to defend themselves.\" He suggested that the impact of economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions will get worse if leaders refuses to accept a peaceful resolution and continue to escalate the conflict, the White House said Saturday. Russian military forces started taking control of parts of eastern Ukraine in late-February 2014, after protesters and other Ukrainian residents helped oust Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych. And within weeks, Russian began its ultimately successful effort to annex the eastern Ukraine region of Crimea. In response to recent calls in Washington and Kiev for the U.S. to give the outgunned Ukrainians such lethal weapons as anti-tank and anti-mortar systems to fight Russian-backed separatists, Moscow said earlier this week that such a move would be a threat to its national security. While in Munich, Biden also met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to discuss the diplomatic efforts and to pledge U.S. support for the Ukraine economy as it pursues reforms, according to the White House. Still, Biden remains skeptical about whether Russian officials will comply with a diplomatic solution, saying they will be judged by their actions on the ground, \"not by the paper they sign.\" German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande traveled to Kiev on Thursday and Moscow on Friday. They are trying to secure a peaceful resolution to the conflict based on the Sept. 24, 2014, Minsk agreements. Poroshenko is pushing for a quick cease-fire and insists that the conflict must be resolved, not frozen. \"There is no temporary solution,\" he said at the Munich Security Conference, amid the flurry of international diplomacy to calm the Ukraine conflict. Poroshenko also renewed Kiev's call to be provided with defensive weapons, something that's opposed by European countries. The Associated Press contributed to this report.","label":0}
{"text":"Trump s young administration is fraught with trouble, but we all knew that already. Most of us probably haven t thought of just how to frame Trump s behavior since assuming the White House, but an enterprising writer at the Washington Post just did. Eugene Robinson, an opinion writer for the Post, wrote an entire op-ed based around the following question: Does Trump know he s president? Well, does he? One of the things that Robinson points to as evidence that he doesn t, or, at least, doesn t know what he s doing at all, is the fact that we had a bunch of government executives tell Europe, tell Iraq, even tell the U.N., not to listen to what Trump says. For instance, he said we re going to take Iraq s oil. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told the press in Baghdad that we were absolutely not there to do that.U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said that we absolutely support a two-state solution after Trump said we didn t. Mike Pence told NATO that we re fully devoted to them, after Trump has said repeatedly that NATO is obsolete and wants to cozy up to Russia.He said that rounding up undocumented immigrants is a military operation, which supposedly means a non-military operation, and he was just using military as an adjective, according to Sean Spicer.Not mentioned in Robinson s article is Trump s neverending Twitter temper tantrum, though he does mention Trump s feud with the press. There s also the fact that Trump loves hobnobbing with his rich buddies in Florida, to the point where he had a meeting on North Korea in plain view of his VIPs, who pay him a ton of money. He won t divest from his businesses, which is creating massive conflicts of interest and may even be in violation of the Constitution.He rushed out his Muslim ban and the courts promptly halted it, and we have to wonder if he even consulted with anyone knowledgeable about the law with that. The 9th Circuit just rejected the Justice Department s request to put that case on hold pending a new order.So when the Post has to ask if Trump even knows he s president, we have to wonder the same thing. We also have to assume that Trump will be pissed if he hears about this op-ed because it makes him look like the buffoon he is, and he already hates the Post. Not as much as The New York Times or CNN, but he hates them enough. The answer to Robinson s question is, No, he doesn t know he s president, especially not in the same way every other president we ve had knew they were president. Featured image by Aude Guerrucci via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Talk show legend Montel Williams is a conservative, one who has expressed very critical opinions of Barack Obama in the past. But Williams says there s an area where he can t disagree with the President Obama s plan to use his executive powers to help alleviate a problem most of his fellow conservatives won t touch.On Tuesday, the President broke into tears as he discussed the problem of gun violence in America today specifically, the lives lost in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, which Obama calls the worst day in [his] presidency. Obama has pledged to close the gun show loophole, which has traditionally allowed pretty damn near everyone to circumvent the background check procedure and get themselves a shootin stick with minimal hassle. In addition, the President will be removing legal barriers preventing a doctor from reporting when someone is too crazy to have a gun, strengthening licensing requirements for sellers, and making dealers responsible for reporting guns that go missing.While many conservatives, including the veritable Brady Bunch of ignorance that is the GOP 2016 presidential field, view these common sense steps as an attack on the freedom of every single man, woman, and child, Williams applauds the President s approach to the problem of gun violence today. I PROUDLY own 14 guns RESPONSIBLY, Williams wrote on Facebook. Naturally, I listened closely to what President Obama said today on guns, and I ve read what was put out detailing his proposals. He explained that no truly responsible gun owner should oppose the President s plans to reform gun laws, nor should any of them develop the opinion that the President and his jack-booted thugs will be going door to door taking people s firearms from them. I m a proud, responsible gun owner and we ought to be the LOUDEST voices for universal background checks, for keeping guns away from criminals and the mentally ill, he says. That is how to be a proud steward of the # 2a right I and so many others hold dear. If I thought for a minute the goal was to take my guns, I d oppose it, Williams added in a comment. I m a law abiding American nothing to fear. I think the corollary to effective background checks is to make it EASIER and more streamlined for law abiding folks to get guns. In an op-ed for HuffPo, Williams says that as a proud, responsible, gun owner, he can t NOT support the President s proposal: I realize this may not make me popular with some gun owners, and I realize there is deep distrust of President Obama and his use of executive action. Simply put, I ve always believed in being a responsible ambassador for the Second Amendment, a right that I hold dear; and, thus, I believe responsible gun owners MUST be the loudest voices for universal background checks and addressing the mental health crisis we face in this country, which form the crux of the president s proposals. Williams says that he has formed his views largely through his work with students in the wake of school shootings over the years. Williams challenges anyone who disagrees that it is important to enact common sense gun legislation to spend time with children who have survived school shootings: They all have the same, haunted look in their eyes, one that frequently keeps me up at night. I would challenge anyone to listen to their stories, experience their pain and then go back the next year and the next, and see how profoundly they are affected and then do it all over again for the next school you ll feel the same way I do. Universal background checks should be a no-brainer. Guns should not change hands without a background check, he says. I cannot give my car to my children without filing a form with the DMV, and no one complains about that burden, nor do they suggest it s a veiled attempt to de-car America. Unfortunately, the NRA and its acolytes spread fear Obama wants your guns to all who will listen, and unfortunately too many listen. The NRA and its bought-and-paid-for politicians fight progress with regard to gun legislation every step of the way including, of course, background checks. Giving up even that much, in their eyes, would be giving up their guns.Williams suggests that we dispense with the meaningless rhetoric, cross the aisle, and work together to solve the problem of gun violence in this country the root of which, he says, is that it s dangerous allowing people to acquire guns without a background check. Williams says that both liberals and conservatives need to skip the divisiveness that plagues our country and focus on the fact that our children s lives are at stake. He asks his fellow gun owners not to buy into the extreme Right s propaganda that paints this as a gun-grabbing measure: This is common sense, and, ultimately, the best way to advance and protect the Second Amendment right we hold dear. Williams is right. No one is trying to take anyone s guns. In fact, President Obama is attempting to ensure that everyone who should be able to get a gun can get one. In the end, this would even accomplish some conservative goals: people would feel safer around armed individuals if they all passed a comprehensive background check and were mentally competent to handle the weapon, for instance. In that sense, the President s plan is a godsend for pro-Second Amendment people of all stripes. If conservatives want to end the stigma associated with gun ownership, the absolute best way is to support this opportunity to protect the integrity of the Second Amendment.","label":1}
{"text":"Carolyn B. Maloney, a congresswoman from the Upper East Side, was riding in a taxi on Friday when she heard the news: Emails discovered in an investigation into Anthony D. Weiner's sexting had revived the F. B. I. 's interest in the case of Hillary Clinton's private server. \"I said: 'Oh, no, not this, not happening now,'\" she said. And then Ms. Maloney's thoughts turned to Mr. Weiner. \"I can't stand him \u2014 even before this,\" Ms. Maloney said. On the West Coast, John L. Burton, the chairman of the California Democratic Party, informed of Mr. Weiner's inadvertent intrusion into the election on Friday evening, let loose an emphatic expletive. \"We're still talking about that guy during a presidential election?\" Mr. Burton fumed, using a profane word instead of \"guy. \" Weiner \u2014 the name became almost a curse word among senior Democrats over the past two days, as the disgraced congressman unexpectedly surfaced in the final stretch of the presidential contest. The news resurrected memories of previous Weiner scandals. \"He is like a recurring nightmare,\" said the Rev. Al Sharpton. \"It's like one of those 'Damien' movies \u2014 it's like every time you think he's dead, he keeps coming again. \" The fury that many leading Democrats feel toward Mr. Weiner had been building for years. His sexting habits embarrassed them. His attempted political comeback in 2013 disgusted them. But their high regard for his wife, Huma Abedin, always kept them from going public. On Friday that was over. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and an influential Clinton supporter, said she had long held her tongue out of \"enormous respect and love\" for Ms. Abedin. But Ms. Weingarten said Mr. Weiner's treatment of women demanded forceful censure. \"I don't care who it is, no one should be a sexual predator,\" Ms. Weingarten said. \"I think we all have to take a stand about that, and I think what's happening now is that people are. \" Mr. Weiner, who lost his seat in Congress and his mayoral hopes after repeated episodes in which he sent lewd messages to women, is now under federal investigation for allegedly sending sexual messages to a girl in North Carolina. In that inquiry, the F. B. I. this month seized a laptop that contained thousands of messages belonging to Ms. Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton. The F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, told Congress on Friday that investigators will now review those messages for possible relevance to the Clinton inquiry, news that rattled the Clinton campaign and stung her supporters. For some, the development touched off more worry than anger: former President Bill Clinton, who learned of the news en route to his last event of the day, in Pennsylvania, fretted that it would draw hostile attention to Ms. Abedin, according to a person familiar with his thinking. Around the country, former aides to Mr. Weiner, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, traded emails and texts throughout the weekend, fuming at the \"collateral damage\" inflicted by their onetime boss. Mr. Weiner did not respond to an email seeking comment. Mrs. Clinton's campaign has largely ignored Mr. Weiner's connection so far, and has instructed campaign surrogates to avoid discussing his role. But amid fears that Mr. Weiner's behavior might undermine the party in a critical election, Democrats \u2014 especially in his native New York \u2014 said that perhaps they had given Mr. Weiner too many second chances over the years, and given him too much latitude out of deference to Ms. Abedin. Beyond New York, there was a sense of disbelief that one former lawmaker, whose memorable surname and lewd online habits made him a staple of comedy, could disrupt the election of an American president. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in an interview with CNN, blurted out, \"Oh, God,\" at the mention of Mr. Weiner's name. He added, \"I'm not a big fan. \" But Mr. Weiner has been a figure of consternation in Democratic politics for years, in New York and nationally, regarded simultaneously as a sharp political mind and a man of striking immaturity and ambition. With a gift for combat on cable television, Mr. Weiner repeatedly forced himself to the fore of Democratic politics, despite being seen by many in the party as too clever by half, too boastful about his intelligence \u2014 and too hungry for attention from reporters and women. A 2001 story in Vanity Fair captured Mr. Weiner, then unmarried, leering at congressional interns while presenting himself as an salesman. When Mr. Weiner explored a campaign for mayor in 2009, aides to Michael R. Bloomberg, who was seeking a third term, highlighted media coverage of his support for legislation making it easier for foreign models to get approval for visas. \"We had a sense of who he was,\" said Bradley Tusk, who was campaign manager for Mr. Bloomberg. \"He knew exactly who he was. \" Also before the same election, Senator Chuck Schumer, for whom Mr. Weiner once worked, privately expressed frustration that Mr. Weiner was insufficiently interested in substance, telling one aide: \"It's all political ricochet. \" The senator is said to have made his peace with Mr. Weiner's problems long ago. But Mr. Schumer is in line to lead Senate Democrats next year, and any damage from Mr. Weiner's latest scandal could impede the party's quest for a majority. Still, he won the lasting appreciation of Mrs. Clinton during the 2008 election, defending her in fashion during a difficult primary against Barack Obama. And Mr. Weiner's marriage to Ms. Abedin, in 2010, seemed to install him permanently among party elites \u2014 whatever their reservations about his company. So tied into the party's power brokers was he, by marriage, that when Mr. Weiner sought to resurrect his political career with a bid for mayor in 2013, numerous Democratic donors cut checks to his campaign at Ms. Abedin's urging. John P. Coale, a wealthy lawyer supportive of Mrs. Clinton, said many donors gave money to Mr. Weiner out of friendship with Ms. Abedin. But Mr. Coale said the 2013 race, which brought new revelations of more sexting, had been exasperating. \"It was just too much for everybody,\" Mr. Coale said. \"And now, it's out of the park. Come on. \" Bill Hyers, a Democratic strategist who managed Mayor Bill de Blasio's campaign that year, said the party establishment had erred by allowing Mr. Weiner \"a second breath of life. \" \"They knew he was a narcissist who was massively flawed,\" Mr. Hyers said. \"And now we're all still stuck with him. \" Among Democrats who shunned Mr. Weiner from the start, there was little joy at the apparent vindication of their judgment. Sarah Kovner, a major Democratic donor, said there was less concern that injuries might cost Mrs. Clinton the election, than sheer frustration that a known bad seed had created such endless tumult. \"We basically never wanted to have anything to do with him,\" Ms. Kovner said of herself and her husband, Victor Kovner. \" too wise for himself, too glib, too full of himself \u2014 that's how we felt about him. \" While predicting Mr. Weiner's latest scandal would not doom Mrs. Clinton's presidential hopes, Ms. Kovner sighed: \"It is more pain. \"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. missile strikes on a Syrian air base are unlikely to halt U.S. Secretary of state Rex Tillerson's planned visit to Moscow next week, the head of the Russian lower house of parliament's international affairs committee said on Friday. \"I don't think this will impact Tillerson's visit, we need to restore dialogue. We should welcome Tillerson, exchange views and try and talk sense into Washington,\" Leonid Slutsky told the Russia 24 television channel, Interfax reported. \"That's much better than hiding behind walls.\" Tillerson is due to visit Russia for talks next week. The United States on Friday fired dozens of cruise missiles at a Syrian air base from which it said a deadly chemical weapons attack was launched this week. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the action \"aggression against a sovereign nation\" on a \"made-up pretext\".","label":0}
{"text":"While there has never been a confirmed instance of transgender people as child predators, this year s Republican pearl clutching is directed toward transgender people and their rights to use bathrooms. States are even passing laws trying to ensure that somehow, people s bathroom habits match up to their birth certificates.Yes, it s absurd, and some retailers are telling their customers exactly that by opening their bathrooms to any shopper, regardless of genitalia. Target was the first major retailer to do that and now, Starbucks and Barnes & Noble are joining them.Starbucks, Hudson s Bay Co. parent company to Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue and Barnes & Noble have all come out in support of trans people s rights to use the bathrooms that best align with their gender identities. HBC respects and affirms each person s right to self-identify and access facilities that reflect their gender identity, said spokeswoman Tiffany Bourr .Starbucks spokeswoman Jaime Riley stated that the company is looking into additional opportunities to have more gender-neutral signage in our restrooms where jurisdictions allow it. As a company, Barnes & Noble treats all employees and customers with dignity and respect, spokeswoman Mary Ellen Keating said. For our transgender employees and customers, that means that they are allowed to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with. Source: NewNowNextOf course, whiny conservatives are, well, whining.Thanks to Starbucks s idiotic gender neutral bathrooms, I won t be going there anymore. Maggie Holmes (@magselizabeth15) May 1, 2016 Hey #BoycottTarget peeps, #barnesandnoble and @Starbucks have the SAME policy on bathrooms. That needs more attention. DJ (@formadeo) April 30, 2016@InGodIDoTrust \/ Target bathrooms are fast rivaling starbucks as a libtard safe haven CLAYVIS (@HAMnEGG_WILLIE) April 26, 2016For most Starbucks shops, this is little more than thumbing their noses at right-wing nut jobs. Most Starbucks bathrooms are single stall, so privacy is kind of a given.If you recall, it was just a few months ago when Starbucks was being boycotted by presumably some of the same people people who objected to the fact that their Christmas cup didn t have Jesusy images like snowmen and Christmas trees. It was just blank.Here s the video:And still, Republicans don t get it. They don t get the point of our government. Young Conservatives, for example, said this, which sums up much of the argument against gender neutral bathrooms.It is very strange how many large companies are willing to completely ignore the safety of their customers just to pander to less than 1% of the population.Ironically, this is the argument used every time liberals suggest equality for everyone. It s true that transgender people are a tiny minority, but that s why they need legal protections. We have never been a true democracy. We don t bow to the tyranny of the majority. When African-Americans were legally integrated into society, the majority of citizens were white and the mouth breathers objected to their little girls being in a stall next to a little African-American girl. Obviously, integrated bathrooms didn t cause problems then and they cause no problems now. They are just the latest desperate grab at an ugly past when the only people who counted were white, male, cigenders and Protestant.","label":1}
{"text":"It is not even 7 AM on the American east coast as of this writing, and Donald Trump is already up and tweeting. As per usual when we get these early morning, unhinged rants from Trump, he is on the attack this time with an old foe, The New York Times. As we all know, Trump has long had a frosty relationship with the media, and even invited them to Trump Tower only to rant at them about how he doesn t like how they covered him. Now, he has cancelled a meeting with the Times, the news organization that he had the most criticism for. Without further ado, here is all the craziness in its full glory:I cancelled today's meeting with the failing @nytimes when the terms and conditions of the meeting were changed at the last moment. Not nice Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016Perhaps a new meeting will be set up with the @nytimes. In the meantime they continue to cover me inaccurately and with a nasty tone! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016The failing @nytimes just announced that complaints about them are at a 15 year high. I can fully understand that but why announce? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 22, 2016This man is literally nuts. Instead of planning his transition, he is scolding the media, picking fights with Saturday Night Live and Hamilton, and deliberately trying to undermine the free press, which is one of our most vital American institutions and is especially important when the person about to take office is an unhinged serial liar.Hopefully, the press resists the temptation to normalize Trump, and they call him out on every lie, every crazy, unAmerican idea, and every corrupt thing he does. If they don t, we can kiss our democracy goodbye, because we just elected a literal fascist. Remember, folks sowing distrust in institutions such as the free press is the first thing that happens when fascism begins to take hold. Trump is already neck-deep in that one. I shudder to think what s next.","label":1}
{"text":"John Podesta is the guardian of the Clintons just like Valerie Jarrett was for the Obamas. He was instrumental during the 2016 election as the Clinton campaign chair and was exposed when the Wikileaks hack happened. He was just interviewed by the House Intel Committee regarding the Russia scam and was asked about it in the heated debate below:https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=z9U5zxVyTqAJohn Podesta is not just the former chairman of the Hillary Clinton s presidential campaign, but also a central figure in the ongoing narrative of Russian meddling in the US election of 2016. His hacked emails were at the heart of what some have called a coordinated news campaign led by Wikileaks, and so he met with the House Intelligence panel yesterday behind closed doors.This morning he appeared on Fox Business to discuss the Russian interference, allegations of collusion with Trump campaign and more with host Maria Bartiromo in what became a testy debate that perfectly exemplifies the divided positions that so many Americans hold right now.Bartiromo showed skepticism over the Russia claims rightfully so!. And there may be no other individual that best embodies the Clinton s web of influence for good and bad than Mr. Podesta. He s the definition of a weasel.Bartiromo aggressively attacked Podesta and Democrats for what she said were deeper ties with Russia, specifically asking about Podesta s investment portfolio:THIS IS JUST ONE EXAMPLE OF A DEEP TIE TO RUSSIA:Russia gave John Podesta 35 millions dollars (1 billion rubles) while he advised Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.Russia gave John Podesta 35 millions dollars (1 billion rubles) while he advised Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. pic.twitter.com\/cf042XZLeU Based Vet (@BasedVet) March 28, 2017 Get your facts straight, the former Clinton campaign chair shot back, before dismissing the FBN hosts claims as coming from a dubious source like InfoWars. It went downhill from there.","label":1}
{"text":"Eureka! We figured out why Hillary won t let the press see her off: The campaign of Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton has poured more than $2 million into the use of private jets this election cycle, according to a review of its expenditures.Federal Election Commission documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon found that Hillary for America made a total of 48 payments from June 1, 2015, to Jan. 29, 2016, to Executive Fliteways, a New York-based private jet company, running up a tab of $2,128,293 for the campaign.Executive Fliteways is considered one of the largest independently owned and operated charter companies in the country and boasts a fleet of private planes ranging from mid-size, which can seat seven or eight passengers, to heavy, which can carry 12 to 16 people.While it is not clear which jet Clinton prefers on the campaign trail, or if they routinely switch between the jets they use, Clinton has been pinned on Executive Fliteways Falcon 900B heavy jet in the past, according to a media reports. Hillary boarded the plane, which burns 347 gallons of fuel per hour, shortly after laying out her campaign s plan to combat global warming.ABC REPORTER Liz Kreutz TWEETED OUT THIS MESSAGE WITH A PHOTO: Clinton staff won t allow press to film HRC boarding her charter. We must get on our plane before she gets out of car The Falcon 900B heavy jet carries a price tag of $5,850 per hour and comfortably seats 12 passengers. The luxury accommodations includes a full service galley, executive workstation, onboard WiFi, a full-size private lavatory, and a flight attendant for the ultimate inflight experience, according to the company s website.","label":1}
{"text":"President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday that the standoff between North Korea and the United States was close to spilling into a large-scale conflict and said it was a mistake to try to pressure Pyongyang into halting its nuclear missile program. Putin, due to attend a summit of the BRICS nations in China next week, said the only way to de-escalate tensions was via talks, and Sergei Lavrov, his foreign minister, said Washington not Pyongyang should take the initiative on that. It is essential to resolve the region s problems through direct dialogue involving all sides without advancing any preconditions (for such talks), Putin, whose country shares a border with North Korea, wrote on the Kremlin s web site. Provocations, pressure, and bellicose and offensive rhetoric is the road to nowhere. The Russian leader, whose nuclear-capable bombers recently overflew the Korean Peninsula in a show of force, said the situation had deteriorated so badly that it was now balanced on the verge of a large-scale conflict. Pyongyang has been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the United States and recently threatened to land missiles near the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam. On Monday, North Korea, which sees joint war games between the United States and South Korea as preparations for invasion, raised the stakes by firing an intermediate-range missile over Japan. In Russia s opinion the calculation that it is possible to halt North Korea s nuclear missile programs exclusively by putting pressure on Pyongyang is erroneous and futile, Putin wrote. A road map formulated by Moscow and Beijing, which would involve North Korea halting its missile program in exchange for the United States and South Korea stopping large-scale war games, was a way to reduce tensions, wrote Putin. Lavrov, addressing students in Moscow, said he felt events were building towards a war which he said would cause large numbers of casualties in Japan and South Korea if it happened. If we want to avoid a war the first step must be taken by the side that is the more intelligent and stronger, said Lavrov, making clear he was referring to the United States. He said Russia was working behind the scenes and that Moscow knew that Washington had a back channel to Pyongyang which he said he hoped would allow the two sides to de-escalate.","label":0}
{"text":"Tucker takes on the co-director of Popular Resistance, and asks him whether he advocates violence, whether he would like political foes to show up at is house and threaten him? Political resistance advocates violence as a tactic to get their way much like a toddler has a temper tantrum. Tucker Carlson debates the leader of a group that thinks it s ok to go to the FCC Chairman s house to protest. Does this cross the line? We believe it does!The Chairman of the FCC is a Republican and is such a great choice! No matter who he is, we still believe it s wrong on a moral level to do what these people are doing. Shame on them!CURRENT FCC CHAIRMAN AJIT PAI STOOD UP TO THE OTHER COMMISSIONERS WHEN THEY WERE TOLD NOT TO RELEASE INFORMATION ON FRAUD IN THE LIFELINE PROGRAM:TYRANNY: Obamaphone Fraud Kept Under Wraps Until Vote To Expand ProgramFederal regulators were instructed to keep a massive fraud investigation under wraps until a day after a controversial vote to expand a program that was allegedly used to bilk taxpayers of tens of millions of dollars, one those regulators claims.The Federal Communications Commission on Friday announced that it would seek $51 million in damages from a cell phone company that allegedly defrauded the federal Lifeline program of nearly $10 million.The commission s five members unanimously backed the Notice of Apparent Liability (NAL), but Republican commissioner Ajit Pai parted from his colleagues in a partial dissent. According to Pai, he and other commissioners were told not to reveal the details of its investigation until April 1, a day after the FCC voted to expand the Lifeline program. Commissioners were told that the Notice of Apparent Liability could not be released or publicly discussed until April 1, 2016, conveniently one day after the Commission was scheduled to expand the Lifeline program to broadband, Pai wrote. That s not right. Pai did not say who issued that directive. However, it had the effect of preventing public knowledge of widespread fraud in the Lifeline program ahead of a contentious vote on expanding it despite persisting concerns about a lack of internal safeguards.FCC spokesman Will Wiquist insisted that the timing was completely coincidental. The timing of the enforcement action was in no way related to the timing of the vote on the program modernization, he said in an email.IF YOU BELIEVE WIQUIST, WE HAVE SWAMPLAND IN FLORIDA TO SELL YOU!","label":1}
{"text":"A convoy is set to leave the Islamic State-held enclave of Syria s Raqqa city on Saturday under an arrangement brokered by local officials, the U.S-led coalition against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said on Saturday. The arrangement is designed to minimize civilian casualties and purportedly excludes foreign (Islamic State) terrorists, the Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve said in an emailed statement. The statement said the coalition does not condone any arrangement that allows (Islamic State) terrorists to escape Raqqa without facing justice .","label":0}
{"text":"An ambitious Asia-Pacific trade pact linking the United States and 11 countries lay in tatters on Tuesday after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said he would kill the deal on his first day in office on Jan. 20. Trump's statement appeared to open the way for China to assume the United States' leadership mantle on trade and diplomacy in Asia. The Republican termed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) \"a potential disaster for our country.\" China, Japan and South Korea are already in the initial stages of discussing a trilateral trade deal, and Beijing has been pushing its own limited Asian regional trade pact that excludes Washington for the past five years. Japan and Australia, Washington's closest allies in Asia, pledged after Trump's announcement to push ahead without the United States, although removing the largest market for goods and services would shrink it dramatically. \"Pushing them forward is the idea that, if they don't act, it will look like China's very weak trade deals are the only game in town,\" said Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on Asian economies and trade. Trump has pledged to redraw trade deals to win back American jobs, and has threatened Mexico and China with punitive tariffs in a move that some economists have warned could spark a trade war that threatens to roll back decades of liberalization. Ending the TPP was a key election pledge of Trump's and was also the policy of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The deal died in Congress after Trump's Nov. 8 election victory. The Trans Pacific Partnership, a signature diplomatic initiative of Democratic President Barack Obama, was intended to lower tariff barriers in countries that accounted for 40 percent of the world economy, as well as providing a bulwark against China. A major trade deal between the United States and Europe is also now close to collapse after Britain's plans to withdraw from the European Union prompted Washington to demand better terms and opposition in France and Germany has also all but scuppered it. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said \"the TPP would be meaningless without the United States,\" even as parliament continued debating ratification and his government vowed to lobby other members to approve it. \"It (the pact) just continues in a state of not being in effect,\" said Shinpei Sasaki of the Cabinet Office's TPP headquarters. Australian Trade Minister Steven Ciobo told reporters in Canberra that countries could push ahead with the TPP without the United States by amending the agreement and possibly adding new members. \"We could look at, for example, if China or Indonesia or another country wanted to join, saying, 'Yes, we open the door for them signing up to the agreement as well.'\" But Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said reopening negotiations would not be easy. \"If you sign a fresh agreement, you have to go through it again. We haven't crossed that bridge yet. We'll cross it if and when we come to that.\" China has pushed its own Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which notably excludes the United States. It is a more traditional trade agreement, involving cutting tariffs rather than opening up economies and setting labor and environmental standards as TPP would. The RCEP was a focus of attention at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru over the weekend. Tan Jian, a senior member of China's delegation at the summit, said more countries are now seeking to join its 16-member bloc, including Peru and Chile, and current members want to reach a deal as soon as possible to counter rising protectionism. China's foreign ministry said on Tuesday that Beijing has an \"open attitude\" toward any arrangements that promote free trade in the region as long they don't become \"fragmented and politicized.\" Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the RCEP was an initiative led by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which China has been promoting. \"We are willing to keep pushing the (RCEP) talks process with all sides to achieve positive progress at an early date,\" he said. Vietnam last week shelved its own ratification of TPP, after Obama abandoned efforts to push it through a lame-duck Congress, while Malaysia has shifted its attention to the RCEP. At a U.S.-China agricultural trade seminar in Washington, senior Obama administration officials and their Chinese counterparts appeared to ignore the elephant in the room: the collapse of TPP and Trump's tough trade talk against China. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he was focused in a U.S.-China trade negotiators meeting in Washington this week on reducing China's regulatory and food safety barriers to American beef, poultry and genetically modified crops out of China. \"There hasn't been a discussion about the future, there's really a focus on the present,\" Vilsack said when asked about what he was telling his Chinese counterparts about the risks posed by an incoming Trump administration. Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang did not address Trump's trade rhetoric at the discussion in Washington, but warned that a closing of agricultural trade would be \"unacceptable to our farmers.\" \"China is one of the most important markets for agricultural exports, accounting for nearly a fifth of U.S. agricultural exports. ... On average, every U.S. farmer exports about $12,000 of agricultural products to China\" every year, Wang said.","label":0}
{"text":"2016 presidential campaign by BAR executive editor Glen Ford  Tens of thousands have demonstrated against the election of Donald Trump. Some are activists, continuing the struggle. Others are Democrats that are just \"mad.\" \"The Black movement against police terror didn't need a Donald Trump waiting in the vestibule of the White House to get \"mad.\" For those who fear Trump's \"fascism,\" the threat level \"depends on how he uses the arsenal of repressive tools bequeathed to him by the Obama administration.\" None of Them Have Ever Been My President by BAR executive editor Glen Ford  \"You can't scare people with a specter if they have already been in combat with the real thing.\"  As a revolutionary Black nationalist whose socialism predates my facial hairs, I have no problem saying Donald Trump is not my president. Neither is the current occupant of the White House, nor were any of the Democrats, Republicans and Whigs that preceded him.  On a chilly November day in 2009 a newly-created coalition, of which I was a co-founder, marched on the White House to denounce and renounce Barack Obama as a tool of white supremacy and the imperial war machine. \"Obama, Obama, you can't hide \u2013 We charge you with genocide,\" we shouted, indicting the First Black President for the crimes he was busily committing in service to his masters on Wall Street. The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations had been formed less than two months before, largely to demonstrate that not all Black people were bamboozled by the slick corporate politician from Chicago, elected one year earlier in the nation's first billion dollar presidential campaign. As the Coalition's founding press release stated :  \"Black and Brown people continue to suffer the brunt of un\/under-employment and predatory loan scandal crises. Military spending under Obama has increased as have the warfare this nation continues to export to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela and Colombia. Mass incarceration, police brutality and political imprisonment remain rampant...\"  The Black is Back Coalition warned of the \"traps set by Obama's so-called 'post-racial' politics that perpetuates the same oppressive militarist agenda well known during the Bush regime.\"  To paraphrase Fidel Castro, history has vindicated us.  \"Obama joined George Bush and Bill Clinton in perpetuating the 20 year-long slaughter in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has claimed more than six million lives.\"  Obama mobilized NATO air forces and jihadist proxies to destroy Libya, which had previously enjoyed the highest living standard in Africa. He redeployed these same al Qaida terrorists to Syria, killing 400,000 people, displacing half the surviving population and bringing the U.S. to the very brink of nuclear war with Russia. This so-called \"Son of Africa\" has effectively occupied most of the continent through a U.S. Military Command (AFRICOM) that was less than a year old when Obama was sworn into office. The African Union provides diplomatic cover for the CIA-run \"peace keeping\" mission in Somalia, while U.S. conventional forces have infiltrated the militaries of all but two African nations. The holdouts, Eritrea and Zimbabwe, are under constant threat of regime change. Obama joined George Bush and Bill Clinton in perpetuating the 20 year-long slaughter in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has claimed more than six million lives, the worst genocide since World War Two (\"Obama, Obama, you can't hide, We charge you with genocide!\")  With the eager assistance of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama baldly abetted a Nazi-spearheaded coup against the elected government in Ukraine -- and then blamed Moscow when Russian-speaking Ukrainians resisted, provoking a \"New Cold War\" that could turn hot in an instant. At the same time, Obama \"pivoted\" to militarily confront China, whose economy is already, by some measures, larger than the U.S. The jihadist war in Syria should also be seen as a theater of imperialism's last ditch offensive to encircle \"Eurasia\" in hopes of preserving U.S.-based multinational corporate domination of a \"rigged\" system of dollar-based world trade.  Just as the Black is Back Coalition warned, Barack Obama was the Black face of imperialism -- a change of color without a difference. He tried to hand off the controls to Hillary Clinton, who got six million votes less than he did, and lost.  Back in 2007, when Obama and Clinton were pretending to be ideological opponents -- as cookie-cutter corporate Democrats often do -- we at Black Agenda Report wrote that \" There's not a dime's worth of difference \" between the two. Every decent, peace-loving person on Earth should be glad to be rid of both of them. Humanity would probably not survive another year of either one.  \"Barack Obama was the Black face of imperialism -- a change of color without a difference.\"  Donald Trump is also a danger to humanity, like every other U.S. chief executive since Truman nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If words mean anything, Trump starts off posing less of a doomsday international menace, since he claims to want to establish talking, rather than shouting, threatening, nuke-rattling relations with Russia and China, while Clinton's version of \"reset\" was an armed confrontation with Russia over the skies of Syria. Of course, all that could quickly change. Trump may be a \"party of one\" among Republicans in Congress and even in his own cabinet.  For those who fear Trump's \"fascism,\" the threat level depends on how he uses the arsenal of repressive tools bequeathed to him by the Obama administration. These legal, infrastructural and technological instruments of the national security state are fascist in their intent; they were made for the purpose of tracking, disorganizing, neutralizing and locking up dissidents, and disinforming the public at large. Thus, President Obama and his predecessors were fascist- minded , whether you call their administrations operatively fascist or not. The Obama administration would not have pushed a bill through Congress allowing the U.S. military to detain American citizens without trial or charge if he had not anticipating using it. He would not have feverishly upgraded an omnipresent national and global surveillance apparatus if he did not anticipate putting it to the task of martial rule. Fascist-minded is all that can be said of Trump, at this point, as well.  Black Lives Matter activists have been under FBI surveillance since day one. Ever since Ferguson, the federal government has taken the lead in over-charging \"rioters\" in rebellious cities. New York City cops have used social media surveillance as the basis for conspiracy charges against groups of more than 100 young Black people in separate sweeps in Manhattan and The Bronx. The \"fascism\" that correctly described Jim Crow rule in the pre-Civil Rights South lives on at the core of the mass Black incarceration regime put in place with the crushing of the Black Liberation Movement, two generations ago. The current movement against police terror, which ultimately demands Black community control of the police, put activists in direct confrontation with the coercive arm of the State. There is no retreat from this response to the demands of Black people \"on the street,\" who bear the daily brunt of repression and are also among the most effective organizers.  \"Obama would not have feverishly upgraded an omnipresent national and global surveillance apparatus if he did not anticipate putting it to the task of martial rule.\"  The Black movement against police terror didn't need a Donald Trump waiting in the vestibule of the White House to get \"mad.\" The movement has already crossed the Rubicon of confrontation with the State. The moment occurred in the second term of the First Black President, when a new generation learned that liberation cannot be vicariously experienced. The 21 st century Black movement emerged with the knowledge that Black corporate Democrats are not their allies, nor are Black police chiefs, or Black preachers whose real loyalties are to the Democratic Party and its Wall Street patrons.  If the Black movement were afraid of the likes of Donald Trump, it never would have gone up against the militarized police that occupy Black communities. You can't scare people with a specter if they have already been in combat with the real thing.  To the extent that electoral activity is useful to the movement, it should be employed with special vigilance close at hand, against misleaders like the 32 members of the Congressional Black Caucus who failed to support the Grayson Amendment that would have halted Pentagon transfers of weapons and equipment to local police departments. These \" Treasonous 32 \", comprising 80 percent of full-voting Black Democrats in the House, cast their shameful votes in June, 2014, just two months before Michael Brown was shot down in Ferguson, Missouri. (Rep. William \"Lacy\" Clay, representing Michael Brown's district, was among the 32.) If the movement is to have any special targets for electoral vengeance, it is these homegrown enemies, who turn Black people's votes against themselves.  Trump or no Trump, the Black movement must continue to press and refine its demands -- or Power will concede nothing. On November 6, after their annual march on the White House, the organizations of the Black is Back Coalition ratified a 19-point document that puts self-determination at the heart of the broadest range of issues confronting Black America: \"Every central demand, every strategy of struggle, must be formulated with the goal of self-determination in mind. Otherwise, the movement will allow itself to be drowned in reformist schemes and projects that bind Black people even more tightly to structures of outside control.\" The points range from \"Black Community Control of Police,\" to \"Halting Gentrification,\" to \"Nationalization of the Banks.\"  The points were compiled during Barack Obama's time in the White House, and they will remain relevant under a President Donald Trump.  We've been mad. Let's get organized, and get free. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted","label":1}
{"text":"Health professionals have been speculating for months that Hillary s odd behavior and inability to stand or walk without help is likely related to Parkinson s disease. That would explain the videos where Hillary is seen having what appears to be having a seizure. Since seizures are triggered by flashes, it makes sense that the Secret Service would take phones away from the audience. Having a full-blown seizure on the debate stage would probably be a mistake at this point in the campaign after Hillary s been likely hiding a serious, debilitating disease Watch here:And here:https:\/\/youtu.be\/11-EAzsGxgQLast night the Secret Service took attendees phones before going into the debate.now we know why REPORTER: This is why it was banned apparently because the Secret Service did not trust people to disable the flashes on their cameras and they were afraid it would inspire Hillary s seizure disorder. A reported admitted on Monday that the Secret Service told reporters not to use a flash because of Hillary Clinton s seizure disorder.Secret Service told reporters at the #debate not to use flash so that it won't trigger Hillary's seizure disorder. https:\/\/t.co\/30zh3Y5cAb REGATED (@regated) October 10, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"By Jack Burns Wikileaks is helping President Obama keep his 2008 campaign promise \u2014 to be the most transparent administration in U.S. history \u2014 whether he likes it or not. And, once again, we're learning more about the inner sanctum of the administration and its communication practices. As FBI Director James Comey announced Friday, a new investigation into Hillary Clinton's email scandal has been launched, just days before the presidential election. Comey's move drew fire instantly from the Democrats who claim Comey is attempting to sway the election in Donald Trump's favor. While many are focused on Comey's actions and renewed investigation, Wikileaks has uncovered what may prove to be a systemic problem of executive branch accountability not merely limited to the former secretary of state's emails. According to former State Department official Tom Nides, in a 2015 email to John Podesta (Clinton campaign manager), everyone in Obama's cabinet and every White House staffer uses their personal email for government business. Nides should know as he worked under Hillary Clinton in the State Department from 2011 to 2013, according to one source . While keeping email hidden from the public may seem like no big deal to folks who simply don't care, ALL correspondence which is related to governmental business is the property of the federal government and is supposed to be accessible by anyone wishing to inquire within the archive of records. The Federal Records Act defines a record as anything, \"regardless of whether it exists in physical, digital, or electronic form, is a record as defined in subsection (a) shall be binding on all Federal agencies.\" This includes all communication of state agents (like the POTUS) who work in the executive branch of government, as well. But the Obama administration, according to Nides, has long since avoided the Federal Records Act by using private Gmail accounts. Nides wrote Podesta and said, \"There is only one thing that needs to be done on this email thing. (Which I am sure nobody wants to do). Get a state dept career lawyer to go through all the emails and pull the official ones.\" That admission seems to be on the level with what is expected for compliance with the Federal Records Act. But it was Nides' next admission which is the talk of many major media outlets. Nides wrote, \"Btw you know as well as I every god damn cabinet officer and WH staff uses their [sic] gmail account!\" The former Department of State employee revealed what many already suspected. The Obama administration is anything but transparent. Just ask Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. His organization routinely sues the Obama administration in federal court using the Freedom of Information Act as warrant for inquiry, and says the administration stonewalls his efforts at every turn. Fitton's organization gave the Obama administration a failing grade on transparency and says his administration is even less transparent than when Bush was president. Fitton wrote in 2015 , \"There are about 18 lawsuits, 10 of which are active in federal court, and about 160 Judicial Watch FOIA requests that could be affected by Mrs. Clinton and her staff's use of secret email accounts to conduct official government business. In our various FOIA lawsuits, our lawyers have informed attorneys for the Obama administration that Hillary Clinton's account and any other secret accounts used by State employees should be secured, recovered and searched.\" JW actively seeks out those files through official methods, using FOIA and the Federal Records Act, but has been met with delay after delay from FOIA requests to the Obama administration. While the Obama administration is on its way out, groups like Judicial Watch aren't going anywhere, and presumably have all the time in the world to FOIA their way into digging up those deleted Clinton emails, as well as securing Gmail accounts from the Obama administration cabinet and staffers. This story is definitely a long way from being over. It's no wonder why so many free thinkers are now questioning the story lines they're being told. With the president and all his men (and women), hiding their communications within their Gmail accounts, the truth is never going to be told, at least not the real truth. And by the time organizations like Judicial Watch are successful in obtaining the electronic communications records that rightly belong to the people, it will be way too late to hold anyone accountable for breaking both the Federal Records Act and the Freedom of Information Act. Julian Assange, we salute you. Thank you for forcing the Obama administration to be transparent. Keep up the valiant work! Delivered by The Daily Sheeple  We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).  Contributed by The Free Thought Project of thefreethoughtproject.com .  The Free Thought Project is dedicated to holding those who claim authority over our lives accountable.","label":1}
{"text":"Like many home cooks, I gave up on steak a while ago. First, meat started showing up on every list of foods to avoid, whether for reasons of health, ethics, economics or ecology. Then, the grill jockeys who blossom in American backyards in the springtime made steak seem impossible in an ordinary kitchen at a minimum, hot and cooking areas, a dry rub and a spray bottle were required. So I never slowed to ogle the steak case until I started cooking for a family. The meat aisle seemed to narrow daily. Chicken gets boring quickly pork is dry ground beef grows depressing veal is for the 1 percent. I started tinkering with steak on the stovetop. I had a skillet and a memory of my mother sprinkling coarse salt into the pan, rather than on the meat. I'd heard rumors of a new method, a departure from the received wisdom that said to put the steak in the pan and leave it alone. After some grisly catastrophes, trying out different cuts, seasonings and heat levels, I had a new system. It turns out that you truly don't need a grill to cook a great steak: savory, salty, encased in a barklike crust. You don't need to marinate or . You don't have to know your way around a chart \u2014 with its bewildering eyes, rounds, chucks and clods \u2014 to buy a good one. And at dinner time, laying a few slices of steak next to the whole grains, the roasted vegetables and the leafy greens that (usually) fill most of our plates is an excellent strategy. The preparations are simple. Buy from a butcher, or directly from a producer, whose meat comes from cattle raised in a way that you feel comfortable with. Choose boneless cuts that are thinner (at one inch thick, they cook through evenly on top of the stove) dry them well (to maximize crust) then sear them in an insanely hot pan. Salt the pan instead of the meat, and turn over the steak every 30 seconds or so after the first minute of cooking. If you don't have a skillet, now is the time: nothing that gets as hot is also nonstick, and nothing else that is nonstick gets as hot. When and how to salt a steak has been endlessly debated. The salt in the pan clearly helped the crust develop. But when I also presalted the meat, whether for 2 days or 10 minutes, the finished steak was too salty beef has plenty of sodium on its own. I cheerfully abandoned the extra step of presalting. As long as the cooking surface is hot enough, all that turning will yield a magnificent crust and a interior: juicy and pink throughout, without the usual gray ring under the crust. According to the food scientist Harold McGee, this is because the juices keep flowing instead of collecting in the middle, which makes the interior cook evenly. Keep in mind that this is stovetop steak, not steakhouse steak it will not have the visual punch of a porterhouse. Grilling bloggers (and there are many) spend days attempting to replicate legendary cuts like the Playboy at Jess Jim's in Kansas City, Mo. or the Longbone Cowboy at Nick Sam's in Dallas. But steakhouses have equipment and exhaust systems. The broilers at Peter Luger in Brooklyn heat up to a rumored 1, 800 degrees. Some steaks at Carnevino in Las Vegas are for eight months. At the chef Michael Mina's Bourbon Steak restaurants, the steaks lounge in a bath of clarified butter before touching the grill. That sounds pleasant, but all you really need is a heavy skillet and the right cut of meat. The experts on steak are not chefs but butchers \u2014 particularly butchers who were raised by butchers and grew up on a steady diet of meat. Pat LaFrieda, a meat purveyor in Manhattan, would rather you didn't buy his sirloin steak. \"Sirloin is one of my cuts,\" he said it's usually lean, making it difficult for home cooks to get just right. \"It comes from the love handles of the animal on down,\" one place where the fat collects under the skin, instead of working its way into the muscles. And intramuscular fat makes cooking steak at home far easier. \"If it's good quality steak, and you don't cook it for more than five minutes per inch, you really can't mess it up,\" said Richard Schatz of Schatzie the Butcher on the Upper West Side (his bloody lineage goes back five generations). \"Steak is nothing to be scared of. \" Buy steaks that are one inch thick for stovetop cooking they have just the right ratio of surface to interior. \"Having the entire surface of the steak pressed against the entire surface of a pan is pretty much ideal,\" said Bruce Aidells, author of \"The Great Meat Cookbook. \" That contact between the meat and the hot surface of the pan forms the crust you want much more effectively than if you cooked it in the broiler, where you can't flip the steak or press down on it to sear it. Steak from beef can be dry or gamy, but so can beef. The thing to look for is marbling, the veins of creamy fat that make steak mouthfilling and juicy. Steaks that have the United States Department of Agriculture's highest grade, Prime, have this marbling. Choice grade is hit or miss, but usually a hit: It can have excellent taste and texture. The next step down is Select and then Standard, an unappetizing category that is rarely labeled. There is a long list of cuts that do just fine on the stovetop. Boneless New York or Kansas City strip, flat iron, and boneless are and tender. Outliers with long muscle fibers \u2014 cuts like skirt, flank and hanger \u2014 are less expensive and more flavorful. They are naturally chewy but can be tender when cooked rare and sliced across the grain. Mr. LaFrieda's favorite cut for home cooking, and now mine, is the \"outside\" skirt, a cut that's thicker than the flat \"inside\" skirt. \"I wouldn't want to call it 'livery,' \" he said. \"From me that's a compliment, but some people want their meat very mild. \" For cuts, a wedge of lemon alongside the steak can do wonders. \"It won't do a lot for filet mignon,\" the chef Michael Psilakis said. \"But for anything well marbled, anything with some age on it, the acid in the lemon juice just brightens up the taste. \" Around the Mediterranean, meat is rarely served without lemon. After you have bought your steaks, keep them refrigerated until 30 minutes to an hour before cooking. (When they hit the pan, they should be cool, not cold.) Pat them dry with paper towels, then set aside on more paper towels, turning occasionally. Do not worry about \"losing\" the juices a dry surface helps build that strong crust. Fifteen minutes before dinner, turn the heat on high under your skillet and sprinkle its surface with salt. Do not oil the pan. When you think it's hot, let it heat some more. If it's not smoking, it's not ready. When the heat and the suspense become unbearable, lay your steak in the pan and prepare to flip. As you flip, move it around in the pan so it absorbs the salt. If you like black pepper (I do) add it only when the steak is almost cooked. It burns easily. The total cooking time for a steak is four to five minutes. The most accurate way to test it is with an thermometer. Insert it into the side of the steak, not through the top. The temperature will rise significantly after cooking, so 120 to 125 degrees is the range for meat. For those who don't want to fiddle around with microtechnology when getting dinner on the table, fingers provide the best intel. The feel of a rare steak quickly becomes different from that of a one. And if all else fails, remember this: \"You're not cooking in a restaurant,\" Mr. Schatz said. \"You can always just cut the thing in half and see what's going on. \" Recipe: Steak","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. military said on Wednesday it was looking into whether more civilians were killed in a raid on al Qaeda in Yemen on the weekend, in the first operation authorized by President Donald Trump as commander in chief. U.S. Navy SEAL William \"Ryan\" Owens was killed in the raid on a branch of al Qaeda, also known as AQAP, in al Bayda province, which the Pentagon said also killed 14 militants. However, medics at the scene said about 30 people, including 10 women and children, were killed. U.S. Central Command said in a statement that an investigating team had \"concluded regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed\" during Sunday's raid. It said children may have been among the casualties. Central Command said its assessment \"seeks to determine if there were any still-undetected civilian casualties in the ferocious firefight.\" DON'T MISS Trump tightens Iran sanctions, Tehran hits back Business Watch - Panic in Silicon Valley Reuters TV - Inside a Mexican migrant shelter U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations. As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists. The Pentagon directed queries about the officials' characterization of the raid to U.S. Central Command, which pointed only to its statement on Wednesday. \"CENTCOM asks for operations we believe have a good chance for success and when we ask for authorization we certainly believe there is a chance of successful operations based on our planning,\" CENTCOM spokesman Colonel John Thomas said. \"Any operation where you are going to put operators on the ground has inherent risks,\" he said. The U.S. officials said the extremists' base had been identified as a target before the Obama administration left office on Jan. 20, but then-President Barack Obama held off approving a raid ahead of his departure. A White House official said the operation was thoroughly vetted by the previous administration and that the previous defense secretary had signed off on it in January. The raid was delayed for operational reasons, the White House official said. The military officials who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said \"a brutal firefight\" killed Owens and at least 15 Yemeni women and children. One of the dead was the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant killed by a 2011 U.S. drone strike. Some of the women were firing at the U.S. force, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told reporters. The American elite forces did not seize any militants or take any prisoners offsite, but White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Wednesday the raid yielded benefits. \"Knowing that we killed an estimated 14 AQAP members and that we gathered an unbelievable amount of intelligence that will prevent the potential deaths or attacks on American soil \u2013 is something that I think most service members understand, that that's why they joined the service,\" Spicer said. A senior leader in Yemen's al Qaeda branch, Abdulraoof al-Dhahab, and other militants were killed in the gunbattle, al Qaeda said. One of the three U.S. officials said on-the-ground surveillance of the compound was \"minimal, at best.\" \"The decision was made ... to leave it to the incoming administration, partly in the hope that more and better intelligence could be collected,\" that official said. As Sunday's firefight intensified, the raiders called in Marine helicopter gunships and Harrier jump jets, and then two MV-22 Osprey vertical takeoff and landing aircraft to extract the SEALs. One of the two suffered engine failure, two of the officials said, and hit the ground so hard that two crew members were injured, and one of the Marine jets had to launch a precision-guided bomb to destroy it. Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Wednesday in an unexpected visit to meet the family of Owens, who had been a chief special warfare operator.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump, Jr. went before Congress today to give yet another version of his reasons for meeting with a Russian lawyer in June of 2016. While he did actually confirm what he said in the email string he was dumb enough to post to Twitter that he met with Natalia Veselnitskaya because she claimed to have dirt on Hillary he gave a ridiculous reason for it. His reason was that he was trying to determine Hillary s fitness for office, because that s a totally innocent reason that makes it all okay.So that makes it all innocent, especially because he also claimed that he was just so overwhelmed with the campaign due to inexperience, but he did still evidently have the presence of mind to know he should talk to legal counsel about the propriety of the meeting and info, or so his claim goes.Some, however, on the Senate Judiciary Committee don t believe him, it seems. Sen. Chris Coons, who sits on that committee, sent out a memo to interested parties about Don the Con Jr. and his testimony today, complete with the statute regarding giving false testimony to Congress. And there s no ambiguity about it the top of the memo says: Below is a statute to keep in mind in regards to Donald Trump Jr. s testimony today. It quotes the full statute, which states that it s illegal to lie to Congress, and then Coons says: It is important to remember that anyone who testifies in front of a Senate committee is under the restrictions of the False Statements statute that says material false statements to Congress are criminal and punishable with fines or imprisonment or both. Read Coons full memo below:? After Don Jr. testimony to Senate Judiciary Cmte, Sen. Chris Coons office sends out statute on giving false statements to Congress pic.twitter.com\/OUdKXMBfqm Andrew Desiderio (@desiderioDC) September 7, 2017The many contradictions in Don Jr. s reasons for meeting with Veselnitskaya clearly raise doubts that his testimony today was the truth. He first claimed, months ago, that he didn t meet with any Russians, and then later claimed that meant he didn t meet with any known Russian officials. Then he claimed that he did meet with a Russian attorney, but it was about adoptions. After that, he said he did meet with her, but it was because he was told she had dirt on Hillary. He said the meeting was a fruitless endeavor.Now he says it s because he wanted to determine her fitness for the presidency, which he seems to think makes it all okay. Coons is right to be skeptical. It would be one thing if the junior Trump s story had never changed, and contradicting information had never come out. But it s impossible to trust the testimony of someone who s changed their story as many times as he has.","label":1}
{"text":"By Whitney Webb UNICEF found air pollution to be a major contributing factor in the deaths of nearly 600,000 under the age of five. Most recent environmental concerns regarding pollution have been...","label":1}
{"text":"President-elect Donald Trump is throwing a private New Year s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago Club that is expected to draw hundreds of guests, including Sylvester Stallone.","label":1}
{"text":"Israeli players have been denied visas to participate in a speed chess championship hosted by Saudi Arabia this week, a vice president of the World Chess Federation (FIDE) said on Sunday. Seven Israeli players had requested visas for the tournament on Dec. 26-30. It would have marked the first time Saudi Arabia had publicly hosted Israelis as the Gulf state does not recognize Israel and there are no formal ties between them. Israel Gelfer, vice president of FIDE, whose Secretariat is based in Athens, told Reuters in an email that visas for the Israeli players have not been issued and will not be issued . He said the tournament would go ahead as planned. It was not immediately clear if other delegations had been excluded but players from Qatar had suggested they may have been rejected. Saudi Arabia s Center for International Communication said in a statement that more than 180 players would participate but did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Israel Chess Federation Spokesman Lior Aizenberg said efforts were still being made by various parties to ensure the Israeli players took part. The event is not a world championship if they prevent chess players from several countries from taking part, Aizenberg told Reuters. Every chess player should have the right to participate in an event on the basis of professional criteria, regardless of their passports, their place of issue or the stamps they bear. Aizenberg said FIDE should ensure Israeli players could compete in international events and that the Israeli federation was considering all options, including legal action and holding an international competition in Israel for players excluded from the Saudi match. FIDE had said in November it was undertaking a huge effort to ensure all players were granted visas. (This version of the story was refiled to clarify that FIDE secretariat in Athens, but unclear where Gelfer speaking from)","label":0}
{"text":"Obamacare tax penalty? I'll take it, millions say \"Has not been large enough to motivate people to sign up for insurance' Published: 20 mins ago  (New York Times) The architects of the Affordable Care Act thought they had a blunt instrument to force people \u2014 even young and healthy ones \u2014 to buy insurance through the law's online marketplaces: a tax penalty for those who remain uninsured.  It has not worked all that well, and that is at least partly to blame for soaring premiums next year on some of the health law's insurance exchanges.  The full weight of the penalty will not be felt until April, when those who have avoided buying insurance will face penalties of around $700 a person or more. But even then that might not be enough: For the young and healthy who are badly needed to make the exchanges work, it is sometimes cheaper to pay the Internal Revenue Service than an insurance company charging large premiums, with huge deductibles.","label":1}
{"text":"The European Union wants Britain to end uncertainties over the terms of its exit from the bloc, the EU s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Thursday. Barnier told the Italian parliament he was looking forward in a constructive spirit to a speech by British Prime Minister Theresa May in Florence on Friday, when she is expected to flesh out her vision of Britain s future relationship with the EU. We expect clear commitments from Britain, said Barnier, adding that an agreement between the two sides needed to be found by November next year in order to allow time for it to be ratified by parliaments.","label":0}
{"text":"When I woke up on Thursday morning, the world was different (again). While I slept, nine people were murdered attending Wednesday night Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lee Lance, Rev. Daniel L. Simmons, Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor, and Susie Jackson lost their lives during a midweek service in which they welcomed a newcomer, Dylann Storm Roof, who would later turn a gun on them, careful to leave a living witness to recount the details of what happened. It does not escape me that it was witnessing \u2014 a term used to refer to an act of Christian discipleship where one shares their faith with nonbelievers \u2014 that likely resulted in Roof's invitation to join the weekly gathering, and it was the need for an (eye)witness that led him to intentionally spare the life of one of the victims. The racist and terrorist act was premeditated and deemed a hate crime, even though some media pundits insisted that it was motivated by antagonism towards Christianity, not black people. I believe it was both. The shooting was not only an assault on black humanity, it was an attack on black faith, which is one of the few things black folk have left in the face of so much loss, despair and ongoing oppression. For generations, black folk have turned to their religious faith and to the church for comfort during times of social injustice (as evidenced in the rich and storied history of Emanuel Church). Now, one of the few safe spaces that black folk can seek out for refuge has been turned into a crime scene. Roof's targeting of a place of worship is an attempt to compromise the safety and sanctity of the black church. Before Wednesday night, the black church seemed to be one of the few places left where black folk could assemble in public and feel seen, recognized, heard, loved and welcome. (We know from the not-so-distant past that those spaces are not the private communities in which we live, not store parking lots, not Walmart stores, not public parks, not street corners, not swimming pools, not even our homes.) And, truth be told, while traditional black churches are safe spaces from white supremacy, they have long been unsafe spaces for folk who are gender non-conforming, same-gender loving, or women. It is important, as we hold up the black church as a whole after this tragedy, that we also hold it up to scrutiny, so that as we do the work of making church spaces safe again, we make sure that they are safe for all of us, all of the time. I believe this moment is an opportunity for the black church to re-establish itself through the proven resiliency of black faith, and become a safe and welcome space for all believers. This is a moment to understand that in order to fight and resist white supremacy we must also dismantle and fight its co-conspirators: homophobia, transphobia, and sexism. Many times churchfolk and skinfolk are afraid of the wrong things. It is white supremacy, not nonheterosexuality, that threatens the lives and legacies of black folk in this country. It is white supremacy, not premarital sex or babies born out of wedlock, that jeopardizes our survival. It was white supremacy, not insanity, that caused Dylann Roof to walk into a black church intending to walk out with blood on his hands. We need healing that is corporate, collective, consistent and accountable. The victims of the shooting should not have to be martyrs, hashtags, or statistics to show, once again, that our country continues to fail at holding white supremacy accountable for the death it perpetuates. This is a moment of love but also of accountability. We can hold well-meaning white allies accountable for being speechless while we are being senselessly murdered, and being sensitive and offended when we express our outrage. We can hold our policymakers accountable, insisting that the Confederate flag, a symbol of anti-black hate, be removed from government spaces (to make them safe for people of color). We can hold our churches and places of worship accountable, requiring inclusivity over conservatism, and demonstrating agape love out in the open. We can hold ourselves and our loved ones accountable, in all the ways we need and all the ways we know, because, as Audre Lorde taught us, our silence will not protect us. We are living in a moment where being black is equally commodified and criminalized, where black people are fighting for dignity, security, humanity and the very right to blackness. This moment is a reminder that in a so-called post racially progressive world, being black remains simultaneously the most marketable, profitable, co-optable and dangerous identity marker one can hold. To be black is to be vulnerable no matter where you are and no matter where you go. To be black is to carry a marker on your skin that racists will use to identify you and in some cases kill you. Despite claims of colorblindness, or so-called transracialism, the black victims in church on Wednesday night could not claim whiteness to save themselves. It was, in fact, the pervasive lie of whiteness that cost them their life. If ever there was a place where black folk believe themselves to be free, it is within the walls of the church. There we dance, cry, pray, praise, shout, sing and testify. The doors are always open. Despite the personal challenges I have with the church, it has remained a beacon of hope, a place of healing and possibility, a refuge in times of trouble, and a safe space for lost souls and people in need, regardless of race. As a non-church-attending black woman who identifies as a Christian, I refuse to relinquish my faith to this tragedy. I refuse to allow Roof's hate to be the end of the story. I refuse to concede that we cannot, as a people, carve out spaces for each other and make room for one another (including difference) within and without the four walls of the church. This is for white girls who pretend to be black girls when white supremacy isn't enough. This is for black Christians who believe respectability will save our lives in the face of perpetual anti-black hetero-patriachal white supremacy, when evidence to the contrary is consistently given. This is for those of us seeking hope and holding on to faith but lacking patience. This is not enough, but it is a beginning.","label":0}
{"text":"Share on Facebook George Soros is running out of friends. With the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and the BREXIT vote in Great Britain, a pattern is beginning to emerge. This pattern is indicating that a major take-down of George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, among other organizations, both sub and individual, is in process. The evidence to support such a claim is difficult to collect and present because of the very nature of such an operation. Outside of conspiracy sites which promote similar stories, like Putin issuing an arrest warrant for Soros, something which has not yet been proven, real information and evidence is all but impossible to find. But much ancillary and suggestive evidence is abound. This evidence is best considered and processed through understanding the mandates and strategies which Soros has been involved in, and has been attempting to influence. This will be contrasted after against the rising opposition which is represented by the election of Trump and the BREXIT vote. I won't waste word space by going into too much detail on these connections, as the internet is full of reliable and validated sources which can be easily googled and found. We will focus on the broad strokes and obvious connections which make up the larger pattern. The most obvious is open borders. George Soros and his hoard of foundations and organizations have been involved in the funding of ISIS and the subsequent migrant crisis which has spread around the world. It has even been suggested that Soros has been involved in the funding of ISIS recruits within America. The Open Society Foundation, and a host of subsidiary organizations, are now being openly exposed for their anti-Israeli operations. This could be an attempt to sever Israel's connections with the United States and isolate the nation internationally. Why Soros would do this is not immediately obvious, but will be as we explain more. The western led coup which overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine was also influenced by George Soros. The distain which Soros has for Russia and Putin are well known, but preventing Putin from having control the natural gas flow into Europe through Ukraine was the overriding factor. Interestingly enough, after the coup the son of VP Joe Biden invested in and sat on the board of a natural gas company in Eastern Ukraine. The Biden's are representative of the American establishment and serve the interests of George Soros. This is how it works. The establishment use their own to infiltrate and take over business and industry of nations from the inside. Biden's other son subsequently died of brain cancer. In addition, Ukraine was getting further absorbed into the Eurasian Union through trade deals with Russia and China. Removing the support in Kiev was instrumental in preventing all of Europe from being aligned with the larger Eurasian Union mandates. The BREXIT vote itself represents the interests within Great Britain hedging a geopolitical strategy in case they needed to separate from Europe and remain aligned with North America. Soros has also been directly involved in the attempted overthrow of Assad in Syria. There are many reasons for this. Syria is aligned with Russia, the enemy of Soros. But Assad also represents a problem for business interest of both Soros and the Clintons, along with others in the American establishment. The natural gas line which was meant to connect Qatar with Europe, traveling through Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey, is the major problem. This gas pipeline has been invested in by the Clintons and others. Assad, a friend of Russia and Putin, has refused to have it run through Syria. Soros and the American establishment require to have this gas line in place to keep Europe from being drawn into the larger Eurasian Union. The Eurasian Union is an important piece of the developing global governance framework, as is becoming more obvious. It is also important to understand that Soros has business relations with the House of Saud. These ties will be further revealed as a deeper investigation into the terror attacks of Sept 11, 2001 commences and the truth is revealed regarding the full nature of the American establishment and its control over both the republican and democrat parties. It is still my conclusion that 9\/11 was an attempt to stop a transformation of the international monetary system in its early stages by using the manufactured event to hijack the global governance process. This hijacking has now failed. George Soros has also been instrumental in manipulating western policy towards Russia and China in general. The NATO buildup on Russia's borders is taking place at the same time as the attempted coup in Turkey and Ukraine, along the war in Syria. Evidence is now beginning to emerge that both Clinton and Soros had been involved in the coup attempt in Turkey. Erdogan was beginning to realign the country with Russia, which would have severely affected the interests of Soros, including threatening the route of migrants being forced into Europe. As for China, the interests of Rothschild, and to a larger extent, the broader international banking interests, have been well represented with the rise of the Asian superpower and its integration into the international monetary system. China is playing an important role in the removal and replacement of the USD as the international reserve currency. The SDR of the International Monetary Fund is being groomed for this role with the support of China. The American delays in implementing the IMF 2010 Quota and Governance Reforms are better understood as the workings of George Soros to hijack the process and prevent the shift away from the USD based unipolar system. Alternatively, they could be attempting to control the SDR development in order to ensure that the dollar remains as the dominate asset within the subgroup. Another interesting aspect of what we are reviewing here is the Panama Papers leaks . The case has been made that George Soros was behind this and the goal was to expose the Rothschild connections throughout the global banking network with the intent of taking control of the global governance process. This attempted coup against the Rothschild's and the more hidden international banking powers which they represent, is now collapsing and the backlash could very well be violent. As stated above, the BREXIT vote was the first obvious counter move against George Soros and his American establishment. This was followed by the election of Donald Trump. I have covered the connections between Trump and the Rothschild's in previous articles . The Trump platform represents a direct attack on the organizations and strategies of George Soros. Along with BREXIT, Donald Trump will be enacting policies to reduce and stop immigration from terrorist supporting nations. This can be assumed to be nations that are in alliance with George Soros. Trump has also openly stated that he will be willing to work with Russia and destroying ISIS and returning stability to the Middle East. It is my estimate that this will include the removal of the House of Saud and the establishment of a stronger Israel. The anti-Israel actions of Soros are in direct conflict with the support which Trump states he will be giving to Israel. The American embassy will even move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. What this means for the Greater Israel Project is not yet determined. It can be assumed that any renegotiation between Iran and Trump's America on the nuclear deal well involve discussions about Israel. Trump could very well be the first US President, along with Putin, who brings peace to the Middle East. Such a thing would be a major loss for George Soros. Trump will also be moving forward with alternatives to NATO. Russia has now called on Trump to remove NATO troops from its borders. This will likely happen and correspond with the joint-military action in Syria and throughout the Middle East. The representatives of the Anglo-American establishment within the European nations are now beginning to understand that a major shift is taking place in the geopolitical world. Repairing relations with Russia should be at the top of their lists as the Eurasian Union continues to grow in size and scope. This constitutes another major blow to the interest of George Soros and his companions in the American establishment. It is becoming increasingly clear that George Soros and those who have used both American political parties are running out of places to hide. The mainstream media is one of those. The alternative media, aligned with the larger mandates of global governance will be one of the winners. I know such a thing may be hard to believe by some readers, but in time you will see. Empire is always replaced from within. The seeds of the alternative to the existing empire are planted years and decades in advance. The placement of Donald Trump and the internet based alternative media are reflective of that. Soros attempts to reverse the election decision in the US will fail just like his efforts to rig and manipulate things in the lead up to the election. It should be obvious that this resistance to Soros and the establishment is not just an organic uprising of the people. There is a power behind this opposition and new sense of nationalism which is guiding the masses. Soros is attempting to guide his masses. Two masses resisting each other could mean civil war. But I don't think that will happen. Forces are at work to remove Soros and his web of foundations and organizations both from within and without. Whether George Soros understood that he was being used as a pawn in a larger game is hard to determine. The international banking interests, of which the Rothschild's are only the outer face, have immense power and influence over this world. George may have been presented with a cleverly crafted opening which his corrupt human nature couldn't resist. The development of his mandates and strategies, open border, terrorism, liberal-left socialism, have directly led to the rise of a new form of nationalism. This new modern nationalism is now being used to herald in the broader framework of the global governance system. The trend and pattern is clear and from where I sit it is hard to deny. Keep watching for events in the world that prove what has been written here. Major war between the world players has been averted but the risk of small regional wars remains. The chess game is not over and there could still be some causalities on both sides. The game may have been rigged against Soros and the American establishment from inception. \u2013 JC Interesting side note. Some within the American political and media establishment are now switching sides. Could have been plants all along. Related:","label":1}
{"text":"France s military said on Thursday the coalition battling Islamic State in Syria had opposed a deal allowing fighters of the militant group to withdraw from their former bastion of Raqqa. The coalition had also been unable to launch air strikes against the fighters because they had mingled with civilians, French army spokesman Patrik Steiger said. A report by BBC television on Sunday said some 4,000 people, including hundreds of foreign nationals, had been evacuated from Raqqa as part of the agreement and spread across Syria and as far as Turkey. Ankara on Tuesday said it was appalled by the approach of the U.S. Department of Defense toward the agreement, struck between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) a U.S.-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias and Islamic State. The coalition was not ... for this agreement which enabled Islamic State terrorists to escape without being chased, Steiger told reporters in a weekly briefing. It (the convoy) was monitored by drones, (but) the terrorists were mixed in with the population which prevented air strikes being carried out. France has contributed to strikes against the jihadist group in Syria and has special forces operating in the Raqqa region. Coordinated attacks planned by militants in Raqqa in Paris in November 2015 were the deadliest on French soil since World War Two, killing more 130 people. With Islamic State losing ground in Iraq and Syria, hundreds of French citizens belonging to Islamic State - and in some cases their children - have started to return to France, officials there say. The BBC report showed one witness claiming that French jihadis were among those allowed to leave Raqqa in mid-October and one suspected militant was recorded saying some French fighters were heading back to France to carry out attacks. At the time an SDF spokesman said 275 Syrian militants left along with their family members, but denied foreign fighters had also left. Seeking to allay concerns, French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said on Wednesday the threat of an attack was no greater than over the last two years and security services were either arresting or monitoring all those who returned to France. About 400 men, women and children had returned so far. There is no massive return. We think that 700 people are still in the zone, he said, referring to French nationals or those who had resided in the country in the past. (This version of the story corrects paragraph three to clarify people, not fighters evacuated)","label":0}
{"text":"Obama just couldn t keep quiet. He released a statement via Facebook today lashing out at President Trump s decision to rescind his DACA executive action, labeling the move as cruel in an immediate admonition of his predecessor following the move. The DACA program is unlawful: Just listen to Obama s own words at a 2011 town hall with Univision:The DACA program is unlawful. For an explanation, look no further than President Obama s own words at a 2011 town hall with Univision. pic.twitter.com\/E4MxN5JZD9 ForAmerica (@ForAmerica) September 5, 2017Obama defended DREAMers people brought here illegally as children as patriots who are American in their hearts and cast Trump s move as political decision WAS IT NOT A TOTALLY POLITICAL DECISION FOR OBAMA TO SIGN THE EXECUTIVE ORDER ON DACA? To target these young people is wrong because they have done nothing wrong, Obama wrote in a Facebook post published hours after Trump announced his decision in a written statement following a speech by Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It is self-defeating because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel. No, what s cruel is having open borders to allow these people in. What s cruel is to have this unConstitutional policy that now Trump has to deal with. President Trump is the adult in the room of a bunch of lawless cowards.OBAMA S STATEMENT: Immigration can be a controversial topic. We all want safe, secure borders and a dynamic economy, and people of goodwill can have legitimate disagreements about how to fix our immigration system so that everybody plays by the rules. But that s not what the action that the White House took today is about. This is about young people who grew up in America kids who study in our schools, young adults who are starting careers, patriots who pledge allegiance to our flag. These Dreamers are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper. They were brought to this country by their parents, sometimes even as infants. They may not know a country besides ours. They may not even know a language besides English. They often have no idea they re undocumented until they apply for a job, or college, or a driver s license. Over the years, politicians of both parties have worked together to write legislation that would have told these young people our young people that if your parents brought you here as a child, if you ve been here a certain number of years, and if you re willing to go to college or serve in our military, then you ll get a chance to stay and earn your citizenship. And for years while I was President, I asked Congress to send me such a bill. That bill never came. And because it made no sense to expel talented, driven, patriotic young people from the only country they know solely because of the actions of their parents, my administration acted to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people, so that they could continue to contribute to our communities and our country. We did so based on the well-established legal principle of prosecutorial discretion, deployed by Democratic and Republican presidents alike, because our immigration enforcement agencies have limited resources, and it makes sense to focus those resources on those who come illegally to this country to do us harm. Deportations of criminals went up. Some 800,000 young people stepped forward, met rigorous requirements, and went through background checks. And America grew stronger as a result. But today, that shadow has been cast over some of our best and brightest young people once again. To target these young people is wrong because they have done nothing wrong. It is self-defeating because they want to start new businesses, staff our labs, serve in our military, and otherwise contribute to the country we love. And it is cruel. What if our kid s science teacher, or our friendly neighbor turns out to be a Dreamer? Where are we supposed to send her? To a country she doesn t know or remember, with a language she may not even speak? Let s be clear: the action taken today isn t required legally. It s a political decision, and a moral question. Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn t threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us. They are that pitcher on our kid s softball team, that first responder who helps out his community after a disaster, that cadet in ROTC who wants nothing more than to wear the uniform of the country that gave him a chance. Kicking them out won t lower the unemployment rate, or lighten anyone s taxes, or raise anybody s wages. It is precisely because this action is contrary to our spirit, and to common sense, that business leaders, faith leaders, economists, and Americans of all political stripes called on the administration not to do what it did today. And now that the White House has shifted its responsibility for these young people to Congress, it s up to Members of Congress to protect these young people and our future. I m heartened by those who ve suggested that they should. And I join my voice with the majority of Americans who hope they step up and do it with a sense of moral urgency that matches the urgency these young people feel. Ultimately, this is about basic decency. This is about whether we are a people who kick hopeful young strivers out of America, or whether we treat them the way we d want our own kids to be treated. It s about who we are as a people and who we want to be. What makes us American is not a question of what we look like, or where our names come from, or the way we pray. What makes us American is our fidelity to a set of ideals that all of us are created equal; that all of us deserve the chance to make of our lives what we will; that all of us share an obligation to stand up, speak out, and secure our most cherished values for the next generation. That s how America has traveled this far. That s how, if we keep at it, we will ultimately reach that more perfect union.","label":1}
{"text":"Trump supporters are racist and violent. That means that a Donald Trump rally is a very scary and dangerous place for a black woman to be. That didn t stop one black woman from braving the hostility and making sure her voice was heard, though. Shiya Nwanguma, a student at the University of Louisville, said she was attacked by racist Trump supporters when she dared to attend a rally as a protester. The victim said of her harrowing experience at the Trump rally: I was called a n****r and a c*nt and got kicked out. They were pushing and shoving at me, cursing at me, yelling at me, called me every name in the book. They re disgusting and dangerous. One of the Trump-supporting attackers was allegedly identified as known white supremacist and Traditionalist Worker Party leader Matthew Heimbach. Protester and victim Chanelle Helm said of her experience with this particular racist: I watched him for hours recruit Trump supporters with five of his buddies. They later attacked the group I was with. The neo-Nazis threw punches and kicked us. Here is video of the violence:\/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&#038;version=v2.3\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); \/\/ ]]&gt;I m watching this shit right now on the news 2016 in Louisville KY and I m furious !!!!look at the way they treated this beautiful African American female these racist ### ######## turned the tables and you know what would happen this is what these people think about usPosted by Paul Bibbs on Tuesday, March 1, 2016Another Traditionalist Worker Party member touted and bragged about assaulting and stealing signs from Trump protesters:Behold our booty of anti-#Trump2016 swag from today's #louisville rally LMAO at a genuine #CurrentYear sign! pic.twitter.com\/ioyeSyEbDv TradYouth (@TradYouth) March 2, 2016Helm went on to say: In my entire life I had never had anyone look at me with such hate. And that is saying something. Trump and his supporter are inciting violence and hate, and no one is doing anything about it. For more proof, here is yet ANOTHER video, and this time Trump s supporters proudly drop n-bombs:This is Donald Trump s America, people. PLEASE vote often, and vote BLUE.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have agreed to meet for a debate on April 14, five days before the New York primary, CNN reported on Monday. Sanders' campaign said in a statement he had accepted CNN's invitation to participate in the debate. The debate will be held in Brooklyn, New York, and will be carried by cable news channels CNN and NY1, CNN said.","label":0}
{"text":"The gunman in a shooting rampage at a Florida nightclub, identified as Omar Mateen, would seem, in retrospect, to have been the kind of person who should not have been able to buy a gun. His former wife described Mr. Mateen as mentally unstable and abusive. A at the security company where he worked recalled him talking \"about killing people all the time. \" And the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated him for possible ties to terrorism. Yet, just as was the case with a long line of other mass shootings, nothing prevented the Orlando gunman from legally buying the weapons he used. The explanation, as confounding as it may be for those who favor tougher gun restrictions, has its roots in a civic value that crosses the political divide: the right to due process. The pattern is, by now, numbingly familiar. Jared Loughner, who in 2011 shot Representative Gabrielle Giffords in the head and killed six others in Tucson, had exhibited alarming signs of mental illness, yet legally bought the Glock handgun used in the shooting just a few weeks earlier. A month before Aaron Alexis killed a dozen people in 2013 at the Washington Navy Yard, the police in Rhode Island visited him after he called them to complain that he was hearing voices and that people were following him and harassing him with a microwave machine. Nevertheless, shortly after, he was able to legally buy the shotgun he used in the shooting. The phenomenon occurs again and again on a more humdrum, daily basis, involving far less spectacular shootings. In 2010, in Oklahoma, Barbara Diane Dye was shot and killed by her husband in a bank parking lot. Two weeks earlier, she had filed an emergency order of protection against him, explaining that her husband had repeatedly threatened to kill her and that she feared he would turn violent when he received divorce papers. As they waited for a court hearing needed for a full protection order, Ms. Dye and her family begged the local police to take away his guns. The issue with these cases and countless others is the way federal gun prohibitions have been drawn up, seeking to balance what the Supreme Court decreed in 2008 was a constitutional right to bear arms against the potential threat to public safety. Most of the federal criteria that bar people from buying or possessing guns under federal law require some sort of legal adjudication: a felony conviction, for instance an involuntary commitment to a mental institution, a process that typically requires a judge's decree a full protection order that includes the opportunity for a hearing. It is a relatively high bar, given the range of behaviors that might set off alarms about someone having a gun. While Mr. Mateen might have exhibited worrisome red flags, his behavior had never risen to the level that involved a court process, or some other official proceeding, that would have blocked him. The same applies to Mr. Loughner and Mr. Alexis, as clearly mentally unstable as they both were in retrospect. In Ms. Dye's case in Oklahoma, her husband had not yet been given the opportunity to contest the allegations against him in a court hearing on the order of protection, which could have led to his being barred him from having guns. The issue of due process, in fact, is at the heart of why gun rights advocates have resisted so strenuously a proposal to bar people on federal terrorism watch lists, or who have otherwise been suspected by the authorities of ties to terrorist groups, from buying guns. (Mr. Mateen was on a watch list from 2013 to James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, said, but not earlier this month when he bought the guns used in the shooting.) People on the watch lists, which can include tens of thousands of names, have no opportunity to contest their inclusion in a court of law, gun rights proponents point out. And taking away a constitutionally protected right, they argue, should carry a much greater legal bar. The measure was defeated six months ago by Republicans in Congress, but Senate Democrats, including Dianne Feinstein of California and Bill Nelson of Florida, said on Monday that they would renew their push for a vote on the legislation. \"I hope every member of the House and Senate had time for quiet reflection yesterday to ask what we could have done to prevent this tragedy,\" Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said on Monday. \"I'm so sorry. I'm heartsick, I'm basically sick by our inaction. It's shameful the United States Senate has done nothing \u2014 nothing \u2014 to stop these mass shootings. \" Just one Republican, Senator Mark S. Kirk of Illinois, voted in favor of the proposal in December, but Democrats said that they believed that Republicans would come under new pressure. It is a sign of where the gun debate is in this country at the moment that even the gun bill of 2013, the most ambitious proposal for tightening federal gun laws in recent years, would have been powerless to block Mr. Mateen's purchase of a gun. That is because the measure, proposed after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. was focused on expanding existing federal background checks on guns to a greater array of gun transactions, particularly those made through \"private sales\" at gun shows or online. Only in a handful states \u2014 New York and California are among those that stand out \u2014 have lawmakers sought to tighten the legal threshold to include red flags that extend substantially beyond the federal criteria. New York passed a law in 2013 after Newtown that compelled mental health professionals to report any patient \"likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others,\" a process that could lead to the person being prohibited from buying and possessing firearms. But, by late 2014, the list had swelled to some 34, 500 names, raising concerns even among some mental health professionals that some in the database were not truly dangerous. California, for its part, introduced this year something lawmakers called a \"gun violence restraining order,\" in which family members or law enforcement officials can petition a judge on an emergency basis to order people to surrender their firearms, pending a full hearing, because the individuals pose a danger to themselves or others. The weapons could then later be returned, if a person successfully contests the removal in court. Gun control proponents, seeking to expand the restraining orders to other states, hope the hearing process for the orders give them a convincing way to counter the due process arguments from opponents. An alliance of gun control supporters are now trying to secure enough signatures to get a similar firearm restraining order on the ballot in November in Washington State. Ultimately, it is a question that promises to resurface, given the protracted nature of the gun debate in the United States: Where should the line be drawn?","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump has stepped up the pressure on the National Football League over protests by its players during the national anthem by launching a petition and asking his supporters to show their patriotism by backing it. The move came after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell this week rejected Trump's calls to punish players who kneel for the anthem to protest racism. Trump has said the protests are unpatriotic and disrespectful of military veterans. \"The President has asked for a list of supporters who stand for the National Anthem. Add your name below to show your patriotism and support,\" said the petition issued on Thursday by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a fundraising organization for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. The petition was published on the Republican National Committee website. It did not indicate how many signatures had been received. Players kneeling during \"The Star-Spangled Banner\" are protesting the killing of unarmed black men and boys by police across the United States, as well as racial disparities in the country's criminal justice system. More than half of all NFL players are black. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who first popularized the gesture last year, said he settled on kneeling as a form of protest because it is widely seen as a gesture of respect. Goodell said on Wednesday after a meeting of league owners that the NFL would continue to nurture players' efforts to fight racial disparities in the criminal justice system, believing this would make the urge to protest fade. Trump has repeatedly expressed disdain for the protests since a rally in September. In a Twitter post on Wednesday, he called the NFL's decision, \"Too much talk, not enough action.\"","label":0}
{"text":"When you try and fail at everything you do, try and try some more! Right? That s how the saying goes, isn t it? No?Well, it looks as if failed half-term governor of Alaska, failed vice presidential nominee, failed Fox News contributor, and failed reality star Sarah Palin is at it again, and this time around she s in talks for her own reality court show. Yes, you read that correctly. Clearly, juris doctor degree or any form of law experience be damned, Palin is gonna tell it like it is in whatever way the words come out of her mouth (to be deciphered later).According to People: The onetime vice presidential candidate has been tapped to preside over a new reality court show that would premiere next year. She signed a deal in February with Montana-based production company Warm Springs, a source close to the process tells PEOPLE. It s a production deal, the source explains. What happens next is she ll meet with stations, make a pilot and sell it. Warm Springs first approached Palin with the idea in 2015 and has since put together a team that includes the TV executive who found Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown. Warm Springs Production had this to say regarding the project, which apparently has been in the works since last year: Palin s telegenic personality, wide appeal and common sense wisdom make her a natural for this kind of format and she was Warm Springs top pick for this project. Yes, you read that correctly, they said common sense wisdom and a telegenic personality, because screeching incoherent ramblings is clearly what the people want, and who they d like deciding their fate in a courtroom.If the show actually sells it would begin in the fall of 2017. So, the good news would be if she got the show and Trump were to become president (knocks on wood) she ll be held up in a contract that would make it impossible for her to be part of his cabinet. Although, they d probably work something out. Reality stars unite!Just when you thought things couldn t get weirder, this happens. God save us all.","label":1}
{"text":"Organizers of the Fyre Festival \u2014 a promised \"luxury\" music festival in the Bahamas that left guests who paid tens of thousands of dollars scrambling immediately to find flights home \u2014 have been hit with a $100 million lawsuit alleging the whole enterprise was a \" scam\" from the beginning. [Attorney Mark Geragos filed the $100 million proposed lawsuit in California Sunday on behalf of client and festival attendee Daniel Jung, Billboard reports. The claim alleges that Fyre organizers \u2014 namely, the rapper Ja Rule and entrepreneur Billy McFarland \u2014 attempted to \"fleece attendees for hundreds of millions of dollars by inducing them to fly to a remote island without food, shelter or water \u2014 and without regard to what might happen to them after that. \" Ticket buyers \u2014 some of whom spent up to a reported $200, 000 on the most luxurious festival accommodations \u2014 arrived at the Island of Exumas on Thursday to find a festival site in disarray, with unfinished infrastructure and stages, disaster relief tents in place of luxury villas, and \"gourmet\" bread and cheese sandwiches in a cafeteria organizers had promised would be staffed by a celebrity chef. The festival \u2014 which had been heavily promoted for months by models and influential social media personalities including Kendall Jenner, Bella Hadid and Hailey Baldwin \u2014 had been billed as a unique \"cultural experience,\" with planned performances from and the rappers Tyga and Desiigner, and opulent ticket packages offering the ability to charter a yacht. The festival's official video promised the island was once owned by legendary drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. But guests who made it to the island reported seeing wet, soggy tents, a lack of security and food, and even stray animals roaming the campgrounds. After organizers cancelled the event Friday, attendees struggled to schedule return flights home as the Island of Exumas' tiny airport was overrun with travelers. In the lawsuit, Geragos alleges that the festival was \"more like The Hunger Games or Lord of the Flies than Coachella,\" according to Billboard. The suit alleges fraud, breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation, with Geragos charging that the island was not \"private,\" as had been advertised, and had never been owned by Escobar. The lawsuit also claims that Rule and McFarland knew the festival would be a catastrophe and warned promoters not to attend. \"They called all the names and the modeling agencies and told them not to come,\" a source told the New York Post's Page Six over the weekend. \"They were just like, 'Oh, come next weekend when all the kinks have been worked out.' This was before the chaos even started. \" Organizers issued a statement to Billboard claiming \"full responsibility\" for the festival, but promised full refunds and VIP accommodations to next year's event, which they said would take place at a \"United States beach venue. \" \"We apologize for any inconvenience the past has caused and we look forward to making a considerable donation to the Bahamas Red Cross Society as part of our initiatives,\" the organizers wrote. \"We need to make this right. And once we make this right, then we will put on the dream festival we sought to have since the inception of Fyre. \" Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum","label":0}
{"text":"Ted Cruz got a brutal lesson in why he should keep his children out of politics on Wednesday night, when his daughter let slip a family secret during a live television interview.The Texas senator and GOP Presidential candidate appeared alongside his wife Heidi and two young daughters for a live Town Hall on CNN on Wednesday night. During the interview, Cruz s daughter revealed that there is video footage of her father in women s underwear and a feather boa. The pronouncement left Cruz visibly nervous and no doubt has his PR team doing some immediate damage limitation among Cruz s Evangelical base.The Cruz family was on stage with Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night, and the whole scene is a perfect reminder of the phrase: Never work with children or animals. This week s Town Halls have placed their focus on the personal lives of the candidates more than the political views, and in a later segment of the event, Cruz began a harmless tale of a recent Daddy-Daughter picnic at school. Thrilled with the reception, Cruz went a little further, in an attempt to up his credentials as a folksy, involved Dad telling them that he often plays dress up with his daughters. She got to dress up Daddy in a pink boa and these like, big goofy-looking underwear he grinned at his daughter Caroline.However, Caroline then chimed in with a revelation that left the Senator briefly stumped. And [inaudible] it was on a videotape the whole time, she said, as millions of Americans watched the scene unfold from home. And that was a class video that they re sending out to all the parents. Cruz could only muster a brief Oh oh. while Heidi attempted to prevent her daughter revealing anything else ad lib. While host Cooper can t withhold a laugh, the audience is clearly as uncomfortable as the Cruz parents. You can almost hear Ted sending out a prayer to his Lord and PR team to double, triple and quadruple check that if that video footage exists, it gets disappeared immediately.https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=40fYlwHFCRgWe at Addicting Info suspect that far from Caroline making a naive PR stumble here, it might actually be a brutal attack of revenge for this campaign moment a while back.It s beginning to look like Caroline is reminding her father that if he continues to try and milk her for political ends, she will continue to kick him firmly where it hurts.","label":1}
{"text":"You will not believe this whopper! Hillary Clinton is dealing in vague answers that are really downright lies. She claims in an interview that it was the fog of war that made her lie to the families of the Benghazi victims. I say it was cover your a@@ time and that s what they came up with. These people are sickening! Sunday on ABC s This Week, while discussing the uncovered email showing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had told the Egyptian prime minister that we know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film, prior to telling them it was a YouTube video that caused the terror attack, Clinton said she did not lie to them but instead was caught up in the fog of war. When confronted by video clips of family members of Benghazi victims, Clinton said, I understand the continuing grief at the loss that parents experienced with the loss of these four brave Americans. I did testify as you know for 11 hours and I answered all of these questions. Now, I can t I can t help it that people think there has to be something else there, I said very clearly, there had been a terrorist group that had taken responsibility on Facebook, between the time that I, you know, when I talked to my daughter, that was the latest information, we were giving it credibility, and then we learned the next day, it wasn t true. In fact, they retracted it. This was a fast-moving series of events in the fog of war. I think most Americans understand.","label":1}
{"text":"The longer it takes for Britain and the European Union to start negotiations on their future relationship after Brexit, the higher the chance of a no deal scenario, trade minister Liam Fox said on Wednesday. I think it s unreasonable (not to move the Brexit talks forward) given the business interests across the European Union and given the interests of international investors, Fox told a committee of lawmakers. The trouble is that the later these discussions begin, the higher the chance of not reaching a deal on time become.","label":0}
{"text":"The organizer of the yesterday s Unite the Right rally was just mobbed as he tried to give a press conference trying to tell the truth of what happened in Charlottesville yesterday. His side of the story was never told mob rule exists right now The left doesn t want THE TRUTH to come out Jason Kessler rushed away from press conference and eventually brought to police station when his car wasn t reachable pic.twitter.com\/JDG1OQ9Hxk Brook Silva-Braga (@Brook) August 13, 2017PROTESTERS CHASED KESSLER AWAY:Shouted down pic.twitter.com\/Ijq4Q2kzRK Brook Silva-Braga (@Brook) August 13, 2017Jason Kessler was addressing the media when the surrounding crowd turned nasty:I asked Jason Kessler if he bears any responsibility for the death in #Charlotteville yesterday pic.twitter.com\/QIA9jiuczS Brook Silva-Braga (@Brook) August 13, 2017KESSLER TRIED TO TELL THE TRUTH OF WHAT HAPPENED UP TO THE CHAOS THAT S WHAT NEEDS TO BE TOLD!Kessler said he applied and was granted a permit to assemble yesterday, had arranged security and liaised with police for the protest. But earlier this week, the city ordered Saturday s rally to be relocated out of Emancipation Park to a larger one, further out of the city, citing safety reasons.Kessler on grounds of free speech and on Friday a judge granted a preliminary injunction which allowed the rally of white nationalists and other extremists to take place at its originally planned location downtown. They rescinded permission, he said. We fought them in federal court and we beat them in federal court. (But) it upended all our security arrangements. He went on to condemn the violence yesterday and said he would like to disavow any folks getting hurt but he was quickly drowned out by the boos and jeers of the crowd.Suddenly the crowd closed in, and police surrounding him, rushed Kessler away and brought him to a nearby police station as a voice was heard over the crowd, shouting We don t want a mob, we don t want a mob, As Kessler was whisked away, many demanded to know why the police were protecting him.As he was led away, he told reporters: I disavow any political violence and what happened yesterday was tragic. The denial of first amendment rights led to the political violence that happened yesterday. Get them out of our town, others chanted.So once again the left shuts down the narrative and the truth! They ve totally hijacked the narrative of what happened too notice how they re skipping over any mention of the two groups who brought the violence into Charlottesville? No mention of Antifa or BLM? All are at fault!","label":1}
{"text":"So Obama is skipping Nancy Reagan s funeral for the South by Southwest festival in Austin. It s a big event for the tech world but you d think Obama would feel a duty to go to the funeral of the former First Lady. Our president is like a petulant child who does exactly what he wants to do without regard for anyone else. He s sending Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton is going what a snub! A White House official confirmed this afternoon that President Barack Obama will not be in attendance at former First Lady Nancy Reagan s funeral on Friday, instead opting to attend a popular multimedia festival in Texas.Obama will be represented at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library by his wife, Michelle. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she will be attending the service in Simi Valley, California, as well. In late February, Obama drew widespread criticism after skipping the funeral for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The president is scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Friday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin. The annual event features movie screenings, musical performances and conferences on interactive media and technology, and has become known as a must-attend date for those in the tech world and Silicon Valley.","label":1}
{"text":"Dem. candidate for Georgia congressional seat @ossoff: Not an issue I don t live in district, can t vote for myself https:\/\/t.co\/RcX3MNqMTD New Day (@NewDay) April 18, 2017Democrats used the anger and fury of their progressive base, including hate-filled Hollywood actor Samuel L. Jackson, to stir up emotions in voters as a way to encourage them to the show up at the polls in Georgia yesterday. They failed Listen to disgusting Hollywood actor\/radical activist Samuel L. Jackson tell voters in a state where he doesn t even live to go vote vote for the Democratic Party. STOP Donald Trump, the man who encourages racial and religious discrimination and sexism. Remember what happened the last time people stayed home. We got stuck with Trump! We have to channel the great vengeance and fury that we have for this administration into votes at the ballot box. Ossoff led an 18-candidate field of Republicans, Democrats and independents, the entire slate placed on a single ballot to choose a successor to Republican Tom Price, who resigned to join Trump s administration as health secretary.But Ossoff fell just shy of the majority required to claim Georgia s 6th Congressional District outright, opening the door to Handel, who finished a distant second but ahead of a gaggle of Republican contenders.The investigative filmmaker and former congressional staffer received 48.1 per cent of the vote on Tuesday he needed 50 per cent to avoid a runoff. Handel, meanwhile, received 19.8 per cent of the vote.The rest of the vote was split between several other Democrats and Republicans, as well as two Independents.Here s what President Trump had to say on Twitter about the Democrats failed efforts to embarrass him:Despite major outside money, FAKE media support and eleven Republican candidates, BIG \"R\" win with runoff in Georgia. Glad to be of help! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 19, 2017Dems failed in Kansas and are now failing in Georgia. Great job Karen Handel! It is now Hollywood vs. Georgia on June 20th. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 19, 2017In total, Democrats received 49 per cent of the vote, Republicans received 51 per cent of the vote. Daily MailIf Republicans are going to maintain their majority in the House and Senate, perhaps they need to take a few pages from the Democratic playbook. The Democrats are fighting for their lives this is no time for the Republicans to sit back and take their majority for granted.Republican resources were split between eleven Republican contenders. The most prolific fundraising candidate among them raised less than $500,000, not even ten percent of the amount Ossoff raised.The Republican establishment, initially caught flat-footed, ended up spending over $5 million in advertising against Ossoff in the last weeks of the campaign, but it never caught up in the all-important ground game, which typically consists of a positive voter engagement on behalf of a single specific candidate rather than a negative attack on a single candidate.In retrospect, Republicans failed to recognize the unique opportunity the jungle primary provided Democrats who focused all their support behind one candidate. Republican leadership could have made a similar choice from among their eleven candidates, but did not do so. They did, in the end, get some help from the Republican establishment in Washington. Republicans in Georgia sounded the alarm several weeks ago, prompting $2 million in spending from the NRCC to help boost Republican turnout and counter Democrats energy. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with House leadership, also dumped in $3 million of its own money and dispatched on-the-ground staffers to the district, Politico reported.Speaker Ryan, however, who has the responsibility to support Republican candidates in the House, did not see the risk of a Democratic victory in Georgia until it was too late.In fact, he was not even in the United States on Tuesday. Instead, he was in Europe, leading a bi-partisan Congressional delegation.","label":1}
{"text":"Germany took a first decisive step on Wednesday toward forming a new government when its veteran finance minister, conservative Wolfgang Schaeuble, agreed to become president of the parliament, clearing the way for another party to take his job. Chancellor Angela Merkel will hope that Schaeuble, deeply respected in Germany for helping to steer the euro zone through its debt crisis, can stamp his authority on a fractious Bundestag lower house that will include two more parties after Sunday s federal election. Merkel must assemble Germany s first three-way coalition since the 1950s after her conservatives lost support and a far-right party, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), entered parliament for the first time in half a century. In a sign of the challenges ahead, Andrea Nahles, the Social Democrats newly elected parliamentary leader, told reporters her party would hit conservatives squarely in the jaw after four years as junior partner in a Merkel-led grand coalition . Merkel s most realistic coalition option now is a deal with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), returning to parliament after a four-year hiatus, and the Greens. But the parties disagree on issues such as energy, Europe and migration, complicating the path to a so-called Jamaica coalition - a reference to the parties colors: black, yellow and green, which are also those of the Jamaican flag. Schaeuble, 75, who emerged as one of Europe s most influential politicians during the euro zone crisis, will bring unprecedented weight to the role of Bundestag president, normally a low-profile position. His willingness to quit as finance minister after eight years in the post makes it easier for the FDP to join a Merkel-led coalition. The FDP, who are as fiscally hawkish as Schaeuble, have said they want his old job. As an outstanding personality Wolfgang Schaeuble possesses a natural authority that is of particular importance in these times, said FDP leader Christian Lindner, himself seen as a likely successor at the finance ministry. Lindner s deputy, Wolfgang Kubicki, another possible candidate for the post, told the RND newspaper chain that Schaeuble s move showed Merkel s openness to a Jamaica coalition. He also underscored his party s call for a shift in fiscal policy. Schaeuble was criticized in southern Europe, especially Greece, for his insistence on tax hikes and spending cuts at a time of deep recession, but is popular at home for balancing the books and presiding over high growth and low unemployment. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, speaking in Munich, said he did not think Schaeuble s departure would soften the EU s approach to heavily indebted Greece. The austerity measures will be continued by those who carried them out together with Wolfgang Schaeuble, he said. The Free Democrats, with a voter support base among Germany s small and medium-sized businesses, are as committed to budgetary discipline as Schaeuble but less pro-European, meaning Wednesday s news drew a mixed reception from the euro zone. I don t think there will be radical changes in German economic policy if the FDP replaces him, said one official close to euro zone policy-making. The FDP are also hardliners on deficits. But another euro zone official said the euro zone was losing one of the most pro-European politicians I know and instead getting a party markedly cooler on political integration. Italian Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan told the Handelsblatt newspaper he would miss Schaeuble s steady hand. Wolfgang Schaeuble was a loyal discussion partner, serious, competent and also a good friend, he said. Merkel emerged from Sunday s election a weakened figure after her conservatives, still the largest bloc in the Bundestag, bled support to the AfD. But the exit of Schaeuble, the most powerful counterweight to the long-serving chancellor, could paradoxically strengthen her position. As Bundestag president, Schaeuble will not be involved in coalition negotiations, removing one strong-minded negotiator from the table and potentially giving Merkel a freer hand. Coalition negotiations will only begin in earnest after Oct. 15, when the conservatives hope to wrest power from the Social Democrats in a state election in Lower Saxony. By law, the new parliament must convene for its first session 30 days after the election, so by Oct. 24 at the latest.","label":0}
{"text":"Stephen K. Bannon has great admiration for a provocative but disputed theory of history that argues that the United States is nearing a crisis that could be just as disruptive and catastrophic as the most seminal global turning points of the last 250 years. This prophecy, which is laid out in a 1997 book, \"The Fourth Turning,\" by two amateur historians, makes the case that world events unfold in predictable cycles of roughly 80 years each that can be divided into four chapters, or turnings: growth, maturation, entropy and destruction. Western societies have experienced the same patterns for centuries, the book argues, and they are as natural and necessary as spring, summer, fall and winter. Few books have been as central to the worldview of Mr. Bannon, a voracious reader who tends to see politics and policy in terms of their place in the broader arc of history. But what does the book tell us about how Mr. Bannon is approaching his job as President Trump's chief strategist and what he sees in the country's future? Here are some excerpts from the book, with explanations from The New York Times. The \"Fourth Turning\" authors, William Strauss and Neil Howe, started using that phrase before it became a pop culture buzzword courtesy of HBO's \"Game of Thrones. \" But, as the authors point out, some winters are mild. And sometimes they arrive late. The best thing to do, they say, is to prepare for what they wrote will be \"America's next rendezvous with destiny. \" In an interview with The Times, Mr. Bannon said, \"Everything President Trump is doing \u2014 all of it \u2014 is to get ahead of or stop any potential crisis. \" But the magnitude of this crisis \u2014 and who is ultimately responsible for it \u2014 is an unknown that Mr. Trump can use to his political advantage. This helps explain Mr. Trump's tendency to emphasize crime rates, terrorist attacks and weak border control. The rhythmic, seasonal nature of history that the authors identify foresees an inevitable period of decay and destruction that will tear down existing social and political institutions. Mr. Bannon has famously argued that the overreaching and ineffective federal government \u2014 \"the administrative state,\" as he calls it \u2014 needs to be dismantled. And Mr. Trump, he said, has just begun the process. As Mr. Howe said in an interview with The Times: \"There has to be a period in which we tear down everything that is no longer functional. And if we don't do that, it's hard to ever renew anything. Forests need fires, and rivers need floods. These happen for a reason. \" One of the authors' major arguments is that Western society \u2014 particularly American culture \u2014 has denied the significance of cyclical patterns in history in favor of the more palatable and belief that humans are on an inexorable march toward improvement. They say this allows us to gloss over the flaws in human nature that allow for bad judgment \u2014 and bad leaders that drive societies into decline. Though he probably did not intentionally invoke Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe, Mr. Trump was channeling their thesis when he often said during his campaign, \"The American dream is dead. \" One of the scenarios the book puts forward is one in which leaders who emerge during a crisis can revive and rebuild dead institutions. Mr. Trump clearly saw himself as one of these when he said his goal would be to bring back the American dream. The authors envision a return to a more traditional, conservative social order as one outcome of a crisis. They also see the possibility of retribution and punishment for those who resist or refuse to comply with the new expectations for conformity. Mr. Trump's \"with us or against us\" attitude raises questions about what kind of leader he would be in such a crisis \u2014 and what kind of loyalty his administration might demand.","label":0}
{"text":"ROAR MagI want to give testimony on what are called the highways of death. These are the two Kuwaiti roadways, littered with remains of 2,000 mangled Iraqi military vehicles, and the charred and dismembered bodies of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, who were withdrawing from Kuwait on February 26th and 27th 1991 in compliance with UN resolutions.US planes trapped the long convoys by disabling vehicles in the front, and at the rear, and then pounded the resulting traffic jams for hours. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, said one US pilot. The horror is still there to see.On the inland highway to Basra is mile after mile of burned, smashed, shattered vehicles of every description tanks, armored cars, trucks, autos, fire trucks, according to the March 18, 1991, Time magazine. On the sixty miles of coastal highway, Iraqi military units sit in gruesome repose, scorched skeletons of vehicles and men alike, black and awful under the sun, says the Los Angeles Times of March 11, 1991. While 450 people survived the inland road bombing to surrender, this was not the case with the 60 miles of the coastal road. There for 60 miles every vehicle was strafed or bombed, every windshield is shattered, every tank is burned, every truck is riddled with shell fragments. No survivors are known or likely. The cabs of trucks were bombed so much that they were pushed into the ground, and it s impossible to see if they contain drivers or not. Windshields were melted away, and huge tanks were reduced to shrapnel. Even in Vietnam I didn t see anything like this. It s pathetic, said Major Bob Nugent, an Army intelligence officer. This one-sided carnage, this racist mass murder of Arab people, occurred while White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater promised that the US and its coalition partners would not attack Iraqi forces leaving Kuwait. This is surely one of the most heinous war crimes in contemporary history. The Iraqi troops were not being driven out of Kuwait by US troops as the Bush administration maintains. They were not retreating in order to regroup and fight again. In fact, they were withdrawing, they were going home, responding to orders issued by Baghdad, announcing that it was complying with Resolution 660 and leaving Kuwait. At 5:35 p.m. (Eastern standard Time) Baghdad radio announced that Iraq s Foreign Minister had accepted the Soviet cease-fire proposal and had issued the order for all Iraqi troops to withdraw to postions held before August 2, 1990 in compliance with UN Resolution 660. President Bush responded immediately from the White House saying (through spokesman Marlin Fitzwater) that there was no evidence to suggest the Iraqi army is withdrawing. In fact, Iraqi units are continuing to fight. . . We continue to prosecute the war. On the next day, February 26, 1991, Saddam Hussein announced on Baghdad radio that Iraqi troops had, indeed, begun to withdraw from Kuwait and that the withdrawal would be complete that day. Again, Bush reacted, calling Hussein s announcement an outrage and a cruel hoax. Eyewitness Kuwaitis attest that the withdrawal began the afternoon of February 26, 1991 and Baghdad radio announced at 2:00 AM (local time) that morning that the government had ordered all troops to withdraw. The massacre of withdrawing Iraqi soldiers violates the Geneva Conventions of 1949, Common Article III, which outlaws the killing of soldiers who are out of combat. The point of contention involves the Bush administration s claim that the Iraqi troops were retreating to regroup and fight again. Such a claim is the only way that the massacre which occurred could be considered legal under international law. But in fact the claim is false and obviously so. The troops were withdrawing and removing themselves from combat under direct orders from Baghdad that the war was over and that Iraq had quit and would fully comply with UN resolutions. To attack the soldiers returning home under these circumstances is a war crime.Iraq accepted UN Resolution 660 and offered to withdraw from Kuwait through Soviet mediation on February 21, 1991. A statement made by George Bush on February 27, 1991, that no quarter would be given to remaining Iraqi soldiers violates even the US Field Manual of 1956. The 1907 Hague Convention governing land warfare also makes it illegal to declare that no quarter will be given to withdrawing soldiers. On February 26,199 I, the following dispatch was filed from the deck of the USS. Ranger, under the byline of Randall Richard of the Providence Journal: Air strikes against Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait were being launched so feverishly from this carrier today that pilots said they took whatever bombs happened to be closest to the flight deck. The crews, working to the strains of the Lone Ranger theme, often passed up the projectile of choice . . . because it took too long to load. New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd wrote, With the Iraqi leader facing military defeat, Mr. Bush decided that he would rather gamble on a violent and potentially unpopular ground war than risk the alternative: an imperfect settlement hammered out by the Soviets and Iraqis that world opinion might accept as tolerable. In short, rather than accept the offer of Iraq to surrender and leave the field of battle, Bush and the US military strategists decided simply to kill as many Iraqis as they possibly could while the chance lasted Continue this story at ROAR MagazineREAD MORE IRAQ NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Iraq Files","label":1}
{"text":"Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warns that Obama s manufacturing of regulations is not over. With the amount of time left in the year, the current pace of rule passage could bring many thousands of more pages. This is astonishing and should be of great concern, and intolerable, to policymakers. Said Wayne Crews. It is remarkable enough that the all-time record has been passed before Thanksgiving.","label":1}
{"text":"Thailand s Royal Household Bureau has dismissed a top palace official for extremely evil behavior , a note on Wednesday said, in what appears to be the latest shake-up under new King Maha Vajiralongkorn. The removal of Grand Chamberlain Distorn Vajarodaya, whose role is to manage the royal household, was announced by the palace in a document dated Nov. 6, media reported. The document lists things that Distorn allegedly did including falsifying a 25 million baht ($754,830) charity receipt for royal honors and tax evasion in the name of the crown. The Bureau of the Royal Household deemed Distorn s ... acts as disciplinary misconducts considered as extremely evil behavior deserving of dismissal from the civil service, the royal household bureau said. A palace official told Reuters on Wednesday that she was unable to comment on the matter. Reuters was unable to reach Distorn for comment. Distorn s dismissal is the latest sign of the new king s assertiveness and part of an ongoing purge of officials who the palace says did not perform or behave according to their rank. King Vajiralongkorn, 65, who inherited the throne last year following the death of his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, has set about reordering the palace, including the way its finances are managed. In February, a top palace official was also fired for extremely evil misconduct. Late King Bhumibol died in Oct. 2016 aged 88 after ruling for seven decades. During his reign, he helped revive the prestige of the monarchy with the help of a powerful palace public relations machine. He was cremated on Oct. 26 after a year of mourning. The funeral was attended by hundreds of thousands of people who thronged Bangkok s historic area to watch a series of spectacular processions and ancient Buddhist and Hindu rites and say goodbye.","label":0}
{"text":"The British Foreign Office said it had summoned the North Korean ambassador to condemn Wednesday s ballistic missile test. North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in a breakthrough that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons. I summoned the North Korean Ambassador to the Foreign Office to make clear to him our condemnation of this latest ballistic missile test, Minister for Asia and Pacific Mark Field said in a statement. North Korea claims it wants to bring security and prosperity to its people. But its actions are creating only insecurity and deepening its isolation, said Field. Britain is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. The latest test was the highest and longest any North Korean missile had flown, and it landed in the sea near Japan.","label":0}
{"text":"Leah H. Somerville, a Harvard neuroscientist, sometimes finds herself in front of an audience of judges. They come to hear her speak about how the brain develops. It's a subject on which many legal questions depend. How old does someone have to be to be sentenced to death? When should someone get to vote? Can an give informed consent? Scientists like Dr. Somerville have learned a great deal in recent years. But the complex picture that's emerging lacks the bright lines that policy makers would like. \"Oftentimes, the very first question I get at the end of a presentation is, 'O. K. that's all very nice, but when is the brain finished? When is it done developing? '\" Dr. Somerville said. \"And I give a very nonsatisfying answer. \" Dr. Somerville laid out the conundrum in detail in a commentary published on Wednesday in the journal Neuron. The human brain reaches its adult volume by age 10, but the neurons that make it up continue to change for years after that. The connections between neighboring neurons get pruned back, as new links emerge between more widely separated areas of the brain. Eventually this reshaping slows, a sign that the brain is maturing. But it happens at different rates in different parts of the brain. The pruning in the occipital lobe, at the back of the brain, tapers off by age 20. In the frontal lobe, in the front of the brain, new links are still forming at age 30, if not beyond. \"It challenges the notion of what 'done' really means,\" Dr. Somerville said. As the anatomy of the brain changes, its activity changes as well. In a child's brain, neighboring regions tend to work together. By adulthood, distant regions start acting in concert. Neuroscientists have speculated that this harmony lets the adult brain work more efficiently and process more information. But the development of these networks is still mysterious, and it's not yet clear how they influence behavior. Some children, researchers have found, have neural networks that look as if they belong to an adult. But they're still just children. Dr. Somerville's own research focuses on how the changes in the maturing brain affect how people think. Adolescents do about as well as adults on cognition tests, for instance. But if they're feeling strong emotions, those scores can plummet. The problem seems to be that teenagers have not yet developed a strong brain system that keeps emotions under control. That system may take a surprisingly long time to mature, according to a study published this year in Psychological Science. The authors asked a group of to to lie in an fMRI scanner and look at a monitor. They were instructed to press a button each time they were shown faces with a certain expression on them \u2014 happy in some trials, scared or neutral in others. And in some cases, the participants knew that they might hear a loud, jarring noise at the end of the trial. In the trials without the noise, the subjects did just as well as people in their . But when they were expecting the noise, they did worse on the test. Brain scans revealed that the regions of their brains in which emotion is processed were unusually active, while areas dedicated to keeping those emotions under control were weak. \"The young adults looked like teenagers,\" said Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University and an author of the study. Dr. Steinberg agreed with Dr. Somerville that the maturing of the brain was proving to be a long, complicated process without obvious milestones. Nevertheless, he thinks recent studies hold some important lessons for policy makers. He has proposed, for example, that the voting age be lowered to 16. \" are just as good at logical reasoning as older people are,\" Dr. Steinberg said. Courts, too, may need to take into account the powerful influence of emotions, even on people in their early 20s. \"Most crime situations that young people are involved in are emotionally arousing situations \u2014 they're scared, or they're angry, intoxicated or whatever,\" Dr. Steinberg said. Dr. Somerville, on the other hand, said she was reluctant to offer specific policy suggestions based on her brain research. \"I'm still in the learning stage, so I'd hesitate to call out any particular thing,\" she said. But she does think it is important for the scientists to get a fuller picture of how the brain matures. Researchers need to do studies to track its development from year to year, she said, well into the 20s or beyond. It's not enough to compare people using simple categories, such as labeling people below age 18 as children and those older as adults. \"Nothing magical occurs at that age,\" Dr. Somerville said.","label":0}
{"text":"Sean Hannity interviewed Greg Jarrett, Judicial Watch s Tom Fitton and the amazing Sara Carter last night it was fireworks on what s being exposed:Sara Carter speaks up at the 3:30 point but the entire video is well worth watching:We were told yesterday that the fix was in In so many ways, this is beyond corrupt and is blatant criminality by the intel agencies, Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.It s worse than you even know Tom Fitton THE FIX WAS IN Watered Down Document Clears Clinton:The interview below is pretty much what we all knew but now it s out in the open. Notice how Senator Johnson calls on the DOJ to act:Senator Ron Johnson told Tucker Carlson tonight that the corruption in the intel agencies is much worse that we thought. He believes that the entire investigation into Hillary s emails was a sham used to protect her and not investigate her. He says the same cast of characters is being used to investigate Trump scary stuff!Fox News reports:WASHINGTON Newly released documents obtained by Fox News reveal that then-FBI Director James Comey s draft statement on the Hillary Clinton email probe was edited numerous times before his public announcement, in ways that seemed to water down the bureau s findings considerably.Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to the FBI on Thursday that shows the multiple edits to Comey s highly scrutinized statement.In an early draft, Comey said it was reasonably likely that hostile actors gained access to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s private email account. That was changed later to say the scenario was merely possible. Another edit showed language was changed to describe the actions of Clinton and her colleagues as extremely careless as opposed to grossly negligent. This is a key legal distinction.Johnson, writing about his concerns in a letter Thursday to FBI Director Christopher Wray, said the original could be read as a finding of criminality in Secretary Clinton s handling of classified material. (read more)Former Speaker Newt Gingrich calls out the DOJ s Sessions:CLINTON AND ABEDIN STRIKE A DEAL TO TAKE DOCUMENTS: Here s yet another reason to be very suspicious of the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton:Via Free Beacon: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton struck a deal with the State Department while serving in the Obama administration that allowed her to take ownership of records she did not want made public, according to recently released reports.Clinton and her then-deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin were permitted to remove electronic and physical records under a claim they were personal materials and unclassified, non-record materials. Judicial Watch made the revelation after filing a FOIA request with the State Department and obtaining a record of the agreement:The newly released documents show the deal allowed Clinton and Abedin to remove documents related to particular calls and schedules, and the records would not be released to the general public under FOIA. Abedin, for instance, was allowed to remove electronic records and five boxes of physical files, including files labeled Muslim Engagement Documents. The released records included a list of designated materials that would not be released to the general public under FOIA and were to be released to the Secretary with this understanding. Electronic copy of daily files which are word versions of public documents and non-records: speeches\/press statements\/photos from the website, a non-record copy of the schedule, a non record copy of the call log, press clips, and agenda of daily activitiesElectronic copy of a log of calls the Secretary made since 2004, it is a non-record, since her official calls are logged elsewhere (official schedule and official call log)Electronic copy of the Secretary s call grid which is a running list of calls she wants to make (both personal and official)16 boxes: Personal Schedules (1993 thru 2008-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State.29 boxes: Miscellaneous Public Schedules during her tenure as FLOTUS and Senator-prior to the Secretary s tenure at the Department of State1 box: Personal Reimbursable receipts (6\/25\/2009 thru 1\/14\/2013)1 box: Personal Photos1 box: Personal schedule (2009-2013) STICKY FINGERS CLINTON:A physical file of the log of the Secretary s gifts with pictures of gifts was also handed over to Clinton. Gifts received by government employees is highly regulated, and often strictly limited. However, gifts that are motivated by a family relationship or personal friendship may be accepted without limitation.","label":1}
{"text":"Getting sick can put a damper on any vacation, but it can be especially unsettling and even scary when it happens in another country. Here, Matthew Klapetzky, a registered nurse and the clinical director of Passport Health, the travel clinic at the University of Rochester School of Nursing, shares tips on what to do if illness hits you while abroad. \"The majority of minor health issues that international travelers contend with can easily be with a good kit,\" Mr. Klapetzky said. It should include an medication such as Imodium or because diarrhea is the most common ailment among travelers from the United States and hits around half of them. \"This happens when your body gets a stomach bug as a reaction to a natural bacteria of a given land, and though it's not usually serious, it lasts two to four days and can be extremely dehydrating,\" he said. Other musts in the kit: ibuprofen to reduce fevers, muscle inflammation and joint pain bandages in assorted sizes along with an antibiotic ointment such as Neosporin for cuts and wounds oral rehydration supplements such as CeraLyte to replenish electrolytes lost through sweating and diarrhea blister pads and fiber supplements to ease constipation, also common during travel. Also, be sure to carry an EpiPen if you have allergies such as to tree nuts. If you twist your ankle, develop heat rash or have another situation where you need to see a doctor, don't hesitate to use local care. \"Remember that the doctors where you are in the world are used to treating ailments specific to that region, such as severe sunburn, which is common in the tropics, so they are going to be your best bet to treat such issues,\" Mr. Klapetzky said. Travelers can find local medical care through the State Department website but should be aware that the department does not take responsibility for the quality of service provided by any doctor or hospital on the list. In more dire health situations such as a heart attack or serious car accident, Mr. Klapetzky suggested contacting the local embassy of the United States. \"The embassy can help get you airlifted out of the country and back home if that's what's required and can also help you, if you need it, arrange to have money wired over to pay for your care,\" he said. Travelers should note that while the embassy is a valuable resource, it does not pay for these services or any medical care.","label":0}
{"text":"Unless you ve been living under a rock since January, you know that Republicans across the country have been slowly but slowly waking up to the horror that is their giant November mistake. In tale after tale, unfortunate conservatives, once defiant in their hatred of all things left of Hannity, are beginning to see what dyed-in-the-wool Republican policy looks like, and it ain t pretty.But with the disgusting Graham-Cassidy healthcare bill just around the corner and racing toward its September 30th finish line, Trumpcare is everything that MAGA-wearing troglodytes feared: They are just finding out that their diabetes will no longer be covered, their kid s heroin addiction is an afterthought, and their ailin mama s Medicare is fixin to be plowed over.Those folks I actually feel kind of bad for. I mean, not really. Most of them voted Trump because they hate Mexicans and gay people. But at least they have the decency to be sick over how nasty it s going to be to get sick under Trumpcare.The ones I have no sympathy for are the self-proclaimed intellectuals in the conservative realm. Like one Sassy Gay Republican on Twitter. His name is Alex, and if you visit his Twitter right now, it s a bit of a mess, because he s busy soaking in the fame and glory that comes with a BuzzFeed interview and someone calling you the next Tomi Lahren (which I don t think Alex has really thought through).But Bill Armagh felt kinda bad for Sassy Alex when he saw that he d been involved in a terrible car accident. We all did, really. But that doesn t stop any of us from drinking down some delicious schadenfreude at how fast life came at poor Sassy.A Sassy Gay Republican DRAMA in Four Acts. ?? pic.twitter.com\/O3tNiTg56A Billy, Just Billy (@BillyArmagh) September 20, 2017It started with a simple question that many Republicans have asked:Sassy may have a point! Go on, Sassy:But then Sassy hits a snag in the pantyhose of life, and is forced to re-think some things:That can t be good. If only there was a way you could be covered in situations like this. Hmm And even Billy was surprised to find out there was more to the story of the Sassy Gay Republican. It turns out his conservative friends didn t have as much sympathy for him as he thought they might in his time of need:And it looks like Sassy himself may be having some serious second thoughts about how well conservative policies serve his interests:Welcome to the club, Sassy Gay Republican. It s terrifying in here.Note: I have not included a link for Alex s GoFundMe page, because there is some question as to whether the picture may be from an accident in the past, and I am not down with helping anyone, no matter how sassy they are, scam the public for sympathy dollars.","label":1}
{"text":"Trump has a serious lack of impulse control, particularly on social media. We ve known this forever, and it s to the point where some have begun calling for the media to return to real journalism and stop focusing on his damn tweets. Part of the reason so many feel we can t ignore them is because they represent a lack of control, and because they re the inner thoughts of a madman who thinks he s still a private citizen and can say what he wants.Newt Gingrich, one of Trump s biggest and most shameless fanboys, has a different idea and it s pretty wild. To Gingrich, Trump is intentionally using social media to manipulate what information gets out. He believes this is Trump s amazing creative skill at work: [The Apprentice] was a remarkably popular show [Trump] understands the value of tension. He understands the value of showmanship. And candidly, the news media is going to chase the rabbit. So it s better off for him to give them a rabbit than for them to go find their own rabbit. He s had them fixated on Mitt Romney now for five or six days. I think from his perspective, that s terrific. It gives everyone something to talk about.He does not think of this as chaos. He thinks of this as creativity. Gingrich went on to say how Trump has used social media to get regular Americans to attack the media for going after real issues. In other words, he believes Trump has come up with this amazing solution to the media exposing truths he doesn t want exposed. President-elect Trump s ability to communicate directly to the American people when he wants to through Facebook, through Twitter, through a variety of mechanisms that aren t traditional gives him an ability to communicate and build on majority unlike any president we have seen up until now and I suspect he will continue to use it.He is not going to fall into allowing the elite media to define who he is and allowing them to censor what the American people learned. Some think Trump is an egotistical nincompoop with onion-paper thin skin and no impulse control at all, and they re probably not wrong. Entire columns, like this one, have been devoted to his numerous, bizarre and vague statements on foreign policy, on climate change, on pretty much everything. They make Trump into a joke.Gingrich doesn t want people making Trump into a joke, so of course he s going to say that his crazy Twitter tirades are carefully calculated distractions that he crafted using his reality show expertise. There s probably no way to know for sure what Trump is up to, but we can say this: Some of his surrogates will spin any wild yarn at all to make him look like the smartest president we ve never had.And largest majority? I do not think that means what you think it means.Featured image by John Sommers II via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine said on Sunday she has extreme reservations about the U.S. Senate's healthcare overhaul and does not think it will be able to pass this week. Collins, a moderate Republican who has not taken a formal stance on the bill, said she was concerned it would cut Medicaid too deeply and said she wants to see an upcoming analysis by the Congressional Budget Office before making a decision. \"I have very serious concerns about the bill,\" she said on ABC's \"This Week\" program. \"It's hard for me to see the bill passing this week.\" Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has pushed for a vote before the July 4th Independence Day holiday recess that begins at the end of this week. He can afford to lose the support of only two Republicans in the face of unanimous Democratic opposition. Five Republican senators have announced they will not support the bill, which is designed to repeal and replace Obamacare, in its current form. One of those senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, called on Sunday for a slowdown in the process to give the Senate and the public time to evaluate the healthcare bill. \"We don't have enough information. I don't have the feedback from constituencies who will not have had enough time to view the Senate bill. We should not be voting on this next week,\" he said on NBC's \"Meet the Press.\" Another senator who has announced that he does not support the current version of the bill, Rand Paul of Kentucky, said he would back it if the Senate reached an impasse on healthcare. \"If we get to impasse, if we go to a bill that is more repeal and less big government programs, yes I'll consider partial repeal,\" Paul said on ABC. The Senate's 142-page proposal, worked out in secret by a group led by McConnell, aims to deliver on a central campaign promise of President Donald Trump to undo former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, which has provided coverage to 20 million Americans since it was passed in 2010. Republicans view the law, formally known as the Affordable Care Act, as a costly government intrusion and say individual insurance markets created by it are collapsing. \"I think they have, at best, a 50-50 chance of passing this bill,\" Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said on ABC. He said Democrats \"are doing everything we can to fight this bill because it's so devastating for the middle class.\" The House of Representatives has passed a measure similar to the Senate plan. The Senate would phase out Obamacare's expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor more gradually than the House bill, waiting until after the 2020 presidential election, but would enact deeper cuts starting in 2025.","label":0}
{"text":"Michelle Obama has scrubbed any reference to Hillary from her Twitter account What? Like with a cloth or something? LOL!Seriously though, it looks like Mooch is trying get rid of any evidence of something she posted to Twitter between March 4, 2013 and now. Hmmm wonder if it has anything to do with a certain presidential candidate s FBI investigation? Michelle Obama has scrubbed all references to Hillary Clinton from both of her Twitter accounts as news breaks that Clinton is under two different FBI investigations involving four FBI offices.Has @MichelleObama deleted her tweets for the past 3 and a half years? Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) November 1, 2016Barrack Obama's Husband Michelle Scrubs Hillary Clinton From Twitter History.The tide has turned.#MAGAhttps:\/\/t.co\/dmH239cdiv General Halley (@HalleyBorderCol) November 1, 2016The @FLOTUS account has been wiped clean of all traces of Hillary, and @MichelleObama, a verified page with almost six million followers, has been scrubbed all the way back to 2013. Your News Wire h\/t Gateway Pundit","label":1}
{"text":"By Mae Chan Kombucha (pronounced kom-BOO-cha) is a fizzy, non-alcoholic fermented drink made with tea. It has gained praise and popularity in recent years for its ability to improve digestion...","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump is still delusional and Twitter users were quick to remind him of who lost the popular vote in November.It s been almost six months since the 2016 Election concluded in November, but Trump is still under the delusion that he won the popular vote and is insisting that he would still win if another election were held.In a pair of tweets on Sunday, Trump declared that the ABC News\/Washington Post poll is fake news even though the poll showed that most Trump supporters don t regret their vote and that a slim majority approve of his foreign policy and his pressure on American companies to keep jobs here. Apparently, Trump only believes polls are fake when the numbers are against him.For instance, his approval rating is the lowest for any president since 1945 in the first 100 days. And most Americans don t trust him.Trump also liked the part of the poll that suggests he would win the popular vote if the election were held again.New polls out today are very good considering that much of the media is FAKE and almost always negative. Would still beat Hillary in .. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2017 popular vote. ABC News\/Washington Post Poll (wrong big on election) said almost all stand by their vote on me & 53% said strong leader. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 23, 2017The problem is that Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes in 2016 despite low voter turnout by Democrats and a protest vote against Hillary in favor of third party candidates.Twitter users didn t wait long to put Trump in his place.@realDonaldTrump Would still beat Hillary in the popular vote you NEVER beat Hillary in the popular vote. How do people take you seriously?! William LeGate (@williamlegate) April 23, 2017@realDonaldTrump YOU DIDN T WIN THE POPULAR VOTE.???? BTW, where is all the evidence of those 3 million illegal votes ? We re waiting. pic.twitter.com\/ZA8bHeFV3A Holly #TheResistance (@AynRandPaulRyan) April 23, 2017@realDonaldTrump Would you like to note the rest of the poll? 52% said they would not trust you in a crisis. Shawn Garrett (@ShawnGarrett) April 24, 2017@realDonaldTrump STILL beat her? You didn t beat her in popular vote. What planet do you live on? #EarlyStageAlzheimers #DementiaSettingIn T I (@TheMIXXRadio) April 23, 2017@realDonaldTrump What an egotistic, incurably delusional man-child. What happened to you before, that makes you constantly feel the need for validation? SAD! Francis B. Baraan (@MrFrankBaraan) April 23, 2017@realDonaldTrump Umm you lost by 3 million votes. Maybe you should worry about getting stuff done and not about an election that happened six months ago Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) April 23, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"President-elect Donald Trump spoke with First Minister Of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon on Friday in what Trump's transition team described as \"a short congratulatory call\" on his election victory last month. \"The President-elect and the First Minister look forward to strengthening the relationship between Scotland and the United States,\" a statement from Trump's team said.","label":0}
{"text":"Major cities need to import yet more immigrant residents to replace the Americans fleeing from those cities' crowded, and expensive districts, according to a Bloomberg article. [The government imports 1 million new legal immigrants per year, even as 4 million young Americans turn 18, but according to Bloomberg: Immigration to the U. S. has failed to make up for the number of residents leaving New York, Los Angeles and Chicago \u2014 the nation's top three metropolitan areas. Chicago \u2014 beset by crime, economic and budgetary woes and high taxes \u2014 is the net exodus leader among 100 metro areas tracked by Bloomberg using Census Bureau data for the year through July 1, 2016. An average 245 local residents left the Windy City each day compared with the arrival of 71 foreigners. Census doesn't inquire about a person's citizenship status \u2026 For the nation's third metropolitan area, foreign immigration \"is the only offset we've got and it would be tragic to lose,\" said Diane Swonk, chief executive and founder of DS Economics in Chicago. Rising government taxes, rental and housing prices in the cities help push ambitious young Americans towards southern cities, such as Dallas, Austin, Tampa, Orlando, Atlanta, and Charlotte. Some other coastal cities are also gaining population from arriving Americans, principally Seattle and Portland. But immigration is so high in Miami that it is pushing out Americans, just like in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. Young people are leaving the crowded cities, in part, because elite jobs and large immigrant populations combine to push up property prices and taxes, while also holding down the salaries and wages needed to start families. \"In the New York metropolitan area, Manhattan prospers while old factory towns such as Paterson, New Jersey, and Waterbury, Connecticut, languish \u2026 While Los Angeles gained more than 54, 000 international migrants, it lost more than 87, 000 people due to domestic migration,\" said Bloomberg. That is bad news for conservatives in those states because GOP candidates tend to sweep districts with where voters can afford to set up homes. Those trends were reflected in the 2016 election, where Trump won 26 of 27 states. As more Americans migrate southwards, they are likely to bring more voters to their new districts, which help offset the huge immigrant inflow of residents. Read the article here. Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart. com,","label":0}
{"text":"The FBI Agent Who Took Hillary's Bribes Just Got Some Really Bad News Oct 28, 2016 Previous post  This week we learned that the wife of an FBI agent who was involved in the Hillary Clinton email investigation was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign finance donations. That FBI agent is now being asked to resign. The Political Insider reported: Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a long-time Clinton insider and former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman, helped facilitate donations \u2013 two separate payments, one for $467,500 and another for $207,788 \u2013 to the campaign coffers of the wife of Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe just so happened to take on \"an oversight role in the investigation into Secretary Clinton's emails\" just months later. The new Deputy Director didn't feel the need to recuse himself from the case, creating a clear conflict of interest. Now, he could be in big trouble\u2026 Via the Washington Examiner: The FBI's second in command is facing pressure over donations Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a top Clinton ally, made","label":1}
{"text":"A day after the Fox News-Facebook Republican presidential primary debates, contenders for the nomination tried to capitalize on momentum Friday by firing up their base at a gathering of grassroots conservative. At the 2015 RedState Gathering in Atlanta, a host of Republican 2016 hopefuls including Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tried to build on strong performances the night before. The gathering, named after the conservative political website RedState.com, is the brainchild of WSB Radio host Erick Erickson. The three-day convention of top GOP elected officials brought a host of 2016 contenders hoping to establish themselves as favorites among the conservative base. All three sought to stir up the base with biting speeches that used humor while showcasing their conservative principles. \"2016 is going to be a fight, a real fight, between conservatism and the progressivism that has completely dominated the Democrat Party and that is now not only undermining the character of our nation but crushing the potential of this nation,\" Fiorina, whom analysts seemed to agree dominated Thursday's 5 p.m. Fox News-Facebook debate, told participants. \"In order to win [in 2016], we're going to have a nominee who throws every punch, who will not ever pull her punches,\" Fiorina said. Both Fiorina and Christie took aim at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce \u2013 an unpopular organization among many grassroots conservatives \u2013 with Christie blaming it for Republicans not properly dealing with the problem of illegal immigration. \"The reason we're not dealing with immigration as strongly as we need to be in my opinion is because of the Chamber of Commerce crowd,\" Christie said. \"Because they want to employ illegal folks and they don't want to use E-Verify.\" Fiorina asked: \"What does the Chamber of Commerce do, remind me?\" Meanwhile, Rubio received big cheers for emphasizing his plan to \"repeal and replace\" ObamaCare, and spent much of his speech talking about solutions to the issue of student loans and the cost of higher education, arguing for more competition and innovation to break the monopoly of higher education. \"I believe before you take a loan, schools should have to tell you 'this is how much people make when they graduate with a degree you are seeking from our school.' And then you can decide if it's smart to borrow $50,000 to be a Greek or Roman philosopher, because the market for those philosophers has tightened in the last 2000 years,\" Rubio quipped to laughter from the audience. The participants also had choice words for President Obama's policies, with Christie promising to repeal his \"illegal\" executive actions and slamming his economic record. \"It is just disgraceful that we are sitting with a president who takes a victory lap for the worst economic growth in post-World War II history,\" Christie said, while also calling for a radical simplification of the tax code. \"Imagine how many people I could fire from the IRS if you could do your taxes in 15 minutes.\" Christie said. Meanwhile Rubio took aim at Obama's foreign policy, specifically his approaches to Iran and Israel, saying, \"we have a president who is more respectful of the Ayatollah of Iran than the prime minister of Israel.\" Other candidates at the gathering included Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The lineup was due to be followed up on Saturday with appearances by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, business mogul Donald Trump and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. The gathering adopted a similar tone to Thursday's debate, which was filled with lots of jabbing one-liners that resonated with the audience, and vitriol aimed at the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton. The Republicans sparred with each other plenty on Thursday, but nobody landed a KO, leaving the 17-candidate field intact heading out of the Cleveland showdown.","label":0}
{"text":"Students at Evergreen College, demanding the suspension of a professor who opposed a school event asking white students and staff to leave campus, are demanding that a video of their protest efforts published online be taken down. [\"We demand that the video created for Day of Absence and Day of Presence that was stolen by white supremacists and edited to expose and ridicule the students and staff be taken down by the administration by this Friday,\" the students wrote in a list of demands to college President George Bridges. The video depicts student protesters screaming and shouting on campus in response to Professor Bret Weinstein's refusal to participate in a campus event in which white community members were asked to leave the school for a day. The video spread throughout social media. The students in the videos demanded that it be taken down, a request which would have been difficult for the administration to comply with due to the nature of social media and the internet. They claimed that the video had been stolen by \"white supremacists\" and demanded that it be taken down by Friday. Based on conversations with the Attorney General's office, the most likely course of action requires an investigation. We commit to launching an extensive forensic investigation of the theft of this video and to determining who stole it from the student. If that investigation yields a suspect, we will seek criminal charges against the individual in consultation with the Attorney General. The video includes profane language and includes a segment in which students hurl expletives at college president George Bridges, who largely complied with the group's demands. Editor's note: The original video included in this story has been removed after it was called into question whether it was the video that student activists had demanded be taken down. Breitbart Tech has reached out to Evergreen and the uploader of the video for clarification. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"Kuwait s ruler reappointed his prime minister on Wednesday and asked him to form a cabinet, the official state news agency said on Wednesday, after the government stepped down earlier this week in an expected cabinet reshuffle. The major oil producer has the oldest legislature among the Gulf Arab states and experiences frequent cabinet resignations amid tensions between the government and lawmakers. Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak al-Sabah had tendered his resignation on Monday. Pan-Arab television channel Al Arabiya had earlier reported the news.","label":0}
{"text":"Britain said on Thursday that moves toward paying half a billion dollars to Iran for a debt owed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution had nothing to do with a bid to secure the release of a jailed Iranian-British aid worker. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, was detained in April and sentenced to five years after an Iranian court convicted her of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges. Prime Minister Theresa May s government is under intense pressure to secure Zaghari-Ratcliffe s release, in part because Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson made remarks that Iran said justified her conviction. Britain has sought legal advice over whether it could transfer over 400 million pounds ($528 million) which it owes the Islamic Republic in capital and interest for a 1970s arms deal with the then-Shah of Iran, the Telegraph newspaper. Britain owes the money after the Shah paid up front for 1,750 Chieftain tanks and other vehicles, almost none of which were eventually delivered after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 toppled the U.S.-backed leader. British officials did not directly answer requests for comment on whether they were preparing to pay the money to Iran, but May s spokesman said the debt issue was not linked to the attempts to convince Tehran to release Zaghari-Ratcliffe. Talks to resolve the debt matter have been going on for years. It is wrong to link a completely separate debt issue with any other aspect of our bilateral relationship with Iran, a government spokesman said, adding that Iran s Defence Ministry remains subject to European Union sanctions. The debt was paid to a bank account controlled by the High Court in 2002 but has not been released due to sanctions on the Islamic Republic, the spokesman said. Iran rejected media reports associating the debt Britain owed to Iran with the fate of Zaghari-Ratcliffe. These are two separate matters ... Linking them is wrong. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been tried and sentenced to jail, TV quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying. British officials told the Telegraph that work on how to pay the debt has intensified in recent months in a bid to improve relations with Iran. When asked about the reports, May s spokesman said the government saw no connection between the debt and the fate of Zaghari-Ratcliffe. We are clear we don t see any link between these two issues, the spokesman said. The reports are speculation, not anything that I recognize. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters. It operates independently of Reuters News.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump decided to attack the family of a U.S. soldier who died in combat in Iraq. Responding to Khizr Khan s statement at the Democratic convention that Trump had sacrificed nothing for his country while pushing for bans on Muslims, Trump told ABC, I think I ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan was a Muslim immigrant who died serving in Iraq in 2004.On Twitter, the dismissive, callous, and insensitive remarks from the former reality TV star and self-described billionaire (an assertion that has not been independently verified) were quickly attacked.The hashtag #TrumpSacrifices became the top trending hashtag in the world and thousands of posts mocking Trump followed.Many of the posts associated with the tag pointed out Trump s well documented luxury life that has been the selling point of his presidential run.Once survived an entire weekend at Mar-a-Lago with just one can of hairspray. #TrumpSacrifices Paul Begala (@PaulBegala) July 30, 2016Once flew coach class in college on a dare. #TrumpSacrifices Sanho Tree (@SanhoTree) July 30, 2016Others noted his history of racially discriminatory policies and statements, most notably when the government had to force Trump to stop blocking blacks from renting in his buildings.#TrumpSacrifices the government forced him to rent apartments to black people. https:\/\/t.co\/PAguRphnof pic.twitter.com\/fBrBLIsOuS sean. (@SeanMcElwee) July 30, 2016#TrumpSacrifices NBC wouldn't let him make a \"race war\" season of \"The Apprentice.\" https:\/\/t.co\/2TwEjg2PVp pic.twitter.com\/IcZ9EUW1AW sean. (@SeanMcElwee) July 30, 2016Some #TrumpSacrifices posts discussed the candidate s repeated business failures, which include multiple bankruptcies that completely destroy the mythology of him as a huge business success.#TrumpSacrifices Declaring Bankruptcy And Walking Away pic.twitter.com\/v4B2I8AeXm Laurel Davila, CPA (@laureldavilacpa) July 31, 2016The wages of every contractor he has ever employed. #TrumpSacrifices Matthew Chapman (@fawfulfan) July 30, 2016#TrumpSacrifices Dishwashers, carpenters, electricians, painters they do the work, then find out he won't pay. https:\/\/t.co\/xsKfCASpas The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) July 30, 2016Many posts simply pointed out the immorality of Trump s comments, and how beyond the pale attacking the families of the fallen is.#trumpsacrifices Morals. Ethics. Self-respect. Decency. Civility. Intelligence. @realdonaldtrump Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) July 30, 2016#TrumpSacrifices Dedicated himself no matter what it cost to making lots and lots of money. Harold Itzkowitz (@HaroldItz) July 30, 2016List of #TrumpSacrifices: 1. Nothing 2. No one Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) July 30, 2016This picture says it all about @realdonaldtrump @realDonaldTrump & the rest of them. Draft dodger #TrumpSacrifices pic.twitter.com\/lTNGooahKC Carolyn Gonzalez (@carogonza) July 31, 2016The hashtag also presented the opportunity to compare Trump s military service or lack thereof to Captain Humayun Khan. Trump received military deferments during Vietnam and has compared avoiding sexually transmitted diseases to serving in combat.Gave up his 5 spots in the military for another 5 men. That's generous! No one thanked him #TrumpSacrifices Sarah (@redpainter1) July 30, 2016Despite the public outcry and condemnation of his comments, senior Republican officials like Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell failed to directly condemn the nominee s attack on a military family, and did not rescind their support for the candidate.","label":1}
{"text":"The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - It was an honor to stop by a #SchoolChoice event hosted by @VP Pence and @usedgov Secretary @BetsyDeVosED at the @WhiteHouse today. [1757 EDT] - An honor to host President Mahmoud Abbas at the WH today. Hopefully something terrific could come out it between the Palestinians & Israel. [1801 EDT] - Join me along w\/ @VP Pence & @BetsyDeVosED at a school choice event in the Roosevelt Room, here at the @WhiteHouse: 45.wh.gov\/Laipqh [1106 EDT] -- Source link: (bit.ly\/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly\/2jpEXYR)","label":0}
{"text":"This call to violence by the Left against innocent people who don t agree with their radical ideology, is eerily similar to the tactics used by terror groups in the Middle East. These are acts of terror that are being overlooked by our President and our DOJ, simply because they understand that this is the only way to stop Trump is by striking fear in the hearts of his supporters A picture of a flier that s been circulating in the Richmond, VA area is going viral. The intent of this flier is clearly to stir up hate and encourage violence against Trump supporters who plan to attend Trump s upcoming rally. This type of organization to create chaos and fear is how the Left wins elections, how the unions get what they want and how our PRESIDENT and his cronies operate behind closed doors at our White House. This flier is laced with hate, fear mongering and calls to violence, but you will never see it being shown to the general public by the mainstream media, as it crushes their narrative that the Trump supporters and conservatives of America are somehow promoting violence and fear mongering to get votes. This incendiary flier is summarized at the bottom by claiming, They [Trump supporters] have promised us violence, and we must promise them the same. Can someone please provide us with one iota of evidence that shows Trump supporters asking other supporters to violently attack innocent people who disagree with their political views?America needs to stand up to these coordinated efforts by talking to their neighbors, relatives, friends, co-workers and even to members of their churches. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If the media won t report this, we need to speak up and let everyone know what is happening h\/t Weasel Zippers","label":1}
{"text":"Hillary Clinton and her aides must have felt like mandatory didn t apply to them they were obviously reminded several times about the ethics training they were required to take but chose to ignore it. Not that it would have helped these corrupt people The State Department has no evidence showing Hillary Clinton or the majority of her top aides at the department complied with mandatory ethics training. McClatchy reports newly released documents show just three of Clinton s aides took the required training:State Department records show only three of nine top Clinton aides took the mandated training for new employees. Records also suggest that none of seven top aides required to take subsequent annual training completed it.No records indicate whether Clinton herself took any training. The Republican National Committee made an FOIA request for the documents last December. When the State Department did not respond within the 90-day deadline, the RNC filed a lawsuit. Today the documents the RNC received in response to the lawsuit were released. The RNC press release reads in part:While the State Department s production demonstrated some senior officials met some of their obligations under the law, no records showing completion of annual ethics training were found for Hillary Clinton or the following top aides:Cheryl Mills Huma Abedin Jake Sullivan Dennis Cheng Anne Marie Slaughter Philippe Reines Caitlin Klevorick Kris Bladerston One of the documents released today is an email exchange in which someone named Angela Jordan informs Huma Abedin that she has yet to complete annual ethics training for 2012. The email, which is dated January 17, 2013, reads in part:Hello HumaOur records indicate that you have not completed Ethics Training for 2012. Per Federal Regulation, all financial disclosure filers must receive annual trainings. If you have taken the training online or with an ethics attorney, please provide the approximate date. Two days later, Huma responds, Angela heather samuelson has my financial disclosure form. Jordan replies, am not talking about your Financial Disclosure Form am talking about your Ethics training. Huma s final response is, Okay I wasn t aware. I ll go online. Apparently there is no record Abedin completing the training. The exchange concluded about a week before Hillary Clinton left her post as Secretary of State.","label":1}
{"text":"A teacher is claiming that her strict Muslim childhood \"repressed\" her and contributed to her desires to have sex with students who attended a New Jersey high school, court records show. [Linda Hardan, a teacher at Manchester Regional High School in Haledon, New Jersey, was arrested and charged with sexual contact with at least two male students, one a and another a . Her contact began with explicit text messages and graduated to sexual contact, police said. But Hardan's defense counsel insists that her strict Muslim upbringing served to repress her, causing her behavior. He also requested therapy for his client instead of prison time, according to the Daily Mail. The victim was \"disgusted\" and \"upset\" about the sexual encounter. Hardan began explicitly texting him and eventually got him in her car, drove to a secluded area, \"and performed a sex act on him. \" The student reported he was so repulsed that he jumped out of the car and walked two miles back home. The convict reportedly perpetrated similar acts with the older boy, prosecutors proved in court. Prosecutors had worked out a deal with Hardan's legal team, and she accepted a sentence, which was then presented during the sentencing phase of her trial. But Passaic County Superior Court Judge Miguel de la Carrera decided on a lesser sentence, citing the mitigating factors of her childhood. Judge de la Carrera imposed a sentence. \"She had classmates and friends, but somehow, perhaps because of limitations on her dating life, she didn't find the proper outlet among males of her own age,\" the judge insisted during the sentencing. \"She did not learn how to interact with guys her age,\" de la Carrera added. Still, the judge refused to put her sentence off until she finished a college class she was taking at a local community college. Hardan will be eligible for parole, with good behavior, in a year. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.","label":0}
{"text":"MANY people will receive drones as gifts this holiday season. But before heading to the nearest field to fly the devices, recipients may want to check their insurance coverage. \"I'm sure there will be a lot of drones given as Christmas gifts, and we'll start to see more claims,\" said Chris Hackett, the senior director for personal lines at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, an industry group. Demand for drones has surged because of their lower cost and expanded capabilities. More than 577, 000 people \u2014 many of them owners of multiple drones \u2014 have registered as hobby drone operators as of early December, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The Consumer Technology Association estimates that about 1. 2 million drones will be sold this holiday season. Drones are highly maneuverable, and they can carry cameras to record spectacular vistas from the air. But accidents do happen: Recently, news outlets reported that a drone being used to record a wedding reception in New Hampshire injured two guests, who later sued the groom. \"There are a lot of unfortunate things that can go wrong,\" said Christie Alderman, a vice president at Chubb Insurance. Generally, if you are using a drone for personal purposes and it injures someone or damages their property, your standard homeowner's insurance policy would provide liability coverage up to the policy's limits, said Mr. Hackett. (If you are using a drone to make money \u2014 even if it is a sideline, like photographing property for a real estate business \u2014 that would not typically be covered by a homeowner's policy). It is always wise, however, to check with your insurance carrier on the specifics of your policy, said Loretta Worters, a spokeswoman for the Insurance Information Institute, a trade group. Some insurers may exclude incidents from their policies \u2014 and those that do not do so now may decide to eventually, as the number of drones taking to the skies increases and insurers learn more about the cost of claims. \"Generally speaking, we evaluate every claim on its own merit,\" said Justin Herndon, a spokesman for Allstate, in an email. \"We continue to follow the evolution of drones and its impact on our customers' policies. \" It is also a good idea to reduce your risk by brushing up on drone operational and safety rules, Ms. Alderman said. The F. A. A. requires that hobby users fly drones at or below 400 feet, and keep them within sight. The agency offers a safety video on its website. Also, the Academy of Model Aeronautics, which charters more than 2, 500 clubs, works with other groups and the F. A. A. to promote safety guidelines and instruction through the Know Before You Fly initiative. Simulation software that can help you learn to fly a drone on a home computer is available for about $100, said Chad Budreau, director of public relations and government affairs for the model aeronautics group. Here are some questions and answers about drones: What other insurance options are available? One option for hobbyists: If you join the Academy of Model Aeronautics, you will receive group liability coverage as a benefit of membership. (Membership is $75 for adults, free for those under age 19.) The academy's insurance policy, issued by a specialty insurer, typically pays out after your homeowner's policy is exhausted, and it provides $2. 5 million in liability coverage for property damage or bodily injury. What if my drone is lost or damaged? Homeowner's policies typically cover replacement of personal belongings, which would include a drone. But most policies have a deductible \u2014 say, $500. So unless you have a very expensive drone, it may not be worth filing a claim, Ms. Worters said. Do I have to register my drone? Federal rules now require recreational owners to register any drone \u2014 or \"unmanned aircraft system,\" in F. A. A. parlance \u2014 flown outdoors. Drones weighing a to 55 pounds can be registered online on the agency's website the fee is $5 per person, can be applied to as many drones as you own and is good for three years. Failure to register a drone can be costly: The F. A. A. says generally it aims to educate operators, but can impose civil fines of up to $27, 500, and criminal penalties can be much higher.","label":0}
{"text":"About 7, 000 years ago, gentoo penguins first came to Ardley Island in the South Shetlands chain just off the Antarctic Peninsula. The island is a little over a mile long, almost small enough for a classic castaway cartoon, except that it is the Antarctic. And instead of a lone palm tree, there are now about 5, 000 breeding pairs of gentoo penguins, one of the largest colonies in the Antarctic, and a lot of guano (penguin excrement) much of which is washed into the freshwater Ardley Lake, where it accumulates in the sediment. In that guano, scientists have found the record of a recurring natural historical drama. Three times since the gentoos arrived on Ardley, the colony was devastated by volcanic eruptions. The ash and smoke killed them or drove them away. Penguins gather in colonies to breed, so there may well have been chicks caught in the ash fall even if adults escaped. The landscape the eruptions left cannot have been hospitable, because each time it took 400 to 800 years for a colony of similar size to . That is the story, reported Tuesday in Nature Communications, that Stephen J. Roberts of the British Antarctic Survey, Patrick Monien of Bremen University in Germany and other scientists from Poland, Scotland and England teased out of lake sediments that show, in the rise and fall of guano concentration, the rise and fall of the penguin colony. Dr. Roberts said the team of scientists did not set out to study guano. Rather, their interest was in evidence of historical changes in climate and sea level. But something about the sediment samples drilled from the bottom of Ardley Lake prompted them to take a different approach this time. The samples were a bit ripe. \"When we opened them up they smelt differently,\" he said. The team could see the ash from volcanic deposits and penguin bones, and began to compile information on the ash layers, biochemical analysis of the guano and similar samples from a lake whose shores did not have a penguin colony nearby. They estimated penguin population by the percentage of guano in a sediment sample, figuring three ounces of guano per day per penguin, and calculating how much of the colony's output would flow into the lake. Using a sample to determine the amount of penguin guano flowing into the lake in a given period of time, they could calculate how big the colony was. This showed wide fluctuations in the colony's size, with the peaks similar to the current numbers. Over all, they did not find any consistent pattern related to climate or sea level. But three times the population crashed \u2014 indicating the near extinction of the colony \u2014 coinciding with eruptions from the Deception Island volcano, also in the South Shetlands chain. The events do not have broad implications for climate studies, Dr. Roberts said. But they show one case where local events had a far greater effect on the population than global trends. Deception Island is an Antarctic landmark and a destination for tourists. The island is the rim of the volcano's caldera. It's a circle in the ocean, with only one entrance to the protected waters inside. Heat from the volcano makes some spots swimmable, and many passengers on Antarctic cruises bring back pictures of themselves in the waters of the island caldera. The scientists estimate that three large eruptions of the Deception Island volcano all but wiped out the penguins on Ardley Island \u2014 one 5, 500 to 5, 400 years ago, one 4, 500 to 4, 200 years ago, and the last 3, 200 to 3, 000 years ago. In more recent times, there have been smaller eruptions. The last eruption was in 1970.","label":0}
{"text":"Just as fears of nuclear terrorism are rising, U.S. President Barack Obama's drive to lock down vulnerable atomic materials worldwide seems to have lost momentum and could slow further. With less than 10 months left in office to follow through on one of his signature foreign policy initiatives, Obama will convene leaders from more than 50 countries in Washington this week for his fourth and final Nuclear Security Summit, a high-level diplomatic process that started and will end on his watch. A boycott by Russian President Vladimir Putin, apparently unwilling to join in a U.S.-dominated gathering at a time of increased tensions between Washington and Moscow, adds to doubts that the meeting will yield major results. The recent deadly militant attacks in Brussels have fueled concern that Islamic State could eventually target nuclear plants and develop radioactive \"dirty bombs,\" a topic that may well be uppermost in leaders' minds as they meet. Despite significant progress by Obama in persuading dozens of countries to rid themselves of bomb-making materials or reduce and safeguard stockpiles, much of the world's plutonium and enriched uranium remains vulnerable to theft. The absence of Russia, one of the biggest atomic powers, could detract from decisions reached in Washington this week. Obama, in an opinion piece in The Washington Post, said, \"Our massive Cold War nuclear arsenal is poorly suited to today's threats. The United States and Russia - which together hold more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons - should negotiate to reduce our stockpiles further.\" Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday Russia was skipping the summit because of a \"shortage of mutual cooperation\" in working out the agenda. While noting that Moscow had continued joint work on nuclear security, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Russia was going to \"miss out on an opportunity\" and that its no-show illustrated the \"degree to which Russia is isolated.\" Russia has chafed over U.S.-led sanctions over the Ukraine conflict. Efforts to make the world safer have also been complicated by North Korea's nuclear weapons advance and Pakistan's move toward smaller, tactical nuclear weapons, which Washington fears may further destabilize an already volatile region. All of this weighs on Obama's agenda as he prepares to host world leaders on Thursday and Friday. He inaugurated the event nearly six years ago, after using a landmark speech in Prague in 2009 to lay out the goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons as a central theme of his presidency. There is no guarantee that once Obama, the driving force behind the initiative, leaves office in January his successor will keep the issue a high priority. The White House previewed the summit by touting a list of achievements in the U.S.-led effort to tie down loose bomb-grade materials, and arms control advocates commend Obama for galvanizing an international response to the problem. However, many say progress has slowed since the last summit in 2014 and countries such as Japan, India and Pakistan are preparing activities that could increase stockpiles of nuclear materials. \"The Nuclear Security Summits have had a positive effect, but the strategic goal of developing an effective global nuclear security system remains unachieved,\" the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an anti-proliferation watchdog, said in a report this month. According to the group's Nuclear Security Index, which tracks the safety of weapons-usable nuclear materials, the past two years have brought no improvement in a range of measures, including on-site physical protection, security during transport and the ability to recover lost radioactive materials. The report also said many countries' nuclear reactors were vulnerable to online attacks. Seven of 24 countries with weapons-grade material, including China and Belgium, received the lowest possible score for their facilities' cyber security. Other critics point to a lack of an agreed-upon set of international standards for nuclear security or a mechanism for keeping tabs on common sources of radioactive material often found in hospitals and medical labs. However, Laura Holgate, Obama's adviser on weapons of mass destruction, cited commitments from 30 countries at the 2014 summit to secure their most dangerous material. \"The international community has made it harder than ever for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons, and that has made us all more secure,\" she told reporters before the summit. Two of the Brussels suicide bombers secretly filmed the daily routine of the head of Belgium's nuclear research and development program and considered an attack on a nuclear site in the country, according to Belgian media. U.S. experts are less concerned about militants obtaining nuclear weapon components than about thefts of ingredients for a low-tech dirty bomb that would use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive material and sow panic. U.S. officials said they had no doubt that Islamic State, which controls swaths of Syria and Iraq, was interested in obtaining such materials, but Holgate said U.S. authorities had no \"explicit indications\" that the group had tried to do so. More commitments from world leaders to enhance nuclear security are expected at the summit but anti-proliferation groups worry that without further meetings at the highest levels, interest could wane and improvements could backslide.","label":0}
{"text":"The violence and hate we witnessed at Trump rallies is now spilling over into the rest of society. Since the billionaire racist misogynist internet troll was elected to lead the free world, there have been literally hundreds of hate crimes (many of which in his name) and his supporters have proved completely unwilling to behave themselves even in their victory.At an anti-Trump protest in Ohio on Monday, we received a reminder of the violent nature of the animals known as Trump voters. As Tim Joseph was delivering his message into a bullhorn at the Ohio Union at OSU in Columbus, one Trump voter voiced his displeasure with the current direction of the country (or whatever bullsh*t the media is saying to explain away these alleged people s behavior today) by shoving the protester down some stairs from behind like a coward, of course. You idiot, the disenfranchised white man screeched as he went all WWE on Joseph.One man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask began to beat the living hell out of the attacker, whose identity has not yet been released. Instead of joining in like we saw at Trump rallies throughout the election year, other protesters calmed the man down and the crowd detained him peacefully until police arrived. According to Undergraduate Student Government president Gerard Basalla the attacker, a student, was arrested and placed under indefinite suspension. The assault that occurred that s what it was in the Union tonight is completely unacceptable, Basalla told The Lantern. Every person on this campus has the right to feel safe and voice their opinion without fearing harm. We can t be having this. We protect First Amendment rights actively, but we do not under any circumstances tolerate intimidation or threats to students, faculty, staff or visitors to our campus, University President Michael Drake said in an email to students following the attack.Watch the assault below:","label":1}
{"text":"The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - The Failing @nytimes, the pipe organ for the Democrat Party, has become a virtual lobbyist for them with regard to our massive Tax Cut Bill. They are wrong so often that now I know we have a winner! [0701 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly\/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly\/2jpEXYR)","label":0}
{"text":"Actor Jeffrey Wright tweeted that our nation has \"too many stupid asses\" with \"too many fucking guns\" following news that a man opened fire on Wednesday's congressional baseball practice. [The facts of the shooting are not in yet. The shooter's motivation has not been confirmed, nor has the shooter's identity or background been released. Wright tweeted: Too many stupid asses in our country with too many fucking guns. \u2014 Jeffrey Wright (@jfreewright) June 14, 2017, What is known is that five people were injured when a gunman opened fire on members of the House and Senate on the field. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was among the injured. The gunman was slowed down because someone at the practice had a firearm and returned fire. Rep. Mike Bishop ( ) told WWJ News Radio, \"The only reason why any of us walked out of this thing, by the grace of God, one of the folks here had a weapon to fire back and give us a moment to find cover. \" AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com.","label":0}
{"text":"A sobering new Security Council ( SC ) analytical report on the US presidential election states that a new American Revolution has begun which today's popular vote is just the beginning of; and that could fully last up to an entire decade, especially if this election is stolen from Donald Trump. [Note: Some words and\/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words\/phrases having no exact counterpart.] According to this report, Federation intelligence analysts in their \"deciphering\/uncovering\" what the current US presidential election is really all about have heavily relied on \"outliers\" [a thing situated away or detached from the main body or system] such as artificial intelligence ( AI ) models, social media trends and psychological analysis of the American electorate. This report notes that the Security Councils use of these \"outliers\" to both understand and explain what is occurring during this US presidential election provides the only proven scientific evidence of what is occurring as the so called polling data used by the American propaganda media has been proven to be nothing more than a manipulation device used to keep people from voting for or supporting the anti-establishment candidate Donald Trump. Examples of this being true, this report explains, lie in too many examples to fully cite\u2014but includes the once respected Monmouth University poll found manipulating data to favor Hillary Clinton , news networks NBC and CBS found manipulating polling data to show Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump when she was actually losing , and CNN manipulating their poll data to favor Hillary Clinton too . Unlike manipulated polling data showing Hillary Clinton will win this election, however, this report continues, the objective and independent scientific \"outliers\" used by Security Council research analysts show not only Donald Trump winning\u2014but winning in a landslide victory. Evidence proving this assertion of a Donald Trump US presidential win, this report notes, lies first with artificial intelligence analysis\u2014that includes the MogIA supercomputer showing Trump winning in landslide and showing he is more popular than President Obama , and a just released AI computer simulation showing Trump winning with 289 electoral votes compared to Clinton's 249 . Social media trend lines in this election, likewise, proves a Donald Trump landslide win in this election, this report continues, as his Facebook-Twitter-Instagram-YouTube \"presence\" dwarfs Hillary Clinton's by a staggering 74 million \u2014and that is further validated by the over 700,000 Americans who have come to his campaign rallies, as opposed to the barely 60,000 that have attended Hillary Clinton's . Most fascinating though of the \"outliers\" used in this Security Council report is the psychological analysis of the American electorate conducted by a virtually unknown US political project called \" We Need Smith \"\u2014whose scientifically conducted studies shockingly proved that anyone from a liberal Democrat, to a conservative Republican was able to win the US presidency as long as they promised to destroy the corrupt political system currently ruling America . The \"We Need Smith\" project, this report explains, is named after a popular US Great Depression era movie called Mr. Smith Goes To Washington about a newly appointed United States Senator who fights against a corrupt political system\u2014and that during this present US presidential election only Donald Trump and US Senator Bernie Sanders fit the mold of. Critical to note about the \"We Need Smith\" project too, this report continues, is that it was co-founded by the legendary American pollster Patrick Caddell \u2014who almost singlehandedly was responsible for putting President Jimmy Carter in office in 1976, but also presided over Carter's unprecedented defeat in 1980 at the hands of the US establishments most hated candidate Ronald Reagan. Seeking to understand how President Carter could go from victory to defeat in just 4 years, this report details, Patrick Caddell spent the past nearly 4 decades examining it\u2014and coming to the scientific conclusion that the conventional wisdom that America is absolutely divided into warring tribes is simply not true, they are all just tired of being lied to . In fact, this report continues, Caddell's research proved that the American political battleground is no longer over ideology but instead is all about insurgency\u2014and with a staggering 84% of the American public believing that the elites live by a different set of rules and laws than ordinary people do , anyone running against them is assured victory. Interestingly to note too, this report says, is Caddell's scientific analyses showing that the hatred of the American people towards their elites comes from both the left and right \u2014and as evidenced by the equal explosive political movements known as Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party insurgencies . This report grimly concludes, however, with a warning that Soviet Communist leader Joseph Stalin's attributed statement\u2014\" Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything. \"\u2014may, indeed, be active in the present US presidential election after newly released secret documents revealed that Hillary Clinton's main supporter, multi-billionaire George Soros, has not only been manipulating the entire American election system , but one of his companies is, also, providing vote county software to 16 States ( they've since denied )\u2014and that should Donald Trump have this election stolen from him the people of that nation will most surely revolt. Source","label":1}
{"text":"A commute in Hong Kong turned to panic Friday evening when a man ignited an incendiary device in a crowded subway train, filling the car with flames and smoke and injuring at least 17 people. Photographs taken soon after passengers fled the burning subway car show a man, believed to have started the fire, standing on a platform as flames jumped from the tatters of his burning clothes. Other images show injured commuters, their faces wrapped in gauze, being treated by emergency workers. The police said the man, whom they identified only as a with the surname Cheung, admitted starting the blaze and was charged with suspicion of arson. Violent crime is exceptionally rare in Hong Kong, home to one of the world's largest subway systems. Annual ridership ranks just below that of New York, according to the Mass Transit Railway Corporation in Hong Kong. \"The suspect was believed to be speaking nonsense,\" said Kwok a police district commander. \"What he said didn't make a lot of sense. \" The South China Morning Post reported that passengers heard the man say that he would \"burn you to death\" before lighting the device, and local television stations reported that he was carrying a document identifying him as a psychiatric patient. The police would not confirm those details, but fire officials said the blaze was caused by the ignition of a combustible material. \"At this stage, we're certain that there's no evidence suggesting it was terrorism or an attack targeting the mass transit system,\" Mr. Kwok said. Employees and commuters helped put out the flames after the train, traveling on the Tsuen Wan line, arrived at Tsim Sha Tsui station, where it was evacuated. Of the 17 people hospitalized, two were in critical condition, five were in serious condition, nine were in stable condition and one was released, according to the Hospital Authority. Hong Kong's chief executive, Leung expressed sympathy for the victims in a statement, and he asked the territory's food and health secretary, Ko to visit the hospitalized passengers. The last major arson attack on a subway train in Hong Kong occurred on Jan. 5, 2004, when a fire broke out as a train was arriving at the Admiralty station. Fourteen people were injured. That fire was set by a man using newspapers, a lighter and a bottle believed to contain gasoline.","label":0}
{"text":"Michael Strickland, 36, was arrested after pulling a handgun on Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon, Thursday night. Video of the incident shows Strickland pulling what appears to be a Glock 26 on protesters who were demonstrating against the recent fatal shootings of black men by police officers. It was revealed that the gun owner had a round in the chamber and five other magazines of ammunition of him while aiming the gun at the anti-police brutality group, according to court records.Strickland is accused of two counts of unlawful use of a firearm, menacing and second- degree disorderly conduct, according to The Oregonian.Multnomah County deputy district attorney Kate Molina Friday successfully argued for Strickland s bail to be set at $250,000 after two felony counts of unlawful use of a firearm were added to misdemeanor allegations of menacing and second-degree disorderly conduct.Strickland had an extended clip in his firearm that he swept at chest level multiple times in front of the demonstrators. The gun owner also waved it in front of a plain-clothed Portland police officer.Portland Officer Branden L. Combs was in Chapman Square during the protest and heard people running by him yelling, Gun! Gun! and He s got a gun, according to a probable cause affidavit.Police were told by one of the protesters that Strickland has tried to incite or instigate others at different demonstrations.Officer Combs witnessed the incident. He was standing just about 20 to 25 yards away from Strickland when he went all Second Amendment on the protestestors, sweeping the crowd with his firearm.After the arrest, police found an extended clip in Strickland s handgun, a round in the chamber of the gun, plus two magazines of ammunition in a belt pouch, two magazines in one of his pants pockets and one magazine in the other, Molina said. In addition, he also had a pocket knife in his right front pants pocket.According to Strickland s attorney Chris Trotter, his client was a journalist who has a concealed carry permit, adding that he has every right to protect himself. Trotter alleged that the District Attorney s office was making an example of Strickland.Molina responded, saying that Given that Mr. Strickland pulled a gun on a crowd of people in front of the steps of the Justice Center and has a past police report alleging possibly race-based threats against an attendee at a Portland vigil for the victims of last month s Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, his client s bail set at $250,000 is justified.From the video, it looks like Strickland aimed his Glock at a man who is armed with only a camera.[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jvV3BQ-RoJw]In a separate incident, a white male showed up at a memorial for Alton Sterling, the black Louisiana man who was fatally shot by police officers.Hey guys, you re doing the Second Amendment wrong.Image via screen capture.","label":1}
{"text":"At least one person was killed and several others injured by Hurricane Irma on the Dutch side of the Caribbean island of Saint Martin, the Dutch government said on Thursday. French officials earlier said there had been eight fatalities on the French side.","label":0}
{"text":"A U.S. State Department official said on Tuesday that Washington has no plans to change a Cold War-era law granting special immigration benefits to Cubans, despite President Barack Obama's moves toward normalized relations with the island country. \"There continues to be a large migration flow out of Cuba. It reflects the difficult economic and human rights conditions in the country,\" Francisco Palmieri, principal deputy assistant secretary in State's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, told a Senate subcommittee hearing. \"We have no plans to change the Cuban Adjustment Act at this time,\" Palmieri said. The Cuban Adjustment Act provides Cubans with benefits granted to migrants from no other country. Once they enter the United States and ask for asylum, virtually all are granted the right to stay, can apply for work permits and, later, green cards, which convey lawful permanent residency. Some U.S. lawmakers have been demanding a fresh look at Cuban immigration policy since the surprise December 2014 announcement from Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro that the two countries would move toward ending decades of estrangement. They argue that most of the Cubans coming to the United States are coming for economic reasons and are not refugees from its Communist government. Fear of an end to their benefits has fueled a surge in departures from Cuba, many via third countries, which has left large groups of Cubans stranded in Central America. Earlier this year, thousands were airlifted from Panama and Costa Rica to northern Mexico, where they crossed the border into the United States. Senator Marco Rubio, the subcommittee chairman, asked Palmieri about reports that Panama might be planning to send more Cuban migrants north. \"We have not told them not to do their airlift,\" Palmieri said.","label":0}
{"text":"In an extraordinary denunciation of Donald J. Trump's temperament and competence, President Obama urged leaders of the Republican Party on Tuesday to withdraw their endorsements of Mr. Trump's candidacy, flatly calling him \"unfit to serve\" as the nation's 45th president. Speaking in the East Room of the White House while Mr. Trump rallied supporters in a nearby Virginia suburb, the president noted the Republican criticism of Mr. Trump for his attacks on the Muslim parents of an American soldier, Capt. Humayun Khan, who died in Iraq. But Mr. Obama said the political recriminations from Republicans \"ring hollow\" if the party's leaders continue to support Mr. Trump's campaign. \"The question they have to ask themselves is: If you are repeatedly having to say in very strong terms that what he has said is unacceptable, why are you still endorsing him?\" Mr. Obama said. \"What does this say about your party that this is your ?\" The president's condemnation of Mr. Trump, and his direct appeal to Republicans to abandon their candidate, were stunning even in a city where politics has become a brutal and personal affair. Mr. Obama seemed eager to go beyond his past interventions in the race, which have included forceful rejections of Mr. Trump's statements and policy proposals. The last time a sitting president was as openly critical of the other party's candidate, said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian, was when President Harry S. Truman mocked Dwight D. Eisenhower during the 1952 campaign. And once Eisenhower was elected, Truman said he did not know \"any more about politics than a pig knows about Sunday. \" \"It's a reflection of just how radical and dangerous President Obama feels that Trump is,\" Mr. Brinkley said. Using the formal backdrop of a joint news conference with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore, Mr. Obama suggested that Mr. Trump would not abide by \"norms and rules and common sense\" and questioned whether he would \"observe basic decency\" should he reach the Oval Office. The president said he would have been disappointed to lose in 2008 or 2012, but added that he had never doubted whether his Republican rivals in those races, John McCain and Mitt Romney, could function as president or had the knowledge to make government work. \"That's not the situation here,\" Mr. Obama said. As Mr. Obama condemned Mr. Trump, the Republican candidate \u2014 apparently unaware of the president's remarks \u2014 repeatedly criticized his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the president in an hour of remarks. He called Mrs. Clinton a \"liar\" and a \"thief\" and said the country would be \"finished\" if voters chose four more years of a presidency like Mr. Obama's. Mr. Trump also accused Mrs. Clinton of repeatedly lying over the weekend when she told Chris Wallace on \"Fox News Sunday\" that James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, had said her statements about her private emails were truthful. \"I mean, she lied,\" Mr. Trump said, prompting cries of \"Lock her up!\" from his supporters. \"She, pure and simple, she only knows to lie. She really does. She only knows to lie. But she lied, and it's a big story. \" Mr. Comey, testifying last month to Congress, said that \"we have no basis to conclude she lied to the F. B. I. \" But he also said he could not say whether Mrs. Clinton's many public statements on the issue were truthful. Mr. Trump, in a written statement meant to respond directly to the president's remarks, called Mrs. Clinton \"unfit to serve in any government office. \" He also accused Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton of allowing Americans to be slaughtered in Benghazi, Libya letting veterans die waiting for medical care and releasing immigrants into the United States to kill innocent people. \"Our nation has been humiliated abroad and compromised by radical Islam brought onto our shores,\" Mr. Trump's statement said. \"We need change now. \" The dueling appearances by the president and the Republican candidate seeking to replace him escalated the heated political rhetoric in a race that had already devolved into a series of personal attacks and character assassinations. Mr. Obama cited Mr. Trump's reaction to Captain Khan's parents, Khizr and Ghazala Khan, as a principal reason for his extended remarks. Mr. Trump had criticized the Khans after they honored their son at the Democratic National Convention and urged people to vote for Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Obama lamented what he called an attack on a \"Gold Star family that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country. \" He said he did not doubt that Republicans were outraged about the statements Mr. Trump and his supporters had made about the Khan family in the last several days. \"But there has to come a point at which you say somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn't have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding, to occupy the most powerful position in the world,\" Mr. Obama said. The president did not limit his criticism to Mr. Trump's treatment of the Khan family. Mr. Obama said the Republican nominee had repeatedly demonstrated that he was \"woefully unprepared to do this job. \" The president said Mr. Trump had proved he lacked knowledge about Europe, the Middle East and other parts of Asia. \"This isn't a situation where you have an episodic gaffe. This is daily,\" Mr. Obama added. \"There has to be a point at which you say, 'This is not somebody I can support for president of the United States, even if he purports to be a member of my party.' The fact that that has not yet happened makes some of these denunciations ring hollow. \" Mr. Trump, who spoke at a boisterous rally at Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Va. began his remarks there by saying a veteran had given him a Purple Heart medal earlier in the day. \"I always wanted to get the Purple Heart,\" said Mr. Trump, who received five deferments from the draft during the Vietnam War. \"This was much easier. \" Throughout his speech, Mr. Trump argued his case that Mrs. Clinton was \"unfit\" for the presidency, accusing her of being dishonest, weak on foreign policy and corrupt. He accused the president of doubling the national debt and said the Iraq war exit was a \"disaster. \" \"Let Obama go to the golf course,\" Mr. Trump said. \"But you know what? We'd be better off. \" At one point during the rally, a crying baby interrupted Mr. Trump's speech. \"Don't worry about that baby. I love babies,\" Mr. Trump said at first. \"I hear that baby crying, I like it. What a baby, what a beautiful baby. Don't worry, don't worry. \" A few beats later, he changed his tune. \"Actually, I was only kidding,\" Mr. Trump said. \"You can get that baby out of here. \" Laughs and a few gasps escaped from the crowd. \"Don't worry, I think she really believed me that I love having a baby crying while I'm speaking,\" Mr. Trump added. \"That's O. K. People don't understand. That's O. K. \" Even as Mr. Obama discussed trade policy and security issues with the Singaporean prime minister, Mr. Trump criticized world leaders. He said he would ask Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany \"what went wrong\" in her country. And he criticized Mrs. Clinton for what he called \"terrible relations\" with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. At the White House, Mr. Lee of Singapore responded to a question about Mr. Trump with diplomacy, and said Singapore would look forward to working with whomever Americans chose as president. \"Many pressures build up during the election campaign, and after the elections in a calmer, cooler atmosphere, positions are rethought, strategies are nuanced, and a certain balance is kept in the direction of the ship of state. It does not turn completely upside down,\" Mr. Lee said. \"The Americans take pride in having a system with checks and balances,\" he added. \"So, it is not so easy to do things, but it is not so easy to completely mess things up. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Loretta Lynch is head of the DOJ and is opening for Deray McKesson of Black Lives Matter tomorrow in Detroit. Is this an endorsement of the radical domestic terrorist organization that calls for looting and violence in the name of social justice? The Department of Justice has lost any remaining credibility it might have had. Loretta Lynch is a political hack and a radical racist!","label":1}
{"text":"Some companies, including Exxon Mobil, say the economics of climate change are too hard to predict for them to give investors hard numbers about the business impact of global warming. Federal regulators may disagree and are considering requiring Exxon to do just that for the value of its oil reserves. Now a legislative effort by a Florida congressman to prevent such a move by the federal government has become an unexpected flash point in the battle over disclosing risks \u2014 with potentially hundreds of billions of dollars in the balance. The congressional measure, an amendment to an appropriations bill, originally introduced in July by Representative Bill Posey, a Florida Republican, has been picked up in the Senate version of the legislation. Because the bill is tied up in a partisan debate over spending, there is no certainty the amendment will pass. But at a time when many Republicans dispute the very notion of climate change, the Posey measure has focused the debate over whether it is reasonable \u2014 or even possible \u2014 to expect companies to put a price tag on the environmental impact of climate change. Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, has called climate change \"a hoax\" and promises to slash environmental regulations to bolster economic growth. The issue is not limited to Exxon and oil companies. The Posey amendment would allow real estate companies to stay mum on the risks posed to waterfront properties by rising seas, for example, and let food companies leave the impact of future water shortages unaddressed. \"Whether it's oil, apparel, clothing, utility \u2014 almost everything in our economy is built off of some use of natural resources, and the risks they face are substantial,\" said Mindy S. Lubber, president of Ceres, a nonprofit organization that works with some of the world's largest investors on climate change issues. But some companies, including Exxon, contend that the economics of climate change are unpredictable and that global growth will continue to create demand for resources, making it even more difficult to come up with hard numbers. Representative Posey is among those who say the federal government has no business forcing businesses to try. He accuses the financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, of pursuing a political agenda by pressing companies to quantify climate risks. \"These politically motivated and mandated disclosures are not about protecting investors, they are about shaming companies, or at least attempting to shame companies, into adopting their agenda,\" he said in July. \"It is a waste of resources for the companies, for their shareholders, and for the S. E. C. ,\" said Mr. Posey, who has accepted donations from oil and gas companies. George Cecala, a spokesman for Mr. Posey, did not respond to requests for further comment. Advocates of fuller corporate disclosure say the sums at stake are vast. Even under a plan that would limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius \u2014 a goal agreed to as part of the Paris deal \u2014 climate change could wipe out $1. 7 trillion of global financial assets, according to a study published earlier this year in the journal Nature. \"How could anybody tell the S. E. C. to ignore the climate?\" Ms. Lubber of Ceres said. The issue has been for investors, corporate executives and environmental leaders gathered in New York this week for Climate Week, an annual showcase tied to the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. Discussions here have been galvanized by news that more than 20 world leaders had ratified the Paris climate accord on Wednesday, all but ensuring that the agreement will be adopted by the end of the year. And Exxon's acknowledgment that the S. E. C. was asking about its accounting gave further hope to proponents of fuller disclosure. Already, a shift in the global energy landscape, brought on partly by a surge in drilling in United States oil and gas shale fields, has brought about a slump in fuel prices, calling into question the viability of future oil projects in places like the Arctic and deepwater oceans. And scientists estimate that as much as of the world's coal, oil and gas reserves must remain in the ground if the world has a shot at keeping carbon emissions under levels set by the Paris climate accord \u2014 unless there is a technological breakthrough in capturing carbon and keeping it out of the atmosphere. Exxon and its American oil industry peers have been reluctant to estimate the risks to their balance sheets. That contrasts with oil companies in Europe, which have been writing down the value of their assets over the last two years as oil prices plummeted. Energy experts say that is largely because international financial reporting standards require more detailed reporting on asset valuations than the standards in the United States. Last year, Statoil, the Norwegian oil giant, wrote down the value of its North American shale and oil sands assets by $4 billion. Royal Dutch Shell reported a of more than $8 billion. \"The rules are different, the relationships between the companies and governments are different, and Europe has clearer carbon policies,\" said Michael Webber, associate director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin. Exxon Mobil, which has accumulated assets over decades, has long argued that its executives take a long view that includes periods of both low and high commodity prices that swing as a matter of normal course. In its filings to the S. E. C. Exxon Mobil has reported that it has its major assets and expects that future cash flow could sustain even its most economically challenged oil and gas fields. The company has conceded that a future of assets is possible if its projections change. Still, most oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, predict that oil and natural gas prices will recover over the next few years and that demand for those fossil fuels will continue to increase along with growing populations and middle classes in emerging markets. The companies also say that projections are difficult without knowing what future regulations will entail, or how new technologies might help curtail greenhouse gas emissions. \"This is like being blindfolded, shooting in the dark at a moving target,\" said Fadel Gheit, a senior energy analyst at Oppenheimer Company. The one certainty is that the United States oil industry is already under severe financial pressure. Last year, American petroleum producers wrote down $177 billion in assets, according to a recent report by IHS Energy. Exxon Mobil is in far better financial condition than most other companies in the industry. But this year the company, stretched by debt, lost its AAA credit rating. And while the fossil fuel companies may face the biggest climate change risks, the need for financial disclosure stretches to other industries, said Mark Campanale, founder and executive director at Carbon Tracker, a financial think tank that focuses on energy and climate change. \"Banks are lending to fossil fuel projects, and ports and railroads are being built to handle coal, and that's not viable,\" Mr. Campanale said. \"We're talking about a highly disruptive transition, and companies aren't properly disclosing what that transition will look like. \" Efforts are now afoot to set standards for disclosing climate change risks, most notably by the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, a nonprofit group whose chairman is Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor. The board estimates that there are significant climate risks for most companies it tracks, which represent $27. 5 trillion, or 93 percent, of United States stocks as measured by market value. Some companies have led the way with disclosure. The global agriculture giant Adecoagro, in an April 2015 S. E. C. filing, reported that drought had reduced yields for its corn and soybean harvest by as much as 31 percent, and warned that \"the occurrence of severe adverse weather conditions, especially droughts, hail, floods or frost or diseases are unpredictable and may have a potentially devastating impact\" on future agricultural production. Jean Rogers, chief executive of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, says more companies should acknowledge the threat. \"Climate risk is the most ubiquitous risk out there,\" Ms. Rogers said. \"There's no excuse anymore. We know what the risks are, industry by industry. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in \/home\/content\/p3pnexwpnas07_data02\/05\/3222705\/html\/wp-content\/plugins\/widget-options\/core\/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 Home \u203a ECONOMIC \u203a HERITAGE COLLEGE CLOSING ALL 10 OF ITS CAMPUSES HERITAGE COLLEGE CLOSING ALL 10 OF ITS CAMPUSES 0 SHARES  [11\/3\/16] The Kansas Board of Regents confirms all 10 of Heritage College's locations, including those in southeast Wichita and Kansas City, Mo. are closed. The board or regents says the school is closed effective \"immediately\" and \"indefinitely.\"  Tuesday afternoon, Eyewitness News heard from a student at the college's location on South Rock Road in Wichita, who was preparing to graduate.  The student says there was a note on the door of the school that they weren't letting anyone in. The note read that the school went bankrupt, the student says. She says neither students nor staff received notice of the shutdown. Some learned of the closure by finding the notes, others heard from classmates.  \"I actually got a text message from a classmate and then I called the school several times and couldn't get an answer so I decided to come up here,\" said Machelle Hatter, who went to Heritage.  Many students say they feel angry and confused.  \"I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what's going on with my loans, I don't know what to do next,\" said Stephanie Hermrack, who attended Heritage College.  Hermrack said now she and many others who attended Heritage are left with only a partial education and thousands of dollars in student loans.  \"So I don't know if I owe the government $20,000 now even though I didn't get a degree out of this or what,\" added Joshua Anderson, another Heritage student. Post navigation Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in \/home\/content\/p3pnexwpnas07_data02\/05\/3222705\/html\/wp-content\/plugins\/widget-options\/core\/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in \/home\/content\/p3pnexwpnas07_data02\/05\/3222705\/html\/wp-content\/plugins\/widget-options\/core\/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in \/home\/content\/p3pnexwpnas07_data02\/05\/3222705\/html\/wp-content\/plugins\/widget-options\/core\/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 Warning : array_key_exists() expects parameter 2 to be array, null given in \/home\/content\/p3pnexwpnas07_data02\/05\/3222705\/html\/wp-content\/plugins\/widget-options\/core\/functions.widget.display.php on line 182 RESOURCES","label":1}
{"text":"COMICAL: Larry the Cable Guy slams 'indefensible' hypocrisy from Donna Brazile Posted at 3:57 pm on October 29, 2016 by Doug P. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter  The defenses of Hillary Clinton have reached comical proportions, so it's only appropriate that a comedian helps point out a fresh round of hypocrisy: Lol. I swear this is getting ridiculous. The hypocrisy is indefensible RT @RyanBLeslie : This tweet didn't age well. https:\/\/t.co\/8fPB4wnJ92  \u2014 Larry The Cable Guy (@GitRDoneLarry) October 29, 2016  Indefensible indeed! Check out this flashback from current DNC head Donna Brazile by way of Media Matters: Wash. Post Editorial Board: Republicans Are Damaging Rule Of Law By Attacking FBI Director Comey https:\/\/t.co\/HEyZqdRsaK  \u2014 Donna Brazile (@donnabrazile) July 7, 2016  That's from July 7th. Oh how the Democrats' attitude has changed in the course of one day! Trending","label":1}
{"text":"A Tennessee woman slipped into a coma and died after an ambulance company took so long to assemble a crew that one worker had time for a cigarette break. Paramedics in New York had to covertly swipe medical supplies from a hospital to restock their depleted ambulances after emergency runs. A man in the suburban South watched a chimney fire burn his house to the ground as he waited for the fire department, which billed him anyway and then sued him for $15, 000 when he did not pay. In each of these cases, someone dialed 911 and Wall Street answered. The business of driving ambulances and operating fire brigades represents just one facet of a profound shift on Wall Street and Main Street alike, a New York Times investigation has found. Since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms, the \"corporate raiders\" of an earlier era, have increasingly taken over a wide array of civic and financial services that are central to American life. Today, people interact with private equity when they dial 911, pay their mortgage, play a round of golf or turn on the kitchen tap for a glass of water. Private equity put a unique stamp on these businesses. Unlike other companies, which often have years of experience making a product or offering a service, private equity is primarily skilled in making money. And in many of these businesses, The Times found, private equity firms applied a sophisticated moneymaking playbook: a mix of cost cuts, price increases, lobbying and litigation. In emergency care and firefighting, this approach creates a fundamental tension: the push to turn a profit while caring for people in their most vulnerable moments. For governments and their citizens, the effects have often been dire. Under private equity ownership, some ambulance response times worsened, heart monitors failed and companies slid into bankruptcy, according to a Times examination of thousands of pages of internal documents and government records, as well as interviews with dozens of former employees. In at least two cases, lawsuits contend, poor service led to patient deaths. Private equity gained new power and responsibility as a direct result of the 2008 crisis. As cities and towns nationwide struggled to pay for basics like public infrastructure and ambulance services, private equity stepped in. At the same time, as banks scaled back their mortgage operations after the crisis, private equity firms \u2014 which face lighter regulation than banks, and none of their capital requirements \u2014 moved in there as well. The power shift has happened with relatively little scrutiny, even as federal authorities have tightened rules for banks. Unlike banks, which take deposits and borrow from the government, private equity firms invest money from wealthy individuals and pension funds desperate for returns at a time of historically low interest rates. Since the 2008 financial crisis, private equity firms have gone from managing $1 trillion to managing $4. 3 trillion \u2014 more than the value of Germany's gross domestic product \u2014 according to the advisory firm Triago. Retirement nest eggs are fueling the growth and sharing in private equity's risks and returns: Nearly half of private equity's invested assets come from pensions. \"There is private equity \u2014 a lot of it \u2014 and it's happening everywhere,\" said Vikram Pandit, a former Citigroup chief executive who is now head of the Orogen Group, which invests in financial businesses. Across the financial landscape, he said, \"New champions will emerge. \" Warburg Pincus, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts Company, and other major private equity firms have invested in emergency services, a business that routinely holds the lives of customers in its hands. While this represents one small corner of private equity, which traditionally used debt to seize underperforming companies, it captures the industry's newfound pervasiveness. K. K. R. \u2014 a firm memorialized in \"Barbarians at the Gate,\" a book that chronicled a defining 1980s Wall Street deal \u2014 also invested in public water services. Blackstone is now America's largest landlord of rental houses. And in the mortgage industry, until recently the province of banks, the Fortress Investment Group controls a huge bill collector. In many of the fields where private equity now operates, it has not necessarily performed better or worse than the banks and governments it replaced. In some cases it financed projects that others wouldn't fund and provided crucial public services, including emergency care. And because these firms do not rely on the government for loans, and are much smaller than Wall Street banks, they pose far less risk to the broader economy. \"Over 11 million Americans work for businesses, and millions more rely on private equity performance for their retirement security,\" said James Maloney, a spokesman for the American Investment Council, the industry's leading lobbying group. Private equity, Mr. Maloney said, helps \"advance both our economic and societal . \" But the Times investigation of emergency services shows that hasn't always been the case. Of the 12 ambulance companies recently owned by private equity, three filed for bankruptcy in the last three years, according to public filings and SP Global Market Intelligence, a research service that tracks over 1, 100 major ambulance companies in the United States. Those three companies had problems that predated private equity. But no other ambulance company tracked by the research firm filed for bankruptcy during that period. The latest blowup came in February, when TransCare EMS, controlled by the firm Patriarch Partners, filed for bankruptcy, closing its doors forever. One day, cities and towns up and down the East Coast had TransCare services the next, they didn't. \"Private equity has, in this case, threatened public safety,\" said Richard Thomas, the mayor of Mount Vernon, N. Y, which relied on TransCare. \"It's not the way to treat the public. \" Patriarch's owner and founder, Lynn Tilton, said in a statement that she was \"deeply saddened by the unfortunate circumstances that triggered the abrupt end to TransCare's operations and the heartache it has caused for many of its devoted employees. \" She noted that TransCare, like other ambulance companies, \"faced the obstacles inherent to its business model. \" long one of the nation's largest ambulance companies and one of the few operators of private fire departments, did a tour through bankruptcy, although it reorganized and stayed in business. One private equity investor took into bankruptcy, and another helped get it out. During that period, 's response times slowed in certain towns and it instituted more aggressive billing practices across the board, records show. While under the control of Warburg, once sent a $761 collections notice to an infant girl born in an ambulance. \"The matter may be reported to a national credit reporting agency,\" the notice read, effectively threatening a baby with a bad credit report. \"Obviously there were problems with \" said Ron Cunningham, a spokesman for 's new parent company, Envision Healthcare, which is not a private equity firm. \"We are continuing to hire paramedics and E. M. T.s and what you are seeing is that the response times are improving. \" In a statement, Warburg said it \"invested in with the objective of growing and strengthening the company's business. \" \"Despite several initiatives undertaken by the company's board and management team,\" the statement said, the \"challenges faced were too difficult to overcome. \" While private equity firms have always invested in a diverse array of companies, including hospitals and nursing homes, their movement into emergency services raises broader questions about the administering of public services. Cities and towns are required to offer citizens a free education, and they generally provide a police force, but almost everything else is fair game for privatization. \"We're reaching new lows in the public safety services we will help provide, especially in very poor cities,\" said Michelle Wilde Anderson, a law professor at Stanford University who specializes in state and local government. Private equity firms, she said, \"are not philanthropists. \" A TransCare ambulance pulled into a hospital parking lot in Westchester County. Employees in windbreakers, \"EMS\" emblazoned on the backs, hopped out and headed for the emergency room door. They were there not to bring in a patient or sign paperwork, but to go \"E. R. shopping\": swiping supplies to replenish critical items TransCare could not afford to replace in its ambulances. After an ambulance finishes a run, hospital staff members often restock medications as a courtesy. But TransCare emergency workers described pressure from supervisors to go further and raid supply carts, sometimes without the hospital's blessing. On occasion, one TransCare worker would act as lookout while \"the other one would just be grabbing stuff,\" said Emanuel Almodovar, a former employee. Chez Valenta, an veteran of TransCare, said employees often had no choice. Medications in the ambulances were expired and supplies were depleted. \"There's only a couple of things that terrify paramedics,\" Ms. Valenta said. \"Being without your critical medications is one of them. I make no apologies. \" The supply shortage \u2014 and the extreme measures taken to address it \u2014 was just one warning sign of TransCare's demise. In February, it became official: Employees received an email from a supervisor declaring, \"We are being told to cease operations immediately. \" TransCare's unraveling, told through internal documents and interviews with former employees, provides a case study in private equity's ambulance experiment. The company's implosion followed the bankruptcies of two other ambulance companies owned by private equity, and First Med. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Private equity investors swept into the ambulance business with high hopes. \"Tremendous growth potential,\" Warburg Pincus said in a statement in 2011 when it bought with plans to acquire rival ambulance services and improve bill collection. Other firms bet that fragile towns would outsource emergency care. And, the thinking went, President Obama's health care overhaul would insure millions more people, providing new paying customers. But many newly insured Americans turned out to be on Medicaid, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Medicaid restricts some of the most aggressive billing tactics. \"It didn't quite play out like they had hoped,\" said Mike Ward, executive director of the National EMS Management Association. So some private equity firms fell back on a moneymaking strategy: slashing costs. The case of TransCare shows the perils of that approach. In 2003, Patriarch helped rescue TransCare, which had previously been owned by other private equity investors, from another bankruptcy. For years the company, which once had 2, 000 employees, showed signs of improvement, with ample resources and high morale. Patriarch's owner, Ms. Tilton, liked to put a friendly face on private equity, shunning the stereotype of Wall Street raiders out to strip companies of valuable assets or flip them for a quick profit. Ms. Tilton starred in a reality television show, \"Diva of Distressed,\" and has famously said, \"It's only men I strip and flip. \" The TransCare mess was a mere blip for Patriarch, which manages a sprawling portfolio of more than 70 companies, including the mapmaker Rand McNally. And Ms. Tilton, who said she \"worked tirelessly\" to try to save the company, attributed TransCare's collapse to problems beyond Patriarch's control. The business requires costly investment in medical gear, she said. \"With limited free cash flow, any disruptions in the business can cause unsustainable deterioration. \" Yet Ms. Tilton was very much in charge of TransCare as it crumbled. She was the sole owner of the Patriarch Partners fund that had a controlling stake in TransCare. And although she never held an executive or management role, she was TransCare's sole board member \u2014 a situation almost in corporate America. Only 3 percent of private companies have two or fewer board members, according to survey data from the National Association of Corporate Directors, which called a board \"likely a recipe for governance failure. \" Former TransCare employees described pressure to cut costs and increase billing as the company weakened in recent years. Patients were transported unnecessarily in ambulances, they said. And ambulances regularly broke down. On the day TransCare filed for bankruptcy, more than 30 percent of the company's vehicles were out of service, some for hundreds of days, according to internal documents. \"We drove buses on the 911 unit where the brakes didn't work properly,\" said Rayshma Raghunath, a former TransCare employee, referring to her ambulance. She started feeling uneasy during the Ebola scare in 2014, when she said workers had trouble getting enough sanitary wipes to disinfect their ambulances. Caitlin Cannizzaro, another former employee, said that even starting the ambulances became tough. One morning, it took four hours to get some running, she said. \"You really had to become a MacGyver in the field. \" By early 2015, the company had racked up health department violations for failed ambulance inspections, internal documents show. Employees spotted bedbugs in the Brooklyn dispatch center. Suppliers refused to provide drugs or repair ambulances because of unpaid bills. \"We were constantly having problems with the heart monitors,\" said Mr. Almodovar, the former emergency medical technician. \"It started getting scary. The last thing we want is for a patient to die on us because the equipment is failing. \" By February 2015, shortages became critical. According to meeting minutes reviewed by The Times, TransCare executives discussed how their New York locations would be \"unable to make it through the weekend with current medical supplies. \" Supervisors regularly paid for supplies out of their own pockets and hoped for reimbursement, emails show. Some workers said the ambulances carried expired medications. Others went \"E. R. shopping. \" In March 2015, a new problem emerged: Some TransCare employees did not get paid on time. Then in July, it happened again. When it looked like payroll might be delayed another time, TransCare sent sample questions and answers to managers, \"to help you communicate\" with frustrated employees. It read in part: In the first few days of 2016, the trouble accelerated. Eviction warnings had piled up. High levels of carbon monoxide in the Brooklyn office sent at least one employee to the hospital, according to medical records. The company lost a major customer, the city of New Rochelle, N. Y. Less than 48 hours later, employees learned the chief executive had stepped down \u2014 the third in four years to leave. \"Recent events have been a call,\" the chief operating officer wrote to the staff to announce the chief executive's departure. The note signed off, \"Here's to a great future together!\" A month later, the company filed for bankruptcy, leaving a mess for cities and employees alike. Workers rushed to the company's offices in Brooklyn to collect their final paychecks. Worried the checks might bounce, some piled into emergency vehicles and raced to a store. James Bradley, deputy commissioner of public safety in White Plains, blamed Patriarch for TransCare's woes. \"That's where the problems lie,\" he said. The city of Mount Vernon, another former customer in New York, hired a new private company at a cost to taxpayers, and is developing its own ambulance operation within its fire department. In New York City, where TransCare had operated 27 ambulances, the fire department paid its own ambulance workers overtime to fill the void. \"I am highly upset with Patriarch. They lied to us,\" said Jay Robbins, a former director of operations at TransCare who was at ground zero after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. \"I told my employees to come in and work, and now they won't be getting paid,\" he said soon after the bankruptcy, his voice shaking. The bankruptcy also disrupted litigation pending against the company, including a malpractice case that raises questions about TransCare's training procedures. During an Aerosmith concert at Madison Square Garden in 2012, Robert Albrecht, a businessman with a wife and three children, suddenly collapsed. TransCare arrived within minutes \u2014 it was stationed in the building. But a paramedic mistakenly inserted a breathing tube into Mr. Albrecht's esophagus, medical records and the lawsuit show, pumping air into his stomach instead of his lungs. He was pronounced dead minutes later. The case was scheduled for preliminary settlement talks, according to the family's lawyer, Jonathan C. Reiter, when TransCare went under. Today Mr. Albrecht's widow is a creditor in the bankruptcy, in line with medical suppliers and unpaid workers. In Loudon County, Tenn. another ambulance company was unnerving local officials. After 11 years of relying on the Tennessee county wanted to part ways in 2014. So it sent letters to the company outlining grievances: employees slept through an emergency call. A driver refused to transport a dead body because it would \"stink up\" his ambulance. Another worker, who later said she offered to respond to an emergency even though she was off duty, had enough time to smoke a cigarette while the company scrambled to assemble a full crew. The patient later died. In the year since private equity had led the company into bankruptcy, had endangered \"the health and welfare\" of its citizens, Loudon County said in a letter to the company. It was, as the letter put it, \"a complete system failure. \" Data on the quality of an ambulance company's performance is scarce at the national level and difficult to compare or . A basic metric \u2014 how often ambulances are late \u2014 is often defined differently, if it is measured at all. Still, data can show how one company changes over time, and a Times analysis of data obtained under freedom of information laws from five of 's major markets suggests that service in four areas suffered under private equity ownership. The Times examined where operated exclusively, in or near cities. In one town, response times surged in another, penalties skyrocketed. In a third, county officials time and again received a dreaded alert: no available ambulances. The first private equity investor to back was Warburg Pincus. It was just one investment for a firm that manages roughly $40 billion. But the 2011 takeover was the sort of acquisition that tarred private equity firms in the public mind as corporate raiders out to make a fast dollar. Warburg financed its roughly $730 million purchase by adding more than $500 million in debt to 's balance sheet \u2014 a deep hole to climb out of. Initially, Warburg invested in the company and its ambulances. acquired two ambulance companies, helping increase capital spending by 20 percent and payroll by 15 percent in 2012. But the deals added to overall debt, contributing to cutbacks that potentially affected patient care. Some ambulances weren't promptly restocked, employees said. In Arizona, the company's home state, it shelved a program that gave raises to senior staff. It also slashed pensions there. \"It was a train wreck,\" said Aaron Chamney, a former fire captain who said he was dismissed a month into Warburg's ownership after he was injured on the job. The financial results were also a mess. which operates ambulances in 20 states, told investors it would book higher revenue than it ultimately did, leading bondholders to sue Warburg for fraud, a case that continues. Warburg denies the accusations. As Warburg's investment spiraled toward bankruptcy, service suffered. In Arizona, just days before the August 2013 bankruptcy, the health department wrote to demanding data on its 911 response times. was failing to respond on time, state records show. Tacoma, Wash. waived almost all of 's fines for lateness in 2012 because the company was meeting overall standards. Then, however, performance collapsed. paid fines for nine straight months. In the first half of 2013, average monthly penalties, both waived and not, nearly quintupled from the same period a year earlier. \"Throughout our ownership of Warburg Pincus always supported a high standard of customer care and the best possible results for all of the company's stakeholders,\" the firm said in a statement, citing \"increased spending to improve operations and processes, increased capital investment and strategic acquisitions. \" But as Warburg's investment was crumbling, something interesting happened: Other investors saw an opportunity and snapped up 's bonds. This is a classic strategy in which Wall Street firms hunt for investments (in this case, distressed debt) expecting them to bounce back. But didn't recover. It filed for bankruptcy. Suddenly those bondholders had a choice: revive the company, or lose their money. The biggest bondholder was Oaktree Capital Management, an investment manager that specializes in distressed bonds and private equity deals. Oaktree invested $88 million in loans and stock, helping wipe out Warburg's stake in the company. By January 2014, Oaktree was the single largest shareholder in . But Oaktree, which owned nearly 40 percent of did not halt the slide. In Rochester, monthly penalties averaged $58, 950 in the first half of 2015, during Oaktree's tenure, more than double the average during the first half of 2013, when Warburg owned the company. In July 2014, the Mesa, Ariz. fire chief formally complained about 's \"unprecedented reduction of ambulances, which in turn delayed patient care. \" The fire chief of the Superstition Fire and Medical District, in Apache Junction, Ariz. accused of appearing \"more focused on cutting corners and canceling contracts than quality of care. \" In Aurora, Colo. awarded medals of valor to some employees for responding to the 2012 movie theater shooting. But the city issued increasing penalties to the company, on an average basis, for late responses and other problems after the bankruptcy. Last year, during Oaktree's tenure, Aurora chose to award its contract to a different ambulance company. In a statement, Oaktree said 's board was unaware of \"any contracts that the company lost due to deficient response times or supplies. \" \"The board's foremost focus was patient safety,\" Oaktree said, adding that it \"never contemplated any expense cuts that would have affected response time or patient care. \" Not everyone was displeased with . In Wheat Ridge, Colo. the company has been considered compliant since 2011. When suffered delays, \"There were always reasonable explanations,\" said Daniel Brennan, chief of police. Similarly, San Diego considered compliant under Warburg's and Oaktree's ownership. However, the city's records show that it excused several hundred late responses over the last five years for circumstances like bursts of emergency calls. Officials in Knox County, Tenn. said they started worrying in April 2015 when alerted them twice that it had no ambulances available for emergencies, forcing them to rely on other providers. That is known as a \"level zero,\" and it had happened only once before in recent years. In 2015, the county penalized $110, 000 for . also must tell the county if three or fewer ambulances are available. During the second half of 2015, it notified the county of such shortages an average of 106 times per month \u2014 quadruple the average of the same period in 2013. \"What we've been told is that their challenge is around staffing,\" said Dr. Martha Buchanan, director of the county's health department. She cited the bankruptcy and a new law requiring more worker certifications, making hiring tougher. also reported increased lateness, defined as taking 10 minutes or longer to reach an emergency. In the second half of 2015, was late, on average, about 9. 4 percent of the time, up from 6. 8 percent two years earlier. Though the company still met overall standards, the county said \"had increased difficulty in doing so. \" Since Envision took over in late 2015, replacing private equity, the company has shown signs of improvement, Knox County officials said. It has purchased new ambulances and raised salaries. In neighboring Loudon County, officials noticed response time problems after the bankruptcy, when Oaktree was the largest shareholder. The final straw came after an 911 call in August 2014. Donna Maher, 81, couldn't breathe. \"They're coming as quick as they can,\" the 911 operator promised. But 's ambulance had not yet left the station. Surveillance video showed an emergency worker standing beside her ambulance, smoking a cigarette. Ms. Maher eventually reached the hospital, but died 10 days later. Later that year, Loudon County negotiated an early exit from its contract. And the ambulance worker, Cortney Bryson, was fired. Ms. Bryson sued for wrongful termination, saying the company was \"covering up improper scheduling, staffing and response criteria\" in a way that \"could have been shown to be a direct factor in the death of a citizen. \" In an interview, Ms. Bryson said she had worked two shifts before the call about Ms. Maher came in. Ms. Bryson was technically off the clock, she said, but a replacement hadn't yet arrived. Ms. Bryson said that she offered to go with another colleague, but that they needed permission because the colleague lacked full credentials. While waiting, she smoked. Jennifer Estes, the 911 center director, says it is difficult to link a delayed ambulance to a death. But this case, she said, \"leaves some room for someone to wonder, 'Could the extra time have made a difference? '\" After private equity took over new posters appeared on the walls of ambulance and fire stations, featuring a caricature of a uniformed employee delivering a mandate: Get a signature. In other words, get patients to sign documents that can be used to bill them. \"Almost always, if the patient is alert, they will be able to sign,\" he says. And if the patient can't sign? Then go to a family member, or a nurse. \"They'll sign \u2014 because I don't give up. \" The posters \u2014 just one element of 's aggressive billing practices while owned by private equity \u2014 promoted \"Do the Write Thing,\" a policy instructing employees to document every detail of a patient's treatment. It paired with another initiative, the \"Care to Cash\" checklist, also instituted during Warburg's tenure. Warburg Pincus said it was not aware of those specific initiatives. The policies, said, would help patients by ensuring that bills were accurate. But employees complained that the process distracted them from caregiving and put them in the awkward position of seeking signatures from ill or medicated patients. Do the Write Thing \"didn't sit well with the firefighters,\" said Nico Latini, who has worked at for a decade. \"We operate under a high level of integrity and we do the right thing every day \u2014 with an R, not a W. \" In the four years that private equity led the company was fighting for financial survival. It raised its prices, but patients couldn't afford those bigger bills. Against that backdrop, the company intensified its collection efforts. And when people didn't pay, took them to court. After Warburg left the company, eliminated Care to Cash and Do the Write Thing. But even under its new equity owner, it still sues to collect some unpaid bills from fire and ambulance customers. 's new owner said it \"will continue to utilize the legal system to pursue payment when appropriate,\" but added that it first asks \"customers who need assistance to work with us to develop a payment plan that meets their needs. \" 's fire departments sell homeowners an annual subscription for fire protection, often ranging from $100 to $500, depending on the property. If a nonsubscriber suffers a fire, will still answer the call, unlike some other private departments. But then it sends a bill well above the subscription price. Even before private equity took over, the company sued to collect fire bills. Under private equity, this practice flourished. The Times examined court filings in the areas where operates fire departments and identified dozens of lawsuits filed since 2011, when private equity took over. In these lawsuits, which are at public fire departments, the company pursued unpaid bills ranging from a few hundred dollars to $59, 000. In Knoxville, Tenn. Lester Day faced one of those lawsuits. When his chimney caught fire in March 2013, he dialed 911. When firefighters arrived almost an hour later, 911 records indicate, the house had been reduced to ashes. That didn't stop from charging Mr. Day for their response and then placing a $15, 000 lien on his home, which he had since rebuilt. \"Now I'm having to sell everything we've got,\" Mr. Day said in an interview. \"It ain't right. \" also filed hundreds of lawsuits against ambulance patients in the same time period, including claims against families of people who died. Public providers are generally less aggressive than private ones, and some opt not to sue at all. The New York Fire Department said it sends letters to ambulance patients but stops short of suing. And yet, patients may not always have the chance to ride in a government ambulance. Private companies now represent about 25 percent of all ambulance providers, according to the National Association of State EMS Officials. 's community fire service, which operates in Arizona, Oregon and Tennessee, is one of the nation's few private fire departments. Only 4 percent of Americans rely on a private fire service. mainly serves unincorporated areas without public fire departments, where often there is no government contract or public oversight. The Times spoke with more than a dozen people who had been sued by the company after fires on their property. Many homeowners in 's jurisdiction did not realize they had to pay for fire protection separately, on top of their taxes. Some thought the subscription fee was unwarranted. \"I thought the fire department was paid out of taxes,\" said Alice Addie, who lives with her husband, LaVern, in Mesa, Ariz. In 2013, filed a roughly $7, 000 lawsuit against the Addies after their mobile home caught fire. Mr. Addie, a Navy veteran, at first disputed the charges, storming into his local fire department to question the suit. Ultimately, the company allowed the Addies to pay off their bill in monthly installments. But in the backyard of his home, in the shadow of the rugged mountains of Maricopa County, he explained how they were still struggling with that debt. \"We just eat two meals a day instead of three,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"A man diagnosed with cancer 50 years ago and told by doctors that he had not got long to live, drank wine to forget his sorrows and found that it saved his life and cured his cancer.  98-year old Stamatis Moraitis who had refused chemotherapy and expensive medical procedures for his lung cancer decades ago lived long enough to share his story.  He even outlived his doctors before dying at the ripe old age of 100 from natural causes in 2013.  Underground Reporter :  There are now many studies proving chemotherapy can make cancer more malignant (deadly).  Some attest that chemotherapy and radiotherapy are both intrinsically carcinogenic treatments \u2014 so if a 98-year old man can live through a cancer diagnosis, without resorting to these treatments, what can we learn from him?  The answer is surprisingly simple.  Stamatis Moraitis was diagnosed with lung cancer in his 60s, and wanted his doctors to tell him how long he had to live. He was surprised by the diagnosis, but even more by the prognosis \u2014 that he was to live only six to nine months, according to medical 'experts.'  Moraitis hails from the Greek island of Ikaria, known as a place where people 'forget to die,' as they have such high longevity rates. He opted to forgo chemotherapy and other medications, not because this was the Greek way, necessarily, but because he considered funeral costs to be too exorbitant in the U.S. where he had moved in 1943 to seek treatment for a combat injury. Upon learning he had little time, he opted to return to his native Ikaria.  Moraitis simply continued to work, and drank two to three glasses of wine every day, waiting for his certain death. At about age 50, he started to question the doctor's prognosis, and at 98 years of age he says, \" I'm no doctor, but I think the wine helped. I've done nothing else except eat pure food, [drink] pure wine, [take] pure herbs. \"  His actions to cure his cancer are decidedly simple, but that's what makes them so surprising. Americans have been taught to believe they need to spend thousands of dollars on chemotherapy drugs, and practically go into bankruptcy while also killing their healthy cells with chemo and radiation, instead of simply changing their lifestyle habits.  Moraitis is living proof that eating right, working in fresh air , and giving the body the proper nutrients \u2014 that scavenge free radicals and create an environment in which cancer cannot thrive \u2014 might be all it truly takes to live well and prosper.  Moraitis may not be a doctor, he quipped, but there are over 2,200 peer-reviewed scientific studies suggesting that his lifestyle was very conducive to his recovery.  Instead of spending more than $120,000 on pharmaceutical 'cures' which don't necessarily work, he likely spent a few bucks every week on wine, fruit, and vegetables. He also happened to avoid the cost of an American funeral .  So, in essence, he spent less to live, than to die at the hands of modern, Western medicine.  \" I found my friends in the village where I was born, and we started drinking. I thought, at least I'll die happy, \" he said when first given his death-sentence.","label":1}
{"text":"The White House said on Thursday it would respond to Iran's ballistic missile test and other hostile actions, a day after President Donald Trump's national security adviser put Tehran on \"notice,\" but it stopped short of providing any details. \"We will have further updates for you on those additional actions, but clearly (national security adviser Michael Flynn) warned to make sure that Iran understood that they are on notice that this is not going unresponded to,\" White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.","label":0}
{"text":"On Thursday, Hillary Clinton ripped Donald Trump and his bigoted administration apart for being on the wrong side of history and refusing to defend LGBT rights and while she was at it, she showed conservatives just what they missed out on by letting a former reality television star get into the White House instead of a well-qualified politician.At a fundraiser for LGBT community organization The Center, Clinton received an award and gave a speech in which she thanked her audience for their continued support. However, her message came with a chilling warning about the Trump administration as she said the progress that we fought for, that many of you were on the front lines for. It may not be as secure as we once expected. Clinton blasted Trump: We may not ever be able to count on this administration to lead on LGBT issues. Then, she couldn t resist rattling off several of the things Trump has been doing to directly attack and weaken the LGBT community. She said: When this administration rescinded protections for transgender students, my heart broke. When I learned about the proposed cuts in funding for HIV and AIDS research, I thought about all of our efforts to try and achieve an AIDS-free generation. Some of the changes that we re seeing should seem small, but they matter a great deal if you re the person affected. Others carry historic significance, like the future of the Supreme Court. While Clinton was not always a supporter of same-sex marriage, she had changed her tone several years ago and has been a powerful ally since. In her usual classy way, she called on Americans to stick together and unite to protect human rights and resist homophobia. Clinton said: I know the election hit a lot of us hard. I can tell you this: Even when it feels tempting to pull the covers over your heads, please keep going. Clinton s skilled and powerful delivery is something that Trump could only dream to emulate one day. Despite having lost the election to Trump, the majority of Americans still love and support Clinton, as Trump s approval rating plummets by the day. The support for her message shows that America no longer supports the values of the GOP any longer, and that conservatives have made a major mistake by putting Trump in the White House.You can watch Clinton s speech below:","label":1}
{"text":"After another challenging day in Washington, President Donald Trump flew to West Virginia to a field full of 40,000 chanting and cheering Boy Scouts, telling them he was happy to leave Washington behind. \"Who the hell wants to speak about politics?\" Trump boomed, telling the boys he wanted to talk about how to achieve their dreams. But politics proved too hard for Trump to resist on a day he spent pleading for Republican senators to vote to advance his long-promised health care overhaul and watching his son-in-law Jared Kushner being grilled on Capitol Hill about contacts with Russia. It did not take long for Trump to veer from inspiration to denigration. The teenaged boys loved it, cheering wildly at each sick burn, hooting and hollering like they were at a wrestling match. \"Tonight we put aside all of the policy fights in Washington, D.C. you've been hearing about with the fake news and all of that,\" he told the teenaged boys, sitting state by state in brightly colored t-shirts. \"You know, I go to Washington and I see all these politicians and I see the swamp and it's not a good place,\" said Trump. \"In fact, today I said we ought to change it from the word 'swamp' to the word 'cesspool' or perhaps to the word 'sewer.' It's not good. I see what's going on and believe me, I'd much rather be with you, that I can tell you,\" Trump said. He told the boys that the media were dishonest and would not show the size of their jamboree on television. \"Fake media, fake media,\" Trump said, eliciting a chorus of boos and cheers. Trump recounted his election night victories, state by state, the boys from Wisconsin cheering when they heard their state mentioned, the boys from Michigan doing the same. But the most sustained round of cheers and jeers came when Trump mentioned his predecessor President Barack Obama, who had declined invitations to speak to the scout gathering while he was in office. \"By the way, just a question: did President Obama ever come to a jamboree?\" Trump said. Trump said he has 10 former Boy Scouts serving in his cabinet and White House, and brought a few on stage as examples of Boy Scout leadership in action, including Tom Price, his health secretary. \"Hopefully he's going to get the votes tomorrow to start our path toward killing this horrible thing known as Obamacare,\" Trump said, referring to Obama's signature health care legislation, as the boys booed. \"He better get them, otherwise I'll say, 'Tom, you're fired!'\" he said, borrowing the catch phrase from his reality television show, \"The Apprentice.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Rick Perry, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to run the U.S. Energy Department, said during a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday that global warming caused by humans is real, but that efforts to combat it should not cost American jobs. The comment marks a shift for the former Texas governor, who had previously called the science behind climate change \"unsettled\" and a \"contrived, phony mess.\" It also clashes with Trump's statements during his campaign for the White House that global warming is a hoax meant to weaken U.S. business. \"I believe the climate is changing. I believe some of it is naturally occurring, but some of it is also caused by man-made activity. The question is how do we address it in a thoughtful way that doesn't compromise economic growth, the affordability of energy or American jobs,\" Perry said. Perry's 3-1\/2-hour hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources was one of the shortest and least contentious in a long list of sessions to vet Trump Cabinet nominees since last week. The committee has not yet scheduled its vote on Perry's nomination. As energy secretary, Perry, 66, would oversee a substantial chunk of Trump's energy portfolio. He would lead a vast scientific research operation credited with helping trigger a U.S. drilling boom and advancements in energy efficiency and renewable energy technology, and would also be in charge of maintaining the United States' nuclear weapons arsenal. Trump, who will be sworn in as president on Friday, has promised to bolster the U.S. oil, gas and coal industries, in part by undoing federal regulations curbing carbon dioxide emissions. He has also suggested pulling America out of a global climate change pact signed in Paris in 2015, calling it expensive for U.S. industry. He sees Perry, who was governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015 and whose nomination has the support of the energy sector, as someone who can help usher in jobs growth. Perry added during his hearing that he regrets having previously called for the department's elimination - a proposal he made during his failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. That proposal, which has become known as his \"oops\" moment, came during a presidential candidate debate when he could not initially remember all of the three Cabinet-level departments he wanted to eliminate: Commerce, Education and Energy. \"After being briefed on so many of the vital functions of the Department of Energy, I regret recommending its elimination,\" he said in his opening remarks. Democrats on the committee expressed worry that Perry would weaken the Energy Department's functions and potentially target its army of scientists focused on climate research. Perry sought to assuage them. \"I am going to protect the men and women of the scientific community from anyone who would attack them,\" he said in response to a question from Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington state about whether he would cut the department's climate science budget. When pressed on whether there would be budget or staff cuts to key research programs at the department, Perry said: \"I will be an advocate (for the programs) ... but I'm not sure I'm going to be 1,000 percent successful.\" He distanced himself from a questionnaire the Trump transition team sent to the department in December demanding names and publications of employees who had worked on climate issues. After an uproar by critics who said it amounted to a witch hunt, the team disavowed the survey. \"I didn't approve it. I don't approve of it. I don't need that information,\" Perry said. Perry said much of his focus running the department would be on renewing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. More than half of the department's $32.5 billion budget goes to maintaining nuclear weapons and cleaning up nuclear waste. \"As a former Air Force pilot during the days of the Cold War, I understand the deterrent value of our nuclear weapons systems, and the vital role they play in keeping the peace,\" he said. Perry said he was generally supportive of a state's right to block the siting of nuclear waste dumps, like Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but fell short of ruling out the federal government's power to impose them over state objections in some cases. Nuclear waste disposal is one of the top hurdles to growth in the U.S. nuclear power industry. Department leadership under Perry would represent a pivot from being run by learned scientists to a person who is known for close ties to energy interests. The current energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, is a nuclear physicist who led technical negotiations in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, while the previous head, Steven Chu, is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Perry recently resigned from the board of directors of Energy Transfer Partners LP, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline opposed by Native Americans and environmentalists.","label":0}
{"text":"Facing slumping poll numbers and a shakeup of his team, U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump takes a detour from the campaign trail this week to visit his golf resorts in Scotland. Trump leaves Thursday on a three-day trip centered on the grand reopening of Trump Turnberry, which the New York businessman bought in 2014 and renovated at an estimated cost of $290 million. He will also visit his other Scottish golf property in Aberdeen. His visit to Scotland, the birthplace of his mother, comes as Britain votes on Thursday on whether to remain in the European Union. Trump has said Britain would probably be better off if it left the EU. He will hold a news conference on Friday when he will doubtless be asked to respond to the vote. Trump's trip abroad comes at an unusual time given the political calendar. With less than a month left until the Republican convention in Cleveland where he is to be formally nominated, Trump is lagging in fundraising and campaign organization and taking heavy fire from Democrat Hillary Clinton, his likely opponent in the Nov. 8 election. He is under pressure to adopt a more presidential demeanor and strengthen his campaign organization after a rocky period in which he criticized a U.S.-born federal judge as unfair because of his Mexican heritage and took fire for his response to the killing of 49 people at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub. Just this week, he fired campaign manager Corey Lewandowski at the urging of family members alarmed at the direction of his campaign. It also emerged that he had only $1.3 million in cash on hand at the end of May to fund his campaign, compared with Clinton's war chest of $42 million. His poll numbers have also dropped. After sealing the nomination seven weeks ago, Trump was basically tied in national polls with Clinton. But she has crept ahead in many polls in the past two weeks. Trump and his aides see the Scotland visit as a chance to showcase his far-flung business empire and job-creating abilities. Aides said the trip also reinforced his ancestral ties to Scotland and his love of family, with his children playing an important role in his business dealings. But many Republicans see Trump's trip to Scotland as a waste of valuable time. \"It has nothing to do with running for president,\" said Republican strategist Rick Tyler, who was a spokesman for former presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. \"It speaks to the non-seriousness of the campaign when you're taking time off the campaign trail to leave the country for a place where there are no voters.\" Trump's golf properties are among his proudest business possessions and he is particularly proud of Turnberry, where the British Open has been played four times, including the famed \"Duel in the Sun\" in 1977 when Tom Watson edged Jack Nicklaus by one stroke. Limiting the trip to his golf properties means there are likely to be fewer chances for missteps like 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney's gaffe-filled trip to London, Jerusalem and Poland four years ago. But it offers little chance for Trump to burnish his foreign policy credentials. \"Traditionally, nominees take overseas trips to build their foreign policy chops,\" said Republican strategist Scott Reed. Trump is not meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron, who has denounced Trump as divisive for his proposed Muslim ban and anti-immigrant rhetoric.","label":0}
{"text":"A leading US senator: US Supporting War in Syria A leading US senator said the war in Syria would have been over by now if the US had put an end to its intervention when Russia entered the war-ravaged country. \"If the United States had just stayed out of it at that point, the war would be over by now; people would be rebuilding, refugees would be returning back to Syria, but the United States rushed anti-Tank missiles, and we used these so-called moderate rebels as a conduit to supply al-Nusra Front (also known as Fatah al-Sham Front), which is al-Qaeda in Syria,\" republican member of the Virginia State in US Senate, Richard Hayden Black said in an exclusive interview with Press TV. \"If we were not supporting the war in Syria, I believe that the Syrians, combined with their allied forces from Iran, Lebanon and Russia\u2026 would move very steadily and restore the borders of Syria.\" The senate member, who visited Syria in April, refused to distinguish between militants and terrorists fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, saying, the two are \"thoroughly integrated.\" \"They really are one and the same, they're part of the same army,\" he said, citing a US defense intelligence agency's investigation in 2013, which showed Washington's ties with the terror group. The outspoken state senator referred to plans by the CIA to transfer arms from Libya to Turkey and from there to Syria to supply the militants, noting that the move \"evolved into an indiscriminate program of supplying all militant groups, including specifically ISIL and al-Qaeda.\" \"We do it indirectly because it's unlawful to do it directly,\" he said, adding that the US keeps \"extremely violent organizations\u2026 off the terrorist watch list because these are the agents that take our weapons and then distribute them to ISIL and al-Qaeda.\" In response to a question on why Iran and Russia are portrayed as the \"bad guys,\" while they are the ones really fighting terrorism there, as put recently by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, Black said the Republican candidate has a \"clear understanding of what's happening over there.\" \"Sometimes, his rhetoric has to match the political mood of the moment\u2026 but I know a number of his advisers and they believe that our determination to topple the government in Syria is suicidal, that it threatens not only the entire Middle East but literally the entire world.\" He further warned that the US itself could be \"threatened,\" arguing that, \"if Syria falls, it will be dominated by some al-Qaeda-related organization; Lebanon will fall; Jordan will fall and the entire area will be destabilized.\" The Vietnam war veteran also elaborated on his personal definition of the Middle East \"axis of evil,\" naming Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and \"particularly\" Turkey over their support for terrorism. \"Probably, three quarters of the rebels are not Syrian at all, they are mercenaries recruited by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia,\" he asserted, describing the three countries as \"the primary force behind the terrorist movement.\" \"Turkey has invaded Iraq and Syria with heavy military forces. Turkey has really become a rogue nation,\" he added, referring to a 1923 treaty that set the border between Turkey and Greece, saying that was even being questioned by President Rececp Tayyip Erdogan. \"And now you see this emerging threat against Western Europe by Turkey,\" he noted, further adding that Erdogan \"has made it clear that he looks to resurrection of the Ottoman Empire.\" \"He has become more and more aggressive; he's crushed the military, the free press; every powerful institution of the Turkish government has come under his iron fist and he's now a total dictator. He's a man who has said that he wants the constitution amended so that he will have power similar to those of Adolf Hilter\u2026 This is our great ally; we're allied with a man who would be Hitler.\" He also blasted Washington's alliance with Saudi Arabia, \"where women are not allowed to walk out in the front yard to pick up the newspaper without a man's permission; they can't drive a car!\" \"Somehow, this is part of the liberalization that we seek to impose on the Middle East,\" he said ironically, calling it \"bizarre.\" He also praised the resistance against the Saudi aggression by the people of Yemen, saying, \"God bless them! The Yemenis are giving the Saudis a bloody nose,\" despite being a \"tiny little, poor nation.\" \"I think the world recognizes that Saudi Arabia has just embarked in massive war crimes in Yemen,\" he said, voicing regret over the US support for the monarchy. \"We don't pay too much attention to them while engaged in war crimes because they're our good allies,\" he said, concluding that Washington is on a \"suicidal course of action.\" \"Saudi money pays the very top politicians in many Western nations. And they really have co-opted the American military into acting as mercenaries for Wahhabism.\"Black referred to the Western media's portrayal of Iran as a supporter of terrorism, saying, \"The fact of the matter is that if you really look at global terrorism, it all emanates from Saudi Arabia.\" He exemplified various terrorists attack, including the 9\/11, the Boston bombing, and the Brussels attacks, noting that they are all a \"reflection of the Wahhabi philosophy.\"","label":1}
{"text":"Trump wins big in New Hampshire in what is an anti-establishment revolt of epic measures America is 100% FED Up! with the status quo in Washington.The latest results (CNN) from the New Hampshire primary:","label":1}
{"text":"Votes cast for New Zealand s ruling National Party reached 46.3 percent with 31.4 percent of results counted in the country s general election on Saturday, while support for the opposition Labour Party was 36 percent, according to the Electoral Commission. The nationalist New Zealand First Party had 7.1 percent of the vote so far, tipping it as a likely kingmaker in the German-style proportional representation system. Votes for the Green Party reached 6.2 percent. A record 1.2 million ballots were cast before the day of the election, accounting for about a third of the 3.3 million New Zealanders enrolled to vote. In past elections, advanced votes were indicative of final results.","label":0}
{"text":"Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley's staff has indicated the senator is willing to meet with Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland after a two-week Senate recess, the White House said on Thursday. \"That obviously is something that we believe is entirely appropriate,\" White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. \"It certainly is the most basic expectation that people would have for a Senate Judiciary chairman when a consensus Supreme Court nominee has been put forward.\" President Barack Obama nominated the centrist judge on Wednesday to replace conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Feb. 13. Garland began meeting with senators on Thursday. Earnest said he hopes that, despite political differences, Grassley will work with the White House to schedule a meeting.","label":0}
{"text":"President Barack Obama met on Monday with a team of national security advisers to discuss U.S. efforts to combat Islamic State following last week's attacks on Brussels, the White House said. \"The President was briefed that there is currently no specific, credible intelligence of any plot to conduct similar attacks here in the United States,\" the White House said. Obama was told of expanded U.S. efforts to share threat information with international partners, and he directed his team to ensure the United States is doing everything possible to disrupt any plots by Islamic State, the White House said.","label":0}
{"text":"Catherine Engelbrecht, president of True the Vote, talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam on Friday regarding President Trump's executive order establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which will investigate voter fraud and offer recommendations. [Engelbrecht said of voter fraud in America, \"We are, in my opinion, on the verge of a systemic crisis for a lot of reasons. The first is, we are not evaluating the people that we are allowing to register to vote. We are not doing any sort of reconciliation for identity, residency, citizenship. \u2026 We don't know that these people are who they say that they are. \" Engelbrecht added that with the data and technology available today, \"there's no reason that we wouldn't have a better handle on that. \" \"We have willfully chosen to let our voter rolls run amok,\" she said. Engelbrecht continued, \"We will soon have a major outcome where we cannot trust the outcome, and at that point, you can't unring that bell. At that point, things start to crumble and crumble fast. \" Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern.","label":0}
{"text":"Sometimes you just need to let people talk and they ll eventually say what you have been saying the whole time. Albeit, it may be accidental. And in this case, liberals should take what they can get when it comes to Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) giving a the perfect argument for Medicare for all. They should also not let him forget it.While trying to make the Affordable Care Act look bad, Ryan accidentally made the perfect argument for Medicare for all.Ryan tweeted out: With another insurer leaving the Iowa insurance market, more Americans will be left without a choice when it comes to their health care. With another insurer leaving the Iowa insurance market, more Americans will be left without a choice when it comes to their health care. https:\/\/t.co\/4agdcFoqLz Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) April 8, 2017Then follows it up with this: Five Iowa counties will now be left with just two health insurers, while the rest will only have one option. This is unacceptable. Five Iowa counties will now be left with just two health insurers, while the rest will only have one option. This is unacceptable. Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) April 8, 2017Now, first of all, if Iowa had set up Obamacare properly, they d have their own health exchange and not put you to the national website. This would have also subsequently given Iowa insurers the ability to work directly with the state. Secondly, when for-profit companies are given the ability to mess with people s care for the sake of profit and to try to prove a point that something isn t working they will do so.Thus, when all is said and done, this is the perfect argument for Medicare for all, OR at least a public option. A public option would provide a guaranteed option for citizens of any state, as well as provide competition in the for-profit world of health insurance, which would then drive down costs across the board (yay, true capitalism and not a manipulative market!). Medicare for all would be ideal, yet not as realistic at the moment, and would provide care to every single American. Imagine that! Taxes being used for tax payers!When all is said and done, we can thank Paul Ryan for this perfect meme to use against him time and time again. Well done, Speaker!Featured Photo by Olivier Douliery\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Britain urgently needs a standstill deal to keep its ties with the European Union unchanged in a post-Brexit transition period, and will probably need an adaptation phase after that for sectors such as financial services, a group of lawmakers said. A transition agreement - which is widely expected to last for two years - must be done with Brussels in a matter of weeks to stop companies from moving more operations away from Britain, the cross-party Treasury Committee said. It is highly likely that, for certain sectors, including financial services, the standstill transition period will have to be followed by an adaptation period, the committee said on Thursday in a report, summing up its work so far on Brexit. Many companies are drawing up contingency plans ahead of Britain leaving the EU in March 2019, given the lack of clarity about their future access to the bloc which accounts for nearly half of Britain s exports. Banks have previously said they want a deal to bridge the period between the end of a Brexit transition phase and the start of Britain s new, permanent relationship with the EU in order to phase in changes to the way they operate. At this stage, the committee makes no recommendations about the design or duration of this subsequent period, except that, unlike the standstill period, it need not involve the UK applying the existing framework of EU rules across all sectors, the committee said. Prime Minister Theresa May last week secured a deal with Brussels that will pave the way for talks on a transition deal and for negotiations about the future permanent UK-EU trade relationship after Brexit. Nicky Morgan, a lawmaker from May s Conservative Party who chairs the Treasury Committee, said time was of the essence and London should accept EU terms for a transition deal, including temporarily remaining subject to the European Court of Justice. Delays to agreements caused by arguments over arcane points of principle could damage the economy, Morgan said. The government should be prepared to accept the terms on which transition is offered by the EU-27. Some Brexit supporters have said Britain must no longer be bound by ECJ rulings after Brexit. But under last week s initial divorce deal, Britain will enable its judges to ask the court to weigh in on issues affecting EU citizens for eight years. The committee also warned the government against assuming that last-minute deals would be reached to avoid disruption in areas such as aviation. The history of international trade diplomacy is replete with examples of short-sighted political considerations prevailing over economic self-interest, it said. And the conclusion of such agreements may come too late for firms that are intending to activate their contingency plans in the first quarter of 2018.","label":0}
{"text":"The left is really great at eating its own. Feminists think Starbucks has a special drink that s racist and they re going after the coffee house because of it. No, we didn t make this up. Just listen to Tucker Carlson s dismay at how ridiculous this is:WEIRDEST CLAIM EVER: PUMPKIN SPICE LATTE = WHITE SUPREMACY: Pumpkin spice just doesn t taste as good when you add a shot of racism, a feminist leader explained as the fall flavor began to pop up in coffee shops around the country. This is a shockingly weird claim, but it shouldn t be surprising.In an editorial published last month, we wrote about the Left s effort to broaden the boundaries of concepts such as white supremacy and racism in a way that impugns the conduct of well-meaning people. Now, a feminist nonprofit is running a campaign to convince festive imbibers of Pumpkin Spice Lattes they re unknowingly boosting the cause of white supremacy.The co-founder of UltraViolet issued the shot of racism statement Sept. 6. I knew Starbucks had a secret menu, but the baristas must really be keeping these racism shots on the down low.A social media post from the group informed readers: That favorite fall drink of yours is funding rent payments to white supremacy. Given the severity of the campaign s language, one may assume profits from sales of Starbucks beloved PSLs are being surreptitiously redirected to the Klan or neo-Nazi groups. In fact, UltraViolet s actual complaint is that a couple of Starbucks 24,000 locations happen to be in properties owned by the Trump Organization.According to UltraViolet s logic, by patronizing any of Starbucks thousands of stores, average consumers of the signature fall beverage are directly boosting the cause of white supremacy. How increased latte profits to the Trump Organization (not even the White House) impact the president s policies on racial matters is left unclear.","label":1}
{"text":"Why Trump Won and Why Clinton Lost Hillary Clinton's stunning defeat reflected a gross misjudgment by the Democratic Party about the depth of populist anger against self-serving elites who have treated much of the country with disdain By Robert Parry November 10, 2016 \" Information Clearing House \" - \" Consortium News \" - In the end, Hillary Clinton became the face of a corrupt, arrogant and out-of-touch Establishment, while Donald Trump emerged as an almost perfectly imperfect vessel for a populist fury that had bubbled beneath the surface of America. There is clearly much to fear from a Trump presidency, especially coupled with continued Republican control of Congress. Trump and many Republicans have denied the reality of climate change; they favor more tax cuts for the rich; they want to deregulate Wall Street and other powerful industries \u2013 all policies that helped create the current mess that the United States and much of the world are now in. Further, Trump's personality is problematic to say the least. He lacks the knowledge and the temperament that one would like to see in a President \u2013 or even in a much less powerful public official. He appealed to racism, misogyny, white supremacy, bigotry toward immigrants and prejudice toward Muslims. He favors torture and wants a giant wall built across America's southern border. But American voters chose him in part because they felt they needed a blunt instrument to smash the Establishment that has ruled and mis-ruled America for at least the past several decades. It is an Establishment that not only has grabbed for itself almost all the new wealth that the country has produced but has casually sent the U.S. military into wars of choice, as if the lives of working-class soldiers are of little value. On foreign policy, the Establishment had turned decision-making over to the neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks, a collection of haughty elitists who often subordinated American interests to those of Israel and Saudi Arabia, for political or financial advantage. The war choices of the neocon\/liberal-hawk coalition have been disastrous \u2013 from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya to Syria to Ukraine \u2013 yet this collection of know-it-alls never experiences accountability. The same people, including the media's armchair warriors and the think-tank \"scholars,\" bounce from one catastrophe to the next with no consequences for their fallacious \"group thinks.\" Most recently, they have ginned up a new costly and dangerous Cold War with Russia. For all his faults, Trump was one of the few major public figures who dared challenge the \"group thinks\" on the current hot spots of Syria and Russia. In response, Clinton and many Democrats chose to engage in a crude McCarthyism with Clinton even baiting Trump as Vladimir Putin's \"puppet\" during the final presidential debate. It is somewhat remarkable that those tactics failed; that Trump talked about cooperation with Russia, rather than confrontation, and won. Trump's victory could mean that rather than escalating the New Cold War with Russia, there is the possibility of a ratcheting down of tensions. Repudiating the Neocons Thus, Trump's victory marks a repudiation of the neocon\/liberal-hawk orthodoxy because the New Cold War was largely incubated in neocon\/liberal-hawk think tanks, brought to life by likeminded officials in the U.S. State Department, and nourished by propaganda across the mainstream Western media. It was the West, not Russia, that provoked the confrontation over Ukraine by helping to install a fiercely anti-Russian regime on Russia's borders. I know the mainstream Western media framed the story as \"Russian aggression\" but that was always a gross distortion. There were peaceful ways for settling the internal differences inside Ukraine without violating the democratic process, but U.S. neocons, such as Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and wealthy neoliberals, such as financial speculator George Soros, pushed for a putsch that overthrew the elected President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Putin's response, including his acceptance of Crimea's overwhelming referendum to return to Russia and his support for ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine opposing the coup regime in Kiev, was a reaction to the West's destabilizing and violent actions. Putin was not the instigator of the troubles. Similarly, in Syria, the West's \"regime change\" strategy, which dates back to neocon planning in the mid-1990s, involved collaboration with Al Qaeda and other Islamic jihadists to remove the secular government of Bashar al-Assad. Again, Official Washington and the mainstream media portrayed the conflict as all Assad's fault, but that wasn't the full picture. From the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, U.S. \"allies,\" including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel, have been aiding the rebellion, with Turkey and the Gulf states funneling money and weapons to Al Qaeda's Nusra Front and even to the Al Qaeda spinoff, Islamic State. Though President Barack Obama dragged his heels on the direct intervention advocated by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Obama eventually went in halfway, bending to political pressure by agreeing to train and arm so-called \"moderates\" who ended up fighting next to Al Qaeda's Nusra Front and other jihadists in Ahrar al-Sham. Trump has been inarticulate and imprecise in describing what policies he would follow in Syria, besides suggesting that he would cooperate with the Russians in destroying Islamic State. But Trump didn't seem to understand the role of Al Qaeda in controlling east Aleppo and other Syrian territory. Uncharted Territory So, the American voters have plunged the United States and the world into uncharted territory behind a President-elect who lacks a depth of knowledge on a wide variety of issues. Who will guide a President Trump becomes the most pressing issue today. Will he rely on traditional Republicans who have done so much to mess up the country and the world or will he find some fresh-thinking realists who will realign policy with core American interests and values. For this dangerous and uncertain moment, the Democratic Party establishment deserves a large share of the blame. Despite signs that 2016 would be a year for an anti-Establishment candidate \u2013 possibly someone like Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Sen. Bernie Sanders \u2013 the Democratic leadership decided that it was \"Hillary's turn.\" Alternatives like Warren were discouraged from running so there could be a Clinton \"coronation.\" That left the 74-year-old socialist from Vermont as the only obstacle to Clinton's nomination and it turned out that Sanders was a formidable challenger. But his candidacy was ultimately blocked by Democratic insiders, including the unelected \"super-delegates\" who gave Clinton an early and seemingly insurmountable lead. With blinders firmly in place, the Democrats yoked themselves to Clinton's gilded carriage and tried to pull it all the way to the White House. But they ignored the fact that many Americans came to see Clinton as the personification of all that is wrong about the insular and corrupt world of Official Washington. And that has given us President-elect Trump. Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com . \u0160 2016 Consortium News","label":1}
{"text":"Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testified today in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee. When asked if the rank and file employees of the law enforcement agency, he said, Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the F.B.I. and still does to this day. The vast majority of F.B.I. employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey, McCabe went on to say, It has been the greatest privilege and honor of my professional life to have worked with him. When asked about the current investigation into any ties between the Trump campaign, McCabe said that the agency considers this investigation to be very important and serious. As to what impact Comey s firing will have on the investigation, he said, The work of the men and women of the FBI continues despite any changes in circumstances, he said in response to a question from Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida. There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date. Simply put, you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing. Given what the White House has said this week, both areas are important. Yesterday, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the press that the reason Comey was fired was because, among other things, that he had lost the confidence of the agents there. One reason many believe President Trump fired Comey, and no one believes anyone but Trump made this decision, because he thought it might slow down the investigation. It now appears neither of those ideas are true.","label":1}
{"text":"Raymond Smullyan, whose merry, agile mind led him to be a musician, a magician, a mathematician and, most cunningly, a logician, died on Monday in Hudson, N. Y. He was 97. His death was confirmed by Deborah Smullyan, a cousin. Professor Smullyan was a serious mathematician, with the publications and the doctorate to prove it. But his greatest legacy may be the devilishly clever logic puzzles that he devised, presenting them in numerous books or just in casual conversation. Sometimes they were and sometimes they were embedded in longer narratives to explain mathematical concepts, such as Boolean logic, as he did in \"The Magic Garden of George B and Other Logic Puzzles\" in 2015 or retrograde analysis, as he explored in the \"The Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Knights\" in 1981. He was also a character. With his long white hair and beard, Professor Smullyan resembled Ian McKellen's wizard, Gandalf, from the \"Lord of the Rings\" film series. He was lanky, hated exercise and loved steak and eggs. He studied Eastern religion. He told corny jokes and performed magic to anyone near him. He played the piano with passion and talent into his 90s. (A career in music had been derailed by tendinitis when he was a young man.) And he was fond of his philosophical, if silly, sayings, such as, \"Why should I worry about dying? It's not going to happen in my lifetime!\" Melvin Fitting, a retired professor of mathematics, philosophy and computer science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, recalled Professor Smullyan's demeanor as his teacher at Yeshiva University in the 1960s while Professor Fitting was pursuing his doctorate. \"He'd be smiling in anticipation of the many beautiful things he was going to show you,\" the professor said in an interview. Professor Smullyan saw beauty in the puzzles that he created, seemingly nonstop, over the decades, and viewed them as tools to spread the gospel of mathematics. In his 1982 book \"The Lady or the Tiger? And Other Logic Puzzles,\" he wrote about the greater popularity that Euclid's \"Elements\" would have achieved had the Greek mathematician framed it as a puzzle book. He wrote: \"Problem: Given a triangle with two equal sides, are two of the angles necessarily equal? Why, or why not?\" His puzzles were so much a part of his identity that he posed one on his first date with his future wife, Blanche de Grab. What he posed to her was a statement that, in the way he framed it, could only result in a kiss from her. Reminiscing about it, he wrote that it was a \"pretty sneaky way of winning a kiss, wasn't it?\" Jason Rosenhouse, a mathematics professor at James Madison University, who edited a book in 2015 celebrating Mr. Smullyan, said the clarity of his puzzles could unveil the beauty of math to those who could not previously grasp it. \"It was like fooling a kid into eating his vegetables,\" Professor Rosenhouse said in a telephone interview, adding, \"Raymond took something like G\u00f6del's incompleteness theorems and used a string of logic puzzles as a device for presenting them. \" Martin Gardner, himself a renowned math puzzler, compared Professor Smullyan to the Oxford logician Charles Dodgson, who also was an author better known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll. Professor Smullyan paid tribute to Carroll in his 1982 book \"Alice in : A Carrollian Tale for Children Under Eighty. \" In one chapter, Professor Smullyan wrote, Alice thinks to herself about how confusing, yet remarkably logical, Humpty Dumpty is. \"I wonder,\" she says, \"how he manages to be both confusing and logical?\" There was, it would seem, some confusing logic in the zigzagging path of Mr. Smullyan's life. Raymond Merrill Smullyan was born in Far Rockaway, Queens, on May 25, 1919. His father, Isidore, was a businessman his mother, the former Rosina Freeman, a homemaker. His education was peripatetic and eclectic. He attended both Pacific University and Reed College in Oregon, then studied mathematics and logic on his own. He learned magic. He created chess puzzles that were more concerned about moves that had been made than the ones that should be made. He put together a magic act, and performed under the stage name Merrill at nightclubs like the Pump Room in Chicago, where he worked for tips. He went on to get his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a Ph. D. from Princeton. He taught at Princeton, Yeshiva, Lehman College of the City University of New York and Indiana University. His philosophy of teaching was a little puzzling. \"My policy is to teach the student as much as possible and to require from him or her as little as possible,\" he told Donald Albers and Gerald Alexanderson, the authors of \"Mathematical People: Profiles and Interviews\" in 2008. But, he added, the impact of his apparent lenience was that many of his students worked harder in his course than in any other. Professor Smullyan is survived by his stepson, Jack Kotik six and 16 . His wife Blanche, a pianist and music educator, died in 2006. His first marriage ended in divorce. Mr. Kotik recalled being with his wife at the Smullyans' house in Elka Park, N. Y. and listening to a radio report about the high salaries of professional athletes. His mother, Blanche, said they were excessive. Professor Smullyan said that to be paid so much was unfair. \"I said, 'Raymond, isn't it true that you're more intelligent than most people?' \" Mr. Kotik said during a phone interview. \" 'Yes,' he said. So I said, 'I think that's unfair. We should take out part of your brain and distribute it to people who could use it.' \"He was silent for a minute, and finally he said, 'I can't give you any reason, but I wouldn't do it.' \" Puzzles were an essential part of Mr. Smullyan's patois \u2014 a logician's way of greeting and testing people. When he met his most recent editor, Rochelle Kronzek, he asked her to solve some problems. \"It intimidated me at first, but I came up with creative answers,\" Ms. Kronzek, the executive editor of World Scientific Publishing, said in an interview, \"and more than once he smiled because he liked the way I was thinking. He got a lot of joy out of seeing how other people thought. \"","label":0}
{"text":"\u2014 Susan? (@GaetaSusan) October 27, 2016 WikiLeaks: Former State Dept. Official Coordinated with Team Clinton on Uranium One Scandal Pushback One month before former State Department official Jose Fernandez defended then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's decision to sign off on the transfer of 20 percent of U.S. uranium to Russia, Fernandez told John Podesta that he was eager to \"do all I can to support Secretary Clinton,\" according to purported emails uncovered by WikiLeaks. On March 30, 2015 \u2014 weeks before the explosive book Clinton Cash was released, and nearly a month before the New York Times published a 4,000 word story detailing the Uranium One transaction that multiple donors to the Clinton Foundation made millions from \u2014 Jose Fernandez wrote an email to Podesta in hopes that the pair could meet.  On April 17, Fernandez writes to Podesta, again, thanking him for their meeting and said, \"I would like to do all I can to support Secretary Clinton, and would welcome your advice and help in steering me to the right persons in the campaign.\"  http:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/big-government\/2016\/10\/26\/wikileaks-former-state-dept-official-coordinated-with-team-clinton-on-uranium-one-scandal-pushback\/ If The Media Investigated Hillary Like They Did Watergate, We Wouldn't Need WikiLeaks Today, mainstream publications have become willing accomplices in suppressing the same type of information they worked so tenaciously to expose all those years ago.  It has now been more than four decades since the Washington Post and New York Times led the charge to bring down Richard Nixon and his administration's massive web of corruption and political subterfuge schemes. They did so by aggressively and tirelessly seeking out the truth, and reporting back to the American people clearly and comprehensively.  Today, both publications have become willing accomplices in suppressing the same type of information they worked so tenaciously to expose all those years ago. By openly and unapologetically acting as institutional surrogates for the Clinton campaign, these same institutions, and nearly every other mainstream media outlet in America, have gone hands-off in exposing what may very well turn out to be the most explosive and damaging corruption scandal in American politics since \"Tricky Dick\" was reelected back in '72.  Not by coincidence, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have stepped in to fill the void. And boy, are the \"truth seekers\" mad about that! My, How Times Have Changed  On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking and entering the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, both reporters for the Washington Post at the time, unflinchingly pursued the complete truth behind the break-in. Little did they know that summer how vast was the network of lies and corruption their investigation would eventually uncover.  The editors at the Post initially put the story on the back burner, while the Nixon administration deftly stonewalled the reporters' probes. By September, though, the Post and New York Times were fully on board with the investigation, and the administration had gone into full cover-up mode. Even though the FBI had confirmed that the administration had conducted a political sabotage conspiracy, it was not enough to keep Nixon from being reelected in a landslide in November. But the die was cast. The American press made it clear this story would not end until all the facts were in and Nixon and his henchmen were fully exposed.  Fast-forward to 2016. We are now two weeks away from the general election, and once again a potentially devastating story appears to be developing, related to a web of corruption and deceit that could eventually rival the Watergate scandal. Just like 1972, the Post and the Times are fully engaged. Except this time, the \"two lions of journalism\" have little interest in covering the avalanche of revelations pouring forth against the Clinton campaign. Instead, both publications are working around the clock to bring the Democratic nominee to power. That's not all. Nearly every other mainstream media outlet in the country has jumped on the bandwagon.  It would be incorrect to think that until now the mainstream media has been a relatively objective source for news. This has been going on for a long time. Few could argue that back in the '70s, editors Ben Bradlee at the Post and Abe Rosenthal at the Times were not absolutely salivating at the chance to bring Nixon down. But they achieved this objective in relentless pursuit of the facts, not the willing suppression of the same.  One would think, given the self-inflicted meltdown the Donald Trump camp finds itself in right now, the media might at least feign some level of balanced reporting, but they've made it very clear they're not taking any chances. They're going to keep digging dirt on Trump, and they're going to continue to minimize, to the best of their ability, a story that may well have historic and damaging implications, both for the nation as a whole and our entire political system moving forward.  Although this may prove to be a very successful political tactic for this year's presidential election, it is likely to forever damage the reputation of mainstream American journalism, and it most certainly will continue to encourage the American public to look elsewhere for the unvarnished truth. President Obama's brother calls for @POTUS to pardon Assange https:\/\/t.co\/BjtaY2wrJ1  Assange & Kenya, background: https:\/\/t.co\/BQ8EqCXTqD","label":1}
{"text":"Republicans are hypocrites.And Ohio state GOP Rep. Wes Goodman proved it this week after he got caught having an affair with a man.Normally, having an affair with a man would not be a big deal. After all, same-sex marriage is legal and relationships with men is no longer the scandal it once was. But Goodman is a conservative Christian Republican who is married to a woman, so his affair with a member of the same sex is absolutely scandalous.So scandalous, in fact, that Goodman resigned from his post on Wednesday. We all bring our own struggles and our own trials into public life, Goodman said in a statement. That has been true for me, and I sincerely regret that my actions and choices have kept me from serving my constituents and our state in a way that reflects the best ideals of public service. For those whom I have let down, I m sorry. As I move onto the next chapter of my life, I sincerely ask for privacy for myself, my family, and my friends. Sorry, Mr. Goodman. But you don t get privacy nor can you expect to not be mercilessly mocked.Goodman preached family values and thinks same-sex marriage should be illegal and that gay people should be punished for being gay. He even bragged about being committed to natural marriage on his own campaign website.Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger accepted Goodman s resignation after he confirmed the allegations during a meeting. I was alerted to details yesterday afternoon regarding his involvement in inappropriate behavior related to his state office, Rosenburger said. I met with him later in the day where he acknowledged and confirmed the allegations. It became clear that his resignation was the most appropriate course of action for him, his family, the constituents of the 87th House District and this institution. Frankly, affairs like this shouldn t matter as long as the relations were consensual. But the fact that Goodman was fiercely anti-gay and carried on the affair in his taxpayer funded office makes it newsworthy and even more explosive.Here s a report on the story via YouTube.Featured Image: Screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"A ruling by Massachusetts' top court could influence other state courts to rule that police cannot detain illegal immigrants solely to give federal authorities time to take them into custody, state Attorney General Maura Healey said on Wednesday. Healey, a Democrat who has been part of a loose coalition of state officials mounting court challenges to President Donald Trump's administration, said the Monday ruling on civil immigration detainer requests, the first to cover a full state, showed the power of state-level challenges. \"We may see in other courts efforts to draw from that,\" Healey said in a interview in her office. \"In this age of some really adverse actions and a lot of fear-mongering, frankly, by Donald Trump and (U.S. Attorney General) Jeff Sessions and others, it is important to make clear what the law here is and that no one is above the law.\" The Trump administration has stepped up immigration enforcement, threatening to deport the estimated 12 million people who have entered the country illegally, contending they raise crime rates and drain government resources. The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has asked local police and courts to hold illegal immigrants who enter the justice system for up to 48 hours after their cases conclude to allow them to be taken into custody. Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court ruled that because the detainer requests are civil, rather than criminal, the detentions amount to unconstitutional arrests. ICE said it was determining what next steps it might take after the ruling, saying it \"weakens local law enforcement agencies' ability to protect their communities.\" Healey said her office is preparing instructions for court officials and local law enforcement on responding to the detainer requests. She dismissed the idea that the decision endangered public safety, saying the state continues to hold illegal immigrants who are wanted for criminal proceedings. Keeping up federal focus on the issue, Sessions said on Tuesday the Justice Department would block federal grants to sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with immigration agents, including detainer requests. Healey said the move would not change state policy. \"It's wrong, it's unlawful and we'll see them in court if they intend to proceed on this front,\" she said. \"This reflects a callous disregard for the rule of law and for governance and for what it takes to run our cities our states and indeed our country.\"","label":0}
{"text":"English patriotism is on the rise, with increasing numbers of people identifying as predominantly English rather than British, a survey has found. [According to the recent YouGov poll, nearly of those questioned described themselves as English instead of British \u2014 a rise of 5 per cent on 2015 figures. Last year, just 18 per cent of those surveyed said they felt only British or more British than English, but 35 per cent said they were English not British or more English than British. The number of people saying they feel equally English and British rose from 35 to 38 per cent between 2015 and 2016. Numerous polls during and after the European Union (EU) referendum showed that those who felt mostly English were more likely to vote for Brexit. Speaking to The Telegraph shortly after his election, UKIP leader Paul Nuttall described how he aimed to appeal to this renewed sense of Englishness, particularly following the devolution of other UK nations. \"The next big issue that's going to come up in British politics beyond Brexit is Englishness,\" he said. Adding: \"There is a value that unites that vast majority of British people away from the small metropolitan clique, and that value is patriotism. \" The former Labour cabinet minister John Denham, who now heads the University of Winchester's Centre for English Identity and Politics, led the study. He said he found a growing correlation between identity and political behaviour. \"Voters who most strongly identify as English are much more likely to reject Labour as a party and key Labour messages, like support for the EU,\" Mr. Dunham explained. \"Without a change in Labour's appeal, rising English identity may make attracting key groups of voters even harder. \" On Tuesday, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn attempted to appeal to patriotism, claiming he was not \"wedded\" to the principle of EU free movement. However, he refused to say he would limit numbers and insisted that current levels of migration were not too high. His only solution was to say that labour reforms would \"probably\" reduce the incentive to come to the UK.","label":0}
{"text":"When Sofia Richie chopped her hair and visited a doctor's office recently, Us Weekly was there. Not to be outdone, People heralded Mindy McKnight as \"the voice for millennial moms. \" And In Touch offered an \"adorable\" picture of Sarah Wright Olsen's infant napping next to a plush rabbit. Meet the striving celebrity underclass that has risen to dominate the gossip machine. Aspiring models, reality show stars, actors, YouTube vloggers and viral news subjects can now all curry coverage just by replenishing their social media accounts with photos of their babies, their butts or both. These are people you've probably never heard of \u2014 or have a nagging suspicion you might have, but don't quite know why. For the record, Ms. Richie is a teenager best known for appearing on Justin Bieber's Instagram account (not to mention being Lionel Richie's daughter). Ms. McKnight films hair tutorials on YouTube. And because In Touch didn't bother to explain who Ms. Wright Olsen even is, I Googled it. Turns out that after a supporting role on the NBC sitcom \"Marry Me,\" she now runs a parenting blog. These have crept onto our radar through our supermarket tabloids and Facebook news feeds, and a crop of publications has emerged to cover them, whether sincerely or satirically. The relentless Instagram gossip outpost The Shade Room airs their dirty laundry, the deliciously absurd podcast \"Who? Weekly\" pokes fun at their claims to fame, and Time Inc. 's shiny new digital celebrity site, Instant. me, hopes to build on their brands. It used to be that the only way a person could land in the pages of the glossy celebrity magazines was to lose 100 pounds, serve as some heartwarming testimony to American values, or be murdered. But in the early aughts, the magazines started diversifying their coverage of Hollywood's leading Jens and Bens with stories on the romantic dupes and plastic surgery nightmares of reality television. Now, as the rise of social media demolishes the leverage that celebrity tabloids once had over their most famous subjects, the gossip industry keeps defining celebrity downward. (After all, no magazine can match the reach of Taylor Swift's more than 90 million Instagram fans or Kim Kardashian West's 47 million Twitter followers.) When Ms. Kardashian West first rose to prominence, commentators sneered that she was \"famous for nothing. \" The accusation seems quaint now: Tabloids have moved on from covering reality television stars like Ms. Kardashian West to following reality TV supporting characters, former reality TV stars, friends and exes of former reality TV stars \u2014 even people who post their own family dramas straight to YouTube. These days, gossip sites are also fueled by figures largely famous for doing nothing much. Jeremy Meeks, whose image went viral when Twitter swooned for his hot mug shot, has popped up on the websites of Us Weekly and People since his release from prison earlier this year. Instagram models like Ms. Richie, Sahara Ray and Bronte Blampied can milk months of coverage out of a couple of shots of themselves posing with Mr. Bieber. And Refinery29 recently ran a spread on the \"Gucci Gang,\" a group of four stylish Parisian girls whose central accomplishment is attracting a combined 50, 000 Instagram followers. As the de facto crew leader, Angelina Woreth, put it, \"It's easy to hate us, actually, because we are not doing something, we're not really doing anything. \" Across the web, a new gossip press further enables these lesser celebrity castes. Drama generated by the young stars of YouTube, Vine and Musical. ly churns through nimble aggregation centers like Superfame and Trending All Day. The freewheeling Guru Gossip forum cuts through the glittery facade of online beauty gurus, while Get Off My Internets deflates the egos of the set. And The Shade Room, a gossip site focusing on black celebrities, pulls in 6. 1 million Instagram followers. While it posts plenty of news on known quantities (Beyonc\u00e9, Drake, Kevin Durant) it recognizes that some of the juiciest material comes from the smaller players (Tameka Harris, Karlie Redd, Keke Wyatt) who keep their names circulating on Twitter by spilling their guts on Instagram. Then there is \"Who? Weekly,\" the cutting podcast in which the hosts, Lindsey Weber and Bobby Finger, guide listeners through celebrity's confounding new frontier. The podcast's name derives from the typical reaction of a layperson to reading a noncelebrity's name in the news. As the hosts explained in a handy primer published in July, \"the subjects of gossip coverage can be divided into two categories: Whos (as in: *furrows brow* Who?) and Thems (as in: 'Oh, them. ')\" On a recent episode, they take on Brittany Farrar, the of Aaron Rodgers's little brother, Jordan Rodgers (who is now dating the \"Bachelorette\" star JoJo Fletcher) who recently accused Jordan of cheating in a series of Instagram posts. \"Why are we still hearing about her?\" Ms. Weber asked. Mr. Finger replied: \"Because she wants us \u2014 she did her due diligence in making sure we talked about her. \" And just like that: A Who was born. Legacy media companies are dancing as fast as they can to keep up. In May, Time Inc. debuted Instant. me, dedicated to covering the foot soldiers of social media. Instant sells its subjects \u2014 a constellation of YouTube creators, Snapchat fitness models and pets \u2014 as \"The New Famous. \" It's illustrated with a Tumblr aesthetic (dancing pizzas, glimmering diamonds, waving koalas) and littered with emoji. The institutional voice is synergetic like: \"We're hungryyyyyy and these slow cooker chicken tamales from Cooking Light sound amazinggggg. \" (Cooking Light is a Time Inc. property.) The site is sponsored exclusively by Degree, and every few minutes, Instant. me's social stars jump eagerly into a deodorant ad. Instant's prerogative is to constantly surface social faces (the recurring segment \"Who to Follow\" offers dossiers on emerging talents) while inspiring Instant viewers to join their ranks (\"Just the Tip,\" another segment, gives advice on how to build your own social fandom). A can watch Instant. me for hours without seeing a recognizable name, and that's kind of the point. \"The goal with Instant is for my grandmother to be able to go onto the site and enjoy herself and get caught up,\" Kirstin Benson, Instant's editorial director, told Adweek in July. Time Inc. has started a kind of publication on the just as the internet has atomized celebrity into a zillion tiny fandoms. Few people are typically energized by the generic category of \"social media figure. \" They get their kicks by closely following a select few of their favorite stars, the stars' friends and family, and a network of (often infighting) fans. The obsessive monitoring of all these channels drums up sufficient drama to create an enduring story line, even if only a few thousand people can manage to follow along. Plus, the setup provides fans the illusion of power in determining which Whos become Thems (Blac Chyna, a rap video vixen engaged to Rob Kardashian, is on her way toward recognition) and which seem destined to fade into permanent obscurity (I'm sorry, Sarah Wright Olsen). But these modern fandoms produce grist for too. There's something deliciously surreal about monitoring the online movements of the barely famous, a class of people who are just unpolished, desperate and savvy enough to act mad, sloppy and sexy. The fact that publications like People and Us Weekly are covering it with a straight face adds another absurd layer. Besides, these people are assaulting our social feeds every day whether we like it or not. Outlets like The Shade Room and \"Who? Weekly\" have managed to extract bits of hilarity, delight and shame out of that arid media landscape. They have intuited what the traditional tabloids don't quite get: The pursuit of celebrity has emerged as a grand tabloid narrative in and of itself.","label":0}
{"text":"Britain s main opposition Labour Party said on Tuesday it could not vote for the government s legislation to sever ties with the European Union unless it was amended to prevent ministers from grabbing powers from parliament. Parliament will begin debating the EU withdrawal bill on Thursday and there will be a vote on Monday, testing Prime Minister Theresa May s deal to shore up her majority with the support of a small Northern Irish party. Labour fully respects the democratic decision to leave the European Union ... and backs a jobs-first Brexit with full tariff-free access to the European single market, Labour said in a statement. But as democrats we cannot vote for a bill that unamended would let government ministers grab powers from parliament to slash people s rights at work and reduce protection for consumers and the environment.","label":0}
{"text":"The Kurdish Regional Government s proposal to freeze its push for independence is an important step but does not go far enough, Turkey s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Thursday. Cavusoglu was speaking a day after Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who visited Ankara on Wednesday, insisted that last month s Kurdish independence referendum be declared void.","label":0}
{"text":"What could Hastert have done so wrong to have to pay someone from his past $3.5 million? He was a teacher and a wrestling coach before he go involved in politics so my question is who was extorting money from him? WE HAVE AN UPDATE ON THIS STORY:Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert paid a man to conceal sexual misconduct while the man was a student at the high school where Hastert taught, a federal law enforcement official told NBC News on Friday.The official spoke on condition of anonymity. Tribune newspapers reported earlier in the day that two unnamed federal officials said that Hastert paid a man from his past to conceal sexual misconduct.YORKVILLE, Ill. J. Dennis Hastert, the longest-serving Republican speaker in the history of the U.S. House, was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges that he violated banking laws in a bid to pay $3.5 million to an unnamed person to cover up past misconduct. Hastert, 73, who has been a high-paid lobbyist in Washington since his 2007 retirement from Congress, schemed to mask more than $950,000 in withdrawals from various ac counts in violation of federal banking laws that require the disclosure of large cash transactions, according to a seven-page indictment delivered by a grand jury in Chicago.The indictment did not spell out the exact nature of the prior misconduct by Hastert, but it noted that before entering state and federal politics in 1981, Has tert served for more than a decade as a teacher and wrestling coach at Yorkville High School in Illinois.In 2010, confronted about the prior misconduct, the former speaker agreed to pay $3.5 million to the person to compensate for and conceal his prior misconduct against Individual A, prosecutors alleged.That person, whose identity was shielded by prosecutors, has known Hastert most of his or her life, growing up in Yorkville, the city next to Hastert s home town of Plano, in the exurbs west of Chicago. Prosecutors said the actions occurred years earlier than the 2010 meeting that sparked the payments.","label":1}
{"text":"KIEV IN PANIC: Tymoshenko declares Third Maidan, emergency govt committee prepares martial law November 14, 2016 - Fort Russ News - RusVesna - translated by J. Arnoldski - Ukrainian law enforcement and security agencies are preparing for possible protest actions in the country. A headquarters for responding to a surge of protest activities has been established at the base of the National Security and Defense Committee of Ukraine. This has been confirmed by Ukrainian journalists close to the headquarter's structures. Among the planned measures is a crackdown on protest actions and the introduction of martial law in Kiev if the situation deteriorates to armed confrontation. The headquarters is headed by the national security committee's secretary, Alexander Turchynov. According to insider sources, the special structure also includes Defense Minister Arsen Avakov, General Prosecutor Yuri Lutsenko, Chief of General Staff Viktor Muzhenko, SBU and intelligence representatives, and also people's deputy Sergey Pashinsky. The first meeting of the headquarters took place on Sunday at the presidential administration. Several resolutions were adopted. The police have been ordered not to allow vehicles transporting protesters into the capital. Kiev authorities and law enforcement have been ordered to by all means prevent equipment and tents from being set up on the Maidan. The municipality is supposed to seek a court ban on holding mass actions in the center of the capital in order to enact this. MP's from the coalition factions in parliament (the Petro Poroshenko Bloc and People's Front) have been suggested to organize private security detachments out of athletes and staff to help security forces disperse actions if necessary. Intelligence services and the SBU have been tasked with investigating evidence of a \"Russian trace\" in the planned protests. They have also been instructed to look into shutting down TV channels and blocking internet sites. If all of these measures do not have the desired effect and protests are held on a large scale with the blockade of administrative buildings, then security forces could receive the order to disperse protests and arrest their leaders. Detachments of the National Guard, Armed Forces, and SBU special forces have been proposed to carry out such operations. At the headquarters meeting, the National Security and Defense Committee of Ukraine was instructed to prepare draft legislation on the imposition of martial law and a curfew in Kiev, sources have reported. The most likely pretext for protests will be the so-called \"shock bills\", according to which as of October new prices are to be introduced for heating. Earlier, the Cabinet of Ministers raised them by 75-90%. Now, heating a two-bedroom apartment costs approximately 1,500 hryvnia, while the average salary is in the range of only 5,000 hryvnia. Earlier, authorities also raised the prices for electricity, gas, and cold water. Videos taken by locals have captured columns of military vehicles moving in the direction of Kiev. **** Novorossiya - translated by J. Arnoldski - Yulia Tymoshenko has urged Ukrainians to take to the streets on November 15th for an indefinite protest action in the center of Kiev. She stated this on Monday, November 14th, during a speech in the Verkhovna Rada. According to Tymoshenko, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the National Bank have become a bastion of corruption and the head of state has appointed his business partners to key positions in the country. \"Today only the people can restore justice and put the government in its place. Tomorrow morning, citizens, including pensioners, will go out for an indefinite protest against the devaluation of the hryvnia, the increase in utility costs, and for returning their bank deposits,\" she announced. Tymoshenko also added that the government is calling protesters \"the hand of the Kremlin\", while in fact \"people are just fed up.\" \"Officials hide behind the war, but they themselves are corrupting and robbing the country. Either the people will unite or the government will simply destroy the Ukrainian nation and Ukrainian state,\" she emphasized. Information that Tymoshenko was preparing a new Maidan appeared as early as late September. It was reported that public organizations with links to her had purchased from 300 to 500 tents for use in mass actions. Tymoshenko recently stated that even Western Ukraine is starting to think positively about the country's former president, Viktor Yanukovych. \"If they think so in Galicia, then you can only imagine what thoughts people from other regions are having,\" she warned. Follow us on Facebook!","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President-elect Donald Trump held meetings in New York on Monday as he worked to fill administration positions ahead of his inauguration on Jan. 20. Below are people mentioned as contenders for senior roles. See end of list for posts already filled. * Steven Mnuchin, former Goldman Sachs Group Inc executive and Trump's campaign finance chairman * Jeb Hensarling, U.S. representative from Texas and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee * Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive officer * Tom Barrack, founder and chairman of Colony Capital Inc * Jonathan Gray, global head of real estate at the Blackstone Group * Mitt Romney, 2012 presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor * Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City * Nikki Haley, governor of South Carolina * John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush * Bob Corker, U.S. senator from Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee * Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq * James Mattis, retired Marine general * David Petraeus, former CIA director and retired general * Tom Cotton, U.S. senator from Arkansas * Jon Kyl, former U.S. senator from Arizona * Duncan Hunter, U.S. representative from California and early Trump supporter, member of the House Armed Services Committee * Jim Talent, former U.S. senator from Missouri who was on the Senate Armed Services Committee * Kelly Ayotte, outgoing U.S. senator from New Hampshire and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee * Rick Perry, former Texas governor * Tom Price, U.S. representative from Georgia who is an orthopedic surgeon * Rick Scott, Florida governor * Rich Bagger, former pharmaceutical executive and former top aide to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie * Bobby Jindal, former Louisiana governor * Michael McCaul, U.S. representative from Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee * David Clarke, Milwaukee county sheriff and vocal Trump supporter * Joe Arpaio, outgoing Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff who campaigned for Trump * Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state * Jeff Holmstead, energy lawyer, former EPA official during George W. Bush administration * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas attorney general * Carol Comer, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management * Harold Hamm, Oklahoma oil and gas mogul, chief executive of Continental Resources Inc * Kevin Cramer, U.S. Representative from North Dakota * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Larry Nichols, co-founder of Devon Energy Corp * James Connaughton, chief executive of Nautilus Data Technologies and a former environmental adviser to President George W. Bush * Rick Perry, former Texas governor * Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee * Jan Brewer, former Arizona governor * Forrest Lucas, founder of oil products company Lucas Oil * Harold Hamm, Oklahoma oil and gas mogul, chief executive of Continental Resources Inc * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Mary Fallin, Oklahoma governor * Ray Washburne, chief executive of investment company Charter Holdings * Wilbur Ross, billionaire investor, chairman of Invesco Ltd subsidiary WL Ross & Co * Linda McMahon, former World Wrestling Entertainment executive and two-time Senate candidate * Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency * Ronald Burgess, retired lieutenant general and former Defense Intelligence Agency chief * Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency * Pete Hoekstra, former U.S. representative from Michigan * Kelly Ayotte, outgoing U.S. senator from New Hampshire and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee * Richard Grenell, former spokesman for the United States at the United Nations * Peter King, U.S. representative from New York * Tulsi Gabbard, a war veteran and Democratic U.S. representative from Hawaii * Dan DiMicco, former chief executive of steel producer Nucor Corp * Andrew Puzder, chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants * Victoria Lipnic, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission commissioner and former Labor Department official during the George W. Bush administration The Trump transition team confirmed he would choose from a list of 21 names he drew up during his campaign, including U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, and William Pryor, a federal judge with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. * Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus * Steve Bannon, former head of the conservative website Breitbart News * Jeff Sessions, Republican U.S. senator from Alabama and senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (subject to Senate confirmation) * Republican U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo from Kansas (subject to Senate confirmation) * Michael Flynn, retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency","label":0}
{"text":"A Maricopa Country judge has finally stood up to the vile, crooked, racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio and charged him along with three of his top cronies with being in contempt. His crime? He hasn t stopped his illegal and unconstitutional racial profiling of Hispanics.Thanks to that darn liberal activist group the ACLU, Arpaio will be in hot water if he continues to practice his clearly racist policies.Judge G. Murray Snow, after a lengthy yearlong investigation after the ruling in Ortega Melendres v. Arpaio, concluded that Arpaio was in contempt on one charge while Chief Deputy Jerry Sheridan was found in contempt on two counts, and retired Chief Brian Sands and Lt. Joe Sousa each were found in contempt of one.In the 162-page ruling, Judge Snow wrote:In short, the Court finds that the Defendants have engaged in multiple acts of misconduct, dishonesty, and bad faith with respect to the Plaintiff class and the protection of its rights.The three contempt charges stem from three requests from Judge Snow that Arpaio and his band of thugs refused to comply with:According to ArizonaCentral:Snow found that deputies had detained and turned over to federal authorities at least 157 individuals who had not committed state crimes, in violation of his order.Snow said both Arpaio and Sheridan made numerous misstatements under oath.Not only did Sheriff Joe and his deputies knowingly fail to comply with a court ruling, they openly flaunted it and thought that they were above the law.Now the Department of Justice is getting involved. After slapping down Sheriff Joe last year over his racial profiling, the DOJ will work closely with Snow to implement proper sanctions. Should Snow feel so inclined, he may refer the case to criminal contempt. Perhaps jail time might await the Sheriff? One can only hope.But while we wait for this monstrosity to be put in prison, the people of Arizona are faced with another option: voting him out of office. This is an election year, and Sheriff Joe is running. Every election his support shrinks. In 2000, Arpaio won with 66 percent of the vote. In 2012, he garnered only 51 percent.With Trump on the rise as the GOP s newest face, Hispanic voter registration has spiked all across the southwest, including Arizona something that should scare Arpaio and his cronies to their core. This is what happens when you rule with fear instead of the common good.Now it s 2016, and this man s reign of terror and shame must come to an end. Let the courts deal with him in court, and let s have the voters throw the bum out of office once and for all.","label":1}
{"text":"We took a very hard look at these numbers, and we did find that Minnesota has a very high rate of gun ownership one of the highest in the country but it has a relatively low rate of violent crime, revealed Minneapolis station WCCO reporter Pat Kessler in a segment Thursday.He added that in 2017, Minnesota set a new record for firearms background checks, processing 473,975 checks on permits, 94,383 checks on handguns and 125,516 checks on long guns.Watch:In other words, more people attempted to purchase weapons in the state last year than ever before. Minnesota set another 2017 record, too, his report continued. The State Department of Public Safety reports 283,188 Minnesotans now have permits to legally carry firearms in public. Conservative Tribune","label":1}
{"text":"Republican leaders in the House of Representatives on Wednesday dismissed U.S. President Barack Obama's proposed $10.25 per barrel tax on oil, saying the increase would translate into higher gasoline prices for consumers. \"The president's tax proposal is dead on arrival at the House. It will not happen,\" House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, told reporters. House Speaker Paul Ryan also rejected the idea. The tax, to be phased in over five years, was part of Obama's proposed budget for fiscal year 2017 released on Tuesday.","label":0}
{"text":"Three of the five candidates running for U.S. president - Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders - have said they supported initiatives that would subject the Federal Reserve's policymaking to greater scrutiny or change its policy framework.[L3N16W46S] Here are details of the candidates' views and the two proposed bills: * DONALD TRUMP, the Republican front-runner, tweeted in February, \"It is so important to audit The Federal Reserve\" - a reference to an \"Audit the Fed\" Senate bill that the central bank fiercely opposes. He has said the Fed played a role in stoking asset bubbles and predicted a \"very massive recession.\" A spokeswoman declined to elaborate on Trump's views on Fed independence. Last year, before the Fed raised rates in December, Trump accused the central bank of keeping rates low at the bidding of President Barack Obama, something the White House has denied. \"Janet Yellen is highly political and she's not raising rates for a very specific reason: because Obama told her not,\" Trump told a news conference in November. \"He doesn't want to see a big bubble burst during his administration.\" * TED CRUZ, the No. 2 Republican candidate, supports Fed audits and a commission to consider a monetary rule tied to gold rather than discretion, according to spokeswoman Catherine Frazier. The United States dropped the gold standard in 1933. In a Republican debate in October, Cruz said: \"I think the Fed should get out of the business of trying to juice our economy and simply be focused on sound monetary policy and monetary stability, ideally tied to gold.\" * BERNIE SANDERS, the No. 2 Democratic candidate who as senator backed Audit the Fed, said in an emailed statement that such an annual policy review would help make the Fed \"a more democratic institution that is responsive to the needs of ordinary Americans rather than the billionaires on Wall Street.\" He also opposes Fed payments to banks on excess reserves. In a New York Times column published in December, Sanders wrote: \"To rein in Wall Street, we should begin by reforming the Federal Reserve... The sad reality is that the Federal Reserve doesn't regulate Wall Street; Wall Street regulates the Fed.\" Sanders also criticized the way Fed officials are selected: \"Banking industry executives must no longer be allowed to serve on the Fed's boards and to handpick its members and staff,\" he wrote. \"Board positions should instead include representatives from all walks of life \u2014 including labor, consumers, homeowners, urban residents, farmers and small businesses.\" Today, bankers and heads of business, industry, unions, and community groups and organizations serve as district Fed directors. Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, and the third-place Republican Kasich have not commented publicly on Fed policy independence. * The Federal Reserve Transparency Act, known as \"Audit the Fed\", was introduced by Republican Senator Rand Paul early last year. It would instruct the Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan congressional watchdog agency, to review and evaluate the Fed's monetary policy decisions, repealing a decades-old firewall between the GAO, which now reviews other Fed activities including bank regulation, and policy decisions on interest rates. The bill has struggled to gain Senate support and was referred to a committee. * The Fed Oversight Reform and Modernization Act (FORM), sponsored by Republican Representative Bill Huizenga, passed the House in November. Among other changes to Fed structure and bank supervision, the bill would tie policy decisions to a single \"directive\" rule. An audit could be launched or congressional testimony called if the GAO determined the Fed strayed from the rule. The bill was sent to the Senate and also referred to its banking committee. * GAO Managing Director Orice Williams told Reuters that, were either of the bills to become law, the agency would take a non-partisan approach and hire experts as needed to do the job.","label":0}
{"text":"Bernie Sanders got his sweetest endorsement yet on Monday when one of the founders of Ben & Jerry's unveiled an ice cream flavor for the Democratic presidential hopeful, inviting Sanders' backers to enjoy a spoonful of \"Political Revolution.\" The flavor named \"Bernie's Yearning\" is mint ice cream topped with a solid chocolate disk, to reflect Sanders' campaign theme of economic inequality, according to Ben Cohen, co-founder of Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's. \"The chocolate disc represents the huge majority of economic gains that have gone to the top 1 percent since the end of the recession. Beneath it, the rest of us,\" according to the label, which suggests eaters smash up the chocolate and mix it with the ice cream. \"Nothing is so unstoppable as a flavor whose time has finally come. #FeelTheBern #BerniesYearning,\" Cohen said on both Twitter (@YoBenCohen) and his Facebook page. Cohen launched the flavor on his own using \"Ben's Best\" branding and said it is not an endorsement by Ben & Jerry's, now a unit of Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer products maker. Sanders represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate. Cohen has made just 40 pints of the new ice cream and is giving 25 of them to the Sanders campaign, he said on social media. The rest will be awarded in a drawing among those who register at www.berniesyearning.com by Feb. 3. Sanders is polling strongly in Iowa and New Hampshire against rival Hillary Clinton in the bid for the 2016 Democratic nomination. The first voting will take place in one week at the Iowa caucuses. By late Monday afternoon, #BerniesYearning was a top-trending hashtag on Twitter. Earl Fando (@earlfando) tweeted: \"Ben & Jerry's have released an ice cream flavor named Bernie's Yearning. Needless to say, people are reading the ingredients very carefully.\" Christine Odunlami (@christineodun) tweeted: \"Not only can you #FeelTheBern, you can now #TasteTheBern.\" Others took advantage of the opportunity to take a jab at the Sanders campaign. Wired-Up Patriot (@ADHDPatriot) posted: \"#BerniesYearning ice cream: 1. Must wait in long lines to get 2. Very limited amount 3. Extremely expensive or for short, like #BernieCare.\" (Reporting by Gina Cherelus; Editing by Dan Burns and Andrew Hay) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency.","label":0}
{"text":"William Pryor, in urging the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 to uphold a Texas law banning gay sex, argued against the notion that the U.S. Constitution should safeguard a person's choice of partners. Pryor, who then was Alabama's attorney general and now serves on a federal appeals court, was one of 11 conservative jurists who presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has named as people he would consider nominating to the Supreme Court, if elected. \"A constitutional right that protects 'the choice of one's partner' and 'whether and how to connect sexually' must logically extend to activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia,\" Pryor said in a legal filing to the Supreme Court. Pryor has a record of provocative remarks, as do some others on Trump's list. But many have established solid conservative judicial records that likely would appeal to Republicans in the Senate, which has the power to confirm Supreme Court nominees, and have steered clear of inflammatory rhetoric. Trump's list, unveiled on Wednesday, included judges who have indicated support for various conservative causes, range in age from 41 to 58 and hail primarily from conservative and Republican-governed states. The eight men and three women all are white. The list's release seems to have reassured some conservatives who may have doubted Trump would name a genuine conservative to the high court, which has a vacancy following the February death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. \"I've heard nothing but positive about this. People in the Senate say this is going to relieve a lot of people,\" said Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a key Trump supporter in the Senate. The Republican-led Senate has refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, arguing the winner of the Nov. 8 election to determine Obama's successor should get to fill the post. Scalia's replacement could tip the ideological balance of the court, now evenly divided with four conservative justices and four liberals. Don Willett of Texas is one of five state supreme court judges on the list. His job is an elected one. \"Don Willett helped defend the right of Texas to display the (Bible's) Ten Commandments and fought the liberals who tried to remove the words 'under God' from our pledge\" of allegiance, his campaign said in a 2012 advertisement. Before becoming a judge, Willett was part of Texas' legal team that won a Supreme Court battle to display the Ten Commandments on a monument in the state Capitol despite opponents' concerns that it amounted to government endorsement of a religion. During Pryor's stint as Alabama attorney general from 1997 to 2004, he described the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion nationwide as \"the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.\" Some of the judges on Trump's list have ruled against abortion and birth control rights. Federal appeals court judges Diane Sykes, Steven Colloton and Pryor all ruled in favor of Christian objections to the mandate under Obama's healthcare law that health insurance covers birth control for women. Federal appeals court judge Raymond Gruender wrote a 2012 ruling upholding a South Dakota law that requires doctors to inform patients that women who have abortions are more likely to commit suicide. Colloton, who sits on the same court, joined the opinion. As on abortion and contraception, the U.S. Supreme Court is closely divided on the scope of the individual right to bear arms under the Constitution's Second Amendment. In a 2013 case, Thomas Hardiman, another federal appeals court judge, dissented when the majority on his court upheld a New Jersey law regulating the possession of handguns in public. Hardiman endorsed a broad reading of Second Amendment gun rights that would protect carrying weapons outside the home for self-defense. The list also includes David Stras, a member of Minnesota's Supreme Court. In 2014, that court waded into the contentious subject of when a person who is incapacitated may be taken off life support and allowed to die. The court ruled, in the case of a 57-year-old man with irreversible brain damage, that a guardian who was given medical-consent power could authorize the removal of life-sustaining treatment when \"interested parties\" agreed it would be in the incapacitated person's best interest. Stras dissented, writing that because the man had already died when the case was heard, the matter was moot and the court should have stayed out of it.","label":0}
{"text":"Pakistani authorities ordered private television channels to go off air on Saturday during a police and paramilitary crackdown on Islamist protesters in the capital. The suspension was ordered by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority for violating media regulations showing live coverage of a security operation, a statement from the regulator said. State-run Pakistan Television continued to broadcast, but aired a talk show discussing politics. Pakistani police used tear gas and watercannon and fought running battles with stone-throwing Islamist activists, as they moved to clear a protest by the religious hard-liners who have blocked main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks.","label":0}
{"text":"Good morning. Welcome to California Today. Is there such a thing as a child prostitute? Campaigners have for years tried to erase the phrase from the law, arguing that if a juvenile cannot legally consent to sex with an adult, neither can she willingly sell her body. She is a victim of rape, they say, not a prostitute. Last week, the movement won perhaps its biggest victory as Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that bans law enforcement from arresting minors involved in the sex trade, except when their safety may be at risk. Instead, they will be treated as victims, and directed toward social services. \"This is a really big deal,\" said Kim Biddle, the executive director of Saving Innocence, a group that counsels sexually exploited youth. The governor also signed a law that allows adult victims to have charges against them dropped if they can show they were coerced into selling sex. Together, the measures represent a shift in prosecutions away from children and young women and toward the pimps and criminal enterprises running the industry. Fifteen other states have passed similar laws that shield sexually exploited boys and girls from being charged with prostitution, according to Rights4Girls, a human rights organization that has fought for the changes. The police and outreach groups say sex trafficking in California has grown rapidly in recent years \u2014 concentrated mostly in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco \u2014 as websites like Backpage and Craigslist have made transactions simpler than ever. Detective Lina Teague, a coordinator of the Los Angeles Police Department's Human Trafficking Unit, said that many people, falsely, tend to view the sale of sex as a voluntary exchange. \"But the reality of street prostitution today is that minors and young women are being sexually exploited out of some type of duress, fear or some type of coercion,\" she said. Ms. Biddle, of Saving Innocence, cited a case in North Hollywood that involved a girl, 13, who was caught with a man. She was handcuffed and charged with prostitution he got a citation, Ms. Biddle said. \"Now, we're able to view these children correctly under the law,\" she added, \"as victims. \" See reporting in The New York Times on the Nov. 8 ballot initiatives: Proposition 51 (a new school bond) | Proposition 56 (cigarette tax) | Propositions 62 and 66 (death penalty questions) | Propositions 65 and 67 (on banning plastic bags). And dig into analyses of all 17 statewide measures by the Legislative Analyst's Office, CALmatters and Ballotpedia. \u2022 Residents of a logging town are battling a timber company for the rights to water that has been piped to houses for more than a century, writes Thomas Fuller, our San Francisco bureau chief. [The New York Times] \u2022 Even as water restrictions have eased for the rest of California, Catalina Island is being hammered by drought. [Orange County Register] \u2022 Tensions flared in a South Los Angeles neighborhood after the police fatally shot an armed teenager on Saturday. [Los Angeles Times] \u2022 Fox Searchlight wants its film \"The Birth of a Nation\" to inspire but not incite. [The New York Times] \u2022 Anxious about the earthquake alert? What you can do to be prepared. [Los Angeles Times] \u2022 California regulators have opened a pathway for the public to get cars that have no steering wheels or pedals. [The Associated Press] \u2022 Tech conferences in San Francisco are apparently a good way for checking out what's new in corporate paranoia. [The New York Times] \u2022 As San Diego's zoo turns 100, it faces a swirling public debate about the treatment of animals in captivity. [San Diego Tribune] \u2022 The Farallon Islands are only 26 miles off San Francisco but feel remote. A boat trip offers views of seals and whales. [The New York Times] \u2022 The Federal Trade Commission's chairwoman has brought hints of her West Coast background to an office in Washington with views of the Capitol. [The New York Times] \u2022 On Tuesday in San Francisco, Google is expected to unveil its answer to the Echo, Amazon's artificially intelligent assistant, alongside new smartphones and tablets. \u2022 During San Francisco Fleet Week, now through Oct. 10, visitors can tour Navy ships. The Blue Angels put on shows Saturday and Sunday. \u2022 Carpinteria hosts the California Avocado Festival starting Friday. The free event will host more than 75 bands and the \"world largest vat of Guacamole. \" \u2022 Desert Trip, a music festival in the Coachella Valley featuring the likes of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Neil Young, starts on Friday. Vin Scully, the Dodgers broadcasting great, called his final game before a sellout crowd in San Francisco on Sunday. The Giants clinched a berth with a victory. (Next up: a showdown against the Mets.) After 67 seasons behind the microphone, Mr. Scully signed off by telling the fans, \"I have said enough for a lifetime, and for the last time, I wish you all a very pleasant good afternoon. \" What's next for Mr. Scully? More time with his wife, Sandi, who has been by the broadcaster's side for much of his career. Richard Sandomir, a sports columnist for The Times, writes about the couple's marriage. As Scully heads into retirement, admirers in recent days and weeks have offered tributes to his legacy. Check out a short selection. Bill Plaschke, Los Angeles Times sportswriter: George Will, Washington Post columnist: Bob Costas of NBC Sports: Kevin Costner, actor: California Today goes live at 6 a. m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes. com. The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a Californian \u2014 born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. Follow him on Twitter. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U. C. Berkeley.","label":0}
{"text":"The remaining 11 countries in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal will discuss a proposal for an agreement in principle to proceed after the withdrawal of the United States, Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said on Thursday. Ministers from the 11 countries are meeting in the resort of Danang in Vietnam on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. We have collectively reached the stage where we can discuss a proposal for a final package for an agreement in principle of the TPP, Motegi told ministers from the other countries. I would like to emphasize once again the importance of reaching an agreement in principle right here.","label":0}
{"text":"On December 9, an unidentified 41-year-old mother was killed in a hotel room during an attempt by five family members to exorcise a demon which they claim was possessing her.According to authorities, the woman s family exerted massive force on her chest and stomach area, as well an extreme amount of violence to her neck. A towel and a clothes hanger were shoved down her throat, reportedly to keep her from screaming.Prosecutors say that the woman was subjected to at least two hours of pain and agony, before she finally died from a combination of asphyxiation and traumatic injuries, all of which were sustained during the exorcism. The killers include a 44-year-old female relative, along with the relative s children, a 21-year-old son, 19-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son. The 15-year-old son of the woman who was killed is also suspected of participating in the violence.Instead of calling police or paramedics after the woman died, the family called a priest.The priest immediately notified authorities, who ultimately discovered the woman s body at the Frankfurt InterContinental hotel.A second victim was later found, another 41-year-old woman, who is believed to be another family member. She was discovered inside a garage.According to Fox 10 in Phoenix, the second victim was taken to a hospital, where she was treated for hypothermia, dehydration and undisclosed injuries.The family involved in the woman s murder is South Korean, and had recently relocated to the Frankfurt, Germany area.The practice of exorcising demons, known as anchal-gido, is common among Charismatic Christians living Korea.As reported here and here, the western media often refers to these exorcisms as Shamanism when in fact they are legitimized by the Protestant Church in Korea.As Kyung Hong explains in the International Journal of Religion and Spirituality: anchal gido rituals are their own kind of abuse, since they often involve forms of physical violence against those deemed to be possessed. The intensity of the healing prayers for cleansing demonic spirits also often accompanies intense physical contact in the belief that physical assaults intimidate and assist to expel demons. Thus, the healing ritual may well become so intense as to involve physical striking, beating, poling, or choking the possessed individual, though each action is viewed by the healers as attacking the demon, not the person. There is a similarity between Korean exorcism and shamanic rituals, but the latter often lacks the violence and is more about appeasing unfriendly nature or ancestral spirits than outright spiritual warfare. Religion Watch reports that in Korea, protestant women who are seen as demon possessed are often viewed as disobedient to their husbands and are subject to shame and condemnation, even in their deaths. The facts about anchal-gido don t fit in with the western narrative of the Christian religion.When 18-year-old Rayoung Kim was killed in her home during a similar exorcism in Fairfax County, Virginia, the media reported that her death was due to a Shamanistic exorcism, although the facts in the case show that she died during the type of violent exorcism that is associated with anchal-gido, not kut or mudang, as the media routinely reported.The Shamanistic ritual of Kut involves singing, dancing and offering sacrifices. It is not associated with the violent driving out of demons, seen in these cases.That is far more typical of Korean Charismatic Christianity.In the case of the women killed in Frankfurt, the most telling sign that the family was conducting the kind of violent, Christian exorcism associated with anchal-gido is that the first person they called was a priest.Here in the U.S. we are constantly subjected to right-wing propaganda about the violent nature of the Muslim religion. At the same time, the media often presents us with a filtered version of current events, especially as they pertain to the Christian religion.Whether this is done purposely or out of ignorance and unconscious bias is up for debate.Either way, had this family killed a relative during a religious ceremony associated with Islam, the right wing would be all over that. In this case, however, the narrative will no doubt seek to shift the blame away from the Christian church and onto Shamanism, without a shred of evidence or single fact to support that theory.*Featured image credit: Michal via Flckr, CC 2.0","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Twitter he postponed a news conference scheduled for Friday in New York to announce his running mate because of the deadly truck attack in Nice, France. Trump's campaign advisers have told Republican officials he has picked Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate, two Republican sources said, but Trump officials said he had not yet made a final decision.","label":0}
{"text":"in: Multimedia , US News (image credit: Justin Sullivan \/ Getty) ( The Real Agenda News ) More details have emerged about the never ending levels of corruption among the DNC, the Obama White House and the Hillary Clinton campaign, as a result of James O'Keefe's Project Veritas' investigation. Corrupt practices go from promoting seemingly harmless campaigns to have people dressed as ducks at Trump rallies to collusion between the Clinton campaign, the DNC and the non-profit organization Americans United for Change. In the third video put out by Project Veritas, Hillary's cohorts confess how they managed to coordinate with her campaign and the DNC to set up what can be described at the very least as provocative moves to get the Trump campaign in trouble and to have the corrupt mainstream media cover the events while blaming Trump for violent outbursts outside his rallies. As we learned from the previous two videos, it was the Clinton campaign itself the one using agent provocateurs to cause violence outside Trump rallies as these agents disguised themselves as Bernie Sanders' followers. In his second video, James O'Keefe showed how the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign, hire operatives to successfully carry out commit voter fraud on a massive scale. Scott Foval, who has since been fired, admits that the Democrats have been rigging elections for fifty years. In his first video, Rigging the Election \u2013 Video I: Clinton Campaign and DNC Incite Violence at Trump Rallies, O'Keefe showed how second and third parties associated with the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, were responsible for violence and attacks on Trump supporters all over the country. As we said before, the veil of corruption that surrounds the Clinton campaign and the Democratic Party continues to fall and people can easily see what is behind their fake progressive and fake liberal masks. Submit your review","label":1}
{"text":"Email  Well, if this doesn't inspire you to do your civic duty, nothing will!  When California resident Candice Payne woke up this morning, she wasn't totally sure she was up to going through the hassle of voting. She figured the lines would be long, the wait would be awful, and the stress probably wouldn't be worth it. But just when this 26-year-old woman was feeling too lazy to vote, something absolutely amazing happened\u2014her ovaries burst out of her body and dragged her to the polling place.  Amazing! Now THAT is how you rally on Election Day!  Like so many Americans, Candice spent her morning lying in her bed, kicking herself for not having voted early, but as soon as it seemed like she'd go back to sleep, her fallopian tubes shot out of her abdomen, curled themselves around the side of her bed, and threw her to the floor. After dragging her body to her living room, her helpful ovaries crawled up to the doorknob and jostled the front door open. What started out as a lazy morning ended with her ovaries anchoring themselves to the floor and pulling the rest of her body to a polling place at nearby Jefferson Public School, where she dutifully filled out her ballot for President of the United States!  If that's not getting out the vote, we don't know what is! It's definitely easy to come up with a million excuses to avoid the polls, but once Candice's ovaries had shot out of her body, they weren't going to retract back inside until she had done her civic duty!  While it might have been a bit of an inconvenience to spend the morning voting, no matter how much she tried to resist, Candice's ovaries kept pulling and clawing at the floor, dragging her flailing body farther and farther until she arrived at a voting booth to cast her vote. Sure, she would rather have been sleeping, or at work, but three miles and several forceful tugs later, she was inside a voting booth and back on her feet, casting her ballot, and exercising her fundamental American right.  Awesome. If you're thinking of just staying inside, going to work, and skipping the polls altogether, it's not too late to change your mind. Candice felt just like you once, but after being violently dragged by her ovaries to a polling station, she's never felt better!","label":1}
{"text":"Pope Francis canonized 35 new Roman Catholic saints on Sunday, including three indigenous children martyred in 16th century Mexico and considered the first Christians killed for their faith in the New World. Francis used the occasion to announce that he had decided to call a meeting of bishops, or synod, from countries in the Pan-Amazon region for October, 2019, to discuss the condition of the Church in the area and the plight of indigenous people. The region includes Guyana, Suriname, French Guyana, Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil. The three children the pope canonized before a crowd of tens of thousands in St. Peter s Square were of the Talaxcaltec people, an indigenous pre-Colombian group in what is now Mexico. The first child, Cristoforo, was converted to Christianity by Franciscan missionaries and was killed in 1527 by his own father, a tribal chief who spurned his son s attempts to convert him from paganism. The boy was beaten and thrown into a fire when he was 13. Two other indigenous children from the same area, Antonio and Juan, were killed by Indios in the village of Cuauhtinchan in 1529 as a result of their conversion. They are believed to have been 12 or 13 when they were beaten to death for helping Dominican missionaries. The pope also canonized 30 martyrs who were killed for their faith in Brazil in 1645. They included two Portuguese missionaries and 28 followers killed by Dutch colonial soldiers during a period of persecution of Catholics. In announcing the 2019 synod for bishops from the Amazon region, Francis said indigenous people there today were often abandoned and without the prospect of a bright future, even due to the crisis of the Amazon Forest, a lung of utmost importance for our planet . Francis, an Argentine and the first Latin American pope, has often linked his calls for social justice, particularly for indigenous people, to those for defense of the environment, saying the poor will suffer the most from the effects of climate change. In 2015 he wrote a landmark encyclical, or papal letter, on defense of the environment and he has called for special protection for the Amazon region because of its vital importance to the planet s ecosystem. In his comments on Sunday, the pope did not mention the role of the Church in suppressing native cultures in the New World. But during a visit to Bolivia in 2015, Francis said many grave sins were committed against the native people of America in the name of God . He asked forgiveness for the Church, for crimes committed against native peoples during the so-called conquest of America . On Sunday, Francis also canonized Father Faustino Miguez, a Spanish priest who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries, and Father Angelo d Acri, an Italian itinerant preacher who died in 1739 after serving in some of the most remote areas of mountainous southern Italy.","label":0}
{"text":"When U.S. President Donald Trump announced a review last week of tough Obama-era vehicle emissions and fuel-efficiency standards, he proclaimed that the \"assault on the American auto industry is over.\" But rules set by the Environmental Protection Agency may take a backseat to consumers demanding vehicles that guzzle less gas and automakers having to meet tougher standards if they want to export cars overseas, according to auto industry analysts. In the end, U.S. carmakers may just gain a few more years to meet the more stringent targets that former President Barack Obama's administration negotiated with the companies in 2012, analysts said. If Europe and China continue to toughen their emissions standards, \"the U.S. might become an outlier,\" American Axle President Mike Simonte told Reuters on Thursday. Trump's move was widely seen leading to a rollback or loosening of more stringent targets, which would slash vehicle exhaust emissions while effectively doubling average fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Automakers have argued the rules for 2022-2025 are too expensive and could cost American jobs, so the Trump administration's review was seen as a win for them. On a conference call Thursday with investors, Bob Shanks, Ford Motor Co's chief financial officer, said, \"We are not seeking a rollback in any way. We just want to have a conversation around the levels we want to achieve.\" Despite what the EPA may want, California and nine other states in the Zero Emission Vehicle program \u2014 eight in the northeast, plus Oregon \u2014 are expected to move ahead on Friday with the previously established targets. Those states account for nearly 30 percent of U.S. auto sales. The potential divide with the rest of the country could create a \"two-tiered environment with two sets of regulations,\" said Mark Wakefield, managing director of AlixPartners' automotive practice. This \"could drive costs higher if automakers have to build two versions of the same vehicle to meet the two different standards.\" The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group that sued to overturn the Obama-era rules on behalf of several big automakers, wrote the White House on Thursday urging talks to begin quickly with California to ensure that national standards remain in place. \"Automakers seek certainty, predictability and rationality \u2013 over time \u2013 from the regulatory process,\" the group's CEO Mitch Bainwol wrote. Kristin Dziczek, director of the Center for Automotive Research's labor and industry group, said U.S. automakers could find it hard to export cars to markets such as China and Europe with tougher regulatory regimes if the U.S. targets were rescinded. \"I don't think we're going to see a rollback,\" she said. \"At most, I think we may see a slowing of the timetable\" for implementing the tougher standards. AlixPartners' Wakefield said if China, the world's largest market, continues pushing electric vehicles while America backpedals, it could lead to \"some movement of investment from the U.S. to China, especially as the latter market continues to grow.\" General Motors Co and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV referred Reuters to public comments made by the industry's lobbying group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a climate change skeptic, said the Obama administration estimated it would cost $200 billion over 13 years to comply with stricter standards, which he believes will lead to higher prices for consumers and jobs leaving the country. Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said the auto industry expected to miss the 2022-2025 targets regardless of who occupied the White House, but he believes the EPA's recent move may carry relatively little weight. \"Of all the things that are likely to drive fuel economy, I would rank the EPA a distant third on the list, behind consumer preferences and the direction of technology,\" he said. United Auto Workers union President Dennis Williams said while around 60 percent of U.S. auto sales are currently trucks and SUVs, consumers value fuel-economy improvements for those vehicles. \"The automakers shouldn't make the mistake of sliding backward,\" Williams said. \"We're here to protect our (union) members, but we understand that in doing so we also have to look at the future.\"","label":0}
{"text":"South Korea s President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to exert stronger pressure through sanctions on North Korea following its nuclear and missile tests, South Korea s presidential office said following a telephone call between the two leaders on Sunday. The two leaders agreed to strengthen cooperation, and exert stronger and practical sanctions on North Korea so that it realizes provocative actions leads to further diplomatic isolation and economic pressure, Blue House spokesman Park Soo-hyun said in a televised briefing. The Blue House said Moon and Trump had strongly condemned the latest missile launch by North Korea, and agreed that the two nations would work with the international community to implement the latest UN Security Council s resolution 2375, Park said.","label":0}
{"text":"Editor's Note : If we weren't already, as soon as our votes went virtual, we became disenfranchised. These machines are hacked every election. With as corrupt as our system is at this point, it'd be shocking if that weren't the case. by Joseph Jankowski A U.K. based company that has provided voting machines for 16 states, including important battleground states like Florida and Arizona, has direct ties with billionaire leftist and Clinton crusader George Soros.  With recent WikiLeaks emails showing that Hillary Clinton received foreign policy directives and coordinated on domestic policy with Soros , along with receiving tens of millions of dollars in presidential campaign support from the billionaire, concerns are growing that these shadowy players may pull the strings behind the curtains of the upcoming presidential election. As Lifezette reports , the fact that the man in control of voting machines in 16 states is tied directly to the man who has given millions of dollars to the Clinton campaign and various progressive and globalist causes will surely leave a bad taste in the mouth of many a voter. The balloting equipment tied to Soros is coming from the U.K. based Smartmatic company, whose chairman Mark Malloch-Brown is a former UN official and sits on the board of Soros' Open Society Foundation. According to Lifezette , Malloch-Brown was part of the Soros Advisory Committee on Bosnia and also is a member of the executive committee of the International Crisis Group, an organization he co-founded in the 1990s and built with funds from George Soros' personal fortune. In 2007 Soros appointed Malloch-Brown vice-president of his Quantum Funds, vice-chairman of Soros Fund Management, and vice-chairman of the Open Society Institute (former name of OSF). Browns ties also intertwine with the Clintons as he was a partner with Sawyer-Miller, the consulting firm where close Clinton associate Mandy Grunwald worked. Brown also was also a senior advisor to FTI Consulting, a firm at which Jackson Dunn, who spent 15 years working as an aide to the Clintons, is a senior managing director. When taking that into account, along with the poor track record Smartmatic has of providing free and fair elections, this all becomes quite terrifying. An astonishing 2006 classified U.S. diplomatic cable obtained and released by WikiLeaks reveals the extent to which Smartmatic may have played a hand in rigging the 2004 Venezuelan recall election under a section titled \"A Shadow of Fraud.\" The memo stated that \"Smartmatic Corporation is a riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters.\" \"The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively to be, susceptible to fraud,\" the memo continued. \"The Venezuelan opposition is convinced that the Smartmatic machines robbed them of victory in the August 2004 referendum. Since then, there have been at least eight statistical analyses performed on the referendum results.\" \"One study obtained the data log from the CANTV network and supposedly proved that the Smartmatic machines were bi-directional and in fact showed irregularities in how they reported their results to the CNE central server during the referendum,\" it read. With such suspicion and a study which claims to prove that the U.K. firm's equipment tampered with the 2004 Venezuelan recall election, should be enough for states to reject these machines if they desire a fair election. Smartmatic is providing machines to Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington DC, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, which means these Soros and Clinton linked machines are going to take the votes of thousands of Americans. While GOP nominee Donald Trump has been voicing his opinion that the elections are indeed rigged due to media bias, and the proof that mainstream polls are heavily weighted to favor Clinton , it is needless to say that if the results show Hillary as a winner in November, there is going to be a mess to shuffle through to find signs of honesty. Delivered by The Daily Sheeple  We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).  Contributed by Planet Free Will of planetfreewill.com .  The mission of Planet Free Will is to enlighten as many people as possible with truthful and thought provoking information while at the same time keeping you up to date on news occurring around the world.","label":1}
{"text":"Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to Donald Trump, doesn t like the media attacking the alleged president just two weeks into office. Trump has screwed up big time but Gorka seems to believe there s a rest period from the media for a newly minted president.On Monday, Gorka said that the Trump administration will continue using the term fake news until the media understands that their monumental desire to attack Trump is wrong, according to Fox6Now. Gorka is a former Breitbart editor, a site dedicated to promoting fake news. There is a monumental desire on behalf of the majority of the media, not just the pollsters, the majority of the media to attack a duly elected President in the second week of his term, Gorka told conservative radio host Michael Medved. The host, for the record, blasted Trump before the election as insecure, unprepared and angrily unhinged. That s how unhealthy the situation is and until the media understands how wrong that attitude is, and how it hurts their credibility, we are going to continue to say, fake news. I m sorry, Michael. That s the reality, he added.Team Trump repeatedly uses the term fake news to discredit the press and media outlets. The crybaby-in-chief even called negative poll numbers fake news on Monday. Each time Trump and his administration call CNN or the New York Times fake news, they offer no proof of any deceptive reporting.Medved asked Gorka if he would admit that the administration s controversial statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day was at least questionable in being the first such statement in many years that didn t recognize that Jewish extermination was the chief goal of the Holocaust. It s a Holocaust remembrance statement, Gorka said. No, I m not going to admit it. Because it s asinine. It s absurd. You re making a statement about the Holocaust. Of course it s about the Holocaust because that s what the statement s about. It s only reasonable to twist it if your objective is to attack the President. A caller told Gorka, every time you call everything fake news, it just turns everyone except your hardcore fans off. Not everything s fake news, the caller added. You know, I would beg to differ, Gorka said. Every single organ that generates these kinds of stories comes from the same clique of media organs that predicted that Hillary (Clinton) would win and that Brexit wouldn t occur. I know what fake news is. And it s coming from those organizations. It s time that you yourself understood that as well. Gorka is the second Breitbart employee brought into the White House. Steve Bannon was the head honcho of the right wing propaganda outlet. The Trump administration is fake news.Image via Twitter.","label":1}
{"text":"Trump has repeatedly said that all the ways he avoided paying taxes was legal, and has even shown his ignorance about how our government works to paint Hillary as incompetent because she didn t single-handedly change these laws during her time in the Senate. However, while he was busy avoiding taxes in the 1990s, his own lawyers warned him against doing, well, exactly what he did.A new report in The New York Times explains that, order to avoid total financial ruin, Trump didn t report hundreds of millions that was technically income. He didn t just not report it, though the IRS would have seen through that immediately. Instead, his first step to avoiding taxes was successfully pushing his various bondholders to cancel the hundreds of millions he owed them.To the IRS, a dollar of canceled debt is a dollar of taxable income. That could have crippled the self-proclaimed master of debt and taxes about as badly as all that debt he couldn t pay. So what did he do? He used what s called a stock-for-debt swap maneuver.Except Congress banned that practice for corporations in 1993. However, Trump s real estate holdings in Atlantic City the ones that were all in trouble weren t corporations. They were partnerships. So he thought he could still swap what s called partnership equity for his debt.Apparently, this works even if the stocks, or, in Trump s case, the equities, are worth considerably less than the canceled debt. The Times says that this is as close as anyone can get to making taxes just magically disappear.But legally, this is fraught with its own problems and Trump s own lawyers actually warned him against doing it. He asked his tax attorneys for formal opinion letters on his plan, which all came back saying: The letters bluntly warned that there was no statute, regulation or judicial opinion that explicitly permitted Mr. Trump s tax gambit. Due to the lack of definitive judicial or administrative authority, his lawyers wrote, substantial uncertainties exist with respect to many of the tax consequences of the plan.' In other words, they felt that his scheme wouldn t stand up to IRS scrutiny. We don t know if the IRS went after him for this because nobody has the whole story. However, from what we do have, tax expert and former chief tax council for the House Ways and Means Committee, John L. Buckley, was able to say: He s getting something for absolutely nothing. Buckley also said: He deducted somebody else s losses. He is double dipping big time. Buckley means that the only people who should have been able to deduct those losses were the bondholders who canceled his debts, and thus, lost out on their investments.This could be one of the bombshells he s hiding in his tax returns. Since all of this involved partnerships, profits could go straight to his personal returns, as could other items. With Trump refusing to release those, though, we don t know just how badly he stretched the law, if not broke it altogether.This scheme quite possibly laid the groundwork for his massive $916 million loss in 1995, which may have allowed him to avoid paying taxes again for 20 years. In other words, not only has he possibly sailed along while Americans who earn an honest day s pay for an honest day s work dutifully paid their taxes, but he very likely broke the law in all his machinations here in a way that the regular Americans he claims to understand would never get away with (hell, we wouldn t even know where to start, most likely).Oddly enough, using partnership equity swaps to avoid taxes was banned by Congress in 2004. Among the Senators who voted to close that loophole was Hillary Clinton.Featured image by Brian Blanco via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"How many Hillary supporters does it take to fill a basket of serious sex offenders? Let s see, there s Bill and then there s Bill s pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein, and oh yeah now we can add Tony to the basket of men who assault the candidate who represents women?Something tells me Trump supporters would rather be in Hillary s imaginary basket of deplorables You might remember a Hispanic political activist named Tony Yapias, who was extremely critical of Donald Trump s assertion that some illegal Mexican aliens were rapists.Tony Yapias is the director of Proyecto Latino de Utah . Mr. Yapias also coordinated numerous protest events against Donald Trump including a rather violent display in Salt Lake City, Utah.Yes, it appears Mexican rapist Tony Yapias felt additionally empowered by the fact his victim was less likely to be able to contact law enforcement.However, as Fox13 in Salt Lake City reports:[ ] Despite the woman s fears concerning immigration issues, court documents state, she reported the assault the day after it happened. She was also examined by a forensic nurse who found she had multiple physical injuries consistent with her explanation of what happened (link)Mr. Yapias threatened, raped and blackmailed his victim specifically because of her undocumented illegal immigration status. Conservative TreehouseWatch Tony complain that a list was released with names of Hispanic illegal alines living in Utah. He actually calls it an act of terrorism against the illegal aliens. This is how these people roll","label":1}
{"text":"Egypt has arrested 22 people in the past three days as part of a crackdown on gays after a rainbow flag was raised at a concert, activists and rights groups said on Monday. At least 33 people have been arrested since Sept. 23, a day after a group of people were seen raising the flag, a rare public show of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the conservative Muslim country. The public prosecutor announced an investigation after local media launched a highly critical campaign against those who raised the rainbow flag at a Mashrou Leila concert, a popular Lebanese alternative rock band whose lead singer is openly gay. On Monday police arrested Ahmed Alaa and Sarah Hegazy, the latter being the first woman involved in such an incident in years, in relation to the case, their lawyer said. They were both charged with joining a group formed in contrary to the law and propagating that group s idea . Hegazy faced a further charge of promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery and the Supreme State Security Prosecution ordered them detained for 15 days, lawyer Amr Mohamed told Reuters. Two men had been arrested earlier in relation to the flag incident but one was released. The remaining arrests were unrelated to the incident but have all been over the perceived sexual orientation of the defendants and came after it. At least 10 men were arrested between Sept. 28-30 and six others earlier that week, judicial sources said. All 16 went on trial on Sunday charged with promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery , euphemisms for homosexuality. A verdict is due on Oct. 29. One man has been sentenced to six years in jail over similar charges. Although homosexuality is not specifically outlawed in Egypt, it is a conservative society and discrimination is rife. Gay men are frequently arrested and typically charged with debauchery, immorality or blasphemy. Those arrested are subjected to anal examinations to determine whether they have had gay sex, which rights groups Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say amounts to torture. Five such examinations have taken place, Amnesty International said on Monday. Judicial sources do not deny the examinations take place but say they are legally carried out and are not a form of abuse. In a matter of days the Egyptian security forces have rounded up dozens of people and carried out five anal examinations signaling a sharp escalation in the authorities efforts to persecute and intimidate members of the LGBTI community following the rainbow flag incident, said Najia Bounaim, North Africa Campaigns Director at Amnesty. In 2001, 52 men were arrested when police raided a floating disco called the Queen Boat.","label":0}
{"text":"Do you hear that sound? That sizzling and popping? That s the beautiful melody of the heads of conservatives across the nation exploding in the wake of some very, very bad news (for them) delivered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California. In a precedent-setting decision, the San Fransisco-based court ruled Thursday that gun owners do not have a constitutional right to conceal carry their weapons if they face no specific threat.The court determined that San Diego and Yolo counties did not violate the Second Amendment when they denied some applicants concealed carry licenses. In those counties, applicants must show good cause to be armed at all times. In other words, a woman who is being stalked by her ex-boyfriend or someone in a dangerous profession can carry their guns around because they have a legitimate need for protection. Someone who just feels like taking his gun to the grocery store, however, might want to think twice before he tucks it in his waistband. In a 52-page opinion, Judge William Fletcher wrote: Because the Second Amendment does not protect in any degree the right to carry concealed firearms in public, any prohibition or restriction a state may choose to impose on concealed carry including the requirement of good cause, however defined is necessary allowed by the Amendment, the 9th Circuit said.Reuters notes that this ruling isn t exactly unusual:The ruling places the 9th Circuit Court in line with other U.S. appellate courts that have upheld the right of officials in the states of New York, Maryland and New Jersey to deny concealed carry applications in certain cases.Under California s concealed carry law, more than 70,000 residents or less than 1 percent of the state s population had active permits last year, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting.The U.S. Supreme Court in 2013, in the middle of a raging national debate on guns, declined to weigh in on whether firearm owners have a constitutional right to carry their weapons in concealment outside the home.This is also in line with the Supreme Court s 1897 finding that the right of the people to bear arms is not infringed by laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons. This decision reversed a 2014, 2-1 decision by a 9th Circuit Court panel that found California residents have an inherent right to carry concealed weapons. While this issue may seem settled, these gun owners promise to keep fighting for the right to carry their confidence around with them everywhere they roam though they may be in for a bit of a surprise, as the Supreme Court could refuse to hear the case because other circuit courts have upheld limitations on the issuance of concealed carry permits.","label":1}
{"text":"Trisha Brown, the choreographer and exemplar of the founding generation of American postmodern dance, died on Saturday in San Antonio. She was 80. Barbara Dufty, the executive director of Ms. Brown's dance company, confirmed the death. Ms. Brown had been treated for vascular dementia since 2011. Few dance inventors have so combined the cerebral and sensuous sides of dance as Ms. Brown did, and few have been as influential. Her choreography, showcased primarily in New York, helped shape generations of modern dance creators into the 21st century. [ Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laurie Anderson and other artists speak on working with Ms. Brown. ] In December 2012, it was announced that the two dances she had made the previous year would be her last. By that point, she had been an international figure for over 30 years, choreographing for the Paris Opera Ballet, collaborating with Mikhail Baryshnikov, and commissioning stage designs from Robert Rauschenberg and other eminent visual artists, including Donald Judd and Nancy Graves. In 1983, she won European as well as American acclaim for \"Set and Reset. \" This intensely sensuous theater piece, with music by Laurie Anderson and designs by Rauschenberg, became the most beloved work ever made in postmodern dance. In the 1980s, her influence was cited by the American choreographers David Gordon, Mark Morris and Stephen Petronio and her work began to join the repertories of other dance companies. In 1988, the French government named Ms. Brown Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres. In January 2000 she was promoted to Officier and in 2004 to Commandeur. In 1991, she was named a MacArthur fellow, the first female choreographer to achieve this distinction. Patricia Ann Brown was born on Nov. 25, 1936, to the former Dorothy Louise Abel, an English teacher, and Martell W. Brown, a salesman. In later years she often spoke of her debt to the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. In public conversation with the choreographer Merce Cunningham (also from Washington State) she once remarked, \"The rain forest was my first art class. \" Ms. Brown graduated from Weatherwax High School in Aberdeen in 1954 and studied modern dance at Mills College, in Oakland, Calif. earning a degree in 1958. She taught dance at Reed College in Oregon for the next academic year and also studied at the American Dance Festival summer schools of 1958, 1959 and 1961, learning especially from Louis Horst, the veteran pedagogue of modern dance composition. Her next chief influences were the postmodern choreographer and teacher Robert Ellis Dunn and John Cage, the radical composer whose ideas on music and art opened up many possibilities. After moving to New York in 1961, she helped found the Judson Dance Theater group the next year. Like her colleagues Mr. Gordon, Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer, she made dances that eliminated bravura, academic technique, acting and musicality \u2014 the hallmarks of modern dance as it had been developed by Martha Graham and others, not to mention ballet. In 1970, Ms. Brown helped found another experimental collective, Grand Union, as well as her own troupe, the Trisha Brown Dance Company. In those years she worked, as a rule, in unconventional spaces and without music. The term \"postmodern dance\" was not coined until the late 1970s, and perhaps it can now be seen that Ms. Brown and others were leading dance at that time into the radical extremes of modernism. Cunningham, whom she greatly admired, had made dance independent from music and design she in turn helped to make it independent of technical rigor and, in the 1970s, to present it with no musical accompaniment. This was \"democratic dance,\" composed largely of movement that the average untrained dancer could do, albeit in new combinations. Some dances were performed barefoot, others in sneakers. Three historic works that Ms. Brown made in 1971 suggest much in their titles alone: \"Walking on the Wall,\" \"Roof Piece\" and \"Accumulation. \" \"Walking\" had dancers suspended in harnesses moving sideways along walls \"Roof\" spread its dancers across 12 roofs on 10 SoHo blocks \"Accumulation\" was a formal study in graduated movement, with repeated phrases building in complexity \u2014 like sentences that each time added one word. The experimental dance of that era, embodied in those pieces, set itself up against virtuosity. Ms. Brown nonetheless now became a virtuoso of a new kind. In 1978 she took her \"Accumulation\" solo and embellished it, showing, in \"Accumulation With Talking Plus Water Motor,\" just how many things could be done simultaneously. She could coordinate several physical acts while talking, as if illustrating multiple trains of thought in action. Having earlier pared dance down to its basics, she was now rebuilding it in new ways, and it was then that she became a seminal figure of truly postmodern dance. A classic of hers from this era was \"Opal Installation\" (1980) among the purest of all works. A quartet in silence, it is its own music, the connections and reactions between the dancers making its harmonies marvelous. Here \"the line of least resistance\" became gorgeous: a fascinating chain sequence of hitches, ripples, shimmies, hops, knee bends. The style was often called \"release technique,\" and some accredited its invention to her. (In fact, release technique was devised by another native of Washington State, Joan Skinner.) Ms. Brown, a gently but memorably witty woman, simply described her own idiom as \"the line of least resistance,\" neatly evoking the rippling of impulses and ricochets that characterized much of her dance. By this time, Ms. Brown was already moving on, starting a different kind of dance theater. From 1979 she made a series of pieces that turned her purity into a new kind of theatricality, sometimes ravishing and generally novel, working with designers like Rauschenberg, and with sound scores and music by Ms. Anderson, Judd and others. (When asked why she had stopped choreographing in silence, she once replied, \"I got fed up with listening to all the goddamn coughing. \") Although the names of works from this era are uninviting \u2014 \"Glacial Decoy\" (1979) \"Set and Reset\" (1983) \"Lateral Pass\" (1985) \"Newark\" (1987) \"Astral Convertible\" (1989) \"Foray For\u00eat\" (1990) and \"Astral Converted\" (1991) \u2014 the works themselves excited lasting adoration. These remained creations, with ingeniously inventive choreography, but their music, costumes and d\u00e9cor made them potently theatrical: Each had a strong atmosphere in which visual effects and music made contributions. It was these pieces, notably \"Set and Reset,\" that brought her a new kind of worldwide prestige. By the late 1980s, she was having seasons in big theaters like City Center in New York and Sadler's Wells in London and she became a darling of the French. She never quite abandoned this style, returning to it in 2011 for her final creation, \"I'm going to toss my arms \u2014 if you catch them they're yours,\" which had designs by her husband, Burt Barr, and music by Alvin Curran. From the late 1980s on, Ms. Brown opened up her next phase: a new engagement with classical music. The composers Monteverdi, Bach, Rameau, Schubert and Bizet supplied her with the challenges she needed, and her responses were never conventional in musicality or theatricality. Her \"M. O. \" (1995) was based on Bach's \"Musical Offering\" in 2002, she staged Schubert's \"Winterreise\" with the eminent baritone Simon Keenlyside (a superb mover). For decades, Ms. Brown was her own greatest dancer, creating many remarkable solos for herself. \"If You Couldn't See Me\" (1994) memorably fused her cerebral and sensuous sides. The underpinning notion \u2014 a gimmick, you might say \u2014 was that her back remained turned to the audience throughout. The transcendent factor lay in her spine's fluidity. When, in 1989, Mr. Baryshnikov turned from being a ballet specialist to a master investigator of American modern dance, Ms. Brown was a favorite collaborator. That solo in 1995 became a duet, \"You Can See Us. \" As danced in 1996, this showed Mr. Baryshnikov facing front Ms. Brown still kept her back to the audience. From the 1930s on, a series of choreographers had made New York a haven for pure dance. Of those choreographers, Cunningham and Ms. Brown were among the brainiest. Devotees of difficulty, they never needed to court an audience. The news that her 2011 dances would be her last \u2014 she had made over 100 dances, many of which had been recorded on film and video \u2014 followed Cunningham's death in 2009 and the closing of his company in December 2011. Plans for the limited afterlife of her company were announced in the ensuing months and years. In January 2016, the Brooklyn Academy of Music gave a season to the company's final presentation of her \"proscenium\" theater pieces. Since 2015, \"In Plain Site\" seasons have been given in special locations, excerpting dances from her repertoire and asking audiences to walk around different rooms to observe the various dances (an entirely Brownian idea). In 2016, the art historian Susan Rosenberg published \"Trisha Brown: Choreography as Visual Art\" (Wesleyan University Press). Mr. Barr, Ms. Brown's husband, died in November. She is survived by her son, Adam four grandchildren a brother, Gordon and a sister, Louisa Brown. Since the 1980s, Brown dances have often been performed by other companies. Her \"Set and Reset\" is usually included in the undergraduate curriculum for French dance students. The choreographer Mr. Petronio, a member of her dance company in the early 1980s, added her \"Glacial Decoy\" to his company's repertoire in 2016. But Ms. Brown's work is not easily codified, and its language may prove elusive to dancers from generations who did not know the casual body language of the last century. All dance legacies are fragile hers may prove especially so. Any of this pertinacity should continue to provoke debate. How great was even Ms. Brown's greatest work? That motto of hers, \"the line of least resistance,\" has sometimes suggested her own limitations: Her work has often seemed to lack drama. Or did it rather extend our idea of drama? Much of Ms. Brown's work created intensely kinesthetic currents. Audiences felt them even as they watched them. Dances in which nothing happened became dances in which much was eventful.","label":0}
{"text":"Out of all of the places we ve ever been overseas, and of all the places we ve been overseas it don t matter where ya know. When we come back to this country, we love it a whole lot more than when we left and went somewhere else. I thank God for all of the freedoms we ve got in this country. I cherish them and treasure them. Um even the rights to burn the flag, ya know. I m proud of those rights. The crowd can be heard moaning and is clearly not happy with Cash saying he cherished the right to burn the American flag. Lemme tell you something. Shhh! We ve also got the right to bear arms, and if you burn my flag, I ll shoot you! Cash then clarified his statement, But I ll shoot you with a lot of love, like a good American! After such a trip overseas in 1975, I wrote this Watch, as Johnny Cash performs Ragged Old Flag, a beautiful song he wrote that gives the history of why Americans honor our flag:Before becoming a musician, Cash worked in the Air Force. While most people waited to be drafted for the required two years, Cash wanted more and stayed for four. He was shipped to Germany during the Korean War. His role was to intercept and decipher Russian morse code.The man in black, discovered that Soviet Union Premier, Joseph Stalin, died before US president Dwight Eisenhower even knew. He was working as a radio operator for the military at the time of Stalin s death and was the first person to receive the message.","label":1}
{"text":"(INTELLIHUB) \u2014\"Everyone's phone in the office did the same thing at the same time,\" one person reported, after a \"Area Emergency Test\" was forced to devices by FEMA in several parts of the U.S..  \"As you can see here this is run by FEMA,\" Youtuber DAHBOO7 stated on his latest video.  This type technology may actually be pinging devices and may even be able to locate peoples whereabouts, DAHBOO told his viewers.  \"[\u2026] they are able to get a ping on your location.\" Featured Image: Jhaymesisviphotography\/Flickr","label":1}
{"text":"Does this piss off Conservatives, Liberals or both? Is there a way to upload this as a regular image for GLP to use? Anonymous Coward Re: Does this piss off Conservatives, Liberals or both? Page 1 09\/28\/16 2 09\/30\/16 3 08\/24\/12 5 \"Godlike Productions\" & \"GLP\" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike\u2122 \u00a9 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.005s (7 queries)","label":1}
{"text":"Militants seeking independence for Cameroon s English-speaking regions killed four gendarmes on Monday, the government said, as disputes with the Francophone-dominated government degenerate into open warfare. Several separatists were killed by security forces in ensuing clashes, the government spokesman said. Repression by President Paul Biya s government against what began as peaceful protests a year ago by Anglophone activists over perceived social and economic marginalization has bolstered support for armed militants demanding a full break with Yaounde. The separatists have launched a series of deadly raids on government police and soldiers in recent weeks, leading authorities to escalate a crackdown that has killed dozens of civilians. Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Cameroon s government spokesman, said the separatists had killed four gendarmes earlier on Monday in the town of Kembong in Southwest region s Manyu Division. The assailants, ensnared by the measures put in place by our defense and security forces, are now reduced to sporadic attacks carried out by hidden faces and using perfidy, Tchiroma said. A representative for the separatists could not be immediately reached for comment. Manyu, with its dense equatorial forests along the Nigerian border, has become the center of the insurgency from which the separatists have launched a series of attacks on security forces in villages. The violence there has fueled a mounting refugee crisis. At least 7,500 people have crossed into Nigeria since Oct. 1, when the secessionists declared an independent state called Ambazonia, and the U.N. refugee agency says it is bracing itself for as many as 40,000. Cameroon s linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the German colony of Kamerun was carved up between allied French and British victors. The English-speaking regions joined the French-speaking Republic of Cameroon the year after its independence in 1960. French speakers have dominated the country s politics since. Tensions have long simmered but the recent violence is the most serious to date and has emerged as a serious challenge to Biya s 35-year rule. The 84-year-old is expected to seek a new term in an election next year.","label":0}
{"text":"One month away from a national election, Germany s Social Democrats are struggling in their efforts to narrow a yawning gap in support behind Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives. The left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD) is languishing on around 24 percent support, polls show, far behind Merkel s conservatives bloc, on some 38 percent. Germans go to the polls on Sept. 24. The SPD is having difficulty in differentiating itself from the conservatives, with whom it rules as junior partner in a grand coalition - an alliance the party wants to avoid repeating, but which polls suggest is the only partnership that can guarantee a majority. We need to get more emotional, to fight and force Merkel to speak in clear terms so that the differences become clear, SPD Labour Minister Andrea Nahles told business daily Handelsblatt. Nahles accused Merkel, who is campaigning for a fourth term on a platform of economic stability, of trying to cruise through the election without staking out clear positions. Last year, Germany s refugee crisis threatened Merkel. But with the migrant flow now stemmed and unemployment at a record low, she is able to project herself as an anchor of stability in an uncertain world. Trying to rock her, SPD leader Martin Schulz has grown increasingly critical of Merkel this week, accusing her of blocking his party s efforts in the ruling coalition to win better pay for temporary workers and improve workers rights. On Thursday, Schulz takes his campaign to Essen, in the heart of the Ruhr area of North Rhine-Westphalia that was at the center of Germany s post-war economic miracle but which is now a rust-belt. Germany s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia has traditionally been an SPD stronghold but the party lost there in a state election in May - one of three regional votes Merkel s conservatives won earlier this year. Schulz, 61, led the SPD to a brief poll surge after the party selected him as leader at the start of the year. But the revival quickly fizzled as his campaign for social justice failed to gain traction. A former European Parliament president, he cannot match the clout of Merkel, 63, gained in 12 years of experience as leader of Europe s biggest economy. Searching for another point of difference, Schulz pledged on Tuesday to have U.S. nuclear weapons withdrawn from German territory if, against the odds, he defeats Merkel. Schulz s election campaign is jumping around so many areas that it is impossible to discern a theme, the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung wrote in an editorial. Striking a defeatist note, Schulz said earlier this month he wanted to stay on as SPD leader even if his party loses the election.","label":0}
{"text":"Negotiations between the White House and congressional leaders on a spending measure to keep the U.S. government running beyond this week are continuing, and President Donald Trump is still seeking border wall and military funding, the White House said on Monday. Asked if Trump was insisting on some funding for his planned border wall in the current spending measure, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the money for the military and the border security wall were a priority for the president and he would not take them off the table yet.","label":0}
{"text":"Neal Katyal made oral arguments for maintaining the injunction against President Donald Trump's executive order banning migrants from certain countries Monday before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. [\"He could say, like President Bush did right after September 11th, 'The face of Terror is not the true face of Islam, that's not what Islam is about, Islam is Peace.' Instead, we get 'Islam hates us',\" Katyal told the bench, answering Judge Richard Paez's question on what, if anything, Trump could do to make the executive order acceptable. Katyal, former President Barack Obama's acting Solicitor General, has taken on the representation of the plaintiffs who stopped the executive order's implementation in March when a federal court in Hawaii ruled in their favor. The Justice Department has appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit, seeking to vacate that injunction. The most controversial element of district court Judge Derrick Watson's ruling was its justification of the injunction based not on the text or effect of the executive order, but on statements President Trump made during the 2016 campaign. According to that ruling, speaking about a \"Muslim ban\" and speaking negatively about the religion's relationship with the West mean that the plaintiffs had a high enough likelihood of proving a violation of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause to block the order. This is true even though the actual order does not take any action based on people being Muslim because, \"[A] reasonable, objective observer \u2014 enlightened by the specific historical context, contemporaneous public statements, and specific sequence of events leading to its issuance \u2014 would conclude that the Executive Order was issued with a purpose to disfavor a particular religion[. ]\" Katyal doubled down on this line of argument Monday, contending, as the district court had, that no reasonable objective observer could not see that the purpose of the order was to disfavor Muslims. As evidence, he rattled off an extensive list of amicus briefs submitted in favor of striking down Trump's order. Mentioned were the usual bevy of and liberal religious groups. \"Even the Cato Institute,\" Katyal finished, referring to the libertarian think tank with a long history of supporting weak immigration laws. The argumentation led naturally to the question of what, if anything, could be done to save such a facially neutral order. \"Does that mean that the President is forever barred from issuing an executive order along these lines?\" Judge Paez asked Katyal. \"What does he have to do to issue an executive order that, in your view, might pass constitutional muster?\" Trump might gain more power to issue executive order if he \"disavows,\" Katyal argued. \"One example would be what Judge Hawkins said about disavowing formally the stuff before. \" \"But that's not it, he could do a lot of things,\" Katyal continued. \"I'm just going to throw out some examples, I'm not trying to micromanage the president. \" In addition to suggesting Trump could save his order by telling the country \"Islam is peace,\" Katyal also recommended removing references, in the text of the order, to the unsavory elements of Islamic society. \"It could eliminate the text which refers to honor killings,\" he told the court. Katyal, in his work at the Justice Department during the Obama administration, frequentally defended presidential power to govern by executive order. He appeared to recognize the unusual nature of this suit challenging a president's authority on religious grounds. \"Our fundamental point to you is that Presidents generally don't run into establishment clause problems. This is a very unusual case in which you have these public statements by the President,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"The GOP is bowing down to Cliven Bundy and his band of domestic terrorists by giving them exactly what they want.A proposal has been drafted to strip the federal government of all public lands and give it all to the states for private uses that would likely destroy what has been protected and conserved for generations. You know, the public lands that include National Forests and natural treasures like the Grand Canyon.In 2014, Cliven Bundy led an armed standoff against the federal government because he refused to pay grazing fees even though his cattle were grazing on federal property. And earlier this year, Bundy s sons Ammon and Ryan Bundy led an armed seizure of a federal wildlife reserve in Oregon that last for weeks until the FBI arrested them. All three Bundy s are now behind bars but the GOP is poised to adopt their wrongly held position that the federal government can t own land.In fact, Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2 of the Constitution specifically gives the federal government the power to own and regulate land.The Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.But Republicans are proposing to turn over all public lands to the states so that they can sell them off to the highest bidders and strip the lands of all the resources. Congress should reconsider whether parts of the federal government s enormous landholdings and control of water in the West could be better used for ranching, mining or forestry through private ownership, the draft says. Timber is a renewable natural resource, which provides jobs to thousands of Americans. All efforts should be made to make federal lands managed by the U.S. Forest Service available for harvesting. The enduring truth is that people best protect what they own. But that is not true at all. These lands, such as the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area that was granted protection by Republican President Gerald Ford 40 years ago and the Noisy-Diobsud Wilderness Area that was granted protection by President Ronald Reagan, could be opened up to loggers if the new GOP has their way.These pristine lands and many others across the country haven t been touched, which means people are already protecting these public lands by keeping them public.Allowing these wilderness areas to fall into private ownership would mean Americans would lose access to these lands. Any private corporation that buys up this land will just put up signs that say No Trespassing and would proceed to cut down all the trees and strip mine the mountains and lands. Companies like Nestle could easily suck up all the water it wants. It would take generations for the forests to grow back and the area would never be the same. It would be devastated by private industry.That is why it is so important to vote in November. Republicans literally want to take our heritage away from us. They are bowing down to the demands of domestic terrorists. We can t let that happen if we want future generations to enjoy the natural wonders that past generations fought so hard to protect.Featured Image of Lake Tenaya in Yosemite National Park via Wikimedia","label":1}
{"text":"For a fifth consecutive night, American warplanes and drones on Monday pummeled suspected Qaeda targets in Yemen as the Pentagon said an earlier attack in the country had killed a former prisoner held at the United States detention center at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, Cuba. Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said an airstrike last Thursday \u2014 the first night of a larger Pentagon campaign to roll back gains made by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or A. Q. A. P. \u2014 killed the former detainee, who was using the name Yasir Ali Abdallah al Silmi. While at Guant\u00e1namo, he was held as Detainee No. 679 and went by the name Mohammed Tahar, according to military records. Including an airstrike overnight on Monday that Captain Davis said killed seven Qaeda fighters, the United States has conducted more than 40 attacks across central and southern Yemen in the past week. By comparison, the military carried out 41 strikes in all of 2012, the most in a single year against the Qaeda affiliate in Yemen. Soon after taking office, President Trump authorized the air campaign against the Qaeda branch, one of the deadliest in the world, at the same time he approved the Special Operations raid in January that left one member of Navy SEAL Team 6 dead and three others wounded. An estimated two dozen civilians were killed in that raid. \"It's a reflection of growing concern about the reconstitution of A. Q. A. P. in Yemen,\" Gerald M. Feierstein, a former United States ambassador to Yemen who is now at the Middle East Institute in Washington, said of the flurry of airstrikes. \"The key issue is how they identify targets, the fidelity of the intelligence, and the care they take to maintain the standard of near certainty on no collateral damage,\" Mr. Feierstein said, referring to civilian casualties. \"I don't know the answer to those questions. \" The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing for Thursday on Yemen, the first since the raid in January. Mr. Tahar was imprisoned at Guant\u00e1namo Bay from 2002 to 2009. Because Yemen was in chaos at that time, officials were reluctant to repatriate detainees there. But Mr. Tahar was among a small group the Obama administration repatriated in December 2009 as part of an experiment. Later that month, however, after the attempted bombing of a airliner by Al Qaeda's Yemen branch, President Barack Obama halted further repatriations to Yemen. Years later, the Obama administration resettled many Yemenis in other countries. Military records show that Mr. Tahar's brother, who went by the name Ali Abdullah Ahmed, was also a Guant\u00e1namo detainee. He was among three detainees who died in June 2006 in what the military said was a coordinated suicide. Captain Davis said that Usayd whom he described as a \"longtime explosives expert who served as the organization's emir\" within Abyan Province, was killed in the same March 2 strike as Mr. Tahar. Yemeni civilians in three provinces where Al Qaeda has strongholds described the American bombing campaign as unrelenting. For three days beginning Friday, American drones and attack planes extensively hit the rugged mountains and valleys in central Baydha Province, where Qaeda military camps have long existed outside the control of the weak central government in Sana, the capital, according to residents reached by phone. \"They appear on the sky at nearly the same time and quickly launched heavy fire against Al Qaeda gatherings,\" said Nayef, a resident who for security reasons preferred to be identified only by his first name. \"The U. S. planes become more aggressive when Al Qaeda militants fire back,\" he said. \"We can see balls of fire on the sky when the Americans exchange fire with Al Qaeda. \" Abdul Aziz Awadh, a resident of Abyan Province in the south, the birthplace of Yemen's president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, said that an American drone struck a taxi carrying a number of Qaeda militants on Thursday afternoon. \"The airstrike completely burned the car and killed at least four Al Qaeda,\" he said. \"We later learned that they came from Aden to Abyan. The U. S. drone chased them until they passed through a farm and hit them. \"","label":0}
{"text":"It looks at though Sen. Ted Cruz will actually have to contend with a complaint issued by an Illinois voter who believes that the Texas senator is not a natural born citizen of the United States. After all, it is true the Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta Canada, so if found not to be a natural born citizen, it would disqualify Cruz from not only being on the ballot in Illinois, but would raise questions nationwide.The voter, Lawrence Joyce, is bringing the complaint before the Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago. He tried previously to have it be heard, but the case was dismissed. However, according to USA Today, he appealed the decision and was granted a hearing for Friday before Judge Maureen Ward Kirby. Joyce, a pharmacist and attorney, and backer of Ben Carson, said: What I fear is that Ted Cruz becomes the nominee, come September, Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida will go forward with his threats and probably several other Democrats will file suit to prevent Ted Cruz from being on the ballot. What Democrats will do at that point is cherry pick which county courthouse they are going to show up in order to file these petitions. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens in this case, because if Cruz is determined not to be a natural born citizen, the implications nationwide would be huge.Just recently, another complaint was brought up in New York over his eligibility, and yet another in the senator s home state of Texas.Cruz has, time and time again, insisted that he is, in fact, a natural born citizen because his mother was born in Delaware, USA, thus making his a natural born citizen through birth. Although, this is still hotly contested by scholars nationwide. Perhaps only time will tell, and we ll all have to wait for the outcome of this hearing.Featured image: Flickr","label":1}
{"text":"Lebanese President Michel Aoun s office said on Saturday that Saad al-Hariri had phoned him from outside Lebanon to resign as the country s prime minister and that Aoun awaited Hariri s return to hear the circumstances of the resignation .","label":0}
{"text":"Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, strongly disputed accusations that President Trump's immigration order contains a \"religious test\" or \"bans Muslims. \"[\"I don't know where they're getting that from,\" he said. \"I don't think they read the same executive order. \" \"I served on the U. S. Commission on Religious Freedom for four years,\" he pointed out. \"We have an ambassador of religious freedom that goes around the world, trying to advance American values and protecting minorities. And it is extremely American, if not our first freedom, obviously, to protect religious freedom. That includes the persecution of minorities. \" \"The executive order from President Trump said nothing specifically about any specific religion. It said we will protect those persecuted in the name of religion, for their religion. So that would include Christians, Yazidis, and even Sunni Muslims like myself who are part of the majority in Syria \u2014 or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, or wherever \u2014 but yet have dissident opinions that are persecuted,\" he pointed out. Jasser said it truly would be wrong to favor one religion over the other, \"but it is very American to favor those who are persecuted over those who are the oppressors. \" \"And there's nothing more American than vetting refugees, and beginning to vet them against those who believe in theocracy,\" he added. \"We don't want people coming into this country that believe in the Islamic states. We want those who believe in freedom and liberty. I think it's appropriate to pause and begin the process of vetting ideology, which hasn't happened so far. We're sort of welcoming in anyone, including jihadists. It's just amazing how the identity Left loves to use us Muslims as a foil of identity politics. They're really not addressing what was written in that order. \" Jasser said Trump's order was, if anything, too narrow. \"I think there should have been more countries: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Qatar. The havens of the founding fathers of ISIS, I think, should have been included. But that would not make it more ' .' There is nothing more than helping dissident Muslims, helping those persecuted under theocracy, under the sharia state, if you will. \" He noted that the seven countries affected by Trump's executive order are \"the same seven countries that Obama listed as hot spots. \" \"I will say, there should be some fair criticism about the messaging from the White House on this,\" he added. \"I understand why they rushed it: because they didn't want people to get a head start, the radicals to get a head start. But still, probably the implementation could have been done better at the front lines, in airports, etc. But that's a different criticism from having what I believe are rallies across the country to try to undercut the stability of our country. \" Jasser said it was time to begin shifting \"the axis of the conversation\" about Islam and religious freedom. \"The conversation for the last eight years, or even into the Bush administration, has been about 'countering violent extremism,' which is a tactic,\" he said. \"We need to start shifting to saying, 'Well, what are we for?' We're against extremism. I think we should change it so that we're against violent Islamism, so that we make it clear \u2014 because when you make it clear and identify the enemy as theocratic Islamists, then Americans can start to say, 'Okay, so the are our friends and allies, and the Islamists are our enemies.' That makes it actually more rather than creating this sort of generic phobia of, 'Well, any Muslim could be a terrorist. '\" \"That's number one. Number two, we need to talk about what we're for,\" he continued. \"We will advance those who want freedom and liberty, who believe in secular democracy. Our Muslim reform movement has a declaration that is a declaration of principles, that says we're against the Caliphate. We believe in the universal declaration of human rights. These are things that I'd like to see the President, as he has this stay, start to engage. \" \"He talks about a commission on radical Islamism. I hope he starts putting that into play because the pause is just going to be a pause, with nothing gained, if we don't start to educate Americans about what we're for, and what the sides are,\" he warned. \"The old allies in the Middle East \u2014 Saudi Arabia, etc. \u2014 they might be with us in this program, but they're both the firefighters and the arsonists. We need to make clear that our principles in America, our religious freedom, are not embodied in those countries that are the cauldrons of radical Islam,\" he said. Jasser invited listeners to consult the resources at the American Islamic Forum for Democracy website and the larger umbrella Muslim Reform Movement that stretches across Europe and Canada. \"Unfortunately, the identity Left, and the Islamists who are what I call '' have been dominating the conversation, and they're just apoplectic right now because they've lost control,\" he said. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN:","label":0}
{"text":"While Trump says he s like, a smart person, and so doesn t need the President s daily intelligence briefings, he s taking security and intelligence briefings from spy agencies from other countries. In this case, he actually got a secret briefing from one of Israel s spy chiefs, Yossi Cohen, Director of the Mossad. The Mossad is Israel s top intelligence agency, analogous to the CIA in many ways, and none other than Benjamin Netanyahu organized this secret meeting with Trump and his people.As if that wasn t suspicious enough, the meeting included discussions of the Iran nuclear deal, which Israel claims is a clear and present threat to its existence; along with discussions of Syria s civil war and terrorism.This is all stuff he could and should be getting from our own intelligence officials, but he s alienated our intelligence community twice now first by shunning briefings, and second by insulting the CIA after they said they were confident that Russia hacked our election to help Trump win.It s quite clear that he looks upon our intelligence community with severe disdain. That s problematic, because if he s planning on getting a lot of intelligence this way, then it s also clear that he doesn t realize these foreign envoys don t have our best interests at heart. They have their own, and they will take advantage of him this way if they can.When it comes to the Russian hacking scandal, Trump is getting most of his intel from military generals who probably don t have the complex knowledge of digital espionage that Trump needs to be able to put a solid cybersecurity plan forward. So it wouldn t be surprising to find that he s getting more intelligence briefings from more sources, like this secret one from the Mossad.(What s worse is wondering what role Trump s ego played here. It wouldn t be surprising to find out that Trump took that meeting more because it made him feel special, and less because it was something he truly believes in.)For reference, the Mossad secretly helped supply Iran with weapons in their war against Iraq as part of the Iran-Contra Affair that embroiled President Reagan s administration in a deep scandal. Now they re reaching out to our president-elect not just for help with Iran and Syria, but also for help with Palestine. As Netanyahu has said in the past, Israel must occupy all the land for the foreseeable future. They see this as essential to their security (it s actually essential to their expansion, but they d never say that).Israel also wants Trump to stand against Obama on a U.N. resolution that Israel and its supporters see as advocating pro-Palestinian rights.The horror.It s just terrible when someone wants equal rights a problem with which we here in the U.S. have some experience. And Obama is expected to speak out in support of this resolution and of restarting peace talks between Israel and Palestine.Trump has tapped his own bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, as the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman a hardliner who doesn t believe in a two-state solution and wants to declare Israel s settlements in the West Bank legal. No wonder Israel sent a secret envoy to meet with Trump.Regardless, Trump needs to get his intelligence briefings on these subjects from U.S. intelligence officials, because he needs to see these things from our point of view. Israel isn t thinking about us, they re thinking about themselves, and could seriously undermine any efforts we re making in the Middle East. This meeting was for them, not for us. If this is how Trump plans on getting intelligence, then we re in a lot of trouble.Featured image by Drew Angerer via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Cook these six vegetables for even greater health benefits   raw food , cooking , vegetables (NaturalNews) \"To cook or not to cook?\" has been a topic of heated debate among some health food advocates. Raw food junkies claim that eating foods in their most natural state is the answer to all our issues and diseases, cancer included. They believe that cooking destroys essential vitamins, live enzymes and antioxidants vital to our health.While nobody will dispute the fact that adding more raw, organic fruits and vegetables to our diet is essential for overall health and well-being, going raw all the way isn't always the best option either. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that people who followed a strictly raw food diet had normal levels of vitamin A and beta-carotene, but low levels of the antioxidant lycopene. As reported by Scientific American , high lycopene levels have been associated with a lower risk of cancer and heart attacks. According to Rui Hai Liu, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University, lycopene may be an even more potent antioxidant than vitamin C .It seems that some vegetables need a little heat to release their plant goodness. Most plants have a tough cellular structure. Lightly cooking these food makes it easier for the body to break down the plant's thick cell walls, making nutrients more available for absorption .Read on to discover six foods that are healthier cooked. 1. Asparagus Lightly cooking asparagus spears makes it easier for the body to absorb cancer-fighting vitamins such as vitamin A, C and E, as well as folate. Furthermore, higher levels of antioxidants, ferulic acid in particular, have been reported when this vegetable is cooked. 2. Carrots Beta-carotene is the compound that gives carrots their vibrant orange color. The body converts beta-carotene to vitamin A, which is vital for vision, reproduction, bone growth and immune health.Carrots, however, are sturdy vegetables and don't give up their nutrients that quickly. To get the most out of your carrots, Researchers at the University of Arkansas advise that higher levels of beta-carotene are obtained when carrots are cooked. 3. Mushrooms According to Andrew Weil, M.D., mushrooms are indigestible when they are uncooked. He said that thoroughly heating them releases the nutrients they contain, including B vitamins, proteins and minerals, as well as compounds not found in other foods. 4. Pumpkin and other winter squash Not many people will eat raw pumpkin, unless it is put through a juicer , and that is just fine, since cooked pumpkin has been shown to be more nutritious. Just like carrots, pumpkins need a little heat to break down tougher cell walls and release their plant goodness. 5. Spinach Folate, vitamin C, niacin, riboflavin and potassium are more available in raw spinach. However, slightly cooking spinach increases the levels of vitamin A and E, fiber, zinc, thiamin, calcium, iron and protein \u2013 as well as essential carotenoids, such as beta-carotene, lutein and zeaxanthin. 6. Tomatoes While cooking tomatoes reduces vitamin C levels, it also makes lycopene more available to the body. As mentioned earlier, lycopene has been linked to a lower risk of cancer and heart attacks. Vitamin C is an abundant vitamin, so it is well worth the loss.As you can see, raw isn't necessarily always best. However, if you love tomato or spinach salads and can't stand them cooked, that doesn't mean you should stop eating them raw. Whether you enjoy your veggies raw or cooked, the most important thing is that you are eating them in the first place.","label":1}
{"text":"It's easy to talk about how giants existed and how ancient mankind created myths around alleged beings of incredible proportions. But apparently, not everything is pure myth. In this article, we take a look at three fascinating MASSIVE footprints that according to many prove ancient Giants did exist.  Interestingly, in nearly all ancient writings we find that in the distant past, giants walked among ordinary humans. If we look at ancient writings from South America, North America, Europe and Asia, we will find that ancient cultures mentioned giants in their ancient writings. However, some ancient texts not only mention giants but suggest they were real. Ok so, if giants did exist, then\u2026 show me the evidence!  Well, the evidence may well be all around us. It doesn't matter where we look, Asia, North America, Africa, we will see that there are 'footprints' embedded into a rock which are indicative of SUPERSIZED beings. We can find stories in many mythologies of the ancient world: Greek, Norse, Germanic, Indian, Indo-European, and also in the new world as in the traditions of the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas; but most importantly in almost all major sacred books of antiquity: the Lebhar Gabhale, the Hindu Ramayana and even in the Bible. However, in addition to the massive footprints found around the globe, there is written evidence which also suggests these beings were real. A 2,000-year-old book called 'The Book of Giants' is what many are referring to as the ultimate proof of the existence of giants. Over 50 years ago, scholars came across this fascinating book which details the Nephilim and how these beings were destroyed. Please note that the word 'Nephilim' is still not fully understood. Throughout the years, scholars have proposed some etymologies, among them: 'The Fallen, 'Apostates,' and even 'those that cause others to fall.' But regardless of their name and the meaning, the enigmatic Nephilim have long been considered the giant beings that inhabited our planet in the distant past. The 'Book of Giants' was found nearly half a century ago in the Qumran Caves where experts recovered thousands of ancient scrolls that offer invaluable details of mankind's past. But Giants are also mentioned in the Bible.  \"There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.\" -Genesis 6:4 So in addition to 'footprints,' we have ancient texts that speak of Giants and how these beings existed on Earth. But not everyone is convinced that these ancient texts are proof of giants. As a matter of a fact, many believe that these are just myths created by our ancients. But if giants are just a myth\u2026 how come we have MASSIVE footprints in different parts of the world? Recently, photographers exploring an area near a Chinese village came across a sensational finding. They discovered (and photographed) a footprint left behind by a massive being. In the image \u2013se below\u2014 you can clearly see the footprint embedded into rock. Compared to an ordinary foot of a human being, the footprint embedded into rock is at least twice as big. Furthermore, in South Africa near the Swaziland border in the Mpumalanga province, another massive footprint was found embedded into rock. There a massive 1.2-meter long footprint stands firmly embedded into granite. Locals call it Goliath's Footprint or 'The Footprint of God'. Its big. Really big. Locals consider the region where the footprint is located as a place of love, peace, and healing and that the Mpuluzi footprint is there to serve the power of good. How the gigantic footprint was imprinted into granite is another mystery, local shamans tell the story that this particular footprint was left by a being which was running across the ground covered with warm lava ash and that this is how the footprint came to be imprinted in granite. However, many remain skeptical. Dr. Jay Wile, a nuclear chemist, asserted that \"it is almost certainly not a footprint.\" However, as we can read on other websites , more controversial footprints have been found around the world. A news article published in the Strand Magazine, December of 1895, reprinted in \"Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland\" by W.G. Wood-Martin mentions this fossilized giant discovered during mining operations in County Antrim, Ireland: \"Pre-eminent among the most extraordinary articles ever held by a railway company is the fossilized Irish giant, which is at this moment lying at the London and North-Western Railway Company's Broad Street goods depot, and a photograph of which is reproduced here\u2026 This monstrous figure is reputed to have been dug up by a Mr. Dyer whilst prospecting for iron ore in County Antrim. The principal measurements are: entire length, 12ft. 2in.; girth of chest, 6ft. 6in.; and length of arms, 4ft. 6in. There are six toes on the right foot. The gross weight is 2 tons 15cwt.; so that it took half a dozen men and a powerful crane to place this article of lost property in position for the Strand, magazine artist. Dyer, after showing the giant in Dublin, came to England with his queer find and exhibited it in Liverpool and Manchester at sixpence, sixpence a head, attracting scientific men as well as gaping sightseers\". The idea that Giants walked on Earth \u2014and that there is even possibly evidence to support claims of their existence\u2014 is something fascinating. So, while looking for more massive footprints, we've stumbled across the image posted below which seems to depict another GIANT footprint embedded into rock. While we have no information as to where the image was taken, we can provide the source where we found the image. Furthermore, another massive footprint embedded into solid rock can be found at Bheemana Hejje near Bangalore. It is referred to as the Giant Footprint of Bheema. Ancient-Code  SOURCE","label":1}
{"text":"Democrat Senator Kristen Gillibrand (NY) likes to think of herself as a champion of women. After multiple women came forward to accuse fellow Democrat Senator Al Franken of sexual assault (photos were also supplied as evidence of one of the accuser s claims), Gillibrand finally called for Franken to step down. Was Gillibrand s call for her fellow Senator to step down part of a larger plan to appear neutral, as she then attacked President Donald Trump for unfounded allegations against him only months before the election? Isn t it kind of hypocritical for Gillibrand to call anyone out of sexual misconduct after she fought to bring a Muslim athlete to upstate New York who molested an innocent 12-year old girl while he was in America?The media CHEERED when NY Democrat Senator s Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer helped a 24-yr old Muslim man enter the U.S. after he was denied entry The media was strangely SILENT, however, after he molested a 12-yr-old upstate NY girl while she was with her family at an event celebrating the Muslim athlete. Yesterday, it was discovered that the Islamic extremist who killed 9 people and injured dozens of others, when he rammed his truck into them on a busy bike path in New York City, entered our country on a Diversity visa that was the brainchild of none other than the Democrat Senator from NY, Chuck (I always put diversity before our nation s security) Schumer An Indian athlete who overcame a visa denial with the help of U.S. lawmakers and a local mayor to attend the World Snowshoe Championship in New York has been arrested on charges of the abuse of a minor.It was a long journey for Indian snowshoe champion Hussain and his coach to the World Snowshoe Championships in Saranac Lake, New York last weekend.The US embassy in New Delhi rejected Tanveer Hussain s application for a visa so he could compete in the World Snowshoe Championship last month, Fox News reported.Local officials then appealed for help to Schumer and Gillibrand, and their offices reached out to the New Delhi embassy, which let Hussain successfully reapply for a visa.Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer, an outspoken opponent of President Trump s position on stricter immigration policies for immigrants and visa holders coming into the United States, bragged about getting around Trump s temporary travel restrictions to bring convicted pedophile Tanveer Hussain to New York on his Facebook page:Schumer s office told Fox he often intervenes to help international competitions. As we often do when local communities ask for help, at the request of Saranac Lake we helped to navigate the visa process so these athletes could compete at a local competition. The charges against one member of the group, who is accused of a serious crime and abusing our visa program, are extremely troubling. If he s found guilty, he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, a rep said.Gillibrand s office offered a similar response, adding that the charges are extremely serious. Hussain hails from the Indian side of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, which is predominantly Muslim. Although India is not one of the seven countries that were part of the initial travel ban, Hussain and Khan had alleged they were victims of it when their first attempt at procuring visas to travel to the United States was turned down in late January, the first business day after Trump s travel ban was put in place.Khan told the BBC that an employee at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi told them they were being rejected because of current policy. U.S. officials said at the time that the denial was not connected to the travel ban. An embassy spokesman said they were preparing a statement for release later in the day. National PostTanveer Hussain was indicted in August 2017, by an Essex County grand jury for allegedly having inappropriate contact with a 12-year-old Saranac Lake girl earlier this year.Tanveer is pictured below surrounded by young teenagers at Saranac Middle School. Taneer is pictured in center-left with his arms around a young girl.The grand jury returned the indictment charging Tanveer Hussain with one count of first-degree sexual abuse and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, a report in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise quoted a press release from Essex County District Attorney Kristy Sprague as saying.The reckless and irresponsible acts of Democrat legislators like Senator Chuck Schumer, perfectly illustrates why Trump was right about demanding that we put additional vetting measures in place for immigrants.Hussain and team manager Abid Khan arrived Feb. 23 in the bucolic Adirondacks town, which had been following their visa ordeal and extended them a hero s welcome. Locals offered congratulations and free lodgings at an inn that in the snow looked like a fairy tale scene from a movie, Khan said in a Facebook post.The fairy tale was shattered Wednesday, when Hussain, 24, was arrested and charged with felony sexual abuse and child welfare endangerment, police said.The parents of the 12-year-old girl allegedly involved said the incident happened Monday, after the end of the three-day snowshoe competition, and reported it to local authorities.Chief Charles A. Potthast Jr. of the Saranac Lake Village police force said the girl was playing pool Monday afternoon with other young people at the inn where Hussain was staying. There was a moment when the two were alone, and that s when the incident occurred, Potthast said. The girl told police there was a passionate kiss and that Hussain touched her in an intimate area on top of her clothing.During their time in Saranac Lake, Hussein and his coach were honored with a special reception by the mayor and gave a talk about Kashmir at Saranac Lake Middle School, where students had waged a letter-writing campaign on their behalf. Pack your bags. Next year you are coming to Kashmir, Hussain told them, according to one of Khan s Facebook posts. Washington Post","label":1}
{"text":"When you re running for re-election in your toughest campaign yet, in a state with a heavy Hispanic voting population, what s the one thing you shouldn t do? Well, for starters, you shouldn t underestimate the voting bloc that could make or break you.But John McCain doesn t care. Even though he runs neck-in-neck with Democratic Congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick in a general election matchup, he is adamant he and the GOP don t need the Hispanic vote to win:An interesting phenomenon right now is the huge turnouts for the Republican primaries, low turnout for the Democrat primaries. Now if all those people would get behind the Republican candidate, I think we could win this election despite the alienation, frankly, of a lot of the Hispanic voters.Two things: one, there s no correlation between primary turnout and wins in the fall in the last 11 elections (a statement that was rated true by Politifact), and two: do not underestimate Hispanic voters. As the Huffington Post notes, the Hispanic and Latino voting bloc could tip the scales for Democrats in Arizona. And, as of right now, the majority of them support Ann Kirkpatrick.The angry white vote can only carry McCain so far. And with a mounting challenge by Tea Partier Kelli Ward, McCain can t afford a split Arizona Republican Party.Like Donald Trump, Republicans are cashing in on their last ditch effort to convince enough angry, latently racist white voters to save them, and screw the rest.Kirkpatrick jumped all over McCain s idiotic comments, saying:I wonder what thousands of Latino families across Arizona will think when they hear that John McCain is willing to alienate them as long as he and Republicans win in November. McCain, who already revealed that his Latino outreach efforts are a pure, political move, has changed his positions on important issues such as immigration reform and the DREAM Act, depending on who he talks to or whether it s an election year. And McCain has repeatedly promised to support Donald Trump if he becomes the GOP nominee, in spite of Trump s racist, anti-Latino rhetoric.Donald Trump? Alienation? Flip-flopping? It s as if McCain is dying to retire. Let s make sure in November he gets what he deserves a swift kick in the behind.","label":1}
{"text":"Zimbabwe s First Lady, Grace Mugabe, has denied assaulting South African model Gabriella Engels with an electric cable in a Johannesburg hotel suite last month, saying an intoxicated and unhinged Engels attacked her with a knife. In a previously unreported Aug. 17 deposition seen exclusively by Reuters, Mugabe countered 20-year-old Engels version, portraying herself as the victim after intervening on behalf of her adult sons Chatunga and Robert Junior who were in trouble with a drunken young woman . The statement said Grace Mugabe, 52 and a contender to replace her 93-year-old husband as Zimbabwe s president, was thinking about filing attempted murder charges. A group representing Engels dismissed the allegations as lies. According to the model, an irate Mugabe burst into the room where she was waiting with two friends to meet Chatunga on Aug. 13 and started laying into her with an electric cable. Photographs taken by Engels mother soon after the incident showed gashes to the model s head. She also had bruising on her thighs. In her deposition, Mugabe dismissed Engels version as malicious allegations and said she had been attacked after going to help her sons. She was worried about them and went to see them at their hotel suite, the statement said. Upon her arrival, Ms Engels, who was intoxicated and unhinged, attacked Dr. Grace Mugabe with a knife after she was asked to leave the hotel. Security was left with no other option but to remove Ms Engels from the hotel suite, it continued. The statement also alleged that Engels had been in a fight with other women at Johannesburg s Taboo nightclub the previous evening and suggested that may have been the cause of her injuries. Afriforum, an Afrikaans civil society group acting on behalf of Engels, denied both accusations. Gabriella never attacked Grace Mugabe in any way and she did not participate in the fight at Taboo, Afriforum said. It is clear that Grace Mugabe is desperately trying to escape responsibility for her own violent behavior by using lies to falsely portray the victim in this case as the perpetrator. South Africa granted Grace Mugabe diplomatic immunity, allowing her to evade immediate prosecution for assault, although Engels and Afriforum have challenged that decision, saying Mugabe was not in South Africa on official business. They also argued that assault was a grave crime that was not covered by diplomatic immunity laws. The decision to let Grace Mugabe return home caused a row in South Africa, with the opposition Democratic Alliance also going to court to overturn the immunity. According to Zimbabwean intelligence files seen by Reuters, Robert Mugabe lobbied his South African counterpart, Jacob Zuma, to have the issue solved amicably and out of court but was stymied by Engels refusal to accept a settlement. He is trying to avoid the embarrassment of his wife appearing before the court, one file, dated Aug. 30, reads. The problem he is facing is that the woman who was assaulted is refusing to accept any money and she just wants justice to be delivered upon Grace. Afriforum lawyer Gerrie Nel - best known for prosecuting South African track star Oscar Pistorius over the shooting of his girlfriend - said last month Engels had been approached with a cash offer but had turned it down. The intelligence report is a part of a series of hundreds of files dating back to 2009 that have come from within Zimbabwe s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Reuters has not been able to establish their original author or final audience. The Aug. 30 report said Mugabe was changing his attitude to the case and was now backing Grace while accusing Engels of impropriety. Mugabe wants people to stop castigating his wife and calling her all sorts of names, it said. Mugabe is saying that his wife acted in an angry mood like all other women who find their children being involved with sleeping with whores. Afriforum chief executive Kallie Kriel said this allegation was an absolute lie and part of a deliberate attempt by Harare to undermine Engels credibility as a witness. A spokesman for Zimbabwe s presidency, which has direct oversight of the CIO, was not immediately available for comment. Zimbabwe s ambassador to South Africa did not respond to a request for comment. Zuma has denied any hand in the affair, telling parliament on Aug. 31: I am not a lawyer. I don t know the point of law and I was not involved in this process. How it was done, I would be lying if I speculate. His spokesman declined to elaborate.","label":0}
{"text":"Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla fighter who has twice stood trial for war crimes, was chosen on Thursday to form a new government in Kosovo, ending a political deadlock that has persisted since elections on June 11. President Hashim Thaci gave Haradinaj the mandate after his coalition struck an agreement with a smaller party that paved the way for them to take power. Haradinaj s coalition comprises parties made up of former guerrillas who fought Serbian forces in 1998 and 1999. That campaign led to accusations of war crimes against him, but he was acquitted twice by a United Nations war crimes tribunal. The coalition signed an agreement on Monday with the smaller New Alliance for Kosovo (AKR) party to put together a new government, an agreement that gives them 62 seats in the 120-seat parliament [nL8N1L42QO. The AKR is led by Behgjet Pacolli, whom media call the richest man in Kosovo. Haradinaj is expected to present his program to parliament on Saturday, after which the government should be elected. The new government will confront unemployment running at 30 percent and uncertain relations with Kosovo s neighbors, especially Serbia, a precondition for both countries to move forward in their efforts to join the European Union. It must also reform health and education and the tax administration system as well as include representatives of some 120,000 Kosovo Serbs who do not recognize independence. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, almost a decade after NATO air strikes drove out Serbian forces that had been accused of expelling and killing ethnic Albanian civilians in a two-year counter-insurgency.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Federal Communications Commission wants to rollback landmark media ownership regulations that prohibit owning a television station and newspaper in the same market and making it easier to acquire additional TV or radio stations, Chairman Ajit Pai said on Wednesday. If approved at the FCC's November meeting, the move would be a win for newspapers and broadcasters that have pushed for the change for decades, but was criticized by Democrats who said it could usher in a new era of media consolidation. The FCC in 1975 banned cross-ownership of a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market, unless it granted a waiver, to ensure a diversity of opinions. The rule was made before the explosion of internet and cable news and Republican President Donald Trump and Pai have vowed to reduce government regulation. \"We must stop the federal government from intervening in the news business,\" Pai told a congressional panel, noting that many newspapers have closed and many radio and TV stations are struggling. Pai moved earlier this year to make it easier for some companies to own a larger number of local stations. Pai said the marketplace no longer justifies the rules, citing Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) dominance of internet advertising. \"Online competition for the collection and distribution of news is greater than ever. And just two internet companies claim 100 percent of recent online advertising growth; indeed, their digital ad revenue this year alone will be greater than the market cap of the entire broadcasting industry,\" Pai said. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat, said at the hearing Wednesday the move would lead to further consolidation in the media business and should be opposed. There are three Republicans and two Democrats on the panel. Pai also proposes to make it easier for companies to own multiple TV and radio stations in the same market and he would allow two local stations among the top four in a market to petition the FCC to merge. The Pew Research Center said in June total weekday circulation for U.S. daily newspapers fell 8 percent in 2016, marking the 28th consecutive year of declines, while Sunday circulation declined to 38 million, the lowest levels since 1945. Newspaper ad revenue in 2016 fell to $18 billion, down from $49 billion in 2006. News Media Alliance Chief Executive David Chavern said newspapers need economies of scale to complete. He praised Pai's move, saying the current rules \"do not make sense, particularly when newspapers compete with countless sources of news and information every day.\" The National Association of Broadcasters said it backs Pai's plan, noting that policymakers have approved numerous \"mega-mergers\" among phone, cable and satellite programmers \"while at the same time blocking broadcast\/newspaper or radio\/TV combinations in single markets.\" The group added \"this nonsensical regulatory approach has harmed the economic underpinning of newspapers, reduced local journalism jobs, and punished free and local broadcasters at the expense of our pay TV and radio competitors.\" Free Press, an advocacy group, said the proposal would make it easier for Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc (SBGI.O) to complete its $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune Media Co (TRCO.N) with fewer divestitures. The \"disastrous proposal is tailor-made for Sinclair and other giant broadcast chains that push often slanted or cookie-cutter content over the public airwaves,\" the group said.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump s Twitter feed is always a goldmine of crazy. Unfortunately, since the orange overlord is now squatting in the Oval Office, those nutty tweets tend to have the ability to derail important policy initiatives, and can therefore have disastrous effects for the nation and sometimes the world. Case in point the fact that he insisted upon attacking Democratic leaders that he had a meeting with regarding the debt ceiling, the Children s Health Insurance Program, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and other important domestic policy initiatives. Apparently, Trump saw fit to take to Twitter to accuse his old pals Chuck and Nancy of not being strong enough on crime and immigration, and therefore doesn t see a way to make deals with them:Meeting with Chuck and Nancy today about keeping government open and working. Problem is they want illegal immigrants flooding into our Country unchecked, are weak on Crime and want to substantially RAISE Taxes. I don t see a deal! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2017Given this out-of-the-blue attack, Democratic Minority Leaders Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) released a joint statement promptly pulling out of the meeting, which reads: Given that the President doesn t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead. Leader Pelosi then took to Twitter herself to take Trump on:Given that the President doesn t see a deal between Democrats and the White House, we believe the best path forward is to continue negotiating with our Republican counterparts in Congress instead. Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) November 28, 2017Rather than going to the White House for a show meeting that won t result in an agreement, we ve asked @SenateMajLdr & @SpeakerRyan to meet this afternoon. Read my full statement w\/ @SenSchumer here: https:\/\/t.co\/v17WhoEJFU Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) November 28, 2017It s likely best that the Democrats don t go meet with Trump anyway. He is clearly becoming more and more unhinged by the day. There was absolutely no reason for him to attack these leaders who had set up a time to meet with him in good faith. Then again, we re led by a crazy man, and there s not much sense in anything at all anymore.Look for that government shutdown, folks. It s coming.Watch a video on the situation, below:","label":1}
{"text":"The United States and Germany called on China to immediately release a prominent human rights activist who was jailed for eight years on Tuesday for subversion, the harshest sentence passed in a recent crackdown on activism. Wu Gan, a blogger better known by his online name Super Vulgar Butcher , regularly championed sensitive cases of government abuses of power, both online and in street protests. He was detained in May 2015 and charged with subversion. In a separate case, also on Tuesday, rights lawyer Xie Yang avoided criminal punishment despite being found guilty of inciting subversion, because he admitted to his crimes. We call on the Chinese authorities to release Wu immediately, the U.S. and Germany embassies in China said in a joint statement. As Xie has been exempted from punishment, we urge China to allow Xie to resume his professional activities without preconditions and be free of any restrictions. China s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Beijing frequently denounces foreign concern about rights cases as an interference in internal affairs and says China is a country with rule of law. Wu, in a statement released by his lawyers late on Tuesday, said he considered the sentence an honor as it proved that he had not become a slave or accomplice to the China s autocracy . I got eight years, but I feel no grief or despair. This was my choice, because opposing autocracy means you are already on the road to jail, Wu said in the statement. I call on the international community to pay attention to China s deteriorating human rights situation, he added. Wu s sentence was the most severe in what rights groups have called an unprecedented attack on rights activists and lawyers, known as the 709 crackdown, which began in full force on July 9, 2015. The hardline approach has shown no sign of softening as President Xi Jinping enters his second five-year term in office, and has drawn widespread concern in Western capitals. Germany has been particularly outspoken, to China s irritation. Speaking at a daily news briefing on Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying expressed displeasure at comments last week by the German ambassador on China s failure to set up a previously agreed upon cyber consultation mechanism. China had, in fact, invited Germany to send representatives to talks, but the Germans kept putting China off, Hua told reporters. China hoped the ambassador stops saying such irresponsible remarks , she added.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on Thursday he would stay out of any probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election but maintained he did nothing wrong by failing to disclose he met last year with Russia's ambassador. Sessions, a longtime U.S. senator who was an early and high-ranking player in President Donald Trump's campaign before becoming the country's top law enforcement official, announced the decision after several fellow Republicans in Congress suggested the move would be appropriate. \"I have recused myself in the matters that deal with the Trump campaign,\" Sessions told reporters at a hastily arranged news conference. Sessions said he had been weighing recusal - ruling himself out from any role in the investigations - even before the latest twist of the controversy over ties between Trump associates and Russia that has dogged the early days of the Trump presidency. The president backed Sessions, saying Democrats had politicized the issue and calling the controversy a \"total witch hunt.\" Sessions' announcement did nothing to quell concerns among congressional Democrats, a number of whom called for Sessions to step down. Trump and Republicans who control Congress are trying to move past early administration missteps and focus on issues important to them, including immigration, tax cuts and repealing the Obamacare healthcare law. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last year that Russia hacked and leaked Democratic emails during the election campaign as part of an effort to tilt the vote in Trump's favor. The Kremlin has denied the allegations. Sessions denied he had contact with Russian officials when he was asked directly during his Senate confirmation hearing to become attorney general whether he had exchanged information with Russian operatives during the election campaign. He told reporters he was \"honest and correct\" in his response, although he acknowledged he \"should have slowed down\" and mentioned he had met with the ambassador in his role as a senator. \"I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,\" Sessions said, adding he felt he should not be involved in investigating a campaign in which he had had a role. In a statement on Thursday night, Trump said Sessions \"did not say anything wrong. He could have stated his response more accurately, but it was clearly not intentional.\" Sessions' meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak were disclosed on Wednesday night by the Washington Post. Sessions received Kislyak in his Senate office in September and also met him in July at a Heritage Foundation event at the Republican National Convention that was attended by about 50 ambassadors. Trump fired national security adviser Michael Flynn last month after disclosures that Flynn had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with Kislyak before Trump took office and that Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. The recusal means Sessions, a powerful member of Trump's inner circle, will not be briefed on details of any probe. Should the Federal Bureau of Investigation decide to move forward with charges, Sessions would not be in a position to weigh in on whether the Department of Justice should take the case. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi urged Sessions to resign and said \"his narrow recusal and sorry attempt to explain away his perjury\" were inadequate. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Sessions' explanation for failing to tell the Senate about his meetings \"is simply not credible.\" He called on Sessions to step down and said the Justice Department should name an independent prosecutor to investigate Russian interference. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee asked the FBI to launch a criminal investigation into Sessions' statements to Congress about his communication with Russian officials. Sessions is one of many \"subjects\" of a government investigation of any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia, two U.S. officials familiar with the probe said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sessions was not now a \"target\" of the probe by the FBI, the Treasury Department, the CIA and the National Security Agency. The investigation, one of the officials said, had a number of subjects because of the numerous contacts between associates of Trump, including Flynn, and the Russian Embassy in Washington as well as Russian and some Ukrainian businessmen and companies. At least two other officials in Trump's campaign said they also spoke with the Russian ambassador at a conference on the sidelines of the July convention last July, USA Today reported on Thursday. Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner also met with Kislyak in December at Trump Tower in New York, an administration official said on Thursday, confirming a report in the New Yorker. While there is nothing legally wrong with such meetings, the reported contacts raise questions about the White House's repeated statements that it knew of no further contacts with Russian officials beyond those by Flynn. Trump has accused officials in former Democratic President Barack Obama's administration of trying to discredit him with questions about Russia contacts. The White House dismissed the disclosure of the Sessions meetings as a partisan attack, saying his contacts with the ambassador had been as a member of the Armed Services Committee. Trump called frequently during his campaign for improved relations with Russia, drawing criticism from Democrats and some Republicans. Ties with Russia have been deeply strained in recent years over Moscow's military interference in Ukraine, military support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and President Vladimir Putin's intolerance of political dissent. With his administration on the defensive over Russia, Trump's enthusiasm seems to have cooled, and his top foreign policy advisers have begun talking tougher about Moscow. The Russian Embassy in Washington, shrugging off the uproar, said on Thursday it was in regular contact with \"U.S. partners.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Join Patrick every week here at 21WIRE.TV for news, views and analysis on all top stories domestically and abroad THIS WEEK: Episode 4 The New World Order Did Great Britain regain control of its former American colonies by stealth? From Cecil Rhodes and his Round Table, to H.G. Wells, to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski many have worked to steer the world beyond the modern nation state and into Technetronic Era of global government. But to what end?Host Patrick Henningsen talks to Sean Stone, author of the new book, New World Order: A Strategy for Imperialism. Listen: END 927 Download Link START 999 Download Link Download this podcast END 999 Download Link This program broadcasts LIVE every Wednesday night from 8pm to 9pm MST, right after the Savage Nation, on Independent Talk 1100 KFNX over the terrestrial AM band across the greater Phoenix and central Arizona region, and live over global satellite and online via www.1100kfnx.com.READ MORE NWO NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire NWO Files","label":1}
{"text":"CNN cut away from a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday morning, seconds after Sen. Lindsey Graham ( ) raised concerns that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had hired a former Clinton Foundation attorney to assist with the probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. [Graham was questioning Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who was sitting in for Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Democrats have long accused the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia, though no evidence has emerged. There is also speculation that Special Counsel Mueller will probe allegations of obstruction of justice against President Donald Trump. Earlier this week, reports emerged that Mueller had hired attorneys for his investigative team who had donated to Hillary Clinton in the past, and one in particular who had represented the Clinton Foundation in its effort to block Freedom of Information Act requests for on Clinton's private server. Graham: Is giving political donations a reason to disqualify somebody for serving in the Special Counsel's office? Rosenstein: No, Senator, it is not a disqualification. It is not. Graham: As a matter of fact, many states, the judges and prosecutors are actually elected. Donations are a part of that system, is that correct? Rosenstein: Yes, that's true. Graham: Would it be a disqualification for somebody in the Special Counsel's office who had represented Mrs. Clinton in the past to serve? Rosenstein: You know, Senator, it would depend on facts and circumstances. As a general matter, I think the answer is no. Graham: Isn't that much closer to a conflict of interest? Rosenstein: I don't want to answer a hypothetical, Senator. Everybody needs to make a determination based on the facts and circumstances of the individual case. Graham: How would you get it before the Special Counsel? What process could a member of the Senate use to inform the Special Counsel that you'd have a concern about hiring someone that represented Clinton? Rosenstein: We have a process within the Department of Justice, Senator, so I would encourage you, if you have those concerns, to raise them with [former] Director Mueller or to raise them with me, and I'll make sure \u2014 Graham: So should I do it to you or to him? Rosenstein: Well, you could do it to both. Graham: Okay. That's fair enough. Rosenstein: And we have career \u2014 Graham: And I don't know if I'll do that, but I've read some things that were \u2014 I don't think donations are disqualifying at all, but if you represented the Clinton Foundation or Clinton herself, that would be disturbing to me, but I'll take care of that. CNN cut back to the studio shortly after that, while Graham was still questioning Rosenstein. Earlier, Graham had asked Rosenstein whether there was \"any reason, for cause, to fire Mr. Mueller. \" Rosenstein had said he did not know of any reason. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the \"most influential\" people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.","label":0}
{"text":"Brazil s Army commander dismissed a general s suggestion that members of the Army s High Command endorse some sort of military intervention if high courts fail to stem political corruption, the online services of Brazil s two biggest newspapers said. At a gathering of freemasons in Bras lia last Friday, General Antonio Hamilton Mour o had suggested his fellows at the High Command think the current timing is not favorable for military intervention but that it could eventually take place through successive steps, Folha de S. Paulo said. Either institutions sort out the political problem, through the judiciary branch of power and withdrawing from public life all those elements involved in illicit acts, or then we will have to impose that, Mour o was quoted as saying by O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper on Sunday. Army Commander Eduardo Villas B as dismissed Mour o s comments by saying there is no possibility of a military intervention in Brazil. B as told Estado that since 1985, when a 21-year military dictatorship came to an end, the military was not responsible for any source of turmoil in the nation s life, and it will continue to be like that. While Mour o, currently the army s head of finance, hinted that there could come a time when the army would have to impose military action, he said it would not be to take power from civilians, Folha said. An action would aim at telling people, Beware, let s fix this now so the country can move forward and not continue the way it is, the newspaper quoted him as saying. The army command did not immediately respond to request for comment. Mour o could not be found by Reuters to comment on his remarks. Mour o, in the army since 1972, was discharged from Brazil s South Military Command and transferred to the federal capital of Bras lia in 2015 for administrative work after publicly criticizing former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff. Rousseff was impeached last year after she was found guilty of doctoring budget accounts. Her fall was accelerated by a three-year corruption scandal known as Operation Car Wash, which has ensnared top members of her Workers Party and her ruling coalition in bribery and graft acts.","label":0}
{"text":"WikiLeaks Initiates Phase 3: The Dump That Will Take Hillary Down Dawn Parabellum Corrupt democrat, Hillary Clinton  WikiLeaks is putting Hillary Clinton and the corrupt Democrats who surround her on notice. With a warning sounded last night about the initiation of \"phase 3\" from the website, which has been leaking devastating emails about Hillary's insiders, the \"election dump\" promises to be the one that brings her to her knees.  Wikileaks announced on Twitter that it would soon launch \"phase three of [its] election coverage.\" The tweet also asked those who wish to see more dumps to donate to the site to assist with their funding. The tweet read, \"We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week.\" We commence phase 3 of our US election coverage next week. You can contribute: https:\/\/t.co\/MsNZhrTzTL @WLTaskForce pic.twitter.com\/XferJnMGux  \u2014 WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 30, 2016  This dump is supposed to be even more damaging to the already flailing political career of Hillary Clinton. Wikileaks supporters now include a number of disgruntled Republican voters and Bernie Sanders supporters.  Immediately after the site announced this dump, several WikiLeaks followers replied with tweets expressing hope that phase three would ultimately damage Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton 's campaign for good. However, some expressed concern that it could be too little, too late. @wikileaks @WLTaskForce by next week, I assume you mean tomorrow, and not 3 days before the election. Near 30%+ in some states already voted  \u2014 Mel (@melimel521) October 30, 2016  New archives of emails released to the public would definitely devastate the Clinton campaign even further, and after the FBI's announcement that they will reopen the investigation against Hillary, it could be the straw which breaks the camel's back.  So far, no amount of corruption or criminal activity has gotten devout Democrat voters to see Hillary for who she is: a power hungry sociopath. She has been caught rigging elections across the globe and cheating to get the Democrat nomination. It's even been proven, thanks to WikiLeaks, that she cheated during the debates against Donald Trump .  There is some speculation that the emails released this time won't all be Hillary Clinton related, eluding to the possibility of even more Democrats and their corruption being exposed. Hillary Clinton's rigged podium helped her cheat during the debates with Donald Trump  Hackers who have taken responsibility for the hacks of John Podesta's emails may have more up their sleeves. Guccifer 2.0, who claims to be a lone Romanian male, was also involved in the hack on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  Hopefully, these leaks will finally get Democrat voters to realize who they have been bowing down to over the past few years. Accessing the leaked emails is not difficult, in fact, I personally check the new dumps daily. If Democrats cared half as much about honesty and integrity as they did about making sure we have the first female president, Hillary would already be no more than a stain on American history.","label":1}
{"text":"The Democratic National Committee apologized to Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday after leaked emails suggested the party's leadership had worked to sabotage Sanders' presidential campaign. \"On behalf of everyone at the DNC, we want to offer a deep and sincere apology to Senator Sanders, his supporters, and the entire Democratic Party for the inexcusable remarks made over email,\" the DNC said in a statement released on the opening day of the party's convention in Philadelphia. It said the emails did not reflect the committee's \"steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process.\"","label":0}
{"text":"A mother is outraged after her autistic daughter came home in tears because another parent told her that her mom doesn t want to cure her autism.If you are a parent with a heart and a brain, you re going to be just as pissed off as this little girl s mom.According to a Facebook post provided by A Science Enthusiast, a parent actually had the audacity to tell a little girl that her mother doesn t want to cure her of her autism, and then gave the child a brochure advertising a natural cure company.So, the little girl s mom took to Facebook to give the anonymous parent a deserved severe tongue-lashing. To the PARENT who today told my daughter with autism that is can be CURED- through specific diet, avoiding chemicals (IDIOT) and essential oils. FUCK YOU. My brilliant science minded, but incredibly naive child who embraces her individuality, came home extremely upset and confused as to why I m not trying to cure her. THIS BITCH gave my kid a brochure for a direct sales company that sells natural and organic foods and spices and told her give it to your mom if she s interested in learning more about a cure. The mother destroyed the brochure, but The Science Enthusiast did provide an image from the company website.After reading about Wildtree, it s clear that they do not claim to be able to cure autism or any other disorders. Wildtree is simply a company that offers organic meals to people who have dietary restrictions due to medical conditions or to those who just want to eat more healthy. So it appears the parent who spouted this nonsense about a cure for autism either misread what the company is about or is truly just an idiot.But that doesn t make this mom any less angry about what this other parent did. My kid now wonders if I m PURPOSELY keeping her sick. I want to beat the shit out of this psycho. My arthritis be damned. Here s the full post via Facebook.\/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&#038;version=v2.3\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); \/\/ ]]&gt;This is so fucked up.Posted by A Science Enthusiast on Wednesday, March 9, 2016This is one of the most evil things to tell a child and this so-called parent should be investigated and kept as far away from kids and civilization as possible.For the record, there is no cure for autism. But there are treatments available such as therapies and behavioral interventions that have proven to be a great help to autistic adults and children.","label":1}
{"text":"Mohammad Dahlan, who played a key backroom role in a major new effort for Palestinian unity, has said a two-state peace agreement with Israel was impossible and healing wounds from a civil war that split Palestine was now a priority. Once of the fiercest foes of Hamas, the Islamist group that seized the Gaza Strip in a civil war in 2007, Dahlan, a member of the rival mainstream Fatah party, spoke to Reuters after a unity cabinet held its first meeting in the enclave in three years. The internal Palestinian situation is more sacred, is more important and is more useful now than the so-called negotiation, the veteran politician said of talks with Israel that collapsed in 2014 over issues such as Israeli settlement-building in occupied territory and Fatah-Hamas reconciliation. A former peace negotiator with Israel who speaks Hebrew and who was born in a refugee camp, Dahlan, 56, noted Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas captured in a 1967 war and which Palestinians seek along with Gaza for a future state. There is a complete Judaisation of the West Bank, not only of Jerusalem. It has become impossible for the two-state solution to be implemented, therefore, there is no political horizon, he said in the rare interview. Israel has built about 120 settlements in the West Bank. About 350,000 settlers live there and a further 200,000 in East Jerusalem, among about 2.6 million Palestinians. Fatah, led by the secular heirs of Yasser Arafat, runs the West Bank, heads the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority and has been responsible for negotiations with Israel. Its rival Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, drove Fatah forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas from Gaza and has run the tiny coastal strip that is home to two million people. Relations eased on Monday, when Hamas handed over control of Gaza to a unity government. Although it agreed to the deal three years ago, the decision to implement it marks a striking reversal for Hamas, considered a terrorist group by Israel, the United States and most powerful Arab countries. Officials on both sides of the Palestinian divide and in other Arab countries say Dahlan, based since 2011 in the United Arab Emirates, was behind an influx of cash to prop up Gaza, and a detente between Hamas and Arab states including Egypt that led the group to dismantle its shadow government last month. It was an honor for us ... that we succeeded to have those understandings between Hamas and Egypt, Dahlan said by telephone from Abu Dhabi. The former Gaza security chief said he had kept silent during mediation efforts but decided to speak out now that they have borne fruit. Dahlan said Egypt, which has accused Hamas of aiding an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai peninsula across the border from Gaza, held meetings with senior officials of the group, which denies aiding the militants. Both sides agreed to shore up security along the border and prevent militants from crossing. Without reconciling with Hamas and without Hamas understanding the needs of the Egyptian national security there can be no serious (Palestinian) reconciliation, and no one but Egypt is capable of playing an effective role, Dahlan said. Cairo will host Hamas and Fatah officials next Tuesday for further talks on power-sharing and the holding of Palestinian elections long-delayed by the internal rift. A first sign of discontent surfaced with Hamas criticizing Abbas s decision to await the outcome of the talks before lifting sanctions he has imposed on Gaza. In the interview, Dahlan called on Hamas to show more patience because all the good things are on the way thanks to Egyptian mediation. He dismissed any notion that Egypt, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, was pursuing Palestinian reconciliation as part of any wider U.S.-initiated push for a regional peace deal with Israel. The chances of the so-called deal of the century is zero because (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu does not want peace and he imposed a reality of 700,000 settlers in the West Bank and in Jerusalem that made it impossible for the two-state solution to be implemented, Dahlan said. Netanyahu on Tuesday warned Palestinians against engaging in bogus reconciliations under which Hamas kept its military arm in Gaza which bristles with hundreds of its rockets. Turning to Palestinian politics, Dahlan, who recently formed the Fatah Reformist and Democratic Party to challenge Abbas - now in the 12th year of a four-year term - accused him of committing crimes and mistakes but said he was ready to reconcile with the 82-year-old leader to reunite the Fatah movement. The ball is in his court and we are ready whenever he is, said Dahlan, in exile since 2011 after quarrelling with Abbas. Ambitious and charismatic, he has long been suspected of harboring designs to succeed Abbas. Dahlan said his strong ties with the UAE helped him to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in aid for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the past 10 years. A recent poll by the West Bank-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey showed that those who still support Fatah in Gaza are shifting loyalty to Dahlan. His popularity among Gazans has risen over the past nine months from nine to 23 percent. Dahlan said he was not obsessed by opinion polls and a decision on whether he would run for a president would await until an election date is set.","label":0}
{"text":"While Paris was still reeling under a state of emergency, President Obama took to the stage at the G-20 conference in Turkey to declare his policy to defeat ISIS a success. He had no plans to change course and no time to deal with critics who disagreed. Just days after ISIS ratcheted up their ambitions to conduct mass casualty attacks against the West, the president persisted in claiming his policy was working. President Obama continues to show a stunning and willful blindness to the tragedies all around him. Meanwhile, the Russians and the French have started fighting back, launching airstrikes against the ISIS capital. As the days go on, more and more nations feel radical Islam's sting and struggle with how to respond. The world is screaming out for U.S. leadership, but the president just isn't up to the job. It is slowly dawning on the West that radical Islam is the existential threat of our times, as fascism was in World War II, as communism was in the Cold War. We can't cooperate with it, we can't convert it and we can't contain it. We must defeat it. But so far we have no Churchill or FDR, no Reagan or Thatcher or Pope John Paul II. Obama has made it abundantly clear that he's not budging. He says the U.S. will not send troops into the region, and he uses that as an excuse to do nothing. He says critics have suggested things he's already doing. He says if anybody has a better plan, he hasn't seen it. Mr. President, here is what a better plan looks like. It's the same plan that won World War II and the Cold War. The U.S. led in both victories, and the U.S. is the only country than can lead this time. Those victories were multifaceted and multinational. To defeat radical Islam, the United States should bring together all of Western civilization, combining our economic, political, ideological and diplomatic weapons, our intelligence and cyber capabilities, and our armed forces. No one country acting alone can defeat radical Islam. Everyone has his own role to play. But it won't happen without America taking the lead. First, assemble an alliance of nations that are threatened by radical Islam. We may have to hold our noses and work with leaders and countries we have differences with, as we did with the USSR during World War II. But we can put aside those differences temporarily to deal with the immediate threat. Putin, Assad, even the hacktivist group Anonymous could play a role. The president insists the U.S. won't send ground forces back to the Middle East. But this is still a military campaign. There is collateral damage in war. We can try to minimize it, but not at the expense of losing this war. Second, cut off ISIS' funding. Bomb their oil fields and refineries. Destroy the pipelines, trucks and tankers taking ISIS oil to market. Use the U.S. banking system to track and freeze ISIS' assets and sanction any country and company doing business with them. Third, get tough with our Arab allies. Many Gulf Arab states have wealthy citizens who support radical Islamist groups. Tell those leaders they should police their own and shut down the funding streams. If they don't, we won't lift a finger to help them when radical Islamist groups bring the fight to their lands. Fourth, launch a propaganda war to win the hearts and minds of those whose minds are still open. Use social media for disinformation campaigns. Counter every ISIS video of beheadings with videos showing jihadists blown to bits. -- Showing terrorists committing unspeakable acts of violence doesn't turn recruits off, it attracts them. The only way to discourage new followers is to show ISIS as weak, confused and in decline. Fifth, encourage Islam's leading clerics to speak out against the extremists. Two of the most respected and important leaders in Islam, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar University and Cairo's Grand Mutfi, have taken strong stands. We can help spread their messages. Sixth, launch cyberwarfare against ISIS. Invade their safe havens on the Internet. Disrupt their networks. Radical Islam has dominated this space while we play catch-up. Even worse, we have tried to conduct our efforts with one hand tied behind our back. Seventh, arm our allies. We should give anyone willing to stand up and fight ISIS whatever he needs. Arm the Kurds and the Anbar Sunni tribes directly. Give weapons and aid to Jordan, Egypt and Israel. Eighth, discard political correctness. We reacted to September 11 by treating everyone alike. The grandmother traveling with her grandkids to Disney World was given the same level of scrutiny as the young man with multiple visits to North Waziristan who traveled without luggage on a one-way ticket he paid for in cash. A better way to use our resources efficiently is to profile for terrorist behavior patterns. If we focus on everyone, we focus on no one. Ninth, Don't accept refugees we can't vet. ISIS has already announced it will hide terrorists among the hordes of refugees flooding Europe and hoping to enter the U.S. The directors of the FBI, the CIA and the National Intelligence Agency have all issued warnings about the difficulty of vetting refugees headed for the U.S. Americans can help best by offering humanitarian assistance to keep refugees in the region, helping those of fighting age to stand and fight ISIS. And finally, 10th, accept that we will constantly need to adapt our strategies and tactics to deal with radical Islamists. President George W. Bush tried to destroy radical Islam by sending in hundreds of thousands of troops to fight in Iraq, and failed. Obama tried withdrawing from the region, and that failed, too. Yet the threat continues to grow. It has taken different forms over the years \u2013 Al Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, al Nusra front \u2013 and it will no doubt wear other faces in the years ahead. But it's the same enemy: religious fanatics driven by the core belief that they have been chosen by Allah to establish a caliphate that rules the world. They will kill any and all who stand in their way \u2013 Christians, Jews, Muslims \u2013 in the Middle East and worldwide. Since they're convinced they will prevail in the inevitable clash of civilizations, they're not worried about the scope of the battle, or the levels of destruction, or even dying in the process. In fact, they are eager to bring on the end times, since they believe their triumph over the infidels is preordained. We can laugh at the absurdity of their goals, or dismiss them as the \"JV team,\" or try to win their hearts and minds, or divert their anger with a jobs summit. This is an enemy we can defeat. But our efforts need a leader. It can't be Putin, and it can't be Hollande. America is the only nation with the bandwidth, clout and power to assemble Western civilization and unite us in this long war. Now all we need is a leader who is up to the task. Kathleen Troia \"K.T.\" McFarland is a Fox News National Security Analyst and host of FoxNews.com's \"DefCon 3.\" She served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations","label":0}
{"text":"CNN s Alisyn Camerota did something on Wednesday that s almost unheard of from CNN: She called out Donald Trump on his many, many scandals and in particular, the pay and play scandal involving Trump s bribing of Florida s Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi, who, after receiving a donation from Trump, dropped an investigation into Trump University.This isn t an allegation. Trump paid the donation, and he paid an IRS fine of $2,500 for breaking the law. Still, the media generally only talks about the Clinton Foundation or Clinton emails, both of which have amounted to absolutely nothing.Trump s entire narrative, when it comes to Hillary Clinton, is to paint her as crooked Hillary, a moniker that, despite sounding like it comes from a third grade bully who s been held back a few times, is sticking. That nickname is pure projection, though. It s Trump who s crooked and Camerota pointed it out: Congressman, Camerota said, don t you think the American public cares about breaking the law? Well, these are technicalities in many cases, (Rep. Chris Collins R-NY) Collins said, as he pointed out on the recent Bondi one. He was solicited for a donation, he told his clerk to do it. She wrote it out of the wrong checking account. Source: Raw StoryThen, back to crooked Hillary, Collins tried to make the claim that she did it too, which is completely untrue, since while some donors to the Clinton Foundation did ask for meetings, most were told to go through regular channels. With Trump and Bondi, however, it was clear quid pro quo. He gave her money and she dropped the case against him. For that, both parties should be in jail.Camerota pressed on: Let s look back, she said, pointing out that in 1985, Trump was caught exceeding legal campaign donation limits by funneling funds through 18 subsidiary companies, which is technically legal, but is essentially a corporate version of the crime that sent right-wing provocateur Dinesh D Souza to federal prison.Cameron went on to describe actual illegalities that Trump has been fined for. Isn t this the very definition of payola? Camerota asked. Payola is the practice of bribing someone to use their influence to promote your particular interest. How does this differ? Collins kept on with his both sides do it argument until Camerota astutely mentioned the one key difference: what Trump did was illegal. What Clinton did wasn t. Who s the crooked candidate again?Here s the interview:GOP Rep. Chris Collins says Clinton has always been someone with her hand out for donors https:\/\/t.co\/dH2DDZP72k pic.twitter.com\/YuxTgFpbcm CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) September 7, 2016If only we could get the rest of the media, or for what that s worth, the rest of CNN, to do their jobs. If you notice, even the tweet from CNN tried to make Clinton the criminal subject of the interview, not Trump. In other words, don t hold your breath for a better CNN, but Camerota was a breath of fresh air.","label":1}
{"text":"A chief proponent of Republican tax reform in Congress urged the business community on Thursday to avoid a battle over coveted tax breaks next year if companies hope to achieve reforms that lower tax rates to boost economic growth and productivity. \"There's incredible pressure in Washington not to change a thing, for everyone to keep every special provision there is,\" said Representative Kevin Brady, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives tax committee. \"That tax code is dragging our economy down, wasting billions of dollars in compliance costs and hurting salaries and jobs and growth.\" Brady was speaking to reporters after a speech on tax reform at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, where he promoted his own plan to lower the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and repatriate an estimated $2.6 trillion in U.S. corporate profits stashed overseas. The House plan, released in June, closely parallels the latest tax reform proposals from President-elect Donald Trump, and the two sides are working to hammer out an agreement on tax reform legislation that could move forward early next year. The Republican plan would pay for tax cuts by eliminating hundreds of tax breaks, including one that allows businesses to deduct net interest costs on debt, a policy heavily favored by Wall Street investors. In addition to a sharply lower tax rate, it would provide businesses with other advantages, including the ability to immediately write off the cost of capital investments. The plan would also end taxation on revenues from exports and impose a new tax on imports. Brady says the approach would result in more buoyant economic growth and a vastly simpler tax code. \"While some would like to have fights over individual provisions in the tax code, the debate we're looking for in America is whether Americans want something this fair and this simple and this understandable and are willing to make the trade-offs,\" he told his Heritage Foundation audience. \"The ability to buy those new buildings, equipment, software, technology and items that not just grow the economy but grow productivity and wages for workers - we think that's awfully important.\" Brady said the staff of his Ways and Means Committee has begun writing tax reform provisions for next year but added that the panel will also accept feedback from the business community and other taxpayers through the end of 2016.","label":0}
{"text":"Out with the old Future No. 1, in with the new Future No. 1. This week, the prolific Atlanta rapper Future has become the first artist in the history of the Billboard album chart to replace himself in the top spot with new albums. \"HNDRXX,\" his newest, opens at No. 1 with 48, 000 sales and 93 million streams in the United States in its debut week it bumps last week's biggest seller, \"Future,\" to No. 2. Both albums were released by Epic. But Ed Sheeran is hot on his trail. After releasing two singles in early January that instantly became popular on streaming services, Mr. Sheeran on Friday issued his latest album \"\u00f7\" (pronounced \"divide\") which looks destined for No. 1 on next week's chart, with yet more huge streaming numbers. (The accounting week for music sales runs Friday through Thursday.) Spotify announced that around the world, songs from \"\u00f7\" racked up nearly 57 million streams on its first day, a record for that service. Also on this week's chart, Bruno Mars is No. 3 with \"24K Magic\" (Atlantic) the country band Little Big Town opens at No. 4 with its new album, \"The Breaker\" (Capitol Nashville) and the soundtrack for \"Trolls\" (RCA) is in fifth place.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan tried to tamp down the furor on Wednesday over reports that President Donald Trump asked former FBI Director James Comey to quash part of his Russia investigation, saying \"we need the facts\" and adding he has confidence in the president. \"I'm sure we're going to want to hear from Mr. Comey if this happens as he allegedly describes; why didn't he take action at the time? So there are a lot of unanswered questions,\" Ryan told reporters. \"What I told our members is: now is the time to gather all the pertinent information.\" Asked if he had confidence in Trump, Ryan said, \"I do.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Apparently New England Patriots defensive end Chris Long got a bit fed up with the attacks launched against him for his decision to skip the White House meeting the team earned by winning the Super Bowl LI. Long jumped to his Twitter account to slam fans disappointed over his decision. [After announcing that he would be one of at least six Patriots players who will not attend the White House meeting, Long was hit with a wave of tweets by fans upset over his move. Some of the criticism appears to have stuck in the player's craw and he took to Twitter to strike back with a series of disjointed, sometimes childish, other times sensible attacks on the fans. Of all his tweets, one stood out as a common sense note about what these White House events really are. \"You should go talk to trump if you want change\" I'm skipping a photo op, not a congressional hearing. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, Indeed, the event is just a photo op. But, if it is that meaningless, why make such a big statement by skipping it? In any case, Long unleashed a tweetstorm of other responses to fans to explain his decision and in many cases responding directly to their complaints. Sorry dude. I appreciate your support of me as a football player, but I just don't get this tweet. https: . \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, Heard it all this week \u2026 if you don't want to hear about some of the dumb shit I've heard \u2026 mute away, but it's good. Rapid fire time, yeah? \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"Respect the office\" Ok birther theory guy, \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"Stick to football\" you don't look like a state senator yourself there bud. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"I hope they cut you\" I'm a free agent. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"stop being self important. I'm no longer a fan\" I'm self important but you thought this was important enough to bring to my attention, eh? \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"You just wanna be a cool lib\" Actually I'm well aware the minute I believe something they don't, libs will hit me w this GIF pic. twitter. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"You just wanna be a cool lib\" As a football player, liberals thought I was a living, breathing piece of steak before I agreed with them. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"You hate the troops\" The secondary focus of my foundation (out of two causes) is veteran support. Do your research. Also, not relatable. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"You hate white people\" You realize all humans that live in America should be concerned? Also that assumption says something about you. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, \"Stop believing the media.\" Dude I just saw you retweet Fox News. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, I think that's it but check this gem out. Bye for now! pic. twitter. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, So I've listened to it all week. And it's sparse really. Most people aren't ridiculous. Thought y'all may enjoy that thread. \u2014 Chris Long (@JOEL9ONE) February 17, 2017, Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.","label":0}
{"text":"WE NEED A REVOLUTION: Overcoming Fascism with a Movement of Love Sabine Lichtenfels negotiating with a general, \"Grace Pilgrimage\" in Colombia, 2008 By Martin Winiecki \/ terranovavoice.tamera.org  November 9th, the day after the U.S. election, will be a peculiar anniversary. On this day in 1938 more than 1000 synagogues and 7000 Jewish businesses were burning all over Germany, set ablaze by the Nazis. Going down in history as \"Kristallnacht\" or the \"Night of Broken Glass,\" this dreadful event marked the beginning of the Holocaust, resulting in six million Jews killed in less than seven years.  History reverberates in an eerie manner these days. In the United States, the anger and hatred that has long been boiling in millions of people has now found its political outlet.  No matter whether or not he will be elected president, Trump's success has been unprecedented and overwhelming. His simple message resonates in large parts of the American society, in people who have long felt betrayed, abused and disenfranchised by an alienated \"establishment.\" Trump wins against all reasoning of decency because he recklessly breaks what his supporters most despise: \"political correctness.\" He understands how to play the emotional piano of the masses; he's the ultimate caricature of a society teeming with universal corruption and sexual perversion.  The rise of fascism always seems to hit the world by surprise. Yet what we are now witnessing has not begun with Trump, just as German fascism had not begun with Hitler. Wherever people are prohibited to express their basic emotional and energetic drives, wherever they grow up and live in conditions of fear, mistrust and violence, the danger of fascism looms. Suppressed life energy dams up and turns into constant aggression. When the container of the bourgeois order crumbles, when people lose their jobs, voices and prospects \u2013 as it has gradually happened in this era of expanding corporate dominance \u2013 and the state no longer succeeds in controlling violence, the monstrous force of bottled-up emotions breaks free. Once they have a strong paternal authority telling them whom to blame, declaring them to be a collective that will now exact revenge, people get together in wild exaltation. Finally they have a channel and they develop a threatening force.i We must not despise or ridicule these people, but understand how they have gotten into the desperate state they are in. Thereby fascism is no longer a thing of \"the others\"; it's something that concerns us all. The psychoanalyst Dieter Duhm writes, \"Latent fascism is present everywhere; it is the cancer of humanity\u2026 It develops in the subconscious of our human relationships. In the emotional substrata of a misguided civilization lie the horrible powers that led to Nazi Germany and which currently lead to very similar atrocities in many countries on Earth.\"ii  On the eve of the election, armed militias across the United States are preparing themselves to, as they say, \"take back their country\" in case their opponent will \"rig\" the elections. People call for boycotting companies who employ refugees from Muslim countries and threaten the people running them. Attacks on people of color, other religions and political ideologies have steeply increased in the time leading up to the election. People no longer see any prospect for the future. They no longer have anything in this world they can believe in. Unable of loving, retaliation is what gives them strength. Similar explosions of hatred are occurring all over the world. When we witness what political prisoners in Turkey (neglected by our Western leaders) or the civilians trapped inside the besieged cities of Aleppo and Mosul are now facing, we know that this global culture has come to a turning point.  Yet the aggression now explicitly exploding among white lower-class Americans is only a miniature version of the ruthless warfare systematically orchestrated by this country's elites for many decades. War is an essential component of our entire economic system \u2013 one without which this system would instantaneously collapse. While \"decent\" Americans show themselves outraged about Trump, their candidate for President has her blueprints ready for expanding military interventionism around the world. Democratic President Obama has already bombed seven Islamic countries and ordered the drone assassination of thousands of innocent children and women abroad, but he is considered \"moderate\" in terms of warfare compared to Hillary Clinton. In the current escalation with Russia and China there no longer seems to be any limit. We mustn't be surprised by what is now erupting inside America. Similar to how it was in the late Roman Empire, the American Empire is entering a phase of self-destruction as it is being eaten up by the very violence it has used to establish itself in the first place. And with it goes the entire capitalist world order this country has essentially shaped.  Trump is nothing other than a mirror for the world to look into, a call to awaken before it's too late. It is silly to blame the mirror for what you see in it. Trump is not the enemy; he is merely the symptom of a culture worshipping power, violence and greed. If you are afraid of Trump, what you are actually afraid of is this culture. Stopping fascism isn't achieved through ideological battles; it is rather a matter of building a new and humane culture. This is nothing short of a global revolution. A revolution from bottom up, on all levels of society.  We need a revolution that establishes new foundations for human life on Earth, new foundations for our coexistence with each other and nature. A revolution that allows us to remember the sacredness of life and of all living beings. We need a revolution for solidarity and trust; \"a revolution,\" as Dieter Duhm says, \"whose victory will create no losers because it will achieve a state that benefits all.\"iii  On November 9th 2005, Sabine Lichtenfels initiated the \"Global Grace Day\" at the separation wall in Israel-Palestine. At the time, the peace activist and co-founder of the Tamera peace research center in Portugal led a group of 50 Israelis, Palestinians and internationals on a \"Grace Pilgrimage\" through the Middle East \u2013 a form of political activism rooted in reclaiming the depth of our humaneness. The activists committed themselves to overcoming hatred and divide by addressing the human being trapped behind the masks of world views and traumatization.iv This allowed for \"miracles\" to happen \u2013 encounters between former enemies invoking the vision of a reunited land. No matter whether it is a dispossessed farmer, a soldier, a fanatic resistance fighter or ourselves, whether it is a fascist, a banker, a liberal or an anarchist \u2013 there is something identical in all of humanity running far deeper than our ideological denominations: a universal longing to be accepted and seen, a longing to love and be loved, to belong to a community and to express oneself in trust and freedom; and there is a similarly universal trauma stemming from the suppression of these essential human needs. What we need is a revolution that acknowledges and follows human longing and establishes societal conditions where they can finally be met.  This new revolution will not be achieved by shifting political power from one party to another, but by establishing forms of coexistence which allow the human being to liberate himself from all disguises and reconnect in trust. Every fascist will transform into a loving person, every terrorist into a caretaker for life, if he or she can find home in a community that allows closed hearts to open again. This is not a matter of therapy, but of the social, sexual, ethical we live in. Building a movement based on communities of trust would not only be a genuine alternative to the fascist threat emerging everywhere; it may also set the foundations for the new global culture we as humanity need in order to have a future worth living on this planet. November 9th is a day of both despair and hope. In 1989 it was the day the Berlin Wall was opened. This year it can be a day for opening the wall of despair\u2014exercised by people who find their determination to collaborate for a world of solidarity and trust.  Works cited","label":1}
{"text":"Europe s big four continental powers and three African states agreed a plan on Monday to tackle illegal human trafficking and support nations struggling to contain the flow of people across the desert and Mediterranean sea. The 28-nation European Union has long struggled to reach a coherent answer to the influx of migrants fleeing war, poverty and political upheaval in the Middle East and Africa, and the crisis is testing cooperation between member states. After hosting the leaders of Germany, Italy, Spain, Chad, Niger and Libya, French President Emmanuel Macron said it was time for greater coordination. We must all act together - from the source countries to Europe and passing by the transit countries, especially Libya - to be efficient, he told reporters. It s a challenge as much for the EU as for the African Union. While the meeting was sparse on concrete details, the leaders agreed on the principle of setting up a mechanism to identify legitimate migrants who are fleeing war and persecution, and to use the United Nations to register them in Niger and Chad so as to prevent them being exploited by traffickers. At the core of it, it s all about fighting illegal migration, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference. She said that Berlin was willing to increase its efforts. If we want to stop human traffickers, then this can only be achieved through development aid, she said. The migrant crisis has put Paris and Rome at odds. Italy has accused France and other EU states of not sharing the migrant burden and has also asked the EU Commission for more budget flexibility to help it tackle the crisis. Nearly 120,000 migrants, including refugees, have entered Europe by sea so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. More than 2,400 have drowned while making the dangerous journey, often without enough food or water in overcrowded dinghies run by people smugglers. We are all committed to reducing the damage, the death of Africans in the desert, the death of Africans crossing the Mediterranean, Chad President Idriss Deby said. The fundamental problem will always remain development. We need resources, he said. The informal meeting did not outline any new specific financing and the leaders repeated that stabilizing chaotic Libya, where thousands of migrants end up before embarking on a perilous Mediterranean sea journey to Europe, would be key to any long-term solution.","label":0}
{"text":"As a black man and a lifelong resident of this city, Ray Kelly has been stopped by the police more times than he can count. And as a community organizer who tried to document police bias after the death of Freddie Gray, Mr. Kelly, 45, had always expected that a federal investigation would uncover a pattern of racial discrimination. Even so, the scathing report that the Justice Department unveiled here on Wednesday \u2014 a indictment of how Baltimore police officers have for years violated the Constitution and federal law by systematically stopping, searching (in some cases ) and harassing black residents \u2014 gave him a jolt. \"Hearing the actual numbers, like on the traffic stops, is blowing my mind,\" Mr. Kelly said. Release of the report, at a packed City Hall news conference here, was another wrenching moment of in this majority black city. Even as Mayor Stephanie and the police commissioner, Kevin Davis, accepted the findings \u2014 both vowed to turn the Baltimore Police Department into a ''model for the nation'' \u2014 there was relief, but also rage and skepticism among black residents here who wondered if anything would change. \"Mere words by officials mean little when it's people on the ground who are living with these material conditions every day,'' said the Rev. Heber Brown III, a Baptist pastor who was among a small group of community leaders who met privately last year with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch. \"From the streets to the suites, everybody is skeptical and furious. '' In one stark statistic after another, the department's report helped validate the experiences of Mr. Brown, Mr. Kelly and countless others in poor neighborhoods who regard the police as an occupying force. Many wanted to know what took so long. \"It's like a huge taste of 'too little, too late,'\" said Brandon Scott, 32, a member of the Baltimore City Council, who said he ran for office to correct police abuses that have been going on since before he was born. In Baltimore, a city that is 63 percent black, the Justice Department found that 91 percent of those arrested on discretionary offenses like \"failure to obey\" or \"trespassing\" were . Blacks make up 60 percent of Baltimore's drivers but account for 82 percent of traffic stops. Of the 410 pedestrians who were stopped at least 10 times in the five and a half years of data reviewed, 95 percent were black. \"Seeing it all collected and pulled together really hit me in the solar plexus,'' said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, who lived here for 15 years while teaching law at the University of Maryland. But what most infuriates her, she said, is that city leaders \u2014 including a series of black mayors \u2014 have ignored the problem for decades. \" have not been silent about this,'' she said. \"It's so rampant, it's so widespread, this kind of harassment of the community in a city that's majority that you really have to ask yourself, Why did it take this?\" The report is a first step toward a negotiated settlement, known as a consent decree, in which police training and practices will be overhauled under court supervision. The city has already entered into an ''agreement in principle,'' the mayor said, adding, \"We have a very long journey ahead of us. '' Mr. Davis, who described himself as \"very, very concerned\" by the findings, said he had already fired six officers who had engaged in misconduct uncovered by Justice Department investigators. \"Those who choose to wear this uniform and choose to blatantly disregard someone's rights absolutely should be uncomfortable,\" he said, \"because we are not going to tolerate it. \" The report took 14 months the mayor invited the Justice Department in after the April 2015 death of Mr. Gray, a black man who sustained a fatal spinal cord injury in police custody, set off riots. As the inquiry has progressed, she said, Baltimore has worked closely with the department to change police practices. City officials have revised 26 policies, she said, including the one governing use of force, and officials are engaged in ''active discussion'' about giving residents a role in determining how officers are punished \u2014 a central demand of civil rights advocates. The city has also retrofitted its transport vans \u2014 officials say Mr. Gray was injured while riding unbuckled in a van \u2014 and has begun issuing body cameras to officers. But none of the steps can substitute for the wholesale change in culture that people here agree is required. Mr. Brown could barely contain his rage as he cited one anecdote from the report \u2014 about a teenage boy who reported having been in front of his girlfriend. The officer denied the teenager during a drug arrest, and the charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. After the teenager filed a complaint, he told investigators that he was again by the same officer who, he said, then grabbed his genitals. \"What that officer did is not just violate a body, but he injured a spirit, a soul, a psyche,'' Mr. Brown said. \"And that young boy will not easily forget what happened to him, in public with his girlfriend. It's hard to really put gravity and weight to that type of offense. '' Tensions over race and policing here date to at least 1980, when the N. A. A. C. P. called for a federal investigation into police brutality, and they continued with a strategy known as \" policing,\" which was singled out by the Justice Department. \"People say, 'driving while black, walking while black,'\" Mr. Scott, the city councilman, said. \"When you're talking about zero tolerance, it's breathing while black. \" Baltimore is now among nearly two dozen cities that the Obama administration has investigated after they were accused of widespread unconstitutional policing. Once Baltimore reaches a settlement, an overhaul of the Police Department will take years and will cost millions Ms. and her aides put the price tag at $5 million to $10 million a year for five to 10 years. Jonathan Smith, a former Justice Department official who supervised a similar inquiry in Ferguson, Mo. said reports like the one issued Wednesday were a required step toward community healing. \"I've often thought of the reports as a necessary cathartic moment, maybe an act of witness, where you give voice to people who wouldn't otherwise have a voice,\" Mr. Smith said. Mr. Kelly, the head of the No Boundaries Coalition, an advocacy group in the West Baltimore neighborhood where Mr. Gray grew up, agreed. After Mr. Gray died, his organization convened hearings and conducted dozens of interviews for a report, \"The People's Findings,\" that he submitted to the Justice Department. He was among those providing testimony. \"You are just hoping that you don't get arrested for loitering or something crazy like that, and you get 23 hours in central booking for something that never even makes it to a courtroom,\" he said. \"That's been routine my whole life. I can't remember a time when that wasn't the way it was. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Manchester, New Hampshire (CNN) It was the revenge of the governors as Republicans met for their final debate before the Granite State's primary on Tuesday. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie knocked the rising Florida Sen. Marco Rubio down several pegs, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush went toe-to-toe with billionaire businessman Donald Trump and equaled or got the better of his nemesis. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, meanwhile, stayed with his positive game and seized opportunities to tout his own record. Here are five takeaways from Saturday night's debate on ABC as the primary clock counts down. After a stronger-than-expected third-place finish in Iowa -- and taking a clear lead over other \"establishment\" candidates -- Rubio knew he'd be wearing a big target Saturday night. But whether he was over-rehearsed or under-prepared, Rubio was off-key as he responded to the attacks. The opponent responsible for most of them: Christie. From the debate's outset, he pestered Rubio. \"You have not been involved in a consequential decision where you had to be held accountable,\" he said. But he then opened up a brutal line of attack in suggesting that the Florida senator only knew how to turn a phrase rather than accomplish something. \"Marco, the thing is this,\" Christie said. \"When you're president of the United States, when you're a governor of a state, the memorized 30-second speech where you talk about how great America is at the end of it doesn't solve one problem for one person.\" In answering Christie, Rubio consistently turned to the same talking point, casting President Barack Obama as calculating rather than incompetent, and intent on changing America for the worse. The fourth time he invoked Obama, though, the audience turned on him, booing the answer. And then moderator David Muir drove in the knife, saying: \"The governor wasn't talking about the President.\" Rubio rebounded a bit near the debate's end, when he hammered Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for supporting abortion rights -- and won applause from the audience for it. Of Democrats, Rubio said: \"They are the extremists on the issue of abortion, and I can't wait to expose them in a general election.\" Christie, Kasich and Bush know that since they're all competing for the same pool of more moderate voters, there probably aren't enough tickets out of New Hampshire's primary for all three. But the trio were still happy to unite in attacking the senators in the race (and, in Bush's case, Trump). The only mild governor-on-governor criticism came from Christie, who noted that Kasich had increased the number of Ohio's government employees. But that followed praise of Kasich's job performance, with Christie saying he'd \"done a great job in Ohio.\" And Bush, in arguing that money and authority should shift from the federal government to the states, said: \"I trust Kasich and Christie to build the roads in their states.\" All three turned in strong performances Saturday night -- and their timing couldn't have been better, given Rubio's on-stage struggles and New Hampshire's reputation for voters who make their decisions at the last minute. Kasich played up his time as the House's lead budget-writer during the surpluses of the 1990s and his record in turning a deficit into a surplus in Ohio. Bush effectively traded blows with Trump, lighting into him on eminent domain with a brutal response to the real estate mogul's accusations that Bush wanted to sound tough: \"How tough is it to take property from an elderly woman?\" And Christie, who risked coming across as a bully in order to knock Rubio down early in the debate, was moving when he talked about drug addiction, linking his position on helping addicts to his stance opposing abortion, saying he wants to support kids after they're born as well as before. \"I'm pro-life when they get out, and it's a lot more complicated,\" he said. Still, there are two big questions: Is it too little, too late? And on a Saturday night, how many New Hampshire voters were watching? 3. Trump vs. Cruz: The fight that didn't happen They've bashed each other on the campaign trail in recent days, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Trump -- the two top-finishing candidates in Iowa's caucuses -- seemed to want nothing to do with each other on the debate stage. It was one fight that was conspicuously absent Saturday night, and it contributed to Rubio's awful night. The Florida senator might have been hoping that those two would bash each other -- but it didn't happen, and he clearly was Enemy No. 1. Cruz had a revealing answer when asked who he expects will win the Super Bowl: \"With an eye toward February 20, Carolina,\" he said, alluding to the South Carolina primary. Why it matters: New Hampshire's more moderate electorate means it's not a state where Cruz is likely to shine. He could, though, win in South Carolina -- and his campaign's strategy largely relies on racking up delegates in Southern states with March primaries. Trump's answers were revealing in their own way, demonstrating that his support isn't about an ideological opposition to big government as much as a desire for strength and a sense that the government is incompetent. At one point, he defended eminent domain, a practice he's used as a real estate developer. Later Trump backed the role of government-sponsored health care, saying: \"You're not gonna let people die sitting in the middle of the street in any city in this country.\" Trump was restrained for most of the night -- with the exception of a bit of audience-taunting when, during an exchange with Bush, he dismissed those booing as his donors, and with a single shot at Cruz during his closing statement (more on that later). Cruz made false claims about CNN's caucus-night reporting -- and the network immediately called him on it. As caucus-goers were still voting in Iowa, Cruz's staffers had wrongly cited CNN in playing up the idea that former neurosurgeon Ben Carson was dropping out of the race. \"My political team saw CNN's report breaking news and they forwarded that news to our volunteers. It was being covered on live television,\" Cruz said Saturday. He said CNN reported that Carson was suspending his campaign \"from 6:30 p.m. to 9:15,\" and \"didn't correct that story until 9:15 that night.\" \"What Senator Cruz said tonight in the debate is categorically false,\" CNN responded in a statement put out while the debate was in progress. \"CNN never corrected its reporting because CNN never had anything to correct. The Cruz campaign's actions the night of the Iowa caucuses had nothing to do with CNN's reporting. The fact that Senator Cruz continues to knowingly mislead the voters about this is astonishing.\" CNN had reported that Carson would continue campaigning after taking a break at home in Florida. His next stop, reporter Chris Moody said, would be Washington, D.C., for the National Prayer Breakfast. Carson passed on the opening to go after Cruz directly Saturday night: \"I'm not going to use this opportunity to savage the reputation of Sen. Cruz.\" But he did say he was \"very disappointed that members of (Cruz's) team thought so little of me\" that they would believe he was dropping out after all the effort his campaign put into the race. He pointed to his dedicated volunteers and noted that \"one even died\" -- a reference to an auto accident in which one of his supporters was killed. Trump, who'd avoided Cruz all night, did take one shot at him at the debate's end. After Cruz cited his victory in Iowa during his closing statement, Trump said: \"That's because you got Ben Carson's votes, by the way.\" Thought the 2016 debate season couldn't get any weirder? Think again. At the start of ABC's broadcast Saturday night, Carson -- the second man due to appear on stage -- seemed not to hear his name. So he lingered behind the curtain as other candidates, confused, walked past him. Soon, Trump -- who apparently had the same problem -- joined Carson in waiting. And Kasich wasn't introduced at all, until the moderators were told they'd missed the Ohio governor. Moderator Martha Raddatz defused the situation by pointing to a loud and rowdy audience that made it difficult to hear. But on television, it was baffling: The names of the candidates came through loud and clear. Carson -- late to the stage -- quickly disappeared on it. And while he got supportive chuckles from the audience for his cracks about not getting enough air time -- \"I thought maybe you thought already I had dropped out,\" he said -- that's not the way to climb above his fourth-place finish in Iowa.","label":0}
{"text":"Democrat Ralph Northam won a bitter race for Virginia governor on Tuesday, dealing a setback to President Donald Trump with a decisive victory over a Republican who had adopted some of the president's combative tactics and issues. Northam, the state's lieutenant governor, overcame a barrage of attack ads by Republican Ed Gillespie that hit the soft-spoken Democrat on divisive issues such as immigration, gang crime and Confederate statues. Trump, who endorsed Gillespie but did not campaign with him, had taken a break from his Asia trip to send tweets and record messages on Tuesday supporting the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. But after the outcome, Trump quickly distanced himself from Gillespie. \"Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,\" Trump tweeted. \"With the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!\" At his victory party, Northam told supporters the sweeping Democratic win in Virginia sent a message to the country. \"Virginia has told us to end the divisiveness, that we will not condone hatred and bigotry, and to end the politics that have torn this country apart,\" Northam said. The Virginia race highlighted a slate of state and local elections that also included a governor's race in New Jersey, where Democrat Phil Murphy, a former investment banker and ambassador to Germany, defeated Republican Kim Guadagno for the right to succeed Republican Chris Christie. Murphy had promised to be a check on Trump in Democratic-leaning New Jersey. Guadagno, the lieutenant governor, was hampered by her association with the unpopular Christie. Murphy's win and the Northam victory in Virginia, a state Democrat Hillary Clinton won by 5 percentage points in the 2016 presidential election, provided a much-needed boost for national Democrats who were desperate to turn grassroots resistance to Trump into election victories. Democrats had already lost four special congressional elections earlier this year. But a strong turnout in the Democratic-leaning northern Virginia suburbs of Washington helped propel Northam, who in the end won relatively easily. With nearly all precincts reporting, he led by a 53 percent to 45 percent margin. Exit polls in Virginia showed that one-third of the voters went to the polls to oppose Trump, and only 17 percent went to support him. Democrats also swept the other top statewide Virginia races, winning the offices of lieutenant governor and attorney general, and gained seats in the Virginia House of Delegates. Democrat Danica Roem beat a long-time Republican incumbent to become the first transgender person to win a state legislative race. \"This is a comprehensive political victory from statehouse to courthouse. Thank you Donald Trump!\" Democratic U.S. Representative Gerald Connolly of Virginia told Northam's supporters at a victory party in northern Virginia. In Virginia, Democrats had worried that if Gillespie won, Republicans would see it as a green light to emphasize divisive cultural issues in their campaigns for next year's elections, when all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 33 of the U.S. Senate's 100 seats come up for election. Republicans now control both chambers. Gillespie, speaking to crestfallen supporters in Richmond, Virginia, said he had run a \"very policy-focused campaign.\" But voters in Arlington County - a suburban Democratic stronghold bordering Washington - said national politics were important to their votes. \"Trump talks about draining the swamp, but Gillespie kind of is the swamp,\" said Nick Peacemaker, who works in marketing and considered himself a Republican until Trump won the party's presidential nomination. Peacemaker said Gillespie seemed to shift closer to Trump's policies after securing the Republican gubernatorial nomination. In local races across the country, Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio in New York and Marty Walsh in Boston both easily won re-election. Voters were also picking mayors in Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle and Charlotte, North Carolina.","label":0}
{"text":"American Conservative Union President Matt Schlapp hosted a conversation with White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and White House strategist Steve Bannon on Thursday at CPAC 2017. [Priebus began by declaring that President Trump, who will also speak at CPAC, would become known as \"one of the greatest presidents that ever served this country. \" Schlapp noted that Trump will also be the first president to address CPAC during his first year in office since Ronald Reagan in 1981, and he congratulated Trump for assembling \"the most conservative Cabinet we've ever seen, according to our CPAC ratings. \" When Schlapp asked for the \"biggest misconception about what's going on in the Donald Trump White House,\" Priebus replied: \"In regard to us two, I think the biggest misconception is everything that you're reading. \" Priebus and Bannon said that contrary to media reports about friction between them, they're working very well together. \"It's actually something that you all helped build,\" Priebus told the audience. \"When you bring together, and what this election showed, and what President Trump showed \u2014 and let's not kid ourselves, I mean I can talk about data and ground game, and Steve can talk about big ideas, but the truth of the matter is, Donald Trump, President Trump brought together the party and the conservative movement. \" The President's chief of staff went on to say, prompting a burst of applause: And I've got to tell you, if the party and the conservative movement are together \u2014 similar to Steve and I \u2014 it can't be stopped. And President Trump was the one guy, he was the one person \u2014 and I can say it after overseeing 16 people kill each other \u2014 it was Donald Trump that was able to bring this party and this movement together. Steve and I know that, and we live it every day. Our job is to get the agenda of President Trump through the door, and on pen and paper. Bannon, formerly a Breitbart News executive, argued that the mainstream media has been consistently wrong in how it portrayed the Trump campaign, the transition, and now the administration during its first months. \"If you remember, the campaign was the most chaotic, by the media's description, most chaotic, most disorganized, most unprofessional, had no earthly idea what they were doing \u2014 and then you saw them all crying and weeping that night on the Eighth,\" he recalled. Bannon agreed with Priebus that President Trump's ideas, energy, and vision were the key to galvanizing a broad coalition of supporters around him. \"A lot of people have strong beliefs about different things, but we understand that you can come together to win, and we understood that from August 15th,\" Bannon said. \"We never had a doubt, and Donald Trump never had a doubt that he was going to win. \" Priebus and Bannon both emphasized how much of Trump's agenda is clearly laid out in his speeches, going all the way back to his appearance at CPAC 2011. \"What all of us were starving for the whole time, because we're so sick of politics and politicians \u2014 in spite of the fact that we love being here, we actually hate politics \u2014 but what we were starving for was somebody real,\" Priebus contended. \"Somebody genuine, somebody that was actually who he said he was. \" \"If you want to see the Trump agenda, it's very simple: it was all in the speeches,\" said Bannon. \"He went around to these rallies with those speeches that had a tremendous amount of content in them. I happen to believe, and I think many others do, he's probably the greatest public speaker in those large arenas since William Jennings Bryan. \" \"Remember, we didn't have any money,\" Bannon pointed out. \"Hillary Clinton and these guys had over $2 billion. We had a couple of hundred million dollars. It was those rallies and those speeches. All he's doing right now is he's laid out an agenda with those speeches, to the promises he made, and our job every day is just to execute on that, to simply get a path to how those get executed. \" Bannon testified that President Trump's response to advice that he should deviate from his agenda for political benefit has been, \"No, I promised the American people this, and this is the plan we're going to execute on. \" \"That's why you've seen the executive orders, the way he's gone through the Supreme Court, and by the way the other 102 judges that we're eventually going to pick,\" he said. \"It's just methodical, and that's what the mainstream media won't report. Just like they were dead wrong on the chaos of the campaign, and just like they were dead wrong on the chaos of the transition, they are absolutely dead wrong about what's going on today, because we have a team that's just grinding it through on what President Donald Trump promised the American people. The mainstream media had better understand something: all of those promises are going to be implemented,\" Bannon promised. Priebus said the most urgent task for the administration was confirming Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. He explained: Number One, we're not talking about a change over a period. We're talking about a change of potentially forty years of law. But more important than that, it established trust. It established that President Trump is a man of his word. We always knew that. But when he said here's twenty names on a piece of paper back in July, remember, and he said, 'I'm going to pick my judge out of these twenty people that are on this piece of paper,' and he did it \u2014 that's number one, because Neil Gorsuch represents a conservative, represents the type of judge that has the vision of Donald Trump, and it fulfills the promise that he made to all of you, and to all Americans across the country. Priebus said the second item on the president's agenda was deregulation. He argued that Trump hasn't been given enough credit for imposing a consistent process of deregulation by ordering that \"for every regulation presented for passage, that Cabinet secretary has to identify two that that person would eliminate. \" The third priority identified by Priebus was immigration \u2014 \"protecting the sovereignty of the United States, putting a wall on the southern border, making sure that criminals are not part of our process. \" \"These are all things that eight percent of Americans agree with, and these are all things that President Trump is doing within thirty days,\" he declared. Bannon divided the White House agenda into three categories: national security, economic nationalism, and the deconstruction of the administrative state. He said: I think one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history was his immediate withdrawal from TPP. Got us out of a trade deal and let our sovereignty come back to ourselves. The people in the mainstream media don't get this, but we're already working in consultation with the Hill, people are starting to think through a whole raft of amazing and innovative bilateral relationships, bilateral trading relationships with people that will reposition America in the world as a fair trading nation, and start to bring jobs \u2014 high value added manufacturing jobs \u2014 back to the United States of America. \"The rule of law is going to exist, when you talk about our sovereignty and you talk about immigration,\" he stated, linking the president's trade positions with national security. He said the defense budget and Secretary of Defense James Mattis's plan for defeating ISIS would also be part of that imperative. Bannon made the interesting point that business leaders have been telling the White House that slashing regulations is at least as important as cutting taxes to get the economy moving faster. \"If you look at these Cabinet appointees, they were selected for a reason, and that is the deconstruction \u2014 the way the progressive left runs is that if they can't get it passed, they're just going to put it in some kind of regulation in an agency. That's all going to be deconstructed, and that's why I think this regulatory thing is so important,\" he said. Schlapp brought the conversation back to media coverage of the new administration. Priebus said he thought there was hope for improvement. \"I\"m personally so conditioned to hearing about why President Trump isn't going to win the election, why a controversy in the primary is going to take down President Trump I lived through it as chairman of the party,\" he said, recalling his time as chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 2016 election. \"It really hit me because it was maybe the summer of 2015, and you remember the media was constantly pounding President Trump, and the polling kept getting better and better for President Trump. But it was when I went home and got out of this town, and I went back to Kenosha, and I talked to my neighbor. And I said, 'Bob, what do you think?' He goes, 'Man, I really love that Trump.' I said, 'Sandy, what do you think?' 'We're for Trump. '\" \"You all lived through it too, because you all had different people you were for, but you kept running into your neighbors, and you kept running into people that you know, and what did they keep telling you? They kept telling you, 'Trump, Trump, Trump,'\" he said, unintentionally sparking a chant of the president's name from the audience. He said it was clear the country was hungry for something much bigger than a single issue campaign, or a modest course correction from the previous administration. Bannon took his turn at the microphone to disagree with Priebus about whether media coverage of the Trump administration would improve. He argued that it was likely to get worse. \"They're corporatist, globalist media that are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has,\" Bannon argued, recalling how that message resonated everywhere from previous CPAC appearances by Trump to small town hall meetings. He predicted media coverage would therefore get worse as Trump continues to \"press his agenda, and as economic conditions get better, more jobs get better, they're going to continue to fight. \" Bannon warned: If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight, you are sadly mistaken. Every day it is going to be a fight, and that is what I'm proudest about Donald Trump. All the opportunities he had to waver off this, all the people who have come to him and said, 'Oh, you've got to moderate.' Every day in the Oval Office he tells Reince and I, 'I commited this to the American people, I promised this when I ran, and I'm going to deliver on this.' Priebus stressed the importance of Republicans sticking together through the coming years. \"I think what you've got is an incredible opportunity to use this victory that President Trump and all of us, and you, and everyone that made this happen put together, and work together, continue to communicate,\" he said, adding: Some of the core principles of President Trump are very similar to those of Ronald Reagan. When you look at peace through strength and building up the military \u2014 I mean, how many times have you heard President Trump say, 'I'm going to build up the military, I'm going to take care of the vets, I'm going to make sure that we don't have a Navy that's decimated and planes that are nowhere to be found?' Peace through strength. Deregulation. You think about the economy and the economic boom that was created. Some of it is going to take a little time \u2014 to get the jobs back, to get more money in people's pockets. Those things are going to happen. In the meantime, we have to stick together and make sure that we've got President Trump for eight years. He's somebody that we know that we're going to be very proud of as these things get done. But it's going to take all of us working together to make it happen. Bannon saw a \"new political order\" continuing to take shape, noting that populists, conservatives, libertarians, and economic nationalists could be found in the CPAC audience. \"We have wide and sometimes divergent opinions, but I think the center core of what we believe \u2014 that we're a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being,\" he said. \"I think that's what unites us, and I think that is what's going to unite this movement going forward. \" \"We're at the top of the first inning on this. It's going to take just as much fight, just as much focus, and just as much determination, and the one thing I'd like to leave you guys today with is that we want you to have our back \u2026 but more importantly, hold us accountable. Hold us accountable to what we promised, hold us accountable for delivering on what we promised. \" Modertor Matt Schlapp, in acknowledgment of the unique nature of their joint appearance, asked the Honorable Gentlemen what they appreciated about one another. Priebus lauded Bannon for being \"very dogged in ensuring that every day, the promises that President Trump has made are the promises that we're working on,\" for being \"incredibly loyal,\" and for being \"extremely consistent. \" \"As you can imagine, there are many things hitting the president's ear and desk every day, different things that come to the president that want to move him off his agenda, and Steve is very consistent and very loyal to the agenda, and is a presence that I think is very important to have in the White House,\" he said. He added that he thought of Bannon as a dear and cherished friend. \"I can run a little hot on occasions,\" Bannon allowed. \"And Reince is indefatigable. It's low key, but it's determination. The thing I respect most, and the only way this thing works, is Reince is always kind of steady \u2026 his job is by far one of the toughest jobs I've ever seen in my life. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Republican leaders are aiming to send their tax bill to President Donald Trump for his signature by the end of the year. To do that, negotiators from the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate will need to iron out differences between their two versions of the legislation. Here are some of the main points they will need to address. The Senate bill repeals a provision of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, that levies a penalty on taxpayers who do not purchase health insurance. The House bill did not repeal the mandate's penalty but leaders there have indicated they would be open to doing so it if the Senate could pass it. The House bill consolidates seven individual income tax rates into four but keeps the top rate at 39.6 percent. The Senate version keeps seven brackets and sets the top rate at 38.5 percent. PASS-THROUGH BUSINESSES The House legislation capped at 25 percent the tax rate on 30 percent of pass-through business income, with the remaining 70 percent taxed at individual wage rates. The House excluded taxpayers in professional services, who would continue paying individual tax rates on all income. The Senate bill leaves all pass-through income in the individual system but establishes a deduction for 23 percent of pass-through income. The Senate version allows those in services professions to use the deduction if their income is less than $250,000 per year, or $500,000 for a married couple. Pass-through businesses include partnerships and other companies not organized as public corporations, encompassing most American business enterprises from mom-and-pop concerns to large financial and real estate organizations. The House bill repeals the deduction for medical expenses that exceed 10 percent of a taxpayer's annual income. The Senate version retains the deduction for two years and drops the threshold to 7.5 percent of income. The House bill repeals the individual and corporate alternative minimum taxes, or AMT, which are intended to make sure high-income taxpayers do not unduly lower their tax liabilities by combining numerous credits and deductions. The Senate bill repeals the individual AMT but keeps the 20 percent corporate AMT. By also cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, some corporations have said this means they would not be able to use popular tax breaks such as the research-and-development credit. The House bill limited a popular individual tax deduction to interest on home mortgages of $500,000 or less. The Senate bill would allow taxpayers to deduct interest on mortgages of $1,000,000 or less. The House bill would allow companies to fully deduct the value of machinery and equipment and other costs for five years. The Senate bill allows businesses to do the same but then phases it out over five years.","label":0}
{"text":"Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence agent who prepared the dossier on Donald J. Trump's supposed activities in Russia, has gone underground. The strange story of the dossier, which United States intelligence agencies, the F. B. I. Senator John McCain and many journalists have had for weeks, if not months, and which Mr. Trump presumably must have known about, appears to have had personal consequences for Mr. Steele. According to neighbors and news reports, Mr. Steele hurriedly left his home in Surrey, a county southwest of London, on Wednesday to avoid attention or possible retribution once his identity as the author of the dossier was revealed, first by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal reported that Mr. Steele had declined its interview requests because the subject was \"too hot. \" Mr. Steele, 52, was a longstanding officer with MI6, the British equivalent of the C. I. A. serving in Paris and Moscow in the 1990s before retiring. In 2009, he started a private research firm, Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd. with Christopher Burrows, now 58. Mr. Burrows has refused to confirm or deny that Mr. Steele and Orbis wrote the memos that made up the dossier, initially under contract to a Washington firm paid to dig into harmful matters from Mr. Trump's past. Mr. Burrows's profile page on LinkedIn describes him as a former counselor in the Foreign Office, with postings in Brussels and New Delhi in the early 2000s. Diplomatic postings are sometimes used to provide cover for intelligence agents. Mr. Steele's profile on LinkedIn gives no specifics about his career. He is known in British intelligence circles for his knowledge of the intricate web of companies and associates that control Russia. Mr. Steele, as a known former MI6 agent, was thought not to have gone to Russia in his investigations but to have used contacts inside and outside the country to prepare the dossier, which United States intelligence agencies have said they cannot substantiate. But the file was used to prepare a appendix to the intelligence presentation American officials gave to Mr. Trump last Friday. Mr. Trump has denied the allegations in the dossier in the sharpest terms, and called them \"fake news. \" Russia has denied that it holds any compromising material on Mr. Trump. John Sipher, who retired from the C. I. A. in 2014 after 28 years with the agency, described Mr. Steele as having a good reputation and \"some credibility. \" Mr. Sipher was stationed in Moscow in the 1990s, and then ran the C. I. A. 's Russia program for three years, according to an interview he gave to PBS NewsHour. He now works at CrossLead, a technology company. \"I have confidence that the F. B. I. is going to follow this through,\" Mr. Sipher said. \"My nervousness is that these kind of things are going to dribble and drabble out for the next several years and cause a real problem for this administration going forward. \" An investigator for a business research firm in London similar to Orbis, who knows the work of the company but who has met Mr. Steele only briefly, said he was not impressed by the dossier. \"I have a lot of experience in this world,\" he said. \"If I were the client, I would throw it back and say, 'Where's the evidence guys? I can't use this.' \" The investigator, who asked for anonymity because he did not want to discuss publicly the work of a competitor, said that \"all intel has to be caveated. \" \"Maybe they went to a usually reliable source,\" he added, \"but there's no explanation about the credibility of these sources. \" He continued, \"Maybe sometimes sources want to tell the investigators what their clients want to hear. \" Referring to companies like Orbis and his own, he said: \"Usually your job would be to stop clients from dealing with corrupt, questionable counterparts in a country like Russia, but this same network could be put to use\" to compile reports like the one on Mr. Trump. \"There's a risk that maybe the sources fed questionable intelligence, knowing that it would do more damage to Trump's enemies than to Trump,\" the investigator suggested. Orbis's website says that it was \"founded by former British intelligence professionals. \" Based in Grosvenor Gardens, near Victoria Station in London, the company says it has a \"sophisticated investigative capability\" and mounts \" operations\" and \"complex, often investigations. \" According to the website, it also offers \" source reporting on business and politics at all levels,\" and \"draws on extensive experience at boardroom level in government, multilateral diplomacy and international business to develop bespoke solutions for clients. \" Mr. Steele and Orbis have previously investigated corruption at FIFA, the governing body of world soccer. In October, David Corn of Mother Jones magazine wrote about the dossier and described his conversations with Mr. Steele, whom he did not identify by name or nationality. According to the British newspaper The Telegraph, a friend of Mr. Steele's said that after his name and nationality were revealed, he had become \"terrified for his and his family's safety. \" Mr. Steele's wife and children also were not at home.","label":0}
{"text":"Three members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, ahead of a planned hearing late this month, said Mylan NV appears to have greatly overcharged the military for its lifesaving allergy treatment EpiPen and asked the pharmaceutical company when it plans to reimburse the Department of Defense. The reimbursement demand came in a letter on Monday to Mylan Chief Executive Heather Bresch, from Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, and committee members Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, both Democrats. \"We are alarmed that Mylan may have overcharged our military for this life-saving drug,\" the Senators wrote. They said Mylan for years may have knowingly misclassified EpiPen as a generic product in order to avoid higher rebates the company would have had to pay state and federal Medicaid programs had it been classified as a branded product. The Medicaid rebate for a generic is 13 percent compared with a minimum of 23.1 percent for a branded medicine. Mylan spokeswoman Nina Devlin declined to comment on the letter, or its demands. The drug company has come under fire from consumers and politicians in recent months for raising the U.S. list price on a pack of two EpiPen injectors nearly six-fold to $600 since 2008. Lawmakers, including Grassley, have called for investigations into Mylan's pricing, helping put the product in the spotlight amid a larger debate over big drug price increases in the United States. Pentagon spending on EpiPen jumped to $57 million over the past year from $9 million in 2008, an increase driven by volume and by hefty price hikes that had a bigger bite on prescriptions filled at retail pharmacies, Reuters reported on Oct. 28, citing previously unreported data. The Pentagon gets a government discount on EpiPens dispensed at military treatment facilities and by mail order. But nearly half of its spending was at retail pharmacies where it most recently paid an average of $509 for EpiPen and $528 for EpiPen Jr two-packs - three times higher than its discounted rate, according to the data. The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to hold a hearing Nov. 30 on EpiPen pricing and related matters.","label":0}
{"text":"Japan s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will lay the foundation stone for India s first bullet train in Prime Minister Narendra Modi s home state this week, in a tightening of ties just days after New Delhi ended a dangerous military confrontation with China. The move by Abe, who starts a two-day visit to India on Wednesday, highlights an early lead for Japan in a sector where the Chinese have also been trying to secure a foothold, but without much success. Modi has made the 500-km- (311-mile-) long high-speed rail link between the financial hub of Mumbai and the industrial city of Ahmedabad in western Gujarat a centerpiece of his efforts to showcase India s ability to build cutting-edge infrastructure. The leaders will launch the start of work on the line on Thursday, India s railways ministry said in a statement. This technology will revolutionize and transform the transport sector, said Railways Minister Piyush Goyal, welcoming the prospects for growth brought by Japan s high-speed shinkansen technology. In Tokyo, a Japanese foreign ministry official told reporters, We would like to support Make in India as much as possible, referring to Modi s signature policy to lure investors in manufacturing. And for that, we want to do what s beyond the Mumbai-Ahmedabad line and achieve economies of scale. India would make all-out efforts to complete the line by August 2022, more than a year earlier than planned, the government said this week. Japan is providing 81 percent of the funding for the 1.08-trillion-rupee ($16.9-billion) project, through a 50-year loan at 0.1 percent annual interest. Ties between India and Japan have blossomed as Modi and Abe increasingly see eye-to-eye in countering growing Chinese assertiveness across Asia. Japanese investment into India has surged in areas ranging from automotives to infrastructure in the remote northeast, making Tokyo its third-largest foreign direct investor. India and Japan are also trying to move forward on a plan for New Delhi to buy Japanese amphibious aircraft - ShinMaywa Industries US-2 - in what would be one of Tokyo s first arms transfers since ending a self-imposed embargo. Tokyo hopes that by gaining a head start on rival exporters of rail technology such as China and Germany, its companies will be able to dominate business in one of the most promising markets for high-speed rail equipment. In 2015, China won a contract to assess the feasibility of a high-speed link between Delhi and Mumbai, part of a network of more than 10,000 km (6,214 miles) of track India wants to set up, but little progress has been made. Bullet train critics say the funds would be far better spent to modernize India s slow and rickety state-controlled rail system, the world s fourth largest. But a $15-billion safety overhaul has hit delays as a state steel firm proved unable to fill demand for new rail.","label":0}
{"text":"Republicans' tax plan would not make adjustments retroactive, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said on Friday, despite calls from U.S. lawmakers who want cuts to apply to 2017 as the party aims to pass the bill by year's end. \"We're trying to deliver great tax reform to the American public. We can't get it retroactive to this year. We're trying to do a tax plan that starts on Jan. 1 of next year,\" Cohn said in an interview with Fox Business Network. (This version of the story was refiled to correct the headline to make it \"Fox Business Network\" instead of \"Fox Business News\")","label":0}
{"text":"Whatever happens on November 8, Donald Trump can claim this achievement: His candidacy exposed the fact that the two-party system of Democrats and Republicans is an illusion.  What we have in the U.S. instead is a corrupt polity where Democrat and Republican \u00e9lites form a single ruling party, as Professor Emeritus Angelo M. Codevilla stunningly asserted in 2010. (See \" America's Bipartisan Ruling Class vs. the People \")  The evidence?  The following list of Republican bigwigs who, by publicly declaring their support for Hillary Clinton \u2014 the pathological liar who had accomplished nothing as secretary of state, but violated U.S. laws and jeopardized national security with her unsecured private email server; lied about and left four Americans to die in Benghazi; and supports the absolute \"right\" of women to kill their unborn \u2014 instead of Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump, have peeled away their masks, revealing their true faces.  Here's a list of the Republican \u00e9lites who have declared they'll vote for Hillary: Dan Akerson , former chairman and chief executive of General Motors: ''Serving as the leader of the free world requires effective leadership, sound judgment, a steady hand and, most importantly, the temperament to deal with crises large and small. Donald Trump lacks each of these characteristics.'' Marc Andreessen , venture capitalist: ''[Silicon] Valley wouldn't be here, we wouldn't be doing any of this if we didn't have the amazing flow of immigrants that we've had in the last 80 years. And the idea of choking that off just makes me sick to my stomach.'' Richard Armitage , deputy secretary of state and adviser to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush: Trump ''doesn't appear to be a Republican, he doesn't appear to want to learn about issues. So I'm going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.'' Max Boot , senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and adviser to GOP presidential candidates: ''I'm literally losing sleep over Donald Trump. She would be vastly preferable to Trump.'' Sally Bradshaw , former top Jeb Bush adviser, who told CNN that she left the GOP and became an independent because of Trump: \"As much as I don't want another four years of Obama's policies, I can't look my children in the eye and tell them I voted for Donald Trump.'' Arne Carlson , a former two-term Republican governor of Minnesota who supported Obama. Jim Cicconi , former Reagan and George H.W. Bush aide: ''Hillary Clinton is experienced, qualified and will make a fine president. The alternative, I fear, would set our nation on a very dark path.'' Eliot Cohen , former Bush administration official who has been called \"the most influential neocon in academe,\" declared Clinton \"the lesser evil, by a large margin.\" Maria Comella , former spokeswoman for governors Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani: ''Instead of speaking out against instances of bigotry, racism and inflammatory rhetoric whether it's been against women, immigrants, or Muslims, we made a calculus that it was better to say nothing at all in the interest of politics and winning elections.'' Doug Elmets , former Reagan spokesman: ''I could live with four years of Hillary Clinton before I could ever live with one day of Donald Trump as president.'' Elmets spoke at the Democratic National Convention, along with other Republicans now backing Clinton. Mike Fernandez , $4 million to GOP candidates in recent years: ''If I have a choice \u2014 and you can put it in bold \u2014 if I have a choice between Trump and Hillary Clinton, I'm choosing Hillary. She's the lesser of two evils.'' Charles Fried , US solicitor general under Reagan and current Harvard Law School professor: ''Though long a registered Republican, this will be the third consecutive presidential election in which my party forces the choice between party and, in John McCain's words, putting America first. . . . It is to [Mitt] Romney's credit that this year, like John Paulson and George Will, he is standing up against the brutal, substantively incoherent, and authoritarian tendencies of Donald Trump.\" Richard Hanna , a \"moderate\" Republican Congressman (NY) who is retiring this year, told The Syracuse Post Standard he will support Hillary because Trump is unfit to lead: \"I think Trump is a national embarrassment. Is he really the guy you want to have the nuclear codes?\" Ben Howe , contributing editor at RedState.com. Robert Kagan , senior fellow at the Brookings Institution; former Reagan State Department aide and adviser to the campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney; will vote for Hillary. Peter Mansoor , retired Army colonel and former aide to disgraced general David Petraeus: ''It will be the first Democratic presidential candidate I've voted for in my adult life.'' Hamid Moghadam , chairman and chief executive of Prologis: ''Our country is about tolerance and inclusion and that's why, as a lifelong Republican supporter, I endorse Hillary Clinton for president in this election.'' William Oberndorf , $3 million to GOP candidates since 2012: ''If it is Trump vs. Clinton, and there is no viable third-party candidate, I will be voting for Hillary Clinton.'' Henry Paulson , treasury secretary to George W. Bush. Paulson wrote: \"When it comes to the presidency, I will not vote for Donald Trump. 'I will not cast a write-in vote. I'll be voting for Hillary Clinton, with the hope that she can bring Americans together to do the things necessary to strengthen our economy, our environment and our place in the world. To my Republican friends: I know I'm not alone.'' Larry Pressler , former three-term Republican senator from South Dakota: ''I can't believe I'm endorsing Hillary Clinton for president, but I am. If someone had told me 10 years ago I would do this, I wouldn't have believed them.'' Chuck Robbins , chief executive of Cisco. Mark Salter , former top adviser to John McCain: ''Whatever Hillary Clinton's faults, she's not ignorant or hateful or a nut. She acts like an adult and understands the responsibilities of an American president. That might not be a ringing endorsement. But in 2016, the year of Trump's s campaign, it's more than enough.'' Kori Schake , National Security Council and State Department aide. Robert Smith , former judge on New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals: ''This year, I'm going to vote for a Democrat for president \u2014 the first time I've done it in 36 years \u2014 and I think the decision is easy. Hillary Clinton is the only responsible choice, and I don't understand why so few of my fellow conservatives see it that way.'' Brent Scowcroft , chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and adviser to three previous GOP presidents: ''The presidency requires the judgment and knowledge to make tough calls under pressure . . . [Clinton] has the wisdom and experience to lead our country at this critical time.'' Craig Snyder , former chief of staff to then-Republican former senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and also an ex-colleague of former top Trump adviser Roger Stone and current top Trump adviser Paul Manafort. Alan Steinberg , regional EPA administrator. Mike Treiser , former Mitt Romney aide: ''In the face of bigotry, hatred, violence, and small-mindedness, this time, I'm with her.'' Meg Whitman , Hewlett Packard executive; former California gubernatorial contender.  Add to the above list Glenn Beck , the billionaire Koch brothers , Bill Kristol ( National Review ), Mitt Romney , Karl Rove , and Ben Shapiro ( National Review ), who, although not declaring they'll vote for Hillary, are reported to be adamantly opposed to Trump.  Here are the Republicans who will vote for the Libertarian Party's Johnson-Weld ticket and so effectively assure a Hillary win : Martin Avila , CEO of Terra Eclipse, former Digital Campaign Director to former Rep. Ron Paul, member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld's steering committee. Julie Germany , Interim Executive Director of the White Coat Waste Project, former COO of Generation Opportunity, member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Mason Harrison , head of communications for Crowdpac, former strategist for the campaigns of Gov. Mitt Romney and ex-Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Jon Henke , former adviser to US Sen. Fred Thompson, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and former Sen. George Allen; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Dawson Hodgson , former member, RI State Senate; former Rhode Island State Prosecutor; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Cyrus Krohn , former Republican National Committee e-Campaign Director; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Ed Lopez , former national vice chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus; former member of the national campaign at Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry; co-chair of Republicans for Johnson-Weld initiative. Liz Mair , longtime GOP operative whose group is behind the Facebook ad buy in Utah featuring a racy photo of Melania Trump; the RNC's first and only online communications director, and has advised US Senator Rand Paul, Governors Scott Walker and Rick Perry, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina on communications; co-chair of Republicans for Johnson-Weld initiative. Kevin Martin , former chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Massachusetts; small business owner; co-chair of Republicans for Johnson-Weld initiative. Michael Melendez , former leader of Young Americans for Liberty in Utah and Utah State Central Committee member; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Marco Nunez, Jr. , Republican strategist who served on the George W. Bush and John McCain presidential campaigns, Arnold Schwarzenegger's gubernatorial campaign, and at the Republican National Committee; co-chair of Republicans for Johnson-Weld initiative. Moira Bagley Smith , former communications director to Sen. Rand Paul and multiple members of House GOP leadership; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Lyle Stamps , attorney; former White House staffer; leader of Latter-day Saints for Bush during the 2004 election cycle; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Michael Turk , President of Opinion Mover Strategies; former Republican National Committee e-campaign director; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Luke Williams , New York Times and USA Today best-selling author; Vice President at AECOM; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Dan Winslow , former Chief Legal Counsel to MA Gov. Mitt Romney; former member, MA House of Representatives; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee. Keith Velia , finance industry leader; Republican Liberty Caucus of Connecticut Treasurer; Ridgefield Republican Town Committee Associate; member of Republicans for Johnson-Weld steering committee.  As The Daily Bell observes:  There is only one party: pro-war and pro-technocratic (corporatist).  The fundamental mythology of US politics is that the Democrats are socialist-oriented and Republicans believe in freedom and individual human rights.  But Hillary is corporatist, not socialist\u2026.  Important Republicans call Trump's stances \"brutal, substantively incoherent, and authoritarian.\"  Strangely, Hillary's actions and statements provide evidence of the very authoritarianism and brutality that Trump is being accused of.  When she and her husband entered the White House, one of the very first things Hillary did was fire the staff of the travel office in order to put her own people in place.  She didn't just fire the staff however, she also tried to get the head of the office, Director Billy Dale, put in jail for embezzlement. He was subsequently found not guilty and Hillary herself was investigated for initiating the firings and making false accusations.  Her intimidation and blackmailing of her husband's lovers is well known by this point- and thus her campaign's emphasis on \"women's rights\" is ironic to say the least.  Her voting record and statements reveal an individual who is most comfortable with US serial wars abroad, no matter the reason (or lack of reasons).  Additional accusations against Hillary and her husband include violence and even murder of individuals whose interests diverged from theirs.  Most notably, Hillary has been accused of orchestrating the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster.  None of this seems to register with Republicans who are \"crossing over\"\u2026.  Conclusion: Whatever else takes place during this federal election, the disintegration of the credibility of the two-party system is perhaps the most important development of all.  See also:","label":1}
{"text":"A North Miami resident shot his unarmed ex-girlfriend after following her into the ladies room at a Denny s in 2013, and he s now facing his hearing. He s been charged with attempted murder, but he and his lawyers are invoking Florida s insanely loose stand your ground law as a defense for him. That law has been used to justify all manner of shootings in that state.Brooke Tuchinsky, the victim, survived with a broken jaw. Sean Barnes, the shooter, claims he saw her open her purse and pull out something shiny. Fearing for his life, he pulled his gun and fired. However, Tuchinsky was found unarmed, and her purse was closed. She wouldn t have been able to put the object back in her purse and close it after getting shot in the face. Barnes told a bald-faced lie right there.Barnes lawyers are maintaining that he never intended to use the gun for anything other than self-defense, and that Tuchinsky was allegedly stalking him. That s all he really needs for a defense. Florida s dangerous law has made vigilante justice, and shooting people out of anger, entirely too easy since people no longer need to prove they tried to get out of a situation before using lethal force.While Tuchinsky does have a history of causing problems for ex-boyfriends, she also said that Barnes threatened her: I bought a new gun and would love to use it on you and make it look like an accident or self-defense. In a sane state, that would be pretty damning, even if every word Barnes spoke about Tuchinsky s actions was true. But not in Florida. Never Florida. In fact, Miami judges have cleared several people from wrongdoing under stand your ground, and the Florida Supreme Court decided that anybody invoking stand your ground, had a right to a hearing before a judge, who would decide whether their claim was valid. If it is, then the case would be dismissed and the defendant wouldn t be held responsible for legal fees or court costs.It s a little difficult to claim stand your ground when you lied about the person you were facing being armed. And with that law, Barnes doesn t have to have tried to leave the Denny s after the two got into an argument requiring employees to separate them. The fact remains that, instead of leaving, he followed her, likely with intent to shoot her, and then shot her. Then he lied about what took place. That s horrible, regardless of how horrible his situation was.","label":1}
{"text":"It s highly illegal and it s likely that the owners of these aircraft took tax deductions as a gift to the Clinton Foundation, Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst and critic of the Clinton FoundationIra Magaziner, the CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, asked former President Bill Clinton to thank Morocco s King Mohammed VI for offering his plane to the conference in Ethiopia. CHAI would like to request that President Clinton call Sheik Mohammed to thank him for offering his plane to the conference in Ethiopia, Magaziner gushed in a November 22, 2011 email released by WikiLeaks.Clinton frequently has expected free, luxurious private jet travel during his post-presidential life. Clinton, his wife and daughter have artfully secured free air travel and luxurious accommodations since they left the White House. It s an effective way to accept gifts of great value without declaring them for the Clinton Foundation. It s highly illegal and it s likely that the owners of these aircraft took tax deductions as a gift to the Clinton Foundation, Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst and critic of the Clinton Foundation.In the Moroccan case, Clinton was able to fly for free, jetting 3,367 miles from Rabat, Morocco, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the King s specially equipped 747-400 jumbo jet.Not including the flight, King Mohammed has donated at least $28 million to the Clinton Foundation. Clinton was traveling to attend a conference organized by Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi, an Ethiopian-Saudi billionaire who is the second wealthiest man in Saudi Arabia. The sheikh has donated up to $10 million to the Clinton Foundation. But neither the Clinton Foundation nor CHAI have listed any non-cash contributions such as free jumbo jet travel on their 2011 tax return for the free use of the aircraft.","label":1}
{"text":"Greek police found bomb making equipment and detonators during an early-morning raid at three addresses in Athens on Tuesday, it said in a statement. Nine persons were being questioned, police said. Earlier police officials told Reuters the individuals were being quizzed for alleged links to DHKP\/C, an outlawed group blamed for a string of attacks and suicide bombings in Turkey since 1990. Police sources earlier said unspecified material in jars was found, and was being tested. The police statement said commercial goods, which could potentially be used in making explosive materials were found.","label":0}
{"text":"The last time Donald Trump went overseas, it was clear that he didn t have the physical or mental stamina to carry out his presidential duties at the level they needed to be performed at. It was widely reported that by just the third day of his trip, Trump was utterly exhausted. Now that Trump is on his second international tour, it seems he s having the same exact issue and his lack of competency is humiliating America in the process.On Friday, Trump made the United States look like a joke once again, when he was caught daydreaming at a roundtable meeting at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany. While every other world leader was alert and paying attention to the fact that they were posing to take a photograph, Trump was clearly in his own world and didn t even know what the hell was going on as he kept himself turned the opposite way. If it weren t for British Prime Minister Theresa May having the decency to wake him up out of his little fantasy land, Trump would have taken the photo with his back turned to the camera perhaps the perfect symbolic gesture for how he turns his back on America (and the world).You can watch this cringeworthy moment play out below:It is insanity that the Republican Party has elected a man who doesn t even have the attention span or the intelligence to perform the role of being POTUS. Trump consistently zones out during important meetings and clearly doesn t have it all together. He is someone who cannot and should not be trusted with the important decisions he has to make, and his complete lack of focus continues to be a danger to our country s future. More than ever, we must question whether or not Trump is really fit to be president and there was far more evidence pointing to his necessary and immediate removal.Featured image is a screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"This post was originally published on this site  sott.net\/news  A black, female Bowling Green State University student allegedly fabricated a hate crime story about white, male President-Elect Donald Trump supporters attacking her on campus and is now being charged for faking a police report.  The day after Trump's presidential victory, Eleesha Long told Bowling Green police that she had been attacked by three men wearing Trump gear who \"began to throw rocks\" at her , according to ABC13.  Long took to her Facebook page to share the story, describing in detail what each Trump supporter was wearing and giving a description of as to where the alleged hate crime had occurred, but never actually called the police.  Long's Facebook post went viral and her father notified law enforcement after he said he was not able to get in touch with her . Local detectives took Long into police headquarters and asked her to share details of the described hate crime.  Long reportedly began telling police multiple stories about the incident, to include changing the location of the alleged incident.  \"Several times the complainant changed her story about what happened, where it happened, and when it happened,\" Lt. Dan Mancuso told ABC13.  Afterward, the police got a warrant for Long's Facebook and Verizon cell phone history, proving that she was not where she claimed she was at the time of the alleged attack .  \"Based on that information, it proved that she was not in the location that of when she said it occurred,\" Lt. Mancuso said.  Police investigators said Long's cell phone history included discriminatory remarks towards Trump supporters that she had sent to her boyfriend and mother.  In one text message, Long said about Trump supporters \"should take an IQ test to vote,\" while a couple other messages said \"I hope they all get AIDS\" and \"I haven't met a decent Trump supporter yet.\"  Long is now being charged for falsifying a police report and obstructing official business, which she will have to appear in court for. Related","label":1}
{"text":"Britain and Ireland clashed over Brexit on Friday with Dublin saying it was not ready to allow talks to move on to trade issues next month and London ruling out the much longer transitional period preferred by its neighbour. The border between EU-member Ireland and Northern Ireland, which will be the UK s only land frontier with the bloc after its departure, is one of three issues Brussels wants broadly solved before it decides in December whether to move the talks onto a second phase about trade, as Britain wants. Meeting in Dublin, Britain s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and his Irish counterpart Simon Coveney struck an amicable tone but remained far apart on several key aspects. Yes we all want to move onto phase two of the Brexit negotiations but we are not in a place right now that allows us to do that, Coveney said. We have very serious issues, particularly around the border, that need more clarity. He said Ireland s preference was that Britain as a whole would share the same regulations as the EU post-Brexit but if that was not possible, then London effectively needed to commit to allowing a tailor-made solution for Northern Ireland In the absence of that, from an Irish persecutive, there is a sense of jumping into the dark, Coveney said. Speaking before a meeting with his counterpart on the sidelines of a European Union summit in Sweden, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said Dublin would need those assurances written into the conclusions of phase one. What we want to take off the table before we even talk about trade is any idea that there would be a physical border, he told reporters. Once those parameters are set, then we d be happy to move onto phase two, provided the other issues are resolved as well. However Johnson said talks would have to move onto the next stage before the border issue could be resolved as many of the questions around it were bound up with Britain s future customs arrangement with the European Union. While he said London has absolutely no interest in seeing any kind of hard border, any room for compromise is complicated by the fact that his government are propped up by Northern Ireland s pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party, which responded on Friday by saying Dublin was trying to block the talks. It is clear now that the Irish government are fully signed up with the European establishment to thwart the referendum result in the United Kingdom to leave the EU, DUP MP Sammy Wilson said in a statement. Johnson added that he understood why Ireland wants a four to five-year post-Brexit transition period for Britain to allow businesses in Ireland time to adjust to any new arrangements, but said this was possible within a much tighter timescale.","label":0}
{"text":"Seven of the 12 jurors who convicted Ronald B. Smith in the murder of a convenience store clerk voted to spare his life. When the case reached the Supreme Court, four of the eight justices voted to stay his execution. The arithmetic of capital punishment can seem curious. Mr. Smith was executed Thursday night. Mr. Smith was convicted of murdering the clerk in 1994 in Huntsville, Ala. The jury recommended life without parole, but the trial judge overrode that determination, sentencing Mr. Smith to death. Alabama is the only state that allows such overrides. It is a good bet that the Supreme Court will soon weigh the constitutionality of the practice. That will be too late for Mr. Smith, who came up one vote short on Thursday night, illuminating a lethal gap in the Supreme Court's internal practices. It takes four votes to put a case on the court's docket, but it takes five to stop an execution. Over the years, in fits and starts, some justices have sought to address this anomaly by casting a \"courtesy fifth\" vote to stay an execution when four justices thought the case worthy of further consideration. In a 1985 concurrence, Justice Lewis F. Powell explained his reluctant decision to supply such a courtesy vote. The inmate's case had \"no merit whatever,\" he wrote. \"But in view of the unusual situation in which four justices have voted\" to hear it, he wrote, \"and in view of the fact that this is a capital case with petitioner's life at stake, and further in view of the fact that the justices are scattered geographically and unable to meet for a conference, I feel obligated to join in granting the application for a stay. \" Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was asked about the practice at his confirmation hearing in 2005. \"How would you feel, if you were chief, if you had four of the justices now voting for a stay of execution?\" Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, asked. \"Do you feel as chief you would do the courtesy of kicking in the fifth one?\" Chief Justice Roberts seemed receptive. \"I don't want to commit to pursue a particular practice,\" he said. \"But it obviously makes great sense. \" \"You don't want to moot the case by not staying the sentence,\" he added. In the 11 years that Chief Justice Roberts has led the Supreme Court, its commitment to such courtesy votes has been inconsistent. Until Thursday, though, it seemed to be on the upswing. The recent trend started with a case on transgender rights. A Virginia school board wanted to stop a transgender boy, Gavin Grimm, from using the boys' restroom at his high school while the Supreme Court considered an appeal from a decision in Mr. Grimm's favor. In August, the court's four more conservative members \u2014 Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. \u2014 voted to grant a stay. Justice Stephen G. Breyer added a fifth vote \"as a courtesy. \" Justice Breyer's motives were not hard to discern. He was concerned about execution chambers, not restrooms. The only case he cited in his concurrence in the transgender case was Medellin v. Texas, a death penalty decision in which he had expressed frustration that \"no member of the majority has proved willing to provide a courtesy vote for a stay. \" Last month, Justice Breyer's gambit seemed to pay off. On Nov. 3, the court considered an application for a stay of execution from another Alabama death row inmate, Thomas D. Arthur. Chief Justice Roberts provided the fifth vote needed to halt the execution. He said he would not ordinarily have favored a stay, but noted that four justices had voted in favor of one. \"To afford them the opportunity to more fully consider the suitability of this case for review,\" Chief Justice Roberts wrote, \"I vote to grant the stay as a courtesy. \" On Thursday, in Mr. Smith's case, the court's more liberal members \u2014 Justices Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan \u2014 voted for a stay. But this time there was no courtesy fifth vote. Upon hearing that news, Mr. Smith's lawyers immediately filed a request for reconsideration. \"The court should not permit executions in the face of four dissents,\" the motion said, adding that the court's practices in this area \"clash with the appearance and reality both of equal justice under law and of sound judicial decision making. \" That motion was denied, too, this time without noted dissent. The leading student of the courtesy fifth is Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University. The title of his 2015 law review article on the subject makes his views plain: \"No Execution if Four Justices Object. \" On Thursday night, as it became clear that Mr. Smith was going to die, Professor Freedman made a more modest point. The justices, he said, should at the least explain their reasoning and standards. \"The time has long ago passed for the court to address forthrightly a situation which is simply unseemly,\" Professor Freedman said. \"For people to live or die in the middle of the night on the basis of no visible rule is simply at odds with any defensible system of judicial decision making. \"","label":0}
{"text":"It was stupid, clumsy and inappropriate for someone to edit the video of a State Department briefing in 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday as two U.S. lawmakers demanded information about the incident. A Republican congressman asked the State Department inspector general to investigate why part of a public briefing that dealt with Iran nuclear talks was cut before it was posted online while another demanded documents about the incident. The excised portion of the Dec. 2, 2013, briefing included a question about whether an earlier spokeswoman for the department had misled reporters about whether the United States was holding secret direct nuclear talks with Iran. The spokeswoman had denied there were such talks, which were later made public. The State Department this week said she did not know about the secret talks when she denied their existence. Speaking to reporters in Paris, Kerry sounded chagrined about the episode, which has drawn Republican criticism. \"Whatever happened was both clumsy and stupid and inappropriate,\" Kerry said. Asked if he wanted people who tampered with the historical record working for him, he replied: \"Of course not. I just said, it's inappropriate.\" The State Department initially said it believed a \"glitch\" caused the gap but on Wednesday said an internal inquiry found it was a deliberate omission. However, it said no rules were broken because none existed governing the integrity of the briefing video. Rules are now being put in place. U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said the technician who excised part of the video told investigators she got a call asking her to do so, discussed the request with her supervisor and concluded it came from a \"level of credibility and authority\" high enough that they should act on the request. The State Department has said the technician does not remember who called her. On Friday the department said it cannot use internal phone records to trace who requested the cut to the briefing video because it keeps such data for only 24 hours. Top officials in the Bureau of Public Affairs in late 2013, including former Assistant Secretary Doug Frantz, former spokeswoman Jen Psaki, former deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf, and deputy assistant secretaries Dana Smith, Valerie Fowler and Moira Whelan have all denied asking for the video to be excised. \"In tampering with this video, the Bureau of Public Affairs has undermined its mission to 'communicate timely and accurate information with the goal of furthering U.S. foreign policy',\" House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce said in a letter released by his office that asked the department's inspector general, Steve Linick, to investigate the matter. Separately, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, also a Republican, on Tuesday wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry asking for documents related to the edited video to be turned over to his panel by Wednesday.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican officials are reportedly scrambling to tear down signs at the party convention site in Cleveland in order to avoid yet another racial incident.Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau photographed a sign in the Quicken Loans Arena labeled White Elevator. Tau noted on Twitter: I m told it s being replaced for obvious reasons. Spotted at the #RNCinCLE. I'm told it's being replaced for obvious reasons. pic.twitter.com\/SVayl1zGCd Byron Tau (@ByronTau) July 16, 2016Republicans have struggled to shed the image of their party as racially hostile to minority groups, especially blacks. But the rhetoric of many of their leaders and elected officials, including presumptive nominee Donald Trump, have made such moves difficult.Signs that echo Jim Crow racism, with segregated water fountains and schools are just the latest headache.Party bosses are already keeping their mouths shut over the controversy.It s unclear who vetted the signs or why they were hung in the first place. Neither RNC organizers nor Trump s campaign immediately responded to the Daily News request for further comment.The white banners are eerily similar to the signs that once kept America segregated: Everything from bathrooms to restaurant entrances were labeled for white and colored use until segregation was abolished in 1964.City officials in Cleveland have expressed concern about the mix of anti-Trump protesters and pro-Trump forces, who have also promised that they plan to carry weapons with them, as Ohio is an open carry state.One of the groups who had previously promised to attend the convention was a white supremacist group, who was also involved in a protest that broke out into violence in California. The head of that group, the Traditionalist Worker Party, has said they have been attracted to Trump s campaign because they believe that he has tapped into their key issue: immigration.Trump and the Republican Party face an uphill climb among black voters. While Mitt Romney attracted six percent of the black vote in 2012, even without President Obama on the ballot (he has endorsed Clinton), Republicans are still viewed with skepticism and the party s support of voter identification laws that suppress the black vote don t help.Recent state polling showed Trump receiving ZERO black votes in key swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.","label":1}
{"text":"Wait until you read this woman s biography and past quotes about conservatives! Popular myth-busting website Snopes originally gained recognition for being the go-to site for disproving outlandish urban legends -such as the presence of UFOs in Haiti or the existence of human-animal hybrids in the Amazon jungle.Recently, however, the site has tried to pose as a political fact-checker. But Snopes fact-checking looks more like playing defense for prominent Democrats like Hillary Clinton and it s political fact-checker describes herself as a liberal and has called Republicans regressive and afraid of female agency. Snopes main political fact-checker is a writer named Kim Lacapria. Before writing for Snopes, Lacapria wrote for Inquisitr, a blog that oddly enough is known for publishing fake quotes and even downright hoaxes as much as anything else.While at Inquisitr, the future fact-checker consistently displayed clear partisanship.She described herself as openly left-leaning and a liberal. She trashed the Tea Party as teahadists. She called Bill Clinton one of our greatest presidents. She claimed that conservatives only criticized Lena Dunham s comparison of voting to sex because they fear female agency. She once wrote: Like many GOP ideas about the poor, the panic about using food stamps for alcohol, pornography or guns seems to have been cut from whole cloth or more likely, the ideas many have about the fantasy of poverty. (A simple fact-check would show that food stamp fraud does occur and costs taxpayers tens of millions.)Lacapria even accused the Bush administration of being at least guilty of criminal negligience in the September 11 attacks. (The future fact-checker offered no evidence to support her accusation.)Her columns apparently failed to impress her readership, oftentimes failing to get more than 10-20 shares.After blogging the Inquisitr, Lacapria joined Snopes, where she regularly plays defense for her fellow liberals.She wrote a fact check article about Jimmy Carter s unilateral ban of Iranian nationals from entering the country that looks more like an opinion column arguing against Donald Trump s proposed Muslim ban.Similarly, Lacapria in another fact check article argued Hillary Clinton hadn t included Benghazi at all in her infamous we didn t lose a single person in Libya gaffe. Lacapria claimed Clinton only meant to refer to the 2011 invasion of Libya (but not the 2012 Benghazi attack) but offered little fact-based evidence to support her claim.After the Orlando terror attack, Lacapria claimed that just because Omar Mateen was a registered Democrat with an active voter registration status didn t mean he was actually a Democrat. Her fact check argued that he might have chosen a random political affiliation when he initially registered. Lacapria even tried to contradict the former Facebook workers who admitted that Facebook regularly censors conservative news, dismissing the news as rumors. In that fact check article, Lacapria argued that Facebook Trending s blacklisting of junk topics was not only not a scandalous development, but to be expected following the social network s crackdown on fake news sites. The opinion-heavy article was mockingly titled: The Algorithm Is Gonna Get You.Lacapria again played defense for Clinton in a fact check article when she claimed: Outrage over an expensive Armani jacket worn by Hillary Clinton was peppered with inaccurate details. One of the inaccurate details cited by Lacapria was that, The cost of men s suits worn by fellow politicians didn t appear in the article for contrast. She also argued the speech Clinton gave while wearing the $12,495 jacket, which discussed raising wages and reducing inequality, wasn t actually about income inequality.","label":1}
{"text":"With a swipe of his pen, U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday started killing off a retirement advice rule that wealth managers from Wall Street to Wisconsin have spent the last six years lobbying against. A landmark policy from the Obama era, the so-called fiduciary rule requires brokers and financial advisers to act in the best interest of retirement savers. This restricts their ability to earn commissions and to sell some higher-fee products. Wall Street has argued it would harm consumers because it would raise compliance costs and therefore fees, and force them to get rid of Main Street clients and small businesses that offer 401(k) plans. Trump's executive order asks the Labor Department to review whether the rule needs to be changed or dumped. Both supporters and opponents are girding to argue their case. But the industry has the edge, with Trump officials stating they were planning on rolling back regulation generally and criticizing the fiduciary rule in particular. The Chamber of Commerce, one of a number of trade groups which have filed lawsuits to kill the rule, cheered Trump's order. \"We look forward to swift action from the Department of Labor in putting this delay into effect and reevaluating matters of policy and law,\" the Chamber said in a statement. Shares of banks with large wealth management divisions jumped on Friday with Bank of America (BAC.N) up 2.5 percent, Morgan Stanley (MS.N) 5.5 percent stronger and Wells Fargo (WFC.N) over 2 percent higher. Insurers, whose sales of annuity products were at risk from the rule, also rose, with shares of Prudential (PRU.N) up 1.9 percent and Metlife (MET.N) 1 percent stronger. \"Everyone will be pleased that DOL's rush to get it done before the administration change is set back,\" said Judi Carsrud, director of government relations for the National Association of Insurance Financial Advisors (NAIFA), which has been fighting the rule for years. NAIFA plans to pursue a \"very straightforward\" fix such as a \"legislative approach\" that directs retirement account advisers to act in clients' best interest \u2013 a standard that Carsrud believes the group's members already meet. The Obama administration had said conflicted advice costs American families $17 billion a year but the industry has said that figure was inflated. No-one disputes the high cost that firms would have to pay to comply with the new rule, an amount the Labor Department estimates at as much as $31 billion over the next decade. Banks have already started changing things with Bank of America saying this week it would more clearly disclose the fees it charges clients of its Merrill Lynch wealth management business. Bank of America Corp had already started cutting back on \"transactional\" accounts that charge clients a commission for every trade, rather than a flat fee based on assets. Morgan Stanley (MS.N) has decided to keep such accounts but is making changes that will allow advisers to work within the rule's confines by creating new contracts, re-training advisors and updating supervisory software. Swiss bank UBS UBSN.VX welcomed Trump's order and said it supported the creation of a fiduciary rule under the Securities and Exchange Commission, which could apply to all advisers not just retirement advisers. Wells Fargo said it would continue to work with regulators to ensure higher standards of care for investment clients. Other banks either declined to comment or were not immediately available to comment. Implementing changes was particularly tough for small-time financial advisers. Along with two colleagues, Juli McNeely, who runs McNeely Financial Services in Spencer, Wisconsin has spent between 45 and 60 hours each week since December preparing for the rule. Their work has focused largely on figuring out which clients from their rural community should now pay a flat fee for financial advice, instead of commissions, and creating new templates for paperwork. \"Now we have a little breathing room to make sure we do this right and not quickly to meet a deadline,\" said McNeely, who voted for Trump, in part because of his pro-business stance. One person who has yet to comment on the retirement rule review is the person who will be at the center of it \u2014 Trump's choice to head the Labor Department, Andy Puzder. Puzder, chief executive of fastfood group CKE Restaurants, has been a vocal opponent of what he has called \"overregulation\" during the Obama administration. The 401(k) plans he offers his own employees are less generous than some rivals, suggesting a more industry-friendly approach. While the Labor Secretary cannot unilaterally repeal a rule, his agency can rewrite and change a rule substantially or scrap it. William Galvin, the top securities regulator in Massachusetts, described Trump's order as \"reckless\". \"My office will continue to protect small investors when those in Washington cave to big business.\" Not all proponents of the rule were as pessimistic. \"There's no question that in the minds of industry lobbyist, delay is just a step toward repeal,\" said Barbara Roper, investor protection director for the Consumer Federation of America (CFA). \"If the Department of Labor follows an honest process and considers the impact on retirement savers, we have a winning argument.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Beverly Emers strode through campus with assurance, her son, Jabari, a few paces behind, as she gave the history of each monument at Bronx Community College this fall. Although decades older than most students there, Ms. Emers, 43, cannot walk between the buildings without someone waving, calling her name or inviting her to a party. It was not always this way. About fourteen years ago, Ms. Emers was too consumed with getting high to even consider college. It was winter 2003, and she was with friends strung out on drugs, her mind in a crazed disorientation. They had a word for the feeling: monos, Spanish for monkeys. By this time, Ms. Emers, who had been dealing drugs since she was 13, had lost track of the number of times she had been arrested. She dropped out of high school in 9th grade and spent six years in jail, usually on charges of selling or possessing drugs, according to police records. Ms. Emers knew the consequences, serving nine stints at the Rikers Island jail complex under three different aliases, according to records from the Department of Correction. Every time she walked out of jail, Ms. Emers swore she would never return. But each time she went back to the streets, only to start dealing again. But high on drugs that winter night, with her friends appearing like ghosts all around her, she found clarity. \"I thought, 'What am I doing here? '\" she recalled. \"I saw the ugliness of my lifestyle for what it was. I knew where I was going wasn't where I was supposed to be. And I just walked out. \" For a year, she had eluded officers on a parole violation charge, but no more. She went to the parole office in Midtown Manhattan to turn herself in. The office was closed, but she still banged on the back door. \"You're late,\" she recalled an officer as saying. She replied: \"You're right. I'm more than a year late. \" Ms. Emers spent the next few months at Rikers. In a court hearing, she requested treatment for her drug addiction. She sought help from the Dreitzer House for Women and Children in East Harlem, which offers drug treatment and affordable housing. Ms. Emers moved into a shelter, where she was pregnant with Jabari and lived for the next year and a half, she said. But she struggled to disconnect from the toxic yet accepting community that had taken her in after an unhappy childhood. After kicking her drug habit, Ms. Emers said, she spent years \"in limbo. \" \"Not doing what I'd been doing before,\" she said, \"but not doing anything else instead. \" She cloistered herself in her Bronx apartment to avoid the temptations outside, but was depressed that her criminal record limited her job prospects. And when Jabari started school, his homework became another stressor for her, prompting verbal abuse. \"He bore the brunt of that,\" she said. Ms. Emers said she realized she needed to end the abuse, so she turned to Community School 61, an elementary school in the Bronx that partners with the Children's Aid Society, one of eight organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. There she volunteered and joined the association. She also signed up for parenting classes at the Children's Aid Society's East Harlem Center and became more engaged at home. School administrators suggested she enroll in college, but Ms. Emers dismissed the idea until shortly after Jabari's fifth grade graduation, when the mother and son were discussing his future. Jabari asked her, \"When are you graduating?\" \"It wasn't planned,\" Jabari recalled. \"It just came out. \" \"And that was an aha! moment for me,\" Ms. Emers said. \"Because here I was telling him to read and study, and I don't even have a high school diploma. \" So Ms. Emers \"surrendered,\" took college prep classes and enrolled in Bronx Community College in spring 2015. Ms. Emers, who is majoring in human services, hopes to work with South Bronx Rising Together, a partner of the Children's Aid Society, which provides opportunities and educational resources to impoverished children and youth in the South Bronx. She is now on the dean's list, serves as the executive secretary in student government and has received leadership and service awards from the college. She was also awarded the Kalief Browder Memorial Scholarship, given to students who served time in jail it is named after a man who was sent to Rikers at 16 and spent three years there without trial. In 2015 at the age of 22, Mr. Browder, who had been a student at the college, committed suicide, after struggling to rebuild his life following incarceration. Ms. Emers is the first recipient of the scholarship \u2014 $5, 000 for this academic year \u2014 which covers most of her costs. But an invitation to the scholarship gala held at the event space Tribeca Rooftop in June posed a problem. \"I didn't have a dress to go to a gala in,\" she said. To help, the Children's Aid Society withdrew $640 from the Neediest Cases Fund for gift cards to pay for Ms. Emers's and Jabari's attire for the event, as well as expenses for school uniforms and household items. The family also received $550 from the fund to help with clothing and household goods in 2012. The family receives $194 in cash assistance and $376 in food stamps each month. Dressed for the occasion, they arrived at the industrial penthouse with large windows overlooking Manhattan and the Hudson River. Feeling out of place, Ms. Emers found comfort in her son. \"Jabari was the guy in the room,\" she said, smiling. \"And I'm not just saying that because he's my son. \" Waiters passed hors d'oeuvres, and she encouraged Jabari, who wants to become a chef, to try a little of everything. \"Just getting exposed to certain things could motivate him to work hard, and maybe he won't make the same choices I did,\" she said. Now, Ms. Emers is helping to plan a discussion in the spring on the importance of mental health and suicide prevention at her college. She also wants to develop resources to ease the transition between jail and civilian life for other formerly incarcerated students. Ms. Emers has not forgotten how far she has come, she said. More than a decade after leaving the treatment center, she still attends monthly meetings and visits her caseworker. \"It's an act of gratitude,\" she said. \"I want people to know we're doing well, because they invested in me before I was doing well. This is our victory. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Israel is in a class all by itself when it comes to perpetuating some of the worst human rights violations of any country on earth today. For decades, Israel has had a policy of ethnically cleansing and robbing the indigenous Palestinian population of its lands and resources and killing them when they resist the atrocities committed against them under the guise of self-defense. Now, an Israeli military general, someone who is one of the leaders of Israel s killing machine, has come out and admitted that Israel today shares many of the same elements as Nazi Germany.Addressing an audience at Tel Yitzhak in central Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israel Defense Forces Major General Yair Golan dropped a bombshell on the Israel s racist establishment when he said: It s scary to see horrifying developments that took place in Europe begin to unfold here. The Holocaust should bring us to ponder our public lives and, furthermore, it must lead anyone who is capable of taking public responsibility to do so. Because if there is one thing that is scary in remembering the Holocaust, it is noticing horrific processes which developed in Europe particularly in Germany 70, 80, and 90 years ago, and finding remnants of that here among us in the year 2016. The general was immediately attacked by Israeli government officials. Justice minister Ayelet Shaked told local media that Golan was a little confused and that he showed a lack of understanding, if not a disrespect of the Holocaust. Yet, it is Shaked who has shown disrespect for humanity when she advocated for the genocide of Palestinians. Here s what she posted on her Facebook page two years ago: They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there. The next day, Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair was kidnapped and burned alive in Jerusalem. Neftali Bennett, leader of one of Israel s right-wing parties also called on General Golan to retract his statements. Bennett is at the forefront of Israel s genocidal and war mongering saber-rattling. He has said of Palestinians: I already killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is absolutely no problem with that. We should keep in mind that these are not two government ministers with fascist tendencies in the midst of a normal government. Israel today is inherently driven by beliefs that makes the general correct in comparing Israel with Nazi Germany. Zionism, which drives Israel, is an ideology whose adherents advocate for a pure Jewish state. In a land where the majority of the population was not Jewish (97%) in the early 20th Century, Zionists have always advocated for the destruction of the inferior non-Jewish Palestinians to create and maintain their Jewish state. 100 years later, with 2\/3 of the Palestinian population ethnically cleansed and not allowed to return to their ancestral homeland, the Israelis see the remaining Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, Gaze Strip, as well as those inside of Israel, as a demographic threat.The rhetoric of Shaked and Bennett is not the exception to the rule of the state of Israel: It is the norm. For the Palestinians, this will continue to mean their oppression and gradual destruction. It is up to the American people to say no to the billions of dollars a year we send to a country that is thirsty for the removal of an entire people in order to achieve its pure state.","label":1}
{"text":"Militants attacked the convoy of a minister in the restive Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, killing at least two bystanders and injuring several others though the minister escaped unhurt, police said. A grenade hurled at the motorcade of Jammu and Kashmir Public Works Minister Naeem Akhtar exploded on the road after hitting a security vehicle, senior state police official Manoj Pandita told Reuters. Akhtar, who was on his way to inaugurate a project in the town of Tral in south Kashmir, told Reuters he was safe. The incident occurred despite tightened security in the town, which was home to former militant leader Burhan Wani whose death last year at the hands of Indian forces sparked massive protests that led to dozens more deaths. India has been fighting a long-running counter-insurgency campaign in Muslim-majority Kashmir, which both India and Pakistan claim in full but rule in part. New Delhi accuses Pakistan of pushing in militants from its part of Kashmir to carry out attacks, a charge denied by Islamabad. So far this year, around 44 civilians have been killed in militant attacks in the state, passing the highest annual total seen in the last eight years, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal.","label":0}
{"text":"As if the Republican Party couldn t possibly look any worse thanks to Donald Trump s exploding Russia scandal, some of the party s top members are hellbent on destroying conservatives reputation even further.On Wednesday morning, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) went on CNN to propose a heartless, revolting solution to getting Trump s border wall paid for. King is apparently accepting Mexico s refusal to pay for Trump s moronic border wall (even as Trump still insists that the country will pay) and has come up with another solution cutting food assistance to low-income Americans! And while he s at it, he d also like to slash Planned Parenthood funding.This disgusting suggestion came up when Alisyn Camerota asked King if he would be comfortable with providing $1.6 billion of taxpayer money not from Mexico to bill that wall? This question was prompted by the House Republicans threat to Democrats on Tuesday, where they suggested a government shutdown if $1.6 billion for the border wall wasn t included in the 2018 budget. King responded: Absolutely yes and more. And I d throw another $5 billion on the pile, and I would find half of a billion of dollars of that right out of Planned Parenthood s budget. And the rest of it could come out of food stamps and the entitlements that are being spread out for people who have not worked in three generations. Camerota, of course, was speechless. She did a double take and asked: You want to take food from people who are on the lowest rung in terms of the nation s safety net and their children, in terms of foot stamps you re happy to take money from them in order to give the $1.6 billion for the border wall? King tried to defend himself, stating that the border wall would create jobs. Then, he jumped to the school lunch program that Michelle Obama had created. He said: I would just say let s limit it to that anybody who wants to have food stamps, it s up to the school lunch program, that s fine. You can watch King turn into an absolute piece of sh*t below:These food stamps provided by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are responsible for assisting 45 million people. Trump has already proposed that this program be cut 25% over the next 10 years, and King wants to cut it even more to support an ineffective border wall that most Americans strongly oppose. By cutting SNAP and Planned Parenthood funding, King is solidifying himself as a conservative who doesn t care about low-income Americans. He s truly living up to the GOP s reputation.","label":1}
{"text":"High-income Wall Street financiers could be unintended winners from a section of U.S. President Donald Trump's tax-cut plan that is meant to help mostly small, \"mom-and-pop\" businesses. Trump called on Wednesday for a new \"pass-through\" tax rate of 25 percent that could mean big savings for owners of sole proprietorships and partnerships who now pay 39.6 percent. But it could also mean a windfall for partners in private-equity, venture-capital and hedge funds, unless Congress can figure out a way to block them from taking advantage of the new rate. Ron Wyden, top Democrat on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, said Democrats supported a pass-through rate for small businesses, such as \"a cleaner, a garage, a restaurant.\" He said Trump's plan, however, would create \"a whole new set of wealthy individuals being able to dodge their taxes through this new provision.\" At issue is the taxation of the roughly 95 percent of American businesses that are not public corporations. Non-public pass-through businesses, such as sole proprietorships, limited liability companies and partnerships, pay no income tax themselves. Instead their profits \"pass through\" directly to their owners, who pay tax on them at the individual tax rates. A small fraction of those business owners pay the top individual tax rate of 39.6 percent, higher than the current top corporate income tax rate of 35 percent. Those business owners have long complained that the disparity is unfair, especially in view of the fact that many multinationals pay much less than the 35 percent statutory corporate tax rate by exploiting abundant loopholes and tax breaks available to large, global corporations. Republicans have been eager to address the issue. Trump's plan proposes a new tax rate of 25 percent for the pass-through income of \"small and family-owned businesses.\" The problem, according to the plan's critics, is that financial entities such as private-equity, venture-capital and hedge funds are all partnerships whose wealthy partners would see substantial tax savings on large portions of their income unless congressional tax writers find a way to exclude them. 'GOOD' VERSUS 'BAD' PASS-THROUGH INCOME The White House document that spelled out Trump's plan signaled that the administration was aware of the potential problem but would leave addressing it up to Congress. The document said: \"The framework contemplates that the (congressional tax) committees will adopt measures to prevent the recharacterization of personal income into business income to prevent wealthy individuals from avoiding the top personal tax rate.\" Trump's plan also proposes cutting the top corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent and cutting the top individual tax rate to 35 percent from 39.6 percent. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said two weeks ago that the administration would ensure partners at services firms such as accounting, law and financial firms would not benefit from a new, lower pass-through rate. A Treasury Department spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the pass-through rate or plans to exempt certain categories of firms. Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, a liberal advocacy group, said the idea that a new pass-through rate would help small business was \"simply a hoax.\" Tax experts said it would be difficult for congressional tax writers to exempt partners at services firms from using the new pass-through rate. \"There has always been talk of how to carve out 'good' pass-through income from 'bad' pass-through income. The problem is it's exceedingly hard to do and there is no way to draw clear lines that won't be manipulated,\" said Seth Hanlon with the Center for American Progress, a liberal group. Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of San Diego, agreed it would be \"challenging.\" \"Still, I think it can probably be done,\" Fleischer said.","label":0}
{"text":"Anniversary of Great Reporter's Death By Daily Bell Staff - November 23, 2016  We got the very sad news today, Nov. 22, 2015, that Dave McGowan passed away from cancer at 12:47 p.m. \u2013 Truth and Shadows  We missed the anniversary of McGowan's death, which was yesterday, but he was one helluva a writer, exposing in brief books the\"directed history\" of the modern era. So, we'll remember him today. We've written about him before, here.  He died of an extremely aggressive form of lung cancer, which made some of his fans speculate that he'd actually been assassinated. Unfortunately, much of Dave's work is no long freely available on the 'Net, though some is available here .  The following is Dave's last post here from his Blog Center for an Informed America (June 14, 2015).  Just nine weeks ago, on April 14, I presented a lengthy video deconstruction of the 2013 Boston Marathon incident through the Caravan to Midnight radio show\/podcast. About a week later (on April 20, of all days), the nearly four-hour video presentation was uploaded to YouTube.  Not long after that, someone using the username Phoenix Archangel posted an interesting comment: \"John [Wells, the host of the show] always signs off with some of the best advice ever. Speaking of advice: this David McGowan fella really ought to quit smoking. With all the elitist feathers he's ruffling, he's likely to come down with a spontaneous case of hitherto undiagnosed stage 4 inoperable Pancreatic cancer.\"  \u2026 Mr.\/Ms Archangel \u2026 wasn't too far off, though I've been told that it's actually incurable small-cell lung cancer that has already spread to my liver and bones. And no, that's unfortunately not a joke. It's my new reality as of just a few short weeks ago, when my entire world was turned upside-down and I suddenly found myself being admitted to the oncology ward at Glendale Adventist Medical Center. Four days later, I was beginning my first round of chemotherapy infusions. The second round begins tomorrow, on Monday, June 15.  More from Truth and Shadows:  The first thing I read from McGowan was his series on the Apollo Moon missions called \"Wagging the Moondoggie.\" This amazing 14-part series is what finally convinced me that the Moon landings never took place. What struck me was not only his insight but his wit. Very dry, which is the best kind.  In addition to what became a whole series on 9\/11, I was also blown away by series on the Boston Marathon \"bombing\" and dark side of the music scene in Laurel Canyon in the 1960s (which became a book). Other books he has written include Programmed to Kill, Understanding the F-Word: American Fascism and the Politics of Illusion, and Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don't Want You to See.  We ran into McGowan's work very early in the 2000s when we were researching an article on the Peak Oil hoax. At the time, libertarian analysis was mostly theoretical, but we were trying to focus on a synthesis between free-market theory and \"directed\" history.  We could hardly believe McGowan's comments on Peak Oil. Without, apparently, a deep background in Austrian free-market economics, he nonetheless fully grasped the idiocy of asserting that the modern world was running out of oil, and that since alternatives were not going to be developed in a timely manner, the only solution was drastic, government action. He even mentioned abiotic oil, see here, as we recall.  When we read his short books, we were further impressed. McGowan moved far beyond simplistic assertions of \"conspiracy\" to show you clearly how modern history seemed to work.  For us, the book on the mid-1960s Laurel Canyon music scene here was perhaps the most brilliant. Who knew that Jimi Hendrix was in the military, here, prior to becoming a rock star? Who knew that many of the musical stars of the early- to the mid-1960s were somehow gathered together in Laurel Canyon prior to their fame, here \u2013 and that many or most had military ties or came from military families.  McGowan didn't state everything. Some things he left up to you. But it was hard to come away from his books without understanding his main point, that society was directed purposefully from above and that before the Internet (and people like McGowan), you would live your entire life unknowingly according to someone else's plan.  His short book about Laurel Canyon not only shows how directed history operates, it makes the point, resonantly, that society and even culture can be shifted according to elite strategies. In other words, in not very many pages it SHOWS (not tells) how Western social manipulation actually works. Likely it has worked this way for thousands of years.  Before McGowan, it was easy to believe that social manipulation must inevitably be a clumsy affair, imposed brutally as it was in the USSR. McGowan presents ways cultural reconfiguration can take place secretly and powerfully, without anyone but a handful knowing it is happening.  For instance, the standard story of the 1960s is that young people got upset over the war and in the process of protesting, quickly created an entire counterculture that opposed much of what \"corporate America\" stood for. The trouble with the 1960s counterculture was that it never adequately defined the real problem, nor did it fully explain the solution.  The hippie ethos blamed much of what was wrong with America on corporate greed and the like. This led to the conclusion that government itself could rectify what was wrong. But both modern corporations and today's massive governments are the result of monopoly force wielded behind the scenes.  In reality, as McGowan showed, the 1960s movement was likely painstakingly created to generate certain results, mostly by reinforcing social chaos. Thus, blaming problems on corporations and looking to government for solutions was only to be expected, though it was wrongheaded on numerous levels.  As we know today from Internet information, government is seemingly supported by a handful of unfathomably rich individuals \u2013 those who likely control central banking \u2013 to provide \"solutions\" that inevitably generate more problems not less.  We know from Austrian economics that almost every law and regulation is surely a price fix that must drain prosperity from society. We know, via \"marginal utility\" here that valid prices can only be generated via market competition itself.  The 1960s hippie revolution explored little of this because \u2013 as McGowan suggested \u2013 it was created and sustained by the CIA. So many 1960s figures were apparently working with the CIA.  These may have included singer Jim Morrison, whose father helped initiate the fake military incidents that Lyndon Johnson used to generate the full-on Vietnam war here \u2013 and many other musicians, promoters and business opportunists. And also those individuals who initially dispersed CIA-created LSD, here.  In fact, one can speculate that the Vietnam War itself was created as part of a Hegelian dialectic that included the creation of a manipulated 1960s alternative \"hippie\" culture. Each Hegelian thesis demands an antithesis that leads to a synthesis. The war was the thesis, and the counterculture was the antithesis leading to the synthesis we have today.  The goal is always globalism, apparently. And social chaos must be regularly induced in order to reinforce additional government actions. If one has the patience and the desire, it is relatively easy to discern the evolution of these modern manipulations and even to predict their future.  It's one reason, we continue to distrust narratives present in the mainstream media and even those being offered, sometimes, in the alternative media. We're not sure that this presidential election, for instance, is what it seems. And we have written numerous articles suggesting that a good deal of purposeful propaganda surrounds nuclear weapons, to name one additional promotion, here .  Conclusion: McGowan helped show the way, however, and we simply need to follow his lead to better our own comprehension. It's not pleasant to pursue such information, nor come to additional conclusions, but the alternative is living in ignorance of the true influences on our life and times. Some people are content to live without embarking on such explorations. Others are not.","label":1}
{"text":"Kurdish-led Syrian groups plan to attend Russia s proposed Syria peace talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Kurdish officials have said. The Syria peace congress was originally scheduled for Nov. 18 but was postponed and the Kremlin said on Thursday that no new date had been set. If the invitation is renewed, we will attend Sochi and every other meeting that concerns the Syrian crisis as representatives of the people s will Sihanouk Depo, an official of Syria s main Kurdish party, PYD, told an affiliated website on Wednesday. We are still invited, Badran Jia Kurd, a senior Kurdish official, told Reuters on Thursday. If the framework for the congress still stands, we will attend , said Jia Kurd, an adviser to the administration that governs Kurdish-led autonomous regions of Syria. It would mark the first time Syria s main Kurdish groups are brought into peace talks. Although they now run at least a quarter of Syria, they have so far been left out of international talks in line with Turkish wishes. Before the Sochi talks were postponed, the PYD said in November it had been invited and favored attending. Since the conflict erupted in 2011, the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia and its allies have carved out autonomous cantons in the north. The YPG spearheads the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting Islamic State militants with Washington s backing. Their territorial grip has expanded since joining forces with the United States, though Washington opposes their autonomy plans. Turkey views the PYD and the YPG as offshoots of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought a decades-long insurgency inside Turkey. Last month, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan s spokesman said Russia had told Ankara that the PYD would not be invited to the peace talks. The Kurdish groups share enmities with both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s government and with neighboring Turkey. This week, Assad described the U.S.-backed militias as traitors . On Wednesday, in an interview with Iran s Arabic language Al-Alam television, Syria s deputy foreign minister Faisal Mekdad equated the Kurdish-led forces with Islamic State. There is another Daesh called SDF, he said, using the Arabic acronym for the militant group that until recently controlled swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria. In his interview on Wednesday, Depo said: Any attack from the regime will be a failed venture.","label":0}
{"text":"There's evidence that when weighing Donald Trump versus rival Ted Cruz, many Republican leaders have become more concerned about Senator Cruz. Donald Trump speaks to a crowd on Jan. 4, 2016, in Lowell, Mass. Thousands attended the rally in packed Paul E. Tsongas Center Arena at the Lowell campus of the University of Massachusetts. Is the Republican establishment \u2013 or at least some of it \u2013 coming to terms with the possibility that Donald Trump will be the GOP presidential nominee? A number of signs in recent days indicate that's the case. Or, to be more specific, there's evidence that when weighing Mr. Trump versus rival Ted Cruz, many Republican leaders think Senator Cruz the greater danger. That's an implicit admission that they're beginning to think Trump might not be, you know, so bad. Let's go to the list: Earlier this month, right-leaning New York Times columnist David Brooks unloaded on Cruz, saying the Texas senator's speeches are full of a sort of \"pagan brutalism.\" Since then, two former Republican Senate majority leaders, Trent Lott and Bob Dole, have indicated they think a Cruz nomination would be cataclysmic for the GOP and lead to widespread losses down the ticket. Then this week, the Republican governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad, said flatly that he hopes anyone but Cruz wins his state's first-in-the-nation caucuses. True, Governor Branstad cited Cruz's opposition to ethanol subsidies, crucial to Iowa's economy, as the reason for his opposition. But the open and vehement nature of the anti-endorsement indicated a high level of political enmity. \"It is no surprise that the establishment is in full panic mode,\" Cruz told reporters after hearing of this news. Why does this imply anything about Trump? Well, the Iowa caucuses are now less than two weeks away. The New Hampshire primary is within three. The primary season moves quickly through South Carolina and other states after that. If the Republican Party as an entity is to exert influence on the nominating process, now is the time. Many have expected Republican leaders to band together against Trump, given that some party figures see him as an existential threat to the GOP in its current form. That doesn't seem to be occurring. \"The sort of GOP effort against Trump that many anticipated is happening instead vs. Cruz,\" tweeted Sunlight Foundation political analyst Richard Skinner on Thursday. Yes, this description of the state of play is a bit simplistic. The Republican establishment is not a cohesive entity chaired by the ghost of Nelson Rockefeller. Many GOP journalists and public intellectuals continue to worry that Trump, with his belligerent populism, will push the party so far from its small-government roots that it will become unrecognizable. \"What we're seeing is the attempt at the normalization of Trump on the right, and defining conservatism down. Can be resisted and defeated,\" tweeted right-leaning Weekly Standard editor William Kristol earlier this week. But the fact remains that the legislative, Washington wing of the party now seems inclined to cut Trump slack. Mr. Dole, the party's nominee in 1996, said in a New York Times interview that Trump could probably work with Congress, because \"he's got the right personality and he's kind of a dealmaker.\" It may be as simple as that. Trump, for all his insults, is the kind of person members of Congress understand. He's a businessman who knows that deals aren't all one-sided, and a political neophyte who would be willing to defer to their judgment. That's the theory, anyway. Cruz? He's proved that the only legislative opinion he listens to is his own, in the view of the establishment. Many in the GOP believe he pushed them into the 2013 government shutdown and then blamed their lack of courage for the shutdown's inevitable collapse. Consider this: Back in the 2008 campaign, questions arose about whether nominee John McCain was a \"natural born citizen,\" and thus eligible for the presidency under the Constitution, because he was born in the Canal Zone. The Senate quickly moved to pass a nonbinding resolution affirming Senator McCain's citizenship. When Cruz became embroiled in the same question, because of his Canadian birth, that did not happen. \"I just don't think the Senate ought to get into the middle of this,\" said majority leader Mitch McConnell of the issue on ABC News's \"This Week\" earlier this month. Does the GOP establishment think it can block Cruz, then turn to oppose Trump and boost someone else? Maybe, but it's getting late to pull off that kind of maneuver. Trump may rocket through the first primaries, and then, who could head him off? Jeb Bush? (Hey, he's at 10 percent in some New Hampshire polls!) Are GOP figures counting on influencing someone who's not that easy to push around? Sure, Trump knows little about the day-to-day operation of government. That doesn't mean he'll be Silly Putty in Senator McConnell's hands. He's a billionaire with little vested interest in the party per se. \"He might well completely ignore Congress's wishes and just do whatever feels right to him on any given day. Trump's primary goal over the past several decades has been to enhance the Trump name. What policies that translates into is anyone's guess,\" writes Seth Masket at Vox. Or does the party leadership still think that somehow or other, without its involvement, Trump is just going to lose?","label":0}
{"text":"Ransom Riggs's novel \"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children,\" with its haunting photos, quirky outsiders and feel for the macabre, reads a bit like a Tim Burton movie. And, fittingly, it has now become one. The director of \"Beetlejuice\" and \"Edward Scissorhands\" was drawn to \"Miss Peregrine\" (in theaters Sept. 30) because it fell in line with the themes he often explores: misfits struggling to be understood and tales that blend the comic and the tragic. The \"Peculiar Children\" of the title possess special abilities, like the power to reanimate dead creatures or shoot fire from their fingers. For this story of a teenage boy (Asa Butterfield) who uncovers a family mystery that involves a handful of those children, invisible monsters known as Hollows, and time travel, Mr. Riggs built his narrative around vintage photographs he collected. \"I liked Ransom's approach with the pictures,\" Mr. Burton said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. \"It was an interesting kind of way to create a story. It made it feel like a weird old fable. \" For the production, Mr. Burton sketched characters, props and more. Here, he explains why he decided to put clothes on evil creatures and how he came to storyboard a feast of human eyeballs. This is Hugh (Milo Parker) a Peculiar who has a wild hive of bees living inside of him. Mr. Burton's simple sketch shows the intensity of the character using only dots to illustrate the bees. \"I didn't do too many sketches of the kids because I didn't want to do three drawings and try to cast the kids to look like that,\" he said. \"This was just a little more my process, my doodles really,\" Mr. Burton said. \"Doodling these little things helps me to get thoughts from the inside out. \" These creatures are the biggest threat to Peculiars, and all the more menacing because they are invisible to most everyone. In his sketch, Mr. Burton incorporated mouth tentacles and other traits described in the novel but also put his stamp on this lanky figure, which could be at home in his films \"The Nightmare Before Christmas\" or \"Corpse Bride. \" \"Originally, we were doing things that felt too much like monsters,\" he said. \"I got back to the idea that they should have a human quality. That made it feel more like a folk tale kind of children's horror story. So I kept clothes on them so they had a human aspect to them. \" This scene is from an experiment conducted by the creepy villain, Barron (Samuel L. Jackson) who has evolved from a Hollow and is trying to achieve immortality. The helmet has a sinister, torturous medieval yet industrial look that Mr. Burton came up with after earlier designs left him dissatisfied. \"I had a lot of artists working on things, and the helmets were looking overly elaborate, overly cartoonish, like from an old Disney movie,\" Mr. Burton said. \"But I thought there was something a bit more weird and scary about a more simple helmet. This riveted simplicity felt kind of cultish to me. \" To become more humanlike, Barron must eat human eyeballs. In one scene, he and other former Hollows enjoy an eyeball feast. It's a grisly, but also a kind of funny, visual set piece that gets at the children's nightmare spirit of the novel. Mr. Burton's simple watercolor drawing helped realize this moment. And while he doesn't make as many storyboards for his movies as he used to, they were necessary in this case. \"We had to do this scene in a montage kind of a way,\" Mr. Burton said, \"so it is one sequence that helped to storyboard. \" In the end, though the feast's vibe is lifted from in the book, he said, \"it's not as literal as what we ended up with. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Jimmy Kimmel landed a rare, on-air appearance from Donald Trump on the May 25th edition of his show, and wasted no part of the segment in grilling Trump on everything. Possibly the most interesting twist, however, came when Kimmel read a question from Bernie Sanders, who will be tonight s guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live. The question? Hillary Clinton backed out of an agreement to debate me in California before the June 7th primary. Are you prepared to debate the major issues facing our largest state and the country prior to the California primary? Trump, ever the attention-whore, replied with something surprisingly philanthropic: Yes, I am. How much is he going to pay me? Because if I debated him, we would have such high ratings and I think I should take that money and give it to some worthy charity. If he paid a nice sum for a charity I would love to do that. Trump later said that whatever network picked it up could donate the money to charity for this debate.The Sanders campaign wasted absolutely no time in responding to Trump on this:Game on. I look forward to debating Donald Trump in California before the June 7 primary. Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) May 26, 2016This would be a truly interesting debate, especially given that primary season isn t over yet, despite all expectations that both nominations would be locked up by now. There have already been so many monkey wrenches thrown into the primaries that one would think nobody would notice this one. However, one would be very wrong this could throw the biggest monkey wrench yet into the works, depending on how the two candidates interacted with each other and the moderators in such a setting.As of the time of this posting, there was no formal arrangement to actually hold this debate, and setting it up could be a logistical nightmare for the campaigns. That could change quickly, though, depending largely on whether the networks see any potential in it. Honestly, they d be idiotic not to want to do it. It s hard to imagine that anybody in the country wouldn t want to see these two put their arguments side-by-side in a debate format.As Bernie said, Game on.","label":1}
{"text":"This is the economic policy that s bringing throngs of college-age young adults to rally for Bernie Sanders.It s a sad but true commentary on the generation of adults who will be leading our nation in the years to come. Note to college students, this is what mature bill-paying adults call B.S. economics.","label":1}
{"text":"At the Democratic National Convention this summer, Hillary Clinton said were due for a tax increase. \"This is not because we resent success,\" she said. \"But when more than 90 percent of the gains have gone to the top 1 percent, that's where the money is. \" But defining America's 1 percent \u2014 and finding out \"where the money is\" \u2014 has become an increasingly subjective endeavor. As wealth becomes more concentrated in certain states and even counties, the gap between the national 1 percent and the local 1 percent is growing, creating wealth clusters that are pulling away from the rest of the country. To be in the top 1 percent of incomes nationally, families need to take in a minimum of $389, 436. The average income of America's is $1, 153, 293, according to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute. Yet when incomes are measured state by state, the study shows wildly diverging fortunes for . in the New York metro area (which includes parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania) earn at least $673, 000. Those in the Conn. area make at least $1. 4 million. Both are eclipsed by the of Jackson, Wyo. who earn at least $1. 7 million. Why Jackson? Billionaires have been flocking to Wyoming, attracted by its outdoor lifestyle and low taxes. Teton County, Wyo. is the richest in America when it comes to 1 percent incomes, with earning more than $2. 2 million. New York County, or Manhattan, ranks second, with a $1. 44 million threshold, followed by Fairfield County, Conn. with just under $1. 4 million. The tech boom has helped the 1 percent in San Mateo County and Marin County, Calif. where they earn at least $1. 1 million. By contrast, you need only $97, 000 to be a in Holmes County, Miss. or Lamar County, Ala. or $108, 000 in Grayson County, Va. \"All high incomes are going up, but they're going up much faster in places like New York, Maryland and California,\" said Mark Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center and of the Economic Policy Institute study. It's no surprise that the most expensive states have the highest incomes at the top. And wealth, by nature, has always been relative. Yet economists and wealth experts say the economic distance between in rich states and the in middling or even affluent states has widened drastically, creating a new national landscape of the 1 percent. \"We have a growing concentration of wealth and income by locality,\" said Edward N. Wolff, an economics professor at New York University. \"The localities and those top earners are moving away from the rest of the country. \" Regionally, the Northeast has been pulling away the fastest. The income threshold of the top 1 percent surged 101 percent in the Northeast from 1979 to 2013, according to Mr. Price. In the South and Midwest, the threshold has grown by about half that. In Massachusetts, ' incomes jumped 130 percent from 1979 to 2013 they've increased by 112 percent in New York and 113 percent in New Jersey. In New Mexico, they've grown only 22 percent over the same period, and in Nevada, only 15 percent. Yet the rich are also moving beyond the traditional hubs of the Northeast and California, creating some unlikely enclaves, such as Wyoming. North Dakota also moved up the ranks \u2014 from 45th to ninth from 1979 to 2013 \u2014 as the oil boom lifted the fortunes of its fortunate. The new peaks and valleys of America's elite have made national definitions less and less useful. The 1 percent is no longer the very top layer of the national economy, but a much deeper slice of residents in states like New York, Connecticut and California. The shift has important policy and cultural implications. Calls to tax the 1 percent nationally are really calls to tax the top 5 or 10 percent in the richest states \u2014 while missing the top 1 percent in many Western and Southern states. \"A tax on the 1 percent is increasingly a regional tax,\" Mr. Price said. \"On average, more folks will be touched by higher rates in New York than, say, West Virginia. \" Many economists say that's as it should be \u2014 people making more than $389, 000 should pay higher tax rates, regardless of where they live. \"They should pay more,\" Mr. Wolff of N. Y. U. said. \"It shouldn't matter where they live. They're earning large amounts of money. \" Yet they may not feel like top earners. People making $389, 000 in New York or Connecticut, for instance, are only in the top 10 percent for their states. They may not feel like since so many people around them are far richer. \"I have friends who may be in the 1 percent nationally but say they don't feel rich because they have friends who are richer,\" Mr. Wolff said. \"Psychologically they don't feel like a . They don't feel rich. But they really are. \"","label":0}
{"text":"It didn't take us long to think of a word to describe the 2016 election results. In fact, it took approximately 2 seconds.  EPIC.  Two weeks ago the media and their allies in the GOP establishment's #NeverTrump movement had already made their decision. And they had their polls back up their proclamation.  Hillary Clinton was going to win and that was that.  According to the media and their ilk in Washington, there was nothing anyone could do to change the outcome. There was no amount of enthusiasm, no amount of energy, no amount of effort that could defeat their choice.  Hillary Clinton would be the next President. She would go on to pass TPP, tax the hell out of America, spend us into oblivion, get us into war around the world, further corrupt our government and remain unscathed by her abundant scandals.  So much for that .  Turns out America has had enough. America is making a stand and that stand doesn't include corrupt elitists like Clinton, Pelosi and whoever they had planned to take over the Senate. It doesn't include Loretta Lynch, Director Comey and a radical leftist Supreme Court. It doesn't include George Soros, criminal aliens and potentially dangerous Muslim Refugees.  Nor does it include the old and tired bunch of self-proclaimed #NeverTrump conservatives who, for decades have told voters to support big government Republicans like Paul Ryan, John McCain and Mitt Romney.  They're all out and a new game is in town.  Donald Trump will be the next President of the United States of America .  It's real. It happened. It's a done deal.  It gets better, though, in that Trump will go into his Presidency with a strong majority in both the House and Senate. Yeah, the same House and Senate the media said would tilt towards Democrats in this election.  Our hats are off to the electorate for restoring faith in the system, the people and the sanity of our nation.  Congratulations to Donald Trump and his team. A hard fought battle won, a victory well deserved.  Now buckle up, folks. The media and their friends in Washington are going to lose their minds. It's going to be a wild ride. AL","label":1}
{"text":"WARS AND RUMORS OF WARS Russia unveils 'Satan 2' missile Nuclear weapon could wipe out France or Texas, report says Published: 7 hours ago  (CNN) A Russian missile design company has unveiled the first image of a new weapon in Russia's arsenal: the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile, nicknamed \"Satan 2.\"  The RS-28 Sarmat rocket \"is capable of wiping out parts of the earth the size of Texas or France,\" Russian state news outlet Sputnik reported in May.  The image was published by the Makeyev Rocket Design Bureau on its website.  Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borsiov said the Sarmat warhead was capable of destroying targets flying across both North and South Poles, Russian state news agency TASS reported Tuesday.","label":1}
{"text":"\"Vicu\u00f1a,\" the new play that opened Sunday at Kirk Douglas Theatre in Culver City, Calif., portrays a Donald Trump-like candidate in an \"Emperor's New Clothes\" tale. The satire about a real estate tycoon and reality TV star turned presidential candidate could be perceived as a hatchet job. However, it offers an entertaining topical comedy on the surface, with glimpses into the climate of fear and xenophobia that has spread across America. The improbable, uncontrollable Republican candidate here, Kurt Seaman (a name that results in sophomoric jokes that take away from the effort), bears an obvious resemblance to Trump. The mogul \"wants to add the White House to his list of properties,\" as one character notes. The Trumpisms include the well- respected daughter (called Srilanka here), ex-wives with names that evoke Trump's, negative attitudes toward immigrants and even an uncomfortable feeling in his party that he will hurt them on Election Day. \"Vicu\u00f1a\" clearly evolved with the election since the Jon Robin Baitz play (his fourth world premiere for the Center Theatre Group) was drafted earlier this year. It takes place as preparations are under way for the third debate between Seaman (played by Harry Groener) and his unseen female opponent, who clearly did better in the first two debates. Directed by Robert Egan, most of the play's action takes place in a posh tailor's atelier, where the character Anselm Kassar (played by Brian George), an Iranian Jewish immigrant, designs garments for presidents and world leaders that create the illusion of power and confidence. The character is based on an actual Washington, D.C., tailor named Georges de Paris, a Greek immigrant who crafted suits for presidents for decades. Seaman decides that for his last debate he needs a magical, powerful suit made out of the finest vicu\u00f1a (hence the name) for him by the great presidential tailor. \"Clothing conveys credibility,\" is the premise. He believes the polls are lying: \"People are afraid to admit they are on my side.\" However, just in case, this emperor wants new clothes. The tailor decides, ignoring his personal feelings, to make a suit for a candidate that he finds repellent and make him more. He cannot resist the reflected glory of his powerful suits on the wannabe or truly powerful. Seaman is at first delighted to meet the tailor's apprentice, Amir Masoud (played by Ramiz Monsef), who is the son of immigrants. He tells him \"Apprenticeship is good. It's my thing.\" But the candidate's world view collides profoundly with this young Muslim man's concepts of justice and America. The candidate actually comments that if people cannot make it in their own country and flee, \"what kind of people are we letting in?\" Amir serves as the play's conscience and challenges the candidate (and his daughter). He points out, \"A suit can't stand in for actual goodness and vision.\" Amir's character (like others in the play) is uneven and his actions do not always convey his feelings (like taking advantage of his prep school and Harvard University scholarships before flaunting his Marxist leanings.) Srilanka (played by Samantha Sloyan) is tired defending her dad against his inappropriate comments. Initially, she tells Amir, \"His message is lost when he is not 'disciplined.'\" The dutiful daughter even boasts that \"when he's elected he will be far more human than he's being painted.\" However, once he speaks positively about woman at her alma mater and then does a disparaging sexist interview, she can no longer ignore his inappropriate comments. The Republican party leadership cannot ignore his \"pitchfork campaign\" and questionable opinions either. They offer Seaman billions to throw the debate and not become president. The real estate tycoon is now engaged in negotiations \"to buy and sell the presidency.\" The final scene is the debate, with the candidate and his exquisite vicu\u00f1a suit. The final act of the real election is yet to be played. But this play's final act is veers into darker territory and an \"emperor has no clothes\" type moment. The Vicu\u00f1a cast is excellent. Groener avoids the obvious parody, but conveys the appropriate pomposity. Sloyan does a great job displaying early confidence crumbling to vulnerability of Srilanka's campaign life. However, the key character is Monsef's Amir, and the actor is up to the task of carrying the audience on his journey challenging the candidate's beliefs and actions. \"Vicu\u00f1a\" portrays Trump in an \"Emperor's New Clothes\" type tale, opening one week before the election. Baitz' new play may not have a long shelf life now. However, it raises some serious issues that are not going away on Nov. 9. Maybe the play will be dusted off years from now and presented as a dramedy based on actual people. But, in the meantime, the reality is a little too real as election day looms. Written and Edited by Dyanne Weiss Sources: Performance Oct. 30 Center Theatre Group : Vicu\u00f1a Los Angeles Times: Q&A The timely new play 'Vicu\u00f1a' is, and isn't, about Donald Trump Photos of Groener (top) and Monsef and Sloyan by Craig Schwartz. courtesy of Center Theatre Group. baitz , Center Theatre Group , Kirk Douglas , vicu\u00f1a","label":1}
{"text":"United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that he is alarmed by the risk of military escalation on the Korean Peninsula. \"The absence of communication channels with the DPRK (North Korea) is dangerous,\" he told the 15-member council. \"We need to avoid miscalculation and misunderstanding. We need to act now to prevent conflict and achieve sustainable peace.\"","label":0}
{"text":"German prosecutors said on Wednesday they were investigating letters telling voters that their political preferences had already been worked out from their internet postings and there was no need to go to the polls on Sunday. Some of the fake letters carried the logo of federal election authorities, meaning the sender could be guilty of forgery, said the state prosecutor s office in Wiesbaden. The messages were crude and it would be surprising if people fell for it , a spokesman for the federal election director said. Still, it s frustrating. There was no indication of who was behind the letters, and they appeared to be based on a recent joke in a German magazine. But German government officials and security experts have been on the look out for evidence of meddling ahead of the Sept. 24 national vote, following allegations of Russian interference in polls in the United States and France. German computer magazine c t carried a satirical article this month in which a fictional voter is told that their vote will be automatically cast for a certain party given their behavior on the internet and credit card charges. The actual letters sent to German voters suggested the voters would cast their ballots for the Party of Bible-abiding Christians or the Basic Wage Coalition, RND newspapers reported. Prosecutors said the investigation started after a complaint from the German federal election director, whose office is in Wiesbaden. The letters looked real, which is why we are investigating possible forgery of documents, a spokesman for the prosecutor s office said.","label":0}
{"text":"Days after several of his colleagues were awakened in their hotel rooms by the police and arrested on corruption charges last year, Sepp Blatter, the longtime president of FIFA, made an important decision. He decided he deserved a raise. With soccer in crisis and an unprecedented scandal beginning to boil, Mr. Blatter \u2014 who had just won to a record fifth term \u2014 signed a new employment contract that increased his salary to $3 million a year and guaranteed him a $12 million bonus if he completed his mandate. That arrangement, completed just as FIFA was plunging into organizational chaos, was one of many instances in which three of FIFA's top officials arranged over five years to pay themselves more than $80 million, according to an internal investigation of world soccer's governing body by the American law firm Quinn Emanuel. It was the latest in a series of accusations about a culture of corruption pervading FIFA. For years, top soccer officials have been accused of using bribes and payoffs to profit from their roles overseeing the billions of dollars FIFA and other governing bodies generate through tournaments like the World Cup. But in the past year, dozens of soccer officials \u2014 though not the three accused Friday \u2014 have been charged with fraud, racketeering and money laundering in a broad corruption investigation led by the United States Justice Department. On Friday, lawyers from Quinn Emanuel, which was hired by FIFA in the wake of last year's arrests, published a synopsis of some of the findings of their own investigation. In it, they identified three former FIFA officials \u2014 Mr. Blatter and his former deputies J\u00e9r\u00f4me Valcke and Markus Kattner \u2014 as having mounted a \"coordinated effort\" to enrich themselves through a series of raises, bonuses and other payments. The three were also accused of modifying the termination clauses in their employment contracts to ensure that they would receive payouts even if they were fired for cause. \"They had the authority they needed,\" Quinn Emanuel investigators wrote of Mr. Blatter, Mr. Valcke and Mr. Kattner, \"and they simply told payroll and HR, the department generally in charge for employment contracts at FIFA and which reported to Mr. Kattner, how much should be paid out and to whom. \" In a statement responding to the accusations, Mr. Blatter's lawyer, Richard Cullen, said Friday, \"We look forward to showing FIFA that Mr. Blatter's compensation payments were proper, fair and in line with the heads of major professional sports leagues around the world. \" Mr. Valcke and Mr. Kattner did not immediately respond to FIFA's statement. None of the three men currently work for FIFA. Mr. Blatter was barred from soccer by FIFA in December and replaced by a new president, Gianni Infantino, in an election in February. FIFA suspended Mr. Valcke, Mr. Blatter's longtime deputy, last fall and fired him in January amid accusations of corruption. Mr. Valcke was replaced temporarily as secretary general by FIFA's finance director, Mr. Kattner. That effectively placed Mr. Kattner in control of FIFA's finances in the months leading to this year's presidential election, but he, too, was fired, in May, after FIFA said it had discovered he had breached his fiduciary duty to the organization. The accusations by FIFA and its lawyers seemed intended to paint a picture of a leadership group operating outside FIFA financial controls: \u25a0 In 2010, Mr. Blatter, Mr. Valcke and Mr. Kattner were awarded $23 million in retroactive bonuses for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa that FIFA said were not called for under their employment agreements. \u25a0 In 2011, with Mr. Blatter in a contested election for the FIFA presidency, Mr. Valcke and Mr. Kattner were given contract extensions that included guarantees that they would receive full payment of their salaries if they lost their jobs, a likely outcome under a new president. \u25a0 That same year, Mr. Blatter received a bonus of 12 million Swiss francs (about $12 million) for overseeing the 2014 World Cup. \u25a0 In May 2015, only days after the arrests of several of their colleagues in Zurich, Mr. Blatter, who signed a contract in 2008 that paid him 2 million Swiss francs (about $2 million) a year, executed a new contract that increased his salary to about $3 million and included the prospect of another performance bonus of $12 million if he completed his term. A day after that, Mr. Kattner's contract was extended four years \u2014 through December 2023 \u2014 and modified to include a clause that he be paid in full even if he was fired. In its statement, FIFA dryly labeled the timing of that contract extension \"noteworthy. \" The details of Quinn Emanuel's investigation deflected attention \u2014 at least momentarily \u2014 away from two other FIFA stories this week: the news that the Swiss attorney general's office had conducted a new raid on FIFA headquarters in Zurich on Friday as part of a continuing investigation into possible corruption, and recent issues regarding transparency that have plagued Mr. Infantino. Earlier this week, a German newspaper reported that Mr. Infantino had worked behind the scenes to marginalize FIFA's independent auditor in a leadership power struggle. That situation came to light when the auditor, Domenico Scala, abruptly resigned at FIFA's recent Congress in Mexico, saying that Mr. Infantino and others had orchestrated a change in FIFA's bylaws that shifted the power to hire and fire the independent ethics officials with FIFA's new governing council \u2014 a body led by Mr. Infantino. FIFA has defended Mr. Infantino by saying the shift was done to protect the organization against the possibility it might be unable to separate itself from individuals who come under investigation, but the assertion seemed to run counter to Mr. Infantino's professed support for reform and his stated goal of greater separation of powers at FIFA. Then this week came the German report, which said that Mr. Infantino had instructed FIFA staff members to delete recordings of an executive session in which removing Mr. Scala had been discussed. Mr. Scala, as part of his role leading the audit and compliance committee, also was responsible for setting Mr. Infantino's salary \u2014 a process that reportedly had gone poorly, with Mr. Infantino describing Mr. Scala's initial proposal of a $2 million salary as \"insulting. \" All of this comes as FIFA tries to emerge from the worst corruption scandal in its history, a period which began just over a year ago when more than a dozen soccer and sports marketing officials with ties to soccer's global governing body were arrested in predawn raids before a FIFA meeting in Zurich. Several have pleaded guilty to corruption charges in the United States, including more FIFA executives arrested in a second Zurich raid in December. Many of those executives held top posts in the FIFA led by Mr. Blatter, Mr. Valcke and Mr. Kattner, so it was not surprising that more detailed allegations against the three men might emerge. In its news release on Friday, FIFA and its lawyers accused Mr. Blatter, Mr. Valcke and Mr. Kattner of working together to bulk up their compensation in agreements as far back as 2007. The evidence, the lawyers said, revealed breaches of fiduciary duty and also raised questions about FIFA's internal financial controls, especially the role of its compensation subcommittee. It was unclear whether all the salary and bonuses were paid and if FIFA would seek to recover any of it. FIFA said that all of the contracts would face further investigation, and that it had shared its findings with the Swiss attorney general's office and would do the same with the Justice Department.","label":0}
{"text":"Eighteen U.S. states sued President Donald Trump's administration on Friday to stop him from scrapping a key component of Obamacare, subsidies to insurers that help millions of low-income people pay medical expenses, even as Trump invited Democratic leaders to negotiate a deal. One day after his administration announced plans to end the payments next week, Trump said he would dismantle Obamacare \"step by step.\" His latest action raised concerns about chaos in insurance markets. The subsidies cost $7 billion this year and were estimated at $10 billion for 2018, according to congressional analysts. \"As far as the subsidies are concerned, I don't want to make the insurance companies rich,\" Trump told reporters at the White House. \"They're making a fortune by getting that kind of money.\" Trump's action took aim at a critical element of the 2010 law, his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement. Frustrated by the failure of his fellow Republicans who control both houses of Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare, Trump has taken several steps to chip away at it. Democrats accused Trump of sabotaging the law. Democratic attorneys general from the 18 states as well as Washington, D.C., filed a lawsuit in federal court in California later on Friday. The states include: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington state. The states will ask the court to force Trump to make the next payment. Legal experts said the states were likely to face an uphill battle in court. \"His effort to gut these subsidies with no warning or even a plan to contain the fallout is breathtakingly reckless,\" New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. \"This is an effort simply to blow up the system.\" The new lawsuit would be separate from a case pending before an appeals court in the District of Columbia in which 16 Democratic state attorneys general are defending the legality of the payments. If the subsidies vanish, low-income Americans who obtain insurance through Obamacare online marketplaces where insurers can sell policies would face higher insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical costs. It would particularly hurt lower-middle-class families whose incomes are still too high to qualify for certain government assistance. About 10 million people are enrolled in Obamacare through its online marketplaces, and most receive subsidies. Trump's action came just weeks before the period starting on Nov. 1 when individuals have to begin enrolling for 2018 insurance coverage through the law's marketplaces. The administration will not make the next payment to insurers, scheduled for Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer expressed optimism about chances for a deal with Republicans to continue the subsidy payments. \"We're going to have a very good opportunity to get this done in a bipartisan way\" during negotiations in December on broad federal spending legislation, \"if we can't get it done sooner,\" Schumer told reporters. Trump offered an invitation for Democratic leaders to come to the White House, while also lashing out at them. \"We'll negotiate some deal that's good for everybody. But they're always a bloc vote against everything. They're like obstructionists,\" Trump told reporters. The Senate failed in both July and September to pass legislation backed by Trump to repeal Obamacare due to opposition by a handful of Republican senators. One of them, Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine who had been contemplating running for governor next year, on Friday said she planned to remain in the Senate and would use her voice in reforming the healthcare system. Hospitals, doctors, health insurers, state insurance commissioners and patient advocates decried Trump's move, saying consumers will ultimately pay the price. They called on Congress to appropriate the funds needed to keep up the subsidy payments. Shares of U.S. hospital companies and health insurers closed down on Friday after the subsidies announcement. Centene Corp (CNC.N) closed down 3.3 percent and Molina Healthcare (MOH.N) closed down 3.4 percent. Among hospital shares, Tenet Healthcare (THC.N) finished 5.1 percent lower and Community Health Systems (CYH.N) declined 4.0 percent. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that erasing the subsidies would increase the federal deficit by $194 billion over the next decade because the government still would be obligated under other parts of Obamacare to help lower-income people pay for insurance premiums. Trump, who as a candidate last year promised to roll back the law formally called the Affordable Care Act, received applause for his latest action during an appearance on Friday before a group of conservative voters. \"It's step by step by step, and that was a very big step yesterday,\" Trump said. \"And one by one, it's going to come down, and we're going to have great healthcare in our country.\" Earlier on Twitter he called Obamacare \"a broken mess\" that is \"imploding,\" and referred to the \"pet insurance companies\" of Democrats. Republicans for seven years had vowed to get rid of Obamacare, but deep intra-party divisions have scuttled their efforts to get legislation through the Senate, where they hold a slim majority. Since taking office in January, Trump threatened many times to cut the subsidies. Health insurers that planned to stay in the Obamacare market prepared for the move in many states by submitting two sets of premium rates to regulators: with and without the subsidies. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners said the change would drive up premium costs for consumers by at least 12 to 15 percent in 2018 and cut more than $1 billion in payments to insurers for 2017. The White House announced the cut-off just hours after Trump signed an order intended to allow insurers to sell lower-cost, bare-bones policies with limited benefits and consumer protections. Republicans have called Obamacare an unnecessary government intrusion into the American healthcare system. Democrats have said the law needs some fixes but noted that it had brought insurance to 20 million people.","label":0}
{"text":"Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated businessman Donald Trump on his victory in the U.S. presidential election in a telegram on Wednesday, the Kremlin said. \"Putin expressed hope for joint work to restore Russian-American relations from their state of crisis, and also to address pressing international issues and search for effective responses to challenges concerning global security,\" the Kremlin said in a statement. Putin also said he was sure a constructive dialogue between Moscow and Washington would serve the interests of both countries, the Kremlin said.","label":0}
{"text":"Just one in seven people from Catalonia believe the current standoff between Barcelona and Madrid will end in independence for the region while more than two thirds think the process has been bad for the economy, a survey showed on Monday. Spain s central government took control of the region after local leaders staged a poll on secession, slated as illegal by the Constitutional Court, and then passed a unilateral declaration of independence through the parliament. In response, Spain s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy fired the government, stripped the region of its autonomous status and called a regional election for Dec. 21. On Sunday, the first part of the GAD3 survey showed that pro-independence parties would win the election but may not gain the parliamentary majority needed to continue with secession. Fifteen percent said they believed the process would end in an independent state, according to part two of survey of 1,233 people conducted between Oct. 30 and Nov. 3 and published in La Vanguard newspaper on Monday. Optimism that a negotiated solution would be found was low, with just over a fifth thinking the crisis would lead to talks between regional authorities and Madrid. The push for independence has dragged Spain in to its worst political crisis since its return to democracy four decades ago and has deeply divided the country, fuelling anti-Spanish feelings in Catalonia and nationalist tendencies elsewhere. The uncertainty has prompted more than 2,000 companies to relocate their legal headquarters out of the region since Oct. 1, while the Bank of Spain said if the conflict persists it could lead to slower growth and job creation. According to the poll, 67 percent said they believed the process had hurt the economy and almost 40 percent said the company exodus would have a negative affect on growth in the short term.","label":0}
{"text":"A leading bank regulator on Friday reversed course and revoked Wells Fargo's right to shield the pay of former executives after a scandal. The regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, also said Wells Fargo must now seek advance approval before naming new bank leadership. Wells Fargo in September agreed to pay $185 million to settle charges that bank employees opened as many as two million accounts banking and credit card without customers' knowledge. The agency, the main regulator for federal banks, exempted Wells Fargo from some controls on \"golden parachutes\" in that settlement. The move Friday evening voids those earlier allowances, the agency said. The bank was notified on Friday that the agency had revoked \"relief from specific requirements and limitations regarding rules, policies, and procedures for corporate activities,\" the comptroller's office said in a statement on Friday. An official of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said the move put Wells Fargo under toughened standards for oversight which the agency had exempted in the original settlement. John G. Stumpf, Wells Fargo's former chief executive, and Carrie Tolstedt, former head of retail banking, have relinquished about $60 million in stock after the scandal, according to a Reuters review of securities filings. But the pair also stood to take home more than $350 million in compensation, according to filings.","label":0}
{"text":"Millennials 'Search for Truth' on Election but Distrust Media, Intelligence Firm Reports Posted on Oct 28, 2016 A crowd of millennial voters at a South Bronx rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders in March. ( Michael Vadone \/ CC 2.0 )  Don't believe the hype about millennial voters. This bloc of the Unites States population, ages 18 to 35 and whose numbers are estimated to be about 69.2 million, may have a reputation for not engaging with the political system \u2014but that is not the case for this election, The Intelligence Group reports, based on a recent study.  \"Leading up to the presidential election, millennials are taking advantage of their hacking mindset to create their own persuasion journey to get to the truth,\" The Intelligence Group, a part of global marketing agency Deep Focus, which performs research for corporations and government organizations, states in a report that quotes numerous millennial voters.  This subset of the electorate will play an important role at the ballot box, and its members are doing their homework.  \"The media is a joke,\" said Joseph, 31, a moderate in the study. \"I research things much more. I Google the topic, and then I sift through a bunch of media spin to try and see if it's true or not.\"  The group's research, conducted through \"a blended approach of social listening and qualitative insights generated via real-time social conversations,\" found millennials fact-checking the presidential candidates' assertions and engaging with their peers on social media sites and forums such as Reddit, Twitter and Facebook to \"make an informed opinion and hold candidates accountable.\"  During the first presidential debate, for example, The Intelligence Group reported that Americans posted 138,000 tweets to fact-check the candidates in real time. This eagerness to critically assess the candidates stems from a distrust of both media and the candidates themselves.  \"I don't believe there is such a thing as a truly objective source,\" said Kelly, 25, a liberal. \"It's up to the individual to factor in the relative objectivity of a source when making their opinion.\"  The millennial vote is an increasingly significant one. This year, data show that millennials already match the baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) as the largest voting-age group in America, according to the Pew Research Center. Census Bureau data show that roughly 1 in 6 voters in the past two presidential elections were younger than 30.  The presidential campaigns have taken note of these numbers, \"firing on all cylinders\" to target millennials, according to Kristin Lynch, communications coordinator for the Clinton campaign in Denver. Clinton's team referred to social media and, specifically, Facebook Live, as crucial to reaching young voters.  \"[Trump] is really facing an uphill battle when people are only hearing what the media is saying,\" Rachel Keane, the Trump campaign's Colorado millennial outreach co-chairwoman, told USA Today.  In the 2012 election, President Obama won over millennials by a landslide against rival Mitt Romney, garnering 60 percent of the youth vote.  \"If millennials vote en masse, they have a chance to determine the election's outcome ,\" writes Courtney Crowder of the Des Moines Register.  The next big question is whether they will be motivated enough to actually vote.","label":1}
{"text":"Leona Coakley-Spring has only been running her consignment shop, Rags to Riches, for a few months. Coakley-Spring opened her dream business and settled into the ritzy Seattle, Washington suburb, only to be made to feel unwelcome.The trouble comes as Coakley-Spring made a horrifying discovery: a Ku Klux Klan robe amongst the dresses dropped off by a customer. She considers the robe to be a threatening message, saying to local station Fox 13: You can t be a black business owner in downtown Redmond, you can t be her. I didn t know what to do or what to say. It was just so horrifying. Coakley-Spring s son, Shane Coakley, documented the incident with photographs, which he then turned over to the authorities. A sketch of the man believed to have left the racist robe, alongside photos of the robe itself, are being released to the public. The cops are increasing their presence around the store, and consider what happened here a hate crime. Coakley-Spring has obviously been deeply affected by this: I can t change the way I look. But it makes me feel like I m not good enough. And that s a bad feeling to have, that you re not good enough. Hopefully, this wonderful woman realizes that it s these racists who have the problem, not her. She even considered closing down over this, but so far, is hanging on: We close the store, and they would win And I don t want to give them any satisfaction. Remember that, Ms. Coakley-Spring, every time you want to throw in the towel. We re rooting for you.Watch a video news report below, via Fox 13:","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump may call anything related to his administration s collusion with Russia as FAKE NEWS, but you know who disagrees? Russia.Russian politician Vyacheslav Nikonov appeared on Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov where he shocked everyone by coming out and saying that, yes, Russia did steal the election. The U.S. overshot. Their intelligence services all slept through Russia electing the U.S. President, Nikonov said, clearly shocking the host who seemed to have no idea how to respond (especially since the wrong response could have gotten him assassinated). What kind of intelligence service is that? As we speak, Mueller s investigation of Donald Trump is heating up as The Donald s campaign is forced to turn over documents. Many Republicans speculate that he s going for the kill. This is all very bad news for Trump, who has managed to bamboozle his Faithful into believing that the Russia investigation is a liberal lie designed to smear him one in which the FAKE NEWS media is complicit.Watch Rachel Maddow report on the remarks below:?BREAKING VIDEO? MADDOW reporting ? Russia ADMITTED on live TV last night that they ELECTED DONALD TRUMP AS PRESIDENT? share and RT! pic.twitter.com\/rzTo1DMMeZ Royce Christyn (@ChristynRoyce) September 12, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Washington (CNN) Democrats in Washington have begun discussing how to encourage Sen. Bernie Sanders to end his campaign without alienating his legions of supporters, as party leaders grow eager to unite the party behind Hillary Clinton and provide a more robust defense for her candidacy. In private conversations on Capitol Hill, senior Democrats are weighing how to persuade Sanders to step aside without appearing as if they are trying to strong-arm him out of the race. In a phone call last month, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid made the case to Sanders why it would make sense for him to leave the race after New Jersey and California vote on June 7, according to sources familiar with the conversation. The widespread view, according to interviews with senators, House members and senior party officials, is that Sanders needs to see the writing on the wall himself: That he has no mathematical possibility to win the race and would be better-served to see his agenda enacted if he urged his backers to support Clinton. \"We will walk out of our convention with a nominee,\" Rep. Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat and active Clinton surrogate, told CNN. \"We should be able to walk into the convention in a consolidating mode.\" Some top Democrats privately say Clinton should consider the ultimate way to bring the progressive firebrand's supporters into the fold: Choose Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as her vice presidential pick. Senators and aides say they've felt reassured after recent discussions with Sanders and his advisers that he won't be a destructive force once voting concludes in mid-June. But Sanders has publicly vowed to take his fight to Philadelphia, something that could deprive the party of a critical month of healing and has spawned fears of unrest at the July nominating convention. If he doesn't drop out, the options on how to persuade him to quit boil down to this: Propose potential process reforms, including gutting the role of superdelegates in choosing the next nominee, give him a prime speaking slot at the Democratic Convention and even dump the head of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a controversial figure among Sanders' supporters. So far, Sanders has not suggested publicly that his fight could be over after California, a state he has barnstormed in recent days as he tries to pull off an upset against Clinton. \"Our campaign has been dismissed and written off more times than I can count,\" Sanders said Wednesday in Palo Alto, California. \"We're going to leave California with enormous momentum going into the convention. And I believe we've got a real shot to come out of that convention with the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.\" Behind the scenes, discussions between the Warren and Clinton camps have been markedly increasing, especially as the freshman senator has begun to a play a more prominent role attacking Donald Trump, according to a source close to Warren. And that has only spawned increased chatter that Clinton could pick Warren, who has not endorsed either candidate and is the only female Senate Democrat not to back Clinton. Reid has spoken out publicly against Clinton choosing a senator as a running mate whose state has a Republican governor -- like Massachusetts -- fearing the vacancy would allow a Republican to be appointed and pad the GOP's majority. But sources familiar with the situation tell CNN that Reid is open to the possibility of Warren as Clinton's running mate, in no small part because it would help unite the party after a long primary season. \"She can take away (Bernie's) power by showing there's no division within the party,\" said one Democratic source who is advocating Warren's selection. It's uncertain when Warren would endorse Clinton, but the senator's allies believe she doesn't want to appear as if she's pushing Sanders to quit before he's ready to leave the race. Yet she also takes her role as a party uniter \"seriously,\" according to the Warren source. Much of how the party reacts after Tuesday's primaries will be dictated by Sanders' own actions, officials say. If he stays in the race, softens his rhetoric against Clinton and begins the process of healing the party, there will be less consternation. But if he blasts what he considers a rigged system, berates Clinton for her corporate donations and paid speeches to big banks on Wall Street and calls for a revolution at the convention, Democrats are bound to push back. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Clinton backer, said his \"preference\" would be for Sanders to \"take a hard look\" after Tuesday and conclude he has no viable path to the nomination. He said he had no problem with Sanders continuing his campaign until July because he's confident that the party would be able to unite against Trump. \"One thing I'm slightly worried about is the tone and tenor of the convention,\" Murphy added. \"We're going to need a very positive unified convention. He's going to have send very clear signals to his delegates that he wants them to be vocal and loud in support of Hillary in our convention.\" Even if Sanders were to win California, where polls show the race with Clinton in a dead-heat, the math looks grim for him to win the 2,383 delegates to become the nominee. He would need 67% of the remaining pledged delegates to take the lead over Clinton in pledged delegates alone after the District of Columbia votes on June 14. Clinton's lead in superdelegates, however, means she is the only candidate who can secure enough delegates to win the nomination before the convention. Reid, in an interview with the Associated Press Wednesday, made his strongest comments yet about Sanders' bleak chances, saying the \"math is the math\" and that \"sometimes you just have to give up.\" \"I think he better do a little mathing,\" Reid said. The comments are significant because Reid -- who backs Clinton -- has avoided criticizing Sanders through the course of the campaign. Reid is perhaps Sanders' closest friend in the Senate; the two had an emotional call when Reid informed Sanders he was backing Clinton in February. And Sanders' wife, Jane, hugged Reid and thanked him for staying neutral before the Nevada caucuses as well. But Reid and Democrats know they need the support of Sanders to help bring his dedicated backers behind Clinton. After the Nevada convention last month spawned angry protests from Sanders' supporters, many argue that the senator has to play a major role to unite the party -- or risk electing Trump. Reid has made the case repeatedly to Sanders, and others have publicly as well. \"My sense is if he believes as passionately about the issues he's been talking about on the campaign trail,\" Becerra said, \"then, after June 7, there's a passionate need for him to be advocating for someone in the White House who will make much of what he is talking about a reality.\" Murphy also was optimistic that Sanders would exit gracefully. \"He's going to be an incredibly impactful spokesman for Hillary,\" Murphy said. \"Once the president and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie get behind Hillary, that's going to be impactful. I'm not wringing my hands on whether it happens next week or next month.\"","label":0}
{"text":"East Libyan forces said they had launched air strikes on Islamic State fighters after the militants made incursions south and east of their former coastal stronghold of Sirte. The jihadist group has grown bolder in recent weeks, setting up temporary checkpoints, attacking local forces, and taking over a village mosque to lead prayers during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, Libyan officials say. The increased activity has raised concern that Islamic State could regroup around Sirte, from where it was driven out in December by local forces and a U.S. air campaign. Most militants were killed in the nearly seven-month battle, but an unknown number fled into the desert to the south and west. Sirte lies at the center of Libya s Mediterranean coastline, on the dividing line between regions controlled by rival Libyan factions. Forces loyal to eastern-based commander Khalifa Haftar said they had carried out air strikes on Sunday against militants in the area of Ain Taqrift, between Sirte and the town of Zillah, 306 km (190 miles) to the south east. The area is close to oil fields previously damaged by Islamic State attacks. Both Haftar s Libyan National Army (LNA) and forces from the port city of Misrata, which led the campaign in Sirte last year, say they are mounting frequent patrols to monitor Islamic State movements in areas under their control. The LNA and Misratan brigades have been on opposite sides of a conflict that developed after the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Islamic State exploited the turmoil to establish a foothold in Libya, taking complete control of Sirte in 2015 and using it as a base for hundreds of foreign fighters. Both the main loose alliances in Libya have accused each other of allowing Islamic State space to operate in order to advance their own military ends. Misratan forces, which aligned themselves with the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, have complained of receiving little support as they try to prevent the jihadists regrouping. Islamic State militants have stepped up their presence in several settlements east of Sirte, said Ibrahim Mlaitan, head of security for Sirte municipality. That included entering a local mosque to preach a sermon last Friday, he said. They set up checkpoints that last just for 10 minutes and then leave. They have been moving around freely in and out of these towns, and in the desert too, Mlaitan said. Eastern military officials denied reports that Islamic State had taken control of one of the villages, Um Qandeel, but a military source acknowledged that the militants had set up checkpoints there during fleeting night visits. The terrorist organization Daesh (Islamic State) from time to time tries to enter the coastal areas from the desert regions and they carry out kidnappings of civilians, and we are conducting surveillance on them, said LNA spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari.","label":0}
{"text":"If you ve been watching the Republican National Convention you ve been witnessing quite the bizarre circus that doesn t seem quite real, as it all seems like a bit of a nightmare.Speaker after speaker has been vilifying Hillary Clinton and talking up Donald Trump as an acceptable choice for President of the United States. A job he is clearly, not by any means, qualified to do.On the second day of the convention came roll call, and state after state shouted out how many of their delegates went to each candidate. With Trump being the clear winner it left those who love him very happy, and those who don t want him anywhere near the White House shaking their heads, or worse.One GOP delegate literally stared straight into the camera as his state called out the number of delegates going to Trump, lifted up his hand, and slapped it against his face in a facepalm of epic proportions.Watch it all unfold here:Republican delegate facepalms as his state announces its votes for Trump #RNCinCLE https:\/\/t.co\/0quzZReAgP https:\/\/t.co\/KLoHOfqwK4 CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) July 20, 2016It was the ultimate, well-understood facepalm felt around the world, and probably the way most sane people feel everywhere.If this guy is smart and, well, a decent human being, he ll make sure Trump isn t elected just as the rest of the world hopes is the outcome.","label":1}
{"text":"Lucy Richards, a Tampa woman who believes lunatics like Alex Jones who say the Sandy Hook tragedy is a hoax, was arrested this week for threatening to kill a parent of one of the children who died in 2012. This is just the latest in the potentially long list of what we can expect to come from fake news conspiracies being spread by right-wing nutjobs.Richards started making threats back in January, saying things like you gonna die, death is coming to you real soon, according to court documents released on Wednesday. She also wrote, Look behind you. It s death, to the parent, who was identified as Len Pozner in a statement he released after Richards arrest. Pozner s son Noah was the youngest victim of the Sandy Hook massacre.Pozner, who now resides in Florida and spends his time disproving these so-called truthers, said in his statement:We are comforted to know that the system is working to protect the victims of violent crime from re-victimization by potentially violent Hoaxers.Sadly, Lucy Richards is not the only one from this group of Sandy Hook hoaxers that has harassed or threatened Mr. Pozner. He s been dealing with this for years.According to The New York Times:The conspiracy theorists have criticized Mr. Pozner and his counterinvestigations of their work. Mr. Pozner has filed complaints with law enforcement, private companies, and the attorney general s office. He even wrote a 165-page book raising questions about a champion of the hoax theory according to a September article in New York Magazine. People don t understand what trolls are, Pozner said, If you don t feed them, they don t just go away. When Mr. Pozner asked a Florida Atlantic University professor, James F. Tracy, to stop posting photos of Noah, the professor sent him a certified letter asking for proof the boy existed.The professor, who was tenured, was soon fired and he blames Pozner.Professor Tracy didn t actually commit any crimes, no matter how disgusting his actions were, but Lucy Richards on the other hand Richards committed 4 counts of felony threat transmission and if convicted will spend up to 20 years in prison. Let s hope the judge makes her serve the full 20.","label":1}
{"text":"There s no way to sample this extra 20 or 25% of new voters that are Trump supporters. Sid Miller, Texas Agriculture Commissioner, went on FOX News on Wednesday to discuss the record breaking voter turnout for Donald Trump in the Lone Star State.Sid Miller: We have a record number of people registered to vote in Texas. We re having record turnouts, the first day, the second day of voting. And it s not Bernie Sanders supporters coming out to support Hillary. It s not Barack Obama supporters coming out to support Hillary. It s a new surge of Trump voters, many who have never registered to vote. Many who have not voted in eight or ten elections so they re not reported in the polls I know for a fact that the polls are off because they oversample Democrats by eight sometimes up to sixteen percent oversampling Democrats. They re oversampling women by five to eight percent. So the Republican vote is underreported. Plus there is no way to sample this extra twenty to twenty-five percent of new voters that are Trump voters. They re not Republican, they re not Democrats, they re pragmatists. They re tired of the status quo and they want change. GPYUGE RECORD BREAKING VOTES in TEXAS!!! & Its Not Bernie Fans or Obama Voters for Hillary Clinton!! ALLL Donald Trump Folks #wednesdaywisdom pic.twitter.com\/Sn79fMhwXG STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterUSA) October 26, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"When Speaker Paul D. Ryan arrived at the White House on Friday to inform President Trump that the health care bill he had made his first major legislative push could not pass, Mr. Trump had one reaction: He wanted revenge. Furious at rebellious Republicans who refused to back the measure, Mr. Trump demanded that defectors cast \"no\" votes for all to see \u2014 even if it meant the measure's defeat, broadcast live on television. But over a lunch of chicken, brussels sprouts and potatoes in the Oval Office, Mr. Ryan pleaded with Mr. Trump to reconsider. A loss could do lasting political damage to Republicans who supported the contentious bill, Mr. Ryan argued, especially those in competitive districts who were vulnerable to primary challenges. It would do nothing to isolate or punish the Freedom Caucus, the conservative faction that had resisted the measure all along, he added. And it could alienate Republicans needed to push through other challenging initiatives in the weeks to come, including an increase in the debt ceiling, a sweeping tax cut and the president's promised $1 trillion infrastructure package. Mr. Trump remained unconvinced, but by midafternoon, armed with vote counts showing that the measure lacked a majority to pass, the president called the speaker to agree: You should pull the bill. The collapse of the measure dealt Mr. Trump \u2014 a professed master dealmaker who campaigned as an agent of change \u2014 a remarkable setback in his young presidency, threatening to sap his influence and imperil his ambitious agenda. It also highlighted the importance of a pairing that will shape the Trump era: a president inexperienced in the complexities of politics and uninterested in the nuance of policy, paired with a vulnerable speaker struggling to corral competing coalitions within the Republican Party. With repeal and replace now a hollow vow, Mr. Trump's anger at the defiant members of the Freedom Caucus was undiminished. But trying to put the best possible face on a major defeat late Friday afternoon, he confined his public criticism to Democrats. \"When you get zero from the other side \u2014 they let us down because they're hurting the people,\" Mr. Trump said in a telephone interview shortly after he had agreed to pull the measure. Asked whether he was worried the loss would hurt Republicans, he said, \"I'll let you know in a year. \" The demise of the American Health Care Act played out in a tense 24 hours that White House and congressional officials said proved a political education for Mr. Trump and his top advisers on the promise and peril of governing, even with unified Republican control. This account is based on government officials who were present during the negotiations and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. \"We all learned a lot,\" Mr. Trump told reporters on Friday afternoon. \"We learned a lot about loyalty, and we learned a lot about the process. \" \"Certainly for me, it was a very interesting experience,\" he added. Mr. Trump, who initially had little involvement in crafting the health care bill, became more deeply engaged in recent weeks, promoting it at rallies outside Washington and holding meetings in the West Wing with conservative and moderate coalitions whose support was crucial to its passage. But he made little secret of his ambivalence about addressing the issue \u2014 \"I would have loved to have put it first, I'll be honest,\" Mr. Trump said of tax reform in Nashville last week \u2014 yet he told aides he believed the measure could not pass without a push from him. By Thursday afternoon, just hours before a scheduled vote, it had become clear that his efforts \u2014 along with those of Vice President Mike Pence and other senior White House officials \u2014 had fallen short. At a meeting in Mr. Ryan's office in the Capitol with members of the recalcitrant Freedom Caucus, top White House officials laid out the changes they had made at the group's behest, including stripping it of federal standards for benefits that must be provided in health insurance policies, including maternity and wellness care. Caucus members began outlining still more changes they needed to see before they could support the bill, angering Mr. Ryan and Mr. Trump's aides. Stephen K. Bannon, the president's chief strategist, and Mick Mulvaney, his budget director, told the group that the White House was finished negotiating and that the president wanted to know its position on the bill \u2014 yes or no. Called on in turn to state their positions, several members refused. As tensions rose, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina said that he spoke for the group and that they were not ready to commit. That meant the votes would not be there. Mr. Ryan postponed the vote and called an evening meeting of House Republicans in the basement of the Capitol. Lawmakers munched on takeout as Mr. Mulvaney delivered the president's ultimatum on the health measure: Fall in line behind it or accept that former President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act would be the law of the land. The speaker emerged and told reporters there would be a vote in the morning, rushing away from the news cameras as he was asked if Republicans had the votes. In a telephone call Thursday evening between Mr. Trump and Mr. Ryan, the two commiserated over the demands of the caucus and strategized over the prospects for a vote on Friday. Even as the two spoke, some of Mr. Trump's advisers were privately expressing frustration with Mr. Ryan, arguing that he had badly misjudged the situation and misled the president into tackling health care before a tax overhaul. The meeting with the Freedom Caucus had prompted a realization by Mr. Trump and his inner circle about how the group operated, and that offering it policy concessions would not win its support. By Friday, Mr. Trump was out for blood, eager to call the bluff of the Freedom Caucus and savage it if the health bill went down in defeat. Mr. Bannon and Marc Short, Mr. Trump's legislative affairs director, both favored holding the vote. But Mr. Ryan, reluctant to suffer an embarrassing loss or to ask his fellow Republicans to take what could be a politically perilous vote on a measure that had little chance of passing, argued vigorously against it. White House officials still believed as much as half of the Freedom Caucus could be pressured into supporting the bill, and Mr. Bannon demanded to see a confidential list that demonstrated otherwise. The numbers were grim, and Mr. Trump called Mr. Ryan to acquiesce into calling off the vote. \"I don't blame him for a thing, I really don't,\" Mr. Trump said of Mr. Ryan in the interview on Friday. \"Look, he tried. He tried very hard. \" But one close adviser said that Mr. Trump, who hates looking weak or any form of embarrassment in public, was stewing. One ally of the president, however, said that he had learned from the process. Christopher Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax Media and a longtime friend of Mr. Trump, said he thought it was a \"blessing in disguise\" that the bill had died. \"This bill was a political bullet aimed at the president and congressional Republicans running for office next year,\" he said. \"On future legislation, he won't make the same mistakes. \" As Mr. Trump reflected on the health care debacle, the president who had predicted during the campaign that he would win so often that people would become \"sick of winning\" insisted that he was at peace with the day's results. \"I'm not disappointed,\" he said in the interview. \"If I were, I wouldn't be calling you. \" He said that he was moving on to overhauling the tax system and trade, describing the experience with the health bill as not that different from some of his negotiations as a developer. But he acknowledged that he was pleased to have it all behind him. \"It's enough already,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump s White House has been going through a lot of insane changes lately, and it is certainly looking like a sign of an inevitable implosion.It was just a few days ago that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer resigned over Trump s hiring of Anthony Scaramucci as his new Communications Director. Now, another key player in Trump s administration is out thanks to the Mooch White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus. Trump announced this shocking change in staff over Twitter, remarking that retired four-star general and Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kennedy would be taking Priebus place:We might have seen this coming yesterday, Scaramucci told the New Yorker that Priebus was a f*cking paranoid schizophrenic and made several other vulgar comments about the former Republican National Committee president.While this story is still developing, these rapid changes in staff show an administration that is clearly in trouble and struggling to keep its head above water as it self-destructs. Trump s staff is being turned over at an unprecedented rate, and the amount of in-fighting between even the top staffers is like nothing we ve ever seen before. But what else can you expect when you appoint the most vile, corrupt individuals to help you run a country?If the leaks coming from the White House weren t concerning enough, the recent changes in staff serve as a telling sign that things are falling apart on a daily basis and Trump is desperate to save his failing presidency. Already, Trump s new Communication Director Anthony Scaramucci has become one of the most hated, abrasive characters in Trump s administration and is causing trouble with other staffers. We can only imagine what this administration will look like in the weeks to come and it s probably safe to say that recovery will be impossible.","label":1}
{"text":"Hannity, Judge Jeanine, Crowley \"Hillary has Sold America's National Security. WORSE than a CRIME FAMILY\" Hannity, Judge Jeanine, Crowley \"Hillary has Sold America's National Security. WORSE than a CRIME FAMILY\" Videos By TruthFeedNews November 6, 2016  Sean Hannity quotes his own and other sources on the FBI's investigation into Clinton wrongdoing, noting that the law enforcement probe will continue regardless of who wins next Tuesday. After reading an update on the current state of the Clinton investigation he turns the floor over to Judge Jeanine Pirro who says, \"It's time for a grand jury.\"  She says, \"It's time for Loretta Lynch to allow Comey and the FBI to get this evidence before a grand jury. There is a mutiny in the FBI, that's why all of this stuff is coming out. There are four offices that continue to investigate although Justice has tried to shut this down, saying there's not enough evidence, this recording from this other person who apparently is an informant is hearsay.\"  Judge Jeanine adds, \"This woman should have been indicted a year ago. A simpleton could figure out that she would make a deal with a particular country, the money goes into the foundation, Bill makes a speech and then they get the benefit. This is classic RICO corruption; go to jail.\"  Hannity asks Monica Crowley, \"What is Loretta Lynch hiding here, what is she resisting when it's clearly an avalanche of evidence?\" Crowley says she sees it as the revenge of the FBI rank and file \"and the timing is not a coincidence.\" She notes that in this country, \"If you do not have an independent, impartial and fair Department of Justice and FBI which are only interested in enforcing the rule of law and finding the truth then you have nothing. Obviously that is not what we have with much of the DOJ and with senior FBI leadership.  She describes the email investigation as the shiny object, while it is very important, the real mother lode of corruption is the Clinton Foundation. Crowley insists that the bigger point that the American people need to bear in mind before going to vote on Tuesday is that Clinton leveraged her public office in order to enrich herself, her husband and their foundation.  As the conversation shifts to the fact that Clinton is a target for extortion and blackmail due to her emails being hacked by five different foreign governments, Judge Jeanine declares, \"She has sold America's national security for money. These people are grifters, they've been grifters since they came on the scene. And she knew that when she set up that server that it wasn't secure. She did it for money, she did it to enrich themselves, she didn't care about our security and Huma Abedin, I don't know who she and Weiner are connecting with, but these are people who do not have our interests at heart.\"  Crowley says Clinton should have her security clearance revoked tonight. She believes this will be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back in the Clinton parasitic relationship with the United States. Crowley knew Richard Nixon well. This is so much worse, she says, reminding the audience that nobody was killed in Watergate and \"nobody made one red cent.\"  H\/T \u2013 RickWells  For once in our lifetime, we the people have an opportunity to elect a President who was NOT chosen by Multinational Corporations, Big Banks, DC Elites, and the Globalist Lapdog Mainstream Media.  Please like and share if you are a TRUMP VOTER!","label":1}
{"text":"By looking at the two Democrat presidential candidates left standing, most Americans would think their platform is primarily about the destruction of capitalism and gun control. The real truth however, is that the Democrat party knows without their unyielding support for the culture of death, they would cease to exist. The sickening truth is, they either support the killing of the most vulnerable or it s curtains for them. What does that say about how far our society has fallen when leftist TV hosts celebrate China s brutal One Child policy on Twitter?Quintanilla may not have been endorsing the one-child policy, but he didn t offer any overt or even implied criticism of it either. In fact, saying it worked sounds a lot like he is suggesting it was a success.The problem, of course, is that the one-child policy, which China converted to a two-child policy this week, was a brutal, harrowing invasion of the human rights of millions of families under the guise of national policy. Since 1979, an estimated 13 million women a year underwent abortions, many of them forced to do so by government officials. Another 200 million women were sterilized under the same policy.https:\/\/twitter.com\/carlquintanilla\/status\/659734982915657728These practices mostly went unseen and unnoticed in the era before social media and digital cameras. In 2012, the world got to see the result of this policy on one young woman when her family members posted an image of her lying next to her dead baby after she d been forced to have an abortion.The young woman, Feng Jianmei, already had one child; so after she became pregnant again, family planning officials called her house to persuade her to have an abortion. When that failed, they showed up at her home and spent hours pressuring her for consent. Jianmei slipped out of the house but was followed by a group of 15 officials to her aunt s house. After briefly escaping and hiding under the bed of a relative, Jianmei was found by the government officials and was reportedly carried out by four men.Here is the horrible story about forced abortions in China and their victims:Meanwhile, family planning officials were negotiating with Jianmei s husband. At first they demanded $15,000, but then dropped the birth planning fee to around $5,000. In any case, it was more than he could raise. Finally, Jianmei was forced to give consent by having her thumbprint placed on a form and was injected with a drug that killed her baby. Her family posted this image, which went viral, of Jianmei with her dead daughter. For criticizing the government, government officials led a march denouncing her family as traitors, and her husband was beaten.And that nightmare is not the only kind of suffering caused by the policy. Those who dared to violate the policy had to keep their secret children out of sight of government officials. As the Washington Post reported last month, the consequences of getting caught were severe: It was terrifying if you had an over-quota child, my father says now. If the government knew, you would be in trouble. People would come to your house, remove all your grains and do anything they could to you. And sometimes, they d destroy your house. My mother recalls: Even for a new house, they d get on the roof, rip it apart and bulldoze the entire house. We had to keep moving and hiding. It was really painful for us. We knew it wasn t a long-term solution. The one-child policy was a decades long campaign of forced abortion, extortion, sterilization, and terror that traumatized hundreds of millions of people. Saying it worked seems like an odd way to sum up such a policy.","label":1}
{"text":"Atrocities such as the horrific shooting in Charleston provoke heartrending anguish and grief in people everywhere. However, for members of the black community who have too often experienced senseless violence due to racial hatred, our sorrow is visceral and makes us question whether our country will ever be free of racial animus. The answer is no. Not because America is inherently racist or because it is not a just society. Rather, it is because racial hatred is premised on evil \u2014 an evil that takes over rational thought, thereby allowing irrational and destructive thinking to cloud one's judgment. It is this same evil that took the lives of four beautiful school girls in Birmingham, Alabama, more than 50 years ago, and it is the same evil that will always be present in the hearts and minds of some people. In light of this, what, as a country, are we to do? As I try to answer this, I imagine myself as one of Reverend Pinckney's congregants sitting on the pews of Emanuel AME Church studying the Word on that fateful night. I imagine posing the question to him. I imagine hearing him provide the following answer: \"We are to do as Christ teaches us. We are to love. We are to treat others the way we would want to be treated, and we are to forgive those who trespass against us.\" Although many of us have been taught these lessons since childhood, it is admittedly very difficult to put them into practice during heartbreaking times such as this. However, this is not only what we are called to do but also what we must do in order to heal racial tensions that threaten the progress our country has made. Here in South Carolina, there has been much improvement in the racial climate, particularly as it relates to whites and blacks. State officials took swift and just action against former police officer Michael Slager in the death of Walter Scott, and the General Assembly recently passed new legislation requiring body cameras for all state and local law enforcement officers. However, disagreements on issues ranging from the placement of the Confederate flag on state grounds to the racial and economic disparities in educational opportunities remain. When discussing these and other race-related issues, starting from a place of love and empathy instead of accusation and distrust can help move us forward to a place of mutual understanding and advancement. As a black community, we cannot let our pain and anger harden our hearts such that we stop engaging in meaningful dialogues about race relations with others who neither look like us or think like us. The white community cannot retreat from the uncomfortable conversations about race, or harden their hearts to the painful experiences that blacks and other minorities have endured and continue to endure on a daily basis. If we are to combat the evil that darkened Mother Emanuel's door, we must learn from her and interact with one another in the same loving and welcoming spirit as she has shown for nearly 200 years. May God's love provide comfort to the victims' families and to our country during this difficult time.","label":0}
{"text":"Hackers are targeting state Democratic Party officials and have successfully breached and impersonated some of them, Politico reported, citing a message the Association of State Democratic Chairs sent Wednesday to its members. The email, titled \"Security Alert: Please Do Not Search Wikileaks!,\" warned recipients to avoid the anti-secrecy site \u2014 which has posted leaked material from the Democratic National Committee - because of concerns about malware embedded in the leaks, Politico said.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's campaign manager said on Friday he was relieved a battery case against him was over but disputed a reporter's claim that he never tried to get in touch after she accused him of bruising her arm. Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said on Thursday that Lewandowski, 42, would not be prosecuted on a misdemeanor battery charge involving Michelle Fields, previously a reporter for the conservative news outlet Breitbart. Police charged him on March 29 with intentionally grabbing and bruising Fields' arm at a campaign event. Lewandowski told CNN he called Fields on the night of the March 8 incident in Florida after seeing her boyfriend's Twitter account that something had occurred. He said he never heard back. \"I didn't know what happened, honestly,\" he said. \"It was a brief interaction, and it wasn't memorable to me, and I'm sorry about that.\" Lewandowski told CNN his phone records proved that he did in fact try to contact Fields. Fields disputed that. \"No. I never heard from Corey,\" she said on Twitter on Friday following Lewandowski's interview.","label":0}
{"text":"Russian and North Korean officials will meet in Moscow on Friday to discuss the North Korea crisis, a move welcomed by the United States, which has been locked in am increasingly heated war of words with Pyongyang over its nuclear and missile programs. Russia s Foreign Ministry said Oleg Burmistrov, Russia s ambassador-at-large, would meet Choe Son-hui, director-general of the North American department of North Korea s foreign ministry. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova declined to give details, but said her ministry would issue a statement after the meeting. The United States welcomed the planned meeting, with U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert saying: I can t see that as a bad thing. Diplomacy is our preferred approach, Nauert told a regular briefing. If Russia can be successful in getting North Korea to move in a better direction, we would certainly welcome that. Privately, however, U.S. officials have played down the likely effect of the Russian effort. Recent days have seen exchanges of heated rhetoric and threats between U.S. President Donald Trump s administration and North Korea over the latter s bid to develop nuclear-tipped missiles capable of hitting the United States. Nauert said Friday s talks would follow a visit to Moscow by the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Joseph Yun, about two weeks ago. Attending the U.N. General Assembly in New York last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov pushed a proposal by Moscow and Beijing for a dual suspension of North Korean weapons tests and the U.S.-South Korean military drills to kick-start negotiations. He suggested then that a neutral European country could mediate. Washington has said its joint military drills are essential to guard against North Korea and that Pyongyang must show it is serious about giving up its nuclear weapons before any return to talks. North Korea, for its part, says it needs to develop its weapons to defend itself against what it sees as U.S. aggression. Last week, Lavrov said North Korea and the United States should tone down their bellicose rhetoric, calling the exchange of threats between the two quite bad, unacceptable.","label":0}
{"text":"An attempt to capitalize on the arrival of 135 deported Mexican nationals by having the president welcome them backfired when some of the migrants said the government abandoned them and would return to the U. S. as soon as possible. [The event took place at Mexico City's airport when Mexican President Enrique Pe\u00f1a Nieto welcomed a group of 135 Mexican nationals who had just been deported from the United States. \"You are not alone, do not feel abandoned\" Pe\u00f1a Nieto said. \"The doors to this, your house, will always be open. \" During his speech, Pe\u00f1a Nieto called Mexico a land of new opportunities as he talked about various programs, new investments, and the support that the individuals would be receiving. \"Today there has been the creation of jobs not seen before and there is productive investment,\" EPN said. The words spoken by the Mexican president come at a time when the peso has been consistently losing value against the U. S. dollar and the price of gasoline continues to rise. During the event by EPN, government officials told the migrants about government credits of $25, 000 pesos or roughly $1, 200 USD so they could start their own business. \"The Mexican consulates in the United States do not do anything for us, they are sending massive airplanes and sending a lot of people,\" said one of the deported migrants. \"I do not think its fair. No one is there to help on that side nor on this side, we have to do something for our people. \" Pedro Vasquez, another Mexican migrant who was interviewed by various news outlets at the airport, said he would be traveling back to the United States within 15 days and that a wall would not be able to stop him. The man from the Mexican State of Hidalgo had been living in Georgia making about $4, 800 a month before his arrest for driving without a license.","label":0}
{"text":"Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte was cited for a misdemeanor on Wednesday after a reporter accused him of physical assault on the eve of a special election to fill the state's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The Gallatin County sheriff's office issued the citation for misdemeanor assault hours after Ben Jacobs, a political correspondent for the U.S. edition of the Guardian newspaper, said in a Twitter post and in a television interview that Gianforte \"body slammed\" him, breaking his eyeglasses. The incident, which caps a campaign seen as a possible bellwether for next year's mid-term congressional races, took place at an event in Bozeman, where Jacobs sought to question Gianforte about healthcare, according to an audio tape captured by Jacobs and played on cable television networks MSNBC and CNN. Fox News Channel reporter Alicia Acuna, who said she and her crew were in the room preparing to interview Gianforte, wrote that she saw Gianforte as he \"grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him to the ground.\" Acuna, her field producer and photographer then \"watched in disbelief as Gianforte began punching (Jacobs) as he moved to top of the reporter.\" Gianforte's campaign did not deny Jacobs' allegation but countered in its own statement that Jacobs instigated an altercation by barging into the candidate's office, shoved a recording device in his face \"and began asking badgering questions.\" \"After asking Jacobs to lower the recorder, Jacobs declined,\" campaign spokesman Shane Scanlon wrote. \"Greg then attempted to grab the phone that was pushed in his face. Jacobs grabbed Greg's wrist and spun away from Greg, pushing them both to the ground.\" \"It's unfortunate that this aggressive behavior from a liberal journalist created this scene at our campaign volunteer BBQ,\" the statement said. Acuna disputed that Jacobs was the aggressor. \"At no point did any of us who witnessed this assault see Jacobs show any form of physical aggression toward Gianforte,\" Acuna wrote in her account on the Fox News website. Interviewed later on MSNBC, Jacobs said he retreated to a parking lot after the confrontation to call his editor and the police. He said he was speaking to MSNBC from a hospital where he was getting his elbow X-rayed. The citation was issued after authorities conducted several interviews and investigated the incident, Sheriff Brian Gootkin said in a statement. Gianforte has until June 7 to appear in a county court. He faces a $500 fine and six months in jail if convicted, according to Gootkin. \"The nature of the injuries did not meet the statutory elements of felony assault,\" Gootkin said. In Jacobs' audio tape of the incident, Gianforte is heard shouting: \"I'm sick and tired of you guys. The last guy who came here, you did the same thing.\" After loud scuffling noises are heard, Gianforte repeatedly yells: \"Get the hell out of here.\" Jacobs is heard saying: \"You just body-slammed me and broke my glasses.\" According to the tape, the confrontation began as Jacobs tried to ask Gianforte if he supported a Republican healthcare overhaul bill after the Congressional Budget Office found the measure would cost 23 million Americans their medical insurance coverage by 2026. Another reporter, Alexis Levinson of BuzzFeed News, who was just outside the office, said on Twitter she saw Jacobs' \"feet fly in the air as he hit the floor\" amid yelling and commotion. Gianforte later huddled behind closed doors with an aide before leaving the event by car, she said. Tech executive Gianforte is running against Democrat Rob Quist, a banjo-playing political novice who hopes to pull off a surprise victory in the Republican-leaning state. A victory for Quist could signal trouble ahead for President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans as they defend their 24-seat House majority in the 2018 mid-term elections. Quist and Gianforte are vying for the seat vacated when Trump, who carried Montana by more than 20 percentage points, named Ryan Zinke as U.S. interior secretary. Republicans have held the seat for two decades and Gianforte was still the favorite. However, both sides say the race was tightening as Quist focused on criticism of Republican efforts to repeal and replace former Democratic President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare.","label":0}
{"text":"My son is obsessed with the Berenstain Bears. When bedtime rolls around, I no longer ask him what book he wants to read, but which Berenstain Bears book he would like. And who could blame him? Stan and Jan Berenstain's series, with its family of bears living in a big tree house down a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country, covers the waterfront of possible toddler experiences: everything from \"Trouble at School\" to \"Too Much Birthday\" to \"Messy Room\" to \"Go to the Doctor. \" And for that reason, the books are easily deployed by scheming parents like myself to inoculate against potentially unsettling changes that might frighten a . When my wife and I were set to take a overseas trip, we read and reread \"Week at Grandma's\" with my son as preparation when summer rolled around, we pulled out \"Go to Camp. \" If my is any indication, young children are continually concerned about changes to their perceived order: Where is Mommy tonight? Why is there no school today? Where did my toy go? The Berenstain Bears are always facing up to new challenges, but their lives \u2014 in that big tree house down the sunny dirt road \u2014 never change much. This familiarity is essential to the books' appeal the stories start with a necessarily brief outburst of chaos, but order is always restored to Bear Country by the end. Parents know best, children always heed their lessons and everything is in its right place. Family values literally reign triumphant, with the books an ongoing celebration of the value of family. This warmth and good humor have captivated generations of young readers since the first volume, \"The Big Honey Hunt,\" was published in 1962. Small changes would occasionally take place in Bear Country \u2014 a baby cub, Honey Bear, was introduced in 2000's \"And Baby Makes Five\" \u2014 but consistency had always been crucial to the Berenstain Bears' appeal. So I could practically hear a needle scratch when I opened up some newer editions my son had received as a gift, and I discovered that the Berenstains' concerns had turned from the mundane to the theological. The new volumes, \"The Berenstain Bears: Do Not Fear, God Is Near\" and \"The Berenstain Bears Go to Sunday School,\" had a markedly different cast than my son's old favorites. Even those without explicitly religious titles are still larded with Bible thumping. In my son's new favorite volume, \"The Berenstain Bears Show Some Respect,\" the bears get snappish with one another during a search for the ideal picnic spot, as the cubs talk back to Mama and Papa, and Papa Bear, in turn, speaks disrespectfully to his father. Gramps grows frustrated and, in an impassioned monologue, makes reference to scripture: \"You know, us old folks know a thing or two. As the Bible says, 'Age should speak advanced years should teach wisdom. '\" This was particularly jarring for me because I had always assumed that, given their surnames, the bears were, well, Jewish (and probably secular, considering they never really brought it up). As a parent, I took it for granted that the moral framework of contemporary children's books, when it made an appearance, would remain disengaged from any actual dogma. So, when had the Berenstain Bears found Christ? And why? The Berenstain Bears franchise currently belongs to Mike Berenstain, who has written the books for the past decade. Berenstain was a when his parents, Stan and Jan Berenstain, professional cartoonists, first learned of a new children' imprint at Random House started by Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss. The two decided to pass along an idea for a book about a family of bears that runs into a series of comic mishaps while on a quest for honey. This became \"The Big Honey Hunt,\" published in 1962. Geisel encouraged the Berenstains to avoid being pigeonholed with their bear characters. \"He said, 'No, that's the worst thing to do,'\" Mike recalls. \"'You'd be typecast. Everybody has a bear. There's Yogi Bear, Sendak has Little Bear, there's the Chicago Bears. '\" But brisk sales of \"Honey Hunt\" caused Geisel to change his mind, and he convinced the Berenstains to resurrect the bear family. They handed in the manuscript for the second book, \"The Bike Lesson,\" soon after that. When it was published, much to their surprise, they found that Random House had given the bears their family name. A dynasty was born. The Berenstain Bears books that followed were intentional throwbacks, reflecting not the tumultuous America of their time \u2014 we never saw \"The Berenstain Bears Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out\" \u2014 but of an imagined, idyllic past. \"They were creating, at that time, a kind of archaic, genteel, exaggeratedly rustic Americana world,\" Mike Berenstain says. This is apparent even in the Berenstains' taste for oddball euphemisms they refer to dog poop as \"calling cards. \" Mike Berenstain became a designer at Random House and then a children' writer and illustrator for about 10 years before being called in by his overworked parents to help out with the family business in the . Stan died in 2005, and after that, Mike was left in charge of the writing his mother continued to the stories along with Mike until she died in 2012. Mike took over as sole author and illustrator, and the books began to reflect more of his own personality, even as he served as the faithful executor of his parents' vision. This led to a disconnect between his family's stolid, universalist postwar morality and his own. Stan Berenstain had been born to a secular Jewish family in West Philadelphia, and Jan Berenstain, n\u00e9e Grant, was Episcopalian by birth. Mike and his brother were not raised in any particular religious faith. \"They taught me morals and traditions and ethics, but not a particular spiritual identity,\" he says. Mike didn't find religion until he enrolled his children at Quaker schools near his suburban Philadelphia home, which led him to the Presbyterian Church and a mature religious faith of his own. In 2006, Mike Berenstain, with the agreement of his mother, approached HarperCollins with an idea for a new book series. They had noticed an unusual volume of letters and emails from devoted Christian readers, writing to share their appreciation for the timeless values of the Berenstain Bears books. A light went off: How about an entire series for religious readers? The resulting books, published as part of the Living Lights series by HarperCollins' Zondervan imprint, best known for its collection of Bibles, were intentionally cordoned off from the original Berenstain Bears series. They were primarily marketed to Christian bookstores and school associations, and promoted to outlets and Christian bloggers. Nonetheless, the Zondervan titles often occupy the same bookstore and library shelves as the other Berenstain Bears books ours came from my a teacher, who purchased them from a decidedly secular website. Not only did sales of the Living Lights series avoid cannibalizing sales of the more traditional Berenstain Bears line, as some at HarperCollins worried overall sales for the Berenstains' books have actually increased by 30 percent since the series began. Annette Bourland, Zondervan's senior vice president and publisher, told me they had found an eager audience in the \" community. \" As an observant Jew, I may not have particularly wanted to read to my son about attending Sunday school, but there was hardly anything to take offense at in the new Berenstain Bears adventures. Still, to be perfectly honest, its characters unwound some of the lingering sentiment I'd felt for the Berenstain Bears, who appeared to me to have abandoned their universalist appeal. Their stories were no longer about milestones and stumbling blocks in every young child's life but took a more narrowly targeted approach that left some out even as it pulled others in. Even knowing Mike Berenstain's reasoning \u2014 his faith, finding a bigger audience \u2014 it was hard not to see the Bears' conversion as another means of escape from the changing world they had always sought to escape. In the 1960s, Bear Country was a refuge from tumult basically, it was the suburbs. Now religion was the refuge, a cloak for the bears' deliberate and unfashionable fustiness. But was there any need for such a justification? Ultimately, bedtime stories serve twin purposes. To children, they're entertainment to parents, a soporific. \"Show Some Respect\" stayed in regular rotation in our household, my discomfort with its Christian themes outweighed by its uncanny ability to speed the progress from bath to bed to blissful (parental) immersion in \"Catastrophe. \" My son, though, could not have cared less that the Berenstain Bears were quoting from the Bible, any more than he would have noticed references to the Quran or \"The Communist Manifesto. \" He was just glad that the Bears had found a place to have their picnic \u2014 and that they always would.","label":0}
{"text":"Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has blown so much money on his vanity presidential campaign that he put himself $1.2 million dollars in debt. An odd accomplishment for a fiscally conservative Republican who says that our government s debt is the most evil thing ever.Walker is trying to sell off the surplus garbage campaign merchandise that nobody wanted to buy the first time around, in order to cover his debts. He sent out an e-mail begging people to buy t-shirts from him for $45. If you really want to wear a t-shirt which will announce to everyone how stupid you are, you can find similar Walker merch online for about half the price.Walker isn t even able to fulfill color or size requests due to a lack of resources. He wants you to pay 45 bucks for something you may not even want to, or be physically able to, wear properly. Don t worry, though! If you get a shirt that is 3 sizes too small or a hideous color, he also said in the e-mail that the shirts can be framed or used for crafty things like a pillow cover or bag.That exactly what I d do; Lay my head on a Scott Walker pillow as I stare at a Scott Walker framed t-shirt on my wall.Walker dropped $90,000 a day on his 70-day presidential run, which is a fact he isn t divulging to the people he s asking for cash. 70 days is pretty impressive to go from the great white right-wing hope to Scott who? In the e-mail that he sent out to the people who are now upset that they forgot to unsubscribe from his mailing list months ago, Walker made some strange statements about how careful he is with money. If there is one thing the American people learned about me during our presidential campaign, it is that I am thrifty. Source: APWalker then went on to cite how he uses coupons and loves hitting up the discount racks when shopping. Do they give coupons for failed presidential vanity campaigns intended for boosting speaking fees and book deals?There s $1,200,000 worth of irony to be found in a thrifty guy, who is against big spending, asking people to waste 45 bucks on what is essentially an I m with stupid t-shirt. He would need a little over 26,000 people who are bad enough with their money to think this is a good deal, in order to cover his debt.","label":1}
{"text":"Share on Twitter  It's the twelfth, or even better, thirteenth time you've carved pumpkins for Jack-O'-Lanterns and it's becoming a real drag.  Have no fear, trickshooter Kirsten Joy Weiss is here...with a way to brighten up your Halloween Day\u2014while making it a bit smokier as well.  All you need is a .22 rifle, a few pumpkins, ammunition, and a safe space away from people (especially liberals) to do your worst to our favorite holiday gourd.  Oh, and this handy tip from our guide: You're not looking to carve a hideous grin on your pumpkin using the bullet entries, but rather you're going for the exit points to get that ghoulish appearance.  That's sure to make an impression on your trick-or-treaters. (Yeah, you bet they'll be picking \"treat.\")  Our expert guide also recommends making it a game. But just like with Halloween trick-or-treating, always practice safety first. Happy Halloween!","label":1}
{"text":"Trump advisor Roger Stone says a bunch of wacky stuff on Twitter, but he managed to go too far even for a platform that seems to ban more people for condemning hate speech than anything else.After it was announced that at least one person had been indicted by a grand jury in the Russia probe, Stone went nuts on journalists who reported the information especially CNN s Don Lemon. There r no credible fact checks that clear the Clinton s on Uranium, Stone wrote in his typical uneducated manner to Lemon. Even the people at CNN say i are a buffoon behind you back. You come across on tv as a dull witted arrogant partyboi, the dull-witted Trump ally added. You lie constantly and no one who knows you thinks you r bright. Don Lemon must be confronted, humiliated, mocked, and punished, Stone said. Dumber than dog shit. Stop lying about the Clinton s and Uranium you ignorant lying covksucker !!!! Stone continued. You fake news you dumb piece of shit. Stone also told Charles Blow, U have no cried you fast talking arrogant fake news piece of shit ! It s unclear why Stone has never bothered to learn to spell at above a second-grade level or why he thinks there should be spaces before exclamation marks, but he ll have plenty of time to think about that and possibly learn to spell because he s gone from Twitter.Whoa. Roger Stone lost his shit to such a degree, Twitter suspended his account.So, why hasn't Trump been suspended? pic.twitter.com\/849LYIGztl Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) October 28, 2017Maybe Stone is just worried that he might be indicted, maybe he s just furious that the chickens are coming home to roost but at least we don t have to deal with his bullsh*t anymore.","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and former adviser K.T. McFarland were the Trump transition officials who spoke to former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn about his contacts with Russian officials, CNN reported Friday. McFarland went on to serve in the Trump White House and has been nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to Singapore. CNN also reported she met with investigators for special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking at contacts between Russians and the Trump administration.","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says All the world s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. William Shakespeare Theatrics in politics is nothing new, but this latest TV drama was just a little over-the-top, even for this entertainer-and-chief. HIGH DRAMA: Obama s epic tears during his gun control rally on Tuesday.During President Barack Obama s landmark New Year s TV address on gun control he grew visibly emotional when invoking Newtown, with bountiful tears arriving in good measure.While right-wing commentators were incensed, left-wing media pundits were understandably blown away by his performance, and commented on it like it was a performance. In media terms, it was a very weird moment, to say the least.Of course, no one would dare accuse the President of producing tears on demand, after all that would be impossible to fake unless of course you re an extremely talented and trained actor and who would believe that our President would have received that sort of special coaching which is reserved for professional TV and film actors.The thought of it is simply preposterous, right? After all, this President is surely not an actor Nonetheless, it was high drama for sure, but there was something about what seemed incredibly staged that morning in the White House s East Room. Anyone who watched it on TV could see how the crowd clapped on cue, and laughed on cue. It was almost like a Democratic Party pep rally which is not what the East Room is for, but there you go.Watch the scene on Tuesday here: Still, after the usual vitriolic calls to save lives , Obama called for Smart Guns with high-tech biometric, personalized triggers. This seemed to be a bizarre over-simplification, as he compared firearms to iPhones, as was his strange comparison of a bottle of aspirin with a gun. If a child can t open a bottle of aspirin, we should make sure they can t pull a trigger on a gun, said Obama.Such dumbed-down rhetoric hardly inspires confidence in the President s grasp of the firearms issue and the 2nd Amendment.The only problem with the President s much anticipated Executive Action plan for gun control in America is that it will not be effective. In fact, nothing he is proposing would have stopped any of the supposed gun deaths constantly being bandied about by the establishment s and media s macabre list of high-profile mass shootings . So why do it then? Answer: this is an election year, and the Democratic Party is attempting to push the issue of Guns in America on to the list of institutionalized, classic American political wedge issues along with the usual balloons like abortion, immigration and gay marriage.Aside from all this, the President s executive action is illegal. In the US system of checks and balances, the President cannot write laws only Congress can. You d think the President, who claims to have taught constitutional law at Harvard, would know about checks and balances.The only real tangible result of the Administration s rhetoric on gun control and the politicization of mass shootings is that gun sales in America are skyrocketing. Shares of gun manufacturers like Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger were up on Tuesday morning after Obama s speech.One could easily argue here that this President has done more to help firearms sales and profits than any other person in history, more than Duck Dynasty, and even more than Charleton Heston.The White House s campaign has less to do with actually reducing gun crime, as it does increasing federal control over the lives of law-abiding Americans. Some critics believe that this new Executive Action on guns is part of a federal nudging strategy that s using federal mental health directives and changes in the state HIPAA laws to deny certain persons, including US veterans, of their 2nd Amendment rights. Make no mistake about it, there is an overall strategy at play here, only it s not being revealed to the public.So, once again, it s all theatre.The government-media complex is going fult-tilt again. Later today, together with its media partner CNN, the White House is co-producing a Town Hall TV special live from Virginia, entitled, GUNS IN AMERICA . The agenda for this program is self explanatory and will be hosted by CNN s top mocking jay, news actor and former CIA operative, Anderson Cooper, who a key operative in the mass media brainwashing that TV networks like CNN do on a daily basis promoting fear at home, and selling illegal wars abroad. OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD: Political-media operative Anderson Cooper.No doubt this political campaign program will feature all of the usual suspects from America s highest rated, high-profile mass shootings events including Sandy Hook, Roanoke, Isla Vista, Aurora, Lafayette, and San Bernardino to name only a few.In the days before the fall of Rome, as historians have often remarked, the Crisis of the Republic was not so much a crisis of the people of Rome, but rather, it was a Crisis of the Ruling Class, and of Rome s Elite Ruling Families. The Republic eventually lost its way and crumbled because of their misrule and institutional corruption. Like Shakespeare, they eventually lost the plot. In the end, of course, the Republic fell because as a system of government, it could not be separated from the individuals who wielded the most power within it. In 1995, Obama s Attorney General, then US Attorney for District of Columbia , Eric Holder, revealed the progressive agenda to subvert the Second Amendment and achieve gun control in America an agenda which is actually being played out right before our eyes today: . Create Your Own Crisis Barack Obama s former chief of staff and top Democratic Party insider, Rahm Emanuel, coined the mantra for our new government by crisis, saying crassly, You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Today, Thursday January 7th, is a very strange day, with a number of unsavory narratives aligned and assembled by the Mockingbird media. Aside from CNN s big budget political campaign stunt, there are a few other worrying events taking place today:Early this morning, CNN started running is programming for the one year anniversary of the infamous GLADIO-style, staged false flag Charlie Hebdo event in Paris. CNN also dispatched many of their top staff to Paris to remind us about the dangers of terrorism, and that we should remain afraid.Also happening today, members of the Bundy family, assorted Militia and public lands activists are presently holed-up at a federal wildlife refuge center outside of Burns, Oregon. There are many people in Washington and throughout the mainstream media establishment, who would like nothing more than to see government forces sweep in and deal with those people . What that entails is anyone s guess.Certainly, some high-profile mass shooting , or gun-related incident scheduled for today would dovetail perfectly with CNN and the White House s joint media messaging and socio-political narrative being rolled out today. Let s hope that does not happen, not today, and not ever READ MORE GUN CONTROL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2nd Amendment Files","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump appeared at three inaugural balls to celebrate his supporters' victory, and to promise a determined push for their shared campaign goals. [\"Well, we did it,\" he told a cheering crowd at his first speech, given at the Liberty Ball. He continued: Now the work begins. There are no game, no games, right? We're not playing games. I want to thank everybody. We love you. We're going to be working for you, and we're going to be producing results. \"Now the work begins,\" he said at his second speech, given at the Freedom Ball. \"We did a good job together \u2026 there has never been a movement like this anywhere in the world,\" he told his enthusiastic supporters. \"We will not be taken advantage of anymore. We're going to have those great companies come pouring back in,\" Trump said. \"We are not going to let you down. Remember the theme: Make America Great Again \u2026 greater than ever before \u2014 it will happen,\" he said. Trump also promised to keep Tweeting, saying: Should I keep the Twitter going or not? Should I keep it going? \u2026 You know, the enemies keep saying 'Oh no, that's terrible.' But it is a way of bypassing dishonest media, right? The White House pool report said thousands of people attended both rallies.","label":0}
{"text":"We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] 2016 Asked What Its Fucking Problem Is November 11, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , ENTERTAINMENT Share 0 Add Comment  FOLLOWING the news that the year 2016 has added songwriting legend Leonard Cohen to its list of prominent homicides this year, the world has confirmed it wants to know what 2016's fucking problem is.  \"You're just fucking taking who you like \u2013 a funk and pop God, a Glam hero and someone I played on vinyl when I needed a good cry, I don't get it. It's like you are trying to ruin every day of my life,\" Colm Henry, a Dublin native, shared as part of furious temper tantrum.  \"And don't get me started on fucking Brexit and that shower in America,\" Henry added while blocking out thoughts of whom 2016 might potentially take next.  2016, a 366 day calendar year has been consistently criticised throughout its reign of terror as its record of killing people and a penchant for batshit crazy happenings compares unfavourably with its peers 2015, 2014 and 2013.  \"Raspberry Beret wasn't supposed to make me sad, it was supposed to make me look like a fool on the dance floor at weddings, and 2016 has fucked that up for me, cheers, you complete bastard,\" added Maggie Dunleahy, from Waterford.  Livid members of the public also pointed out that 2016, despite having an Olympics and European Championships, still managed to leave people feeling 'incredibly sad, frustrated and annoyed'.  \"It's not too much to ask is it, for an explanation like, seriously, what the fuck is its problem?\" added just about everyone.","label":1}
{"text":"In a speech on Wednesday in Phoenix, Arizona, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump outlined his plan for reforming the U.S. immigration system. The New York businessman has made immigration a central issue of his bid for the White House, taking a harder line than his Democratic rival, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, ahead of the Nov. 8 election. Trump's plan includes: 1. Building a wall along the border between the United States and Mexico. Trump emphasized that this would be a physical wall, albeit bolstered by technology. 2. Ending \"catch and release,\" a term often broadly used to refer to practices under which not everyone apprehended by immigration agents is necessarily deported. 3. Immediate deportation of undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes. Trump has promised to begin these deportations on his first day in office. Going forward, undocumented immigrants arrested for committing a crime would be placed into immediate deportation proceedings. 4. Blocking funding for \"sanctuary cities,\" places that limit, to differing extents and through different methods, how much they help immigration officials in the apprehension and deportation of undocumented immigrants. 5. Cancellation of executive orders and enforcement of immigration laws. This point would particularly hit two of President Barack Obama's executive actions, known by their abbreviations: DACA and DAPA. The actions gave a certain legal status to certain undocumented immigrants, such as those brought to the United States as children or those who now have American children. 6. Suspending visas to immigrants from parts of the world where screening procedures are deemed inadequate. Trump singled out Syria and Libya as two countries from which immigration would be suspended. 7. Ensuring that other countries take back their citizens when the United States moves to deport those immigrants. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that these people cannot be detained indefinitely, but without a country to which to return they often are simply released from detention. Trump said he would force the immigrants' home countries to take them back. 8. Completing a biometric entry-exit visa tracking system. Many undocumented immigrants enter the country legally, and then overstay their visas. In those cases, this kind of system would be more effective than a border wall. While such a system has been discussed for years, the logistics remain a major challenge. Putting in such a system would likely require major overhauls of U.S. points of entry, such as airports and ports. 9. Making it harder for undocumented immigrants to get jobs and benefits. Trump specifically cited the E-verify system as part of this. That system allows employers to check whether their employees are legally eligible to work in the United States. Trump also mentioned ending access to benefit programs such as public housing or food stamps. 10. Serving the best interests of American workers. Trump's final point serves as something of a catch-all for his immigration proposal. But he also mentioned a few specific goals here, such as limiting immigration. He also talked about being more selective about who gets to enter the country, for example limiting immigration to people who can be financially self-sufficient.","label":0}
{"text":"Liberia s Supreme Court on Monday put a presidential run-off on hold until the electoral commission can investigate claims of irregularities and alleged fraud in last month s first round of voting. Former footballer George Weah was initially set to face Vice-President Joseph Boakai on Tuesday to determine who will replace Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. A successful vote would be Liberia s first democratic transfer of power in over 70 years. But preparations for the second round were halted last week when the Supreme Court announced it was examining a complaint by the Liberty Party of third-placed candidate Charles Brumskine. The Supreme Court s order for a full investigation into the allegations could push back the run-off date by weeks or even result in a re-run of the first round. The NEC (National Elections Commission) is stopped and prohibited from conducting the run off election until the complaint filed by the petitioners is investigated by the NEC, the Supreme Court ruling said. Addressing the Supreme Court last week, Brumskine cited gross irregularities in the first round and accused NEC officials of fraud. The NEC has denied wrongdoing and said the election was largely fair. International observers say they saw no major problems with the vote. But a growing chorus of parties have expressed doubt about the vote, including Boakai s ruling Unity Party, which last week accused Johnson Sirleaf, one of its own members, of trying to influence the vote. She rejected the allegation. The course we pursue is not about Charles Walker Brumskine. It is not about the Liberty Party. It is greater than all of us. It is about our country, Brumskine said following the Supreme Court ruling. Janga Kowo, Secretary General of Weah s CDC party, called upon supporters to remain calm and allow the legal process to run its course. The Unity Party had no immediate comment on Monday s ruling. Expectations of a poll delay have increased tensions in Liberia, where many are eager for change after 12 years of Johnson Sirleaf s rule. Her tenure cemented peace after a long civil war, but many Liberians say she did little to alleviate widespread poverty despite vast iron ore reserves. It is now unclear when the run-off will take place. The NEC has until mid-November to rule on the Liberty Party s complaint. If it is rejected, Brumskine could still take the case back before the Supreme Court with an appeal, potentially pushing the date of the second round into December. The court also has the option of calling a new first round vote to be held within 60 days.","label":0}
{"text":"The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit on Monday claiming that government payments to President Donald Trump's businesses violate the U.S. Constitution. Payments to the president's enterprises from foreign and domestic governments through his hospitality empire draw business away from Maryland and D.C. venues and put local governments under pressure to give Trump-owned businesses special treatment, according to the complaint. Foreign and domestic government payments to Trump's businesses were the target of a similar lawsuit brought in January by plaintiffs including an ethics nonprofit group, and Democratic lawmakers have blasted them as potential corrupting influences on Trump. The Trump Organization has said it will donate profits from customers representing foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury but will not require the customers to identify themselves. \"Every time the president has spoken about drawing a line between his presidency and his businesses, he's walked those promises back,\" said D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine said at a news conference on Monday. The case by Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, both Democrats, has a better chance in court as the first government action over allegations that Trump, a Republican, violated the Constitution's so-called emoluments clauses, legal experts said. Democratic attorneys general have taken a lead role in challenging Trump policies, successfully blocking executive orders restricting travel from some Muslim-majority countries. The Maryland and D.C. attorneys general are seeking an order in U.S. District Court in Maryland preventing Trump from continuing to receive government payments beyond his salary. White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Monday rejected the claim that Trump's business interests violated the Constitution and said \"partisan politics\" were behind the lawsuit. Trump's lawyers will likely move to dismiss the case, he said. The Justice Department declined to comment. Trump's ownership in hundreds of businesses hurts Maryland and D.C. and violates \"emoluments\" clauses in the Constitution that bar the president from accepting gifts from foreign governments without congressional approval as well as from domestic governments under any circumstances, according to the complaint. While Trump turned over management of the umbrella Trump Organization in January to a trust controlled by his two elder sons, he still owns his businesses, including the Trump International Hotel in Washington, and can draw revenue from them at any time. The attorneys general argued they had standing to sue Trump because their citizens will be harmed if payments to Trump are used to influence his allocation of federal funds. They also said local hospitality companies, including state-owned facilities, are being harmed. The Justice Department on Friday argued in the other lawsuit that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue because they cannot allege enough specific harm caused by Trump's businesses. The attorneys general have a better chance of establishing standing, legal scholars said, although they are divided over whether the AGs will ultimately succeed. Plaintiffs typically only have standing to file lawsuits under federal law if they can show they have been injured and a court ruling would remedy the harm. Fordham Law School Professor Jed Shugerman said state governments' special duty to protect their citizens means they face a lower bar to standing in federal court, and the AG lawsuit should proceed. However, Derek Muller, a professor at Pepperdine University School of Law, said it was unclear that this harm could be remedied by a favorable ruling. The government has also said Trump hotel revenue does not fit the definition of an improper payment under the Constitution. Payments to Trump's hotels do not qualify as a violation of the emoluments clause, which is intended to cover personal services performed by the president, the government said. \"If the Justice Department is correct, the emoluments clause has no meaning whatsoever,\" said Frosh, the Maryland official. \"The president can stand over here with his president of the United States hat and he's not allowed to take payments. But he takes a step over here and puts on his businessman hat, they can funnel as much money to him as they want.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Only a few days after his inauguration, President Donald Trump moved aggressively to tighten the nation s immigration policies Wednesday, signing executive actions to jumpstart construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall and block federal grants from immigrant-protecting sanctuary cities. Beginning today the United States of America gets back control of its borders, Trump declared during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security. We are going to save lives on both sides of the border. Trump cast his actions as fulfillment of a campaign pledge to enact hard-line immigration measures, including construction of a wall paid for by Mexico. With the families of Americans killed by people living in the U.S. illegally sitting in the audience, Trump said, When it comes to public safety, there is no place for politics. Trump cast his actions as fulfillment of a campaign pledge to enact hard-line immigration measures, including construction of a wall paid for by Mexico. With the families of Americans killed by people living in the U.S. illegally sitting in the audience, Trump said, When it comes to public safety, there is no place for politics. PBSAlthough the source of funding for a border wall was never really clear, most Americans believed with a Republican majority in both the House and Senate, funding for a secure border wall, as part of our national security was a no-brainer. Conservative Review The proposed budget deal before the House of Representatives is playing out like a bad replay of the latter Obama era: A Republican-controlled Congress given the power of the purse by the American people giving away the farm to Democrat demands.But the capitulation is far worse than one may realize. It s not just the lack of new funding for a southern border wall; this omnibus, which funds countless liberal priorities, prohibits existing funds from being used on any sort of border wall as well.According to a Congressional Research Service report from January, the Department of Homeland Security could have taken non-obligated funds and used them to put structures along areas of the border already spelled out in the Secure Fence Act of 2006 mandating a double-layered fence. Indeed, nothing in current law would appear to bar DHS from installing hundreds of miles of additional physical barriers, it contends, at least so long as this action was determined appropriate to deter illegal crossings in areas of high illegal entry or was deemed warranted to achieve operational control of the southern border. It s important to remember that the requirement to construct no less than 700 miles of border fencing (originally 850 miles) has been the law on the books for over a decade. Obama used waiver authority and very loose discretion (thanks to the weakening of the law in 2008) to skirt the requirement.Now that Trump wants to fulfill the existing mandate, Congress really has a moral obligation to honor the existing statutory authorization with sufficient appropriations. This is not some Trump boondoggle; this is a law passed with major bipartisan support in 2006.What the current proposal does is not only not fund a border wall, but it s so specifically worded as to prohibit any of the currently allocated funds from going to construction on the project. The bill actually rescinds $21 million in unobligated funds for border fencing.This means that even previous resources cannot be used on new construction as well, thereby tying the administration s hands and essentially weakening current law. Without this language, Trump could theoretically begin entering into contracts so that by the time the September funding bill is signed, he can hit the ground running with new funding (not that he will fight then, either). So, rather than take what money exists and use that to start negotiating contracts, run studies, and do whatever else is conceivable on physical border security between now and when Congress revisits this never-ending budget circus in September, nothing except for maintenance on the current, insufficient structure will be permitted.Meanwhile, the current budget retains provisions either providing funds specifically for, or predicating them upon, border security in countries such as Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan, Libya, Ethiopia, and other countries affected by extremism. That is not to say that the security of these borders against the likes of jihadists aren t our concern, or that these provisions ought not to exist. Assisting in physically stopping the flow of terrorist arms and personnel across borders is but one basic tool to be employed in the global fight against Sharia supremacism. But the juxtaposition of these is telling.A Republican Congress is willing to pass a bill that realizes border security is necessary for countries across the ocean, but will sacrifice not only a symbol of our own sovereignty, but a physical means of protecting it (the only effective way of tackling the policy and political problems with open borders).","label":1}
{"text":"Ted Cruz thinks he could be an asset to the campaigns of his fellow Republican senators. There s just one problem, though: most of them don t like him.Republicans currently face an uphill climb this year, especially with Donald Trump at the top of the 2016 ballot. The nomination of Trump presents a major problem for Republicans who hope to keep their seats or take seats away from Democrats.Indeed, instead of riding Trump s coattails to victory, Republicans are looking at down-ballot rejection as people associate them with the Republican nominee and his vile campaign.Despite being destroyed by Trump, Texas Senator Ted Cruz wants to lend a hand to his colleagues. That can go a long way toward establishing good relationships, one Cruz adviser told The Hill. At the same time, though, I d be wildly surprised if he suddenly started moderating his principles just to get along. Establishing good rapport with colleagues is incredibly crucial to running for higher office. But Ted Cruz has alienated and pissed off most of his Senate colleagues because of his aggressive losing strategies in recent years, the biggest of which is undoubtedly the government shutdown in 2013.Cruz incited the shutdown because he thought it would force President Obama to dismantle Obamacare. In the end, it was a PR nightmare for Republicans as the American people rightfully blamed them for shutting the government down.But the Cruz adviser thinks his colleagues will be interested in taking Cruz s help. I think politicians are practical people, he said. They re going to be pretty interested in the kind of support he can give them I think fewer people would say they don t want him now. Unfortunately for Cruz, he seriously underestimates just how much his colleagues loathe him.As it stands, incumbent Republicans facing tough re-election battles don t want Ted Cruz making their lives more difficult.When asked by The Hill if she would accept help from Ted Cruz, New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte said, Uh, no. I don t think I d ask anyone to come up, generally, other than I had [Sens.] Joni [Ernst (Iowa)] and Shelley [Moore Capito (W.Va.)] up, she continued. This is about me campaigning for New Hampshire. I m going to be focusing on my campaign for me. It s not a reflection on him, or anyone else he hasn t contacted me, but I m sure there s a lot of different races out there. In other words, please don t come to New Hampshire, Ted.In Pennsylvania, Senator Pat Toomey also faces a tough campaign, but that doesn t mean he wants Cruz there to make it worse.[Cruz is] not going to [be] into what my campaign is doing, Toomey insisted.And then there is Arizona Senator John McCain, who has famously referred to Cruz as a whacko bird. Yeah, he definitely does not want Cruz stumping for him in his home state.McCain said he only seeks help from people he is close to. I m not close to Sen. Cruz, McCain declared.So it looks like many Republicans would rather not have Cruz s support, which isn t surprising considering how extreme he is on several issues.Frankly, if Cruz wanted his colleagues to be more enthusiastic, perhaps he should have thought about that before becoming the most annoying voice in the Senate.Featured Image: Spencer Platt\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Turkey expects to receive its first Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles in 2019, Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli said on Wednesday, the first time Ankara has given a firm timeline for a deal that has alarmed its NATO allies. Turkey has been in negotiations with Russia to buy the S-400 for more than a year, a decision seen by Washington and some of its other allies in NATO as a snub to the Western military alliance. Giving the most detail yet on the deal to parliament s budget committee, Canikli said it called for delivery of two S-400 systems, but that the second one was optional. The deal has raised concern among NATO countries in part because the weapons cannot be integrated into the alliance s defenses. Ankara has said it had no choice but to buy the Russian missiles, because NATO countries did not offer a cost-effective alternative. Once these systems are received, our country will have secured an important air defense capability. This solution aimed at meeting an urgent need will not hinder our commitment to developing our own systems, he said. Relations between Turkey and Russia deteriorated sharply over years during which they backed opposite sides in the war in neighboring Syria, but have improved markedly over the past year. The countries are now cooperating on Syrian peace efforts. Canikli said Turkey was also in talks with the Franco-Italian EUROSAM consortium on developing its own missile defense systems, after signing a memorandum to strengthen cooperation between the three countries in defense projects. With the memorandum in question, Turkish, French and Italian firms have started cooperation to identify, develop, produce and use a more advanced version of the SAMP-T (missile system) in a common consortium, he said. Turkey aimed to bring talks with EUROSAM to a definitive end soon, he said, adding that Ankara aimed to finalize the deal by the end of 2017 at the latest. Turkey has been working to develop its own defense systems and equipment, and has lined up several projects for the coming years, including combat helicopters, tanks, drones and more. Canikli said Turkey received bids last Friday for the production of 500 Altay battle tanks, of which 250 are optional. Shares of Turkish commercial and military vehicle producer Otokar rose almost 3 percent following the news about the 7 billion euro ($8.24 billion) domestic tank project.","label":0}
{"text":"Bravo! This woman is example of true courage. More Americans need to take a stand against anyone who attempts to silence their First Amendment right Whenever folks in Penfield, New York get a hankering for pancakes for lunch they head over to the 5 Mile Caf .The family-owned restaurant is known in those parts for serving breakfast any time of the day (order their homemade corned beef hash).They are also known for their patriotism. We are very patriotic here at the caf all year round not just this time of year, owner Jennifer Aquino told me. We have American flags and patriotic things around the caf . So Jennifer decided to ask the town for a permit so she could post a God Bless America banner on the front of her restaurant. She wanted to display the banner from Memorial Day through Independence Day.There was just one significant problem.Penfield has a strict banner allotment policy. Businesses are only allowed to post banners for a total of three weeks out of the year. And Jennifer had used up her allotment. At one point we had banners all over the town and the town just looked trashy and our residents said enough s enough, town supervisor Tony LaFountain told WHEC.Jennifer s request was denied.Instead of posting the banner outside the restaurant, she posted it inside. And that was that until the Orlando terrorist attack. I decided on my way to work that I was going to put it up regardless of the town telling me I couldn t, she said. So I put it up. A bit later that day she received an email from the town telling her to remove the banner. They warned her that she could face a possible fine for violating the ordinance. I didn t take it down, Jennifer told me. And I was willing to pay the fine. The [message on the banner] means a lot to me especially during this time in our country with all that s going on with terrorism, she said. I just can t believe that I can t have this banner up and be supported by the town board. The fact that I m being asked to take it down is wrong, she said. It s against my First Amendment rights. People need to open up their eyes. If we start letting them tell us we can t do this it s going to get worse. Jennifer tells me she never imagined there would be a day like this in America. I have lots of veterans in my family, she said. I have a cousin who fought in Desert Storm so that we could have the freedom to hang a banner that says, God bless America. And yet we live in a nation where you can be punished for simply being patriotic.","label":1}
{"text":"British aid minister Priti Patel is flying back to London after cancelling a planned trip to Africa, the BBC reported on Wednesday, after local media reported she was facing the sack for not fully disclosing meetings during a holiday to Israel. The BBC quoted unnamed sources as saying that she was on a plane. Some on social media suggested she would arrive in London at around 1500 GMT.","label":0}
{"text":"The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi offered his condolences to the son of slain former Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh at his residence in Abu Dhabi, according to his official twitter account. The account tweeted a picture of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces visiting Ahmed Ali at his residence in the United Arab Emirates capital. Ahmed Ali, a former commander of Yemen s elite Republican Guards, once served as Yemen s ambassador to the UAE before it joined ally Saudi Arabia to make war against the Houthis.","label":0}
{"text":"If there is one political ideology that every American should despise, it s Nazism. But conservatives don t seem to mind it one bit.On inauguration day last month, Nazi Richard Spencer got punched in the face by a protester during an interview.Spencer, along with others of his ilk, support Donald Trump and hail his presidency as a new era of white nationalism where fascism and racism flourish.It s no secret, of course. Conservatives have been moving further to the extreme right for decades and the end of that side of the political spectrum is Nazism.Rather than run away from Nazism and people like Spencer who advocate in favor of it, conservatives decided to give Spencer credentials to attend their annual CPAC conference.Spencer attended on Thursday, and he had a lot to say to reporters as supporters flocked to him like moths to a flame.When asked how he feels about being at CPAC, Spencer said he feels welcome. Richard Spencer, at CPAC: I feel very welcome here. Nobody s punching me yet. Travis Waldron (@Travis_Waldron) February 23, 2017Spencer then praised Donald Trump for being a supporter of white nationalist causes.Richard Spencer tells reporters at @CPAC he thinks Trump represents the alt-right more than conservatives #CPAC2017 pic.twitter.com\/b5dEtXVmKy Kira Lerner (@kira_lerner) February 23, 2017CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp apparently had no problem with Spencer attending the conference despite claiming to disagree with him.Just talked to CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp. Said he didn t endorse Richard Spencer s ideas but won t kick him out of the conference. fake Matt Pearce (@mattdpearce) February 23, 2017But then it appears someone felt that Spencer was getting too much adulation at CPAC so they had him escorted out by security.Here s the video via YouTube.Richard Spencer should never have been approved to get credentials to CPAC in the first place, especially if conservatives really don t agree with Nazism.But the fact that Spencer was allowed to attend makes it pretty clear that conservatives are more okay with Nazis than they would like us to believe. And that s an insult to the millions of Americans who fought to stop the Nazis and their evil agenda during World War II.","label":1}
{"text":"President-elect Donald Trump said on Thursday after a meeting with House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan that after his inauguration he will work very rapidly on issues like healthcare and immigration. Speaking in Ryan's office, Trump told reporters: \"We are going to lower taxes, as you know,\" and added: \"I think we are going to do some absolutely spectacular things for the American people.\"","label":0}
{"text":"In this most contentious of elections, you wouldn't think that a soda tax would be the issue to attract the big bucks. But measures in just two California cities have drawn more money than that state's Senate race and statewide referendums on marijuana legalization and gun control \u2014 combined. Soda taxes are on the ballots in San Francisco and Oakland, Calif. and spending to persuade citizens to vote for or against them has topped $50 million \u2014 enough to buy every person in those two cities about 100 cans of Coke, at least if you bought them in bulk. On the side are big donations from billionaires: Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, and Laura and John Arnold. And opposing them are the companies in the beverage industry, which is outspending them by a ratio of about 3 to 2. The battle is the biggest so far by health advocates in their efforts to reduce the consumption of sugary carbonated soft drinks that they say leads to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. The idea of taxing beverages, which the measures would do, was initially an esoteric idea hashed out in medical journals. Some municipal officials showed interest, but, until recently, no soda tax got far. The failure of 40 tax measures around the country reflected public skepticism about the idea, often seen as a intrusion. But it also reflected the lopsided investment of industry to defeat them. Recently, the tide has begun to turn, helped in part by big donations from Mr. Bloomberg. Two years ago, Berkeley, Calif. became the first city in the country to pass such a tax. Mr. Bloomberg got involved late in the effort, when it became clear the law had a chance of passing. (San Francisco had its own failed initiative that year it won a majority of votes but failed to clear a supermajority threshold, a bar it won't need to clear this time.) In June, Philadelphia passed its own soda tax through the City Council. The beverage industry spent about $10 million there, but Mr. Bloomberg weighed in too, contributing about $1. 6 million of the $2. 5 million spent to support the bill. Albany, Calif. another community in the Bay Area, is also voting Tuesday, though there has been less direct spending there. Boulder, Colo. will vote on a soda tax measure Tuesday. And Cook County, Ill. which includes Chicago, is to consider a soda tax measure later this month. Public sentiment on soda is also shifting. Many Americans now say they are trying to avoid the products, and national sales of such drinks have been slipping. The Bay Area initiatives are expensive prizes. Unlike Philadelphia, where much of the battle was fought through lobbying, both California tax proposals must win passage by a majority of voters. That means both sides have invested in big public outreach campaigns. Citizens have been inundated with and tax TV and radio commercials, and mailboxes are filled with direct mail from both sides. Canvassers are making phone calls and going door to door in the final days of the campaign. Dan Newman, a political consultant with SCN Strategies, who is working on the campaign, said the volume of messages about the measures dwarfs the 2014 effort. \"It was intense and expensive, and folks were amazed in talking about it,\" he said of 2014. \"And it was nothing like this. \" The tax battle has also prompted accusations of skulduggery. The soda industry enlisted the help of several local grocers to pose for mailers and state their opposition to the tax. Several of them, later approached by advocates and reporters, said they had been misled about the nature of the tax proposal. Others have become the subjects of negative Yelp reviews and threatened with boycotts, what an campaigner described as \"intimidation. \" The measures are similar in both cities: They would impose a tax of one cent per ounce of any drink with added sugar, including sugary soft drinks, iced teas and smoothies. The taxes would be imposed on beverage distributors, not at the checkout registers. The emerging evidence from existing soda taxes suggests those higher prices will be passed through to retailers and then to shoppers. If they are, they could result in a price increase of 67 cents on a bottle, or $1. 44 for a . Those higher prices are intended to discourage shoppers from consuming so many sugary drinks, which have been linked to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. The side has been emphasizing the negative health effects of consumption, and arguing the tax will make the city's children healthier. Research from Mexico, which passed a national soda tax in 2014, shows that the taxes can drive down soda consumption. But it is not known yet whether those reductions will result in better health. The industry argues that the taxes have no clear connection to public health and that they will fall disproportionately on shoppers. In California, they have also been arguing that the taxes could result in higher prices for other items at the grocery store as retailers try to spread the rising wholesale cost of soft drinks over other products. But there is no research from Berkeley or Mexico that advocates could cite to support the notion. A local coalition of advocates, led by the American Beverage Association, a trade group for began sending direct mail months earlier than is typical for a ballot initiative. Susan Neely, the association's president, said her organization was committed to fighting soda taxes on every front. \"We oppose them wherever they are introduced \u2014 that is a clear position that we have staked out,\" she said. \"That is not going to change. \" There has been little public polling on the measures, though consultants on both sides said they have been polling privately, and the vote will be close. The complexity of the city's ballots this year makes predicting a result hard. In San Francisco, voters are considering more than 40 initiatives, including two separate measures about plastic shopping bags. The beverage tax is fairly far down on both ballots, which means some voters may grow fatigued and fail to weigh in.","label":0}
{"text":"Egypt has blocked the website of Human Rights Watch just one day after the organization released a report on systematic torture in the country s jails. Reuters attempted to access the website late on Thursday but was unsuccessful. Egyptian authorities keep insisting that any incidents of torture are isolated crimes by bad officers acting alone, but the Human Rights Watch report proves otherwise, Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said on Thursday. The report titled We Do Unreasonable Things Here , based on the accounts of 19 former detainees and the family of another, claimed Egyptian authorities used arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, and torture. Rather than address the torture crisis in Egypt, the authorities have blocked access to a report that documents what many Egyptians and others living there already know. Egypt s foreign ministry lambasted the report in a statement on Wednesday, saying it defamed the country and ignored progress made on human rights in recent years. The report ... is a new episode in a series of deliberate defamation by such organization, whose politicized agenda and biases are well known and reflect the interests of the entities and countries sponsoring it, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid. Egypt first blocked access to a number of news websites including Al Jazeera and Huffington Post Arabic in May after similar actions by its Gulf allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. But since, hundreds of other news sites and blogs have been wiped from Egyptian screens with the most recent count according to the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression, a non-government organization tracking the affected sites through software that monitors outages, at 424. Journalists see the campaign against them as a step toward banning all but the most state-aligned media, effectively reversing the private media boom that flourished in the final decade of former president Hosni Mubarak s rule and which they say helped push him from power in 2011. The government has offered no comment on the reason behind the blockages.","label":0}
{"text":"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was on Meet the Press and let out another gibberish laden response to a question. Does anyone out there understand what she meant by her comments about the wall. How does it mean Trump is weak if he wants a wall? Twisted reasoning is all that comes from Pelosi these days especially when in 2006 most prominent Democrats voted to build a barrier at the border. Immoral and unwise ? How is it immoral and unwise to want to protect your people? You have to understand this part of the country. There s a community going through it. WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED TO THE 2006 BORDER WALL FENCE?Remember the promise of a fence on our southern border? Yes, it was the plan but the $1.2 billion dollar plan was never executed as proposed. You can thank our Liar in Chief and a popular Republican for that WE RECENTLY POSTED THIS VIDEO OF AN IMMIGRATION OFFICIAL SAYING BUILDING A BORDER FENCE ISN T POSSIBLE EVEN THOUGH $1.2 BILLION WAS GIVEN IN 2006 FOR A FENCE: In his speech in El Paso on immigration reform on May 10, 2011, Obama declared that the fence along the border with Mexico is now basically complete. Like much of what comes out of the Obama administration, that was a lie. What was supposed to be built was a double layered fence with barbed-wire on top, and room for a security vehicle to patrol between the layers. Except for 36 of the seven-hundred mile fence, what was built looks like the picture above or the one below.But that doesn t stop your liar in chief. He claims. We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement, Obama said. All the stuff they asked for, we ve done. But even though we ve answered these concerns, I ve got to say I suspect there are still going to be some who are trying to move the goal posts on us one more time. Maybe he s right the goal posts were moved, but to make the job easier.The Secure Fence Act was introduced on Sept. 13, 2006 by Rep Peter King (R-NY) and passed Congress on a bi-partisan basis. In the House of Representatives, the Fence Act passed 283 -138 on September 14, 2006. On September 29, 2006, the Fence Act passed in the Senate 80 -19. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 s goal was to help secure America s borders to decrease illegal entry, drug trafficking, and security threats by building 700 miles (1,100 km) of physical barriers along the Mexico-United States border. Additionally, the law authorized more vehicle barriers, checkpoints, and lighting as well as authorizing the Department of Homeland Security to increase the use of advanced technology such as cameras, satellites, and unmanned aerial vehicles to reinforce infrastructure at the border. So far less than 40 miles of a real fence have been built most of it during the Bush Administration.Of the almost 700 miles of fencing, DHS reports there are currently 36.3 miles of double-layered fencing, as the bill required, the kind with enough gap that you can drive a vehicle between the layers. But the majority of the fencing erected has been made from vehicle barriers with single-layer pedestrian fencing, the kind of barriers that are designed to stop vehicles rather than people. The design specifications vary, depending on geography and climate characteristics, but according to the Customs and Border Patrol website, those include post on rail steel set in concrete; steel picket-style fence set in concrete; vehicle bollards similar to those found around federal buildings; Normandy; vehicle fence consisting of steel beams; and concrete jersey walls with steel mesh. The first blow against the promised fence was made by Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican Senator from Texas, at the urging of DHS she proposed an amendment to give the Department discretion to decide what type of fence was appropriate in different areas. The law was amended to read, Nothing in this paragraph shall require the Secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the Secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the most appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location. Hutchison s amendment was included in a federal budget bill in late 2007 despite the fact that Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., had a cow he argued the amendment effectively killed the border fence promised in the 2006 bill, he was right. Hutchison s intentions may have been honorable, but she didn t foresee Barack Obama being the next president.When Janet Napolitano became Obama s first DHS she took advantage of Ms. Hutchison s 2007 amendment, instead of building a fence which look something like the below, she built a fence that was mostly a combination of the two pictures above.When She was still Governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano said, You show me a 50-foot wall, and I ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border. And she may be right The fence will never STOP all illegal crossings. The purpose of the fence is two-fold, slowing the intruders and making them visible to members of the border patrol. The rest of the work is done by human beings.Very little of the Israeli separation barrier erected to keep out terrorists is a wall, most of the 400 miles of the barrier which has received so much international scorn is a two layered fence like section of their barrier below. The fence has served its purpose, in 2002, the year before construction started, 457 Israelis were murdered; in 2009, 8 Israelis were killed.The reason it has been effective is not simply the fence itself but how the fence is guarded and patrolled. And that s what will make our fence along the Mexican border work.Here s the bottom line. Back in 2006 the people of the U.S. were promised a border fence. Since then thanks to Kay Bailey Hutchison and Barack Obama 95% of the fence wasn t built. The arguments against the fence are bogus especially if you look at Israel s history. It s time for America to demand that its leaders build the fence they promised. No one can honestly say it wont work, after all it hasn t been tried.","label":1}
{"text":"1000s of NATO troops train in Adazi (Latvia) Page 1 05\/10\/14 6 Mail with questions or comments about this site. \"Godlike Productions\" & \"GLP\" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike\u2122 Website Design Copyright \u00a9 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.006s (8 queries)","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump's outside legal team spokesman has resigned amid media reports the team is being reorganized as investigations continue into alleged Russian meddling in the U.S. election and possible collusion with Trump's campaign. Mark Corallo confirmed his departure on Friday in an emailed statement. His resignation comes amid reports regarding the role of Marc Kasowitz, Trump's attorney handing the investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia. NBC reported on Friday that Kasowitz was no longer leading the legal team but would remain on board to provide guidance. The New York Times reported late on Thursday that his \"role ... will be significantly reduced.\" A source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Friday that Kasowitz had not left the team. Separately, Trump is considering appointing Wall Street financier and long-time supporter Anthony Scaramucci as his White House communications director, according to a senior White House official. The staff changes come amid other media reports that some of Trump's lawyers are considering ways to limit U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe. The Washington Post, citing people familiar with the effort, reported late Thursday that Trump's legal team is seeking to limit or undercut the investigation by targeting Mueller's team and is exploring Trump's pardoning authority. The New York Times also reported that Trump's lawyers are looking into the background of Mueller's investigators, citing three people familiar with the research effort. Moscow has denied any interference with last year's U.S. presidential election. Trump has also said there was no collusion.","label":0}
{"text":"Sudan, Africa and the Mosaic of Horrors 27.10.2016 \"What could be the most striking image, one that would clearly illustrate the destructive involvement of the United States in Sudan?\" I ask. \"In short, what should I photograph, that could show the suffering of the Sudanese people?\" \"Let's go and photograph what is left of the Al-Shifa factory,\" I am told. \"It is terrible, and truly symbolic.\" It is actually close to impossible to photograph just about anything in Sudan. For right or wrong reasons, the government is paranoid. Elaborate permits have to be issued for traveling outside the main urban areas, and for taking photos and videos even inside the capital city of Khartoum itself. If one dares to at all, one has to work fast and clandestinely, even if one is not planning to do anything damaging to Sudan. by ANDRE VLTCHEK Print version Font Size Why was I here? After making my films, after covering the horrid wars of the African Great Lakes, after witnessing the awful devastation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), I had to finally come to Sudan, which for me represented that remaining, that last piece of the 'puzzle'; a part in the mosaic of the horrors which are now covering almost the entire continent of Africa. I thought that I had to be here, in order to understand all the subtle nuances of how Western imperialist designs have been fragmenting and ruining this entire continent. I convinced one of my friends in Khartoum to accompany me, and on my third day in Sudan, we drove towards the 'legendary' sight of the former Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Bahri, Khartoum North. The path we took led through relatively affluent neighborhoods, full of large houses, even villas, some of which, I was told, belong to Omar al-Bashir himself, and to his relatives. Our car passed near the bizarre complex of Al-Noor Mosque, which is built in a Turkish style. \"This may be the only mosque in the world, which has a supermarket behind its walls,\" my guide explained, smiling sarcastically. \"The investment and idea came from our President; from al-Bashir himself.\" A few minutes later we see what we came here for: the site, the rubble, the devastation . A surviving chimney of the factory is right in front of us. On the left-hand side of the road, it is just pure destruction. 18 years after the 'event', nothing grows here, and nothing, no structures have replaced what has been converted into debris. I work fast. I don't want to get caught. I came here in order to document the brutality of the Western global regime, but somehow here I feel like a thief, like an intruder. At this point I still don't know why. US missile destroyed factory: Clinton The Al-Shifa factory was hit and destroyed by US Tomahawk cruise missiles in 1998, just a few days after the terrorist attacks on the American embassies in both Kenya and Tanzania. President Bill Clinton ordered the attack, arguing that the compound was storing nerve gas, something that was strongly denied by both the Sudanese government and the owner of the plant. On October 20 th , 2005, The New York Times reported in its uncommonly critical article: \" American officials have acknowledged over the years that the evidence that prompted President Clinton to order the missile strike on the Shifa plant was not as solid as first portrayed. Indeed, officials later said that there was no proof that the plant had been manufacturing or storing nerve gas, as initially suspected by the Americans, or had been linked to Osama bin Laden, who was a resident of Khartoum in the 1980's... no apology has been made and no restitution offered, which has Sudan's government steaming, even seven years after the ground shook and the dark sky over Khartoum turned light as the plant was hit. On the most recent anniversary of the bombing, Sudanese authorities did what they always do and repeated their call for a United Nations investigation of the American attack on the factory, which, if nothing else, was a major provider of medicines for humans and animals at the time it was destroyed. Mustafa Osman Ismail, who was foreign minister until recently, also raised the issue at the United Nations summit meeting in New York last month, saying the bombing \"damaged the development efforts of my country and deprived my people of basic medicines.\"\" \"It is thoroughly paradoxical,\" I am told, as we are driving away. \"The Americans ruined Sudan's most important medicine supply. They bombed a private factory that actually belonged to a person with extremely close business ties to the United States.\" But this is not the only paradox that I will encounter in this country. And it is not the only paradox in its relationship with the arch tormentor - the United States. *** In Khartoum, I met dozens of people: Sudanese people, Eritrean people, Europeans as well as Asians. I kept putting the same questions to everyone: is Sudan really at odds with the West, particularly with the United States? Or is 'the game' actually much more complex than that? Western media again distorts the truth If Sudan is really a brutal dictatorship, then Sudanese people are shockingly outspoken. Those who are opposing the government are speaking against it openly, even in front of a total stranger like myself. This would be unthinkable even in today's Egypt or Turkey. \"But no names, please, no names,\" I am told. I understand. I take notes, but do not write down any names. A man working for an international organization is laughing, as we are having dinner: \"In Sudan, people can meet and say whatever they want. Nobody cares. But god forbid if they begin to organize.\" He is talkative and friendly. But later I find out that he thinks (and tells his colleagues) that I am a 'spy', which, in turn, is explained to me, is quite the usual way of looking at each other here. It is enough to be half Eritrean or Ethiopian to be suspected of spying. All Westerners are flatly considered to be professional spies, no matter how strong their anti-imperialist credentials are. This constant suspicion is what made me uncomfortable in Sudan, from the first moment I stepped off the plane. I never felt like this in Eritrea or in Zimbabwe. There, they knew who I was and what I do: they read my books and have watched my films, and consequently they trusted me. Here, one paradox piles on top of another. There is this brutal embargo, and open confrontation between the West and Sudan. Already, many years ago, the ICC issued an arrest warrant against the President. It is almost impossible to get a Sudanese visa with a US passport. But, as I am told, half of the Sudanese parliamentarians are holding US citizenship and regularly 'commute' between Sudan and North America. Bizarre? Yes, thoroughly. Is it even possible? Apparently it is: welcome to Sudan! In the meantime, over one of the tastiest steaks I have ever had in my life, my acquaintance spills his heart out to me (allegedly a foreign spy): \"We have some of the best meat in the world... The embargo means, no chemicals, everything is organic. Sudanese are herders... Beef, sheep... Such a rich land! We have plenty of water below the ground. Our people are nice, they are peaceful, welcoming... We want to be friends with everybody in this world.\" At the end, he helps to arrange a car for me, for the following day. He is not supposed to, as I am not allowed to drive anywhere in this country. Especially if he thinks that I'm a spy. Things are slightly confusing. But I am quickly getting used to it. *** Several African and foreign analysts now believe that the events in Sudan, the West's desire to destabilize it, to overthrow its government and ultimately to break the country into pieces, are closely linked to the horrific past and present of the rest of Central Africa, particularly to Rwanda, Uganda and the DRC. Others dispute it. The disagreements are often only over whether the main booty of the West was actually supposed to be the Democratic Republic of Congo or Sudan. In his legendary work, first published in 2004, CENTRAL AFRICA: 15 YEARS AFTER THE END OF THE COLD WAR. THE INTERNATIONAL INVOLVEMENT, Dr. Helmut Strizek, a German academic, argues: \" Most people expected that Clinton with his \"leftist\" leanings would pressurize the Bashir-Turabi regime into a process of democratization in line with the Bush-Mitterrand approach that had been adopted after the end of the Cold War. But things took a different course. Clinton and Madeleine Albright, the new American Ambassador to the U.N., considered Sudan to be a \"rogue state\" and the number one enemy in Central Africa. They therefore opted for a proxy approach (\"get others to fight your war\"), a well known strategy that had been applied during the Cold War. Mitterrand was unlikely to comply with the intended \"regime change\" in Khartoum. He was apparently not informed about Washington's Sudan policy and could not understand the effects this new policy had on the Rwandan problem. After the Somalia disaster of 3 October 1993, Madeleine Albright used all the tricks in the book to minimize a U.S. contribution to the UNAMIR peacekeeping force envisaged in the Arusha Agreements. These activities were the first signs that the U.S. wished to reduce its commitment in favour of power sharing in Rwanda, help Museveni and his friend, Paul Kagame, to win the Rwandan war, and find other anti-Khartoum allies.\" The horrors in Rwanda occurred in 1994 and then the US-backed Tutsi RPF took power almost immediately there (or one could say almost simultaneously), the same year. One year later, Rwanda and Uganda began one of the most brutal and genocidal wars in the history of the 20 th Century - the one against the people of the DRC. The war continues until now, and is fought on behalf of several Western powers and business interests. By the recent count, at least 10 million people have already lost their lives. The West was interested in chipping off several resource-rich parts of Sudan, including the then so-called southern Sudan. Neighboring Uganda was extremely interested in the 'project', too. It was enjoying full impunity and was clearly emerging as a brutal regional power. It had already supplied, trained and hardened the RPF cadres, (before the RPF took power in neighboring Rwanda). It was already helping with plundering the DRC, and it felt suddenly ready to play and to think big. Not everyone was impressed. But the stakes were extremely high, and rebellious heads, those that did not want to support the West's Machiavellian designs, began to roll. Helmut Strizek continues: \" UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali was considered in Washington to be a \"French and Sudanese sympathizer\". He became a prominent victim of the approach to Sudan. Richard Clarke reveals a strange deal: \"Albright and I and a handful of others (Michael Sheehan, Jamie Rubin) had entered into a pact together in 1996 to oust Boutros-Ghali as Secretary-General of the United Nations, a secret plan we had called Operation Orient Express (...). The entire operation had strengthened Albright's hand in the competition to be Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration.\" (CLARKE 2004:201\/202). This pact was forged after an attempt - attributed to the Khartoum regime - to kill Egypt's President Mubarak during a conference of the Organization for African Unity in Addis Ababa in June 1995. \"Following that event, Egypt and we (joined by other countries in the region) sought and obtained the United Nations Security Council's sanctions on Sudan.\" Well, Egypt was always on the side of the British colonialists, when it came to the wars against Sudan. Similar to his predecessors, Mubarak faithfully served the Empire. In 1998, Bill Clinton organized a 'meeting' in the Ugandan city of Entebbe, in order to amalgamate a group of the proxies - those willing to launch a war against Khartoum. Helmut Strizek again: \" Rather than promoting democracy the meeting was intended to prepare for war against Khartoum with the help of this so-called \"new generation of African leaders\". But the war never took place. Shortly after Clinton left Africa, an absurd war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Laurent Kabila, whose anti-democratic record - according to different reports in the press - had made Clinton feel very uneasy in Entebbe, used this war as an excuse to leave the anti-Khartoum alliance and try to get rid of his Rwandan \"protectors\" in late July 1998. As a result the anti-Khartoum alliance collapsed.\" \" While the planned war failed to materialise, the joint U.S.-U.K. policy initiative to topple the Sudan government continued. Although Richard Clarke would like to make the world believe that the bombing of a chemical plant in Khartoum on 20 August 1998 in retaliation for the Al Qaida attacks on the American embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam was a success story, in fact it was a failure. This attack only exacerbated anti-American feelings, because the Sudan government had apparently not supported Osama bin Laden after he left Sudan in 1995. The failed attempt to kill bin Laden the same day in Afghanistan reinforced his belief that he was protected by \"providence\" and so he stepped up the fight against the \"American devil\".\" \" Despite the improved relations between Sudan and Egypt, there was no change in the policy to bring about a regime change in Khartoum before the end of the Clinton era. Even Jimmy Carter, who cannot be suspected of excessive sympathy with Muslim fundamentalism, disapproved of this inflexible approach in 1999. \"The people in Sudan want to resolve the conflict. The biggest obstacle is U.S. government policy. The U.S. is committed to overthrowing the government in Khartoum. Any sort of peace effort is aborted, basically by policies of the United States. Instead of working for peace in Sudan, the U.S. government has basically promoted a continuation of the war.\" What Jimmy Carter said is definitely correct, but it does not, of course, apply exclusively to Sudan. It could be traced to almost all the conflicts in which the Empire has some involvement (therefore, to almost all of them), from those in Africa to those in the Middle East, including Syria. Helmut Strizek believes that the wars in the African Great Lakes Region were directly connected to the US attempt at destabilizing Sudan, that they were actually ignited by the West, for Sudan to be destroyed or conquered in the end. But many others, including a legendary Canadian international lawyer, Christopher Black, who has been deeply involved in the events of the region (where he was working for the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania), disagree. Chris wrote to me, shortly after I sent to him Strizek's report: \" Strizek... He testified for the defense in our trial at the ICTR and put forward this thesis about Sudan. I think most of what he says is correct but found then and still find his theory that the war in Rwanda was about Sudan a little difficult to accept. It may have been one of the considerations for Museveni and the US and UK etc. but it was not the primary one. The primary one was the war on Zaire, to kick out Mobutu and break Congo into pieces, That was the central plan for the RPF, US, UK, Belgium etc. re Rwanda and I have a letter from Kagame saying so. Strizek was used by an opposing defense team in my trial to try to make it look like I forged that letter from Kagame and I went after him about that. I think he fell into a trap about that - that is that other defense team, who I am sure were working for the prosecution, tricked him into doing. We discussed it later and he admitted perhaps he had been wrong but would not totally retreat. But we are in touch still... So in my opinion, the rest of his paper is basically correct re the geopolitical situation and he is correct on who invaded Rwanda and is responsible for that war, but I disagree that Sudan was the central objective of that war - that objective was Zaire. I agree re Sudan's importance but I fail to see how the take over of Rwanda had any effect on the attempt to break up Sudan. It is not on Sudan's border, Uganda is. No doubt Museveni etc. wanted that result - but I could never quite see how Rwanda fitted into that picture except in general terms - that is the US etc. wanting to take over all central Africa which would make them stronger further north in Sudan etc. But it is clear from all the other evidence at the trial and that of the French expert Dr. Bernard Lugan and others that the main objective of the Rwanda war was to take over Rwanda so they could use it to attack and break up Zaire, which is what they did.\" My comrade, a Ugandan opposition politician Arthur Tewungwa, agrees with Christopher Black, but he also thinks that the West 'drenched in blood' the entire region, whatever have been its 'primary goals': \"Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and the DRC have all been the victims of a cross-Atlantic foreign policy that has left the region disfigured and drenched in blood. While the motives have been presented as altruistic, the net result has been dreadful. Loud Western propaganda based on simplistic interpretations has been the order of the day. Sadly this approach has drawn celebrities and other well-intentioned individuals who have contributed to suffering equaled only during WWII. Darfur, Luwero, Eastern Congo and Rwanda have narratives built that don't stand the test of objective scrutiny. Who will repair the damage visited on these places? The only answer is the victims. The do-gooders have done enough bad to warrant their exit left of stage!\" *** I then asked my close friend and a dedicated internationalist, Mwandawiro Mghanga, Chairperson of (Marxist) Social Democratic Party of Kenya (SDP), to comment on the situation in Sudan. He expressed, in his letter, a strong opinion and his support for the Sudanese people, against the sanctions and against Western imperialism in general: \"The economic and political sanctions imposed against Sudan by Western countries have existed for many years. However, despite disrupting the development of the country they have not succeeded into forcing the people with a long and proud history and culture to surrender its freedom to Western imperialism. Western countries imposed the sanctions against Sudan ostensibly for its violation of the human rights of South Sudan which until recently was part of Sudan. But even after the government of Sudan participated in the democratic process that gave birth to the Republic of South Sudan (RSS), still the West continued with its hostilities and sanctions against Sudan. Sudan is now accused by the West of gross violations of human rights in Darfur. Yet despite its propaganda, the West is not actually interested in solving the problem of Darfur but in undermining the government of Sudan, compromising its sovereignty and carving another country out of Sudan. After RSS and Darfur the West will encourage another region of Sudan to demand to split and so on until Sudan is left into a tiny country like Rwanda. In fact, until the RSS was created, Sudan was the largest country in Africa in terms geographical size and ethnical diversity. This did not please Western imperialism that was imposed into Africa through the partition and balkanization of the second largest continent in the World and sharing it among the European colonial powers. Colonialism then existed in Africa through the notorious tactic of divide and rule that it continues today. The goal of Pan - Africanism and African Union for regional integration and eventual political union of African countries has always been seen as a threat to imperialist's interests in Africa. In this context, Sudan like Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with it rich natural resources is seen to be too big by the West to dominate and therefore all means possible are used to balkanize it. They do not even care that the creation of RSS from Sudan has escalated inter-ethnic violence, violations of human rights and undermined real freedoms. The national liberation hero of Sudan and leader of South Sudan John Garang was assassinated by the West 'with the connivance of the Ugandan government under President Yoweri Museveni because he was leading the struggle for the liberation of the whole of Sudan and not the creation of RSS. In the meanwhile, the sanctions against Sudan have only made the country more determined to safeguard its freedom and independence, to explore and implement self - reliance strategies and to search for alternative development partners - Russia and China. And so Sudan struggles and lives on.\" Not everyone in Africa feels deep solidarity with Sudan, though. The country has an extremely complex history and relationships with its neighbours. My close colleague from Eritrea, usually very outspoken and passionate about the West's devastating involvement in Africa, this time just commented, simply and dryly: \" The only thing I can say is that in Sudan it's not similar to Eritrea - ours is a clear case of economic sabotage, injustice, and double standards.\" *** The last day before my departure, I ended up working with a lady, an acquaintance of mine, who spent a long year working in Darfur. Are things there really as they are described by the Western mass media? We sit in the lobby of my hotel, drinking coffee, and I'm taking notes. No names, of course, no names here... But she speaks freely, confidently, and what she describes is actually not much different from the nightmares occurring in many other parts of Africa: \" It is extremely tiring working in Darfur. You don't realize it when you are still there; at some point it all becomes somehow 'normal', but then when you leave the place, it all comes back to you, and it is hard to keep living a normal life afterwards. You are asking whether it is it as horrible there, as we are told? Yes it is, and perhaps worse... Killings and rapes, refugees and despair, and great suffering of the people... But it is not happening, honestly, just because of this government, and the state-backed Janjaweed militias... although they can be blamed for many terrible acts, of course. But the other side is not blameless either. And local people almost never report crimes committed by the rebels, and the Western media hardly mentions them...\" What I want to know is what role the West is actually playing in Darfur? \" The West is definitely trying to encourage Darfur to leave Sudan. The West, even Israel, is supporting Abdelwahid rebels from Fur African tribe. It is not unlike what it did in South Sudan. Darfur is rich in uranium and other raw materials. The conflict in Darfur, and brutality of it, is actually being fuelled from outside. The UN peacekeeping force UNAMID is thoroughly ineffective in Darfur. It hardly interferes on behalf of the local people. One has to wonder, what are their mandates and true goals there. I asked and was told that they are there 'to report'. It often appears that the so-called international community is doing everything for the conflict to continue, so it could justify its push for separation. In the meantime, the refugees are flowing into neighbouring Chad, and elsewhere. In the camps in Chad, they are often screened and interviewed, by foreigners, even Israelis... I don't know what happens there, in those camps, afterwards.\" As we speak about Chad - its top military brass is having a joint meeting with local, Sudanese commanders. The entire hotel lobby is filled with men in various uniforms. Some are armed. I then ask to be taken to the so-called 'open areas' outside Khartoum; places inhabited by the South Sudanese refugees. Like Darfur now, South Sudan had been, in the past, destabilized and encouraged to leave the Republic of the Sudan. The West did its best to create this the 'youngest country on Earth', rich in oil and many other resources. As I was already explained to on several occasions by foreigners who have been based in South Sudan, the place has been, from the beginning, an ungovernable, and an artificial country, ruled by local warlords but above all, by countless international organizations and NGOs. That was actually the plan of the West from the outset. The situation in South Sudan is now so terrible, that people are fleeing across the newly marked border, to the Republic of the Sudan. Before the breakup, the exiles would be processed simply as IDP's, but now they are 'true refugees', as they are technically coming from a different country. We drive slowly to one of the 'open areas' called Altakamul, in Alhag Youseif town. My acquaintances are feeding me with the latest data from UNHCR and other sources: \"there are now 7 camps for South Sudanese refugees in White Nile State, with a population of 101,495. And there are 35,507 refugees located in the open areas, in and around Khartoum.\" How are they treated here? \"Right after the separation, there was a lot of talk about South Sudanese people being our 'brothers and sisters'. We were told to treat them exactly as we would treat our own people. Some actually have relatives here, even houses. But now, with the economical difficulties that Sudan is facing, things are becoming very problematic.\" Altakamus is a tough, miserably poor area, covered by sand and dust. As with everywhere else, I am not supposed to photograph here. And as with everywhere else, I do. Garbage covers almost entire alleys and the sides of roads. The whole area consists almost exclusively of only two colours with some varieties of shades: yellow and grey. Only very few economic activities could be detected. At this hour, children should be in school, but many are not. So this is where the increasing number of South Sudanese people are now ending up; this is the result of yet another 'glorious' Western experiment on human beings: of mingling with the borders, creating new states that should serve the Empire's political and economic interests. How many more are 'planned' for this area? We know of at least of some others: Goma (the DRC), Darfur (Sudan), Jubaland (Somalia). *** I don't know where Sudan is heading. Despite many problems, despite its clearly capitalist leaning, corruption and economic troubles, I am impressed with many things here. Khartoum looks definitely much cleaner and safer than Nairobi or Kampala, two cities in countries that are fully supported and often loudly glorified by the West. In Nairobi, more than half the people live in desperate, deadly, even 'toxic' slums. In Khartoum, poverty has a much gentler face. Despite sanctions, despite everything... Sudanese leaders have many new grand plans for their country: new housing developments, a new international airport, new office towers, hotels, riverfronts, office buildings and shopping malls. Some of these projects are now delayed, or even cancelled, but others are ongoing and on target. Life is tough here, and much tougher in the provinces. Because of the sanctions, many goods and basic equipment (even those for the hospitals) are missing. No credit cards are accepted here. Inflation is mounting. Goods and services are often calculated in dollars, but there are two parallel exchange rates in place: official and the black market one. Several times a day I hear the same question: \"Do you like Sudan?\" I don't know. It is a complex place, but inhabited by warm, courteous people. Honestly, this is not my fight. Here I don't see a struggle, an attempt to build an egalitarian country based on social justice. But Sudan is, to a great extent, a victim. A place which has been placed on that horrid hit list of the Empire and selected for demolition. And as such, I feel, it deserves to be supported. I wandered through the National Museum, with its exquisite artefacts. Two local schoolgirls wearing headscarves approached me, demanding to take selfies with me, on their phone. At times, life appears to be almost 'normal', but there is always some tension. As we drive through the city of Omdurman, I ask my friend: \"Is it true what one reads in Western press; that they amputate hands for theft, that they are nailing people on the cross?\" She laughs, mockingly: \"Of course not! They got rid of these practices a long time ago! If they kept up with them, half of the government would be running around without hands!\" *** But who is who here, and who works for whom? I am told that imaginary 'spies' are really everywhere. One day, I was sitting with a friend and with a local filmmaker in a cafe, discussing the possibility of my returning here and making a documentary film. The filmmaker was offering to drive me to Port Sudan if I come back, even to arrange my visa and all the necessary permits. At one point, we began discussing my latest novel \"Aurora\" . He asked about the plot. I told him that the book is about the European cultural institutions, which are funding young artists and thinkers in almost all developing countries, then using the arts and 'culture' as a vehicle for spreading capitalist and pro-Western propaganda, silencing almost all rebellious voices. At first interested, the filmmaker became gradually very edgy, and towards the end of my explanation, he apologized and ran away from the cafe, faster than the speed of light. I never heard from him again. \"You hit the nail on its head,\" my friend began laughing, right after he vanished. \"He is funded by all those organizations that you mentioned. You scared him witless.\" Before I left the country, all my notes 'mysteriously' disappeared. Someone entered my hotel room and took both notepad and my Mont Blanc pen, which was attached to it. The Mont Blanc had been, for many years, one of my dearest writing tools. Practically, it was not easy to depart Sudan. At the airport, my passport was endlessly scrutinized, and in the end I was ordered to produce my 'registration paper'. I was told that registration is not required for stays under 30 days. I began expecting the worst. But in the end, the security apparatus allowed me to leave. But which security apparatus was harassing me, really? Who is in charge in this country? I will most likely never find out. In 1898, during the Battle of Omdurman (and later in 1899 during the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat), British imperialism debilitated, and eventually ruined the entire Sudan. British forces relied on their alliance with the Egyptians. In modern history, the West has never really left this proud nation in peace. All the terrible attacks came in the name of higher principles. The West has always claimed that it has been liberating Sudan from someone or something. In the end, the Sudanese people have suffered immensely. Those who were supposed to be 'freed' were actually mercilessly sacrificed. Some things never change!  Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Three of his latest books are revolutionary novel \"Aurora\" and two bestselling works of political non-fiction: \" Exposing Lies Of The Empire \" and \" Fighting Against Western Imperialism \" . View his other books here . Andre is making films for teleSUR and Al-Mayadeen. After having lived in Latin America, Africa and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter . Sent to Pravdareport by the author","label":1}
{"text":"During the Democrats first debate last month, Bernie Sanders said we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people. Denmark s Prime Minister came out swinging, demanding that Sanders get his facts straight, Denmark is not a socialist nation, it has a market economy. Democrats have been working for decades to adopt the progressive policies based on political correctness that permeates most European nations.Sweden, the Rape Capitol of the world, is a perfect example of how well their politically correct, open-border policies have worked out for them. As the Muslim invasion of these European nations escalates, we are seeing this indifferent attitude of live and let live that only benefits those Muslim invaders who have no intention of assimilating in their host nations. This video shows how a nation gripped with fear reacts with apathy towards the criminal as opposed to taking action to save the supposed victim. It illustrates how easily a group of invaders can overtake a nation conditioned to accepting everyone, so as not to offend anyone. Sadly, we live in a country which has the highest rate of reported cases of rape. And this land is called Sweden. Rape is a very serious crime which not only affects our country, but the rest of the world. So in our new social experiment, we put Swedish citizens up for a test. This video is a great example of what happens to a nation who puts political correctness before the safety and security of its citizens: A poor girl can be heard screaming for help from the backseat of a car. There is no question she is being sexually assaulted, yet one after another, Swedish citizens continue to walk by pretending not to hear.At one point in the video, the rapist a brave passerby took action to stop him. Sadly, most of the other apathetic citizens were satisfied to look the other way, so as not to get involved. The biggest sin of the humankind is indifference.","label":1}
{"text":"A confidential draft United Nations blacklist seen by Reuters on Tuesday names a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition for killing and maiming children in Yemen, though it notes that the alliance has put in place measures to improve child protection. In an effort to dampen controversy surrounding the annual children and armed conflict report, the draft blacklist - contained in an annex to the full report - is split into listed parties that have put in place measures during the reporting period to improve the protection of children and those which have not. In Yemen, the coalition s actions objectively led to the listing for the killing and maiming of children, with 683 child casualties attributed to this party, and, as a result of being responsible for 38 verified incidents, for attacks on schools and hospitals during 2016, according to a draft explanation of the blacklist seen by Reuters. The coalition is included in section B of Annex I, as it has put in place measures during the reporting period aimed at improving the protection of children, the draft said. The draft U.N. annex blacklists the Houthis, Yemen government forces, pro-government militia and Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for violations against children in 2016 as it did in last year s report covering violations in 2015. The draft report has to be approved by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and is subject to change. It is due to be submitted to the U.N. Security Council this month, and the 15-member body is to discuss the report on Oct. 31. The Saudi U.N. ambassador, Abdallah Al-Mouallimi, declined to comment until the report is officially issued. In August, the Saudi U.N. mission said there was no justification whatsoever for including the coalition on the blacklist. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the United Nations does not comment on leaked documents. The coalition was briefly added to the blacklist last year and then removed by then-U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon pending review. At the time, Ban accused Saudi Arabia of exerting unacceptable undue pressure after sources told Reuters that Riyadh threatened to cut its U.N. funding. Saudi Arabia denied threatening Ban. The report - produced by U.N. children and armed conflict envoy Virginia Gamba and issued in Guterres name - does not subject those listed to any U.N. action, but rather shames parties to conflicts in the hope of pushing them to implement measures to protect children. The Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign in Yemen in March 2015 with the aim of preventing Iran-allied Houthi rebels and forces loyal to Yemen s ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh from taking power. An earlier draft of the latest annual report, which covers 2016 and was seen by Reuters in August, said that of the 683 child casualties blamed on the Saudi-led coalition, about half of those were killed and the rest injured. That earlier draft said the Houthi rebels and affiliated forces were responsible for nearly a third of the total 1,340 child casualties verified by the United Nations. The annual children and armed conflict report is produced at the request of the U.N. Security Council. In 2015 the United Nations left Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas off the blacklist, after they had been included in an earlier draft, but criticized Israel over its 2014 military operations. Separately, the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council agreed on Friday to set up a panel to examine all alleged human rights violations committed in Yemen s war and identify those responsible. U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein had long-pleaded with the 47-member Human Rights Council to launch an independent investigation into the war, which has killed thousands, ruined the economy and pushed millions to the brink of famine.","label":0}
{"text":"You've probably heard that it's always best to focus on the average of polls. The poll results that often get the most attention are outliers \u2014 they get attention because they're shocking, not because they're representative. But we also know that people often ignore that advice. They want to know the details of the newest poll, and how and why it might be different from the last. And to tell you the truth, I do, too. I read the details and methodology of almost every survey that is released. The problem is that it's a lot harder than it looks. After a splashy poll is released, Twitter is often overflowing with but misguided analysis. It's true: You really are better off looking at the averages. But if you're going to assess individual polls this election, here's a guide on how to do it well. When a poll comes out, I start by looking at the topline results \u2014 Hillary Clinton is plus 3 percentage points, or Donald J. Trump is plus 1, for example. But it's also worth looking at vote share \u2014 whether Mrs. Clinton has 47 percent or 40 percent, for instance. In particular, I care about how close the leading candidate is to 50 percent. There's more uncertainty the further a candidate is from 50 percent and the larger the number of undecided voters. Until a candidate approaches 50 percent, it's hard to know whether the lead is because of party unity or because the candidate has won over the key voters needed for victory. This is especially true in a reliably red or blue state: A Democrat who has 40 percent of the vote in Arizona still has a lot to prove, even with a lead. He or she hasn't yet won the voters who decide the state's elections. There was a good example of this in the Arizona Senate race. A lot of polls showed John McCain narrowly ahead, or even behind. But once he won the G. O. P. primary, voters returned to his side. Usually, anything at 46 percent or above is a good indicator of real strength. Less than that, and you have to wonder about undecided voters. \u25a0 It's also worth looking at whether there's a difference between registered and likely voters. In a presidential election year, I generally prefer looking at the registered voter numbers \u2014 with a caveat. That's because many methods that screen for likely voters are poor and yield noisy data. Registered voter samples are larger, and there aren't additional questions to add statistical noise. But here's the caveat: Registered voter polls tend to overrepresent Democrats, so I often focus on the registered voter number and mentally shift it a point or two toward the Republicans. \u25a0 This year, there's also the question of whether to look at or polls. I'm not sold on which is best. This year's candidates don't have the strong bases of a Ross Perot or John Anderson. It's possible that the polls that name them will overestimate their support it's possible that the polls that do not name them will underestimate their support. For now, I'm inclined to split the difference. To get a sense of whether a poll is good or bad news for a certain candidate, I usually compare the results of the poll with the polling averages or the last poll conducted by the same pollster. \u25a0 If the poll is very different from the polling average, there's a good chance it's an outlier. \u25a0 If the poll shows a big shift from a prior survey, I also wonder whether the previous poll was an outlier. If so, a candidate might appear to rebound simply because he or she was unusually weak in a prior poll. So compare that prior poll with the average of the time, too. \u25a0 It's also worth looking at whether the candidate has gained or lost vote share. When candidates fall without good reason, I often assume they're likelier than not to win back their former supporters. I definitely take note when candidates have won more supporters than they've won before. If that happens a lot, it's a real sign of strength. \u25a0 I also look at the various measures of whether Mr. Trump has a ceiling: like a 50 percent \"very unfavorable\" rating, or 50 percent who say they would be scared of a Trump presidency. I'm not convinced that those measures actually represent a ceiling. But they very well might, and I am curious about whether he's making progress by those measures. I also care a lot about how the poll was conducted. Polling is hard. A lot of things can go wrong, from question wording to weighting a sample or selecting likely voters. These choices can make a big difference \u2014 even with the same data. Worse, there are very few pollsters that really provide enough information to know whether they're making reasonable choices \u2014 and what the consequences of those decisions might be. As a result, I strongly prefer experienced firms with solid track records. \u25a0 I have serious problems with IVR polls (interactive voice response). These are sometimes called and they don't have any means to contact voters with a cellphone. This is a problem for even an experienced firm with a good record. It can be disastrous for firms without much . \u25a0 I have reservations about online polls. It's harder to draw a representative sample online because you can't rely on traditional random sampling. There are skilled and experienced pollsters that do a good job, like YouGov and SurveyMonkey. But there's a somewhat higher burden for online pollsters to build solid track records, make good hires and publish a detailed methodology. \u25a0 If the poll is from a less established firm, I'll give a closer look if it has been transparent \u2014 if the pollsters publish a detailed methodology that gives me a better sense of what I'm getting. You don't have to analyze every detail of a poll's methodology, but here are some rules of thumb: \u25a0 A poll is often a bad poll. You usually need multiple days to call voters back and get a representative sample. \u25a0 Well over half of adults ought to be reached on cellphones in a typical national survey about 40 percent of Americans do not have a landline at all. A poll of registered voters off the voter file can have a somewhat smaller number of voters, since the poll can typically be weighted by partisanship, and registered and likely voters are less likely to have only a cellphone (they're older, more affluent and often less mobile than the population as a whole). \u25a0 Pay attention to sample size. If a poll has a small sample \u2014 less than 800 people or so \u2014 be aware that sampling error will play a bigger role than usual. The gains from big samples are smaller than you might think, so don't give a lot of extra credit for a poll that goes much higher than 1, 200. Often, the polls with huge samples are actually just using cheap and problematic sampling methods. If the sample is less than 400, the result should be considered no more than a ballpark estimate. \u25a0 I don't usually pay much attention to the margin of error because it does not even come close to approximating the actual potential for error in a survey. And pollsters calculate margin of error somewhat differently. In particular, I see a lot of firms that don't adjust their margins of error to account for the effect of weighting \u2014 making their poll seem more confident than it is. The country is deeply divided along demographic lines, which makes it very important to check on the demographic composition of the sample. But this is not so simple to do. \u25a0 Know the polling universe: adults, registered voters and likely voters. This is trickier than you might suppose. Often, a poll of registered or likely voters will report the demographic composition of the overall sample of adults \u2014 generally a much more diverse group. That doesn't tell you about the demographic makeup of registered or likely voters. \u25a0 Know the targets. Almost all pollsters adjust their sample to match demographics, like age, race and gender. If a pollster isn't weighting for something fundamental like that, it's a big warning sign: See for yourself whether the poll is off by a wide margin on those measures (sometimes, they're fine). It's also worth looking at education or party registration. Not every poll weights by those measures, and sometimes that's a mistake. \u25a0 The exit polls are not the word of God. There are legitimate debates about the electorate. Many of these debates center on differences between estimates based on the census, voter files or exit polls. Most polls are on the end of the spectrum showing a whiter sample, since most polls use voter file and census data. Many times, polls get slammed on social media for being \"too white\" in comparison with the exit polls, even though they're near the consensus of more reliable measures. \u25a0 Wrong is wrong. In general, I wouldn't criticize a poll if the electorate fell somewhere in the debatable range around the exit polls, census and voter file. But if a pollster leaves the debatable range, it's probably just wrong. It may even indicate colossal failures in weighting or sampling. The poll can be dismissed out of hand on this basis alone. Examples of what I mean: a poll showing that more than 45 percent of the electorate in Pennsylvania will be over age 65 (that's too high) or that 13 percent of the electorate will be black in North Carolina (that's too low). \u25a0 I really don't look at party identification. We have no idea what the \"right\" partisan breakdown of the electorate really is: It's an attitude, not a nearly fixed characteristic. Depending on the news or the national political environment, or voters can switch in and out of the \"unaffiliated\" or \"independent\" column. It is very clear that there are more Democrats than Republicans in the country, which has been true for about a decade. But I will look at party registration, if it's available from the voter file. That's a pretty fixed characteristic: It doesn't swing with the mood. \u25a0 When I look through the polling crosstabs for subgroups \u2014 like young people or black voters \u2014 I compare with old polls, not the exit polls. The two measures are irreconcilable, and a direct comparison introduces a lot of bias. It will generally show, for instance, Democrats doing better among white voters even as they're not doing better over all. \u25a0 Subgroups are noisy, and that's fine. I often see a lot of people who dig into the polls and find a crosstab that doesn't make sense \u2014 maybe Hispanic voters give Hillary Clinton only 55 percent of the vote. Well, that's O. K. For one, it matters a lot less than you might think (giving Mrs. Clinton an additional shift among Hispanic voters will boost her national vote share by just two points). And subsamples are noisy by nature. It might be canceled out by noise elsewhere in the sample, either by chance or for a more structural reason. An underappreciated fact is that polls are usually adjusted for the right number of voters by race, age and gender, but subgroups don't each have the right demographic composition. There won't necessarily be the right number of young, female Hispanics, or old, less educated white men. So a Hispanic subsample could be too old and male, but in exchange, some other part of the electorate is too young and female. \u25a0 A lot of polls conducted off voter registration files will select a certain set of past voters, like people who have voted in the last two elections in addition to those who are newly registered. These decisions can exclude less likely voters, who may vote differently. That's a problem. I get even more concerned when I see a screen on top of a sample that was already especially likely to vote. I could go on. But these are the basics of my mental checklist in judging whether an individual poll might maintain the status quo, move the needle or stand as an outlier. And then I go back to the poll averages.","label":0}
{"text":"Take on the Santa Blanca Cartel as elite special forces operators in the Wildlands of Bolivia in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands. [Developed by Ubisoft Paris, Wildlands brings the tactical action of the Ghost Recon series into a massive open world, where players can either team up cooperatively or play solo as they fight to dismantle the created by a brutal cartel. \"Journey through Ubisoft's largest open world and discover the diverse landscapes of the most beautiful (and dangerous) place on Earth, from the arid mountains to the lush jungles,\" Ubisoft declares. \"Explore Bolivia on and off road, in the air, on land, and at sea with over 60 different vehicles. \" Wildlands features a Faction Influence System, where the player's actions will impact the game world around them: \"Turn each dangerous situation into an advantage by seizing control of the cartel's traffic patterns, patrols, and movements. \" Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands is available now for Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC.","label":0}
{"text":"Oops! Hillary and her race-baiting campaign team are NOT going to want the Black community to see this video Donald Trump doesn t want to give the Black and minority communities a hand-out he wants to give them self-respecting JOBS. He wants to see every American reach their full potential regardless of the color of their skin. This is a concept so foreign to the Democrat Party that the only response they re able to come up with is falsely accusing Trump of being a racist and hoping it sticks. For decades, the Democrats have been able to get away with falsely labeling Republicans But Donald Trump is NOT your average Republican, and he s about to bring down the Democrats false narrative like a house of cards.Enjoy:https:\/\/youtu.be\/7U6Pp5iflTs","label":1}
{"text":"I think that maybe I wouldn t be here if it wasn t for Twitter, Donald Trump told Fox News earlier this year. This possibility apparently has Twitter co-founder Evan Williams staying up at night, as he just apologized for any role Twitter played in putting Orange Mussolini in the White House. It s a very bad thing, Twitter s role in that, Williams told the New York Times in an article published Saturday. If it s true that he wouldn t be president if it weren t for Twitter, then yeah, I m sorry. This isn t the first time Williams has expressed dismay at the impact of social media on Trump s message of hate. What we tend to forget is that Zeus was so pissed at Prometheus that he chained him to a rock so eagles could peck out his guts for eternity, he said in a commencement speech at the University of Nebraska earlier this month. Some would say that s what we deserve for giving the power of tweets to Donald Trump. Unfortunately, Trump is correct that Twitter played a huge role in swinging his election his way especially with numerous paid Russian trolls on his side spreading lies about his opponent.Even more unfortunately, the lies and hate he continues to tweet as President* are continuing to have a deleterious impact on our nation.","label":1}
{"text":"Gawker founder Nick Denton read out a graphic account of the acts shown in a sex tape featuring wrestling celebrity Hulk Hogan in a Florida courtroom on Tuesday, saying his company's 2012 online publication \"stands up to the test of time.\" Gawker was sued for $100 million by Hogan, who says the release violated his privacy. The New York-based media company could be forced out of business by an unfavorable verdict in a civil trial testing the limits of freedom of the press. Hogan's attorneys asked Denton, a high-profile figure in the world of Web publishing, to read aloud a very explicit article accompanying the video, which he did in an even tone. The lawsuit centers on the one-minute, 41-seconds of video that Gawker excerpted from the sex tape of unknown origin. It has not yet been shown to the jury in St. Petersburg, Florida, near Hogan's home. The clip shows Hogan's tryst with the wife of his then-best friend, radio \"shock jock\" personality Bubba the Love Sponge. Hogan says their consensual encounter was recorded without his knowledge five years before Gawker's posting. Denton said he had not watched the video, nor read the article before publication. He described his role as broadly overseeing the portfolio of websites under Gawker media. Still, he stood by the piece as in keeping with Gawker's mission to produce \"true and interesting\" journalism. \"The piece had value. It was true. It was a story honestly told and it was interesting to millions of people,\" Denton said. The Hogan sex tape piece was one of more than 10,000 posts in 2012 on the Gawker website, a former company executive testified later on Tuesday. The video alone was viewed 2.5 million times, with 57 percent watching the entire clip. Denton's testimony, spread out over two days, highlighted his approach to websites run by the Gawker company, which include technology-oriented Gizmodo and women-focused Jezebel. Pressed on his views on privacy rights during cross-examination, Denton said celebrities have \"a smaller zone.\" Jurors had questions for Denton, too. One of them asked if the sex in the video would be protected speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution if it was gratuitous. \"No,\" he replied. He had previously said that he did not think the sexual content overreached. Hogan's attorney, David Houston, issued a statement suggesting the jury question \"perhaps sets the tone for deliberations.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump's presidential campaign is likely to launch a small donor fundraising effort akin to the grassroots one that powered another insurgent presidential contender, Democrat Bernie Sanders, according to two top donors who attended the first official meeting of Trump's national finance team. The Trump finance machine kickoff took place at New York City's Four Seasons Hotel amid growing concerns about the Republican presidential candidate's lack of a campaign infrastructure heading into a Nov. 8 election battle against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. \"The pitch to this group in the room was a traditional pitch, but the backroom discussion was, because of this being a populist movement, there's going to be significant outreach to, you know, those who give $1, $2, $20,\" said Trump Texas fundraising co-chairman Gaylord Hughey. \"There's a huge opportunity there.\" Sanders, who has effectively lost the 2016 presidential nomination to Clinton, broke fundraising records during his long-shot bid for the presidency, collecting more than $210 million through more than 7.4 million individual contributions, averaging $27 apiece. Trump could well find his supporters eager to pitch in $1, $5 or $20. For a story in May, Reuters found that nearly all three dozen Trump supporters it interviewed were not only unmoved by Trump's about-face to accept money from outside donors, they said they would also happily contribute. The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment about replicating the fundraising apparatus of Sanders, a democratic socialist U.S. senator from Vermont. Some donors were fearful of the late start of Thursday's gathering. Normally such a meeting would take place two years earlier in a candidate's campaign. But others in attendance said they left assured that Trump would be able to easily plug into the Republican National Committee's robust infrastructure. Trump, a wealthy businessman, became the presumptive Republican nominee last month after seeing off 16 rivals in a largely self-funded primary campaign. The gathering featured talks by Trump, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, chief strategist Paul Manafort, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, former rival-turned-ally Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and Republican fundraisers Ray Washburne and Lew Eisenberg. Trump's late start on fundraising has raised questions about whether he can achieve his previously stated aim of raising $1 billion before November. On the Democratic side, Clinton's well-oiled operation is well ahead of schedule. Trump is also pulling back from his earlier statements on his fundraising goal. Campaign manager Lewandowski told Reuters on Wednesday that he sees no need for Trump to raise that sum and that Trump may be able to stick to his low-cost style of campaigning. That includes garnering free media, which is estimated will reach a value of $5 billion by November, according to media analytics firm mediaQuant. That is more than double what Clinton is likely to get, mediaQuant says. While Trump shot to the top of the Republican race with freewheeling rhetoric, insults of rivals and promises to get tough on issues such as illegal immigration, even his biggest donors say they are discouraged by the candidate's attacks in recent weeks on a Mexican-American judge. In comments that have been widely condemned, Trump has suggested that U.S. Federal Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is presiding over a case against Trump University, has an inherent bias because of his heritage. \"He needs to stop the campaign infighting, shut up and stop calling an American who was born in Indiana a Mexican,\" said Texas billionaire Doug Deason.","label":0}
{"text":"Conservative Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are seeking to add an amendment this week to spending legislation that would slash the number of staff at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The budget research office, known as the CBO, has drawn recent Republican criticism, including from the White House, after it concluded that Republican proposals to replace Obamacare would lead to 23 million more Americans being uninsured if they became law. Representative Mark Meadows, head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said on Monday his colleague Morgan Griffith has offered an amendment to an appropriations bill the House is expected to take up this week that would cut the CBO's staff of 235 by 89 employees, saving about $15 million. \"They ought to be aggregators,\" Meadows said of the CBO at a National Press Club lunch. \"There's plenty of think tanks that are out there. We ought to take a score from Heritage, from AEI (American Enterprise Institute), from Brookings, from the Urban Institute and bring them together for a composite score.\" The Heritage Foundation is a conservative think tank based in Washington, as is the American Enterprise Institute. The Brookings Institution and Urban Institute are liberal-leaning think tanks based in Washington. The CBO is one of a handful of analysis units of Congress whose employees strive for political impartiality, providing dependable and neutral information that lawmakers can use when making often complex budget, tax and other decisions. Its staff includes economists, public policy analysts, lawyers and editors. In May, after Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney called the CBO's healthcare analysis \"absurd\" and questioned its continued existence, Democrats defended the office, saying Republican attacks were irresponsible. \"When Trump administration officials either disagree with or do not understand the impacts of their own policies, they prefer to attack the nonpartisan analysts who are doing their jobs with integrity and expertise,\" Representative Steny Hoyer, a Democratic House leader, said at the time. The CBO was created in 1974 during a spending dispute between the Democratic-controlled Congress and Republican President Richard Nixon after he withheld funds for government programs that did not support his political positions.","label":0}
{"text":"Atlantic City, the distressed New Jersey gambling hub, should consider privatizing its fire-fighting services and convention center and find ways to make more money off its drinking water utility, the city's emergency manager said in an updated fiscal rescue plan. The report comes one year after Governor Chris Christie appointed Kevin Lavin as emergency manager. Lavin's report, which also calls for additional layoffs, follows an initial assessment last March. New Jersey taxpayers have so far spent $2.62 million on Lavin and his team of accountants, restructuring lawyers and a mediator, according to invoices obtained and reviewed by Reuters through public records requests. \"I'm glad the emergency manager has, after spending millions of dollars in no-bid contracts and wasting months of time, concluded what we all know: that Atlantic City government is broken and needs to be fixed immediately,\" Senate President Steve Sweeney said in a statement. Sweeney is now pushing for a full state takeover of Atlantic City operations that would strip elected officials of nearly all power. Lavin said in a statement that over the past year his office and city stakeholders have \"kept the city from falling into financial ruin\" by tackling a $100 million budget deficit. \"Unfortunately, our momentum has been stalled by parochial politics that continue to inhibit progress, all to the detriment of the taxpayers of Atlantic City,\" he said. \"Many of the most critical and financially important issues need to be addressed urgently.\" He said the city should consider privatizing the entertainment and sports arena Boardwalk Hall and should regionalize municipal services, including police. The city is facing tough odds. Its school district is projecting a budget deficit of up to $55 million in fiscal 2017. Atlantic City also has at least $190 million of casino tax appeals and other unbonded debt. In part because of that, the city's \"ability to raise public funds in order to repay the unbonded debt is highly unlikely,\" the report said The report found that the city does not qualify for \"adequate\" financing under the state's Qualified Bond Act, which it used in the past to issue bonds because its credit rating is at junk status. Mayor Don Guardian said in a statement he would review the report. \"I fully recognize that much work still needs to be done to fix the problems that have accumulated over the past 30 years,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"A Socialists dream! Now you can check your privilege at the door. With the Equipay app, you ll never have to walk away from a restaurant with friends wondering if you paid your fair share It s a huge dilemma for progressives: on the one hand, it s terribly patriarchal for a man to pay for a woman s dinner. On the other hand, the gender pay gap of feminist mythology holds that women only make 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. So isn t the failure to pay just another contribution to structural sexism?Equipay, a new app for Android and the iPhone has a solution. Developed by San Francisco-based comedian Luna Malbroux, the app divides bills between dinner guests according to their race and gender. For example, black women, who allegedly make just 64 cents on the dollar compared to white men, would only pay 64 per cent of their share of the bill.According to the app s website, Equipay helps you avoid the entrenched discrimination that exists in our society. It doesn t split the bill equally it splits it equitably. You pay what you should to balance out the wage gap. The app is free to use unless you re a member of a high-privilege group. Then there s a surcharge. As the site explains: When dining out with a high privilege group, Equipay automatically adds an EquipayItBack Surcharge. This fee subsidizes meals for others and funds Equipay s charitable arm. Thanks! Last but not least, the app allows users to let their followers know whenever they ve used the app to smash the patriarchy at the dinner table. In a live presentation of the app, Melbroux described how a user, Graham shares his Equipay-powered purchase on social media to show that he is a social justice ally. Of course, having informed the world of his use of Equipay, it remains to be seen if Graham will ever be invited out for a meal again.The app won first prize at San Francisco s Comedy Hack Day, which brings comedians, developers, and designers together. However, Melbroux insists that the app isn t a joke. In an interview with Care2, she expressed hopes that the app would start a serious conversation: I hope that this, more than anything, starts a discussion and helps people to start thinking a little bit differently about how we can use more technology and more innovation to address inequality and wage inequality. For the rest of us, the app s social media sharing function will give us a useful list of people to never invite out for dinner.","label":1}
{"text":"Hint: It s not because of Jane Fonda (although that would make more sense than the actual reason for their apology).If the people who re up for an award happen to be white then why is that such a huge deal? Well, it s a huge deal in Hollywood and demands a mea culpa Is Hollywood going to now be forced to give a lead role NOT to the best person for the role but the most racially diverse actress? Someone needs to slap some sense into Hollywood!On Wednesday, The Hollywood Reporter published a group discussion with a panel of potential female award contenders as part of its annual Actress Roundtable cover story. An hour later, the publication issued a preemptive mea culpa for the fact that all the actresses on their panel happened to be white.THR executive editor Stephen Galloway sat down with actresses Carey Mulligan, Jennifer Lawrence, Cate Blanchett, Jane Fonda, Brie Larson, Helen Mirren, Charlotte Rampling, and Kate Winslet all of whom have projects contending for an Academy Award or an Emmy in the coming year.The interview was everything you would expect from a group of actresses speaking off the cuff to a publication that s been covering the entertainment industry since the 1930s.However, due to the current politically correct climate in Hollywood and the country at large, Galloway felt the need to immediately clarify why there were no minority women in a roundtable discussion with award contenders a pool which includes few minorities in 2016.","label":1}
{"text":"The lyrics seem to have been inspired by Donald s Trumpisms. These are not your typical little beauty pageant girls. These girls are rockin liberty and Trump s fans can t get enough of them!Watch, and you ll see why this video has already received over 2 million hits in 2 days:","label":1}
{"text":"A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a U.S. Department of Justice request to place on hold an appeal over President Donald Trump's travel ban on people from seven majority-Muslim countries. The order from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could increase pressure on the Trump administration to clarify its intentions regarding the controversial executive order. The 9th Circuit suspended Trump's travel ban earlier this month while litigation over the measure proceeds. Trump has said he will soon issue a new executive order that addresses concerns raised by the appeals court judges. The president's Jan. 27 order caused chaos at airports around the world as visa holders heading to the United States were pulled off planes or turned around upon arrival at U.S. airports. Trump has said travel limitations are necessary to protect the United States from attacks by Islamist militants. His original order barred people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the country for 90 days. Refugees were banned for 120 days, except those from Syria, who were banned indefinitely. Americans were deeply divided over the measure, which was condemned by prominent U.S. companies and allies and challenged in court by the state of Washington. The 9th Circuit had directed the Justice Department to file a legal brief defending the travel ban later this week. Given Trump's intention to issue a new order, however, the Justice Department asked last week for the appeal to be placed on hold. In a response, the state of Washington said the Trump administration has said both that it would pursue an appeal, and that it would issue a new order. \"Throughout these proceedings, there appears to have been a lack of communication between the Department of Justice and the White House,\" the Washington attorney general's office said in a court filing arguing that the 9th Circuit move forward now. Representatives for the Justice Department declined to comment. After stating that a new travel ban would be issued last week, a White House official said on Wednesday that a new order would come sometime this week.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump dictated a statement, later shown to be misleading, in which his son Donald Trump Jr. said a meeting he had with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 was not related to his father's presidential campaign, the Washington Post reported on Monday. Trump Jr. released emails earlier in July that showed he eagerly agreed last year to meet a woman he was told was a Russian government lawyer who might have damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as part of Moscow's official support for his father. The New York Times was first to report the meeting. The Washington Post said Trump advisers discussed the new disclosure and agreed that Trump Jr. should issue a truthful account of the episode so that it \"couldn't be repudiated later if the full details emerged.\" The president, who was flying home from Germany on July 8, changed the plan and \"personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said he and the Russian lawyer had 'primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children,'\" the Post said, citing unnamed people with knowledge of the deliberations. It said the statement, issued to the New York Times as it prepared to publish the story, emphasized that the subject of the meeting was \"not a campaign issue at the time.\" An attorney for Trump, Jay Sekulow, issued a statement in response to the Post report: \"Apart from being of no consequence, the characterizations are misinformed, inaccurate, and not pertinent.\" The White House did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Post story, nor did Trump Jr.'s attorney, Alan Futerfas. U.S. investigators are probing whether there was collusion between the Kremlin and Trump's Republican presidential campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow sought to hurt Clinton and help Trump in the 2016 election. Russia denies any interference, and Trump has denied collusion with Russia.The president applauded his son's \"transparency\" after he released the email exchanges on July 11. \"It remains unclear exactly how much the president knew at the time of the flight about Trump Jr.'s meeting,\" the Washington Post said. David Sklansky, a professor of criminal law at Stanford Law School, said that if Trump, as reported by the Post, helped craft a misleading public statement about the meeting, he may have bolstered a potential obstruction of justice case against himself. To build a criminal obstruction of justice case, federal law requires prosecutors to show that a person acted with \"corrupt\" intent. A misleading public statement could be used as evidence of corrupt intent, Sklansky said. \"Lying usually isn't a crime,\" he said. But \"it could be relevant in determining whether something else the president did, like firing (former FBI Director James) Comey, was done corruptly.\"","label":0}
{"text":"RT October 27, 2016  Britain is deploying troops, aircraft and armor in the biggest military buildup in Eastern Europe since the Cold War.  The deployment, which was first floated in the press by UK defense chiefs on Wednesday, appears to have been prepared well in advance.  It will see up to 800 armored infantry troops deployed to Estonia and Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter jets deployed to Romania in what appears to be a reiteration of the strategy of containment employed against the Soviet Union during the Cold War.  France and Denmark will also commit more troops.  On Wednesday, UK Defence Secretary Michael Fallon struck a belligerent tone in the Wall Street Journal when he warned that Europe \" is our continent \" and, as such, would be defended.  While he claimed the force would be \" defensive in nature \" he pledged it would be \" fully combat-capable. \" A d v e r t i s e m e n t  He denied the placement of small formations around the Baltic area are merely a \" trip-wire \" in case of the much-heralded, but hypothetical, clash with Russia.  \" This is a serious military presence, \" he said.  Tensions have only just begun to subside after a fleet of Russian naval vessels bound for the Mediterranean Sea passed through the North Sea and English Channel.  The passage caused a press frenzy in the UK, framed as though Russia was launching an invasion of the British Isles. The Royal Navy deployed destroyers to, in Fallon's words, \" man-mark \" the vessels while the RAF overflew the ships with fighter jets.  According to the Russian military, the naval group's task was to \" ensure a naval presence in operationally significant areas of the world's oceans, \" as well as \" the safety of maritime navigation and other maritime economic activities \" of Russia.  Britain's deployment of troops, drones and aircraft is expected to begin in May 2018. This article was posted: Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 6:45 am Share this article","label":1}
{"text":"in: War Propaganda , World News If it's not Islamophobia, it's Russophobia. Tired of Western propaganda? Get Vladimir Putin's perspective with words straight from the horse's mouth. Vladimir Putin in particular, and Russia in general, have been the focus of an intensive high-drama propaganda campaign of late. Are you buying it? For the time being, Russophobia has replaced Islamophobia as the driving force behind the lies. Various US officials have been frantically warning Americans that the Russians are behind everything: hacking the DNC, controlling Trump, influencing the election and breaking the Syrian ceasefire agreement. They might as well add making your girlfriend break up with you, making your toast get burnt and making your car run out of fuel for all the evidence they have presented. Many of these totally unfounded allegations stem from (naturally) the Clinton campaign, home to career criminals Bill and Hillary Clinton , who are desperately seeking to find something to gain some sort of shred of popularity or advantage over Trump, who fills up arenas with 1000s of people more easily than Clinton can fill a high school gym with 50. Many US officials and war hawks are trying to get in on the action; CIA man Mike Morell indicated it would be a good idea to covertly kill Russians to make them \"pay a price\" ; Hillary Clinton called Vladimir Putin the \"grand godfather of extreme nationalism\" and blamed him for the rising popularity of right-wing leaders; and even standing VP Joe Biden came out and said that, \"We're sending a message to Putin \u2026 it will be at the time of our choosing and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact\" . It seems there is no depth to which some US leaders won't stoop in order to gain some political advantage, even it means lying, demonizing and destroying geopolitical partnerships in order to garner a few brownie points. Russophobia is in full swing before the US Presidential Election to distract American voters. Vladimir Putin: It's All About Distraction During Election Season You would think Russian President Vladimir President would be agitated by all of this mud-slinging. At times he has been, for instance when he issued a warning a few months ago about an impending WW3 due to NATO's constant aggression and advancement towards Russian borders. However, judging by his own words and mostly calm demeanor, he has seen through the agenda and understands what is going on. Putin spells out how it's all inflamed rhetoric before an election season, an old trick used by politicians to distract when they have no meaningful solutions for internal and domestic problems. Here is Vladimir Putin in his own words : \"You can expect anything from our American friends \u2026 the only novelty is that for the first time, on the highest level, the United States has admitted involvement in these activities, and to some extent threatened [us] \u2013 which of course does not meet the standards of international communication. As if we didn't know that US Government bodies snoop on and wiretap anyone? Everyone knows this \u2026 Apparently, they are nervous. The question is why. I think there is a reason. You know, in an election campaign, the current government carefully crafts a pre-election strategy, and any government, especially when seeking re-election, always has unresolved issues. They need to show, to explain to the voters why they remain unresolved. In the US, there are many such problems \u2026 for example, the massive public debt is a time bomb for the US economy and global financial system \u2026 more examples can be cited in foreign policy \u2026 in these conditions, many choose to resort to the usual tactics of distracting voters from their problems \u2026 try to create an enemy and rally the nation against that enemy \u2026 Iran and the Iranian threat did not work well for that. Russia is a more interesting story.\" And that's exactly what this whole thing is: a giant story. However, as Voltaire once said, if you can make someone believe absurdities, you can make them commit atrocities. Let's see what else Vladimir Putin has to say on other topics of interest. Russian Hacking: A Laughable Claim so the Clintons and DNC Can Try to Avoid Culpability Let's face it: the whole Russophobia affair is about avoiding blame, dodging responsibility and evading liability. Thanks to WikiLeaks, Project Veritas and many other sources, we know the entire Hillary Clinton campaign has been rigged beyond belief. Fake primaries, fake speeches, fake images, fake videos, fake crowds, fake supporters and fake debates. There is seemingly no depth of criminality to which that woman won't sink. She's selling out the presidency before she even gets there, such as the stunt of trying to promise future presidential executive orders to mega donors. There is not a shred of evidence that Russia is affiliated with WikiLeaks or behind any of the DNC hacks. As this Zero Hedge article NSA Whistleblower: US Intelligence Worker Likely Behind DNC Leaks, Not Russia states: \"On \"Judge Napolitano Chambers,\" the Judge said that while the DNC, government officials, and the Clinton campaign all accuse the Russians of hacking into the DNC servers, \"the Russians had nothing to do with it.\" Napolitano then mentioned Binney, arguing the NSA veteran and whistleblower who \"developed the software that the NSA now uses, which allows it to capture not just metadata but content of every telephone call, text message, email in the United States of every person in [the country]\" knew the NSA had hacked the DNC \u2014 not the Russians. If Judge Napolitano and Binney are right and the NSA did hack the DNC, what was the motive? According to the Judge, \"members of the intelligence community simply do not want [Clinton] to be president of the United States.\" \"She doesn't know how to handle state secrets,\" Napolitano continued. And since \"some of the state secrets that she revealed used the proper true names of American intelligence agents operating undercover in the Middle East,\" some of these agents were allegedly captured and killed, prompting NSA agents to feel compelled to act. Whether NSA agents hacked the DNC or not, one thing is clear: there's no real evidence linking the DNC and Arizona and Illinois voting system hacks to the Russian government.\" The Mythical \"Russian Threat\" Vladimir Putin directly addressed another mythical story, that of the so-called Russian threat and Russian aggression , at the recent Valdai forum in Sochi from October 24-27, 2016: \"There is another mechanism to ensure the transatlantic security, European security, the OC security and their attempt at turning this organization (NATO) into an instrument of someone's political interests. So what the OC is doing is simply void. Mythical threats are devised like the so-called Russian military threat. Certainly this can be (used to) gain some advantage, get new budgets, make your allies comply with your demands, make NATO deploy the equipment and troops closer to our border \u2026 Russia is not trying to attack anyone. That would be ridiculous \u2026 The population of Europe is 300 million \u2026 and the population of the US is 300 million, while the population of Russia is 140 million, yet such menaces are served as a pretext. Hysteria has been fueled in the US with regard to Russia's alleged influence with the current presidential election. Is there anyone who seriously thinks that Russia can influence the choice of the American people? Is the US a banana republic? The US is a great power. If I'm wrong please correct me.\" Here's what he had to say about who the real aggressor is when it comes to the US and Russia: \"Is it known to you that Russia, in the 90s, completely halted (as did the USSR) any strategic aviation in the further afield regions of patrol, i.e. not in the closer abroad. We halted such activity completely. US geostrategic aviation however, with nuclear weapons on board. They continued to encircle us! What for? Who are you concerned about? Or why are you threatening us? We continued with the non-patrol year after year. It is only since about 3 years ago that we restarted aviation patrol further abroad. Which party is the provocateur here? Is it us? We have only 2 military bases abroad. They are known areas of terrorism dangers \u2026 US bases on the other hand are all over the world. And you are telling me that I am the aggressor? Have you any common sense? What are US forces doing in Europe, including nuclear weaponry? What business have they got there? Listen to me. Our military budget, while increased slightly from last year, in the dollar equivalent, is about US$50 billion. The military budget of the Pentagon is almost 10 times that amount. $575 billion, I think Congress singed off on. And you're telling me I'm the aggressor here? Have you no common sense at all? Is it us putting our forces on the border of the US? Or other states? Is it NATo, or who, that is moving their bases closer to us? Military infrastructure! It's not us. Does anyone even listen to us? Or try to have some kind of dialogue with us? The repeated answer we get is 'mind your own business' and 'each country can choose its own security measures'. Very well, so will we \u2026 And finally, on the antiballistic missile defense system, who was it that exited from the treaty which was vital to the entire system of international security? Was it us? No. It was the States. In a one-sided way, they simply withdrew from the treaty. Now they are threatening us, turning their missiles towards us, not only from Alaska, but also from Europe too \u2026 We want to develop normal relations in the sphere of security, in the fight against terrorism, in the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. We want to work together with you \u2026 so long as you want that too.\" US Repeatedly Broke Its Promises to Russia and Destroyed Trust The Western MSM is so one-sided in its coverage of geopolitical events like Ukraine and Syria. Anyone not toeing the line with US-UK-NATO interests is painted in a bad light. In point of fact, it has actually been the US who has been breaking agreements with Russia since the end of the Cold War. US leaders lied to Russian leaders at the time, by promising that NATO would not extend any further eastward, and possibly even hinting that Russia could join NATO. As Eric Zuesse explains in his article America Trashes NATO Founding Act; Rushes Weapons to Russia's Borders : \"The NATO Founding Act was agreed to between the US and Russia in 1997 in order to provide to Russia's leader Boris Yeltsin some modicum of assurance that America wouldn't invade his country. When his predecessor Mikhail Gorbachev had ended the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact military alliance in 1991, the representatives of US President GHW Bush told him that NATO wouldn't move \u00abone inch to the east\u00bb (toward Russia), but as soon as Gorbachev committed himself to end the Cold War, Bush told his agents, regarding what they had all promised to Gorbachev (Bush's promise which had been conveyed through them), \u00abTo hell with that! We prevailed, they didn't\u00bb. In other words: Bush's prior instructions to them were merely his lies to Gorbachev, his lies to say that the US wouldn't try to conquer Russia (move its forces eastward to Russia's borders); but, now, since Gorbachev was committed and had already agreed that East Germany was to be reunited with and an extension of West Germany (and the process for doing that had begun), Bush pulled that rug of lies out from under the end of the Cold War \u2026\" Bill Clinton carried on the great American legacy of exceptionalism (that is, excepting themselves from obeying international law) spearheaded by Daddy Bush of surrounding and dominating Russia by allowing NATO into the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Russia got shafted by trusting the US numerous times after the fall of the Soviet Union. Here's Vladimir Putin once again on America's broken promises (in April 2016): \"In the early 2000s, we agreed with the Americans to destroy weapons-grade plutonium, on both sides. We were talking about the excessive amounts that were manufactured by both the US and Russia. This is the enriched uranium from which nuclear weapons are made. 34000 tonnes, from both sides. We signed an agreement, and decided that this material would be destroyed in a specific manner. It would be destroyed in an industrial way \u2013 for which special plants needed to be built. We fulfilled our obligations \u2013 we built the necessary plant. Our American partners did not. Moreover, recently they announced that rather than destroy the enriched material in the manner that we agreed, and signed an international agreement on, that they would dilute it and store it in a holding capacity. This means they retain the potential to bring it back \u2026 Surely our American partners must understand that, jokes are one thing, such as creating smear campaigns against Russia, but questions of nuclear security are another thing entirely \u2026 they must learn to fulfill their promises. They once said they would close down Guantanamo. And? Is it closed? No.\" Incidentally, this is the exact same plutonium agreement which made the news last month, when as reported on October 3rd, 216, Russia suspended their deal with the US on disposal of plutonium from decommissioned nuclear warheads. A decree signed by Vladimir Putin lists \" the radical change in the environment, a threat to strategic stability posed by the hostile actions of the US against Russia, and the inability of the US to deliver on the obligation to dispose of excessive weapons plutonium under international treaties, as well as the need to take swift action to defend Russian security\" as the reasons for why Russia chose to suspend the deal. Conclusion: Wake up and Smell the Russophobia Expect Vladimir Putin and Russia to keep being demonized by the Clintons \u2013 and more importantly the NWO manipulators who so desperately want them in power. Although the Clintons are a powerful modern American mafia family, replete with a long body count behind them, it's important to remember they are lackeys for far greater and more pervasive powers (check out some of Hillary's lovey-dovey letters to Lynn Forester de Rothschild here ). There's a lot at stake here. Right now, Vladimir Putin and Russia are being used with the sole purpose of getting Clinton elected. Although Putin is not perfect and has his own dark side, he deserves respect for standing his ground and refusing to become another US puppet. If we are to believe his own words, he has no qualm with Americans or even America itself, but rather the selfish, imperialistic and murderous agenda of the NWO agents running the USA: \"We have a great deal of respect and love for the United States, and especially for the American people \u2026 [however] the expansion of jurisdiction by one nation beyond the territory of its borders, to the rest of the world, is unacceptable and destructive for international relations.\" It's up to the American public to switch off CNN (Clinton News Network) and all the other duplicitous MSM channels and get truly informed. Vladimir Putin is reaching out his hand to America, in the hope that enough Americans can reclaim their country and work together with other nations in peace. On the issue of Vladimir Putin and Russia, the MSM is not just one-sided, it's outright lying.","label":1}
{"text":"Malaysian police thwarted a plan by a member of the Islamic-State linked Abu Sayyaf militant group to attack the closing ceremony of the Southeast Asian Games in Kuala Lumpur last week, the top police official said on Tuesday. The suspected attacker, a 25-year-old Philippine national, had been involved in fighting, kidnapping and beheading of foreign hostages in the Philippines, Inspector-General of Police Mohamad Fuzi Harun said in a statement. The arrest will raise concern about increasing cooperation among militants within Southeast Asia and what governments fear is the spreading influence of Islamic State as it loses ground in the Middle East.. Mohamad Fuzi did not identify the suspect but said he had planned to attack the closing ceremony of the games at the Bukit Jalil National Stadium, as well as an Independence Day parade the next day. He gave no detail of the plans. The man was arrested in a raid on Aug. 30, the day of the ceremony, along with seven other suspected members of the hardline Abu Sayyaf, including another Philippine national. Authorities said earlier they had detained Philippine Abu Sayyaf leader Hajar Abdul Mubin, 25, also known as Abu Asrie, in the Aug. 30 raid. Abu Asrie was arrested with six Malaysians and another Philippine national, aged between 20 and 52, police said earlier. Eleven other suspected militants, including nine foreigners, were picked up in a two-month security operation before the games. The arrests were the latest in a crackdown on militancy by Muslim-majority Malaysia. Since 2013, Malaysia has arrested more than 250 people on suspicion of links to Islamic State. Among those picked up were two Iraqi brothers, aged 41 and 63, who were suspected to have served as commanders for Islamic State, Mohamad Fuzi said. They were working as technicians and were arrested in a Kuala Lumpur suburb on Aug. 11. The Iraqis had arrived in Malaysia separately and were detained on information from foreign intelligence agencies, a Malaysian police source told Reuters. One arrived last year, while the other came in early August. We re still investigating what their activities were in Malaysia, said the source, who declined to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to media. Others picked up in the sweep included suspects from Bangladesh, the Maldives, Indonesia and the Palestinian territories. Police counter-terrorism chief Ayob Khan Mydin Pitchay told Reuters the number of foreigners showed the growing Islamic State threat in the region.","label":0}
{"text":"Draft-dodger Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president, is at war with a military expert who had the audacity to point out Trump's obvious ignorance about the military operation against ISIS in Mosul, Iraq.  Today, in an ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos, Trump sounded off about Mosul. \"So you can tell your military expert that I'll sit down and I'll teach him a couple of things.\"  In Trump's experience-free opinion, Mosul is a \"total disaster\" because we gave too much notice of the attack. The attack on Mosul is turning out to be a total disaster. We gave them months of notice. U.S. is looking so dumb. VOTE TRUMP and WIN AGAIN!  \u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2016  Trump made similar comments during the last presidential debate . \"The element of surprise. Douglas MacArthur, George Patton spinning in their graves when they see the stupidity of our country.\"  Unfortunately for Trump, real military experts disagree. The next day, the New York Times reported that such warnings reduce civilian casualties and instill fear within the enemy, among other benefits. Then there was this quote: \"'What this shows is Trump doesn't know a damn thing about military strategy,' said Jeff McCausland, a retired Army colonel and former dean at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.\"  Today, Stephanopoulos asked Trump about his tweet and McCausland's comment. Trump doubled down . Oh, and check out how he first referred to General George Patton: \"The Army War College \u2013 let me tell you, the element of surprise. I've been hearing about Mosul now for three months, 'We're going to attack. We're going to attack.' Meaning Iraq's going to attack but with us, OK? We're going to attack. Why do they have to talk about it? Don't talk about it. Element of surprise. General George Patent [sic].\"  Trump subsequently correctly referred to Patton. But his later comments probably did nothing to reassure anyone about his suitability as commander in chief. Besides his desire to lecture McCausland, Trump brushed aside a challenge to his dire assessment of the Mosul operation.  When Stephanopoulos noted that Defense Secretary Ash Carter has said 35 ISIS leaders have been killed, Trump insisted : \"Excuse me: The resistance is much greater now because they knew about the attack. Why can't they win first and talk later? Why do they have to say, three months before the attack, we're going in?\"  Of course, Trump provided no evidence to support his argument that a surprise attack would have worked better. But why would he? In Trump's mind, he knows better than anyone about fighting ISIS, as he said last year that: \"I know more about ISIS than the generals do, believe me.\"  Fortunately, it looks like most Americans don't believe him.  Video via ABC News on YouTube . About Ellen Brodsky  Ellen Brodsky is a long time blogger for NewsHounds.us and a contributor to Crooks and Liars. She has also worked as a researcher for Brave New Films' landmark documentary, \"Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism\" and \"Iraq for Sale.\" Connect","label":1}
{"text":"Indian journalists and rights activists protested on Wednesday against the murder of an outspoken publisher of a weekly tabloid amid growing concerns about freedom of the press at a time of rising nationalism and intolerance of dissent. Gauri Lankesh, 55, the editor and publisher of the Kannada-language Gauri Lankesh Patrike newspaper, was shot dead on Tuesday by unidentified assailants near her home in the southern city of Bengaluru. She had parked her car outside her gate and was walking to the main entrance of her home when the attackers fired at least seven rounds, killing her, police said. The motive was not known. Lankesh was a fierce advocate of secularism and opposed hardline Hindu groups associated with Prime Narendra Modi s right-wing, nationalist ruling party. Her weekly, with a circulation of more than 5,000, is regarded as influential in the state, read by policy makers and politicians. Lankesh spent decades with various media outlets before taking over the newspaper started by her father. Several journalist groups, including the Editors Guild, Press Club of India and Press Association, held protests in cities across India, calling her murder a brutal assault on the freedom of the press . They said she was a critical, secular voice at a time when the country was being swept by a wave of right-wing, Hindu nationalism. She was an idealist and would take on the right-wing forces on several controversial issues, said Y.P. Rajesh, an executive editor at the news website The Print and a long-time friend of Lankesh. The U.S. embassy in New Delhi also condemned the killing. The murder is a new low in India s recent record of protecting journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists has said that there have been no convictions in any of the 27 cases of journalists murdered in India because of their work since 1992. This year, the country of 1.3 billion people slipped three places to 136th in the World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Without Borders. The group said Hindu nationalists, on the rise since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in 2014, were trying to purge all manifestations of anti-national thought . Journalists seen to be critical of Hindu nationalists are often insulted on social media, and some women reporters have been threatened with assault. People, including BJP members, have also openly insulted journalists, using terms like presstitute - a combination press and prostitute - to berate them. In recent weeks, Lankesh had posted videos on her Facebook page that were critical of Modi s economic policies and the rise of hardline Hindu groups since he came to power. Last year, she was sentenced to six months in jail after a defamation case was filed by a BJP member. She was released on bail. Ananth Kumar, a federal minister in the Modi government, said the state government must arrest those behind the killing. The state government in Karnataka, run by the Congress party, said it had set up a special investigations team to investigate and police were examining CCTV footage. M.N. Anucheth, a senior police official investigating the case, said Lankesh was shot in the head, neck and chest. This is an attempt to silence all of us all of those who believe in democracy and decency, Ramchandra Guha, a historian told the Indian Express newspaper. (This story has been refiled to fix spellng in paragraph 22)","label":0}
{"text":"For centuries, societies have erected walls and fences to separate themselves from their neighbors, from the Great Wall of China through the Berlin Wall right up to the barrier that today divides Israel from the Palestinians on the West Bank. The United States has debated putting up security barriers of its own along the Southwest border and has spent billions of dollars in recent years fencing one-third of it. Now, Donald Trump is proposing to go even further, vowing to build a massive, impenetrable wall along the U.S.-Mexico frontier to keep out illegal Mexican migrants.  \"Building a wall is easy, and it can be done inexpensively,\" the Republican presidential candidate said in an interview. \"It's not even a difficult project if you know what you're doing.'' The wall has become the signature proposal of Trump's campaign, which has stirred widespread controversy over its focus on illegal immigration and his comments about immigrants. Any wall-building effort would cost billions of dollars and encounter a variety of obstacles, according to experts, documents and federal officials, including some of the same difficulties that bedeviled the federal government as it spent more than $7 billion on border fencing. The hurdles include environmental and engineering problems; fights with ranchers and others who don't want to give up their land; and the huge topographical challenges of the border, which runs through remote desert in Arizona to rugged mountains in New Mexico and, for two-thirds of its length, along rivers. \"It's extremely challenging to put a brick-and-mortar wall along the Southwest border for any number of reasons,\" said Richard Stana, who wrote multiple reports on border security for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office before retiring in 2011. \"It seems very simplistic.\" If such a barrier could be erected, experts and government officials agreed that making it impenetrable would be virtually impossible, as is completely securing the entire 1,954-mile border. The Department of Homeland Security is already spending millions of dollars a year to maintain existing fences and to repair breaches, according to government reports and officials, while drug traffickers and smugglers are increasingly using tunnels to pass underneath. While a wall along much of the border might theoretically be possible, said Thad Bingel, a former senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official, \"is it desirable? At what cost, and what do you give up to pay for that?'' Bingel \u2014 who was involved in border fence-building during the George W. Bush administration and is now a partner at Command Consulting Group in Washington \u2014 added: \"Every wall can be circumvented. People can go under it, they can go over it. . . . No one should go into this with the idea that if you just build the right kind of wall, no one will get through.'' Trump disputed that, saying that a wall \"would be very effective\" in deterring illegal migrants and that seismic and other equipment could detect and stop any underground tunnels. \"A wall is better than fencing, and it's much more powerful,\" he said. \"It's more secure. It's taller.\" The veteran builder acknowledged that environmental impact studies would be difficult but said he is the one person who can rise to the challenge. \"I'm considered a great builder, by everybody,\" he said, adding that cost is irrelevant because he would force Mexico to pay for the structure. Asked whether that was realistic, Trump said: \"It's realistic if you know something about the art of negotiating. If you have a bunch of clowns negotiating, it's not realistic.\" Trump has emerged as a leading GOP candidate partly because of his strong statements about immigration, which have included describing Mexicans entering the country illegally as \"rapists\" and \"murderers.\" He has suggested at times that his proposed wall would be extensive and would cover nearly the entire border, but said in the interview: \"You don't have to build it in every location. There would be some locations where you would have guards, where you don't need it because the topography acts as its own wall, whether that's water or very rough terrain.\" [Univision cuts ties with Trump over comments about Mexican immigrants] The concept of a wall or fence along virtually the entire border has bubbled up occasionally in the nation's immigration debate, with some Republicans supporting the idea. Today, there are more than 45 such walls and border fences worldwide, perhaps most prominently Israel's West Bank barrier. While Israeli officials say it has reduced attacks, security specialists say that barrier, slated to be more than 400 miles long when finished, is not comparable to what would be required along the far more extensive U.S. Southwest border. The Israelis, they add, supplement the physical concrete barrier with a mix of border police and technology, much as the Department of Homeland Security does in the United States. The U.S. government began building border fencing near San Diego in 1990. As DHS cracked down on illegal immigration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush dramatically expanded the effort. Spending on border fencing and related infrastructure such as lighting shot up from $298 million in 2006 to $1.5 billion the following year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. Overall, more than $7 billion has been spent to build what is now almost 653 miles of Southwest border fencing \u2014 costing nearly $5 million per mile in some spots \u2014 nearly half in Arizona. The costs could rise substantially if extensive new fencing was built, since it would be in increasingly remote regions without roads and in mountainous terrain, said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. Adding even more to the expense, he said, would be acquiring private land near the border and maintaining existing fencing. Trump's wall would probably cost far more than fencing, Stana said, given the greater needs for construction materials and labor. While current and former DHS officials say the fencing has been effective in deterring illegal immigration, they say it is only one part of a broader border strategy that includes expanded sensors, drones and other technology, along with growing numbers of Border Patrol officers. \"Our southern border is a mixture of winding river, desert and mountains. Simply building more fences is not the answer,\" DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said in an October speech. The government's difficulties in erecting fences highlight the challenges of building a wall, experts said. The fencing mandated by Congress in 2006 was beset by delays, surging construction costs and disputes with private property owners, mostly in Texas, DHS officials have said. The biggest failure was the virtual fence, a Bush administration effort to cover the border with a high-tech surveillance system. \"It's a huge effort to construct anything at the border,\" said one DHS official, who has worked in Republican and Democratic administrations and spoke on the condition of anonymity because Trump's plan is part of a political campaign. \"You have lots of requirements to do construction: the environmental piece, engineering assessments. And a private landowner might not want fencing.\" Wayne Cornelius, director of the Mexican migration field research program at the University of California at San Diego, called Trump's proposal \"ludicrous. . . . Any physical barrier can be tunneled under or climbed over or gotten around. There will always be gaps, and smugglers and migrants will seek out those gaps and go through.\" Robert Costa and Alice Crites contributed to this story.","label":0}
{"text":"Ben Rhodes, who ran foreign policy errands for President Barack Obama as Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Speechwriting, created an infamous \"echo chamber\" of fake news to sell the Iran deal. [Now, Rhodes is part of a new echo, repeating and retweeting smears aimed at one of his successors, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Deputy Assistant to President Donald Trump and a key media spokesman for the White House. Rhodes first took aim at Gorka in response to a tweet by Tommy Vietor, a former National Security Council spokesman under President Obama who infamously attempted to dismiss the Benghazi scandal by telling Fox News' Bret Baier: \"Dude, this was like two years ago. \" Vietor was, in turn, quoting a Newsweek article criticizing Gorka for criticizing a critic for criticizing his credentials. Rhodes piled on, mocking the \"Breitbart credentialed Gorka\" for his sensitivity. Rhodes and Vietor ought to be the last to question anyone's credentials. Rhodes had no national security experience before being plucked from a struggling career as a fiction writer and promoted up the ladder. Vietor was literally the \"dude\" who drove the press van for Obama on the campaign trail. Both symbolize the callow nature and culture of the Obama West Wing. (Rhodes still claims today that Syria gave up \"all\" of its chemical weapons in 2013.) Since that first swipe in February, Rhodes has joined the latest round of smears aimed at Gorka, tweeting an article from the Forward that attempted \u2014 and failed \u2014 to prove that Gorka supported an antisemitic Hungarian militia. This person works in the WH: \"Gorka \u2026 publicly supported a violent racist and militia\" https: . via @jdforward, \u2014 Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) April 3, 2017, (Be warned before clicking on the link to the Forward article itself: readers are hit with a popup request for donations to continue funding the smear campaign against Gorka. They are literally fundraising off this character assassination.) The article included an old video interview in Hungarian with Gorka, with English subtitles \u2014 but the video was obviously spliced together. The raw video was also provided, but without subtitles. David Reboi of RedState undertook a full translation. As David P. Goldman of PJ Media noted, \"the Forward's clip edits out Gorka's denunciation of the parties for exploiting popular fears in order to advance their own agenda\" (original emphasis). A lie good enough, as the joke goes, for government work \u2014 or work, in Rhodes's case. He tweeted later: \"Picture if Gorka was a Muslim who supported an militia and had associations with Nazi groups. Would he be in the White House?\" Here Rhodes did more than repeat the false accusations in the Forward: he also took aim at Gorka's notable criticism of radical Islam, a threat Rhodes and his former boss refused even to pronounce. The culmination of this new \"echo chamber\" came last weekend, with an NBC News piece that tried, and failed, to prove Gorka's associations with Hungarian extremists but smeared him anyway, citing a fraudulent organization. And so a smear that started with a discredited report on an blog has been promoted, via the Forward \u2014 which has an actual problem with antisemitism, having linked Zionists absurdly and outragously with Nazis \u2014 into the front ranks of the mainstream media and finally to the big network news stage, but remains essentially empty. It is the \"echo chamber,\" reborn \u2014 or, rather, undead, a sort of zombie, totally impervious to truth. Note that none of Gorka's detractors actually question his support for Israel, or even his links with Jews, because they do not care. The echo chamber depends on a factual void, and repetition by false authorities. Just ask the man who invented it. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the \"most influential\" people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.","label":0}
{"text":"(King World News) Paul Brodsky, Macro Allocation Inc. \u2014 Gold  To \"take a flier\" against consensus with long duration treasuries also suggests taking a flier with gold. Treasuries and gold are normally inversely correlated. In a typical economic cycle, declining treasury yields imply dollar strength, which in turn, suggests gold weakness. We argue that current conditions do not imply a normal economic cycle and that, in the current environment, long treasury positions may be best hedged \u2013 and potentially enhanced \u2013 with a long gold position. (For fixed income investors, this is reminiscent of hedging long MBS positions with long Treasury positions.)\u2026 IMPORTANT: To hear which legend just spoke with KWN about $8,000 gold and the coming mania in the gold, silver, and mining shares markets CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.  In the current environment (imminent balance sheet recession), gold is the most convex asset we know. Gold hedges financial asset values by hedging the currency in which they are denominated. An increase in goods and service inflation reduces the purchasing power value of the currency while an increase in goods and service deflation reduces the supply of goods and services. The former is better understood than the latter because the frequency of inflation is so much greater. At the end of the day, gold is a hedge against balance sheet de-leveraging, whether it comes from a significant increase in the quantity of money or a significant decrease in the value of liabilities. A decrease in the value of treasury bonds, from either debt deflation or currency inflation would send the price of gold in the underlying currency higher.  King World News note: It is very important to understand what Brodsky is saying in the paragraph below about the problem of higher interest rates in relation to investor portfolios and overall consumption. The Real Problem With Higher Interest Rates It is true that higher treasury yields would provide investors with positive carry that gold would not (unless investors choose to lend out gold in return for interest). Lost on investors that succumb to this thinking, however, is that with almost $20 trillion of treasury and agency debt outstanding, rising treasury yields would produce more debt deflation on existing portfolios than higher income from newly issued treasuries would stimulate consumption.  You may find the discussion above dense, in large part because gold's characteristics are unfamiliar to most financial asset investors. After all, it is a shiny rock with no utility or income, a monetary relic of pre- digital generations. The way to think about gold is as a necessary monetary anchor if\/when leveraged fiat currencies can no longer be supported by global banking systems and the global productive economy. In extremis, there would be no fiat currency winners, even the dollar.  Simply, gold is the one item against which all currencies, and the assets and liabilities they value, can be re-valued by political and monetary authorities regardless of whether or not authorities coordinate a synchronized revaluation. It is the only politically-unsanctioned potential monetary asset banking systems cannot create and authorities cannot directly control. (Official gold holdings amount to about 22% of above-ground gold.) It is also the only asset on most central bank balance sheets that is not debt. The world's largest central banks and the IMF continue to store and add to their gold reserves, we surmise, because it might come in handy one day.  The daily price of gold today, in dollars, euros, yen, etc., 1) handicaps the likelihood of the global monetary system failing; and 2) implicitly speculates an exchange rate against which fiat currencies would be converted if necessary.  A Global Monetary Reset With QE Used To Purchase Gold? Were gold to again become a sanctioned monetary asset, the transformation would likely be executed by the political dimension through their banking systems, as it always has been. We would speculate that such a transformation, if necessary, would be coordinated by the G10, agreed upon through a treaty, and overseen by the IMF and BIS. It would be a one-time monetary reset, rather than a reversion of the global monetary system to a fixed-exchange rate system.  Devaluing currencies to gold would be an expedient political solution to a global balance sheet recession. The reset would be similar in nature to debt jubilees periodically necessary since ancient times. The only difference here would be legal debt covenants would not have to be destroyed. Rather, the burden of servicing and repaying outstanding debt would be greatly reduced through inflation. The inflation would come from extreme central bank money creation used to purchase gold at higher prices \u2013 QE for gold. The new money would add a couple zeros to assets while keeping the principal value of liabilities constant.  A monetary reset that ties currencies to gold would not alter commerce. Consumers would not need gold in their pockets. Producers and merchants would be ostensibly satisfied that the debit cards consumers carry are backed by currency tied, even temporarily, to something finite.  Owning Gold Is Not Just About A Monetary Reset Investors should not necessarily own gold today in anticipation of a global monetary reset. Circling back to a contemporary discussion of whether to own gold in concert with long duration treasuries and other financial assets, the increasing potential for fiscal stimulation through deficit spending increases the odds that already indebted currencies will be rejected by goods and service suppliers. Gold priced in fiat currencies could rise if those currencies do not produce an equal amount of revenue and income. In short, gold should re-price higher if\/when global GDP falls and global liabilities don't.  *** KWN has just released one of legendary Art Cashin's greatest audio interviews ever discussing the gold market at length, including the recent takedown in gold, what to surprises to expect in key markets as Trump becomes president, and what impact massive public works projects will have on the United States, inflation, gold, bonds, and much more. and you can listen to this extraordinary interview by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.  ***KWN has now released the extraordinary KWN audio interview with whistleblower Andrew Maguire, where he discusses the gold and silver smash, at what price the large sovereign wholesale bids are located, and much more, and you can listen to it by CLICKING HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.   As The Monetary Madness Continues, What Is Happening Is Stunning\u2026 CLICK","label":1}
{"text":"Wow! This is really epic! Paris Dennard nails Paul Begala on Begala s trash talking of Trump. You won t believe the response from David Gergen! How can Trump let someone down when they never believed in his policies to begin with? We love Paris Dennard s effort to call out the liberal pundits this is not just good it s great that he said what every American is thinking about CNN and MSNBC:Strategist @David_Gergen clashes w\/ @PARISDENNARD: \"You respect the office not the man but he is letting me down\"https:\/\/t.co\/PWncWEoyzx CNN Newsroom (@CNNnewsroom) April 30, 2017PRIOR TO THE DENNARD COMMENTS, BEGALA CALLED THE PRESIDENT A MENTAL MIDGET AND A NEEDY LITTLE BABY :More GREAT TAKEDOWNS from Paris Dennard:THE EXCHANGE BETWEEN THESE TWO PUNDITS IS SO CLASSIC BECAUSE THE LIBERAL IS SUCH AN ELITIST Charles Blow didn t want to listen to the truth and had a major hissy fit when confronted with facts. It s pretty epic On CNN s New Day Friday morning, Chris Cuomo interviewed two black guests from opposing parties about Donald Trump s outreach to minorities. The anti-Trump guest, New York Times op-ed columnist Charles Blow grew visibly irritated with Cuomo and the pro-Trump guest, GOP commentator Paris Dennard, when Dennard said things Blow didn t agree with. After a heated back and forth discussion, Blow finally exploded at Cuomo, saying CNN was committing media malpractice for letting Dennard come on the show.","label":1}
{"text":"The entire community of Fort McMurray, the heart of Alberta's oil sands region, was ordered to evacuate on Tuesday night as a wildfire advanced on the city and cut off its only highway link to the south. The fire destroyed a number of homes in one neighborhood and some trailers in a trailer park, said Robin Smith, a spokesman for the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, which includes Fort McMurray. According to television news reports, commercial buildings downtown were also ablaze. There were no reports of injuries by early evening. A video showed flames and smoke rising hundreds of feet into the sky, prompting the largest fire evacuation in Alberta's history, The Edmonton Journal reported. The fire was expected to get worse on Wednesday, when winds were forecast to switch direction and increase in speed. Mr. Smith said early Tuesday that Highway 63, which connects Fort McMurray to Edmonton, Alberta, to the south and the main oil sands production areas to the north, was heavily congested with cars fleeing the fire, which began over the weekend. Late in the afternoon, however, the fire jumped over the highway, making evacuation to the south impossible, Mr. Smith said. He added that there was no immediate danger in areas north of Fort McMurray. The highway was later reopened. As of early Tuesday evening, the city's airport was open, but some airlines were canceling flights, said Jillian Philipp, an airport spokeswoman. After leaving the airport earlier in the day, Ms. Philipp said she was unable to return because of the fire. But employees still there told her that it did not appear to be in the immediate path of the flames. The provincial government had ordered residents out of six neighborhoods and a trailer park by late in the afternoon after declaring the fire \"out of control. \" The fire had consumed about 6, 500 acres of forest by late Monday night and increased substantially in size by Tuesday, said Laura Stewart, a spokeswoman for the provincial government. Ms. Stewart said that strong, changing winds were shifting the fire's direction, making it unsafe for firefighters on the ground. As a result, their efforts had been limited to aerial water bombing. A photograph posted by the government showed only a relatively small line of trees and a hill separating a commercial district from a tower of flame. Until last year, the oil sands had made Fort McMurray Canada's boomtown, where the biggest concern was dealing with frenetic growth and the housing shortages and social problems it created. The collapse of oil prices, however, has hit the city particularly hard. Oil sands companies have been laying off workers as projects are completed, but no major oil sands projects have shut down. Last year, the regional municipality had a population of about 125, 000, excluding thousands of workers who officially claimed residency elsewhere but who commuted by air to Fort McMurray and lived in work camps.","label":0}
{"text":"The public should not be forced to pay to walk on Germany s beaches or swim in the sea, a federal court ruled, calling into question private beaches along the North and Baltic Sea coasts. The coastal town of Wangerland, 170 km (100 miles) west of Hamburg, was sued by two residents of neighboring towns who demanded it provide free access to its two North Sea beaches. Wangerland s tourist office has largely fenced in the beaches, added facilities, playgrounds and lifeguards, and has been charging visitors a 3-euro ($3.57) entry fee during the summer season, with the exception of residents and tourists of the town itself. Under German law, anyone is allowed to enter unused tracts of land, a provision meant to give the public access to the country s natural beauty and create opportunities for fresh-air recreation free of charge. But a court in the state of Lower Saxony last year ruled in favor of Wangerland, saying the beaches in question were not unused but had been leased by the town for commercial purposes. The federal administrative court said in its ruling published on Thursday the town could not charge visitors to go for walks on the beach or to swim in the sea, but could for using the facilities set up there. Claims to nearly the entire beach, and not only the areas needed to operate the business, put excessive limits on general liberty, the court said in a statement, partly overturning the lower court s ruling.","label":0}
{"text":"Charles Koch, the billionaire CEO of Koch Industries has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on political campaigns because of Citizen s United, but he still thinks he should have even more influence.During an interview with the Financial Times, Charles Koch whined that even as he spends tons of money trying to shape the political landscape to his will he still doesn t have as much influence as he expected to have in 2016.Koch says he presented of list of his wishes to Republican candidates, who basically ignored them, which is why he is pouting now. (It) doesn t seem to faze them much, Koch said. You d think we could have more influence. It is hard for me to get a high level of enthusiasm because the things I m passionate about and I think this country urgently needs aren t being addressed. In other words, Koch has the sads because he hoped Republicans would automatically be his puppets and support and enact all of his demands.The billionaire polluter actually gave the candidates a freaking LIST of things he wants them to do if they win the presidency and now he thinks he needs even more influence because the candidates didn t seem to give two shits about it.According to Politico, the Koch brothers are poised to spend nearly $1 billion on the 2016 election, in what should be seen as a blatant effort to buy the White House and Congress.Among the many aims on their agenda is the destruction of labor unions, abolishing the minimum wage, dismantling environmental protection laws, and repealing Obamacare while opposing any effort to bring affordable healthcare to the American people. And those are just a few things that the Koch brothers want to do to this country.Charles Koch attempted a run for president in the 1980s, but he failed miserably. Instead, he decided to focus on buying the government instead.But despite his massive influence on Republican politics, Koch is complaining that he still doesn t have enough power over the candidates. In reality, the American people are the ones who should be complaining about not having enough influence over elections, which the Kochs believe they are entitled to buy.If the Koch brothers are wondering why most of the American people see them as villains, this is why.Featured Image: Flickr","label":1}
{"text":"The \"Fearless Girl\" statue which stands opposite of the iconic charging bull on Wall Street is racking up awards this week at Cannes Lions, the largest annual gathering of marketing executives. [The statue was commissioned on behalf of asset manager State Street and advertising agency McCann New York as a way of encouraging firms to hire more female executives. \"Its simplicity in the use of symbolism transcends geography, it transcends language, it transcends culture,\" Wendy Clark, CEO of DDB North America, told Adweek. \"For us, while it is a girl, it elegantly captures women's journeys and our path to empowerment. And it also encapsulates our hopes and our ambitions for every little girl in the world. \" Clark also serves as the jury president of the Cannes Lions awards week, which was inspired by the Cannes Film Festival and takes place at the same conference center in Cannes, France. The \"Fearless Girl\" statue took home the Grand Prix in the Glass, PR and Outdoor Lions categories on the festival's first day. The statue was sculpted by artist Kristen Visbal in an effort to encourage gender diversity amongst corporate executives. \"The girl is standing there like this in front the bull, saying, 'Now, what are you going to do?' Arturo Di Modica said, who sculpted the Charging Bull statue. Di Modica argues that the \"Fearless Girl\" statue violates his artistic rights as it changes the meaning of the bull statue. \"Remove her and place her somewhere else in the city,\" Di Modica's attorney said. \"We've got lots of ideas. And damages must be awarded to Arturo for violation of his legal, statutory rights. \" Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"EXCLUSIVE: A senior Hillary Clinton aide has maintained her top secret security clearance despite sending information now deemed classified to the Clinton Foundation and to then-Secretary of State Clinton's private unsecured email account, according to congressional letters obtained by Fox News. Current and former intelligence officials say it is standard practice to suspend a clearance pending the outcome of an investigation. Yet in the case of Cheryl Mills, Clinton's former chief of staff at the State Department, two letters indicate this practice is not being followed -- even as the Clinton email system remains the subject of an FBI investigation. In an Oct. 30, 2015, letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa -- who has been aggressively investigating the Clinton email case -- Mills' lawyer Beth A. Wilkinson confirmed that her client \"has an active Top Secret clearance.\" The letter said previous reporting from the State Department that the clearance was no longer active was wrong and due to \"an administrative error.\" A second letter dated Feb. 18, 2016, from the State Department's assistant secretary for legislative affairs, Julia Frifield, provided additional details to Grassley about the \"administrative error.\" It, too, confirmed Mills maintained the top secret clearance. The letters come amid multiple congressional investigations, as well as an FBI probe focused on the possible gross mishandling of classified information and Clinton's use of an unsecured personal account exclusively for government business. The State Department is conducting its own administrative review. Under normal circumstances, Mills would have had her clearance terminated when she left the department. But in January 2014, according to the State Department letter, Clinton designated Mills \"to assist in her research.\" Mills was the one who reviewed Clinton's emails before select documents were handed over to the State Department, and others were deleted. Dan Maguire, a former strategic planner with Africom who has 46 years combined service, told Fox News his current and former colleagues are deeply concerned a double standard is at play. \"Had this happened to someone serving in the government, their clearance would have already been pulled, and certainly they would be under investigation. And depending on the level of disclosure, it's entirely possible they would be under pretrial confinement for that matter,\" Maguire explained. \"There is a feeling the administration may want to sweep this under the rug.\" On Monday, the State Department was scheduled to release the final batch of Clinton emails as part of a federal court-mandated timetable. So far, more than 1,800 have been deemed to contain classified information, and another 22 \"top secret\" emails have been considered too damaging to national security to release even with heavy redactions. As Clinton's chief of staff, Mills was a gatekeeper and routinely forwarded emails to Clinton's personal account. As one example, a Jan. 23, \u200e2011 email forwarded from Mills to Clinton, called \"Update on DR meeting,\" contained classified information, as well as foreign government information which is \"born classified.\" The 2011 email can be declassified 15 years after it was sent -- indicating it contained classified information when it was sent. Fox News was first to report that sworn declarations from the CIA notified the intelligence community inspector general and Congress there were \"several dozen emails\" containing classified information up to the most closely guarded government programs known as \"Special Access Programs.\" Clinton has maintained all along that she did not knowingly transmit information considered classified at the time. The U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Manual lays out the penalties for taking classified information out of secure government channels \u2013 such as an unsecured email system. While the incidents are handled on a \"case by case\" basis, the manual suggests the suspension of a clearance is routine while \"derogatory information\" is reviewed. The manual says the director of the Diplomatic Security Service, \"based on a recommendation from the Senior Coordinator for Security Infrastructure (DS\/SI), will determine whether, considering all facts available upon receipt of the initial information, it is in the interests of the national security to suspend the employee's access to classified information on an interim basis. A suspension is an independent administrative procedure that does not represent a final determination \u2026\" Fox News has asked the State Department to explain why Mills maintains her clearance while multiple federal and congressional investigations are ongoing. Fox News also asked whether the department was instructed by the FBI or another entity to keep the clearance in place. Fox News has not yet received a response. Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent. Pamela K. Browne is Senior Executive Producer at the FOX News Channel (FNC) and is Director of Long-Form Series and Specials. Her journalism has been recognized with several awards. Browne first joined FOX in 1997 to launch the news magazine \"Fox Files\" and later, \"War Stories.\"","label":0}
{"text":"After winning the Iowa caucus, Ted Cruz is following the pattern of the last two Republicans who won that contest and fading out of the presidential top tier, losing both the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries. This is very sad for self-described rodeo clown and conservative radio host Glenn Beck.Beck endorsed Cruz and has been on the trail with the candidate, touting him as the direct heir to George Washington. But now that Cruz s path to the presidency is getting bumpy, Beck is starting to sound somewhat detached from reality.Beck has called for Cruz supporters to join him in a fast in honor of the candidate. If that sounds like a strange thing to do you aren t alone. Even among conservatives, some have pushed back on Beck s suggestion.In response, Beck is now saying that the backlash proves that the church is dead. He wrote a message to his followers on Facebook as part of his push back:Since when has a fast and prayer been crazy?It was standard practice to beseech the powers of heaven for not just your country but personal guidance and revelation at one time.Have we really become a nation that mocks those who pray and fast?The sad answer is yes.I am not telling you who to vote for. I am asking people to pray and humble themselves before the Lord. If you wish to do that for your candidate please do so. God will not answer you or me. With prayer and fasting, approached with humility and a broken heart, we may fall closer into alignment with His will.Beck goes on to say that we are closer to losing our nation and Liberty than we were on September 11th. In his view, candidates like Marco Rubio and Donald Trump are not pure of heart enough to save America the way that Ted Cruz would.Beck is prone to dramatics and oddball announcements which are part of the reason he was eventually let go from Fox News.Having a freak out over Ted Cruz s lackluster performance is just the latest episode of Beck having a tantrum when he doesn t get his own way.","label":1}
{"text":"The U.S. Senate voted nearly unanimously on Thursday for legislation to impose new sanctions on Russia and force President Donald Trump to get Congress' approval before easing any existing sanctions on Russia. In a move that could complicate U.S. President Donald Trump's desire for warmer relations with Moscow, the Senate backed the measure by 98-2. Republican Senator Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, were the only two \"no\" votes. The measure is intended to punish Russia for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and support for Syria's government in the six-year-long civil war. If passed in the House of Representatives and signed into law by Trump, it would put into law sanctions previously established via former President Barack Obama's executive orders, including some on Russian energy projects. The legislation also allows new sanctions on Russian mining, metals, shipping and railways and targets Russians guilty of conducting cyber attacks or supplying weapons to Syria's government. \"The legislation sends a very, very strong signal to Russia, the nefarious activities they've been involved in,\" Senator Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said as lawmakers debated the measure. If the measure became law, it could complicate relations with some countries in Europe. Germany and Austria said the new punitive measures could expose European companies involved in projects in Russia to fines. The legislation sets up a review process that would require Trump to get Congress' approval before taking any action to ease, suspend or lift any sanctions on Russia. Trump was especially effusive about Russian president Vladimir Putin during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, though his openness to closer ties to Moscow has tempered somewhat, with his administration on the defensive over investigations into Russian meddling in the election. Putin dismissed the proposed sanctions, saying they reflected an internal political struggle in the United States, and that Washington's policy of imposing sanctions on Moscow had always been to try to contain Russia. The bill also includes new sanctions on Iran over its ballistic missile program and other activities not related to the international nuclear agreement reached with the United States and other world powers. To become law, the legislation must pass the House of Representatives and be signed by Trump. House aides said they expected the chamber would begin to debate the measure in coming weeks. However, they could not predict if it would come up for a final vote before lawmakers leave Washington at the end of July for their summer recess. Senior aides told Reuters they expected some sanctions package would eventually pass, but they expected the measure would be changed in the House. The Trump administration has pushed back against the bill, and his fellow Republicans hold a commanding 238- to 193-seat majority in the chamber. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson questioned the legislation on Wednesday, urging Congress to ensure that any sanctions package \"allows the president to have the flexibility to adjust sanctions to meet the needs of what is always an evolving diplomatic situation.\" Previously, U.S. energy sanctions had only targeted Russia's future high-tech energy projects, such as drilling for oil in the Arctic, fracking and offshore drilling. They blocked U.S. companies such as Exxon Mobil, where Tillerson was chairman, from investing in such projects. The new bill would slap sanctions on companies in other countries looking to invest in those projects in the absence of U.S. companies, a practice known as backfilling. Also included for the first time are discretionary measures the Trump administration could impose on investments by companies in Western countries on Russia energy export pipelines to Europe. The Senate also voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to add provisions to the bill allowing the U.S. space agency NASA to continue using Russian-made rocket engines and the 100 senators voted unanimously for an amendment reaffirming the U.S. commitment to the NATO alliance.","label":0}
{"text":"Politico reports Sunday: \"The push to block, rewrite and delay scores of rules may be the [Trump] administration's biggest untold success. \"[That declaration comes just one month after Politico mocked President Donald Trump's efforts to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse his predecessor's rules: none of it, Politco declared, \"evoke[d] the populism that Trump rode to the presidency. \" \"Trump's ardent supporters and detractors alike tend to exaggerate the impact of the 13 rules he's rescinding, out of more than 20, 000 approved under President Obama,\" Politico's Michael Grunwald wrote on April 10, adding: \"For the most part \u2026 Republicans won't score many political points with their CRA victories. \" He also argued that the deadline for repealing regulations on the CRA had tolled (though others would argue it extended all the way back to the beginning of Obama's presidency, covering any regulation that was not reported to Congress). At the time, Breitbart News called Trump's use of the CRA a \"legislative milestone,\" arguing that Trump's \"use of the CRA to repeal regulations has put future administrations on notice that there is a limit to government's regulatory reach, and that given the opportunity by the voters, conservatives will enforce those limits. \" Now, Politico's Andrew Restuccia and Nancy Cook seem to agree \u2014 and they fill in the rest of the picture, noting that Trump's executive orders and executive actions amount to \"a series of actions that could reshape American life for decades \u2014 efforts to rewrite or wipe out regulations affecting everything from student loans and restaurant menus to internet privacy, workplace injuries and climate change. \" They add: Trump is \u2026 setting bureaucratic wheels in motion that could eventually ax or revise hundreds of regulations as agencies reorient themselves toward unwinding red tape and granting speedier approvals to projects \u2026 If successful, these efforts could represent the most rollback of federal regulations since Ronald Reagan's presidency, especially if Trump's proposed budget cuts make it hard for a future Democratic president to reaccelerate the apparatus. Trump's assault on regulations represent a fulfillment of a core campaign promise, and the execution of what adviser Steve Bannon called in February the \"deconstruction of the administrative state. \" Read the full Politico article here. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the \"most influential\" people in news media in 2016. He is the of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.","label":0}
{"text":"Referral from a friend, relative, or certified U.S. Gourd Steward. I hope seeing the big pumpkin helps me find the answer to that question. 3. We're going to show you the small pumpkin to see how you feel before we set you up with the big pumpkin. Please choose the answer that best describes your reaction to the small pumpkin. I feel comfortable. I feel overwhelmed. I have a feeling that if I see a pumpkin any bigger than that, something truly wonderful will happen. This is not at all what I thought a pumpkin was.  Sorry again for the red tape. If we had it our way, we would just show you the picture right now. 4. We'll need a little medical information as well. Has anyone in your family died after seeing the big pumpkin? Yes, I've lost one or more relatives because they saw the big pumpkin. No, no one in my family has died because they saw the big pumpkin. My cousin died, but that was years after he saw the big pumpkin. I have one or more family members who became paralyzed in some part or all of their body after seeing the big pumpkin, but they're alive and I obtained their blessing before coming here. 5. Does this pumpkin look orange on your computer screen? If not, please re-calibrate your display settings for optimal viewing of the Big Pumpkin. My display settings have been optimized for viewing the big pumpkin. What I am looking at is definitely orange but in no way a pumpkin. 6. Please choose one of these dogs with a pumpkin. This is simply for our own record-keeping, your choice will in no way affect our decision to show you the big pumpkin.  Ah, excellent choice. 7. Alright, almost done! Here's a quick liability waiver. Don't worry, we make everyone do this. It's to cover both your ass and our ass, but you're going to be completely fine. I accept full responsibility for any harm done to my physical person and\/or computer as a result of viewing the big pumpkin. 8. Lastly, please select an emergency contact before viewing the big pumpkin. Reverend John Gerrity Badboy former reverend Dag Havermeier who got ex-communicated for giving confession while sitting on his motorcycle Let's See The Big Pumpkin Results for Just A Few Minor Formalities Before We Can Show You The Big Pumpkin Okay, we're all finished! Everything looks to be in order here. Thank you for your patience, now please enjoy the big pumpkin. Share Your Results","label":1}
{"text":"Australia s former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce will return to parliament after he won an essential by-election for his seat, just over a month after he was kicked out over a dual citizenship crisis that cost the conservative coalition government its majority. Joyce, who was widely expected to win, said he was utterly humbled by his sizeable victory in the rural New South Wales seat of New England, in which he looks likely to increase his primary vote by an additional 10 points. ABC election analyst Antony Green reported that Joyce is on track to achieve a primary vote of about 64 percent, a significant increase on his 52.3 percent primary at the last federal election in 2016. The win gives the government and its embattled prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, some much-needed breathing space, as it restores its slim one-seat majority. The government is already claiming the victory as a vote of confidence of its performance, despite a series of polls showing its growing unpopularity. This has been a stunning victory, Turnbull told supporters as he joined Joyce at a pub in the town of Tamworth to celebrate the win. Exit polls were predicting the largest swing to the government in the history of by-elections in Australia , Turnbull said, adding it was a sign of confidence in his government. Joyce added that he was completely and utterly humbled , after winning from a record field of 17 candidates. I say to the people of New England, that I never take anything for granted, and for every person who voted for us and voted for us for the first time, he said, the ABC reported. Joyce was one of the Citizenship Seven whose eligibility to sit in parliament was thrown into doubt when it was found they were dual citizens, a status that is barred for federal politicians under Australia s constitution to prevent split allegiances. The High Court ruled on Oct. 27 that Joyce, along with four of the seven other lawmakers, was ineligible to remain in parliament, forcing a by-election. Joyce was found to be a dual citizen of New Zealand, a status he has since rescinded. A by-election occurs outside of the usual three-year election cycle, usually when a representative decides to leave parliament early or dies. The deputy leader position, traditionally held by a member of the junior coalition partner, the National Party, has remained vacant since the High Court ruling. The result comes at a difficult time for Turnbull, who earlier this week was forced into an embarrassing reversal of his long-standing position against a Royal Commission into the country s scandal-hit banking and financial sector amid mounting political pressure. The last day of campaigning for the by-election was marred by a call from New South Wales Nationals state leader and deputy premier John Barilaro for Turnbull to step down as a Christmas gift to the nation. The comments were quickly rebuffed by Liberal Party lawmakers and Joyce, who said they were very unhelpful and insulting. It was the latest of a long line of internal turmoil to hit the coalition throughout the year, which has contributed to its poor performance in polls throughout the year.","label":0}
{"text":"If there s one thing about Donald Trump that pretty much everyone knows by now, it s that he s never wrong. Well, at least according to Donald Trump. He ll never admit a mistake, he ll double down on controversial statements, and heaven forbid he s asked a question he doesn t want to answer, or even worse, challenged on an answer on live television. The latter is exactly what Megyn Kelly did in the first GOP debate, and oh boy, has that thrown Trump into full tantrum mode, especially finding out she ll be moderating the next GOP debate to be held on Fox News. He literally told CNN s Wolf Blitzer: I mean, I don t like her. She doesn t treat me fairly. So, in turn, Trump is threatening to boycott the next debate because he thinks Kelly is a meanie.Trump even took his sophomoric toddler behavior to Twitter and Instagram and polled his followers:Should I do the #GOPdebate? https:\/\/t.co\/cjTywwIl85 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2016 Should I do the #GOPdebate?A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Jan 26, 2016 at 10:04am PSTAll of this led Fox News to issue a reply that was absolutely accurate. Probably one of the few times they ve said something that is completely true. A network spokesperson said: Sooner or later Donald Trump, even if he s president, is going to have to learn that he doesn t get to pick the journalists we re very surprised he s willing to show that much fear about being questioned by Megyn Kelly. They basically called Trump out for being terrified of Megyn Kelly. If he s terrified during a debate because he s asked questions he doesn t completely fancy, how is he going to deal with leaders around the globe who would inevitably call him out all the time for the decisions he would make as Commander-in-Chief?Fox also told Mediaite is a statement that was pure gold: We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings. Fox News had the perfect response to Trump s hissy fit over Megyn Kelly moderating the next debate. If you desire to be leader of the free world, you re going to have to realize people aren t going to kowtow to your every whim, and bullying really isn t an option with diplomatic relations. Trump needs to grow the f*ck up.Featured image: Gage Skidmore (flickr)","label":1}
{"text":"President-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday he is considering retired General James Mattis for U.S. defense secretary, a day after meeting with him in New Jersey. Trump said in Twitter that Mattis, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general who previously headed U.S. Central Command, \"was very impressive yesterday. A true General's General!\"","label":0}
{"text":"He wants more money? He should find a different occupation that pays more. Hey Florida, vote this guy out! Members deserve to be paid, staff deserves to be paid and the cost of living here is causing serious problems for people who are not wealthy to serve in this institution, the Florida Democrat said at a Rules Committee meeting, referring to the average member s $174,000 annual salary. We aren t being paid properly, Dem.Rep.Alcee Hastings","label":1}
{"text":"According to a new study, eight percent of our DNA is ALIEN. In fact, it is made up of NON-HUMAN, viral fragments. The new study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .  The recent study revealed that there is literally non-human DNA residing in modern humans' genome. This study comes after a froup of researchers from Tufts and University of Michigan Medical School examined 2,500 people. Experts discovered that our DNA is less human and that nineteen pieces of Ancient Viral DNA exist within our own genome. Most strikingly, experts discovered the full genetic mockup for an entire virus within 2 percent of the people they examined. According to sciencedaily.com , whether or not the virus can be replicated or reproduced, isn't yet known. But other studies of ancient virus DNA have shown it can affect the humans who carry it. ScienceDaily reports that the study offers new insight on human endogenous retroviruses. HERV's are actually antique diseases which possess eerily similar characteristics to human immunodeficiency virus, the precursor to AIDS. Experts believe that this 'Viral DNA0 has been passed down through thousands of generations of human beings. The study's authors are still unsure whether the ancient strains of DNA could cause infections. \"This one looks like it is capable of making infectious virus, which would be very exciting if true, as it would allow us to study a viral epidemic that took place long ago,\" says senior author and virologist John Coffin, Ph.D. of the Tufts University School of Medicine. \"This research provides important information necessary for understanding how retroviruses and humans have evolved together in relatively recent times.\" \"Many studies have tried to link these endogenous viral elements to cancer and other diseases, but a major difficulty has been that we haven't actually found all of them yet,\" says co-first author Zachary H. Williams, a Ph.D. student at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University in Boston. \"A lot of the most interesting elements are only found in a small percentage of people, which means you have to screen a large number of people to find them.\" \"This is a thrilling discovery,\" says co-first author Julia Wildschutte, Ph.D., who began the work as a Ph.D. student in Coffin's lab at Tufts. \"It will open up many doors to research. What's more, we have confirmed in this paper that we can use genomic data from multiple individuals compared to the reference human genome to detect new HERVs. But this has also shown us that some people carry insertions that we can't map back to the reference.\" Reference: http:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/113\/16\/E2326.full.pdf Source: EWAO","label":1}
{"text":"Japan s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday said an almost two-month pause in North Korean missile tests was no indication that it had halted its weapons development, insisting it was too early for any talks with the regime. I believe that it continues to develop its weapons, Abe told a news conference in Manila after a series of meetings with other Asian leaders at a gathering of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia Forum. There is no point for talks for the sake of talks, he said. Abe s insistence that tough sanctions, including restrictions on oil sales, are necessary to soften up the North Korean regime over the coming winter could put him at loggerheads with other countries such as South Korea that might agree to open talks if approached by the North. After firing missiles at a pace of about two or three a month since April, North Korean missile launches paused in September, after it fired a rocket that passed over Japan s northern Hokkaido island. Abe said he would work closely with other countries in the region including China and Russia to persuade North Korea to halt missile development and give up its nuclear weapon ambitions. Abe, in a meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping at an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam on Saturday, hailed a fresh start to the relationship between Asia s two biggest economies and military powers, including cooperation on North Korea. Abe on Tuesday said that he wanted to deepen cultural and economic ties with China. The Japanese leader, who also called for an Indo-Pacific region that is open and free to all returns to Japan on Wednesday.","label":0}
{"text":"President Trump took aim at reporters on Thursday for more than an hour at an impromptu White House news conference. \"The press has become so dishonest,\" he said, and not talking about it would be \"doing a tremendous disservice to the American people. \" He added that the \"level of dishonesty is out of control. \" In accusing the news media, though, Mr. Trump uttered several falsehoods of his own. Here is a list of some of the most important. Mr. Trump won 306 Electoral College votes (and ended up with 304 officially) well above the threshold needed to secure the presidency but well behind several of his most recent predecessors. President Barack Obama won 332 Electoral College votes in 2012 and 365 four years earlier. President Bill Clinton received 370 Electoral College votes in 1992 and 379 in 1996. And President George Bush won 426 Electoral College votes in 1988. When a reporter pressed Mr. Trump on the claim, he laid the blame elsewhere. \"I was given that information,\" he said. Mr. Trump said the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which upheld a temporary restraining order on his targeted travel ban, was \"in chaos. \" There is no evidence of that. The decision by the Ninth Circuit's panel in the travel ban case was unanimous. Mr. Trump also claimed that the court was \"a circuit that has been overturned at a record number. \" He was apparently referring to the Ninth Circuit's reversal rate, which the president cited correctly: \"I find that hard to believe, that is just a number I heard, that they are overturned 80 percent of the time. \" PolitiFact found that of the cases the Supreme Court took up from the Ninth Circuit, about 79 percent were reversed from 2010 to 2015. But that was not the highest rate among the nation's 13 appeals courts. The Sixth Circuit (87 percent) and 11th Circuit (85 percent) each had a greater percentage of reviewed decisions reversed. For all appellate court cases in that period, the Supreme Court reversed decisions about 70 percent of the time. By most definitions, the economy is not a mess, nor is it in recession. The unemployment rate in January was 4. 8 percent, compared with 7. 8 percent in January 2009, when Mr. Obama took office. Last month, the economy added 227, 000 jobs, even though the unemployment rate is already low. The number of people filing new claims for jobless benefits continues to hit lows not seen in decades. Other measures suggest the same thing, as our colleagues at The Upshot report: The economy seems to be taking off. Mr. Trump correctly cited the daily presidential tracking poll by Rasmussen. But the poll is an outlier, giving Mr. Trump an approval rating several points higher than others in the field. Real Clear Politics' average of approval ratings finds that 44. 6 percent of Americans approve of the job Mr. Trump is doing, compared with 50. 3 percent who disapprove. Gallup's daily job approval tracker puts Mr. Trump's approval rating at 40 percent, the lowest since he has taken office, and disapproval at 54 percent. percent of respondents to a Pew Research Center poll released on Tuesday approve of Mr. Trump's performance, while 56 percent disapproved. The claim is not a new one for Mr. Trump, and has been fodder for fact checkers since September. Behind it is the purchase by Russia's nuclear power agency of a controlling interest in a company that has assets in the United States, including mills, mines and land used for producing uranium. Mr. Trump's claim is incorrect on at least two points. First, the company's American assets were equal to 20 percent of the country's uranium production capacity \u2014 not its produced uranium, as Mr. Trump suggested. Second, Mrs. Clinton was not in a position to approve of or reject the deal herself as secretary of state. Though the State Department did sign off on it, so did eight other federal agencies. It is unclear whether Mrs. Clinton was briefed about or weighed in on the State Department's decision. Mr. Trump's instinct to hedge on the news media's approval rating was right. The news media does not enjoy a great reputation among Americans, according to a variety of polls in recent years, but Congress fares worse. Gallup's annual poll of Americans' confidence in their institutions, the most authoritative on the matter, found that as of June 2016, just 21 percent of Americans had a \"great deal\" or \"quite a lot\" of confidence in television news and only 20 percent in newspapers. Congress, by comparison, inspired confidence in just 9 percent. There is evidence that Congress's approval rating is on the rise in Gallup's polling, but there is not more recent data comparing the institutions. Mr. Trump went on to say that aside from a federal district judge's decision to temporarily halt the ban, its rollout had been \"perfect. \" By most measures, that is far from true. The order's announcement and speedy implementation created chaos across the country and around the world. Travelers already in transit were stranded, protests erupted in the United States, and green card holders were initially blocked from the country before being allowed back in. Several additional judges challenged various aspects of the measure. Even senior Republicans who agreed with the order's goals said it had been \"poorly implemented\" and had sown confusion by being \"overly broad. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The Wisconsin Election Commission posts recount data on a spreadsheet every day. The latest spreadsheet totals as of 1:30 p.m. CST on December 3 show that the recount isn t changing much, although a smattering of errors have been found throughout the state. The candidates each lost and gained a smattering of votes in towns, cities, and villages that are reporting, so any losses were basically cancelled out.The Election Commission doesn t tally the returns, but, rather, just posts a raw spreadsheet of numbers. Heavy went through the spreadsheet and tallied the lost and gained votes for Trump and Clinton for each county so far, and then subtracted the two totals for a net gain or loss for day 2.Here s what the returns show so far:Day 2 totals Clinton gained 89 votes but lost 86 for a net gain of 3 votes. Trump gained 98 votes but lost 92 for a net gain of 6 votes.OVERALLClinton gained 3 votes Trump gained 6 votes Net Trump gain of 3 votes on Day 2Trump won Wisconsin by more than 22,000 votes.That means that Trump inched ahead by a grand total of 3 votes in a recount expected to cost more than $3.5 million. Green Party nominee Jill Stein raised more than $6 million to fund recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The latter two recounts are now bogged down in legal issues and challenges. On December 3, Stein dropped her request for a Pennsylvania recount, saying she couldn t afford the $1 million required, even though she raised $7 million overall for recounts. Clinton would have needed all three states Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to flip in order to take the White House back from Trump, an exceedingly tall order.In Wisconsin, Trump supporters sued to stop the recount, alleging it was not being conducted uniformly (some counties use paper ballots and others use machines). A judge said the recount could continue at least until a December 9 hearing. The Wisconsin recount is the first in the 2016 presidential election. Heavy","label":1}
{"text":"Turkey made a directly appeal to the president of the northern Iraqi Kurdish region on Friday, calling on him to cancel an independence referendum planned for Sept. 25, warning that Ankara viewed the vote as illegal and unacceptable. In a statement, Turkey s National Security Council called on Massoud Barzani to stop the referendum, saying it retained the rights defined in bilateral and international agreements if the vote were held. It did not elaborate on the nature of those rights. The statement followed a meeting of the council, which was chaired by President Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan is also due to hold a cabinet meeting later on Friday.","label":0}
{"text":"German Justice Minister Heiko Maas tweeted on Wednesday that the world would be a bit crazier after Donald Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election. \"The world won't end but it will get crazier,\" tweeted the minister, a Social Democrat (SPD) in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's right-left coalition.","label":0}
{"text":"White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders was the perfect choice to take on the media today following the release of a bombshell video by Project Veritas showing an undercover reporter capturing CNN s Supervising Producer admitting that most of the news they put out about the Trump-Russia collusion is bullish*t! Early this morning, James O Keefe released the Project Veritas video where reporters went undercover at CNN to investigate the #VeryFakeNews network. O Keefe said their intent in making the video was to determine the motivation behind CNN s Trump-Russia collusion obsession. Since the inauguration, CNN has mentioned Russian story nearly 16,000 times.During her press conference today, Sarah Huckabee-Sanders encouraged the room full of reporters to watch the Project Veritas video that exposes CNN as fake news for ratings. She even took it a step further and noted that while she couldn t confirm the accuracy of the tape, that every American should watch the video. Sanders appeared to be disgusted as she remarked that if the tape is accurate, then it is a disgrace to all of media to all of journalism. And furthermore, If the media can t be trusted to report the news, then that is a danger to all of America. BOOOM Sarah Huckabee Sanders advises ALL to watch Veritas Video where CNN producer admits they realize Trump\/Russia is a hoax but dont care! pic.twitter.com\/tng5DUmKq3 STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterUSA) June 27, 2017Although panicked fake network hosts like MSNBC s Joy Reid were praising reporter Brian Karem for attempting to stand up to Huckabee-Sanders, in reality, he was no match for the sharp-witted Huckabee-Sanders who claimed that media has gone into a dark place. One of the Democrat Party s top cheerleaders Joy Reid is no exception. Here s her tweet:Now following @BrianKarem who was every political reporter today. https:\/\/t.co\/yJC2IXDKi4 Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) June 27, 2017The video below shows Karem s attempt to defend his fellow journalist s use of unnamed sources and fake news for ratings. Karem argued that Huckabee-Sanders was inflaming the CNN undercover video story, saying: Everybody in this room is only trying to do their job. Sarah Huckabee-Sanders blasted Karem as she shot back: I disagree completely. First of all, I think if anything has been inflamed, it s the dishonesty that often takes place by the news media. And I think it s outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I was simply trying to respond to his question. :Here s the exchange between Brian Karem and Sarah Huckabee-Sanders:MUST WATCH: White House reporter @BrianKarem pushing back against Sarah Huckabee Sanders and saying what many people have been thinking. pic.twitter.com\/hW49e0tdWY Yashar Ali (@yashar) June 27, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"It s worth noting that the victims of this horrible terrorist bombing are responsible for their own court parking fees, food and any potential travel and lodging expenses they incur as a result of this trial. Muslim terrorists first it s the Obama way The family of the convicted marathon bomber is in America, on your tax dollars, and survivors are outraged after learning the news.As of Thursday, family members of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev have been staying at the Hampton Inn in Revere under very tight security, just one of the things tax dollars are paying for. FOX25 s Sharman Sacchetti investigated how much this trip is costing you.Sources say these family members are being called as witnesses and not only that, at least three agencies are working around the clock to protect and transport them. This is all part of the defense team s strategy to save Tsarnaev. While it s unclear when their flight started, we know the last part of it came through Amsterdam and landed at Logan Airport and cost nearly $2,500 per person.The cost to put them up at the Hampton Inn at the government rate: almost $200 per night, per person. And a source says at least three agencies, the FBI, US Marshal s and Revere Police are involved in constant protection. I think you re probably talking about $100,000 plus in that neighborhood in terms of security and out of pocket costs associated with travel, former US attorney Michael Sullivan said.And that s just for this trip.Lawyer fees or even what all witnesses during the trial cost is still unclear. One defense witness, Mark Spencer of Arsenal Consulting, charged $375 per hour and billing taxpayers for $150,000.Governor Charlie Baker said, It s a federal trial, it s a federal case, the feds ultimately need to make the decisions about this. Baker was non-committal about how resources are being used, even state ones.Sullivan told Sacchetti that while he understands taxpayer outrage, the whole point is to make sure it s done right. The court wants to make sure that at the end of the day, the defendant gets a fair trial and would not want to add any potential issues on appeal in the penalty phase, prosecutors finished making their case yesterday, he said.JUDGE JEANINE HAS A POWERFUL MESSAGE for Jihadi Mom:Marathon survivor Marc Fucarile reached out to us Friday night, reacting to this news, saying that he s outraged that Tsarnaev s family s expenses are being paid for when myself and some of the other survivors and our families have to pay for our own parking at court, lunch, and we were told that if the trial was moved out of state, we d have to pay for our own travel and lodging, there. The statement went on to say: Why should our country pay for them when that family committed a violent act against our country? Not to mention, all of the free government services this family previously enjoyed on the backs of the taxpayers including government assistance and a free ride to UMass Dartmouth. In contrast, I was denied housing assistance I sought after the bombings, even though I needed a handicapped accessible apartment, and my wife lost her job as a result of the events. He ended by saying he feels badly for the taxpayers that have to pay for this after they were so generous to all the survivors and the One Fund. The defense team is up next. And the penalty phase picks up again Monday.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump has revived the birther conspiracy theory, but this time he has targeted a fellow Republican: Ted Cruz.Cruz has begun creeping up in some state polls, particularly in evangelical-heavy Iowa, so as he has done in the past Trump went on the attack.Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz s Canadian birthplace was a very precarious issue that could make the Texas senator vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee. Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years? That d be a big problem, Trump said when asked about the topic. It d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he d be running and the courts may take a long time to make decision. You don t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head. Trump added, I d hate to see something like that get in his way. But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport. Trump is easily the most visible proponent of the birther conspiracy theory. Before the 2012 election, Trump made numerous national television appearances demanding that President Obama release his birth certificate. Trump even claimed that he had enlisted right-wing Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio to send a cold case posse to Hawaii to investigate Obama s past.The reality TV star even made a bizarre video requesting Obama s college records in order for the Hawaiian-born president to prove his citizenship.Senator Cruz s mother was a U.S. citizen when she gave birth to him in Calgary, Canada, which easily fulfills the requirement for someone to be a natural-born citizen of the United States. While Cruz s ideas may be repellent to the majority of citizens, he is easily eligible to be President of the United States.After years of trying to de-legitimize President Obama through two terms, it is odd to see the tactic turned against the right s own candidates. Like so much of their rhetoric, it resembles Frankenstein building his monster then watching it turn on him instead of his enemies.","label":1}
{"text":"Colombia s armed forces have been authorized to launch air raids against crime gangs and FARC members who have refused to adhere to a peace accord with the former guerilla group and instead chose to continue drug trafficking and other criminal activity, the Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. As many as 1,000 members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have not abided by the terms of last year s peace agreement with the government, preferring instead to remain armed, fight the government and profit from illegal drugs and mining. The conflict killed more than 220,000 people and displaced millions since it began in 1964. The executive order allows troops to conduct bomb attacks against FARC dissidents and crime gangs from airplanes and helicopters, and shields the military from criminal prosecution, the Defense Ministry said in a statement. Raids can only be carried out if civilians are not close by. Air raids were the most effective weapon in the government s fight against the FARC, pushing fighters deep into inhospitable jungle and killing high-level rebel commanders. That strategy also has been used against the National Liberation Army (ELN), now the biggest active guerrilla group in Colombia, which is in peace talks with the government. The two sides began a bilateral ceasefire in October. More than 11,300 members of the FARC, including fighters, urban militia and prisoners are in the process of being incorporated into society after the group handed in its weapons to the United Nations and formed a political party.","label":0}
{"text":"Support Us The Arrivals Bosanski Prijevod 15-hollywoodAndThePromisedLand","label":1}
{"text":"Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard used his position in the people s chamber to screw the people over. Now he s going to prison for it.On Friday, a jury convicted Hubbard on 12 counts of ethics violations two years after he was first indicted. He had continued to serve as the Speaker of the House in the Alabama state legislature during those two years but his political career is over.According to AL.com, Hubbard was convicted of 12 out of 23 charges which include:Voting on legislation with a conflict of interest that would benefit American Pharmacy Cooperative Inc., a consulting client.Receiving money from a principal, American Pharmacy Cooperative Inc., through a consulting contract.Receiving money from a principal, Edgenuity, through a consulting contract.Using office for personal gain through a consulting contract with Capitol Cups, a business owned by Robert Abrams.Lobbying the state Department of Commerce for consulting client Robert Abrams.Lobbying the governor s office for consulting client Robert Abrams.Using state personnel to benefit consulting client Robert Abrams.Soliciting and receiving money from a principal, former Business Council of Alabama Chairman Will Brooke, a $150,000 investment in Craftmaster Printers.Soliciting and receiving money from a principal, James Holbrook\/Sterne Agee, a $150,000 investment in Craftmaster Printers.Soliciting and receiving money from a principal, Great Southern Wood President Jimmy Rane, a $150,000 investment in Craftmaster Printers.Soliciting and receiving money from a principal, Hoar Construction President Robert Burton, a $150,000 investment in Craftmaster Printers.Soliciting and receiving a thing of value from a principal, former BCA Chairman Will Brooke, help obtaining clients for Auburn Network and financial advice for Craftmaster Printers.Hubbard faces up to 20 years in prison for each count and, needless to say, he is going to appeal the verdict.But Attorney General Luther Strange is confident the case was put together so well that getting the decision overturned will be an uphill battle. This is a good day for the rule of law in our state, Strange said in a statement. This kind of result would never have been achieved had our office not put together the finest public corruption unit in the country. I m very proud of their work. This should send a clear message that in Alabama we hold public officials accountable for their actions. Here s video of prosecutors discussing the verdict via YouTube.Hubbard isn t the only serving Republican official in Alabama dealing with a major scandal. Governor Robert Bentley has been dealing with his own personal scandal for engaging in an extramarital affair with a female staffer and lying about it. An impeachment resolution has been filed and hearings begin this month. The Alabama Republican Parry sure has been rocked by scandal this year. First the House Speaker, now the Governor.Featured Image: Screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"Chinese Immigrants Demand Protection from Paris Muggers David Chazan, Telegraph, August 21, 2016  Thousands of angry Chinese immigrants demonstrated in a Paris suburb yesterday (Sun) to demand police protection from muggers who they say prey on them because they are seen as easy targets.  The death of a 49-year-old Chinese tailor after being badly beaten in a robbery earlier this month has lent new urgency to the long running complaint that Asian immigrants are systematically attacked and robbed in the French capital.  \"The Chinese community is dying in silence,\" read a slogan on a T-shirt splashed with red to symbolise bloodstains worn by one demonstrator, Maike Song.  He said he joined the protest in Aubervilliers to pay homage to Chaoling Zhang, the father of two who died on August 14 after being punched to ground in the north-eastern suburb that is home to some 4,000 Chinese immigrants.  No arrests have been made over the attack.  About 100 Chinese residents of Aubervilliers have been attacked and robbed since November, according to the Franco-Chinese Friendship Association.  \"It is because of prejudices that Chinese people are weak, docile and wealthy,\" said Fang, a young female student. \"I've been attacked three times in three years and my friends are suffering the same thing. Some have moved away from this area because of it. I don't go out with a handbag any more.\"  Community workers say many muggings are committed by members of other minorities living in the area, generally of Arab or African origin.  Paris officials corroborated the figures but declined to identify the robbers by ethnic origin.  Many Chinese immigrants own restaurants or shops and tend to be relatively well-off, but are often reluctant to go to the police. \"Some victims have been illegal immigrants,\" said Dominique Darden, a social worker.  The Chinese community of Paris has held other protests in recent years over the attacks.  \"They happen almost every day because of poverty but it's unbearable,\" said a spokesman, Olivier Wang. \"No one should have to put up with this.\"","label":1}
{"text":"Russian President Vladimir Putin supervised his intelligence agencies' hacking of the U.S. presidential election and turned it from a general attempt to discredit American democracy to an effort to help Donald Trump, three U.S. officials said on Thursday. U.S. intelligence agencies' conclusion that Russia tried to influence the election by hacking people and institutions, including Democratic Party bodies, has angered President-elect Trump, who says he won the Nov. 8 vote fairly. Russian officials have denied accusations of interference in the U.S. election. Separately, a senior White House official said on Thursday that Putin was likely to have been aware of the cyber attacks but he fell short of accusing the Russian president. \"I don't think things happen in the Russian government of this consequence without Vladimir Putin knowing about it,\" Ben Rhodes, the White House's deputy national security adviser, told MSNBC. \"When you're talking about a significant cyber intrusion like this, we're talking about the highest levels of government.\" The U.S. officials - who have knowledge of intelligence information on the matter - said on the condition of anonymity that the hacking of U.S. political groups and figures had a more general focus at first. \"This began merely as an effort to show that American democracy is no more credible than Putin's version is,\" one of the officials said. \"It gradually evolved from that to publicizing (Hillary) Clinton's shortcomings and ignoring the products of hacking Republican institutions, which the Russians also did,\" the official said. By the fall, the official said, it became an effort to help Trump's campaign because \"Putin believed he would be much friendlier to Russia, especially on the matter of economic sanctions\" than Democratic rival Clinton. Democratic President Barack Obama said in an interview with National Public Radio that the United States will take action against Russia. \"I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections ... we need to take action and we will,\" he said according to excerpts of the Thursday interview released by NPR. \"At a time and a place of our own choosing. Some of it may be ... explicit and publicized; some of it may not be. ... Mr. Putin is well aware of my feelings about this, because I spoke to him directly about it,\" Obama said. NBC reported earlier that U.S. intelligence officials have \"a high level of confidence\" Putin was personally involved in the Russian cyber campaign against the United States. Hacked emails of Democratic operatives and Clinton aides were leaked during the presidential campaign, and at times dominated the news agenda. The U.S. officials said Russia also hacked Republicans but did little to nothing with the information they found. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told state TV channel Rossiya-24 that he was \"dumbstruck\" by the NBC report of Putin's alleged involvement. \"I think this is just silly, and the futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious,\" he said. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has brushed off reports of Russian hacking of U.S. political institutions. \"If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?\" Trump wrote in a post on Twitter on Thursday. In fact, the U.S. government did formally accuse Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against U.S. political organizations in October - one month ahead of the election. Obama last week ordered a review by the U.S. intelligence agencies about foreign interference in the 2016 election. Asked on Thursday about the hacks, Secretary of State John Kerry described how Obama had been considering the evidence ahead of the October announcement. \"The president made the decision based on the input that was carefully, carefully vetted by the intelligence community ... that he did have an obligation to go out to the country and give a warning. And he did so,\" Kerry said at a news briefing. The three U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters said the fact that Putin oversaw a hacking operation was not surprising and is standard operating procedure in Russia. \"If anything, given his background as a KGB officer, Putin has a much tighter grip on all Russian intelligence operations, civilian and military, foreign and domestic, than any democratic leader does,\" one official said. The reports of Russian hacking have raised concerns among both political parties in Congress, with top Republicans breaking with Trump to call for closer scrutiny. Some Republican lawmakers have also questioned Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Exxon Mobil Corp Chief Executive Rex Tillerson, who has close business ties to the Russian government.","label":0}
{"text":"Margaret Thatcher famously declared that \"we must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend. \" In a speech 32 years ago, Mrs. Thatcher, the British prime minister facing a threat from the Irish Republican Army, said she was not calling for censorship but proposing that \"a voluntary code of conduct\" for journalists might keep them from aiding \"the terrorists' morale or their cause. \" It was a statement of a familiar point, one made repeatedly in the decades since: that the news media plays a crucial role in amplifying the effect of terrorist violence and giving it exactly the political import the terrorists crave. So for some experts who study terrorism, President Trump's assertion this week that the news media has actually been ignoring and covering up terrorist attacks came as a surprise. \"It's totally astonishing,\" said Martha Crenshaw, a Stanford scholar who has written on terrorism since the 1970s. \"It has no basis in fact whatsoever. The criticism has always gone the other way. \" Other experts said Mr. Trump's claim had less to do with the facts about terrorism coverage than with the new administration's political goals, notably defending his executive order that temporarily bans refugees and visitors from some Muslim countries. In the face of the onslaught of legal challenges and outspoken opposition to the order, they said, the president has an interest in persuading Americans that the terrorist threat from abroad is worse than the news media has revealed. Years of books and articles critiquing the \"symbiosis\" of terrorism and news media coverage have pointed out that terrorists usually seek to promote a political or ideological cause and use spectacular violence with the specific goal of attracting attention. News executives, while sometimes expressing mixed feelings about giving terrorists what they seek, have generally felt obligated to give such attacks ample coverage. \"It's incredible to say that the media does not give enough attention to terrorism,\" said David C. Rapoport, a retired U. C. L. A. political science professor considered a founder of terrorism studies. He said modern global terrorism arose in the 1880s in Russia in parallel with, and partly owing to, the rise of mass daily newspapers. In the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, even failed terrorist plots often have drawn saturation coverage \u2014 think of the fizzled underwear bomb on a airliner on Christmas Day 2009 or the S. U. V. to blow up that produced only smoke in Times Square on a May night in 2010. Though no target was harmed, both attempts drew mountains of coverage, much of it focused on how terrorists went undetected. But in an appearance Monday at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. Mr. Trump reviewed the horrors of more recent attacks, including those inspired or directed by the Islamic State, and pronounced the coverage inadequate. \"Radical Islamic terrorists are determined to strike our homeland as they did on as they did from Boston to Orlando to San Bernardino,\" he said at the headquarters of Central Command, which carries out military operations in the Middle East. \"All over Europe it's happening. It's gotten to a point where it's not even being reported and, in many cases, the very, very dishonest press doesn't want to report it. They have their reasons, and you understand that. \" The president did not explain the reasons he believed journalists might have for not reporting Islamist terrorism. But in response to a wave of skeptical comment, the White House on Monday night released a list of 78 attacks around the world since September 2014. \"Most have not received the media attention they deserved,\" the accompanying statement said. Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, stood by the point on Tuesday, though adjusting the language. \"It's becoming too often that we're seeing these attacks not get the spectacular attention that they deserve,\" he said. \"And I think it undermines the understanding of the threat that we face around this country. \" It was a subjective judgment only a dozen of the 78 listed attacks occurred in the United States, and most resulted in few or no deaths, reducing their prominence in American news reports. The list omitted terrorist attacks by including white supremacists like Dylann S. Roof, who killed nine at a Charleston, S. C. church in 2015. But news databases show virtually all 78 attacks got some coverage, and the big attacks in Paris Brussels Boston San Bernardino, Calif. and Orlando, Fla. played out for days or weeks on cable television and news sites. Peter D. Feaver, a political scientist at Duke who studies public opinion on national security issues, said he saw no basis for the White House claims. \"I don't think there's evidence of the press underreporting terrorism,\" he said. \"The corporate incentives run the other way. \" But Mr. Feaver, who served in the George W. Bush White House but publicly opposed Mr. Trump during the presidential campaign, said the president's remarks, if not literally true, nonetheless play out in a larger, partisan debate about terrorism. Democrats sometimes accused the Bush administration of exaggerating the terrorist threat. Republicans often charged President Barack Obama of minimizing the danger and embellishing his own successes against Al Qaeda. By suggesting that the news media is hiding the truth about the menace from \"radical Islamic terrorists,\" Mr. Trump may rally his base behind the executive order and other measures still to come. Mr. Spicer suggested as much, saying the executive order and the president's remarks in Tampa have the same motive: \"because he cares about making sure that we don't have attacks in this country, that we're protected. \" Mr. Trump wants Americans, he said, to \"understand the unwavering commitment that the president has and the actions that he will take to keep the country safe. \" Preventing terrorist attacks is, of course, a goal that is pretty much universally shared. But Mr. Trump's loose relationship with facts, and his eagerness to fault journalists and judges, make some think he has a less lofty goal as well: to find scapegoats for terrorist attacks that sooner or later are certain to happen. \" blame,\" said Ms. Crenshaw, the Stanford terrorism researcher. \"Nothing's happened. But if something does happen, he can blame the judiciary and the news media. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The supermodel and TV personality Tyra Banks has decided to sell her Battery Park City home, a duplex facing the Hudson River, complete with dressing room and hair salon, a personal gym and separate staff and guest quarters. Ms. Banks bought her Riverhouse apartment, at 2 River Terrace, in 2009 and used it as a primary residence for about four years. But she has been spending most of her time lately on the West Coast, where she has homes in Los Angeles and Northern California, and so she has been renting out the unit since May 2015, for $50, 000 a month furnished. Tyra Beauty, her new cosmetics company, is also based in Los Angeles, as are various entertainment projects. (Ms. Banks is the new of \"America's Got Talent\" and will be returning to the show she helped create, \"America's Next Top Model. \") The Lower Manhattan apartment, which overlooks Rockefeller Park, is being offered for both rent (at $50, 000 a month) and for sale, with an asking price of $17. 5 million and monthly carrying costs of $16, 644, according to the listing broker, Adam D. Modlin of the Modlin Group. Ms. Banks, 43, who last year became a parent for the first time with her photographer boyfriend, Erik Asla, said she would prefer to sell the place rather than continue leasing it out, although she admits that she \"will miss the feeling of having a home in the sky. \" When she bought it, she said in an email, she intended to create a space that felt less like an apartment and more \"like a home with finishes and an experience like one would have in the Hamptons or even in an estate in Los Angeles. \" She seemed to have succeeded, at least when it comes to its sprawl and flourishes. The duplex, No. 22D, is actually a combination of four units at the Riverhouse \u2014 three on the 22nd floor and one on the 23rd \u2014 that were acquired for $10. 13 million. Ms. Banks said she spent almost as much on the extensive renovations and d\u00e9cor, which incorporate rich fabrics, textured wall coverings, exotic wood details and ornate light fixtures. The apartment also has surround sound, oak floors and ample storage throughout. \"New amazing ideas just kept coming and coming to me,\" Ms. Banks said of the renovations, which dragged on for several months. The layout of the apartment was configured to provide maximum privacy \u2014 for staff, business associates, family and guests \u2014 with various wings that can be closed off from the rest of the unit. There are five bedrooms, five full bathrooms and three powder rooms, along with several kitchens and kitchenettes. The home is entered through a hallway on the main level that leads to a spacious living room with a connecting room. Several feet away are the family room and open chef's kitchen. The kitchen has two Miele dishwashers and other appliances, along with a butler's pantry, a copper sink and an island of zebrawood, to name a few features. Nearby is a dining alcove with banquette seating that, Ms. Banks said, was meant to resemble \"a booth at a restaurant. \" These main entertaining rooms face windows that offer expansive views of the river and beyond. \"There's the Statue of Liberty, all the ferryboats from the New York Waterway and the Midtown skyline,\" Mr. Modlin said. The lower level contains the gym, mirrored dressing room, salon and laundry area. Also there are offices and a staff suite with another full kitchen, two bedrooms and a bathroom. The staff suite has an additional entrance. And if all that were not enough, there is another suite with a kitchenette, for guests. \"She created different spaces,\" Mr. Modlin said, \"so you can have different things going on in the home. \" On the second level are another bedroom and an enormous master suite, which features a sitting area, kitchenette and shag carpeting. There are dual master bathrooms and dressing rooms, and a large marble soaking tub encased in white oak. The Riverhouse development, which received a gold certification in the LEED environmental building rating system, offers amenities like a concierge, valet parking, a yoga studio and fitness center, and a saltwater lap pool. It also has as a resident the actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who, like Ms. Banks, has created his own compound there. Ms. Banks said the two never ran into each other in the building. \"He was always that elusive spirit that so many people talked about,\" she said. \"Farewell, Leo. I'll miss my houseguests trying to spot you in our building. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Rare is the individual who hasn't tripped over a pet or uneven pavement, tumbled off a bike, slipped on ice or maybe wiped out skiing or skating. Some get injured, while others go unhurt \u2014 often claiming it's because they knew how to fall. According to paratroopers, stunt professionals, physical therapists and martial arts instructors, there is indeed a \"right way\" to fall \u2014 and it can save you a lot of grief if you know how to do it. Although often associated with older people, falls occur at any age and are the most common cause of injury seen in emergency rooms in the United States. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality estimates that falls cause more than a third of emergency room visits, around 7. 9 million a year. \"As physical therapists we talk a lot about preventing falls, but what we don't talk about is what to do when you actually do fall,\" said Jessica Schwartz, a physical therapist in New York City who trains athletes and people with prosthetic limbs to fall without hurting themselves. \"It's almost inevitable you are going to fall, so you really should know what to do. \" The number one thing to remember, she said, is to protect your head. So if you find yourself falling, pivot to your side and tuck in your head. \"Have you seen those slip and fall cartoons where the characters fall flat on their back or face? Don't do that,\" said Dr. Schwartz. \"You'll hit your head like a coconut and get a concussion,\" and the reverse motion, or bounce, of your head after impact \"will give you something like whiplash. \" Moreover, falling straight forward or backward raises the risk of damaging your spine and vital organs. The other thing to avoid, she said, is \"foosh,\" an acronym for \"falling onto outstretched hands. \" If you do that, all the force of impact will be concentrated there, raising the risk of breaking your wrist. You similarly don't want to come crashing down on your knee so you break your kneecap or do that maneuver where you kind of pedal with your feet to catch yourself, which can lead to broken bones in your foot and ankle. Instead, if you feel yourself falling, experts said you should bend your elbows and knees and try to take the hit on the fleshiest parts of your body, like the side of your thigh, buttocks and shoulder. \"Aim for the meat, not bone,\" said Kevin Inouye, a stuntman and assistant professor of acting, movement and stage combat at the University of Wyoming. \"Your instinct will be to reach out with hands or try to catch yourself with your knee or foot, but they are hard and not forgiving when you go down. \" The key is to not fight the fall, but just to roll with it, as paratroopers do. \"The idea is to orient your body to the ground so when you hit, there's a multistep process of hitting and shifting your body weight to break up that impact,\" said Sgt. First Class Chuck Davidson, master trainer at the Army's Advanced Airborne School at Ft. Bragg, N. C. Paratroopers' goal is to fall sideways in the direction the wind is carrying them \u2014 in no way resisting the momentum of the fall. When the balls of their feet barely reach the ground, they immediately distribute the impact in rapid sequence up through the calf to the thigh and buttocks. Then they roll over on the latissimus dorsi muscle, the large, flat muscle running laterally down the side of your back, and kick their feet over, shifting their weight so they end up supine with legs bent in front of them. The procedure is strikingly similar to how martial arts practitioners learn to take a fall when they are, say, thrown over someone's shoulder or have their legs knocked out from under them. \"I would say the principles we follow are: Accept that you're falling and go with it, round your body, and don't stiffen and distribute the energy so you take the fall in the widest area possible,\" said Paul Schreiner, a black belt jiu jitsu instructor at Marcelo Garcia Academy in New York City. While martial arts falls often have a gymnastic aspect, with rather elegant and snappy kinds of somersaults, it's still all about spreading out the force of impact. \"There may be an aesthetic component, but what it does is save the body,\" said Mr. Schreiner. \"If you don't take the fall in any single place, you'll still walk out sore, but you'll walk out of there. \" Difficult as it may sound as you're hurtling toward the ground \u2014 medical bills and disability flashing through your mind \u2014 experts said it's important to relax as you fall. You're less likely to hurt yourself if you soften up all your muscles and exhale. Rigidity is your enemy, while pliability is your friend. \"As unfair as it is, that's why people who are drunk\" tend to be the ones who \"don't get hurt in car crashes,\" said Mr. Inouye. \"They are loose and just flop around. \" Of course, you will be better able to loosen up, pivot to your side, tuck and roll if you are in good physical condition. \"If you have a room full of soccer players and computer desk workers and go around knocking people over, you can bet the soccer players are going to be less likely to get hurt because of their superior strength, agility and coordination,\" said Erik Moen, a physical therapist in Kenmore, Wash. But that doesn't mean you have to be an elite athlete or paratrooper to fall the \"right way. \" Young children are arguably the best fallers because they have yet to develop fear or embarrassment, so they just tumble and roll without tensing up and trying to catch themselves. Physical therapists can be helpful in assessing your weaknesses and prescribing exercises to improve your strength and agility (for example, jumping from side to side and on and off platforms or steps) so that you will be better able to execute a fall as well as lessen the risk that you will fall in the first place.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will be \"pushing hard\" to advance U.S. interests in his debut meeting with Group of 20 counterparts this week, including reaffirming commitments to avoid competitive currency devaluations, a senior Treasury official said on Monday.Mnuchin, who will attend a meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors from the G20 major economies on Friday and Saturday in Baden-Baden, Germany, also will press countries to help strengthen global growth, the official told reporters. \"The G20 can play a helpful role in advancing U.S. interests. The secretary will be pushing hard to make that come to pass, whether it's on macroeconomic policies, exchange rate policies etcetera,\" the official said. The official said it was important to the Trump administration that previous G20 commitments to not target exchange rates to gain a competitive trade advantage be reaffirmed and fully implemented. But that explicit pledge, which has long been a part of past G20 communiques, was not included in an early draft of the statement to be issued at the Baden-Baden meeting. The early draft, which is subject to more revisions, simply stated \"we reaffirm our previous exchange-rate commitments.\" The early draft also dropped language to \"resist all forms of protectionism\" in favor of a pledge to \"maintain an open and fair international trading system.\" The U.S. Treasury official declined to discuss the language that would be in the final communique but said that the Trump administration was committed to \"fair and open trade.\" \"I think that means a trading system that has a level playing field for our firms and our workers globally, and we'll be encouraging policies that lead to that level playing field so that our firms and workers are not disadvantaged,\" the official said. Trump officials have criticized China on a host of trade-related fronts related to its $347 billion trade surplus with the United States last year. These include President Donald Trump's own charges that Beijing manipulates its yuan currency and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross' complaints about Chinese excess industrial capacity, unfair subsidies for state-owned enterprises and a lack of access for foreign firms to major sectors of China's economy. The U.S. Treasury said in October that none of the U.S.' major trading partners was manipulating its currency to gain advantage for its exports. Mnuchin has said he would not pass judgment on China's currency practices until Treasury issues its semi-annual currency report in mid-April. China has announced plans to reduce some capacity in its steel industry in recent months and has urged the United States to move cautiously in pursuing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases. The country's ministry of commerce has denied U.S. charges that China's aluminum industry is receiving unfair subsidies. Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro last week also said Washington needed bilateral engagement with Germany to reduce its $65 billion trade surplus with the United States. The Treasury official said that countries with a trade surplus have a role to play in helping to achieve the G20's goals of maintaining \"strong, sustainable and balanced growth.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Canadian designer Line the Label shot to prominence on Monday after U.S. actress Meghan Markle wore a coat from the brand in her first public appearance after her engagement to Britain s Prince Harry. Markle appeared in the sunken garden at Kensington Palace on Monday in the late November chill, donning the C$799 ($627.11) white wrap coat with oversized collars and cinched at the waist with a knotted belt. The surge in interest in the coat caused the style to quickly sell out and crashed the Toronto-based knitwear label s website in some parts of the world, including in London. The company is taking reorders on the coat, an external spokeswoman said by email. Line has since named the coat Meghan, company President and co-founder John Muscat said in a statement, adding it was one of her favorite pieces from the fashion label. We are incredibly honored that Meghan chose to wear a Line coat to mark this very special occasion, Muscat said. We are elated for Meghan and wish her a lifetime of happiness with Prince Harry. Markle, who has a starring role in the Toronto-filmed U.S. TV show Suits, has lived in the Canadian city for several years. Markle also wore a Line coat to the closing ceremony of the Invictus Games in Toronto in September, days after the pair made their first public appearance together. Celebrities including Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Garner and Kate Hudson have also been photographed wearing the brand. Line was founded in 2000 by Muscat and designer Jennifer Wells. It was acquired a few years later by Canadian fashion house and importer PYA, which is based in a north Toronto suburb.","label":0}
{"text":"Some are disarmingly named, like the cutesy Chinese mitten crab. Others have names more indicative of their undesirable nature, like rock snot, an algae that slimes up cool forest streams. They are some of more than 100 invasive species that conservationists must battle in New York State, which teems with a growing number of plants, birds, fish, insects, mosses, molds and fungi that actually belong somewhere else. With some of the busiest airports and ports in the United States, New York has far more invasive species of certain types than any other state, federal officials say. Carried inside airplane wheels or in the ballast water of large boats, many creatures and spores show up in New York first, making it a laboratory of sorts where scientists and others strive to devise methods to banish the outsiders or risk losing native flora and fauna to invading hordes. Underscoring the increasing menace posed by persistent pest species, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, recently announced a $2 million grant challenging groups and institutions to come up with fresh strategies to fight living things like zebra mussels and a catastrophic fungus that causes even the most ancient oaks to wilt away. Last year, the state budget for invasive species control was nearly doubled from 2015, to $12 million. \"New York State is a real epicenter for everything invasive, whether it's aquatic, forest or terrestrial, because of where we sit in terms of international and interstate commerce,\" said Robert Davies, director of the division lands and forests for the state's Department of Environmental Conservation. \"The world is getting smaller and one of the downsides of the world getting smaller is this. \" Invasive species have long been a threat unwanted visitors, once they arrive, sometimes stay forever. The Asian beetle was first discovered in New York in 1996 and has been devouring hardwood trees nationwide ever since. In the last century, chestnut blight, a fungus, wiped out nearly all of New York's American chestnuts, once the most populous tree in the state. And gypsy moths, introduced from France in the 1860s, are still here, decimating leafy trees. Despite strict rules about what can be brought into the United States and the screening of goods and packages by federal authorities at entry points, the sheer volume of traffic makes it virtually impossible to erect a foolproof barrier. \"As a global hub for international trade and travel, New York is on the front lines of protecting our nation,'' Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. The state mobilized in December after the discovery that oak trees in Brooklyn and in Suffolk County on Long Island were infected with oak wilt, a deadly fungus that chokes off trees' internal water supply. There is no known cure contaminated trees must be cut down and their root systems killed to prevent the fungus from spreading. The state issued an order forbidding the transporting of oak wood out of the affected counties. In Brooklyn, the outbreak was detected in a northern red oak tree \u2014 just one so far \u2014 inside the Cemetery, the final resting place for many luminaries. Now, only a stump is left of a shade tree that was over 50 years old. It was cut down last month to prevent the wilt's spread. The stump will get a coat of herbicide that will kill the root system, which is still infected. \"The potential for the devastation here is immediately impactful, but it's also the significance for the oaks throughout the city,\" said Joseph Charap, the director of horticulture for the cemetery, who first noticed the diseased oak. He stood among the graves on a recent morning, while in the bare canopy of an uninfected oak tree above him, teams of men tethered to the upper branches sawed off limbs. The discovery had set off a race to prune all 664 of the cemetery's oak trees while they are dormant for the winter as a barricade against the spread of disease. The branches that are trimmed are treated with a special paint to guard against the fungus entering the trees. \"The potential to lose our oak collection is unthinkable,\" Mr. Charap said. Across the country, invasive species cause over $100 billion in damage every year, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, from blighted crops to boats covered with sharp zebra mussels. New York State does not keep a total for damage caused, but the annual bill just to control one species \u2014 the sea lamprey, a parasitic fish \u2014 is $500, 000. The overall budget for invasive species control is about $5. 5 million. While the state is at the epicenter of the problem, there are hot spots, including other parts of the East Coast, California and Texas. Sitting at the intersection of so many streams of commerce, New York has had to innovate under the pressures of invasive species. In 2009 it introduced a novel law forbidding the transporting of any firewood more than 50 miles from its source to prevent the spread of disease. (The oak at Cemetery, Mr. Charap believes, was probably infected by firewood improperly brought to the city.) Inside a laboratory at Cornell University, tiny, Galerucella birmanica beetles from China are kept under quarantine as their appetite for water chestnut is tested. An invasive aquatic species most likely introduced to New York in the 1880s, the water chestnut continues to clog the state's fresh waterways. Someday, the bugs may be released as a biological means to control the plant. The state Conservation Department has also created an app that allows people to log sightings of plants and animals they suspect might not belong in their yards or any natural areas. Last year, over 300 people reported more than 12, 000 such sightings. On the ground, the battle is fought with teams of forestry experts going inoculating root systems against fungus. In the air, the Conservation Department uses State Police helicopters to conduct seasonal patrols to spot shriveled trees on mountainsides or to search for animals that do not belong here, such as the Eurasian boar. Such efforts do pay off. It's been several years since the last boar sighting for Bill Burns, 75, a farmer who grows corn and other crops on over 600 acres in Spafford, N. Y. on the eastern edge of the Finger Lakes. Mr. Burns estimates that the animals, which are native to Russia and are believed to have been introduced here by game farmers who were careless with their fences, have caused more than $100, 000 in damages to his crops over the years. \"They will go right down the corn planter tracks and suck the seed right out of the ground,\" Mr. Burns said. He shot and killed several of them \u2014 \"they taste rewarding,'' he said \u2014 but it took a concerted effort by the state and federal authorities, which sent in specially trained trappers and dogs to round up the animals, to achieve true relief. The pigs have been eradicated from the state, according to the Conservation Department. Still, from his kitchen window, Mr. Burns can look across Skaneateles Lake and see stands of dead ash trees. He believes they have been killed by swarms of emerald ash borers, a Asian beetle first confirmed to have colonized New York State in 2009, according to Cornell University. The insects are one of the state's top priorities. Mr. Burns fears it is too late. \"I am irritated and disappointed in just about everybody in the world that is careless,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Home | World | Experts: Britain's National Security at Stake Infiltrated by EU Experts: Britain's National Security at Stake Infiltrated by EU By Guy Fawkes 05\/11\/2016 11:17:32  Corruptio optimi pessima est  LONDON \u2013 England \u2013 The High Court decision to quash Brexit is proof that there are clandestine operatives within the system who only hold allegiance to Brussels and not to the United Kingdom.  Only a purge of the political, judicial, and defence sectors can save Britain from the mass infiltration of EU operatives working within the British governmental institutions.  These people have been identified during the EU referendum and must be purged from the system otherwise these treasonous operatives of the EU could cause further harm to the British constitution and Britain's national security.  We have seen the damage already committed within the judicial system when EU operative judges were allowed to preside over the Brexit ruling and attempted to thwart the vote of the electorate on the EU referendum.  The blatantly biased decision by these EU judges, one of which is Lord Carnwath, 71, who was one of four co-founders of the EU Forum of Judges for the Environment and served as the forum's secretary general from 2004-05. The body exists to \"promote the enforcement of national, European and international environmental law\".  L ord Reed, began his career as an advisor to the Scottish education department, served as a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, who also acted as an expert adviser to the European Union Initiative with Turkey on Democratisation and Human Rights between 2002 and 2004, and the following year he became chairman of the Franco-British Judicial Co-operation Committee.  The other EU judge is Lord Kerr, 68, who also sat as a judge in the European Court of Human Rights, ruling on a case in 2001 involving aircraft noise from Heathrow.  Additionally we have L ord Mance, 73, who began his career working for a law firm in Hamburg, before qualifying as a barrister in 1965. His time in Germany gave him a taste for international legal affairs, and he has represented the UK on the Council of Europe's Consultative Council of European Judges, which was set up in 2000 to advise the Council of Europe on the \"independence, impartiality and competence\" of judges. He has also served as a member of a seven-person EU panel that helps select judges and advocates-general of the European Court of Justice and General Court.  These elements within the panel were clearly not impartial in their decision purely on their heavily entrenched links with the EU.  Impartiality within law regarding key national security decisions like Brexit should be paramount to the judicial system within Britain therefore in justice terms, their decision to thwart Brexit, and the EU referendum result, voted for by 52% of the electorate, is wholly unjust and biased, bordering on corruption at the highest levels.  The question of corruption should be implemented with a full public inquiry into how these judges were selected and how they were allowed to come to their obviously biased non impartial decision. We must as a democracy look into any form of clandestine payments given to the judges prior to their decision, and if any discrepancy is found it must be put right.  Britain's national sovereignty is at stake, and treachery, corruption at the highest judicial levels must be eradicated to conserve our constitution. To purge the institutions of EU collaborators and clandestine operatives should be of paramount import in order to solidify Britain's national security and overall sovereign status. Share on :","label":1}
{"text":"Hillary Clinton recruited Al Gore, the former vice president in her husband's administration, to raise the specter of Gore's loss to former President George W. Bush in the contentious 2000 U.S. election to urge voters to go to the polls next month. \"Take it from me,\" Gore told a crowd of several hundred Clinton supporters at a campaign event in a college gymnasium. \"Every single vote counts. Every single vote counts.\" As he campaigned for Clinton at Miami Dade College ahead of the Nov. 8 election that pits her against Republican nominee Donald Trump, Gore reminded voters of the Florida recount saga 16 years ago. Bush was declared the winner in the state by a mere 537 votes after the intervention of the U.S. Supreme Court. \"Your vote really, really, really counts,\" Gore said. \"You can consider me as an exhibit A of that. For those of you who are younger than 25 you might not remember the election of 2000 and what happened here in Florida. For those of you older than 25, I heard you murmuring just now, but take it from me it was a very close election.\" A chant grew out of the crowd: \"You won! You won!\" Gore, who served as vice president under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, also sought to put a spotlight on the fight against climate change, which has long been his signature issue. \"When it comes to the most urgent issue facing our country and the world the choice in this election is extremely clear: Hillary Clinton will make solving the climate crisis a top national priority,\" Gore said. \"Her opponent, based on the ideas he has presented, would take us toward a climate catastrophe.\" Clinton highlighted comments from her rival Donald Trump expressing skepticism about climate change. In 2012, he said on his Twitter account that the \"concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese\" in order to benefit its manufacturing sector. \"We cannot put a climate denier in the White House, at all,\" she said. \"We need a president who believes in science.\"","label":0}
{"text":"China will keep up its years-long battle against smog to ensure blue skies and promote a revolution in clean energy, President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday at the opening ceremony of a key Communist Party congress. Improving the notoriously toxic air across the northern regions of the world s second-largest economy has been a cornerstone of Beijing s economic and social policy in recent years. China has ordered factories to cut output in a bid to enforce bigger emission cuts in coming months and avoid a repeat of the near-record levels of choking smog that enveloped key northern areas at the start of the year. In the long term, it has also launched a series of measures to curb the use of coal, the nation s favorite fuel, and boost use of renewable power, like wind and solar. The government will also take measures to improve rural areas by restoring soil and waterways, Xi added, as China moves to modernize its vast agricultural sector.","label":0}
{"text":"Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said on Saturday the country had a problem with its judiciary, which annulled his election win of last month, and we must fix it . The Law Society of Kenya said in a strongly worded statement that Kenyatta, as the head of state who under the constitution is a symbol of national unity , should refrain from derogatory comments about the judiciary. Kenyatta, speaking a day after the Supreme Court canceled his victory and ordered new polls within 60 days, repeated his message from Friday that he would respect its ruling. But, speaking on live television at the State House in Nairobi after meeting elected officials from his Jubilee party, he added Who even elected you?...We have a problem and we must fix it. He did not elaborate. The decision to annul the election was unexpected and unprecedented in Africa where governments often hold sway over judges. The president s latest comments mark the second time since Friday s ruling that he has criticized the judiciary in public. On Friday, during an impromptu rally in Nairobi, he accused the court of ignoring the will of the people and dismissed the chief justice s colleagues as wakora , or crooks. The lawyers association condemned Kenyatta s use of the Kiswahili word, saying that the judges serving in the highest court had acted professionally, with honor and dignity . They...do not deserve the disrespectful treatment they are being shown , the statement read. The president s appearances since the ruling suggest he intends to campaign rigorously for the re-run of the Aug.8 poll. He said via Twitter on Saturday: For now let us meet at the ballot. Attention now turns back to the election board. The court ruled that it had failed, neglected or refused to conduct the presidential election in a manner consistent with the dictates of the constitution . Raila Odinga, the veteran opposition leader whose coalition brought the petition against the election board to the Supreme Court, said on Friday that some officials from the commission should face criminal prosecution. The chairman of the election board said there would be personnel changes, but it was not clear if that would be enough for the opposition. Sweeping out the whole board would complicate efforts to hold a new poll within two months. Last month s election which included the presidential poll in addition to races at other levels of government was one of the most expensive ever held in Africa. Ahead of the vote Kenya s treasury said preparation and conduct of polling would cost the equivalent of around $480 million. Analysts saw the president s latest comments on the judiciary as a worrisome development. It s extremely unfortunate that Kenyatta seems to be issuing veiled threats at the judiciary, said Murithi Mutiga, a Nairobi-based senior Africa analyst at the International Crisis Group. This was a tremendous moment for Kenyan democracy, where the court upheld the rule of law. Politicians should be careful not to incite the public against the judiciary. On Friday, Chief Justice David Maraga said the Supreme Court s verdict was backed by four of the six judges and declared Kenyatta s victory invalid, null and void . Details of the ruling will be released within 21 days. Prior to last month s election Maraga spoke out to emphasize the judiciary s independence. In a statement he read out on behalf of the Judicial Service Commission less than a week before the election, he listed instances in which politicians from the ruling party and the opposition had tried to intervene in the judiciary s work. The emerging culture of public lynching of judges and judicial officers by the political class is a vile affront to the rule of law and must be fiercely resisted, the statement read. We wish to state that ... the judiciary will not cower to these intimidating tactics. Kenya s judiciary went through sweeping changes in a bid to restore confidence in the legal system after the bloodshed following the 2007 election. Experts say the constitution adopted in 2010 enshrines protections for the judiciary against interference by the executive.","label":0}
{"text":"Hillary's campaign is going down faster than submarine with screen doors. Abedin and Wiener are each trying to make their own immunity deals with the FBI. CNN just ran a piece disrespecting Clinton and said her campaign was \"in crisis\". Can she survive? Are the Democrats finally going to get what they so richly deserve, their day of justice. America has never seen a time like this. The chaos is summarized in the following video.       P lease Donate to The Common Sense Show    PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL AND DON'T FORGET TO \"LIKE\" US    This is the absolute best in food storage. Dave Hodges is a satisfied customer. Don't wait until it is too late. Click Here for more information.   Click here for more information    The sane alternative to Facebook  Seen.Life-The Facebook alternative- no censorship, no spying\u2013 Sign up here","label":1}
{"text":"A centre-left party that has no seats in Slovenia s parliament and is led by a former comedian topped an opinion poll published by daily newspaper Delo on Monday, about six months ahead of an expected general election. The Lista Marjana Sarca (LMS) under Marjan Sarec, mayor of the city of Kamnik, drew the support of 15.7 percent with a junior governing coalition party, the Social Democrats, in second place with 12.6 percent and the leading opposition party, the centre-left Slovenian Democratic Party, with 12.2 percent. The Party of Modern Centre led by Prime Minister Miro Cerar came in sixth with 5.5 percent. Last month, the Social Democrats led the same poll with 19.8 percent while the LMS was not yet included in the survey. Sarec surprised many last month when he was narrowly beaten in a presidential run-off election, gathering about 47 percent to incumbent Borut Pahor s 53 percent. Analysts said Sarec s party, which has so far been active only at local level, could win a parliamentary vote amid general dissatisfaction with the centre-left government, above all its inability to improve the inefficient national health system. The government of the southeast European country is also under heavy pressure from various public sector unions demanding wage hikes at a time of strong economic growth, expected to be 4.4 percent this year, up from 3.1 percent in 2016. Pahor will call a general election in the coming months and it is expected to be held in the first half of June.","label":0}
{"text":"Implausible schemes to put Mike Pence, rather than Donald Trump, on the top of the ballot have been flying since a once-secret recording of Trump's lurid boasting about sexual assault leaked to the public on Friday evening. Pence has issued a public statement on Trump's remarks, saying he \"does not condone his remarks and cannot defend them\" \u2014 but accepted Trump's apology and suggested he'd stick by him through the second presidential debate on Sunday night. Anonymous sources say privately Pence is \"beside himself\" over the details in the leaked audio. Meanwhile, multiple prominent Republicans \u2014 from former rival for the nomination Carly Fiorina to former Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of members of Congress \u2014 have called for Trump to step aside and allow Pence to be the nominee. On some level, the Republican longing for Pence in the face of these new details about Trump's past makes sense. He's an experienced politician with a long track record. He has impeccable social conservative credentials. He's the governor of a state. He can pay attention in a debate long enough to land punches on Tim Kaine. And he has almost certainly never been secretly recorded talking about a woman's \"tits\" or \"pussy\" or bragging about kissing women against their will. But if Republican politicians are really horrified by Trump's remarks \u2014 and not just by the possible electoral implications \u2014 Pence made one decision that should disqualify him in their eyes, too: Mike Pence agreed to be Donald Trump's vice president. Pence lent Trump the legitimacy he needed to unite the Republican Party. He spent months apologizing for Trump, explaining what Trump really meant, and doing everything he could to put Trump in the Oval Office. Trump himself pointed to \"party unity\" as one of the key reasons for choosing Pence as his running mate in the first place, making no secret of the role he viewed the Indiana governor as playing in the campaign. It's not as if Pence didn't know what he was doing. By the time Trump picked him as his running mate on July 14, Trump had already: Nor was Trump's rampant sexism a secret. His public feuds with celebrities aside, the New York Times had already published a long article on times Trump was accused of crossing boundaries with women in his private life. And, of course, Trump had spent years publicly doubting that President Obama was born in the United States. This is not a complete list. But by the time Trump was picking a running mate, it was clear that he was a man with a history of bigoted, racist, sexist behavior and remarks. This is what Pence agreed to make palatable to the Republican establishment, to social conservatives, and to swing voters. Pence was going against his own principles, as these tweets from before he joined the ticket show: And Pence has stood by Trump throughout the ensuing controversies \u2014 Trump's fights with a Gold Star family and the 1997 Miss Universe among them. He's watched Trump tell black voters that they should vote for him because \"What do you have to lose?\" and say that the Central Park Five, proved innocent by DNA evidence, should have been executed anyway. To characterize Pence as a paragon of respect and decency who happened to wake up one morning and, through no fault of his own, be Trump's running mate ignores the role Pence played in trying to make Trump palatable to voters and the establishment in the first place. If the case against Trump's presidency is his poor judgment and his lack of respect for women, what does Pence's tacit approval of all of this say about him?","label":0}
{"text":"Britain's Sir Elton John will not perform at the inauguration of Donald Trump in Washington as U.S. president, the singer-songwriter's spokeswoman said on Wednesday. Anthony Scaramucci, an economic adviser to Trump's campaign, said John would be performing in a BBC radio interview during which Scaramucci also said the Republican president-elect had a pro-gay rights stance. \"Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the Mall for the inauguration,\" Scaramucci added in the interview for \"HARDtalk,\" broadcast on Wednesday. \"Elton will not be performing at Trump's inaugural,\" the singer's publicist, Fran Curtis, responded. John, a prominent gay rights activist, performed at fundraisers for Democrat Hillary Clinton during the U.S. presidential election campaign. He also objected when Trump played his \"Rocket Man\" and \"Tiny Dancer\" songs without permission during rallies and campaign appearances earlier this year, saying that any use of his music \"should not be seen as an endorsement of Donald Trump.\" A spokesman for the Trump inauguration committee did not respond to a request for comment on Scaramucci's claim.","label":0}
{"text":"Watch the first Democratic presidential debate Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. ET live on CNN and CNNgo ; join the conversation at #DemDebate Washington (CNN) The shadow boxing that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have played at for months -- they've barely mentioned each other on the campaign trail -- will give way to more direct jabs Tuesday night. That's when the two rivals line up on stage at the first Democratic debate of the 2016 campaign, sponsored by CNN and Facebook. The encounter will provide a crucial opportunity for Clinton and Sanders -- the leading Democratic contenders -- to contrast their personalities, experience and approach to the key issues in the campaign. Though Clinton and Sanders have rarely mentioned each other's names, they are clearly reacting to each other and their rival's potential weaknesses. Sanders took aim at Clinton's Wall Street record and Iraq vote over the weekend; she put him on the defensive on guns and his poor standing with minority voters. Until now, they have each had good reason for avoiding full contact with the other. Clinton hasn't wanted to elevate Sanders and his surprisingly strong poll numbers, while Sanders has wanted to maintain his untraditional, above-the-fray image. On Tuesday, that calculus will change. And the distinctions they've subtly staked out on a range of issues are only likely to grow sharper. In the weeks leading up to the debate in Las Vegas, the two Democrats have been carefully finessing their political positions in relation to each other and their party's wide coalition, offering clues about how they will spar Tuesday night. Sanders has been signaling he will try to strike a contrast with Clinton on reining in Wall Street and on her record of support for military interventions overseas. The former secretary of state, meanwhile, is under pressure to prove to progressives who have flocked to Sanders that she genuinely cares about the middle class. She's expected to highlight her differences with her rival on gun control and to demonstrate the broad support she has among minority voters -- a key sector of the Democratic coalition where Sanders is struggling. As he limbered up for their clash, Sanders threw down the gauntlet on the Iraq War -- a thrust that Clinton has struggled to counter in the past -- hinting that she has hawkish views that are out of step with the majority of Democratic voters. His campaign issued a statement reminding voters that he, then a member of the House of Representatives, voted against authorizing the Iraq war in late 2002. At the time he argued that the conflict would destabilize the Middle East, kill large numbers of Americans and Iraqi civilians and hamper the war on terror against al Qaeda. The statement did not once mention Clinton -- but it did not have to. The then-New York senator did vote to authorize the Iraq war, and that vote was one of her greatest vulnerabilities in the 2008 Democratic campaign against Obama, who also opposed the war. The Sanders statement raised the possibility that Clinton's vote could haunt her for a second presidential campaign. \"Democrats are no more fond of the Iraq war now than they were back then. That could be a problem,\" Peter Beinart, a foreign policy expert and CNN contributor, said Monday. He added that another Democratic candidate, former Virginia senator and Vietnam war veteran Jim Webb, who was also against the war, could double-team with Sanders to cause trouble for Clinton on the issue. Sanders has also been staking out territory to Clinton's left on Syria. The former secretary of state recently distanced herself from Obama's much-criticized policy on the vicious civil war by calling for a no-fly zone to be set up to shield refugees. Sanders issued a statement earlier this month pointing out that he opposes such an idea, warning that it could \"get us more deeply involved in that horrible civil war and lead to a never ending entanglement in that region.\" The statement appeared to be a clear appeal to Democrats who share Obama's antipathy toward getting the United States entangled in another Middle Eastern conflict and who are wary of Clinton's more activist instincts on foreign policy. Sanders is not alone in seeing Clinton's foreign policy record as a vulnerability. Another Democratic candidate, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, also picked up on her Syria position Sunday -- saying on CNN's \"State of the Union\" that a no-fly zone was not advisable and warning that the former secretary of state was \"always quick for the military intervention,\" apparently referring to her previous support for military action in nations such as Iraq and Libya. Another area where Sanders seems more in tune with the progressive Democratic base is on Wall Street, especially since he has raised most of his money from small donors -- unlike the former secretary of state, who has been relying on big budget fund-raising events with rich contributors. Even with his small-donor focus, Sanders is nearly neck-and-neck in the fund-raising race with Clinton. Clinton has made strenuous attempts to connect with what her campaign has called \"regular\" Americans, stressing the need to raise up the middle class to feel the benefits of the economic recovery. But Sanders has said that she hasn't done enough, an argument he may expand upon on the debate stage. \"People will have to contrast my consistency and my willingness to stand up to Wall Street and corporations with the secretary,\" Sanders said on NBC's \"Meet the Press\" on Sunday. The Vermont senator also will likely draw an implied contrast with Clinton on two other issues -- the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact the United States and 11 other nations reached this month and the Keystone XL pipeline designed to carry oil from Canada's tar sands across the United States. Clinton now says she is a 'no' on both issues, but she took months to get there -- despite fervent opposition to both projects from the left flank of the Democratic Party. \"I am glad that she has reached that conclusion,\" said Sanders in Washington last week when asked about Clinton's opposition to a trade agreement she championed repeatedly as secretary of state. \"This is a conclusion that I reached from day one.\" Yet Sanders is not alone in curating the battlefield for the Democratic debate. Clinton, while getting in line with progressive Democratic positions on big issues, has also been preparing to strike key contrasts with Sanders. Guns are one policy issue where Sanders is not completely in sync with the Democratic base, so Clinton is likely to exploit it on Tuesday night. She has been promising a forthright effort to enact new gun control laws after a string of recent mass shootings. It partly seems to be an attempt to focus attention her rival's record on guns, which recently saw him express his openness to reforms that would hold gun manufacturers liable for crimes committed with their weapons. Clinton has also spent the runup to the debate cementing her links to key voting blocs of the Democratic coalition -- especially in sectors of the party where Sanders is weak. She can point to broad appeal in the party, which could be key to eventually blunting the challenge from Sanders after early-voting contests in the less diverse states of Iowa and New Hampshire where he is strong. In recent weeks, Clinton has met representatives of the Black Lives Matter movement and has even criticized Obama for not going far enough in changing immigration laws. \"Hillary has done a lot of work leading up to this debate that has pretty much gone unnoticed,\" Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton's 2008 campaign manager, said on CNN on Monday. \"She's rolled out Latinos for Hillary, she has rolled out Women for Hillary, she has met with the leadership of Black Lives Matter, she has checked a lot of boxes walking into this debate,\" she noted. \"I think she is going to display tomorrow night (Tuesday) her vast support among this coalition.\" The challenge that Sanders faces reaching out to minority voters, who are a vital part of the Democratic Party voting bloc, was underscored by a new CNN poll Monday finding that only 1% of nonwhite voters in the important early voting state of South Carolina favor him. That is a showing that Sanders must improve on if he is to come from behind and beat Clinton for the nomination.","label":0}
{"text":"We re wondering if Sen. Lindsey Graham (R) is OK. He just doesn t seem to be himself lately. The South Carolina Republican was so fiercely critical of alleged president Donald Trump, but that s all suddenly changed now. Graham, who once called Trump a jackass, praised the amateur president on Saturday as a leader who is open-minded and is even willing to reach out for help, even late at night, according to the Washington Examiner. What have I learned about our president? He s curious, he asks questions, and he knows no fear, Graham said in his remarks at the South Carolina Republican convention. And he s under siege unlike any president I ve ever seen in my entire life They don t believe he won; I do. Now Obama was somewhat hard for us, but I thought we were somewhat respectful, Graham added without one bit of irony whatsoever.Graham then went to on to disrespect former President Barack Obama by calling him a community organizer who apologized for America every turn all over the world. Let me tell you that you have a commander in chief that s not going to let this country get walked over anymore, he said.And that s really cute, don t you think? He said that of Obama who had 20 years of experience under his belt before taking the job as President while praising a former reality show star who had zero experience in politics. He calls and I m honored that he would call me and I want to help him, he said. He calls me when I m asleep and he calls me after I go to bed. I wish he would rest more. I gave him my phone number. So far so good. It s nice he has a cozy relationship with a man who just recently penned him a letter to assure him that he has no connections to Russia. Lindsey Graham requested that information. Trump s lawyers said in the letter that a review of the last 10 years of Trump s tax returns revealed that he has no income from Russia with a few exceptions. Here s the kicker: The law firm who sent the letter actually has deep ties to wait for it Russia. Lindsey Graham appeared to be that one Republican with a spine willing to call out the White House, but now he s rolling over while claiming that Republicans respected Obama. Democrats are just being big ol meanies to the man who is plagued in scandals while only 120ish days into the job.Trump, for the record, is the same man who dogged Obama for years, insisting that our first black President was actually a scary Muslim from Kenya. Obama did not have conflicts of interest. The biggest scandal at this same amount of time during Obama s presidency was that he put Dijon mustard on his hamburger. That was the big scandal featured on Fox News for a week. In contrast, Trump has a massive amount of conflicts of interest.Sure, Lindsey, we ll give Trump the same respect Republicans gave Obama. No problem!Photo by Alex Wong\/Getty Images.","label":1}
{"text":"B b..but she s a victim (Mosby claims her account was hacked).Earlier this month, two controversial tweets were favorited by a personal Twitter account belonging to Baltimore City State s Attorney Marilyn Mosby. The first tweet referred to the officers charged in the death of Freddie Gray as those 6 THUG cops and the other praised Mosby and claimed she INFURIATES a certain kind of white person. But Mosby s office is now claiming that the two favorited tweets were the work of a hacker. Both Mosby s official Twitter account and her personal account were hacked, the Baltimore City State s Attorney s Office reportedly told The Kelly File on Wednesday. We do not know how long it s been going on, we are working with Twitter. Mosby revealed on May 23 that her official government Twitter account had been hacked, but did not mention her personal account being compromised. Further, the tweets in question were favorited by her personal account weeks before her government account was reportedly hacked.Fox News host Megyn Kelly expressed cynicism that a hacker would take over her account and only randomly favorite two tweets.Watch the segment via The Kelly File below: The Five co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle said Mosby is behaving like an activist when she is supposed to be an impartial evaluator of the facts of the case. The officers charged in the Gray case have asked for a change of venue because it doesn t appear they can get a fair and impartial trial in Baltimore.","label":1}
{"text":"Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday she expected any deal with the European Union to be struck close to the end of the two-year negotiating period and only then would Britain know the costs or benefits. We are negotiating a deal. We will not have negotiated that deal until, I suspect, close to the end of the period (which has been set aside), May told parliament.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump has added Pope Francis to his very long list of people he is feuding with. During an episode of The Late Show with Colbert, Stephen Colbert did a hilarious bit about Trump s latest failure attempt to pander to Christians.The feud came after Pope Francis was quoted as saying that Trump is not a Christian, A person who thinks only about building walls wherever they may be and not of building bridges is not a Christian, Pope Francis said while traveling to Rome from Mexico. When asked if he thought people should or should not vote for Trump, Pope Francis responded saying, As far as what you said about whether I would advise to vote or not to vote, I am not going to get involved in that. I say only that this man is not Christian if he has said things like that. Trump released an official campaign response, where said that Pope Francis is going to regret not supporting him and his campaign when ISIS attacks the Vatican. During a campaign rally on Thursday Trump had this to say: As I m walking up here, they said, Mr. Trump, the pope made a statement about you, and I said, The pope? What did the pope say? I like the pope was it good or bad? Because if it was good, I like the pope. If it s bad, I don t like the pope. Colbert mocks Trump during the segment, saying: It s like Jesus said: Blessed are the poor, unless they said something bad about me then screw them. Trump is trying to pander to Christians. He really needs them in order to secure his chances at receiving the Republican primary nomination.As I have pointed out before, Trump is making himself look a fool doing it too. It s not just that Trump isn t saying the wrong things to win over Christian voters. He doesn t even appear to understand the basic concepts of Christianity. This was shown Trump publicly stated that he had not asked Jesus Christ for forgiveness.You can the video below.Featured image from video screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"It looks like it s safe for everyone to pack up their little victim tents and head back to the dorms Something stinks at the University of Missouri.A reported incident of vandalism at Mizzou sparked university-wide protests, a boycott by the school s 4-5 football team, and eventually the resignation of the university s president and chancellor.There s only one problem: no evidence of the alleged incident, in which a poop swastika on the wall of a dormitory restroom was reported, has ever been made publicly available. Did this incident occur as reported, or was it an immaculate defecation that formed the foundation of an unimaginable deception?According to Billy Donley, the president of Mizzou s Residence Halls Association (RHA), the poop swastika was reported at approximately 2:00 a.m. on October 24, 2015. On Saturday, October 24th, at 2:00am an individual came into one of the restrooms in Gateway Hall and drew a swastika on the wall with their own feces, Donley wrote in a letter several days after the alleged incident. This event happened while many students, including myself, were already asleep. Later in his letter, Donley noted that he only founded out about the alleged vandalism incident via a flyer posted on the walls of the dorm.Although Donley did not respond to repeated requests for comment prior to publication, The Federalist spoke with two RHA staffers while trying to get in touch with Donley. Neither had personally witnessed the poop swastika. When asked if there was any photographic evidence of the alleged incident, one staffer replied, Not to my knowledge. Frankie Minor, the director of residential life at Mizzou, did not respond to repeated requests for comment on whether he personally saw the poop swastika or any photographic evidence of it.The Federalist also attempted to contact Christian Basi, the associate director of the University of Missouri News Bureau, who previously told the Columbia Missourian on Oct. 30 that the incident had been immediately reported to Mizzou police. Basi did not respond to requests for comment prior to the publication of this article.Calls to the University of Missouri Police Department, which responded to and investigated the alleged poop swastika incident, also failed to yield any evidence of the poopstika.Multiple activists on Twitter pointed to this photo as proof that the incident occurred as reported, but a Google search for the same image shows that it has been floating around the Internet for nearly a year. A reddit thread from November of 2014 appears to contain the earliest publication of the photo in question, meaning that it most certainly does not constitute proof of the incident alleged to have occurred at Mizzou on October 24, 2015.Maj. Brian Weimer, the public information officer for the Mizzou police department, told The Federalist that he also did not personally see the poop swastika that was reported to police. When asked if anyone in the police department personally witnessed the swastika, Maj. Weimer clammed up and referred all questions about the incident to the university s custodian of public records.The Federalist also repeatedly contacted @ConcernedStudent1950, the Twitter account representing Mizzou protesters who issued a series of demands of university administrators after the alleged poop swastika incident made headlines. The individuals running the @CS1950 account failed to produce any photographic or documentary evidence of the incident prior to publication of this article.While a mere absence of evidence is not synonymous with evidence of absence, the complete lack of any verifiable photographic evidence of the alleged poop swastika and the lack of any named eye witnesses raises serious questions about the veracity of a racially charged incident of vandalism that eventually led to the resignation of the University of Missouri s two top administrators.Did the incident happen as reported, or did two university administrators resign over protests that were sparked by a hoax? And if the incident did happen as reported, a proposition for which no publicly available evidence currently exists, how did university administrators and law enforcement authorities confirm that the vandalism was driven by racial animosity, as opposed to being promulgated as a public relations stunt meant to tar the university for failing to provide an environment free of racist invective? It would not be the first time a public university fell victim to a high profile PR stunt that was later revealed to be a fabrication. Either way, students, their parents, university employees, and Missouri taxpayers deserve solid, verifiable answers based on clear evidence about what exactly transpired in that Gateway Wall bathroom in the early morning of October 24.Under the provisions of Missouri s broad public records laws, The Federalist has requested from the University of Missouri copies of any and all records relating to the alleged vandalism, including any police or incident reports describing the investigation of the poop swastika by law enforcement authorities, as well as any photographic records of the alleged swastika, and will make that information available if and when it is received from university officials.","label":1}
{"text":"A Detroit judge threw the mother of a drunk driver being sentenced for killing a man out of her courtroom and into jail after she laughed at the victim's family during a statement from the victim's sister. [VIDEO: Drunk Driver's Mom Jailed for Laughing at Victim's Family, Amanda Kosal, 25, was awaiting sentencing when Judge Qiana Lillard threw Donna Kosal and her boyfriend out of the courtroom, calling them \"clowns\" after the victim's sister gave a statement to the court, the Daily Mail reported. The video showed the judge losing patience with Donna and her boyfriend after she caught them smirking. The judge later brought the mother back in and sentenced her to 93 days in jail for contempt of court. Amanda Kosal pleaded guilty to killing Jerome Zirker and severely injuring his fiancee Brittany Johnson. She was sentenced to three to 15 years in prison. Judge Lillard said Donna Kosal and an unidentified boyfriend were acting disrespectfully in the courtroom. \"It's time for him to go,\" Judge Lillard said, looking out into the gallery. \"And I don't know who he is, but whoever can sit here at a tragic moment like this and laugh and smile when somebody has lost a family member \u2026 in the entire time that Mr. Zirker's sister was speaking that clown, and that's what I am going to call him, a clown, was sitting there smiling and laughing. \" A guard escorted the man from the room, and Judge Lillard addressed Donna. \"You can go too because if you don't know how to act, you can go to jail, so leave,\" she said. When Judge Lillard brought Donna back in, they exchanged a few words and the judge motioned to the bailiffs to take Donna to jail. \"Take her, she's going in the back,\" the judge said to the bailiffs. \"Anybody else wanna go? You can go, too. \" Donna said something about the judge's mouth, to which the judge replied, \"Oh, my mouth? Well, thank you, your mouth got you 93 days,\" the New York Post reported. The next day, Donna appeared before the judge, and apologized for what she did. \"I deeply apologize for what I did. I was under a lot of stress,\" Donna said to the judge. The judge took pity on her and reduced her sentence by 92 days, setting her free. Amanda's vehicle slammed into Johnson and Zirker head on, crossing the center line. Zirker was picking up his fiancee from a as a care worker at a group home when the accident happened, WDIV reported.","label":0}
{"text":"By now, the entire world is aware that Donald Trump spent his morning lashing out at Morning Joe hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski in a truly unhinged fashion even by normal Trumpian standards. He let loose in a crazy, misogynistic rant that accused Brzezinski of begging to be invited to his New Year s Eve party, but essentially he said she was too ugly to be there except in much worse terms. Now, it seems that Trump s social media man, Dan Scavino, is joining in the continued debasement of the White House with equally childish tweets. We will screenshot them here, in case he thinks better of these tweets and decides to delete them:Of course, this is all because Joe and Mika have the stones to do their jobs and call this abnormal, alarming presidency out for what it is: Dangerous, unhinged, and terrible for the nation. Of course, with Trump being as thin-skinned as he is, the biggest job of his staff is to make him feel good and to hit back at any and all criticism that might be thrown at the White House, and especially at Trump himself.These people have done irreversible damage to the office of the president, to America s standing in the world, and to the political climate and discourse in America. It will likely take us a generation to get back to where we were if we ever do at all.It s time to really think hard about what four years of this will do to our nation. Hell, the damage he s already done is quite literally immeasurable.","label":1}
{"text":"If British plans for leaving the European Union have been a dance of the seven veils, the British government removed one of them on Sunday, letting slip to news media that Prime Minister Theresa May is likely to choose to exit Europe's single market and its customs union \u2014 a hard Brexit. Mrs. May is scheduled to make a speech on her plans on Tuesday, but the British weekend papers and Sunday news programs were briefed by Downing Street about the main lines of the policy, and some published selected quotations of what Mrs. May is scheduled to say. Officially, a government spokesman on Sunday called the reports \"speculation\" and emphasized only the extracts of the speech that were leaked by Downing Street itself, with Mrs. May calling for British unity \"to make a success of Brexit and build a truly global Britain. \" Those extracts were not explicit on the single market or the customs union, but the Sunday newspapers, which receive their own briefings from the government before publication, took much the same line: that Britain is headed for a sharp break with Europe after a transitional period. Downing Street dislikes the term \"hard Brexit,\" but an outcome along those lines is not unexpected, because it flows logically from the priorities Mrs. May has set out, particularly about controlling the country's borders. Being outside the single market could damage Britain's important financial services sector and is likely to hit the value of the pound again, at least temporarily. A week ago, Mrs. May said in a television interview that Britain would not be able to keep \"bits\" of its European Union membership. That, too, was interpreted as a break with the single market, which requires freedom of movement and labor for all citizens of the bloc. \"Often people talk in terms as if somehow we are leaving the E. U. but we still want to kind of keep bits of membership,\" she said then. \"We are leaving. We are coming out. We are not going to be a member of the E. U. any longer. \" She added, \"We will be able to have control of our borders, control of our laws. \" She and her officials have made it clear that her two main priorities are ending the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice over British law, and restoring British control over its borders and immigration, including from the European Union. Those decisions mean that Britain could no longer be a part of the single market for goods, capital, people and services of the European Union, because the rules for that market are adjudicated by the European Court of Justice. The situation is similar for the customs union, which applies only to goods. Membership in the customs union would mean that Britain would have to obey European Union regulations on manufacturing standards and would be banned from making separate trade deals with countries \u2014 two of the most important reasons forces have cited for leaving the bloc. Another implication of leaving the single market and the customs union would be Britain's desire to negotiate a new trade deal with the European Union as a special partner of some kind, but one different from those held by countries like Norway and Turkey. It would also seem to mean trying to negotiate a transitional deal with Brussels while the larger trade deal is being haggled out, which could take many years. Under a transitional deal, which would extend beyond the limit for negotiating the exit, Britain would presumably continue to have a relationship much like the current one, including paying into the European Union's budget. In an article in The Sunday Times of London, David Davis, the minister in charge of the new Department for Exiting the European Union, wrote that Britain would consider ways to extend or smooth the exit process to provide certainty for businesses. \"If it proves necessary, we have said we will consider time for implementation of new arrangements,\" he wrote. \"We don't want the E. U. to fail, we want it to prosper economically and politically, and we need to persuade our allies that a strong new partnership with the U. K. will help the E. U. to do that. \" In a combative interview published on Sunday, the chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, warned that, if no agreement could be reached on market access, Britain could change its economic model from \"European style\" taxation and regulation to regain competitiveness. \"The British people are not going to lie down and say, 'Too bad, we've been wounded,'\" he said. \"We will change our model and we will come back, and we will be competitively engaged. \" Those comments, from an interview with the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, were interpreted as a warning that Britain could use its corporate tax as a form of leverage in Brexit negotiations. In a television interview on Sunday, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, said that Mr. Hammond \"appears to be making a sort of threat to the European community,\" calling it \"a recipe for some kind of trade war with Europe in the future. \" But Mrs. May's speech on Tuesday, judging from the excerpts, is also meant to assuage European Union colleagues by committing Britain to a close, friendly and constructive future relationship. Britain would prefer a customs relationship with the European Union if one can be negotiated on British terms, which would mean limits on the bloc's citizens working in Britain and the ability to do separate trade deals. European Union leaders have been largely dismissive of such efforts, but both sides are setting out hard positions before the real negotiations begin, sometime after Britain invokes Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to officially begin the process of leaving the bloc. Mrs. May insists that that will take place before the end of March, even if it requires a vote of Parliament, setting off two years of complicated talks on extracting Britain from a union it joined more than 40 years ago. Mr. Hammond is known to have argued strongly inside the government for Britain to keep its access to the single market to protect its financial sector, which accounts for 10 to 12 percent of Britain's economic output. Bankers and brokers in the City of London are sometimes reviled by many Britons but are also highly paid, so their tax receipts are important to the Treasury. If a significant number of them moved their operations to European Union cities or New York, the pressure on the British government's budget to pay for health care, pensions, welfare benefits and military spending would increase substantially. Britain already runs a significantly higher yearly deficit than most European countries, about 4. 4 percent of gross domestic product, and its cumulative debt is estimated at nearly 85 percent of G. D. P. Mainstream economists \u2014 under fire for wrongly predicting an immediate recession after the Brexit vote last June \u2014 say those figures are likely to worsen as the pound falls and the economy slows from the delayed effects of Brexit and the uncertainty around it. Mrs. May has also emphasized an interest in working with the incoming American administration of Donald J. Trump, and her government trumpeted its success in arranging a Washington meeting with the new president before the end of February. But her officials were not likely to be happy to discover that Michael Gove, who strongly favored Brexit and whom she fired from the cabinet, had secured the first British interview with Mr. Trump, scheduled to be printed in The Times of London on Monday. That interview comes after Mr. Trump had a series of meetings with Brexit advocates like Nigel Farage, the former leader of the U. K. Independence Party, and Arron Banks, who gave millions to fund UKIP and an alternative \"Leave\" campaign in the June referendum. Both men are expected to attend Mr. Trump's inauguration.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Labor Department on Wednesday said it was rescinding the Obama administration's standard for determining when companies are \"joint employers\" of contract and franchise workers, in the agency's first major shift in labor policy under President Donald Trump. The department in a statement said it had withdrawn a 2016 interpretation of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that expanded the circumstances under which a business could be held liable for wage-law violations by staffing agencies, contractors, and franchisees. Previously, companies were considered joint employers when they hired and fired workers and set wages. The Obama administration said a worker's level of \"economic dependence\" on a company should also be considered. The expanded definition of joint employment had rankled the business community, which said it threatened the franchise business model and would draw companies into lawsuits when they were not responsible for setting working conditions. Also on Wednesday, the department withdrew 2015 guidance that said that under the same law, many workers are improperly treated as independent contractors when they are actually employees, which would make them eligible for minimum wage, overtime, and other legal protections. Guidance issued by federal agencies is not legally binding, but serves as a blueprint for how agencies will enforce federal laws. A shift in enforcement priorities at the Department of Labor had been widely expected since President Donald Trump, a Republican and wealthy businessman from New York, took office. Business groups have said the department's guidance on employment and worker classification was misguided and affected nearly every U.S. industry, and they praised the agency's changes on Wednesday. \"Diligent employers work hard to be compliant with the FLSA and these (department) interpretations were merely enforcement traps waiting to spring,\" Randy Johnson, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement. Unions and workers' rights groups said they were troubled by the labor department's decision. \"This was guidance that made it easier for employers, workers, unions and others to know about their rights and obligations under the law,\" Lynn Rhinehart, general counsel for the AFL-CIO, said in a statement. The withdrawal of the guidance does not affect a separate expansion of the definition of joint employment by the National Labor Relations Board, which is under review by a federal appeals court. The NLRB's standard has had more of an impact than the labor department's because it is legally binding and requires joint employers to bargain with unions.","label":0}
{"text":"Monday on CNN's \"Newsroom,\" Jan Chamberlin, who opted to quit the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rather than sing at the inauguration of Donald Trump defended comparing Trump to the Adolf Hitler. Partial transcript as follows: Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN","label":0}
{"text":"With the United States pulling back after years of frustrated efforts to break the intractable impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, Russia is stepping forward with its own drive to bring peace to a fractured land. A special envoy has been shuttling through the region, Israeli and Palestinian leaders are jockeying for position, and Russia keeps hinting that a Moscow summit meeting may be in the offing. Never mind that nearly everyone involved here agrees that the effort will almost certainly not lead to a settlement of the dispute. Russia's newfound Middle East peace push, part of President Vladimir V. Putin's reinsertion of Moscow into the region in a profound way after years of retreat, seems to be about everything but finding peace in the Middle East. Instead, it is about Moscow's ambitions and competition with Washington, exemplified by its intervention in Syria. Mr. Putin's military campaign in support of President Bashar of Syria has transformed the dynamics of that conflict and made Russia a leading player in the area's geopolitics, thwarting Washington's diplomatic efforts. Alongside its deep engagement in Syria, Russia's recent rapprochement with Turkey and alliance with Iran have made Russia a major actor in the region in a way it has not been since the Cold War. The Kremlin's diplomatic endeavor in Jerusalem has become something of a geopolitical billiards game in which each side is counting on a bank shot to leave itself in a better position. Israel is determined to deflect what it considers more threatening interventions by the French or even the Americans. The Palestinian leadership, facing internal challenges and plummeting support on the street, is trying to shore up its standing at home and abroad by showing it is willing to do something. Almost beside the point is whether a meeting actually takes place, much less yields tangible progress toward reconciliation between two hostile populations. \"I don't think even the Russians have much hope that they are going to make magic,\" said Zakaria a professor of national security studies at Al Quds University in East Jerusalem. While Russia has always been fitfully involved in peace efforts over the years, Mr. Putin now seems intent on taking the lead, both as a poke at Washington amid continuing tension over Syria and Ukraine and as a show of Russian significance. Mr. Putin has made a point of developing a relationship with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel even as Mr. Netanyahu has feuded with President Obama. \"They're eager to become an important player, a big shot in the Middle East,\" said Zvi Magen, a former Israeli ambassador to Russia who is now a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. \"The idea is not to reach any specific results, but it's good for Russia. They don't need results. They need the process itself. \" So far, all they have is the process. After Mr. Putin's special envoy met with Mr. Netanyahu and officials of the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas, in recent days, Moscow declared that the two had agreed \"in principle\" to meet. But no date was set, and neither side openly confirmed an agreement to sit down. Until now, Mr. Abbas insisted that before any meeting Israel must freeze its construction of settlements in the West Bank and release prisoners. Mr. Netanyahu had insisted that he would meet only if there were no preconditions. It remained unclear whether Mr. Abbas had dropped his conditions, but even if he had, his team held out little hope for a meeting in the near term. A senior Palestinian official, who insisted on anonymity because of the shifting nature of the diplomacy, said his side had agreed to a meeting in principle, but there was no date and he did not expect that there would be soon. The official refused to specify whether Mr. Abbas was demanding any terms for the meeting, saying only that there had been \"no change in the Palestinian position\" regarding settlement construction. He reiterated the Palestinian assertion that the demand for a settlement freeze is not a precondition, but an obligation under international law. The Palestinians argued that Mr. Netanyahu was the one who did not really want a meeting brokered by the Russians. But his office maintained that he would go anywhere, anytime to meet as long as no terms were required to sit down. \"If the Palestinian Authority can say with one voice that they are willing to meet without preconditions, then Prime Minister Netanyahu will meet President Abbas,\" said David Keyes, a spokesman for the Israeli leader. Always a crafty tactician, Mr. Netanyahu seems to be gambling that the Palestinians will never drop their terms while he gets to contend that he is open to negotiations. In reality, analysts said, he wants to undercut a French effort to broker talks and is especially worried that Mr. Obama, his nemesis, might go to the United Nations after the American election in November to seek a resolution outlining terms of a possible peace deal. If there is even the appearance of progress in Moscow, Mr. Netanyahu hopes it may discourage Mr. Obama from acting for fear of appearing to be interfering, some scholars said. \"It's good to show the United States that he's a relatively good player at this game,\" said Mr. Magen, the former Israeli ambassador. Mr. Netanyahu may also have a domestic interest in playing along with the appearance of progress if he is serious about broadening his governing coalition by luring in Isaac Herzog, the current opposition leader, and at least part of his Zionist Union party. In another indication of the toxic atmosphere that does not seem conducive to peace talks, Mr. Netanyahu released a video on Friday accusing the Palestinian leadership of demanding a Palestinian state with \"no Jews\" in it. \"There's a phrase for that,\" he said. \"It's called ethnic cleansing. \" The Palestinians have protested this charge that has cropped up of late, saying there is a difference between what Mr. Netanyahu is claiming and their refusal to legitimize the settlements. The Palestinians view the Moscow peace bid as a way to keep their cause on the international radar screen. For Mr. Abbas, who faces internal dissent, it is also a way of keeping power. \"The Palestinians want to give the impression that their issue is still high in the sky and everybody is losing sleep because of the Palestinian question,\" Professor Qaq said. \"But I think this is an illusion. \" Mr. Abbas prefers the effort led by the French, who have traditionally been more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, and he must maneuver carefully to keep the Russians from pointing at him as the obstacle to peace, analysts said. Not that the Russian effort has much chance either way. \"It's all nonsense,\" Ziad Abu Zayyad, a journalist and former Palestinian Authority minister, said on Israeli radio. \"I don't see any point in a meeting between Abu Mazen and Netanyahu,\" he added, using Mr. Abbas's nickname. \"There were already tens of meetings like this, and they bore no fruit. \"","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump's nominee to be U.S. Trade Representative said on Tuesday that he believes China substantially manipulated its currency in the past to gain a trade advantage, but it was unclear if Beijing is still doing so. \"In the past, it is my judgment that China was a substantial currency manipulator and I think we've lost a lot of jobs in the United States because of it,\" Robert Lighthizer told senators in his confirmation hearing. \"Whether China is manipulating its currency right now, to weaken it, that's another question,\" Lighthizer said, adding that U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would be the person to make that determination. Trump pledged during his campaign that he declare China a currency manipulator on the first day of his administration, a move that would trigger demands for bilateral negotiations over this issue. He has not done so. China in the past year has spent hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves to prop up the value of its yuan in the face of capital outflow pressures.","label":0}
{"text":"November 4, 2016 - Aris Petasis, Katehon - c.e. by J. Arnoldski  The Cyprus problem is a Russian problem as well. The current purblind negotiations, ostensibly between the two Cypriot communities (82% Greek and 18% Turkish), are strictly directed by NATO under the watchful eye of 40,000 Turkish occupation troops that hold 37% of Cyprus's land and 54% of its shores. At every major juncture in Cyprus' recent history, one finds an obsession with Russia by Britain and its successor in the Eastern Mediterranean (EM), America.  The Russia factor featured strongly in 1878 and, of course, before. In that year, the Ottomans ceded Cyprus to Britain in exchange for the United Kingdom's military support to the Ottomans (read: Turkish) should Russia attempt to take possession of Ottoman territories in Asia. Here we see the people of Cyprus treated as a commodity and Turkey and Britain acting as traders treating Russia as collateral.  With the start of WWI, Cyprus was put under British military occupation (1914-1925) and then became a colony of the British crown (1925-1960.) During WWI, when the Turks joined the losing side, Britain promised to cede Cyprus to Greece just as it did in 1864 with some Greek-populated islands. But Britain reneged on its promise perfidiously because of its obsession with keeping Russia in check in the EM. The Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 established the new Turkish state, which in turn formally recognized Britain's sovereignty over Cyprus (Article 20).  The British distrusted the Greeks because of favorable Greek sentiment towards Russia. Beyond the cultural links between Greeks and Russians, Russia deservedly earned the appreciation of the Greeks. In 1770, at Catherine the Great's behest, the Orlov brothers attempted, although unsuccessfully, to free the Greeks from Turkish bondage. The Greek General Alexander Ypsilanti, who fought against Napoleon as an officer of the Russian Cavalry, led the Greek war of independence against the Turks. The Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ioannis Kapodistrias, was the first Governor of liberated Greece. The battle of Navarino of 1827, that saw the crushing of the Turkish navy, was initiated by Russia (with Rear-Admiral Lodewijk Heyden of the Imperial Russian Navy) and only then, so as not to be left out, did France and Britain (with philhellene Vice-Admiral Edward Codrington) joined the fray. This led to independence in 1829 for some Greek territory.  Just after WWII, when the issue of Cyprus was raised again, the British toyed with the idea of ceding Cyprus to Greece. The project was stopped when the British (and Americans) cunningly brought up the imaginary danger of Greece falling under communism and ultimately siding with the Soviet Union (read: Russia). Of course, the Yalta agreement prevented such an eventuality (Greece went to the West by 90%) whilst the massive military support the British and Americans gave the anti-communists (many of whom were shadowy characters and collaborators) sealed the communists' fate.  Here again, the legitimate ambitions of the Greeks of Cyprus were thwarted largely on account of the West's obsession with stopping Russia.  Years later, after Cyprus was given fettered independence by the British in 1960, NATO accused Cyprus' president of close relations with Cypriot \"communists.\" In response, NATO started to work tirelessly towards the dissolution of the Republic of Cyprus (RofCy) out of fear that Russia would use the \"communists\" as a wedge to gain entry into Cyprus. All of this was, of course, nonsense.  So, the British set their sights on replacing the RofCy with a new amalgam to be run 50-50 by the 18% Turks and the 82% Greeks, thereby ushering in minority tyranny and government paralysis. This was meant to meet NATO's two objectives in Cyprus: a.) to set up a regime that would be paralyzed by the Turkish minority's vetoes so that the Greeks would never be able to side with fraternal Russia, and b.) to establish in Cyprus a second NATO (Turkish) presence in addition to Britain's.  The Americans want - in this order - Cyprus, Crete, and Greece as military staging posts against anyone that dares to refuse to succumb to the American line. In the last twenty years, NATO and co. have used the British military bases in Cyprus regularly to bomb a multitude of countries. Now, NATO is just a step away from meeting both objectives. The first objective has already been met in that the Greek nomenklatura of the last 8 years accepted the dissolution of the RofCy and its replacement by a 50-50 \"Frankenstein state.\"  As regards the additional NATO military base on Cyprus, all guns are now trained on the already browbeaten Greek representatives. NATO remains optimistic. In this way, NATO hopes to seal Russia's and Greece's fate in Cyprus - but what has been agreed upon to date will still need to be put to referendum. If the plan goes through, the Greeks will be put on the path to emigration. Uncertainty will reign, conflict will rule, and violence and intimidation against the Greeks will probably be organized from Turkey. In the absence of a serious central government, mass colonization by Turkey will immediately follow, since any mechanisms of control will all but disappear.  Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova was right when she recently accused the West of persistent attempts to speed up negotiations and push for a solution at all costs. She warned of a repeat of the 2004 fiasco when the disastrous NATO-initiated Anan plan (masquerading as a UN plan) was massively rejected by the people of Cyprus and is blatantly supported by those in power now. The same sources continue to support the current NATO plan. Fortunately, there is a huge chasm separating some among the political elite of Cyprus and those who consider the people's desire for a democratic rather than a NATO solution.  Incidentally, the current administration in Cyprus has repeatedly called on NATO to accept Cyprus in its ranks, forgetting that NATO's primary objective is the encirclement of Russia.  Russia now needs to stand firm on the side of a democratic solution. Using its vast diplomatic weight, Russia can thwart the current NATO plan before it goes to referendum. A strong Russian position will give courage to the people of Cyprus. If the Greeks surrender, NATO will become the choreographer of Cyprus' political life from now on. Since Greece is merely a sorry bystander, only Russia can save Cyprus. If the NATO plan for Cyprus succeeds, Russia will end up suffering geostrategic casualties and the Greeks of Cyprus will be left as collateral damage.   Follow us on Facebook!     Follow us on Twitter!     Donate!","label":1}
{"text":"Billie Joe Armstrong may be punk rock's biggest triple threat: the frontman of Green Day, which was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame the and sometime star of \"American Idiot,\" the Broadway musical on its way to becoming an HBO movie and the lead of \"Ordinary World,\" an indie film out Friday, Oct. 14. What he is not, though, by his own admission, is a social media maven. \"I'll try to catch up,\" he said. \"I get into Instagram, and the next thing I know, someone will say, it's all about Snapchat now! It's like, oh God, leave me in the Stone Age \u2014 I got one foot in the Stone Age and the millennium right now. \" Mr. Armstrong's straddled take on culture is laid out on \"Revolution Radio,\" the new Green Day album, and the first since 2000 that the band \u2014 including the bassist Mike Dirnt and the drummer Tr\u00e9 Cool \u2014 with an engineer. \"It feels more independent than we've ever been,\" Mr. Armstrong said in a phone interview. He's also branching out \u2014 sort of \u2014 with \"Ordinary World,\" in which he plays a dad who throws himself a 40th birthday party. \"My thing was keeping my stubble on for the movie,\" he said. \"I had to make sure I shaved it in the right way, once every three days. And I wanted to show my gray that I have growing in. \" A still boyish 44, Mr. Armstrong \u2014 who went through rehab for substance abuse in 2012 after an onstage outburst at a pop festival \u2014 is grappling with his shifting generation. The cover for \"Revolution Radio\" is a boombox on fire. \"It's like that feeling of what's obsolete,\" he said, \"like we're turning into a graveyard. \" He paused. \"Ooh, that was good \u2014 graveyard! I'm going to say that so many times in the next few days. \" He hopes to reprise the role of St. Jimmy, the bad influence, in HBO's \"American Idiot,\" a rock opera based on the 2004 Green Day album. He credits the ambition of \"Idiot\" with the new heights of success in his career. But, he added: \"I'm not royalty. I'm the king of nothing. I'm in the same high school rock 'n' roll band I've been in since I was 16. \" Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. This is your first leading film role. Did you do any actorly things to prepare? Not like anything weird \u2014 I wasn't exactly doing any, like, mime. Me and Lee Kirk, the director, we spent a lot of time together fleshing the character out, putting it more in my language. I just went from experiences on my own, and I just tried to be as honest as I could. Acting for the stage, you project to the back of the room, especially a character like St. Jimmy. This is all about the subtleties of acting to the camera, which is difficult for me, because I'm anything but subtle. And you were playing opposite some very seasoned improvisers, like Fred Armisen and Judy Greer. Did that throw you? It felt pretty intimidating, just because I have so much respect for those people. They're brilliant people they're not like at what they do, they're all the way good at what they do. Everybody wanted to make things really relaxed and fun. A couple of the guys that played dads in the movie came in, and we just acted out some of the scenes, which is super awkward at first, doing something you've never done, but eventually I got comfortable with it. We're seeing more and more of that nontraditional father onscreen. Can you relate? It's a different take on parenting, especially people that were maybe Generation X kind of people and are raising kids now. We're not our dads. I think there's more sensitivity training that's involved in being a parent nowadays. My kids are 21 and 18 \u2014 that was a trip. I was a very young dad. And your sons are both musicians. Do you jam with them? A little bit. Mostly they show me music that they're into, they do a lot of demos and things like that on their own. My youngest son, Jakob, he's becoming a really good songwriter. He writes songs that are straight from the heart. Joey's band, they're really good, and they're different. It's not about being, like, a rock star. If there's anything I share with them, it's the joy and the love of music. You started in the punk scene as a teenager, when it's a lot about youthful anger. What does it mean to you to be part of a punk scene now? I think punk is a lot more than just anger, and rage. It's like the weirdo that gets to find their voice for the first time. It could be someone that wants to have their own fanzine, and write about things they believe in, and despite the odds, do it anyway. Green Day records in general are about feeling kind of lost, and a bit stupid, in the midst of chaos and media and everything that's changed. And the bottom line for this album is to find something that's attainable, some kind of peace or serenity inside that chaos. The song \"Ordinary World\" is basically what that's about. \"Say Goodbye\" is about watching how Ferguson is this military state, and you see all these tanks and tear gas. \"Revolution Radio\" mentions that, too. It's just reflecting what I see, and maybe coming up with a caricature of it. You touch on difficult topics on the album \u2014 \"Bang Bang\" is a song from the perspective of a mass shooter. Is that fun to play? Yeah, and hard \u2014 it's fast. It's a release for everyone that's singing it in the crowd. When you grow up in an era of social media and manifestoes and mass shootings and narcissism and that sort of evil side of American life, what do you say about something like that? You're just left speechless. The best way I'm able to talk about it is when I do it in a song, and that's sort of my release, and that's what ends up coming along in our crowds these last few years. Has your songwriting process changed in sobriety? I've just become more focused I've learned to stop when I'm blocked. Either you go and make the bigger mess right now, or that song doesn't want to be written right now, your brain's not ready for it. Sometimes I just gotta know when to back off something. The fact that I'm clearheaded \u2014 I just love making stuff. A song like \"Revolution Radio,\" it's so subtle and it's so nerdy. The song's got the intro, and it's got a that goes into the chorus, and I decided to not do that going into the chorus in the second verse. It makes the song unpredictable. For me, that's like the greatest song I've ever done. It's super nerdy, but that's what I love about writing. Why do you think \"American Idiot\" has had such a long life, in so many forms? Because people are able to interpret it anyway they want any time there's any kind of injustice that's going along, in America, you can adapt it somehow, go listen to that record, and it makes sense. There's a lot more transparency now. In Pennsylvania, there was a small theater group with an cast that did \"American Idiot\" for Black Lives Matter. When I saw that, I was like: \"Yeah, this is why I do this stuff!\" Because people take it and make something of their own out of it.","label":0}
{"text":"Malaysia s growing ties to Saudi Arabia - and its puritan Salafi-Wahhabi Islamic doctrines - are coming under new scrutiny as concerns grow over an erosion of traditional religious practices and culture in the multi-ethnic nation. A string of recent events has fueled the concern. Hostility toward atheists, non-believers and the gay community has risen. Two annual beer festivals were canceled after Islamic leaders objected. A hardline preacher, accused of spreading hatred in India, has received official patronage. The government has backed a parliamentary bill that would allow the shariah court wider criminal jurisdiction over Muslims in the state of Kelantan. And after religious officials supported a Muslim-only laundromat, Malaysia s mostly ceremonial royalty made a rare public intervention, calling for religious harmony. Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysia s longest serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, publicly lashed out at the government for allowing the Arabisation of Malaysia. Marina, who heads the civil rights group Sisters in Islam, told Reuters Saudi influence on Islam in Malaysia has come at the expense of traditional Malay culture . Her father, 93, now heads the opposition alliance. Saudi Arabia s fundamentalist Wahhabi beliefs have strongly influenced Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia - for decades, but have strengthened considerably since Najib became prime minister in 2009 and began cozying up to the kingdom. The relationship came under a harsh spotlight when nearly $700 million wound up in Najib s bank account in 2013. Najib said it was a donation from the Saudi Royal family, rebutting allegations it was money siphoned from the 1MDB state investment fund he had founded and overseen. Malaysia s attorney-general cleared him of any wrongdoing. The trend toward a politicized brand of Islam in Malaysia, a middle-income emerging market, has alarmed Malaysia s non-Muslims, including ethnic Chinese who comprise a quarter of the population and dominate private sector commerce. It is also a concern for foreign investors, who account for nearly half the local bond market and have invested $8.95 billion in project investments in the first nine months of this year. The government denies actively promoting Wahhabi-style Islamic conservatism. Najib has been largely silent about the recent religious controversies. Critics have accused the prime minister, whose governing coalition lost the popular vote in the last general election but retained a simple majority in parliament, of playing on fears that Islam and Malay political power will be eroded should the opposition win. An election is due by mid-2018. Militancy has also been on the rise in Malaysia, which from 2013 to 2016 had arrested more than 250 people with alleged ties to Islamic State, many of whom were indoctrinated with hardline interpretations of Islam. After the visit of the Saudi monarch this year, Malaysia announced plans to build the King Salman Centre for International Peace to bring together Islamic scholars and intelligence agencies in an effort to counter extremist interpretations of Islam. The center, which is being built on a 16-hectare (40-acre) plot in the administrative capital of Putrajaya, will draw on the resources of the Saudi-financed Islamic Science University of Malaysia, and the Muslim World League, a Wahhabi Saudi religious body. Saudi Arabia has long been funding mosques and schools in Malaysia, while providing scholarships for Malaysians to study in the kingdom. Many of them find employment in Malaysia s multitude of Islamic agencies, said Farouk Musa, chairman and director of the moderate think-tank, Islamic Renaissance Front. One of the most worrisome doctrines they preach in multi-cultural Malaysia is al-w ala wa-al-bara or allegiance and disavowal , Farouk said. This doctrine basically means do not befriend the non-believers (al-kuffar), even if they are among the closest relatives. We have never heard of Islamic scholars forbidding Muslims to wish Merry Christmas before, for example. Now, this is a common phenomenon, he said. The adoption of Arab culture and interpretations of Islam is a result of greater exposure to Middle Eastern people and universities, said Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, a member of the Supreme Council of Najib s political party, the United Malay National Organisation. The extensive usage of social media also accelerated the external influence on the locals, he told Reuters. The government is not promoting Wahhabism but rather the doctrine of wasatiyyah , or moderation and balance, to accommodate Malaysia s multi-cultural society, said Abdul Aziz, who is also a federal deputy minister. Karima Bennoune, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for cultural rights, expressed concern in a report after her September visit to Malaysia about the deepening involvement of religious authorities in policy decisions. She said this was influenced by a hegemonic version of Islam imported from the Arabian Peninsula that was at odds with local forms of practice. She also expressed concern about the banning of books, including some about moderate and progressive Islam, in the country when the government extols these very concepts abroad . Marina Mahathir said religious departments, staffed with Saudi graduates, are now consulted on absolutely everything, from movies to health and medicine to insurance, all sorts of things that they do not necessarily have any expertise in . The kingdom also exerts leverage over Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia through the quotas it gives to countries for the number of pilgrims they can send on the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam that all capable Muslims must perform at least once in their lives. This could all start to change if Saudi Arabia s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman succeeds in returning the Saudi kingdom to a moderate Islam, which he says was practiced before 1979. He has already scaled back the role of religious police, permitted public concerts and announced women will be allowed to drive. The kingdom has also set up an authority to scrutinize uses of the hadith accounts of the sayings, actions or habits of the Prophet to prevent them being used to justify violence or terrorism. (This story has been corrected to clarify bill on Islamic law and remove reference to stoning and amputations in paragraph 3)","label":0}
{"text":"Ever since same-sex marriage became the law of the land, Bible Belt states have been pushing back on it. Of course, we all remember the Kim Davis fiasco, where the Rowan County, Kentucky County Clerk went to jail rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Now, we have something similar happening in Arkansas, where the state was refusing to put the names of same-sex parents on their children s birth certificates. However, the Supreme Court handed down a decision forcing the state of Arkansas to treat same-sex couples just like they treat opposite-sex couples.The decision that was handed down was 6-3, with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissenting. This comes as no surprise, since those are the three most conservative justices on the court. Further, it gives us just a taste of what we are in for with Trump s new justice, and it isn t good. The case reached the highest court in the land as the result of two women who filed a suit against the state when they insisted that it was not a right to have both parents listed on their infant s certificate of birth. First, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state, so the case went to the Supreme Court, where it was struck down.Luckily, this is a 6-3 ruling, so it s not on a razor s edge, like some rulings in favor of equality have been including Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that legalized marriage equality nationwide. With talk of the potential retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is usually the swing vote on the Court, there could be a lot of anti-equality rulings if Trump puts another right-wing asshole up for consideration. The last great hope is that the Democrats are able to take the Senate back in 2018, and Justice Kennedy will wait until then to retire. For now, we can be happy that the Court did the right thing in this case.","label":1}
{"text":"In a YouTube video posted on January 19, CloudGate Studio demonstrated an experiment in virtual reality tracking with the HTC Vive. [With two controllers in his hands, and two more strapped to his feet, CloudGate CEO Steve Bowler demonstrated some amazing live tracking of his body in a 3D VR environment, using two of Valve's HTC Vives. He posted a link to the video on Twitter: Wake up, Neo. @CloudGateStudio just figured out how to give you a presence in VR. pic. twitter. \u2014 Steve Bowler (@gameism) January 19, 2017, Bowler first showed off the function of virtual hands in the game, but said that it's something \"everyone's [doing]. \" Then he displayed unfinished virtual arms, saying \"we're not going to ship this yet,\" but \"it's getting there. \" But CloudGate wanted to \"do more than just this \u2026 like, a lot more. \" So with the aid of four total motion controllers in addition to an HTC Vive headset, Bowler showed what he called \"a pretty good facsimile of a human body in VR. \" He then demonstrated the ability to look down at his virtual body and make contact with it in a way that mirrored the contact he was making with his own form. He touched his toes, then his head and shoulders. The shadow of his form mimicked his motions, even to the point of dancing and crouching, despite a lack of hip tracking. Bowler said that while right now the simulation is effectively guessing at the position of his hips, with a dedicated hip tracker it would look even better. He concluded the video by demonstrating interactivity in the environment, able to \"kick all the things. \" He proceeded to do just that, showing how objects in the environment reacted to his motions because he \"had a body\" in VR. But according to Steve himself, this was just a \"hack,\" with a better realization of the concept being adapted to the new HTC Vive trackers announced at CES 2017. @nuclearfossil it's a \"hack\" using two Vives so we could get 4 wireless controllers. Now that it's proven will move to Vive Trackers later. \u2014 Steve Bowler (@gameism) January 20, 2017, The possibilities for this development are thrilling. tracking in VR could provide endless application in entertainment and social spaces alike. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on further developments from CloudGate Studio and other virtual reality pioneers, as the emerging technology finds its place in the global market. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.","label":0}
{"text":"Florida continues to lead the nation in head shaking insanity after 81-year-old Luis Angel Dominguez, affectionately known to his neighbors as Papi, was deliberately run and killed over by a 26-year-old after an argument.As reported by the Washington Post:According to Broward County police, Dominguez and a younger man got into an argument at Everglades Holiday Park on Wednesday night. The younger man, whom police have identified as 26-year-old Kyle Christopher Hannover, was at the park fishing when he allegedly started yelling racial slurs at Dominguez and threw a rock at Dominguez s car.Hannover then allegedly got into his Ford Ranger truck and drove directly toward Dominguez, striking him. He was completely rolled over from the suspect s car and trailer, a witness told ABC. When I called 911 it was, No ambulance. It was, Get a trauma chopper out here as quickly as possible. Unsurprisingly, Hannover has a history of violence. In 2015, he was arrested and for allegedly threatening his girlfriend with a shotgun. Considering how disturbed he is, it s amazing that she survived long enough for him to be arrested. As a result of his threats, his guns were confiscated as part of his plea deal this past March. I can only assume that s why Hannover didn t simply shoot Dominguez instead of sadistically running him over.The cause of the fight is unclear and, honestly, is irrelevant. There is literally no justification for a 26-year-old to run over a senior citizen in a rage. The only upshot to this entire incident is that Hannover will probably be about the same age when he gets out of prison.His step-granddaughter Damaris Riveron expressed her gratitude to the police: We re extremely happy there has been an arrest, Thank you to the police department for all of their hard work and for everyone who contributed. Domiguez is survived by his wife, his children and his grandchildren.Featured courtesy of Vivian Sanchez","label":1}
{"text":"Ashutosh attempts suicide at protest rally, rescued while proofreading suicide note Posted on Tweet (Image via shiningindianews.com)  Delhi police has foiled a suicide attempt by Aam Aadmi Party spokesperson Ashutosh during a protest rally organized by his party. He was apprehended when he and his team were proofreading his suicide note before attempting suicide.  He was later sent to 14 days judicial custody where he is currently undergoing a refresher course in grammar and spelling.  The incident happened yesterday when AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal organized an impromptu protest rally at Jantar Mantar to expose Narendra Modi, but unfortunately no one from the media turned up for the event. Crestfallen, Mr. Kejriwal decided to go back on Twitter and continue his service for his constituency when an idea crossed his mind. He shared the idea with Ashutosh and urged him to commit suicide.  \"But this is not what I was looking forward to when I joined AAP,\" retorted Ashutosh.  \"No, you are not going to die. You will just attempt a suicide. We will call media to cover the event. Just imagine, you will be making headlines, you will be trending on Twitter, everyone will be talking about you. It will be so cool!\"  \"Ok, you do it then if it's so cool.\"  \"No, I need to oversee the whole event. See, there are two options for you, either do it or find another party.\"  ''Which party will take me if I leave AAP?' he pondered for a while and said, \"Ok, let's do it.\"  \"Cool, now write a suicide note and let's get on with this.\"  \"Ok.\"  AAP party workers gathered around Ashutosh as he typed the opening line on Microsoft Word that read, \"I holed Modi resoncible for my deth\u2026\"  A crack team of 5 proof readers was formed immediately, who advised him about the correction the sentence demanded.  He grinned and typed, \" sorry responcible \u2026not resoncible .. \"  \"No, you can just delete the words and\u2026\"  Another 5 proof readers were hired urgently to strengthen the team as he continued to type the letter.  By the time he completed the letter, the language settings on MS Word had automatically turned into Spanish.  \"Done,\" Ashutosh pronounced with a satisfactory smile as he beheld his creation for a few seconds before calling police to inform them about his plan.  \"Sir wait, we haven't started proofreading yet,\" implored one of the newly hired proofreaders.  \"Do you want me to die for real or what?\"  \"No but at least the attempt should look genuine and not a hoax.\"  \"Don't worry, I've informed Darya Ganj Police Station. By the time they beat the traffic to reach here, we will not only complete the proofreading but will also complete the suicide\u2026attempt.\"  3 proofreaders immediately started to decode the message in the letter in a separate document, another 3 changed the language settings of MS Word, and the rest started deleting the word 'why' which he had added at the end of every sentence. But it was too much of an ask for 10 mortals and they couldn't even rewrite half of the letter when police arrived at the scene.  Kejriwal tried to cover up the whole mess and handed over the letter to the police inspector, saying, \"See, what Modi has done to him! He was about to commit suicide.\"  The inspector held the suicide note in front of him and mumbled, \"Oh, Ashutosh. We would need some help here.\"  Experts, including the ones who decoded Nostradamus's predictions, were flown in from various parts of the world to decipher the message in the letter, however, they haven't quite succeeded in their endeavor as reports last came in.","label":1}
{"text":"House Republicans tried to pave the way for rampant crime and corruption by voting to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics in a secret meeting, and the ladies of The View were absolutely disgusted.On Monday night, Republican lawmakers voted to strip power from the independent non-partisan panel, forcing them to refer investigations to the House Ethics Committee, which the GOP controls. Republicans gave themselves the ability to kill investigations and even barred the panel from reporting crimes to law enforcement.The move has generate national outrage, including from Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, who ripped Republicans a new one on Tuesday.Pointing out that House Republicans are apparently insisting that they can police themselves, Goldberg remarked that Trump s promise to drain the swamp is now stuck. Joy Behar then chimed in with a salvo of her own. First of all, Congressional ethics is an oxymoron, Behar began. Particularly in this Congress. But it s sort of like on the slippery slope towards a dictatorship, you know. First, we re going to be very secretive about what we do. We re going to police ourselves. You re not going to know what bad things we re doing. We re going to keep it very quiet. It s very scary. Sunny Hostin read Donald Trump s pathetic response to the news, in which he only had a problem with Republicans making it their first priority.Behar noted that it s just about priorities, it s not that he cares about ethics of it. And Hostin piled on by explaining what it means to allow Republicans to police themselves. [T]his Office of Congressional Ethics was created after all these things happened. You had a string of really serious ethical issues and now the Republicans are saying, We re going to get rid of that. We re just going to use the House Ethics Committee and we re just going to police ourselves. Which means we re going to get an A every time. It s like, if you made me grade myself, I get an A every time. Jedediah Bila chimed in by pointing out the hypocrisy of Republicans because they initiated countless investigations against Hillary Clinton but don t want to be investigated themselves for their own wrongdoings, to which Behar replied, You know, Jedediah, when you re shameless there s nothing you can do about it. They are shameless. And when Bila slammed Republicans for not standing up against this move, Behar had the perfect response. It s very hard to stand up when you re spending time on your knees, she said.Here s the video via VidMe.Clearly, the only reason Republicans wanted to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics is because they intend on pulling some incredibly unethical shit in Congress, which could very well include bribes from lobbyists considering the GOP intends to consider infrastructure spending, tax cuts for the wealthy, and massive defense spending. And the fact that they can t be reported to law enforcement for committing crimes is a complete travesty.Gutting the ethics panel should really be seen as treason because Republicans just gave themselves permission to steal from and cheat the American people with impunity.And after much outrage, Republicans backed away from their unethical agenda. However, they just want to wait until the story dies down so they can try again. That s why we need to remain vigilant.Featured image screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"While Donald J. Trump refuses to release his federal tax returns, saying his tax rate is \"none of your business,\" a USA TODAY analysis found Trump's businesses have been involved in at least 100 lawsuits and other disputes related to unpaid taxes or how much tax his businesses owe. Trump's companies have been engaged in battles over taxes almost every year from the late 1980s until as recently as March, the analysis of court cases, property records, and other documents across the country shows. At least five Trump companies were issued warrants totaling more than $13,000 for late or unpaid taxes in New York state just since Trump declared his candidacy in June 2015, according to state records. This spring, as Trump flew to campaign rallies around the country aboard his trademark private jet, the state of New York filed a tax warrant to try to collect $8,578 in unpaid taxes from the Trump-owned company that owns the Boeing 757. The company has since paid that tax bill. As recently as last week, Trump said he was \"willing to pay more\" taxes personally and that \"taxes for the rich will go up somewhat\" if he becomes president. But the lawsuits and other tax-related disputes show a different reality for his businesses. They illustrate a pattern of systematically disputing tax bills, arguing for lower property assessments, and in some cases not paying taxes until the government takes additional action. At least three dozen times, Trump companies' unpaid tax bills have forced the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance to go to local courts to get liens against his properties to try to collect overdue bills. New Jersey also had to go to court for a lien to collect a Trump company's unpaid tax bill. Eventually, those disputes were resolved, and his companies paid some amount of taxes. The disputes surrounding Trump's business taxes are uncharted territory for the presidential nominee of a major party. The GOP's 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, also had extensive business interests as the leader of a private-equity fund. But Trump has a network of complicated real estate and other investments, and some of the tax disputes are ongoing. Trump has acknowledged that he tries to pay as little taxes as possible, and the public records across the country shed light on how he does it. In documents rarely seen by the public, Trump's businesses regularly minimize the value of his properties for tax purposes. Publicly, including in his presidential financial disclosure report, Trump's team declares many of those same properties are worth tens of millions of dollars more. He's fought tax collectors to lower the assessed values of his luxury golf courses in Briarcliff, N.Y., and Jupiter, Fla. Yet on his presidential financial disclosure report, he valued each at more than $50 million. USA TODAY's examination of Trump's track record as a business taxpayer found not just court actions, but dozens of additional tax disputes with local authorities that didn't reach the courthouse in states including New York, Nevada, Florida and New Jersey. In some cases, Trump's businesses have disputed tax assessments; in others, they have simply not paid the tax bill until after the government took additional action. In New York, for example, there are dozens of tax warrants against Trump businesses. Tax warrants are filed only after the state has exhausted all other options to collect what's owed. \"You have to ignore us to end up with a tax warrant,\" said Geoff Gloak, spokesman for the state Department of Taxation and Finance. \"We try to work with taxpayers to resolve the debt, long before it becomes a warrant.\" If the tax warrant is ignored, the state can choose to take the matter to court \u2013 and in some cases has. In addition to the five tax warrants since his announcement, there are additional New York state tax warrants dating to the years before Trump became a candidate, including $1,580 in unpaid taxes in 2010 for Trump Mortgage, his failed mortgage venture, and $1,747 in unpaid taxes in early 2015 against Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, once known as the troubled Trump University, which was later paid. Alan Garten, general counsel to the Trump Organization, said he was unaware of the particulars of the tax warrant cases. He said disputes can arise over how one calculates sales-tax liabilities. \"It happens all the time,\" he said. \"And some of the charges could have been mistaken.\" Real estate developers often appeal assessments, and Morris Ellison, a commercial real estate tax attorney based in Charleston, S.C., said it's difficult to compare one organization's volume of property tax appeals vs. another's. Garten said the companies do what any property owners have the right to do: challenge their property's assessment to make sure they are fairly taxed. \"We are a business, and we are in the business of making money,\" he said. \"Why should it be any different if we think the assessment is incorrect? It would be irresponsible if we didn't. It's got to be fair.\" Trump has been particularly aggressive by any measure, acknowledging it's part of his business strategy. \"I fight like hell to pay as little as possible,\" he said at a New York news conference announcing his own tax plan in September. \"I fight like hell always, because it's an expense. And you know, I feel ... and I fight. I have the best lawyers and the best accountants, and I fight, and I pay. But it's an expense.\" Trump's boasts about his wealth have sometimes undercut his attempts to slash his taxes. In 1985, Trump scooped up Mar-a-Lago, the opulent estate built by Marjorie Merriweather Post in Palm Beach, Fla., for $10 million, bragging in his 1989 book, The Art of the Deal, that it was a sweet deal, worth far more than he paid. When the property was assessed at $11.5 million and later $17 million, Trump objected. Litigation dragged on until 1993 over the tax bills. A settlement hinged on Trump agreeing not to develop the Mar-a-Lago land into individual lots, said Jay Jacknin, outside counsel for Palm Beach County's appraisal's office. Last year, the county assessed the property at about $20 million \u2014 though Trump's federal financial disclosure form values it at \"more than $50 million.\" Similarly, just up the road in Jupiter, Fla., Trump bought the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club and Spa in 2012 for a reported $5 million, then renovated it. For the past three years, his team has appealed the assessed value, of $13.7million as of 2015. In his financial disclosure forms, Trump claims that the course on 285 acres is worth \"more than $50 million\" and that it throws off more than $12 million in revenue. In Westchester County, N.Y., Trump has taken an aggressive approach toward the town of Ossining regarding the taxable value of Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor. The battle gained national prominence, after an investigation in September 2015 by The Journal News, which is part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, of the club's audacious bid to slash its taxable value by 90%. Town Assessor Fernando Gonzalez valued the 140-acre complex at $14.3 million (a valuation since increased to $15.1 million) \u2014 but Trump's team countered that it was worth $1.4 million. For perspective, a three-bedroom villa built at Trump National's 16th hole on a separate tax parcel sold in 2005 for $2.4 million and was recently on the market for almost $2 million. Trump's claimed value would slash the $471,000 in taxes he owes to the town, village county and its school district to $47,000. Residents are outraged. \"What he's claiming is way off,\" said Briarcliff Manor homeowner Steve Cohen. \"I see people playing there. The club looks fabulous. It certainly isn't falling into disrepair.\" The Trump team's lowball valuation follows a pattern similar to other assessment battles. His camp's estimate appears to be a mere opening bid in a negotiation. Trump's attorney, Jeff Rodner, acknowledges that he is sure the property is worth more than the $1.4 million. \"Maybe it's worth $12 million, maybe $13 million,\" Rodner told The Journal News. \"Now, my value is my opinion until it's proven otherwise.\" The Briarcliff property is among 20 developments on Trump's financial disclosure report that he values at \"more than $50 million\" \u2014 accounting for $1 billion of his net worth that Trump claims totals $10 billion.","label":0}
{"text":"Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Tuesday he would take action if any citizen was attacked in the country s northern semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, state television reporter. We would not stand idly by if any citizen were attacked, the broadcaster quoted him as saying in a weekly news conference. Three people were killed and more than 80 wounded, local officials said earlier, as Kurdish protesters angered by years of austerity and unpaid public-sector salaries took to the streets in a second day of violent unrest amid tensions with Baghdad.","label":0}
{"text":"The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Remember, Republicans are 5-0 in Congressional Races this year. The media refuses to mention this. I said Gillespie and Moore would lose (for very different reasons), and they did. I also predicted \"I\" would win. Republicans will do well in 2018, very well! @foxandfriends [0623 EST] - Ivanka Trump will be interviewed on @foxandfriends. [0642 EST] - The train accident that just occurred in DuPont, WA shows more than ever why our soon to be submitted infrastructure plan must be approved quickly. Seven trillion dollars spent in the Middle East while our roads, bridges, tunnels, railways (and more) crumble! Not for long! [1341 EST] - My thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved in the train accident in DuPont, Washington. Thank you to all of our wonderful First Responders who are on the scene. We are currently monitoring here at the White House. [1351 EST] - Our deepest sympathies and most heartfelt prayers are with the victims of the train derailment in Washington State. We are closely monitoring the situation and coordinating with local authorities... bit.ly\/2Bail99 [1435 EST] - Over the past 11 months, I have travelled tens of thousands of miles, to visit 13 countries. I have met with more than 100 world leaders and everywhere I traveled, it was my highest privilege and greatest honor to represent the AMERICAN PEOPLE! bit.ly\/2BajKwn [1519 EST] - When the American People speak, ALL OF US should listen. Just over one year ago, you spoke loud and clear. On November 8, 2016, you voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! bit.ly\/2Ba2kQr [1528 EST] - As the world watches, we are days away from passing HISTORIC TAX CUTS for American families and businesses. It will be the BIGGEST TAX CUT and TAX REFORM in the HISTORY of our country! bit.ly\/2BbAjI6 [1540 EST] - 70 Record Closes for the Dow so far this year! We have NEVER had 70 Dow Records in a one year period. Wow! [1725 EST] - With the strategy that I announced today, we are declaring that AMERICA is in the game and AMERICA is DETERMINED to WIN!OUR FOUR PILLARS OF NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY: bit.ly\/2BdrOfJ [1849 EST] - Together, our task is to strengthen our families, to build up our communities, to serve our citizens, and to celebrate AMERICAN GREATNESS as a shining example to the world.... bit.ly\/2Bdsjq7 [1954 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly\/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly\/2jpEXYR)","label":0}
{"text":"Germany s pro-austerity Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is ready to quit his job and become head of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives said on Wednesday, following Sunday s election. Schaeuble is deeply respected at home for his tight control of public finances since taking on the job in 2009, but is loathed in Greece and elsewhere in southern Europe for his insistence on tough austerity steps during the eurozone crisis. The pro-business, fiscally hawkish Free Democrats (FDP), a likely coalition partner for Merkel s conservatives, has said it wants to run the finance ministry in any new government. We are pleased that Wolfgang Schaeuble has agreed to become a candidate for the position (of president of the Bundestag), Volker Kauder, parliamentary leader of Merkel s conservatives, said in a statement. The center-right CDU\/CSU bloc will propose Schaeuble as their candidate for the Bundestag post at their next meeting on Oct. 17, Kauder added. The current Bundestag president, CDU lawmaker Norbert Lammert, is not up for re-election. Schaeuble, 75, has been confined to a wheelchair since being shot at an election rally in 1990. He is the longest serving member of parliament. (The story is refiled to amend word in parenthesis in paragraph 4 to make clear he will be proposed for job of president of parliament.)","label":0}
{"text":"One week before the first votes of the 2016 campaign are cast, Donald Trump has solidified his standing nationally, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Republicans see Trump as the strongest candidate on major issues and by far the most electable in the large field of GOP hopefuls. The Republican electorate is in a sour mood as its members prepare to begin the process of picking a presidential nominee. Almost 9 in 10 say the country is seriously off on the wrong track, and more than 8 in 10 are dissatisfied with the way the federal government works, including nearly 4 in 10 who say they're angry about it. Two-thirds worry about maintaining their current living standard, more than 6 in 10 say people with similar values are losing influence in American life, and about half say the nation's best days are behind it. Half also say immigrants mainly weaken American society, compared with 55 percent of the overall population who say immigrants strengthen America. Amid this political climate, Trump has maintained his place atop the Republican field for six months. He now receives the support of 37 percent of registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, almost identical to the 38 percent support he enjoyed a month ago. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas runs second in the national survey, with 21 percent, surpassing his previous high of 15 percent in December. Third place belongs to Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida at 11 percent, virtually unchanged from 12 percent a month ago. Rounding out the field are retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 7 percent, former Florida governor Jeb Bush at 5 percent, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 4 percent, businesswoman Carly Fiorina at 3 percent, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 2 percent each, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at 1 percent. Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum registered less than 1 percent. When first and second choices are combined, Trump is named by 49 percent, Cruz by 39 percent and Rubio by 32 percent \u2014 well ahead of the others. At this point in presidential campaigns, as the primary season is beginning, candidates' support can be tenuous and shift quickly in response to the first state-level contests. Results in Iowa, which holds its caucuses Monday, and in New Hampshire, which votes eight days later, often scramble national numbers. Trump enters this crucial phase strong nationally, but it isn't clear what a loss in Iowa would do to his support. But The Post-ABC survey offers some clues. Trump's supporters appear more committed to him than do people backing other candidates. A majority (57 percent) of Trump supporters say they will definitely vote for him. For all the other candidates combined, 34 percent are as firmly committed, while nearly two-thirds say they could change their minds. Trump's committed support exceeds what the previous Republican nominee received before the Iowa caucuses four years ago: 36 percent of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's supporters said then that they would definitely support his candidacy. The poll also finds no sign that Trump's support wavers among the Republicans who are most likely to attend primaries and caucuses, which are typically low-turnout contests. Trump's 16-point advantage among all registered Republican voters is similar to his lead among Republicans who say they are certain to vote, report voting in 2012 Republican contests or are following the race \"very closely.\" Although there was resistance to his candidacy at the beginning, Trump now is broadly acceptable to GOP voters. About 2 in 3 Republicans say they would find him acceptable as their nominee, a percentage almost identical to Cruz's and Rubio's. Rubio is seen as the least unacceptable, followed by Cruz, Carson and then Trump. Only about half of Republicans say Christie and Bush are acceptable, and Bush has the highest \"unacceptable\" percentage at 45. That fluidity underneath Trump is the other story of the Republican race to date. One after another candidate has been seen as surging, in Iowa or New Hampshire. Cruz surged into a narrow lead in Iowa and then got into a fight with Trump, after which Trump has regained a small advantage. Cruz, Christie and Kasich have claimed some momentum in New Hampshire. Rubio is seeking a clear third-place finish in Iowa and a strong finish in New Hampshire to use as springboards into the later contests. But whether Republicans are heading for a three-person race or a two-person race won't be clear until the results are in from the first four states. The new Post-ABC survey suggests that a sizable majority of Republicans believe that whatever happens in those early states, Trump will emerge with the nomination \u2014 a dramatic shift from when he first entered the race in June to mixed reviews and overcame widespread unfavorable impressions among GOP voters before his campaign launched. Today, more than 6 in 10 Republicans say Trump is most likely to win the nomination, up from 4 in 10 in the late fall. Trump leads among nearly all demographic groups, including a narrow advantage among white evangelical Christians, a key target of the Cruz campaign. Trump's strongest support comes from those with incomes below $50,000. Previous surveys showed Trump with significantly more support among those lacking a college degree, compared with those who have graduated from college. The new survey finds no significant difference. The reality TV star scores best among those who are most dissatisfied with government and the country's direction and with those who say they prefer someone from outside the political system rather than a candidate with political experience. Overall, a bare majority of Republicans say they are looking for an outsider, while just over 4 in 10 who want someone with experience in politics. On a wide range of issues and candidate attributes, Trump dominates his rivals. Majorities of Republicans say he has the best chance of getting elected president and is most likely to bring needed change to Washington. More than a third say he is closest to them on issues. He and Carson are seen as the most honest of the GOP candidates, while Trump and Cruz are seen as having the best personality and temperament to serve as president. Half or more of all Republicans name Trump as the candidate best able to handle the economy and regulate the banks. More than 4 in 10 say he would be the best to handle immigration and the threat of terrorism. Trump is seen by about 3 in 10 as the most capable of the GOP candidates to handle a major international crisis. Cruz is second, named by almost a quarter of Republicans. Republicans are bullish about their chances of winning in November. Three in 4 say Trump would defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, while just over 6 in 10 say Cruz or Rubio would defeat the former secretary of state. Republicans are even more optimistic about winning a general election against Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Among the broader public, however, Clinton is seen as a favorite to defeat Trump, Cruz or Rubio. She is perceived as having a better chance of winning than would Sanders. Trump won the endorsement of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin last week, but her support appears to be mostly a non-factor in the race. About 8 in 10 of the Republican respondents in the poll said it makes no difference, and the rest split evenly on whether it makes them more or less likely to back Trump. Overall, 56 percent of Republicans have a favorable impression of Palin. The Post-ABC poll was conducted Jan. 21-24 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults reached on land-line and cellular phones. The margin of sampling error for overall results is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points; the error margin is 5.5 percentage points among the sample of 356 Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters.","label":0}
{"text":"While working on an article on civilian massacres by the Nigerian military, the photographer Ashley Gilbertson and I heard reports that soldiers were burning villages. The militant group Boko Haram, too, has been accused of setting fire to homes, but residents told us the military had now adopted the tactic as a way to clear the countryside so it could freely carry out operations against the insurgents. We saw the charred remains of villages when we flew over the area, but it was unclear who was responsible. In some places like this one, patches of farmland were burned. The military not long ago opened several main highways from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, leading to the rest of northeastern Nigeria, saying the area was now cleared of insurgents. Farmers who are living in squalid camps for displaced people in Maiduguri are anxious about the state of their fields. Because they have not been allowed back for years, they have no idea what awaits them on their farms. From the sky, Borno State, the region where Boko Haram is most active, is a patchwork of fallow farmland, swaths of desert and a few swampy areas. conditions are raging in the area, a region with a rich history of agriculture. Boko Haram has chased off all the farmers, and the militants themselves have fallen victim to food shortages. We spotted only a handful of vehicles on the roads as we passed overhead. The area is mostly a ghost town. Every shade of beige is visible in this part of Nigeria. We think these are animal tracks, probably from cattle. Boko Haram is notorious for stealing cows to feed their group and to trade as a means of financial support. Most farmers who have livestock have cleared out, but nomadic herders pass through this part of Nigeria. Maybe the tracks are from motorbikes, which officials in Maiduguri banned after insurgents used them to begin attacks and carry out suicide bombings. Now, anyone spotted riding a motorbike is presumed to be a member of Boko Haram. This is part of a camp for displaced people in a community called Monguno. The town itself was once destroyed by Boko Haram, but military advances helped clear out insurgents, and now tens of thousands of people have poured in, looking for a safe place to wait out the yearslong insurgency. They live in ragged huts in a camp that is low on food supplies. More people arrive daily \u2014 350 villagers came the day before we visited. Several recent arrivals told us the military had ordered them to leave their homes. One woman sent an envoy back to check on her house and received word that it had been burned to the ground. Lake Chad is not far from this area of Nigeria, and swamps emerge in a few spots, right next to farms. Besides farmers, fishermen have also fallen on hard times during the crisis. The military has largely banned the fish trade, fearing Boko Haram was profiting from it. We met one fisherman in the Monguno camp who had been sneaking back to a small lake to fish, then stuffing his catch in his pants in hopes of passing undetected on his way home. The military has a big garrison in Monguno, and soldiers keep watch in their vehicles on the outskirts of town. A berm has been constructed around the edges of the camp, which houses about 26, 000 displaced people. Mobile phone networks in Monguno have been cut and fuel stations are closed. Most farms are inoperable around here. Famine was declared in pockets of Borno State last year. Many communities are sealed off from safety as insurgents scatter from in the forest, pushed out by recent military operations. Humanitarian groups face huge logistical challenges getting food and other supplies to people in need. Even roads the military says are safe now have been attacked by insurgents.","label":0}
{"text":"Last week, the mostly female audience of The View watched the panel of hypocritical, rabidly anti-Republican hosts attack Alabama s GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore for unproven sexual assault allegations. Only one year ago, however, The View s co-host Joy Behar, attacked the disgraced the mulitple sexual assault victims of former President Bill Clinton, calling them tramps who slept with him . Are the mostly female viewers really okay with the co-hosts of The View (who are completely devoid of any intellectual thought) dismissing the multiple allegations of sexual assault, including rape, by the impeached Democrat President Bill Clinton? Is it really okay with their viewers that Whoopi Goldberg would refer to the wife of the alleged rapist, Hillary Clinton (who threatened his victims to remain silent about her husbands sex crimes, or pay serious consequences) a victim ? When do the women who watch The View say, Enough with the hypocrisy! ? The female hosts of The View discussed the second debate the following day on their show. During the discussion, host Joy Behar called the women who allegedly slept with Bill Clinton tramps .Prior to the debate, Trump highlighted three women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or harassment. The View host Sunny Hostin suggested that Hillary Clinton may have missed an opportunity to address the controversy during the second presidential debate. This is the thing though if a woman sleeps with your husband, you re not going to necessarily embrace them That s why when he brought up these allegations, I wonder if she missed the opportunity to address it in a way that the public would understand Hostin mused.Behar disagreed, joking that there wasn t much Hillary Clinton could say to the women.Behar suggested the Democratic nominee could say: I would like to apologize to those tramps that have slept with my husband. Maybe she could have said that. Fox News.@WhoopiGoldberg reacts to Donald Trump inviting Bill Clinton s accusers to last night's #debate. https:\/\/t.co\/wxW54okAF5 The View (@TheView) October 10, 2016Only today, The View hags attempted to defend Democrat Senator Al Franken s sexual assault accusations, suggesting that he shouldn t step down, while simultaneously suggesting that GOP Senate candidate, Roy Moore, should drop out of the Senate race in Alabama.Watch:SHOULD SEN. FRANKEN RESIGN? After a second woman accuses Sen. Al Franken of inappropriate touching, co-hosts discuss what should come next. pic.twitter.com\/NoerTvzzCd The View (@TheView) November 20, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"www.youtube.com 0  Hypothesis: There are Major Bombings that have been printed on the U.S. Currency many years BEFORE the events actually happened.  There is a common denominator between all the images and how they were spiritually discerned by what was recorded in the prophets of Isaiah spoken 2,700 years ago.  There are multiple layers of ink and watermarks printed on the bills when magnify appear to produce animations. Tags","label":1}
{"text":"Republican Senator Marco Rubio on Monday sought to quash speculation that he might emerge as the vice presidential running mate for Republican candidate Donald Trump, saying he still has deep reservations about the billionaire. \"He will be best served by a running mate and by surrogates who fully embrace his campaign. As such, I have never sought, will not seek and do not want to be considered for vice president,\" Rubio said in a statement. Rubio, a former Republican presidential candidate himself, and Trump clashed repeatedly in the weeks leading up to the bitterly contested primary vote in Rubio's home state of Florida in March. Trump had dismissed Rubio as \"little Marco\" and won the state handily, dealing a death blow to Rubio's campaign. Rubio had blasted Trump as a con artist who is not a conservative. \"While Republican voters have chosen Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee, my previously stated reservations about his campaign and concerns with many of his policies remain unchanged,\" Rubio said. GOP, short for Grand Old Party, is an acronym for the Republican Party. A former Trump campaign rival, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, is leading Trump's search for a vice presidential running mate. Trump has said he is considering a variety of his former rivals for the nomination, but some have ruled themselves out or declared they will not support him. Rubio said he plans to focus his attention in the run-up to the Nov. 8 helping Republicans hang on to control of the Senate and \"electing principled conservatives across the country.\"","label":0}
{"text":"An Oklahoma state legislator has apologized after saying in the legislature last week that Native Americans are pre-disposed to alcohol abuse, officials said on Thursday. State Representative Todd Russ, a Republican, made the apology in a statement issued by his office this week, his office said on Thursday. During floor debate last week on a measure to amend Oklahoma's liquor laws, Russ said: \"The white man took advantage of the Native American people at the rim of an alcohol bottle. \"We see the effects of that today in society because they are predisposed physically. Scientifically we know the truth that they cannot process that like other people,\" he said. Russ, whose western Oklahoma district includes a portion of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes' jurisdictional area, urged members of the legislature's Native American Caucus to vote against the bill, which would allow supermarkets and convenience stores to sell beer and wine. Instead, he received a rebuke for his comments. \"He may not have intentionally done this, but disparaging Native Americans is an uncalled for, inappropriate comment on the House floor,\" Representative Dan Kirby, a Republican and a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation said during the debate. In his apology, Russ offered contrition \"for the unintended pain I have caused Native Americans by my statement that was based upon outdated information.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Several thousand people on Saturday joined the last protest to take place before Britain formally begins the process of leaving the European Union. [The United for Europe March called for Britain to stay in the EU despite the result of last June's referendum, with protesters marching just days before Prime Minister Theresa May formally triggers Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The demonstrators marched along Piccadilly, Pall Mall and Whitehall, waving European flags and banners, before listening to speeches outside Parliament. The march comes just days after the Westminster terror attack, resulting in a heavier police presence than usual. Some of the protesters brought along yellow flowers to lay at the memorial to the victims. The organisers said in a statement: \"We will not be intimidated. We will stand in unity and solidarity. We will march on the heart of our democracy and reclaim our streets in honour and respect of those that fell. \"We will be observing a minute of silence and remembrance at the start of the rally. We would encourage all attendees to bring with them some symbol of respect and to act in the appropriate fashion on the day. \" Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron addressed the crowd, saying: \"Our job is to win hearts and minds over these coming months, to win support for a referendum on the deal, to change the direction of the debate and to change the direction of our country. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The United States has lost trust in South Sudan's government for fueling the country's civil war and it must bring peace or risk losing support from Washington, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told the nation's President Salva Kiir. Haley was the first senior member of President Donald Trump's administration to visit South Sudan, which spiraled into civil war in 2013, just two years after gaining independence from Sudan. She met one on one with Kiir for some 45 minutes. \"I let him know that the United States was at a crossroads and that every decision going forward was going to be based on his actions,\" Haley told reporters after the meeting in the capital Juba. The United Nations has warned that the violence in South Sudan, which has forced some 4 million people to flee their homes, was providing \"fertile ground\" for a genocide. Kiir's government has denied U.N. allegations of ethnic cleansing. Haley had to cut short a visit to a camp for South Sudanese displaced by the violence amid rowdy anti-Kiir protests. \"He understood that Americans were disappointed in his leadership in South Sudan, I made that very clear. And he understood that all the aid or help that he hopes will go forward is not a given,\" she said. Haley did not elaborate on what further action Washington could take, but said that Kiir \"got what I was trying to say.\" On Monday she said Washington was considering how to pressure Kiir into peace, though noted that withdrawing aid may not work. The Trump administration last month imposed sanctions on two senior South Sudanese officials and the former army chief. \"We have lost trust in the government and we now need to regain that trust and the only way to regain that trust is through the actions of taking care of all of the people,\" Haley told South Sudan's Eye Radio. She demanded that Kiir allow full and consistent humanitarian aid access and bring peace and stability to the country. She said she pushed a timeline for Kiir to act, but declined to elaborate. Nhial Deng Nihal, a senior adviser to Kiir, said the president told Haley his government and a U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan had established \"mechanisms that work jointly to improve and address the humanitarian problems.\" He also told reporters that Kiir said government troops \"will also be observing a cessation of hostilities in order to create an atmosphere for dialogue.\" The civil war was sparked by a feud between Kiir, a Dinka, and his former deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer. It has plunged parts of the world's youngest nation into famine. A fragile peace deal broke down last year and Machar fled the country. He is being held in South Africa to stop him stirring up trouble, sources told Reuters in December. Haley had to cut short a visit to a camp in Juba, where U.N. peacekeepers are protecting some 30,000 displaced people, after hundreds of rowdy pro-Machar protesters blocked nearby roads, yelling \"Salva Kiir is a killer\" and \"Welcome USA.\" Protesters held a large sign that read \"South Sudan IDPs (internally displaced people) and refugees love President Trump, the peacemaker and supporter of human rights.\" A spokeswoman for the U.N. mission said the protest \"started to gain momentum after (Haley) left, IDPs became upset that she was not able to meet with them.\" Haley was meeting with a displaced family when she had to leave early due to security concerns. The previous U.S. administrations of President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama were heavily involved in the birth of South Sudan, which signed a peace accord with Sudan in 2005 and gained independence in 2011.","label":0}
{"text":"Turkey told Iraq it would deal only with the Iraqi government on crude oil exports, the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said on Thursday. In a phone call with Abadi, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim confirmed the support of his country to all decisions taken or sought by the Iraqi government after the independence referendum held in Iraqi Kurdistan on Monday, Abadi s office said in a statement. Among these measures, the statement mentioned restricting oil export (operations) to the Iraqi government. It didn t give more details or say how Ankara would deal with current crude exports from Iraqi Kurdistan.","label":0}
{"text":"Maxine Waters told a TMZ reporter that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should put threats aside and appease North Korea by giving them the things that they re asking for . She responded as she was leaving an upscale steakhouse in Beverly Hills. She told the reporter that we can t afford to go to war. Pretty rich for a person who wants to spend unlimited amounts on everything else BUT what s MOST important to the U.S DEFENSE! I want us to be very careful, very alert to what is happening and to avoid war. I think we can do this with some diplomacy, but we have got to have Tillerson, who is our secretary of state, get those positions filled for deputy, for assistant, so that we can engage with North Korea. I think there s some things that they want from us, and we have to find out whether or not we can work with them on the things that they re asking for. This is exactly what Obama did for 8 years! It s exactly why we re in this position today!","label":1}
{"text":"(Before It's News) News and Adventure from Glacier National Park After surprising and then being charged by a grizzly bear, a couple fishing along the Lamar River effectively deployed their bear spray and saved themselves from injury on Saturday, October 22. John and Lisa Vandenbos from Bozeman, MT, parked at a pullout near the Specimen Ridge trailhead in the Lamar Valley, east of Tower Junction. They walked cross-country to the Lamar River and, while scouting for fishing spots, surprised an adult grizzly bear who was feeding on a partially consumed carcass. The bear immediately charged the couple and came within nine feet when both individuals quickly discharged their bear spray. The bear initially left. When attempting to charge the couple again, it ran into the original cloud of bear spray. Upon making contact with the cloud, the bear retreated all the way back across the river and up the adjacent hillside \"as fast as it could go\". The couple did not sustain injuries and bear spray stopped the charging bear. The couple left the area immediately and returned to their vehicle. They then reported the incident to a park ranger. Park rangers do not intend to search for the bear since this incident was a surprise encounter with a bear defending its carcass. All of Yellowstone National Park is bear country. Reduce your risk of a bear encounter by carrying bear spray. Studies show that bear spray is more than 90 percent effective in stopping an aggressive bear. In fact, it is the most effective deterrent when used in combination with regular safety recommendations \u2013 be alert, make noise, hike in groups of three or more, do not run if you encounter a bear and stand your ground if charged by a bear. \"Yellowstone visitors care deeply about preserving bears and observing them in the wild,\" says Kerry Gunther, the park's Bear Management Specialist. \"Carrying bear spray is the best way for visitors to participate in bear conservation because reducing potential conflicts protects both people and bears.\" Help the park increase the number of visitors who carry bear spray and know how to use it. Visit A Bear Doesn't Care Campaign for more information. Jeff HikinginGlacier.com TetonHikingTrails.com RockyMountainHikingTrails.com HikingintheSmokys.com","label":1}
{"text":"Growing numbers of U.S. states are seeking to ensure that women have continued access to free birth control in case the insurance benefit is dropped as part of President-elect Donald Trump's vow to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The 2010 law, popularly called Obamacare, requires most health insurance plans to provide coverage for birth control without a patient co-payment, which can be as much as $50 per month for birth control pills or $1,000 for long-acting contraceptives such as intrauterine devices. California, Maryland, Vermont and Illinois since 2014 have enacted statutes codifying the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate in state law and expanding on the federal law's requirements. Democratic lawmakers in New York, Minnesota, Colorado and Massachusetts said they are pursuing similar measures this year, with Obamacare under mortal threat in Washington. New York's Democratic attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, on Wednesday introduced such a measure in his state's legislature that would expand on the Obamacare contraception mandate. \"Women across New York are very concerned that Republican efforts to repeal the ACA will mean the loss of the contraception on which they rely,\" Schneiderman said. \"I won't hesitate to act to protect New Yorkers' rights - including the right to choose, and the right to birth control - no matter what a Trump administration does,\" Schneiderman added, referring to abortion rights. Trump, who succeeds Democratic President Barack Obama on Jan. 20, and his fellow Republicans in Congress have made dismantling Obamacare their \"first order of business,\" as Vice President-elect Mike Pence put it on Jan. 4. [nL1N1EU0RW] Republicans in Congress have not presented a detailed proposal for repealing and replacing the law but many Republicans and religious conservatives have opposed the Obamacare contraception mandate. [nL1N1EU0RW] Twenty-eight of the 50 states currently have laws requiring private insurers to provide coverage for birth control. But not all the laws affect all insurance plans, and only a few mandate cost-free birth control. OUT-OF-POCKET EXPENSES The Obamacare contraception mandate has applied since 2012 to most new insurance plans including employer-provided coverage. In 2013, for example, the mandate saved U.S. women more than $1.4 billion in out-of-pocket expenses for birth control pills, according to a report by University of Pennsylvania researchers. Almost 6.9 million privately insured U.S. women used the pill that year. The legislative move by some states, most of them Democratic governed, is designed to clear up uncertainty for some of the 55 million women who now have access to free contraceptives and related treatments under the Affordable Care Act. Conservatives also have chipped away at the Obamacare mandate in court. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that forcing family-owned businesses to pay for employee insurance coverage for birth control ran afoul of another federal law safeguarding religious freedom. The Supreme Court last May sent another legal challenge by nonprofit Christian employers back to lower courts to reconsider the matter after tossing out their rulings favoring the Obama administration. [nL2N18D0PL] \"I think it is even more important now,\" said Colorado state Representative Susan Lontine, who last year co-sponsored a contraception coverage bill in her state's legislature that did not get passed but she expects to be resurrected in 2017. \"We don't know what will happen on the federal level.\" California in 2014 became the first state to pass a contraception mandate that went further than the Obamacare language. Maryland, Vermont and Illinois last year passed laws that also eliminated co-pays for vasectomies and allowed women to fill a birth control prescription for at least six months rather than one to three. The New York legislation would allow women to fill multiple months of a birth control prescription, prohibit private insurers from \"medical management\" reviews that could limit or delay contraception coverage, and provide coverage for vasectomies without a co-pay. Within a matter of months, the Trump administration even without congressional action could drop contraception from Obamacare's list of preventive services that health insurance plans must cover without out-of-pocket costs, said Laurie Sobel, senior policy analyst at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. If repealed, some employers might choose to maintain the coverage without a co-pay because it is a relatively inexpensive benefit popular with employees. The proportion of privately insured women who paid nothing out of pocket for birth control pills increased from 15 percent in the fall of 2012 to 67 percent in the spring of 2014 during the time when the coverage went into wide effect, according to the Guttmacher Institute research organization. The no-cost contraceptives coverage also spurred women to switch to long-acting methods such as the IUD, which is offered in the United States by Bayer, Teva, Allergan and Medicines360, studies have found. More than 77 percent of women and 64 percent of men support the no-cost contraceptives coverage, according to a 2015 Washington Post\/Kaiser Family Foundation survey.","label":0}
{"text":"Just days before the start of a new school term, ITT Educational Services, one of the nation's largest educational companies, closed nearly all its campuses on Tuesday. The company cited the Education Department's recent decision to bar the chain of colleges from using federal financial aid to enroll new students as the reason for the sudden shutdown. Except for a small school that operates under a different name, the move puts an end to an operation that has been accused of widespread fraud and abuse, leaving roughly 35, 000 students and 8, 000 employees in the lurch. ITT Educational Services, whose recruitment, lending practices and educational quality have been under scrutiny by federal regulators and state prosecutors for years, said in a news release that it had \"exhausted the exploration of alternatives, including transfer of the schools to a nonprofit or public institution. \" It denounced the Education Department's decision to restrict the use of federal funds, calling it \"inappropriate and unconstitutional\" and \"taken without proving a single allegation. \" Nicole Elam, an ITT spokeswoman, declined to make any further comment. Ted Mitchell, the under secretary for the Education Department, denied assertions that ITT was being targeted for political reasons, saying that the issues surrounding its educational programs and financial stability gave the federal government little choice. \"The risk presented by ITT to both students and taxpayers made it irresponsible for us to allow them to enroll new students and not have additional oversight,\" Mr. Mitchell said. He also noted ITT's independent accreditor had concluded that the schools were unlikely to be able to comply with the accreditor's standards. Current ITT students and those who withdrew in the last 120 days essentially have two options, neither of them particularly appealing, Mr. Mitchell said. Students can try to transfer their credits to another school in a bid to finish their education. Few quality schools may be willing to accept those credits, but Mr. Mitchell said education officials were encouraging community colleges to reach out to former ITT students and to be flexible in transferring credits. Students who are successful in continuing their studies would still be obligated to pay off their student loans. The other alternative would be for students to apply for a loan discharge. That would essentially wipe out their federal student debt, but also deny the students any of their educational credits. If everyone at ITT who was eligible took that route, the cost could run as high as $500 million, Mr. Mitchell said, though about $90 million of the final bill to taxpayers is expected to be defrayed by a surety bond ITT had to post with the government. Any borrowers who believe they have been defrauded can also apply under a separate loan forgiveness program. Chris Blank, a former Marine who used the G. I. Bill to complete three years of a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at ITT's Vista campus in California, said he did not know what he was going to do. \"I'm still trying to take it all in,\" said Mr. Blank, who attended school at night while working full time as an engineering aide at an aeronautical company. \"I can't get promoted until I get my bachelor's degree. \" He worried not only about the lost time and possibly useless credits, but also the potential exhaustion of his veteran's educational benefits. \"This is something I worked so hard on, and it's basically all gone,\" Mr. Blank said. The department has set up a website, studentaid. and a telephone number, ( ) for ITT students to obtain more information. After Corinthian Colleges, a giant educational company accused of widespread fraud, was suspended from the federal student aid program in 2014, education officials helped broker the sale of dozens of its campuses and online programs to the Zenith Education Group, a nonprofit. Corinthian later filed for bankruptcy. Since then, Zenith has lost money, students and staff members. Mr. Mitchell said that the circumstances surrounding ITT were different. Despite informal conversations with company officials and potential buyers, he said, the Education Department \"never saw a path forward. \" The actions against Corinthian and ITT are part of a wider push by education officials to hold the education industry more accountable after growing complaints about unwieldy student debt, deceptive advertising and feeble graduation and job placement rates. The Obama administration has adopted a series of regulations aimed at protecting students as well as taxpayers, who will end up being stuck with the bill for unpaid student loans. The crackdown has elicited protests from the industry and its supporters, who say the government has overreached. Last week, the owner of a chain of colleges, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, filed a lawsuit in federal court, accusing the Education Department of pursuing a political agenda and trying to put the chain of formerly colleges out of business. Student and consumer advocates said they were encouraged by the end of ITT Technical Institutes. (Daniel Webster College in New Hampshire, also owned by the ITT parent company, is still open and enrolling students, according to a receptionist who answered the phone there. The college's president did not respond to repeated messages.) At the same time, critics of the industry expressed concern that some unscrupulous colleges would be working hard to persuade former ITT students to enroll, enlarging their student debt and offering poor training. \"There's nothing to celebrate,\" Barmak Nassirian, director of federal relations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said of the closings. \"It's a good thing in the sense that it was a real terrible performer and it won't be around to victimize others,\" Mr. Nassirian said. But he noted that many faculty members and employees were going to lose their jobs and many former students were stuck with unmanageable debts. \"It would have been better to have better oversight and decent gatekeeping,\" he said, \"so that we don't reach the point where you have to wish for an operation to go under. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Police in Malaysia have arrested seven youths in connection with a fire at an Islamic boarding school in Kuala Lumpur that killed at least 23 people, mostly teenagers. The seven, aged 11 to 18, were brought to court and remanded for seven days, Kuala Lumpur police chief Amar Singh told reporters at a news conference on Saturday. I can assure you now that the case is solved with the arrest of the seven of them, Singh said. It was the most deadly incident of its kind in Malaysia in two decades, and has outraged the public, some of whom have called for greater safety and tougher regulation at such religious schools. The arrested include students from the surrounding neighborhood, and some have tested positive for consuming marijuana. The police are treating the case as one of murder and mischief by fire. The blaze erupted early on Thursday in a top-floor dormitory at the three-storey boarding school where most of the students were sleeping in bunk beds, with many of the windows covered by metal grilles. Asked if the suspects had planned to kill the victims, Singh said: Intention was to burn, but it could be because of their age or because of their maturity levels, perhaps they may not have known that it would cause deaths. Two gas cylinders were brought up from the kitchen to the second floor, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"French university academics have made an extraordinary intervention in the French election, emailing students and urging them to back establishment candidate Emmanuel Macron. [The president of the University of Angers in Western France, Christian Robl\u00e9do, claimed in an email to students that, \"as a university professor\" it was his \"duty to denounce the harmful ideology that [Marine Le Pen] conveys\". He characterised this ideology as \"withdrawal into oneself, intolerance, fear of the other [and] refusal of differences\" in opposition to \"humanism, openness, pluralism and freedom of expression\" \u2014 the values which, in Robl\u00e9do's estimation, \"constitute the very essence of higher education and research in France\". \"Already in 2002, we were placed before such a choice,\" he said, recalling the second round showdown between Jacques Chirac and Marine Le Pen's father, . Mr. Le Pen was expelled from the Front National by his daughter as she reformed it into a moderate, populist movement. \"[In 2002] a Republican front had come together to make the Front National score as low as possible,\" wrote Robl\u00e9do. \"[Again] we have to vote massively so that [Marine Le Pen] does not win the presidential election. \" Anticipating criticism of his intervention as an abuse of his public position, the professor concluded by saying that \"[Sometimes] the values of a man's life take precedence over all other considerations. In addressing you as president of the University, the duty of reserve is obliterated by the threats to the institutional foundations on which our University is based. \" WATCH | @MLP_officiel to @EmmanuelMacron: \"France will be led by a woman, either me or Angela Merkel!\" \ud83d\udc4f\ud83c\uddf7\ud83d\ude02 pic. twitter. \u2014 LEAVE. EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) May 3, 2017, Colleague Manuel Tunon de Lara, president of the University of Bordeaux, was equally unabashed, writing of his \"responsibility to call on the academic community to vote next Sunday to block \u2026 the accession of Marine Le Pen to the presidency of the French Republic. \" He claimed that the \"Marine Le Pen programme\" was incompatible \"with the academic values we have hitherto defended\". \"How to defend openness in a country that would close its borders?\" he asked. \"My position is not an isolated position,\" he declared. \"It is associated with that advocated by the Conference of University Presidents, which called for 'voting against the extremism of the candidature of Marine Le Pen'. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The blood is on DeBlasio s hands! Career criminals are walking the streets with a violent history and sealed arrest records. THAT IS PROOF that the administration is NOT doing what is best for the civilian population. Is he an ILLEGAL being protected by politicians who support sanctuary cities?THIS MOTHER OF 5 DESERVES ANSWERS: The body of FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo being carried into the Medical Examiner s Office by fellow FDNY EMT s:The body of FDNY EMT Yadira Arroyo being carried into the medical examiner Office by fellow FDNY EMT s. pic.twitter.com\/HWXgu2MVt0 BMR Breaking News (@BMRBreakingNews) March 17, 2017 The NYPD identified Jose Gonzalez, 25, as the suspect who was operating the emergency vehicle and slammed into 14-year FDNY EMT veteran Yadira Arroyo and her partner Thursday night. Arroyo, a mother of five, later succumbed to her injuries and died at Jacobi Medical Center.Gonzalez, who has an extensive arrest history, faces murder, grand larceny and operating a motor vehicle impaired by drugs charges, police said. Moments before, Jose Gonzalez was going door to door begging for money:Moments before he s alleged to have run over a @FDNY EMT, Jose Gonzalez was going door to door begging for money https:\/\/t.co\/eJAJaTQGxi pic.twitter.com\/fx9pWzE5Wz Myles Miller (@MylesMill) March 17, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Tuesday that if China doesn t follow the United Nations sanctions approved on North Korea, he will seek new financial sanctions on Beijing to cut off access to the U.S. financial system. Mnuchin told a conference broadcast on CNBC that China agreed to historic sanctions on North Korea on Monday in a UN Security Council vote. If China doesn t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system, and that s quite meaningful, Mnuchin said.","label":0}
{"text":"A new report reveals how churches nationwide are harboring illegal immigrants, helping them evade federal immigration orders for deportation. [In a 60 Minutes special report, more than 800 churches are acting as jurisdictions to hide illegal immigrants from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. ICE has a policy in which agents do not detain illegal immigrants at churches, making the facilities an ideal spot to avoid deportation orders. In a Buffalo, New York, church profiled, parish staff confirmed that they recently harbored an illegal alien family of four from Honduras. Since January, the church officials said it protected more than 40 migrants. Rev. Robin Hynicka of Philadelphia's Arch Street Methodist Church explained how he believes enforcing federal immigration laws are oppressive to illegal immigrants who remain in the U. S. \"It's injustice and oppression, all of which is evil,\" Hynicka said. \"Yeah, when a human being's human rights are denied, when they can't stay with their family, when they can't work, when they can't participate in the community in which they have deep roots, all of those apply. \" In one specific case, Hynicka's church has been harboring Javier Flores Garcia, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who came to the U. S. in 1997. Garcia was arrested and convicted for drunk driving, and despite an immigration judge ordering him be deported, he remains hiding out in Arch Street Methodist Church. ICE's Deputy Director Daniel Ragsdale did not back down to his agency's responsibility to enforce federal immigration law and protect Americans, despite questioning from 60 Minute's Scott Pelley. Scott Pelley: How much concern do you have about separating families in deportations? Daniel Ragsdale: As a human being, I know it is traumatic for folks. But I will also say that the Rule of Law is something that America is built on. But this seems to be the one area where the narrative about separating families, you know, sort of gets a little bit ratcheted up. Scott Pelley: Well, you can understand why. Daniel Ragsdale: Well, I can. But I would suggest that every person who has, you know, come to the United States illegally, just like if I went somewhere and, you know, resided in violation of law, I could expect at some point that sovereign country to want to remove me. Last month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sent a letter to 10 sanctuary cities, demanding they stop obstructing federal immigration agents from being able to deport criminal illegal immigrants. Sessions said that if sanctuary cities do not eventually comply with federal law, they could see a loss in federal grant money. John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.","label":0}
{"text":"South Korea s foreign ministry stressed the Pyeongchang Olympics will be safe from North Korean provocations in a briefing to diplomats and executives at foreign companies in the country on Friday, as concerns persist over tensions with the North. Officials and executives from around 120 embassies and companies in South Korea were hosted by the ministry to explain the government s efforts for a safe Olympic Games scheduled for Feb. 9-25 next year, officials told Reuters. We will consider it our top priority to ensure the safety and security of each and every national team, the Olympic family, and all the spectators visiting Pyeongchang during the Games, said Park Enna, a foreign ministry official, in opening remarks at the meeting. (We) will thoroughly prepare the Pyeongchang Olympics so that it may be regarded as the safest Olympics in history. Briefing topics included current events regarding North Korea and the Korean peninsula as well as preparations in general for the Pyeongchang Olympics, she added. Officials from the United States, Japan, Russia and China, as well as members of chambers of commerce for Japan, China and Europe were to attend, according to the ministry. An official at the Japanese chamber of commerce in South Korea told Reuters ahead of the meeting they were not specifically aware which companies were planning to attend as the ministry appears to have contacted businesses separately. Park said the UN Olympic Truce Resolution, which has been adopted every two years since 1993 to cease all conflicts during the period of the Truce, will be adopted at the UN General Assembly on Nov. 13 for the Pyeongchang Games. Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen in recent months as North Korea s leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump exchanged threats and insults over the North s nuclear and missile development program. Concerns over safety grew in tandem as the Games will take place just 80 km (50 miles) from the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, the world s most-heavily armed border. France s Sports Minister Laura Flessel said last month that if the crisis in the region deepened and athletes security could not be guaranteed then they would not travel to the Games. Members of France s Winter Olympics team, however, have remained optimistic the country will not boycott. Park said governments reportedly hesitant on participating in the Games have stated their position to partake in and support the coming Olympics. Rattled by rising tensions with North Korea, South Korea has been taking extra measures to try to ensure the safety of the 2018 Winter Games, including setting up a crack cyber defense team and doubling the number of troops, according to officials and documents reviewed by Reuters. North and South Korea remain technically at war after their 1950-53 conflict with a truce and not a peace treaty.","label":0}
{"text":"Print  The bombshells about this criminal are now breaking daily. It's not a question of Trump, it is an imperative that Hillary be defeated. If the people choose Hillary, then they must and will be punished.  \"Wikileaks: Bill Clinton Boasts of Hillary's 'Working Relationship' with Muslim Brotherhood,\" By John Hayward , Breitbart, October 26, 2016:  In a speech Bill Clinton gave at the home of Mehul and Hema Sanghani in October 2015, revealed to the public for the first time by WikiLeaks, former President Bill Clinton touted Hillary Clinton's \"working relationship\" with the Muslim Brotherhood 's Mohamed Morsi in Egypt as an example of her diplomatic skills.President Clinton also gave his wife a lot of credit for negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, in a passage that began with the standard Democrat \"stuff happens\" shrugging defense for foreign policy failures:  Finally, we live in a world, as I said, that's full of good news and bad news. The United States cannot control it all, but we need a president who's most likely to make as many good things happen as possible, and most likely to prevent big, bad things from happening. You can't keep every bad thing from happening; who's most likely to be able to get people involved in a positive way. Even the people who don't like the Iran nuclear agreement concede it never would have happened if it hadn't been for the sanctions. Hillary negotiated those sanctions and got China and Russia to sign off \u2013 something I thought she'd never be able to do. I confess. I'm never surprised by anything she does, but that surprised me. I didn't think she could do it. The Chinese and the Russians to see past their short-term self-interest to their long-term interest and not sparking another nuclear arms race.  And when the Muslim Brotherhood took over in Egypt, in spite of the fact that we were (inaudible), she developed a working relationship with the then-president and went there and brokered a ceasefire to stop a full-scale shooting war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, which on top of what was going on in Syria and the (inaudible) Jordan would have been a calamity for the world.  And when we were trying to reset our relations with Russia under President Medvedev, she and her team negotiated a New START Treaty, which limits warheads and missiles. And she lobbied it through the Senate. She had to get 67 votes, which means a lot of these Republicans who say that they don't like her now are just kidding for election season. They trusted her, and she got it passed. You can't get 67 votes in the Senate without a lot of Republican support. And I don't know about you, but with all this tension and Mr. Putin trying to affect the outcome of the conflict in Syria, I think it's a very good thing that we're in a lower risk of any kind of accidental nuclear conflict with the Russians. She did that.  You'll rarely find a more tortured political framing of the Iran debacle than Bill Clinton boasting that the sanctions Barack Obama lifted were super-awesome, as even those who don't think those sanctions should have been lifted agree.  Mr. Clinton's version of the Iran sanctions leaves out a few details , such as Russia's keen financial interest in keeping Iranian energy out of the European market, and China's desire to use Iran sanctions as a geopolitical bargaining chip.  But the part about the Muslim Brotherhood is most interesting. If anything, he is selling Hillary Clinton's \"working relationship\" with Egyptian Islamists short, because she used American diplomatic leverage for Morsi's benefit even before he got elected, warning Egyptians about \"backtracking\" to a military regime at a key moment of the post-Mubarak campaign, when Morsi was running against a former member of Hosni Mubarak's military. There have long been rumors that more subtle forms of U.S. \" pressure \" were used to secure Morsi's office, as well.  Then again, in public pronouncements, Clinton called Hosni Mubarak's tottering regime \"stable\" and cautioned her Obama Administration colleagues against \"pushing a longtime partner out the door.\"  A few days ago, declassified State Department documents revealed Clinton's talking points for a 2012 meeting with Morsi hailed his election as a \"milestone in Egypt's transition to democracy,\" and stated that she was to offer the Muslim Brotherhood leader \"technical expertise and assistance from both the U.S. government and private sector to support his economic and social programs.\"  Clinton was also supposed to privately offer Morsi assistance with his police and security forces, which would be conducted \"quite discreetly.\"  After Morsi was gone, she declared herself exasperated with Egyptian political culture and declared herself a cynical \"realist.\" That is pretty much the opposite of what everyone in the Obama Administration was saying while the \"Arab Spring\" was in the midst of springing its little surprises on autocratic but America-aligned (or at least America-fearing) regimes, which we were all supposed to feel guilty about selfishly supporting for so long.  As for Clinton's superb working relationship with Morsi, that eventually ended with Morsi's wife railing against Clinton for supposedly dismissing him as \"a simpleton who was unfit for the presidency,\" and threatening to publish letters from Clinton to Morsi that would damage the former U.S. Secretary of State. Meanwhile, Mohammed Morsi is developing a solid working relationship with the Egyptian penitentiary system .  Egypt has one of those icky military governments again, and while it won't have fond memories of Hillary Clinton's support for the Muslim Brotherhood regime, it will most likely work with whoever wins the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Therefore, a prospective President Hillary Clinton probably won't suffer too much from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's appalling lapses in judgment.  Article reposted with permission from PamelaGeller.com","label":1}
{"text":"Senate Democrats on Monday secured the votes necessary to filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, presaging a bitter confrontation this week that threatens to further unravel a chamber where bipartisanship and decorum have eroded for years. The show of solidarity from the minority came as Republicans advanced Judge Gorsuch's nomination in the Judiciary Committee, clearing the way for his consideration on the Senate floor. Republicans vowed Monday to confirm him by the end of the week. The implication was not subtle: If they must change longstanding rules to bypass the filibuster, elevating President Trump's selection on a simple majority vote, they will not hesitate. \"We have no alternative,\" Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the Republican in the Senate, said alongside his Judiciary Committee colleagues after a vote, 11 to 9. It was the beginning of what both parties consider a seminal week on Capitol Hill, likely to fundamentally reshape the way the Senate conducts its business. Though lawmakers have long deployed the filibuster \u2014 a procedural device that allows for continued debate to block or delay a vote \u2014 to suit their circumstances, Supreme Court confirmations have been viewed as another matter, insulated at least somewhat from the body's most partisan passions. Under current rules, Republicans cannot break the filibuster if fewer than 60 senators vote to move the nomination to an Senate vote. That would require eight Democrats to join the Republican majority. As of Monday evening, only four Democrats had announced support for an vote. Judge Gorsuch's fate will depend on whether Republicans follow through on plans for the nuclear option, as Mr. Trump has urged, to circumvent the filibuster for a Supreme Court pick. \"The Republicans are free actors,\" Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said Monday, urging a withdrawal of the nomination if Judge Gorsuch cannot earn 60 votes. \"They can choose to go nuclear or they can sit down with Democrats and find a way forward that preserves the grand traditions of this body. \" Such was the theme of Monday's proceedings: a series of meditations on grand traditions, a resignation to their imminent demise and an insistence that the other side was to blame. During the committee vote, senators took turns lamenting the state of the institution they serve, although none pledged to buck their own party on either the Democratic filibuster or the Republican push for a rule change. What comes next, it appears, is a dismantling of senatorial standards and practice, scheduled for demolition over several days. \"This is a new low,\" Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, said of the likely filibuster, \"but not entirely surprising. \" Of course, Democrats identify Mr. McConnell as the chief purveyor of new lows. From the beginning, the Gorsuch nomination has been shadowed, in large measure, by Judge Merrick B. Garland, whom President Barack Obama nominated in March 2016 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia the month before. Mr. McConnell led Republicans in refusing to even consider the nomination during a presidential election year. But Democrats insist that their opposition to Judge Gorsuch is not about payback. They have cited his record on workers' rights and his degree of independence from Mr. Trump and conservative groups like the Federalist Society, among other concerns. Perhaps no member sounded as pained on Monday as Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the Senate's member. He first argued that the treatment of Judge Garland had convinced Judge Gorsuch that \"this committee is nothing more than a partisan rubber stamp,\" allowing the nominee to evade straightforward questions during his hearings. Mr. Leahy suggested that Mr. McConnell had no qualms about \"forever damaging the United States Senate. \" And he wondered aloud how the Capitol had become so unrecognizable to him, after 42 years. \"I cannot vote solely to protect an institution when the rights of Americans are at risk,\" Mr. Leahy said. \"Because I fear that the Senate I would be defending no longer exists. \" Republicans have in turn faulted Democrats for what they call two escalations of hostilities: a series of filibusters against judicial nominees under President George W. Bush and a vote in 2013, when Democrats controlled the Senate, to bar filibusters for the president's appeals court and executive branch nominees. That shift left the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations untouched. Supporters of Judge Gorsuch have appeared incredulous that the Senate \u2014 whose members approved Justice Scalia unanimously and did not use a filibuster for even some fiercely contested nominees like Justice Clarence Thomas \u2014 could come undone over a judge they view as plainly qualified and uncontroversial. \"It's pathetic,\" Mr. Hatch said, \"that they're so stupid that they picked somebody of his quality and ability\" to oppose. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the committee's chairman, accused Democrats of searching in vain for credible reasons to vote against \"a judge's judge. \" Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, pressed the case that Judge Gorsuch's nomination carried a \"superlegitimacy\" because voters last year knew that the next president would get to fill the seat. (Before the election, he had suggested trying to leave the seat open indefinitely if Hillary Clinton won.) Yet even some Republicans who planned to support a rule change if necessary said they worried about what would come of it. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, predicted that a threshold for Supreme Court confirmations would lead to the elevation of future judges who are \"more ideological, not less. \" Every Senate race, he added, would effectively become a referendum on the Supreme Court. \"This is going to haunt the Senate, it's going to change the judiciary, and it's so unnecessary,\" Mr. Graham said after the vote. Though some Democrats have expressed concerns, in public and private, about pushing ahead with a filibuster, they are also aware of their political hand: The party's progressive base has called on lawmakers to oppose Mr. Trump at every turn, reminding them of the extraordinary dynamics at play. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, linked his vote opposing Judge Gorsuch, at least in part, to the current investigations into connections between Mr. Trump's orbit and Russia. \"It is about the constitutional crisis that may well be looming,\" he said, arguing that Judge Gorsuch had not demonstrated sufficient independence from Mr. Trump. Mr. Blumenthal added that the prospect of the Supreme Court needing to enforce a subpoena against the president was \"far from idle speculation. \" Even lighter fare on Monday could not coax consensus from committee members. At one point, Mr. Grassley asked the senators how they would like to manage their lunch schedule: a break for everyone or an uninterrupted hearing with senators peeling off one by one to eat. The room appeared split. \"Could the majority cater this lunch?\" asked Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota. A few Republicans raised their hands to convey a desire to keep going. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee's top Democrat, smiled slightly, her hands clasped. The committee, she said quietly, could not even agree on lunch.","label":0}
{"text":"In another attempt to stifle freedom of expression, President Trump and his administration have dismantled the White House switchboard comment operating system. Instead, callers will be told to take their complaints and comments to Facebook and other White House social media platforms.When called, the White House switchboard states: Thank you for calling the White House comments line. The comment line is currently closed but your comment is important to the President and we urge you to send us a comment online at www.WhiteHouse.gov\/contact or send us a message through Facebook messenger. Trump really is becoming the social-media president.Since the end of the transition, when the lines were apparently shut off, the Trump administration has been purging the White House website off all things that generally resemble the Obama White House and thus anything that has to do with equality and inclusion. So this is just another instance of curtailing the openness of the people s house.It seems that the 15 percent of American households without internet will not be able to have Trump hear their concerns, who promised to be a champion of all people and listen to their needs.There is no indication yet from the White House whether this is permanent or temporary, as the incoming administration settles into their positions.Still, there was no downtime for this crucial line of democracy when the Obama administration took over in 2009.Given the Trump administration s penchant for lying and ignoring the people, this should come as no surprise. However, it should worry the public if no future action is taken to address this. The people s house should be readily available at all times, in all fashions.It s only day three, and Donald Trump and his team are showing a brazen disregard for the little things that make us great. When studying authoritarians, one must look at how the littlest of things change before their eyes.This might be one of them a White House that doesn t want to be bombarded with calls from an outraged public.Featured image by Ron Sachs via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Only five Zimbabwe cabinet ministers and the attorney general turned up for a meeting called by President Robert Mugabe as 17 others opted to attend a meeting to plan the 93-year-old leader s impeachment, sources said on Tuesday. The cabinet meeting is the first called by Mugabe since a military takeover last Wednesday. Mugabe faced the start of an impeachment process later in the day as his party sought to end his nearly four decades in power.","label":0}
{"text":"Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said on Tuesday he will tell his U.S. counterpart that the New York trial of a Turkish banker, charged with helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions, is not legal and should be ended. Gul told Turkish broadcaster 24 TV in an interview that it would be impossible to accept a verdict contrary to Turkey s interests in the case, which has strained ties between the NATO allies.","label":0}
{"text":"Troy Ave, the Brooklyn rapper charged with attempted murder after a May shooting at a concert at a Manhattan club, was shot twice on Sunday, the police said. The rapper, whose real name is Roland Collins, was driving a red Maserati around 4:20 p. m. in Brooklyn when an unidentified man approached the vehicle, which was stopped at an intersection at East 91st Street and Linden Boulevard. The gunman fired multiple rounds, the police said. Mr. Collins was struck twice, taking a gunshot wound to the arm and a graze wound to his head. He then crashed his vehicle into a parked car. Mr. Collins went to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, where he was hospitalized in fair condition. The police are investigating the shooting, though they said they had no description of the gunman. No arrests had been made as of Sunday night. In June, Mr. Collins pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and other counts in connection with the shooting at the Irving Plaza concert hall in Manhattan. In August, he sued the club and the concert promoter Live Nation, which oversees the club, accusing it of lax security. The shooting occurred at a May 25 show that was to feature the rapper T. I. Before he was able to perform, however, shots were fired in a green room, killing Mr. Collins's bodyguard Ronald McPhatter, 33, and wounding Mr. Collins and two other people. Security footage showed Mr. Collins firing one shot amid the scuffle. He had been scheduled to appear as a guest of T. I. that night and had entered through a V. I. P. entrance, according to the lawsuit.","label":0}
{"text":"Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is a fierce campaigner against racial inequality whose hostility to big business has rattled investors in South Africa. She is also one of two front runners to be the country s next president. The 68-year-old is vying to succeed her ex-husband, President Jacob Zuma, as leader of the ruling African National Congress at a party vote this weekend, an outcome that would make her favourite for the presidency after a parliamentary election due in 2019. A medical doctor and former chair of the Commission of the African Union, a pan-continental grouping, Dlamini-Zuma has pledged during her campaign to radically tackle the racial inequality that persists in South Africa 23 years after the end of white minority rule. Backers of her main rival, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, say she is peddling populist rhetoric and would rule in the mould of her former husband, whose decade in power has been plagued by corruption scandals. Dlamini-Zuma declined to be interviewed for this story. The choice between Dlamini-Zuma and Ramaphosa will influence South Africa s economic policy trajectory, as well the country s role in Africa and beyond. Investors are worried by Dlamini-Zuma s hostility towards international companies, which she says form part of a white monopoly capital cabal dominating South Africa s wealth. A Dlamini-Zuma victory would signal a sharp rhetorical shift towards more leftist economic policy, said John Ashbourne, an Africa-focused economist at Capital Economics. A further credit ratings downgrade would be almost inevitable. Yet Dlamini-Zuma s supporters point to a commitment to changing the lives of South Africa s black majority. Lynne Jones, a psychiatrist and author who lived with Dlamini-Zuma when they were students together in the English city of Bristol in the 1970s, says her determination to fight injustice is rooted in her own personal story. Jones remembers a day four decades ago when Dlamini-Zuma lay on her bed and wept after being forced to miss her brother s funeral because the apartheid-era security services had hounded her out of South Africa. She was fiercely intelligent and determined, said Jones. Here was someone who had put their whole life on the line and given up home and family for what they believed. It was eye-opening. The race between Ramaphosa, a unionist-turned-millionaire businessman, and Dlamini-Zuma is too close to call, political analysts say. Her campaign team told Reuters in written comments it was confident she would be elected ANC leader. Ramaphosa, who is popular among swathes of the ANC disillusioned with Zuma, is promising to end corruption, boost a flatlining economy and deliver jobs to the poor in a country where more than a quarter of the population is unemployed. Dlamini-Zuma, by contrast, is an African nationalist and has the support of the influential ANC youth and women s leagues, which both tend to support socialist policies. Known for her fierce temper and hostility towards the West, she was described in one 2001 U.S. diplomatic cable on WikiLeaks as a truculent and petulant foreign minister . Another cable to Washington suggested she could be charming. Belying her reputation as fierce and formidable, the Minister was soft spoken and smiling in this meeting - articulate but gentle, candid but warm, Donald Gips, then U.S. ambassador to South Africa, wrote in 2010. The most common criticism of Dlamini-Zuma is that she is beholden to Zuma and his powerful patronage network. Zuma has publicly endorsed her. She is bold and you can t fool her. She is someone you can trust, Zuma told a rally recently. The couple met in Swaziland in the 1980s, when they were both in the ANC underground. They were married for more than a decade and have four children together. In a rare interview last month, Dlamini-Zuma challenged her opponents to find any evidence of corruption in her long political career. I don t loot government coffers. I ve never done so, and I will not do so, she told ANN7 television. But for some senior figures in the ANC, she has not done enough to distance herself from the corruption scandals that have dogged President Zuma. She has not said anything on state capture , ANC chief whip Jackson Mthembu told Reuters, using a South African term to describe private interests unduly controlling government funds. Dlamini-Zuma says accusations that she is piggy-backing off Zuma are insulting given her career, first as a doctor to ANC leaders fighting apartheid and then as a cabinet minister under every South African president since 1994. As health minister in Nelson Mandela s cabinet, she laid the foundations for free public healthcare for the poor, took a hard line on smoking and made medicines more accessible. As foreign minister she fostered friendships with African countries and emerging economies like China, even when this angered the West. But she also made errors of judgment. In 1996, Dlamini-Zuma awarded a contract for more than $3 million to a friend for a play, Sarafina II, to raise awareness about AIDS and was later found to have ignored tender rules. Political analyst Ralph Mathekga said that paled in comparison to recent government malpractice. He said: 14 million rand in the Sarafina scandal now seems like peanuts when compared with the looting under Zuma. (For a graphic on 'ANC election in South Africa' click here) (For a graphic on 'South African economy' click here)","label":0}
{"text":"New Yorkers fight to overturn ballot selfie ban New Yorkers fight to overturn ballot selfie ban By 0 119  New York voters are suing the state, arguing it is unconstitutional to ban them from showing their completed ballots to others via social media. The ballot selfie ban is becoming a hot topic this election, affecting even celebrities like Justin Timberlake.  The three New Yorkers \u2013 Eve Silber, Rebecca White, and Michael Emperor \u2013 filed the federal lawsuit in on Wednesday, seeking a judge to declare the election law banning \"ballot selfies\" unconstitutional, according to the attorney representing the group.  \"Taking a photograph of a filled out ballot is a powerful political statement that demonstrates the importance of voting. Without the photograph, the message loses its power,\" says the lawsuit, filed by lawyer Leo Glickman in Manhattan Federal Court, according to the New York Daily News.  Under the current state law, showing a marked ballot to another voter is considered a misdemeanor which can result in prison time and a hefty $1,000 fine, according to court papers.  Glickman is seeking a court injunction to stop officials from enforcing the law before the November 8 election.  Similar laws against \"ballot selfies\" have been struck down in Michigan, Indiana and New Hamsphire as a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of the freedom of speech.  Selfies are being allowed at the polls in Connecticut, but officials will be watching for whether the practice becomes disruptive for voters.  In New Jersey, Assemblyman Raj Mukherji is pushing for a bill that would protect voters' right to take selfies at the ballot box, CBS radio reported.  Singer-actor Justin Timberlake got into some trouble this week after posting a photo of himself voting in Tennessee on his Instagram page. The picture prompted a reminder of the law from state officials that such photography is against the law.  Timberlake addressed the controversy during an appearance on 'The Tonight Show' Wednesday, telling host Jimmy Fallon he thought he was inspiring people with the picture and \"had no idea\" it was illegal.  Taking photos inside a voting booth is illegal in Tennessee under a 2015 state law, as it is in 17 other states, according to a review of laws banning ballot selfies conducted by the Associated Press.  Via RT . This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.","label":1}
{"text":"\u25a0 The Senate Judiciary Committee, in a vote, sent the nomination of Judge Neil M. Gorsuch for the Supreme Court to the full Senate for consideration. \u25a0 Democrats now seem to have the votes to filibuster Judge Gorsuch's nomination. \u25a0 But Republicans will most likely vote to change Senate practices later in the week so that Judge Gorsuch could be approved with a simple majority vote. \u25a0 The tenor of the Judiciary Committee strongly suggests that the full Senate debate on Judge Gorsuch will be even more contentious. With an announcement from Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, during the Judiciary Committee's hearing to vote on Judge Gorsuch's nomination, Democrats found their 41st vote in support of a filibuster, sending the body hurtling toward a bitter partisan confrontation this week. Read more \u00bb As senators began revealing their votes on Monday, partisan acrimony predominated. Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa and the committee's chairman, accused Democrats of searching in vain for credible reasons to vote against Judge Gorsuch. \"This nominee that we're voting on today is a judge's judge,\" he said. \"He's a picture of the kind of justice we should have on the Supreme Court. \" Mr. Grassley suggested that some attacks in recent weeks from Democrats, which have included criticisms of the spending push from outside groups supporting Judge Gorsuch, defied the country's values. \"This is America,\" he said, \"where people can spend their money where they want to spend it. \" Taking her turn next, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee's top Democrat, criticized Judge Gorsuch's record on workers' rights and his reluctance to answer questions. She did thank Mr. Grassley for overseeing the hearings fairly. Ms. Feinstein also reminded the public about the treatment last year of Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama's nominee for the seat left by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. Republicans refused to even consider Judge Garland during a presidential election year. \"In my view, this is not a routine nomination,\" she said at the top of her remarks. In his own comments, Mr. Grassley expressed no regrets. \"I believe then and I believe now that we took the right course for the Senate and for the court,\" he said. From the hearing's opening moments, lawmakers took turns lamenting the state of the Senate, holding forth on the present divisions but appearing resigned to the institutional upheaval that awaits this week. Few sounded as aggrieved as Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and the body's member. He first suggested that Republicans' treatment of Judge Garland last year had convinced Judge Gorsuch that \"this committee is nothing more than a partisan rubber stamp,\" allowing the nominee to evade straightforward questions during his hearings. He said that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, had \"promised to use whatever tactic is necessary to get his way, to make sure that Donald Trump's nominee is confirmed, even if that means forever damaging the United States Senate. \" \"Now, I respect this institution as much as anyone. I never expected to be here long enough to become the dean of the Senate,\" Mr. Leahy said. \"I've devoted myself to the good the Senate can accomplish. But I cannot vote solely to protect an institution when the rights of Americans are at risk. Because I fear that the Senate I would be defending no longer exists. \" As the committee continued debating Judge Gorsuch's nomination, Republicans received a modest lift outside the hearing room: Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado said he would not join fellow Democrats in filibustering the nomination. He urged Republicans against the nuclear option, changing the rules to allow Judge Gorsuch to be approved on a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes now required. \"Neither Republicans nor Democrats are blameless for where things stand in our politics and on this nomination,\" Mr. Bennet said in a statement, which did not reveal his voting intentions on Judge Gorsuch's nomination itself. \"But at some point, we need to take the long view and stand up for our institutions. \" What happens next will most likely be up to Republicans. And their intentions seem clear. \"What I can tell you is that Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed this week,\" Mr. McConnell told Chuck Todd on NBC's \"Meet the Press. \" Practically, this will almost certainly require Republicans to change Senate practice and elevate Judge Gorsuch on a simple majority vote. The strain has already compelled leaders from both parties to adopt the tone of hostage negotiators \u2014 and the senatorial tic of leavening criticism by calling opponents \"friends. \" \"Our Republican friends are acting like, you know, they're a cat on the top of a tree and they have to jump off, with all the damage that entails,\" Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, told \"Meet the Press,\" urging Mr. Trump to submit a new judge. \"Come back off the tree, sit down and work with us. \" Mr. McConnell chose to forgo analogies. Judge Gorsuch will get his new robes, he suggested, and \"how that happens really depends on our Democratic friends. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Qatar is open to dialogue in resolving a dispute that has seen the Gulf state isolated from its Arab neighbors, its emir said during a visit to Indonesia on Wednesday. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of financing terrorism and maintaining too close of ties to their arch-rival Iran. Doha denies the charges. Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said he discussed the issue with President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, which has the world s largest population of Muslims and has close ties to the Arab world. We conveyed...that Qatar is ready to conduct a dialogue to solve the problem as we already know that no one will win, Thani told reporters after meeting with Widodo at the state palace in Bogor, outside the capital of Jakarta. We are all brothers and suffering because of this crisis, he added. President Widodo did not publicly address the dispute. The leader of the world s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas also visited Malaysia - another Muslim-majority nation - and Singapore this week. Saudi and other Arab nations have made a list of 13 wide-ranging demands of Qatar, including closing down the Al Jazeera television network and curbing ties with Iran. Kuwait and top United States officials have attempted to mediate between the parties, but there is little sign that the crisis will be resolved soon.","label":0}
{"text":"The Iraqi government has dismissed a call from U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for Iranian-backed paramilitary units that helped Baghdad defeat Islamic State to end operations in Iraq. Speaking after a meeting on Sunday with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and Saudi Arabia s King Salman, Tillerson said it was time for the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation forces and their Iranian advisers to go home . Washington, which backed Baghdad against Islamic State, is concerned Iran will use its expanded presence in Iraq and in Syria to expand its influence in the region. But Abadi showed unwillingness to meet Tillerson s demand. No party has the right to interfere in Iraqi matters, the statement from his office read. It did not cite the prime minister himself but a source close to him. Trained and armed by Iran, the Iraqi Popular Mobilisation forces often supported Iraqi government units in the fight against the militants who were effectively defeated in July when a U.S.-backed offensive captured their stronghold Mosul. They are paid by the Iraqi government and officially report to the prime minister, but some Arab Sunni and Kurdish politicians describe these militias as a de facto branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp. Iraq s Sunni neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, share Washington s concerns over Shi ite power Iran s influence in Iraq, where the population is also predominantly Shi ite. But the office of Abadi, himself a Shi ite, said the forces were under the authority of the Iraqi government. Popular Mobilisation are Iraqi patriots, it said in the statement. The United States trained tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers in the course of rebuilding the Iraqi armed forces and has over 5,000 troops deployed in the country, providing key air and ground support to the offensive on Islamic State.","label":0}
{"text":"On a recent afternoon in Montevideo, a young couple approached the counter at Futuro Refuerzos, a snug sandwich shop that features artisanal breads, spreads and locally sourced meats. The woman was wearing a felt halt and carried a vintage leather handbag the man sported tousled curls, forearm tattoos and skinny jeans. There was nothing remarkable about this scene \u2014 stylish ordering gourmet sandwiches in a rustic space \u2014 except that it unfolded in a destination that has seemed immune to hipsterdom. Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, is almost invariably described as and . But in the past few years, an energetic cadre of entrepreneurs with social media proficiency and a keen awareness of global trends has begun to breathe fresh life into this traditionally sleepy South American city. Most are design and millennials who are opening up restaurants and boutiques, organizing street festivals and supper clubs, and daring to stand out in a society that has typically rewarded modesty. \"Thanks in part to social media, young Uruguayans have a global and are very motivated,\" said M\u00f3nica Zanocchi, the founder of a popular fashion and lifestyle blog called Couture. \"There are a lot of creative professionals entering the work force, and since established companies can't absorb all of this new talent, they end up becoming entrepreneurs. \" Futuro Refuerzos is led by Ferm\u00edn Solana, a food writer and rock musician who grew frustrated with the lack of options in Montevideo. \"There was nowhere to eat a decent sandwich beyond the old places that make chivitos,\" he said, referring to the traditional steak sandwiches that are offered in neighborhood joints or local chains. \"I looked at Santiago and Lima, where the sandwiches are incredible, and decided to take a risk. \" Soon after opening in late 2015, Futuro Refuerzos had garnered a following thanks to creations like \"gol,\" handmade pita filled with spiced meatballs, sweet blood sausage and red cabbage. Mr. Solana is part of a group of young restaurateurs and chefs fueling the city's small but growing foodie circuit, which right now includes over a dozen restaurants, cafes and specialty stores (until recently, Montevidean epicures spoke of living in a culinary wasteland, so this is a noticeable improvement). There is Estrecho, a tiny restaurant in the historic district with simple d\u00e9cor belying a sophisticated lunchtime menu prepared by Cali Diemarch, a chef trained in the United States who invents his daily dishes on the fly, such as a deconstructed chivito made with filet mignon, poached egg, caramelized pancetta and fried onions. La Pasionaria, a concept store and restaurant on a quiet nearby street, recently welcomed a new young chef, Luciana Fia, who makes pasta, ice cream and other food by hand, using fresh, local ingredients. At Sucr\u00e9 Sal\u00e9 Bistro, a casual spot near downtown, on the back patio of the Alliance Fran\u00e7aise de Montevideo, Florencia Ibarra often sneaks refined dishes like rabbit in mustard sauce with boulang\u00e8re potatoes into her unfussy menu. Leading the pack is the and Jacinto, headed by Luc\u00eda Soria, an alumna of the famed Argentine chef Francis Mallmann. Ms. Soria frequently appears on television, participates in food festivals like Degusto and headlines as the top guest chef in supper clubs like Mesabrava. \"Finally, we have good places to eat, good live music and a generation of people who are breaking away from the old molds,\" Mr. Solana said. \"I think the city's lighting up. \" Montevideo's new vibe is closely linked to fashion and interior design, as seen in a surge of shops selling locally made clothes, accessories and home accents. Last year, one of the most dynamic new labels, Rotunda, unveiled a sleek multistory boutique in the Punta Carretas neighborhood, complete with its own photography studio, where the owners, Kevin Jakter and Sof\u00eda Dominguez, showcase their expanding line of minimalist women's clothing, eyewear, shoes, and jewelry. Ten blocks away in the residential and commercial district of Pocitos, a trendy multibrand store, Tienda, sells labels like Pastiche, which specializes in denim, and Mutma, a maker of leather shoes and handbags. Casa Ban\u00e9m, a home d\u00e9cor store set in a villa in upscale Carraco, also stocks a variety of homegrown brands like Don Baez, known for its throws and pillows made with Uruguayan merino wool, and Home Touch, which makes lighting. This design boom can be gauged at MoWeek, the local fashion week held in April and October, which began in 2010 with six showrooms and now includes more than 60. \"They're all independent brands started by a new generation, which is impressive,\" Ms. Zanocchi of Couture said. \"Montevideo is still quiet, but there are some very interesting alternative scenes that are seeping into the mainstream. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The following are highlights of the maiden policy address of Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam on Wednesday as she laid out a blueprint of her government s priorities in the coming five years. National security - Say no to any attempt to threaten country s (China s) sovereignty, security and development interests Infrastructure - Belt and Road Initiative and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area development will bring enormous opportunities for Hong Kong s economy Economy - The government last went into deficit in 2003-04 and now fiscal reserves are in excess of HK$1,000 billion. - Hong Kong grew by 4.0 percent in real terms year-on-year in the first two quarters, with unemployment dropping to 3.1 percent in recent months, the lowest level in two decades - Overall economic growth in 2017 is expected to be higher than 3.5 percent Innovation and Technology - The government will step up efforts in research and development, expanding talent pool, venture capital, legislation reviews, and I&T development - The government has set a goal to double the Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product from the current 0.73 percent to 1.5 percent within the current-term government s five-year tenure Taxation - On the two-tier profits tax system, the profits tax rate for the first HK$2 million of profits of enterprises will be lowered to 8.25 percent, or half of the standard profits tax rate - Profits above that amount will continue to be subject to the standard tax rate of 16.5 percent Housing - To step up efforts to increase the supply of housing units - Seek to shorten the waiting time for public rental housing and increase supply of flats under the home ownership scheme. - Proposes to introduce affordable Starter Homes for middle-class families in Hong Kong - Land for Starter Homes to come from sites already owned by private developers or to be bought from the government - Provisions in land leases to require developers to pursue mixed developments, to build and offer for sale a specified number of Starter Homes units in addition to private housing units to target buyers who meet the eligibility criteria Education and talents - Increase education expenditure by HK$5 billion a year - Appoint more young people to government committees, with the aim of increasing the overall ratio of youth members to 15 percent within the current-term government - Recruit young people in policy research units so that the voices of young people can be heard at senior levels of the government","label":0}
{"text":"He called it. Many times.  Michael Moore, the controversial documentary filmmaker, is a staunch Democrat and Clinton supporter, but has been saying all along that Trump was going to win.  On Real Time with Bill Maher in July, Moore cried out, \"Get out of your bubble, people!\" He listed five reasons why Trump was going to be the next president and he was creepy correct.  For example, his first reason 'The Rust Belt\/Brexit Strategy' played out before our eyes last night:  \"Mitt Romney lost by 64 electoral votes. The total votes of [Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania ]\u2026 64. All he (Trump) has to do is win those four states.\"  You can check out the whole list, explained in detail, here .  And during a talk posted on Youtube on October 24 th , Moore also explained why Trump was gonna win.  But the ever-optimistic Moore is not wasting his time saying, \"I told you so.\" Instead, he has put out a call for action. On his Facebook page, he posted a to-do list and it looks like this time people are listening. The posting has gone viral, with 218K reactions, 10K comments and almost 100K shares on Facebook alone.  So, without further ado\u2026 Michael Moore's Morning After To-Do List: Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must \"heal the divide\" and \"come together.\" They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin. Everyone must stop saying they are \"stunned\" and \"shocked.\" What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all \"You're fired!\" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: \"HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!\" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the \"liberal\" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above). Let's try to get this all done by noon today.  \u2014 Michael Moore  You can read the original post on Michael Moore's Facebook page .","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump tried out a new minion on Sunday in what resulted in an embarrassing and terrifying appearance on all the networks.Trump adviser Stephen Miller, who helped write Trump s apocalyptic and negative inaugural address and the executive order that banned travelers from seven countries from entering the United States, appeared on the Sunday shows to press the same theme over and over again.Miller claimed that the judicial branch has no authority to stand in the way of Trump s national security agenda and that Trump is always 100 percent correct. We do not have judicial supremacy in this country, Miller said on Fox News Sunday. We have three co-equal branches of government. It s true that we have three branches of government, but the Constitution clearly made the judicial branch responsible for interpreting the laws and deciding what is and what is not constitutional.Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court ruled against reinstating Trump s executive order, a blistering defeat for his administration.The ruling caused Republicans to make a bill splitting the Ninth Circuit Court a top priority as punishment. And now Trump and his team are trying to undermine the power of the judiciary in retaliation.And that why Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressed horror on Monday morning.The Morning Joe hosts could not believe how anti-Constitution Miller was and that Trump actually praised him for it. It s so much worse than I ever thought, Scarborough said after both reacted to Miller s performance by saying, Oh my God. Scarborough then proceeded to inform Miller that courts have every right to question what Trump does and gave him a quick lesson about the Constitution. They will be questioned by the court it s called judicial review. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote about it in the Federalist Papers, it was enshrined in Madison s Constitution. Indeed, Article 3 of the Constitution has been the bedrock of our nation s judiciary since America s founding.Article 3 states:The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish The judicial power shall extend to all cases, in law and equity, arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more states; between a state and citizens of another state; between citizens of different states; between citizens of the same state claiming lands under grants of different states, and between a state, or the citizens thereof, and foreign states, citizens or subjects.In short, the courts have the final say about what is constitutional and what is not. Trying to undermine the power of the judiciary is a violation of the Constitution.That was the worst performance out of anybody, Scarborough continued. That was horrendous, an embarrassment. Go back and read the constitution. The White House has got to stop embarrassing themselves by putting this guy out there. Scarborough concluded that if Trump keeps trying to undermine the judiciary he ll be impeached.Here s the video via Twitter..@JoeNBC on Stephen Miller s weekend performance: That was horrendous and an embarrassment https:\/\/t.co\/rE5Fxo8AF3 Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) February 13, 2017Donald Trump continues to get more dangerous to our democracy and Constitution every day. He needs to be ousted before we wake up one day and no longer have rights.","label":1}
{"text":"Home \u203a POLICE STATE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | US NEWS \u203a DETROIT AIRPORT USING NEW HIGH-TECH SYSTEM: TAKES FINGERPRINTS, IRIS SCAN, HIGH-RES PHOTO OF FACE DETROIT AIRPORT USING NEW HIGH-TECH SYSTEM: TAKES FINGERPRINTS, IRIS SCAN, HIGH-RES PHOTO OF FACE 0 SHARES  [10\/27\/16] Metro Detroit Airport now has a new way to allow people to move seamlessly through airport security .  It's called CLEAR and it's now in operation at the airport's McNamara Terminal. Certified as a \"qualified anti-terrorism technology\" by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CLEAR has been used more than five million times to move travelers quickly through airport security lines at 16 other airports.  \"They validate their identity using a knowledge-based quiz, they use a government identification that's validated using technology, and then we link it to their bio-metrics \u2014 we take 10 fingerprints with a digital reader, we take a scan of their iris, and we take a high-res photo of their face,\" said CLEAR spokesperson David Cohen.  Cohen said the initial sign-up process takes about five minutes and after that, getting through security lines should be a breeze. He said there are special lines for CLEAR customers that can be a great time-saver for travelers, who will still have to pass through X-Rays and body scans. Post navigation","label":1}
{"text":"The United States is suspending food and fuel aid for most of Somalia s armed forces over corruption concerns, a blow to the military as African peacekeepers start to withdraw this month. African Union (AU) troops landed in Mogadishu a decade ago to fight al Shabaab Islamist militants and Somali forces are supposed to eventually take over their duties. But the United States, which also funds the 22,000-strong peacekeeping force, has grown frustrated that successive governments have failed to build a viable national army. Diplomats worry that without strong Somali forces, al Shabaab could be reinvigorated, destabilize the region and offer a safe haven to other al Qaeda-linked militants or Islamic State fighters. The U.S. suspension of aid came after the Somali military repeatedly failed to account for food and fuel, according to private correspondence between the U.S. and Somali governments seen by Reuters. During recent discussions between the United States and the Federal Government of Somalia, both sides agreed that the Somali National Army had failed to meet the standards for accountability for U.S. assistance, a State Department official told Reuters last week, on condition of anonymity. We are adjusting U.S. assistance to SNA units, with the exception of units receiving some form of mentorship, to ensure that U.S. assistance is being used effectively and for its intended purpose, the official said. The U.S. suspension comes at a sensitive time. The AU force - with troops from Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda - is scheduled to leave by 2020. The first 1,000 soldiers will go by the end of 2017. The State Department official said Washington would continue to support small, Somali special forces units mentored by U.S. personnel and would work with the Somali government to agree criteria that could restore support to other units. It is true that some concerns have been raised on how support was utilized and distributed. The federal government is working to address these, Somali Minister of Defence Mohamed Mursal told Reuters. Documents sent from the U.S. Mission to Somalia to the Somali government show U.S. officials are increasingly frustrated that the military is unable to account for its aid. The documents paint a stark picture of a military hollowed out by corruption, unable to feed, pay or arm its soldiers - despite hundreds of millions of dollars of support. Between May and June, a team of U.S. and Somali officials visited nine army bases to assess whether the men were receiving food the United States provides for 5,000 soldiers. We did not find the expected large quantities of food at any location ... there was no evidence of consumption (except at two bases), the U.S. team wrote to the Somali government. At one base, less than a fifth of the soldiers listed by Somali commanders were present. The best-staffed base had 160 soldiers out of 550. Only 60 had weapons. Many appeared to be wearing brand new uniforms. This implied they were assembled merely to improve appearances, the letter, seen by Reuters, said. An ongoing assessment of the Somali military this year by the Somali government, African Union and United Nations drew similar conclusions. The joint report seen by Reuters said many soldiers lacked guns, uniforms, food, vehicles or tents. Troops relied on support from AU forces or local militias to survive. The SNA is a fragile force with extremely weak command and control, the report said. They are incapable of conducting effective operations or sustaining themselves. Most units don t have radios, leaving soldiers to rely on runners to get help when mobile networks go down, the report said. Troops lacked paper to write reports, toilets, boots and medical equipment such as tourniquets. Many slept under trees. SNA units were at 62 percent of their authorized strength on average. Only 70 percent of them had weapons, the report said. Although the report was deeply critical, diplomats praised the government for trying to quantify the scope of the problem. The government deserves massive praise for doing it and being willing to talk about it, Michael Keating, the U.N. s top official in Somalia, told Reuters. The United States also suspended a program paying soldiers $100 monthly stipends in June after the federal government refused to share responsibility for receiving the payments with regional forces fighting al Shabaab. Washington has spent $66 million on stipends over the past seven years but has halted the program several times, concerned the money was not going to frontline soldiers. One Somali document seen by Reuters showed members of a 259-strong ceremonial brass band were receiving stipends this year meant for soldiers fighting militants. The State Department s watchdog said in a report published in October there were insufficient checks on the program and U.S. stipends could fund forces that commit abuses - or even support insurgents. Officially, Somalia s military is 26,000 strong, but the payroll is stuffed with ghost soldiers, pensioners and the dead, whose families may be receiving their payments, diplomats say. Intermittent payments from the government have forced many active soldiers to sell their weapons, ammunition or seek other work - practices the U.S. stipends were designed to curb. Washington has whittled down the number of troops it pays to 8,000 from over 10,000 but there is still no reliable payroll, said a Mogadishu-based security expert. Defence Minister Mursal said the United Nations is creating a biometric database and plans to help the Somali government make cash payments directly to soldiers via mobile phones. The new government will also set up a separate system for widows, orphans, and the wounded so the payroll would adequately represent military strength, he said. The weakness of Somali forces has deadly consequences. The insurgency is striking with ever larger and more deadly attacks in the capital Mogadishu and major towns. A truck bomb killed more than 500 people in October and a suicide bomber killed at least 18 at a police academy on Thursday. Yusuf, a 35-year-old Somali soldier stationed near the Indian Ocean port of Kismayu, knows what it s like to depend on local militias and AU forces to stay alive. On Sept. 26, insurgents attacked his base at Bula Gadud, killing 15 colleagues and wounding scores more before the local Jubaland militia and AU peacekeepers saved them. We lost several key members in that battle especially my close friend, he told Reuters. We tried to retreat ... after using all the ammunition we had. A senior Somali security source said when the attack happened, the battalion of more than 1,000 soldiers had only been issued 300 guns. Defence Minister Mursal said the Somali troops at Bulagadud have since been sent more weapons. Somalia s national security plan calls for a military of 18,000 soldiers, funded by the central government and operating country-wide. Getting there will be hard. Security experts say the military is dominated by a powerful clan, the Hawiye, which would be reluctant to lose control of the lucrative security assistance revenue stream. Many regional governments within Somalia already see the Hawiye-dominated federal forces as rivals rather than allies. The government s ability to push reforms depends on balancing demands from federal member states, lawmakers, clan leaders and international partners, the U.N. s Keating said. It s going to take a long time and its going to run into massive clan resistance, he said. Some clans are very dominant in the security forces. Somalia s partners also need to get serious and coordinate better, said Matt Bryden of the think-tank Sahan Research. According to Sahan, donors - including the EU, AU, Turkey and Uganda - have trained more than 80,000 Somali soldiers since 2004. Bryden said records are so poor it was not clear if many had taken multiple courses, or just quit afterwards. It s like sand through your fingers where are they all?","label":0}
{"text":"What Exactly Are Poll Watchers? Here's The Cliff Notes Version (VIDEO) By Natalie Dailey on October 29, 2016 Subscribe  For months, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has been whining that the election is rigged against him.  He urges people to go to the polls and look out for voter fraud. Watching for fraud is not illegal by itself. If you actually try to force someone to vote a certain way, that is illegal. Sending out false information about the election is also illegal in Ohio. In most states, intimidating voters like that is illegal. According to 18 U.S. Code \u00a7 594 : \"Whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote or to vote as he may choose.\"  The states are allowed to regulate election procedures, so the rules vary widely. Some states allow poll watchers to help out by simply being in the room. They watch for any specific suspicious behavior. What Are Poll Watchers?  For example, in Florida, each candidate is allowed to have one poll watcher at each polling place. They have to be approved by the state beforehand.  The poll watcher's job is to make sure that the votes are counted correctly and to make sure there aren't any weird voting schemes going on.  Also in Florida, the poll watchers are allowed to challenge someone's identity if they find a problem with the person's identification or if the voter doesn't show up on local voter rolls. If the issue isn't resolved on-site, then the person can fill out a \"provisional\" ballot.  This ballot won't get counted until the problem with the voter's identity is cleared up, and only if the vote numbers are close enough for provisional ballots to make a difference. Unfortunately, they often don't get counted at all and if they do, not until after the vote would've been useful. Who Are The Poll Workers?  The poll workers are usually a combination of state employees, temporary contractors, or volunteers. They are trained to answer your questions, and they handle disputes with the poll watchers.  You are allowed to ask who poll workers are and who they represent. If you have a problem while voting, you'll report it to the poll workers.  Poll watchers and poll workers are not allowed to intimidate voters or suppress voting based on race, gender, national origin, or religion. They also can't question you, and they can't film you without your approval.  Stay safe on election day, November 8!  Donald Trump has gotten himself in some hot water for calling for poll watchers:","label":1}
{"text":"Another day, another situation where a Catholic priest is caught being a pervert. Monsingor Lawrence McGovern is the head of the Presentation Parish in Stockton, California. He also clearly has a proclivity for gentlemen. McGovern allegedly sent photos of his penis to an unnamed man who takes care of the swimming pool at the parish. The man complained about McGovern s sexual harassment to the police, and the parish, in true Catholic fashion, fired him.Vince Vinaldi is a lawyer for the fired pool man, and he says of the situation: It s extremely disturbing that the person s who is head of this parish would be sending text with photographs of his exposed genitals. Someone s who s engaging in that type of conduct has very, very serious credibility issues and issues with judgement. Finaldi also says that the pool man approached McGovern about the explicit material that he was receiving, and also pointed out that Catholic priests are supposed to be completely celibate. The perverted priest simply responded, Oh, that just means that you re not married. Last I checked, celibacy in modern times refers to abstaining from sexual activity, not marriage.The Stockton Parish suspended McGovern once the allegations hit the news, and issued the usual generic statement regarding a supposed internal investigation: Today the Diocese of Stockton learned for the first time of employment related allegations against Monsignor Lawrence McGovern, the Pastor of Presentation Parish in Stockton. In accordance with the Canon Law of the Church, Bishop Stephen Blaire has placed Monsignor McGovern on administrative leave pending a full and complete investigation. Vince Finaldi, however, has a much more appropriate reaction than that of the local diocese: That person has no business being in a parish and head of a school where there are numerous young children walking around everyday. Unfortunately, Mr. Finaldi, if all of these pedophiles and other assorted perverts were to be dismissed as they should be, there would be very few priests left in the Catholic Church worldwide, and there s no way the Church would allow for that. Likely, McGovern will just be shuttled away to a different parish after the media storm dies down, free to sexually harass another day.Watch a news report on the developing situation, via local station Fox 40:","label":1}
{"text":"But even though it is ultimately an egalitarian ruler, wreaking havoc on the old, young, good and bad alike, Time seems to hold a special grudge against Loretta Lynch, the woman who, after an unprecedented delay, was finally sworn in on Monday as the 83rd attorney general in the history of the United States. The first indication that Time has it in for Lynch was also the most obvious: the Senate's 167-day-long dawdle. But while it was obviously wrong to make the first African-American woman ever nominated for the post wait so absurdly long to be confirmed (only two of Lynch's 82 predecessors waited longer), I'm hesitant to throw the fault entirely on Time's shoulders. The attack was launched by Republicans, after all; Time was merely their weapon. But the second piece of evidence that Time may be holding a particular grudge against the attorney general was more palpable: the riots that convulsed Baltimore this weekend and paralyzed the city on Monday. Because although Lynch obviously had nothing to do with the disorder, the riots' fires show with blinding clarity that Lynch's first goal \u2014 which is \"improving police morale,\" according to the Times \u2014 is entirely premature. The wanton destruction of property cannot be legitimated; but simply criticizing anarchy and praising law enforcement won't bring the mayhem to an end. And it won't provide justice. In many ways, the chaos in Baltimore is just the latest iteration of one of America's saddest and longest-running stories. It is another example of what Martin Luther King once called \"the language of the unheard.\" King was speaking then of the riots that traumatized much of the country during the summer of 1966. But the social ills he described as kindling for the riot's fire \u2014 poverty, police brutality and malign neglect \u2014 are, despite the nearly 49 years that followed, still powerful forces in America today. For this particular moment, though, it's Baltimore Police Department's documented history of lawless violence that's been identified as the riots' inspiration. Protestors and rioters \u2014 who, it's worth noting, are usually not the same \u2014 cite as their catalyst the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old African-American man and Baltimorean. On April 12, Gray was arrested by officers from the BPD. When police detained Gray and put him in a van for transportation, he was walking; by the time the trip was over, he had a broken neck. He died on April 19th. No one yet knows for sure exactly what happened to Gray during that trip and in that van. There are reports that he was taken out at one point and beaten, but an autopsy showed no injuries except for those to his spinal cord and neck. The BPD has already admitted that its officers did not provide Gray with the necessary medical care. But the main question \u2014 Why was he able to run from the police in the morning, but struggling to breathe by nightfall? \u2014 has gone unanswered, though an increasing number suspect the widespread, grotesque practice of giving \"a rough ride\" is to blame. Yet the fact that such a thing could happen, and only become a major story after the activism of peaceful protesters (and the destructive hijacking of violent rioters), is exactly the problem. The fact that the BPD's reputation is such that many Baltimoreans heard Gray's story with weary outrage rather than shock or indignation is exactly the problem. The fact that the BPD rank-and-file evidently feels so comfortable with extralegal brutality, and are so accustomed to wielding it, that demands for accountability has left them panicking \u2014 that, too, is exactly the problem. I'm quite certain that, at least to some extent, Attorney General Lynch would agree. But that's why it's so unfortunate that news of her interest in \"finding common ground between law enforcement and minority communities\" came when it did. Because once the last stone is thrown, the fires are put out, and the state of emergency in Maryland is lifted, what Baltimore and the countless places in the U.S. like it will need is not another conversation. And finding \"common ground\" won't be what America needs from its attorney general or its Department of Justice. What will be needed instead is for the authorities in Baltimore, Maryland and D.C. to stop pandering to the police unions who demand carte blanche in the field and an endless line of officials singing about their valor. What will be needed instead are signs that the authorities take fears of the rise of the \"warrior cop\" and police militarization seriously, and that they will no longer see the deaths of people like Gray as \"tragic.\" Because they're not cosmic acts of injustice; they're crimes. To suspend (with pay) the officers who may be responsible is not enough \u2014 and Lynch needs to make clear that she understands that, and that her predecessor's groundbreaking report on Ferguson, Missouri, was no aberration. What will be needed, in short, is for the people most apt to use \"the language of the unheard\" to feel that someone who matters is finally listening. And that those in public office prove with actions that they believe it when they say an African-American life is worth no less than a cop's. Now is not the time for Lynch to focus on making law enforcement happy. Now is the time for her to promote equal justice. Improving police morale can wait.","label":0}
{"text":"Part Three of a series \u2026 In Part One we saw how the gospel of globalism inspires its believers to disdain, even despise, nationalists \u2014 that is, the people who voted for Donald Trump. And in Part Two we saw how the Deep State, one of the many weapons in the globalist arsenal, is now targeting Trump and his agenda for America. Here in Part Three, we will focus on how one Trump opponent is seeking to pick off a key member of the new presidential staff. 1. Fake News: \"Bannon vs. Trump\" Attacks on Stephen K. Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart, slated to become the top strategist in the Trump White House, are nothing new. Just since the election, Mother Jones magazine has called him \"worse . . . than a racist,\" Joy Behar labeled him \"a fascist,\" and former Vermont governor Howard Dean insisted, against all evidence, that he is \"a Nazi. \" You get the idea. Okay, these assaults haven't gotten very far they were tried, too, during the 2016 campaign, and Bannon's standing within Trump world has never wavered. And yet, of course, the assaults keep coming. And so to help keep track of them all, perhaps we should assign them into categories. For example, in an earlier article, not part of this series, Virgil cited the ways in which \"argument from authority\" \u2014 argumentum ad verecundiam \u2014 can be used and, more often these days, misused. So now we can add a second, slyer, category of media falsehood. We can call this one the \"assertion of a false conflict,\" declaratio contra falsum. This one is a version of the familiar attempt to stir the pot, whipping up hard feelings between people: Hey, did you hear what he said about you? And here's Brooks' description of the gist of Bannon's speech: Humane capitalism has been replaced by the savage capitalism that brought us the financial crisis. National democracy has been replaced by a network of global elites. Traditional virtue has been replaced by abortion and gay marriage. Sovereign are being replaced by hapless multilateral organizations like the E. U. Decadent and enervated, the West lies vulnerable in the face of a confident and convicted Islamofascism, which is the cosmic threat of our time. So that's how Brooks characterizes Bannon's beliefs. And Brooks is just warming up. He then goes on to compare Trump to Vladimir Putin, and Bannon to a conservative Russian political figure in Putin's orbit, Alexander Dugin. Yet after making these dark comparisons, Brooks offers his readers a ray of light: The dark he predicts, will fail. Why? Because, Brooks chortles, Trump is such a lazy, egocentric, lightweight that he will lose interest in these Bannonite topics and so will drift over to the side of the globalists. A question leaps immediately to mind: Did Brooks get some scoop as to Trump's thinking? Some revelatory interview? The answer, Brooks indicates, is \"no. \" It's just his hunch: I'm personally betting the foreign policy apparatus, including the secretaries of state and defense, will grind down the populists around Trump. David Brooks has enjoyed a good career in the MSM. Born in 1961, he's nominally a conservative, having worked variously at National Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and, since 2003, as a opinion columnist for The New York Times. And along the way, he has expressed some interesting ideas for example, in 2006, he opined that Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman should form their own third party, based mostly on their shared neoconservatism and globalism. Needless to say, nothing ever came of Brooks' suggestion. Over his career, Brook has been notable for three things: first, a book published in 2000 that celebrated the luxe lifestyle second, a fervent advocacy of the 2003 Iraq War and third, his journalstic love affair with Barack Obama. In other words, he's the perfect sort of housebroken \"conservative\" for Washington, DC, just the sort of fellow who gets that gig on the PBS NewsHour. Okay, so let's consider Brooks' track record on Donald Trump. We can sum it up with two points: First, he hates Trump and second, he is not a good forecaster. In March of last year, the headline of his column was \"No, Not Trump, Not Ever. \" In that piece he harumphed, \"Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. \" Then Brooks really got going: Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy. And since Trump was so terrible in Brooks' mind, it was hard for him to imagine that anyone else could like him. Thus in June 2016, he predicted that in the November election to come, Hillary Clinton would beat Trump. As he put it, \"People will be sick of Donald Trump, and they will go for her. \" To cap it off, in a column published on November 4, four days before the 2016 general election, Brooks doubled down on his endorsement of Clinton, describing her as \"the bigger change agent. \" Then he went on to describe Trump as \"solipsistic, impatient, combative, unsubtle and ignorant,\" all the while insisting that Clinton was \"better suited to getting things done. \" Amusingly, among the things Clinton would get done, Brooks told his readers, was developing a plan to \"secure the border. \" Perfectly expressing the Times' view of the world, Brooks added, \"Any sensible person can distinguish between an effective operating officer [Clinton] and a whirling disaster who is only about himself [Trump]. \" Okay, so Brooks, along with 99. 9 percent of the rest of the Times, liked Clinton and didn't like Trump. We get that. Yet further details of that column are revealing \u2014 revealing, that is, about Brooks. Here's how the piece starts: A few weeks ago I met a guy in Idaho who was absolutely certain that Donald Trump would win this election. He was wearing tattered, soiled overalls, missing a bunch of teeth and was unnaturally skinny. He was probably about 50, but his haggard face looked 70. He was getting by aimlessly as a handyman. We might linger over some of those snobby word choices: \"tattered, soiled overalls . . . missing a bunch of teeth. \" Virgil might pause to ask: Since the 1972 movie Deliverance, has has there ever been a more profoundly perfect stereotype of how a posh Easterner looks down his nose at the rubes in the rest of the country? In the piece, Brooks, himself blissfully confident that Hillary was going to prevail, then goes on recount how he tried patiently to explain to the man that he was wrong in his thinking. And yet, Brooks writes with a sigh, \"It was like telling him a sea gull could play billiards. \" One might think that the actual election results, four days later, would have humbled Brooks a bit, but they haven't \u2014 not at all. Since the election, he's been as strongly as ever. And, amazingly, he's still in the game of making predictions for Times readers, \"The guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. \" As for Steve Bannon, he has views that can only be described as Trumpian, and he has held them for a long time. So of course the globalists hate him, too. Since Bannon only rarely gives interviews, some might be curious to know more about his thinking \u2014 that is, looking beyond the nasty canards hurled at him by the likes of Mother Jones, Behar, and Dean. In fact, Bannon has been articulating his vision for a long time since 2004, he has produced no fewer than 16 documentaries. Yet a more direct and personal window into Bannon's thinking can be found in his 2014 speech to the Vatican that's the one that Brooks ripped in his January 10 column. So, without Brooks' \"help,\" let's take a closer look: Bannon begins by saying that he believes, strongly, that there's \"a crisis\" in our time \u2014 that is, \"a crisis of our faith, a crisis of the West, a crisis of capitalism. \" And so he begins with the spiritual question yes, many today are well off, but the question they should be asking themselves is deeper than money: What is the purpose of whatever I'm doing with this wealth? What is the purpose of what I'm doing with the ability that God has given us, that divine providence has given us to actually be a creator of jobs and a creator of wealth? He continues in this vein: It really behooves all of us to really take a hard look and make sure that we are reinvesting that back into positive things. Yes, we should invest in positive things, things of faith and belief, which money can't buy. Thus the \"crisis of faith. \" So now we come to Bannon's \"crisis of the West. \" Here, we need only look to Angela Merkel's Germany it's the richest country in Europe, and yet it is now in deadly danger of demographic dissolution \u2014 and threatens to take the whole continent down with it. Indeed, Bannon's words from 2014, before Merkel foolishly chose to open her borders while subsidizing permanent dependence, now look prescient. He warned then that the threat from jihadi Islam is \"going to come to Europe . . . it's going to come to the United Kingdom. \" Moreover, in his talk he took note of a tweet that very day from ISIS, promising to turn the United States into a \"river of blood. \" Yes, a crisis of the West, indeed. Hawkins summarized Bannon's Vatican speech, in which Bannon argued that in recent decades, capitalism seems to have come mostly in two forms, both at least somewhat pernicious: First, there's the \"crony capitalism\" that we saw in the scandalous 2008 bailouts and second, there's the \"Ayn Rand influenced . . . libertarian capitalism, which he sees as commoditizing people into mere producers and products. \" This latter kind, Hawkins continued, weakens \"our collective moral strength. \" The answer, Hawkins concluded, is \"enlightened capitalism\" \u2014 that is, the capitalism in which capitalists think about the fate of their country, not just their bank account. As Hawkins put it: It was this enlightened capitalism that gave the \u2014 through wide asset ownership \u2014 strong middle class and an aspirant and affluent working class which provided the moral and economic foundations for the West to defeat Nazism in 1945 and support Ronald Reagan in to and defeating the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And now this has been corrupted and in turn weakened the West itself and Bannon believes the West now faces losing everything it has gained across more than 2000 years. [emphasis added] Hawkins ended his essay with these hopeful words: With Bannon, Trump and \"Trumpism\" the US and the West has an opportunity for economic, moral and political renewal \u2014 a new enlightenment. Okay, so Hawkins ably describes the problem, and outlines the ultimate desired outcome. And yet we might ask: How, exactly, does America get there? How do we get from the crisis of 2017 to a better place \u2014 as soon as possible? For the answer, we might return to Bannon's 2014 talk, in which he called for aggressively building \"a populist movement,\" the heart of which should be: . . . the middle class, the working men and women in the world who are just tired of being dictated to by what we call the party of Davos. Interestingly, that seems to have happened in the last three years! We can also pause to note that \"Davos,\" of course, is shorthand for the World Economic Forum, a conclave of billionaire globalists and their courtiers, meeting every year in Davos, Switzerland. And so Bannon's reference to \"the party of Davos\" speaks to the reality that global high finance seems to have conquered most of the politics, and most of the parties, of most of the world \u2014 and as a result, the America middle class, now sinking in the globalist broth, has been made worse off. It might be worth noting that the next Davos meeting is just a few days away, on January 17 to 20. And since this is the first session since the November election, there's going to be some \u2014 and a lot more attempted . And yet Davos Men, and Davos Women will not be giving up so easily. For instance, one of the scheduled \"chats\" at Davos will be between Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook and Meg Whitman of HP together they will offer their audience their thoughts on shaping \"a positive narrative for the global community. \" That is, a \"global community\" that's safely profitable for Facebook and HP, wherever in the world they might choose to operate. Will these efforts at spinning globalism succeed? Will the globalists be permitted to keep inflating their financial bubbles \u2014 and keep getting bailed out when they pop? The Davosians surely hope so, but it's possible, after Trump (and before Trump, Brexit) that the jig is up. But wait! There's still hope for the globalists. The new American president might not think much of Davos, but the president of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, thinks differently. Indeed, he is scheduled to speak at Davos in a few days it will the appearance by a Chinese head of state. We can assume, of course, that Xi, picking up the torch from, say, Barack Obama, will offer a defense of globalism after all, globalism has been very, very good for his country. 4. Trump's Moment, In the meantime, the eyes of the world are on the 45th president. As noted in Part One, Trump's energetic economic activism is already making itself felt: And the good news has continues to pour forth: Just on January 12, Amazon announced that it would commit to creating 100, 000 new jobs in the US. Moreover, on January 13, Lockheed, which had earlier been chastised by Trump for announced that it would pledge not only lower costs for its fighter, but also an additional 1800 jobs in Texas. As Virgil also noted earlier, it's astonishing that past presidents didn't engage in this sort of economic patriotism perhaps they didn't know how, or perhaps they didn't care. In any case, Trump does know how, and he does care. And the American people are noticing. According to a January 10 Quinnipiac Poll, 47 percent of Americans believe that Trump's economic policies will help the economy, while only 31 percent say they will hurt. In other words, Trump has already built for himself a advantage on that question. And his presidency has not yet even begun. To be sure, in the next few years, Trump, and his team, will be tested again and again. And while it's impossible to predict the future, it would be foolish to bet against them.","label":0}
{"text":"The Supreme Court is trying hard to reach common ground in the wake of the vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. But some justices are trying harder than others. A burst of 11 decisions issued in just over a week in late May provided one telling snapshot of a court divided over the value of consensus. A series of public remarks last week from three justices delivered another. The court seems to have split into two camps, with the four justices at its ideological center working diligently to deliver unified opinions. The remaining members of the court seem less committed to that project. The recent run of rulings, accounting for more than a quarter of all decisions in argued cases so far this term, tells the story. The court's most conservative members \u2014 Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. \u2014 wrote eight concurrences or dissents. Its two most liberal members \u2014 Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor \u2014 wrote four. The remaining justices make up the new center of the court. Three of them \u2014 Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Elena Kagan \u2014 voted together in every case, and Justice Stephen G. Breyer cast a single dissenting vote. None wrote a concurrence or dissent. Two members of that core group offered public reflections last week on the court's current state, declaring themselves satisfied. \"I try to achieve as much consensus as I can,\" Chief Justice Roberts said at a judicial conference in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. \"We kind of have to have a commitment as a group. I think we spend a fair amount of time \u2014 maybe a little more than others in the past \u2014 talking about things, talking them out. It sometimes brings you a bit closer together. \" The resulting decisions can be narrow or nonexistent, as when the court unanimously returned a major case on access to contraception to the lower courts. That effectively deferred a Supreme Court ruling on the matter for at least a year and probably much longer. The chief justice acknowledged, \"It's been subject to some criticism that you can put things off. \" \"Some people think that's bad,\" he said. \"I think it has something to do with judicial philosophy. I think we should be as restrained in when we decide the issues when it's necessary to do so. I think that's part of how I look at the job. \" The contraception opinion was unsigned, but some sophisticated observers suspect that Justice Breyer played a major role in setting it in motion. He did not address the case directly in remarks at an awards ceremony last week, but he took issue with the idea that the Supreme Court is diminished when it fails to rule in significant cases. \"If you believe the Supreme Court should decide all the major issues for the country, you'd like them all decided,\" he said. \"I happen not to believe that. \" Justice Ginsburg, the leader of the court's liberal wing, sounded less content with the current state of affairs on Thursday at a judicial conference in Saratoga Springs, N. Y. \"Eight, as you know, is not a good number for a multimember court,\" she said. In his own remarks, Justice Breyer said an court was capable of deciding most cases, supporting the point with statistics from recent terms. \"We're unanimous 50 percent of the time,\" he said. \"Twenty percent of the time we're and half of those are kind of random, not what the press would call the usual suspects. \" That was just about correct, though the fraction of decisions that split along the usual ideological lines in recent terms was more like . But Justice Breyer's larger point was true: There is no reason to think the court is likely to deadlock all that often. The number of closely divided decisions was never large, and Justice Scalia was not the decisive vote in all of them. In the term that ended last June, he was in the majority in six of 19 decisions decided by a vote. The recent run of 11 decisions followed the general pattern. None were deadlocks. Five were authentically unanimous, while a sixth was unanimous about the bottom line but divided over the rationale. One split 5 to 3, another 6 to 2. The three remaining decisions were 7 to 1, with Justice Thomas in dissent every time. One case concerned prosecutors' exclusion of all black potential jurors from the trial of a black defendant facing the death penalty. Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, said a prosecutor's explanation for striking a black potential juror was \"nonsense. \" But it was good enough for Justice Thomas, the member of the court least interested in consensus. That same day, the four more quarrelsome justices issued dueling concurrences in a series of cases about offenders sentenced to die in prison. The court itself had done nothing more than return the cases to lower courts for reconsideration in light of a January decision that had seemed to give the prisoners a fresh shot at eventual release. Justices Thomas and Alito, in separate concurrences, said there were still reasons to sustain the sentences. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ginsburg, said lower courts should grant relief in all but the rarest cases. John P. Elwood, a lawyer with Vinson Elkins, wrote on Scotusblog that he was struck by the level of discord. \"That's a lot of disagreement,\" he wrote, \"for people who agree on the disposition of a case. \"","label":0}
{"text":"People travelling to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro should avoid visiting impoverished and overcrowded urban areas to prevent catching the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has been linked to birth defects, the World Health Organization said on Thursday. Athletes and visitors should also consult a health worker before travelling, use insect repellent and clothing on as much of their body as possible, and practice safe sex or abstain during their stay and for at least four weeks after their return, it said. They should also choose air-conditioned accommodation. Pregnant women should avoid travelling to areas with Zika transmission, including Rio de Janeiro, the WHO said.","label":0}
{"text":"A U.S. Senate committee advanced legislation Tuesday that would ease financial rules for banks for the first time since the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The Banking Committee advanced the legislative package by a vote of 16 to 7, where it now heads to the full Senate for consideration. The bill would ease regulatory requirements for banks with under $250 billion in assets, among other changes to rules imposed by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. The bill is supported by nearly every Republican in the Senate and at least 12 Democrats, making its passage extremely likely. The high likelihood the changes may become law has led to intense lobbying by industry groups eager to see legal changes included in the measure that they view as beneficial. Over 100 amendments were proposed to the bill, primarily by Democrats looking to trim favorable provisions for banks and boosting consumer protections. But the four moderate Democrats on the committee joined with the panel's 12 Republicans to oppose any changes to the compromise package, which was first announced in November. While the bill seems likely to pass the Senate, its path forward remains unclear. Lawmakers are facing a busy December schedule, including efforts to finalize a tax cut package and the need to pass a funding bill to avert a government shutdown. \"Financial regulation should promote safety and soundness while enabling a vibrant and growing economy,\" said committee Chairman Mike Crapo. \"The bill we are marking up today is the product of a thorough, robust process, and honest, bipartisan negotiations.\" Proponents argue the bill would help spur the economy by encouraging lending. But critics argue it increases the risk of future crises while aiding banks that already enjoy record profits. \"This bill is about helping the banks, including the largest of the largest,\" said Senator Sherrod Brown. The legislation makes a number of changes to heightened financial rules enacted as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law, with the relief aimed primarily at smaller banks and credit unions. However, there are a handful of provisions beneficial to larger banks, most notably exempting some larger banks from heightened regulatory scrutiny as \"systemically important\" financial institutions. The bill raises the threshold by which banks face those stricter rules from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion. Banks with assets between $50 billion and $100 billion would be exempt once the bill is enacted, while those with assets between $100 billion and $250 billion would be exempted 18 months later. The Federal Reserve would have flexibility to release banks from stricter rules sooner, or reinstate them for scrutiny under certain conditions as part of the legislation. The bill also exempts banks with less than $10 billion in assets from several regulatory requirements, including the \"Volcker Rule\" ban on proprietary trading.","label":0}
{"text":"Dogged by combustible smartphones and recalls of other devices, Samsung Electronics is hoping to find a path to product redemption. The South Korean company on Wednesday introduced the Galaxy S8, its first major smartphone release since the scandal over its Galaxy Note 7 smartphones, which were discontinued last year after some of the devices spontaneously caught fire. \"It's been a challenging year for Samsung,\" said D. J. Koh, the company's head of mobile devices, adding that Samsung was ready to start anew. The Galaxy S8 features a large 5. screen without adding bulk to the device. The company said it made room for the screen by reducing the size of the bezel \u2014 or the forehead and the chin \u2014 on the face of the device. Samsung also made the home button into a virtual button and shoved it under the display. With the Galaxy S8, Samsung also rolled out its virtual assistant, Bixby, to rival Apple's Siri, Google's Assistant and Amazon's Alexa. Similar to previous virtual assistants, Bixby responds to voice commands. Time \u2014 and sales \u2014 will tell whether the Galaxy S8 will restore confidence in Samsung's smartphones. Last year, after the company received dozens of complaints about the Galaxy Note 7 overheating, and in some cases exploding, the company recalled the phones. But replacement phones continued to catch fire, and the company had to recall the devices a second time before killing the product altogether, sacrificing billions of dollars in revenue. The Galaxy Note 7 may still make a reappearance. On Monday, Samsung said that it might sell refurbished versions of the phone. Jan Dawson, an independent analyst for Jackdaw Research, said the Galaxy S8 could help Samsung recover as long as the product worked reliably. \"Note 7 definitely did some damage to the Samsung brand, especially for people who had little or no personal experience with Samsung devices,\" he said. \"But as long as the S8 does well and doesn't suffer from any of the same problems, the memories of the Note 7 issues will fade and Samsung will recover well.\" Samsung last year also issued a separate recall for 2. 8 million washing machines in the United States. The machines were prone to detaching from the washing machine chassis, posing a risk of injury. The Galaxy S8 will arrive in stores next month with a starting price of $750.","label":0}
{"text":"President Barack Obama chastised supporters at a rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in North Carolina on Friday, as tensions spiked when a supporter of Republican opponent Donald Trump began protesting. But that didn't stop Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, campaigning a few states away at the time, from telling a completely opposite version of what happened, condemning Obama for screaming at the protester. The incident happened in clear view of reporters covering the rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where a predominantly African American crowd was jammed into a gym at a state university to hear Obama stump for Clinton. Obama had just said Trump was unfit to lead the country when he was interrupted by a white-haired white man in a beret and suit jacket with what appeared to be military patches, who stood up in the stairwell of the bleachers, waving a Trump campaign sign. The crowd turned its attention to the protester, screaming and booing at the man. Obama repeatedly told the irate crowd to \"focus\" and to \"settle down.\" \"Everybody sit down and be quiet for a second!\" Obama said. \"You've got an older gentleman who is supporting his candidate,\" he said as the protester was led away. \"We live in a country that respects free speech,\" he said. \"It looks like he might have served in our military \u2013 we've got to respect that.\" In Trump's version, Obama scolded the protester, not the crowd. \"He was talking to the protester, screaming at him, really screaming at him,\" Trump said. \"By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester they would say, 'He became unhinged,'\" Trump said.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday left open the possibility of meeting with Taiwan's president if she visits the United States after he is sworn in on Jan. 20 and also expressed continued skepticism over whether Russia was responsible for computer hacks of Democratic Party officials. In remarks to reporters upon entering a New Year's Eve celebration at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump said, \"We'll see,\" when pressed on whether he would meet Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's president if she were to be in the United States at any point after he becomes president. Taiwan's president will be in transit in Houston on Jan. 7 and again will be in transit in San Francisco on Jan. 13. Trump, citing protocol, said he would not meet with any foreign leaders while President Barack Obama is still in office. Beijing bristled when Trump, shortly after his Nov. 8 victory, accepted a congratulatory telephone call from the Taiwan leader and has warned against steps that would upset the \"one-China\" policy China and the United States have maintained for decades. Talk of a stop-over in the United States by the Taiwan president has further rattled Washington-Beijing relations. On another foreign policy matter, Trump warned against being quick to pin the blame on Russia for the hacking of U.S. emails. The Washington Post also reported on Friday that Moscow could be behind intrusion into a laptop owned by a Vermont electric utility. U.S. intelligence officials have said that they are confident Russia was behind the hacks of political figures, which could have played a role in Trump's defeat over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. \"I think it's unfair if we don't know. It could be somebody else. I also know things that other people don't know so we cannot be sure,\" Trump said. Asked what that information included, the Republican President-elect said, \"You will find out on Tuesday or Wednesday.\" He did not elaborate. But he said that any computer is subject to hacks. \"It's very important. If you have something really important write it out and have it delivered by courier the old fashioned way,\" Trump said, adding, \"No computer is safe, I don't care what they say.\" Trump tried to end the year on a positive note, however, despite questions about the future of U.S.-Russia relations because of escalating tensions between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Trump's promise to crack down on China's trade practices, which he says unfairly target American workers. \"Hopefully we're going to have great relationships with many countries and that includes Russia and that includes China,\" Trump said. But he criticized U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for earlier this week offering a stark assessment of Israel's policies in the Middle East, which he said could threaten the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state co-existing with Israel. Trump called Kerry's speech \"very unfair.\" As he wrapped up a four-minute informal chat with reporters, Trump also was asked what his 2017 new year's resolution was. \"Make America great again,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Can Israelis And Palestinians Change Their Minds? What makes people change their minds? About the really hard stuff. Covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the past three years, I've often wondered if people here ever do. This conflict is frequently described as \"intractable,\" with neither side willing to give up their historical perspective or their entrenched positions to end it. And it does not take many interviews to hear repetitions of the same sweeping narrative repeated on each side. Palestinians from different places cite the same historical events to back their views. Israelis who have never met each other use similar turns of phrase. \"People have a lot of [psychological] resources invested in what they believe about the conflict,\" says Thomas Zeitzoff, a political scientist at American University in Washington, D.C., who has researched Israeli and Palestinian attitudes. He says the high political stakes and emotional involvement make it hard for Israelis and Palestinians to change their minds. But there have been certain shifts \u2013 in public opinion and in individual beliefs - during the 68 years of Israel's existence and almost half-century of the Israeli military control over Palestinian territories. Why? Experts list a range of influences that \u2013 to varying degrees \u2013 can move or even flip deeply held views. \"You can point to major events, either in the world or people's lives, changes in their social context, as well as changes in the kind of messages they get from politicians and other elite sources,\" says Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor at Dartmouth College who researches politics and misperceptions. Other factors include repeated exposure to a new idea, whatever the source, scientific research, and direct personal experience. Four people \u2013 two Israeli and two Palestinian \u2013 told me their stories of personal, radical belief change related to the conflict. They not only changed their minds, but, a higher hurdle, their behavior. Here are some triggers that led these people to see the world differently than they had before, even in the midst of a larger impasse. Many groups supporting co-existence advocate for exposure to the other side. Knowledge develops empathy, they say, which can broaden an individual's perspective as well as pique curiosity. Maayan Poleg is a Middle East program director for the group Seeds of Peace, which brings Palestinian and Israeli teens together for summer camp in Maine. She says the group does not advocate a particular political position and is not directly aiming to change minds. But time together, deliberately discussing the conflict, humanizes the enemy, she says, and helps participants question their assumptions, as well as navigate the onslaught of opinions from politicians, family and media to clarify their individual beliefs. \"They become open to accepting the fact that what they know as truth is a narrative. That's a huge step,\" Poleg said. \"People spend a lot of time defending a specific fact. And it takes them a long time to understand that their fact is actually a narrative. It doesn't mean that it's wrong. It just means that there's another way to view it.\" Palestinians and Israelis used to interact with some regularity, often in the workplace or the marketplace. But over the past 15 years, they have been increasingly separated physically. They now spend very little time together. But one Palestinian who went from throwing stones at Israeli soldiers to teaching non-violence says he began to change his mind about violence while in an Israeli prison. While behind bars, he learned Hebrew, saw his first movie about the Holocaust, and got to know Israeli prison guards. \"It's a process,\" says Bassam Aramin, who became one of the co-founders of Combatants for Peace, a group of former Israeli soldiers and Palestinian ex-militants. \"You never wake up in the morning and say, 'Oh my God, we are wrong. The Israelis are right. I give up fighting.'\" He remembers the first time he and other ex-combatants \u2013 Israeli and Palestinian - sat down together. He was scared. \"We don't trust them. I think they're from the Israeli intelligence. Maybe they are coming to arrest us,\" Aramin recalls. He saw fear in the eyes of the Israeli men who sat down with him. \"It's the first time they're coming to meet a Palestinian terrorist. And they have this fear of maybe one of us will kidnap them and kill them.\" Trust did build trust over time and many conversations. They built an organization that teaches empathy and understanding. But empathy is also vulnerable to a change of heart. Many Israelis and Palestinians reached out to each other eagerly after leaders signed their first-ever peace plan back in 1993. People were hopeful, and more open than ever to the idea they could live together peacefully, says Palestinian sociologist Nader Said. \"It was highly euphoric and highly exciting times,\" he remembers. But that peace deal, the Oslo Accords, did not deliver on its promise. Violence returned with a vengeance when the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, broke out in September 2000. Said, who has polled Palestinians since the mid-1990s, says by then Palestinian support for co-existence had already begun to fall, as people grew disillusioned by the gap between expectations and reality. \"While they felt [Israeli] settlement activity would decline, settlement activity has increased,\" he says. \"They felt maybe they'll have more access to Jerusalem, they have less access now.\" Palestinian Abla Masrujeh is part of this societal shift. Now 54, she invested her time, money and reputation in joint projects with Israelis in the 1990s. She organized Israeli visits to her hometown of Nablus, in the West Bank, where they shared meals and visited Palestinian homes. She helped present a Tel Aviv exhibition of handcrafts done by women from both sides. But when violence broke out once again, she felt her new Israeli friends did not understand her experiences as Israeli soldiers swept through the West Bank, or her point of view. \"All this made me rethink my position and my opinion of Israelis,\" Masrujeh says. Israelis went through the same reversal of hope, says pollster Tamar Hermann. \"The repeated failures in achieving something tangible, and then the huge waves of terror, this made people think maybe it's not workable,\" she says. \"People started to doubt whether the cognitive change which opened the door for the two-state solution was justifiable.\" Many Israelis cite repeated suicide bombings, in cafes and on buses during the second intifada, from 2000 to 2005, as the beginning of a national shift in attitudes toward Palestinians. American social psychologist Jay Van Bavel says accumulated experience often leads to change. \"Like a rat pressing a lever. If it gets a pellet, it will press the lever again. People are the same way,\" he says. Over a decade, Israeli Tamar Asraf's mind and lifestyle turned 180 degrees around. She describes the process not as repetitive feedback, but as digging deeper. Once secular and opposed to Israel's West Bank settlements as an obstacle to peace, Asraf is now religious and a spokesperson for Eli, a growing settlement in the central West Bank. \"It works like this. You get more connected to yourself, you get more connected to your private roots, then you get more connected to your national roots,\" Asraf says of her journey. Exposed to religious Jews during her army service, Asraf began to feel her secular upbringing left huge gaps. When she began to study Judaism, her sense of connection to biblical places in the West Bank grew, trumping Palestinian claims to the same land. Israel's political power base has shifted to the right over the past two decades, says Avi Dgani, an Israeli expert in mapping social and political dynamics. But even though identity politics, magnified by frequent violence and international attention, play a large role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Dgani says big personal swings such as the one Asraf experienced aren't all that common. That's because many people don't deeply question their personal beliefs, or, subsequently, their politics, Dgani says. He cites last year's re-election of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an example. A third of Netanyahu backers chose him simply because \"me and my father and my forefather, we always voted right,\" Dgani says. Once people change their minds, one of the most powerful ways to maintain that new belief is to find new friends who share it. Asraf moved to a settlement because the people there followed the same religious practices she had recently adopted. Once there, she started voting for right-wing leaders, as do most of her neighbors. Another Israeli, Noam Chayut, shifted to the left politically. He says small jolts shook his beliefs briefly along the way, but real change took off when he found like-minded people. Chayut wrote a book, The Girl Who Stole My Holocaust, about his change from Zionist soldier to co-founder of Breaking the Silence, an organization of former soldiers who share anonymous stories critical of Israel's military occupation of the West Bank. Time and a great deal of reflection were key to Chayut's realization that his core beliefs had changed. \"Soldiers get orders, they obey,\" he says. \"You just do things. But reflecting on it, I did things that were close to my moral boundary.\" People can be pushed to change their minds when they sense a clash between their beliefs and actions has become too strong. But change is hard because people protect themselves against internal dissonance, especially in situations as emotionally and politically laden as this conflict, says Thomas Zeitzoff, the American political scientist who has studied how narratives can change here. \"We think people engage in what psychologists would call 'motivated cognition,'\" says Zeitzoff. \"To avoid things that may threaten our own view of selves or others, maybe motivated in a benign way to remember certain facts more than others, and selectively ignore things that contradict beliefs.\" And that's just one of the reasons it's so hard to change.","label":0}
{"text":"Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the 13th National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC, Tuesday about President Trump's commitment to the faith community. Pence reiterated the administration's goal to advance Catholic causes, such as religious freedom and protecting the unborn. [\"I had the honor to stand by President Trump as he signed an executive order to restore religious liberty in the public square,\" Vice President Pence said to a standing ovation. \"This administration hears you. This administration stands with you,\" he continued. \"Remember to bow the head and bend the knee to pray in these challenging times. Not so much pray for a cause but as for our country. \" Pence's remarks were well received by those attending and speaking. \"I was very encouraged to hear the vice president, to express his faith overtly and to exhort us here to pray for our country,\" former Ambassador to the Vatican R. James Nicholson told Breitbart News. \"Nobody knows President Trump better than Vice President Pence, and when he affirms the president's commitment to the sanctity of life, it's very encouraging. \" \"The vice president is sending the right message in the right moment. Unity is important, and it is promoted by faith. Embracing God, we will be one nation,\" said Mario E. Dorsonville, the auxiliary bishop of Washington and the event's invocation speaker. One attendee, Kevin Francis, voiced the overall attitude of the gathering, emphasizing that \"it's very encouraging that [Pence is] supportive of the sanctity of life and religious freedom, which is fundamental to not just being an American but being a person as well. In fact, I think that religious freedom is one's most fundamental right. With that in mind, it's also important that [Pence] expressed solidarity with all persecuted religious minorities everywhere, including imperiled Christians in Iraq and Syria. \"","label":0}
{"text":"(AFP) \u2014 Some 300 migrants stormed the border between Morocco and Spain at Ceuta on Monday, authorities said, days after hundreds more forced their way over the frontier. [The young migrants climbed over the high border fence into the Spanish North African territory, ecstatic to have finally crossed into a European Union state. Their arrival comes just days after nearly 500 migrants made it over the fence on Friday, one of the biggest entries since the border barrier was reinforced in 2005. Ceuta and Melilla, also a Spanish territory in North Africa, have the EU's only land borders with Africa, so are entry points for migrants who either climb the border fence, swim along the coast or hide in vehicles. The enclave has been ringed by a double wire fence eight kilometres (five miles) long. The high fence also has rolls of barbed wire.","label":0}
{"text":"How can it possibly be legal for these terrorists to lock arms and block innocent shoppers from entering these stores? The Miracle Mile, located in the city of Chicago draws tens of thousands of shoppers every year at Christmas time. Imagine the faces of families of every ethnicity when they find out the City of Chicago is allowing these terrorists to prevent them from entering these stores? Roughly 3,000 demonstrators have shut down a large portion of Michigan Avenue in Chicago the Magnificent Mile in the middle of Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year, to protest the shooting of black teenager Laquon McDonald.The 17-year-old was killed in October 2014, and was apparently armed with a knife at the time. Video of the shooting released on Tuesday, however, shows that he was walking away from police at the time he was shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke.Turnout was strong despite 39-degree weather and rainy conditions. Demonstrators shouted 16 shots! and No justice, no shopping! The march started at Michigan and Wacker Drive and began walking north. They include demonstrators from the Nation of Islam, which is marching under the banner of Justice of Else ; RevCom, the Revolutionary Communist Party, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson s Rainbow PUSH coalition.100 Percent FED UP: Here, the terror groups can be seen (without any visible resistance from the police) chanting about shutting down the Apple Store, located on the Miracle Mile:Apple Store on Michigan just locked its doors. #LaquanMcDonald #BlackFriday @TouchVisionTV pic.twitter.com\/y97WaHTQVT Lauren Mialki (@laurenmialki) November 27, 2015Shutting down Tiffany's over #LaquanMcDonald \"No diamonds today\" pic.twitter.com\/ygHQdLKaUL Kathryn Pensack (@katpen6) November 27, 2015The #LaquanMcDonald protest is on the move, heading north on Michigan Avenue https:\/\/t.co\/2E4mcauYv0 Whitney Dawn Carlson (@whitneydawn) November 27, 2015And of course, what would a #BlackLivesMatter protest be without pro-communism supporters?Old, White Communists Lead Anti-Cop Protests In Chicago Over McDonald Death: https:\/\/t.co\/gVpflUqm6M #LaquanMcDonald pic.twitter.com\/29PKqhcQ0A The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 27, 2015Yesterday, we shared a story about BLM terrorists attempting to rip down the iconic Christmas tree on Miracle Mile. Click HERE for the full story.The latter group is marching slowly, while the other groups have pushed ahead, effectively taking up five city blocks along Michigan Ave., with hundreds of Chicago Police Department officers lining the streets.Various groups begin marching down Michigan Ave in protest of Mayor @RahmEmanuel s handling of #LaquanMcDonald vid.Various groups begin marching down Michigan Ave in protest of Mayor @RahmEmanuel's handling of #LaquanMcDonald vid. pic.twitter.com\/FF0XbYMOZ0 The Chicago Reporter (@ChicagoReporter) November 27, 2015 The Chicago Reporter (@ChicagoReporter) November 27, 2015Protesters are attempting to gain access to major department stores and shopping malls. Police turned them away at the entrance to Water Tower Place, but they continue to try to enter other shopping areas with the intention of blocking commerce from taking place. As of noon, the protesters were walking toward the John Hancock tower.Update 1:00 p.m.: Several stores have been blocked and effectively shut down, including Macy s, H&M, and others over six blocks. Shoppers are either stuck inside the stores or cannot enter. Some shuffle by, as protesters shout at them. Michigan Avenue itself, normally filled with traffic, is empty.)Photo- Lee Stranahan, Breitbart NewsIn conversations with demonstrators, Breitbart News has learned that the groups plan to target the Chicago Board of Trade, one of the world s most important commodities exchanges, in future demonstrations. The aim is to do as much economic damage as possible while drawing attention to perceived racism and abuse by the Chicago Police Department. The police have struggled to manage the city s rise in crime in recent years, and now labor under new suspicions of prejudice and political corruption.","label":1}
{"text":"How does the old saying go? The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Which is exactly the strategy the Clinton campaign is utilizing to move forward against Donald Trump.Hillary Clinton just released a new ad throughout all her social media channels to deliver the message that not only do she and her fellow Democrats want to defeat Trump and believe he is bad news, but so does a majority of the Republican Party.As Trump likes to claim that he is a unifier, the opposite actually seems to be true. His divisive rhetoric is toxic, and any Republican who values their career, and any conservative voter who values human decency, would be wise to distance themselves as far away as possible from the real estate mogul\/reality television star.The ones who have backed Trump have likely done so as a gamble that Trump will win and they can ride his coattails into his administration. What they don t seem to realize is, they re going to go down in history as backing the guy who called Mexican s rapists, told Muslims they shouldn t be allowed to enter the country, and calls women every name in the book.Trump cannot be allowed to step foot into the Oval Office, and many Republicans agree, as pointed out in this brilliant video put out by the Clinton campaign. If we re going to unify, we need to do so as a nation to prevent Trump from winning. For the good of all humanity.Here s the video:\"President Trump\" is a dangerous proposition.Mitt Romney, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio agree.https:\/\/t.co\/fUkISvgaXC Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) May 4, 2016Featured Photo by Joe Raedle\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital will hasten the country s destruction, Iran s defense minister said on Monday, while a top Revolutionary Guards commander phoned two Palestinian armed groups and pledged support for them. Leaders of Iran, where opposition to Israel and support for the Palestinian cause has been central to foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution, have denounced last week s announcement by the U.S. president, including a plan to move the U.S. embassy to the city. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. (Trump s) step will hasten the destruction of the Zionist regime and will double the unity of Muslims, Iran s defense minister, Brigadier General Amir Hatami, said on Monday, according to state media. The army s chief of staff, General Mohammad Baqeri, said Trump s foolish move could be seen as the beginning of a new intifada, or Palestinian uprising. Iran has long supported a number of anti-Israeli militant groups, including the military wing of Lebanon-based Hezbollah, which the deputy commander of Iran s elite Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Hossein Salami, said was stronger than the Zionist regime. Similarly, Qassem Soleimani, the head of the branch of the Guards that oversees operations outside of Iran s borders pledged the Islamic Republic s complete support for Palestinian Islamic resistance movements after phone calls with commanders from Islamic Jihad and the Izz al-Deen Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, on Monday according to Sepah News, the news site of the Guards. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday stepped up efforts to rally Middle Eastern countries against U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel s capital, which EU foreign ministers meanwhile declined to support.","label":0}
{"text":"A tale of a mother and the dangerous religion of progressivism Putting her radical liberal ideology before the safety and well-being of her own children A Swedish mother decided it would be a good idea to open up her home to a male refugee from Eritrea, and so she kicked her daughter out of her room to make space. That refugee then decided to sexually assault her 10-year-old daughter.In the summer of 2015, a mother of three children in Sweden brought two third world asylum seekers into her home. To make space, she decided to move her daughter Emma into her own room.On the eve of Aug. 18, 2015, Emma awoke to find Isaac squeezing her chest. She suffered breast pain after the incident and didn t want to tell anyone, as she was afraid her mother would get in trouble. Emma couldn t even look at Isaac because he looked scary to her. The story came out after Emma finally told a friend of hers, and eventually after several people became aware of the situation, Isaac was confronted.He protested he would never sexually assault Emma, since he has a girlfriend back in Eritrea. But after further questioning, he finally admitted to groping Emma s breasts. When the police questioned him, Isaac changed his testimony and denied he had ever touched her.Isaac meanwhile maintains he s only 15, since he started school in Eritrea when he was 10 and then went to school for an additional seven years. He finished school two years ago, which according to him, makes him only 15.The Lund District Court finds this sort of calculation bizarre, but the judge has decided to move forward with the case under the assumption that he is, in fact, just 15. The judge sentenced Isaac on Friday based on the charge of juvenile sexual assault, which means he ll be sent to counseling.In the counseling process, he ll apparently learn to control his impulses and process through past experiences in his life that may have caused him to act out the way he did.Meanwhile, Emma s brother says he s never seen his sister so distraught. She cries often, even though according to her brother, she s very strong.Yet, despite what Isaac did, he ll be able to stay in Sweden.","label":1}
{"text":"Army says 2-star general committed suicide 10\/31\/2016  MSN  The Army said Friday it has determined that suicide was the cause of death of a two-star general who was found dead in his home on a military base in Alabama.  Maj. Gen. John Rossi was found dead July 31 at Redstone Arsenal, two days before he was to assume command of Army Space and Missile Defense Command.  He is the first Army general to commit suicide on active duty since record-keeping began in 2000, according to the Army. Military suicides soared earlier this decade and remain a major source of concern; they typically have affected lower-ranking military members.  Rossi, a West Point academy graduate and an air defense artillery officer by training, had just moved onto Redstone Arsenal and was scheduled to be promoted to lieutenant general when he took command of Space and Missile Defense Command.  A written statement by the Army on Friday made no mention of what might have prompted Rossi to take his own life.  The Rossi family issued a statement through the Army expressing thanks for wide support and urging those who may need suicide-prevention help to seek it immediately.  \"To the Army, he was Maj. Gen. Rossi,\" it said. \"To us, he was John \u2014 husband, dad.\"  \"We ask for the time and space to grieve in private, and for the Army to continue to better understand suicide, and to help and treat those in need,\" the family statement added. \"For our family, this has been an incredibly painful time, and we ask that you continue to keep us in your thoughts and prayers. To all the other families out there, to the man or woman who may be facing challenging times, please seek assistance immediately. Compassionate and confidential assistance is available.\"","label":1}
{"text":"Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Monday formally announced Retired General John Kelly, a 45-year military veteran, as his choice to lead the Department Of Homeland Security. Trump's transition team said in a statement that Kelly would \"spearhead the urgent mission of stopping illegal immigration and securing our borders\" as well as streamline the Transportation Security Administration and improve ties between U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says One TV personality Trumps another TV personality.While GOP front runner Donald Trump was on his way to another resounding win, this time at the Nevada Caucus primary, he continued to rewrite the political rule book by making an unscheduled stop at a competitor s rally. It couldn t have happened to a better entertainer (not Donald) https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=aCEtRKGsGQc . Eliza Collins PoliticoDonald Trump crashed the Nevada caucus location at which conservative talk show host Glenn Beck was speaking Tuesday night on behalf of Ted Cruz.MSNBC was broadcasting a live look at the caucus site, Palo Verde High School in Summerlin, when Trump suddenly showed up and made an impromptu speech of his own. We are going to have hopefully a historic night, Trump said. I appreciate everybody being here. I wanted to be here myself and say a few words. The billionaire informed his Twitter followers he would be at various caucus sites throughout Nevada on Tuesday, but didn t specify where.Afterward, MSNBC asked Trump about his allegation that Cruz is a liar. Ted is gonna start telling the truth people have gotten wise to him, Trump said, pointing to Cruz s third-place finish in South Carolina on Saturday as a problem for the Texas senator. When he lifts his hands up high, I think he s going to be very happy. Continue this story at PoliticoREAD MORE 2016 ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files","label":1}
{"text":"A member of the House Republican team trying to win support to pass a bill dismantling Obamacare said on Friday the \"next few votes\" needed would be the toughest to secure. \"The next few votes that we need to get are going to be the toughest,\" Representative Rodney Davis told MSNBC. Asked if Republican leaders might pull the bill if they do not get enough votes for passage, Davis said: \"That's not something that we're discussing right now. We fully intend to have that vote today and we fully intend to make sure that vote passes.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Hillary Clinton s campaign charged up to a hundred thousand dollars for fundraisers in L.A. she may well not attend.It s a big deal the rich and famous were expecting to rub elbows with Hillary at Seth MacFarlane s home. There was also an intimate dinner with Hillary at billionaire Barry Diller s estate. For lunch at the Family Guy creator s pad donations start at $5k $10k gets you co-host status with preferred seating and for a whopping $33,400 you get a photo with HRC. Dinner at the home of Barry and Diane von Furstenberg s a tad steeper $100k per couple. The campaign said Monday Hillary will be back on the campaign trail by the middle or end of the week and it s likely she ll miss the 2 fundraisers due to pneumonia. We re told the donors have already shelled out the money and received Secret Service clearance. There s buzz Bill Clinton could end up showing up You know he doesn t want to miss out on the LA babes","label":1}
{"text":"A very pregnant Kerry Washington appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday, and crushed Donald Trump in a way only a mother could.The Republican nominee is hoping that women will vote for him because he introduced a child care initiative that supposedly gives paid maternity leave to new mothers. The big problem is that Trump doesn t even offer paid maternity leave to his own employees, forcing them to use vacation days and sick days as their unpaid leave. Furthermore, Donald Trump himself is not a fan of pregnancy, once calling it an inconvenience. So when Washington sat down at the table, she was ready to rip Trump a new one. There s been a lot of talk about it being insulting to women, but I actually think it s insulting to families and to workers because there s no paternity leave, there s no family leave! Washington said. For Hillary Clinton, these issues and these policies are not about women s policies. this is about economic policy, because we understand in this country that if families are able to take care of each other, we do better as a nation. I choose that candidate over the guy who brags about having never changed a diaper. He has literally bragged about never having changed a diaper! That s crazy. Indeed, Trump made it clear in 2005 that he has never changed a diaper for any of his five kids and claimed that it s because husbands shouldn t do that sort of thing. There s a lot of women out there that demand that the husband act like the wife, and you know, there s a lot of husbands that listen to that. So you know, they go for it. If I had a different type of wife I probably wouldn t have a baby, ya know, cause that s not my thing. I m really, like, a great father, but certain things you do and certain things you don t. It s just not for me. In fact, Trump would rather not do anything to take care of children except provide money. I mean, I won t do anything to take care of them, he added. I ll supply funds and she ll take care of the kids. Washington wasn t finished with Trump yet, however, going on to explain that voting for him would against our best interests. There s a bigger problem, which is right now, we are in a political climate where we are being led by the media no offense to vote for the loudest candidate and the meanest, bulliest candidate in the playground, and that we are voting based on a cult of personality or a cult of celebrity rather than voting in our own best interest. I think if we really look at policy, voting for Trump is voting against our best interests as Americans as workers, as people of color, as women. Not voting is voting against ourselves. She also explained why she supports Hillary Clinton. I would rather vote for the candidate who is willing to address mistakes, address issues, take responsibility, be accountable, be a part of a changed solution rather than a candidate who continues to perpetuate fear and hate in the present moment. Here s the video via YouTube.Donald Trump can t be trusted do what he says he will do for the country when he can t even be bothered to do those things for the people who work for him.","label":1}
{"text":"The solution to our debt crisis is for \"We the People\" to take our Republic back from the special interests by educating voters to enforce the Constitution, not by adding a Balanced Budget Amendment via an Article V convention.  \"Our country is run by a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media.\" \u2014 Eighty-one percent of Americans agreed with this statement in a 1996 survey.  Back in 1996, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia published the results of their survey of the American public based on 2,000 face-to-face, in-depth interviews. They titled their survey \"The State of Disunion \u2014 1996.\"  Their finding that 81 percent of Americans believe \"Our country is run by a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media\" was recently reaffirmed by a January 2016 Gallup poll that revealed that 84 percent of Americans agree with the statement, \"powerful special interests [have] too much control over what the government does.\" According to the Gallup poll, 51 percent believe that this is a \"major problem,\" while 33 percent believe that this is a \"crisis\" situation.  This widespread belief that \"Our country is run by a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media\" has also been validated by the presidential election campaign of 2016. Rarely have we seen so clearly the political power plays of this \"close network,\" which includes of course the establishment elites of both parties, as during the 2016 election cycle.  You might wonder what all this talk of special interests' control over our government has to do with our debt crisis. The connection is that for the last four decades there has been an organized movement to get Congress to call an Article V convention for the purpose of proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA), ostensibly to avert a national debt crisis, such as national bankruptcy or some other type of \"economic meltdown.\" The proponents of this BBA constitutional convention tell us that the government is out of control, as shown by our steady diet of $500 billion or higher federal deficits and the resulting skyrocketing national debt, currently around $20 trillion. According to these proponents, the solution is to add a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution via an Article V convention.  However, the federal government is not out of control. It is under the control of a \"close network\" of powerful special interests, aka establishment elites, whose carefully nurtured voting blocs benefit from ever-larger, unconstitutional federal programs. The problem is not just the huge annual federal deficits and the towering national debt they contribute to, it is the bloated and tyrannical federal government that has been created and powered by congressional approval of myriad special interest-sponsored unconstitutional programs.  Establishment Elites Plot to Rewrite the Constitution  Throughout its 30-year history, this magazine has led the way in exposing the powerful establishment elites who run this country. These elites are found in such leading special-interest groupings as Big Business, Big Labor, Big News Media, the education establishment, foundations, internationalist foreign policy organizations, big political donors, and the major political parties. An excellent example of this magazine's expos\u00e9s is \"Council on Foreign Relations,\" an article that was originally published in the August 3, 2009 issue. That article described the amazing degree of influence over our government exercised by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the preeminent internationalist foreign policy special-interest group, as follows: Chief among these groups is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the most visible manifestation of what some have called the American establishment. Members of the council have dominated the administrations of every president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the cabinet and sub-cabinet level. It does not matter whether the president is a Democrat or Republican.  Although the CFR has only about 5,000 members, a very large number of them are leaders of other leading special-interest groups, serve as public officials, and hold leading management and editorial positions in the media. This is true to such an extent that the CFR membership alone could be thought of as \"a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media\" that run our country.  An earlier article in this magazine, \" Bicentennial Plot \" (February 10, 1986 issue), exposed the plans of a powerful establishment special-interest group, the Committee on the Constitutional System (CCS), which was leading the charge to \"formalize radical changes that have already been taking place by rewriting the Constitution.\" As you would expect, two out of the three CCS co-chairs were members of the CFR, and 15 of the 41 members of the CCS board of directors were also CFR members.  Since that special-interest establishment's attempt to rewrite the Constitution in the 1980s fizzled out, there hasn't been another such transparent attempt by the establishment to replace the Constitution. However, we shouldn't neglect to point out that since the 1970s the leading organization promoting the calling of an Article V convention for the purpose of proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment has been the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), an establishment special-interest group that boasts of having nearly one-fourth of our nation's state legislators, as well as nearly 300 corporations (including many multinational corporations) and private foundations, as members. ALEC is on record on its website as officially supporting congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), two signature causes of the establishment elites. For more information on this, see our 2014 article \" The Not-so-smart ALEC .\"  Although the establishment's fingerprints are otherwise hard to find on today's leading initiatives to bring about an Article V convention, there is a somewhat stealthy bipartisan movement to bring about such a convention, as revealed in \"Working Together to Rewrite the Constitution\" in our June 9, 2014 issue.  Republics and Democracies  To better understand the connection between increasing numbers of unconstitutional programs and an increasingly tyrannical federal government, consider the distinction between republics and democracies.  On September 17, 1961, Constitution Day, Robert Welch (who had founded The John Birch Society less than three years earlier) gave a speech entitled \" Republics and Democracies \" to a patriotic Chicago-based organization, \"We the People.\" This speech went on to influence millions of Americans to understand that our nation is a republic, not a democracy. It is still available at TheNewAmerican.com.  In his speech, Robert Welch demonstrated that the United States is a constitutional republic characterized by the \"rule of law,\" not a democracy characterized by the \"rule of men.\" And he quoted approvingly from James Madison in The Federalist , No. 10, regarding the nature of a democracy: Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.  One's first reaction to Madison's assertion that democracies are \"short in their lives\" might be to say, \"Madison is wrong because our nation is a democracy and it has lasted for over 200 years.\" However, our nation is a republic, not a democracy. That's why it has lasted so long. The problem is that the more our nation is transformed into a democracy, the shorter its life will be.  And our nation is being transformed into a democracy by the ongoing passage of unconstitutional programs by Congress. After a century or more of congressional seizures of powers not granted to it by the Constitution (as discussed below), we've long since reached the point where almost the only consideration taken into account by congressmen voting for a bill is whether a majority of their constituents will approve. Very few congressmen vote for a bill based on whether it is constitutional. As Representative \"Pete\" Stark (D-Calif.) famously opined at a town hall meeting in 2010, \"The federal government \u2026 can do most anything in this country.\"  We live in an era of \"the tyranny of the majority,\" which is the basic critique of democracies. In a pure democracy, everything is decided by a simple majority vote of the people or their representatives. There are no constitutional restraints, such as the enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution or a Bill of Rights.  If Congress and the rest of the federal government continue on the path of bowing primarily to majority opinion, usually artfully crafted by the special-interest elites, and not obeying any constitutional limitations on their power, then we will lose all remaining constitutional bulwarks against tyranny, and finally, lose all security for our God-given rights.  Robert Welch ended his \"Republics and Democracies\" speech by stating, \"This is a Republic, not a Democracy. Let's keep it that way!\" We need to take this slogan to heart and reject the ongoing transformation of our constitutional Republic into a democracy.  Therefore, the solution to our nation's twin problems of too much national debt and too powerful a federal government is to defeat the special interests' control over our government by educating voters sufficiently to get a majority of constitutionalists elected to Congress. This constitutionalist majority would eliminate or gradually phase out all unconstitutional programs, thereby balancing the budget, reducing taxes, securing our rights, and restoring our constitutional Republic and the rule of law, not of men.  So in terms of the above overview of the national debt\/tyrannical government crisis and solution, our main objection to bringing about a Balanced Budget Amendment Article V convention at this time in our nation's history is that the \"close network of special interests, public officials, and the media\" that runs our country would dominate such a convention process and would most likely end up revising the Constitution in their favor.  History of the National Debt\/Tyrannical Government Crisis  Now let's take a look at the history of our national debt\/tyrannical government crisis to see how long we've had it, how big it is, and what caused it.  First of all, take a look at the chart in Figure 1a (right), which shows our national debt from 1792-2020 as measured in dollars, uncorrected for inflation and the size of our economy. This chart gives the false impression that we never had a significant national debt in our nation's history until somewhere around 1940, and that sometime in the 1980s the national debt began to increase exponentially and shows no signs of slowing down. This false impression is due to not correcting the chart for inflation and the size of our economy. This is not to say that we don't have a public debt problem. We emphatically do. It's just that the history of our national debt has been more nuanced than what is displayed in Fig. 1a.  Meanwhile, the Balanced Budget Amendment Article V convention movement got rolling in the 1970s. Proponents of such a convention made the argument to state legislators in the 1970s, as they have ever since, that large annual federal deficits and the rapidly growing national debt were leading to economic and fiscal disaster. They argued that the solution was to add a BBA to the Constitution. But since Article V of the Constitution provides only two ways to propose amendments, either by a vote of two-thirds of both houses of Congress or by a state-initiated constitutional convention, and since Congress had still not approved a proposed BBA, then we just had to get 34 states to apply to Congress to call an Article V convention in order to get a BBA proposed and ratified.  It turns out that the dire predictions of economic and fiscal crisis have not come true \u2014 yet. However, the catastrophic situation depicted in Fig. 1a does reflect a truly dangerous fiscal situation as revealed in a more accurate way in Fig. 1b. In this chart the level of national debt is measured in terms of percent of real GDP, which provides an automatic correction for inflation and the size of our economy. Just as in Figure 1a, the graph in Fig. 1b shows a dangerous buildup in national debt. In contrast to Fig. 1a though, Fig. 1b provides some valuable information about the history of our nation's national debt. Figure 1b shows that we've had a buildup in national debt many times since 1792. Until the 1980s, these increases in national debt have always been associated with wars, such as the War for Independence, the War of 1812, the Civil War, WWI, and WWII. After each of these wars, we've paid most of the debt off.  But since 1980, we've had a rapid increase in the national debt without being involved in a full-scale war. Since the increases in our national debt are basically due to our annual federal budget deficits, let's examine what's been going on with federal spending and deficits as revealed in Figures 1c and 1d. In these two figures, spending and deficits are measured as a percent of real GDP, again to correct for inflation and the size of our economy. We see a familiar pattern in both 1c and 1d. There are the peaks of spending and deficits corresponding to the major wars we've fought.  However, there's also something very interesting that is revealed in the pattern of federal spending. We see a rapid increase in federal spending beginning in the 1930s and continuing into the 1980s. We know from American political history that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in 1932 and that he inaugurated many new government programs, not authorized by the Constitution and known collectively as the \"New Deal.\" Once FDR and Congress had opened the floodgates for large-scale unconstitutional spending, there was no turning back.  Unconstitutional programs begat more and more unconstitutional agencies, departments, and programs, and this process has continued right up to today. We'll verify the unconstitutionality of the vast majority of federal spending below when we look at the specific spending categories for fiscal year 2015.  One very striking statistic from Fig. 1c is that during President Obama's first term, annual federal spending set a new, post-WWII record of nearly 25 percent of GDP.  Now look at Fig. 1d. In the 1930s, the increased federal spending led to immediate increases in federal deficits. Next, the massive deficits of the WWII years masked any deficits that were caused by increases in non-war spending. But within a few years after WWII, a pattern of seemingly modest deficits developed. Then, in the 1970s, these deficits began to increase toward five percent of GDP and remained at or near the five-percent level until the late 1990s when federal deficits were eliminated for a few years in the wake of the Republican Revolution of 1994. Under George W. Bush the deficits returned, but it was during the Obama years that some of the deficits set a new post-WWII record of nearly 10 percent of GDP.  So, what's the point of all of this analysis of spending, deficits, and debt? It is that Congress was authorized with specific enumerated powers in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution; however, in the 1930s Congress began a lavish spree of unconstitutional spending that increased rapidly for many decades and continues to increase to this day.  The Unconstitutionality of Most Federal Spending  Now take a look at Figure 2 (below). This pie chart shows all federal spending for fiscal year 2015, which amounted to $3.8 trillion (about 20 percent of GDP). Let's see if our characterization of the rapid increase in federal spending since the 1930s as unconstitutional holds up.  If you'll compare the 12 spending categories listed for the various pie pieces in Fig. 2 with the powers granted to Congress in Article I, Section 8, you'll find that over 70 percent of current federal spending is unconstitutional. About the only categories of spending that appear to be constitutional are \"Military,\" \"Veterans' Benefits,\" and \"Interest on Debt.\" Sure there are some constitutional programs buried within the various categories, but the vast majority of spending within the unconstitutional categories is still unconstitutional.  Even a very brief review of some of the various categories of federal spending in Fig. 2 reveals the seeds of the destruction of our freedoms by a tyrannical federal government present in these categories.  For example, the \"International Affairs\" category includes our unconstitutional foreign aid program and the dues for our unconstitutional United Nations membership. These expenditures are being used to help build a global government, which would destroy our nation's independence and our personal rights and freedoms.  The \"Education\" spending is used by the federal government to exert its unconstitutional control over all levels of education with the goal of producing compliant citizens who will vote to support the \"close network of special interests, public officials, and the media\" that runs our country. Think Common Core.  The \"Food & Agriculture\" spending hides the surprisingly large unconstitutional \"food stamp\" program, which in 2014 cost $74.1 billion and was used by 46.5 million Americans. This program develops and maintains the loyalty of millions of voters to the special-interest elites on a daily basis.  Then there's the huge \"mandatory spending\" categories of \"Social Security, Unemployment & Labor,\" and \"Medicare & Health,\" which constituted fully 60 percent of federal spending in 2015. Here is where we find the spending for the big three entitlement programs \u2014 Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Various economists have estimated that the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs have unfunded liabilities of between $100 and $200 trillion. This is equal to between five and 10 times the size of our annual GDP. In short, the promises to pay specific levels of future benefits for these unconstitutional entitlement programs are simply promises that our government can't keep.  Also hidden inside the spending shown in the Fig. 2 pie chart is about $500 billion in unconstitutional federal aid to states each year for health, education, etc., which amounts to about 30 percent on average of each state's annual budget. This unconstitutional federal aid is passed through by the states to its citizens and thereby makes the states complicit in the special interests' rampant unconstitutional federal spending. This level of federal subsidization of state budgets severely compromises state sovereignty.  Furthermore, consider that the 10th Amendment states, \"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution \u2026 are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.\" When Congress illegally seizes the power to \"do most anything in this country,\" then that leaves virtually no powers reserved to the states to exercise.  The point of this brief review of the unconstitutionality of over 70 percent of federal spending in 2015 is to confirm that the rapid increase in federal spending that occurred between the mid-1930s and 1980, and that has continued, albeit at a slower pace, right up to today, can be characterized as mostly unconstitutional spending.  BBA Article V Convention Movement  In 1957, Indiana became the first state to apply to Congress to call an Article V convention for the purpose of proposing a Balanced Budget Amendment. Although a sprinkling of states applied to Congress for such a BBA \"constitutional convention\" in the 1960s and early 1970s, the movement didn't really take off until sometime in the mid-1970s, when the American Legislative Exchange Council began promoting a \"Balanced Federal Budget Petition,\" which later became known as a \"Balanced Budget Amendment\" petition. (See our 2015 article \" The New BBA Con-Con Threat \" for more BBA Article V convention history.)  Nowadays most proponents of such a convention deny that it can be properly called a \"constitutional convention\" \u2014 because such a reference warns Americans of the potential danger of such a gathering. However, The John Birch Society and many other organizations and activists continue to correctly refer to an Article V convention as a constitutional convention (often abbreviated as Con-Con). The 1979 fifth edition of the widely used Black's Law Dictionary even explicitly refers to an Article V Convention as an example of a constitutional convention.  By 1983, 32 of the required 34 states had applied to Congress to call a BBA Article V convention. This was the high-water mark of the BBA constitutional convention movement; it has not been surpassed up to the present day. The next state to apply for such a convention was Florida in 2010.  By the mid-1980s members of The John Birch Society and other organizations, such as Eagle Forum, were working with state legislators to oppose the approval of any new Article V convention applications and to rescind (cancel) existing applications. From 1988 to 2010, 17 states, including Florida, rescinded their previous BBA Article V convention applications.  Current Status of the BBA Article V Convention Movement  Although the numerous Article V convention application rescissions during the years 1988 to 2010 reduced the number of states that still had \"live\" (unrescinded) applications for a BBA Article V convention down to 17, the momentum shifted again in 2010. From 2010 to 2015, eight states that had formerly rescinded their applications reapplied for a BBA Article V convention. Then, Ohio and Michigan made their initial BBA convention applications in 2013 and 2014 respectively, yielding a new total of 27 states with \"live\" applications as of September 2015, just seven short of the required 34 states.  Then, in 2016 two more states, Oklahoma and West Virginia, applied for a BBA Article V convention to be called; however, Delaware rescinded its existing \"live\" application for a BBA Article V convention. So, the BBA convention proponents gained a net of one state this year for a total of 28. That leaves them six short of the required 34 states for forcing Congress to call a convention.  Now look at the \"BBA Article V Convention Status November 2016\" map (right) and see what your state's status is. The John Birch Society is recommending that those readers living in a green state (no \"live\" BBA Article V convention application) work with others and your state legislators to stop the approval of any BBA Article V convention application in your legislature.  If your state is orange, your state already has an existing \"live\" BBA Article V convention application. The John Birch Society is recommending that you work with others and your state legislators to get a resolution introduced and approved to rescind all existing Article V convention calls, especially of the BBA variety. Remember that for every additional state that rescinds its BBA convention call, the BBA convention movement is one state further away from its goal of 34. For further information about how to rescind Article V convention applications, see our article \" Save the Constitution by Rescinding Article V Convention Applications .\"  See the sidebar \"Why a BBA Article V Convention Is Not a Wise Idea\" at the end of this article for a summary of the reasons for opposing a BBA Article V convention.  This Is a Republic, Not a Democracy!  The point is that our problem with the federal government is not just due to deficit spending, and the federal government is not simply out of control. Our problem with the federal government is that Congress has seized (usurped) powers not granted to it by the Constitution, and special interests have taken control of the federal government by taking advantage of these usurped powers to reward their carefully cultivated constituencies.  Our Republic is being converted into a democracy by the establishment's deliberate flouting of the Constitution, along with its cultivation of voting blocs that are electing congressmen who are moving our nation toward a \"tyranny of the majority.\" Even though our nation was founded on the principle in the Declaration of Independence that \"governments are instituted among men\" to \"secure\" our God-given rights, a \"tyranny of the majority\" would eventually strip our nation of all our rights.  Therefore, the solution to our twin problems of too high a national debt and too powerful a federal government is not to add a BBA to the Constitution, but rather to support grassroots efforts by independent, private organizations to create a constitutionally informed electorate that would nominate and elect a majority of constitutionalists to Congress and state legislatures. We the People are the last resort for enforcing the Constitution and thereby securing our rights. We must not enable the powerful special-interest establishment to revise our Constitution in their favor via an Article V convention process at this time in our history.  The Constitution must be preserved as a rallying point for freedom-loving Americans. This is a republic, not a democracy. Let's keep it that way! * * *  Sidebar: Why a BBA Article V Convention Is Not a Wise Idea  - The national debt is not the real problem. The real problem is how \"a close network of special interests, public officials, and the media\" control the federal government based on their ability to build voting blocs that benefit from the unconstitutional federal programs that they initiate. The fiscally dangerous size of the national debt is a measure of just how effective the special interests are in getting their deficit-spending programs funded. The solution to the debt crisis is to create a constitutionally informed electorate and pay the national debt off by phasing out unconstitutional spending.  - A runaway convention could rewrite the Constitution. An Article V convention has the inherent power to extensively revise or completely rewrite the Constitution based on the precedent of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and on the right of the people to alter or abolish their form of government (including the ratification procedure) as stated in the Declaration of Independence.  - An Article V Convention would play into the hands of the special interests. The \"close network of special interests, public officials, and the media\" that control our nation would lead an Article V convention process to revise the Constitution to favor the special interests, and would also massively influence the ratification process to favor the special interests.  - Virtually all BBA proposals include loopholes, such as national emergency exceptions and supermajority exceptions, that would enable Congress to continue approving deficit spending, even if a BBA were to be added to the Constitution.  - A BBA would legitimize unconstitutional spending by shifting the focus away from whether a certain bill is unconstitutional and toward whether the bill would fit within a balanced budget. The BBA Article V convention movement has never been about restoring the spending limitations contained in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.  - A BBA would further transform our Republic into a democracy by making the main criterion for approving a proposed bill the degree of popular support that bill has for including it in a balanced budget, as opposed to its constitutionality. A constitutional republic is characterized by the rule of law, while a democracy is characterized by the rule of men and leads to a tyranny of the majority.  Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment  Thank you for joining the discussion at The New American. We value our readers and encourage their participation, but in order to ensure a positive experience for our readership, we have a few guidelines for commenting on articles. If your post does not follow our policy, it will be deleted.  No profanity, racial slurs, direct threats, or threatening language.  No product advertisements.  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{"text":"President Trump and his daughter Ivanka are getting some much welcomed positive press thanks to a social media craze that has slowly been growing over the past few months.A number of women have begun posting images online which show them modelling clothing from Ivanka s eponymous fashion label or Trump-branded wears while voicing their support for the commander-in-chief.It is a diverse array of clothes, and the most popular choice by far this summer is a one-piece women s swimsuit in metallic blue that reads: Make America Great Again. There is even a fan-run Instagram page that gathers all the images featuring ladies in Trump-branded swimwear these days, along with those who are scantily clad while also wearing his trademark hat, Babes For Trump.More women jump in to join the trend to support President Trump with Trump gear and bumper stickers adorning their beach coolers. #MAGA And finally, these young women post an image of themselves pretending to build a wall on the Mexico border: These posts have no official hashtag yet, with the women using a variety of words and phrases, including #womenfortrump, #ivankatrump, and #hillaryforprison to name a few.This surge in popularity for Trump brand clothing comes a little over nine months after women across the country began a boycott of Ivanka s fashions with the #GrabYourWallet campaign.These women are ignoring the left and posting pictures of themselves wearing Ivanka s line of clothing.This woman is dresses as a secret service agent who s wearing Ivanka s line of clothing:This Instagram user posted a picture of herself sporting Ivanka s jewelry:Select retail shops and national department stores also began to drop Ivanka s line around that time, and in some cases were very publicly attacked by Trump supporters.Nordstrom was forced to weather the worst of the storms after the passed on picking up Ivanka s latest collection, with President Trump going after the retailer on Twitter. Daily MailKeep up the great work ladies! #MAGA","label":1}
{"text":"The tens of thousands of women marching in the Women's March on Washington demonstration in Washington, D. C. Saturday are \"mostly white\" and experiencing \"therapy\" for their anxiety over Hillary Clinton's election loss to Donald Trump in November, the Washington Post reports. [Planned Parenthood tweeted: We stand shoulder to shoulder with all women in the struggle for equality justice. #WhyIMarch @womensmarch pic. twitter. \u2014 Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) January 21, 2017, According to the Post: Marchers \u2014 mostly women and mostly white \u2014 said they came to take the most public possible stand against Trump, a candidate and now president whom they said routinely insults women and the issues they care about. But the gathering also provided therapy for many, the balm of immersing themselves in a sea of citizens who had shared their anxiety and disappointment after Democrat Hillary Clinton's historic bid for the presidency ended in defeat. The report notes some of the women are \"sometimes sleeping on the couches of people they had never met before\" due to the vast crowd participating in the march. \"Organizers, who originally sought a permit for a gathering of 200, 000, said Saturday they now expect as many as a half million participants \u2014 potentially dwarfing Friday's inaugural crowd,\" the report says: 12 Ways You Can Fight Back Against All This Oppressive Crap In 2017: https: . via @buzzfeed #IDEFY, \u2014 Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) January 20, 2017, The march's central focus appears to be to protect abortion chain Planned Parenthood from taxpayer defunding, one of the stated goals of the Trump administration. Though cast as a \"women's rights\" march, women who attempted to register for the march were refused. \"If you want to come to the march you are coming with the understanding that you respect a woman's right to choose,\" Linda Sarsour, a Muslim racial justice and civil rights activist, and a chairwoman of the event, told the New York Times. Feminist Gloria Steinem and Planned Parenthood have partnered for the event, providing it with its decidedly tone. On her website, Steinem says to her fans: We have all the powers we had [before Trump was elected] of lobbying and pressuring and making clear that the political consequences are great. We may look up and feel powerless and think there's nothing we can do, but it's not true. There are things we can do at each level. And there's always civil disobedience. Trump is not my president. Steinem also recently said she would refuse to pay the full amount of her federal income tax if Planned Parenthood's taxpayer funds were eliminated. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said about the march: We will send a strong message to the incoming administration that millions of people across this country are prepared to fight attacks on reproductive health care, abortion services, and access to Planned Parenthood, as they intersect with the rights of young people, people of color, immigrants, and people of all faiths, backgrounds, and incomes. According to the march's website, its mission is to \"send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world that women's rights are human rights. \" Democrat Sens. Patty Murray (WA) and Elizabeth Warren (MA) are supporting Planned Parenthood: Today, we stood with Planned Parenthood and the millions of women men who don't want to see their health care taken away. pic. twitter. \u2014 Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) January 20, 2017, Despite its message of unity among all the left's political identity groups, the Times previously reported the \"Women's March\" has been anything but unified from its inception: On the march group's Facebook page, it is easy to see how complicated the idea of the \"women's vote,\" an already mythological concept, has become, and how difficult it might be for organizers to fulfill their aim of gathering women who remain fiercely divided on reproductive rights, gun control, marriage and immigration, among other issues. Not everyone on the page believes, for instance, that Hillary Clinton would have made a good president, or that Stephen K. Bannon, a chief strategist under Mr. Trump, holds divisive views about minorities. Debates over both have sprung up in recent days. Bob Bland, one of the march's organizers, said in an email that organizers in Maryland had to change a Facebook page from public to private to protect the safety of women who want to attend. Writing at the Week, abortion rights supporter Shikha Dalmia asserts the demonstration has already failed in its mission. \"Demonstrations serve a useful function in a democracy \u2014 but only when they have clarity of purpose,\" she writes, adding that the march is \"shaping up to be a exercise in search of a cause. \" Dalmia writes some of the \"absurdity\" related to the event stems from \"the fact that they are billing this event as the voice of women when 42 percent of women (and 62 percent of educated white women) actually voted for Trump. \" She also observes \"the progressive hysteria over the event's name. \" The initial plan by the \"three white women\" organizers, she says, was to call the event the \"Million Women March,\" but the women were criticized for \"cultural appropriation\" for \"allegedly poaching the heritage of the 1997 Million Woman March for black women. \" \"Feminists are confusing the issue by making Trump's threat about themselves,\" Dalmia concludes. \"If they really wanted to help, they would have kept their powder dry for now, rather than embark on this confused and pointless march. \"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump reviewed an array of options for a strategy on Afghanistan with his top national security aides, but made no decision on whether he would commit more troops to America's longest war. Friday's meeting was the latest in a series of high-level discussions on Afghanistan and a broader security strategy for the South Asia region that has been bogged down by internal differences. Trump was briefed extensively \"on a new strategy to protect America's interests in South Asia\", White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters, after the meeting at the Camp David Maryland retreat. \"The president is studying and considering his options and will make an announcement to the American people, to our allies and partners, and to the world at the appropriate time,\" Sanders said. National security adviser H.R. McMaster and other top national security officials went into the meeting backing a modest increase in troops. At a mid-July meeting, they had thrown their weight behind 3,000 to 5,000 additional U.S. and coalition soldiers. \"Anti-globalists,\" who were led by Steve Bannon before he was fired on Friday as Trump's chief strategist, backed withdrawing U.S. forces, U.S. officials said. Other options which were to be discussed included keeping the status quo of some 8,400 U.S. troops, a modest hike, or a small reduction that would focus on counter-terrorism operations enhanced by drone strikes and intelligence-gathering, they said. A U.S. official said that during a trip to Afghanistan earlier this year, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Afghan President Ashraf Ghani that the United States would have a sustained commitment to Afghanistan. More than 15 years since the United States invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Islamist Taliban government for giving al Qaeda a sanctuary where it plotted the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, there is no sign to an end in fighting. U.S. intelligence agencies assessed in May that the conditions in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through next year, even with a modest increase in military assistance from America and its allies. Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican and advocate of a stronger U.S. role in Afghanistan, urged Trump in a statement to \"listen to his generals. At the end of the day, Afghanistan is about American homeland security - not building empires.\" The Camp David discussions have also been complicated by differences over taking a harder line on Pakistan for failing to close Afghan Taliban sanctuaries and arrest Afghan extremist leaders. U.S. officials say the Afghan Taliban are supported by elements of Pakistan's military and top intelligence agency, a charge Islamabad denies. Under one proposal, the United States would begin a review of whether to designate Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism unless it pursues senior leaders of the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network, considered the most lethal Afghan extremist group, U.S. officials said. Such a designation would trigger harsh U.S. sanctions, including a ban on arms sales and an end to U.S. economic assistance. Finalizing a regional security strategy has been held up by Trump's frustration with a lack of options for defeating the Taliban and ending the longest foreign conflict in U.S. history. At the meeting in mid-July, Trump said Mattis and Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, should consider firing Army General John Nicholson, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, for not winning the war. The delay for a decision left an opening for Erik Prince, the founder of the former Blackwater military contracting firm and the brother of Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos, to propose replacing U.S. forces in Afghanistan with mercenaries. The plan made its way into the White House, according to a senior administration official. There is no indication, however, that the proposal \u2013 promoted by Prince in media interviews \u2013 garnered serious attention and it was not among the options prepared for consideration at Camp David, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. McMaster, Mattis, Dunford and retired Marine General John Kelly, the president's chief of staff, are opposed to this plan, according to U.S. officials. It was not known whether Prince's proposal was brought up at the meeting. With Afghan security forces struggling to prevent Taliban advances and the country's political leadership all but paralyzed by infighting, Nicholson in February requested thousands of additional U.S. troops to bolster U.S. military trainers, advisers and special forces. U.S. military and intelligence officials are concerned that a Taliban victory would allow al Qaeda and Islamic State's regional affiliate to establish bases in Afghanistan from which to plot attacks against the United States and its allies.","label":0}
{"text":"New US Ambassador Nikki Haley strutted into the UN on Friday with a blunt message to American allies: For those who don t have our backs, we re taking names. The former South Carolina governor made the remark to reporters as she arrived at the world body s headquarters in Manhattan to present her credentials to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Our goal with the administration is to show value at the UN and the way that we ll show value is to show our strength, show our voice, have the backs of our allies and make sure that our allies have our back as well, she said. For those that don t have our back, we re taking names, we will make points to respond to that accordingly, President Trump s envoy said.She said Trump wants her to put fresh eyes on the UN. Everything that s working, we re going to make it better, she said. Everything that s not working we re going to try to fix, and anything that seems to be obsolete and not necessary we re going to do away with. She then hopped on an elevator and went to the 38th floor to meet Guterres, who became UN chief on Jan. 1. They then went into his office for a private sit-down. There have been reports that the White House is poised to demand major cutbacks in UN agencies and personnel in slashing Washington s financial contributions to the organization. NYP","label":1}
{"text":"The president of the Texas Association of Business (TAB) duped Texas lawmakers with false claims of economic destruction if legislators pass a bill protecting women and children in the privacy of their bathrooms and dressing areas. Few people know the history of this business association leader's Democratic voting record and donations to political groups that push a agenda under the guise of equality. [TAB President Chris Wallace appears to be attempting to pull the wool over the eyes of Texas legislators about the possible loss of business and tax revenue to the state if it passes Senate Bill 6, also known as the \"bathroom bill. \" Citing \"dire consequences\" for the state, Wallace is attempting to \"warn leaders\" that passing the bill would cost the state of Texas 185, 000 jobs and $8. 5 billion in lost revenue from lost sporting events, concerts, conventions and other business related losses. These claims have been discredited by none other than the Politifact who rated his claims as \"Mostly False. \" Politifact defines \"Mostly False\" to mean the statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. Politifact surmised: The TAB said a study projects up to $8. 5 billion in lost GDP and up to 185, 000 lost jobs in Texas if lawmakers approve a discriminatory measure like proposals in other states. Such a law might cause economic shivers. But we find this study's headlined figures, reached about 13 months ago, to be based on predicted or actual effects of discriminatory mandates in Arizona, Louisiana and Indiana that didn't make it into law or were rescinded or softened. Moreover, not all the study's numbers, calculations and assumptions proved solid and a key figure, reflecting on Indiana losing $1. 5 billion in conventions, doesn't appear to have a documented basis. The Texas Tribune summarized the intent of SB6 stating, \"Senate Bill 6, one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's legislative priorities, would require transgender people to use bathrooms in public schools, government buildings and public universities based on 'biological sex.' The measure would also local nondiscrimination ordinances that allow transgender Texans to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. \" The bill creates guidelines that only impact government buildings including schools and universities. It does not address what businesses do with their bathrooms or changing rooms. Texas State Senator Paul Bettencourt ( ) also debunked the threats made by Wallace and noted there had been no economic impact in Houston after the city reversed Mayor Parker's bathroom ordinance. During the Senate committee hearing on the bill, Senator Bettencourt and Senator Kelly Hancock ( Richland Hills) picked Wallace's testimony apart. This raises the question as to why a respected organization like the TAB would go out on a limb with easily discredited statements. Dr. Steve Hotze suggests in the Conservative Republicans of Texas News that Wallace is more motivated by a political agenda than the interests of the businesses he represents. Hotze wrote: Chris Wallace's political allegiances and philosophy are demonstrated by his voting record and by his political contributions to the Texas Democrat Party, to numerous Democrat candidates and to the No Nonsense in November PAC that opposed the Texas Constitution Marriage Amendment in 2005. Wallace has made contributions to the Texas Democrat Party, Al Gore against George Bush in 2004, Obama for America in 2008, Bill White for Governor against Gov. Abbott in 2009 and 2010, Wendy Davis against Gov. Abbott in 2014, Leticia Van de Putte against Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in 2014, and four separate contributions to the Human Rights (Campaign) PAC in 2016. The Human Rights (Campaign) PAC describes itself as the \"largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights organization. \" The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) PAC supports candidates who \"have a solid history of support for lesbian and gay equality\" (www. hrc. org). In 2016, the HRC opposed Donald Trump, while supporting Hillary Clinton. Wallace financially supports this homosexual front group. Wallace has voted numerous times in the Democrat Primary, and yet he has been hired as the spokesman for conservative Texas businessmen. \"These facts are well documented,\" former Harris County GOP Chairman Jared Woodfill told Breitbart Texas late this week. \"We have copies of his voting record and the contributions made to the Human Rights Commission PAC which supports the LGBT agenda. \" SB6, authored by State Senator Lois Kolkhorst ( ) passed the Senate in a bipartisan vote of on March 15 after a lengthy hearing and public testimony on the matter and moved it forward to the House. State Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr. joined with the Republican majority in supporting the bill's passage. The bill has not yet been scheduled for a committee hearing in the House. It is expected to face tougher opposition and could possibly die in the committee or in the Calendars committee before coming to the House Floor for a vote. \"All we want is an up or down vote,\" Jared Woodfill told Breitbart Texas. \"The people should not be denied the right to know where their representatives stand on this issue. \" Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"A major road in east London was partially closed due to a significant police incident on Tuesday, the British capital s transport operator said. Transport for London said on Twitter that East India Dock Road was partially blocked both ways due to a significant police incident . London police had no immediate comment.","label":0}
{"text":"Comments  A Catholic church in San Diego has taken Donald Trump's calls to demonize of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton a tad too literally. The Immaculate Conception Catholic Church was caught passing out flyers last week that told parishioners that voting Democratic was a sin, and would immediately damn them to the fires of hell.  This week, they've gone even further, and declared that the lawyer, former First Lady, and lifelong public servant is in fact an agent of the ruinous dark lord of evil incarnate himself, Satan.  \"The devil does this through tactics outlined by Saul Alinsky with the outcome as Hillary Clinton stated 'And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed,' to draw us away from God's teachings regarding the sanctity of life to those of the world and its prince!\" railed the flyer.  Previously, the flyers asserted that \"it is a mortal sin to vote Democrat \u2026 immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell.\"  This, of course, is not the first time that Secretary Clinton has been compared to the despoiler of worlds. Former neurosurgeon and pyramid expert Ben Carson declared Hillary in league with the devil at the Republican National Convention . A recent poll of Florida Trump supporters found a staggering 40% of them believe that the former New York Senator is a literal demon .  The irrational and all-consuming hatred that the right-wing feels for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is astonishing, and the fact that this is an actual issue shows that either the American public schooling system is entirely failing to do its job, or that a fair segment of the American population has fallen to thirteenth-century radical Christian extremism.  What's truly ironic is that if one were to rationally approach this from such a literalist perspective, it is quite obvious that the envious glutton, shameless thief, and unrepentant lecher Donald Trump is Sin Manifest and his supporters are worshiping a false prophet, placing their own souls in mortal danger as they are consumed in heresy.  But since those are fairytales designed to maintain social control over an illiterate pre-industrial peasant populace, it's hard to explain this phenomenon without concluding that they may all just be idiots. Forgive me, but at this point my patience with these people is running very thin.","label":1}
{"text":"The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - Stock Market could hit all-time high (again) 22,000 today. Was 18,000 only 6 months ago on Election Day. Mainstream media seldom mentions! [0849 EDT] - \"Corporations have NEVER made as much money as they are making now.\" Thank you Stuart Varney @foxandfriends Jobs are starting to roar,watch! [0903 EDT] - Only the Fake News Media and Trump enemies want me to stop using Social Media (110 million people). Only way for me to get the truth out! [0955 EDT] -- Source link: (bit.ly\/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly\/2jpEXYR)","label":0}
{"text":"The U.N. Human Rights Council agreed on Thursday to send experts to work with Burundi s government in pursuing perpetrators of deplorable crimes but the European Union and United States criticized the resolution. They said the last-minute move presented by African nations failed to take into account the conclusions of an existing probe which accused senior Burundian officials of atrocities that may amount to crimes against humanity. That commission said there are reasonable grounds to believe crimes against humanity have been committed since April 2015 when President Pierre Nkurunziza said he would seek a third term in office. The opposition said he was acting unconstitutionally. A government crackdown on protests followed and the ensuing upheaval triggered a food crisis and the exodus of over 400,000 refugees. The African text, supported by Bujumbura s delegation, was adopted by a vote of 23 states in favor, 14 against, with nine abstentions at the 47-member Geneva forum. The text in no way reflects the scale or severity of the situation in Burundi, Latvia s ambassador Janis Karklins said on behalf of the EU. It doesn t take into account the conclusions of the investigation team and no follow-up is provided to them. The last-minute maneuver by the African Group, led by Tunisia, presents a dangerous precedent for the Council , he said. It was unclear if an EU resolution on Burundi, which would extend the mandate of the existing U.N. inquiry, could survive in some form after the African resolution. The Council is expected to decide on the EU resolution before its three-week session ends on Friday. The United States voiced deep disappointment at what it called the African resolution s failure to address the grave human rights situation in Burundi. Due to severe restrictions on space for civil society and independent media, the Commission of Inquiry serves as a critical and credible source of information and must be able to continue its work, U.S. diplomat Jason Mack said. We remind this Council that after conducting more than 500 interviews the commission found reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity have been committed in Burundi and the government of Burundi continues to engage in extrajudicial killing, torture, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances and sexual violence, he said. The Human Rights Council should not support any mechanism short of a commission of inquiry or this Council further risks diminishing its credibility as the primary mechanism for protecting and promoting human rights , Mack added. Burundi s ambassador Renovat Tabu declined to comment after the vote, but earlier told the Council that the EU had a hidden agenda against his country. The (Burundi) government has already achieved substantial progress in improving the human rights situation as well as building the rule of law, and in the fight against impunity and is determined to continue its efforts to move forward, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Four people were killed on Thursday when a helicopter belonging to utility Hydro One crashed in central Ontario, the company said in a statement. Hydro One did not provide details on its four employees who were killed in the crash, saying names would not be released until next of kin had been notified. The company, which is based in Ontario, said emergency services were on site in the Tweed area of rural central Ontario, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Toronto. It said it had notified the appropriate oversight groups. The Ontario Provincial Police said in a statement that officers responded to the crash shortly after 12:30 pm ET (1730 GMT), and were joined by emergency response services, including a forensic identification unit. Police said Canada s Transportation Safety Board would investigate. A woman named Kim Clayton tweeted that Hydro One staff had been working on power lines on her property before the crash. On Wednesday a small airplane carrying 22 passengers and three crew members crashed after taking off in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.","label":0}
{"text":"Yet another example of our airline industry s awesomeness occurred Friday when an employee was captured on video challenging a passenger to a fight after a woman holding a baby was hit with her stroller. The video begins with the crying woman holding one of her children in her arms while begging for her stroller back.One angry witness can be heard saying he s not going to sit here and watch this before going to the front of the plane to demand the name of the employee who hit the woman. Another woman on the flight can be heard confronting the staff about their treatment of the latest victim of airline violence. Much of the staff s conversation can not be heard from the vantage point of the person filming, but the gentleman who initially confronted the thugs on the plane stands up and says you do that to me and I ll knock you flat. You stay out of this! the male flight attendant shot back. Try it. Hit me. You don t know what the story is. But the passenger knew what the story is (the part that matters, anyway):I don t care what the story is. You almost hit that baby!Q13 Fox spoke to some of the people aboard the plane, and the story is just as terrible as it seems:Olivia Morgan was standing in the doorway of the aircraft with her 8-year-old daughter waiting to board when the altercation happened. The flight attendant wrestled the stroller away from the woman, who was sobbing, holding one baby with the second baby in a car seat on the ground next to her, she said.Morgan said the flight attendant was violent when taking the metal stroller from the woman and nearly hit the baby with the stroller. He stormed by me with the stroller and I said something like, What are you doing? You almost hit that baby! And he yelled at me to stay out of it! just like he does in the video, she said.Morgan said she talked to the woman about the incident. The woman said a female flight attendant told her she could look for space to store the stroller because it folds up very small, but if there was no available space, she would need to check it at the gate. She was looking for space when the male attendant tried to take it away from her and she said she told him the other attendant had told her it was okay to look, she said.According to the American Airlines website, small strollers can be checked at the gate but there is no policy about strollers in the overhead bin. The lady and her two children were seated near the back of the plane. She was somehow able to get her stroller on board and back near her seat, said Tom Watson, who was sitting just behind the first class section when the staff went insane. She refused to let him take it and she was almost to the point of shouting. The flight attendant and the woman started making their way to the front of the plane. They were at the front of the plane near the crew area. The woman was holding on to the stroller and refusing to let go, he continued, adding that The flight attendant should not have been so aggressive and should have been more aware of the kids. He then says the woman was escorted off the plane.Fortunately, American Airlines seems to have learned from United s numerous blunders following employees assault on a doctor. Rather than attempt to blame the woman, the company released a statement announcing that the employee has been suspended (not terminated though):We have seen the video and have already started an investigation to obtain the facts. What we see on this video does not reflect our values or how we care for our customers. We are deeply sorry for the pain we have caused this passenger and her family and to any other customers affected by the incident. We are making sure all of her family s needs are being met while she is in our care. After electing to take another flight, we are taking special care of her and her family and upgrading them to first class for the remainder of their international trip.The actions of our team member captured here do not appear to reflect patience or empathy, two values necessary for customer care. In short, we are disappointed by these actions. The American team member has been removed from duty while we immediately investigate this incident.The woman had to take another flight, but was given upgraded accommodations.Watch video shot directly following the attack below:","label":1}
{"text":"The Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on Iran, which it said were just \"initial steps\" and said Washington would no longer turn a \"blind eye\" to Iran's hostile actions. The sanctions on 25 individuals and entities were the opening salvo by President Donald Trump who has vowed a more aggressive policy against Tehran and came two days after the administration had put Iran 'on notice' following a ballistic missile test. \"The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate Iran's provocations that threaten our interests,\" National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said. \"The days of turning a blind eye to Iran's hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over,\" Flynn said in a White House statement. Suggesting that more concrete action could follow if Iran does not curb its ballistic missile program and continues support in regional proxy conflicts, a senior administration official said the latest sanctions were the initial steps in response to Iran's \"provocative behavior\". The administration was \"undertaking a larger strategic review\" of how it responds to Iran. Iran denounced the sanctions as illegal and said it would impose legal restrictions on American individuals and entities helping \"regional terrorist groups\", state TV quoted a Foreign Ministry statement as saying. Those affected under the sanctions cannot access the U.S. financial system or deal with U.S. companies and are subject to secondary sanctions, meaning foreign companies and individuals are prohibited from dealing with them or risk being blacklisted by the United States. The White House said that while the sanctions were a reaction to recent events, they had been under consideration before. It added that a landmark 2015 deal to curb Iran's nuclear program was not in the best interest of the United States. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the missile test did not violate the nuclear agreement. \"It's not a direct violation ... I think there is no question that it violates the spirit of that,\" Spicer said in an interview with MSNBC. He said the nuclear agreement was a \"sweetheart deal\" for Iran. Citing a foreign ministry statement, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said the missile program is \"the undeniable and inalienable right of our nation under international law and the UN charter. Any foreign interference in this regard is a violation of international law.\" The new designations stuck to areas that remain under sanctions even with the 2015 nuclear deal sealed between Iran and world powers in place, such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military body that is powerful in Iranian politics and the economy, and Iran's ballistic missile program. Zarif led Iran's delegation at the nuclear negotiations in 2015. Among those affected by the sanctions were what it said was a Lebanon-based network run by the Revolutionary Guards. \"The list is actually so targeted and comparatively mild, it leads one to surmise that it may have been a set of targets devised by the Obama administration, and was ready to go when Trump came into office,\" said Adam Smith, former senior advisor to the Director of the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. \"As such, the real test for which way the Trump team will go on Iran may well be not this list release but the next one, whenever that occurs,\" Smith said. The sanctions' impact will be more symbolic than practical, especially as they do not affect the lifting of broader U.S. and international sanctions that took place under the nuclear deal. Also, few of the Iranian entities being targeted are likely to have U.S. assets that can be frozen, and U.S. companies, with few exceptions, are barred from doing business with Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S. moved a Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, close to the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen to protect waterways from Houthi militia aligned with Iran. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Friday expressed understanding over the sanctions, but warned against conflating Sunday's test with the nuclear deal. Earlier on Friday, Trump tweeted: \"Iran is playing with fire\". U.S. Senator Mark Warner expressed support for the sanctions, adding: \"I urge the Administration to bring clarity to their overall strategy towards Iran, and to refrain from ambiguous rhetoric \u2013 or provocative tweets \u2013 that will exacerbate efforts to confront those challenges.\" Some of the entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China. Among those affected were companies, individuals and brokers the U.S. Treasury said support a trade network run by Iranian businessman Abdollah Asgharzadeh. Treasury said he supported Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which the United States has said is a subsidiary of an Iranian entity that runs Iran's ballistic missile program. Hasan Dehghan Ebrahimi, a Beirut-based official with the Revolutionary Guard's Qods Force, which runs its operations abroad, was put under sanctions for acting on behalf of the Qods Force, Treasury said. Three Lebanese companies involved in waste collection, pharmaceuticals, and construction were also listed under the sanctions for being owned or controlled by Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat, one of Ebrahimi's employees. Treasury said he has facilitated millions of dollars in cash transfers to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Two of his employees and a company he manages were also sanctioned. Treasury said Ebrahimi and his employees used a Lebanon-based network to transfer funds, launder money, and conduct business.","label":0}
{"text":"0 comments  CNN's Dana Bash attacked Donald Trump on Wednesday for \"taking time out of swing states\" to attend the opening of his newest hotel in Washington, D.C., even though he had three campaign stops scheduled for that same day.  She instantly regretted that decision, though, because Trump but her in her place without even blinking an eye.  Watch: Dana Bash: Is your DC hotel opening free advertising?Donald Trump: \"No, not at all\" https:\/\/t.co\/6OZtrfIwim https:\/\/t.co\/9HHqooom8r  \u2014 CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) October 26, 2016  SHARE this if you think Donald Trump has what it takes to #MakeAmericaGreatAgain!","label":1}
{"text":"Boxer Ray Beltran, a Mexican national, is fighting for more than just an International Boxing Federation World title, he is also battling the U. S. Immigration Service to have his immigration status approved, and his green card issued. [Beltran, who grew up in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico, will face Jonathan Maicelo in an IBF world title eliminator at Madison Square Garden in New York City this weekend. \"This fight is the key. It is the key to everything,\" lightweight boxer Beltran said according to USA Today. The boxer is being literal in several ways. Not only will it give him a shot at gaining a title for his professional boxing career, but a win could also prove to U. S. Immigration Services officials that he is worthy of permanent residency. \"(In boxing) the green card process is unique,\" Beltran's manager, Steve Feder, told the media. \"You have to prove yourself unique to anyone else, not just in the world but within the sport itself, you have to be a great fighter among great fighters. It is twice as hard. It is not about how long you have been here if you pay your taxes, it is nothing to do with that. \" For Beltran, a winning career would prove him to be of \"exceptional ability\" and would mean he would be afforded an green card. But, this upcoming fight in New York is an important milestone in both his career and his immigration application process. \"It is like a championship belt,\" Beltran said in a recent interview. \"It is like winning the lottery ticket because I know that being (permanent) here I will have a lot more opportunities. (If) I can be deported at any time, who will provide for my family and take care of them? I want to grow and do something and contribute to this country. \" The boxer entered the U. S. illegally with his mother when he was and now, as he climbs the ranks in the world of boxing, he is also trying to rectify the problem of his legal status. The boxer has had an equally rocky road to boxing stardom as to legal status. After an early career that floundered a bit, he recently began to pick up speed by winning a few bouts he wasn't expected to win. But, even that didn't goad some of the higher ranked boxers to take his fights. Now, with his with 20 knockouts record, he is advancing to a spot where other, boxers will be forced to meet him in the ring. So, this weekend's match with Jonathan Maicelo has deep personal significance for Beltran. It will prove a lot of things. If he wins it will show that he is a sportsman to be reckoned with, it will prove that sticking with his career choice was the right one, and it just might mean he can finally be a legal citizen of the United States of America. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.","label":0}
{"text":"Lawyers for Jacob Zuma have until midnight to file papers outlining why nearly 800 corruption charges shelved before he became South African president eight years ago but recently reinstated by the courts should not be brought against him. The revival of the charges could increase pressure on Zuma to step down before his term ends in 2019 and diminish his influence over who succeeds him when the ruling African National Congress (ANC) chooses a new leader in December. The 75-year-old president has faced and denied numerous other corruption allegations since taking office in 2009. The 783 charges, which relate to a 30 billion rand ($2.2 billion) government arms deal arranged in the late 1990s, were filed but then dropped by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) shortly before he ran for the presidency. South Africa s High Court reinstated the charges last year and the Supreme Court upheld that decision in October, rejecting an appeal by Zuma and describing the NPA s decision to set aside the charges as irrational . The NPA said then that Zuma had until Nov. 30 to make submissions before it decided whether to pursue the charges. Spokesmen for the NPA and Zuma were not available for comment on Thursday. Last month s Supreme Court ruling lifted the rand currency against the dollar as investors bet that Zuma s removal may be inching closer. The president is unpopular with many investors after sacking respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan in March, a move that hit South African financial assets and helped tip the country s credit ratings into junk territory. Infighting within the ruling ANC ahead of next month s conference to elect a successor to Zuma as party chief has also sapped confidence among the investors upon whom South Africa relies to finance its hefty budget and current account deficits. One of South Africa s leading universities, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, said on Thursday that it had appointed Gordhan as a visiting professor. He will join other ANC heavyweights who have ended up at the Wits after being sidelined by Zuma, among them another respected and ousted finance minister, Nhlanhla Nene, and former Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni. Widely seen as a competent and honest technocrat, Gordhan has become an unlikely poster boy for public anger at the president, whose administration has been marred by missteps and allegations of corruption. Zuma denies any wrongdoing. ($1 = 13.6794 rand)","label":0}
{"text":"Timing is everything, and no one knows how to seize the moment better than members of the Kardashian family. The progressive left is determined to bully Americans into submission when it comes to accepting the LGBT lifestyle as mainstream. After spending years in the reality TV business, Bruce Jenner just happens to know a thing or two about marketing himself and has a chosen much kinder and more palatable approach. And now, in true Kardashian style, it s time to sit back and cash in and his contribution to the decay of our society big time.Watch new promo for Bruce s new show I am Cait here: How many people go through life and just waste their entire life because they never deal with themselves, with who they are? Jenner says at the start of the 60-second spot. According to a press release, the eight-part, one-hour series I Am Cait will tell the story of Jenner as he lives his new normal. Living for the first time as the person he feels he was born to be, the docuseries will also explore what Bruce s transition means for the people in his life and how those relationships are affected, while offering a better understanding of many of life s challenges, E! said in the statement.The promo follows Jenner as he applies makeup in a mirror and drives out into the world. It s so bright out there, look at that, Jenner says from the backseat of a car. Isn t it great that maybe someday you ll be normal? Just blend into society? You are normal, a woman interjects. Put it this way: I m the new normal, Jenner replies.Bruce Jenner, who appeared for the first time as a transgender woman on an infamous Vanity Fair magazine cover earlier this week, could parlay his transition into a half-billion dollar fortune within a decade, experts predict.Jenner s net worth is already estimated to be $100 million. But experts familiar with the earning potential of media figures told the New York Daily News that the former gold medal Olympian and Keeping Up with the Kardashians star could be worth as much as $500 million in the next five to ten years. She could become the wealthiest of them all, VH1 s The Gossip Table host Rob Shuter told the paper, referring to the rest of the Kardashian family. If Bruce Jenner made $100 million in 65 years, if all the stars align, she could be worth over $500 million in the next five to 10 years. Caitlyn is going to be a pioneer. Jenner is set to star in an eight-part, one-hour reality television series called I Am Cait, airing this summer on E! And he was already earning between $20,000-$40,000 in speaking fees prior to his transition, according to fee tracking website BigSpeak.com. But that figure could shoot up sharply in the wake of Jenner s transformation and subsequent magazine cover. A book deal could hit seven figures, Brian Balthazar, editor of culture website Pop Goes the Week, told the Daily News. Speeches could garner six figures each. There is no denying the transgender movement s recent ascendancy in the national culture. In addition to Jenner s record-breaking magazine cover and upcoming reality show, popular television shows like Amazon s Transparent have catapulted the issue to the forefront of American consciousness, and some companies are already jumping on the chance to get involved.","label":1}
{"text":"What To Watch For At Democrats' First Debate A bruised Hillary Clinton will have much to prove as she takes the debate stage Tuesday evening alongside four of her Democratic presidential challengers. The former secretary of state has been damaged by lingering questions about her private email server and doubts about her trustworthiness. That has partly enabled Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to ride a wave of progressive support to a lead over her in New Hampshire and an impressive $25 million fundraising haul last quarter. Sanders, too, will need to impress in his most high-profile appearance so far. This will be the first chance for many voters to see him on stage, and they'll be watching to see if he's someone they want to be president. \"It's certainly not going to be as entertaining as some of the previous Republican debates, but it will be important, especially for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, to finally show the broader public what exactly they're made of,\" said Jim Manley, a longtime Democratic strategist and former top Senate aide. Of course, there's also the elephant \u2014 or, rather, the donkey \u2014 in the room: Vice President Joe Biden. He's not yet announced his intentions, as he continues a public flirtation with a bid. CNN has left open the possibility of allowing Biden on stage, even if he were to decide as late as Tuesday. He has given no indication that he will do so. But perhaps the most important thing for Democrats is that it's finally their turn in the political spotlight. After two rollicking GOP debates and a cycle that's largely been dominated by the outsiders in the Republican field, party loyalists have worried they are being overshadowed. \"This is the first real opportunity for a Democratic message to break through,\" said Mo Elleithee, a former Democratic National Committee communications director who now directs the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service. \"The numbers game is working against us right now, and the Republican message is penetrating far more than the Democratic message.\" Here's what to watch for from each candidate in the first Democratic debate. CNN's coverage begins at 8:30 p.m. ET, while the debate is expected to start at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday on CNN. Need: Appear likable and straightforward, especially when talking about those emails and recent policy positions She will be center stage and the center of attention. She's the most experienced campaign debater on stage \u2014 there were 25 primary debates in 2008 \u2014 and that will be an asset. But Clinton still has some of the same struggles she had eight years ago \u2014 trying to appear likable and not scripted to a public very skeptical of traditional politicians. \"In Hillary's case, she has to be more likable and come across as genuine and down to earth,\" said Dan Payne, a Democratic strategist and debate coach. \"She is those things, from what people say who know her well. She can talk to day-to-day people about their lives and share experiences, but somehow it doesn't come across when she's on camera. She gets stiff and stern, and not likable.\" She wasn't that way during her cameo on Saturday Night Live last week, Payne noted, and that should be an instance her team should draw from. \"She was self-aware,\" he added. \"She was poking fun at herself and doing it with a laugh. If she can do that in the debate occasionally, it can help.\" One of the first questions directed to her will likely be about her email server. She has yet to put to rest questions about why she had the private server and whether it was a security threat. Last month she finally apologized for the decision, but it may have been too little too late. In an interview on 60 Minutes on Sunday, President Obama said the server was not a national-security threat. But he did not forcefully defend Clinton, instead directing questions back to her. \"I would hope that, if pressed, she would again apologize for allowing this to be an issue in the first place,\" said Manley, who is a Clinton supporter. It's no mistake that in the run-up to the debate, Clinton came out against both the Keystone XL Pipeline and Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership, something she once called the \"gold standard\" of trade agreements. Clinton was trying to clean up messy policy positions ahead of the debate. But Clinton will still likely have to answer whether the moves were politically calculated. Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley have been against both for some time; expect them to point out the disparity. Need: Convince a national audience he's presidential material and that he can branch out beyond his core economic message While Sanders may not have had much campaign debating experience \u2014 he has faced mostly safe elections in Vermont \u2014 he does have more than two decades of congressional experience to draw from. He brings skills debating on the House and Senate floor and in committees to Tuesday's event. His challenge will be translating the considerable enthusiasm he's been generating on the campaign trail to the debate stage. Filling arenas is quite impressive, but facing questions from moderators and elbows from his rivals is another thing entirely. \"He can give a line or two or three and get a roar from the crowd,\" Payne said, \"but you have much longer in a TV debate \u2014 you have to sustain your argument for 45 seconds to a minute.\" Don't expect Sanders to go for the jugular against his chief rival, though. As much as the moderators might try to goad him into it, the Vermont senator has largely avoided direct attacks on Clinton, and his team has telegraphed to expect the same on Tuesday. Instead of focusing on lobbing hits, Politico reported, his somewhat limited debate prep has instead been policy-heavy. Ultimately, Democrats say, they don't anticipate fireworks between the two top candidates. \"I suspect that neither one is really going to go after the other,\" predicted Elleithee, who worked on Clinton's 2008 campaign. \"They may disagree, and they will point out where they disagree. That's normal, and that's fine. But I don't think you'll see either one come in and try to tear the other one down. That would be a bad strategy.\" But Sanders will have to keep his cool throughout the debate, too. He's been testy with reporters when pressed in the past, and that type of reaction might not play well in front of a national TV audience. \"In Bernie's case, he has to be in control and not appear unpleasant \u2014 be a man who you could conceivably believe is president,\" said Payne, the debate coach. \"If you're angry, it may come across as extremely harsh.\" Need: Show he belongs in consideration as a top-tier candidate Avoid: Debating about debates and getting on a high horse Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has struggled to catch fire, but has also proven to be the most dogged Clinton attacker of the bunch \u2014 another element Clinton will have to manage. Ultimately, O'Malley may have the most to gain and the most to lose during Tuesday's debate. Once seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, he was supposed to have been the top alternative to Clinton. Instead, that distinction has gone to Sanders (or possibly even Biden, if he does indeed run). Now, O'Malley needs to give a rationale for his candidacy and prove he can be an able sparring partner with both Clinton and Sanders. O'Malley has vigorously pushed for more debates instead of the scheduled six face-offs, and he needs to show why that's a good idea for him. \"This could be his Scott Walker moment,\" Elleithee said, comparing O'Malley to the Wisconsin governor whose presidential campaign was doomed after a dismal performance in the second GOP debate. \"O'Malley can either break through and show he deserves to be considered as a top-tier candidate,\" he continued, \"or if he doesn't break through, his advisers are going to have to circle up, re-calibrate, and figure out what they're going to say to donors. The rationale for his candidacy is not very evident.\" That doesn't mean O'Malley should come in being a bomb-thrower, which could backfire on stage. Instead, he needs to draw well-reasoned contrasts with his opponents. One top issue where he could do that is on gun control, which is back in the news after yet another mass shooting last week. O'Malley has, by far, the most progressive and far-reaching plan of any Democratic candidate. He also stands in contrast especially with Sanders, who has had a mixed record on the issue. Need: A breakout moment to show they're serious candidates Avoid: Getting left out of the conversation The other two candidates on stage \u2014 former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee \u2014 have been almost entirely absent from the campaign trail and will simply need to explain why they're in the race. Both need to introduce themselves to voters, as expectations are already very low. Webb, the only veteran on the stage, could bring a valuable voice in terms of foreign policy and national security. \"He needs to tell his story,\" Payne said. \"He was a star in the making eight years ago, but once he left the Senate, his star has all but extinguished.\" Chafee, a former GOP senator turned independent turned Democrat, could still have to explain his liberal bona fides and defend a controversial tenure as Rhode Island governor. Expect him to needle Clinton on her vote for the Iraq War \u2014 and to point out that even as a Republican, he opposed it from the start. Both Webb and Chafee need a breakthrough moment.","label":0}
{"text":"Starting Saturday, about two million Muslims will participate in the hajj, an annual pilgrimage to holy sites in Saudi Arabia. I'll be participating for the first time, and to prepare, I assembled an eclectic reading list including Islamic history, firsthand accounts of the hajj and spiritual meditations. I am rereading \"The Autobiography of Malcolm X,\" which culminates with one of the most meaningful passages I have ever encountered on the pilgrimage. Also, I revisited \"The Sun Also Rises\" by Ernest Hemingway, for his sharp prose and as a reminder that a journey can always be an adventure. I bought \"Getting the Best Out of \" by Abu Muneer Ismail Davids, a droll manual that includes invaluable advice, including where to camp at the plains of Mina, why you should bring an inflatable mattress, and what direction to walk to avoid being crushed by the crowds of pilgrims. I have already flagged many pages with note reminders. Also on the list: \u2022 \"Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam,\" edited by Venetia Porter, to help me understand the spiritual importance of the hajj. \u2022 \"The Siege of Mecca: The 1979 Uprising at Islam's Holiest Shrine,\" by Yaroslav Trofimov, about the great rupture almost 40 years ago between Saudi Arabia and Iran that played out at the hajj. \u2022 Finally, \"Sea Without Shore: A Manual of the Sufi Path\" by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, to immerse myself in some spirituality before I head to Mecca.","label":0}
{"text":"The lead Brexit negotiator for the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, said on Thursday that a Brexit withdrawal agreement could be reached with Britain. That s the assumption that I have and it is towards that that we work, Verhofstadt said after a speech to students at the London School of Economics. And that a withdrawal agreement be done in March 2019 means that there has to be an agreement in fact in October or November because then the agreement will go to the European Parliament and we need four or five months, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"The ethics committee of the U.S. House of Representatives said on Tuesday it would continue to investigate possible conflicts of interest by Representative Alan Grayson, a Florida Democrat and liberal firebrand running for the Senate seat soon to be vacated by Marco Rubio. The possible conflicts of interest relate to Grayson's roles as both a hedge fund manager and a member of Congress. The committee in a statement said the matter needed further review; it gave no time frame for completion. Grayson has denied any wrongdoing. In a statement Tuesday, his campaign called the ethics probe a \"political witch hunt.\" The extension means the issue will still hover over a race that is seen as key to Democrats' bid to wrest control of the Senate from Republicans in November's elections. The primary is in August. The New York Times reported in February that emails and the fund's marketing documents showed Grayson had promoted his international travels, some with congressional delegations, to solicit business for the fund, in possible violation of House ethics rules. \"The larger picture here is that the Washington political establishment has decided who their favored candidate is, and it's not Rep. Grayson,\" the statement from Grayson's campaign said. Top Democrats have tried to get Grayson to drop out of the Florida Senate race because of the questions about the hedge fund, throwing their support to Democratic opponent Representative Patrick Murphy. President Barack Obama has endorsed Murphy, and Vice President Joe Biden has campaigned with Murphy. Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said earlier this year that Grayson's actions had disgraced Congress and that he should leave the Senate race immediately. But Grayson has been endorsed by some grassroots liberal groups who appreciate his outspokenness. One of his more famous lines, delivered during the Obamacare debate in 2009, was that the Republican health-care plan for America amounted to \"don't get sick,\" and if you do, \"die quickly.\" The New York Times reported that Grayson had created the hedge fund in 2011 after losing a race for re-election to Congress, and kept it open after he was re-elected in 2012. According to filings with the Securities and Exchange, the fund had been called the Grayson Fund, but Grayson changed the name to Sibylline Fund LP. The Times reported the fund had closed branches previously located in the Cayman Islands. Rubio, who recently ended a campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, leaves the Senate after this year after just one term. Republicans seeking the seat include Representatives Ron DeSantis and David Jolly.","label":0}
{"text":"Brand new White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is off to a rough start. In just a few days, the media has been relentless for calling him out on his never-ending stream of lies, or, as Kellyanne Conway put it, alternative facts. Publicly, everything seems peachy keen after all, the boss has been known to fudge a truth or a few thousand. Privately, though, there s word that the Trump White House is already looking to replace its first scapegoat. Not, though, because of the lies. Trump s not a fan of Spicer s performance because of optics:Politico Playbook alum Mike Allen writes, This West Wing is a tough neighborhood. Even AFTER Sean Spicer s successful get-back-on-the-horse presser yesterday, I m told that a top White House official was discussing his possible replacement. On Day 4! He continues, reporting that Trump himself is displeased with Spicer for reasons completely divorced from his argumentative skills. Unfortunately for Spicer, Trump is obsessed with his press secretary s performance art. Our Jonathan Swan hears that Trump hasn t been impressed with how Spicer dresses, once asking an aide: Doesn t the guy own a dark suit? Source: MediaiteTrump s problem with Spicer has nothing to do with the media s calling him out on his lies. If anything, for Trump, Spicer didn t lie enough, and he certainly didn t prop up his new Commander-in-Chief enough:Many critics thought Spicer went too far and compromised his integrity. But in Trump s mind, Spicer s attack on the news media was not forceful enough. The president was also bothered that the spokesman read, at times haltingly, from a printed statement.Trump has been resentful, even furious, at what he views as the media s failure to reflect the magnitude of his achievements, and he feels demoralized that the public s perception of his presidency so far does not necessarily align with his own sense of accomplishment.Source: Washington PostAs for Trump preferring a woman, don t take that as a sign that the glass ceiling will break during Trump s administration. Trump wants a spokesmodel who he can easily manipulate.While Spicer might get better at his job and at predicting his boss wants, press secretaries don t have a lot of job stability. None have lost their jobs after less than a week though.Featured image by Shawn Thew via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Last night during the third debate, FOX News Chris Wallace asked Donald J. Trump if he would accept the election results? With multiple stories of voter fraud being committed by Democrats across the nation and a video (see below) proving that the DNC and Hillary s campaign are coordinating with criminals to plan massive voter fraud, why would Trump make a statement that he was willing to accept the outcome of the election regardless of how it may be won? Hillary chastised Trump for having VERY LEGITIMATE concerns over the potential for voter fraud to swing the election. Her admonishment was carried by every mainstream media outlet, but wait what about the Al Gore election result?Here s the exchange:Here s Hillary discussing Al Gore s contested election to CNN s Larry King: From everything I ve seen and heard, ah more people did intend to vote for Vice President Al Gore. I hope there still will be an opportunity to have the votes counted. I think that s the best for whoever is inaugurated. Watch Al Gore s announce at a press conference in 2000, that he will continue to contest the results of the election and even suggests the Republicans committed voter fraud in the hotly contested 2000 election against George W. Bush.Al Gore even goes as far as to suggest the GOP prevented blacks from voting (a common Democratic Party tactic). He makes it perfectly clear that he will not concede the election until the Supreme Court makes a decision on the election:And more recently, here is Hillary nodding in agreement with her small crowd of supporters as they chant You won! to her featured guest, professional liar and con-man Al Gore:https:\/\/youtu.be\/xpYwiYvSO8MWatch Jr. Senator Barack Obama suggest the results of the Florida Supreme Court decision on the Bush-Gore election was incorrect (challenging the election results):WATCH this video and then tell us if you would accept the results of the election if the race is close and Hillary wins:","label":1}
{"text":"In case you haven t heard, after Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered an investigation into Planned Parenthood after disingenuous, heavily-edited videos were produced by the deceptively-named Center For Medical Progress. The videos, which claimed the women s health organization sold baby parts to the highest bidder, launched a wave of investigations nationwide all of which turned up absolutely no wrongdoing on the part of Planned Parenthood.One such investigation in Texas involved Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast. Though a grand jury cleared the much-maligned institution of any and all wrongdoing, two indictments were handed down against the producers of the anti-Planned Parenthood fabrications.David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt were both indicted for Tampering with a Governmental Record. In addition, Daleiden received an indictment for Prohibition of the Purchase and Sale of Human Organs an incredibly serious charge. We were called upon to investigate allegations of criminal conduct by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, said Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson. As I stated at the outset of this investigation, we must go where the evidence leads us. All the evidence uncovered in the course of this investigation was presented to the grand jury. I respect their decision on this difficult case. The people behind this fraud lied and broke the law in order to spread malicious lies about Planned Parenthood to advance their extreme anti-abortion political agenda, Planned Parenthood said in a statement. As the dust settles and the truth comes out, it s become totally clear that the only people who engaged in wrongdoing are the criminals behind this fraud, and we re glad they are being held accountable. Nothing about today s announcement in Harris County impacts the state s ongoing investigation, said Governor Abbott, who promised to continue to waste state money in fruitless attempts to smear the women s health group. The State of Texas will continue to protect life, and I will continue to support legislation prohibiting the sale or transfer of fetal tissue. The horrific nature of these videos demand scrutiny and investigation. The Senate Committee on Health and Human Services will continue to examine the practices of abortion providers and whether state law adequately protects the sanctity of life, Lt. gov. Dan Patrick added. I will never be deterred from standing up to fight to protect the unborn. Daleiden s supporters similarly don t care about the facts, with many demanding an investigation into the grand jury because they can t possibly think that laws were broken when the Center for Medical Progress illegally recorded privileged information and slopping edited clips together to give the impression of wrongdoing no matter what the evidence says. On Fox News Facebook page, they let their thoughts (we use that word loosely) be known: It s important to remember that these people will be voting in November.","label":1}
{"text":"on November 13, 2016 3:09 pm \u00b7  As predicted, Donald Trump's victory on Election Day has emboldened racist conservatives to start harassing and attacking minorities.  And it's even happening in the deep blue state of California, where a woman spotted a sign hanging on the side of a building in the town of Pittsburg and snapped a photo of it.  Twitter user James Thompson posted the image of the sign on the social media platform after his sister sent it to him. This picture was taken in Pittsburgh California. My sister texted this to me 10 minutes ago.Our democracy is being tested even in California pic.twitter.com\/gDLKw54Lox  \u2014 James Thompson (@JETBallin) November 13, 2016  The sign clearly promotes lynching to prevent African-Americans from getting equal rights.  \"You can hang a n****r from a tree \/ Equal rights he will never see!\" it says.  The FBI has been notified and local police have filed a lawsuit in an effort to force the owners of the sign to remove it.  In the wake of Trump's surprising and depressing victory there has been a rise in the number of racist incidents in this country. In fact, there have been 139 reports of people being bullied by Trump supporters since the election night results.  These incidents include the harassment of a Muslim teacher by a student in Georgia, and students designating water fountains \"white\" or \"colored\" at a Florida high school.  Frankly, there are so many incidents that it's difficult to list them all. You can find a somewhat comprehensive tally here .  This is what Trump's America looks like and it's scary. And this has all happend in the course of a few days as Melania Trump continues to tell the media that her focus will be on ending bullying. What exactly does she mean by that? Is she going to call out all bullying, including the racist bullying being perpetrated by her husband's own supporters? Or is she going to ignore those incidents and merely whine about people who criticize her husband. Because right now, she isn't even First Lady yet and her \"effort\" has failed miserably. And she only has her husband to blame.","label":1}
{"text":"The leaders of the U.S. intelligence community on Thursday pressed Congress to renew the National Security Agency's expiring surveillance law, warning in a rare public statement that national security may be endangered if lawmakers let it lapse. The message from the intelligence chiefs sought to apply pressure on lawmakers who appeared to abandon an effort this week to pass legislation that would have reauthorized for several years the NSA's warrantless internet spying program, which is due to expire on Dec. 31. That plan cratered late on Wednesday amid objections from a sizable coalition of Republicans and Democrats who want to have more privacy safeguards in the program, which chiefly targets foreigners but also collects communications from an unknown number of Americans. Instead, House Republicans unveiled a stopgap funding measure on Thursday that includes an extension of the surveillance law until Jan. 19. The law, known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is considered by U.S. intelligence agencies to be vital to national security. \"There is no substitute for Section 702,\" Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the directors the NSA, FBI and CIA wrote in the joint statement, adding that failure to renew the authority would make it easier for foreign adversaries to \"plan attacks against our citizens and allies without detection.\" Section 702 allows the NSA to collect vast amounts of digital communications from foreign suspects living outside the United States. But the program incidentally gathers communications of Americans for a variety of technical reasons, including if they communicate with a foreign target living overseas. Those communications can then be subject to searches without a warrant, including by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Some lawmakers in both parties want to eliminate or partially restrict the U.S. government's ability to review data of Americans collected under Section 702 without first obtaining a warrant. The intelligence chiefs also criticized the current plan to temporarily extend the program, saying short-term extensions \"fail to provide certainty and will create needless and wasteful operational complications.\" U.S. officials recently acknowledged the end-year deadline may not matter much because of a belief the program can lawfully continue through April due to the way it is annually certified. In their statement, however, the intelligence chiefs warned that the surveillance program would need to begin \"winding down\" well in advance of the April date.","label":0}
{"text":"Their leads, however, are all within the margin of error, indicating a tight race in the three key early nominating states. In New Hampshire, Bush leads the pack with 18 percent support among potential Republican primary voters. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker takes 15%, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul takes 14% and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie draws 13% support. Huckabee takes 17% support from potential GOP caucus-goers in Iowa, barely edging Bush, who nabs 16% support. Walker again draws the support of 15% of respondents, while Christie takes 9% and Paul draws 7%. In South Carolina, Graham draws 17% support, while Bush takes 15% and Walker takes 12% support. Huckabee and neurosurgeon Ben Carson tie with 10% of respondents. The surveys, though early in the nominating contest, may be most troubling for Bush. They suggest despite being well-known as the son and brother of two former presidents, and though he's emerged as the preferred candidate of the GOP establishment, Bush hasn't yet convinced the party's primary voters to get on board. The South Carolina results, too, suggest even Graham's constituents are lukewarm about his presidential aspirations. On the Democratic side, the contest looks far more settled \u2014 former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leads the field by 45% or more in all three states. NBC and Marist did not poll the preferred candidate of progressives, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, because she's repeatedly said she won't run. The New Hampshire survey was conducted from Feb. 3-10 among 381 potential GOP primary voters and has a margin of error of 5%; the Iowa survey was conducted over the same period, among 320 potential GOP caucus-goers, and has a margin of error of 5.5%; and the South Carolina poll was conducted over the same period among 450 potential GOP primary voters and has a margin of error of 4.6%.","label":0}
{"text":"The Black Panther Party was founded 50 years ago in Oakland, Calif. on Oct. 15, 1966. Within two years, it had chapters across the country. The Times is marking the occasion by exploring the Black Panthers' legacy through their iconography and how they were covered in our own pages. Fifty years later, images from the Black Panther Party's heyday still flicker in our national memory. With their leather jackets, black berets and lock step formations, these youthful revolutionaries were for media coverage \u2014 and for posterity. With the heroic era of the civil rights movement glimmering to a close in 1966, the Black Panthers showed that a more radical struggle for racial justice could be photogenic, even if it was less palatable to the mainstream. An ironic tension emerged in the way the press treated the Black Panthers: Journalists were at once fascinated and frightened by them. And The New York Times was no exception. \"At the same time the newspaper was dubious and skeptical of them, it also gave them a tremendous amount of coverage,\" said Jane Rhodes, a professor of studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of \"Framing the Black Panthers: The Spectacular Rise of a Black Power Icon. \" \"The media, like most of white America, was deeply frightened by their aggressive and assertive style of protest,\" Professor Rhodes said. \"And they were offended by it. \" When Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party, their first goal was to confront what they saw as an epidemic of police brutality. They took to the streets with rifles, standing guard over policemen on patrol. The California Assembly responded quickly, proposing a law to ban the open carrying of firearms. So the Panthers, fully armed, marched into the California state Capitol to protest the bill. The national news media took notice. The Times's first article on the Panthers was a wire report, \"Armed Negroes Protest Gun Bill,\" published on May 3, 1967. The piece began, \"With loaded rifles and shotguns in their hands, members of the antiwhite Black Panther party marched into the state Capitol today. \" What the article did not explicitly say, though it was reported later by others, was that the Panthers had read a statement that afternoon calling \"upon the American people in general\" \u2014 not just \u2014 to help them in their push for rights. The Times sent its own reporter a few days later to write a profile of Mr. Newton, the party's young . That article was no more measured than the first. It barely mentioned police brutality, instead lavishing attention on the fact that the Panthers had weapons. \"Political power comes through the barrel of a gun,\" Newton was quoted as saying. To some degree, the Panthers were responsible for presenting themselves as a legion. \"This is how the Black Panther Party wanted to be seen,\" said Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University. \"The Panthers and The Times were taking part in a coproduction. \" And in subsequent articles, The Times did investigate the Panthers' broader goals a bit more closely. A Times Magazine article by Sol Stern argued that \"to write off the Panthers as a fringe group of little influence is to miss the point. The group's roots are in the desperation and anger that no legislation or poverty program has touched in the ghetto. \" But as tensions with law enforcement escalated into increasingly violent clashes, the press focused with increasing intensity on violence between the Panthers and the police \u2014 especially Newton's violent with a police officer in October 1967, which led to a murder trial the next year. There was far less attention paid to the party's critique of law enforcement. What went largely unreported was the fact that these conflicts stemmed not just from the Panthers, but also from the federal government. With chapters springing up in dozens of cities, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover, mounted a covert operation to discredit the group and create strife within it. He declared the Panthers \"the greatest threat to the internal security of the country. \" It was not until years later that the Senate's Church Committee would show how pervasively the F. B. I. worked against the Panthers and how much it influenced press coverage. It encouraged urban police forces to confront Black Panthers planted informants and agents provocateurs and intimidated local community members who were sympathetic to the group. The conflict that inevitably followed played directly into the narrative that had been established: that the party was a provocative, dangerous organization. This was never more apparent than in 1969, when the F. B. I. 's campaign to undermine the party reached its peak. Black Panthers in New York, known as the Panther 21, were charged with plotting to set off bombs throughout New York City. A surge of media coverage followed, with The Times among those outlets leading the way. Almost two years later, all the defendants were cleared, after it became clear that the charges stemmed almost entirely from the provocations of three three undercover operatives with the New York City Police Department who had embedded themselves within the organization. Internal documents made public during a lawsuit brought by Dhoruba bin Wahad, one of the defendants, show that the F. B. I. had used the press \u2014 particularly the New York news media \u2014 to create strife within the party and to convey the impression that it was a volatile group. Agents wrote of \"an effort to obtain news media publicity highlighting friction between east and west coast BPP leadership personnel,\" according to one F. B. I. memo procured in the 1980s by Mr. Wahad's legal team. Another discusses \"distributing copies of a critical article on the BPP which appeared in the 'New York Times. '\" As The Times focused on the trial and other conflicts between the Panthers and the police, the party was organizing a slate of service programs for in New York. But they went relatively unnoticed. \"We didn't get covered by any of the media when we were doing these types of things, really \u2014 only when some of us would get arrested,\" Mr. Wahad said in an interview. Beginning in late 1968, fatigued by constant conflict and what they saw as sensational coverage, the Panthers refocused their efforts away from policing the police and toward providing health care and other services to the urban poor. They began in California's Bay Area with a breakfast program for school children, and eventually developed initiatives around education and housing advocacy. The Times did eventually report on some of these programs, but often with a tone of skepticism. An article on Dec. 7, 1968, mentioned the party's free breakfast program, but only to suggest that it was part of a ploy to indoctrinate . The article, \"Black Panthers Growing, but Their Troubles Rise,\" suggested that as the party grew, it was intimidating residents and struggling to formulate a coherent direction. When it did mention the breakfast program, the article called it merely \"a means of improving its image. \" The Times painted a slightly different picture the following June, when it ran a full feature on the breakfast program, nearly nine months after the party's official newspaper, The Black Panther, announced the initiative. But mostly, the programs were treated as publicity stunts, or worse. The fact that The Times did respond, to some degree, to the organization's change of focus was largely because of a growing cadre of reporters. In July 1969, Earl Caldwell, who is black, wrote an article, \"Panthers' Meeting Shifts Aims From Racial Confrontation to Class Struggle,\" and followed it with a piece for the Week in Review section, \"Panthers: They Are Not the Same Organization. \" \"One thing The Times figured out was that the Panthers were selling newspapers,\" Professor Rhodes said. \"The coverage of the Panthers was attracting a younger audience, maybe more of a black audience. \" \"Black reporters were able to do much better reporting because they had greater credibility and greater access,\" she said. But that was becoming a moot point: By 1969, the party was being torn asunder, its East and West Coast factions rived by distrust, largely because of the F. B. I. And in the court of public opinion, the Panthers had already lost. A Harris Survey showed that in April 1970, just 10 percent of Americans thought that \"a fairly sizable number of Black Panthers have been shot and killed by law enforcement officers\" because law enforcement officers were trying to wipe out the Panthers \u2014 exactly what Hoover privately said his mission was. of the country said that police shootings of Panthers were due to violence started by the Panthers themselves. Just 16 percent perceived the Panthers as doing good work for disadvantaged youth. Looking at contemporary news coverage, Professor Rhodes said progress has been made when it comes to covering race and activism. \"I see organizations like The Times making a much more sustained effort at deeper coverage,\" she said. But articles still tend to emphasize the conflict between the police and protesters, she said, without addressing the core principles guiding social movements such as Black Lives Matter: greater investment in public education, community control of law enforcement and economic justice. \"There's a lot of examples to be learned from the example of the Black Panthers, in terms of taking a look at not just rhetoric and styles of protest, but also looking for some understanding of what protest means and what it intends,\" she said.","label":0}
{"text":"A day before they killed Yemen s former president, gunmen from the Iran-aligned Houthi militia group overran one of Ali Abdullah Saleh s fortified compounds in Sanaa. Ransacking the villa, they snapped photos of liquor flasks and vodka bottles and posted them online. This is how the traitor (Saleh) and his family lived during a time of war, siege and cholera, Hamid Rizq, a senior Houthi official, said on his official Twitter account. The Houthi gunmen acted fast and mercilessly to punish the 75-year-old Saleh for having appeared to switch sides in Yemen s three-year civil war - a proxy battle for influence between regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia. Allied with the Houthis for three years, Saleh had called on Saturday for a new page in relations with Saudi Arabia. The murder is a setback for Riyadh, which had hoped the backing of Saleh and his loyalist army units in northern Yemen - would help close a war that has killed 10,000 people and caused one of the world s most acute humanitarian crises. Saudi Arabia fears the Houthis will become as powerful a force in the Middle East as Lebanon s Iran-backed Hezbollah. The Houthis are holding their ground despite air strikes by Saudi Arabia and its allied forces and a naval blockade that has prevented food, medicine and fuel from arriving in Houthi-controlled northern areas, bringing the region to the brink of famine. Last month, the Houthis fired a ballistic missile into Riyadh. Now, the Saudis are turning their hopes to Saleh s son Ahmed Ali and his good ties with Saudi ally United Arab Emirates to do the job his father couldn t. Photos of Ahmed Ali, a military leader admired by thousands of soldiers in Houthi-run lands, appeared on the front page of UAE newspapers on Wednesday meeting the UAE s de-facto leader Mohammed bin Zayed. Saleh s death caps a 40-year political career that charts Yemen s tragic modern history. A country with few natural resources, awash in weapons and fractured along tribal and religious lines, Yemen has long been buffeted by its powerful neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia. Saleh was the first leader of a unified Yemen in 1990. But he shifted loyalties various times - fighting the Houthis in the 2000s, for example - as the plates of influence shifted in the Middle East. In this latest geopolitical drama, the UAE is emerging as playmaker in the Yemen crisis. The UAE has been financing and training armed groups that have been pushing toward the Red Sea port of Hodeida, a Houthi stronghold and entry point for supplies getting to millions of civilians in northern Yemen. The Saleh family has long enjoyed good relations with the wealthy Gulf state, which had over the decades funded infrastructure projects in Yemen before becoming a key member of the Saudi-led coalition. Hamza al-Houthi, a top Houthi leader, said the Houthis had suspected the Saleh family s allegiance to the Saudi-held coalition for some time and that tensions had been brewing since August. Al-Houthi said his troops had intercepted UAE arms shipments bound for Saleh s family late last month. As punishment, the Houthis killed his nephew Tareq on Monday. Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said the latest events mean the war in Yemen is likely to escalate. The Houthis, while an important military force, are not particularly adept at politics or governance. Their reach...in the population is limited, and over time that will play into their opponents hands. But that won t happen anytime soon, so it looks like the conflict will worsen. Saleh s relationship with Saudi Arabia and its allies has been marked by politics and prayer. Over the past few decades, Riyadh has tried, in succession, to quash an anti-royalist revolution, Marxism and al Qaeda militancy in Yemen. Riyadh backed Saleh, an Arab nationalist strongman, between 1978 and 2012 to help him quash those ideologies before they could seep next door to Saudi Arabia. But as Arab Spring protests rocked Yemen swept through the Middle East, Riyadh realized Saleh was no longer strong enough for the job and backed a transition to his deputy Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. When the Houthis attacked Sanaa in 2014 and swept Hadi into Saudi exile, Riyadh began the bombing campaign that continues today. At that time, Saleh took one of the riskiest gambles of his turbulent career, allying himself to the Houthis, heirs to a theocratic sect that ruled Yemen for a thousand years. Saleh s Yemeni military which had jets, tank brigades and long-range missiles had fought the Houthis in six wars over ten years at the time Saleh had allied himself with Saudi and Western powers. With Saleh s experience administering the country and cultivating a strong military, the Houthis made major military gains around the country and together their forces withstood thousands of Saudi-led air strikes. But the Houthi-Saleh entente cracked in August when a Houthi leader passed over a trusted Saleh confidante for a key military position, according to people in the General People s Congress Party, the grouping of technocrats and tribal grandees that did Saleh s bidding throughout his rule. Saleh loyalists itched for revenge, they said. Fearing disloyalty, the Houthis restricted Saleh to his fief in Sanaa s political district. Gerald Feierstein, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen of the Middle East Institute in Washington, said the Houthis then waged their war largely without him. Saleh was largely a spent force by the time he died in a weekend s fighting, wrote Feierstein in a policy brief. On November 29, tensions exploded. Rumors swirled in the city of Sanaa that the Houthis were planning to paint the domes of a giant mosque and palace that Saleh had built and named after himself in their trademark green. When Houthi militia neared the palace, Saleh s guards fired. The Houthis, experts in mountain guerrilla warfare, overran the palace with grenades and seized it. The Houthis wanted Saleh to hand over his weapons and disarm his fighters, a senior Saleh party official told Reuters. He refused. Another party official said that, contrary to reports that Saleh was in his car trying to flee when he was killed on Dec. 4, the former president had been executed with a gunshot to the head after making a last stand at his house. Now, the Saleh associate says he and his colleagues are afraid the Houthis will turn against all of them. The Houthis want to kill us all. For a graphic on Yemen's stalemated war, click tmsnrt.rs\/2zqGyq9","label":0}
{"text":"The head of a congressional committee investigating contacts between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia said on Monday the panel had not seen evidence of inappropriate communications, prompting the panel's top Democrat to insist it was too early to make such a determination. Devin Nunes, Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, also said there was no need for a special prosecutor and dismissed a suggestion that Trump should release his tax returns to clear up allegations he has business ties to Russia. \"What are we going to appoint a special prosecutor to do, exactly?\" he asked reporters. Nunes, who was a member of Trump's presidential transition team, said U.S. intelligence officials had not yet presented the committee with evidence of contacts between Trump campaign staff and Russian intelligence. \"It's been looked into and there's no evidence of anything there,\" Nunes told a news conference, called after a weekend report by the Washington Post that the Trump administration asked him and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr to call journalists to knock down reports about possible collusion. The story fueled concerns about whether congressional committees led by Trump's fellow Republicans would conduct a serious investigation of the politically charged allegations. Nunes acknowledged that the White House had given him a reporter's number, but said the administration had not asked him to knock down reports. He said his communications with news organizations was intended to promote transparency. Underscoring the partisan divide, Representative Adam Schiff, the intelligence committee's top Democrat, told his own news conference later on Monday that a non-partisan investigation would be most effective, insisting it was too early to comment on any evidence. \"When you begin an investigation, you don't begin by stating what you believe to be the conclusion,\" he said. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said Nunes' remarks raised \"serious questions about stonewalling.\" Potential contact between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia, and possible Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election on Trump's behalf, have prompted Democrats to demand a select committee or special prosecutor. Most of Trump's fellow Republicans in Congress have resisted such suggestions, prompting Democrats to contrast their approach with their multiple investigations of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, including her use of a private email server. Republican Representative Darrell Issa broke with the party line by calling for an independent review. \"I want the Trump administration to be successful and that starts with embracing high standards for openness and transparency,\" he said in a statement. Schiff said he was not confident that James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would provide investigators with all the information they would need. Comey, a Republican, drew furious criticism from Democrats for saying just before the election that he was looking at emails related to Clinton's use of a private server. Nunes said he did not want U.S. citizens to be hauled before Congress because of news reports about their potential ties to Russia. \"We can't have McCarthyism back in this place,\" he said, alluding to the notorious 1950s Senate hearings into Americans' potential ties to Communism.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday that Obamacare was \"exploding\" after Republican lawmakers shelved legislation that would have dismantled the healthcare law. That's not going to happen this month. Probably not even this year. The more than 12 million people who bought 2017 health insurance plans on HealthCare.gov and other websites the law created are not in danger of losing their healthcare or having their premiums go up right now, experts say. But 2018 is another story. Republicans could choose to pass a budget that defunds Obamacare's cost-sharing subsidies, which help low-income people cover out-of-pocket and other medical costs. But that would be highly unpopular among consumers who would likely blame the president and Congress for skyrocketing healthcare costs, experts said. \"That is one of the ways that is available to monkey wrench the Affordable Care Act,\" said Morgan Tilleman, an associate with the law firm Foley & Lardner, who represents insurers. Obamacare, former Democratic President Barack Obama's signature legislation created by the Affordable Care Act of 2010, has had a tough beginning. The mix of sick and healthy customers has been worse than expected, and premium rates on the individual insurance market went up 25 percent this year. Other parts of the law, like the expansion of Medicaid to enhance coverage for the poor, and changes to allow young people to stay on their parents' health plans, have been popular. And the defeat of the bill is a win for the hospitals that have benefited from those increased Medicaid dollars. But many counties across the country have only one insurer, after Humana Inc, Aetna Inc and UnitedHealth Group Inc pulled out after reporting hundreds of millions of dollars of losses. The insurers who are left, Anthem Inc and other BlueCross BlueShield insurers across the country, as well as smaller players like Centene Corp and Molina Healthcare Inc need to decide in the next few months where to sell insurance and how much to charge. And that is where the market's slow burn takes off, with insurers leaving and premiums rising. Jeff Jonas, a portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds who focuses on health care, said that for consumers, 2018 looks uncertain, with a \"death spiral\" of decreasing competition and increasing premium rates ramping up. After the failed Republican effort to push through the bill, insurers are looking at changes to help 2018, America's Health Insurance Plans spokeswoman Kristine Grow said. That includes the market's cost-sharing subsidies as well as other government payments for sicker-than-usual customers and finalizing a rule the Trump administration proposed that addresses issues insurers say drives up costs. The Trump administration could do some of that itself if it wants to, such as using its regulatory authority to adjust the formula for how it compensates insurers for the sickest people, Elizabeth Carpenter at healthcare consultancy and research firm Avalere Health said. But it is unknown if the administration will try to work within the law's existing framework or take actions to undermine it and blame the Democrats for its failure. \"If they fail to act and they don't act in an appropriate way, that will further destabilize the marketplace,\" Dr. Mario Molina, CEO of Molina Healthcare, said. Molina's enrollment ballooned to 1 million exchange enrollees this year and the company is weighing if it will submit plans for next year. The administration could also decide to not enforce the individual mandate, which requires that everyone purchase health insurance or pay a fine. It already took steps to erode that provision last month, when it backed off implementing tougher oversight that was due to go into effect for 2016 taxes. Experts said the individual mandate still cost less than purchasing insurance, but as it increases each year more young and healthy people would have incentive to join the healthcare market, helping to offset the cost of sicker patients. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 14 million more people would be uninsured under the Republican bill next year, with most of the increase coming from the repeal of the penalty associated with the individual mandate. It's unclear what the Republicans will do. Trump said this bill had been shelved but that Republicans would end up with a \"great\" healthcare bill in the future, but for now that they are moving onto tax reform. Until they do that, they will have to work within the 2010 Affordable Care Act. It can also undercut the healthcare law through regulatory authority at the Department of Health and Human Services.","label":0}
{"text":"Saturday on MSNBC's \"AM Joy,\" MSNBC terrorism analyst Malcolm Nance argued that President Donald Trump \"never promised democracy\" in the election, and instead \"always promised autocracy. \" \"Vladimir Putin views Donald Trump as an ally because he intends to establish a series of global autocracies and link the world through autocracy, not through the old communism that he was brought up with,\" Nance said to host Joy Reid. He added, \"Donald Trump never promised democracy in this election. If you go back, he's always promised autocracy. In fact, you could argue that \u2026 Donald Trump is the closest thing we've ever had to King George III and they're very, very much alike. \" Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Obama administration on Thursday in rebuffing a bid by 20 states to halt an Environmental Protection Agency rule to curb emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants from power plants. The action came about a month after the high court put on hold federal regulations to curb carbon dioxide emissions mainly from coal-fired power plants, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's strategy to combat climate change. Chief Justice John Roberts denied a petition made last week by the states, led by Michigan, to put the rule on hold after a federal appeals court decided in December to leave it intact while the EPA reassessed costs of implementing the regulation. The states had argued that a stay was necessary because the Supreme Court had \"already held that the finding on which the rule rests is unlawful and beyond the EPA's statutory authority.\" The Supreme Court ruled last June that the EPA should have considered compliance costs when it decided to limit emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants mainly from coal-fired power plants, and returned the case to the appeals court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit subsequently said the regulations could remain in place while the government responds to the high court's June ruling. The appeals court gave the EPA until April 15 to come up with compliance costs. The EPA rule, which went into effect last April, applies to about 1,400 electricity-generating units at 600 power plants. Many are already in compliance. EPA spokeswoman Melissa Harrison said the agency was \"very pleased\" with Roberts' action, noting that power plants are the largest source of mercury pollution in the United States. \"These practical and achievable standards cut harmful pollution from power plants, saving thousands of lives each year and preventing heart and asthma attacks,\" Harrison said. Environmental groups and 15 other states that had asked the court to reject the stay request applauded Roberts' action and called on the attorneys general in the group of states led by Michigan to end their legal challenge to the rule. The rule is \"safeguarding millions of American children from poisons such as mercury, arsenic and acid gases,\" said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund anti-pollution advocacy group, a party to the case.","label":0}
{"text":"The traditional markers of adulthood, such as independence, marriage, children, and homeownership, show that the millennial generation is greatly lagging behind baby boomers, according to a new study comparing statistical data over the past 35 years. [Researcher Lydia Anderson of the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University compared U. S. Census data from 1980 with the most recent American Community Survey data from 2015. Comparing to in 1980 with the same age group today, Anderson found that far fewer millennials are married, live away from their parents, have children of their own, or own their own houses than the baby boomers of the same age group the year Ronald Reagan was elected president. In 1980, for example, more than (68 percent) of to were already married, whereas in 2015, just two in five millennials (41 percent) in the same age group were married. Only 20 percent of baby boomers of these ages had never been married, while more than half (53 percent) of millennials have never married. In simple terms, in 1980 a majority of baby boomers were married, while in 2015, a majority of millennials have never married, the study found: Anderson considers early baby boomers to be those U. S. citizens born between 1945 and 1955, while early millennials refers to those born between 1980 and 1990. Other common indicators of adulthood followed suit, Anderson found, such as what the study termed \"residential independence,\" or living away from one's parents or grandparents. In the intervening 35 years from 1980 to 2015, the share of young adults still living with parents or grandparents more than doubled, from nine percent in 1980 to 22 percent in 2015. While 59 percent of young adults in 2015 lived in independent households, the figure was 84 percent in 1980, or a full 25 percent more: Home ownership follows a similar pattern. A majority (60 percent) of young adults in 1980 owned their own homes, while in 2015, less than half of young adults (43 percent) were homeowners. A final indicator of adulthood, which Anderson describes as \"living with a biological child,\" revealed a similar difference, although in this case it was somewhat less striking. In 1980, more than (68 percent) of young adults aged lived with their biological children, while the figure was just over half (55 percent) for adults of the same age in 2015. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to advance the nomination of President Donald Trump's pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency and a final vote could occur on Friday. The Senate voted 54 to 46 to advance Scott Pruitt, the attorney general of oil and gas producing Oklahoma. Pruitt has come under criticism from many lawmakers for suing the agency he intends to run 14 times on behalf of Oklahoma. One Republican, Senator Sue Collins, said this week she would not vote for Pruitt in the final vote.","label":0}
{"text":"At least 65 media workers around the world have been killed doing their jobs this year, media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders said on Tuesday. Among the dead were 50 professional journalists, seven citizen journalists and eight other media workers. The five most dangerous countries were Syria, Mexico, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Philippines. Of those killed, 35 died in regions where armed conflict is ongoing while 30 were killed outside of such areas. Thirty-nine of those killed were targeted for their journalistic work such as reporting on political corruption or organized crime while the other 26 were killed while working due to shelling and bomb attacks, for example. It s alarming that so many journalists were murdered outside of war zones, said Katja Gloger, a board member of Reporters Without Borders. In far too many countries perpetrators can assume they ll get off scot-free if they re violent towards media professionals, she added. The organization said more than 300 media workers were currently in prison, with around half of those in five countries, namely Turkey, China, Syria, Iran and Vietnam.","label":0}
{"text":"China and the United States have created a \"miracle\" as companies from the world's two largest economies signed deals worth some $253.4 billion over the past two days, China's Commerce Minister Zhong Shan said at a briefing on Thursday. \"This is truly a miracle,\" said Zhong on the second day of U.S. President Donald Trump's state visit to China.","label":0}
{"text":"Conservatives efforts to recruit a candidate to compete against Donald Trump may have only been able to come up with David French, a National Review writer, who is merely contemplating the possibility of running. But last week, a new potential candidate stepped up to the stage, if not for this race, possibly for a future one. Dwayne Johnson, the actor formerly known by his professional wrestling moniker The Rock, told British GQ that hes considered a different kind of career. Ill be honest, I havent ruled politics out. Im not being coy when I say that, but at the moment I am not sure, Johnson said. I cant deny that the thought of being governor, the thought of being president, is alluring. And beyond that, it would be an opportunity to make a real impact on peoples lives on a global scale. But there are a lot of other things I want to do first. The prospect of yet another former reality-television star running for higher office may feel improbable at best and horrifying at worst, given Trumps performance in the 2016 campaign thus far. And I cant vouch for Johnsons position on the issues though hes registered as a Republican and has appeared at the Republican convention to boost voter registration,* hes generally talked less about actual policy and spent more time flashing his famously winning smile: But just as I was an early champion of Johnsons acting abilities hes fascinating as a gay, closeted driver in Be Cool, mesmerizing as a an amnesiac who is not doing well in the post-apocalypse in Southland Tales and one of the funniest parts of Michael Bays wildly underrated Pain & Gain Ive long thought that Johnson had a weirdly plausible path to a political career. He grew up all around the country because of his fathers job but makes his home in Florida, an important state in presidential election years and the place where he played football for the University of Miami. (The locker room was named for him after he made a major donation). Since his pivot to movie stardom, Johnson has become one of the most consistently likable celebrities in America, as measured by the Q Scores Company; hed begin any race not just with high name recognition, but also with high favorable ratings. Johnson is even descended from James Bowles, a free black man who fought with the British during the Revolutionary War when the kingdom offered land and freedom to black Americans who joined their side. (His mothers side of the family is Samoan.) For a Republican Party that was desperate to woo nonwhite voters before Donald Trump tossed his toupee in the ring, and will be even harder-pressed to woo them once our present mess is over, Johnson could be the sort of person the GOP tries to renovate into a viable candidate. If he doesnt have policy or issue bona fides, Johnsons relative silence on substance also means he doesnt have a record that can be used to tar him as some sort of flip-flopper. And he could also make a series of carefully selected charitable and political donations designed to start building a record of positions. Its easier to teach talking points than charisma, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) experienced earlier this year. Of course, if he really was going to try to follow Ronald Reagans path to the presidency, Johnson would certainly have to run for something else first. And he could do it as early as this year: Johnson has until June 24 to get on the primary ballot in Florida and join the candidates who are competing for the Senate seat Marco Rubio decided to vacate when he ran for president. The prospect of The Rock sitting through committee hearings might be vaguely ridiculous, and a governorship would probably require him to take fewer potentially damaging votes. But the lesson of this year in American politics is that stranger things can always happen. And Trump is proof that if our politics are turning into reality-television competitions, the results could always be worse.","label":0}
{"text":"Hey America Are you ready for a leader who says, NO to unvetted refugees? ****WARNING****GRAPHIC VIDEO*** German Chancellor Angela Merkel has recently admitted that terrorists have managed to infiltrate Europe by passing themselves off as refugees. She said that in part, the refugee flow was even used to smuggle terrorists. This comes as no surprise to those critics of Europe s massive influx of Muslim immigrants. Indeed, upon hearing the news, many are no doubt jumping out of their seats yelling, we told you so! Just this last May, Neue Osnabr cke Zeitung, a German news source, reported that Germany s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has received 369 tip-offs on possible links between refugees and Muslim extremists. German police announced that at least forty asylum seekers were being investigated for alleged terrorism links. It was reported that Germany s spy chief, Hans Georg Maassen, said that Germany s domestic intelligence agency had obtained strong evidence that 17 people have arrived under Islamic State instructions. [Emphasis added.] Furthermore, last month, German authorities announced that 499 Islamists were under surveillance, ostensibly because there is credible evidence that they pose a threat. It is not clear if this figure also includes homegrown Islamists.So we now know for certain that some Islamist terrorists have taken advantage of the massive influx of refugees and have successfully infiltrated Europe and on ISIS orders. Furthermore, there are undoubtedly even more pending investigations, and it is certain that many Islamist terrorist cells with refugee connections are operating within Europe as of this writing.The largely Muslim migrants have brought no shortage of problems with them: there have been refugee-caused sexual assaults across European cities, increased radicalization of Muslim circles, a lack of assimilation, persecution of Christian migrants, etc. These problems serve to exasperate the assimilation problems that already plague many second-generation Europeans whose parents are from Muslim-majority countries. Given that European birthrates are generally below replacement levels, and that the massive influx of immigrants is, although stemmed in some quarters, still occurring, these problems will unfortunately only become more acute as time goes by. The late Libyan President Mu amar al-Gaddafi once said, alluding to Muslim immigration to Europe, that the Islamization of Europe would happen without the need for the sword. But he surely didn t expect it would happen as fast as we are witnessing now.Since the vast majority of the refugees are Muslims whose culture clashes with native European ones on several well-known fronts, this influx has naturally resulted in growing anti-Islamic sentiment in Europe. It is reported that nationalist and rightist groups are gaining ascendency With the increase in the number of Islamic terrorist acts happening all around the world, including in the heart of the European Union, Europeans certainly have a right to be worried any encroaching Islamism.","label":1}
{"text":"Republicans at the University of North Carolina have gone completely off the rails and are now literally threatening transgender women who use the women s restrooms on campus with the penalty of death.Sadly, there is no amount of exaggeration in that statement. College Republicans have already made direct threats to the life of one transgender female on campus and are asserting that they will defend their daughters and sisters, with equal force against anyone else they declare a threat.The student who received the threats posted the exchange to Reddit while redacting her name. College Republicans have completely denied that the exchange occurred, which is not surprising.Portions of the attack, taken from the thread, are listed below: First of (sic), you are a mentally-ill man, no amount of surgery or hormones will change that. Second, if a tranny like you goes into the women s restroom, then what about the rights of them? If you value your life, you shouldn t have made this sick choice and settled with the gender God gave you. Playing into your delusions would make us no better than someone who tolerates pedophiles. You will never be a woman, and so you should stick with the man s room, as that is what you are, a mentally-ill man. you are sick and disgusting for mutilating your own God-given body, so a tranny like you find no pity with us. If you ever dare to set foot into the women s room I will make sure to give you a lesson not to harass our women, you freak of nature. We will make sure that you trannies do not molest our daughters and sisters. This comes on the heels of North Carolina passing a license-to-bigot law, otherwise known as a religious freedom law. Among the usual mundane items of people being protected from the sin of baking gay wedding cakes, it also places restrictions on transgender individuals forcing them to use the bathroom that is associated with their physical genitalia.The UNC College Republicans released a statement denying everything about the incident, claiming that it s a fake story and they never threatened her. Yeah, I m sure that it s far more likely a transgender student decided to make death threats against herself, rather than just simply pee and go on with her business.The law, despite its utter failures on so many levels, seems to have had its desired effect. It has now legitimized every phobia and bit of hate that the good moral Christian right-wingers had inside themselves. They now think that they are within their rights to use deadly force to defend their women. Thanks, Republicans. We couldn t have gone full-Christian Sharia in America without you.","label":1}
{"text":"Report on the phone call held between President's Putin and Obama says that was discussed that the much feared time for the \"Apocalypse Equation\" may be now, not later. The \"Apocalypse Equation\" refers to report authored by one of the most secretive women in US intelligence circles named Audrey Tomason who is Obama's Director for Counterterrorism suggesting that it would be more humane for our world to undergo a \"planned and controlled genocide\" rather than to see it descend into the abyss of chaos it is now entering. The Apocalypse Equation, (technically called a \"stochastic equation,\" because it describes the relationship of probability to time) shows what nuclear weapons ultimately mean for \"civilization.\" If each of a large number of nuclear missiles existing today has even a small probability of being launched, over time the probability of a launch (APocalypse) approaches certainty. The more missiles, the shorter the time before a launch. Unless nuclear weapons are deactivated, and nonviolent means developed to take the place of military violence for achieving justice and peace, civilization is doomed .  WATCH THE VIDEO:  Disclose TV SOURCE","label":1}
{"text":"November 3, 2016 at 10:20 pm  well clinton is a fool if she does not seek to restore relations with russia ASAP\u2026they seem to be forgetting about ''the dead man's switch\" it's an actual system implimented by russia as a warning to it's enemies of nuclear retaliation\u2026.why the fuck is america's citizens letting their leaders destroy peaceful relations with russia.. even if russia would lose a war against usa the problem is the aftermath\u2026.we're talking millions dead if not billions and nuclear fallout on a global scale","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump thought bringing Juanita Broaddrick to the second presidential debate would be a good idea.For people who might have forgotten, in the early 1990s, when President Bill Clinton was running his first campaign, Broaddrick went public with her accusations that Clinton had raped her in the 1970s while running for governor and that Hillary had intimidated her into silence.As expected, it created a media circus. No such accusation had ever been thrown at a presidential candidate in such a manner.However, years after the accusations surfaced, Broaddrick, in a sworn affidavit in December 1998, during the Paula Jones scandal, admitted that President Clinton had never made any un-warranted sexual advances towards here.As obtained by the Washington Post:3. I met President Clinton more than twenty years ago through family friends. Our introduction was not arranged or facilitated, in any way, by the Arkansas State Police. I have never been an Arkansas state employee or a federal employee. I have never discussed with Mr. Clinton the possibility of state or federal employment nor has he offered me any such position. I have had no further relations with him for the past (15) years.4. During the 1992 Presidential campaign there were unfounded rumors and stories circulated that Mr. Clinton had made unwelcome sexual advances toward me in the late seventies. Newspaper and tabloid reporters hounded me and my family, seeking corroboration of these tales. I repeatedly denied the allegations and requested that my family s privacy be respected. These allegations are untrue and I had hoped that they would no longer haunt me, or cause further disruption to my family. 5. . Specifically, I do not have any information to offer regarding a nonconsensual or unwelcome sexual advance by Mr. Clinton, any discussion offer or provision of state or federal employment or advancement in exchange for sexual conduct, or any use of state troopers to procure women for sex. Requiring my testimony at a deposition in this matter would cause unwarranted attorney s fees and costs, disruption to my life and constitute an invasion of my right to privacy. For these reasons, I have asked my attorney to advise Ms. Jones s counsel that there is no truth to the rumors they are pursuing and to provide her counsel with this sworn affidavit.Known as Jane Doe #5 at the time, Broaddrick admitted, to law enforcement and to the courts of this country (six years after the initial accusation), that President Clinton never raped her.And if Bill didn t rape her, how would Hillary Clinton have intimidated her into silence?Seems as though the Trump campaign didn t so their research. Sad!Considering Broaddrick lied, could one see why Hillary Clinton wouldn t take too lightly to such awful and shameful accusations that were never true to begin with? That s why women take her side on these issues.The fact that Donald Trump used a liar as a prop to deflect from his own sexual prowess shows how desperate and pathetic him and his whole campaign is.","label":1}
{"text":"Indonesia s foreign minister will fly to Bangladesh on Tuesday for talks following her visit to Myanmar where she urged national leader Aung San Suu Kyi to end ongoing violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority there. Bangladesh s foreign secretary, Shahidul Haque, told Reuters Retno Marsudi will meet Bangladeshi officials in Dhaka. Nearly 90,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, following an army crackdown triggered by attacks by Rohingya insurgents in Buddhist-majority Myanmar s northwestern Rakhine state. The Rakhine violence has killed at least 400 people, most of them Rohingya insurgents, according to the Myanmar government, leading to the exodus of Rohingya to neighbouring Bangladesh that is struggling to cope with the influx. Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Turkey, who are trying to pressure Nobel peace prize winner Suu Kyi to end the crisis, are also offering help to Bangladesh deal with the massive inflow of people from across its 271 km (168 mile)long border with Myanmar.","label":0}
{"text":"Video of a passenger being violently dragged from a United Airlines flight has gone viral, and now Congress wants answers.Audra D. Bridges, who filmed the shocking video and posted it to social media, told the Courier-Journal that passengers were informed that the flight was overbooked at the gate. The airline originally said that one person would need to give up their seat. After everyone had boarded the plane, they were told that four passengers would have to give up the seat they had paid for so that airline employees would be able to fly instead.They asked for volunteers and even offered money and hotel accommodations to sweeten the deal. But when no one offered to leave the plane, they randomly selected passengers to kick off the flight. When the man they had chosen to boot out of the seat he paid for said he didn t want to leave because he was a doctor and had patients he had to care for in the morning, United Airlines called the police.In the video, you can see the cops forcefully grab the doctor and violently drag him off the plane while he screams out in pain. Other passengers were horrified. He was eventually allowed back on the plane, bleeding mouth and all.Now, Washington, D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), a senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, is demanding answers. Norton is calling for a congressional hearing into the incident. I deplore the violent removal of a passenger from a United Airlines flight this weekend. Airline passengers must have protections against such abusive treatment. I am asking our committee for a hearing, which will allow us to question airport police, United Airlines personnel, and airport officials, among others, about whether appropriate procedures were in place in Chicago and are in place across the United States when passengers are asked to leave a flight, Norton said in a statement.Norton said that she will be following up with a letter to committee chairman Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) and Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), chairman of the aviation subcommittee, to request a hearing to investigate this incident and others like it.You can watch the disturbing video below:@United overbook #flight3411 and decided to force random passengers off the plane. Here s how they did it: pic.twitter.com\/QfefM8X2cW Jayse D. Anspach (@JayseDavid) April 10, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is officially in for the 2016 presidential race, telling the Associated Press that he feels he is \"uniquely qualified\" to run and serve. And Rubio is nothing if not unique in today's GOP. He's young (43 years old) in an increasingly old party, he's Hispanic in a party that is hemorrhaging Latino votes, he's a very good communicator in a party that struggled to find one in 2012, and he has ties to both the tea party and the party establishment in a party that is very much split between the two. And as we've argued before, he has more upside than just about anybody in the 2016 race -- Republican or Democrat. He's also putting a lot more on the line than just about anybody else. For a few reasons: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is also running for president and, like Rubio, is up for reelection in 2016. But because Paul comes from a red state and the filing deadline for his seat isn't till late January 2016, he could potentially revert to staying in the Senate if his presidential campaign doesn't catch fire. Rubio doesn't have that luxury. He comes from Florida, a big swing state in which you need to be focused on that race from day one. Democrats already have a solid contender in Rep. Patrick Murphy, and other Republicans are already looking at running for Rubio's seat. The filing deadline in Florida isn't till May 2016, so Rubio could conceivably attempt what Paul is doing -- he hasn't quite ruled it out, though he came close -- but national Republicans can't really afford to let Democrats get that much of a head start in a very important state while Rubio figures out whether he can win the GOP presidential nomination. All the other GOP hopefuls either aren't up in 2016 -- Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), for instance -- or are out of office altogether. Rubio, as the youngest GOP hopeful in the field, is the only one giving up a bird in hand for the possibility of two in the bush. Well it doesn't matter if he doesn't win the nomination, you might say, because he's got a really good shot at becoming the vice presidential pick. This makes complete sense; with Republicans likely to nominate another white man and likely to face the potential first female president, getting some diversity on their ticket will be key. And nobody fits the bill better than Rubio. Some are even joking about Rubio running for VP: But the idea that Rubio could run for president with being VP as a backup plan took a significant hit the day Jeb Bush started running for president. That's because the fellow Floridian is perhaps the likeliest (if not likely, period) nominee, and the Constitution basically precludes him from picking Rubio as his running mate. It says that no state can cast its electoral votes for a ticket that includes to people from their own state. And given Florida's 29 electoral votes are, well, kind of important, it's really hard to see Bush picking Rubio -- unless one of them conveniently established residency outside the Sunshine State. In short, at this point Bush seems like the most likely nominee, and Rubio the most likely vice presidential pick, but Bush won't pick Rubio. 3) He has a lot more time Rubio's youth also means he has more time to wage a political comeback, yes. But there are no guarantees in a state like Florida, and winning office is much more difficult than holding an office you already inhabit. What's more, the Republican bench in Florida is teeming with ambitious young pols, by virtue of the GOP dominance of the state. The GOP controls all statewide offices and about two-thirds of the state legislature. No, Republicans haven't exactly fielded the greatest candidates in recent years (Connie Mack, much?), but there are lots of new faces these days. That means that, if this whole 2016 thing doesn't pan out, Rubio can't count on returning to statewide office in Florida any time soon. Rubio would certainly be a frontrunner, but he would probably have to fight for it. Time works both ways. Yes, Rubio would have years to mount a comeback. But it also means he has time to wait for another presidential campaign -- one in which he wouldn't have to give up his seat in the Senate to run. And yet, he has chosen to strike while the iron is semi-warm and risk his political future on running for president. What's clear is that he doesn't enter into it lightly. Update: Longtime Florida political reporter Adam Smith tells our own Fix Boss about the reasoning for Rubio's move:","label":0}
{"text":"The company owned by the family of senior White House aide Jared Kushner will skip roadshow events in China this weekend seeking money from local investors for a real estate project in exchange for a shot at U.S. immigrant visas, a company spokesman said. Nicole Kushner Meyer, Jared's sister, appeared at marketing events last weekend in Beijing and Shanghai in an effort to raise $150 million from Chinese investors through the controversial EB-5 visa-for-investment program. According to marketing materials from one of the organizers of the roadshow, sales events for the project are scheduled in the southern cities of Shenzhen on Saturday and Guangzhou on Sunday. \"No one from Kushner Companies will be in China this weekend,\" James Yolles, spokesman for the firm, said. The company and KABR Group are raising money for a two-tower apartment complex in New Jersey called One Journal Square, marketing materials showed. Kushner Companies earlier this week apologized for Meyer having mentioned Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law, in discussing the project. The company said Meyer had done so only in an attempt to make clear that her brother was not involved. \"Kushner Companies apologizes if that mention of her brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Ms. Meyer's intention,\" it said. In addition to Meyer, Laurent Morali, president of Kushner Companies, was included in marketing materials online for the China road show. Jared Kushner, whose White House portfolio includes relations with China, sold his stake in Kushner Companies to a family trust early this year. The EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to, in effect, buy U.S. immigration visas for themselves and families by investing at least $500,000 in certain development projects. A member of the audience at the marketing event in Shanghai said Meyer spoke for about 10 minutes during last Sunday's event and described her family's humble roots. According to the New York Times, in Beijing on Saturday she told the audience of about 100 people the project \"means a lot to me and my entire family\".","label":0}
{"text":"Detroit Public Schools' emergency manager Darnell Earley is stepping down later this month, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder said on Tuesday. Earley, who has drawn criticism from the teachers union and black state lawmakers for the crumbling state of the city's schools, will leave the school district on Feb. 29, the governor said in a statement. Earley, who had formerly presided over the city of Flint and its now lead-contaminated water system, has served as manager of the Detroit schools since January 2015. The school system is drowning under $3.5 billion of debt, including $1.7 billion of bonds backed by property taxes. Detroit Public Schools is suffering from declining enrollment. Heavy pension and debt obligations have left the district in danger of running out of cash in April. The governor said if the state Senate passes legislation reorganizing the school and tackling the debt soon, the school system could revert to some form of local control. If the debt is not addressed, the system will be \"virtually insolvent\" by April, Snyder said. A November report by Earley said a bankruptcy by Detroit's school system could shift liabilities for pensions and bonds to the state and local governments. The governor, whose approval is needed for the system to file for bankruptcy, is unlikely to support such a move. Snyder said on Tuesday that Earley has done a \"very good job under some very difficult circumstances,\" restructuring the school system, cutting costs and working to stabilize student enrollment. The governor said he will appoint a transition leader before the end of the month to set in place his plan to restructure the system to address the district's academics and finances. The Michigan black legislative caucus last week asked Snyder to fire Earley. Also last week, the union for Detroit public school teachers sued the district, demanding Earley's immediate removal and a return of local control with a plan to repair the district's crumbling buildings. Ivy Bailey, interim president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, called Earley's departure a \"step in the right direction.\" Under Earley's leadership as emergency manager of Flint, the city switched its water supply from Detroit to the Flint River in April 2014. It switched back last October after tests found high lead levels in blood samples from Flint children. Lead is a neurotoxin that can damage the brain and cause other health problems. Earley has said he is not to blame for the problem since the decision was made before his tenure.","label":0}
{"text":"By Warren Woodward Everyone knows that wireless \"smart\" meters communicate via microwaves. What was unknown until now is that additional frequencies are transmitted in the 2 to 50...","label":1}
{"text":"The Russian response to Barack Obama s announcement that he was expelling 35 diplomats over the alleged cyber attack on the US election, was fast, and in some cases, rather amusing:The Russian response to Barack Obama s announcement that he was expelling 35 diplomats over the alleged cyber attack on the US election, was fast, and in some cases, rather amusing.As officials in Moscow said that US diplomats would be ordered to leave in a tit-for-tat response, the Russian Embassy used Twitter to make its point with little panache.","label":1}
{"text":"You know all that buzz you are hearing about a likely Hillary Clinton FBI indictment? This may be the shocker of all shockers, but it s completely made up.Before right-wing pundits popped the corks on their champagne bottles, this lie was uttered by Fox News Bret Baier, who claimed that two separate sources with intimate knowledge of the FBI investigations ha confirmed not only that the Clinton Foundation investigation is far more expansive than anybody has reported so far but that there is a lot of evidence and that the sources say it will end in likely an indictment. This would be a bombshell revelation if it were true. On Thursday, however, Baier explained that his claims were inartful :MARTHA MACCALLUM (CO-HOST): The FBI sources that you spoke with suggest that an indictment is likely. That would prove go ahead.BRET BAIER: I want to be clear I want to be clear about this, and this was came from a Q and A that I did with Brit Hume after my show and after we went through everything. He asked me if, after the election, if Hillary Clinton wins, will this investigation continue, and I said, yes absolutely. I pressed the sources again and again what would happen. I got to the end of that and said, they have a lot of evidence that would, likely lead to an indictment. But that s not, that s inartfully answered. That s not the process. That s not how you do it. You have to have a prosecutor. If they don t move forward with a prosecutor with the DOJ, there would be, I m told, a very public call for an independent prosecutor to move forward. There is confidence in the evidence, but for me to phrase it like I did, of course that got picked up everywhere, but the process is different than that.That s his way of saying he was lying. The next time one of your right-wing friends (if you have any left at this point) parrots his ridiculous claims, show them his retraction that their absolute best argument against Hillary Clinton is based on a lie.Watch it below:","label":1}
{"text":"Prosecutors allege that bone cement manufactured by Norian and its parent company, Synthes, was used to conduct human experimentation, resulting in a string of deaths over the past several years.As Fortune reports here, the deaths were the result of spinal injections of a product called Norian XR, described as a cement that has the unique capacity to turn into bone when injected into the human skeleton. Norian XR was never approved by the FDA for use in the human spine. To the contrary, the FDA required the company to mark the product as not approved for such use.Experiments conducted at the University of Washington exposed the dangers of using the bone cement to treat human spine injuries as early as 2002. When tested on pigs, the Norian XR caused severe blood clotting, resulting in the deaths of the animals.Synthes had acquired the California-based Norian Corporation with the intention of altering Norian XR for use in spinal treatments. Nothing was going to stand in the way of company profits.Prosecutors say that the company launched a scheme specifically designed to get around FDA approval.As The Dallas Morning News reports here:CEO Hansjorg Wyss directed a few sites to perform 60 to 80 procedures in spinal surgeries using the Norian bone cement and to publish clinical results. He recruited surgeons to test-market the product on patients, court records show.The patients who were exposed to the experimental treatment were never told that the product was not approved by the FDA.By 2010, a string of deaths had been attributed to the company s human experimentation.Lois Eskind, age 70, was injected with Norian XR while a company salesperson watched. The Dallas Morning News reports, The product leaked into Eskind s veins and led to the clotting that killed her. The company did not inform the FDA of Eskind s death. They continued to experiment on human beings without their knowledge or consent, causing the deaths of many other people, including Reba Golden and Joan Bryant.In 2010, Synthes and Norian, along with four top executives, were convicted of conducting unauthorized clinical trials on humans. Norian paid a $22.5 million penalty, while Synthes paid $669,800 fine. The executives went to prison.The families of Golden and Bryant recently filed a civil suit against Dr. Jens Chapman, Synthes, Norian, the University of Washington, Harborview Medical Center and Washington state. The first trial is set to begin in June.The crimes committed by these companies are a chilling example of the risks we take in allowing our healthcare system to be controlled by profit-motivated corporations like Synthes.","label":1}
{"text":"More than 180,000 civilians, mostly Kurds, have been displaced by the conflict between the Iraqi central government and the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, humanitarian organizations said on Thursday. Last month Iraqi forces captured Kirkuk and other territories from Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, in retaliation for a referendum on independence held by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) on Sept. 25 in northern Iraq. As of 2 November, over 183,000 people are displaced in the disputed areas, including 79,000 from Kirkuk city, the Office of the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq said in a statement, giving no breakdown by ethnic or religious group.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday will propose a five-year ban on executive branch officials lobbying after they leave government if he is elected, according to excerpts of a speech on fixing ethics problems in Washington. Trump also will say he plans to ask Congress to impose its own five-year ban on former lawmakers and their staff lobbying as well as set a lifetime ban on senior executive branch officials lobbying for foreign governments.","label":0}
{"text":"Email  Donald Trump's plans for his first 100 days in office are raising eyebrows around the world, but of all the items on his agenda it is the reopening of the 9\/11 investigation that will provide the greatest earthquake for the establishment. Via Yournewswire  Trump believes that 9\/11 has not been properly investigated and he plans to get to the bottom of it. \"First of all, the original 9\/11 investigation is a total mess and has to be reopened,\" Trump said. SPONSORED LINKS  The election of Donald Trump has rocked the establishment and things are only going to get rockier for them during his first term. There is a reason George W. Bush didn't vote for Trump in the election, leaving the presidential line blank and voting Republican down-ballot. Trump has pledged to investigate 9\/11 in a way it has not been investigated before.  For the first time 9\/11 will be investigated by someone who isn't part of the establishment, with skin in the game and plenty to lose.  \"First of all, the original 9\/11 investigation is a total mess and has to be reopened\" Trump announced to supporters. \"How do two planes take out three buildings in the same day? I never got my head around the fact that nothing is mentioned about the destruction of Building 7 in the 585 page document,\" he explained, talking about World Trade Center 7 which also collapsed \u2013 inexplicably \u2013 during the September 11 attacks.  Donald Trump has also taken cracks at former president George W. Bush. There will be no covering up for former presidents on Trump's watch. \"The World Trade Center came down during the reign of George Bush,\" he said in a February debate. \"He kept us safe? That is not safe. That is not safe.\"  \"Why did the administration at the time not take legal means against Saudi Arabia? Weren't 19 of the high-jackers from Saudi Arabia? Americans deserve answers and I will definitely request a new investigation so that this horrible tragedy never happens again.\"  Donald Trump and the 9\/11 Truth movement  While Trump might be railing against the establishment in reopening the 9\/11 investigation, he has received support on this issue from a number of public personalities who have demanded the case be revisited \u2013 and not behind closed doors.  Former Senator Bob Graham has been demanding a new, transparent investigation \"For years I have been campaigning for the release of the 2002 Joint Congressional Intelligence Committee 9\/11 Inquiry's report, to no avail\" explains the former Governor of Florida. \"These missing pages point to the direct involvement of the government of Saudi Arabia. Why are these being kept secret? Who has to gain from these games of secrecy?\" he asks.  \"I have read these documents myself and if the American public knew what was in these documents, there would be a revolution tomorrow in the streets of America\" he acknowledged during a radio interview. \"Americans deserve to know the truth\" he concluded, visibly angered by the whole affair.  Since 2002, the release of a number of 9\/11 Commission Report documents is hindered because they are congressional records, hence they are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).  The long withheld 28 pages were partially released to the public this year \u2013 heavily redacted \u2013 and the Saudi government claimed the release proved they were not responsible for supporting or financing the attacks. But it's not as simple as that. There are direct ties to the Saudi hierarchy in the 28 pages. There are a lot of questions that need answering, and they were never going to be addressed under a Clinton presidency with all her ties to Saudi Arabia.  But with President Trump's executive powers, everything has changed. The establishment are on edge. More than half the country doesn't believe the official version of what happened that day. There is now a renewed belief that this biggest of lies and cover ups is about to be dismantled. The establishment did all it could to destroy Trump the outsider's election chances at election. Now they are on edge.","label":1}
{"text":"A parliamentary committee on Thursday accused British Prime Minister Theresa May s government of giving ministers excessively wide powers in new bill to transfer EU law into British law. The bill in question sets out the government s plan for transposing European Union law into the British statute book as part of Brexit. But it creates scope for ministers to alter legislation without full parliamentary scrutiny in order to make sure laws works properly once transferred. The bill gives ministers excessively wide legislative powers beyond what is necessary to ensure UK law works properly when the UK leaves the EU, said a statement accompanying a report by a committee of lawmakers from parliament s unelected upper chamber, the House of Lords. The government has said the powers created by the bill are strictly limited to what is needed to allow for a smooth transition - something they say is necessary to give businesses certainty over the rules they will face when Britain s EU membership ends in March 2019. Nevertheless, May, whose Conservative Party does not have an outright majority in parliament, could be forced into making concessions to ease concerns from across the political spectrum to clear the remaining lawmaking stages. Thursday s critical report by the House of Lords Delegated Powers Committee set out an alternative proposal that would allow more rigorous scrutiny of changes that the government wants to make when transposing EU law. The report offers a taste of the resistance May can expect to find in the House of Lords, where her Conservatives peers are significantly outnumbered by rivals from other parties. The Lords will have to approve the withdrawal bill before it can become law. Earlier this month the government cleared the first of many parliamentary hurdles, winning a vote on crucial legislation known as the EU withdrawal bill despite criticism that it amounted to a government power grab.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump declared on Wednesday that Russia's Vladimir Putin had been a better leader than U.S. President Barack Obama, as the Republican presidential nominee used a televised forum to argue he was best equipped to reassert America's global leadership. Trump suggested at the event in which he and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton made back-to-back appearances that U.S. generals had been stymied by the policies of Obama and Clinton, who served as the Democratic president's first secretary of state. \"I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton the generals have been reduced to rubble. They have been reduced to a point that's embarrassing for our country,\" Trump said at NBC's \"Commander-in-Chief\" forum in New York attended by military veterans. It was the first time Trump and Clinton had squared off on the same stage since accepting their parties' presidential nominations in July for the Nov. 8 election. Clinton was grilled over her handling of classified information while using a private email server during her tenure at the State Department. FBI Director James Comey had declared her \"extremely careless\" in her handling of sensitive material but did not recommend charges against her. \"I did exactly what I should have done and I take it very seriously, always have, always will,\" she said.Trump's praise of Putin and his suggestion that the United States and Russia form an alliance to defeat Islamic State militants could raise eyebrows among foreign policy experts who feel Moscow is interfering with efforts to stem the Syrian civil war. \"If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him,\" Trump said of the Russian president. \"Certainly in that system, he's been a leader, far more than our president has been.\" Trump had called Obama \"the founder of ISIS,\" an acronym for Islamic State, in stump speeches several weeks ago. The statement drew broad criticism, prompting him to take a more disciplined approach to campaigning. He has since picked up ground on Clinton in national opinion polls. Trump also flirted with revealing what he had been learning in classified intelligence briefings given to him by U.S. officials because he is the Republican nominee. \"There was one thing that shocked me,\" Trump said. \"What I did learn is that our leadership, Barack Obama, did not follow what our experts ... said to do, and I was very, very surprised. ...Our leaders were not following what they recommended.\" Earlier on Wednesday, Trump pledged to launch a new U.S. military buildup, saying America was under threat like never before from foes like Islamist extremists, North Korea and China. The event offered a prelude to how Clinton and Trump will deal with questions on national security issues in their three upcoming presidential debates later in September and in October. Clinton began the forum saying her long experience in government as a U.S. senator and secretary of state made her uniquely qualified to serve as president. She said she had \"an absolute rock steadiness\" to be able to make tough decisions, a not so subtle dig at Trump, who Democrats say is temperamentally unfit for the White House. Moderator Matt Lauer doggedly pressed her about her handling of emails from a private server while secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. The issue has raised questions about whether she can be trusted to serve as president. Clinton said none of the emails she sent or received were marked top secret, secret or classified, the usual way such material is identified. Appearing in the second half of the hour-long show, Trump faced questions about his fitness for office. Asked if he would be prepared on Day One to be commander in chief, Trump said: \"One hundred percent.\" Trump quickly abandoned Lauer's entreaties to avoid attacking his opponent and focus on what he would do if elected president in November. \"She's been there for 30 years,\" Trump said. \"We need change, and we need it fast.\" The event brought together the meticulously prepared Clinton, 68, the wife of former President Bill Clinton, and Trump, 70, a New York businessman whose brash, freewheeling style has allowed him to dominate the headlines during his campaign. Clinton said she regretted her decision as a U.S. senator from New York to vote in favor of the much-criticized 2003 Iraq war and that Trump had been in favor of it as well. Trump has condemned the war during his campaign and said he would avoid lengthy conflicts in the Middle East. On the U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011, Clinton rejected Trump's criticism of her support for the effort as secretary of state. \"Permitting there to be an ongoing civil war in Libya would be as threatening and as dangerous as what we are seeing in Syria,\" she said. Trump said Clinton's handling of Libya proved disastrous. Republicans have made much of the fact that the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was killed in an Islamist attack in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. \"She made a terrible mistake in Libya,\" said Trump. Clinton said U.S. policies under her leadership at the State Department had helped promote security. \"We made the world safer,\" she said.","label":0}
{"text":"Sworn Donald Trump enemy John McCain admitted Wednesday that he passed the dossier of claims of a Russian blackmail plot against the president-elect.The Arizona senator issued a public statement amid mounting questions of his exact role in the affair and how a document riddled with errors and unverifiable claims came to be published. Late last year, I received sensitive information that has since been made public, he said. Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue. But the 2008 Republican loser, who disowned his party s candidate weeks before the election, may have been far more intimately involved than that.The chain of how the document reached the FBI is not officially known.However Carl Bernstein, the Watergate reporter who contributed to the first story about its existence, published by CNN on Tuesday afternoon, suggested that McCain was handed it by a former British ambassador to Moscow. Arizona Senator who disowned Trump before election admits he handed document outlining claims of Kremlin blackmail to FBI Brief statement claims that he received it and gave it directly to FBI Director James Comey because he was unable to make judgment about accuracy But Washington reporter Carl Bernstein says former British ambassador to Moscow handed it to McCain Ambassador has not been named and author of report also gave to FBI agent he knew at its station in Rome months ago Report was apparently paid for first BY Republican enemies of Trump then by DemocratsBernstein told CNN: It came from a former British MI6 agent who was hired from a political opposition research firm in Washington who was doing work about Donald Trump for both republican and democratic candidates opposed to Trump. They were looking at Trumps business ties, they saw some questionable things about Russians, about his businesses in Russia, they in turn hired this MI6 former investigator, he then came up with additional information from his Russian sources, he was very concerned by the implications of it, he then took it to an FBI colleague that he had known in his undercover work for years, he took it to this FBI man in Rome who turned it over to the bureau in Washington in August. And then, a former British ambassador to Russia independently was made aware of these findings and he took the information to John McCain Senator John McCain of Arizona in the period just after the election, and showed it to McCain additional findings. McCain was sufficiently disturbed by what he read to take it to FBI director James Comey himself personally, they had a five minute meeting the two men, very little was said, McCain turned it over to him and is now awaiting what the FBI s response is to that information. The identity of the former British ambassador has not been disclosed.Only one former British ambassador to Moscow remains in UK government service, Sir Tim Barrow, who went on to be Foreign Office political director and is now Britain s ambassador to the European Union.The new information, which has not been independently verified, claims that Russian officials also gathered highly damaging information on Trump, but only released the details attacking Clinton through the WikiLeaks website.The Kremlin has denied all of the allegations, while Trump tweeted: FAKE NEWS A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT .Buzzfeed followed up a report by CNN which disclosed the existence of the explosive dossier, but only gave a brief outline of the contents.The 35-page document, which had been collated by a former British Secret Intelligence Service agent had initially been handed over to the FBI in August.Buzzfeed s Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith wrote an email to his staff shortly after publishing the document.Buzzfeed is one of the radical publications on the internet. It is known for pumping out hateful and negative Trump stories almost with a vengeance to its young readers on a regular basis. The release of this FAKE NEWS should surprise NO ONE! Daily Mail","label":1}
{"text":"For those searching for a soul mate, the website WikiHow offers an plan that could be of help. It tells the lovelorn about fruitful places to look for a mate and instructs them to do things such as make a list of the traits sought in a partner and to \"start looking. \" But here at The New York Times, we have a better plan, and ours has only two steps: 1. Put on a sweater emblazoned with a cat wearing a Santa hat on the front. (Any kind of cat \u2014 calico, Siamese, Abyssinian \u2014 will do.) 2. Stand next to an elevator. (It wouldn't hurt to put on some perfume or cologne this plan needs all the help it can get.) Then, boom! Mr. or Ms. Right will pop up. We can't swear by this, because our data is admittedly scant. But in two wedding stories published in The Times this year, sweaters have led to love. And in three others, sightings in elevators led to marriages. O. K. we get it that the ugly Christmas sweater craze may have run its course. But you can't argue with success, which is why these couples lead the list of the most unusual stories for 2016. The catless among us fared just as well, however. Here is our list: Cat People Our cat lovers are Caitlin Taylor Landy and Brandon Travis Ponder, who were married Aug. 27 in Rye, N. Y. and Sarah Callaway and John Rader, who were married July 23 in Birmingham, Ala. Mr. Ponder wore his Christmas cat sweater for the picture he posted on his Tinder profile in summer 2014, and Ms. Landy was intrigued by his sense of humor. Mr. Rader and Ms. Callaway met in December 2013 in Nashville when Mr. Rader and a friend (who was wearing a Christmas cat sweater) were hailing the same cab as Ms. Callaway (who was also wearing a cat sweater) and her friend. \"Meow,\" Mr. Rader's friend said to Ms. Callaway, but she wound up with Mr. Rader. Asked recently to explain the romantic allure of sweaters, Mr. Rader said a number of factors came into play. \"But No. 1 would be the actual girl wearing the sweater,\" he said. \"In addition to her, it's a celebration of the most beautiful and wonderful time of the year, and to have a cat wearing a Santa hat is just something that is friendly and welcoming and cheerful all wrapped into one. \" Which Floor for Love? Our elevator couples are Alyssa Carbone and Jeremy Kees, who married March 19 in Montclair, N. J. Nadia Gaya and Timothy Martin, who were married April 30 in Manhattan and Kaci Lindhorst and Adam Sokoloff, who were married June 18 in New York. Ms. Carbone remembered seeing her future husband in the elevator of their Philadelphia apartment building. \"He looked charming, handsome and dapper in his nice suits,\" she said. Then the two got the chance to chat when an fire alarm rousted the pair and their fellow tenants and temporarily left them outside. Ms. Gaya recalls hitting the button on her elevator in her Brooklyn apartment building and out walked Mr. Martin. \"I said to myself, 'That's the hottest guy I've ever seen. '\" They were introduced by the woman showing an apartment to Mr. Martin, but she did not get his last name. A few months later, they again met at the elevator and began to get better acquainted. Ms. Lindhorst did not actually spot Mr. Sokoloff in the elevator. But her roommate, a natural matchmaker, had. Ms. Lindhorst, with encouragement from her roommate, then sent a Facebook friend request to \"the really attractive guy\" she saw there. What is so enticing about an elevator? Jodi Hynes, communications manager of Otis Americas, the elevator company, has given it some thought. \"You are instantly put into an intimate setting from the moment you step inside, then the doors close and you can't help but make eye contact and start talking to the person standing next to you,\" Ms. Hynes said. \"Where that leads may not always be what you intend, but it forces you into an otherwise unexpected conversation. \" Loving the Wait Anh Tu Dang and Josh Mankiewicz, who were married May 16 in Los Angeles, met while engaged in the most frustrating of activities: waiting in an airport security line. When Mr. Mankiewicz saw Ms. Dang in 2008 at Los Angeles International Airport, suddenly the wait didn't seem so long. \"Standing ahead of me was this stunning woman,\" Mr. Mankiewicz, a correspondent for \"Dateline NBC,\" recalled. \"I was staring at her. She didn't notice. Finally we started talking. Actually, I started talking and she responded. \" A Better View Kelly McKanna and David Hirsch, who were married July 30 in Palo Alto, Calif. had just met and had been chatting briefly at a San Francisco music festival in 2011 when he offered her a perch on his shoulders for a better view. She told him he should sit on hers instead. He hopped on, her back didn't crumple, and love ensued. The Man Without a Face After Meegan Brooks connected online with Michael Kimiecik, she communicated with him for weeks on end without the benefit of seeing his face. His profile photo was sort of obscure. At one point, she asked him outright to post a more recent photo, and he sent a photo of himself wearing ski goggles and a hood that covered most of his face. She finally got the chance to see him up close when she flew to Michigan, and he picked her up at the airport \u2014 without anything covering his face. \"He was incredibly handsome,\" she said. They were married Aug. 6 in Carmel Valley, Calif. Love at First Shout The first time Akino Brown heard Dr. Dionne Hoskins, she was giving him a good at a Big Lots store in Savannah, Ga. Sparks flew \u2014 but not good ones \u2014 when she overheard Mr. Brown and a discussing the firing of another employee. Incensed by this breach in protocol, Dr. Hoskins proceeded to tell Mr. Brown just that. He was distracted, though: \"All I heard was, 'Blah blah blah,'\" he said. \"I drifted off, thinking about how good she looked. \" Rod Serling Would Approve Perhaps the most Twilight of our 2016 involved Allison Gans and Brian Fischer, who were married Sept. 24 in Los Gatos, Calif. The two thought they had first met on JDate in 2013, but when Ms. Gans began looking through her future husband's childhood photos, she discovered that they had both been in the same large group that had traveled to Israel in 1997 for bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies. More digging revealed a video had been taken of a ceremony there in which a rabbi took a candle held by Ms. Gans and gave it to Mr. Fischer. The future bride and groom, though standing just inches apart, scarcely noticed each other.","label":0}
{"text":"Erica Garner blasts Clinton campaign over discussions staffers had about Eric Garner page: 1 One Podesta email has Clinton Campaign people discussing the death of Eric Garner in ways his Daughter Erica dislikes. She went on Twitter and gave them a piece of her mind. Seems they saw a newspaper story that may have been interpreted as a liability. This exposure could hurt the Campaign. The whole Campaign is based on political profits and losses, not Human dignity. Erica Garner blasts Clinton campaign over discussions staffers had about her father's death in WikiLeaks emails Erica Garner, the daughter of police chokehold victim Eric Garner, ripped the Hillary Clinton campaign in a series of tweets Thursday after new campaign emails released by WikiLeaks showed how the Democratic nominee's staffers discussed the death of her father. \"I'm troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed 'using' Eric Garner \u2026 Why would you want to 'use my dad?\" Garner tweeted along with a link to emails released by WikiLeaks. \"These people will co opt anything to push their agenda. Police violence is not the same as gun violence. \"I'm vey (sic) interested to know exactly what @CoreyCiorciari meant when he said 'I know we have an Erica Garner problem' in the #PodestaEmails19,\" added Garner. \"I know we have Erica Garner issues but we don't want to mention Eric at all? I can see her coming after us for leaving him out of the piece,\" Clinton's traveling press secretary Nick Merrill wrote in a March 17 email. edit on Oct-27-2016 by xuenchen because: politicalmoneyisntgreen","label":1}
{"text":"Dem Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz Pakistani IT staffer Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles airport while trying to flee the United States. Get the back story from Maria Bartiromo: How is it possible that 3 brothers are hired, Muslim brothers just saying, to work in Congress and deal with our most intelligent and sensitive information, number one? They were all making $160,000! Why were they paid so much? 22 years old one of the guys, the other was 25. They re making $160,000, $161,000 and $165,000. And one of them has a criminal background! If you haven t been following this crazy series of events, we ve got a previous report below to fill you in. Basically, Imran Awan and three Muslim relatives were hired to handle IT for the DNC which gave them access to lots of sensitive information NOT GOOD! The Daily Caller just exclusively reported that Awan attempted to destroy hard drives then desperately tried to retrieve them when they were discovered.GETTING THOSE DESTROYED HARD RIVES BACK:Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, the individual told The Daily Caller News Foundation s Investigative Group.A high-level congressional source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, confirmed that the FBI has joined what Politico previously described as a Capitol Police criminal probe into serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network by Imran and three of his relatives, who had access to the emails and files of the more than two dozen House Democrats who employed them on a part-time basis.Capitol Police have also seized computer equipment tied to the Florida lawmaker.Awan s younger brothers, Abid and Jamal, his wife, Hina Alvi, and Rao Abbas, Imran s best friend, are also under investigation. There have been no arrests in the case.THIS CASE IS HUGE! MARIA BARTIROMO IS LIVID ABOUT IT:A Pakistani family under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police (see our previous report below) for abusing their access to the House of Representatives information technology (IT) system may have engaged in myriad other questionable schemes besides allegedly placing ghost employees on the congressional payroll.Imran Awan, his wife Hina, and brothers Abid and Jamal collectively netted more than $4 million in salary as IT administrators for House Democrats between 2009 and 2017. Yet the absence of signs of wealth displayed among them raise questions such as was the money sent overseas or did something other than paychecks motivate their actions?Capitol Police revoked the Awans access to the congressional IT system in February 2017 after a major data breach was detected. Their access had allowed them to read emails and files of dozens of members, including many serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THIS THE MAIN STREAM MEDIA IS IGNORING THE CRIMINALITY OF THESE BROTHERS:3 MUSLIM BROTHERS Working For Dems In Congress CAUGHT Accessing Unauthorized Top-Secret Government Intel One Has Criminal Background May Have Ties To Muslim Brotherhood [VIDEO]3 Congressional IT employees have been fired for accessing members computer networks without permission. Maria s on the show, knows more about this. Can you fill me in a bit.Here are their names Stuart. let me tell you what the 3 people that were fired on Thursday: Abid, Imran and Jamal Awan. They were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives on Thursday because they accessed Congressmen and Congress people s computer networks unauthorized. At a minimum they were fired. At a minimum we know that they accessed computers unauthorized and they did so in foreign intelligence, foreign affairs and intelligence committees. Okay? So they were getting very important information, government information. They accessed these computers. That is the least of it. There s also some talk that people are looking into what ties they have into terrorism. Are they impacted by the Muslim Brotherhood? Are they a part of the Muslim Brotherhood? One of them has a criminal background!How is it possible that 3 brothers are hired, Muslim brothers just saying, to work in Congress and deal with our most intelligent and sensitive information, number one? They were all making $160,000! Why were they paid so much? 22 years old one of the guys, the other was 25. They re making $160,000, $161,000 and $165,000. And one of them has a criminal background! I hear what you re saying, I mean, these intelligence committees handle our terror strategies right? They got in on Benghazi by the way.Yes, and they also worked for many Democrats in the House. They are thinking that they may be also one of the reasons Debbie Wasserman Schultz got hacked. There s so much more to come on this Stuart, it s an incredible story. I think it s amazing!Chiefs of staff for dozens of Democratic lawmakers who employed the four were informed last week that a criminal probe was underway into their use of congressional information technology systems, including the existence of an external server to which House data was being funneled, and into the theft of and overbilling for computer equipment.Their salaries and time were shared among dozens of Democratic members, including former Democratic National Committee Chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida.Chiefs of staff for dozens of Democratic lawmakers who employed the four were informed last week that a criminal probe was underway into their use of congressional information technology systems, including the existence of an external server to which House data was being funneled, and into the theft of and overbilling for computer equipment.Despite the generous salaries, the four were involved in multiple suspicious mortgage transfers and a debt-evading bankruptcy. Abid had more than $1 million in debts following a failed business called Cars International that he ran in Falls Church, Va., from November 2009 to September 2010. Business associates said in court documents that Abid had stolen money and vehicles from them.It s unclear how Abid found time to run an automotive business while working full-time for Congress. He had been on the congressional payroll since 2005. A congressional credit union repossessed two of his personal cars before the business folded.Abid filed for bankruptcy in 2012, but somehow managed to keep ownership of two houses while telling the bankruptcy court and creditors that he had no assets with which to pay them. He signed a sworn statement that he and his wife, Natalia Soba, were living apart and needed separate residences. My spouse and I are legally separated under applicable non-bankruptcy law or my spouse and I are living apart other than for the purpose of evading the requirements of 707(b)(2)(A) of the Bankruptcy Code, Abid claimed in bankruptcy documents. But both houses had been in the family for years.Abid s record includes numerous driving- and alcohol-related legal problems, including driving with a suspended or revoked license, court records show. He was found guilty of drunk driving a month before he started at the House, and was arrested for public intoxication a month after his first day.A spokesman for Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas told TheDCNF Friday that Jamal s employment with our office has been terminated. Hilarie Chambers, a spokeswoman for Rep. Sandy Levin who employed Abid told TheDCNF that after being notified by the House Administration Committee, this individual was removed from our payroll. We are confident that everything in our office is secure. Not every Democrat is willing to terminate their connection with these four:Some Democrats have not terminated their connection with the four, including Wasserman Schultz, who employs Imran and who resigned from her DNC post last year after a computer hack revealed embarassing emails. Derrick Robinson, spokesman for California Rep. Karen Bass, refused to comment on Alvi s employment status.","label":1}
{"text":"The GOP is known for its misogyny. This is especially true of those currently running for president on that side of the aisle. So, it is only fitting that misogynist insults often used by men are turned on these guys, and Full Frontal host Samantha Bee did just that on Monday s edition of her show.Women are often accused of being too emotional to be in certain positions, but the mudslinging and childish insults that have peppered the GOP debates and campaign trails show that men can be just as emotional in their cases inappropriately so. Bee started her first segment with a eulogy for the death of the Republican Party in the wake of the absolute national embarrassment that is their presidential primary, then turned on the candidates themselves. She began: I don t mean to sound sexist, but I think men are just too emotional to be president. Bee then pointed out what everyone knows, saying that the GOP establishment knows that the Donald Trump candidacy is doing to their brand what his a*shole son does to real elephants. This narrative within the establishment has made old-time GOPers like former presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Arizona Senator John McCain try to urge people within the party not to support Trump.Bee says that this won t do any good, though, if past efforts by Romney are any indication, because when [Romney] tried to stand between a charismatic guy and the White House, you got beat like a Muslim girl at a Trump rally. Samantha Been is absolutely correct here. Trump will likely be the GOP s nominee, and that is absolute nightmare for them. He s an openly racist, misogynist, xenophobic asshole who bears some startling and disturbing resemblances to Adolf Hitler, and we all know how THAT ended.You re done, GOP and you did it to yourselves. Good riddance.Watch Samantha Bee s brilliant takedown below:","label":1}
{"text":"On this day in 1973, J. Fred Buzhardt, a lawyer defending President Richard Nixon in the Watergate case, revealed that a key White House tape had an 18...","label":0}
{"text":"Parliamentarians in Russia gave a mixed reaction on Monday to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's proposal to strike a deal on nuclear arms cuts in exchange for Washington lifting sanctions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis. Konstantin Kosachev, head of the upper house of parliament's international affairs committee, was cited by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying getting the sanctions annulled was not a goal in itself and not worth making security concessions for. \"We consider them (the sanctions) a stupid legacy of the outgoing White House team that need to be consigned to history along with them,\" said Kosachev. But another Russian senator, Oleg Morozov, was quoted by the same agency as saying that Moscow would be ready to discuss the issue of nuclear cuts, something he said Russia itself favored. Trump told The Times of London in an interview published online on Sunday that he would propose offering to end sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea in return for a nuclear arms reduction deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.","label":0}
{"text":"Washington (CNN) The Iran nuclear talks are progressing. But tough issues still remain. We could reach a deal. But we also might not. About 50-50. Less than 50-50. It's all up in the air. Those messages are just a slice of what top U.S. officials are saying publicly as they emerge from closed-door negotiations with their Iranian counterparts, struggling to find a way to broker a lasting deal aimed at keeping Iran from a nuclear weapon. But there's a method to the messaging madness as the Obama administration is looking to reassure key constituencies in the U.S. while holding together an increasingly fractious coalition of countries joining them in the negotiations and also ratcheting up pressure on Iran. \"All of this is inevitably to some extent posturing, but it's also real and important in terms of setting the expectations for the negotiating parties,\" as well as setting the political context at home, said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and a former State Department Iran policy adviser. Skeptics in Congress want to know the U.S. is taking a hard line and pressing for the best deal possible. International partners want to know the U.S. hasn't brought them to this point for nothing. And Iran needs to know the U.S. won't concede certain points but is truly willing to walk away. \"As I have said many times and as I discussed with President Obama last night, we are not going to sit at the negotiating table forever,\" Kerry said at a press conference Thursday. But he also said the U.S. isn't pressed by time: \"We shouldn't get up and leave simply because the clock strikes midnight.\" Bold public statements that the U.S. is prepared to leave Iran hanging at the negotiating table telegraph the message that Tehran needs to budge on certain issues or it could find itself without the much-awaited sanctions relief it has chased for years. That's how Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a key Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, interpreted Kerry's words. \"My hunch is that what we're hearing here from Secretary Kerry is a determination to send a message to the Iranian Supreme Leader: 'The deal that is on the table is the best deal you're going to get. You either need to accept it or we're going to walk away,'\" Coons said Thursday on CNN. Maloney said Kerry and other officials' statements are a clear gambit to \"influence Iranian expectations and Iranian decision-making\" on the inside from the outside. \"Those theatrics were necessary,\" Maloney said. But they also have another audience: restive members of Congress who fear that the repeated deadline extensions are a sign that Iran is gaining the upper hand and sticking to its demands while the U.S. caves. By passing the July 9 date that Congress set for completing the deal and turning a copy over to Congress, the administration now faces a congressional review period of 60 days rather than just 30. That's twice as much time for vocal opponents to tear the details of the deal apart and rally votes against the measure. So Kerry and President Barack Obama have doubled down in recent weeks on their insistence that the U.S. is willing to walk away from talks altogether if Iran won't relent on the final, crucial sticking points. \"I will walk away from the negotiations if, in fact it's a bad deal,\" Obama said last week from the White House. \"If the tough decisions don't get made, we are absolutely prepared to call an end to this process,\" Kerry stressed on Thursday. That's giving some in Congress hope that the Obama administration is sticking to its guns. But it's not clear whether the more hardened skeptics are buying the administration's insistence that it is not flinching on key points, Maloney said. \"There's still frustration and an overwhelming skepticism toward the administration and its ability to hold a hard line with respect to Iran,\" she said. The talking point of walking away from a deal also helps reinforce the administration's arguments that it has worked tirelessly to obtain a good deal and that it therefore got the best one possible -- should a deal be reached. And if there is no deal, the messaging will help to lower expectations. That's why Obama told Senate Democrats this week that it's more likely that there won't be a deal. \"He said in the course of the negotiations he's been more optimistic, less optimistic. And he said that the chances at this point are below 50-50,\" said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate. Days later, though, Kerry played the other side of expectations, telling reporters optimistically that the parties \"resolved some of the things that were outstanding\" and that \"it's safe to say that we have made progress today.\" Because ultimately, the U.S. needs to keep not just Iran, but its partners, in the negotiations pressing full steam ahead at the negotiating table. The coalition of five world powers -- Russia, China, Germany, France and the UK -- negotiating alongside the U.S. is already showing signs of strain, as Russia adopts a stance on relaxing sanctions more in line with Iran's. In particular, the new Iranian demand that the arms embargo on it be lifted has caused frustration for the U.S. while winning support from Moscow. On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated that his country was backing Iran's bid to lift the arms embargo \"as soon as possible.\" Russia is a top supplier of weapons to Iran. For that, Americans also have a talking point. \"Under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking,\" Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey said this week on Capitol Hill.","label":0}
{"text":"Hundreds of pilot whales that swam into a shallow New Zealand bay died overnight after they got stuck in the waterway and beached themselves on the coastline. More than 500 rescuers tried frantically to send the pilot whales back out to sea, but at least 250 died in what officials called one of the worst whale strandings in New Zealand's history. Attempts to refloat the remaining whales during high tide met with partial success. About 50 whales had swum out of the bay after high tide, according to the Department of Conservation, but as many as 90 others had rebeached themselves by Friday afternoon. Volunteers said they would try to refloat the stranded whales again on Saturday. Whale strandings at Farewell Spit, at the northern tip of New Zealand's South Island, happen most years, Kath Inwood, a ranger, told The Associated Press. But the high number of whales trapped this year has surprised conservation officials. The whale stranding was the largest in the country since 1985, when 450 were stranded near Auckland. New Zealand has one of the highest rates of whale strandings, which are believed to occur when the mammals, who are known for their social bonding, make navigational mistakes while chasing prey, escaping predators or trying to protect sick members of the group.","label":0}
{"text":"Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he doubted that a possible U.S. preventative strike on North Korea would destroy all of Pyongyang s weapons.","label":0}
{"text":"US air strikes in Afghanistan increase in 2016 Sun Oct 30, 2016 6:12PM A US drone aircraft lands at Afghanistan's Jalalabad Airport. \u00a9 AFP  Amin AlemiPress TV, Kabul  A number of US military officials have declared that America has conducted 700 air raids in Afghanistan in 2016. The figure shows a 4 percent increase in such strikes compared to last year. Afghan officials, however, believe that the country can fight terror groups without support from US forces. Loading ...","label":1}
{"text":"License DMCA  It's like we are back to the 1800s when the U.S. Army rampaged against Native American tribes across the American West. The militarized police and the use of the National Guard this week in responding to the Standing Rock Sioux Native American challenge in North Dakota to big oil and its dangerous pipelines reminds one of Custer's Last Stand against Sitting Bull.  In fact, the portrait of Sitting Bull is on one of the most popular t-shirts available to supporters of the \"water protectors,\" as those are known who protest yet one more oil pipeline that crosses sensitive watershed areas and major rivers of the United States.  Four days last week, I joined hundreds of Native Americans and social justice campaigners from around the United States and around the world, in challenging the Dakota Access Pipe Line (DAPL), the 1,172-mile, $3.7 billion dollar scar across the face of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.  Last week, I photographed the area along Highway 6 south of Bismarck where the Energy Transfer Partnership contractors were busy digging the trench for the \"Black Snake\" as the pipeline is called. License DMCA - Advertisement -  I also counted 24 police cars returning to Bismarck at shift change around 3 p.m., a huge number of state law enforcement personnel and vehicles dedicated to protection of corporate business, instead of the rights of citizens.  Huge machines were chewing up the earth near water sources for all of North Dakota. The pipeline was rerouted from near Bismarck so if the pipeline breaks it would not endanger the water supply of the capital city of the state. But it was relocated to where it will cross the Missouri River and will jeopardize the water supply of the Native Americans and all Americans living in southern North Dakota and downstream of the Missouri River. Security forces protecting the Dakota Access pipeline construction spray protesters with pepper spray. License DMCA - Advertisement -  On Thursday, the digging took a more confrontational turn. The huge digging equipment arrived to cut across State Highway 1806 at a spot where water protectors had set up a front-line camp several months ago, one mile north of the main encampment of over 1,000 people. As the equipment arrived, the \"water protectors\" blocked the highway.  In a dangerous incident, an armed private security guard of DAPL came onto the camp and was chased off into the water abutting the camp by water protectors. After a lengthy standoff, tribal agency police arrived and arrested the security guard. Water protectors set his security vehicle on fire.  On Friday more than 100 local and state police and North Dakota National Guard arrested over 140 people who blocked the highway attempting to stop the destruction of the land. Police in riot gear with automatic rifles lined up across a highway, with multiple MRAPs (mine-resistant ambush protected military vehicles), a sound cannon that can immobilize persons nearby, Humvees driven by National Guardsmen, an armored police truck and a bulldozer.  Police used mace, pepper spray, tear gas and flash-bang grenades and bean-bag rounds against Native Americans who lined up on the highway. Police reportedly shot rubber bullets at their horses and wounded one rider and his horse.  As this police mayhem was unfolding, a small herd of buffalo stampeded across a nearby field, a strong symbolic signal to the water protectors who erupted in cheers and shouts, leaving law enforcement officials wondering what was happening. The security forces protecting the Dakota Access pipeline against protesters are heavily militarized.","label":1}
{"text":"While Donald Trump and his brownshirts are busy destroying the country, President Obama is committing his time and energy to making the country a better place.On Saturday, the former President made a surprise video appearance at a Chance the Rapper show in Chicago where he did his usual thing and delivered a positive message.Obama thanked the performer for serving as the grand marshal of Chicago s annual Bud Billiken parade (the largest and oldest African-American parade in the country) and thanked him for helping provide school supplies to Chicago s students. The Hill notes that:Chance the Rapper s charity, SocialWorks, and Brooklyn-based backpack company STATE bags reportedly donated 30,000 backpacks filled with school supplies to Chicago students at the parade, the news outlet reported, adding that the rapper also handed out free tickets to his concert. He previously donated more than $1 million to the Chicago Public Schools foundation.Chance the Rapper in a recent interview said his platform and voice are bigger than President Trump s. I have a bigger voice than Donald Trump, you know what I m saying? Than literally anybody that works in politics, he said. We want to make sure our kids are safe, we want to make sure that they are ready to go back to school. We want to make sure that we are nurturing and protecting and encouraging and loving the next generation of leaders all throughout the city of Chicago, Obama says in a video posted to Twitter by Black Owned Chicago. So Chance, I m grateful for everything that you ve done on behalf of the young people back home. President @BarackObama had some words of encouragement for @chancetherapper tonight at his #BBBash concert. #BlackOwnedChicago pic.twitter.com\/aebsFgk4Pd Black Owned Chicago (@blackownedchi) August 13, 2017This has many Americans nostalgic for when they had a President they could respect:.@nastywomanatlaw You seein this shit?! Why wasn't I there? Jared Rogers Martin (@Jaredrog) August 13, 2017 pic.twitter.com\/ckvwYyMIKS Michael ? (@maxmc785) August 14, 2017It made me so proud to watch this video of President @BarackObama we need him back in the White House. Tiamat (@EvaTiamatMedusa) August 13, 2017COME BACK OBAMA!! We need you now more than ever!! Ritchie K. Blackmore (@Ritchie_1966) August 13, 2017OBAMA, THIS NATION REALLY NEEDS,YOU MORE THAN EVER BEFORE Vero\/Roni\/Vee (@prettywings24) August 13, 2017Unfortunately, President Obama can t come back no matter how much the country wants him to but we can get rid of Donald Trump, who is currently destroying education, safety net programs, and the world s sense that Americans have any sense of decency.","label":1}
{"text":"Transgender recruits will be able to join the U.S. military as of Jan. 1 after a federal judge on Monday denied a request by President Donald Trump's administration to enforce his ban on transgender troops while the government appeals an order blocking it. In a ruling, with which the Pentagon said it would comply, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington refused to lift part of her Oct. 30 order stopping the ban from taking effect until the case is resolved, saying it likely violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection under the law. The White House said the Justice Department was reviewing its options. The Pentagon said in a statement that it would follow court orders and begin processing transgender applicants on Jan. 1. It added, however, that it and the U.S. Department of Justice \"are actively pursuing relief from those court orders in order to allow an ongoing policy review scheduled to be completed before the end of March.\" The administration had argued that the Jan. 1 deadline was problematic because tens of thousands of personnel would have to be trained on the medical standards needed to process transgender applicants, and the military was not ready for that. Kollar-Kotelly rejected the concerns, saying preparations for accepting transgender troops were under way during the administration of Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama. \"The directive from the Secretary of Defense requiring the military to prepare to begin allowing accession of transgender individuals was issued on June 30, 2016 - nearly one and a half years ago,\" the judge said. Several transgender service members filed a lawsuit after Trump said in July he would ban transgender people from the military, citing concern over military focus and medical costs. In an August memorandum, Trump gave the military until March 2018 to revert to a policy prohibiting openly transgender individuals from joining the military and authorizing their discharge. The memo also halted the use of government funds for sex-reassignment surgery for active-duty personnel. Defense Secretary James Mattis had previously delayed a deadline that had been set during the Obama administration to begin enlisting transgender recruits to Jan. 1, which Trump's ban then put off indefinitely. The Pentagon said on Monday there were a number of guidelines that would have to be met by the applicants. It said that sex reassignment or genital reconstruction would be disqualifying factors unless a medical provider certified that a period of 18 months had passed since the most recent surgery, no complications persisted and additional surgeries are not required. The service members who sued Trump, Mattis and military leaders in August had been serving openly as transgender people in the U.S. Army, Air Force and Coast Guard. They said Trump's ban discriminated against them based on their sex and transgender status. In her October ruling, Kollar-Kotelly said the Trump administration's reasons for the ban \"do not appear to be supported by any facts\" and cited a military-commissioned study that debunked concerns about military cohesion or healthcare costs. A federal judge in Maryland also halted the ban in Nov. 21 ruling.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican Donald Trump neared the end of his vice presidential search on Thursday and appeared to be leaning toward Indiana Governor Mike Pence, a conservative with the potential to unify divided Republicans. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tweeted on Wednesday night that he would announce his choice on Friday at 11 a.m. (1500 GMT) in Manhattan. The New York businessman is to be formally nominated as the party's candidate for the Nov. 8 election at the Republican National Convention next week in Cleveland. Traditionally, the vice presidential choice is used to build enthusiasm among party loyalists. Trump's choice of running mate is seen as critical because his defeat of 16 rivals in the Republican primary race left the party divided and some party leaders are still uneasy about some of his campaign positions, and his style. Sources familiar with campaign operations cautioned that while Pence and former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich were finalists, Trump could always have a last-minute change of heart and choose someone else from his short list. A source close to the campaign said Trump appeared to be leaning toward Pence but could easily change his mind. Gingrich told an ABC News correspondent he expected to hear Trump's decision after 1 p.m. EDT and would not be surprised if Trump chooses Pence. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, 53, a former rival to Trump in the presidential race, is also high on the list of potential running mates and provides the kind of counterpunch to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton that Republicans like. Pence, 57, a former congressman, is seen as a safe choice, not too flashy but popular among conservatives, with Midwestern appeal and the ability to rally more party faithful behind Trump. Gingrich, 73, is a close adviser to Trump with a wealth of ideas and deep experience in the legislative process from his time as speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1990s. In what has been an unusually public process, Trump, 70, sat down with both Pence and Gingrich separately in Indianapolis on Wednesday. He also met with a fourth potential No. 2, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, 69, of Alabama, who has been one of Trump's closest advisers. The New York businessman had dinner with Pence on Tuesday night after they appeared together at a rally. Trump, joined by daughter Ivanka and sons Donald Jr. and Eric Trump, had breakfast with Pence and his wife, Karen, on Wednesday at the governor's residence in Indianapolis. Trump adviser Ed Brookover told CNN that Trump \"first and foremost\" wants a running mate who he has good chemistry with and someone who can help him govern best.","label":0}
{"text":"Kenyan opposition supporters skirmished with police and threw up burning barricades in pockets of the country on Thursday, seeking to derail President Uhuru Kenyatta s likely re-election with a low voter turnout. The election commission said that more than one in 10 polling stations failed to open. Voting was delayed until Oct. 28 in four of Kenya s 47 counties - all in the opposition-supporting west - due to security challenges . The repeat election is being closely watched across East Africa, which relies on Kenya as a trade and logistics hub, and in the West, which considers Nairobi a bulwark against Islamist militancy in Somalia and civil conflict in South Sudan and Burundi. In the western city of Kisumu, police used tear gas and fired live rounds over the heads of stone-throwing youths heeding opposition leader Raila Odinga s call for a voter boycott. Gunfire killed one protester and wounded three, a nurse said. In Homa Bay county next door, police said they shot dead one protester and injured another. Riot police fired tear gas in Kibera and Mathare, two volatile Nairobi slums. Protesters set fires and threw stones in Kibera, and in Mathare a church was firebombed. Around 50 people have been killed, mostly by security forces, since the original Aug. 8 vote. The Supreme Court annulled Kenyatta s win in that poll on procedural grounds and ordered fresh elections, but Odinga pulled out of the rerun and urged a boycott because, he said, the poll would not be fair. In the capital, polling stations saw a sprinkling of voters instead of the hours-long queues that waited in August. With Kenyatta all but ensured a victory, eyes are on the turnout, which was nearly 80 percent in the August vote. The election commission said Thursday s estimated turnout was 48 percent, excluding the counties where voting did not take place. We are requesting them (voters) humbly that they should turn out in large numbers, Kenyatta, the U.S.-educated son of Kenya s founding father, Jomo Kenyatta, said after voting. We re tired as a country of electioneering and I think it s time to move forward. A decade after 1,200 people were killed over another disputed election, many Kenyans feared violence could spread. As well as delayed voting, the poll is likely to trigger legal challenges to the result, stirring longer-term instability and ethnic divisions. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court was due to hear a case seeking to push back the polls. But it was unable to sit after five out of the seven judges failed to show up. The lack of a quorum is highly unusual for a Supreme Court hearing, a statement from the European Union said. Not hearing this case has de facto cut off the legal path for remedy. In Kisumu, the scene of major ethnic violence after the disputed election in 2007, many schools designated as polling stations were padlocked. Young men milled about outside. In Kisumu Central, constituency returning officer John Ngutai said no voting materials had been distributed and only three of 400 staff had turned up. One nervous official said his election work was a suicide mission . Reuters found no polling stations open. Wafula Chebukati, head of the election commission, said counties where voting would be delayed included Homa Bay, Kisumu, Migori and Siaya. But residents were skeptical. Today, not a single polling station opened. People have been throwing stones all day at the police. So I don t think people will accept that elections take place. Unless Raila says OK , it won t happen, said social worker Christine Onyango. Kisumu businessman Joshua Nyamori, 42, was one of the few brave enough to defy Odinga s stay-away call, but could not cast his ballot. Residents fear reprisal from political gangs organized by politicians. This is wrong, he said. In the coastal city of Mombasa, protesters lit tyres and timber along the main highway. Reuters contacted a dozen polling stations there after voting closed. The highest turnout was 89 voters out of 793. We have seen you, we know you and we have marked you, a group of opposition supporters shouted at voters outside a polling station. Four armed police were on guard at each station - double the number on duty last time. Yvonne Mwenesi, 21, was beaten outside another polling station before police rescued her. I had just voted and as I walked out, a group of men who I know attacked me saying I had betrayed them by voting, she said, her nose bleeding. On the eve of the vote, Odinga backed off previous calls for protests and, speaking in English, urged supporters to stay home and hold vigils instead. Some politicians who preceded him urged in the KiSwahili language that supporters should ensure the vote did not take place. Odinga s National Super Alliance coalition, whose supporters attacked polling staff in the run-up to the vote, could argue in court that the lack of open polling stations showed the re-run was invalid. The Supreme Court said it would annul this election too if it did not meet legal standards. The head of the election commission said last week he could not guarantee a free and fair vote, citing political interference and threats of violence. One election commissioner quit and fled the country. Another official was tortured and murdered days before the Aug. 8 vote.","label":0}
{"text":"The members of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce had broken their fasts and left the mosque near Florida's eastern shoreline. In the waning minutes of Sunday, less than an hour later, a surveillance camera recorded a man as he approached the mosque. Then came a flash as flames damaged the house of worship where the man who attacked an Orlando, Fla. nightclub often prayed. The authorities, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, were investigating the fire as a potential hate crime, even as officials cautioned that they remained uncertain about the motive. The blaze occurred on the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and nearly three months after Omar Mateen opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. It also happened around the beginning of Eid a Muslim holiday. \"Today was supposed to be a day of this community exchanging gifts with their kids, visiting their family members, having dinners, having lunches,\" Wilfredo Ruiz, a spokesman for the mosque, said at a Monday afternoon news conference in Fort Pierce, Fla. \"Instead, they needed to go to another place to worship. \" No one was injured in the attack, and the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office sought help identifying the suspect, whom the authorities described as a white or Hispanic male. Video showed the man arriving at the mosque, which is in a former Presbyterian church, about 11:38 p. m. on Sunday, appearing to carry paper and a bottle of some type of liquid. The camera recorded a flash, presumably when the fire ignited, and the man waved his arms, perhaps from a burn, before he fled on a motorcycle. Officials refused to speculate about a connection between the fire and the anniversary of the terrorist attack. A spokesman for the Sheriff's Office, Bryan Beaty, declined to discuss whether Mr. Mateen's ties to the mosque might have prompted the fire. With its painted star and crescent, palm trees and occasional protester outside, the Sunni mosque is central to Islamic life in Fort Pierce, a city of around 44, 000 people about an hour's drive north of Palm Beach. Yet it has also been a hub of controversy, drawing attention twice in recent years as a place where young men who staged attacks had worshiped. In addition to Mr. Mateen, who was killed during the siege at Pulse, which left 49 other people dead, the Islamic Center was a frequent stop for Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who carried out a 2014 suicide bombing in Syria. (The F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, said the men had known each other \"casually. \") In June, the Islamic Center's imam, Syed Shafeeq Rahman, distanced himself and the mosque from Mr. Mateen and, more generally, from extremist ideology. \"There is nothing that he is hearing from me to do killing, to do bloodshed, to do anything, because we never talk like that,\" the imam said of Mr. Mateen. The mosque, like many in the United States, has expressed concerns about security and the commitment of the local authorities to protect its members and property. Tensions mounted in July after the authorities arrested a man they said had repeatedly punched someone who had been at the Islamic Center to pray. The case is pending in the local circuit court, where a prosecutor said in a filing last month that the accused man had \"evidenced prejudice\" during the attack. Mr. Beaty said deputies had also investigated two suspicious vehicles and a harassing phone call at the mosque since the June 12 attack in Orlando. The fire at the Islamic Center is at least the third suspected arson at a Florida mosque this summer. A Tampa mosque was targeted twice in less than 24 hours last month, and a spokesman for the city's Fire Department, Jason A. Penny, said Monday that the inquiry there remained active. In Fort Pierce on Monday, people responded to the attack with a mix of outrage and sadness. \"An attack on any house of worship is an attack on all houses of worship,\" said Ahmed Bedier, a Muslim activist in Florida. \"It's unacceptable. \"","label":0}
{"text":"BEIRUT, Lebanon \u2014 With Russia's backing, the United Nations Security Council voted on Monday to send United Nations observers to monitor evacuations from the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo and to report back regularly. Russia had threatened to veto an earlier resolution proposed by France, which had sought to place the evacuations under United Nations supervision, but a compromise was reached on Sunday that would allow the monitors to observe after consultations with \"interested parties. \" The resolution passed unanimously. That could, in principle, give any number of groups on the ground \u2014 including Syrian soldiers and the Shiite militias fighting alongside them \u2014 the ability to block access. Fighters from the array of rebel groups, including extremists, could also block access to areas they control. Three questions now loom: Will Russia lean on Syria to allow safe and unimpeded access, as the resolution demands? How long will it take for the monitors to start working? And would they be in place before the evacuations are complete? \"Our objective is: immediately,\" Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said when asked by reporters after the vote when the monitors would start. \"They need to get in there and be relevant on those green buses,\" the ones used to evacuate civilians and rebels. The United Nations spokesman, St\u00e9phane Dujarric, could not say on Monday how many monitors would be deployed or how quickly they could be posted. Asked whether they could be deployed within the next 24 hours, when more evacuations are expected, Mr. Dujarric said: \"It's dangerous for me to predict anything. Our colleagues on ground are trying to make this work. \" Nor was there much clarity from a statement sent by the United Nations emergency relief chief, Stephen O'Brien. \"We stand ready to scale up our presence and efforts across the entire city, in line with the resolution and international humanitarian law,\" the statement read. \"This can be done immediately, but only if the parties live up to this resolution and their most basic legal obligations. \" Hours after the vote, the United Nations envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said he would convene political talks among Syrian government and opposition groups starting Feb. 8. Citing the Security Council deal, he said, \"It is vital to build on this initial momentum. \" The United Nations says it has about 100 staff members in Aleppo, mostly Syrian citizens, and several hundred others in nearby Syrian cities. Officials with the organization have said they were denied permission to observe evacuations. As many as 50, 000 civilians may still be stuck in the area, according to humanitarian groups, although a precise figure is all but impossible to determine. \"After so many delaying tactics and obstruction, this resolution should finally allow the full respect of international humanitarian law in Syria,\" President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande of France said in a statement. \"It should also pave the way for a and negotiate a political solution that is much awaited by the Syrian people and the entire international community. \" The extent to which the Syrian government will cooperate with the monitoring is unclear, though Russia is a principal military backer of President Bashar 's regime. After days of delays and sporadic violence, the evacuation of civilians and fighters from besieged communities in Syria resumed Sunday night, with convoys taking people out of eastern Aleppo and two nearby Shiite villages. As of Monday afternoon, 20, 000 people had been removed from the last part of Aleppo, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said in a post on Twitter. Among those evacuated to a area west of the city was Bana a girl whose Twitter posts with her mother throughout the siege by government forces helped draw attention to the plight of civilians. Opposition activists posted videos and photographs of the girl and her mother on Monday after they arrived in territory. The evacuation of more than 2, 000 sick and wounded people from two Shiite villages that have been surrounded by Sunni insurgents for years also began Monday. The villages, Fouaa and Kfarya, were not originally part of the agreement but were added after gunmen prevented buses from removing people from eastern Aleppo last week. Ten buses carrying civilians from the villages left on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, and local journalists posted online videos of their arrival in another area. Also added to the agreement was the evacuation of two villages near the border with Lebanon, Zabadani and Madaya, that have long been surrounded by government forces. The evacuation deal, brokered by Russia, Turkey and Iran, was intended to relieve one of the more crushing aspects of Syria's war: the practice by both sides of besieging their opponents and bombarding their communities. The agreement, and an accompanying has proceeded haltingly since it began on Wednesday, with gunfire on the route repeatedly stopping convoys. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the Syrian government, said five buses that had been held up by forces for hours were allowed to leave eastern Aleppo before midnight on Sunday. The eastern part of Aleppo, the remaining area of the city, has been surrounded by government forces for months and subjected to frequent airstrikes that have killed hundreds of people and have reduced neighborhoods to rubble. If the evacuations continue without interruption, the removal of the remaining residents of eastern Aleppo will put the entire city under Mr. Assad's control and mark a turning point in the war. Aleppo was once the largest city in Syria and was its industrial hub before the war. Its fall would leave rebels in control of only smaller towns and rural areas. The jihadists of the Islamic State, who oppose both the government and the rebels, still hold significant territory farther east, including the city of Raqqa, their de facto capital.","label":0}
{"text":"The collapse of Islamic State s self-proclaimed caliphate has not diminished the militant group s ability to inspire attacks on Western targets via the internet, U.S. national security officials told senators on Wednesday. The Sunni Muslim extremist group has been building its external operations over the past two years and has claimed or been linked to at least 20 attacks against Western interests since January, said Lora Shiao, acting director of intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center. Unfortunately, we don t see ISIS loss of territory translating into a corresponding reduction in its inability to inspire attacks, she told a U.S. Senate committee. ISIS capacity to reach sympathizers around the world through its robust social media capability is unprecedented and gives the group access to large numbers of HVEs, Shiao said, using the government s acronym for homegrown violent extremists. The U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State estimated on Tuesday that fewer than 3,000 fighters belonging to the hardline Sunni militant group remain in Iraq and Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014. ISIS was driven out of Raqqa, the Syrian city it called its capital, in October, prompting President Donald Trump to say the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight. Yet the elimination of the physical caliphate does not mark the end of ISIS or other global terrorist organizations, said Mark Mitchell, acting assistant defense secretary for special operations\/low-intensity conflict. As ISIS loses territory it will become more reliant on virtual connections, he said, and continue to inspire stray dog attacks by vulnerable people. Senators questioned the security officials about U.S. efforts to fight online recruitment of potential extremists. This is the new caliphate - in cyberspace, said Ron Johnson, the Republican chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The experts described an evolving threat including ISIS ability to adapt its narrative after territorial losses to portray the struggle as a long-term process. The internet is the primary tool for radicalization and no group has been more successful than ISIS in drawing people into its message, said Nikki Floris, deputy assistant director for counterterrorism at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In a possible reference to Trump s use of Twitter, Democratic Senator Kamala Harris asked Floris, Has the FBI examined the role that social media posts or videos from our own government officials affect the online recruitment tactics used by ISIS? The answer was no.","label":0}
{"text":"Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera urged caution on Friday because more provocation was possible from North Korea on Oct. 10, when the start of lower house election campaigns in Japan coincides with one of the North s main anniversaries. Tensions have risen on the Korean peninsula since reclusive North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3, leading to a new round of sanctions after a unanimous vote by the United Nations Security Council. U.S. President Donald Trump has since traded insults with North Korean leaders, raising the stakes even further. North Korea has often marked significant events on its calendar by conducting weapons tests, such as its fifth nuclear test last year on Sept. 9, its founding anniversary. Onodera said Oct. 10 marks an important anniversary for North Korea. It is the date the North celebrates the founding of the North Korean communist party. I understand it is an important anniversary for North Korea. We would like to maintain a sense of urgency, Onodera told reporters. Oct. 10 is also coincidentally the same day that campaigns will begin in Japan for parliament s lower house election 12 days later after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dissolved the chamber on Thursday. Onodera s warning echoed a comment by South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong, who said during a meeting with President Moon Jae-in on Thursday that he expected Pyongyang to act around Oct. 10 and 18, but gave no details. [nL4N1M9191] Oct. 18 marks the start of China s all-important Communist Party Congress. North Korea has conducted a series of ballistic missile launches this year, including two launches over Japan in recent weeks, in defiance of international pressure. China, North Korea s main ally and trading partner, has urged that dialogue is the only way to resolve the crisis, although Japan has tended to support Washington s more robust approach. Abe has said now is the time to apply pressure on North Korea, rather than dialogue, in order to convince North Korea to end its nuclear and missile programs.","label":0}
{"text":"Just one month ago, Hillary Clinton had amassed a 9-point lead over Donald Trump in national polls and had an even bigger advantage in several swing states. Her eventual victory seemed to many to be all but assured, and Democrats were so confident of winning that a landslide victory even seemed like a possibility. But it's all been downhill for Clinton from there. Starting in mid-August, her leads in both national and swing state polls began to gradually shrink. And the events of this past weekend seem to have made her margin narrow even further, as Trump has been getting some of his best state polls of the entire general election campaign. Importantly, Clinton still appears to be narrowly ahead both nationally and in enough states to win. But the recent trends have not been good for her, and make a remarkably dramatic contrast with where the race appeared to be last month. So what's happened? Why has this race gotten so close all of a sudden? Matt Yglesias offers the big-picture point that Clinton is simply quite unpopular. But that still leaves open the question of why things have changed so quickly. Inconveniently, a month of a campaign is a complex thing, with many different events unfolding either concurrently or one after another, which makes it difficult to test a clean theory about what's made the difference. Some combination of all this is most likely responsible for the shift we've seen, due to voters changing their minds and, perhaps, differences in poll response rates \u2014 though it's unclear which of these factors is most important. What is clear is that a race Democrats hoped would be a landslide is now looking more like a nail-biter. In the weeks following the Democratic convention in late July, Trump's poll standing plummeted. This was probably partly because Clinton got a convention bounce, but another factor was likely Trump's high-profile attacks on the family of the late Capt. Humayun Khan. The Kahn controversy was heavily covered in the press and earned Trump a new round of condemnations from high-profile Republicans. But around August 17, Trump decided to make a change. He installed a new campaign team. He stopped doing constant TV interviews where he'd end up putting his foot in his mouth. He started doing more traditional and message-driven campaign events, as the Wall Street Journal's Monica Langley writes. And perhaps most importantly, Trump has managed to avoid embroiling himself in any major new, campaign-consuming controversies (well, until Thursday's birther flap, which hasn't yet played out in the polls). Of course, he is being graded on a curve here \u2014 as Matt Yglesias writes, even uneventful Trump interviews usually contain several untrue or offensive statements that would shock us if any other politician were involved. Trump still isn't doing as well as we would expect a generic Republican nominee to be doing. Vox's fundamentals-based elections forecast suggests that he should be winning 50.9 percent of the two-party vote, and he's currently 3 points behind that. Still, Trump has generally spent the past month hammering home his critique of Clinton rather than being dogged with questions about one offensive statement or another. And that could be helping bring some reluctant Republicans back into his camp. There's also one other big thing that's changed for Trump in this time period: He finally started spending money on swing state campaign ads. Until mid-August, Hillary Clinton had been spending millions on the airwaves essentially unopposed in every key state, but now the Trump campaign has been investing millions in ads as well. Now, these ads are only seen by swing state voters, so we wouldn't expect them to make a dent in national polls. And Trump has improved nationally, so they're not at the heart of what's going on. Still, they could be making a difference at the margins in his performance in the swing states that will decide the election. As Trump has been improving his operation, Clinton has been dogged by a series of negative news stories that could be hurting her to some extent. On September 2, the FBI released a report of its findings in its investigation into Clinton's emails. There wasn't really much \"news\" here, but it quite understandably led to a new spate of news stories with \"Clinton\" and \"FBI\" in the headlines. And considering that the last time Clinton sank this badly in the polls was in the weeks after FBI Director James Comey first announced his findings in early July, it seems that when the topic is in the news, Clinton's poll standing suffers. Over this same late August\/early September time period, a series of negative-sounding stories about the Clinton Foundation also were published. Most of these stories didn't seem to amount to very much if you read their details closely. But the very fact that a bunch of negative-sounding stories about Clinton appeared in the news helps create an aura of \"corruption\" around her, particularly when Trump dubs her \"crooked,\" regardless of the fine details. (Most voters aren't retaining the fine details here.) Meanwhile, Clinton kept a relatively light campaign schedule in August so she could focus on fundraising instead. The side effect, though, was that she didn't have the opportunity to \"counterprogram\" those negative news stories with positive events putting her message out there. \"Clinton's decision to lay low in August \u2026 will be debated for years,\" Politico's Glenn Thrush writes. \"If she wins, her summertime fundraising blitz, meant to unleash a torrent of anti-Trump advertising at campaign's end, will be regarded as strategic genius; lose and her decision is up there with Michael Dukakis in the tank.\" I find that to be a bit overheated and doubt this made that much of a difference, but, hey, when voters did see a lot of Clinton and her message during the week of the Democratic convention, they did seem to like them well enough. So the race had already gotten a good deal closer since mid-August. But then, the events of this past weekend seem to hurt Clinton even more \u2014 though it's not clear which mattered most. First was \"deplorables-gate.\" At a fundraiser last Friday, Clinton disparaged \"half\" of Trump's supporters at a fundraiser as belonging in \"the basket of deplorables \u2026 racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it.\" Clinton soon gave a semi-apology, saying that \"half\" was too much but reiterating that Trump does indeed have many racist supporters. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and much of the media quickly portrayed her remarks as a devastating gaffe akin to Mitt Romney's \"47 percent\" comments from 2012. Afterward, things got worse for Clinton, as she felt faint and had to leave a 9\/11 commemoration event on Sunday, was recorded nearly collapsing while being led into her car, and belatedly admitted that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier. All this seemed to some to vindicate rumors Trump and his allies had been trying to spread about Clinton's health for some time, and made Clinton appear less than fully forthright. This is speculative, but, like Brendan Nyhan of the Upshot, I suspect the health news is hurting Clinton more than deplorables-gate. Yes, the Trump campaign has seized on her remark, but the Clinton team probably has better data and they now seem eager to discuss the topic (after the candidate's initial semi-apology). Furthermore, the deplorables comment seems like the type of inside-baseball campaign story that ordinary voters won't really care about, whereas Clinton's health is far more striking. Search data also suggests that people are far, far more interested in Clinton's health than in the \"deplorables\" controversy. Now, it's possible that this sudden swing in the polls is affected somewhat by differential non-response rates, a phenomenon Vox's Jeff Stein wrote about earlier this year. That is to say, the news of Clinton's illness may have made her supporters less enthusiastic about even answering polls, so they'd naturally show up less often in the results even after demographic weighting. Similarly, Trump supporters may have been disproportionately less likely to respond to polls back in early August, when Trump was under fire for his attacks on the Khan family. That could have made Clinton's poll leads look artificially large then, and a change in Clinton supporter response rates could be making the race look unusually tight now. As Stein wrote, Andrew Gelman and Alan Abramowitz have compiled evidence showing that what looks like big poll swings can often be explained partly by this effect. Yet if Clinton voters truly are feeling so unenthusiastic about the race that they won't answer phone polls, that in itself indicates a major underlying enthusiasm problem her campaign needs to solve. Furthermore, finding creative reasons to dismiss poll results that may not fit with your preconceptions has generally been a bad idea this year, as Trump's primary rise and Brexit have both shown. As for whether this is the harbinger of a new normal in the race, well, we don't really know, of course. There are still 53 more days until Election Day, and much can happen in that time. (Everything mentioned above happened in just the past month!) Clinton's health could get better or worse. Trump could avoid more gaffes or start backsliding like he did with birtherism on Thursday. The media could cover Trump more harshly now that it seems more likely he could win. The debates could go well or disastrously for either candidate. What is clear is that a race Democrats briefly thought they had in the bag no longer looks like such a sure thing.","label":0}
{"text":"Florida government official is serious about the BBQ aroma infraction.LOL! The environmental laws are creeping into our everyday normal activities like grilling out. Big government is way out of control! Once our homes were our castles. Now they are the government s. Not even the most trivial details of how we make use of our own property escapes bureaucratic regulation in the name of the environment. For example:Cobb County [Georgia] is telling a Kennesaw family to apply for permission to park their kids cars in their own driveway.The Oviedo family got a notice of violation for having four cars in the driveway. The family has relatives visiting and two kids home from college. They got a visit Friday from code enforcement, acting on an anonymous complaint. The neighborhood is zoned an Open Space Community. A recent rule changed, and enacted a limit of two cars parked in the drive. After Channel 2 consumer investigator Jim Strickland got the county on the phone, officials decided to let the issue slide this summer, but put the family on notice next summer would require a permit to park four cars in the driveway. I m having to pay to park on a property that I already pay tax on, said [Kim] Oviedo.But think how grateful the polar bears will be!Cobb County s Open Space Community zoning was established to encourage the preservation of natural resources within residential development. Once environazis get their heads in your tent, you have been relegated to sleeping out on the sand.","label":1}
{"text":"October 30, 2016 at 3:02 pm  Besides, using a \u00abcloud\u00bb account, is extremely stupid. Paedo hunter October 30, 2016 at 1:09 pm  and about time too\u2026\u2026my biggest 'fear' is the brainwashed masses putting resistence to the change\u2026..like the Brexit 'remainers' who just can't accept they lost yet still fighting at every legal street corner to have it reversed\u2026.that kinda mindset for different issues worldwide are the biggest stumbling block to change and they also feed the ruling classes objectives and give them reason to plant some more MSM treats for us to despair at\u2026..like Russophobia\u2026\u2026\"LONG LIVE PUTIN\" Mike October 30, 2016 at 12:05 pm  Thanks Gilad, at least everyone here at vt isn't brainwashed by Hillary. Vt is doing a disservice to itself by closing the comment sections on articles by Ian and Gordo. What cant control the narrative so you close the comments? Sad days for the Vt faithful! CoJonesGrandes October 30, 2016 at 12:57 pm  Are you aware of Karla Turner's work? The negative aliens who have controlled this planet for ages have many tools in their box. For example,where an incorruptible person has acquired a large following but works against their agenda, one way of dealing with such a person is to replace his soul. This way, it would appear as if that person has switched allegiances. Unless you are psychic enough to see the soul, you would have NO idea that there has been any such switcheroo. http:\/\/www.reptilianagenda.com\/exp\/e112300a.shtml Quote: HOW THE ALIENS MIGHT CONTROL THE LEADERS:  \"\u2026. if they wanted to use one of their own souls \u2026 perhaps to inhabit the body of a politicians and work full-time through it, that could be done. \u2026. they could simply take the soul out and stick another soul in. They have the ability to retrieve what we call the soul, to store it in a container, and to put it back into another body. They can put it in any body they wish.\" Ariana October 30, 2016 at 11:37 am  Sorry Correction _ Ironically, the masters of color revolutions around the world, are now experiencing the same colorfull revolution from inside, without any snipers behind the courtain and walls !  You must be logged in to post a comment Login WHAT'S HOT","label":1}
{"text":"Revelers in Guatemala set ablaze cardboard representations of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump wearing devil horns during a traditional ceremony, \"La Quema del Diablo\", or the Burning of the Devil, held ahead of Christmas every year. Trump's hardline stance on immigration during his presidential election campaign, including a promise to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, has drawn anger from Latin Americans in the United States and around the world. \"We are against this person in many respects, regarding deportations, the wall he wants to build. We do not agree,\" said participant Astrid Soto, just before setting fire to the Trump figures, which clutched fistfuls of fake cash, and a U.S. flag. Participants believe the practice of torching the devil helps banish bad spirits from their homes and neighborhoods. The custom began in the 16th century, but has spread out from various towns since the 1990s to become popular nationwide.","label":0}
{"text":"Britain on Tuesday dismissed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's unprecedented expression of support for Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage to be made British ambassador to Washington, saying pointedly that there is no vacancy for the job. Trump, who after his election victory met Farage before any EU leaders, said on Twitter that \"many people\" would like to see the former metals trader turned politician as Britain's ambassador. \"Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!\" Trump said. Prime Minister Theresa May, who congratulated Trump on his victory, was swift to reject such an undiplomatic proposal, with a spokesman saying Britain already had an excellent ambassador to Washington and that London would appoint its own envoys. \"We have first rate ambassador in Washington,\" Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who campaigned for Brexit, told the British parliament. \"There is no vacancy for that position.\" It is highly unusual in the modern era for leaders to publicly suggest to foreign nations whom they would like to see as ambassador, though during strained relations they sometimes reject or expel envoys. Trump's suggestion provoked anger, support and even hilarity in Britain, with one lawmaker, Conservative Simon Burns, joking that perhaps Britain should suggest Hillary Clinton as its preferred choice as ambassador to London. But the apparent public suggestion about who to appoint as ambassador by the man who will lead Britain's most powerful ally puts Prime Minister May in a difficult position just as she tries to build ties with Washington ahead of leaving the EU. London is trying to gauge whether Trump would support a special trade deal with Britain as it negotiates a divorce from the EU. Britain also places great store on what it calls its \"special relationship\" with the United States. Farage, who spent decades campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union and helped force former Prime Minister David Cameron to call the June referendum that brought the Brexit vote, spoke at a Trump rally during the U.S. campaign and visited the president-elect after his victory. As leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and one of the key figures of the successful Brexit campaign, Farage has repeatedly angered EU leaders by predicting the collapse of the EU, which he says is run by an out-of-touch elite of \"idiots\". Farage said Trump's suggestion that he serve as ambassador had come \"like a bolt from the blue\" but Trump understood loyalty in a way that those in the \"cesspit\" of career politics did not. \"I am in a good position with the President-elect's support to help. The world has changed and it's time that Downing Street did too,\" Farage said in an article written for the Breitbart news website. \"I would do anything to help our national interest and to help cement ties with the incoming Anglophile administration,\" Farage said. A photograph of Trump greeting Farage in front of a gilded elevator shortly after the U.S. election caused consternation in EU capitals, many of whom view Trump with a mixture of fear and puzzlement. His suggestion of Farage also provoked anger among some British lawmakers. \"Many people think you should mind your own business and talk about pussy-grabbing less, but hey, life is a constant disappointment,\" Jess Phillips, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party, said on Twitter in a reference to Trump's previous vulgar comments about groping women. Accused by his critics of being a racist and a bigot, Farage peppers his speeches with jokes and the odd expletive while railing against what he calls the doomed European superstate and immigration into Britain. He is a member of the European parliament but has failed in his efforts to win election to the British parliament. Farage said Trump would be a great president after \"the political revolution\" that brought Brexit in Britain and Trump to power in the United States. \"In the United Kingdom the people have spoken but the players at the top have, I am afraid, stayed the same,\" Farage, 52, said. \"Those who supported Remain now hold senior positions. Worst still, those who were openly abusive about Trump now pretend to be his friend,\" said Farage. Farage has urged May to build ties with Trump, who provoked criticism in Britain with his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. Queen Elizabeth might invite Trump for a state visit to Britain next year. Farage made light of allegations of sexual assault against Trump during the U.S. campaign by encouraging him to \"come and schmooze\" May but adding \"don't touch her for goodness sake\". When U.S. President Barack Obama said before the referendum that Britain would be at the back of the queue for a trade deal, Farage said it was disgraceful to intervene in the sovereign affairs of Britain. In a radio interview after the U.S. election, Farage described the U.S. president as: \"That Obama creature \u2013 a loathsome individual who couldn't stand our country.\" The way ambassadors are chosen in the United States and Europe differ significantly. It is common practice for the United States to appoint celebrities or campaign donors as envoys, for example when Richard Nixon appointed Shirley Temple as his envoy to Ghana in 1974. European states mostly appoint career diplomats or officials with long experience as ambassadors. Kim Darroch, the current British ambassador in Washington, did not reply to emails from Reuters requesting comment on Trump's remarks. His email bounced back with an out of office reply saying that the ambassador was traveling.","label":0}
{"text":"Nazar Naqvi has faithfully voted Republican for more than three decades. After Donald Trump's feud with Muslim parents who lost a son in battle for the United States, he has vowed not a single Republican will get his vote. Naqvi, 69, a retired U.S. government engineer from Newburgh, New York, is a member of a small community of Muslims who are among America's Gold Star families, those whose loved ones were killed while serving in the U.S. military. His son Mohsin Naqvi, who was born in Pakistan, enlisted in the U.S. Army four days after Sept. 11, 2001, and was killed in 2008 by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. Trump lashed out at Khizr and Ghazala Khan, the Pakistani American parents of slain U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, after they appeared at last week's Democratic convention in Philadelphia to criticize the Republican presidential hopeful for proposing a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country. \"I'm going to vote for anyone but Republicans because of this one person, this man who has gone out of his mind,\" Naqvi said this week. \"Not any office should get our vote. He has been nominated not by one person - the Republican Party nominated him.\" Naqvi said he was pressing his registered Republican friends to do the same. The Pentagon says that 3,939 active duty service members have identified themselves as Muslim, less than 1 percent of the 1.3 million active duty U.S. military troops, but a Pentagon spokesman said there is no record of how many Muslims have been killed in action. Reuters reached out to a dozen Muslim Gold Star families who lost a loved one in action after Sept. 11, 2001. The families are not organized as a group and some did not want to talk. But those who did agreed that Trump's comments upended their political loyalties, and moved them to take action to register and motivate other voters to keep Trump out of the White House in November. Nooshin Razani, 43, an Iranian-American pediatrician in Oakland, California, whose 19-year-old brother Omead Razani died while serving as a U.S. Army medic in Iraq in 2004, said Trump's comments sparked her to speak to the press for the first time. \"When I saw there was this person who was willing to use religion in this negative way, I decided I'm coming forward,\" said Razani. Trump rebuked Khizr Khan for suggesting that he should read the U.S. Constitution and said his wife Ghazala may have stood silently by her husband because she might not have been \"allowed\" to speak. Although Trump did call their son a hero and said his aim was to end radical Islamic terror, the ensuing uproar has caused many Republicans to distance themselves from him and to support the Khan family. Razani joined more than 20 Gold Star families in signing an open letter calling for Trump to apologize to the Khans and said she is going to volunteer to register voters, mainly because of Trump's comments about Ghazala Khan, which she said insulted all Muslim women. \"I want to be an active part of making sure people's voices are heard. Even people Trump thinks don't speak up,\" Razani said. Trump's ongoing dispute with the Khans has become a call to political action for Kevin Ahearn of Phoenix. His brother, Army Major James Ahearn, converted to Islam to marry a woman with whom he fell in love in Iraq, brought to the United States and with whom he had a daughter before he was killed by a bomb in Iraq in 2007. Kevin Ahearn, 48, said on Tuesday that he and his husband planned to go to Democratic Headquarters in Phoenix to volunteer for the first time. \"It makes me all the more determined that he does not make it to the White House,\" said Ahearn, whose Muslim niece now is 10. The soldier's mother said she was shocked by Trump's rhetoric and wishes she could talk to her late son about it. \"He was always a staunch Republican because they backed the military. I can't imagine how he would feel now,\" said Constance Ahearn, 75, who lives in the San Francisco area.","label":0}
{"text":"Abortion opponents gathered on Friday in Washington for their annual march, which has taken place every year since 1974 to protest the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision from 1973. \u25a0 Vice President Mike Pence, the official to ever speak in person at the march, told the crowd that \"life is winning. \" \u25a0 Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, also addressed the crowd. \u25a0 The march drew thousands of activists. Mr. Pence, using the refrain \"life is winning,\" assured the crowd that Mr. Trump shared their opposition to abortion and would appoint a justice to the Supreme Court who held that view as well. \"We will not rest until we restore a culture of life in America,\" Mr. Pence said, and thousands in the crowd cheered. He also said that by many measures \u2014 the views of members of Congress and advances in science among them \u2014 \"life is winning in America. \" Standing where other Republican leaders have usually just sent video or audio recordings of their message, Mr. Pence said the movement should embrace the moment. Kellyanne Conway may have sprung onto the national political scene largely unknown. But inside the movement of those opposing abortion, she has been a leading figure for two decades. \"Kellyanne is one of us,\" is how she was introduced at the March for Life. As a pollster and political strategist, she advised numerous groups like the Susan B. Anthony List and the March for Life, urging them to adopt what she often described as a more approach that avoided some of the more incendiary language of the movement in the past. Opponents of abortion gather every year on the National Mall and march to the Supreme Court. Usually their defiance is not much more than symbolism \u2014 the court is the origin of Roe v. Wade, the decision in 1973 that they have sought for more than 40 years to overturn. This year they have ample reason to believe that under a government, they will begin to see movement for the first time in more than a decade. In previous years, no president or vice president has ever addressed the march in person. This year, the Trump administration will be out in full force with the appearances of Mr. Pence and Ms. Conway. President Trump, in one of his first official acts, signed an order prohibiting foreign aid to health providers abroad who discuss abortion as a option. And in a break with previous Republican presidents, he has embraced the idea of a litmus test for his Supreme Court nominees and pledged explicitly to name someone who opposes abortion. He said he would announce his choice on Thursday to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February. Mr. Trump has become an unlikely champion for the movement, with abortion opponents saying he is probably their most unflinching White House ally since President Ronald Reagan. Though Mr. Trump spent much of his life as a supporter of abortion rights, he spoke more vividly and forcefully on the issue during the campaign than any recent Republican nominee. And while many groups opposing abortion were vehemently opposed to Mr. Trump during the Republican primaries last year, almost all of them came around. Today, however unexpectedly, they march in a Washington suddenly more friendly to their interests. Many of the activists said they were looking forward to President Trump appointing Supreme Court justices who might overturn the right to abortions and to the defunding of Planned Parenthood. Marchers waved signs spelling out their beliefs in messages like \"Save the babies,\" \" \" and \"Trump for Baby Bumps. \" Still, some of the marchers remained wary of the new president. Kathleen Crank, 19, a sophomore at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. traveled on a five bus caravan of 260 students to come to the march. She said she was happy to have a president who would oppose abortion but wasn't excited about much else about Mr. Trump. She said she waited until the last minute and decided not to vote for either him or Hillary Clinton. \"Their stance on abortion is probably the only issue I'm glad about for this administration,\" she said. \"I'm glad that after eight years of reading Obama's tweets celebrating Roe v. Wade, I'm glad we finally have an administration that is recognizing we need to cut funding for abortions in other countries and bringing it back down to the state level. \" Ms. Crank also said she saw abortions as less about religion than about preserving the rights of unborn children. \"It's more a social justice issue for unborn babies than a religious one to push an agenda,\" she said. \"Everyone should be able to live their life and live it however they want to. \" Annette Saunders, 60, drove five hours with her husband from Norwalk, Conn. to volunteer with Save the Storks, a group that opposes abortion, and to hand out signs that said, \"For those who can't. \" Though she voted for Mr. Trump, Ms. Saunders said she agonized over the decision because she found him to be \"crass\" and was frustrated by the tape of him using vulgarities to talk about women. \"I was concerned but I felt like God told me to vote for Donald Trump,\" she said. \"He is standing up for and his vice president certainly is and I'm excited about seeing a turnaround. \" Jon Banks and Josie Rauh, both 18, were taking photos of each other in front of the Washington Monument clad in red and blue President caps. They were part of a group that traveled to Washington from Archbishop Hoban, a private Catholic high school in Akron, Ohio. Both said Mr. Trump's opposition to abortion were the centerpieces of their support for the new president. They grew up in families dedicated to the cause. Ms. Rauh had supported former President Barack Obama but became enthusiastic in 2016. \"I thought Obama was a pretty good president,\" she said. \"I think there are some things that need to be changed, like Roe v. Wade. I think Trump has got a plan and is ready to do it. \" \"I want women to have their rights,\" she added. \"But I think there are a bunch of women in the womb that are being killed, too. \" Mr. Banks, the son of a police officer, said he was thrilled by Mr. Trump's patriotism. He said he hoped the new president found a way to outlaw abortion. As Mr. Pence, Ms. Conway and several other speakers celebrated what they described as a new phase for the movement, thousands of people shouted \"Trump\" and \"Life\" while happily waving their hands. Anne Nudi, 49, a nurse and college professor who flew to Washington from her home in Kenosha, Wis. to come to the march, said she enthusiastically cast her ballot for Mr. Trump and has been encouraged by his first busy week in office. \"I feel empowered. I feel positive. I feel encouraged about the future and I feel blessed that I have a president who is supportive of our cause,\" she said as she shivered while watching the speakers. \"I believe he's a good person. He's made his own way and I believe he wants what's best for our country regardless of party affiliation. \"","label":0}
{"text":"(CNN) Donald Trump is ratcheting up his rhetoric about American Muslims, saying there's precedent for monitoring some mosques amid the recent terror wave. At a Birmingham, Alabama, rally on Saturday -- which included a physical altercation between a black protester and several white Trump backers -- the 2016 Republican front-runner suggested law enforcement keep an eye on certain Islamic houses of worship which, in his view, could pose terrorist threats. \"I want surveillance of certain mosques if that's OK,\" Trump told the often-raucous and approving crowd. \"We've had it before.\" The remarks echo a call Trump made earlier in the week, when he said on MSNBC he'd \"strongly consider\" shutting down mosques in the U.S. The billionaire businessman also linked current terrorist concerns, after the Paris carnage and other attacks, with 9\/11. \"I watched the World Trade Center go down,\" Trump asserted, adding he watched in New Jersey, \"as thousands of people were cheering as the building was coming down.\" Trump then denounced calls to resettle Syrian refuges on U.S. soil, which his Republican rivals for the nomination also oppose. \"I want surveillance. I will absolutely take (a) database on the people coming in from Syria. \"If we can't stop it -- but we are going to if I win -- they're going back.\" Several attendees at the rally punched and kicked a protester who tried to disrupt Trump's speech. At least a half-dozen attendees shoved and tackled the protester, a black man, to the ground as he refused to leave the event. At least one man punched the protester and a woman kicked him while he was on the ground. All of the attendees who were involved in the physical altercation with the protester were white. The protester appeared to be shouting \"black lives matter\" and later removed his sweatshirt to reveal a shirt with those words. At least one attendee shouted \"all lives matter\" as the protester was eventually led out by police officers on the scene. Birmingham Police Lt. Sean Edwards told CNN that three people were asked to leave the event following the scuffle. No arrests were made, and the protester did not require medical attention. Campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN that \"the campaign does not condone this behavior.\" Trump has fended off criticism recently that he was accused of backing a U.S. database on all Muslims in the country. Trump has denied making that remark but hasn't dismissed the idea out-of-hand. The database controversy began Thursday when Trump told Yahoo News that he would create new anti-terrorism measures if he's elected. \"We're going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,\" he told Yahoo News. \"And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we're going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.\" The Yahoo reporter asked about the possibility of a database for Muslims or \"a form of special identification that noted their religion.\" Trump did not say no to either idea. Then, after an Iowa campaign event later that day, an NBC reporter asked Trump if he favored a database to track Muslims in the country. Trump responded in a way some took as backing that idea. At Saturday's rally in Alabama, Trump said he decided not to answer once he heard the reporter identified as being with NBC News.","label":0}
{"text":"Whole Foods is a store that many people love. They love the organic food, the appearance of cleanliness and health, and the impeccable customer service. However, lately, this popular chain has found itself under fire for creating and marketing products that are excessively expensive and completely unnecessary often at the expense of the environment due to the packaging, and at the expense of its customers budgets.Everyone remembers the absolute shitstorm caused by the asparagus water last year that the chain sold $6 a bottle for water with a couple of stalks of asparagus in it. Apparently, that did not teach the folks at Whole Foods a lesson, because they have now just had a similar reaction to another ridiculously expensive product oranges that are already peeled, which are going for a whopping $6 a pound.Needless to say, the public has not taken kindly to this move, and many people have taken to Twitter to blast the chain. Here are just a few choice critical tweets:Firstly, it was pointed out how environmentally irresponsible this is:If only nature would find a way to cover these oranges so we didn't need to waste so much plastic on them. pic.twitter.com\/00YECaHB4D Nathalie Gordon (@awlilnatty) March 3, 2016 @awlilnatty Fucking hell. That makes me unbelievably angry actually. Talk about necessarily contributing to plastic taking over the planet. Swiftie Be (@StephanieBe) March 3, 2016Others pointed out how ironic the chain s antics are, given its name:@ajdomanico @awlilnatty the irony of this being Whole Foods too Mollie Goodfellow (@hansmollman) March 3, 2016Others made fun of the obviously lazy nature of the people who would purchase this:@ConorS @awlilnatty @MisterVivian next logical step: half eaten. (@Jemppu) March 4, 2016It was pointed out that it could be ableist to assume that everyone can peel an orange; however, that point was quickly followed by the obvious fact that such people are not who Whole Foods is targeting. In fact, due to the fact that most disabled people are not exactly well-to-do, they likely could never even afford to shop at Whole Foods, making that particular point moot:@otherbecky @awlilnatty You know, as well as i do, that that is NOT who that is marketed towards. Also, the packaging is still superfluous. Swiftie Be (@StephanieBe) March 4, 2016All of this and more is true here. This is simply outrageous. Shame on you, Whole Foods. You market to organic food-eating, hippieish, health conscious liberals, and you expect us to put up with this, to not notice? Well, for the second time in their price-gouging attempt, Whole Foods was forced to backtrack, calling the marketing and selling of these pre-peeled oranges a mistake. @awlilnatty Definitely our mistake. These have been pulled. We hear you, and we will leave them in their natural packaging: the peel. Whole Foods Market (@WholeFoods) March 3, 2016You re damn right it was a mistake. Hopefully you people have learned your lesson this time.","label":1}
{"text":"Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner vowed to pursue a legal challenge against union dues the state collects from non-unionized, rank-and-file government workers despite a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Tuesday that upheld the practice. In a victory for labor, a 4-4 deadlock by the nation's high court allowed a federal appeals court opinion to stand against 10 non-unionized California public school teachers who contended so-called fair-share dues should not be withheld from their paychecks if they chose against union membership. But the court move likely does not settle the issue, because nearly identical federal litigation in Illinois that Rauner helped launch last year remains viable. \"Our case is winding its way through the courts, and it will get to the Supreme Court probably at some point in the future,\" Rauner said during a stop in rural Illinois on Tuesday. \"And we will just continue the fight for the freedom of political expression and the right of free speech for government employees. It's a fundamental issue.\" Since taking office in 2015, the first-term Republican governor has waged war with public-sector unions in a bid to weaken their longstanding influence over state politics. During his first month in office, the governor signed an executive order to bar state agencies from withholding fair-share dues, which non-unionized employees must pay under Illinois law and collective-bargaining agreements to support non-political union activities that benefit all workers. Public-sector unions sued in Illinois state court to block Rauner's executive order from being implemented and persuaded a judge to allow the fees to continue to be collected while the case, which is still pending, was litigated. Simultaneously, Rauner sued in federal court to challenge the fees, but last May he was dismissed from the case by a judge, who ruled the governor lacked legal standing. Three non-unionized Illinois workers forced to pay between $19.75 and $60.86 in union dues per paycheck were allowed to proceed with their own complaint. A spokesman for the union representing the largest bloc of state workers called Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling a \"win\" but acknowledged the Illinois case may become the next fair-share battlefront. \"These attacks are political, and they're ideological. They're brought by people who want to rig the economy and our democracy in their favor. They're not going to stop because they lost this particular challenge. They'll bring another one,\" said Anders Lindall, a spokesman for AFSCME Council 31.","label":0}
{"text":"GOP presidential candidates called for prayers for victims of the terrorist attacks in Paris and a swift response from the U.S., while criticizing President Barack Obama's foreign policy.","label":0}
{"text":"Newly released body camera footage shows a La Junta, Colorado police officer violently slamming a man s head to the pavement with enough force to break his neck. The officer s actions left the man, who was never charged with any crime, paralyzed from the chest down.According to Donovan Duran s family the young MMA fighter was experiencing a mental health crisis at the time of the encounter with police, which took place in December of 2015.Over the course of several days Duran s family called police to help them cope with what they describe as unusual behavior.The Denver Post reports that Duran was drinking excessively and experiencing bouts of paranoia in the days prior to his injury.On two prior occasions police had taken the man to a local hospital. On both occasions he was released without treatment.According to police, authorities were not able to hold him in custody because he had not broken any laws.The latter half of the body cam video shows officer Vince Fraker speaking with Duran before his arrest. Although it appears that some of the footage has been edited, none of the footage published by the Denver Post shows the man being combative or threatening the police.The first portion of the video shows the moment that Fraker slams Duran s head to the pavement. It s clear that he is severely injured and no longer able to stand or walk.The video shows Fraker and another officer dealing with Duran s injuries in a shockingly callous manner, dragging him across the hospital parking lot and tossing his limp body around without any concern whatsoever for his well-being.Watch the video below, courtesy of the Denver Post.More than six months later Duran still remains in the hospital. In spite of the brutal treatment he received from police, he was never charged with any crime.According to the Denver Post:A grand jury in April found there were no fileable charges against Fraker or another officer involved in the encounter.The grand jurors wrote in a report that while Fraker was responsible for Duran s injuries a fractured neck that left him paralyzed from his nipples down when he rolled him out of a La Junta police SUV, it cannot be the basis of any criminal charges. Duran s attorneys have filed a federal lawsuit, stating: La Junta Police Department training of officers does not include proper training in responding to calls involving persons in crisis or with obvious mental health problems, including use of force policies and de-escalation strategies. The suit goes on to say: Fraker s use of excessive force as described above herein was outrageous and shocking to the conscience, in violation of Duran s substantive due process rights. A spokesperson for the La Junta Police Department states that an internal investigation into the incident is still underway.Image credit: video screen capture via Denver Post","label":1}
{"text":"A bipartisan group of 48 lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday asked the Obama administration to brief Congress \"as soon as possible\" about a 2015 Yahoo YHOO.O program to scan all of its users' incoming email at the behest of the government. The request comes amid scrutiny by privacy advocates and civil liberties groups about the legal authority and technical nature of the surveillance program, first revealed by Reuters last week. Custom software was installed to search messages to hundreds of millions of accounts under an order issued by the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. \"As legislators, it is our responsibility to have accurate information about the intelligence activities conducted by the federal government,\" according to the letter, organized by Republican Representative Justin Amash of Michigan and Democratic Representative Ted Lieu of California. \"Accordingly, we request information and a briefing as soon as possible for all members of Congress to resolve the issues raised by these reports.\" Investigators searched for messages that contained a single piece of digital content linked to a foreign state sponsor of terrorism, sources have told Reuters, though the nature of the content remains unclear. Intelligence officials said Yahoo modified existing systems used to stop child pornography and filter spam messages on its email service. But three former Yahoo employees told Reuters the court-ordered search was done by a module buried deep near the core of the company's email server operation system, far below where mail sorting was handled. The Senate and House intelligence committees were given a copy of the order when it was issued last year, sources said, but other members of Congress have express concern at the scope of the email scanning. Some legal experts have questioned the breadth of the court order and whether it runs afoul of the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches. Half of registered U.S. voters believe the Yahoo program violated the privacy of customers, according to a poll of 1,989 people conducted last week by Morning Consult, a polling and media company. Twenty-five percent were supportive of the program because of its potential to stop criminal acts, the survey found, while another quarter did not know or had no opinion. The congressional letter is addressed to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.","label":0}
{"text":"There have been many reactions to the horrific shooting at a Republican baseball game this week, but the one that was just given by Congressman Mark Sanford (R-SC) is one of the most shocking.While many Republicans have been quick to blame Democrats and Liberals for the shooter s actions, Sanford went on Morning Joe today to point the finger at America s president, Donald Trump. Sounding like a Republican who might actually have a tiny grip on reality, Sanford argued that Trump helped create a toxic political environment, which may have motivated yesterday s attack. Sanford said: I think we have to watch out as a society because, if we don t watch out, civility is indeed a part of civilized government and an open political system. If you let these forces play out, I think we end up at a very, very bad spot. I think what happened yesterday was symptomatic of it. Sanford then turned his focus on Trump, stating that he is part of the reason America has become so deeply divided, and his rhetoric has undoubtedly had an effect on the country. Sanford didn t mince his words when he said: I would argue that the president is at least in partially not totally but partially to blame for demons that have been unleashed. The fact that you have the top guy saying I wish I can hit you in the face. Why don t you and I ll pay your legal fees. That s bizarre. We ought to call it as such. What I ve said back home, some of these people have been frankly weird and different in a town hall meeting. I say what is going on. They ll say look, if the guy at the top can say anything to anybody at any time, why can t I? I think we all need to look for ways to learn from what happened yesterday and to say, wait a minute, this is a pause moment. What might I do a little differently in the way I reached out to other members. Finally, a Republican who has the guts to point out just how insane and inappropriate Trump s behavior is, and to acknowledge that there are consequences to having a POTUS who is this unhinged. You can watch the interview below:","label":1}
{"text":"A recent viral video showed a woman wielding a Bible overhead and marching through a Target, ringing out her message through the brightly lit aisles. \"I'm a mother of 12 and I'm disgusted by this wicked practice,\" she cried. \"Mothers, get your children out of this store \u2026 it's a dangerous place!\" The woman, who has not been identified, is not the only one incensed by Target's announcement that it would allow transgender customers to use the restroom that matches their gender identity. More than 700,000 people have pledged to boycott the store. Target's move, meanwhile, was seen as a response to a new North Carolina law that requires people in government buildings to use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex on their birth certificate\u2014in effect forcing post-transition transgender people to use the bathroom of the opposite sex. The idea that children, especially girls, will somehow be hurt by relieving themselves alongside transgender women has been one of the main arguments of the law's proponents. In the words of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, \"Men should not be going to the bathroom with little girls.\" There's no evidence that municipalities that have protected trans people's restroom access have seen a spike in public-safety issues. But according to some studies, not having protected restroom access can be harmful for trans people. According to a study by Georgia State University's Kristie L. Seelman, being denied bathroom access is correlated with an increased risk of suicide attempts among trans people. Transgender people have said bathroom access is one of their \"most pressing challenges,\" Seelman writes in the study, which was published in February in the Journal of Homosexuality. Trans people have reported getting stared at or being asked to leave, something that causes them \"great stress,\" according to researchers. Seelman highlights an earlier study of 93 trans people that found 68 percent had been verbally harassed in bathrooms, and 9 percent were physically assaulted.","label":0}
{"text":"New Zealand First leader Winston Peters said on Monday that he still had not spoken to either major party leader after his small nationalist party was left holding the balance of power in Saturday s indecisive election. On the same day, Labour leader Jacinda Ardern confirmed she would seek to form a coalition government with NZ First, following the heels of Prime Minister Bill English who had started making overtures to Peters in an election night speech. I think his chief of staff s talked to my chief of staff... I have yet to have a chance to talk to my colleagues, Peters told broadcaster One News from his home in the far north. The ruling National Party won the most seats, but failed to secure enough to form government, leaving Peters kingmaker. English has said it could take weeks to form a coalition government, with the uncertainty weighing on the New Zealand dollar, which posted its biggest daily drop in over four months. Peters is a veteran maverick politician who has served as a cabinet minister in both previous National and Labour governments and also said on Sunday talks would take two to three weeks . While Labour trailed the National Party by around 10 points, under the country s German-style proportional representation it could still form a government if it goes into coalition with the Green Party and NZ First. My expectation is over the next couple of days to reach out but I haven t done so yet, Ardern told reporters in Wellington, referring to Peters. Our job now is to work with what voters delivered us which was an expectation that ...as a bloc that voted against the status quo to see if we can form a stable coalition government. National secured 58 seats ahead of the 52 seats from the Green Party and Labour, which experienced a surge in popularity under new leader Ardern. That left both still needing NZ First s nine seats to reach the 61 seats required to form a government. While both National and Labour are expected to adhere to fiscal prudence, they will likely differ on monetary policy, trade and immigration. Some expect Labour s plans to cut migration and renegotiate some trade policies will hurt two key sources of growth for New Zealand s small, open economy. There is also some concern about what NZ First will demand in return for its support. Peters has lobbied for more currency intervention by the central bank, which would weigh on the Kiwi, the world s 11th most traded currency. The currency fell 1.19 percent to $0.7254, posting it biggest daily loss since May. We now wait to find out who is going to form a coalition with NZ First and that may take some weeks, said Stuart Ive, dealer at OM Financial. A final tally of the results is due on Oct. 7, when special votes , which make up 15 percent of the total and which include overseas votes, are released. English remains prime minister in the interim.","label":0}
{"text":"Former CIA director John Brennan on Friday criticized as \"disgraceful\" President Donald Trump's efforts to play down U.S. intelligence agencies' assessment that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election. Trump's administration has been dogged by investigations into allegations of Russian interference in last year's U.S. presidential election and possible ties with his campaign team. Speaking one day before his first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hamburg earlier this month, Trump said he suspected Russian interference in the election but that no one knows for sure. \"These types of comments are just disgraceful ... and the person who said them should be ashamed of himself,\" said Brennan, CIA chief under former President Barack Obama, at the Aspen Security Forum. Special Counsel Robert Mueller and several U.S. congressional committees are investigating whether Russia interfered in the election and colluded with Trump's campaign to try to swing the race in his favor over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Those probes are focused almost exclusively on Moscow's actions, lawmakers and intelligence officials have said, and no evidence has surfaced publicly implicating other countries. Moscow has denied any interference, and Trump has said that his campaign did not collude with Russia. Brennan said he was disappointed by the president's handling of security issues in his first six months in office. \"I must say there are disappointments that I see in terms of what Mr. Trump is doing on the international stage that I think pose serious questions about how he is keeping safe our national security,\" Brennan said. Speaking at the same event in Aspen, James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under Obama, was also critical of Trump's administration. Asked if Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and top adviser, should have his security clearance canceled for initially failing to list on a disclosure form contacts he had with Russians, Clapper said it should be suspended pending a review. \"I do think the appropriate thing here is take a pause and at least suspend a clearance until you've had the opportunity to investigate and then decide whether the clearance should be restored or not,\" Clapper told the same panel. Brennan and Clapper also criticized Trump's remarks in a tweet earlier this year about U.S. spy agencies in which he accused them of practices reminiscent of Nazi Germany. \"That (tweet) was a terrible insulting affront not to me or John. We get paid the big bucks to take that. But I'm talking about the rank and file, the people in the trenches, men and women, the patriots in the intelligence community and that was completely inappropriate,\" said Clapper.","label":0}
{"text":"I'm going to level with you. Getting inside the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is hard. \"Advanced timed passes for April 2017 Available on January 4th,\" the website laughs. So with all due respect to the buckets of cash raised to fix Dorothy's ruby shoes, the opening of the Blacksonian is the museum event of the year \u2014 probably the century. (Yes, \"the Blacksonian,\" because no one is going say that whole name and no one's going to say \"NMAAHC,\" either, because no one wants to hear \"God bless you\" every time somebody does.) The wait to create a national museum of black history and culture was decades long. And the result amounts to a major bureaucratic, academic and emotional achievement. Now everybody wants in. So some of us have to wait. I got in on a chilly autumn Sunday, after a stranger, who had more passes than she needed, gave an extra one to me. There aren't many places where gluttony becomes largess, but it does at the Blacksonian. While you're standing there, hoping a look of pity turns into a pass, there's plenty of time to roll your eyes at the faint fragrance of barbecued meat from the food truck parked along Constitution Avenue, or to ask someone to hold your spot in line while you consult with the man selling pies nearby. There's also plenty of time to admire the edifice you're waiting to enter: three tiered trapezoidal stacks of gating that sheaths a giant glass box. I had assumed that the gating was iron or actual bronze. Nope. Aluminum. Aluminum siding. But it's the most vivid, most alive, aluminum siding you're ever going to see. Obviously, we're talking about architecture not black hair, but the edges lay perfectly. Designed just a little differently, the gating might have read as defensive, as a meticulous: \"Keep out. \" But the panels are too porous for combat. They extend cautious warmth, instead: \"Take care. \" The trapezoids, we've been told, evoke a Yoruba crown, imputing a sense of majesty. You can see that, especially in the museum's silhouetted logo. Yet viewed from the minor distance of 14th Street and Constitution, with the Washington Monument playing the role of antenna, it's a fortress. But \u2014 unlike, say, the pink marble of its neighbor the National Gallery of Art, or the curvilinear limestone of the National Museum of the American Indian \u2014 the Blacksonian is brown. In the course of a day, depending on the weather and the light, that aluminum skin turns every shade of that color. In the sunlight, it's golden, sepia in the shade, when it's overcast. At dusk, it's mahogany and deep chestnut after a cloud gobbles up the sun. The building can be all of these browns without ever getting to black, as if it knows that no black person is actually, phenotypically black. So the building, a mighty, physical construct, memorializes a figurative one. \"Black\" is the concept that gets unpacked, rebuilt and celebrated within the museum. Inside, there's more waiting to be done \u2014 for the very good restaurant, for the ladies' room, for entry to the museum's deep lower levels. Building waiting into the experience feels right for a place that tells the story of a people who've had to wait for everything else. The anticipation for the subterranean history galleries already feels mythic. You might know, for instance, that the museum's narrative history starts underground, and gradually brings you up \u2014 into the present, into the ample light that pours through the great glass enclosure. But that doesn't account for the emotional toll of all the waiting and reading and thinking and connecting and feeling to come. It doesn't account for the experience of standing in the immense concourse and seeing the faces of the hundreds of people waiting with you, the endless hues of skin. This standing around is simultaneously boring and one of the happiest, most poignant things I've ever done with monotony. Here we all are, imported as Africans, standing around as checking our phones, laughing, talking, taking group selfies, waiting with white people from this country and from Europe, with all kinds of Latinos, all kinds of Asians, all kinds of Arabs, to interact with a version of a story of what America truly is. During that wait for the underground galleries, natural impatience threatens to upstage the human majesty of it all. You don't know why it's taking so long to get there. Once you reach the entrance, you see. You're waiting for an elevator. The Blacksonian has one pivotal conceit, one metaphorical device that you need to embrace despite its hokiness, despite its comical proximity to a set of stairs, and it's the elevator. The elevator is an enormous glass box that comfortably fits about 30 people. The operator welcomes you to a time machine that's going to carry you from the 21st century to the 15th. It was a device I knew I'd bought into when the operator asked whether we were ready, and I honestly couldn't say that I was. Despite waiting all morning for this \u2014 despite waiting all my life, really \u2014 I was overcome with stress. Suddenly, I was unready to see any of the 37, 000 procured, purchased and donated objects, even as the box began its descent and landed its cargo at the year 1400. The stress never left. And it probably shouldn't have. That's history. It's heavy. You just bear the weight as you set forth to graze thousands of chronologically arranged facts, names, photographs, things, explanatory guides, problems. The museum doesn't tell you how to proceed. You're not doing it wrong, even though a school of museum criticism \u2014 and to be fair, some museumgoers \u2014 expect . Maybe the Blacksonian doesn't instruct you on where next to graze. But you're always oriented. And it's the orientation that gets to you. Until the installation on slaves' role in the Revolutionary War, for instance, the ceilings in the galleries are low (Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are among the museum's donors, and I wish their heads luck). With a crowd, the walkways narrow the lighting is almost notional, polite, correspondent with one solemn detail after the next. You can see more than well enough to understand that enslaved labor was foundational for the colonies. You can hear that anyone speaking is doing so almost reluctantly. You feel simultaneously overheated and spiritually chilled. In these early galleries, you're always in someone's way. There's always some image you're not seeing, some wall text you practically have to kiss in order to read. It's strange: Here we are, climbing past one another, inspecting the historical molecules that make us us. Objects, stories, illustrations, faces, ideas and legislation will magnetize you to them, will imprint themselves upon you. That happened to me almost immediately, with the wall of slave ships. It carries the names of vessels and their countries of commercial origin (always Europe, often Portugal). It specifies the date of disembarkation and tallies the number of passengers versus the number of survivors. The wall appears to be a single structure, full of information that you have to both crouch and get on the tips of your toes to make out. Then you realize that it runs the length of much of one side of the gallery, and that the decorative presentation has fooled then floored you. It's such a horrifyingly casual display that it becomes grimly amusing before it turns devastating. The awkward presentation feels morally apt. The Atlantic Ocean was once a sloshing highway to transport slaves. The work you do to see that wall is emblematic of the work to be done by visitors all over the historical galleries. You reach the end of Reconstruction on the lowest level and have to climb a ramp to get to the civil rights era. That doesn't feel accidental. It's effort that seems meant as a terribly loaded abridgment of the work black people have always done in this country. Progress is a StairMaster. The Blacksonian reveals a wicked, poetic sense of humor about this history. You exit that long, tight, airless gallery into a huge open space with virtually no ceiling, and you realize you weren't breathing. And then you catch your breath only to look up and see, on a platform, a statue of Thomas Jefferson. Arrayed behind him are rows and rows of bricks painted with the names of some of his slaves \u2014 Hercules and Jupiter and lots of Sallys. Surrounding him are equally proportioned statues of Harriet Tubman, Benjamin Banneker, Phyllis Wheatley and the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture \u2014 black people the museum argues are equally important. They loom near Jefferson. They haunt him. Abraham Lincoln, too, is morally conjoined here, on the abolition of slavery. He is as bound to Frederick Douglass, as Tony Curtis is chained to Sidney Poitier in \"The Defiant Ones. \" Lincoln's not a hero at the Blacksonian. He's a man with a nagging mandate from Douglass to do the right thing. He's another brick in the wall. The time machine transports you to other places \u2014 to an old slave cabin, a heartbreakingly perfunctory bill of sale for a black girl, the coffin of young, murdered Emmett Till, to photograph after photograph of slaves who radiate a kind of melancholic neutrality. Encountering so many long faces makes you aware of the length of yours. They also dare you to wonder: Who, among these ancestors, was the first to have the audacity to be pictured with a smile? The wonder keeps growing. How did this country ever evolve from a wall listing the amount paid for so many black people to the wall on the great ground floor featuring the many black people who helped pay to build the museum that would display either wall? How did we get from the funereal assessment of American history below ground to the vibrant galleries on the upper floors that salute black hair, black comedy, black athletes, black scientists, black travel, black art, black body language, Chuck Berry's Cadillac? (That's not quite the story down the Mall, at the Museum of the American Indian, and I carried that heaviness around with me, too.) The Blacksonian takes astonishing care to correct a crucial misrepresentation of slavery. I, at least, am guilty of necessarily focusing on the very real degradation of the work and not on the dignity and ingenuity of the workers. Over and over, the word \"skill\" appears in the display texts to describe the innovation slaves made to streamline agriculture and industry. Though the labor was evilly got and cruelly maintained, the laborers were innovators, creators and artisans. We call this place a museum, but to behold its impregnability, to feel centuries of pain and pride, to receive the story of how black people helped forge this nation (first by whip then by will) to find, at the twilight of one historic presidency and the dawn of what promises to be a very different one, that the forging must (must) continue \u2014 to see that metal gating reaching up, up, up \u2014 is to sense that the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture really should have an additional name, one worthy of all that forging and hammering and ironing out. It should also be called the Blacksmith.","label":0}
{"text":"One of the fastest growing groups of refugees coming to the U.S. are coming from Africa According to the Center for immigration studies:The sending countries with the largest percentage increases in the number of immigrants living in the United States since 2010 were Saudi Arabia (up 122 percent), Nepal (86 percent), Afghanistan (up 74 percent), Burma (up 73 percent), Syria (up 62 percent), Venezuela (up 58 percent), Bangladesh (up 53 percent), Kenya (up 46 percent), Ethiopia (up 41 percent), Nigeria (up 40 percent), Iraq (up 39 percent), Ghana (up 37 percent), India (up 37 percent), Egypt (up 32 percent), Pakistan (up 28 percent), and China (up 25 percent). The states with the largest numerical increases in the number of immigrants from 2010 to 2016 were Texas (up 587,889), Florida (up 578,468), California (up 527,234), New York (up 238,503), New Jersey (up 171,504), Massachusetts (up 140,318), Washington (up 134,132), Pennsylvania (up 131,845), Virginia (up 120,050), Maryland (up 118,175), Georgia (up 95,353), Nevada (up 78,341), Arizona (up 78,220), Michigan (up 74,532), Minnesota (up 73,953), and North Carolina (up 70,501).ACCORDING TO PEW RESEARCH: There were 2.1 million African immigrants living in the United States in 2015, up from 881,000 in 2000 and a substantial increase from 1970 when the U.S. was home to only 80,000 foreign-born Africans.The fact is that whether Africans come to the U.S. legally or illegally, they brig with them risks like the one below:DANCING WITH THE DEADIn Madagascar, ceremonies in which families exhume the remains of dead relatives, rewrap them in fresh cloth and dance with the corpses are a sacred ritual.A local name for these ceremonies is famadihana. It s one of Madagascar s most widespread rituals, historian Mahery Andrianahag told AFP. It s necessary to assure cosmic harmony it satisfies our desire to respect and honour the ancestors so that they can be blessed and one day return. The dead are believed to reciprocate the blessings. Says one participant, I am extremely proud to go to rewrap the bones of my grandmother and all of our ancestors. I will ask them for blessings and success in my school leavers exams. Famadihana is also an opportunity to party:The customary ritual, rather than a religious rite, can be shocking for some, but for those taking part, it is an intense celebration accompanied by music, dancing and singing, fuelled by alcoholic drinks.When the party is over, participants store the mats that the bodies are laid on under their own mattresses. This is said to bring good luck.But some doctors warn that they can also transmit germs and infections.And, at a time when Madagascar is enduring its most lethal outbreak of the plague in years, the practice of body turning has raised fears among health officials.Since August, the disease has infected more than 1,100 people, with 124 deaths. Health ministry epidemiologists have long observed that plague season coincides with the period when famadihana ceremonies are held from July to October.But who cares about the plague? Scoffs one participant, I will always practise the turning of the bones of my ancestors plague or no plague. The plague is a lie. Meanwhile, immigrants from every corner of the Third World pour into our country, often illegally, bringing along their exotic customs and diseases.","label":1}
{"text":"The following are people mentioned as contenders for senior roles as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump works to form his administration before taking office on Jan. 20, according to Reuters sources and media reports. Trump has already named a number of people for other top jobs in his administration. * Mitt Romney, 2012 Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor * Rudy Giuliani, Republican former mayor of New York City * Bob Corker, Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee * David Petraeus, retired general and former CIA director who pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information that he shared with his biographer, who also was his mistress * Jon Huntsman, former Republican Utah governor and ambassador to China under President Barack Obama; ran for Republican presidential nomination in 2012 * James Stavridis, retired Navy admiral * John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, foreign policy adviser to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney * Rex Tillerson, president and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil Corp * Joe Manchin, Democratic U.S. senator for West Virginia * Dana Rohrabacher, Republican U.S. representative of California and member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee * Alan Mulally, former CEO at Ford Motor Co and former executive vice president at Boeing Co * Kevin Cramer, Republican U.S. representative from North Dakota * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Heidi Heitkamp, Democratic U.S. senator from North Dakota * Joe Manchin, Democratic U.S. senator from West Virginia * Larry Nichols, co-founder of Devon Energy Corp * James Connaughton, CEO of Nautilus Data Technologies and a former environmental adviser to President George W. Bush * Rick Perry, Republican former Texas governor * Navy Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency * Ronald Burgess, retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former Defense Intelligence Agency chief * Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency * Pete Hoekstra, Republican former U.S. representative from Michigan * Rudy Giuliani, Republican former mayor of New York * Debra Wong Yang, a former U.S. attorney who was appointed by former President George W. Bush * Ralph Ferrara, a securities attorney at law firm Proskauer Rose LLP * Paul Atkins, a former SEC commissioner who heads Trump's transition team for independent financial regulatory agencies * Daniel Gallagher, Republican former SEC commissioner * John Allison, a former CEO of regional bank BB&T Corp and former head of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank * Paul Atkins, former SEC commissioner * Thomas Hoenig, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp vice chairman and former head of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank * Dan DiMicco, former CEO of steel producer Nucor Corp * Robert Lighthizer, former deputy U.S. trade representative during the Reagan administration * Mick Mulvaney, Republican U.S. representative from South Carolina * David Malpass, former chief economist with investment bank Bear Stearns and a senior Trump adviser * Rick Perry, former Texas governor * Chuck Conner, a former acting secretary of the U.S. Agriculture Department and current head of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives * Tim Huelskamp, Republican U.S. representative from Kansas * Sid Miller, Texas agriculture commissioner * Sonny Perdue, former Georgia governor * Scott Brown, former Republican U.S. senator from Massachusetts * Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor * Jeff Miller, former Republican U.S. representative from Florida who was chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee * Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a hedge fund partner and former FDA deputy commissioner under former Republican President George W. Bush * Jim O'Neill, a Silicon Valley investor who previously served in the Department of Health and Human Services, also under Bush The Trump transition team confirmed the president-elect would choose from a list of 21 names he drew up during his campaign, including Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah and William Pryor, a federal judge with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.","label":0}
{"text":"What the HELL just happened in Orlando? Donald Trump, the guy that most of the free world has been legitimately comparing to Adolf Hitler, just ordered thousands of supporters at an Orlando rally to raise their hands in salute and swear loyalty to him.And they did it THEY ACTUALLY DID IT. Watch all the hands in the clip below.Donald Trump tells the audience to raise their right hands and promise to vote for him pic.twitter.com\/thqQYL2tlF Brandon Wall (@Walldo) March 5, 2016Here is pretty much what just happened in Orlando at the Trump rally.Image via thelocal.deIt isn t an exaggerationDonald Trump makes members of his Orlando crowd raise their right hands and swear to vote in the primary. pic.twitter.com\/EVenRilJrV Jenna Johnson (@wpjenna) March 5, 2016What the hell is going on with the Republican party and Trump?This is seriously starting to get legitimately frightening. We have huge crowds of Americans gathering to have their most vile inclinations validated by someone who is, factually speaking, running on a fascist presidential platform. Now, they are throwing up what you might as well call a 1940s Berlin Style salute to him as well.Some people might say this couldn t happen in America. But remember during WWII America unconstitutionally imprisoned thousands of Japanese-American citizens for no crime other than being Japanese. We didn t think that would happen, did we?The Nazi party rose to power by promising suffering Germans, who were practically bankrupt from the after-effects of World War I, help in lifting the nation and its people out of poverty and unemployment. At the same time, the party was severely critical of existing political leaders in Germany for not addressing the needs and will of the people. They promised widespread economic prosperity, a regained national strength via the military, and to make Germany great again. Does this sound familiar?Republicans have spent the better part of eight years now calling President Obama one of the greatest leaders of the modern era a fascist, Nazi, communist, dictator and whatever else they can come up with that has a negative governmental connotation. At the exact same time, they are fully embracing an actual fascist and using nazi-style salutes to pledge their loyalty to him.If you are a liberal, please don t stay home this November. The nation can t afford it.","label":1}
{"text":"Erdogan's dream of reinstating Turkey's death penalty is set to become reality after a new bill looks set to pass in Parliament.  Recep Tayyip Erdogan will make good on his promise of cleansing Turkey of \"traitor citizens\" and \"political dissidents\"\u2013 by sending them to their deaths. Recommended  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced plans to bring back the death penalty in Turkey following last months failed coup. (2 hours ago)  Yahoo News reports:  Addressing crowds in Ankara on Saturday, Erdogan said he would ratify such a bill once it passed despite any objections it might spark in the West.  Erdogan made the comments in response to public chants calling for the death penalty, which Turkey abolished in 2004 as part of its bid to join the European Union.  Erdogan said:  \"Soon, our government will bring (the bill) to Parliament\u2026It's what the people say that matters, not what the West thinks.\" Recommended  Turkish President Recep Taiyp Erdogan has been warned not to use the failed coup in Turkey as a \"blank cheque\" to bypass democratic principles. (2 hours ago)  The government has blamed the coup on the followers of U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.  The cleric denies involvement.","label":1}
{"text":"Saudi Arabia aims to start issuing tourist visas to foreigners next year, a senior Saudi official told CNN, as the government seeks to open up the conservative kingdom and find new sources of revenue to diversify its economy. At present, foreigners traveling to Saudi Arabia are largely restricted to resident workers and their dependents, business travelers, and Muslim pilgrims who are given special visas to travel to holy sites. The targets are people who want to come and literally experience this country, and really the grandness of this country, Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, head of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Natural Heritage, said in an interview broadcast late on Wednesday. Asked about plans for the visas, he replied: Hopefully in 2018, adding that the government would use online technology to make applying for visas easy. Saudi Arabia s 32-year-old heir to the throne, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is seeking to develop new industries to wean his country off its dependency on oil exports. He has also taken some steps to loosen its ultra-strict social restrictions, scaling back the role of religious morality police and announcing plans to allowing women to drive next year. Plans to admit significant numbers of tourists from abroad have been discussed for years, only to be blocked by conservative opinion and bureaucracy; the commission announced such a plan as long ago as 2006, but it did not go ahead. This time, the government appears determined to push through the change, partly because of financial pressures. It hopes to earn billions of dollars to cover a state budget deficit caused by low oil prices. Economic reforms aim to lift total tourism spending in the country - by local citizens as well as foreigners - to $46.6 billion in 2020 from $27.9 billion in 2015. Prince Sultan said his commission was focusing mainly on increasing numbers of local tourists. The commission has estimated Saudis spend more than $20 billion annually on tourism abroad, and persuading more of them to holiday inside the country would reduce that drain on the economy. But Prince Sultan told CNN that his commission was also working to prepare tourist spots for foreigners. The government announced plans in August to develop resorts on about 50 islands off the Red Sea coast, with the first phase of the project to be completed in 2022. The kingdom also intends to offer visits to historic sites such as Mada in Saleh, a 2,000-year-old Nabatean city carved into the rocks of the northern desert. Heir to the throne Prince Mohammed would be the first ruler from a new generation since 1953, after six kings who were all sons of state founder Abdulaziz ibn Saud. He has announced wide plans for social and political reforms to the kingdom, which is ruled as an absolute monarchy with a powerful clergy that adheres to Wahhabism, an ultra-austere version of Sunni Islam.","label":0}
{"text":"PaulCraigRoberts.org October 29, 2016  I am now convinced that the Oligarchy that rules America intends to steal the presidential election. In the past, the oligarchs have not cared which candidate won as the oligarchs owned both. But they do not own Trump.  Most likely you are unaware of what Trump is telling people as the media does not report it. A person who speaks like this is not endeared to the oligarchs.  Who are the oligarchs?  \u2014Wall Street and the mega-banks too big to fail and their agent the Federal Reserve, a federal agency that put 5 banks ahead of millions of troubled American homeowners who the federal reserve allowed to be flushed down the toilet. In order to save the mega-banks' balance sheets from their irresponsible behavior, the Fed has denied retirees any interest income on their savings for eight years, forcing the elderly to draw down their savings, leaving their heirs, who have been displaced from employment by corporate jobs offshoring, penniless.  \u2014The military\/security complex which has spent trillions of our taxpayer dollars on 15 years of gratuitous wars based entirely on lies in order to enrich themselves and their power.  \u2014The neoconservatives whose crazed ideology of US world hegemony thrusts the American people into military conflict with Russia and China.  \u2014The US global corporations that sent American jobs to China and India and elsewhere in order to enrich the One Percent with higher profits from lower labor costs.  \u2014Agribusiness (Monsanto et.al.), corporations that poison the soil, the water, the oceans, and our food with their GMOs, herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers, while killing the bees that pollinate the crops.  \u2014The extractive industries\u2014energy, mining, fracking, and timber\u2014that maximize their profits by destroying the environment and the water supply.  \u2014The Israel Lobby that controls US Middle East policy and is committing genocide against the Palestinians just as the US committed genocide against native Americans. Israel is using the US to eliminate sovereign countries that stand in Israel's way.  What convinces me that the Oligarchy intends to steal the election is the vast difference between the presstitutes' reporting and the facts on the ground.  According to the presstitutes, Hillary is so far ahead that there is no point in Trump supporters bothering to vote. Hillary has won the election before the vote. Hillary has been declared a 93% sure winner.  I am yet to see one Hillary yard sign, but Trump signs are everywhere. Reports I receive are that Hillary's public appearances are unattended but Trumps are so heavily attended that people have to be turned away. This is a report from a woman in Florida:  \"Trump has pulled huge numbers all over FL while campaigning here this week. I only see Trump signs and stickers in my wide travels. I dined at a Mexican restaurant last night. Two women my age sitting behind me were talking about how they had tried to see Trump when he came to Tallahassee. They left work early, arriving at the venue at 4:00 for a 6:00 rally. The place was already over capacity so they were turned away. It turned out that there were so many people there by 2:00 that the doors had to be opened to them. The women said that the crowds present were a mix of races and ages.\"  I know the person who gave me this report and have no doubt whatsoever as to its veracity.  I also receive from readers similar reports from around the country.  This is how the theft of the election is supposed to work: The media concentrated in a few corporate hands has gone all out to convince not only Americans but also the world, that Donald Trump is such an unacceptable candidate that he has lost the election before the vote.  By controlling the explanation, when the election is stolen those who challenge the stolen election are without a foundation in the media. All media reports will say that it was a runaway victory for Hillary over the misogynist immigrant-hating Trump.  And the liberal, progressive opinion will be a relieved and off guard as Hillary takes us into nuclear war.  That the Oligarchy intends to steal the election from the American people is verified by the officially reported behavior of the voting machines in early voting in Texas. The NPR presstitutes have declared that Hillary is such a favorite that even Republican Texas is up for grabs in the election.  If this is the case, why was it necessary for the voting machines to be programmed to change Trump votes to Hillary votes? Those voters who noted that they voted Trump but were recorded Hillary complained. The election officials, claiming a glitch (which only went one way), changed to paper ballots. But who will count them? No \"glitches\" caused Hillary votes to go to Trump, only Trump votes to go to Hillary.  The most brilliant movie of our time was The Matrix. This movie captured the life of Americans manipulated by a false reality, only in the real America there is insufficient awareness and no Neo, except possibly Donald Trump, to challenge the system. Americans of all stripes\u2014academics, scholars, journalists, Republicans, Democrats, right-wing, left-wing, US Representatives, US Senators, Presidents, corporate moguls and brainwashed Americans and foreigners\u2014live in a false reality.  In the United States today a critical presidential election is in the process in which not a single important issue is addressed by Hillary and the presstitutes. This is a total failure. Democracy, once the hope of the world, has totally failed in the United States of America. Trump is correct. The American people must restore the accountability of government to the people. The Best of Paul Craig Roberts Tags: Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions , co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House. Visit his website . Copyright \u00a9 2016 Paul Craig Roberts","label":1}
{"text":"A new ad from a conservative super PAC absolutely destroys Donald Trump, and it uses his own words to do the job. The commercial comes from Our Principles PAC, and it showcases ordinary everyday women reading a series of horribly sexist and misogynist quotes from current Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump.A few choice quotes from the ad include:These are the sorts of quotes that have terrified the Republican establishment about what Trump would do to the party in the general election. Even with candidates without misogynist comments like these on the ballot, Republicans have struggled to convince female voters. In 2012, 55 percent of women voted for Barack Obama, a number that was almost the same at 56 percent in 2008. Even when John Kerry lost the election in 2004, he still got 51 percent of the women s vote.You can hear the audio of Trump himself making many of these sexist comments in a story compiled by Buzzfeed. They went through Trump s appearances on radio shows like Howard Stern:Trump appeared upwards of two dozen times from the late 90s through the 2000s with the shock jock, and BuzzFeed News has listened to hours of those conversations, which are not publically available. The most popular topic of conversation during these appearances, as is typical of Stern s program, was sex. In particular, Trump frequently discussed women he had sex with, wanted to have sex with, or wouldn t have sex with if given the opportunity. He also rated women on a 10-point scale.This Super PAC ad is designed to derail Trump s path to the Republican nomination, but it may be too late for that. But a similar ad, broadcast from coast to coast by Democrats and their affiliated super PACs would likely be extremely devastating.","label":1}
{"text":"It will feel like a familiar affair at the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards, with \"Game of Thrones,\" \"Modern Family\" and Julia once again landing nominations on Thursday. But the occasionally stodgy Emmys, which sometimes latch on to winners (like Ms. ) and stay with them, was also infused with new blood. Popular shows like \"The People v. O. J. Simpson,\" \"Roots'' and \"Fargo\" drew attention to the limited series category, James Corden emerged as a force in the competition, and there was recognition in the best drama category for the widely praised but previously overlooked \"The Americans. \" \"Game of Thrones,\" HBO's fantasy epic, will again be the leader of the pack heading into the awards. The drama, which just completed its sixth season, received 23 nominations, the highest total for any show. The show received 24 nominations last year and won its first best drama Emmy. [ List: Nominations for the 2016 Emmy Awards ] HBO, which is coming off its biggest Emmy haul ever last year, had a total of 94 nominations, the highest of any network for the 16th consecutive year. FX's limited series \"The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story\" and its anthology series \"Fargo\" were the and nominated shows. FX finished behind HBO in nominations with 56. The streaming services Netflix and Amazon continue to make significant inroads, with each scoring its highest Emmy nomination totals (54 for Netflix and 16 for Amazon). The Emmys reflect an infusion of talent into television at a time when movie stars are increasingly turning to TV, especially in limited series, and there are more scripted shows than ever before. Over the past few months, networks have been ferociously competing against one another in nomination campaigns. The broadcast networks are still experiencing a diminished presence at the Emmys, with three of the networks \u2014 ABC, Fox and CBS \u2014 notching fewer nominations than in 2015. NBC had the same total, with 41. And for the fifth consecutive year, the networks were shut out of nominations for best drama. In that category, \"Game of Thrones\" will compete against the final season of the PBS show \"Downton Abbey,\" USA's \"Mr. Robot,\" AMC's \"Better Call Saul,\" Netflix's \"House of Cards,\" FX's \"The Americans\" and Showtime's \"Homeland. \" \"Mr. Robot,\" which won the Golden Globe for best drama in January, is a new entrant in the category, along with \"The Americans. \" They replace \"Mad Men,\" which ended last year, and Netflix's \"Orange Is the New Black. \" HBO's \"Veep,\" which last year ended the winning streak of ABC's \"Modern Family'' in the best comedy category, was once again nominated for that award. It will go up against \"Modern Family\" again, along with Netflix's \"Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,\" Amazon's \"Transparent,\" HBO's \"Silicon Valley,\" ABC's \" \" and Netflix's \"Master of None. \" With Jon Hamm's Don Draper from \"Mad Men\" out of the race, the best actor category for drama has no clear . Two previous Emmy winners, Kyle Chandler (\"Bloodline\") and Bob Odenkirk (\"Better Call Saul\") will compete against Kevin Spacey (\"House of Cards\") Liev Schreiber (\"Ray Donovan\") Matthew Rhys (\"The Americans\") and Rami Malek (\"Mr. Robot\") all of whom are looking for their first Emmy. Viola Davis, who last year became the first woman to win a best acting Emmy in the drama category, will try to repeat, for her performance in \"How to Get Away With Murder. \" She is up against Robin Wright (\"House of Cards\") Keri Russell (\"The Americans\") Tatiana Maslany (\"Orphan Black\") Claire Danes (\"Homeland\") and Taraji P. Henson (\"Empire\"). Ms. Russell is the only new actress in the category, and this represents her first Emmy nomination. FX's Emmy haul was propelled by \"The People v. O. J. Simpson,\" \"Fargo\" and \"The Americans. \" \"The People v. O. J. Simpson\" received a whopping six nominations in the limited series acting categories, including one for Sarah Paulson, who was also nominated for her role in FX's \"American Horror Story: Hotel. \" Ms. Paulson, who portrayed the prosecutor Marcia Clark in \"The People v. O. J. Simpson,\" said in an interview that she shot both roles at the same time and that she was \"running on fumes, just as Marcia was. \" She added, \"I used all of my exhaustion to my benefit since no one was more tired during that trial than Marcia Clark. \" Another standout on Thursday was Emmy winner Laurie Metcalf, who was nominated for three awards: for best actress in a comedy series for HBO's \"Getting On\" and for guest appearances in \"The Big Bang Theory\" and \"Horace and Pete. \" Netflix had a strong day, with nominations in both the lead drama and comedy categories and in several acting categories. With 54 nominations, Netflix has 20 more than it received last year, its previous record. \"Making a Murderer,\" the popular Netflix documentary, was nominated for six awards, including best documentary series. This is the first year that Netflix eclipsed each of the broadcast networks. Amazon was led by its comedy \"Transparent,\" which had 10 nominations. Last year, the show's star, Jeffrey Tambor, won the best actor award, the first time a streaming service had won a lead acting Emmy. For the first time in 16 years, \"The Daily Show\" was not nominated in the best variety show category, a blow to its rookie host, Trevor Noah. Likewise, Stephen Colbert's \"The Late Show\" was snubbed, while Mr. Corden's \"The Late Late Show\" was honored instead. The nomination will add fuel to the discussion that Mr. Corden is outshining his more experienced CBS colleague. Rounding out the category were HBO's John Oliver, ABC's Jimmy Kimmel, HBO's Bill Maher, NBC's Jimmy Fallon and Crackle's \"Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee\" with Jerry Seinfeld. Unlike the Academy Awards, which have overhauled the membership ranks following controversy over its slate of acting nominees, the Emmys have a relatively diverse lineup, with a number of actors of color receiving nominations. Last year, the Emmys made changes to the voting process, opening up the best drama and comedy categories to all Television Academy voters, not just a committee. \"Game of Thrones,\" which has never been more popular, has probably been a beneficiary to the rules change. In the comedy acting categories, Ms. is up again for her performance in \"Veep. \" She has won the award four years in a row (and has seven Emmys over all). She will be competing against Ms. Metcalf, Amy Schumer (\"Inside Amy Schumer\") Lily Tomlin (\"Grace and Frankie\") Tracee Ellis Ross (\" \") and Ellie Kemper (\"Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt\"). Mr. Tambor will be up against Anthony Anderson (\" \") Aziz Ansari (\"Master of None\") Will Forte (\"The Last Man on Earth\") William H. Macy (\"Shameless\") and Thomas Middleditch (\"Silcon Valley\"). Though television has never been more celebrated as an art form, drawing a sizable audience for the Emmys remains something of a challenge: Last year's show was its lowest rated ever. The Emmys will be hosted this year by Mr. Kimmel and will be broadcast on Sept. 18 on ABC.","label":0}
{"text":"A Spanish judge ordered nine Catalan secessionist leaders to be held in custody on Thursday pending a potential trial over the region s independence push. The lawyer for ousted Catalan President Carles Puigdemont said a warrant had also been issued for his client s arrest - though the statement was dismissed by a senior official in Spain s High Court. The reason for the differing accounts was not immediately clear. In an short address broadcast by Catalan regional television TV3, Puigdemont called for the release of the legitimate government of Catalonia , a call echoed by hundreds of people gathered outside the Catalan parliament. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sacked Puigdemont and his government last week, hours after the Catalan parliament made a unilateral declaration of independence - a vote boycotted by the opposition and declared illegal by Spanish courts. Puigdemont later traveled to Belgium with four associates and ignored an order to appear before the High Court to answer charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds relating to the region s secessionist drive. Mr. Puigdemont will stay here. He has said that he will fully cooperate with Belgian authorities during the procedure, lawyer Paul Bekaert told Belgian state broadcaster VRT. He said Puigdemont had told him a European arrest warrant has been issued, though the court source said that would most likely happen on Friday. The detention of the secessionist leaders and Puigdemont s flight to Belgium make it difficult for leading figures from the independence movement to stand in a snap election in the wealthy region called by the Spanish government for Dec. 21. Puigdemont said on Tuesday he would go back to Spain only if given unspecified guarantees by the Spanish government. His flight appears to have cost some support for his cause at home. President, enough is enough, the influential Catalan newspaper el Peridico, which has been skeptical of the case for independence, said on its front page on Wednesday. Ebelio Ramos, a pensioner from the pro-independence town of Berga said: I don t know what they re thinking about but when someone does what he did and declares independence and then flees... A president has to fulfill the law and if he doesn t, it is better that he stays calm, because if he starts doing something outside the law, he is going to lose everything. Following a tumultuous month, attention is gradually turning to the December vote. Protests taking place in central Barcelona on Thursday to support secessionist leaders as they testified in Madrid failed to attract a big crowd. Several hundred people took part in another protest called after the nine leaders were ordered held in custody, many fewer than the hundreds of thousands who staged several demonstrations for independence over the last two months. Cracks have appeared within the pro-independence coalition of center-right and far-left parties as well as inside Puigdemont s own PdeCat (Democratic Catalan Party) where some of his allies are now pushing for a negotiated solution with the central government. The struggle has divided Catalonia itself and caused deep resentment across the rest of Spain. In Madrid, 20 secessionist leaders had been summoned by two separate courts to testify over their role in holding a banned Oct. 1 referendum on secession and later proclaiming independence from Spain. With Puigdemont and four others in Belgium, only 15 turned up. All the members of the dismissed Catalan cabinet but one declined to answer questions from the state prosecutor and the High Court judge, who opened an investigation that could take several years before any potential trial. The defendants have played an active role by propelling the carefully designed secessionist process and overcoming all kinds of obstacles that could make them deviate from their final objective, the judge said in the ruling that sent the defendants to jail. She said the defendants, who could face jail sentences of up to 50 years, must be held in custody because they were a flight risk and could destroy evidence. One of them, Santi Vila, who stepped down from the Catalan cabinet before a unilateral declaration of independence last Friday and has since then been pushing for a negotiated solution with the government, was granted bail of 50,000 euros ($58,300). A lawyer for several of the jailed Catalan leaders said they would appeal against the judge s decision. The decision to hold them in custody is absolutely disproportionate as we consider the charges of rebellion and sedition lack any ground, no matter how much the prosecution insists on affirming it, lawyer Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas said. Five senior regional lawmakers and the speaker of the Catalan parliament, Carme Forcadell, were summoned by the Supreme Court, which handles the cases of people who enjoy parliamentary immunity. The Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to give one more week to Forcadell and the Catalan lawmakers to prepare their defense and a new hearing will take place on Nov. 9. The courts have already told the Catalan secessionist leaders to deposit 6.2 million euros ($7.2 million) by Friday to cover potential liabilities.","label":0}
{"text":"We do this not because it s legally required, because it s not, Patton said at a hearing on the agreement. We do this because we believe it s the right thing to do, both for the victims and their families and for the city. This is historic, said Mr. Coverson. The only city in America that has given reparations and passed a reparations ordinance, and given an official apology for the violence that the police have done to citizens. The city of Chicago on Tuesday sought to put to rest one of its most persistent scandals, proposing a $5.5 million reparations fund for dozens of torture victims connected to former Chicago police Cmdr. Jon Burge and his so-called midnight crew of rogue detectives.The proposal, negotiated with a key plaintiff s attorney and supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, would offer free city college tuition for victims and their families, free counseling for psychological issues and substance abuse as well as other assistance to more than 50 potential victims. The city would also issue a formal apology, create a permanent memorial recognizing the victims and ensure that eighth- and 10th-grade students attending Chicago Public Schools would be taught about the Burge case and its brutal legacy, cementing the scandal s role in city history.But as much as the proposal seeks to end a painful, controversial era Emanuel said it would close this book, the Burge book on the city s history it is unlikely to stanch the flow of torture claims from victims. A Loyola University Chicago law school dean appointed by a Cook County judge has identified some 20 additional cases in which inmates may have been Burge victims. Other inmates who have made torture claims continue to fight to overturn convictions and win their freedom. And one lawsuit over the torture is pending.Already, this stubborn scandal has cost taxpayers about $100 million in lawsuit settlements, judgments and other legal costs, according to lawyers. It brings it much closer to closure, especially from the city s point of view, said Flint Taylor, an attorney who has been pursuing the torture issue for decades and was one of the lawyers who negotiated the reparations package. But it s not done and over. But as much as the proposal seeks to end a painful, controversial era Emanuel said it would close this book, the Burge book on the city s history it is unlikely to stanch the flow of torture claims from victims. A Loyola University Chicago law school dean appointed by a Cook County judge has identified some 20 additional cases in which inmates may have been Burge victims. Other inmates who have made torture claims continue to fight to overturn convictions and win their freedom. And one lawsuit over the torture is pending.Already, this stubborn scandal has cost taxpayers about $100 million in lawsuit settlements, judgments and other legal costs, according to lawyers. It brings it much closer to closure, especially from the city s point of view, said Flint Taylor, an attorney who has been pursuing the torture issue for decades and was one of the lawyers who negotiated the reparations package. But it s not done and over. Burge was convicted in federal court of lying about the torture and sentenced to 41\/2 years in prison. He was released in October but confined to his home until February. He still collects a police pension.Burge did not return calls Tuesday to his home in Florida.But John Jack Byrne, Burge s former right-hand man, on Tuesday called the reparations deal a scam perpetuated on taxpayers.","label":1}
{"text":"It is an iconic photograph of American patriotism, depicting the heroism of service members raising the flag over Iwo Jima during World War II, which inspired the book and movie \"Flags of Our Fathers. \" But while the image has become a symbol of the sacrifices of American troops, the Marine Corps has also had to defend it for 70 years against accusations that it was staged and that some of the men were misidentified. Now, the man who wrote the book, which chronicled how his father and five Marines came together to lift the flag in the famous photograph, has raised new doubts about the image, saying that he now believes his father is not actually in it. The author, James Bradley, revealed his conclusion in an interview on Tuesday, just days after the Marine Corps said that it had opened an inquiry into whether the identifications in the photograph were correct. He said that his father, John, a Navy corpsman, had participated in raising a flag on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945, but had not taken part in another the same day, which became the famous photograph. His father, he said, probably thought that the first was the one that was captured in the famous picture taken by Joe Rosenthal, a photographer for The Associated Press. Mr. Bradley's doubts tell a story about the fog of war, the efforts of a son to memorialize his father and the apparent willingness of the Marines to at first brush aside questions about one of their most historic moments. Mr. Bradley said he had become convinced that his father was not in the photograph after studying evidence that was published in a 2014 article in The Omaha which described doubts raised by amateur historians who compared that photograph to images of the first . They found that the pants, headgear and cartridge belt on the Navy corpsman identified as John Bradley were different from the gear he wore that day. Mr. Bradley said he had waited a year to examine the evidence in the newspaper article because he was working on a new book in Vietnam, and then became ill. He did not come forward with his belief that his father was not in the photograph, he said, because there was little interest from the news media and the Marines. \"It wasn't top of mind,\" Mr. Bradley said in the interview. \"It wasn't a priority. I was overseas, and this past fall I was recovering from a disease I got in New Guinea that almost killed me. Now there's interest in this, and I'm talking about it. I didn't have the energy to carry the water all by myself. \" The photograph, taken during one of the bloodiest battles of the war, was splashed across the front pages of newspapers throughout the country less than 48 hours after it was taken, exceptionally fast for the time. It was an immediate source of patriotism and controversy. President Harry S. Truman used it to sell bonds to fund the war, and Mr. Rosenthal brushed back accusations that it had been staged. And two years after the image was taken, one of the men identified as being in it hitchhiked to Texas from Arizona to tell the family of a man who died on Iwo Jima that the man had been incorrectly named as one of those depicted. That spurred a congressional investigation that led the military to acknowledge that it had misidentified one of the men. \"Flags of Our Fathers,\" first published in 2000, was on lists for nearly a year. It was later made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. The photograph was also the inspiration for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va. a statue in which six figures are depicted in the positions captured by Mr. Rosenthal. Mr. Bradley said that his father had met with the sculptor of the memorial, who based some of the figures on his body. All of the men identified in the photograph are dead. Three of the men died fighting the Japanese on Iwo Jima. John Bradley died in 1994. The 2014 article in the Omaha newspaper detailed how Stephen Foley, a man in Ireland who worked at a building supply company, and Eric Krelle, an historian, had concluded that Mr. Bradley was misidentified after poring over the images and studying uniforms worn on the island. At the time, however, the Marines and James Bradley discounted the research. \"Listen, I wrote the book based on facts told to me by guys who had actually been there,\" Mr. Bradley was quoted saying in the article. \"That's my research. That's what I trust. \" He added: \"At the end of the day, the truth is the truth. Everything is possible. But really?\" The Marines said at the time that they \"firmly\" stood by the established accounts of who was in the photograph. Last year, Dustin Spence, a historian from California who made a documentary about the and Mr. Foley approached the Marines with findings that they said showed problems with the identifications, Mr. Spence said in a telephone interview. The Marines, Mr. Spence said, did not seriously look into their claims. \"I believe it's something difficult for some in the Marine Corps to swallow,\" Mr. Spence said. The Smithsonian Channel said it had gone to the Marines after \"months of thorough, scientific analysis\" and had since been working closely with the service. It added that it would broadcast the findings this year. The Marine Corps acknowledged the inquiry in a statement, but provided few details. \"Our history is important to us, and even today, this iconic image still represents the fighting spirit of Marines and is a symbol of the tremendous accomplishments of our corps,\" the Marines said. \"As such, with the information and research provided by the Smithsonian Channel, who used advanced digital technology to examine battle footage, the Marine Corps decided to review their photo enhancements, film analysis and findings. \" It added, \"Joe Rosenthal's photo captured a single moment in the battle during which more than 6, 500 U. S. servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice, and it is representative of the more than 70, 000 U. S. Marines, sailors, soldiers and Coast Guardsmen that contributed to the battle. \" A summary on the paperback edition of \"Flags of Our Fathers\" reads: \"Here is the true story behind the six flag raisers and the immortal photograph that came to symbolize the power and courage of America during World War II. In 'Flags of Our Fathers,' the son of one of the flag raisers captures the glory, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six ordinary boys who came together at a crucial moment in one of history's bloodiest battles \u2014 and lifted the heart and spirit of a nation at war. \"","label":0}
{"text":"When the Islamic State was about to be driven out of the ancient city of Palmyra in March, Yves Ubelmann got a call from Syria's director of antiquities to come over in a hurry. An architect by training, Mr. Ubelmann, 36, had worked in Syria before the country was engulfed by war. But now there was special urgency for the kind of work his youthful team of architects, mathematicians and designers did from their cramped offices in Paris: producing digital copies of threatened historical sites. Palmyra, parts of it already destroyed by the Islamists who deemed these monuments idolatrous, was still rigged with explosives. So he and Houmam Saad, his Syrian colleague, spent four days flying a drone with a robot camera over the crumbled arches and temples. \"Drones with four or six rotors can hover really close and register structural details, every crack and hole, and we can take very precise measurements,\" said Mr. Ubelmann, who founded the company Iconem. \"This is the stuff architects and archaeologists need. \" They need it in a new push for virtual preservation that scientists, archaeologists and others, like Mr. Ubelmann, are compiling on a large scale. The records could be used to create computer models that would show how monuments and endangered historical sites might one day be restored, repaired or reconstructed. Of special interest today are ancient sites in Syria, and also Iraq, that have suffered from war, looting and the Islamic State. \"Palmyra was very difficult,\" Mr. Ubelmann said. \"The terrorists were uploading videos with them blowing up monuments and smashing statues to manipulate public opinion,\" he said. \"We felt the best response was to magnify the pictures of these places and show their splendor and their importance to the culture. It became a war of images. \" The latest front in that war is in the exhibition halls of the Grand Palais in Paris, where, through Jan. 9, many of the 40, 000 images he and his team took at Palmyra have become the basis for displays. Called \"Eternal Sites: From Bamiyan to Palmyra,\" the show aims to draw attention to the rising threats to global heritage. To underscore the exhibition's political importance, it was opened several weeks ago by President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande of France, who described it as \"an act of resistance\" against terror and intolerance. Showing the beauty of the Middle Eastern heritage, he said, \"is the best answer to the Islamist propaganda of hate, destruction and death. \" Martinez, the director of the Louvre and the lead curator of the show, said the sites had been chosen because \"all are under threat from pillaging, neglect or destruction and are not accessible to the public. \" He said it aimed to mobilize public opinion \"in the face of the devastation of unique heritage. \" Besides images from Palmyra, the multimedia show projects enormous photographs and videos, immersing visitors in different eras, including the ancient Iraqi city of Khorsabad around 700 B. C. an mosque in Damascus and a medieval Christian citadel. Mr. Ubelmann dismissed any criticism of collaboration with the government of the Syrian president, Bashar . \"We were working pro bono, not for any government, but to help the archaeologists,\" he said. They shared their work with the Syrian archaeologists, he said, adding, \"We also train our colleagues so they can later do this on their own. \" What is paramount is memory and potential restoration. In the last year, his team has flown drones over some 20 historic sites in Syria. Recently, it moved into zones in Iraq, close to the front line in the fight against the Islamic State. The team is now analyzing the war's effects on the remains of once thriving cities dating back some 3, 000 years, including Nineveh, Khorsabad and the thrashed temple and palace of Nimrud, where the government drove out the jihadists in November. In 2015, Islamists sent out videos showing militants using sledgehammers to break reliefs of human figures and mythical winged bulls as part of their campaign. \"Nimrud was probably the most splendid of the Assyrian cities,\" Layla Abdulkarim, a Syrian architect, said as she analyzed aerial photographs. Using drones in archaeological work is not entirely new, specialists say, but at a recent gathering in Paris researchers from Europe and the Middle East said they were now having to practice \"war archaeology,\" that is, collecting reliable data from areas. The images from the drones in war zones had proved immensely valuable. But these were barely scratching the surface. Before the war, close to 150 archaeological projects were underway, just in Syria, researchers said. Experts from many countries are trying to assess the damage in Syria's old cities but also in the area where the Islamic State held sway that is straddling Iraq and Syria, the region that is seen as central to human history and often called the birthplace of modern economics and writing. There is an outcry for data about the havoc wreaked in Yemen by Saudi bombing. \"People are exchanging satellite images and data on blogs and other research platforms, but we have no real assessment yet because so many ancient sites are not accessible,\" said Pascal Butterlin, a professor of archaeology at the Sorbonne in Paris. Time is of the essence, even in the case of ruins, Mr. Butterlin said. He has led expeditions for more than 20 years to Mari, near Syria's border with Iraq. Before fleeing, the guards at Mari reported that looters had come from Iraq, he said. \"We need to know what places need to be stabilized and how looters have altered the sites,\" he said. \"Important evidence, like clandestine pits, can disappear very quickly through sandstorms and erosion. \" Cheikhmous Ali, a Syrian archaeologist based in France, who founded the international group the Association for the Protection of Syrian Archaeology, said reports of organized pillaging continued. A first wave of looting began in 2012, Mr. Ali said, and looting has accelerated since 2014 with the arrival of the Islamic State. While jihadists were more motivated to destroy the artifacts, they had also allowed looters to operate in exchange for money. Mr. Ali said he kept an ever changing tally of museums bombed, objects carted off, safes stolen. The exhibition in Paris, which is drawing large crowds, coincides with \"History Begins in Mesopotamia,\" a show at the Louvre's regional museum in Lens. Both exhibitions highlight the French government's active concern about cultural damage in Syria, which was briefly controlled by France in the first half of the 20th century. Mr. Hollande has taken a strong interest, condemning the deliberate destruction of patrimony by all sides as \"war crimes. \" This past month, France offered $30 million toward a proposed $100 million fund to protect sites as fighting abates, provide emergency storage for artifacts and eventually rehabilitate monuments. At the \"Eternal Sites\" opening at the Grand Palais, Mr. Hollande stressed that France was taking in more Syrian refugees trying to protect monuments of great historical and cultural importance did not mean ignoring the suffering of the population. \"Should we be concerned about the patrimony?\" he asked. \"What is more important, saving lives or saving stones? In reality, these two are inseparable. \"","label":0}
{"text":"President Barack Obama's administration has added record levels of new regulation in the year 2016, with 18 regulations added for every new law, according to a new analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. [Whilst Congress passed 211 laws over the course of the year, they had an accompanying 3, 852 new federal regulations, costing billions of dollars in both implementation and losses to businesses. This was 443 more regulations than 2015. There was also a record number of pages of red tape, with 97, 110 pages printed on the 2016 Federal Register. However the level of regulation per new law passed is still down considerably compared to 2013, when the Obama administration introduced 3659 new regulations for just 72 new laws, a record 51 pieces of regulation for every new law. The record for overall new regulation is still held by George. W. Bush in 2003, who introduced 4148 new rules to improve security following the terror attacks, 21 one pieces of regulation for every law. However, the report states that \"the multiple [of number of regulations per law passed] did tend to be higher during Obama administration. Bush's eight years averaged 20, while Obama's have averaged 29. \" \"There's no pattern to any of this, since the numerators and denominators can vary widely there had been 114 laws in 2015, and a multiple of 39. The multiple can be higher with fewer laws, or with more regulations, holding the other constant. The point is that agencies do the bulk of lawmaking, no matter the party in power,\" the report continued. Throughout the election campaign, Donald Trump promised to cut taxation as well as much federal regulation that has risen under Obama. A report from the American Action Forum found that will save the financial services industry at least $1. 7 billion per year. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"The maroon passport currently held by British citizens will revert back to its original dark blue colour as Britain prepares to leave the European Union, the Home Office has confirmed. [The classic dark blue design, which was replaced by passports in 1988 to comply with EU policy of a single European passport, could be as soon as 2019, with a range of contractors currently bidding for its production. In 2007, the European Union sought to further dilute the passport's individuality by insisting that the words \"Her Britannic Majesty,\" were removed from the first page. Tory MP Andrew Rosindell, who is chairman of the Parliamentary Flags and Heraldry Committee said: \"It's a matter of identity. Having the pink European passports has been a source of humiliation. It merged us into one European identity, which isn't what we are. \" \"The old dark blue design was a distinct, clear and bold statement of what it means to be British, which is just what our citizens need as they travel abroad after Brexit,\" he continued. The current contract with passport manufacturers De La Rue expires with the British government in 2019, with the Home Office now accepting proposals from companies to manage \u00a3490 million redesign project. Other priorities for the government's new design will include incorporating new mechanisms to combat identity fraud. Responding to the news, a Home Office spokesperson said: \"We are launching the procurement process now to ensure there is sufficient time to produce and design UK passports from 2019 when the current contract ends. \" The issue of the British passport was one frequently mentioned by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who pointed out that as well as having the words 'European Union' on the front, it also guarantees British citizenship rights for all 500 million EU citizens. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Energy Department said on Tuesday it will not comply with a request from President-elect Donald Trump's Energy Department transition team for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers. The Energy Department's response could signal a rocky transition for the president-elect's energy team and potential friction between the new leadership and the staffers who remain in place. The memo sent to the Energy Department on Tuesday and reviewed by Reuters last week contains 74 questions, including a request for a list of all department employees and contractors who attended the annual global climate talks hosted by the United Nations within the last five years. Energy Department spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said Tuesday the department will not comply. \"Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of (the Energy Department) and the important work our department does to benefit the American people,\" Burnham-Snyder said. \"We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department,\" he added. \"We will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.\" He added that the request \"left many in our workforce unsettled.\" Andrew Rosenberg, an official at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the Energy Department \"made the right choice in refusing this absurd and dangerous request. Federal agencies need the best available science to respond to the growing risk of climate change.\" Reuters reported late Monday that former Texas Governor Rick Perry is expected to be named by Trump to run the Energy Department. The agency employs more than 90,000 people working on nuclear weapons maintenance and research labs, nuclear energy, advanced renewable energy, batteries and climate science. The memo sought a list of all department employees or contractors who have attended any meetings on the social cost of carbon, a measurement that federal agencies use to weigh the costs and benefits of new energy and environmental regulations. It also asked for all publications written by employees at the department's 17 national laboratories for the past three years. Trump transition officials declined to comment on the memo. \"This feels like the first draft of an eventual political enemies list,\" a Department of Energy employee, who asked not to be identified because he feared a reprisal by the Trump transition team, had told Reuters. Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, said in a news briefing on Tuesday that the queries \"could have been an attempt to target civil servants,\" including \"scientists and lawyers and other experts who are critical to the success of the federal government's ability to make policy.\" By design, their work transcends the term of any one president, Earnest said. Trump, a Republican, said during his election campaign that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by China to damage U.S. manufacturing. He said he would rip up last year's landmark global climate deal struck in Paris that was signed by President Barack Obama. Since winning the Nov. 8 election, however, Trump has said he will keep an \"open mind\" about the Paris deal. He also met with former Vice President Al Gore, a strong advocate for action on climate change. After that meeting, he picked Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a climate change skeptic, to head the Environmental Protection Agency.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump does not like the \"border adjustment\" tax cooked up by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan and other Republicans in the House of Representatives. At least, he does not like the term. \"I don't like the word 'adjustment', because our country gets taken advantage of, to use a nice term, by every other country in the world,\" Trump told Fox Business News in an interview that aired on Wednesday. \"Adjustment means we lose. We lose.\" \"Let's call it an import tax. Let's call it a reciprocal tax,\" he added. \"Nobody gets angry when you say reciprocal tax.\" Trump was talking about a provision in Ryan's House Republican tax blueprint that has polarized the tax reform debate, as the White House tries to score a much-needed legislative victory by overhauling the U.S. tax code for the first time since the Reagan era. The proposal would exempt U.S. corporate export revenues from federal taxes, while requiring U.S. companies to shoulder the same flat 20 percent tax rate on supplies and other purchased products, whether produced overseas or domestically. But the president appeared to favor an import tax that could be adjusted to reflect the country of origin's tax rate for U.S. products. He said such an approach could take the form of trade policy rather than tax policy. \"There has to be a certain reciprocal nature to it,\" the president said. \"The other countries, if they're charging you a 50 percent tax, you say: 'O.K., whatever you charge, we're charging'.\" The House border adjustment tax, or BAT, would help Trump keep his campaign pledge to create manufacturing jobs, advocates say, by exempting U.S. export revenue from tax while subjecting imports to the same 20 percent corporate tax imposed on domestic products. But the measure has been angrily denounced by import-dependent industries and rejected by enough Senate Republicans to call its political viability into question. In his Fox interview, Trump lamented the inequalities of the international tax system, saying U.S. products face high tax rates overseas while foreign-made goods enter the U.S. market tax free. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin floated the idea of a \"reciprocal\" tax in February, but administration officials have offered few details and lobbyists have suggested that it could strongly resemble the House BAT proposal. \"I love the idea of reciprocal,\" Trump said. \"You can call it a reciprocal or a matching tax or a mirror tax. There are numerous terms. But the reciprocal tax is very important.\"","label":0}
{"text":"What this story shows is that while there are some conscientious journalists at the New York Times who have made a concerted effort to discover the truth about President Trump s somewhat outlandish claim that the Cuban government have deployed sonic attacks against US diplomats in Havana the paper s editors also ran with the predictable mainstream conspiracy theory that Putin might be behind this malicious high-tech assault on US foreign service officials.Is there an internal struggle underway in mainstream media institutions between those who want to retain their integrity, and gatekeepers determine to use these outlets to peddle Establishment propaganda?Consortium News Exclusive: When the Trump administration blamed Cuba for a sonic attack on U.S. diplomats, a New York Times reporter did something unusual for his newspaper: he tried objectively to assess the evidence, as Robert Parry reports By Robert ParryI often criticize The New York Times, Washington Post and other major mainstream media outlets for a very simple reason: they deserve it especially for their propagandistic, unprofessional and reckless coverage of foreign crises.But there are occasional moments when some reporter at an MSM outlet behaves responsibly and those instances should be noted at least under the classic definition of news something that is unexpected or as the old saying goes, dog bites man is not news; man bites dog is news. One such moment occurred earlier this month when a Times science editor assigned science reporter Carl Zimmer to look into the mysterious illnesses affecting U.S. diplomats in the recently reopened U.S. embassy in Cuba.About two dozen U.S. diplomats supposedly were suffering hearing loss and cognitive difficulties due to what has been labeled a sonic attack. The Trump administration blamed the Cuban government even though the Cubans claimed to be mystified and would seem to have little motive for disrupting a long-sought d tente with Washington along with the expected boon to their tourist industry. President Trump retaliated by expelling 15 Cuban diplomats.Zimmer recounted the background to his story in a reporter s notebook piece on Oct. 6: On Tuesday, Michael Mason, my editor on the science desk, shot me an email. Would I consider writing an article about this sonic attack business ? I knew exactly what he was talking about. I had been vaguely puzzled about this business for months. Checking Out the StoryZimmer then did what professional journalists are supposed to do: he started contacting impartial experts to get their assessments of what was possible, what was likely, and what didn t make sense. I decided to try to find something out not as a political reporter but as a science writer, Zimmer wrote in the sidebar that accompanied his news article. I usually base my ideas on scientific research that has matured far enough that it is beginning to get published in peer-reviewed journals. I knew that an article on sonic weapons would be very different from the ones I usually write. I learned there was not even an official medical report. I decided to try to draw some boundary lines for all the speculation swirling around the story. Is the idea of a sonic attack plausible, based on what scientists know about sound and the human body? So I hit the phone. I didn t want to talk with just anyone I looked for people with lots of experience in research that had direct bearing on this question. I started with Timothy Leighton, whose job title at Southampton University is, literally, professor of ultrasonics and underwater acoustics. Better yet, Dr. Leighton has published the only thorough recent scientific review of the effects of environmental ultrasound that I m aware of. When I interviewed Dr. Leighton and others, I made clear I didn t expect them to solve this mystery; I just wanted them to reconcile the question with what we know through science. The consensus was that it was extremely unlikely the diplomats were the victims of a sonic weapon. It would be necessary to rule out less exotic possibilities before taking that one seriously. Yet, despite this skeptical scientific consensus among experts, Zimmer noted, The notion [of a sonic attack] has ricocheted like mad around the press, making it possible for readers to assume that [the sonic attack explanation] has been generally accepted by experts. But it most certainly has not. I ll be curious to see if articles like mine can put the brakes on the speculation. Suspecting PutinWell, Zimmer could have read the Times editorial in the same day s (Oct. 6) newspaper for a partial answer. While critical of the Trump administration for rushing to judgment in blaming the Cuban government and expelling 15 diplomats, the editorial concluded: The sonic attacks on Americans are too serious to be used for cynical political ends. So much for the editorial writers reading their own newspaper, but clearly they were driven by a higher agenda. A New York Times editorial about some unpleasant topic anywhere in the world these days wouldn t be complete without taking the opportunity to blame Russia or, in this case, at least suggest Russia as a possible villain in the mystery.The Times wrote: Other parties, most notably Russia, must also figure as suspects: President Vladimir Putin would probably welcome a setback to American-Cuban relations. Yes, every possible conspiracy theory must somehow circle back to Vladimir Putin, a real-life Dr. Evil. When he is not plotting how to flood Facebook with images of puppies or manipulate Americans in their pursuit of Pokemon Go characters, he is building secret sonic weapons to disorient U.S. diplomats in Havana and provoke President Trump to act rashly (when we all know how cool and collected Trump normally is) Continue this story at Consortium NewsREAD MORE ABOUT MSM REPORTING AT: 21st Century Wire Media Cog FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"32 King World News  On the heels of yesterday's Fed meeting, what we just witnessed has rarely occurred in the past 20 years!  Surprises In The Put Options Market From Jason Goepfert at SentimenTrader: \" Equity options traders focused on puts almost as much as calls on Wednesday. A stocks-only put\/call ratio is rare during bull markets, occurring only 17 times in 20 years (see chart below).  King World News note: For a broader look at how extreme the put\/call ratio is, below is a 5-year chart.  Although this is flashing a warning signal for the bears who are short the stock market, the exception would be if stocks are about to enter a bear market. In that case put buyers are often rewarded for their pessimism.  The charts and commentary above are from SentimenTrader. To try a free 14-day trial of the internationally acclaimed work that Jason Goepfert produces at SentimenTrader simply CLICK HERE.   Investors Intelligence Says Here Is The Key To A Turnaround In Gold & Silver","label":1}
{"text":"While the mainstream media remains transfixed on a phony Trump-Russian collusion story, they completely ignore the real news, about how things appear to be heating up between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the U.S.A Marine Corps commandant on Thursday warned U.S. troops stationed in Norway to be prepared for a coming war.Neller pointed to the near future possibility of Russia and the Pacific theater being the next major areas of conflict.Sgt. Maj. Ronald Green sounded a similar tone. Just remember why you re here, Green said. They re watching. Just like you watch them, they watch you. We ve got 300 Marines up here; we could go from 300 to 3,000 overnight. We could raise the bar. The warnings came a day before Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told troops at Fort Bragg, N.C., that storm clouds are gathering over the Korean Peninsula.Whether the comments were more than motivational rhetoric remained unclear.Neller and Green s arrival in Norway coincided with heightened tensions between the U.S. and its NATO allies and Russia. According to Military.com, Russia warned Norway that its decision to host a new unit of U.S. troops through the end of 2018 would negatively affect relations. FOX NewsAccording to UK Express, Russian President Putin said the US missile defense sites in Romania containing interceptor missiles could also house ground-to-ground intermediate-range cruise missiles, which would be in violation of the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.He told the military officials that both the US and NATO have been accelerating build-up of infrastructure in Europe and emphasised that the deployment of NATO forces near Russia s borders had threatened its security.He said: When we move military units on our own territory, they present it as some kind of a threat. And when they move military bases, infrastructure and new weapons near our borders they present it as something normal. It s probably normal for those who do it, but not for us. NATO has deployed military units to Poland and the Baltics to reassure allies worried over Russia s intentions following its 2014 annexation of Ukraine s Crimea and its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.Mr Putin mentioned NATO s US-led missile defense system and efforts to develop new prospective conventional weapons among other security challenges.He added: They are searching for some violations on our part while consistently infringing on it themselves. All that seriously affects security in Europe and in the whole world. Mr Putin accused the US of violating a landmark Cold War-era nuclear arms pact and harbouring aggressive intentions, and pledged to fend off any potential threats.FOX News At a Q&A session with the troops in the Norwegian Home Guard base near Trondheim, Neller said that the U.S. could shift its focus from the Middle East to Eastern Europe, citing Russia s conflicts with Ukraine and Georgia as justification. He told the Marines that they should be prepared for a big-ass fight on the horizon.Russia has reportedly been uneasy about the presence of American troops close to its borders. The 300 U.S. Marines deployed to Norway in June 2016 were the first foreign troops allowed to operate in the country since World War II.In September of this year, Russia conducted a joint-military exercise with neighboring Belarus that involved 12,700 troops.A new National Security Strategy unveiled by the Trump administration on Monday singled out Russia and China as two world powers challenging American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. F","label":1}
{"text":"If the metal barricades, \"Do Not Enter\" signs and lurking Secret Service agents were a bother the past eight years in the Hyde area \u2014 the South Side neighborhood where President Obama still owns a house, but rarely has been home \u2014 residents are not complaining. \"All that's been fine, really. You get used to it,\" said Adela Cepeda, who like many people on Mr. Obama's block of Greenwood Avenue met him before he was president, or a senator, or elected to anything at all. \"To me, it's just too bad his time will be over. This has been fabulous for Chicago in a certain way. I think that all things being equal, we came first. But I guess all good things must end. \" As Mr. Obama prepared to give his farewell address on Tuesday from McCormick Place, the cavernous convention center beside Lake Michigan, people in his hometown sounded by turns possessive, proud, anxious and wistful. With his election in 2008, this city \u2014 and its heavily South Side in particular \u2014 had suddenly been thrust to the forefront of the national political conversation. And so early Saturday, in temperatures barely above zero, thousands waited outside for the chance to receive free tickets to witness the end of that story. By Sunday, tickets were being hawked online for as much as $5, 000. Near the Obamas' red brick Georgian, not far from the University of Chicago, some wondered gloomily whether his legacy might now be erased by his successor, Donald J. Trump, who received just 12 percent of the vote in Chicago and only slivers in the wards near Mr. Obama's house. Would Chicago's spin in the spotlight, complicated as it had been at times, be over now, too? \"I guess I feel sad,\" said Antonio Coye, a barber at the Hyde Park Hair Salon, where the plain black chair Mr. Obama used to sit in for his trims is now preserved under glass. Not long ago, a crew of bicyclists peered at the chair from the foyer of the small shop, where a line of men forms on Saturdays and \"the Obama cut,\" a taper on the side and the back for $24, remains popular. \"This was really something unique that happened,\" Mr. Coye said as he worked on a customer with a razor over the weekend. \"It was the first time somebody really different became president, and he did a really good job. To me, the person in office after him is going to make his time in office stand out even more than it did already. \" tour buses, once an oddity, cruise down Hyde Park Boulevard with some frequency now. People can occasionally be seen pulling over with cameras outside a nondescript shopping center along 53rd Street, where an plaque notes the Obamas' first date, during which Barack Obama bought Michelle Robinson ice cream from a shop that has since become a Subway. For a place that has not forgotten being called the Second City by a New Yorker writer long ago, Chicago had watched its standing, in the eyes of the coasts, rise along with Mr. Obama's. Chicagoans were entrusted with important posts in Washington, and many of them, along with the first family, had roots on the South Side, rather than on the richer and whiter North Side. At points during the term, Chicago voices seemed to be everywhere. Both Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, who is now back in Hyde Park at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, were senior advisers. Chicago cabinet members included Arne Duncan (education) and Penny Pritzker (commerce). Austan Goolsbee, another Hyde Parker, was an economic adviser, and Desir\u00e9e Rogers was an early White House social secretary. And Mr. Obama's chiefs of staff included William M. Daley, the brother of Chicago's former mayor, and Rahm Emanuel, who was later elected mayor. But it is not just the shutting of that pipeline that causes concern. In Mr. Obama's old neighborhood, the notion that Mr. Trump was soon to step in left some speaking of the president's farewell speech in terms more akin to a funeral than a celebration. Many recalled watching an ebullient evening here in 2012, when President Obama appeared at McCormick Place \u2014 a bookend, it now seems, to Tuesday night. Others recounted how they had felt as they watched his 2008 victory from Grant Park, the city's downtown front yard along the lake, where he addressed thousands with the gleaming Chicago skyline as a backdrop. \"It was a magical moment \u2014 such a positive buzz all around,\" said Kevin Elliott, a manager at 57th Street Books, an underground maze where Mr. Obama had held book signings and often visited before his election. Even here, though, a few have questioned whether Mr. Obama did as much as he could during his time in office to solve urban problems of gang violence, joblessness and segregation. In Chicago, violence cascaded last year: More people, 762, were murdered in the president's hometown in 2016 than in New York and Los Angeles combined. Some complained that Mr. Obama had not interceded forcefully enough. \"He was a community organizer here himself, and he should be embarrassed that he came in as president and the problems have actually worsened,\" said Ja'Mal Green, a local activist. But others, like Mr. Coye, the barber, noted that Mr. Obama was president of the United States, not of the South Side: \"Who knows what happens now, but you can't have expected him to solve this city's violence. \" The Obamas intend to stay in Washington while their younger daughter finishes high school, but many residents here believe that they might never return to the house on Greenwood Avenue. He is building his presidential library in Chicago, many say, and that is just fine. \"No, he's not coming back, and he shouldn't, either \u2014 he couldn't go anywhere without being recognized,\" said Stephanie Crouse, 53, a school bus driver eating her lunch from a tray at Valois, a Hyde Park cafeteria Mr. Obama once frequented. \"This is like your kids,\" she added. \"He's done his thing. He did what he could. And you're sending him off now to graduate and move up and go off to better things. \"","label":0}
{"text":"A lot of people have a lot to say about the role of Hermione Granger, of the famed Harry Potter series, now being played by black actress Noma Dumezweni in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. However, none more than Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling herself who has slapped down all criticism calling critics idiots and a bunch of racists, because they are.In the latest bout of criticism being thrown at Rowling, one Potter fan decided they would tell her how to cast her own film. You know, because they know best. This person named Dan took to Twitter and said: It is not about racism. It is just about consistency of the movie. How come you cannot find even a good white actress @jk_rowling it is not about racism. It is just about consistency of the movie. How come you cannot find even a good white actress Dan (@Dan49905785) June 10, 2016First sign you re a Twitter troll? You can t even take the time to upload a selfie it would take three seconds to take and upload. However, Rowling wasn t going to let this clear racism slide, even though she was clearly being trolled.Not even giving a clear f*ck what this racist, not racist person has to say, Rowling threw the ultimate shade right back when she said: We found the best actress and she s black. Bye bye, now. We found the best actress and she's black. Bye bye, now. https:\/\/t.co\/1fGmP5znHP J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) June 10, 2016Good for you, Rowling. That s the only response that is needed.Featured Photo by Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"For months, Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign labored listlessly under a cloud of doubt after revelations that she had a private e-mail server during her time as secretary of state. Then, Republicans, as they so often do, overreached on their Clinton attacks and handed the Democratic front-runner a message and momentum that she had struggled mightily to build on her own. First, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) went on Fox News and, floundering to prove his conservative bona fides to be speaker of the House, said this to Fox News host Sean Hannity: \"Everybody thought that Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.\" Then there was the hearing last week \u2014 more than two years in the making (Clinton last testified before Congress on Benghazi in January 2013) \u2014 that flopped mightily for Republicans. Eleven hours worth of questions left the GOP looking small and Clinton looking calm, cool and collected. Even Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, admitted in the hearing's wake, \"I don't know that [Clinton] testified that much differently today than she has the previous time she testified.\" For longtime Clinton watchers \u2014 and I count myself in that category \u2014 the pattern was remarkably familiar. Republicans, handed a potent issue (and the controversy over Clinton's private e-mail server is one), try to knock the Clintons out and instead swing, miss and fall on their collective face. Think back to the late 1990s, when, after admitting to an extramarital affair with a White House intern, Bill Clinton found himself more popular than ever \u2014 particularly among Democrats \u2014 after congressional Republicans tried to impeach him despite the public's skepticism about whether such a punishment was warranted. Eerie similarities echo between that moment and this one for Republicans in Congress. Unquestionably, the revelation that Clinton exclusively used a private e-mail address and server while she was the nation's top diplomat had damaged her front-running campaign for the Democratic nomination. Her lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) had shrunk, and large majorities of the public said she was neither honest nor trustworthy. Most important for Clinton was that establishment Democrats began to openly fret that perhaps she simply wasn't up to the race and that someone else \u2014 such as Vice President Biden \u2014 needed to step into the breach. McCarthy's comments provided Clinton with overwhelming proof (at least to Democrats) that the Benghazi committee was effectively political theater designed to damage her chances of winning in 2016. The hearing itself allowed Clinton a platform that was perfectly suited to her strengths \u2014 preparation and a remarkable tirelessness \u2014 and on which she, unsurprisingly, shined. Clinton looked in control, poised and smart. The majority of her Republican interrogators looked outmatched. Democrats noticed. The hour after the end of the committee hearing \u2014 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time Thursday \u2014 was the most lucrative 60 minutes of fundraising in Clinton's campaign. And suddenly Clinton wasn't the boring candidate of the status quo anymore. She was the target of \u2014 wait for it \u2014 a vast right-wing conspiracy aimed at, yet again, playing politics in hopes of hurting her chances of being elected to office. The campaign is \u2014 and this is so obvious that it is probably not worth saying \u2014 far from over. The Iowa caucuses aren't for about 100 more days, and the general election is a year away. Lots can, and will, change. It is also obvious that the past two weeks have been the best two weeks of Clinton's campaign. She has gone from flagging front-runner to rejuvenated fighter \u2014 a much better look if you want to, you know, win. Not all of the Clinton renaissance can be credited to or blamed on Republicans. Her strong performance in the first Democratic presidential debate was all her doing, and Biden's decision not to run seems only tangentially tied to her strengthening of late. But the Clintons have always been at their best when under fire from the other side; Hillary Clinton, in particular, is a better counter-puncher than a first-strike player. For some reason, Republicans have never learned that lesson. Over the past month, they have pulled off a trick that Clinton never could seem to do herself: They have turned her into a sympathetic and more appealing figure for Democrats and lots of independents \u2014 whom she will need in a general election. If she wins the White House in November 2016, Clinton should send thank-you notes to McCarthy, Gowdy and the rest of the House Republicans. They may have saved her candidacy.","label":0}
{"text":"The United States strongly opposes the planned independence referendum by Iraqi Kurds and urges Iraqi Kurdish leaders to engage in negotiations with the Baghdad government instead, the U.S. State Department said on Wednesday. In the most forceful U.S. statement so far opposing the referendum, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said: The United States strongly opposes the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government s referendum on independence, planned for September 25.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump will travel to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Hawaii between Nov. 3-14, the White House said on Monday, amid rising tensions over North Korea s nuclear and missile programs. Trump will call on the international community to join together in maximizing pressure on North Korea, the White House said in a statement, and will meet family members of Japanese citizens who have been abducted by North Korea. During his visit, Trump will emphasize his commitment to U.S. alliances and partnerships, attend events at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. He will also meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and Vietnam President Tran Dai Quang.","label":0}
{"text":"Switzerland s defense ministry has admitted sending staff to test reconnaissance drones in contested land held by Israel - an embarrassing blow for the neutral European country s status as an honest broker in the Middle East. Swiss officials visited an airfield in the Golan Heights region on three occasions in 2012, 2013 and 2015 to monitor tests of the Israeli-built Hermes 900 aircraft that they are buying for $265 million. The visits, which lasted several days, took place in an area which Switzerland does not recognize as being part of Israel, which took the land from Syria following a 1967 war. Following an internal review this year, the Swiss found the presence of their personnel at the airfield contradicted the Swiss position on the Middle East conflict, the ministry said. The visits took place without the knowledge of the Swiss foreign ministry. No further visits have taken place since the affair came to light, it said in a statement. This incident was a communication breakdown, it said. Those who were informed about the activities did not realize Swiss officials were not allowed to be there and those who knew about the restrictions were not informed about the planned activities. Future tests will now take place at an airfield within Israel, it added, with the drones due to enter service in 2020. Switzerland has frequently acted as a broker in the Middle East, most recently hosting peace talks about the Syrian civil war in Geneva and carrying out consular services for Iran and Saudi Arabia in their respective countries. This case damages the credibility of Switzerland with regards to all governments in the region which are in conflict with Israel, veteran diplomat Tim Guldimann, a lawmaker from the Social Democrat party, told the Tages-Anzeiger paper.","label":0}
{"text":"Facebook Faces High Profile Lawsuit Regarding Facial Recognition Technology 'DeepFace' Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg  As the technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous and far more accurate, facial recognition and the lack of any laws or regulations around the practice is slowly starting to enter mainstream consciousness. It's a very important issue that isn't getting the attention it deserves.  For example, as I highlighted in the recent post, Half of American Adults Exist in a Government Accessible Facial Recognition Network :  Half of all American adults are already in some sort of facial recognition network accessible to law enforcement, according to a comprehensive new study.  Conducted over a year and relying in part on Freedom of Information and public record requests to 106 law enforcement agencies, the study , conducted by Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, found American police use of facial recognition technology is a scattered, hodgepodge network of laws and regulations.  \"Looking at the sum total of what we found, there have been no laws that comprehensively regulate face recognition technology, and there's really no case law either,\" Clare Garvie, an associate at the CPT, told Vocativ. \"So we find ourselves having to rely on the agencies that are using that technology to rein it in. But what we found is that not every system \u2014 by a long shot \u2014 has a use policy.\"  With that in mind, Bloomberg published an interesting article yesterday covering a couple of lawsuits against Facebook and Google regarding their facial recognition practices.  Here's some of what we learned:  While millions of internet users embrace the tagging of family and friends in photos, others worried there's something devious afoot are trying block Facebook as well as Google from amassing such data.  As advances in facial recognition technology give companies the potential to profit from biometric data, privacy advocates see a pattern in how the world's largest social network and search engine have sold users' viewing histories for advertising. The companies insist that gathering data on what you look like isn't against the law, even without your permission.  If judges agree with Facebook and Google, they may be able to kill off lawsuits filed under a unique Illinois law that carries fines of $1,000 to $5,000 each time a person's image is used without permission \u2014 big enough for a liability headache if claims on behalf of millions of consumers proceed as class actions. A loss by the companies could lead to new restrictions on using biometrics in the U.S., similar to those in Europe and Canada.  Facebook declined to comment on its court fight. Google declined to comment on pending litigation.  Facebook encourages users to \"tag\" people in photographs they upload in their personal posts and the social network stores the collected information. The company uses a program it calls DeepFace to match other photos of a person. Alphabet Inc.'s cloud-based Google Photos service uses similar technology.  The billions of images Facebook is thought to be collecting could be even more valuable to identity thieves than the names, addresses, and credit card numbers now targeted by hackers, according to privacy advocates and legal experts.  And just how good is Facebook's technology? According to the company's research, DeepFace recognizes faces with an accuracy rate of 97.35 percent compared with 97.5 percent for humans \u2014 including mothers.  Rotenberg said the privacy concerns are twofold: Facebook might sell the information to retailers or be forced to turn it over to law enforcement \u2014 in both cases without users knowing it.  Now here's some history on Facebook and facial recognition. Facebook v. Privacy Law  December 2005 \u2014 Facebook introduces photo tagging  October 2008 \u2014 Illinois adopts Biometric Information Privacy Act  June 2012 \u2014 Facebook acquires Israeli facial recognition developer Face.com  September 2012 \u2014 Facebook ceases facial recognition in Europe  2015-2016 \u2014 Facebook, Google, Shutterfly and Snapchat sued under Illinois biometrics law. Shutterfly settles confidentially.  May 2016 \u2014 Illinois lawmaker proposes excluding photos from biometrics law, then shelves bill after privacy advocates complain  October 2016 \u2014 Facebook makes second attempt to get biometrics lawsuit thrown out  The Facebook case is In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, 15-cv-03747, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). The Google cases are Rivera v. Google, 16-cv-02714, and Weiss v. Google, 16-cv-02870, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).  For prior articles on the topic, see:","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump will play golf with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe next week, near his Club in Palm Beach, Florida. [Trump insists that Abe is his partner during the round. So as usual, the 45th president plans on winning. \"We're going to have a round of golf, which is a great thing,\" Golf Digest reported. \"That's the one thing about golf \u2014 you get to know somebody better on a golf course than you will over lunch. \" Trump has a ways to go to catch up to Barack Obama, who played over 300 rounds during his presidency. Nevertheless, Trump claims to have won many club championships over the years before his decision to dive into the political arena. Historically, golf plays a significant role for many of the nation's presidents. Dwight Eisenhower played some 800 rounds as the 34th President of the United States. Woodrow Wilson reportedly played 1200 rounds when he was president from 1913 to 1921. The new will get a chance to air out a gift Abe presented to Trump after he won the election in November. Japan's chief executive bestowed a Honma Beres driver to the New York billionaire. The club retails for a whopping $3, 755. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump indicated he would be looking for Abe and his country to help the United States in covering the cost of providing security and safety around the world. This idea disturbed many of Trump's critics, as they accused him of encouraging nuclear arms proliferation in the \"Land of the Rising Sun. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Scott Baio became a teen idol starring as Chachi Arcola on Happy Days from 1977-1984 and he worked pretty consistently until a few years ago, most recently as star and producer of See Dad Run on Nick at Nite. Baio spoke to The Hollywood Reporter about being a conservative in famously liberal Hollywood.Donald Trump has had some gaffes recently, like insulting the Khan family. Do you think they are actual gaffes or media hype?Well, let s put that up against someone who should be indicted, according to James Comey, the FBI director. It s amazing. I mean, I don t know where you stand politically you work for The Hollywood Reporter so I m sure you lean left. But it s incredible to me that she lied about people dying in Benghazi, and she is still lying about her emails, and Donald Trump says something about this couple and it s taken completely out of context. I was around for Romney and I thought that was bad, but this is insane. I don t know who the Clintons made a deal with, but the media is, so bad. How do you fight that? Hollywood Reporter On Monday, Scott Baio filed a police report claiming the wife of the Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer went nuts on him at a function with their elementary school kids physically attacking him over his support of Donald Trump.Law enforcement tells TMZ, Baio says he was at an event with his daughter Saturday in Thousand Oaks, CA, when Nancy Mack confronted him. Mack, who s married to drummer Chad Smith, is a vocal anti-Trump supporter who has called the Prez-elect racist began berating and cursing Baio, one of Trump s strongest celebrity supporters.We re told Baio told cops he asked her to quiet down because kids were present, but Mack was undeterred, asking him how he could support a man who said, Grab em by the pussy. Baio claims she repeatedly screamed, Grab em by the pussy. Baio asked Nancy to stop, but he claims she kept repeating the comment because she felt everyone needed to hear it, cause Trump used it. Baio told cops at that point Mack attacked him, grabbing him under his arms and then shaking and pushing him.","label":1}
{"text":"Live in New York long enough and you will lose somewhere you love. Good things die here. It's what keeps the place alive. But every now and then a big one goes, as it did on Friday morning, when the owner of the Carnegie Deli suddenly announced that the Manhattan sandwich place would be shutting down at the end of the year. The famous Jewish restaurant on Seventh Avenue and 55th Street, down the block from Carnegie Hall, has been putting out cardiologically perilous fare since 1937. When it closes its doors on Dec. 31, the city will lose not only an irreplaceably iconic pastrami sandwich, but also a small piece of itself. News of the restaurant's demise emerged at 7 a. m. on Friday when, at a meeting in the dining room, the owner, Marian Harper, told about 25 employees that she could no longer bear the stressful challenges of restaurant life. \"The restaurant business is one of the hardest jobs in New York City,\" Ms. Harper later said in a formal statement issued by her publicist. \"At this stage in my life, the early morning to late night days have taken a toll, along with my sleepless nights and grueling hours. \" The shock waves quickly followed. Eater, the culinary website, reported on the closing with a mournful article with the headline: \"Pastrami Bombshell. \" Twitter was full of photographs of deli meat and melancholy posts: \"How's a Jew like me supposed to suffer a heart attack at age 37 in this city anymore? !\" And \"It's pastrami on cry. \" The restaurant had seen its share of turmoil in the last few years. In April 2015, it was closed for almost 10 months by Consolidated Edison, which was investigating its misappropriation of natural gas, an impropriety that the utility said had gone on for six years and resulted in a backdated bill of more than $40, 000. One year earlier, Ms. Harper and her husband of 22 years, Sandy Levine, went through a contentious divorce. According to her spokeswoman, Ms. Harper, 65, would not go quietly into retirement, but rather planned to devote herself \u2014 as awful as it sounds \u2014 to \"licensing the iconic Carnegie Deli brand\" by selling a line of wholesale products. Though the flagship restaurant would soon go the way of New York institutions such as Elaine's and CBGB, satellite Carnegies would remain in operation at Madison Square Garden, the Mirage Hotel Casino in Las Vegas and the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, Pa. the spokeswoman said. The somewhat catty truth about the Carnegie Deli is that it is one of those New York destinations that actual New Yorkers visit once or twice and then frequently decide they have had enough of. Its 64 seats are usually filled with tourists. This was proved true by a quick poll of the people standing in line outside the restaurant on Friday afternoon. When asked where they were from, they provided a long list of locations that were not New York: Arkansas, Louisiana, Arizona, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas, Switzerland. \"We came up on a bus trip from Baltimore, and I read the place was shutting down on my iPhone,\" said Ruthann Smith, a retired high school teacher who was enjoying the pastrami with her husband, Dennis, a former financier. \"We were trying to figure out where to go for lunch and I said, 'We better go to the Carnegie Deli while we still have a chance. '\" With its linoleum floors and animal protein odors, the Carnegie Deli was never fine dining, but the seedy lighting and eclectic checkerboard of celebrity photos (from the quarterback Y. A. Tittle to the Fonz, Henry Winkler) gave the place a homey sort of charm. \"I served Denzel Washington and James Brown and Bill Clinton,\" said Desmarine Redwood, who has worked there as a waitress for 26 years. \"It gave me peace of mind. I loved working at this place. I'm going to miss it. \" Once the deli closes, devotees of the sandwich will begin their hunt for other options \u2014 perhaps like the one at Katz's on the Lower East Side. That, at least, was a possibility for Otis Allen, a credit manager and one of the few New Yorkers having lunch at the Carnegie on Friday. \"I'll miss the place \u2014 I've been coming here for years,\" Mr. Allen said. \"I haven't figured out yet where my next place will be. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Three of the women who have accused U.S. President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct called on Monday for a congressional probe of his behavior amid similar accusations against powerful men in Hollywood, the media and politics. Over the past two years, more than a dozen women have accused Trump of making unwanted sexual advances against them long before he entered politics. Trump has denied the accusations, and the White House has accused the women of lying. Among his accusers are a Miss Utah beauty pageant winner, a businesswoman, a reporter and a receptionist. The following are the three women who on Monday renewed their call for action: ** Jessica Leeds recounted in a video interview posted on The New York Times website in October 2016 that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt on a flight on which she was traveling to New York in or around 1980 when she was a 38-year-old businesswoman. ** Rachel Crooks, formerly a receptionist at a real estate firm in Trump Tower, told The New York Times in a report published in October 2016 that Trump \"kissed me directly on the mouth\" in 2005 at Trump Tower in Manhattan when she was 22. ** Samantha Holvey, the 2006 Miss North Carolina and a former contestant in the Miss USA pageant, told NBC's \"Today\" program on Monday that Trump walked into the pageant dressing room in 2006 while contestants were naked and in bathrobes. She told CNN in an October 2016 report that Trump personally inspected each woman prior to the contest, \"eyeing us from head to toe like we were meat, we were sexual objects.\" Here are other women who have made accusations against Trump: ** Summer Zervos, a contestant on Trump's reality show \"The Apprentice\" in 2006, told an October 2016 news conference that Trump tried to get her to lie down on a bed with him when she met him in 2007 to discuss a possible job. Zervos said she complied with a request to sit next to Trump and, \"He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast.\" Trump has denied the allegation. Zervos sued Trump in January, contending that his denials of her accusations amounted to false and defamatory statements and that being \"branded a liar\" by Trump has harmed her and her business. ** In a video posted on The Washington Post website in October 2016, Kristin Anderson accused Trump of putting his hand up her skirt in a crowded New York nightclub in the early 1990s in an unwanted advance. \"He did touched my vagina through my underwear, absolutely,\" Anderson said in the video interview. ** Lisa Boyne said in a short film titled \"16 Women and Donald Trump\" that she met Trump in the early 1990s at a dinner party he hosted in New York. Boyne said that Trump picked up her and another person in his limousine, and he made inappropriate remarks about famous actresses. \"He asked us to rate them from 1 to 10,\" Boyne said. Boyne said that at the party, Trump \"used his table as a 'casting couch,' instructing women who attended to model above the table. He then looked under the dresses of each women and made comments of what he saw.\" ** Jessica Drake, an adult film actress, told a news conference in Los Angeles in October 2016 that Trump pressured her to have sex with him 11 years ago when they met at a golf tournament. Trump's campaign said the accusations were false. ** Jill Harth, a former Trump beauty pageant business associate, filed a $125 million lawsuit in 1997 against Trump alleging that on Jan. 24, 1993, at Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago, Trump \"forcibly removed plaintiff to a bedroom, whereupon defendant subjected plaintiff to defendant's unwanted sexual advances.\" A Trump spokesperson was quoted by The New York Times in October 2016 as saying, \"Mr. Trump denies each and every statement made by Ms. Harth.\" The lawsuit was dropped in May 1997. ** Cathy Heller said that in 1997 Trump tried to kiss her during a Mother's Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago. Heller, her husband, her three children and her in-laws attended the event. When she was introduced to Trump, \"He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips,\" she told The Guardian newspaper in October 2016. She said she turned her head and Trump kissed her on the side of the mouth. ** Ninni Laaksonen, a former Miss Finland, accused Trump of groping her in 2006 when she was representing her country in the Miss Universe beauty contest. Laaksonen told the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper in October 2016 that he had grabbed her behind before she appeared on a television show in New York with other contestants. \"He really grabbed my butt. I don't think anybody saw it but I flinched and thought: 'What is happening?',\" she was quoted as saying in the newspaper. ** In October 2016 Mindy McGillivray told the Palm Beach Post that she was a 23-year-old photographer's assistant at a Jan. 24, 2003, event at Mar-a-Lago when Trump grabbed her buttocks. ** Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter, wrote a first-person account that described Trump kissing her without her consent in December 2005 at Mar-a-Lago while she was working on an article about him and his third wife, Melania, for People magazine. In the account published by People in October 2016, Stoynoff said \"he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.\" ** Temple Taggart, a former Miss Utah, said Trump twice kissed her on the lips while she was a contestant for the Miss USA pageant in 1997 when she was 21 years old. \"What he did made me feel so uncomfortable that I ended up cutting my trip short, bought my own plane ticket, flew home and never spoke to him again,\" Taggart said at an October 2016 press conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred. ** At an October 2016 news conference, yoga instructor Karena Virginia said Trump approached her outside the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1998 when she was 27 years old. She alleged that Trump commented on her legs and then touched her breast before she was able to get into a car and be driven away.","label":0}
{"text":"Hillary Clinton promised on Monday to bring the \"full weight of the law\" against people who kill police officers if she becomes the next U.S. president after two recent episodes of gunmen slaying police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic candidate ahead of a Nov. 8 election, made the promise in a speech in Cincinnati at the annual convention of the civil rights group the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. \"Anyone who kills a police officer and anyone who helps must be held accountable,\" Clinton said. \"As president, I will bring the full weight of the law to bear to make sure those who kill police officers are brought to justice.\" The penalties for killing a police officer are rightly more severe than those for killing a civilian because police are symbols of the rule of law, she said. Clinton's remarks come among heighten tensions between police forces and many black and Latino Americans, who have been rallying in protests across the country against a spate of police killings of black men, often unarmed, during encounters. A black former soldier killed five police officers during one such protest in Dallas, Texas, on July 7. On Sunday, another black former U.S. Marine sergeant killed three police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.","label":0}
{"text":"Two Republican senators proposed steps to slash the number of legal immigrants admitted into the United States by half on Tuesday, but the legislation, developed with the Trump administration, faces an uphill climb to get through Congress. Senators Tom Cotton and David Perdue said their bill would cut the number of immigrants granted U.S. residency each year to 500,000 from 1 million, through measures including cutting far back on which relatives can be brought into the country and eliminating a diversity visa lottery. The legislation does not address visas specifically tied to employment, such as the H-1B visas for skilled workers used by many technology companies. Cotton and Perdue said they had consulted Republican President Donald Trump, who vowed to crack down on both illegal and legal immigration during his campaign for the White House. Cotton said he had spoken to Trump about the bill by telephone as recently as Tuesday morning. The measure faces stiff opposition in Congress. Although Trump's fellow Republicans control majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, several back comprehensive immigration reform, not a tough crackdown. Republican Senator John McCain said he disagreed with the bill. A long-time advocate for immigration reform, McCain praised the contribution of immigrants to the United States. \"We need more Sergey Brins and people like that who were born outside of this country and came here, received an education and made enormous progress for all mankind,\" McCain told reporters, referring to the Google co-founder, who came to the United States as a refugee from Russia. Any measure also would need Democratic support to advance in the Senate, and Democrats, who cite studies showing that immigrants boost the U.S. economy, are strongly opposed. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen called it \"wrong and senseless\" to separate families and cut successful visa programs. Perdue and Cotton acknowledged the bill would not come up any time soon, saying they hoped for a Senate vote this year. Senator John Cornyn, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Congress first needed to address border security, but said the new measure \"will be a helpful constructive proposal.\" The bill would admit only immediate family members of immigrants, eliminating preferences for adult siblings or adult children. Cotton said it would exclude parents unless they were sick and the family promised not to rely on public benefits. The proposal came amid a larger immigration fight over Trump's travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees. Cotton said his goal was to stop competition that lowers wages for workers without high school or college degrees. \"Unless we reverse this trend, we are going to create a near-permanent underclass for whom the American dream is always just out of reach,\" he said. Asked if the White House would support the legislation and whether it was working with the senators, a spokesman said, \"We are reviewing it.\" U.S. companies often argue in favor of immigration. More than 100 filed a legal brief opposing Trump's travel ban.","label":0}
{"text":"In a state plagued by a foster care crisis , it s hard to believe officials in the state of Oregon would target two loving parents because their IQ wasn t considered high enough to raise their children.In November of 2016, Oregon Live published an article based on a report by the was released by the Department of Human Services showing the state s ongoing failure to adopt solutions identified year after year in previous reviews:Oregon needs to fill a deep shortage of foster homes and programs equipped to care for children with significant trauma and other intensive needs, the report found echoing warnings documented as recently as 2011. As a result, the state might be certifying foster homes that fall below its standards.Moreover, Oregon must still work up a strategy for recruiting foster care providers, despite acknowledging in a 2007 federal review that it lacked a process to ensure the diligent recruitment of foster homes, despite significant shortages of all types. Desperation for placements appears to be increasing the risk of (the human services department) certifying foster homes where abuse is more likely occur, the report said.And inconsistencies in how child welfare workers screen reports of abuse, a problem identified by consultants as far back as 2002, remain today. Children in the foster care system, as well as people who have reported abuse, called the state s system for tracking and investigating abuse untrustworthy. Given the crisis the state of Oregon has been facing with their foster home program, one has to wonder why they would target two loving parents who are raising their children in a safe and caring environment? Should these children be allowed to stay in their home with their biological parents or does the state have the right to determine that the parents just aren t intelligent enough ?The Daily Mail An Oregon couple has been fighting a legal battle after they lost custody of their two kids because both were designated not intelligent enough to care for them in a safe and proper manner.Amy Fabbrini, 31, was reportedly unaware about her state of pregnancy when she grew far into her third trimester with her now eldest son, Christopher.Fabbrini did not receive formal examination or treatment within the ninth month term and went into advanced labor at the family s home, where she gave birth Sept. 9, 2013.Fabbrini s partner, Eric Ziegler, 38, was receiving financial aid through the Social Security and Supplemental Security Income program on the behalf of a mental disability he was diagnosed with.Earlier this year, Social Services acquired and fostered the pair s second newborn baby, Hunter, while he was in the hospital, following past allegations brought against them.A relative to the couple initially expressed concern in a complaint to authorities regarding the Christopher s well-being under the care of Fabbrini and Ziegler, according to the Oregonian.A child welfare report alleged Ziegler had been sleeping with the baby on the floor and almost rolled over on him. Fabbrini s father, Raymond, said he and his wife were acting as the primary caregivers at the time, because he believed his daughter did not possess the instincts to be a mother. After taking a required IQ test, Ziegler scored a meager 66 and Fabbrini a 72. The IQ of the average person ranges anywhere from 90-110.Ziegler s IQ score categorized him under the mild intellectual disability range, while Fabbrini extremely low to borderline range of intelligence, according to the report.Fabbrini had been working as a grocer to help provide for her family at the time. Ziegler was unemployed due to his health condition.Board member of Healthy Families of the High Desert and advocator for the couple, Sherrene Hagenbach, said the decision to place Christopher and Hunter up for adoption lacks substantial ground work and may be even more detrimental to the family as a whole. They are saying they are intellectually incapable without any guidelines to go by, Hagenbach said. They re saying that this foster care provider is better for the child because she can provide more financially, provide better education, things like that. If we re going to get on that train, Bill Gates should take my children. There s always somebody better than us, so it s a very dangerous position to be in. Domestic abuse and neglect were not factors in the custody case.Fabbrini s aunt, Lenora Turner, told the Oregonian she believed the decision was unfair in the grand scheme. I honestly don t understand why they can t have their children. I go to the grocery store and I see other people with their children and they re standing up in the grocery cart. I think, how come they get to keep their children? How do they decide whose child they re going to take and whose child can stay? Turner said.Fabbrini and Ziegler insisted that they have complied to all of the state s orders over the course of the past several years. We ve just done everything and more than what they ve asked us to, Fabbrini said. It doesn t seem like it s good enough for them They re saying, Who would parent Christopher better, the foster parents or the parents? is basically what they re going on. Ziegler added.So long as Oregon s parental rights law stays in effect, both children will remain under watch by foster care.The parents will continue to have visitation rights under the supervision of another.","label":1}
{"text":"As anyone who remotely follows the news knows, media whore Hillary has been dying for a reason to appear in photos unrelated to a story about her criminal activities. True to form, Hillary capitalizes on the birth of Chelsea s campaign baby by standing alone and waving to the crowd how very grandmotherly .You won t see the other set of grandparents in any pictures however, as the royal Clinton family has banned their son-in-laws family from appearing in any pictures with them Chelsea Clinton has emerged from hospital for the first time with her newborn son Aidan.The former First Daughter beamed at cameras on the steps of New York s Lenox Hill Hospital on Monday, flanked by her husband Marc Mezvinsky and parents Bill and Hillary Clinton.Despite the soaring temperatures, Hillary wore a button-down coat, while Chelsea opted for a floral mini-dress.Aidan, Chelsea s second child with husband Marc Mezvinsky, was born on Saturday in the $1,700-a-night maternity ward.- DMWho is Chelsea Clinton s father-in-law and why are he and his wife banned from appearing in pictures with Crooked Queen Hillary and her sexual predator husband? Edward Maurice Ed Mezvinsky, Chelsea Clinton s father-in-law and her daughter s grandfather, is a convicted Felon. The former Democrat Congressman from Iowa s 1st Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives, served two terms, from 1973 to 1977.Ed Mezvinsky has known Hillary Clinton since the days when he served on the House Judiciary Committee that decided the fate of President Richard Nixon. This harsh critic of President Richard Nixon, had called Nixon a crook and a disgrace to politics and the nation , and called for Nixon s impeachment.But, did you ever wonder who that allusive Nigerian Prince is who might be sending you those emails looking for money? Look no farther than the Clinton Family Tree.Through a series of Nigerian email scams and Ponzi schemes, Ed Mezvinsky, Chelsea Clinton s father-in-law embezzled more than $10 million dollars. In 2001, Ed Mezvinsky was convicted of 31 (out of 69!) charges of fraud, and served five years in federal prison. His fraud charges included bank, mail, wire, as well as other offenses involving financing bogus oil development and other trade deals in Africa.But don t think Ed doesn t keep it in the family. In addition to his law clients and friends, he even bilked his own (now deceased) mother-in-law out of money. To date in 2015, the Fraudster still owes over $9.4 million in restitution to his victims.A lot of political pundits have made allusions to the fact that the Clintons and the Mezvinkys behaviors are so similar, that it is what bonded the two. Be that as it may, the Clintons go to great lengths to never, ever, be seen or photographed with any of Chelsea s in-laws. So afraid is the Clinton Dynasty of being tarnished by the Mezvinkys that neither Ed nor his second wife and Marc s mother, Marjorie Sue Margolies-Mezvinsky, were allowed in any of Chelsea s wedding pictures. Conservative America","label":1}
{"text":"Indonesian authorities have detained a fireworks factory owner and a manager on suspicion of negligence after explosions and fire ripped through a warehouse on the outskirts of Jakarta, killing 48 workers and injuring dozens, police said on Saturday. The blaze in the manufacturing hub of Tangerang was one of the worst industrial disasters to hit Southeast Asia s biggest economy, where safety standards are often weakly enforced. Police said the fire started when sparks from a welding operation lit a stack of raw materials used for making fireworks, causing at least two explosions that could be heard miles away. The men are suspected of negligence that led to deaths, said Jakarta police spokesman Argo Yuwono. The owner of the PT Panca Buana Cahaya Sukses factory and an operations manager were detained while police looked for the welder. The owner was also suspected of employing underage workers, police said. Neither of the two detained was available for comment. Tangerang regent Ahmed Zaki said on Friday that the company, which had been operating for two months, had a permit for packaging but not producing fireworks. Preliminary investigations and witness accounts showed that more than 30 victims were found at the back of the factory, where they had run to try to escape while others had to break holes in the walls to get out. Police denied reports that the front gate and only exit of the factory was locked at the time of the fire. All bodies, many of them charred beyond recognition, had been taken away from the gutted factory, and family members were providing DNA samples to try to identify them. Dozens of workers have been admitted to hospital with burns of up to 80 percent of their bodies. Hospital officials said some remained in critical condition and expected the death toll to rise.","label":0}
{"text":"It s finally happened. The baby parts lie fabricated by two felons at the deceptively-named Center for Medical Progress has been mindlessly parroted throughout right-wing media that they are now claiming the women s health organization violates federal law by performing later-term abortions in order to sell baby parts. On Monday, O Reilly Factor, the discussion turned to Hillary Clinton s statement on abortion at the Fox News Town Hall. Asked whether she supports late-term abortions, Clinton said that it should be an option if the life and health of the mother is at risk. While this would seem sensible to even most adamantly anti-abortion individuals, Fox contributor Katie Pavlich naturally idiotsplained that Clinton is as evil as the most infected cyst on Satan s behind. She was asked specifically about late-term abortion and there was an incredible poll that came out in January showing 80 percent of Americans, including 80 percent of women, think late-term abortion should be banned, Pavlich said, ignoring that Clinton had explained that the exception only pertained to saving the mother s life.Juan Williams pointed out that Planned Parenthood is very popular in the United States, but Pavlich had a dirty little secret to drop for her incredibly stupid crowd:Does she have any evidence to back her claim? Of course not numerous investigations failed to prove that Planned Parenthood had sold a single baby part. The organization did accept reimbursement for expenses, but it is a crime to actually profit from fetal tissue sale. After the Right foamed at the mouth over the fake controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood, the organization stopped accepting reimbursement altogether to appease the Stupid Part of America.While it is obvious that the gerbils that operate Pavlich s brain are having difficulties overcoming such a baffling level of stupidity, you might be wondering: is this a work slowdown, or did they just say f*ck it and go on strike? Does Planned Parenthood even perform late-term abortions?They don t. During the baby parts witch hunt, Richards was clear that the organization does not perform late-term abortions. Politico reported at the time:When late-term abortions came up, Richards maintained that Planned Parenthood doesn t perform abortions past viability. But as the National Right to Life Committee points out, Planned Parenthood clinics advertise and perform abortions well into the second trimester, even up to 24 weeks, while research says about a quarter of infants born at 22 weeks survive.Richards professed to have never heard of a baby surviving an abortion, even though survivors have testified before Congress. She said a baby born alive after an attempted abortion should get medical care a significant concession given people on her side of the abortion debate, including Barack Obama in Illinois, have previously opposed legislation to protect born-alive infants.That s right. Thanks to the continuous strain and lackluster benefits involved with operating Pavlich s thinkie-thingie and after numerous on-the-job deaths, the little critters in her head are refusing to work. Rumor has it that they are demanding more break time, paid lunch, a raise, and better healthcare, and that Pavlich refuses the only explanation for the words that just came out of her mouth.Visibly perplexed that a human being can be this utterly ignorant, Williams shot back: This is exactly where I think Republicans go off the rails. The people who tried to argue that Planned Parenthood was selling baby parts, they got indicted. In Texas. In a red state. For violating people s rights and for making up stuff. Watch this monumental reminder that it s important to VOTE BLUE in November below:","label":1}
{"text":"'Hungover' now recognised as a school of philosophy 12-11-16  THE wisdom and insight that comes with a hangover is to be taught as part of philosophy courses.  'Hangoverism' will be approached as an over-arching discipline, taking in elements from existentialism's view that life is meaningless, all the way back to Socrates' allegory of not being able to face leaving a cave and going outside.  Philosophy professor Nikki Hollis said: \"Many students will be able to relate to the teachings of Jeffrey Barnard and his theory that reality is just a construct that needs ignoring on a Saturday morning.  \"Now leave me the fuck alone. I went mental on Chardonnay last night. My head feels like it's in a tumble dryer.\"  Meanwhile, academic journals have begun printing hangoverism essays, including The Morality of Bacon Sandwiches and Vomiting and Nothingness .  Share:","label":1}
{"text":"Tightrope Walk Over a Windy Canyon By Lee Adler. The Commerce Department reported today that sales of newly built homes posted a seasonally adjusted month to month increase of 3.1% to an annualized rate of 593,000. The department revised the August headline number down by 5.6% from 609,000 to 575,000. Without that revision the headline number this month would have been down by 2.7%. Surprise, surprise. Revise, revise.","label":1}
{"text":"Several hundred people, most of them expatriate Americans, held a protest on Friday in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, hours before his inauguration in Washington. Some people held up electric candles and others carried placards reading \"Love Trumps Hate\" and \"Women's Rights Are Human Rights\", as they marched along a downtown street. \"Trump presidency gets my blood boiling ... Everything we value could be gone. It's time to speak your mind and concerns and to do our best to salvage the values we cherish in America,\" said Bill Scholer, an art teacher. \"I grew up in the 1960s, and it feels like we are going backwards, and am very worried that we will lose all of the advances we have made over these years,\" said Holly Thompson, a writer. Women's rights activists plan protests in various Asian cities on Saturday. In the Philippines earlier on Friday, about 200 demonstrators from a Philippine nationalist group rallied for about an hour against Trump outside the U.S. embassy in Manila. Some held up signs demanding U.S. troops leave the Philippines while others set fire to a paper U.S. flag bearing a picture of Trump's face. Trump's presidency is being viewed with caution in some parts of Asia. He alarmed China by breaking with decades of precedent last month by taking a congratulatory telephone call from Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and objects to countries interacting with it as a violation of Beijing's \"one-China\" principle. Trump has even raised questions about the U.S. position on the principle. Trump has also criticized China's trade practices and threatened to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese imports. He has also said he would kill an ambitious Asia-Pacific trade pact, raising questions about the prospects for globalization and free trade.","label":0}
{"text":". 22 Signs That You Are Embodying Your Higher Self The Higher Self is the blissful superconscious, higher mind part of ourselves that is the expression... Print Email http:\/\/humansarefree.com\/2016\/11\/22-signs-that-you-are-embodying-your.html The Higher Self is the blissful superconscious, higher mind part of ourselves that is the expression of Divine Love, spiritual wisdom, and creative power. During spiritual awakening , our personal consciousness grows to become aware of the greater parts of ourselves. We may feel energies, intuition and even psychic knowledge. We raise our energy vibration and spiritually purify ourselves to embody more of our Higher Self \u2013 the eternal Soul aspect of our being. Full spiritual realization and enlightenment occurs when we attain the conscious experience of blissful union with the Source of Life and all of creation. Everything is One and we are home! 1. Higher Sensory Perception Your intuition is developing at a rapid rate. Other higher senses like clairvoyance and clairaudience can also be turned on. These higher senses allow you to access information and wisdom that otherwise would be unavailable through the use of your rational mind. Harmonious lucid dreaming and out of body experiences are also ways to access higher dimensional information. 2. Knowing Your Soul Purpose With your higher senses turned on, it has become crystal clear what your Soul's Purpose is. Not only you know what your mission here on earth is but you are fulfilling this mission by taking action and walking your path. Your are fulfilling your basic human needs of self-growth and contribution by being on the path of eternal self actualization and being at the service of others. 3. Meeting Your Soul Family Your frequency has attracted you to people with whom you resonate at a soul level. When you met these individuals you felt a strong and undeniable connection with them, like if you had met them before (from a past life). Even if they live on the other side of the world, the spiritual ties between you are so strong that years can go by and when you meet again is like no time has passed. 4. Meeting Your Twin Flame or Soul Mate You are in a relationship with a person that highlights and enhances your best qualities. As well, this person will mirror back to you everything you need to work on yourself. This relationship thrives on self-growth, contribution, higher giving love and fulfillment. A necessary step for the manifestation of this relationship is cutting cords of attachments and karmic ties with previous relationships. 5. Synchronicities and Accelerated Manifestations Your connection with the universe and life is evident. Your questions are answered through synchronicities and hidden messages are easily revealed to you by the power of your higher senses . You find messages and answers in books, nature and even random conversations. As well, you become aware of how strong and powerful your intent has become. Whatever you focus on manifests at a much faster than ever before. 6. Taking Responsibility For Your Happiness As you embody your Higher Self you realize how powerful you are and how you co-create reality through your thoughts and emotions . You take full responsibility for your own happiness and you stop blaming other people, the government or any other outside sources. Victimization is a thing of the past and you take full charge of your healing and evolutionary process. 7. Embracing All Emotions You have finally transcended the spiritual bypass that some emotions are 'bad' or 'negative'. Instead you embrace all e-motions and instead of repressing them you allow them to flow through you. You can use anger for passion or motivation. You can easily empathize with others while maintaining the integrity of your field. 8. Holographic Nature of Reality Like Rumi said 'You are not a drop of water in an ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop of water.' The holographic nature of reality is encoded within you and you can sense the interconnectedness of everything. It is obvious to you that we live in a multidimensional matrix and that you have a multidimensional anatomy. You also feel very attracted to sacred geometry. 9. Alchemical and Healing Powers Whether it's hands on healing, soul retrieval or any other type of healing modality you have learned how to direct your intent and manipulate energy to remove energetic blockages. You can easily connect to your Higher Self and disengage discordant energies that hinder your spiritual evolution. Often you will assist others in their healing and ascension process with your siddhis. 10. Activating Your DNA DNA activation is the process of accreting more light into your morphogenetic field by activating the dormant strands of DNA that correspond to your Higher Self. You have at least a 12 strand DNA template that allows 12 dimensions of consciousness. DNA activation is the key to spiritual ascension and the embodiment of your Higher Self. It's quite common for a person who goes through DNA activation to progressively experience all the other signs mentioned in this page. 11. Unconditional Self-Love Your 4th strand of DNA corresponds to your heart chakra. One of the main benefits of DNA activation is being able to access and embody a state of unconditional self-love. No longer do you feel the need to extract love from other people, instead you see yourself as an infinite source of love. A sense of wholeness begins to unfold as you love ALL aspects of yourself, including your shadow self. 12. Integrating and Transcending Your Shadow Self Your shadow self is the part of you that is running in reverse. It is mainly made up of archetypes, personas and complexes. Some examples are the Professional Victim Persona, the Rescuer Archetype, the Sorcerer, The Tyrant and the Absolute Perfectionist. The shadow self is what causes self-sabotage and causes you to create chaos in your life. The shadow self is created by making decisions that are not aligned with your Higher Self and manifest as reverse codes in your DNA. 13. Frequency Resonance As you continue to raise your frequency you notice how some people begin to fall out of your holographic reality . You understand that your frequencies no longer match. The same can happen with your job or even your country of origin. In turn your higher frequency attracts you to a new grid of people, places, times, things and events that are in line with your Higher Self. 14. Honest Yes and Honest No You are not afraid of saying 'no' to other people when you inner guidance tells you not to do something or go somewhere. You are not afraid of other people's reactions and you are true to yourself. Every time you are congruent with what you want and what you don't want you feel more powerful. As well you embrace the art of an honest 'yes' when the universe delivers what you desire. You don't try to appear 'humble' or 'spiritual' by rejecting what you truly desire in your life. 15. Harmonious Family Relationships 'If you think you are enlightened, go spend a weekend with your family.' Ram Dass You have realized that enlightenment doesn't happen in a cave. You have cleared the cords of attachments and karmic ties with your family. Gone are the days where you kept experiencing the same old family drama. Your family members have shifted their approach to connect with you to higher ways and you accept\/love them just how they are. 16. No Guilt, No Shame Shame and guilt are the two lowest frequency energetic blockages in humanity. In order to embody your Higher Self you have let go of the identification with shame and guilt. You have cleared the guilt and shame you inherited from your parents through the DNA and you have released the shame and guilt that has been implanted by society and religions. Instead you choose to embrace the states of joy and bliss. You have become immune to guilt manipulating strategies often used by victims. 17. Making Decision In Line With Your Higher Self Instead of making decisions based on fear, righteousness, competition or lack you are making decisions in line with your Higher Self and ultimately with Source-will. You are aware of Source's intentions: the Law of One, Unconditional Love, Cooperation, Evolution, Perpetual Motion, Cause and Effect, Non-Judgment and Free-will. Even though we all have free-will and can ultimately go against Source-will (you're unconditionally loved), you're aware that making such decisions will trigger the Law of Cause and Effect and create a karmic imprint to re-mind you must heal that karmic miasm at some point. 18. Inner and Outer Abundance Lack and limitation are a thing of the past. You have embodied a state of absolute inner abundance that is being reflected onto your holographic reality. You no longer seek to extract love, approval and appreciation from other people, you are the source. Happiness is within you. As well you have transcended the spiritual bypass that money is 'evil' and you know that money is just energy, made up of consciousness just like everything else. You enjoy financial abundance and use this abundance to create a more harmonious reality for yourself and others. 19. Mind Unplugged From the Matrix One sign that your mind has been unplugged from the matrix is that you can clearly see the hidden agenda of those who desire to control this planet. You no longer resonate with the news and their 'official story'. You inner truth detector can sense when someone is lying and you have become immune to the low frequency strategies and implants that constantly try to tell you 'you are not enough'. Mindless consumerism and the herd mentality seem absurd to you. 20. Bye-Bye Idolatry As you awaken to your co-creative powers and God-like nature, you no longer put other people on a pedestal. Your inner guru precedes any external guru and you see teachers as a reflection of your own unlimited potential. The forces of your worthiness and deservedness drive you to achieve whatever you set your mind upon. You have become the master of your own reality . 21. Overflowing with Gratitude Gratitude is your attitude. Gratitude is your prayer . The sense of lack has become foreign to you, instead you cannot stop counting your blessings. The feeling of gratitude multiplies whatever you have and brings you even more positive experiences. You are even grateful for the challenges and setbacks that are inevitable in life, you can't help to see them as opportunities for growth. And you probably have a gratitude journal. 22. Don't Take Yourself Too Seriously Life is meant to be fun, you know that. Being extremely rigid and disciplined suck the fun out of everything. Even though you are adamant when it comes to working on yourself and achieving self mastery, you always allow yourself to make mistakes. In fact making mistakes is part of the learning process. You have a great sense of humor and you don't take yourself too seriously. Your inner child is thriving and you often feel energized, inspired and overflowing with creativity. Gustavo Castaner is the founder of AscendedRelationships.com and In-Light-Ment.com . Gustavo specializes in helping people change their frequency so they can embody their Higher Self and manifest higher vibrational relationships. Dear Friends, HumansAreFree is and will always be free to access and use. If you appreciate my work, please help me continue.  Stay updated via Email Newsletter: Related","label":1}
{"text":"Seven U.S. senators urged Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday to press Bahrain's government to do more to promote political and social reform, adding to recent concern in Washington over that country's human rights record. The letter said the United States should be prepared to consider \"tangible consequences,\" including reconsidering arms sales, if a recent crackdown on opposition continues. \"Bahrain's failure to address the legitimate grievances of its citizens has strained the country's social fabric and invited outside actors to take advantage of the deteriorating situation,\" six Democratic lawmakers and one Republican said in a letter to Kerry, a former Democratic senator. \"Indeed, we believe the government's harsh crackdown on the political opposition undermines the country's stability and plays into the hands of Iran,\" they wrote, calling themselves \"deeply alarmed.\" State Department spokesman John Kirby said he was aware of reports about the letter, but had not seen it. Asked about whether U.S. arms provided to Bahrain could be used against the opposition, he said, \"We always have concerns about the end use of items that are inside the foreign military sales program.\" Bahrain, which hosts the United States' Fifth Fleet and is seen by Sunni-ruled Gulf kingdoms as a strategic bulwark against Iranian influence, drew U.S. and United Nations criticism this month when it moved to strip a top Shi'ite cleric's citizenship and closed the main Shi'ite opposition group. A State Department report, first reported by Reuters, found Bahrain's national reconciliation efforts after it crushed street protests in 2011 have stalled, and said the Western ally in the Gulf has not implemented recommendations to protect freedom of expression. \"We continue to urge the government of Bahrain to reverse their recent harmful actions,\" Kirby said a news briefing on Thursday. Earlier this week, the State Department said Bahrain's plan to try an activist for tweets condemning its prison system and involvement in the war in Yemen is worrisome to the United States. The letter was led by Democratic Senator Chris Murphy and also signed by Republican Marco Rubio and Democrats Patrick Leahy, Ron Wyden, Bob Casey, Chris Coons and Tim Kaine. It asked for more information on specific actions President Barack Obama's administration is taking to press Bahrain's leadership on the issue.","label":0}
{"text":"Hurricane Harvey s destruction in Texas may not have altered Florida s well-tested storm plans, but it appears to have infused residents with a new sense of urgency as they prepare for approaching Hurricane Irma. Officials said Harvey s devastating flooding, coupled with the sheer power of Irma, ranked as the strongest Atlantic storm on record, had sharpened the focus of Floridians who were somewhat indifferent about preparing for past hurricanes. A lot of times they end up having hurricane parties here instead of evacuating, Monroe County spokeswoman Cammy Clark said by phone. That s been the opposite this time around. Monroe County includes the Florida Keys, which ordered evacuations for all residents and tourists. Clark said she saw a steady stream of traffic leaving the travel destination as she drove to work early on Wednesday. The U.S. National Hurricane Center forecasts that Irma may strike southern Florida on Saturday, when it could still be a major hurricane. As it neared Puerto Rico on Wednesday with maximum sustained winds of 185 miles per hour (295 kph), Irma was a Category 5 storm, the highest level on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity. This storm is bigger, faster and stronger than Hurricane Andrew, Florida Governor Rick Scott told a news conference on Wednesday, referring to one of the costliest storms in U.S. history that struck southern Miami-Dade County 25 years ago. For south Florida, Hurricane Irma is a once-in-a-generation storm. It s the Big One for us, Ed Rappaport, acting director of the hurricane center, told WFOR-TV in Miami on Wednesday evening. Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Wednesday evening announced mandatory evacuations for most of the county s coastal cities beginning at 9 a.m. (1300 GMT) on Thursday. Miami-Dade has a population of 2.7 million. The evacuation orders affect more than 100,000 residents, the Miami Herald reported. Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine had already urged residents of that city on Tuesday to evacuate. We don t want any heroes, he said. We want people to bring themselves to a safer place than a barrier island. Officials across Florida said they saw signs of people taking Irma more seriously than past storms. Residents were stocking up on water and batteries and even complaining that county leaders were not being quick enough to announce evacuations, said Don Walker, spokesman for Brevard County Emergency Management. Houston officials were criticized for not ordering an evacuation ahead of the flooding that left hundreds of people in the country s fourth-largest city trapped in their homes. Everyone is really in tune with this storm system. My neighbors are talking about it, and we don t usually do that, Walker said. For years, many Florida residents, joined by an ever-growing number of newcomers, paid little heed to hurricane warnings as most opted to stay in their homes, county officials said. Not this time around. I ll tell you for the community, heck yeah, they re taking this more seriously, said Teri Barbera, spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff s Office, noting that many stores were out of bottled water by Monday. They re not playing.","label":0}
{"text":"Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital had made Washington complicit in violence. His comments on the U.S. move have strained fragile relations between Turkey and Israel, which only restored ties last year following a six-year diplomatic rift. Erdogan, a frequent critic of Israel, has said the decision by U.S. President Donald Trump will spark violence in the region. The ones who made Jerusalem a dungeon for Muslims and members of other religions will never be able to clean the blood from their hands, Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara. With their decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital, the United States has become a partner in this bloodshed, he said, adding he did not consider Trump s decision binding. Trump s decision last week overturned longstanding U.S. policy on Jerusalem, a city holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. The status of Jerusalem has been one of the biggest obstacles to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians for generations. Over the weekend Erdogan referred to Israel as a terror state and an invader state , prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire back. I m not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villages in his native Turkey, who jails journalists, helps Iran go around international sanctions and who helps terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people, Netanyahu said at a news conference. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group has fought a decades-old insurgency with the Turkish state in which more than 40,000 people have been killed. The conflict flared up after the collapse of a ceasefire in 2015. Last year Israel and Turkey restored ties following a six-year rupture that occurred after Israeli marines stormed an aid ship in 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, killing 10 Turkish activists on board. The normalization of ties between both countries has been driven in part by the prospect of lucrative Mediterranean gas deals as well as by mutual concerns about regional security.","label":0}
{"text":"The Disappearing Middle: Electorate Way Less Moderate Than Past Primaries One of the biggest stories of the election cycle is turnout (as we've reported a few times now): Republican turnout has spiked far beyond 2012 levels, and Democratic turnout has fallen off after the party's mammoth 2008. The tone and the turnout are vastly different between Republicans and Democrats this year, but oddly enough, both sides have something crucial in common: their voters are far less moderate than they were in their last primaries. Let's start with the Republican numbers. The below chart shows the ideological difference between the Republican electorate this year and in 2012. Each dot represents one state \u2014 so, for example, 33 percent of Vermont Republican primary voters in 2016 said they considered themselves moderate or liberal, compared to 53 percent in 2012. That puts Vermont at negative-20 for \"somewhat conservative\" \u2014 the most extreme result we found among the 15 GOP states for which there was sufficient exit-poll data. It's true exit polls can have a margin of error, but there's no mistaking a pattern here. In no state did the share of \"moderate\" and \"liberal\" GOP primary voters grow from 2012 to 2016. (The exit polls lumped moderate and liberal together in 2012, so they're not separated out here.) Altogether, an NPR analysis finds that the share of \"somewhat conservative\" voters on the GOP side climbed by nearly 10 percentage points in 2016 over 2012's primaries. (That is, among the states with exit polling data for both years). The share who were moderate or liberal, meanwhile, fell by around 9 percentage points, and the share who were \"very conservative\" held relatively steady. Something similar is at work on the Democratic side, as well: The share of moderate and conservative Democratic voters was down \u2014 sometimes dramatically so \u2014 in most states that have voted thus far. Meanwhile, the share of people who are somewhat or very liberal is way up. This year, around 60 percent of Democratic primary voters said they considered themselves \"somewhat\" or \"very liberal,\" up from around 45 percent in 2008 (once again, among states with sufficient exit polling data for both years). So interestingly, though voters on both sides are less moderate than in the last contests, Democrats this year have more decidedly moved toward the \"very liberal\" end of the spectrum. Republican voters, meanwhile, are way more \"somewhat conservative\" than in 2012, but don't appear to be more \"very conservative.\" One thing to keep in mind: Republican turnout across the board is higher this year. That means there are still a few more moderate and liberal Republican primary and caucus voters this cycle than there were in the 2012 primaries \u2014 it's just that the number of somewhat conservative Republicans shot up way more. Likewise, Democratic turnout is down almost entirely across the board. Interestingly, even with the sharp drop off in turnout, multiplying the exit poll data by the turnout numbers suggests that the raw number of \"very liberal\" Democratic voters is, in fact, up slightly from 2008. However, the number of moderate and conservative voters dropped off steeply. And even though the share of \"somewhat liberal\" voters is up, the raw number is also down. But anyway: all of this could mean that a bunch of moderate and conservative Democrats who voted in 2008 stayed home this year, while a lot of those somewhat and very liberal Democrats from 2008 came out again. Likewise, it could mean that the Republican wave of turnout is driven largely by a bunch of \"somewhat conservative\" voters who weren't there in 2012. And looking at the results so far, there are simple explanations to why this might be happening. The very-liberal Bernie Sanders is probably driving some of the turnout among very-liberal voters. It's likewise possible that the somewhat-conservative Trump is behind the bump in somewhat conservative voters in Republican primaries (while Ted Cruz does better among very conservative voters, and John Kasich gets more votes among moderates). But then, it might not just be candidate-driven: it's possible that lots of people have simply become more conservative or liberal than they were four or eight years ago. This is also to some degree plausible, as there is evidence that Americans are getting more polarized. In other words, there's a chicken-egg question here, with no clear answer \u2014 chances are, they're both right. To the degree that voters are more polarized, they're gravitating toward more extreme candidates. And Sanders and Trump also both happen to be very good at energizing people to turn out and vote for them.","label":0}
{"text":"In a thinly veiled reference to U.S. President Donald Trump, the top U.N. human rights official on Thursday condemned \"populists\" who spread \"hatred through tweets\". Britain criticised Trump on Wednesday after he retweeted anti-Islam videos originally posted by a leader of a far-right British fringe party who was convicted this month of abusing a Muslim woman. \"There are the populists \u2014 political hooligans who through their incitement \u2014 which is the equivalent of hurling racist insults, throwing bottles onto the field, attacking the referee and, as we saw yesterday, spreading hatred through tweets \u2014 seek to scramble our order, our laws,\" U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said in a speech in Geneva. A U.N. official, who declined to be identified, said that Zeid's remarks were \"clearly a reference to Trump tweets but also others using social media in this way\". (Refiles to add dropped full name of official)","label":0}
{"text":"Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that Marco Rubio knows what he's doing. A week ago, the youthful senator from Florida was in great shape. His surprisingly strong finish in the Iowa caucuses left him with a clear chance to consolidate mainstream Republican support \u2014 and a path to the GOP presidential nomination. But in just a few minutes Saturday night, Rubio undid everything he had worked for during the past year \u2014 really, the past five years. His singularly disastrous debate performance, in which he repeated irrelevant, canned phrases, caused would-be supporters to flee for Ohio Gov. John Kasich and other more stable candidates. And Tuesday night, Rubio proved true the axiom popularized by Alan Simpson, the wisecracking former senator from Wyoming: \"One day you're the toast of the town, the next you're toast.\" The culprit here, as in most things that have gone wrong this campaign season, is Donald Trump, who after his convincing win in New Hampshire is once again the front-runner for the nomination. Typically, Iowa and New Hampshire serve as proving grounds for the candidates. Voters there scrutinize the contenders, who rise and fall in the polls as various candidates gain and lose the status of front-runner. But Trump's celebrity short-circuited the process. With Trump dominating the coverage and the polls, Iowa and New Hampshire failed to fulfill their traditional vetting roles. Rubio was one who never got the scrutiny. And when he emerged, blinking, into the spotlight after Iowa, voters found an empty suit. Watching him campaign last week, I wrote: \"Rubio's strong Iowa finish has brought new attention \u2014 and overcapacity crowds \u2014 in New Hampshire. But the would-be supporters are greeted by a robot.\" [What Marco Rubio would have said if he had won New Hampshire] This wasn't necessarily a surprise to those who watched Rubio closely (or even to those who recall his water-gulping response to the State of the Union three years ago). Buzzfeed's McKay Coppins, who wrote about Rubio in a 2015 book, observed that he had an \"incurable anxiousness \u2014 and an occasional propensity to panic in moments of crisis, both real and imagined.\" He had seemed to be a good debater \u2014 but with 10 or more candidates crowding the stage in early debates, he didn't have to go far beyond canned lines. On Saturday, exposed to withering attacks from rival Chris Christie, a former prosecutor, Rubio suffered what was perhaps the most memorable lapse at the presidential level since Edmund Muskie appeared to weep in the New Hampshire snow in 1972. \"Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing,\" Rubio proclaimed early in the debate, as ungrammatical and off-point. \"He knows exactly what he's doing.\" A moment later, Rubio said again: \"But I would add this. Let's dispel with this fiction that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing.\" And again: \"Here's the bottom line. This notion that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing is just not true. He knows exactly what he's doing.\" Even when called out by Christie for the mindless repetition, Rubio said again: \"We are not facing a president that doesn't know what he's doing. He knows what he is doing. That's why he's done the things he's done.\" The reviews were savage, and then, on Monday night, RubioBot malfunctioned again. \"Janette and I are raising our four children in the 21st century, and we know how hard it's become to instill our values in our kids instead of the values they try to ram down our throats,\" he told supporters, then added: \"In the 21st century, it's becoming harder than ever to instill in your children the values they teach in our homes and in our church instead of the values that they try to ram down our throats.\" Exit polls left little doubt that Rubio's glitches ruined his prospects in New Hampshire. Two-thirds said the debates were important, and of the nearly half of GOP voters who made choices in the last few days, Kasich did far better than Rubio. This left Rubio, with 70 percent of precincts reporting Tuesday night, languishing at 10 percent of the vote. He trailed not only Trump (34 percent) but also Kasich (16 percent), Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, who was once left for dead. \"I'm disappointed with tonight,\" Rubio said Tuesday, acknowledging that \"I did not do well on Saturday night.\" The results also left Republicans, once again, without a consensus alternative to Trump \u2014 and with dwindling hope of finding one. Had Rubio received scrutiny earlier, voters might have been able to find a candidate who didn't wilt in the spotlight. But Iowa and New Hampshire didn't serve their functions this time. Trump got in the way. Read more from Dana Milbank's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"Law enforcement in North Dakota is running out of money protecting the Dakota Access oil pipeline.  A legislative committee will be reviewing an emergency request to borrow more money from the Bank of North Dakota to cover the cost of law enforcement's involvement in the Dakota Access pipeline protests.  The department has used an increasing amount of money since the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, which was supposed to be saved for natural disasters, but is now used to protect the pipeline that is planned to go through 1851 treaty land.  To fight for companies behind the DAPL, officers from at least 6 states have been deployed. North Dakota is responsible for reimbursing out-of-state police agencies for costs that have to do with wages, overtime, officer benefits, meals while on duty, a per diem while off duty, lodging and mileage for the communities that sent vehicles.  Governor Jack Dalrymple will vote on Tuesday, November 8th on whether to borrow $4 million from the state-owned bank.  The panel has already borrowed and spent $6 million from the bank in September.  North Dakota officials have also requested federal officials to reimburse the state for the additional law enforcement costs.  All of this money going towards the police brings a lot into question. How much taxpayer money will be used to protect the investment of a company over investments on human health? How much money is given to law enforcement, military, and corporations in order to silence the people fighting for justice?","label":1}
{"text":"The country's murder rate jumped more last year than it had in nearly half a century, newly released federal crime data showed, although the number of homicides remained far below the levels of the 1980s and '90s. The data, part of an annual report released on Monday by the F. B. I. showed that the murder rate rose 10. 8 percent across the United States in 2015, part of a nearly 4 percent increase in violent crime. Fueling the surge in murders was street violence in a handful of major cities, notably Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Washington, D. C. and Milwaukee, where most of the victims were young males. The F. B. I. reported that guns were used in nearly of the nation's 15, 696 murders during 2015. Police officials and criminologists say there is no single explanation for the increase nationally, but point to disputes that more often end in gun violence and turf battles over a growing, and highly profitable, heroin trade. \"It's too early to call this an end to the crime drop, but we are facing a rise in murders that is quite substantial \u2014 the largest in about half a century,\" said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of . Louis, and an authority on crime trends. \"Alarm is not the appropriate response,\" he said, \"but the priority should be in improving relations, particularly in disadvantaged communities. \" The data was released on a day when a gunman in Houston wounded nine people before being fatally shot by the police, and in the midst of a heated presidential campaign in which the Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, has made law and order a central tenet. Saying that \"crime is out of control, and rapidly getting worse,\" Mr. Trump has pledged to make the country safe again. He suggested last week that policing, a tactic that has been ruled unconstitutional and subsequently discontinued in New York City, might be a model for other cities. The Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, has called for an overhaul of the justice system and a rebuilding of trust between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve. She has also called for stricter gun control. The murder rate last year was far below the levels of 30 to 40 years ago, when violent crime, fueled partly by gang violence during the crack cocaine epidemic, reached a peak. The overall 3. 9 percent increase in violent crime in 2015 was lower than levels from five and 10 years ago, the F. B. I. said. \"It is important to remember that while crime did increase over all last year, 2015 still represented the year for violent crime in the past two decades,\" Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said Monday. The pace of murders in Baltimore, Milwaukee, St. Louis and Washington has since fallen in 2016, according to police data from those cities. (Homicides classified as murder or manslaughter are included in the F. B. I. data for murder.) Still, the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said that President Obama, who has pushed for stricter gun control, \"believes there's more that we can and should do. \" \"And there's no area where the president has been more outspoken than taking action on gun safety measures that would make it harder for criminals and others who shouldn't have them to buy a gun,\" Mr. Earnest said. James B. Comey, the F. B. I. director, has suggested that the increase in violence in some urban centers may be the result of police officers' being less aggressive in confronting potential crime as departments have been subjected to intense scrutiny over questionable shootings that have been captured on video and watched by millions on the internet. Mr. Comey's remarks have been disputed by police chiefs and criminologists, who say there is no reliable data that supports his premise. The F. B. I. report said that about 1. 2 million violent crimes occurred in 2015, up from 1. 15 million in 2014. In 1996, when cities experienced a wave of violent crime, there were about 1. 7 million violent crimes, according to the data. The number of murders in 2015 was about the same as the 15, 399 committed in 2009. Still, the 10. 8 percent increase in the murder rate in 2015 is the most since a rise of more than 11 percent from 1967 to 1968, Dr. Rosenfeld said. By contrast, property crimes fell 2. 6 percent in 2015, according to the F. B. I. data. Chicago, one of the cities responsible for a significant part of the nation's homicide increase, had 411 murders in 2014 and 478 in 2015, according to the F. B. I. data. As of late September, more than 500 people had been killed in Chicago so far this year, passing the city's total for all of 2015, and more than 3, 000 people have been shot. Officials in Chicago have struggled to explain the uptick in killings. The law enforcement authorities point to a rising number of increasingly splintered gangs on the city's South and West Sides, as well as an abundance of guns and what they view as weak penalties for gun violations. Community leaders identify more profound roots for the violence, including disinvestment in neighborhoods, poverty and unemployment. Last week, Chicago officials announced efforts to try to slow the violence, including the addition of nearly 1, 000 officers who are expected to join the Chicago Police Department, which is already the nation's municipal police force. Relations between the Chicago police and residents have grown especially tense since late 2015 when city officials made public a video showing a police officer shooting Laquan McDonald, an teenager, 16 times. The Department of Justice is investigating the Chicago police. Los Angeles had 282 murders in 2015, compared with 262 in 2014, while New York had 352 murders last year, and about 333 in 2014, the report said. Other cities that had large increases in murders in 2015 \u2014 including Baltimore, where they rose to 344 from 211 in 2014, and Milwaukee, where they increased to 145 from 90 \u2014 have seen murders drop this year. \"There are four or five cities that are big enough to drive a significant portion of the increase,\" said Ronal Serpas, a former police chief in Nashville and New Orleans, who is now a criminal justice professor at Loyola University New Orleans. But homicides have increased during the first nine months of this year in several other cities, including Charlotte, N. C. where Keith Lamont Scott, a black man, was fatally shot by the police last week. Those numbers are expected to lead to an even higher increase in the murder rate for 2016, according to a report published this month by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.","label":0}
{"text":"It looks like National Security Pick Monica Crowley isn t the only plagiarist on Team Trump, aside from Melania, that is. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson Trump s pick for HUD Secretary started off the confirmation hearing today with a bang, refusing to say that the president-elect and his family wouldn t profit from the agency he hopes to head. To top that off, part of Carson s prepared opening statement appears to contain word-for-word plagiarism, according to The Washington Post.However, the Senate Banking Committee did not hear the plagiarized sections because Carson used his typical off-the-cuff style during his testimony leaving behind his prepared remarks.Carson s prepared remarks were taken verbatim:The two paragraphs in question focused on the health problems caused by lead exposure in young children. According to the Post, they were taken verbatim from Where We Live Matters For Our Health, a 2008 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.A Trump transition spokeswoman told The Washington Post that the plagiarized text was included accidentally, and that Carson never intended to read it at his hearing. We re not sure exactly what accidental plagiarism is.Prepared statements from nomination hearings are typically entered into the congressional record. It was a written statement for the record his oral testimony, as I am sure you ve heard, is extemporaneous and planned that way, the spokeswoman told the Post. The original written statement was sourced with hyperlinks and footnotes, but unfortunately that seems to have fallen off.According to the Post, however, there was no sourcing included in the copies of prepared text which was passed out to reporters at the hearing.In mid-November, Carson declined a Trump cabinet position, citing his lack of experience. Even though he lacks political experience, the sleepy-eyed doctor ran for the GOP nomination for the presidency. Carson now wants to lead a massive agency with 8,300 employees and a budget of about $48 billion. Carson said he s a good pick for the position because he grew up in inner-city Detroit with a single mother who had a third-grade education and worked several jobs to keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table.At the hearing, Sen. Elizabeth Warren asked Carson, Can you assure me that not a single taxpayer dollar you give out will financial benefit the president-elect or his family? Carson failed to assure Warren that the president-elect would not financially benefit from HUD and that s because Donald J. Trump is the swamp.Photo by Scott Olson\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"On Saturday, Illinois newspaper, the Belleville News-Democrat. published the unhinged ravings of one of the perpetual haters of sanity regarding President Obama s yet-unfulfilled mass gun-grab. Sure, he s gone seven years without taking guns away from Americans even the Stupid Part of America but Steve Kassa Jr. of Edwardsville is certain that any day could be the day, and he wrote to share his mindbogglingly-stupid thoughts with everyone. Obama was up to his lying and deceiving propaganda again trying to drum up support like Hitler installing to take your guns away, Kassa writes. He s had his prostitute in the media, Katie Couric, doing gun propaganda all week on satellite. In fact, he says that the President even used the Sandy Hook conspiracy (that s right he thinks Sandy Hook was fake) to emphasize his point that it s probably not a good idea to allow unhinged people to buy and own guns without some form of safeguard in place. After this last big breaking of the law and getting in America s face with this transgender thing, if you can t see America where this guy is wanting you disarmed, you better watch some of the rise and fall of the third Reich on AHC or the American History Channel, he continues, segueing into the inevitable ill-informed Hitler comparison: These people have a very evil, demonic agenda and soon as they get the guns, if they can, you will see worse than what happened in Germany in World War II here in the United States. In reality, had Mr. Kassa opened a book at some point in his lifetime (not even a history book, just any book that mentions Hitler s rise to power), he would know that while Hitler seized guns from his enemies, he was actually quite in favor of an armed populace. Politifact notes that, like his party s modern-day American counterparts, Hitler was in favor of open carry, deregulation of firearm regulations, and allowing children to own guns:The Nazis adopted a new gun law in 1938. According to an analysis by Bernard Harcourt, a professor at Columbia University School of Law, it loosened gun ownership rules in several ways.It deregulated the buying and selling of rifles, shotguns and ammunition. It made handguns easier to own by allowing anyone with a hunting license to buy, sell or carry one at any time. (You didn t need to be hunting.) It also extended the permit period from one year to three and gave local officials more discretion in letting people under 18 get a gun.The regulations to implement this law, rather than the law itself, did impose new limits on one group: Jews.Then, things got crazy (yes, then). Kassa decided to bring Agenda 21 into the mix: The rich white elite Democrats wanted the American Indians ground, so the first thing they did was disarm them, the next thing they did was put them on a reservation (Agenda 21), and then they stole their ground. Go check out Agenda 21 for yourself. Agenda 21 is a fictional New World Order plot to depopulate the earth and control everything that is mindlessly parroted by people who have trouble figuring out how to operate a doorknob. In reality, Mother Jones notes that Agenda 21 isn t actually scary at all, despite the ominous-sounding name:While the name might sound a bit ominous, Agenda 21 is a voluntary action plan that offers suggestions for sustainable ways local, state and national governments can combat poverty and pollution and conserve natural resources in the 21st century. (That s where the 21 comes from. Get it?) 178 governments including the U.S. led by then-President George H.W. Bush voted to adopt the program which is, again, not legally binding in any way, at the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. These people are very evil and you bet they want the guns so bad they can t stand it, as it s not for your safety, but for theirs, Kassa concludes. God bless America and unite as the one world order will have Obama coming after you. Be prepared, stick together.","label":1}
{"text":"Ray Dalio, founder of the world's largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates LP, said he is increasingly concerned about the Trump administration's \"populist\" policies that could hurt the world economy. The detrimental effects of these policies could be more powerful than the beneficial effects of Trump's pro-business policies, Dalio and co-Chief Investment Officer Bob Prince said on Tuesday. \"We are now in a period of time when how this balance tilts will be more important to the economy, markets, and our well-beings than normally dominant drivers such as central bank policies,\" Dalio and Prince said in a note. \"While there is a lot of potential to improve fiscal policies and make beneficial structural reforms, there is also a significant risk that his populist policies could hurt the world economy (and worse).\" In November, Dalio said Trump's policies would have a \"broadly positive\" effect on the U.S. economy and that bond prices likely made a \"30-year top.\" Trump on Friday put a four-month hold on allowing refugees into the United States and temporarily barred travelers from Syria and six other Muslim-majority countries. Bridgewater oversees about $150 billion in client assets.","label":0}
{"text":"Thursday in an interview with POLITICO Playbook, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ( ) signaled Mexico would not pay for the border wall as President Donald Trump has proposed. When asked, \"Do you believe Mexico will pay for it,\" McConnell said, \"Uh, no,\" ( Politico) Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN","label":0}
{"text":"Things India should do to improve its Olympic performance Posted on Tweet (Image via catchnews.com)  In August 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had formed a task force to plan for the next three Olympics. This was followed by our mainstream media writing the usual \" 10 things the task force should do to improve Indian sports \", \" 7 ways India can ensure a better showing at Tokyo 2020 Olympics \", \" How to win 20 Olympic medals by 2020 \" or \" India can get you 10 medals in 2020 if you spend Rs 480 crore \" kind of stuff. Two months down the line, all is forgotten.  Since we are not a satire site but a serious website, it was against our ethos to jump the gun and write such an article. Instead we have done painstaking research for the last 2 months and come up with our suggestions.  Here are our suggestions:  (A) Due to our colonial mindset, cricket dominates the sporting scene in India. Cricket in its purest form was meant for the aristocratic families of England who had nothing better to do with their time and wanted a game which would keep them occupied for days. It is not suitable for common working class Indians who have to earn a living. India was once the superpower in hockey and there is no reason why we cannot be once again.  Our Verdict: Create a social media campaign to boycott cricket. Force organizations who sponsor cricket to donate at least 5 Crore rupees for sponsoring other sports. Impose hefty fines on cricket commentators. Force Ravi Shastri to do commentary for hockey and kabaddi matches.  (B) It is common to find people in Delhi and the surrounding NCR region flaunting their power and influence. One has often heard the phrase \"Tu Janta hai mera baap kaun hai?\" flaunted by these folks. This craving for recognition through power has prompted several impressionable kids in the NCR Region to take up aggressive sports to flaunt their power. Just look at the number of Olympic medalists from the NCR region who have won Olympic medals in aggressive sports:  Abhinav Bindra(2008) \u2013 Shooting Sushil Kumar (2008 and 2012) \u2013 Wrestling Yogeshwar Dutt (2012) \u2013 Wrestling Sakshi Malik(2016) \u2013 Wrestling  Further, Gagan Narang who won the bronze in shooting in 2012, was brought up in Chennai and Hyderabad but his parents hail from the NCR region which explains it.  The ripple effect from NCR is so strong that even Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore from neighboring Rajasthan won silver medal for shooting in 2004.  Poor Saina Nehwal found it difficult to practice a non-aggressive sport like badminton in NCR and had to shift to Hyderabad to become a champion and win a bronze medal in 2012 Olympics.  Our verdict: Channelize the aggressive and power flaunting energy of the NCR kids early on and we can be assured of a few medals from here in every Olympics.  (C) Eastern and southern India has produced many Olympic medalists like Karnam Malleswari in Weightlifting, Mary Kom in Boxing, Leander Paes in Tennis and P. V. Sindhu and Saina Nehwal in badminton along with the likes of Dipa Karmakar who show a promise in a sport where India was never in the reckoning.  Our verdict: Just provide encouragement and things will improve.  (D) Our intellectuals and elites attribute the poor showing of India to poverty. But then what explains western India's poor show considering that it has two of the most prosperous states, Gujarat and Maharashtra.  The last medal a person from Maharashtra won at the Olympics was Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav in Wrestling in 1952. But then Maharashtra is home to cricket legends like Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar and of course the cricket commentary of Ravi Shastri. This explains it.  But what about Gujarat then? We are not mainstream media and we do not claim to have expertise on everything and we admit we do not have the answer. But the mainstream media which questioned Modi on everything else has kept quiet about this. Why?  Our verdict: We do not have an answer to this. But we will not keep quiet like the mainstream media. Why did Gujarat not produce a single Olympic medal winner? Will Modi answer?  (E) Given that the elites blame the lack of facilities in our country for our poor show in Olympics, what stops the kids of these elites from excelling at sports? With cheap skilled manpower to help, they should have done well. Unfortunately, the Indian elites believe in a sense of entitlement and are not willing to work hard. Sport is a meritocratic activity and only performance matters. That is the reason sport is one stream in India which is dynasty free, except for brave exceptions like Rohan Gavaskar who are willing to fight against all odds.  A friendly media and intellectuals' ecosystem can make a failed politician look successful, a failed actor a superstar or a news trader a journalist. But this ecosystem cannot make a cricket duck look like a cricket century.  This explains why the son of one of India's greatest cricketers, Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, who captained Indian cricket team despite having vision in only one eye, chose his mother's profession rather than his father's. His biggest sporting achievement to date remains winning a 100 meters sprint in an Amul Macho ad.  Now, you also know why the daughter of Prakash Padukone chose acting or why the son of Dilip Sardesai chose journalism.  Of course, there are exceptions like Leander Paes who went on to become a tennis star despite his father being a member of Indian hockey team and mother being member of Indian basketball team. He is also wise in that he choose tennis over hockey or basketball. Given his ability to get in trouble with his doubles partners, may it be Mahesh Bhupathi, Rohan Bopanna or Sania Mirza, one wonders how he would have fared in basketball or hockey which has a team of more than 2 players.  Our verdict: Lack of facilities is not an excuse, at least for the Indian elites.  (F) Every other Indian boy wants to become a cricketer. For those boys who look beyond cricket, analysis of Indian Olympic winners show that men have only won in hockey and aggressive sports like shooting, boxing and wrestling, except for Norman Pritchard in 1900 who was anyway born to British parents and moved to Britain soon after winning the medals.  Of course Leander Paes is an exception but we already told you why he did not play hockey and also how aggressive he is even towards his partners.  Our verdict: Do not expect anything from Indian men beyond hockey and aggressive sports.  (G) Compared to Indian men, Indian women have won medals in a variety of sports and have been very inclusive, such as Karnam Malleswari in weightlifting, Saina Nehwal and P. V. Sindhu in badminton, Mary Kom in boxing and Sakshi Malik in wrestling. The fact that women got opportunity to train and win in sports like boxing and wrestling that are considered the domain of men show how fake the propaganda of the feminist intellectuals is.  These feminists intellectuals will form stereotypes based on their opinions and peddle it as facts. Being into responsible journalism, we cannot do that. So we decided to explore an angle we thought was a cause for concern. While it's true that this decade has seen the rise of likes of P. V. Sindhu and Sakshi Malik, what concerned us was, \"Why is there no one to carry forward the legacy of P. T. Usha and Anju George? Why is Indian falling backwards in women's athletics?\"  We did some investigative journalism and the results will shock you. The reason is not patriarchy but colonial hangover. All of India's women medal winners have won in indoor sports like boxing, wrestling, badminton and weightlifting. As per our investigation, small school girls are interested in participating in difficult indoor games like gymnastics but they are scared to play any outdoor games for fear that it will darken their skin. Naturally, India is falling behind in women's athletics.  Our verdict: Ban fair skin creams. This single action will ensure India wins more medals. Change the slogan \"Beti bachao, beti padhao\" to \"Beti bachao, beti padhao, gorepan ka dabaav na dalo.\"","label":1}
{"text":"While rock band U2 s Bono has had a career of being politically outspoken, his priorities have generally been focused primarily on improving living conditions in underdeveloped countries. Heck, the liberal Bono even found common ground with George W. Bush. There s no common ground to be found with Donald Trump, though, who the U2 singer called potentially the worst idea that every happened to America. In an interview with CBS This Morning, Bono gave credence to the idea of American exceptionalism, but he feels that Trump destroys that. In fact, Bono says, Trump could destroy the very idea of America: Look, America is like the best idea the world ever came up with, Bono, whose real name is Paul David Hewson, told CBS This Morning in an interview broadcast Tuesday. But Donald Trump is potentially the worst idea that ever happened to America. Potentially. Bono pointed to nations like Ireland and Great Britain as great countries but suggested that America is different because it s an idea, one that Trump is trying to hijack. That idea is bound up in justice and equality for all equality and justice for all, you know, he continued. I think he s hijacked the party. I think he s trying to hijack the idea of America. And I think it s bigger than all of us. I think it s it s this is really dangerous. Source: PoliticoHere s the video:Say what you want about the often controversial Bono, but he has seen the world and he s right. The idea of America, as a melting pot, as a place where with hard work, anyone can be a success, is not completely incompatible with Donald Trump s ideas. Trump is a xenophobe. He and his supporters want to turn our nation into a solitary island. That s never been what our nation is about.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump is looking for ways to defend American-made products by certifying legitimate U.S. goods and aggressively going after imported products unfairly sporting the \"Made in America\" label, the White House said on Tuesday. Trump, who campaigned on reviving the U.S. manufacturing sector, vowed on Monday that his administration would crack down on \"predatory online sales of foreign goods\" hurting U.S. retailers. On Wednesday, Trump will discuss with small- and medium-sized manufacturers how to certify their products and keep out foreign counterfeits, a senior administration official told reporters. Their products include gutter filters, flags and pillows. \"There's just too many examples of foreigners slapping on 'Made in America' labels to products and the worst insult is when they do it after they have actually stolen the product design,\" the official said. The United States loses about $300 billion a year to theft of intellectual property ranging from semiconductors to jeans, the official said. In March, Trump signed an executive order that gave customs officials more authority to stop pirated and counterfeit items, the official told reporters. The White House plans to work with the private sector on the new certification and verification system rather than create new regulations or spend taxpayer money, the official said, citing as a model the LEED system used to rate the environmental sustainability of building projects.","label":0}
{"text":"Remember back in May when Donald Trump said he d make California, New York and Maryland compatible (and that he d win them)? Well it s now mid-October and he can barely hang on to red states Utah, Georgia, Arizona and even Texas the latest poll out of the Lone Star state has him leading by three points. Romney won Texas by 19 points in 2012.There is one state in particular that is leaning towards Hillary Clinton Arizona.The Grand Canyon state, home to Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Jan Brewer, and the god-awful SB 1070, should be a dead set win for Trump, whose anti-immigration rhetoric has propelled him to where he is today. However, recent polling out of the state suggests that Clinton has the upper hand, and for good reason.According to a new Arizona Republic\/Morrison\/Cronkite News poll released just before the third presidential debate, Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump by five points, 39-34 percent. Gary Johnson took six percent while Jill Stein took one percent. Twenty percent remain undecided.However, when pressed on how those who lean one way or the other would solidly vote, as of right now, both Clinton and Trump expand their lead:When including leaners in the sample, the number of undecideds drops to 8.1 percent. Clinton s support rises to 43.3 percent while Trump s support increases to 37.8 percent. Johnson gets 6.5 percent while Stein gets 4.3 percent. The margin of error for the sample including the leaners is plus or minus 4 percentage points.In Nate Silver s FiveThirtyEight general election projection, Clinton has a 58 percent chance of winning Arizona s 11 electoral votes, compared to Trump s 42 percent chance. In the last 48 polls conducted in the state, Clinton holds the edge in 26, Trump in 19, and a tie in three.It is because of these shocking poll results that the Clinton campaign is pumping more than $2 million in advertising in the state and sending a slew of high profile surrogates including First Lady Michelle Obama and Senator Bernie Sanders all across the state.The last time Arizona went blue was in 1996, when voters chose Bill Clinton over Senator Bob Dole by 2 percent.Imagine if Arizona, a state most affected by illegal immigration, stuck it to Trump on election day? Arizona is proving to have a rich, culturally diverse electorate, buoyed by Latino and Hispanic voters who don t take too kindly to Trump s xenophobic, racist tones.Ana Navarro was right if Trump thought insulting Mexicans and Hispanics was the right move, he s going to have one hell of a wake up call in November.","label":1}
{"text":"The president of the open borders group known as La Raza is comparing President Donald Trump's immigration orders to a number of historic atrocities, including the slave trade, in a new Washington Post . [The piece by National Council of La Raza President Janet Murgu\u00eda, claims Trump's plan to deport criminal illegal immigrants build a wall along the southern border and crack down on sanctuary cities will \"similarly tarnish our nation's character\" like the slave trade did: Some of the darkest chapters in U. S. history have involved forcibly relocating minority populations: the slave trade, the Trail of Tears, Operation Wetback and the internment of citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Each was considered legal and justified in its time. Now they are condemned as assaults on the values that define our nation. President Trump's first executive order on immigration and the draft enforcement memos signed by Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly promise to similarly tarnish our nation's character. The memos call for expanding the nation's deportation forces by 15, 000 to round up, detain and deport the undocumented immigrants living among us. Instead of focusing on criminals, they make all undocumented people priorities for enforcement, and through a process called \"expedited removal,\" they severely reduce due process protections. Murgu\u00eda says Trump's immigration orders through the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are based entirely \"on falsehoods\" about illegal aliens, arguing that illegal immigration is down and it does not pose as much of a threat as the Trump Administration purports. The La Raza president also parroted the talking points that illegal aliens help grow the economy by paying taxes every year: And the cost of the undocumented? Their contributions to the economy far outweigh their burden. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, undocumented immigrants pay $11. 6 billion in taxes each year. According to the Social Security Administration, undocumented workers contribute $15 billion annually to the fund, but only withdraw an estimated $1 billion. This claim has been repeatedly debunked by groups like the Federation for Immigration Reform (FAIR) which found in a comprehensive study that illegal immigration costs American taxpayers a whopping $113 billion, as Breitbart Texas reported. Murgu\u00eda also claims that there is \"little evidence that most undocumented immigrants pose a threat to national security. \" But, in documents released by the Senate Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest back in 2016, research found that there have been 580 individuals convicted of terrorism in the U. S. since the September 11th attacks, with 380 of those individuals being terrorists, as Breitbart News reported. Murgu\u00eda refers to the recent deportation of Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, an illegal immigrant living in Phoenix, Arizona, with her two children for 20 years. \"A woman who was a resident of Phoenix for 20 years was also deported, leaving behind her two U. S. children,\" Murgu\u00eda writes in the piece. \"They are hardly security threats, but will be 'enforcement priorities' under Homeland Security's new policy. \" Nonetheless, Murgu\u00eda did not mention that Garcia de Rayos had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2008 after she was found to be illegally using a Social Security number to work at a theme park, as Breitbart Texas reported. In 2013, a judge ordered Garcia de Rayos to return home to Mexico, but she instead was required to periodically meet with immigration officials due to lax enforcement policies under former President Obama. Murgu\u00eda goes on to claim that the Trump administration has \"declared war\" referring to ICE's efforts to deport criminal illegal immigrants as \"stalking people leaving church or going to the movies. \" Murgu\u00eda's piece concludes with a plea for the rest of the open borders lobby and amnesty advocates to continue to try to hold up deportation processes by the Trump Administration, writing \"we're deploying every tool we've got to oppose this policy \u2014 in the media, in the courts and in peaceful protests in the streets. \" John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.","label":0}
{"text":"mothers. fathers. Disapproving elders. Parents who warn about regrets. Others whose financial limits were a statement of their values. A week ago, I asked you to send me the best questions you've ever asked, or answered, about money, and published seven queries to start the conversation. Of the five best new ones that arrived in the last week, every one came with a story about a parent like the ones described above. This shouldn't come as an enormous surprise. After all, what we spend, save and give says a lot about who we are. Value and values are just a letter apart, and given how much influence our parents often have on the latter, it makes perfect sense that we think of them when we ponder our financial situations as well. So consider the following five questions, or adapt them to your own financial forks in the road as needed. And if your parents are alive, ask them, too, though you may already know what they will say. Where are we staying in Florida? When Jan Even was in second grade in River Forest, Ill. many of her classmates discussed their pending spring break plans. Some were going to Fort Lauderdale. Others were headed to Sarasota. \"I just kind of thought that we were going, too, and that my parents hadn't told me yet,\" she recalled. But they weren't going, and when she asked about the family's destination, here's how her mother replied: It's more important for you to be able to go to college at age 18 than it is for us to go to Florida now. Ms. Even's family had enough money that this wasn't a so much as a conscious choice. Both her parents grew up during the Depression, and her mother told stories of people coming to the back door of their farmhouse looking for food and Ms. Even's grandmother feeding them dinner. Children make many assumptions about their lives and the lives of others based on where we choose to raise them. So you can't fault Ms. Even, who is now 66 and lives in Redmond, Ore. for wondering aloud when she was young. Nor can you fault her parents for enforcing a bit of artificial deprivation. \"Maybe they really were concerned about the money, but I think it was more an expression of their values,\" she said. They did eventually take her to Florida \u2014 but not until senior year in high school, when the college fund was safe and she was six months away from starting at Northwestern University. Can you accept the fact that we can't live the same life that you do? Plenty of parents hope that their children will climb at least one rung up the social class ladder once they are adults, and many more will fight hard to keep their children from slipping even a bit. So it can be jarring for parents when their adult children don't strive for the same things they do. A reader in Baton Rouge, La. who did not want to use her name because she didn't think her relatives would appreciate her sharing the story publicly, wrote in to describe the pressure she and her husband once felt to buy and spend and own and live the way that other, more established family members did. They ran up credit card debt before realizing they couldn't keep up and didn't really want to, either. Then, they had to gently explain to their family how they felt. \"Sometimes, I think it's easier to talk about sex with your parents than money,\" she told me via email. \"We choose a simple life. Experiences over possessions. \" Her note reminded me of one of the most haunting things I've ever read about families and money. In her book \"A Wealth of Possibilities,\" Ellen Miley Perry described the \"centrifugal force\" of abundance that swirls around financially successful families. And she described an acquaintance who summed up her relationship with her father this way: \"He can't accept the smallness of my dreams. \" What would you do if you weren't afraid? In 2001, Daniel L. Anderson and his family were living in Reno, Nev. and loving the easy access to the outdoors, the low cost of living and the good schools. But he was slowly growing bored with his real estate job. He posted his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 online and soon had a promising job offer in Houston. He also sought advice from his old mentor, who eventually offered him a different job in San Francisco, and then put that pointed question to Mr. Anderson when he wavered. The Houston company had a reputation as a terrific place to work. The word on the San Francisco employer was much more mixed. \"His question caused me to my situation to make sure I wasn't doing what was easy and comfortable,\" Mr. Anderson recalled, adding that he had to get over a bit of macho denial about his own fear before he could really think it through. There were also the stories his mother told him about all of her retired friends who talked about their regrets over the roads not taken. \"I did not want to be that person,\" he said. Which is how he ended up moving to Walnut Creek, Calif. where his family thrived. And how he turned down the attractive offer from a company called Enron. What good is having a lot in the bank if you've never let yourself live? Lisa and Janice Woolery both grew up in families that didn't have much money, and in their life together as a couple, they have been fairly careful. There is no mortgage on their home in Des Moines, and they've saved money for retirement. \"But when you do some of those rather extensive retirement planning programs online, you just feel defeated,\" Lisa said. \"You start saying, 'I'm going to die someday, and I want to live in a way that lets me do things that I have been putting off. '\" For the two of them, both 55, that means travel of the sort that might have felt fiscally irresponsible in previous years. New Zealand is high on their list. In an interview this week, I asked Lisa whether they'd been able to answer their big question in a way that had allowed them to put a trip like that on the calendar. \"Not in the next year or two, yet,\" she said. \"But. \" Then a long pause. \"It's a \u2026 \" Then a deep sigh. \"The safe answer is the answer I know to use,\" she said finally. \"Low to no risk. But at what point do you say that low to no risk isn't living?\" As I was writing this column, she followed up with an email. They'd booked a couples getaway to San Francisco, a place that holds fond memories for them from travel earlier in their relationship. It's a good start. What is the most satisfying thing you've spent money on? By the time she'd scraped her way through college and graduate school, Trudelle Thomas recognized that she had inherited some heavy generational baggage from the Great Depression. So Ms. Thomas, an English professor at Xavier University, went to work on herself to see if she could derive more joy from the money that she chose to spend. When she finally persuaded herself to buy a new car, she didn't draw much additional satisfaction from it. Nice meals out were often unhealthy and expensive. What she enjoyed much more, however, was the money she spent on and with others. She tithes and has contributed to the National Alliance on Mental Illness for a long enough period to feel as if she has been part of important policy changes. Another regular habit: taking her students, many of whom could not afford it, out for lunch in the campus cafeteria. And a few years ago, she took a niece, who otherwise might not have been able to travel, on a trip to California. She liked to dote on people, as she put it, and she reminded me that \"thrive\" is the root word of thrift. \"My niece could think of me as her rich aunt,\" she said. \"But I want her to think of me as her thrifty aunt who splurges on her. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Microsoft founder Bill Gates called for a robot tax to offset the loss of jobs done by humans as a result of advancements in automation during an interview with Quartz. [\"Certainly there will be taxes that relate to automation. Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50, 000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed and you get income tax, social security tax, all those things,\" declared Gates. \"If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think that we'd tax the robot at a similar level. \" \"There are many ways to take that extra productivity and generate more taxes. Exactly how you'd do it, measure it, you know, it's interesting for people to start talking about now,\" he continued. \"Some of it can come on the profits that are generated by the efficiency there. Some of it can come directly in some type of robot tax. I don't think the robot companies are going to be outraged that there might be a tax. It's OK. \" Gates added that \"you ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed of that adoption somewhat to figure out, 'OK, what about the communities where this has a particularly big impact? Which transition programs have worked and what type of funding do those require? '\" \"You cross the threshold of of certain activities all sort of at once,\" Gates concluded. \"So, you know, warehouse work, driving, room cleanup, there's quite a few things that are meaningful job categories that, certainly in the next 20 years, being thoughtful about that extra supply is a net benefit. It's important to have the policies to go with that. \" Billionaire and entrepreneur Mark Cuban also claimed robots are going to \"cause unemployment,\" posting, \"Automation is going to cause unemployment and we need to prepare for it,\" to Twitter on Sunday. Last week, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk warned that deep A. I. could potentially be dangerous to the human race, who he described as already . \"One of the most troubling questions is artificial intelligence. I don't mean narrow A. I \u2014 deep artificial intelligence, where you can have AI which is much smarter than the smartest human on earth,\" proclaimed Musk during the World Government Summit in Dubai. \"This is a dangerous situation. \" \"Pay close attention to the development of artificial intelligence,\" he continued. \"Make sure researchers don't get carried away. Scientists get so engrossed in their work they don't realize what they are doing. \" In November, Musk also predicted that automated robots would lead to mass unemployment, which he claimed could eventually create a universal wage from the government. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"A Cambodian court on Saturday charged two journalists with espionage for filing news reports to a U.S.-funded radio station, which can carry a prison term of up to 15 years. Prime Minister Hun Sen, the strongman who has ruled Cambodia for more than three decades, has taken a strident anti-American line in an increasingly tense run-up to a 2018 election and there has been a crackdown on critics, rights groups and independent media. The United States announced it was ending funding for the election, and promised more concrete steps , after the Supreme Court dissolved the main opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) on Thursday at the request of the government, on the grounds it was plotting to seize power. The party denied the accusation. The two journalists, Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin, had in the past worked for the Washington-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) which broadcast in the Khmer language until it shut down in September. The two were charged with providing information that is destructive to national defense to a foreign state , when they were caught filing stories to RFA, said Ly Sophana, a spokesman at Phnom Penh Municipal Court. They will be sent to an investigating judge for further procedures, Ly Sophana told Reuters. RFA has said it had no ties to the two journalists since it shut its Phnom Penh office in September. In charging two former RFA journalists with espionage, Cambodian authorities have opened the door to more serious forms of intimidation worthy of despots and dictators, RFA spokesman Rohit Mahajan said in emailed comments. A lawyer for the two said the charges were too serious and they had merely been doing their jobs as journalists. This is not dangerous to the country, said the lawyer, Keo Vanny. The charges carried up to 15 years in prison if the men were convicted, he said. Hun Sen has been fighting a deepening war of words with the U.S. embassy and State Department over his government s crackdown on the opposition. CNRP leader Kem Sokha was arrested on Sept. 3 and charged with treason for an alleged plot to take power with U.S. help. He denied any such pot. The U.S. State Department called on Friday for Cambodia to release him and reverse the decision to ban his party. Western countries, which for decades supported Cambodia s emergence from war and isolation, have shown little appetite for sanctions in response to the government s crackdown, but the European Union has raised the possibility of Cambodia losing vital trade preferences.","label":0}
{"text":"You've probably been cleaning your hands all wrong. They must be filthy. Scientists have found that a common technique for applying hand sanitizer, one that is even recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is inferior to an alternative method with twice as many steps. The C. D. C. way: Step One: Apply the sanitizer to one palm. Step Two: Rub both palms together. Step Three: Rub product over your hands until dry. In a study published in the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, scientists in Scotland found that an alternative technique, recommended by the World Health Organization, was significantly more effective in reducing the median bacteria count on participants' hands. It was also more . The C. D. C. method takes 35 seconds on average to complete the alternative, 42. 5 seconds. You may notice that while the instructions include applying the sanitizer and allowing your hands to dry, the technique ignores both actions. (The diagramed W. H. O. method actually contains 11 intensive steps. The study only counted Steps 2 through 7.) Here's how you do it the (much more laborious) W. H. O. way: Step One: Rub palms together. Step Two: Rub each palm front to back over the back of the other hand, interlacing fingers. Step Three: Twist palms with fingers interlaced, and rub between fingers. Step Four: Interlock your fingers, (thumbs should be on opposite sides) and twist again, this time, backs of fingers against palms. Step Five: Clasp your left thumb in your right hand and move thumb in circular motion \u2014 then switch thumbs. Step Six: (Still with us?) Press your right fingers together and rub them in a circular motion on your left palm, then switch. You're done! Jacqui Reilly of the Glasgow Caledonian University, the lead author of the study, which focused on workers, stressed that the way the steps were counted emphasized the precision of the superior W. H. O. technique. \"The difference between them is that the W. H. O. guidance gives you six maneuvers to do, instead of just saying, 'Apply it all over your hands,' \" she said. Hand hygiene, she added, remained \"the single most important intervention that you can do to prevent health infection but also to protect yourself and your family from infections and viruses. \" Certain antibacterial soaps may do more harm than good, experts say. Some have come under scrutiny for using chemicals like triclosan. The Food and Drug Administration has recommended using hand sanitizers that contain at least 60 percent alcohol if soap and water is unavailable. Dr. Reilly said that while her study focused only on hand sanitizer, the technique applied equally well to hand washing with soap and water. O. K. so maybe you have been persuaded but are reluctant to memorize and do all those new steps? You're not alone. According to the study, even the professionals who participated had trouble with all the steps. Nearly a third of them were unable to complete the entire process despite \"having instructions on the technique in front of them and having their technique observed. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an Islamic State attack on Thursday cut off the main road between Deir al-Zor city and Palmyra, but a Syrian military source denied this. The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor, said Islamic State seized the town of al-Shoula on the road, as Syrian troops and their allies battled around it with heavy air cover. But the Syrian military source said the army thwarted the attack and denied that Islamic State fighters had taken the town and cut off the route. The militants tried to mount an attack from territory they control southeast of Deir al-Zor city, near the border with Iraq, the source added. They received a blow and did not succeed, the source said. The road, which the army and its allies seized in recent weeks, serves as a major supply route from government territory into the eastern city. With Russian air power and Iran-backed militias, the Syrian army reached Deir al-Zor city last month, breaking an Islamic State siege of an enclave there that had lasted three years. The towns along the Euphrates river, downstream of the city, have fast become the last major IS footholds in Syria and a focus of the multi-sided war. Islamic State militants have been on the back foot in both Iraq and Syria, where they have lost vast territory to different enemies this year. With U.S.-led jets and special forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias is also battling Islamic State on the river s eastern bank. The separate offensives have both advanced as they race to capture swathes of Deir al-Zor province. IS media unit Amaq said on Thursday that the militants took al-Shoula and a nearby village as they waged an attack that included suicide bombers, capturing two Russian forces. The Russian defense ministry denied any military personnel were taken hostage, RIA news agency said citing a Russian military official at the Hmeimim air base in Syria. There were no incidents with capturing or losing Russian servicemen in Deir Al-Zor province and other Syrian provinces, the official said. Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi exhorted his followers on Thursday to stand fast and keep fighting, in his first purported audio communication in almost a year.","label":0}
{"text":"The leaders of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee asked Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday to investigate any involvement of U.S. interrogators at secret prisons in Yemen where inmates have reportedly been tortured. The Associated Press published a report on Wednesday that nearly 2,000 men have disappeared into a secret network of prisons in Yemen run by the United Arab Emirates or Yemeni forces trained by the Gulf nation, where they have been abused and tortured. The UAE denied the allegations in a statement to AP. The AP report said U.S. forces have been involved in interrogations of detainees, citing senior American defense officials. The U.S. officials denied any participation in or knowledge of human rights abuses, but obtaining intelligence that may have been extracted by torture inflicted by another party would violate the International Convention Against Torture. Senators John McCain, the Senate committee's Republican chairman, and Jack Reed, its ranking Democrat, asked Mattis to conduct an immediate review of the alleged abuses, including of U.S. support to the forces involved. McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has been a leader of anti-torture efforts in Congress. In the letter, he and Reed argued that any suggestion the United States is complicit in torture hurts national security. They also asked Mattis to assess what, if anything, U.S. forces knew about the alleged abuses and to provide a briefing to the committee as soon as possible. \"We are confident that you find these allegations as extremely troubling as we do,\" McCain and Reed wrote.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Monday called on the Senate to take immediate action this week to address Puerto Rico's $70 billion debt crisis before the critical July 1 deadline for the island territory's next debt payments. \"The Senate should take up the matter immediately,\" Lew said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. \"Delay will only jeopardize the ability of Congress to conclude its work before July 1, a critical deadline Puerto Rico's leadership has publicly highlighted for months.\" If no action is taken, the crisis there will only ratchet higher, he said in the letter. Puerto Rico faces a deadline on Friday to pay off $2 billion of its debts. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said later in a floor speech that the vote would take place on Wednesday. \"I really do think that we can go ahead and support the bill,\" he said. A senior Republican aide could not confirm that a vote would take place on Wednesday. The financially ailing island is staring down $70 billion worth of debt that it says it cannot repay in full, adding to its 45 percent poverty rate and rising emigration to the U.S. mainland that is also cutting into its economic growth. The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives already passed legislation to address Puerto Rico's debt before leaving Washington for the July 4 holiday break. The Senate is expected to recess at the end of this week. The House bill, a rare piece of bipartisan legislation, would establish a federal oversight board to negotiate various debt restructurings while seeking to institute balanced budgets on the island, a U.S. territory with 3.5 million residents. Lew called on senators to also pass the House measure - the \"Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act,\" or PROMESA - this week to get it to President Barack Obama to sign into law before Friday's payment deadline. The Senate, also controlled by Republicans, is expected to debate the measure this week, but Democrats have said they want changes - a move that could complicate its passage. A vote is expected this week.","label":0}
{"text":"A proposal by a U.S. Senate committee to cancel the Defense Department position of acquisition chief could lead to an increase in costs, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday. The Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the National Defense Authorization Act aims to cancel the position of under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics because it slows innovation. The committee is proposing to divide the responsibilities between a new office in the Pentagon that deals with research and another which would address business management. If the acquisition chief position, currently held by Frank Kendall, was cut, it would separate research and engineering from manufacturing and could derail progress made on lowering growth in contract costs over the last three decades, Carter said at the Sea-Air-Space conference. \"Separating these functions makes no sense, as procurement and sustainment costs are controlled by decisions made during development,\" Carter said. The proposal still has to take a number of steps before it becomes law. The Senate version of the defense bill must be reconciled with the House's version before being voted on in both chambers. If passed, that version would be sent to the White House for President Barack Obama's signature, or veto. On Monday, the White House said it would veto the House's version of the bill because it would shift $18 billion of wartime Overseas Contingency Operations, or OCO, funds to avoid automatic budget cuts to military programs.","label":0}
{"text":"Guatemala s Congress on Monday voted overwhelmingly to preserve President Jimmy Morales immunity from prosecution after the attorney general submitted a request to investigate him over suspected financing irregularities during his 2015 election campaign. The vote to protect Morales from possible prosecution was lopsided, with only 25 of the 158 members of Congress voting to strip Morales of his legal protections. Presidential immunity can only be lifted with the backing of at least two-thirds of the chamber, or 105 members. Backers of Morales argued their vote to stop the probe from advancing favored political stability in the Central American nation. Democracy isn t built by changing the president every two years, said Congressman Raul Romero, head of the Fuerza party, referring to the corruption cases that led to the 2015 resignation of Morales predecessor, Otto Perez Molina. The vote in Congress was a blow to the U.N.-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which was pushing to determine the origin of some $800,000 in funds Morales managed as secretary general of the conservative National Convergence Front (FCN) party he led from 2015 to 2016. It was widely believed that those in favor of stripping Morales of his impunity would struggle to win enough support in Congress to green light an eventual prosecution as CICIG is also investigating all the major parties in Guatemala over suspected illegal financing. Members of Congress are making a pact of corrupt officials now that they are afraid of being investigated themselves for illegal electoral financing, said Alvaro Montenegro, head of the anti-corruption organization Justicia Ya. Morales, who has denied any wrongdoing, issued a statement late on Monday praising the vote as a sign of the country s unity and democratic maturity of its institutions. I call for an end to the political and ideological confrontations and together we ll continue to build the Guatemala we all desire, the statement said. The congressional vote reversed the recommendation of a Guatemalan congressional committee on Sunday that Morales immunity be revoked. Last month, Guatemala s attorney general and CICIG jointly sought to investigate Morales, a former comedian, over the illegal financing allegation. Two days later, Morales declared the head of the U.N. body persona non grata. Under the leadership of Ivan Velasquez, a veteran Colombian prosecutor, CICIG has caused problems for Morales, first investigating his son and brother, and then training its sights on him. The Guatemalan president won office in 2015 running on a platform of honest governance after Perez Molina was forced to resign and imprisoned in a multi-million dollar graft case stemming from a CICIG investigation.","label":0}
{"text":"Third of Four Parts \u2026 A Defining Event in Everyone's Healthcare Let's start with the central moment of healthcare as experienced by most Americans. The patient goes to a medical office and says, \"Please, doctor, I have this ache, pain, or lump. Is there anything you can do to help me?\" We can quickly see that this healthcare experience \u2014 including, also, seeking advice for wellness and overall longevity, for oneself or for a loved one \u2014 almost always comes prior to any consideration of paying the bill. Instead, one's instinctive and immediate focus is on health that is, we are more naturally interested in the fruits of medical science \u2014 is there anything you can do? \u2014 than in the of accountancy finance. To put the issue another way, the patient regards his or her problem as, first and foremost, a health issue and then, and only then, a financial issue. After all, the reason for going to the doctor in the first place is not to wrangle over the eventual bill that might come later. In the here and now, the purpose of the visit, of course, is to get better. We can observe that this is basic human nature: If you're in a theater and someone yells \"Fire!\" your first instinct is flight, to survive worrying about getting a refund on your ticket can wait till you've escaped the danger. Thus the implicit science of a medical situation \u2014 can the doctor help me or not? \u2014 is prior to the finance flesh, blood, and pain take priority over money, debt, and numbers on a ledger. \"Healthcare Policy Is a Loser for Whichever Party Is in Charge\" The Value of Hanging Out with a Better Crowd, So is there hope that a Republican Cure Strategy will emerge? We'll have to wait and see, of course, but it certainly seems that the cures approach \u2014 as highlighted by Trump and Cruz, and as legislated by Upton and Wicker \u2014 offers Republicans more upside and less downside. In the meantime, we only know this much: The fusion of science, technology, and vision has worked in the past to promote progress, and it can be made to work, yet again, in the future. Why so optimistic? We'll take up that question in the next installment.","label":0}
{"text":"A visa program aimed at diversifying the U.S. immigrant population came under attack from President Donald Trump on Wednesday after he learned that the man accused of killing eight people in New York City on Tuesday used it to enter the country. Sayfullo Saipov, who was charged in Tuesday's truck attack, immigrated to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010 after winning a lottery enabling him to obtain a so-called \"diversity visa,\" two government officials confirmed to Reuters. The program, established by Congress and coordinated by the State Department, has its roots in efforts to bring more Irish and Italian immigrants into the United States. Citizens of countries that send relatively few immigrants to the United States can enter a lottery that grants winners permanent U.S. residency. Applicants must have at least a high school education or its equivalent, or relevant work experience. Just under 11.4 million applicants entered the 2016 lottery for 50,000 slots available to winners and their close family members, according to State Department figures. The visa program has succeeded in diversifying the mix of immigrants that come into the United States each year, but has also drawn criticism for being vulnerable to fraud and for posing national security risks. Trump said on Wednesday he would ask Congress to \"immediately\" initiate efforts to kill the program, and Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, who has long called for an end to diversity visas, said in a statement that they pose \"a threat to the safety of our citizens.\" Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer helped create the program in 1990 when he was a member of the House of Representatives. But he was also part of a group of lawmakers in 2013 who crafted a bipartisan immigration bill that would have done away with the program. That bill was passed by the Senate but was killed by the Republican-led House. Top congressional Democrats on Wednesday defended the program, saying it subjects all visa recipients \"to the same stringent vetting as all other immigrant visa programs.\" The only other known instance of a diversity visa beneficiary carrying out a deadly terrorist attack in the United States occurred in 2002. That year, an Egyptian man who had received a diversity visa through his wife years earlier shot and killed two people in a Los Angeles airport. The man had earlier sought asylum in the United States but was rejected. Ultimately, he was allowed to stay in the country after his wife won the lottery. As early as 2004, the State Department's then-deputy inspector general, Anne Patterson, told Congress her office believed the diversity program \"contains significant vulnerabilities to national security\" and that terrorists could \"attempt to use it to enter the United States as permanent residents.\" The agency watchdog recommended barring citizens of countries that sponsor terrorism from the program. Over the years, government audits have exposed sophisticated fraud schemes targeting the program, including extortion rackets, sham marriages and the use of fake identification documents. In 2007, Congress's Government Accountability Office issued a report noting that federal law enforcers \"believe that some individuals, including terrorists and criminals, could use fraudulent means to enter or remain in the United States.\" The report found, however, \"no documented evidence\" that diversity visa immigrants \"posed a terrorist or other threat.\" A September 2013 State Department inspector general report found that \"organized fraud rings masquerading as travel agencies\" had hijacked the diversity visa program in Ukraine. Under the scheme, Ukrainians were entered in the lottery without their consent, and then held up for money in exchange for the chance to claim a visa or encouraged to enter into sham marriages if they won.","label":0}
{"text":"Stephen K. Bannon, former Breitbart News executive chairman, founding host of Breitbart News Daily, and now chief strategist for the incoming Trump White House, made a special appearance on the final live show of 2016. [\"I'm only doing this because of the great audience we've got here and your producing team, led by Caroline Magyarits \u2014 and you, Matt, that you're hosting the thing. So, glad to be on,\" Bannon told SiriusXM host Matt Boyle. \"This was the most amazing year we've seen, both here in the United States and overseas,\" Boyle said, describing those events as a \"revolt of the working class. \" \"It's pretty amazing,\" Bannon agreed. \"As you know, with the website, with Breitbart and with the radio show, particularly the weekend show and then the daily show, we've been following this and reporting on it for years. \" \"It's something we saw build up particularly in Europe, with the great team we've got over in London, led by Raheem and James Delingpole,\" he said, referring to Breitbart London chief editor and frequent Breitbart News Daily host Raheem Kassam. \"That led ultimately to Brexit, after all the different European Parliament votes they had and everything that UKIP kind of led. \" \"And then here in the United States, where we saw it build up in the primaries, and then in the general election,\" he continued. \"I think we've lived through an historic time. I think we'll talk about what happened in this year politically for many, many decades to come. It was exciting to live through it, and very exciting to be at SiriusXM, you know, the Patriot Channel with the show, and at Breitbart to actually see and report on it and comment on it. \" Bannon said, \"The best thing we ever had was both the comments section at Breitbart and the callers, the great audience we've got here at SiriusXM, to call and share every day what their feelings were. \" \"We used to tease, after John McCain made that speech that time, that called our audience 'hobbits,' it was always great to hear what the hobbits had to say because at the end of the day what they had to say was what mattered most,\" he said. Bannon's message to the hobbits and \"deplorables\" \u2014 to quote Hillary Clinton's memorable slander of Trump voters \u2014 was to keep in mind that it's only the \"top of the first inning\" for their movement. \"You've got to stay engaged,\" he advised, pleased to see high levels of engagement in \"traffic at all the different sites, and the activity you see, the comments sections at the various sites you see, and how great the radio show is doing. \" \"The Trump administration, I think it's three weeks from the day exactly is when President Trump will take the oath of office. So let's hold people accountable and stay engaged. There will be a lot of exciting activity over the next couple of years,\" he promised. \"Stay engaged. Stay on top of stuff. I think '17 will be actually more exciting than '16 was. \" \"So continue to go to various sites that are out there, where you get your news and information, and then obviously continue to listen to the various shows on the Patriot Channel. You've got so many great shows \u2014 you know, David Webb, Wilkow, Sean Hannity. You've got really a whole raft of great guys, Mark Levin, and of course the Breitbart News Daily and Breitbart Weekend shows,\" he recommended. Bannon anticipates that 2017 will be as much of an \"exciting time\" as 2016 was. \"We don't like to try to guess what's going to happen in the future, but I've got to tell you, I think people were very engaged in this election, and I think will be very engaged as time goes forward. The key is to hold people accountable. The hobbits, or the deplorables, had a great run in '16. Everybody mocked them and ridiculed them, and now they've spoken. I think '17 is going to be a very exciting year,\" he predicted. \"I noticed on Breitbart over the last month or two, as either certain appointments were made or certain things were done that didn't comport with behavior that the deplorables or the hobbits thought were correct, it was interesting to see some of the articles written on the site, and the intensity in the comments,\" said Bannon. \"I think that's great,\" he said. \"People are engaged. They feel like they have a voice. Just continue on. I know that on the show, you guys have been doing a great job every day with the production team and the great folks at SiriusXM. So it's just going to be a great year. Let's just stay engaged. \" He concluded by applauding Boyle for doing a great job and said to the Breitbart News audience and callers, \"I really miss you guys. Have a great New Year, and look forward to talking with you guys early in 2017. \" Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern. LISTEN:","label":0}
{"text":"Bryan Pagliano is in hot water with this and he knows it. Is water boarding an option here? Seriously, they need his testimony but he s obviously not going to incriminate himself so he pleads the fifth.The State Department IT worker who managed Hillary Clinton s private email server while she was secretary of state will plead the Fifth Amendment if called to testify about his work on the Democratic presidential candidate s mysterious email setup, his attorney informed the House Select Committee on Benghazi this week. The committee subpoenaed Bryan Pagliano on Aug. 11, according to The Washington Post. In addition to testifying on Sept. 10, committee chairman Trey Gowdy asked Pagliano to produce documents related to the servers he managed on behalf of Clinton. Pagliano worked on Clinton s 2008 presidential campaign before moving over to the State Department in May 2009, several months after Clinton took office. He left the agency at the same time as Clinton, in Feb. 2013. But in a letter to the Benghazi Committee on Monday, Mark MacDougall, Pagliano s attorney, said that his client would assert his constitutional right against self-incrimination if called to testify. Pagliano is one of numerous Clinton aides that Gowdy s panel intends to interview. Two of Clinton s top aides will testify this week. Clinton herself is scheduled to publicly testify next month.","label":1}
{"text":"I'm not horrified she's with the Washington Post. She's typical of what you get with that paper. Left wing bias. I'm glad O'rilley called her out.","label":1}
{"text":"THE UPDATE TO THIS NEBRASKA DEMOCRATIC PARTY OFFICIAL S DISGUSTING COMMENTS: PHIL MONTAG HAS BEEN FIRED!The Democrats just aren t getting the message that America is leaving their Party in droves because of violent rhetoric! Who wants to be associated with anyone who is happy that someone got shot?A Nebraska Democratic Party official is now in hot water. An audio recording was posted on YouTube Thursday with Phil Montag, a technology chairman, voicing how glad he was that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., got shot last week at a GOP baseball practice. Nebraska Democratic Party Chairwoman Jane Kleeb confirmed to FOX 42 News Thursday it was really his voice:Nebraska Democrat Party official caught on tape saying I m glad that motherfucker [Scalise] got fucking shot, I wish he was fucking dead! pic.twitter.com\/yFJ32PqT77 Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) June 23, 2017 His whole job is to get people, convince Republicans to (expletive) kick people off (expletive) health care. I m glad he got shot, said Montag in the audio recording.Montag is now looking for a new job; Kleeb let him go after the recording became public. I wish he was (expletive) dead, said Montag in the recording. We obviously condemn any kind of violence, whether it s comments on Facebook or comments in a meeting, said Kleeb when reached by phone Thursday.","label":1}
{"text":"This past Sunday, the latest ABC\/ Washington Post poll showed a 12-point national polling in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. This poll, along with various other recent polls from the Washington Post , Reuters, and ABC, has shown a 9-percentage point sampling bias toward registered Democrats , causing an uproar of speculation. Keep in mind, we are neither Trump supports nor Hillary Supporters. The website Zero Hedge reported : \"METHODOLOGY \u2013 This ABC News poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 20-22, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 874 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3.5 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 36-27-31 percent, Democrats \u2013 Republicans \u2013 Independents.\" These small sampling details shouldn't be taken so lightly, as they can change the results of the poll immensely, as well as shift people's perceptions of their candidate's likelihood of winning. This in turn can deter people from voting altogether. There may be a few more registered Democrats, but they certainly don't have a 9-point registration average, which the latest sampling polls have shown. Furthermore, the media organizations involved are pulling a certain demographic sampling to get the results they have. Zero Hedge put it into perspective by noting: As a quick example, the ABC \/ WaPo poll found that Hillary enjoys a 79-point advantage over Trump with black voters. Therefore, even a small \"oversample\" of black voters of 5% could swing the overall poll by 3 full points . Moreover, the pollsters don't provide data on the demographic mix of their polls which makes it impossible to \"fact check\" the bias\u2026convenient. The many recent WikiLeaks documents have exposed Hillary Clinton's scandalous behaviour, including the release of the contents from her private e-mail server. One of them in particular revealed the close ties the Clinton campaign has had with polling organizations, creating speculation that the campaign is paying the organizations to push the polls in Clinton's favor. With media organizations using specific demographic sampling details to rig the results of polling, more dismay, confusion, and anger over the possible, if not absolute, corruption that occurs in the U.S. presidential election can be the only result. And to really expose just how rigged the polls are, the latest Podesta emails, which were just released by WikiLeaks , show in disturbing detail just how to \"manufacture\" the hoped-for results from a certain poll. The email correspondence exposes the request for recommendations regarding \"oversamples for polling\" in order to \"maximize what we get out of our media polling.\" One email said, \"I also want to get your Atlas folks to recommend oversamples for our polling before we start in February. By market, regions, etc. I want to get this all compiled into one set of recommendations so we can maximize what we get out of our media polling.\" And among some of the most damaging materials was an attachment of a 37-page guide. One instance revealed that, in Arizona, the oversampling of Hispanics' and Native Americans' populations was highly recommended: \"Research, microtargeting & polling projects \u2013 Over-sample Hispanics \u2013 Use Spanish language interviewing. (Monolingual Spanish-speaking voters are among the lowest turnout Democratic targets) \u2013 Over-sample the Native American population\" And in Florida, the report discusses \"consistently monitoring\" samples for ensuring they're \"not too old\" and \"has enough African American and Hispanic voters.\" The report even acknowledges that national polls over sample \"key districts\/regions\" and \"ethnic\" groups \"as needed.\" \"\u2013 General election benchmark, 800 sample, with potential over samples in key districts\/regions \u2013 Benchmark polling in targeted races, with ethnic over samples as needed \u2013 Targeting tracking polls in key races, with ethnic over samples as needed\" Many of the Podesta emails give clear insight into why the mainstream media has refused to report on the most damning allegations against Clinton \u2014 with this latest revelation simply affirming the reality that the \"consent of the governed\" is, in reality, nothing more than manufactured consent by one group that holds total power. Ultimately, these elections are a mere distraction, and as John F. Hylan, among others, told us: The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation \u2026 The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties \u2026 [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. ( source )( source ) These are the ones we should be focusing our attention on.","label":1}
{"text":"Barack Obama implored members of Congress to have the courage not to repeal the Affordable Care Act Sunday night.The former president made his first public remarks about the proposed health care legislation just days after House Republicans voted to pass the measure 217 to 213. If it passes the Senate, it would repeal and replace major parts of Obamacare.During his speech, Obama also lauded the Democratic members of Congress who voted in favor of the Affordable Cart Act in 2010 and then lost their seats because of it. These men and women did the right thing, the hard thing, and theirs was a profile in courage, and because of that vote, 20 million people got health insurance that didn t have it before. Daily Caller","label":1}
{"text":"The campaign group Human Rights Watch on Friday condemned the arrest by Saudi authorities of some 30 clerics, intellectuals and activists this week as a coordinated crackdown on dissent , and Amnesty International echoed the sentiment. The arrests were made after exiled opposition figures called for demonstrations following Friday s afternoon prayers, which did not appear to attract much support amid a heavy security deployment. Activists this week circulated on social media lists of people detained. They included prominent Islamist preacher Salman al-Awdah, as well as some people with no clear links to Islamist activity or obvious history of opposition. The detentions come amid widespread speculation, denied by officials, that King Salman, 81, intends to abdicate in favor of his son, Crown Prince Mohammed, who dominates economic, foreign and domestic policy. There are also growing tensions with Qatar over its alleged support of Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, which is listed by Riyadh as a terrorist organization. These apparently politically motivated arrests are another sign that Mohammed bin Salman has no real interest in improving his country s record on free speech and the rule of law, said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. The New York-based group said the arrests fitted a pattern of human rights violations against peaceful activists and dissidents, including harassment, intimidation, smear campaigns, travel bans, detention and prosecution. Crown Prince Mohammed has rocketed to the pinnacle of power in the kingdom, pushing a reform agenda called Vision 2030 aimed at weaning the country off oil and introducing social reforms. Critics say he is not doing enough to liberalize politics in a country where the king enjoys absolute authority. Amnesty International also denounced the crackdown, urging the authorities to reveal the whereabouts of the detainees and give them access to families and lawyers. In recent years we cannot recall a week in which so many prominent Saudi Arabian figures have been targeted in such a short space of time, said Samah Hadid, the group s director of campaigns in the Middle East. It is clear that the new leadership under Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman is sending a chilling message: freedom of expression will not be tolerated, we are coming after you. A government spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. All public protests are banned in Saudi Arabia, as are political parties. Labor unions are illegal, the media are controlled and criticism of the royal family can lead to prison. Riyadh says it does not have political prisoners, but senior officials have said monitoring of activists is needed to maintain social stability. The al-Saud family has always regarded Islamist groups as the biggest internal threat to its rule over a country in which appeals to religious sentiment cannot be lightly dismissed and an al Qaeda campaign a decade ago killed hundreds. Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, which originated in Egypt and briefly held power there after the 2011 Arab Spring, represent an ideological threat to Saudi Arabia s dynastic system of rule. The Brotherhood-inspired Sahwa movement agitated in the 1990s to bring democracy to Saudi Arabia and criticized the ruling family for corruption, social liberalization and working with the West, including allowing U.S. troops into the kingdom during the 1991 Iraq war. The Sahwa were weakened by a mixture of repression and co-optation, but remain active. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt cut diplomatic and transport links with Qatar in June over its alleged support for Islamists including the Brotherhood a charge Doha denies. At a mosque in central Riyadh that protest organizers had identified as one of several potential gathering spots, the imam warned worshippers against demonstrating. All the groups that exist today and call for political action or aspire to rule they are all misguided, deviant groups headed by the Muslim Brotherhood, he said. Most people seemed to heed that message, with no demonstrations reported across the kingdom.","label":0}
{"text":"Autry Pruitt, board member of FAIRtax. org spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Friday regarding tax day rallies planned to take place across America, including in front of Trump Tower in NYC. [Said Pruitt, \"FAIRtax. org is holding a rally tomorrow and we're holding the rally to help remind President Trump of what he promised. Our fear after watching the recent events in Syria, our fear after watching what occurred with Obamacare is that President Trump is going to be urged, he's going to get a push from the media, to turn tax reform over to the establishment. \" \"And that's exactly what we do not want,\" he continued. \"So, we felt that at this time it is imperative that all the people who voted for him, who's sweat and I believe your previous guest who talked about having blood coming from their feet as they marched for him, we believe that it's imperative that we remind President Trump we were there for you. We got you there. When nobody else said you could, we said you can and you will. \" Pruitt also authored a book titled Planes, Steak Water: Defending Donald J. Trump in September of 2016. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern.","label":0}
{"text":"By now, we re all sick and tired of hearing Donald Trump whine about fake news, especially when he s team is a major creator of it.Earlier today, Trump went on one of his routine Twitter rants about fake news and unfavorable coverage, targeting unwatchable MSNBC and CNN for their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. To top it off, Trump happily endorsed Fox News, which has been proven to be the most dishonest media outlet there is.While Trump was whining about networks that tell the truth about how awful he is, CNN s Chris Cuomo hit back and completely shut him down. Cuomo pointed out that for someone who hates CNN, Trump is one of their most loyal viewers. Cuomo said: The president, as we know, watches New Day. We appreciate that viewership. He does not want to talk to us, but he does want to talk about us, and yet, this situation is different. He has said nothing to rebut the facts of this situation. On top of that, Cuomo and his colleagues spent the entire morning reporting on the details that Trump s senior advisors had been in constant communication with Russian intelligence during Trump s presidential campaign making Trump look like a complete idiot.Cuomo also pointed out that fact that Trump hasn t been able to give an answer regarding Russia s involvement in the election or General Michael Flynn s communications with Russia that have now caused him to resign just 24 days after beginning his role as national security advisor. Cuomo said: Who knew? The idea that Flynn had to resign because he was soloing with this unique agenda with Russia that nobody else knew about, nobody had told him to do and nobody participated in is hard to believe and goes without good answer from the White House. Cuomo s attack on Trump is perfect, and hopefully it ll shut him up for a while so he can actually do his job:","label":1}
{"text":"A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered the partial unsealing of a government search warrant and supporting documents stemming from a federal inquiry into emails belonging to Huma Abedin, a top aide to Hillary Clinton. The judge, P. Kevin Castel of United States District Court, ordered on Monday that the documents be posted on the court's docket at noon on Tuesday unless his decision is appealed and stayed or modified by a federal appeals court. The emails were discovered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during an unrelated investigation of Anthony D. Weiner, the former congressman and estranged husband of Ms. Abedin. Mr. Weiner has been under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan over allegations that he exchanged illicit text messages with a girl. The emails, which the F. B. I. director, James B. Comey, revealed to Congress on Oct. 28, jolted Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign and led to broad criticism of his handling of the investigation. On Nov. 6, Mr. Comey told Congress that the bureau's review of the emails had not changed its conclusion: Mrs. Clinton should face no charges over her handling of classified information. The requested unsealing of the warrant and related materials was made by E. Randol Schoenberg, a lawyer who has criticized Mr. Comey's handling of the investigation and who has written that Mr. Comey's actions cost Mrs. Clinton the presidency. Mr. Schoenberg argued in a court filing that access to the materials \"that provided the basis for the investigation are of the utmost public importance. \" Last week, a Justice Department lawyer, Jennie L. Kneedler, said the government objected to the unsealing request, but Judge Castel made it clear that he was leaning toward releasing the materials, with some redactions. He asked the government to provide the documents and proposed redactions to him under seal. In his ruling, the judge noted that the government, in its filing, \"effectively\" withdrew its opposition to Mr. Schoenberg's request and asked that the documents be unsealed with redactions. In ordering the unsealing, the judge said Mrs. Clinton had little \"privacy interest in the release of documents identifying her as the subject of this investigation. \" \"The strong presumption of access attached to the search warrant and related materials is not overcome by any remaining privacy interest of Secretary Clinton,\" the judge said. Although Ms. Abedin and Mr. Weiner are not mentioned in the ruling, their names appear to be among the redacted information, along with portions related to the investigation of Mr. Weiner. Mrs. Clinton had taken no position on the request, Mr. Schoenberg's lawyer, David B. Rankin, said in a court filing last week. Mrs. Clinton's lawyer, David E. Kendall, declined to comment on the ruling, as did Arlo a lawyer for Mr. Weiner, and lawyers for Ms. Abedin. The Justice Department also declined to comment.","label":0}
{"text":"For months Republican presidential candidates traded insults such as \"dummy,\" \"jerk\" and \"loser.\" Then, party front-runner Donald Trump repeated a supporter's description of Ted Cruz as a \"pussy.\" With the contest for the party's nomination moving into South Carolina and the stakes rising, it is possible the most disparaging discourse of the Nov. 8 election campaign is yet to come. The epithets may be characteristic of schoolyard bullies, but there is some evidence that candidates are reveling in the attention they draw. The harshest attacks elicit the biggest responses at rallies, on the Internet and on cable TV. Trump, the billionaire former reality TV star, sent a New Hampshire rally into a frenzy on Monday when he repeated the term \"pussy\" shouted by a person in the crowd, effectively questioning Cruz's manliness. Trump went on to win the state's primary the next day, ahead of the third-place Cruz by a 3-to-1 margin. \"It's one of the reasons I won. You have to be yourself,\" Trump said in a television interview on NBC's Today show. Trump later promised to clean up his foul language and to be more presidential. History suggests the language could turn even more coarse in the run-up to next Saturday's Republican nominating contest in South Carolina. It was there that U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona was accused in 2000 of fathering an illegitimate African-American child, and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in 2008 of supporting polygamy. \"These adults are acting like elementary children,\" Leslie McRobbie, a former fifth-grade schoolteacher from New Hampshire, said of this year's Republican contenders. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, this week spoke of the snark that characterized a Republican race of the past when he recalled that Ronald Reagan was described by rivals as an \"unshapely man\" and a \"yahoo\" before his election as president in 1980. Coming off the first nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, the seven remaining candidates for the Republican nomination are under pressure either to break away from the crowd or prevent others from doing so. Insults can foster that. Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, mocked more than once by Trump as a \"low-energy\" candidate, has since retaliated by tweeting that Trump was \"not just a loser,\" but also a \"liar and a whiner.\" The put-down was re-tweeted nearly 3,000 times and \"liked\" by more than 4,000 users. Cruz, responding to Trump's decision to skip a Fox News-hosted Republican debate, branded his rival \"Ducking Donald\" and sponsored a special edition filter on picture-sharing app Snapchat that featured a blond-haired duck with an exaggerated pout meant to represent the real-estate mogul. \"When we create so much of the modern campaign around the characters that are running, and not on the subjects, the natural byproduct of that is calling people names,\" said political scientist Michael Artime. Artime said that while bickering and name-calling have always existed in elections, this cycle has seen a notable uptick in the negative. \"In the past, if somebody would've said what Trump said the other night, that would have been a very damaging thing to their campaign,\" Artime said. \"The kind of politics we get is kind of the politics we deserve,\" he said. While many have gleefully or indifferently watched as candidates hurled barb after barb, others have condemned it. \"Bullying can be highly instrumental and used for social climbing,\" said Bob Faris, associate professor of sociology at University of California-Davis, who studies aggressive behavior in adolescents. \"And it works,\" he said, \"provided that kids target the right kids.\" For Trump, perhaps the most blustery of the candidates, the target is constantly changing, his numbers remaining constant in the opinion polls while he assails rivals for being \"stupid,\" \"weak\" and \"pathetic.\" \"He does look like a bully,\" Faris said. \"Donald is a whole new development. I can't think of a candidate like him.\" Presidential historian Mike Purdy, however, cites a precedent in the late Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. \"Roosevelt loved more than anything else to be the center of attention, and he had a huge, huge ego,\" Purdy said. \"They both have a certain amount of ego. They both have trouble controlling their mouths,\" Purdy said, likening Roosevelt to Trump. Purdy said Roosevelt called his onetime ally William Howard Taft a \"fathead\" during the 1912 presidential campaign, and went on to say then-rival Taft, seeking re-election at the time, had the \"brains of a guinea pig.\" Neither won the race. Purdy noted the attacks also came at the expense of substantive political discourse. \"They're incredibly personal attacks, and they're not just attacks just on somebody's position, they're attacks about personal characteristics,\" he said. \"That is part of the civility I think we need to recapture.\" On Friday, Trump suggested he agreed. \"I do this for effect,\" Trump said of his foul language in an interview with WOR Radio in New York. \"As we get closer, you will be shocked at how presidential I will be. You will be very proud of me.\" (Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Howard Goller) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters' editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.","label":0}
{"text":"The Washington game now requires that any unindicted politician with a bit of ambition \u2014 even 75-year-old Jerry Brown \u2014 let it be known that he is thinking about maybe, just possibly running for president. But here's the flip side: the media culture now demands to know whether these pols are quietly plotting a White House bid \u2014 and treats it as sort of strange if the answer is no. What do you mean you're not feverishly plotting a presidential bid three years before the next election? Is there something wrong with you? I guess we don't like to take no for an answer. Take Paul Ryan. A natural leader of the conservative movement. The Republican VP nominee last year. A man who can translate Beltway jargon into Main Street concerns. The Wisconsin congressman is in the spotlight because he just hammered out a budget agreement with Patty Murray that passed the Senate yesterday with 64 votes\u2014three fewer than supported a cloture vote\u2014after winning bipartisan approval in the House. The modest deal is noteworthy mainly because it temporarily ends the Washington gridlock and threats of shutdown and default. But it also brought sniping from more militant conservatives who see Ryan as selling out to the Democrats. The dustup triggered a spate of Whither Paul Ryan pieces in the press. Is he running? Is he not running? It's 2013 already \u2014 we have to know! \"In interviews The Hill conducted with more than two dozen House Republicans from across the ideological spectrum over the last couple of weeks, many of Ryan's colleagues said they are doubtful he will run for president in 2016. Most believe that concerns for his young family will lead him to lay claim to the job he's always wanted: chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.\" Ryan wants to be a Hill poohbah and not move into the White House. \"Ryan on Tuesday told The Wall Street Journal that he plans to lead the Ways and Means Committee in the next Congress. Ryan and his wife Janna have three children, and his friends say that his concern about the hardship of an 18-month presidential campaign is a genuine factor in his consideration.\" This is the human factor that journalists rarely pause to consider. Running for president is a meat grinder that chews people up, and Ryan got a taste of that as Mitt Romney's running mate. I don't know whether Ryan is being coy, or whether, with the highest positive rating among Iowa Republicans, he'll change his mind and jump into the race. But I do think the press ought to take him at his word until there's evidence to the contrary. I guess it wasn't a big story when John Podesta compared the Republicans to a suicide cult. But now that Podesta is joining President Obama's inner circle, Politico is asking: \"Can John Podesta Save Him?\" (Boy, that's a tall order.) In its profile of Podesta, who is stepping down as head of the Center for American Progress, this incendiary quote was slipped into the narrative without comment. White House officials, said Podesta, \"need to focus on executive action given that they are facing a second term against a cult worthy of Jonestown in charge of one of the houses of Congress.\" Podesta was comparing John Boehner to Jim Jones, who led his followers to kill themselves? Didn't that set off any alarm bells? But the quote caused a stir now that the former Bill Clinton chief of staff is joining the White House, and he tweeted an apology: \"In an old interview, my snark got in front of my judgment. I apologize to Speaker Boehner, whom I have always respected.\" Click for more from Media Buzz. Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of \"MediaBuzz\" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.","label":0}
{"text":"Allow me to begin by saying former DNC chair Howard Dean is the f*cking man. After tweeting that Donald Trump might be on cocaine a reasonable observation based on the GOP s actions during the first presidential debate he could have backed down under scrutiny. He could have caved and apologized. Instead, he made his case.Dean, a physician who is qualified to speculate though in his own words not diagnose without examining Trump in person responded to criticism of his remarks on MSNBC. I don t make diagnosis on the television, it s medically improper, he told Kate Snow Tuesday, a subtle jab at Trump and his legion of Fox News doctors feverishly trying to diagnose Clinton with every neurological disorder under the sun because she coughed that one time and contracted pneumonia the other. But I don t think this was a ridiculous idea. Something funny was going on with Trump last night. Something ridiculous was indeed going on. Trump spent his evening screaming about ridiculous conspiracy theories, attacking his opponent s stamina based on a minor illness, interrupting Clinton constantly, guzzling water, sweating profusely, and other things that would be expected from his meth-addled Twitter followers rather than a serious presidential candidate. Here s the interesting constellation: he sniffs during the presentation, which is something that users do. He also has grandiosity, which is something that accompanies that problem. He has delusions, I m not talking about being crazy, but for example when he told everybody he was very smart not to pay taxes and then denied that he said after he said it it in front of 100 million people, Dean said. He thinks somehow he s not going to get caught, that is delusional. He has trouble with pressured speech, the former Vermont governor added. He interrupted, as you pointed out, Hillary Clinton twenty-nine times. He couldn t keep himself together. Do I think at 70 years old he has a cocaine habit? Probably not, Dean concludes. But it s something that I think would be interesting to ask him, to see if he ever had a problem with that. Asked for clarification if he thinks Trump has a cocaine habit, Dean replied I don t think he has a cocaine habit, placing special emphasis on the word habit. In other words, it might be a stretch to say Trump is addicted to cocaine, but it is possible that he used it to pep himself up before the debate.In an effort to deflect from the allegation, Trump assured the public that he just had a cold, but Stephen Colbert put it best when he said The Donald sounded like he was trying to get over a cold using cocaine. We can t know for sure if Trump has ever been treated for addiction, as he refuses to release his records and since Trump should be held to the same standards to which he holds Hillary Clinton, it s not unreasonable to question if he has been using cocaine (especially given the crazy, whacked-out bonkers stuff he says in public).Watch Dean SLAY this interview below:","label":1}
{"text":"Every once in a while, the perfect pun comes along. You know them when you see them. They re so good, you have to come back and use them again and again. And in situations of discomfort, or fear, or even danger, a pun can be a lifesaver, or an icebreaker, or just something to remind everyone that not everything is serious all the time.Donald Trump presents America with those situations every day. And although there are plenty of good jokes and puns about his hair or his complexion or the likelihood that he has, um, nether regions that match his abnormally tiny hands, none of those are actually perfect. They re physical digs, and those are a dime a dozen.No, the funniest jokes about Donald Trump have to do with ironic things he does, like owning a brand of steaks and famously eating them in a way that makes Mr. Creosote himself, well, sick.But the funniest one of them all rolls right off the tongue because it s already a part of our everyday vernacular. We say Trump s ties to Big Oil, and Trump s ties to Putin s Russia, but really we could just stop at Trump s Ties: They re f*cking hilarious. And nothing is funnier than taking something that s already funny and making it even better. So today we re revisiting a Twitter account that popped up back in February specifically for the purpose of making Donald Trump s neckties even funnier than they already are:Here s Trump ruminating over the fact that the Russia investigation had by this time reached the money laundering stage.pic.twitter.com\/tF0DpZ2iUP Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) August 31, 2017Trump, Pence, and the notoriously filthy Paul Ryan engage in some three-way bondage.pic.twitter.com\/L1M6mbO8VU Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) September 2, 2017A secret affair between Trump and a top Democrat? Only the tie knows.pic.twitter.com\/vy45es2nKT Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) September 8, 2017 Florida can t be as wet as my tie right now, am I right guys? Guys? pic.twitter.com\/OFUJB2XFah Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) September 14, 2017 Trump Fires Underage Gardener For Mowing Over His Signature Power Tie pic.twitter.com\/TBnpyIGsb6 Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) September 15, 2017 No, Mister F*cking President, the Hanoi Hilton is not a hotel. pic.twitter.com\/4rgDh0Hnil Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) September 22, 2017It s too bad Pence didn t take a knee, he would ve jerked Donnie right out of the 400 level of Lucas Oil Stadium.pic.twitter.com\/Py4WQ4Wy5P Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) October 9, 2017Trump teaches Mitch that little trick Paul Ryan showed him.pic.twitter.com\/9dbBaNaP7r Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) October 16, 2017We don t know exactly who s behind the genius Twitter account, but we at least have a clue that it s a woman. After the social media giant suspended Rose McGowan s account on October 11. a hashtag surfaced called #WomenBoycottTwitter, and @TrumpsTies was among those participating in the blackout:Have a good Friday, friends. See you on the flip side. #WomenBoycottTwitter Trump's Ties (@TrumpsTies) October 13, 2017Whoever it is, I m following her. I keep checking back, because everyone knows in the age of Trump, we can all use a laugh.","label":1}
{"text":"There will be no planned announcement on Friday of U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee for FBI director, the White House said. Trump fired the former director James Comey on May 9 in a surprise announcement that sparked days of political turmoil. On Thursday, the president said he was close to choosing a replacement.","label":0}
{"text":"A bomb planted by Kurdish militants ripped into a military vehicle, killing four soldiers and wounding four more, as they traveled in southeast Turkey near the border with Iran on Wednesday morning, local authorities said. Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants were behind the attack, which occurred in the Yuksekova district of Hakkari province, the provincial governor s office said in a statement. Security sources said a large number of armored vehicles were sent to the site of the blast. The governor s office said the wounded were being treated at a nearby hospital. More than 40,000 people have been killed since the PKK launched its separatist insurgency in 1984. It is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union. The collapse of a peace process between the state and the PKK brought an end to a ceasefire in July 2015 and thousands have been killed in renewed fighting since then across mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.","label":0}
{"text":"The following statements were posted to the verified Twitter accounts of U.S. President Donald Trump, @realDonaldTrump and @POTUS. The opinions expressed are his own. Reuters has not edited the statements or confirmed their accuracy. @realDonaldTrump : - We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and\/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! [0905 EST] -- Source link: (bit.ly\/2jBh4LU) (bit.ly\/2jpEXYR)","label":0}
{"text":"0 comments  Megyn Kelly seems to think that she can get away with anything she says or does. Rupert Murdoch gave her a rude awakening when he told her that there are tons of other qualified people that would kill to take her spot.  Rupert Murdoch is making Fox News' salary negotiations with Megyn Kelly very public by granting an interview to one of the newspapers his company News Corp. owns, The Wall Street Journal. In the interview, Murdoch said that keeping Kelly is a priority, but that he has other hosts who could take over the program should she try and go to a rival network.'[W]e have a deep bench of talent, many of whom would give their right arm for that spot,' said Murdoch. Kelly, who is said to be making $15million this year, is reportedly looking to make more than $20million when she renegotiates her contract next July. She declined a request to comment on the story.  Kelly's star has continued to rise over the past year, and next month she will be releasing her first book, Settle For More. It has also been revealed that Kelly will be appearing Live With Kelly! the day after the election, marking the first time she is set to appear on Ripa's morning show as a co-host.  Her popularity is one of the main reasons Murdoch says he wants to get her contract signer 'very soon.'  He added however that whether or not Kelly stays at the network is 'up to her.' It is unclear where Kelly might land if she does not stay with Fox News, but CNN seems like a very likely possibility for the popular host. Kelly also has a huge fan in CNN head honcho Jeff Zucker, who called her a 'tremendous anchor' earlier this year. And former CNN president Jon Klein applauded Kelly for not backing down to Donald Trump in the first Republican debate when she questioned him about his treatment of women, this despite the fact that her then boss Roger Ailes was a supporter of the Republican nominee.'To be able to stand up and ask tough questions to your boss's choice of president shows a certain steeliness,' said Klein. The article also points out that Kelly also separated herself from other Fox News anchors during the internal investigation into Ailes' alleged sexual harrassment by speaking with the lawyers hired to look into the claims being made by former host Gretchen Carlson. That revelation about Kelly's speaking with investigators was confirmed by people who were familiar with the matter. Some have said that Kelly is set to be the center of Fox News after the exit of Ailes, but Murdoch shot down those claims saying: 'We're not changing direction \u2026 that would be business suicide.' Murdoch also said that he wants to make sure Bill O'Reilly also resigns with the network when his contract is up next month. One rival news executive told Vanity Fair in August that the rivalry between Kelly and O'Reilly has devolved to the point that one of them will likely leave when their contracts expire. O'Reilly shot down reports of a feud between himself and Kelly in June however, telling The Hollywood Reporter: 'Oh, that's all fabricated. She's in a totally different part of the building. The last time I saw Megyn Kelly was in Detroit in March [at the Fox News GOP debate].' Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Fox News said: '[Fox News President] Bill Shine and [Executive Vice President, Programming & Development] Suzanne Scott have maintained a close relationship with Bill and Megyn for years and have helped both of them in many instances, all while co-existing under the same roof.' Kelly has previously hinted that she would be willing to leave the network where she has worked for the last 12 years  'There's a lot of brain damage that comes from the job. There was probably less brain damage when I worked in the afternoon. I was less well known. I had far less conflict in my life,' Kelly said in an interview with Variety earlier this year.'I also have three kids who are soon going to be school from 8am to 3pm I come to work at 3:30. I like to see my children.' Kelly says she's thought about hosting her own talk show but isn't sure 'what the market looks like for that in 2016' and just doesn't think 'that's the perfect thing for me'. As for co-hosting a morning show like Today, Kelly said she's tried that before and she's not much of a morning person.'You have to wake up so early. The alarm goes off at 3:30am,' said Kelly.'When I did America's Newsroom, which started at 9am, I remember saying to the makeup artist at the time, \"If you could only know the afternoon me, you'd like me so much better.'\" She then added: 'Listen, this is a fickle business. What if they called me and fired me tomorrow? I have to keep my options open.'  Everybody is replaceable, even you Megyn!! Related Items","label":1}
{"text":"The Republican-controlled U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed President Donald Trump's nominee to serve as his administration's top advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court, overcoming united Democratic opposition. Noel Francisco, a Washington lawyer with strong conservative credentials who previously worked in Republican former President George W. Bush's administration, was confirmed by the Senate as U.S. solicitor general on a vote of 50-47. All the Senate's Democrats voted against him except for New Jersey's Robert Menendez, who is currently on trial facing corruption charges in Newark. Francisco takes up his new position as the Supreme Court prepares to begin its new term on Oct. 2. The court has several potential blockbuster cases on its docket, including the challenge to Trump's travel ban on people from six predominantly Muslim countries entering the United States. That case will be argued before the justices on Oct. 10. Francisco, who previously worked at the Jones Day law firm, will now be overseeing the Justice Department's defense of the ban and other major policy initiatives that are challenged in court. He has argued three cases at the Supreme Court. Most recently, he represented Republican former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell in a successful attempt to throw out corruption convictions. The justices ruled in favor of McDonnell last year in an 8-0 ruling that could make it tougher to prosecute politicians for corruption. Francisco served as a White House lawyer from 2001 to 2003 and spent another two years in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from 2003 to 2005. He previously worked as a clerk for the late Supreme Court conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.","label":0}
{"text":"Five candidates will be on stage Tuesday at the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2016 race in Las Vegas. Here's what each needs to do to come away in a better position at the end of the evening:","label":0}
{"text":"Rick Santorum had the impossible job of defending Donald Trump during Friday s Real Time and he found himself humiliatingly outnumbered.Bill Maher began by expressing astonishment at how the Republican nominee has been acting throughout the campaign. Even conservative commentator Tara Setmayer couldn t believe Trump s antics, surmising that it s almost like he is trying to lose but people just keep supporting him so he has to do something even more outrageous. It s easy to behave this way when you re mentally ill, director Rob Reiner chimed in. It s not like he s trying to lose. He can t help himself. Then Santorum took his turn and instantly became the punching bag for Maher and the other two panelists when he attempted to defend Trump as some kind of change-maker while portraying Hillary Clinton as a politics-as-usual candidate.Setmayer pointed at Santorum and pointed out that people like him are to blame for Trump getting this far while Rob Reiner once again pleaded, Stop being mentally ill. Santorum claimed that Trump was relatively tame on Friday, prompting Setmayer to ask if Trump seriously wants a cookie for acting like an adult for once.Maher explained that Trump can never be president because his number one priority is getting back at anybody who has slighted him in any way. Santorum continued repeating how Trump has tapped into some kind of anger among conservatives who think they are being ignored, but Setmayer hit back by noting that there s a way to do that without acting like a petulant child, and that Trump is an embarrassment.Santorum then attacked Hillary Clinton by claiming Trump isn t a liar like her by bringing up her emails again, which drew the ire of Rob Reiner. Let s talk about the FBI! There was one email! One email that was not listed as classified with a little tiny c and James Comey said anybody could have missed that! Enough of that! Enough of that! Bill Maher agreed, saying that he is sick of hearing about Hillary s emails all the time.The panel continued piling on Santorum with Setmayer doing the most damage and then Maher slammed Republicans for handcuffing themselves to a dead hooker by making Trump their nominee and catering to a base that hates and denies facts.Here s the video via YouTube:Donald Trump is an embarrassment to this country and as this episode of Maher demonstrates, even conservatives are embarrassed that he is the Republican nominee. Those who still support him are either ignorant or just want to watch the world burn.Featured Image: Screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"(Editor's note: This story contains language in the second paragraph that may offend readers) The president of Maine's state Senate on Friday said he would not pursue a special session to censure Governor Paul LePage for leaving a profanity-laden voicemail message for a lawmaker amid a dispute about the governor's comments on race and drug dealing. Senator Michael Thibodeau, who like LePage is a Republican, earlier in the week had said he was interested in a one-day special session to officially reprimand the two-term governor for calling a Democratic state legislator a \"little son-of-a-bitch, socialist cocksucker.\" But on Friday he said he would not follow the lead of state House Speaker Mark Eves, who began polling lawmakers in his chamber as to whether they were ready to call a special session \"to take action regarding the Governor's conduct.\" \"He is unfit to serve as Governor and must resign or be removed from office,\" Eves said of LePage in a statement on Friday. That query, Thibodeau said, went further than Senate Republicans were willing to go, adding that his party had been ready to vote for a one-day session to vote on an official censure of LePage, whose current term extends through 2018. \"We're not interested in coming back for impeachment,\" Thibodeau told reporters. The state House and Senate both adjourned in April and are not due to meet again until after the November elections. LePage has faced a flurry of criticism over the past week for saying that members of minority groups from out of state were responsible for the lion's share of the heroin trade in Maine. He drew further criticism after leaving a profane and widely circulated voicemail for a lawmaker that he believed had called him a racist. Earlier in the week he mused during a 15-minute radio interview about the idea of not finishing out his term, only to come back a day later to say that he would not resign. Earlier this year a group of lawmakers started an effort to impeach him, contending the governor overstepped his authority by threatening to withhold funds from a nonprofit group that hired a political rival, but that effort collapsed before making it to the full House. Under Maine's constitution, Thibodeau would have been first in line to succeed LePage if he stepped down or was removed from office.","label":0}
{"text":"I m a political refugee from Iran. I ve been to prison. I ve been under Islamic law. And I know how it starts, and I know how it ends. And it always starts with uh, for some reason unity of the left and Islamists and it scares me. So, I came here to be free. I chose Canada as my second home to live in a free country, and uh, I m beginning to get really scared. Because the way things are going, it looks like they re going to basically appease Islamists, just to not raise any ruckus. They [Islamists] see it as a sign of weakness, so they re [Islamists] are just gong to take more and more Watch:Iranian immigrant warns the West. Islamofascism \"always starts with the unity of Leftists & Islamists.\" https:\/\/t.co\/vFLOdAYjGL Tarek Fatah (@TarekFatah) March 5, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt gave Reuters a wide-ranging interview on Monday at his office in Washington, discussing issues from climate science to automobile emissions. The following is a full transcript of the interview: REUTERS: You have said the EPA will focus on a \"Back to Basics\" approach under your leadership. What does this mean for how EPA enforces polluters? You have been critical of the idea of regulation by enforcement. PRUITT: I think what I'm speaking about there is a consent decree approach to enforcement, where you use judicial proceedings to actually engage in regulation. Enforcement should be about existing regulations that you're actually enforcing against someone who may be violating that, very much in the prosecutorial manner. As attorney general [in Oklahoma], I lived that. There was a grand jury that I led. Being a prosecutor, I understand very much the importance of prioritization, of enforcing the rule of law, of addressing bad actors. That's something we are going to do in a meaningful way across the broad spectrum of cases, whether it is in the office of air or the superfund area, or otherwise. REUTERS: Do you want to see states play a bigger role in enforcing polluters, even though some have less of a capacity to do so \u2013 financially and personnel wise? PRUITT: I think the state's role is really, when you look at this office working with states it should be how do we assist, how do we engage in compliance and assistance with states. The office [at EPA that deals with enforcement] is called OECA, the Office of Enforcement, Compliance and Assistance, so those are the tools we have in the tool box to achieve better outcomes. So what we ought to be doing is working proactively with state DEQs [Departments of Environmental Quality] to get their state implementation plans [for federal regulations] timely submitted, provide assistance and technical support, drive a draft of state implementation plans and then actually work with them on how to achieve through those plans better outcomes and air and water quality. As far as enforcement is concerned we will actually work with states. We actually did that recently with Colorado, there was an oil and gas company that was emitting some 3,000 tons, is that what it was, it was quite a bit, of\u2026 it was an ozone case. In any event, we joined with Colorado in that prosecution. So sometimes states will do it, sometimes we will join with them. The importance is, in my view, that with respect to achieving good environmental outcomes, you need to use all of the tools in the toolbox to achieve that \u2013 compliance, assistance and enforcement \u2013 and use that enforcement in a meaningful impactful way to ensure that actions are addressed in a timely way. REUTERS: Some of the pending settlements that are out there \u2013 Harley-Davidson for example \u2013 where do they stand? And would you look at some of these previous settlements that were reached during the last days of the Obama administration and revisit them? PRUITT: Well, I'm not familiar with\u2026 I don't know the latest on the Harley Davidson case\u2026 My review predominantly has been with respect to the consent decrees that were being used to engage in regulation. There is a distinction there. I want to make sure I'm saying that clearly. In one instance with respect to enforcement you have a regulation that has already been adopted and a standard that has to be met and a company that is not meeting the standard that was set by regulation. That is enforcement. This is what OECA should be working with the states to address. The part that has not been handled well over the past several years is the part where you have the EPA sued by third party, not an enforcement mechanism, but sued by an NGO, and that NGO is asking the court to compel this agency to take certain steps, either through change in statute or time lines set by statute and then the agency will acquiesce through a consent decree changing the very statutory framework. That is regulation through litigation and that is inconsistent with the authority in my view of this agency. That has nothing to do with enforcement. REUTERS: What are some examples that are egregious? PRUITT: There is a host of consent decrees that I've inherited that we are evaluating on a case by case basis to see what authority we have to address those. But again, that is not enforcement that is completely under the banner of regulation by litigation. Let me say to you that it is important because Congress has said that as you engage in rulemaking you follow the administrative procedures act, which is you propose a rule, you take comment, you respond to that comment on the record, you make an informed decision and then you finalize the rule. The reason that is important is that is how you build consensus. That is how you hear from people at the state level. That is how you hear from states. That is how you hear from industry. All these various voices are heard in that process and you make a more robust and informed decision. And the merits of the rule, I think, are received better that way. And when you do it through one case, through litigation, and it is passed on to the rest of the country, voices are subverted in that process and it is not good decision-making. REUTERS: With the cheat devises used by automakers to skirt EPA vehicle emission standards, did you think that some of those penalties were too harsh? PRUITT: Look, what VW and Fiat\u2026 you've got this Fiat case that is on the horizon as well. The emails and the communications that I'm aware of: it was strategic and intentional and should be dealt with very aggressively. They knew very, very well what they did. I wouldn't call what was done too light at all. I'm fact, I would tell you that as we look forward\u2026 what VW did was very, very troublesome and we need to make sure it doesn't happen again. REUTERS: Will you model EPA enforcement after what you did in Oklahoma as attorney general? PRUITT: It is a completely different role that I had as attorney general. In fact, as I said during my confirmation process, the AG is not the enforcement arm at the state level with respect to permitting. That is DEQ. The environmental unit that we set up in the previous administration was not set up to address enforcement. It was actually set up to address a nuisance claim that was filed against a company on poultry waste that we dealt with in other ways with the state of Arkansas. Long and short of it, the role that I have here is very different from the role. As it turned out we were not the front-line enforcer. It was the DEQ and the state regulatory bodies. Now we did provide assistance to them through general counsel, and they provided support and input to them. But as far as a standalone enforcement arm, that was handled by the individual agencies in the state of Oklahoma. Which is different than here [at EPA]. We have a robust, very important role of enforcement here. We are coordinating with the regions, making sure there is consistency across the regions\u2026I tried to explain it during the confirmation hearing. Look at Superfund. People don't usually equate that with enforcement. Under the CERCLA statute [the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980] we have joint and several liability with respect to potential responsible parties, and a large percentage of our portfolio at the Superfund is through responsible parties, private funding. I think the agency has not done the best job historically at holding those private parties accountable for the amount of waste and remediation that needs to take place. We have tremendous authority. I'm going to have a very thoughtful and meaningful enforcement response to Superfund to make sure that we are achieving good outcomes for citizens across the country with respect to that entire portfolio of 1,336 or so sites. Again, that is not often thought about in terms of enforcement. We think about air, we think about permitting, but we don't often think about remediation under CERCLA and I think we have got a lot of room for improvement and opportunity to get accountability in that area. I've got a report on my desk that spent thirty or so days. I'm doing the task force recommendations right now, on how to better achieve accountability from enforcement across the board. REUTERS: But the administration's proposed budget for FY2018 proposes severe budget cuts across the board, including to Superfund \u2026 PRUITT: But there aren't. There aren't budget cuts across the board. We have a Continuing Resolution until the end of April that funded us around $8 billion or so, and Congress is going through that process with respect to what the funding levels are going to be on Superfund. So the fact that we have a proposed budget\u2026 Congress is having that discussion and there haven't been any budget cuts taking place at this point and we're working with Congress to make sure that there is adequate funding to address both the enforcement side and the Superfund side. REUTERS: When you saw the president's budget proposal which called for a 31 percent cut to the EPA budget, did it worry you? PRUITT: I think there are certain parts of the agency that there is room for true legitimate cuts, and there are other parts of the agency where that is not the case - as it is in every department. But to take something like Superfund and say that whatever the proposed budget was means that we can't do what we need to do as far as our reform and accountability is just simply not accurate. Most of the challenges I've seen from the Superfund program have been related to attitude management leadership and less about money. But as I told Congress during the budget and nomination process, if I determine that we need more moneys there, we'll ask Congress, because that's the priority. Enforcement and Superfund are included in that category. When you're funding [inaudible] million dollars you've got room to cut. But I can tell you this, the core mission of the agency \u2013 improving air and water quality, addressing remediation as far as the superfund sites \u2013 those types of priorities \u2026 REUTERS: There have been reports about the EPA launching what has been called a red team-blue team review of climate change science. Can you tell us more about this? Will this lead to a re-evaluation of the 2009 endangerment finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health? PRUITT: I'm thinking about it. Steve Koonin, professor at NYU, did a very exciting piece in the Wall Street Journal called Red Team Blue Team. I scheduled time with Steve in my office the week that article came out. I didn't know it was coming out\u2026 So Steve and I were meeting about some other things, and we didn't really focus on that, but I took the opportunity to talk to him about it and \u2026 we're considering it. I think the American people deserve and honest, open, transparent discussion. What do we know? What don't we know? Does it pose an existential threat, what can be done about it? etc\u2026 There are lots of questions that have not been asked and answered. Who better to do that than a group of scientists? Red team scientists and blue team scientists getting together and having a robust discussion about that for all the world to see. So, I'm not a scientist, I'm an attorney. That does beg the question because there is a follow-up question to that, which is what can be done about it [climate change] that is statutory and legal? But as I've shared with senators in the confirmation process, Congress has never responded to this issue. If you ask people that amended the Clean Air Act in 1990, including [former Michigan Democratic] Congressman Dingle, he is endlessly quoted as saying that if you try to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act of 1990 that it would create \"a glorious mess.\" So the Clean Air Act was truly set up to address local and regional air pollutants. So, you hear often about the regulation of GHG and CO2, but there has to be a determination of what can be done. What are the tools in the toolbox? If the tools are not in the toolbox to address this issue, I can't, and this agency can't, just simply make it up. We can't re-imagine authority. The past administration tried to do that with its Clean Power Plan. It was extraordinary what the Supreme Court did [in its 2014 ruling on the Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA case. The court backed the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases from mobile and stationary sources but threw out its \"tailoring rule,\" which revised the statutory thresholds for requiring federal air permits for greenhouse gases.] It said a lot. It said the authority the previous administration was trying to say that they had in regulating carbon dioxide wasn't there. So there are two parts to this question: what do we know\/what don't we know? And two, what is the response\u2026the statutory response? The red team blue team is intended to be a response that provides answers to the American people\u2026 the American people deserve, in my view, an open transparent honest discussion about this issue\u2026. So we are contemplating being a part of that process. REUTERS: The consensus has been overwhelming that climate change has been caused by human beings\u2026 PRUITT: That's not the question. It is not a question about whether the climate is warming. It is not a question about whether human activity contributes to it. It is a question about how much we contribute to it? How do we measure that with precision? And by the way, are we on an unsustainable path? And what harm...is it causing an existential threat? There is another great piece in the New York Times by Brett Stephens, I think it was, that talked about the climate of complete certainty. His whole premise is that there is a basis of consensus we know but the politicians have done what? Created an elasticity approach. They've stretched it so far that it's reached a point where the credibility is being strained. That article, along with the red-team blue-team, I think those book-end this approach where we have a discussion about that. Some of the blue team scientists \u2013 they say oh we are not going to participate in that. Why not? Why don't you want to participate? It's like the New York Yankees according to them. It's like the New York Yankees playing a Little League team. If you're going to win and if you're so certain about it, come and do your deal. They shouldn't be scared of the debate and discussion. That's what science is all about. That's what scientific debate is about. Let's get red team scientists in. Let's get blue team scientists in. Let's let them question one another. That would be exciting to see. REUTERS: But what would it look like? PRUITT: It's in its formative stages. The idea is a good idea because it's an idea that advances science. It advances discussion. It advances transparency. It advances for the American people to consume and participate through this debate because there is not consensus on this issue. How do we know that? There has been no policy response. That's why we haven't seen Congress act because there has been such a question. It's not a question about whether warming is happening or whether we are contributing to it. That's not what we are debating. It's how much? To what degree? The precision of measurement. Does it pose a meaningful threat? Is it unsustainable? There is a host of questions that will be asked and answered during the process. It's exciting. REUTERS: But how would this be brought to the public? Would you put it on television? PRUITT: \"I think so. I think so. I mean, I don't know yet, but you want this to be open to the world. You want this to be on full display. I think the American people would be very interested in consuming that. I think they deserve it.\" REUTERS: How do you guarantee the objectivity of scientists? Make sure there are no conflicts of interest? PRUITT: That's why the red team blue team matters. Steve modeled this after national security and defense [exercises] - they kind of check one another. There is a consumption, an evaluation and interpretation. They will check one another. REUTERS: Congress hasn't legislated on the endangerment finding. Will this scientific review lead to a review of the endangerment finding? PRUITT: You have the 2007 Massachusetts vs. EPA ruling which most people misinterpret. Mass vs. EPA didn't say to the EPA that you must regulate CO2. What Mass vs. EPA said is that you must make a decision whether you regulate or not. You can't just simply not make a decision. That was whole thing about Mass vs. EPA. And then what happened in post script. What happened post script was in 2009 with the endangerment finding but that was for mobile sources. That's another thing that important. The endangerment funding was focused on mobile sources \u2013cars \u2013 and section 111 [of the Clean Air Act]\u2013 what the [Obama administration] Clean Power Plan dealt with \u2013 was stationary sources. And they are separate requirements under section 111 of the Clean Air Act. There are a lot of process\/ legal-related issues here that the previous administration didn't comply with. But the endangerment finding is only on the mobile side. When I say Congress hasn't responded, you've had a court case and an endangerment finding and then you've had an agency engage in regulatory response \u2013 by the way using tools currently in the Clean Air Act \u2013 and failed twice. They tried to respond to the endangerment finding by regulating under section 111 and failed and failed with the UARG decision (with the tailoring rule). So the question is begged \u2013 what are the tools in the toolbox? I talked about that in my confirmation hearing. I've talked about that with individual senators. It's something that Congress has to ask and answer. We have no authority except that which Congress gives us. We can't just simply make it up. The previous administration made it up with WOTUS [the Waters of the United States act]. They re-imagined authority in defining the Waters of the United States to include things that included dry creek beds and puddles. It just went too far and the sixth circuit struck that down or put a stay in place and did the same with CO2. This Supreme Court has been very, very clear that this agency, like any other agency in the federal government, can't simply re-imagine authority and a large authority beyond the statutory text. The scientific review \u2013 the red team blue team discussion \u2013 is intended to have an open transparent debate about something that is a policy issue that is extremely important in this country that is not taking place. The endangerment finding in 2009 was based on IPCC [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] information not on the science of this agency. The red team blue team is intended to provide that type of vehicle, mechanism, to have an open debate, discussion. REUTERS: So you might take a look at the endangerment finding? PRUITT: That's not what this is about. What this is about is exactly what I described. REUTERS: Let's move on to the California waiver, which allows California to set its own more stringent emissions standards for vehicles. Is that something the EPA will review or change? PRUITT: It's not under review right now. REUTERS: Will you review it in the future? PRUITT: The governor of California and I have traded correspondence with respect to California's role \u2013 very important. Congress has recognized it. They were regulating air quality before the Clean Air Act was adopted in 1972, which is why the California waiver exists. We've reached out to the California governor as part of our CAFE midterm review in 2018. I'm hopeful that the state of California, the governor there, will respond with reciprocity and we are working through that process. REUTERS: Are there any meetings taking place now with automakers? PRUITT: I don't know what conversations have taken place between automakers and California. The president and I were in Detroit announcing that the midterm review was going to take place when it should have taken place which is April of 2018, which is 16 months early, which occurred January this year. We restored process there and order there. We're going through the process now and we've reached out to California and believe that it is important to have a holistic discussion with California and we're optimistic that they will respond with reciprocity. REUTERS: On the Renewable Fuel Standard- How seriously is the EPA taking the proposal by Trump advisor and billionaire investor Carl Icahn to move the point of obligation? PRUITT: As you know, 18,000 comments were submitted. That was actually the process that began late in the last administration. We are still reviewing those comments. But the RFS is something \u2013 look, it's a statute that Congress has passed. And Congress \u2013 I take seriously the importance of enforcing a statute that Congress has passed and there are some challenges to that statute as you know. there are targets that have been put in prescriptively in the statute such as billions of gallons of cellulosic being blended into the fuel supply when I think the last numbers we had as far as produced numbers are around 190 million that's actually production. That's a problem and it makes it tough administering the statute. I think whatever waiver authority we use we use it judiciously. Tied to production and actual market demand. Our job is to fulfill the objectives as best as possible of the statute and we're going to do that. The RVOs [renewable volume obligations] were supposed to be published every year in November. The past administration didn't do that timely. We are. We are going to have those out in November. We're on path to do that which is very good for people across the country to know what is expected of them. That's going to be done timely. We just released our proposed volume numbers and the preamble and in the language of the RVOs we talked about production demand market realities with respect to those advanced fuels. We are seeking to do our job there in a very meaningful way. There is a lot of discussion on Capitol Hill about the statute and perhaps a bipartisan approach to update the statute because it actually expires in 2022 and so there's a lot of discussion about trying to update the statute. It's well received here and I encourage Congress to continue that. REUTERS: What is your strategy with your legal defense of your moves to undo the Obama era rules? The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals last week denied your bid to delay the Obama administration's regulations on methane. PRUITT: There are various authorities. That (methane case) was a case about our authority to stay certain rules. That's distinct from withdrawing rules. On WOTUS [the Waters of the United States rule] we've actually proposed a withdrawal. I signed that on June 27 on energy dominance week. I think that our section 307 stay that we used there was because we were up against the compliance time and try to use authority that we thought was well established. We are going to respond to that accordingly. But going forward\u2026 I think it was a case focused on the facts of that particular case. I don't think it says anything to us with respect to authority we have to stay under section 705 of the administrative procedures act or section 307 of the Clean Air Act. Those are well established procedures we have. We will use them accordingly as necessary. That's what we are doing on the Clean Power Plan. We have a proposed rule to withdraw the CPP. What comes next is yet to be determined but what we do know with regards to that particular rule is that SCOTUS has issued a stay against it which means there is a likelihood of success on the merits as far as it being inconsistent with statutory authority and so it's not wise of this agency to use resources to advance the defense of a rule that maybe deficient. We are going to withdraw that and see what our authority is- the tools in the toolbox on that particular issue. REUTERS: On Paris and climate change, polls show younger people are more supportive of U.S leadership on climate change. How do you explain your decision to a younger generation? PRUITT: That's not what Paris was about. I get what you're saying but here's the deal though. It was not about whether the U.S. is going to continue leading on reducing our CO2 footprint because Paris didn't actually do that. Paris was a bumper sticker. Go back and read the articles about the criticism that was levied on the environmental left. They were very critical and dismissive of the Paris agreement. You know why? Because China didn't have to do anything until 2030 and India conditioned all of their obligations upon receiving two and a half trillion dollars of aid. Russia, India and China contributed 0 dollars to the Green Climate Fund. People have short memories there. We are already at pre 94 levels and we exited Kyoto in 2001 and from 2000 to 2014 we reduced our CO2 foot print by 18 plus percent. That's better than others across the globe. When people really want action and meaningful outcomes with regards to this, we are doing it. We are at pre-1994 levels. Paris was not in my view \u2013 it shouldn't be symbolic or optical with respect to whether progress or no progress is being made in CO2 reduction. REUTERS: What do you think about the argument some major fossil fuel companies like Exxon and Cloud Peak Energy (coal company) made that it is better for the US to remain in the Paris agreement because it gives them a competitive advantage? I don't understand that argument. I just simply don't understand that argument because if they are saying that the technology that is being developed domestically that we are not going to be able to export and other countries will be interested in? Where is the evidence of that? China is still building coal facilities to the tune of almost one a day. They had 800 planned and they have scaled that back. India is going to continue burning coal. What we ought to be doing is exporting technology and innovation to help them do it cleaner. It is not the job of this agency and it shouldn't be the job of any regulatory body to force or pick winners and losers in the energy mix. We need fuel diversity as far as the generation of electricity because you can only get so much natural gas through the pipelines. So if there is an attack on your infrastructure with regards to the pipes and how natural gas is delivered to generate electricity, what do you do? You have to have a solid amount of hydrocarbons \u2013 coal stored on site \u2013 that allows you to address peak demand. If GDP growth is going to continue at 3 percent, then you've got to have [fuel] diversity- it's energy security across the board. It's unwise in business to have one client or two clients. It's unwise in electricity to have one source or two sources. In Oklahoma \u2013 18 percent of our electricity is wind generated. This is an all of the above approach and EPA should not get in the business of foisting upon the markets decisions to say don't burn fossil fuels. The past administration was unapologetic. That's not what regulation should be about. Now Paris? Paris was a bad business deal for this country at the end of the day. It put us at an economic disadvantage. The US has never been about agreeing to targets. In this case, 26 - 28 percent [**the U.S. pledge for emissions reductions under the Paris agreement] in this instance. Every rule that the previous administration adopted\u2026Their entire climate action plan \u2013 fell 40 percent short. It was failed from the very beginning. So why did they go to Paris and agree to 26-28 percent targets? Because it provided exposure domestically. Third party groups \u2013 NGOs \u2013 could sue this agency and say you need to do more under section 115 of the Clean Air Act [a section of the CAA that enables the United States to work cooperatively with other nations to address trans-boundary air pollution]. So there was legal exposure and we were already leading the world with respect to CO2 reduction. To interpret the president \u2013 who said by the way engagement, renegotiate or another agreement \u2013 but the Paris agreement is bad for this country and doesn't achieve good environmental outcomes. We have nothing to be apologetic about with regards to what we are already going. It was absolutely a decision of courage and fortitude and truly represented an America First strategy with respect to how we are leading on this issue. Germany is burning more coal. REUTERS: Didn't the US position on Paris isolate the United States at G20? PRUITT: The past administration was all about words. This administration is all about action. Look at the actions this country has taken. We have reduced our greenhouse gas levels to pre 1994 levels primarily through technology and innovation, not through government mandate. We have nothing to be apologetic about with the rest of the world. And if we really want to do something about reducing the CO2 footprint, then hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling need to be exported to China and India and Europe because that has created the greatest reduction in CO2. And nuclear. Why is Germany going away from nuclear? They are abolishing their nuclear portfolio and increasing what? Their CO2 emissions. Why doesn't anyone talk to chancellor Merkel about that? REUTERS: Do you ever talk to your kids about climate change? Do they agree with you? PRUITT: My kids are wonderfully talented individuals and their world view is wonderful. They look at these issues in a smart way and I think they would probably echo the things that I have shared.","label":0}
{"text":"The Democratic National Committee announced Friday that it is still holding onto most of the money it received from Hollywood mogul and alleged sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein.The DNC will donate just ten percent of the almost $300,000 received from Weinstein, money that will go to organizations close to the Democratic Party: EMILY s List, Emerge America, and Higher Heights, all of which predominately help Democratic candidates running for office. The DNC s response to the Harvey Weinstein matter is shockingly bad even by Washington standards, Alexandra Smith of the conservative opposition research firm America Rising said. Donating a mere 10 percent of the entire Weinstein contribution to another left-leaning political action committee is a complete embarrassment. The mission statement of EMILY s List is: We elect pro-choice Democratic women to office. Emerge America adds ethnic diversity to that same basic mission, proclaiming its intent to increase the number of Democratic women leaders. Higher Heights goal is to help black women get elected; the Center for Responsive Politics notes that it gives exclusively to Democrats.Some Democratic politicians are donating money received from Weinstein to nonprofits helping victims of sexual violence, while others have remained silent on the matter. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) announced he would donate his Weinstein money to several charities supporting women following a Washington Free Beacon report about Democrats inaction. WFB","label":1}
{"text":"The United Nations aviation agency is backing the creation of a single global drone registry, as part of broader efforts to come up with common rules for flying and tracking unmanned aircraft. While the International Civil Aviation Organization cannot impose regulations on countries, ICAO has proposed formation of the registry during a Montreal symposium this month to make data accessible in real time, said Stephen Creamer, director of ICAO s air navigation bureau. The single registry would eschew multiple databases in favor of a one-stop-shop that would allow law enforcement to remotely identify and track unmanned aircraft, along with their operator and owner. The initiative comes at a time when drone usage is soaring in the United States, Europe and China, raising privacy concerns and fears of collisions with commercial jets. You ve got to have some commonality so that you re not carrying five receivers in your police car, Creamer said in an interview on Thursday. It s not yet clear who would operate such a database, although ICAO could possibly fill that role. The proposal, however, could face push back from users, after hobbyists successfully challenged the creation of a U.S. drone registry by the Federal Aviation Administration in court earlier this year. ICAO will host the symposium from Sept 22-23 on issues like registering and tracking drones, along with geofencing-like systems to prevent their operation in restricted areas. The talks will be at an event attended by experts and companies like Google, Rockwell Collins (COL.N) and Amazon.com (AMZN.O), according to the meeting program schedule. Montreal-headquartered ICAO, which normally sets standards for international civil aviation that are adopted by its 191-member countries, was asked to assist in the development of more uniform domestic drone regulations because the remotely-piloted aircraft are sold and flown globally. They (drone makers) are worried that Europe might create one set of standards, United States might do a second and China might do a third. And they ve got to build a drone differently in these different environments, Creamer said. Parimal Kopardekar, a principal investigator for Unmanned Aircraft System Traffic Management (UTM) at the NASA Ames Research Center in California said he supported the drone industry developing around the world with common operating standards. I think it s smart that ICAO is trying to harmonize it, he said by phone. If you have a drone that you build in one country you should be able to use it in another country and vice versa.","label":0}
{"text":"The poor little ISIS-inspired, chain migration, snowflake, terrorist can t even walk by a Christmas poster without being triggered. How long before Mayor DeBlasio starts the dialogue about removing triggering signs of Christmas from NYC, so as not to offend non-Christians? The taxi driver behind the failed terror attack in a New York City told investigators he meant to detonate his homemade pipe bomb in the busy subway station after seeing the walls festooned with Christmas posters in revenge for violence against Muslims all over the world.While initial reports suggested the crude pipe bomb, made from a pipe, a 9-volt battery, match heads, sugar, Christmas tree lights and screws, had detonated prematurely, suspect Akayed Ullah, 27, insisted he set off the bomb deliberately.Ullah, who was arrested and taken for questioning after the bomb only partially detonated, told police he was walking through the underground tunnel at 7.20am, between the Port Authority station towards Times Square, when he saw the Christmas-themed posters on the wall, which reminded him of ISIS calls last month for militants and lone wolves to attack holiday markets. He acknowledges he purposely set it off then and there, a senior law enforcement official told the New York Post.The Bangladeshi immigrant added that he was specifically inspired by ISIS, not Al-Qaeda .Authorities say that if the explosive had fully detonated in the busy Midtown Manhattan subway station, there would have been more injuries and doubtless loss of life.The attack came days after Ullah s Brooklyn neighbors say they heard a huge row coming from his home, reporting yelling and screaming over the past two nights.Ullah, who was allowed to stop and pray multiple times during his interrogation, was taken to Bellevue Hospital to be treated for serious burns and lacerations to his abdomen and hands but is expected to survive. At the hospital, the Brooklyn resident told investigators that he was inspired to carry out the attack by the recent flare ups between Israelis and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.Monday s attack was the first terror attack on U.S. soil since that proclamation, but only one of many violent demonstrations across the world since the controversial move was announced last Wednesday. It was also the second time in two months that New York City was the target of a terrorist attack.President Trump said in a statement that lax immigration policies were to blame for the attack, and urged Congress to enact legislative reforms to protect the American people .Authorities say Ullah took the A train subway to the Port Authority Bus Terminal stop Monday morning, and started walking east towards Times Square via an underground terminal when a pipe bomb hidden underneath his clothes prematurely exploded. Law enforcement officials don t believe the passageway was the intended target since the low-tech bomb attached to Ullah with Velcro and zip ties did not explode fully.The chemical explosive appears to have ignited but the pipe itself did not burst. Screws were found at the scene, indicating that they may have filled the pipe and were intended to be used as shrapnel.In the end, Ullah was the only one seriously injured by the explosive (three others reported to hospitals for ringing in the ears and headaches). Daily Mail","label":1}
{"text":"A North Carolina sheriff's office said on Monday it would not charge Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump or his campaign with \"inciting a riot\" at a rally in the state last week. North Carolina is one of five states holding Republican and Democratic primary elections on Tuesday in the race to select candidates for November's U.S. presidential election. The Cumberland County Sheriff's Office, based in Fayetteville, earlier had said it was reviewing whether Trump or his campaign incited a disturbance at a rally last Wednesday. At the rally in Fayettsville, John McGraw, a 78-year-old white Trump supporter, was arrested on a misdemeanor assault charge after he was seen on video punching a 26-year-old black protester in the face. On Monday evening, the Sheriff's Office said in a statement it would not seek a warrant or indictment for Trump or his campaign over the incident. \"The Sheriff's Office legal counsel advised, and the Sheriff concurred, that the evidence does not meet the requisites of the law as established under the relevant North Carolina statute and case law to support a conviction of the crime of inciting a riot,\" the office said. In North Carolina, \"inciting to riot\" is a legal charge that can apply to a public disturbance and does not necessarily involve a full-scale riot. The offense can be classified as a misdemeanor or a more serious felony. During a trip on Monday to North Carolina, Trump rejected suggestions that his language was to blame for recent clashes at his rallies. The 69-year-old New Yorker leads a field of four Republican candidates vying for the party's presidential nomination.","label":0}
{"text":"While President Donald Trump amasses praise from labor unions and work advocates for his cracking down on abuse within the visa program, the U. S. Chamber of Commerce is distressed by the executive order. [The U. S. Chamber of Commerce slammed Trump's order, which mandates that the Departments of Justice, Labor, and Homeland Security conduct legal reviews of the system and its impacts on American labor. \"Economic growth requires a skilled workforce, so it should be a priority to make sure American workers have the skills required to fill open jobs with American companies,\" the Chamber wrote in a statement. \"It would be a mistake to close the door on workers from around the world who can contribute to American businesses' growth and expansion and make the U. S. more competitive around the world. The program plays an important role in addressing this need, but it can be improved. \" The U. S. Chamber of Commerce's statement also claims the organization supports Trump's 'Buy American' initiative, but said \"expanding current 'Buy American' rules in U. S. law would make it more difficult to spur growth and jobs here at home. \" Rather than reforming or ending the visa program, which gives at least 85, 000 U. S. jobs to foreign workers every year, the Chamber said they would prefer an expansion. \"If the goal is to grow the economy and create jobs, which the administration has indicated, it's important to open more procurement markets for American companies and attract the best and brightest talent,\" the statement read. \"We look forward to working with the administration to accomplish those shared goals. \" The U. S. Chamber of Commerce touts their support for \"a legal status\" for illegal immigrants on their website, despite the harmful impacts it would have on American workers. As Breitbart News has reported, there are perhaps 1. 8 million foreign guest workers in the U. S. despite 4 million young Americans entering the workforce every year. If the visa program had never been introduced and enacted, computer science job availability in the labor market would be up 11 percent and wages in the tech industry would have increased by five percent, Breitbart News reported. With American voters, the visa remains incredibly unpopular, since only 30 percent of Americans said in a recent poll that the visa is necessary, Breitbart Texas reported. John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.","label":0}
{"text":"Monday, 31 October 2016 Wrong  After being accused of trying to make America Great Again by grabbing another pussy, the man who is trying to break the Guinness Book of world records for the most lies told during a presidential campaign, Donald Trump is crying \"Wrong\" again!  Just when you thought Donald Trump had more lawsuits than total number of sniffles ever recorded during a live speech, more women have come forward to prove he's pointing the wrong finger by showing him their middle ones.  Sexual Assault accusations are pouring in like Viagra Falls between Trumps legs. Donald Trump has been responding by abusing the word \"Sue\" because it's a womans' name, while his wife Melania Trump continues defending poor little Donald like the mother in denial making excuses for her baby boy who keeps crying \"Wrong\" while getting in trouble.  Voters fear Donald Trump is so full of malarkey, it's making him turn more orange. Donald Trump just received the 2016 Pinocchio award while donors ran to GOP customer service asking for a refund on the broken product they purchased. The few GOP members that have Donald's back, continue to look for their balls they lost on Trumps golf course. Donald Trump's response to every accusation is \"wrong\"!","label":1}
{"text":"The uproar at the University of Notre Dame over Vice President Mike Pence's upcoming commencement address has escalated, as students are now claiming that his presence on campus will make them feel \"unsafe. \"[Seniors Imanne Mondane and Jourdyhn Williams have started a whiteboard message campaign to express their concern over the selection of Mike Pence as the university's commencement speaker. Over the past week, Mondane and Williams have taken photographs of students with quotations from Pence that the two seniors feel are \"racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic. \" \"For me personally, [Pence] represents the larger Trump administration,\" Senior Immane Mondane told The Observer, the newspaper of the University of Notre Dame and the nearby St. Mary's College. \"His administration represents something, and for many people on our campus, it makes them feel unsafe to have someone who openly is offensive but also demeaning of their humanity and of their life and of their identity. \" \"I know that during his time as governor of Indiana and also during his campaign trail, along with Trump, he has made offensive statements towards minority groups that affect me, like women and \" Williams claimed. Williams argues that the selection of Pence as the university's commencement speaker contradicts with the school's Catholic mission. \"I feel that is offensive to such a large population here at Notre Dame, and I also believe it goes against certain Catholic Social Teaching, which is something the University likes to broadcast that it stands behind, but it picks and chooses when it wants to stand behind them,\" Williams complained. Encouragingly, Mondane has organized a discussion on her concerns and has invited students of all political persuasions to attend and voice their opinions. \"We're going to have a discussion in the weeks to come,\" Mondane said. \"Everyone is welcome to the discussion, and we're going to have an event and advertise, but we really want to get the voices there who may not agree with us and who may take issue with what we're doing. We both have an equal platform, and we're on an equal playing field where one narrative isn't totally dominant of the other. \" Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"Once U.S. President Donald Trump returns from his overseas trip, the White House plans to launch its most aggressive effort yet to push back against allegations involving Russia and his presidential campaign, tackling head-on a scandal that has threatened to consume his young presidency. Trump's advisers are planning to establish a \"war room\" to combat mounting questions about communication between Russia and his presidential campaign before and after November's presidential election, while bringing new aides into the White House, administration officials and persons close to Trump told Reuters. The strategic shake-up comes as Republicans in Washington increasingly have fretted that the probe, continued chaos in the West Wing and Trump's steady slide in opinion polls will derail the president's drive to reform healthcare, cut taxes and rebuild the nation's infrastructure. Upon Trump's return, the administration will add experienced political professionals, including Trump's former campaign manager, and possibly more lawyers to handle the Russia probe, which has gained new urgency since the Justice Department appointed a special counsel to head the investigation, the sources said. Beyond pushing back at suggestions that Moscow is unduly influencing Trump's administration, the messaging effort will also focus on advancing Trump's stalled policy agenda and likely involve more trips out of Washington that will feature the kind of raucous rallies that were the hallmark of Trump's campaign. A person in regular touch with the White House said it needed a different structure to focus on the \"new reality\" that there would be continued leaks to the media from the law enforcement and intelligence communities, leaks that have increased in frequency since Trump fired former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey on May 9. \"Since the firing of Comey, that really exposed the fact that the White House in its current structure ... is not prepared for really a one-front war, let alone a two-front war,\" the person said. \"They need to have a structure in place that allows them to stay focused\" while \"also truly fighting back on these attacks and these leaks.\" The White House declined to comment on plans for a \"war room\" but said Trump will be looking to expand on momentum it believes it has built up during the president's trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Europe. A White House official confirmed plans to hold more rallies. Trump returns to Washington on Saturday from his first trip abroad as president. \"The president has had an incredibly successful trip overseas and the White House looks forward to continuing an aggressive messaging strategy to highlight his agenda when we return to D.C.,\" said White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders. Jared Kushner, a senior adviser to Trump, will be involved in the new strategic messaging operation, as will Steve Bannon, another top adviser who specializes in managing Trump's populist appeal and shaping his political image, the sources said. Bannon and Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, have been laying the groundwork for the plan this week, they added. On Thursday, NBC News and the Washington Post reported that Kushner, who held several meetings with Russian officials following the election, is a focus of the probe, making him the first current White House official to be caught up in it, although Kushner, who is Trump's son-in-law, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. Corey Lewandowski, Trump's former campaign manager, is also expected to be part of the effort. Lewandowski, who has been seen in the White House recently, could join the administration as early as next week, a source close to him said. Lewandowski was fired by Trump in June 2016 over concerns that he was not experienced enough to oversee the general election fight against Democrat Hillary Clinton, but has remained a trusted adviser to Trump and a steadfast defender of the president on news programs. This month, the Justice Department named Robert Mueller, a former FBI director, as an independent special counsel in the probe. Trump has been frustrated of late that his communications team hasn't done a more effective job at making the case that he isn't implicated in the Russia probe and highlighting his administration's successes, sources close to the president said. The White House declined to comment on the president's frustrations. Another Republican close to the White House said the new team is taking a page out of former President Bill Clinton's playbook. When Clinton faced impeachment in the late 1990s, he assembled a crisis-management operation that dealt with fallout from his affair with Monica Lewinsky while allowing the rest of the White House to deal with day-to-day policy matters. \"The goal of the White House is to try and contain the crisis and media coverage of the special counsel,\" the Republican said. Christopher Ruddy, chief executive of Newsmax Media and a Trump friend, said he expects the president will travel more when he returns from overseas and encouraged the White House to focus on issues that pump up his base voters. \"From my perspective, I think the president should be doing the stuff that he does best, which is talking about his agenda: jobs, trade and security,\" Ruddy said. Trump has scheduled a political rally for next week in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The White House said other similar events are in the planning stages. Republicans in Congress are aching for Trump to leave the distraction of the Russia probe aside and focus on legislation and nominating officials to fill the hundreds of vacant slots across the administration. \"What we really want to be able to do is tend to our business,\" Mike Rounds, a Republican Senator from South Dakota, told Reuters. \"We've got a healthcare bill we're working on. We've got tax reform that we think is important.\" Some of Trump's donors, too, say they are concerned. Stanley Hubbard, a billionaire radio mogul from Minnesota, said he worries that the White House continues to be distracted by the Russia scandal, but laid some of the blame on Trump himself. \"He talks when he shouldn't,\" he said. Former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said this week that Trump's time in office has been a \"complete disaster\" aside from foreign affairs. Boehner, a fellow Republican, told an energy conference he supported efforts to \"get to the bottom\" of any potential interactions between Trump associates and the Russian government but described any calls to impeach Trump as the purview of \"the crazy left-wing Democratic colleagues of mine.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Last month, about 50 new movies opened in New York and Los Angeles. Some, like a Robert De Niro vehicle called \"The Comedian,\" showed up in one or a handful of theaters to qualify for Oscar consideration. Some showed up everywhere. (Hi, \"Assassin's Creed. \" Hello, \"Rogue One. \") Who's got time to see them all? But just in time for Sunday's Golden Globes broadcast, we plucked four movies from the glut to discuss on \"Still Processing\": \"Fences,\" directed by and starring Denzel Washington the romance \"Passengers,\" with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt the Los Angeles romantic musical \"La La Land,\" starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling and \"Patriots Day,\" about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, starring a bunch of people but especially Mark Wahlberg. Jenna calls that one \"the perfect movie for our time. \" We like a couple. We're mixed on another. And one we hate. That's life \u2014 at the movies, anyway. We also had to take a minute to express our heartfelt sympathies for \u2014 and total bafflement about \u2014 Mariah Carey's New Year's Eve debacle: so uncomfortable, so funny, so, so her. From a desktop or laptop, you can listen by pressing play on the button above. Or if you're on a mobile device, the instructions below will help you find and subscribe to the series. On your iPhone or iPad: 1. Open your podcast app. It's a preloaded app called \"Podcasts\" with a purple icon. (This link may help.) 2. Search for the series. Tap on the \"search\" magnifying glass icon at the bottom of the screen, type in \"Still Processing\" and select it from the list of results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, tap on the \"subscribe\" button to have new episodes sent to your phone free. You may want to adjust your notifications to be alerted when a new episode arrives. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, tap on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you'll be able to stream the episode. On your Android phone or tablet: 1. Open your podcast app. It's a preloaded app called \"Play Music\" with an icon. (This link may help.) 2. Search for the series. Click on the magnifying glass icon at the top of the screen, search for \"Still Processing\" and select it from the list of results. You may have to scroll down to find the \"Podcasts\" search results. 3. Subscribe. Once on the series page, click on the word \"subscribe\" to have new episodes sent to your phone free. 4. Or just sample. If you would rather listen to an episode or two before deciding to subscribe, click on the episode title from the list on the series page. If you have an internet connection, you'll be able to stream the episode.","label":0}
{"text":"A Kosovo prosecutor withdrew his bid on Thursday to extradite a Turkish citizen accused by Turkey of being part of a group linked to a failed coup there in 2016, saying Ankara had not provided enough evidence to back the case. Ugur Toksoy was arrested in October at the request of prosecutors in the Turkish region of Hatay, on charges of working for an NGO in Kosovo linked to U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of masterminding a failed coup attempt in 2016. The Hatay prosecutors said Toksoy had participated in the attempted coup. Gulen has denied any involvement in the attempted coup. The Kosovo prosecutor told the judge in withdrawing his case that he had asked the Turkish embassy to provide more evidence but had not received any. He said he could start the case again if Turkey sends more evidence. Justice in Kosovo has won with this verdict because there was no evidence for extradition, Toksoy s lawyer Adem Vokshi said after the session was over. If Turkey had proof about him, they would have sent it by now. Toksoy is one of two Kosovo-based Turks named on a Turkish wanted list of 11 people issued by the public prosecutor in Hatay province bordering Syria and seen by Reuters. The others are listed as living in Austria, Thailand, Mauritania, Romania and Lithuania. Gulen-linked schools and foundations have been facing funding problems and closing in the Balkans and elsewhere. Kosovo has refused to close Gulen schools on its soil, while Turkish government-supported schools are also being opened across the country. Turkey remains one of the biggest supporters of Kosovo s independence and its companies run the country s sole airport, own electricity distribution and have won the tenders to build two highways worth around $2 billion.","label":0}
{"text":"There are moments in life when you have to admit you made mistakes. However, for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, this is not one of those moments. To be blunt, he s having a very bad week. Not only is Christie no longer in the running for the White House, he made the bizarre choice to endorse Donald Trump on the same weekend that Trump wouldn t disavow the Ku Klux Klan. And it even seems as if Trump isn t that thrilled with the support, telling Christie that he should just go home. Christie claims he s proud to support Trump, but his actions at a recent press conference suggest otherwise. He insisted that he only be asked questions that were on-topic, and anytime he was asked about Trump he would go off into a rehearsed non-answer to avoid the subject. He said things, such as: No, I won t permit you to. I told you that there s going to be only on-topic questions today. So, permission denied. That s an off-topic question. I think you understand that I m answering on-topic questions today. And then when asked why he wouldn t answer any questions related to Trump, he responded with the maturity level of a four-year-old being asked to eat his peas: Because I don t want to. At this point the New Jersey governor should just go back to his state to take care of business instead of try to hold on to whatever remaining spotlight he can. He should do so not only for his state, but also for his dignity.Christie, back away slowly while you still can and do your job. Both your state and your nation will appreciate it. Not only does your endorsement mean nothing to Trump, it makes you look like, to use your language, an idiot.Watch the awkward moments from the press conference here:","label":1}
{"text":"The New York Daily News has never been subtle with their covers. This is especially true when the subject of said covers is Donald Trump. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that its Sunday cover will be one of its most explosive yet, considering that Trump spent his Saturday leveling an extraordinary claim at President Barack Obama: That Obama tapped the phones at Trump Tower during the presidential campaign.On the cover, the Daily News shows an unhinged photo of Trump, with a huge headline reading NUTS! Underneath are bullet points highlighting Trump s Saturday Twitter insanity and baseless claims. Here is the image, via Twitter:Tomorrow's front page NUTS!@realDonaldTrump claims Obama tapped his phones before election https:\/\/t.co\/B1yJ9KalPd pic.twitter.com\/cr2NgJ3UqH New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) March 5, 2017The NUTS! part is most important, of course. We can no longer afford to ignore a very important fact: The man currently occupying the Oval Office is dangerously unhinged. His behavior becomes more outrageous and erratic every day. He lies pathologically, peddles conspiracy theories, threatens the free press, decries any story he doesn t like as fake news, and holds his officials hostage and forces them to lie repeatedly to the American public as well.There have been some brave souls in Congress who have openly questioned the president s mental stability most notably Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA). However, the Democrats are not in control, so they can do nothing to put safeguards in place to keep Trump s instability from endangering the nation even more than he has already. So, it s time for the GOP to step up and put country before party, and admit that they know that Donald Trump is stark raving mad and has no business being president.Until then, thank you journalists at papers like the New York Daily News for speaking truth to power. It just might be the Fourth Estate that saves us after all.","label":1}
{"text":"Former US President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, the current Democratic Party presidential nominee, have attracted billions of dollars to their own foundation to trade power and influence, Wall Street investor and analyst Charles Ortel told Sputnik.  Charles Ortel is a veteran Wall Street investment analyst who has carried out major studies into the operation of the Clinton Foundation and its legal status, and runs a blog monitoring its activities. Ortel was the whistleblower that blew the lid off the General Electric financial discrepancies in 2008. \"The Clinton Foundation has been a gigantic slush fund,\" Ortel said. \"People can donate relatively small sums to the Clinton regime and get gigantic concessions worth hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars back.\" During the four years that Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, hundreds of millions of dollars flowed into the Clinton Foundation from governments around the world, many of which then enjoyed favored treatment from the US State Department, Ortel noted. \"To the world at large, the Clintons are open for business,\" he stated. The US corporate media always refused to subject the Clinton Foundation to any kind of serious or skeptical coverage, in part because of fear of alienating the Clintons, Ortel explained. \"This is such a big story that the US press is not doing its job. What we have in 'Clinton Incorporated,' is Tammany Hall on steroids,\" he said.","label":1}
{"text":"So, if the climate scare-mongers can t frighten the adults, the next logical step is to heap angst on their children who then frighten (or better, pester) the adults into action. You need to read this ENTIRE story and watch the video near the end of the page. Finally, the United Nations Environmental Programme is spending our money to come out with scary children s fairy tales about global warming. Sedena, the Mother of the Sea, is featured in the UN Environmental Programme s latest children s book on global warming entitled Tore and the Town on Thin Ice . This book tells the story of a young boy named Tore who lives in a village in the Arctic and is upset when he loses a dog sled race. The Mother of the Sea appears in Tore s dream and informs him that the thinning ice, which caused his loss in the dog sled race, was due to man-made global warming. But that is nothing compared to what it is doing to the Mother of the Sea s own dominion and to all living creatures. She sends an owl, a polar bear, and a whale to scare poor Tore into thinking that they will become extinct during his lifetime and that our world is melting from climate changes, mostly caused by those bad people in rich countries who are spewing gases in the air from their huge cars , air conditioners and the like. In the words of the whale, children like Tore should get good and angry . The book ends with a so-called facts section, blaming climate change on the Industrial Revolution in Europe and North America and singling out the United States in particular for its contribution to the production of carbon dioxide added by humans. It claims that climate change will hit the poorer countries hardest while at the same time saying that New York along with other coastal areas could disappear beneath the waves. A psychotherapist, a true believer in the Climate Church, nevertheless argues that children should not be targeted by the climate activists it is not good for the children and it is not good for the cause. I wish she could also see that her cause is a phony one, but I m glad she is against harming children in the name of it:Climate change community groups often want to work with children. We must get into the schools, says someone and there is a nod of agreement. It s worth thinking about the psychology behind this. Why is this idea so appealing? And why is it so damaging?The appeal is clear. It s fun working with children: they re responsive, creative and willing. And it s certainly easier than working with white-van-man, frequent fliers or the oil industry. The reasons given for working with children are usually two-fold:We need to influence them while they are young. If they understand the issue and the effect of their actions, they will grow up finding it natural to care for the environment. It s a good way of getting to their parents. Who can resist their child pleading with them to change the lightbulbs because it will save a polar bear?Both reasons are suspect. The first reason assumes that instruction at best participatory, at worst didactic is the route either to action or to the inculcation of positive values towards the environment. There is little evidence for this. We know that information based campaigns have a limited impact with adults, so why should we expect children to be different? As for values these tend to be formed through experience, relationship, identification and social systems, not through information. If the school has an influence on values it will be through its culture, ethos and the relationships and experiences it offers not through the information it provides.Both reasons also raise direct ethical questions. It is easy to engage the sympathies of children with stories of damage to the natural world and images of suffering animals they will identify with. But children have very little power. Of all the sections of society who might make an impact on climate change, they have the least influence, the least agency, the least leverage. There is a real risk of raising levels of anxiety amongst children that will not only cause distress in the immediate term but will in the long term lead to those children turning against the environmental causes we hoped they might espouse.When I was 10 a speaker came to my school and told us about food shortages and starvation in the third world. I rushed home and explained to my parents that we needed to grow more food. I couldn t understand why they wouldn t accede to my idea of banding together with the neighbours and turning all our back gardens into a corn field. I was left haunted by images of dying children, guilt at my good fortune and the anxiety that feeds on powerlessness. In adolescence I became determinedly indifferent to the appeals from 3rd world charities. As an adult I have continued to find them difficult to relate to.We need to ask what happens to the child whose parents are indifferent to their attempts to get them to act? What happens to the child who is overwhelmed by stories of disasters he or she cannot influence?But the deeper question is why are adults so keen to focus on children? Why concentrate on the weakest, least influential members of society and ask them to act?Got kids? Watched as they ve been indoctrinated sorry, I mean educated about global warming over the last decade? Then you ll know what I mean. They come home from school moodily depressed about the future of our planet and, of course, what that means for their own lives. What s the point? We re all doomed! Why study? Why bother getting an education? It s futile. Sea levels are rising. Temperatures are soaring. Soon we ll all be living in a polluted hell-hole constantly battling the equivalent of the Queensland floods or the Victorian bushfires year upon year. And you want me to waste what precious time I have left studying accountancy? It s called nihilism, and it s even more terrifying to witness in your teenage children than hickeys, drunkenness, truancy, insolence, idleness, bad marks or bullying. Nihilism, or the conviction that life on Earth is totally pointless, saps the young of their energy, their ambition, and their will to strive, struggle and triumph. Extract from an online article by Rowan Dean, 17 August 2011.A postgraduate student in Oxford gets it This should be a wake-up call for all the purveyors of the politics of fear . Children are, naturally, relatively powerless and likely to feel overwhelmed by the challenges facing mankind. But as adults, we should have a greater sense of our own collective power to master problems and build better societies. Not only does jumping from one panic to another, each with disastrous consequences mobile phone radiation, BSE, SARS, crime, paedophilia, terrorism, bird flu, global warming diminish our own sense of agency, by turning childhood dreams of utopia into nightmarish visions of the future it is teaching the citizens of the future all the wrong lessons. This is one of the best videos we have seen on climate change. There are 5 parts to this series. This is Part 1:An excellent, easy to understand piece about the TRUTH surrounding phony climate cooling, warming, change:The pollution resulting from the rapid uncontrolled post-war industrial expansion spawned two environmentalist movements. One group primarily composed of physical scientists and engineers set about to directly address the pollution problems by developing facilities and legislative controls that have to date virtually eliminated industrial contamination of soil, water and air.A second group primarily composed of activists with little or no physical science background did nothing but protest against industry without ever having addressed a single environmental problem for which they created a solution.While the physical scientists and engineers worked quietly with industry solving the environmental problems, the ideology driven environmentalist activists, used dramatic alarmist rhetoric to gain media control and have become a dominant political force capable of forcing their self-serving ideologies on the general public with impunity.The Earth entered a cooling phase in 1942, and by 1970 the environmentalists found a way to blame this cooling on industrial expansion. The concept was that particulate matter from fossil fuel usage was blocking energy from the sun giving this cooling effect. This concept was incorporated as a parameter in the crude climate models of the time, and the predictions from models run by James Hansen in 1971 projected fifty years of further cooling from the increased use of fossil fuels.Only four years later, and in spite of the continued increase in fossil fuel usage global cooling came to an end, proving that the models did not have a proper physical basis for relating fossil fuel usage to global cooling.By 1988, after 13 years of global warming the ideological environmentalists developed a new tact for blaming fossil fuels. The British Government had embarked on a political campaign to promote their nuclear industry and attack the powerful coal unions by creating alarmist scenarios of runaway global warming resulting from CO2 produced by coal and other fossil fuels. This was entirely political in nature with absolutely no scientific backing, but it did make the perfect weapon for the environmentalists to promote their anti energy (and anti humanity) ideology. All that was needed was some scientific justification.As was done in 1971, climate models which were now far more sophisticated provided the science backing. Instead of blaming fossil fuels for blocking incoming solar radiation, the models removed this parameter and replaced it with a newly contrived parameter that now related global warming to the effect of fossil fuel sourced CO2 on the outgoing thermal radiation from the Earth.This model also produced by James Hansen, projected warming for the next century because of the fossil fuel CO2 emissions that were increasing at a continued accelerated rate. As with the 1971 model, the 1988 model was proven to be false when global warming ended after 1998 even as CO2 emissions continued to rise at unprecedented rates. To make matters worse since 2002, the Earth has been cooling making all of the projections clearly in the wrong direction.By even the most basic standards of ethical science, models that first predict cooling from fossil fuel usage that are discredited just four years later when warming occurs with increased usage, and then predict warming from fossil fuel usage and are again discredited ten years later as cooling reoccurs with increased usage, would be declared absolutely invalid; but when ideology is involved science protocol is totally abandoned.Impact 2009As a result of the alarmist predictions of the 1988 climate models of Hansen, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was formed under the auspices of the United Nations. This body was given a science mandate to investigate the possibility of human effects on climate to determine if the projections of Hansen were valid.The true nature of the IPCC was not that of a science based body, but that of a political body to give scientific legitimacy to false alarmist predictions in order to meet a political self serving environmentalist agenda. Since its inception, the IPCC has used its position of authority to promote its agenda to the detriment of science and even more importantly to the detriment of the global population.From 1997 to 1998 the average global temperature increased by over half a degree C and from 1998 to 1999 the average global temperature fell by over half a degree C. This was due to an extraordinary el Ni o and has nothing to do with either the greenhouse effect or CO2 emissions (CO2 emissions increased from 24.0gt\/y in 1997 to 24.2gt\/y in 1998 to 24.4gt\/y in 1999).An honest scientific body would have made some sort of statement to this effect, but the IPCC in their 2001 Third Assessment Report and particularly in their Summary for Policy Makers for this report not only made no mention of the fact that from 1998 to 1999 the Earth cooled more than it had ever cooled during the entire global temperature record, but emphatically stated that from 1997 to 1998 the Earth had warmed more than it ever had.This is an absolute violation of science ethics because the policy makers were purposely misinformed with alarmist rhetoric. This same 2001 report also stated that the observed global warming for the past century which they stated was attributable to CO2 emissions was measured at 0.60 C + 0.20 C. This is only 0.006 C per year making the el Ni o temperature spike over eighty times greater than what the IPCC stated was attributable to CO2 emissions, so it is clear that this was stated for the purpose of politically motivated alarmism and not to properly convey information in a scientifically justified manner.The 2001 IPCC report also included the infamous MBH98 Hockey Stick temperature proxy which used physical temperature measurement data up to and including 1998 which gave the alarmist impression of twice the 20th century warming because 1999 was not included.The Hockey Stick graph became the pivotal evidence that convinced governments around the world to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, that has resulted in such detrimental effects to the global population and global economy.In this regard the el Ni o temperature spike of 1998 may be considered the most significant climate event in recent history, and when one considers the hundreds of millions of the world s poorest people starving because of Kyoto biofuel initiatives that has literally taken their food away and made it into Kyoto friendly fuel, this el Ni o might also be considered the most tragic climate event as well.Through diligence and hard work physical scientists were able to correct most of the environmental problems that had been created through industrialization, but there is no scientific effort capable of undoing the damage caused to the global population by the ideological environmentalists. This issue is now out of the hands of the scientists and the only salvation for the global population is the media who must readopt their lost journalistic integrity and expose the true nature of this global fraud.","label":1}
{"text":"It never ceases to amaze me how, blinded by their narcissism, Hollyweirdos and other pop culture \"celebrities\" are rank hypocrites, utterly devoid of introspection.  The latest exemplar: Pop singer Mariah Carey.  Carey, 46, is the best-selling female singer of all time, with an estimate net worth of $500 million from her preternatural ability to screech like a dolphin in heat (apologies to dolphins).  Born in New York state, Carey is biracial \u2014 her father is of African descent, her mother is of Irish descent \u2014 which makes Mariah Carey a racial \"minority\" in the U.S.  Beginning at the 0:58 mark in the video below, Carey says she agrees with protests over the lack of women and minorities in \"entertainment\" because:  \"I don't think women get a fair deal in anything . . . . [In the music business] it's obvious that we've had to, you know, women and minorities have had to fight for, you know, trying to get equal opportunities for, for ages . . . . There's not enough diversity . . . . I'm just an entertainer but, um, you know, I'm a fan of Hillary [Clinton] . . . of course I'm a fan of Hillary. Of course I would love to see a woman president.\"  Carey is very much in the news these days because Australian playboy billionaire James Packer recently broke off their engagement. Rumors have it that one of the reasons for the breakup was her \"insane spending sprees\".  According to an account in New York Post 's \" Page Six \" on Oct. 27, 2016, the following are examples of Carey's \"over-the-top . . . frenzied spending that may have doomed her engagement to Packer\": Sources say Carey \"regularly drops $10,000 to get her hair and makeup perfect \u2014 even if it's all going to last just a single day.\" Power 105's The Breakfast Club radio host Charlamagne Tha God, aka Lenard McKelvey, who knows the singer, told The Post : \"Mariah is the last of the divas \u2014 she's got a very old-school approach to stardom. It's champagne-in-the-morning type stuff. She [once] shared some with the Breakfast Club staff at 10 o'clock in the morning, but she did not pour her own champagne \u2014 someone else poured it for her.\" In 2014, Carey \u2014 who once called overhead lighting \"abusive\" \u2014 showed up to a filmed radio interview on The Breakfast Club over an hour late, with her own lighting crew in tow. McKelvey told The Post : \"I remember thinking to myself, damn, what kind of disposable income she has where she has her own lighting director? That was the first and only time that that has ever happened on the radio show.\" Carey reportedly drops at least $45,000 a year on spa treatments for her dogs \u2014 Jack Russells named Cha Cha and Jill E. Beans \u2014 even flying them first class to LA in January, which cost over $2,000 per dog. A close friend of Packer told Woman's Day last month that Carey \"spends $100,000 a month ordering exotic flowers from around the world to where she happens to be.\" Carey has her own yacht, the Capri, which costs a cool $340,000 per week plus expenses to maintain, according to \"Entertainment Tonight\" . She would use a ferry to reach Packer's boat, the Arctic P, which is the seventh-largest privately owned vessel in the world. Carey's closet is \"the stuff of legends, packed with more stilettos than the Barneys shoe department.\" She has a room just to store her shoes. In a recent Instagram showing off part of her vast footwear collection, she calls the room \"always my favorite room in the house\".  But Mariah Carey tells us that women can't get a fair deal in anything and, in the music business, women and minorities have to fight for equal opportunities.  If you buy this delusional woman's music or go to her concerts, you're contributing to Mariah \"Marie Antoinette\" Carey's obscene spending that pollutes the environment and squanders the world's resources.  ~Eowyn","label":1}
{"text":"Angry law enforcement investigators are talking about corruption at the top of the FBI's \"investigation\" of Hillary.  Here's how it went sideways. NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles Download on your mobile device now for free. Today on the Show Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars crew. From the store Featured Videos FEATURED VIDEOS A Vote For Hillary is a Vote For World War 3 - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . The Most Offensive Halloween EVER! - See the rest on the Alex Jones YouTube channel . ILLUSTRATION How much will your healthcare premiums rise in 2017?","label":1}
{"text":"It started in 1998, with a $50 check out of the blue. The money was a donation from one of the highest-placed men in Florida politics \u2014 Jeb Bush, the son of a former president who was about to be elected governor \u2014 to one of the lowest. Marco Rubio, 26, was running for the city commission in tiny West Miami. \"I remember him showing it off,\" a Rubio friend recalled. \" 'I got a check from Jeb Bush!' \" In the years to come, the two men formed an alliance that, at times, even looked like a politician's odd version of friendship. Rubio, younger and gifted, provided Bush with help in the state legislature. Bush provided Rubio with donors, endorsements and \u2014 at one especially curious moment \u2014 a golden sword. By this week, however, the relationship itself had become a kind of weapon. \"Someone has convinced you that attacking me is going to help you,\" Rubio told Bush during Wednesday night's GOP presidential debate, after Bush had criticized Rubio. The power of the comeback was in its familiarity \u2014 in Rubio's pitying sense that he knew Bush well enough to know Bush had betrayed himself. That moment had been coming for months, as a presidential election put the old allies on a path to collide. They schmoozed the same donors. Courted the same pro-establishment voters. Each threw insults \u2014 veiled, then not veiled \u2014 at the other. A confrontation was coming. And people who watched these allies turn into enemies had little doubt who would win. \"It was a godsend for Marco,\" a chance to show off his political talents and get out of Bush's shadow, all in the same sentence, said Jorge Luis Lopez, a lawyer in Miami who is backing Rubio. \"For years, everybody [in Rubio's camp] always had to validate, 'Is Marco ready to do it?' And now, everybody sees Marco is ready to do it. And it came from the lips of his own mentor.\" For now, both Rubio and Bush are losing in this race. But both say they're playing a longer game. After a while, both men believe, the outsiders Donald Trump and Ben Carson will fade, and voters will come looking for somebody safer. Both Bush and Rubio, of course, think the safe choice will be him. That competition has put the campaign's spotlight on a two-decades-long relationship that never fit conventional categories. \"Friends\" was always too warm a word, even back then. \"Enemies\" is too strong, even now. \"Frenementor,\" said Dan Gelber, a Democrat who served in the Florida House when both Rubio and Bush were in state government. Bush and Rubio were born, 18 years apart, into vastly different American experiences. Rubio's parents were Cuban immigrants who had worked as a bartender and a maid. Bush was a Bush. The first office he ran for was governor of Florida. As Rubio rose in politics \u2014 interning for a congresswoman, working for a politically connected lawyer \u2014 Bush took notice. That was what the $50 was about. Then, in 2000, the two men realized they could help each other in new and more concrete ways. Rubio was a new state legislator, at a time when term limits had cleared out the old guard. Bush was the governor, looking for a new ally. \"Jeb looked around, and suddenly Marco was one of the people he knew best in the House,\" said a former colleague who worked closely with both men. Rubio advocated Bush's ideas, and Bush steered Rubio toward conservative politics, especially the gospel of small government. By 2005, the two men were close enough that when Rubio gave an emotional speech after winning the race to be Florida's House speaker, Bush made a show of his mentorship. Bush honored Rubio with a gift: a sword, which he said belonged to a great \"conservative warrior\" named Chang. \"Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society,\" Bush told a crowd so large that a plane had to be chartered to ferry well-wishers from Miami to Tallahassee. \"Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.\" This gesture was even stranger than it sounds. It appears that \"Chang\" was not a real person but something from a Bush family in-joke about Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek (\"Unleash Chiang!\"). Now, Jeb \u2014 whose \u00adfather was once the U.S. envoy to Beijing \u2014 had garbled the story into something about a mystical warrior with a sword. The sword \"really meant something to Jeb,\" a longtime friend and colleague of both men said. \"He thought it was Marco who would continue his legacy.\" At the time, the sword seemed to mean something to Rubio, too. He hung it in a place of honor in his office \u2014 or at least, he used to. \"I have it somewhere at home,\" Rubio told reporters in New Hampshire this year. \"I have young kids. I don't want them to run around with a sword.\" Bush left the governor's office in 2007. After that, friends say, he kept up his alliance with the still-rising Rubio. He supported Rubio, working donors behind the scenes, when Rubio took on the Florida GOP establishment in the 2010 Senate race. After Rubio won, the two would meet for coffee after workouts in the gym at the luxurious Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Fla., where Bush has an office. Then the men \u2014 who now shared friends, donors and allies \u2014 began to realize they would be rivals. \"He's entitled to do this \u2014 there's not something per se wrong,\" Al Cardenas, a power broker in Florida politics who backs Bush, said of Rubio. \"But we believe that most people would have decided not to proceed.\" Bush made clear last year that he planned to run. In April, Rubio announced his candidacy, and pointedly told his audience that America couldn't go \"back to the leaders and ideas of the past.\" This was the first of many signals: Rubio wasn't just running alongside his old ally but against him, lumping him in with Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton as symbols of the stale political order. \"The minute I saw [Rubio's] announcement, I had every reason to assume, regrettably, that this was never going to be the same,\" said Jorge Arrizurieta, who first met Bush in the 1980s, served in different roles during his governorship and is now a top donor. \"I've heard many common friends call it a betrayal by Marco, but not Jeb,\" said Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist who is a friend of both men but supports Bush in this race. \"Jeb's not a guy to cry over spilled milk. Jeb's got a goal ahead of him, and wasting time psychoanalyzing Marco's motives won't help him get there.\" Since then, Bush and Rubio have rarely spoken one another's names \u2014 but they have talked about each other all the time. Rubio, for instance, talked for 25 minutes in June at the Prescott Bush awards dinner \u2014 named for Jeb Bush's grandfather \u2014 without mentioning the Bush name. He never mentioned Bush to a room full of seniors during a central Florida campaign stop in September. But in both places, he implied a contrast, telling the Prescott Bush awards crowd in Connecticut that it was time to \"transition from the past we are so proud of to the exciting future that awaits our country.\" Bush has also deployed a knock-him-without-naming-him strategy against Rubio. For months, he's called for members of Congress who miss many votes \u2014 as Rubio has \u2014 to have their pay docked. In late September, Bush tried to burnish his leadership credentials by telling a TV interviewer that he \"relied on people like Marco Rubio and many others to follow my leadership\" in Florida. Later, the two campaigns squabbled about which one of them had a disappointing quarter of fundraising. (They both did). By Monday, Bush's campaign \u2014 increasingly desperate amid a cash shortage and staff cuts \u2014 labeled Rubio a \"GOP Obama\" in a meeting with top donors. That may not sound like an insult, since Obama did manage to get elected president twice. But Bush meant it in the context of Republicans who view the president as inexperienced and untrustworthy. In a broad sense, Bush was losing the argument. Rubio was overtaking him in the polls. And the very thing that had made Rubio such an attractive ally before \u2014 he shared Bush's basic political beliefs but did a better job of selling them \u2014 made him a devastating rival now. \"I support Jeb because he's older, he's got a lot of experience, he was governor for two terms and did an extraordinarily good job, but if Jeb doesn't make it I certainly hope Marco does,\" said Barney Bishop, a prominent Florida lobbyist who is backing Bush but has also given to Rubio's super PAC. \"A lot of us are torn between both Jeb and Marco because we think Marco has a great future ahead of him. We don't want to see either one of them have to do battle with each other in order to get ahead.\" Their competition finally came to a head at Wednesday night's debate, producing the defining moment in their relationship so far. Even on the attack, Bush seemed hindered by the relationship and by his blue-blood sense of decorum. \"Could I \u2014 could I bring something up here?\" he said. \"Marco, when you signed up for this [the Senate], this was a six-year term, and you should be showing up to work,\" Bush said. Rubio seemed to know that the intimacy of their relationship gave him more power, not less. He looked Bush right in the eye, knee-capped him, and then turned away from him to face the audience. \"My campaign is going to be about the future of America, it's not going to be about attacking anyone else on this stage,\" he said. \"I will continue to have tremendous admiration and respect for Governor Bush.\" He was talking about his old ally as though Bush was already gone.","label":0}
{"text":"Hey Robert Mueller! Do you care to find out which foreign leaders candidate Hillary Clinton spoke with during her campaign? Because according to Hillary, she received messages from foreign leaders asking her if they can endorse her to stop Donald Trump from becoming President. I am already receiving messages from leaders. I m having foreign leaders ask if they can endorse me to stop Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton, March, 2016Hmmm Is there a tape of candidate Donald Trump like the one of Hillary, where he admits to having discussions with foreign leaders about how to stop Hillary from becoming President?While speaking at a Democratic Presidential Townhall meeting in Columbus, Ohio, in March of 2016, Hillary thought she was rather clever by attempting to make it appear as though Donald Trump was wildly unpopular with all of her foreign connections. It s too bad the media forgot about this clip:TREASON? Video surfaces of Hillary admitting she was in contact with foreign leaders interfering in our election! https:\/\/t.co\/EHHTyC0sEU Newt-Trump Fan Club (@NewtTrump) July 19, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"The Republican Party s establishment candidates are being thrashed by the evangelical right wingers. So, when Jeb Bush went appeared on MSNBC s Morning Joe on Monday morning, he decided it was time to fight fire with fire. He opened a can of whoop-ass.Bush took a moment to hit out at his Republcan peers for failing to take on Donald Trump. He seems staggered by the success of the Trump campaign, which has turned former anticipated favorites into footnotes in the race so far. He puts this down to other candidates being too scared to confront the bully. It s just ridiculous. I mean the guy, he s just a real estate guy he told the hosts. He s gone bankrupt four times! He s a successful man but not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, so why not confront him, challenge him? Later on, Bush played a word association game about his Republican and Democrat rivals with host Mika Brzezinski. The results were more than revealing. Here were his answers:MIKA: Chris ChristieJEB!: Great guy.MIKA: Marco RubioJEB!: Work in progressMIKA: Hillary ClintonJEB!: Can be beatenMIKA: Bernie SandersJEB!: Love the ad!But the one the really stands out? He summed up Trump Eoin just one word.MIKA: Donald TrumpJEB!: Loser.There aren t really any issues where we agree with the platform of Jeb Bush. Despite presenting himself as a moderate among the likes of Trump and Cruz, Bush is promising a pretty similar offer to America. He is just another anti-science, anti-choice, pro-gun, creationist attempting to drag America back into the dark ages. but on this one thing, Jeb: spot on. It s actually the second time in 24 hours that Jeb! has called Trump as loser. He got a standing ovation for doing the same during an address in New Hampshire on Sunday night.But however angry Bush is, he is still polling below 10% in New Hampshire while Trump soars over 30%. It appears the GOP is choosing which lunatic they want to run the asylum, and the crazier the better. Featured image from video screen capture","label":1}
{"text":"Friday on ABC's \"The View,\" senior for Breitbart News Joel Pollak took on Joy Behar over claims Breitbart News is a white supremacist and site. Partial transcript as follows: BEHAR: Breitbart \u2014 the website has been described as a platform for the or some say white supremacists. How would you describe it? POLLAK: Breitbart News is a conservative website and we have a very diverse group of editors and writers. I'm the orthodox Jewish former senior . So not exactly an accurate description. We call that fake news, a fake news description. But we are \u2014 BEHAR: What's fake news, what I said? POLLAK: Yes. BILA: That it is white supremacists. BEHAR: No no no. That is not fake news. POLLAK: It's absolutely \u2014 BEHAR: How do you explain this headline, 'Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew,' You're Jewish. POLLAK: It was written by David Horowitz, who is one of the most prominent Jewish conservatives. He was criticizing Bill Kristol for not being Jewish enough, so it was the opposite of what people described. And we have more than a dozen Jewish people working at Breitbart including the CEO, COO. We have Black writers, Hispanic, Asian, whatever, gay, whatever you can imagine. BEHAR: What do you think is the rise of about in this country? POLLAK: I'm really glad the media finally woke up to this phenomena. It started quite a long time ago, long before Donald Trump ran for president, particularly in California where I live, on college campuses, there's been a rising tide of linked to far criticism of Israel. It's very tough to be a Jewish student on some of these campuses nowadays. BEHAR: Mostly, it seems to me that there's a flurry of them since Trump is in. POLLAK: I think the media just woke up and noticed that this is a problem. BEHAR Really? POLLAK: And I think that I feel very proud that Donald Trump not only is one of the most presidents that we've ever had, but his daughter Ivanka tonight will light the Sabbath candles just like my wife will, and bring in the Sabbath. To me, that is something extraordinary in America history. BEHAR: But you know that phrase, one of my best friends is Jewish, it's meaningless really. You can still be an and have Jewish relatives. POLLAK: I agree with you. When people say my friends are Jewish, it doesn't cut it. HOSTIN: Or I have a black friend. POLLAK: But when your are Jewish, you have a little more credibility. HOSTIN: Let me ask you about Steve Bannon. Whoopi calls him President Bannon. He's the White House chief strategist, former executive chair of Breitbart, people have called him everything from a Nazi to a racist. He's made bigoted statements. They've called him a white supremacist sympathizer. What's your response? How do you work for someone who has that reputation? POLLAK: None of that is true. That's more fake news and even people who \u2014 HOSTIN: So everyone is lying? POLLAK: Yes. Steve is a fantastic guy. I worked with him for six years and he can be very tough in an argument. We used to argue all the time over any kind of policy issues. Jedediah will back me up here. You bring data and facts to the table \u2014 BILA: A very tough guy. POLLAK: Absolutely a person. HOSTIN: So we can't believe when he makes these bigoted statements, is he just being provocative? POLLAK: What statements are you talking about? HOSTIN: There's a laundry list. I can get you a card. BEHAR: Here's a headline from Breitbart. 'Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.' Do I look crazy to you? POLLAK: You see how you've shifted the goal post now. So, it's gone from Steve Bannon says things to, \"Oh, there was a headline. \" Steve Bannon has not said bigoted things. BEHAR: But he's behind these though. What are you talking about? BILA: I submitted content a long time ago to Breitbart and I know Steve and I've often argued that you can disagree with him, and it's tough to disagree with him because he's a strong headed guy, but I don't believe him to be an or racist. He's tough though, so if you go into battle you better be prepared. I have a question about Steve, which is that Steve is from what I know of him, he is kind of a boss. He does like to take control. He does like to be kind of in charge, and I see a lot of what's coming out from the Trump campaign now. A lot of the focus seems to be about going against the media establishment. That is Steve's main focal point. Is it safe to assume that Steve is kind of running the show? POLLAK: Well, I don't think Donald Trump takes orders from anybody, so I think Donald Trump is very much in charge. I think that Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus do get along. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN","label":0}
{"text":"Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic runner who shot his girlfriend to death in 2013, is unfit to testify at his sentencing for murder, a defense psychologist said as a hearing opened on Monday in a court in Pretoria, South Africa. \"Currently, in my opinion, he is not able to testify,\" the psychologist, Jonathan Scholtz, told Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa of the High Court in Pretoria, arguing that Mr. Pistorius should be hospitalized rather than imprisoned. \"His condition is severe. \" Under questioning from Mr. Pistorius's defense lawyer, Barry Roux, Dr. Scholtz gave a largely sympathetic account of Mr. Pistorius's background, personality and mental health. Dr. Scholtz said Mr. Pistorius showed symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress disorder. He also said Mr. Pistorius was taking psychiatric medication and had problems with memory. Gerrie Nel, the chief prosecutor, rejected that argument, saying that Mr. Pistorius had not expressed remorse for the death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Mr. Nel also questioned Dr. Scholtz's assertion that Mr. Pistorius was unable to testify, given that Mr. Pistorius recently gave an interview, his first about the killing, to the television network ITV. The interview is scheduled to be broadcast on June 24, which is probably after his sentencing. Guidelines call for a sentence of at least 15 years, but the judge has discretion to render a lighter or tougher sentence. The decision, which is not expected until later this week, will bring to a close a case that has riveted and divided South Africa. Mr. Pistorius, 29, was found guilty in December of murdering Ms. Steenkamp after South Africa's top appeals court overturned a lower court's conviction on the lesser charge of manslaughter. The court found that the earlier conviction had been based on a misinterpretation of laws and an erroneous dismissal of circumstantial evidence. The appeals court said Mr. Pistorius, who insists that he accidentally killed Ms. Steenkamp under the mistaken belief that an intruder had broken into his home, should have foreseen that his actions would kill someone. He fired four shots through a locked bathroom door, killing Ms. Steenkamp, who was on the other side. In a country with a high crime rate, the fear of home intrusion cuts across social and racial lines, and high walls and security guards are common in gated communities like the one where Mr. Pistorius lived in Pretoria. Mr. Pistorius's arrest in the killing of Ms. Steenkamp on Feb. 14, 2013, sent South Africans reeling. Known as the Blade Runner for the flexible prosthetic legs he used when competing, Mr. Pistorius achieved worldwide fame by challenging athletes, most notably at the 2012 London Games. He won medals at the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Summer Paralympics. Ms. Steenkamp, who was 29 at the time of her death, was a model, a law school graduate and a budding star. In September 2014 \u2014 after a lengthy and highly publicized trial that was likened to the trial of O. J. Simpson in the United States \u2014 Judge Masipa convicted Mr. Pistorius of culpable homicide but found him not guilty of murder. She found that prosecutors had failed to present \"strong circumstantial evidence\" and to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Pistorius had shown intent to kill. Prosecutors, and Ms. Steenkamp's family, argued that Mr. Pistorius had deliberately killed his girlfriend after an argument. Although Mr. Pistorius was regarded as a hero to many in South Africa, the trial revealed another, darker side: a man with a mercurial temper, given to jealousy and occasional anger an aggressive driver an irresponsible gun owner and a celebrity who was used to getting his way. In their appeal, prosecutors argued that Judge Masipa had misinterpreted a crucial legal concept in finding Mr. Pistorius not guilty of murder. They argued that, under a legal principle known as dolus eventualis, Mr. Pistorius should be found guilty because he should have known that firing through the locked door would kill the person inside. The Supreme Court of Appeal, in Bloemfontein, agreed. Mr. Pistorius was released from prison in October after serving one year of the sentence for manslaughter, and he has been living under house arrest. Dr. Scholtz called Mr. Pistorius's relationship with Ms. Steenkamp \"a normal, loving relationship,\" with \"no signs of abuse or coercion. \" Dr. Scholtz said that Mr. Pistorius \"has found some solace in the belief that the deceased is with God,\" and that he was enrolled in a degree program at the University of London. He argued that further incarceration \"would not be psychologically or socially constructive\" and that Mr. Pistorius was not a threat to society. Mr. Pistorius, once a gun enthusiast, has sold his firearms, Dr. Scholtz said. \"He is adamant that he never wants to touch or handle a firearm again,\" the psychiatrist said. But Mr. Nel, who Dr. Scholtz, suggested that Mr. Pistorius had not expressed remorse. \"Does he understand that he committed murder?\" Mr. Nel asked. \"Yes,\" Dr. Scholtz said. \"In what way?\" Mr. Nel asked. The prosecutor then made it clear that he was unconvinced.","label":0}
{"text":"November 4, 2016 For our freedom and yours  IF EUROPEAN history once seemed to have arrived at its terminus in 1989, it has sped off in a new direction in Poland. After winning the country's first post-1989 outright majority in elections one year ago, the populist Law and Justice party (PiS) immediately set about undermining independent checks on its power, from the constitutional court to public media. Such antics would disqualify an aspirant from membership of the European Union, but it is harder to punish miscreants once they are inside. Surrounded by problems outside its borders, from Russia to Turkey to Libya, the EU now confronts a particularly chewy one within.  Outsiders sometimes lump Poland's government in with the other populists making the running in much of western Europe. But while it shares their hostility to outsiders and taste for economic statism, PiS is a very Polish phenomenon. Its chairman, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who runs the country from the party's headquarters (the prime minister, Beata Szydlo, is a cipher who does her leader's bidding), is fixed on completing what he considers an unfinished revolution. Mr Kaczynski believes the Polish state was captured by a cosy, treacherous elite after 1989, with the connivance of the EU. His aim is to overturn and replace it.","label":1}
{"text":"The U.S. Senate confirmed President Donald Trump's pick to run the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday over the objections of Democrats and environmentalists worried he will gut the agency, as the administration readies executive orders to ease regulation on drillers and miners. The installation of Scott Pruitt, who sued the agency he intends to lead more than a dozen times as Oklahoma attorney general, reinforces expectations on both sides of the political divide that America will cede its position as a leader in the global fight on climate change. Senators voted 52-46 to approve Pruitt, who was to be sworn in later on Friday afternoon at the White House. Only one Republican, Senator Susan Collins of Maine, voted against him. Two Democrats from energy-producing states, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, voted for his confirmation. \"I have no doubt that Scott will return the EPA to its core objectives,\" said Republican Senator James Inhofe, also of Oklahoma, adding the agency had been guilty of \"federal overreach, unlawful rule making, and duplicative red tape,\" during President Barack Obama's presidency. The nomination of Pruitt, who sued the EPA more than a dozen times on behalf of his oil-producing state and has doubted the science of climate change, upset many former and current agency employees. Nearly 800 former EPA staff urged the Senate to reject Pruitt in a letter this week, saying he had \"shown no interest in enforcing environmental laws.\" Earlier this month, about 30 current employees at an EPA regional office in Chicago joined a protest against Pruitt held by green groups. Trump is likely to issue executive orders as soon as next week to reshape the EPA, sources said. The Republican president has promised to kill Obama's Clean Power Plan, currently held up in the courts, that aims to slash carbon emissions from coal and natural gas fired power plants. Trump also wants to give states more authority over environmental issues by striking down federal regulations on drilling technologies and getting rid of an Obama rule that sought to clarify the EPA's jurisdiction over streams and rivers. Conservatives warmly welcomed Pruitt's confirmation. \"For far too long the EPA has acted in an overzealous manner, ignoring the separation of powers, the role of states and the rights of property owners,\" said Nick Loris, an economist at the Heritage Foundation. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin, however, said he was concerned that if the administration does not enforce emissions cuts such as outlined in the Clean Power Plan, it would increase U.S. pollution and harm the country's leadership in international efforts to curb climate change. Opponents of Pruitt also protested his ties to the energy industry. Republicans have the majority in the Senate, but Democrats spoke through Thursday night and Friday morning on the Senate floor, trying to extend debate on Pruitt until later in February when 3,000 emails between him and energy companies will likely be revealed by a judge. An Oklahoma judge ruled this week that Pruitt will have to turn over the emails between his office and energy companies by Tuesday after a watchdog group, the Center for Media and Democracy, sued for their release. The judge will review and perhaps hold back some of the emails before releasing them, a court clerk said. Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer told reporters that Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell had moved to \"strap blinders\" on his fellow Republicans by not waiting for the release of Pruitt's emails. Environmentalists decried the approval. \"If you don't believe in climate science, you don't belong at the EPA,\" said May Boeve, the head of environmentalist group 350.org.","label":0}
{"text":"More than 160 Simon and Schuster children's book authors have signed a letter to the CEO of the company protesting the publishing of Breitbart Senior editor MILO's upcoming book, \"DANGEROUS. \"[The letter, organised by Simon and Schuster's children's authors, was published Thursday morning with signees such as Newbery, Caldecott, and honorees of the National Book Award. Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi also texted his signature from India according to the release. The letter reads, We, as Simon Schuster children's and YA authors and illustrators, have deep respect for our publisher, our editors, and the Simon Schuster Children's Division, which we believe strives to publish the strongest, most diverse list it can acquire, for the betterment of literature and children everywhere. Sadly, we cannot extend this same respect to Simon Schuster's Threshold imprint following their decision to lend the legitimacy of this publisher's venerable brand to Milo Yiannopoulos. Threshold has placed Simon Schuster's considerable reputation and weight behind one of the most prominent faces of the newly repackaged white nationalist movement and financially supported a man who routinely denigrates, verbally attacks, and directs dangerous internet doxxing and hate campaigns against women, minorities, LGBTQ individuals, Muslims, and anyone he chooses to target who supports equality and human decency. Irrespective of the content of this book, by extending a mainstream publication contract, Threshold has chosen to legitimize this reprehensible belief system, these behaviors, and white supremacy itself. Additionally, they have associated all of Simon Schuster with it, and therefore weakened the reach of the many other brilliant imprints that daily attempt to contribute to humanity instead of destroy it. This is not an issue of advocating or suppressing free speech, as Mr. Yiannopoulos has a broad internet broadcasting platform and the support of many extremist organizations and publications. His voice is certainly being heard, and it is a voice of hate that stirs its followers to emotional, verbal, and physical violence directed at anyone who disagrees or speaks to the contrary. Insinuating that people who protest this terrible decision wish to suppress free speech is gaslighting. As Simon Schuster authors and illustrators who are already published, with books in the release pipeline, with contracts in place, we do not have to quietly accept or assent to this \"Gleichschaltung,\" this getting in line with fascism and making it mainstream. We reject the wisdom of this decision. This man, and this book, are not America. This man, and this book, are not the bulk of Simon Schuster. This man, and this book, are not us, the authors and illustrators of Simon Schuster. We believe that the children we write for deserve a better America. We the undersigned pledge to continue to advocate tolerance, acceptance, love, diversity, and equality, and respectfully ask you to take an irrefutable stand against hate. Simon and Schuster has yet to respond to the letter.","label":0}
{"text":"A 30-year prison sentence for a woman in El Salvador who said her child was stillborn is appalling, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell said on Friday. The Second Court of Appeal of San Salvador on Wednesday upheld the sentence for Teodora Vasquez, who was convicted in 2008 of aggravated homicide in the death of her child the previous year. Prosecutors said Vasquez strangled the baby after birth. Her lawyers said she suffered health complications and the baby was stillborn. Since 1997, El Salvador has had one of the world s most severe laws against women who have abortions or are suspected of assisting them. It is absolutely astounding, astonishing, appalling that these women are in essence being convicted of having a miscarriage, having a child stillborn, Throssell said. They are basically being convicted for being women, for losing a child and for being poor, she said, adding that at least 41 other women have been similarly convicted over the past decade or so. The U.N. was not aware of El Salvador jailing any women from wealthier backgrounds under the same law, Throssell said.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican vice presidential candidate Mike Pence said on Sunday that evidence implicated Russia in recent email hacks tied to the Nov. 8 U.S. election, contradicting his running mate, Donald Trump, who has cast doubt on Russia's involvement. Pence's comments came after U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview that aired on Sunday that the United States would be sending a message to Russia \"at the time of our choosing\" about the email attacks. Obama administration officials initially refused to say if they thought Russia was behind the attacks, before accusing Moscow for the first time earlier this month. President Barack Obama said in an interview with NBC News that \"anything's possible\" when asked if Russia hacked into the Democratic National Committee. \"What we do know is the Russians hack our systems, not just government systems, but private systems,\" Obama said. \"But what the motives were in terms of the leaks and all that, I can't say directly, but what I do know is that Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed admiration for Vladimir Putin.\" Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, speaking about the hack of the DNC emails, said the U.S. intelligence community was not ready to \"make the call on attribution\" as to who was responsible. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson offered state officials help from hacking threats or other possible election tampering, in the face of unsubstantiated allegations by Trump that the system is open to fraud. Speaking at a conference in Washington, Clapper said that \"the Russians hack our systems all the time,\" but he did not officially blame them for the intrusions into Democratic Party organizations. During a live interview with the Washington Post, Clapper said Russia had a tradition of trying to interfere in elections in other countries. He added that his biggest concern was not that a foreign power would try to affect the outcome of the U.S. election but instead \"cast doubt on the whole process.\" The U.S. government for the first time formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations. \"We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,\" the Obama administration said in a statement. Biden said in an interview with NBC News that the United States would send a \"proportional\" response to Russia for the hacking \"at the time of our choosing and under the circumstances that have the greatest impact.\"","label":0}
{"text":"If this keeps up, the Democrats will never win another election Several county clerks in Colorado said they ve seen hundreds of people withdraw their voter registrations following the state s announcement that it would comply with President Trump s voter fraud commission.In Denver, a spokesperson for the Denver Elections Division said 180 people have withdrawn their registrations in the county since Monday, according to a Denver Channel report.In Arapahoe County, which contains the city of Aurora, at least 160 people have withdrawn their registrations since July 1.The counties normally see fewer than 10 withdrawn registrations in similar time frames.Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said last week he would submit the registrations requested by the Trump administration.Numerous states have said they won t comply with the request for voter registrations, which include the last four digits of Social Security numbers and other identifying information. CNN reported earlier this week that 44 states refused to comply with the request by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who serves as vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.Kobach disputed that number Wednesday, saying only 14 states and the District of Columbia have refused. Washington Examiner","label":1}
{"text":"Ukrainian Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko said on Thursday he was open to amending law reforms amid concerns they aided corruption and could lead to the end of probes into the shooting of protesters in the run-up up to the 2014 revolution. The eastern European nation, which is in a dispute with Russia over its annexation of Crimea, passed amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code last week that anti-corruption groups say severely limits the time investigators have to solve a crime and present a case in court. Petrenko said he had yet to go through the final text of the lengthy reforms, but he said that he was aware of the concerns. If there (are) some positions which make problems for the investigations process for old cases or for new cases I will give proposals to the parliament and president to change these positions, Petrenko told Reuters in an interview in Sydney, where he was attending a legal industry conference. The legislation still requires the sign-off from President Petro Poroshenko. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine said in a statement last week the new legislation could force investigators to present a criminal case before court within six months, or up to 12 months with a court extension. Corrupt officials could benefit, the law enforcement agency said, given the complexity of investigations that can involve international assistance. There are also fears that the legislation could prevent prosecutions for crimes committed during the Euromaidan street demonstrations in 2013 and 2014, where more than 100 protesters, demanding closer European integration, were gunned down. The popular uprising, that focused on corruption concerns and the country s Russian ties, culminated with the removal of the then president Viktor Yanukovych. More than three years on, Ukraine is still dealing with allegations of deep corruption with Transparency International earlier this year ranking it 131st of 176 countries in the World Ranking of Corruption Perception. Petrenko said on Thursday the country was intent on reforming its judicial system, which included the selection of more than 100 Supreme Court judges after a competition-style candidate process designed to root out corruption. Are all these people ideal? I think no, because the country is not ideal, Petrenko said. You cannot find some ideal people from Mars or from the moon and take them and put in these positions, but those people, they went through the objective, transparent and absolutely public competition. Ukraine is the recipient of an aid-for-reforms program from the International Monetary Fund.","label":0}
{"text":"More than 500,000 people have gotten health insurance in Kentucky through the state's health care exchange, Kynect, and through expanded Medicaid. Kentucky has seen the second-steepest drop in uninsured of any state. Supporters of the health care law point to it as one of the success stories, but the man who very well could become the state's next governor is vowing to \"dismantle\" Kynect and cancel the Medicaid expansion. \"We will have a very spirited discussion as it relates to health care in our state. Trust me on that,\" vowed Republican Matt Bevin, the surprising apparent winner of the contentious GOP gubernatorial primary. The Tea Party-backed Bevin finished just 83 votes ahead of James Comer, the state's agriculture commissioner, out of more than 200,000 votes. \"Obamacare's been very good to the state,\" said Al Cross, director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. But President Obama is very unpopular in the state and anything associated with him is, too. Kentuckians and Bevin are stressing the \"first three syllables instead of the last one\" in Obamacare, Cross said. It is the latest example of the problems Obama's signature legislation has faced at the state level, where most governors and legislatures are in Republican hands. The Affordable Care Act, often called \"Obamacare,\" can be viewed very differently based on the name. In 2013, Hart Research and Public Opinion Strategies, the bipartisan pollsters who conduct the NBC News\/Wall Street Journal poll, tested that in 2013 for CNBC. The poll asked separately about feelings toward \"Obamacare\" and the \"Affordable Care Act.\" There was almost a 10-point difference in how much more negatively people felt toward \"Obamacare,\" and almost three times as many did not know the \"Affordable Care Act.\" It was similar when the question was asked specifically in Kentucky about feelings toward \"Kynect\" and \"the new health care law.\" An NBC News\/Marist poll in May 2014 found by a 29 percent to 22 percent margin that Kentuckians had a favorable opinion of their state health care exchange. But 57 percent had an unfavorable view of \"Obamacare,\" while just 1 in 3 had a positive one. In Kentucky, the governor has the power to unilaterally create or disband programs like Kynect, Cross said. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear chose to both set up a state exchange and expand Medicare. But he is term-limited. Bevin, a venture capitalist who lost badly in a Senate primary last year to Mitch McConnell, would face off with Democrat Jack Conway. Conway, the state attorney general, starts as a slight favorite, but Kentucky is a conservative state, and Conway struggled in his 2010 Senate bid against Republican Rand Paul. Bevin made getting rid of Kynect and the Medicaid expansion central to his campaign. He is also vowing to implement right-to-work laws and shrink government, in part, through attrition of public sector workers. \"I think it, too, is destined to crumble under the weight of its own instability,\" Bevin said of Kynect when he announced his long-shot bid for governor. Bevin wound up breaking through in the primary, in large measure, by pitting the two front-runners against each other. He did it with this memorable ad, depicting Comer and Hal Heiner, a former Louisville city councilman, as children at a backyard table throwing food at each other: \"Hal Heiner and James Comer are acting like children, throwing insults and attacking each other,\" an announcer says as pasta splatters across the lens. \"Kentucky can do much better.\" The ad pivots, labeling Bevin as \"grown-up leadership for Kentucky.\" But now it will be Bevin's policies that come under sharper scrutiny. He argues the state cannot afford the Medicaid expansion, which was the biggest reason for the drop in the uninsured. Federal funds currently pay for it, but that money will eventually go away. \"The fact that we have 1 out of 4 people in this state on Medicaid is unsustainable; it's unaffordable,\" Bevin said during the campaign, \"and we need to create jobs in this state, not more government programs to cover people.\" But Medicaid expansion is different than Kynect, which has been held up as one of the best-functioning state exchanges in the country. \"He won't get away with it,\" Cross maintained of Bevin's promise to get rid of Kynect. \"He'll have to get serious about it at some point and stop conflating Kynect and the Medicaid expansion.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Andy Nowicki (The Nameless One), Randy J and Fvnk$oul (ACR and 21Wire contributors) for the hundred and thirty first episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.This week on Boiler Room the ACR Brain-Trust is examining the change in the Boy Scouts of America allowing girls into the club, Harvey Weinstein s perverted history in Hollywood, the potential ramifications of his being outed as a sexual predator who s been covered for by the mainstream media and leftist politicians for many years and giving a good beat down to rapper, Eminem, who foolishly decided to throw his rap stylings into the political realm and failed miserably.Direct Download Episode #131 Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:","label":1}
{"text":"We ve noticed a trend across America that s disturbing because the communities of Muslims do not assimilate but want Americans to bend to their every whim. We noticed in the last election that a non-English speaking forum was held in Minneapolis for the 2016 election:Ilhan Omar now addressing the room. No English so far in candidate speeches, so I can t relay what has been said pic.twitter.com\/OH3jTpH91I Eric Roper (@StribRoper) March 2, 2016NO ENGLISH SPOKEN AT ALL Do you call that assimilation?Quite a scene here as Omar (left) and Noor (right) supporters break off pic.twitter.com\/O2aRZ18HKC Eric Roper (@StribRoper) March 2, 2016An uptick in Muslim activists running for positions in public office is noticeable so we wanted to find out who s behind it: NEW AMERICAN LEADERS PROJECT RECRUITS ANYONE BUT WHITES TO RUN FOR OFFICENew group in Maryland is recruiting Muslim candidates to run for officeCANDIDATES ACROSS AMERICA WILL SHAPE POLICY:Son Of Egyptian Immigrants Hopes To Become FIRST MUSLIM GOVERNOR In U.S Will Push For Sanctuary State REFUGEE TO ACTIVIST: DEEQO JIBRIL IS GIVING IMMIGRANTS HOPE A nice fluff piece by NBC on a Muslim activist running for city council in MASSDearborn: Amnesty-pushing Obama Muslim appointee announces run for CongressWHY MUSLIMS ARE LESS LIKELY TO INTEGRATE INTO WESTERN NATIONS: Sharia lawyer and expert Daniel Akbari tells Ezra Levant of The Rebel Media why Muslims are less likely to integrate into Western nations. This is one of the best interviews we ve come across on the truth in Sharia law and abiding by the Koran. How can a Muslim follow our laws when they are taught to follow Sharia law?WRAPSNET is a great resource for anyone concerned about refugees and where they re going. You can find out what who, what and where the refugees are going. It s shocking to see but should be shared with everyone!What we found: Arrivals are close to 50,000!Some of the top states receiving refugees are Florida, Georgia, Texas, California and Arizona. Please note that California is off the charts with over 4 thousand refugees! Remember that those refugees can relocate anywhere they want to and do. Pockets of mostly Muslim refugees like to live separated from their community so they will seek out other Muslim pods of refugees.Places like Minneapolis have become swamped with Somali Muslims. They even have an area called Little Mogadishu that is flooded with Smoalis:Isolation of the Somali Muslim community AND teaching Sharia law in Muslim schools in Minneapolis are the two main reasons why we should still fear their recruitment to terrorism. Assimilation hasn t happened and that s a HUGE problem! A very recent article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune discusses a new Somali Mall:Minneapolis Council Member Abdi Warsame pledges to build new Somali mallPete Hegseth goes to Little Mogadishu and finds out that many Somali Muslims don t speak English and that they actually teach Sharia law in school but not sure about American law. This all goes back to the REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT PROGRAM and the HUGE problem with bringing over 3 million MOSTLY Muslims to the U.S. in the past 30 years. We need to take a look at defunding this program because it s ballooned way past what it was originally intended to be.","label":1}
{"text":"License DMCA  How much does it take to get by where you live? A new report concludes that current federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour doesn't come close, anywhere in the United States. It takes more than $15 per hour to earn a living wage in most states. When you throw in the rising cost of student debt, low-income Americans are even further underwater.  The report, \" Waiting for the Payoff: How Low Wages and Student Debt Keep Prosperity Out of Reach (pdf),\" was issued this week by the People's Action Institute. Among its findings:  * It takes more than $15 per hour to earn a living wage in 42 states and the District of Columbia. That figure is over $16 in more than half of the country, comes to nearly $20 per hour in California, and is more than $20 in New York state.  * New York State's minimum wage of $9 per hour provides only 44 percent of a living wage for a single adult and less than a quarter of the living wage for a single adult with two children.\"  * Arkansas had the lowest hourly rate of any state, but at $14.58 per hour it was barely below the $15 per hour minimum proposed by Fight for 15 . - Advertisement -  * The situation is even more dire for working parents. A single adult with two children needs more than $26 per hour to get by in South Carolina, more than $41 per hour in New York state, and nearly $44 per hour in Washington DC.  * 43 states and Washington, D.C. have a lower minimum wage for tipped workers. Half of tipped workers are 30 years old or older, and tipped workers are three times as likely as other workers to be impoverished.  What's the price of a dream? For people who saw college as the way to a better life, this country's student debt crisis offers a harsh answer. More than 43 million Americans now carry some level of student debt.  Student loan debt in this country now totals more than $1.3 trillion -- and it's getting worse. Common Dreams' Deirdre Fulton points to a new study from the Institute of College Access and Success which shows that the average undergraduate borrower now graduates with $30,100 in debt, a 4 percent increase from last year's figure.  Living wage figures rise even higher when the cost of student debt is factored in. The national median payment for student debt comes to $242 per month. Student debt cost increases the national average living wage from $17.28 to $18.67 per hour. - Advertisement -  College graduates typically earn higher wages, but the discrimination faced by women and people of color contributes to ongoing wage inadequacy. For example, African Americans are considerably more likely to take on student debt that white Americans, and are more likely to go to higher-cost private institutions. Women and people of color are more likely to work in tipped occupations, so the sub-minimum wage affects these groups disproportionately.  Wage discrimination is also a critical problem, both for student debt holders and low-wage workers as a whole. As the report notes:  \"... Majors with a high proportion of white males, such as computer and information sciences, see starting salaries of $65,000. At the same time, English and Psychology, which see more women and people of color, have median starting salaries of $35,000 and $32,750 per year, respectively -- lower even than the traditional living wage for a single adult.\"  Discrimination in hiring and other systemic problems take a heavy toll. For each dollar paid to white male college graduates with degrees, black men are paid 78 cents; Latinos are paid 81 cents; black women are paid 72 cents; and Latinas are paid 69 cents.","label":1}
{"text":"Ben Carson, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead U.S. housing policy, won approval on Tuesday from the Senate committee reviewing the qualifications of the retired neurosurgeon and former Republican presidential candidate. The endorsement by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, by a voice vote shown on its website, cleared the way for a full Senate vote on Carson's appointment as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Carson, 65, had promised senators on the committee during a confirmation hearing that he would monitor any potential conflicts of interest between his agency and properties controlled by real estate mogul Trump. He also told lawmakers during a hearing on Jan. 12 that he was fit to lead HUD, an agency that offers housing to the poor, even though he has sometimes criticized its work.","label":0}
{"text":"MARK STEYN ON TRUMP S MOVE LAST NIGHT: @MarkSteynOnline pic.twitter.com\/CM21gVlFWW FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) April 7, 2017Gen. Jack Keane said this is a major setback for Russia and Iran, close allies of the regime of Syrian President Bashar-al Assad. These airstrikes are a sign that the U.S. is open to taking a more aggressive role in the Syrian civil war. This is an incredible message. It should have been sent many years ago by the Obama administration. MARK STEYN NAILS IT ON INTERVENTION IN SYRIA:Mark Steyn nailed it when he said that President Trump should be cautious about using American power to overthrow a dictator without a very clear endgame: To go back to the Democrats most notorious debacle, Hillary thought knocking off Gaddafi in Libya would be easy and cost-free. What we know now is that it left a power vacuum and further destabilized the Middle East. You ve got to have an endgame here. You ve got to know what you want Syria to look like after Assad, or it s a waste of time. Trump has been very clear that he regards running around Afghanistan for 15 years as a complete waste of time. He doesn t want to get into a similar situation. THE COMMENTS BEGIN ON SYRIA AT THE 3:00 MARK:","label":1}
{"text":"The Senate session is coming to a close for the 113th Congress, and we are seeing a dramatic change in its composition come January 2017. Liberal firebrands Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer and Barbara Mikulski will be retiring, leaving quite a big void in the chamber but they will all be succeeded by equally progressive leaders, so no need to worry.As per tradition, the outgoing members of the Senate gave their farewell addresses on the floor, speaking for the last time in their capacity as Senators. Needless to say, it was bittersweet watching these leaders (who have been in the Senate for over 25 years) pass the torch. But while watching their remarks and their colleagues tributes we are reminded of all the handwork they did for the progressive causes we as Democrats hold so dear.Here are their farewell addresses.Barbara BoxerSenator Boxer has served in the Senate since 1993 for California, and beforehand in the House from 1983 until joining the Senate. She chaired the Senate Environment Committee before becoming a ranking member. A pro-LGBT (before it was acceptable), pro-worker s rights, pro-environmentalism senator, Boxer never wavered in her fight for what was right for not only California but for the whole country.Barbara Mikulski Senator Mikulski, the longest-serving woman in Congressional history, arrived in the House in 1977, serving until moving up to the Senate in 1987. She chaired the powerful Appropriations Committee, becoming a ranking member. Coining the term Macaroni and cheese economics, Mikulski worked tirelessly for working families, children, women, and veterans, who too often fell prey and victim to a system that was rigged against the little guys.Harry ReidSenator Reid, who entered the United States Congress in 1983 and the Senate in 1987, bringing with him a unique and humbling story of hope, handwork and perseverance. For two years Reid served as Minority Leader until elevating to Majority Leader, a position he held for 8 years in which he fought tooth and nail to protect and defend President Obama s legacy and the progressive ideals the Democrats work for every single day. Whether it be standing up to Ted Cruz during a government shut down, or convincing centrist Democrats to vote in favor of Obamacare, Harry Reid never backed down ever. And we are better as a nation because of that.These three progressive Senators blazed trails and put up the good fight. When the going got tough, the tough got going. Senators Boxer, Mikulski and Reid stood tall in times of thick and thin, and never wavered in their commitment to doing the right thing. These Senators will be missed greatly, and their legacies will live on long after they leave their seats. There might never be more like them, but we should all feel lucky that each one will be succeeded by intelligent, equally compassionate progressives who share their values.Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, and Barbara Mikulski you will be greatly missed. Thank you for your service.","label":1}
{"text":"EXTREME POSITIONS ON ABORTIONHillary Clinton positioned herself as a moderate on abortion for much of her career, but now holds the most extreme positions on abortion of any presidential candidate ever.Here are three reasons why:1. She wants taxpayers to pay for abortion.Clinton supports government funding for abortion. On June 10, Clinton delivered a speech at a Planned Parenthood event in which she called for repealing the Hyde Amendment, a policy that prevents taxpayer funding for abortion. Let s repeal laws like the Hyde Amendment that make it nearly impossible for low-income women, disproportionately women of color, to exercise their full reproductive rights, she said.The Democratic National Committee added this goal to its platform after Clinton became the nominee.An August YouGov poll found that 55 percent of Americans support the Hyde Amendment. This includes a large number of Democrats, who are about evenly divided. Forty-one percent of Democrats support the ban on abortion funding while 44 percent oppose it, which is within the poll s margin of error (4.8 percentage points for the full sample).2. She supports abortion until birth.Clinton supports abortion up until the moment of birth.She doesn t say it exactly like that, of course, because it sounds awful when you say a baby can be legally killed right before she s born. Instead, Clinton uses some shifty Clintonian lingo.Clinton has said she supports restrictions only in the third trimester and only if there are exceptions for the life and health of the mother. (In one interview she said there should only be restrictions at the very end of the third trimester. ) But as Clinton understands, and most voters don t, the health exception is just a huge loophole that allows for abortion for any reason.The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Doe v. Bolton, the companion case to Roe v. Wade, that the health exception can be whatever the abortionist decides it is.An abortionist s medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman s age relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health, the court decided.So, when Clinton says she ll only support abortion restrictions in the third trimester if there is a health exception, she is effectually saying there should be no restrictions on abortion through the entire pregnancy. She admits this when pressed on the issue.In an April appearance on ABC s The View, Clinton was asked if she supports legal abortion just hours before delivery, and she agreed. That same week, on NBC s Meet the Press, she was asked, when or if does an unborn child have constitutional rights? She answered, the unborn person doesn t have constitutional rights. A July 16 Marist poll found that only 13 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal through the entire pregnancy. Similarly, a 2012 Gallup poll found only 14 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in the last three months of pregnancy, and a July 2014 HuffPost\/YouGov poll found that 59 percent of Americans support a ban on abortions after 20-weeks of gestation, which is during the second trimester. 3. She thinks abortion should be common, not rare.Clinton no longer argues that abortion should be rare.During his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton s husband, Bill, said that abortion should be safe, legal and rare. It was controversial at the time within the pro-choice community because saying that abortion should be rare implies that there is something wrong with getting an abortion. (What could that be?) But the phrase helped establish Bill Clinton s public image as a moderate on abortion.","label":1}
{"text":"Welcome to the new America, where there can be no opposition to the Left or there will be serious consequences The retired cop who annually cut a rug while directing Rhode Island traffic until Providence cut ties with him when he protested a Black Lives Matter supporter has a new dance partner on the other side of town.Tony Lepore, 68, is taking his holiday dance act to East Providence from Dec. 10 to Dec. 24, the cavorting cop said during an appearance Sunday on Fox & Friends. And I ll always on the 24th wear my Santa hat and pass out candy canes to the kids, said Lepore, who s been dancing in the streets since 1984.A longtime local favorite, Providence dropped Lepore s services after he helped organize a picket outside a Dunkin Donuts where a worker wrote #blacklivesmatter on a police officer s coffee cup. Mr. Lepore was not authorized to speak on behalf of the Providence Police Department and his actions were, in my judgment, a disservice to the department and to members of the Providence community, Providence Police Chief Stephen Pare said in a statement.Lepore said Sunday he was aware of the risks of his protest but he wanted to support the beat cops. Black Lives Matter is an organization that has some individuals some individuals that advocate harm to police officers, Lepore said. Since we picketed and got a written apology from the Dunkin Donuts owner. . . . we haven t had one incident in Rhode Island.","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump previewed his administration's budget, promising to hold each branch of his cabinet accountable. [\"We must do a lot more with less,\" he said prior to a working lunch with economic and political advisers. Trump described the current financial situation of the country as \"a mess\" and vowed to fix it. \"The finances of this country are a mess, but we're going to clean that up,\" Trump said, pointing out that he had only been president for four weeks. \"I can't take too much of the blame for what's happened, but it is absolutely out of control. \" Trump met with his Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, as well as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. He was joined by his senior staff, including Jared Kushner, Reince Priebus, Steve Bannon, and his economic adviser Gary Cohn. He asserted that funding the military was a priority, and promised to negotiate more deals for the government. \"We have already saved a lot \u2014 billions and billions of dollars,\" he said, referring to his efforts at renegotiating federal contracts.","label":0}
{"text":"Is anyone else getting sick and tired of hearing all of the baseless lies being told about Trump? There is zero evidence that Trump is a racist, yet the Left continues to spew that horrible label every chance they get. If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler s public relations mastermind","label":1}
{"text":"Talk radio hosts went nuts with the news of Gore s visit to Trump Tower today. Michael Savage was very disappointed but Rush Limbaugh gave the best comment: I m gonna tell you something, said Limbaugh. If Trump goes south on climate change, that is just gonna be deeply disappointing and alarming because of what climate change is to the left. It s everything, it s everything they want and everything they believe and it s almost everything they can get to achieve it, to accomplish it. We couldn t agree more with Rush! It s just upsetting that they would even want to speak with the phony who claims global warming is real Yikes!","label":1}
{"text":"Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane just couldn t resist having a bit of fun with Kellyanne Conway s absolutely batsh*t insane claim regarding Trump s unfounded allegation that President Obama spied on The Donald through his microwave. On Monday, the legendary comedy figure tweeted his own theory about what Conway meant and to him, it sounds a lot like the sort of thing you d expect from the furniture at PeeWee s Playhouse (those sneaky little bastards):So basically @KellyannePolls, you're saying this is how Obama spied on Trump: pic.twitter.com\/8IeecMwa5E Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane) March 13, 2017 There was an article this week that talked about how you can surveil someone through their phones, through their certainly through their television sets, any number of different ways, Conway said over the weekend as she attempted to defend Trump s claim that Obama tapped his wires at Trump Tower. And microwaves that turn into cameras, et cetera. So we know that that is just a fact of modern life. Tech publication Wired explains that it is, contrary to her assertion, impossible to use a microwave oven to spy on someone (unless, of course, it really is the worst Transformer ever):First, let s take Conway s assertion literally. Microwaves (the waves) can be used for certain types of imaging, as in radar, but a microwave oven can t be used as a camera unless it literally has an outward-facing webcam onboard. No such microwave appears to exist. That s in contrast to the case of the spying Samsung TVs, referenced by Conway, that each come with a built-in, internet-connected microphone.But what if we were to take Conway not literally, but seriously? Asked whether a microwave could be turned into not a camera, specifically, but a listening device, Stephen Frasier, a microwave imaging and radar researcher at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, let out several seconds of sustained laughter. Unless it s a voice-activated microwave oven connected to the internet I can t think of a way, says Frasier. Outside of a failed smart microwave Kickstarter, no microphone-equipped microwaves appear to exist. In fact, a quick check of major appliance manufacturers including GE, LG, and Samsung shows that internet-connected microwaves are a rarity. Even those that might exist in early-adopting kitchens would be far more likely to be conscripted into a botnet than used as a listening device.To date, the Trump administration has not produced a shred of evidence to back Trump s claim though they did secure additional time to stall as they desperately search for something anything that will at least convince the most stupid among us that it happened.","label":1}
{"text":"Nigeria s army said it had repelled an attack on Monday by suspected Boko Haram militants on the city at the center of the conflict with the Islamist insurgency. Major General Nicholas Rogers, who heads Nigeria s military operations against Boko Haram, told Reuters that the situation in Maiduguri, in the northeast of Nigeria, was under control. He did not give further details. The government says it is on alert for Boko Haram attacks during the Christmas period and other festivals for Christians and Muslims. Embassies regularly warn their nationals to be cautious and avoid public spaces at those times. Heavy gunfire was heard in the Molai area on the outskirts of the city on Monday evening, prompting residents to flee the district, two residents and an officer in a local vigilante group had said. The vigilante commander, who asked not to be identified, said his group had joined the effort to repel the attackers. There were no immediate reports of casualties nor any immediate claim of responsibility. It was also not immediately possible to identify the target of the assault. Boko Haram has in the past targeted places of worship during religious celebrations, including attacking churches at Christmas or mosques during Muslim festivals or prayer times. The last major Boko Haram attack on Maiduguri, a mainly Muslim city with a Christian minority, was in June, when the group launched an assault on the eve of a visit by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. President Muhammadu Buhari s administration has previously said Boko Haram was almost defeated but the latest attack shows the group s continued ability to stage hit-and-run raids, prompting a renewed government push against the militants. The Nigerian government approved the release of $1 billion last week from a state oil fund to help with the fight. Nigeria s long-term plan is to corral civilians inside fortified garrison towns, a move that effectively cedes the rural areas to Boko Haram. Nigeria replaced its previous military commander of the fight against Boko Haram after half a year in the post. Military sources told Reuters this followed a series of embarrassing attacks by the militants.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Navy carrier Ronald Reagan is conducting drills with Japanese warships in seas south of the Korean peninsula, Japan s military said on Friday, in a show of naval power as Pyongyang threatens further nuclear and missile tests. The Reagan strike group will conduct a separate drill with the South Korean Navy in October, the defense ministry said in a statement distributed to South Korean lawmakers on Monday. The 100,000-ton Reagan, which is based in Japan, and its escort ships have been holding drills with Japanese navy vessels since Sept 11 in waters south and west of Japan s main islands, the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force said in a statement. That exercise with the three Japanese warships, including two destroyers and one of the country s two biggest helicopter carriers, the Ise, will run until Sept 28, it added. The U.S. and regional allies are responding with military drills, including bomber and jet fighter flights near the Korean peninsula, as Pyongyang pursues its nuclear and missile programs, with an apparent hydrogen bomb test and two ballistic missile firings over Japan in recent weeks. North Korea on Friday said it might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean after U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to destroy the country.","label":0}
{"text":"The most worrying thing about James Hodgkinson, experts on violent extremism say, is how unremarkable the 66-year-old home inspector from Illinois seemed until he opened fire on Republican lawmakers as they played baseball. Violent clashes between left-wing and right-wing groups at rallies and protests around the country have increased since the election of President Donald Trump in November. Experts say detecting and heading off anti-government attacks from people driven by political ideology is increasingly difficult because of the abundance of partisan rancor, particularly on social media. Hodgkinson wrote a series of strident messages against Trump and other Republicans on his Facebook account. But so have many other Americans as politics have become more polarized in recent years, particularly since the divisive 2016 presidential election campaign. None of Hodgkinson's posts suggested he would end up opening fire at a baseball field outside Washington on Wednesday morning. He wounded a top Republican lawmaker, a Congressional aide, a lobbyist, and a Capitol police officer before being shot himself. He later died from his wounds. In one Facebook post, Hodgkinson wrote: \"Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co.\" However, there is no evidence so far that he was linked to any radical or violent groups. Like millions of other Americans, he supported Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who sought the Democratic presidential nomination and condemns violence. Steve Bongardt, who worked until 2015 as an FBI special agent focusing on threat detection, said traditional counter-terrorism tools such as behavioral profiling and surveillance are less effective because so many otherwise harmless people post virulent messages on social media. \"The problem isn't that behavioral profiles don't work. The problem is the utility of them, because they give us so many false positives,\" said Bongardt, who now heads The Gyges Group, a security firm. Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow in the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism, said the intensity of emotions on both sides of the political divide could be dangerous. \"When you have people with basically mainstream opinions so worked up that they're willing to commit acts of actual violence, it illustrates in a very stark way how divided our country is right now,\" Pitcavage said. A spokesman for the Justice Department said the department is considering a possible statute to target \"ideologically motivated crimes of violence\" from radical groups or individuals inside the country. Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of the conservative Family Research Council, which a gunman attacked in 2012 over its opposition to same-sex marriage, said Wednesday's shooting showed that both sides need to \"tone down their rhetoric.\" \"This is an opportunity for a fresh start for everybody in a position of leadership, all the way up to the president,\" Boykin said. Most political violence in the United States still comes from right-wing groups, according to Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. However, the United States also has a history of violence from left-wing groups such as the Weather Underground, which was active in the 1970s. It then eased substantially over the past three decades but has risen again in recent years with violence at protests against globalization, police brutality and the Trump administration, Levin said. Left-wing extremists \"might be the junior varsity, but they're now on the radar screen,\" he said. It is too early to say if Hodgkinson's attack was part of a post-election trend of left-wing violence, said J.J. MacNab, a fellow specializing in anti-government extremism at George Washington University's Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. \"We are a cycle-of-violence country. It looks like we may be going into a left-wing phase now, but I'm not sure the violent right-wing is ready to shut up yet,\" MacNab said.","label":0}
{"text":"Her shoes were bedazzled platform moon boots. Her outfit was encircled by a tutu tilted at a particularly rakish angle. Her capelet, cresting in tusklike spikes, appeared to be from aluminum foil. Jeremy Scott, the fashion designer, leaned forward and fixed the contestant, Alyssa Edwards, with a look. \"I will just come out of the closet here and say, This is fashion,\" he said. And because this is also \"RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars\" \u2014 one of the reality TV shows in the empire overseen by RuPaul Charles, the drag \"supermodel of the world\" \u2014 Ms. Edwards, a drawling diva out of Mesquite, Tex. accepted the compliment and went on to Taylor Dayne's \"Tell It to My Heart. \" For the uninitiated, \"RuPaul's Drag Race\" is a competition on the Logo network to find \"America's next drag superstar. \" It is a campy, joyful pastiche of \"Project Runway,\" \"America's Next Top Model\" and \"America's Got Talent,\" requiring its superstars to sing, dance, act, strut and for the title. Along the way, in and out of drag, contestants design and make their own dresses, spackle on their own makeup and merrily talk trash about, and to, one another. Is it any wonder that it has become the fashion industry's favorite show? \"I've seen every episode,\" said Marc Jacobs, who, like Mr. Scott, has been a guest judge on the show. (Mr. Charles and his friend and sidekick, Michelle Visage, are two of the constant judges, with a rotating roster of regulars and guests.) \"It makes me laugh, it makes me cry. There's a lot of power in it, and I'm not a big reality TV show fan at all. \" It was first recommended to him by the photographer Steven Meisel. Since its premiere in 2009, \"Drag Race\" has grown from minor curiosity into niche touchstone, largely by word of mouth and social media. This month, after being ignored by most major awards for years, Mr. Charles won his (and the show's) first Emmy, for best host. Its audience is growing along with its acclaim. The first episode of the eighth season of \"Drag Race,\" its most recent, which concluded in May, was the most streamed in the history of the series. Viewership for the second season of \"Drag Race All Stars,\" in which previous contestants come back for a second chance at a crown, airing now, is up 28 percent over \"Drag Race\" (and more than 50 percent over the first season of \"All Stars\"). Winners and have gone on to perform around the world, record albums and music videos, team up with cosmetics companies and, in at least one case (Laganja Estranja, Season 6) debut a line of fashion, accessories and dog clothes. In some circles, the show has been celebrated for its politics of affirmation and visibility. In fashion circles, it is celebrated for this, too \u2014 but also for minting a class of who look great in a dress. \"It's happening,\" said Miss Fame, 31, a contestant on Season 7. \"The doors have been opening. \" Since being on \"Drag Race,\" she has attended New York Fashion Week (and will attend Paris's this season) and made beauty videos for L'Or\u00e9al, which sent her to the Cannes Film Festival, where she walked the red carpet in a Zac Posen gown. Mr. Charles's queens are now guests at fashion shows and fashion week parties, adored by the biggest names in the industry. Pat McGrath, the doyenne of runway makeup artists, posts images of contestants on her social media accounts. Miu Miu flew several contestants to Paris for a party to celebrate its perfume last July. They also appear in magazines and ad campaigns. Mr. Meisel was on the vanguard when he shot Carmen Carrera (an early contestant who has since announced she is transgender) for W magazine in 2011. In the years since, more have followed. Pearl, a contestant from Season 7, signed with Wilhelmina Models in 2015. This year, Mr. Jacobs featured Dan Donigan (better known by his nom de drag, Milk) a contestant from Season 6, in his spring ads, wearing his women's collection. And in April, Naomi Campbell gave a to Naomi Smalls, a Season 8 who chose a drag name in Ms. Campbell's honor. \"I'm loving Naomi Smalls,\" Ms. Campbell told a crowd in London. \"It's a kind of \" said Violet Chachki, 24, the winner from Season 7. \"There's a strong crossover there. \" Known on the show as a \"fashion queen\" (as opposed to a \"comedy queen\" or a \"pageant queen\") Ms. Chachki's signature look involved corseting herself to a so extreme that one of her accessories was an oxygen tank. Since her win, she has been invited to fashion shows by Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Scott, and was among those flown to the Miu Miu party in Paris (\"\" she said). The photographer Steven Klein shot her for Interview magazine, alongside the runway model Anna Cleveland, and for Italian Vogue, alongside other \"Drag Race\" alumni, for an article about the club promoter Susanne Bartsch. \"I think that a lot of people in the fashion world have an eye on me, because I do have that crossover,\" Ms. Chachki said. \"It seems so normal to me now, but even three years ago I never would have imagined it. Now it seems I'm segueing into that world, more so than the drag world. \" \"That world\" is watching, and discussing. \"I was on set shooting an ad campaign a few days ago, and I think half the set watched the show,\" said the designer Jason Wu. \"It was totally the topic of the day. Between the makeup artist and the set designer, we're all huge fans. \" Mr. Wu has a long history with RuPaul as a doll designer before he worked in fashion, Mr. Wu worked on a series of RuPaul dolls. \"There are many weekly discussions in the office,\" said the designer Joseph Altuzarra, who called RuPaul \"the heir apparent to Oprah. \" \"A lot of people go into fashion \u2014 a lot of designers, certainly \u2014 because they love clothing, they love makeup and hair and beauty. And I think 'Drag Race' is such an extreme version of it that it only makes sense that people in this industry can appreciate it and latch on. \" Bianca Del Rio, 41, the winner of Season 6 and one of the show's most visible stars, said, \"Fashion people understand drag. \" She has toured the world with her comedy act, and stars in a new independent film, \"Hurricane Bianca,\" that comes out this week. \"It's a process, and you get to create absolutely anything you want. The only difference with a fashion show is it's 15 minutes. For us, it's usually two hours. \" Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, two of the executive producers of \"Drag Race,\" are also documentarians who directed \"In 'Vogue': The Editor's Eye. \" \"We were a little anxious they might find out that we made 'Drag Race,'\" Mr. Bailey said about his initial meetings with Vogue editors. \"The reverse was completely true. The embrace was fantastic, because they all watch it. \" The affection is mutual. Asked who else from the fashion industry he would most like to have on the show \u2014 besides Mr. Scott and Mr. Jacobs, the models Gigi Hadid and Chanel Iman have appeared \u2014 Mr. Charles said: \"How fabulous would it be if we got Anna Wintour on the judges panel?\" Of course, drag fashion is not runway fashion. Most of the queens on the show make or commission their outfits, only occasionally straying into designer pieces, which rarely come in regular women's sizes, let alone 's sizes. (\"I can definitely make sample size work,\" said Ms. Chachki dryly, \"which is more than most. \") More to the point, drag fashion satirizes high fashion as much as it celebrates it. \"That's part of the bohemian creed,\" Mr. Charles said. \"You reserve the right to simultaneously love something with all your heart and absolutely hate it to your core. I love creativity and beauty. Fashion is absolutely that. \" Which may in part explain why the fashion industry has found \"Drag Race\" easy to love. Runway fashion, with very few exceptions, exists in a state of permanent seriousness drag sends it up mercilessly, worshiping its extremes while mocking its pretensions with impunity. It comes as a relief. And that is exactly how some use it. After the grueling production of his most recent fashion week show, Mr. Jacobs said, he dragged himself home and got in bed. \"I couldn't move, I was so wiped out,\" he said. \"Eight o'clock came around I was like, 'Oh, my God, we get to watch 'Drag Race All Stars.' What could be better? Lying in bed, eating pretzels with peanut butter stuffed inside them, watching 'Drag Race' with my boyfriend. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Democratic U.S. presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders brought his firebrand rhetoric back to the floor of the Senate on Tuesday to condemn a White House-backed bill on Puerto Rico's financial crisis as \"colonialism at its worst.\" Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who turned an unlikely presidential bid into a political movement to combat inequality, warned that legislation due for a crucial Senate vote on Wednesday would subject Puerto Rico to Republican trickle-down economics and favor \"vulture capitalists\" at the expense of the island's increasingly impoverished population. An aide said it was the first time Sanders has spoken in the Senate since December. \"Does that sound like the kind of morality that should be passed here in the United States Senate?\" Sanders fumed during an eight-minute appearance to support an hours-long speech by Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who opposes the bill. The Vermont senator used his appearance to rail against details of the legislation, which would put much of Puerto Rico's management in the hands of a seven-member oversight board and require the island to pay $370 million over five years for the board's administration costs even as it cuts funding for education, healthcare and pensions. In an exchange with Menendez, Sanders said, \"How in God's name do you run up an administrative cost of $370 million,\" adding, \"I know this sounds so absurd that people may think I'm misleading them.\" \"Would my friend from New Jersey agree that this is colonialism at its worst?\" asked Sanders, who announced last week that he would vote for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in her November election contest against Republican Donald Trump. \"Oh absolutely,\" replied Menendez. The Puerto Rico bill, which has already been passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, faces opposition from both sides of the aisle in the Senate. Nevertheless, the Obama administration and Republican leaders are trying to get the bill passed before a July 1 deadline, when the island is scheduled to make a $1.9 billion payment on its $70 billion debt.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump is ramping up his search for a new chief for the U.S. central bank, meeting with former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh and three others and promising a decision next month. \"I've had four meetings for Fed chairman and I'll be making a decision over the next two or three weeks,\" Trump told reporters on the White House South Lawn. Trump has previously suggested he may reappoint Fed Chair Janet Yellen to the post. Jerome Powell, one of the current governors on the Fed's board, also met with Trump earlier this week about the Fed job, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Trump on Friday did not provide details on his meetings. A new Fed chair would take the helm as the central bank eases well away from crisis-era policies in response to a strengthening economy and falling unemployment, though inflation still lingers below the Fed's 2-percent goal. Under Yellen, the Fed has raised interest rates and launched a plan to shrink its $4.5 trillion balance sheet. Much of the latter was accumulated through a controversial bond-buying program that Yellen said helped the economy avert an even deeper downturn. Her term as chair expires in February. Warsh was a Fed governor between 2006 and 2011 and resigned from the board because of his opposition to the bond-buying program. He has called for a revamp of how the Fed makes monetary policy, saying it needs \"fresh air\" from markets and from the \"real economy.\" Treasury yields spurted higher on news of the Trump meetings; Warsh is viewed as more of a hawk than Yellen. \"He's definitely more hawkish on the spectrum. He is quite a contrast to Yellen. It does seem he is the front-runner even though it's not a sure thing he will be nominated,\" Gennadiy Goldberg, interest rates strategist at TD Securities in New York, said of Warsh. As recently as July, Trump had not ruled out reappointing Yellen, telling the Wall Street Journal that he liked her demeanor and desire to keep interest rates low. In addition to Warsh and Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor's name also has been floated as a contender. Powell specialized in financial regulatory matters during his five years on the Fed Board of Governors, which is led by the Fed chair. There has also been speculation that Trump could turn to his top economic aide, Gary Cohn, for the Fed chair position. A Fed spokesman declined to comment on the process while Warsh and Taylor did not respond to requests for comment.","label":0}
{"text":"Is anyone else 100% FED UP?On Friday, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, along with Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-AZ) and Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), sent a letter to DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and ICE Deputy Assistant Secretary Salda a warning them not to release an illegal immigrant with drug-resistant tuberculosis into the general public. I was alarmed when I was forwarded a letter written by Pinal County Director of Public Health Thomas Schryer indicating that the ICE Detention facility in Florence is planning on releasing an illegal immigrant with drug resistant tuberculosis into the Pinal County Community in the next couple days, Gosar said in a statement. I demand ICE and DHS rethink this awful decision and not release this dangerous individual. Such actions put our citizens at risk and will impose significant financial burdens on the County. Dr. Thomas Schryer, Director of Public Health for Pinal County, wrote a letter explaining his concerns about releasing the detained illegal immigrant, who has been receiving treatment for seven months for his tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a very dangerous disease that can spread easily, due to the public health threat Arizona Revised Statutes and good public health practice dictates that we provide healthcare to treat tuberculosis for anyone residing in our county (other than those incarcerated) as a result when the ICE facility releases this individual he will be treated at the local tax payers expense, he stated. From a public health perspective it is essential that anyone who is suffering from TB be treated so they are not a health threat to others, I request that ICE pay the costs of those who are released from their facility. The full text of Dr. Schryer s letter and the letter from Gosar, McCain, Flake, and Kirkpatrick can be read below. FINAL Letter to ICE and DHS re Illegal Immigrant with TB in Florence Facility.docx","label":1}
{"text":"Russia s military forces in Syria are likely to be substantially reduced and a drawdown could begin before the end of the year, the head of the Russian general staff, Valery Gerasimov, said on Thursday.","label":0}
{"text":"Here's something interesting from The Unz Review... Recipient Name => Pat Buchanan not only read these books, he wrote them. Credit: VDare.com.  If only Donald Trump hadn't been such a crazy, thin-skinned, moral lout who holds the Constitution in contempt, THEN we could have supported him! Maybe.  Mushy moderates think alike: Rod Dreher is out with The Tragedy of Trump [ The American Conservative , October 24, 2016] praising New York Time s token conservative Ross Douthat for saying  The dangers of a Hillary Clinton presidency are more familiar than Trump's authoritarian unknowns, because we live with them in our politics already. They're the dangers of elite groupthink, of Beltway power worship, of a cult of presidential action in the service of dubious ideals. They're the dangers of a recklessness and radicalism that doesn't recognize itself as either, because it's convinced that if an idea is mainstream and commonplace among the great and good then it cannot possibly be folly.  [ The Dangers of Hillary Clinton , October 22, 2016, Dreher's emphasis]  Dreher comments:  Boy, is that ever true. Read the whole thing. Along these lines, there was a quite good Peggy Noonan column in the WSJ last week [ Imagine a Sane Donald Trump , October 20, 2016](now, alas, behind the paywall, but I found the whole thing here ), saying that if Trump were not a \"nut\" \u2014 which he clearly is \u2014 he would be winning this thing by a landslide, because a lot of folks are sick and tired of the status quo that Hillary represents.  But wait a minute. I find my mind circling back to Patrick J. Buchanan, a devout Christian, a long-time conservative, and a loyal Republican who endorsed Bob Dole in 1996 and George W. Bush in 2004. Buchanan was a truly creative political thinker who wrote the Donald Trump playbook on immigration, free-trade , and foreign policy \u2014and he was excommunicated from the cult of #TrueConservatism for opposing the disastrous Iraq War.  Then, after Pat Buchanan, there was Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012, who was a very different messenger, but one who carried Buchanan's torch on foreign policy. Ron Paul wasn't as strong as Buchanan on immigration or free-trade, but he was the Mr. Constitution of 2008 and 2012. Like Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul carried none of Trump's character baggage on women, morality or religion, but he was STRONG on the Constitution.  How did all of these born-again constitutional conservatives respond to Ron Paul's candidacy at the 2012 Republican Convention? They crushed him. [ Chaos on the Convention Floor as RNC Blocks Ron Paul Delegates, Alters Seating Rules , DemocracyNow, August 29, 2012]  Mike Huckabee , too, was a very different messenger than Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul. Huckabee's campaigns anticipated Trump's campaign on entitlements. He wanted a more blue-collar, populist, working class Republican Party that tilted more toward Main Street than to K Street and the Chamber of Commerce. Also like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee shared none of Trump's character baggage on women, morality or religion. Mike Huckabee was the Mr. Evangelical of the 2008, 2012 and 2016 campaigns. Huckabee styled himself as the \"God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy\" conservative.  And yet, Pat Buchanan was caricatured as a Neo-Nazi anti-Semite, Ron Paul as a crazy wild eyed kook, and Mike Huckabee as an unacceptable cornpone welfare-stater.  Unlike John McCain, Mitt Romney and \u00a1Jeb!, non e of these \"Sane Donald Trumps\" were acceptable to the classical-liberal, self-anointed \"governing wing\" of the Republican Party.  TAC 's Dreher wimps on:  Trumpers, likewise, will be strongly tempted to indulge in bitter \"You stabbed him in the back!\" polemics. All of this will work to the advantage of President H. Clinton, of course. What is needed is for the GOP establishment to humble itself enough to admit those who, like Noonan, accept the critique of the party and the system that Trump's candidacy embodies, however, well, nuttily. And the Trump insurgents \u2014 including their leader \u2014 need to have the sense to realize that it advantages them not at all to drag this fight with Republicans out past the election . Their candidate will have received a thorough, resounding rejection by voters in an election he likely would have won had he not consistently spoken and acted like a nut.  Do I think this (humility on both sides, uniting in the face of Hillaryism) is likely to happen? No, I do not. But I hope I'm wrong. The Trump people, like their candidate, are not known for their ability to think strategically and to restrain themselves for their own good. And the bitterness and spite among Republican regulars is going to blind them to their own role in creating this mess. (My emphasis)  But this isn't \"polemics\"\u2014it is a historical fact: no major party candidate in American history, including William Howard Taft in 1912 and Barry Goldwater in 1964 , has been stabbed in the back by more members of his own party. No major party candidate in history has ever taken more fire from the \"leading intellectuals\" of his own party. Trump has been fighting a two-front war since May\u2014the war against Hillary Clinton and the Left, and the war against #NeverTrumper conservative intellectuals and hacks in his own party.  Trump's struggles from the convention through the general election have been due to a single demographic: college educated, suburban White Republicans, especially women. These people voted for Mitt Romney in 2012. They voted for \u00a1Jeb!, Rubio and Kasich in the Republican primaries. This is the 25% of the Republican Party who have refused to back Trump or have panicked time and time again whenever some new story roils the news cycle.  #NeverTrump still has a lot of influence over these Establishment-oriented voters. Their strategy has been to throw gasoline on every small fire in the news cycle in order to panic these voters into fleeing from Trump. That's what happened with the Judge Curiel incident, the Khizr Khan fiasco and most recently with the Access Hollywood tape. Trump's \"fellow Republicans\" come out and slam him and make these stories a far bigger deal.  Because of these dynamics, it's true to say that what happened on October 8, 2016 was The Day The Republican Party Died . That was the day of the #NeverTrump coup in which1\/3 of the Republican Senate and 1\/4 of all elected Republicans publicly abandoned him. It was a historically unprecedented betrayal \u2013 never before in American history, not even during TR's short-lived Bull Moose Party in 1912, had more elected members of one party deserted their own nominee.  The utterly predictable result of the #NeverTrump coup was the party split that showed up in the polls. That event altered the whole trajectory and tone of the race.  What would have happened if Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul or Mike Huckabee had beaten Dole in 1996 or Romney in 2012? I believe the result would have been the same . I think the Republican Establishment would have joined forces with the Democratic Establishment in order to preserve the neo-liberal globalist status quo.  There would have been some kind of #NeverBuchanan, #NeverPaul, or #NeverHuckabee campaign. If any of these forerunners of Trumpism had won the Republican nomination, there would have a similar fight to \"save the soul\" of \"conservatism.\"  If the Establishment candidate loses the primary, the \"soul\" of the Republican Party will always be at risk.  If Trump loses in a landslide, the response of the GOP Establishment to any future insurgent candidate will be the precedent set in 2016: They will sabotage their own nominee in order to elect the Democrat and hang on to power.  Because of this, it will be impossible to reform the GOP through the primary system.  So yes, we must face facts and \"drag this fight out\" beyond November.  Conservatism, Inc. has thrown down the gauntlet: either support \u00a1Jeb! 2020 or Rubio 2020, the candidate of the minority neo-liberal globalist \"governing wing\" of the GOP\u2014or else.  Brad Griffin is the Editor of Occidental Dissent , where he writes under pen name Hunter Wallace . (Reprinted from VDare.com by permission of author or representative)","label":1}
{"text":"CNN cut ties with political commentator and interim Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile after leaked emails suggested she offered advisers to Hillary Clinton advance information about presidential debate questions, the news network reported on Monday. Brazile came under fire earlier this month after a hacked email published by WikiLeaks showed she may have tipped off the Democratic presidential nominee's campaign about a March CNN town-hall debate question about the death penalty. CNN announced her departure after a subsequent leaked email showed she said she was privy to \"questions in advance\" and offered to \"send a few more.\" Brazile had offered the network her resignation earlier this month, CNN reported. Brazile previously denied allegations that she gave the Clinton campaign information about debate questions ahead of time, according to media reports. Brazile, currently serving as interim head of the DNC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment but posted several tweets on Monday as the news broke. \"Thank you @CNN,\" Brazile tweeted. \"Honored to be a Democratic strategist and commentator on the network. Godspeed to all my former colleagues.\" Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized CNN, alleging it is biased against his campaign. A Clinton spokesman said in an email the campaign would not comment \"on the authenticity of any individual emails that have been hacked by the Russian government.\" FBI Director James Comey said on Friday the agency was probing more emails that might relate to Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.","label":0}
{"text":"Motorola is Dead but Donbass lives on \u2039 \u203a Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America's best-known critics of the War on Terror. He is Host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO ; a hard driving weekly LIVE call in radio show. He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications. Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. I beat the ban in Berkeley \u2013 still censored in Sacramento By Kevin Barrett on October 26, 2016  by Kevin Barrett , Veterans Today Editor  Thanks to members of the Social Justice Committee of the Berkeley Fellowship of Unitarian Universalists, a large and enthusiastic crowd turned out for my talk on \"Recent False Flags\" yesterday. It was a triumph of free speech in the city that gave the world the Free Speech Movement.  But unlike last year's talk (watch it here ) this one wasn't held at BFUU.  Why not? One member of the BFUU Social Justice Community, a certain Holly Harwood, demanded that my scheduled event be canceled because (she libelously claimed) I am a \"Jew hater\" and \"homophobe.\"  Not one member of the Social Justice Committee supported her.  So Holly Harwood started inundating the BFUU Board with lies and distortions about me and my books. The Board, which apparently includes some \"stealth Zionists\" who got themselves elected by concealing their pro-Israel loyalties, went along with her.  Harwood's vicious vilification campaign only succeeded in increasing the turnout for my talk, which was held at Redwood Gardens instead of BFUU. But Harwood didn't get the message. Now she has managed to censor another Berkeley free speech institution: Bonnie Faulkner's legendary Guns and Butter radio show.  Today's broadcast, which goes out on KPFA Berkeley and other Pacifica stations, features most of an interview Bonnie recorded with me last week. Unfortunately, after more mendacious complaints from Holly Harwood, Bonnie was apparently forced to cut the final six minutes of the interview, which features me explaining how and why I was banned at BFUU. Here is the censored \"Guns and Butter\" segment (please spread it far and wide so the censorship backfires):  The last place on earth I would ever expect ANY censorship of ANYTHING is Berkeley, California. And the last two places in Berkeley I would EVER expect to be censored are the Unitarian Church and the Guns and Butter radio show!  Did I fall into a black hole and emerge into a Bizarro World counter-universe where Berkeley Unitarians are authoritarians and censors, and it's the Bible-thumping Baptists of Alabama who are at the cutting edge of free speech, free thought, and unfettered intellectual inquiry? Memo to the Association of Alabama Baptists: Please invite this \"radical Muslim conspiracy theorist\" to speak at your freedom-loving church!  And it gets worse. I will be speaking in Sacramento tonight, and guess who's blocking the news? The main local leader of the 9\/11 truth movement!  David Kimball, who runs Sacramento 9\/11 Truth, has sponsored and\/or helped publicize all of my previous talks in the area. Yet this time he wouldn't return my repeated phone calls. Finally, weeks after I had started calling him, I got this email:  From: David Kimball <\u2026> Sent: Friday, October 21, 2016 11:42 PM Subject: Re: Sacramento event October 26th  Hi Kevin.  I've received your phone messages and email, and my apologies for this late response.  In recent years I've continued to research 9\/11 more thoroughly, and although you and I are still in agreement that the \"official narrative\" of 9\/11 cannot be true and that the media perpetuates the Big Lie, my views about 9\/11 are no longer in agreement with yours.  Therefore, I cannot in good conscience promote your upcoming speaking event.  Sincerely,","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, flew into Iraq on Monday with the top U.S. general to get a first-hand assessment of the battle against Islamic State from U.S. commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders. For Kushner, who has not been to Iraq before, the trip comes at a critical time as Trump examines ways to accelerate a U.S.-led coalition campaign that U.S. and Iraqi officials say has so far been largely successful in uprooting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. The visit appears to demonstrate the far-reaching portfolio of Kushner, 36, who is part of Trump's innermost circle and who has been given a wide range of domestic and foreign policy responsibilities, including working on a Middle East peace deal. Marine General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he invited Kushner and Tom Bossert, White House homeland security adviser, to accompany him so they could hear \"first-hand and unfiltered\" from military advisers about the situation on the ground and interact with U.S. forces. \"I said, 'Hey, next time I go to Iraq, if you're interested, come and it'd be good,\" Dunford said, adding he extended the invitation weeks ago. That kind of ground-level awareness of the war helps inform strategic decisions, Dunford said, adding it was the same reason he regularly leaves Washington to visit Iraq. \"The more appreciation you could have for what's actually happening on the ground, the more informed you are when you start talking about the strategic issues,\" Dunford said. Kushner, who is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka Trump, did not speak with reporters. Trump campaigned on defeating Islamic State but has yet to announce any dramatic shift in war strategy. After arriving, Kushner joined Dunford for meetings with the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad and the senior American commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend. Dunford's delegation also met Iraq's Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, whose office said their talks focused on the ongoing battle to retake the city of Mosul from Islamic State and U.S.-led coalition assistance, including aiding civilians displaced by the fighting. \"The delegation affirmed its support to Iraq in the war on terror,\" Abadi's office said in a statement. The trip comes as Iraqi security forces engage in fierce, house-to-house fighting in Mosul, Islamic State's last major stronghold in Iraq and the city where leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate nearly three years ago. Nearly 290,000 people have fled the city to escape the fighting, according to the United Nations. Although the loss of Mosul would deal a major defeat to Islamic State, U.S. and Iraqi officials are preparing for smaller battles even after the city is recaptured and expect the group to go underground to fight as a traditional insurgency. What happens to the U.S. military role in Iraq after Mosul is recaptured remain unclear. Influential Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has previously called on Iraq's government to order the withdrawal of U.S. and allied forces after the battle of Mosul is over. Dunford said Abadi understood the need for continued U.S. military support. \"It's not our judgment that the Iraqis will be self sustaining and self sufficient in the wake of Mosul. More importantly, it's not Prime Minister Abadi's assessment,\" Dunford said before his talks. Across the border in Syria, a U.S.-backed campaign to isolate Islamic State's de facto capital of Raqqa is advancing ahead of an eventual assault on the city. But in Syria, too, tough decisions await Trump. NATO ally Turkey has been incensed by U.S. support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, seen by the U.S. military as a reliable partner but by Turkey as a hostile force with deep links to Kurdish PKK militants who have waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state. The U.S. military has said no decision has been made yet on whether to support the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which include the YPG, in the Raqqa assault.","label":0}
{"text":"ENOUGH ALREADY! A California Dem and two dozen others want to have gender neutral terms now. Everyone s equal now? Um, not really.More than two dozen Democrats have proposed legislation that would eliminate the words husband and wife from federal law.Those gendered terms would be replaced by gender-neutral words like spouse or married couple, according to the bill from Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif. The Amend the Code for Marriage Equality Act recognizes that the words in our laws have meaning and can continue to reflect prejudice and discrimination even when rendered null by our highest courts, Capps said. Our values as a country are reflected in our laws. I authored this bill because it is imperative that our federal code reflect the equality of all marriages. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution means all states have to license same-sex marriages, a ruling that effectively ended the same-sex marriage debate in America. Capps said her bill was aimed at taking the next step, which is to ensure the United States Code reflects the equality of all marriages.","label":1}
{"text":"Why is the NFL ignoring this situation? Are they okay with NFL players posting images that suggest brutally murdering cops? The NFL can be reached at this number for anyone who cares to let them know how you feel about their silence. You may also send them a Tweet @NFL to let them know how you feel or go to their NFL Facebook page and leave a comment.The 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has denied New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and the NFL Players Association s appeal for an en banc rehearing in the ongoing Deflategate case.As a result, Brady s four-game suspension stands with the start of the regular season just nine weeks away. USA TODAYThe NFL was quick to tweet about the defeat of Brady s appeal:Tom Brady's appeals petition denied: https:\/\/t.co\/9cy1wP5Y7o pic.twitter.com\/RTPCMif5ug NFL (@NFL) July 13, 2016Yesterday we reported about a vile Instagram post by Cleveland Brown s Isaiah Crowell that depicted a cop s neck being slit by an ISIS type character. The NFL has had a couple days to respond to the horrific, hateful and racist post below:Here is the response from the NFL on Isiah Crowell s hateful social media post that glorifies killing cops:The Cleveland Police have threatened to pull out of Cleveland Stadium after NFL s Isaiah Crowell s vile social media post.Here s a sample of what Stephen Loomis, President of Cleveland Police Patrolmen s Association had to say to Crowell: Think we ll accept your apology? Kiss my ass. The full story can be found HERE.","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump picked Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci, a long-time supporter, to be his White House communications director on Friday, a White House official said. Currently at the Export-Import Bank, Scaramucci is expected to start his new job in August, the official said. No other changes were immediately expected in a communications operation that includes press secretary Sean Spicer and his deputy, Sarah Sanders, the official said. The appointment comes as the White House deals with questions around a special counsel probe and several congressional investigations into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and potential collusion with Trump's campaign. The communications position has been vacant since Michael Dubke resigned in May as communications director. Spicer has been serving a dual role as press secretary and communications director since Dubke left. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Scaramucci was interviewed by Trump on Friday morning and the job had been offered and accepted. Scaramucci, a Republican fundraiser and founder of Skybridge Capital, was earlier offered the post of U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.","label":0}
{"text":"Iran s defense capabilities are not negotiable, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday in remarks made previously but which now come amid increased pressure from the U.S. government over Tehran s ballistic missile program. Ties between Iran and the United States have deteriorated under U.S. President Donald Trump and suffered another deep blow two weeks ago when he decided not to certify that Tehran is complying with a 2015 nuclear pact and warning he might ultimately terminate it. Iran has reacted defiantly, dismissing Trump s demands for the pact to be toughened up. Last week, Iran s elite Revolutionary Guards, the most powerful military force in the country, said its ballistic missile program would accelerate despite U.S. and European Union pressure to suspend it. The defense capabilities and strength of the country are not negotiable or up for haggling, Khamenei was cited as saying at a ceremony at the Imam Ali army officer s academy in Tehran, according to state media. The ramping up of rhetoric on both sides has raised the specter of a possible military confrontation between the two countries. In recent months, small boats from the Revolutionary Guards navy have swarmed close to American warships in the Gulf, prompting the U.S. navy to fire flares and warning shots. Under the landmark 2015 deal between Iran and world powers, the Islamic Republic agreed to curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of a number of sanctions. The U.S. Senate is considering new legislation which could lead to Washington restoring sanctions on Iran should it test a ballistic missile able to carry a warhead or bar nuclear inspectors from any sites. In response, Khamenei said last week that Tehran would stick to the nuclear accord with world powers as long as the other signatories respected it, but would shred the deal if Washington pulled out.","label":0}
{"text":"USA Today reports:  Aoun, 81, is an ally of Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political party backed by Iran that has helped Syrian President Bashar Assad survive a five-year civil war on Lebanon's border.  The vote for Aoun, by 83 of parliament's 127 members, shows Iran-backed political factions shouldered past those aligned with Saudi Arabia, replacing Syria as Lebanon's chief foreign power broker.  Aoun's \"victory now is a victory for Hezbollah and that alliance, and certainly a kind of black eye for Saudi Arabia,\" said Paul Salem, vice president for policy and research at the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.  Saad Hariri, a pro-Western and Saudi-oriented politician, formally endorsed Aoun last week after failing to garner enough support for the presidency. In return, Aoun is expected to appoint Hariri prime minister.  \"It's a power-sharing system,\" Salem said. \"In a way, the status quo will continue.\"  U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby congratulated Lebanon on the election results.  \"This is a moment of opportunity, as Lebanon emerges from years of political impasse, to restore government functions and build a more stable and prosperous future for all Lebanese citizens,\" he said in a statement.  Asked later about Aoun's support from Hezbollah, which the State Department has designated a terrorist organization, Kirby said: \"Let' see what decisions he makes, what kind of leadership he exudes as president.\"  The U.S. routinely assesses its foreign assistance programs \"and we will do that with Lebanon going forward,\" Kirby said at a press briefing.  Aoun's election drew immediate praise from a top adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei.  The adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, described the choice as a victory for Iran and its allies in Lebanon, because the Lebanese president is \"a very significant ring in the chain of the Islamic resistance,\" according to Iran's government-owned Tasnim News Agency.  Aoun, in his first speech after becoming president, pledged to fight corruption and protect Lebanon from the fires raging around it, referring to the Syrian civil war, according to the Associated Press. He also promised to liberate contested territory under \"Israeli occupation,\" according to Hezbollah's Al Manar-TV, apparently referring to territory Israel considers part of the Golan Heights, which it conquered from Syria during the 1967 war. Saad Hariri and Michel Aoun  Lebanon has been without a head of state since May 2014, when then-president Michel Suleiman's six-year term expired. Since then, 45 sessions to elect a new leader have failed because of political infighting, the AP reported. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah and Michel Aoun","label":1}
{"text":"A racist Trump supporter who couldn t hack it as a police officer is calling for right-wing militia members, former police officers, and military veterans to grab their guns and come to Cleveland to shoot any black people they find protesting at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland next month. I am encouraging patriots and Trump supporters and those that support liberty and freedom to come lawfully armed with lethal and non-lethal weaponry, Jim Stachowiak declared in a video directed at lone wolf patriots. Stachowiak was booted out of the police force for misconduct after only three years on the job, yet he thinks he is capable of patrolling the outside of the GOP convention as a pretend law enforcement official.After slandering the Black Lives Matter movement by claiming that the group has issued death threats aimed at Donald Trump, Stachowiak called for armed volunteers to join him at the convention to intimidate and even kill black protesters They have threatened to cause riots in Cleveland and nationwide, he said. It is our sworn duty and obligation for all those like me and many of you who have taken the oath to defend this country against all enemies foreign and domestic. Then he repeated Donald Trump s suggestion that President Obama is a terrorist sympathizer and urged patriots to use their Second Amendment against Black Lives Matter members, whom he also referred to as domestic terrorists. We should answer the call with our Second Amendment. Yes, I m encouraging patriots to come prepared to defend this nation against a domestic terrorist organization supported by the terrorist in the White House, Obama Come prepared, because this may spark another revolution. It won t be decided if that spark turns into a bonfire by we who love liberty, for we will defend, not attack. We won t act, but we will react. Here s the video via YouTube.Stachowiak is nothing more than a right-wing terrorist trying to organize another Bundy-style standoff that he hopes will turn into some kind of bloody revolution. Gun nuts like him are the reason why we need serious gun restrictions in this country. If anybody shouldn t be allowed to have a gun it s this guy. He is literally calling for gun violence against back protesters who show up to the GOP convention. Hopefully, the FBI has seen this video and are planning to take Stachowiak into custody before we end up with another mass shooting.","label":1}
{"text":"posted by Eddie Michelle Obama has scrubbed all references to Hillary Clinton from both of her Twitter accounts as news breaks that Clinton is under two different FBI investigations involving four FBI offices. The @FLOTUS account has been wiped clean of all traces of Hillary, and @MichelleObama , a verified page with almost six million followers, has been scrubbed all the way back to 2013. Is Michelle performing a last minute tidy up, clearing out the clutter before the dumpster fire of the Democratic campaign finally burns out?  Bernie Sanders has also begun to change his tune. A Twitter post today sure didn't sound like it was referring to Hillary Clinton. Bernie was asked by a supporter about the write-in thing \u2013 and his response might surprise you. \" If you want to write me in here [Vermont], I think it's fine.\" source:","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump s statements are frightening to those who see the danger of his rise and his antics are certainly theatrical. Maybe that s why he fits in perfectly in this amazing Game of Thrones mashup clip.Watch Video Here: [youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=I0tE6T-ecmg]His face, along with quotes from his speeches and interviews, is cut into a mashup of the HBO hit drama as the viewer gets a sense of both the hilarity as well as the absurdity that is Donald Trump. It seems that Trump fits in quite well in the Seven Kingdoms. Produced by Australian satirist Huw Parkinson, the video begins with Trump turning away Daenerys Targaryen from the city of Quarth.Trump later attacks Pope Francis for criticizing him and complimented himself, saying he was a nice guy. He also said that he s going to build a massive wall and negotiates with Littefinger.Although the video is entertaining, it also sends a strong message about both the absurdity and the danger that is Trump. If his current stances on everything from banning Muslims to attacking Mexican immigrants are backed up with actual power by winning the presidency, then he ll not only be a danger to those communities, but will bring to power all of the racists that have backed him thus far, making America quite a dangerous place.","label":1}
{"text":"Consultant tied to Trump super PAC promoted 'voter suppression' against black, female... Consultant tied to Trump super PAC promoted 'voter suppression' against black, female voters By 0 98  Donald Trump may call the 2016 election \"rigged,\" but a consultant connected to the Great America PAC, a pro-Trump super PAC, told reporters that the group has a suppression campaign in the works, believing them to be representatives of a potential donor.  Political consultant Jesse Benton is once again in hot water. After journalists from The Telegraph introduced themselves to the former Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) aide as lawyers representing a potential Trump donor who was also a Chinese national, Benton proceeded to not only tell them how to donate to Trump's campaign despite it being against federal election law, but also discussed attempts to suppress votes in Cleveland, Ohio.  This isn't Benton's first time engaging in politically and legally questionable behavior. In May, he had to take a step back from his role at the Great America PAC after pleading guilty to buying an endorsement for presidential candidate Ron Paul in 2012, during his time as campaign manager. Benton was sentenced to two years of probation.  The undercover reporters first contacted the PAC's co-chairman, Eric Beach, who was filmed telling them that their Chinese client would be \" remembered \" if Trump becomes president, The Telegraph reported .  Beach proceeded to refer them over to Benton, claiming he was a consultant. When they met with Benton, he discussed the Trump campaign's plans in the swing state of Ohio. Referring to Hillary Clinton's support in Ohio, he said: \" In Cleveland, if we can\u2026turn her to regular turnout levels, she's gonna lose about 60,000 votes in that area \u2013 that's a dead heat. \"  \" So we have a voter suppression campaign quite frankly, targeting African-Americans, and sort of suburban moms, just bad stuff about Hillary, just trying to take their taste for her away, \" he explained.  When it came to the issue of how the Trump campaign would be able to accept money from a Chinese national without arousing suspicion, Benton explained that he would channel the cash through a dark money tunnel.  Super PACs make use of non-profit organizations to collect money from donors because 501(c)4 nonprofit groups are allowed to donate funds to political campaigns without disclosing who their donors are. Benton said he could accept the offered $2 million contribution from the non-existent Chinese donor by having the money sent to his company, which would then pass it on to one or two more non-profits.  The Great America PAC has tried to distance itself from Benton. Dan Backer, a lawyer for Great America, told The New York Times that \" I think it's pretty clear that someone who used to work for the organization decided to leverage that former relationship for his own purposes. \"  Backer suggested that Benton had exaggerated his role in the PAC, telling The Telegraph that Benton was engaging in \" puffery and self-promotion. \"  Benton has denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the reporters were brought to him as a \" business referral \" from Beach and that the clip was actually a part of a \" public affairs contract, \" The Telegraph reported.  The Trump campaign claims to have severed ties with the PAC, releasing a statement saying it \" publicly disavowed this group back in April. This is public via Federal Election Commission filings. \"  However, it was just a month ago that Trump's son Eric and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani spoke at a Great America PAC fundraiser, Raw Story reported .  Via RT . This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News with permission or license.","label":1}
{"text":"BLOG Girl Put Aluminum Foil After Washing Her Hair and She Delighted The Best Hairdressers of The World posted by Eddie Most of the girls and women have a lot of problems with hair but with this simple trick you'll get a nice, beautiful and strong hair. Everything you need for this trick are these natural ingredients. Ingredients: 1 lemon, orange or grapefruit 1 banana 2l milk Preparation: You must first squeeze the lemon, orange or the grapefruit. Put a banana in a blender and mix with 2l of milk. Thereafter mix all these ingredients and apply to your hair, then cover with aluminum foil. This mixture should be left to act on the hair for half an hour and then wash your hair with shampoo. With this combination you will make your hair be shiny, healthy, beautiful and what is most important to be without dandruff. source:","label":1}
{"text":"a leading immigration activist \u2014 has a message for Hillary Clinton: it's great that she's devoting one of the first speeches of her campaign to immigration, but \"that doesn't mean we're going to be starstruck.\" \"We're going to look past that,\" Vargas, the director of DRM Action Coalition, said. \"Because we learned from President Obama.\" Clinton appeared in Nevada on May 5 at a roundtable with unauthorized immigrants (as Adrian Carrasquillo reported for BuzzFeed). She called for Congress to create a \"full and equal\" path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants in the US. But she also said that if Congress didn't do that, she'd keep \u2014 and even expand \u2014 President Obama's executive actions to unilaterally let millions of unauthorized immigrants get protection from deportation and work permits. The appearance itself shows that the campaign is working hard to woo Vargas and immigrant-rights activists like him. Being catered to this early in a Democratic primary is a sign that the party understands not just the importance of the Latino vote, but also the power the immigrant-rights movement has to motivate this key group. There's a very good chance that Clinton's eventual opponent in the general election will oppose a path to citizenship. (Only two Republican presidential candidates have even said they want unauthorized immigrants to get legal status in the US.) But a path to citizenship isn't what advocates care about when it comes to Clinton. They see comprehensive immigration reform, with or without citizenship, as a pretty \"easy\" position for any Democratic politician to take in 2015. the partisan battle may be over what's in an immigration-reform law \u2014 but advocates are looking for clinton to support more executive actions Clinton has a good track record with Latino voters, with whose support she handily beat President Obama in the 2008 primary. But immigration activists believe they're far more powerful now than they were in 2008, and Hillary's record with them is another story. Even in 2014, her comments on the issue left advocates seriously concerned. She also must contend with how those activists view Obama's legacy on immigration reform. Obama took major executive actions in 2012 and again in 2014 to protect millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation, but the immigrant-rights movement remembers those actions as something they had to fight tooth and nail for against an often recalcitrant administration. Some Latino voters \u2014 and advocates \u2014 are not over the sting of Obama's 2008 \"promesa\" to introduce an immigration reform bill in the first year of his presidency. He failed to deliver and, at the same time, ramped up deportations. Clinton's appeal to immigration advocates has to go beyond the safe politics of comprehensive immigration reform and take a few risks to ensure their support. Her first speech on the topic indicated that's exactly what she'll do. In advance of the May 5 speech, Clinton political director Amanda Renteria made calls to several advocates for input \u2014 including DRM Action Coalition. As Vargas paints it, the conversation showed exactly the attitude that advocates think they're up against. Renteria, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in California in 2014, \"expressed frustration about why the Latino community were not turning out to vote.\" For Vargas and his colleagues, that's an easy question to answer. \"The standard talking point that we have been hearing, 'We need to have comprehensive immigration reform' \u2014 those are more than decades-old talking points, and it's no longer motivating people. It's no longer inspiring people.\" In 2008, Frank Sharry, of the immigration reform group America's Voice, was \"pleasantly surprised\" to hear Clinton, Obama, and others go after each other during a primary debate \"trying to outdo each other on comprehensive immigration reform.\" But the lesson advocates learned from 2008 is that a presidential candidate can't make a promise that only Congress can keep. As Clarissa Martinez of the National Council on La Raza points out, at this point \"we've had a Republican president try, and not succeed. We've had a Democratic president try.\" And frankly, advocates just don't feel it should be a big deal for a Democratic candidate to support comprehensive immigration reform, since it's traditionally (and recently) been a bipartisan issue. Advocates may be skeptical that a reformer like Jeb Bush could make it out of the Republican primary without running to the right on immigration. But the possibility's still there. \"It should be easy\" to support comprehensive reform, says Martinez. To advocates, it might be a good idea for a candidate to endorse a bipartisan policy, or a policy that majorities of Americans support. But it's not a victory for advocates themselves. So now, candidates have to offer a plan B: what happens if Congress doesn't pass comprehensive immigration reform? The answer, of course, is executive action \u2014 like the ones President Obama took in 2012 and 2014, which would allow millions of unauthorized immigrant young adults and parents of US citizens and permanent residents to apply for protection from deportation and work permits. But is defending Obama's actions enough? They're certainly a point of difference between Democrats and Republicans \u2014 every Republican presidential candidate has made some sort of promise to reverse the executive actions, though immigration moderates like Marco Rubio (and possibly Jeb Bush) have left the door open to waiting until immigration reform has passed through Congress to \"repeal and replace\" the immigration programs. But advocates aren't looking for Clinton to distinguish herself from Republicans. Defending what Obama's already done is \"the minimum she could say,\" says Sharry. They're looking for her to promise them more than they've already been promised. (It doesn't particularly matter to advocates that Obama's 2014 executive actions are currently on hold in federal court; everyone in the immigration advocacy world is confident that this is just a temporary setback, and the court battle will eventually go the administration's way.) \"The reality is that these executive actions are going to be associated with President Obama,\" says Vargas. \"What's her legacy?\" Sharry puts it differently: in order to win advocates' respect, she has to show them she's willing to stick her neck out. Promising to expand executive action \"would be, to me, a sign that she's really going to lean into the issue, open herself up to more criticism, anger from the Republican ranks, in order to show the immigrant community and its allies that she's really supportive this time around,\" he says. There's a policy basis to wanting executive action expanded. As pleased as advocates were with the 2014 executive actions, it's not like all their demands were met. For one thing, parents of deferred-action recipients, including many leading advocates (like Vargas's partner Erika Andiola), were left out. (In fact, that's exactly the group Clinton said she wanted to help next.) Furthermore, advocates are looking for an answer to what they see as the big unanswered question of the Obama administration: if some unauthorized immigrants are \"high priorities\" for deportation because they've committed crimes or have just come to the US, and other unauthorized immigrants are \"low priorities\" who should get deferred action and work permits, what about people who fall into neither category, or both? Clinton started to answer that question in her first speech, saying that immigrants with \"deep ties and contributions to communities\" should be allowed to stay. But that doesn't fully address the issue. It is, however, more details than even advocates were asking for. As Carrasquillo reported, DRM Action Coalition plans to release a memo this week \"detailing what it wants from presidential candidates,\" but Vargas stresses that they're having an open conversation with campaigns. \"It's more that there's a commitment that there's more to be done,\" he says, \"than the specific.\" To put it another way: President Obama spent a lot of time protesting to immigration advocates that he'd done everything in his power to protect unauthorized immigrants, and advocates spent a lot of energy getting him to reconsider. The results were the 2012 and 2014 executive actions. Advocates are hoping to skip that step \u2014 by getting Clinton to start with the assumption that there is more she could do as president. Between today's speech about immigration and last week's speech about criminal justice, it sure looks like Clinton is using the beginning of her campaign to make it clear she knows this isn't the Democratic Party that nominated her husband in 1992. Clinton's never exactly been a champion of immigration reform. During the 2008 campaign, she famously flip-flopped on driver's licenses for unauthorized immigrants; as a senator, she was supportive of the 2007 push for comprehensive immigration reform, but, according to Sharry, her role was limited to proposing a few \"safe\" amendments. What really raised some red flags among advocates, though, were a pair of comments Clinton made in 2014 \u2014 when everyone assumed she was gearing up to run for president. First, she told an audience that she thought most of the children coming to the US from Central America should be sent back \u2014 a stance that was much harsher than the one the Obama administration ended up taking. Then in Iowa in September, when a member of Vargas's group asked her if she supported executive action for immigrants, she said the answer was to \"elect more Democrats\" \u2014 something that was insanely tone-deaf, given that President Obama had just delayed taking executive action until after the 2014 elections. That seemed like a return to the way the Democratic Party viewed immigration back in 2007 \u2014 the last time Hillary Clinton was running for office. There's long been a camp among Democrats that's seen the issue as a balancing act: they should be just supportive enough to win over Latino voters, but not too supportive or else they'll turn off white voters. Sharry of America's Voice describes this thus: \"Sure, immigration's important \u2014 but not when it's inconvenient.\" Immigration advocates are convinced that Democrats have more to gain from full-throated support for protecting unauthorized immigrants than they have to lose. And after the 2012 presidential campaign, when President Obama defeated Mitt Romney largely on the strength of the Latino vote \u2014 and then the 2014 campaign, when Democrats lost Senate races in states like Colorado after Obama's delay on executive action \u2014 they feel they've made their case and deserve a seat at the big kids' table. The May 5 speech was an indication that Clinton (or at least her campaign) agrees. She called special attention to the thousands of recent immigrant families who've been put in immigration detention \u2014 a signal to activists that she understood the problems with taking a tough approach to child and family migrants. And she couldn't have been more explicit in supporting executive action to protect immigrants if there aren't enough Democrats in Congress to pass immigration reform. The speech does raise a totally different question \u2014 one that's only going to be answered with time: whether the Clinton campaign will treat immigration as a special interest issue or as a core part of her campaign platform. As Sharry puts it, \"Does she talk about immigration only in front of Latino audiences, or does she make it part of her stump speech?\" Part of this is about respect \u2014 a recognition that Latino voters have done a lot for Democrats in the past few cycles, and a signal that Democrats don't think that \"speaking to a general audience\" automatically means \"white voters.\" But while advocates don't say this explicitly, it's also a way to prevent a repeat of President Obama in 2008 \u2014 who made it pretty easy to forget that he'd made a promise to introduce immigration reform. The more Clinton talks about the need to protect unauthorized immigrants \u2014 no matter whom she's speaking to \u2014 the more opportunities she's creating for the media and advocates to hold her accountable if she tried to ignore the issue in office.","label":0}
{"text":"South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he was willing to take steps to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula ahead of next year s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, including curtailing military exercises with the United States, NBC said on Tuesday. It is possible for South Korea and the U.S. to review the possibility of postponing the exercises. I ve made such a suggestion to the U.S., and the U.S. is currently reviewing it. However, all this depends on how North Korea behaves, Moon said in an interview with NBC News.","label":0}
{"text":"European lawmakers said on Thursday they were disappointed about Sri Lanka s slow roll-out of human rights reforms that the island nation had promised in exchange for trade concessions. The European Union reinstated concessions on a series of products in May - after Sri Lanka said it would ratify 27 international conventions on rights, labor conditions, the environment and governance. The island s key garments industry benefited the most from the duty reductions and other allowances offered by the EU s Generalised Scheme of Preferences Plus scheme. But a European Parliament delegation said they had seen little progress more than five months after the agreement. There was no immediate comment from the government. It was noted that a number of important issues remain pending, in particular the revision of the Prevention of Terrorism Act on which the Prime Minister and other senior figures had given their personal assurances, the EU delegation said in a statement. The United Nations has said Sri Lanka s current terrorism legislation allows the torture of detainees. Sri Lanka originally lost the EU concession in 2010 after then-president Mahinda Rajapaksa rejected demands from the international community to address human rights abuses allegedly committed during a 2009 offensive to crush a Tamil insurgency. Rajapaksa was ousted in January last year, and the EU agreed to reinstate the concessions after a new administration, led by President Maithripala Sirisena, promised to make changes. The garments industry is Sri Lanka s second biggest hard currency earner after remittances. It boasts annual exports of around $5 billion and produces goods for Victoria s Secret, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Marks & Spencer and other well known brands.","label":0}
{"text":"This post was originally published on this site  The first Russian-Egyptian anti-terrorist exercise, dubbed Defenders of Friendship-2016 was held on October 15-26.  It took place in the desert, between the Egyptian cities of El-Alamein and Alexandria.  The Russian Airborne Troops arrived in the African continent for the first time.  Over 500 Russian and Egyptian paratroopers took part in the drills.  More than 15 helicopters and planes, 10 items of air-droppable military hardware were involved.  Russian and Egyptian servicemen practiced localization and elimination of militant groups in desert conditions.  Foreign representatives, including ambassadors and military attaches, were present in the capacity of observers.  Egyptian military are going to use the experience of the Russian Airborne Troops in the fight against international terrorism.  In 2015, Russia and Egypt held their first joint maritime exercises in the Mediterranean near Alexandria.  Next Russia-Egypt joint drill may be held in Russia next year. Related","label":1}
{"text":"French President Emmanuel Macron will go to the Athens hill considered the birthplace of democracy to urge fellow Europeans to tackle the democratic crisis he believes the continent faces, his aides said on Tuesday. Macron, who swept to power on a pro-EU platform last May, has made reforming the euro zone and EU institutions battered by a series of crises - from the economy, to immigration and Brexit - a priority of his mandate. It s a symbol of a new chapter (for Europe), a French presidency official said of the speech Macron plans to give on Thursday evening on the hill of Pnyx, where ancient Greeks gathered to host popular assemblies. We have gone through a financial crisis and a sort of confidence crisis, Greece knows that, it suffered from them. The president wants to show that Europe must be rebuilt democratically, the official said. Macron will promote his campaign proposal to launch democratic conventions - or public debates - in European countries to discuss the future of the EU. The president, whose popularity ratings have slumped at home following a series of unpopular measures including proposals to cut public spending and welfare benefits, also wants to make institutions governing Europe s single currency more democratic. He wants a euro zone finance minister to manage a common budget that would be accountable to a euro zone parliament, but that proposal has met with robust resistance abroad, notably in Berlin. During a two-day trip ending on Friday, Macron will be accompanied by around 40 French business leaders, including from blue-chip firms Total, L Oreal, Sanofi, Engie and Vinci. After a German-French consortium won a majority stake in Thessaloniki Port last June, France is keen to push its companies to invest in Greek infrastructure, energy and the agri-food business. French officials also want to avoid more strategic sectors of the Greek economy from falling into non-European hands after China s COSCO Shipping bought a 51 percent stake in Piraeus Port, Greece s biggest, for 280.5 million euros. It poses a sovereignty problem, it s kind of a European failure, the French official said. In June, Macron urged the European Commission to come up with a system for screening investments in strategic sectors from third countries, something some other western European nations have supported. But smaller eastern and southern European economies that have benefited from Chinese investments have rejected any steps against Beijing.","label":0}
{"text":"This is a Daily News Brief for all of the civil servants out there who are just \"doing their job\". I was (up until recently) one of those people. I learned first hand that no matter how good you are at your job, how much you save the taxpayer, and how many times you've saved your boss or the \"higher ups\" from getting in trouble, when you need them to stick their neck out for you, they just hang you out to dry. Huma Abedin is learning that firsthand now too\u2026 and Donna Brazile\u2026The loyalty you feel in your heart to your country, or county is not reciprocated to you in your time of need. The Powers That Shouldn't Be don't give a rats patoot about you. I hope this Daily News Brief serves as a wake up call to all those who serve. Watch on YouTube  Sources:  Now Huma Is Just 'One of My Staffers' After Close Aide Gets Left Behind on Ohio Campaign Trip While Hillary Keeps up Her War on the FBI in Defiance of White House Backing for Comey  CNN Cuts Ties With Donna Brazile After Hacked Emails Show She Gave Clinton Campaign Debate Questions  The Globalization Of Media: A Failing Strike Force  Media Deception: You Are Not Getting the Truth Delivered by The Daily Sheeple  We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).  Contributed by The Daily Sheeple of www.TheDailySheeple.com .  This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.TheDailySheeple.com.","label":1}
{"text":"SYDNEY, Australia \u2014 A man who stabbed and critically wounded another man in a park in a Sydney suburb on Saturday was inspired by Islamic State extremists, the police here said on Sunday. Catherine Burn, a deputy police commissioner for the state of New South Wales, said at news conference that a Sydney man, whom police did not name, had been charged with committing an act of terrorism and attempted murder. He was expected to appear in court on Sunday morning. Ms. Burn said the man was known to the police for other unrelated crimes. \"We will be alleging before court this was an act that was inspired by ISIS,\" she said. \"It was a deliberate act yesterday. It resulted in a person receiving extremely serious injuries. \" The unidentified victim was attacked while walking through a nature reserve in Minto, about 30 miles southwest of downtown Sydney. He was listed in serious condition at an area hospital. The police said that the two men did not know each other. \"We know that this person has strong, extremist beliefs inspired by ISIS,\" Ms. Burn said at the news conference. \"What made him act we don't know. \" She said that counterterrorism police officers had searched the man's home and found material that linked him to the extremist group. On Thursday, the New South Wales police arrested another man, 18, in an unrelated incident at the Sydney Opera House. He was charged with threatening to destroy or damage property, after the police arrested him outside the music venue. Last week, Malcolm Turnbull, the prime minister, warned that the Islamic State had called for terror attacks at popular tourist sites in Australia, including the Opera House and at Bondi Beach.","label":0}
{"text":"Wow is right! Tomi Lahren gives the best ever response to Obama s pro-Muslim speech at a radical Mosque.","label":1}
{"text":"Former Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan has been released after being abducted during a visit to the capital, Tripoli, and held for nine days by an armed group, a relative said on Wednesday. Zeidan was prime minister from 2012-2014, a period when Libya slid deeper into the political turmoil and armed conflict that has plagued the country since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown six years ago. He has since been living in Germany with his family. It is not clear why Zeidan traveled to Libya or why he was abducted. He was being held by a group aligned with the U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, though he faced no judicial charges, a source said. The U.N.-backed government has not commented on the case. Tripoli is controlled by a number of the armed groups that have held power in the capital since 2011. Some have been given semi-official status by successive governments, but the groups remain unaccountable and involved in criminal activity. A lawyer for Zeidan, Moussa Al-Doghali, told France 24 Arabic TV channel that his client was released without explanation and that he did not know the circumstances of his arrest and detention. Zeidan was in good health and was staying in a Tripoli hotel following his release, Doghali said. In October 2013, Zeidan was briefly abducted from a Tripoli hotel room by an armed group allied to the parliament that sacked him just over a year later.","label":0}
{"text":"MILAN (AP) \u2014 An Italian court has convicted a man and his wife on charges of international terrorism in connection with an Islamic State plot to carry out attacks in Rome during the Holy Year in 2016. [advertisement","label":0}
{"text":"The political news cycle is fast, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Trying to find differing perspectives worth your time is even harder. That's why we have scoured the internet for political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen. We would love to hear your thoughts on this collection. Send your feedback to ourpicks@nytimes. com _____ \u2022 From National Review: \"To smear Neil Gorsuch, the Left has created and attacked a straw man. \" For originalists, there is a crucial distinction between \"original intent\" and \"original meaning. \" This is a distinction that the writer David French believes gets erased by those who oppose the legal doctrine. _____ \u2022 From The Weekly Standard: \"It is easier to decide who we don't want here than who we do. \" What should United States immigration policy look like after some of the more contentious debates have been settled? Irwin M. Stelzer proposes a solution. _____ \u2022 From The Federalist: \"You thought Bane was a movie character turns out he's a political avatar. \" Owen Strachan, a professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, argues that at the root of the movement is a group of young men who feel left behind by society. Troubled by the rise of the movement, but also critical of the progressive culture that he argues has silenced these young men, his prescription calls for, among other things, a \"savior\" who will call this group to maturity and . _____ \u2022 From The American Conservative: \"He apparently went to sleep shortly after Richard Nixon declared a 'war' on illegal drugs in 1971 and just recently awakened from his slumber. \" Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently equated marijuana and heroin use, arguing that the former was only \"slightly less awful\" than the latter. Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow for the libertarian policy research firm The Cato Institute, argues that Mr. Session's positions on marijuana make him the \"Rip van Winkle\" of drug policy. _____ \u2022 From Jacobin: \"Originalist textualists are no less activist than their peers. They're just less open about it. \" As Judge Neil M. Gorsuch's Senate confirmation hearings draw to a close, Matt McManus explains why progressives should be wary of judges who consider themselves to be originalists. _____ \u2022 From Democracy: \"It's big, bold, and could fit on a bumper sticker. \" Here's a policy plan we haven't heard from the Democrats: Guarantee every American willing and able to work a job. That's exactly what the writer Jeff Spross advocates in a piece that is part serious policy proposal, part theoretical mental exercise. _____ \u2022 From In These Times: \"Heritage isn't an appendage of the Trump administration's radicalism. It's the heart of it. \" Though President Trump is a Washington outsider, not all establishment groups viewed his victory in November as a defeat. In a cover story for the liberal magazine In These Times, Theo Anderson chronicles the history of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and connects its longstanding agenda to the current administration's proposed cuts to the federal budget. _____ \u2022 From New Republic: \"In declaring the media the 'opposition party,' Bannon may have actually done it a great favor. \" Leah Finnegan argues that the media should shed its \"pompous air of \" and reverence for objectivity in favor of a opposition to the Trump administration. _____ \u2022 From Lawfare: \"Why are so many judges being so aggressive here?\" What is behind the slew of judicial responses to Mr. Trump's executive orders on travel? Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic explore the possibility that the judiciary doesn't quite trust Mr. Trump's oath of office. _____ \u2022 From The Chronicle of Higher Education: \"For at least two generations, it has been leftist professors who were supposedly addicted to tearing things down [. ..] But the habit now seems to be spreading. \" Welcome to Claremont McKenna College, the academic home of the movement. _____ \u2022 From The Smart Set: \"I have been reading about the damned Mondragon cooperatives since the 1980s. Enough with Mondragon!\" Michael Lind has no patience for the \"false utopias\" of ideologues on either end of the political spectrum. Read his ringing endorsement for political pragmatism. _____","label":0}
{"text":"Russia may decide to designate any media as foreign agents if they are financed by a foreign state or citizen, or by a Russian organization that gets foreign financing, the Interfax news agency reported on Thursday. Interfax cited a draft regulation from the justice ministry. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law last month that allowed the authorities to designate foreign media outlets as foreign agents in response to what Moscow said was unacceptable U.S. pressure on Russian media. So far, it has been exclusively used to label media sponsored by the U.S. authorities as foreign agents, but the new regulation would appear to go further. Under the existing law media branded foreign agents must provide any news they provide to Russians as the work of foreign agents and disclose their funding sources.","label":0}
{"text":"Prime Minister Theresa May s most senior minister has denied an allegation that police found pornography on one of his computers in the Houses of Parliament in 2008 as the British government struggles to contain a scandal about sexual harassment. First Secretary of State Damian Green said the claims by a former senior police officer in a Sunday newspaper were completely untrue and political smears. This story is completely untrue and comes from a tainted and untrustworthy source, Green said in a statement on his Twitter page. The claims amount to little more than an unscrupulous character assassination, he said. The Sunday Times reported on its front page that former Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Bob Quick alleged the material was discovered by officers during an inquiry into government leaks in 2008. Quick, who was involved in the leak investigation, told the newspaper that officers had reported finding the extreme pornography on a parliamentary computer from Green s office. The claims against one of the prime minister s closest allies risks deepening a growing sexual harassment scandal that led Britain s defense minister Michael Fallon to resign last Wednesday. Fallon said his behavior has fallen short of the standards expected by the British military. May s minority government is already struggling with divisions over Britain s departure from the European Union. Britain s interior minister Amber Rudd said the issue would be investigated by the Cabinet Office on Monday and she denied the government was on the verge of collapse if Green resigned. Rudd said Britain needed to address allegations of sexual harassment in the corridors of power. It is something that will take place, in terms of clearing out Westminster of that sort of behavior, and Westminster, including the government, will be better off after it, she said. Green, 61, has also denied a previous allegation that he made an inappropriate sexual advance on a young woman. He said it was not true that he had touched the woman s knee and told her that his wife was very understanding during a meeting in a pub in which the pair discussed her career aspirations and gossiped about sexual affairs in parliament.","label":0}
{"text":"Hondurans voted on Sunday in a presidential election that many expect to result in a second term for the current U.S.-friendly leader, eight years after he supported a coup against a former president who also floated the idea of reelection. Based on recent polls, Juan Orlando Hernandez, of the center-right National Party, looks set to profit from a 2015 Supreme Court decision that overturned a constitutional ban on reelection. He is running against television host Salvador Nasralla, who helms a broad left-right coalition called the Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship. Below are the candidates main proposals: Juan Orlando Hernandez - A former head of Congress who studied at the State University of New York and Honduras military academy, Hernandez, 49, enjoys a good rapport with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and is seen as a reliable U.S. ally in Central America. - Hernandez has managed to lower the murder rate and raise growth while expanding his influence into the furthest reaches of the Honduran government. - Critics say Hernandez, who was born in a humble, rural family of 17 siblings, has stifled dissent and is seeking to consolidate power. U.S. government officials say they want him to revitalize stalled legislation to place a cap on presidential term limits and assuage fears he will not cede power. - With his slogan Change has begun and should continue, Hernandez says he will keep up his militarized fight against the gangs that have turned the Central American nation into one of the world s most violent. - Hernandez says his Honduras 20\/20 plan will help lure investment in textiles, call centers and car manufacturing and lift growth. He wants to push ahead with special economic zones, a project that has so far yielded few concrete results. He says his policies will create 600,000 new jobs in the next four years. Salvador Nasralla - A colorful 64-year-old sports and talent TV show host descended from Lebanese immigrants, Nasralla promises to put an end to years of violence, poverty and graft. - Nasralla s Opposition Alliance Against the Dictatorship coalition includes the Liberty and Refoundation Party, or LIBRE. It is controlled by ousted former President Manuel Zelaya, who many believe is the true force behind the coalition. - A non-traditional political figure who has benefited from his entertainment background to build support among those disenchanted by business-as-usual Honduran politics, Nasralla trailed Hernandez by 15 points in a September poll, the last permitted before the election. - Nasralla says he will ask the United Nations to install an anti-graft body, similar to one operating in Guatemala, to probe and bring charges in corruption cases. He would maintain the Military Police created by Hernandez but wants to start a community police force to work in violent slums. He would also continue firing corrupt national police officers, while hiring up to 25,000 new officers. - Plans for the economy are vague, but the coalition has proposed lowering the sales tax and slashing a Hernandez-imposed corporate levy that has enraged the private sector. - The Alliance has proposed a referendum on how the current Constitution should be rewritten, either by Congress or by a new national assembly. It also wants a referendum on stripping the powers of the Supreme Court, which it accuses of being pliant to Hernandez.","label":0}
{"text":"Bernie Sanders emerged from Wisconsin with a solid victory Tuesday, prolonging his dogged but improbable bid to catch Hillary Clinton in the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination. The senator from Vermont was leading the party's front-runner in a state with a celebrated tradition of progressive activism \u2014 and a primary open to independent voters, a bedrock Sanders constituency. Now, despite Clinton's still-overwhelming lead in delegates, Sanders can claim the momentum of winning in six of the past seven states holding nominating contests across the country. The victory was certain to energize Sanders's supporters two weeks ahead of what will be a key showdown in delegate-rich New York, a state where Clinton hopes to put an end to Sanders's embarrassing winning streak and reclaim control of the race against the self-described democratic socialist. Sanders held a boisterous rally Tuesday night in Wyoming, the site of Democratic caucuses Saturday. Screams erupted and the crowd broke into chants of \"Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!\" in an auditorium at the University of Wyoming in Laramie when Sanders shared the news that the networks had called Wisconsin for him. \"If we wake up the American people, and working people and middle-class people and senior citizens and young people begin to stand up and fight back and come out and vote in large numbers, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish,\" he said. Clinton had already turned her attention to New York before voting began in Wisconsin. She appeared Tuesday morning on ABC's \"The View,\" held an event in Brooklyn focused on women's issues and attended an evening fundraiser in the Bronx where attendees were asked to raise $10,000 for her campaign. In a tweet after the polls closed, Clinton congratulated Sanders on his victory. \"To all the voters and volunteers who poured your hearts into this campaign: Forward!\" she wrote. While catching Clinton in the delegate count remains a long shot, Sanders has chipped away at her onetime lead of more than 300 pledged delegates, which was down to 263 before Tuesday's contest in Wisconsin, according to an Associated Press tally. Sanders invested significant time in Wisconsin, not leaving the Badger State in the final four days leading up to the primary and making an unadvertised campaign stop at a Milwaukee diner Tuesday morning. \"If people come out to vote in large numbers, I think we're going to do very, very well,\" Sanders told reporters as he entered Blue's Egg with Barbara Lawton, a former Wisconsin lieutenant governor. Sanders aggressively sought to highlight his more insular views on trade \u2014 an issue that he's pressed in other Midwestern industrial states \u2014 as well as Clinton's ties to Wall Street. Wisconsin was viewed as difficult terrain for Clinton. In 2008, the state's Democratic electorate was 87 percent white \u2014 voters whom Sanders has consistently won in nominating contests this year. Its industrial landscape, large bloc of independent voters and substantial working class also were seen as fertile ground for Sanders's message of rethinking U.S. trade policy. In 2008, Clinton lost the state by 17 points \u2014 to then-Sen. Barack Obama. This time, she campaigned lightly here, focusing strategically on cities in congressional districts that played to her strengths, including Milwaukee, where she is popular with a large African American electorate. She highlighted that she, unlike Sanders, has been a Democrat her \"whole adult life.\" She emphasized her commitment to supporting Democratic candidates at the state and local levels \u2014 a salient issue for a state party that has been waging fierce ideological battles against Gov. Scott Walker (R). \"He's won some, I've won some. But I have 2 million more votes than he does,\" Clinton said on \"The View\" on Tuesday morning. Both candidates are now set for a showdown April 19 in New York, a state where Sanders grew up, where Clinton was elected twice to the U.S. Senate \u2014 and where 247 delegates will be at stake. Clinton plans to campaign aggressively there, in part to prevent an embarrassing upset in her adopted home state and in part to deliver a decisive victory that would further marginalize Sanders. The Brooklyn-born Sanders plans to make New York his home base over the coming two weeks as well. While he will make some campaign stops in other states with upcoming nominating contests, aides say he plans to return to New York City most nights, reflecting the hard-to-overstate consequences of the primary. His decision to campaign Tuesday in Wyoming was born of a desire to add to his momentum heading into New York by notching a win in the state's caucuses Saturday, though only 14 delegates are in play. At this time in 2008, Obama's pledged-delegate lead over Clinton fluctuated between 120 and 140 delegates \u2014 about half of the margin by which Clinton now leads Sanders. And that doesn't include superdelegates, the elected officials and other party leaders who are not bound by their state's results and who so far have broken heavily in Clinton's favor. Sanders aims to catch Clinton in pledged delegates \u2014 those won in primary elections \u2014 once California votes June 7. Doing so would require lopsided wins in most of the remaining contests, including some in states that have demographics similar to places where he has struggled. If Sanders catches Clinton \u2014 or gets close \u2014 both candidates would enter the party's convention in July without enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination. That would force the party's superdelegates \u2014 who are automatically made convention delegates \u2014 to choose the nominee, a scenario Sanders's campaign manager reiterated during an interview Tuesday on CNN. The Sanders campaign has started making the case to superdelegates that they should side with him because he is more electable than Clinton against Republican front-runner Donald Trump \u2014 a view the Clinton camp disputes. In a memo to supporters Monday, Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, described the Sanders strategy as reliant on \"overturning the will of the voters.\" The results in Wisconsin continued many of the trends seen in previous contests. Independents, who were allowed to participate in the Democratic primary, favored Sanders over Clinton by a 40-point margin, according to preliminary exit polls. And as in prior contests, voters rated Sanders as far more trustworthy than Clinton. Nine in 10 Democratic voters said Sanders was \"honest and trustworthy,\" compared with to 6 in 10 who said the same of Clinton. Tuesday morning, as Sanders mingled with voters over breakfast at Blue's Egg in Milwaukee, Dale Dulberger, 66, of Wauwatosa, Wis., came to greet the senator after casting his vote for him. \"I think he's really authentic,\" Dulberger, who teaches at a county technical college, said of Sanders. \"I think people believe what he's saying. His proposals are idealistic, but that's what a president is supposed to do.\" Clinton, on the other hand, campaigned in New York City and did not mention Wisconsin's election at either appearance. In a preview of what is expected to be a rough-and-tumble New York primary, the New York Daily News debuted Wednesday's front-page story, which encapsulates the challenge that awaits Sanders in the Empire State. The paper lambasted the senator for his position opposing legal liability for gunmakers after the massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school in 2012. The headline: \"Bernie's Sandy Hook shame.\"","label":0}
{"text":"It is no surprise that Democrats in the U.S. Congress will oppose Donald Trump but the most important resistance to fulfilling the president-elect's agenda is beginning to emerge from Republicans on Capitol Hill. A small number of influential Republicans in the Senate are threatening to block appointments to Trump's administration, derail his thaw with Russia and prevent the planned wall on the border with Mexico. The party held onto control of the Senate at the Nov. 8 election but by only a thin margin, putting powerful swing votes in just a few hands. That empowers Republican Senate mavericks such as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas. Both were bitter rivals to Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary. Paul, a libertarian lone wolf, says he will block Senate confirmations if Trump nominates either former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton to be secretary of state. South Carolina's Lindsay Graham has started publicly outlining places he might be willing to oppose Trump. He is against the Mexican border wall and is delivering warnings against Trump's intention to revoke legal status for undocumented immigrants brought here as children - although that would not require congressional approval. Graham, a traditional Republican foreign policy hawk, strongly disagrees with Trump's attempt to improve ties with Russia. \"I am going to be kind of a hard ass\" on Russia, Graham told reporters recently. \"We can't sit on the sidelines\" and let cyber attacks blamed on Russia \"go unanswered.\" The early stirrings of opposition from Senate Republicans are a sign that the New York businessman, who has never held public office, might run into harsh political realities soon after taking office on Jan. 20. Other Senators who might defy Trump are Arizona's John McCain and Jeff Flake, Nebraska's Ben Sasse, Florida's Marco Rubio, Maine's Susan Collins and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, said senior Senate aides and lawmakers. These lawmakers have ruffled feathers in the past and some have a good political reason not to fear Trump: Paul, McCain, Murkowski and Rubio do not have to run for reelection until 2022. Graham, Collins and Sasse will have to face the voters in 2020; Cruz and Flake have an earlier election, in 2018. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose job is to keep the Republicans in line, knows the challenges ahead. A senior Republican aide said McConnell is \"loathe\" to spend time trying to move bills that lack the needed Senate votes. McConnell is aware he will not have the support of some of his own lawmakers on bills that could pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, such as appropriating money to build the Mexican wall and further abortion restrictions, the aide said. But Trump has a history of taming what appear to be well-entrenched Republican opponents. He won the party nomination against all the odds and some of his staunchest opponents like Rubio and Cruz ended up endorsing him. And swing votes in the Senate cut two ways. The Democrats have their own potential renegades such as West Virginia's Joe Manchin, who has already declared his support for Trump's nomination of Republican Senator Jeff Sessions as attorney general. Such swings by Democrats toward Republicans may be likelier ahead of the 2018 elections, when Democrats must defend more vulnerable Senate seats than Republicans. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer must deal with this. Trump said over the weekend he and Schumer \"always had a good relationship.\" Republicans are likely to control only 52 seats in the 100-seat Senate, meaning three defections within the party are enough to block cabinet appointments which only require 50 votes. Vice President-elect Mike Pence would break 50-50 ties. The task for McConnell gets more difficult when it comes to passing legislation, which requires 60 votes, known as cloture, to allow a bill to move forward. If Trump plans to sign a bill while in office, perhaps one that will change immigration law or restrict abortions, McConnell will have to keep all Republicans in line and win over an additional eight Democrats. Trump could deliver on campaign promises that do not require legislative approval like blocking the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal or ending the Iran nuclear pact. The repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, enjoys robust Republican support and would be done through a legislative maneuver that does not require any Democratic support. Collins and Murkowski have a history of crossing the aisle to join Democrats and could shy from abortion restrictions. Cruz has never feared disrupting Senate business to prove a point or seek concessions in legislation. Sasse did not waver from his staunch criticism of Trump through the campaign. Flake has said he is \"eating crow\" after Trump's win, but he could defect on immigration and border security, issues he has previously joined with Democrats on. Paul was asked last week on MSNBC if he would put a hold on Giuliani or Bolton. In the Senate, a hold allows a single senator to delay a confirmation. He left open the possibility of such a move, saying, \"I feel pretty strongly about it.\" He said: \"We have a 52-48 majority, all it would take is two or three Republicans to say they can't go along with Giuliani and can't go along with Bolton.\"","label":0}
{"text":"German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday she was pleased that all Group of 20 members besides the United States had agreed in a communique that the Paris climate accord was irreversible. \"I think it's very clear that we could not reach consensus, but the differences were not papered over, they were clearly stated,\" Merkel told reporters at the end of the two-day meeting. She said she did not share the view of British Prime Minister Theresa May who said on Friday that she thought Washington could decide to return to the climate agreement. Merkel sharply condemned what she described as the \"unbridled brutality\" exhibited by some protesters in the northern city of Hamburg after violent clashes injured hundreds of police officers.","label":0}
{"text":"Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST every Wednesday. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Daniel Spaulding of Soul of the East, Andy Nowicki from Alt Right Blogspot, Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis & ACR\/21Wire contributor Randy J. In this broadcast listeners will be hearing us go around the BOILER ROOM on a veritable feast of topics including commentary on the latest in the lame stream media reality TV show that is the US Presidential race, the mysterious death of Supreme Court Justice Scalia, an in depth discussion with Jay Dyer on the pitfalls of anarchy\/libertarian ideologies, predictive programming aimed at children through Barbie cartoons, unfortunate experiences in air travel, a cautionary tale about manatees and a discourse between Randy J and Hesher on aftermath of the Oregon stand off. If you want to participate, bring something interesting to throw into the boiler Join us in the ALTERNATE CURRENT RADIO chat room.BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! LISTEN TO THE RECORDING IN THE PLAYER BELOW ENJOY!","label":1}
{"text":"Rapper Blac Youngsta went to an Atlanta bank to withdraw $200,000 of his own money, and upon leaving the building he was detained by police.Blac Youngsta s real name is Sam Benson and he claims that the police even pulled a gun on him.Yo Gotti's artist Blac Youngsta Speaks To News About Police Drawing Guns On Him For Withdrawing $200k From The Bank! pic.twitter.com\/mZPOFvlJH1 saycheesetv.com (@SayCheese_TV) January 9, 2016Benson said he withdrew $200,000 in cash from his account. He said when he came out of the bank, a police officer pointed at him. They come bum rushing me at the car, put me on the ground, putting guns to my head, so I m like What I d do, Benson said. A lady was like I m not supposed to have $200,000 on me. I m like, I m a millionaire. How can I not have $200,000 on me? On his Facebook page, Benson posted a picture of himself in handcuffs on the ground surrounded by police officers with the caption LOOK AT HOW THEY TREAT A YOUNG RICH NIGGA. Benson also posted a video discussing the fact that the police thought he had too much money on him.https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/BlacYoungsta\/videos\/vb.708100352651760\/802664839861977\/?type=2&theaterBenson said police told him that they thought he was someone who had previously written a bogus check, and apologized to him after taking $100,000 of his cash but eventually giving it back to him.The rapper said he had withdrawn the money because he planned to buy a car. Initially he planned to buy a Maybach but after the incident he was feeling fast and thinking about purchasing a Ferrari.Police told an Atlanta TV station that they responded to the bank at the request of the bank manager but Officers found that no crime had been committed. Imagine the anger at working at your skill to the point where you ve amassed such a large sum of money in the bank, go to withdraw your own money, and are style eyed with suspicion to the point that police are called and you are put down on the ground in cuffs.Something has to be changed.","label":1}
{"text":"The political world was obsessed last week with Jeb Bush's problems in saying whether he would or wouldn't have ordered the invasion of Iraq. But a more provocative statement about projection of American power actually came from a fellow presidential contender, Marco Rubio, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. \"As president, I will use American power to oppose any violations of international waters, airspace, cyberspace or outer space,\" Sen. Rubio declared. \"This includes the economic disruption caused when...","label":0}
{"text":"A fire in a textile factory in Bangladesh killed six workers on Wednesday before it was extinguished, police said, renewing fears about safety in the multi-billion dollar industry. Bangladesh s garment sector, the world s second biggest after China, drew worldwide scrutiny after more than 1,100 people were killed in the collapse of a factory complex in 2013 and 112 killed in a garment factory fire in 2012. Police said Wednesday s fire started on the ground floor of a four-storey building storing chemicals and dyes in Munshiganj, 20 km (12 miles) from Dhaka, the capital, and spread quickly. The mill was closed when the fire broke out but there were some workers in the factory and six bodies, including one woman worker, have been recovered, a police official, Alamgir Hossain, told Reuters by telephone. Firefighters had put out the blaze but it was not immediately clear if more workers had been trapped, he added. The roughly $28-billion garment industry employs 4 million people and generates about 80 percent of Bangladesh s export earnings.","label":0}
{"text":"ACLU Threatens War Against President Trump The ACLU has a message for Donald Trump. They are not impressed with many of Trump's campaign promises, and threaten the new president-elect with court if he tries to implement them.  The ACLU has a message for Donald Trump.  NEW YORK \u2014 In response to Donald Trump's election as president of the United States, Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union , had the following statement:  \"For nearly 100 years, the American Civil Liberties Union has been the nation's premier defender of freedom and justice for all, no matter who is president. Our role is no different today.  \"President-elect Trump, as you assume the nation's highest office, we urge you to reconsider and change course on certain campaign promises you have made. These include your plan to amass a deportation force to remove 11 million undocumented immigrants; ban the entry of Muslims into our country and aggressively surveil them; punish women for accessing abortion; reauthorize waterboarding and other forms of torture; and change our nation's libel laws and restrict freedom of expression.  \"These proposals are not simply un-American and wrong-headed, they are unlawful and unconstitutional. They violate the First, Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. If you do not reverse course and instead endeavor to make these campaign promises a reality, you will have to contend with the full firepower of the ACLU at every step. Our staff of litigators and activists in every state, thousands of volunteers, and millions of card-carrying supporters are ready to fight against any encroachment on our cherished freedoms and rights.  \"One thing is certain: we will be eternally vigilant every single day of your presidency and when you leave the Oval Office, we will do the same with your successor.","label":1}
{"text":"Nancy Pelosi may face a challenge to her 14-year-old role as the leading Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives now that Republicans have captured the White House and maintained their grip on Congress. Representative Tim Ryan, 43, of Ohio, is weighing a run against Pelosi, 76, who is the House minority leader and former speaker of the House, said Ryan's spokesman Michael Zetts. The party vote for minority leader is scheduled for Thursday. \"He is concerned that if changes aren't made we will be in the political wilderness for many years to come,\" Zetts said. It was unclear how much support Ryan might have. He has been in the House since 2003. Voters who elected Republican Donald Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton on Nov. 8 also gave Democrats a few more seats in the 435-member U.S. House of Representatives and the 100-member Senate, but Republicans held on to their majorities in both. Democrats had expected to do much better; some had predicted double-digit wins in the House. Pelosi, of California, faced calls from Representative Seth Moulton and other Democrats, dismayed by the election results, to postpone the party's leadership election until later in November while a reassessment is made. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, may have given some ammunition to Pelosi's detractors on Monday when he said, \"I kind of like Pelosi staying around. As long as she's there, I think we stay in the majority.\" The new Congress convenes on Jan. 3; Trump will succeed President Barack Obama, a Democrat, on Jan. 20. In the U.S. Senate, New York's Chuck Schumer is expected to replace the retiring fellow Democrat Harry Reid as minority leader. In the Republican party, no one is challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and House Republicans are expected on Tuesday to nominate Paul Ryan to remain House speaker. Ryan would face an election in January, when all members of the new House, both Democrats and Republicans, vote on a new speaker. Before Trump's win, some Republican conservatives angered by Ryan's tepid support for Trump were talking about trying to block his re-election. Those threats have subsided but not vanished. An aide to New York Republican Representative Chris Collins said, \"Congressman Collins fully believes Speaker Ryan is a slam dunk to be re-elected as speaker, and looks forward to working with him in the next Congress.\" Collins was Trump's first supporter in the House. Some conservative Republicans still have doubts. \"Presently Speaker Ryan does not have my vote, but I will listen to his message tomorrow,\" Representative Tom Massie of Kentucky said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"The International Olympic Committee has tried to discourage by the news media and others during the Rio Games \u2014 good luck with that \u2014 but this hasn't stopped the people of the internet from spotting a good meme when they see one. Behold, #PhelpsFace. Phelps, the most successful and possibly the most scrutinized Olympian in history, was caught making a grimly determined face that only the internet could love as he prepped Monday for his semifinal in the butterfly. What was Phelps thinking while wrapped in his gear? Perhaps he was trying to telegraph a message to his rivals: \"Don't mess with my medal count, or I will destroy you. \" Such a telepathic challenge might have been meant especially for Chad le Clos of South Africa, who was dancing and jiggling just a few feet away like one of those deflated noodle men often found dancing in front of used car dealerships. In an interview with NBC after his heat, Phelps claimed he had been thinking about \"nothing\" as le Clos wriggled and shadowboxed in front of him. But the two swimmers have an interesting history. At the 2012 Games in London, le Clos handed Phelps his first international defeat in a decade, in the butterfly. Le Clos later said that watching Phelps collect a record eight gold medals in Beijing in 2008 had been a major source of inspiration as he developed his own program. \"He was the reason I swam the butterfly,\" le Clos told The New York Times recently. \"It's not a joke. \" Only hours old, images of Phelps's face seemed to have the potential to go down in the history of ridiculous sports memes. (Somewhere, Michael Jordan is sighing with relief.) Fans even imagined what Phelps was listening to on his headphones: Could it be Eminem, Papa Roach or Alanis Morissette? Though the Games are only a few days in, followers of the United States swim team have been spoiled by a group of athletes who seem at home expressing themselves for the cameras. First, there was the car pool karaoke episode. Then Lilly King directed a finger wag at one of her competitors, Yulia Efimova of Russia, who had failed a test for meldonium. King then made her most definitive statement in the pool, beating Efimova in the breaststroke and setting an Olympic record. For his part, Phelps told NBC that he had been \"trying to not really even look at\" le Clos's gyrating. \"He does his thing, I do mine,\" Phelps said. The rivals were facing each other Tuesday in the finals of the butterfly. Expect material.","label":0}
{"text":"Home \/ #Solutions \/ Crisis of Conscience? Obama Frees Scores of Drug Offenders from Prison, Including 42 Lifers, Days Before Election Crisis of Conscience? Obama Frees Scores of Drug Offenders from Prison, Including 42 Lifers, Days Before Election Matt Agorist October 28, 2016 1 Comment  \"Prison is for rapists, thieves, and murderers. If you lock someone up for smoking a plant that makes them happy, you're the fucking criminal.\" \u2013 Joe Rogan  Washington D.C. \u2014 The timeless words of Joe Rogan seem to be taking their toll on the consciences of American politicians. To kidnap and lock people in a cage for a personal choice and action that harms no one, is an evil act. Some politicians are figuring this out \u2014 or at least pandering to public demand. Either way, the result is the same.  Despite largely continuing the drug war and drastically increasing raids on medical marijuana facilities as compared to his predecessor, Barack Obama has somehow managed to dupe people into thinking he was pro legalized pot. And now, as his reign comes to an end, he seems to be reversing course.  Over the years, Obama has blown a lot of smoke (pun intended) when it came to his views on the war on drugs. He's played Mr. Nice Guy while his heavily militarized government task forces have laid waste to the rights and property of peaceful people trying to help their fellow man by growing medical marijuana.  Under Obama, police in America, through the federal 1033 program , have acquired MRAP's, grenade launchers, and even Apache attack choppers; most of which have been used enforcing immoral and unethical drug laws. However, no one, not even the almighty Barack Obama, can stop an idea whose time has come.  The people have spoken, and politicians who continue to call for the imprisonment of non-violent individuals for their personal choices are being exposed for the vile and obstinate tyrants they are.  Apparently this notion has made it to the ear of his majesty, Barack Obama. In a recent show of humanity, he's freed several dozen more non-violent drug offenders.  According to Reason Magazine , this latest batch of commutations raises Obama's total so far to 872, nearly all of them involving nonviolent drug offenders. That is more commutations than were issued by his 11 most recent predecessors combined. According to the White House , the 688 commutations since the beginning of 2016 are \"the most ever done by a president in a single year\"\u2014not surprising, since Obama's commutations have been strikingly backloaded, with 79 percent coming during his last year in office and 98 percent in the second half of his second term. He shortened just one sentence during his first term.  As the chart shows below, either Obama's conscience is weighing on him or political pressure is is winning.  According to a report from Reason:  Obama clearly is trying hard to make up for lost time. In a speech on Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said there will be \"many more [commutations] to come.\" Wednesday White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said Obama is committed to \"using his clemency authority through the remainder of his time in office.\" If he maintains this month's rate in November, December, and January, his total will be around 1,500. If he picks up the pace, he could still reach the \"thousands\" predicted in 2014.  Even 2,000 commutations would represent just 6.9 percent of the 29,000 or so petitions Obama has received , making him slightly more merciful than Richard Nixon by that measure. That nevertheless would represent a huge improvement from where Obama stood just six months ago.  Any time the state admits it was wrong, and innocent people are freed from their cages of oppression; it's a win for freedom. If one life is spared the horrid fate of being caged like an animal for possessing or ingesting a plant that grows from the ground, this is good news.  However, there are tens of thousands of non-violent drug offenders locked in steel cages across this country, many of them are in for possession alone. The slow and rusty cogs of the bureaucratic leviathan can't turn fast enough. For every non-violent drug offender the president frees, five more are thrown in. Why? Locking up drug users has proven to be quite the profitable venture.  It is much easier to walk out on the street corner and shakedown a teenager who may have an illegal plant in his pocket than it is to examine the evidence in a rape or murder case. The so-called \"Private\" Prisons know this and have subsequently found their niche in this immoral war on drugs.  The term Private Prison is a farce from the get-go.  A truly Private prison would not be solely funded by taxpayer dollars. These Private prisons are nothing more than a fascist mixture of state and corporate, completely dependent upon the extortion factor of the state, i.e., taxation, as a means of their corporate sustenance.  A truly Private prison would have a negative incentive to boost its population for the simple fact that it is particularly expensive to house inmates. On the contrary, these fascist, or more aptly, corporatist prisons contractually require occupancy rates of 95%-100%.  The requirement for a 95% occupancy rate creates a de facto demand for criminals. Think about that for a second; a need or demand for people to commit crimes is created by this corporatist arrangement. The implications associated with demanding people commit crimes are horrifying.  Creating a completely immoral demand for \"criminals\" leads to the situation in which we find ourselves today. People, who are otherwise entirely innocent, are labeled as criminals for their personal choices and thrown in cages. We are now witnessing a vicious cycle between law enforcement, who must create and arrest criminals, and the corporatist prison system that constantly demands more prisoners. The police and prison corporations know that without the war on drugs, this windfall of money, cars, and houses \u2014 ceases to exist.  If you want to know who profits from ruining lives and throwing marijuana users in cages, we need only look at who bribes (also known as lobbies) the politicians to keep the war on drugs alive.  Below is a list of the top five industries who need you locked in a cage for possessing a plant in order to ensure their job security. Police Unions: Coming in as the number one contributor to politicians for their votes to lock you in a cage for a plant are the police themselves. They risk taking massive pay cuts and losing all their expensive militarized toys without the war on drugs. Private Prison Corporations: No surprise here . The corporatist prison lobby is constantly pushing for stricter laws to keep their stream of tax dollars flowing. Alcohol and Beer Companies: These giant corporations hate competition, so why not pay millions to keep a cheaper and far safer alcohol alternative off the market? Pharmaceutical Corporations: The hypocrisy of marijuana remaining a Schedule 1 drug, \"No Medical Use Whatsoever,\" seems criminal when considering that pharmaceutical companies reproduce a chemical version of THC and are able to market and sell it as such. Ever hear of Marinol? Big pharma simply uses the force of the state to legislate out their competition ; which happens to be nature. Prison Guard Unions: The prison guard union s are another group, so scared of losing their jobs, that they would rather see thousands of non-violent and morally innocent people thrown into cages, than look for another job.  What does it say about a society who's resolute in enacting violence against their fellow human so they can have a job to go to in the morning?  The person who wants to ingest a substance for medical or recreational reasons is not the criminal. However, the person that would kidnap, cage, or kill someone because they have a different lifestyle is a villain on many fronts. When does this vicious cycle end?  The good news is that the drug war's days are numbered, especially seeing that it's reached the White House, and they are taking action, even if it is symbolic. Evidence of this is everywhere. States are defying the federal government and refusing to lock people in cages for marijuana. Colorado and Washington served as a catalyst in a seemingly exponential awakening to the government's immoral war.  Following suit were Oregon, D.C., and Alaska. Medical marijuana initiatives are becoming a constant part of legislative debates nationwide. We've even seen bills that would not only completely legalize marijuana but deregulate it entirely, like corn.  As more and more states refuse to kidnap and cage marijuana users, the drug war will continue to implode. We must be resilient in this fight.  If doing drugs bothers you, don't do drugs. When you transition from holding an opinion \u2014 to using government violence to enforce your personal preference, you become the bad guy. Don't be the bad guy. Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter and now on Steemit Share geneww1938  The best way to stop illegal dealers and drug use is to stop trafficking by the criminal cartel behind our government. When was the last time we heard of a drug bust that disrupted street consumption ! The elitist's cartel derive billions from international trafficking to wit: Google \"Bush, Clinton drugs Mena Airport AK\". Social Trending","label":1}
{"text":"Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine for war dead, seen in China and the two Koreas as a symbol of Japan s past militarism, to mark its annual autumn festival, the shrine said on Tuesday. Abe was expected to refrain from visiting the shrine during the festival, which will last until Friday, the Nikkei business daily and Kyodo news agency reported. He is scheduled to visit northern Japan, Akita prefecture and Yamagata prefecture, for an election campaign stump on Tuesday, Kyodo news said. His ruling coalition is on track for a big win in Sunday s general election - even though almost half the country s voters don t want him to keep his job, a media survey showed on Monday. Abe s snap election comes amid heightened global tension following North Korea s nuclear tests and missile launches, which prompted the U.N. Security Council to impose fresh sanctions. Health Minister Katsunobu Kato also sent an ritual offering to the shrine, a spokesperson for the shrine said. Past visits to Yasukuni by Japanese leaders have outraged Beijing and Seoul because it honors 14 Japanese leaders convicted by an Allied tribunal as war criminals, along with Japan s war dead. China s position on the shrine was clear, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters in Beijing. We urge the Japanese side to earnestly, squarely and deeply reflect on their history of aggression, appropriately handle the relevant issue and take actual steps to win the trust of their Asian neighbors and the international community, Lu said. Abe has only visited the shrine in person once, in December 2013, since becoming premier the previous year. Rather than attend in person, Abe sends a ritual offering on several occasions in an effort to improve ties with China and South Korea, which have been strained by territorial and other disputes. Japan, China and South Korea are trying to hold a summit meeting this year, the Nikkei business said.","label":0}
{"text":"Even though the media and the their allies in the Democrat Party are maniacly focused on doing whatever it takes to bring down the popular Alabama GOP Senate candidate, only one month before the election, Judge Roy Moore still has a sizable lead in the most recent polls.Accusations from four decades ago, by women that range from a woman who worked for Hillary and promotes Democrat candidate for Senate, Doug Ross on Facebook, to a woman who has a history of accusing several pastors of sexual misconduct are suddenly coming out of the woodwork.One of Moore s accusers, Leigh Corfman apparently has a history of claiming pastors made sexual advances on her.Purportedly Moore s main accuser Leigh Corfman has had three divorces, filed for bankruptcy three times, and has been charged with multiple misdemeanors.Posts on Moore's FB page indicate that Corfman, has claimed several pastors at various churches made sexual advances at her. James Hirsen (@thejimjams) November 10, 2017Another one of Moore s accusers Debbie Wesson Gibson wasn t clever enough to delete postings from her Facebook page that show she s a Hillary supporter, she hates President Trump and oh yeah, she asks her friends (more than once) to vote for Moore s Democrat opponent, Doug Ross.Today, leftist media whore, Gloria Allred marched another accuser, Beverly Young Nelson, out in front of the cameras with a four decades old story about how she was sexually assaulted by Roy Moore. This time, however, Roy Moore, and his wife Kayla are not just sitting back and watching his reputation be destroyed by the liberal machine. Watch, as Moore and his wife come out swinging, at the lies being told by the latest accuser. Roy Moore tells the crowd of his supporters and the media, I don t even know the woman. I don t even know where the restaurant was or is. :Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore and his wife, Kayla Moore, react to new sexual misconduct allegations brought against him by an Alabama woman, Beverly Young Nelson, who claims Moore assaulted her when she was 16 years old pic.twitter.com\/FSJlntUant Breaking911 (@Breaking911) November 14, 2017Moore s wife Kayla, who is planning to sue the Washington Post, reminded her friends on Facebook that the media whore lawyer Gloria Allred tried the same stunt with Donald Trump only months before the election:Gloria Allred is currently under two separate bar investigations for alleged misconduct:Anti-Trump Celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred is under two bar investigations https:\/\/t.co\/OzbyYWaHLD via @MailOnline Jim Hoft (@gatewaypundit) November 13, 2017Yesterday, this letter was published by dozens of pastors, who came to the defense of Judge Roy Moore:Pastor s LetterDear friends and fellow Alabamians, For decades, Roy Moore has been an immovable rock in the culture wars a bold defender of the little guy, a just judge to those who came before his court, a warrior for the unborn child, defender of the sanctity of marriage, and a champion for religious liberty. Judge Moore has stood in the gap for us, taken the brunt of the attack, and has done so with a rare, unconquerable resolve. As a consequence of his unwavering faith in God and his immovable convictions for Biblical principles, he was ousted as Chief Justice in 2003. As a result, he continued his life pursuit by starting the Foundation for Moral Law, which litigates religious liberty cases around our Nation. After being re-elected again to Chief Justice in 2012, by an overwhelming majority, he took another round of persecution for our faith as he stood up for the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman. You can know a man by his enemies, and he s made plenty from the radical organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ACLU to the liberal media and a handful of establishment politicians from Washington. He has friends too, a lot of them. They live all across this great State, work hard all week, and fill our pews on Sunday. They know him as a father, a grandfather, a man who loves God s Word and knows much of it by heart, a man who cares for the people, a man who understands our Constitution in the tradition of our Founding Fathers, and a man who deeply loves America. It s no wonder the Washington establishment has declared all-out war on his campaign. We are ready to join the fight and send a bold message to Washington: dishonesty, fear of man, and immorality are an affront to our convictions and our Savior and we won t put up with it any longer. We urge you to join us at the polls to cast your vote for Roy Moore. In your service, Dr. Tom Ford, III, Pastor, Grace Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama Pastor Stan Cooke, Kimberly Church of God, Kimberly, Alabama Pastor Jonathan Rodgers, Dothan, Alabama Pastor Joseph Smith, Pine Air Baptist Church, Grand Bay Alabama Dr. David E. Gonnella, Pastor, Theodore, Alabama Pastor Mike Allison, Madison, Alabama Dr. Terry Batton, Christian Renewal and Development Ministries, Eufaula, Alabama Pastors Tim and Elizabeth Hanson, Smiths Station, Alabama Pastor Mark Liddle, Dominion Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama Pastor Steve Sanders, Victory Baptist Church, Millbrook, Alabama Dr. Richard Fox, retired Baptist pastor Dr. Randy Cooper, Pastor, Warrior, Alabama William Green, Minister, Fresh Anointing House of Worship, Montgomery, Alabama Maurice McCaney, Victory Christian Fellowship Church, Florence, Alabama Pastor Jamie Holcomb, Young s Chapel, Piedmont, Alabama Pastor Paul Elliott, Young s Chapel, Piedmont, Alabama Pastor Rodney Gilmore, Covenant Christian, Gadsden, Alabama Pastor Mark Gidley, Faith Worship Center, Gadsden, Alabama Pastor Bill Snow, Edgewood Church, Anniston, Alabama Pastor Michael Yates, Webster s Chapel, Gadsden, Alabama Pastor Mark Holden, Webster s Chapel, Gadsden, Alabama Pastor Joshua Copeland, Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church, Anniston, Alabama Pastor Bruce Jenkins, Young s Chapel, Piedmont, Alabama Pastor Keith Bond, Young s Chapel, Piedmont, Alabama Pastor Jim Lester, Fannin Road Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama Pastor Thad Endicott, Heritage Baptist Church, Opelika, Alabama Bishop Fred and Tijuanna Adetunji, Fresh Anointing House of Worship, Montgomery, Alabama Pastor David Floyd, Marvyn Parkway Baptist Church, Opelika, Alabama Pastor Bruce Word, Freedom Church, Gadsden, Alabama Pastor Paul Hubbard, Lakeview Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama Rev. Carl Head, Lakeview Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama Pastor Duwayne Bridges, Jr., Fairfax First Christian Church, Valley, Alabama Rev. Edwin Roberts, Adams Street Church of Christ, Enterprise, Alabama Pastor John McCrummen, Open Door Baptist Church, Enterprise, Alabama Rev. Mickey Counts, Open Door Baptist Church, Enterprise, Alabama Rev. Alex Pagen, Open Door Baptist Church, Enterprise, Alabama Pastor Glenn Brock, Eufaula, Alabama Rev. Tim Head, Montgomery, Alabama Pastor\/Elder Ted Phillips, Christ Church, Odenville, Alabama Tim Yarbrough, Elder, Trinity Free Presbyterian, Trinity, Alabama Pastor Myron Mooney, Trinity Free Presbyterian, Trinity, Alabama Jerry Frank, Elder, Trinity Free Presbyterian, Trinity, Alabama Pastor Jim Nelson, Church of the Living God, Moulton, Alabama Pastor Earl Wise, Millbrook, Alabama Rick and Beverly Simpson, Summit Holiness Church, Alabama Pastor Lane Simmons and Margie Dale Simmons, First Assembly of God, Greenville Alabama Rev. Charles Morris, Pastor Grace Way Fellowship, Evergreen Alabama Dr. George Grant, Pastor, Parish Presbyterian Church Pastor David Whitney, Cornerstone Church Dr. Peter and Roseann Waldron, St. Francis Anglican Church Pastor Franklin and Mrs. Pamela Raddish, Capitol Hill Independent Baptist Ministries Dr. Michael Peroutka, Institute on the Constitution Reverend Bill Owens, Coalition of African American Pastors **Church names are listed for identification purposes onlyAfter the dust settles around what appears to be a coordinated assault by the left to destroy a man who they fear will take Jeff Sessions Senate seat in December, the voters in Alabama will have to decide who they believe.","label":1}
{"text":"Is Spirit Halloween really foolish enough to believe no one else will sell this costume? Thanks to conservative news sources posting about this story, it will likely be the hottest halloween costume this year. We sure hope bowing down to the PC Police is worth the huge revenue you re going lose you big dummies!Spirit Halloween has taken its Caitlyn Jenner costume off its website, after the Internet exploded in outrage.Right. Making fun of celebrities is just mean.Based on Jenner s Vanity Fair cover shot from earlier this year, the Call Me Caitlyn Halloween costume sold for $74.99 and included a wig, shorts, padded bustier, and a sash emblazoned with Call Me Caitlyn. The costume was labeled as unisex with a photo showing a big, hairy guy wearing it.Spirit Halloween hasn t publicly commented on why the costume disappeared, according to USA Today, which added it s still available at AnytimeCostumes.com and at WholesaleHalloweenCostumes.com, for only $49.95.Spirit s marketing director Lisa Barr earlier said the get-up was a celebration of Jenner.Of course it was. Which is why the guy modeling it looked like someone s sloppy Uncle Lenny. There s no tasteful way to celebrate Caitlyn Jenner or respect transgender people this way on the one night of the year when people use their most twisted imaginations to pretend to be villains and monsters, Vincent Villano, the spokesman for the National Center for Transgender Equality in Washington, told USA Today.Here s an easy homemade costume idea for anyone who doesn t want to spend the money for a manufactured Bruce Jenner costume:As one might imagine, GLAAD wasn t very pleased either. When transgender women step out into the world as their authentic selves, they aren t wearing a costume, said organization spokesman Nick Adams. Companies should think twice before seeking to profit from mocking trans women.","label":1}
{"text":"Ireland and Britain remained at odds on Monday on how to progress talks on the Irish border with a week to go before London could face failure in persuading European Union leaders to open trade talks at a December Brexit summit. The EU handed Prime Minister Theresa May a 10-day absolute deadline on Friday to improve her divorce terms and meet three key conditions, including on the border between EU-member Ireland and Britain s province of Northern Ireland. Before it can sign off on the first phase of talks, the Irish government wants Britain to spell out in writing how it intends to make good on its commitment that the 500-km (300-mile) border will remain as seamless post-Brexit as it is today. Dublin and EU officials say the best way to avoid a hard border is to keep regulations the same north and south and that this needs to be agreed in phase one, but a spokesman for May reiterated on Monday that a solution can only be concluded in the second phase of talks. We remain firmly committed to avoiding any physical infrastructure but the secretary of state (Brexit minister David Davis) was also clear that we will only be able to conclude them finally in the context of the future relationship, he told reporters. May s spokesman repeated that the whole of the United Kingdom will leave the EU s single market and customs union but Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said it seemed impossible to Dublin that some form of hard border could be avoided if there are diverging regulatory regimes north and south. It s simply not credible to say on the one hand that we are going to have a frictionless border and at the same time that all of Britain, including Northern Ireland, is going to leave the customs union, the single market without giving any reassurance on the avoidance of regulatory divergence, he told national broadcaster RTE. With the possibility of Ireland vetoing progress on the talks dominating some newspaper front pages in Britain, Coveney added that Dublin would not need to use its veto if it remained dissatisfied since it has the backing of all other EU states. We don t need to use a veto because we have complete solidarity on this issue. It is clear to us that if there is not progress on the Irish border, we will not be moving onto phase two in December and that was reinforced to me as late as last Friday by very senior EU leaders, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"U.N. special envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura will visit Moscow on Thursday for talks on the situation in Syria, RIA news agency quoted him as saying on Wednesday. De Mistura will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu to discuss preparations for a new round of Geneva peace talks on Syria and a proposed congress on Syria in Russia s Black Sea resort of Sochi, RIA reported.","label":0}
{"text":"0 Our Landfill Economy: Want to make a quick profit along a tropical sea coast? Dig some big holes near the coast, dump in baby prawns, food and chemicals to suppress algae blooms and diseases and then harvest the prawns to ship to the insatiable markets of the developed world. by IWB \u00b7 October 27, 2016  by Charles Hugh-Smith  This \"maximizing growth and profits is the highest good\" mode of production is insane.  Correspondent Bart D. (Australia) captured the entire global economy in three words: The Landfill Economy . Stuff is manufactured, energy is consumed shipping it somewhere, consumers buy it and shortly thereafter it ends up as garbage in the landfill.  This is of course the definition of \"economic growth\": waste, inefficiency, environmental destruction\u2013none of these matter. Only two things matter: maximize \"growth\" by any means necessary, and maximize profits by any means necessary.  The Landfill Economy now encompasses the entire planet. The swirling gyre of plastic trash the size of Texas between Hawaii and California: it's just one modest example of the planetary trash dump that \"growth\" and profit generate as byproducts\/blowback.  The planet's oceans are one giant trash dump. Everything from plastic water bottles to abandoned fishing nets to radiation to containers that fell off ships is floating around even the most distant corners of the seas. Seabirds nesting in remote islands die of starvation as their guts fill with plastic bits of \"permanent growth.\"  Globalization has turned the planet's land masses and rivers into trash dumps. Want to make a quick profit along a tropical sea coast? Dig some big holes near the coast, dump in baby prawns, food and chemicals to suppress algae blooms and diseases and then harvest the prawns to ship to the insatiable markets of the developed world.  Once the prawn farms are poisoned wastelands, move on and despoil another coastline elsewhere.  Globalization has greased the slippery slope from factory to landfill by enabling the global distribution of defective parts. Whether they are pirated, designed to fail or just the result of slipshod quality control, the flood of defective parts guarantee that the entire assembly they are installed in\u2013stoves, vacuum cleaners, transmissions, electronics, you name it\u2013will soon fail and be shipped directly to the landfill, as repairing stuff is far costlier than buying a new replacement.  QE\/ZIRP Is Crushing the Global Supply Chain, Product Quality and Profits (October 17, 2016)  The Keynesian Cargo Cults that rule global economics love The Landfill Economy because it means more \"growth\". Never mind the poisoned seas, rivers and land, or the immense waste of energy, commodities and labor that result from the global manufacture and distribution of shoddy products: if it adds to \"growth,\" it's all good in the warped view of the Keynesian Cargo Cults.  We got your \"growth\" right here.  People are also tossed on the trash heap with careless abandon. The health of workers is a cost that reduces profits, so it's ignored unless it can be turned into a profit center via state funding for managing preventable diseases, i.e. sickcare.  A worker sickened by industrial waste or lifestyle illnesses who becomes a profit center is a wonderful source of \"growth\" and profits.  A worker who can't generate a corporation or state a profit is dumped on the trash heap as a matter of routine. A worker who can't generate somebody a profit or \"growth\" by taking on more debt to spend spend spend is worthless.  If a robot or software can do the same work, then it is self-destructive for an enterprise to pay a human worker: if profits fall, Wall Street will crucify the enterprise and competitors will eat it alive.  This \"maximizing growth and profits is the highest good\" mode of production is insane. It doesn't have to rule the world. As I outline in my book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology & Creating Jobs for All , other more efficient, sustainable and humane modes of production are within reach if we escape from the global grip of the destructive \"growth by any means\" cult.","label":1}
{"text":"Whether an October surprise may have come a month early, it's too soon to say. But Hillary Clinton's weekend health scare already has started to stir speculation about whether Democratic officials should be discussing the possibility of a Plan B, in case they need to hastily arrange for a replacement nominee. Which raises a basic question: How does that work? Democratic Party bylaws say the DNC has the power to fill \"vacancies in the nominations for the office of the president and vice president\" when the national convention is not in session. Under party rules, the DNC chair \u2013 currently Donna Brazile \u2013 could call a special meeting, and fill the vacancy by a majority vote of those present. Analysts still see this scenario as exceedingly unlikely. It appears party leaders have no authority to sideline Clinton, meaning the special meeting would kick in only if she were to step aside voluntarily. The nominee and her aides say she's recovering and feeling much better now. But after Clinton left a 9\/11 memorial Sunday stumbling and being helped into an SUV by multiple aides -- an incident the campaign tied to a recent pneumonia diagnosis and other factors -- some Democrats are at least thinking about that process. Former DNC Chairman Don Fowler told Politico that the party needs to develop a plan immediately for finding a potential successor candidate. Former Al Jazeera and MSNBC anchor David Shuster tweeted Sunday that the DNC was considering an \"emergency meeting\" to talk about a Clinton replacement, although his source emphasized her status as nominee was up to her, not the party. NPR's Cokie Roberts said Monday that Democrats already are considering another candidate. \"It has them very nervously beginning to whisper about having her step aside and finding another candidate,\" Roberts said, adding that \"it's unlikely to be a real thing\" and describing the talk as likely \"an overreaction.\" Perhaps inadvertently feeding that frenzy, former Ohio Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland introduced Clinton running mate Tim Kaine at an event Monday by describing him as \"ready to become the president\" if necessary, The Columbus Dispatch reported. But in the, albeit unlikely, scenario of a replacement scramble, Kaine isn't necessarily a shoo-in. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vice President Joe Biden, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others could all be possible candidates. Historian Doug Wead told Fox News' Neil Cavuto that the votes would tend to go toward whomever the top of the ticket endorses, though it's not guaranteed. \"Whatever [Clinton] says will likely hold sway, but legally, technically they have their own vote,\" he said. Replacing a member of a major-party ticket would be exceedingly rare, though not unprecedented. This happened in 1972 when Democratic nominee George McGovern's running mate -- Sen. Thomas Eagleton -- withdrew from the race in July after it was revealed he had undergone electric shock treatment for mental health issues. Eagleton was replaced in August by Sargent Shriver as the new vice presidential nominee. The McGovern\/Shriver ticket went on to lose the race in a landslide to incumbent President Richard Nixon. Rick Hasen, who runs the Election Law Blog, told FoxNews.com that the situation could become significantly more complicated if it were to play out later in the calendar. \"The more complicated problem would arise if ballots have already been printed, and people would have started voting. There, the Electoral College would come into play, and electors from the party would be expected to vote for the replacement nominee,\" Hasen said. The first absentee ballots were mailed out in Sept. 9 in North Carolina, and many other states will soon follow. By mid-September the deadlines for both parties to certify candidates for the general election will have passed in every state \u2013 meaning lawsuits might have to be filed to try and get a replacement on the ballot. The DNC did not respond to a request for comment from FoxNews.com. This isn't the first time this election cycle there has been talk of a candidate dropping out. In August, during a particularly rough patch of poll numbers for Trump, some GOP officials were reportedly considering contingency plans in case the Republican nominee dropped out. Adam Shaw is a Politics Reporter and occasional Opinion writer for FoxNews.com. He can be reached here or on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.","label":0}
{"text":"The Republican Party has had it rough. Not only have they had to admit that their presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is an absolute nut job who can t do anything right, but their attempt to replace Obamacare has been just as much of a failure.The GOP has spent several years whining and moaning about how they would like to replace Obama s Affordable Care Act, despite the fact that a majority of Americans are in favor of keeping it. But once they finally had their chance to prove they could do better with Trump in the White House, they blew it.Recently at his weekly press conference, House Speaker Paul Ryan was asked if the House would vote on Trumpcare before Trump reached his first 100-day marker. Ryan s response was nothing short of absolute defeat and despair as he admitted that the GOP s horrible healthcare bill didn t have enough votes to pass. Ryan said: We want to go when we re ready to go. This has been a very organic bottom up process. It takes time to do that. We re doing big things, and you know me, I talked about 200 days because I thought the kind of agenda we re attempting to put together here overhauling health care, overhauling the tax system, rebuilding our military, securing the border. Those take more than just a few months. They take a long time, at least a year, so that s why we re working on the path to get it right, and not constrain it to some artificial deadline. What Ryan gave was a lot of excuses, along with his admission that he can t pass Trumpcare because there aren t enough votes to support a disastrous bill that would strip millions of Americans of their life-saving health insurance. It s entirely possible that the GOP will never have enough votes to make Trumpcare a thing, and Ryan s words are just as much empty promises as Trump s are.You can watch Ryan admit defeat below:Featured image by Win McNamee via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Democrats have a rare chance to win major concessions in a U.S. Congress they do not control by taking advantage of a battle within the Republican Party over keeping the government open. With a Friday deadline looming when most funding for federal agencies runs out, Democrats finally have some clout. But their power is strongest while the Republicans in Congress remain fractured and fighting. The showdown with Republicans could come to a head on Thursday when Democrats are expected to press their demands to President Donald Trump at a White House meeting. For Trump, the complex, and very public, battle over the shutdown will also be a demonstration of his ability to deliver on a central 2016 campaign promise of adding billions of dollars to the U.S. military budget. That issue is at the core of Republicans' behind-the-scenes negotiations with Democrats. Most Republicans want a defense buildup. But many also want to limit government spending. While many Democrats also support bolstering defense, they insist on raising spending on non-defense programs too. Democrats' top two demands include passage of legislation that has eluded them for 16 years: protecting from deportation nearly 700,000 young people known as \"Dreamers,\" whose parents brought them illegally to the United States as children. The Democrats also want to shore up Obamacare by reversing Trump's decision to stop monthly subsidy payments to insurance companies offering healthcare policies to lower-income people. Democrats will enter the White House meeting knowing their support is crucial to Senate Republicans passing any spending bills. Republicans control the chamber by 52-48, but need 60 vote for passage of most spending measures. While a partial government shutdown would keep emergency services and the military mainly operating, thousands of operations would be suspended, such as the operation of national parks. Republicans have clear control of the House of Representatives. But a core of conservative Republicans who consistently vote against funding bills in their drive for smaller government could balk. Democrats have a history of strongly supporting stopgap funding bills, providing the cushion for victory in the Republican House. Conservative Republicans said on Tuesday they would try to pass temporary spending bills without House Democrats' support. If so, it is unclear whether such a bill could clear the Senate, where Democratic votes are necessary to pass most bills. There is another wild card for both parties in Thursday's meeting: Trump. Democrats will test the unpredictable president to see whether he is willing to go the bipartisan route in order to keep federal agencies running smoothly or whether he will be in a confrontational mood. In May, angry he did not win money to build his promised wall along the border with Mexico, Trump said the United States needed a \"good shutdown\" to force his agenda on Congress. Just last week, he wrote on Twitter about the spending bills: \"I don't see a deal.\" Democrats are counting on the bipartisan Trump showing up, betting that he and fellow Republicans in Congress do not want to leave the immigration legislation, popularly known as the Dreamers Act, to fester until a March deadline, so close to the 2018 congressional election season. Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader, and Nancy Pelosi, House minority leader, are calculating that voters' wrath would rain down on Republicans if the government lights go out. Republicans would blame Democrats. At a news conference last Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said that if Democrats vote against the temporary spending bill because they have not won their demands, \"then they will have chosen to shut the government down.\" Republicans already are trying to exploit possible differences among Democrats over whether to link support for the stopgap spending bill to the immigration measure. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said she expected Democrats to vote for the government funding bill this week, telling Reuters in an interview that while it \"is important to all of us\" to take care of the Dreamers, \"I don't think we should shut the government down.\" Senator Dick Durbin, the chamber's No. 2 Democrat, told the Washington Post last week he would oppose any spending bill if Congress had not first taken care of the Dreamers. On Tuesday, Schumer noted there were \"good negotiations\" under way on the immigration measure. This week's vote to keep the government operating on temporary funding is likely to be the first of a three-step process that could stretch to Jan. 31. A second step would be another short-term funding bill, followed by one to fund the government through the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.","label":0}
{"text":"The Golden State Warriors have been defined by artistic ball movement and underrated defense. But at their core, they may be powered by something more abstract: an ability to motivate themselves just when they are being doubted. With the playoffs set to begin on Saturday and the Warriors coming in as heavy favorites after winning a record 73 games, the question is whether a tightly knit group of players that has come to dominate basketball the last two years can keep that edge through the next two months. In all likelihood, they can. Just consider how the regular season concluded: After a shocking home loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on April 5 left the Warriors with a record, Golden State needed to win its last four games to break the mark established by the Michael Chicago Bulls in the season. Because two of those last four games would come against a very tough Spurs team, including one in San Antonio, where Golden State had not won since 1997, the consensus seemed to be that the Warriors would fall short \u2014 especially with Warriors Coach Steve Kerr talking about the importance of resting key players before the playoffs. But Draymond Green, Golden State's forward and emotional leader, had other ideas. He became intensely vocal about his desire to get the wins record, and pressure from him and Stephen Curry seemed to get to Kerr, who allowed his starters to keep playing as long as the Warriors kept winning. And they did, including a difficult victory in San Antonio that broke the Spurs' seasonlong home winning streak. The rest was history, as the Warriors snatched the wins record and Curry almost assuredly locked up his second consecutive Most Valuable Player Award. Now comes the postseason. Can anyone really challenge this Warriors team and somehow rattle it? The Cleveland Cavaliers, despite the murmurs of internal strife, can never be discounted as long as LeBron James is around. The Spurs had one of the best teams in N. B. A. history, even if it went somewhat unnoticed. Still, if the Warriors, a team perfectly constructed to succeed in this era, play to their potential, it is hard to see any team keeping up with them. Jalen Rose, a N. B. A. veteran who will be providing playoff analysis for ESPN, said one of the biggest reasons for that is Curry's killer instinct. Rose called Curry a \" assassin\" and said Curry is set apart by his ability to maintain an edge as a defending champion and defending M. V. P. \"He is not playing around,\" Rose said. If Curry is looking for slights to motivate him, he may find one if he is not the first N. B. A. player unanimously named M. V. P. (Shaquille O'Neal and James have come the closest, each falling one vote short.) Chris Webber, a who will be part of TNT's broadcast team, said a few M. V. P. voters may choose someone other than Curry simply to be contrarian. \"I don't see how a true, humble basketball fan can vote against Steph,\" Webber said. Curry is likely to be the dominant story line of the playoffs after leading the N. B. A. in scoring average along with total field goals, and steals despite playing in the fourth quarter in just 60 of his 79 games. The Warriors complement him with incredible depth in Green, Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala on a roster that is largely unchanged from last season. Asked to imagine a team that could compete with the Warriors, Rose said that the Spurs are contenders but that people should also consider the star power and depth of the Oklahoma City Thunder. Beyond Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, the Thunder also have a defensive ace in Serge Ibaka and an rotation at center in Steven Adams and Enes Kanter that can be remarkably effective. \"If they're clicking on all cylinders, I give them a punter's chance obviously to put the kind of firepower out on the floor to go head to head with the Warriors four quarters,\" Rose said, while acknowledging that Oklahoma City struggled in the fourth quarter this season. The quality of Oklahoma City's front line could be a pivotal issue if it should face Golden State. Rose cited points in the paint as the Warriors' biggest weakness and said teams would be wise to attack them inside. \"While they defend really well, one of the best in the league, they're short,\" Rose said of Golden State's Death Lineup in which Green plays center. \"Draymond Green, when they have that lineup out there, he's Harrison Barnes is or so you have to take advantage of that, try to get to the line, get them in foul trouble. \" For now, the Warriors will focus on the Houston Rockets, whom they beat in five games in last season's Western Conference finals. It is a matchup that may not extend any longer this time around. But if an uninspiring matchup was not providing the team with the proper motivation, Jordan may have inadvertently put the chip right back on Golden State's shoulder. When the Warriors broke the Bulls' record earlier this week, Jordan issued a statement of congratulations. But he also included a line that seemed to be part jab and part reminder that their legacy is not yet secure. \"I look forward to seeing what they do in the playoffs,\" he said. For Curry and Green, that may be enough of a challenge to carry them all the way.","label":0}
{"text":"China s ruling Communist Party on Wednesday opens its 19th Congress, at which President Xi Jinping will map out his ambitions for the country for the next five years and beyond, likely to be high on aspiration and short on concrete details. Here are some key factors to watch out for: - Will Xi resurrect the position of party chairman? Xi is currently the party s general secretary, but not its chairman, a title Mao Zedong and his two successors, Hua Guofeng and Hu Yaobang, both held. Becoming party chairman would put Xi at the same level as Mao and could allow him to effectively end three decades of collective leadership, giving him unparalleled power. - What will happen to chief corruption-buster Wang Qishan? Speculation has swirled that Wang, 69, could be asked to stay on past an unofficial retirement age limit, either in his current role, or possibly in a new position with an economic portfolio. - Who will be on the new Standing Committee, the apex of power in China? Currently made up of seven men, most of whom are expected to retire and be replaced by new faces. Possible names include Li Shulei, Wang s deputy at the anti-corruption watchdog; the Chongqing party chief Chen Miner, who is close to Xi; and the provincial party boss of Guangdong, Hu Chunhua. If Xi becomes party chairman the significance of the Standing Committee would become diminished, as power would be concentrated in Xi s hands rather than in the Standing Committee. - A series of new personnel appointments, like the foreign minister and central bank chief, will be decided, though some may not be formalized and announced until the annual meeting of parliament in March. - Changing the party s constitution. Some sort of reference to Xi and his theories will be included in the revised constitution - a further sign of his tightening grip on power. - Bolstering the anti-corruption and security systems. A new National Supervision Commission, which would combine the roles of several party and government bodies that currently combat graft, will likely be set up. - The National Security Commission, already headed by Xi, could also get new powers, potentially making it more important than the Central Military Commission, which runs the People s Liberation Army. That would give the National Security Commission more power to tackle domestic and foreign threats. The exact role of a more powerful Commission is still unclear, including if it will have overall command of both the military and the domestic security forces. - Whether Xi will anoint a successor. Xi s rise to the top was confirmed at the 2007 Congress, when he first joined the Standing Committee and then became vice president the following year. Any successor would have to join the Standing Committee at this Congress and be young enough to serve at least three five-year terms. If there is no obvious successor, it will increase speculation that Xi could stay on in power after 2022, when the next Congress occurs, and when Xi should, according to precedent and age limits, step down after two terms in office. - Whether Xi reaffirms 2013 reform pledges to let market forces play a decisive role in the economy, a catchphrase rarely mentioned now. Signals on new reform initiatives will be important, especially concerning state-owned enterprises, the fiscal system, property taxes and land rights. Also important is if there are any fresh measures to tackle industrial overcapacity and debt issues. Any fresh measures to tackle overcapacity and debt issues. - Any hints on policy priorities for the next five years, both monetary and fiscal, though analysts don t expect the Congress to unveil any major policy changes. Economic and policy agendas for 2018 will be set at the annual economic work conference later this year. - New expressions on the economy and reforms, following Xi s use of the terms new normal to describe the more moderate pace of economic growth, and supply-side structural reform . - How the punishing war on pollution is affecting China s business and government leaders as they prepare for a tough winter campaign aimed at meeting politically sensitive smog reduction targets. Fighting pollution is now a key criterion on which the performance of officials will be judged.","label":0}
{"text":"Cable news is in trouble. The Pew Research Center reports that the median daily audience for Fox, CNN, and MSNBC is down about 11 percent since 2008. The Washington Post's Paul Farhi sees a grim future for the industry. He argues that cable news outlets are pretty much where newspapers were a decade ago: their audience is aging, their medium is being disrupted by new technologies, and the next generation of viewers is developing habits and preferences that they're poorly placed to serve. (This is probably a good moment to note that I'm a contributor to MSNBC.) The networks may still be making money \u2014 in 2014, Fox News managed $1.2 billion in profits, while CNN cleared $300 million and MSNBC made a bit more than $200 million \u2014 but Farhi suggests \"the cable news networks will face bankruptcy the same way Ernest Hemingway once described a character's financial demise: 'Gradually and then suddenly.'\" Perhaps that's right. But while Farhi's account of cable news outlets' woes focuses mainly on the cable part of the equation, it's also worth considering the problems all three networks are having with the news itself. The rise of the three major cable news networks were all driven by stories they dominated. CNN was made by the 1991 Gulf War. It wasn't just the first time it passed the networks in ratings; it was the first time CNN showed that it could beat the networks in coverage. You can still feel the surprise in this New York Times article from 1991: The shooting in the Persian Gulf began tonight with the three broadcast networks committed to covering the war on a 24-hour basis, although their image as news leaders was damaged by the Cable News Network's early dominance of the coverage ... he networks' image was certainly not helped when Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said he was following the attacks on Baghdad on CNN. At least one network station, an NBC station in Detroit, decided to quit its network's coverage to run CNN's. And NBC finally was compelled to interview CNN reporters on the air to get information out of Baghdad. Fox News, for its part, saw basically exponential growth around 9\/11, and then again around the 2008 campaign and Obama's election. MSNBC's rise was driven by the backlash to the Bush administration, and particularly to the Iraq War: The network held those gains in the first half of the Obama era, as liberals went from terrified to triumphant. But as liberals have gone from triumphant to a bit depressed and checked out, viewership has begun to decline. The recent rise of cable news \u2014 particularly Fox and MSNBC \u2014 came in a period when the news \u2014 particularly political news \u2014 was unusually interesting. Between 2000 and 2012, we saw a contested US presidential election, the largest terrorist attack ever on US soil, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, repeated wave elections, a global financial crisis, the first black president, the rise of the Tea Party, the fight over Obamacare, and the first states to legalize gay marriage and marijuana \u2014 and much more. It's been a weirdly interesting, consequential period in American politics. And so the cable news networks, which could devote 24 hours a day to covering these stories, benefited. But now it's an unusually dull period in American politics. Congress is gridlocked, and is likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. The US, thankfully, isn't reeling from a terrorist attack or a financial crisis. We haven't invaded Iran, at least not yet. And it's not just cable news that's losing viewers because of it. Turnout in the 2014 election was the lowest it's been in 70 years. You see this, I think, in the specific fortunes of the cable networks. Farhi reports that MSNBC lost 14 percent of its audience in 2014, and Fox lost 2 percent. But CNN prime time \u2014 which swung away from politics toward covering plane crashes and airing documentaries \u2014 is up 10 percent in 2015. Which is all to say that Farhi may be right about the long-term decline of cable news \u2014 over some extended period of time, both network and cable channels are going to be diminished by whatever it is the internet creates in their place. But year to year, a lot of the ups and downs might just be the appeal of what's actually in the news. If President Scott Walker goes to war with Iran, MSNBC's ratings are going to go up. If President Hillary Clinton takes away everyone's guns, Fox is going to boom. But for now, relative peace and stability are bad news for cable news.","label":0}
{"text":"The chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday asked chief executives from companies representing the two sides of the net neutrality debate, including Alphabet, Facebook, AT&T and Verizon, to testify at a Sept. 7 hearing. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is considering tossing out 2015 Obama administration net neutrality rules that reclassified internet service like a public utility. The current rules bar providers from blocking or slowing websites, or allowing websites to pay for \"fast lanes\" over competitors. Internet providers and major tech companies have been sharply divided over the rules. Many internet providers want Congress to step in and write permanent rules, while websites say the Obama era rules are critical to preserving the open internet. The outcome of the debate could have a major impact on the future of the internet economy and potentially profits of the companies involved. Other chief executives asked to testify include the heads of Comcast Corp, Netflix Inc and Charter Communications Inc. Several companies said they were reviewing the letter but none immediately said if they will testify. Comcast said it welcomed the hearing and \"believes the best way to stop the regulatory ping-pong on this important issue is for Congress to enact bipartisan legislation.\" \"A strong consensus is forming across party lines and across industries that it's time for Congress to call a halt on the back-and-forth and set clear net neutrality ground rules for the internet,\" said Representative Greg Walden, a Republican, who chairs the committee. \"The time has come to get everyone to the table and get this figured out.\" Democrats on the committee want Republicans to invite small businesses and consumers, not just the CEOs from some of the \"largest corporations in the world with a combined market capitalization of nearly $2.5 trillion,\" said a statement from Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Ranking Member Mike Doyle, both Democrats. Democrats have so far refused to work with Republicans on internet legislation. A group representing major technology firms last week urged the FCC to abandon plans to rescind the rules barring internet service providers from hindering consumer access to web content or offering paid \"fast lanes.\" Major internet service have urged the FCC, however, to reverse the rules, even as they vowed not to hinder internet access. In May, the FCC voted 2-1 to advance Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to withdraw the former Obama administration's order reclassifying internet service providers as if they were utilities. The FCC is considering whether it has the authority to limit internet providers' ability to block, throttle or offer \"paid prioritization,\" and, if so, whether it should keep any regulations in place. More than 12 million public comments have been filed on the proposal. The Internet Association, a group representing Facebook, Google, Microsoft Corp and Twitter Inc, said last week it was \"open to alternative legal bases for the rules, either via legislative action codifying the existing net neutrality rules or via sound legal theories offered by the commission.\"","label":0}
{"text":"The chances of Northern Ireland s political parties restoring a power-sharing agreement in Northern Ireland are not positive and talks in the last few days have stalled, Britain s minister for the region said on Wednesday. If I had given evidence to this committee last week I might have indicated some momentum, more progress. That progress stalled at the end of last week, James Brokenshire told a parliamentary committee. Unless there is a renewed spirit of compromise then the outlook for imminent resolution is not positive. Time is running out. (This story has been refiled to remove extraneous word from headline)","label":0}
{"text":"Pinterest  The leaders of the militia who temporarily occupied a national wildlife refuge in Oregon have been acquitted on charges related to the standoff.  The 41-day \"occupation\" brought heightened attention to a decades-long dispute over control of federal lands in the U.S. West.  A jury in Portland found brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy not guilty of possession of a firearm in a federal facility and conspiring to impede federal workers from their jobs at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, some 300 miles southeast of Portland, The New York Post is reporting .  Despite this acquittal, the brothers are still expected to stand trial in Nevada early in 2017, on charges stemming from another controversial standoff with federal authorities. The feds rounded up cattle at their father Cliven's ranch in 2014, alleging unpaid grazing fees, but they faced armed protesters.  The brothers are part of a Nevada ranching family embroiled in a lengthy fight over the use of public range, and their occupation drew an international spotlight to a uniquely American West dispute: federal restrictions on ranching, mining and logging to protect the environment. The U.S. government, which controls much of the land in the West, says it tries to balance industry, recreation and wildlife concerns to benefit all.  \"We are just so excited,\" Angie Bundy, Ryan's wife, told the Guardian after the verdict was announced. \"We've been praying hard, and we knew they hadn't done anything wrong.\"  The Post is reporting that the trial seemed like an open-and-shut case. There was no dispute that the group actually seized the refuge, established armed patrols, and vetted visitors.  \"Ladies and gentlemen, this case is not a whodunit,\" Assistant U.S. Attorney Ethan Knight said in his closing argument, arguing that the group decided to take over a federal workplace that didn't belong to them.  But federal prosecutors took two weeks to present their case, finishing with a display of more than 30 guns seized at the standoff, testifying to 16,636 live rounds and 1,700 spent casings were found.  Despite the evidence, the brothers were found not guilty, suggesting that the jury \u2013 along with the American people \u2013 are growing weary of continued government interference in local land use issues.","label":1}
{"text":"Republican front runner Donald Trump has once again confused everyone on one of his policies by completely reversing and flip-flopping several times in the span of just a few days. This time, he chose the controversial topic of abortion because he s a misogynist and degrading women just comes so effortlessly and naturally to him.First, the business mogul p*ssed everyone off by saying that women who got abortions should face some sort of punishment. Then, the disgraced candidate frantically backpedaled and said abortion should be left to the states , and that it wasn t women that should be punished, but the doctors who perform the abortions! After that, Trump said that abortions laws were set and should stay the way they are, before his campaign clarified his statement and said that the laws should remain the same until Trump is president. As this back-and-forth nonsense went on, the media was pummeling Trump for not being able to make up his damn mind, and for being horrendously offensive.Now, Trump is trying to avoid even more backlash by straight-up refusing to answer questions on the topic of abortion, as America tries to understand what exactly Trump s position on it really is. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd discovered this when she recently tried to interview Trump for her Sunday column entitled Trump Does It His Way . Dowd said she posed this clever question to the front runner: When he was a swinging bachelor in Manhattan, was he ever involved with anyone who had an abortion? Trump s answered by evading the question entirely. He said: Such an interesting question. So what s your next question? Trump also gave a pathetic justification for his original punishment comments on abortion that he d made earlier in the week. He told Dowd: This was not real life this was a hypothetical, so I thought of it in terms of a hypothetical. So that s where that answer came from, hypothetically. Dowd also asked Trump how he possibly expected to win the election when he had completely turned off and disgusted 73 percent of American woman. Trump simply murmured, It was 68 percent, actually.","label":1}
{"text":"by Dr. Mercola  The U.S. food system is set up to protect industrialized, centralized food production and distribution, while efforts to decentralize food are kept strictly under wraps.  There are many problems with this system, including the fact that food production is often out of sync with demand, leading to excessive amounts of waste. In 2016, for instance, the industrial dairy industry has dumped 43 million gallons of milk due to a massive milk glut.  The glut is the result of a 2014 spike in milk prices, which encouraged many dairy farmers to add more milk cows to their farms. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data shows that dairy cows have increased by 40,000 in 2016, with a 1.4 percent increase in production per cow.  With too much milk and nowhere to sell it, prices have tanked. Milk prices declined 22 percent in recent months to $16.39 per 100 pounds \u2014 a price so low some farmers can no longer afford to even transport it to the market. [1]  The milk glut isn't only affecting the U.S., either. It's been felt globally, which means milk producers can't export their surplus milk. What's a dairy farmer to do with a surplus of milk? Dump it \u2014 on fields, into animal feed or added to manure lagoons. USDA Steps in to Bail Out Dairy CAFOs  At its foundation, the milk glut is the result of dairy operations in the U.S. consolidating into concentrated feeding operations (CAFOs) \u2014 massive industrial \"farms\" with the sole goal of producing as much food as possible for the greatest profit. As reported by Yale Environment 360: [2]  While milk carton imagery pictures bucolic, small farms, more than 50 percent of U.S. milk is now produced by just 3 percent of the country's dairies \u2014 those with more than 1,000 cows, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).The very largest U.S. dairies now have 15,000 or more cows.  The USDA, meanwhile, is coming to bail out these massive industrial enterprises. They've offered to buy $20 million of cheddar cheese from private sources, while milk producers try to get fast food outlets to add more cheese-heavy products to their menus. [3] The USDA already purchased $20 million of cheddar cheese in August 2016. 1 in 4 US Dairy Cows Contracts Mastitis  Dairy cows raised in confinement and fed unnatural diets of genetically engineered (GE) grain are at high risk of illness, as are all animals raised in CAFOs. It's estimated that one-fifth of livestock are lost due to diseases, which is an unrecognized source of food waste. [4]  In the U.S. alone, 1 in 4 dairy cows contracts mastitis, which is a painful and serious udder disease. The result of producing large quantities of low-quality milk, mastitis is also the leading cause of therapeutic antibiotics treatment in U.S. dairy animals.  In an era where antibiotic-resistant disease is taking millions of lives, any preventable causes of antibiotics usage should be curbed. Mastitis is also preventable with clean, humane living conditions and proper diet, which lead to healthy cows.  Mastitis is also another source of food waste. Milk with antibiotic residues cannot be sold, so milk from cows being treated with antibiotics for mastitis must be poured down the drain \u2014 to the tune of 1.2 billion servings a year (not to mention the addition of more antibiotics into the environment). [5]  As noted by one study on antibiotics usage on a dairy CAFO in New York state, \"One of the best options to decrease antibiotic usage is to prevent the infection in the first place \u2026\" [6] Indeed, which again brings us back to the way cows are raised. CAFOs are literal breeding grounds for infection.  Further, according to the 2016 Global Agricultural Productivity (GAP) Report prepared by the Global Harvest Initiative, once a cow contracts mastitis, she will probably not produce as much milk as before: [7]  In addition, the cow's level of milk production through her entire life cycle will likely fall below her potential as she is more susceptible to contracting mastitis on a recurring basis.  The need for alternatives to protect the health of animals and preserve the long-term effectiveness of shared-class antibiotics has never been greater. As Dairy CAFOs Grow in Size, so Too Does Related Pollution  In Wisconsin, the heart of dairy country in the Midwest, farm consolidation is growing at an alarming rate.  While the number of overall dairy farms in the state dropped by about one-third in the last decade, the number of such farms with more than 500 cows grew by 150 percent \u2014 and those with 2,000 or more cows grew at the fastest rate of all. [8]  In addition to concerns like mastitis and milk gluts, such operations produce mind-boggling amounts of waste that represent one of the top sources of pollution in the U.S. Yale Environment 360 reported: [9]  According to the EPA, a 2,000-cow dairy generates more than 240,000 pounds of manure daily or nearly 90 million pounds a year. The USDA estimates that the manure from 200 milking cows produces as much nitrogen as sewage from a community of 5,000 to 10,000 people.  \u2026 Milking cows \u2026 produce more manure than beef cattle and the Holsteins that dominate the U.S. dairy industry produce almost twice as much manure as Jerseys.  Cows that give more milk per cow also produce more manure and per-cow milk production has almost doubled since the 1970s.  Manure spills and leaching of waste from storage \"lagoons\" contaminate waterways and drinking water, posing serious environmental risks in Wisconsin and elsewhere in the U.S. Grass-Fed Dairy: Better for the Environment, the Animals and Human Health  Demand for grass-fed dairy products is growing at an impressive rate, which is excellent news for the environment, animal welfare and human health. Grass is a cow's natural food.  When cows eat grains, as they do on CAFOs that produce the milk used for most U.S. dairy products, their body composition changes. Most importantly for you, these changes include an alteration in the balance of essential fats.  Milk (and meat) from cows raised primarily on pasture has been repeatedly shown to be higher in many nutrients, including vitamin E, beta-carotene and the healthy fats omega-3 and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). According to a study published in the journal PLOS One: [10]  Milk from cows consuming significant amounts of grass and legume-based forages contains higher concentrations of \u03c9-3 FAs [omega-3 fats] and CLA than milk from cows lacking routine access to pasture and fed substantial quantities of grains, especially corn.  In turn, lactating women consuming such milk have an increased CLA concentration in their breast milk \u2026  This study confirms earlier findings that milk from cows consuming significant amounts of grass and legume-based forages contains less LA [omega-6 linoleic acid] and other \u03c9-6 Fas [omega-6 fats] and higher concentrations of ALA, CLA and the long-chain \u03c9-3s EPA and DPA, compared to cows lacking routine access to pasture and fed substantial quantities of grains. Grass-Fed Dairy is a Solution to the Problems Created by Industrial Dairy  Unfortunately, only about 22 percent of U.S. dairy cows have access to pasture and even then access tends to be very limited. [11] Grass-fed dairy producer Maple Hills Creamery further shared reasons why grass-fed dairy is better: [12] When a cow eats corn and grain, the pH of the rumen (the first chamber of the cow's stomach) becomes acidic; this destroys some flora and increases systemic inflammation, shortening the cow's lifespan and increasing her risk of infection Raising grass-fed cows requires fewer resources than growing grain crops to feed CAFO cows, along with fewer chemical fertilizers and pesticides On a 100 percent grass-fed farm, manure is spread over pastures naturally as the cows roam; there is no need for environmentally destructive manure lagoons Grass-fed dairy farming works best with small herds, which in turn helps support local economies and small farmers, who are able to claim a premium price for their premium dairy products  \"In short,\" Maple Hills Creamery writes, \"100 [percent] grass-fed organically produced dairy is a viable solution to the industrial dairy system, focusing on holistic care of both the animals and land, rather than an end goal of highest production and maximizing the bottom line at the cost of animal welfare and environmental concerns.\" Support Raw, Grass-Fed Milk Products  Raw milk dairy products from organically raised pasture-fed cows rank among some of the healthiest foods you can consume. They're far superior in terms of health benefits compared to CAFO-produced, pasteurized milk products, and if statistics are any indication, safer, too.  While many believe that milk must be pasteurized before it can be safely consumed, it's worth remembering that raw milk was consumed for thousands of years before the invention of pasteurization. It's also important to realize that pasteurization is only really required for certain kinds of milk, specifically that from cows raised in crowded and unsanitary conditions, which is what you find in CAFOs.  Your dairy products should ideally be pasture-raised, NOT pasteurized. Organically raised cows that are allowed to roam free on pasture where they can graze for their natural food source produce very different milk.  Their living conditions promote and maintain their health and optimize their milk in terms of the nutrients and beneficial bacteria it contains. Getting your raw grass-fed milk and other food from a local organic farm or co-op is one of the best ways to ensure you're getting high-quality food.  Read the full article at Mercola.com. References","label":1}
{"text":"Tesla Made More Money This Quarter Than All U.S. Oil Companies Made Last Year Nov 14, 2016 0 0  Signs of the times. This past quarter, Elon Musk's Tesla company made a profit of $22 million, while the entire U.S. oil industry lost a total of $67 billion last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration . This is in part due to the global oil prices falling, as well as humanity's awakening push for clean, renewable energy.  According to the Renewable Energy Institute , the price efficiency of solar technology will be better than fossil fuel by 2025 and will continue to get cheaper and cheaper until that time.  However, the newly elected President of the U.S. says that he wants to \"lift the restrictions on the production of $50 trillion worth of job-producing American energy reserves, including shale, oil, natural gas and clean coal.\" Donald Trump also says he will initiate this action within his first 100 days of being in office.  While this action is certain to increase jobs for more Americans, we must also take into account the environmental impact this will have as even more carbon will be released into the atmosphere if these now dormant energy reserves begin to be tapped.  Additionally, the price of oil continues to remain low and even if jobs are created, there is no guarantee these companies in the fossil fuel industry will be able to profit financially.  The way the world is recognizing the necessity to move away from fossil fuels, as well as the increased technological capability, it appears as though Donald Trump will have a very difficult time putting this part of his plan into action.  Instead, he is likely to face a wave of opposition if he tries to implement such measures as people know that we can't keep pumping even more carbon into the atmosphere if we want our world's atmosphere to return to pristine condition.  Earlier this year, leaders from Russia, China, Japan and South Korea met to sign an agreement to begin working on a project called the Asian Super-Grid . The project will include wind and solar technologies and will power various parts of the world, including Europe, Southern Africa, South and Southeast Asia, as well as the four countries involved.  What we are seeing right now in our world is the writing on the wall: We see what destruction and pollution can come from the fossil fuel industry (as well as the political destruction that occurs through war to gain more oil resources from the Middle East) and we see that the solutions to these issues already exist.  We see more and more that the solutions are being put into place, and now on an even wider scale (Asian Super-Grid). We also are seeing the economic reality of either continuing down the old path of fossil fuels as well as the bright new path being forged with clean and sustainable energy.  2017 is going to be quite a year. We have the solutions, but will we implement them on a mass scale?  Lance Schuttler graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Health Science and does health coaching through his website Orgonlight Health . You can follow the Orgonlight Health facebook page or visit the website for more information and other inspiring articles.","label":1}
{"text":"As cable TV sports giant ESPN continues to contract with a massive loss of subscribers, and a corresponding loss of advertising income even as its budget continues to rise, some are warning that the network's focus on cable TV is a very bad business model going into the future. [ESPN has lost an astounding 12 million subscribers since 2011, according to a lengthy new analysis of the network's status by Bloomberg. Indeed, in the final quarter of 2016 the network lost 621, 000 subscribers in a single month, the most it has ever lost at one time. The sports network's losses drove down the stock of network owner Disney by seven percent last year. Faced with the fall in subscribers and the consequent drop in advertising revenue, ESPN recently announced a major round of layoffs to save what was reported as \"tens of millions\" of budget dollars. It was later revealed that the layoffs will affect mostly talent. The fall of ESPN coincides with the rise of liberal political content seen on the air, content many say is driving even more subscribers away. The complaints about the liberal politics being ladled over its sports coverage became so pervasive that the network's ombudsman, Jim Brady, felt pressured to write an extensive article about the problem on the network's website. But, as Bloomberg notes, the network faces another, more problem. The way Americans consume entertainment \u2014 especially sports \u2014 is in flux with many dumping cable TV and relying more on the internet, and streaming video on mobile devices. ESPN, it appears, is so focused on its pay TV business model that it is failing to keep up with the customers' needs. In response to this charge, though, ESPN executives insist that the move to \"cut the cord\" is exaggerated, Bloomberg says. While other cable TV networks are now offering streaming services, ESPN has found it difficult to emulate the model. HBO, for instance, charges a $15 a month fee for customers to watch its programming over the internet. But, ESPN would drown with such a low fee. According to Bloomberg, to pay its budget, ESPN would need 43 million customers paying $15 a month to survive with internet services. It is an unrealistic number. A major budget problem are the exorbitant fees that the network has to pay to the various leagues for broadcast rights. ESPN's broadcast fees amount to more money than many networks spend on their entire budget. As ESPN's future continues to be questionable, one solution would be for the leagues to understand that the days of the billions in broadcast rights it had been seeing are likely coming to an end. In the future, those fees will simply have to be cut if the leagues want to stay on broadcast TV and internet services. It all portends a future where professional sports will be earning far less money than it has been used to seeing, and that this gravy train is probably coming to an end. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.","label":0}
{"text":"The chairman of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee said on Thursday he wants to pass a major piece of bank reform legislation by early next year at the latest. Senator Mike Crapo, a Republican, intends to go beyond rewriting the 2010 Dodd Frank financial reform legislation and craft a bipartisan bill that advances economic growth and capital formation, he told attendees at a Chamber of Commerce event focused on capital markets. \"My hope is ... that is either late this year or early next year. I'm not looking further than that,\" Crapo said. Crapo's agenda is being intensely watched on Wall Street, as his committee is widely seen as playing a critical role in crafting any rewrite of Dodd Frank. That 2010 law was enacted after the financial crisis, and the industry is eager to see if Republicans now in charge of the White House and Congress can significantly relax its requirements. Some of the Dodd Frank provisions that are most contentious prohibit banks from some higher risk investments and require higher capital requirements of the biggest banks. A bill that attacks Dodd Frank directly is set to be introduced in the House of Representatives soon by Jeb Hensarling, the Texas Republican who chairs the Financial Services Committee. But that bill is seen as a tough Republican approach that may not garner enough support in the Senate to be passed. Crapo said meaningful reforms would require a bipartisan approach, and he is working closely with Sherrod Brown, the top Democrat on the committee, to find areas of common ground. He also said he wants to go beyond simply revisiting Dodd Frank's provisions and look more broadly at all rules and policies that impact economic growth, an approach he said might encourage Democrats to vote with him. He said he expects Congress to address financial regulatory reform after it finishes work on a tax reform bill. Crapo did concede that the current political environment is tough for passing controversial legislation in the Senate, and others in his party said they intend to push some of their favored Dodd Frank revisions through a budget process that would not require much Democratic support.","label":0}
{"text":"The Egyptian public prosecutor ordered that a suspected Libyan militant and 14 others be held for 15 days pending an investigation of their role in a deadly attack in Egypt s western desert last month, state news MENA reported on Friday. The Interior Ministry said on Thursday that Abdelrahim Mohamed al-Mesmari, from the Libyan city of Derna, was captured by Egyptian forces following an air raid in response to the attack. Security sources initially said at least 52 policemen were killed when militants attacked a patrol, firing rockets and detonating explosives in a remote part of the desert. The Interior Ministry refuted those figures and said 16 were killed. Charges against Mesmari will include premeditated murder of police officers, possession of firearms and joining a terrorist organization, MENA reported. A new and little-known group called Ansar al-Islam claimed responsibility for the October attack, posing a new threat to Egyptian security forces, which have been battling an Islamic State insurgency in the Sinai peninsula since 2013. The military last month killed 15 militants in an air raid directed at the group it blamed for the desert attack, according to the Interior Ministry, which said that all of those killed had been trained in Derna. Mesmari escaped the air raid but was later arrested along with 29 Egyptians who had been recruited to join the group, according to the Interior Ministry. (This version of the story corrects final paragraph to clarify that 29 suspects were arrested later, after the air strike in which 15 were killed)","label":0}
{"text":"Advertisement - It was not too long ago that many people looked to the U.S. for leadership and not so long ago, our nation was still thought to be a democratic nation of laws, due process, and a prudent separation of powers. Now the U.S. is reviled; Bush is seen the world over as having betrayed his own people as he wages aggressive war against a nation that even he concedes had nothing whatsoever to do with 911, a nation about which he lied in order to justify his dirty, evil little war. The war on terrorism is phony. And now, Bush proves everything that is said about him by refusing to close Guantanamo, by refusing to end practices of torture and rendition which he denies --even as he defends them. I recommend Robert Jackson 's Place in History by Henry King Jr. An excerpt: In his final report, after he resigned as U.S. Chief Counsel for War Crimes, Jackson stated that \"[i]t is not too much to hope that this example of a full and fair hearing, and tranquil and deliberative judgment, will do something toward strengthening the process of justice in many countries. \" I believe that after fifty years it can be maintained with considerable credibility that these visions have largely come to pass. Perhaps --at the time of the writing --\"these visions\" had come to pass. But thanks to the Bush administration's deliberate effort to undermine the very foundations of International Law, that important progress has been undone. One rightly suspects Bush's motives. Even before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, before the attack on Afghanistan, Tom DeLay sponsored legislation that exempted U.S. soldiers from war crimes prosecution at the International Tribunal at the Hague. Did anyone in Congress stop to ask why? Were we planning to commit crimes for which we sought exemption from prosecution? Wasn't it clear to any thinking person what Bush was up to? Are we not the good guys? [Amendment to H.R. 1646, The Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 2001 ]  Clearly --the Bush administration was, in fact, planning to commit war crimes but wanted to make them legal if done by the U.S. I cannot possibly hope to document in a short internet essay the various circumlocutions that have been indulged by the Bush administration and its chief apologist: Alberto Gonzales. All, however, are intended to make legal the very acts that are prohibited by Nuremberg --but only if those acts are done by Americans. Bush is at least consistent in this respect: neither would he press for trials for non-Americans. He would simply decree their imprisonment and torture.  Nazis engaged in similar polemical campaigns. The results were tragic. So too with Bush who most certainly boasted of what can only be the summary executions of thousands who were most certainly murdered before they could assert their innocence: ...more than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries. Many others have met a different fate. Let's put it this way -- they are no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.  This statement must be soberly examined; note that Bush refers to 3,000 suspects . Yet --he smirks that \"...they have met a different fate.\" He boasts that \"...they are no longer a problem to the the United States...\". - Advertisement - They were only suspects . Since when does the United States summarily execute mere suspects? Do we not know who our enemies are? What were the conditions of their detention? Why are we rounding up mere \"suspects\" --and not actual combatants? How is the execution of suspects justified under any standard, any morality, any legal system? I am frankly surprised that Bush maintained the pretense when he has since arrogated unto himself the power to define terrorists. \"Terrorists\" are what Bush says they are. Bush is the judge and jury. Detainees are never charged and, by Bushs' own words, \"suspects\" are caused to be \"...no longer a problem\". Others are \"terrorists\" not because they are \"terrorists\" but because Bush --the decider --says they are. Some may be combatants. Some may be \"evil doers\". Others may be innocent. No matter. Bush --the all powerful decider --has thrown them all in the same wire cage. The same suicide factory. Contrast Bush's remarks with those of American Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson uttered when America still had credibility and moral authority:  \"That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason. \"  -- Opening Statement before the International Military Tribunal, Robert Jackson, Chief American Prosecutor, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials - Advertisement - At the end of World War II, when even Winston Churchill espoused the summary executions of Nazi war criminals and Joseph Stalin favored mere show trials, it was the United States, under the leadership of Franklin Roosevelt, that insisted upon war crimes trials. Nazis would not be summarily shot merely because they were Nazis by definition or decree. Rather, they would be given a trial. Even Nazis would be allowed the right of counsel, the right to present a defense.  How can Bush hope to defend democracy --as he has claimed --when he subverts every Democratic principle that has been fought and died for over the last four hundred years? How can Bush justify his war of aggression against Iraq when he subverts the very \"democracy\" that he claims to bring them? How can Bush accuse anyone outside the United States of \"...just hat[ing] freedom\" when Bush is himself democracy's most insidious enemy?  If Nazis had engaged in the same disingenuous activities with regard to the incarceration and ultimate extermination of the jews, what moral authority could the U.S. have extended if its own policies differed not a whit in principle?","label":1}
{"text":"Taming the corporate media beast BRICS Countries to Invest $500 Million in Russian Gold Deposit  A new agreement to restart exploration and extraction at a mine in Siberia marks a milestone in the development of economic ties among the BRICS nations. Originally appeared at RBTH  A consortium made up of the Chinese state-owned mining firm China National Gold Corporation, India's SUN Mining Group and the Russian Far East Development Fund, as well as funds from South Africa and Brazil is prepared to invest up to $500 million in the development of the Klyuchevskoye gold field in the Transbaikal region (over 4,000 miles east of Moscow). The agreement was signed during the most recent BRICS summit, which that took place in the Indian resort of Goa on Oct. 15-16. According to plans for the site, Klyuchevskoye will become operational three years after investment becomes available and will yield some 6.5 tons of gold per year.  This is the first mining deal in the history of BRICS that involves all five member states, which makes it particularly significant, says Wiktor Bielski, global head of commodities research at VTB Capital. Bielski adds that the agreement paves the way for bigger projects in the future that can benefit a wide range of BRICS investors.  Benefits for the partners  The Klyuchevskoye gold deposit was explored a long time ago, however, the bulk of the gold was not extracted because of the costly development process that was halted some 20 years back, according to Alexei Kalachev, an expert analyst with FINAM investment firm in Moscow. The China National Gold Corporation, however, has the relevant technological experience to extract and process the gold, Kalachev said.  The deposit is currently owned by India's SUN Gold, Ltd., part of the SUN Mining Group, which has not begun to develop it. In August 2016, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service said that the China National Gold Group intended to buy 70 percent in the deposit from SUN Gold. According to Kalachev, the idea of a consortium may have evolved from an attempt to speed up the deal at the highest levels.  The Klyuchevskoye gold deposit is not especially rich; at its stated production volumes and reserves, it will have a life cycle of 11-12 years, while the average life cycle of gold mines worldwide is 15-16 years, says Artem Kalinin, a portfolio manager at Leon Family Office. Additionally, the cost of production at Klyuchevskoye is being forecast at the average global level. \"That said, the Chinese are used to operating in this mode: the country's steel and coal industries have very weak production costs, but they have so far been feeling quite alright thanks to cheap financing and state support,\" Kalinin said.  Russian gold mining companies are currently not taking part in developing Klyuchevskoye, but according to Kalinin, Russia stands to gain regardless of who develops the site. \"The Russians will get an opportunity to borrow new technologies and to get an infrastructure that the Chinese will build,\" he said.  Alexei Kalachev notes that other obvious upsides for Russia include a rise in tax revenues, new jobs and an inflow of foreign investment.  What's in it for China?  Despite the fact that China is the world's leader in gold mining and one of the world's largest consumers of the precious metal, its resource base is rather weak, says Kalinin. The CIS countries host the majority of the world's gold reserves \u2014 28 percent. Another 20 percent of the reserves are located in North America while Asian reserves make up just 11 percent.  Oleg Remyga, head of China studies at the Moscow School of Management Skolkovo, notes that China's gold production is falling \u2014 it was down 0.4 percent in 2015 \u2014 while consumption is rising \u2014 up + 3.7 percent in 2015. \"Hence, the clear ambition of Chinese companies to enter international markets,\" Remyga explained.  According to Remyga, the China National Gold Group's investment in the Klyuchevskoye deposit is part of this bigger drive for resources. Chinese companies have already purchased shares in Canada's Pinnacle Mines, Ltd. as well as 50 percent of shares in a deposit in Papua New Guinea owned by Barrick Gold Corp. \"I am convinced that it is just the beginning of acquisitions of Russian gold-mining assets by Chinese companies, such as Zijin Mining, China Gold, Zhaojin Mining Industry, and Shandong Gold,\" Remyga said, adding that negotiations with them have been going on already for five years.","label":1}
{"text":"The C. I. A. told senior lawmakers in classified briefings last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help elect Donald J. Trump president, a finding that did not emerge publicly until after Mr. Trump's victory months later, former government officials say. The briefings indicate that intelligence officials had evidence of Russia's intentions to help Mr. Trump much earlier in the presidential campaign than previously thought. The briefings also reveal a critical split last summer between the C. I. A. and counterparts at the F. B. I. where a number of senior officials continued to believe through last fall that Russia's cyberattacks were aimed primarily at disrupting America's political system, and not at getting Mr. Trump elected, according to interviews. The former officials said that in late August \u2014 10 weeks before the election \u2014 John O. Brennan, then the C. I. A. director, was so concerned about increasing evidence of Russia's election meddling that he began a series of urgent, individual briefings for eight top members of Congress, some of them on secure phone lines while they were on their summer break. It is unclear what new intelligence might have prompted the classified briefings. But with concerns growing both internally and publicly at the time about a significant Russian breach of the Democratic National Committee, the C. I. A. began seeing signs of possible connections to the Trump campaign, the officials said. By the campaign's final weeks, Congress and the intelligence agencies were racing to understand the scope of the Russia threat. In an Aug. 25 briefing for Harry Reid, then the top Democrat in the Senate, Mr. Brennan indicated that Russia's hackings appeared aimed at helping Mr. Trump win the November election, according to two former officials with knowledge of the briefing. The officials said Mr. Brennan also indicated that unnamed advisers to Mr. Trump might be working with the Russians to interfere in the election. The F. B. I. and two congressional committees are now investigating that claim, focusing on possible communications and financial dealings between Russian affiliates and a handful of former advisers to Mr. Trump. So far, no proof of collusion has emerged publicly. Mr. Trump has rejected any suggestion of a Russian connection as \"ridiculous\" and \"fake news. \" The White House has also sought to redirect the focus from the investigation and toward what Mr. Trump has said, with no evidence, was President Barack Obama's wiretapping of phones in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign. The C. I. A. and the F. B. I. declined to comment for this article, as did Mr. Brennan and senior lawmakers who were part of the summer briefings. In the August briefing for Mr. Reid, the two former officials said, Mr. Brennan indicated that the C. I. A. focused on foreign intelligence, was limited in its legal ability to investigate possible connections to Mr. Trump. The officials said Mr. Brennan told Mr. Reid that the F. B. I. in charge of domestic intelligence, would have to lead the way. Days later, Mr. Reid wrote to James B. Comey, director of the F. B. I. Without mentioning the C. I. A. briefing, Mr. Reid told Mr. Comey that he had \"recently become concerned\" that Russia's interference was \"more extensive than widely known. \" In his letter, the senator cited what he called mounting evidence \"of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign\" and said it was crucial for the F. B. I. to \"use every resource available\" to investigate. Unknown to Mr. Reid, the F. B. I. had already opened a counterintelligence inquiry a month before, in late July, to examine possible links between Russia and people tied to the Trump campaign. But its existence was kept secret even from members of Congress. Well into the fall, law enforcement officials said that the F. B. I. \u2014 including the bureau's intelligence analysts \u2014 had not found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government, as The New York Times reported on Oct. 31. But as the election approached and new batches of hacked Democratic emails poured out, some F. B. I. officials began to change their view about Russia's intentions and eventually came to believe, as the C. I. A. had months earlier, that Moscow was trying to help get Mr. Trump elected, officials said. It was not until early December, a month after the election, that it became publicly known in news reports that the C. I. A. had concluded that Moscow's motivation was to get Mr. Trump elected. In January, intelligence officials publicly released a declassified version of their findings, concluding that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had \"aspired to help\" Mr. Trump to win the election and harm Hillary Clinton, a longtime adversary. By then, both the F. B. I. and the C. I. A. said they had \"high confidence\" that Russia was trying to help Mr. Trump by hacking into the internal emails of the Democratic National Committee and of some Clinton aides. (The National Security Agency expressed only \"moderate confidence\" that the Russians were trying to help him.) Last month, Mr. Comey publicly acknowledged the continuing investigation for the first time at a House hearing on Russia's influence on the election and said the F. B. I. was examining possible links between Trump associates and Russia for evidence of collusion. One factor in the C. I. A. analysis last summer was that American intelligence agencies learned that Russia's cyberattacks had breached Republican targets as well as Democrats. But virtually none of the hacked Republican material came out publicly, while the Russians, working through WikiLeaks and other public outlets, dumped substantial amounts of Democratic material damaging to Mrs. Clinton's campaign. Some intelligence officials were wary of pushing too aggressively before the election with questions about possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign because of concerns it might be seen as an improper political attempt to help Mrs. Clinton. But after her loss, a number of Mrs. Clinton's supporters have said that Mr. Comey and other government officials should have revealed more to the public during the campaign season about what they knew of Russia's motivations and possible connections to the Trump campaign. The classified briefings that the C. I. A. held in August and September for the Gang of Eight \u2014 the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and the Senate and of the intelligence committees in each chamber \u2014 show deep concerns about the impact of the election meddling. In the briefings, the C. I. A. said there was intelligence indicating not only that the Russians were trying to get Mr. Trump elected but that they had gained computer access to multiple state and local election boards in the United States since 2014, officials said. Although the breached systems were not involved in actual operations, Obama administration officials proposed that the eight senior lawmakers write a letter to state election officials warning them of the possible threat posed by Russian hacking, officials said. But Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, resisted, questioning the underpinnings of the intelligence, according to officials with knowledge of the discussions. Mr. McConnell ultimately agreed to a softer version of the letter, which did not mention the Russians but warned of unnamed \"malefactors\" who might seek to disrupt the elections through online intrusion. The letter, dated Sept. 28, was signed by Mr. McConnell, Mr. Reid, Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the ranking Democrat. On Sept. 22, two other members of the Gang of Eight \u2014 Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Adam B. Schiff, both of California and the ranking Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees \u2014 released their own statement about the Russian interference that did not mention Mr. Trump or his campaign by name. But they did say that \"based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U. S. election. \" \"At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election,\" they added. The F. B. I. the N. S. A. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also held a classified briefing on Sept. 6 for congressional staff members about the wave of Russian hacks and \"the current and ongoing threat facing U. S. political organizations during this national political season,\" according to a government official. These new details show Congress and the intelligence agencies racing in the campaign's final weeks to understand the scope of the Russian threat. But Democrats and Republicans who were privy to the classified briefings often saw the intelligence through a political prism, sparring over whether it could be construed as showing that the Russians were helping Mr. Trump. The briefings left Mr. Reid frustrated with the F. B. I. 's handling of Russia's election intrusion, especially after the agency said in late October \u2014 11 days before the election \u2014 that it was Mrs. Clinton's emails. Mr. Reid fired off another letter on Oct. 30, accusing Mr. Comey of a \"double standard\" in reviving the Clinton investigation while sitting on \"explosive information\" about possible ties between Russia and Mr. Trump. \"The public,\" Mr. Reid wrote, \"has a right to know this information. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Some Hollywood moguls handle the transition from general to civilian with grace. But they can also be one of moviedom's saddest sights. Some are very obviously at loose ends, no matter what kind of face they put on. Others seem terrified about a table downgrade at Mr. Chow. And some are just utterly out of touch, as when one former media titan, struggling to adjust to life without an private jet, arrived at an airport and was baffled by the procedure. What, pray tell, were these newfangled kiosk devices? (I am so not joking.) Hollywood has lately become populated with an unusually large number of moguls guys (and they are still almost always guys) who find themselves reigning supreme as media kingpins one day and facing down an existential crisis as mere millionaires the next. They include Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former DreamWorks Animation chief Jim Gianopulos, replaced as the big boss at 20th Century Fox in June Philippe Dauman, dismissed as Viacom's leader in August and Rob Friedman, eased aside as of Lionsgate in September. There are several more examples, including Rob Moore, who recently lost his job as vice chairman of Paramount Pictures. \"It's upsetting, no question, when you are suddenly dislodged from your life,\" Mr. Moore told me. \"You're raw, and you're vulnerable. Even though you know this eventually happens to most everyone at a certain level in Hollywood \u2014 that's just how it works in a business \u2014 it's still a surprise. \"In these jobs, your become the thing to your children and parents, and not communicating with them in the same way all of a sudden leaves a big gap. You feel a sense of loss. \" Don't feel too bad for Mr. Moore. Under his old contract, Paramount has to pay him for three years, so he has no immediate pressure to find a new gig, even though most people in Hollywood expect him to be courted by a Chinese movie company. Mr. Moore, 54, also has a new fianc\u00e9e, Betty Zhou, 35, who is the host of a show on Chinese television called \"Talking to Hollywood With Betty Zhou. \" (No, contrary to Hollywood gossip, he did not propose to her on live TV. But they did pose for photos afterward while offering a Vulcan salute.) Mr. Moore, who sounded relaxed during our interview, said that he had recently returned from Europe (\"the first real vacation I've had in 15 years\") and was now starting to think about his next career move. \"Where's the growth?\" he asked rhetorically. \"Where would be a fun place to work next? At some point, you get through the shock of what happened and start getting excited about new opportunities. \" So far, put Mr. Moore squarely in the graceful category. How are his jettisoned compatriots doing, emotionally and otherwise? It is hard to know. Whether trying to fly under the radar while putting together a new act, licking wounds, or still miffed about coverage (mine specifically) of their departure, they declined interview requests. But this much is clear: None are ready to leave the stage. Mr. Gianopulos, 64, whose departure from Fox, where he spent 24 years, revealed considerable good will toward him as people rallied to his side, has been courted by financiers for potential partnerships. Mr. Friedman, 65, one of the architects behind Summit Entertainment, which hit pay dirt with the \"Twilight\" film series and then sold itself to Lionsgate, has been hired as a consultant for Paramount's \"Transformers: The Last Knight,\" set for June release. According to Mr. Friedman's friends, he may decide to start a new studio. None have been more visible than Mr. Katzenberg, 65, whose studio career stretched from Paramount to Walt Disney Studios to DreamWorks Animation, which he sold to Comcast in April for $3. 8 billion. But Comcast did not want one asset \u2014 him \u2014 and so Mr. Katzenberg left the company, a moment that was marked by a ceremony outside the Chinese Theater, where his footprints were immortalized in cement. Variety gave him a tribute that played like a retirement party, replete with praise and from stars. (Elton John: \"How did he do such amazing stunts with those little feet? \") That was in September. But by then, the Mr. Katzenberg was already starting a holding company that aims to emulate Barry Diller's Corporation, which owns internet businesses like Match. com and Vimeo. Several of Mr. Katzenberg's friends told me that he is working to raise $500 million to $700 million in funding to invest in \"mobile content\" that his new company will help incubate and operate. For now, Mr. Katzenberg is also still a consultant to AwesomenessTV, a digital media studio that is owned by Comcast and Verizon. All of these bigwigs will be just fine, of course. None certainly have to worry about feeding their families, like a lot of Americans who lose their jobs. Mr. Dauman, 62, who ruled over MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount for a decade as the top Viacom executive, received $72 million in exit compensation. Mr. Katzenberg personally collected more than $400 million from the sale of his \"Shrek\" studio, money he has said will largely go toward his philanthropic work. (\"That money doesn't change anything for me,\" he told Variety. \"I was already blessed. I was already rich. \") But perception is another matter. Leaving any global job requires an altitude adjustment. But leaving one in Hollywood \u2014 or having the job leave you, as is more often the case \u2014 can be traumatizing on a whole different scale. Sure, cue the tiny violins if you want. But one week, these people are fielding calls from and making decisions about what millions of people around the world will watch. The next week, they are faced with starring in their own version of \"The Incredible Shrinking Man. \" Calls get returned, but slower. The media spotlight shifts to the next regime, and you start being called an \"elder statesman. \" Show business is a small, incestuous and, in some cases, cruel club. Unlike other industries, almost everyone in Hollywood lives in a bubble (Beverly Hills and Brentwood during the week, Malibu over the weekend) making it nearly impossible to escape the peer pressure. \"What are you doing next?\" becomes a question that burns like acid. Because status here is openly telegraphed (the platform banquette at the Palm, the invitation to Vanity Fair's Oscar party) everyone notices when you lose it. So what is the best way to navigate this transition? Curious for the perspective of those who have left megawatt Hollywood jobs in the past, I called three people who have done it with aplomb. None were fired, instead leaving on their own terms \u2014 a big difference. But each had to face the same question as everyone else: Now what? \"These jobs are so that, when you are in the middle of them, it's hard to clear your mind enough to think about what you want to do after it's done,\" said Barry Meyer, 72, who retired as chairman of Warner Bros. in 2013 after a celebrated run. \"So you have to be willing to give yourself some time. \" Quick moves, he added, are usually the wrong ones. \"I don't think there was a west of the Mississippi that didn't reach out to me, and that was flattering,\" he said. \"But I quickly realized that a lot of people just want your Rolodex and your name to put on announcements. When you spend years building your credibility and your reputation, you have to be careful about how you use that. \" In the end, among other things, Mr. Meyer decided to join the board of a entertainment company (Activision) and take on something he never thought he would: He sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. \"As it turns out, there is life outside Hollywood,\" he said with a laugh. For another former Hollywood warrior, Anne Sweeney, 59, who stepped down as president of the Television Group last year, her plans were quickly upended when her mother fell ill. Instead of throwing herself into a directing career, as she intended, Ms. Sweeney cared for her mother through her death in January. Not long after, Ms. Sweeney, already a Netflix board member, became a Mayo Clinic trustee. \"I learned that a job is just a piece of you, it isn't all of you,\" she said. \"So many times, especially in Hollywood, that distinction can get lost. \" Her advice when that happens? \"You have to reclaim yourself, and you have to do it without worrying what other people think,\" she said. \"We are more than other people's definitions of us. \" Nina Tassler, 59, who last year walked away from her job as president of CBS Entertainment, is moving as fast as ever, publishing a book (\"What I Told My Daughter\") and producing television shows, among other activities. Her advice: \"It's not about starting a new business. It's about starting yourself. \" In other words, savor the joy of being \"fully present\" with your family, she said, and \"do what you want to do, and not what you think you have to do\" to cling to status. \"I was so grateful for my time at CBS, but, let's be honest, these jobs are insane,\" she said. \"I remember being at my daughter's volleyball tournament and not seeing her play because I was in the bathroom at the convention center \u2014 the only quiet spot \u2014 trying to negotiate a new contract with an actress. Insane!\" How long did it take, though, for Ms. Tassler not to wake up and immediately check the overnight Nielsen ratings? \"I still look,\" she said, a bit sheepishly. \"Old habits die hard. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Candles that had not been properly extinguished after an Easter service probably caused the fire that swept through the historic Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava in Manhattan on Sunday, officials from the New York Fire Department said on Tuesday. \"There's no reason at this point to label it suspicious,\" said Francis X. Gribbon, a Fire Department spokesman, \"and what the fire marshals are looking at is the use of candles in the rear of the church that may not have been completely extinguished. \" Mr. Gribbon said it was likely that a caretaker thought he had extinguished several hundred candles after a luncheon that followed a celebration attended by some 700 congregants. The caretaker told fire marshals that he stowed the candles in a cardboard box under a piece of wooden furniture in a rear corner of the church, on 25th Street between Broadway and Avenue of the Americas in the Flatiron district. The future of the building, a New York City landmark, is uncertain depending on how much the fire damaged the stone structure. For decades, the church has been the spiritual pillar of the Serbian community in the region. As part of the ceremony on Sunday, several hundred candles were lit and placed in a long metal tray containing sand to safely hold them. After the luncheon ended around 3 p. m. the caretaker thought he had put out the burning candles in the sand. Fire Department officials now believe one or more candles may not have been fully extinguished, and may have started a fire that gutted the church's old wooden interior after the church had closed, Mr. Gribbon said. Even the crowds at the flea market in the parking lot next to the church did not report any signs of fire, he said. When the fire became evident, around 7 p. m. firefighters entered the church to find it fully engulfed in flames, Mr. Gribbon said. The caretaker also entered through another door, and the incoming oxygen fed the already mounting blaze. Mr. Gribbon said portions of the interior \u2014 most notably the choir loft \u2014 had collapsed, another indication that the fire had been burning for a while. \"You don't get a fire like that in 10 minutes,\" he said. The caretaker was ushered out. Finding no one else inside, officials ordered the firefighters out, fearing other areas would collapse, Mr. Gribbon said. Buildings Department officials said that the church was in no immediate danger of collapsing, but that inspectors were still monitoring the structure. Church officials did not return calls on Tuesday. But many churchgoers had questions as to whether the damage was severe enough to prohibit rebuilding the church with its original structure, Bob Stopanjac, founder of the Serbian Association of New York, said. Mr. Stopanjac said he doubted the fire was caused by the candles. He said candles had been part of the church's celebrations for decades with no fires. He said some Serbs in the community were concerned about news media reports that said St. Sava was among a group of four Christian Orthodox churches that caught fire on Sunday. \"I have no answers,\" Mr. Stopanjac said.","label":0}
{"text":"The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura has received assurances that the Syrian government delegation will attend peace talks in Geneva this week, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Tuesday. Earlier the pro-Damascus Syrian newspaper al-Watan reported that the Syrian government delegation to U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva this week has not yet left Damascus and may announce on Tuesday whether it will participate. The Government delegation has not yet arrived, the Special Envoy received a message that they are planning to arrive tomorrow, which is the 29th of November, U.N. spokeswoman Alessandra Vellucci told a news briefing in Geneva, declining to give details. At least we know that they are coming.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's plan to rapidly deport 2 to 3 million illegal immigrants with criminal records would further tax a system already stretched to its limits, current and former U.S. immigration officials say. Immigration courts, which issue deportation orders, set bond and grant or deny asylum, currently have a backlog of more than 500,000 cases. Boosting staff could help address the problem but that could prove difficult. Officials at the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security say they have had trouble quickly finding and vetting enough qualified candidates to fill all the positions for judges and immigration agents that Congress has authorized. The Executive Office of Immigration Review, which adjudicates immigration cases, has so far been able to fill only 294 judge positions out of the 374 Congress has authorized because the process is slow by necessity. Candidates for the job \"face a rigorous screening process comparable to that of the appointment of a U.S. attorney,\" said spokeswoman Kathryn Mattingly. Trump said last week after his election victory that once he takes office he will move to deport or incarcerate up to 3 million illegal immigrants who have criminal records. At U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a force of 6,200 agents responsible for arresting and deporting criminal migrants is already spread thin. While some agents could be redeployed to other areas, more agents would likely need to be hired if deportations were sharply escalated, said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who asked not to named. The agency would probably need to add detention space as well, the official added. More apprehensions of migrants could also strain the Border Patrol, which has struggled to fill open positions. Congress has mandated a force of more than 21,000 border agents, but it currently stands at just over 19,000. Former U.S. Border Patrol chief Mike Fisher said the agency ran into problems a decade ago after Congress asked it to double the number of Border Patrol agents from 6,000 to 12,000 between 2004 and 2006. The push to hire quickly helped fuel corruption, a March 2016 report by the Department of Homeland Security's independent advisory council found. The report concluded that the rapid hiring was exploited by Mexican drug gangs, which sent in cartel-friendly applicants for the patrol jobs. Once hired, they then facilitated drug smuggling across the U.S.-Mexico border. The agency began using polygraph tests in 2010 to weed out applicants with criminal histories or ties to cartels. Fisher said the testing made it harder to find qualified candidates, estimating that by the time he left in 2015, the border patrol made one hire out of every 100 applicants. \"I can't imagine if they said 'double it' now,\" Fisher said. Trump could try to change laws and procedures to expedite deportation processes, which could reduce the need for additional personnel. On Friday, Trump tapped Republican Senator Jeff Sessions to be attorney general. Sessions has supported Trump's plan to build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico and undo Obama's executive actions on immigration. During President Barack Obama's time in office, the United States has deported about 2.5 million illegal immigrants, more than under any other president.","label":0}
{"text":"the national laws passed during the height of fear of terrorism, opened the door for many of our rights being taken from us. Fear is their greatest tool, when we are afraid we are irrational creatures.","label":1}
{"text":"Critics say the shock of congressional rejection of the nuclear deal is a path to bring Iran back to the negotiating table. Secretary of State John Kerry calls that view 'a fantasy.' Secretary of State John Kerry listens while testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the impacts of the nuclear deal with Iran on Capitol Hill Wednesday. The television ads are airing across the country, from Washington to Honolulu: The Iran nuclear deal is a \"bad deal,\" the ad says, before concluding, \"We want a better deal.\" As Congress debates the complex international agreement limiting Iran's nuclear program in anticipation of a September vote, the option of rejecting this deal in favor of a \"better deal\" appears to be catching on. On Wednesday, Rep. Grace Meng (D) of New York announced she would oppose the deal on the table, believing \"the world could and should have a better deal.\" But what is the likelihood that an agreement negotiated over several years between six world powers and Iran could indeed be renegotiated and toughened up if Congress rejects the current deal and overcomes a promised presidential veto? The deep divisions over that question come down, more than anything, to people's perception of Iran: whether or not it is a country the United States should be entangled with in such a complex deal, whether or not it should be allowed to possess any uranium enrichment program at all. Critics of the Iran deal say there is plenty of historical precedent for renegotiating and amending international agreements. They argue that Iran is so intent on getting a deal with the US that Tehran could be brought back to the negotiating table after the shock of a congressional rejection. \"There is an alternative to the current [deal], it is an amended deal,\" says Mark Dubowitz, an international sanctions expert and executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington. Citing nearly 80 multilateral agreements Congress has either rejected or for which it has required amendments, he says, \"Congress should require the administration to renegotiate certain terms of the proposed [deal] and resubmit the amended agreement to Congress.\" But senior administration officials involved in the Iran negotiations say there is no chance the deal could be renegotiated \u2013 and they warn that instead of tighter controls on Iran's nuclear program, rejection of the deal would very likely result in a ramped-up uranium enrichment program. That, in turn, would mean a shrinking \"breakout\" time for Iran to rush to produce a nuclear weapon, if it chose to, they add. Calling the prospect of a \"better deal\" a \"fantasy,\" Secretary of State John Kerry told senators last week that those demanding a renegotiated deal, including in the TV ads he'd seen, were proffering \"some sort of unicorn arrangement involving Iran's complete capitulation\" \u2013 something he said is not going to happen. Some nonproliferation experts echo that position, saying the Iranian nuclear program was already too advanced years ago to reduce it any more than what the deal reached July 14 does. \"Sure I'd like a better deal \u2013 I'd like a pony, too, but it's not realistic,\" says Jeffrey Lewis, director of nonproliferation studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif. \"The most important thing now is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon in the next 10 to 15 years, and this deal does that.\" Others are much less certain the deal blocks Iran's paths to a nuclear weapon, but they believe a renegotiated deal could. FDD's Mr. Dubowitz says he sees three different directions the Iran nuclear issue could take if Congress rejects the current deal and holds out for an agreement \"renegotiated on better terms.\" Iran could go ahead and implement its commitments under the deal, he says. It could also \"abandon its commitments\" and escalate it nuclear program. Or it could try to do both, complying with certain commitments while abandoning others \u2013 and thus attempt to divide world powers while advancing its nuclear program. But under any of those scenarios, Dubowitz says, the US could work to \"persuade the Europeans to join the US\" in demanding a renegotiation of key parts of the deal. Yet many regional experts say that prospects for wooing the Europeans to join the US in pressing for a tougher deal, if Congress rejects the one now before it, are dim. \"European and Asian partners would feel frustrated and misled\" in the wake of a US rejection of the deal, Jon Alterman, a Middle East expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the House Armed Services Committee this week. European allies would likely join countries like China and India in investing in Iran's energy sector, he added. \"Broadly, the action would create distance between the US and the world and diminish distance between Iran and the world,\" Dr. Alterman added, \"after more than a decade when the reverse was the case.\" Looming large over the calls for a return to negotiations are strong suspicions on the part of deal supporters that the \"better deal\" advocates really have no interest in a stronger deal at all, but instead want to thwart any US agreement with the Iranian government. \"We had a 'better deal' in Iraq after 1991 [following the Gulf War], there were no restrictions, inspectors could go where they wanted when they wanted, and that deal wasn't good enough,\" says Dr. Lewis, adding that \"we still went to war. So really I don't believe them when they say they just want a 'better deal' this time.\" Other doubters of the sincerity of the seekers of a \"better deal\" say it's telling to note that the sponsor of the TV ad campaign demanding a better deal is a group called Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, which is backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel organization lobbying Congress hard for the deal's defeat. \"There really is no 'better deal' for [such critics] in the sense of an agreement that leaves any nuclear program in the hands of the current Iranian government,\" Lewis says. \"Any deal is bad because it means living with the Islamic Republic.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Pleading ignorance is a perfect ploy for Nancy Pelosi Who wouldn t believe she s clueless on pretty much everything. Pelosi claims she s been busy with lots of things . That s laughable! This case is a big deal! Here s what The Daily Caller had to say about this stain on the Democrats:U.S. Capitol Police and other agencies are probing the cyber activities of three brothers who had jobs as congressional staffers at the office of information technology for lawmakers on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, The Daily Caller News Foundation first reported. Brothers Imran, Abid and Jamal Awan also provided their services for other Democratic members in the lower chamber.When they came under suspicion by law enforcement for accessing the House network without permission last February, they were all banned from accessing it. While some Democratic lawmakers dismissed Imran from their employ when the story, others, like Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz kept him on.Are the Democrats helping these two men hide the evidence?","label":1}
{"text":"Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday vowed an unbreakable U.S. alliance with Israel if he is elected president in November, seeking to clear up confusion over his repeated pledges to remain neutral in any peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Trump's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, was part of a daylong effort by the anti-Washington candidate to persuade establishment Republicans to get behind his insurgent candidacy and give up on an effort to deny him the party's presidential nomination. Describing Israel as ready to negotiate a peace agreement, Trump said the Palestinians would have to be willing to accept that Israel will forever exist as a Jewish state and able to stop attacks on Israelis. \"The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable,\" the New York billionaire businessman said. Trump has drawn fire for his position on Middle East peace negotiations. He has described himself as extremely pro-Israel, but has said he would take a \"neutral\" stance in trying to negotiate an elusive peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump's critics have said he could harm long-standing U.S. support for Israel. Trump's leading Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, reminded the AIPAC gathering of Trump's position. \"Let me be very, very clear,\" Cruz said. \"As president I will not be neutral. America will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel.\" Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, used her AIPAC appearance to attack Trump. \"We need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everything's negotiable,\" she said. Clinton also took aim at Trump's vow that, if elected, he would deport illegal immigrants and bar Muslims temporarily from entering the United States. \"If you see bigotry, oppose it, if you see violence, condemn it, if you see a bully, stand up to him,\" she said. In a rarity, Trump delivered his AIPAC speech with the aid of a TelePrompter, abandoning his typical free-wheeling style. Throughout the day, his public remarks lacked their usual bombast, an obvious effort to appear more presidential. At a news conference, Trump presented himself as Republicans' best chances of capturing the White House in the Nov. 8 election. He took steps to appear as the nominee-in-waiting, releasing the names of some foreign policy advisers and pledging to name seven to 10 people he would pick for the Supreme Court. Trump said establishment Republicans would be making a mistake if they persuade a high-profile party leader to launch a third-party run to deny him the White House. He said it would \"almost certainly\" mean the Democrats would win the presidency. \"If people want to be smart, they should embrace this movement,\" Trump said at the site of a new hotel he is building in Washington. \"If they don't want to be smart, they should do what they're doing now and the Republicans are going to go down to a massive loss.\" Trump laid out some foreign policy priorities in a CNN interview, saying the United States is contributing more than it should to the NATO alliance and that he would continue a U.S. thaw toward Cuba begun by President Barack Obama, who is now in Havana. Trump was in Washington for closed-door talks with a variety of Republicans organized by his top backer in the capital, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. It was his most overt bid yet to seek party unity at a time when many establishment Republicans bitterly oppose him. The meeting, held at the offices of the Jones Day law firm, included some Republican lawmakers and a former Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, and former Congressman Bob Livingston. \"We've had almost eight years of Mr. Obama, who's been a disastrous president. We have now an opportunity to change course or have four more years of the same. And I think that Donald Trump is the alternative,\" Livingston said after the session. Also at the meeting were Representatives Renee Ellmers of North Carolina and Chris Collins of New York, as well as former Senator Jim DeMint, who is head of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative Washington think-tank. In a separate session with the Washington Post editorial board, Trump named some members of his foreign policy team. The team included Walid Phares, who Trump called a counter-terrorism expert; George Papadopoulos, an oil and energy consultant; and Joe Schmitz, a former inspector general at the Department of Defense. Trump's rise has alarmed establishment Republicans who have tried in vain to stop him. Their best hope of derailing his insurgent candidacy is to stretch the contest out and deny him the 1,237 delegates needed to formally win the party's presidential nomination. Trump has 678 delegates to 423 for Cruz and 143 for Ohio Governor John Kasich, according to the Associated Press. If Trump does not win the 1,237 delegates, the Republican nominee would be decided at the party's convention in Cleveland in July.","label":0}
{"text":"This is truly a chilling story of organized voter fraud We reported on a massive voter fraud operation was discovered in Democratic Broward County, Florida ealier this week:https:\/\/twitter.com\/TEN_GOP\/status\/793890171058085888The amazing citizen journalist Mike Cernovich broke this story this morning at Danger and Play. Florida residents have been complaining that they re not getting their absentee ballots. Chelsey Marie Smith, was working full-time at Broward County Supervisor of Elections main office blew the whistle on the voter fraud scheme:LIVE on #Periscope: Breaking news! Voting fraud uncovered in Florida #MAGA3X https:\/\/t.co\/q7jeEz6Rgh Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) November 4, 2016The Florida State Attorney is actively investigating the fraud case that involves Secretary of Elections Brenda Snipes: Source: FL State Attorney investigators are actively reviewing Broward County Voter Fraud Case Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) November 4, 2016 Democrat Dr. Brenda Snipes was appointed by Jeb Bush in 2003 and is no stranger to controversy. On October 20, the Sun Sentinal reported that former Oakland Park Commissioner Anne Sallee noticed something troubling about her vote-by-mail ballot. It is missing Constitutional Amendment 2, the medical marijuana question.Sallee, now Broward chapter director of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association, knows her way around government. Yet she said she spent a week unsuccessfully trying to get someone at the Broward elections office to pay attention to her complaint.She was cleared on Wednesday of another election snafu, the early posting of primary election results. Her office also was criticized for sending out inaccurate voter ID cards, and for printing ballots for November that include the word no in the yes line on the county s transportation sales surtax question.There were multiple reports that Hillary personally met with Brenda Snipes days ago:There were multiple reports Hillary personally met with Brenda Snipes days ago. No photos, but where there's smoke Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) November 4, 2016According to a former Secretary of Elections Department employee, there is a secret room where Democrat insiders fill out those absentee ballots.The woman provided her sworn testimony via affidavit.The affidavit by Chelsey Marie Smith accuses Broward County officials of filling out blank absentee ballots to officials who she saw filling the ballots out at the Supervisor of Elections headquarters.","label":1}
{"text":"An employee of Canadian aircraft and train maker Bombardier facing bribery charges in Sweden is to be released immediately from custody, his lawyer said on Wednesday. A 37-year-old Russian man was arrested in March on suspicion that he and several others at the company had bribed an Azerbaijani official to secure a contract worth around $340 million. The Stockholm district court has ordered the man - who denied the allegations - to be released immediately, his lawyer said. Our interpretation is that he will be completely acquitted, or that he is guilty only of a minor part of the accusation and, if so, has already served his time, the employee s lawyer Cristina Bergner told Reuters. The district court could not immediately be reached for comment. The prosecutor had demanded a sentence of five years in prison. The trial has concluded and sentencing is set for Oct. 11. In their March statement, Swedish prosecutors alleged Bombardier had won the tender in question after competitors that had offered better prices were disqualified by Azerbaijan s rail authority. The Canadian firm said in August it took the allegations very seriously as they ran counter to its values and high standards, and it supported an investigation into the facts.","label":0}
{"text":"A small group of bipartisan senators introduced a bill Thursday that would block a pending judicial rule change allowing U.S. judges to issue search warrants for remote access to computers in any jurisdiction, even overseas, arguing the change would expand the FBI's hacking authority. The one-page legislation from Democratic Senator Ron Wyden and Republican Senator Rand Paul would undo the change, adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in a private vote last month and without congressional involvement, to procedural rules governing the court system. Republican Senator Steve Daines and Democrats Tammy Baldwin and Jon Tester are co-sponsoring the Stopping Mass Hacking Act. Magistrate judges currently can only order searches within the jurisdiction of their court, typically limited to a few counties. \"This is a dramatic expansion of the government's hacking and surveillance authority,\" Wyden said in a statement. \"Such a substantive change with an enormous impact on Americans' constitutional rights should be debated by Congress, not maneuvered through an obscure bureaucratic process.\" Companion legislation is expected in the House soon, Wyden's office said. The U.S. Justice Department has pushed for the rule change since 2013 and has portrayed it as a procedural tweak needed to modernize the criminal code to pursue sophisticated 21st century criminals. Congress has until Dec. 1 to vote to reject, amend or postpone the changes to Rule 41 of the federal rules of criminal procedure. If lawmakers fail to act, the change will automatically take effect, a scenario seen as likely given the short timeline. But civil liberties groups and Alphabet's Google have argued the change should be properly authorized by Congress and could violate the U.S. Constitution's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Many organizations have vowed to lobby Congress intensely in the coming months to block it. The change would permit judges to issue warrants in cases where a suspect uses anonymizing technology to conceal the location of his or her computer or for an investigation into a network of hacked or infected computers, such as a botnot. Tensions over the FBI's secretive hacking tools, also known as \"network investigative techniques,\" have played out in a number of recent cases involving the bureau's covert seizure of a dark web child pornography website in February 2015 to track thousands of the site's visitors. Two defendants in the investigation secured rulings last month declaring the warrants used in their cases were invalid under current limitations of Rule 41.","label":0}
{"text":"Dick Eastman The Truth HoundWhen Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller met with Zhou Enlai in China in 1973 just after President Richard Nixon had visited China establishing official relations an understanding was reached whereby the U.S. would supply industrial capital and know-how to China.In return Kissinger-connected corporations would gain the monopolistic advantage of low-cost labor production which could outcompete all U.S. domestic industry.The comparative advantage gained was being able to hire Chinese laborers who were ready to work hard at exceedingly low cost with no drugs, no alcohol, a strong work ethic, no unions, no paid benefits and weak environmental standards. And with such a large labor pool, burned out workers could simply be replaced. This gave the Rockefeller\/Kissinger corporations a major edge over their domestic U.S. competitors who had to pay relatively high wages, high regulation costs, deal with union strikes and collective bargaining etc.Of course, the American consumer did not see greatly lowered prices commensurate with such greatly lowered labor costs. The $19.99 plastic action-figure toy marketed with a Hollywood movie still cost $19.99 even though it cost $12 to $15 to produce in the U.S. but less than $2.00 per copy to produce in China and transport to America s West Coast container ports for distribution throughout America.The consumer paid pretty much the old prices but the corporations split the monopoly profit with China s Princelings since it did not take much of a lowering of prices to drive high-wage, high-benefit, contracted-labor domestic corporations out of business (not to mention the environmental and workplace safety regulations with which domestic companies were saddled). Then, Wal-Mart became a near-monopoly retailer that increased and reinforced the widespread selling of these off-shore manufactures.Thus, America s domestic producers were not simply being bested on one or another area of production; they were being bested across the entire spectrum of manufactured goods that American buy. It was anticipated that these domestic firms would fail, and their failure was hastened by the banks maintaining a deflationary domestic economy in the U.S. throughout the post Rockefeller-Kissinger-Zhou buildup of China and the degrading of American domestic manufacturing.Remember, the entire money supply of the U.S. is borrowed that is, the money co-created with a debt of an even bigger amount (principal plus compound interest) that must in due course be returned to the lender. But money in the domestic economy was going to multinational corporations and to China, while also going to taxes to pay on the national debt that resulted [NOTE: Due to U.S. industrial depletion, federal revenue receipts as well as the tax-take of state and local governments, shrunk, resulting in greater government borrowing and therefore greater public debts TRUTH HOUND note]. And of course, compound interest was attached to that debt.Rockefeller and Kissinger were (and to some extent still are) at war with middle-class America with intelligent, self-supporting, self-respecting, ambitious, industrious citizens who always pose the greatest threat in the form of populist politics to the bankers and their Bank-of-England\/East-India-Company\/Rothschild monetary and trade system, the very system that Rockefeller and Kissinger were representing and expanding when they visited Zhou Enlai.So here we are in 2016 and newly elected President Donald J. Trump says he intends to place a tariff on goods imported from China, while the media decries the tariff proposal as a violation of long-standing liberal free-trade policies. One more thing in defense of who I believe was a great president and a warning for the new one.Richard Nixon opened China believing in peaceful co-existence and the fact that if given time for a fair comparison of how free-enterprise and representative government functions in contrast to the communist planned economy, that the U.S. model would win out over a system where each receives what the state deems he needs and where work is ordered by the state.But of course Kissinger and Rockefeller instigated the Watergate coup against Nixon a frame-up with John Dean and Kissinger as the real Deep Throats by my deductions from public information so that the Rockefeller\/Kissinger plans for China s industrialization and America s deindustrialization could proceed unopposed, as it certainly did after Nixon resigned to avoid a constitutional crisis that would hinder the proper working of government.Nixon should have fought them because they were about to take a financial axe to this country as soon as Nixon was gone. When Nixon was gone, they first robbed the middle-class of their savings with banker Paul Volcker s QE (quantitative easing) bond purchases at the New York Federal Reserve branch. Then, when that was accomplished, America s savings-and-loans were cast into crisis (because they had been taking in money short-term at 3% and lending long-term at 6%). This helped force the deregulation of banking to Rockefeller advantage after which Volcker moved to become Federal Reserve Chairman in control of the discount rate. With that lever of power that sets the interest-rate framework of the nation, Volcker inaugurated the tight-money (deflation) policy that has persisted to this day, making it very hard for firms to invest in automation to combat the cost advantage of Chinese subsistence labor.Japan was hit with deflation too they were going to provide us with the robots. THE WHOLE THING WAS A GREAT PLAN AGAINST US, COORDINATED AT EVERY LEVEL, WITH EVERY INSTITUTION, FROM THE NEWS TALKING ABOUT HOW THE LEVERAGED BUY-OUTS OCCURING IN THE DEFLATION WERE MAKING US LEAN AND MEAN, WHEN IN FACT THEY WERE TEARING OUT THE GUTS OF AMERICAN PRODUCTION. And the news media and the economics and business administration courses in colleges sung the praises of international free trade and the efficiency of markets nonstop.I watched it all from a pretty good seat on the sidelines, but of course I was marginalized as just another excess white person who needed to stand aside so that blacks and women could have their fair chance. And who could argue with that? So I took to the internet to see what effect I could have simply speaking as a citizen, where I ve met encountered considerable abuse and ridicule, which certainly makes it unpleasant to try and be the Paul Revere awakening the good citizens.I do wish President Donald Trump the best. But let us make sure that none of the neo-conservatives he is taking into his administration are really Kissingers beholden to Goldman-Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Beware of new Watergates.Washington writer Dick Eastman taught economics at Texas A & M University and also studied the behavorial sciences.READ MORE CHINA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire China Files","label":1}
{"text":"New Zealand's country's entire east coast and urged residents in low-lying areas to evacuate and seek higher ground.  Waves of up to two meters (6 feet) could be possible for up to two hours, it said.  Anna  \"That's reasonably significant so people should take this seriously,\" she told Radio New Zealand.  New Zealand's Geonet revised up its estimated magnitude of the quake to 7.5, from 6.6 earlier.  USGS Zealand's South Island.  A 6.3 quake there in February 2011 killed 185 people and caused widespread damage.  The  \"The whole house rolled like a serpent and some things smashed, the power went out,\"  Chris Hill, a fire officer in Cheviot, a coastal town near the quake's epicenter, said officials had gone door to door evacuating residents.  Learn More:","label":1}
{"text":"[Graphic: Clinton vs Trump by DonkeyHotey .] Paul Jay interviews Henry A. Giroux Editor's Note The idea here that there politics is theater is not new; however, \"political theater\" has never taken on the connotations that embrace what this campaign has revealed. It is clear that there has been an agreement about what \"story\" is being played out, but that has gotten repeatedly derailed by two (now 3) sources of counter-story. One source, as noted in the following interview, are the wikileak materials. Another source has been Trump himself. While he may not understand politics, he is very adept with theater and controlling the media, and he has played them like a piano. Throughout this endless campaign I kept remembering \"there is no such thing as bad press.\" Trump has certainly proved the truth of that adage repeatedly. The third source is James Comey. His repeated breaching of judicial-political norms will likely reverberate well after November 8th. Mentioned within this interview is the phenomenon of Americans seeming inability to maintain a long term memory. I believe this is a rich area to examine though this is not the focus of this discussion. Most people in the U.S. seem to live in the cultural equivalent of anteretrograde amnesia and lack the ability to make long term memories that extend beyond themselves. They remember their own histories, but their social memory is constantly being rewritten and little if anything seems to stick. Transcript PAUL JAY, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. I'm known for a documentary I made called Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows. It was about professional wrestling and a battle between Bret Hart and Vince McMann and we got a lot of behind the scenes coverage in that and I got to know the wrestling world some. It occurred to me that there's a certain kind of press that covers wrestling much the way a lot of press covers American politics. Now everyone that has any sense about them at all knows that professional wrestling is theater. In fact, the film I made helped kind of make that clear for everyone. But it is theater and everyone acknowledges it's theater but there is still some press out there that plays along and covers the wrestling theater as if it's real. Well I think much the same thing goes on in American politics. Much of the election campaigns are positioning, rhetoric, language, supposedly support this, oppose that, which is really all part of the theater. But because it does affect the horse race of the outcome of the elections, most of the corporate media covers all of this theater as if it's real. Well something's happening in this election which because of partly the bluster and in some ways weird honesty of Donald Trump, some of that theater is breaking down. The WikiLeaks about Hillary Clinton and behind the scenes machinations of the Clinton campaign, there's been somewhat of a tear in the fabric of this theater. Now joining us to talk about this is Henry Giroux. Henry joins us from Hamilton, Ontario. He's a professor of scholarship in the public interest at McMaster University and author of his most recent book, America at war with itself. Thanks for joining us Henry. HENRY GIROUX: It's a pleasure to be with you. JAY: So, what do you make of the idea that wrestling and American politics have a lot in common? GIROUX: I think it's a fabulous analogy. I think that in many ways what we see happening is the cultural celebrity which has never really been taken too seriously, although it confers a great deal of authority, has all of a sudden outed itself. It's out of the closet. I mean people realize that what we're getting is not only an exercise in performance and showmanship but we're also getting what I would call, an elimination of the truth. The truth is one of the great causalities of this particular election cycle. It's never been more visible than it is now. In one hand, what you have basically a celebrity who has no trouble lying because he believes that nobody will really take him too seriously because he thinks he really is a celebrity. On the other hand, you have the alternative press, you have the alternative media exposing all the nonsense that of course Hillary Clinton believes in and making it clear that she has no lock on honesty either. It seems to me that as the truth begins to disappear, questions are being raised about what are the conditions that produced this. What are the contradictions at work here? What does it mean for instance when Hillary Clinton says she believes in families and she believes in children and she worked for the Children's Defense Fund when in actuality as the first lady, she had no trouble calling black youth super predators, she basically supported her husband's welfare program which did horrible things for pro minorities? She supported an educational system in part that had nothing to do with the imagination and real learning. Had everything to do with accountability and standardization. So, it goes on and on. I think that as this fabric gets torn, as the veil gets sort of taken away and as the mystic of theater begins to dissolve, a kind of shocking reality emerges. One steeped in corruption, despair, inequality, poverty, systemic violence, racism, that becomes increasing difficult for the American political, financial, and corporate elite to basically legitimize. JAY: I think the Clinton campaign's particularly interesting. First of all, you have a 74 senator from Vermont. If he'd had maybe another month or two, might' have actually might have won in terms of especially in his weakness in the south and amongst African Americans. Another month or two and he might have sorted some of that out. It's quite remarkable that someone at least in terms of mainstream media, someone who came from obscurity, I think people that followed progressive politics, he was certainly well known. But for most of the country, they barely knew his name. To go from there to almost winning and there's some suggestion, some of the specific state races he certainly didn't lose fairly. Now you have the majority of the country simply says they don't believe Hillary Clinton is a truth teller. They think she's a liar. They don't trust her. Yet she's the only candidate these elites got. Trump lies exposed. Even the republicans, the fact that the system couldn''t come up with better candidates within the republican party to actually take on someone like Trump that should've been an easy duck to shoot of anybody of any caliber. The whole caliber of these political candidates has just banal. GIROUX: I think what's interesting here is that the republican party, they couldn't come up with a decent candidate because they had no sense of the degree to which they had violated any principles that sort of [attaches] them to any notion of civic justice or to the economic issues that have caused enormous anger throughout the country, that they were unwilling to address. I think there's another issue here. I think the issue is something you mentioned earlier about Bernie Sanders, who I find very hopeful, in that people don't realize that language matters and I think what Bernie did, taking off from the Occupied movement which gave us a new language about inequality. Bernie gave us a language for economic and social justice and political justice in a way that we haven't heard before because it was endlessly being replayed over and over again. I think that what you have there is you have the power of what I call a reimagination machine that attacks a disimagination machine. He took the disimagination machine which covers everything over in lies and false metaphors and indecent stories and corruption and he exposed them and I think that one of the great beginnings, one of the great movements for any form of insurrection of democracy is to make power visible. I think he did that. I think the black lives matter movement does that. I think they're all driving liberals absolutely crazy because it's becoming increasingly difficult for the liberals to basically defend this thing that they call democracy. It's not a democracy at all. They know it. But they don''t have a language to basically come back at this. I know. I was listening to a radio this morning and I don''t know if you know this but the alt-right, they''re responding to this by intimidating people, by attempting to ruin the lives of now I think it's like 500 reporters throughout the United States attacking their families, putting stuff on twitter, putting pictures of their children up in ways that are utterly disgusting and vile. I think you see two moments here. You see a moment of impending fascism which is utterly violent and criminogenic. Then you see another moment which is criminogenic but not as violent. But' its grappling at the same time with some way to rescue itself by pointing only to Trump without at the same time pointing to its own liabilities. JAY: I think the sort of mediocrity banality of these candidates, it's not just a happen chance, and many of the presidents in the past and I would put both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama \u2013 they're smart guys. I disagree with probably 98 or 99% of their policies and both of them were involved in what I think could be categorized as war crimes, including Bill Clinton and sanctions on Iraq and the drone policy and others and the development of the war on Syria with Obama and such and Libya of course. But that being said, these are smart guys. They speak in full paragraphs. They are articulate. They can crack jokes. They're knowledgeable. But it was under their watch that we had a great leap in this transfer of wealth to the top 1 or so percentile. A great leap in the parasitism of capital. Casino capitalism. Massive derivatives and speculative markets and this very parasitical, very degenerate you could say type of capital created this orgy of profits for this top tier at a level they'd never seen before and when you live in the bubble of those massive profits, perhaps they have no idea what's going on amongst the American people. So, all of a sudden they get this shock in the republican party and almost a major shock in the democratic party and I don't know if they really come back from this because I don't know if they can really get out of this bubble disconnect with what's going on in terms of daily life. GIROUX: They meaning the financial elite. Is that what you're saying? JAY: Well the financial and political elites, yea. GIROUX: Exactly. Well I don't want to underestimate the power of the cultural apparatuses that they control to basically normalize what appears to be unimaginable. I mean I'm always shocked by that I think the real issue here is that we live in a country in which memory is very short. We live in a culture of the immediate. I'm often shocked about what gets forgotten 5 days after the news cycle. So, the real question is, how do you keep the count of memories. These images. How do you keep this language up? This critical language that consistently reminds people of the contradictions and the crimes. The United States is a war culture. I mean there''s no other way to talk about it. It's primarily organized for the production of violence at almost every level. Of course, the punishing state is getting worse and the acceleration of police violence is getting worse. I think as long as the alternative media can focus on and sustain these images and these stories and these counter narratives, I think they're fine. But it's a hard fight because as you well know Paul the mainstream media controls most of the media and so the real question here is how do we take the question of culture and power and education and link it to everyday life in ways that allow it to travel across a variety of public spheres so that these memories and injustice and corruption can be sustained? JAY: Thanks very much for joining us Henry. GIROUX: My pleasure. JAY: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.  Henry A. Giroux, Contributing Editor C urrently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department and a Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Ryerson University. His books include: American at War with Itself , Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism (Peter Land 2011), On Critical Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011), Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm 2012), Disposable Youth: Racialized Memories and the Culture of Cruelty (Routledge 2012), Youth in Revolt: Reclaiming a Democratic Future (Paradigm 2013). Giroux's most recent books are America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth (Monthly Review Press, 2013), are Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education, America's Disimagination Machine (City Lights) and Higher Education After Neoliberalism (Haymarket) will be published in 2014). He is also a Contributing Editor of Cyrano's Journal Today \/ The Greanville Post , and member of Truthout's Board of Directors and has his own page The Public Intellectual . His web site is www.henryagiroux.com . [email-subscribers namefield=\"YES\" desc=\"\" group=\"Public\"]","label":1}
{"text":"The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed five of President Donald Trump's U.S. Treasury nominees, including the top officials for international affairs and tax policy, easing a shortage of top political appointees in the department. The Senate confirmed by unanimous voice vote: David Malpass as Undersecretary for International Affairs; David Kautter as Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy; Brent McIntosh as General Counsel; Christopher Campbell as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions and Andrew Maloney as Deputy Undersecretary for Legislative Affairs.","label":0}
{"text":"Hundreds of civilians left a besieged Islamic State enclave in central Syria after the Syrian government and Islamic State reached an evacuation deal, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday. The Syrian army could not be reached for comment but a Syrian military source quoted on state media later said that the army and its allies had captured several areas in the enclave. An insurgent source in northwestern Syria said the civilians - mostly shepherds - from the enclave, straddling the border between Hama and Homs provinces, had arrived in rebel-held Idlib province. The Syrian army - supported by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias - isolated the pocket, Islamic State s last presence in central Syria, in August during its eastward drive against the jihadists. The military source said the army had captured the areas of Mazin al-Baqr, al-Mushirfa al-Shomalia, Rasm al-Tawil and Jawra al-Nazal, . The Observatory reported that the government and Islamic State had finalised the deal on Thursday, allowing Islamic State fighters, their families and civilians to leave the pocket and cross government areas into areas held by Islamist groups. Some crossed to areas held by Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist alliance that includes the former Nusra Front group, in northern Hama and eastern Idlib provinces, it said. Others moved to camps set up west of the enclave in government-held areas in accordance with tribal deals, the British-based monitor said. Last week, jihadists launched an offensive against government-held parts of northern Hama province, advancing south from rebel-held Idlib. The Syrian government has responded with strikes on rebel-held positions. Russia, Iran and Turkey had previously struck a tripartite deal to deploy an observer force on the edge of a designated de-escalation zone in Idlib. The Islamist militants who hold sway in Idlib rejected the diplomatic effort. The Syrian army s main focus has been its offensive against Islamic State in the east of the country, where the Islamist group is also facing an offensive by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he expects the world economy will be steady in the short run after Britain's decision to leave the European Union but expressed concern about longer term global growth. Obama, appearing at a North American summit with the leaders of Canada and Mexico, said there have been reactions in markets, stock prices and currencies since last Thursday's so-called Brexit vote. Preparations by central banks, finance ministers and the U.S. treasury secretary helped ensure the global economy will hold steady in the short term, he said at a news conference. \"I think there are some genuine longer term concerns about global growth if in fact Brexit goes through and that freezes the possibilities of investment in Great Britain or in Europe as a whole,\" Obama said. \"At a time when global growth rates were weak already, this doesn't help.\" The U.S. president, who had openly sided with British Prime Minister David Cameron against Brexit, said the leaders of G20 nations, who will meet in China this year, will have to work to boost global demand and fortify the global economy. Obama said that, while the special relationship between Britain and the United States will endure, that country's absence from the EU would \"make it harder for us to solve some of the other challenges that have to be solved.\" He said his main message to Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other leaders involved in the Brexit would be: \"Everybody should catch their breath, come up with a plan and a process that is orderly, that's transparent, that people understand and then proceed, understanding that both sides have a stake in getting this right. \"And I think that will be a difficult, challenging process but it does not need to be a panicky process.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Qatar must do more to protect construction workers from heat which often reaches levels that are potentially fatal, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. HRW and other rights campaigners are frequent critics of Qatar s treatment of migrant laborers whose working conditions have received additional scrutiny as the country prepares to host the 2022 World Cup. The group said existing regulations only set limits on outdoor work during the period June 15 to Aug. 31, and then only from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Climate data shows that weather conditions in Qatar outside those hours and dates frequently reach levels that can result in potentially fatal heat-related illnesses in the absence of appropriate rest, it said. HRW called authorities also to investigate the causes of migrant worker deaths and publish data on such incidents. In 2013, health authorities reported 520 deaths of workers from Bangladesh, India, and Nepal, HRW said. Like other wealthy Gulf Arab states, Qatar relies on vast numbers of migrant workers, mostly from the Philippines, South Asia and Africa. Around 2 million migrant workers live in Qatar, outnumbering the local workforce by nearly 20 to one. Some 800,000 work in the construction sector. Unions and labor protests are banned and authorities penalize dissent with jail or deportation. The Qatari government s Communications Office said: Qatar is committed to its labor reform program and is constantly reviewing its policies to ensure that migrant workers receive the necessary on-site protections. We continue to coordinate closely with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and international NGOs to implement reforms that will improve the health, safety and rights of migrant workers, Sheikh Saif Al Thani, head of the Communications Office, said in a statement sent to Reuters.","label":0}
{"text":"PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 The trial of Ammon Bundy, his brother Ryan and five of their followers, antigovernment protesters charged in the armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge this year, will begin here on Tuesday in a federal court. The takeover, at a remote eastern Oregon reserve, began Jan. 2 and lasted nearly six weeks, starting a national debate about homegrown militias, public lands and constitutional rights. The defendants face conspiracy, weapons and theft charges. In all, 26 people have been indicted. One protester was shot and killed by the state police during the occupation. On Jan. 2, a small group of members of a militia group adopting the name Citizens for Constitutional Freedom \u2014 the number grew as the occupation wore on \u2014 seized control of administration buildings at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about 30 miles southeast of Burns, in Harney County, a sparsely populated area in the high desert of eastern Oregon. In daily briefings with reporters, Ammon Bundy said the group had acted against what he called unconstitutional federal land management policies that infringed on the rights of citizens. His softly spoken statements echoed terms of a simpler, earlier America, where individual effort on the land counted for all, and government's business was to stay out of the way. But guns, on hips and in the arms of lookouts, were . As they were en route to a community meeting on Jan. 26, where they hoped to persuade local ranchers to join their cause, Mr. Bundy and seven others were arrested in a traffic stop about 40 miles from the refuge. The arrests spiraled into bloodshed when a member of the group, LaVoy Finicum, 54, raced his truck toward a police roadblock. After his vehicle went off the road, Mr. Finicum got out and was shot and killed by Oregon State Police officers as he appeared to reach for a weapon. The last four holdouts at the refuge surrendered peacefully two weeks later. A grand jury indicted 26 members of the group on various charges, including conspiracy to impede federal employees from performance of their duties, which is punishable by up to six years in prison, as well as weapons charges and theft of government property. Eleven defendants have reached a plea deal with prosecutors charges were dropped against one defendant this month. The trial of seven other defendants is scheduled for February. In Oregon, as in many Western states, most of the land is owned by the federal government \u2014 a fact that has rankled conservative politicians and protesters like the Bundys for many years. Efforts to wrest land back into private ownership or state control have simmered in state capitols in the Rocky Mountain region for years, fueling resentment even as they have foundered. At the Malheur refuge, a dispute between federal officials and a local ranching family \u2014 Dwight L. Hammond and his son Steven D. Hammond \u2014 became a catalyst for the militants. But a long decline in the area's economic health, mainly driven by a collapse of the timber industry, compounded local frustrations. Cliven Bundy, Ammon and Ryan's father, led the family into confrontation in an armed standoff in 2014 against federal officials over illegal cattle grazing on public land in Nevada. The elder Mr. Bundy has for many years refused to obtain permits to graze his cattle on public land. When federal officials said they would confiscate the cattle, an armed standoff ensued. Cliven Bundy was arrested and indicted this year for his role in that episode, as were Ammon, Ryan and two other men who were also at the Malheur takeover. That case is proceeding separately in Nevada, with a trial scheduled for February.","label":0}
{"text":"Kyrgyzstan votes in a presidential election on Sunday that is being closely fought between a protege of the outgoing president and an opposition leader, testing stability in a country where two previous leaders were ousted in violent riots. The mainly Muslim ex-Soviet state of six million people stands out from its neighbors, mostly run by autocrats, in having a boisterous democracy that produces sometimes chaotic changes of leadership. Serving President Almazbek Atambayev has to step down because of term limits, and is backing Sooronbai Jeenbekov, a 58-year-old member of Atambayev s Social Democratic Party, to succeed him. He is facing strong opposition from Omurbek Babanov, 47, who heads the biggest opposition party, Respublika-Ata Zhurt (Fatherland). The most likely outcome is that neither Babanov nor Jeenbekov will win outright on Sunday, setting up a second round run-off, according to the U.S.-based International Republican Institute, which has conducted its own polling. Both leading candidates differ little on the main points of policy: a secular state, hewing close to Russia in a region where Moscow vies for influence with the United States and China. However, they represent rival interest groups and clans inside Kyrgyzstan that are fighting for access to power and state resources. In a September poll by Coalition for Democracy and Civil Society, a Western-backed NGO, 38.7 percent of respondents said they expected Babanov to win and 41.2 percent picked Jeenbekov. Eleven more candidates are running in the vote. A candidate needs more than 50 percent for an outright win. Opposition candidate Babanov is a wealthy businessman with a charismatic style, while Jeenbekov is a former livestock technician turned bureaucrat. Both say they will maintain strong ties to Moscow. Kyrgyzstan hosts a Russian military airbase. Remittances from hundreds of thousands of migrant laborers working in Russia are a vital source of Kyrgyzstan s foreign currency revenue. The campaign has featured allegations of coup plots and corrupt practices, hinting at the fragile political stability that has dogged Kyrgyzstan since a revolution in 2005 that ousted long-standing leader Askar Akayev. I am going to start my fight against corruption with you, Jeenbekov told opposition candidate Babanov in a televised debate, in which he also called his younger opponent a chick . The Kyrgyz government detained one of Babanov s supporters on Sept. 30, charging him with plotting a violent coup during the vote. It has also accused several Babanov campaign workers of planning to bribe voters. Babanov has denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the charges against his supporters as dirty election tactics. Atambayev s government last month accused Kazakhstan, a bigger and wealthier neighbor which is also close to Russia, of interfering in the election after Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev met Babanov and appeared to endorse him. Kazakhstan has denied backing any candidates, and, citing security concerns, introduced tighter checks on the Kyrgyz border this week.","label":0}
{"text":"Former FBI Director James Comey is now leaking details of a private dinner with President Donald Trump to the media, through some of his close associates. [According to the New York Times, the FBI director had dinner with Trump in January after the inauguration, citing private details of the meeting that portray Comey as a martyr. Comey's people, \"who have heard his account of the dinner\" and spoke anonymously, insist that Trump asked the director to pledge his personal loyalty to him, but he declined. They added that Comey was wary about dining with the president, but believed he couldn't turn him down. The White House, however, disputed the report. \"We don't believe this to be an accurate account,\" said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary. \"The integrity of our law enforcement agencies and their leadership is of the utmost importance to President Trump. He would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people. \" According to the White House, one of the many reasons Comey was fired was because he failed to stop sensitive leaks of information to the media. In an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Trump said he asked Comey whether he was under investigation during a dinner with the FBI director and also spoke with him on the phone. \"I said, if it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, 'You are not under investigation. '\" Trump told Holt. Trump said Comey was \"a showboat\" and \"a grandstander. \" \"You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that,\" he said. \"You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago. It hasn't recovered from that. \" Trump said that he was anxious for the results of the FBI investigation into Russia's efforts to disrupt the election. \"If Russia or anybody else is trying to interfere with our elections, I think it's a horrible thing and I want to get to the bottom of it and I want to make sure it will never ever happen,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said he backed bringing back the Glass-Steagall Act, a Depression-era law that would revamp Wall Street banks by splitting their consumer-lending businesses from their investment arms. The National Economic Council director, also a former Goldman Sachs (GS.N) president, expressed support to lawmakers for a banking system where firms would focus primarily on trading and underwriting securities or issuing loans. Big banks have strongly opposed such a move that would fundamentally overhaul their business. Reinstating the law, which was repealed in 1999, has not attracted significant attention in Congress, but advocates in the White House and both parties now argue it would provide critical safeguards to prevent another financial crisis. Critics of that approach say it lacks nuance and would not have prevented the last financial meltdown. The fact Cohn, widely viewed as one of Wall Street's own, was willing to push that position spooked big banks' representatives in Washington. The White House confirmed Cohn's remarks in a private meeting with lawmakers on Wednesday. A spokesperson said he was \"simply discussing the President's previously stated position\" in favor of a \"21st century Glass-Steagall.\" Cohn's remarks were first reported by Bloomberg. bloom.bg\/2nZK5n1 The Trump administration has indicated support for a return to Glass-Steagall. The White House has stuck by the idea since it was included in the Republican Party platform during the presidential campaign, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin expressed interest in a modernized version of the law. When asked on Thursday when large financial institutions should begin to worry about Glass-Steagall becoming a reality, one industry representative said, \"Right now.\" However, any legislation establishing such a firewall faces long odds in the current Congress. The heads of the House and Senate banking committees have indicated support for alternative approaches, and efforts to move Glass-Steagall legislation in prior years have garnered little support. \"A new Glass-Steagall would require legislation, and it simply isn't a priority issue in Congress,\" wrote Ian Katz, a financial policy analyst for the research firm Capital Alpha Partners, in a note to clients. In the meeting which was arranged by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, Cohn was asked by Senator Elizabeth Warren about Glass-Steagall. Cohn responded favorably, noting that the Republican Party platform supports the idea, according to sources familiar with the meeting. The meeting included lawmakers from both parties and their staff. Bringing back Glass Steagall would likely have a significant impact on banks like JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and Citigroup (C.N) that have large highly intertwined commercial lending and investment banking operations, say analysts. It would impact Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N) to a lesser degree although, they would likely have to revert to being standalone investment banks and shed their deposit funding.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Air Force has developed a new framework for assessing the resilience of its satellites that should allow it to start the acquisition process for more military communication and missile detection satellites this autumn, a senior official said at the Farnborough Airshow this week. Lockheed Martin, Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp and Raytheon Co are keeping a close eye on these satellite programs, which could be worth billions of dollars and represent the first big new business opportunities in the military space market for some time. U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned about the need to protect their military satellites - which are critical to being able to identify targets, navigate, communicate and operate drones - given the growing use of electronic jammers and other threats. Winston Beauchamp, the U.S. Air Force deputy undersecretary for space, told Reuters that officials had developed a new set of criteria over the past year to help military leaders determine their options for more satellites. The Air Force had previously looked at the options for follow-on satellites in both programs but until now had not included specific criteria for their resilience, or their ability to operate in the face of \"hostile action or adverse conditions,\" such as electromagnetic interference. Beauchamp said senior Pentagon leaders last week endorsed the work done so far on the framework and further work planned before it is presented to Defense Secretary Ash Carter for approval in the fall. Once that decision is made, the Air Force hopes to begin the long-awaited acquisition process to buy follow-on satellites for the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) system built by Lockheed Martin for protected satellite communications, and new missile warning satellites, also currently built by Lockheed under the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program. Work was already underway on the acquisition strategy for each of the two programs so they could begin shortly after the resilience decision this autumn, Beauchamp said. The U.S. Air Force was also focused on increasing coordination and planning among allies for its space operations, as well as more multilateral wargaming and work on developing rules of engagement and joint concepts of operations. \"We are thinking more broadly about how to conduct operations in a joint manner,\" Beauchamp said. \"In the past it was tacked on at the end. But we'd like to find a way to shift the planning to the left in a number of areas.\"","label":0}
{"text":"A church treasurer from Ohio is going to jail for five years after blowing $800,000 of church funds on a decade-long drugs and sex rampage. So much for that Christian Morality that Evangelicals argue makes them better than people of other faiths and none.61-year-old Garry Meyer was the trusted treasurer of Tri-County Baptist Church in West Chester Township, Ohio for 14 years. What his church did not know, is that he was actually cooking the books, spending nearly a million dollars of church money on drugs, lavish holidays, expensive cars, pornography and high end escorts for more than a decade.While maintaining the pretense of a god-fearing, responsible, married father, Meyer lived a rock star lifestyle on the side and his church community picked up the tab.But, sadly for Meyer, his wife uncovered the crime. Under pressure, he made a confession to the church. The only problem was, he confessed to stealing $400,000. Once the full investigation was complete, Meyer was exposed as a liar all over again. The full sum stolen was twice that figure.Meyer s wife sobbed in the courtroom as her husband s exploits were exposed, and he was sentenced to five years in prison. He told the court: There is no excuse for my actions, I also want to say I am sorry to my family. I have caused unimaginable hurt and suffering, Turning to his wife, Meyer said: I am sorry for betraying your trust you have always been the best part of my life. Meyer stole nearly a million dollars from his own congregation in order to fund a lifestyle to which his church is supposed to stand opposed. Also speaking at Meyer s sentancing hearing was colleague Pastor Brian McManus, who said: Our church family has continued to pray for everyone involved in this very sad event. The truth is, our life choices always come down to personal not religious morality. A person bent on making the wrong decisions in life, will do so with or without the bible. This lesson is everywhere from child-abusing priests, to chumps like Garry Meyer, and on to so-called Christian Conservative leaders who lay the sin of wrath upon anyone who fails to follow their warped Ayn Randian version of God.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he would strike numerous bilateral trade deals, as opposed to multilateral accords like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and they would include clauses to allow a 30-day termination notice. \"Believe me, we're going to have a lot of trade deals,\" Trump told a gathering of Republican lawmakers. \"If that particular country doesn't treat us fairly, we send them a 30-day termination, notice of termination.\"","label":0}
{"text":"A man arrested on suspicion of trying to carry explosives onto a plane in western Sweden will be released from custody and is no longer a suspect, the prosecutor said on Friday The suspicious objects have been analysed during the day and the man is no longer suspected of any crimes, the prosecutors office said in a statement. The man was stopped as he tried to get onto a flight at Gothenburg s Landvetter airport on Thursday morning when a regular security check flagged up signs of explosive materials.","label":0}
{"text":"During the opening monologue of \"Tucker Carlson Tonight,\" host Tucker Carlson offered his thoughts on last week's controversy involving Kathy Griffin holding up a severed bloodied mannequin head of President Donald Trump. After apologizing, Griffin later held a news conference and declared herself to be the victim, to which Carlson said was a signal of her embodiement of the left. Transcript as follows: Earlier this week, as you just saw, Kathy Griffin released a video of herself posing with a bloody mannequin head made up to look like President Trump, comedy that failed completely, nobody thought it was funny. As performance art, it was lame, least creative stunt of the week by far. As a political statement it didn't even make any sense but it did have the effect of briefly making Griffin famous again and of course, that was likely the whole point. Today, Griffin elbowed her way back into the news cycle holding a press conference with celebrity misery chaser Lisa Bloom, here's part of what she said. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KATHY GRIFFIN, COMEDIAN: Imagine that I participated in. That apology absolutely stands. I feel horrible. I have performed in war zones, the idea that that people think of this tragedy, have been touched by this tragedy is horrifying and it's horrible. Thrust me, if I could redo the whole thing, I would've had a blowup doll and no catch up. I'm going to make fun of the President and, you know, what, I'm going to make fun of him more now, more. I'm not afraid of Donald Trump, he's a bully. I've dealt with older white guys trying to keep me down my whole life, my whole career. I just wanted to say, you know, if you don't stand up, you get run over. And what's happening to me has never happened ever in the history of this great country. Which is that a sitting president of the United States and his grown children and the First Lady are personally I feel personally trying to ruin my life forever. This is America, and you shouldn't have to die for it. The death threats that I'm getting are constant and they are detailed and they are serious and they are specific. And today it's me, and tomorrow it could be you. I don't think I will have a career after this. I think he \u2014 I'm going to be honest, he broke me. And then I was like, no, this isn't right, it's just not right. There's a bunch of old white guys trying to silence me and I'm just here to say that's wrong. CARLSON: That's just unbelievable, I don't know where to begin. Kathy Griffin isn't particularly talented or amusing, he does have a point, it's a little disproportionate for all of us to keep so much attention on someone who probably shouldn't be famous in the first place, so why are we doing this segment? Because whether she realizes it or not and I bet she has no idea, Griffin is an important figure in American life and that she's the perfect embodiment of what the modern left beliefs. Consider carefully what she said today. Griffin publicly fantasizes violently about murdering the President yet she holds a press conference to announce she's the one who has been wronged. Trump and his family bullied her she says, so have unnamed older white guys who have oppressed her despite giving her a series of very high paying jobs. In other words, she is the real victim here. Of course she is, liberals are always the victims. Being the victim is virtually what it means to be a member of the progressive America. It has more benefits it turns out than AAA and it's free. It means never having to say you're sorry, it also means being right even when you're wrong. Victimhood is the modern equivalent of holiness, it excuses anything. That's why liberals will say almost anything no matter how ludicrous to get it. Do you remember when President Obama the most powerful human being in history use to imply that he was somehow the victim of racial bias? Did you catch Hillary Clinton the other day, a woman so rich and pampered, she hasn't driven her own car in 30 years complain that sexism prevented her from becoming even richer and more pampered. Before you laugh, remember that overpaid sports figures make these kinds of claims all the time, entertainers \u2014 even TV anchors and now even unfunny comedians. We see a trend here because there is one. Wait, if the most powerful and richest people on the planet can be victims, who can't be a victim? Good question. The most remarkable thing about victimhood as that it allows the alleged victims to commit to the very offenses they are complaining about. They will punch you in the face and accuse you of assault. Or more specifically smash you in the head with the bike lock and then complain you're making them feel unsafe. They'll crush a bible club at a school that never even been to and then tell you that other people's beliefs oppressed them. They will take over a college campus forcing spineless administrators to enact every one of their demands and then claimed to be powerless victims of a climate of racism. And then they will conduct a nationwide for Christian small businesses trying to shut them down if they don't violate their own faith. They will throw illiterate refugees into public schools and call you a bigot for questioning it. Oh, well, they fled a $50, 000 a year private schools for their own kinds. And then of course, they will fly private even as they berate you for destroying the world with your SUV. It used to be that the point of running a country was to make things better for the people who live there. That has changed. Now the goal, it's almost explicit is to achieve moral superiority over the population often while making their lives worse. It's quite a trick and victimhood makes it possible. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor","label":0}
{"text":"French President Emmanuel Macron said on Sunday he called German Chancellor Angela Merkel to congratulate her on winning a fourth term in office and said France and Germany would forge ahead with their cooperation. I called Angela Merkel to congratulate her. We continue with determination our vital cooperation for Europe and for our countries, Macron tweeted. Macron ran for the French presidency on a pledge to relaunch Europe, in tandem with Germany, after years of economic and financial crisis and the new shock dealt by Britain s vote last year to leave the bloc. Merkel s conservatives beat their rivals to win her a fourth term in an election that will also bring a far-right party into Germany s parliament for the first time in more than half a century, exit polls showed.","label":0}
{"text":"Market Watch U.S. stocks rallied Wednesday, with the Dow industrials jumping 257 points, led by a surge in financial, health-care and industrial stocks, as investors bet on the infrastructure spending policy promised by President-elect Donald Trump.The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +1.40% gained as much as 316 points, briefly surpassing the all-time closing high set in August. The index closed 256.95 points, or 1.4%, higher at 18,589.69, its highest level since Aug. 18. Pfizer Inc. PFE, +7.07% and Caterpillar Inc CAT, +7.70% led the gains, rallying more than 7%.","label":1}
{"text":"President Trump just signed a law overturning a last-minute Obama-era regulation forcing states to fund Planned Parenthood, America s largest abortion business.The regulation, which pro-life groups call former President Obama s parting gift to the abortion industry, forced states to give Title X money to organizations that commit abortions. Now, states if they wish will be able to withold Title X money from abortion-committing organizations, instead prioritizing non-abortion businesses.Federal Title X dollars fund family planning services, but technically not abortion. However, government money Planned Parenthood receives helps the abortion-centered organization overall. This money is fungible, pro-life advocates say.REMEMBER OBAMA WAS THE MOST PRO-ABORTION PRESIDENT EVER! Audio of his cold-hearted testimony before the Illinois State Senate:In 2001, then IL State Sen. Barack Obama for the 2nd year in a row was the sole senator opposing Born Alive Infant bills:The U.S. House voted 230 to 188 to overturn this regulation on February 16. The U.S. Senate voted 50-50 on it on March 13. Vice President Mike Pence broke the tie, sending the bill to Trump s desk.Rep. Diane Black, R-TN, Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America, and Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List were at the White House bill signing. This week the pro-life movement had two huge victories: first, the swearing-in of Justice Gorsuch and now, President Trump will undo former President Obama s parting gift to the abortion industry, said Dannenfelser. The resolution signed today simply ensures that states are not forced to fund an abortion business with taxpayer dollars. Rather, states have the option to spend Title X money on comprehensive health care clinics that better serve women and girls.","label":1}
{"text":"Pope Francis on Thursday called for decisive measures to resolve the political crisis causing mostly Muslim refugees from neighboring Myanmar to flee to Bangladesh. But, just as in the first leg of his trip in Myanmar, he did not use the word Rohingya, which is contested by the Yangon government and military. In a speech before Bangladesh s president hours after arriving, Francis instead spoke of refugees from Rakhine State . He also called on countries to give immediate material assistance to help Bangladesh deal with the crisis.","label":0}
{"text":"Britain s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said it was time to begin serious negotiations on Brexit, hours before Prime Minister Theresa May visits Brussels in an attempt to unlock the stalled talks. We think in the UK that it is time to get on with these negotiations ... for us to start some serious conversations about the future and the new relationship, the deep and special partnership we hope to construct, Johnson told reporters. I think we will work very much in the interests of both sides ... let s put a tiger in the tank, let s get these negotiations going and stop letting the grass grow under our feet. We hope very much that our friends and partners will take that message and really begin to do some serious negotiations. Johnson, arriving for talks in Luxembourg with his European Union peers on Monday, also said London made a very good and fair offer on safeguarding expatriates rights after Britain leaves the European Union. May s office said on Sunday she would meet the European Union s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier and the head of the bloc s executive Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, in Brussels on Monday.","label":0}
{"text":"With debate gearing up over the coming expiration of the Patriot Act surveillance law, the Obama administration on Saturday unveiled a 6-year-old report examining the once-secret program to collect information on Americans' calls and emails. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly released the redacted report following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the New York Times. The basics of the National Security Agency program had already been declassified, but the lengthy report includes some new details about the secrecy surrounding it. President George W. Bush authorized the \"President's Surveillance Program\" in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. The review was completed in July 2009 by inspectors general from the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, NSA and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. They found that while many senior intelligence officials believe the program filled a gap by increasing access to international communications, others including FBI agents, CIA analysts and managers \"had difficulty evaluating the precise contribution of the PSP to counterterrorism efforts because it was most often viewed as one source among many available analytic and intelligence-gathering tools in these efforts.\" Critics of the phone records program, which allows the NSA to hunt for communications between terrorists abroad and U.S. residents, argue it has not proven to be an effective counterterrorism tool. They also say an intelligence agency has no business possessing the deeply personal records of Americans. Many favor a system under which the NSA can obtain court orders to query records held by the phone companies. The Patriot Act expires on June 1, and Senate Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow continued collection of call records of nearly every American. The legislation would reauthorize sections of the Patriot Act, including the provision under which the NSA requires phone companies to turn over the \"to and from\" records of most domestic landline calls. After the program was disclosed in 2013 by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, President Barack Obama and many lawmakers called for legislation to end that collection, but a bill to do so failed last year. Proponents had hoped that the expiration of the Patriot Act provisions on June 1 would force consideration of such a measure. A bipartisan group of House members has been working on such legislation, dubbed the USA Freedom Act. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday that Obama is pleased the efforts are restarting in the House. \"Hopefully, the next place where Democrats and Republicans will turn their attention and try to work together is on this issue of putting in place important reforms to the Patriot Act,\" Earnest said. If no legislation is passed, the Patriot Act provisions would expire. That would affect not only the NSA surveillance but other programs used by the FBI to investigate domestic crimes, which puts considerable pressure on lawmakers to pass some sort of extension.","label":0}
{"text":"Liberia s supreme court cleared the way for a presidential run-off election, ruling on Thursday that it had not found enough evidence of fraud to halt the whole process. Ex-soccer star George Weah will now face off against Vice-President Joseph Boakai in a vote that could mark Liberia s first peaceful transition of power in seven decades. The court dismissed a complaint from the third-place finisher Charles Brumskine s Liberty Party, which had said fraud had undermined the first round of voting in October. In the absence of sufficient evidence, the court cannot order a re-run of the election, Justice Philip Banks said, reading out the court s decision. There were over 5,000 polling places, (so) to present evidence of just a few is problematic, the judge said. The evidence should have (shown) ... that they were committed in such magnitude that they could have altered the results. The winner of round two will replace Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as leader of the small West African country, one of the world s poorest despite abundant diamonds and iron ore. The delays caused by all the legal wrangling have ratcheted up tensions in a country still recovering from decades of civil war that killed tens of thousands. However, a spokesman for the Liberty Party said it would accept the result. If we did not respect the judiciary, we would not have come, Darius Dillion said. Liberia has won, our democracy has won. Liberians are eager for change after Johnson Sirleaf s 12-year rule, which sealed a lasting peace that many doubted was possible, but which has failed to tackle corruption or significantly lift living standards of the country s poorest. Authorities still have to name a date for the run-off. NEC spokesman Henry Flomo told reporters outside the court he believed one could be held in two weeks, but said the date would be announced shortly. The judges made the ruling with a 4-1 majority.","label":0}
{"text":"Musicians do not usually respond with patience when listeners refer to their music as \"filth. \" So the tweets that Vince Staples sent early Wednesday morning in response to a viral video of a mother criticizing his work were surprising, particularly to those unfamiliar with Mr. Staples's worldview. In a video posted to YouTube last month, a mother of four girls, who does not identify herself by name, says that she was driving her daughter to school when she heard \"Norf Norf,\" a song from Mr. Staples's 2015 album \"Summertime '06. \" \"This rap song comes on. Guys, I could not believe what I was hearing,\" she says, adding that she usually tunes her car radio to Christian music but put on a \"top hits\" station at her 's request. \"This is on our local radio station? This crap is being played?\" She continues, \"I couldn't even believe the words I was listening to. As a mom, it infuriated me. \" The video has received more than 800, 000 views. The lyrics of \"Norf Norf\" are explicit, painting a violent picture of Mr. Staples' adolescent years in Long Beach, Calif. In her reaction video, the mother reads the words aloud, bursting into tears several times. She seems particularly taken aback by the repetitive line of the chorus: \"I ain't never ran from nothin' but the police. \" \"Let's just encourage kids to run from the police because that's O. K. right? ,\" she says. \"We wonder why this society is so messed up \u2014 just listen to the music. \" But responding to the video on Wednesday, Mr. Staples said that the woman seemed confused and frightened, and went on to defend her. \"No person needs to be attacked for their opinion on what they see to be appropriate for their children,\" Mr. Staples tweeted. \"They have a right to it. \" He continued, \"This misunderstanding of our community leads to miscommunication which we should convert into a progressive dialogue. \" He then declared that he was done speaking about the issue. Mr. Staples's tweets, which were meant to clarify earlier comments in The Independent, were a contrast to the mother's disgust and to those who had mocked her ignorance about rap by responding to the video with laughing emojis or syncing the audio from the YouTube video with the beat of \"Norf Norf. \" Others blasted her comments as racist and ignorant. David Dennis Jr. a journalism professor at Morehouse College who has covered online for close to a decade, said that Mr. Staples's thoughtful reaction was \"extremely unusual. \" \"Twitter is 140 characters of quick reactions and not a lot of nuance whatsoever,\" Mr. Dennis said. \"There are brilliant people who, when they get on Twitter, they sort of become the lowest common denominators of themselves. \" He said that the rapper's experience as a public figure with a vast online following may have helped him empathize with the mother. \"As a famous rapper, he sort of knows how Twitter mob mentality works,\" Mr. Dennis said. \"Through the lens of somebody who goes viral a lot, I think that empathy is something he learned. \" In an interview in The Fader soon after \"Summertime '06\" was released, Mr. Staples talked about people he knew who were trapped in a cycle of gang violence. His attitude toward them mirrored his comments about the mother. \"I just want to help people understand that we don't get to pick, bro,\" he said. \"We don't get to pick where we was from. That ain't how it works. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Once again, the Republican Party should be embarrassed that Donald Trump is their nominee.During a press conference on Wednesday, Trump answered questions about his ties to Russia and Vladamir Putin. He denied it, of course, but openly urged Russia to commit an act of espionage against Hillary Clinton and the United States Government.First, Trump condemned the hack of the DNC that gave him ammunition to use against Democrats and then he urged Russia to do even more. Russia, if you re listening, I hope you re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, Trump said. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Here s the video via YouTube.Well, the media certainly did not reward Trump for calling upon Russia to continue their cyber attacks against Hillary Clinton and our government institutions.David Gregory compared Trump to a child playing with matches and said he has run out of words to express his shock at the things Trump says and does.CNN panelist Christine Quinn ripped Trump a new one for urging Russia to continue the attack against his political opponent. The man who thinks he s going to be the president of the United States stood in front of the world and called on Russia and Putin to hack the emails of the former Secretary of State. I mean, it s honestly, and I know I m partisan in this clearly, but it s almost treasonous! Former Republican South Carolina Lt. Governor Andre Bauer responded by going even further than Quinn by claiming Clinton committed treason outright because 30,000 emails went missing. But if that s the case, former President Bush should have been tried and imprisoned for treason years ago when millions of emails were deleted during his administration. Bauer also didn t seem to have a single problem with what Trump said and defended him.Here s the video via YouTube.The bottom line is that Donald Trump just told a repressive Russian regime to continue hacking a former high-tanking government official who could very well be the next president of the United States. This hack is a serious breach in national security and Trump is egging it on as long as it helps him gain politically.It s treason and those who commit treason are not allowed to hold office in this country.This is outrageous and shows that Republicans are totally incapable to leading this nation and only further solidifies the fear that Donald Trump would be nothing more than Putin s puppet if he wins in November.","label":1}
{"text":"On the campaign trail, Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has sold himself as a businessman who has made billions of dollars and is beholden to no one. But an investigation by The New York Times into the financial maze of Mr. Trump's real estate holdings in the United States reveals that companies he owns have at least $650 million in debt \u2014 twice the amount than can be gleaned from public filings he has made as part of his bid for the White House. The Times's inquiry also found that Mr. Trump's fortunes depend deeply on a wide array of financial backers, including one he has cited in attacks during his campaign. For example, an office building on Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, of which Mr. Trump is part owner, carries a $950 million loan. Among the lenders: the Bank of China, one of the largest banks in a country that Mr. Trump has railed against as an economic foe of the United States, and Goldman Sachs, a financial institution he has said controls Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, after it paid her $675, 000 in speaking fees. Real estate projects often involve complex ownership and mortgage structures. And given Mr. Trump's long real estate career in the United States and abroad, as well as his claim that his personal wealth exceeds $10 billion, it is safe to say that no previous major party presidential nominee has had finances nearly as complicated. As president, Mr. Trump would have substantial sway over monetary and tax policy, as well as the power to make appointments that would directly affect his own financial empire. He would also wield influence over legislative issues that could have a significant impact on his net worth, and would have official dealings with countries in which he has business interests. Yet The Times's examination underscored how much of Mr. Trump's business remains shrouded in mystery. He has declined to disclose his tax returns or allow an independent valuation of his assets. Earlier in the campaign, Mr. Trump submitted a federal financial disclosure form. It said his businesses owed at least $315 million to a relatively small group of lenders and listed ties to more than 500 limited liability companies. Though he answered the questions, the form appears to have been designed for candidates with simpler finances than his, and did not require disclosure of portions of his business activities. Beyond finding that companies owned by Mr. Trump had debts of at least $650 million, The Times discovered that a substantial portion of his wealth is tied up in three passive partnerships that owe an additional $2 billion to a string of lenders, including those that hold the loan on the Avenue of the Americas building. If those loans were to go into default, Mr. Trump would not be held liable, the Trump Organization said. The value of his investments, however, would certainly sink. Mr. Trump has said that if he were elected president, his children would be likely to run his company. Many presidents, to avoid any appearance of a conflict, have placed their holdings in blind trusts, which typically involves selling the original asset, and replacing it with different assets unknown to the seller. Mr. Trump's children seem unlikely to pursue that option. Richard W. Painter, a professor of law at the University of Minnesota and, from 2005 to 2007, the chief White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush, compared Mr. Trump to Henry M. Paulson Jr. a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs whom Mr. Bush appointed as Treasury secretary. Professor Painter advised Mr. Paulson on his decision to sell his Goldman Sachs shares, saying it was clear that Mr. Paulson could not simply have placed that stock in trust and pretended it did not exist. If Mr. Trump were to use a blind trust, the professor said, it would be \"like putting a gold watch in a box and pretending you don't know it is in there. \" \"I am the king of debt,\" Mr. Trump once said on CNN. \"I love debt. \" But in his career, debt has sometimes gotten the better of him, leading to at least four business bankruptcies. He is, however, quick to stress that these days his companies have very little debt. Mr. Trump indicated in the financial disclosure form he filed in connection with this campaign that he was worth at least $1. 5 billion, and has said publicly that the figure is actually greater than $10 billion. Recent estimates by Forbes and Fortune magazines and Bloomberg have put his worth at less than $5 billion. To gain a better understanding of Mr. Trump's holdings and debt, The Times engaged RedVision Systems, a national property information firm, to search publicly available data on more than 30 properties in the United States. The Times identified these assets through Federal Election Commission filings, information provided by the Trump Organization and records, such as filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The search covered thousands of pages of public information, including loan documents, land leases and property deeds. It concentrated on Mr. Trump's commercial holdings, including office towers, golf courses, a vineyard in Virginia and even an industrial building in South Carolina that he ended up with after a troubled business venture involving Donald Trump Jr. The inquiry also examined some of Mr. Trump's residential properties, including his penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue and a house he owns in Beverly Hills, Calif. The examination did not include Mr. Trump's dealings outside the United States. That Mr. Trump seems to have so much less debt on his disclosure form than what The Times found is not his fault, but rather a function of what the form asks candidates to list and how. The form, released by the Federal Election Commission, asks that candidates list assets and debts not in precise numbers, but in ranges that top out at $50 million \u2014 appropriate for most candidates, but not for Mr. Trump. Through its examination, The Times was able to discern the amount of debt taken out on each property, and its ownership structure. At 40 Wall Street in Manhattan, a limited liability company, or L. L. C. controlled by Mr. Trump holds the ground lease \u2014 the lease for the land on which the building stands. In 2015, Mr. Trump borrowed $160 million from Ladder Capital, a small New York firm, using that lease as collateral. On his financial disclosure form that debt is listed as valued at more than $50 million. Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, said that Mr. Trump could have left the liability section on the form blank, because federal law requires that presidential candidates disclose personal liabilities, not corporate debt. Mr. Trump, he said, has no personal debt. \"We overdisclosed,\" Mr. Weisselberg said, explaining that it was decided that when a Trump company owned 100 percent of a property, all of the associated debt would be disclosed, something that he said went beyond what the law required. For properties where a Trump company owned less than 100 percent of a building, Mr. Weisselberg said, those debts were not disclosed. Mr. Trump, for example, has a 50 percent stake in the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. In 2010, the company that owns the hotel refinanced a $190 million loan, according to Real Capital Analytics, a commercial real estate data and analytics firm. Mr. Weisselberg said that a Trump entity was responsible for half the debt, and that all but $6. 4 million of the loan had been paid off. The Times found three other instances in which Mr. Trump had an ownership interest in a building but did not disclose the debt associated with it. In all three cases, Mr. Trump had passive investments in limited liability companies that had borrowed significant amounts of money. One of these investments involves an office tower at 1290 Avenue of Americas, near Rockefeller Center. In a typically complex deal, loan documents show that four lenders \u2014 German American Capital, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bank UBS Real Estate Securities Goldman Sachs Mortgage Company and Bank of China \u2014 agreed in November 2012 to lend $950 million to the three companies that own the building. Those companies, obscurely named HWA 1290 III LLC, HWA 1290 IV LLC and HWA 1290 V LLC, are owned by three other companies in which Mr. Trump has stakes. Ultimately, through his investments, Mr. Trump is a 30 percent owner of the building, records show. Vornado Realty Trust owns the other 70 percent and is the controlling partner. A similar ownership structure is in place at 555 California Street in San Francisco, formerly the Bank of America Center. There, Pacific Life Insurance Company and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company lent $600 million in 2011 to a limited liability company of which Vornado owns 70 percent and Mr. Trump owns 30 percent. Green Street Advisors, a real estate research firm, estimates the combined value of the two buildings to be about $3. 7 billion. On a smaller scale, Mr. Trump also has a 4 percent partnership interest in a company that has an interest in a large Brooklyn housing complex, and owes roughly $410 million to Wells Fargo, according to Bloomberg data. The full terms of Mr. Trump's limited partnerships are not known. The current value of the loans connected to them is roughly $1. 95 billion, according to various public documents. Mr. Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's chief financial officer, said that neither Mr. Trump nor the company were responsible for the debt associated with the limited partnerships. Still, as with all of the properties in which Mr. Trump holds an interest, the value of the buildings as well as the terms and magnitude of their debt could have a major impact on his personal fortune. Mr. Trump, Mr. Weisselberg added, was liable for a \"small percentage of the corporate debt\" listed on the federal filing but would not elaborate. Other instances in which Mr. Trump could be personally responsible can be found in public filings. He guaranteed as much as $26 million for the loan taken out against his land lease at 40 Wall Street, money the lender could take if certain things went wrong. The United States Office of Government Ethics, which reviewed Mr. Trump's financial filing before the F. E. C. released it, said it does not comment on submissions by individual candidates. The agency's procedures for staff members reviewing presidential submissions, a copy of which was obtained by The Times through a Freedom of Information Act request, say the Office of Government Ethics does not audit reports for accuracy. \"Disclosures are to be taken at 'face value' as correct, unless there is a patent omission or ambiguity or the official has independent knowledge of matters outside the report,\" the procedures say. Tracing the ownership of many of Mr. Trump's buildings can be a complicated task. Sometimes he owns a building and the land underneath it sometimes, he holds a partial interest or just the commercial portion of a property. And in some cases, the identities of his business partners are obscured behind limited liability companies \u2014 raising the prospect of a president with unknown business ties. At 40 Wall Street, Mr. Trump does not own even a sliver of the actual land his ground lease gives him the right to improve and manage the building. The land is owned by two limited liability companies Mr. Trump pays the two entities a total of $1. 6 million a year for the ground lease, according to documents filed with the S. E. C. The majority owner, 40 Wall Street Holdings Corporation, owns 80 percent of the land New Scandic Wall Limited Partnership owns the rest, according to public documents. New Scandic Wall Limited Partnership's chief executive is Joachim Ferdinand von a businessman based in Europe, according to these documents. The people behind 40 Wall Street Holdings are harder to identify. For years, Germany's Hinneberg family, which made its fortune in the shipping industry, controlled the property through a company called 40 Wall Limited Partnership. In late 2014, their interest in the land was transferred to a new company, 40 Wall Street Holdings. The Times was not able to identify the owner or owners of this company, and the Trump Organization declined to comment. Mr. Trump has ground leases on several other properties, including a golf course in New York's Hudson Valley and retail space in Midtown Manhattan. Private owners are also behind these leases, their identities sometimes obscured by L. L. C. s. Mr. Trump's status in these situations is indicated by the word tenant, which is listed under his signature on many of the relevant documents. Mr. Trump also holds a ground lease on the Trump International Hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington, a few blocks from the White House. The federal government, which owns the land, gave a lease to Trump Old Post Office, a limited liability company controlled by Mr. Trump and members of his family. In return, the government receives a minimum of $3 million a year from the company. Mr. Weisselberg said that despite his holdings, Mr. Trump should not be held to the same standards that might apply to the heads of companies in highly regulated industries. \"If you take away all the fancy stuff and so on and so forth, and the ratings, you are basically down to a closely held business that is fundamentally different from IBM or Exxon,\" Mr. Weisselberg said, quoting from an email he had received from Donald F. McGahn, a lawyer and former chairman of the F. E. C. who advised Mr. Trump on his federal filing. Mr. McGahn did not return calls for comment. Others disagree. Mr. Trump's opaque portfolio of business ties makes him potentially vulnerable to the demands of banks, and to business people in the United States and abroad, said Professor Painter, the former chief White House ethics lawyer. \"The success of his empire depends on an ability to get credit, to get loans extended to his business entities,\" he said. \"And we simply don't know a lot about his financial dealings, here or around the world. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Wheel of Fortune caved to the left and apologized for using what appeared to be slaves in a photo on the show on Thursday: We regret the use of this background image, and we will be replacing it moving forward on any rebroadcast. But wait! The people in the photo are tour guides and NOT slaves! This didn t stop the goofballs on the left from freaking out on social media:Someone please tell me why @WheelofFortune has slaves in their Southern Charm Week images? pic.twitter.com\/IPCFo9wh1b Joshua Itiola (@joshitiola) June 16, 2017The eternally butt hurt left was abuzz over a photo taken in 2005 at Oak Valley Plantation. The left claimed it was a photo of slaves! As it turns out, the two women were in period costumes and happen to be tour guides at the historic plantation: A spokesperson for the plantation said, The plantation employs a diverse range of people of all skin colors for tour guide roles. Even though they wear clothing indicative of the period, the actors who work at the plantation do not try to portray slaves. Get that? The actors who work at the plantation DO NOT try to portray slaves Can we move forward already? It s like the left wants to keep us stuck in the past.","label":1}
{"text":"The EU executive urged Spain to talk to Catalan separatists on Monday, condemning violence but also calling for unity, a day after Spanish police beat people trying to vote in an independence referendum in Catalonia. Edging into a minefield it has tried hard to avoid, despite a danger for stability in Spain and the euro zone, the European Commission issued a cautiously balanced statement. It voiced trust in Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy s ability to manage this internal matter , but also called for dialogue and reminded Madrid of a need to respect citizens basic rights. We call on all relevant players to now move very swiftly from confrontation to dialogue. Violence can never be an instrument in politics, the Commission said in a statement read out by chief spokesman Margaritis Schinas, just before Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont asked for EU mediation. Pressed by reporters, Schinas declined to say specifically that the EU was condemning Spanish police tactics, though it was their actions at polling stations on Sunday which mostly shocked fellow Europeans and generated public pressure that saw other governments including Germany and France call for more dialogue. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Rajoy later on Monday after being in contact over the weekend, though the EU spokesman declined to say whether the Union would mediate, an unusual step for Brussels to take within one of the bloc s own member states. Aides said Juncker spelled out the Commission position and was also in a listening mode . Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who chairs summits of EU national leaders, said after his own conversation with Rajoy that he shared the Spanish premier s constitutional arguments but also appealed to him to find ways to prevent a further escalation and the use of force. The Commission statement also supported Madrid s line that the vote, which Catalan leaders said recorded a huge result for independence, was not legal under Spain s constitution. Brussels has in the past given little or no encouragement to separatist movements inside the European Union, whether those of the Catalans, Scots, Flemings or others. These are times for unity and stability, not divisiveness and fragmentation, it said. Any breakaway state would have to leave the EU and re-apply to join, the statement also noted. Even that could only happen if the split were amicable. This distinguishes Scotland, which held a referendum agreed with London in 2014, from Catalonia, where Spain s Constitutional Court has said the 1978 constitution forbids secession. For all the reluctance of other Europeans to be drawn into the dispute in public, there has been growing unease in Brussels about the way the conservative government in Madrid has handled the confrontation with Barcelona, reviving emotions rooted in 20th-century civil war and dictatorship. As pictures of heavily armoured Spanish police clubbing women on the ground stunned Europe on Sunday, the few governments that spoke out included those of Scotland, Slovenia, which emerged from the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia, and Belgium, where repeated rounds of devolution have averted a final split between French- and Dutch-speakers. On Monday, Berlin joined the calls for dialogue, warning against a spiral of escalation . Germany s BDI industrial federation warned that splitting the highly industrialised region from Spain would be very damaging for both sides.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's acting director criticized President Donald Trump for telling law enforcement officers not to be \"too nice\" to suspects, urging DEA agents to show \"respect and compassion\" and saying he felt compelled to speak out when \"something is wrong.\" Acting Director Chuck Rosenberg sent an agency-wide email on Saturday, one day after Trump's speech to officers in Brentwood, New York, on Long Island. The email was seen by Reuters on Tuesday. Trump suggested to officers that, as part of a tougher approach to suspects, they do away with practices like protecting the head of a suspect being put into a patrol car. That suggestion drew criticism from many local law enforcement agencies, as well as Rosenberg. \"I write because we have an obligation to speak out when something is wrong,\" the acting DEA chief said in the email. \"The President, in remarks delivered yesterday in New York, condoned police misconduct regarding the treatment of individuals placed under arrest by law enforcement.\" Rosenberg, who was not nominated by Trump but is a holdover from the Obama administration, was the first head of a federal agency to challenge Trump's remarks in a wide arena. Incidents of police brutality and law enforcement killings of black suspects have sparked mass protests nationwide and led many departments to purchase body cameras to record interactions between officers and the public. Trump, a Republican, campaigned on a pro-law enforcement platform, winning the support of several police unions by promising to be tough on crime and more supportive of police than his predecessor, Democratic President Barack Obama. Chuck Canterbury, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union, said Trump's \"off the cuff comments\" are taken \"too literally\" by news media. \"The President knows, just as every cop out there knows, that our society does not, and should not, tolerate the mistreatment or prejudgment of any individual at any point in the criminal justice process,\" Canterbury said in a statement on Saturday. The DEA combats drug trafficking into the United States from offices nationwide and several international posts. Rosenberg said he was not seeking to advance a political agenda, but to remind his agents of their core values, including accountability, diversity and integrity. \"This is how we conduct ourselves. This is how we treat those whom we encounter in our work: victims, witnesses, subjects and defendants. This is who we are,\" he wrote.","label":0}
{"text":"Thousands of people marched through downtown Chicago on Thursday night. The rally was held by the Chicago Teacher s Union. They, along with other groups who stood in solidarity with the union, were demonstrating against the budget cuts, lay-offs, and more.#CTU takes the street #brokeonpurpose pic.twitter.com\/gfj4Buqt0K Aaron Cynic (@aaroncynic) February 4, 2016 @ctuLocal1 #FairContractNow rally through #Chicago loop. #CTU #CPS #reportage #journalism pic.twitter.com\/5sX0qdWVn3 Chris Riha (@TalentedMrRiha) February 5, 2016A major target for the CTU was Bank of America. They claim that BOA and the Chicago Public School system made a number of unwise financial investments that the teachers and students have been deeply hurt by. WGN reports: CPS says it needs the bond money for existing debt payments to cover construction and repair projects.This all comes after the union rejected a contract proposal that would have required members to pay more toward their pension and health care.The district then announced it would slash $75 million from school budgets.According to a Chicago Tribune poll, three times as many Chicagoans side with the teacher s union versus Mayor Rahm Emanuel on how to improve public schools.The survey also found that Emanuel s approval rating on education has fallen to a record low as it has with his overall job performance and handling of crime in the city. #CTU #faircontractnow Sit in started at Bank of America building Photos from inside @Sarah4Justice @CTULocal1 pic.twitter.com\/LFxm8rP4wm Bill Chambers (@Chgofenian) February 4, 2016Protesters filled the streets, causing traffic on the Loop to slow to a crawl. Many of the protesters carried signs that lobbed attacks at Chicago s mayor, Rahm Emanuel.The CTU released a statement, saying: Our goal remains the same: reaching an agreement that protects our children while treating teachers fairly. We know our work is not finished, and we are committed to building a mutually respectful relationship with the CTU and working at the bargaining table around the clock so Chicago children can remain in the classroom. In the meantime, because of our dire financial circumstances, we must proceed forward with painful cuts in the absence of an agreement. We are hopeful we can rescind these cuts by swiftly reaching an agreement. It looks like the Emanuel administration will be embroiled in just as much controversy this year as it was in 2015. Last year, The Nation released an editorial, calling for Emanuel to resign. Among Emanuel s numerous sins, is his terrible track record with educators. Particularly with the teacher s union.#CTU marches against #Rahm pic.twitter.com\/CbTxRRf5s0 Joe Iosbaker (@iosbakerjoe) February 4, 2016Emanuel also garnered national attention over allegations that his administration took part in a cover up to prevent video footage that shows the death Laqaun McDonald, who was shot sixteen times by a Chicago police officer. So far, there has been evidence released that shows that the mayor s office was in working in coordination with the CPD.Featured image from video screenshot via WGN","label":1}
{"text":"The state of Hawaii said in a court motion on Tuesday that it intends to seek a temporary restraining order on Wednesday against President Donald Trump's new executive order restricting travel from six Muslim-majority countries. The Trump administration this week issued the new executive order that supplanted an earlier, more-sweeping one which had been challenged in court by the state of Washington.","label":0}
{"text":"Comments  As the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline continue to escalate, the crackdown from law enforcement has grown harsher and harsher. Hundreds have been arrested by Morton County police, many of them without charge, and have had their civil rights violated by shockingly cruel police officers, who are sexually humiliating their prisoners by strip-searching them and leaving them naked in their cells.  When getting booked at the jail, they were all strip searched, forced to \"squat and cough\" to demonstrate they had nothing hidden in their rectums, then were put in orange jumpsuits. The treatment was the same for Chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Dave Archambault, to a pediatrician from the reservation, Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, to actress Shailene Woodley, star of the films \"Divergent\" and \"Snowden,\" among others.  The use of a strip search for those arrested on trumped-up charges like \"trespassing\" and \"rioting\" is a clear intimidation tactic that shows the the United States government still sees Native Americans as savages to be abused.  LaDonna Brave Bull Allard told The Young Turks how her daughter was arrested, stripped of her clothes by three male and one female officer, and then left naked in a cell overnight. \"They're targeting our families\" she said. Human rights abuses have been widely committed by police and security forces as they try to discourage the protesters.  Rebecca Kemble, Alderwoman from Madison, Wisconsin, recounts how arrested protesters are beaten and thrown into pieces of the very pipeline they are protesting. \"I saw the Marathon County deputy push her down the hill and slam her body and head into the transport van after this.\"  Georgianne Nienaber of the Huffington Post knows where to point the finger for these outrageous crimes.  Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier is the official who sets the tone for police actions in Morton County North Dakota. He alone determines how prisoners are treated. He holds the authority to enforce humane treatment or encourage cruelty designed to instill fear, humiliation, embarrassment and shame. And shame is the ultimate weapon\u2014utilized by the narcissist in a pitiful attempt to gain control and break the spirit of his victims.  This kind of systematic violence is the way the U.S. government has always treated the native inhabitants of the American continent. Very little mainstream news coverage is documenting these crimes, instinctively taking the side of the corporation plotting to desecrate the sacred grounds of the Standing Rock Sioux in order to make a quick buck off of climate-warming and water-poisoning fossil fuels. We cannot allow the police state to squash the will of the people.  Listen to LaDonna Brave Bull Allard tell her story here:","label":1}
{"text":"Jerusalem (CNN) When Israel destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin drew an important line in the sand: No enemy could be permitted to develop weapons of mass destruction. Israel, he declared, would defend itself \"with all the means at our disposal.\" These words still reverberate in Israel today, and they help explain why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is flying to Washington next week to give a controversial speech before Congress on Iran. Netanyahu wants to thwart a nuclear deal world powers are hammering out with Tehran, a deal that his government believes will leave Iran with the means to potentially develop a nuclear weapon -- and leave him with the same choice Begin faced more than three decades ago. \"This is the primary Israeli fear,\" said Ronen Bergman, military and intelligence analyst for the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. \"They are afraid at the end of the day, if negotiations fail, Israel would be left alone to make the call -- whether to contain an Iranian nuclear capability or to make the call on the strike.\" In making the trip to Capitol Hill, Netanyahu is willing to risk the ire of the White House, which is chagrined that he is expected to rail against the administration's deal-making and encourage Congress to push for an Iran sanctions package that President Barack Obama has threatened to veto. And Netanyahu is doing so even amidst recriminations -- over how Republican House Speaker John Boehner and the Israeli Embassy handled the invitation -- that have tainted the atmosphere between the prime minister and the White House. Administration officials charge that the invitation violated protocol and has partisan overtones. While the Israeli leader's speech might only intensify those bad feelings, Netanyahu has said it's worth the cost of stating his case before the American public. Advisers indicate that with a deal looming, he feels that he has less and less time to prevent what he sees as a catastrophic outcome. Netanyahu critics and many analysts see a political motive. His speech to Congress comes two weeks before the Israeli election, in which he is facing a tight race. His security credentials and rhetorical skills are two of his strongest assets, and being welcomed by U.S. senators and representatives could play well on television screens in Tel Aviv. The White House has used the proximity of the elections as its reason for denying Netanyahu an Oval Office meeting during the trip. But many confidants insist that Netanyahu has a strong ideological conviction on the need to block Iran and treats his roles as protector of Israel and the Jewish people with the utmost seriousness. For him, this is a chance to act before Israel is faced with choosing between an Iranian bomb and bombing Iran. Inherent in that choice is the fear Israel cannot count on the United States to stop Tehran. Obama has famously said that he's \"got Israel's back\" when it comes to Iran. Yet Israeli officials say they have watched over the past several years as the Obama administration has backtracked from its firm stance on Iran's nuclear program to a position that could potentially allow Iran to maintain a significant uranium enrichment program. \"What started with zero (centrifuges), then went to a symbolic enrichment capacity of a few hundred. Now it is well known we are speaking about several thousands,\" Israeli Minister of Intelligence Yuval Steinitz said in an interview with CNN. \"We think that the overall goal of the negotiation should be to get rid of the Iranian nuclear threat and not just hold it or restrain it or freeze it.\" Israel maintains that even an Iranian threshold nuclear state, leaving Iran with enough enriched uranium to give it \"break-out capacity\" to build a nuclear weapon, would position Tehran as a superpower in the region and enable it to threaten Israel with impunity. That would challenge the so-called qualitative military edge that Israel has built up over decades to fend off its enemies. Israeli military leaders worry they may have to think twice about responding to say, a Hezbollah attack on Israeli troops, out of fear of Iranian reprisal. \"This is a severe strategic threat to the variety of options that the national security of Israel stands upon,\" Bergman said. \"They want to have the bomb in order not to use it. They want to position themselves as a regional superpower and this would give them a nuclear umbrella over their heads.\" It's a daily threat to their existence that many Israelis believe the United States -- half a world away -- can't possibly understand. And some Israelis aren't as sanguine as Bergman that Iran wouldn't want to use the bomb. \"I have no doubt about the seriousness and the good intentions of the Obama administration,\" said Steinitz, the intelligence minister. \"Maybe we are more concerned because we feel the threat because they are speaking about the elimination of the Jewish state.\" Moreover, Israel fears a nuclear Iran would spark an arms race in the Middle East, potentially surrounding them with a group of nuclear-armed enemies in a region in turmoil. While the United States has long pledged to safeguard Israel's security, Israeli leaders now fear the easing in relations between the United States and Iran following the election of President Hasan Rouhani has clouded the Obama administration's judgment. And the U.S.-Iran thaw has come at the same time that tensions between Obama and Netanyahu have escalated. \"The sense in Israel, and it goes way beyond Netanyahu, is that the president underestimates Iran's duplicity, underestimates Iran's ruthlessness, the religious imperative behind its ideology,\" said David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel news website. In addressing Congress next week, aides say that Prime Minister Netanyahu feels compelled to warn the U.S. and the world that, in his view, beneath its friendly new image, Iran is still intent on wiping Israel off the map. \"I think that he feels fated that he is leading the Jewish people when it potentially faces a genocidal threat,\" Horovitz said. \"That is the Netanyahu mindset -- that people are in peril, and he needs to stand firm and say what he wants to say and if necessary take the step that needs to be taken.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Home \u203a SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY \u203a MOBILE PASSES DESKTOP FOR THE FIRST TIME\u2026 MOBILE PASSES DESKTOP FOR THE FIRST TIME\u2026 0 SHARES  [11\/1\/16] More users around the world are accessing the internet from mobile devices than from desktop computers for the first time, according to internet monitoring firm StatCounter . The combined traffic from mobile and tablet devices tipped the balance at 51.2 percent, vs. 48.7 percent for desktop access, marking the first time this has happened since StatCounter began tracking stats for internet usage.  It's a huge moment for the web overall: this means going forward, companies that haven't yet decided to focus on a mobile-first approach to their internet services and web properties really should, as the trend line is unlikely to reverse.  StatCounter also found that the maturity of the market impacts which is the dominant means of access, and as you might have guessed, mobile platforms are far and away the method of choice for internet access when it comes to emerging markets like India, where they account for 75 percent of use. More mature markets including the UK, the US and Ireland still see use swinging in favor of desktop, but the trend is still showing a narrowing gap. Post navigation","label":1}
{"text":"Obamacare architect blames Republicans for rising premiums pic.twitter.com\/sFlKgPlvzz FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) October 6, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"A CBS News poll released on Monday showed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton holding a 4-point lead over Republican Donald Trump, 45 percent to 41 percent. The survey of 1,753 U.S. adults was taken Nov. 2-6 and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. A Washington Post\/ABC poll released earlier on Monday also found Clinton with a 4 percentage point lead. A separate Bloomberg Politics-Selzer & Co poll found a 3 point lead for the former secretary of state.","label":0}
{"text":"I watched this exchange last night and couldn t believe the insanity seriously. It was curfew and the people in the streets ignored it which is crazy in itself but then Geraldo shows up. He almost comes to blows with rioters and is screamed at. One rioter said, Stop making money off of black pain. The part of all this that s maddening is this woman s excuse that the media was causing these people to be angry. The City Council woman continued to make excuses for these bad actors and blamed the messenger. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Yes, this is the common theme from the left and I believe most Americans are 100% FED Up! with it.","label":1}
{"text":"Senate Banking Committee Democrats on Monday asked the panel's Republican chairman in a letter to \"clear the backlog\" of 16 nominations by President Barack Obama to posts related to financial oversight, national security and other areas. The committee, led by Republican Senator Richard Shelby, has \"failed to carry out one of its basic duties\" for more than a year, the 10 Democratic banking committee senators wrote in the Feb. 22 letter. It is the only Senate committee that did not act on any nominees last year, the Democrats wrote. Of the 16 nominations pending before the committee, four have been waiting for action for more than a year while others have been \"in limbo\" for more than nine months, the Democratic senators wrote. Shelby must \"stop obstructing\" the nominations, they wrote in a separate statement. All 10 Democrats on the committee signed the letter, including Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Charles Schumer of New York. A spokeswoman for Shelby did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shelby has said he is concerned that Obama has not nominated anyone as the U.S. Federal Reserve's vice chair for supervision, a post created by the Dodd Frank financial reform law, but which has never been filled. \"We are aware of your concern that the Administration has not nominated anyone to serve as Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve, but the response to one vacancy should not be the creation of 16 more,\" the Democratic banking committee senators wrote. It was unclear why President Obama has not appointed a nominee for the Fed post. A White House spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. The Senate Banking Committee backlog includes Lisa Fairfax and Hester Peirce, Obama's two nominees to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Adam Szubin, nominated as the Treasury Department's under secretary for terrorism and financial crimes.","label":0}
{"text":"The Brazilian authorities arrested 10 members of an Islamist militant group that was organizing terrorist attacks, officials announced Thursday, raising tension around the country just two weeks before the start of the Olympic Games. The Federal Police said in a statement that the suspects belonged to a group called the Defenders of Sharia. Agents from an antiterrorism unit are investigating the group's activities in several states, including Rio de Janeiro, where the Games will take place. The arrests were announced at a time when the Brazilian authorities are coming under scrutiny over security preparations for the Olympics. Responding to the truck massacre last week in Nice, France, Brazil's sports minister, Leonardo Picciani, told reporters on Wednesday that \"the government is absolutely convinced that the Games will be safe. \" Brazil's justice minister, Alexandre de Moraes, said Thursday that Brazil's main intelligence agency, known as ABIN, was working with foreign intelligence services and the Federal Police, an investigative force in Brazil that is similar to the F. B. I. Officials said that the people arrested had communicated with one another via WhatsApp and Telegram, two mobile messaging services. Mr. Moraes said the suspects had been taken into custody \"when they went from basic commentaries about the Islamic State to preparatory acts. \" Still, Mr. Moraes emphasized the group's embryonic nature, calling it \"an amateur cell without any preparation. \" He said that its members had been seeking to buy weapons in Paraguay, including an rifle, but that no such arms acquisitions were confirmed. \"This is a disorganized cell,\" Mr. Moraes said, who described all those arrested as Brazilian citizens. He said that intercepted messages showed members of the group celebrating the recent attacks in Orlando, Fla. and Nice. Mr. Moraes did not provide more details about what kind of attack the group was planning, but he said officials had to act \"because of the proximity of the Olympics. \" Marcos Josegrei da Silva, the federal judge overseeing the case, said on Thursday that the suspects ranged in age from 20 to 40, and that they communicated with each other using code names in Arabic even though none appeared to have Arab ancestry. \"It's hard to call them terrorists,\" Judge da Silva said. \"But even though they don't have a very solid organization, the arrests are warranted from a legal point of view. \" One suspect, identified in Brazilian media reports as Vitor Barbosa Magalh\u00e3es, 23, converted to Islam several years ago and lived in the city of Guarulhos in S\u00e3o Paulo State's metropolitan area, where he works in his father's car repair shop. Mr. Magalh\u00e3es's wife told reporters he had traveled to Egypt in 2012 to study Arabic and Islam. After returning to Brazil, he gave classes in Arabic over YouTube and maintained a WhatsApp group to discuss Islam, she said. Concern has been increasing here over the potential for terrorist attacks around the Olympics, with police squads responding to various reports of bags left in public areas (no explosive devices have been found). These fears are relatively new in Brazil, a country that has largely been spared the kind of attacks that have horrified Europe, the Middle East, the United States and many other parts of the world. Brazilian officials have also said they were enhancing security measures following a report by the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadist websites, saying that a group calling itself Ansar Brazil had proclaimed allegiance to Abu Bakr the leader of the Islamic State. The arrests on Thursday marked a turning point in the way Brazil's government generally discusses terrorism threats. For more than a decade, and especially after the Sept. 11 attacks, Brazilian intelligence officials have been monitoring individuals suspected of links to terrorism. During that time, however, \"Brazilian government officials kept saying publicly that no credible evidence exists that people who live inside Brazil have links to terrorism,\" said Marcos Ferreira, a scholar focusing on terrorism in South America at the Federal University of Para\u00edba. At the same time, other experts voiced caution as to whether the suspects would have put a plot into motion. \"Initially, these arrests seem very fragile,\" said Rodrigo Monteiro, a security specialist at the Federal Fluminense University in Rio. \"We need to wait a bit for the government to define the threat in a better way. \" On Thursday, the justice minister, Mr. Moraes, said that violent crime remained the priority ahead of the Olympics. Despite gun control measures, Rio is still awash in weapons, with drug gangs wielding control over parts of the city. The authorities have begun deploying tens of thousands of troops to bolster security in Rio. \"The biggest concern is still crime,\" Mr. Moraes said.","label":0}
{"text":"In a move that will most likely never be described as progress, the state of Missouri has voted to pass SB 5, a bill that among other controversial and oppressive laws, would permit employment and housing discrimination against women who use birth control or choose to have an abortion. The bill passed by the Senate tonight is a good start, Will Scharf, policy director for Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, wrote on Twitter. Looking forward to seeing how the House can substantially improve it to protect life! The main reason behind SB 5 is to impose more restrictions on abortion providers in the state, such as requiring them to send fetal tissue samples to a pathologist within five days, the pathologist then having 72 hours to respond. Currently there are no deadlines, but despite the bill being supported under the guise of women s health, requirements such as this serve absolutely no medical purpose whatsoever. Furthermore, the move will just impose more costs, both monetary and bureaucratic, on abortion clinics, ultimately forcing them to eventually close down, which was the goal all along.But there are even more disgusting, farther-reaching repercussions of SB 5 The bill overturns a St. Louis ordinance that prevented discrimination from employers and landlords against people based on their reproductive health decisions. To put it bluntly, if the bill is passed, women could be fired or evicted in Missouri for having an abortion, using contraception, or becoming pregnant while unmarried.The ordinance that was passed in February had its share of opposition. Archbishop Robert Carlson released a statement criticizing the passing of the ordinance as a terrible moment for a city with such proud history, adding The laws of the city of St. Louis now actively protect and promote the killing of unborn children. Thomas Buckley, general counsel to the Archdiocese, said the ordinance promotes religious discrimination against those who don t want to be complicit in the evils of abortion. He then took it a step further, saying The Archdiocese will not and cannot comply with this. We will go straight to federal court. That is not far removed from what they did. And they won. Soon in Missouri if an employer has a problem with a female staff member s use of contraception, which is about 99% of sexually active women between the ages of 15-44, their employment could be terminated and landlords could even deny them a home.","label":1}
{"text":"For some time now, the United States has been experiencing a rapid decline in gas prices. It s almost hard to forget when the last time filling up at the tank was a burdensome thing that s because nearly two years has gone by since gas was over $3.00 a gallon (on average across the United States). Over the last year or so, gas prices have dropped even further, due to Saudia Arabia continuing to keep up output, and the Iran deal that is expected to glut the global market even more so. All of this is great news but it looks like the good news will keep on flowing (pun intended) according to experts in the industry.The AAA and GasBuddy, two top organizations that follow gasoline prices, say that if refinery capacity stays strong the price of a gallon of gasoline could reach historic lows of $1.00 a gallon in some areas a level that hasn t been reached since 1999. That would be quite a remarkable event.Prices are already low by historical standards and depending on which part of the country you live in, already under $2.00 a gallon. If you look at the map below, you will easily be able to see which parts of the United States already receive the cheapest gas. There are very few areas colored in dark green (lower than $1.38 a gallon). Most of the middle part of the country is either light green ($1.68-$1.83), or yellow ($1.83-$1.98). If gas is pushed downward to $1.00 a gallon, that s still a huge percentage drop no matter where you live.Pic via Gas BuddyGas prices are mostly driven by four things: oil prices, proximity to refineries, refinery capacity and state taxes and levies.We already know that crude oil prices are going to continue to fall. Although, there are a few detractors, there always are. Nevermind that here s what the money managers that run the economy are doing: while 6,346 of them bet on higher prices (okay fair enough) 17,517 of them bet on lower prices. It s not even close. This is the least bullish investors have been on oil in more than five years, according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.All in all, gasoline futures fell 1.83 cents or 1.6%, to $1.12 a gallon the lowest it s been since February 2009. And gasoline also fell 14.33 cents a gallon (11% for the week) which also happens to be the largest weekly loss since September 2009.If the experts are right, $1.00 a gallon gasoline may not be that far off. Thanks, Obama!Pic via Gas Buddy","label":1}
{"text":"Clinton's #1 Huma Abedin Caught On Hidden Camera Rant To Make America Islamic State Oct 28, 2016 Previous post  If we are to believe Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin, then Hillary Clinton's immigration policy is essentially to just let all Syrians into our country. And according to interviews with Syrians, this works out pretty well. Many of them are now gearing up to get fake passports aimed at allowing them entry to Germany, where they will likely end up in the United States once Hillary takes the Presidential helm.  This, folks, is the real direction we are headed.","label":1}
{"text":"0 comments You read that correctly. Here is the ugly truth that is sending Black Lives Matter leadership into orbit over Hillary's pandering hypocrisy! Eric Garner died a tragic, unexpected death at the hands of a police officer. His death has sometime's referred to as \"the chokehold death.\" Video of the sad episode can be seen below: Eric Garner's daughter, Erica, is a prominent Black Lives Matter leader, and she is none to pleased at what WikiLeaks has brought to light. In discussing an upcoming statement to describe Hillary's stance on gun violence, Clinton staffer Nick Merrill wrote: \"Finally, I know we have Erica Garner issues but we don't want to mention Eric at all? I can see her coming after us for leaving him out of the piece.\" Maya Harris replied, \"Eric Garner not included because not killed by gun violence.\" The full email can be read here . Hillary's campaign was clearly considering how to best use, or not use, the Eric Garner story to push their agenda. The revelation, understandably, has set off a firestorm in the Black Lives Matter community. Erica Garner is teeing off! I'm troubled by the revelation that you and this campaign actually discussed \"using\" Eric Garner \u2026 Why would you want to \"use\" my dad?  \u2014 officialERICA GARNER (@es_snipes) October 27, 2016 I dont care what BLM activists endorse #Hillary \u2026 They WILL continue more of the same, they dont care about Black lives and I got proof!  \u2014 officialERICA GARNER (@es_snipes) October 27, 2016 https:\/\/t.co\/jzfUl0FbXF In this #PodestaEmails leak @CoreyCiorciari n @NickMerrill plot to use police violence victims to push gun control  \u2014 officialERICA GARNER (@es_snipes) October 27, 2016 They can get whoever they want to play their game,she called YOU super predators, they passed the crime bill and welfare reform. JUST SAY NO  \u2014 officialERICA GARNER (@es_snipes) October 27, 2016 If you vote for her by default you are endorsing her and whatever she does. Remember her hiding being Nergos that supported the crime bill?  \u2014 officialERICA GARNER (@es_snipes) October 27, 2016  Do you blame Erica Garner for feeling the way that she does? For years, since the days of Lyndon Johnson, the Democrats have pandered to blacks, women, and other minorities. Many times, these minority groups have fallen in step behind these pandering, hypocritical, power-hungry leaders.  With WikiLeaks on the scene to reveal the truth, it appears that times are changing!","label":1}
{"text":"Did you catch that? Information accidentally collected I think it is alarming. There seems to be a universal trend toward more surveillance and more surveillance that impacts Americans privacy without obtaining a warrant -Lawyer for the ACLU During his final year in office, President Barack Obama s team significantly expanded efforts to search National Security Agency intercepts for information about Americans, distributing thousands of intelligence reports across government with the unredacted names of U.S. residents during the midst of a divisive 2016 presidential election:Barack Obama s top aides routinely took advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats. Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures.The data, made available this week by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, provides the clearest evidence to date of how information accidentally collected by the NSA overseas about Americans was subsequently searched and disseminated after President Obama loosened privacy protections to make such sharing easier in 2011 in the name of national security. A court affirmed his order.The revelations are particularly sensitive since the NSA is legally forbidden from directly spying on Americans and its authority to conduct warrantless searches on foreigners is up for renewal in Congress later this year. And it comes as lawmakers investigate President Trump s own claims his privacy was violated by his predecessor during the 2016 election.","label":1}
{"text":"Example #490927 that Trump is terrible with children: While making his way through the crowd at the White House Easter egg roll, Trump was asked by a young child if he would sign his hat. Somehow he screwed that up.After being stopped, Trump grabs a pen, quickly signs the hat and then throws the hat deep into the crowd. Some in the crowd literally shout nooo! as he does it. Trump, oblivious to the fact that he just screwed this kid over, grabs another hat. Signs it. And does the exact same thing.What is going through his head?A kid asks Trump to sign his hat at the White House Easter Egg Roll. The president signs and then tosses the hat into the crowd. pic.twitter.com\/7ExdhpO97H POLITICO (@politico) April 17, 2017At the end of the clip, Trump asks whose hat? as if the kid he screwed over wasn t standing right in front of him the whole time. It s unclear if the original kid ever got his signed hat.Even setting aside this awful moment, Trump s Easter egg roll was a shoddily run event.Other than that, everything was perfect.","label":1}
{"text":"Is former DNC Chair Donna Brazile attempting to tie Hillary to the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich in her new book Hacks ? What does Brazile know? Is she in danger if she says too much? Is Brazile offering just enough information, so that authorities are pressured into looking into a connection with Hillary and Seth Rich s murder? From her book Hacks :I felt some responsibility for Seth Rich s death. I didn t bring him into the DNC, but I helped keep him there working on voting rights. With all I knew now about the Russians hacking, I could not help but wonder if they had played some part in his unsolved murder. Besides that, racial tensions were high that summer and I worried that he was murdered for being white on the wrong side of town. [My friend] Elaine expressed her doubts about that, and I heard her. The FBI said that they did not see any Russian fingerprints there.Daily Caller Brazile repeatedly returns to the subject of being haunted by Rich s murder, even though other Democrats have pounced on anyone who suggested that the murder was anything other than a robbery gone wrong. The DNC data staffer was killed days before Wikileaks began publishing its emails, and his valuables were not taken.100 Percent Fed Up The private investigator, Rod Wheeler, who was hired by the Rich family to get to the bottom of the murder of their son, DNC staffer Seth Rich, offered startling information on the Rich murder case when he appeared on the Sean Hannity show on May 15, 2017. Wheeler spoke about the mystery of why they can t locate the computer Rich used. They went on to discuss clues in the case that point to collusion between the DC police and the DNC. The most shocking information comes at the 4:20 mark when Wheeler says that a high ranking official at the DNC wanted to know why he was snooping around.Rod Wheeler: Here s one other thing that is going to be startling I m just gonna say this right now. I reached out to the police department way back in March when the family first hired me right..to get involved. I didn t hear anything from the police department for 2-3 days.Guess what I learned yesterday from the family of Seth Rich? The police department did not call me back because someone, a high ranking official at the DNC check this out a high ranking official at the DNC when I called the police department, they got that information and called the Rich family wanting to know, why was I snooping around? Shorty after WND wrote a story that outed Donna Brazile as the high ranking DNC representative who allegedly called the police to ask why a private investigator was snooping into Rich s death, Twitter SUSPENDED WND s account!Here s the title and an excerpt from the WND article:BOMBSHELL: DONNA BRAZILE WARNED OFF PRIVATE EYE ON SETH RICH MURDEREx-DNC chairwoman reportedly asked cops why investigator is snooping into mysterious case Alicia Powe and Liz Crokin wrote the story that was also posted to and deleted from the social media platform by Twitter: Former Democratic National Committee interim chairwoman Donna Brazile is the high-ranking DNC representative who allegedly called police and the family of murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich and demanded to know why a private investigator was snooping into Rich s death, the private eye revealed to WND Monday. The high-ranking DNC official that called the police after I inquired about Rich s case was Donna Brazile, veteran homicide detective Rod Wheeler told WND. Why shouldn t I reveal who it was? Brazile, who was also a CNN contributor and a Hillary for America donor at the time, was caught providing Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton with questions that would later be asked of Clinton at a televised CNN town hall. In an interview with Fox News before the election, Brazile denied leaking the questions to Clinton. But in a March 17, 2017, column for Time magazine, she finally admitted doing so, saying it was a mistake I will forever regret. According to WND, their Twitter account was suspended because of this Seth Rich investigation bombshell.Daily Caller But Brazile says she had a spook, with connections to the intelligence community, who told her after the killing that she needed protection for herself, including cameras, alarms and backup power at her house, and that she heeded his advice.I knew the campaign had over $3 million set aside in a legal fund. Could she help me get this lawsuit started? And don t forget the murder of Seth Rich, I told her. Did she want to contribute to Seth s reward fund? We still hadn t found the person responsible for the tragic murder of this bright young DNC staffer. You re right, she said. We re going to get to that. But she really had to go. She had made the call and checked it off her list, and I accepted after we said our goodbyes that I might never hear from her again.","label":1}
{"text":"Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared the end of Islamic State on Tuesday while a senior military commander thanked the thousands of martyrs killed in operations organised by Iran to defeat the militant group in Syria and Iraq. Today with God s guidance and the resistance of people in the region we can say that this evil has either been lifted from the head of the people or has been reduced, Rouhani said in an address broadcast live on state TV. Of course the remnants will continue but the foundation and roots have been destroyed. Major General Qassem Soleimani, a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards, also said Islamic State had been defeated, in a message sent on Tuesday to Iran s supreme leader which was published on the Guards news site, Sepah News. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei congratulated Soleimani on the defeat of Islamic State and said it was a blow against Israel, America and its allies, an allusion to Saudi Arabia. It was a blow against the past and current governments of America and the regimes linked to it in the region who created this group and gave them every kind of support so they could expand their malevolent power in west Asia, Khamenei said in a statement published on his official website. In June Islamic State carried out its first attack in Iran, killing 18 people in Tehran, testing the government s belief that by backing offensives against the group elsewhere in the region it could keep the militant group away from Iran. Iranian media have often carried video and pictures of Soleimani, who commands the Quds Force, the branch of the Guards responsible for operations outside Iran, at frontline positions in battles against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The Revolutionary Guards, a powerful military force which also oversees an economic empire worth billions of dollars, has been fighting in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the central government in Baghdad for several years. More than 1,000 members of the Guards, including senior commanders, have been killed in Syria and Iraq. The Syrian conflict has entered a new phase with the capture at the weekend by government forces and their allies of Albu Kamal, the last significant town in Syria held by Islamic State, where Soleimani was pictured by Iranian media last week. Iraqi forces captured the border town of Rawa, the last remaining town there under Islamic State control, on Friday, signaling the collapse of the so-called caliphate it proclaimed in 2014 across vast swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territory. Most of the forces battling Islamic State in Syria and Iraq have said they expect it to go underground and turn to a guerrilla insurgency using sleeper cells and bombings. In his address on Tuesday, Rouhani accused the United States and Israel of supporting Islamic State. He also criticized Arab powers in the region and asked why they had not spoken out about civilian deaths in Yemen s conflict. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and other Arab states criticized Iran and its Lebanese Shi ite ally Hezbollah at an emergency meeting in Cairo on Sunday, calling for a united front to counter Iranian interference. Soleimani acknowledged the multinational force Iran has helped organize in the fight against Islamic State and thanked the thousands of martyrs and wounded Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani defenders of the shrine . He pointed to the decisive role played by Hezbollah and the group s leader Seyed Hassan Nasrallah and highlighted the thousands of Iraqi Shi ite volunteers, known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces, who have fought Islamic State in Iraq. On websites linked to the Guards, members of the organization killed in Syria and Iraq are praised as protectors of Shi ite holy sites and labeled defenders of the shrine . Rouhani is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan in Russia on Wednesday to discuss the Syria conflict. The Revolutionary Guards initially kept quiet about their military role in both Syria and Iraq but have become more outspoken about it as casualties have mounted. They frame their engagement as an existential struggle against the Sunni Muslim fighters of Islamic State, who see Shi ites, the majority of Iran s population, as apostates. Last month, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the U.S. Treasury Department authority to impose economic sanctions on Guards members in response to what Washington calls its efforts to destabilize and undermine its opponents in the Middle East.","label":0}
{"text":"The officials decision to keep information cite deep mistrust Judge Napolitano has a great solution QUIT! The people who re loyal to Barak Obama need to go!","label":1}
{"text":"Marco Rubio finished third in Monday's Iowa caucuses, but his Republican White House rivals are attacking him as though he were the victor, and on Wednesday the U.S. senator from Florida peppered his speech with humble caveats that seemed designed to deflect the hits. As the 2016 candidates looked ahead to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has called Rubio \"the boy in the bubble,\" suggesting he gives the same speech no matter where he goes. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is campaigning for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, said Rubio could not win a general election because of his positions on abortion and immigration. Bush and Ohio Governor John Kasich both said the country needed an experienced commander in chief, in what appeared to be a jab at Rubio, a first-term senator. In the run-up to the Iowa caucuses, Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, two anti-establishment candidates, had dominated the polls in the state while Rubio lagged well behind. But on Monday, he racked up a surprisingly strong third-place finish, garnering the support of 23 percent of Republican caucus goers, just below Trump's 24 percent second-place finish. Cruz, a senator from Texas, won Iowa with 28 percent. Many pundits had predicted Rubio would struggle to get much above 15 percent to 20 percent in the state. Rubio struck a triumphant tone in his post-caucus speech. \"This is the moment they said would never happen,\" he said, adding that the people of Iowa had \"sent a very clear message.\" On Wednesday, though, he gave a cautious outlook on his prospects in New Hampshire and beyond. Rubio said he was leaving his fate in the Republican U.S. presidential primary contests in God's hands, and added that he hoped his children would be proud of him \"no matter how this turns out.\" \"I just want to do as well as we possibly can here in New Hampshire,\" Rubio told reporters. After emerging as the leading \"establishment\" candidate competing with Trump and Cruz, Rubio faces high stakes in New Hampshire. His elevated stature in the race has given his rivals added incentive to attack him. Some voters in the state seemed to be warming to him. Grace Freije, 63, of Bow, New Hampshire, said she had decided to support Rubio after gravitating earlier toward Christie. Steve McMahon, 65, said the same. \"He's not a divisive person,\" McMahon said. \"This guy's got the best shot at winning.\" (Reporting By Emily Flitter; Editing by Caren Bohan and Jonathan Oatis) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters' editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.","label":0}
{"text":"Wow! What a week for the Democrats! Nothing like the truth to bring the Dems to their knees! With the start of the DNC Convention, it s looking like the Bernie supporters are going to put on a huge demonstration. This ll be interesting since their chairwoman has been ousted and Hillary just hired her. And they said the Republicans are divided? This gathering of leftists will show us what divided looks like get ready for chaos!PHILADELPHIA The Democrats convention kicking off Monday still faces the potential for rowdy protests from Bernie Sanders delegates and supporters, despite the ouster of Democratic National Committee leader Debbie Wasserman Schultz serving as somewhat of a peace offering to liberal factions of the party that have accused her of tipping the scales for Hillary Clinton.Sanders supporters were angry over leaked emails that show the Florida congresswoman and her team blasting Sanders and discussing ways to undermine him.While her resignation could calm that storm, the liberal wing still appears intent on protesting over other grievances including Clinton, the party s presumptive presidential nominee, picking Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate.Norman Solomon, a Sanders delegate from California, said Sunday that Clinton picking a centrist like Kaine is an assault on the progressive agenda. He said the roughly 1,250 Sanders delegates connected to his Bernie Delegates Network are considering walking out during the Virginia senator s expected acceptance speech at the Wells Fargo Center, and they are even looking into contesting his nomination.","label":1}
{"text":"Fixing the corruption problem in China s ruling Communist Party is world class hard and the battle will never end, the country s top graft-buster told Singapore s prime minister in a rare meeting with a visiting foreign leader. Wang Qishan, who heads the party s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, has been at the forefront of President Xi Jinping s fight against deep-seated corruption, and speculation has swirled about whether he will retire or stay on at next month s key party Congress. Meeting Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the central leadership s Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing, Wang said the party s anti-corruption campaign and efforts to supervise itself had been highly effective. Carrying out an operation on yourself to cure an illness is world class hard, the commission cited Wang as saying, in a statement late on Wednesday. The party has long insisted it has no need for an independent anti-corruption mechanism, in a country where the party also controls the legal system. Wang said that the final aim in the graft fight was to find an effective route to self-supervision for a party that has been in power for a long time, and to always maintain the party s progressiveness and cleanliness . The party s efforts have won the trust of the people and demonstrates the party s confidence in its system, he added. The anti-corruption effort is always on the road , Wang said, using a frequently used party expression to refer to how the campaign will not end. Singapore s Straits Times said that the meeting with Wang had been requested by Lee, and that Wang told Lee he was surprised but happy the request had been made. So I sought permission and I am here meeting you and your delegation today, Wang told Lee, the newspaper reported. Wang, who is 69 and sits on the party s elite ruling Standing Committee, should retire at next month s party Congress according to unwritten party rules on age limits, but he is close to Xi and could stay on in some capacity, sources with ties to the leadership have said.","label":0}
{"text":"Companies including Cars.com, Peloton, and Leesa Sleep have all given in to pressure to cease advertising on the show over Hannity s pursuit of now retracted claims made by Fox News that murdered DNC employee Seth Rich had contact with Wikileaks before his death.Leesa Sleep even bragged about cutting off their advertising with Sean Hannity on Twitter. They apparently made 11K liberals very happy with their decision. The big question is how many conservatives will they lose as customers for their high-end mattresses?We adjust our media buying every day and we can confirm that we are no longer advertising on Sean Hannity. Leesa (@leesasleep) May 24, 2017Cars.com would like you to consider purchasing one of their certified pre-owned options. They must be addressing their new liberal audience with this tweet, since conservatives are likely now shopping with their competition like autotrader.com for instance Shopping for a new or used car but don't know about the certified pre-owned option? Find out more here: https:\/\/t.co\/pTb209UzBs Cars.com (@carsdotcom) May 20, 2017Peloton bragged about the $1.25 billion value of their company on Twitter yesterday. Bringing a Peloton Cycle bike home with you comes with a hefty price tag of $1,995. You will, however, need to pay a $39 per month subscription fee to continue taking spin classes over the HD screen. Peloton has a link on Amazon where users can review their bikes. Feel free to review their bikes HERE..@WSJ features Peloton's latest round of financing, which values the company at $1.25 billion: https:\/\/t.co\/MeLC9HULCo #ridepeloton Peloton (@RidePeloton) May 24, 2017 I totally and completely understand how upset and how hard this is on this family, especially over the recent coverage of Seth s death, he said. I ve been communicating with them. I got a very heartfelt note. I also sent them a heartfelt note back. However, out of respect for the family s wishes, for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time, Hannity continued, although he later contended that he had retracted nothing and would continue to try to get to the truth. In a series of tweets on Wednesday, Hannity accused figures including George Soros, David Brock of Media Matters, and failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of liberal fascism, after his advertisers were reportedly inundated with emails from left-wing groups asking them to stop advertising on the show. Breitbart","label":1}
{"text":"Billionaire Carl Icahn will advise Donald Trump on rescinding what the activist investor called \"excessive regulation\" on U.S. businesses, the president-elect's transition team announced on Wednesday. Icahn will serve as a special adviser, not a federal employee, and he will not have specific duties, Trump's team said in a statement. He will not take a salary, a transition aide said. The pick could draw scrutiny because Icahn, whose major investments include insurer American International Group and oil refining business CVR Energy, could help shape rules meant to police Wall Street and protect the environment. In the transition team statement released on Wednesday, Icahn said it was time to \"break free of excessive regulation\" and let businesses create jobs. Icahn, an early supporter of Trump's White House bid who has at times been outspoken about regulation, has already helped the transition team weigh candidates to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. He has held meetings at his New York City office, not far from Trump Tower but away from reporters staked out there, people familiar with the talks said. Current SEC Chair Mary Jo White will leave in January. Candidates to replace her have included former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins and Debra Wong Yang, a former federal prosecutor, a source familiar with the matter said. Over the years, Icahn's businesses have had occasional regulatory run-ins, according to disclosures with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. He is a large investor in nutrition supplement maker Herbalife, which said at one time it was investigated by the SEC. \"Voters who wanted Trump to drain the swamp just got another face full of mud,\" Democratic National Committee spokesman Eric Walker said in a statement, referring to Trump's pledge to clean up Washington. Icahn, who was once known as a corporate raider, said in a recent Reuters interview the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking law \"went too far.\" He is a critic of the U.S. biofuels program that requires oil companies to use renewable fuels such as ethanol. \"I do believe that, to some extent, we have gone overboard concerning the environment. But I leave that to the experts in that area,\" Icahn told CNN in a recent interview. Trump and Icahn share some history in the casino business. Icahn this year helped shutter the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resorts in Atlantic City, two years after buying it out of bankruptcy. The casino was once a prized part of Trump's empire.","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump decried on Thursday the removal of monuments to the pro-slavery Civil War Confederacy, echoing white nationalists and drawing stinging rebukes from fellow Republicans in a controversy that has inflamed racial tensions. Trump has alienated Republicans, corporate leaders and U.S. allies, rattled markets and prompted speculation about possible White House resignations with his comments since Saturday's violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, which came in the aftermath of a white nationalist protest against the removal of a Confederate statue. Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, questioned Trump's capacity to govern. \"The president ... has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful,\" said Corker, who Trump had considered for the job of secretary of state. Corker said Trump needed to make \"radical changes.\" Trump unleashed attacks on two Republican U.S. senators, Jeff Flake and Lindsey Graham, in a series of Twitter posts on Thursday, raising fresh doubts about his ability to work with lawmakers in his own party to win passage of his legislative agenda, which includes tax cuts and infrastructure spending. He took aim at the removal or consideration for removal of Confederate statues and monuments in a long list of cities in California, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Missouri, Montana, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas, as well as Washington, D.C. \"Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn from it,\" Trump wrote on Twitter, refusing to move past the controversy. \"Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!\" Trump said. He was referring to two Confederate generals in the Civil War that ended in 1865, and to early U.S. presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves but whose legacies are overwhelmingly honored. Opponents call the statues a festering symbol of racism, while supporters say they honor American history. Some of the monuments have become rallying points for white nationalists but also have the support of some people interested in historical preservation. Trump also denied he had spoken of \"moral equivalency\" between white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who clashed with anti-racism activists in Charlottesville. U.S. stocks suffered their biggest drop in three months on Thursday as the turmoil surrounding the White House sapped investor confidence that Trump's ambitious economic agenda would become reality. Equity index futures fell a bit further after the close of regular trading, with S&P 500 emini futures heading into the overnight trading session about 2 points lower. The U.S. stock market has not followed a 1 percent-down day with a second straight day of losses since Trump was elected in November, so Friday's session is being watched as a significant test of the market's resilience. Amid the controversy, the White House knocked down rumors that Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn might resign. An official said Cohn \"intends to remain in his position\" as National Economic Council director at the White House. Trump announced the disbanding of two high-profile business advisory councils on Wednesday after the resignation of several corporate executives over his Charlottesville remarks. On Thursday, a White House official said Trump had dropped plans for an advisory council on infrastructure. In another indication of businesses not wanting to be associated with the president, the world-renowned Cleveland Clinic canceled a planned 2018 Florida fundraiser at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Florida resort, where it had held such events for seven straight years. Spokeswoman Eileen Sheil said the Cleveland Clinic considered \"a variety of factors\" in deciding to cancel an event that typically generates $1 million a year. The clinic's chief executive, Toby Cosgrove, was a member of a one of the two councils that disbanded on Wednesday. James Murdoch, chairman of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc and son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, slammed Trump's response to Charlottesville in an email to friends and pledged to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, the New York Times reported. James Murdoch wrote that Trump's comments should \"concern all of us as Americans and free people,\" the Times said. Twenty-First Century Fox owns Fox News Channel, a favorite with Trump and his conservative supporters. 'HATE-FILLED INDIVIDUALS' The Charlottesville violence erupted when white nationalists marched to protest against the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. A 32-year-old woman, Heather Heyer, was killed when a man described as a white nationalist crashed his car into the counter-protesters. Trump has blamed the Charlottesville violence on not just the white nationalist rally organizers but also the counter-protesters, and said there were \"very fine people\" among both groups. He also expressed distaste for removing Confederate statues in a heated news conference on Tuesday. After Trump blasted Graham on Twitter, the senator who was one of Trump's rivals for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination fired back. \"Because of the manner in which you have handled the Charlottesville tragedy you are now receiving praise from some of the most racist and hate-filled individuals and groups in our country. For the sake of our Nation - as our President - please fix this,\" Graham said. \"History is watching us all.\" Another Republican senator, Dan Sullivan, also said on Twitter: \"Anything less than complete & unambiguous condemnation of white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the KKK by (Trump) is unacceptable. Period.\" Graham had said on Wednesday Trump's remarks at his news conference the day before had suggested \"moral equivalency\" between the white nationalists and anti-racism demonstrators and called on the president to use his words to heal Americans. \"Publicity seeking Lindsey Graham falsely stated that I said there is moral equivalency between the KKK, neo-Nazis & white supremacists and people like Ms. Heyer. Such a disgusting lie. He just can't forget his election trouncing. The people of South Carolina will remember!\" Trump wrote. In a separate tweet, Trump called Flake \"WEAK on borders, crime and a non-factor in Senate. He's toxic!\" and appeared to endorse Kelli Ward, Flake's Republican challenger in his 2018 re-election race. Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, called for the immediate removal of Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol. U.S. Senator Cory Booker, also a Democrat, said he would introduce legislation so that could be done. \"There is no room for celebrating the violent bigotry of the men of the Confederacy in the hallowed halls of the United States Capitol or in places of honor across the country,\" Pelosi said in a statement. A spokesman for Republican U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said it was up to U.S. states to determine which statues were displayed on their behalf in the Capitol building.","label":0}
{"text":"by Yves Smith  The law firm Akin Gump issued a warning that might chill the bones of some private equity general partners: clawbacks may be a-comin'. From the firm's website :  In recent months, managers of private equity funds in the energy sector have been facing a scenario they likely never imagined: having to return millions of dollars of their \"carried interest\" earnings back to investors.  For newbies to this private equity practice, private equity funds typically pay the profit share, prototypically 20% once a target rate of return has been met. What creates the possibility of a clawback is the fact that for most US funds, the profit computation and any payouts are made every time a portfolio company is sold. By contrast, in \"European\" deals, the carry fees are paid only at the end of the fund's life.  The conventional US approach, combined with strong general partner incentives to realize profits on at least some promising deals early in the fund's life, means that the general partners can pay themselves carry fees that are more than they deserved once the impact of doggy companies, which are sold late in the fund's life, are factored in. Hence the limited partnership agreements provide for \"clawbacks,\" as in the recovery of overpayments of carry fees.  Yet as we've written, clawbacks are almost never paid in practice. Why? First, the clawback provisions have tax language that is very favorable to the general partners, and has the economic effect that they can hang on what are excessive carry fees based on raw cash flows. Second, possession is 9\/10ths of the law. In those instances where the general partner owes limited partner clawbacks, the general partner usually goes to the limited partners and offers them a special deal (details often unspecified!) on their next fund. Needless to say, this approach has the desirable effect of pre-committing those limited partners.  Akin Gump flagged specifically the lousy performance of some unnamed energy funds. In light of the discussion above, the limited partners have been sufficiently burned that they have no intention of investing in energy funds any time soon, and may also be willing to be atypically forceful about getting money back. Recall that limited partners fetishize maintaining friction-free relationships with general partners. Again from the firm's missive:  Several energy-related funds that were formed in nascent stages of the boom now have terms ending during collapse-protracted downturns. Managers may feel as though they could recoup some losses if they could delay liquidating assets until oil recovers further. Many fund agreements provide for a one or two year extension of the fund's investment period at the manager's discretion; however, to the extent that this option has already been exhausted, some managers are now going back to investors to seek additional time and, potentially, additional capital. To placate investors in such cases, a manager may need to reduce or eliminate management fees charged to a fund for the duration of any extension period. Unfortunately, apart from extending a fund's investment or harvest period, managers have little recourse after a fund's inception.  In other words, Mr. Market did not bail these funds out and a day of reckoning is coming.  Interestingly, Akins Gump uses pain in the oil patch to argue that general partners should consider building in better means for assuring that general partners can pay clawbacks back if they are due and owing. What this document reveals is that limited partners have signed up for clawback agreements that are likely to be empty in practice. The money went years ago into the firm's carry pool, and hence for payouts to senior and mid-level staffers. The top dogs may have tied the money up in investments or property (houses, art) that they can't readily liquidate. Or the funds may be beyond their reach entirely by having gone to outlays (political fundraising or a campaign, big gifts to charities) or an ex-wife. People below the senior level may have moved on. And perhaps as important, all the true partners (owners of the management company) have vis-a-vis everyone else who is in the firm is moral suasion. How far do you think that is going to go in getting people to write checks to disgorge monies they banked or worse spent, years ago?  What is striking about the Akins Gump article is that the firm is giving what amounts to marketing rather than legal advice:  The best way a manager can avoid the predicament of having to return a large sum to investors in respect of a clawback is to build preventative measures into the organizational documents of the fund or the vehicle earning the carry at the outset (i.e., escrows at the carry level or the contractual ability to get any distributions back from employees).  Mind you, the private equity business has been around for 40 years, and has had large and supposedly savvy institutional investors for 30 plus years. The general partners have always been expose to the risk of paying clawbacks when their limited partnership agreements allow for them. So what is different now?  Perhaps it is that investors are more acutely aware of the risk of investing at the peak of cycle than in the past, and the example of what happened to energy funds has made them realize that they could see problems like that on a broader basis. Moreover, given that the mainstream media is much less reverential in its treatment of private equity than in the past, if a meaningful minority of funds were to post overall crappy returns, resulting in meaningful clawbacks due, the press is more likely to expose the failure of investors like public pension funds to get insistent about getting their money back. Limited partner suing general partners is unheard of, but in a weak returns environment, private equity would no longer be a \"must have\" portfolio allocation. So Akins Gump appears to be alerting the industry to a risk that they had been able to cavalierly ignore that may start to bite them.  And another reason for concern:  Further, although Section 956 of the Dodd-Frank Act relating to executive compensation could impose a mandatory return-of-incentive compensation scheme on certain financial institutions, it is unlikely that the proposed rules, in their current formulation, would apply to carried interest distributions, but they are subject to further clarification.  The suggestions acknowledge that money-driven private equity professionals wouldn't be happy with a \"wait until the dust has settled\" European structure. Some of the ideas include escrowing some carry but not so much as to demotivate staffers (30% was the suggested level), interim clawbacks that require the general partner \"to reckon with any shortcomings as they occur.\" A modified deal-by-deal structure would require the general partner to tally up losses and writedowns and earn back the shortfall before any more carry could be paid.  Akins Gump curiously omitted another option: a performance bond. It's not hard to imagine that Wall Street firms would be willing to insure this risk (or at least after the general partners paid a first loss amount) for a suitable fee.  Nevertheless, this alert to general partners, as occurs so routinely in private equity, illustrates how remiss the limited partners have been. It would be gratifying if the underlying assumption in the Akins Gump piece were correct, that the deterioration in private equity profit generation is leading to contract terms becoming less one-sided in favor of general partners. But given the degree of complacency among limited, don't expect these changes to take place any time soon. 0 0 0 0 0 0","label":1}
{"text":"Turkey cast the testimony of a wealthy gold trader in a U.S. court as an attempt to undermine Ankara and its economy on Friday, highlighting how President Tayyip Erdogan may use the politically charged case to rally nationalist support. The trader, Reza Zarrab, told a New York court on Wednesday that Erdogan had authorized a transaction in a scheme to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions. A dual national of Iran and Turkey, Zarrab is cooperating with U.S. prosecutors in the trial of a Turkish bank executive accused of helping Iran launder money. The executive has pleaded not guilty. This court case has stopped being judicial and become completely political, with the sole aim to corner Turkey and its economy, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. The case has aggravated tension between Ankara and Washington, NATO allies already at odds over Syria policy and the United States failure to extradite the Muslim cleric Turkey accuses of engineering a failed military coup last year. Although the economic fall-out from the case could be substantial - especially if U.S. authorities fine Turkish banks - analysts said that Erdogan is unlikely to be damaged politically at home and could potentially emerge stronger by attracting more nationalist support. This will bolster his claim that he is fighting an independence battle against foreign enemies, said Halil Karaveli, editor of the Turkey Analyst, a policy journal. If there is going to be any political impact, I suspect it will actually help in the electoral sense. Media coverage of the case has been limited in Turkey and one pro-government outlet branded the trial as a conspiracy by enemies of the country. Erdogan, who has governed Turkey for almost 15 years, has not yet responded to the courtroom claims; but had already dismissed the case as a politically inspired attempt to bring down the Turkish government. His government says the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed by Ankara for the failed military coup, was also behind the court case. Zarrab s deposition before the U.S. court will not impact the outlook of the AK Party constituency. In return, mitigating the possible economic impact will be more of a challenge especially if Turkish banks are eventually fined, said Sinan Ulgen, an analyst and former Turkish diplomat. International investors have grown nervous about Turkey as ties with the United States have worsened - helping drive the lira currency down some 10 percent against the dollar in the past three months, to a series of record lows. But the U.S. legal action over the alleged Iran sanctions busting, and the risk that some of the country s banks might be sucked into the case, lies at the heart of the latest investor concerns. U.S. prosecutors charge that the executive of Turkey s state-owned Halkbank, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, helped Iran launder the money. Halkbank, like Atilla, has said it is not guilty of the charges. In his testimony, Zarrab also said that Turkish officials had authorized two Turkish banks, Ziraat Bank and VakifBank, to move funds for Iran. Both Ziraat and VakifBank have denied taking part in any such scheme. Nonetheless, investors are worried about the possibility that Turkish banks could be fined. If there is a fine that s outsize and the Turkish government doesn t want to pay or allow the bank to pay, it will turn into a political standoff which is not great for banks or sovereign spreads, said Greg Saichin, head of emerging debt at Allianz Global Investors in London. This whole issue is weighing heavily on Turkey as a country to allocate (capital) to.","label":0}
{"text":"Influence Peddling Scheme Hits President Park in Korea November 07, 2016 Influence Peddling Scheme Hits President Park in Korea  A South Korean court said on Sunday it had issued arrest warrants for two former presidential aides under investigation in an influence peddling scandal that has sent President Park Geun-hye's approval rating to a record low. Tens of thousands of South Koreans demonstrated at a rally on Saturday evening in central Seoul demanding that Park resign over the scandal involving an old friend, Choi Soon-sil, who is alleged to have used her closeness to the president to meddle in state affairs. Park's approval rating has fallen to just 5 percent, the lowest since such polling began in 1988, according to a Gallup Korea survey released on Friday. The Seoul Central District Court said in a statement that it granted a warrant to prosecutors to arrest An Chong-bum, a former senior advisor for Park, who faces charges of abuse of power and attempted extortion. An was already in custody under an emergency detention order.  Prosecutors are looking into allegations that An and Choi forced South Korean conglomerates to donate funds to non-profit foundations.  The court said it also issued an arrest warrant for a second former presidential aide, Jeong Ho-seong, who also had already been held in temporary custody.  Prosecutors apprehended Jeong late on Thursday on suspicion of leaking classified information.  An and Jeong both stepped down late last month amid the deepening crisis. Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE!","label":1}
{"text":"Recently I had a conversation with a chief executive who expressed concern about several of her senior managers. They were smart, experienced, competent. So what was the problem? \"They're not asking enough questions,\" she said. This wouldn't have been a bad thing in the business world of a few years ago, where the rules for success were: Know your job, do your work, and if a problem arises, solve it and don't bother us with a lot of questions. But increasingly I'm finding that business leaders want the people working around them to be more curious, more cognizant of what they don't know, and more inquisitive \u2014 about everything, including \"Why am I doing my job the way I do it?\" and \"How might our company find new opportunities?\" I may be of this trend because I think of myself as a \"questionologist,\" having studied the art of questioning and written a book about it. But I also think there are real forces in business today that are causing people to value curiosity and inquiry more than in the past. Companies in many industries today must contend with rapid change and rising uncertainty. In such conditions, even a company cannot rest on its expertise there is pressure to keep learning what's new and anticipating what's next. It's hard to do any of that without asking questions. Steve Quatrano, a member of the Right Question Institute, a nonprofit research group, explains that the act of formulating questions enables us \"to organize our thinking around what we don't know. \" This makes questioning a good skill to hone in dynamic times. Asking questions can help spark the innovative ideas that many companies hunger for these days. In the research for my book, I studied business breakthroughs \u2014 including the invention of the Polaroid instant camera and the Nest thermostat and the genesis of like Netflix, Square and Airbnb \u2014 and found that in each case, some curious soul looked at a current problem and asked insightful questions about why that problem existed and how it might be tackled. The Polaroid story is my favorite: The inspiration for the instant camera sprang from a question asked in the by the daughter of its inventor, Edwin H. Land. She was impatient to see a photo her father had just snapped, and when he tried to explain that the film had to be processed first, she wondered aloud, \"Why do we have to wait for the picture?\" One might assume that people can easily ask such questions, given that children do it so well. But research shows that peaks at age 4 or 5 and then steadily drops off, as children pass through school (where answers are often more valued than questions) and mature into adults. By the time we're in the workplace, many of us have gotten out of the habit of asking fundamental questions about what's going on around us. And some people worry that asking questions at work reveals ignorance or may be seen as slowing things down. So how can companies encourage people to ask more questions? There are simple ways to train people to become more comfortable and proficient at it. For example, question formulation exercises can be used as a substitute for conventional brainstorming sessions. The idea is to put a problem or challenge in front of a group of people and instead of asking for ideas, instruct participants to generate as many relevant questions as they can. Kristi Schaffner, an executive at Microsoft, regularly conducts such exercises there and says they sharpen analytical skills. Getting employees to ask more questions is the easy part getting management to respond well to those questions can be harder. When leaders claim they want \"everyone to ask more questions,\" I sometimes (in my bolder moments) ask: \"Do you really want that? And what will you do with those questions once people start asking them?\" For questioning to thrive in a company, management must find ways to reward the behavior \u2014 if only by acknowledging the good questions that have been asked. For example, I visited one company that asked all employees to think of \"what if\" and \"how might we\" questions about the company's goals and plans. Management and employees together decided which of these mission questions were best, then displayed them on banners on the walls. Leaders can also encourage companywide questioning by being more curious and inquisitive themselves. This is not necessarily easy for senior executives, who are used to being the ones with the answers. I've noticed during questioning exercises at some companies that top executives sit in the back of the room, laptops open, attending to other business they seem to think their employees are the only ones who need to learn. As they do this, these leaders are modeling precisely the kind of incurious behavior they're trying to change in others. They could set a better example by asking \"why\" and \"what if\" \u2014 while asking others to do likewise. And as the questions proliferate, some good answers are likely to follow.","label":0}
{"text":"The Czech Republic is not prepared to accept any more than the 12 migrants it has already taken under the quota scheme set up by the European Union (EU) even if that means facing sanctions, the nation's interior minister has said. [\"Ongoing security checks show that the country can no longer accept anyone else\" said Milan Chovanec, noting that the Czech Republic has so far received 12 of the 1, 600 migrants it has been ordered to take in under the terms of the EU quota deal. Vetting refugees is \"complicated\" the minister explained, adding that migrants \"have not even been willing to remain in place [in Greek and Italian camps, while security checks take place\". \"We check thoroughly and in detail during the process, which takes between several weeks and more than two months. \"But these people [that the Czech Republic have been told to take in as refugees] were not prepared to remain in place while being vetted. Because of that, we haven't given them security clearance. \" Confirming that the country \"has no further plans to adopt more migrants\" Mr Chovanec raised the issue of repeated threats from Brussels to punish states which are refusing to go along with the EU's agenda to push migrants from the third world on unwilling countries. \"The Czech Republic does not plan to adopt more migrants\" he said, acknowledging that this stance is likely to result in Brussels imposing sanctions against the country, \"perhaps in the range of several million Euros\". \"It is then up to the government to assess if it's worth paying the penalty or not. In my opinion \u2014 yes. You cannot let people here without running all the checks. \" The Czech minister's position is likely to come as a blow to Brussels, as last week the EU told Hungary and Poland they face legal action if their populist governments continue to resist orders to take in migrants from the third world. Warsaw and Budapest have strongly opposed the scheme, which seeks to move 160, 000 people from Italy and Greece into other EU nations. Fewer than 20, 000 people have been resettled so far even though the programme is due to end in September this year. \"If Member States do not increase their relocations soon, the Commission will not hesitate to make use of its powers \u2026 for those which have not complied,\" the bloc's executive arm said in a statement. Italy, along with Germany, Sweden, Austria, and France have been vocal in demanding the EU cut subsidies to Hungary and Poland for their refusal to welcome migrants. But Reuters reported that, worried about rising Euroskepticism, officials in Brussels are split on whether to open legal proceedings against Hungary and Poland.","label":0}
{"text":"Former Hillary Clinton operative Huma Abedin is reportedly \"working hard\" to save her marriage with former Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner, just months after the pair separated as a result of his multiple sexting scandals. [Sources close to the Abedin family told the New York Post that \"Huma has been working hard on her relationship with Anthony. He has been spending 80 to 90 percent of his time at the [Irving Place apartment] they share. If there is a disagreement, he goes to his mother's apartment in Brooklyn. \" \"Both [his and her] families are hoping they will reconcile,\" the source continued. Another source supported this story, saying that the couple's separation was \"more for optics for the campaign and pressure from Hillary's camp. \" The potential reconciliation is perhaps surprising given Weiner's multiple sexting scandals. The first, exposed in 2011 by the late Andrew Breitbart and dubbed 'Weinergate,' led to Weiner's resignation from Congress and the issuing of a public apology. In 2013, having declared himself a candidate to be mayor of New York, other photos were published of Weiner sexting another woman under the name 'Carlos Danger.' Despite the revelation, Weiner did not pull out the race and eventually finished fifth with just 4. 9 percent of the vote. In August last year, Abedin revealed that she was separating from Weiner after yet another sexting incident, although she said the pair would continue to work together to raise their son, who could even be seen in one of Weiner's photos. EXCLUSIVE: Anthony Weiner sexted a busty brunette while his son was in bed with him https: . pic. twitter. \u2014 New York Post (@nypost) August 29, 2016, Last October, Weiner checked into a sex addiction facility to overcome his urges, although he was reportedly forced to leave early having run out of money to pay for it. He was also investigated by the FBI over claims he had been sexting a girl. A laptop examined in that investigation reportedly contained emails from Hillary Clinton's private email server, as both Weiner and Abedin used the device. This development led FBI Director James Comey to announce that the bureau its investigation of Clinton's handling of classified information. The Clinton campaign to this day claims the Comey announcement caused significant damage to her candidacy. The girl claimed that Weiner sent her nude photos, shared pornographic videos with her, discussed his \"rape fantasies,\" and requested that she undress and masturbate during video calls. In January, media reports revealed that federal prosecutors were looking into potential charges against Weiner for child pornography, However, despite all this, Abedin is apparently \"still in love\" with Weiner, blaming the \"pressures of the campaign and presidential race and him drifting off into obscurity\" for his latest relapse. \"A lot of [their] friends believe this is an illness, that he is sick. [But] Huma takes it into consideration that there's been no affair, or physical contact that anybody is aware of. He never met [the women],\" the family friend added. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held a phone call on the Syria crisis with his American counterpart Rex Tillerson, the ministry said in a statement on Friday. Lavrov and Tillerson spoke late on Thursday and discussed cooperation in their attempts to resolve the Syrian crisis with an emphasis on de-escalation zones, the ministry said.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump probably did not enjoy watching Fox News this time around.Because when Neil Cavuto went on the air on Tuesday he addressed Trump s angry rant against the media and will likely be labeled fake news in retaliation for the way he did it.Earlier in the day, Trump attacked the media instead of honoring the 29,000 American soldiers who died on D-Day 73 years ago.The FAKE MSM is working so hard trying to get me not to use Social Media. They hate that I can get the honest and unfiltered message out. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017Sorry folks, but if I would have relied on the Fake News of CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, washpost or nytimes, I would have had ZERO chance winning WH Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2017Of course, Fox News was not included on that list.But Cavuto decided to sort of speak out against Trump s rant anyway, and he not only informed Trump that he is the problem, he accused Trump of scapegoating. Mr. President, it s not the fake news media that s your problem, Cavuto said. It s you. It s not just your tweeting, it s your scapegoating. It s your refusal to see that sometimes you re the one who s feeding your own beast and acting beastly with your own guys. Cavuto pointed out that Trump focuses too much on settling endless scores and that the people around him want him to stop shooting himself in the foot all the time.By lashing out on social media and going on these ridiculous rants, Trump is only embarrassing himself. If Trump really wants the media to stop reporting on his tweets, he should stop tweeting stupid things like attacks on the media and insulting London s mayor in the wake of a terrorist attack. Look at the critiques you re now hearing from usually friendly and supportive allies as sort of like an intervention, Cavuto concluded. Because firing off these angry missives and tweets risks your political destruction. Here s the video via YouTube.Donald Trump just got called out by Fox News. Will he listen or will he put them on his enemies list, too?Featured Image: Screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"Gardasil Vaccine Given without Consent and Ruins Life of 14 Year Old Girl Savannah with her mother Sarah Snyder.  Health Impact News  The VAXXED film crew continues interviewing people who are vaccine damaged around the country.  In this interview in Nebraska, 14 year old Savannah Snyder is interviewed along with her mother Sarah.  Savannah talks about her experiences in receiving her 7th grade required vaccines. Her mother Sarah explains that she only gave permission for Savannah to receive the required vaccines. Gardasil, the HPV vaccine, is an optional vaccine. Sarah explains that she had been warned about this vaccine and wanted to investigate it further.  You believe your doctor. Every parent believes their doctor. We're all trying to do the right thing.  But Savannah was given the Gardasil vaccine anyway, without their original knowledge. She immediately started suffering some side effects, such as a headache, almost fainting, and skin rashes breaking out. She soon developed pneumonia and other infections.  As time went on, things got worse. She started experiencing seizures, including grand mal seizures. She was hospitalized many times for severe pain. Her mother tearfully explains that Savannah would wake up in the middle of the night and state that she was dying.  Like many other parents of children with Gardasil injuries, Sarah relates how they had little support, and that most people just thought it was all in Savannah's head.  But after a trip to the Mayo clinic, Savannah was diagnosed with POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), a known side effect of Gardasil that affects the heart. (See: Cardiologist Comments on New Study Linking HPV Vaccines to POTS )  Savannah explains that before the Gardasil shot, she was very active and athletic. She was in the process of joining a gym. Now, she has difficulties speaking and walking, and needs a feeding tube.  Comment on this article at VaccineImpact.com.  Watch the entire interview: More information about Gardasil Leaving a lucrative career as a nephrologist (kidney doctor), Dr. Suzanne Humphries is now free to actually help cure people. In this autobiography she explains why good doctors are constrained within the current corrupt medical system from practicing real, ethical medicine. FREE Shipping Available! Order here . Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations \u2013 Should Their Views be Silenced? eBook \u2013 Available for immediate download.  One of the biggest myths being propagated in the compliant mainstream media today is that doctors are either pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine, and that the anti-vaccine doctors are all \"quacks.\"  However, nothing could be further from the truth in the vaccine debate. Doctors are not unified at all on their positions regarding \"the science\" of vaccines, nor are they unified in the position of removing informed consent to a medical procedure like vaccines.  The two most extreme positions are those doctors who are 100% against vaccines and do not administer them at all, and those doctors that believe that ALL vaccines are safe and effective for ALL people, ALL the time, by force if necessary.  Very few doctors fall into either of these two extremist positions, and yet it is the extreme pro-vaccine position that is presented by the U.S. Government and mainstream media as being the dominant position of the medical field.  In between these two extreme views, however, is where the vast majority of doctors practicing today would probably categorize their position. Many doctors who consider themselves \"pro-vaccine,\" for example, do not believe that every single vaccine is appropriate for every single individual.  Many doctors recommend a \"delayed\" vaccine schedule for some patients, and not always the recommended one-size-fits-all CDC childhood schedule. Other doctors choose to recommend vaccines based on the actual science and merit of each vaccine, recommending some, while determining that others are not worth the risk for children, such as the suspect seasonal flu shot.  These doctors who do not hold extreme positions would be opposed to government-mandated vaccinations and the removal of all parental exemptions.  In this eBook, I am going to summarize the many doctors today who do not take the most extremist pro-vaccine position, which is probably not held by very many doctors at all, in spite of what the pharmaceutical industry, the federal government, and the mainstream media would like the public to believe. Read : Medical Doctors Opposed to Forced Vaccinations \u2013 Should Their Views be Silenced? on your mobile device!","label":1}
{"text":"By Padishah , July 23, 2006 at 12:19 am Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  I must address the complete drivel that was Mr Jeff Gershoff's comment.  First and foremost, in 2002, with the full backing of the Arab league, Saudi Arabia offered the Israeli's a peace treaty - I repeat - a peace treaty in the form of the Egyptian and Jordanian ones, stating the formal end to the Arab-Israeli conflict, recognition of Israel, and a whole host of other concessions in return for Israel returning all of the Occupied Territories captured during the 1967 war, and a just solution to the Palestinian humanitarian problem, amongst other concessions.  Generalissimo Sharon outright refused to aknowledge this peace deal, and it withered. US Administration said nothing, the US media allowed the story to die. So your statement:  \"Let Hamas and Hezbolah recognize Israels right to exist and there can be peace. Let them keep strapping explosives to themselves and killing women and children, let them keep lobbing missles into Israel and Israel will continue doing what they are doing until one of them cannot get up off the canvas anymore.\"  is quite irrelevant, seeing as Hamas was not governing the Palestinian territories, and Hezbollah was not governing Lebanon in 2002. A general Peace deal with the Arab World was allowed to die, and you suggest that Israel will be willing to deal with two entities it thinks are terrorist organisations.  Furthermore, you ask for the Arabs to make the first move. Always, the onus is on the Arab side to make many concessions even before Israel consider negotiation. There is no equal footing with which to negotiate with Israel because Israel will not allow it to be so. History and current events show that even if the Arabs were to accede to all Israeli demands, there is no gaurantee that the Israeli's will not find some other demand in order to stall, or even to not just ignore Arab overtures out of spite. Indeed, judging from recent events, they seem quite capable of it.  Your statement:  \"No one gave a rats ass about the Palestinians when their \"home land\" was squalor, flies, and dirt. Israel turned it into a garden and now everyone demands Palestine for the Palestinians.\"  seems to imply that imprisonment in an Israeli garden; where your house can be demolished, or your olive and fruit groves be uprooted depending on your heritage, is much better than freedom in your own country, however squalid, fly-ridden or dirty. Furthermore, a land totally at peace would need no-one to give 'a rat's ass' (in your parlance) about it anyway, and is a misrepresentation of the historical situation. Your statement smacks of the colonialist attitude of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Would you also hold this view for all those people of colour, who were enslaved and brutalised in many instances around the world? Would you believe that the sexual slavery of women practices in some parts of the world somehow beneficial to the women who must suffer those indignities?  It's obvious from your comment that you harbour a prejudice for Palestinians in particular, and Arabs in general; they aren't fit for the land they occupy, and only Israeli's can make the Middle East bloom. Thus, by extension, all Arabs deserve to suffer under the heel of Zionism, for their own good. Corrrect? Does this sound eerily like the whole 'White Man's Burden' trollop that precipitated the excesses of the colonisation of Africa? It certainly does, and it fits with the Israeli mindset as well.  By eleven bravo , July 22, 2006 at 9:24 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  Israel likes to spy on the country that feeds it to the tune of billions to date and then calls the traitor who spied on us, a hero -just the kind of ally we need in the middle east. By the way, they also like to sell our military technologies even if we tell them not to - China sure appreciates it. Remember, do not forget the USS Liberty. Some Brits certainly remember that these same Israelis that cry holy terror about terrorism were terrorists themselves when the Brits were in Palestine and they to this day are unrepentant for the terrorist acts they performed.  By wildhog , July 22, 2006 at 8:38 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  WOW, THIS IS AMAZING. AS A VIETNAM VETERAN AND A PATRIOTIC AMERICAN I AM GLAD YOU ARE SPEAKING OUT. WE SURE DONT NEED ALL THIS STRIFE AND BLOODSHED WE SURE HAVE NOT LEARNED OUR LESSON FROM THE PAST. WE HAVE GOT TO REGAIN OUR FREEDOM FROM ISRAELI TYRANY. MAKE NO MISTAKE WE NEED TO STAND UP FOR OUR NATION BEFORE WE ARE EMBROILED IN A CONFLICT WE CANNOT WIN.  By blues , July 22, 2006 at 8:32 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  Wow Jew Haters Gone Wild said:  Jews have contributed their energy, intellect, resources to every progressive cause in modern history. And yet you so-called progressives just turn your back, raise the chorus of Jew blame, and think you're moral? [....]  Well, yeah, I guess. In some ways, I think it could be argued that the Navajo have done far more.  But the power-mad neozionists that have hijacked the Nation of Israel have been treating all their neighbors worse than cockroaches for decades. And they have warped, probably wrecked our American society in the process. They collaborated with the vicious apartheid Union of South Africa to enable the South African tyrants and themselves to develop nuclear WMDs. So that just doesn't make me feel friendly toward neozionists.  As far as the question of weather I harbor any actual hatred of Jewish people themselves, you will never begin to be able to discover the answer to that. I could easily bear the fervent wish that every Jew be burned alive in an oven, all the while pretending to love the Jews. Or I could accept Jews as just people who practice a particular religion, bearing no ill-will at all against them, while proclaiming to Jew-hating neighbors that I detest the Jews as much as they do. But you will never be able to begin to decipher what I truly feel.  By Toole , July 22, 2006 at 7:39 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  Israel and the U.S.A. are, by their present alliance to dominate, taking a walk to the wild side just like Hitler and Nazi Germany.  By Fadel Abdallah , July 22, 2006 at 7:22 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  To plunger, message # 14774  You piece on 9\/11 is well reasoned and makes a lot of sense, and I thank you much for your interst in digging out the truth about this very tragic event and its far-reaching disastrous consequences on the whole world.  There is no hope of finding physical evidence to prove who and how it all happened. This is so for the simple fact that the sophisticated team that planned this inside job made sure to destroy any physical evidence possible.  In light of this, serious thinkers are only left to use their intellectual reasoning and circumstantial evidence to reach an approximation about the facts related to 9\/11.  Yours is indeed a very serious analysis, and, most likely, very close to the truth. That's why I was intrigued by your piece. I was particulary intrigued about your being specific on the Mossad role as a way to blackmail the political establishment. Remember Monica Lewinsky? I theorized, at the time, and wrote about her being an Israeli Mossad agent, planted in the White House to bring about the fall of Clinton, who was getting a little bit sympathysing to solving the Palestinian problem.  Your piece also supports my thinking about 9\/11; about which I wrote a short comment somewhere else on the truthdig. In case you have not read my piece, I am attaching it below:  \"To Janice A. # 14474:  You're very smart Janice. You're one of the few thousands in America and around the world who believe 9\/11 was an inside evil job, to create the atmosphere of fear in preparation for the trauma and mind control you talked about.  I simply could not believe and will never believe that some people living in caves and constantly on the run could have carried out such sophisticated operation. This is not to say that Al-Qaeda had not enough hate for America to attempt hurting it in a big way when they could; but from a scientific point of view, know-how and sophisticated human resources, they did not have that, and no small group of enemies will ever have what it takes to prepare and carry out such operation. And imagine that!! The hijackers had only box-cutters as their weapons! From all those on board the hijacked planes, wasn't there a few courageous enough who were willing to get injured and possibly die to prevent a bigger disaster?!!  Elements in the Pentagon, CIA, FBI with possibly a lot of help from the Israeli Mossad must have started working on this just as Bush was put on the throne by the Supreme Court! For Bush and the Neocons to continue ruling the country and taking it in the direction they have taken it, something tragically big must have to take place! Everyone knows, that in every country and society there is that class of people called the merchants of death! For what happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and now Lebanon, 9\/11 was a must prerequisite!  Sad as it is to invoke thoughts about the 9\/11, I always find consolation to find like-minded people. Thank you Janice for being a free thinker and publicly join the small but privileged group!\"  By Mark , July 22, 2006 at 7:20 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  By the way: if Americans generally ever finally start to figure out what a false ally Israel really is, there is of course the danger of an upwelling of anti-Semitism in America. Let's look at exactly why this is so.  The essential misunderstanding that may lead to such a horrible development is a failure of Americans to distinguish between Israel and \"the Jews\". This is a conflation that Israel and many American Jewish leaders have done much to encourage.  Any strong condemnation of Israel's actions, of its ethnocratic ideology, or of its interference in our political process, is regularly condemned as inherently \"anti-Semitic\" by prominent members of the mainstream American Jewish community. Right-wing American Christians \u2014 perhaps even more extreme than American Jews in their adherence to the notion of Israel's blameless holiness \u2014 eagerly echo this charge.  And so, despite the fact that American Jews are in fact over-represented among intellectuals and activists who expose and denounce the crimes of the state of Israel, we may well see such a surge of anti-Semitic backlash in this country, if and when most Americans come to some glimmer of understanding concerning the worse-than-useless US\/Israeli \"alliance\".  Americans in general are not terribly sophisticated. This is why such a ludicrously one-sided alliance, so destructive to American interests, was ever possible in the first place. And it's why an anti-Semitic reaction may accompany its end.  If this backlash should happen, then to Israel and to the American Jews who have laid the foundation for it, I have three words from a great Jewish philosopher: AS YE SEW.  By Wow Jew Haters Gone Wild , July 22, 2006 at 6:18 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  Wow, just read this thing and be amazed at the level of knee jerk jew hating, blindness to history, and desire for the death of Israel. So sad. If these terror groups lay down their weapons and agreed to stop attacking Israel tomorrow, that would be the end of war. If Israel lay down their weapons and agreed to stop hitting back at the terror groups, it would be overrun tomorrow and a new holocaust would ensue. Apparently, that suits the jew haters just fine. Islamic fascism is fascism, and again Jews stand against it while the moral ambivalence or antisemitism of non Jews seeks to guarantee yet another cycle of jew killing. SHAME, SHAME. It's sad that Israel's only friend can be found in the Bush government, but that doesn't make ISrael complicit in anything that Bush does. If you have only one friend and you're fighting for your life, you don't question that friendship. More power to Israel in this fight for their life. Look at the numbers of arabs killed by arabs, of non muslims killed by muslims, of the track record of muslims in the world today (whereever there's trouble, muslims are there trying to dominate and destroy non muslims). Jews have contributed their energy, intellect, resources to every progressive cause in modern history. And yet you so-called progressives just turn your back, raise the chorus of jew blame, and think you're moral? You better hope that in the end we don't all get what we deserve.  By Harry H. Snyder III , July 22, 2006 at 4:07 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  I surely didn't say anything about Jews crucifying anyone\u2026  HOWEVER crucifiction was hardly exclusively a \"Roman thing\"  This means of punishment was practiced by Persians, Seleucids, Jews, Carthaginians, among others. There is even some evidence it was practiced in Egypt.  reflex action? by whom?  By John Z , July 22, 2006 at 3:41 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  Marcia, of course Ishrael wants peace\u2026..a piece of Iraq, a piece of Iran, a piece of Syria and a piece of lebanon. They also have our own government by the balls through, bribery, extortion and threats. I and thouroughly disgusted and sick to my stomach from it all. It is time for a new American revolution. We must: Take our government back from those who have corrupted it for their own benefit, including Ishrael. Prosecute those within the Whore House for betraying our nation, our constitution and its people. The punishment must be severe enough to deter any who might think about doing it again in the future. Stop paying tribute to that miserable little zionist state. No more money period! enough is enough, goddamn it! Congress should get its collective asses kicked, and maybe in the balls as well. Break all ties with Ishrael..they are on their own from now on. That way they will have to behave themselves. As long as they have the U.S. as their rich poodle Ishrael will continue to act like a pitbull. Round up the zionists, MOSSAD, AIPAC and the jew lobby and send them packing back to zionland. Use the laws we have to break up the jewish stranglehold on our media, including the newspapers. There are enough anti monopoly laws with which to use. Please realise I have nothing against people of Judaism. It's the rabid, racist, zionist who I find to be our own worst enemy. Thank you Tom, for finally coming out with enough guts and patriotism to speak out on this matter. Even our founding fathers spoke out against zionism. Unless we change the course of our nation, we will be \"undone\". I fear for my country and for those in the middle east for they are the ones who are the victims of zionist aggression. Now I will wait for the zionists to send their hitmen to my house.  By John F. Butterfield , July 22, 2006 at 12:58 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  Harry,  Crucifiction was a Roman thing. Jews have often been on the receiving end of brutality. Whether they have more often been teachers of brutality or learners from brutality can be disputed. That they have killed more Arabs in the last 60 years than Arabs have killed Jews in that same time period cannot be disputed. The side that the United States has taken in the disagreement cannot be disputed. It was interesting to see your reflex action.  By blues , July 22, 2006 at 12:34 pm Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  This article has pushed me beyond some point of critical mass. My world-view will never be the same.  What we are looking at here goes beyond issues like anti- Jewish sentiment, terrorism, capitalism, etc, etc, etc. We have been victims to a vast media conspiracy that has parlayed a typical religious ideal into a powerful, violent cult of death, and allowed that cult to play a key role in the establishment of a fascist regime in the United States. It needs to be called the neocon\/ neomedia\/ neozionist conspiracy of treason, or something like that.  These pseudo- religious traitriots are destroying America and the rest of the world too, including the people of the Middle East, including the Jewish ones, apparently for sport. This is evil in its purest form. I am stunned.  By Harry H. Snyder III , July 22, 2006 at 5:19 am Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)  John;  Back when crucifiction was occuring in the Middle East the Brits were drawing and quartering folks, the Spanish were killing witches and most of Europe was pre civilized.  I will not be a party to a conversation where we blame one side or the other for this disagreement which clearly has enough blame to cover the northern hemisphere.  I thought the point of Tom's message was that there are two valid points of view here?  By plunger , July 22, 2006 at 2:03 am Link to this comment (Unregistered commenter)","label":1}
{"text":"At first glance, U.S. Representative Mo Brooks seems exactly the kind of candidate President Donald Trump would love to see win Tuesday's Republican primary election for Alabama's open U.S. Senate seat. The 63-year-old Republican is a Freedom Caucus member and an immigration hardliner who calls opponent Luther Strange \"Lying Luther,\" echoing Trump's penchant for bestowing insulting nicknames on his political foes. Strange, 64, is the former state attorney general who was appointed to fill the Senate seat left vacant after Jeff Sessions became U.S. attorney general. \"Trump would like to drain the swamp; Brooks would like to blow it up,\" said Larry Powell, a professor of communication at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. \"But their goals are the same.\" Yet it was Strange, not Brooks, who earned a coveted prize last week in a race that could measure Trump's influence in a state he carried easily in last year's election, despite recent indications that his support among Republicans may be softening. Trump took to Twitter to offer Strange his \"complete and total endorsement.\" The tweet came as something of a surprise. Known as \"Big Luther\" thanks to his 6-foot-9-inch (2.1-meter) frame, Strange has a close alliance with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is under fire from Trump for failing to push his agenda through Congress and refusing to eliminate a filibuster that gives Democrats veto power over many key bills. Strange agrees the filibuster should remain in place. In a telephone interview, Brooks noted that Trump followed his endorsement of Strange with a barrage of Twitter criticisms aimed at McConnell, which Brooks called \"extraordinarily baffling.\" \"Any Alabama voter who wants to see President Trump's legislative agenda pass the United States Senate would be much better served to vote for Mo Brooks than Luther Strange,\" Brooks said. \"President Trump's entire legislative agenda is dead so long as the Senate's 60-percent rule requires President Trump to get the consent of Democrat leader Chuck Schumer to pass it.\" Both Brooks and Strange may be losing to the third viable candidate in the nine-way race. Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, 70, has led in several voter surveys, though polling in the race has been limited. The Moore and Strange campaigns did not respond to requests for comment. Assuming no candidate reaches 50 percent of the vote, the top two finishers will go head-to-head in late September, with the winner a heavy favorite against whoever emerges from the Democratic primary. For weeks, Strange and Brooks have lobbed attacks at one another as insufficiently committed to Trump. Advertisements from supporters of Strange highlighted Brooks' endorsement of Texas Senator Ted Cruz for president last year, as well as criticism Brooks made of Trump at the time. Brooks, a founder of the House of Representatives' far-right Freedom Caucus who survived the shooting attack on Congress members at a softball practice in June, has fired back by attacking Strange for his close ties to Senate leadership. Strange and Brooks have largely ignored Moore, though Strange backers have run some anti-Moore ads in recent days. \"I think both assume that Moore is going to make the runoff, and whoever gets to the runoff will likely beat him,\" Powell said. Moore made his name in 2003 by refusing a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state Supreme Court building and losing his position. After winning another term in 2013, he was suspended in 2016 and later resigned after directing state judges to defy the U.S. Supreme Court and continue to enforce a ban on same-sex marriage. The former judge is popular among religious conservatives but had trouble expanding his base in previous campaigns for governor. Each contender would likely serve as a reliable Republican vote in the Senate, with little daylight between their policy positions. \"All three of these candidates are different intensities of the same flavor,\" said Steven Taylor, a political science professor at Troy University in Alabama.","label":0}
{"text":"Fox News just revealed what we knew but it s out in the open now: Text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and mistress Lisa Page in 2016 referred to then-candidate Donald Trump as a loathsome human and an idiot. HOW CAN THEY EVEN BEGIN TO BE NEUTRAL IN THIS SHAM OF AN INVESTIGATION?More than 10,000 texts between Strzok and Page were being reviewed by the Justice Department after Strzok was removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller s Russia probe after it was revealed that some of them contained anti-Trump content.The bulk of the messages obtained by Fox News were sent on March 4 of last year, as Trump held a sizable lead in the GOP primary race. God, Trump is a loathsome human, Page texted Strzok on that date. Yet he many[sic] win, Strzok responded. Good for Hillary. Later the same day, Strzok texted Page, Omg Trump s an idiot. He s awful, Page answered. America will get what the voting public deserves, said Strzok, to which Page responded. That s what I m afraid of. WHY REASSIGNED AND NOT FIRED?Strzok, who was an FBI counterintelligence agent, was reassigned to the FBI s human resources division after the discovery of the exchanges with Page, with whom he was having an affair. Page was briefly on Mueller s team, but since has returned to the FBI.The messages disclosed were sent during the 2016 campaign and contain multiple discussions about various candidates BUT THE MOST DAMAGING ARE THE RIPS ON TRUMP.","label":1}
{"text":"When Omar Mateen entered an Orlando, Florida, nightclub on Sunday to carry out the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, he wielded a weapon that has been used in massacres from California to Connecticut: a military-inspired semi-automatic rifle. Though so-called assault rifles account for a small fraction of the United States' 30,000 annual gun deaths, they have been used in at least 10 mass shootings since 2011, according to a database compiled by Mother Jones magazine. The prevalence of these firearms has made them a focal point in the debate over U.S. gun laws as opponents say civilians should not own what they describe as \"weapons of war.\" Backers say they are simply modern rifles enjoyed by millions of law-abiding Americans. In December 2012, Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster XM15 to kill 28 children and adults at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut before taking his own life with a Glock pistol. Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook used two assault rifles and two pistols to kill 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December 2015. James Holmes carried an assault rifle, a shotgun and two pistols when he killed 12 people in a Colorado movie theater in 2012. Law enforcement officials say Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S. citizen who was the son of Afghan immigrants, carried an AR-15 style assault rifle and a handgun when he killed 50 people and wounded 53 at a gay nightclub in Orlando. He also had an unidentified device, said Orlando Police Chief John Mina. The AR-15 was developed from the U.S. military's M-16 rifle, used in the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Unlike the military version, the AR-15 is not fully automatic, meaning users must pull the trigger each time they want to fire a shot. Like the military version, many AR-15s combine light weight with a relatively modest recoil. Prominent manufacturers include Smith & Wesson, Sturm Ruger and Remington Arms Co, which faces a lawsuit from some families of Sandy Hook victims who say the rifle should not be sold to civilians. \"It is the gold standard for killing the enemy in battle, just as it has become the gold standard for mass murder of innocent civilians,\" said Josh Koskoff, a lawyer involved in the case. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents gun manufacturers, said it would not comment on the Orlando shooting until more facts are known. The NSSF estimates there are roughly 5 million to 10 million AR-15 rifles owned in the United States, a fraction of the 300 million firearms owned by Americans. Most owners say they use the rifle for target shooting and home defense, although they can be used for hunting as well. Despite their controversial reputation, assault rifles do not often turn up at murder scenes. Handguns accounted for at least 48 percent of all murders between 2010 and 2014, according to FBI data, while rifles - a category that includes more traditional types of long guns - accounted for 2.4 percent. Roughly four times as many people were killed by knives in that period. Still, in the wake of the Orlando shooting several Democratic politicians said Congress should renew a ban on assault-style weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines that was in place between 1994 and 2004. \"It reminds us once more that weapons of war have no place on our streets,\" said presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Research is mixed on whether the assault-rifle ban had a significant impact. Gun manufacturers were able to tweak their designs to get around the ban and crime rates have fallen steadily since the early 1990s, whether or not the ban was in place. The number of mass shootings has increased since it expired. Any effort to renew the ban would face fierce opposition in the U.S. Congress, where Republicans who control both chambers of Congress have staunchly opposed tighter gun laws and groups like the National Rifle Association have been able to mobilize millions of gun owners against other restrictions. Despite strong support from President Barack Obama, the last attempt at new gun legislation failed in the U.S. Senate in 2013. Opinion polls find that Americans are less enthusiastic about banning assault weapons than other types of gun restrictions, such as expanded background checks. Several polls since 2013 have found between 44 percent and 57 percent of Americans back the idea. Six states and the District of Columbia currently ban assault weapons and two more, Minnesota and Virginia, ban possession by people under 18 years old. Experts say it is difficult to tell whether those laws have had an impact since gun buyers can easily find those weapons in other states.","label":0}
{"text":"President Barack Obama said on Thursday he would support any move by President-elect Donald Trump to improve healthcare for Amercicans. \"Trump says that he can improve the health system. I believe that if he is able to insure the same number of people - better than I am - I would support this,\" Obama told German television station ARD, according to a translation into German. During the U.S. presidential campaign, Trump called for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, to be repealed and replaced and labeled the 2010 law \"a disaster.\" He has since said he is considering retaining parts of Obama's healthcare law.","label":0}
{"text":"Turkey s swift response to Somalia s deadliest truck bombing drew praise from survivors and officials who called Ankara their only genuine international partner. It is an implicit challenge to Western backers that spend billions on security but have not, in the view of many Somalis; jumped to help. Whenever there is a problem, Turkey helps us. Where are the other countries? runs a popular cartoon circulating on Somali social media. Within 48 hours of the huge twin explosions that hit Mogadishu on Saturday, a Turkish air ambulance had landed in the battle-scarred capital and picked up dozens of wounded Somalis to transport them to Turkey for free medical treatment. Its health minister also pitched up with surgeons who set to work at once in hospitals alongside Somali doctors and nurses. Ankara has invested heavily in Somalia over the past five years, with one eye on rich economic pickings should stability ever return and the other on burnishing President Tayyip Erdogan s image of Turkey as a global promoter of compassionate Islam. Turkey is the best friend to Somalia and they were the first supporter to us after the blast, said Abdiasis Ahmed, a jobless university graduate who said four friends had been airlifted out, one with a broken back. At least 300 people were killed in the blasts and more than 400 injured. Although Islamist al Shabaab militants were pushed out of Mogadishu in 2011, Saturday s attack - which al Shabaab has not claimed - shows the dangers still facing the capital. Many Somalis contrasted Ankara s response with that of the European Union, which has a naval force including combat ships equipped with emergency medical systems off Mogadishu s shore to deter piracy, but which did not take in casualties. I ve heard a lot of complaints from Somalis saying There s a huge Western navy on our shores - why can t those people come to help us? , said Rashid Abdi, a Nairobi-based Somalia analyst at International Crisis Group, a think-tank. A spokesman from the naval force said the force had diverted its nearest vessel, a Spanish ship, that delivered equipment and medical supplies once it reached the Somali coastline. He said the maritime area the force covers is vast but the ship arrived Mogadishu as quickly as possible. A tweet from the naval force earlier on Wednesday said it was providing vital medical aid for the victims. Senior officials also compared the speed and scale of Turkey s assistance with that of Somalia s foreign partners, including neighbors Kenya and Djibouti and the United States and the United Nations. Mogadishu mayor Thabit Mohamed tweeted on Monday that he was grateful for Turkey s immediate response and relief for victims , compared with a Thanks for standing with #Mogadishu tweet 24 hours later aimed at the U.S. Embassy. Turkey is always first to help us. They are our only genuine brother, Information minister Abdirahman Omar Osman told Reuters, recalling a personal visit by Erdogan in 2011, when Somalia was in the grip of famine. Their support is visible to everyone. They build hospitals, they build schools, and that s why they are different than others, he said. Others might give more money but Turkey is perceived by the people to be the ones really helping Somalia.","label":0}
{"text":"A woman has accused Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Alabama, of initiating a sexual encounter with her when she was 14 years old and he was 32, the Washington Post reported on Thursday, prompting top Republicans to say he should step aside if the allegations prove true. Moore, 70, the state's former chief judge, vehemently denied the allegations, calling them \"completely false and a desperate political attack.\" U.S. President Donald Trump would want Moore to step aside if the allegations against him are true, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Friday. \"Like most Americans, the president believes we cannot allow a mere allegation, in this case one from many years ago, to destroy a person's life,\" Sanders said. \"However, the president also believes that if these allegations are true, Judge Moore will do the right thing and step aside,\" she said, as Trump arrived in Vietnam on his 12-day Asia tour. In a series of Twitter posts later in the day, Moore cast the published allegations against him part of a bid to \"silence and shut up Christian conservatives like you and me,\" adding \"I will NEVER GIVE UP the fight!\" Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, working with a slim 52-48 majority, called on Moore to drop out of the race \"if these allegations are true.\" Several other Republicans, including Texas Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and Utah Senator Mike Lee, all of whom endorsed Moore, echoed that sentiment. At least two Republican senators, John McCain of Arizona and John Thune of South Dakota, said Moore should step aside immediately, with McCain calling the accusations \"deeply disturbing and disqualifying.\" Leigh Corfman, now 53, told the Post she met Moore at a courthouse in 1979 when Moore offered to keep her company on a bench outside of a hearing room while her mother was inside for child custody proceeding. Moore, at the time an assistant district attorney, asked for the girl's phone number and days later took her to his house, where they engaged in sexual activity before she asked to be taken home, Corfman said. The story also quoted three other women who said Moore dated them when they were between 16 and 18 years of age and he was in his early 30s, though none said they had sexual contact with Moore. Reuters was unable to independently confirm the allegations. The Moore campaign accused the Post of colluding with Democrats to tarnish his reputation with false accusations. The Post said none of the women had donated to or worked for Moore's Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, or for his Republican primary rivals, and that Corfman said she had voted for Republicans in the past three presidential elections, including for Donald Trump in 2016. Moore has consistently led in polls over Jones. He was considered a heavy favorite in deeply Republican Alabama in the Dec. 12 special election to fill the seat of U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It remains to be see whether Thursday's allegations can buoy Jones' long-shot bid, which would represent a major upset for Democrats and narrow Republicans' current edge in the Senate. Jones' campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Post story. No matter what happens, Moore will remain on the ballot on Dec. 12 since a candidate's name cannot be removed within 76 days of the election, according to the office of Alabama's secretary of state. If, however, the state party tells election officials that it wants to withdraw its nominee, or if Moore himself decided to do so, election officials would not certify any votes cast for Moore. Write-in candidates are also allowed under state law. Alabama political strategist David Mowery, who has worked for candidates of both parties, said the chance of Moore bowing out of the race was \"less than zero,\" and that it was almost as improbable for state party officials to abandon him in favor of a last-minute write-in candidate. Mowery cited Moore's overwhelming popularity with Alabama's Republican voters, who he said would tend to distrust allegations published in the Post. Nevertheless, he said Democrats would seize on the scandal to boost fund-raising. Moore, who has made his moral and religious beliefs the heart of his pitch to voters, prevailed over several Republican opponents in a closely contested primary that saw Trump, McConnell and most Senate Republicans support the incumbent who had been appointed to Sessions' seat, Luther Strange. The race exposed rifts between the Republican Party's conservative base and its Washington-based establishment. Moore's candidacy was heavily promoted by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, who has vowed to support grassroots challengers next year to take on Republican incumbents. On several occasions, Moore has made controversial statements and taken positions that have cost him his job. He has condemned homosexuality and said he believes some U.S. communities are living under Islamic religious law. He first became a national figure in the early 2000s, when he lost his position as Alabama chief justice after refusing a court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from outside the courthouse. After winning his position back in 2012, he was again forced out after defying the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage by ordering probate judges not to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples. On his Senate campaign website, Moore said he was suspended \"for upholding the sanctity of marriage as between one man and one woman.\"","label":0}
{"text":"The special counsel appointed to lead a probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election should be granted full control of the investigation independent of Justice Department officials, the Democratic National Committee said on Friday. The DNC, in a statement, said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has authority over special counsel Robert Mueller, needs to recuse himself from the Russia probe and control of the investigation should not be given to another Trump appointee.","label":0}
{"text":"While many have been baffled and upset by Donald Trump s reckless decision to attack Syria (without Congressional approval), the inner details of what drove Trump to make such a decision are even worse.Senior White House officials have just confessed that this attack against Syria was nothing more than a publicity stunt for Trump, to feed his out of control ego. According to those officials, the poorly planned missile strike (which ultimately failed) isn t even part of a broader strategy or a step in a larger plan to remove Assad. It was absolutely meaningless, and its only purpose was to make Trump seem like a strong leader.CNN s Jim Acosta reported:While it s not surprising that Trump has no strategy for Syria (let s face it, he has zero strategy for anything he does), it s terrifying to actually see it play out before our eyes as an incompetent president puts America in grave danger.Basically, Trump used the U.S. military to make it LOOK like he was taking some sort of action on Syria, when really the exact opposite is true. There is no plan, and there likely will never be one. What Trump put on last night was merely a performance and a damaging one. Already, U.S.-Russia relations have grown more tense as Russia is making moves to punish America for Trump s carelessness.The message Trump is sending to the world is terrifying what we can expect during Trump s presidency is a show; just big empty gestures that won t actually carry any weight. Trump has basically shown Assad that he s not really going to do anything besides send 50 missiles his way. Now Assad and the rest of the world knows our president is all talk and almost no action. The strength and leadership that America once had in the world is disintegrating quickly.","label":1}
{"text":"While America is still recovering from the shocking shooting that occurred at a Republican baseball game in which Rep. Steve Scalise and four others were injured, many conservatives are still using the shooting as a way to promote division within America.Many Republicans were quick to place blame on the Democratic party, and today Donald Trump s White House adviser Kellyanne Conway jumped at the opportunity to strengthen those accusations. In an appearance on Fox & Friends, Conway trashed the media and Democrats for criticizing Trump at the time of the shooting, arguing that it was Democrats who were creating division in the country by refusing to praise Trump for his poor performance as POTUS. Conway said: I went back and looked at exactly what was being discussed on all the TV shows, except yours, at 7:09 a.m. on Wednesday, when this happened, and it s a really curious exercise, because as Steve Scalise was fighting for his life and crawling into right field in a trail of blood, you should go back and see what people were saying about the president and Republicans at that very moment. Of course, they had to break in with the news of this tragedy, and since then there s been some introspection some quieter, more muted voices toning down the rhetoric. Then, Conway s rant got even more strange. Still trying to pretend that her boss isn t the source of a good portion of the hate and division we are seeing in America today, she tried to give the bizarre example of her own death to make her point. She said: But look at Twitter. If I was shot and killed tomorrow, half of Twitter would explode in applause and excitement this is the world we live in now. Well, according to Trump himself, he could technically shoot Conway on a busy street in New York and get away with it as he once bragged about. So for Conway to be blaming Democrats for the tension that our current Republican POTUS has created is beyond unfair and misguided.While many Republicans were blaming the opposite party, Democrats were praying and sending supportive messages in solidarity with their GOP colleagues disproving Conway s accusations entirely. You can watch Conway s ridiculous rant below.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump is close to a decision on how to respond to what he considers China's unfair trade practices, a senior Trump administration official said on Tuesday. Trump is considering encouraging U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to initiate an investigation of Chinese trade practices under the 1974 Trade Act's section 301, the official said. An announcement could come as early as this week, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 allows the president to unilaterally impose tariffs or other trade restrictions to protect U.S. industries from \"unfair trade practices\" of foreign countries, such as trade agreement violations, or \"discriminatory\" actions that burden U.S. commerce. The United States has a long list of grievances about China on trade, including accusations of steel dumping and theft of U.S. intellectual property. China has said that trade between China and the United States benefits both sides and that Beijing is willing to work with Washington to improve their trade relationship. Trump has long been a critic of Chinese trade practices but his interest in penalizing Beijing has risen because of his concern at what he perceives to be Chinese inaction on reining in increasingly belligerent North Korea. The United States has pressed China to exert more economic and diplomatic pressure on North Korea to help rein in its nuclear and missile programs. Beijing has repeatedly said its influence on North Korea is limited and that it is doing all it can. A senior Chinese official said on Monday there was no link between North Korea's nuclear program and China-U.S. trade. Susan Thornton, acting assistant secretary of state for East Asia, told a congressional hearing on Tuesday that new U.S. sanctions aimed at curbing North Korean's weapons programs, including measures aimed at Chinese financial institutions, could be expected \"fairly soon.\" Section 301 was used extensively in the 1980s to combat Japanese imports of motorcycles, steel and other products - an era during which Lighthizer served as deputy U.S. trade representative. The statute has been little used since the World Trade Organization was launched in 1995. The WTO provides a forum for resolving trade disputes, but Lighthizer and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross have complained that it is extremely slow, often taking years to reach a conclusion, and that the Geneva-based organization has an inherent anti-U.S. bias. Both China's Foreign Ministry and Commerce Ministry did not respond immediately to requests for comment. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met Michigan's governor Rick Snyder in Beijing on Tuesday, where he said the common interests of China and the United States were bigger than any disputes. \"China welcomes U.S. states, including Michigan, to ... enhance bilateral trade and investment, ... and consolidate and expand cooperative consensus to create better development opportunities and jobs for both countries' peoples,\" Li told Snyder, according to a Chinese government statement. \"The Trump administration believes in free and fair trade and will use every available tool to counter the protectionism of those who pledge allegiance to free trade while violating its core principles,\" Ross said in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece on Tuesday. He tried to refute arguments that the Trump administration was taking a protectionist stance, saying that both China and Europe were more protectionist because they subsidized export industries and had \"formidable tariff and non-tariff trade barriers against imports.\" \"China is not a market economy. The Chinese government creates national champions and takes other actions that significantly distort markets,\" Ross wrote. \"Responding to such actions with trade remedies is not protectionist.\"","label":0}
{"text":"This past week was the annual Women in the World Summit. It s a place that celebrates women who have a voice, and who speak for those who do not. It is a place of celebration, discussion, strategy, and empowerment. It is also a place for women to speak their minds. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton definitely spoke her mind on that stage. Now that the Summit is over, its founder, Tina Brown, is sounding off on Donald Trump s presidency.Appearing on CNN s Reliable Sources, Brown told host Brian Stelter of what it feels like to watch Trump: It s almost like being in the ward of a mental hospital half the time, with what s going on with Trump. I mean, you can t make this up. Stelter then asks, You mean we re all the patients of the mental hospital? Brown responds: You know, watching his behavior, you know it s like watching out of control that s what makes it such riveting viewing. He seems so his entire administration seems to be so out of control. Unfortunately it s addictive. Stelter then joked about a New Yorker cartoon that quipped about people binge watching CNN, and asked Brown if that was a bad thing. Brown responded: It s a disastrous thing, because, you know, you re actually talking about very serious things that are not being discussed, and that is what is so scary about it. I mean, I was thinking the other day, how many hours have been spent by everybody in Washington in the you know, last two months, whether it is the Intelligence community or the National Security community.. everybody trying to retrofit the crazy tweet about being eavesdropped by Obama. It s like the need to backfill his mendacity by so many different agencies is the most time-consuming thing right now in government. Stelter then lamented: It was a month ago, and we re never going to get that month back. Brown concluded: Think about all the things that weren t done in that month. Tina Brown is correct. It s like being in a mental hospital, or perhaps in the back of a car driven by a very drunk driver who thinks he is sober and refuses to stop so people who know better can hop out. The people who have the power to take us off this crazy train won t, so we re stuck. Hopefully, we survive.Watch the fascinating exchange below:Tina Brown: It s almost like being in the ward of a mental hospital half the time, with what s going on with Trump https:\/\/t.co\/DH6Ywnnfni Reliable Sources (@ReliableSources) April 2, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump are in a tight race ahead of the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. Following is a roundup of Wall Street's take on the likely outcome of the U.S. elections. Analysts still expect a Clinton win, but with a lower probability after the FBI revealed it is examining newly found emails related to Clinton's use of a private server while she was secretary of state.(reut.rs\/2eVjseK) Prior to this revelation, analysts were largely focused on the likelihood \u2013 albeit a small one \u2013 of a Democratic sweep of the White House, Senate and House of Representatives this election, and the implications of such a scenario on financial markets. (reut.rs\/2fcIZ2O) MORE COVERAGE: bit.ly\/2dOgcoE Tina Fordham, Chief Global Political Analyst, Citigroup \"Our probability of a 75 pct probability of a Clinton victory remains unchanged due to our longstanding caution over the risks of Black Swans, but these developments (FBI's latest announcement on Clinton email probe) have added a significant obstacle to the Clinton campaign, and are likely to further dent voter confidence.\" \"The FBI announcement could increase the risk that if Trump loses he does not accept the result, as he has threatened. If a Clinton victory transpires and she presides over a Republican-controlled or divided Congress, the risk of continuous investigations and future impeachment risk is non-negligible.\" Shawn Golhar, Head of Public Policy Research, Barclays Capital \"While the FBI Director's letter may drive reluctant GOP voters to the polls and convince some remaining undecided voters to support Donald Trump, it is unclear if this will sway the election enough for Trump, given the Democratic electoral firewall, early voting indications, and Trump's lack of a voter turnout campaign.\" \"The 2016 elections continue to have two tail end risks: Donald Trump wins, or the Democrats sweep the White House and both chambers of Congress. Friday's announcement will likely increase Trump's chances of winning and whittle down the already slim chances of a Democratic sweep.\" Alec Phillips, U.S. Political Economist, Goldman Sachs \"The probability implied by online prediction markets that Sec. Clinton wins the White House has declined over the last several days, from between 80 pct and 90 pct in most markets over the last couple of weeks, to between 64 pct and 75 pct as of November 1... That said, Secretary Clinton is still seen by prediction markets to be twice as likely to win the election as Mr. Trump.\" \"Polls have tightened in the U.S. presidential election... However, even after adjusting Sec. Clinton's lead in state polls for her diminished margin nationally, she still appears likely to win more than the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the White House.\" \"As a starting point, note that the reliably Democratic states that Sec. Clinton currently leads by at least mid-single digits are worth 263 electoral votes. To reach 270, she must add to this North Carolina (15 EVs, Clinton leads by around 2pp), Colorado (9 EVs, Clinton leads by 1-2pp); and\/or Nevada and the 2nd Congressional District of Maine (6 EVs plus 1 EV, Clinton leads by around 1pp in both).\" \"By contrast, Mr. Trump has a solid lead in states worth 186 EVs; to reach 270 he would need to add to this Arizona (11 EVs, Trump leads by around 1pp), Florida (29 EVs, Trump leads by around 1pp), Ohio (18 EVs, Trump leads by around 2pp), plus Colorado, Nevada, and North Carolina, or some other combination that scores electoral votes even deeper into Democratic territory.\" \"This is still a significant polling deficit for Mr. Trump to overcome in a large number of states, particularly in contrast to Sec. Clinton, who simply needs to win one of the very competitive states she currently leads (Colorado, Nevada, or North Carolina) and maintain her sizable lead in the others to win.\" Stephen Gallagher, Americas Head of Research, Societe Generale \"Our baseline outcome is for Secretary Clinton to win the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Donald Trump's chances are modest but still viable. The latest FBI interest in emails demonstrates that, 'It isn't over till it's over.'\" \"Traditionally, the losing candidate in a race concedes on the basis of incoming results, and that call is typically an early morning exercise. The challenge for 2016 is Trump's promise to maintain the suspense. Without a concession, markets and general public may presume the outcome on the basis of results, but difficult to confirm until states certify the results.\" Thomas Block, Washington Policy Strategist, Fundstrat Global Advisors \"Fundamentals continue to point to a Clinton victory with 75 percent chances of a Clinton\/Kaine win, but margins are likely to be closer in key swing states. However, Trump surprised and outperformed in primaries, and with recent events impossible to capture in polling, nothing is certain.\"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump paced, frowned and physically loomed at times over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during Sunday night's town-hall debate, prompting bewilderment and mockery from some on social media. The online reaction underscored the contentious tone of the encounter in St. Louis in which Trump and Clinton hurled insults at each other less than a month before the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. Twitter users seized on Trump's body language, with some remarking that he appeared to have \"stalked\" Clinton around the stage. The criticism came as the Republican faces a political storm after being caught on a leaked 2005 videotape making lewd and demeaning remarks about women. \"#Trump's body language [was] bizarre,\" wrote Twitter user Sheena (@texdakota). \"Pacing, insulting, standing right behind her.\" \"Trump's body language freaked me out,\" wrote Charlotte (@charlotteirene8). \"I get very uncomfortable when men stand behind me, especially like that.\" A spokeswoman for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Clinton's performance inspired online criticism as well. \"Clinton could have done better,\" tweeted ryank (@ryantkelly). \"Didn't seem as hungry, as able to get under his skin tonight.\" Sentiment on Trump's performance was 66.9 percent negative, according to an analysis by social intelligence firm Brandwatch of Twitter posts during the debate, while Clinton's was 57.8 percent negative. The debate, which featured questions from audience members, was the most tweeted-about debate ever, with more than 17 million tweets, said Twitter spokesman Nick Pacilio. Trump's statement that he and running mate Mike Pence differed on their approach to military intervention in Syria was the most-talked-about moment of the night on the microblogging site.","label":0}
{"text":"The Ferguson #BlackLivesMatter protesters are spilling the beans on the so-called grassroots movement.Earlier this week black protesters staged a protest at at the office of MORE (Missourians Organizing for Reform and Empowerment) on Thursday to press their claim that groups led by whites have collected tens of thousands of dollars in donations off of the Black Lives Matter movement without paying the Black participants their fair share.Much more on that sit-in protest at MORE here.The black protesters threatened to f*ck up the white protest organizers.Now this It s widely known thatFerguson activists were flown to New York City, Wisconsin, and even the West Bank to spread racial hatred.Now we know why they re so committed to the cause.They are being paid quite a bit to disrupt and initiate violence across the country.The protesters are talking online about how much they were getting paid to protest against the police and stir up racial hate in Ferguson and other communities since August.** Protesters were making MORE THAN $5,000 a month to disrupt cities and attack police!Listening to @search4swag live now on @JoePrich they pointing out that @deray is getting paid by Soros Independent CaT (@RealOrangeCat) May 16, 2015The far left billionaire George Soros pumped at least $33 million into the violent Ferguson protest movement, according The Washington Times.Many of the grassroots leaders were paid handsomely.And the protesters are wising up to Deray who has been out every night tweeting and stirring up the race hate n numerous cities for several months. Black Lives Matter and Get Paid Another group Resource Generation, a racist Socialist group, paid a million to the protesters.","label":1}
{"text":"Former Republican Senator Dan Coats of Indiana is the leading candidate to serve as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's director of national intelligence, NBC News reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the discussions. Coats met with Trump on Nov. 30 at Trump Tower in New York City.","label":0}
{"text":"Barack Obama has been accused again and again of ruining the economy but where s the proof? Oh wait, there is none because he s done the exact opposite of that. In fact, president Obama has broken records by creating jobs.According to the majority of Republicans, Obama has done just about nothing right. He gets zero credit for the good things he s done and all the credit for anything that goes slightly wrong. Well, that has to change. Obama has done everything he can for America and is still doing so. Obama is currently on a 78 month long streak of creating jobs. In those 78 months he s created over 15.1 MILLION jobs. That s more than any other president in history.On the off chance that a republican president had managed something like this, they would be receiving plenty of praise. In fact Jesse Lee tweeted a rather accurate remark on that:In alt universe where Romney won, these #s would be getting chiseled under his face on Mount Rushmore as we speak. https:\/\/t.co\/7prryK5nPF Jesse Lee (@jesseclee44) September 2, 2016It s ridiculous how poorly Obama has been treated since he s been in office. He s worked harder than president-elect Donald Trump ever will, and has made so much progress for this country. Yet all he has received is criticism and sarcastic remarks: thanks Obama. Well it s time for us to start saying thank you to Obama, and mean it.Featured Image via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"British Prime Minister Theresa May should call a leadership election and as many as 30 of her lawmakers support telling her to go, former Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps said on Friday. I think she should call a leadership election, Shapps told BBC Radio 5 live. The writing is on the wall. Shapps, who chaired the party between 2012 and 2015, said up to 30 Conservative lawmakers backed the bid to tell May to go.","label":0}
{"text":"Britain is hopeful of some good news from Northern Ireland that may allow it to introduce legislation that would restore the region s power-sharing government, the leader of Britain s lower house of parliament said on Thursday. Northern Ireland has been without a devolved administration since its collapse in January, raising the prospect of direct rule being reimposed from London, potentially destabilizing a delicate political balance in the British province. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who has been facilitating the talks with his counterpart in London, raised the possibility on Wednesday that a successful outcome could be reached by the end of the week. We are hopeful for some good news from Northern Ireland that may allow for legislation to recreate the Northern Ireland Executive, Andrea Leadsom added when setting out the upcoming parliamentary business for next week. Although there was no formal reference to legislation on Northern Ireland in the published list of business, her comments suggest the government would be able to find time for it in the parliamentary schedule. Britain s Northern Ireland minister has warned that he will have to impose a budget for the province from London if an agreement is not reached by the end of the month, saying on Thursday that clear differences remained between the parties. The main impediment in the talks between Irish nationalists Sinn Fein and the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) is disagreement over the rights of Irish language speakers. Sinn Fein s leader in Northern Ireland, Michelle O Neill, said in a statement there were still very real challenges to be addressed in the talks.","label":0}
{"text":"Former Gawker CEO Nick Denton claimed that the establishment will have to adopt a nicer \"Zen Buddhism response\" to beat Breitbart News during a SXSW interview last week. [\"In some degree there's a difference between Gawker and Breitbart,\" claimed Denton during an interview with Digiday. \"Gawker is sensational, shameless news that is grounded in truth, a dramatic version of the truth, but it is the truth. While Breitbart and fake news on Facebook are further escalation: They are not just sensationalization of the truth, but also go beyond the truth. \" Denton went on to add that the left needs to adopt a nicer approach to beat Breitbart News and the rise of conservatism, before falsely associating Breitbart with Nazism. \"I think the answer to Breitbart is not going to be, 'Let's do more aggressive fake news on the left,'\" Denton explained. \"There might be some Zen Buddhism response to Breitbart. It is going to be hard because the sensation is you want to punch the Nazi, but they have the guns. \" Gawker Media became infamous for publishing news that often ruined or negatively impacted people's lives before it was bankrupted and shut down following a lawsuit from one of its targets. \"Facebook makes me despise many of my friends, and Twitter makes me hate the rest of the world,\" said Denton during his SXSW panel, before praising Reddit as the model of the future. \"Even if we're full of despair over what the Internet has become, it's good to remind yourself when you're falling down some Wikipedia hole or having a great conversation with somebody online \u2014 it's an amazing thing,\" he concluded. \"In the habits that we enjoy, there are the seeds for the future. That's where the good Internet will rise up again. \" Last year, Denton and Gawker were forced to pay out $140 million to Hulk Hogan following a lengthy lawsuit over the gossip outlet's unauthorized posting of Hogan's private sex tape. The lawsuit was backed by PayPal and billionaire Peter Thiel, who himself had been affected in the past by the outlet after being outed as gay, and forced Denton to file for bankruptcy. At SXSW on Sunday, Denton claimed that Thiel had become a \"national figure\" and \"extremely prominent\" in American politics and culture. \"Peter Thiel, through his financial support of litigation and his support for political disruption through Donald Trump, has become a national figure,\" Denton proclaimed. \"He has become extremely prominent and an avatar, an embodiment, of the merger of the reactionary elite with a kind of populist celebrity in Donald Trump. \" Thiel is not the first homosexual that Gawker outed, while the gossip media empire also mocked the death of Vice President Mike Pence's dog, accused actor James Franco of being a rapist, encouraged readers to pirate Quentin Tarantino's film The Hateful Eight, published several celebrities' nude photos, and refused to remove an uploaded video of the potential rape of a girl in a bathroom. When former Gawker editor A. J. Daulerio was asked in court what the limits would be in deciding not to publish a sex tape, he replied that the video would have to feature someone aged four or under. Following the controversy, Gawker Media was bought by Univision, who made it their first act to shut down the media company's flagship site, Gawker, and rebrand themselves as Gizmodo Media. Since filing for bankruptcy, Denton was denied the ability to lease his $4. 25 million apartment in Manhattan, and he has since moved into a cheaper property. Hogan has since purchased a $1. 6 million beach house. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"THE BIG UPSET: Democrats Go Into Shock As Donald Trump Pulls Even With Crooked Hillary In Michigan Trump and Clinton both received 44 percent support from respondents in a poll conducted Nov. 3 in Michigan. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received 4 percent support, while Green party nominee Jill Stein received 3 percent. One percent of the respondents said that they were supporting someone else, and five percent said they were still undecided. Republican nominee Donald Trump is tied with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in Michigan, according to a Strategic National Poll.  The Michigan statewide poll revealed Trump is now dead even with Clinton , in a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.  Trump and Clinton both received 44 percent support from respondents in a poll conducted Nov. 3, which was obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received 4 percent support, while Green party nominee Jill Stein received 3 percent. One percent of the respondents said that they were supporting someone else, and five percent said they were still undecided.  The survey , conducted by Strategic National , a Republican leaning consulting firm based in Michigan, contacted 573 likely voters in the State of Michigan on Nov. 3. The survey reported that 39 percent of the respondents were affiliated with the Democratic Party, 34 percent affiliated with the GOP, 21 percent affiliated with an independent or third party, and 5 percent said they were \"unsure\" of their party affiliation. Donald Trump MASSIVE Rally in Warren, Michigan:  Clinton is scheduled to make an appearance in Detroit Friday afternoon. Clinton will attempt to inject enthusiasm into reliable Democratic Party voters that came out for President Barack Obama in full force both in 2008 and 2012. Trump appeared at two rallies in the state Monday, and his children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka stumped around the state this week.  Texas Sen. Ted Cruz appeared at a campaign rally with vice presidential candidate Mike Pence Thursday in Portage, Mich. on the state's west side \u2014 an area where Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich performed well in the GOP primary.  Both candidates have made \" six-figure \" advertising purchases in the state in the last days before the election. Clinton's campaign dumped $2.5 million in Michigan in two days alone, according to tabloid news outlet TMZ . Laura Ingraham on Why Trump Can Pull Off an Election Upset Over Clinton on Tuesday:  Clinton enjoyed as much as a 13-point advantage over Trump in Michigan just two weeks ago. The Democratic nominee has not made Michigan a regular campaign stop while Trump has focused on the state and other rust belt states as a potential path to victory.  While Michigan hasn't voted for a Republican candidate for president since President George H. W. Bush in 1988, the state is home to vast swaths of conservative-leaning precincts and a well-established state party apparatus. Michigan's governor and both legislative chambers are controlled by Republicans and the state's congressional delegation is made up of nine Republicans and five Democrats.  Democrats have been able to win presidential elections by \"running up the score\" in its urban areas and population bases, something Clinton hoped would keep the state safely in her corner without diverting resources and time from other battleground states.  \"Trump is over performing in key segments of the electorate especially in rural areas and Macomb County while Clinton is failing to get the numbers she needs out of the city of Detroit,\" John Yob, CEO of Strategic National, who conducted the poll, reported.  Out of the poll's respondents , 75 percent were contacted by landline, while 25 percent were contacted over cellular phone. The poll was conducted through landlines, using Interactive Voice Response and the margin of error for the poll is 4.09 percent. source","label":1}
{"text":"WFB North Korea for the first time this week revealed plans for using its nuclear arms for space-based electronics-disrupting EMP attacks, in addition to direct warhead ground blasts.The official communist party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, published a report Monday on the EMP might of nuclear weapons, outlining an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack produced by detonating a nuclear warhead in space. In general, the strong electromagnetic pulse generated from nuclear bomb explosions between 30 kilometers and 100 kilometers [18.6 miles and 62 miles] above the ground can severely impair electronic devices, electric machines, and electromagnetic grids, or destroy electric cables and safety devices, said the article authored by Kim Songwon, dean of Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang. The discovery of the electromagnetic pulse as a source of high yield in the high-altitude nuclear explosion test process has given it recognition as an important strike method, he stated.The official discussion by North Korea of plans to conduct EMP strikes will likely fuel debate over the threat. Former CIA Director James Woolsey has said North Korea is capable of orbiting an EMP nuclear weapon in a satellite.Some liberal arms control advocates have dismissed the EMP threat from Pyongyang as far-fetched, such as arms control advocate Jeffrey Lewis, who in April dismissed the threat of an EMP attack by laughing at a reporter s question. This is the favorite nightmare scenario of a small group of very dedicated people, he told NPR.Disclosure of North Korea s intention to use its nuclear force for EMP attacks comes as U.S. intelligence agencies are continuing to analyze the latest underground nuclear test by North Korea on Sept. 3 that the regime said was its first hydrogen bomb explosion.Senior administration officials said initial assessments of the nuclear blast in northeastern North Korea indicate it was the largest test detonation so far, and much larger than an underground test carried out last year. It was the regime s sixth nuclear test.U.S. nuclear technicians have not made a definitive conclusion about the specifics of the device. Specialists are trying to determine if the test involved a hydrogen bomb, as Pyongyang asserted, or a device designed for EMP attack. They are also assessing whether the test used boosted fission technology.Hydrogen bombs are advanced devices that use a two-stage explosion process to produce a massive explosion. Boosted fission devices are less sophisticated technologically and require more nuclear fuel. We re highly confident this was a test of an advanced nuclear device and what we ve seen so far is not inconsistent with North Korea s claims, a U.S. intelligence official said.However, a final conclusion on the type and yield of the blast is not expected for several days. Data from the test is being analyzed by nuclear weapons experts at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.Also, the large explosion perhaps more than 100 kilotons, or the equivalent of 100 tons of TN likely produced significant venting of radioactive particles into the air.Special U.S. intelligence aircraft, including the WC-135 nuclear sniffer jets, are conducting flights near the test zone to gather samples of particles from the test.EXPERTS ARE SAYING AN EMP ATTACK BY N KOREA IS A VERY REAL AND DARK POSSIBILITYAccording to the Business Insider, some experts believe that the more realistic threat at this point in time is an EMP attack. To make that happen, all North Korea has to do is launch a low-yield nuclear missile from a submarine, ship, or even by balloon and explode it at high altitude, above the atmosphere.The potential result: a blackout of the Eastern grid that supplies 75% of power to the United States.If an EMP attack did take place, it would be beyond anything we have seen before. The Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack, which was established by Congress in 2001, estimates that within 12 months following a nationwide blackout, up to 90% of the US population could perish from starvation, disease, and societal breakdown. Electronic ArmageddonIn practical terms, a catastrophic blackout would be worst in cities, because it would instantly deprive the population of access to drinking water, refrigeration, heat, air conditioning, and telecommunication. Food stores would be looted within a matter of days, and gas stations would cease to function without electricity.Without Internet access and power, all commerce and advanced methods of communication would stop. There would be no TV, radio, phones. Credit card transactions and cash withdrawals at banks would be impossible. Paper money would become worthless, and Bitcoin would cease to exist, along with the stock market.Newt Gingrich, speaking at the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources earlier this month, said an EMP attack would send us back to the 18th century. But that s not the only problem. If no outside help arrives, within days, chaos begins to reign. Civilization is a rather thin veneer that humans have acquired over centuries, a mask covering our hard-wired survival instincts. Once the mask slips, it could mean the end of the world as we know it.We are Ill-Prepared For An EMP AttackUS politicians and major utilities have kicked the can down the road when it comes to EMP preparation. Edison Electric estimates that shielding transformers for the US grid system could cost $20 billion.Granted, American power companies have been studying ways to protect our electronic grids against attack, but tangible results are slow in coming.The only current option after an EMP attack would be to replace damaged or destroyed transformers. However, says Scott Aaronson, managing director for Cyber and Infrastructure Security at Edison Electric, replacements for those transformers must be procured from foreign suppliers, which could take up to 18 months.Peter Vincent Pry, leader of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, believes North Korea is closer to launching an EMP attack than many analysts believe. He wants Congress to work harder and cut the red tape to allow the innovation necessary to mitigate the threat.In Pry s opinion, an EMP attack would ultimately kill more Americans than a direct nuclear blast could. His book, The Long Sunday, describes several plausible EMP attack scenarios.Pry thinks that the first nation to use nuclear weapons today even a rogue state like North Korea or Iran will immediately become the most feared and credible nuclear power in the world, a formidable force to be reckoned with, and perhaps the dominant actor in a new world order. Is there a sensible way to prepare for an EMP attack?Maybe not, but stocking some food, water, fuel, and batteries for emergencies is always a good idea as well as owning a stash of gold coins as hard assets.While you can t eat gold, as some preppers say, it is the only kind of money that has prevailed over the millennia. Kim, the North Korean technical university dean, stated that high-altitude explosions can be conducted in the stratosphere or in space where the blast wave is limited by the lack of air or the thinness of air. In explosions occurring at such altitudes, large amounts of electrons are released as a result of ionization reactions of high-energy instant gamma rays and other radioactive rays, he said. These electrons form a strong electromagnetic pulse (EMP) through interaction with the geomagnetic field. The detonation would create a strong electric field of 100,000 volts per meter when it approaches the ground and that is how it destroys communications facilities and electricity grids, the report said.The EMP report was published Monday, a day after the same state-run outlet reported on a visit by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to a nuclear weapons facility that also mentioned plans for using nuclear weapons in EMP attacks. Our hydrogen bomb whose power as a nuclear bomb can be adjusted at will from tens of kilotons to hundreds of kilotons according to the targets of strike is a multifunctional thermonuclear warhead which not only has enormous lethality and destructibility, but also can even carry out super-powerful EMP attack over an expansive area through detonation at high altitudes according to strategic goals, the report said.","label":1}
{"text":"A Las Vegas high school student was caught on camera calling an African-American classmate a f*cking n*gger in a shockingly racist rant that went viral after someone on her school bus filmed the incident and posted it online.Not much is known about the incident yet, but according to someone who tweeted the video he says he s a friend of the target of the slur the black student who filmed the girl s hateful ravings was punished for filming it. The person behind the camera was scheduled for a mandatory parent meeting complete with suspension. A school in Vegas just rpcd a black kid for recording a Caucasian female calling him a n*gger on the bus, the teen, who goes by Key on Twitter, wrote. Any thoughts? @FOX5Vegas @FOX5Vegas pic.twitter.com\/wayrBn7H42 Key ? ? (@Kizzy_K42) May 9, 2017Asked what rpcd means, he explained:@yoongisblanket @goldenseoulss @FOX5Vegas Required parent conference suspension until the meeting Key ? ? (@Kizzy_K42) May 10, 2017The girl can be heard saying that someone is black but he makes himself look like a f*cking n*gger before huffing and sitting back in her seat, turning away from the person filming. Key says that he does not wish to reveal the name of the school because he fears retaliation from the school for exposing what happened, adding that it started when she said she was better than him because she s white :@FOX5Vegas Btw not giving out a lot of info for my protection being that this is my Senior year Key ? ? (@Kizzy_K42) May 9, 2017One poster a friendly white Trump supporter attempting to intimidate a former student of the school who commented on the video and apparently knows the girl revealed that the students are from Shadow Ridge High School. We have redacted identifying information from her post:Welcome to Trump s America, where more and more people are deeming it acceptable to hurl racial slurs at minorities.","label":1}
{"text":"Andrew Olmem, an attorney and former Republican congressional aide, has joined the White House National Economic Council as a deputy to Gary Cohn, said two sources familiar with the move. Olmem, an attorney to the Senate Banking Committee during the financial crisis, left his job at Venable LLP last week, said the law firm. Olmem was a leading staff negotiator working on the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act which led to Wall Street reforms, according to a Venable notice. \"Mr. Olmem was particularly involved with its provisions dealing with the regulation and resolution of systemic financial institutions, Federal Reserve liquidity programs, financial regulatory structure, and prudential regulation of financial institutions,\" according to the profile. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The National Economic Council will coordinate economic policy across President Donald Trump's Cabinet> It was not clear what post Olmem will hold.","label":0}
{"text":"Russia is ready to make contact with new U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and is considering a meeting in Bonn or Munich in Germany in February, Russia's state-run RIA news agency cited a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying on Thursday.","label":0}
{"text":"The Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, appeared on Meet The Press with Chuck Todd on Sunday to discuss his state s new open carry law. Now, while we must say Mr. Patrick did a pretty good job at making it seem like he defended the merits of the law, in reality, all he did was provide outdated, heavily debunked statistics.Here s what Dan Patrick had to say about the relation of guns to crime data: Everywhere that we have more citizens carrying guns, crime is less. There s a study showing that where states have open carry, or concealed carry, but particulary open carry, crime is down 25%, murders are down (even). Having law-abiding citizens having guns is a good thing. In fact, Chuck, every one of the mass-shootings except two in America since 1950 have been gun-free zones. Where people have guns, bad guys don t go. Lt. Governor Patrick doesn t cite his source in the interview, but given how he just said open carry causes crime to go down 25%, we re going to assume he s referring to Florida State Rep. Matt Gaetz s (R-Fort Walton Beach) research. Matt Gaetz is the guy who came up with all this from when he sponsored a bill in October to allow open carry in his state.During a press conference, he claimed to show research that proved violent crime was 23 percent lower in states that allowed open carry, and the murder rate was 5 percent lower. There are just a few problems with this. Politifact decided to fact-check this and determined that it was very misleading. For one, Gaetz only used data for one full year (not very historical by any means) and compiled it in such a manner that would make it impossible to draw a reasonable conclusion from. It noted that no policy makers should rely on it. Yes, anyone can come up with stats, but that doesn t make them applicable. If a policy maker were to try then and use these stats to make the claim that this proves open carry laws make people safer, then that deserves the title of fake.Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck doesn t think you can use just one statistic to back up a claim when several other studies are proving otherwise. Plenty of research has found rates of carry permit holding having no net effect on crime rates, including violent crime rates, one way or the other. And, not only that but the opposite appears to be true. The Washington Post published an article entitled: More gun, more crime: New research debunks central thesis of the gun rights movement. In it, it points out how Stanford law professor John Donohue has advanced decades of analysis showing that guns do in fact equal more crime. So much for the Texas Lt. Governor s argument that we need more guns to be safe. I guess this is what you get when you pick and choose your facts, heavily debunked ones at that.","label":1}
{"text":"The great debate over what \"nationalism\" means will surely be filled by the closing passage of President Donald Trump's inaugural speech:[A new national pride will stir ourselves, lift our sights and heal our divisions. It's time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget, that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots. We all enjoy the same glorious freedoms and we all salute the same great American flag. And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, they look up at the same night sky, they fill their heart with the same dreams and they are infused with the breath of life by the same almighty creator. So to all Americans in every city near and far, small and large, from mountain to mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words: You will never be ignored again. Your voice, your hopes and your dreams will define our American destiny. And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. Together we will make America strong again, we will make America wealthy again, we will make America proud again, we will make America safe again. And, yes, together we will make America great again. Trump's inaugural address, reportedly written by chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and senior advisor Stephen Miller, was criticized as aggressive, but it was largely an effort to explain what he meant by \"Make America Great Again,\" which is (thankfully!) a very aggressive idea. For an example of a passive campaign theme, try \"Hope and Change. \" There is nothing more passive than lying around and hoping some Santa Claus politician comes along with a bag of other people's money to fix your life. Trump was also criticized for delivering an inaugural address that sounded too much like his campaign speeches. This was necessary, because the mainstream media didn't relay enough of what he said on the stump. They were too busy freaking out over whatever \"outrageous\" thing he said at any given rally. It was appropriate for Trump to succinctly explain his platform to the widest audience he'll ever have, both within and beyond America's borders, with no media filter. Until now, most of the media commentary on \"Make America Great Again\" consisted of whining about how unfair it was to the inexplicably Barack Obama, mixed with the occasional lefty primal scream about how America was never great to begin with. Perhaps most importantly, Trump used his inaugural to beat down the asinine smear of \"white nationalism. \" His talk of national pride has been corrupted to mean unthinking national chauvinism by the Left. \"America first\" is twisted to mean \"screw everybody but America\" (or, in the hands of the more mendacious critics, \"screw the Jews. \") Then it gets twisted even further by welding the unspoken word \"white\" onto \"nationalism,\" transforming it into a racist call to arms. The number of actual white nationalists who talk about white nationalism is vastly smaller than the number of liberals who insist that's what they hear when Trump talks about \"American pride. \" Maybe it's time for liberals to check in with their therapists and have a long talk about why they hear so many racist dog whistles. In his inaugural, Trump could not have been more clear about the inclusiveness of his vision for American pride. \"Whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots\" is about as clear as it gets. Of course, the usual media swamis will declare they've looked inside Trump's mind, and he didn't really mean that. He just threw those words in because Kellyanne told him he needed a little racism insurance. But everything about that speech, and everything Trump has said about resurgent American pride, and everything said by the people who want to reclaim nationalism from chauvinism, is inclusive. The point is to insist on both national priorities and national responsibilities, for everyone from citizens at the immigration office to President Trump and his Cabinet. The woman from Mexico who took her oath of citizenship yesterday is 100% American. The man from Mexico who slipped across the border in a coyote truck yesterday is not. President Trump has a long list of sacred duties to the woman, but not to the man. This is not a complicated idea, or a racist one, or really even a nationalist one. It's Civics 101. It's also the idea global socialism must strangle, in order to survive. Liberals who rail against \"nationalism\" are primarily interested in creating a world of zero accountability for their maximum leaders. With borders erased, the Ruling Class can hack the electorate to suit its political needs, and their business partners can slash the cost of labor. \"Internationalist\" leaders are accountable to no nation's citizens. Trump's inaugural address included a bold statement of the opposite principle. America's president has neither control, nor responsibility, over the economies of other nations. He is responsible to Americans, from Nebraska to Detroit, as Trump put it. He set a very high bar for himself to clear by pointedly mentioning Detroit. He also made a promise that no group will be preyed upon for the advantages of another. To be the president of all Americans means he is the sugar daddy of none. No more will the power of government be used to penalize groups the Left hates, and beat them into line with new social orthodoxies. No more will Washington dream up economic plans that benefit some, or even most, while designating certain \"forgotten people\" as lifetime losers who need to shut up and accept their fate. Trump referred to \"wealth\" several times in his speech. \"Wealth\" means more than just money. Wealth benefits all, no matter how loudly socialists may screech about too much of it accruing to the One Percent. Some people got very rich by designing, building, and selling the device you're staring at right now. You are wealthier than your grandparents, because you have it. As for a proud America's proper relationship with other nations, Trump said: We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow. That's not chauvinism, or imperialism. That's the understanding America was founded upon. When Thomas Jefferson took his turn at the presidential bat, he called for \"peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. \" No one interpreted that to mean \"to Hell with the rest of the world. \" Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but just about every other nation on Earth understands the concept of putting its own interests first, and believes it has a moral obligation to do so. The leaders of some other nations are very good at murmuring sweet globalist nothings into the ears of elites, but what they actually do is ruthlessly pursue their own national interests. The charade is made much easier for them by the universal understanding that America is supposed to be the one country that never gets to look out for itself, that has no moral right to protect its own interests. Those are all much easier promises to make than keep, to be sure, but Trump did make them. It is wise to be skeptical, and hold his feet to the very large fire he built with that inaugural address.","label":0}
{"text":"After a long struggle, Sri Lanka, the large island nation southeast of India, was declared free of malaria last week by the World Health Organization. It has been more than three years since the last case. \"This is a big success story,\" said Dr. Pedro L. Alonso, the director of the W. H. O. 's global malaria program. \"And it's an example for other countries. \" Sri Lanka almost succeeded in eliminating malaria 50 years ago, but its huge effort fell apart. The country became the example most frequently cited by malariologists to show how defeat could be pried from the jaws of victory. Through the 1940s, Sri Lanka routinely had a million cases of malaria a year. Then officials began an intensive public health campaign, relying on DDT to kill mosquitoes and chloroquine to cure the disease. By 1963, the annual caseload had fallen to a mere 17. Then the drive ran out of money and faltered, and annual cases of malaria rose above 500, 000 by 1969. By then, mosquitoes had evolved resistance to DDT, and by 1992 to its successor, malathion. Malaria parasites first showed resistance to chloroquine in 1984. But the failure also was political: The country's ethnic fabric disintegrated. Sri Lanka had been the British colony of Ceylon, an exporter of tea and cinnamon. After its independence in 1948, the majority Buddhist Sinhalese began discriminating against the Hindu Tamils, whom the British had favored. Decades of civil war between the government and the Tamil Tigers ensued, with the latter aided covertly by India, until the rebellion was crushed in 2009. In 2000, outside the areas in the northeast, malaria cases began dropping as the government, with donor help, deployed a mix of indoor spraying, bed nets, rapid diagnostic kits and medicines that combined artemisinin, an effective treatment, with other drugs. The government also screened blood samples drawn \u2014 for any reason \u2014 in public clinics and hospitals for malaria infection, and officials established a nationwide electronic system. In areas, the disease retreated more slowly, although the Tigers often cooperated with teams because their villages and fighters also suffered. Nonetheless, in a population of 20 million, it took years to get rid of the last few hundred annual cases. Most were soldiers and itinerant laborers, often from India, who worked in remote farming areas and in logging and camps. The Sri Lankan health ministry set up mobile clinics near the camps, as well as at airports and ferry landings where migrants arrived, offering diagnosis and treatment to all. Free malaria care is still a core part of the country's effort to prevent an imported case from leading to a new outbreak. \"They don't ask if anyone is legal or illegal,\" Dr. Alonso said of the medical staff at the clinics. \"If you ask questions, people won't go. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The media doesn't even try to hide its shameless pro-Socialist bias these days. Since nobody really pays attention to them anymore, you might have missed some of the more entertaining butthurt spouted by shameless propagandists posing as journalists. 2016 election night coverage on the propaganda news channels is a lesson in hilarity when examining the reaction of lamestream media talking heads. What is most entertaining about Trump's ascendancy to the Oval Office is that it was totally unexpected, catching cocksure Marxists at CNN and other alphabet channels completely off guard. Let's go over some of the more entertaining reactions last Tuesday. 5. Hillary Shill Martha Raddatz Breaks Down In Tears  Over at ABC, the wrinkled old Hillary shill Martha Raddatz was at a loss for words as she attempted to perform an off the cuff hamster rationalization to fellow Clinton operative George Staphylococcus, explaining why The Bitch lost the election. Raddatz looked like her mother just died as victory turned into defeat for the criminal Hillary Clinton. She's sure to be moving from a pack of smokes a day to two packs a day as the reality of the election continues to settle into her pea brain over the next 4 years. Her tears say more than her boilerplate language ever could. 4. Bernstein Plays The Race Card  To the mainstream media, white people voting in accordance with their own self-interest is racist. In fact, white people acting in any other manner than total subservience is racist to CNN. Washington Post \"journalist\" Carl Bernstein even went so far as to say Trump's election is \"tragic and dangerous\" as despondent and quite possibly drugged CNN propagandists looked on. Bernstein seemed most upset about Trump's immigration policy proposals, in which Mexico will no longer be able to flagrantly let its citizens violate U.S. immigration law. Bernstein completely forgot the racism white people have endured all year long at the hands of Black Lives Matter, La Raza and other black and brown supremacist groups. 3. Chris Matthews Goes Into Hamster Rationalization Mode  Hamster rationalizations are usually reserved for women, but effeminate, low-T manlets like Chris Matthews also have them. His first spin of the hamster wheel makes him say Hillary won the debates. She didn't. Then he says she had the best ad campaign. Nobody believes advertising or anything you say, anymore Chris. Then Matthews says she had the best ground game. She might have, but she was a terrible candidate. The half-man, half-alligator James Carville looked ready to give Chris a hug as the reality of Hillary's defeat began to settle in on MSNBC. 2. The Racist Van Jones Whines About White People  Van Jones looked like he needed a change of underwear as he fell back on tired, old leftist talking points from the 1960s about the evil white male \u2014especially white males that haven't been turned into geldings. He then goes on with an emotional overreaction to say families will be afraid to have breakfast the next day because whitey got back into office. LMFAO. Really, dude? He then says immigrants are afraid now that Trump is going to be President. No Van, immigrants aren't afraid. Illegal hordes who figuratively if not literally say \"Fuck you!\" to U.S. immigration law are afraid, as they should be. Jones then goes on to make a supremely ironic quote as he talks about a so-called white-lash: He says Trump's campaign was based on \"Throwing away some of us to appeal more deeply to others.\" Umm, isn't that what the entire platform of the Democratic party is, Van? Throwing away, nay, crucifying white men to appeal more deeply to others ? Your entire career is based on just that, Mr. Jones. 1. CBS Does A Mea Culpa CBS published an article admitting how badly the press is biased CBS was so stunned it did a full mea culpa on the network's shoddy coverage of the 2016 election. This stunning article entitled \"The Unbearable Smugness of the Press\" needed to be written 10 years ago. Better late than never. CBS actually echoed what we in the manosphere and alt-right have been saying since day one with the Op-Ed piece. This is all symptomatic of modern journalism's great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness . Had Hillary Clinton won, there'd be a winking \"we did it\" feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic. The Eyeball network even admitted the contempt the network has for men like us. So much for that. The audience for our glib analysis and contempt for much of the electorate, it turned out, was rather limited. This was particularly true when it came to voters, the ones who turned out by the millions to deliver not only a rebuke to the political system but also the people who cover it. Trump knew what he was doing when he invited his crowds to jeer and hiss the reporters covering him. They hate us, and have for some time. And can you blame them? Journalists love mocking Trump supporters. We insult their appearances. We dismiss them as racists and sexists. We emote on Twitter about how this or that comment or policy makes us feel one way or the other, and yet we reject their feelings as invalid. Damn. At least some people over there know why we hate them. (That includes this former mainstream media news anchor who defected!) Shameless Activism Got Marxism? It's the guiding philosophy of the alphabet channels Anyone who has the capacity to perform an iota of critical thinking knows the mainstream media is NOT on the side of the average American. It hates and seethes at traditionalists and works to tear down every institution of Western civilization while attempting to impale the most hated of creatures on this planet, the Evil White Male. The rebuke of a sorry candidate like Hillary when the socialist shills thought she was a shoe-in caught the smug son of a bitches off guard. Their reactions are priceless, and need to be documented and remembered. These reactions are undeniable proof that blogs like Return Of Kings and web sites like Breitbart and Drudge are sorely needed, indispensable resources in this day and age. We have not been getting the truth from media for generations. And now, as alternative voices appear, the rift between the two versions of reality grows wider and deeper. The once mainstream media have become nothing but shameless activists for New World Order socialism. The election night \"horror show\" only solidifies this point. We should be proud to be activists pushing our own agenda, if nothing else to balance the scales. The media are NOT friends of the American public. Ultimately, the tired old Socialist media must be dismantled in order for freedom and traditionalism to survive .","label":1}
{"text":"Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a political insider who believed in civility, suspended his campaign Wednesday \u2013 one day after Sen. Ted Cruz bowed out. How SNL's 'the bubble' sketch about polarization is all too true Republican presidential candidate John Kasich arrives to Central Medford High School in Medford, Ore. on April 28. The Ohio governor suspended his campaign Wednesday. John Kasich, who ran as a hug-providing political insider in a year dominated by voter anger and the rise of outside candidates, suspended his political campaign on Wednesday. The move leaves Donald Trump standing alone as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Mr. Trump sounded conciliatory after news broke that Governor Kasich was quitting. He said that the Ohio governor might be helpful in the Buckeye State for the general election and that he would be interested in vetting Kasich as a possible vice presidential running mate. \"I think John's doing the right thing,\" Trump told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. Did he? Not everyone was so sure. Kasich supporters bemoaned the loss of what they felt was the last source of civility in the race. Over the months of a campaign where other candidates resorted to deeply personal insults, innuendo, and shouting, the Ohio governor stood alone in emphasizing the complexity of political problems and the need to work with others to find answers. \"If this is his last campaign, he went out admirably,\" tweeted Yahoo News National Political Correspondent Matt Bai on Wednesday. Others pointed out that Kasich had finally reached his strategic goal \u2013 a one-on-one match-up with Trump \u2013 only to withdraw. Whether he could have beaten Trump or not was irrelevant, in this view. He'd have been able to rally anti-Trump forces in a way Ted Cruz could not, and show that Trumpism had not conquered the entire Republican Party. The problem is that Trump, if not Trumpism, does conquer all in the GOP. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus last night referred to Trump as the \"presumptive nominee.\" Given that, and fact that Trump is almost certain to pile up a winning majority of 1,237 delegates by the end of the primary season, Kasich felt he had no choice but to look for the exits. And there were never enough of those supporters, anyway. Kasich won only his home state of Ohio and by the end was at less than 20 percent in the national polls in a three-man race. Technically, Kasich finished 2016 in fourth, even though he was the last losing contender to drop out. Trump, Senator Cruz, and Marco Rubio all won more delegates. It's amazing that he stayed in the race so long, given that he won more than 20 percent of the vote only once in the first 20 GOP primaries or caucuses, notes FiveThirtyEight polling guru Harry Enten. \"Most candidates would have seen the writing on the wall and gone home. Kasich didn't see the wall or the writing, or he didn't care,\" writes Mr. Enten. Would Trump actually ask Kasich to be his running mate, and if so would Kasich accept? Trump's said he wants a politician as a VP, and the Ohio governor would provide balance to the billionaire in terms of experience and message. The pair never really clashed, though Trump did mock Kasich's losing ways and his enthusiastic methods of eating. For Kasich, a VP slot might validate his quixotic effort and provide a cap to his long and varied political career. But Kasich also described himself as a \"Prince of Light and Hope,\" and he'd be joining a presidential candidate who's shown no eagerness to embrace either of those characteristics.","label":0}
{"text":"Fareed Zakaria tends to go for the heart of the matter when he s talking about pretty much anything, but it s not likely that anybody expected him to criticize Donald Trump as bluntly as he did. Zakaria was live on CNN, speaking with Wolf Blitzer about what it says when a presidential candidate has to come back, time and again, to clarify what he says on volatile issues like Russia.Zakaria explained that there s a pattern of ignorance with Trump, and how, when someone points out that he s wrong somewhere, he comes back with a certain bravado and tries to explain it away with a tweet or a statement. He listed multiple examples of this, such as Brexit, the nuclear triad, and even where Tim Kaine was governor (Trump said New Jersey; Kaine actually governed Virginia). Then he said: Usually he adds that the press hates him. But there s a term for this kind of thing This is the mode of a bullshit artist. DAMN. There s a truth bomb if there ever was one. Trump is, indeed, a bullshit artist there s no other way to put it. Watch Zakaria s entire comment below:Fareed Zakaria, discussing Trump on CNN: This is the mode of a bullshit artist. pic.twitter.com\/WXsgeegGFS Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) August 1, 2016 Zakaria just hit one of Trump s biggest problems on the head with an awfully heavy hammer. Trump can t ever admit that he made a mistake. It s the media that s dishonest. It s his opponents and enemies who are dishonest. Everyone but him is incredibly dishonest and unfair, and he s just a victim for whom our hearts bleed pink carbonated peanut butter. In the end, though, a bullshit artist is what he really is. And he s the GOP s candidate for president.","label":1}
{"text":"Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine spent his Thursday evening with Late Show host Stephen Colbert, and of course eventually the conversation turned to the absolutely destructive force that is the Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump. The first element of Trump s many outrageous statements to be discussed was his absurd description of Trump calling Kaine s running mate Hillary Clinton a bigot. Kaine reminded the audience the difference between the two candidates records regarding America s race troubles: When Hillary Clinton got out of law school, she was working to help advance racial justice in the juvenile justice system in South Carolina and fight school segregation in Alabama, and I about that time got out of law school and was battling housing discrimination in the South and in Virginia. At his early career, Donald Trump was a real estate guy who got sued by the Justice Department for discriminating against people in housing (by) writing the letter C on applications if they were minority, Kaine continued. Hillary Clinton has got a track record all the way back to being a middle schooler in a Methodist youth group of trying to advance priorities for others and Donald Trump s for himself. Kaine is right, of course. The contrast couldn t be more stark, and history speaks for itself. If anyone is the bigot in this scenario, it s Donald Trump, not Hillary Clinton.Briefly, Stephen Colbert turned to his and Kaine s shared faith, and asked Kaine to recite a New Testament verse he is fond of. Kaine responded with Philippians 2:3: Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind consider one another as more important than yourself. Colbert then cited his own favorite verse in Latin. A backstage interview yielded more criticism of Trump from Kaine, when he said: This is fundamentally about the nation s promise of equality. If we are supposed to do a U-turn or not, so you got to take that seriously, and I m really glad she just reminded everybody that is what is at stake in November. Kaine says that if he ever gets to confront Trump, he d ask one simple question: How can you say the things you re saying? Kaine then continued his final blistering blow: He is going around saying that the American military is a disaster, ridicules a Gold Star family, makes fun of John McCain because he was a POW that kind of personality shouldn t be within 10 time zones of being commander-in-chief. So right, Senator Kaine, so right. Hopefully, people listen to you.Watch a clip below, via Raw Story:","label":1}
{"text":"New Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa is expected to form a new cabinet this week, with all eyes on whether he breaks with the past and names a broad-based government or selects old guard figures from Robert Mugabe s era. Of particular interest is his choice of finance minister to replace Ignatius Chombo, who was among members of a group allied to Mugabe and his wife, Grace, who were detained and expelled from the ruling party. Chombo is facing corruption charges and is due to appear in court for a bail hearing on Monday. In a tentative sign that he might do things differently, ZANU-PF cut the budget for a special congress to be held next month and also slashed the duration by half from six days, the state-owned Herald newspaper reported on Monday. Mnangagwa was sworn in as president last Friday after 93-year-old Mugabe quit under pressure from the military. He vowed to rebuild Zimbabwe s ravaged economy and serve all citizens. But behind the rhetoric, some Zimbabweans wonder whether a man who loyally served Mugabe for decades can bring change to a ruling establishment accused of systematic human rights abuses and disastrous economic policies. The composition of the new government will show a clear path whether we continue with the status quo or the clear break with the past that we need to build a sustainable state. It s a simple choice, said former finance minister and opposition leader Tendai Biti. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change has called for an inclusive transitional authority to mark a break with Mugabe s 37-year rule and enact reforms to allow for credible and free elections due next year. Zimbabwe needs all hands on deck...We cannot continue reproducing these cycles of instability, Biti, who earned international respect as finance minister in a 2009-2013 unity government, told Reuters. Some economic and political analysts say Mnangagwa s choices may be limited after Cyber Security Minister and close ally Patrick Chinamasa said last week he saw no need for a coalition, as ZANU-PF had a parliamentary majority. And with Mnangagwa saying on Friday elections would go ahead next year as scheduled, the opposition would have little to gain from participating in a coalition just eight months before the vote, Professor Anthony Hawkins, a business studies professor, said. If I were an opposition politician I would say: what s in it for me? Unless I m convinced I m going to lose the election, I won t participate, Hawkins told Reuters. He (Mnangagwa) might introduce technocrats from commerce and that will send out a signal of sorts... As far as the international community is concerned legitimacy is important. It s a very delicate situation and he has very little room for maneuver. The Standard newspaper, which has been critical of Mugabe and his government over the years, said Mnangagwa would be judged on how he delivers on the bold commitments he made at his inauguration. It said he must walk the talk on graft that has exacerbated the country s economic decline. Mugabe s fall after 37 years in power was spurred by a battle to succeed him that pitted Mnangagwa, his former deputy who had stood by him for 52 years, and Mugabe s wife, Grace, 52, who has been at the couple s Blue House mansion in Harare and hasn t been seen in public since.","label":0}
{"text":"BELLEVILLE, Wis. \u2014 Drive past the dairy farms, cornfields and horse pastures here and you will eventually arrive at Cate Machine Welding, a business run by Gene and Lori Cate and their sons. For 46 years, the Cates have welded many things \u2014 fertilizer tanks, parts, cheese molds, even a farmer's broken glasses. And like many small businesses, they have a dusty old computer humming away in the back office. On this one, however, an unusual battle is playing out: The machine has been taken over by Chinese hackers. The hackers use it to plan and stage attacks. But unbeknown to them, a Silicon Valley is tracking them here, in real time, watching their every move and, in some cases, blocking their efforts. \"When they first told us, we said, 'No way,'\" Mr. Cate said one afternoon recently over pizza and cheese curds, recalling when he first learned the computer server his family used to manage its welding business had been secretly repurposed. \"We were totally freaked out,\" Ms. Cate said. \"We had no idea we could be used as an infiltration unit for Chinese attacks. \" On a recent Thursday, the hackers' targets appeared to be a Silicon Valley food delivery a major Manhattan law firm, one of the world's biggest airlines, a prominent Southern university and a smattering of targets across Thailand and Malaysia. The New York Times viewed the action on the Cates' computer on the condition that it not name the targets. The activity had the hallmarks of Chinese hackers known as the C0d0s0 group, a collection of hackers for hire that the security industry has been tracking for years. Over the years, the group has breached banks, law firms and tech companies, and once hijacked the Forbes website to try to infect visitors' computers with malware. There is a murky and much hyped emerging industry in selling intelligence about attack groups like the C0d0s0 group. Until recently, companies typically adopted a defensive strategy of trying to make their networks as impermeable as possible in hopes of repelling attacks. Today, threat intelligence providers sell services that promise to go on the offensive. They track hackers, and for annual fees that can climb into the seven figures, they try to spot and thwart attacks before they happen. These companies have a mixed record of success. Still, after years of highly publicized incidents, Gartner, a market research company, expects the market for threat intelligence to reach $1 billion next year, up from $255 million in 2013. Remarkably, many attacks rely on a tangled maze of compromised computers including those shops like Cate Machine Welding. The hackers aren't after the Cates' data. Rather, they have converted their server, and others like it, into launchpads for their attacks. These servers offer the perfect cover. They aren't terribly well protected, and rarely, if ever, do the owners discover that their computers have become conduits for spies and digital thieves. And who would suspect the Cate family? Two years ago, the Cates received a visit from men informing them that their server had become a conduit for Chinese spies. The Cates asked: \"Are you from the N. S. A. ?\" One of the men had, in fact, worked at the National Security Agency years before joining a company, Area 1, that focuses on tracking digital attacks against businesses. \"It's like being a priest,\" said Blake Darch\u00e9, Area 1's chief security officer, of his N. S. A. background. \"In other people's minds, you never quite leave the profession. \" Mr. Darch\u00e9 wanted to add the Cates' server to Area 1's network of 50 others that had been by hackers. Area 1 monitors the activity flowing into and out of these computers to glean insights into attackers' methods, tools and websites so that it can block them from hitting its clients' networks, or give them a days, weeks or even months before they hit. The Cates called a family meeting. \"People work really hard to make products, and they're getting stolen,\" Ms. Cate said. \"It seemed like the least we could do. \" Area 1 paid for the installation cost, about $150. Shortly after installing a sensor on the machine, Mr. Darch\u00e9 said his hunch was confirmed: The sensor lit up with attacks. Area 1 began to make out the patterns of a familiar adversary: the C0d0s0 group. Area 1 was founded by three former N. S. A. analysts, Mr. Darch\u00e9, Oren Falkowitz and Phil Syme. The three sat side by side at Fort Meade, tracking and, in some cases, penetrating adversaries' weapons systems for intelligence. A little over two years ago, they decided to start their own company and raised $25. 5 million in funding from major venture capitalists and security entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, including Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers and Cowboy Ventures, and security veterans like Ray Rothrock, the chief executive of RedSeal, and Derek Smith, the chief executive of Shape Security. Area 1 is a new player in threat intelligence, a nascent subsector of the security business that includes companies like iSight Partners and Recorded Future that track attackers in underground web forums and on social media, gleaning intelligence about them. Threat intelligence is still more art than science. The jury is still out on whether companies are equipped to use that intelligence to thwart hackers. Area 1 claims that it can head off attacks through the compromised servers it is tracking. It can also use its vantage point to see where attackers are setting up shop on the web and how they plan to target their intended victims. A handful of Area 1 customers confirmed that its technology had helped head off attackers. One client, a chief information security officer at a large health care provider, said the health care sector had been slammed by digital criminals and governments in recent years. He asked that the company not be named, to avoid becoming a more visible target. He credited Area 1's sensors with blocking several attacks on his network, helping his company avoid the fates of the health insurer Anthem, which was breached by Chinese hackers last year, and a growing number of hospitals hit by attacks that have forced them to pay a ransom to get important information back. Mr. Smith, the chief executive of Shape Security, said Area 1 gave his company warning of three attacks before they happened, providing time to block them. Mr. Smith said he was impressed enough that he made a small investment in Area 1. \"Many of these shops are ambivalent because the attacks don't directly impact their business and revenue,\" he said. \"Meanwhile, they unwittingly operate this attack infrastructure. \" But Area 1's business model can pose ethical dilemmas. What does the company do when it sees attacks against prominent companies and government agencies who are not Area 1 customers? \"We think of ourselves as a bodyguard, not a police force that runs around telling everyone they're a victim,\" said Mr. Falkowitz, Area 1's chief executive. \"We're in the business of . \" They do warn some victims, he said. For instance, they tipped off a law firm, a manufacturer, a financial services firm and electronics company that were attacked via the Cates' server after they saw the C0d0s0 hackers make off with their intellectual property. Some of those victims, including the law firm, later signed up for Area 1 services. Not all companies heed the warning. A security consultant for one victim, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of nondisclosure agreements, said that his client chose not to act on a tip from Area 1 last year out of concern that a scandal over a successful online attack against the company would jeopardize its recent acquisition. It figured its acquirer would not have been thrilled to learn that the 's proprietary technology was now in Chinese hacker's hands. Posted on the wall of Area 1's headquarters in a historic house in Redwood City, Calif. is a list titled \"45 Things That Are Harder Than Cybersecurity. \" It includes flight, solar power, the flu vaccine, brain surgery, the internet, heart transplants, skyscrapers, the Thermos and the . Mr. Falkowitz disagrees with a growing concern that it is too difficult or impossible to stop online attacks. As attackers have grown more sophisticated, many security companies have stopped believing they can block attacks with traditional defenses like antivirus software. Instead, many focus on trying to detect an intrusion \"in real time,\" to catch hackers before they steal too much. Eighty percent of the time, victims learn they have been breached only when law enforcement or someone else shows up with their stolen data, according to Verizon, which tracks breach data. At the N. S. A. Mr. Falkowitz had worked with teams that detected North Korean missile launches. Much of that early work was done with satellites that would look for sudden heat blasts. Eventually, Mr. Falkowitz's team tried a more proactive approach. If they could hack the computers that controlled the missile launch systems, they could glean launch schedules. Area 1 is now taking a similar approach to digital attacks, tapping into the attackers' launchpads, as it were, rather than waiting for them to attack. Hackers don't just press a big red \"attack\" button one day. They do reconnaissance, scout out employees on LinkedIn, draft carefully worded emails to trick unsuspecting employees to open them and click on links or email attachments that will try to launch malicious attacks. Once they persuade a target to click \u2014 and 91 percent of attacks start this way, according to Trend Micro, the security firm \u2014 it takes time to crawl through a victim's network to find something worth taking. Then they have to pull that data off the network. The process can take weeks, months, even years and leaves a digital trail. Area 1 watches for this kind of activity and then teams up with firms like Blue Coat, a web security company, to build what it has learned into security software that can try to block attacks when they come. The owners of Cate Machine Welding say that living with Chinese attackers in your office can be a strange feeling. Recently, Area 1 executives visited the shop and showed them some of what they had learned from watching their computer. The C0d0s0 group had used their server to pilfer a law firm's due diligence on an impending acquisition, a financial services firm's confidential trading plans, a mobile payment 's proprietary source code, some blueprints and loan applications at a mortgage company. Hearing that, Mr. Cate expressed pride \u2014 and maybe even a hint of schadenfreude. For years, the welding business that is his family's bread and butter has been migrating to China. Now his family is helping American businesses fight back. \"We want to do the right thing for these businesses,\" Mr. Cate said, \"For our country. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Bill Paxton, the affable actor who was a in a string of 1990s blockbuster movies including \"Twister,\" \"Titanic\" and \"Apollo 13,\" and who later played the lead in the critically acclaimed television drama \"Big Love,\" has died. He was 61. His death, from complications of surgery, was announced on Sunday by a family representative. The statement did not say when or where Mr. Paxton died, but Rolling Stone magazine reported that he died on Saturday. Early in his career, Mr. Paxton had small parts in \"The Terminator\" (1984) and \"Aliens\" (1986). Both films were directed by James Cameron, who later featured him in more roles: as a salesman who cheated Jamie Lee Curtis's character in \"True Lies\" (1994) and as the scientist who salvaged the wreck of the ocean liner in \"Titanic\" (1997). He also starred in Ron Howard's film \"Apollo 13\" (1995) portraying Fred Haise, one of three astronauts on a mission to the moon that experienced serious mechanical problems, and in \"Twister\" (1996) as a . Mr. Paxton appeared regularly on television in the last decade. On the HBO series \"Big Love,\" from 2006 to 2011, he played Bill Henrickson, the patriarch of a polygamist family in Utah, receiving three Golden Globe nominations for his portrayal. In 2012, he was nominated for an Emmy Award for playing Randolph McCoy in the \"Hatfields McCoys\" on the History Channel. And in 2014 he appeared in six episodes of \"Marvel's Agents of S. H. I. E. L. D. \" on ABC. Mr. Paxton returned to TV this year as the star of \"Training Day,\" CBS's new police drama. A spinoff of the 2001 movie starring Denzel Washington, the series had its premiere this month, and only four episodes have been broadcast. In total, 13 episodes of \"Training Day\" have been filmed, and Mr. Paxton appears in all of them. For now, the show will continue to be shown on Thursday nights, but its future is not certain. Reviews have been mixed \u2014 though Mr. Paxton's performance as a rogue cop has been praised \u2014 and its ratings have been low, averaging little more than four million viewers. In a statement, CBS and Warner Bros. Television offered no word on the show's future. William Paxton was born on May 17, 1955, in Fort Worth, the son of the former Mary Lou Gray and John Lane Paxton, a businessman and sometime actor. When he was 8, Bill and his brother, Bob, were taken by their father to see President John F. Kennedy on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, in Fort Worth, hours before his assassination in Dallas. \"I remember just a really euphoric crowd,\" he recalled in a 2013 interview. \"I was a bit young to really understand later the consequences of the event. \" There is a photograph of Mr. Paxton from that morning, perched on a stranger's shoulders. He graduated from Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth and moved to Los Angeles the next year to break into the film industry, finding jobs as a production assistant and set dresser. At 21 he enrolled in New York University, where he studied with the acting teacher Stella Adler, but dropped out after two years to return to Los Angeles to pursue acting there. \"I didn't see any point in a degree,\" he told Texas Monthly. \"I didn't see where I'd be filling that in on an application for any kind of job. \" Mr. Paxton's survivors include his wife of more than 30 years, Louise Newbury and two children, James and Lydia. Long before his role in \"Big Love,'' Mr. Paxton was in assessing his status in Hollywood. \"It's always a little frustrating when you're reading a script after 10 guys ahead of you have had a chance to pick it over,\" he said in 1998. \"You can almost see the bread crumbs. I haven't had a role that's propelled me into major stardom. Sure, I've had roles that put me on the playing field. A lot of base hits. No home runs. \"","label":0}
{"text":"They are supposed to be memorable and a chance to reconnect with your loved ones, but family reunions need careful planning to pull off successfully, according to Jeanne Pena, the family reunions manager at Mohonk Mountain House, a resort in New Paltz, N. Y. that hosts more than 150 family reunions a year. \"There are a lot of little pieces involved in making sure that this important occasion goes smoothly,\" she said. Here, Ms. Pena's advice for having a family reunion you'll remember for all the right reasons. Set the Date Far in Advance Getting a large group of family together takes a lot of coordination, and it is best to start planning the trip at least a year in advance so everyone can save the dates and book flights and accommodations. As you get closer to the date, availability will become slim, and prices will go up. Ms. Pena said to be firm about sticking to a date once it has been chosen. \"You want to accommodate as many people as possible, but you're unlikely to find a time that works for everyone,\" she said. Consider a House Rental Homes offer many benefits for family reunions, including multiple private bedrooms, fully equipped kitchens and communal living and outdoor spaces where everyone can gather. Look for rentals on Airbnb. com, HomeAway. com or Vrbo. com, or seek out resorts that have private residences these options give you the space and privacy of a home along with the services of a resort such as daily housekeeping and access to a pool, spa and other amenities. Mohonk, for example, recently opened Grove Lodge, a residence that was built with family reunions in mind. Pick a Destination With Activities Ms. Pena says it's important to find a destination where all generations of your family can have a good time with a variety of activity options. \"You want a hotel or home that offers or is near a golf course, a pool, a spa, a lake where you can go swimming or fishing, hiking trails, bike rentals and more,\" she said. For hotels suited to family reunions, she suggested the Cloister in Sea Island, Ga. Teton Mountain Lodge Spa in Teton Village, Wyo. and Grand Hotel in Mackinac Island, Mich. Plan a Themed Event The purpose of a reunion is to spend time with your family, but Ms. Pena said that in many instances, people tend to go their separate ways to participate in their favorite activities and get little time together as a group. She suggested designating one afternoon or evening of your reunion for a fun collective event such as a Mexican fiesta with a mariachi band, a barbecue with rodeo music, or a dance party of oldies tunes. \"In my experience, parties where everyone in the family gathers together are the highlight of the reunion,\" she said.","label":0}
{"text":"We have heard the stories about Apple fanatics selling body parts and changing their passport in order to get the latest products from the company, but this latest story coming from China gives a different perspective on how you can use Apple devices as a tool. As a rather strange tool, in fact: an entrepreneurial Chinese woman is said to have convinced 20 men that she has been dating to buy her iPhones, which she would then sell and use the money as a downpayment for a house. The purchase of a house is probably the single biggest one-time spending in the lifetime of a person, and it could take long years of hard work, so it is indeed remarkable that the woman found the quick way to get there (however, not the most ethical one, arguably). Let's make it clear: the story seems to have started on local Tian Ya Yi Du forum, where someone by the nickname Proud Qiaoba told the story of how her co-worker Xiaoli (not her real name) asked each of her 20 current boyfriends to buy her the new iPhone 7. How in the world is it possible to simulatenously date 20 people remains a mystery that gives this whole story a bit of a fairy tale aura, but knowing that China suffers from a terrible male-to-female ratio let's assume that is somehow possible.  Xiaoli, whose life remains veiled in secrecy, then sold all of the phones to a suspiciously particular place: mobile phone recycling site Hui Shou Bao, all for a total of 120,000 Chinese yuan, the equivalent of around $17,500. The woman then used the cash for a downpayment towards a countryhouse home. Xiaoli broke the news when she invited her co-workers for a house warming party. \"Everyone in the office is talking about this now. Who knows what her boyfriendsthink now this news has become public.\" From Qiaoba we also learn that Xiaoli \"is not from a wealthy family. Her mum is a housewife and her dad is a migrant worker, and she is the oldest daughter. Her parents are getting old and she might be under a lot pressure hoping to buy them a house\u2026 But it's still unbelievable that she could use this method!\"  It does indeed sound quite fantastical and made-up, and some have theorized that it's all just a theory to popularize the local Hui Shou Bao phone re-seller (the company has confirmed that it had indeed sold 20 iPhones from a single person recently). Meanwhile, the whole story quickly started becoming popular in China: a '20 mobiles for a house' hashtag went trending on local microblog Weibo and has been used more than 13 million times. Reaction sway from admiration for Xiaoli's boyfriend-getting and management skills to sheer awe and condemnation of her actions. Whatever it is, Xiaoli \u2013 if she even exists \u2013 is now said to shy away from the public eye and to refuse interviews from media. That's actually not surprising\u2026 those 20 boyfriends surely would not be happy about her actions. Phone Arena  SOURCE","label":1}
{"text":"The Walt Disney Company the same group that s so woke, they once apologized for drawing a fat cartoon that made race-baiters mad has taken it upon themselves to teach your kids about LGBT rights by featuring their first on-screen gay character.According to this, Disney plans to have one of the main characters on their popular tween show Andi Mack come out as gay in this week s episode. Oh and it s a 13-year-old boy who s got feelings for the main character s crush.Of course, the character s coming out as gay doesn t to do with moving the plotline forward so much as it pushes the pro-LBGT agenda the media are determined to cram down your throat or, if that fails, your kid s. Andi Mack is a story about tweens figuring out who they are, said Disney Channel in a statement. (Creator) Terri Minsky, the cast and everyone involved in the show takes great care in ensuring that it s appropriate for all audiences and sends a powerful message about inclusion and respect for humanity. Producers say the coming out scene will have the barely-a-teenager telling a friend about his feelings for a boy at school. His friend will tell him it s A-O.K. and perfectly natural for guys to like guys, because Disney s all about creating a brainwashing supportive atmosphere. The company added they consulted with several outside advocacy groups to make sure the scene was age-appropriate and sufficiently inclusive, including gay activist groups GLAAD and PFLAG, along with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and Common Sense Media.Groups that would ve likely had a different opinion about teaching pre-pubescent elementary school kids the importance of being gay didn t make the list.According to ratings data, the median age of Andi Mack s viewers is 10. In fact, the show is the Disney channel s No. 1-rated program among kids six-14. Because nothing says inclusivity like teaching six-year-olds about being gay, whether their parents like it or not. MRCTV","label":1}
{"text":"A Republican member of Congress was caught scrubbing his Wikipedia page of potentially embarrassing information, including his affiliation with a cult. Rep. David Jolly s (FL) congressional campaign was caught in the act. Jolly is running to replace Senator Marco Rubio after his failed presidential campaign.A spokesman for Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday that the campaign removed certain information, including references to the Church of Scientology, that once appeared on Jolly s Wikipedia page.Spokeswoman Sarah Bascom confirmed to BuzzFeed that the campaign took off parts of the Wikipedia entry that told of Jolly s ties to Scientology. The campaign also removed references to Jolly s past career as a lobbyist and his past positions on gay marriage, according to the report.Jolly told a local newspaper the attempt to hide the information was a careless staff mistake, but the incident follows a pattern of politicians and their underlings attempting to remove information from the heavily trafficked encyclopedia site. Corporations have also previously been caught attempting to remove unflattering information or add PR fluff to the site as well.The information Jolly tried to remove has been restored, with a sentence noting:Jolly s relationship with the Church of Scientology, which is based inside his congressional district in Clearwater, Florida, has been reported on in the press, including Jolly s attendance at various fundraising events hosted by the organization.Via TheLipTV, here is the invitation for the Scientology fundraiser for Florida attorney general Pam Bondi involving David Jolly that his campaign tried to hide:David Jolly Scientology InvitationThe Daily Beast reported on Jolly s ties to Scientology in a story headlined Scientology Could Get Its Own Senator. In addition to Jolly s fundraising connection to the group, his wife was slated to be a model in a charity fashion show for the group, and the treasurer for his PAC is on the board of a group founded by Scientologists.Jolly is perhaps trying to avoid connections to Scientology due to their well-documented history of harassment campaigns against defectors, practices involving disconnecting members from their families, or their belief in alien involvement in world affairs.","label":1}
{"text":"A different set of laws apply to illegals in fact, it appears there are no laws that apply to illegals More than 100 convicted criminals who remained in the U.S. despite receiving deportation orders between 2010 and 2014 now face murder charges, according to the agency charged with carrying out such deportations of illegal immigrants.U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement reports that 121 convicted criminals who were never removed from the country face murder charges today.In response, Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., of the Judiciary Committee submitted a letter on June 12 requesting a multi-departmental response from Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of State John Kerry and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.In their letter, Grassley and Sessions cite Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics that show 1,000 of the 36,007 criminally-convicted illegal immigrants released from custody in fiscal year 2013 have been reconvicted of additional crimes.The senators wrote that the murders committed by the 121 convicted criminals could have been avoided had they not been released.As a result, Grassley and Sessions are requesting an explanation from the Obama administration officials concerning the government s decision to release the convicted criminals before deportation.The senators also ask for information concerning the future of U.S. initiatives to deport convicted criminals and whether immigration officials are fully leveraging existing tools and resources to prevent these dangerous outcomes. However, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana wrote in a recent letter that convicted criminals may be released, even if the convicted individuals face deportation charges.h\/t Weasel Zippers","label":1}
{"text":"Election officials in three Pennsylvania counties said they believed no ballots had been wrongly counted as a result of computer malfunctions, despite reports on Tuesday that touch-screen voting machines in the state were switching votes. Officials in Cumberland, Perry and Butler Counties in Pennsylvania told Reuters that they had no reason to believe the mistakes were affecting voters from one party more than the other, and that voters were catching the mistakes on \"review screens\" before their ballots were cast.","label":0}
{"text":"Detroit elections officials waited several days to deliver nearly 100 poll books to Wayne County officials charged with certifying the presidential election, newly released documents show.County clerk officials on Thursday released a memo to State Elections Director Chris Thomas that said 95 poll books from the 662 precincts weren t available at the start of the canvass, which began the day after the Nov. 8 election. Five of those poll books, which contain the names of voters and ensure the integrity of elections, were never delivered to county canvassers and presumably remain missing.The revelation comes atop other irregularities that have prompted a state audit. Among other issues, The Detroit News reported this week that voting machines registered more votes than they should have in one-third of all city precincts. I m not happy with how Detroit handled this election at all, said Krista Hartounian, chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, which certified the election. We had been seeing improvement, but this one was different. This one was off. Canvassers compare poll books with printouts from voting machines to ensure the number of people who signed in to vote match the number of ballots cast.In heavily Democratic Detroit, the numbers didn t match in 392 of 662 precincts or 59 percent. The discrepancies emerged during a statewide presidential recount that began last week and ended Friday following a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court.It s unclear how many extra votes were counted in Detroit. That s because tallies were off by five or more votes in 52 Detroit precincts, but county officials will not release the exact number of discrepancies in each precinct.","label":1}
{"text":"The second day of the Democratic National Convention took an emotional turn when a group of black women, whose children s lives were lost long before their time, stepped on the stage and began to tell their heartbreaking stories and say emphatically: Black Lives Matter.The room hushed as Mothers of the Movement told of their children and the violent ways they had left this earth. Geneva Reed-Veal (mother of Sandra Bland), Lucia Bath (Jordan Davis) and Sybrina Fulton (Trayvon Martin) explained to the crowd of delegates why they were standing there in front of them, somewhere they never expected to be. Their stories brought the DNC to tears. You don t stop being a parent when your child dies. I am still Jordan Davis s mother. His life ended the day he was shot and killed for playing loud music. But my job as his mother didn t, Bath said. I lived in fear my son would die like this. I even warned him that because he was a young, black man, he would meet people who didn t value his life, she said. That is a conversation no parent should ever have to have. So naturally, right-wing racists came out in droves.@Tyronem07172460 @RedPillTweets The mothers of the movement are a freaking joke. a group of idiots who didnt raised their kids properly. Mauricio (@Shelby14_02) July 27, 2016There aren t any #FathersOfTheMovement. They all ran out!#MothersoftheMovement Donald Bateman (@NationalismRise) July 27, 2016LMAOOOO, they have Mothers of the Movement on stage. AKA, women who raised their sons to beat, fight with, shoot, or aim at police & ppl. Dav (@DavosFox118) July 27, 2016Mothers of the movement or should I say Mothers of the Racist Hate Group Black Lives Matter Trever Talley (@trever_talley) July 27, 2016#MothersoftheMovement If they actually cared about their kids, they would be still alive. No sympathy from me. #FunctioningIlliterates. DNC IS CORRUPT (@PCiscancerous) July 27, 2016Mother of victims of police violence? they must not have done a great job raising them Mothers of the Movement #DemConvention rewrite omitted#7089 (@JohnFict) July 27, 2016Despite the reactions of bigots, the stories of these grieving mothers are as powerful as they are heartwrenching. The inclusion Mothers of the Movement at the DNC is proof that the Democratic party and Hillary Clinton do believe Black Lives Matter.You can watch these mothers give their moving speech here: [youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=eW8_tr3JCEk]","label":1}
{"text":"We can probably expect more Donald Trump lackies to be hit with ethics violations over the next four years.South Carolina GOP state Rep. Jim Merrill was hired by Trump in 2015 to serve as an adviser for his campaign in the notoriously conservative state.Predictably, Trump ended up winning the state. But Merrill is about to win a trip to prison after prosecutor David Pascoe officially charged him with 30 counts of ethics violations and misconductAccording to The State, Merrill is being accused of using his political office to receive over $1 million through his company, Greechie Communications, or directly.Merrill is accused of failing to disclose contributions and expenditures made to and from the House GOP Caucus operating account and improperly using that account for campaign purposes. That failure allowed Merrill to collect $164,564 from the House Republican Caucus without without accountability between Jan. 1, 2005 and Dec. 31, 2008, according to prosecutors.Merrill is charged with using his office for financial gain as a House member for receiving $108,169 to Geechie Communications from the GOP caucus just from Jan. 1, 2010 through Dec. 31, 2011.He is accused of using his position from 2005-2008 while serving as House GOP leader to direct $82,515 from the caucus to his PR firm.In addition, the indictment alleges Merrill directed $186,332 from the caucus to Geechie Communications, in excess of the fair market value for services it rendered between 2008 and 2010.In addition, Merrill illegally received payments totaling at least $276,561 from the S.C. House Republican Caucus through multiple accountsAnd those are just the tip of the iceberg.As it turns out Pascoe had to fight in court to keep the investigation because Attorney General Alan Wilson attempted to help Merrill, who happens to be his friend, by trying to assign another prosecutor to the case.This isn t the first time Trump has hired people who have since been charged with committing crimes.A Trump campaign staffer in Michigan was convicted of election fraud late last month.It makes one wonder just how many criminals Trump hired to help him win and how many will be in his administration.Featured Image: Spencer Platt\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"The end of everything is nearing us all! Or perhaps not, but we won't know when it's here. It's a mysterious universe we are living in, so magnificent and complex that researchers and experts have come up with hundreds of theories on how it originated, how it works and when it ends. The infinite questions that we hold about the universe will keep us thrilled for the rest of our lives, and the universe will probably end before we can even figure it out. We fear the universe will trigger either a Big Crunch or a Big Rip during it's course, colliding into a singularity state or ripping itself apart .  Scientists have revealed that the universe could delete itself, without anyone even noticing it. Experts believe that our universe has reached it's lowest state with every particle in existence except for the \"Higs Field\". Watch the following video to know more!  Disclose TV SOURCE","label":1}
{"text":"BOULDER, Colo. \u2014 Through the darkness, Rashaan Salaam drove his Suzuki sedan. He was, as usual, alone. For months, friends said, Salaam had been a recluse who left his rented condo in a Denver suburb only occasionally, to buy groceries and, even more rarely, for a solitary morning walk. Now and then he went to a bar for drinks and a steak, sitting by himself. But on this Monday night, Dec. 5, Salaam, a former football standout, was headed for the site of his greatest triumph. From his home, it was eight miles to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where Salaam was a running back who won the Heisman Trophy in 1994. On the final dash of his last game at Folsom Field here that year, Salaam roared 67 yards for a touchdown, collapsing in the end zone and spurring his teammates to hoist him onto their shoulders as fans waved \"2000\" signs he had become just the fourth college player to exceed 2, 000 rushing yards in a season. Now, on an unseasonably warm December night, he drove past the stadium and cut through the heart of the idyllic Colorado campus, where, he often said, he still felt most comfortable. Less than two miles from where he had scored his touchdown, he pulled into the tiny parking area of Eben G. Fine Park, bordering the burbling Boulder Creek. Around 8 p. m. a few hours after the voting closed for the 2016 Heisman and five days before the 22nd anniversary of Salaam's trophy win, a young man walking in the park saw a body lying beside an idling sedan. Salaam. A revolver lay nearby. Salaam's death at the age of 42 is being investigated as a likely suicide. Autopsy results are expected in about a month. But in the days since the death, as friends, relatives and associates puzzle over the circumstances, they cannot help but wonder if the Heisman and its attendant expectations of fame had undercut his life instead of elevating it. \"Rashaan came back to Boulder a few years ago to revive himself,\" said Francisco Lujan, one of Salaam's close friends and a business associate. \"He was trying to find a way to find himself. He returned to where the memories were good. \" T . J. Cunningham, a Colorado teammate who had stayed in touch with Salaam until a few months ago, said he believed Salaam's football career, which sputtered after he left college largely because of injuries, always weighed on him. \"Rashaan was 20 years old when he won the Heisman Trophy,\" Cunningham said. \"To achieve the epitome of success at 20, but then you can't get to that point again \u2014 what did that do to Rashaan?\" That may be an insoluble question. For people who knew him, the prospect that he took his own life is hard to reconcile with someone best known for an infectious smile that brightened a room when he entered it. As Cunningham said: \"He was a happy guy. I can still see him at Christmas last year, at my house teaching my how to hit a baseball. But, you know, Rashaan struggled with some things. \" Many of his friends believed he suffered from depression and mood swings, typical signs of the brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C. T. E. that has afflicted scores of players. The disease is linked to repeated hits to the head and diagnosed posthumously, but it is unclear if Salaam's family members have donated his brain to be tested. The Salaam family declined to be interviewed for this article, and multiple phone messages and email messages left for relatives drew no response. Salaam's brother, Jabali Alaji, told USA Today shortly after Rashaan's funeral on Dec. 9 that if Salaam's brain were examined: \"I would guarantee they'd find it. I would guarantee it. \" But several of Salaam's friends who spoke with family members said they were told Salaam's brain would not be tested. Though injured often, Salaam had no known history of repeated concussions or head trauma. But as Cunningham said: \"Rashaan had a lot of collisions. He wasn't a fake and juke guy he ran right through you. \"C. T. E.? He showed all the symptoms,\" Cunningham said, \"and C. T. E. probably added to that. \" Whatever the cause, it was obvious to people around him that Salaam was dealing with mental health problems. He routinely retreated to his condo and stayed there. Phone calls and texts from friends went unreturned for days or weeks, especially since October. Salaam spent Thanksgiving by himself, a neighbor said, in his small, plain condo next to a playground and a municipal wastewater plant in Superior, Colo. \"He was always in his condo,\" said the neighbor, Deanna Ardrey. \"He would sit there by himself every day. You knew there was something off. \" Riley Robert Hawkins, a school social worker and behavioral therapist who had been a partner with Salaam in a charitable foundation since 2011, talked to him about whether he should seek treatment for depression. \"You could tell he was fighting some things,\" Hawkins said. \"Anxiety and depression, that's bipolar. It was always there to some degree. \"Like many of us,\" he said, \"I think he thought he had a handle on things. \" Maurice Henriques, another Colorado teammate who had remained close with Salaam, said it was impossible to pinpoint what ailed him. \"For the family's sake, you'd love for there to be an explanation,\" he said. \"But it's probably a cocktail of things \u2014 depression, some C. T. E. and Rashaan still trying to deal with the transition from football. \"How,\" he added, \"do you yourself?\" When he was first handed the Heisman in 1994, Salaam had no idea how much the trophy would complicate the rest of his life. Going forward, it distorted the perception of his career. Salaam had a spectacular N. F. L. rookie season with the Chicago Bears but faded markedly thereafter, lasting for only four seasons. After that, he more and more kept his distance from the trophy, whose renowned pose is a stiff arm. \"He felt people viewed him as a failure,\" said David Plati, an associate athletic director at Colorado and a friend of Salaam's for nearly a . \"He was frustrated with his N. F. L. career. That's the burden the Heisman carries. He felt pressure that he had to go do something in the pros as good or greater than what he did in college. \"He felt that people were looking at him, thinking that he let them down. \" Still, the Heisman loomed large. Everybody wanted to see it and touch it. Salaam wanted to stand apart from it. \"He wasn't a huge fan of the trophy itself,\" Lujan said. \"When he was making an appearance, people would always ask if he could bring the Heisman Trophy to the engagement. He'd turn them down. He didn't like carrying the trophy around. It made him feel like the only reason anyone wanted to see him was because he had a Heisman Trophy. \" Once, visiting Salaam at his home, a friend saw the trophy being used as a doorstop. For the majority of the last 22 years, Salaam's mother kept the trophy at the family home in San Diego. Salaam was conflicted about the trophy from the start he declined to do several major interviews the year he won it. \"That's the thing. Deep down Rashaan didn't care about the trophy and never did because he didn't like being singled out,\" Plati said. \"Rashaan wanted to be just one of the guys,\" Plati said. \"But he knew his offensive linemen wanted him to win the Heisman. He understood it was important for the university and the football program. \" Salaam is Colorado's only Heisman winner and eventually got into the experience of winning it, even enjoying the week in New York for the ceremony. At the time, it seemed like a thing \u2014 not a lifetime designation permanently attached to his name. He had won the trophy in his junior year and entered the 1995 N. F. L. draft. Yet he was perturbed, even insulted, when he was the fifth running back taken in the first round. But Salaam had proved others wrong in his career before. With his mother urging him on, he had left his hometown, San Diego, and traveled by bus two hours daily to attend La Jolla Country Day, a private school where he excelled academically and on the football team. But La Jolla played football, and Salaam was barely noticed by college recruiters. His La Jolla coach mounted a campaign to promote him, and soon Colorado took him on. He was, however, on the third string as a college freshman. Though he was a sturdy and weighed in at 220 pounds, there were doubts about whether he had the speed to compete at the highest level of college ball. He made progress as a sophomore, and by his spectacular junior season at Colorado had more than vanquished his critics. And yet, N. F. L. evaluators still had reservations, which is how Salaam fell to the draft's 21st pick. As a rookie, Salaam rushed for 1, 074 yards and 10 touchdowns, becoming the youngest N. F. L. player to rush for more than 1, 000 yards. But a series of leg injuries limited his playing time and effectiveness in the next two seasons, his last with the Bears. In 1999, he carried the football once for 2 yards for the hapless Cleveland Browns. He was also briefly with two other N. F. L. teams but never got on the field. In 2001, Salaam played for the Memphis Maniax of the X. F. L. At 28, he regrouped and spent nearly a year getting in top shape because the San Francisco 49ers had invited him to training camp. Around that time in 2003, in an interview with ESPN, Salaam decided to open up about his marijuana use while with the Bears. He said he was too young to handle the money and success of his early N. F. L. career and blamed an undisciplined lifestyle for hampering his development as a professional. Salaam later said he had hoped the interview would show a newfound maturity, since he was admitting to a mistake and describing a new, robust work ethic. But the reaction to the interview, and to Salaam, was decidedly negative. He was cut by the 49ers toward the end of training camp. After a flirtation with the Canadian Football League, his football career was over. Salaam said in interviews years ago that he had invested much of his nearly $4 million N. F. L. payday with a San Diego brokerage firm. Shortly after retiring from football, Salaam began spending months in China, where he started a mixed martial arts business. None of his friends were sure how or why he made a connection with China, but there he promoted championship events and shuttled between his native California and Beijing. By the beginning of this decade, he sold the venture and returned to San Diego. There, Salaam lived quietly, and mostly, anonymously. A \"bachelor for life,\" Salaam never married, although his friends said they had met his various girlfriends over the years. About five years ago, Salaam decided to return to the Boulder area in what was viewed as an attempt to regain his footing in a familiar place. He began working with Lujan, a coach at a local high school, who had a company that did testing for N. F. L. and C. F. L. scouting combines. Salaam was paid $2, 500 or more for public appearances and helped with the testing. He appeared financially secure. While he did not live extravagantly \u2014 rent at his condo this year was about $1, 500 a month \u2014 he never seemed in need of funds. A 2011 newspaper account reported that Salaam sold ornate rings he had received for winning the Heisman Trophy for roughly $9, 000. Salaam said that the rings were sold, without his knowledge, by a family member. \"Rashaan's primary goal when he came here was to start a foundation to help youth,\" said Lujan, who eventually put Salaam in touch with Hawkins, the school social worker, who years earlier had founded the SPIN Foundation \u2014 Supporting People in Need. Together, Hawkins and Salaam planned events, camps, clinics and appearances, and they devised programs to benefit underprivileged children. Salaam became a fixture at Jefferson High School in Edgewater, Colo. where Hawkins has worked for 15 years. Salaam regularly spoke with classes and worked with students individually and in groups. For four days in April 2015, for example, the foundation brought about 30 Jefferson students and staff members to the ski slopes of Aspen for a trip that was called a \"Ski for the Heisman\" program. \"Rashaan was like a family member to Jefferson students,\" said Oscar Lopez, a senior at the high school who participated in the trip. \"He was like a big brother and he was always encouraging us to better ourselves. He talked about the mistakes he made and how he kept going. His big message was to stay positive. \" Lopez, who is a wrestler and football player, said Salaam once cautioned him about taking care of his body in athletics. \"He told me if I was hurt, to protect myself and stay off the field,\" Lopez said. \"He had injuries and went back out there. He said, 'Don't do that, let it heal. '\" Lujan said the cost of the Aspen trip was $25, 000. At Jefferson High, students who had laughed on the Aspen slopes with Salaam and been buoyed by his enthusiasm for their future prospects were thunderstruck by his death. \"I broke down because he was always here for us,\" said Janessa Kiome, a senior at Jefferson. \"And that night, no one was there for him. \" Hawkins and others have been counseling the Jefferson students. Seated in his school office last week, Hawkins sighed and said: \"Rashaan was trying to save lives, but he had trouble saving his own life. There are things we can explain and things that we can't explain. \" It had been hard to get to know Salaam well, as he was introverted by nature and something of a loner, especially in the last few months. He was a semiregular at C. B. Potts, a bar and restaurant about a mile from his condo in Superior. He usually came in around 10 on Sunday nights, well past the dinner rush. He was always alone, and he would sit in a section of the bar unoccupied by other patrons, ordering a steak and two or three vodka drinks known as Moscow Mules. \"He was always nice to everyone,\" said Chris Rosa, a bartender there who works Sunday nights. \"But more than a few times, we'd be talking and he'd say he was mad that injuries and bad luck messed up his N. F. L. career. He said things spiraled out of control and he wished things had been different. \" Rosa said he had not seen him in the last couple of months. Neither had his friends or the people he worked with, like Lujan and Hawkins. \"Everyone has the same story,\" Lujan said. \"We've asked each other, 'When did you last hear from him?' And everyone answers, 'About a month or six weeks ago. '\" Salaam's neighbor Deanna Ardrey was among the few who saw him regularly during this period. She had met Salaam a few months earlier when she moved in with her boyfriend. She learned only by accident that Salaam had played football, then Googled him and was dumbfounded to discover his celebrity. \"We talked about football, but he was more likely to talk about other things, like astronomy,\" Ardrey said. \"He was always pointing out planets to us in the sky. \" On sunny days, Salaam kept his front door open and Ardrey would hear music playing. In the fall and winter, Salaam's television would be tuned to football games. \"We would hear him watching games all night and yelling at the TV,\" Ardrey said. \"But I mean, he was always there by himself. Every day, every night. His car was always in the driveway. \" In the days before his death, Ardrey noticed something unusual: His car was frequently gone at night. \"In the last few days, I've been thinking: How many times did he go to that park thinking he might \u2014 and then changed his mind?\" Ardrey wondered last week. On the morning of Dec. 5, Ardrey saw her neighbor as she got in her car and waved at him. He waved back and smiled. Much later, he drove away from the condo, leaving a light on in the living room.","label":0}
{"text":"Is anyone else concerned that the Left was able to turn the display of a Confederate flag by an American into a criminal offense almost overnight? When a contractor s truck at the University of Wisconsin LaCrosse sported a Confederate flag across its grille in November, one official was quick to condemn the contractor, call for the flag s removal, and it turns out even asked for an informal police investigation into the matter. E-mails obtained by the LaCrosse Tea Party show Paula Knudson, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the school, went farther than previously known in her efforts to get the flag removed and the contractor punished.LaCrosse confederate flagUpon learning of the flag s presence on campus, Knudson e-mailed Doug Pearson, the head of Facilities Planning and Management for the school, to ask that the contractor be told the flag needed to go. The contractor quickly and willingly complied and Knudson went on to e-mail the entire UWL campus students and faculty to express her regret over the incident and say that she was personally. . . offended and. . . very sorry for the fear and angst caused by its presence. [Emphasis added]At the same time, e-mails reveal, Knudson e-mailed pictures of the truck to interim UW-LaCrosse Police Chief Scott McCullough with the subject line License please? After reading Knudson s campus-wide missive, McCullough responded to say he read her e-mail to mean that there was no longer any need for police action since the flag had been removed.McCullough also went on to reference another incident with yet another truck that displayed the Confederate flag and urged Knudson to remember that the police cannot run license plate numbers without a valid excuse to investigate the vehicle. I would like to take a second and make clear that like the last truck with this emblem, I would need to be conducting a police investigation into some violation (I believe it was harassment last time) before I can run this plate, he wrote. It could be literally only seconds talking with a complainant but it is an important protection to all of us that even the police cannot simply run records checks for no reason, he went on to say. Please don t take this as any hesitation on our part to help just that we have very specific rules that we (the police) need to follow. At least two students who were offended by the flag took action on their own and approached the construction site to express their indignation according to an e-mail from facilities chief Pearson. The job site superintendent was concerned about two students who walked into the job site and confronted the trucker, Pearson wrote in an e-mail to Knudson that included UWL Chancellor Joe Gow. The superintendent indicated they [the students] were rude and were baiting the trucker to say something. I can help resolve these issues, but staff and students should not be walking into a job site without proper personal protective equipment. The following day, Chancellor Gow e-mailed Knudson to chide her for how she handled the situation. He urged her to point out the trucker kindly complied with the school s request that the flag be removed. We need to refute the notion that we have somehow banned display of the confederate flag, because we don t have the legal authority to do so. And we wouldn t want to stifle free expression no matter how uncomfortable it might make us feel [emphasis added], Gow concluded.In public statements made after Media Trackers first broke the news of the incident and published a picture of the truck, Gow said the Confederate flag clearly is a racist symbol, but acknowledged that UWL would have allowed the trucker to continue to display it had he refused to remove it.","label":1}
{"text":"U.N. declares junk food a 'human rights' issue Says countries failing to meet globally agreed upon nutrition targets Published: 9 mins ago  UNITED NATIONS (AP) \u2014 A U.N. expert says junk food is a human rights concern.  Hilal Elver, the U.N.'s special representative on the right to food, said Tuesday the rise of industrial food production combined with trade liberalization has allowed large corporations to flood the global market with cheap, nutrient-poor foods that force poor people to choose between economic viability and nutrition, effectively violating their right to adequate food.  \"Within the human rights framework, states are obliged to ensure effective measures to regulate the food industry, ensure that nutrition policymaking spaces are free from private sector influence and implement comprehensive policies that combat malnutrition in all its forms,\" she said.","label":1}
{"text":"Share on Facebook Share on Twitter When it comes to taking herbs for medicinal purposes, it seems the mainstream belief is that they are not as effective and not worth taking. While the effectiveness of herbs has not been studied deeply to determine how well they work across the entire population, the same could be said for most pharmaceutical drugs. Much of the time, pharmaceutical drugs attempt to mimic a compound that occurs in nature (herbs), but often bring the risk of side effects in the process. advertisement - learn more Safety is one of the most critical areas of review amongst herbs and drugs. According to stats released by the American Association of Poison Control Centers, no deaths have been reported due to the use and consumption of herbs. [4] However, pharmaceutical drugs and physician prescribed medications kill approximately one million Americans each year. While it is important to note that herbal medicines can be lethal in extreme doses, it appears their safety is much greater than that of pharmaceutical drugs. [2] Interestingly, pharmaceutical drugs are actually adding to the world-wide issue of declining health due to their side effects and encouragement of viral resistance. Antibiotics in particular are adding to the wave of increased viral strength when it comes to certain infections. [3] Herbs, on the other hand, can be a useful tool in fighting infections that have turned into superbugs due to the overuse of antibiotics. It is always useful to perform as much research as possible, or as you see fit, when it comes to both pharmaceutical drugs and herbs prior to taking them. Just as we approach the use of herbs with skepticism, so too should we approach the use of any pharmaceutical drugs with the same discerning eye. Contrary to popular belief, our reluctance to use herbs in Western culture is not a result of their inefficacy. It is because pharmaceutical companies (and those who can benefit from the sale of pharmaceutical drugs) have done a great job of making them seem unsafe and inadequate. Herbs cannot be patented and owned, unlike synthetic drugs, which is why many pharma companies operate the way they do. Seek out the assistance of a naturopathic doctor, traditional Chinese medicine practitioner, ayurveda practioner, or herbologist before you use herbs. Like any medical issue, each illness can have different root causes and it's always important to understand them before relying on any treatment to solve the entire problem.  Below is a list of herbs that can not only boost lung and respiratory health but can also repair it. Herb information is courtesy of John Summerly who is a nutritionist, herbologist, and homeopathic practitioner. advertisement - learn more 1. Licorice Root \u2013 Glycyrrhiza Glabra Licorice is one of the more widely consumed herbs in the world. In Traditional Chinese Medicine it occurs in more formulas than any other single herb because it is thought to harmonize the action of all other herbs. Licorice is very soothing and softens the mucous membranes of the throat and especially the lungs and stomach, and at the same time cleanses any inflamed mucous membrane that needs immune system support . It reduces the irritation in the throat and yet has an expectorant action. It is the saponins (detergent-like action) that loosen the phlegm in the respiratory tract so that the body can expel the mucus. Compounds within this root help relieve bronchial spasms and block the free radical cells that produce the inflammation and tightening of the airways. The compounds also have antibacterial and antiviral effects to them as well, which helps fight off viral and bacterial strains in the body that can cause lung infections. Glycrrhizins and flavonoids can even help prevent lung cancer cells from forming. For people with high blood pressure this should be taken with caution. 2. Coltsfoot \u2013 Tussilago Farfara Coltsfoot has been traditionally used by Native Americans for thousands of years to strengthen the lungs. It clears out excess mucus from the lungs and bronchial tubes. It also soothes the mucus membranes in the lungs and has been shown in research to assist with asthma, coughs, bronchitis, and other lung ailments. Coltsfoot is available in dried form for tea or as an alcohol extract known as a tincture. 3. Cannabis The toxic breakdown of therapeutic compounds in cannabis from burning the plant are totally avoided with vaporization. Extracting and inhaling cannabinoid essential oils of the unprocessed plant affords significant mitigation of irritation to the oral cavity that comes from smoking. Cannabis is perhaps one of the most effective anti-cancer plants in the world, shown in study after study to stimulate cannabinoid receptor activation in specific genes and mediate the anti-invasive effect of cannabinoids. Vaporizing cannabis allows the active ingredients to stimulate the body's natural immune response and significantly reduces the ability of infections to spread. Vaporizing cannabis (especially with very high amounts of cannabinoids) opens up airways and sinuses, acting as a bronchodilator. It is even a proven method for treatment and reversal of asthma. 4. Osha Root \u2013 Ligusticum porteri Osha is an herb native to the Rocky Mountain area and has historically been used by the Native Americans for respiratory support. The roots of the plant contain camphor and other compounds which make it one of the best lung-support herbs in America. One of the main benefits of osha root is that it helps increase circulation to the lungs, which makes it easier to take deep breaths. Also, when seasonal sensitivities flare up your sinuses, osha root, which is not an actual antihistamine, produces a similar effect and may help calm respiratory irritation. 5. Thyme \u2013 Thymus Thyme is very powerful in the fight against chest congestion. It produces powerful antiseptic essential oils which are classified as naturally antibiotic and anti-fungal. Thyme is well known to zap acne more so than expensive prescription creams, gels, and lotions. Thyme tea has the power to chase away and eliminate bacteria and viruses, so whether your infection is based on one or the other, it will still work. Thyme has been used as a lung remedy since antiquity and is used extensively today to prevent and treat respiratory tract infections and bacterial infection pneumonia. 6. Oregano Although oregano contains the vitamins and nutrients required by the immune system, its primary benefits are owed to its carvacrol and rosmarinic acid content. Both compounds are natural decongestants and histamine reducers that have direct, positive benefits on the respiratory tract and nasal passage airflow. Oil of oregano fights off the dangerous bacteria Staphylococcus aureus better than the most common antibiotic treatments. Oregano has so many health benefits that a bottle of organic oregano oil should be in everyone's medicine cabinet. 7. Lobelia Inflata Did you know that horses given lobelia are able to breathe more deeply? Its benefits are not limited to equestrians. It has been used as an \"asthmador\" in Appalachian folk medicine. Lobelia, by some accounts, is thought to be one of the most valuable herbal remedies in existence. Extracts of Lobelia Inflata contain lobeline, which showed positive effects in the treatment of multidrug-resistant tumor cells. Lobelia contains an alkaloid known as lobeline, which thins mucus and breaks up congestion. Additionally, lobelia stimulates the adrenal glands to release epinephrine; in effect, this relaxes the airways and allows for easier breathing. Also, because lobelia helps to relax smooth muscles, it is included in many cough and cold remedies. Lobelia should be part of everyone's respiratory support protocol! *Use with caution as too much can cause side effects. 8. Elecampane \u2013 Inula Helenium Elecampane has been used by Native Americans for many years to clear out excess mucus that impairs lung function. It is known as a natural antibacterial agent for the lungs, helping to lessen infection, particularly for people who are prone to lung infections like bronchitis. Herbal practitioners often recommend one teaspoon of the herb per cup of boiling water, drunk three times daily for two to three weeks. Elecampane is also available in tincture format for ease. 9. Eucalyptus \u2013 Eucalyptus Globulus Native to Australia, eucalyptus isn't just for Koala bears! Aborigines, Germans, and Americans have all used the refreshing aroma of eucalyptus to promote respiratory health and soothe throat irritation. Eucalyptus is a common ingredient in cough lozenges and syrups and its effectiveness is due to a compound called cineole. Cineole has numerous benefits \u2014 it's an expectorant, can ease a cough, fights congestion, and soothes irritated sinus passages. As an added bonus, because eucalyptus contains antioxidants, it supports the immune system during a cold or other illness. 10. Mullein \u2013 Verbascum Thapsus Both the flowers and the leaves of the mullein plant are used to make an herbal extract that helps strengthen the lungs. Mullein is used by herbal practitioners to clear excess mucus from the lungs, cleanse the bronchial tubes, and reduce inflammation that is present in the respiratory tract. A tea can be made from one teaspoon of the dried herb to one cup of boiled water. Alternatively, you can take a tincture form of this herb. 11. Lungwort \u2013 Pulmonaria officinalis As early as the 1600's, lungwort has been used to promote lung and respiratory health and clear congestion. Pulmonaria selections come in all kinds so seek a herbologist for direction. Lungwort also contains compounds that are powerfully effective against harmful organisms that affect respiratory health. 12. Chaparral Chaparral, a plant native to the Southwest, has been appreciated by the Native Americans for lung detoxification and respiratory support for many years. Chaparral contains powerful antioxidants that resist irritation, and NDGA, which is known to fight histamine response. NDGA inhibits aerobic and anaerobic glycolysis (the energy-producing ability) of cancer cells. Chaparral is also an herb that fights harmful organisms. The benefits of chaparral are mostly available in a tincture extraction but chaparral tea may support respiratory problems by encouraging an expectorant action to clear airways of mucus. [Source] 13. Sage \u2013 Salvia Officinalis Sage's textured leaves give off a heady aroma, which arises from sage's essential oils. These oils are the source of the many benefits of sage tea for lung problems and common respiratory ailments. Sage tea is a traditional treatment for sore throats and coughs. The rich aromatic properties arising from sage's volatile oils of thujone, camphor, terpene, and salvene can be put to use by inhaling sage tea's vapors to dispel lung disorders and sinusitis. Alternatively, brew a strong pot of sage tea and place it into a bowl or vaporizer. 14. Peppermint \u2013 Mentha \u00d7 Piperita Peppermint and peppermint oil contains menthol \u2014 a soothing ingredient known to relax the smooth muscles of the respiratory tract and promote free breathing. Dried peppermint typically contains menthol, menthone, menthyl acetate, menthofuran, and cineol. Peppermint oil also contains small amounts of many additional compounds including limonene, pulegone, caryophyllene, and pinene. Paired with the antihistamine effect of peppermint, menthol is a fantastic decongestant. Many people use therapeutic chest balms and other inhalants that contain menthol to help break up congestion. Additionally, peppermint is an antioxidant and fights harmful organisms. 15. Plantain herb \u2013 Plantago major and P. lanceolata Plantain leaf has been used for hundreds of years to ease coughs and soothe irritated mucous membranes. Many of its active constituents show antibacterial and antimicrobial properties, as well as being anti-inflammatory and antitoxic. Clinical trials have found it favorable against cough, cold, and lung irritation. Plantain leaf has an added bonus in that it may help relieve a dry cough by spawning mucus production in the lungs.  Sources:","label":1}
{"text":"By Sean Colarossi on Mon, Oct 31st, 2016 at 8:47 pm While the media continues to focus on the Clinton email non-story, news about Donald Trump's ties to Russia continues to gain steam. Share on Twitter Print This Post  While the media continues to focus on what is increasingly becoming a non-story \u2013 FBI Director James Comey's vague letter regarding more emails related to Hillary Clinton \u2013 news about Donald Trump's ties to Russia continues to gain steam.  Not only did NBC just report that the FBI is now in the preliminary stages of investigating Trump's ex-campaign manager's connection to Russia, but Slate also reported on Monday that a Trump server may have repeatedly been communicating with a Russian bank.  Slate claims that while a group of computer scientists was looking into the Russian cyber attack of the DNC, they stumbled onto something unexpectedly.  The report:  In late July, one of these scientists\u2014who asked to be referred to as Tea Leaves, a pseudonym that would protect his relationship with the networks and banks that employ him to sift their data\u2014found what looked like malware emanating from Russia. The destination domain had Trump in its name, which of course attracted Tea Leaves' attention. But his discovery of the data was pure happenstance\u2014a surprising needle in a large haystack of DNS lookups on his screen. \"I have an outlier here that connects to Russia in a strange way,\" he wrote in his notes. He couldn't quite figure it out at first. But what he saw was a bank in Moscow that kept irregularly pinging a server registered to the Trump Organization on Fifth Avenue.  More data was needed, so he began carefully keeping logs of the Trump server's DNS activity. As he collected the logs, he would circulate them in periodic batches to colleagues in the cybersecurity world. Six of them began scrutinizing them for clues.  The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn't the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation\u2014conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn't an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank.  This news doesn't come out of nowhere. Trump has repeatedly praised Vladimir Putin as a strong leader, all while taking pro-Russia positions throughout the campaign that come straight off a Kremlin wishlist.  The Clinton campaign was quick to jump on the report in a statement by Clinton Senior Policy Adviser Jake Sullivan:  This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump's ties to Russia. It certainly seems the Trump Organization felt it had something to hide, given that it apparently took steps to conceal the link when it was discovered by journalists.  This line of communication may help explain Trump's bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin and endorsement of so many pro-Kremlin positions throughout this campaign. It raises even more troubling questions in light of Russia's masterminding of hacking efforts that are clearly intended to hurt Hillary Clinton's campaign. We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia's meddling in our elections.  Trump's pro-Russia rhetoric and policy positions are not a coincidence. The more information that comes out, the clearer it is that the Republican nominee has connections to Russia that he is hiding from voters.  With just a week until Election Day, this is the explosive story the media should be focusing on. It's critical that the American people know what kind of financial ties a potential president has with an American adversary, especially when that adversary is Russia.","label":1}
{"text":"Republicans are already predicting doom and gloom for November. Since Donald Trump seems not to grasp what get on message means (they ve been telling him to do that for months), members of the Republican Party are already predicting Hillary Clinton as the victor.In an exclusive with The Hill, several members of the House GOP caucus under anonymity, who back Trump, now say they are preparing for a Clinton sweep in November.One Southern lawmaker, who is a Trump supporter, told the Hill:I m not feeling great about the immediate future of the conservative movement right now. As a conservative who believes our ideas are good for America, it is pretty gloomy these days.The southern lawmaker acknowledged Trump would be a difficult candidate to sell to the American people, considering the GOP s lack of a coalition with women, minorities, LGBT, and youth voters (yet they re still a Trump supporter), which means they don t care about the bran issues facing their party. There was some hope that the disaffected, so-called silent majority would be broad enough and turn out in large enough numbers to give Trump a chance. But if he continues the next 90 days like the last week, then he will lose big time, the southern lawmaker told the Hill.One Northeastern lawmaker was more candid with his feelings:I think it will be Hillary. If I had to bet, I d definitely bet that Trump loses. This is like a football game where you hate both teams. You root for a tie and maybe some minor injuries.Right now, it sucks to be a Republican. Rep. Matt Salmon, who originally backed Marco Rubio, then Ted Cruz and now Trump, admitted a Trump win will be a steep climb. That s because the GOP didn t listen to their 2012 autopsy report, and they are paying the price. But not all members of the GOP are ignoring the findings from their last loss in 2012. Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania told the Hill that the GOP must learn from their autopsy report if they hope to win:Another autopsy will occur, and the next time I hope lessons will be learned.Fat chance that will happen. They seriously thought Romney was going to beat President Obama, and decided to disregard all the points they missed when he didn t win.The GOP is bracing for a Clinton win, and so is the rest of he country anything is better than Donald Trump.","label":1}
{"text":"Fighters with the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia have credited Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan with their victory over Islamic State in Raqqa, in apparent response to U.S. criticism of their praise of a man jailed in Turkey for treason. In a video praising Ocalan s ideological power , the YPG fighters rebuffed U.S. criticism of battle celebrations in Raqqa last week where the YPG s all-female affiliate, the YPJ, unfurled a banner with his face on it. The banner has become a new focal point for Turkey s anger over U.S. support for the YPG, which Ankara sees as an extension of Ocalan s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Deeply concerned by the rise of Kurdish power in northern Syria, Turkey has opposed the U.S. alliance with the YPG which spearheaded the Raqqa campaign under the banner of the multi-ethnic Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). On Saturday, the U.S. embassy in Turkey issued a statement reiterating its misgivings about Ocalan, in an apparent response to criticism from the Turkish government over the banner. The PKK is listed among foreign terror organizations. Ocalan has been jailed in Turkey for his actions related to the PKK. He is not a person to be respected, it said. In the video circulated by the YPG press office on Sunday, seven fighters credit Ocalan s ideology for the defeat of Islamic State at Raqqa, which served as the jihadists Syrian base of operations and a hub for planning attacks in the West. All victories, developments and gains made here are results of a great battle based on his opinions and philosophy. If his ideological power hadn t been with us, we wouldn t know what to do in such a situation, said one of the fighters. Raqqa would never have been rescued from the darkness of recent years, and all other IS occupied cities as well. Ocalan s influence runs deep in Kurdish-led regions that have emerged in northern Syria since its civil war began in 2011. Steps are under way to establish a new political system based on his ideas about federalism and local democracy. Another of the fighters, who identified himself as a Canadian and gave his name as Hozan Kobane, said the U.S. government position on Ocalan was a mistake and a bit behind the times . The writings and the philosophy and the influence of Abdullah Ocalan was very, very decisive in motivating the soldiers with an ideology of peace and democracy that allowed this liberation to be possible, he said. The U.S.-led coalition has said the Ocalan banner was not sanctioned by the SDF leadership. Furthermore, the Coalition does not approve of the display of divisive symbols and imagery at a time in which we remain focused on the defeat of Daesh (IS) in Syria, Colonel Ryan Dillon, the coalition spokesman, said. Ocalan has been in jail in Turkey since 1999 on a treason conviction. More than 40,000 people, most of them Kurds, have died in the fighting since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union.","label":0}
{"text":"We all know that President Donald Trump has wanted to blow up the disaster that is Obamacare for months now, however, his latest vision of bringing better healthcare to the people of America will actually stop billions of dollars in payments to health insurance companies that serve the poorest enrollees in the Affordable Care Act.If the President stops these payments, the entire health insurance system will be thrown into complete chaos, resulting in higher prices and fewer choices, if any, for consumers. Insurance companies would most likely increase the premiums of people using exchanges such as HealthCare.gov and Covered California, or stop selling to them altogether. Without Trump s payments, this aspect of healthcare will simply fall apart under his watch.The main issue behind all of this are cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments, reimbursements to health insurance companies made in order to reduce out-of-pocket costs such as deductibles and copayments for low-income customers. The House of Republicans filed a lawsuit in 2014, which is still pending, against the Obama administration questioning the legality of these payments. According to one White House official, the Trump administration has agreed to make the CSR payment for the month of May, but has made no commitment after that. As Donald Trump himself said about the healthcare system in January during a pre-inauguration speech, The easiest thing would be to let it implode in 17 and believe me, we d get pretty much whatever we wanted. In Trump s unhinged mind, ending what he has referred to as these bailout payments would force democrats to negotiate repealing the Affordable Care Act, however, they don t seem too keen on doing so, nor do the majority of the American people, with 60 percent stating that they don t approve of negotiations that disrupt insurance markets according to a survey conducted last month by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Three-quarters of those surveyed also believe the ACA should be kept running and two-thirds, including a majority of Republicans, believe that the repercussions of any further problems stemming from changes to healthcare in the USA sit squarely on President Trump s shoulders.Still, the President continues to ignore any advice given to him and remains in favor of cutting the payments. To be eligible for the cost reduction, enrollees in exchanges can earn up to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, which equals $30,015 per person. With the CSR payments being made by the government, deductibles of thousands of dollars are reduced to just hundreds for the consumer, a subsidy that has been received by seven million people between November 1, 2017, and January 31 this year, equating to 58 percent of exchange enrollees.Without the Trump administration making these CSR payments, insurers would need to raise premiums by an average of 19 percent on top of any other price increases next year.","label":1}
{"text":"During a segment of HBO s Real Time with Bill Maher, Prophets of Rage guitarist Tom Morello sat down with the show s host Bill Maher where they discussed the legacy of Muhammed Ali.Maher described the influence that the late boxing champion had on himself and the world, saying: He invented hip-hop. It was completely revolutionary. For everyone who is younger, who grew up in a world of hip-hop, where braggadocio is a big part of life. You know I used to say, rap is affirmative action for the ego. Morello agreed with Maher, saying that Ali had influenced himself, saying that he was particularly attracted to Ali because of how unapologetic his attitude was. Morello also went on to comment on how Ali s legacy is now being whitewashed. I was attracted to Muhammad Ali by how he used his vocation to inflict his worldview on the public, and it was unapologetic. In the same way with Nelson Mandela, there s been a sort of a whitewash of who Muhammad Ali was. He was a person who said, You might not like my religion, but it s my religion. You might not like the color of my skin, or my opinions, but I am just as American as you are. And the powers that be can shove it, because I m the champion of the world and I m the peoples champion. And that s thing, as a kid, that made me think, in my vocation, I can express my opinion in a way that is unapologetic as well. Morello was spot on with his statement that Ali s legacy is being whitewashed. That s why a hate-mongerer like Donald Trump feels comfortable tweeted out platitudes to The Greatest despite the fact that Trump s presidential campaign flies in the face of everything that Ali stood for. Ali was so much against Trump s stance on banning Muslim s from entering the United States, that he wrote a public letter lambasting the idea.You can watch the segment below:\"Muhammad Ali invented hip-hop.\" @BillMaher and @TMorello reflect on Ali's revolutionary and unapologetic persona:https:\/\/t.co\/qj1YJc1D71 Real Time (@RealTimers) June 11, 2016Featured image from video screenshot","label":1}
{"text":"SIOUX CITY, Iowa \u2014 Texas Republican Ted Cruz on Saturday brushed off the most recent poll results showing him behind businessman Donald Trump in Iowa by 5 points. \"If you had told me a year ago that two days out from the Iowa caucuses we would be neck and neck, effectively tied for first place in the state of Iowa, I would have been thrilled,\" Cruz told reporters. The latest Des Moines Register\/Bloomberg Politics Iowa Poll, released hours before Cruz held a rally here, showed Trump retaking his lead in Iowa. Cruz previously held the poll's top spot. The latest Iowa Poll showed Trump at 28% support among likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers and Cruz at 23%. Even so, Cruz considers himself in a \"dead heat\" with Trump for the top spot. Cruz pointed to an increase in attacks against him as proof that he still has strong political standing in Iowa. \"Everyone in the field is running millions of dollars in attack ads. We saw it in the last debate where everyone lined up to toss their attacks. That's fine. That goes with the territory,\" Cruz said. \"I'll tell you I'd be a lot more worried right now if nobody was attacking me. Then that would be concerning: What do they know that we don't?\" The U.S. senator and presidential hopeful was ending a five-stop day. Cruz had set the rally here as the location for a one-on-one debate he challenged Trump to earlier in the week. Trump did not show up. Throughout the day, Cruz gave a version of his usual stump speech, laying out his agenda for what he'll do if he makes it to the White House. It includes repealing Obamacare and Common Core, opening an investigation into Planned Parenthood, instituting a flat tax, and eliminating the IRS and a slate of other federal agencies. Linda Imsland, of Hubbard, said she supports Cruz, during his stop in her town 25 miles north of Ames. \"He believes with all his heart that the Constitution needs to be upheld,\" she said. \"I believe he's a very patriotic man. I believe that he cares about the country, and I think it scares him to death to see where we're headed, and it does me, too.\" Cruz has been making his final pitches throughout Iowa while counting down the hours to caucus night. \"This is now your time. This is the men and women of Iowa, the time to look candidates in the eyes and make the judgment: Who do I trust? Who do I know is going to defend the Constitution, is going to repeal Obamacare, is going to stop amnesty, is going to kill the terrorists and keep this country safe?\" Cruz said.","label":0}
{"text":"(CNN) The State Department announced Friday that it will not release 22 emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton because they contain \"top secret\" information, the highest level of government classification. The decision, coming three days before the Iowa caucuses, could provide fodder for Clinton's political opponents, especially Republicans, who are likely to make note of the emails' \"top secret\" designation. Clinton's email use has haunted her on the campaign trail since it became public early last year that she maintained a private server while leading the State Department. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the documents, totaling 37 pages, were not marked classified at the time they were sent, but are being upgraded at the request of the Intelligence Community because they contain sensitive information. But, Kirby said, a separate review by the bureaus of Diplomatic Security and Intelligence and Research is being held into whether the information in the emails was classified at the time they were sent and received. He would not say when the review began or how long it would go, and acknowledged it's possible there could be classified emails that weren't marked as such. \"It's certainly possible that for any number of reasons, traffic can be sent that's not marked appropriately for its classification. That is certainly possible,\" Kirby said. But he added that he wasn't going to make any judgments about this particular case. \"All I can tell you definitively is it wasn't marked classified at the time it was sent,\" Kirby said. A senior State Department official said the review \"began very recently\" and was initiated by the State Department, but the official wouldn't say what prompted it. A spokesperson for the Intelligence Community's inspector general declined to comment. Kirby also said 18 emails, comprised of eight email chains between Clinton and President Barack Obama, are being \"withheld in full\" to \"protect the President's ability to receive unvarnished advice and counsel.\" But, Kirby said, they \"have not been determined to be classified\" and said they will \"ultimately be released in accordance with the Presidential records act.\" \"I'd love for people to see what I did and I hope that will happen,\" she said. Brian Fallon, a spokesman for Clinton's campaign, said in a statement that Friday's announcement was a case of \"over-classification run amok\" and reiterated Clinton's position that the emails be made public. But later Friday, Fallon declined to say whether Clinton would ask Obama to declassify the emails when pressed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on \"The Situation Room.\" \"The President easily could declassify all of these emails if she asked him and if he agreed, right?\" Blitzer asked. \"I'd really be surprised if this has risen to the President's level,\" Fallon replied. \"Because, again, this a mundane matter of fulfilling a FOIA request.\" Asked Friday if he had \"certainty and confidence\" that Clinton will not be indicted over the email controversy, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said any decision to prosecute Clinton would rest with the Justice Department. \"That is a decision to be made solely by independent prosecutors,\" Earnest said. \"But again, based on what we know from the Department of Justice, it does not seem to be headed in that direction.\" The State Department released more than 900 of Clinton's emails Friday -- 242 of which received classification upgrades: 11 to \"secret\" and 209 more to \"confidential,\" along with the 22 emails containing \"top secret\" information -- but the release fell well behind the judge-imposed timetable for producing all of her emails. Among the most interesting correspondence: This month's release was supposed to be the final one and include just over 9,000 pages of documents -- the largest number to date. That delay was then compounded by a huge snowstorm that shut down the federal government for several days, according to the State Department's motion. Several prominent Republicans, including presidential hopefuls, quickly condemned Clinton, the Democratic 2016 front-runner, over Friday's developments. \"The new e-mail release is a disaster for Hillary Clinton. At a minimum, how can someone with such bad (judgment) be our next president?\" GOP front-runner Donald Trump tweeted. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Clinton's email use was a \"disqualifier\" for the White House. \"Hillary Clinton put some of the highest, most sensitive intelligence information on her private server because maybe she thinks she's above the law,\" Rubio said at a town hall event in Clinton, Iowa. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that Clinton's email controversy would seriously imperil her presidential aspirations. \"We are talking about serious offenses for which the Obama Justice Department threw the book at General (David) Petraeus,\" Cruz said. \"And justice needs to be enforced fairly and impartially.\" And Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus tweeted that Clinton and the Obama administration have \"obfuscated and misled at every available opportunity,\" adding that she has \"removed all doubt that she cannot be trusted with the presidency.\" But Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said classification determinations \"are often very complex.\" \"It's important to remember that none of these emails had any classification markings at the time they were sent, and Secretary Clinton and her staff were responding to world events in real time without the benefit of months of analysis after the fact,\" Schiff said. Meanwhile, Clinton's top Democratic 2016 rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, said in a statement that \"there is a legal process in place which should proceed and not be politicized.\" \"The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,\" he said then to applause.","label":0}
{"text":"The USS Ronald Reagan, a 100,000-ton nuclear powered aircraft carrier, patrolled in waters east of the Korean peninsula on Thursday, in a show of sea and air power designed to warn off North Korea from any military action. The U.S. Navy s biggest warship in Asia, with a crew of 5,000 sailors, sailed around 100 miles (160.93 km), launching almost 90 F-18 Super Hornet sorties from its deck, in sight of South Korean islands. It is conducting drills with the South Korean navy involving 40 warships deployed in a line stretching from the Yellow Sea west of the peninsula into the Sea of Japan. The dangerous and aggressive behavior by North Korea concerns everybody in the world, Rear Admiral Marc Dalton, commander of the Reagan s strike group, said in the carrier s hangar as war planes taxied on the flight deck above. We have made it clear with this exercise, and many others, that we are ready to defend the Republic of Korea. The Reagan s presence in the region, coupled with recent military pressure by Washington on Pyongyang, including B1-B strategic bomber flights over the Korean peninsula, comes ahead of President Donald Trump s first official visit to Asia, set to start in Japan on Nov. 5, with South Korea to follow. North Korea has slammed the warship gathering as a rehearsal for war . It comes as senior Japanese, South Korean and U.S. diplomats meet in Seoul to discuss a diplomatic way forward backed up by U.N. sanctions. The U.N. Security Council has unanimously ratcheted up sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes since 2006. The most stringent include a ban on coal, iron ore and seafood exports that aim at halting a third of North Korea s $3 billion of annual exports. On Monday, Kim In Ryong, North Korea s deputy U.N. envoy, told a U.N. General Assembly committee the Korean peninsula situation had reached a touch-and-go point and a nuclear war could break out at any moment. A series of weapons tests by Pyongyang, including its sixth and most powerful nuclear test on Sept. 3 and two missile launches over Japan, has stoked tension in East Asia. A Russian who returned from a visit to Pyongyang has said the regime is preparing to test a missile it believes can reach the U.S. west coast. On Sunday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said President Donald Trump had instructed him to continue diplomatic efforts to defuse tension with North Korea. Washington has not ruled out the eventual possibility of direct talks with the North to resolve the stand-off, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan said on Tuesday.","label":0}
{"text":"A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives introduced bills on Wednesday to toughen U.S. foreign investment rules amid growing concern about Chinese efforts to buy U.S. high-tech companies. Senator John Cornyn, a member of the Republican leadership who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced a Senate bill to broaden the government's power to stop foreign purchases of U.S. firms by strengthening the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Representative Robert Pittenger, a North Carolina Republican, introduced an identical bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. Both bills have Republican and Democratic co-sponsors. \"This bill focuses on providing CFIUS with updated tools to address present and future security needs,\" said Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. \"Senator Cornyn and I have been working on this bill for the last eight months, and we hope to build on the progress we've already made to update CFIUS and address national security threats.\" In addition to Cornyn, of Texas, and Feinstein, cosponsors of the Senate bill include Republicans Marco Rubio of Florida, John Barrasso of Wyoming, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Tim Scott of South Carolina. Democratic co-sponsors are Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Gary Peters of Michigan and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. \"China is buying American companies at a breathtaking pace. While some are legitimate business investments, many others are part of a backdoor effort to compromise U.S. national security,\" said Pittenger in a press statement. House co-sponsors include Republicans Devin Nunes of California, Chris Smith of New Jersey and Sam Johnson and John Culberson, both of whom are from Texas. House Democrats backing the bill are Denny Heck of Washington and Dave Loebsack from Iowa. \"That's a pretty powerful collection of members, which makes me think it's got a good shot (at becoming law),\" said Seth Bloom, a former general counsel on a Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee. The bills would expand CFIUS' reach to allow it to review, and potentially reject, smaller investments and add new national security factors for CFIUS to consider. Those factors include whether information about Americans, such as Social Security numbers, would be exposed as part of the transaction or whether the deal would facilitate fraud. The bills would also allow CFIUS to exempt certain transactions from review if the investors are from a country that is a treaty ally or has another security arrangement with the United States. CFIUS already has a reputation for being tough on high-tech deals involving China in particular, and has blocked transactions that involve sophisticated semiconductors. It has become more cautious since President Donald Trump was inaugurated amid growing political and economic tensions between the United States and China. Since the inauguration, the panel has balked at approving a broader range of deals from China, according to lawyers who specialize in representing proposed transactions to the board.","label":0}
{"text":"Hollywood may experience one of the worst slumps at the box office in the last decade this summer as Americans grow tired of the seemingly endless number of sequels and tentpoles churned out by the film industry. [Multiple reports by the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter show box office revenues are on track to decline by five percent this summer season when compared with last year, and could drop by as much as ten percent. In real dollars, that could calculate out to a net loss of $450 million for Hollywood's film industry, with summer earnings for movies expected at about $4 billion, which would make box office performance during this year's summer season the worst in at least ten years. The summer season kicked off with a bang with the release of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 on May 5. The ensemble superhero sequel starring Chris Pratt, Kurt Russell, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and Bradley Cooper opened to a robust $145 million in its domestic debut, and is expected to top the box office in its second frame with an estimated $60 million haul. The James film has already crossed the $500 million mark in international sales. But the second weekend of summer hints at more trouble to come, as Warner Roadshow's pricey tentpole King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is set to debut to around $25 million in its opening weekend, a disastrous projection when compared with its reported $175 million budget, before marketing costs. But the real test will come later this summer, when Paramount trots out Transformers: The Last Knight and Disney releases Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, both of which represent the fifth entries in their respective, franchises. Other key tests will include the sequel Alien: Covenant, War for the Planet of the Apes, and the third reboot of the Spiderman franchise, : Homecoming. Of course, Americans' sequel fatigue also comes at a time when there are more programs available to watch on demand and in the comfort of one's home than one could ever hope to watch in a lifetime. These options include hits like Game of Thrones and newly created cult classics like Netflix's Stranger Things and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale. Studios are looking to avoid a repeat of last summer's uneven season, which saw numerous major releases \u2014 including Independence Day 2, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The BFG, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, The Legend of Tarzan, and Warcraft \u2014 either underwhelm or else outright bomb at the box office. There appear to be at least a couple of bright spots this summer, as the animated family film Despicable Me 3 and Christopher Nolan's World War II drama Dunkirk are expected to perform well for Universal and Warner Bros. respectively. But some executives are already blaming the upcoming season's with sequels for the projected decline in box office. \"Some of the tent poles are just not as strong this year,\" 20th Century Fox domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson told the Times. \"Pirates of the Caribbean? It's the fifth one. Transformers? It's the fifth one. \" John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.","label":0}
{"text":"We all know the feeling of dread that takes over when you see someone in public that you would really rather avoid. That frantic moment when you look around for somewhere, anywhere, to hide. Well, apparently former FBI Director James Comey felt that way about Donald Trump, not that you can blame him.The New York Times reports that Comey was once so desperate to avoid dealing with Trump that he tried to blend in with the curtains to avoid him. Make no mistake, Comey is not a little guy. He stands 6 8 tall. So he tends to stand out. But Brookings Institution fellow Benjamin Wittes said that Comey was hoping that if he stood close enough to the dark blue curtains of the White House Blue Room in his suit (that was an almost perfect match), maybe he could go unnoticed. He thought he had gotten through and not been noticed or singled out and that he was going to get away without an individual interaction, Wittes told the Times.But no such luck. Trump spotted Comey and made a big production out of it. He called Comey out of the curtains, noting that he had become more famous that himself and then proceeded to hug Comey against his will.Comey said that as he was walking across the room he was determined that there wasn t going to be a hug, Wittes said. It was bad enough there was going to be a handshake. And Comey has long arms so Comey said he pre-emptively reached out for a handshake and grabbed the president s hand. But Trump pulled him into an embrace and Comey didn t reciprocate. If you look at the video, it s one person shaking hands and another hugging. Lucky for us, this classic moment was caught on video:","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump's administration plans to consider almost all illegal immigrants subject to deportation, but will leave protections in place for immigrants known as \"dreamers\" who entered the United States illegally as children, according to official guidelines released on Tuesday. The Department of Homeland Security guidance to immigration agents is part of a broader border security and immigration enforcement plan in executive orders that Republican Trump signed on Jan. 25. Former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, issued an executive order in 2012 that protected 750,000 immigrants who had been brought into the United States illegally by their parents. Trump has said the issue is \"very difficult\" for him. Trump campaigned on a pledge to get tougher on the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, playing on fears of violent crime while promising to build a wall on the border with Mexico and to stop potential terrorists from entering the country. Trump's planned measures against illegal immigrants have drawn protests, such as an event last week that activists called \"A Day Without Immigrants\" to highlight the importance of foreign-born people, who account for 13 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 40 million naturalized American citizens. A banner declaring \"Refugees Welcome\" was posted on the base of the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of American acceptance of immigrants, before park rangers removed it on Tuesday, WABC television reported. DHS officials, on a conference call with reporters, said that although any immigrant in the country illegally could be deported, the agency will prioritize those deemed a threat. These include recent entrants, those convicted of a crime and people charged but not convicted of a crime. Some details of the guidelines were detailed in a draft memo seen on Saturday. Many of the instructions will not be implemented immediately because they depend on Congress, a public comment period or negotiations with other nations, the officials said. Mexican immigration officials immediately objected to part of the new rules. The guidance also calls for the hiring of 10,000 more U.S. Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents and 5,000 more U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. The DHS will need to publish a notice in the Federal Register subject to review in order to implement one part of the plan that calls on ICE agents to increase the number of immigrants who are not given a hearing before being deported. The new rules would subject immigrants who cannot show they have been in the country for more than two years to \"expedited removal.\" Currently, only migrants apprehended near a U.S. border who cannot show they have been in the country more than 14 days are subject to rapid removal. The memos also instruct ICE to detain migrants who are awaiting a court decision on whether they will be deported or granted relief, such as asylum. DHS officials said they are reviewing what jurisdictions may have laws in place that prevent the amount of time immigrants can be held. The agency also plans to send non-Mexican migrants crossing the southern U.S. border back into Mexico as they await a decision on their case. The DHS officials said this plan would be dependent on partnerships with the Mexican government and would not be implemented overnight. The guidelines were released a day before U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly were due in Mexico City for talks with President Enrique Pena Nieto and Mexican officials. An official from Mexico's Foreign Ministry said the government would tell Kelly's team to that it was \"impossible\" for Mexico to accept deportees or asylum applicants from foreign countries, and would ask them to explain their plan. The deportation of Mexicans would be one of the government's major concerns at the meeting, said the official, who declined to be named. A spokeswoman from the Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.","label":0}
{"text":"The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, under mounting pressure to advance gun-control legislation, will vote next week on a measure to keep guns out of the hands of people on government terrorism watch lists. Republican and gun lobby sources said the legislation, due to be introduced as part of a terrorism package, was likely to be a National Rifle Association-backed bill brought by Representative Lee Zeldin of New York as the companion to a Senate Republican measure from Senator John Cornyn of Texas. House Democrats, who last week staged a 25-hour sit-in on the House floor to push for gun control after the June 12 mass shooting in Orlando, condemned the Cornyn-Zeldin measure as the handiwork of the NRA. Senate Democrats blocked the same legislation last week. \"House Democrats will keep up our efforts to push for the majority to allow a vote on gun violence legislation, but bringing up a bill authored by the NRA just isn't going to cut it,\" said Drew Hammill, an aide to House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. The NRA denied writing the legislation. House Speaker Paul Ryan announced the plan in a conference call with lawmakers. Republican leadership aides declined to provide details. One said the package was still being negotiated. After the Orlando, Florida, shooting that killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at a gay nightclub [nL1N19L1WH], gun-control proponents ratcheted up pressure for meaningful legislation. \"We are going to get something done this year, I predict,\" Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid told reporters. \"I think we're going to take a bite out of the NRA.\" Reid said he was hopeful for a bill introduced by Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, and a bipartisan House companion bill backed by Republicans including Representative Carlos Curbelo of Florida, to prevent gun sales to anyone on the government's \"No Fly List\" for terrorism suspects or the \"Selectee List\" for extra airport screening. Before Thursday's announcement, Representative Bob Dold of Illinois, a Republican backer of the Collins-Curbelo bill, urged Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy to opt for the bipartisan measure, according to a Dold aide. But hopes for a vote on that measure could be dashed if House Republicans move first on the Cornyn-Zeldin bill, which would allow party leaders to say they had acted on gun control. \"It would really be a sharp blow,\" said Representative Scott Rigell, a Virginia Republican and NRA member who supports the Collins-Curbelo measure. The NRA-backed measure would give officials three days to decide whether a gun sale should be blocked. Democrats argue the timetable is insufficient and say the government would have to persuade a court that a would-be buyer \"has committed or will commit an act of terrorism\" before it could block a gun sale. Under the Collins-Curbelo bills, a court would have 14 days to decide on appeals.","label":0}
{"text":"This soldier s story is shocking and heartbreaking, but serves as a serious warning about what we, as a nation are getting ourselves into if we bring hundreds of thousands of people to our country whose beliefs are diametrically opposed to ours. These are also people who have no intention of assimilating in our country, as their actions are justified as part of their faith I don t typically go on rants or express my political beliefs here (Facebook), but I just have to get this off my mind.As some of you know, I m active duty Army. Aside from that, I am a medic. I ve spent 3 years of my life overseas in both Afghanistan and Iraq. I ve seen some pretty atrocious sites caused by war, from both sides. I ve picked up blown up body parts of friends and I ve saved the lives of guys who were trying to kill me and my guys right before I was keeping them from their 72 virgins or whatever they believe awaits them on the other side.Here is an unbiased truthful view to the Syrian refugee situation.My first deployment to Iraq, in 2006, my unit voluntarily ran a childrens burn clinic outside of the FOB. It was a constant target for attacks. You would think that people wouldn t shoot mortars or rockets at their own children, but you would be wrong. We saw hundreds of children, from infants to 18 year olds. The overwhelming majority of the kids we saw (90% or better) were clear cases of abuse. These parents were literally dunking their kids in boiling water, or throwing hot chai at their kids faces Yes, we re talking about babies, toddlers, kids not even old enough to understand why their parents would do these things to them. HUNDREDS of kids We saw quite a few of these kids that were sexually abused, both girls and boys. Their parents acted if nothing was wrong with this, even when confronted by our doctors.This is the mentality of their society, not the viewpoint of a few individuals these beliefs have been accepted to the vast majority of these people. Many were educated, well dressed, well spoken men, but yet, they still raped their own children, and kept chai boys (if you don t know what that means, google it.)During that deployment, we also captured the 3rd largest EFP cache that had ever been captured. There were hundreds of copper plates, homemade explosives, fake curbs to house the EFP s, hundreds of mortars and rockets and howitzer rounds, even an anti-aircraft gun. All of these things came from one place, Syria. Almost every single IED or EFP we found or hit could be traced back to Syria A lot of the terrorists we captured were from SYRIA Imagine that.Fast forward a couple years, and I find myself in Helmand Province, in Afghanistan We had a group of Afghani s that were paid to help guard our little mud hut in the middle of an Afghan village (I wasn t on a fob) These guys also kept a chai boy A boy, about 11 years old, who was there to serve these guys sexually. We heard him being sexually assaulted many times, but there was nothing we could do about it. We asked the police, the Afghan Army, and we were told the same thing every time . it s their culture, and accepted as the norm .Once again, we captured Syrian made explosives, weapons, and other items We found Syrian passports during raids And people out there want us to let these people into the US, with our kids, and near our wives. Near our schools, near our churches, synogogues, malls. Places where we should never have to fear being blown up, shot, kidnapped and tortured Don t forget what they did to the Egyptian Coptic Christians, or the Jordanian pilot Don t forget about what they do to rape victims! They stone these women to death for being raped! They behead their own people. Do you think they will show mercy to you?Look at the rape statistics in Denmark, Sweden, Belgium. Facts don t lie 97% of rapes committed in Sweden were committed by Muslim immigrants And you want 10,000 of these people here? Even if just 1% of these so called refugees were ISIS supporters or active ISIS terrorists, would that be acceptable to you?Chew on it think about it. Take a good look at your kids or your wife and decide if the risk is worth taking. Feel free to share this if you want.-Christopher Allard, Facebook post Nov. 16, 2015Christopher Allard posted this plea (below) for donations to the Scania Burn Clinic on Nov. 18, 2015, as a follow up to his Facebook commentary (which has since been removed). If you re so inclined, he would appreciate your donations.A little follow-up for you guys and gals. First, let me thank you guys for sharing my story. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the support. Second. I forgot about this, but there is a video on Youtube of the burn clinic that I mentioned. It s an old video and the quality isn t great but here it is. You can see me throughout the video:","label":1}
{"text":"A former governor of Puerto Rico shut down a question from MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski on Wednesday when she asked about President Donald Trump s treatment of San Juan Mayor Carmen Yul n Cruz.Trump and Cruz s interactions and criticisms have drawn national attention during the process of helping Puerto Rico recover from Hurricane Maria, with Cruz charging that the Trump administration has been too slow in delivering federal assistance. Trump tweeted criticism of her over the weekend, saying she exhibited poor leadership and that others in Puerto Rico were not doing enough to get their workers to help. Upon meeting each other face-to-face on Tuesday, Cruz told Trump it was saving lives and not about politics. Trump shook her hand and then walked away.After Morning Joe played the clip, a cross-armed Brzezinski looked disgusted. After welcoming former Puerto Rico Gov. Luis Fortu o to the show, she asked him what he made of Trump s treatment of Cruz. I m very sorry, Mika, but I m not going to get into local politics, Fortu o said.Brzezinski did a double take upon hearing his answer. If she s running for governor, there are different parties I don t care, Fortu o said. I care about results. Is that what you think it is? Brzezinski asked. You think it was politics that had him attacking her? I have no idea, he said. All I can tell you is we need results. We have people that desperately need help. As long as we get that help, we should not be talking about politics at this moment. WFB","label":1}
{"text":"The Office of Brazil s Prosecutor-General Rodrigo Janot asked the Federal Supreme Court on Thursday to convert the temporary detention of billionaire beef tycoon Joesley Batista into preventative detention, a person with knowledge of the situation said.","label":0}
{"text":"A healthcare bill being unveiled by U.S. Senate Republicans on Thursday is expected to roll back the Obamacare expansion of the Medicaid healthcare program for the poor and reshape subsidies to low-income people buying private insurance. Those subsidies are expected to be linked to recipients' income, a \"major improvement\" from a healthcare overhaul bill passed in the House of Representatives that tied them solely to age, Republican Senator Susan Collins said on Wednesday. The Washington Post reported that the bill would also repeal most of the taxes that pay for the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, give states wider latitude to opt out of its regulations and eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood, a healthcare provider that offers abortion services. The healthcare bill will be released to the Republican Senate Conference on Thursday morning and posted online, senators said. A vote could come as soon as next week, several senators said. Senate Republicans have been working behind closed doors for weeks on legislation aimed at repealing and replacing major portions of Obamacare, former Democratic President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law. Obamacare extended insurance coverage to millions of Americans through both subsidized private insurance and an expansion of Medicaid. \"There is an urgency to get this done because of the continued collapse of the Obama healthcare law,\" Senator John Barrasso, a member of the Senate Republican leadership, told CNN. \"People across the country are suffering pain and the pain is getting worse as insurance companies are pulling out.\" Democrats accuse Republicans of sabotaging Obamacare, and say the Republican healthcare bill is aimed at cutting taxes for the wealthy. Democratic Senator Patty Murray of Washington said in a statement that leaked details of the bill indicated it was \"every bit as devastating for families' bank accounts and healthcare coverage as the disastrous bill that passed in the House.\" President Donald Trump and fellow Republicans campaigned last year on a pledge to replace and repeal Obamacare, which they described as ineffective and government intrusion in a key sector of the economy. Some Republican senators voiced concern on Wednesday about the rush to consider the major legislation as their party's leaders prepare to unveil it. Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said he wanted to read the bill and discuss it with constituents before he votes. \"I'd find it hard to believe we'll have enough time,\" he said, adding that if he did not get enough information, \"I won't be voting yes.\" Democrats hoping to block the healthcare measure in the Republican-led Senate need at least two Republicans to defect. The Democrats have criticized the behind-the-scenes meetings, and blocked Senate committees on Wednesday from meeting for over two hours in protest. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, defending the closed-door sessions, has said all Senate Republicans have had a chance to participate in meetings on the bill, and that Democrats are not interested in overhauling Obamacare. Once the plan is unveiled, Senate Republicans will face a skeptical public that thinks the House version would be harmful for low-income Americans and people with pre-existing health conditions, according to a Reuters\/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday. Trump told a rally in Iowa on Wednesday night that he hoped the Senate would come up with a \"really good\" bill. \"I've been talking about a plan with heart,\" Trump said. He had privately called the House legislation \"mean,\" according to congressional sources. Several weeks of negotiations over the bill have been plagued by tensions between moderates and conservatives. Much of the battle has been over how quickly to phase out the Medicaid expansion that took place under Obamacare. Moderates favored a seven-year phase-out, but the Senate leadership proposed three years starting in 2020. There was also an argument over Medicaid's growth rate going forward, with conservatives favoring lowering the growth rate in 2025. \"That's what we're told it might be,\" said Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. Cassidy said senators had also been told the legislation would continue funding cost-sharing subsidies made available to help low-income Americans under Obamacare \"for a couple of years.\" Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, said she wanted to read an assessment by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on its impact on cost and insurance coverage before making her decision. \"The first concern is how many people will lose coverage and what do the demographics of that group look like,\" she said. An estimated 23 million people could lose their healthcare under a similar plan narrowly passed last month by the Republican-controlled House, according to the CBO.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump has long had a contentious relationship with the press. He cannot stand to be criticized, and any publication that dares to do so risks his ire. He banned a long list of publications from his campaign rallies, and now that he has been elected, he continues to attack the Fourth Estate. Trump s latest target is Vanity Fair, and the reason could not be more petty.Apparently, one of the magazine s writers, Tina Nguyen, wrote a scathing article criticizing the quality of Trump Grill, which is an eatery in Trump Tower. Nguyen says of the place: The allure of Trump s restaurant, like the candidate, is that it seems like a cheap version of rich. Nguyen also goes on to say that Trump Grill s quality reveals everything you need to know about our next president. Of course, one of the things that sticks in Trump s craw the most is anyone questioning his wealth, or his status among the elite. There are many people who believe that Trump is not a billionaire at all, and that if only he would release his tax returns, we d see a man who knows nothing of finances and money, who is a tax cheat, as well as a cheapskate who donates nothing to charitable causes like most truly wealthy people do.The article provoked a thinly veiled threat against Vanity Fair, as Trump insisted the magazine was in big trouble :Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine. Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2016Of course, the mention of editor Graydon Carter is telling as well, as to Trump s ability to hold long and enduring grudges. Carter is, after all, the one who dubbed Trump the short-fingered vulgarian, and it is a moniker that is appropriate and has stuck. That s why the GOP primaries devolved into dirty jokes regarding hand sizes. Of course, this speaks to Trump s insecurity about his own masculinity, which is something else that Trump cannot stand to have challenged.All in all, this is part of a much deeper and more troubling pattern, though. Trump is directly attacking the First Amendment, and it does not bode well to have a president who is so hostile to the press. He has already done a remarkable job of making his supporters blindly believe that the press hates them, that they are out to get them and their chosen king. Now, Trump s direct attacks on the press and specific publications means that he will likely use the bully pulpit of the White House to do the same for the next four years.This is how autocracies start, folks. Look for Trump to try to set up some kind of state-funded propaganda network, similar to what they have in Russia, to drive the message he wants and to shut out all other voices. This will likely start in the form of Breitbart News, which will then morph into some kind of television network on behalf of the Trump Administration.These are scary times, folks. Remember we must resist. We can no longer count on the institutions we ve long taken for granted to prevent the slow formation of a dictatorship. In fact, if you look closely, it s already happening.","label":1}
{"text":"Google Pinterest Digg Linkedin Reddit Stumbleupon Print Delicious Pocket Tumblr  Most sane people are horrified at the idea of a Donald Trump presidency. However, there's a substantial portion of the electorate that seems not to see just how absolutely dangerous the guy is as just a presidential candidate, much less how dangerous he would be as president. However, it seems that some of Trump's supporters DO recognize that he's a total nutcase, but plan to vote for him anyway. One woman's reason is truly out of this world. A lady named Crystal said of her choice to vote for Trump:  \"Oh I think he's crazy, and he may get us killed, but at least he's going to be truthful with us.\" Ultimate Trump Voter Quote, from Crystal: \"Oh I think he's crazy, and he may get us killed, but at least he's going to be truthful with us.\" pic.twitter.com\/Qz4u7OIzB0  \u2014 Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 29, 2016  Of course, Crystal's reason for her choice prompted much ridicule on Twitter. Here are just a few of the more fun tweets laughing at the absurdity of this logic: @MikeLewisTO @ddale8 \"I'm nuking Germany because that dog Angela Merkel said my hands were tiny. Believe me. Get affairs in order now.\"","label":1}
{"text":"Next Prev Swipe left\/right Super Mitchell Bros is the Mario parody every EastEnders fan must see  Inspired by the success of Super Mario Bros \u2013 YouTubers Douggy Pledger and Osysmo have created an EastEnder's version where you get to play as a drunken crack pipe smoking Phil Mitchell that fights his way through Albert Square. In the film a 16-bit Phil runs through Walford, gathering scotch eggs challenged along the way by adversaries such as Ian Beale, Dot Cotton and Sharon.  The duo's previous Mitchell tributes include;  A Lego Eastenders set;  a Phil action toy;  and conceptual art pieces\u2026 Speaking exclusively to The Poke Douggy said \"I start doing these photoshopped images about 15 years ago, just to stick up in the office as a joke. Over the years I noticed Phil was cropping up on the odd funny picture floating around online so I decided to go do a bunch more of my own. I met Osymyso in 2001 and used to go to all the Bastard nights he DJ'd at, he was famous at the time for his 'Pat and Peg' song so we'd both been dabbling in messing around with Eastenders, despite the fact that neither of us watch the show. Nowadays we just skip through the episodes and pick out Phil's bits. Which in itself is quite weird as we only know Eastenders from Phil's perspective.\"  for more wonderfully warped Mitchell magic visit Utter Philth","label":1}
{"text":"German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday congratulated U.S. Republican Donald Trump on his election victory and offered to work closely with him on the basis of the values of democracy, freedom, respect for the law and for the dignity of people. \"Germany and America are bound together by values - democracy, freedom, respecting the rule of law, people's dignity regardless of their origin, the color of their skin, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views,\" Merkel said. \"On the basis of these values, I am offering to work closely with the future President of the United States Donald Trump,\" she added. Merkel said working with the United States remained a key pillar of Germany's foreign policy.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. State Department, reacting to Spanish efforts to block a Catalan independence bid, said on Friday that Catalonia is an integral part of Spain and Washington backs Madrid s efforts to keep the country united. Catalonia is an integral part of Spain, and the United States supports the Spanish government s constitutional measures to keep Spain strong and united, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"Brazilian police raided the home of Agriculture Minister Blairo Maggi on Thursday in a corruption investigation linked to his time as a state governor, adding to the graft scandals rocking President Michel Temer s government. Last month the Supreme Court opened a bribery probe into Maggi s role in a scheme known as mensalinho, a payment of a monthly stipend to lawmakers in exchange for political support in his home state of Mato Grosso. He served two terms as governor there between 2003 and 2010. According to a person with direct knowledge of the matter, the raid was linked to a plea deal by former Mato Grosso state governor Silval Barbosa, who accuses Maggi of participating in the corruption scheme. Barbosa was Maggi s vice-governor, replacing him in the top job in 2010 when Maggi resigned to run for a seat in Brazil s Senate. Barbosa was subsequently elected to a four-year term that ended in 2014. Maggi denied any wrongdoing, claiming in a statement that Barbosa lied in his plea bargain testimony. I never authorized any illegal actions while in office nor have I obstructed justice, Maggi said. Maggi is a billionaire who was once Brazil s largest soybean producer. His family firm Amaggi SA runs large farms in Mato Grosso and operates a commodity trading business that competes in Brazil with global firms like Archer Daniels Midland Co, Cargill Inc and Bunge Ltd. Mato Grosso, where federal police said they served search warrants in nine cities, is a major producer of grains and cattle. Raids were also conducted in S o Paulo and Bras lia, the police said in a statement. The probe marks the latest blow to Temer s administration, whose economic reform agenda has been repeatedly thwarted by graft investigations that have targeted top officials, including the president. Temer has denied any wrongdoing.","label":0}
{"text":"This is just stunning! Free speech in our nations capitol under Obamas reign is now determined by your political bent Live video archived at Periscope shows U.S. Park Police officers detaining and searching a peaceful anti-Hillary Clinton demonstrator in the area of the opening ceremony for the National Museum of African-American History on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Saturday afternoon.Here is the video the protester is referring to with his sign, where Hillary refers to young black men as super predators and suggests we need to bring them to heel. Trump supporter Jack Posobiec went to the Mall dressed in an orange prison outfit wearing a blond wig and Hillary Clinton mask while holding a sign that read Blacks are super predators H The sign referenced a controversial remark Clinton made while First Lady in the 1990s. Clinton was not at the museum opening that was attended by President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush.DC Police Detained and Frisked me for Anti-Hillary Demonstration pic.twitter.com\/CwDE6Ao9N4 Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) September 24, 2016After walking around on the sidewalk and closed street on the Mall near the new museum, Posobiec is surrounded by uniformed Park Police officers led by a Black officer who proceeds to interrogate Posobiec and demand his ID. The reasons for detaining and searching Posobiec ranged from holding a sign , a bogus claim of threatening the president by just being there, holding a can of Monster and an implied statement that he was annoying Black people with his demonstration.Here is a video of Jack protesting. It appears the only people offended by his protest are Obama s US Park Police. You can see the initial encounter with the US Park police at the 10:28 mark:LIVE on #Periscope: Hillary Calls Blacks Superpredators At National African American Museum https:\/\/t.co\/HGIS8zrcXV Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) September 24, 2016The audio is difficult to hear at times, but the Black officer demands to know why Posobiec is protesting. He answers he is not protesting but is (garbled.)The Black officer says, You can do that anywhere. You can do that on You Tube. You can do that on Twitter. Why are you here? Posobiec s response is garbled.The Black officer then demands, Do you have any weapons on you? More back and forth and then the Black officer takes the Hillary sign from Polosiec and puts it on the ground and then orders his hands raised and put on his head and then to turn around.As the Black officer starts to search Polosiec he focuses on the photographer filming and orders his officers to search the photographer saying, You okay? You wanna check him out too cuz he s like doing all the filming. Let s make sure he doesn t have anything on him. The Black officer orders the camera being taken out of the photographer s hands so he can be properly searched.The camera continues filming at ground level while police search and interrogate the photographer who after a while appears to sit down. Prosobiec can be seen a few feet away sitting down on the sidewalk being detained by officers.After eight minutes of being detained the Black officer says to Polosiec, You are perfectly within your rights but I d advise you to (garbled) but if you come back (garbled,) The lecture is hard to hear, but the Black officer claims he doesn t care about Polosiec s politics and warns him that someone might (attack) him over the sign and the that he wouldn t come back to save you. You re free to go. The Black officer then walks over to the photographer to repeat the lecture, saying It is not a wise move to do it here, but you can do it here. (Garbled) coming back possibly to save you. Alright? You want to go the White House or Lafayette Park if you re under 25 people that s not a problem you can still make the same statement people feel comfortable This particular venue is not a wise place. But you can do, alright you re free to go, alright? Posobiec then starts speaking to the camera that there were numerous Black Lives Matter protesters around who were not being detained by police.Posobiec vows to continue his protest at the location.This writer was a prolific conservative activist with the Washington, D.C.chapter of FreeRepublic.com during the Clinton and Bush years and never witnessed or experienced any officer with federal or D.C. police agencies ask for ID or search a peaceful protester acting and dressed similarly to Prosobiec. The late FReeper Doctor Raoul Deming would wear masks and costumes to protest Bill and Hillary Clinton and was never searched or had ID demanded in D.C. over the course of hundreds of protests.In fact D.C. has some of the most lenient laws for protesters that allow spontaneous street demonstrations that block traffic where arrests can be made only after three prolonged warnings.Prosobiec was in a public place, not blocking traffic, and was not acting belligerent or threatening. He was exercising his First Amendment rights but as the officer implied because his audience was Black people, he should take his protest elsewhere like the White House of Lafayette Park (same thing, really, as a protest locale.)via: Gateway Pundit","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump s admiration of Vladimir Putin and the tyrannical way he runs Russia is very worrying to Trump s friend Joe Scarborough.The Morning Joe host strongly advised that Trump to put out a statement condemning the killing of journalists and political opponents. Because if he doesn t, his recent statements in two separate interviews over the course of the last year are even scarier. He s running his country, and at least he s a leader, Trump said in December 2015 when asked about Putin murdering journalists and political rivals. Unlike what we have in this country. But again: He kills journalists that don t agree with him, Scarborough replied.Trump then stunned Scarborough by excusing Putin s crimes. I think our country does plenty of killing, also, Joe, so, you know. There s a lot of stupidity going on in the world right now, Joe. A lot of killing going on. A lot of stupidity. And that s the way it is. And just as in that interview, Trump basically repeated himself during an interview with Bill O Reilly that aired prior to the Super Bowl on Sunday. There are a lot of killers, Trump said in defense of Putin. You think our country s so innocent? And that makes Joe Scarborough wonder if Trump will start emulating Putin. If Donald Trump keeps being asked to criticize Vladimir Putin for assassinating journalists, and Donald Trump refuses to criticize Vladimir Putin for assassinating journalists, and say, well, we do it, too, in a sense, does that suggest that he thinks that it s OK to assassinate journalists? Does that suggest that it s OK to jail political opponents, to assassinate political opponents? Scarborough then condemned Trump for defending Putin and advised him to issue a statement against killing journalists and political rivals to make it clear that he does not support doing these things. If you don t condemn after being asked repeatedly to condemn these actions, at some point you go back to the he who does not deny admits story, and it suggests that he does. I suggest somebody at the White House get him to write a very strong statement letting the world know that he condemns the assassination of journalists and political rivals, because he suggests in the two interviews with O Reilly and us that he does not How do you compare a country whose leader assassinates journalists, a country s leader who assassinates political rivals we saw one found dead in the street across from the Kremlin a year ago who jails economic rivals, who has an authoritarian regime that has put everybody on notice, he s plundered his country. Many people estimate that Putin is worth $200 billion that he has stolen from the Russian people, and yet this desire to keep preaching moral equivalency continues and it is baffling. It was disturbing enough a year ago, it is baffling now, as president of the United States, that he s still doing this. Here s the video via MSNBC.Donald Trump is a threat to our individual liberties and our lives. His obsession with wanting to be buddies with Putin is frightening and the fact that he is actually defending murder is sickening and un-American.","label":1}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says The Oroville dam in Northern California has sustained sink hole damage in the main spillway and over 188,000 residents of the local area have been told to evacuate. Helicopters are dropping rocks into areas of erosion to try to prevent ground from eroding further downstream of the primary and the never before used secondary, passive spillways at the dam.ABC10 noted late last week that the amount of water in the Oroville dam is challenging the design of the dam (due to the sink hole having formed in the spillway which required the outflow to be slowed) with 185,000 cubic feet of water per second are coming into the dam and only 41,000 going out.There is a passive spillway that has now been forced into use as the water levels rise and more rain is expected later this week, but its unknown what the down stream effects will be as this auxiliary spillway has never been used before. It has the potential of causing a lot of damage spilling downstream into the Feather River and towards residential areas. Reports indicate they have increased the outgoing water from the main spillway to lessen the potential damage of the use of the passive spillway.Join ABC10 below for live updates and ongoing reports on this developing situation at the Oroville Dam ABC 10At least 188,000 people living downstream of California s Oroville Dam were ordered to evacuate late Sunday as officials said an emergency spillway was dangerously eroding and a failure could cause uncontrolled floodwaters to pour out of the lake.Water began flowing over the emergency spillway at the Oroville Dam in Northern California on Saturday for the first time in its nearly 50-year history after heavy rainfall.Evacuation orders still in place. We will work to keep updating everyone. Be safe. https:\/\/t.co\/xjYGk6B8VF Yuba County (@YubaCounty) February 13, 2017Crews are hard at work reinforcing the integrity of the levee adjacent to Tyler Island. Stay tuned to our social media for continued updates pic.twitter.com\/6UIgIbCjWm SacramentoOES (@SacramentoOES) February 13, 2017The Paradise Alliance Church is not longer accepting new evacuees. If seeking shelter visit https:\/\/t.co\/zmTLivT9tA for updated list. Butte County, CA (@CountyofButte) February 13, 2017Butte County offices in the Oroville area will remain CLOSED tomorrow due to the #OrovilleSpillway evacuations. @ButteSheriff @CA_DWR Butte County, CA (@CountyofButte) February 13, 2017Continue this developing story with live updates at ABC10READ MORE US NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire US FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"USA Today published an article today that was so egregiously misleading that every hotel that leaves this joke of a publication outside the doors for their guests to read, should be ashamed to be peddling such trash. (Even if it is free..and we all know what they say: If it s free It s free for a reason .) USA Today is one of the most virulently anti-Trump publications you will find anywhere. Much like the morning shows, whose morning talk hosts greet their viewers with cheerful dispositions and big white smiles, while sticking daggers into our president and his family, USA Today can be found as in almost every hotel in America as a complimentary source of news for their guests.USA Today comes across to the everyday American as a friendly publication that gives Americans a snapshot into the latest national news without any bias. Unfortunately, nothing could be further than the truth. USA Today s stories are so anti-Trump, they should almost come with a warning label for anyone who s looking for honest journalism and unbiased news.An article that appeared today, in the USA Today talked about the dire financial situation that President Trump and his family have caused with their with an unprecedented number of White House protectees. Shortly after the article was published, Secret Service Director Randolph Tex Alles released a statement refuting what USA Today claimed he said. The quotes in red in the USA Today article below are from the Secret Service Director s statement.USA Today The Secret Service can no longer pay hundreds of agents it needs to carry out an expanded protective mission in large part due to the sheer size of President Trump s family and efforts necessary to secure their multiple residences up and down the East Coast.Here s what Secret Service Director Randolph Tex Alles said about the Secret Service running out of money: The Secret Service has the funding it needs to meet all current mission requirements for the remainder of the fiscal year and compensate employees for overtime within statutory pay caps. Secret Service Director Randolph Tex Alles, in an interview with USA TODAY, said more than 1,000 agents have already hit the federally mandated caps for salary and overtime allowances that were meant to last the entire year.OOPS! It looks like the same thing happened in 2016 while Barack Obama was President: The Secret Service estimates that roughly 1,100 employees will work overtime hours in excess of statutory pay caps during calendar year 2017. Our agency experienced a similar situation in calendar year 2016 that resulted in legislation that allowed Secret Service employees to exceed statutory caps on pay.The agency has faced a crushing workload since the height of the contentious election season, and it has not relented in the first seven months of the administration. Agents must protect Trump who has traveled almost every weekend to his properties in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia and his adult children whose business trips and vacations have taken them across the country and overseas.To remedy this ongoing and serious problem, the agency has worked closely with the Department of Homeland Security, the Administration, and the Congress over the past several months to find a legislative solution. As we work to ensure that employees are compensated for the hours they work, the Secret Service continues its rigorous hiring of special agents, Uniformed Division officers, and critical support staff to meet future mission requirements. The president has a large family, and our responsibility is required in law, Alles said. I can t change that. I have no flexibility. The law, Title 18 US Code 3056, details protection requirements for the President, Vice President and their immediate family members.Alles said the service is grappling with an unprecedented number of White House protectees. Under Trump, 42 people have protection, a number that includes 18 members of his family. That s up from 31 during the Obama administration.Does USA Today really believe the average American is so stupid that they ve already forgotten about the several separate vacations that the former first lady took while her husband golfed almost every weekend that he was in office? What about her notorious trip to Spain where she brought most of her entire friends and family list courtesy of the American taxpayers?The people you see surrounding former First Lady Michele Obama on her luxury African Safari are Michelle s family members. Yes, the American taxpayer paid for her luxury African Safari with her brother, cousins and of course, her mother, who lived in the White House for Barack s entire 8-year term, and traveled to all of their overseas destinations courtesy of, you guessed it, the American taxpayer.Surely USA Today doesn t believe we ve already forgotten about Barack Obama s obsession with golf, that more than one time, took him and his lovely wife to opposite sides of the country to satisfy their individual 5-star travel needs:Overwork and constant travel have also been driving a recent exodus from the Secret Service ranks, yet without congressional intervention to provide additional funding, Alles will not even be able to pay agents for the work they have already done.The compensation crunch is so serious that the director has begun discussions with key lawmakers to raise the combined salary and overtime cap for agents, from $160,000 per year to $187,000 for at least the duration of Trump s first term.But even if such a proposal was approved, about 130 veteran agents would not be fully compensated for hundreds of hours already amassed, according to the agency. And finally, the same Secret Service Director Randolph Tex Alles who allegedly gave USA Today the exclusive scoop about how the Trump family were draining the Secret Service funds dry, concluded his statement with this:This issue is not one that can be attributed to the current Administration s protection requirements alone, but rather has been an ongoing issue for nearly a decade due to an overall increase in operational tempo.This isn t the first time USA Today was caught fabricating a story to make President Trump look bad to their readers. In April of 2017, USA TODAY was caught fabricating a story about an innocent Dreamer being deported. Click HERE to read the story.","label":1}
{"text":"The majority of America has been wondering who actually is supporting Donald Trump. He s been rejected in Chicago and protests have been a theme at his rallies throughout the country. Yet, he does have support as evidenced by his trouncing of other GOP hopefuls who are just as crazy as he is but are prone to show it less. So, who are Trump s supporters exactly? This video shows us who these people are and how they think:Watch video here:[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=FiFMts60ZIQ]One man believed that the government is after Trump, turning the volatile and nasty Republican candidate into a victim or even a martyr of sorts. I m for Trump cause he s being bullied by the government and they need to be together, the man said. And when asked about the frequent counter-protests against Trump, he defended the Republican candidate. I m not racist and I don t think he s racist, though he admitted Trump should have denounced the KKK.Another man believes in Trump s honesty and thinks Bernie will control his every move: I think Trump is honest. We don t need a Barack in office no more, because he s a liar. He can t be direct. Hillary Clinton is a criminal. Bernie Sanders is a socialist. He believes in taking away all our freedoms. He ll control the way we eat, the way we sleep, the way we live. These remarks border on paranoia and misinformation. If these people just looked a little closer and deeper at who they re voting for, they would see a racist, a demagogue, and someone who s already done damage to this country. One can only imagine the damage he would do should he become president.","label":1}
{"text":"ZACHARY, La. \u2014 For Linda Fernandez, this summer has been one long disaster tour. In July, her daughter died in Baton Rouge, while her infant mysteriously ailed in Houston. It was at a hospital there, a week and a half ago, where Ms. Fernandez learned she had lost her home, too, to flooding. She explained this to President Obama on Tuesday afternoon as he walked through that house, emptied of all the furniture except for what was too heavy to haul outside. He hugged her four times and they had their picture taken. Others may have debated the timing of Mr. Obama's visit and whether he was too late in coming to this state, but Ms. Fernandez wiped tears from her eyes and said she had not been following any of that. \"Really I don't have time to think when I go home \u2014 I mean, go to my place in the corner,\" said Ms. Fernandez, who turned 69 on Saturday and is staying at a friend's house. \"I've been busy. I haven't watched the news. I've been doing all this by myself. \" Nearly 11 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Mr. Obama came to meet with flood victims in a visit that required him to navigate a delicate mix of compassion and politics. The president landed in Baton Rouge to see the devastation left by flooding in the last week, and to demonstrate, in part by his presence, that the federal government will deliver help to those who lost everything. Standing amid rubble in front of flooded homes, he lamented that so many people's lives were \"upended\" by the floodwaters that swept through communities with devastating force. But he praised the disaster relief response and expressed optimism that the people of Baton Rouge would recover and thrive. \"I know how resilient the people of Louisiana are and I know you will rebuild again,\" Mr. Obama, dressed in a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, said after touring several homes. He pledged that the federal government would support the victims of the community for the long run. \"These are some good people down here,\" he said. \"They got a lot of work to do and they shouldn't have to do it alone. \" Local and state officials from both political parties have praised the federal response in Baton Rouge, drawing a sharp contrast with the delays by the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Katrina. Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, a Republican who frequently criticizes Mr. Obama, said in an interview that federal officials had done \"an excellent job\" responding to the floods. \"They actually do care,\" he said. But Mr. Obama arrived four days after Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, visited areas around Baton Rouge. In a Twitter message on Tuesday, Mr. Trump mocked the president for failing to cut short his Martha's Vineyard vacation last week. \"Too little, too late!\" he wrote. Some Republicans and distraught locals have also criticized the president for waiting more than a week to visit the tens of thousands of residents affected by the floods. More than 7, 000 people were forced into 37 shelters across a vast stretch of the state by the rainfall, which has been blamed for 13 deaths. The Advocate, a local newspaper, mocked the president in an editorial last week. And on Tuesday, Representative Charles Boustany, a Louisiana Republican, added, \"It's a shame it took the president so long to come to Louisiana, but we are glad he is here. \" Frustration over the president's absence, merging with a widespread sense that the disaster has been unjustly overshadowed in media coverage of the Summer Olympics and the presidential election, has ranged from the hot anger of The Advocate editorial to a more subdued disappointment. Some here said the president had been callously detached for vacationing during a catastrophe, while others said he was respectfully keeping his distance during rescue efforts. But for those most intensely affected, the political debate is a luxury they can hardly afford. \"I didn't even know he was here,\" said Nita Case, 75, sitting wearily on a folded camp chair inside her gutted home, 11 miles from the neighborhood Mr. Obama had just visited. Florence Lucas, 79, had lost everything in Hurricane Betsy in 1965, lost her home during Hurricane Katrina and then had her home flooded this summer. She stood in the kitchen as a contractor discussed the rebuilding timeline, a needlepoint Home Sweet Home sign still hanging above the door to the hallway. \"Politics should be out of this,\" Ms. Lucas said, adding that an earlier visit by the president would have just complicated the work of local responders and the police. \"What can he do? He can't come and get rid of the water. \" The president praised W. Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator, for overhauling the agency to make it work better, and he announced that the federal government had already distributed $127 million in aid to the flooded communities. Still, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, issued a statement after meeting with the president saying that he had formally requested additional help for his state. Mr. Edwards, who had urged the president not to visit the state when the rescue operation was in full swing, said the federal government so far has been \"responsive to all of our requests. \" Mr. Obama was in Baton Rouge for about three hours before heading back to Washington. White House officials said the president also planned to meet briefly with the family of Alton B. Sterling, the who was shot while being held on the ground by Baton Rouge police officers, as well as families of officers killed and injured in an ambush in July. In the long run, the success of Mr. Obama's visit will be judged in two different contexts: first, the political imagery that has become a vital part of White House planning since President George W. Bush was photographed gazing down on New Orleans from Air Force One, and second, the gritty reality on the ground for people struggling to rebuild. As a candidate in 2008, Mr. Obama was eager to focus on the politics of Mr. Bush's flyover, denouncing him during a rally for being \"a president who only saw the people from the window of an airplane instead of down here on the ground, trying to provide comfort and aid. \" Now the spotlight has shifted to Mr. Obama's actions. After touring the damage, Mr. Obama pledged continued help \"even after the TV cameras leave\" and waved aside questions about politics. \"I guarantee you,\" he said, \"nobody on this block, none of those first responders, nobody gives a hoot whether you're Democrat or Republican. \" He could have been referring to Nita Case's husband, Dennis, 78. A fan of Bill O'Reilly, the conservative talk show host, he had few good words for the government, saying, it \"ain't never done enough. \" But he also said he had paid little attention to the politics surrounding Mr. Obama's visit on Tuesday. \"I haven't watched the news for two weeks,\" he said. \"I've been busy. \"","label":0}
{"text":"A group of investigative journalists whose slogan is digging dung, fertilizing democracy is holding South African President Jacob Zuma to account over his widely criticized links to a family of wealthy businessmen. AmaBhungane, which means dung beetles in the Zulu language, was founded by three veteran reporters to expose wrongdoing in South Africa. Together with online news site the Daily Maverick, amaBhungane in June released leaked emails and documents that they said showed allegedly improper dealings in government contracts and influence peddling by the Guptas, a family with close ties to Zuma. Zuma and the Gupta family, which has said the emails were fake, have denied wrongdoing. Co-founder Stefaans Brummer said amaBhungane, which was founded in 2010, had spent several years probing Zuma s family business dealings, and had verified the authenticity of the leaked documents. Our very first stories as amaBhungane was a series called Zuma Inc and we looked at the Zuma family and how its business fortunes had grown since Zuma took the office of president, Brummer said. He said the Gupta name popped up in several of amaBhungane s inquiries into Zuma s family business links and the organization was well placed to process the trove of information in more than 100,000 emails and documents. You fight hard for every piece of information and when something like this happens it s like Christmas, you suddenly have a lot of information, said Brummer. Brummer said amaBhungane, which mostly uses external hard drives to store documents for safety reasons, had sent a copy of the leaked Gupta emails to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project - a global consortium of investigative journalism centers. Reuters has not independently been able to verify the allegations in the so-called GuptaLeaks emails, sent between the Gupta brothers and their associates. The allegations, which came after an anti-corruption watchdog report into claims of influence peddling, opened Zuma up to renewed scrutiny and deepened divisions within the ruling African National Congress. Zuma survived an attempt in parliament to force him from office on Aug. 8, but he was left politically wounded after some ANC members voted with the opposition. It s quite amazing that people in South Africa have woken up to state capture now in 2017 when amaBhungane have been exposing this for a decade, said Glenda Daniels, a senior media studies lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. Perhaps the nature of their exposes were rather intense and detailed for people to follow. Maybe they have now let some air into their writing and everyone is getting it. As a non-profit company, amaBhungane s 8 million rand ($600,000) annual budget is funded by grants from charitable foundations and public donations. It does not sell adverts or accept funds from the government or from companies. Sam Sole, another amaBhungane co-founder, said his desire to expose society s injustices drove him into journalism. Both Sole and Brummer started their journalism careers before the end of apartheid in 1994. During my subsequent conscription into the defense force I came face to face with the sharp, brutish reality of apartheid - and that was the impetus for my first piece of journalism, said Sole. Journalism, for me, was a way to fight against injustice. The third amaBhungane co-founder, Adriaan Basson, is now editor of News24, an online news site. Sole and Brummer have won numerous journalism awards, including for their reporting on a 30 billion rand ($2.3 billion) deal to buy military equipment in the late 1990s that was plagued by allegations of fraud and corruption. Zuma was linked to the deal through his former financial adviser, who was jailed for corruption. The president said last year that an investigation into the deal found no evidence of wrongdoing, but critics denounced the findings as a cover-up. All charges against Zuma were dropped in 2009, but a court last year ordered a review of the decision. Zuma is appealing the ruling. The arms deal scandal lasted much longer and was much slower burning, which gave us time to develop some of the skills we use now, Sole said. For amaBhungane, the aim was to probe the link between politics and money. We set ourselves a target of trying to find that sweet spot of where organized crime, politics and business intersect, Brummer said. Politics has its good side but it has its bad side, business has its good side and its bad side, organized crime is all bad, but there is always that intersection where the three come together and that s where you get the worst wrongdoing. But amaBhungane has been accused by a group called Black First Land First and some on social media of being run by racist white men and not doing enough stories on white monopoly capital , a phrase used to describe the fact that the white minority still control much of the economy. Brummer said the criticism has not deterred amaBhungane. We are not going to roll over and die. Investigative journalism is what we do and what we like to do, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"A number of officials appear to suggest that the Obama administration may have actually wiretapped the Trump campaign, but that if they did it would have been justified by a court and part of an investigation by the Justice Department \u2014 not led by or ordered from the White House or the former president himself. [On Saturday, former President Obama's spokesman Kevin Lewis denied that the former White House or the former President himself would have given such an order to wiretap Trump Tower \u2014 or any other type of surveillance in any case \u2014 but that such an order would have come from an \"independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. \" \"A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice,\" Lewis said. \"As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U. S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false. \" Lewis' statement on the former president's behalf came in response to the explosive charges from President Donald Trump, who tweeted on Saturday morning that the Obama team conducted surveillance on Trump Tower during the campaign and afterward. Valerie Jarrett, another close Obama aide, also tweeted the statement from former President Obama's spokesman, Lewis. Jarrett is, according to the U. K. Daily Mail, now living in the Obamas' multimillion dollar Washington, D. C. mansion. From there, the Daily Mail reports, the former president and Jarrett will be running a \"nerve center for their plan to mastermind the insurgency against President Trump. \" Check out statement from Kevin Lewis, spokesperson to former President Obama. Enough said. pic. twitter. \u2014 Valerie Jarrett (@ValerieJarrett) March 4, 2017, Interestingly, however, a number of other former Obama administration officials do not deny that such a wiretap existed. They just deny that the White House or Obama himself would have approved it or ordered it, and say that the Department of Justice would have sought it in consultation with a foreign intelligence surveillance, or FISA, court. Obama's former speechwriter Jon Favreau tweeted that he would warn reporters against saying there was no wiretap. I'd be careful about reporting that Obama said there was no wiretapping. Statement just said that neither he nor the WH ordered it. \u2014 Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) March 4, 2017, And Favreau endorsed a Twitter feed that laid out the reporting about the existence of the wiretaps, which cited reporting from Louise Mensch, formerly of Heat Street, and The Guardian that the Obama DOJ had sought a FISA court approved surveillance warrant for Trump Tower back in the summer of 2016 that was denied but received a narrower focused warrant in October. Ok you definitely need to read this thread https: . \u2014 Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) March 4, 2017, The wiretaps that Donald Trump \"just found out\" about have been reported for weeks. I'm going to summarize here some of the discussion. \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, @LouiseMensch broke the news for @heatstreet that a FISA warrant was granted to explore Donald's Russia Ties https: . pic. twitter. \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, The @guardian's @julianborger reported on the FISA warrant again when the Steele dossier news broke in January https: . pic. twitter. \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, Republicans who have defended surveillance powers are now critical of it especially following Flynn's resignation https: . pic. twitter. \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, And just this week Donald's administration announced it had no intention of curtailing FISA https: . pic. twitter. \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, When @LouiseMensch reported on the FISA tap, she included details that implicated Putin's own daughters, Carter Page and Paul Manafort. pic. twitter. \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, This week @SenCoonsOffice suggested the transcripts that the FBI has may prove collusion with Russia. https: . \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, Coons has been one of the staunchest critics of surveillance powers, having introduced bills to reign in FISA https: . \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, Back to Donald. Wiretapping him was not illegal, full stop. And it suggests the court had reason to permit it. https: . \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, Donald's tweets this morning are a helpful reminder that he was under investigation, possibly for espionage. https: . \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, We can now conclude that our govt has significant intelligence on Donald and his associates. We need to see it. https: . \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, Donald can whine about being surveilled, but the reality is we citizens must now demand a special prosecutor and a select committee. \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, Interesting Donald's tweets this morning may have in fact declassified the existence of the wiretap https: . \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, @NRO's @AndrewCMcCarthy \u2014 a former terrorism considered the implications of using FISA to tap Trump. https: . pic. twitter. \u2014 Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017, David Axelrod, another former Obama adviser, tweeted that such a wiretap would receive court approval \"for a reason. \" If there were the wiretap @realDonaldTrump loudly alleges, such an extraordinary warrant would only have been OKed by a court for a reason. \u2014 David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) March 4, 2017, In other words, these officials are subtly confirming the accuracy of the reporting \u2014 that the Obama administration did in fact conduct surveillance on Trump Tower in October and and that the administration originally sought a warrant back in the summer of 2016 \u2014 but they say the president himself and the Obama White House was not involved in the decision. What's more, Philip Rucker, the White House bureau chief at the Washington Post, says the same thing as these former Obama officials: That the Obama spokesman's statement does not deny the existence of wiretaps on Trump Tower, only that Obama himself and the Obama White House did not approve them if they did exist. The Obama statement does not say there was no federal wire tapping of Trump Tower. It only says Obama and White House didn't order it. \u2014 Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) March 4, 2017, The outrage from the media and the Democrats appears to be standard hatred of Trump. The president forced a set of facts into the news cycle that was already previously public but framed in a way that puts his political opponents and the establishment media on the defensive. This appears to be the calculus: either the wiretaps exist, as Trump suggests, and the president will use them to bludgeon the Obama administration and the media for impropriety and overreach or, there were no wiretaps, which suggests the previous administration had no reason to suspect Trump colluded with a foreign government.","label":0}
{"text":"Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland has been sympathetic to government regulators in his almost two decades as an appeals court judge, frequently rejecting business-led challenges to federal action. His overall record, however, suggests he is a moderate who follows Supreme Court precedent and is not eager to spearhead efforts to adopt novel legal theories. Garland sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which hears a large proportion of the legal challenges to major federal regulations in areas such as environment and labor. They are often brought by business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Cases are assigned randomly to three-judge panels. Garland has avoided some of the most contentious cases of recent years, including challenges to government efforts under President Barack Obama to curb carbon emissions and ensure equal access to Internet data via its so called \"net neutrality\" rule. Of the cases in which he has participated, some of his opinions and votes in his 19 years on the bench have already attracted criticism from conservative and pro-business groups following his nomination to the high court by Obama on Wednesday. They say he too easily defers to government action. \"We have great concerns about this nominee's record,\" said Juanita Duggan, president of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small business owners. The group cites several cases, including one from 2003 in which the appeals court ruled against a developer challenging a finding the federal government had authority to force it to take measures to protect an endangered toad on the property under the federal Endangered Species Act. The ruling, written by Garland, was a win for the administration of Republican President George W. Bush, which was defending the actions of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Garland wrote a narrow decision, saying he was merely staying in line with court precedent. One of the judges on the appeals court who disagreed with the outcome was John Roberts, who Bush appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 2005. Roberts questioned whether the federal government had the authority to issue regulations protecting what he described as \"a hapless toad.\" Roberts' opinion was questioned by liberals when he was nominated to the high court as a sign that he would limit federal power to issue broad nationwide regulations. In another case mentioned by the business group, Garland was part of a three-judge panel that in 1998 upheld Environmental Protection Agency emissions limits for nitrogen oxides from electric utility boilers. More recently, he was on a panel in 2014 that upheld an Obama administration air pollution rule that limits emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants. The court held that the government was not required to consider the cost of compliance before issuing the regulation. The Supreme Court in June 2015 threw out that decision, although the regulation remains in place. In another 2014 case, he was part of a panel of 11 judges that ruled 8-3 to reject a food industry challenge to a federal rule concerning labeling requirements for meat. Despite those votes in favor of the government and against business interests, Garland is seen by legal experts as a moderate on the appeals court. \"He's a modest judge in that he really does try to stick to Supreme Court precedent,\" said Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Adler said Garland was somewhere in the middle of the 17-judge court when it comes to deference to agency action. Appeals court judges' hands are somewhat tied on regulatory cases because they are bound by Supreme Court precedent that favors deference to government agencies. In 1984, the high court ruled that judges should not second-guess agencies if the law is ambiguous. Neal Katyal, a former Obama administration lawyer now in private practice with the Hogan Lovells law firm, said it is a \"really tough argument\" to suggest Garland's rulings on regulations show an ideological leaning. He described Garland's record on such cases as \"very, very centrist.\" The Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, another industry group that regularly fights government regulations, said they would not comment on the merits of Garland's nomination. (This version of the story corrects the day of nomination announcement to Wednesday in paragraph five.)","label":0}
{"text":"The Republican Party has been nervous as hell ever since the CIA released reports that Russia had meddled in the U.S. election in order to sway it toward Donald Trump. This tension within the GOP couldn t have been more obvious than when Republican National Committee spokesman Sean Spicer had a fullblown meltdown over his distrust of the CIA.While being interviewed by MSNBC on Monday, host Kate Snow brought up the recent reports about Russia s interference, and Spicer was quick to deny the truth. Spicer said that any evidence that the Kremlin was trying to help Trump win is based on the fact that the RNC was hacked, and it was not hacked. He said: That does call into question the intelligence and the conclusions they came to. Snow then asked Spicer to clarify whether or not he is saying he doesn t believe the CIA and that s when Spicer devolved into a toddler (obviously taking hints from Trump) and began throwing a temper tantrum. Spice yelled: Stop doing that! That s not what I said, no! You keep Snow jumped in and said, I m just asking a question. Are you saying you don t trust the CIA? Because just a moment ago you said three letter agencies with unnamed sources, that s why I m asking. Do you not trust Spicer continued on with his angry rant, making it clear that he doubted the validity of the CIA s reports. He shouted: No, no. Tell me someone in the CIA, give me a name, publish a report and we ll deal with it. Right now, you guys start saying that you read these reports, you have no name behind it. It should be noted that there are even members within the Republican party that wholeheartedly trust the CIA and are backing an investigation into this matter. Snow responded that the CIA has a high degree of confidence that the Kremlin was behind Trump s win. Snow asked Spicer, I m asking, do you not believe that? Spicer continued to snap, growing more angry with each question. He fired back: Can I answer the question? They ve now walked that back in the course of the last 48 hours. So my point to you is this: the facts that we were initially presented with are clearly not accurate and so it does call into question [the legitimacy of those reports]. And I find it interesting that you guys aren t asking them to provide further proof of this. Spicer ended his rant by insulting news networks like the one he was on, stating that news organizations were not doing a good job in getting more evidence of Russian interference.You can watch Spicer go insane below:","label":1}
{"text":"Police in Charleston, S.C., say a man they suspect opened fire and killed nine people during a Wednesday prayer meeting at one of the city's oldest historically black churches has been captured. Police are calling the attack a hate crime, and they released stills from a security video that authorities say show 21-year-old Dylann Roof entering the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Roof, police said, sat with the congregation for about an hour before he opened fire at around 9 p.m. ET. He left the church in a black sedan, unleashing an overnight manhunt that involved local and federal law enforcement. Police apprehended the lone suspect during a traffic stop in Shelby, N.C., an almost four-hour drive from Charleston. Roof waived extradition during a court appearance in Shelby and will be headed back to South Carolina. Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley said the arrest is a part of the healing process that has just begun. \"In America we don't let people like this get away with this dastardly deed,\" Riley said. In a statement from the White House, President Obama meditated on the history of the church, which he called a \"sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America.\" He said the Emanuel AME is a church that has seen tragedy in the past. It was burned to the ground because its worshippers wanted to end slavery. It's a place where civil rights leaders spoke and led marches in search for freedom. Obama said it's a tragedy anytime Americans die in a situation like this, but it's especially heartbreaking when it happens \"at a place where people are seeking peace.\" Obama quoted a eulogy Martin Luther King Jr. delivered at the funeral service for three of the four children who were killed in the 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham. In death, King said, those three little girls told America \"that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers.\" At an earlier press conference, Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen said: \"It is senseless, it is unfathomable, that in today's society somebody would walk into a church, into a prayer meeting, and take lives.\" State Sen. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was also the senior pastor at Emanuel AME Church, was one of the people killed during the attack. The President Pro Tempore of South Carolina's Senate, Hugh Leatherman, said Pinckney was \"a strong advocate for his constituents, a great pastor and community leader, but most importantly, a cherished and loved husband, father and son.\" He continued: \"The victims were in a Bible study, learning the Word of God, in one of the most beloved institutions in our State whose roots go back to the dark days of slavery. What happened last night is incomprehensible.\" The Charleston County coroner identified the nine victims as Cynthia Hurd, 54; Daniel Simmons Sr., 74; Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41; Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45; Ethel Lance, 70; Tywanza Sanders, 26; Myra Thompson, 59; Susie Jackson, 87; and Depayne Middleton Doctor, 49. All the victims, but Simmons, died at the scene. Simmons died in hospital. In a short speech at the White House, President Obama said that he was restrained by what he could say about the facts of case, but he was not constrained by emotion. Obama said that it is tragic anytime Americans die in a situation like this. But it is especially heartbreaking when it happens \"at a place where people are seeking peace.\" He said the Emanuel AME is a church that has seen tragedy in the past. It was burned to the ground because its worshippers wanted to end slavery. It's a place where civil rights leaders spoke and led marches in search for freedom. \"This is a sacred place in the history of Charleston and in the history of America,\" Obama said. Today, he said, marks another attempt against a black church in the United States. And like this church, and others like it, have rebuilt in the past, Mother Emanuel \"will rise again, now.\" Update at 12 p.m. ET. Tip Led To Arrest: During a news conference, Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen said a civilian called police to report suspicious activity. Police followed up on the tip and quickly figured out that they were dealing with shooting suspect Dylann Roof, who was arrested without incident. Mullen, who would not comment on whether Roof had any weapons on him, said that Roof was cooperative. Mullen said that police had yet to determine a motive. Update at 11:13 a.m. ET. Barbaric Crime: \"Acts like this one have no place in our country and no place in a civilized society,\" she said. Lynch said that federal authorities are working closely with local authorities to try to apprehend the suspect. President Obama is expected to make a statement at 11:45 a.m. ET. Update at 11:10 a.m. ET. Two Previous Arrests: A search of public records finds that Dylann Roof had two recent court cases against him \u2014 one for trespassing, one for drug possession. Update at 10:33 a.m. ET. Suspect Identified: The city of Charleston said police have named a suspect: 21-year-old Dylann Roof. \"The vehicle he may be driving is a black Hyundai with vehicle tag LGF330. Anyone with information about his location call 1-800-CALL-FBI,\" the city said in a statement. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups, tweeted a photograph of the suspect sporting a jacket with what appears to be the flag for \"white-rule Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.\" Another patch on the jacket, the SPLC says, shows a South African apartheid era flag. Update at 9:35 a.m. ET. A 'Beloved Senator': The President Pro Tempore of South Carolina Senate, Hugh Leatherman, said Sen. Pinckney was a \"beloved\" public servant. \"Senator Clementa C. Pinckney was a leader in the Senate of South Carolina, a strong advocate for his constituents, a great pastor and community leader, but most importantly, a cherished and loved husband, father and son,\" Leatherman said in a statement. \"The entire Senate of South Carolina extends our love and sympathy to Jennifer, Eliana, Malana, and to the rest of his family.\" Update at 9:05 a.m. ET. State Senator Among Those Killed: State Sen. Clementa C. Pinckney, who was also the senior pastor at Emanuel AME Church, was one of the people killed during the attack, according to multiple news outlets as well as the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Update at 8:43 a.m. ET. Federal Hate Crime Investigation: Update at 7:17 a.m. ET. Suspect Sat With Congregation For An Hour: During a press conference just minutes ago, Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen said the suspect sat with the congregation in prayer for about an hour before opening fire. The suspect ultimately killed 9 people \u2014 six females and three males. Three others survived. Mullen said that law enforcement from all along the East Coast are helping in the investigation and the FBI and the ATF have come in from D.C. \"This tragedy that we're addressing right now is indescribable,\" Mullen said. \"No one in this community will ever forget this night ... and because of the pain and the hurt this individual has caused this community ... the law enforcement officials working on this are committed and we will catch this individual.\" Mullen called on anyone with information about the suspect to call 1-800-Call-FBI, but said that they should not approach the suspect because he is \"very dangerous.\" Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley Jr. said that last night that he and the police chief \"hugged as many\" of the victims' families as they could. He said they saw weeping mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers. Riley said this attack has ripped a part of the community's fabric forever. \"But we will work to heal them, to love them and support them in that church as long as we live,\" Riley said. Update at 6:50 a.m. ET. What Happened? According to The Post and Courier of Charleston, a gunman entered the church on Wednesday evening, as members of the church gathered for a prayer meeting. The Emanuel AME Church website says that church is the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the South. \"Emanuel has one of the largest and oldest black congregations south of Baltimore, Maryland,\" the website says.","label":0}
{"text":"Mon, 24 Oct 2016 10:26 UTC \u00a9 Sophie Wolfson 'Music probably does something unique. It stimulates the brain in a very powerful way, because of our emotional connection with it.' The multimillion dollar brain training industry is under attack. In October 2014, a group of over 100 eminent neuroscientists and psychologists wrote an open letter warning that \"claims promoting brain games are frequently exaggerated and at times misleading\". Earlier this year, industry giant Lumosity was fined $2m, and ordered to refund thousands of customers who were duped by false claims that the company's products improve general mental abilities and slow the progression of age-related decline in mental abilities. And a recent review examining studies purporting to show the benefits of such products found \"little evidence ... that training improves improves everyday cognitive performance\". While brain training games and apps may not live up to their hype, it is well established that certain other activities and lifestyle choices can have neurological benefits that promote overall brain health and may help to keep the mind sharp as we get older. One of these is musical training. Research shows that learning to play a musical instrument is beneficial for children and adults alike, and may even be helpful to patients recovering from brain injuries. \"Music probably does something unique,\" explains neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster. \"It stimulates the brain in a very powerful way, because of our emotional connection with it.\" Playing a musical instrument is a rich and complex experience that involves integrating information from the senses of vision, hearing, and touch, as well as fine movements, and learning to do so can induce long-lasting changes in the brain. Professional musicians are highly skilled performers who spend years training, and they provide a natural laboratory in which neuroscientists can study how such changes - referred to as experience-dependent plasticity - occur across their lifespan. Changes in brain structure Early brain scanning studies revealed significant differences in brain structure between musicians and non-musicians of the same age. For example, the corpus callosum, a massive bundle of nerve fibers connecting the two sides of the brain, is significantly larger in musicians. The brain areas involved in movement, hearing, and visuo-spatial abilities also appear to be larger in professional keyboard players. And, the area devoted to processing touch sensations from the left hand is increased in violinists. These studies compared data from different groups of people at one point in time. As such, they could not determine whether the observed differences were actually caused by musical training, or if existing anatomical differences predispose some to become musicians. But later, longitudinal studies that track people over time have shown that young children who do 14 months of musical training exhibit significant structural (pdf) and functional brain changes (pdf) compared to those who do not. Together, these studies show that learning to play a musical instrument not only increases grey matter volume in various brain regions, but can also strengthen the long-range connections between them. Other research shows that musical training also enhances verbal memory, spatial reasoning, and literacy skills, such that professional musicians usually outperform non-musicians on these abilities. Long-lasting benefits for musicians Importantly, the brain scanning studies show that the extent of anatomical change in musicians' brains is closely related to the age at which musical training began, and the intensity of training. Those who started training at the youngest age showed the largest changes when compared to non-musicians. Even short periods of musical training in early childhood can have long-lasting benefits. In one 2013 study, for example, researchers recruited 44 older adults and divided them into three groups based on the level of formal musical training they had received as children. Participants in one group had received no training at all; those in the second had done a little training, defined as between one and three years of lessons; and those in the third had received moderate levels of training (four to 14 years). The researchers played recordings of complex speech sounds to the participants, and used scalp electrodes to measure the timing of neural responses in a part of the auditory brainstem . As we age, the precision of this timing deteriorates, making it difficult to understand speech, especially in environments with a lot of background noise. Participants who had received moderate amounts of musical training exhibited the fastest neural responses, suggesting that even limited training in childhood can preserve sharp processing of speech sounds and increase resilience to age-related decline in hearing. More recently, it has become clear that musical training facilitates the rehabilitation of patients recovering from stroke and other forms of brain damage, and some researchers now argue that it might also boost speech processing and learning in children with dyslexia and other language impairments. What's more, the benefits of musical training seem to persist for many years, or even decades, and the picture that emerges from this all evidence is that learning to play a musical instrument in childhood protects the brain against the development of cognitive impairment and dementia. Unlike commercial brain training products, which only improve performance on the skills involved, musical training has what psychologists refer to as transfer effects - in other words, learning to play a musical instrument seems to have a far broader effect on the brain and mental function, and improves other abilities that are seemingly unrelated. \"Music reaches parts of the brain that other things can't,\" says Loveday. \"It's a strong cognitive stimulus that grows the brain in a way that nothing else does, and the evidence that musical training enhances things like working memory and language is very robust.\" Learning to play a musical instrument, then, seems to be one of the most effective forms of brain training there is. Musical training can induce various structural and functional changes in the brain, depending on which instrument is being learned, and the intensity of the training regime. It's an example of how dramatically life-long experience can alter the brain so that it becomes adapted to the idiosyncrasies of its owner's lifestyle.","label":1}
{"text":"Wednesday 9 November 2016 by Spacey Donald Trump could regain access to Twitter account on completion of successful trial with nuclear codes  Donald Trump, who had his Twitter access revoked by his campaign managers, has successfully secured access to America's nuclear codes.  Trump was denied control of his Twitter account in the build-up to the presidential election due to a series of monumentally stupid tweets.  According to a senior aide, the new president will only regain full control of his Twitter account once he's proved that he can act responsibly.  \"We'll give him the nuclear codes, and if he can get through a week without triggering armageddon then we'll review his Twitter access,\" confirmed the senior aide.  \"It's one thing to bring on the apocalypse, but we can't risk him reacting to criticism with an ill-judged tweet.\" Get the best NewsThump stories in your mailbox every Friday, for FREE! There are currently","label":1}
{"text":"During the year 2016, some 90, 000 Christians were killed for their faith around the world, according to a new study from the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR). [The director of CESNUR and leader of the study, Dr. Massimo Introvigne, told Breitbart News that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world, and the numbers of those affected are staggering. Christians are targeted primarily for two reasons, Introvigne said, \"first because their proclamation of peace disturbs more belligerent groups and second, because their social teachings on life, family and poverty are opposed by powerful forces. \" While in the past century, atheistic communist regimes were the greatest persecutors of Christians, Introvigne added, the geopolitical landscape has changed considerably since then and the actors have changed as well. While \"Communism's last salvoes\" are still responsible for some of Christians, Introvigne told Breitbart, \"Islamic \" has taken its place as the agent of persecution. Introvigne's findings coincide with those of other scholars and human rights groups. According to the 2016 \"World Watch List,\" for example, published by the Open Doors organization, nine out of the top ten countries where Christians suffer \"extreme persecution\" had populations that are at least 50 percent Muslim. The 2016 report found that \"Islamic extremism is by far the most significant persecution engine\" of Christians in the world today and that \"40 of the 50 countries on the World Watch List are affected by this kind of persecution. \" Introvigne told Breitbart that in Nigeria, \"over the last 12 years, the most reliable estimates assess at more than 10, 000 the Christians killed by the Islamic organization Nigeria's Boko Haram. \" Yet while some groups, like Boko Haram, are private organizations, in a number of countries, \"persecution of Christians is actually promoted by the governments,\" Introvigne said. \"Several Muslim countries still have laws punishing apostasy \u2014 converting from Islam to another religion,\" he noted. \"Others have laws against blasphemy, and some tend to consider any criticism of Islam as blasphemy. \" While tens of thousands of Christians are killed for their faith, Introvigne said, they are just the tip of the iceberg and much persecution takes place on a daily basis that never makes news. CESNUR's annual study, which is slated for release next month, indicates that between 500 and 600 million Christians were in some way persecuted and prevented from freely practicing their faith. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter: Follow @tdwilliamsrome","label":0}
{"text":"Vertical Pools Help Heal Wounded Combat Veterans Seeks Positive Doers To Help Make It Happen \u2039 \u203a Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. UFC GYM\u00ae Celebrates \"Veterans Day\" with Complimentary Military Access By VNN on November 1, 2016 Complimentary 'Bootcamp' Themed Class Offered on Saturday, November 12  UFC GYM\u00ae will celebrate the upcoming Veterans Day holiday by offering active duty and veteran military personnel as well as their families VIP status at more than 130 locations across the United States from Friday, November 11 through Sunday, November 13.  During this celebratory weekend, VIP attendees will receive total gym access, including a special 'Bootcamp' themed Daily Ultimate Training\u00ae (DUT\u00ae) class on Saturday, November 12. The 50-minute class is designed to challenge participants of all fitness levels and will include a variation of exercises often used in military training. For this specific class, all sessions will also be offered using body-weight based exercises, making it easy to execute in any setting.  Due to limited spacing, attendees are encouraged to contact their local club for more information. Please visit your local club at UFCGYM.com for the time slots offered for this class.  Offering a full-range of functional fitness classes, group and private MMA training, group fitness, personal and group dynamic performance-based training, plus MMA youth programming, UFC GYM creates training programs to fit all ages and fitness levels. UFC GYM programming has been developed through exclusive access to the training regimens of internationally-acclaimed UFC\u00ae athletes, providing members with everything they need for the entire family to move, get fit and live a healthy life.  Since debuting in 2009, UFC GYM has opened more than 135 locations throughout the United States,  Australia, Canada, South America and the United Arab Emirates. The fitness franchise has continued to grow at a rapid pace with more than 50 locations opening in the past two years and over 50 gyms expected to open in the next year.  For more information about UFC GYM, please visit UFC GYM.com , or follow us on Facebook.com , Twitter or Instagram: @UFCGYM. You can also subscribe on YouTube at UFCGYM .  About UFC GYM\u00ae  UFC GYM\u00ae is the first major brand extension of UFC\u00ae, the world leader in the sport of mixed martial arts (MMA). In alliance with New Evolution Ventures(tm) (NeV), developers of many of the world's most successful fitness brands, the UFC GYM brand gives UFC enthusiasts and fitness seekers of all ages the opportunity to practice the training techniques of famed UFC athletes. Offering a full-range of group fitness classes, private MMA training, personal and group dynamic training, plus MMA style youth programming, UFC GYM creates something for all ages and fitness levels. As the first to combine the world of mixed martial arts and fitness, UFC GYM's TRAIN DIFFERENT\u00ae approach has developed an atmosphere where members can see immediate results. UFC GYM is the ultimate fitness experience. The brand is not what you expect, and more than you can imagine, aiming to continue revolutionizing the fitness industry. Related Posts:","label":1}
{"text":"Illegal migrant sea crossings to Italy are up 57 per cent on 2016 so far, with 1, 300 landing in Sicily over the weekend. [Reuters reports that around half a million migrants have made their way to Italy since the beginning of 2014, with a 181, 000 making landfall in 2016. Numbers so far indicate that 2017 will mark another high for landings and drownings, with both up on the same period last year. Sicily's latest arrivals were picked up on two ships, one from Norway operating on behalf of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) and one operating on behalf of an NGO named Proactivia Open Arms. NGOs like Proactivia Open Arms have been accused of becoming an \"indispensable\" part of the industry by the think tank GEFIRA. The organisation states NGO vessels pick up migrants from smuggler boats just outside Libyan waters and, rather than taking them to safe Tunisian ports nearby, bring them to Italian Coast Guard vessels which will transport them to Europe. Consequently, GEFIRA argues \"these operations cannot be classified as genuine rescue operations\" and has called for their prosecution. Source: GEFIRA, Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri claims that around 40 per cent of migrants arriving in Italy are transported by NGO vessels, and has also accused them of acting \"like taxis\" for . \"[W]e must avoid supporting the business of criminal networks and traffickers in Libya through European vessels picking up migrants ever closer to the Libyan coast,\" he said. \"This leads traffickers to force even more migrants onto unseaworthy boats with insufficient water and fuel than in previous years. \" However, the Frontex agency has previously confessed that \"all parties involved in [ ] operations\" including itself, \"unintentionally help criminals achieve their objectives at minimum cost [and] strengthen their business model by increasing the chances of success\". Despite an admission that its current approach is encouraging and increasing drowning deaths, the agency has said it will not change its tactics in the Mediterranean Sea \"because they stem from European values\". This contrasts sharply with the \"tough love\" approach to illegal sea crossings adopted by Australia, which sees all incoming vessels intercepted at sea and removed to their port of origin or a processing centre. The deterrent effect of this strategy has prevented any illegal crossings for over 900 days. Tony Abbott, the former prime minister who introduced it, advised EU leaders in September 2016 that \"if you want to stop the deaths [and] you want to stop the drownings, you have got to stop the boats\". \"Effective border protection is not for the squeamish, but it is absolutely necessary to save lives and to preserve nations. The truly compassionate thing to do is: stop the boats and stop the deaths. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Turkey warned its citizens about travel to the United States on Saturday in response to what the foreign ministry called increasingly violent protests against President-elect Donald Trump. \"Within the context of risks caused by the incidents and of social tension, our citizens who live in the U.S., or who are considering traveling there, should be cautious,\" the ministry said in a statement. Demonstrators planned to gather again on Saturday in U.S. cities nationwide to protest against Trump, whose election they say poses a threat to their civil and human rights, a day after a protester was shot in Portland, Oregon. Last month, the U.S. State Department updated its travel warning on Turkey, ordering family members of consulate employees in Istanbul to leave the country, citing threats against U.S. citizens. There has been growing tension between the two NATO allies after repeated calls from Turkey to extradite U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara blames for a failed coup in July. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday he hoped for an improvement in bilateral ties after Trump's victory, and again called for Gulen's extradition.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider reviving litigation seeking to hold Arab Bank Plc financially liable for militant attacks in Israel and the Palestinian territories that accused the Jordan-based bank of being the \"paymaster\" to militant groups. The justices agreed to hear an appeal by roughly 6,000 plaintiffs, who included relatives of non-U.S. citizens killed in such attacks and survivors of the incidents, of a lower court ruling throwing out the litigation. The plaintiffs accused Arab Bank under a U.S. law called the Alien Tort Statute of deliberately financing terrorism, including suicide bombings and other attacks. They are hoping to overturn a 2015 New York federal appeals court ruling that the bank could not be sued under the statute because it is a corporation. The Alien Tort Statute, a law dating back to 1789, lets non-U.S. citizens seek damages in U.S. courts for human rights violations abroad. The lead plaintiff in the case is Joseph Jesner, whose British citizen son was killed at age 19 in a 2002 suicide bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv. The plaintiffs filed several lawsuits under the law in Brooklyn federal court, claiming Arab Bank used its New York branch to transfer money and \"serve as a 'paymaster' for international terrorists.\" The transfers helped Hamas and other groups fund attacks and reward families of the perpetrators between 1995 and 2005, the suits alleged. The bank said in court papers that the U.S. government has called it a constructive partner in the fight against terrorism financing. The bank said only four transactions out of 500,000 involved \"designated terrorists\" by the U.S. government, and they were the result of machine or human error. The bank also cited a separate 2010 case, Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, in which the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute. After reviewing that case, the Supreme Court in 2013 narrowed the law's reach, saying claims must sufficiently \"touch and concern\" the United States to overcome the presumption that the Alien Tort Statute does not cover foreign conduct. But the high court declined to explicitly decide whether the 2nd Circuit ruling on corporate liability was correct. Based on the Kiobel ruling, the 2nd Circuit threw out the litigation against Arab Bank. The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, urging it to decide once and for all whether or not corporations are shielded over foreign conduct.","label":0}
{"text":"After a string of scandals this year, Uber has rushed to repair its corporate culture. The company has started an internal investigation into workplace practices, issued apologies for some of its behavior, and has had several female executives and a board member speak up on its behalf. On Tuesday, Uber continued its mea culpa tour by releasing its first report detailing the composition of its work force, which depicted an overwhelmingly male employee base and showed that the largest ethnic group is white. In addition, the company forcefully repudiated its past, saying that its intense, masculine culture went too far. \"Every strength, in excess, is a weakness,\" Liane Hornsey, the recently appointed chief human resources officer, said in an interview at the company's headquarters in San Francisco. \"What has driven Uber to immense success \u2014 its aggression, the attitude \u2014 has toppled over. And it needs to be shaved back. \" Fixing Uber's culture and image has become a top priority for the privately held company, which is valued at nearly $70 billion. Last month, Uber's dysfunctions were thrust into the public eye after a former engineer detailed her experience with sexual harassment and a lack of support from human resources at the company. Employees have described a cutthroat, political environment among some managers. Scrutiny has fallen on Uber's chief executive, Travis Kalanick, who helped found the company and has set its tone. In recent weeks, Uber has moved quickly to shed that past. The company hired Eric H. Holder Jr. the former United States attorney general, and others to conduct an investigation of the workplace. Arianna Huffington, a board member, has repeatedly said that the company would no longer hire \"brilliant jerks. \" Ms. Hornsey, a former executive at Google, has also moved into the hot seat. She joined Uber late last year from SoftBank and has essentially been given a blank check \u2014 money, head count, resources \u2014 to revamp the workplace processes and managerial styles put into place when the company was still a fledgling . Along with resources, Ms. Hornsey has embarked on a \"listening tour\" with employees who wish to share grievances. She is reworking the human resources structure and how Uber rates employee performance, long considered a problem area for insiders. And she spoke on behalf of the company about the diversity report, which covered employees but not drivers, who work as freelancers. The report's numbers were stark. Only 36 percent of Uber's work force is made up of women, while the technology jobs at the company \u2014 some 85 percent \u2014 are overwhelmingly held by men. In terms of racial composition, 50 percent of Uber's employees in the United States are white and 31 percent are Asian, while 9 percent are black and 6 percent are Hispanic. \"We have to build more trust with our employees, and transparency will build that trust,\" Ms. Hornsey said of the report. In the past, Mr. Kalanick has resisted publishing a diversity report, current and former employees have said. In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Kalanick said, \"I know that we have been too slow in publishing our numbers \u2014 and that the best way to demonstrate our commitment to change is through transparency. And to make progress, it's important we measure what matters. \" Compared with statistics at other technology companies, Uber's diversity figures are not that different \u2014 and are modestly better than some. According to Google's most recent diversity report, for example, just 31 percent of its work force are women. Google also said 81 percent of its technical jobs were held by men, while 1 percent of its employees in the United States were black and 3 percent were Hispanic. Many of the numbers stack up roughly along the same lines at Apple and Facebook. Many of the diversity issues at Uber are also endemic to Silicon Valley. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers was sued over gender discrimination in 2012 by a former partner it won the case in 2015. The software development GitHub has also dealt with allegations of sexism and harassment. At Uber, issues of internal culture may have been compounded by its dizzying growth over the past few years. The service is available in hundreds of cities across more than 70 countries and completes hundreds of thousands of trip requests a day. In the last year alone, the company's employee base has doubled in size to more than 12, 000. But that turbocharged expansion has come at a cost, employees have said. Growth, they said, was prioritized above anything else. That skewed the development of the organization into something that embraced the \"cult of the individual,\" Ms. Hornsey said. Top performers were rewarded and promoted into management positions. Some 63 percent of managers had never previously held a leadership position, and Uber did not provide much training for new managers, some said. \"For the first several years, we had to just focus on executing our operational goals, and that was kind of the \" said Nicole Cuellar, an operations and logistics manager who has worked at Uber for nearly four years. \"There was never the need to think about our culture like that. And I don't think it sunk in until we all had this really experience. \" Among the things that Uber now has on the table to change are its list of 14 corporate values, which include being \"super pumped\" and \"always be hustlin'. \" Mr. Kalanick is open to revising or adding new values, Ms. Hornsey said. She added that Uber was creating a task force to pinpoint major human resources failings, aided by Frances X. Frei, an adviser from Harvard Business School who has helped companies through organizational change. Uber also pledged to donate $3 million over the next three years to groups working on bringing women and underrepresented minorities into the tech industry. Some current and former employees have expressed concern over whether Uber will be able to change, given the trait of aggressive individualism that Mr. Kalanick has fostered. But others like Tasneem Minadakis, who is active in Uber's LadyEng organization, an internal group at the company that supports and campaigns for women, said they have been galvanized by the efforts to fix the culture. In total, Ms. Minadakis said LadyEng has more than 500 employees eager to enact change. \"They really do believe that this company can be a force for good,\" Ms. Hornsey said. \"If it could only stop shooting itself in the foot. \"","label":0}
{"text":"\"I can guarantee that,\" Obama answered when asked by Fox News' Chris Wallace if he would direct the Justice Department to treat Clinton as the evidence shows. \"That is institutionally how we have always operated: I do not talk to the attorney general about pending investigations. I do not talk to FBI directors about pending investigations. We have a strict line,\" he said. Wallace asked Obama if he can still stand by his previous claims that the emails did not jeopardize national security. \"I continue to believe that she has not jeopardized America's national security,\" Obama said. \"Now what I've also said ... there's a carelessness in terms of managing emails that she has owned and she recognizes. But I also think it is important to keep this in perspective.\" The President tried to distinguish between different levels of top secret -- or classified information -- as a means of defending Clinton. \"What I also know, because I handle a lot of classified information, is that there's classified, and then there's classified,\" he said. \"There's stuff that is really top secret-top secret, and there's stuff that is being presented to the President or the secretary of state, that you might not want on the transom, or going out over the wire, but is basically stuff that you could get in open source.\" Obama said his former secretary of state saying she would \"never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.\" \"This is somebody whose served her country for four years as secretary of state, and did an outstanding job, and no one has suggested that in some ways as a consequence of how she's handled emails that that detracted from her excellent ability to carry out her duties,\" he said. Obama was also questioned by Wallace on criticism to his personal responses to terrorist attacks, citing the President calling the November terrorist attacks in Paris \"a setback.\" \"There isn't a president who's taken more terrorists off the field then me over the last seven and half years,\" Obama said, defending himself. \"I'm the guy who calls the families or meets with them or hugs them or tries to comfort a mom or a dad or a husband or a kid after a terrorist attack. So let's be very clear how much I prioritize this. This is my No. 1 job and we have been doing it effectively,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says You know that western society is approaching its final hour when animal rights activists start advocating individual animals to be able to sue humans in courts. That s exactly what has happened in the US.We can trace some of this line of thinking back to Cass Sunstein, the radical, liberal progressive technocrat and chief advisor to President Barack Obama (as well as the husband of disastrous UN Ambassador Samantha Power). According to his own writing and public declarations, Sunstein believes that activists should be able to bring a lawsuit on behalf of an animal in US courts. In his 2004 book Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, Sunstein remarked:Cass Sunstein. My simplest suggestion is that private citizens should be given the right to bring suits to prevent animals from being treated in a way that violates current law. I offer a recommendation that is theoretically modest but that should do a lot of practical good: laws designed to protect animals against cruelty and abuse should be amended and interpreted to give a private cause of action against those who violate them, so as to allow private people to supplement the efforts of public prosecutors. Somewhat more broadly, I will suggest that animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law. As one of liberal America s most influential technocrats, Sunstein argues that this legal right can be invoked on the basis of animal cruelty. While no cruelty seems to be present in the case of the Monkey Selfie (see story below), activists at PETA were no doubt emboldened by Sunstein and others who have propelled their ideological argument into the political activist discourse.While our society and our legal system are far from perfect, a move like this from a wealthy charity like PETA could throw that system into even further chaos.Surely, if animals can sue humans, then shouldn t humans be able to sue animals? As you can see, when you pursue this activist rabbit hole, reality starts to dissolve rather quickly.More on this incredible story from AP Monkey Selfie Copyright credited to David J. Slater (UK)Linda Wang APcurious monkey with a toothy grin and a knack for pressing a camera button was back in the spotlight Wednesday as a federal appeals court heard arguments on whether an animal can hold a copyright to selfie photos.A 45-minute hearing before a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco attracted crowds of law students and curious citizens who often burst into laughter. The federal judges also chuckled at times at the novelty of the case, which involves a monkey in another country that is unaware of the fuss.Andrew Dhuey, attorney for British nature photographer David Slater, said monkey see, monkey sue is not good law under any federal act.Naruto is a free-living crested macaque who snapped perfectly framed selfies in 2011 that would make even the Kardashians proud.People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] sued Slater and the San Francisco-based self-publishing company Blurb, which published a book called Wildlife Personalities that includes the monkey selfies, for copyright infringement. It sought a court order in 2015 allowing it to administer all proceeds from the photos taken in a wildlife reserve in Sulawesi, Indonesia to benefit the monkey.Slater says the British copyright for the photos obtained by his company, Wildlife Personalities Ltd., should be honored Continue this story at AP\/Chicago TribunePictured here is a typical Indonesian Crested Black Macaque monkey (Image Credit: Lip Key Yap, Wikicommons)READ MORE FINANCIAL NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Financial FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"The Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigrants will likely weaken overall U.S. consumer spending and economic growth as those targeted for arrest increasingly choose to stay home and save more, a Federal Reserve policymaker said on Wednesday. Millions of immigrants \"are not going out and shopping, they are staying home, they are afraid if they go out they are not coming home,\" Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said when asked about U.S. President Donald Trump's months old directive. \"On the margin - and it's too soon for the data to pick it up, but you hear it anecdotally - I believe we are going to see it, I believe those people are more likely to save than to spend,\" he added at the Council on Foreign Relations. \"And those two effects have some muting effect on consumer spending and therefore GDP growth.\"","label":0}
{"text":"It s now no surprise that Donald Trump, the most hated presidential candidate in the field, is the GOP s frontrunner. It seems being hated is all the Republican Party is good for these days.And there s even better news for Democrats!A new poll from the Pew Research Center shows that the GOP is overwhelmingly hated by the American public and has reached its highest level of disdain since 1992. According to the poll, 62 percent of Americans have an unfavorable impression of the GOP whereas only 33 percent view it favorably. American s positive perception of the GOP fell four points in the last six months.The poll also found a very interesting trend: most of the negativity towards the GOP came from self-identified Republicans, where only 68 had a favorable view of their own party an 11 point drop from October.As Trump rises is in the polls, Republicans feelings about their party falls. What a coincidence.In contrast, 45 percent of Americans had a favorable view of the Democratic Party versus 50 percent who harbored negative views. Eighty-eight percent of Democrats had a favorable view of the party.Not surprisingly, Independent voters were more favorable to the Democratic Party preferring them 37 to 28 percent than the Republican Party. As Trump continuously tells the public he s winning with Independents, he certainly hasn t been very successful. Also not surprising was respondents who were black, female or young were also much more likely to give favorable impressions of the Democratic Party compared to the GOP.When broken down, the poll reminds us of what we already know:White people, in general, are almost identical in how they feel about both parties; 37 percent have a favorable view of both parties, while 59 percent have an unfavorable view of the Democrats and 58 percent for the Republicans.It looks like the two-party system has failed the oppressed whites yet again how sad.Over 2,000 Americans responded to the poll, which was conducted between April 12 to 19 and it has a margin of error at 2.5 percent.","label":1}
{"text":"NICE, France \u2014 It was the first and last fireworks show in this seaside city that Yanis Coviaux ever saw. He died in the carnage Thursday night. So did Brodie Copeland, 11, who was visiting from the United States. Haroun El Kamel, 12, survived but might never look at fireworks the same way. Then there was Laura Borla, 14, who came to see the fireworks with her twin sister and their mother but was separated from them in the chaos. After days of searching frantically for her, Laura's family learned on Sunday morning that she was dead. \"We miss you already we will love you always,\" her sister, Lucie, said in a Facebook post. The driver who plowed his truck into crowds at the conclusion of the Bastille Day fireworks in Nice killed at least 84 people and injured hundreds more. The trauma was exacerbated by the presence of a large number of children, whose deaths, injuries and psychological scars gave this attack \u2014 like the one in March that killed many children at a park in Pakistan, or the recent slaughter of families celebrating the end of Ramadan in Baghdad \u2014 an especially brutal feel and underscored its indiscriminate cruelty. At least 10 children were killed Thursday night, and at least 35 were treated for injuries at hospitals in Nice. Others were separated from their parents in the chaos, and some no doubt saw and heard things they might carry with them for a long time. No one who was visiting the waterfront that night could have imagined such a horrific ending. Going to the fireworks on July 14 is an annual family ritual in Nice, a time for picnics on the beach \u2014 and, when the beach is too full, for spreading tablecloths on the meridian of the waterfront road known for more than 150 years as the Promenade des Anglais. From there, people have a fine view of the sea and the extravagant fireworks display. \"You have to bring your children because if you don't, you will pay for it all year \u2014 all their friends are there,\" said Raja El Kamel, 43, Haroun's mother, who was with him and a close friend from Sweden and her two children to watch the festivities. In a city that enjoys a party, the July 14 fireworks are especially beloved because the entire community joins in: Christian and Muslim, religious and secular, but French above all. The presence of large numbers of tourists gives the evening even more of a festive feel. For Yanis and his parents, Mickael and Samira Coviaux, the evening was a first. The parents, both truck drivers, live in Grenoble, and this was their first time seeing the July 14 fireworks on the Mediterranean as a family, said Yanis's aunt Ana\u00efs Coviaux, a law student in Paris, who came to support her brother and after Yanis was killed. \"The children were playing among themselves, and they had their back to the road,\" she said. \"They did not hear the truck until just one second before it hit. It went up on the sidewalk it struck Yanis and the mother of one of the other children with them. \" The mother also died. There was no first aid nearby. Finally, Mr. Coviaux picked up his little boy and began walking with him until they found a person with a car who agreed to take them to the hospital. When they passed some firefighters, they stopped and asked them to try to revive him. But the child was dead. \"He was my parents' only grandson, the only grandson in the family,\" Ana\u00efs Coviaux said softly. She explained that her brother and his wife were too distraught to speak. \"Yanis loved people,\" she said. \"He especially liked Sundays when all the family was gathered, and he would say, 'Mamie and Papi, we are going to have a party. '\" Later, Mr. Coviaux said in an email that \"every single person that Yanis met in his short life fell in love with him. \" The entire family gathered on the promenade Saturday to view the last sights he had seen. \"It was important for us to come to the place he died to pay him a tribute,\" Ana\u00efs Coviaux said, \"because we could not bear to say goodbye to him. We left a picture of him and flowers. \" Identifying children and examining them has been difficult because of the level of trauma and because some were brought to the hospital without relatives, said Sylvie Serret, a child psychiatrist at the Lenval Foundation hospital, which treated at least 30 injured children on Thursday night. \"A lot of the children coming in were in a state of shock they were not speaking, for instance,\" she said. An emergency room nurse at Pasteur Hospital, Mejdi Chemakhi, cared for several children, including a boy and a girl who had been brought in without their parents. The boy was 4, Mr. Chemakhi said, and the girl was 6. The boy, Mr. Chemakhi recounted, spoke in a flat tone, apparently in shock. \"My mummy is dead, but my daddy is still alive,\" he recalled the boy saying over and over. The boy, expressionless, finally said, \"I am tired, I need to sleep, I have no clothes,\" Mr. Chemakhi recalled. \"So I took him in my arms and tried to console him,\" he said. \"You don't really know what else to do in those situations. It is really important to make them feel safe. \" Later that night, a wounded man was brought to the hospital and told Mr. Chemakhi that he had lost his wife and could not find his children, a boy and a girl. Mr. Chemakhi realized the three belonged together and helped reunite them. On the Promenade des Anglais on Saturday, there were memorials of flowers and notes, sometimes every few feet, to mark where people had lost their lives. Nathalie Russo, 30, a Muslim who wears a hijab, came with her mother to retrace the steps she and her children, Mayssa and Emine, took on Thursday night. \"My daughter is telling me that she does not want to see fireworks again,\" Ms. Russo said, adding, \"She kept asking me, 'How did the bad people get from Paris to Nice? '\" \"She thought the man who did this was one of those who attacked the Bataclan,\" she said, \"and he had come here to do the same thing. \" The Bataclan is the Paris concert hall where 90 people were shot dead by three Islamic State operatives on Nov. 13, when a total of 130 people were killed in and around Paris by terrorists. Some mothers and fathers who had not been near the fireworks brought their children to see the memorials on Saturday as a way of expressing unity with the community and defiance toward the terrorists. Nour Hamila, a Nice native who has converted to Islam, made a point of bringing her three children, who are 8, 5 and 3. \"I told them not to be afraid because that's what the terrorists want we have to support each other,\" she said as her son, Mohamed, placed flowers on one of the memorials. It is harder for those children who witnessed the killings. For Ms. Kamel's son, Haroun, the moment is etched in his mind. \"We saw it from far away, a white truck in this black night,\" she said. She recalled thinking that the truck did not belong there because the street was closed to traffic. Her son and her friend's son and daughter were playing and laughing. Then the driver accelerated and began to veer from one side of the road to the other, \"plowing into people,\" she said. Somehow she pushed herself and her son onto the sidewalk as the truck neared. Then it passed, and all she remembers was her son saying, \"Mama, Mama, you must come to help the people. \" She looked at the road and recognized a neighbor who was kneeling next to her husband, wailing his name. Ms. Kamel told her son to go with her friend and the other children. Everything was silent. \"There was just this terrible wind,\" she said. \"To the left you saw bodies you looked right and saw bodies there were strollers, and people trying to save other people. \" After trying to comfort her neighbor, she looked for her son, but by then the crowds were running, and it was chaos. Hours later, when she found him and her friend, her son said, \"Mama, did you manage to save the man?\" Ms. Kamel responded that the emergency services had come for him. \"You know, children don't have a global vision,\" she said. \"He saw all those corpses, but for him, the one at his feet was supposed to be saved. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The top Democrat on the House committee investigating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton s use of a private email system released an email exchange Wednesday between former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Clinton in which he advised her on circumventing State Department servers.The exchange between Clinton and Powell, two days before the start of her tenure as secretary of state, shows Clinton asked him for advice on the use of a BlackBerry. He responded with multiple tips, saying he used a personal computer for government and personal business that wasn t going through the State Department servers. Powell said, I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. The emails were cited in the FBI s notes from their investigation into Clinton s and her aides handling of classified information during her time at the State Department. According to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI quoted some, but not all, of the conversations between Powell and Clinton.Clinton has told federal authorities she didn t follow Powell s guidance, even though she used a private email account to handle government business. FBI Director James Comey recommended no charges be brought against Clinton, but said that she had been extremely careless with classified information.What exactly Powell advised Clinton to do had been a matter of debate, and Powell even recently suggested Clinton s allies were trying to pin the controversy on him. Democrats released the full exchange in a bid to show that Clinton s predecessors did not use official email accounts.In his Jan. 23, 2009, response to Clinton, Powell said he used a personal computer and a PDA.The latest release appears to show that Powell acknowledged he exchanged work-related emails with foreign leaders and State Department officials using a personal device. He said the setup allowed him to bypass the government s computer network. The release of the email by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. came on the eve of a House Oversight hearing in which Republicans are expected to focus on Clinton s use of a private email server and whether the State Department had been forthcoming with Freedom of Information requests.However, Cummings came down on Republicans accusing lawmakers of holding Clinton to a double standard during the investigation into her private email server. If Republicans were truly concerned with transparency, strengthening FOIA, and preserving federal records, they would be attempting to recover Secretary Powell s emails from AOL, but they have taken no steps to do so despite the fact that this period including the run-up to the Iraq War was critical to our nation s history, he said.","label":1}
{"text":"Elections in the Netherlands on Wednesday are being watched especially closely across Europe and beyond as a key gauge of whether formerly strong barriers to the far right still stand on a continent with painful memories of fascism, but also with a growing number of aspiring nationalist leaders. The Dutch vote is the first of several critical European elections this year, to be followed by those in France, Germany and possibly Italy. A common thread in the campaigns has been attacks on the European Union for diluting sovereignty, opening borders to migrants and leaving nations vulnerable to terrorism. \"These are the quarterfinals in trying to prevent the wrong sort of populism from winning,\" Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister and leader of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, said of the Dutch election. \"The half finals are in France in April and May and in September in Germany, we have the finals,\" he said. Almost everywhere populist parties have risen with nationalist calls to stem immigration to secure and preserve local cultures. The question now is whether the populists will maintain their momentum or be blunted by a newfound hesitancy among voters. Even as support for centrist parties craters nearly everywhere, some analysts see new hints of wariness of the protest and votes that aided the rise of recent populist politicians, given the uncertainty and conflict ushered in by the first weeks of the Trump administration and the British vote last year to exit the European Union, or Brexit. Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University in Berlin, said he had detected early signs in the past several weeks of a backlash against populism. In Germany, for example, the Alternative for Germany party has slipped in the polls. Mr. Funke said he thought that voters in Europe were looking at Brexit and the Trump presidency not as points of inspiration, but rather with deep concern. \"There is no Trump effect,\" he said. \"Nothing happened. \" On the current moment for populist parties, he said, \"I see stagnation, or decline. \" In the Netherlands, Mr. Funke noted, Geert Wilders, one of the most stridently politicians in Europe, has struggled to improve his standing in recent weeks after climbing quickly in the polls. \"There is a danger that it can go out of control, as far as the voting for Wilders,\" he said, \"but I doubt that will be the case. \" Even if populists like Mr. Wilders do not prevail, other analysts said, their high profiles and often inflammatory presence had moved much of the political debate to the far right's turf. The battle in many ways is already won. \"Since the entrance of Geert Wilders into the political arena, he hasn't had any office but he has exerted influence,\" said Bert Bakker, a communications professor at the University of Amsterdam. Discussions in the Netherlands now often center on restrictions on immigrants, identity politics and nationalism. Professors, pollsters and others who closely watch elections emphasize that, at least in the Netherlands, the far right is not going to win or control the government \u2014 or even come close \u2014 not least because the other parties have promised publicly not to work with Mr. Wilders in a coalition. That has not stopped them from adopting somewhat milder versions of the far right's positions on many issues. One result is that the far right's views have dominated the debate, crowding out other views and issues. \"Even if these parties are not actually winning or part of the government, everything is moving to a more stance, more to try to win voters who are the losers in globalization,\" said Jasper Muis, a professor of sociology at the Free University of Amsterdam, who studies populism. \"Immigration and asylum seekers become the focus on the one hand and values and norms on the others,\" he said, \"but not much is said about economic development or employment and that's a part of the success story of the populist right: that they've been able to make it difficult to talk about other subjects. \" In the most optimistic outlooks, Mr. Wilders, who heads the Freedom Party, will get about 15 percent of the vote. Even if his votes were combined with those of other and parties, the combined number of likely seats in the Parliament would not exceed about 30, or 20 percent of the Parliament. However, the Christian Democratic Appeal party is promoting a line almost as conservative on immigration as that of Mr. Wilders, a change from its more moderate position of several years ago. That party now looks likely to win about as many seats as Mr. Wilders, and if the mainstream right's seats are added to that, the and parties would have a majority. Even if the right has dominated the campaign, the reality is that the Netherlands is deeply divided and its centrist parties are losing ground in an increasingly fractured political landscape. There are 28 parties on the ballot. Only between 10 and 12 will get enough votes to win a seat in Parliament. There are still likely to be four or five parties in the governing coalition \u2014 all but guaranteeing it will include both and parties. For that reason some experienced observers of European politics say the rightward drift by the Dutch may be more important as a harbinger of trends on the Continent than for its practical impact. Some analysts are far more worried about the French vote, because the leader of the National Front, the presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, has a bloc of voters that is much more solidified behind her. \"The bloc for Le Pen is very consistent, which is different than the other populists,\" said Mr. Funke of the Free University in Berlin. An even greater concern may be Italy, where the populist Five Star party and the Northern League could win if elections are held, in part on a platform proposing a referendum on whether Italy should continue to use the euro. That could trigger a loss of confidence by foreign investors and capital flight from the Continent. \"Italy is potentially the worst case because if they are forced by election results to have a euro referendum,\" Mr. Funke said, \"then there would be a big danger. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Reports out of Texas are saying that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead while visiting the luxury resort at the Cibolo Creek Ranch just south of Marfa, Texas. He was apparently on a hunting trip, and it looks at though his death was from natural causes, but his death is still under investigation.The 79-year-old justice was found in his hotel room after he didn t appear for breakfast. He was attending the ranch with about 40 other people.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued this statement after the news of Scalia s passing: He was the solid rock who turned away so many attempts to depart from and distort the Constitution. We mourn his passing, and we pray that his successor on the Supreme Court will take his place as a champion for the written Constitution and the Rule of Law. Cecilia and I extend our deepest condolences to his family, and we will keep them in our thoughts and prayers. While there are definitely differing opinions of the Reagan appointed justice, many of whom believe the justice a harsh critic of equality and justice for all, it is still a very sad day in America with the passing of Justice Scalia.Featured image: Flickr","label":1}
{"text":"South Korea's trade minister Kim Hyun-chong said on Friday the United States may demand that Seoul guarantees it will step up arms purchases and imports of U.S. shale gas if the two countries renegotiate a free trade agreement. The comments, made at the parliament, came as Seoul indicted last week that it was open to talks on amending the five-year-old bilateral deal, which U.S. President Donald Trump had threatened to terminate unless it was renegotiated. U.S. President Donald Trump said in his tweet last month that he was allowing Japan and South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States, amid rising tensions with North Korea. Last month, Seoul deployed the four remaining launchers of the U.S. anti-missile system designed to protect against mounting threats from Pyongyang. South Korea, the world's second-biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) importer after Japan, received its first LNG cargo under a 20-year supply deal with U.S. exporter Cheniere in early July through Korea Gas Corp. Asked about China's trade retaliation against South Korea's decision to deploy a U.S. anti-missile defence system, Kim said Korea has not \"abandoned\" an option to file complaints to the World Trade Organization (WTO). China had been taking punitive measures such as restricting tourism with South Korea against the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system as Beijing worries the system can threaten its security and undermine regional stability.","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says Last April, the UN general assembly met to discuss how the world s nations can combat the global drug problem. It was just the latest non-event in a long line of categorical failures, led by the United States. Ever since US president Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs in 1971, the international narcotics trade has grown from strength to strength, in a black global market that is now worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year. After Nixon, other US presidents tried to champion the issue, from Reagan to Clinton, Bush and Obama. Each of them presided over one epic failure after another. However, where long-term data is available, it does point to systematic failures in drug policies. A study published in the British Medical Journal in 2013 found that despite efforts to limit the supply of these drugs, since 1990 prices have fallen while the purity of the drugs has increased. The trends were similar in the US and in Europe. The authors conclusion was clear: These findings suggest that expanding efforts at controlling the global illegal drug market through law enforcement are failing. (The Guardian)As a direct result of the policies of western governments led by the US, and their corrupt accomplices in the international banking, UN and NGO sectors in 2017, cheaper, newer and more deadly drugs continue to ruin families and communities, and millions of lives in the new western underclass and youth population Zero HedgeThe opioid crisis that is ravaging urban and suburban communities across the US claimed an unprecedented 59,000 lives last year, according to preliminary data gathered by the New York Times. If accurate, that s equivalent to a roughly 19% increase over the approximately 52,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2015, the NYT reported last year.Overdoses, made increasingly common by the introduction of fentanyl and other powerful synthetic opioids into the heroin supply, are now the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. And all evidence suggests the problem has continued to worsen in 2017. One coroner in Western Pennsylvania told a local newspaper that his office is literally running out of room to store the bodies, and that it was recently forced to buy a larger freezer.The initial data points to large increases in these types of deaths in states along the East Coast, particularly Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine. In Ohio, which filed a lawsuit last week accusing five drug companies of abetting the opioid epidemic, the Times estimated that overdose deaths increased by more than 25 percent in 2016.In some Ohio counties, deaths from heroin have virtually disappeared. Instead, the primary culprit is fentanyl or one of its many analogues. In Montgomery County, home to Dayton, of the 100 drug overdose deaths recorded in January and February, only three people tested positive for heroin; 97 tested positive for fentanyl or another analogue.In some states in the western half of the US, data suggest deaths may have leveled off for the time being or even begun to decline. Experts believe that the heroin supply west of the Mississippi River, traditionally dominated by a variant of the drug known as black tar which is smuggled over the border from Mexico, isn t as easily adulterated with lethal analogues as the powder that s common on the East Coast Continue this story at Zero HedgeREAD MORE WAR ON DRUGS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire War on Drugs FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said Britain must accept the full economic and legal status quo in a transition period after it leaves the EU and should expect no tailor-made terms on trade in its future relationship. Suggesting a transition should run for 21 months from Brexit on March 30, 2019 until the current EU budget expires at the end of 2020, Barnier said Britain would certainly remain subject to EU laws and courts during that transition. During this period, the EU legal framework including on jurisdiction would continue to apply to Britain, Barnier said in an interview published on Tuesday in Germany s Handelsblatt newspaper. We don t have time to invent a new model. So for a short time after the formal exit from the EU the economic status quo would continue to apply, which besides the internal market also includes the customs union and collective political decisions. In a version of the interview in Belgium s L Echo, he said of the transition: The only difference is that the British would no longer take part in decisions on European legislation. British Prime Minister Theresa May has proposed a transition of around two years to give time to put a new free trade pact in place, although she faces opposition in London from some Brexit supporters who want a clean, quick break. Barnier noted that May had rejected the option of staying in the EU single market long-term the Norwegian model as he called it, referring to Norway s membership of the EU internal market, accepting all its rules and costs without having a say. So we must work on other hypotheses, Handelsblatt quoted him as saying. Another option would be a free trade treaty using the example of the CETA agreement with Canada. It would take several years, however, to negotiate such an agreement. Asked if that meant there could be a specifically British model along the lines of the bespoke arrangements May has referred to without giving detail, Barnier replied simply: No. Quoted by L Echo, he said a trade deal could be agreed in three years meaning that if talks start in December it would be ready just in time for a transition ending in December 2020. He said his staff were already working on drafting a withdrawal treaty that will include terms for transition. Barnier said he still hoped that May could provide more detail on her offer to meet financial commitments on withdrawal so that EU leaders could agree in December to end their refusal to negotiate a future trade deal. May told an EU summit last week that she could not agree a figure until she knows what trade terms the EU offers. Barnier said it was important to de-dramatise talks on the payment.","label":0}
{"text":"German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a newspaper she would be prepared to become involved in a diplomatic initiative to end the North Korean nuclear and missiles program, and suggested the Iran nuclear talks could be a model. South Korea on Saturday braced for a possible further missile test by North Korea as it marked its founding anniversary, just days after its sixth and largest nuclear test rattled global financial markets and further escalated tensions in the region. If our participation in talks is desired, I will immediately say yes, Merkel told Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in an interview to be published on Sunday. She pointed to negotiations that led to a landmark nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2015. Back then, Germany and the five countries on the United Nations Security Council with veto power took part in talks that led to Iran agreeing to curb its nuclear work in return for the lifting of most sanctions. Merkel said that was a long but important time of diplomacy that ultimately had a good end last year, referring to when the deal was implemented. I could imagine such a format being used to end the North Korea conflict. Europe and especially Germany should be prepared to play a very active part in that, Merkel added. She said she thought the only way to deal with North Korea s nuclear program was to come to a diplomatic solution, adding: A new arms race starting in the region would not be in anyone s interests. Europe should stand united in trying to bring about a diplomatic solution and do everything that can be done in terms of sanctions , she said. Merkel is expected to win a fourth term in office in a Sept. 24 vote, with polls giving her conservatives a double-digit lead over their rival Social Democrats. Merkel is widely seen in Germany as a safe pair of hands at a time of global uncertainty such as the North Korea crisis, Britain s looming departure from the European Union and Donald Trump s presidency in the United States. Merkel has spoken to leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about North Korea this week. The newspaper said, without naming its sources, that she would speak by telephone with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday.","label":0}
{"text":"A decision by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc (MUFG) to shift its U.S. banks from state regulators to a federal bank regulator is garnering scrutiny from a pair of U.S. Democratic senators. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chris Van Hollen sent a letter to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Monday, pressing for details on the regulator's decision to allow the bank to come under its purview, after it had sparred with New York's banking regulator. Earlier this month, MUFG's Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd branches in New York, Illinois, Texas and California were granted federal charters, allowing the bank to be regulated by the Trump administration rather than state governments. The pair said they were \"disturbed\" by the decision, and questioned whether the shift to a federal banking license allowed the bank to escape any investigations by the New York Department of Financial Supervision, where the company had bank branches. They also questioned the role of Acting Comptroller Keith Noreika, who previously counted MUFG as a client, in the decision. Noreika recused himself from the bank's application for a federal charter, but the two senators are demanding additional details on that decision, and who was responsible for approving the bank's charter instead. An OCC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.","label":0}
{"text":"The moment the initial members of the Bundy militants were arrested, effectively ending the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, one thing was for certain: as paranoid, anti-government conspiracy theorists, these people could be counted on for some absolute batsh*t crazy legal defenses. But no one could anticipate the sheer stupidity of their other legal filings.Shawna Cox, the woman who falsely claimed that LaVoy Finicum was executed with his hands in the air when in actuality he was attempting to pull a gun on law enforcement, filed a lawsuit against the big, bad federal government. Cox is seeking a whopping $666,666,666,666.66 in damages because she says the government harmed her in performing works of the devil including her attempted execution.KATU reports that Cox, who managed to convince the court to do her a special favor in allowing her to attend Finicum s funeral, quickly found her lawsuit tossed out because her claims are not cognizable in this criminal proceeding and will not be addressed in this case. Cox maintains that she did not interfere with public employees when she and her friends undertook an armed occupation of the Refuge because it was their choice not to come to work out of guilt, that federal employees were secretly extending the boundaries of Malheur, and says that she is being maliciously prosecuted by the State and Federal Bar Association members because they do not want to be held accountable for their subversive activities against the people of the United States of America. No one is safe from her wrath. Cox says she will be asking the jury to render civil and criminal charges against a number of public officials, including All of the Oregon State Bar members, and public employees who were involved in the persecution, prosecutorial misconduct, and ineffective council involving the incarceration of the Hammonds, including each and every one of them who violated the separation of powers and held offices in the judiciary and \/ or legislative and \/or executive branches at the same time, anyone who interfered with the militia s attempt to form an illegal and unrecognized Grand Jury to prosecute public officials, and all involved in the ambush that attempted to execute myself and others and executed LaVoy Finicum. She also says she wants charges against all state, public, and federal officials involved in organizing and authorizing the ambush execution of myself and others including LaVoy Finicum as well as all of the state employees involved in the ambush that attempted to execute myself and others, and resulted in LaVoy Finicum s murder. Cox specifically names Judge Grasty, Senator Cliff Bentz, Harney County Prosecutor Tim Calhoun, Governor Kate Brown, U.S. prosecutors Dwight Holton, Kirk Engdall, Kelley Zusman, S. Amanda Marshall, Judge Hogan, and Judge Ann Aiken as well as officials who committed crimes against the Hammond family and myself by omissions and misprision [sic] pf felony s [sic], Sheriff David Ward and Special Agent Katherine Armstrong.She says she is seeking the $666 billion in damages because these individuals subjected her to damages from the works of the devil. If this seems nuts to you, you re probably right. These armed and crazed individuals declared war on the federal government, openly, and have essentially received a slap on the wrist for their anti-government efforts.Words can not describe the insanity of this woman s claims, so read them for yourself. Shawna Cox's claim for damages","label":1}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says The Democratic Party National Convention hit full swing in Philadelphia yesterday, as fashion and celebrity politics dominated the the presentation. The First Lady also took to the podium and invoked slavery in order to to stir delegates, and to try and propel DNC nominee Hillary Clinton forward for November s election. I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, she said. Watch:https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uuqu61b3YVE . See more celebrity and fashion highlights here. Watch as Texas-based, black\/Afro-American author and pundit E.T. Williams breaks down the psychological messaging behind Michelle Obama s slavery comments, as well as what he believes is her party s over-reliance on identity politics as its primary strategy.","label":1}
{"text":"China aims to pass a national supervision law and set up a new commission next year to oversee an expansion of President Xi Jinping s campaign to fight corruption in the ruling Communist Party and government, the party said on Sunday. The moves will be made during China s annual meeting of parliament early next year, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party s anti-graft watchdog, said in its report to a five-yearly party congress last week. The report, issued by the official Xinhua news agency, had not been previously released and gave few other details on the new commission. All provinces, regions and cities must closely connect regional practices, integrate reform pilot scheme experience, implement the overall plan according to the decision of the party s Central Committee, and promote organizational integration, the report said. The report also said former Chongqing Party boss Sun Zhengcai and a group of other top officials ousted for graft, including former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, were schemers and plotters out to further their own careers. The official line on Sun and Zhou had been that graft, not politics, was the primary reason for their downfall. Zhao Leji, the newly appointed head of the CCDI, told the commission that they must secure a sweeping victory in the fight against corruption, and set up an institutionalized legal framework to make it impossible for officials to be corrupt, Xinhua reported. Zhao took over from Wang Qishan as part of a leadership reshuffle announced at the close of the 19th National Party Congress of the Communist Party, which ended last Tuesday. Wang had been widely credited with the success and vigor of the graft fight. Analysts say Zhao is likely to take a more institutional approach. The new National Supervision Commission will work alongside the CCDI, sharing much of its power and resources, and will merge multiple additional anti-graft units, according to an announcement last year. It will also expand the purview of Xi s anti-graft campaign to include employees at state-backed institutions who are not necessarily party members. Since coming to power in 2012, Xi s signature anti-corruption drive has jailed or otherwise punished nearly 1.4 million party members and he has emphasized the importance of improving China s rule of law architecture. In his congress address, Xi said China would keep up with the irreversible momentum of the anti-corruption campaign, and announced a central leading group responsible for overseeing China s law-based governance. Xi also said the party would scrap the practice of secretive interrogations known as shuanggui , in which cadres accused of graft and other disciplinary violations are routinely subjected to extrajudicial detention, isolation and interrogation by the CCDI. The CCDI only hands cases over to police and the judiciary for prosecution. International rights groups have raised concerns about torture, including sleep deprivation, being used to obtain confessions.","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump does not know anything about foreign policy. Now, it appears, he knows just as little about trade. This is more troubling as one of his selling points was that he was a successful businessman with a global company. You d think that a person with such a vast empire (there are Trump Towers all over the planet) would know a thing or two about the subject. This idea was blown out of the water this week by comments from a German official about Chancellor Angela Merkel s recent visit to Washington, DC.The official told The Times of London, Ten times Trump asked [German chancellor Angela Merkel] if he could negotiate a trade deal with Germany. Every time she replied, You can t do a trade deal with Germany, only the EU. On the eleventh refusal, Trump finally got the message, Oh, we ll do a deal with Europe then.' For a man who claimed to be able to make the best deals for the United States with our trading partners, it helps to know who exactly those partners are.As bad as that is, Trump s lack of world knowledge is more than just problematic when it comes to problems the country is dealing with on the other side of the world. Not only has the Trump Administration failed to even nominate an ambassador to South Korea, up until China President Xi Jinping visited him at Mar-a-Lago, he was under the impression that the only thing that had to happen to contain North Korean leader, Kim Jung Un, was have China tell him to behave.North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2017After his visit with Xi, Trump told the Wall Street Journal, After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it s not so easy. I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. But it s not what you would think. Keep in mind, Trump spent a lot of time during the campaign (and before) touting, I know China. He claimed that the combination of the work he has done with the Chinese and the hundreds of books he had read about China made him an expert on the region. All of this is odd, given his comments about that short (ten minutes!) conversation. His lack of understanding goes further.After his meeting with Xi, Trump told an interviewer, Korea actually used to be a part of China. This did not go over well with the South Korean government. South Korean foreign spokesman Cho June-hyuck responded with, It s a clear fact acknowledged by the international community that, for thousands of years in history, Korea has never been part of China. But wait, there s more.An interview with Fox & Friends makes it appear that Trump really doesn t even know who is running North Korea right now. He told them:I hope things work out well. I hope there s going to be peace, but you know, they ve been talking with this gentleman for a long time. You read Clinton s book, he said, Oh we made such a great peace deal, and it was a joke. You look at different things over the years with President Obama. Everybody s been outplayed, they ve all been outplayed by this gentleman and we ll see what happens. But I just don t telegraph my moves.Bill Clinton never dealt with the current leader, he dealt with his father, Kim Jung Il. Getting these facts wrong says a lot. Trump doesn t know who to deal with when it comes to trade with Germany. He seems to have taken his information about Chinese and Korean history from Xi. He doesn t appear to have a clue as to who the leader of North Korean leader. The questions with this president are not What did he know and when did he know it? but Does he know anything and can he be taught?","label":1}
{"text":"Monica Camacho-Perez came to the United States from Mexico as a child, crossing into Arizona with her mother in the same spot where her father made the trip before them. \"Nobody stopped us,'' Camacho-Perez, now 20, said of her 2002 journey. Three years ago, her uncle tried to cross the border and join the family in Baltimore, where they remain illegal immigrants. He was stopped three times by the U.S. Border Patrol and jailed for 50 days. \"He doesn't want to try anymore,\" said Camacho-Perez. \"Now, it's really hard.\" As the Department of Homeland Security continues to pour money into border security, evidence is emerging that illegal immigration flows have fallen to their lowest level in at least two decades. The nation's population of illegal immigrants, which more than tripled, to 12.2 million, between 1990 and 2007, has dropped by about 1 million, according to demographers at the Pew Research Center. A key \u2014 but largely overlooked \u2014 sign of these ebbing flows is the changing makeup of the undocumented population. Until recent years, illegal immigrants tended to be young men streaming across the Southern border in pursuit of work. But demographic data show that the typical illegal immigrant now is much more likely someone who is 35 or older and has lived in the United States for a decade or more. Homeland security officials in the Obama and George W. Bush administrations \u2014 who have more than doubled the Border Patrol's size and spent billions on drones, sensors and other technology at the border \u2014 say enhanced security is driving the new trends. \"We have seen tremendous progress,\" said R. Gil Kerlikowske, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. \"The border is much more secure than in times past.\" The issue of border security is central to the broader debate over immigration reform that has roiled Washington in recent years and is emerging as a flash point in the 2016 presidential campaign. Congressional Republicans have insisted on greater border security before they consider legalizing any immigrants who came to this country without proper documents. President Obama says the border has never been more secure and is urging a series of legislative steps to legalize millions of undocumented immigrants, streamline the visa system and further fortify the border. He has already moved to protect certain undocumented immigrants from deportation through executive actions. But these actions have faced resistance in the courts, including the decision Tuesday by a federal appeals court to keep one of the president's signature immigration efforts from moving ahead. What's increasingly clear is that the shifting fortunes of the U.S. economy account for less of the ebb and flow of illegal immigration. Even as the economy bounces back from recession, illegal immigration flows, especially from Mexico, have kept declining, \u00adaccording to researchers and government data. Since the 1990s, the opposite was true: The better the economy, the more people tried to come. \"Every month or quarter that the economy continues to improve and unauthorized immigration doesn't pick up supports the theory that border security is a bigger factor, and it's less about the economy and we have moved into a new era,'' said Marc Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. immigration program at the Migration Policy Institute. Some researchers say factors other than security are playing a role and might even account for much of the reduced flow of illegal immigrants. These researchers point, for instance, to changes in Latin America that could be pushing fewer people to seek a better life in the United States. At odds with the government's claims of success, a series of academic studies in recent years have found little linkage between border security and illegal migration. Douglas S. Massey, a Princeton University sociologist, said the falling numbers of immigrants have \"nothing to do with border enforcement.\" Massey, who helps run a project that has interviewed thousands of illegal Mexican migrants over the past three decades, attributed the trend to demographic changes in Mexico, such as women having fewer children. But even some researchers who are skeptical about the overall effectiveness of enhanced border security acknowledge indirect effects of these measures. For potential migrants who are calculating the pros and cons of trying to cross the border, stiffer U.S. security measures are making the trip much more expensive, in particular the exploding cost of hiring a guide. The journey has also become more arduous and dangerous, in part because the DHS has plugged traditional crossing points and driven migrants deeper into the desert. Since the Bush administration, the DHS has dramatically increased its efforts to lock down the southwest border. The budget for Customs and Border Protection has grown to $10.7 billion in the past decade, a 75 percent increase. The number of Border Patrol agents at the border has nearly doubled over the past decade, to more than 18,000 today. Much of the ramp-up occurred during the Bush administration, but the Obama administration has marshaled more forces as well. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has recently set up three task forces to increase coordination within the DHS. Current and former DHS officials acknowledge that a confluence of factors explains the decline in illegal migration, including demographic changes in Mexico, improvements in its economy and Mexico's crackdown on Central American migrants headed to the United States. But these officials insist that the massive investment to secure the border has been the key factor. \"It used to be that you could literally sit at a bar in Tijuana, Mexico, look across the border into San Diego, wait for the Border Patrol to drive in the other direction and make a run for it,'' said Steve Atkiss, a former CBP chief of staff and now a partner at Command Consulting Group. \"It's much more difficult and expensive now.\" Madai Ledezma crossed the Mexican border into Texas a decade ago at age 23 and remains in the United States as an illegal immigrant. She said her uncle and brother had recently wanted to join her. But, she said, they're staying put after her uncle was caught by the Border Patrol a year ago and locked up for a month before being sent back to Mexico. \"The risk of crossing again is that he will be locked up again,'' Ledezma said. She added, \"I just heard recently that the Border Patrol now has the ability to fire their weapons.\" Ledezma's uncle was one of a shrinking number of undocumented immigrants stopped by the Border Patrol. Government officials widely cite that trend as evidence that the overall flow is also down. In 2000, considered the peak of the flood of illegal Mexican migration, more than 1.6 million people were apprehended, according to DHS data. Those numbers have plunged to around 400,000 per year since 2012 and are down 28 percent in the first part of fiscal 2015 compared with last year. Even last year's widely publicized spike in unaccompanied minors crossing the border from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has receded dramatically, the data show. While the declining number of apprehensions is not conclusive proof that illegal immigration is down, other less publicized research strongly suggests this is the case. Wayne Cornelius, director of the Mexican migration field research program at the University of California at San Diego, interviews hundreds of people each year in the Mexican state of Yuca\u00adtan and asks them whether they are planning to come to the United States in the next 12 months. In 2006, 24 percent said yes. By 2009, as the U.S. economy was cratering, 8 percent said yes. This year, 2.5 percent answered in the affirmative. A recent study by the Pew Research Center, meanwhile, found that the median length of stay for illegal immigrants in the United States jumped from less than eight years in 2003 to nearly 13 years by 2013. Their median age has increased from 28 during the 1990s to nearly 36 today. Those figures wouldn't be possible if young men were still coming across the border in huge numbers, and it was those young men who accounted for most of the illegal traffic. But Massey, the Princeton researcher, highlighted an unintended consequence of the security crackdown on the border. He said immigrants who are already in the United States are afraid to go back and forth to Mexico as they traditionally did, and are \"aging in place\" in the United States. Ledezma's tale is a common one. Over the past decade, she and her husband, Jose Pina, a landscaper, have become involved in their community in New Carrollton. Their daughter, Heather, 6, is a U.S. citizen. Ledezma volunteers at Heather's school, reads with her at the public library and attends a local church. \"After so many years of living here, I of course consider this my home,\" she said. According to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute, about a third of illegal immigrants own a home and have children who are U.S. citizens. \"We have this population here and they haven't left and they don't appear to be going back and forth to Mexico anymore,'' said George Escobar, senior director of human services for CASA, a \u00adMaryland-based immigrant advocacy group. \"These trends have reshaped the immigration debate right before our eyes.\"","label":0}
{"text":"At the Libertarian Town Hall on CNN earlier this month, the Libertarian Party's presidential candidate Gary Johnson and his running mate Bill Weld made a pitch to both \"Never-Hillary\" and \"Never-Trump\" voters on the left and right of the political spectrum as the sane and principled third-party alternative for 2016. And whether you agree or disagree with what the two former governors had to say, it's hard to deny their likability \u2014 especially in an election where the two major party candidates are as thoroughly unlikable as Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Johnson and Weld presumably have a better shot at appealing to Never-Trump conservatives than Never-Hillary liberals or leftists (whose political views align much more with the Green Party's Jill Stein), but the former New Mexico governor did make a compelling pitch \u2014 superficially, at least \u2014 to disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters at the Town Hall. And while polls indicate that the majority of the democratic socialist's supporters will vote for Clinton in November, there is a minority faction that will be voting their conscience \u2014 and Johnson is certainly in a position to woo some of these voters. With this undoubtedly in the back of his mind, the libertarian candidate said that he and Bernie are similar \"on about 75 percent of what's out there,\" from marriage equality and reproductive rights, to the legalization of marijuana and the end of futile military interventions overseas. From an \"economic standpoint,\" however, Johnson admitted disagreement: \"If Bernie supporters are really looking for income equality, I don't think that is something that government can accomplish. Taking from Peter to rob Paul, that's an equation that Peter really loves. But if Bernie supporters are looking for equal opportunity, I think that is something that can be accomplished. \u2026 In politics, you can definitely stand up for equal opportunity.\" It was a cogent response that included an acknowledgement that \"crony capitalism is alive and well\" \u2014 something that libertarians and leftists have long agreed on (and equally object to). But apart from this, Johnson's economic worldview is diametrically opposed to Sanders' egalitarian vision of social democracy \u2014 and this should be enough to stop the latter's supporters from voting for the former. In the economic realm, right-wing libertarians (as opposed to left libertarians or \"libertarian socialists\") are essentially classical economic liberals who reject most of the social democratic reforms that were enacted throughout the capitalist world during the 20th century. Instead of a mixed economy, libertarians advocate laissez faire capitalism and profess that even minimal state intervention in the economy will lead to tyranny \u2014 or serfdom, as the famous libertarian philosopher F. A. Hayek put it in his influential book \"The Road to Serfdom\" (this didn't pan out, of course \u2014 instead, it was the welfare state that likely prevented more radical assaults on capitalism in the West). In his statement, Johnson said that he doesn't believe that the government can reduce economic inequality \u2014 which has soared over the past forty years \u2014 and equated redistributive measures to theft. This alone reveals the candidates dogmatic worldview. The social democratic reforms of the 20th century clearly demonstrate that wealth and income inequality can be curbed within a capitalist economy (and should be if leaders want to achieve greater economic and political stability). While Johnson is less fanatical than some of his party colleagues (indeed, he is considered too moderate by many libertarians), he is still undoubtedly the most extreme candidate of 2016 on economic matters. He opposes corporate taxation, supports privatized healthcare, advocates eliminating the progressive income tax and replacing them with a regressive consumption tax, and is a proponent of widespread economic deregulation and privatization (including the privatization of prisons). Libertarianism may sound good on paper \u2014 championing individualism and maximum freedom; but in practice, its laissez faire prescriptions would result in corporate tyranny, the very opposite of freedom (libertarians are so consumed with the threat of state tyranny that they seem unable to even consider the very real threat of private tyranny, or as Noam Chomsky has described it, \"tyranny by unaccountable private concentrations of wealth\"). G. A. Cohen, the father of analytical Marxism and notable critic of libertarianism, discussed how private property actually inhibits the freedom of the ownerless in his essay \"Capitalism, Freedom, Proletariat\": \"Private property, like any system of rights, pretty well is a particular way of distributing freedom and unfreedom. It is necessarily associated with the liberty of private owners to do as they wish with what they own, but it no less necessarily withdraws liberty from those who do not own it. To think of capitalism as a realm of freedom is to overlook half of its nature.\" Now, there was a time when the rugged individualism and minimal state intervention that libertarians advocate could have conceivably produced a greater degree of freedom: namely, in a pre-capitalist, pre-industrial economy \u2014 before the prevalence of wage-labor and the advent of multinational corporations, when independent producers (e.g. yeoman farmers, artisans, etc.) who sold their own commodities on the market (or simply produced for subsistence) were the dominant economic players. But in a modern corporate capitalist economy in which the richest 20 citizens control more wealth than the bottom half (about 152 million people in America), these notions are not only antiquated, but inimical to both freedom and democracy. Thus, a Bernie Sanders supporter would have to be grossly uninformed to go from backing the democratic socialist senator to a libertarian like Johnson. Yes, there are similarities between the two; but their political philosophies are so antithetical to each other \u2014 particularly when it comes to political economy \u2014 that the single issues where there is some agreement are basically irrelevant. Libertarianism is fundamentally opposed to the egalitarian and democratic values that Sanders represents.","label":0}
{"text":"This madness needs to stop and that means Donald Trump should not be president.Trump supporters have been rampaging ever since Election Day. Emboldened by the results, they have committed hundreds of hate crimes and the number continues to rise. Nazis and racists are celebrating because they believe Trump will turn America into a whites only nation.And one Trump supporter couldn t have made that any clearer.A San Jose mosque recently received a threatening letter from a Trump supporter promising them that Trump will treat them like Hitler treated the Jews. As we all know, six million Jews were systematically exterminated during World War II in an effort to wipe them out. In short, this Trump supporter threatened Muslims with mass genocide.Referring to them as the Children of Satan, the Trump supporter praised Trump and declared that he will cleanse America. You Muslims are vile and evil people, the letter began before hurling racist insults at their fathers and mothers. There s a new sheriff in town President Donald Trump. He s going to cleanse America and make it shine again. And he s going to start with you Muslims. He s going to do to you Muslims what Hitler did to the Jews. You Muslims would be wise to pack your bags and get out of Dodge. This is a great time for patriotic Americans. Long live President Trump and God bless the USA. The Trump supporter didn t even have the balls to use their real name, cowardly signing the letter, Americans for a Better Way. Here s an image of the letter via Twitter.(2). @SanJosePD investigating. Letter: You worship the devil. But your day of reckoning has arrived . Calls Muslims vile & filthy people pic.twitter.com\/99WGI2giLF Damian Trujillo (@newsdamian) November 26, 2016San Jose police are now investigating but the mosque refuses to let hate win. We wanted to let law enforcement know so that in case there s an unfortunate event people are prepared, Evergreen Islamic Center Board President Faisal Yazadi told ABC7. Our doors are never locked. I hope that person knows that we re more than happy to have a dialogue. Hopefully, we learn a thing or two from him or her, and he or she learns something from us. Here s the video via NBC.Donald Trump has done nothing but bring about a rise of hate in this country and he hasn t even taken office yet. Just imagine how emboldened his supporters will be once that happens. The Electoral College can stop Trump from being president. All they have to do is vote for Hillary Clinton on December 19th. And we can do our part by asking them to do so by signing this petition. Hate cannot be allowed to win in this country, therefore, we need to make sure Trump loses.","label":1}
{"text":"Minnesota Man Arrested, Sentenced to 6-Months in Jail for Having a Windmill On His Property Nov 14, 2016 0 0 Now the State claims the right to tell you what you can and can't have on your own property.  Orono, MN \u2013 For more than a year, we have been following the story of a Minnesota man, Jay Nygard, who is routinely risking jail time because he refuses to remove a wind turbine from his property. Nygard has been in and out of court over the years, and despite a short-lived victory last October, he was recently back in front of a judge facing a contempt of court charge for refusing a court order to remove the turbines from his property.  He did eventually remove the turbines, leaving only the cement bases because removing them would cause structural damage to their house. This was not good enough for the local government, who ignored the advice of three different engineers and demanded that they remove the bases, despite the risk of damaging the home. This is all that remains of the windmill on Nygard's property, a concrete footing, in the ground.  On Friday, Nygard was arrested and, according to his son, has been given six months in prison for refusing to remove the base.  According to Kahler Nygard, Jay's son, his father even attempted to make peace with the county and compromise on a number of different issues, but they ignored his appeals.  \"The choices for my dad were to potentially destroy our foundation in the house or go to jail, he even offered an olive branch saying he would add an easement to the deed saying when the house is demolished the pad must be removed, but that was ignored also, \" Kahler said in an exclusive interview with The Free Thought Project.  \"The base was level with the ground and 4 feet cubed. We removed the top half of the concrete and used a metal cutting tool to remove the top half of the bolt assembly, rendering the structure unusable,\" Kahler explained.  \"They say that we have to remove to footing 100% and have it inspected by the city, which we have three different engineers all saying we should just leave it , one of them even does contract work for the city, \" he added.  Kahler said that although there are no ordinances against windmills, the county has a personal vendetta against his family.  Nygard has the right to do whatever he wants with his own property, but unfortunately in a democracy such as the United States, the property rights of an individual can be overridden according to the whims of politicians and the demands of uninvolved third parties.  Please share this story with your friends and family in hopes of keeping a good man, whose only \"crime\" was self-sustainability, out of jail.  John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter-culture and the drug war. In addition to his writing and activist work , he organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference , which features top caliber speakers and whistle-blowers from all over the world. You can contact him and stay connected to his work at his Facebook page. You can find his 65 chapter Book entitled \"Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance\" at bookpatch.com.  This article was originally featured on The Free Thought Project Vote Up","label":1}
{"text":"FAIR BLUFF, N. C. \u2014 Under a clear twilight sky, well after Hurricane Matthew broke up and moved offshore, this tiny town was drowning. Homes were submerged and deserted after officials evacuated about 400 people by boat and by truck, and Main Street was a canal of water. Frank Horne, 79, drove a large tractor slowly through the water inundating the lovingly maintained main drag. Most of the awnings and street lamps were eerily intact, even as merchandise and storm debris floated through businesses like the Ellis Meares Son hardware store and community pillars like the town hall. At the Ford dealership, every vehicle was partly underwater. \"My granddaughter has a beauty shop right up on the right,\" Mr. Horne said grimly on Monday, pointing toward Carolina Class Salon. \"If that hardware store goes, the town's gone. That's the only thing holding us. \" Hurricane Matthew's disastrous turn over North Carolina lashed some areas with more than a foot of rain and left behind swelling rivers and streets like rivers throughout much of the region south and east of Raleigh. By Tuesday, emergency crews in trucks, boats and helicopters had rescued more than 2, 000 people from houses, porches and rooftops. Here in Fair Bluff, they included James Thomas, 57, who cannot walk because of a spinal cord injury, but was hoisted into a boat by firefighters on Sunday. The upheaval had a special sting here in a town that has tried, with no shortage of grit and heart, to remake itself in the face of economic shifts that have sucked the life out of so many other small towns. Now, Fair Bluff's future looks even more challenging. The extent of the damage here and in places like Lumberton, Fayetteville, Goldsboro and Pinetops sank in like a recurring bad dream on Tuesday after a storm that killed 17 people in the state and left commerce and daily life in some areas grinding to a halt. \"Certain parts of the state, we're going through recovery at this point in time,\" Gov. Pat McCrory said on Tuesday morning. \"Certain parts of the state, we're still going through ongoing floods. And now, we have other parts of the state that are about to deal with some very serious circumstances, especially along two of our major rivers. \" Mr. McCrory said that a state trooper had shot and killed a man on Monday after a \"confrontation\" \u2014 the authorities later said he had become \"hostile\" and displayed a handgun \u2014 in Lumberton, a site of major flooding north of here. He added that state officials were especially worried about residents farther northeast, in and near Goldsboro, Greenville and Rocky Mount. With flooding expected in the state throughout the week, he urged drivers to use caution. \"There are going to be conditions during the next 72 hours which will be extremely dangerous,\" Mr. McCrory said. As residents evacuated and the authorities imposed curfews, officials issued advisories to boil tap water for drinking and school districts canceled days of classes. The airport in Greenville, a city of about 91, 000, will be closed until Oct. 20. \"A lot of communities are dealing with terrible flooding,\" President Obama said on Tuesday night in Greensboro, where he addressed a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton. \"Lives have been lost, and so the entire country has been thinking about North Carolina. \" The flooding this month has evoked memories of Hurricane Floyd, which devastated parts of the state 17 years ago. \"The scars of the memories of 1999 are still there, and they're fresh,\" said Tony Sears, the city manager in Kinston, where the Neuse River is expected to approach a record height by Saturday. \"And people are thinking back to how difficult of a time that was, and they're anticipating that this time. \" In Fair Bluff, with a population of about 900, officials said the water rose further on Tuesday, to levels no one here had seen. The town has a poverty rate of 33 percent, and its population has decreased over time, with older residents dying off and the young moving away. Some in the area wondered if all of the flooded businesses, most operated by longtime residents, would reopen. \"Because it's so small, income levels are so low here, it's going to be hard for them to justify putting the money back in to reopen their businesses,\" said Brenden Jones, a candidate for state representative from nearby Tabor City and an owner of a funeral home in Fair Bluff that was spared from flood damage. Fair Bluff was incorporated in 1873, with the Lumber River \u2014 currently inundating the town \u2014 and a railroad as its lifeblood, supporting logging and trade. By the 1970s, it was small but thriving, sustained by tobacco farms and warehouses, said Ken Elliot, 48, who like many people here grew up in a tobacco farming family. When those tobacco farms began to go under, people found new work. Mr. Elliot became a firefighter and paramedic, and he spent last weekend rescuing his friends and neighbors from the encroaching floodwaters. Others found work in a new plant that makes vinyl building materials. The town, which has a museum, built a visitors' center and a new river walk, earnestly seeking tourists. And locals fought tooth and nail to sustain a vital Main Street as the town's heart despite pressure from stores like Walmart and Family Dollar. \"That's what keeps this area above water,\" Mr. Elliot said, adding that the town would pull together once again. Would everything reopen? \"I'm not going to lie,\" Mr. Elliot said. \"That's always a worry. \" Others were confident the town would prevail. Kathy Ashley, 55, the vice president of the Chamber of Commerce and Mr. Horne's daughter, said that Fair Bluff was a trading post and had shown a penchant for reinvention ever since. \"We got history,\" Ms. Ashley said. \"When the water goes away, we're going to sweep it out and we're going to make our town better. \" Critical to the floods' devastation was how surprising they were: Many people did not expect Hurricane Matthew to drop nearly as much rain as it did, and they prepared only for a small storm. \"This is a river town,\" said Rodney Singletary, 47, a behavior specialist at the county school who took a boat back to his house on Monday to pick up medication for a relative. \"We're used to the river. We just don't think that it's going to look like that. \" His family had evacuated on foot over the weekend, walking along the railroad tracks as water rose on both sides. \"We had to get out of here,\" he said. \"I have to say, I was a little frightened. \" At a shelter at West Columbus High School in a neighboring town, Cerro Gordo, Fair Bluff residents described harrowing rescues and domestic crises. Twyla Denise King, 44, worried about the five dogs she had left at home in the evacuation. And Simon Stephens, 33, who called for a rescue of himself, his wife and his two children when the waters rose because he cannot swim, wondered what had become of his house and two cars. \"Words cannot describe it,\" said Mr. Stephens, a fabricator. \"House paid for, cars, one car paid for, only $800 left on the truck. \" So when it was time for a shelterwide meeting, Tom Guilliams of the Salvation Army opened with a prayer. \"We thank you for getting us out of the waters and onto the land,\" he said. \"Be with us through the storm. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Kurdish-led authorities held local elections on Friday in areas they control in northern Syria, pushing ahead with autonomy plans opposed by both the government of President Bashar al-Assad and by Turkey. Kurdish forces and their political allies now hold the largest part of Syria outside the grip of Assad s government. They have captured vast territory from Islamic State with the support of U.S. arms, jets and ground advisers, although Washington opposes their autonomy drive. Kurdish leaders say their goal is to establish self-rule within Syria, not secession. But their influence has infuriated Ankara, which considers the Kurdish YPG militia to be an offshoot of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has run a decades-long insurgency in Turkey. Assad has vowed to recover every inch of the country, as his territorial grip expanded rapidly over the past two years with help from Russia and Iran. Damascus has more forcefully asserted its claim to territory held by Kurdish-led forces in recent months. The head of Syria s delegation to U.N.-backed peace talks in Geneva, Bashar al-Ja afari, rejected the election, repudiating any unilateral act that happens without coordination with Damascus. Since Syria s conflict began more than six years ago, the dominant Kurdish parties have been left out of international diplomacy in line with Turkish wishes. They were excluded again from U.N.-led peace talks which reconvened in Geneva this week. Hadiya Yousef, a senior Kurdish politician, said the Kurdish-led administration would not be bound by decisions taken in its absence. We are not present in these meetings, and therefore we are developing the solution on the ground, Yousef told Reuters. Peace talks would not arrive at solutions so long as they do not involve those running 30 percent of the country, she added. Voters are picking from close to 6,000 candidates for town and city councils on Friday, the second part of a three-stage process that will culminate in electing a parliament early next year. They chose representatives for smaller-scale district councils in September. Everyone should take part (in the election) because this is the fate of the entire region, said Sheikhmous Qamishlo, a 65-year-old Syrian Kurd at a polling station in Qamishli. This is a new experience, we wish it success, he said, and described casting his vote as a national duty . The election was being monitored by a small group of politicians from other countries in the Middle East, Yousef said, including a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party which runs the autonomous Kurdish region in neighboring Iraq. Yousef said the Iraqi Kurdish official s presence was a kind of recognition of the Syrian Kurdish political project. The Iraqi Kurdish authorities, whose own plans for independence were met with a swift backlash from states in the region in the past two months, have previously been hostile to the Syrian Kurdish parties.","label":0}
{"text":"Amazon boss Jeff Bezos wants to apply the same principles used in Amazon's developing delivery services to bring supplies to the future population of the moon. [After The Washington Post obtained a copy of the confidential \"white paper\" that Bezos' space company Blue Origin is passing on to Trump's transition team, the company verified its authenticity. And while Elon Musk's SpaceX rushes to beat Trump's own lunar ambitions, Bezos is focused on the logistics of something a little more permanent than private sightseeing excursions. Blue Origin want to deliver cargo to the moon, paving the way for sustained human colonization of our natural satellite. They've even picked a spot for this potential real estate \u2014 a cheery little crater near the moon's south pole, with access to water via ice hidden in the crater's shadows, and enough consistent sunlight to make use of solar energy. The thought of lunar expansion has managed to whet the appetites of several companies, who are already offering their own ideas for involvement. One such example is Bigelow Aerospace. Its founder, Robert Bigelow, wants to adapt the design of their BEAM habitat, currently docked with the International Space Station. He wants to create an orbital depot to house supplies and medical facilities. According to Bigelow, venturing toward Mars is \"premature. \" As for the moon? Bigelow asserts that \"We have the technology. We have the ability, and the potential for a terrific business case. \" For his part, Bezos believes that \"if you go to the moon first, and make the moon your home, then you can get to Mars more easily. \" Bezos says that this project \"only be done in partnership with NASA,\" and believes that \"[Blue Origin's] liquid hydrogen expertise and experience with precision vertical landing offer the fastest path to a lunar lander mission. \" He is personally \"excited about this,\" to the point of investing his own money \"alongside NASA,\" to make sure they get there. \"Blue Moon is all about delivery of mass to the surface of the Moon,\" according to the Amazon boss. \"Any credible first lunar settlement will require that capability\" But all of this is just the beginning of Blue Origin's ambitions. Their first proposed mission hopes to be just the first in \"a series of increasingly capable missions. \" We'll have to wait to see whether President Trump and his advisors are as excited about the possibilities as Bezos himself. Follow Nate Church @Get2Church on Twitter for the latest news in gaming and technology, and snarky opinions on both.","label":0}
{"text":"You think those people are anti-love Bahahaha! The left can t handle the truth! This is epic!","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed a Chinese diplomatic effort to rein in North Korea s weapons program as a failure on Thursday, while Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Beijing was doing a lot, but could do more to limit oil supplies to Pyongyang. In a tweet, Trump delivered another insulting barb against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who he called Little Rocket Man and a sick puppy after North Korea test-fired its most advanced missile to date on Wednesday. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Washington s approach was dangerously provocative. Trump s tweets further inflamed tensions reignited this week after North Korea said it had successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile in a breakthrough that put the U.S. mainland within range of its nuclear weapons whose warheads could withstand re-entry to the Earth s atmosphere. The Chinese envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man, Trump said on Twitter, a day after speaking with Chinese President Chinese President Xi Jinping and reiterating his call for Beijing to use its leverage against North Korea. Tillerson on Thursday welcomed Chinese efforts on North Korea, but said Beijing could do more to limit its oil exports to the country. The Chinese are doing a lot. We do think they could do more with the oil. We re really asking them to please restrain more of the oil, not cut it off completely, Tillerson said at the State Department. China is North Korea s neighbor and its sole major trading partner. While Trump has been bellicose at times in rhetoric toward North Korea, Tillerson has persistently held out hopes for a return to dialogue if North Korea shows it is willing to give up its nuclear weapons program. However, Tillerson may not remain in his job long, with disagreements with Trump over North Korea being one factor. On Thursday, senior Trump administration officials said the White House was considering a plan to replace Tillerson with Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he still had confidence in diplomatic efforts on North Korea and that the United States would be unrelenting in working through the United Nations. In spite of Trump s rhetoric and warnings that all options, including military ones, are on the table in dealing with North Korea, his administration has stressed it favors a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Trump has pledged more sanctions in response to the latest test and, at an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting late Wednesday, the United States warned North Korea s leadership would be utterly destroyed if war were to break out. This administration is focused on one big thing when it comes to North Korea, and that s denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told a regular White House briefing. Anything beyond that is not the priority at this point, she said, responding to a question on whether regime change was on the administration s agenda after Trump s recent tweets and a speech by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Lavrov pointed to joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises planned for December and accused the United States of trying to provoke Kim into flying off the handle over his missile program to hand Washington a pretext to destroy his country. He also flatly rejected a U.S. call for Russia to cut ties with Pyongyang over its nuclear and ballistic missile program, calling U.S. policy toward North Korea deeply flawed. In a call with Trump on Thursday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the missile launched this week was North Korea s most advanced so far, but it was unclear whether Pyongyang had the technology to miniaturize a nuclear warhead and it still needed to prove other things, such as its re-entry technology. A White House statement said Trump and Moon reiterated their strong commitment to enhancing the deterrence and defense capabilities of the U.S.-South Korea alliance and added: Both leaders reaffirmed their strong commitment to compelling North Korea to return to the path of denuclearization at any cost. North Korea has tested dozens of ballistic missiles under Kim s leadership and conducted its sixth and largest nuclear bomb test in September. It has said its weapons programs are a necessary defense against U.S. plans to invade. The United States, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, denies any such intention. Previous U.S. administrations have failed to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and a sophisticated missile program. Trump, who has previously said the United States would totally destroy North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies from the nuclear threat, has also struggled to contain Pyongyang since taking office in January.","label":0}
{"text":"Conservatives have suggested repeatedly that if former President Barack Obama clicked his heels together three times while saying the words radical Islamic terrorism then terror attacks would never happen again. Ever. During former reality show star Donald Trump s speech in Saudi Arabia, he failed to use those words, but it helped to elect him while on the campaign trail by criticizing his opponents for not saying the magical phrase.While Trump is visiting the Middle East, a bomb tore through an entrance hall of the Manchester Arena at about 10:30 p.m. as American pop star Ariana Grande s concert was ending. In total, 22 people died and 59 concert-goers were hospitalized, marking this as the deadliest terrorist assault in Britain since 2005.On Tuesday, ISIS claimed responsibility for the bombing.During President Curtsy s press conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Trump branded terrorist groups as evil losers. I extend my deepest condolences to those so terribly injured and to the so many families of the victims. We stand in absolute solidarity with the people of the United Kingdom, Trump said Tuesday. So many young beautiful and innocent people living and enjoying their lives, murdered by evil losers in life, he said. I won t call them monsters because they would like that term, he continued. They would think that s a great name. I will call them from now on losers because that s what they are, they re losers. And we ll have more of them. But they re losers, just remember that. The terrorists and extremists and those who give them aid and comfort must be driven out from our society forever, he added, then called on the international community to protect human life. Watch Trump deliver a real sick burn to terrorists everywhere by calling them evil losers. You know, as opposed to evil winners.On the campaign trail, Donald Trump said he would present a plan to defeat the Islamic State to his generals within 30 days after taking office, but that hasn t happened.Photo by Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images.","label":1}
{"text":"Iraq s Kurdish security forces said Baghdad would pay a heavy price for launching an advance on the Kurdish-held city of Kirkuk. In a statement, the Peshmerga also accused a faction from one of the two main Iraqi Kurdish political parties of treason for assisting Baghdad with the advance.","label":0}
{"text":"The Democrats are in full panic-mode over Crooked Hillary as she continues to plummet in the polls. Liberal CA Congresswoman, Maxine Waters is hilarious in this interview with and MSNBC host Tamron Hall, as she attempts to blame Hillary s media cheerleaders because Americans don t trust Hillary! LOL There s a reason why people from all over the world will be tuning in tonight to watch what is certain to be an epic presidential debate. The match up between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is so popular because it reminds us of an age-old formula that has been selling movies and books for years, the underdog vs. the evil villain. There s something very satisfying about watching the underdog take down an evil villainess who s managed to escape the law for decades.There s something equally as satisfying watching lying liberals attempt to circle the wagons around the most corrupt candidate to ever run for office and blame of all people wait for it the media!","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday that voting machines in the U.S. state of Texas have been 'flipping' his registered votes to rival Hillary Clinton.  Sputnik reports:  The Republican nominee has warned for weeks that the election could be rigged against him.  \"A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas,\" Trump said via Twitter. \"People are not happy.\"  Trump also noted in his Twitter message that the lines at the polling places are very long. \"What is going on?\" he asked. A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas. People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on?  \u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 27 October 2016  On Tuesday, Chambers County in east Texas officially announced that it was switching over at least temporarily to the old-fashioned, low-tech system of voting with emergency paper ballots after electronic voting machines in the region suffered technical glitches.  Electronic voting using the usual machines would be suspended until the problems with them could be fixed, Chambers County Clerk Heather Hawthorne said in a press release.","label":1}
{"text":"Theresa May looked despondent , with deep rings under her eyes, EU chief executive Jean-Claude Juncker told aides after dining with the British prime minister last week, a German newspaper said on Sunday. The report by a Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung correspondent whose leaked account of a Juncker-May dinner in April caused upset in London, said Juncker thought her marked by battles over Brexit with her own Conservative ministers as she asked for EU help to create more room for maneuver at home. No immediate comment was available from Juncker s office, which has a policy of not commenting on reports of meetings. The FAZ said May, who flew in for a hastily announced dinner in Brussels with the European Commission president last Monday ahead of an EU summit, seemed to Juncker anxious, despondent and disheartened , a woman who trusts hardly anyone but is also not ready for a clear-out to free herself . As she later did over dinner on Thursday with fellow EU leaders, May asked for help to overcome British divisions. She indicated that back home friend and foe are at her back plotting to bring her down, the paper said. May said she had no room left to maneuver. The Europeans have to create it for her. May s face and appearance spoke volumes, Juncker later told his colleagues, the FAZ added. She has deep rings under her eyes. She looks like someone who can t sleep a wink. She smiles for the cameras, it went on, but it looks forced , unlike in the past, when she could shake with laughter. Now she needs all her strength not to lose her poise. As with the April dinner at 10 Downing Street, when the FAZ reported that Juncker thought May in another galaxy in terms of Brexit expectations, both sides issued statements after last week s meeting saying talks were constructive and friendly . They said they agreed negotiations should be accelerated . May dismissed the dinner leak six months ago as Brussels gossip , though officials on both sides said the report in the FAZ did little to foster an atmosphere of trust which they agree will be important to reach a deal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also reported to have been irritated by that leak. Although the summit on Thursday and Friday rejected May s call for an immediate start to talks on the future relationship, leaders made a gesture to speed up the process and voiced hopes of opening a new phase in December. Some said they understood May s difficulties in forging consensus in London.","label":0}
{"text":"\"Health officials are recommending that 240 people at Renton's Hazen High School get tested for tuberculosis (TB) after someone at the school was diagnosed with the infectious disease,\" the Seattle Times reported on January 12. [Hazen High School is part of the Renton School District, located in a King County, Washington city about 18 miles south of Seattle. \"Health officials recommended the tests at Hazen High School as a precaution after someone at the school was diagnosed with the infectious disease,\" the Times noted. According to the Renton School District's website: Renton School District offers an English Language Learner (ELL) program to students who need to develop English proficiency. We offer instruction from ELL teachers in collaboration with mainstream teachers to effectively teach ELL students listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. \u2022 15% of students in the Renton School District are enrolled in the ELL program. \u2022 The number of ELL students served in the Renton School District has increased by 67% in the last 10 years. \u2022 At least 85 home languages or dialects are spoken by Renton School District students. As Breitbart News reported, 66 percent of all cases of active TB in the United States in 2015, or 6, 350 out of 9, 563, were diagnosed in residents of the country. At 76 percent, the percentage of active TB cases was significantly higher in the state of Washington than in the rest of the United States in 2015. Though the Hazen High School School Nurse's webpage makes no mention of TB, it does mention pertussis, another disease associated with residents of the United States: King County received 100 reports of confirmed pertussis between more than the 98 reports received in all of 2011. Vaccinating eligible children and adults is the best way to prevent this disease. News of the diagnosis of active TB in a Washington State high school follows several reports of similar diagnoses in two high schools in Minnesota, one high school in Nebraska, and one middle school in South Carolina. All four of these high schools had significant populations of students participating in English Language Learner programs. \"Calling it a precaution, health officials are offering testing Jan. 18 at the school to determine if anyone has symptoms of active TB. Blood tests will also be offered to check if people are infected but without the symptoms, a condition known as latent TB,\" the Times reported: They've estimated about 240 people from the school community are at risk based on the amount of time they were exposed to the person with TB in indoor spaces. Officials are not saying whether the person with TB is a student or employee to protect the person's privacy, said James Apa, spokesman for Public Health \u2014 Seattle King County. \"The person at Hazen with active TB is receiving treatment and is not a risk for infecting others, Apa said,\" the Times reported: In 2015, 208 new cases were reported in Washington state, including 98 in King County.","label":0}
{"text":"The explosion of violence against conservatives across the country is being intentionally ginned up by Democrats, reporters, TV hosts, comedians and celebrities, who compete with one another to come up with the most vile epithets for Trump and his supporters. [They go right up to the line, trying not to cross it, by, for example, vamping with a realistic photo of a decapitated Trump or calling the president a \"piece of s \u2014 \" while hosting a show on CNN. The media are orchestrating a bloodless coup, but they're perfectly content to have their shock troops pursue a bloody coup. This week, one of the left's foot soldiers gunned down Republican members of Congress and their staff while they were playing baseball in Virginia. Democratic Socialist James Hodgkinson was prevented from committing a mass murder only by the happenstance of a member of the Republican leadership being there, along with his Capitol Police protection. Remember when it was frightening for the losing party not to accept the results of an election? During the third debate, Trump refused to agree to the election results, saying he'd \"look at it at the time. \" The media responded in their usual style: A 'HORRIFYING' REPUDIATION OF DEMOCRACY \u2014 The Washington Post, Oct. 20, 2016, DENIAL OF DEMOCRACY \u2014 Daily News (New York) Oct. 20, 2016 DANGER TO DEMOCRACY \u2014 The Dallas Morning News, Oct. 20, 2016, ONE SCARY MOMENT IT ALL BOILED DOWN TO \u2026 DEMOCRACY \u2014 Pittsburgh Oct. 21, 2016, \"(Shock) spiked down the nation's spinal column last night and today when the Republican nominee threatened that this little election thing you got there, this little democratic process you've got here, it's nice, it's fine, but he doesn't necessarily plan on abiding by its decision when it comes to the presidency. \" \u2014 Rachel Maddow, Oct. 20, \"Trump's answer on accepting the outcome of the vote is the most disgraceful statement by a presidential candidate in 160 years. \" \u2014 Bret Stephens, editorial page editor at The Wall Street Journal, \"I guess we're all going to have to wait until Nov. 9 to find out if we still have a country \u2014 if Donald Trump is in the mood for a peaceful transfer of power. Or if he's going to wipe his fat a \u2014 with the Constitution. \" \u2014 CBS's Stephen Colbert, Oct. 19, 2016, \"It's unprecedented for a nominee of a major party to themselves signal that they would not accept \u2014 you know, respect the results of an election. We've never had that happen before. \u2026 This really presents a potentially difficult problem for governing \u2026 \" \u2014 MSNBC'S Joy Reid, Oct. 22, 2016, \"This is very dangerous stuff \u2026 would seriously impair our functioning as a democracy. \u2026 This is about as serious as it gets in the United States. \" \u2014 CNN's Peter Beinart, Oct. 20, 2016, \"Obviously, it's despicable for him to pretend that there's any chance that he would not accept the results of this election it would be \u2014 in 240 years you've never had anybody do it. \u2026 \" \u2014 CNN's Van Jones, Oct. 20, 2016, Then Trump won, and these very same hysterics refused to accept the results of the election. Recently, Hillary announced her steadfast opposition to the winning candidate using a military term, saying she'd joined the \"Resistance. \" Imagine if Trump lost and then announced that he'd joined the \"RESISTANCE. \" He'd be accused of trying to activate militias. Every dyspeptic glance at an immigrant would be reported as fascistic violence. But the media seem blithely unaware that the \"Resistance\" has been accompanied by nonstop militaristic violence from liberals. When Trump ripped up our Constitution and jumped all over it by failing to concede the election three weeks in advance, CNN ran a segment on a single tweet from a random Trump supporter that mentioned the Second Amendment. Carol Costello: \"Still to come in the 'Newsroom,' some Trump supporters say they will refuse to accept a loss on Election Day, with one offering a threat of violence. We'll talk about that next. \" In CNN's most fevered dreams about a violent uprising of Trump supporters, they never could have conceived of the level of actual violence being perpetrated by Americans who refuse to accept Trump's win. (See Hate Map.) It began with Trump's inauguration, when a leftist group plotted to pump a debilitating gas into one Trump inaugural ball, military families were assaulted upon leaving the Veterans' Inaugural Ball, and attendees of other balls had water thrown on them. Since then, masked, armed liberals around the country have formed organizations to beat up conservatives. In liberal towns, the police are regularly ordered to stand down to allow the assaults to proceed unimpeded. The media only declared a crisis when conservatives fought back, smashing the beta males. (\"Battle for Berkeley! \") There is more media coverage for conservatives' \"microaggressions\" toward powerful minorities \u2014 such as using the wrong pronoun \u2014 than there is for liberals' physical attacks on conservatives, including macings, concussions, and hospitalizations. And now some nut Bernie confirms that it's Republicans standing on a baseball field, before opening fire. In the media's strategic reporting of the attempted slaughter, we were quickly told that the mass shooter was white, male and had used a gun. We were even told his name. (Because it was not \"Mohammed. \") But the fact that Hodgkinson's Facebook page featured a banner of Sanders and the words \"Democratic Socialism explained in 3 words: 'We the People' Since 1776\" apparently called for hours of meticulous by our media. Did reporters think they could keep that information from us forever? The fake news insists that Trump's White House is in \"chaos. \" No, the country is in chaos. But just like Kathy Griffin and her Trump decapitation performance art \u2014 the perpetrators turn around in innocence and blame Trump.","label":0}
{"text":"Myanmar on Tuesday launched its first bid to improve relations between Buddhists and Muslims since an eruption of deadly violence in August inflamed communal tension and triggered an exodus of some 520,000 Muslims to Bangladesh. Rohingya Muslims are still fleeing, more than six weeks after Rohingya insurgents attacked security forces in western Myanmar s Rakhine state. The United Nations has denounced a ferocious military crackdown in response to the attacks as ethnic cleansing aimed at driving out Rohingya. A new surge of refugees has entered Bangladesh in recent days, including about 11,000 on Monday. Some have told of increasing hunger in Rakhine as well as of more mob attacks on Muslim villagers. Despite growing international condemnation of the refugee crisis, the military campaign is popular in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where there is little sympathy for the Rohingya, and for Muslims in general, and where Buddhist nationalism has surged in recent years. The party of government leader Aung San Suu Kyi took the first step toward trying to ease animosity with inter-faith prayers at a stadium in the biggest city of Yangon, with Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and others. Thousands of people packed the stands of the stadium, with Buddhist monks, Hindus, Christian nuns and Muslim men with beards and caps listening to religious leaders who took turns to appeal for friendship. Be free from killing one another, be free from torturing one another, be free from destroying or demolishing one another, the chief Buddhist monk of Yangon, Iddhibala, told the crowd. Stepping off the podium, he shook hands with Muslim leader Hafiz Mufti Ali. Citizens should collaborate in friendship and work for the country, Ali said, adding: Freedom of life, freedom of education, freedom of religion, it is absolutely necessary for the country to fulfill all these rights. The Rohingya had pinned hopes for change on Suu Kyi s party but it has been wary of Buddhist nationalist pressure. Her party did not field a single Muslim candidate in the 2015 election that it swept. Rohingya are not classified as an indigenous minority in Myanmar and so are denied citizenship under a law that links nationality to ethnicity. Regarded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, they face restrictions and discrimination and are derided by ethnic Rakhine Buddhists in Rakhine, and by much of the wider population. The militants of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) who launched the Aug. 25 attacks that triggered the latest spasm of violence are demanding full citizenship rights and recognition as an indigenous community. A one-month ceasefire the insurgents called in September in order, they said, to ease aid deliveries to Rakhine, expired at midnight on Monday, but authorities said there was no sign of any new attacks. The government rebuffed the ceasefire, saying it did not negotiate with terrorists. Myanmar denies ethnic cleansing. It says more than 500 people have been killed in the violence since late August, most of them ARSA terrorists . Even before the government offensive, the small, lightly armed ARSA appeared only capable of hit-and-run raids and unable to mount any sort of sustained challenge to the army. The insurgents said on Saturday they were ready to respond to any peace move by the government, even though their ceasefire was ending. Reports of food shortages in Rakhine will add to the urgency of calls by aid agencies and the international community for unfettered humanitarian access to the conflict zone. Villagers said food was running out because rice crops were not ready for harvest and authorities had shut village markets and limited food transport, apparently to cut supplies to the militants. The government has cited worry about food as a main reason people have cited for leaving, but a senior state government official dismissed any suggestion of starvation. Among those fleeing were more than 30 people on a boat that capsized off Bangladesh on Sunday. Twenty-five people drowned, 13 of them children, police said.","label":0}
{"text":"Leading Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage visited Donald Trump at his home on Saturday, after suggesting he could act as a go-between to help smooth British relations with the U.S. president-elect. British Prime Minister Theresa May is not expected to meet the incoming leader until early next year and Farage has suggested her criticisms of Trump in the early days of the campaign could damage ties with Washington. \"We're just tourists!\" Farage, head of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), told reporters as he waited for an elevator to take him up to the meeting at Trump Tower in New York City. He later tweeted a photograph of himself with Trump standing in front of a pair of golden doors and smiling broadly, the president-elect giving the camera a thumbs-up. \"It was a great honor to spend time with @realDonaldTrump,\" Farage tweeted. \"He was relaxed and full of good ideas. I'm confident he will be a good President.\" Trump's election campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said: \"I think they enjoy each other's company, and they actually had a chance to talk about freedom and winning and what this all means for the world.\" In a separate photograph posted on Twitter, UKIP donor Arron Banks, Breitbart London Editor in Chief Raheem Kassam, and Gerry Gunster, an American whose advocacy firm worked on the Brexit campaign, were also pictured with Trump and Farage. May - who spoke to Trump by phone on Thursday - and her predecessor David Cameron last year described Trump as \"divisive\" and \"wrong\" over his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. At that time he was not considered likely to win the presidency. In a leaked diplomatic telegram, sent on Nov. 9 and printed in the Sunday Times newspaper, Britain's ambassador to Washington, Kim Darroch, said he believed Britain had built better relationships with Trump's team than other foreign diplomats. \"(Trump) is above all an outsider and an unknown quantity, whose campaign pronouncements may reveal his instincts, but will surely evolve and, particularly, be open to outside influence if pitched right,\" he said. \"We should be well placed to do this.\" While the British government has congratulated Trump on his election, the head of the opposition, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said he should \"grow up\" on the immigration issue and recognize that the U.S. economy depends on migrant workers. \"The treatment of Mexico by the United States, just as much as its absurd and abusive language towards Muslims, is something that has to be challenged and should be challenged,\" Corbyn, whose wife is Mexican, told the BBC on Sunday. UKIP, which has only one member of parliament in London, said Farage and Trump spent more than an hour discussing Trump's victory, global politics and Brexit. A UKIP official has suggested Farage could even be the next ambassador to the United States, but British media reported that May's office rejected the idea of any role for Farage, citing unnamed sources who described him as an \"irrelevance\". A day after Trump's election victory, Farage called on the real estate mogul to reverse \"loathsome\" Barack Obama's policy by making Britain his top priority. Farage said he had been pleased at Trump's \"very positive reaction\" to the idea that a bust of former British prime minister Winston Churchill be put back in the Oval Office. He has also joked about sexual assault allegations against Trump, urging him to \"schmooze\" May but not touch her. He proposed that in any meetings between the British and American leaders, he could attend to be the \"responsible adult to make sure everything is OK.\" Farage, who spoke at a Trump rally during the election campaign, had predicted the former reality TV host would tap into the same dissatisfaction among voters that led to Britain deciding on June 23 to leave the European Union. Trump made repeated references to Brexit during his campaign, saying it had highlighted the desire for change among voters frustrated with traditional politics. (Story refiles to add dropped word \"the\" in first paragraph.)","label":0}
{"text":"Lauren McGaughy of The Dallas Morning News did a disgusting hit job on a top Texas lawyer and former judge. As a mother of 3 girls, I m offended by journalists like Lauren McGaughy, who wrote about a lawyer who was fired from his law firm for posting an article written by a rape survivor about her views on the now hijacked feminazi #metoo movement. It s sad to see the left grabbing onto the serious issue of sexual assault and doing the exact same thing they did to racism, using it as a political football, and trying to make it a Republican or conservative thing. If everyone s a racist, then no one is a racist. Lauren McGaughy, a reporter for Dallas Morning News didn t stop at exposing the firing of a top Texas lawyer over an article he shared on his personal Facebook page about the #MeToo movement (that was written by a rape survivor), she went after him with a bizarre vengeance, as though she had been personally harmed by his words. McGaughy didn t stop after pointing out that his law firm fired Andrew D. Leonie in a shameful case of censorship, she went on to tie him to conservatives and prove that he s actually (gasp) supported Republican candidates in the past. McGaughy took it a step further, and provided evidence that this horrible human being was also involved in litigating a case against are you ready? Muslim students praying in public schools!McGaughy wrote: Leonie was behind an AG s office letter that blasted a Frisco-area high school for allowing Muslim students to use an empty classroom to pray. The letter, which alleged the school might be infringing on the constitutional rights of its non-Muslim students, was called a political stunt by district staff who said the room was open to all students.From the Dallas Morning News article:A top lawyer in the Office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton resigned Thursday after reports he wrote a Facebook post that called women s sexual misconduct allegations pathetic. The Dallas Morning News reported Thursday morning Associate Deputy Attorney General Andrew D. Leonie posted on Facebook this week: Aren t you also tired of all the pathetic me too victim claims? If every woman is a victim , so is every man. If everyone is a victim, no one is. Victim means nothing anymore. The post went up at 2:40 a.m. on Wednesday. By Thursday afternoon, Leonie had resigned. In a press release, Paxton s office said Leonie s exit was effective immediately. The views he expressed on social media do not reflect our values, Paxton s Director of Communications Marc Rylander wrote. The OAG is committed to promoting and maintaining a workplace that is free from discrimination and harassment. Leonie s post was removed late Thursday afternoon. His bio was changed from Associate Deputy Attorney General to Retired. The Dallas Morning News was fortunately, able to get a screen shot of the offensive post for everyone to see:His Facebook post linked to an article from the conservative website The Federalist titled, Can we be honest about women? The teaser to the article, which was written by a woman, states: Here s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty. He previously worked for Paxton s predecessor, Gov. Greg Abbott, as a regional chief for consumer protection and special litigator, according to Leonie s LinkedIn. His salary was listed as $150,984 in April on the Texas Tribune s salary explorer.Leonie s post comes as some conservatives question the increasing number of sexual harassment and assault claims against the nation s most powerful men in media, politics and business. While the stories have led to a number of high-profile resignations and apologies in the private sector, change is slower in the political realm, where it s usually up to voters to oust elected officials accused of sexual misconduct.In Texas, for example, Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold on Thursday decided not to run for reelection after allegations he made lewd comments and unleashed profanity-laced tirades on staffers. The decision was made after Farenthold declined to resign for weeks after news broke he once used $84,000 in taxpayer money to settlement a harassment claim. Accusations against state lawmakers as well as concerns over the ability of elected officials to harass with impunity have also led to new training requirements in the Legislature.OOPS! It looks likeThe Federalist-reported that Leonie s Facebook post linked to an article entitled Can We Be Honest About Women? authored by McAllister, who is a survivor of sexual assault. Here s a little secret we have to say out loud: Women love the sexual interplay they experience with men, and they relish men desiring their beauty, McAllister writes. Why? Because it is part of their nature. As a society, we need to encourage both sexes to become comfortable with who they are naturally and all the messy, uncomfortable, stumbling, tantalizing, and glorious twists and turns that come with it, she continues. Men and women need to show each other grace and respect as they engage as sexual beings in whatever sphere they interact. The article explicitly condemns sexual assault but argues that what some call sexual assault doesn t deserve that label and expanding its definition into innocent behavior hurts both men and women. In the past, McAllister has written about how our society has emboldened men in positions of power to think they can get away with sexually harassing or assaulting women.In a post entitled It s Not Up To Women To End Sexual Harassment, she explains why men need to step up their efforts to protect women from such evils. She has also criticized aspects of the #MeToo movement, writing recently that it is destroying trust between men and women because the social media movement denies human nature.The sexual tension between men and women will always exist, and if women assume a man s sexuality is a threat instead of a powerful complement to their own sexuality, they will always be on guard. In this environment of suspicion, there can be no privacy between a man and a woman. If there is any kind of interaction or discourse, even if it s not sexual, the man can t trust that the woman won t use it against him so communication is silenced. Fear is generated on both sides, and fear is the death of trust. It is also the death of love.Throughout McAllister s critiques of the #MeToo movement and discussions of sexual topics, she has repeatedly stated that women ought to be respected and that sexual assault and sexual harassment are wrong a fact left out of the numerous media accounts of Leonie s resignation and her article.","label":1}
{"text":"Barack Obama has to be the world s biggest hypocrite. Here he is in 2005 adamantly defending our borders: We simply cannot allow for people to pour in, undocumented and unchecked. @PressSec Obama 2005: \"We simply cannot allow for people to pour in, undocumented, unchecked\". OUCH! pic.twitter.com\/1ibXXaNeeU Leahann (@Leaha_Luv) February 1, 2017Isn t it funny that only 9 years later, we all watched our PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES tell an illegal alien on TV that it s okay for illegal aliens to vote in the upcoming election. So in 2005, it was against the law to enter our country illegally, but in 2016 they should not only flood into our country and overwhelm our nation, but they should also vote. But yeah Trump is a racist for trying to clean up the mess Obama started.","label":1}
{"text":"The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday for just the second time since the 2008 financial crisis. Economists talk a lot about the impact this will have on markets, but what about everyday consumers? The Fed's decision can affect the cost of housing, cars, student loans and even the interest on your credit card \u2014 though not all necessarily right away. And when the Fed raises rates, all sorts of other expenses eventually tick up. The move is part of what will be a slow, upward climb for what's known as the federal funds rate. Banks are ordered by law to have a certain amount of money in reserve, so they typically make overnight loans to each other to keep those balances up. The federal funds rate is the level of interest that applies to those loans. Because the rate has been close to zero since 2008, as part of the Fed's strategy to bring the nation out of a recession, there's hardly anywhere for it to go but up. As the economy improves and Donald J. Trump unveils his stimulus package, economists expect rates to rise steadily over a period of years. \"The bottom line, ostensibly, is that the economy is getting stronger,\" said Dean Baker, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. \"Nobody in their right mind would say, 'I'd rather have higher unemployment and lower interest rates.' Nobody wants to pay a higher interest rate, but I think that's an easy choice for most people. \" If you're going to buy a home, chances are that you will opt for a mortgage. Most home buyers do. Those loans have become remarkably affordable, especially since the financial crisis, with their interest rates bottoming out at around 3. 5 percent. In general, movement of the Fed's rate does not have a large, direct impact on mortgage rates. But when the Fed's rate goes up, banks find ways to pass their higher borrowing costs along to consumers. And because mortgage rates are set in stone, they also factor in the anticipation of future rate increases. That's part of why mortgage rates have been shooting up in recent months: The Fed has suggested that interest rates are likely to continue rising for years. The average interest rate on a mortgage this month is 4. 3 percent, according to LendingTree, and the average loan on a mortgage is worth about $237, 000. If the borrowing rate were to rise by, say, another percentage point in the coming year, this would mean an additional $138 a month on the average mortgage \u2014 leading to nearly $50, 000 in added interest over the duration of the loan. As mortgage rates go up, people are a little less likely to buy a house, and those with mortgages are less likely to refinance (because they probably will not end up with a better deal). An interesting wrinkle is that as a result, volume \u2014 that is, the amount of new mortgage contracts being issued \u2014 goes down. So brokers could also start loosening their requirements for new mortgages. The annual percentage rate on your credit card can be anywhere from 15 percent to 20 percent \u2014 much higher than the interest rate on a mortgage or a car loan. An uptick in the Fed's interest rate might cause your credit card's A. P. R. if it's variable as opposed to fixed at a specific rate, to bounce by one or two percentage points. The effects of that can be larger than they may initially seem, in part because the interest compounds. That is, you begin to pay interest on what you owe and the interest that you have been accumulating on that. \"If you're accumulating credit card debt for a year,\" said Markus K. Brunnermeier, a Princeton economist, \"moving from 13 percent interest to 15 percent is a much bigger deal than moving something from 1 percent to 3 percent. \" Rates for student loans, like other forms of borrowing, are at a relative low. But as the Fed's rate rises, that will change for those just starting to think about paying for college. Federal loans are tied to the Treasury rate, which factors in the Fed's anticipated interest rates over the coming decade. Because these rates are projected to tick up steadily by the Fed's own forecasts, students planning to take out loans in the next few years can expect the government's student loan rates to rise. \"Students taking out new debt will be looking at higher payments,\" Dr. Baker said, adding that he expected rates could rise by one or two percentage points in the next few years. Rates for car loans, too, are already climbing in response to the Fed's expected move. Auto loans tend to last only a few years, so there is still time for car buyers to get ahead of the curve. That's because the Fed, in its most recent economic projection, predicted that interest rates will continue climbing into the next decade. A few years from now, a car loan issued in 2017 could be fully paid off, and interest rates may still be on the rise. \"If you're thinking of buying it now or in two years' time, you should buy it now,\" Dr. Brunnermeier said. What about renters? An increase may also affect them \u2014 just not as directly. Higher rates mean that landlords must pay more to purchase and renovate their properties, so in the long run, those are costs they could easily pass on to renters \u2014 though it's not necessarily a given that it will happen. And with the labor market improving, workers' wages could rise at about the same time as rent prices, said Stephen D. Oliner, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and former member of the Federal Reserve Board. \"It's possible that with their wages rising, people will be able to keep up with the higher payments on their rents,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Mick Mulvaney, White House budget chief and acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), said on Monday he has no intention of firing Leandra English, who had attempted to block him from taking control of the agency. Former CFPB head Richard Cordray had named English to lead the bureau following his resignation last month, but that appointment had been mired in turmoil after U.S. President Donald Trump had assigned Mulvaney to the same role. A U.S. District Court judge last week sided with Trump, saying the law gave Mulvaney the right to lead the consumer finance watchdog, but English is challenging the decision. During a news briefing at the CFPB on Monday, Mulvaney told reporters he would \"absolutely not\" consider firing English and that he would like her to continue to serve as deputy director but had not had any direct contact with her. English could not immediately be reached for comment through her lawyer, Deepak Gupta. Since arriving at the CFPB, Mulvaney has implemented a hiring freeze and suspended all new regulations for 30 days. On Monday, he said he was also reviewing more than 100 pending enforcement actions, including litigation as well as private settlement talks and investigations. He declined to comment on specific cases, but said there were two litigation actions he has asked to delay and separately cited the CFPB's case against mortgage company PHH Corp (PHH.N) as one that \"has issues\" without elaborating. The budget chief said data security was also a top priority and that he had instructed the bureau to stop collecting personally identifiable information until data security problems highlighted by the bureau's independent audit office had been addressed. Mulvaney this week brought in Republican congressional lawyer Brian Johnson as a senior adviser and plans to quickly bring on board more political hires to help him review the bureau's existing and pending regulations, the budget chief said. \"Then I'm going to get down to the weeds of something I enjoy which is the budget, and how the agency ... is funded, how it's structured, personnel, those types of things,\" he added. Trump \"wants to move expeditiously\" on naming a permanent replacement but the Senate confirmation process is likely to take some time and Mulvaney expects to be in the interim role for up to seven months, he said in an interview Reuters. English is expected to formally file a preliminary injunction against Mulvaney and Trump this week, according to court filings.","label":0}
{"text":"After becoming one of the Columbia Fireflies best fan draws, former NFL quarterback and now baseball player Tim Tebow may be in line for a promotion, according to sources. [Tebow's playing stats have been quite respectable, especially considers he is almost a decade older than many of his teammates. The former Denver Bronco was signed to a minor league contract by the New York Mets this year and has been playing in South Carolina, achieving a 849 OPS over his last 16 games. Tebow has a . . . 370 slash line with two homers and 11 RBIs in 28 games for Columbia, the New York Post reports. His work on the diamond puts him in a solid position and the Mets have taken notice. According to sources, there is talk of bumping the player up to the next level in AA ball. But, there is undoubtedly another reason for this consideration. After all, Tebow has become a major for the Fireflies. Tebow is helping the Fireflies break team attendance records this year as fans scramble to see their new favorite player. In fact, by some estimates, Tebow has booted attendance for the Fireflies by a whopping 92 percent. Tim Tebow is boosting attendance by 92% in Columbia Fireflies road games according to @BaseballAmerica. \u2014 Michael Mayer (@mikemayerMMO) May 12, 2017, And, Tebow hasn't just helped the team he plays for bring fans to the stadium. He is a draw everywhere he goes. \"We had 4, 500 people in the stands,\" Hickory Crawdads season ticket holder Christopher Pack told the Associated Press this month, \"and 4, 300 were there to see Tim Tebow. \" The AP continued, saying, \"People show up in Tebow's NFL jerseys, and Florida Gator outfits, lining up around the rails in this intimate ballparks trying to get autograph or a selfie with Tebow. \" Tebow has been such a draw, even for other teams, that the Augusta, Georgia, GreenJackets found themselves scrambling to find enough concession workers to handle the crowd when Tebow came to town. On that day, 5, 830 fans turned out to see Tebow play, well above the GreenJackets' average of 3, 190 fans. Clearly the Mets want to bring that excitement to AA ball and thence to New York itself and the Majors if Tebow can continue playing at level. This is all a far cry from the doubters who insisted that Tebow's ideas of becoming a pro baseball player were the silly dreams of a silly man. Now, it appears that the Mets feel his capabilities are sustainable and that he is bringing fans to the stands in droves is a plus. It's a punch that can't be denied. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.","label":0}
{"text":"The sweeping tax overhaul that passed the U.S. Senate on Saturday contains the Republicans' biggest blow yet to former President Barack Obama's healthcare law, repealing the requirement that all Americans obtain health insurance. The individual mandate is meant to ensure a viable health insurance market by forcing younger and healthier Americans to buy coverage to help offset the cost of sicker patients. It helps uphold the most popular provision of the law, which requires insurers charge sick and healthy people the same rates. Removing it while keeping the rest of Obama's Affordable Care Act intact is expected to cause insurance premiums to rise and lead to millions of people losing coverage, policy experts say. \"It's going to take a bunch of healthy people out of the insurance market,\" said Craig Garthwaite, director of the healthcare program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Obamacare \"is going to collapse even more now,\" he said. Republican lawmakers failed several times this year to scrap the mandate as part of a broader repeal of Obamacare, blocked by opposition from a few of the party's senators, including Susan Collins of Maine. Collins, still opposed to removing the mandate, said she voted for the tax bill on Saturday after being assured by Republican leaders that they will support legislation to prop up U.S. health insurance markets. The tax bill is not yet final. The U.S. House of Representatives and Senate must now reconcile the differences in their respective versions of the legislation. \"Repealing the individual mandate simply restores to people the freedom to choose,\" Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who has opposed previous Obamacare repeal efforts, wrote in an opinion piece in Alaska's Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. \"Instead of taxing people for not being able to afford coverage, we should be working to reduce costs and provide options.\" One of the Obamacare stabilization bills, co-authored by Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patty Murray, would restore billions of dollars in subsidies that health insurers use to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low income Americans. A second, co-authored by Collins and Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, would create an additional $4.5 billion fund to compensate insurers for covering health care for the sickest patients. Still, health policy experts said both of those measures would be needed without a mandate repeal and would not make up for expected premium increases and the rise in the numbers of uninsured Americans. \"Neither of these bills would do anything to offset the increase in uninsured resulting from a mandate repeal,\" said Larry Levitt, health economist at the Kaiser Family Foundation. \"The marketplaces would limp along without a mandate but it's probably not a stable place.\" Without the mandate, health insurance premiums would rise 10 percent in most years over the next decade on the individual market and 13 million people would lose coverage by 2027, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report last month. Levitt said that insurers would need around $10 billion per year to offset the lost revenue from the individual mandate rather than raise premiums. Republicans, who control the White House, U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, failed for months to make good on a top campaign pledge of President Donald Trump. Trump has said Congress will return to repeal-and-replace efforts next year and over the past several months has taken regulatory and executive actions to steadily undermine the Obamacare law. Insurers and leading medical groups have already urged Congress to preserve the individual mandate and warned of \"serious consequences\" such as rising premiums and a rise in the number of uninsured if it were repealed.","label":0}
{"text":"Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) knocked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday for backing away from his push for comprehensive immigration reform, saying on ABC's \"This Week\" that he had \"folded like a cheap shotgun.\" Rubio, who announced his bid for president last week, has gotten heat from some conservatives for co-authoring an immigration reform bill that would allow some undocumented immigrants to eventually become citizens, along with ramping up border security and enforcement measures. He then said in February that he'd since learned a comprehensive approach was the wrong one, and that border security should be done separately and before other reform. McCaskill said, \"He took a principled, courageous stand on immigration reform\" while helping to draft the bipartisan bill that passed the Senate in 2013 -- but then dropped those principles. \"Then the minute his party's base starting chewing on about it, the minute Rush Limbaugh criticized him, he folded like a cheap shotgun,\" she said. \"That's old politics. That's not what we need right now. That is the stalest trick in the book. That is shirking on your principles because of the political necessities of your party.\" Rubio said on CBS's \"Face the Nation\" in an interview that aired on Sunday that it was wrong to say he \"walked away from\" immigration reform. \"Well that's not an accurate assessment,\" he said. \"What I'm saying to people is we can't do it in a massive piece of legislation, and I know because I tried. We understand that we have to deal with 12 million human beings that are in this country, that have been here longer than a decade. We know we have to deal with this. We are not prepared to deal with it until first you can prove to us that this will never happen again.\" \"Well that's a hypothetical that will never happen,\" Rubio said, reiterating he would first ask for border security and enforcement bills. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who is considering a run for president and is another author of the 2013 immigration bill, also referred to Rubio's shift on immigration Sunday in an interview with \"Fox News Sunday.\" When he was asked to give his thoughts on Rubio, he threw in a slight dig while praising the senator. \"He embraced immigration reform,\" he said. \"He seems to have backed off -- I'll let him explain why. I think comprehensive immigration reform, securing our border and dealing rationally with the 11 million [undocumented immigrants], is the only way you're going to solve this problem.\"","label":0}
{"text":"This is a pretty ironic statement for someone who s in big trouble with the FBI! In fact, it s been reported today that the FBI is getting closer to a devastating decision fro Clinton. If you ask me, Hillary has no business bring president!","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump is increasingly unlikely to nominate Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen next year for a second term, and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn is the leading candidate to succeed her, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing four people close to the process. Politico said sources in the White House, the Treasury Department and on Capitol Hill said that if Cohn decides he wants the job, he is likely to get it. \"It's Gary's if he wants it, and I think he wants it,\" Politico quoted one Republican whom it said was close to the selection process as saying. A few Senate Republicans may express reservations about Cohn but he would probably receive widespread support, a senior congressional Republican aide said, according to Politico. In response to a query from Reuters, White House spokeswoman Natalie Strom said: \"Gary is focused on his responsibilities at the NEC.\" Cohn, a Democrat and former Goldman Sachs president, did not work on Trump's campaign and only got to know him after the November election. Yellen took over from Ben Bernanke as Fed chair in February 2014 with the U.S. economic recovery from the 2008 financial crisis still on shaky ground. She has made no secret she puts a priority on growth in jobs and wages and a broad recovery in U.S. household wealth. Yellen begins two days of congressional testimony on Wednesday on the Fed's semi-annual report on the state of the U.S. economy. Under her leadership the Fed has pared the massive stimulus it put in place to counteract the 2007-2009 financial crisis and begun raising interest rates. Later this year Yellen expects to begin trimming the Fed's $4.5 trillion balance sheet in a gradual and predictable manner. \"I do think the Fed's trying to set a course toward normalization that won't be knocked out by a new Fed chair,\" said Eric Stein, co-director of global income at Eaton Vance. Still, Cohn would be a very different kind of leader than Yellen or her immediate predecessor, Ben Bernanke, both of whom hold doctorates in economics. Cohn began his career at Goldman as a commodities trader in 1990. \"He has more knowledge of financial markets than almost any Fed chair would have and less of a monetary policy background,\" Stein said. During last year's election campaign, Trump accused Yellen of accepting orders from then-President Barack Obama to keep interest rates low for political reasons, and he said he would replace her as Fed chair because she is not a Republican Party member. But in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in April, Trump said Yellen was \"not toast\" and that he respected her. A Fed spokeswoman had no comment on the Politico story. Yellen has said she plans to serve out her full four-year term as chair, which runs through Feb. 3. Cohn would join several other Goldman alumni around the Fed policymaking table, including New York Fed President William Dudley, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari and Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan.","label":0}
{"text":"Russian and Syrian jets killed at least 150 civilians and injured dozens in over a week of heavy bombing that shattered a six-month halt in intensive aerial raids in opposition-held northwestern parts of Syria, opposition rescue workers said on Wednesday. The renewed bombing campaign came after an array of jihadist rebels led by the former Qaeda offshoot in Syria last week waged a wide-scale offensive against government-controlled areas in northern Hama. We have pulled 152 bodies and we have rescued 279 civilians since the Russian and regime bombing campaign, said Salem Abu al Azem, a senior rescue worker from the opposition-run Civil Defence in Idlib, adding bodies were still being pulled out of the wreckage of buildings flattened by air raids. Russia s defense ministry says it is attacking hard-line Islamist militants. It denies accusations it has targeted infrastructure and medical centers to force rebels into local truces that effectively restore President Bashar al Assad s grip on the country. Civil defense officials and other humanitarian aid workers have documented the destruction of six hospitals, five defense centers, and power stations in the first few days of the bombing campaign alongside hitting camps where displaced civilians have been sheltering. Rebels and witnesses differentiate easily Russian jets from Syrian planes with the former flying in sorties at high altitudes making drops with devastating impact. The strikes began with intensive bombing of towns and cities in southern Idlib where the jihadists have a large presence but in recent days have spread to most towns across the province that borders Turkey. Thousands of families have fled from towns such as Jisr al Shqour and Jabal al Zawya to rural areas less exposed to daily bombing and shelling, aid workers said. The bombing campaign however comes shortly after a tripartite deal struck by Moscow, Ankara and Tehran to deploy an observer force in Idlib, a province where the former al Qaeda Syrian offshoot has cemented its control after it crushed opponents. The Kremlin said earlier this week Russia s president Vladimir Putin was expected to meet his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on a visit to Ankara on Thursday. Syrian rebel officials says Turkey wants to get the approval of Moscow, the power with the dominant role in Syria, to press ahead with its widely anticipated plan to deploy troops in Idlib.","label":0}
{"text":"After an awful campaign filled with hateful rhetoric, American voters elected a man to lead the most powerful country on earth even after he was accused of raping a 13-year-old. The year was 2016 and the accused was an alleged billionaire, former reality show star and an admitted sexual predator. Still, even after the revelations, conservatives saw nothing wrong with Donald Trump s behavior. The plaintiff described the horrifying incident in which Trump and his friend Jeffrey Epstein allegedly raped a child. A lawsuit was filed which claims that threats were made in order for the victim to keep her mouth shut about what had just happened.Both Defendants let Plaintiff know that each was a very wealthy, powerful man and indicated that they had the power, ability, and means to carry out their threats. Indeed, Defendant Trump stated that Plaintiff shouldn t ever say anything if she didn t want to disappear like Maria, a 12-year-old female that was forced to be involved in the third incident with Defendant Trump and that Plaintiff had not seen since that third incident, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed.There was a witness who backed up Jane Doe s claims. According to the lawsuit, Trump and Epstein sexually and physically abused the then 13-year-old plaintiff and forced her to engage in various perverted and depraved sex acts including being forced to manually stimulate Defendant Trump with the use of her hand upon Defendant Trump s erect penis until he reached sexual orgasm, and being forced to engage in an unnatural lesbian sex act with her fellow minor and sex slave, Maria Doe, age 12, for the sexual enjoyment of Defendant Trump after luring her to a series of underage sex parties by promising her money and a modeling career, according to Snopes.Trump has admitted knowing Epstein for 15 years. Epstein was named in multiple similar lawsuits, served 13 months in jail, and is registered as a sex offender for life.The lawsuit which was filed in California on April 26, 2016, was dismissed over technical filing errors and it was refiled in June of the same year, then dropped again in November after the plaintiff received death threats.Last year, Trump was also accused by 16 women of sexually harassing or assaulting them. Conservatives went on to elect him knowing full well that he is a sexual predator because he said so in the Access Hollywood tape.History will not be kind as it remembers November of 2016.Photo by Alex Wong\/Getty Images.","label":1}
{"text":"The United Nations refugee chief said on Wednesday the big question regarding the up to 800,000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh was whether they would be allowed to return to their homeland. Filippo Grandi, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said he hoped to discuss the statelessness of Rohingya with Myanmar officials in Geneva next week but recognized it was a very complex issue . It is very clear that the cause of this crisis is in Myanmar, but that the solution of this crisis also lies in Myanmar, Grandi told a news conference in Geneva on his return from Bangladesh. He called on the Myanmar authorities to end the violence in northern Rakhine state so that solutions to the situation could then be discussed. Some 480,000 Rohingya have fled northern Rakhine since Aug. 25 and accused the army of a campaign of violence that the U.N. has called ethnic cleansing , following attacks by Rohingya insurgents on police posts. About 300,000 Rohingya had previously crossed into neighboring Bangladesh. A Myanmar minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday that the Yangon government will manage the redevelopment of villages torched during the violence in Rakhine state. Since it is most likely that return will take time, if it happens, if violence stops, it will be important also to find in the medium term suitable solutions for the people that are in Bangladesh, Grandi said. He called for the Myanmar government to implement the recommendations of a commission led by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The lack of citizenship for the Rohingya, this needs to be addressed and resolved, he said. Clearly if only the people with papers can go back, that will be a very small number if at all, he said. So I think that the exercise should go beyond that and should really determine, if that s what is needed, who is a national, and those people should be allowed to go back and be given that citizenship. Grandi condemned violence by Rohingya insurgents, warning: It was also very obvious to me when I visited northern Rakhine that it is only a matter of time before terrorists would spring up from the situation of discrimination, of poverty, that prevailed in that area, he said. If the situation is not resolved, the risk of the spread of terrorist violence in the whole region - and this is a particularly fragile region - is very, very high.","label":0}
{"text":"German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that Turkey was fast abandoning the rule of law and vowed to push her EU partners to consider suspending or ending its accession talks at a meeting in October. Less than three weeks before a German national election, she spelled out her intentions clearly to the Bundestag lower house of parliament after sharpening her rhetoric on Sunday and saying Turkey should not become an EU member. Those comments, made in a televised debate with her Social Democrat (SPD) election rival, drew charges of populism from Ankara. It was the latest of a series of spats between Merkel and President Tayyip Erdogan over the last two years which has led to a serious deterioration in relations. Turkey is moving away from the path of the rule of law at a very fast speed, Merkel said, adding her government would do everything it could to secure the release of Germans detained in Turkey, who Berlin says are innocent. The Foreign Ministry said last week 12 German citizens, four of them with dual citizenship, had been detained in Turkey on political charges. One has since been released. The ministry updated its travel advice on Tuesday and said that incomprehensible arrests were taking place all over Turkey, including regions frequented by tourists. Venting her growing frustration, Merkel said a rethink of Germany s and the EU s relations with Turkey was needed. We will also - and I will suggest this takes place at the EU meeting in October - discuss future relations with Turkey, including the question of suspending or ending talks on accession, she said. I will push for a decisive stand ... But we need to coordinate and work with our partners, she said, adding that it would damage the EU if Erdogan saw member states embroiled in an argument. That would dramatically weaken Europe s position. Although Turkey s foreign minister has said EU membership remains a strategic goal, the EU has turned very skeptical - especially since Erdogan s crackdown on opponents after a failed coup in July 2016. A European Commission spokesman said on Monday Turkey was taking giant strides away from Europe. Although her conservative party has long opposed Turkish membership of the bloc, Merkel has staked a good deal on maintaining relations with its NATO ally. She has repeatedly defended an EU-Turkey migrant deal she championed last year because it helped to stem the flow of refugees fleeing war in the Middle East to western Europe. Merkel said despite her own reservations, she had gone along with EU accession talks agreed by her SPD predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder, mainly to ensure continuity in foreign policy. Erdogan accuses Germany of harboring plotters behind the 2016 coup attempt. Turkey has arrested about 50,000 people in its purges of state institutions and the armed forces. Ankara says the crackdown is necessary to ensure national security but many Western countries and human rights groups say it is an attempt by Erdogan to stifle all dissent. Erdogan also won sweeping new powers in a referendum in April. In the runup to the German election little divides the main parties, who currently share power in a grand coalition, on Turkey. SPD Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in July said Germans should be careful if they traveled to Turkey and threatened steps that could hurt investment there.","label":0}
{"text":"President Trump was still upbeat Wednesday night, as he settled into dinner in the White House residence with his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, some 24 hours after giving the most consequential speech of his brief presidency. But not long afterward, the glow from Mr. Trump's best day in office began to fade with the breaking news that his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, had met with the Russian ambassador during the 2016 campaign. Mr. Sessions failed to mention those conversations in his Senate confirmation hearing, or, according to presidential advisers, to tell Mr. Trump at all. The story overshadowed Mr. Trump's visit the next day to the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, a classic presidential opportunity to highlight his role as commander in chief. And by the time he got back to the White House on Thursday night, the president let his frustration show. In a statement repeating a familiar critique that Democrats were on a \"witch hunt\" over the administration's ties with Russia, Mr. Trump offered a passing but pointed public jab at how Mr. Sessions had handled the matter. \"He could have stated his response more accurately,\" Mr. Trump said. For Mr. Trump, it was the latest unforeseen obstacle preventing him from gaining traction after a historically bumpy first month in office that has been marked by massive national protests, the dismissal of his national security adviser, and historically low approval ratings. The president was irritated that Mr. Sessions did not more carefully answer the questions he was asked under oath, according to people who spoke with him. His larger frustration, however, was not with Mr. Sessions, but with whoever revealed the meetings to reporters for The Washington Post. Mr. Trump, according to his advisers inside and outside of the White House, has felt besieged by what he regards as a mostly hostile bureaucracy, consisting in part of Democrats and people who opposed his election who are now undermining his presidency with leaks. He believes that they are behind the stories about confusion and dysfunction in his administration and, most of all, that they have made his relationship with Russia a recurring issue. \"That is the real story,\" said Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, when asked for comment on how the White House views the constant string of stories based on what they have called leaks. Several of those stories have raised questions about ties between the president's 2016 campaign and Russian officials. Allies of Mr. Trump say his sense of being surrounded by hostile forces will be relieved once his own appointments fill the thousands of political jobs that have not yet been filled. But people close to Mr. Trump concede that the White House's sluggish hiring process, in which insufficient work was done to tap people for key deputy roles at major agencies during the transition process, is a large part of the problem. \"Any new administration takes a while to get their sea legs,\" said Charlie Black, a veteran Republican lobbyist. But he added that for Mr. Trump's administration, \"a big part of it is the lack of personnel political appointees around the government. \" In the meantime, Mr. Black and other Republicans said that Mr. Trump had to avoid the trap of fighting all fights, no matter how small. \"The Trump team needs to better stay on the offense with their reform agenda, take out the trash, and get on with governing,\" said Scott Reed, the top political strategist for the United States Chamber of Commerce, in a typical critique. Mr. Trump's aides were heartened by his relative calm even amid the flap around Mr. Sessions. And he stayed on message during his appearance on the Gerald R. Ford and on Friday in an appearance in Florida, declining to weigh in then as new reports emerged about previously undisclosed meetings between additional advisers and the Russian ambassador. Mr. Trump is not one to spare the blame when he has hit difficult patches in the past, and his rebuke of Mr. Sessions reflected that. So did his public jab at his press secretary, Sean Spicer, for his attempt to trace leaks from his communications staff members by examining their cellphones. Mr. Trump told Fox News that he personally would have done that type of search \"differently. \" But the stories related to Russia are of a different order of magnitude. During the transition he publicly called out the intelligence community for being behind the leaks and at one point, he compared them to smears conducted by the Nazis in the 1940s. More recently, he has blamed Democrats bitter over the defeat of Hillary Clinton. But while Mr. Trump puts the blame on leakers for his administration's rough start, it has not helped that the White House has been distracted by internecine skirmishes, partly dictated by lingering tensions between advisers and aides to the Republican National Committee, who came to work for the president after he tapped the committee's chairman, Reince Priebus, as his chief of staff. In the midst of it, Mr. Trump, who has a famously short attention span, has at times had trouble staying on course. He is pondering a broader response to the Russia issue, people close to him say, but he is so far stymied by opponents he can't see, but who have clearly knocked him off track. On Friday, Mr. Trump tried to go back on the offensive with two Twitter messages, one about Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, and the other about Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, and their meetings with Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, and Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States. Instead of the intemperate messages that Mr. Trump has often deployed, he had help from the White House social media team in crafting the Twitter posts. But in doing it, he ended the week by breathing more oxygen into the Russia issue. Such daily skirmishes might satisfy the need to fight back, but Republicans who want him to succeed caution that Mr. Trump's fate as president will lie in his actual accomplishments. \"If they get some legislative successes, they'll be fine,\" said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma, \"and if they don't, that's when the real trouble begins. \"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday the United States believed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline involving Russia and several European energy companies was a \"bad deal\" for Europe. Russia's Gazprom and its European partners agreed the project, which will run across the Baltic Sea to Germany, last year. But many eastern European countries and the United States have said the pipeline could limit supply routes and the energy security of the European Union, which gets a third of its gas from Russia. Biden made his comments during a news conference in Sweden.","label":0}
{"text":"Leave it to Obama to take to fear mongering to try and convince voters to vote for socialism What a putz!President Obama would much rather critique the Republican presidential race than the Democratic contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, arguing that the GOP is headed way beyond the political mainstream. To me, the relevant contrast is not between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, but (the) relevant contrast is between Bernie and Hillary and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and the vision that they re portraying for the country, Obama told Politico in an interview.Voters need to pay attention to the degree to which the Republican rhetoric and Republican vision has moved not just to the right but has moved to a place that is unrecognizable, Obama said.Obama told Politico the gap between Democrats and Republicans on everything from tax policy to immigration to foreign policy is as wide as he has seen.There were real differences with GOP nominee John McCain during the 2008 election, Obama said, but John McCain didn t deny climate science. John McCain didn t call for banning Muslims from the United States. You know, John McCain was a conservative, but he was well within, you know, the mainstream of not just the Republican Party but within our political dialogue.","label":1}
{"text":"SEOUL, South Korea \u2014 South Korea's Constitutional Court, which will decide whether President Park is permanently removed from office, on Thursday ordered Ms. Park to respond to one of the most contentious accusations against her: that she neglected her duties on the day in 2014 when hundreds died in the sinking of a ferry. Ms. Park's presidential powers have been suspended since Dec. 9, when the National Assembly voted to impeach her. The Constitutional Court has until June to decide whether her impeachment is justified, either reinstating her or formally ending her presidency. Thursday's hearing, which Ms. Park did not attend, was the start of that process. The legislature accused Ms. Park of a wide range of violations of law and the Constitution, including taking bribes from businesses. But for South Koreans, perhaps the most emotional accusation is that Ms. Park failed to protect citizens' lives on April 16, 2014, the day the Sewol ferry sank off the country's southwestern coast. More than 300 people drowned, most of them teenagers on a school trip, and the country was scarred by the catastrophe, perhaps the worst in its peacetime history. Ms. Park has been dogged by questions about what she was doing during the first seven hours of the Sewol disaster. She did not emerge from her official residence during that time, and her office has not explained what she was doing, though it has said she received updates and gave orders. In its impeachment bill, the National Assembly said Ms. Park's reticence undermined the people's right to know about the government's activities. On Thursday, the court appeared to agree. \"That was such a day for the country that most people will remember what they were doing that day,\" Justice Lee said. \"I am sure she has such memories. We ask her to give us a thorough account of where in the Blue House she was in those seven hours, an account of what official and private work she was doing then, and what reports and instructions she received and gave. \" A variety of government failures contributed to the Sewol disaster, and it deepened distrust of Ms. Park's leadership. Lurid rumors have since spread about what she was doing during those hours one such story says she was having a romantic liaison, another that she was undergoing plastic surgery. No evidence has emerged to support either allegation, both of which her office has denied. Her government has sued and even arrested people who have been accused of spreading such rumors. Though Ms. Park's office said she was kept up to date about the disaster, her visit to an emergency management center later that day led some to conclude that she was not fully informed. At one point, she asked why it was difficult to find missing passengers when they had life jackets an official had to remind her that the passengers were trapped inside the ship, which had overturned and all but disappeared below the water. The hearing on Thursday was brief and largely procedural, attended by only three of the court's nine justices, as well as lawyers representing Ms. Park and those appointed by the National Assembly to act as prosecutors. Two lone protesters stood outside the court, one supporting Ms. Park and the other calling for her impeachment, with a sign reading, \"The 304 who died in the Sewol ferry are watching you!\" The next hearing was set for Tuesday. The move to impeach Ms. Park stemmed originally from allegations that she conspired with a longtime friend and confidante, Choi to force big businesses to donate tens of millions of dollars to two foundations that Ms. Choi controlled. Ms. Park was also accused of letting Ms. Choi interfere with government affairs, despite having no official post. Ms. Park's approval ratings dropped to record lows in the weeks before her impeachment, and huge crowds filled central Seoul calling on her to resign or be removed from office. Prosecutors have indicted Ms. Choi on extortion and other charges and identified Ms. Park as an accomplice, though as a sitting president she cannot be indicted. The National Assembly is conducting its own investigation of the scandal, as is a special prosecutor. Both Ms. Park and Ms. Choi have denied breaking the law. Prime Minister Hwang is serving as acting president while Ms. Park is suspended. If the court removes her from office, a presidential election would be held 60 days later. On Thursday, the special prosecutor's office said it was asking the authorities in Germany to detain and extradite Ms. Choi's daughter, Chung who is believed to be there. The Foreign Ministry said Ms. Chung's passport would be invalidated if she did not return to South Korea. The special prosecutor is looking into allegations that Ms. Choi used millions of dollars from Samsung, South Korea's largest conglomerate, to finance her daughter's equestrian career and a luxurious lifestyle in Germany. A special prosecutor in South Korea has obtained a warrant to detain Ms. Chung for questioning. She is accused of illegally enrolling in Ewha Womans University in Seoul.","label":0}
{"text":"Emma Watson has been in the news lately and it s not because of her acting. She s a staunch feminist and a human rights activist, taking a strong position on the rights of refugees. She recently made news when she gave an extraordinary speech at the United Nations, advocating for the rights of women around the world. She also recently tweeted in solidarity with the refugees coming to Europe in search for safety after years of war and torment in Syria.That was more than enough for anti-feminist and anti-refugee trolls to attack Thomson by using her humanitarianism against her. There is a petition circulating that challenges Watson to live in a camp in Calais, France. Entitled Spend one week in a Calais migrant camp for feminism (without bodyguards), the petition states: In order to show how safe current migration is to Europe, particularly regarding the cause of feminism (I reject wholeheartedly the notion that North African and Middle Eastern migrants are unsafe, and rapists), Emma Watson should spend a week s holiday in a Calais migrant camp, without guards of course, to show how safe, and how pro feminism these migrants are. It all started with one simple humanitarian tweet:#refugeeswelcome Emma Watson (@EmWatson) September 7, 2015The tweet has since garnered plenty of responses for and against Watson s stance. Some ignorant people have chosen to lump all the refugees into a single category by citing the attacks on France:Remember this @EmWatson? #RefugeesWelcome They killed innocent people in #Paris, Emma. How do you sleep at night? pic.twitter.com\/LYqfoWuh4i JEB DELENDA EST (@rsmccain) November 15, 2015Others however, have shown support:@rsmccain @EmWatson if we abandon the innocent refugees we abandon compassion and create more extremists Chris France (@france_chris) November 15, 2015Since the petition was created a week ago, over 12,000 people have signed it with 15,000 being the goal. Here s what a troll had to say about Watson: Ever since she was invited to give a widely praised speech at the UN on the topic, she has become a poster girl of modern feminism. Her simultaneous embrace of female equality, mass migration and the misogynistic non-western cultures brought with it, is widely seen as typical of left wing activists today. In this context, the petition can be interpreted as an expression of frustration with the contradictions of modern liberal feminism, rather than merely a personal attack on Ms. Watson. Watson, who is best known for her role as Hermione in the Harry Potter films, was made a Goodwill Women s Ambassador by the United Nations in 2014 and has been passionately using her platform to advocate for the betterment of humanity. At only 24 years old, she s already making a difference. We need more people like Emma Watson and we need to support her.Featured Image Via Wikimedia Commons.","label":1}
{"text":"For anyone who thinks Trump s comments have crossed over the line, perhaps they ve forgotten about the Obama supported Arab Spring in Egypt that resulted in the violent overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak who was replaced by the radical Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi. And that s just one example Donald Trump accused President Barack Obama on Wednesday of founding the Islamic State group that is wreaking havoc from the Middle East to European cities. A moment later, on another topic, he referred to the president by his full legal name: Barack Hussein Obama. In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama, Trump said during a raucous campaign rally outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He is the founder of ISIS. He repeated the allegation three more times for emphasis.The Republican presidential nominee in the past has accused his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, of founding the militant group. As he shifted the blame to Obama on Wednesday, he said crooked Hillary Clinton was actually the group s co-founder.Trump has long blamed Obama and his former secretary of state Clinton for pursuing Mideast policies that created a power vacuum in Iraq that was exploited by IS, another acronym for the group. He s sharply criticized Obama for announcing he would pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, a decision that many Obama critics say created the kind of instability in which extremist groups like IS thrive.The White House declined to comment on Trump s accusation.The Islamic State group began as Iraq s local affiliate of al-Qaida, the group that attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001. The group carried out massive attacks against Iraq s Shiite Muslim majority, fueling tensions with al-Qaida s central leadership. The local group s then-leader, Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in 2006 in a U.S. airstrike but is still seen as the Islamic State group s founder.Trump s accusation and his use of the president s middle name, Hussein echoed previous instances where he s questioned Obama s loyalties.In June, when a shooter who claimed allegiance to IS killed 49 people in an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, Trump seemed to suggest Obama was sympathetic to the group when he said Obama doesn t get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands. In the past, Trump has also falsely suggested Obama is a Muslim or was born in Kenya, where Obama s father was from.","label":1}
{"text":"Any attempt to separate Taiwan from China will be thwarted and the principle of peaceful reunification must be upheld, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Wednesday at the start of a Communist Party Congress. China regards self-ruled and democratic Taiwan as a wayward territory, to be brought under Beijing s rule by force if necessary.","label":0}
{"text":"Throughout the drama of his U.S. Senate testimony on Thursday, James Comey sat ramrod-straight, his mouth set, all business. It was the posture of a longtime law-enforcement official and former FBI director, someone used to keeping matters close to the vest. But even the steady, crisp rhythm of his answers could not hide what lay beneath the surface: Comey's dismissal by President Donald Trump last month wounded and angered him. Beyond testifying to conversations he said he had with Trump concerning the federal probe into ties between Trump's campaign and Russian officials, Comey time and again told the Senate committee before him and viewers across the country he not only has a harsh opinion of the president's purported conduct, but also of his character. Just minutes into his testimony, Comey said the president and his aides had chosen to defame him by spreading lies about his job performance, attempting to shred a reputation carefully built during 20 years of government service. \"Those were lies, plain and simple, and I am so sorry that the FBI workforce had to hear them and that the American people were told them,\" he said. Later, Comey testified he began documenting his conversations with the president because of what he called \"the nature of the person.\" \"I was honestly concerned he might lie about the nature of our meeting,\" Comey said. Trump, uncharacteristically, stayed silent during Comey's testimony, despite earlier suggestions from White House aides that he might take to Twitter to respond. He never did, ceding the stage, for the moment, to his nemesis. He left rebuttals to his son, Donald Trump, Jr., who defended Trump on Twitter, and to his outside lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, who denied the president had ever pressured Comey to drop the FBI's probe into Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. In response to questions from senators, Comey repeatedly cast Trump as a boss or \"patron\" trying to secure his loyalty, something that Comey said made him \"uneasy.\" At one point, Comey was asked why his version of events should be believed over the president's. \"I've tried to be open, fair, transparent and accurate,\" he said, encouraging senators to examine the two men's \"consistency track record, demeanor, record over time, that sort of thing.\" Referring to a Trump comment on social media about the possible existence of tapes that could provide proof of their conversations, Comey said he was so rankled he decided to hand memos of his interactions with the president to a close friend to leak to the media. \"I've seen the tweet about the tapes,\" Comey said. \"Lordy, I hope there are tapes.\" At the White house, in keeping with Trump's silence, his aides played down the day's events. \"It's a regular Thursday at the White House,\" Sarah Sanders, the deputy press secretary, told reporters, as televisions in the West Wing blasted Comey's testimony. Trump watched at least part of the hearing with his outside legal team, in a dining room at the White House, but Sanders said she did not know if he had seen much of it. Sanders took umbrage when asked if, as Comey had suggested, the president had lied. \"I can definitively say the president is not a liar. I think it's frankly insulting that question would be asked,\" she said. After Comey's testimony, Trump delivered a brief speech to a friendly audience at a conference of religious leaders in Washington where he did not mention the controversy. Throughout the hotel ballroom where the event was staged, attendees expressed support for the Republican Trump and distaste for Democrats and the news media. \"I feel he's doing a wonderful job for our country,\" said Donna Hubers of Baltimore, who was checking her phone for Comey updates. There were some lighter, and literary, moments in Comey's testimony. He recalled at one point that he had to give up a dinner date with his wife because Trump asked to meet him at the White House. That was one of the meetings that Trump allegedly used to pressure Comey to drop the investigation into Flynn. \"In retrospect, I love spending time with my wife, and I wish I would have been there that night,\" he said on Thursday, drawing laughs from the senators. Comey also reached into English history to boost his portrayal of Trump. He was asked by Senator Angus King, an independent, whether he took the president's references to the Flynn probe in the Oval Office as a directive to drop the matter. Comey replied with a quotation attributed to King Henry II of England, who was at odds with Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. \"Yes. It rings in my ear as, well, 'Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?'\" \"I was just going to quote that,\" Senator King said. \"And the next day, he (Becket) was killed.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt will face a second trial on Friday for genocide, a lawyer for victims said, reviving a case against the strongman accused of ordering massacres of Maya Indians during a long civil war. Rios Montt, who ruled Guatemala in 1982 and 1983 after a military coup, was convicted of genocide four years ago along with another military officer but the ruling was overturned. A Supreme Court tribunal will hear the case, Edgar P rez, a lawyer for the relatives of victims who have led a years long campaign against Rios Montt, said on Wednesday. The 91-year-old retired general was diagnosed with senile dementia in 2015. He will be represented in court by two lawyers and will not make a personal appearance. The lawyers were not immediately available for comment. The new trial will revisit the earlier accusations that Rios Montt ordered massacres leading to deaths of at least 1,771 Ixil Mayan Indians during his 17-month rule. Rios Montt maintains his innocence, saying junior officers acted without his knowledge. Guatemala s 1960-1996 civil war led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people and was the bloodiest among the Cold War conflicts that tore through Latin America when U.S.-backed military government battled leftist governments and rebels.","label":0}
{"text":"Jos\u00e9 Estrella pulled a handkerchief to cover his face as he began to speak. The air around the morgue in Mocoa was filled with the smell of the dead, he said, who included his sister and two nephews. \"Now the bodies are decomposing because they are in open air,\" said Mr. Estrella, his voice cracking as he spoke by telephone. He was unable to retrieve the bodies, he said the morgue, overloaded with the dead, was understaffed. The bodies were piling up on Monday morning in Mocoa, a Colombian city where mud and debris had made it impossible in places to see that anyone had ever lived there. Rescue workers continued to scour the rubble for the dead. And family members, like Mr. Estrella, pleaded for the bodies of loved ones so they could offer them a proper burial. The provincial capital in the southern mountains of the country was devastated by a flood of water and debris on Saturday that has so far claimed at least 262 lives. The heavy rains caused nearby rivers to rise, generating a torrent that leveled homes and neighborhoods. \"The putrefaction is beginning,\" said Nixon Piaguaje, a local radio journalist. Rescue teams, some covered in mud, waded through a landscape of stone and earth in what in many cases had become a search for bodies rather than survivors. Hundreds of relief workers arrived in the town to distribute supplies. President Juan Manuel Santos acknowledged \"bottlenecks\" in the relief process, but said more help would be arriving soon and promised a full reconstruction of the city. Edgar Ruiz, an indigenous leader, expressed frustration in a phone interview after trudging through the mud searching for lost members from his community, the Siona people. So far, he said, he had located six families alive from his group, but eight more were unaccounted for. \"We went to the health centers and the morgue as well, but they were nowhere,\" he said. Mr. Santos said that at least 43 of the dead were children. \"We send our prayers to all of them,\" he said. \"To their families we send condolences and the sympathy of the entire country. \" Colombian television transmitted images of loved ones still searching for lost children in the rubble. \"I did everything that was possible: I told my son don't let go, and he said he wouldn't,\" Yuri Narv\u00e1ez told Colombian television station Caracol TV. \"But the current came and we lost him. \" Mr. Piaguaje, the radio journalist, said there were so many bodies that there was no one to bury them all. \"When someone finds a cadaver, they take them to the cemetery and just leave them there,\" he said. He said scores of bodies were still lying in open air. On Monday afternoon, Mr. Estrella, the man who was unable to get the bodies of his relatives in the morgue, recalled rushing to the neighborhood of San Miguel after hearing the mudslide to see if his family members were still alive. Instead he looked on as rescue workers pulled out their bodies: First his sister, who lay near the ruins of her home, then her two daughters, one 8, the other just 5 months. He said he had since been haunted by the smell of the dead. \"You smell it for hundreds of feet,\" he said. \"There are people who faint when they open the bags and the bodies are putrefied. \"","label":0}
{"text":"If it were up to this President, we wouldn t have any arms to bear U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Tuesday said it will no longer require incoming U.S. citizens to pledge that they will bear arms on behalf of the United States or perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces as part of the naturalization process.Those lines are in the Oath of Allegiance that people recite as they become U.S. citizens. But USCIS said people may be able to exclude those phrases for reasons related to religion or if they have a conscientious objection.USCIS said people with certain religious training or with a deeply held moral or ethical code may not have to say the phrases as they are naturalized.The agency said people don t have to belong to a specific church or religion to use this exemption, and may attest to U.S. officials administering the oath that they have these beliefs.","label":1}
{"text":"A Kenyan court on Monday awarded a young woman four million shillings in damages after she was strip-searched by police who said they were looking for drugs. The incident in August 2015 provoked an outcry in the East African country after images of the half-naked 18-year-old schoolgirl were posted on social media. She pleaded guilty to possession of marijuana shortly after the incident and was sentenced to 18 months on probation. In the lawsuit she later filed jointly with a child rights group, the young woman said the photos humiliated her and sought legal compensation. Kenyan high court judge John Mativo said in his ruling that the student was entitled to the four million shillings ($38,815) because her constitutional rights to dignity had been violated. The student had been traveling with more than 40 others on a bus home for the holidays when she was stopped by the police. The court s ruling is a rare victory in the East African country s legal system against the police. Although no police officers were tried or found guilty in the case, the ruling was an acknowledgment of wrongdoing. A government civilian body exists to oversee the police, but few officers are charged and convictions are extremely rare.","label":0}
{"text":"France has decided to arm its surveillance drones in West Africa as part of counter-terrorism operations against Islamist militants, Defense Minister Florence Parly said on Tuesday. French President Emmanuel Macron has made fighting Islamist militants his primary foreign policy objective and the move to armed drones fits into a more aggressive policy at a time when it looks increasingly unlikely Paris will be able to withdraw from the region in the medium to long-term. France currently has five unarmed Reaper reconnaissance drones positioned in Niger s capital Niamey to support its 4,000-strong Barkhane counter-terrorism operation in Africa, and one in France. Beyond our borders, the enemy is more furtive, more mobile, disappears into the vast Sahel desert and dissimulates himself amidst the civilian population, Parly said in a speech to the military. Facing this, we cannot remain static. Our methods and equipment must adapt. It is with this in mind that I have decided to launch the process to arm our intelligence and surveillance drones. A further six of 12 Reaper drones, built by U.S. firm General Atomics and ordered after France s 2013 intervention in Mali to eventually replace its EADS-made Harfang drones, are due to be delivered by 2019. The defense ministry said on Tuesday the new drones would be delivered with Hellfire missiles while the existing six would be armed by 2020, possibly with European munitions. Previous French administrations have shied away from purchasing armed drones, fearing a possible increase in civilian casualties. Al Qaeda s north African wing AQIM and related Islamist groups were largely confined to the Sahara desert until they hijacked a rebellion by ethnic Tuareg separatists in Mali in 2012, and then swept south. French forces intervened the following year to prevent them taking Mali s capital, Bamako, but they have since gradually expanded their reach across the region, launching high-profile attacks in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, as well as much more frequent, smaller attacks on military targets. At the end of July, at the military base in Niger, officers and pilots had told Reuters it was imperative to arm the drones to be more efficient and quick in tackling jihadist groups. In the future, armed drones will enable us to accompany surveillance ... with the capacity to strike at the opportune moment. We will be able to gain in efficiency and limit the risk of collateral damage, Parly said. France is also working with Germany, Italy and Spain to develop a European drone, which is expected to be ready by 2025.","label":0}
{"text":"President-elect Donald Trump will not revive his predecessor's stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in any form, but will quickly pursue bilateral trade agreements, a Trump transition policy adviser said. \"TPP is dead. I cannot stress that more strongly,\" said the adviser, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly for the administration that takes office on Jan. 20. \"TPP, or a multilateral agreement that looks like TPP but is called something else, is emphatically dead.\" On Wednesday, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, said he was not opposed to President Barack Obama's 12-country Pacific Rim trade deal but shared some of Trump's views \"on whether the agreement that was negotiated serves all of America's interests at best.\" Speaking by phone late on Thursday, the Trump adviser said Tillerson was expressing some personal views on free trade theory. The adviser said the administration was not going to pursue multilateral trade deals. \"You will be shocked by the speed at which bilateral agreements begin to materialize,\" the adviser said. Britain has expressed strong interest in a bilateral trade deal with the United States once it exits the European Union. Official spokespeople for the Trump transition team did not respond to Reuters' requests for further comment. The adviser said he would not rule out declaring China a currency manipulator or levying tariffs on Chinese goods as a means of reducing massive U.S. trade deficits with China. He declined to speculate how quickly a currency designation could come, adding that the issue needed further review. The Trump policy adviser said the new administration is determined to reverse years of Chinese trade practices that have \"hollowed out\" the U.S. manufacturing base. \"You have to understand the view of this administration that China is essentially perpetrating an economic war, they're already engaged in a trade war against us,\" the adviser said.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday said one of the top goals of the Trump administration's tax plan is to help the middle class, but he could not guarantee that every middle-class family would receive a tax cut. \"It is our objective that the entire middle class will get a tax cut,\" Mnuchin said on ABC's \"This Week\" program. \"You cannot make guarantees because every single person's taxes are different, people take advantage of different things.\" President Donald Trump last week outlined his plan, which includes reducing the corporate income tax rate to 20 percent, establishing a new 25 percent tax rate for pass-through businesses and lowering the top income tax rate for individuals to 35 percent. A report on Friday from the non-profit Washington-based Tax Policy Center found that taxpayers in the top 1 percent income bracket - above $730,000 - would receive about 50 percent of the total benefit from the overhaul, with their after-tax income forecast to increase an average of 8.5 percent. The group said about 12 percent of taxpayers would face an average tax increase of roughly $1,800. This includes more than a third of taxpayers making between about $150,000 and $300,000, as most itemized deductions, including for state and local taxes, would be repealed. Mnuchin and other Trump administration officials defended the plan, saying it is not aimed at helping the rich, while acknowledging the details were in flux. \"The objective of the president is that rich people don't get tax cuts,\" Mnuchin said. \"As we go through this process, we will explain to the American public how this works.\" Mnuchin was also asked on whether a proposed new rate of 25 percent for so-called pass-through businesses would end up being exploited by wealthy people looking to lower their tax bills. About 95 percent of American businesses are pass-throughs such as sole proprietorships, partnerships and S-corporations, according to the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. The name comes from the profits and losses of such businesses that pass through directly to their owners, unlike public corporations. Mnuchin said the administration would seek to put \"guard rails\" around rules for pass-throughs to avoid people using them as a loophole. White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told CNN's \"State of the Union\" program: \"This really is about the middle class and the corporate tax rate, for the president.\" Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic adviser, said no one knows how the plan would affect Americans because it has not been finalized. \"When people come out with these definitive statements of what the tax plan is going to do, or what the tax plan is not going to do, I find it hard to believe, because we don't even know what the tax plan is going to look like in its entirety,\" Cohn said on Fox News' \"Sunday Morning Futures\" program. Mnuchin said the administration hoped to have the tax overhaul legislation passed in December.","label":0}
{"text":"By karencole  Posted Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 10:20am EDT  Having a great smile can say so much about someone. This is the first thing when making a conversation with someone. If your teeth are not white enough, it may greatly lower your self-esteem, and you lack confidence. In the long run, you end up losing opportunities, and you are unable to express yourself. There are so many people with discolored teeth, and they have spent a fortune in dental visits, yet there are several ways that they can be controlled by below home remedies . Watch what you eat.  Ensure that you frequently eat crunchy fruits as well as vegetable . Fruits such as apples, carrots act as a natural toothbrush. They are important in removing any bacteria that may be present in the mouth. Also, these fruits remove any food particles that may be left in the mouth. They are also useful in scrubbing any stain that may be on the surface of the teeth.  Also, consider taking strawberries. They are known to contain a Malic acid enzyme which is important in removing any stains on the teeth surface thus whitening the teeth. While eating them, you should chew them thoroughly to ensure that they are brushing the teeth. Always brush and floss your teeth on a daily basis.  Brushing and flossing your teeth regularly helps a lot in avoiding the formation of plaque. It is recommended that you should brush and floss at least twice a day. The time taken to brush the teeth may not mean much but it is the quality and how well you do it that matters. While brushing, ensure that u reach the surfaces that are behind your teeth as well as the back molars. The bottom line is removing any food particles and bacteria that may facilitate the formation of plaque. Use the oil pulling method.  This method is quite common with the Indian community. It helps in improving their oral health and cleansing their bodies. For this method, it entails moving a tablespoon of oil in your mouth for a few minutes while pulling it in between your teeth. After about 20 minutes, spit the oil and clean your mouth using plenty of water. Doing this frequently can go a long way in whitening your teeth thus better oral health . Use of a mixture of baking soda and lemon.  This method is used by so many people in whitening the teeth. The mixture has a reaction that often results in brighter teeth. However, you should be very careful in ensuring that the mixture doesn't stay in your mouth for long without brushing as it will result in enamel erosion.  By following the above natural home remedies, you can rest assured that you will have whiter teeth. Ensure practice these tips frequently.  Author Bio: Karen Cole is working as a freelance writer from last 4 years. Currently, she is doing research on oral health and working with some dentists of USA . You might also like\u2026","label":1}
{"text":"The GOP tent continues to get smaller as the first House Republican has decided to vote for Hillary Clinton against the divisive Donald Trump.New York GOP Rep. Richard Hanna, unlike many of his Republican colleagues, has a conscience. Therefore, he can t hold his nose and support the Republican nominee.Many Republicans continue to support Trump even though he has made blatantly racist comments and preached hate on the campaign trail. But Hanna has had enough.In an open letter written for Syracuse.com, Hanna ripped Trump:Months ago I publicly said I could never support Trump. My reasons were simple and personal. I found him profoundly offensive and narcissistic but as much as anything, a world-class panderer, anything but a leader. Little more than a changing mirror of those he speaks to. I never expect to agree with whoever is president, but at a minimum the president needs to consistently display those qualities I have preached to my two children: kindness, honesty, dignity, compassion and respect.I do not expect perfection, but I do require more than the embodiment of at least a short list of the seven deadly sins.Then Hanna slammed the Republican Party for alienating a large swath of Americans while becoming incapable of nominating a candidate who is electable:I have long held the belief that the Republican Party is becoming increasingly less capable of nominating a person who is electable as president. The primary process is so geared toward the party s political base, which ignores the fact that we have largely alienated women, Hispanics, the LGBT community, young voters and many others in general.Hanna went on to call Trump deeply flawed and blasted him for the way he has treated John McCain and for the way he is treating Humayun Khan s family now. Hanna is ashamed that his party continues to still support Trump even though he is insulting military families and veterans across the country.And that why he is throwing his support and most importantly, his vote -to Hillary Clinton.Secretary Clinton has issues that depending on where one stands can be viewed as great or small. But she stands and has stood for causes bigger than herself for a lifetime. That matters. Mrs. Clinton has promoted many of the issues I have been committed to over the years including expanding education and supporting women s health care.While I disagree with her on many issues, I will vote for Mrs. Clinton. I will be hopeful and resolute in my belief that being a good American who loves his country is far more important than parties or winning and losing. I trust she can lead. All Republicans may not like the direction, but they can live to win or lose another day with a real candidate. Our response to the public s anger and the need to rebuild requires complex solutions, experience, knowledge and balance. Not bumper sticker slogans that pander to our disappointment, fear and hate.Now that one Republican in Congress has the balls to vote for Hillary in rejection of Trump, how many others will do the same?","label":1}
{"text":"With more than 20 nominees now selected, Donald Trump's cabinet appears much like the president-elect himself: mostly older, white males, many of them wealthy, who see themselves as risk-takers and deal-makers and prize action over deliberation. Trump, who says Washington is \"broken\" and controlled by special interests, has largely eschewed technocrats with long government experience. Instead, he has built a team of bosses. Trump's roster of agency heads and advisers conspicuously lacks intellectuals, lawyers, and academics of the sort sought by some past presidents. In their place are titans of business and finance from the likes of Exxon Mobil and Goldman Sachs and no fewer than three retired generals in key positions. Commentary: Mr. Trump, here's what other presidents learned from the CIA U.S. intelligence agencies feud with Republicans over Russian hacking Obama points finger at Putin for cyber attacks on U.S. election Many of them are people used to getting their way but will now have a boss to answer to - Trump - while navigating the sometimes frustrating and sprawling bureaucracy of the U.S. government. The incoming Trump administration is poised to undo as much of President Barack Obama's accomplishments as possible, while also attempting to advance a conservative policy agenda in areas such as taxes and healthcare. A former senior U.S. official who knows Rex Tillerson, the former Exxon Mobil CEO who is Trump's nominee for secretary of state, and Marine General James Mattis, Trump's pick for defense secretary, predicted a massive clash of egos in the cabinet. Tillerson and Mattis are \"accustomed to dominating whatever space they find themselves in, and that probably will now include the Situation Room and even the Oval Office.\" Trump's transition team has said the cabinet is intended to be a mix of experienced Washington hands and newcomers. But former presidents who brought in outside blood have at times seen political neophytes make costly errors, experts said. Of the 21 cabinet members and White House advisers chosen to date by Trump, 16 are white men. There are four women, none of whom hold what might be considered a top-tier agency post. There is one African-American, one Asian-American and one Indian-American. There are no Hispanics. Like the real-estate magnate who chose them, several have no government experience. Others have been hostile toward the agencies they will lead if the U.S. Senate confirms them early next year. Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, said Trump is building a cabinet in his own image: blunt-talkers with real-world experience. \"Surrounding yourself with military guys and money guys sends a certain message,\" Zelizer said. \"A certain kind of cutthroat aggressive dealmaker is how [Trump] imagines himself to be.\" Obama, who leaves office in January, relied on experienced hands to form his cabinet in 2008. He named his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, as his secretary of state. Robert Gates, who served the previous administration, remained at the Pentagon, and Obama made longtime Justice Department official Eric Holder attorney general. Some of Trump's picks do have similar experience, and he has packed his on-the-ground transition teams at various agencies with government veterans and ex-lobbyists, a Reuters review found earlier this month. The newcomers to Washington will rise to the administrative challenge, said those who know them. Republican Representative Tom Price, Trump's choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is \"decisive by nature,\" said fellow Republican lawmaker Tom Cole. He credited Price's career as a surgeon, which is also the former profession of Ben Carson, Trump's choice for secretary of housing and urban development. Carson, said Henry Brem, a neurosurgeon who worked with Carson at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, has a \"cool head\" and is unafraid to give strong opinions. \"He's a gentleman, he speaks his mind, he has great ideas \u2013 and nobody in the world intimidates him.\" Rick Perry, Trump's choice for energy secretary, served three terms as governor of Texas and had to \"balance a very conservative and increasingly ideological grassroots (support base) with a very influential business community,\" said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. \"Whether he can do that do that in a bureaucratic setting, in an environment as competitive as a cabinet with a lot of obviously large egos, I think is another question,\" Henson said. Several of Trump's picks have never held any sort of government post and have little, if any, background in policy-making, including Tillerson, Treasury nominee Steven Mnuchin, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, Commerce pick Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor, and Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs executive who would chair Trump's economic council. In 2008, Mnuchin purchased IndyMac, a lender that failed during the financial crisis and helped transform it into OneWest, now a thriving retail bank in southern California. Kevin Kelly, a managing partner at Recon Capital Partners, an investment firm in Stamford, Connecticut, said that kind of real-world savvy could make government more effective. Those with high-level corporate experience are used to having to please shareholders, board members, employees, and the community, Kelly said. \"It takes a very precise and dedicated person to deliver across those constituencies.\" The outsider approach hasn't always worked. In 2001, President George W. Bush's treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, the former chief executive of aluminum producer Alcoa Inc, rattled markets with a series of careless remarks that seemed to herald economic policy shifts that differed with the White House's stance. He ultimately was fired. \"Management of large, public agencies is really difficult and requires bringing in experienced and knowledgeable people and working in ways that doesn't alienate people,\" said Thomas Mann, an expert on governance at the Brookings Institution. Anthony Scaramucci, an adviser to the Trump transition, has acknowledged that too much inexperience could be harmful to Trump's young administration. \"Washington is a very healthy immunological system,\" he said. \"You'll see a full-blown organ rejection if you put too many status-quo disruptors in Washington.\"","label":0}
{"text":"The outcome of local elections in Sicily has further weakened the ruling party of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and strengthened the populist 5-Star Movement s lead, a poll conducted after the regional vote showed. Based on the IPSOS poll published in Saturday s Corriere della Sera, a center-right coalition would win next year s general election with 253 seats while the 5-Star would have 173 and Renzi s Democratic Party 164 together with a smaller ally, leading to a hung parliament. As Italy nears a national vote it must hold by May 2018, concerns are mounting it may leave the country ungovernable. The poll conducted on Nov. 8-9, showed the 5-Star Movement now leads with 29.3 percent of preferences while the Democratic Party stands at 24.3 percent, having lost six percentage points in six months. Italy has just introduced a new electoral system that is expected to handicap the anti-establishment 5-Star favoring instead mainstream political blocs. The voting system - a mix of proportional representation and first-past-the-post - will benefit parties that form pre-election coalitions, something the 5-Star has always ruled out. Seen as a dry run for next year s nationwide election, the Sicilian ballot held on Nov. 5 marked a strong political comeback for Silvio Berlusconi, handing government of the island to a center-right bloc backed by the four-times prime minister. Berlusconi s Forza Italia party had 16.1 percent of preferences according to the poll. The anti-immigrant Northern League another 15.3 percent and smaller center-right party Fratelli d Italia 5.1 percent. Half of the respondents in the poll said Renzi had been weakened by the Sicilian vote and should not run for premier again, while 32 percent thought he had remained the best option for the Democratic Party. Renzi stepped down as prime minister after voters rejected his landmark constitutional reform in December last year. Half of the people polled said they thought the center-right would not be able to stay united once in power.","label":0}
{"text":"Saudi Arabia s King Salman discussed the most prominent developments in the region in a telephone call from the Turkish president, the Saudi state news agency reported, after President Donald Trump announced the U.S. Embassy in Israel would be moved to Jerusalem. The agency gave no further details on the discussions. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam s holiest sites, and regional Muslim power Turkey have both warned against any attempt to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital or move the embassy to city.","label":0}
{"text":"The editorial board of a Detroit newspaper wrote a frantic piece to its readers, calling President Donald Trump's immigration plans \"a moral stain. \"[The editors of the Detroit Free Press claim Trump's promise to secure the Border is an \"attack America and American values\": Trump's vision for American immigration, egged on by a slew of lawmakers, is an attack on America and American values \u2014 on undocumented residents, sure, but also on the millions of American immigrants here lawfully. This kind of targeted enforcement marks out Americans, regardless of immigration status, as different, other, suspect. It's a clear demarcation of whom Trump and his cohort consider real Americans. The Detroit Free Press editorial board goes on to say that \"the idea that a border wall would halt or even pause illegal immigration \u2014 much less the idea that Mexico will volunteer payment for such a wall \u2014 is absurd. \" However, Trump has proposed a 20 percent tax on imports coming into the U. S. from Mexico which would serve as a payment from Mexico for the border wall, as Breitbart News reported. Likewise, the claim that walls do not serve to secure borders has been challenged by the National Border Patrol Council, which has heralded Trump's immigration plans, as Breitbart Texas reported. \"We know we won't have a wall along the 2, 000 miles of border,\" the President for the Local 2455 of the National Border Patrol Council Hector Garza said. \"What we will have is a wall where it is needed. That barrier with proper manpower, resources, technology and other tools will be effective. But most important, for the first time we have a president that wants to secure the border. \" The editorial board also wrote that Trump tapped into \"bigoted fear\" over immigration: But Trump gained a lot of his support by manipulating truth about America's immigration challenges, by painting a picture of Latino and Muslim immigrants as, broadly, leeches and potential terrorists. That's what his policies are about. That's the bigoted fear he tapped into. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has found that illegal immigrants are somewhat of a drain on American social services, costing about $113 billion for them to live in the country, as Breitbart Texas reported. Ending the editorial, the Detroit Free Press calls on residents and citizens to be a \"resistance\" to Trump, writing, \"there is undoubtedly much more to come. Which means the protests over his early actions may need to take a turn toward another tactic: resistance. \" John Binder is a contributor for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.","label":0}
{"text":"Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged world powers on Friday to get behind a joint Russian-Chinese roadmap for settling the crisis over North Korea s weapons program. Speaking at a conference on non-proliferation in Moscow, Lavrov said that the break-up of a deal on Iran s nuclear program would send an alarming message about international security mechanisms, and could impact the situation on the Korean peninsula.","label":0}
{"text":"Justice Department deputy solicitor general Michael Dreeben will assist Robert Mueller and he s no slacker. He has argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court so his resume is worthy of joining the investigation into possible coordination between Trump s associates and Russian officials. Donald Trump had better stock up on aspirin because team Mueller is going to be all up in his business. The move signals that Mueller may be seeking advice on complex areas of criminal law, including what constitutes obstruction of justice and that has been an issue of debate for a while now. Most recently, when former FBI Director James Comey testified Thursday.Dreeben is the department s go-to lawyer on criminal justice cases and is highly respected by Democrats and Republicans alike due to his encyclopedic knowledge of criminal law, according to the Washington Post.Dreeben has been pulled into the investigation to work part time for Mueller while he continues to oversee the department s criminal appellate cases, according to Justice officials.According to former and current Justice Department officials, Mueller s recruitment of Dreeben into the probe shows how serious he is about the investigation and signals complexities in the investigation.Dreeben is thought of as brilliant in his area of expertise:Michael is the most brilliant and most knowledgeable federal criminal lawyer in America period, said Walter Dellinger, a law professor at Duke University School of Law and acting solicitor general for the 1996-1997 term of the Supreme Court. I learned early on in my time as acting [solicitor general] that there was no point of ever thinking of second-guessing Michael on a matter of federal criminal law because he just knew more than I did or could ever know, Dellinger said. He s a straight shooter, and is held in the greatest esteem by the FBI and lawyers in U.S. attorneys offices all over the country. It s not just Dreeben:Mueller s team includes Jeannie Rhee, a former deputy assistant attorney general and a partner in the investigations practice at WilmerHale, and Andrew Weissmann, the chief of the Justice Department s fraud section who oversaw corruption investigations including the probe into cheating by Volkswagen on diesel emissions tests over.Aaaand, Trump s lawyer can t even spell President so that s kind of sad, don t you think? Marc Kasowitz, Trump s life-long personal attorney, issued a statement to refute Comey s testimony. The only problem is that it was riddled with errors, including the spelling of President. Spelling is HARD.Trump better lawyer up but hire someone more effective because it s Mueller Time!","label":1}
{"text":"In a landmark move, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced Tuesday that it is changing its posture toward gays. The church has decided to support anti-discrimination legislation for gays and lesbians in the realm of housing and employment. The church also announced that it it comes with the condition that no one can be forced to perform actions if he or she has religious objections. One example, a doctor who refuses to artificially inseminate a lesbian couple. Utah is facing two bills that protections for each group. Political watchers in the state have noted that both measures would be likely to pass if the LDS Church got behind it. \"When religious people are publicly intimidated, retaliated against, forced from employment or made to suffer personal loss because they have raised their voice in the public square, donated to a cause, or participated in an election, our democracy is the loser,\" said Elder Dallin Oaks, a member of the church's Quorum of Twelve Apostles. \"Such tactics are every bit as wrong as denying access to employment, housing, or public services because of race or gender.\" However, this month, the church was in hot water for planning to excommunicate a prominent critic of its same-sex marriage stance for the apostasy.","label":0}
{"text":"NTEB Ads Privacy Policy Iran Sending Elite IRGC Warfighters Into Europe And United States In Preparation For Battle Iranian military and government officials have continued to advocate violence against the U.S. and its allies, despite the nuclear deal and several secret side agreements that gave Iran $1.7 billion in cash. by Geoffrey Grider November 2, 2016 The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country's elite military force, is sending assets to infiltrate the United States and Europe at the direction of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, according to recent Farsi-language comments from an Iranian military leader.  EDITOR'S NOTE: This is just a small bit of what our next president will have to deal with. Do you want a president who needs to take naps all the time , or do you want a Commander in Chief who is awake, alert and highly energized to get the job done? It's a no-brainer, people, go out and vote to #MakeAmericaSafeAgain.  The IRGC \"will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,\" according to the Iranian military commander, who said that these forces would operate with the goal of bolstering Iran's hardline regime and thwarting potential plots against the Islamic Republic.  \"The whole world should know that the IRGC will be in the U.S. and Europe very soon,\" Salar Abnoush, deputy coordinator of Iran's Khatam-al-Anbia Garrison, an IRGC command front, was quoted as saying in an Iranian state-controlled publication closely tied to the IRGC. Iran's secret army, the IRGC:  The military leader's comments come as Iran is spending great amounts of money to upgrade its military hardware and bolster its presence throughout the Middle East and beyond. Iran intends to spend billions to purchase U.S.-made planes that are likely to be converted for use in its air force.  Congressional leaders and others suspect that Iran has used a large portion of the cash windfall it received as a result of last summer's nuclear agreement to upgrade its fighting capabilities war machine.  \"The IRGC is [the] strong guardian of the Islamic Republic,\" Abnoush was quoted as saying. \"The Fedayeen of Velayat [fighting force] are under the order of Iran's Supreme leader. Defending and protecting the Velayat [the Supreme Leader] has no border and limit.\" Iranian military and government officials have continued to advocate violence against the U.S. and its allies, despite the nuclear deal and several secret side agreements that gave Iran $1.7 billion in cash.  Iran accuses the U.S. of violating its end of the agreement by not helping the Islamic Republic gain further access to international banks and other markets. Iran's frustration over this has led to further accusations about a U.S. plot to foster unrest in the country. Iran IRGC UAV & UCAV operation units in Persian Gulf:  \"Our enemies have several projects to destroy our Islamic revolution, and have waged three wars against us to execute their plans against our Islamic Republic,\" Abnoush said. \"The IRGC has defeated enemies in several fronts. The enemy surrendered and accepted to negotiate with us.\"  \"And now all of our problems are being solved and our country is becoming stronger in all fronts. Some believe the holy defense ended,\" the military leader added. \"They are wrong; the holy defense continues, and today, it is more complicated than before.\"  Congressional sources and experts involved in tracking Iran's increased aggression in the region and elsewhere told the Washington Free Beacon that these most recent comments are troubling given Iran's very public efforts to assassinate political enemies and others across the globe.  \"If we look at Iran's previous terror attacks and assassination campaign around the world, such a statement is alarming,\" Saeed Ghasseminejad, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Free Beacon . \"The Islamic Republic has killed hundreds of Iranians and non-Iranians around the world in a coordinated campaign of terror. Iran may decide to restart the project now that many western companies are going to Iran and Iran feels its action in Europe may not be punished strongly.\"  Another source who advises congressional leaders on Iran sanctions issues told the Free Beacon that the Obama administration is blocking Congress from taking action to stop this type of infiltration by Iranian forces.  \"Iran is ideologically, politically, and militarily committed to exporting the Islamic revolution through terrorism, which is why even the Obama administration says they're the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism,\" the source said. \"Congress wants to act, but Obama officials keep saying that new laws are unnecessary because the U.S. has enough tools to block Iranian terror expansion. Instead of using those tools, though, they're sending Iran billions of dollars in cash while Iran plants terror cells in Europe and here at home.\" source SHARE THIS ARTICLE Geoffrey Grider NTEB is run by end times author and editor-in-chief Geoffrey Grider. Geoffrey runs a successful web design company, and is a full-time minister of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition to running NOW THE END BEGINS, he has a dynamic street preaching outreach and tract ministry team in Saint Augustine, FL. NTEB #TRENDING","label":1}
{"text":"Trump's grandfather was a pimp and tax evader; his father a member of the KKK \u2039 \u203a Bio by Jack Heart : My earliest memories were of being surrounded by machinery and a constant deep mechanical humming rose and fell like the breath of fitful sleep. Maybe it was the \"mother ship\" or the \"Montauk underground\" like Preston Nichols author of the The Montauk Projects would later claim but I am inclined to believe it was the post natal care room at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn where I was born to a well to do family. I grew up in Brooklyn. My father had a Fur business on Twenty-Seventh Street and Seventh Avenue in Manhattan. The city bought him and his partners out when they built the Fashion Institute of Technology. From grades one to five I attended the finest Catholic school in NYC. Before I was 12 my family moved to Amity Harbor Long Island and from there the volume on the strangeness was turned up full blast. My teenage years were spent working on fishing boats at Montauk Point where my father had been stationed at Camp Hero for the Korean War. Back home in Amityville we would wile away the night doing performance art for tourists milling around outside my best friend's home gawking at the Amityville Horror House, some of you may have already met me I was one of the guys throwing beer bottles at you. Butchy to this day doesn't know who was up in that room with him that night, nobody does but I can take a real good guess. By the time I was eighteen I realized that globalism had made the seas off Long Island barren and I would have to find a new way in life to make a living. I had always wanted to be a fisherman but I opened a landscaping business with my mother who was the top woman designer in her field. Our clients included many celebrities and denizens of Long islands gold coast. Back then it seemed life would always be good. I remember one day while dragging trees out some stock broker's yard he pulled up his long driveway in his convertible sports car. I looked at his decaying body not much older than mine. Then I looked down at mine. Salty sweat encased sinewy bronze muscles pumped full of blood from the days exertion. I decided I was just where I wanted to be. He would make his 500$ for the day and he had to give it to me because there was no way he was dragging that tree down his long driveway. Little did I know that he and his tribal brethren had a plan. Over the next twenty years they would flood America with illegal \"immigrants\" to do my job for a hundred dollars a day. Things are not so good anymore even with an associate's degree in architectural engineering I'll never make 500$ a day again. He makes more because now the government that sold me out, not once but three times subsidizes his job. I wonder how many of his tribe are buried in veterans memorial cemetery's. Practically every male member of my family is. I ended up on the wrong side of the law when I was 27 years old through no fault of my own. I was helping Geraldo Rivera film what I now realize must have been Ollie North's little cocaine contra excursion into NY. It was never aired. He quit his job but I was beaten and tortured by the police then branded as a felon for the rest of my life. In 1987 I was asked to remove the Pagans motorcycle gang from their clubhouse a strip club named Bogart's. The person that asked me was Richard Capri who died abruptly a few years back. He owned Bogart's and a lot of other strip clubs on Long Island. He was a prominent figure in New York's underworld. Financially he dwarfed people like Gotti and the rest of the menagerie of mutts paraded on TV as \"mob bosses.\" It was during that period that I realized I was a member of a very elite unit. Some would call us soldiers of God others the army of Satan. You read what I write and you decide. LUCIFER in the Temple of the Dog I By Jack Heart on October 28, 2016 LUCIFER in the Temple of the Dog I By Jack Heart, Orage & Friends  Every story has a beginning and an end, everything in between is just a story\u2026  The oldest stories known come from the Aborigine people of Australia. Their stories go back at least thirty thousand years. They are passed on orally by the tribe's elders under a rigid tradition called \"the law\" which ensures the preservation of the Aborigines ancient tribal narratives. Linguistic scholars who have studied them have noted the Aborigines ability to sustain \"the inter-generational scaffolding needed to transmit stories over vast periods.\" 1  Aborigine tribal lore has been academically documented to chronicle the thawing of the Ice Age and the flooding of the Australian coastline thirteen-thousand years ago.2 According The Wisdom Keepers an episode of Ancient Aliens, the television show purporting to document alien intervention in human history, Aborigine lore also recounts meteorite impacts, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and solar eclipses\u20263  What is certain is that aborigine culture ignores the brutal realities of its own existence and focuses on what is now called the dreamtime. The word dreamtime itself is a mistranslation of the Aborigine word alcheringa, which means the uncreated source; a source which was always there, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything that is perceived is derived.  To the aborigine the dreamtime is an altered state of consciousness that lies across the uncharted chasms of the mind, a place where everything that ever was has been imprinted forever in the aether. Nothing that was, nothing that is, can be lost and it can always be accessed by going back to the beginning through ceremonies and dreams.  According to Ancient Aliens; \"in many ways the concept of dreamtime mirrors the ancient Hindu idea of the Akashic records.\" 4 This may not be true\u2026  The idea of Akashic records go back no further than Madam Blavatsky and Theosophy, a system of mysticism which she founded. Akasha simply means aether in Sanskrit.  The expansion of the microcosm into the macrocosm and contraction back of the macrocosm into the microcosm is a doctrine of just about every reputable school of mysticism. \"As it is above is so it is below\" to the Hermitic. \"And the living creatures rush forth and return\" as it is written in verse 537 of the Zohar: Concerning the Eyes of Microprosopus\u2026  If Blavatsky and her followers got the idea from anywhere other than a library that there was an astral hall of cosmic records it was from Tibetan lamas schooled in the all but forgotten ways of the ancient Bon religion. Bon was the mysterious religion of Tibet before Buddhism, a primal type of animism that believes all things animate and inanimate are sourced from an invisible world.  Ancient Aliens is a show that is often painful to watch yet is a necessity for any serious student of human history. The show has by far its finest moment in its decade long existence when it proposes that the Aborigines concept of the dreamtime matches a leading edge property of String Theory called the \"Holographic paradigm.\"5  There are tears in the fabric of Mans reality that upon scrutiny open to abysses of darkness. Quantum entanglement as been proven over and over again in laboratories whose annual budget would bankrupt a small country. Einstein was wrong and his precious \"particles\" do react with each other by some mechanism that travels faster than light. Anyone who's ever had a premonition should have known that\u2026  In the Holographic universe, quantum entanglement the enigma of superluminal interaction between particles \u2013what a baffled Einstein called \"spooky action at a distance,\" petulantly denying its existence in the face of all the evidence (even then) 6 \u2013 is easily explained. What are being observed in particle physics are not particles at all, but different aspects of interference patterns generated by the collision of spherical frequency waves emanating from an Event Horizon.  The Holographic paradigm postulates, in fact takes it as a given, that at the threshold of the time-space continuum, what physicists call the cosmological horizon, lay the source of everything that is, ever was, or will be. The information that composes the universe is never lost or changed. It's immutable and is broadcast in oscillating signals, generating a chaotic sea of fluctuating frequencies that are picked up by mans senses and translated by the mind into the three dimensional world in which he finds himself.  In short; consciousness takes place inside a frequency receiver and \"reality\" is a television show\u2026  The empirical evidence is overwhelming that the human brain works in the exact same manner as a hologram. This is called the Holonomic brain theory by neuroscientists. Many just cannot accept its implications. But its founder Karl Pribram, who held professorships for ten years at Yale and thirty at Stanford, was the Albert Einstein of neuroscience\u2026  Pribram died in the beginning of 2015 at the age of ninety-five after a long and distinguished career working side by side with such giants in science as BF Skinner, Jon von Neumann and David Bohm; arguably the most brilliant physicist that the Anglo-American empire produced during the twentieth century.  Bohm collaborated closely with Pribram in the formulation of the Holonomic brain theory, but his earlier radical communist political affiliations would have barred him from the inner sanctums of the Stanford Research Institute.  There at Menlo Park, in the womb of madness, Pribram would have had access to at least some of the classified material of Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ. Throughout the seventies Puthoff and Targ were weaponizing the paranormal for Americas Department of Defense. They were working in the outer limits of quantum entanglement. In fact, Pribram admits to consulting with both Puthoff and Targ about it before beginning his collaboration with Bohm\u20267  In the same interview, from years ago, Pribram explains that \"when an input comes in through one of the senses to the brain, it has to then become encoded in some way so that there is a representation.\"8 Pribram calls these representations memory traces and says they have no localized point of origin in the brain.  \"If you hack away at the brain\" in surgery \"you would expect that whatever representational process there is and \u2013call it a memory trace if you will\u2013 that it would really be impaired tremendously, that you would remove a memory,\" like cutting off a piece of a picture. \"It doesn't work that way.\"  Pribram \u2013a highly skilled neurosurgeon\u2013 noted among other things for his experimental work at the Yerkes Primate Center, of which he became director, recounts that \"when lesions occur in the brain there is never any particular memory trace that is removed.\" Recalling from over a half century of experience he continues \"you may remove something, like the way to retrieve, to get back out the memory. For instance; you might not be able to talk about it but you can still write a note and say what it is you mean.\"9  But the overall method by which these memories are spread throughout the brain, enabling them to avoid damage from injury, has always been a mystery.  Pribram explains that it was discovered in the late fifties that the input from the retina is organized in spots, then focused into lines in the cerebral cortex suggesting that the cerebral cortex is filled with cells that act as line detectors. These cells are sensitive to lines at multiple orientations and once you have lines you can create \"circles, faces, stick figures, whatever\" to formulate images.10  The idea that the cerebral cortex was interpreting interference patterns can be traced back to Germany in 1906.11 Decades later, John Lashley, Pribram's mentor at the Yerkes Primate Center, reached the same conclusion.  Interference patterns can be seen in the water if you cast two stones in a pool. When the series of concentric waves generated by each of the stones clash the resulting confused ripples or wavelets are interference patterns.  In the interview Pribram asks \"what might constitute those interference patterns in the brain\" and \"given interference patterns, how do you get an image out of that?\"12 He then answers his own questions saying both problems were solved when people started building holograms at the University of Michigan and at Stanford (around 1962). He qualifies that by saying \"because a hologram is a photographic store of ripples, of interference patterns. Instead of pebbles on a pond, what you have is light beams hitting the film.\" 13The light then spreads in ripples over the surface of the film.  Pribram continues \"Every light beam that hits does that and the neighboring ones do it and the neighboring ones and so you got every light beam, every part of a beam essentially spread over the entire surface. That's why mathematically it's called a spread function.\"14  In a hologram that spread function is translated into images and with every passing year in neuroscience it becomes more and more apparent, Pribram uses the word \"overwhelmingly,\"15 that the brain functions in the same manner.  Pribram goes on to say that \"over the last thirty years or so more and more evidence has accumulated to suggest strongly that the cerebral cortex acts as a resonator. It resonates to the frequencies of energies that are being transduced by the receptors; it's the frequencies of energies.\" He emphasizes that this is not an epiphany. German scientists were talking about it in 1906\u202616  Holography works by using interference patterns to encode information about a three dimensional object into what is, for all intents and purposes, a two dimensional light beam. The interference patterns can then be translated back into a three dimensional object. A tremendous amount of information can be stored and transferred this way.  Another profoundly functional feature of the hologram and analogous to the non-locality of memory in the human brain, is that all information is stored throughout the entire hologram. As long as a part of the hologram is big enough to contain the interference pattern, it can recreate the entire image stored in the hologram.  Holographic technology is based on the Fourier transform, a type of integral transfer sometimes called an improper Riemann integral. The Fourier transform itself is a mathematical function originally used in the nineteenth century to show the transfer of heat between two systems. Fourier transforms are the foundation of Spectral Analysis in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century.  In a Fourier transform two graphs are created; one showing the frequency domain and the other the time domain. The differential is then mapped between the two domains and through various permutations of the equations a spread sheet is achieved of all the individual frequencies that constitute a function of time, what is defined as a signal\u2026  Often it is easier to solve a problem in the time domain by working on it in the frequency domain. Afterwards transformation of the result can be made back to the time domain by reversing the equation, what is called an inverse Fourier transform. The entire signal can be filtered simply by changing the frequencies in the frequency domain\u2026  A Fourier transform can, theoretically, be used to send a function of the three dimensional continuum into a moving four dimensional mass or vice a versa\u2026  The father of the Holograph is 1971 Nobel Prize recipient Dennis Gabor, who right after WW II produced the math \u2013called windowed Fourier transforms\u2013 necessary to make one. Gabor served in a Hungarian artillery unit during WW I and in the twenties was instrumental in the development of the electron microscope in Berlin. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933 Gabor, a Hungarian Jew that had converted to Lutherism, fled Germany to England.  By the time Gabor worked with them, Fourier transforms had been infused with the genius of Bernhard Riemann, the nineteenth century German mathematician who broke the back of Euclidian geometry for good, making quantum physics and relativity possible. Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger, the twentieth century Austrian physicist whose wave equation would become one of the two pillars of quantum physics and the foundation of wave mechanics.  David Hilbert, the German mathematician who taught most of the others and after whom Hilbert's Space is named, and Werner Heisenberg the discoverer of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, the other pillar of quantum physics\u2026  Gabor would have at least had access if not worked directly with the legendary Jon von Neumann, Hilbert's best pupil. Gabor and von Neumann were both Jews, native Hungarians and born to money, although von Neumann's education under Hilbert had been paid for by the Rockefeller Foundation. Von Neumann was in fact titled nobility, besides being the man who named Hilbert's Space in Hilbert's honor.  Von Neumann was perhaps the most brilliant mathematician who ever lived. He would leave Berlin upon concluding his tutelage under Hilbert and be in Princeton by the end of 1929\u2026  At Princeton, von Neumann delighted in playing Prussian marching music so loud on his gramophone that Einstein, who was in an adjoining office, would have to ask the authorities to intervene. In vain, there was nothing Einstein or anyone else could do about it. Von Neumann wrote the textbook for Quantum mechanics; Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, or in English Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics.  His mathematical contributions to civilization could fill a library, but his real achievements remain classified till this day. It is said that when von Neumann was dying of cancer, while under sedation he was surrounded by a Special Forces guard to insure he didn't blurt out any of the empires secrets.  Von Neumann would tell anyone who would listen, delighted in it, that he had mathematically proven Einstein wrong. Most academics, although they could not understand his math, believed him and still do\u2026 Although they are now fonder of the experimental results of John Stewart Bell for their Einstein bashing\u202617  Einstein had always insisted that there were hidden variables that when discovered would reconcile quantum physics, which is indeterminate, and relativity, which is determinate. In Einstein's vision of the future there would be just one unified field of physical phenomena and that would be determinant.  In physics, determinant means events transpire as a result of a mechanistic necessity and are therefore predictable. They follow laws. All physical phenomena should follow rules.  But they don't. In Quantum physics, quantum entanglement is not the only enigma. There is the double slit experiment where an individual particle is fired through a slit and another through a different slit at a screen. What shows up on the screen is a wave interference pattern which could have only been made by waves passing through the slit\u2026  There is the wave function collapse and quantum randomness in general. If the observer calculates the position of a \"sub-atomic particle\" in space they cannot calculate its momentum because the very act of locating it influences its trajectory. If they find its momentum, the act of their doing so prevents them from finding its position. That's the short definition of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.  It's all about predicting probabilities in a matrix, nothing is certain and the observer is part of the equation, anathema to 'good science\u2026'  Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger, who won the Nobel Prize in 1933 for providing the equation that makes it all work, was more than just a scientist. A philosopher and poet at heart, he was a lifelong student of the Vedas and believed individual consciousness was a manifestation of the universal whole.  Back then, Schr\u00f6dinger described the prevailing interpretation of quantum physics, now called the Copenhagen interpretation, as making no distinction \"between the state of a natural object and what I know about it, or perhaps better, what I can know about it if I go to some trouble. Actually \u2014 so they say \u2014 there is intrinsically only awareness, observation, measurement.\"18  The Copenhagen interpretation is the prevailing school of thought in quantum physics to this very day. As George Berkeley, the father of Immaterialism and therefore the Copenhagen interpretation, said three hundred years ago; nothing can exist if there is nothing to see it, \"esse est percipi,\" to be is to be perceived.  After serving as an apprentice to the mysterious German scientist; Max Wien, heir of Friedrich Paschen's late nineteenth century experimental research on hydrogen spectral lines in the infrared region, Schr\u00f6dinger would begin publishing papers about atomic theory and the theory of spectra in the early twenties\u2026  He would publish his famous equation in 1926. In the twenty-first century, it's still the tool mathematicians use to describe a wave function. In the Copenhagen interpretation the wave function is the most complete description that can be given to a physical system.  In Quantum mechanics the Schr\u00f6dinger equation predicts probability distributions from which results are drawn. A probability distribution is a mathematical description of a random phenomenon. There are no exact results and at the time Schr\u00f6dinger is quoted as saying \"I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it.\"19  Einstein was livid. Not only was special relativity no longer feasible but perhaps relativity itself. As every school child knows he said \"God does not play dice with the universe!\"  Schr\u00f6dinger worked closely with Einstein in the ensuing years, attempting to formulate a unified field theory and reconcile the whole mess into one determinant science, but by the end of the forties he had abandoned those efforts. In a 1952 lecture, he made the first documentable reference to what has become known as the multiverse, prefacing it by saying that what he was about to say might \"seem lunatic.\" 20  Schr\u00f6dinger went on to tell his perplexed audience that when his equations seem to be describing several different histories they are \"not alternatives but all really happen simultaneously\u2026\"21  Famously, in 1956 Schr\u00f6dinger would refuse to speak about nuclear energy at an important lecture during the World Energy Conference, giving a philosophical lecture instead because he had become skeptical about the entire subject. He would cause a great deal of controversy in the physics community after that, abandoning the idea of particles altogether and adopting the wave-only theory also put forth by Hugh Everett III in his many-worlds interpretation of the multiverse.  In the many-worlds interpretation, the wave in the quantum state is the only thing that is real and under the appropriate conditions it will exhibit particle-like behavior. In Everett's multiverse, everything that ever could have happened in the past did and every possibility spawns its own universe where that possibility did and does occur.  After Jon von Neumann died prematurely of cancer in 1957 Hugh Everett III would become the Anglo-American empires go-to guy on Quantum physics\u2026  Pilot Waves were first proposed by Einstein in an effort to explain the wave interference patterns produced by particles in cases like the double slit experiment. He had hoped that they could be explained deterministically if the particle were somehow guided by an electromagnetic field; \"which would thus play the role of what he called a F\u00fchrungsfeld or guiding field.\"22  The idea of a pilot wave was picked up and made mathematically feasible by Louis de Broglie in 1927, but with little support from a physics community now enamored by Heisenberg and the Copenhagen interpretation it died a slow death from neglect.  De Broglie's math was resurrected by David Bohm in 1952 and renamed Bohmian mechanics. Heisenberg, who had been \"profoundly unsympathetic\"23 to the idea from its inception in the twenties wrote in 1955 that it was nothing more than an \"exact repetition\" of the Copenhagen interpretation \"in a different language\u2026\"24  Regardless of the value of \"Bohmian mechanics\" the rest of what David Bohm had to say about the holographic universe may be a summation of everything that was really learned by man in the twentieth century (outside of course all those in this account who had an above top secret clearance\u2026).  Bohm said there were two worlds. The primary one he called the Implicate Order or the enfolded order. He said the enfolded order was \"the ground out of which reality emerges.\"25The other world, \"reality,\" the world of the human senses, the world where consciousness dwells, he called the Explicate Order or the unfolded order.  \"What we take for reality, Bohm argues, are surface phenomena, explicate forms that have temporarily unfolded out of an underlying implicate order. Within this deeper order forms are enfolded within each other so systems which may well be separated in the Explicate Order are contained within each other in the Implicate Order.\"26  Superficially it would appear the two worlds are \"dual forms related by an integral transfer\" but the reality is the unfolded order cannot exist independent of the enfolded order.27  Bohm, always a pariah to the powers that be because of his politics sometimes had his work classified before he could even finish it. In the Manhattan project he was barred access to Los Alamos and was not allowed to write the thesis for his own scattering equations.  Einstein had always been his mentor, shielding him and preventing his ostracism from academia and Bohm had always worked closely with him in Einstein's quest to save physics as he knew it. But by the end of the war Bohm had come to the conclusion that quantum mechanics would never become a deterministic science. He stopped looking for deterministic mechanisms as the cause of quantum phenomena and set out to show that the events could be attributed to a far deeper underlying reality.  Bohm's idea of an Implicate and Explicate order mirror the conclusions reached by Mircea Eliade, the world's foremost theological scholar of the WW II era\u2026 Eliade said there are only the Sacred and the Profane. The Sacred is the place of mythology, where the gods and archetypes dwell together with all the things that establish the very structure of this world. The Sacred is the First Cause of the Gnostics, the alcheringa of the Aborigine and the Implicate Order of Bohmian mechanics.  The Profane is the material things of this world, the things that have nothing to do with the Sacred. They are basically just like the set in an old black and white movie story\u2026 Eliade said they \"acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality.\"28 In other words, it is only through its participation in the Sacred that the Profane finds validation.  Through his myths, his ceremonies and his rituals, even in his behavior and dreams, man manifests the Sacred into the Profane. It is Man himself that breaths reality into the fleeting and phantasmagorical world of the Profane\u2026  Eliade said that in order to uphold the world of the Profane, the Scared must be manifested into it, over and over again. He called these incarnations, these places where the Sacred intersects with the Profane, the Eternal Return (not to be confused with Nietzsche's Eternal Return, just as important but more to do with the cycle of the Yuga's and the Mandela). Eliade called these manifestations of the Sacred into the Profane hierophanies.  Eliade maintained that all Shamanic practices in cultures uncluttered by the poisons of twentieth century rationalism, indeed the foundation of all Paleolithic spiritual practices, was an attempt to produce these hierophanies.  No one was, nor ever will be, more influential than Mircea Eliade, not even the vaunted Joseph Campbell. But present day academia with its penchant for semantics and cutting the whole up into smaller and smaller pieces till there is nothing left to see at all (both Pribram29 and Bohm30 warned the world about this), still rails against him. They say Eliade painted all cultures with too broad a brush stroke and seem to feel that their exceptions are more important than his whole, the same mistake Einstein made\u2026 But even Eliade's staunchest critic; Geoffrey Kirk, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge from 1974 to 1984 and prolific author himself, concedes that what Eliade said about the Eternal Return fit the culture of Australia's aborigines like Cinderella's slipper\u2026  There has always been something dark and foreboding about Australia. Master of horror H P Lovecraft wrote about it in The Shadow out of Time. There is something menacing, something unspoken and threatening, a nameless fear of the stark and unforgiving land and an instinctual loathing of its native aborigine inhabitants that runs like an unseen current through the hard White men who dispossessed them.  In 1770 a British exploratory expedition led by James Cook would land in Botany Bay where the great city of Sidney now stands. They began shooting the natives immediately and the fighting would continue for over a hundred and fifty years. It finally subsided after the Coniston massacre in 1928 in the Northern Territory, which left over a hundred Aborigine dead.  Overall the fighting left thousands of Whites dead and hundreds of thousands of Aborigines. There were no pitched battles; the fighting was at close quarters, often hand to hand before repeating rifles were invented and savagely brutal, more like gang fights than military engagements. Atrocities were committed by both sides and in the interest of political correctness a well documented history of cannibalism among the Aborigine has been kept suppressed by the authorities.31  The Aborigine bore no animosity towards Whites because of their skin color. Eating the dead was strictly business in a land where distances are endless and the sun relentless. As settlers claimed the rights to all Australia's fertile land the Stone Age hunting and gathering lifestyle of the Aborigine provided less and less sustenance. Resentment, and hunger, became inevitable.  But a journal from as late as 1849 explains how the Aborigine viewed Whites as their \"ancestors who have returned to them again.\"32 The archived diary describes how the Aborigine, before eating each other, would \"scorch off the entire outer skin or epidermis which reveals the 'true skin' which in all branches of the human race is quite white.\"33  \"Their impression being that when they die 'The black fellow England walk and by and by jump up white fellow.'\"34 Australia is rivaled for geological anomalies only by its nearest neighbor Papua New Guinea. Both have stood in isolation for what academia says is sixty thousand years. Only their indigenous tribes, more like ghosts than men, can testify as to what cataclysmic events they may have witnessed.  In the Kimberley region of Western Australia four thousand year old cave paintings depict fantastic beings from the dreamtime called Wandgina. Local Aborigine believe the actions of the Wandgina in the dreamtime manifest themselves as features in the landscape of Australia's Great Western Desert. They believe these beings control the wind, the rain and the lighting\u2026 The Wandgina  Rising like a specter out of the center of the Australian continent and on an otherwise almost unbroken horizon is Uluru or Ayers Rock, an isolated hill that appears like a single great stone has been imbedded into the earth. Uluru, a Mecca for tourists, is famous for its glowing red appearance at dusk and dawn and is sacred to the Aborigine.  At two miles long, over a mile wide and eleven hundred feet high Uluru is by far Australia's best known geological anomaly. But just as striking is Kata Tjuta, fifteen and a half miles to the west and Mount Conner, slightly to the south and forty-five miles east of Uluru.  Kata Tjuta or the Olga's consists of thirty six domes covering a little less than eight and half square miles, the tallest being Mount Olga at over seventeen hundred feet high. Mount Conner covers eight and half square miles and rises nine hundred and eighty-four feet at its highest point. All of them are conglomerates of granite-like stone and gravel cemented by a matrix of sandstone, about 50% feldspar, 25\u201335% quartz and up to 25% rock fragments.  Explanations abound for how the island mountains, called inselbergs by academics, got to be in the western desert. They range from the electric universe theory which postulates that they are the result of an immense electrical discharge, to creationism which of course believes they were scoured out by the deluge, all the way to academia's old standby of a greased pig, erosion\u2026  Local Aborigines believe most of the south face of Uluru is the result of a war fought in the dreamtime between the carpet-snakes (Kunyia) and the venomous-snakes (Liru). The northwestern corner of Uluru and most of its north face were formed as a result of the activities of the hare-wallaby's (Mala) and the comings and goings of other dreamtime entity's fill in the rest of Uluru's geological features.  To the Aborigine it is the dreamtime that generates this world and with it the landscape\u2026  Black Mountain National Park is located at the northern end of Queensland, a little over five miles from the Coral Sea. \"The park\" is just a restricted three square mile area around a pile of dark colored granite boulders, some the size of houses. The pile reaches almost a thousand feet in height. Academics have explanations for this striking geological anomaly but to the untrained and perhaps the more objective eye the boulders appear to have been placed there by unknown methods for unknown reasons.  Black Mountain has a sinister reputation among Whites as well as the Aborigine. The Aborigine call it Kalkajaka or place of the spear and avoid it. People disappear around Kalkajaka and the people who go looking for them disappear too.  Some believe the missing have simply been lost forever in the labyrinthine passages between the boulders. Others claim the missing were eaten or enslaved by reptilian aliens that, among other things, have been sighted around the rocks. They believe reptilian aliens have a secret base under Black Mountain where UFO sightings are a regular occurrence.  UFO's have been receiving a lot of attention lately in Australia. An Australian himself, Duncan Roads \u2013editor of Nexus Magazine for over a quarter century and the most respected name in the alternative media\u2013 recounts \"Australia is certainly a hot spot of UFO sightings. We've had a phenomenal growth in the reporting of UFO sightings by the general public especially since the advent of the internet.\"35  Roads points to the area around the Blue Mountains in Australia's New South Wales \"as a hotspot of UFO sightings and other mysteries. There is certainly a lot of mystery in the Blue Mountains. Campers, bushwalkers, explorers all have got tails of mystery, disappearing people, strange tunnels, strange noises and strange creature sightings\u2026\"36  According to Aboriginal tribal elder Kevin Gavi Duncan \"the Blue Mountains is a very sacred area, sacred place, especially the highest places, because we would be closer to Baiame, closer to god.\"37  The human disappearances in the Blue Mountains seem to be focused around Mount Yengo. Called the Uluru of the east, the flat top of Mt. Yengo rises about a thousand feet above a plateau and is believed by academics to be all that remains of an ancient volcano. Perhaps because of its prominent flat top, Aborigine tribes believe that after he was done with the act of creating this world their creator god Baiame leapt back up into the spirit world from Mt. Yengo.  Roads continues \"UFO sightings of the Blue Mountains have triggered many magazine articles, radio shows and books. A lot of people have come forward over the last few decades to document and put onto the record their own experiences.\"38 Rex Gilroy, author of Mysterious Australia, has unearthed accounts of UFO sightings in the Blue Mountains by nineteenth century pioneers\u202639  Ancient Aliens straight man David Hatcher Childress theorizes that the Blue Mountains are a \"stargate, some portal to another dimension and jumping to hyperspace perhaps\u2026\"40 Childress speculates \"For some reason Australia was the place where they put this hyperspace portal used by extra terrestrials.\"41  Duncan continues \"there are stories that elders would say, that some people have actually travelled back to the Morning Star and have come back again.\"42 Earlier, standing in front of an ancient rock carving depicting Baiame about forty miles southeast of Mt. Yengo, Duncan explained \"Baiame came from a place that we call the Morning Star within the Mirrabooka. Mira means stars and booka means river. That is the Milky Way that flows across the North Star. \"43 Baiame, Bulgandry Aboriginal Engraving site, Brisbane Water National Park, New South Wales, Australia  Duncan then gives his interpretation of the petroglyph. Baiame \"holds the Moon in one hand and the Morning Star in the other. Which is a bit like what we call planet earth and these are the two moons which exist around the Morning Star in the Mirrabooka.\"44  What the petroglyph shows is Baiame with his arms outstretched and a giant knife horizontal across his naval. The hilt is under his left arm. He is holding a circle in his right hand and a crescent in his left. Below the crescent is another circle suspended in mid air and slightly smaller than the one he holds in his right hand. To the right of the free floating circle, perfectly horizontal to it, is a much smaller almost tiny circle. Slightly to the right of the tiny circle and above it is another tiny circle.45  If the two tiny circles are rotated about two hundred and eighty degrees clockwise or ninety degrees counter clockwise so that the tiny circle that was furthest from Baiame is now in the hilt of the knife you would have close to an image of what, left to right, is in the middle of Australia. Mount Conner would be the large circle, now furthest right.  The Three Sisters rock formation is about fifty miles to the Southwest of Mt. Yengo. The three craggy pillars of sandstone tower above the lush Jamison Valley. No doubt conjuring memories in Australia's early Anglo-Saxon settlers of the three Wyrd Sisters crouched at their cauldron casting spells on both gods and men in Shakespeare's Macbeth.  Wyrd is an old Anglo-Saxon word meaning destiny, to come to pass, to become. By the fifteenth century it had come to mean having the power to control fate. In sixteenth century Scotland and northern England wyrd implied that an event was miraculous. It wasn't till the early nineteenth century that weird came to mean something was odd. The Proto-Indo-European root is wert meaning to turn or to rotate\u2026  In the 1965 epic science fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert the Wyrding Way is an overwhelming close quarter fighting technique used by the story's messianic hero and his rebel armies with devastating effectiveness. In hand to hand combat its adepts are able to maneuver around and strike their opponents at speeds that resemble teleportation to the observer and words and sounds can be amplified to become lethal weapons.  Mastery of the Wyrding Way required the adoption of a completely different concept of what the space-time continuum is and what its cause and effect are. The essence of the Wyrding Way is summed up in both the motto and the mantra of its practitioners \"my mind affects my reality.\"  Wyrd is a notion taken from the pre-Christian religion of the Norseman. In Old Norse the word is Ur\u00f0r. It is also the name of the mother of the Norns, female beings who rule over the destiny of gods and men. There are many Norns, good and evil, who appear at a person's side at their birth and decide upon their future.  Ur\u00f0r (fate), Ver\u00f0andi (present) and Skuld (karmic debt) are the most powerful of the Norns and said to have come to intervene in a time long past when the gods ruled too haughtily over men. The three beautiful maidens pour the purifying waters of the Ur\u00f0arbrunnr (Well of Ur\u00f0r) over the Yggdrasil (Tree of Life) to keep it eternally rejuvenated.  The Ur\u00f0arbrunnr is said to be one of three wells, one under each of the three roots of the Yggdrasil. Each root reaches to a different far off land. The other two wells are Hvergelmir (bubbling boiling spring), located beneath a root in Niflheim (Abode of Mist), and M\u00edmisbrunnr (M\u00edmir's well), located beneath a root near the home of the frost j\u00f6tnar (Giant). It was said that Odin gave one of his eyes to drink from the M\u00edmisbrunnr, the well of wisdom and understanding.  Aside from Tasmania and parts of New Zealand Australia's Blue Mountains is the last real stop in the Pacific Ocean before the Antarctic. The Blue Mts. are about as far away as you can get from the land of the Norsemen on the Baltic Sea. But as Caroline Cory author of The Visible and Invisible Worlds of God notes \"there are several umbilical cords on the planet. This particular location is located exactly at negative thirty-three latitude.\"46  Cory then recites the standard alien enthusiast dogma about the thirty-three degree latitude of planet earth aligning with the center of the galaxy and how it is \"continuously being visited from different parts of the planetary system from different parts of the galaxy and even from beyond this galaxy, from way out in the universe.\"47  Most amateur UFO enthusiasts have never heard of Bruce Cathie and his book; Harmonic 33, published way back in 1968. But most professional researchers are well acquainted with the book and many new age authors use Cathie's math to validate their Tinkerbellian speculations.  \"Even while you read this interplanetary space ships are rebuilding a world grid system from which it appears they can draw motive power and they are possibly using the grid for navigational purposes.\" 48  This is the cover sentence in Harmonic 33. There are rumors that the original book was immediately pulled from bookstore shelves, edited, then rereleased with Cathie put under wraps and assigned a handler, never to produce anything again of any consequence for the general public, though he would write a few more books.  Cathie, a New Zealand airline pilot, saw his first UFO in 1952. He would be fascinated till he died in 2013. He began collecting data and collating it with sightings by other pilots over New Zealand. Using techniques borrowed from French UFO researcher Aim\u00e9 Michel he was able to establish two track lines where aerial anomalies were being regularly encountered. From there he \"was able to form a complete grid network over the whole of the New Zealand\u2026\"49  Cathie learned that the American survey ship Eltanin had taken some of the strangest photographs of the twentieth century off the west coast of South America. There, thirteen thousand feet beneath the waves mounted on the pacific sea bed was an \"aerial-like object\" that was \"two-to-three-feet high and had six main crossbars spaced evenly up its stem with a smaller one at the top. Each set of crossbars had a small ball at the end of each arm.\"50  Later one of the scientists who had been on board the Eltanin told Cathie the object was thought to be metallic and an artifact of some kind. Cathie was able to align his New Zealand grid with the coordinates of the artifact fashioning what he reasoned was a world energy grid and perhaps used as a galactic navigational tool by extra-terrestrials.  Interestingly enough, in light of Erwin Schr\u00f6dinger's actions at the World Energy Conference in 1956, Cathie did not believe nuclear weapons could be detonated randomly but would have to be at exactly the right coordinates at exactly the right time to work. Using his world energy grid he started publically predicting the exact times and places of test sites before they got him muzzled\u2026  In Cathie's own words \"It was only a matter of time before I realized that the energy network formed by the grid was already known to a powerful group of international interests and scientists. It became obvious that the system had many military applications, and that political advantage could be gained by those with secret knowledge of this nature. It would be possible for a comparatively small group, with this knowledge, to take over control of the world.\" 51  Cathie concluded that the \"whole of physical reality was in fact manifested by a complex pattern of interlocking wave-forms.\"52  Aliens are a very grey area, as is reality itself. What the Explicate Order translates out of the Implicate Order, what the Sacred manifests in the Profane, they are like points in a wave that show up as a particle. Just as surely they are guided only by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle\u2026  Something is going on in the Blue Mountains, always has been. It's been categorized by twenty-first century academia as paranormal but it's something Australia's aboriginal people are well acquainted with.  Duncan Roads is the man who introduced Bruce Cathie to the general public. He knows words like von Neumann knew numbers. He says \"the Australian aborigines have a connection and a relationship with what we call extra terrestrials and UFO's which goes back tens of thousands of years. Their rather nonplussed by their existence, they have developed an awareness of individual types of visitors from what we call outer space.\"53  The Three Sisters crouch at the south edge of the town of Katoomba, an Anglo-Saxon enclave of artists and artisans. They can be viewed from its golf course and are the most famous landmark in The City of Blue Mountains, a ribbon of contiguous towns, which lie on New South Wales Main Western railway line. The City of Blue Mountains has dubbed itself 'The City within a World Heritage National Park.' It has Sister City Relationships with Sanda City, Japan and Flagstaff, Arizona in the USA.  Located in the southwest of the Four Corners, an area famed for its paranormal activities, Flagstaff is the unofficial capital of the Navaho (Din\u00e9) Nation and the Hopi, the priestly tribe who are the keepers of the Din\u00e9's most profound secrets.  Like a penitent kneeling at the foot of the alter Flagstaff prostrates itself at the south foot of Agassiz Peak, Freemont Peak and Doyle Peak in the Kachina Peaks Wilderness.  To the Hopi this area, part of the San Francisco Peaks, the remains of an eroded composite volcano, is the most sacred place in the Four Corners. In fact it is the most sacred place in the world\u2026  The San Francisco Peaks are where the doorways open up for their gods, which they call Kachina, to come forth when they are called in the powerful ceremonies performed by the Hopi.  The Kachina are supernatural beings said to control the wind, the rain and the lighting\u2026  At 11,464 feet Doyle Peak was the site of the world's highest astronomical observation point from 1927-1932. Built by the Lowell Observatory, the stated purpose of the cabin on the south side of the summit was to scan the heavens and make spectroscopic observations, especially in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths\u2026  In 2005 \"a collaborative project team formed, the heart of which is still active today, including NASA scientists, Navajo Medicine Men, and both NASA and Navajo educators.\"54 Flagstaff is the home of the Lowell Observatory, the U.S. Naval Observatory and the United States Geological Survey Flagstaff Station\u2026 Rock art from Sego Canyon at the northern frontier of the Four Corners.  Citations  1 \u2013 Reid, Nick, and Patrick D. Nunn. \"Ancient Aboriginal Stories Preserve History of a Rise in Sea Level.\" The Conversation. 13 Jan. 2015. Web. 25 July 2016. http:\/\/theconversation.com\/ancient-aboriginal-stories-preserve-history-of-a-rise-in-sea-level-36010  2 \u2013 Ibid.  3 \u2013\"Ancient Aliens S11E07 \u2013 The Wisdom Keepers.\" 11:00. YouTube, 7 July 2016. Web. 26 July 2016. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=J-mX1eWoj6I  4 \u2013Ibid. 29:33.  5 \u2013Ibid. 30:09.  6\u2013 MARKOFF, JOHN. \"Sorry, Einstein. Quantum Study Suggests 'Spooky Action' Is Real.\" Science. New York Times, 21 Oct. 2015. Web. 3 Aug. 2016. http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/10\/22\/science\/quantum-theory-experiment-said-to-prove-spooky-interactions.html?_r=0  7 \u2013 \"Karl Pribram 'Holographic Brain' New Dimensions 1:12:52.\" Youtube. Insightfreeman, 5 Dec. 2012. Web. 15 Aug. 2016. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=awFleswtH2Y  8 \u2013Ibid. 23:34.","label":1}
{"text":"Texas Governor Greg Abbott on Friday gave $50 million to Houston to help cover costs related to Hurricane Harvey, a move the mayor said will allow the city to avoid a temporary property tax hike that was up for a city council vote in October. Mayor Sylvester Turner, who accepted the money from the Republican governor at a city hall press conference, said he will pull his proposal for a one-year tax increase to cover the city's share of debris removal expenses and for insurance-related payments. Parts of Houston suffered severe wind and flood damage after Hurricane Harvey made landfall on Aug. 25. It was the strongest hurricane to hit Texas in more than 50 years. Earlier this week, Abbott rejected Turner's request for the state to immediately tap its $10 billion rainy day fund to aid its largest city. On Friday, the governor said he had the flexibility to withdraw $50 million from a state disaster relief fund for Houston. \"This looked like the best solution at this point,\" Abbott told reporters. He added that once the state gets a handle on total hurricane expenses, the Texas legislature will consider tapping into the rainy day fund when its next regular session begins in January 2019 or sooner in a special session.","label":0}
{"text":"Jamie Oliver wearily wanks out yet another f**king cookbook 27-10-16  JAMIE Oliver has wearily dumped yet another book of recipes, photographs and shit onto the market for Christmas.  The celebrity chef, who has been stuck in this fucking rut longer than he can remember, tiredly admitted the new book is the same old bollocks with a sprig of holly on top.  He continued: \"I was going to skip this year because I just cannot stand it anymore.  \"But then the publisher says I've never done a Christmas one, and I say 'surely I have,' and he's like 'amazingly no' and I'm like 'well whatever' so, once again, I've crapped something out.  \"It's all about boshing the old bird in the oven while you have a couple of ales and I dunno, bacon sandwiches with a bit of maple syrup on for breakfast on Boxing Day.  \"Near 20 years these have been coming out now. Remember when I was the Naked Chef? A lifetime ago.  \"Anyway, new fucking book, buy it or don't. You'll never make anything in it anyway.\"  Jamie Oliver's Christmas Cookbook is out now from Michael Joseph, priced at \u00a326.  Share:","label":1}
{"text":"\u2014 Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) September 26, 2016  She's 7 years old and lives in Aleppo, Syria. As Vox reports, Aleppo has been one of the \"most significant battlefield\" in the country's continuous fight between Bashar al-Assad and government rebels since 2012.  Bana recently created a Twitter account with her mother, Fatemah, to finally show the world what life is like for those in their war-torn city.  In an interview with Independent Journal Review, Bana said the violence in her country is \"all she knows.\"  When asked to describe what happens when a bomb goes off, she said:  \"The bombing is predictable. It always hits civilian places so there's always fear \u2014 not just me, but thousands live in fear every day.\" I am very afraid I will die tonight. This bombs will kill me now. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com\/KqVHwqRClK \u2014 Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 2, 2016  Unlike many children, Bana doesn't go to school. She explained that a typical day doesn't even involve playing outside:  \"[We just] keep strong & [have] hope.\" This is what remains of our childhood memories. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com\/O7NjuxnAzP \u2014 Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 21, 2016  Here she is in what used to be her family's garden, which is now just a pile of rubble: This is our bombed garden. I use to play on it, now nowhere to play. - Bana #Aleppo pic.twitter.com\/drWnwflSOE \u2014 Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 4, 2016  As you can see, life in Aleppo is a far cry from what many in the United States will ever experience.  Bana hopes that her message for President Barack Obama will be heard loud and clear. Instead of a plea for her personal safety, her request shows tremendous understanding of the broader picture and concern for all involved:  \"Stop [the] war and bring peace.\"  Pretty profound for a 7-year-old.  Bana has amassed a Twitter following of more than 77,000 people. When asked about having such a huge platform to share Aleppo's story, she gave the most humble and selfless response:  \"[I'm] very happy and good. One day people will help us.\" Hello world we are still alive. Wake up this morning alive. - Fatemah #Aleppo pic.twitter.com\/EZz7xqbJ6E \u2014 Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) October 3, 2016  Bana possesses an innate ability to have faith in a situation that should give her every reason to doubt God's existence.  The 7-year-old admitted she believes in God, prays and said her faith has \"increased\" in light of her circumstances.  But she doesn't just pray for herself. She also said she prays every day for \"peace around the world.\" This is me before the war. Tonight I'm praying for peace #Aleppo pic.twitter.com\/vvMV6EtpVl \u2014 Bana Alabed (@AlabedBana) September 26, 2016  When Bana grows up, she wants to be three professions she \"loves most\": a teacher, author and actress.  She says her faith will not falter in the face of violence, war and evil. Bana firmly believes better days are coming, but has a lasting message for not just President Obama, but the entire world:  \"I want us saved.\"","label":1}
{"text":"Rogue Twitter feeds voicing employee concerns at more than a dozen U.S. government agencies have been launched in defiance of what they say are President Donald Trump's attempts to muzzle federal climate change research and other science. Representing scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and other bureaus, either directly or through friends and supporters, the accounts protest restrictions they view as censorship since Trump took office on Jan. 20. Seizing on Trump's favorite mode of discourse, the feeds reflect concern that the new president, a climate change skeptic, is out to squelch federally backed research showing that emissions from fossil fuel combustion and other human activities are contributing to global warming. \"Can't wait for President Trump to call us FAKE NEWS,\" read one posting on the newly opened Twitter account @AltNatParkService. \"You can take our official twitter, but you'll never take our free time!\" Reuters could not verify that all the accounts, which borrow the names and logos of their respective agencies, were being run by current federal employees of those agencies. The alternate National Park Service Twitter feed said it had passed control of its account to individuals outside the government to protect colleagues at the agency. The introductory disclaimer borne by the @RogueNASA account was typical of many of the feeds, describing it as \"The unofficial 'Resistance' team of NASA. Not an official NASA account.\" It beckoned readers to follow its feed \"for science and climate news and facts. REAL NEWS, REAL FACTS.\" An administrator of an associated Rogue NASA Facebook page told Reuters the alternative site was being used as a platform by agency scientists and others who support them. In some instances, the alternate Twitter accounts were registered on behalf of employees by supporters, presumably to better safeguard their anonymity, as was the case for the unofficial Rocky Mountain National Park site. An individual contacted at the alternative Twitter feed for Mount Rainier National Park said: \"It's not about the people running the accounts. It's about the movement it's generated. We may never disclose our identity due to the current political ecosystem.\" The swift proliferation of such sites followed internal directives several agencies involved in environmental issues have received since Trump's inauguration requiring them to curb their dissemination of information to the public. Last week, Interior Department staff were told to stop posting on Twitter after an employee re-tweeted posts about relatively low attendance at Trump's swearing-in, and about how material on climate change and civil rights had disappeared from the official White House website. Employees at the EPA and the departments of Interior, Agriculture and Health and Human Services have since confirmed seeing notices from the new administration either instructing them to remove web pages or limit how they communicate to the public, including through social media. The resistance movement gained steam on Tuesday when a series of climate change-related tweets were posted to the official Twitter account of Badlands National Park in South Dakota, administered under the Interior Department, but were soon deleted. A Park Service official later said those tweets came from a former employee no longer authorized to use the official account and that the agency was being encouraged to use Twitter to post public safety and park information only, and to avoid national policy issues. Within hours, unofficial resistance, or rogue, Twitter accounts began sprouting up, emblazoned with the logos of government agencies, the list growing to at least 14 such sites by Wednesday afternoon. An account dubbed @ungaggedEPA invited followers to visit its feeds of \"ungagged news, links, tips and conversation that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is unable to tell you,\" adding that it was \"Not directly affiliated with @EPA.\" \"Civil servants have a job to do and part of that job is to interpret the national parks and history behind it,\" said a former official at the Interior Department, the parent agency of the National Park Service, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The former official said that while people outside the federal government could be involved in the rogue accounts, employees with whom the official communicated were supporting the feeds. \"They bristle at any political involvement,\" the former official said. \"They're taking that as an attack on their work. You have 75l,000 people feeling attacked. You're going to play whack-a-mole trying to stop them. I don't see this stopping.\" The phenomenon was not limited to U.S. environmental and natural resource employees. They were soon joined by similar alternative Twitter accounts for various science and health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Weather Service. Many of their messages carried Twitter hashtags #resist or #resistance.","label":0}
{"text":"San Francisco does not have enough places to live. Sonja Trauss, a local activist, thinks the city should tackle this problem by building more housing. This may not sound like a controversial idea. But this is San Francisco. Ms. Trauss is a anarchist and the head of the SF Bay Area Renters' Federation, an upstart political group that is pushing for more development. Its platform is simple: Members want San Francisco and its suburbs to build more of every kind of housing. More subsidized affordable housing, more rentals, more condominiums. Ms. Trauss supports all of it so long as it is built tall, and soon. \"You have to support building, even when it's a type of building you hate,\" she said. \"Is it ugly? Get over yourself. Is it housing? Get over yourself. Is it luxury housing? Get over yourself. We really need everything right now. \" Her group consists of a mailing list and a few dozen members \u2014 most of them young professionals who work in the technology industry \u2014 who speak out at government meetings and protest against the protesters who fight new development. While only two years old, Ms. Trauss's Renters' Federation has blazed onto the political scene with youth and bombast and by employing guerrilla tactics that others are too polite to try. In January, for instance, she hired a lawyer to go around suing suburbs for not building enough. The organization also inflamed Sierra Club volunteers in San Francisco by trying to elect its own candidate to the environmental group's executive committee. That effort failed, and last week her candidate, Donald Dewsnup, was arrested and charged with voter fraud \u2014 a move that Ms. Trauss claims is political retaliation. \"There's no other explanation for why the district attorney of a major city would investigate and charge one person for registering at an inaccurate address,\" she said. In an interview, Mr. Dewsnup said he was homeless and simply used an address near the place where he was sleeping at the time. Across the country, a reversal in urban flight has ignited debates over gentrification, wealth, generational change and the definition of the modern city. It's a familiar battle in suburbs, where homeowners are an American archetype. In San Francisco, though, things get weird. Here the tech boom is clashing with tough development laws and resentment from established residents who want to choke off growth to prevent further change. Ms. Trauss is the result: a new generation of activist whose bent is the opposite of the San Francisco stereotypes \u2014 the lefties, the aging hippies and tolerance all around. Ms. Trauss's cause, more or less, is to make life easier for real estate developers by rolling back zoning regulations and environmental rules. Her opponents are a generally older group of progressives who worry that an influx of corporate techies is turning a city that nurtured the Beat Generation into a gilded resort for the rich. Those groups oppose almost every new development except those reserved for subsidized affordable housing. But for many young professionals who are too rich to qualify for affordable housing, but not rich enough to afford $ rents, this is the problem. Adding to the strangeness is that the typical San Francisco progressive and the typical member of Ms. Trauss's group are likely to have identical positions on every liberal touchstone, like marriage and climate change, and yet they have become bitter enemies on one very big issue: housing. \"We have liberal Democrats, and very liberal Democrats, and yet we are as polarized as the rest of the country,\" said Tim Colen, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Action Coalition. Ms. Trauss is smart and energetic and unpolished. She called her group the Bay Area Renters' Federation because \"federation\" reminds her of \"Star Trek\" and because her roommate thought it would be funny if her group's acronym spelled \"BARF. \" Jennifer Fieber, policy director at the San Francisco Tenants Union, likened the group to the Tea Party, because it lacks nuance (\"Just build! \") and can be rude. BARF's public message board does in fact veer into strident libertarianism and juvenile ribbings, like pictures that equate its opponents to Adolf Hitler. This might make it tempting to dismiss Ms. Trauss as just another colorful activist in a place where activism is a local sport. But the anger she has tapped into is real, reflecting a generational break that pits cranky homeowners and the San Francisco political establishment against a cast of newcomers who are demanding the region make room for them, too. To befriend a certain kind of techie on social media is to be bombarded with angry Facebook posts and retweeted news articles about how San Francisco doesn't build enough housing or how it is also the suburbs' fault and isn't Seattle great? Every few weeks, when a company like Zillow puts out a new price report, both sides hold up the numbers as an example of how San Francisco has failed the middle class. Zillow puts the city's median home price at $1. 1 million, neck and neck with Manhattan. The region's rent, at $3, 500 a month for an average apartment, is the highest in the nation. Today Ms. Trauss's group is one of several organizations (GrowSF and East Bay Forward are others) that represent a kind of \"Yimby\" party, built on the frustrations of young professionals who feel priced out of the Bay Area. BARF has won the backing of technology millionaires \u2014 Jeremy Stoppelman, and chief executive of Yelp, is the group's largest individual donor \u2014 and the encouragement of local politicians. \"BARF is an important voice in this housing debate, and that is the voice of young people who are asking the question: 'What is my future in this city? '\" said Scott Wiener, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. \"And you can agree or disagree with them, but they have activated a new generation of activists. \" The group's platform may be politically contentious, but economically speaking, it is anything but controversial. The Bay Area was expensive even before the tech boom. And the supply of new projects, while increasing, remains decades behind population growth. This extends from Silicon Valley suburbs like Palo Alto, whose ratio of jobs to housing units is triple the median level in the Bay Area, to San Francisco, which despite an increase in new housing has lagged behind job growth, according to the Association of Bay Area Governments. Much of San Francisco's progressive establishment feels the city is building too much housing. Some go so far as to argue that the appetite for real estate here is so high that rules don't really apply. To get prices down, \"You'd have to, like, build another city on top of the city,\" said David Campos, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He thinks the city should focus the vast majority of future development on affordable housing limited to people making well below the city's median income. This thinking is at odds with a February report on housing prices from the California Legislative Analyst's Office, which said underdevelopment was the primary cause of the high prices that afflicted cities throughout the coastal part of the state, especially in the Bay Area. \"Many housing programs \u2014 vouchers, rent control and inclusionary housing \u2014 attempt to make housing more affordable without increasing the overall supply,\" the report said. \"This approach does very little to address the underlying cause of California's high housing costs: a housing shortage. \" Ms. Trauss, 34, is a born activist from Philadelphia whose father is a lawyer who defends homeowners against foreclosure. She moved to the Bay Area in 2011, shortly after getting her master's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis, and taught math at local community colleges. She intended to live in San Francisco, but settled across the bay in Oakland. Like nearly everyone who moves to the Bay Area, Ms. Trauss spent an inordinate amount of time complaining about rent. In 2014, after reading a history of Bay Area housing politics written by Cutler, a reporter at the TechCrunch news site who has gone on to help found a called Roam, Ms. Trauss started writing letters to the San Francisco Planning Commission in support of any new project with more than 30 units. She graduated from writing letters to attending planning meetings, and, after registering the SFBARF website, started recruiting members by finding voices on sites like Reddit and the comments sections of local news articles. \"People say testifying doesn't do anything \u2014 but guess what definitely doesn't do anything: giving a dumb speech to your friend at the bar,\" she said. Today BARF is her job, allowing her the financial wherewithal to become one of those strangely persistent people who speak regularly at City Hall. To an outside observer, this can feel like watching an obscure and sport. This is a town with an app for everything and where people get fussy when an Uber driver takes more than five minutes to arrive. City Hall, with its architecture and wait times, can feel like an anachronism. Ms. Trauss may be a millennial, but she loves it. \"Even in this modern era of, whatever, the Internet and people like interacting in a place that's no place at all, City Hall is still a center,\" she said. One recent afternoon, she spent an hour on the hard wooden benches in the chamber of the Board of Supervisors. She was there to make a public comment in favor of a proposal to streamline the permitting process for some projects. Three days later she was back, this time to support a \"density bonus\" \u2014 a proposal to let developers build taller buildings in exchange for including more affordable housing as well. When she arrived, Mr. Campos, from the Board of Supervisors, was blasting the proposal from the City Hall steps, surrounded by 70 or so supporters. Ms. Trauss and another member of her group stood opposite and held up signs that said \"Stop Affordable Housing. \" This was meant to be ironic. Their point was that Mr. Campos was opposing legislation that would create more housing \u2014 but also more affordable housing. Nobody seemed to get it, so Ms. Trauss went inside City Hall to add her name to a list of people making public comments before the planning commission. Her chance to speak would be hours away, so she trekked around City Hall, past bronze busts and wedding parties, in search of a quiet place to take a lunch break. She was joined by a man whose legal name is Starchild. Starchild is the sort of Francisco character you end up making friends with if you spend enough time at City Hall. He works nights as an \"erotic service provider. \" Asked if this meant he was a prostitute, he said, \"'Prostitute' is O. K. as long as it's said in a respectful way. \" Starchild spends his days campaigning for libertarian causes and running doomed campaigns for office. The two ate on a marble ledge and discussed police brutality, pretrial detention and whether it was possible for an anarchist to be in favor of soda taxes. A short while later, Ms. Trauss headed back to a waiting room, where she took a selfie for the @SFyimby Twitter account and began a wait for a few more minutes at the microphone. \"This is my life,\" she whispered. \"It's ridiculous. \" Many longtime San Franciscans view groups like BARF as yet another example of how the technology industry is robbing San Francisco of its San . Far from the hippies of the 1960s, many of today's migrants lean libertarian \u2014 drawn by dreams or to work for the likes of Google or Apple, two of the world's most valuable companies. They tend to share a belief, either idealistically or na\u00efvely, depending on who is judging, that corporations can be a force for social good and change. But BARF members are so about housing that they can be hard to label politically. They view San Francisco progressives as, in fact, fundamentally conservative. That is because, to the group members at least, progressive positions on housing seem less about building the city and more about keeping people like them out. On a drizzly Sunday in December, Ms. Trauss hosted the SF YIMBYParty Congress, a gathering of groups held at a Market Street space full of touches like mismatched furniture, a foosball table and lots of white men. Toward the beginning, a debate broke out about whether they should call themselves moderates to distinguish themselves from progressives. Ms. Trauss joked that she liked moderate because you can shorten it to mod, and mod sounds cool. Mr. Wiener, the supervisor, disagreed, noting that in San Francisco, a moderate Democrat \"might have a Bernie Sanders sticker on their car. \" One man, who seemed exasperated by the discussion and the idea of using his Sunday to talk about politics, said, with more colorful language, that he did not give a hoot about progressives versus moderates \u2014 he just wanted some darn housing. The tech boom takes much of the blame for soaring housing prices. But the movement has less to do with tech as an industry, and everything to do with newcomers as a class. Brian Hanlon, a federation member who regularly attends Board of Supervisors meetings with Ms. Trauss, has a day job doing administrative work for the United States Forest Service. Two years ago, when he started worrying that his claim to an $ room in a apartment might be in jeopardy, he reacted in classic San Francisco fashion. He started marching in protests next to people beating drums and signs that said things like \"Tech = Death. \" But he quickly broke ranks. Many of his fellow protesters also opposed building new apartments \u2014 putting him at odds with them. \"They want to be on the side of tenants, but they don't have any real plan for how do we become a welcoming metropolitan area for new people who don't have money,\" Mr. Hanlon said. \"Their plans are only to allow current incumbent renters to stay in their place, presumably until they die and some rich person comes along. \" The progressive movement has played a guiding role in creating the quirky and picturesque San Francisco that many people love today. Progressives battled plans to crisscross the city with freeways and opposed urban renewal programs that destroyed black neighborhoods. They have fought for, and won, protections and funding for affordable housing, along with various amenities that many newcomers take for granted. The question is how to handle a demographic reversal in which cities across the country have regained population following years of \"white flight\" to the suburbs. After losing population for two decades through the 1970s, San Francisco resumed growth in the '80s and has only accelerated from there. \"There's that book, 'What's the Matter With Kansas? '\" said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR, an urban policy research organization. \"What's the matter with San Francisco? Why is it that in a city that's renters we have adopted a housing policy that is horrible for renters?\" The challenge for groups like BARF is that, politically speaking, they have a lot of persuading to do. The talk might sound great to a recent Stanford graduate, but San Francisco is in a moment when corporate buses are regarded as instruments of a tech invasion bent on turning people who can't code into a underclass. The idea that everything would be better if only the city threw up more tall buildings is a hard sell. Of the 11 propositions on San Francisco's ballot in November, seven were either directly or indirectly related to high home prices and the influence of the technology industry. Michael Hankinson, a Harvard Ph. D. candidate who is studying and housing prices, surveyed voters for his dissertation and found renters skeptical that new development would do anything other than raise prices. For instance, a recent proposal to temporarily stop development in the city's Mission District, a gentrifying neighborhood popular with technology workers, failed citywide. But Mr. Hankinson found that a majority of renters favored it because they did not think that new development would do anything for them \u2014 and feared that it might, somehow, get them evicted. \"BARF has to convince renters that neighborhood change will benefit them in the long run,\" he said. Today, when eviction is a hot party topic, most renters are unwilling to take that gamble. So Ms. Trauss is taking her campaign to the courts. In December she sued the city of Lafayette, Calif. an East Bay bedroom community, after it took a parcel that had been set aside for apartments and office buildings and rezoned it for homes instead. She wrote the petition herself, saying the move violated the California Housing Accountability Act, a 1980s law and \" \" statute that limits cities' ability to downsize housing developments. Recently, she hired a lawyer to litigate the case. Asked about Ms. Trauss's lawsuit, Steven Falk, Lafayette's city manager, said the city actually faced another lawsuit over the same development. The second group is suing, he said, because they think it is too big.","label":0}
{"text":"An Indian court on Thursday acquitted a former telecoms minister, politicians and business executives of graft and money laundering charges in the grant of telecoms licenses due to lack of evidence in one of the country s biggest corruption scandals. The case relates to alleged below-market-price sale of lucrative telecoms permits bundled with airwaves in 2008, which a federal auditor said may have cost the government as much as $28 billion in lost revenue. A special court convened by the federal investigator was called to give its verdict on the accused, including former telecoms minister A. Raja. The prosecution has miserably failed to prove its charge, defense lawyer Vijay Aggarwal told reporters, citing the judge s ruling. Shares of companies affected by the case rose after the verdict, with Reliance Communications Ltd gaining as much as 13.3 percent, DB Realty jumping nearly 20 percent and SUN TV Networks Ltd rising as much as 6.8 percent. The scandal dented the fortunes of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government, which oversaw the sale of the licenses at below-market prices, and triggered street protests. It was one of the several scandals that emerged during Singh s second term, hobbling policymaking and diverting the government s attention away from pushing forward crucial economic reforms. The uncertainty hurt business sentiment in Asia s third-biggest economy, and led to questions about the government s efforts to crack down on corruption. In 2012, the Supreme Court ordered 122 licenses held by eight operators to be revoked, declaring the licenses illegal and the process wholly arbitrary, capricious and contrary to public interest .","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump faces an uphill battle to overcome a federal judge's temporary hold on his travel ban on seven mainly Muslim countries, but the outcome of a ruling on the executive order's ultimate legality is less certain. Any appeals of decisions by U.S. District Court Judge James Robart in Seattle face a regional court dominated by liberal-leaning judges who might not be sympathetic to Trump's rationale for the ban, and a currently shorthanded Supreme Court split 4-4 between liberals and conservatives. The temporary restraining order Robart issued on Friday in Seattle, which applies nationwide, gives him time to consider the case in more detail, but also sends a signal that he is likely to impose a more permanent injunction. The Trump administration has appealed that order. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said late on Saturday that it would not decide whether to lift the judge's ruling, as requested by the U.S. government, until it receives briefs from both sides, with the administration's filing due on Monday. Appeals courts are generally leery of upending the status quo, which in this case - for now - is the suspension of the ban. The upheaval prompted by the new Republican administration's initial announcement of the ban on Jan. 27, with travelers detained at airports upon entering the country, would potentially be kickstarted again if Robart's stay was lifted. The appeals court might also take into account the fact that there are several other cases around the country challenging the ban. If it were to overturn the district court's decision, another judge somewhere else in the United States could impose a new order, setting off a new cascade of court filings. If the appeals court upholds the order, the administration could immediately ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. But the high court is generally reluctant to get involved in cases at a preliminary stage, legal experts said. The high court is short one justice, as it has been for a year, leaving it split between liberals and conservatives. Any emergency request by the administration would need five votes to be granted, meaning at least one of the liberals would have to vote in favor. \"I think the court's going to feel every reason to stay on the sidelines as long as possible,\" said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law. Trump last week nominated a conservative appeals court judge, Neil Gorsuch, to fill the vacancy, but he will not be sitting on the Supreme Court for at least two months. Gorsuch's vote, if he is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, could come into play if the case were to reach the court at a later stage of the litigation. Once the case proceeds past the injunction stage of the litigation and onto the merits of whether the order is legally sound, legal experts differ over how strong the government's case would be. Richard Primus, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Michigan Law School, said the administration could struggle to convince courts that the ban was justified by national security concerns. The Supreme Court has previously rejected the idea that the government does not need to offer a basis for its actions in the national security context, including the landmark 1971 Pentagon Papers case, in which the administration of President Richard Nixon tried unsuccessfully to prevent the press from publishing information about United States policy toward Vietnam. \"The government's argument so far in support of the order is pretty weak,\" Primus said. Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, said the administration has legal precedent on its side, with the courts generally deferential to executive action on immigration. However, he said it is unusual for the courts to be asked to endorse \"a policy that appears to have been adopted in as kind of haphazard and arbitrary way as this one appears to have been.\"","label":0}
{"text":"In her first international trip in her role as U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley toured a Jordanian refugee camp Sunday \u2014 and defended the Trump administration's policy on the Syrian refugee crisis in the face of its many critics in the UN. [Visiting the Zaatari refugee camp, Haley met with Syrian refugees displaced by the Syrian civil war and reminded reporters of the work the U. S. is doing in the region \u2014 a role that has been widely ignored as critics instead focus on Trump's executive order restricting refugees into the country. \"We're the No. 1 donor here through this crisis, that's not going to stop,\" Haley said in an interview after UN officials briefed her on the camp, according to The Wall Street Journal. Haley visited vocational classes and a supermarket where are used to charge accounts as a way to cut down on fraud. Outside the camp, she also visited a U. S. school where Syrian and Jordanian girls can get an education and a border crossing between Jordan and Syria. One of the reasons we traveled to Jordan is to see firsthand how the Syrian crisis is affecting children. pic. twitter. \u2014 Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) May 22, 2017, pic. twitter. \u2014 Nikki Haley (@nikkihaley) May 21, 2017, During the trip, Haley will also visit parts of Turkey and will meet with government and UN officials, as well as heads of NGOs. The trip will focus on the Syrian refugee crisis both countries are on the front line of the crisis and share borders with the imperiled country. The Trump administration has eyed deep cuts to funding for the controversial UN, but Haley sought to combat the narrative that those cuts would hurt those most in need. According to McClatchey, Haley told reporters that the U. S. was \"not pulling back\" from the crisis and was in fact \"engaging more. \" The Trump administration's policy on the crisis, particularly President Trump's executive order on immigration, has attracted the criticism of members of foreign governments, including figures in the United Nations. In an address to the League of Arab States in March, UN Antonio Guterres said it \"breaks my heart to see developed countries closing their borders to refugees fleeing this region, and worse, sometimes invoking religion as a reason to keep them out. \" But Haley has already gained a reputation for standing up to the UN. On multiple occasions, she has blasted the body's bias. In March, she demanded a UN report calling Israel an \"apartheid state\" be withdrawn \u2014 which it was. In April, when Bolivia requested a session of the UN Security Council in the wake of a chemical weapons attack in Syria, Haley denied the request. \"Any country that chooses to defend the atrocities of the Syrian regime will have to do so in full public view, for all the world to hear,\" she said, also blasting the \"empty words\" of other members of the council. Haley foreshadowed her defense of the U. S. policy in an last week for The Wall Street Journal. In it, Haley defended the U. S. saying \"The U. S. is doing more than anyone. \" Talking about how she was heckled at an international women's conference in April, she argued that \"those who accuse the U. S. of heartlessness in the face of this crisis are wrong. \" \"No country has invested more in protecting, housing, feeding and caring for Syrian refugees than the U. S. We have provided nearly $6. 5 billion in emergency assistance for Syria since the start of the crisis. Inside Syria, some four million people benefit from U. S. assistance for essentials like food and shelter every month,\" Haley wrote. Haley said she would bring attention to U. S. food programs on her trip to Turkey and Jordan, including programs that deliver aid to Syrians still trapped in the country. \"With American help, Syria's neighbors have made the difference between life and death for millions of Syrians. The U. S. and the UN will continue to do a great deal of heavy lifting for these desperate people,\" she wrote. Adam Shaw is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY.","label":0}
{"text":"Turkish authorities summoned a U.S. consulate worker to testify on Monday over his relatives' alleged links to last year's failed coup attempt, state-run Anadolu news agency said, days after the arrest of another consulate employee. Anadolu said the suspect was wanted for questioning after his wife and daughter were detained in the Black Sea city of Amasya. It did not say whether he had complied with the summons. The man's wife and daughter were detained over alleged links to the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, Anadolu said, blamed by Ankara for orchestrating the abortive putsch. The two were later brought to Istanbul for legal procedures, it said. \"U.S. consulate worker N.M.C., husband and father of the suspects in question, has no diplomatic immunity and has been called to the prosecutor's office to testify,\" Anadolu quoted a statement from the Istanbul prosecutor's office as saying. On Sunday, the U.S. mission in Turkey and the Turkish mission in Washington cut back visa services after Metin Topuz, a U.S. consulate employee, was arrested in Turkey last week. Washington said the charges linking him to Gulen were baseless. The prosecutor's office said that testimony from Topuz pointed to the two suspects detained in Amasya being high-ranking members of Gulen's network. Gulen has denied any role in the failed coup.","label":0}
{"text":"Copyright Mark Taliano, Global Research, Montreal 2016.  Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference. Please Forward Syria's War for Humanity, by Mark Taliano far and wide. Post it on Facebook. Scroll down for I-BOOK Table of Contents \"Syria's War for Humanity\" by Mark Taliano is part of Global Research's Online Interactive I-Book Series which brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here. Preface We bring to the attention of our readers Mark Taliano's I-Book entitled Syria's War for Humanity . In contrast to most geopolitical analysts of the Middle East, Mark Taliano focusses on what unites humanity with the people of Syria in their struggle against foreign aggression. Author: Mark Taliano Taliano talks and listens to the people of Syria. He reveals the courage and resilience of a Nation and its people in their day to day lives, after more than five years of US-NATO sponsored terrorism and more than two years of US \"peacemaking\" airstrikes which have largely targeted Syria's civilian infrastructure. Everybody in Syria knows that Washington is behind the terrorists, that they are financed by the US (at tax payers expense) and its allies, trained and recruited by America's Middle East partner. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, have been financing and training the ISIS-Daesh, al Nusra terrorists on behalf of the United States. Israel is harboring the terrorists out of the occupied Golan Heights, NATO in liaison with the Turkish high command has since March 2011 been involved in coordinating the recruitment of the jihadist fighters dispatched to Syria. Moreover, the ISIS-Daesh brigades in both Syria and Iraq are integrated by Western special forces and military advisers. While all this is known to the Syrian people, Western public opinion is led to believe that the US is leading a \"counter-terrorism campaign\" in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh), an entity created and supported by US intelligence. Image: Damascus National Museum, M Chossudovsky, 2011 \"Everything that we saw in Syria speaks of humanity's common heritage\", says Mark Taliano. Syria is the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia, the Land of Two Rivers, where the early civilizations of the fertile crescent took their roots. This is what the Washington Neocons want to destroy. But to reach their objective they need to wage a dirty propaganda campaign which conveys the illusion that America is involved in a \"humanitarian\" \"peace-making\" undertaking. The Syrian people know who the real terrorists are. \"The Western assault on this country is an assault on our common humanity, and an assault on Syria's progressive and forward-looking future\", says Taliano. Mark Taliano focusses on the truth as an instrument for building peace and counter-propaganda: \"S hould the West's \"regime change\" operations succeed, the secular, pluralist government of President Assad will be replaced by its opposite: a barbaric, sectarian regime, and chaos. Yet Western politicians are seemingly propagandized by their own lies. Or perhaps they see no choice but to cravenly follow diktats from above. Humanity's better nature, however, demands that we all open our eyes, that we learn from history, and that we embrace the rule of international law rather than the diktats of a criminal Empire. Syria and Syrians must be saved, not destroyed.\" Currently, my interests lie in digging for political truths in a world that is rushing headlong into war and barbarism, on a bedrock of lies. When I find such truths, their trajectories invariably lead to peace rather than war. So now, my \"crusade' is to help share the truth, to make it broad-based, and to make a positive difference. The dirty war on Syria is such a blatant example of the supremacy of war, deception \u2014 and evil \u2014 over civilization, and our common humanity, that my current research interests are defined by what does or does not happen there. If Syria wins, we all win. Right now, she is winning.\" Mark Taliano refutes the mainstream media. The causes and consequences of the US-led war on Syria, not to mention the extensive war crimes and atrocities committed by the terrorists on behalf the Western military alliance are routinely obfuscated by the media. Taliano is committed to reversing the tide of media disinformation, by reaching out to Western public opinion on behalf of the Syrian people. \"Syria's stand against the Western agencies of death and destruction is a stand for all of humanity against the dark forces that fester beneath our politicians' empty words and the courtesan media's toxic lies.\"  These twenty-seven chapters of Mark Taliano's Syria's War for Humanity provide an overview of life in Syria, the day to day struggle of the Syrian people to protect and sustain their national sovereignty.  Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2016 * * * Introduction by Mark Taliano I recently traveled to war- torn Syria because I sensed years ago that the official narratives being fed to North Americans across TV screens, in newsprint, and on the internet, were false. The invasion of Libya was based on lies; so was the Iraq war; likewise for Ukraine. All of the 9\/11 wars were sold to Western audiences through a sophisticated network of interlocking governing agencies that propagandize both domestic and foreign audiences. But the dirty war on Syria is different. The degree of war propaganda leveled at Syria, and contaminating humanity at this moment, is likely unprecedented. I had already studied and written about Syria for years, so I wasn't entirely surprised by what I saw. But what I felt was a different story.  First Impressions When I awoke on the first morning of my visit, and sat at a table on the polished marble floor beside the fountain, it was still and quiet. The walls of the hotel courtyard surrounded me \u2014 rows of hard, dark basalt stone block and intricately carved soft brown stone were woven together with alcoves and archways, all radiating ancient artistry. High vaulted windows overlooked the palazzo, with plants flowing from balconies and the railings of the narrow corridors leading to rooms. Above was the pale blue cloudless morning sky. A pigeon lumbered in and perched inside, sheltered by the ancient walls. A native bird, bluish white, swift and silent, swooped in towards the pigeon, and they were both gone, swept away into the Damascene morning. The quiet returned and the pale blue sky became darker and deeper. Syria will find peace again when this is all over. Syria is an ancient land with a proud and forward looking people. To this ancient and holy land we sent mercenaries, and hatred, and bloodshed, and destruction. We sent strange notions of \"exceptionalism\", and waves upon waves of lies. As a visitor I felt shame, but Syrians welcomed me as one of them. This is their story. And these are their voices.  Testimonies from Syrians  In this video , Dr. Joseph Saddeh, standing in front of desecrated Christian icons in the ancient and holy city of Maaloula, where Aramaic, the language of Jesus, is still spoken, explains that what happened in Syria was not a \"revolution\", and that the terrorists want to destroy everything that is good, and that \"they want to make us like them or they will kill us.\"  The terrorists did invade this ancient and holy place, they did destroy religious icons, and they did kill many people. Terrorist-damaged religious iconography at Maaloula, Syria Former al Nusra Front Headquarters, Maaloula, Syria Syrian soldier Dr. Ali Salem \u2013 a veterinarian during times of peace \u2013 explained that terrorists include \"imports\" from about 80 countries, street people, thieves, smugglers (diesel fuel and drugs), and those who were forced to fight under the threat of death or the death of family members.  He said that by now people must understand the truth about what is happening, despite the propaganda that demonizes the Syrian government and its people. The army is the people, he explained, and the government is not a \"regime\". When this is over, he said, young people will have to be taught the truth about what happened. Terrorist-destroyed Shrine of Saint Takla, Maaloula, Syria. Listen to the video here. Religious icons were either destroyed or burned. We met soft-spoken, accommodating, Dr. Ali Haidar at at his office. He had earlier explained to Jamal Daoud, leader of the Third International Tour of Peace to Syria , that in 2011, he was offered a large sum of money from Qatar to boycott a \"consultation summit\" with the government. When he refused the bribe, he received threats, and his son was murdered. The process of national reconciliation, headed by Dr. Haidar, is emblematic of Syrian decision-making processes. The externally-orchestrated war is being resolved internally \u2013 by Syrians, for Syrians \u2014 and the solutions are often the fruit of a genuine democratic processes, in contrast to the fake democratic processes masquerading as \"democracy\" in the West, where Western politicians and citizens are heavily propagandized.  All Syrians are paying a horrible price for the sins of the West. Ammar recounted this nightmare: \"As everyday morning my sister was going to the university when a bloody Takfiri Salafi Wahhabi suicide bomber blew up bomb car at the bus stop which led to the martyrdom and injury of many civilians and university students who were going to their exams, after 10 minutes another suicide bomber blew up himself at the same place taking advantage of the gathering of people and ambulance teams, usually when a terror attack happens we call all family members and friends to make sure they all are ok but this time no one answered! Then we started looking for her in hospitals \u2026 the shock was in the bloody views there; many burned bodies and human body parts were on the ground , there i saw my sister a body without soul \u2026\"  Madj explained his sentiments:  \" I am Syrian\u2026 living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your government. They are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country.  We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them.  The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people\u2026 The chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by the USA and the UK, etc. Everyone knows that here.  American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone.  Every massacre is committed by them. We were all happy in Syria: we had free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank.  Life before the crisis was so beautiful here. Now it is hard and horrific in some regions.  I do not understand how the good and brave American people can accept to bomb my country which has never harmed them and therefore help the barbarian al Qaeda. These animals slit throats and behead for pleasure\u2026 they behead babies and rape young kids.  They are satanic. Our military helped by the millions of civilian militias are winning the battle against al Qaeda. But now the USA wants to bomb the shit out of us so that al Qaeda can get the upper hand.  Please help us American people. They are destroying the cradle of civilization. Stop your government.  Impeach that bankster puppet you have as president\u2026 support Ron Paul or Rand Paul (as Libertarians they have opposed foreign interventions\u2014Editors) or anyone the like who are true American patriots. but be sure of one.thing\u2026if they attack and I think they will\u2026.it will be hell.  Be sure that if it were to be a world war, many many will die. Syria can and will defend itself and will sink many US ships. Iran will go to war..Russia and China eventually if it escalates\u2026 and all this for what ? For the elites who created al Qaeda through the US government and use it to conduct proxy wars and destabilize countries which do not go along with their new world order agenda !!?  American people\u2026you gotta regain control of your once admirable country. Now everyone hates you for the death you bring almost everywhere.  Ask the Iraqis\u2026the Afghans\u2026the Pakistanis\u2026the Palestinians\u2026the Syrians\u2026the Macedonians and Serbs\u2026the Libyans\u2026the Somalis\u2026the Yemenis \u2026.all the ones you kill with drones everyday. Stop your wars. Enough wars. Use diplomacy\u2026dialogue\u2026help\u2026not force.\" Jad also shared his tragedy. He told me that his brother was kidnapped last year, and that the terrorists tortured him and destroyed his knees. Now he can't walk. He also told me that his cousin, who was serving in the Syrian Arab Army, lost his leg when Wahhabi suicide bombers attacked his military vehicle, and that another cousin was kidnapped in 2012, and remains in captivity. The tragedies are legion, but all of the Syrians to whom I spoke assured me that they support the government of Bashar Al-Assad. They are unified in the battle against Western terrorists. The sanctions, the terrorists, the death and destruction, are not working. The alternative, a Western-installed Wahhabi stooge government, is not an attractive option. The ongoing dirty war on Syria is particularly odious because the elected President of Syria, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad, and his wife, represent the best of what Syria's future promises to be. The Assads are well-educated \u2013 like all of the Syrians whom I had the pleasure of meeting \u2013 and they are moving ancient, holy Syria into a better future than that promised by the uni-polar, \"exceptional\" imperialists who are trying to destroy Syria with their Wahhabi-inspired terrorists.  Syrians have seen the devastation of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine. They refuse to be the next domino. Syria's future will include the rule of international law, nation-state sovereignty, self-determination, pluralism, respect for all people, and multi-polar geo-political relationships. Syria has strong institutions, strong people, a strong military, strong allies, and a strong government; and she will not be pulled into the abyss of terrorism like the other aforementioned countries.  For this we should all be grateful.  We have just witnessed the pain and hardship that Syria and Syrians are enduring. The next question is, How did the West arrive at the point where otherwise intelligent and morally upright citizens support the illegality and barbarity of their nations' foreign policies? The simple answer is that the collective mindset of the public has been contaminated by an unprecedented and on-going propaganda campaign that engineers consent for unspeakable crimes that \"benefit\" transnational elites and impoverish the rest of us. [This is the longstanding nature of US foreign policy, dating back more than a century, even prior to the Civil War, when early imperialist and \"Manifest Destiny\" believer James Polk seized half of Mexico under trumped-up pretexts and false flags. Meanwhile, the American media have always supported these international crimes, as they do today.\u2014Editors.] The dreadful reality is that the Global War on Terror is actually a global war for terror. The foreign policies of Western nations are increasing the reach of terrorism exponentially, because the West uses these terror brigades as foot soldiers for illegal wars of aggression. In its Syrian campaign, as with its previous Libyan campaign, the West is literally the air force for the terrorists on the ground. This is all well documented with Western sources. US-led NATO is aligned with the Gulf Monarchies, and Israel, to flood Syria with mercenary terrorists, to balkanize and destroy the country, and to remove President Assad, so that it can advance its agenda for a New World Order of conquest under the false banner of the Global War On Terror (GWOT). Through its actions and inactions, its sanctions, its arms dealings, and its pre-planned invasions, the West and the terrorists in Syria are one and the same. We support all the imaginary \"moderates\", and every other terrorist organization operating in Syria. Again, the evidence is ample, and well-documented using western sources. US-led NATO is aligned with the Gulf Monarchies, and Israel, to flood Syria with mercenary terrorists, to balkanize and destroy the country, and to remove President Assad, so that it can advance its agenda for a New World Order of conquest under the false banner of the Global War On Terror (GWOT). This on-going project necessarily entails death, destruction, and wide-spread poverty. Neo-con planners hope that the widespread destruction will enable them to control destroyed countries and open them up for predatory and parasitical economic programs \u2014 similar to domestic neoliberal economic models that are ravaging domestic economies beneath the lies and diversions. Despotic stooge puppet regimes are easier to control and manipulate than independent sovereign governments that represent the democratic will of their peoples and the rule of international law. Again, this favoured totalitarian style rule is mirrored at home, but more subtly. The notion that we live in democracies is absurd.  Tentacles of predatory neoliberal capitalism have yet to invade Syria's famous souks\/markets Spices at the Souk F alse flag terrorism is part of the apparatus of deception which serves to advance policies that are contrary to the wishes of those who are deceived. There's nothing new about \"synthetic terrorism'; it is military doctrine, and examples of its use are legion, but it is a taboo topic and a \"conspiracy theory\", so it works.  The Canada Day pressure-cooker bomber plot was a proven false flag (though not acknowledged as such by mainstream media), and it served the apparatus of deception as did other domestic terrorism cases.  Even if the Ottawa shooting crisis unfolded exactly as the official narratives described it, the conflation between the shooting and ISIS is surely unfounded, as noted by Senator Mobina Jaffer.  But the accumulated impact of these events, coupled with largely unquestioned official narratives, has the intended effect of creating a consensus of ignorance wherein otherwise intelligent people support illegal warfare, terrorism, and police state legislation.  Preeminent Constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati assesses Canada's C-51 legislation in these words :  It takes all our private information and shares it with all government agencies, including foreign government. For some citizens that becomes an eventuality of torture and\/or death when travelling abroad.  It restricts arbitrarily who can travel.  Freedom of expression and political criticism with respect to \"terrorism and the government's role\" (becomes) a terrorist offence in itself. So words and thoughts become an act of terrorism under this bill.  It allows CSIS to disrupt covertly constitutionally-protected rights of association, expression, and protest.  It does all of this by taking away all and any transparent judicial oversight.  He says that \"We've entered into the final fascist state.\"  Consequently, both domestically and abroad, we are living what author Naomi Wolf describes as a \"fascist shift\" , wherein we unwittingly embrace our own enslavement, global war, and poverty, all for the \"benefit\" of transnational oligarch classes, and the known catastrophic impacts for humanity.  Syria is standing strong against these Western cancers of ignorance and evil. She, and her allies, are swooping down on these globalist interlopers. Her victory will be our victory.  Outline of This Book T he purpose of this book is to shed some light on how the propaganda works, and to decode it and other events, so that we can arrive at a better understanding of what is really happening in Syria, and why. The degree of war propaganda leveled at Syria, and contaminating humanity at this moment is unprecedented.  I have yet to meet a single Syrian who would prefer a stooge, Wahhabi dictatorship to the current government. Every single Syrian opposition leader prefers the current government to an imperial -imposed government. The on-going campaign of lies directed at Syria is particularly odious because the elected President of Syria, Dr. Bashar Al-Assad, and his wife, represent the best of what Syria's future promises to be.  The Assads are well-educated \u2013 like all of the Syrians whom I had the pleasure of meeting \u2013 and they are moving ancient, holy Syria into a better future than that promised by the uni-polar, \"exceptional\" imperialists who are trying to destroy Syria with their Wahhabi-inspired terrorists.  Syrians have seen the devastation of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine. They refuse to be the next domino.  Syrians are unified. Their future will include the rule of international law, nation-state sovereignty, self-determination, pluralism, respect for all people, and multi-polar geo-political relationships. Syria has strong institutions, strong people, a strong military, strong allies, and a strong government; she will not be pulled into the abyss of terrorism like the other aforementioned countries.  For this we should all be grateful.  The compilation of articles in this book decode the propaganda apparatus which creates an engineered consensus that serves the covert agenda of expanding the parasitical economic model called \"neoliberalism\".  Neoliberalism impoverishes domestic and foreign populations, and enriches a transnational oligarch class. The transnational oligarch class \u2014 enriched by \"deregulation\", \"privatization\" schemes, and \"free trade\" agreements \u2014 contaminates the collective mindset of humanity with its foundations, its lobbying, and its undue influence, so its real nature, and its very existence, remains hidden. Rarely will a mainstream publication even use the word \"neoliberalism\", which is the economic foundation of the current class system.  Part One is the story of Syria as told by Syrians, unfiltered by mainstream media (MSM) propaganda. We see and hear the trauma lived by defiant, heroic Syrians, and we discover that this ancient, holy land will surely survive the current barbarian invasion, and will rise again as a beacon of civilization, hope, and dignity, in contrast to so many of those countries that seek to destroy it.  Voices from Syrian citizens are absent from mainstream media stories. Syrians are like you and me. This is what they have to say:  \"We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them.\" I Am A Syrian Living in Syria: \"It was Never a Revolution nor a Civil War. The Terrorists are sent by your Government\"  The externally-orchestrated war is being resolved internally \u2013 by Syrians, for Syrians \u2014 and the solutions are often the fruit of a genuine democratic processes, in contrast to the fake democratic processes masquerading as \"democracy\" in the West, where Western politicians and citizens are heavily propagandized.  NATO et al. terrorists destroy everything that contradicts their deviant ideology. They seek a \"blank slate\" that denies and negates the real Syria.  Syria insists on being a sovereign nation; it refuses Empire's head-chopping criminality.  \"Syria was prosperous, with a growing economy. It had food sovereignty, with a \"strategic\" stock of millions of tons of high quality wheat , not the \"Franken-food\" bio-tech variety; it had a strong central bank with no usurious IMF loans ; it had a popular, reformer President; it had a mostly well-educated, secular, pluralist, forward-looking population; and it was the fourth safest country in the world.\"  Part Two elaborates upon the real story about Syria, and the drivers behind the current dirty war, in which the U.S-led Empire is using terror proxies to advance its predatory reach, contrary to the wishes of the vast majority of Syrians.  The alternative to Syria's elected government is genocidal despotism and Sharia law. The (non-existent) \"moderates\" can't be separated from the \"extremists\", because all of the mercenary terrorists share the same goals and the same ideologies.  The predictable result of engineered deception is that domestic Western populations remain deceived and politically passive. The truth is inverted, and large swaths of the population remain deluded. Whereas the West and its allies support all the terrorists invading Syria, domestic populations think that we are fighting terrorism. This is the great fraud of the \"Global War On Terror\".  The West uses mercenary terrorist proxies to advance its predatory reach; to destroy foreign countries; and to increase global terrorism exponentially, all for the benefit of the oligarch classes. There is nothing new about this.  \"The secular governments of Iraq, Libya, and Syria all \u2014 prior to Western invasions \u2014 opposed terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.\" Dedication  This book is dedicated to the people of Syria, all of whom are on the front lines in the fight against international terrorism.  Your blood is being shed for our sins.  Acknowledgements  I can't begin to thank everyone who helped me with this book, but here's a start.  Thanks to Ken Stone, who inspired me to take the trip to Syria.  Thanks to Jamal Daoud, and the organizers of the Third International Tour of Peace To Syria, who made this trip possible, despite \"external\" barriers, thus giving us the chance to see and hear Syria for ourselves. Now we can better share the truth.  Thanks to my fellow travellers, who are my brothers and sisters in spirit.  Thanks to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky who helped me publish this book.  Thanks to Gerry DiSanto, at the Defensive Arts Training Centre (DATC), who encouraged me to write this book.  And last but not least, thanks to Victoria, who helped me along the way. NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS","label":1}
{"text":"Home improvement retailers Home Depot Inc and Lowe s Inc said on Wednesday they have started shipping emergency material to Florida in anticipation of Hurricane Irma, even as they continue recovery efforts after Hurricane Harvey in Texas. Irma, which hit the Caribbean island of St. Martin on Wednesday, is expected to make landfall in Florida during the weekend but its precise trajectory remained uncertain. Irma could become the second powerful storm to thrash the U.S. mainland after Harvey killed more than 60 people and caused as much as $180 billion in damage after hitting Texas late last month. This is unusual because we are now juggling two different storms in two different phases. One is approaching while the other market is in the recovery phase, Home Depot spokesman Matthew Harrigan told Reuters. Home Depot is following the same script preparing for Irma as it did for Harvey. The retailer s merchandising and supply chain teams have previously dealt with different weather-related disasters at once, Harrigan said without giving specific examples. Before Harvey hit Texas, the world s largest hardware and home improvement chain activated its disaster-response plan, asked managers to freeze prices in stores around the region and move storm related merchandise to the front of the store. It followed a plan honed over many hurricane seasons to minimize disruptions, deliver essential material to affected areas and capitalize on a surge in demand for products once repairs begin. Home Depot said it takes up to two months to open stores that are hit hard by a hurricane. Stores that are minimally impacted are usually opened within a few days. Both Home Depot and Lowe s had activated a hurricane command center during Harvey that is now continuing to monitor the path of Irma and mobilizing resources such as supplies. Home Depot said it has despatched 300 truckloads to Florida so far. Rival Lowe s said it has sent 400 truckloads of hurricane prep material including flashlights, batteries and weather radios to Florida. Analysts have said investments in logistics and supply chain by home improvement chains during a weather-related disaster typically brings about 10 to 15 times more in sales. Shares of both Home Depot and Lowe s traded up nearly 2 percent on Wednesday morning.","label":0}
{"text":"This recent midterm election was my first real setback since I became a committed liberal (after years on the other side), and what I don't understand is why so many well-meaning liberals refuse to fight dirty. Sure, some Democratic politicians \"sling mud,\" but the \"professional left\" (as they are often derisively called) spend too much time debating the exactitude of certain issues and not enough time shutting down the bad ideas of the opposition. It might speak well to one's character, but it's an ineffective way to do battle. There is a place for self-examination, but it's not on the battlefield. Sometimes the proper reaction to cruelty or stupid ideas is disgust or even a well-timed insult. For many on the left this art is sadly as dead as the late hero of mine quoted above. I got married, dropped out of college, joined the military and became a father all before I was 21 years old, and I spent the next 20 years dealing with my early missteps. It was a painful climb, but one benefit of the circuitous route I took is that I understand the angry, white and rural right wing of America better than most. It's a group that grows ever more desperate and irrational no matter which way the electoral winds blow. As a member of the frothing right wing, I always spouted nonsense, even when I wasn't sure I believed it. Sometimes I would throw out really crazy stuff just to see how it fit the big picture and sometimes to get a rise from the opposition. Rhetorical bomb throwing is well respected on the right, and it's not always a bad thing. There is nothing wrong with trying out ideas, letting them roll off the tongue to see how they sound. I'm always playing with ideas, most of which get discarded before I let myself believe them or write them down. There is one caveat to this and that's the racist, hateful and homophobic rants that have become too common among the worst of the Tea Party. This ugly side of conservative rage is one of the major factors that drove me (and many others) away from right-wing politics. When I lived conservative values, I attended many events with like-minded people. Conservative movements foster a herd mentality. Even when someone stood up to \"lead,\" he or she often regurgitated well-accepted talking points while crowds nodded in unison. Listen to talk radio or watch Fox News, and you can barely tally the number of times you hear, \"yes, I think that's true.\" A perfect example of thoughtless regurgitation is when callers on talk radio mention \"Saul Alinsky Democrats.\" Still others like to sling the insult of \"Obama's Chicago political machine,\" with no context whatsoever. I'm going to make the obvious point that few if any of these callers have read one word of Alinsky, and fewer still have any direct, pointed or even third-hand knowledge of \"Chicago politics.\" These goofy phrases have become totems of the insider, and like children, these listeners mindlessly repeat what someone else has said as if they had insight. Now that I've been in the liberal camp for a few years, I've noticed the complete opposite with the politically engaged left. They often identify as \"contrarian.\" They question everything and have a hard time taking a firm stand, even when 70% of the public is with them (on minimum wage, for instance). In an ideological battle, the tendency toward inclusion and reflection can become a handicap. As a side effect of all this soul-searching, the left becomes ineffectual at fighting even the worst excesses on the right. I'm boiling this down to a false dichotomy to illustrate a point. Of course there is every gradation of political belief on the right and left; yet our system itself is incapable of nuance, because only one side has even heard of the word. Most people know that individuals will suffer because of the results of the latest midterm election. People won't get health care and some will lose food stamps. Discrimination will find a better foothold and the advance of science will lose ground. People I love, personally, will be vilified for being gay, because conservative voices of discrimination will feel empowered to act like jerks. Much of the latest loss stems from an inability to talk to regular people \u2014 especially working-class men \u2014 about liberal ideas. If Homer Simpson is America (he is), then liberals should learn to talk to him. Rich people have won over the white working class even though those same wealthy people don't do shit for the working class, ever. The wealthy have bought elections and government, wholesale. Working-class Americans are scared, battered and desperate. They are ready to listen to liberal messages, but not if we act like \"wimps.\" The thing conservatives can't stand the most is what they charmingly call \"pussy liberals.\" A white, conservative man would walk through hot coals or swallow shards of glass to prove to a stranger on the barstool next to him that he's not one. (My wife, a nuanced liberal, vehemently objects when I use the term. As a feminist I totally understand. It's offensive. But I didn't create this usage. I'm only pointing it out.) One of the reasons I became a liberal is not only because they have better ideas but also because they are willing to reconsider them, sometimes ad infinitum. The debates and discussion and endless self-examination appeal to me, because of who I am. Liberals do a lot less yelling and a whole lot more making everyone feel welcome. Yet the same strength in debating, self-awareness and the Socratic Method are the enemies of a good story. The retired guy in a modest home on a fixed income defends the rights of billionaires to exploit him, because he's been sold a narrative. The story matters, and Republicans spin a hell of yarn about America and \"freedom,\" even though most of it is bullshit or a straight-out rewriting of history. They talk about Jefferson, Madison and Washington, men who would despise the science-hating, ignorant and reactive group the right has become. But it doesn't matter what or who you really stand for, it's just a matter of what you can sell. People with a billion dollars in the bank who benefit from low taxes and who exploit American labor could give two shits about patriotism, but they sing \"The Battle Hymn of the Republic\" as loud as possible while owning sprawling mansions in five countries. Alice Walton, Wal-Mart heiress and professional layabout, is hardly your relatable, average American. Certainly the left should be able to find an explanation for why her brand of capitalism is evil. If liberals want to win the war of ideas they can't be afraid to use the word \"evil.\" If Ms. Walton is not an evil person, we should at least not be afraid to call the practices of Wal-Mart by that powerful and often factual label. Too harsh? Have you heard the dreck slung at immigrants lately? How about the word \"traitor,\" so easily thrown at the president almost daily, every day for six years? If you think those on the right are reasonable, wish one \"happy holidays.\" You might get your ass kicked. The worst part is that people do not prefer conservative ideas. In the last election they voted to increase the minimum wage in red states, to impose gun background checks and to legalize marijuana. The problem with all three of these issues is that Democrats refuse to stand up for them or do so only tepidly. They won't fight, argue and, if necessary, insult the increasingly unbalanced platform of the opposition. I call on my fellow liberals to embrace the rough stuff. Engage in battle with people who hate you and feel free to throw crazy right back, even if you only half believe it. Let it out and taste it on the way by. See if it flies. If it doesn't, screw it \u2014 just fix it up next time. Refer to your political opponent as \"the honorable shithead from New Jersey.\" Use the words, images and for god's sake, the passion of the street. People who hate and fear you will always hate you unless they die out, change their minds or we can beat them in a heated contest of ideas. You're not playing checkers \u2014 and they're winning by giving zero shits about reality, so cut the crap and fight like you mean it.","label":0}
{"text":"President-elect Donald Trump has chosen former Goldman Sachs partner and Hollywood financier Steven Mnuchin as his nominee for Treasury secretary and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross to head the Commerce Department, the two men told CNBC on Wednesday. The following is a list of Republican Trump's selections for top jobs in his administration: Mnuchin, 53, is a relatively little-known but successful private equity investor, hedge fund manager and Hollywood financier who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs (GS.N) before leaving in 2002. He assembled an investor group to buy a failed California mortgage lender in 2009, rebranded it as OneWest Bank and built it into Southern California's largest bank. The bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. Ross, 78, heads the private equity firm W.L. Ross & Co. His net worth was pegged by Forbes at about $2.9 billion. A staunch supporter of Trump and an economic adviser, Ross has helped shape the Trump campaign's views on trade policy. He blames the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which entered into force in 1994, and the 2001 entry of China into the World Trade Organization for causing massive U.S. factory job losses. Chao, 63, was labor secretary under President George W. Bush for eight years and the first Asian-American woman to hold a Cabinet position. Chao is a director at Ingersoll Rand, News Corp and Vulcan Materials Company. She is married to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: U.S. REPRESENTATIVE TOM PRICE Price, 62, is an orthopedic surgeon who heads the House of Representatives' Budget Committee. A representative from Georgia since 2005, Price has criticized Obamacare and has championed a plan of tax credits, expanded health savings accounts and lawsuit reforms to replace it. He is opposed to abortion. U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: GOVERNOR NIKKI HALEY Haley, a 44-year-old Republican, has been governor of South Carolina since 2011 and has little experience in foreign policy or the federal government. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley led a successful push last year to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina state capitol after the killing of nine black churchgoers in Charleston by a white gunman. DeVos, 58, is a billionaire Republican donor, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party and an advocate for the privatization of education. As chair of the American Federation for Children, she has pushed at the state level for vouchers that families can use to send their children to private schools and for the expansion of charter schools. [L1N1DO0KC] Sessions, 69, was the first U.S. senator to endorse Trump's presidential bid and has been a close ally since. The son of a country-store owner, the senator from Alabama and former federal prosecutor has long taken a tough stance on illegal immigration, opposing any path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: RETIRED LIEUTENANT GENERAL MICHAEL FLYNN Flynn, 57, was an early supporter of Trump and serves as vice chairman on his transition team. He began his U.S. Army career in 1981 and served deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. Flynn became head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012 under President Barack Obama, but retired a year earlier than expected, according to media reports, and became a fierce critic of Obama's foreign policy. Pompeo, 52, is a third-term congressman from Kansas who serves on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, which oversees the CIA, National Security Agency and cyber security. A retired Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate, Pompeo supports the U.S. government's sweeping collection of Americans' communications data and wants to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran.","label":0}
{"text":"Protests against Trumpcare are ramping up now that the Congressional Budget Office has released their assessment of the bill. And not surprisingly, Republican senators are sinking to all-time lows to avoid the angry constituents begging for the GOP not to take away their health care. Last week they were dragging people out of wheelchairs to haul them off to jail and this week they re throwing priests behind bars.Six protesters were arrested on Monday for protesting the repeal of Obamacare at Sen. Shelley Moore Capito s office in Charleston, WV, who has yet to decide how she will vote on the bill. One of the protestors who ended up in handcuffs was Rev. Jim Lewis. For the party that claims to be all about Christian values, it sure is ironic that they having a man of God arrested because he asked them not to kill the poor and sick. Just saying.The Washington Journal reports:So, for six hours, several dozen West Virginians stood outside the office calling for their Junior Senator to protect their healthcare, while six went into Capito s office and staged a sit-in. At 5:30 pm, protesters inside were told that the office was closing and they would be arrested if they did not leave.The videos below, livestreamed on Facebook, show the protesters calmly and peacefully explaining their cause and the disaster they were committed to avoiding. Police officers seemingly with reluctance, if not sympathy told them they would be charged with trespassing and taken to jail if they did not leave.Committed to the moral imperative that is stopping Trumpcare, the protesters made clear that if the choice was between jail or backing down, the decision was easy.Gary Zuckett, executive director of the West Virginia Citizen Action Group which helped organize the event along with West Virginia Citizen Action Group, Rise Up West Virginia and Kanawha Valley Democratic Socialists of America, said they were there to try to get through to Capito just how many of her constituents will be hurt if this bill becomes law. The idea is, we need to send a message to Sen. Capito that this is not an acceptable direction for our country to be going, he said. It s going to hurt West Virginia, it s going to hurt our economy, it s going to put a lot of the rural health clinics at risk, it may close some rural hospitals. It s definitely going to harm her constituents when they lose their health care coverage, especially with the Medicaid expansion. You can watch video of a GOP senator having a priest arrested here:","label":1}
{"text":"Transcripts November 3, 2016 Obama: 'It's Because of You That a Marine Can Serve His Country Without Hiding the Husband He Loves'  Speaking at the University of North Carolina this afternoon, President Barack Obama told voters it was because of them that millions of people had health care who did not have it before and Marines could enter publicly into same-sex marriages.  \"It is because of you that millions of people have health care today that didn't have it before,\" Obama said. \"It is because of you that millions of young people are going to college that couldn't afford it before. It's because of you that a Marine can serve his country without hiding the husband he loves. It is because of you that more young immigrants came out of the shadows and are serving our country.\"","label":1}
{"text":"Syrian President Bashar al-Assad s negotiating team is set to arrive in Geneva on Sunday to participate in peace talks, Syria s state news agency SANA reported on Thursday, quoting a foreign ministry source. The delegation, led by Bashar al-Ja afari, walked out last week and returned to Damascus. Negotiations resumed on Wednesday without the Syrian government delegation. The talks began last week and after a few days with little apparent progress, the U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura said that the government delegation was returning to Damascus to consult and refresh . The government delegation blamed its departure on the opposition s uncompromising stance on Assad s future. Last month, the opposition drew up a statement in a meeting in Riyadh that rejected any future role for Assad in Syria. During last week s sessions, de Mistura shuttled between the representatives of the two warring sides, who did not meet face-to-face. He had planned to continue the round until Dec. 15. The opposition negotiating team arrived at the U.N. offices in Geneva on Wednesday morning to resume talks with de Mistura. France accused the Syrian government on Wednesday of obstructing the peace talks with its refusal to return to Geneva and called on Russia not to shrink its responsibilities to get Damascus to the negotiating table.","label":0}
{"text":"The White House said on Thursday it was focusing on getting the lowest corporate rate possible in tax reform legislation being considered on Capitol Hill. \"Fifteen (percent) is better than 20, 20 is better than 22 and 22 is better than what we have,\" White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters.","label":0}
{"text":"Urged on by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Republican lawmakers rushing to scrap Obamacare said this week they hoped to make some changes intended to stabilize the insurance market while they work at repealing and replacing the law. The beginnings of a framework outlining what a post-Obamacare world could look like came in the same week that Congress approved a resolution instructing key committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate to draft Obamacare repeal legislation by a target date of Jan. 27. The fate of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, is a high-stakes political showdown between Republicans and Democrats that potentially jeopardizes medical coverage for millions of Americans and risks causing chaos in the health insurance marketplace. The seven-year-old law has enabled up to 20 million previously uninsured Americans to obtain health coverage and helped slow the rise in healthcare spending. But Republicans have called it federal government overreach. \"If our general goal is to move decisions out of Washington back to the states, we should be able to make those decisions in the next several months,\" a key Republican senator working on the repeal, Lamar Alexander, told reporters outside the Senate this week. In a speech on the Senate floor, Alexander indicated Republicans are eyeing some moves insurers have said would help shore up the insurance plans offered on the Obamacare exchanges. The changes could be done by law or by regulation, Alexander said. Alexander said he favors continuing, at least temporarily, the cost-sharing subsidies that millions of Americans receive with their Obamacare exchange-based plans - a kind of financial assistance that helps keep down the cost of deductibles and co-pays. He advocates adjusting the special enrollment periods that insurers say are sometimes abused by people who wait until they are sick to sign up for insurance. Insurers have long sought changes that would fix this facet of Obamacare to weed out misuse. It would also help the transition to a new system, Alexander said, if individuals could use government premium subsidies to buy plans outside of the Obamacare marketplace. Alexander is chairman of the Senate health committee, one of the committees drafting the repeal legislation. He told reporters he had discussed his ideas with a number of senators and the process was evolving, but stressed it should be gradual, with some changes made by lawmakers and some by the secretary of Health and Human Services after he is confirmed. Trump has nominated Republican Representative Tom Price for the job. \"Certainty is something the insurance industry needs so they don't abandon coverage,\" said Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, another Republican lawmaker who has been working on how to stabilize insurance markets. It was unclear whether lawmakers will reach the ambitious target date of Jan. 27 for drafting repeal legislation. But House Speaker Paul Ryan said on CNN on Thursday that Republicans are moving \"as quickly as they can\". The 2010 law, Democratic President Barack Obama's signature piece of domestic policy, touches almost all parts of the U.S. healthcare system, making its replacement likely to take effect over a number of years, even if lawmakers are trying to draft changes in weeks or months.","label":0}
{"text":"Lawmakers in Democrat-controlled California are already laying the groundwork to fight President-elect Donald Trump's conservative populist agenda. On Monday, leaders of both houses of the legislature introduced measures to protect undocumented immigrants in the state from efforts by a Trump administration to deport them once the billionaire businessman takes office Jan. 20. The bills followed closely on Democratic Governor Jerry Brown's nomination of U.S. Representative Xavier Becerra as attorney general, a high-ranking Democrat who challenged the incoming administration to \"come at us\" on such issues as climate change, immigration and worker protections. \"Immigrants are a part of California's history, our culture, and our society,\" said Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Democrat from Los Angeles, responding to Trump's calls to deport undocumented immigrants and build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. \"We are telling the next Administration and Congress: if you want to get to them, you have to go through us.\" California voted decisively for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election, choosing the former first lady over Trump by 28 percentage points. Democrats hold two-thirds majorities in both houses of the legislature, and every statewide office. The most populous U.S. state, California has more than 2.7 million undocumented immigrants - about 7 percent of its 39 million population. Brown's nomination of Becerra last week positions the state to fight back against efforts to weaken progressive policies with a reliably progressive attorney general steeped in the ways of Washington. On its first day back from recess on Monday the legislature passed resolutions urging Trump to abandon his deportation promise, and introduced two bills aimed at protecting immigrants. One measure would set up a fund to pay for lawyers for immigrants facing deportation. Another would train criminal defense attorneys in immigration law. At a news conference on Monday, Brown and Becerra avoided antagonistic language about Trump. But both men promised to protect the state's interests. \"I don't think California is out there to pick fights,\" Becerrra said. \"But we certainly will stand up for the rights that we do have.\" The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Republican leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley criticized the legislature's moves. \"Democrats stole a page out of President-Elect Trump's campaign playbook and pushed a rhetorical, divisive agenda designed to inflame tensions many of us seek to soothe,\" Mayes said.","label":0}
{"text":"On April 26 an armed robbery suspect failed to successfully rack the slide of his pistol but pointed the jammed gun toward a cashier and demanded money anyway. [The incident occurred at a Kansas City Jimmy John's around 9:15 p. m. According to Fox 13, the robbery suspect was \"wearing a baby blue sweatshirt and black hat. \" He ordered food, then tried \u2014 unsuccessfully \u2014 to rack the slide on his pistol. Video of the incident shows a bullet ended up being jammed between the slide and the barrel's chamber, yet the suspect pointed the gun at the cashier and carried out the robbery anyway. The cashier remained extremely calm throughout the incident, even though the suspect placed the end of the barrel just inches from the cashier's head. In fact \u2014 once the robbery attempt was obvious \u2014 the cashier \"simply takes his gloves off, takes the money out of the register and hands it to the suspect, without any change in his demeanor whatsoever. \" The suspect took the money and fled the scene, but police reported that he was arrested on Friday. Police did not indicate whether the cashier knew the gun was jammed. AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com.","label":0}
{"text":"The U. S. Department of Labor (DOL) asked a San Francisco federal judge on April 7 to compel Google to provide detailed data regarding systemic gender pay discrimination. [With the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) making a preliminary determination that Google Inc. in its capacity as a federal contractor, has exhibited a pattern of pay discrimination against women, the DOL began a suit in front of a San Francisco Administrative Law Judge to compel Google to allow auditors to inspect and copy records and data about the company's compliance with federal laws governing equal opportunity. Google's labor lawyer attorney Lisa Barnett Sween from Jackson Lewis stated that Google had complied with initial requests. But she argued that the DOL's demand for employee names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses violated Google's Constitutional Fourth Amendment right of protection against unreasonable searches. Silicon Valley CEOs view the DOL's aggressive action against Google as the first salvo in President Obama's January 29, 2016 Executive Order that expanded the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) gender compensation audits. Obama's action came on the seventh anniversary of his signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. The Order directed the EEOC, in partnership with the DOL, to start collecting summary pay data by gender, race, and ethnicity from all private sector businesses with 100 or more employees. The White House stated that the audits would cover 63 million American workers and \"focus public enforcement of our equal pay laws and provide better insight into discriminatory pay practices across industries and occupations. \" President Obama protested that he was forced to issue an Executive Order because Congress had refused to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act that he claimed would \"give women additional tools to fight pay discrimination. \" Obama issued a report titled \"The Gender Pay Gap on the Anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act,\" which claimed that the U. S. gender wage gap is now 2. 5 percentage points worse than the average for industrialized countries, after the world reduced the pay gap by 7 percentage points since 2000. DOL Regional Director Janette Wipper testified that the government had collected information to show that Google is violating federal EEOC laws on wages: \"We found systemic compensation disparities against women pretty much across the entire workforce. \" Despite California being the eighth best state in the U. S. for gender equality, the DOL may have chosen to go after Google knowing the U. S. Ninth Circuit has a reputation as America's most liberal venue. The DOL filed discrimination lawsuits against Palantir in September for alleged systematic hiring discrimination against Asian job applicants and sued Oracle in January claiming that the company paid white men more than other racial groups. Both company deny the charges as \"politically motivated. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Convinced that previous snow plowing policies were \"sexist,\" the city government of the Swedish capital of Stockholm recently implemented a \"feminist\" system for clearing it. It ended in disaster and the city came to an absolute standstill. For a start, four times as many people than usual were hospitalized for snow-related injuries. Nearly as importantly, countless workers, most of them men, were prevented from getting to work. It would appear that the patriarchy-backed snow won, as local politicians ended up apologizing for the havoc-causing changes. Havoc like this: Forgetting that motor vehicles are often more impeded by snow than pedestrians (and create a greater safety risk), municipal resources, which had already been increased, were diverted to clearing bicycle paths and sidewalks and away from main roads. Areas like schools were also prioritized, which again ignores the frequently greater ease of walking in snow than driving in it, plus the longer distances car commuters face compared to children, mothers and other women walking to places. The situation is quite plainly moronic for a further reason: non-main roads and other parts of a city take up much more space, meaning that the Swedish capital's snow removal teams were targeting a far larger, less densely used zone. To boot, this was all during a November already breaking records for snowfall . The saga in Stockholm reads like an microcosm of feminism itself: an over-educated (meaning under-educated) group of leftists come together, create \"data\" based on feelings, and produce a plan of action that screws up an entire community. Feminists in Stockholm had previously complained that the thoroughfares cleaned up first and most extensively by snowplows were the ones heavily used by men. How they came to this conclusion is unclear but, given the shutdown of the city that resulted from the feminist changes, it wasn't based on any solid reasoning. With private cars and public transport vehicles alike unable to move in many cases, the \"female-friendly\" snow-clearing ended up adversely impacting far more people, including women, than the old one. Well done, feminists and white knights. What this says about Sweden Is it really surprising that one of the people responsible for Stockholm's \"female-friendly\" snow plowing scandal, Mayor Karin Wanng\u00e5rd, is a feminist and career politician who first joined the council in her teens? Because Sweden is perhaps the most concentrated welfare state in the world, not having people at their jobs and instead stuck in snow is a very bad thing. How can a country continue to pay such a large bill for handouts with elected representatives of the caliber of Stockholm's trying to ruin things? Sweden is also home to a growing class of low-skilled migrant communities, including many tens of thousands from the most recent Mediterranean waves last year. Its recent migrant population is now essentially the same proportionally-speaking as states more typically associated with multiculturalism, such as Canada and Australia. And non-ethnic Swedes in Sweden tend to come from more troublesome cultures, compared to the more assimilation-friendly East Asians and Indians emigrating to Canada and Australia. How Sweden intends to deal with issues like this while balancing urgent economic needs remains to be seen, especially with brain-dead initiatives like the snow plow fiasco taking precedence. Add to the mix the recent creation of a \"mansplaining\" hotline by a Swedish labor union and you start to see the \"real\" problems Scandinavia's most basketcase society is trying to solve. So who was organizing the snow plowing\u2013and actually doing it? Yup, you guessed it, it's a man driving. There's no doubt that the feminist snow plowing scheme was an unmitigated disaster. And it's also extremely likely that the vast majority of people tasked with clearing Stockholm's streets are men. Oh, the irony. Not only do feminist politicians try to preference women in the removal of snow, they expect men to do the work in achieving it. Just as sanitation workers and garbage collectors are invariably male, don't expect to catch too many female snowplow operators and other snow-clearing employees in Stockholm. Wake up, Sweden Swedish multiculturalism in action. Stockholm's snow removal catastrophe is emblematic of a country refusing to deal with its real malaise. While the men who built Sweden are categorized as would-be oppressors, Swedish society itself is close to breaking point. Even Stockholm's central train station is now terribly unsafe and various city police forces have long made it known that they do not have control of many suburbs. In particular, Malm\u00f6, Sweden's third city, and certain districts of Stockholm are notorious for ethnic ghettos, gang violence, rape, and other crime. But no, mansplaining hotlines and not removing snow in a new, feminist way are the clear and present dangers most Swedes should fear at night.","label":1}
{"text":"Europe Hopes for Clinton Win for More Deals With Iran November 01, 2016 Europe Hopes for Clinton Win for More Deals With Iran  After a year of disappointment, European businesses are hoping a victory for Hillary Clinton in the U.S. election next week may help break the logjam that has prevented large-scale Western investments in Iran since the opening of its economy. While no one in Europe is predicting a flurry of new deals should Clinton defeat her Republican rival Donald Trump on Nov. 8 A win for the Democrat would remove some of the political clouds hanging over last year's nuclear deal between Iran and world powers. Business groups say this could help fuel a more aggressive push into the Iranian market in 2017, especially in the second half of the year, if a Clinton victory is followed by the re-election of moderate Iranian President Hassan Rouhani next May.  \"If Clinton and Rouhani win, then we will have a political window of opportunity that is much bigger than we have now,\" said Matthieu Etourneau, who advises French firms on the Iranian market for MEDEF International, the French employers group.  \"This is what the European banks and companies are waiting for,\" he said.  Back in January, when the United States and Europe lifted sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program, the excitement in Europe's business community was palpable.  With a population of 78 million and annual output higher than that of Thailand, Iran was the biggest economy to rejoin the global trading and financial system since the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union.  European politicians flocked to Tehran with dozens of corporate executives in tow. Rouhani, a pragmatist elected in 2013 on a platform to reduce Iran's isolation, traveled to Paris and Rome to promote his country to eager investors.  But within months the euphoria had vanished, replaced by frustration on both sides.  BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO IRAN DEAL: US LAWS  The biggest obstacle for European firms seeking to do business in Iran has been the reluctance of the continent's largest banks to finance deals out of fear they could run afoul of U.S. sanctions and incur massive penalties down the line.  The United States has taken steps to reassure the banks. Last month the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued new guidance to allay concerns about doing U.S. dollar transactions with Iran.  READ MORE: DONALD TRUMP SAYS THAT HILLARY CLINTON'S FOREIGN POLICY WILL LEAD TO WORLD WAR THREE  But Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged at a think-tank event in London this week that banks remained skittish. German officials raised their concerns about the hurdles during a recent visit by U.S. sanctions coordinator Daniel Fried.  This caution is likely to persist, regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Beyond the issue of sanctions, the poor state of Iranian banks after a decade outside the international financial system, the strong state role in the economy and a lack of clarity about the legal system are all deterrents to foreigners.  \"Everyone knows now that this will be a long, step-by-step process to build up our economic ties,\" said Friedolin Strack, head of international markets at the Federation of German Industries (BDI).  Still, a Clinton victory would be a reassuring signal to Europe. Her close adviser Jake Sullivan was a key figure in the secret negotiations in Oman that paved the way for the landmark agreement that curbed Iran's disputed nuclear activity, and she has defended it during the election campaign.  Trump, by contrast, has called it \"one of the worst deals ever made\" and promised to renegotiate it if he is elected. Bankers say the risk of the deal unraveling under a Trump presidency has contributed to the reticence in Europe.  Recently however, there have been signs of movement.  Smaller German banks, pressed by their clients to support them in Iran, are beginning to offer limited financing and payment services.  \"Medium-sized banks that finance the German Mittelstand have a great deal of interest in Iran business and are preparing the groundwork intensively,\" said Siegfried Utzig, acting head of economic policy and international affairs at the Association of German Banks (BvB). \"We can see the light at the end of the tunnel but it's still quite far away.\" Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news  We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories","label":1}
{"text":"By now we re all familiar with Donald Trump s speech in front of 40,000 boy scouts at their National Jamboree last month, when the President rambled like a drunken stepfather, straying from the usual topics of diplomacy and citizenship and turning an 80-year presidential tradition into a campaign rally before a crowd of adolescents. But the madness didn t stop there.According to reports, White House aides told Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, host state of this year s quadrennial Boy Scouts of America National Jamboree, that she could fly with him on Air Force One when he addressed the boy scouts, but only on one condition; that she vote in favor of Senate Republicans healthcare bill. At the time the offer was made to Capito, Republicans were clutching at straws and doing anything possible to salvage their overhaul in the Senate in an effort to actually try and come through on one of the main promises Donald Trump made the entire time he was on the campaign trail, to repeal and replace the disaster that is Obamacare. Naturally, Capito took the high road and turned down the offer, mainly due to the fact that she hadn t even read the actual text of the bill at the time, however, Capito was also one of several Republicans senators who had made their doubts clear about it in the first place.There were several versions of the plan that failed so the Republicans ultimately threw together a skinny repeal, but that also failed when 49 voted for it while 51 voted against, with Arizona Senator John McCain casting the deciding negative vote. Capito also voted against the Republican s skinny repeal, sending them back to the drawing board.President Trump still vows to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and is adamant that he will get his bill passed, however, it may take a little more than a ride on Air Force One to get the votes.","label":1}
{"text":"Perhaps this young girl aspires to be the First Lady someday. Is it really fair to fire her for making racist remarks on social media when our President and First Lady have been on a hate\/blame the white man media tour since they entered the White House? Meet Illinois resident Shana Poohpooh Latrice, a Brookfield Zoo employee who made the mistake of sharing an Instagram photo on Facebook with the caption, At work serving these rude ass white people :She made the even bigger mistake of tagging the photo as having been taken at the zoo.As a result, Brookfield Zoo got bombarded with a litany of complaints from pissed-off zoo visitors who found her comments to be clearly hateful and racist. Some even demanded that Latrice be fired for her mistake, and judging by what spokeswoman Sondra Katzen told reporters, that s exactly what s going to happen. This employee s statements in social media are in violation of our policies and do not reflect our institution s values, she said. We have zero tolerance for these kinds of divisive behaviors. We treat all employment matters confidentially, but rest assured that we have taken prompt action to remedy the situation.","label":1}
{"text":"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will study whether to discontinue using privately run detention centers, which the Justice Department recently called unsafe, for migrants and shares of private prison operators fell on Monday after the news. Department Secretary Jeh Johnson said he directed his advisory council to evaluate whether the agency should continue to contract with private prison operators and make a recommendation by Nov. 30. Advocates for immigrants have accused the companies of withholding proper mental health and medical care from detainees to boost profits. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of DHS, currently uses detention facilities run by Corrections Corp of America (CXW.N) and The GEO Group (GEO.N). Corrections Corp of America's stock slid 9.4 percent and The GEO Group's stock fell 6 percent immediately after news of the review. Both stocks were rebounding later in the afternoon. Corrections Corp of America earned $689 million from ICE contracts since 2008, 12 percent of its revenue from state and federal contracts over that time, according to the website SmartProcure which tracks government contracts. The company currently manages a facility for Central American women and children in Dilley, Texas. The GEO Group runs a similar facility in Karnes City, Texas and has earned $1.18 billion from contracts with ICE since 2008, about 35 percent of its total revenue from government contracts, according SmartProcure data. The GEO Group said in a statement, \"GEO's facilities under contract with ICE are highly rated and provide high-quality, cost-effective services in safe, secure, and humane residential environments pursuant to strict contractual requirements and the federal government's national standards,\" the statement said. Corrections Corp of America spokesman Steve Owen said, \"We're proud of the quality and value of the services we provide and look forward to sharing that information.\" Immigration advocates and members of Congress have ramped up pressure on DHS to end its contracts with the private prison companies since the Justice Department announced on Aug. 18 it would do so. That was prompted by an inspector general's report that criticized the safety and effectiveness of private prisons. \"Rather than wait for a review and a report from a committee, the president should ensure that the phase-out of private prisons ... is extended to DHS operations immediately,\" said Greg Chen, advocacy director at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Senator Bernie Sanders, former Democratic presidential candidate, and Democratic Representative Raul Grijalva asked DHS in a letter last week to end the practice. A Department of Homeland Security official told Reuters on Aug. 19 that ICE needed private prison companies because they offer flexibility to quickly build facilities and adjust detention space as migration flows fluctuate. Both companies also contract with state and local prison systems, which make up about half of their revenue. A Reuters survey of 10 states with the largest contracts with private prison companies, including California and Texas, showed none had immediate plans to drop their contracts.","label":0}
{"text":"President Trump's sweeping new immigration policies \u2014 which include efforts to shine a harsh national spotlight on cities that released undocumented immigrants who went on to be accused of serious crimes \u2014 are sharply increasing the legal and political risks confronting local law enforcement officials. As Mr. Trump ratchets up the pressure on sanctuary cities through what some advocates are denouncing as a \" \" campaign to force them to work more closely with federal immigration authorities, police and sheriff's departments are being caught in a crossfire. In Denver, Sheriff Patrick Firman, who runs the local jail, has long received one set of instructions from the city government and local advocates. The city attorney warned him against detaining anyone without a warrant. The American Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue him if he did. Immigrants' rights groups applied the added deterrent of local political pressure. So Mr. Firman's department began doing what many law enforcement officers around the country have learned to do: balance contradictory requests. When the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency wants to deport one of his inmates, the jail sends a fax notifying ICE before the inmate is about to walk free \u2014 leaving it to federal agents to show up and make an arrest. But the fax is not necessarily sent with a great deal of advance notice. In the case of Ever Valles, 19, a Mexican national awaiting trial for car theft, the Denver jail's fax was sent in the middle of the night in late December, 10 hours after Mr. Valles posted bail but less than a before he walked free. ICE was nowhere to be seen. Last Friday, Mr. Valles was charged with a much more serious crime: murdering a man at a light rail station in a robbery gone awry. Now, Mr. Firman is in the eye of a political storm that highlights the precarious position confronting many law enforcement officials. Immigration officials accused Mr. Firman of ignoring their detainer request. \"Had the officer for ICE been sitting at the fax machine, waiting for it to come in, it still would not have been enough time for us to come and get him,\" said Shawn Neudauer, an ICE spokesman. The Fox News host Bill O'Reilly declared that Mr. Firman and Denver's mayor had \"blood on their hands. \" Angry messages quickly began flooding the sheriff's department and its social media pages. Mr. Firman declined to be interviewed. Officials at the jail, which releases about 100 people a day and receives three to five detainer requests a week, say they try their best to cooperate with immigration officials and to notify them in a timely manner, despite calls from local advocates not to communicate with the agency and to release undocumented immigrants through a side door to elude federal agents. The Trump administration hopes the firestorm will help shift public opinion in cities that have vowed to protect their undocumented populations. Yet, the attacks on Mr. Firman do not acknowledge the confusing and often conflicting rules that have led to complaints by the law enforcement agents. United States appeals courts have ruled that federal detainer requests are not a substitute for a warrant or for the probable cause required to get one. \"You can't just pick up the phone and say, 'Please hold an individual,'\" said Jonathan F. Thompson, executive director of the National Sheriffs' Association. When federal officials began issuing detainers in 2008 under a pilot program called Secure Communities, most jurisdictions treated the requests as mandatory. But after American citizens were mistakenly held, filed suit and won costly damage awards, some jurisdictions stopped cooperating. More confusion occurred when cities and states adopted their own policies spelling out when to turn over undocumented immigrants. As compliance with detainers dropped sharply, the Obama administration ended the program and introduced a new one allowing local jurisdictions far more leeway to decide when to cooperate. But that has caused even more confusion among law enforcement officials, when what they want is clarity about their obligations, Mr. Thompson said. He said his members were relieved this week when Mr. Trump reinstated the Secure Communities program. But Mr. Thompson said the rules surrounding federal detainers were still \"a work in progress. \" It remains to be seen how the reinstated program will avoid the same legal setbacks that took the program down under President Obama. \"We're all trying to figure out how to do that as quickly as possible,\" Mr. Thompson said, mentioning a meeting he and some of his members had recently with Mr. Trump. Recent clashes between local and federal officials have only muddied the waters. In New York City this week, ICE officials publicly assailed the city government after an undocumented Salvadoran teenager with suspected ties to a violent gang, Estivan Rafael Marques Velasquez, was released from Rikers Island despite a federal request for assistance with his deportation. \"Honoring a detainer request is not about politics,\" Thomas R. Decker, director of enforcement and removal operations for ICE in New York, said in a news release. \"It is about keeping New York citizens safe. \" But the city's mayor, Bill de Blasio, vigorously defends that policy, adopted by the City Council in 2014, under which only those accused of 170 serious felonies \u2014 such as arson, robbery or homicide \u2014 can be turned over to immigration enforcement agents. And in a radio interview last month, the mayor suggested that turning local police into a deportation force would make the city more dangerous because fewer people would report crimes or cooperate with investigations. \"If so many of our fellow New Yorkers who are undocumented feared to communicate with the local authorities because they thought they might be deported, we couldn't run our city,\" he said. The case of Mr. Velasquez, 18, who has been arrested six times since 2014 on charges that remain sealed because he was a minor at the time, highlights how quickly public opinion can shift if an undocumented immigrant commits a serious crime. A trenchant New York Post headline \u2014 \" 'Sanctuary City' Law Let Gang Member Walk Free From Rikers\" \u2014 lit up social media as Trump supporters across the country railed against New York's defiance. The prospect of more such cases being publicized has rattled New York officials. \"I don't think that litigating this in the public sphere is the best path forward,\" said Nisha Agarwal, the city's commissioner for immigrant affairs. Mr. Velasquez \u2014 known to city officials as Steven Marquez \u2014 was involved in a clash last year between youths outside Queens County Criminal Courthouse witnesses told investigators they heard gunshots. He was charged with felony weapons possession, which would have made him eligible to be handed over to ICE under New York City's policy. But he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, weapons possession. He served less than a year at Rikers Island, where investigators noted that he had a tattoo associating him with the Salvadoran gang . On Feb. 16, he was released from jail. Hours later, he was rearrested by federal agents at a Queens apartment, according to ICE, whose agents say it is far more dangerous to arrest someone on the streets than in jail. To highlight the additional risks they say they must take in sanctuary cities, ICE agents make a point of issuing news releases that criticize jurisdictions that decline to cooperate with deportations. That kind of warfare is almost certain to escalate. This week, the Department of Homeland Security ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement to release weekly reports of crimes committed by immigrants who were the subjects of detainer requests that went ignored. Some sanctuary cities view the move as beyond the pale. \"This is a shaming list, a scarlet letter that the federal government is going to put on jurisdictions around the country,\" said Dennis Herrera, San Francisco's city attorney. \"We welcome an open and honest discussion about immigration and crime, because numerous studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit serious crimes or be incarcerated than individuals. \" But Mr. Thompson, of the National Sheriffs' Association, said the effort was merely meant to illuminate the constraints under which law enforcement agencies are operating. The new directive \"wasn't written in a way to shame anyone,\" he said. \"It was written in a way to give the department a handle on, 'Why can't these criminal aliens be held? Is it state law or local law preventing a sheriff from cooperating? '\"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, seeking to tamp down a firestorm over meeting with former President Bill Clinton, said on Friday she will accept the recommendations of career prosecutors and the FBI director on whether to charge Hillary Clinton for mishandling emails. The United States' top law enforcement officer, however, stopped short of saying she would recuse herself from the investigation of the Democratic presidential candidate. \"I will be informed of those findings, as opposed to never reading them or never seeing them, but I will be accepting their recommendations and their plan for going forward,\" Lynch said. She was responding to questions from a Washington Post journalist who was introducing a talk by Lynch at the Aspen Ideas Festival, a gathering of government, technology and other business leaders in Aspen, Colorado. Republicans, including presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have said a political appointee like Lynch should not be involved in the email investigation and that the Monday night meeting with Bill Clinton shows Lynch is too close to the Clintons. With a regretful tone, Lynch said on Friday she would not privately meet with Bill Clinton again and that she understood how the meeting \"casts a shadow\" over the perception of the Justice Department's probe into Hillary Clinton's email use. The attorney general said she has received many questions about her role in the investigation and \"whether someone who was a political appointee would be involved in deciding how to investigate.\" Republican lawmakers have called for an independent investigation of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while secretary of state, saying the Obama administration's Justice Department could not be free of bias. In Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest told a daily news briefing that the investigation is being handled completely independently of the White House and President Barack Obama. Lynch was appointed by the Democratic president and sworn in on April 1, 2015, well after Hillary Clinton left Obama's Cabinet in 2013. Career prosecutors are not appointed by a president and may serve through different administrations. The FBI director is appointed by the president but is not part of his Cabinet and is considered apolitical. Lynch said on Friday that she had already decided to accept whatever recommendations prosecutors presented her before her meeting with Bill Clinton. The private meeting with the former president took place on Lynch's plane after she landed in Phoenix on Monday night. Bill Clinton was leaving the airport after a rally for his wife earlier that day. Lynch told reporters earlier this week that she did not discuss the email probe or other matters pending before the Justice Department with Bill Clinton, calling their meeting \"primarily social.\" The FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton's email use and whether laws were broken as a result of a personal email server kept in her Chappaqua, New York, home while she was secretary of state, an issue that has overshadowed her campaign. She apologized last year for using the server, saying that while she did nothing wrong, she should have used two email accounts: one for State Department business and another for personal matters. Representatives for her campaign could not be reached immediately for comment on Friday. Trump on Thursday called Lynch's meeting \"a sneak\" and questioned the judgment of both Bill Clinton and the attorney general. In a tweet on Friday, the wealthy businessman said the meeting showed the U.S. political system was \"totally rigged\" and that Hillary Clinton had bad judgment. \"Bill's meeting was probably initiated and demanded by Hillary!\" Trump said on Twitter. The Justice Department, along with the White House, has said the probe should be free of political interference.","label":0}
{"text":"Thailand s Supreme Court convicted and sentenced former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra in absentia to five years in prison on Wednesday for mismanaging a rice subsidy scheme that cost the country billions of dollars. Yingluck fled abroad last month fearing that the military government, set up after a coup in 2014, would seek a harsh sentence. For more than a decade, Thai politics have been dominated by a power struggle between Thailand s traditional elite, including the army and affluent Bangkok-based upper classes, and the Shinawatra family, which includes Yingluck s brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was also ousted by a coup. Yingluck had faced up to 10 years in prison for negligence over the costly scheme that had helped get her elected in 2011. She had pleaded innocent and accused the military government of political persecution. Nine judges voted unanimously to find Yingluck guilty in verdict reading that took four hours, and a warrant was issued for her arrest. The court said Yingluck knew that members of her administration had falsified government-to-government rice deals but did nothing to stop it. The accused knew that the government-to-government rice contract was unlawful but did not prevent it ..., the Supreme Court said. Which is a manner of seeking unlawful gains. Therefore, the action of the accused is considered negligence of duty, it said. A former commerce minister in her government was jailed for 42 years last month for falsifying government-to-government rice deals in connection with the subsidy scheme. Norrawit Larlaeng, a lawyer for Yingluck, told reporters outside the court that an appeal was being discussed. The Shinawatras had commanded huge support by courting rural voters, helping them to win every general election since 2001, but their foes accused them of corruption and nepotism. Under the rice scheme, Yingluck s government bought rice from farmers at above-market prices, leading to stockpiles and distorted global prices. Losses amounted to $8 billion, the military government has said. Yingluck s Puea Thai Party defended the scheme on Wednesday. The Puea Thai Party believes in the various schemes that the party introduced during the previous administration, Phumtham Wechayachai, secretary-general of party, said. Yingluck was banned from politics for five years in 2015 but remained the unofficial face of the party and the populist movement that supports it. Kan Yuengyong, executive director of the Siam Intelligence Unit think-tank, said Wednesday s sentence marked the end of her political career, adding that it was unlikely she would return to Thailand in the near future. Politically, this is an execution for Yingluck. The verdict has effectively taken her out of politics, Kan told Reuters. Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University, said the Puea Thai Party was now rudderless . Pheu Thai officially becomes rudderless and will have to regroup under new leadership. If it is not dissolved and if its leader is more compromising, then maybe Thailand can move on, he said. The bottom line is that the Shinawatras have corruption problems and their elected governments are flawed but their unintended legacy of helping and connecting with the masses will need to be openly adopted by their opponents if Thailand is to move on. Dozens of supporters had gathered outside the court to hear the verdict on Wednesday. That was far fewer than on Aug. 25, when the court was originally scheduled to deliver its verdict, only to find out that Yingluck had fled the country. Though her whereabouts has not been disclosed by either her aides or the junta, Reuters reported last month that she had fled to Dubai where Thaksin has a home and lives in self-imposed exile to avoid a 2008 jail sentence for corruption. Neither Yingluck or Thaksin commented publicly immediately after the verdict. Nothing has been heard from Yingluck since she fled the country, and one of her lawyers, Sommai Koosap, told Reuters outside the court on Wednesday that she has not been in contact. Photos posted on Instagram this week by one of Thaksin s daughters show Thaksin in London. None of the photos features Yingluck. The leader of the junta, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, said on Tuesday he knows where Yingluck is but would not reveal it until after the verdict is read. Thai authorities investigating how Yingluck escaped said last week they have questioned three police officers who admitted to helping her.","label":0}
{"text":"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/10\/04\/... Here's Bill Clinton, calling Obamacare the craziest thing in the world. Then, after he got an earful from Hillary, he tried to walk back his comments.","label":1}
{"text":"Tom Hanks is set to executive produce an HBO miniseries about Donald Trump's historic election and stunning victory over Hillary Clinton, according to the Hollywood Reporter. [Jay Roach will direct the project while Gary Goetzman is also signed on to executive produce. The Trump miniseries will be based on the third installment of political commentary duo Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's book Game Change. Roach, Hanks, and Goetzman all collaborated with Halperin and Heilemann on the 2012 HBO film Game Change, which chronicled the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator John McCain and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin. The 2012 installment of Game Change was described by Breitbart News as a \"heinous piece of propaganda,\" an \" contribution to Barack Obama,\" and an overall hackneyed political on Governor Palin. Halperin and Heilemann's 2010 bestseller Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime was over 400 pages long. But, as Breitbart reported, the HBO film focused primarily on Palin and largely ignored President Obama. Of course the 2012 installment of Game Change, which starred Ed Harris, Julianne Moore, Woody Harrelson, and Sarah Paulson, was a runaway success. It snagged three Golden Globes and five Primetime Emmy Awards, among others. \"We are thrilled to continue our relationship with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, whose work on their book Game Change set the bar for political reporting and storytelling inside a presidential campaign,\" HBO Films president Len Amato said in a statement. \"Reuniting Game Change director and executive producer Jay Roach and Playtone producers Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman with Mark and John for a project based on their upcoming book promises to vividly capture the most unique and impactful event in modern American politics. \" No writer has been attached yet for the Trump miniseries. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson","label":0}
{"text":"Report Copyright Violation If the Christian evangelicals believe Trump will save America then that means he will destroy it instead. These people are always wrong. They supported bush. The patriot act. Torture. The war in Iraq. They demonized anybody who didn't support the war. Called them unpatriotic. These also are the same people who want to bomb Iran because it would bring about the rapture. They told us Obama was the antichrist and would take away your guns but then nothing happened. And they think Putin(Mr. KGB)is a great man. They control hellholes like Mississippi and Alabama(two of the sorriest states in the country).If Trump is Pat Robertson's man you better hope he doesn't get elected. It will be a disaster. No doubt about it. Page 1","label":1}
{"text":"In the book, The World is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean s are One, Marine Biologist Sylvia Earle wrote: Even if you never have the chance to see or touch the ocean, the ocean touches you with every breath you take, every drop of water you drink, every bite you consume Everyone, everywhere is inextricably connected to and utterly dependent upon the existence of the sea. A report released this week discovered roughly 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the largest living structure on Earth, has been damaged due to coral bleaching. We ve never seen anything like this scale of bleaching before, said Professor Terry Hughes in a press release. Professor Hughes is Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, and leader of the National Coral Bleaching Task Force which produced the report. In the northern Great Barrier Reef, it s like 10 cyclones have come ashore all at once. The task force evaluated 911 coral reefs by air around Australia, and found 93 percent were suffering from coral bleaching to some extent. The bleaching was found to be worse in the northern sector of the reef, where no coral has escaped its impact. Based on diving surveys, the researchers say they have seen nearly 50 percent coral death so far.According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the United States Department of Commerce, increased ocean temperatures caused by climate change are the leading cause of coral bleaching. Coral depends on algae to survive, which is very sensitive to temperature changes. If warm temperatures remain constant for a long period of time, the coral dispels the algae, leaving it colored white, and eventually leading to the death of the coral if the stresses are prolonged. In 2005, the United States lost half its coral reefs in the Caribbean Sea due to a massive bleaching event. High carbon emissions absorbed by the ocean also decrease Ph levels, leading to ocean acidification. Observation stations monitored by the US EPA in Hawaii, Bermuda, and the Canary Islands found that in the past two decades, carbon dioxide levels in the oceans have increased, directly resulting in the acidification. These changes also put stresses on marine life, diminishing the quality of their habitats and depleting food sources. If emissions aren t reduced soon, the negative effects already being seen in these environments will be irreversible. The bleaching doesn t necessarily mean the coral is dead, but the greater the stressors causing coral bleaching, the less likely the coral is able to recover. It can take thousands of years for coral reefs to fully form, so once the coral dies, those ecosystems are unlikely to ever recover. This is, by far, the worst bleaching they ve seen on the Great Barrier Reef, Mark Eakin, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration s Coral Reef Watch, in an interview with the Washington Post. Our climate model-based Four Month Bleaching Outlook was predicting that severe bleaching was likely for the [Great Barrier Reef] back in December. Unfortunately, we were right and much of the reef has bleached, especially in the north. Today on Earth Day, it is important to acknowledge and fully comprehend how dire the situation of our world s ecosystems are because of climate change. There is no time for incremental efforts. We must either make the necessary changes to mitigate the effects of climate change in the future now, or pay dearly for the consequences which will manifest exponentially in the near future. We can no longer treat our Earth as a source of infinite economic development when the resources on it are finite.Featured Image Courtesy of Flickr","label":1}
{"text":"Cultural exchanges between countries need to consider the temperature of popular opinion and how people feel about each other, a senior Chinese official said on Friday, amid a freeze in cultural ties with South Korea over an anti-missile system. China has been angered by Seoul s decision to deploy the U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, saying that its powerful radar harms China s own national security and will do nothing to lessen tensions with North Korea, which THAAD is supposed to defend against. Popular South Korean soap operas have been pulled from streaming sites, K-Pop singers have had concerts canceled and there has been a dramatic drop in Chinese tourists to South Korea. China has not officially linked the moves to the THAAD tensions, but has said relations need to have a basis in popular opinion . Asked about the prospects for cultural exchanges with South Korea amid the THAAD dispute, deputy media regulator Zhang Hongsen said cultural exchanges were not an ordinary exchange of goods . Cultural exchanges relate to where the popular will inclines and to emotional choices, he said, speaking on the sidelines of a Communist Party Congress. So what we say is that culture exchanges are an exchange of temperatures, and this temperature comes from popular feeling and emotion, added Zhang, who is a Vice Minister of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. When popular sentiments and emotions align, cultural exchanges and cooperation can certainly develop in a positive direction, he said, without elaborating.","label":0}
{"text":"China s ambassador to Washington on Friday called on the United States to refrain from making threats over North Korea, which a day earlier launched another missile over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Ambassador Cui Tiankai told reporters at an embassy event: Honestly, I think the United States should be doing ... much more than now, so that there s real effective international cooperation on this issue. They should refrain from issuing more threats. They should do more to find effective ways to resume dialogue and negotiation, he said. President Donald Trump and others in the United States and beyond have urged China to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on its Communist ally to help resolve the standoff over North Korea s weapons programmes. China fought alongside North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, in which Chinese leader Mao Zedong lost his eldest son, and Beijing has long been Pyongyang s chief ally and primary trade partner. But the Chinese government has pushed back against the notion that it has any control over Pyongyang, and says it is the United States that should be doing more. Trump tweeted earlier this month that the United States was considering halting trade with countries doing business with North Korea. Cui on Friday cautioned against putting China-U.S. trade on the table. Efforts to undermine Sino-U.S. trade, or even slapping sanctions on China, I think would be off-target, the Chinese state news agency Xinhua quoted Cui as saying on Friday at a Chinese National Day reception. If someone were to pressure China or impose sanctions on China over the DPRK, it would not be supported by many U.S. citizens, Cui said, referring to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, Democratic People s Republic of Korea. Workers at U.S. airplane factories, farmers growing soybeans, companies that sell smartphones to China, manufacturers that enjoy large market shares in China, companies in the service sector that have gained trade surplus in China, U.S. states that engage in robust trade with China would all stand against it, Xinhua quoted him as saying.","label":0}
{"text":"Turkey under President Tayyip Erdogan needs more Westernization, and not less, to bolster dwindling free speech rights and a wobbly democracy, Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk said on Tuesday. Pamuk, 65, also said in an online chat in the Reuters Global Markets Forum that he laments much modernization and saw his stories, including his 10th novel published last year, The Red-Haired Woman as focused on the personal costs people pay for discarding traditions in the rush to adapt to the ways of 21st century. The following are edited excerpts: Question: Is Turkey, often described as a bridge between West and East, becoming too Westernized? Answer: The lack of free speech is so grave that we definitely need to be more friendly with the West and Europe. I am not worried about too much Westernization, especially in these days when government is trying to push us away from Western values. Q: Do you see gentrification in Istanbul and other Western influence in Turkey as threats or positives to Turkey s identity? A: I actually do not want to bring East and West together. I essentially want to write poetic, literary observations about the lives of the people in and around Istanbul. And since Istanbul is made up of things from the West, and modernity, and also things that come from traditional cultures, and East, readers think my intention is to bridge them. Actually, there are things from East and West that are already harmoniously together in Istanbul. All I do is invent stories about them. Q: How is that theme in The Red Haired Woman ? A: My main character carries the weight of having an idealist political father, while he is more busy with making money. I have many friends like that ... They are troubled by moral issues like the ones I discussed in this book. Individuality versus belonging to community ... Or economic development and comforts of modernity versus preserving the past than the old architecture and culture. My books are always about how to be modern without losing your identity. Q: It is Nobel award season. How did your win in 2006 affect you? A: My books were already translated to 46 languages before I won the Nobel prize. Now my books are translated into 63 languages. The prize may have helped. It definitely brought me new readers and some diplomatic responsibility of representing my country.","label":0}
{"text":"Mainstream Media Calls Real News \"Fake\" Because Their Narrative Is Collapsing Mainstream Media Calls Real News \"Fake\" Because Their Narrative Is Collapsing Relampago Furioso  Relampago is the author of The New Modern Man blog. He is a former member of the mainstream media turned dissident. He enjoys striking at the Establishment using politically incorrect truths and electrifying SJWs with logic. He is now living the expat dream in the Caribbean and does not want to come back to The Matrix. Relampago also maintains a library of Red Pill Book and Film recommendations and is a Red Pill Life Coach , helping other men realize the dream of getting laid on the regular, getting out of debt, and traveling the world.  Facebook | Twitter November 23, 2016 Manosphere  There are those who think we should only get our news from \"official\" sources. You know, like the blonde telling you what to believe in between hocking a hockey game.  If there's anything the 2016 election showed us, it's that the American people are increasingly distrustful of and not listening to the commands laid out by the once mainstream media. They're increasingly reticent to commit national and demographic suicide under the guise of \"diversity\" and other nebulous ideals. They're desperate not only to \"drain the swamp\" but to restore some sense of national pride and stability to the declining USA.  In response, the controllers of the presstitutes (the people who really run the world) are already hard at work trying to find some way to create a false narrative about \"fake news\" sites in order to lay the ground work for censorship and control. The Internet has all but destroyed the corporate-government narrative, and there is a shit fit happening at the highest levels of the propaganda ministry (i.e. CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, et. al.) because they have learned the American people know how full of shit they really are.  Sites like Return Of Kings are on the front lines of this war in support of free speech and it is vitally important we stay on top of our game to avoid a reversion to the managed propaganda the centralized control of mass media gave us over the last 50 years. Hackers and leakers play right into the hands of the censorship narrative  Make no mistake, one of the reasons leakers of misdeeds done by politicians and the elite they work for have been allowed to continue leaking dirty laundry is because it plays into the hands of those with designs on censorship and re-gaining control of the information the sheeple get to listen to. Having Julian Assange and Edward Snowden doing leaks of information and giving them extensive press coverage plays right into the hands of the censorship brigade because they can also play the protecting national security game when the time to silence dissent comes .  Fake news is only the first assault in what is sure to become a full scale war on free speech on the Internet. We can be thankful Trump won the election rather than The Bitch since his election will slow the process of censorship, but the aggressiveness of the \"fake news\" narrative shows us how determined some people are to shut us up and shut us down.  The New York Times is already on the front lines of this assault on free speech on the Internet. Only days after The Bitch lost the election, publisher Arthur Sulzberger published a Mea Culpa and promised to rededicate the newspaper to \"honest\" reporting.  We cannot deliver the independent, original journalism for which we are known without the loyalty of our subscribers\u2026 [The New York Times promises to] give the news impartially, without fear or favor\u2026 We also approach the incoming Trump administration without bias.  Don't buy into it. This is what's known in Public Relations as a diversion tactic. While we focus on our seeming victory, they're already moving on to their next false narrative \u2013 so-called fake news. No sooner than the ink dried on the promise to give Trump a chance, The New York Times was moving to shut up the very people who made possible his rise to power \u2013 the alt-right and alternative news web sites.  While some fake news is produced purposefully by teenagers in the Balkans or entrepreneurs in the United States seeking to make money from advertising, false information can also arise from misinformed social media posts by regular people that are seized on and spread through a hyperpartisan blogosphere.  They did a spurious case study on how a \"rumor\" got started about protesters being bussed in to protest at Trump rallies. Never mind the mainstream media is a business that runs lock, stock and barrel on fake news. Almost every narrative they create is a false one. One need do no more than a Google search to discredit many, if not most of the mainstream media's stories. The hypocrisy is astounding. Pulling The Plug Facebook censorship algorithms are nothing compared to the elite's agenda of eliminating free speech online  Whether or not the \"fake news\" narrative gains traction, the next step will be for the elite to create a problem that affects millions of people online, then follow through with the Hegelian Dialectic with a pre-ordained \"solution\" to \"make everyone safer online\" and to \"stop the spread of false information\" while \"protecting free speech\" online by destroying it.  Look for no less than a figurative \"Internet 9\/11\" if the elite become desperate enough.  They'll pull the plug on the backbone of the Internet, shutting down e-commerce and communication online for a few days, blame it on a \"fake news\" story (just like Benghazi was blamed on a YouTube video) then spring in to save us from ourselves by passing all sorts of creative laws and restrictions aimed at nothing more than eliminating competition to the corporate-government narrative and gutting yet another of our Bill of Rights protections.  Make no mistake, Freedom of Speech is the most important of Amendments to the Constitution. Once that is taken away, it's Game Over. Obama has already floated the idea of silencing those of us who \"cling to our guns and religion\" and continues this narrative even after the election of Trump  Obama has already been floating the idea of official news web sites. This is nothing more than proposing the creation of the American equivalent of Pravda in the Soviet Union, in which only the state-approved newspaper was considered the truth and everything else was considered lies. Obviously, the New World Order socialist narrative would be the only truth under a system such as this, and traditional and conservative views would be relentlessly silenced  Check out what The Messiah said in Berlin recently.  In an age where there's so much active misinformation, and it's packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a US official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect. If we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.  The fact he is saying these things should frighten you. It should also make you angry. This statement is a PC way of saying the goal of the power structure is to shut us the fuck up. They want us to listen to clueless \"journalists\" who encourage the idea of microchipping your children and later, yourselves so every aspect of your life can be controlled by the government.  We must fight back by discrediting the \"fake news\" narrative at every turn and informing those who will listen of the possibility of a fake \"Internet 9\/11\" designed to give the government a reason to curb free expression on the very Libertarian Internet of today.","label":1}
{"text":"Islamic Militant Compound Discovered Inside America's Borders, Obama Refuses To Act (Obviously) Oct 26, 2016 Previous post  The threat of terrorism on United States soil continues to skyrocket at the hands of Obama's weak policies. Not only have terrorist groups like ISIS gotten stronger internationally, but they are also finding ways to resettle inside the United States and carry out attacks here.  Within the past month, we have experienced three terrorist attacks on our own soil. A Muslim jihadi in Minnesota went on a stabbing spree the same weekend that a group of Muslims set off pressure cooker bombs in New York and New Jersey while pledging allegiance to ISIS.  It has been reported that an Islamic compound has been spotted on American soil. The facility is known as \"Islamberg,\" and it has many in the area very scared and worried.  Islamberg is located in the small town of Tompkins, Delaware County. As the video below will show, many have speculated that dozens of these Islamic compounds exist on American soil, and when these two reporters stumbled upon one, they confirmed our deepest fears.  They wanted to investigate reports of \"unusual sounds of gunfire and explosions\u2026emanating from the compound.\"  Here is what else they found:","label":1}
{"text":"ARLINGTON, Va. \u2014 Walk into the immigration court here, and scenes of a justice system in collapse abound. In the overflowing courtrooms, one judge raced through hearings, opening 85 cases on a recent day, and several others were not far behind. The judge in Courtroom 2 had unsettling news for Edhite Pouken Shienji, a woman from Cameroon seeking asylum. After 14 years of delays, she was finally scheduled for a hearing. But at the last minute, the judge was reassigned to handle the cases of some migrants from Central America. Her hearing was postponed once again \u2014 to 2019. In Courtroom 8, there was a deportation hearing for Dami\u00e1n Mart\u00ednez, from Mexico. The judge soon discovered he was a infant, dozing on the shoulder of his mother. Somehow the baby's case had become separated in court records from hers. The bewildered mother, in court without a lawyer, had no clue how to fix the problem. The judge could only urge her to make sure that Dami\u00e1n \"presents himself in all of his future hearings. \" Weighed down by a backlog of more than 520, 000 cases, the United States immigration courts are foundering, increasingly failing to deliver timely, fair decisions to people fighting deportation or asking for refuge, according to interviews with lawyers, judges and government officials. With too few judges, overworked clerks and an antiquated docket based on stacks of paper files, many of the 56 courts nationwide have become crippled by delays and bureaucratic breakdowns. The courts will be a major obstacle for Donald J. Trump and his plans to deport as many as three million immigrants he says have criminal records. Many of those deportations \u2014 at least hundreds of thousands \u2014 would have to be approved by immigration judges. Mr. Trump has also said he intends to freeze federal hiring, which would prevent the courts from bringing on new judges and clerks, who are federal employees. Without significant new resources, the courts would probably slow Mr. Trump's deportations to a stall. On a visit to the immigration court in Denver four years ago, cases were moving briskly, but judges were starting to worry because hearing delays were reaching 18 months. Now in Denver, the court with the longest wait times in the country, most cases drag on more than five years, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a research group studying federal data, has found. In Arlington, by reputation one of the nation's courts, eight judges have more than 30, 000 cases, with some scheduling hearings in 2022. \"The system has been failing, but now it is reaching a tipping point,\" said Benjamin Johnson, the executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Unlike other federal courts, which are part of the judiciary, immigration courts are run by the Justice Department, making them subject to shifting political priorities in Washington. The backlog started building years ago, as President Obama stepped up immigration enforcement while Congress clamped down on spending. A hiring freeze at the Justice Department under the budget sequester from 2011 to 2014 exacerbated the problem. In the past two years, the administration won increases for the courts from Congress, and the number of immigration judges rose by 65 to about 300 today. But the hiring of judges is glacially slow. With each judge completing an average of 750 cases a year, the courts would need at least 520 judges to eliminate the backlog within one year, according to an analysis by Human Rights First, a watchdog group in New York. The worst crunch was created by the Obama administration after families from Central America surged across the southwest border in 2014 and again this year. In late 2014, justice officials ordered the courts to rush asylum claims of Central American parents and children to the front of their dockets, pushing other cases back. Officials hoped migrants who were denied would be deported quickly, sending a message to others in Central America to stay home. Judge Paul W. Schmidt observed the effect of this edict from his bench in an austere Arlington courtroom. \"It's total chaos,\" he said in an interview, after retiring from the immigration bench in June after nearly two decades. Mr. Schmidt was given cases that were not priorities. Before long, his docket was piled with more than 10, 000 cases. The only dates open on his hearing calendar were six years away. Mr. Schmidt recalled the shock on the faces of those before him when he announced the distant date when they could expect a decision. \"It becomes clear to people these are just imaginary dates,\" he said. \"That robs the judges of credibility. The court as a whole loses credibility. \" The administration's plan did not succeed, Justice Department officials acknowledge. Across the country, more than 161, 000 cases of parents and children from Central America have been opened since 2014, but so far judges have finished only about 67, 000 \u2014 or about 40 percent \u2014 of them, according to records. Other cases are inching forward as migrants fearing for their safety press their arguments for protection. In nearly 41, 000 of the cases completed, judges ruled against immigrants and ordered them deported, the records show. But in practice, with enforcement agents under instructions from the administration to focus on deporting dangerous criminals, few deportations of families from Central America, who mostly do not have criminal records, have been carried out. \"The system is there to provide due process. It isn't there to send enforcement messages,\" Mr. Schmidt said. Mr. Trump has said he will choose as his nominee for attorney general Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, a vigorous proponent of strong immigration enforcement. With broad powers over the immigration courts, Mr. Sessions could appoint tough judges and change procedures so the system in the future would move faster and be more restrictive. Mr. Sessions could cancel the appointments of roughly 75 new judges selected by Attorney General Loretta Lynch to choose judges to his liking. But it might be a year or longer before they took the bench. And Mr. Sessions would not have authority to summarily reduce the backlogs, lawyers said. As the backlogs grow, they create new problems. People who come to the courts with urgent stories of terrifying dangers that drove them from their homes find they cannot be heard for years. Circumstances change, evidence grows old, witnesses move on. Cases get scrambled or misplaced. When Reina Rojas de Ayala first filed for asylum in Arlington in 2012, she had a strong argument that she would be in grave danger if she was forced to return to El Salvador. By the time she had a hearing four years later, her legal case was diminished even though the perils at home were not. Ms. Ayala, 43, lived in Virginia with her Salvadoran husband, a legal immigrant. But she was undocumented, and in 2009 she went to El Salvador to try to obtain papers to return legally, taking two children born in the United States. The danger came from one of her older sons in El Salvador, Samuel Ayala, now 26. He demanded money, saying he needed to pay dues to a criminal gang. \"He was violent, telling me he had to have the cash,\" Ms. Ayala said. \"I told him to get a job. Many times he shoved me down and hit me. \" Fearing he would kill her, she sent her American children to Virginia by plane while she went to the border to request asylum. Over time, the gang turned on Mr. Ayala, threatening the whole family. He fled to the United States, making peace with his mother. But her legal case, based on his threats, unraveled. At her hearing, the judge denied asylum but agreed to dismiss her deportation. She is in immigration limbo, allowed to remain with her family but uncertain for how long. Many foreigners cannot afford to pay for lawyers indefinitely, and in a court system where there is no right to counsel, volunteers are reluctant to take cases that could last for years. Among those who need a lawyer is a woman who crossed the border in August 2014, after hiding for months in her own darkened house in a Salvadoran mountain village to protect her family from a gang. When she could not pay the $6, 000 they demanded, she said, they went to her daughter's high school, dragged her into the street and beat her unconscious. \"I saw her blood,\" said the woman, 36, who asked that she be identified by only her initials, Z. A. which are used on her court docket. Still fearful after two years in Virginia, in her small apartment she keeps the lights low and the curtains drawn. The daughter had scars from the beating, which persuaded a judge to grant her asylum in January. Z. A. should have won as well, but the government lost track of her case. It took a lawyer to recover it, but Z. A.'s case will begin moving forward only at a hearing next May. \"This case could be done in 10 minutes,\" said the lawyer, Christina Wilkes. \"But the court is so overwhelmed, no one can look at it. \" There are some benefits for people stalled in the courts, as immigrants can stay legally in the United States and many receive work permits while their cases wind through the system. But for asylum seekers, endless waiting can be agonizing. Until they are approved, they cannot help spouses and children escape the same dangers that caused them to run. Another immigrant fled Ethiopia in 2012, one step ahead of government officials coming to jail him. An Arlington judge set the hearing to decide in his case in May 2019. His wife and two young sons, still in Ethiopia, have been continuously harassed. \"My kids are suffering because of me,\" said the man, who requested that he be identified by only the initials on his case file, S. Y. \"I used to call them two times a day. But now I stopped because I feel like I am lying to them. I used to be sociable, but now I don't even know who I am. I just sit in my house alone. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Turkey s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Sunday that Turkey would employ an additional 110,000 public servants in 2018 including teachers, medical and religious personnel. Speaking in the southern border town of Kilis, Yildirim said that among the total, the government would hire an extra 36,000 medical personnel and 20,000 teachers.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio received boosts Monday in his drive to become the mainstream Republican alternative to front-runner Donald Trump, with a string of high-profile endorsements and missteps by rival Ted Cruz's campaign. Rubio, who eked out a second-place finish in South Carolina's primary by fewer than 1,000 votes over Cruz on Saturday, racked up endorsements from prominent Republicans including U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson and former presidential candidate Bob Dole. Rubio and Cruz came out of South Carolina with sharper criticism of Trump, who swept the Southern state with a comfortable margin of victory. At the same time, the two senators' rivalry intensified - and soured. Cruz fired his main spokesman, Rick Tyler, on Monday afternoon over a video that falsely showed Rubio dismissing the Bible. Tyler had apologized late on Sunday for posting \"an inaccurate story\" involving a video purporting to show Rubio referring to the Bible and saying, \"Not many answers in it.\" Tyler had retweeted a link to the misleading video and posted it on Facebook. Cruz fired Tyler the next day, saying his campaign did not question the faith of other candidates. \"That's why I'm asking for Rick Tyler's resignation,\" Cruz said. The first-term senators from Texas and Florida are locked in a battle to become their party's alternative to political outsider Trump in Nevada's caucus on Tuesday, the last Republican presidential contest before the busy voting month of March. Tyler's dismissal came amid intense criticism of the Cruz campaign as dishonest from both Rubio and Trump. Rubio spokesman Alex Conant called Cruz a \"candidate willing to do or say anything to get elected\" and urged him to apologize. \"There is a culture in the Cruz campaign, from top to bottom, that no lie is too big and no trick too dirty,\" he said. Trump seized the opportunity to pile on Cruz, whom he has repeatedly characterized as a liar. \"Wow, Ted Cruz falsely suggested Marco Rubio mocked the Bible and was just forced to fire his Communications Director. More dirty tricks!\" the billionaire businessman from New York said on Twitter. \"Ted Cruz has now apologized to Marco Rubio and Ben Carson for fraud and dirty tricks. No wonder he has lost Evangelical support!,\" continued Trump, who has derided Cruz for failing to live up to expectations he would get solid support from evangelical Christians in South Carolina. Trump was the big winner in that state on Saturday, finishing ahead of Rubio by 10 percentage points. Opinion polls show Rubio and Cruz running close in Nevada, and both candidates hope to get a boost going into the contests in a dozen states on March 1. Super Tuesday is the crown jewel in the state-by-state nominating contests to pick the Republican and Democratic candidates for the Nov. 8 presidential election. Rubio on Monday also secured the backing of three Republican leaders from Nevada: U.S. Senator Dean Heller and U.S. Representatives Cresent Hardy and Mark Amodei. Senator Hatch said that, unlike many in the Republican establishment, he did not dislike Trump. \"I just feel that Rubio is the more serious candidate. And I feel he has the background to be able to really help turn this mess around,\" Hatch told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Emily Stephenson, Megan Cassella, Susan Cornwell, Eric Beech; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Frances Kerry and Jonathan Oatis) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.","label":0}
{"text":"India s home ministry said on Monday it would confidentially share intelligence information with the Supreme Court showing Rohingya links with Pakistan-based militants, in a bid to get legal clearance for plans to deport 40,000 Rohingya Muslims. The Supreme Court is hearing an appeal lodged on behalf of Rohingya against the deportation plan proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi s Hindu nationalist government. India s home ministry submitted an affidavit to the court arguing that the hardline stance was justified by the security threat posed by illegal immigrant Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom have fled from Myanmar to Bangladesh, from where many have crossed into India. The ministry said the illegal influx of large numbers of Rohingya into India began four to five years ago, long before an exodus that saw more than 400,000 Rohingya flee to Bangladesh since Aug. 25 to escape a Myanmar military counter-insurgency offensive that the United Nations has called ethnic cleansing . The affidavit went on to say the government had reports from security agencies and other authentic sources indicating linkages of some of the unauthorized Rohingya immigrants with Pakistan-based terror organizations and similar organizations operating in other countries. It also said there was information on Rohingya involvement in plots by Islamic State and other extremist groups to ignite communal and sectarian violence in India. Senior home ministry official Mukesh Mittal said the Indian government would privately show the court material gathered from sensitive investigations to substantiate the claims in its affidavit. Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who filed the plea on behalf of two Rohingya men, will file a rejoinder to the government s affidavit, his office told Reuters. The court will next hear the matter on Oct. 3. Meantime, police said on Monday that they had arrested a suspected member of al Qaeda who they believed was trying to recruit Rohingya living in the country to fight security forces in Myanmar. Senior police officer Pramod Kushwaha told Reuters that British national Shauman Haq, 27, was arrested near a bus stop in Delhi on Sunday. He had come to India via Bangladesh. Rohingya in India voiced worries that they were being unfairly tainted by the allegations and sought more understanding for their plight. We feel helpless and hopeless, said Rohingya youth leader Ali Johar, who came to India in 2012 and lives with his family in a Delhi settlement. The world s largest democracy has given us shelter but they should handle this situation more empathetically. Modi s government has been criticized by activists for not speaking out against Myanmar s recent military offensive against Rohingya insurgents, and right-wing groups in India have begun vilifying Rohingya living there. The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and regarded as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots that date back centuries. More than 800,000 Rohingya currently live in Bangladesh.","label":0}
{"text":"Rallies in support of President Donald Trump took place across America this weekend in a show of support for the new administration's agenda. [In many places, resorted to violence. Media outlets, however, suggested inaccurately that the protests were an outgrowth of the protests themselves. demonstrations were held in cities across the country, including New York, Washington, San Diego, Palm Beach, Nashville, Lansing, and Minnesota. Most rallies went forward without disruption, apart from in Berkeley, California, where anarchists became violent after holding a . Ten people were arrested in scenes reminiscent of protests at UC Berkeley against former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos's talk, while an elderly man could be seen lying in agony after being by the anarchists. Fighting is spreading to the streets in Berkeley. This isn't a Trump rally anymore. It's the anarchists. pic. twitter. \u2014 Lizzie Johnson (@lizziejohnsonnn) March 4, 2017, Violence also ensued at a rally in Minnesota, where 400 Trump supporters rallied around the state capitol rotunda in St. Paul, before being accosted by an . According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, the conflict led to scuffles, and six were arrested. WATCH: 'March 4 Trump' participants and counterprotesters engage in dueling chants at MN Capitol rotunda https: . \u2014 KSTP (@KSTP) March 4, 2017, In New York, around 200 people demonstrated their support for the president in front of Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. Photos: Trump Supporters Rally at Trump Tower In Support Of President And Against 'Seditious Fringe' https: . pic. twitter. \u2014 New York City News (@NewYorkCityOBN) March 5, 2017, Meanwhile, in Washington D. C, around 150 Trump supporters marched from the Washington Monument to Lafayette Square. This handsome guy speaking at the #march4trump rally in Washington DC. I'm one lucky girl! \ud83d\ude18 @DustinStockton pic. twitter. \u2014 Jennifer Lawrence (@JenLawrence21) March 4, 2017, In Nashville, Tennesse, a huge crowd turned out at Legislative Plaza as part of the Spirit of America, with rally organizer Mark Skoda telling Breitbart News that the crowd size was estimated at 2, 000 people. Huge Crowd at Nashville Spirit of America Rally in Support of President Trump https: . pic. twitter. \u2014 Patricia Miler (@PatriciaMiler1) March 5, 2017, In Palm Beach, Florida, the president's motorcade was stopped by dozens of supporters, with Trump stepping outside the vehicle to greet them. President Trump stops by #March4Trump Rally Outside Palm Beach #PeoplesPresident pic. twitter. \u2014 Jack Posobiec \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 (@JackPosobiec) March 4, 2017, Supporters in Lansing, Michigan, turned out in their hundreds. Donald Trump was the first Republican to win the state of Michigan since George H. W Bush in 1988, defeating Hillary Clinton in the tightest race in state's electoral history. Pro Trump rally in Lansing Michigan. pic. twitter. \u2014 #ObamaGate (@lisafedup) March 4, 2017, Over 200 Trump supporters also rallied in downtown San Diego. #NEWS President Donald Trump Supporters Rally in San Diego \u2014 NBC 7 San Diego https: . #RT pic. twitter. \u2014 Political Informant (@ThePolinformant) March 5, 2017, On Sunday evening, Donald Trump thanked supporters for the \"tremendous support\" he had received throughout the weekend. Thank you for the great rallies all across the country. Tremendous support. Make America Great Again! \u2014 Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2017, You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"Democrats were seething Tuesday night over President Donald Trump's decision to nominate Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U. S. Supreme Court, claiming that Trump \"stole\" the seat from President Barack Obama. [In a fundraising email, the Democratic National Committee said (original emphasis): Judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, has a legal history that shows a deep sympathy for corporate interests and an apparent disdain for workers. Donald wants to put Judge Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat the GOP stole from President Obama. Add your name to tell the Senate to reject his nomination. As an attorney, Judge Gorsuch routinely represented big businesses in class action lawsuits. As a judge on the Tenth Circuit, he wrote a concurring opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius \u2014 the case that allowed employers to deny basic health care coverage to women by ruling the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate was unconstitutional. He upheld a decision that denied insurance benefits to a worker who sustained a injury that required spinal surgery. He even dissented from a ruling in favor of a truck driver whose employer illegally fired him for abandoning a trailer with locked brakes \u2014 so he wouldn't freeze to death. And as a member of the \"Federalist Society,\" Gorsuch believes in severely restricting the power that federal agencies like the EPA have to regulate businesses. It's not hard to see why Trump loves him so much \u2014 but from where we're sitting, Joel, Judge Gorsuch has no business on the Supreme Court bench. Republicans declined to move Obama's nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, through the Senate, based on the principle \u2014 articulated by . Joe Biden ( ) decades before \u2014 that a Supreme Court Justice should not be confirmed in the last year of a lame duck administration. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the \"most influential\" people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.","label":0}
{"text":"For the first time in months, a national poll shows Donald Trump is not leading the Republican 2016 primary race, and instead has Ben Carson in first place. Carson won the support of 26% of Republican primary voters, compared to 22% who are backing Trump, according to CBS News\/New York Times . Though within the poll's margin of error, it marks the first time since the billionaire businessman's dominant rise over the summer where he has been bumped from the top spot nationally. The new numbers also represent a reversal from the last CBS \/New York Times poll, taken more than a month ago, which saw Trump leading Carson 27%-23%. Carson and Trump have been running consistently neck-and-neck since the start of September -- with other candidates struggling to keep pace. The switch in the lead comes as Carson has taken a clear lead in the Iowa race, beating Trump in some polls by double-digits. Trump told MSNBC's \"Morning Joe\" Tuesday morning \"I don't get it.\" CBS\/New York Times pollsters found Carson outpacing Trump among women and evangelicals and running even with him among men. Trump performed better with moderate Republicans and voters without college degrees. No other candidate cracked double-digit support in the latest poll. Marco Rubio won 8% support, Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina tied for fourth place with 7 percent and Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and John Kasich each got 4%. The poll does carry an important caveat, however: 70% of respondents said they had not settled on a choice yet. Trump's supporters, however, are more locked in with their support. The most recent CBS\/New York Times poll surveyed 575 Republican primary voters and carries a 6-percentage-point margin of error. RELATED: Donald Trump on poll slump: 'I don't get it'","label":0}
{"text":"Investors and traders in Asia indicated on Monday they are mostly increasing their bets on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton winning the U.S. presidential race after the second of three debates with Republican party nominee Donald Trump. Some, though remain cautious, saying there was still a chance of a surprise Trump win. They said many in the markets were wary after being burned by the shock \"Brexit\" vote in June. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan edged up around 0.1 percent by mid-afternoon in Singapore on Monday, while Wall Street index futures were little changed after Clinton exchanged barbs with Republican party nominee Donald Trump in the televised event, which was shown live across trading rooms during Asia's morning. The 90-minute debate quickly turned into an acrimonious discussion of a 2005 video that emerged on Friday in which Trump was heard using vulgar language and talking about groping women. The controversy has caused some senior Republicans to withdraw their support for him. \"For those that think that Trump has a very, very low chance of winning the U.S. elections it might be a good time to go long on global equities,\" said Itay Tuchman, Citi's head of markets for Australia and New Zealand. Markets could be prematurely pricing in a Clinton victory, as they did during the \"Brexit\" vote in June, when the United Kingdom voted unexpectedly to leave the European Union, said Lee Jin Yang, research analyst for Aberdeen Asset Management in Singapore. \"We need to remember that Brexit only became a key focus one week before the vote. The market had priced in near zero probability of it happening but it did.\" According to a CNN online poll, Clinton won the debate by 57 percent to 34 percent. But Josh Crabb, head of Asian equities at Old Mutual Global Investors in Hong Kong, said he is wary of such polls - especially after Brexit. \"The way that mainstream media, and a lot of commentators, interpret the outcome of the debate may be different to what the voting public in general takes away,\" Crabb said. \"That is a concern because often, a lot of these polls have not been quite as accurate as people are expecting.\" Mathan Somasundarum, a strategist at stock brokerage Baillieu Holst in Sydney, said a Clinton victory would reduce the risk of the United States adopting a strong trade protectionist policy. Trump has been highly critical of the NAFTA trade deal with Mexico and Canada as well as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Congress. He has promised to build a border wall and make Mexico pay for it. \"I would expect the U.S. dollar to weaken and you would expect then there is some pressure coming off emerging markets, and then commodities, which (are a) proxy for emerging markets,\" Somasundarum said. \"China, commodities and the Aussie dollar should do better.\" While the markets had already begun to price in a Clinton victory even before the Republican party's crisis over Trump's 2005 remarks, some are beginning to game out what would happen if the Democrats won both houses of Congress, which are now Republican controlled. The possibility of the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House is a concern to some in the markets as they see it leading to more regulation of businesses and higher taxes. \"Over time, people will start thinking, is this going to mean a big difference in the way taxation works? Is it going to mean more government involvement?,\" said Crabb at Old Mutual Global in Hong Kong. \"But the immediate reaction will be a relief rally.\" Angus Gluskie, managing director of White Funds Management in Sydney, said while markets usually view one party dominating the government as a risk, it could be different this time. \"Investors have been disappointed by the political stalemate over recent years, which has prevented meaningful and well-needed changes being pursued,\" Gluskie said. Steven Friedman, senior investment strategist at BNP Paris bas Investment Partners in New York, said he saw little in the debate that represented a game-changer for either candidate. \"This obviously plays to Clinton's advantage, given her lead in the polls,\" he said. Strategists in a recent Reuters equity poll mostly viewed an election victory on Nov. 8 by Clinton as more positive for the stock market through the end of the year, largely because her positions - unlike her opponent's - are well-known. Chris Brankin, chief executive at stock brokerage TD Ameritrade Asia, said he thought Trump was much better prepared for the town hall debate in St. Louis than he was for the first debate, and that could give markets some pause. \"I have always said markets 'know what they get' with Hillary, as she as always been seen as pro-Wall Street and Trump is a bit of an unknown for investors. \"After tonight's debate I still think there are a lot of questions as who will be elected into office next month and markets are probably going to remain range-bound till after the U.S. elections.\"","label":0}
{"text":"The Palestinian leadership is \"disappointed\" by the feckless Arab reactions to reports the United States may relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a former Fatah official told Breitbart Jerusalem. [\"Trump is unpredictable and Arab leaders don't want to get on his bad side so soon,\" Dimitri Diliani, a former member of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, said, adding that \"Arab leaders are waiting to see what will happen eventually and how exactly the embassy will be moved. \" \"It's impossible to foresee the reaction of the Palestinians on the street, but I expect it will be harsh,\" he said. \"The Palestinian Authority must use whatever measure it has at its disposal \u2014 from rolling back the security coordination with Israel, to disbanding the PA and turning its security officers into paramilitaries. The Palestinian Authority cannot react lightly. It's the moment of truth. \" \"Jerusalem is not the capital of the State of Israel, it's an occupied territory,\" he wrongly claimed, \"and the question is whether the United States wishes to become a country that violates international law,\" he said. \"I expect the PA leadership to use whatever means it has at its disposal to resist that decision. \" Earlier this week, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer was asked by reporters for an update on the embassy matter. \"We are at the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject,\" Spicer said, according to Reuters. President Trump told Fox News's Sean Hannity on Thursday it was \"too early\" to discuss moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.","label":0}
{"text":"Five people were taken to hospital after a shooting at a baseball field in Alexandria near Washington, where Republican members of Congress were holding baseball practice, the Alexandria police chief said on Wednesday. Police Chief Michael Brown did not elaborate on the extent of their injuries. He told a news conference police received a call about an active shooter shortly after 7 a.m. ET and were on the scene within three minutes. U.S. Capitol Police Matthew Verderosa said on-scene Capitol Police officers exchanged gunfire with the suspect.","label":0}
{"text":"Benghazi was just a ploy to hurt Hillary Clinton s shot at the presidency, admits Rep. Darrell Issa. Like other senior Republicans who have also admitted the truth about the right s never-ending Benghazi investigations, Issa opened up and told the truth to a friendly right-wing radio show. You know, people often ask Trey Gowdy and myself, what did our investigations do? Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Boston Herald Radio on Friday morning. Gowdy currently chairs the House Select Committee on Benghazi, while Issa conducted his own investigation in 2012 when he served as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Well what they did is that they opened up an opportunity for the American people to sort of smell what s in the garbage can, Issa said. And I think that s the reason that a devout socialist who wants to nationalize almost everything in America is close to and probably will beat Hillary here in New Hampshire. It s not because they like Republicans. It s because they don t trust Hillary. Multiple bipartisan investigations have repeatedly cleared Sec. Clinton and President Obama of malicious wrongdoing in response to the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Those investigations found that systemic problems in the policies protecting ambassadors and other diplomats on foreign soil led to the tragedy that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and the contractors hired to provide security.That hasn t deterred the right from constantly invoking Benghazi, particularly in relation to Clinton s presidential campaign. Fox News and other conservative media outlets recently expressed the hope that the Michael Bay movie 13 Hours would provoke an outcry against Clinton outside of the circle of the right. Instead, the film has been a box office flop and is one of the worst-performing films ever released by the super-successful director.Just as screaming Benghazi failed to derail President Obama s re-election, it does not appear to be a potent force in halting Sec. Clinton s presidential campaign.","label":1}
{"text":"If Megyn [sic] Kelly Doesn't Want Her Pussy Grabbed, Why Did She Pose for This \"Grab My Pussy\" Photo Shoot?  Andrew Anglin Daily Stormer October 27, 2016  Megyn [sic] Kelly has continually asserted over the last two weeks that she personally fears that if Donald Trump is elected President, he will use his Presidential powers to grab her by the pussy.  However, this begs the question: if Megyn [sic] Kelly is so concerned about having her pussy grabbed, why did she pose for this \"grab my pussy\" photo shoot for GQ?  Keep in mind, these pictures are from 2010. She wasn't some dumb college student trying to make a few bucks to pay rent with a quick \"grab my pussy\" photo shoot. She was already a multi-millionaire Fox News host.  Last year, when the whore Kelly was attacking Trump as a sexist, he pointed out this \"grab my pussy\" photo op, and noted that Kelly is a bimbo.  In response to allegations of bimboism, Kelly told People Magazine : \"I was 40, and I was pregnant, I was like, 'I look pretty good.'\"  Of course, in woman-speak this translates to \"I was 40, and I was pregnant, and I wanted to send the message to random men that they should grab me by the pussy to confirm that I am still attractive.\"  And sure, the pictures do look good, but they are airbrushed all to hell and back  For instance, she is wearing a push-up bra, but the curvature of her breasts has been corrected and wrinkles have been removed from the place where her breasts connect to her chest and from her neck. Armpit wrinkle removal is also plainly obvious.  So nothing is proved by these pictures \u2013 other than the fact she wants her pussy grabbed.  In the same year, 2010, she went on the Jew Howard Stern's show and said that she wanted to fuck Bill O'Reilly, which is bizarre and I believe sick. In this interview she also talked about her breasts and her husband's penis size.  (Full interview here .)  It is not like she didn't know she was walking into a sex interview here. That is Stern's entire shtick. And everyone knows who Howard Stern is.  So the only reason she would go on this show is to sexually objectify herself, which again, is to feel sexy when old and beginning to sag  All of this simply confirms that Megyn's continued attacks on Donald Trump \u2013 such as we saw Newt Gingrich slap her around like an even cheaper hooker than she actually is for earlier this week \u2013 are part of a gigantic shit test against Donald Trump.  Basically, Kelly's entire career is now devoted to trying to bully Donald Trump into grabbing her by the pussy.  Tsk-tsk, Megyn [sic].  Tsk-tsk.  Roger Ailes Firing Conspiracy Confirmed?  Way back when Fox News chief Roger Ailes was fired \u2013 OVER A SEXUAL HARASSMENT HOAX THAT MEGYN [sic] KELLY TOOK PART IN BY SAYING HE HUGGED HER WEIRDLY \u2013 I said that it was obviously part of an anti-Trump conspiracy by the station's owner, Rupert Murdock .  Murdock, while claiming to be a \"conservative,\" is an elite globalist and friend of the Clintons.  Ailes, while not a perfect guy (shilled for Bush's wars, shilled for Israel), is a friend of Trump and wasn't going to allow this whore Kelly \u2013 as well as a whole bunch of other hosts and pundits \u2013 to betray the network's viewership by shilling for Hillary Clinton.  Because that is exactly what we are seeing now: a massive betrayal of Donald Trump by the Fox News channel.  O'Reilly hasn't been horrible, but he hasn't been great either.  The only one who has consistently supported Donald J. Trump is Sean Hannity, and his ratings have now gone through the roof because of it. I'm half-surprised Murdock doesn't just fire him for it, but I suppose that wouldn't work, as the entire viewership would boycott the channel. Right now, they can do a lot of damage to Trump by having the majority of their hosts shill for Hillary, but still having a few support Trump so they don't totally expose themselves as being part of a Clinton conspiracy.","label":1}
{"text":"Apparently, Tom Brady's missing Super Bowl jersey nearly caused an international incident. [The international manhunt that ensued after Brady's jersey went missing eventually brought authorities to the home of Martin Mauricio Ortega, a Mexican journalist and tabloid newspaper boss who, as it turns out, not only had Brady's jersey from this past Super Bowl but also had Brady's jersey from Super Bowl XLIX and Von Miller's helmet from Super Bowl L. Though, as reported by Robert Klemko and Jenny Vrentas in the Monday Morning Quarterback, this case was about a lot more than a missing jersey. It also had the potential to hurt U. S. relations. In fact, so concerned were U. S. authorities that they didn't even want to ask the Mexican police for help. According to the MMQB, \"American officials were also cognizant of the charged atmosphere. 'We had [Ortega] identified \u2014 that wasn't the point,' says a U. S. investigator who worked on the case. 'It was now the point of walking that political minefield as delicately as we could to appease everybody. We didn't want to upset the Mexican authorities, we didn't want to upset the Mexican people, we didn't want to upset the U. S. embassy. '\" Though Ortega was in possession of more than $500, 000 dollars of property stolen from American citizens in the U. S. the on the part of U. S. law enforcement over making Mexican authorities \"upset,\" resulted in American officials only seeking the return of the stolen Super Bowl hardware, as opposed to pressing any charges against Ortega. From the MMQB: Dressed in his pajamas, his stunned wife looking on, Ortega was with armed federal agents. According to a source in the Mexican government, a deal was presented: Hand over the Super Bowl jerseys and whatever else you've stolen, and you will sleep in your own bed not only tonight, but for the foreseeable future. Ortega fished a black trash bag out of a dresser drawer and gave it to the police, who took photos of the transaction to prove Ortega's cooperation. Agents didn't tear up the floorboards, toss cabinets or pull kitchen appliances from their wall connections. They didn't even search the lower floor. They simply asked, Do you have anything else? He did. He made a phone call to a friend who arrived shortly thereafter. (Mexican police on the scene dubbed the physically stout newcomer Gordito, \"little fat one. \") The friend brought with him an helmet with scuff marks on the crown: Von Miller's Super Bowl 50 helmet. The rest is history: Brady got his jersey back, American citizen and Rob Gronkowski attempted to steal it again, we all had a laugh, and all's well that ends well. However, if you were wondering why Donald Trump got elected president, it's pretty well laid out for you here. Here you have a Mexican citizen, in this country as a guest, robbing two U. S. citizens of merchandise totaling more than $500, 000, and American law enforcement seem more concerned over \"appeasing\" Mexico than they are with securing justice for the Americans who got robbed. Of course, the FBI didn't have to arrest Ortega for stealing jerseys and a helmet. If the only people we had to worry about crossing the border to commit crimes were Mexican sports memorabilia thieves, then the world would be a far better place. However, the attitude displayed by U. S. law enforcement here, the attitude which prioritizes niceties and appeasement of foreign countries and foreign people over and above justice for Americans citizens, seems to only rear its ugly head when law enforcement is investigating NFL memorabilia thieves and not when they're investigating murders, drug trafficking, and kidnapping. The wall just got ten feet taller. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn","label":0}
{"text":"***WARNING***This video will make your blood boil. The exchange between this Hispanic woman, (who we re pretty sure is not a legal citizen, based on her comment to the victim, when she screamed, F*ck your laws! after he cited his right to free-speech) and the victim is stunning. Over and over again, this ill-informed and unbelievably angry student makes up her own facts with absolutely no basis whatsoever. Saying things like the signature Trump hat that reads Make America GReat Again represents the genocide of a bunch of people and America was never great and of but of course, You stole this land! Just another ungrateful immigrant who is likely one of Obama s Dreamers. According to Campus Reform, here s how the unbelievable exchange went down:A Trump-supporting student at the University of California, Riverside had his MAGA hat stolen by a peer who demanded that administrators refuse to allow him to continue to wear it.A video of the incident obtained by Campus Reform shows an enraged female student taking the hat to the school s Student Life Department as Matthew Vitale fruitlessly attempts to explain to the young woman that the hat is his property. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t, she continues as several staffers look on. Are you people not going to do anything? She is stealing my property, Vitale pleads, though the altercation went on for several more minutes. We will need to return his property to him, but we can talk about one university employee begins to explain before being abruptly cut off by the student thief. How about we talk about not letting him wear this sh*t on campus? the thief retorts, while Vitale later tells a growing presence of administrators that the fact that you people haven t gotten this back for me is sad and wrong. The altercation continued for several minutes until the hat was relinquished to an administrator who then returned it to Vitale, though not before his fellow student got in the last word. F*** your f***ing freedom of speech, boy. F***it. F*** it because your freedom of speech is literally killing a lot of people out there.","label":1}
{"text":"While Donald Trump has been taking vacations, special counsel Robert Mueller has been working hard on the Russia investigation. Instead of golfing this weekend, we suggest that the former reality show star huddle with his lawyers. Trump s former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador and he s fully cooperating with Mueller. As part of the plea deal, Flynn admitted that he was directed by a senior member of the Trump transition team to make contact with Russian officials in December. In addition, Flynn is prepared to testify that Trump as a candidate, ordered him to make contacts with the Russians.This marks the first instance of solid proof that there was collusion between team Trump and a hostile foreign government.On Friday, just after the news broke, the White House insisted that Flynn s guilty plea will not implicate Trump or anyone else in the White House.The White House said in a statement that Flynn was fired for making false statements to Trump officials, and that he worked for the administration for a short time and that he was a former Obama administration official. The false statements involved mirror the false statements to White House officials which resulted in his resignation in February of this year, said White House lawyer Ty Cobb. Nothing about the guilty plea or the charge implicates anyone other than Mr. Flynn. The White House then referred to Flynn as the former National Security Advisor at the White House for 25 days as well as a former Obama administration official. However, the White House left out a few important details. President Obama fired Flynn as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and he also warned Trump about Flynn during a discussion two days after the election and emphasized that he had concerns about him joining the national security team for the new president.On top of that, just after Flynn was forced to resign, Trump called him a wonderful man who was treated unfairly by the media.Photo by David Becker\/Getty Images.","label":1}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says No doubt about it. In comparison to Washington s other weapons trafficking exploits, like Operation Fast & Furious, this one is even more reckless, dangerous, totally unethical and completely illegal. Back in 2011, President Obama green-lighted one of the CIA s worst ever operations one which resulted in a five year-long flood of weapons, ammunition right into the hands of moderate terrorist fighters running wild in Syria.In total, hundreds of millions in US taxpayer funds have been spent on arming terrorists in Syria. This is no accident. Obama assured Arab monarchs that the US would supply the weapons for the proxy war in Syria.The twisted logic and naive optimism of Washington elites was such that they were convinced that these terrorists would eventually bring Syria to its knees and topple the government in Damascus enabling the US-led coalition to divide up Syria and rules over a protracted period of chaos in the region, not caring about the collateral damage they have caused along the way.Somehow, we are meant be believe that the current US President really cares about gun control, and yet here he is running point one of the largest illegal weapons-tracking operations in history, and not a crocodile tear is shed for any of the hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrian lives that have been lost because of this criminal US policy.This is proof that the US has been actively undermining the ceasefire in Syria, but it s only the tip of iceberg IHS Janes 360Documents released by the US government s Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website have provided an indication of the types and numbers of Eastern European weapons and ammunition the United States is providing to Syrian rebel groups as part of a programme that continues despite the widely respected ceasefire in that country.[The following manifest was make available through official channels]The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy s Military Sealift Command.Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba.The solicitation was subsequently updated with a detailed packing list that showed the cargo had a total weight of 994 tonnes, a little under half of which was to be unloaded at Agalar, a military pier near the Turkish town of Tasucu, the other half at Aqaba.The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks.READ MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files","label":1}
{"text":"No party is likely to obtain a majority of votes in Austria s parliamentary election on Oct. 15. A coalition between two of the three biggest parties the conservative People s Party (OVP), the Social Democrats (SPO) and the far-right Freedom Party (FPO) will probably be needed to govern. Below is a breakdown of polling, positions and comments the parties have made about potential coalitions. Since 31-year-old Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz took over as leader of the OVP in May, his party has consistently attracted support in polls of around 33 percent on a platform dominated by tough rhetoric on immigration. That has dislodged the Freedom Party from the top position in polls it reached in the aftermath of the refugee influx of 2015 and 2016. The Freedom Party is competing with Chancellor Christian Kern s Social Democrats for second place, both at around a quarter of votes in most polls. Polls put the Greens, the liberal Neos and a new party founded by former Greens lawmaker Peter Pilz all on around 5 percent of the vote, above the 4-percent threshold for entering parliament. OVP leader Kurz called an end to the centrist coalition with the Social Democrats, triggering a snap parliamentary election. He has not ruled out any party as a potential coalition partner and has said he will hold talks with all parties if his party comes first. Kurz has avoided setting conditions before the vote apart from saying that any potential partner must be pro-European and not merely stand by Europe, but also have the desire to shape Europe . His plans on cutting immigration, reducing the corporation tax burden and streamlining the EU overlap with the Freedom Party s. The OVP wants a slimmer EU that focuses on its core competences such as trade and securing its external borders. In contrast to the FPO, however, Kurz is in favor of more European defense cooperation, which he says would not threaten Austria s neutrality. The FPO says it would only go into a coalition if it were given control of the Interior Ministry. It also would like to secure the post of foreign minister, but has not made that a fixed condition. FPO leader Heinz-Christian Strache has said the FPO will not enter a coalition with the SPO until a full SPO party conference has lifted the ban on coalitions with his party. The decision to lift the ban was taken by the SPO party leadership. The FPO has also said it would only enter a coalition that results in more referendums or direct democracy , which is part of the OVP program. Strache has rowed back from the FPO s former stark euroskepticism, but he has called the idea of a European army a red line. He says Austria is at the heart of Europe but also wants a referendum on Austria s future in the EU if it hands more powers to Brussels or if Turkey accedes to the bloc. Strache has also ruled out that the FPO will sign up to a coalition headed by the third-placed party if it comes second, as it did in 2000 when it became a junior partner to the OVP. Under Chancellor Christian Kern, the SPO has lifted self-imposed ban on national coalitions with the Freedom Party (the two parties already govern together in Burgenland, one of Austria s nine provinces). The ban was replaced by a values compass , which makes principles such as a pro-European position and gender equality pre-conditions for cooperation. Kern has also said the FPO must leave the far-right faction in the European Parliament, which France s National Front is also part of, if it wants to join a coalition with the Social Democrats. In a recent debate with Strache, Kern said the two parties are still worlds apart . The Social Democrats favor closer European integration on issues like economic and monetary union and social policy.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stepped up his bid to win over minority voters by addressing a largely black church in Detroit on Saturday and calling for a new civil rights agenda to support African-Americans. As scores of protesters outside chanted \"No justice, no peace,\" Trump said he wanted to make Detroit - a predominantly African-American city which recently emerged from bankruptcy - the economic envy of the world by bringing back companies from abroad. Trump separately met with about 100 community and church leaders, his campaign said, in his latest push to peel away minority voters from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. His outreach to minorities over recent weeks comes as he seeks to improve his chances in the Nov. 8 election and shake off months of offending the sensibilities of black and Hispanic voters with his hard line on immigration and rough-hewn rhetoric. \"I fully understand that the African American community is suffering from discrimination and that there are many wrongs that must still be made right,\" Trump said at the church which was half-full. \"I want to make America prosperous for everyone. I want to make this city the economic envy of the world, and we can do that.\" His address of over 10 minutes at the Great Faith Ministries International church received moments of applause, including when he said Christian faith is not the past, but the present and the future. Accompanying Trump to the church was Ben Carson, the former Republican presidential hopeful who grew up in the city and whose childhood neighborhood Trump visited on Saturday. Trump has argued that his emphasis on job creation would help minority communities in a way that Democrats have failed to. But Clinton has accused Trump of aligning himself with racists. Opinion polls show Trump has low support among minorities. \"I believe we need a civil rights agenda for our time, one that ensures the rights to a great education, so important, and the right to live in a good-paying job and one that you love to go to every morning,\" Trump said. \"That can happen. We need to bring our companies back,\" he added. Emma Lockridge, 63, said as she entered the church that she found his comments about Mexicans and Muslims \"hateful.\" \"That's my major reservation with Mr. Trump is how he's treated those particular sets of people,\" said Lockridge, who is retired and an environmental activist. But she said she also had concerns about Clinton's support in the 1990s for crime legislation signed by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, which many black Americans say contributed to high incarceration rates in their communities. Vicki Dobbins, an activist protesting outside, said she was disappointed the church asked Trump to speak. \"I believe that Trump coming to Detroit is a joke, and I'm ashamed of the pastor who invited him,\" she said. \"In my opinion, he stabbed everyone in the back.\"","label":0}
{"text":"HBO has discarded plans for an animated political comedy series from former Daily Show host Jon Stewart. [In a statement Wednesday, the premium cable network said that technical difficulties had derailed the untitled project, which Stewart had been working on since at least the summer of 2016. \"HBO and Jon Stewart have decided not to proceed with a digital animated project,\" the network said in a statement. \"We all thought the project had great potential but there were technical issues in terms of production and distribution that proved too difficult given the quick turnaround and topical nature of the material. \" Stewart signed an exclusive production deal with HBO in November 2015, shortly after retiring from his stint as host of Comedy Central's Daily Show. The network said Wednesday that it is currently developing other projects with Stewart. The scrapped project was described as an animated parody of a cable news network, which would have been delivered over the Internet and would have allowed Stewart to comment on political news in real time. At the Television Critics Press Association summer tour last year, HBO programming president Casey Bloys described the project as being an \" portal. \" The network had initially hoped to have the new project in production during the 2016 presidential race. The news of the cancellation comes as Stewart's former colleagues Stephen Colbert and Samantha Bee have seen interest in their programs spike under President Donald Trump's administration. Colbert's Late Show on CBS earned its first total viewer victory over NBC and Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show this season for the first time since 1995. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will meet with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday, Politico reported on Monday, citing aides on Capitol Hill. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is scheduled to visit Washington on Thursday to meet with House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan.","label":0}
{"text":"This random cop killing trend is almost like punishing every black man in America for the crimes Obama has committed against our nation. Most of us are smart enough to understand that you don t blame an entire group of people who are largely innocent of wrong doing, for a few bad apples. Now that Obama, Holder, Sharpton and DeBlasio have made blaming our law enforcement as a whole, for the crimes of a few, expect to see more of these hate crimes committed across America. This is a despicable new trend, and people need to start demanding those who started this war against our law enforcement are held accountable.Officials say they were warned a gunman was hunting cops in Ohio this weekend, and by Sunday evening they realized the terrible truth behind the warning when they found a bloody hat but no patrol car and no officer.Police say a woman in Danville called dispatch Sunday evening around 11:20 p.m. to warn them her ex-boyfriend, identified as 34-year-old Hershel Ray Jones III, was armed and looking to kill an officer, reports CBS affiliate WBNS-TV in Columbus.The woman said officers in the area of Danville, near Columbus, were in danger.Dispatchers frantically put out a call and failed to make contact with Danville Officer Thomas Cottrell. Deputies from the Knox County Sheriff s officer were dispatched, but all they turned up initially was a Cottrell s hat with blood on it, and nothing more.Their worst fears were later realized 20 minutes later when they Cottrell s body behind the Danville Municipal Building, clearly dead from gunshot wounds. His gun and patrol car had been stolen.He was the first officer killed in the state of Ohio in 2016, reports WBNS.Jones was tracked down a short while later, and spotted at 1:30 a.m. running out of a house. Police gave chase, and caught him near Danville Park. He has been named as the prime suspect in the murder.No charges have been announced yet.","label":1}
{"text":"New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio told CNN that he approves of the idea of shielding from deportation any illegal alien arrested for drunk driving. [During an interview on CNN's State of the Union, host Jake Tapper pointed out to Mayor DeBlasio that the City of New York refuses to cooperate with the federal government to deport illegal aliens who have been convicted of drunk driving and grand larceny. Tapper went on to ask why the city is so quick to shield such dangerous criminals from deportation. Tapper also asked DeBlasio for a response to the recent order President Donald Trump signed stating that federal grant money will be stripped \"from the sanctuary states and cities that harbor illegal immigrants. \" DeBlasio decried the move and insisted he opposes \"tearing families apart\" over a \"small offense\" such as drunk driving. DeBlasio claimed these \"small\" crimes don't merit deportation, but for \"any serious and violent crime, we're going to work with\" the federal government. Still, DeBlasio claimed that drunk driving could easily be seen as a lesser offense. \"Drunk driving that does not lead to any other negative outcome, I could define as that,\" DeBlasio said before going on to say, \"Someone commits a minor offense \u2026 let's say someone went through a stop sign, they could be deported for that and their family could be torn apart and you could have children left behind where the breadwinner in the family is sent back to a home country, that is not good for anyone. \" Of course, if someone is picked up and scheduled for deportation after being detained during a traffic stop, it isn't the running of a stop sign that gets him deported it's being in the country illegally. Drunk driving is not generally seen as a \"small offense. \" Nearly 10, 000 Americans are killed by drunk drivers every year, according to The Hill newspaper. Indeed, for years many activists have criticized what they feel are chronically lax drunk driving laws in many states in the U. S. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Justice Department has reached a settlement with dozens of conservative groups that claimed the Internal Revenue Service unfairly scrutinized them based on their political leanings when they sought a tax-exempt status, court documents showed. In a pair of lawsuits filed in federal court in 2013, the conservative groups accused the IRS of targeting organizations with such words as \"Tea Party\" or \"patriots\" when they applied to the agency for tax-exempt status starting in 2010. The sides asked the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Wednesday to issue a declarative judgment in one of the cases involving 41 plaintiffs that would say the IRS was wrong to apply the United States tax laws based on an entity's name, position or association with a particular political movement. \"We hope that today's settlement makes clear that this abuse of power will not be tolerated,\" Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement on Thursday. The IRS admitted it was wrong when it based screenings of the groups' applications on their names or policy positions, subjected the groups to heightened scrutiny and delays and demanded unnecessary information from the groups, the agreement in the Washington case said. The IRS \"expresses its sincere apology,\" it said. Senior management within the IRS's Exempt Organizations Division \"was delinquent in its responsibility to provide effective control, guidance, and direction over the processing of applications for tax exempt status filed by Tea Party and other political advocacy organizations,\" the settlement document said. A request to halt the other case, a class action suit involving 428 members, was filed in a federal court in Ohio. Republicans claimed the targeting of conservative groups showed political bias in the IRS under former Democratic President Barack Obama. House Republican investigators found no connection to the Obama administration, according to a 2014 report. But the report did blame IRS officials for mistreating conservative organizations who sought tax-exempt status and that IRS officials covered up the misconduct and misled Congress. The officials included former Commissioner Douglas Shulman, former acting Commissioner Steven Miller, and Lois Lerner, the former head of the unit overseeing applications for tax-exempt status. Obama fired Miller after an internal 2013 IRS audit released found poor management - not partisan politics - led to an \"inappropriate\" focus on conservative groups. No criminal charges were ever filed against IRS officials. Groups seeking tax exemption under federal law may engage in limited amounts of political activity, depending on the type of exemption sought. That and the vagueness of the rules often make it difficult for IRS agents to tell which groups overstep and become ineligible for exemption.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid on Wednesday threw his weight behind legislation being written that would stop gun sales to a limited number of people who are on some terrorism watch lists. \"I support Senator (Susan) Collins' legislation to keep guns and explosives out of the hands of terrorists. Even though it may be a small step forward, at least it is a step forward,\" Reid said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"Myanmar s leader Aung San Suu Kyi is the latest in a long line of Nobel Peace Prize laureates to disappoint many of those who once applauded her, and probably won t be the last, a cautionary tale for the 2017 laureate who will be named next week. Suu Kyi is facing international criticism, including from fellow peace prize winner Desmond Tutu, for not doing more to stop what the U.N. says are mass killings, rapes and the burning of villages taking place in Rakhine state. The violence has forced 421,000 Rohingya Muslims into neighboring Bangladesh. That is a turnaround from 1991, when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded her the prize and praised her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights . Once awarded, the prize cannot be withdrawn. This has happened many times before that laureates have been criticized, said Professor Geir Lundestad, who was the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 1990 to 2014. Lundestad said the prize remains a force for good, even if some winners later fall short of its ideals: Aung Sang Suu Kyi was a very important spokeswoman for human rights in Burma and much of Asia. You cannot take that away from her. The Nobel prizes were established by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, whose fortune came in part from making and selling arms. The peace prize, worth 9 million Swedish Krona ($1.1 million) will be announced on Oct. 6 and can go to one or more individuals or organizations. A number of winners of the peace prize have gone on to launch wars or escalate them. Israeli leader Menachem Begin ordered the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, four years after sharing the Nobel with Egypt s Anwar Sadat for their Camp David peace accord. Sadat was assassinated by an Islamist army officer in 1981. Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat shared the 1994 prize with Israel s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres for the Oslo accords, which have not brought a lasting settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Rabin was assassinated by a far-right nationalist in 1995 and Peres was voted out of office eight months later. Arafat later presided over the Palestinians during the second intifada, a violent uprising against Israeli occupation. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, awarded the prize in 1990 for his role in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end, sent tanks in 1991 to try to stop the independence of the Baltic countries, though he later let them become independent. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shared the 1973 prize with North Vietnam s Le Duc Tho for what turned out to be failed efforts to end the Vietnam War. Tho declined the award, the only laureate ever to do so, accusing Washington of violating the truce. The war ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese. When U.S. President Barack Obama won in 2009 just months after taking office, even he said he was surprised. By the time he came to Oslo to collect the prize at the end of the year, he had ordered the tripling of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated, he said in his speech. I m responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill, and some will be killed. And so I come here with an acute sense of the costs of armed conflict. Among Suu Kyi s critics is Tutu who, in a Sept. 7 letter to his dearly beloved younger sister writes: If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep. On Sept. 19, Suu Kyi condemned rights abuses in Rakhine state and said violators would be punished. While Western diplomats and aid officials welcomed the tone of her message, some doubted if she had done enough to deflect global criticism. Dan Smith, the director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, said the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize might even have harmed the Rohingya. She has an aura, he said of Suu Kyi, adding that maybe her stellar international reputation masked the true awfulness of abuses over many years of the Rohingya. When she responded to questions about the Rohingya by saying why are you focusing on them, not on other issues?, people were inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. Suu Kyi was the rare winner, like Nelson Mandela, to rise from political prisoner to national leader. Mandela stepped down after five years as South Africa s first black president with his reputation largely unblemished, but some of his allies from the apartheid-era liberation movement faced scandals in office. Maybe it s this move from the image of the bold, heroic defender of human rights and ordinary people ... into what is inevitably a more grubby world of politics where compromises are made that tarnishes reputations, said Smith. Even saints face criticism. Mother Teresa, the 1979 Nobel winner canonized by Pope Francis last year, was faulted in 1994 by British medical journal The Lancet for offering neither diagnoses nor strong pain killers to dying patients in her Calcutta hospice. The decision to give the award in 2012 to the European Union was criticized at the time. Brussels was then imposing tough financial bailout conditions on member Greece that many economists said destroyed livelihoods. Tutu, among others, also faulted the EU as an organization that uses military force. The risk of disappointment arises because Nobel committees pick laureates for the hope they carry or a recent achievement, rather than the sum of a career, said Asle Sveen, a historian of the Nobel Peace Prize. It is a always a risk when they promote somebody, because they are getting involved in politics, he told Reuters. And they cannot predict what is going to happen in the future. That is what makes the Nobel Peace Prize different from all the other peace prizes, said Sveen. Otherwise you would give the prize to very old people just before they die. Among the favorites are parties to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, such as Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini and John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time. The deal, which saw Iran agree to curbs on its nuclear program in return for the lifting of international sanctions, has been criticized by hardliners in both Tehran and Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump called it an embarrassment to the United States in a speech at the United Nations this month, and has suggested Washington could repudiate it. Experts on the prize say it is precisely the sort of breakthrough among foes that the committee tends to recognize. This is the first time that a country subjected to Chapter VII (of the U.N. Charter) has seen its situation resolved peacefully, said Henrik Urdal, Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo, referring to how Iran s nuclear program is no longer labeled a threat by the U.N. Security Council. Focusing on the EU and Iran would also be a signal to the United States that the Iran nuclear deal has a broad support base, Urdal told reporters. Other possible contenders are Pope Francis, Syria s White Helmet rescue crews, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and its high commissioner Filippo Grandi. UNHCR has already won twice. Last year s prize went to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for his efforts to end half a century of war that killed a quarter of million people.","label":0}
{"text":"Like millions of Americans who are paying thousands of dollars a year for health insurance no doctors will take, I would love to be flying to Washington this week, pleading with members of Congress, spearheading campaigns and appearing as a witness, to tell everyone about my experiences with Obamacare. [But none of us can, because we're too busy working so we can afford to pay for the health care of 22 million poor, entitled or irresponsible people under Obamacare. Just yesterday, for example, in addition to working, I had to spend an hour \u2014 on top of days and days last month \u2014 figuring out which few remaining clinics provide mammograms under my now third Obamacare insurance plan. My original plan was made \"illegal\" by Obamacare, and the next two plans \u2014 fully approved under Obamacare \u2014 went bankrupt and were shut down by state and federal regulators. Now I just have to pray I don't get cancer or break a bone before Obamacare is repealed because, even at $700 a month with a gigantic deductible, there is NO PLAN on the individual market accepted by the two premier hospitals in my area for cancer or broken bones. Those $700 premiums go to pay for the pregnancies and dental care of welfare recipients and immigrants, not cancer treatment for Ann. Democrats love to get on their high horses about the wonderful things Obamacare has done for the uninsured. They should be asked why they refuse to live under it. After they spend 800 hours changing insurance plans every year, ending up with increasingly expensive and increasingly useless plans \u2014 all so that their premiums can pay for the poor \u2014 I'll be fascinated to hear about their love for the downtrodden. Same with Republicans who are, once again, being bamboozled by lobbyists, to the detriment of their taxpaying constituents who don't have time or money to fly to Washington and tell them our stories. Insurance lobbyists have somehow convinced politicians, who have very little experience in the private sector, that health insurance is wildly different from every other product \u2014 even car insurance and homeowner's insurance \u2014 because of its need for a large pool of enrollees. Everyone talks about the enrollment problem as if this is a bug unique to the health insurance industry. What product, do they imagine, does not need lots of customers? How could restaurants afford those chefs, fresh flowers, industrial kitchens, one hundred sets of plates, napkins and silverware and a staff of waiters \u2014 without customers? AHHHH! THEY'LL GO OUT OF BUSINESS! !! THE MODEL DOESN'T WORK WITHOUT LOTS OF PARTICIPANTS! CONGRESS MUST GET INVOLVED. Publishers couldn't have editors, proofreaders, lawyers, paper plants and marketing departments \u2014 unless there's a large pool of book buyers. Pipe manufacturers couldn't have hundreds of employees, huge machines and factories unless \u2014 you get the idea. Why is \"having customers\" treated like some freakish need of this one industry? People are a lot less interested in buying hotel rooms, restaurant meals and pipes than they are in buying health insurance. Everyone knows someone who has died of cancer or had some other major medical problem, and most people are not insane. Even with the hell of Obamacare, requiring hundreds of hours of work \u2014 to research, sign up for, be thrown off of, then sign up for a different, plan, year after year \u2014 the taxpayer is doing all that in order to maintain some form of health insurance. So apparently, no matter how awful you make it, this is a product Americans are desperate to buy! Republicans all say they want to save the \"good parts\" of Obamacare. Because who knows better what the American consumer wants than a member of Congress! I keep imagining Congress designing a \"comprehensive hotel reform bill,\" promising to save the popular parts: \"BUT PEOPLE LIKE HAVING TV'S IN THEIR HOTEL ROOMS!\" How could we ever get TVs in hotel rooms without Congress writing a law? It turns out, people running a business have an uncanny ability to figure out what's popular with their customers. Any \"popular\" features of Obamacare obviously, manifestly, inevitably will be preserved by the free market. If parents like keeping their useless millennial kids on their plans, guess what? Any insurance company forced to compete with other insurance companies WILL OFFER THAT. As for covering people with \" conditions\" \u2014 there are conditions and conditions. Does this mean the unfortunate few with some exorbitantly expensive medical problem? Or does it mean people who have a \" condition\" because they waited to be diagnosed with cancer before buying insurance? The first category of people was dealt a bad hand. Eventually, they will be taken care of by the market when excess coverage policies are common and reinsurance companies pop up to cover the primary insurance companies. Until then, a separate program can pay for the unlucky. That's not a reason to wreck the health insurance market for everyone else. There aren't 22 million people with horrifyingly expensive medical conditions. They're being used as the baby seals to sell subsidized health care for the irresponsible. The second category is a lot less sympathetic, which is precisely why the two cases are always conflated. You can't buy flood insurance after your house has already floated away. But we won't let people die in the streets, so \u2014 as Trump said at the very first GOP debate \u2014 they will be dealt with \"through a different system. \" They probably can't go to Sloan Kettering, but then again, neither can I. Right now, my $700 a month pays for them to go to Sloan Kettering. Both cases are of zero practical importance to the vast majority of people who just want to buy health insurance on the free market, rather than what we're doing now, which is giving shiftless layabouts and irresponsible an unlimited health care credit card \u2014 paid for through our insurance premiums. We'd come to Washington and tell you that, but we're working to pay for the pediatric dental care of illegal aliens.","label":0}
{"text":"After a business meeting before the Miss Universe Pageant in 2013, a Russian participant offered to send five women to Donald Trump s hotel room in Moscow, his longtime bodyguard told Congress this week, according to three sources who were present for the interview.Two of the sources said the bodyguard, Keith Schiller, viewed the offer as a joke, and immediately responded, We don t do that type of stuff. The two sources said Schiller s comments came in the context of him adamantly disputing the allegations made in the Trump dossier, written by a former British intelligence operative, which describes Trump having an encounter with prostitutes at the hotel during the pageant. Schiller described his reaction to that story as being, Oh my God, that s bull -, two sources said.The conversation with the Russian about the five women took place after a morning meeting about the pageant in Moscow broke up, two sources said.That night, two sources said, Schiller said he discussed the conversation with Trump as Trump was walking back to his hotel room, and Schiller said the two men laughed about it as Trump went to bed alone. Schiller testified that he stood outside Trump s hotel room for a time and then went to bed.One source noted that Schiller testified he eventually left Trump s hotel room door and could not say for sure what happened during the remainder of the night.Two other sources said Schiller testified he was confident nothing happened.Schiller said he and Trump were aware of the risk that hotel rooms in Moscow could be set up to capture hidden video, two sources said.Schiller was grilled about the Moscow trip as part of four hours of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. The questioning around the Moscow trip took a significant amount of time, the sources said. Schiller was also asked about the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between Donald Trump Jr. and Russians, two of the sources said. He testified that he did not recall much about that day. A White House lawyer familiar with the matter said that the White House and fair-minded people are pleased that Mr. Schiller was able to debunk yet another of the false claims in the fantasy dossier funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign and prepared during a time its foreign author worked closely with paid Russian operatives. A Navy veteran, Schiller worked part-time as a bodyguard for Trump while still an NYPD officer. He began working for Trump full-time after his retirement from the force in 2002 and became his director of security in 2004. He served as director of oval office operations in the Trump White House from January until September. NBC News","label":1}
{"text":"Security surrounding the inauguration of Donald J. Trump is proving to be the most challenging in recent history, according to senior officials involved in its planning, largely because of the same forces of political rancor that shaped the race for the presidency. On top of the daunting threats to any inaugural ceremony, the three dozen agencies responsible for security at the Jan. 20 festivities are preparing for the possibility of large numbers of protesters flooding the capital, along with what may be nearly a million supporters of Mr. Trump. The agencies are worried about the possibility of confrontations between groups of Americans still deeply divided over the election \u2014 and at a moment when millions of people around the world will be turning their attention to Washington. At the very least, officials said, protests would put additional pressure on the region's security apparatus. \"To paraphrase Tolstoy: Each inauguration is risky, but each is risky in its own way,\" said Michael Chertoff, who was secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush and oversaw the department for President Obama's first inauguration, in 2009. \"I can't think of an inauguration that presented more security challenges than this one,\" Mr. Chertoff said. There were, of course, heightened concerns for the second inauguration of Mr. Bush, in 2005, the first presidential to follow the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And in 2009, Mr. Obama's inauguration was the first transfer of power in the era \u2014 and the first in which an was taking the oath of office. Mr. Obama faced a rash of racist threats, as well as concerns about a terrorist plot that ultimately proved unfounded but sent the and top aides scrambling on the eve of his . Even so, Mr. Obama did not face the kind of large protests expected to greet Mr. Trump when he officially arrives in Washington. The 2009 crowd of nearly two million people, a record, included few, if any, protesters and did not lead to a single arrest, according to Christopher T. Geldart, the director of homeland security for the District of Columbia. The National Park Service, which controls much of the public land in Washington, from sidewalks to the National Mall, has already seen permit requests from groups hoping to host events both for and against Mr. Trump skyrocket to 23. In typical inauguration years, the agency receives just a handful of requests. Safeguarding the nation's peaceful transfer of power is no easy task even under the most predictable of circumstances. There are few rituals in American public life than the of a new president. From the Metropolitan Police of Washington to the National Park Service to the F. B. I. a vast overlapping patchwork of intelligence analysts, military personnel and law enforcement officers numbering in the tens of thousands will be working to protect the inauguration and related activities. In total, more than three dozen agencies spread out across the capital will be working to prevent the occasion from becoming a platform for individuals or groups looking to do harm. Their work, begun months ago, has taken on a new urgency since Election Day and will soon include the imposition of a security perimeter around the Capitol, the Mall and large parts of the city. The costs of security alone are expected to exceed $100 million. Protecting the new president, the thousands of dignitaries who will be on hand and the crowds is the top priority of federal intelligence, law enforcement and military agencies, as it has been at inaugurations since the Sept. 11 attacks. Threats, from abroad and from homegrown extremists alike, remain a chief concern, current and former officials said. \"What the intelligence community says publicly is what they say privately, and that is more threats from more directions than ever before,\" said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, who is chairman of the congressional committee planning the inaugural ceremony. \"And that just means the Capitol Police and the security elements need to be more thoughtful and alert than ever to what could happen. \" But this time, security forces \u2014 particularly law enforcement officers who will be on the ground here \u2014 are also preparing to confront crowds of Americans who are unusually divided and anxious over the election results. The priority, officials said, is to avoid the kind of violent clashes that periodically flared up on the campaign trail between Mr. Trump's supporters and those who opposed him, while allowing groups on both sides to carry on with events. \"Everybody knows how contentious the campaign was,\" said Mr. Geldart, the District of Columbia homeland security director. \"Honestly, what really keeps me up at night around this is the ability for us to just allow folks to come in, express their views and leave safely. \" Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service, said the agency was \"actively reviewing\" permit requests, with a goal of trying to accommodate as many events as possible. Groups that are granted permits will be spaced out to try to prevent mixing, Mr. Geldart said. The largest of those events, the Women's March on Washington, was granted a permit for about 200, 000 people to rally and then march in protest against Mr. Trump on Jan. 21, the day after the inauguration. Boris Epshteyn, the communications director for Mr. Trump's inaugural planning committee, said the group welcomed the \"free exercise\" of First Amendment rights \"as long as it is done peacefully and within all applicable laws, rules and regulations. \" Just how many of Mr. Trump's supporters will attend remains unclear. The planning committee said it was expecting two million to three million people. Such a crowd would be a record, though Mr. Geldart said his team had yet to see evidence that would cause it to revise its own estimates of 800, 000 to 900, 000 people. The security effort will require virtually the full strength of the region's law enforcement agencies, as well as significant reinforcements. More than 3, 200 police officers from departments across the country and about 8, 000 members of the National Guard will be on hand to help with basic crowd and traffic control around the city. An additional 5, 000 active duty service members will be on hand to serve in ceremonial capacities. Mr. Geldart said those forces would allow local agencies better versed in crowd management tactics to monitor the protesters and groups, in person and with the help of social media. The security planning covers not just Inauguration Day itself but also a week of public and private events planned to celebrate Mr. Trump's victory, beginning with a welcome concert on the National Mall on Jan. 19. Thomas Barrack Jr. a longtime friend of Mr. Trump's who is leading the inaugural planning committee, said each of those events had been carefully negotiated with the Secret Service and its partners. Mr. Trump's personal security was made somewhat simpler when he decided he would stay at Blair House, as his modern predecessors have, rather than at his new hotel in Washington, as was once under consideration. \"It's their party and we're there to develop the operation security plan to make their party safe,\" said James Murray, the deputy assistant director of the Secret Service's office of protective operations, which has overall responsibility for inaugural security. \"But by all means it's certainly a kind of thing. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump is being graded on a curve. He always has been, as he has broken every rule in the political handbook and still managed to lie, cheat, and insult his way to the presidency. However, on Tuesday night, he delivered a speech to a joint session of Congress his first. For the most part, he stuck to his prepared remarks, and he seemed to keep his attention span and his temperament in check. There were no nasty insults to the press, to Democrats, or to Republicans who have been critical of him. Compared to the wild, unhinged antics we ve been treated to from Trump since the day he launched his disgusting presidential campaign, this speech was surprisingly normal by Trumpian standards. This seems to be good enough for cable news personalities at this point.But, one #NeverTrump conservative, Charlie Sykes, has news for said pundits: They are looking too hard for Trump to act like a normal president or even a normal human being and in turn they are behaving like abused spouses. Appearing on MSNBC, Sykes said of the punditry surrounding Trump s speech: There s almost a battered pundit syndrome going on out there. He comes home and he s not abusive, and he s not drunk, and so we re just so incredibly grateful, it s just so incredibly good. Sykes went on to remind people that Trump s new tone is unlikely to go beyond that speech. He ll be back to his old, unruly self again in no time just like a drunken, abusive spouse. To that end, we, the American people, need to treat him like an abuser, because that is just what he is, only on a grand scale.Thank you, Mr. Sykes, for reminding everyone just who and what Trump is. Splashes of seeming normalcy from him should not be treated as if the storm has passed. It will never pass with this man.Watch the exchange below:","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he would be issuing an order next week aimed at keeping the American people safe, as his temporary ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries remains kept on hold by a federal court. \"We will be issuing a new and very comprehensive order to protect our people,\" Trump said at a news conference.","label":0}
{"text":"Posted on November 1, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog 75% of Americans Believe the Media Is Biased For Hillary  A Suffolk University\/USA Today poll released Friday found that 75.9% of Americans believe the mainstream media \"would like to see [Hillary Clinton] elected president.\"  The poll also found that only 10% of Americans believe that \"foreign interests such as Russian hackers\" are \"the primary threat that might try to change the election results\". In contrast, 45.53% believe \"the news media\" is the primary threat to the election:  Indeed, the New York Times , Boston Globe , Los Angeles Times , CNN and other mainstream media admitted to us they were going to try to throw the election for Hillary. (And leaked emails show widespread collusion between the media and the Clinton campaign.)","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Republican Senator Jeff Flake on Thursday expressed concern about the Senate Republican tax proposal's impact on the national debt. In a statement, Flake did not say how he might vote on the proposal unveiled earlier Thursday. \"I remain concerned over how the current tax reform proposals will grow the already staggering national debt by opting for short-term fixes while ignoring long-term problems for taxpayers and the economy,\" he said. Both the Senate and House tax cut plans would add about $1.5 trillion to the U.S. national debt over 10 years. Lawmakers should achieve tax reform in a fiscally responsible manner, Flake said, adding that he looked forward to working with his colleagues \"to deliver on that goal.\"","label":0}
{"text":"mars-alive.blogspot.ca 0  In this image from NASA's Curiosity Rover's Image, which i call the Medusa Rover, every life form Curiosity looks at changes to stone, you can clearly see a few Martian faces in this image, to me this is pretty clear evidence that the rovers are on Mars and not here on Earth. ( Devon Island ) NASA JPL are masters of making Mars look as dead and dry as possible, they are not really searching for life because they have known for a very long time already that life exists on every planet and moon out there, i hope you are all able to see what i see in this video!  Thanks very much for Watching  Please Share and Subscribe!!","label":1}
{"text":"A spate of unsolved murders of young women in Uganda is putting rare public pressure on a police force long accused by opposition politicians of spending more time suppressing political dissent than tackling crime. Widespread media coverage of the appearance of 20 corpses beside roadsides south of the capital since May reflects public anger with police for repeatedly saying they have arrested the perpetrators, only for another body to be discovered. It s terrifying, Susan Kabul, 29, told Reuters, standing near the garbage-littered bank of a drainage channel where the latest murder victim was discovered. The police need to tell us who is slaughtering people like this. The government has defended the police, and police say they have arrested 30 suspects and charged 13 of them, listing possible motives ranging from domestic rows through sexual abuse to ritual murder linked to human sacrifice. Ritual killing is one of the motives that we suspect, we also think there might be cases of jilted lovers, police spokesman Asan Kasingye said by telephone. Other theories might come up as investigations progress. There have been occasional individual cases of alleged ritual murder in the east African nation, but this is the first time there has been such a large number of people killed in similar circumstances in the same area. In a nod to the public outrage, lawmakers stopped work for two days this week after the 20th body was found, saying ministers had failed to appear before the legislature over the killings in three districts on the outer edge of Kampala. Government spokesman Ofwono Opondo accused them of populism. They spoke as if the government is doing nothing, he said. They should leave police to work without pressure. The legislature is dominated by supporters of longstanding President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986. The constitution was changed in 2005 to remove a two-term limit, allowing him to extend his rule, and parliament is discussing removing an age cap. His son is a major general and powerful presidential adviser. Opposition leader Kizza Besigye, who contends that Museveni stole his victory in last year s election, has been charged with treason. Police often break up opposition rallies with teargas, beatings or detentions. The opposition and rights activists have long accused security forces of neglecting crime to focus on political control. Police can t secure women in a small area - all the attention is on politics, on who is criticizing Museveni, said Sarah Birete of the Centre for Constitutional Governance. Government spokesman Opondo said police were doing a good job. Some people start disguised as political activists and degenerate to criminals, I think they are unhappy that the police is on their back, he said. The police is right to focus on all forms of crime that can cause insecurity. Uganda is ranked among the world s most corrupt countries by watchdog Transparency International. The Ugandan government s inspector general said in a 2014 report that the police force was the most corrupt public institution in the country and noted crimes were rarely investigated. In Wakiso, the district south of Kampala where most of the victims have been found, few residents have faith that the killings will stop. I have stopped moving about at night. He could be a serial killer. I don t know where he will strike next, said Deo Busulwa, who lives a stone s throw from the canalside bank location of the latest grisly discovery, of mother-of-two Maria Nabilawa. Many residents suspect the victims are killed elsewhere and the bodies dumped. Kasingye said they had arrested Nabilawa s husband in connection with her killing. (Story refiles to add dropped word in fifth paragraph.)","label":0}
{"text":"Zimbabwe s ruling party will dismiss President Robert Mugabe on Sunday and reinstate Emmerson Mnangagwa, the vice-president he fired, two party sources told Reuters on Saturday, as ecstatic crowds celebrated the expected downfall. Mugabe s 37-year rule has been effectively at an end since the army seized control on Wednesday, confining him to his residence, saying it wanted to target the criminals around him. State television said Mugabe would meet military commanders on Sunday, quoting Catholic priest Fidelis Mukonori, who has been mediating in negotiations with the president. But hundreds of thousands of people had no need for a formal signal that his time had ended as they flooded the streets of Harare, singing, dancing and hugging soldiers. In scenes reminiscent of the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, men, women and children ran alongside the armoured cars and the troops who stepped in this week to oust the only ruler Zimbabwe has known since independence in 1980. Others marched towards his lavish Blue Roof residence, but were kept away by soldiers. Under house arrest in his compound, the 93-year-old has watched support from his party, security services and people evaporate in less than three days. The sources said a ZANU-PF party central committee meeting scheduled for 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) would also dismiss 93-year-old Mugabe s preferred successor, his wife Grace, from her role as head of the ZANU-PF Women s League. Mugabe s nephew Patrick Zhuwao, speaking from an undisclosed location in South Africa, told Reuters the leader and his wife were ready to die for what is correct rather than step down in order to legitimise what he described as a coup. Zhuwao also said that only Mugabe, who had hardly slept since the military took over but was otherwise in good health, could call a meeting of the central committee. It was not clear from reading the party s constitution who is empowered to call such a meeting - but events appeared to have made the issue irrelevant. On Harare s streets, Zimbabweans spoke of a second liberation for the former British colony, alongside their dreams of political and economic change after two decades of deepening repression and hardship. These are tears of joy, said Frank Mutsindikwa, 34, holding aloft the Zimbabwean flag. I ve been waiting all my life for this day. Free at last. We are free at last. Mugabe s downfall is likely to send shockwaves across Africa, where a number of entrenched strongmen, from Uganda s Yoweri Museveni to Democratic Republic of Congo s Joseph Kabila, are facing mounting pressure to step aside. The crowds in Harare have so far given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army s intervention, backing its claims that it is merely effecting a constitutional transfer of power, which would help it avoid the diplomatic backlash and opprobrium that normally follows a coup. The military had been prompted to act by Mugabe s decision to sack Mnangagwa, Grace Mugabe s main rival to succeed her husband. The next presidential election is due next year. Zimbabweans abroad were also hailing the end of Mugabe s rule, not least the hundreds living in Britain who gathered outside their embassy in central London. I m ecstatic to see people give Mugabe a reality check because he has been in his echo chamber for too long, lying to himself that people still want him, said Ruva Kudambo, 37, who came to study technology and ended up staying. Tasa, a 36-year-old who refused to give his family name, said he had brought his four young children, aged 5 to 9, to the protest because they are the future of Zimbabwe . NO DIS-GRACE For some Africans, Mugabe remains a nationalist hero, the continent s last independence leader and a symbol of its struggle to throw off the legacy of decades of colonial subjugation. But to many more at home and abroad, he was reviled as a dictator happy to resort to violence to retain power and to run a once-promising economy into the ground. Political sources and intelligence documents seen by Reuters said Mugabe s exit was likely to pave the way for an interim unity government led by Mnangagwa, a life-long Mugabe aide and former security chief known as The Crocodile . Stabilising the free-falling economy will be the number one priority, the documents said. The United States, a long-time critic of Mugabe, said it was looking forward to a new era in Zimbabwe, while President Ian Khama of neighbouring Botswana said Mugabe had no diplomatic support in the region and should resign at once. The Herald, the state newspaper that has served as Mugabe s loyal mouthpiece, said ZANU-PF had called on Friday for him to go. It said ZANU-PF branches in all 10 provinces had also called for the resignation of Grace, the first lady whose ambitions to succeed her husband outraged the military and much of the country. To many Zimbabweans, she is known as Gucci Grace on account of her reported dedication to shopping, or - in the wake of an alleged assault in September on a South African model - Dis-Grace . The scenes in Harare reflect the anger and frustration that has built up among Zimbabwe s 16 million people in nearly two decades of economic mismanagement that started with the seizure of white-owned farms in 2000, the catalyst of a wider collapse. The central bank tried to print its way out of trouble by unleashing a flood of cash but that only made matters worse, leading to hyperinflation that topped out at 500 billion percent in 2008. At least 3 million Zimbabweans emigrated in search of a better life, most of them to neighbouring South Africa. After stabilising briefly when Mugabe was forced to work with the opposition in a 2009-2013 unity government, the economy has collapsed again, this time due to a chronic shortage of dollars. In October, monthly inflation leapt to more than 50 percent, according to some economists, putting basic goods beyond the means of many in a country with 90 percent unemployment. Mugabe s only public appearance since the military took over was at a university graduation ceremony on Friday morning. Decked out in blue and yellow academic gowns, he appeared tired, at one point falling asleep in his chair. A senior member of ZANU-PF said it was only a matter of time before he agreed to go. If he becomes stubborn, we will arrange for him to be fired on Sunday, the source said. When that is done, it s impeachment on Tuesday.","label":0}
{"text":"Proud Shares  The NRA's magazine acknowledged that President Obama \"really hasn't had the opportunity to\" confiscate firearms, undercutting years of fearmongering about the supposed existence of a \" massive Obama conspiracy \" to dismantle the Second Amendment and take guns away.  The NRA's admission that a president can't confiscate guns because \"Congress writes the laws, not the president\" also demonstrates the implausibility of repeated recent claims from the NRA that link Hillary Clinton to gun confiscation.  The admission was included in a June 9 article for NRA magazine America's 1st Freedom which took issue with how Obama \"rudely\" responded to a question from a gun store owner at a recent town hall event.  The article quoted Obama as telling the questioner, \"I'm about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I've been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country. And at no point have I ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners. So it is just not true.\"  Responding to Obama's statement, the article acknowledged, \"Now, [the gun store owner]could have interrupted the president to mention that Obama really hasn't had the opportunity to do that. Congress writes the laws, not the president\":  Rhude didn't sit down after asking his question. Rather, he stood silently as President Obama didn't even try to answer his question, but instead went off on a defensive tirade: \"First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks' guns is just not true. And I don't care how many times the NRA says it.\"  Obama then said, \"I'm about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I've been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country. And at no point have I ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners. So it is just not true.\"  Now, Rhude could have interrupted the president to mention that Obama really hasn't had the opportunity to do that. Congress writes the laws, not the president. He could then have listed the many attacks on the right to bear arms \u2014 from Operation Fast and Furious to Operation Choke Point to Obama's attempted ban on common ammunition for AR-15-type rifles to his using a \"pen and phone\" to push anti-gun executive actions. But Rhude respectfully stayed silent.  Claims about gun confiscation and Obama have been the NRA's bread and butter for the past eight years . More recently, the NRA has suggested that the election of Clinton could lead to gun confiscation for law-abiding Americans.  Read in full on Media Matters for America: NRA Admits It: \"Obama Really Hasn't Had The Opportunity To\" Confiscate Guns","label":1}
{"text":"Palestine Palestinians inspect the damaged house of Zaid Amer, after it was demolished by the Israeli army, in the West Bank city of Nablus, May 3, 2016. (Photo by AP)  Israeli troops have razed to the ground at least three houses in the East Jerusalem al-Quds, in the latest demolition of Palestinian property in the occupied territories.  Local media reported that Israeli forces demolished the buildings in the neighborhoods of Beit Hanina and Silwan on Wednesday without prior notice, displacing at least 44 Palestinians including children.  The United Nations has documented a dramatic rise in demolitions, saying 124 Palestinians, including 60 children, were left homeless in the occupied West Bank in a single day in April.  The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also said in August that a total of 726 Palestinian structures had been razed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds since January, and that the demolitions had affected 1,020 Palestinians.  The world body noted that there were 533 demolitions and 688 displaced Palestinians in the entire 2015, meaning that demolitions so far this year have increased more than 36 percent. This picture taken on March 14, 2011 shows a general view of a construction site in the West Bank settlement of Modiin Illit. (Photo by AP)  The demolitions have raised alarm among diplomats and human rights groups over Tel Aviv's sustained violation of international law. The demolished structures include houses and schools.  The Israeli razing of Palestinian homes along with its illegal settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories have dimmed hopes of any peace in the region.  Over half a million Israelis live in more than 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, including East al-Quds. The settlements are considered by the international community as illegal.  The occupied territories have witnessed increased tensions ever since Israeli forces imposed restrictions on the entry of Palestinian worshipers into the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem al-Quds in August 2015.  Nearly 250 Palestinians have lost their lives at the hands of Israeli forces since the beginning of last October. Loading ...","label":1}
{"text":"While at a campaign event in Riviera Beach Florida, Bill Clinton was speaking about his wife, Hillary, and letting everyone know why they should choose her in the upcoming election. However, from the crowd came shouts of protest from a lone Donald Trump supporter who stood with a Trump campaign sign smirking and looking very proud of himself.What this protester didn t realize was coming was the fact that the former president is used to being attacked from every angle. He will have a comeback and retort to everything thrown his way. So that protester soon had his condescending smirk wiped off his face by an epic verbal smack down that he likely was not expecting.The Trump supporter was shouting You took his money! in reference to the Clinton s taking Trump s money for their foundation. This is when Clinton responded without even blinking an eye: I certainly did. I took his money for my foundation and used it better than he s using it now. However, the Trump minion still stood there with his smug little smile waving his sign around for all to see. And as the crowd grew restless at this obnoxious display, Clinton took on this creep head on. Referencing Trump, he said: I remember when he called me to say how terrible the Republicans had been to Hillary and me and how unfair they were and what a brilliant job Hillary did as a senator. By the way, a lot of them called me about that, which is why they spent the last three years trying to tear her down because they know if they nominate her they are going to have to eat the words they said. However, the former president wasn t done. As the Secret Service finally led the Trump lackey away, Clinton said: If you want to build a wall along the Rio Grande and spend $13 million, then you should follow him like Moses into the Promised Land. BURRRNNN! Clinton basically told the guy that Trump is full of crap and is selling him on racist promises he simply won t be able to deliver.The lesson to be learned from all of this? Don t mess with the Explainer-in-Chief. He will SHUT YOU DOWN.Watch here:Video\/Featured image: YouTube","label":1}
{"text":"Palestinian Islamist group Hamas s leader in Gaza said on Thursday a reconciliation deal with President Mahmoud Abbas s Fatah faction was collapsing, just 10 weeks after the agreement was reached. The rivals signed a deal brokered by Cairo on Oct. 12 after Hamas agreed to hand over administrative control of the Gaza Strip, including its border crossings with Egypt and Israel, a decade after seizing control of the enclave in a civil war. The deal bridged a deep gulf between Abbas s Western-backed mainstream Fatah and Hamas, an Islamist movement designated a terrorist group by Western countries and Israel. But continued disputes have delayed its implementation. Yehya Al-Sinwar, Hamas s chief in Gaza and a key architect of the unity agreement, offered a bleak outlook on Thursday, suggesting the deal could suffer a similar fate to numerous reconciliation attempts over the past decade. The reconciliation project is falling apart. Only a blind man can t see that, Sinwar said in comments published by pro-Hamas media. One of the latest disputes came earlier this month when Hamas, according to Fatah officials, missed a milestone to complete the handover of Gaza to Abbas s West Bank-based government. Hamas says it has given up all administrative control in Gaza. Rami Al-Hamdallah, the prime minister, said Hamas had not transferred moneys as agreed, while Hamas said Hamdallah s government had not paid salaries in Gaza as agreed. Sinwar in the past has said his group would not go back to governing Gaza and that he was committed to making the deal succeed. Fatah officials declined immediate comment. Reconciliation is collapsing because some people want to get from it the relinquishing of arms and the closing of tunnels, said Sinwar without elaborating, but in apparent reference to Fatah. During the last Gaza war, in 2014, Hamas fighters used dozens of tunnels to blindside Israel s superior forces and threaten civilian communities near the frontier. Israel and the United States have called for Hamas to be disarmed as part of the pact between it and the Palestinian Authority, so that Israeli peace efforts with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which collapsed in 2014, can proceed. Hamas has rejected the demand.","label":0}
{"text":"REYHANLI, Turkey \u2014 After an airstrike on his village, a Syrian farmer hurried to rescue the initial victims of the attack, the residents of a home. But as Mohammad Nejdat Youssef neared the site, he ran headlong into what he described as \"a winter fog \u2014 not quite yellow and not quite white. \" He started to lose his balance, he said. His eyes began to sting. His nose started to stream. Finally, Mr. Youssef said, he started to foam at the mouth. Mr. Youssef had been poisoned, one of the victims of Tuesday's chemical attack in northern Syria, one of the deadliest chemical weapons attacks in years in the country, which killed dozens of people. A tall and burly man, Mr. Youssef, 23, was able to recover after being treated locally. But when the toxic cloud that had sickened him was blown downwind toward his farm outside the village, his pregnant wife, 20, and a nephew, 9, had a far more serious reaction and were evacuated by ambulance to a hospital in Turkey, said Mr. Youssef, who accompanied them. At the hospital in Reyhanli, a small Turkish border town that took in many of the victims, the mourners gathered outside mostly came from just two extended families, Mr. Youssef's and the Abu Amash family. The families are connected by marriage and both come from Khan Sheikhoun, the village in Idlib Province that residents said had been hit with chemical weapons earlier that morning. \"Just look at this!\" Orwa Abu Amash, 33, said as he held up his phone. On the screen was a long WhatsApp message listing what he claimed were the names of 46 relatives who had died that day in Khan Sheikhoun. As Mr. Youssef paced around the parking lot outside the hospital, he said he was scared not just for his wife on the other side of the hospital wall, who had arrived lying motionless on a stretcher, but for his relatives on the other side of the border. Many of them had also been poisoned by the gas but had not been deemed sick enough to be treated in Turkey, whose border is closed to most Syrians. Earlier Tuesday, witnesses reached by phone in Syria described similarly traumatic scenes at the site of the attack. Warplanes had roared overhead just before 7 a. m. when many people in the town were sleeping after a night of intense sounds of bombing, said Othman an activist in Khan Sheikhoun who was reached via phone at a first aid station. He spoke after fleeing Rahmeh Hospital in Khan Sheikhoun, where many victims were being treated, after an airstrike hit part of the hospital. While he was speaking, another loud boom sounded, and the line went dead he called back to say it had been another nearby strike. The area's minister of health, Mohamad Firas said in an online video that hospitals and clinics were overwhelmed. He said he had been in a field hospital at 7:30 a. m. when over 100 people arrived injured or sickened many others, he said, were sent to other clinics, with some left lying in the corridors. Symptoms, he said, included suffocation, fluid in the lungs with foam coming from the mouth, unconsciousness, spasms and paralysis. \"It's a shocking act,\" he said. \"The world knows and is aware of what's happening in Syria, and we are ready to submit evidences to criminal laboratories to prove the use of these gases. \" Yasser Sarmani, a rebel fighter reached by phone in Idlib, said he collapsed while driving to the scene on his motorcycle to help the victims. \"It became a routine for us that when we hear an airstrike to rush to the scene and try to rescue people,\" he said. \"I woke up to the sound of an explosion, but it was not as loud as usual. \" \"Driving against the wind, my eyes started burning and I felt I was being suffocated,\" he added. \"People were running away from the site and falling on the ground. It was a cruel scene. At that point I fainted. \" He said he woke up an hour later at a clinic, after receiving injections and oxygen. \"Kids were all over the floor, some dead and others struggling to breathe,\" he said. \"The noise of them trying to breath was loud, with foam all over their faces. \" As they watched the ambulances come and go outside the hospital in Reyhanli, Mr. Youssef and several of his relatives wondered what President Trump might make of all this. On Monday, Mr. Trump's administration signaled that it no longer saw the departure of President Bashar of Syria as a priority. On Tuesday, Mr. Assad appeared to unleash one of the worst chemical attacks of the war. \"If Donald Trump is happy for this to happen to his own people and his own children,\" said Mr. Youssef, \"then we're happy to keep Bashar . \" Shuffling around in the hospital parking lot, several of Mr. Youssef's relatives buried themselves in their phones, watching the videos of the morning's atrocities over and over. The clips have been widely circulated on the internet. They show the pale corpses of dead toddlers, or the retching bodies of men who appear to be close to death. One woman lay on her back, her purple leggings exposed. A young boy, perhaps 12, lay motionless except for his mouth, gasping for air. None had visible marks of injury. Some of the sickened and dying were nearly naked, as rescuers, many with their bare hands, stripped them and hosed them down. A man narrating a video of motionless children, lined up as if sleeping, was able to come up only with sentence fragments. \"A whole family,\" he repeated. Unlike the people around the globe who found these videos on social media, several of those watching them outside the hospital in Reyhanli had witnessed the scenes in real life. You wouldn't have known it, however, by looking at their blank faces. \"We've seen so much of this,\" Mr. Abu Amash said. \"It's normal. We see this every day. We had six years of it. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Kellyanne Conway is not taking Russian interference in our political process seriously, so CNN host Kate Bolduan called her out for it.During an interview on Thursday night, Bolduan asked Conway about Donald Trump s reaction to President Obama slapping sanctioned against Russia, including the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, in retaliation for hacking the DNC and meddling in the election on Trump s behalf.Trump insisted that we move on and blamed computers instead of the Russians for the attack because computers have complicated our lives greatly. Conway, as usual, brushed off the question and began whining about the New York Times and Hillary Clinton all while once again claiming that Trump won a huge victory. She also accused President Obama of hitting the Russians with sanctions as a political maneuver against Trump.Let s not forget that Clinton won the popular vote and Trump electoral win is one of the smallest margins of victory in the last 100 years.But while President Obama s actions against Russia may make it harder for Trump to kiss Putin s ass, it s hardly politically motivated. The CIA and 17 other intelligence agencies agree that Russia interfered in our election, and there needed to be consequences because Trump sure as hell was not going to do anything about it himself.Conway, however, continued her obsession with talking about Hillary Clinton to dodge Bolduan s questions and whined about people questioning Trump s legitimacy, which forced Bolduan to call Conway out for not taking the Russian hacking seriously. This is serious, Bolduan said. This is about a foreign country hacking into the United States electoral process. Regardless, it doesn t even have to do with the result, even. It is more that they tried to and did. Conway replied by blaming the DNC for the hack instead of the Russians who did the hacking and then proceeded to accuse the intelligence community of trying to interfere with the election results.Here s the video via YouTube:It sure sounds like there will be a lot of friction between Trump s team and the intelligence community, and frankly, they should tell Trump he s on his own. Because you know he s going to blame them for whatever happens anyway.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump is set to impose a range of executive orders immediately after his inauguration on Friday, according to his transition team. [\"He's got a few of them, probably in the area of four or five, that we're looking at for Friday,\" said incoming press secretary Sean Spicer at the Trump transition headquarters. \"Then there are some other ones that I expect him to sign with respect to a couple of issues that have been high on his priority list,\" he continued. Trump has promised to reverse a range of orders previously imposed by Barack Obama. The most likely executive order to be repealed on Friday is the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) which grant amnesty to thousands of illegal immigrants. Other orders that will inevitably be repealed on Friday or in the near future include the Clean Power Plan, as well as orders pertaining to gun control and religious liberty. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump said the suspected gunman who opened fire on Republican lawmakers on Wednesday had died from injuries he received during the shooting. \"The assailant has now died from his injuries,\" Trump announced from the White House.","label":0}
{"text":"on October 30, 2016 4:07 pm \u00b7  For like the eleventy-billionth time, Sarah Palin posted a broken link to a Facebook post on Twitter Sunday. Now, at first glance her months of posting dead links and not figuring out how to fix the problem might seem moderately stupid \u2014 until you see the content of the actual post on the half-term, half-wit former Governor of Alaska's Facebook timeline.  Referencing Clinton's recent, mundane campaign stop at a bar, Palin \u2014 who regularly appears to be heavily intoxicated whenever she has a camera in front of her and was involved in a drunken hillbilly brawl in 2014 \u2014 quipped, \"she's gonna drive us all to drink.\"  Thinking she is clever, she then adds that Clinton should have been \"thinking Sam Adams\" rather than \"drinking Sam Adams.\"  Naturally, as Palin brought up drinking, the internet decided it couldn't let this one go: @SarahPalinUSA I see you've already started  \u2014 Clodagh Smith (@Clodagh831) October 30, 2016 @SarahPalinUSA Any excuse to drink, eh Sarah? #Lush  \u2014 John Yuma (@JohnYuma) October 30, 2016 @SarahPalinUSA Have you been day drinking again?  \u2014 Mr. Wolfcastle (@tew156) October 30, 2016 @SarahPalinUSA oh Sarah, remember when you mattered?Me neither. Open another Box O' Wine.","label":1}
{"text":"One day after what was demonstrably one of the stories by the media focused on the \"removal\" of Steve Bannon, President Trump's top adviser, from the National Security Council (NSC) he attended a council meeting, the Washington Examiner reported on Thursday. [\"White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has attended the first meeting of the National Security Council after he was removed from the principals committee Wednesday,\" the Examiner story said. Despite the headlines about Bannon's removal, most media outlets included the fact that the change on the council only meant Bannon was no longer a permanent member on the council but that he retained top security clearance and could attend council meetings. \"Bannon is still permitted to go to NSC meetings,\" Fox News reported on Wednesday. CNBC reported that Bannon can attend council meetings by invitation of the president or H. R. McMaster, Trump's national security adviser. \"He is one of the president's closest and most trusted advisers,\" a White House source told CNBC when asked why Bannon attended.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump issued an apology on Friday after the release of a video in which the Republican presidential candidate was recorded on an open microphone in 2005 talking in vulgar terms about trying to have sex with women. \"This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course - not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended,\" Trump said in a statement released by his campaign. The video, released in a Washington Post story (wapo.st\/2dSk1nD), was recorded while Trump was speaking with TV host Billy Bush of \"Access Hollywood\" while they were about to tape a segment about a planned cameo appearance by the New York businessman on the soap opera \"Days of Our Lives,\" the Post reported. Trump has faced repeated criticism for his comments about women, most recently involving his attacks on a former beauty queen with a vague and unsubstantiated allegation about a sex tape in predawn Twitter posts that prompted Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to denounce him as \"unhinged.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Enjoy your turkey, family events and holiday cheer. Enjoy the changing political environment and the strange sense of normalcy that has returned since the end of the election. None of it is likely to last. 2017 may prove to be pretty brutal. Now that the Western world has turned in the direction of Trump and Brexit, it may be that the bankster class is prepared to start the next phase. The pressure that has been building since the 2008 economic crisis is poised to topple the system again. As reputed author James Wesley Rawles of SurvivalBlog.com points out, negative interest rates and big debt governing under Obama have set us up for a fall. Easy money, cheap money and free flowing, unlimited credit to the top of the heap have brought things to a desperate point of no return. Nassim Taleb made the point that Obama's most grandiose betrayal against the American people won't be felt until the coming tide of inflation enlarges the national debt, already at record levels of government spending, even further: 3) Don't fughet Obama is leaving us a Ponzi scheme, added ~8 trillions in debt with rates at 0. If they rise, costs of deficit explode\u2026 \u2014 NassimNicholasTaleb (@nntaleb) November 20, 2016  Federal Reserve officials have already conceded that the zero percent interest\/quantitative easing package is no longer capable of stimulating the economy, and so raising interest rates to normal is in order; however, raising these rates even slightly is enough to induce panic and economic turmoil. Countless figures have come forward to warn that our financial system is set up for a pump and dump \u2013 and that the populist Trump presidency is likely to be background to economic pain, gloomy news and grim difficulties in every respect. Though the die was cast by the cronies who drafted the phony recovery, Trump will be associated with what could be one of the worst financial eras in history. Worse, that time would leave millions and millions of people without jobs, money or a way to provide. As usual, Rawles makes the case for how to survive in such a depressing and chaotic environment, and how to avert the worst of the collapse by preparing now, and building a lifestyle that is resistant to market pressures and political shoes dropping. Here's the interview from X22 Report : Check out more of James Wesley Rawles work at SurvivalBlog.com or via his survival books .","label":1}
{"text":"Jut when you didn t think the hosts on the Fox News channel couldn t get any more despicable, they do. On Tuesday s edition of Fox and Friends, the hosts of that silly show decided to take aim at a high school athlete who just happens to be transgender. They misgendered her and called her a boy, and also said that she was gender bending, and confused. The athlete is a track star at her high school, and instead of praising this brave young woman as they should have the hosts said that she was confusing kids who are already pretty confused in this culture. They went on to wonder: Are girls who identify as boys, are they going to be the running backs for the football is that going to work out well? How s that going to work out? Here is the transcript of the conversation, via Media Matters:STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Laura, we talk about popular culture and society. How about this story this morning. There s a high school track athlete who was born male, identifies now as female LAURA INGRAHAM: No.DOOCY: Competed with the girls track team. And finished I think third at the state competition. I think we could have seen this coming. What do you make of this?INGRAHAM: Well, it s another first, right? We re all into firsts so that s a first. Then it will be the first field hockey player and pole vault star. Let me just say this, and Brian will love this story. I was in field hockey in Glastonbury, Connecticut. And at the end of the season one season we had the boys soccer team play us. We were ranked number one in the state so the boys decided they were going to pick up sticks, the soccer team and play against us. Well, sadly for us the boys, who have never played field hockey, creamed us, okay? They killed us. We were number one in the state. They were faster. They were stronger. And they I mean, it made me really mad, but they had better hand\/eye coordination and never picked up a stick before. So is this fair to the other girls competing? I mean, I don t think it s really fair.BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Of course it s not.INGRAHAM: And I think it s just more gender bending. This is gender bending this is the next frontier until there s another frontier that the you know, those who want to mix up the traditional social mores want to take us to. So it doesn t surprise me. It s not fair. Until parents make their views known, this is just going to keep getting worse.KILMEADE: Hey, Laura, in an environment where people are taking performance enhancing drugs to do better in sports you know we re going to be in the situation where, well, we d like to win our first state championship so let s let a few men excuse me, some boys play with the girls team and then take the controversy and also take the trophy.INGRAHAM: Hey Brian, do you think it will go the other way though? Are girls who identify as boys, are they going to be the running backs for the football is that going to work out well? How s that going to work out? Let s go the other direction and see how successful that works out. I mean it s just, I have no I really have KILMEADE: I just shrug my I don t know what to say.INGRAHAM: Well, it s only the current conversation, but remember we ll be on to the next issue and then the next and the next. This is a current litmus test. You re not a human being with real feelings and empathy unless you re cheering this on and bowing down to this new movement. Look, that s the way they want to frame it. It s up to the regular Americans to say, look, I m a good person. But I don t think this is fair and I think most people don t develop their understanding of their own, you know, sexuality until frankly later in life. You know, I think it s I think it s confusing kids who are already pretty confused in this culture.KILMEADE: I m confused, and I m a grown-up. Laura Ingraham, I pretty much have reached my maximum in maturity. Laura. Thanks so much.This is really just too much, even for the imbeciles at Fox and Friends. They can have their opinions, sure, no matter how absolutely ignorant they may be. But attacking a private citizen, a high school student no less, on national television over her gender identity is truly beyond the pale. These people need an education, not a platform to spread ignorance.Watch the video below, again via Media Matters:","label":1}
{"text":"China wants to improve its military relationship with Singapore, but is resolutely opposed to any country having defense ties with self-ruled Taiwan, China s Defence Ministry said on Thursday, obliquely criticizing Singapore s Taiwan links. China is suspicious of the city state s good military relations both with the United States and Taiwan, claimed by China as its own. Singaporean troops train in Taiwan, despite a lack of formal diplomatic relations between the two, which has been an irritant in China-Singapore ties. Last November, Hong Kong port authorities impounded nine Singaporean armored military vehicles being shipped home from training grounds in Taiwan, leading to tensions between Singapore and China. Hong Kong later released the vehicles. Asked about a visit of Singaporean Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen to China last week and speculation this may lead Singapore to end its military training in Taiwan, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said relations with Singapore s military had been generally developing smoothly. There are high level talks, mutual visits of warships and other exchanges, which has deepened mutual understanding and achieved practical results, Wu told a monthly news briefing. China is willing to work with Singapore to create favorable conditions to develop an even more mature military relationship, he said. I also want to stress here that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. We resolutely oppose any country having any form of official exchanges with Taiwan or military links. Ng s meeting with Chinese Defence Minister Chang Wanquan came as part of a trip to Beijing by Singapore s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, where there was no public mention of the Taiwan matter. Influential state-run Chinese newspaper the Global Times said last week that it was inevitable the military training in Taiwan would end, though it offered no proof. Taiwan is one of China s most sensitive issues. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring what it considers a wayward province under its rule. Ties across the Taiwan Strait have nosedived since Tsai Ing-wen from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party won presidential elections last year. China suspects she wants to push for the island s formal independence. She says she wants to maintain peace with her giant neighbor. In recent months, Chinese air force jets have carried out a series of drills around Taiwan which have included bombers and advanced fighter jets. Spokesman Wu reiterated that the drills were routine. We will continue with such exercises, he added. Taiwan s Defence Ministry declined to comment.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to pass a $602 billion defense authorization bill, despite President Barack Obama's threat to veto the annual policy measure over issues including a ban on closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison. The vote was 85-13, far more than the majority needed to pass the 100-member Senate. Six Republicans and seven members of the Democratic caucus voted against the bill, which authorizes military spending for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1. Obama gave a long list of objections to the versions of the bill passed by the Senate and House of Representatives, including provisions making it more difficult to close the detention center at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and the use of funds specially designated for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to allow the military to avoid mandatory spending limits. The Senate's version of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, now must be reconciled with the one passed by the House last month before it can be sent to Obama. The House bill also faces a veto threat. If the bill is finished before November, when every member of the House and one-third of the Senate is up for re-election, a veto could prove challenging for Democrats. Obama's party is trying to keep the White House, and hopes to regain the Senate majority it lost in 2014, if not control of the House. But Democrats perpetually battle accusations from Republicans that they are soft on defense, a fight that could be more difficult if they block the major Pentagon policy bill. Republican Senator John McCain, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, said he was disappointed the bill did not include a program that would help Afghans who are in danger because they worked for American troops to move to the United States. \"They are the number one target for the Taliban and for ISIS (Islamic State),\" McCain said in the Senate after the bill passed without an amendment extending the program to provide Special Immigrant Visas for interpreters and others who worked for U.S. forces. Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who had introduced the amendment, called its omission \"unconscionable.\" In a statement, she said, \"For many of them, this could be a death sentence.\" The bill would also require young women to register for the military draft, as the Department of Defense opens all of the military, including combat roles, to females. A few conservative senators voted against the measure because of that provision. The bill passed with a compromise on the use of Russian RD-180 rocket engines. Lawmakers eased a ban on their use late last year, worried that it could drive United Launch alliance, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co, out of business and leave only privately held SpaceX to transport satellites into space. An amendment from Republican Senator Cory Gardner and Democrat Bill Nelson gives the Pentagon time to develop and test a replacement for the Russian-made engines and limits their use for launches. McCain, a harsh critic of Moscow, had tried to stop the use of the RD-180 to send a message to Russia's President Vladimir Putin. The bill also bars military base closures, despite military leaders saying they have more capacity than they need. Closing bases is a thorny issue for many lawmakers, especially in an election year.","label":0}
{"text":"The senior United States commander in Iraq said on Tuesday that an American airstrike most likely led to the collapse of a building in Mosul that killed scores of civilians this month. But the commander, Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, indicated that an investigation would also examine whether the attack might have set off a larger blast from explosives set by militants inside the building or nearby. It was the fullest acceptance of responsibility by an American commander since the March 17 airstrike. \"My initial assessment is that we probably had a role in these casualties,\" said General Townsend, who commands the task force that is fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But he asserted that \"the munition that we used should not have collapsed an entire building. \" \"That is something we have got to figure out,\" he added. With an increase in reports of civilian casualties from the American bombing of Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, some human rights groups have questioned whether the rules of engagement have been loosened since President Trump took office. Pentagon officials said this week that the rules had not changed. But General Townsend said on Tuesday that he had won approval for \"minor adjustments\" to rules for the use of combat power, although he insisted they were not a factor in the Mosul attack. General Townsend acknowledged, however, that steps had been taken to speed up the process of providing air power to support Iraqi troops and their American Special Operations advisers at the leading edge of the offensive to recapture Mosul from the Islamic State. The goal, he said, was to \"decentralize\" . General Townsend did not describe the changes in detail, but he cast them as a return to the military's standard offensive doctrine, in contrast to the \"very centralized\" approach he said was initially put in place after President Barack Obama sent American forces back to Iraq to combat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Maj. Gen. Maan an Iraqi special forces commander, has said that his men called in a coalition airstrike to take out snipers on the roofs of three houses in a Mosul neighborhood called Mosul Jidideh. The Iraqi forces, General Saadi said, were unaware that at least some of the houses were filled with civilians. General Townsend said he did not have information on the Iraqi commander's specific role, but explained that the United States had been training Iraqi military officers how to call in airstrikes that are carried out by Iraqi aircraft. Any American airstrike requested by the Iraqis, General Townsend said, would need to be approved by American officers. \"If he said his guy was calling for fire, he could have been,\" he said. \"Now how that works is that they don't call directly to a U. S. fighter overhead and suddenly a U. S. fighter is rolling in on their grid coordinates. \" Iraqi forces have been eager for the help of American air power as they take on the toughest phase of the more than battle to retake Mosul. American officials have said that 500 Iraqi troops were killed and about 3, 000 wounded in taking the eastern half of the city. General Townsend said the battle for the western half of the city was even more difficult because of what he called its \"claustrophobically close terrain\" of narrow streets and buildings. He repeated several times that the fighting was the most intense urban combat since World War II. Adding to the challenge is a factor he did not mention: the decision by Iraq's governments to urge Mosul's residents to shelter in place instead of trying to flee. When American troops retook Falluja in 2004, the fierce urban fighting took place in a city that had already been abandoned by most civilians. Though the Iraqis are doing the main fighting on the ground in Mosul, American and coalition forces have been playing an essential role. United States Army Paladin howitzers have been firing rounds into Mosul from their positions outside the city. Task Force Thor, which is based at Qayyarah West Airfield 40 miles south of Mosul, has been firing Himars rockets into the city. American Apache attack helicopters have added to the firepower. This year, the United States increased the number of soldiers who have been advising Iraqi troops as they have pushed into the city. While the mission of the advisers is not to directly engage in combat, many are in harm's way as they advise Iraqi units carrying out the fight. On Monday, American military officials said that two infantry companies from the 82nd Airborne Division were being sent to help protect those United States advisers and that a \"route clearance\" platoon was also being deployed to clear away roadside bombs. Together, the deployment adds about 240 troops to the mission. The troop cap that the Obama administration established for the operation in Iraq \u2014 what the Pentagon calls the \"force manning level\" \u2014 is 5, 260. But that formal limit, which the Trump administration is likely to eliminate, does not count temporary deployments. The actual number of troops in Iraq is certainly higher. With more American forces in Iraq, and more United States advisers near the front lines, the need for timely airstrikes is much greater. Brig. Gen. Matthew C. Isler, an Air Force officer who serves as deputy to General Townsend, is in charge of the investigation into the Mosul airstrike. A team of American experts has visited the site to collect evidence to determine what caused the significant loss of civilian life. American officials said they were investigating a number of possibilities, including whether the militants herded the civilians into the building to use as human shields whether the building was rigged with explosives or whether a nearby car bomb exploded. \"My initial impression is the enemy had a hand in this, and there's also a fair chance that our strike had some role in it,\" General Townsend said in a briefing broadcast to the Pentagon from Iraq. \"I think it's probably going to play out to be some sort of combination. But you know what, I can't really say for sure, and we've just got to let the investigation play out. \" General Townsend said the results of the investigation would be reported publicly, \"unlike our enemy. \" While General Townsend acknowledged an American role in the Mosul strike, he said the allegations that the United States had bombed a school full of refugees in Syria were not credible. That airstrike, which has garnered considerable attention, occurred during an operation in which Syrian fighters were trying to seal off the western approaches to Raqqa, the Islamic State's capital. But General Townsend said that the evidence he had seen indicated that it was about 30 Islamic State fighters who were killed in that attack. \"I think that was a clean strike,\" he said. He also dismissed reports, publicized by the Islamic State, that an American airstrike had endangered the Tabqa Dam west of Raqqa, saying that the structure was not in imminent danger. \"If something happens to the Tabqa Dam, it will be at the hands of ISIS, not the coalition,\" he said. Still, the reports of desperate civilians in Mosul prompted Zeid Ra'ad the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, to urge on Tuesday that the coalition reconsider its tactics. The United Nations has said that at least 61 people were killed in the March 17 strike in Mosul. Amnesty International said as many as 150 might have died. \"The fact that Iraqi authorities repeatedly advised civilians to remain at home, instead of fleeing the area, indicates that coalition forces should have known that these strikes were likely to result in a significant number of civilian casualties,\" Donatella Rovera of Amnesty International said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says Every Sunday, our editorial team curates another documentary film for 21WIRE readers.This week: Although this is a mainstream and at times, a somewhat sensational depiction of CIA history, the film contains some extremely interesting information and insights regarding the US Central Intelligence Agency s covert program targeting members of the general public which employed the use of Class A and hallucinogenic narcotics in order to develop an array applied behavior science applications to be used in the manipulation of people and the extraction of information under duress. The film also introduces the prospect of RFK assassin, Sirhan Sirhan as a Manchurian candidate. These classified drug-based programs were developed during the height of the Cold War, and who knows how many other similar programs there were, and which one are still running today. Watch: SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERE","label":1}
{"text":"The number of migrants illegally coming across the U. S. southern border in March dropped to the lowest level in 17 years, says a leaked agency statement given to the Associated Press. [The statement is included in testimony slated for delivery on Wednesday, April 5, by Gen. John Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Typically, routine testimony is provided early to the legislators so they can prepare questions for the witness, but it is rarely leaked. According to the Associated Press: Another report on Tuesday said the data showed a 67 percent drop in migrants seeking to cross the border. David V. Aguilar, former U. S. Border Patrol and acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that March 2017 figures he reviewed indicate illegal border crossings are down 67 percent [compared to March 2016] \u2026 . \"It's actually up to 67 percent drop compared to last year,\" Aguilar told the Senate committee. During his tenure, former President Barack Obama reduced border barriers and allowed at least 300, 000 migrants from Central America to cross the border and get temporary residency, plus work permits and access to Americans' schools. That wave of migrants helped solidify public opposition to immigration, aided Donald Trump's presidential campaign and helped cause many extra crimes in the United States. However, the flow of new illegal immigrants is only a small part of the nation's oversupply. Currently, at least 11 million illegal immigrants are living in the United States, of which at least 8 million hold jobs. Many of the recent illegal immigrants arrive legally as tourists or workers but fail to leave when their visas expire. In 2015, for example, almost 500, 000 people overstayed their visas and remained for some time as illegal immigrants. Also, the federal government annually invites 1 million people to legally immigrate to the United States, and provides work permits to a shifting population of up to 1. 45 million plus at least 200, 000 . The immigrants and contract workers compete for jobs sought by the 4 million young Americans who join the workforce each year. Overall, the huge inflow of migrants, both legal and illegal, help lower Americans' salaries and wages by roughly $500 billion per year. In turn, that money is scooped up by employers and Wall Street investors as higher profits. President Trump has promised to toughen border security by building a barrier along most of the border, and he has already directed border officers to end Obama's \"catch and release\" policy. He has also rejuvenated repatriation policies and has promised to curb business' use of temporary contract workers in place of Americans.","label":0}
{"text":"The powerful U.S. gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, said on Sunday it would oppose an outright ban on bump-stock devices that the killer in the Las Vegas massacre of 58 people used to turn rifles into automatic weapons and strafe a crowd with bursts of sustained gunfire. The NRA, which has seldom embraced new firearms-control measures, stunned gun control advocates last week when it issued a statement voicing willingness to support a restriction on bump stocks. On Sunday, the organization said it was open to regulation but opposed any legislation banning the devices. \"We don't believe that bans have ever worked on anything. What we have said has been very clear - that if something transfers a semiautomatic to function like a fully automatic, then it ought to be regulated differently,\" Chris Cox, the NRA's chief lobbyist, said on \"Fox News Sunday.\" Police said the gunman, Stephen Paddock, 64, fitted 12 of his weapons with bump-stock devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to operate as if they were fully automatic machine guns, which are otherwise outlawed in the United States. Cox and Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's chief executive, accused the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives under Democratic former President Barack Obama of paving the way for the use of bump stocks and creating legal confusion about their usage. Republican President Donald Trump, whose party controls both chambers of the U.S. Congress, was an outspoken advocate of gun rights during his 2016 campaign for the White House. The NRA spent more than $30 million in support of his candidacy. Several Republican lawmakers suggested last week that they were receptive to legislation to curb the use of bump stocks, including Kevin McCarthy, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, who said such controls were an area where Congress may be able to act. But House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, a Republican who himself was nearly killed by a gunman earlier this year while at a baseball practice, was cautious on Sunday about potential new legislation. \"I do think it's a little bit early for people to say they know what to do to fix this problem,\" he said on NBC's \"Meet the Press.\" \"A week ago most people didn't know what a bump stock was so to think that we're now all experts and know how to write some panacea law, it's fallacy,\" Scalise added. LaPierre lashed out at U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who has pushed for gun-control legislation on Capitol Hill. \"I think you want to tell ATF to do its job. It's an interpretive issue and they need to get the job done. But not let Dianne Feinstein, which is what she wants to do - turn this all of this into some Christmas tree on the Hill where she brings all of her anti-gun circus she has been trying to do for years into this,\" LaPierre said on CBS's \"Face the Nation.\" Feinstein said she has garnered some Republican interest, but no support, for the measure. \"I have nobody lined up,\" she told the CBS program. Some gun-control advocates praised the NRA for showing some flexibility. \"This is the first time that the gun lobby has shown willingness to come to the table and I think that's in part because Americans just simply do not accept mass shooting after mass shooting happening and Congress doing absolutely nothing,\" Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on CNN's \"State of the Union.\" But Sunday's comments from the NRA representatives suggested nothing may have changed as they castigated calls for gun-control measures in the emotional aftermath of a mass shooting. \"There used to be a common decency in this country where people paused talking about policy. Unfortunately with Dianne Feinstein and Michael Bloomberg, they want to exploit a tragedy from Day One. It's shameful, but apparently that's the new normal.\" Cox said on the \"Fox News Sunday\" program. Bloomberg, a billionaire and former mayor of New York, has been an outspoken critic of the National Rifle Association through the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Investigators remain largely in the dark about what drove Paddock, a retired real estate investor and high-stakes gambler, on Oct. 1 to carry out the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.","label":0}
{"text":"A tiger was shot dead in western Paris on Friday after escaping from a circus, police said. The tiger was shot by circus staff, police said. A tram line had been closed while the animal was at large. No further details were immediately available.","label":0}
{"text":"In another show of just how disturbing the Republican Party s base has become, an astonishing number of primary voters marching out of the polls in South Carolina proudly said they supported Trump s idea to ban Muslims from entering the United States.According to a CBS News exit poll conducted during the South Carolina primary, a staggering 75 percent of voters said they supported Trump s proposal to ban Muslims. This is in line, but actually slightly up, from an earlier South Carolina poll that found Trump supporters overwhelming favored legalizing discrimination against Muslims.There s also 62\/23 support among Trump voters for creating a national database of Muslims and 40\/36 support for shutting down all the mosques in the United States, something no one else s voters back. Only 44% of Trump voters think the practice of Islam should even be legal at all in the United States, to 33% who think it should be illegal. To put all the views toward Muslims in context though, 32% of Trump voters continue to believe the policy of Japanese internment during World War II was a good one In the days after the San Bernardino terror attack, Trump demanded that America ban Muslims even American citizens currently abroad from entering the country. He ordered a total and complete shutdown on Muslims indefinitely. Or as he put it: Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. Certain political observers believed that Trump s proposal to ban Muslims even American citizens abroad from entering or re-entering the United States was so far beyond the pale that he would suffer in the polls because of it. Jeb Bush even risked his own campaign to call Trump out on it.Donald Trump is unhinged. His \"policy\" proposals are not serious. Jeb Bush (@JebBush) December 7, 2015Unfortunately for common decency (and Jeb Bush), Trump s supporters loved the idea. His polls actually went up. Republicans have since only embraced Trump s bigoted ideas at ever scarier levels of enthusiasm.Given the hatred coming out of the election booths, it s no surprise to learn that Donald Trump is projected to win South Carolina by a massive margin. If moderate Republicans are wondering how the GOP went so wrong, they might want to look at what the voters are actually saying: Trump represents discrimination, bigotry, and hatred. And they absolutely adore him.","label":1}
{"text":"Venezuela: Will the army save the nation from chaos? 27.10.2016 Vladimir Padrino The Venezuelan Parliament stopping the procedure of the referendum about the resignation of President Nicolas Maduro and urged the people for \"rebellion.\" The Brazilian precedent has thus become a practice, which can be referred to as a \"legitimate illegal coup\". Why is so hard for Washington to topple Venezuelan President Maduro? Legitimate illegal coup Print version Font Size Not that long ago, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was removed from power in compliance with all constitutional procedures. Dilma was a leftist progressive president, who was accused of using loans of private banks to consolidate the budget, which played a crucial role in the formation of her positive image in the presidential race. This practice is frequently used in Brazil, but the opposition could not forgive Rousseff for winning the presidential campaign by a very small margin.The economic situation in Venezuela is even harder than that in Brazil. The country suffers from low profitability of the budget due to the fall in oil prices and wild inflation of 400 percent for the current year. The authorities of the country had to introduce cards to distribute foodstuffs. The current situation in Venezuela looks very much like the one that Russia experienced in 1992: empty stores, hospitals where you have to pay for everything and depression. In the parliamentary elections last year, Socialists suffered a defeat, and the opposition bloc won the absolute majority of 74 to 26 votes.The government of Hugo Chavez should have created reserve funds not to let all this happen. In addition, Chavez used to give oil, the nation's treasure, away to assist \"fraternal peoples.\" The previous administration of Venezuela made a mistake when it decided to develop economic ties with China. Today, China decreases both investment and oil procurement. As a result, the parliament's initiative to convene a referendum about Maduro's resignation has collected a lot more signatures than was necessary. A survey conducted by Venebar\u00f3metro shows that 88 percent of Venezuelans want to vote, and 10.8 million of them want Maduro to step down, whereas 1.4 million are against such a move. However, the courts of five provinces of Venezuela canceled the results of the first phase of the referendum signature collection, making the second phase of the process, which was scheduled for 26-28 October, impossible. It was important for the opposition to hold the referendum in 2016. If the referendum is held after January 10, 2017, and even the majority of Venezuelans vote to remove Maduro from power, the powers of the head of state for the remaining two years will be handed over to the sitting vice-president. If the referendum is held earlier, new elections would have taken place - this was the prime goal of the Venezuelan opposition. Maduro wins in the legal field of Venezuela, but not the opposition. One can talk a lot about the corruption of Brazilian senators, who voted for the impeachment of Dilma, and the corruption of Venezuelan judges, who did not approve the collected signatures, but it is very difficult and nearly impossible to prove it. Therefore, the dispute between the executive and the legislative powers of Venezuela may take an illegitimate turn to repeat the events that took place in Russia in 1993 or in Ukraine in 2014. In both of these scenarios, the army will play the decisive role. MP Freddy Guevara has already urged the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (BNVS) not to obey the dictatorship and not to shoot at their own people.\" However, the army is loyal to Maduro. Vladimir Padrino is the future President of Venezuela? Venezuela's Defense Minister and the commander of the Strategic Operational Command, Vladimir Padrino L\u00f3pez, remains personally loyal to President Maduro. Padrino has recently been appointed the chief of the Sovereign Supply Mission (misi\u00f3n Abastecimiento Soberano) and the Second Vice-President, which will allow him to perform the duties of the president in the event Maduro is impeached after January 10, 2017. Secondly, Padrino successfully neutralizes certain divisions within the army, to ensure the continuity of \"Chavismo.\" There is a group of those, who do not want to see Maduro in power, but demand the \"return to the roots\" of the Bolivarian revolution. There are also those who consider themselves \"apostates from Chavismo\", whereas the third group is controlled by Chavistas, Member of Parliament, Chairman of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela Diosdado Cabello. His people believe that \"some things need to change, but not through the toppling of Maduro, because Cabello is his political ally.\"Vice-Admiral Rafael Huizi Clavier believes that Padrino holds absolute power in the army. He has his people both in the National Guards (internal troops) and in military districts (Regiones de Defensa Integral (REDI)), which is a crucial aspect. Thus, it is clear that Maduro will be able to retain power in the midst of a crisis with Padrino's help. Lyuba Lulko","label":1}
{"text":"As Americans began signing up for Obamacare health insurance plans on Wednesday, experts expected reduced participation as a bitter political debate clouds the program's future. Republicans in Congress have repeatedly failed to repeal and replace former President Barack Obama's healthcare law, which they have said drives up costs for consumers and interferes with personal medical decisions. Democrats have warned that repeal would leave millions of Americans without health coverage. President Donald Trump promised to kill Obama's Affordable Care Act in his 2016 election campaign, and has taken steps to undermine a law he has declared \"dead\" and \"imploding\". Trump's administration cut Obamacare advertising by 90 percent and shortened the enrollment period by half. \"The market's going to be extremely confusing. There's going to be entire complexity of choice,\" said David Anderson, a health policy researcher at Duke University. Obama took to social media on Wednesday, encouraging Americans who need insurance to sign up on the federal Healthcare.gov website. He stressed that government tax credits would keep coverage affordable for most. Obama asked people to get out the word, \"because this country works best when we look out for one another.\" A new Trump ad, paid for by the Republican National Committee, blamed Democrats for Obamacare's \"skyrocketing\" insurance premiums and for blocking efforts to repeal the law. Obamacare advocates have warned that sign-ups for individual insurance coverage under the law could drop by about one million people in 2018 compared with 2017. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that four million fewer people will sign up for Obamacare private insurance than previously forecast due to Trump policies. Still, CBO expects total enrollment to reach 11 million in 2018, up from the around 10 million who obtained and paid for coverage in 2017. Administration officials could not immediately say when 2018 enrollment data would be made public. The Trump administration has cut the 2018 enrollment period in half to six weeks from Nov. 1 to Dec. 15 for states using the federal Healthcare.gov website. Enrollment previously ran until Jan. 31, and many consumers tended to sign up in the last two weeks, according to state officials and organizations that help people choose insurance. The administration has also cut off billions of dollars in subsidies that insurers use to discount out-of-pocket medical costs for low-income Americans and cut funding to groups that help people enroll in health insurance. Several insurers have exited Obamacare markets due to concerns over subsidies and other Trump actions. Those that remained raised monthly premium prices to account for the lost government subsidies. Senate Republicans and Democrats are working on legislation to stabilize Obamacare markets in the short term, including restoring the subsidies. But Trump has sought more far-reaching changes, and urged Republicans to take up full-scale repeal again in the coming months. The Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that premiums for the most popular Obamacare plans would rise 37 percent in 2018. Americans eligible for Obamacare tax credits to buy insurance may pay less for coverage, but middle-class consumers who do not get subsidies will face much higher prices for these plans. \"It's been such a flood of information. A lot of the population thinks the Affordable Care Act has already been put under,\" said Daniel Polsky, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and executive director of the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. \"The strange premium increases are going to be very confusing for consumers.\" The Trump administration is now planning changes for 2019. Last week, it proposed a rule giving states more flexibility over the benefits that must be covered by insurance. Under Obamacare, all insurers have to cover a set of 10 benefits, such as maternity and newborn care and prescription drugs.","label":0}
{"text":"Finland s defense ministry said on Tuesday it suspected a Russian aircraft had violated Finnish airspace over the Baltic Sea earlier in the day. The ministry said a Tupolev TU-154, a Russian passenger and transport plane, had been detected south of Porvoo and that the border guard was investigating the matter. A ministry spokesman declined to say whether Finland had scrambled jets to identify the plane. The Russian defense ministry was not immediately available to comment. Finland, which is preparing to celebrate 100 years of independence on Wednesday, has accused Moscow of several airspace violations since the Ukraine crisis began in 2014. Last year, Estonia and Finland blamed Russia for entering their airspace as Finland was signing a defense pact with the United States. In a separate incident, two Russian warplanes flew simulated attack passes near a U.S. guided missile destroyer in the Baltic Sea. Finland was part of the Russian Empire and won independence during the 1917 Russian revolution, then nearly lost it fighting the Soviet Union in World War Two. It is now an EU member state which does not belong to NATO military alliance.","label":0}
{"text":"A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday ordered that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton may have to testify in a lawsuit related to the private email server she used while secretary of state. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said the parties in the case, the State Department and conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, also struck an agreement about the scope of the testimonies that some of Clinton's former top aides will give in the case. Those testimonies, known as discovery, will take place over the next eight weeks and may yield information that would require Clinton herself to be deposed, Sullivan said in an order. Clinton has come under fire for using a private email account and server at her home in New York state for official emails when she was America's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013. Critics, including likely Republican presidential election rival Donald Trump, say she endangered government secrets and evaded transparency laws but the former first lady denies any wrongdoing. Judicial Watch brought a lawsuit against the State Department to gain access to records related to a Clinton aide's employment. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is also probing her email arrangement. \"This is a very great victory for transparency and, despite the best efforts of the Obama administration and the Clinton camp, it looks like we might finally get some answers under oath about the Clintons' illicit email system,\" said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. Sullivan gave Judicial Watch permission to take testimony from close Clinton aide Huma Abedin and others. They may be asked about the creation and operation of the private server but nothing unrelated to \"whether State conducted an adequate search\" in response to Judicial Watch's request for the emails, according to the court order. It is not typical for a judge to grant discovery to a plaintiff in a Freedom of Information Act case, but Sullivan said in the order that the question remained whether the State Department provided all relevant documents to Judicial Watch.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump is quickly closing in on his first 100 days in office, and despite his many, many promises of accomplishments during this presidential milestone, he s accomplished zilch other than a handful of executive orders that would help make America and the world a living stinkhole. So what does Trump, whose ever and only a showman do? He holds photo ops, where he holds up oversized documents to show off his cartoonish signature.His latest executive order was the type of empty photo op you d expect from a game show host, not from a president, because it literally did nothing. It was supposed to empower education secretary, Betsy DeVos to screw with Washington, D.C. public schools in much the same way as Trump is allowing oil companies to screw with our environment. Why just D.C.? Because they are the only school district within the purview of the federal government and not the states. So, every time Republicans want to bully people of color, they go after Washington, D.C. Fortunately for the school children, though, this executive order was about as toothless as the average Fox News viewer, as Senior Department of Education official Rob Goad admitted:Q You said at the top that this executive order would empower the Secretary to modify or get rid of any regulations that don t comply with law. How will that process work?MR. GOAD: So I think at the end of 300 days, and after we have produced a report, we will make those decisions once the report has concluded.Q So is she empowered to modify the regulations as needed, or is that going to be a separate process entirely?MR. GOAD: The executive order gives her empowers her to modify anything that is inconsistent with federal law.Q Isn t she already empowered to do those things? This executive order doesn t give her those powers, right?MR. GOAD: That s right.Source: ShareBlueThat, apparently, was too much transparency for the administration. Goad was prompted to shut down the press conference right after that question.","label":1}
{"text":"Trump s biggest (and most insane) surrogate Rudy Giuliani just got some bad news his daughter, Caroline, is backing Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for President over Donald Trump, her father s new BFF.After posting on her Facebook that she has been pro Hillary all along, and making her profile picture Clinton s iconic H, Giuliani confirmed that the account was indeed hers and that her father, Rudy, does know:I love Hillary, I think she s by far the most qualified candidate that we ve had in a long while. My dad knows. I was for Barack in 2012. He knows and is fully comfortable with it and thinks I have a right to my opinion.She did not comment on her father s surrogacy or support for Trump. On her Facebook, after sharing an article titled, I Wrote That I Despised Hillary Clinton. Today, I Publicly Want To Take That Back, Giuliani wrote:I ve been pro-Hillary all along, but the people who are willing to open their minds & shift their perspectives are the ones with the power to save our country at this point, so I really respect this [the article]. #imwithher #voteAccording to Politico:The younger Giuliani is not the only one who has drifted from her father this election the New York Times reported that many of the former mayor s most loyal former aides have rejected Trump s candidacy, and have expressed concerns about Giuliani s embrace of the Manhattan mogul and his more extreme views, specifically on immigration. Some of his former staffers, like his onetime press secretary Matt Higgins, have endorsed Clinton.It seems like Rudy is really off his rocker when everyone around him, including his own family, are voting for the other candidate.One has to wonder what Trump promised or paid Giuliani for his ardent (and downright insane) support.","label":1}
{"text":"Republican Donald Trump's choice of Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate on Friday helped bolster support among some conservatives skeptical about his policies, a crucial step as he prepares to accept the party's nomination next week. Some conservatives who had fought against Trump's ascendancy in the Republican nominating race welcomed his announcement that he had picked Pence, a well-known social and evangelical conservative. The Club for Growth, a conservative economic group, had sharply criticized Trump's support for protectionist trade policies. On Friday, the group noted that as a member of the House of Representatives, Pence had been a strong voice for \"free markets and economic liberty\" at a time when the Republican leadership had been weak on these issues. \"Today's news gives a similar hope that Mike Pence will be effective in pulling the Republican ticket toward economic conservatism and limited government,\" the group said. Other conservatives were also heartened by Trump's VP pick, which the businessman announced in a tweet ahead of a joint appearance in his hometown of New York on Saturday. \"Pence is a principled conservative, man of faith, and talented messenger for Republican ideas,\" said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. \"His addition to the ticket will bring even more excitement to the voters who are eager to put a Republican in the White House and deny a third term for President Obama's liberal agenda.\" Trump, 70, chose Pence, 57, over two politicians he considers friends and close advisers, former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, 73, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, 53. Pence is viewed as a safe choice for Trump. The Indiana governor's low-key demeanor is a contrast to that of the bombastic real estate developer. And he could take the fight to the Democrats in the months leading up to the Nov. 8 election without upstaging Trump. He and Trump will have to smooth over some policy differences. Pence has said he does not support trade protectionism or a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, two policies that are central to Trump's campaign message. In his first public remarks after Trump announced his running mate, Pence appeared to soften his opposition to a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country after he called it \"offensive and unconstitutional\" in a tweet last December. \"I am very supportive of Donald Trump's call to temporarily suspend immigration from countries where terrorist influence and impact represents a threat to the United States,\" Pence told conservative Fox News commentator Sean Hannity. \"We have no higher priority than the safety and security of the American people,\" Pence said, adding that he suspended a Syrian refugee program in Indiana after a shooting rampage last year in San Bernardino, California. Pence also said he \"absolutely\" backed Trump's promise to build a wall between the United States and Mexico to stem illegal immigration and make Mexico pay for it. Trump said Pence had done a great job in Indiana and that of all the people he had interviewed for the job, \"there's nobody that agrees with me fully on everything.\" Pence's selection was slammed by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign. \"By picking Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump has doubled down on some of his most disturbing beliefs by choosing an incredibly divisive and unpopular running mate known for supporting discriminatory politics and failed economic policies that favor millionaires and corporations over working families,\" said Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta. Trump had faced a midday Friday deadline to announce Pence because the governor had to declare by then whether he would be on the ballot in his home state for re-election. Trump had postponed his announcement, which had been planned for Friday, out of respect for the victims in Nice, France. An attacker in a heavy truck drove into crowds celebrating Bastille Day, killing at least 84 people and injuring scores more in what President Francois Hollande called a terrorist act. Trump is set to be formally nominated as the party's candidate for the presidential election at the convention, which opens in Cleveland on Monday. Traditionally, the vice presidential choice is used to build enthusiasm among party loyalists. The Republican National Committee expects the convention to draw 50,000 people to the Ohio city, whose population is about 390,000. U.S. authorities were preparing for the possibility of violence, whether from demonstrators or planned attacks. The Cleveland conclave and the Democratic Party Convention the following week in Philadelphia have been given the status of special national security event by the federal government for the first time, and security will be heightened, said Republican Party spokesman Sean Spicer. The Department of Homeland Security will send more than 3,000 personnel to each convention, Secretary Jeh Johnson said on Thursday, speaking before the Nice attack. No specific or credible threat to either gathering has been reported, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Clinton campaign in crisis after FBI agents uncover Hillary emails among sexts to underage girls on Anthony Weiner's phone.  The new Hillary Clinton emails uncovered by the FBI were discovered on electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner .  The devices were seized by the FBI as they investigate allegations Weiner sent illicit sexual messages to underage girls.  The New York Times reports that \" The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case \u2014 one federal official said they numbered in the thousands \u2014 potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election. \"  Huma Abedin, Hillary's closest aide, separated from her husband Weiner recently after it was revealed he conducted an online affair with an underage girl \u2013 the latest in a long line of scandals for the former congressman.  The FBI informed Congress that while analyzing Weiner's phone agents had uncovered new Hillary Clinton emails related to the investigation into whether Clinton and her aides mishandled classified information.  The announcement has breathed new life into the Trump campaign \u2013 and proved the Republican nominee was eerily accurate with an old prediction. In a statement on his website immediately after the Abedin-Weiner split, Trump questioned Hillary's judgement in allowing someone like Weiner into her circle of trust:  DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON HILLARY CLINTON'S BAD JUDGMENT \" Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him. I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information. Who knows what he learned and who he told? It's just another example of Hillary Clinton's bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.\" \u2013 Donald J. Trump  And previously, in an Aug. 3 tweet: It came out that Huma Abedin knows all about Hillary's private illegal emails. Huma's PR husband, Anthony Weiner, will tell the world.","label":1}
{"text":"Television just doing their part to contribute to the moral decay of America Sex in a box in front of a studio audience having failed to save American marriages, the TV industry now will attempt to rescue the institution by trying a two-week spouse switch for wedded couples. FYI has greenlighted The Seven Year Switch, an eight-episode series in which married couples bravely put their marriage on the line by shacking up with a new partner for a couple weeks. Production is underway for the series to premiere this summer.It s named after The Seven Year Itch, the 1955 Broadway play-turned-Billy Wilder movie starring Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell. Hopefully that will be lost on most viewers of this series because if they saw it, they re too old to be FYI s target audience or any network s for that matter.In today s announcement, FYI instead focused on the fact that someone at some point decided seven years marks the point in many marriages at which couples become restless and dissatisfied and might wonder why they d signed up with this guy instead of the doctor their mothers wanted them to marry. In the series, four couples at a crossroads in their relationship FYI did not say if they ve all been married seven years get the chance to shack up with a stranger for two weeks in an experimental marriage. They will eat, live and, yes, sleep with these total strangers, the network said.As with WE tv s recently pulled-due-to-lousy-ratings reality series Sex Box, relationship experts will help guide the Seven Year Switch couples through the process, FYI said. At the end of what the network explains is a monthlong experiment, each of the married couples will reunite and decide whether to divorce or renew their vows.Gena McCarthy, SVP Programming and Development at FYI, described it as an experiment to determine whether absence really does make the heart grow fonder, sidestepping the whole shacking-up-with-a-stranger part.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Friday the nation's debt ceiling will be raised in September and that after talks with congressional leaders from both parties everyone is \"on the same page.\" \"My strong preference is that we have a clean debt ceiling (increase), but the most important issue is the debt ceiling will be raised in September,\" Mnuchin told reporters at the White House, indicating an interest in legislation that did not stray into unrelated territory. \"I have had discussions with the leaders in both parties in the House and Senate and we are all on the same page,\" he added. \"The government intends to pay its debts and the debt ceiling will be raised.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Tapper, the host of the network's \"State of the Union\" Sunday show and \"The Lead\" on weekdays, was picked to lead the event at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library on Sept. 16. The prime-time debate will actually be split into two parts: One with the candidates that national polls rank as the top 10 GOP contenders, and one with the candidates who didn't make that cut. The broad GOP field has presented a challenge for both Fox News and CNN as debate hosts. Fox News announced a plan for an August 6 debate that would only include the 10 candidates that were at the top of the heap, as determined by an average of national polls. Fox's proposed criteria created the most consternation, partly because it is hosting the first debate, partly because it is a favorite of conservatives, and partly because its rules are more restrictive than CNN's. Some Republican Party leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire have said they feel the use of national polls stomps on their roles as the first in the nation caucus and primary states, respectively. Tapper announced that he'll moderate the debate on Sunday, at the end of his first show as CNN's new \"State of the Union\" host.","label":0}
{"text":"While immature, snowflake college students freak out over the pronouns their fellow students and teachers use to address them, people in so many countries around the world are facing real human rights violations that most of us can t even imagine.The floor looks clean in this high-rise apartment, seven stories above Kuwait City traffic. Not a smudge in sight on the picture window. On the other side of the glass, the maid is hanging on by one knuckle, screaming. Oh crazy, come here, a woman says casually in Arabic, holding a camera up to the maid. Hold on to me! Hold on to me! the maid yells.Instead, the woman steps back. The maid s grip finally slips, and she lands in a cloud of dust, many stories below.The maid an Ethiopian who had been working in the country for several years, according to the Kuwait Times survived the fall. The videographer, her employer, was arrested last week on a charge of failing to help the worker.It s still unclear what led to the fall. But it was not the first time a domestic servant had fallen off of a building in Kuwait, an oil-rich country where foreign workers are cheap, plentiful and live largely at the mercy of their employers. Washington Post","label":1}
{"text":"The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which implements foreign arms sales, on Wednesday announced sales of $41.93 billion for fiscal 2017, a 25 percent rise from a year earlier. The agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense, said sales included $32.02 billion funded by partner nations through the Foreign Military Sales system and $6.04 billion funded by the State Department's Foreign Military Financing. (bit.ly\/2AfrSd7)","label":0}
{"text":"Indonesia has issued new regulations aimed at curbing money laundering and terror-related financing across a broader range of financial service providers, including money changers, credit card issuers and electronic money providers. The move is part of efforts by Indonesia to bring rules up to international standards and join the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an inter-governmental body fighting money laundering. Indonesia was taken off an FATF blacklist two years ago. The new regulations, issued by Bank Indonesia (BI), cover transactions handled by non-bank financial institutions and were made public on its website on Wednesday. BI said the new rules balanced a need to contain the risks of money laundering and terrorism-related financial crimes and promoting economic growth. Eny V. Panggabean, BI s executive director of payment system regulation, said the rules also addressed developments in the industry, digital economy and innovations in payments that include a more complex money changer business . The new BI regulations cover credit card issuers, electronic money providers, remittance and money transfer companies as well as fintech startups. Service providers now have to have an up-to-date list on alleged militants, radical organizations and individuals linked to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in order to cross check with customers. They must also assess customer risks depending on the country origin of an incoming transfer or the destination of outgoing transfers, and must not engage with so-called shell banks, which don t have a physical presence in a country where they are incorporated. Companies should report anything suspicious to the financial transactions watchdog. A financial service provider that fails to follow the rules could have its license revoked and directors, commissioners or shareholders banned from the financial services business for five years. A similar regulation was introduced a few months ago by the Financial Services Authority (OJK) for financial conglomerates, banks, insurance companies and other bigger players in the industry. The OJK rules also elaborated on procedures to handle suspicious transactions. Indonesia was put on an FATF list of jurisdictions with weak measures to combat money laundering and terrorism financing in 2012. In 2015, the FATF declared Indonesia off the blacklist due to progress in improving regulations.","label":0}
{"text":"Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, seeking to up the pressure in a stand-off with Iraq s Kurdish region, said on Tuesday he would act soon over border areas under Kurdish control but predicted his government s forces would regain them without violence. The central government in Baghdad has cracked down hard on the Kurds since the government of the Kurdish autonomous region staged an independence referendum on Sept. 25 that Baghdad considers illegal. The Iraqi armed forces have threatened to resume military operations against the Kurds, accusing them of delaying the handover of control of borders and taking advantage of negotiations to bolster their defenses. We will regain control on border areas without escalation. But our patience will run out. We will not wait forever. We will take action, Abadi said at a news conference. The independence vote defied the central government in Baghdad which had ruled the ballot illegal as well as neighboring Turkey and Iran which have their own Kurdish minorities. Abadi spoke a few hours after the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced a concession to Iraq s central government by saying it would accept a court decision prohibiting the region from seceding. The announcement marks the Kurds latest attempt to revive negotiations with Baghdad over their region s future after the central government imposed measures in retaliation against the independence vote. Among the steps was an offensive by Iraqi government forces and the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces that took back the oil city of Kirkuk and other disputed territories from the control from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) last month. The KRG said on Tuesday it would respect the Nov. 6 ruling by the Supreme Federal Court, which declared that no Iraqi province could secede. We believe that this decision must become a basis for starting an inclusive national dialogue between (Kurdish authorities in) Erbil and Baghdad to resolve all disputes, the KRG said in a statement. Abadi had previously urged the northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region to abide by the court s decision. The court is responsible for settling disputes between Iraq s central government and the country s regions and provinces. Its decisions cannot be appealed, though it has no mechanism to enforce its ruling in the Kurdish region.","label":0}
{"text":"JIDDA, Saudi Arabia \u2014 For most of his adult life, Ahmed Qassim worked among the bearded enforcers of Saudi Arabia. He was a dedicated employee of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice \u2014 known abroad as the religious police \u2014 serving with the troops protecting the Islamic kingdom from Westernization, secularism and anything but the most conservative Islamic practices. Some of that resembled ordinary police work: busting drug dealers and bootleggers in a country that bans alcohol. But the men of \"the Commission,\" as Saudis call it, spent most of their time maintaining the puritanical public norms that set Saudi Arabia apart not only from the West, but from most of the Muslim world. A key offense was ikhtilat, or unauthorized mixing between men and women. The kingdom's clerics warn that it could lead to fornication, adultery, broken homes, children born of unmarried couples and societal collapse. For years, Mr. Ghamdi stuck with the program and was eventually put in charge of the Commission for the region of Mecca, Islam's holiest city. Then he had a reckoning and began to question the rules. So he turned to the Quran and the stories of the Prophet Muhammad and his companions, considered the exemplars of Islamic conduct. What he found was striking and life altering: There had been plenty of mixing among the first generation of Muslims, and no one had seemed to mind. So he spoke out. In articles and television appearances, he argued that much of what Saudis practiced as religion was in fact Arabian cultural practices that had been mixed up with their faith. There was no need to close shops for prayer, he said, nor to bar women from driving, as Saudi Arabia does. At the time of the Prophet, women rode around on camels, which he said was far more provocative than veiled women piloting S. U. V. s. He even said that while women should conceal their bodies, they needed to cover their faces only if they chose to do so. And to demonstrate the depth of his own conviction, Mr. Ghamdi went on television with his wife, Jawahir, who smiled to the camera, her face bare and adorned with a dusting of makeup. It was like a bomb inside the kingdom's religious establishment, threatening the social order that granted prominence to the sheikhs and made them the arbiters of right and wrong in all aspects of life. He threatened their control. Mr. Ghamdi's colleagues at work refused to speak to him. Angry calls poured into his cellphone and anonymous death threats hit him on Twitter. Prominent sheikhs took to the airwaves to denounce him as an ignorant upstart who should be punished, tried \u2014 and even tortured. I had come to Saudi Arabia to explore Wahhabism, the Saudi strain of Sunni Islam that is often blamed for fueling intolerance around the world \u2014 and nurturing terrorism. I spent weeks in Riyadh, Jidda and other cities speaking with sheikhs, imams, religious professors and many others as I tried to peel back the layers of a closed and private society. For the Western visitor, Saudi Arabia is a baffling mix of modern urbanism, desert culture and the effort to adhere to a rigid interpretation of scriptures that are more than 1, 000 years old. It is a kingdom flooded with oil wealth, skyscrapers, S. U. V.s and shopping malls, where questions about how to invest money, interact with or even treat cats are answered with quotes from the Quran or stories about the Prophet Muhammad. Religion is woven into daily life. Banks employ clerics to ensure they follow Shariah law. Mannequins lack heads because of religious sensitivities to showing the human form. And schoolbooks detail how boys should cut their hair, how girls should cover their bodies and how often a person should trim his or her pubic hair. While Islam is meant to be a complete program for human life, interpretation is key when it comes to practices. The Saudi interpretation is steeped in the conservatism of central Arabia, especially regarding relations between women and men. In public, most women wear baggy black gowns called abayas, designed to hide their forms, as well as veils that cover their hair and faces, with only thin slits for their eyes. Restaurants have separate sections for \"families,\" meaning groups that include women, and for \"singles,\" which means men. Many Saudis mix in private, and men and women can usually meet in hotel lobbies with little problem. Others do not want to mix and see gender segregation as part of their cultural identity. In some conservative circles, men go their whole lives without seeing the faces of women other than their immediate family \u2014 even their brothers' wives. Inside the kingdom, all other religions are suppressed. Not only are there no public churches, there is no Church's Chicken. (It is called Texas Chicken in the kingdom.) When asked about this, Saudis deny that this reflects intolerance. They compare their country to the Vatican, saying it is a unique place for Muslims, with its own rules. Officials I spoke with were upset by the kingdom's increasingly troubled reputation abroad and said over and over that they supported \"moderate Islam. \" But what exactly did they mean by \"moderate Islam\"? Unpacking that term made it clear how wide the values gap is between Saudi Arabia and its American ally. The kingdom's \"moderate Islam\" publicly beheads criminals, punishes apostates and prevents women from traveling abroad without the permission of a male \"guardian. \" Don't even ask about gay rights. Instead of calls for jihad, what I heard were religious leaders insisting that the faithful obey the state. The Saudi royal family is terrified that the jihadist fervor inflaming the region will catch fire at home and threaten its control. So it has marshaled the state's religious apparatus to condemn the jihadists and proclaim the religious duty of obedience to the rulers. And while it was once common, I heard little disparaging talk about Christians and Jews, although it was open season on Shiites, whose faith is frequently bashed as part of the rivalry with Iran. The only Saudis who suggested I was an infidel were children. Once, a Saudi journalist proudly introduced me to his daughter, whom he had put in private school so she could study English. \"What is your name?\" I asked. \"My name is Dana,\" she said. \"How old are you?\" \"I am 9. \" \"When is your birthday?\" Confused, she switched to Arabic. \"We don't have that in Saudi Arabia,\" she said. \"That's an infidel holiday. \" Shocked, her father asked where she had learned that, and she fetched one of her textbooks, flipping to a lesson that listed \"forbidden holidays\": Christmas and Thanksgiving. Birthdays had been part of the same lesson. Another time, I met a religious friend for coffee, and he brought his two young sons. When the call to prayer sounded, my friend went to pray. His sons, confused that I did not follow, looked at me and asked, \"Are you an infidel?\" The first thing many Saudis will tell you about Wahhabism is that it does not exist. \"There is no such thing as Wahhabism,\" Hisham told me the first time we met. \"There is only true Islam. \" The irony is that fewer people have a purer Wahhabi pedigree than Mr. Sheikh, a direct descendant of the cleric who started it all. In the early 18th century, Sheikh Mohammed ibn called for a religious reformation in central Arabia. Feeling that Islam had been corrupted by practices like the veneration of saints and tombs, he called for the stripping away of \"innovations\" and the return to what he considered the pure religion. He formed an alliance with a chieftain named Mohammed ibn Saud that has underpinned the area's history ever since. Then the Saud family assumed political leadership while Sheikh and his descendants gave legitimacy to their rule and managed religious affairs. That mix proved potent among the warring Arabian tribes, as Wahhabi clerics provided justification for military conquest in some cases: Those who resisted the House of Saud were not just enemies, but infidels who deserved the sword. The first Saudi state was destroyed by the Ottomans in 1818, and attempts to build another failed until the early 20th century, when King Abdulaziz undertook a campaign that put him in control of most of the Arabian Peninsula. But the king faced a choice: to continue expansionary jihad, which would have invited conflict with the British, or to build a modern state. He chose the latter, even crushing a group of his own warriors who refused to stop fighting. Since then, the alliance between the royal family and the clerics has endured, although the tensions between the quest for ideological purity and the exigencies of modern statehood remain throughout Saudi society. Fast forward to 2016, and the main players have transformed because of time and oil wealth. The royal family has grown from a group of scrappy desert dwellers into a sprawling clan awash in palaces and private jets. The Wahhabi establishment has evolved from a puritan reform movement into a bloated state bureaucracy. It consists of universities that churn out graduates trained in religious disciplines a legal system in which judges apply Shariah law a council of top clerics who advise the king a network of offices that dispense fatwas, or religious opinions a force of religious police who monitor public behavior and tens of thousands of mosque imams who can be tapped to deliver the government's message from the pulpit. The call to prayer sounds five times a day from mosques and inside of malls so clearly that many Saudis use it to organize their days. \"Let's meet after the sunset prayer,\" they would tell me, sometimes unsure what time that was. So I installed an app on my phone that let me look up prayer times and buzzed when the call sounded. And so it was, after the sunset prayer, that I met Mr. Sheikh, a proud descendant of Mohammed ibn . He was a portly man of 42 who wore a long white robe and covered his head with a schmag, or checkered cloth. His beard was long and he had no mustache, in imitation of the Prophet Muhammad, and he squinted through reading glasses perched on his nose while peering at his iPhone. We sat on purple couches in the lobby of a Riyadh hotel and shared dates and coffee while he answered my questions about Islam in Saudi Arabia. \"I am an person,\" he told me early on. It was clear that he hoped I would become a Muslim. His life had been defined by the religious establishment, but he proved to be a case study in the complexity of terms like \"modern\" and \"traditional\" in Saudi Arabia. He had memorized the Quran at a young age and studied with prominent clerics before completing his doctorate in Shariah, with his thesis on how technology changed the application of Shariah. Now he had a successful career and a host of religious jobs. He trained judges for the Shariah courts, advised the minister of Islamic affairs, wrote studies for the clerics who advise the king and served on the Shariah board of the Medgulf insurance company. On Fridays, he preached at a mosque near his mother's house and welcomed visitors who came to see his uncle, the grand mufti. He had traveled extensively abroad, and when he found out I was American he told me that he loved the United States. He had visited Oregon, New York, Massachusetts and Los Angeles. On one trip, he visited a synagogue. On another, a black church. He had also visited an Amish community, which he found fascinating. A relative of his lived in Montgomery, Ala. and he had spent happy months there, often visiting the local Islamic center. The hardest part, he said, was Ramadan, because there were few eateries open late that did not have bars. \"All I had was IHOP,\" he said. He said Islam did not forbid doing business or having friendships with Christians or Jews. He opposed Shiite beliefs and practices, but said it was wrong to do as the extremists of the Islamic State and declare takfir, or infidelity, on entire groups. When it came to birthdays, which many Saudi clerics condemn, he said he did not oppose them, although his wife did, so their children did not go to birthday parties. But they had celebrations of their own, he said, showing me a video on his phone of his family gathered around a cake bearing the face of his son Abdullah, 15, who had just memorized the Quran. They lit sparklers and cheered, but did not sing. He was on the fence about music, which many Wahhabis also forbid. He said he had no problem with background music in restaurants, but opposed music that put listeners in a state similar to drunkenness, causing them to jump around and bang their heads. \"We have something better,\" he said. \"You can listen to the Quran. \" Since much of what differentiates Saudi Arabia is the place of women, I wanted to talk to a conservative Saudi woman, which was tricky because most would refuse to meet with any unrelated male \u2014 let alone a correspondent from the United States. So I had a female Saudi colleague, Sheikha contact Mr. Sheikh's wife, Meshael, who said she would meet me. But I asked Mr. Sheikh's permission. \"She is very busy,\" he said, and changed the subject. So Ms. Sheikh met Ms. Dosary at a women's coffee shop in Riyadh, where women can uncover their faces and hair. Her marriage to Mr. Sheikh had been arranged, she said. They met once for less than an hour before they were married, and he had seen her face. \"It was hard for me to look at him or to check him out as I was so shy,\" she said. They were cousins. He was 21 she was 16. He agreed to her condition for marriage that she continue her studies, and she was now working on a doctorate in education while raising their four children. She disputed the Western idea that Saudi women lack rights. \"They believe we are oppressed because we don't drive, but that is incorrect,\" Ms. Sheikh said, adding that driving would be a hassle in Riyadh's snarled traffic. \"Here women are respected and honored in many ways you don't find in the West,\" she continued. She, too, is a descendant of Sheikh and said proudly that her grandfather had founded the kingdom's religious police. \"Praise God that we have the Commission to protect our country,\" she said. The primacy of Islam in Saudi life has led to a huge religious sphere that extends beyond the state's official clerics. Public life is filled with celebrity sheikhs whose moves, comments and conflicts Saudis track just as Americans follow Hollywood actors. There are old sheikhs and young sheikhs, sheikhs who used to be extremists and now preach tolerance, sheikhs whom women find sexy, and a black sheikh who has compared himself to Barack Obama. In the kingdom's society, they compete for followers on Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. The grand mufti, the state's highest religious official, has a regular television show, too. Their embrace of technology runs counter to the history of Wahhabi clerics rejecting nearly everything new as a threat to the religion. Formerly banned items include the telegraph, the radio, the camera, soccer, girls' education and televisions, whose introduction in the 1960s caused outrage. For Saudis, trying to navigate what is permitted, halal, and what is not, haram, can be challenging. So they turn to clerics for fatwas, or nonbinding religious rulings. While some may get a lot of attention \u2014 as when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran called for killing the author Salman Rushdie \u2014 most concern the details of religious practice. Others can reveal the sometimes comical contortions that clerics go through to reconcile modernity with their understanding of religion. There was, for example, the cleric who appeared to call for the death of Mickey Mouse, then tried to backtrack. Another prominent cleric issued a clarification that he had not in fact forbidden buffets. That same sheikh was recently asked about people taking photos with cats. He responded that the feline presence was irrelevant the photos were the problem. \"Photography is not permitted unless necessary,\" he said. \"Not with cats, not with dogs, not with wolves, not with anything. \" The government has sought to control the flow of religious opinions with official fatwa institutions. But fatwas have provoked laughter, too, like the fatwa calling spending money on Pokemon products \"cooperation in sin and transgression. \" While the government seeks to get more women into the work force, the state fatwa organization preaches on the \"danger of women joining men in the workplace,\" which it calls \"the reason behind the destruction of societies. \" And there are fatwas that arm extremists with religious justification. There is one fatwa, still available in English on a government website and signed by the previous grand mufti, that states, \"Whoever refuses to follow the straight path deserves to be killed or enslaved in order to establish justice, maintain security and peace and safeguard lives, honor and property. \" It goes on: \"Slavery in Islam is like a purifying machine or sauna in which those who are captured enter to wash off their dirt and then they come out clean, pure and safe, from another door. \" Once while we were having coffee, Mr. Sheikh answered his cellphone, listened seriously and issued a fatwa on the spot. He got such calls frequently. The query had been about where a pilgrim headed to Mecca had to don the white cloths of ritual purity \u2014 an easy one. The answer, in this case, was Jidda. Others were harder, and he demurred if he was not sure. Once, a woman asked about fake eyelashes. He told her that he did not know, but thought about it later and decided they were fine, on one condition: \"that there is no cheating involved. \" A woman, for example, could put them on before a man came to propose. \"And then after they get married, they're gone!\" he said. \"That is not permitted. \" One Friday, Mr. Sheikh took me to see his uncle, Grand Mufti Abdulaziz . We entered a vast reception hall near the mufti's house in Riyadh, with padded benches along the walls where a dozen bearded students sat. In the center, on a raised armchair, sat the mufti, his feet in brown socks and perched on a pillow. The students read religious texts, and the mufti interjected with commentary. He was 75, Mr. Sheikh said, and had been blind since age 14, when a German doctor carried out a failed operation on his eyes. Mr. Sheikh said I could ask him a question, so I asked how he responded to those who compared Wahhabism to the Islamic State. \"That is all lies and slander. Daesh is an aggressive, tyrannous group that has no relation,\" he said, using another term for the Islamic State. After a pause, he asked, \"Why don't you become a Muslim?\" I responded that I was from a Christian family. \"The religion you follow has no source,\" he said, adding that I should accept the Prophet Muhammad's revelation. \"Your religion is not a religion,\" he said. \"In the end, you will have to face God. \" The first time I met Mr. Ghamdi, 51, formerly of the religious police, was this year in a sitting room in his apartment in Jidda, the port city on the Red Sea. The room had been outfitted to look like a Bedouin tent. Burgundy fabric adorned the walls, gold tassels hung from the ceiling, and carpets covered the floor, to which Mr. Ghamdi pressed his forehead in prayer during breaks in our conversation. He spoke of how the world of sheikhs, fatwas and the meticulous application of religion to everything had defined his life. But that world \u2014 his world \u2014 had frozen him out. Little in his background suggested that he would become a religious reformer. While at a university, he quit a job at the customs office in the Jidda port because a sheikh told him that collecting duties was haram. After graduation, he studied religion in his spare time and handled international accounts for a government office \u2014 a job requiring travel to countries. \"The clerics at that time were releasing fatwas that it was not right to travel to the countries of the infidels unless it was necessary,\" Mr. Ghamdi said. So he quit. Then he taught economics at a technical school in Saudi Arabia, but didn't like that it taught only capitalism and socialism. So he said he had added material on Islamic finance, but the students complained about the extra work, and he left. He finally landed a job that he felt was consistent with his religious convictions, as a member of the Commission in Jidda. Over the next few years, he transferred to Mecca and cycled through different positions. There were occasional prostitution cases, and the force sometimes caught sorcerers \u2014 who can be beheaded if convicted in court. But he developed reservations about how the force worked. His colleagues' religious zeal sometimes led them to overreact, breaking into people's homes or humiliating detainees. \"Let's say someone drank alcohol,\" he said. \"That does not represent an attack on the religion, but they exaggerated in how they treated people. \" At one point, Mr. Ghamdi was assigned to review cases and tried to use his position to report abuses and force agents to return items they had wrongfully confiscated, he said. He recalled the case of an older, single man who was reported to receive two young women in his home on the weekends. Since the man did not pray at the mosque, his neighbors suspected he was up to no good, so the Commission raided the house and caught the man \u2014 visiting with his daughters. \"Often, people were humiliated in inhuman ways, and that humiliation could cause hatred of religion,\" Mr. Ghamdi said. In 2005, the head of the Commission for the Mecca region died, and Mr. Ghamdi was promoted. It was a big job, with some 90 stations throughout a large, diverse area containing Islam's holiest sites. He did his best to keep up, while worrying that the Commission's focus was misguided. In private, he looked to the scriptures and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad for guidance on what was halal and what was haram, and he documented his findings. \"I was surprised because we used to hear from the scholars, 'Haram, haram, haram,' but they never talked about the evidence,\" he said. Realizing the gravity of such a conclusion for someone in his position, he stayed silent and filed the document away. But his conclusions would, soon, emerge. Around the time he was rethinking his worldview, King Abdullah, then the monarch, announced plans to open a university, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or Kaust. What shocked the kingdom's religious establishment was his decision to not segregate students by gender, nor impose a dress code on women. Kaust followed the precedent of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, which had also been shielded from clerical interference, highlighting one of the great contradictions of Saudi Arabia: Regardless of how much the royal family lauds its Islamic values, when it wants to earn money or innovate, it does not turn to the clerics for advice. It puts up a wall and locks them out. Most clerics kept quiet out of deference to the king. But one member of the top clerical body addressed the issue on a show, warning of the dangers of mixed universities: sexual harassment men and women flirting and getting distracted from their studies husbands growing jealous of their wives rape. \"Mixing has many corrupting factors, and its evil is great,\" said the cleric, Sheikh Saad adding that if the king had known this was the plan, he would have stopped it. But mixing was in fact the king's idea, and he was not amused. He dismissed the sheikh with a royal decree. From his office in Mecca, Mr. Ghamdi watched, frustrated that the clerics were not backing a project he felt was good for the kingdom. So after praying about it, he retrieved his report and boiled it down to two long articles that were published in the newspaper Okaz in 2009. They were the first strikes in a yearslong battle between Mr. Ghamdi and the religious establishment. He followed with other articles, went on TV and faced off against other clerics who insulted him and marshaled their own evidence from the scriptures. His colleagues at the Commission shunned him, so he requested \u2014 and was swiftly granted \u2014 early retirement. Once off the force, he questioned other practices: forcing shops to close during prayer times and urging people to go to the mosque, requiring face veils, barring women from driving. Each comment lit a new inferno. A woman once asked him on Twitter if she could not only show her face, but also wear makeup. Sure, Mr. Ghamdi said, setting off new attacks. Then in 2014, he was to appear on a popular talk show, and the producers filmed a segment about him and his wife, who appeared with her face showing and said she supported him. Harsh responses came from the top of the religious establishment. Many attacked his religious credentials, saying he was not really a sheikh \u2014 a dubious accusation since there is no standard qualification to be one. They targeted his r\u00e9sum\u00e9, too, saying he had no degree in religion and pointing out, correctly, that his doctorate was from Ambassador University Corporation, a diploma mill that gives degrees based on work experience \"in the Middle East. \" \"There is no doubt that this man is bad,\" said Sheikh Saleh a member of the top clerical body. \"It is necessary for the state to assign someone to summon and torture him. \" The grand mufti addressed the issue on his show, saying that the veil was \"a necessary order and an Islamic creation\" and calling on the kingdom's television channels to ban content that \"corrupts the religion and the morals and values of society. \" If the clerical attacks on Mr. Ghamdi were loud, the blowback from society was more painful. His tribe issued a statement, disowning him and calling him \"troubled and confused. \" His cellphone rang day and night with callers shouting at him. He came home to find graffiti on the wall of his house. And a group of men showed up at his door, demanding to \"mix\" with the family's women. His sons \u2014 he has nine children \u2014 called the police. Before the Mr. Ghamdi had also delivered Friday sermons at a mosque in Mecca, earning a government stipend. But the congregation complained after he spoke out, and he was asked to stay home, later losing his pay. Mr. Ghamdi had not broken any laws and never faced legal action. But in Saudi Arabia's society, the attacks echoed through his family. The relatives of his eldest son's fianc\u00e9e called off their wedding, not wanting to associate their family with his. \"Are you with your brother or with me?\" Mr. Ghamdi said his sister's husband had asked her. \"She said, 'I am with my brother. '\" They soon divorced. Mr. Ghamdi's son Ammar, 15, was taunted at school. Ammar said another boy had once asked him: \"How did your mom go on TV? That's not right. You have no manners. \" So Ammar punched him. One evening in Jidda, a university professor invited me to his home for dinner. His wife, a doctor, joined us at the table, her hair covered with a stylish veil. They had recently been married and he joked that they were meant for each other because she was good at cooking and he was good at eating. His wife chuckled and gave him more soup. I asked about Mr. Ghamdi. \"From what I read and what I saw, I think he's right and he stood up for what he believes in,\" the professor said. \"I admire that. \" The problem, he said, is that tolerance for opposing views is not taught in Saudi society. \"Either follow what I say or I will classify you, I will hurt you, I will push you out of the discussion,\" he said. \"This is . We have many people thinking in different ways. You can fight, but you have to live under the same roof. \" His wife had no problem with mixing or with women working, but did not like that Mr. Ghamdi had caused a scandal by making his views public. The royal family sets the rules, and it was inappropriate for subjects to publicly campaign for changes, she said. \"He has to follow the ruler,\" she said. \"If everyone just comes out with his own opinion, we'll be in chaos. \" After dinner, a young cleric who works for the security services dropped by. He, too, agreed with Mr. Ghamdi, but would not talk about it openly. The response, he said, is part of the deep conservatism in the clerical establishment that is impeding development. He often gave lectures to security officers, followed by discussions, he said, and a common question he heard was, \"Isn't the military uniform haram?\" Many Wahhabi clerics preach against resembling the infidels, leading to confusion. He believed that wearing uniforms was fine, and worried that such narrow thinking made people susceptible to extremism. \"It's like in those American movies when they invent a robot and then they lose control and it attacks them and the remote control stops working,\" he said. The next day, the professor thanked me for my visit in a text message. \"I'd like to remind u that any story that would uncover the source may hurt us. I trust your discretion,\" he wrote, followed by three flowers. All that was left, really, was to to speak with the Commission. What did its leaders and rank and file think about all of this? But for a force portrayed as and all powerful, it proved surprisingly shy. I could not visit Mr. Ghamdi's former office because are barred from entering Mecca. So I had multiple contacts ask for interviews with relatives who worked for the Commission, but they all declined to speak. I called the Commission's spokesman, who told me that he was traveling and then stopped answering my calls. I even dropped by the Commission's headquarters, a boxy, building on a Riyadh highway between a gas station and a car dealership. Its website advertised open hours with the director, so I went to his office, through halls filled with bearded men milling about and slick banners proclaiming \"A Policy of Excellence\" and \"Together Against Corruption. \" \"He didn't come today,\" the director's secretary told me. \"Maybe next week. \" On my way out, two men invited me into an office and served me coffee. \"How do you like working for the Commission?\" I asked. \"Everyone who chooses this job loves it,\" one said. It was the work of \"the entire Islamic nation,\" and it felt good \"to bring people from the darkness into the light. \" The other man had been on the force for 15 years and said he preferred working in the office. \"You rest more in the administration,\" he said. \"Out there we have problems with people. They call us the religious police. Criminals! Thieves! You never get to rest out in the field. \" A scowling man appeared in the doorway and told me that I was not allowed to talk to anyone. The first man soon left. The second offered me more coffee, then tea, then forced me to take a bottle of water when I left. The first irony of Mr. Ghamdi's situation is that many Saudis, including members of the royal family and even important clerics, agree with him, although mostly in private. And public mixing of the sexes in some places \u2014 hospitals, conferences and in Mecca during the pilgrimage \u2014 is common. In some Saudi cities it is not uncommon to see women's faces, or even their hair. But there is a split in society between the conservatives who want to maintain what they consider the kingdom's pure Islamic identity and the liberals (in the Saudi context) who want more personal freedoms. Liberals make cases like Mr. Ghamdi's all the time. But sheikhs don't, which is why he was branded a traitor. The second irony is that this year, Saudi Arabia instituted some of the reform Mr. Ghamdi had called for. It had been a rough year for the Commission. A video went viral of a girl yelping as she was thrown to the ground outside a Riyadh mall during a confrontation with the Commission, her abaya flying over her head and exposing her legs and torso. For many Saudis, \"the Nakheel Mall girl\" symbolized the Commission's overreach. Then the Commission arrested Ali a popular talk show host who often criticized religious figures. Photos appeared online of Mr. Oleyani in handcuffs with bottles of liquor. The photos were clearly staged and apparently had been leaked as a form of character assassination. Many people were outraged. In April, the government responded with a surprise decree defanging the religious police. It denied them the power to arrest, question or pursue subjects, forced them to work with the police and advised them to be \"gentle and kind\" in their interactions with citizens. Mr. Ghamdi applauded the decision, although he remains an outcast, a sheikh whose positions rendered him unemployable in the Islamic kingdom. These days, he keeps a low profile because he still gets insults when he appears in public. He has no job, but publishes regular newspaper columns, mostly abroad. Near the end of our last conversation, his wife, Jawahir, entered the room, dressed in a black abaya, with her face showing. She shook my hand, exuding a cloud of fragrance, and sat next to her husband. The experience had changed her life in unexpected ways, she said. And like her husband, she had no regrets. \"We sent our message, and the goal was not for us to keep appearing and to get famous,\" she said. \"It was to send a message to society that religion is not customs and traditions. Religion is something else. \"","label":0}
{"text":"On Friday, Donald Trump was so angry about the more than half the country that feels it is probably not a good idea for his administration to be in bed with Russia that he was completely unable to type coherently when unleashing his unpresidential ravings on Twitter. Specifically, he found himself unable to spell the word hereby. Trump informed the American public that he the President* wants to hear by launch investigations into his political enemies because they have been in photographs taken during public, scheduled meetings with some of the same Russian folks with whom members of his administration have been busted having secret, off-the-books meetings. After half the world pointed out he had spelled it incorrectly, he gave it another go, changing it to hearby still wrong, but closer.Then he unironically tweeted about education We must fix our education system for our kids to Make America Great Again. Wonderful day at Saint Andrew in Orlando. pic.twitter.com\/OTJaHcvLzf Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2017 before finally spelling hereby correctly.I hereby demand a second investigation, after Schumer, of Pelosi for her close ties to Russia, and lying about it. https:\/\/t.co\/qCDljfF3wN Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 3, 2017Taking pity on The Donald for the difficulties he was having, the Merriam-Webster dictionary jumped into the fray, providing the first President who would lose a second-grade spelling bee a little bit of assistance. OK, OK. Here. Bye, the dictionary tweeted shortly after Trump s numerous flubs:OK, OK.Here.Bye. https:\/\/t.co\/hLdwJNNI05 Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) March 3, 2017Naturally, this was quite popular with Americans who care about having a President who isn t a constant embarrassment:@MerriamWebster me seeing this tweet. pic.twitter.com\/W2y8GlM5HU Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) March 4, 2017@MerriamWebster I hereby declare you the winner of that round, or any round. Laila Lalami (@LailaLalami) March 3, 2017@MerriamWebster @realDonaldTrump LOOK, the dictionary people voluntarily helped you out big of them .you should thank them. Kirsten Frazier (@KvFrazier) March 3, 2017@MerriamWebster How high on the geek meter am I if this the funniest post of my feed? True, LOL. Beth Landau (@theblandau) March 3, 2017@MerriamWebster you know you're doing a horrible job when the heckin dictionary throws shade at you @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com\/Tq9OJNGhWs Angel G. Suarez (@BaezAngelG) March 3, 2017Whoever tweets for @MerriamWebster, I'm picturing your mother at bookclub or something, bragging about her child's awesomeness. E. Lebee (@ewlebee) March 3, 2017Dear @MerriamWebster, give the person running this account a raise. Karen Priester, MD (@Dr_Priester) March 4, 2017@MerriamWebster hereby the best cunning linguists on Twitter (((ResisTrumpNazi))) (@NeinFuhrerTrump) March 3, 2017This is not the first time the dictionary has helped Trump out, nor will it be the last. The Donald still has not thanked them.","label":1}
{"text":"The New Republic Mon, 04 Apr 1994 13:56 UTC You see a girl walking down the street. You can say, \"There goes a beautiful girl\" or \"There goes a whore.\" What the hell's the difference? They've both got legs. ~ Jon E.M. Jacoby, executive vice president of Stephens Inc., explaining the Arkansas system of politics and finance as it reached perfection during the Clinton years Part 1 \u00a9 Unknown In Arkansas, the latest backstairs of the national political system, you hear a lot of things. Concerning Whitewater, for example, you are constantly-- and probably correctly--reminded that the dustup involves nothing but a typical loony tunes savings & loans deal from the 1980s, despite the august personages involved and their perplexing insistence on behaving like refugees from a Raymond Chandler novel. In Arkansas memories are long, political rascality is king of regional sports and rumor and truth tend to commingle until otherwise reasonable people are driven slightly bonkers trying to sort out one from the other. In Little Rock the whole Whitewater affair is regarded as something of a hoot--the Yankee carpetbagger press, with the reality of Arkansas staring it in the face, has gone and missed the real story again. But if Whitewater was nothing but a minor peccadillo that the press has glommed onto because it thinks it understands it--and compared with the private financial shenanigans of Arizona Governor Fife Symington, Whitewater resembles a misdeed along the lines of crossing the street against the light-- why, then, has the Clinton administration so frantically placed its back to the door, as though a peek beyond would reveal grandpa tied to a chair, surrounded by his looted bank books? In Arkansas the answer to this question eerily resembles the epitaph on the tombstone of Sir Christopher Wren: if you would see Clinton's monument, look around. When it comes to Bill Clinton's home state, the national press has repeatedly looked, seen everything and observed next to nothing (the honorable, largely ignored exception being the Los Angeles Times ). Visiting Little Rock in search of atmosphere during the presidential campaign, reporter after reporter dutifully described the imposing Stephens Building, the elegant Capitol Hotel, the Worthen Bank tower and the headquarters of Arkla Petroleum, future White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty's gas company, without realizing that all of these things were either owned, controlled or under the influence of a single, immensely powerful family: the Stephenses . By a happy chance, the family is also the stellar client of Hillary Rodham Clinton's old employer, the Rose Law Firm . Although it usually served as a hired gun with a conveniently blind eye, Rose proves to be a handy prism for observing a Gothic, sometimes darkly humorous tale of bonds, banks, a friendly cocaine distributor, sinister Pakistanis, shadowy Indonesians and the uses to which an agreeable state government can be put. The story is in fact three connected stories, combined in a typically Southern saga: Stephens Inc. and the Worthen Bank Corporation; the Rose Law Firm itself; and the Arkansas bond business, which, like most bond businesses, is extremely difficult for the well-educated layman to understand, thus making it an excellent place to hide things in plain sight. Central to the story is a pair of siblings named Witt and Jackson Stephens. Part 2 In one sense, nothing unusual occurred in Arkansas during the 1980s: tales of high jinks in high places have always figured prominently in American discourse, and some of the most colorful stories--a number of them actually true--have come out of the Bubba Belt of the South and Southwest, whose geographical heart happens to be occupied by Arkansas. But Arkansas is rendered sui generis by the presence of the only major investment bank not headquartered on Wall Street, Stephens Inc. of Little Rock, which does much to explain some of the arresting peculiarities of a state that is more than a little strange even when judged by the spacious standards of its region. For one thing, although Arkansas is the home to some of the nation's wealthiest families, it is one of the poorest states in the country , although there is no reason for it to be poor at all. Abundantly endowed with minerals, petroleum, timber and some of the most fertile agricultural land on the surface of the planet, it bears a close resemblance to a Third World country, with a ruling oligarchy , a small and relatively powerless middle class and a disfranchised, leaderless populace admired for its colorful folkways, deplored for its propensity to violence (on a per capita basis, Little Rock has one of the highest murder rates in the nation) and appreciated for its willingness to do just about any kind of work for just about any kind of wage. In the words of one local wag, the farther you get from Arkansas, the better the Stephens boys look. Indeed, the family's sanitized, Horatio Alger- like biographies have been featured, accompanied by a remarkable lack of examination, in publications as various as Forbes and Golf Digest . The dynasty's founder, Witt Stephens, together with his younger brother by sixteen years, Jackson, grew up on a hardscrabble farm near the town of Prattsville, the sons of a small-time speculator in oil stocks and sometime state legislator, A.J. Stephens, who remained a power in state Democratic politics until the end of his life. An eighth-grade dropout, Witt first made his living by peddling Bibles and belt buckles before he discovered a pair of bonanzas in undervalued, Depression-era municipal bonds and the natural gas with which Arkansas is so richly endowed. Meanwhile, Jackson briefly served as a page with his father in the state legislature and went on to become a classmate of future president Jimmy Carter at the Naval Academy, a circumstance that would later serve the family's fortunes well while causing a disaster of still unmeasured magnitude in the American banking system. After World War II the brothers joined forces at Stephens Inc. in Little Rock, with Witt--or Mr. Witt, as he came to be known--serving as the company's colorful, cigar-chomping and aphoristic face to the world (or as much of the world as paid attention) while the taciturn Jack toiled away in the back office, revealing a golden touch at investment strategy. These things are relative, of course; by the time Witt (who died in 1992 at the age of 83) handed over the reins to Jack in 1957, while retaining his petroleum interests and serving as the presiding genius of the firm, Stephens Inc. was worth a beggarly $7.5 million. But in the Arkansas of 1957, a financial institution with $7.5 million had the money and the clout to do a number of things--including purchase a governor. Witt, like his father before him, was a staunch hereditary Democrat, a supporter and friend of such Arkansas luminaries as Senator William Fulbright. He was also a great patron of the infamous, six-term Orval Faubus--not, apparently, because of the governor's segregationist policies (to the family's credit, Jack Stephens, a trustee of the University of Arkansas since 1948, had successfully lent his voice to the cause of integrating the institution), but because Faubus was sound on the subject of natural gas, a subject dear to the Stephens' heart. As the family's fortune continued to wax after the Faubus years, it became an axiom of Arkansas politics that someone could occasionally become governor without permission from Stephens headquarters, but the politician was unlikely to remain governor for very long unless he paid close attention to the care and feeding of the brothers-- the great exception to the rule being two-term Republican Winthrop Rockefeller, the beneficiary, representative and broken reed of an even vaster American fortune, who became the failed hope of Arkansas liberalism. Decades later, when the self-effacing Jack became chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, naive visitors were quickly enlightened on the subject of how a man so shy could assume a post so prominent in the sport of the moneyed and the gently bred. \"Jackson Stephens?\" it was explained. \"He's the man who owns Arkansas.\" It was with Jackson Stephens at the helm that Stephens Inc. propelled itself into the stratosphere of the American financial plutocracy, making a bewildering variety of investments in enterprises as various as real estate, hazardous waste incineration, data processing, nursing homes, trucking and airplane maintenance, while simultaneously diversifying into the business of underwriting issues of common stock. In its new role, the firm called on the services of young C. Joseph Giroir, the only trained securities lawyer in the state, and his paralyzingly respectable firm, Rose. The securities business, in turn, led to a chain of peculiar events beginning in 1977 (the year, it so happened, that Bill Clinton became Arkansas attorney general and that Rose hired his wife). That year, no less a figure than T. Bertram Lance appeared on the corporate doorstep of his old friend's classmate, bringing with him a load of troubles and a glittering opportunity. Lance was compelled to resign as head of Jimmy Carter's Office of Management and Budget because of his long history of questionable financial practices in Georgia. As a result of that history, he was also beset by a negative net worth, substantial loans from banks in Chicago and New York and a large stockholding in the National Bank of Georgia. Sadly for Lance the price of the bank stock was depressed and its sale on the open market could not rescue him from the specter of bankruptcy, which was the dilemma Stephens Inc. was invited to solve. A solution was soon found in the form of the now notorious Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) , although whether Lance introduced Stephens to the Pakistani-run scam or vice versa is a matter of some debate. Beyond dispute, however, is the fact that the comptroller of the currency, the nation's principal regulator of commercial banks, had clearly stated that BCCI was never to enter the American banking system under any circumstances. Oddly, this unambiguous order did nothing to prevent Stephens Inc. from solving Lance's problems while settling a small score of its own. The National Bank of Georgia was controlled by a holding company called Financial General, one of the few entities in the country allowed to engage in interstate banking under the laws of the time. The Stephens interests controlled slightly less than 5 percent of Financial General and the investment had soured, partly because Financial General refused to hire the family's data processing company. It was, Stephens soon persuaded BCCI, just the sort of investment BCCI was looking for, the comptroller's edict notwithstanding. Comment: BCCI was pretty much the global (not 'Pakistani') financial instrument that got the Western 'war on terror' up and running, funneling weapons to terrorists via payments of hard drugs, prostitutes and cash. In short order, Stephens launched Lance on the path to renewed solvency, assembled blocks of stock for purchase by the front men who would conceal BCCI's identity, effected an introduction to the subsequently disgraced Democratic wise man Clark Clifford, turned a small but tidy profit on the sale of its own shares, pocketed fees of at least $95,000--and, in return for a sum that in Stephens terms amounted to chump change, set in motion the process that would give BCCI its long-sought beachhead in the American financial community. When subsequently confronted with its BCCI involvement by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Stephens Inc. neither admitted nor denied the sec's findings but promised to go and sin no more. But BCCI was not the only exotic party attracted by Lance's bank holdings. Also appearing on the scene was Mochtar Riady, one of the wealthiest men in Indonesia, with far-ranging interests and a known connection to his country's dictator, General Suharto . When someone went into business with Riady, there was also the possibility that they were in business with the general, a fairly decent chap by dictatorial standards (he had begun his reign with the slaughter of 200,000 supposed Communists, a feat he had not found necessary to duplicate except on the island of Timor) but a tyrant nonetheless. Stephens Inc., which appeared to be uninterested in the true activities of BCCI, exhibited a similar indifference when it came to Riady. Moreover, the Stephens people did not appear to be the least bit curious about the business endeavors of the distinguished former statesman who effected the introduction between Jakarta and Little Rock. This was Robert B. Anderson. Formerly a secretary of the treasury in the Eisenhower administration, Anderson had carried out diplomatic assignments for President Lyndon Johnson in the Middle East and had served as President Richard Nixon's chief negotiator in the Panama Canal talks before opening an offshore bank--Commercial and Trade Bank and Trust Ltd. on Anguilla--that catered to people who needed to launder money, evade taxes, or both. Jack Stephens had willingly presided over the handoff of a big hunk of an American bank to a bunch of Pakistani thugs, but he was not willing to let Riady go so easily. \"He wanted to buy into an American bank, an idea I was not enthusiastic about,\" Stephens told an interviewer some years later, perhaps making an unconscious semantic distinction. He'd seen nothing wrong with selling BCCI an American bank--they even named it First American--but he and Riady soon began planning an entirely new kind of Arkansas bank holding company, for which they required the services of Giroir and his expertise in securities law. But they also needed something that increasingly became a hallmark of the Rose firm: a willingness to perpetrate a subtle conflict of interest. Founded in 1820, well before Arkansas became a state, Rose is one of the oldest surviving law firms west of the Mississippi, one of the most competent and one of the most quietly influential. Often, in looking at the state government of Arkansas, the Rose firm and the Stephens interests, it is hard to escape the impression that one is looking at a single entity, rather along the lines of NATO. The law partnership takes its curious name from U.M. Rose, a talented attorney who dominated the firm from the mid-1860s to the end of the century, was one of the founders of the American Bar Association and is one of two Arkansans whose statues adorn the Capitol in Washington. Over the years Rose has provided Arkansas with numerous legislators and justices of the state supreme court. In 1957, when the modern civil rights era was born in Governor Faubus's refusal to integrate Little Rock's Central High, it was a Rose lawyer who acted as lead counsel to the school board. (Rose still has no black partners.) And from 1975 until 1988 the firm enjoyed a spectacular run--growing from seventeen lawyers to fifty-three--under the leadership of the dapper and charming Giroir, the first and only chairman in the history of Rose, who deeply entwined the partnership and his personal destiny in the affairs of the Stephens family's empire. During the Clinton administration, the history of the Rose firm could be divided into two periods: the Giroir years, and the shorter period, from 1987 to 1992, when the firm claimed to be a democracy, voting on its future rather than blindly following a single, charismatic leader. This democracy, however, was publicly dominated by three partners: the amiable Webster Hubbell, who was until a few days ago associate attorney general; the quiet Vincent Foster, who was deputy White House counsel until his suicide last summer; and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who as of press time is still First Lady. The firm's sea change, which generated a certain amount of hoopla from the legal press, was more apparent than real. Under the surface, Rose was much the same as always, doing good for its friends and clients while doing well for itself, but much more silently. In his years as Rose's chief, Giroir conspicuously chaired a group drawn from the state's so-called Good Suit Club. The club successfully lobbied the legislature to change the state usury law, which made owning an Arkansas commercial bank a much more attractive proposition. It also was active in convincing the state's lawmakers to revise the law restricting the formation of bank holding companies, which enabled Giroir, Riady and Stephens to make a substantial and potentially lucrative investment. On his own, Giroir had purchased control of four Arkansas banks. He sold all four--including the second-largest bank in the city of Pine Bluff--to Worthen Banking Corporation, the new holding company Riady and Stephens had been able to set up after state law, with Giroir's help, had been made more congenial to such things. For his part in the deal, Giroir was compensated with $53,760,294 in cash, stock and assumed debt. He also became a major stockholder of Worthen (named after the venerable and very large Little Rock bank that was the pride of the Stephens commercial banking empire) and a powerful member of its board. He received further income by renting property to the company, and he pocketed an additional $2.1 million when he sold part of his stockholdings to a company affiliated with Riady's son James (who was also Worthen's co-president). More important, he managed to create a whole new client for his firm; Rose became Worthen's principal outside counsel. These things are complicated, dull and dry, which is an excellent form of concealment, but consider the sequence of events. With the stroke of a pen and without a visible second thought, then-Governor Bill Clinton, following his traumatic period as a voter-rejected civilian between 1980 and 1982, gave life to two pieces of legislation inspired by his wife's boss--revising the usury laws and permitting the formation of new banking holding companies. In a state as small as Arkansas, where everybody of importance knows everybody else, it seems impossible that Governor Clinton could not have known that the relevant legislation would be of immense personal benefit to the boss in question, the state's most powerful family and an Indonesian investor whose presence in Arkansas seemed to be regarded as the most natural thing in the world. Last and not incidentally, the governor, by permitting the creation of the Worthen Bank Corporation, had arranged a new payday for the Clinton family through the windfall in legal fees provided to the Rose firm (Hillary Rodham Clinton, partner). When the compensation of the firm's partners was computed, Rodham Clinton has insisted, she specifically exempted herself from receiving a share of Rose's business with the state. But although Worthen could not have been brought to life without the help of her husband's government, it was not a government agency. Rodham Clinton was therefore not excluded from a partner's share of its fees. More important, Worthen also became a major depository of the state's tax receipts. Nothing unusual here; governments frequently park their undeployed funds with large private banking institutions until they decide what to do with the money. But the results soon proved to be imprudent under the most charitable interpretation of the word. In 1985 Worthen Bank managed to lose $52 million of Arkansas state taxpayers' money in a purchase of government securities from a New Jersey brokerage with a questionable past and no future whatever; several of its principals ended up in jail for fraud. With its capital wiped out in a single stroke and a seizure by federal regulators imminent, Worthen was swiftly rescued with a $30 million cash infusion from its major stockholders, in the form of a loan that paid the Stephens partners a handsome 10 percent--together with additional funds from Stephens Inc., which pocketed a $3.2 million fee for its trouble. (The risk, in true Stephens fashion, was not great. Two-thirds of the funds were swiftly replaced by Worthen's insurance company, which made Stephens Inc.'s noble rescue of the bank--and of a big hunk of the Arkansas treasury--an almost surefire, profitable investment.) Also conspicuous during the complex negotiations were Joe Giroir and his partner Webb Hubbell, appearing in their capacity as members of Rose. Two questions surround this incident. First, how could Worthen have allowed the state to make such an obviously tainted investment via the New Jersey brokerage firm? Second, and more important, why did nobody in Arkansas appear before the bar of justice? The New Jersey firm was a direct lineal descendent of a peculiar regional phenomenon: the world of so-called bond daddies. The bond-daddy racket, long centered in Memphis but with many of its members drawn from Arkansas, specialized in selling questionable government securities to gullible investors, principally small banks with little financial sophistication. Here is where the oddity begins, at least as it concerns Worthen. The Stephens brothers, if not Giroir and Riady, were intimately familiar with the black arts of finance. They were also experts in the government bond market. Moreover, at least one of the principals in the New Jersey brokerage of Bevill, Bresler & Schulman Inc. (which executed the transaction for Worthen and the state of Arkansas) was well-known in the region. Bevill's operations had all the earmarks of a standard bond- daddy scam, and yet Worthen committed $52 million anyway. (At the bank, the official explanation was that co-president Jim Jett acted naively, on his own and without the supervision of his principal stockholders, which is possible but not entirely plausible, since Giroir, who represented the Stephenses, sat on the board.) Consider a virtually identical event at the same time in Ohio, in which a savings bank controlled by Marvin Warner, Jimmy Carter's ambassador to Switzerland, invested in the same kind of fraudulent securities, destroyed itself, ignited a statewide financial panic and caused Governor Richard Celeste to declare the first Ohio bank holiday since the Great Depression. A number of the responsible parties, including Warner, found themselves behind bars, some for a very long time. Why? Under long established Anglo-American law, an officer or director of a bank is governed by the \"prudent man\" rule, which states that he is personally responsible for the financial and legal consequences of his acts. In Arkansas, where the prudent man rule seems to have been suspended, a number of people were fired, but the Clinton government hauled precisely no one into court on criminal charges. Once again in Clinton's Arkansas, the law seemed to be different than it was in the rest of the United States--which makes certain Arkansans smile in knowing amusement over the fact that Bill Clinton now happens to be running the United States . Part 3 The near failure of Worthen in 1985, like the arrival of BCCI, proved to be another pivotal event in recent Arkansas history: Stephens, Worthen, Rose and the Clintons remained at the center of the stage, but the cast of supporting players began to change. A former Stephens executive named Ray Bradbury, who had been deeply involved in the bcci negotiations--hardly a job qualification, one would think--took the helm at Worthen, where he discovered that the bank was also stuffed with bad real estate loans. Meanwhile, federal regulators learned that the bank had made an excessive number of insider loans, particularly to the Riadys, although what happened next is, as usual, a matter of mutually exclusive explanations. Knowledgeable observers in Little Rock and elsewhere say that the Riadys were slowly forced out of the bank by the federal government; at Worthen, the official version says that the Riadys disengaged because it was clear the troubled bank could not be a major force in international finance. In any event, the Riadys soon departed. The role of Joe Giroir also underwent a change. As a principal owner of Worthen, he was charged with securities fraud in a shareholder suit; he was also sued by Worthen itself for taking illegal \"short-swing\" profits when he sold stock to the Riady affiliate. Not only did Giroir lose his board position and partial ownership of the bank--with Giroir and Riady out of the picture, the Stephenses gradually increased their stockholding to more than 40 percent, while stoutly denying they controlled the place--but, following Giroir's disgrace in 1988, Rose lost Worthen as a client that had once paid the firm hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. As for Giroir, his troubles were far from over. In 1986 he was revealed to be a shareholder in and a substantial borrower from a Pine Bluff thrift called FirstSouth, the first billion-dollar savings & loan failure in the country . Comment: Isn't that curious; the first S&L bust happened under the Clintons' watch. Before the dust had cleared, the head of FirstSouth had gone to jail together with a former president of the Arkansas Bar Association, and Giroir had sued the federal regulators while the federal regulators were suing him, putting a considerable crimp in the plans of his partners, Hubbell and Foster, to create a lucrative practice in the cleanup of the s&l crisis. (At failed s&ls, the fees for firms like Rose could be enormous. According to one frustrated federal investigator, private lawyers in Dallas were making $500,000 per month from the thrift catastrophe, more than the total annual budget for the federal cleanup effort in the entire state of Texas--and in Arkansas, where lawyers were cheaper, the damage per capita was among the worst in the country. Somehow, Governor Clinton escaped criticism for this interesting fact.) It was clear that Joe Giroir, who had built the modern Rose Law Firm, was now the partnership's greatest liability--the firm's reputation aside, federal regulators charged that Giroir had used Rose letterhead to give FirstSouth legal advice beneficial to himself; Rose was forced to settle with the Federal s&l Insurance Corporation regulators for a reported half-million dollars--although once again there is a contradictory official version of his abrupt departure. Giroir once claimed that he left the firm voluntarily but will no longer comment on the matter. The Rose firm fell abruptly silent on this and all other subjects following recent allegations that it had shredded its Whitewater files, but its spokesman told American Lawyer in 1992 that Giroir departed in a coup arranged by litigators who were miffed that he and the firm's other rainmakers were paid substantially more than the lawyers who actually did the scut work in court--litigators prominently including Hubbell, Foster and Rodham Clinton, who actually seemed to be engaged in very little legal work at all. With the departure of Giroir, life at Rose became quieter if no less active. The three partners became the firm's public face to the world. The most physically imposing and locally active of these was Hubbell, a six-foot, five- inch giant of a man who had played football for the University of Arkansas, had almost made it into the big time with the Chicago Bears, had served briefly as mayor of Little Rock (when Rose received a significant portion of the city's bond business) and had received an interim appointment as chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court from Governor Clinton. (According to a reliable source, Hubbell's father-in-law, Seth Ward, a septuagenarian self-made entrepreneur, once complained that keeping Hubbell in politics cost him $100,000 a year.) The second was Foster, once described as an immaculately brown-suited man in an immaculate brown office, who was regarded as the \"soul\" of a firm that, according to grand jury testimony, shredded volumes of his records the moment an independent federal prosecutor appeared in the vicinity . The last was Rose's first female partner, Rodham Clinton, who occasionally did some lawyering in the intervals when she wasn't working for the Children's Defense Fund, attending to her personal business affairs or serving as the governor's first lady. The three were described to American Lawyer as \"big, big buddies\"; Rodham Clinton's office was next door to Hubbell's, and much of her work was actually done by Foster. Comment: Hubbell is very likely the father of Chelsea Clinton. And Foster, another 'lover', was suicided shortly after he followed Killary to the White House. The three also were closely entwined in a curious financial arrangement. This was Mid-life Investors, a partnership set up by E. F. Hutton in 1983. Hubbell, Foster and Rodham Clinton each kicked in $15,000 and named each other--rather than their spouses--as beneficiaries. But although the fund was active at least until 1991, Rodham Clinton reported annual dividends of under twenty dollars from Mid-life Investors, a sum that comes as a surprise to Roy Drew, the financial counselor who supervised the partnership and invested its money in such 1980s takeover candidates as Diamond Shamrock and Firestone Tire. According to Drew, with the likes of Sir James Goldsmith and the Japanese offering huge sums for the stock of Shamrock and Firestone, there was no way Mid-life Investors could have failed to reap substantial profits. Although Rodham Clinton was a litigator--that is, a lawyer whose task is to appear in court, if only to force the other side to settle--and an attorney who was named one of the 100 most influential in the country by the National Law Journal in 1988 and 1991, she was almost never seen in the courtrooms of Little Rock ; some court reporters remember an occasional appearance, and one could not remember having seen her at all. According to a search conducted by American Lawyer , she tried just five cases during her fifteen years at Rose; other published sources say her work revolved around copyright infringement cases involving songwriters and bread companies. But paradoxically, in view of what happened to Giroir, she (like Giroir) received extra compensation for the business she generated from her extracurricular activities, even if she did not work on the cases at all. For example, she was only one of two Rose partners to act as a corporate director, serving at various times on the boards of four companies and earning $64,700 in 1991 from director's fees alone . (Her 1991 salary from Rose was in the vicinity of $110,000; her husband earned $35,000 and got to live in a free house.) She was on the board of Wal-Mart, a Rose client that Stephens had launched on the road to glory . (Rodham Clinton also owned $80,000 worth of Wal-Mart stock.) She served Southern Development Bancorp, a holding company created to give development loans in rural Arkansas, which, according to The Washington Post , paid Rose somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 in fees. In 1989 she joined the board of TCBY yogurt company, which occupies the tallest building in Little Rock. TCBY then proceeded to pay Rose $750,000 for legal work during the next few years. Last, and puzzlingly, she was a director of Lafarge, a giant French cement company that had no discernible connection to Arkansas except, like Stephens Inc., it was engaged in burning hazardous waste . (As president, Bill Clinton did nothing to stop operation of an Ohio waste incinerator, partly backed at one time by Stephens Inc., despite the fact that it didn't work, had no legal permit and his own vice president had promised that it would never operate until it was thoroughly investigated, which it wasn't.) Comment: That's the same Lafarge recently caught trading with Head-chopper Inc, ISIS: Paris strikes corporate partnership with Lafarge, who secretly sponsored ISIS for profit and has ties to Killary With Rodham Clinton aboard at Rose, the firm's long established connections to the governor's office were made firmer still. Rose, the gold standard of Arkansas law firms, had long enjoyed unusual access to the state's corridors of power. It both advised and did the bidding of the powerful family that acted as the state's shadow government, and during the Clinton years, the Rose Law Firm sometimes behaved as though it were an agency of the state rather than a legal partnership with offices in a converted YMCA. The intimate connection between Rose, Stephens Inc. and the governor's office may help explain how the Stephens family made a vast amount of money when its most visible enterprises were doing no such thing. The investment bank had hit a gusher when it took Wal-Mart public, made a pleasing sum on the stock of Tyson Foods, the nation's largest chicken processor, but otherwise cut no great swath in the stock market. Until recently, Worthen was a disaster area. At least part of the answer for the family's continued prosperity seems to reside in the unusual way Bill Clinton's state dealt with Stephens Inc.'s old specialty, government bonds. Part 4 The crown jewel of Bill Clinton's avowed attempt to create industries and jobs in the state was an unusual entity called the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA). According to well-established common law, a government-chartered authority is supposed to be an independent body, insulated from the hurly-burly of everyday political life and its temptations. But ADFA, written into law with the help of Webb Hubbell, was no such thing. All ten members of its board were appointed by the governor. Though it was specifically granted the power to issue industrial development bonds, the governor, personally, was required to approve every bond issue. State agencies with the ability to issue industrial bonds are supposed to distribute the money (and thus create jobs and wealth) to companies and individuals who can't receive lines of credit on favorable terms from the usual financial institutions or venture capitalists. On significant occasions, however, ADFA spread its bounty to less than deserving clients. Nor do the peculiarities of this body end here. Although it issued bonds, ADFA did no due diligence--the common practice of engaging an outside financial expert to examine the applicants for the proceeds and determine if they actually need the money and are otherwise worthy recipients. (Due diligence, according to an ADFA spokesman who happens to be the brother-in-law of one of Witt Stephens's daughters, was the responsibility of the purchasers of the bonds under the ancient principle of caveat emptor --a practice that had previously helped the region's bond daddies flourish and had wiped out the capital of the Worthen bank.) While its spokesman is a little fuzzy on the subject, it seems that there was no regular ADFA oversight to ensure that money was being spent according to the original purpose of the loan, although an ADFA employee might occasionally be sent into the field to discover if everything was tickety-boo. It is also somewhat difficult to discover just what ADFA was actually doing. A recent examination of the log kept at ADFA headquarters for the enlightenment of wandering reporters and inquisitive citizens reveals just twenty-five bond issues from 1985 to the present--or twenty-six, if you count the paperwork on a bond issue that was removed in a reporter's presence. Moreover, the log suggests that ADFA was heavily involved in good works with religious orders. But according to the Los Angeles Times ' count of ADFA's activities, the authority released seventy industrial bond issues--according to my count, the number is sixty-five--none of them to religious charities or university hospitals, and most of them missing from the official log. Which begs the question: Just what was ADFA doing with the $719 million it dispensed (or whose dispensation it authorized) as of January 1992? \"ADFA,\" says Larry Nichols, a dismissed authority official, \"was set up by Clinton for Dan Lasater.\" Now, it should be borne in mind that Nichols is something of an Arkansas character and, in some circles, a figure of fun. A well-known supporter of the Nicaraguan contras, Nichols was also the person who originally alleged that Clinton had an affair with Gennifer Flowers and four other women, only to destroy his credibility when he retracted his charges in a document remarkable for its abject contrition . But there are those in Arkansas who insist that Nichols is neither entirely a vindictive nut nor the sort of notorious regional liar who has to hire a man to call his own dog. \"You ought to listen to Larry Nichols,\" says a Little Rock political consultant. \"He says a lot of things, but sometimes he tells you something you really need to know.\" And, certainly, there is something intriguing about Bill Clinton's relations with Lasater, a man no governor in his right mind would let in the front door. If Dan Lasater was not the largest cocaine user in the state of Arkansas, he was certainly the most conspicuous one. A prosperous Little Rock bond dealer, he was an acquaintance of the Clinton family and a contributor to the governor's political fortunes. Lasater distinguished himself in other ways, too. He served ashtrays full of cocaine at parties in his mansion, stocked cocaine on his corporate jet (a plane used by the Clintons on more than one occasion) and later told the FBI that he had distributed cocaine on more than 180 occasions . \"I shared my success ... in that manner,\" he explained. He was also a patron of Governor Clinton's cocaine-using half-brother, Roger, employing the younger man in his thoroughbred racing stables in Florida and claiming that he gave Roger Clinton $8,000 to pay off debts to drug suppliers . By 1985 it was also known that Lasater was the subject of a police investigation that, even the most uneducated guess would suggest, could end in only one way. But that year, Governor Clinton deemed Lasater worthy of handling a $30.2 million bond issue to modernize the state police radio system, despite the fact that the expenditure would normally be made by an appropriation from the treasury and the fact that Lasater was about to be busted . Nonetheless, Clinton vigorously lobbied the legislature, ignored the wishes of the Stephens family and won the day, giving Lasater & Co. a handsome $750,000 underwriting fee , according to the Los Angeles Times . In 1986 Lasater was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, with Roger Clinton testifying against him at his trial. In 1990 he received a state pardon from Governor Clinton . For whatever it's worth, one of the few people to have access to the office of the late Vincent Foster during the three days it was unsealed following his suicide was White House official Patsy Thomasson, who managed Lasater's business affairs while he was in jail. But in the Clinton system, perfected in Little Rock and now being practiced in Washington, none of these things should be considered a mistake or an aberration. Lasater was not the only strange thing about the Arkansas bond business during the time of Bill Clinton. Whenever a normal state issues bonds, there are many ways for a variety of people to get well on the public nickel. The beneficiary of the proceeds receives a loan at below-market rates. The financial institution that sold the bonds receives underwriting fees. For each bond issue, an outside attorney is engaged to certify that the deal conforms to the law and prepares the documents required by the Internal Revenue Service and the federal treasury. A bank is chosen as trustee for the money, collecting the repayments from the lucky borrowers and making the repayments to the purchasers of the bonds. And the borrower itself almost invariably retains a lawyer. But when one examines the activities of ADFA, a certain pattern emerges concerning at least some of the beneficiaries of Arkansas largess. For example, one of the very first ADFA bond issues provided $2.75 million to POM, a manufacturer of parking meters in Russellville, whose president happened to be Seth Ward II, the brother-in-law of Webb Hubbell. Despite the fact that Hubbell was chairman of the conflicts committee at Rose, he seemed to see nothing amiss in the fact that Rose then collected a fee as adfa's certifying attorney or that he himself served as POM's attorney. Nor did Hubbell seem to see anything unusual in the fact that he was representing the Resolution Trust Corporation in its case against the auditors of Madison Guaranty, despite the fact that his father-in-law, the senior Ward, had not repaid millions in loans from the thrift, or that Ward had received an airplane from Madison in the bargain. Between 1985 and mid-1992 Stephens Inc. was involved in the underwriting and sale of 78 percent of ADFA's housing and industrial bonds, an unsurprising figure considering the firm's familiarity with the market and its clout in the state. Still, considering Stephens's involvement in the authority's affairs, Governor Clinton did not appear to feel that it was ever so slightly wrong to appoint two Stephens associates--a vice president of one of Worthen's banks and a vice president of a chain of nursing homes partly controlled by the Stephens empire--to ADFA's ten-member board. Nor did the man who signed off on every single ADFA bond issue exhibit suspicion when Stephens seemed to be supplementing its brokerage fees by helping itself to ADFA's money in the form of favorable loans. Meanwhile, at least another member of the board, the vice president of Twin Cities Bank, an institution that served as trustee in one of ADFA's tangled deals, appeared to take a similar double-dip. And the governor's wife's law firm was not only receiving a healthy chunk of ADFA's legal business, but Rose apparently found nothing wrong with affiliates of Stephens receiving ADFA money, or with the fact that on not one but two occasions, ADFA issued bonds that benefited the relatives of Rose partners. In 1988 and 1989 ADFA lent a total of $1.37 million to the Pine Bluff Warehouse Company. Rose received $22,321 in legal fees from ADFA. The trustee bank was Worthen's National Bank of Commerce in Pine Bluff, whose vice president sat on the ADFA board and whose chief executive officer was not merely a member of Pine Bluff Warehouse's board but the father of a senior Rose partner, William Kennedy III, now associate White House counsel. Stephens, unsurprisingly, underwrote the bonds. In 1989 ADFA loaned $4.67 million to Arkansas Freightways, whose largest outside stockholder was Stephens Inc. Co-counsel on the bond issue was Rose. The trustee bank's executive vice president was a member of the ADFA board. The underwriter was Stephens. Also in 1989 ADFA tried to loan $83 million to a Texas entrepreneur for the purpose of bailing out Beverly Enterprises, the country's largest operator of nursing homes, 10 percent owned by Stephens, whose vice president sat on the ADFA board, at a time when Beverly's stock was being hammered by the company's persistent losses. A swift and decisive halt to the deal was called by Arkansas Attorney General Steve Clark, a rising political star who was expected to be a strong gubernatorial candidate in 1990, and who claimed that a Stephens-Beverly lobbyist had offered him a $100,000 bribe (as campaign contributions, of course) if he would just lay off and let the deal go through. The lobbyist was later cleared by an Arkansas court, but Clark was caught charging personal expenses on his state credit card. His political career in shambles, he was later disbarred. Current reports place him somewhere in the state of Georgia. But these were only the most conspicuously questionable of ADFA's doings, the ones most easily understood by the public and the press. There was also the question of the true extent of Rose's involvement in the authority's bond business. According to the Daily Record , a Little Rock business journal, Rose ranked fourth among the law firms working directly for ADFA, with fees of only $175,000 for the years up to 1991. But not everyone agrees with this assessment. When Frank White, the only man ever to defeat Clinton in a gubernatorial election, tried to repeat the feat in 1986, his campaign claimed that Rose had actually been in on every ADFA deal (for the authority or for the recipient) while Clinton was governor . Unfortunately, the relevant data was assembled under the supervision of White's political consultant, Darrell Glasscock, a former Louisiana state official and a great supporter of the contras ( an occupation that appears to have been an Arkansas cottage industry ). Reached recently by phone, former Governor White, now an officer of Worthen's principal competitor, the First Commercial bank holding company, clearly wishes he had never heard of Glasscock, cheerily questions Glasscock's veracity and pleasantly turns aside any questions about Rose. When a visitor to ADFA asks for the complete documentation on any particular bond issue, he is presented with a thick volume that, if placed on a chair, would allow him to dine with the grown-ups. A small sampling of these volumes reveals an interesting thing: every company examined, including POW, Arkansas Freightways, Pine Bluff Warehouse and Concert Vineyards appears to be eminently creditworthy. These are the sorts of enterprises that could walk in the door of any bank and walk off with any reasonable sum they needed. Why, then--in addition to the mutual back-scratching described above--were they being given loans at below market rates by a desperately poor state with other uses for its money? This question takes added luminosity from the fact that ADFA really didn't work very well. The old Arkansas Industrial Development Commission, started by Orval Faubus, created 90,000 jobs in nine years. And it had no bonding power. After seven years under the Clinton regime and with tens of millions in issued loans, ADFA had created just 2,700 jobs, many at wages significantly below the national standard. This anemic showing obscures the fact that ADFA had yet another purpose: its generosity was returned in the form of campaign contributions for William Jefferson Clinton . According to the Los Angeles Times , in the 1990 race for the governorship, the recipients of ADFA's largess contributed $400,300, nearly one-fifth of the Clinton war chest. They then kicked in with millions more for the presidential race. Outside Arkansas the white-shoe investment bank of Goldman Sachs, which later contributed its co-chairman, Robert Rubin, to President Clinton's inner circle of economic advisers, raised millions for the presidential race and even paid for a substantial hunk of the Democratic National Convention. According to ADFA's incomplete records, Goldman was either the lead or sole underwriter of at least $400 million in ADFA bonds. In addition, two of ADFA's board members were active Clinton fund-raisers, which raises yet another question among many: Wasn't this against the law? For once, the answer is terse and straightforward. Not in Arkansas . Under the Arkansas ethics-in-government act, passed in 1988 and, according to state legislators, either drafted or inspired by Hubbell, state legislators were required to report possible conflicts of interest. Surprisingly, the law specifically exempted the governor and other elected or appointed officials, including officials of state agencies and commissions. Moreover, these officials were not even required to report dealings with entities--such as Rose--that employed their relatives. This was not the only remaining service that Rose had provided to the governance of its state. When the time came to rewrite the state's incorporation laws, it was Rose that drew up the 397-page treatise that formed the basis of the legislation. Well, somebody has to draft a state's legislation, and under Arkansas's unusual ethics law, it was perfectly all right for Rose to do just that. Less clear (if anything in these murky waters can be described as clear) is just why Clinton seemed so eager to assist the Stephens family, which was hardly enamored of the man and kept bankrolling the candidates who ran against him for governor until it experienced a change of heart in 1990. Witt Stephens habitually referred to Clinton as \"that boy.\" In a moment of candor his brother Jack once remarked that \"it would be awfully easy for Stephens, if we wanted to be close to a governor, to be close to Bill Clinton.\" Nonetheless, the Clinton governorship's assistance to Stephens extended well beyond ADFA. During Clinton's years in Little Rock, the Stephens interests were involved in some 61 percent of the $7 billion of all the state bonds issued in Arkansas . Contrary to state law, Stephens Inc., according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette , was given the underwriting for the state university system without competitive bids from other bond dealers. The Fayetteville campus alone, where the Clintons had once taught law, had $33 million in bonds outstanding. Under Clinton, Stephens devised a plan to rescue the state's troubled student loan authority, in which the authority's bonds would be bought by the state employees' retirement funds. An independent consultant--Roy Drew, the very man who created Mid-life Investors for Hubbell, Foster and Rodham Clinton-- was brought in to examine the deal. Drew thought it was a terrible investment and so did the state's auditor, Julia Hughes Jones. But Drew was dismissed, Jones's budget failed to pass the legislature (the first time ever for an Arkansas state auditor) and she began to receive late-night harassing calls from a collection agency--concerning, ironically, her own daughter's student loan, which was current. In the upshot, the retirement funds bought $100 million of the loan authority's bonds, another $100 million in the bonds of two other state agencies, ADFA was given the task of overseeing the retirement fund's investment policies and Stephens Inc., according to The Philadelphia Inquirer , made $1.8 million. These were very considerable favors to a family that not only bankrolled Clinton's opponents but seemed to despise him as a man. But Bill Clinton's canny instinct that the Stephenses needed to be appeased--rather than ignored--eventually paid off. After Clinton's unexpected loss in the New Hampshire primary, with the campaign coffers bare, the staff paying its bills on their personal credit cards and federal matching funds just beyond reach, the Worthen Bank rescued the candidacy with a prearranged $3.5 million line of credit, selflessly advanced at a lucrative rate of interest. Later, Worthen - whose executives, like many Stephens executives, experienced a spasm of Arkansas patriotism that caused them to reach for their checkbooks - became the Clinton campaign's depository of $55 million in federal campaign funds, which, in effect, was free money. Worthen did not have to pay any interest on this staggering sum, but as long as it was on deposit (and as long as Worthen, with its undistinguished track record in the department of government deposits, managed not to lose it), the bank was free to use it to make itself some money that it got to keep. And when the votes were counted, everybody who wanted to go to Washington got to go to Washington: Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, president and First Lady; Mack McLarty, White House chief of staff; Vince Foster, deputy White House counsel; Webb Hubbell, associate attorney general; Patsy Thomasson, a White House aide. Jack Stephens, though mentioned as a candidate for secretary of the treasury, had, it now seems safe to say, the good sense to stay home. Oh, and one last thing: when Whitewater special prosecutor Robert Fiske--who once defended Clark Clifford, the famed friend of Jack Stephens's old client, BCCI--arrived in Little Rock, something strange happened. Worthen Bank had a fire. Is this a great country, or what? Comment: Yeah, it's a great country if you love giving free reign to your baser instincts. See also:","label":1}
{"text":"It s common knowledge that Donald Trump is a self-obsessed narcissist, but he also considers himself to be somewhat of a patriot, so when the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain was involved in a collision on Sunday evening with an oil tanker near the mouth of the Strait of Malacca en route to Singapore, an incident that left 10 sailors missing and another five injured, one would expect the President of the United States to have some compassionate words.But that wasn t to be the case. Instead, President Trump had a simple three-word reaction for journalists That s too bad. The Commander in Chief reportedly didn t even offer any further comment for the media, instead taking to his preferred platform, Twitter, to send his condolences to those involved in the collision, offering the stock-standard thoughts and prayers response, but very little else.Thoughts & prayers are w\/ our @USNavy sailors aboard the #USSJohnSMcCain where search & rescue efforts are underway. https:\/\/t.co\/DQU0zTRXNU Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 21, 2017It is unknown whether the President had been briefed prior to commenting on the incident, but regardless, neither his comments to the media or those he later tweeted showed anything that came even remotely close to true compassion.According to the US Navy, the USS John S. McCain, based in Yokosuka, Japan, sustained damage to its port side after colliding with the merchant ship, the accident reported at 5:24 am Monday local time, as the destroyer passed the entrance to one of the world s most congested shipping routes, the Strait of Malacca. Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command s Joint Intelligence Center, claims the oil tanker also involved in the incident would have been at least three times larger than the USS John S. McCain.","label":1}
{"text":"It has been nearly fifty years since the landmark Supreme Court ruling, Loving v. Virginia, that made interracial marriages (relationships) legal in the United States, but apparently some people are unaware of the ruling. A teenager in Texas recently tweeted an infuriating letter from her dad explaining the reason why he s disowning her: the relationship she was in with an African-American male.Stephanie Hicks, 19, is dating a black male and apparently this pissed her father off so much that he disowned her. In a letter she posted on Twitter, her father says: My belief is that interracial relationships are despicable. Vulgar and reprehensible. There s nothing worse than a half-black, and I m crushed that my own daughter has entered into such a disgusting relationship Mistakes can be forgiven, but you have willingly and consciously chosen a lifestyle of sickening choices, and I won t tolerate it. Her father then tells her that is she does not break up with her boyfriend, Nike, that she is not welcome in his life any longer: If you choose this black kid over your parents fill [suitcases] up and leave my house Change your name as soon as possible, because I won t have any association with you. Ever. First of all, as a parent, I am disgusted by this piece of garbage who has the audacity to call himself Dad. If he s are willing to disown his child over who they are dating, he never had any business raising a kid in the first place.Secondly, it is 2016 and no matter how much the GOP would like us all to believe racism is dead, it is clearly alive and thriving in the state of Texas. Her father called her relationship sickening but the only thing sickening about any of this is that guy s vile, hatred for a person because of the melanin he has in his skin. It is sad that this is even a battle that needs to be fought still, but it does.Like Stephanie, I am super white. I m so white that you could all use me to guide your way through a dark forest and my husband isn t white at all. I also live in the South, just like her and know what it is like to have people stare at me with disgust because my husband and child are naturally tan. Seriously. In 2016.America really has changed that much in the last fifty years because we have an entire political party that campaigns on platforms of racism and hate hell, just look at Donald Trump. And this is going to continue to be a problem until we all step up and fight back. That means that we all have to vote for progressive candidates who want to move this country forward, not back.Hopefully, Stephanie takes this and uses it to become an even stronger human being. Sometimes the best thing a toxic person can do for you is cut themselves out of your life.","label":1}
{"text":"The green criminals who re working on how to distribute your money to those in far away places had a splendid meal last night in Paris. Could someone tell Obama we re broke?As working dinners go, President Obama s meal Monday night in Paris with French President Francois Hollande, Secretary of State John Kerry and others wasn t too shabby.No cartons of takeout instead, the gang fueled up after a long day of climate talks at L Ambroisie, the three-Michelin-starred temple of gastronomie in the Marais neighborhood.Per the Michelin Guide, the ornately be-chandelier-ed dining room is known for incomparable classicism and an immortal feast for the senses. Perhaps worried that Obama would create an international faux pas by ordering a burger or a margarita (two of his faves), a reporter asked what he planned to eat. Obama was, appropriately, diplomatic: I will get recommendations from the president, he answered, nodding in Hollande s direction.According to the AP, Obama cracked a joke about the opulence of the setting. Don t break the chandelier, he warned as a reporter s microphone got just a little too close to the crystal. You can t afford it.","label":1}
{"text":"One thing that has continuously dogged the Donald Trump for president campaign is the fact that racists, anti-semites, xenophobes, misogynists, and various other bigots have stuck with the bombastic real estate mogul since he first launched his travesty of a campaign. No matter how much Trump s people try to say he doesn t want the support of such folks, the candidate himself refuses to take the fact that there is anything about the campaign he has been running that attracts these people seriously. So, naturally, when Trump s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway sat down with an interview with CNN s Jake Tapper on Sunday, that particular issue came up again. Of course, Conway was not happy. Tapper began: There are a lot of anti-Semites and racists and misogynists who support the Trump candidacy. Conway immediately went on defense, saying, wow. Tapper went on to reference a man who was shouting JEW-S-A at the press pen at a recent Trump rally, and directly asked Conway if she would refer to such people as deplorable. She responded: Yes, I would. Wow, I have to push back on some of the adjectives you just used to describe I hope you ve been to Trump rallies and I hope that you ve seen the tens of thousands. I mean, he s had over half a million people easily, I think in excess of that. These are U.S.A.-loving Americans. Tapper went on to say that no, he isn t putting all Trump supporters into that camp, but went on to force Conway s hand on this one: But without question, people who are experts on hate groups say that there has been a comfort level that has been offered to people who are anti-Semitic that has been offered to people who are anti-Semitic and racists and on and on. And these people are comfortable coming out in the open and supporting Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump has refused to condemn in a very serious way his racist and anti-Semitic fans, Tapper continued. He just has. He says things like, Oh, sure, I disavow, I disavow. But he has never serious said, I don t want the support of those people, they are reprehensible, they have nothing to do with me. He has never seriously done it. Conway used the pushing to pivot back to the idea that the Trump campaign is winning, saying: I think this exchange is frankly the best piece of evidence I have that we re actually going to win in nine days because the idea that we re going to shift away from the pattern of corruption the cloud of ethical stain that Hillary Clinton would bring to the Oval Office in such an important week. No, Kellyanne, it s not a sign that Trump is winning. It s pointing something out that has been true since this whole fiasco began: That Donald Trump is a raging bigot, and he has been so openly. Dog whistles have turned into fog horns this election cycle, and it s all because of Donald Trump. He embraces these bigots because he s one of them. The quicker you learn that, the better.Watch the exchange below:","label":1}
{"text":"Trump World's Darkest Side November 8, 2016  Donald Trump's campaign has exposed and spoken to the real pain and profound alienation of many Americans, but the candidate also has exploited those emotions with lies and appeals to prejudice, says Michael Winship.  By Michael Winship  When I grow up, I want to be Charlie Pierce , who covers politics for Esquire magazine and has toiled in our scrivener's trade, as far as I can tell, since the late 1970s.  I know, technically, he's a couple of years younger than I am, but he writes with the fierce wit and well-aimed anger to which I aspire, and as this wheezing milk train of a presidential campaign clanks into the final station, few have been as perceptive when it comes to trying to figure out just what the hell has happened to America this year. Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. (Photo credit: Grant Miller\/RNC)  Charlie Pierce has done so with great style throughout, but now, thanks to Donald Trump and just hours before Election Day, he has come to the end of his watchdog rope. He wrote on Saturday that Trump \u2014 to whom he refers as El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago \u2014 had \"managed to exceed even my admittedly expansive limits for political obscenity.\"  Pierce was talking about Trump's reaction after President Obama responded to an elderly heckler wearing a military tunic at a Friday campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina.  As the crowd booed the man, Obama said, \"Hey! Listen up! I told you to be focused, and you're not focused right now. Listen to what I'm saying. Hold up. Hold up! \u2026 Everybody sit down, and be quiet for a second\u2026 First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech. Second of all, it looks like maybe he might've served in our military and we got to respect that. Third of all, he was elderly and we got to respect our elders. And fourth of all, don't boo, vote.\"  In other words, the President showed poise, grace and yes, class. But shortly after, here's how the moment was seen through Trump's eyes at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania: \"There was a protester and a protester that likes us,\" Trump said. \"And what happened is they wouldn't put the cameras on him. They kept the cameras on Obama. \u2026 He was talking to a protester, screaming at him, really screaming at him. By the way, if I spoke the way Obama spoke to that protester, they would say he became unhinged.\"  Unhinged? Really? We all know that Trump seems to get his news from an implanted electrode picking up propaganda signals from the Planet Mongo. But there comes a point when the lies piled upon lies become too much for even the fairest and most equable of us. Hearing Trump's demonstrably false description of what happened at Obama's rally, Charlie Pierce finally had it.  \"Maybe it was because it was so ludicrously provable a lie,\" he wrote. \"[Trump] didn't care. He never has cared. His contempt for the democratic processes and for the norms of self-government is matched only by the deep contempt he has for all the suckers who mistake his contempt for the American experiment for their deep disappointment in it. He has measured their intelligence by his heavily leveraged net worth and found them hilariously lacking.  \"We are all the subcontractors who build his indomitable ego for him and, as such, he can stiff us according to his customary business plan. His campaign long ago became a sickening charade performed by a grotesque charlatan.\"  The Scene in Reno  And so it is. Look, too, at how Trump and his followers at a rally in Reno, Nevada, on Saturday responded to a man with a \"Republicans against Trump\" sign. Before someone shouted \"Gun!\" and the moment turned even uglier, Trump had looked down and said, \"Oh we have one of those guys from the Hillary Clinton campaign. How much are you being paid, $1,500?\" As the crowd booed, Trump said, \"Okay. Take him out.\" The run-down PIX Theatre sign reads \"Vote Trump\" on Main Street in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. July 15, 2016. (Photo by Tony Webster Flickr)  The protester, a Reno resident named Austyn Crites, described himself as Republican and a fiscal conservative. He told The Guardian he was grateful to the police who removed him from the auditorium for interrogation \u2014 they kept him from being further kicked, choked and pummeled by the gang of Trump supporters who surrounded him.  Still, he said, \"The people who attacked me \u2014 I'm not blaming them. I'm blaming Donald Trump's hate rhetoric, \u2026 The fact that I got beat up today, that's just showing what he's doing to his crowds.\"  Throughout the campaign, whenever Trump has egged on his followers, I've thought of that line in Young Frankenstein, when the angry Transylvanian villagers are told by the local police inspector, \"A riot is an ugly thing, and I think that it is just about time we had one.\"  Remember what Trump said when a protester was dragged out of a February rally in Las Vegas: \"I love the old days \u2014 you know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They'd be carried out on a stretcher, folks. \u2026 I'd like to punch him in the face.\"  By now, you've heard it all before and the litany of lies, outrageous claims and insults has climbed so high that many of us have become numb and weary from the sheer repetition of Trump's buffoonery. You can only go to so many demolition derbies before the sight of flaming car wrecks becomes routine.  Dog Whistles  What's more, you can argue that far more insidious and frightening are the dog whistle attacks appealing to the baser instincts of the bigoted and ignorant. The latest: the closing ad from the Trump campaign that, with anti-Semitic overtones, points fingers at \"a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class.\" Former speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona. March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)  As Josh Marshall notes at Talking Points Memo , \"The four readily identifiable American bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clinton, George Soros (Jewish financier), Janet Yellen (Jewish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blankfein (Jewish Goldman Sachs CEO)\u2026 This is an ad intended to appeal to anti-Semites and spread anti-Semitic ideas\u2026 This is intentional and by design. It is no accident.\"  Here is something Charlie Pierce wrote back in May . Trump, he said, \"is riding on a wave of pain that he never has felt.\"  \"He is riding on a wave of anxiety he never has encountered. Beyond their love of him, there is no indication that he is as deeply aware of what has powered his rise as the people whose fear, and doubt, and, yes, hatred has powered his rise. Their job is still to wait in line, cheer on cue, and give him the devotion that he has earned because, after all, he is He, Trump, and they're not, and that will never change.\"  Add it all up and to me, this is what it comes down to: Do you want to live in a United States where anger, prejudice and fear rule, and dissent is viewed as treason, or in a country where we try to meet every issue from terrorism to education with clear eyes and a rational mind?  This year's choices are far from perfect, but nonetheless a choice must be made. To quote a founding father who believed in such things: liberty, once lost, is lost forever. This could be democracy's last stop. Vote.  Michael Winship is the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company and BillMoyers.com, and a former senior writing fellow at the policy and advocacy group Demos. Follow him on Twitter at @MichaelWinship .","label":1}
{"text":"In the past week, as a swirl of sexual assault accusations against Donald J. Trump has prompted a loud national discussion about male power and women's rights, the first woman to be a major party's presidential nominee was barely heard from. Though Hillary Clinton has stood at the center of feminist debates for more than two decades, she has at times been an imperfect messenger for the cause. That has never been more apparent than now, as her old missteps and her husband's history have effectively paralyzed her during a moment of widespread outrage. The most impassioned speeches on the topic have come not from her, but from the first lady, Michelle Obama, who said Mr. Trump's words had \"shaken me to my core,\" and from President Obama and others. When Mrs. Clinton herself spoke, she quickly changed the subject to other groups of people Mr. Trump had insulted, and she tried to lighten the mood with a joke about watching cat videos. \"It makes you want to turn off the news. It makes you want to unplug the internet or just look at cat GIFs,\" Mrs. Clinton told donors in San Francisco on Thursday, making her first remarks on Mr. Trump's treatment of women since several came forward to accuse him. \"I've watched a lot of cats do a lot of weird and interesting things,\" she said, drawing a few laughs. \"But we have a job to do. And it'll be good for people and for cats. \" The virtual silence from Mrs. Clinton speaks volumes about the complicated place she has occupied as a 1960s Wellesley feminist who stayed as a devoted wife to her husband through infidelities and humiliation. Forcefully denouncing sexual assault would most certainly provoke ugly attacks on Bill Clinton and Mrs. Clinton's role in countering the women who accused him of sexual misconduct. That painful past haunted Mrs. Clinton last Sunday when Mr. Trump invited some of her husband's accusers to the second presidential debate. In the days since, Mrs. Clinton has had to once again navigate the messy crosscurrents of politics, symbolism and her ambition to shatter \"that highest, hardest glass ceiling\" of being elected the first female president. Now, when the collective voice of American women and victims of sexual assault seems to be letting out a cathartic scream, Mrs. Clinton has deferred to another first lady to speak for her. At the San Francisco on Thursday, she pointed to Mrs. Obama's speech earlier that afternoon when the first lady placed her hand on her heart and spoke out for the many who were outraged. Speaking to college students in New Hampshire, Mrs. Obama called Mr. Trump's lewd remarks about how he had forced himself on women \"disgraceful\" and \"intolerable. \" \"I can't believe I'm saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,\" Mrs. Obama said as a crowd of young women watched with silent and somber expressions. \"I can't stop thinking about this \u2014 it has shaken me to my core. \" Mrs. Clinton has every political reason to avoid wading into the discussion of sexual assault that has riled a nation and thrown her Republican rival's candidacy into chaos. Not known as a naturally emotive public speaker, Mrs. Clinton risks stumbling if she embraces the issue at a time when polls show that she is in her strongest position yet to defeat Mr. Trump on Nov. 8. She has played it safe, all but disappearing from the campaign trail until the next debate in Las Vegas on Wednesday. But then again, two decades ago, it was Mrs. Clinton, who, as a first lady in a powder pink suit, defied her husband's West Wing advisers and captured the attention of women worldwide by declaring, \"Human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights once and for all. \" Last summer, Mrs. Clinton began her campaign by declaring that she wanted to create \"an America where a father can tell his daughter: 'Yes, you can be anything you want to be. Even president of the United States. '\" Since then, allegations of sexual harassment have led to the ouster of Roger Ailes as chairman of Fox News college campuses have been shaken by the jail sentence given to Brock Turner, a former Stanford University student found guilty of sexual assault and women continue to come forward with allegations against Mr. Trump. At the same time, Mrs. Clinton, so close to becoming the first woman to win the White House amid national outrage over reports of her rival's male lechery, has all but abandoned gender as an issue. On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton appeared to get choked up on the set of \"The Ellen DeGeneres Show\" when, during a taping, Ms. DeGeneres played a portion of Mrs. Obama's speech. But Mrs. Clinton quickly composed herself and, in a remarkable punt, pivoted to a laundry list of other constituencies whom she said Mr. Trump had offended. \"It's not just what Trump has said about women, as terrible as that has been,\" Mrs. Clinton told Ms. DeGeneres. It's \"what he has said about immigrants and and Latinos and people with disabilities and P. O. W.s and our military and Muslims and everybody. \" On Friday, without mentioning the accusations against Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton told volunteers in Seattle: \"This election is incredibly painful. I take absolutely no satisfaction in what is happening on the other side with my opponent. \" Asked if Mrs. Clinton would be speaking more directly about the issue, Jennifer Palmieri, the campaign's communications director, noted that Mrs. Clinton had confronted Mr. Trump at the last debate about the recently released 2005 video in which he bragged about groping women. \"You should expect that she'll continue to do that,\" Ms. Palmieri said. Mrs. Clinton has battle wounds from wading into gender in the past. In 1992, she seemed an affront to mothers when she defended her legal career, saying, \"I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies. \" As a working mother in the White House, Mrs. Clinton redefined the role of first lady when she tried, and subsequently failed, to overhaul health care, but she also played the role of a traditional wife when she stayed with Mr. Clinton despite his affair with Monica Lewinsky. In hacked emails released by WikiLeaks this week, Mrs. Clinton was shown in an interview transcript pondering, at length, the many complexities of running to be the first female president. \"When I ran the last time, the research was pretty clear that there was a resistance to a woman president, not just among Republicans and independents, but among Democrats,\" she said in one of the thousands of emails obtained by hackers who illegally breached a top aide's account. \"They didn't think a woman was qualified, could do the job, didn't see a woman as commander in chief,\" Mrs. Clinton continued. So, in 2008, she played up her fortitude and tried essentially to run as if she were a man. Eight years later, Mrs. Clinton talks regularly about being a mother and a grandmother, and she doesn't shy away from embracing her potential to make history. She has also promised that as president she would advance policies that would help women, including doubling the child care tax credit, increasing the minimum wage and pushing for 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. And yet Mrs. Clinton has found in her second presidential campaign that young women aren't particularly moved by her promise to make history. Many of them voted instead for Mrs. Clinton's primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Thinking about her current campaign, Mrs. Clinton said in the transcript, \"You know, I mean, I'm damned if I do, I'm damned if I don't. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Uganda is launching a drive against online pornography that critics condemn as a diversion from deeper problems of graft, unemployment and crumbling social services facing President Yoweri Museveni. The campaign is the latest salvo in a culture war between conservatives fighting what they see as foreign moral influences promoting criminality and a more liberal, often younger population. This is an invasion, it s Western culture, said Simon Lokodo, a 59-year-old Catholic priest who serves as minister of ethics and integrity. Over consumption of pornography ... the consequences are very dire, he told Reuters this week. The government had released 2 billion shillings ($556,000) to his office to combat online pornography. Some money would go to pornography-blocking software, he said. Some Ugandans expressed anger at the cost of the ban, saying it served only to divert public attention from failures of President Museveni s government. Critics of Museveni, who has ruled for 31 years, say he presides over widespread corruption and human rights abuses. Parliament is considering a removing a constitutional age cap to allow Museveni to serve longer. He is also widely considered to be grooming his son, a presidential adviser and the former commander of an elite military unit, to succeed him. Andrew Karamagi, a rights activist and lawyer in Kampala, said he could not understand government obsession with what people watch, who sleeps with whom, how and when , while it struggled to fund social services such as hospitals and schools. Uganda s only radiotherapy machine broke down last year and hasn t been replaced due to funding shortages. Drug shortages are common in public hospitals where and in dilapidated public schools poorly-paid teachers often don t show up for class. The regime ... does not have the moral authority to combat pornography, Karamagi said. They are themselves an obscenity.","label":0}
{"text":"Puerto Rico's debt crisis, if left unaddressed by the U.S. Congress where legislation has stalled in the House Natural Resources Committee, will result in the need to pay for a humanitarian aid package, Congressman Raul Grijalva said on Thursday. Grijalva, the ranking Democrat on the HNRC from Arizona, said in a teleconference with reporters that it is an \"either\/or\" situation as Puerto Rico faces $70 billion in debt it cannot pay off and a growing humanitarian crisis because it cannot afford maintaining basic social services. \"Either we begin this process, stabilize, create some carve out opportunities for essential services and\/or wait for the crisis to get worse and then have to respond with humanitarian relief,\" Grijalva said, adding that a new draft of the bill had not been made available as of Thursday morning. Grijalva visited Puerto Rico this week and met with the island's leadership and toured its main medical facilities. He said austerity alone is not going to stay the situation of degraded conditions for health, nutrition and education. \"People talk about a bailout. Thus far there is no money being talked about extended by the United States government,\" Grijalva said, adding: \"We are talking about a piece of legislation that provides for a method of restructuring and for some accountability attached to that restructuring.\" The Republican chairman of the HNRC, Rob Bishop of Utah, said he wants a bipartisan bill to emerge from committee but canceled an expected release of the legislation on Wednesday while lawmakers hashed out language revolving around the status of the island of Vieques, pensions and minimum wage rates. Puerto Rico defaulted on May 1 for a third time on some of its debt, missing a roughly $400 million payment owed by the Government Development Bank, the island's main fiscal agent. It faces a near $2 billion July 1 debt payment. The legislation's basic structure still includes the creation of an independent oversight board to lead the restructuring of the U.S. commonwealth's credit and work with the local government to develop an economic reform plan. On the issue of Vieques, Democrats are concerned the language regarding the transfer of federal land on the island, which is mainly a nature preserve, could leave it vulnerable to commercial development in the name of recreation. \"Our position has been from the beginning that Vieques did not belong in this package of legislation,\" said Grijalva.","label":0}
{"text":"Earlier today, President Trump tweeted: We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and\/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! Not only is his latest tweet hilarious, but it speaks to the millions of Trump supporters who are sick and tired of watching #FakeNews networks like CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS spew their vile, leftist propaganda. These over-paid activists, who are posing as hosts of news shows, are so consumed with hate, that they don t even try to hide their embarrassingly biased coverage of our President.We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and\/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2017Is President Trump correct when he says the media has treated him unfairly? Well, an interesting study from the far-left leaning Harvard University, provided stunning evidence that proves President Trump is 100% correct: Chicago Tribune Harvard University s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy has come out with a study of media coverage of the Trump White House in its first 100 days.It is astonishing because it comes from Harvard, not exactly the bedrock of American conservatism.The study found that in Trump s first 100 days in office, the tone of the news coverage of the president has been a whopping 80 percent negative to 20 percent positive.So what does fair and balanced really mean, anyway? It confirms what most people understand, said Tom Bevan, publisher and co-founder of RealClearPolitics, one of the go-to websites for media and political junkies.Bevan spoke as a guest on The Chicago Way podcast that I co-host with WGN-AM radio producer Jeff Carlin. The response will be that Trump is deserving of this kind of coverage because he s conducted himself inappropriately, and these are self-inflicted wounds, and the press is doing nothing but covering him and his actions. But that s a little bit disingenuous, Bevan said.So how was President Obama covered in his first 100 days? With a 60-40 positive to negative ratio, according to the Harvard study. That s a significant shift, a significant difference, says Bevan. I think this is reflective of the fact that the media does root from the press box and they do cheer for certain personalities and they do cheer against others. I have my own memory of the media s tone after Obama took office. It wasn t merely positive, it was adoring, gushy, in the way a small child looks up to a beloved parent, or a dog to the master who gives it biscuits.It was as if the media were hugging a magical unicorn. Obama wasn t only given the benefit of the doubt. He was handed the Nobel Peace Prize though he hadn t done anything to earn it. And critics were trashed as nothing but racists.Obama controversies, from his administration s gun running scandal in the Fast and Furious debacle to using the Internal Revenue Service as a weapon against conservative groups, were covered, somewhat. But generally, the tone was muted, respectful, nothing like it was for Trump or the Clintons.Later, in Hillary Clinton s failed 2016 campaign, leaks of Democratic National Committee email whether hacked by the Russians or not demonstrated collusion between journalists and Democrats. But that cozy relationship has never properly been addressed, and that avoidance undermines the credibility of journalism as the media challenges Trump. Because of the way the press covered Obama, they lost so much credibility, Bevan said. And because they did not take these things seriously, the IRS Scandal, Fast and Furious, you could go down the list of where they turned the other cheek. And now where they re giving Trump the third degree on everything, that makes the contrast all that much greater. So you have a certain segment of the public, the people who voted for Trump, who literally do not trust what the media says. And the divide between rigidly defined political tribes, one courted by the media, the other dismissed by it, grows even wider. It s not good for journalism, and it s not good for the country, said Bevan.","label":1}
{"text":"In my timeline it was Michael Barage, Rump and Billary Mandella Mail with questions or comments about this site. \"Godlike Productions\" & \"GLP\" are registered trademarks of Zero Point Ltd. Godlike\u2122 Website Design Copyright \u00a9 1999 - 2015 Godlikeproductions.com Page generated in 0.004s (8 queries)","label":1}
{"text":"A women s rights group has called a rally to protest against a Portuguese court ruling that upheld a light sentence for a woman s attackers on the grounds they may have been driven to it by her adultery, an offence punishable with death in the Bible. Judges Neto de Moura and Maria Luisa Arantes rejected the prosecutors appeal to toughen the suspended sentence and fine, saying the depressive state of the two defendants - the woman s former husband and her former lover - was a mitigating factor. We read in the Bible that an adulteress should be punished with death, the judges in the Porto Court of Appeal wrote. They also referenced the symbolic sentences given to men who murdered adulterous wives in the late 19th century in Portugal. These references are merely intended to stress that the society has always strongly condemned adultery by a woman and therefore sees the violence by a betrayed, humiliated man with some understanding, they wrote in their Oct. 11 verdict. The UMAR Women s Union for Alternative and Response called the verdict in Portugal s second-largest city revolting and said it perpetuated the ideology of victim-blaming . Evoking the Bible does not combine with the rule of law in our country and discredits the judicial norms, UMAR said in a statement. In the 2015 attack, one of the men assaulted and held the victim while the other attacked her with a nail-spiked club. Her injuries were not life-threatening. Both were convicted and sentenced to pay large fines in addition to suspended time in prison of about a year each. UMAR and the feminist movement Por Todas Nos (For all of Us Women) called a protest rally in downtown Lisbon for Friday. Protests were also called in Porto under the slogan Male chauvinism is not justice, but crime . Ultra-orthodox patriarchy - one of the cornerstones of the fascist dictatorship of Antonio Salazar up until the 1974 revolution - still survives in parts of Portugal.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday that the United States' response so far to Russia orchestrating hacks during the 2016 presidential campaign was just the start. \"Some responses have been made. I think you should regard that as a start and not the end,\" Carter said during a news briefing at the Pentagon alongside the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford. Last month, President Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian suspected spies and imposed sanctions on two intelligence agencies over their involvement in hacking U.S. political groups in the 2016 presidential election. The Kremlin has said the U.S. hacking allegations are \"reminiscent of a witch-hunt.\"","label":0}
{"text":"ESPN host Jemele Hill called President Trump and Kid Rock white supremacists . It didn t end there she said in one of several tweets that Trump is unfit to be president. The screenshot below gives you an idea of how Hill represents ESPN on twitter. It s disgusting!What did ESPN do? You guessed it NOTHING! They tweeted out a mild apology and that s it!This is after Mike Ditka was fired for supporting President Trump and criticizing Obama. Kurt Schilling was also fired after posting a picture on social media against transgender bathrooms.Why hasn t this woman been fired by ESPN?Please contact ESPN to let them know how you feel about this outrage: ESPNTucker Carlson spoke with the awesome Clay Travis last night. Travis shed some light on why Hill is still employed by ESPN:","label":1}
{"text":"In what some may assume is a misspeak and others may attribute to a Freudian slip, Sarah Palin took to Facebook to go after rapper Azealia Banks. To be honest, the two of these ladies fighting is a mind-numbing assault on everything good and decent, because both women are outrageous in their own regards. The two have been trapped in a Twitter battle that s gotten kind of ugly.Trying to end the battle, in her own condescending way, was Palin when she took to her medium of choice, Facebook. She wrote: Hey Female Rapper listen up, little darling. No one has any idea what you re wigging out about in these bizarre, violent rants against me, but you re obviously not exercising enough intelligence to acknowledge you ve been sucked into believing some fake interview in which I supposedly offered comments representing the antithesis of my truth.In this life, you re blessed to have been given an influential platform. So have I. Why don t we strengthen both our platforms and work together on something worthwhile like condoning racism, along with empowering young women to defend themselves against a most misogynist, degrading, devastating assault perpetrated by evil men rape.Thanks. And now I ll go through my young daughter s playlist to make sure there hasn t been any inadvertent addition of any anti-woman, pro-rape garbage that you seem to endorse, which perpetuates the cultural challenges we face in America. I encourage other parents to do the same.God bless you Ms. Banks, as you consider a change of heart. Sarah Palin Mediaite seems to have captured the original post:via FacebookOf course, she either didn t know what condoning means or she really meant it. Either way, she s clearly been notified of how horrific she sounded, because her post was deleted and re-posted with the word condemning instead.Here s the thing, Palin is backing the most racist candidate running for president Donald Trump. His outright bigotry towards Latinos, Muslims, etc. isn t even thinly veiled. He boasts his hatred for the other right in the open. So while Palin may have written the wrong word initially, she clearly is condoning racism and misogyny by backing Trump.Featured Photo by Mark Wilson\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Liberal Democrats and progressive activists have grown wary of the state of the 2016 presidential race, chafing at Hillary Clinton's courtship of Republican leaders they have long opposed and fearing the consequences of shaping the contest as a referendum on Donald J. Trump. While few have questioned the electoral strategy of bringing Republicans into the fold by casting Mr. Trump as a singular threat to democracy, both skeptics and some admirers of Mrs. Clinton have come to view her decisive advantage in the polls with mixed emotions. She may win by a margin, they say. But what, exactly, would the mandate be for? In a matter of weeks, beginning with the party conventions, the debates that animated the Democratic primary race have largely disappeared from the political foreground, giving way to discussions of Mr. Trump's temperament, his inflammatory remarks and even his sanity. \"If she's going to get anything done as president, she is going to have to have a mandate,\" said Robert B. Reich, a secretary of labor in Bill Clinton's administration who supported Bernie Sanders in the primary. The subject of Mr. Trump's temperament was unavoidable, Mr. Reich said, \"but temperament doesn't give you a mandate to do anything. \" Mrs. Clinton's dogged pursuit of Republican votes has especially rankled progressives, and highlights the divisions within the Democratic Party, even as they see a victory more likely. They have grumbled at her eager promotion of endorsements from veterans of the George W. Bush and Reagan administrations, including that of John D. Negroponte, a top diplomat and intelligence official under Mr. Bush. They worry aloud that Henry Kissinger, of whom Mrs. Clinton has often spoken fondly, could be next. \"Secretary Clinton's decision to aggressively court Mitt Romney's base has her looking more and more like Mitt Romney every day,\" said Benjamin T. Jealous, a former N. A. A. C. P. president who initially supported Mr. Sanders. \"That's not a good thing. \" By most measures, the Democratic Party's left flank has had a banner year. Mr. Sanders's primary challenge pushed Mrs. Clinton conspicuously left, coaxing her into policy shifts on trade and college tuition. The party platform was, by virtually all accounts, the most progressive in history, and Mrs. Clinton has not made any perceptible changes in substance recently. Notably, a major economic speech from Mrs. Clinton on Thursday in Michigan would not have seemed out of place in the primary race, with discussions of expanded Social Security, college and a higher minimum wage. And on Friday morning, her campaign, sensitive to any suggestion that Mrs. Clinton might waver on promises to the left, emailed reporters a collection of 22 sympathetic quotes and Twitter posts from leaders and organizations. \"She is not just running as the alternative to the other guy. She is running on a progressive policy agenda that she seriously believes will make a difference in people's lives,\" Brian Fallon, a campaign spokesman, said in an email. \"If she wins, it will not just mean a rejection of Donald Trump. It will be a call to action on the issues she has championed. \" But the campaign's chief gambit since the start of the Democratic convention \u2014 depicting Mr. Trump as a menacing anomaly, disconnected from mainstream Republican thought \u2014 has already supplied conservatives with an opening: Even if Mrs. Clinton wins big, Republicans opposed to Mr. Trump's rise may argue that Americans were not voting for her policy proposals. Some are not waiting. \"Clinton is not likely to emerge with a legislative mandate,\" said Rick Tyler, a former top aide to Senator Ted Cruz's presidential run. \"She will have to start from zero in terms of selling all her policy proposals. They will not have been sold through this process. \" Mr. Tyler, who believes the 2016 election has effectively been decided, predicted a common refrain from Republican legislators next year: \"We didn't see that the people voted for that we see that the people voted against Donald Trump. \" In interviews, elected progressive leaders, activists and local lawmakers made clear that their top priority remains defeating Mr. Trump. Most cautioned that the race was a long way from over, despite a wave of encouraging polls for Mrs. Clinton. Still, some liberals fear their leverage has been diminished, though the vast majority of Sanders supporters have rallied to Mrs. Clinton's side, if sometimes tepidly. If she can win without generating excitement among that already distrustful wing of the party, they reason, she may be less inclined to accommodate it once in office. \"We need the broadest popular front against Donald Trump,\" said Bill Lipton, a founder of the Working Families Party. \"The challenge for the left is, if that's all we do, we're saying anyone one degree to the left of David Duke is O. K. with us. \" Many of Mr. Sanders's backers believe that two of the principal issues he raised during his primary contest against Mrs. Clinton \u2014 her foreign policy hawkishness and her Wall Street ties \u2014 remain central to her political core. \"I fully expected that we would be at war with the Clinton administration, if there is one,\" said Jonathan Tasini, a former union leader who challenged Mrs. Clinton in her Senate primary in 2006. \"Once she is elected, I suspect she will go back to being what she is, which is a relatively moderate, centrist, corporate Democrat. \" Helen Gym, a Philadelphia City Council member who supported Mrs. Clinton in the primary, said the dynamics between Mrs. Clinton's team and the party's activist base reflected \"a fragile negotiation. \" \"The coalition has to hold together,\" she said. \"Is a Clinton victory synonymous with a progressive victory? It depends. I don't think I can give a full yes or no. \" Megan Ellyia Green, a St. Louis alderwoman and Sanders delegate, said she feared Democrats were squandering \"our New Deal moment\" by not focusing voters' attention more intensely on the issues that powered enthusiasm for Mr. Sanders. Mrs. Clinton and her team have long ago grown weary of any implication that she is not entirely committed to liberal causes, repeatedly presenting her as a fusion of pragmatism and idealism. She has called herself \"a progressive who likes to get things done. \" In both of her presidential primary runs, Mrs. Clinton accused her opponents \u2014 first Barack Obama in 2008, then Mr. Sanders \u2014 of promising more than they could credibly deliver. But when approached at her rallies, even zealous Clinton supporters are often to name a signature policy proposal of hers. Her speech in Michigan touched on, among other things, a planned $275 billion infrastructure investment and green energy spending. Mr. Fallon noted that Mrs. Clinton has pledged to act on issues ranging from immigration reform to gun safety. On some such measures, she has promised to pursue executive action in the face of possible congressional resistance. Recent unease from the left has often centered more on presentation and messaging than on the merits of her proposals. \"Her policy proposals are admirably detailed, but they cover so much ground that their whole is less than the sum of their parts,\" Mr. Reich said. \"She really needs to focus on a few big ideas. \" Some Clinton allies have argued that the most pressing goal should be to run up the largest possible margin of victory, which could enable the party to seize seats that might be unwinnable in an ordinary year. And a number of candidates in such elections, including some elevated by Mr. Sanders, have said it is incumbent on them to frame their races as something more than a Trump litmus test. \"It's up to us,\" said Pramila Jayapal, a Washington state senator who recently won her primary in a run for Congress. Adam Green, a founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said Mrs. Clinton's efforts to cast a wide net and train voters' attention on Mr. Trump amounted to a \" sword. \" \"Republicans in Congress won't grant as easily after the election that we won a huge mandate on progressive issues, but thanks to Donald Trump, we might have more progressives and majorities in Congress,\" Mr. Green said. \"I'd rather have a Republican minority in denial about what just happened than a Republican majority standing in the way. \"","label":0}
{"text":"We all know that Trump supporters are crazy, but a man in New York City s Times Square took it to a whole other level on Thursday. The clearly disturbed man is NYC s 21-year-old Krit McClean. He was reportedly shouting about Donald Trump at the top of a ledge, and was completely naked. Authorities and bystanders stared as he blew kisses at the crowd that stopped to watch the show, and was shouting, Donald Trump where are you! It all started when McClean took to the Square early Thursday morning, stripped naked in front of a Disney Store near 46th street, removed the watch from his wrist, hurled it at a nearby woman, and began shouting incoherently. A security guard told McClean to get dressed, but the order was ignored. He also was combative when police arrived, shouting Get that bitch Debbie, I want to talk to Debbie! After that, McClean said he needed to meet with Trump.Then, McClean was atop a 16 foot ledge shouting, Donald Trump where are you, Donald Trump where the f are you?! Officers on the scene report that he was grabbing and waving his private parts at them, did some sort of dance, and then jumped from the ledge, but unfortunately missed the safety apparatus that first responders had down below for him, and hit the pavement instead. He was carted off to Bellevue, a psychiatric institution in New York City, and is reportedly in stable condition.Now, this man is clearly mentally ill, but I find it very telling that he appears to be obsessed with Donald Trump, even in the middle of some kind of psychotic break. That isn t to make fun of McClean, of course. It s just a very interesting connection. May he make a full recovery.","label":1}
{"text":"Saker Message: No current Saker messages. Russia celebrates a Unity Day of liberation of Moscow from the Polish Roman Papists army in 1612 273 Views November 05, 2016 No Comments Scotts Corner Scott  The National Unity Day, first celebrated on 4 November 2005, commemorates the popular uprising lead by prince Dmitry Pozharsky and a meat merchant Kuzma Minin which ejected the alien occupying forces of Polish Roman Papists army from Moscow in November 1612, and more generally the end of the Time of Troubles and foreign interventions in Russia. Its name alludes to the idea that all the classes of the Russian society willingly united to preserve the Russian statehood when its demise seemed inevitable, even though there was neither Tsar nor Patriarch to guide them. Recently this episode was made into a Russian movie 1612.  Minin and Pozharsky: The Liberation of Moscow. (from the triptych \"For the Russian Land!\") Artist Yuri Pantyukhin  Russia: Muscovites celebrate Unity Day in capital  River dance in Simferopol, Crimea  Russia: Putin and Patriarch Kirill bless new monument to Vladimir the Great  Nov 4, 2016  President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new monument to the Russia's first Christian leader Vladimir the Great in Moscow, on Friday. The opening ceremony took place just in few meters from Kremlin walls and coincided with the Russian National Unity Day.  Vladimir Putin, Russian President (Russian): \"Your Holiness. Respected Muscovites! Dear friends! I greet and congratulate you on the opening of the monument to Saint Equal-to-apostles Prince Vladimir. This is a big and significant event for Moscow, for the whole country and for all Russian compatriots. It is symbolic that it is being held on the National Unity Day here in the centre of the capital near the walls of the ancient Kremlin, in the heart of Russia.\"  Vladimir Putin, Russian President (Russian): \"The strong moral support, cohesion and unity helped our ancestors to overcome difficulties, to live and to win for the glory of the Fatherland, to strengthen its power and greatness from generation to generation. And today it is our duty to stand together against modern threats and challenges basing on spiritual precepts, invaluable traditions of unity and concord and to move forward ensuring the continuity of our thousand-year history.\"  Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia (Russian): \"The monument to Prince Vladimir is a symbol of the unity of all the peoples to whom he is farther. This is the peoples of the historical Rus' currently living within the borders of many states. The monument to the farther may be everywhere where his children live. There is no contradiction in it. But it is bad if children forget that they have the only father.\" The Essential Saker: from the trenches of the emerging multipolar world $27.95 Be the First to Comment! Leave a Reply Click here to get more info on formatting (1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks. (2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum. (3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:<b>bold text<\/b> results in bold text <i>italic text<\/i> results in italic text (You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)<em>emphasized text<\/em> results in emphasized text <strong>strong text<\/strong> results in strong text <q>a quote text<\/q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically) <cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited<\/cite> results in: a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited <blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...<\/blockquote> results in: a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly. and last but not least:<a href=''http:\/\/link-address.com''>Name of your link<\/a> results in Name of your link (4) No need to use this special character in between paragraphs: ; You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated. The \"Live Preview\" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it. (5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like. Search articles","label":1}
{"text":"License DMCA  MIDDLEBURY, Vt. -- The Native Americans who have spent the last months in peaceful protest against an oil pipeline along the banks of the Missouri are standing up for tribal rights. They're also standing up for clean water, environmental justice and a working climate. And it's time that everyone else joined in.  The shocking images of the National Guard destroying tepees and sweat lodges and arresting elders this week remind us that the battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline is part of the longest-running drama in American history -- the United States Army versus Native Americans. In the past, it's almost always ended horribly, and nothing we can do now will erase a history of massacres, stolen land and broken treaties. But this time, it can end differently.  Those heroes on the Standing Rock reservation, sometimes on horseback, have peacefully stood up to police dogs, pepper spray and the bizarre-looking militarized tanks and SWAT teams that are the stuff of modern policing. (Modern and old-fashioned both: The pictures of German shepherds attacking are all too reminiscent of photos from, say, Birmingham, Ala., in 1963.)  The courage of those protesters managed to move the White House enough that the government called a temporary halt to construction. But the forces that want it finished -- Big Oil, and its allies in parts of the labor movement -- are strong enough that the respite may be temporary.  In coming weeks, activists will respond to calls from the leaders at Standing Rock by gathering at the offices of banks funding the pipeline, and at the offices of the Army Corps of Engineers, for protest and civil disobedience. Two dozen big banks have lent money to the pipeline project, even though many of them have also adopted elaborate environmental codes . As for the Corps, that's the agency that helped \"expedite\" the approval of the pipeline -- and must still grant the final few permits. The vast movement of people across the country who mobilized to block fossil-fuel projects like the Keystone pipeline and Shell's plans to drill in the Arctic need to gather once more. This time, their message must be broader still. - Advertisement -  There are at least two grounds for demanding a full environmental review of this pipeline, instead of the fast-track approvals it has received so far. The first is the obvious environmental racism of the whole project.  Originally, the pipeline was supposed to cross the Missouri just north of Bismarck , until people pointed out that a leak there would threaten the drinking water supply for North Dakota's second biggest city. The solution, in keeping with American history, was obvious: make the crossing instead just above the Standing Rock reservation, where the poverty rate is nearly three times the national average. This has been like watching the start of another Flint, Mich., except with a chance to stop it.  The second is that this is precisely the kind of project that climate science tells us can no longer be tolerated. In midsummer, the Obama administration promised that henceforth there would be a climate test for new projects before they could be approved. That promise was codified in the Democratic platform approved by Hillary Clinton's campaign, which says there will be no federal approval for any project that \"significantly exacerbates\" global warming.  The review of the Dakota pipeline must take both cases into account.  So far, the signs are not good. There has been no word from the White House about how long the current pause will last. Now, the company building the pipeline has pushed the local authorities to remove protesters from land where construction has already desecrated indigenous burial sites, with law enforcement agents using Tasers, batons, mace and \"sound cannons.\" - Advertisement -  From the Clinton campaign, there's been simply an ugly silence, perhaps rooted in an unwillingness to cross major contributors like the Laborers' International Union of North America , which has lashed out against the many other, larger unions that oppose the project. But that silence won't make the issue go away: Sioux protesters erected a tepee in her Brooklyn campaign office on Thursday. If Mrs. Clinton is elected on Nov. 8, this will be the new president's first test on environmental and human rights.  What's happening along the Missouri is of historic consequence. That message should reverberate not just on the lonely high plains, but in our biggest cities, too. Native Americans have carried the fight, but they deserve backup from everyone with a conscience; other activists should join the protest at bank headquarters, Army Corps offices and other sites of entrenched power.  The Native Americans are the only people who have inhabited this continent in harmony with nature for centuries. Their traditional wisdom now chimes perfectly with the latest climate science. The only thing missing are the bodies of the rest of us joining in their protest. If we use them wisely, a fresh start is possible. View Ratings | Rate It Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books, including The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. A former staff writer for The New Yorker, he writes regularly for Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, and The ( more... )","label":1}
{"text":"Sir Rod Stewart has apologized after a video appeared online this week in which the rocker seemingly performed an mock execution on a male friend in the desert. [According to the Independent, Stewart's wife Penny Lancaster first posted the video to her Instagram account, which showed the \"Maggie May\" singer walking on a sand dune in the desert of Abu Dhabi with a group of friends. At one point, one of Stewart's male friends kneels down in front of the singer, as Stewart pulls his head back with his hand and appears to make a cutting motion across the man's throat. The video was deleted from Lancaster's account but was captured by several media outlets, including TMZ. The rocker came under fire from some fans, social media users and even the families of ISIS victims. Relatives of David Haines and Alan Henning, two British aid workers who were murdered by the ISIS terrorist known as Jihadi John, told the UK Mirror that they found the joke to be \"brainless\" and \"disgraceful. \" Stewart apologized in a statement, saying he had not intended to mock ISIS executions and had instead been emulating a scene from the HBO series Game of Thrones. \"From the Beatles' Abbey Road crossing to spontaneously playing out Game of Thrones, we were simply larking about \" he said in a statement to the Independent. \"Understandably, this had been misinterpreted and I send my deepest apologies to those who have been offended. \" Stewart's apology did little to quell the criticism (and sarcastic jokes) on social media. Not sure I'm a great fan of Rod Stewart's new album cover, tbh. pic. twitter. \u2014 Thomas Jones (@tomj191) March 3, 2017, Rod Stewart, what happened, man? \u2014 DIRTBAG LEFTIST (@coconono) March 3, 2017, I hope I've got the energy to perform mock executions with teenagers when I'm Rod Stewart's age. I won't probably, but nice to have options, \u2014 John Shafthauer (@hourlyterrier) March 3, 2017, Excited to start my first day as Rod Stewart's US publicist. Time to take a huge swig of coffee and see what's in today's news pic. twitter. \u2014 Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) March 3, 2017, Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum","label":0}
{"text":"North Korea's biggest nuclear test, conducted last week less than 50 miles from the Chinese border, sent tremors through homes and schools in China's northeast. But hours later, there was no mention of the test on China's evening television news, watched by hundreds of millions of viewers. The decision on Friday to publicly ignore stark evidence of Pyongyang's expanding nuclear capabilities illustrated the embarrassment that North Korea's leader, Kim poses for his patrons in Beijing. But although North Korea remains nearly 100 percent dependent on China for oil and food, Chinese analysts say Beijing will not modify its allegiance to North Korea or pressure the country to curtail its drive for a nuclear arsenal, as the United States keeps requesting. \"The United States cannot rely on China for North Korea,\" said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. \"China is closer to North Korea than the United States. \" China sees living with a state on its border as preferable to the chaos of its collapse, Mr. Shi said. The Chinese leadership is confident that North Korea will not turn its weapons on China, and that China can control its neighbor by providing enough oil to keep its economy afloat. The alternative is a strategic nightmare for Beijing: a collapsed North Korean regime, millions of refugees piling into China and a unified Korean Peninsula under an American defense treaty. The Obama administration's decision to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea also gives President Xi Jinping of China less incentive to cooperate with Washington on a North Korea strategy that could aim, for example, to freeze the North's nuclear capacity, the analysts said. The missile defenses in South Korea, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or Thaad, have effectively killed any chance of China's cooperating with the United States, they said. \"China is strongly opposed to North Korea's nuclear weapons but at the same time opposes the defense system in South Korea,\" said Cheng Xiaohe, an assistant professor of international relations at Renmin University. It is not clear which situation the Chinese leadership is more agitated about, he said. Beijing interprets the Thaad deployment as another American effort to contain China. The system reinforces China's view that its alliance with North Korea is an integral part of China's strategic interests in Asia, with America's treaty allies Japan and South Korea and tens of thousands of American troops close by, Mr. Shi said. Washington insists that the Thaad system, due to be installed in 2017, is intended to defend South Korea against North Korean missiles, and is not aimed at China. The system \"does not change the strategic balance between the United States and China,\" President Obama said after meeting with Mr. Xi in Hangzhou, China, a week ago. But China is not persuaded. Chinese officials argue that the Thaad radar can detect Chinese missiles on the mainland, undermining its nuclear deterrent. So despite what Chinese analysts describe as the government's distaste for Mr. Kim and his unpredictable behavior, China's basic calculus on North Korea remains firm. Mr. Xi is expected to continue to ensure that North Korea remains stable. The Chinese leader, 63, has shown disdain for the much younger Mr. Kim, 32. He has not invited him to China, and has authorized only sporadic visits by Chinese officials to Pyongyang. The two militaries remain largely uninvolved with each other. But the personal and professional antagonisms do not alter Beijing's goal of preventing a unification of North and South Korea under an American defense arrangement. The longstanding fear that punitive economic action would destabilize North Korea makes it very unlikely that Beijing will cooperate with the United States on more stringent sanctions at the United Nations, according to Chinese analysts. In March, after considerable hesitation, China agreed to Washington's appeals and signed on to tough United Nations sanctions that included a ban on the export of North Korean coal. Now, as the West moves toward another round of United Nations sanctions, China's mood is very different, said a former senior Chinese official who worked on North Korea. He said some officials were wondering why China would work with the United States at the United Nations after Washington went ahead with the antimissile system against Chinese wishes. Meanwhile, the sanctions imposed in March have been enforced in only a desultory fashion, trade experts said. A loophole in the sanctions allows North Korean coal to be sold if the proceeds are used for humanitarian purposes, and that opening seems to have been exploited, said Stephan Haggard, a Korea expert at the University of California, San Diego. The sale of coal since the sanctions came into force was down 12 percent from the same period last year, a marginal amount, he said. On its own, the United States imposed secondary sanctions on business entities that do business with North Korea and in the United States. But North Korean businesses have found Chinese partners or are creating front companies to use smaller Chinese banks, Mr. Haggard said. There are differing opinions in China about whether an oil embargo \u2014 an unlikely punishment \u2014 would result in Mr. Kim's giving up his weapons. If China stopped the flow of oil, North Korea would face a severe economic crisis in about one year, and then face a choice between keeping its economy going or maintaining its nuclear program, the former senior official said. It is possible that at that point, Mr. Kim would negotiate, the former official said. But others disagree, saying the Chinese government would not dare cut the oil supply, knowing that North Korea would be able to get supplies from Russia and elsewhere. \"The fundamental reason for not cutting oil is they don't want to sacrifice the buffer zone, and they also know if they cut off the oil supply, it will not force Kim to surrender his weapons,\" Mr. Shi said. Mr. Shi questioned why China would want to risk making North Korea into an enemy by cutting off the oil supply. \"If you cut off the oil, there is a 50 percent possibility North Korea will not surrender their weapons, and they will hate China even more,\" he said. China's continued support of North Korea is a fundamental reason the United States should stop relying on China for progress on reducing the North Korean nuclear threat, said Joel Wit, a visiting scholar at the U. S. Institute at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Wit is among a group of American North Korea experts who believe the United States should take the lead and negotiate with the North.","label":0}
{"text":"Home \/ Badge Abuse \/ Police Family Fakes Robbery, Vandalizes Own Home to Blame it On Black Lives Matter Police Family Fakes Robbery, Vandalizes Own Home to Blame it On Black Lives Matter Matt Agorist October 31, 2016 Leave a comment  Millbury, MA \u2014 If you want to scam your insurance company while painting a group in a negative light who wants your husband and his peers to be held accountable for beating and killing unarmed black people, you can simply fake a robbery on your police officer's home and blame it on Black Lives Matter. But, you have to do it better than Maria Daly, who was busted last week for that very act.  According to CBS Boston, police say on October 17 Maria Daly reported a burglary at the family home, saying jewelry and money had been stolen. She also reportedly said her house was tagged with graffiti that appeared to reference the Black Lives Matter movement.  After investigators looked at the supposed crime scene, however, they quickly determined the entire account was false.  \"Something wasn't quite right,\" said Millbury Police Chief Donald Desorcy. \"I think that was pretty obvious and as a result of that investigation, the officers did their due diligence and followed through with the investigation that we had.\"  \"Basically we came to the conclusion that it was all fabricated,\" said Desorcy. \"There was no intruder, there was no burglary.\"  After Daly robbed and vandalized her own home, she reported it to police and then went on social media to decry the 'hatred' against her husband from Black Lives Matter.  \"We woke up to not only our house being robbed while we were sleeping , but to see this hatred for no reason,\" she said.  Naturally, chief Desorcy quickly exonerated Daly's police officer husband, noting that he had no role in the deception. Whatever you say chief.  \"She must have tagged the place herself,\" one neighbor said. \"I don't know why you'd do that if you're gonna stage a robbery, I mean really come on, you're a cop's wife. You should know better.\"  Maria Daly faces charges of filing a false police report and misleading a police investigation, according to CBS Boston.  People vandalizing their own property to blame Black Lives Matter is not an isolated incident.  A man who accused Black Lives Matter activists of vandalizing and spray-painting his car was recently arrested because police believe that he vandalized the car himself to stage a hoax and to scam his insurance company. Scott Lattin, a self-described supporter of police, reported in September of 2015, that his truck was torn apart and tagged with the phrase \"Black Lives Matter.\" Lattin alleged that his vehicle was targeted because he had a number of pro-police stickers and symbols displayed.  Lattin's story received national press, and he even appeared on a number of news programs where he showed the damage that was done to his truck. However, shortly after the hype, Whitney police arrested Lattin on a misdemeanor charge of making a false police report.  \"We had initial video when the officers took the report and then when we saw your story on Channel 4. When we looked at those two videos, there were some differences in those and that led us to take the investigation into a different direction,\" Whitney Police Chief Chris Bentley said, adding that the case was \"very disturbing.\"  Lattin was apparently so excited about going on TV he further vandalized his own truck, more so than what was initially reported. When police noticed the extra damage on the TV report, they knew he was lying. Share","label":1}
{"text":"(Want to get this briefing by email? Here's the .) Good evening. Here's the latest. 1. Democrats seemed relieved and pleased a day after Hillary Clinton used a major speech to ridicule Donald J. Trump. Some Republicans fretted that Mr. Trump might not be up to the task of repelling such attacks. \"I thought it was one of the most important speeches Secretary Clinton has made throughout this campaign,\" said Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary under President Obama and chief of staff for Bill Clinton. _____ 2. The judge hearing a lawsuit by former students of Trump University is a cool customer, his friends say. That temperament is said to be helping the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, weather unusual public criticism by Mr. Trump. His attacks on Judge Curiel, including calling out his Mexican heritage, are part of a pattern of behavior that has led some scholars to question Mr. Trump's respect for the rule of law. _____ 3. Officials in Chicago released videos and other materials from 101 cases in which police officers had shot or otherwise injured civilians. The officials said many of the videos were not illuminating, but the disclosure was unusual for a city whose police department has a reputation for secrecy. The head of the investigative agency behind the release said it represented \"an important step\" toward increased transparency. _____ 4. As flooding in Paris threatened the Louvre, staff members and volunteers worked to remove art from harm's way. Nearly 160, 000 works were moved to higher floors from storage areas and galleries. Rain has lifted the Seine River to its highest levels since 1982. _____ 5. The U. S. economic recovery isn't quite as robust as analysts had hoped: Employers added just 38, 000 workers in May, the lowest monthly growth since September 2010. But the numbers aren't as foreboding as they seem, our analyst writes. Averaging job growth over the past three months shows a more modest slowdown. _____ 6. Nest, a digital device maker Google bought for $3. 2 billion in 2014, drew comparisons to Apple with its innovative approach to bringing unglamorous household devices like thermostats into sync with a digital world. Its Tony Fadell said Friday that he was leaving because Nest was in \"maintenance mode. \" But the departure came after reports that Nest had a harsh corporate culture and Mr. Fadell an abrasive style. _____ 7. It's a big weekend in sports, kicking off tonight at 9:30 Eastern time with the first game of the Copa Am\u00e9rica soccer tournament, pitting the United States against Colombia. On Saturday, Serena Williams goes for her 22nd major championship in the French Open final, and the Pittsburgh Penguins shoot for a lead over the San Jose Sharks in the Stanley Cup finals. Sunday brings Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray competing in the French Open final, while the Cleveland Cavaliers, down to the Golden State Warriors in the N. B. A. finals, try to tie the series. _____ 8. If you're looking for a movie to watch this weekend, our critics say the mockumentary \"Popstar: Never Stop Stopping\" is one of your best bets. It features Andy Samberg as a Justin pop idol, and \"takes aim at everything that is artificial and plastic in contemporary pop in a spirit of love rather than spite,\" A. O. Scott writes. Ostensibly more serious fare: \"Me Before You\" is the story of a romance between a paralyzed aristocrat and the woman hired to keep him company. But Mr. Scott finds it to be ridiculous. _____ 9. Most West African capitals are scenes of sartorial flair, but the bright patterns adorning skirts and dresses worn by women there are more than just eye candy. Messages ranging from the playful to the political are encoded within the prints. During election season, clothes sporting the face of a politician can signify support \u2014 although that depends on where the face is placed. _____ 10. A Japanese boy survived six nights alone on the island of Hokkaido. He had wandered off after being left on the side of the road by his parents as a disciplinary measure, and was found by soldiers on a military base about three miles away. \"I'm full of gratitude. From now on, I'm going to take better care of him as he grows up,\" the boy's father said. _____ 11. In other rescue news, a Florida fisherman who fell out of his boat without a life jacket was saved by the Coast Guard after 20 exhausting hours treading water, a local news channel reported. The man, William Durden, said the night was an ordeal but when the sun came up, he felt a surge of optimism. He felt fish hitting his legs, but his fears that a shark \"would come out and decide to have me for dinner\" went unrealized. Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don't miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here's last night's briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com.","label":0}
{"text":"If the weather hadn't been so foul, the most dramatic moment of Tiffany Mallory's wedding to Jerrell Moore would never have happened. \"It had been pouring, and then it stopped raining but turned cold and windy right as we started the ceremony,\" said Mrs. Mallory Moore, who was married April 2 before 140 guests on the back lawn of the Mint Museum in Charlotte, N. C. Just as she arrived through the squall to meet her groom at the altar, a gust blew her veil into the sky. \"It went flying, right off my head,\" she said. \"But I'm over six feet tall, so people thought it looked very glamorous. \" During a very wet April and May on the East Coast, many couples learned the hard way that a perfect (or at least nearly perfect) wedding does not require perfect weather. \"Did my guests get wet? Yes, kind of,\" said Minoo Fadaifard Wade, who married John Wade in a drizzle on May 21 at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in front of a crowd of 82. \"It was chilly, too. But nobody complained. Everybody made the best of it. We were all lighthearted. \" Should rain clouds threaten your wedding, here are some tips on how to salvage that perfect day, provided by couples who have managed to do just that. Rain was expected on May 22, the day Jill Jacinto, 30, was to marry Sander van den Bergh, 31, on the outdoor terrace of Battery Gardens, a New York restaurant. But she held out hope that the day would clear by the ceremony's 4:30 p. m. start time. \"I gave up on checking weather. com the night before and assumed an indoor ceremony was in our future and out of our hands,\" said Ms. Jacinto, an associate director at an investment firm. \"But then 30 minutes before the start time, the sun came out. \" The couple was able to swiftly switch from their Plan B \u2014 an sheltered space \u2014 to the patio, their Plan A. \"We ended up with a gorgeous ceremony,\" Ms. Jacinto said. \"But we were ready for whatever happened. \" At Mariana Rodrigues and David Rothschild's May 21 wedding at Cherry Hill in Central Park, rain began falling as guests boarded buses bound for a reception at the NoMad Hotel. \"The bus driver was really kind and offered everyone on the upper deck ponchos, but I was pretty upset,\" said Mrs. Rothschild, 32, a former financial executive. \"Then I was upset with myself for being upset, and David reminded me that that was absolutely warranted, that I was allowed to have that moment. \" She did not let the moment last, though. \"I realized it wasn't perfect but it was a great celebration,\" she said. \"You have to remember that the weather is out of your control, and just enjoy yourself. \" Erin McGrail and Elliot Fleming invited 150 guests to their June 2014 wedding under a stately oak tree at the Destrehan Plantation, just outside New Orleans. Thirty minutes before the ceremony, the sky turned black. \"Then it just started pouring torrentially in that typical New Orleans way,\" Mrs. Fleming, 28, said. Instead of panicking as she watched friends and family run for shelter at a gift shop, she played it cool. \"At first I took it badly,\" Mrs. Fleming said. \"Then I saw how upset my mom was. So I said to myself, 'Stay calm, we can figure this out. '\" The wedding was moved to the reception site nearby, where guests were seated at decorated tables. \"But it didn't matter: At that point I had just accepted it for what it was,\" said Mrs. Fleming, who works in purchasing at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans. Looking back, she added, she wouldn't change a thing. \"Your state of mind is going to determine your guests' state of mind,\" said Constantino Khalaf. Mr. Khalaf, 36, married David Khalaf, 38, on May 14 in Cathedral Park in Portland, Ore. the couple's hometown, under drizzly skies with the occasional hard rain. There was no shelter for their 65 guests. \"We warned people far in advance to bring their umbrellas and raincoats, because we knew getting married in May in Portland was like playing Russian roulette with the weather,\" said David Khalaf, who runs the Christian website Modern Kinship with his husband. Then they made the best of it. During the reception, held at the wedding site, \"We all huddled together to stay warm, and we danced in the rain,\" he said. \"If you're just like, 'Hey, this is a beautiful occasion, let's dance in the rain,' everybody is going to pick up on that,\" \"The first advice I would give is: Ask all your vendors what their rain policies are, and read the contracts closely,\" said Mrs. Mallory Moore, the bride whose veil wouldn't stay put and who is also an assistant United States attorney with the Western District of North Carolina. That includes contracts with musicians. \"Some live musicians who play string instruments won't play in dampness,\" she said. \"We had a trio of horn players, so it worked out for us. But it might not have if we had a violinist. \" She also was not sure how her florist would handle broken vases several were smashed in the storm. The couple was not charged. \"But you really have to pay attention to that stuff,\" Mrs. Mallory Moore said. Rachel Bowie felt personally responsible when the rain started coming down on May 13 at Jane's Carousel in Brooklyn, where 99 guests had gathered to watch her and Matthew Dorville get married. \"It was Friday the 13th. We sort of asked for it,\" she said. But she was glad she remembered a tip from her photographer: buy a lot of clear umbrellas. \"They don't cast a shadow on your face,\" said Mrs. Bowie, 33, an editor who lives in Brooklyn. If she had to do it over again, she would have asked a friend to pack galoshes for her, too. \"Right before I walked down the aisle my shoes were so wet I was slipping in them. I had been jumping through those gross, deceptively deep New York City puddles. \" Hurricane Irene was an uninvited guest at the August 2011 wedding of Jacqueline Shea and Matthew Bailey of Eatontown, N. J. When the bride was getting her nails done in preparation for the rehearsal dinner, an evacuation was ordered for an area that included the wedding site on the beach near Asbury Park.' \"\"I was in denial, like, this is not happening,\" said Mrs. Bailey, 35, a teacher of the deaf. The couple married that night at a local restaurant. Flowers were assembled from Trader Joe's, and the bride's mother bought a sheet cake from ShopRite.\" 'Then, vendors refused to refund deposits for the wedding. A year later, the couple appeared on Anderson Cooper's talk show, \"Anderson,\" ostensibly to warn other couples about the need to buy wedding insurance. Instead, Mr. Cooper announced that the show was giving them a wedding redo, including a reception at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in West Orange, N. J. and a trip to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, to renew their vows on the beach. The Baileys now have two children, ages 1 and 2\u00bd, and more perspective on disasters. \"I think what happened to us is sort of like a precursor to what everybody finds out once they're married,\" Mrs. Bailey said. \"And that's that there are ups and there are downs in married life, sometimes big ones. What you do is you make the most of it, no matter what. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Fox News host Sean Hannity is having a Twitter meltdown after Time called out Donald Trump for claiming that the magazine called him regarding the Person of the Year award and that he declined the offer.Time magazine corrected Trump in a tweet, writing, The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6. The magazine calling out Trump was too much to bear for Trump cult member Sean Hannity who called it bullshit just hours after Time denied the former reality show star s bizarre claim. I call total Bullshit on Time. Answer the question; did you or did you not call the WH and say @realDonaldTrump @POTUS was being considered for person of the year and ask for an interview? Hannity tweeted Friday.I call total Bullshit on Time. Answer the question; did you or did you not call the WH and say @realDonaldTrump @POTUS was being considered for person of the year and ask for an interview? https:\/\/t.co\/DaqfDBsr0V Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) November 25, 2017And again.So @Time is worse than Fake News @CNN. The coming ice age, The Big Cool ha. https:\/\/t.co\/mppoFtFsvc Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) November 25, 2017Sean really wants the magazine s attention.Waiting https:\/\/t.co\/90GSYMVVKU Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) November 25, 2017Twitter users, of course, are calling out Liddle Sean.You re questioning Time? Why aren t you questioning the man who hung fake Time covers of himself in his resorts? It s sad you haven t caught on to his lies yet, Sean. Mrs. SMH (@MaraLaGoFuckYou) November 25, 2017pic.twitter.com\/UJtVSaKgOF What the Fork (@WhattheForkLLC) November 25, 2017Only the finest make it on @TIME @POTUS44 @MichelleObama pic.twitter.com\/fGLX2Rzgwo NAT (@N_A_T_39) November 25, 2017LMAO! Let s look at this logically. @Time magazine has been in business 93 years. It s never gone bankrupt. It s a respected institution.@realdonaldtrump has gone bankrupt 4 times, has been caught in scores of lies including a fake Time cover mounted on his golf club walls. pic.twitter.com\/ywzr96arh1 Annalise Brown (@SWFLib) November 25, 2017Donnie can t stand the idea of Obama being Time s Man of the Year in the first year of his presidency. He knows he ll never be half the man or the President @BarackObama was, and it s eating him up inside. pic.twitter.com\/ROMxC3oc7C Annalise Brown (@SWFLib) November 25, 2017As this woman notes, Trump has always been obsessed with Time magazine.Honey, just get the man warm milk and one for yourself Also. pic.twitter.com\/LMV9lwg9Lx kastherine (@Mercedes8_S) November 25, 2017Find a comfy chair. Drink some warm milk. And wait for the voices to stop. Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 25, 2017With Trump s history, a man who literally hangs photoshopped Time magazine covers featuring his big stupid face, on the walls of at least 4 of his golf courses, we re pretty it s not Time magazine who is lying.Photo by Rob Kim\/Getty Images.","label":1}
{"text":"Bestselling conservative author Ann Coulter, one of President Donald Trump's earliest and staunchest supporters, railed against the Obamacare 2. 0 bill championed by House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday. [Obamacare 2. 0 would inflict severe healthcare costs on Rust Belt voters while easing taxes on counties that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, according to Bloomberg News. Trump swept into the White House on a populist wave because voters protested mass immigration policies, erosive trade deals, and Middle Eastern military conflicts \u2014 not because they wanted another \"crazy corporatist agenda,\" Coulter tweeted. Could some investigative reporter write a piece explaining why Ryan is so hellbent on this deeply unpopular healthcare bill? \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, We did the tough thing! We passed an unpopular bill! \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, GOP: When did you get the sense that Americans are clamoring for a tax cut to help the \"job creators\"? \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, Only 50% of people even pay taxes! \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, \"Job creators\" aren't popular right now. They're creating jobs in Indonesia and jobs for lobbyists. \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, TRUMP DIDN'T RUN ON CUTTING TAXES! \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, NO ONE SAID CUTTING TAXES WAS TOP PRIORITY! Even businesses would prefer cutting regulations, red tape and trial lawyers. \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, The only thing that got the GOP this win that voters thought Trump was going to abandon this crazy corporatist agenda. \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, GOP response to Trump's victory has been to on all the ugly unpopular policies that make GOP hated. \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, GOP has to get working class votes, or they're just handing it to social justice warriors. \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, I'd love to pay less in taxes. THAT ISN'T THE BIGGEST PROBLEM. Bigger: No jobs, no health care, no wall, immigrant crime welfare \u2026 \u2014 Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 22, 2017, Conservatives are furious over the bill's complete lack of enforcement against illegal aliens receiving healthcare tax credits \u2014 meant for citizens and certain immigrants \u2014 through document fraud and identity theft. Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash said the bill has \"no constituency\" beyond the political class entrenched in Washington, D. C. and their wealthy insurance company allies.","label":0}
{"text":"Trump s brand-new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, is raising some eyebrows, and not because he s another former Wall Streeter. He supported both Obama and Hillary, and has expressed some considerably liberal views on things like gun laws and the 2nd Amendment. That may well put Trump at war with the NRA, because the NRA is likely to see this as a betrayal of sorts.In 2012, Scaramucci was very clear in his position on gun laws, and they do not match what the NRA wants to see in the White House at all:Image via TwitterHe also told all of Twitter that he s always supported strong gun laws. The NRA hates any gun laws in fact, they like to push lawmakers to loosen them in response to mass shootings:Image via TwitterSo, of course, NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch isn t exactly thrilled with Scaramucci s appointment. She s hoping that he s changed his position since then, because, after all, the only things that matter to the NRA-types are guns. Lives? Safety? Well, those are just collateral damage in the fight for freedom.Loesch and the NRA have been under fire recently for a patently disgusting ad calling liberal protesters messages the violence of lies, and that also said that liberals assassinate the truth. She says that it s up to real Americans to fight the violence of lies with the clenched fist of truth. It s not hard to interpret that as a call to eliminate liberals.Scaramucci is, crazily enough, someone that Trump believes will be loyal to him, first and foremost and above everything else. Will he actually do that, though? Maybe. He ll have to do a complete 180 on issues like gun control, which then throws his convictions and credibility into doubt. Who will come out on top when all is said and done? Only time will tell.","label":1}
{"text":"We always knew that the Trump Administration was anti-LGBTQ. However, he just went full throttle on Twitter in an incredibly bigoted way. Despite his promises during the campaign, Trump is now insisting that transgender people should not be included in military service. Trump tweeted that transgender people would never serve in the military under his direction. Trump tweeted:Of course, this is a major reversal of Obama-era policies. President Obama ended the travesty that was Don t Ask, Don t Tell for lesbian, gay, and bisexual service members. Now, he is going after the policy that would provide healthcare for transgender soldier. Trump just effectively let the nation know that he has every intention of taking the nation back to a time when equality was simply not on the table for anyone not straight, white, Christian, and cisgender.Of course, this is red meat for Trump s bigoted base. Also, his rabidly anti-LGBTQ #2 Soldier in bigotry, Mike Pence, likely had a whole hell of a lot to do with this. Pence hates LGBTQ people, as was shown by the actions and statements he made first during his time in Congress, and then as Governor of Indiana.This is disgraceful. Trump made all kinds of promises he is refusing to keep. He promised he wouldn t go after LGBTQ people. He promised to be a president for all Americans. He has now officially proven that he never had any intention of doing any such thing.This is indeed a dark day for America.","label":1}
{"text":"As she announced in January 2016 that the Philippines would immunize one million children with a new dengue vaccine, the nation s then health secretary Janette Garin boasted it was a world-first and a tribute to her country s expertise in research. At the time, it seemed the Philippines could be on the cusp of a breakthrough to combat a potentially lethal tropical virus that had been endemic in large parts of the Southeast Asian nation for decades. Almost two years later, the program lies in tatters and has been suspended after Sanofi Pasteur, a division of French drug firm Sanofi, said at the end of last month the vaccine itself may in some cases increase the risk of severe dengue in recipients not previously infected by the virus. Documents reviewed by Reuters that have not been disclosed until now, as well as interviews with local experts, show that key recommendations made by a Philippines Department of Health (DOH) advisory body of doctors and pharmacologists were not heeded before the program was rolled out to 830,000 children. After Garin s announcement, the Formulary Executive Council (FEC) of advisers urged caution over the vaccine because it said its safety and cost-effectiveness had not been established. After twice meeting in January, the panel approved the state s purchase of the vaccine on Feb 1, 2016 but recommended stringent conditions, minutes of all three meetings show. Based on the available scientific evidence presented to the Council, there is still a need to establish long-term safety, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, the FEC told Garin in a letter on that day. The letter was reviewed by Reuters. The FEC said Dengvaxia should be introduced through small-scale pilot tests and phased implementation rather than across three regions in the country at the same time, and only after a detailed baseline study of the prevalence and strains of dengue in the targeted area, the FEC letter and minutes of the meetings said. The experts also recommended that Dengvaxia be bought in small batches so the price could be negotiated down. An economic evaluation report commissioned by Garin s own department had found the proposed cost of 1,000 pesos ($21.29) per dose was not cost-effective from a public payer perspective, the minutes from the meetings reveal. For reasons that Reuters was unable to determine, these recommendations were ignored. The DOH purchased 3 million doses of Dengvaxia in one lot, enough for the required three vaccinations for each child in the proposed immunization program and paid 1,000 pesos per dose, a copy of the purchase order reviewed by Reuters shows. It did conduct a limited baseline study in late February and March 2016, but the survey looked at common illnesses rather than the prevalence of dengue, according to guidelines issued by Garin s office at the time and reviewed by Reuters. Garin, who was part of the government of former president Benigno Aquino and replaced when President Rodrigo Duterte took power in June, 2016, did not respond to requests for comment on why she ignored the local experts recommendations. A physician, Garin has defended her conduct and a program that she said was implemented in accordance with WHO guidance and recommendations . I understand the concern, she told Philippine TV station ABS-CBN on Friday. Even us, we re also very angry when we learned about Sanofi s announcement about severe dengue. I m also a mother. My child was also vaccinated. I was also vaccinated. DOH spokesman Lyndon Lee Suy also did not respond to text messages or questions emailed to him. Sanofi Philippines declined comment on the Philippines government decision. However, Dr. Su-Peing Ng, Global Medical Head of Sanofi Pasteur, told Reuters: We communicated all known benefits and risks of the vaccine to the Philippines government. Rontgene Solante, former president of the Philippines Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, said health officials were motivated to end the debilitating impact of dengue on the Philippines, where there are about 200,000 reported cases each year and many more unreported. Over 1,000 people died of the disease in the country last year. Two months after the FEC wrote to the health secretary, the DOH began immunizing one million students around the age of 10 in all three target areas in April 2016, in accordance with its original plan but at odds with the FEC s recommendations to conduct a slow roll-out of the vaccine. The usual process for the DOH that has protected our children for so many decades was not followed. That s a fact, said Susan Mercado, a former Philippines health department undersecretary and former senior official at the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO said in April 2016 that the Philippines campaign appeared to meet its criteria for using Dengvaxia because the targeted regions had high levels of dengue exposure; the vaccine would be provided to children 9 years and older; and they would each receive three doses. WHO was not involved in the deliberations of the FEC, according to the minutes. It said in a statement last week that a position paper on the dengue vaccine it published in July 2016 did not include a recommendation for countries to introduce it. Now, after Sanofi s warnings, WHO has said it agrees with the government s decision to suspend the immunization program. The current secretary of health in the Duterte administration, Francisco Duque, said he would carry out a thorough analysis of the FEC s recommendations and the program before passing judgment. He said the Council s recommendations were not legally enforceable. At the end of the day, the final decision is made by (the)secretary of health, he told Reuters. But because of the expertise that the members of the FEC have, it is something that you don t want to ignore. Underpinning the concerns in 2016 about Dengvaxia, since confirmed by Sanofi, were fears that the vaccine would act like a primary infection for those who had never had dengue. If they were bitten by a mosquito carrying the virus after the vaccination, it could be akin to getting dengue a second time, which often leads to far more severe symptoms and potentially death if bad cases are not treated quickly. The concerns were first raised by noted U.S.-based tropical disease expert, Dr. Scott Halstead, who urged both Sanofi and the WHO to proceed with caution. In the Philippines, Dr. Antonio Dans, an epidemiologist from the University of the Philippines, led a delegation of physicians to the DOH in March 2016 where, citing Halstead s research, they pressed for the campaign to be aborted. The data was not definitive but it was clear there were uncertainties and risks. Why not wait for the complete studies to be finished before endangering so many children? Dans told Reuters. In a Senate hearing late last year, Garin said she was aware of Halstead s assessment but dismissed it. This is a theory ... it has not been proven, she said at the time. Two sources involved in the program said no antibody testing was undertaken, as recommended by the FEC. Antibody testing, while not 100 percent accurate, indicates whether an individual has had dengue before. Duque, the current health secretary, is demanding the company refund the 3 billion pesos ($60 million) paid for the vaccinations and has threatened legal action against Sanofi if it is proven to have withheld information. A criminal probe is underway into how a danger to public health came about and two Congressional inquiries have been convened in the Philippines. Duque told Reuters he was concerned that the program was paid from an off-budget allocation, meaning it bypassed Congressional scrutiny. Reuters was unable to confirm this. Until now, one child out of the 830,000 vaccinated, a girl who was hospitalized with severe dengue, has been linked definitively by the DOH to the campaign. But the department of health says it still does not have complete data on those who fell ill after taking Dengvaxia.","label":0}
{"text":"Egypt's czar thought he was just doing his job when he estimated how much endemic graft had cost his country: About $76 billion, he said, mostly in corrupt land deals. But the estimate, it turned out, was itself a criminal offense. The official, Hisham Geneina, is to stand trial in Cairo on Tuesday, just over two months after he was unceremoniously fired by President Abdel Fattah as the head of the Central Auditing Authority. He faces a charge of spreading false news and disturbing the peace that carries a potential jail sentence. Mr. Geneina, who served as a senior judge for 34 years before taking the post in 2012, said the prosecution is politically motivated and driven by powerful enemies inside Mr. Sisi's government. \"I was expected not to touch certain corruption cases,\" he said in an interview. More broadly, critics of the government say his case exemplifies how, under Mr. Sisi, even senior officials are running afoul of an authoritarian crackdown that seems intent on quelling any criticism of the powerful state security apparatus. In the past month alone, the authorities have indicted the head of Egypt's journalists union and convicted more than 150 people who protested the transfer of two Red Sea Islands to Saudi Arabia. Even the Parliament has been whipped into line: In May, the speaker threatened to discipline any politician who publicly criticized Egypt's efforts to defend its sliding currency. \"This is an unprecedented way of dealing with corruption and the rule of law,\" said Ashraf el Sherif, a politics lecturer at the American University in Cairo. \"The message is that nobody in the state, especially key institutions, can be held accountable. \" The prosecution of Mr. Geneina began in March, days after Mr. Sisi dismissed him by presidential decree. It surprised many Egyptians for its speed and the profile of the defendant. Unlike the Islamists, activists and journalists who have been singled out by Mr. Sisi's government, Mr. Geneina had long been a member of the establishment. Mr. Geneina's lawyer, Ali Taha, said he had been misquoted by a newspaper, which reported that the $76 billion loss had been incurred in 2015 instead of across three years. Mr. Sisi convened a committee to examine the figure, which concluded that Mr. Geneina had exaggerated the figures. In an interview, Mr. Geneina declined to discuss the details of the report, saying he had been told not to discuss the case. But he said he believed that he was being pursued because he had angered powerful interests \u2014 officials who became wealthy under former President Hosni Mubarak, and parts of the state security services under Mr. Sisi. \"In every position I have held, I underwent security checks,\" he said. \"If I was so dangerous why didn't they come after me 40 years ago?\" Since then, Mr. Geneina and his family have been subject to a campaign of defamation on television channels in an effort to discredit him, ranging from accusations that he belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood to suggestions that his wife supported the militant group Hamas because she is of Palestinian origin. \"I have lost faith in a lot of things,\" Mr. Geneina said. His wife, sitting beside him, spoke of her shock of him being hustled into a van and hauled off to jail. Mr. Sisi made fighting corruption a central policy plank after he came to power in 2013. Yet since then, his government has introduced a \"reconciliation\" law that has cleared the way for several figures to have corruption convictions quashed in return for large cash payments. Hussein Salem, a businessman living in exile in Spain, recently struck an agreement to pay more than $600 million to the Egyptian government to be allowed to return home. Analysts say that Mr. Geneina's $76 billion comment hit a nerve because it touched on the power of state institutions that Mr. Sisi has sought to placate, even in the face of accusations of graft and brutality, in order to solidify his own power, and in the name of ensuring the country's stability. Mr. Geneina has been succeeded at the Central Auditing Authority by Hisham Badawy, who worked previously for Egypt's state security apparatus. The agency has not announced any major new cases, Mr. Sherif noted. \"He's a regime figure,\" he said. \"It's more or less the same old wine. \"","label":0}
{"text":"House Republicans managed to pass their healthcare bill on Thursday, just barely, and it is truly a despicable piece of legislation. The right-wing nutjobs who have taken over the Republican party, AKA the Freedom Caucus, refused to vote in favor of the bill as long as Obamacare s protections for pre-existing conditions remained intact. So, the GOP said the hell with it and gutted protections for the sick in order to gain their votes.Think it can t get any worse? WRONG. As if taking health care from 24 million people and removing protections for pre-existing conditions isn t bad enough, what qualifies as a pre-existing condition is even worse.Among possible pre-existing conditions that could result in outrageous premiums are rape and sexual assault. Seriously. Rape.NYMag reports:The new MacArthur-Meadows Amendment will allow states to discriminate based on medical history, reportedly without addressing the subsequent high cost of health care for millions of Americans.In addition to rape, postpartum depression, cesarean sections, and surviving domestic violence are all considered preexisting conditions. Companies can also deny coverage for gynecological services and mammograms.The amendment also says that Nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting health insurance issuers to discriminate in rates for health insurance coverage by gender. But, ummm, did you look at what qualifies as a pre-existing condition? Insurance companies don t have to cover gynecological services and mammograms that screen for cancer? How many men are gonna need a c-section? How many men have postpartum depression? How many men need a pap smear to check for cervical cancer? Seems pretty damn obvious that being a woman is a pre-existing condition itself.Paul Ryan and Donald Trump have tried to claim that pre-existing conditions are covered, but that isn t exactly the truth. The MacArthur-Meadows amendment would allow states to opt out of federal regulations and allow insurance companies to charge higher premiums for people who have pre-existing conditions. Since this was the law of the land before the Affordable Care Act, we know what happens when you give insurance companies this option: they set premiums so high that sick people are priced out of insurance coverage altogether.So now, besides the shame, fear, and trauma that have traditionally kept women from seeking medical care after they are sexually assaulted, rape victims now get to worry that they will lose their health insurance if they get help. What the actual f*ck is wrong with these people? This is as disgusting as it gets.","label":1}
{"text":"The value of the bully pulpit of the president of the United States can't be measured on a corporate spreadsheet or the Excel file of a Wall Street analyst. But as Donald J. Trump tries to stop Carrier from moving more than 2, 000 jobs to Mexico, the company is learning that the pulpit can be powerful indeed. Carrier, in the middle of negotiations with the incoming administration, may end up keeping some of the jobs in Indiana. In exchange, the incoming administration could ease up on regulation for businesses and cool campaign rhetoric on imposing tariffs. Officials familiar with the situation, who insisted on anonymity because talks were still underway, described the discussion on Friday as a negotiation, with both sides seeking a compromise. Carrier and its corporate parent, United Technologies, confirmed on Thursday that executives were in discussions about the fate of two factories in Indiana scheduled to shut down, not long after Mr. Trump posted on Twitter that he was \"working hard, even on Thanksgiving,\" to get Carrier to stay. \"Making progress,\" he added, in all capital letters. For both Mr. Trump and the company, the stakes are huge. His promise to reverse trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement, or Nafta, and bring back manufacturing jobs to the United States was critical in taking the Rust Belt out of the Democratic column and winning the White House. \"Trump cannot afford to back down on this one,\" said Robert Dilenschneider, a veteran public relations executive who advises companies and chief executives on strategic communications. \"He prides himself on the art of the deal, and he's going to make Carrier an offer they can't refuse. \" \"It's a hallmark case and if Trump can win it, which I think he will, it will send a message to every single American company that's thinking of going offshore,\" Mr. Dilenschneider added. For the company, the costs of defying the are at least as high, if not higher, and may well outweigh the tens of millions of dollars to be saved by relocating production to Monterrey, Mexico, from Indiana. United Technologies is among the country's biggest military contractors, producing engines for the Pentagon's most advanced fighter jets and receiving more than $5 billion annually from the federal government. That equals 10 percent of the company's revenue. The size of the federal government's dealings with United Technologies has also caught the eye of legislators on Capitol Hill, like Senator Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana. \"It's unfair to ask the same workers who have been laid off to pay tax dollars that will go to the company that fired them,\" he said. \"We're in this together as Americans. When our workers succeed, our economy succeeds and our defense contractors succeed. \" Senator Donnelly is pushing for the government to consider outsourcing as a factor in deciding which companies receive federal contracts. Kenneth G. a professor of labor and employment law at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University, said he also thought that Mr. Trump \"could get a win here,\" adding, \"Because they are a defense contractor, the federal government has some leverage. \" \"Whether he can do something that benefits the working class in general is a different story,\" he said. \"The underlying problems are very hard to address. Trying to hold back the economic tide of automation, and the loss of manufacturing jobs, is something I'm not sure anybody can do. \" While Carrier is best known for its it also sells a variety of other heating and cooling equipment for homes and small businesses, like the furnaces and fan coils made at the Indianapolis factory. And as a business, Carrier is much more vulnerable to public pressure than firms that primarily deal with other businesses, said Barbara J. Fick, a professor of law at Notre Dame Law School. She noted that not far from Notre Dame's campus, at a plant in South Bend, Honeywell has been engaged in a bitter standoff since May with employees represented by the United Automobile Workers. \"Honeywell doesn't make a lot of things you can boycott,\" Ms. Fick said. \"It's mostly . To the extent that Carrier makes and furnaces, you can hit them with the pocketbook. \" Although Carrier workers in Indianapolis say management at the factory has been traveling back and forth to Mexico in recent months, with Mexican engineers measuring machines that are expected to be transported to Monterrey, there is plenty of time for the company to change course. In a presentation this week, Carrier's management told employees that the fan coil line would be the first to close in eliminating 300 to 400 jobs. But as that line closes, about 100 jobs will be saved temporarily by the creation of a new night shift making furnaces. furnace production is not set to end until to late 2018, while the final line to close, furnaces, won't he shuttered until early 2019. That staggered schedule has given workers some hope that if a compromise between the new administration and the company does emerge, it may revolve around keeping the gas furnace production lines open, even if a smaller number of jobs are relocated to Mexico in the meantime. If a deal was reached, it could also help set the tone for a Trump presidency in terms of corporate America, Mr. Dilenschneider said. Much as Ronald Reagan's decision to fire striking air traffic controllers in 1981 signaled to organized labor that political momentum was no longer on their side, keeping Carrier in Indiana would show that a Republican president was willing to stand up to corporate America. There are signs that Mr. Trump is already eager to show just that. This month, he took credit for Ford's decision to keep Lincoln production in Kentucky, although it is not clear that any Ford jobs at the Louisville plant were actually in danger of going to Mexico. \"It doesn't make any difference who the president is,\" Mr. Dilenschneider said. \"If the president of the United States says, 'Do it,' you've got to give it some very serious thought. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Five Republican presidential hopefuls are scheduled to speak at an ultra-conservative pastor s religious freedom event, to prove what the GOP believes religious liberty is REALLY about i.e. bigotry, exclusion and treating those who live different lifestyles like scum.On Saturday, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee will appear on the Free to Believe Broadcast, which is being hosted by the Family Research Council s Tony Perkins and Vision America s Rick Scarborough two men who have become infamous for their anti-gay activism. Both Perkins and Scarborough have taken it upon themselves to fight against gay marriage because it is apparently violating their Christian rights. In the past, Perkins has said that America s persecution of anti-gay Christians is inspiring ISIS and Scarborough said he ll burn to death to outlaw gay marriage. Live and let live is completely lost on these two, and they intend to keep fighting with more fear-mongering, threats and punishment.Scarborough, who is a pastor, has repeatedly said that God punishes gay people for their immoral act with AIDS and has even called for a class action lawsuit against homosexuals in 2013. Scarborough has claimed that if only Americans would wake up and stop supporting gay rights, God would probably give us the cure for AIDS today. Last year, Scarborough said God would be completely justified in sending a nuclear bomb to destroy America just because Obama appointed a few gay ambassadors. Here s a video of Scarborough preaching about AIDS and God s judgement on gays:Perkins record of homophobia isn t much better.It should come as no surprise that the five GOPers listed above would support such a vile event. Cruz in particular has rained praise on Scarborough and similar anti-gay activists before, expressing his support for the Religious Right s rhetoric that God will punish gays. Cruz, along with Huckabee, have also supported anti-gay radicals by making appearances at a 2015 conference hosted by Kevin Swanson, who believes gay people should be put to death. The two candidates also stirred up controversy last year with their alliance to anti-gay Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who became infamous for her refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples after the Supreme Court s ruling.Extreme events like the broadcast these five GOP candidates are planning to attend are a perfect example of what the party truly stands for. It s not about religious freedom at all it s about hate, shame, fear and punishment and has very little to do with the true values of Christianity. When Republican candidates attend and participate in events like this, they re showing America who they really are and what they truly support bigotry. Hopefully, America is paying attention.","label":1}
{"text":"Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at New York University, explains how US elections are stolen: http:\/\/www.informationclearinghouse.info\/article45799.htm  He outlines what can be done, but those in power will not do it. Revolution is probably the only solution. The post Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at New York University, explains how US elections are stolen: appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org .","label":1}
{"text":"In Indiana, schools staged a robotics competition for fourth graders. The winning team was comprised of two African-American children and three Latino children, ranging in age from 9-10. While this fact should (and does) demonstrate that science doesn t know skin color, it also brought out the ugliness that s become pervasive in Trump s America.The winning team was from Pleasant Run Elementary in Indianapolis. As they were leaving the competition, though, things got really ugly. Some children screamed Go back to Mexico, to the team. Then, parents got involved and it got even worse.This verbal attack had spilled over from the gymnasium. While the children were competing, one or two parents disparaged the Pleasant Run kids with racist comments and loud enough for the Pleasant Run families to hear. They were pointing at us and saying that Oh my God, they are champions of the city all because they are Mexican. They are Mexican, and they are ruining our country, Diocelina Herrera, the mother of PantherBot Angel Herrera-Sanchez, heard a woman say.Source: USA TodaySchool officials, naturally, apologized and said that that sort of behavior isn t tolerated, but unfortunately, this is Trump s America and enabling that sort of behavior is what the non-political correctness crowd is all about.Trump s America is why Rep. Steve King (Iowa), who literally preached eugenics on Twitter, had almost zero consequences from Republicans.Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can t restore our civilization with somebody else s babies. https:\/\/t.co\/4nxLipafWO Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 12, 2017Trump s America is why hate crimes have been on the rise since the election.No, Trump is not the cause of racism, but he is an enabler. Racism has suddenly become socially acceptable, at least among certain people. Trump has filled his cabinet and administration with white supremacists. Steve Bannon is a known white supremacist and he is the de facto Chief of Staff (sorry Reince Priebus, but you know this to be true). Their policies even want to make it easier (and slightly more legal) to be a radical right-wing extremist.The winning kids, fortunately, were much more mature than some of the adults. One gave the most heart breaking comment of all: They yelled out rude comments, and I think that they can talk all they want because at the end we re still going to Worlds, said team leader Elijah Goodwin, 10. It s not going to affect us at all. I m not surprised because I m used to this kind of behavior.He shouldn t have to be used to it. No one should ever be used to this.","label":1}
{"text":"CHARLESTON \u2013 John Kasich isn't sure how he got to be the runner-up to in Tuesday's New Hampshire GOP primary, an achievement that is drawing more South Carolina voters to his under-the-radar presidential campaign. \"Frankly no one would have thought I would finish in second place, way ahead of everybody else, in New Hampshire,\" Mr. Kasich told [\u2026]","label":0}
{"text":"When Ellen DeGeneres found out that Donald Trump watched Finding Dory as his immigration ban was causing worldwide chaos, she used it as a teaching moment.On Friday, Trump signed an unconstitutional executive order banning people traveling from seven countries from entering the United States. International outrage ensued as people and governments around the globs condemned the ban and protests raged across the country.On Sunday, Trump watched the Disney\/Pixar film in the White House as the protests continued and apparently learned nothing from watching it.So on Tuesday, DeGeneres told Trump what he should have learned. I don t get political, so I m not gonna talk about the travel ban, DeGeneres began. I m just gonna talk about the very nonpolitical, family-friendly, People s Choice Award-winning Finding Dory. DeGeneres explained that the character of Dory lives in the ocean near Australia, but she decides to travel to America to find her parents, whom she remembers after getting her memory jogged. Dory and her friends reach California, only to find a wall standing in their way and they proceed to do what is necessary to get around the obstacle.Finding Dory is about a fish named Dory and Dory lives in Australia. These are here parents. They live in America. I don t know what religion they are but her dad sounds a little Jewish. Doesn t matter! Dory arrives in America with her friends Marlin and Nemo and she ends up at the Marine Life Institute behind a large wall. They all have to get over the wall and you won t believe it but that wall has almost no effect in keeping them out. Even though Dory gets into America, she gets separated from her family. Other animals help Dory animals that don t even need her, animals that don t have anything in common with her. They help her even though they re completely different colors because that s what you do when you see someone in need. You help them.Here s the video via YouTube.Indeed, walls are a main obstacle throughout the movie, but the characters find a way to circumvent them every time, just as immigrants are going to circumvent Trump s massive and expensive wall along the southern border.As the Berlin Wall teaches us, people will find a way no matter how deadly the risks are.At least 5,000 people entered West Germany across the heavily guarded wall to escape the tyranny of the Soviet Union. 138 people died trying.If people are desperate enough, they will find a way to live in America. Travel bans and walls will not stop immigrants and refugees from seeking a better life for themselves and their families.","label":1}
{"text":"Friday on CNN's \"Situation Room,\" CNN political director David Chalian said President Donald Trump's recent foreign policy maneuvers mean he is \"going mainstream\" and Washington \"establishment. \" Chalian said, \"I don't know if we're seeing a Trump doctrine take shape. Certainly, Donald Trump is not portraying it as such. It's a little bit more of these disparate and discrete incidents that have happened, whether the Syria attack or this bomb. In fact, you just said it was a tactical move that the theater commander was able to make, not necessarily the large \u2014 part of a strategic framework here, and I think \u2014 the only thing that I could sort of ascertain in observing what Donald Trump is doing right now is that he's going mainstream \u2014 a little establishment, which is totally against the brand that he ran on. \" \"But he \u2014 I think it shows the power \u2014 and when I say establishment, I don't mean just Republican establishment \u2014 Democrat \u2014 the Washington establishment \u2014 and it shows the power and the stranglehold that the establishment has,\" he continued. \"I know he tried to bust it up during the campaign and saying that he was going to be the irritant and destroy it, but when you don't have ideological moorings \u2014 you're not moored, that's guided, then I think you're susceptible to the power of the establishment and I think that's what we see playing out right now with Donald Trump. \" CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash added, \"He said the world has changed, and it hasn't. I mean, things change every day in the world, but the \u2014 but the overall sort of zeitgeist of where these hot spots are is where they were when he took office, so it wasn't that. It was him, and it is him, and \u2014 and to your point, David, it's that he's not a dogmatic guy. He never was. If he was a dogmatic guy, then he would have run for the Democratic nomination because he would still be and for health care system but he's not. He switched, you know, did a complete 180 on those issues and so it's not surprising that he is willing to \u2014 to use his words, be flexible when it comes to a whole host of issues, as he's learning a really, really hard, really new job that people who are even ideological and get the job tend to realize, you know, I need to switch a little bit. \" Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN","label":0}
{"text":"Two women were injured on Friday by an attacker wielding a hammer and shouting Allahu Akbar in the eastern French town of Chalon-sur-Saone in Burgundy, local officials said. The local prosecutor s office said witnesses of the attack in a public park of the town center heard the attacker shout Allahu Akbar while hitting the women, who were taken to hospital but whose life is not in danger. Prosecutors said they were treating the incident as a possible terror attack, but also did not rule out the possibility the attacker was deranged. The attacker was still on the run on Friday afternoon, police said.","label":0}
{"text":"Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room tonight 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for bar fly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along side Funk$oul and Randy J (ACR & 21WIRE Contributors), and Patrick Henningsen (21WIRE) for the 125th episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.This week on the show the ACR Brain-Trust is back with another meeting of the Social Reject Club in the No Friends Left Zone and the gang is discussing Hurricane Irma, weather modification, the off the charts levels of so called political correctness in Washington DC as reported live by Sunday Wire s Patrick Henningsen, establishment are still actively pushing lies about the war in Syria, the good\/bad\/ugly business of disaster relief charities, reactionaries still blaming Hurricane Harvey on climate change, the repeal of DACA and the challenges for the left and the right to have any sort of beneficial dialog about immigration realities, platforms and policies in the environment of media driven, knee jerk, emotionally charged politicization of the topic.Direct Download Episode #125Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research:","label":1}
{"text":"A Wall Street News poll released Monday found growing disapproval of Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. [Forty percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Ryan, compared to only 22% who view him positively, according to the poll. The numbers represent a major decline in popularity since February, when Ryan's net favorability was only one percentage point negative. The same drop in support is mirrored among Republican poll respondents, with net favorability falling from to 23 in the same period. Ryan's drop in popularity was more significant than that among the low rating for Congress as a whole. The percentage of those with a favorable view of congressional performance fell from 29 to 20 since February. The drop among Republicans was more significant, falling to a mere 31% from the high 40s. This outpouring of disapproval comes after Speaker Ryan spearheaded the abortive effort to repeal and replace Obamacare with his own \"American Health Care Act. \" The bill had to be withdrawn for lack of support and drew criticism from across the spectrum of Republican politics. The perception of Ryan's ability to deliver legislative victories in the House took a major hit in the aftermath of his health care bill's demise, with some members of Congress calling for his replacement. Other legislative initiatives have stalled under Ryan's leadership. He has repeatedly stated that tax reform will likely to be possible only after the precarious health care situation is untangled. At the moment, the House is embroiled in a struggle to pass a budget to keep the government running, with contention over the funding of President Donald Trump's signature border wall apparently stalling this often routine measure. As Congressional Republicans approach the mark of the Trump presidency, Speaker Ryan is unable to point to any major legislative accomplishment. Negotiations are ongoing to revive the momentum for implementing the GOP's agenda, but the Wall Street News poll suggests the electorate is losing confidence in the Republican leadership's ability to do so.","label":0}
{"text":"A key meeting between Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives ended on Thursday without a compromise on a proposal to eliminate a popular deduction for state and local taxes, the top House tax writer told reporters. \"I'm going to stay at the table and so is the leadership ... to try to find a solution,\" U.S. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said after a dozen Republicans from states that oppose the deduction's elimination voted against a key budget measure to advance tax reform. \"They made it clear. They need this problem solved before they vote 'yes' on tax reform,\" he added.","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says..With Christmas season right around the corner, millions retail consumers in North America and Western Europe will be taking on thousands of dollars in new credit card debt. Few have paused to ponder how it all started, and where the real breaking point lies for both personal and social stability. If you think that your credit has taken over your life then you need to watch this film.This week s documentary film curated by our editorial team at 21WIRE Debt is like a disease that can enable us from living a happy and normal life by taking control over our lives. Most of us don t even know how we end up in the situation we are in. Buying every thing we own with credit has become our culture. But don t let debt control your life any more. You can take over your life again. Imagine life with out debt Watch: SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENING HERESUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"The classless Democrats are at it again. The over-the-top potty talk by the Chairman Tom Perez was bad enough but now the California Dem Chairman has raised the bar on nastiness. He prompts the crowd to yell out F@ck Donald Trump! The kicker is that Nancy Pelosi was caught laughing with the crowd. How unbelievably childish are these people?AP reported:California s elected Democrats had tough words for President Donald Trump and the GOP Congress on Saturday, urging their party s fired-up activists to work against the 14 Republicans in the state s congressional delegation.The party s leaders blasted Trump s alleged ties to Russia and presented California as the epicenter of liberal resistance to the president. The world, literally the world, is counting on all of you, counting on California to reject Trump s deception and destructiveness, said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is among a crowded field of Democrats running for governor next year.U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, often mentioned as a potential candidate for president in 2020, accused Trump of putting Russia first, America second. In a sign of the vigor of the party s distaste for the president, outgoing party Chair John Burton, a longtime Democratic lawmaker and powerbroker known for his blunt and profane manner, extended two middle fingers in the air as the crowd cheered and joined him. F Donald Trump, he said:Outgoing @ca_dem chair @Johnburton gets standing O w final words to his party, finger upraised: F@ck Donald Trump! pic.twitter.com\/VIqNQlhDJc Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) May 20, 2017And we though Tom Perez was bad!","label":1}
{"text":"For years if not decades liberals have complained that the nation is on the verge of becoming an oligarchy, which in the most simplistic terms possible, means that corporations (and the wealthy) are more important than regular people. Well, a ruling in Los Angeles might not be the biggest or the most wide-reaching news story, but when a judge ruled that the victims (yes, the victims) of the horrific mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado would have to pay for the sins of daring to sue the movie theater, our wall between government and corporations crumbled even more.On July 20, 2012, an orange haired 24-year-old named James Holmes entered a screening of the Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. He proceeded to set off tear gas and grenades before peppering the theater with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. He killed 12 and injured 70. At that point, it was the largest mass shooting in history. Holmes was sentenced to more than 3,000 years in prison, so there was some justice some The living victims of the shooting sued Cinemark Theaters, claiming that if they had had guards and better security camera coverage, the shooting might not have happened and even if it had, there might have been fewer casualties. They lost. Now, we can debate the validity of the lawsuit all day long, but to add insult to dozens of brutal injuries, the theater countersued, claiming that the victims owed them $700,000 in legal fees and court costs. The theater won. They now owe the theater $700,000.We can also debate the validity of this ruling all day long, but the bare truth is that Cinemark didn t need to sue. They were just being dicks. The shooting or the impending lawsuit didn t hurt Cinemark. Their annual revenues are just south of $3 billion a year and rising steadily. They could have easily eaten the legal costs with just a few concession sales (only a slight exaggeration).The worst thing this ruling did, other than re-victimize people who have to live with the traumatic memory and for some, permanent injuries, was to send a message. The message is that if citizens dare to stand up to their corporate overlords, we should be prepared to be slapped down hard and in the most expensive ways possible. Cinemark should have just let this go, but it was in their interest, like it s in the interests of large corporations throughout the nation, to let us know, in no uncertain terms, that we have no voice.","label":1}
{"text":"UN: Migrant Deaths in Mediterranean Hit Record in 2016 BBC News, October 26, 2016  At least 3,800 migrants have died or are missing in the Mediterranean Sea in 2016\u2013the deadliest year on record, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has said.  It said this was despite a significant drop in migrant crossings compared with 2015, when 3,771 deaths were reported.  Smugglers were now more often using flimsy boats and putting more people aboard, the UNHCR said.  {snip}  The agency said the most dangerous route had been between Libya and Italy, with one death in every 47 arrivals recorded.  By comparison, another\u2013much shorter\u2013route from Turkey to Greece had a ratio of 1 in 88.  {snip}  Nearly 330,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea this year, compared with more than one million in 2015.  {snip}","label":1}
{"text":"\u00ab on: Today at 08:34:33 PM \u00bb Duterte Wants Foreign Troops Out of Philippines in 2 Years 26 October 2016 , by Andreo Calonzo (Bloomberg) - Philippines will survive without U.S. help, he says in Japan- No talks with China about military alliance, Duterte says Logged","label":1}
{"text":"A U.S. Justice Department appeals lawyer is on special counsel Robert Mueller's team probing interference in the 2016 presidential election, Reuters has learned. Scott Meisler, an appellate attorney with the Justice Department's criminal division, is one of 16 lawyers who have signed on to the probe and one of only two who have not been previously identified. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said Meisler joined the team in mid-June. In an investigation like Mueller's, former U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said appeals lawyers would help determine whether the conduct being examined violates sometimes complex federal laws. \"Having people who've spent their careers making difficult judgments in this area would be quite valuable,\" Verrilli said. Appeals lawyers usually argue in federal circuit courts or the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold or overturn trial results. The solicitor general's office represents the U.S. government before the Supreme Court. Meisler is one of several appeals lawyers on Mueller's legal team. The most senior is Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben, who has argued more than 100 cases before the Supreme Court and is widely considered the Justice Department's top criminal law expert. Elizabeth Prelogar, an assistant solicitor general, is another appeals lawyer on the team. Mueller, who was appointed special counsel in May, is looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election, among other matters. Last week, his team began interviewing former and current White House officials, according to a person familiar with the matter. Russian officials have denied meddling in the U.S. election, and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign. A 2005 Georgetown University Law Center graduate and fluent Spanish speaker, Meisler has been in his current position since 2009, aside from a recent year-long stint as an assistant solicitor general. He has represented the government in appeals involving search warrants and seizures, motions to suppress wiretap evidence, mail fraud, wire fraud, structuring financial transactions and money laundering.","label":0}
{"text":"The travel restrictions put in place by U.S. President Donald Trump on seven countries are deterring travelers from other countries too, according to a travel analysis company. ForwardKeys, which analyses 16 million flight reservations a day from major global reservation systems, said bookings for international arrivals to the United States over the next three months were 2.3 percent higher than last year. But on Jan. 27, the day Trump issued the executive order, bookings had been 3.4 percent ahead of the previous year, Forwardkeys data showed. When the travel ban was in place from Jan. 28 to Feb. 4, bookings to the United States dropped 6.5 percent, including an 80 percent slump in reservations from the seven countries listed on Trump's order and a 13.6 percent drop from Western Europe. On the day the curbs were lifted by a U.S. judge, bookings from Iran surged, ForwardKeys said, leaving reservations for travel to the United States five times higher on Feb. 3 and Feb. 4 than the same two days a year earlier. Most of those bookings were for arrival in the United States on Feb. 5 and Feb. 6. ForwardKeys CEO Olivier Jager cautioned that the data was just a snapshot of an eight-day period and it would continue to monitor the situation. Other groups, such as the U.N. World Tourism Organization, have also warned travel demand could be hurt by U.S. restrictions, which are still suspended pending a U.S. appeals court hearing due to start at 2300 GMT on Tuesday. \"The ambiguity of these very latest developments introduced by President Trump is casting a shadow over the future travel demand to and from the U.S.,\" said Nadejda Popova, travel project manager at Euromonitor. \"The new executive order could also impact how the U.S. is perceived as a tourism destination and how open to foreign travelers it will be in the future.\"","label":0}
{"text":"In the latest move in its ambitious space program, China launched a manned spacecraft from the Gobi Desert on Monday morning. Images broadcast on CCTV showed the astronauts giving a salute seconds before launch, and 15 minutes later they could be seen on the live feed clasping their gloved hands, apparently a sign of a successful launch. The spacecraft, called is to dock with an orbiting space laboratory launched last month. The astronauts are expected to stay in the lab for 30 days before returning to Earth, the deputy director of China's Manned Space Agency, Wu Ping, said before the launch. The mission is the third flight for one of the astronauts, Jing Haipeng. \"It is any astronaut's dream and pursuit to be able to perform many space missions,\" Mr. Jing said, according to Xinhua, the news agency. The mission is China's sixth manned space launch, and by staying aloft for 30 days the two astronauts will more than double the national record for staying in space, CCTV, the national broadcaster reported. The main tasks in the space lab will include testing computers, as well as propulsion and life support systems and other experiments, according to CCTV. The activities in the lab are intended to help China reach its goal of launching a more permanent space station, in 2018. The docking of the spacecraft with the lab will take place about two days after the liftoff, Chinese space officials said. China launched its first lunar probe in 2013, and plans to land another lunar probe on the far side of the moon by 2018. In 2020, China aims to send an unmanned rover to Mars. The target date for sending an astronaut to the moon is 2025. This year is the 46th anniversary of China's space program, which has bolstered its spending in the past decade in an effort to catch up with the United States and Russia. Chinese official media reported that the space program expects to complete 20 launches this year, including the deployment of the world's first quantum communications satellite and a military satellite. The Chinese word for Shenzhou means \"heavenly vessel,\" and Tiangong means \"heavenly palace. \"","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says NSA and police state cheerleaders will often use the flimsy defense of mass surveillance, claiming that it s legal , and therefore, it is somehow right, and that we must trust the state because the U.S. is an advance democracy, land of the free, home of the brave (you know the drill).The truth of the matter is independent of the whims of the state (in this case, the Orwellian police state), which is this: when laws are manipulated and passed through our bicameral legislative machine and then used for oppressive and profitable ends the very ends that so many great writers and philosophers warned us about for centuries then those laws, along with the state s omnipotent authority must be challenged. And how many times have we heard central government cheerleaders throw around this old trope when it comes to state surveillance: Well, if you haven t done anything wrong and you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about. Presently, Washington s current liberty death spiral is in direct conflict with the fundamental principles and morals of a free society. This has caused a near complete breakdown in trust between the corporate state and the voters. This reality seems to be lost on so many media pundits and of course, completely lost on our bureaucratic class RT: It turns out that FBI director James Comey covers his laptop camera with tape, just like any NSA-fearing citizen should an admission that has generated hilarity on social media","label":1}
{"text":"Bosnia must start making concrete reforms if it wants to join the European Union, or the window to becoming a member could close, the bloc s enlargement chief said on Monday. The European Union accepted Bosnia s application 15 months ago - but Johannes Hahn said the Balkan nation had not made any of the reforms or changes agreed with the bloc and international creditors. So far nothing has been delivered. We now expect very concrete results, Hahn said after meeting political leaders. Bosnia s prime minister, Denis Zvizdic, said he hoped the leaders would reach a compromise on outstanding issues by later this month or early January. The ethnically divided country has so far not managed to respond to the initial EU questionnaire on its readiness to join the bloc. Political bickering has held up a law raising excise tax on fuel, required to unlock external financing for infrastructure projects. There has also been no sign of development and energy and agriculture sector strategies demanded by the bloc. There are a lot of issues in the pipeline but I would like to have them through the pipeline, said Hahn. It is absolutely high time now to deliver on what has been agreed, otherwise, the window can be closed again and this is not something we all would like to see, he told a news conference. Hahn urged government and opposition leaders to stop appealing to ethnic nationalism, and said the EU would be looking for evidence of European values, including a respect for court rulings. Without that understanding one cannot make any progress, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"The French island of Martinique escaped Hurricane Maria largely unscathed but a communications blackout with Guadeloupe meant it would be several more hours before damage there could be assessed, a senior French Civil Protection official said on Tuesday. Maria, the second major storm to hit the Caribbean this month, lashed Guadeloupe s southern shores as it tracked northwest toward the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. In Martinique, reconnaissance operations are still underway but already we can see that there is no significant damage, Jacques Witkowski, France s head of civil protection and crisis response, told a news briefing in Paris. He said the hurricane was currently less than 70 km (43.5 miles) south of Guadeloupe. Right now we re in a blackout zone, so it s very, very hard to communicate with Guadeloupe, Witkowski said. Video footage released by the Guadeloupe prefecture showed tree-bending winds whipping through deserted streets and shaking lamp posts when the storm first hit. It urged residents to stay indoors and take shelter in their most secure room. Guadeloupe prefect Eric Maire said up to 400 millimeters of rain were forecast in some parts of the island. A storm surge could also flood low-lying coastal areas. We ve already got some early information of flooding, flooded houses and submerged roads, Maire said in a video recording posted on the prefecture s Twitter handle. Airport group Guadeloupe Pole Caraibes said Guadeloupe s main international airport would be closed until at least 14:00 local time (1800 GMT) on Tuesday.","label":0}
{"text":"China on Monday signaled it would again block an Indian request at the United Nations to blacklist the head of a Pakistan-based militant group because there was no consensus, a move likely to cause recrimination in New Delhi. India, backed by the United States, has been trying to get Maulana Masood Azhar on a U.N. list of groups with ties to Al Qaeda, blaming his group for a series of attacks in India, including one on its parliament in 2002 and another last year on an airbase. But China, a member of the U.N. Security Council, has repeatedly put a technical hold on the Indian request, the latest of which is due to end this week. Such decisions must be based on cast-iron evidence and fully backed by members of the U.N. panel charged with implementing resolutions relating to sanctions on militant groups and individuals, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said. China proposed a technical hold, the aim of which was to give more time for the committee members to discuss it and for relevant parties to have further consultations, Hua told a daily news briefing. But regrettably, the committee has yet to reach consensus. The wrangling over Masood Azhar, a longtime Indian foe, has become a thorny issue in ties between China and India, which fears Beijing is disregarding its concerns over terrorism. It has also fueled worries that China will stick to its all-weather friend, India s arch-foe Pakistan, no matter the weight of evidence against Islamabad. Pakistan denies giving material support to militants fighting Indian rule in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir besides carrying out attacks elsewhere. It said it interrogated Azhar and his associates in the Jaish-e-Mohammad group after the January 2016 attack on the Pathankot air base but found no evidence linking him to it. Hua said there were clear rules for listing a person or group as a terrorist, and that China has always believed the relevant U.N. committee should operate on the principles of objectivity, fairness and professionalism on this matter. Jaish-e-Mohammad has already been blacklisted by the 15-nation Security Council, but not Azhar, an Islamist hardliner.","label":0}
{"text":"November 10, 2016 French privacy row over mass ID database  A French state watchdog has called for the suspension of a database that could end up holding the biometric details of 60 million people. The aim of a single \"mega-database\" is to fight identity fraud and improve efficiency. But, as Paul Kirby explains, there are fears the database could be abused not only by hackers but by state intelligence too, What's the database for? The single database would not be used in judicial investigations, ministers insist. Rather, it would help tackle identity fraud by comparing one set of digital fingerprints with another. France's interior ministry wants the Secure Electronic Documents (TES) to collect all the information on an individual held on two separate databases that have details of people's passports and national ID cards. Only children under 12 would be exempt. It would include an individual's name, address, marital status, eye colour, weight, photograph and fingerprints. It's merely an administrative register, argues Justice Minister Jean-Jacques Urvoas. Its only legal use would be when data need to be requisitioned.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald J. Trump was introduced to millions of Americans in prime time through reality TV. In his first address to a joint session of Congress, President Trump tried to show, after a tumultuous first month, that he could also do scripted. The content of the president's speech \u2014 on trade, terrorism and other issues \u2014 was much like what we'd heard from him in the campaign. But Mr. Trump's goal seemed to be about his tone more than his text: to reassure America that he could simply keep control for an hour. Since his inauguration, Mr. Trump has, for starters, picked a fight on Twitter over Arnold Schwarzenegger's \"Celebrity Apprentice\" ratings, declared that negative polls and news are fake, raged against his own intelligence agencies over leaks and spun a tale that millions of illegal voters cost him the popular vote. On Tuesday night, even his neckwear was more muted: a striped tie, not a blazing red one, as if to signal that he was putting away his bullfighter's cloth for one night. During the campaign, Mr. Trump was known for going on furious improv tears, throwing belligerent verbiage against the turbine fan of his aggression. On Tuesday night, he had a script. He largely stuck to it. He performed a version of his campaign persona \u2014 the circles, little riffs. (\"Great wall\" in his prepared remarks became \"great, great wall\" he added a joke about executives trying to get him to ride one of their motorcycles.) The character he was playing this night was not the angry boss who might fire someone, but the executive who needed to reassure his shareholders. Although Mr. Trump won office by running an unconventional campaign, his address used many of the conventional tools of past presidents. He created moments by inviting guests \u2014 a tradition that goes back to Ronald Reagan \u2014 including the widow of Chief Petty Officer William Owens of the Navy SEALs, who drew a very long, emotional round of applause. (Afterward, Mr. Trump said that the fallen soldier was \"looking down\" and \"very happy because I think he just broke a record. \") The father of Chief Owens earlier refused to meet with Mr. Trump, insisting on an investigation into the death. But Mr. Trump also used those he invited to send a darker message. In a passage on immigration, he pointed out four relatives of people murdered by undocumented immigrants he had invited the victims' families to sit in the box with his wife, Melania. This was showmanship, too, but of a much darker kind, meant to whip up fear against undocumented immigrants by implying that they're more dangerous than Americans. Study after study shows that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than Americans. But if you skew the publicity, you skew the impressions. Put \"immigrants\" and \"kill\" in the same sentence often enough and people hear, \"Immigrants kill. \" That familiar from his campaign, was a reminder that he still had an obligation to throw red meat to the passionate voters who got him elected. He deployed the phrase \"radical Islamic terrorism,\" which his new national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, had reportedly asked him not to use, but which he had made a verbal totem in the campaign. Above all, Mr. Trump used the theater and scale naturally built into the event to show his status. The Democrats, in their televised response by former Gov. Steven Beshear of Kentucky, a champion of Obamacare, tried to make a virtue of the difference in grandeur by having it take place in a diner. Mr. Trump had used his speech for some damage control, beginning it by denouncing hate crimes he had been criticized for avoiding: the murder of an Indian technology worker in Kansas, blamed on a man who is said to have thought his victim was Middle Eastern, and the rash of bomb threats against Jewish community centers and desecration of Jewish cemeteries. \"We are a country,\" Mr. Trump said, \"that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms. \" But not that united. The health care issue was one of many that demonstrated the divide in the room: When Mr. Trump promised to repeal Obamacare, Republicans stood and cheered, Democrats booed and gave thumbs down on camera. For at least a year, pundits have been like forlorn scanning the sky for the appearance of the Great American Pivot. Judging by the pundit round tables after his speech, Mr. Trump gave them, for a while, reason to think it had returned. That has happened before. \"At the right time,\" he told NBC's \"Today\" during the campaign, \"I will be so presidential, you will be so bored. \" Since then, America has been a lot of things, but not bored. On Tuesday night, however, Mr. Trump declared, \"The time for trivial fights is behind us. \" True enough: Mr. Schwarzenegger's \"Celebrity Apprentice\" broadcast its finale two weeks ago. But history suggests we wait to declare the pivot achieved, at least until the congressional crowd has cleared and Mr. Trump has gotten his phone back for a while.","label":0}
{"text":"An elderly, disabled couple in New Hampshire is suffering thanks to the United States ridiculous classification of marijuana. Lorraine Sevigny, 61, and Brian Cardinale,59, may be evicted from their apartment after police raided their home and found a tiny amount of marijuana that the couple uses for medicinal purposes in a jar.On May 10, Lebanon police carried out a search warrant on the apartment, discovered the marijuana and issued them a citation. Police say they conducted the search after some busy-body an anonymous source provided them with drug intel. Sevingy told officers that she uses the plant to relieve pain from a traumatic brain injury suffered in a car accident forty years ago. Cardinale smokes pot, in addition to taking 18 other drugs, to treat multiple sclerosis (MS). His debilitating illness, which attacks the central nervous system, has forced him to walk with a cane. Stairs are my mortal enemy, said Cardinale. I m lucky. I m not in a wheelchair. Medical marijuana is legal in the state of New Hampshire, but Cardinale is unable to get a prescription for it because technically he does not have an address. His apartment was destroyed in a fire in February, so he moved in with Sevingy; unfortunately, the paperwork to put his name on the lease has not been processed yet.Ordinarily someone would not be evicted from an apartment for a misdemeanor drug citation but the type of complex and federal drug laws makes this case extremely frustrating. The couples landlord, Twin Pines Housing Trust, is a non-profit organization that provides the elderly with low-rent places to live. The organization purchased Sevigny s apartment building in November with the help of a $6.8 million U.S. Department of Agriculture loan and that loan is the problem.When Twin Pines accepted the USDA loan they agreed to a zero-tolerance drug policy. After police searched the couples home they notified Twin Pines about the marijuana they found and that triggered eviction proceedings. Andrew Winter, executive director of Twin Pines, said: While we recognize that state policies on marijuana are rapidly evolving, we still need to comply with federal restrictions that govern the financing of our properties. And therein lies the problem. The federal government still has marijuana listed as a schedule 1 narcotic. A schedule 1 drug is one that could lead to severe psychological or physical dependence. MDMA (ecstasy) is considered a schedule 1 narcotic. LSD (acid) is considered a schedule 1 narcotic.In February 2015, Representatives Jared Polis (D-CO) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), tried to change the classification of marijuana with bill H.R. 1013, the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act. In November 2015, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced its companion bill to the Senate, unfortunately, like every bill introduced by Democrats in the Republican-controlled Congress, the bills never saw the light of day. Had Congress acted and declassified the plant as a schedule 1 drug, this couple would not be worried about their future because the police would have never raided their apartment. But here we are, all thanks to the GOP s inability to do their job.","label":1}
{"text":"Dan Kahan and his team at the Yale Law School's Cultural Cognition project have been doing a bunch of research recently on: That's of obvious interest to Monkey Cage readers and students of politics more generally. To what extent are our attitudes on hot-button issues simple products of our political leanings? The question is important because political decisions are in part driven by public opinion. The answer can't be simple. We know that the correlations between issue attitudes, partisanship, and ideology have changed over time. For example, conservatives are more likely than liberals and moderates to believe that vaccines cause autism. Our beliefs about science and ideology are themselves often rigid. One trick that Kahan uses to shake us up is what he calls the MAPKIA (Make a prediction, know it all!) challenge, in which he describes an experiment on public opinion, but without revealing the results, and then asks the reader to guess what will happen. For his latest MAPKIA challenge, Kahan brings up a question from a 2015 Pew Research survey on Public and Scientists' Views on Science and Society. Here's the survey item: How powerfully (if at all) will responses to the Pew Malthusian Worldview item predict beliefs and attitudes toward technological and environmental risks like climate change, fracking, nuclear power, and GM foods? Will it be a stronger predictor than political partisanship? Will responses interact with \u2014 or essentially amplify \u2014 the explanatory power of political ideology and party identification? What will the relationship be between the Malthusian Worldview item and science literacy? Will responses be correlated with it \u2014 and if so in which direction? Will higher science literacy magnify the correlation between responses to the Malthusian Worldview and opposing perceptions of environmental and technological risks, just as higher science comprehension magnifies cultural polarization on climate change, nuclear power, fracking, and the like? If you're interested in political polarization and attitudes toward science and policy, this is a great question. And as Kahan writes, \"Perhaps my framing of the question implies an answer. But if you think I have one, then obviously mine could be wrong!\" As sociologist Duncan Watts has written, everything is obvious (once you know the answer). That's why it's a good exercise to commit first on this one before learning the answer. Here's an example from the Monkey Cage a couple of years ago of researchers who jumped to conclusion about public opinion which turned out not to be borne out by the data. As I wrote at the time: [Alfred Moore, Joseph Parent and Joseph Uscinski] write, \"When science means nuclear weapons, innovation and winning the space race, conservatives love it.\" Actually, when I last looked at the data, I found that \"support for the space program does not seem particularly associated with conservative or Republican positions.\" There is indeed a logic to the idea that conservatives should support the space program (see my last paragraph here) but the data don't seem to bear this out. My quick understanding of this is that political ideologies are interesting but ultimately you can't make sense of them: any given person's views are a tangle with many possibilities. To return to the Malthusian worldview challenge: My point here is that political ideology and issue attitudes are tangled. Attitudes are not always carefully thought through, nor are they the pure product of political ideology or partisanship. The Malthusian worldview seems like it might be a proxy for a simple liberal\/conservative dimension, at least in the United States, but maybe it aligns with other aspects of people's worldviews. In this post, I'm purposely not giving the answer (or, to be precise, I'm not giving data that would address this question) but am rather following Kahan by leaving it unresolved, to remind us of the uncertainty we should hold before seeing hard data on the relevant public opinion questions.","label":0}
{"text":"This is a shocking story of corruption and collusion even for a Clinton. Hillary should ve been locked up for this one but instead, her campaign finance director takes the fall. How ironic that Hillary would admit to a top donor that she doesn t do emails because of being under so many investigations. That must be a badge of honor for a Democrat .No matter the size of the scandal, Hillary and Bill always find some magical way to escape prosecution. The scandal seen in the undercover video below shows movie producer Peter Paul discussing emails with Hillary Clinton. Paul claims he spent $2 million to produce a major fundraising event for Hillary. Peter Paul admits he hosted the event in order to gain access to the Clintons. The campaign laws that were in effect at that time limited campaign gifts to $2,000.Watch Peter Paul s stunning story below:Peter Paul s whistleblower site explains the timeline and the significance of the smoking gun video.After [Paul] began to blow the whistle in March, 2001, to four US prosecutors on Hillary s role in the false FEC reports filed by her campaign that hid more than $1.2 million in his expenditures, the Attorney General[ s office ] launched a four year investigation leading to the indictment and trial of Hillary s finance director, David Rosen, in May 2005, for election law fraud. Rosen was solely indicted for providing information that only he knew was false, to Hillary s treasurer for reporting to the FEC The Federal Judge, Howard Matz, (appointed by the Clintons in 1998) who officiated over the subsequent trial of Rosen in Los Angeles, made ethically questionable statements to the jury, prior to the commencement of the trial, stating unequivocally that Hillary Clinton was not involved in any direct way whatsoever in the illegal fundraiser On Fox News in 2005, Doug Schoen, a former Clinton adviser, said that, The prosecutors and defense attorneys said she is not involved Prosecutors made the decision that Mr. Rosen should be tried, it s a fact-based case. It has nothing to do with Senator Clinton. The video appears to directly counter these assertions and instead links Hillary and her aide to the planning of the fundraiser. Hillary Clinton is not a part of this case In fact, if Clinton participated in the planning of the fundraising event, it: would make Paul s substantial contributions a direct donation to her Senate campaign rather than her joint fundraising committee, violating federal statutes that limit hard money contributions to a candidate to $2,000 per person. Knowingly accepting or soliciting $25,000 or more in a calendar year is a felony carrying a prison sentence of up to five years In the tape, Clinton is heard via speakerphone thanking Paul, business partner Stan Lee and other colleagues for their efforts in putting together the fundraiser She also describes the role of longtime aide Kelly Craighead as assisting in day-to-day involvement in preparation for the event as her liaison with Paul and his producers Craighead, Clinton says, talks all the time with Paul, so she ll be the person to convey whatever I need. The aide s hands-on role is significant, because the law also implicates a candidate if any of his or her agents are involved in coordinating expenditures with a donor In another portion of the tape, Clinton is heard discussing her direct solicitation of a large contribution from the entertainer Cher. Paul s legal team, the U.S. Justice Foundation, argues the value of Cher s performance alone vastly exceeded the FEC limits The Hillary Clinton Felony Video The video itself is fascinating. The preface to the tape states that it shows Hillary Clinton in the process of committing at least four or five felonies under federal election law -Via: Doug Ross JournalPeter Paul filed and won a civil suit against the Clinton s in 2010. The segment below is from the Supreme Court precedent setting film Hillary The Movie by Citizens United, shows the polygraph test taken by Hillary s largest donor, Peter Paul, corroborating his claims the Clintons promised to have Bill Clinton work with his public company in exchange for Paul paying more than $1.2 million to elect Hillary to her first political office. This video supports the allegations in the civil fraud suit filed by Paul in 2003 and settled with the Clintons in 2010.","label":1}
{"text":"The Saudi-led military coalition fighting against the Houthi movement in Yemen has reopened a land border crossing, easing a blockade imposed on the country earlier this week, a Yemeni official and witnesses said on Friday. The coalition said on Monday it would close all air, land and sea ports in Yemen to stem the flow of arms to the Houthis from Iran, after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired toward its capital Riyadh. The al Wadea border crossing, linking Saudi Arabia with territory in eastern Yemen controlled by the Saudi-backed government, was reopened on Thursday, the official and witnesses said, letting food and other supplies enter Yemen. The United Nations has said that a total blockade could cause a famine that could kill millions. The southern port of Aden was reopened on Wednesday. The Houthis, drawn mainly from Yemen s Zaidi Shi ite minority and allied to long-serving former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, control much of the country including the capital San aa. Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies have been waging war against them on behalf of the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, based in Aden. United Nations aid chief Mark Lowcock said on Wednesday that if the coalition did not allow humanitarian aid access to Yemen, it would cause the largest famine the world has seen for many decades, with millions of victims. The Saudis and their allies say the Houthis get weapons from their arch-foe, Iran. Iran denies arming the Houthis and blames the conflict in Yemen on Riyadh.","label":0}
{"text":"The new leader of Italy s anti-establishment 5-Star movement says it is not a populist party and will make cutting waste and reducing debt its priority. 5-Star, which leads most opinion polls ahead of national elections due early next year, has been trying to shed its maverick, populist image and reassure foreign capitals that it can be trusted with power. Luigi Di Maio, the 31-year-old lawmaker picked on Saturday to lead the movement, told Reuters on Sunday that 5-Star stood for post ideological common sense, and was opposed to right-wing and left-wing extremism. I reject populism as a label for 5-Star, he said in an interview on the sidelines of the party s annual gathering in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast. 5-Star, founded by comedian Beppe Grillo nine years ago as a protest movement, bases its appeal mainly on opposition to corruption and vested interests. Boyish-looking and usually immaculately turned out in suit and tie, Di Maio presents a more moderate image than Grillo, who is famous for raucous tirades against the ruling elite. He had been groomed for the leadership by Grillo, who is 69 and now plans to withdraw gradually from his figurehead role. Di Maio said many of the party s proposals, such as a public bank to fund investments, had been adopted with success by mainstream parties in Northern Europe which he wanted to emulate. He said that, if 5-Star won next year s election, due by May, he would try to negotiate changes to European Union fiscal rules to allow Italy to invest more to boost its stagnant economy. However, he said he would also cut waste, arguing that this was the best way to bring down Italy s huge public debt, forecast to be just under 132 percent of GDP this year, the highest in the euro zone after Greece s. We have brought down debt in every town and city where 5-Star governs. We will do that at the national level too, he said. 5-Star has rowed back from a pledge to hold a referendum on Italy s membership of the euro and now says this would only be a last resort if the EU rejects any reforms to current budget rules. Di Maio, who comes from Italy s poor south and entered parliament at 26 five years ago, after mostly doing odd jobs and internet marketing, dismissed the suggestion that he was too inexperienced to be prime minister. I came from a part of Italy with 60 percent youth unemployment, and people who sneer at my background are sneering at thousands of young Italians who are trying to create a future for themselves, he said. The ability to build a competent team was the most important quality for a prime minister, Di Maio said, vowing to present a full cabinet line-up before the election. Asked to name three priorities that would mark his leadership of the party, Di Maio listed universal income support for the poor, cutting wasteful public spending and increasing forms of direct democracy.","label":0}
{"text":"Over three generations, the Michael family forged a deep bond with the University of California, dating back nearly 50 years to when Jay Dee Michael Sr. was the university system's vice president and chief lobbyist. Family members proudly displayed degrees from the campuses in Los Angeles, Davis, Berkeley and Santa Barbara. And when Mr. Michael died last year, his family asked that memorial donations go to a U. C. Davis institute. Recently, though, the relationship has soured, a victim of the economic forces buffeting public universities. Jay Dee Michael Jr. said he might never feel the same again after his son was rejected from several U. C. campuses. \"I have blue and gold running through my blood,\" Mr. Michael told a State Assembly hearing here in March. \"But I can tell you that when I get calls now from U. C. Davis, as an alum, I'm not giving a dime. \" A state audit in March reinforced what many California parents already suspected: On a constant hunt for more revenue, the prestigious University of California system gave favorable admissions treatment to thousands of and foreign students, to the detriment of Californians. As a result, admissions to the system have become a bipartisan political issue in California, where the Legislature recently moved to link university funding to enrolling additional California residents. But at its core, the discontent in California, which is also developing in other states, reflects a broader, fundamental breakdown in the traditional operation of the public university. And it highlights troubling questions about affordability and access, much of the impetus behind the announcement by Hillary Clinton on Wednesday that she was embracing a large part of Bernie Sanders's proposal to provide free tuition at public colleges. Since the 2008 recession, states have reduced spending on public higher education by 17 percent, while tuition has risen by 33 percent, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The University of California system relied on state money for almost a quarter of its budget as recently as 2002, according to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Now, that figure is 9 percent, after $1 billion in cuts. Students who once could afford educations at their state public universities now pay nearly twice what they used to pay, part of the driving force behind a $1. 27 trillion student debt bill. According to the College Board, the average cost of attending a public university, including room and board, increased from $11, 655 in 2000 to $19, 548 in 2015, in dollars. In the City University of New York system, tuition at colleges is now $6, 330, having increased by $300 each year since 2011, when it was $4, 830. Mrs. Clinton's proposal \u2014 which would use federal funds to make public tuition free for students with family incomes of up to $125, 000 \u2014 would also require states to pay matching dollars. Public higher education advocates generally agree that a federal effort to reverse the long disinvestment by states is overdue. \"What Sanders figured out \u2014 it's not the $65, 000 cost of attendance at some of our pricier privates driving the debt bubble, but rather the disinvestment and privatization of public higher ed,\" said Barmak Nassirian, the director of federal relations and policy analysis for the American Association of State Colleges and Univerities. For more than a century, the public university has been viewed as the proverbial ticket to the American dream, assuring a pathway to better jobs and a more comfortable lifestyle for generation after generation. With generous state subsidies, the public university operated on the idea that even a poor or student could acquire a education. That egalitarian notion was expressed in Michigan through the phrase \"an uncommon education for the common man,\" coined by the university's former president, James B. Angell. In Wisconsin, the university's former president, Charles Van Hise, declared that he would \"never be content until the beneficent influence of the university reaches every family in the state. \" That became known as the Wisconsin Idea. Funding cuts have also changed the demographic makeup of the public universities as they seek revenues from outside the state, admitting more and more and foreign students. In California, even Mrs. Clinton weighed in. \"We have got to get back to using public colleges and universities for what they were intended,\" Mrs. Clinton said during a California campaign stop. \"If it is in California, for the children in California. If it is in New York, for the children in New York. \" In California, nonresident enrollment has been about 15. 5 percent on U. C. campuses over all, but as high as 29 percent at the marquee Berkeley. Yet California's enrollment is low compared with flagship universities in a number of other states. On Monday, Berkeley announced that it had offered admission to 14, 400 high school students for this fall, including 1, 000 more California residents than last year. Defending her university system after the audit's release in March, President Janet Napolitano wrote that because of budget cuts, nearly every state in the nation had been forced to make a \"Hobson's choice, and they all have reached the same decision: Open doors to students to keep the doors open for students. \" Ms. Napolitano reeled off a list of more than a dozen big public universities whose enrollment exceeds California's. Some, like the University of Alabama, where the student body of 37, 000 is more than 50 percent nonresident, have resorted to aggressive marketing aimed at luring including distributing million of dollars in merit aid to nonresidents, much of it to students from affluent families, not only improving its bottom line but also raising average test scores, metrics used by commercial ratings groups to rank colleges. But it is a ratings and financial game, some worry, that means university student bodies will increasingly become alienated from their state's population. \"It seems like all the incentives are going after wealthy students and leaving the students in the dust,\" said Stephen Burd, a senior policy analyst with the New America Foundation who has studied the increased use of merit aid to attract nonresident students. A study found that as enrollment increases, universities admit fewer minority and students. \"When you grow the share of students, you're making the student body richer, more white and Asian and less black and Latino,\" said one of the study's Ozan Jaquette, an assistant professor of education at U. C. L. A. William Deary, who has made a fortune in the home health care business in Jackson, Mich. put himself through Michigan State by working nights in a door factory, making $28 an hour. Since then, hourly jobs have disappeared in Michigan, but tuition at Michigan State has risen sharply, Mr. Deary said, so much so that the university has become out of reach for many students. It is part of the impetus for his first political campaign \u2014 for Michigan State's board. He is also concerned that and foreign students are squeezing out Michiganders. \"Our sons and daughters should come first,\" Mr. Deary's campaign literature urges. Michigan State's enrollment of about 50, 000 includes 7, 568 international students, placing it in the top 10 colleges for foreign student enrollment. At the nearby University of Michigan, the student body of 43, 625 is nearly 37 percent and nearly 14 percent international students. The New York Times reported in 2004 that more freshmen at the Ann Arbor campus came from families with annual income of $200, 000 or more than from families with less than the median national income of $53, 000. The university has pointed out that its admissions rate for Michigan students is higher than for . In Massachusetts, enrollment has increased by nearly 85 percent at University of Massachusetts campuses since 2008, while enrollment grew by only 19 percent, said a recent critical report by the Pioneer Institute, a Massachusetts think tank. UMass officials responded denying that students had been adversely affected. At the University of Wisconsin's flagship campus in Madison, officials last fall lifted a cap on the enrollment of . The Wisconsin student newspaper, The Badger Herald, predicted that the university would transform into a bourgeois playground for wealthy Chicagoans, who can afford the luxury private dormitories near campus. The newest offering, Hub Madison, offers amenities including a rooftop swimming pool, sauna, a golf simulator, arcade games and billiards tables. \"Rich kids value amenities \u2014 luxury recreation facilities and luxury dorms,\" said Mr. Jaquette, of U. C. L. A. \"These are the things that resident students or students don't care about. \" Among concerns voiced by Mr. Jaquette, Mr. Burd and other experts is that public university campuses, often among the more elite settings in states, will become even more alienated from their state population as a whole. Elliot Spillers, from Pelham, Ala. was student body president at the University of Alabama last year \u2014 the first black student in 40 years to have held that position. He said he doubted he would have been elected if the student body, which is mostly white, had been homegrown. The university's enrollment is now more than half . \"It's definitely shifting the culture here on campus, which is a positive thing,\" Mr. Spillers said, echoing the views of many students. Others see a less positive side to the change. Of the undergraduates at Alabama's Tuscaloosa campus, more than 3, 000 receive merit aid in the form of free or discounted tuition \u2014 an average of $19, 000 per student. In 2015, the university gave $100 million in merit aid. Mr. Burd, of the New America Foundation, wonders if that money could be better used to help needy students, particularly in a state with a poverty rate among the highest in the country. In essence, he said, some colleges have adopted the enrollment tactics of private colleges to increase revenues and enhance prestige. Devin Thompson of St. Paul, Minn. had a SAT score and realized he could save $200, 000 over four years by not attending a private college in Virgina and instead accepting the free tuition offered by Alabama, automatic to anyone with his record. The son of college professors, he will be attending this fall. By enrolling Mr. Thompson, Alabama will elevate its average SAT score, one of the metrics used in the U. S. News and World Report rankings. That, in turn, education experts say, will attract other affluent students, many of whom will get smaller merit packages from Alabama \u2014 just enough to make the college enticing compared with its peers. Meanwhile, the number of entering freshmen from Alabama high schools has declined steadily, from 3, 122 in 2009 to 2, 458 in 2015, records show. University officials say the acceptance rate for those students \u2014 63 percent \u2014 has remained the same. About half a mile away and just across the railroad tracks from the University of Alabama's manicured campus sits the mostly black Central High School. Few Central High students attend the University of Alabama. Ernestine Tucker, a Tuscaloosa school board member, wonders whether the university is working hard enough to recruit them. \"You would think their first priority would be the local students,\" Ms. Tucker said. Mr. Michael, whose son attends the University of Washington, was one of thousands of California residents who complained about admissions practices at U. C. From 2010 to 2014, the number of California residents enrolled declined by 1 percent, or 2, 200 students, while nonresidents increased by 82 percent, or 18, 000 students, the audit found. In 2015, nonresident students paid $37, 000, compared with $12, 240 for . \"Over the past several years, the university has failed to put the needs of residents first,\" the audit said. One of those residents was Priyanka Krishnamurthi, a math wiz from Saratoga with a SAT score. She ended up at Yale after being turned down by her desired program at Berkeley. In debating a bill in June over enrollment at the University of California, Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown told colleagues about her granddaughter, who recently graduated from high school in Sacramento, but did not bother to apply to U. C. schools. That is because a college admissions adviser told her she would be a good candidate only if she were from out of state. To Mr. Michael's way of thinking, when it came to his son, the University of California had reneged on an unwritten contract. \"In my case, three generations of Michaels have supported and funding the U. C. and the same is true for my wife's family,\" he said. \"And then, when it comes time for our children to go, there's no room. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The White House on Tuesday said it strongly opposes a House bill to fight the Zika virus, saying its funding is \"woefully inadequate\" to support the public health response that is needed. The Obama administration has urged Congress to pass legislation that would direct $1.9 billion to fighting the Zika virus that is linked to birth defects including microcephaly.","label":0}
{"text":"Russia is within its rights to restrict the operations of U.S. media organizations in Russia in retaliation for what Moscow calls U.S. pressure on a Kremlin-backed TV station, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman said on Sunday. Russian officials have accused Washington of putting unwarranted pressure on the U.S. operations of RT, a Kremlin-funded broadcaster accused by some in Washington of interfering in domestic U.S. politics, which it denies. The foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said the full weight of the U.S. authorities was being brought to bear against RT s operations in the United States, and that Moscow had the right to respond. We have never used Russian law in relation to foreign correspondents as a lever of pressure, or censorship, or some kind of political influence, never, Zakharova said in an interview with Russia s NTV broadcaster. But this is a particular case. She cited a 1991 Russian law which, she said, stated that if a Russian media outlet is subject to restrictions in a foreign country, then Moscow has the right to impose proportionate restrictions on media outlets from that country operating inside Russia. Correspondingly, everything that Russian journalists and the RT station are subject to on U.S. soil, after we qualified it as restriction of their activities, we can apply similar measures to American journalists, American media here, on Russian territory, Zakharova said. She did not identify any specific U.S. media outlets that would be targeted. She said it made no difference from the Russian government s point of view if those outlets were backed by the U.S. state, or privately-funded. Late last month, Russia s state communications regulator accused U.S. TV channel CNN International of violating its license to broadcast in Russia and said it had summoned the broadcaster s representatives in connection with the matter. The watchdog did not publicly disclose the nature of the violation. The head of the regulator said it was a technical matter and denied that politics was involved. U.S. intelligence officials, in a report in January this year into allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, said RT was part of a state-run propaganda machine that supported a Kremlin campaign to influence U.S. politics. Russia Today, and Russian officials, have denied any attempt to interfere in U.S. politics. They say that political forces in the United States are whipping up hysteria about Russia s influence to discredit President Donald Trump.","label":0}
{"text":"It pays well to be a failed right-wing candidate. Sarah Palin, who served a half term as Alaska s governor and made a halfhearted attempt to become vice president next to John McCain, has profited quite nicely from her place in the conservative universe.After losing the 2008 election, Palin quickly quit being governor of Alaska and became a pundit on Fox News Channel. She signed a book deal and pumped out several tomes (her most recent book is Sweet Freedom: A Devotional), likely ghostwritten by writers who will be forever anonymous, and set up a political action committee, SarahPAC, that went to work buying thousands of her own books helping to send them up the bestseller charts.While her deal with Fox was ended by the network (after they built her a custom studio at her Alaska home, she rarely appeared on the network outside of goofy appearances on Sean Hannity s program), she ran an online subscription TV service for a while before that abruptly ended, and now appears on the fringe One America News Network. That network has promoted itself as the conservative alternative to Fox News, but does not have mainstream satelitte or cable tv coverage.In 2011 Palin purchased a mansion in Arizona for $1.695 million, and is now selling the property for $2.499 million. She ll make a profit on the home, thanks in part to the Obama agenda she opposed improving the economy and the real estate market.While Palin styles herself as just a hockey mom who loves her country, the 8,000 square foot home is not exactly a humble home on the range.The nearly 8,000-square-foot home was built in 2001. Some of its features include high ceilings, chandeliers and wrought-iron railings.The home also boasts a media room\/theater, a wine cellar, six bedrooms and six and a half bathrooms. One of the two master suites includes a rooftop deck.The outdoor area features a built-in grill station, a fire pit, a pool, a spa, a water-saving synthetic lawn and a lighted sports court complete the more than four-acre equestrian-zoned grounds. There s also a six-car garage.The home is inside a gated community, so not just anyone can come inside to pal around with the Palins.Here s how the realtor sells the property to prospective buyers:This pristine gated estate is sure to impress as you enter from a wraparound drive to access the private gated entrance. Masterfully designed & built this 7971 sqft home showcases 6 bedrooms, 6.5 baths, a 6 car garage & breathtaking mountain views from virtually every room! Quality & care echoes throughout, with beautiful finishes, fixtures, fireplaces, chandeliers, soaring ceilings, media theater, wine cellar & more. Craftsmanship extends to the resort themed backyard with fireplaces off the covered patio, veranda & rooftop deck off of the master suite. Luxury abounds with a built-in grill station, fire-pit, sparkling blue pool, spa, synthetic grass & a lighted sports court. This 4.9 acre equestrian estate offers opulence at it s finest.Here are some photos of Palin s mansion, are you in the market?","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump took his first official actions as U.S. president on Friday, sending his Cabinet nominations to the Senate and calling for a national day of patriotism, his spokesman said. Trump, who was sworn into office earlier on Friday, also signed into a law a waiver to allow Defense Secretary-designate James Mattis, a retired U.S. Marine Corps general, to serve, Sean Spicer said.","label":0}
{"text":"After Donald Trump watches this ad he ll probably start saying that he likes people who weren t wounded in combat.During his presidential campaign, Trump smeared Vietnam veteran John McCain by saying that he likes people who weren t captured by the enemy. McCain is a war hero who was a prisoner of war. He was brutally tortured after being shot down during a mission. As a result, McCain can no longer lift his arms above his shoulders.Ever since the election, Trump has been whining about not being treated like a legitimate president. Of course, that s because Trump lashes out at anyone who criticizes him like a petulant child who isn t getting his way. It s also because Russia helped him win the election and because he has done nothing but hurt people across the nation and all around the world with his policies.For instance, Trump s assault on Obamacare threatens the healthcare of 30 million Americans, including veterans.Well, one veteran had a message for Trump in an amazing ad released on Monday.As a bearded man lifts weights, the camera pulls away to reveal that he only has one leg. He lost the other leg fighting for our country. President Trump, I hear you watch the morning shows, he began. Here s what I do every morning. He then tells Trump that if he wants to be considered a legitimate president he should act like one by not killing Obamacare and banning Muslims from entering the nation. Look, you lost the popular vote. You re having trouble drawing a crowd. And your approval rating keeps sinking. But kicking thousands of my fellow veterans off the health insurance by killing the Affordable Care Act and banning Muslims won t help. That s not the America I sacrificed myself for. You wanna be a legitimate president, sir? Then act like one. Here s the video via Twitter.New TV ad running today: Wounded veteran tells Trump: You wanna be a legitimate president, sir? Then act like one. pic.twitter.com\/GiL5X62Dx5 Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 6, 2017Donald Trump will never be legitimate. Because he is totally incapable of acting presidential. He is a selfish bully who only cares about himself and his rich friends. It s only been a little over two weeks since he took over the White House and he is already destroying the very foundation of this country while alienating our allies. His decisions are ruining lives. And he has even gotten a Navy SEAL killed in response to a video that is several years old, proving that he is completely inept. At some point, the military will have to refuse to follow Trump s orders, especially if he continues to escalate confrontations with Iran and China. This country cannot afford to lose more blood and treasure because a madman is obsessed with absolute power.","label":1}
{"text":"Legendary journalist Dan Rather says that Robert Mueller s ongoing Russia investigation has Donald Trump seized with fear. Speaking to MSNBC on Wednesday, Rather explained that the investigation into Trump s possible collusion with Russia has Trump scared out of his mind. Donald Trump is afraid. He s trying to exude power and strength. He s afraid of something that Mueller and the prosecutors are going to find out. A political hurricane is out there at sea for him, we ll call it Hurricane Vladimir if you will, the whole Russian thing. It s still pretty far out at sea, but each day this hurricane, this political hurricane is building in intensity. Mueller s investigation has been steadily picking up steam. It was reported on Wednesday that New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is now working with Mueller to take an even deeper look at Trump s former campaign manager Paul Manafort.Former national security adviser Michael Flynn has also found himself under a microscope and has even tried to cut deals for immunity to flip on Trump. So far, neither Mueller nor Congress (who is conducting their own simultaneous investigation) has taken him up on the offer. This is presumably because they don t need to let Flynn off the hook in exchange for his testimony to nail Trump s hide to the wall.Publicly, Trump still claims that the investigation is nothing more than a witch hunt. However, those close to him say that behind closed doors, Trump has become increasingly distraught over the intensifying investigation into his shady Russian ties.Trump should be afraid, very afraid. In fact, being terrified of what Mueller may find is probably the smartest thing he has done so far. Sooner or later, the truth is going to come out just like it always does. And when that finally happens, Trump is going to be beyond screwed. It s only a matter of time.You can watch Rather s interview below:","label":1}
{"text":"Let this sink in The word has been out for some time now that the US borders are open. Now we have the President of Panama giving an even bigger free pass to ANYONE to come to America. We are going to be Europe soon Obama is making sure of it Panama promised to help hundreds of migrants who have crossed its jungle border from Colombia to carry on toward the United States.President Juan Carlos Varela on Tuesday said Panama would make an exception to its immigration restrictions for migrants who have recently crossed into Panama s Darien jungle. The border will remain closed to irregular migrants, but those that are using these points to cross and have already reached our territory will be given humanitarian assistance so they can continue on their way, he said. Panama will not allow anyone who has crossed into our country to die on our territory, he added, in a public speech.Around 800 US-bound migrants, most of them from Haiti, Africa, Asia and Cuba, are in dense jungle on the Panama-Colombia border, Varela said Friday.He described it as another migration crisis. A further 2,500 are stranded in Panama s northern neighbor, Costa Rica, since the next country on the trail, Nicaragua, has tightened immigration controls.Colombian authorities say they have deported thousands of migrants trying to reach Panama from its northern territory.Varela said last week that many of the migrants were Haitians who had gone to Brazil after a 2010 earthquake devastated their country.Brazil s current deep recession has driven them to try to get to the United States through Central America.","label":1}
{"text":"President Obama on Monday made an impassioned argument for his administration's decision to instruct public schools to allow transgender students to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity, saying that society must protect the dignity and safety of vulnerable children. The remarks were the president's first public comments on a directive released Friday that has added fuel to a searing national debate over transgender rights. Mr. Obama said the guidance, issued by the Education and Justice Departments, represented \"our best judgment\" on how to help schools wrestling with the issue. \"We're talking about kids, and anybody who's been in school, been in high school, who's been a parent, I think should realize that kids who are sometimes in the minority \u2014 kids who have a different sexual orientation or are transgender \u2014 are subject to a lot of bullying, potentially they are vulnerable,\" Mr. Obama said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. \"I think that it is part of our obligation as a society to make sure that everybody is treated fairly, and our kids are all loved, and that they're protected and that their dignity is affirmed. \" The White House has said little about Mr. Obama's role in the release of the guidance, which had been under development for months, other than to say that he had been kept apprised of its progress and that it was broadly consistent with his values. It has drawn condemnations from many Republican lawmakers who call it an example of presidential overreach. Greg Abbott, the governor of Texas, said on Monday that the guidance violated the principle of separation of powers, and state officials there have signaled that they will seek to challenge it in court. \"The president is turning the Constitution on its head,\" Mr. Abbott told Fox News. \"He's trying to cram down as many parts of his liberal agenda on the United States of America as he possibly can\" before leaving office in January. The clash comes as the Obama administration is battling North Carolina over a law that says transgender people must use restrooms and changing facilities that correspond to their sex at birth. The Justice Department sued the state this month, arguing that the law is discriminatory. \"There's no denying that there has been a significant uptick in public consideration of these kinds of questions\" because of North Carolina's measure, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said on Monday, before the president's comments were published online. \"The White House was not just aware of these policy deliberations but in the loop as the decisions were being made to ensure that the guidance reflected the president's values and the president's preferences,\" he added. Mr. Obama said he would not comment on the North Carolina suit, to avoid intervening in a pending case. But he said that he expected the courts to eventually resolve the issue of how schools should treat transgender students, and that, in the meantime, his administration wanted to respond to inquiries from schools on how to proceed. \"We said, 'It is our view that you should try to treat these kids with dignity,' \" Mr. Obama said, adding that the administration had sought to help educators and administrators by including a set of \"best practices\" from school districts that have enacted similar transgender policies. \"There are school districts who have been wrestling with this problem and have, we think, done a good job in accommodating them in a way that is good for everybody, and so you can learn from these best practices. This is what we are advising. \" But the directive represents more than just a suggestion. While it does not carry the force of law, it signals how the administration interprets federal statutes, bringing with it an implied threat that schools that act otherwise could lose federal funding. \"Ultimately, depending on how these other lawsuits go, courts will affirm or reject how we see the issue,\" Mr. Obama said.","label":0}
{"text":"Many Americans view Islam unfavorably, and supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump are more than twice as likely to view the religion negatively as those backing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to a Reuters\/Ipsos online poll of more than 7,000 Americans. It shows that 37 percent of American adults have a \"somewhat unfavorable\" or \"very unfavorable\" view of Islam. This includes 58 percent of Trump supporters and 24 percent of Clinton supporters, a contrast largely mirrored by the breakdown between Republicans and Democrats. By comparison, respondents overall had an equally unfavorable view of atheism at 38 percent, compared with 21 percent for Hinduism, 16 percent for Judaism and 8 percent for Christianity. Spokespeople for Trump and Clinton declined to comment. The poll took place before an attacker on Thursday drove his truck into a holiday crowd in Nice, France, killing more than 80 people in what President Francois Hollande called a terrorist act. Police sources said the driver, while linked to common crimes, was not on a watch list of intelligence services and no Islamist militant group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. The race for the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election has put a spotlight on Americans' views of Muslims with Trump proposing a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. He repeated the proposal after Omar Mateen, a New York-born Muslim armed with an assault rifle, killed 49 people in an attack on a Florida gay nightclub last month. The ideological divide between Trump and Clinton supporters is set against a backdrop of increasing violence and discrimination against Muslims in the United States. The poll shows 78 percent of Trump supporters and 36 percent of Clinton supporters said that when compared to other religions, Islam was more likely to encourage acts of terrorism. Trump supporters were also about twice as likely as Clinton supporters to say that Islam was more encouraging of violence toward Americans, women and gay people. Polling on none of the other belief systems and their perceived connection to terrorism or violence came close to matching those numbers. Clinton has called for a more inclusive environment within American society and for a joint effort between the U.S. government and Muslim countries to battle the spread of Islamist militancy. She has criticized Trump's harsh statements about Muslims and Mexicans while Trump has bemoaned what he calls American society's devotion to political correctness. Graphic: tmsnrt.rs\/29IPJ6l Party affiliation accounted for the deepest division among Americans where their views on Muslims were concerned. Respondents' status as rich or poor, young or old, or male or female did not offer as pronounced an overall view as did their identification as Democrats or Republicans. \"If it was true that Trump did not represent Republicans broadly defined, you would think Republicans would look different; they don't,\" said Douglas McAdam, a sociology professor at Stanford University who studies American politics. \"It goes against the claims of the (former presidential candidate) Mitt Romneys of the world, that Trump is not really a Republican, that he doesn't represent the Republican party. He seems to be resonating with Republicans generally.\" According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group, attacks on American Muslims and on mosques in the United States rose in 2015 to their highest level ever recorded. The group said 31 incidents of damage or destruction of mosques were reported; there were 11 incidents in which a Muslim person was the target of a slur or another kind of harassment. The Reuters\/Ipsos poll ran in all 50 states from June 14 to July 6. It included 7,473 American adults and has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 1 percentage point.","label":0}
{"text":"by PAUL FASSA  Allowing and encouraging domestic hemp cultivation would be a boon for small farmers, especially organic farmers. I'm talking only about industrial hemp, not medical cannabis\/marijuana, which continues to prove its merits and gain acceptance  Industrial hemp's use should be a no-brainer. But it's a complex boondoggle of legal and bureaucratic nonsense even without THC, the molecule that leads to \"Reefer Madness\" . Industrial hemp commercial cultivation is legal in Canada. But the USA hemp industry was pushed to the side by government connected industry insiders whose monopolies were threatened when it appeared hemp may boom and compete for the very products of their monopolist concerns.  Circa 1937, the hemp industry had been given a mechanical invention gift known as the decoricator machine was invented. It was a machine that was to hemp what the 19th Century cotton gin was. It replaced hand shredding of hemp to glean its fibers, fibers that could be used for textiles, clothing, paper, and plastic.  With the advent of the decoricator, hemp would have been able to take over competing industries in paper, textiles for clothing and other applications, fuel, and plastics. Growing hemp in abundance was easy, and it's plant to harvest time was no more than six months.  According to Popular Mechanics during that time, \"10,000 acres devoted to hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average [forest] pulp land.\" Then a small number of large businesses with competition concerns used high level government connections to push through the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.  The ensuing marijuana scares hyped by movies such as \"Reefer Madness\" brought about more legislation that would prohibit all hemp cultivation, even hemp without THC.  Prior to this, even without the high speed decoricator, hemp was an easy cash crop for small farmers, some of whom were recruited to continue cultivating hemp during WW II to provide hemp fibers for U.S. Naval ships' ropes as well as other military applications.  And prior to that, hemp was so important during colonial and early American times that farmers were virtually required to cultivate it along with their other crops.  George Washington \u2013\"Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it everywhere.\"  Thomas Jefferson \u2013\"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth and protection of the country.\"  Hemp for Nutrition  Hulled hemp seeds, their powders and cold pressed oils provide all the essential amino acids for easily digested high protein. Hemp is not only very high in omega-3, but it provides an almost perfect ratio of omega-3 to omega-6.  It is truly a super food that you can buy in health food stores or online. The seeds come from Canada, where industrial hemp is legal . Hemp is so nutritionally dense that one could survive on hemp seeds alone during extreme food shortages. If hemp were legal, you could easily grow your own. Hemp Improves Farming  Hemp plants don't need pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, which rely mostly on the phosphate industry. A phosphate industry byproduct is the sodium fluoride that is sold to municipality water works for our poisoned tap water.  The runoff from fields of phosphate fertilizers into waterways that merge with seawater is causing all sorts of nitrogen and phosphorous excesses and imbalances, leading to algae that stifles the water's ecological support systems.  Hemp's thick roots ward off weeds, and growing hemp improves the soil's nitrogen, making that soil better for other crops. They would be useful and lucrative rotation crops for organic farmers.  Hemp plants have a growth cycle of only four months. In mild climates, harvesting hemp two times in one year would create an annual cash cow for farmers. The marijuana taboo is eliminated by allowing the male plants to continually pollinate the female plants. This reduces psychotropic THC to legal levels.  Eliminating Toxic Petrochemical Plastics  There is a clump of plastic waste residue larger than the state of Texas floating in the middle of the Pacific. A lot of it is expected to decompose, creating a plastic soup in the ocean. The toxins from this plastic soup spread out into other oceanic regions and are hazardous to fish and bird wildlife. This soup could find its way into our kitchens as well!  All kinds of plastics are produced with hemp, from clear wraps for foods to automobile parts. Hemp plastics are durable and heat resistant. And they are bio-degradable. Recently the French auto industry use hemp to manufacture some of its automobile parts. Henry Ford pioneered this in 1941 when he built his \"vegetable car\" with hemp and flax. It was stronger and lighter than steel cars.  Ford's hemp-mobile also used hemp bio-diesel fuel, which creates very little pollution. The petroleum industry didn't want to see or hear that. Hemp seeds were even used to make paints and lacquers in the mid-1930s.  Petrochemical plastics for all purposes could be replaced with hemp plastics that are non-toxic and bio-degradable. Bye-bye BPA!  Construction Materials for Housing  Amazingly, housing construction materials made from hemp fibers have been discovered to be superior to most cheap materials used in housing construction these days. Ever see a house under construction after its initial framing?  What you'll usually see before whatever exterior coating is used are sheets of wood substitutes, either pasteboard or particle board or pressboards, some of which are processed and bound with toxic chemicals that can off-gas into interior quarters. It's cheaper than other materials and used abundantly.  Inexpensive hemp can be made into various different building materials, hempcrete, fiberboard, carpet, stucco, cement blocks, insulation, and plastic. Those materials are stronger and much longer lasting than what's being used currently. They are also mold and rot free and more fire resistant. And they are environmentally and ecologically friendly and non-toxic. More Trees for Tree Huggers  Pulp from trees is used to make paper. But anything wood pulp can do, hemp fibers can do better. It's said that the original Constitution and Bill of Rights were on hemp paper.  Paper from trees can be recycled maybe three times. Hemp paper can be recycled eight times. Since hemp was effectively banned in the USA since 1937, 70% of the USA's forests have been eliminated. It takes years for trees to grow. Hemp can be gown and harvested within six months.  It's estimated that one acre of hemp produces more oxygen from CO2 and methane than 25 acres of forest. One idea presented by hemp advocates is to have inner city hemp plots to improve urban air quality. We wouldn't need bogus carbon tax legislation.  Pulping trees for paper creates more waste, pollution, and consumes more energy than most enterprises. This industry consumes more water than almost all others. It is the fifth largest industry consumer of energy, and it emits a good deal of toxicity in the process.  \"Why use up the forests which were centuries in the making and the mines which required ages to lay down, if we can get the equivalent of forest and mineral products in the annual growth of the hemp fields?\" \u2014 Henry Ford  Anything the petrochemical industry can produce, hemp can do better without toxic environmental and human consequences. Deforesting could be a thing of the past if hemp became the major source of construction materials and paper. Heavily pesticide and herbicide sprayed or GMO cotton wouldn't be necessary, nor would toxic synthetic fibers.  Amazing how such an easily cultivated plant with so many beneficial applications has been so efficiently suppressed by the one or two percent for their purposes while too many among the 98% agreed with that suppression.  Paul Fassa is a contributing staff writer for REALfarmacy.com. His pet peeves are the Medical Mafia's control over health and the food industry and government regulatory agencies' corruption that harms more than most realize. Visit his blog by following this link and follow him on Twitter here .","label":1}
{"text":"Rameshwar Natholi received an unexpected gift from the government recently when workmen descended on his modest home in this rural village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and built a brand-new toilet in his front yard. Natholi, a farmworker, said he never wanted one. Most people in his village have been relieving themselves in the open fields for years. But as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's \"Clean India\" campaign to provide new sanitary toilets to more than 60 million homes by 2019, Mukhrai has been in the midst of a toilet-building boom since April. More than 53 percent of Indian homes \u2014 about 70 percent in the villages \u2014 lack toilets. Poor sanitation and contaminated water cause 80 percent of the diseases afflicting rural India, and diarrhea is a leading killer of children younger than 5, UNICEF says. Modi says that this is a shame for a country that has global aspirations and that the lack of sanitary conveniences is demeaning to women. But building toilets is the easy part. Getting people to use them is the real challenge, officials say. \"We never asked for a toilet. Now we are stuck with it,\" said Natholi, 22, as he opened the squat toilet to show that it has not been used. His 62-year-old father peered in and shook his head. \"Having a toilet so close to the house is not a good idea. The pit is too small; it will fill up quickly. I don't want the bother of cleaning it up frequently. Going out to the open field is healthier. The open breeze outside is better than sitting inside this tiny room.\" Modi has made toilet-building and sanitation a rallying cry since October. He has enlisted large companies to help. In the past year, his government has built more than 5.8 million toilets \u2014 up from 4.9 million the previous year. But reports show that many of them have gone unused or that they are being used to store grain or clothes or to tether goats, thwarting Modi's sanitation revolution. \"Even as we accelerate toilet construction now, much more needs to be done to persuade people to use them,\" said Chaudhary Birender Singh, India's minister for rural development, sanitation and drinking water. \"For long, we assumed that if the toilets are built, people will automatically use it. But we have to diligently monitor the use over a period of time and reward them with cash incentives to the village councils at every stage. Only then will it become a daily habit.\" The government budget for raising awareness largely remained unspent for years. Thousands of villages were declared to have ended open defecation since 2006, but many have since returned to the practice. Critics also say that the government's great toilet race has turned into a vortex of corruption in which villagers and middlemen siphon money by creating fake ledger entries about toilet construction. After years of promoting toilet use by advocating the health benefits, many regions of India began using women as toilet ambassadors. Prospective brides were urged to shun potential grooms whose villages did not have toilets. Now, the campaign has begun to promote toilets as key to women's security. Numerous television ads and signs on village walls ask families to forbid their daughters and daughters-in-law to defecate in the open. But an unintended consequence of this campaign has been the perception that toilets are just for women. \"Men can go out to the open fields, but for women who wear veils all day, a toilet in the home is a good idea,\" said Sarvesh Sharma, 28, speaking with her face covered in Mukhrai, in front of her half-built toilet. In the southern state of Karnataka, a film about responsible fathers of adolescent daughters was used to get men to build toilets in their villages. \"Whether you like it or not, it's the men who make the decisions. And sanitation is just not a priority for the men. So we had to convey a message about toilets that enhances their manliness,\" said Jayamala Subramaniam, chief executive of Arghyam, a group in Bangalore that works on sanitation and water projects. In many villages, the new toilets are being used by women and the elderly. Researchers say that families use toilets sparingly because they do not want the pits to fill up quickly. Natholi said he wants a toilet pit so large that he can forget about emptying it for 20 years. India's poor toilet habits have little to do with income or limited access to water. They are influenced more by India's centuries-old caste system, in which members of the lowest group \u2014 formerly called \"untouchables\" \u2014 would clear away human waste. \"The act of emptying the pit latrine is associated with the socially degrading caste system,\" said Sangita Vyas, managing director at Rice, a New Delhi-based research group that studies sanitation issues. \"People fear a situation when their pit fills up and there is nobody willing to clean it because of the social stigma. That fear discourages sustained use of toilets. \" A Rice survey in 300 villages last year showed that more than 40 percent of homes with working toilets still showed evidence of open defecation. The report said that toilets built by the government, typically smaller, are least likely to be used. But conversations about caste are not part of the government's toilet and sanitation campaign, activists say. \"How can you speak about \u00adtoilets for everyone without first freeing certain caste groups from the degrading work of cleaning human waste?\" said Bezwada Wilson, founder of the Sanitation Workers Movement. \"For any sanitation program to be successful in India, the government has to first mechanize the entire cleaning activities of the pit latrines, sewer lines and septic tanks.\" Sanitation is not just a rural problem in India. Even in big cities, only 30 percent of sewage is treated and disposed of. \"If all of us begin to use toilets in India tomorrow, India will still not be in a position to solve the public health problem,\" said Madhu Krishna, senior program officer for sanitation at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation based in Delhi. Meanwhile in Mukhrai, Man Pal Chaudhury, the Mukhrai village chief, said the 114 new toilets will bring change, but slowly. \"The goal is to free my village of open defecation. But for that, each and every person has to fall in line,\" he said. \"That is several years away. For a new American ambassador, India is a kind of homecoming India's Narendra Modi completed one year in power. Here's how he did. India's roads are among the deadliest in the world. Can new laws tame drivers? Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world","label":0}
{"text":"Good morning. Here's what you need to know: \u2022 Donald J. Trump questioned whether the U. S. must remain bound to its longstanding One China policy \"unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade. \" He also disparaged the American spy agencies that he will count on as commander in chief, dismissing a C. I. A. assessment that Russian hacking had influenced the presidential campaign as \"ridiculous. \" Mr. Trump is expected to name as secretary of state Rex W. Tillerson. The chief executive of Exxon Mobil, he has made extensive deals around the globe and has close ties to Russia's president, Vladimir V. Putin. Above, Mr. Trump at the football game over the weekend. _____ \u2022 Prime Minister Hwang is now South Korea's acting president, after Park 's powers were suspended last week when the National Assembly vote to impeach her. If the Constitutional Court decides to remove her, here are some contenders to fill the presidency, including Ban the outgoing United Nations secretary general. Our reporter looks at how the scandal and the election of Mr. Trump might be affecting North Korea. _____ \u2022 Thousands of readers in the Philippines responded to the photographer Daniel Berehulak's gruesome documentation of scores of homicides committed as part of President Rodrigo Duterte's antidrug campaign. Some expressed horror, but most applauded Mr. Duterte's approach. \"Slaughter might be harsh but I guess for drug peddlers, they deserve it,\" one said. _____ \u2022 Syrians are streaming out of eastern Aleppo as government forces continue to hammer neighborhoods with airstrikes, but some are staying. \"We are dead either way,\" one man told a nurse. The Islamic State appeared to take advantage of the government's focus on Aleppo, retaking the ancient city of Palmyra. _____ \u2022 Turks massed in mourning after twin suicide bombings in Istanbul killed 38 people and wounded scores. A Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, the latest in a series of that have crushed the city's spirit and economy. \"This is the new norm,\" one Turk said. _____ \u2022 Our columnist Roger Cohen managed to get into one of Australia's island detention centers for refugees. The world, he writes, \"knows no more sustained, sinister or surreal exercise in cruelty than the South Pacific Australia has established for its trickle of the migrant flood. \" \u2022 An informal lending network administered through smartphone apps and online platforms is allowing investors in China to make American deals \u2014 sometimes inflating prices. \u2022 An investigation by The New York Times into the financial maneuvering at Hostess as the Twinkie was reintroduced found a blueprint for how private equity executives have amassed some of the greatest fortunes of the modern era. \u2022 Iran's national airline and Boeing signed a $16. 6 billion deal for 80 airplanes, but its future under a Trump administration is uncertain. \u2022 A lawyer for Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, is expected to try to delay her criminal trial today on charges of fiscal negligence in a 2007 arbitration case, when she was France's finance minister. \u2022 The U. S. Federal Reserve Bank has all but announced it will raise its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday for the first time since December 2015. \u2022 Here's a snapshot of global markets. \u2022 Jakarta is preparing for the possibility of more terrorist threats after the Indonesian police foiled a major bomb plot over the weekend. [Jakarta Post] \u2022 The race for Hong Kong's next chief executive has become more complicated. Leung the unpopular incumbent, said he would not seek a second term. [The New York Times] \u2022 And John Tsang, Hong Kong's financial secretary, is hinting at a run. [South China Morning Post] \u2022 A pioneer is one of the most successful wine growers in China. [Hong Kong Free Press] \u2022 A church in southern Nigeria whose construction had been rushed collapsed onto worshipers at an ordination, killing at least 160 people. [Associated Press] \u2022 The movement in the United States is trying to improve its image, but its core message of racial separation and white supremacy is still the same. [The New York Times] \u2022 David Hallberg, the first American dancer to join the Bolshoi Ballet, returns to the stage two and a half years after an ankle injury. He performs in Sydney with the Australian Ballet on Tuesday, Friday and Dec. 19 and 21. \u2022 China has plans to recreate a model American farm, and possibly an entire Midwestern community, in Hebei Province, inspired by President Xi Jinping's visit to Iowa in 2012. \u2022 And in our Daily 360 video, the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei takes us on a stroll through Tompkins Square Park in New York, his old stamping grounds from 1983 to 1993. Four exhibitions of his work are currently in the city. Last week, the Pizzagate case escalated when a man fired a rifle inside a Washington restaurant falsely accused in fake news stories of ties to a child abuse ring. The history of the \" \" suffix begins with the 1970s Watergate scandal that led to President Richard M. Nixon's resignation. Since then, the suffix has been synonymous with political wrongdoing. The Times columnist William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter, popularized the practice. He introduced readers to Nannygate, Scalpgate, and Troopergate during the Clinton administration. Mr. Safire later admitted that he might have been trying to minimize Nixon's crimes. But \" \" scandals have not been limited to the United States. Britain has had its share, and in Germany, there was the 1987 Waterkantgate, a scandal around a West German politician that resulted in his mysterious death. India had snoopgate, and Malaysia had cowgate. Argentina and Venezuela's relations soured over Valijagate \u2014 which, if you speak Spanish, you'd have guessed turned on the contents of a suitcase. The unoriginal suffix even gets recycled now. Pizzagate was previously used to describe a soccer player's use of the food as a weapon, and when New York's mayor committed a : using silverware to eat a slice. Evan Gershkovich contributed reporting. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com.","label":0}
{"text":"Paul Ryan is in a little bit of hot water. Not because he s establishment, not because he s proposing a giant cut to Medicare or Medicaid, and not because he s thwarting the RNC.No, he s in hot water because he seems to think that lack of diversity is a good thing!The Speaker recently posted a picture on his Instagram page celebrating the new interns for the Republican Party on Capitol Hill. The picture, taken with a selfie stick, shows the smiling Speaker with an entire whites-only workforce, with the majority of them being men. No diversity, no color, nothing but lily-white college kids.The Speaker wrote, I think this sets a record for the most number of #CapitolHill interns in a single selfie. #SpeakerSelfie. Needless to say, Speaker Ryan and the Republicans faced backlash.But it was the Democrats who had the best response.Everyone knows the Democratic Party is the party of inclusiveness. Everyone, no matter their race, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual orientation is welcome, in all capacities. While the Republicans seem to have a whites only policy when hiring interns, the Democrats like to broaden their horizons.Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat from Texas, posted on her Twitter page a picture of the Democratic interns. And, well, there is a big difference:Can anyone tell me what the difference is? Well, for starters, there s more women. There s also individuals of all different races and ethnicities.The difference could not be more stark. As Republicans (yet again) struggle to appeal to minority voters, it should come as no surprise to them why those who aren t white males have a hard time trusting them.Just take a look at their convention. Out of the 2,400 delegates at the RNC (who nominated Trump to be their candidate), only 18 were people of color, which amounts to approximately 0.0075 percent.Of the 71 prime-time speakers who will be addressing the convention over the four days, 80 percent are white. Only seven speakers are black, and three are Latino.When 100 percent of your interns are white, more than 99 percent of your delegates are white, and 80 percent of your speakers are white, you don t deserve the minority vote. You cannot be trusted nor taken seriously if you refuse to have them represented in your most official capacities.No wonder this year s RNC was branded RNC so White. This year s GOP is the least diverse. It really is now the party of Donald Trump. They learned absolutely nothing from their 2012 autopsy report, and they may suffer irreparable damage in November.","label":1}
{"text":"PLEASE LISTEN TO LINDA SARSOUR SPEAK ABOUT HOW DISSAPOINTED SHE IS THAT 22 STATES HAVE VOTED AGAINST SHARIA LAW: HAHA! Leader and organizer of Washington #WomensMarch is annoyed that 22 US states don t allow Sharia laws. Blames Islamaphobia! pic.twitter.com\/fjN3WQ7p7P Onlinemagazin (@OnlineMagazin) January 23, 2017 Linda Sarsour, one of the organizers behind Saturday s Women s March, being held in Washington, D.C., was recently spotted at a large Muslim convention in Chicago posing for pictures with an accused financier for Hamas, the terrorist group. Sarsour, the head of the Arab American Association of New York and an Obama White House Champion of Change, was speaking at last month s 15th annual convention of the Muslim American Society and Islamic Circle of North America.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner, on Saturday first blamed \"thugs\" for his decision to cancel a rally in Chicago over alleged security concerns and then said supporters of his Democratic rivals caused disruptions there. \"It is (Hillary) Clinton and (Bernie) Sanders people who disrupted my rally in Chicago - and then they say I must talk to my people,\" Trump tweeted. \"Phony politicians!\" \"Obviously, while I appreciate that we had supporters at Trump's rally in Chicago, our campaign did not organize the protests,\" the Vermont senator said in a statement. \"What caused the violence at Trump's rally is a campaign whose words and actions have encouraged it on the part of his supporters.\" The Chicago Police Department said on that four men and a woman were arrested at the rally after brief scuffles broke out at the event at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion. Four of the individuals were still in police custody on Saturday morning but had not yet been charged, said Officer Jose Estrada, a department spokesman. One individual was given an ordinance citation and released. However, CBS News said its reporter, Sopan Deb, was detained by law enforcement while covering the scene. Another man, activist William Calloway, said he was arrested and charged with misdemeanor criminal trespassing. Calloway said police told him they arrested him because he failed to immediately exit the arena after the rally was canceled and guests were ordered to exit. The police department, however, said he was not among the five they had taken into custody. Calloway said that he was arrested by UIC campus police. Calloway played a prominent role in the court-ordered release of a police video of a white officer fatally shooting a black teenager, which triggered months of protests in the city. Calloway said he believes that his role in the McDonald case may have factored into police detaining him. He said police released him about three hours after taking him into custody. \"They knew who I was,\" Calloway said in a phone interview Saturday. Anthony Guglielmi, a police department spokesman, said the Trump campaign did not consult the police department before canceling. \"The decision was made by the campaign on its own,\" Guglielmi said. Trump held a rally in the Dayton suburb of Vandalia Saturday afternoon and planned an event in Cleveland ahead of primary voting in Ohio on Tuesday. Trump denied some media reports that a rally in Cincinnati on Sunday had been canceled. On Twitter, Trump blamed the protesters for Friday's canceled rally. \"The organized group of people, many of them thugs, who shut down our First Amendment rights in Chicago, have totally energized America!\" he said on Twitter. At the Dayton rally, Trump said some of the people taunting and harassing his supporters in Chicago \"represented Bernie, our communist friend.\" \"With Bernie, he should really get up and say to his people, 'stop, stop.' Not me,\" Trump said. Chaos ensued after organizers announced at 6:30 p.m. that Trump, who never arrived at the pavilion, had scrubbed the event. Some protesters rushed the arena floor in celebration, many shouting, \"Bernie, Bernie\" and \"We stopped Trump!\" Police ejected at least a half dozen anti-Trump demonstrators, including one man who got onto the stage and approached the podium. Joe Fritz, 20, who came to hear Trump speak, said a woman punched him outside the arena after the rally was canceled. He said the woman, who was with a girl about 10 years old, landed a glancing blow to his chin after he questioned her for yelling epithets toward police and about Trump. \"I told her, 'What kind of example are you setting?'\" Fritz said. Fritz said he and his friend were then surrounded by other anti-Trump protesters who screamed at them before police pulled them out of the crowd. Still, the pushing and shoving was brief, and some protesters said security concerns were overstated. \"(Trump) felt us tonight and felt our power tonight,\" said Angelica Salazar, 30, of West Chicago, Ill. Salazar, who went to speak out against Trump's anti-immigrant rhetoric, said she did not feel unsafe. Matthew Ross, a Chicago activist, said suggestions from Trump that protesters presented a security risk don't hold up. \"Have you seen what his supporters have incited at their rallies?\" asked Ross, who said a Trump supporter threw water on him after it was announced that the rally was canceled. \"I think what [Trump] is doing is inciting violence.\" Afterward, Trump spoke by phone with several news networks and described many anti-Trump protesters, including those at previous rallies, as violent. \"I just don't want people hurt,\" he told MSNBC. Trump has been criticized about violent comments he and his supporters have made on the campaign trail. When attendees at an event in November kicked a Black Lives Matter activist, Trump said, \"Maybe he should have been roughed up.\" Another supporter, John McGraw, sucker-punched a protester at a rally Wednesday in North Carolina. McGraw later told Inside Edition that \"we might have to kill him\" next time the protester shows up. Trump insisted that anti-Trump protesters were instigating incidents at his events. \"I certainly don't incite violence,\" he said. \"If a protester is swinging a fist at a man or a group of men, and if they end up going back,\" he said, \"I'm not looking to do him any favors.\" Trump's rivals for the GOP nomination quickly weighed in on the uproar. Sen. Marco Rubio, speaking Saturday in Florida, blamed the rhetoric of the front-runner for the violence, and the media for ignoring his \"offensive\" statements for too long. \"This is what happen when a leading presidential candidate goes around feeding into a narrative of anger and bitterness and frustration,\" Rubio said. Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's closest rival in the race, noted that \"in any campaign, responsibility starts at the top.\" \"When the candidate urges supporters to engage in physical violence, to punch people in the face, the predictable consequence of that is that it escalates,\" Cruz told reporters in Illinois. \"Today is unlikely to be the last such incidence.\" \"Some let their opposition to his views slip beyond protest into violence, but we can never let that happen,\" the Ohio governor said in a statement. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said the \"divisive rhetoric\" of the Trump campaign should be of \"grave concern.\" \"We all have our differences, and we know many people across the country feel angry,\" Clinton said in a statement. \"We need to address that anger together.\"","label":0}
{"text":"The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level. Norman MailerBernie Sanders has raised a lot of money during the 2016 Democratic primary. In fact, his supporters often brag about his fundraising as proof of his viability as a candidate, just like Obama supporters did back in 2008.With all that in mind, you ll never guess what most of Bernie s donors have in common.The Los Angeles Times reports:Who gives money to Bernie Sanders?Small-dollar contributions have been the fuel that has propelled Sen. Bernie Sanders presidential bid, making it one of the most successful insurgent campaigns in Democratic party history, but little has been known about those donors because campaigns don t have to publicize the names of people who give $200 or less.Now, a Times analysis of nearly 7 million individual contributions has provided unprecedented detail about the army of people behind the $27 donations Sanders mentions at virtually every campaign stop.Many resemble Emily Condit, 40 of Sylmar, who has contributed three times $5 each to the Vermont senator s campaign.Condit, who has several physical disabilities, is among the largest single group of Sanders donors those who don t have a job. Of the $209 million given to the Vermont senator s campaign, about one out of every four dollars came from those not in the workforce, who include the unemployed or retired.Here s a handy chart that puts things in perspective:So the free stuff candidate is being bankrolled mostly by people who aren t working.Anyone surprised?","label":1}
{"text":"President Trump was sporting a Commemorative Stetson hat today when he introduced the Made in America week starting with Omaha Steaks. He has a great one-liner in the video below this one about opening the beef trade again with China: The gentleman who was in charge of Omaha Beef. They do beef. He hugged me and he wanted to kiss me so badly. OPENING REMARKS:President Trump says Omaha Steaks CEO wanted to kiss me so badly for opening beef trade in China https:\/\/t.co\/LQEanwTWY8 NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) July 17, 2017President Trump admiring a Made in America baseball bat:President Trump admires a baseball bat during Made in America event: It s so beautiful I love to play baseball https:\/\/t.co\/zvYjE7EG1e NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) July 17, 2017President Trump mentioned Senator John McCain: We hope John McCain gets better very soon. We miss him. He s a crusty voice in Washington, plus we need his vote. https:\/\/t.co\/ZSpibzJlG2 NBC News (@NBCNews) July 17, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Pop icon Cher left little to the imagination while performing some of her biggest hits at Sunday night's Billboard Music Awards, the singer's first awards show concert in 15 years. [The icon performed her smash hits \"Believe\" and \"If I Could Turn Back Time\" Sunday night before accepting the ceremony's Icon Award for her career in the music industry. The and danced on stage wearing a silver diamante dress, with her chest covered up by nipple pasties. The sparkling dress, which consisted of multiple hanging diamond strips, barely covered the singers chest and groin area. She later returned to the stage in a black catsuit and a large wig, a throwback to her early 80s look. \"So, I wanted to do what I do since I was 4 years old, and I've been doing it for 53 years,\" Cher said in accepting the Icon Award. \"That is not an applause thing, I'm 71 yesterday! And I can do a plank, okay? Just saying. \" The singer steered clear of politics in her acceptance speech, focusing instead on the advice she received when she was younger and on something her mother told her before she became famous, that she would never be the \"smartest,\" the \"prettiest,\" or the \"most talented,\" but she would be \"special. \" \"I think luck has so much to do with with my success,\" she continued. \"I think it was mostly luck and a little bit of something thrown in. \" Cher's outfit drew plenty of commentary on social media and on television, including on Good Morning Britain, where host Piers Morgan said he was not a fan. \"At what point do Cher's outfits become inappropriate? She's 70,\" he said. \"That one in particular, come on, Cher, for goodness' sake, love. \" Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"The human rights debacle that is being referred to as the Flint water crisis has just been summed up perfectly by political cartoonist Matt Wuerker, who found a brilliant way to express the true underlying issues behind this massive issue in one powerful image:Cartoon by Matt WuerkerThanks to the irresponsible, neglectful actions of Republican governor Rick Snyder and Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, a city with over 100,000 residents the majority of which are African American has been poisoned. Almost a dozen people have died from Legionnaire s Disease as a result, with dozens more becoming seriously ill.As more evidence surfaces, Snyder s disturbing role in the crisis has become crystal clear, adding to the outrage as many call for Snyder to resign and be held accountable for allowing this to happen to Flint. Among those speaking out is filmmaker and Flint native Michael Moore, who called Snyder out for having knowingly poisoned a black city and racial killing. Flint homeowners have been lied to and were told that their tap water which in some areas is polluted enough to meet the EPA s standards for toxic waste was safe to drink, even though it was discolored.Twitter TwitterThe damage that Snyder s carelessness has caused is irreversible, and it will take 10-15 years for the real damage of the lead-poisoned, highly corrosive water to be calculated. For the children of Flint, this could be deadly. It s not just homeowners that have been affected either even hospitals are without safe water.TwitterWe cannot ignore the fact that Flint is a predominately black city with a large low-income population.Even as more evidence is gathered, many GOPers in Michigan (aside from Snyder) are calling the water crisis a hoax. Republican L. Brooks Patterson has even called reputable reports of the lead poisoning false . Earlier today, Snyder said that race played no role in the water crisis when asked a question from a New York Times article that asked, If Flint were rich and mostly white, would Michigan s state government have responded more quickly and aggressively to complaints about its lead-polluted water? He s lying through his teeth.","label":1}
{"text":"Democrats face years of work, focusing on \"kitchen table\" economic issues over several election cycles, if they want to regain ground lost to Republicans, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on Wednesday. The Democratic mayor of the nation's third largest city also said Republican President Donald Trump's legal and political troubles give Democrats a chance to regain a large slice of the more than 1,000 seats Democrats have lost in Congress and state legislatures since 2008. With Democrats controlling cities and Republicans dominating rural areas, the battle will be fought among swing suburban voters, he added. \"It's not going to be done in a singular election,\" Emanuel told Reuters in a wide-ranging, exclusive interview. \"The real crux question to me as a party is what I call kitchen table economics,\" Emanuel said. Home ownership, affordable college, job security, retirement savings and health care are key issues, he said. Chicago has faced fiscal problems and untamed street violence since Emanuel first was elected mayor in 2011. The release in 2015 of a dashcam video showing a Chicago police officer fatally shooting an unarmed teenager led to street protests that hurt the mayor's standing with voters. Black Lives Matter sued the city Wednesday, seeking to force Emanuel to agree to federal oversight of proposed police reforms. Emanuel said the Justice Department under President Trump will not participate. \"I can't wish a different Justice Department,\" Emanuel said. Instead, he is focused on police body cameras, more training and the hiring of new cops in supervisory roles, he added. Emanuel cited improvements under his leadership, public transportation in particular. \"Eighty-five percent of our people in the city are happy with our public transportation system. In New York, I don't think you could get 85 people, let alone 85 percent,\" he said, citing not-yet-published data from an annual ridership survey for the Chicago Transit Authority. Emanuel blamed Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner for gridlock that has put the state's credit rating near \"junk\" status and helped bring the Chicago Public Schools to the brink of insolvency. \"There is a fundamental flaw here in the inability to find a way to say, 'Yes,'\" Emanuel said. Rauner spokeswoman Eleni Demertzis said the mayor and Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan are to blame for the state's budget stalemate and \"saying no at every turn.\" In national politics, Emanuel is positioned to play a role as a leader of Democratic Party efforts to recover from the 2016 electoral defeat. He has served as White House adviser to President Barack Obama and President Bill Clinton and led the 2006 mid-term campaign that returned Democrats to a majority in Congress. With a 38 percent approval rating in a May Reuters\/Ipsos poll, Trump's unpopularity figures to be a dominant issue during the 2018 mid-term elections, Emanuel said. He declined to predict whether Trump will finish his term. \"It's a parlor game right now,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Suspected cartel gunmen killed another journalist. This year, reporters exposing drug cartels and their ties to Mexican politicians have become targets with five murders taking place in 2017. [Mexico's Rio Doce confirmed the murder of its founder, Javier Valdez, an investigator and author who had been reporting on Mexico's organized crime. Valdez was driving a red Toyota Corolla along a city street in Culiacan, Sinaloa, when unidentified gunmen shot him, Rio Doce reported. The local print weekly and online publication is one of the few news outlets that continues to carry out investigations in Mexico exposing the deep ties between Mexican politicians and drug cartels. Valdez's murder comes just weeks after cartel gunmen murdered respected journalist Maximino Rodriguez Palacios in Baja California Sur as he drove with his wife to a shopping center, Breitbart Texas reported. The murder remains unsolved. Just days before the murder of Rodriguez, cartel gunmen from the La Linea faction of the Juarez Cartel killed journalist Miroslava Breach, Breitbart Texas reported. Breach's death occurred after her work exposed how the of one of the La Linea leaders was going to be running for mayor in the state of Chihuahua. Mexico's Network of Journalists from the Northeast expressed their condemnation and demanded that Mexico's government stop turning a blind eye to the escalating violence. \"We come once again and as many times as necessary to harshly demand that authorities carry out their duty of protecting citizens from criminals and punish criminals according to the Rule of Law,\" a prepared statement from the network revealed. Ildefonso Ortiz is an journalist with Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Brandon Darby and Stephen K. Bannon. You can follow him on Twitter and on Facebook. Brandon Darby is managing director and of Breitbart Texas. He the Cartel Chronicles project with Ildefonso Ortiz and Stephen K. Bannon. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. He can be contacted at bdarby@breitbart. com. This article has been updated to reflect the correct first name spelling for the murdered journalist, Javier Valdez.","label":0}
{"text":"Amy Schumer has reportedly exited Sony's Barbie film due to scheduling conflicts[According to the Hollywood Reporter, the Trainwreck star will no longer play the title role in Sony's upcoming film based on the popular Mattel doll and will no longer write the screenplay. \"Sadly, I'm no longer able to commit to Barbie due to scheduling conflicts,\" Schumer said in a statement. \"The film has so much promise, and Sony and Mattel have been great partners. I'm bummed, but look forward to seeing Barbie on the big screen. \" Schumer had signed on to the project in December, with Deadline reporting that Sony chief Tom Rothman personally pitched the script to the actress. Schumer had reportedly completed a rewrite of the script before her exit. \"We respect and support Amy's decision,\" a Sony spokesperson said in a statement. \"We look forward to bringing Barbie to the world and sharing updates on casting and filmmakers soon. \" Sony is hoping to release Barbie on June 29, 2018, though the film does not currently have a director. The Hollywood Reporter also reported Thursday that Schumer had signed on to star in the dramedy She Came to Me alongside Steve Carell and Nicole Kidman from Rebecca Miller and OddLot Entertainment. The actress \u2014 perhaps best known for her Comedy Central series Inside Amy Schumer \u2014 is set to appear next in Snatched, a comedy Goldie Hawn due out for release May 12. Schumer made headlines this week when she took to Instagram to accuse Internet trolls of deliberately tanking the ratings of her Netflix comedy show, The Leather Special. The special was flooded with reviews shortly after its release. Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum,","label":0}
{"text":"Kellyanne Conway, who serves as a senior adviser to Donald Trump, is a connoisseur of alternative facts. In other words, she lies so much she even believes herself. But don t call her a liar, or she ll freak out. Conway is on the offensive today after the president of her alma mater called her out for repeatedly trying to sell falsehoods to the American people as truth.Trinity Washington University President Patricia McGuire blasted Conway for her lies in a blog titled On lies and the truth we must tell. She said Conway was part of a team that thinks nothing of shaping and spreading a skein of lies as a means to secure power. Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway, Trinity Class of 1989, has played a large role in facilitating the manipulation of facts and encouraging the grave injustice being perpetrated by the Trump Administration s war on immigrants among many other issues. She is one of President Trump s primary spokespersons, an almost daily figure on cable news shows, McGuire wrote. Some people admire her staunch advocacy for her client s positions, and others applaud the fact that she was the first woman to manage a successful presidential campaign. But in fact, as is true of many of President Trump s statements, her advocacy on his behalf is often at variance with the truth. Ms. Conway invented the now-infamous phrase alternative fact, to defend Trump s claims about the size of crowds at his inauguration, a thinly-veiled autocratic scheme to try to claim that the Trump inauguration drew the biggest crowd in history when, in fact, it was on the smaller side, she continued. Ms. Conway has been part of a team that thinks nothing of shaping and spreading a skein of lies as a means to secure power. Perhaps the Bowling Green Massacre comment was truly a mistake, as she claims, but she repeated that canard on three different occasions as an explanation for why the travel ban, an executive order that clearly discriminates against Muslims, was necessary. When the Washington Post informed Conway of McGuire s comments, she didn t take it well at all. True to form, she lashed out and slammed not only McGuire s wise words, but also her fellow alumni. Because why not? It s a disappointment to have the president of the university lift up other Trinity graduates who have a casual relationship with the truth, Conway said. She then whined that McGuire didn t even have the courtesy of calling or emailing me to ask what I meant on any given occasion. Without addressing the fact that she has been running around making up the truth as she goes along, including the Bowling Green massacre that never happened, Conway added that she has given the school lots of money over the years. My money was good, she noted. Apparently, writing a check means that no one is allowed to call you out for spouting lies to defend a demagogue. Sounds totally legit.","label":1}
{"text":"The FBI's October surprise has thrown the 2016 election into November chaos. But an examination of the trigger mechanism behind this event reveals a deeper layer of manipulation by the media and financial interests behind the election. This is the GRTV Backgrounder with your host James Corbett. This report also includes an Interview with Prof. Michel Chossudovsky. Visit GlobalResearch.ca  Visit CorbettReport.com Delivered by The Daily Sheeple  We encourage you to share and republish our reports, analyses, breaking news and videos ( Click for details ).  Contributed by Activist Post of www.activistpost.com .","label":1}
{"text":"\u00ab Previous - Next \u00bb The First Space Photo Of Earth - Shot From A Third Reich Rocket In 1946  Prior to 1946, the highest pictures that had ever been taken of the Earth were from the Explorer II balloon in 1935. At 13.7 miles up, the photos were understandably vague. At this point, our view of Earth was largely based on science, with a bit of support from the Explorer II photos. However, nothing was clear enough to be confirmed.  In October of 1946, the ideas of many scientists were confirmed, as new heights were reached. Something astonishing occurred at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Using a V2 rocket that had been captured from Nazis and brought to White Sands in 300 rail cars after the war, a camera was shot into space. The first rocket reached what is now a measly height of 65 miles. At nearly five times the height of previous photos, researchers now had their first view from space. While the camera was destroyed, plummeting back to earth at nearly 500 feet per second, the film had been protected by a steel case, completely untouched .  Fred Rulli recalls after the recovery of the film, \"when they first projected them onto the screen, the scientists just went nuts\", speaking of the photos in 1946. He speaks of his friend, who realized the importance of the day, saying \"Do you realize what's going on here?\" Many may not have. They had no idea that in the years following that spectacular day, the V2 rockets would reach even greater heights, traveling over 100 miles up. Hundreds of photos were taken and researchers were ecstatic at what they had discovered.  Today, when millions of people watch pictures of the Earth from cameras in outer space every day, it seems a perfectly natural thing. Since the V2 rockets, photos have been taken from the moon during the Apollo 8 mission, from space beyond Neptune in 1990 from the Voyager 1, and more recently from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. It seems as though there is not much left to discover when it comes to the surface of the Earth and the photos we have captured of it. However, there will always be something greater. There will always be something new to be found, always a new way to capture beautiful, more technological photos of the surface of our Earth.  This article (The First Space Photo Of Earth - Shot From A Third Reich Rocket In 1946) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with full attribution and a link to the original source on Disclose.tv Related Articles","label":1}
{"text":"Billionaire investor Carl Icahn ended his role as a special adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday after facing criticism that policy recommendations he offered could help his own investments. Some Democratic lawmakers and biofuels advocates argued that Icahn's guidance to the Republican administration created a conflict of interest with his businesses, including oil refining company CVR Energy Inc. Icahn has denied any conflict of interest. Icahn's departure followed a flurry of changes at the White House. Trump on Friday fired his chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, two days after disbanding two high-profile business advisory groups. \"I chose to end this arrangement (with your blessing) because I did not want partisan bickering about my role to in any way cloud your administration,\" Icahn wrote in a letter to Trump released on his website. The White House declined to comment. A call to Icahn's office was not immediately returned. The activist investor, who leads Icahn Enterprises LP, was an early and close ally of Trump who was often praised by the Republican for his business acumen. One of Icahn's first tasks was to vet the future Securities and Exchange Commission chairman and a number of candidates met with the octogenarian investor in his Fifth Avenue office just a few blocks north of Trump Tower in Manhattan. While Icahn stopped managing money for clients years ago, he still has large stakes in companies like Herbalife Ltd , CVR and American International Group Inc , which have faced regulatory issues. Icahn was so sure Trump's election last year would give a boost to stocks that he left the campaign's victory party to make a $1 billion bet on the market, he told Reuters last year. The day after the election, stocks leapt. In his letter to Trump, Icahn downplayed his role as an adviser on regulatory matters, saying \"I never had access to nonpublic information or profited from my position.\" Trump, who came to office promising to roll back regulation, reform the tax code and boost infrastructure spending, never put Icahn on the payroll. But Icahn's involvement was considerable. He interviewed Scott Pruitt, now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the very agency that would determine regulations about requiring refiners to blend biofuels. His web of financial interests became a lightning rod. \"If he was not willing to admit he was a de facto special government employee, and follow the rules, then he had no place serving in government,\" said Norman Eisen, co-founder of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for former President Barack Obama. \"His short tenure, marred by serious conflicts allegations, was yet another black eye for an administration that has become notorious for violations of ethics and the rule of law.\" Icahn has been one of the loudest critics of the federal biofuels program, and he was working at price-crushing reforms of the program at the same time he was betting that credits at the center of the program would fall. Biofuels regulations require refiners either to blend biofuels into gasoline or - in the case of companies like CVR that have no blending facilities - to buy credits from competitors. The regulation, the Renewable Fuel Standard, also allows companies to delay those credit purchases by a year. As an adviser to Trump, Icahn urged the president in February to alter the policy to lift the blending burden from refiners. Yet environmental regulators are preparing to formally reject that proposal, sources told Reuters. Investors have built up a large short position in CVR in the past three months, according to Reuters data, as evidence mounts that the company's gamble on the biofuels market is going sour.","label":0}
{"text":"Earlier this week, Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, long may he reign, praise be his name, holy is he, we bow down before him, subtly denounced racist, xenophobic hatemonger, Donald Trump, during a keynote speech at the company s annual F8 conference. While he never mentioned Trump by name, the tech god had plenty to say about Trump s nature. As I look around the world, I m starting to see people and nations turning inward, against the idea of a connected world and a global community, Zuckerberg told the crowd. But then he targeted his verbal beatdown to Trump: I hear fearful voices talking about building walls It takes courage to choose hope over fear. Instead of building walls we can help build bridges. Instead of dividing people we can connect people. We do it one person at a time, one connection at time. That s why I think the work we re doing together is more important than it has ever been before. Trump, and his moronic horde of jaded, hateful Teanuts, have all said these things, and worse. It takes courage to choose hope over fear, Zuckerberg added. People will always call you naive but it s this hope and optimism that s behind every important step forward. Zuckerberg s powerful words obviously struck a chord with employees, who voted to ask their CEO a very important question in a recent weekly Q+A: Do they have a moral obligation to stop Trump from rising to power? Gizmodo reports:Every week, Facebook employees vote in an internal poll on what they want to ask Zuckerberg in an upcoming Q&A session. A question from the March 4 poll was: What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017? A screenshot of the poll, given to Gizmodo, shows the question as the fifth most popular.It s not particularly surprising the question was asked, or that some Facebook employees are anti-Trump. The question and Zuckerberg s statements on Tuesday align with the consensus politics of Silicon Valley: pro-immigration, pro-trade, pro-expansion of the internet.This question could mean many things, depending on the level and nature of help. In the 2010 congressional elections, Facebook used its considerable influence to convince voters to show up at the polls. An estimated 340,000 extra people vote (unfortunately, not many of them were Democrats, who largely stayed home rather than perform their civic duty. Hint, hint, guys) thanks to an aggressive, one-day campaign that strong-armed users into getting off the couch to head to the polls. Could Facebook wage a similar war on Trump by utilizing a similar strategy to inform conservatives that he s the only man in recent history who chances being unfavorably compared to Hitler one day? Would such a thing be ethical, no matter the motivating reason?In 2014, the social media giant experimented with manipulating users emotions. In a move that was widely decried by everyone the company removed either all positive or all negative posts from a good number of its users news feeds in an effort to see how it would affect their emotions. Technically, we have all agreed to this sort of thing when we agreed to the data use policy, but no one was warned that they were part of the experiment, either. The result was as one would expect: more negative posts caused people to produce more negative posts. More positive led to more positive posts from users, and so on.Could the same be done with posts about Trump? Would showing people more negative Trump posts cause the overall sentiment even among the most vapid who reside in Stupidville toward Trump to shift? Could they use this method to influence voters? Once again, would it be ethical, even if it would accomplish something good? Gizmodo notes:What s exceedingly important about this question being raised and Zuckerberg s answer, if there is one is how Facebook now treats the powerful place it holds in the world. It s unprecedented. More than 1.04 billion people use Facebook. It s where we get our news, share our political views, and interact with politicians. It s also where those politicians are spending a greater share of their budgets.And Facebook has no legal responsibility to give an unfiltered view of what s happening on their network. Facebook can promote or block any material that it wants, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh told the publication. Facebook has the same First Amendment right as the New York Times. They can completely block Trump if they want. They block him or promote him. Volokh says that the only way Facebook could legally overstep would be to collude with any candidate. If they were to choose to stamp out positive Trump posts, to create a blackout, they would have every legal right. If they were working with Sanders or Clinton, however, it would be a different issue: If Facebook was actively coordinating with the Sanders or Clinton campaign, and suppressing Donald Trump news, it would turn an independent expenditure (protected by the First Amendment) into a campaign contribution because it would be coordinated and that could be restricted.But if they re just saying, We don t want Trump material on our site, they have every right to do that. It s protected by the First Amendment. It is very clear that Facebook could take a number of actions to ensure that Trump stays as far from the White House as his fans are from reality. But, what if Zuckerberg decides the company does have a moral obligation? Unfortunately, given the secretive nature of the news feed (and their history of manipulating users), we likely won t know what, if anything, he would decide to do at least not until after it has happened.","label":1}
{"text":"RT October 26, 2016  Around 300 civilians were killed in eleven airstrikes conducted by the US-led coalition in Syria, which Amnesty International investigated for its latest report. Amnesty says the US must come clean about the civilian toll of its fight against Islamic State.  Amnesty suspects that US Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs coalition airstrikes in Syria, \"may have\u2026 carried out unlawful attacks\" in Syria, failing to take necessary measures to prevent civilian killings.  \"We fear the US-led coalition is significantly underestimating the harm caused to civilians in its operations in Syria,\" said Lynn Maalouf, Deputy Director for Research at Amnesty International's Beirut regional office.  \"It's high time the US authorities came clean about the full extent of the civilian damage caused by coalition attacks in Syria. Independent and impartial investigations must be carried out into any potential violations of international humanitarian law and the findings should be made public.\"  Amnesty investigated evidence, including eyewitness accounts, reports by human rights organizations and the media, photographs and video footage as well as satellite imagery, related to 11 suspected coalition attacks in Syria. The group estimates that the attacks have claimed as many as 300 civilian lives. So far none of these deaths has been acknowledged by CENTCOM.  The report published on Wednesday added that the total civilian death toll from coalition action \"could be as high as 600 or more than 1,000\" since the operation against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS, ISIL) started in Syria in 2014.  One of the strikes investigated by Amnesty took place in the early hours of December 7, 2015. The attacks hit two houses in the village of Ayn al-Khan, near al-Hawl in al-Hasakah governorate in northern Syria, killing 40 civilians, including 19 children, and injuring at least 30 others, the report said. A d v e r t i s e m e n t  According to an eyewitness account, an initial night strike was followed by a second attack from a helicopter gunship, which hit first responders trying to dig out survivors.  \"At this point I had a two-month-old baby boy in my arms whom I had rescued. The hit caused me to fall and drop him\u2026 I fell into the hole made by the air strike. That was what saved me\u2026 My mother, aunt, wife and children \u2013 a daughter who was four years old and a son who was two and a half were all killed. The woman and her son who I'd rescued were killed. Everyone but me was killed,\" the survivor said.  The strike is believed to have targeted IS fighters. But local Kurdish militia reportedly warned the coalition that there were civilians in the area.  Amnesty said CENTCOM's failure to acknowledge civilian deaths in Syria, as well as the poor record of investigating such incidents in Afghanistan and Iraq, poses grave concerns over the toll which the civilian population of Mosul, Iraq is likely to face from the ongoing operation to take the city from IS. The US-led coalition is providing air support for the offensive.  \"Given the likely increase in air strikes by the US-led Coalition as part of the Iraqi offensive to recapture Mosul, it is even more pressing that CENTCOM be fully transparent about the impact of their military actions on civilians. And it is crucial that they adhere scrupulously to international humanitarian law, including by taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians and to minimize harm to civilian homes and infrastructure,\" said Maalouf.  A similar operation to capture Manbij, Syria, which is far smaller than Mosul, killed more than 200 civilians, Amnesty estimated.  Last week, Amnesty International blasted Russia for civilian deaths in Aleppo. The Syrian city is divided between government forces and various armed groups, including the Al-Qaeda offshoot Al-Nusra Front. Russia says that the militants use civilians as human shields and would not allow them to leave the city, derailing several attempts by Russia to open humanitarian corridors out of the city. This article was posted: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 6:20 am Share this article","label":1}
{"text":"While Donald the Trump is busy making the rounds decrying immigration, Hillary Clinton decided to make a surprise appearance in New York City for Pride. She joined NYC mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo on the parade route near the Stonewall Inn an especially fitting show of solidarity and support following the Orlando massacre.Hillary has worked hard on reaching out to the LGBT community, and right now, they need it more than ever. The entire community was rocked to its core by the Orlando massacre, and how they feel right now is evident in Pride celebrations that are more subdued than usual.Some have avoided Pride altogether out of fear. Others have refused to engage anybody that might show the slightest hint that they re bigoted towards the LGBT community. Make no mistake, Orlando was a direct attack on their community and they have every reason to be terrified right now.Where are the Republicans who decried Orlando? Oh, right, twiddling their thumbs, shaking their heads, and making empty gestures so they don t piss off their evangelical base. Paul Ryan said that authorities knew Omar Mateen had specifically targeted the LGBT community. Then he gave the LGBT community a big fuck you when he introduced a rule that the House wouldn t vote on any measure giving workplace protections to LGBT employees of federal contractors.Marco Rubio pretended to mourn the massacre while saying that it can make people think harder about where they can best serve their countries. It s not likely he s talking about military service, and that was a ridiculous way of saying he ll continue to work on behalf of the hate-filled evangelicals from which the horror of Orlando came.And then there s good ol Ted Cruz. He tried to use Orlando to convince people that it s really the Democrats who are responsible for the deaths of millions of LGBT people all over the world. So why isn t he marching in Pride parades, then? He should if he really wants to make the point that it s not his side of things that caused this.Trump himself once thanked the LGBT community and claimed nobody would be better for them than him, because he ll allegedly fight for their freedoms while Hillary wants to take them away. However, he s also said he d never appoint justices to the Supreme Court who would support marriage equality, and wants people who would give serious thought to overturning Obergefell v. Hodge. Since when is taking a right away from a specific group of people the same as fighting for their freedom?Hillary supports full equality and isn t afraid to say so. She s also unafraid to show up at a major Pride event to show her support. She didn t let the organizers know about her plans because monkey wrenches of all sorts had already been thrown into the works for so many Pride celebrations, thanks to Orlando, so it wasn t totally a surprise. However, some of her campaign volunteers said that she had been planning this for weeks. She would have appeared to show support and solidarity even if Orlando hadn t happened. The GOP? We hear crickets from them, if not outright discriminatory statements.Featured image by Drew Angerer\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he was willing to work with Republican Speaker Paul Ryan on reforms to address poverty, such as expanding the earned income tax cut (EITC). \"I'd welcome a serious discussion about strategies we can all support, like expanding tax cuts for low-income workers without kids,\" Obama said, according to prepared remarks for his State of the Union address.","label":0}
{"text":"Abby Martin Exposes What Hillary Clinton Really Represents \u2039 \u203a Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. 65 US 'journalists' at a private dinner with Hillary Clinton's team and John Podesta By VNN on October 26, 2016 We wanted to make sure everyone on this email had the latest information on the two upcoming dinners with reporters. Both are off-the-record.  Hang The Bankers  Several top journalists and TV news anchors RSVPed \"yes\" to attend a private, off-the-record gathering at the New York home of Joel Benenson, the chief campaign strategist for Hillary Clinton, two days before she announced her candidacy in 2015, according to emails Wikileaks has published from John Podesta 's purported accounts.  The guest list for an earlier event at the home of John Podesta was limited to reporters who were expected to cover Clinton on the campaign trail.  The email thread starts with Jesse Ferguson, the campaign's Deputy National Press Secretary and Senior Spokesman, describing the venues and target audience of each gathering:  We wanted to make sure everyone on this email had the latest information on the two upcoming dinners with reporters. Both are off-the-record.  1) Thursday night, April 9th at 7:00p.m. Dinner at the Home of John Podesta\u2026 This will be with about 20 reporters who will closely cover the campaign (aka the bus).  2) Friday night, April 10th at 6:30p.m. Cocktails and Hors D'oeuvre at the Home of Joel Benenson\u2026 This is with a broader universe of New York reporters.  The \"broader universe of New York reporters\" includes several top news anchors for network and cable channels, many of whom are listed as a \"yes\" for the appearance:  From ABC: Cecilia Vega, David Muir, Diane Sawyer (who could only stay for 30 minutes), and George Stephanopoulos.  From CBS News: Norah O'Donnell.  From CNN: Brianna Keilar, Gloria Borger, John Berman, and Kate Bolduan.  From MSNBC: Alex Wagner and Rachel Maddow (\"TRYING\").  From NBC: Savannah Guthrie.  \"Yes\" respondent George Stephanopoulos worked for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign and was a Senior Adviser to the President during Clinton's first White House term. Stephanopoulos does not disclose this fact when reporting on the 2016 Clinton campaign for ABC News.  The nascent Clinton campaign invited Jeff Zucker and Phil Griffin, the presidents of CNN and MSNBC, respectively. Zucker declined while Griffin RSVPed \"yes.\" CNBC's John Harwood  Wikileaks' release of emails from the Democratic National Committee showed then-DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz scheduled or attempted to schedule private meetings with both executives.Other \"yes\" RSVPs come from journalists who have been sighted in the Wikileaks Podesta emails, outing them as friendly or fawning towards Hillary's campaign.  CNBC's John Harwood, who was also a moderator for a 2015 presidential debate, emailed Podesta frequently , practically begging for approval and access . Politico's Glenn Thrush  Politico's Glenn Thrush also emailed Podesta periodically. On Monday, a newly-released email revealed a particularly humiliating incident where Thrush sent Podesta a passage from an upcoming article for his personal approval.  \"Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u,\" Thrush wrote. \"Please don't share or tell anyone I did this\u2026 Tell me if I fucked up anything.\"  Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, Washington Bureau Chief at PEOPLE magazine, boasted two days after this confab that stories on Clinton's campaign were generating \"absolutely off the charts\" traffic and asked for \"color you can whisper on background\" about what Hillary was up to. Joel Benenson \u2013 Clinton Chief Strategist  The full RSVP list for Benenson's gathering is shown in an attachment on a separate email :  This is an off-the-record cocktails with the key national reporters, especially (though not exclusively) those that are based in New York. Much of the group includes influential reporters, anchors and editors.  The goals of the dinner include: (1) Give reporters their first thoughts from team HRC in advance of the announcement (2) Setting expectations for the announcement and launch period (3) Framing the HRC message and framing the race (4) Enjoy a Friday night drink before working more  TIME\/DATE: As a reminder, this is called for 6:30 p.m. on Friday, April 10th .  There are several attendees \u2013 including Diane Sawyer \u2013 who will be there promptly at 6:30 p.m. but have to leave by 7 p.m.  \u2026  FOOD: This will include cocktails and passed hours devours.  REPORTER RSVPs","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump's choice for deputy secretary of commerce, Todd Ricketts, has withdrawn his nomination, a source close to Ricketts said on Wednesday. Ricketts, a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs baseball team, pulled his name from consideration due to difficulties untangling his financial holdings to the satisfaction of the government ethics watchdog, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. \"I hope there are other opportunities to contribute to his administration in the future,\" Ricketts said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"They preyed on the poor in Latin America. They promised them an education, but the real goal was about turning a profit. No, we re not talking about the Democrat party, we re talking about the sleazy Clinton Crime Syndicate, headed up by a serial sexual abuser and his habitual liar wife. You may have heard of her, she s the Democrat party s frontrunner in the upcoming presidential race With her campaign sinking in the polls, Hillary Clinton has launched a desperate attack against Trump University to deflect attention away from her deep involvement with a controversial for-profit college that made the Clintons millions, even as the school faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations. In April 2015, Bill Clinton was forced to abruptly resign from his lucrative perch as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit college company. The reason for Clinton s immediate departure: Clinton Cash revealed, and Bloomberg confirmed, that Laureate funneled Bill Clinton $16.46 million over five years while Hillary Clinton s State Dept. pumped at least $55 million to a group run by Laureate s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker, a man with strong ties to the Clinton Global Initiative. Laureate has donated between $1 million and $5 million (donations are reported in ranges, not exact amounts) to the Clinton Foundation. Progressive billionaire George Soros is also a Laureate financial backer.As the Washington Post reports, Laureate has stirred controversy throughout Latin America, where it derives two-thirds of its revenue. During Bill Clinton s tenure as Laureate s chancellor, the school spent over $200 million a year on aggressive telemarketing, flashy Internet banner ads, and billboards designed to lure often unprepared students from impoverished countries to enroll in its for-profit classes. The goal: get as many students, regardless of skill level, signed up and paying tuition. I meet people all the time who transfer here when they flunk out elsewhere, agronomy student Arturo Bisono, 25, told the Post. This has become the place you go when no one else will accept you. Others, like Rio state legislator Robson Leite who led a probe into Bill Clinton s embattled for-profit education scheme, say the company is all about extracting cash, not educating students. They have turned education into a commodity that focuses more on profit than knowledge, said Leite.Progressives have long excoriated for-profit education companies for placing profits over quality pedagogy. Still, for five years, Bill Clinton allowed his face and name to be plastered all over Laureate s marketing materials. As Clinton Cash reported, pictures of Bill Clinton even lined the walkways at campuses like Laureate s Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey. That Laureate has campuses in Turkey is odd, given that for-profit colleges are illegal there, as well as in Mexico and Chile where Laureate also operates.Shortly after Bill Clinton s lucrative 2010 Laureate appointment, Hillary Clinton s State Dept. began pumping millions of its USAID dollars to a sister nonprofit, International Youth Foundation (IYF), which is run by Laureate s founder and chairman, Douglas Becker. Indeed, State Dept. funding skyrocketed once Bill Clinton got on the Laureate payroll, according to Bloomberg:A Bloomberg examination of IYF s public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The following year, those numbers jumped: IYF received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department.","label":1}
{"text":"Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton is thundering against the House Republican effort to dismantle the Office of Congressional Ethics. [In a strongly worded statement, Fitton says: \"It is shameful that House Republicans are trying to destroy the Office of Congressional Ethics, the most significant ethics reform in Congress when it was established nearly a decade ago. \" Judicial Watch focuses on the transparency, accountability and integrity in government and politics and remained a thorn in the side of the Obama administration, the Clintons, and Democrats for many years. \"This effort to eliminate the Office of Congressional Ethics, which provides appropriate independence and transparency to the House ethics process, is a poor way for the Republican majority to begin 'draining the swamp,'\" Fitton says. Although the office was created under then Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2008, Judicial Watch worked with her to create an investigative body with independent power. \"The American people will see this latest push to undermine congressional ethics enforcement as shady and corrupt,\" Fitton said. \"The full House should seriously consider whether it wants to bear the brunt of public outrage and go through with the rule change this afternoon. \" Although House Speaker Paul Ryan and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy reportedly opposed the rule changes, they allowed the vote to take place.","label":0}
{"text":"Charles Hugh Smith  There are many sources of rage: injustice, the destruction of truth, powerlessness. But if we had to identify the one key source of non-elite rage that cuts across all age, ethnicity, gender and regional boundaries, it is this: The Ruling Elite is protected from the destructive consequences of its predatory dominance.  We see this reality across the entire political, social and economic landscape.  If I had to pick one chart that illustrates the widening divide between the Ruling Elite and the non-elites, it is this chart of wages as a share of the nation's output (GDP): 46 years of relentless decline, interrupted by gushing fountains of credit and asset bubbles that enriched the few while leaving the economic landscape of the many in ruins.  The Ruling Elite once had an obligation to uphold the social contract as a responsibility that came with their vast privilege, power and wealth (i.e. noblesse oblige ).  America's Ruling Elite has transmogrified into an incestuous self-serving few unapologetically plundering the many. In their hubris-soaked arrogance, their right to rule is unquestioningly based on their moral and intellectual superiority to \"the little people\" they loot with abandon.  Rather than feel a responsibility to the nation, America's Elite views the status quo as a free pass to self-aggrandizement.  Much has changed in America in the past 46 years. Not only have wages and salaries declined as a share of \"economic growth,\" but the wealth that has been generated has flowed to the top of the wealth\/power pyramid (see chart below).  Social mobility has also declined drastically: Restoring America's Economic Mobility , as has trust in government and key institutions.  As Frank Buckley, the author of The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America observed:  \"In a corrupt country, trust is a rare commodity. That's America today. Only 19 percent of Americans say they trust the government most of the time, down from 73 percent in 1958 according to the Pew Research Center.\"  The top .01% has seen its share of the household wealth triple from 7% to 22% in the past four decades, while the share of the nation's wealth owned by the bottom 90% has plummeted from 36% to 23%.  As I described in America's Ruling Elite Has Failed and Deserves to Be Fired and Now That the Presidential-Election Side Show Is Finally Ending\u2026. , the economy is rapidly undergoing structural changes that tend to reward the top 5% class of technocrats and managers and the top .1% with millions in mobile capital, while leaving the bottom 95% in the dust.  Rather than address this rising inequality directly and honestly, the Ruling Elite has parroted propaganda and policies that protect their gains while obfuscating the reality that most American households have been losing ground for decades, a decline that has been masked by replacing real income with rising debt.  The ceaseless parroting of the Ruling Elite and the Mainstream Media that prosperity has been rising for everyone is nothing less than the destruction of truth. This propaganda has one purpose: to mask the inequality and injustice built into the American status quo.  The rapid concentration of wealth has also concentrated political power in the hands of a few who seamlessly combine public and private modes of power.  This wealth and power protects the Ruling Elite from the perverse consequences of their dominance. Their precious offspring rarely serve at the point of the American military's spear, they never lose their jobs or income when corporations shift production (and R&D, etc.) overseas, and they are never replaced with illegal immigrants paid under the table.  Rather, the Ruling Elite is pleased to pay immigrants a pittance to care for their children, clean their luxe homes, walk their dogs, etc.  This is why we're enraged: we bear the consequences of the Ruling Elite's dominance. The system is rigged to benefit the few, who use their wealth and power to protect themselves from the destructive consequences of their self-serving dominance.  This rage is as yet inchoate, sensed but not yet understood as the inevitable result of a broken system and a predatory Elite that exploits the system to maximize their private gain by any means available .  ELECTION NOTE: As I write this Tuesday evening, it appears Donald Trump may win the presidency. For those who cannot understand how anyone could possibly vote for Trump, please read the above essay again and ponder what people were voting against by voting for Trump .  They may well have been voting against the corrupt, self-serving status quo rather than voting for the individual Donald Trump.  There are very few opportunities for powerless non-elites to register their disapproval of the nation's Ruling Elite and the corrupt status quo. Voting for an outsider in a national election is one such rare opportunity.  As I noted in October, The Ruling Elite Has Lost the Consent of the Governed (October 20, 2016).  If you still don't understand how Trump could win, please read the above essay as many times as is necessary for you to get it: the status quo of corrupt self-serving insiders generates injustice and inequality as its only possible output.","label":1}
{"text":"Nordstrom cancelled the Ivanka Trump line after a liberal organization called Grab Your Wallet flooded them with complaints. Shame on Nordstrom!The Trump family has had to sacrifice so much to do what they re doing for America. It s a shame that even though Nordstrom had said they wouldn t cancel Ivanka s product line LEFTISTS CALL FOR Ivanka Trump Brand Boycott This Huge Retailer Is Sticking With Her they caved to the pressure from the left!PLEASE CONTACT NORDSTROM AND COMPLAIN : NORDSTROM FEEDBACKDaily Mail reported:Nordstrom denied partisanship in the decision to drop Trump s brand, insisting the move was made as a result of poor sales months after it was hit by a grassroots boycott started by a marketing specialist and a grandmother.The move from Nordstrom comes after several other retailers have already stopped selling her merchandise due to the Grab Your Wallet campaign, which calls for shoppers to boycott retailers that carry her brand or her father s goods.The Grab Your Wallet campaign was launched on October 11 by Shannon Coulter and Sue Atencio after they simultaneously realized they could no longer in good conscience shop at retailers that do business with the Trump family .The campaign compiled a list of businesses that sell Trump family goods. The extensive list also includes companies that advertise on Celebrity Apprentice or executives that have raised money for President Donald Trump.","label":1}
{"text":"It all started with a rumor: the Mungiki, a dreaded Kikuyu tribal militia, had infiltrated Nairobi s Kawangware slum. Within minutes, local men already fired up by Kenya s divisive election had grabbed machetes and sticks to defend their turf. By the end of Friday night s confrontation, a man had been beaten to death and rows of shops and homes set alight, a worrying taste of how quickly ethnic violence can erupt in the Kenyan capital s volatile slums. Almost all the 50 deaths since August s presidential vote have been in clashes between protesters and police. The deeper fear of Kenyans is that the months of political strife, exacerbated by the courts annulling the August vote, eat away at deep tribal divisions and ignite a wave of inter-ethnic violence, as happened after a disputed 2007 vote when 1,200 people were killed. The Kawangware fighting was sparked by rumors that Kikuyu, the tribe of President Uhuru Kenyatta, had drafted in members of the Mungiki to protect them from opposition supporters. On Friday, a Reuters witness saw a group of men armed with machetes, known locally as pangas, on the streets of Kawangware. Their identity was unclear, although several residents said they were Mungiki, brought in after opposition loyalists burnt down a prominent Kikuyu-owned business the previous night. The Mungiki, notorious for castrating and decapitating victims, were blamed for hundreds of deaths in the 2007 clashes. Their relative quiet since has not diminished their reputation. They were more than a hundred, and they were carrying all new pangas, Vitalis Aloyi, a Kawangware resident, said. Another man said residents had to act to defend themselves. We had to teach them not to bring Mungiki here. If they bring Mungiki, we will destroy their property and their lives, said Kennedy Ochieng, an ethnic Luo, like opposition leader Raila Odinga. As the pro-Odinga vigilantes, also armed with clubs and machetes, swept down the muddy street they set fire to Kikuyu businesses suspected of hiding Mungiki militiamen, Ochieng said. One man was killed, and his body burned, leaving a charred spot on the road. Some Odinga supporters denounced him as Mungiki, but no one could explain how they knew. The next day, with smoke still rising from the twisted wreckage of homes and shops, the remaining traders in Kawangware began loading their wares of pipes, popcorn machines and meat onto trucks. All the other tribes are against the Kikuyu here because of the voting, said Stephen Kamau, whose fruit stall was burned down. These people will come back and burn more. Others in the district, long home to mixed communities, said the truth was more nuanced. As political tensions rose, some businesses had hired local youths for protection, said Rhoda Kungu, a market trader. She insisted the vigilantes were not Mungiki. We are all brothers and sisters. We just want to live in peace, she said. Another trader, Brian Njenga, said it may merely have been pro-Odinga youths spotting a chance to enrich themselves, demanding protection money or looting businesses before they burned them. Some people are just using this situation to get personal benefit, Njenga said to somber nods from a crowd of youths around him. Many have not worked for a long time because the economy is very down. A few hundred meters down the rubbish-strewn road, hundreds of young men milled around on street corners. Teargas from the night before lingered in the air. We want to kill Mungiki. They must know this is our territory, one man shouted. Don t think because it is quiet now that we are at peace. We are just waiting for something!","label":0}
{"text":"Days after testifying in front of Congress and after requesting more resources for the Russian investigation, FBI Director James Comey was fired on Tuesday night, effective immediately.The Trump administration is blaming Comey s handling of the Hillary Clinton emails, which makes no sense whatsoever because Trump loved Comey s handling of the emails in October. Trump tried to make the case that he fired Comey for being mean to Hillary Clinton, but even the most rabid Trump supporters have to acknowledge that his Lock Her Up, slogan is completely incompatible with Trump s given rationale.It doesn t take a tin foil conspiracy theorist to imagine that the real reason for the Comey firing is that he was getting too close to the truth in investigating Trump s Russia connections. NPR imagines even more scenarios, like the fact that Comey was becoming too big and was stepping on poor little Donnie s ego. It s becoming more and more likely though, that there were just two reasons Comey was fired and both of them should scare the hell out of you.According to two sources that CNN is calling close to Comey, the two reasons Comey was fired were:#2 confirms everything we ve been assuming since the news broke Tuesday night. #1, though, while not at all surprising, is almost more frightening. Trump had to have approached Comey at some point, demanding his loyalty. That s third-rate Banana Republic dictator crap. It makes one wonder just how many people have had to make an oath of loyalty, not to the Constitution, but to Trump. Maybe it s just the people who might have damaging goods on the administration or maybe it s every single person in his administration, which could explain why hundreds of jobs still remain unfilled within the Executive Branch.Loyalty oaths or no loyalty oaths, the Trump administration s charade when it comes to the handling is quickly coming unraveled. It likely won t be long before Comey, and not just sources close to him, are speaking out and perhaps speaking to Congress.","label":1}
{"text":"The U.S. Defense Department on Wednesday said it would conduct another comprehensive review of Raytheon Co's long-delayed ground control system for next generation GPS satellites in about three months, following Tuesday's \"deep dive review.\" \"We will conduct another comprehensive review in approximately three months to assess progress against the plan,\" said Pentagon spokesman Mark Wright. He said additional information would be released as it became available. Pentagon chief arms buyer Frank Kendall, Air Force Secretary Deborah James and other officials met with Raytheon Chief Executive Tom Kennedy in Colorado on Tuesday to review progress on the $3.6 billion program after years of schedule delays and technical challenges.","label":0}
{"text":"President-elect Donald Trump's drive to rebuild U.S. roads, bridges, ports and other public works projects with a $1 trillion infrastructure investment plan would come as the country faces a shortage of skilled laborers. Before any dirt can be moved, Trump would have to get approval from Congress. But with Democratic support and a push from business groups, there is some optimism that Trump could win over skeptical Republicans who control Congress, if the plan does not add significantly to federal debt. More than two-thirds of U.S. roads are in less than good condition and nearly 143,000 bridges need repair or improvement, the Transportation Department estimates. At the same time, construction contractors have reported tight labor conditions in the South, Midwest and Southwest, causing project delays, the Federal Reserve noted last month. Earlier this year, the National Association of Home Builders estimated there were around 200,000 unfilled construction jobs in the United States, an 81 percent increase in the last two years. Infrastructure projects need highly trained workers, such as heavy equipment operators and iron specialists. But as a result of the 2007-2008 recession, which caused an estimated 25 percent of construction jobs to vanish, their ranks have thinned. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs\/2h9paJX) Many of these workers went back to school, joined the military or got lower-paying jobs in retail, services and other sectors. Some just got too old for the rigors of construction. \"They wandered off into other careers,\" said Leonard Toenjes, president of Associated General Contractors of Missouri, which represents contractors in the state. Undocumented immigrants, who otherwise might help replenish those ranks, are unlikely candidates however, since companies do not want to invest in training people with an uncertain status, especially given Trump's anti-immigrant bent. The labor shortage is driving up construction costs, according to government and industry experts, which could cut into the scope of any new Washington investment scheme. In response to the construction \"skills gap,\" the U.S. Department of Labor and Federal Highway Administration are aiming to expand help to localities training workers for road and bridge building, according to a FHWA spokesman. Even if the scope of work is not as grandiose as Trump originally envisioned, it would benefit a range of businesses, from steel maker Nucor Corp and concrete firm US Concrete Inc to construction machinery companies such as Caterpillar Inc. More infrastructure spending would boost trade unions, too, which appeals to Democrats. \"We will build new roads, tunnels, bridges, railroads, airports, schools and hospitals,\" Trump boasted in a Dec. 1 speech in Cincinnati. A Trump transition representative, who asked not to be named because the topic was still under discussion, said that enactment of \"infrastructure funding legislation\" is one of the top priorities for the first 100 days of the new administration. A Trump website refers to taking steps that would fill a $1 trillion gap in infrastructure investments over 10 years. Like many Trump campaign proposals, his infrastructure plan is thin on details. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters earlier this month: \"What I hope we will clearly avoid, and I'm confident we will, is a trillion-dollar stimulus.\" In a departure from past fiscal policies, Trump has proposed slashing taxes and expanding infrastructure investment at a time of economic stability. Historically, such steps have been used by the government to provide economic stimulus in recessions. Trump has discussed investor tax credits for infrastructure projects. Democrats have attacked this as a boon to Wall Street that would spark too few projects and create too few jobs. House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told reporters last week infrastructure is something her party could collaborate on with Republicans. But she said Democrats would reject anything \"disguised as infrastructure. It has to be a real infrastructure bill that grows the paychecks of American workers.\" If Congress balks at writing a big check, there is talk of a mix of alternatives. One could involve new corporate income tax revenue from bringing foreign profits into the country. Others could be an infrastructure revolving fund, raising the gasoline tax or a new surface freight fee, experts said. These could help marquee projects move forward: a Hudson River rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey; a deeper port in Charleston, South Carolina; expanded rail service in southern California; fixing the crumbling I-70 freeway in Missouri; replacing a key bridge linking Ohio and Kentucky. Harry Holzer, professor of public policy at Georgetown University, said fixing roads and bridges would boost U.S. productivity and, depending on how it is structured, generate good-paying jobs for those without college educations. Given shortages of high-skilled construction labor, he said government ought to ramp up the projects carefully to allow time to train a new generation of skilled workers. \"I'm not sure anyone has thought that through,\" he said. (Click here for graphics on 'U.S. construction employment, spending' here)","label":0}
{"text":"Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that the two leaders decisively condemned North Korean weapons tests. We decisively condemned North Korea s launch of a medium-range ballistic missile that flew over Japan s territory on August 28, as well as the new nuclear tests conducted on September 3, Putin said in a statement. Putin reiterated that the crisis around North Korea should be resolved only by political means, and that it posed a threat to peace and stability in the region. He called for it to be resolved through a road map proposed by Moscow and Beijing. Putin also said he and Abe discussed the prospect of joint economic activities by their countries on the disputed Kurile islands. The islands, called the Northern Territories in Japan and the Southern Kuriles in Russia, were seized by Soviet forces at the end of World War Two, when 17,000 Japanese residents were forced to flee. Putin said he and Abe discussed the prospect of a peace treaty officially ending World War Two hostilities, which has never been signed because of the territorial dispute. Putin did not say how close the two countries were to such an agreement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov later said there could not be a timeframe for concluding a treaty. This is a very complicated and sensitive issue, he said. Russia and Japan are steadily building up mutual trust, mutually beneficial cooperation, which cannot but promote the creation of a favorable atmosphere for finding a solution for the peace treaty.","label":0}
{"text":"Russia said it will retaliate tit-for-tat over a new Canadian law that will impose sanctions on officials from Russia and other nations considered guilty of human rights violations. The bill, expected to be approved by Canada s parliament later on Wednesday, was inspired by the case of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-corruption lawyer who died in 2009 after a year in a Russian jail. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying on Wednesday that any anti-Russian actions by the Canadian authorities will not be left without an adequate response. Canada already has cool ties with Russia. It has repeatedly condemned Moscow over Russia s 2014 annexation of Crimea and has imposed sanctions against Russia along with other Western nations. We warn again that in case the pressure of the sanctions put on us increases ... we will widen likewise the list of Canadian officials banned from entering Russia, Zakharova said, according to Interfax. To a large extent, it (the bill) simply copies the odious American Magnitsky Act and is set to further undermine Russian-Canadian relations. The United States adopted a law in 2012 freezing any U.S. assets of Russian investigators and prosecutors said to have been involved in the detention of Magnitsky. In retaliation, Moscow barred Americans from adopting Russian children. The Canadian parliament s lower house approved adoption of the Law on Victims of Corrupt Foreign Governments on Monday and submitted the bill to the Senate for approval. The law, which was proposed by an opposition legislator and is backed by the government, will come into force once it is signed by Canada s governor-general. The Russian embassy in Canada, in a statement posted on its Twitter page, blamed the Magnitsky bill on failed policies, pressed by Russophobic elements .","label":0}
{"text":"The head of Thailand s immigration police chief said he believed former prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra remained in the country after a Supreme Court judge raised suspicion that she had fled after she failed to show up on Friday for the verdict in a negligence case. Yingluck, whose government was ousted in a 2014 coup, faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty. Up until this point we have no information showing that Yingluck has exited via any of Thailand s border check points, Immigration police chief Nanthathorn Prousoontorn told Reuters. I believe she is still in Thailand. If she is found she will be arrested, he said. A lawyer for Yingluck said on Friday he did not know her wherabouts. The Supreme Court set a new date of Sept. 27 for the verdict but said it would also seek an arrest warrant for Yingluck. The court said Yingluck gave an ear problem as the reason she could not come to court to hear the verdict.","label":0}
{"text":"Meanwhile, as President Trump continues to meet resistance from blue states in his effort to clean up voter fraud, one of his most vocal opponents is none other than the Democrat governor of New York, the same state where the board of elections made the mistake of changing Kushner s identity to a female AFTER he registered as a male . It seems like this may be just the high-profile screw-up the White House has been waiting for in order to revisit the legitimacy of voter rolls in New York.NY refuses to perpetuate the myth voter fraud played a role in our election. We will not comply with this request.https:\/\/t.co\/eQC6ORV0v1 Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 30, 2017Kushner, President Trump s son-in-law, and senior adviser did in fact list himself as a male in his New York voter registration but an elections database error led to him getting listed as a female.Kushner s supposed registration as a woman, which made headlines Wednesday, is actually a data entry error that the New York Board of Elections corrected only after it became public.A Wired story first reported that Kushner whose father-in-law has been waging a fact-challenged war on voter fraud was registered as a woman on his publicly accessible New York State voter information. NYDaily NewsThe Wired story that was written by Ashley Feinberg suggests one of the reasons Kushner registered to vote as a female may be attributed to him committing voter fraud, which according to Feinberg, would, of course, would be interesting, considering that Trump s White House has been fixated on allegations that rampant voter fraud took place during the 2016 election. The Huffington Post used the fake news story to prove that Jared Kushner is not capable of brokering peace in the Middle East. Here is their headline for an article written by Amanda Terkel:From the Huffington Post article:If people weren t already skeptical that Kushner a man who inherited his father s real estate empire and has no policy experience in the Middle East or elsewhere could achieve the impossible, recent developments may give further pause.He registered to vote as a woman.Radical leftist and (sometimes) comedian Jimmy Kimmel did an entire skit on Jared Kushner registering to vote as a female. We ll wait for his apology #VeryFakeNewsCNN quickly jumped on the story without verifying why Jared Kushner was registered as a female. Given the incompetence of our government agencies, one would think CNN would give Kushner the benefit of the doubt, but alas, giving anyone close to President Donald J. Trump the benefit of the doubt would be counter-productive to the Trump-hating network who only has one goal, and that is to destroy Donald Trump and anyone who dares to stand with him. CNN has changed the story that was originally attached to this tweet to reflect their update, but their headline that attempts to paint Kushner as either a liar or a cheat stands on Twitter.Jared Kushner is registered to vote as a female https:\/\/t.co\/MtWq9uHTC7 pic.twitter.com\/1ub2dS6OFM CNN (@CNN) September 27, 2017Another loudmouth liberal who goes by the name of Ring of Fire on Youtube and has over 130K followers, has completely embarrassed himself by using Kushner s inability to fill out a simple form or who is so careless, or reckless, or downright stupid that he cannot fill out a form .","label":1}
{"text":"Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Friday said she respected the United Kingdom's vote on leaving the European Union and was committed to maintaining America's relationships with both Britain and European countries. \"Our first task has to be to make sure that the economic uncertainty created by these events does not hurt working families here in America,\" she said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"Shortly after 7 a.m. on Wednesday, the police say, James T. Hodgkinson, of Belleville, Ill., opened fire on a baseball field in Alexandria, Va., just steps from the Y.M.C.A., spraying bullets at members of the Republican congressional team practicing there.Four people were shot in the assault, including Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the majority whip and third-ranking Republican in the House. An ensuing firefight with the police took Mr. Hodgkinson s life.The suspect s brother said Mr. Hodgkinson was a critic of Mr. Trump, upset over last fall s election and intent on bringing his protest to Washington. But his more immediate motive for the attack remained unclear late Wednesday, even as investigators surrounded Mr. Hodgkinson s home on the outskirts of Belleville, a town of 40,000 across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. I know he wasn t happy with the way things were going, the election results and stuff, his brother, Michael Hodgkinson, said in a phone interview after he received the news on Wednesday. NYTRepresentative Steve Scalise (R-LA), a husband and father of 2 young children is still listed in critical condition, simply because his political views didn t align with those of the radical Democrat Party to which the shooter belonged.Brave members of the GOP were determined not to allow what happened to stop them from playing in tonight s game. They took a knee before the game and prayed for their friend and colleague Steve Scalise:The congressional players who witnessed the shootings by the liberal Democrat terrorist yesterday, got a surprise visit from Ivanka Trump at the game tonight. Watch MI Republican Rep. Mike Bishop (#8) who was on the field when Rep. Steve Scalise was shot, pose for a picture with Ivanka Trump:https:\/\/twitter.com\/TEN_GOP\/status\/875493467471962112President Trump also took time to address the players and to send his love, thoughts and prayers to Steve Scalise and his family:https:\/\/twitter.com\/TEN_GOP\/status\/875507877535993861President Trump and First Lady Melania visited Steve Scalise in the hospital last night:","label":1}
{"text":"Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is leaning on new sources of cash as he prepares for a long primary fight against front-runner Donald Trump, with new campaign finance filings showing the expense of competing against a billionaire adept at grabbing headlines. Cruz's more traditional campaign has struggled to compete with Trump. The U.S. senator from Texas poured money into advertising, staff and calls to voters, spending $5.6 million more in February than he raised as he tried to outmaneuver Trump, according to campaign finance records made public on Sunday. But the effort had a limited impact as Trump took a commanding lead in the delegate count for the Republican nomination while spending a little more than half what Cruz did. The real estate mogul has loaned his campaign more than $24 million since he entered the race for the White House. Now, with establishment Republican rivals Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio out of the race, Cruz is trying to win votes and rake in money by arguing the party should unite behind him if it hopes to defeat Trump. It's a tough proposition for a conservative candidate who has long rankled the establishment wing of his party, including by leading a fight over President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law that led to a 16-day shutdown of the federal government. Cruz now hopes to convince his party that he, not Ohio Governor John Kasich, the other Republican remaining in the race, is best poised to defeat Trump and go on to the Nov. 8 presidential election. In a sign of Cruz's warming ties with establishment Republicans, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who has been a vocal critic of Cruz, plans on Monday to hold a fundraiser for the senator from Texas. Charles Foster, a Houston immigration attorney who backed Bush until he left the race in February, said Friday he is urging establishment Republicans to line up behind Cruz. \"My pitch to them simplistically is that Trump is an existential threat. He'd be a total disaster,\" Foster said. \"The only person that has a real chance,\" he added, \"particularly within the Republican primary base, which is conservative, far more conservative than Kasich, is Ted.\" Trump has a substantial lead in the Republican White House race, though he remains far short of the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. It is unclear whether he will hit that number before the July convention in Cleveland, but it would also be difficult for either Cruz or Kasich to catch him. Cruz could pick up delegates in Utah, which holds its caucus on Tuesday, and all of the candidates are expected to compete hard in Wisconsin on April 5. But so far, efforts to stop the Trump juggernaut have made little impression on voters. In February, Cruz raised $11.9 million and spent $17.5 million, leaving his campaign with $8 million when he woke up on Super Tuesday. And despite the heavy spending, Cruz won just one state that voted in February and three on the March 1 Super Tuesday primaries. In addition to self-funding his campaign, Trump has the advantage of running an operation that leans heavily on free media exposure. In February, Trump, raised $9.2 million, including a $6.9 million loan he gave his own campaign, and spent $9.5 million. Kasich raised $3.4 million in February and spent $3.6 million. About half of Cruz's spending, or more than $8.7 million, was on advertising. Cruz also allotted $2.6 million to traditional campaign tactics like printing mailers, postage stamps and phone calls to voters. Cruz did spend a bit less than Trump on staff, recording $342,525 in payroll costs in February to Trump's $370,973. Jeff Roe, Cruz's campaign manager, said on Twitter on Sunday the campaign has enough cash to continue competing through June 7, the last Republican primary day when hundreds of delegates are up for grabs.","label":0}
{"text":"Someone is going to empty lots and cordoned off buildings around the country and putting signs on the fences around them. These aren t ordinary signs, either. They literally say, Lot reserved for: Future Internment Camp. They carry the presidential seal and Donald Trump s signature.Signs Designating Future Internment Camp Go Up At Construction Lots https:\/\/t.co\/p56nREy5mR pic.twitter.com\/gBfUFPnL1j LAist (@LAist) March 6, 2017Prank Signs Advertising Future Internment Camp Pop Up At Chicago Sites https:\/\/t.co\/tIO9Xfmhgw pic.twitter.com\/rMxHF08K7m Chicagoist (@Chicagoist) March 7, 2017Street art hits Boston https:\/\/t.co\/ZutU678Wao Erin Tiernan (@ErinTiernan) March 8, 2017 Future Internment Camp Signs Appear Across America A Conversation with the #Artist Behind Themhttps:\/\/t.co\/4gFDgapHsA SATIRISTAS! (@Satiristas) March 6, 2017Future Internment camp signs across the USA. A selection from ten US cities. #immigration #immigrant #humanrights #racism #donaldtrump pic.twitter.com\/FiT5TBjpMy Plastic Jesus (@plasticjesusart) March 6, 2017They aren t real (yet), but they are a frightening reminder of just who we elected to the White House and what it is that Trump is trying to do. They re the work of a street artist known as Plastic Jesus, who s previously focused most of his work on the entertainment industry. According to LAist, though, these signs are something different, and not just because they re political: We re seeing detention of travelers to the U.S. They have all the proper credentials, but they re being detained for the country they re coming from, as well as their race. I have a friend who was detained because her name was Lebanese. She was detained for a couple hours and was questioned. This was someone who has a visa. Lebanon isn t on Trump s list. It s normal for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to briefly question foreign nationals from everywhere before granting them admission to the country, and it s true that we don t know all the specific circumstances surrounding these detentions. However, the amount of hours-long detention for people who seem to otherwise check out (are traveling on the proper visa, have the rest of their travel documents and itineraries in order, etc.) is alarming.Not only are people being unnecessarily, and even wrongly, delayed prior to entering the U.S., but Trump is working to ramp up deportation, including increasing funding for detention beds, for immigrants awaiting deportation. To ramp up the deportation process the way Trump wants could eventually require camps, since detention centers aren t big enough, probably won t be made big enough, and deporting someone isn t as simple as picking them up and driving them across the border.The signs reference Executive Order 9066, which is the order FDR signed to create the Japanese internment camps we had during WWII. The idea of camps for immigrants, people who are prohibited from entering the U.S. due to Trump s new travel ban but can t be turned around immediately, and possibly more, is eerily evocative of that.There s some backlash, but when art gets political like this, there will always be backlash. The idea is to stir people up and make them take notice of the events unfolding around them.Featured image by John Moore via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"The leaders of the House intelligence committee are giving the NSA, FBI, and the CIA until Friday to reveal how many Americans' private conversations were improperly 'unmasked' amid legal surveillance activities in the last six months, which they believe happened to President Donald Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. [The demand comes as the committee is trying to figure out who revealed Flynn's identity during his phone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December and who illegally leaked the classified contents of those calls to the news media. \"Masking\" refers to the protection of identities of Americans who are inadvertently caught up in surveillance \u2014 for example, of foreign individuals in the U. S. \u2014 and is referred to as a \"minimization\" procedure. Chairman Devin Nunes ( ) and Ranking Member Adam Schiff ( ) made the request in a letter dated Mar. 15 addressed to Director of the National Security Agency Adm. Michael Rogers, FBI Director James Comey, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo. \"As you know, the Committee has been very concerned regarding the purported unauthorized disclosures of classified information, particularly when they pertain to intelligence collection on, or related to, U. S. persons (USP). To take a prominent example, a January 12, 2017 article in a major newspaper was the first to claim that 'Retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, [then ] Trump's choice for national security adviser \u2026 . phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29. \" \"Such stories would appear to contain the unauthorized disclosure of USP identities. This potential misuse is a key reason why the Intelligence Community (IC) has developed robust 'minimization procedures' for the protection of USP information, including requiring the 'masking' of USP identities in most circumstances,\" they wrote. \"However, as recent news stories seem to illustrate, individuals talking to the media would appear to have wantonly disregarded these procedures,\" they added. Thus, the leaders have requested all policies procedures each agency uses to determine when to unmask and disseminate the identity of an American and the number of individuals who can approve an unmasking. They are also asking for the total number of times any unmasked American identity was disseminated between June 2016 and January 2017. They are also asking for the names of those unmasked Americans who had their identities disseminated in response to requests from intelligence community agencies, law enforcement, or any senior Executive Branch officials during that timeframe, in relation to either Trump or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They also want to know who requested any unmasking and dissemination of individuals related to Trump or Clinton and why. If those answers are not produced by Friday, Nunes and Schiff will issue a subpoena for them, they said. The committee is scheduled to question Rogers and Comey at a public hearing on Monday.","label":0}
{"text":"Does anyone else get the sense Biden was picked to be the VP just to make Obama look smart?Vice President Joe Biden remarked at a Hillary Clinton campaign event Thursday that it s OK sometimes to be an uninformed guy who has no idea what the hell he s talking about. Biden, however, was referring to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. I don t believe the guy s a bad guy. I just think he is thoroughly, totally, completely uninformed, Biden said. He has no idea what the hell he s talking about. And guess what? That s OK sometimes. That s OK sometimes. Biden went on to point out for the rally audience, for the second time in less than a month, the military aide who travels with him and holds the nuclear launch codes in case something happens to the president. WFB","label":1}
{"text":"Remember that cute scene in the movie Love Actually when The Walking Dead s Andrew Lincoln declares his love for Keira Knightley using a series of clever cue cards? Well, SNL just upped that scene with a very clever one of their own that we are sure Donald Trump will hate as much as he hates the cold opener.Cecily Strong, appearing as an elector in the scene, answers a knock at her door to find Kate McKinnon as Hillary Clinton standing there holding a stack of cue cards, attempting to sway her to vote for ANYONE but Donald Trump even John Kasich. I know that you re an elector And on December 19th, you re supposed to vote for Donald Trump But bish, he cray. The cards go on to read: Look, I know I lost the election And we may never know why **cough** Russia, You don t even have to vote for me Just vote literally for anyone else Like John Kasich Tom Hanks The Rock A rock. That advice is very convincing, but it gets better!Watch the full sketch here:","label":1}
{"text":"Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the state of Indiana, saying a new state law restricting abortion was unconstitutional. The law, which was signed last month by Indiana Governor Mike Pence and goes into effect on July 1, prohibits abortion in the early stages of a pregnancy based on genetic abnormalities and mandates a fetus be buried or cremated, according to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court. Planned Parenthood asked for an injunction on the law, according to the lawsuit, which was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the nonprofit organization's Indiana chapter. \"The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed that a woman, not the state, is to determine whether or not to obtain an abortion,\" Ken Falk, legal director for ACLU of Indiana, said in a statement. \"The state of Indiana's attempt to invade a woman's privacy and to control her decision in this regard is unprecedented and unconstitutional.\" The lawsuit named the Indiana State Department of Health, prosecutors of several counties and the state medical licensing board. A spokeswoman for the health department referred all questions to the attorney general's office, where no one could be reached for comment. A spokesman for the medical licensing board declined to comment about the lawsuit. Pence's press secretary, Kara Brooks, said the governor is confident the law is constitutional. \"We will work with the attorney general to defend the law that enhances information expectant mothers receive and enhances protection for the unborn,\" she said. Indiana was the second U.S. state to prohibit abortions based on a prenatal diagnosis of disabilities such as Down syndrome, following North Dakota. Planned Parenthood does not ask patients to disclose why they are obtaining an abortion, but under the new law, doctors would be mandated to report if a fetal anomaly was present before the abortion. The new Indiana law would put physicians at risk for legal woes, and require additional costs for a fetus to be buried or cremated, according to the lawsuit. \"Gov. Mike Pence isn't a woman and he isn't a doctor. He needs to get out and stay out of our doctors' offices,\" Betty Cockrum, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"Rep. Paul Ryan must step down as Speaker of the House. America rejected his big government, open borders globalism. Paul Ryan rejected Trump all year long. And now the majority are calling on Wisconsin lawmaker to step down. Americans deserve a Republican Speaker who will support President Trump. A bridge, not a wall. Sean Hannity spoke tonight on FOX after Donald Trump won the election for President of the United States. He noted that he spoke with Trump three times throughout the night after he said the following: And on every objective measure, you know thank God the American people this is about one thing. They see that Washington is broken and by the way Republicans are just as guilty. Paul Ryan is not going to be the Speaker off the House in January. I was going to save that for my program tomorrow. He's not going to be the Speaker. His state went for Donald Trump tonight. I mean it's an amazing turn of events because the establishment on both sides Republican and Democrat have lost touch with the real lives of real Americans that are really suffering and Donald Trump has now opened the door and said we're going to fix it and we're going to turn that table over and you know what, I wish him all the best cause it's not going to be easy because it's all the same people that opposed him in the lead up to tonight are going to be opposing him tomorrow. Source","label":1}
{"text":"More than 21,000 people from all regions of the world participated in the Best Countries survey, in which they assessed how closely they associated 80 countries with specific characteristics. Four of these economically stable, good job market, income equality and is a place I would live were included in the Best Countries to Be an Immigrant ranking.Countries also were scored in relation to others on the share of migrants in their population; the amount of remittances the migrants they host sent home; and graded on a United Nations assessment of integration measures provided for immigrants, such as language training and transfers of job certifications, and the rationale behind current integration policies. [LOL! NOT assimilation! ed]Note how important remittances are! Those are dollars sent out of the host economy and I will bet a buck that any economic study that seeks to justify migration benefits to a country, NEVER factors in how much of the migrants earnings (or their welfare payments!) are sent OUT of the country (and thus lost to the host country s economy!). Ann Corcoran Refugee Resettlement Watch1. Sweden (this, coincidentally, is the country I have for a long time ranked as #1 to fall to the Islamists!)2. Canada (just be sure our northern border is fortified!)3. Switzerland4. Australia5. Germany6. Norway7. US8. Netherlands9. Finland10.DenmarkNotice that Arab (mostly Muslim) countries are not a desired destination. Gee, why is that?","label":1}
{"text":"Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republican Donald Trump gave victory speeches Tuesday night in New Hampshire after winning their parties vote in the state's primary. Each took the top spot after second-place finishes in the Iowa caucuses. It's a boost for their standing in a highly competive election season.   Trump's first victory of the 2016 White House race means he's no longer a political rookie but the front-runner for his party's presidential nomination. CBN News' David Brody will share his insights on the outcome of the New Hampshire primary on Wednesday's The 700 Club. Trump started out his speech by thanking his wife, family and other supporters. \"We are going to make America great again, but we're going to do it the old-fashioned way,\" Trump said. \"The world is going to respect us again, believe me.\" \"We're going to make the deals for the American people,\" he said. Trump went on to talk about repealing Obamacare, making trade deals, rebuilding military, creating jobs and protecting the borders. Dr. Paul Bonicelli, professor of government at Regent University, breaks down the numbers from last night's New Hampshire primary. Watch below: \"We are going to make our country strong again. We are going to start winning again. We are going to make America so great again. Maybe greater than ever before.\" John Kasich grabbed the second spot, with 16 percent of the vote. \"There's something that's going on, that I'm not sure that anyone can quite understand. There's magic in the air with this campaign,\" Kasich told supporters. \"We see it as an opportunity for all of us, and I mean all of us, to be involved with something that is bigger than our lives.\" Cruz, Bush and Rubio had a tight outcome, with Cruz narrowly winning third place. The overcrowded GOP party shrank after the Iowa caucus, and more candidates could end their campaign following the evening's results. Ben Carson, bringing in only 2 percent of the votes, is already on his way to South Carolina to prepare for the next round, his campaign team reiterating that he has not dropped out of the race. Chris Christie won't reveal whether his campaign will continue. When asked what place he needs to come in at a minimum to continue he responded, \"I don't get into that stuff. Next!\" he said, calling on the next reporter.   And the win for Sanders completes his rise from presidential long shot to legitimate challenger for the Democratic nomination against Hillary Clinton. \"When we stand together, we win. Thank you, New Hampshire!\" Sanders celebrated on Twitter. \"Nine months ago we began our campaign here in New Hampshire,\" he said. \"And tonight, what appears to be a record-breaking turnout, because of a huge voter turnout - we won!\" Sanders encouraged his supporters to maintain their excitement and commitment for the November election. Hillary Clinton used her concession speech to rally her supporters. She referenced equal pay for women, racism, LGBTQ rights, and poverty. \"When people anywhere in America are held back by injustice that demands action,\" she said, admitting she has work to do to win the millennial vote. \"Even if they are not supporting me, I support them.\" It was a higher turnout than in 2008, and one thing voters on both sides agreed on in exit polls was they feel betrayed by the government and their parties.","label":0}
{"text":"The powerful Lebanese group Hezbollah said on Saturday that an Iraqi Kurdish independence vote marked a first step toward the partition of the Middle East, warning that this would lead to internal wars and must be opposed. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Iran-backed group, said events in northern Iraq, where Kurds overwhelmingly voted for independence on Monday, were a threat to the whole region and not just Iraq and neighboring states with Kurdish populations. It will open the door to partition, partition, partition, Nasrallah said. He added that partition means taking the region to internal wars whose end and time frame is known only to God . Nasrallah noted that his group s arch enemy Israel had come out in support of Kurdish statehood and described the referendum as part of a U.S.-Israeli plot to carve up the region. The United States came out in opposition to the vote, along with major European states and neighboring countries Turkey and Iran. The government of Syria, where Kurdish groups have established autonomous regions, also opposed the referendum. Nasrallah was speaking to supporters on the eve of Ashura, when Shi ites commemorate the slaying of the Prophet Mohammad s grandson, Imam Hussein, at Kerbala in 680 AD. Hezbollah, a political and military movement, is a major player in the Syrian conflict, where it has deployed thousands of fighters in support of President Bashar al-Assad. Hezbollah fighters are currently fighting along with other Iran-backed militias and the Syrian army against Islamic State militants in eastern Syria. Daesh is at its end. It is a matter of time in Iraq and Syria, Nasrallah said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State. He said counter attacks mounted by Islamic State in eastern Syria in the last two days were expected as the group was besieged, adding that it was incapable of recovering ground .","label":0}
{"text":"It shouldn t be surprising to anyone that Trump is attacking recount efforts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. However, many people assume that he s doing so because he s afraid of the recounts proving he didn t actually win the election. That s only partly true. Evan McMullin, who ran for President as an independent, has a different hypothesis that s much worse than such a fear:It should not go unrecognized that @realDonaldTrump s effort to inflate his election performance without cause is typical of autocrats. https:\/\/t.co\/rY4e5jmWxZ Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) November 27, 2016They do it increase the perception of their political legitimacy, while undermining popular opposition to them. Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) November 27, 2016Whoa. Interesting idea, and it does fit with what we know of Trump s personality. So it s not a stretch to believe that fear of losing face, and anger at having his legitimacy questioned at all, is at the root of Trump s attacks. It s not just the possibility that he could be proven a loser here.But there s something even more insidious than showing Trump has autocratic tendencies. We already know he has strong autocratic tendencies. But he also undermined our democracy by repeatedly calling the election rigged. His attempts to undermine opposition in this manner expands his attack on democracy. McMullin points out that both of these tactics help to solidify an autocrat s power:And, in the process, they do enormous damage to democratic institutions, which is a larger objective they share. Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) November 27, 2016Because it is those institutions and supporting norms that present the most significant check on an authoritarian s power. Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) November 27, 2016When confidence in those institutions and norms has been sufficiently eroded, the authoritarian has a freer hand with which to wield power. Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) November 27, 2016Trump s claims during his campaign that only he could fix our country, and fuck using our democratic system to try and do it because it s all rigged anyway, demonstrated his dictatorial nature. By throwing Twitter tantrums over possible recounts, and claiming there was massive voter fraud even though he won, Trump is trying to put us all in our places while reinforcing his image as a strong political leader who is beloved by everyone.Featured image by Mark Wilson via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"The influential Catalan business lobby Cercle d Economia said on Wednesday it was extremely worried by the prospect of Catalonia declaring independence from Spain and called for leaders from both sides to start talks. Such a declaration would plunge the country into an extraordinarily complex situation with unknown, but very serious consequences, the lobby said in a statement. The lobby also condemned violence on Sunday, saying Catalan-Spanish relationships had deteriorated as a consequence, after Spanish riot police were seen beating Catalans attempting to cast a ballot in a vote the government had said was illegal.","label":0}
{"text":"Michelle Obama Deletes Hillary Clinton From Twitter When Hillary goes low, Michelle goes BYE! Posted on November 1, 2016 by Baxter Dmitry in News , US \/\/ 1 Comment  Michelle Obama has scrubbed all references to Hillary Clinton from both of her Twitter accounts as news breaks that Clinton is under two different FBI investigations involving four FBI offices.  The @FLOTUS account has been wiped clean of all traces of Hillary, and @MichelleObama , a verified page with almost six million followers, has been scrubbed all the way back to 2013.  Is Michelle performing a last minute tidy up, clearing out the clutter before the dumpster fire of the Democratic campaign finally burns out? RELATED CONTENT Obama Administration Begs Court Not To Depose Hillary Clinton  Are the Washington elite preparing to move on from Hillary?  Bernie Sanders has also begun to change his tune. A Twitter post today sure didn't sound like it was referring to Hillary Clinton. Now is the time for our next president to rally people against Wall Street and corporate greed and stand up for the declining middle class.  \u2014 Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 30, 2016  Bernie was asked by a supporter about the write-in thing \u2013 and his response might surprise you. \" If you want to write me in here [Vermont], I think it's fine.\"","label":1}
{"text":"The man who sued Seattle Mayor Ed Murray accusing him of paying him for sex when he was a teenager has dropped the lawsuit, his attorney said on Wednesday, and Murray said he felt vindicated and would consider options for getting back into the race for reelection. In Twitter messages, Lincoln Beauregard, a lawyer for accuser Delvonn Heckard, wrote that his client was \"delaying\" his lawsuit until the mayor was out of power. Beauregard did not reply to a request for comment beyond the tweets, but emailed a copy of the motion to dismiss the lawsuit. A copy of a court order by a Superior Court judge in King County granting the dismissal was posted online by the Seattle Times newspaper. In April, Heckard, 46, accused Murray in the lawsuit of paying him for sex when Heckard was a homeless, drug-addicted teenager. The allegations caused Murray, whose mayoral term will expire at the end of 2017, to abandon his campaign for re-election. \"I believe the withdrawal of this lawsuit vindicates me,\" Murray told a press conference. \"This lawsuit was filed just as people were just getting ready to run, and it's withdrawn about 30 days after I move out of the race,\" he said. Murray, 62, said he was considering his options regarding launching re-entry into the crowded mayoral race. Murray is Seattle's first openly gay mayor. As a senator in the Washington state legislature, he was an advocate for gay rights and legalizing same-sex marriage.","label":0}
{"text":"Saturday during her Fox News Channel \"Justice\" opening statement, Judge Jeanine Pirro reacted to University of California at Berkeley disinviting author Ann Coulter from speaking on campus, saying the shutting down of free speech on college campuses is pushing the country to a fascist and totalitarian society. \"America is in trouble,\" Pirro began. \"They are trying to silence you. A monstrous and pervasive movement is putting the First Amendment and your free speech, the most basic and fundamental tenets of our nation at risk and in danger of extinction. And whether you are on the left or right, free speech is essential to our democracy, the reason the country was found, the reason people risk so much, even die to come here. Yet, as you sit there, you are watching a silencing in . Where people are not allowed to express their opinion if it does not align with the thinking of others. \" \"It's putting us on the course where we are in danger of becoming a fascist totalitarian society where there is only one accepted point of view no other will be tolerated, and it's time to fight back,\" she added. Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent","label":0}
{"text":"The conversations U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions had last year with Russia's ambassador were not related to his role advising the Trump campaign but solely to his work as a U.S. senator, the White House said on Thursday. \"He was clearly conducting himself as a United States senator,\" White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters aboard Air Force One. \"This is what senators do.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Three senior Brazilian law enforcement officials, including the former prosecutor general, said new leaders of the federal police and prosecutors offices are curbing an anti-corruption drive that challenged centuries of impunity in Latin America s biggest country. Rodrigo Janot, who until mid-September was Brazil s prosecutor general and remains an influential senior prosecutor, told Reuters this week he believes that President Michel Temer, whom he charged on three different counts of corruption, appointed a new head of federal police specifically to divert graft investigations. Separately, two other senior law enforcement officials said that Raquel Dodge, Janot s replacement as prosecutor general, told some senior prosecutors in the capital Brasilia to shift away from corruption probes and stop talking publicly about anti-graft efforts. In a statement, the president s office said the police chief was appointed after consultations with the police force. It criticized any suggestions the new director would hinder investigations. Only someone ill-informed or ill-intentioned could suppose that interference in investigations is possible, Temer s office said. A spokeswoman for Dodge said the new prosecutor general was vigorously combating corruption on numerous fronts. Fernando Segovia, the new police director, in an email to Reuters said his office will strengthen the fight against corruption. Brazil s crackdown on graft in recent years led to dozens of convictions of senior politicians, government officials and corporate executives, inspiring many Brazilians to believe that a longstanding culture of impunity was changing. It also helped spawn similar crackdowns elsewhere in Latin America. But in Brazil, where Congress recently shielded Temer from charges, some investigators and prosecutors say that elected officials are finding ways to outmaneuver them, especially as they seek, before elections next year, to retain seats that give them constitutional safeguards against prosecution. The sprawling nature of many of Brazil s inquiries, conducted by investigators in dozens of far-flung offices, would make any concerted effort to derail them difficult, corruption experts said. But Janot s dissent, and growing criticism expressed by other senior officials, reveal a growing rift at the top levels of Brazilian law enforcement at a time when some investigators believe Temer and Congressional allies are out to quash landmark investigations. Now is the time to speak up, Janot told Reuters, so that all this effort will not have been in vain. The effort, including Operation Car Wash and several other major investigations, involves probes into kickbacks by private construction firms to government officials and politicians in exchange for public works and other contracts. It uncovered billions of dollars worth of illicit payments and led to sharing of evidence with 40 other countries, many of which launched their own probes and convicted officials based on Brazilian investigators findings. During a rare, two-hour interview in Brasilia, Janot was especially critical of Segovia s appointment to head the federal police, which spearheaded Car Wash and other investigations. The 61-year-old prosecutor, who stepped down as prosecutor general because the second of his two terms in the office expired in September, said he believes that Segovia was named to complete a mission to divert the focus of the investigations. Janot cited public commentary made by the new police chief, including Segovia s criticism of prosecutors investigations at a press conference shortly after he took office. By the statements he has made, it appears he was selected for the mission to discredit the investigation, Janot added. Segovia, 48, who has spent over two decades on the force, in the email said he seeks to strengthen investigations of crimes against public coffers and involving corruption. I have made clear in all my public statements that we will broaden and strengthen Operation Car Wash, he added. The new police chief was appointed with strong support from Temer s ruling Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB. His appointment surprised some within the federal police because Segovia has never held what is considered one of the force s major posts, according to other investigators and law enforcement experts. During a press conference on Nov. 20, ten days into the new job, Segovia criticized prosecutors for their case against Temer, calling it a rushed investigation. He belittled the evidence, including a video shot by federal police of a Temer aide accepting a bag with 500,000 reais ($150,000) in cash. A single bag does not provide the criminal evidence needed, Segovia said, prompting widespread scorn in Brazilian press and social media. It cannot be denied that the statements made by the new director of the federal police were extremely unfortunate, read an editorial in the Folha de S. Paulo, Brazil s largest newspaper, afterward. When Dodge took office on Sept 19, she was widely criticized by police, prosecutors and many others in Brazil for failing in a speech to acknowledge the historic Car Wash probe. The two senior law enforcement officials, who requested to remain anonymous, said that the new prosecutor general has told other prosecutors to shift their focus from graft. Dodge also told some prosecutors to stop using the word corruption so much in public, they said. The prosecutor general s spokeswoman did not respond to questions about whether Dodge told prosecutors to avoid the word corruption or whether she told prosecutors to de-emphasize graft cases. Janot declined to comment on Dodge s dealings with other prosecutors, saying he has a professional and respectful relationship with his successor. Although it is early in the tenure of both Dodge and Segovia, some prosecutors and police investigators say they are already seeing a significant slowdown in procedures necessary to pursue some cases. Janot, for instance, said Dodge s office has filed far less paperwork with Brazil s Supreme Court than would have been expected given the caseload when she took over. The paperwork is a key step in many big investigations because only the top court can authorize probes involving elected federal officials. A spokeswoman for the top court did not respond to a request for comment on the volume of the paperwork. Before his term expired, the prosecutor general s office this year sent an average of 302 requests related to the Car Wash corruption investigations to the Supreme Court each month, Janot said. Dodge s office said it had filed a total of 450 requests since she took office in mid-September, representing an average of 180 per month, or a roughly 40 percent drop. Some experts say it is too soon to know whether a shift away from corruption investigations is underway or even possible to orchestrate, particularly because of the number of investigators pursuing cases across Brazil. More time is needed, they say, to evaluate Dodge s administration. Even if Dodge and Segovia were strategically appointed to stop or create delays in investigations, I doubt they would succeed because the process has become decentralized, said Carlos Pereira, a professor of public administration at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Rio de Janeiro and a leading expert on corruption. Still, those involved in ongoing cases are troubled by any prospect of a slowdown, particularly with national elections looming next October, which would prolong constitutional protections for many office-holders facing charges. The risks increase exponentially as the elections approach, said Carlos Lima, the top regional prosecutor in Curitiba, the southern city where the Car Wash investigations began. During his conversation with Reuters, Janot criticized Segovia s support from Temer and his allies, some of whom are also facing investigations and charges. A person with close ties to these people some under investigation, some charged I cannot say if they should be allowed to run an institution of the size and importance of the federal police, Janot said. In the email, Segovia said I have no type of political or party ties with the PMDB or any other political party. Temer, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, staved off prosecution largely because allies in the lower house of Congress, which must authorize charges against a sitting president, voted against it. The vote outraged many Brazilians because some of those who voted against the charges in Congress are also being investigated. Temer will still face charges once he leaves federal elected office. The pushback is such that a Congressional committee is now investigating how federal prosecutors carried out their probe against Temer. We re going to investigate those who have always investigated us, said Carlos Marun, a PMDB Congressman and Temer ally, who danced on the lower house floor after it voted against sending the president for trial. Marun himself is facing a corruption trial in his home state of Mato Grosso do Sul. He has denied any wrongdoing.","label":0}
{"text":"0 comments  With just 10 days to go before the most important election of our lifetime, Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are soaring in the polls. The Friday announcement that the FBI would be re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server has not helped matters for Democrats, either.  But none of this will matter if they are able to manipulate the vote. According to MRC Blog , that's why the left is going to drastic measures to drum up Democratic voters, expanding voting rights to include non-citizens in major cities nationwide.  The latest notable city to do so is San Francisco, whose Election Day ballot will include a measure allowing the parents or legal guardians of any student in the city's public schools to vote in school board elections. Under this measure, people with green cards, visas, or no documentation at all would be allowed to vote.  San Francisco Assemblyman David Chiu, who believes illegal aliens should be allowed to vote to bypass the \"broken immigration system in this country,\" made the following statement:  \"One out of three kids in the San Francisco unified school system has a parent who is an immigrant, who is disenfranchised and doesn't have a voice. We've had legal immigrants who've had children go through the entire K-12 system without having a say.\"  Chiu is the son of Taiwanese immigrants.  It is no secret that the vast majority of illegal aliens vote Democrat, because that is the party which is incessantly trying to buy their loyalty with an endless stream of handouts and promises of blanket amnesty. If it weren't so, we wouldn't see all of these liberals pushing so hard to give illegals voting rights; they simply do so because it works in their favor, not because it is actually good for anyone.  Major cities from sea to shining sea are following San Francisco's lead, which is just one more very important reason to vote for Donald Trump on Nov. 8. We need to turn this country around and FAST!","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump's proposal to ban all Muslims from entering the United States would go nowhere in the Senate, the Republican leader there says. \"We're not gonna follow that suggestion that this particular candidate made,\" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told CNN's Jake Tapper Sunday on \"State of the Union.\" \"It would prevent the president of Afghanistan from coming to the United States. The king of Jordan couldn't come to the United States,\" he said. \"Obviously we're not going to do that.\" McConnell had previously criticized Trump's proposal to temporarily block Muslims from entering the United States in the wake of terror attacks in Paris and California. Despite his rebuke of Trump's proposal, McConnell wouldn't weigh in any further on the presidential race Sunday.","label":0}
{"text":"As the presidential inauguration drew near in January, something bordering on panic was taking hold among some scientists who rely on the vast oceans of data housed on government servers, which encompass information on everything from social demographics to satellite photographs of polar ice. In a Trump administration that has made clear its disdain for the copious evidence that human activity is warming the planet, researchers feared a broad crusade against the scientific information provided to the public. Reports last week that the administration is proposing deep budget cuts for government agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have fueled new fears of databases being axed, if only as a measure. \"We'll probably be saying goodbye to much of the invaluable data housed at the NCEI,\" Anne Jefferson, a water hydrology professor at Kent State University, wrote on Twitter Saturday, referring to the National Centers for Environmental Information. \"Hope it gets rescued in time. \" It is illegal to destroy government data, but agencies can make it more difficult to find by revising websites and creating other barriers to the underlying information. Already there have been a handful of changes to the websites of federal science agencies, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a new organization with researchers monitoring the content. On the E. P. A. 's website, for instance, the science and technology office had described as its mission the development of \"scientific and technological foundations to achieve clean water. \" Now the office says the goal is to develop \"economically and technologically achievable performance standards. \" Pie charts on a Department of Energy website illustrating the link between coal and greenhouse gas emissions also have disappeared. So has the description on an Interior Department page of the potential environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing on federal land. Changes like these appear only to reflect the publicly stated priorities of the new administration and there have been few signs as yet that federal databases are being systematically manipulated or restricted. But concern about the vulnerability of scientific information has also focused attention on a nonpartisan problem of government: Much of the scientific information so painstakingly collected over the decades, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, remains held only by the government, scattered on thousands of servers in hundreds of departments where it may not be backed up and could be impossible to find. As thousands of academics, librarians, coders and citizens have gathered at what are called \"data rescue\" events in recent weeks \u2014 there were at least six this past weekend alone \u2014 the enormousness of extracting government data that is easily found has become apparent, as has the difficulty in tracking down the rest. Some activists refer to it as \"dark data\" \u2014 and they are not talking about classified information or data the government might release only if compelled by a Freedom of Information Act request. \"It's like dark matter we know it must be there but we don't know where to find it to verify,\" said Maxwell Ogden, the director of Code for Science and Society, a nonprofit that began a archiving project in collaboration with the research libraries in the University of California system. \"If they're going to delete something, how will we even know it's deleted if we didn't know it was there?\" he asked. The obstacles have spurred debate among activists over how to build an archiving system for the government's science data that ensures that the public does not lose access to it, regardless of who is in power. \"No one would advocate for a system where the government stores all scientific data and we just trust them to give it to us,\" said Laurie Allen, a digital librarian at the University of Pennsylvania who helped found Data Refuge. \"We didn't used to have that system, yet that is the system we have landed with. \" At the moment, the closest thing to a central repository is Data. gov, which, under a 2013 Obama administration directive, is supposed to link to all of the public databases within the government. But it relies on agencies to and the total size of all the data linked to by the directory, Mr. Ogden recently found, comes to just 40 terabytes \u2014 about as much as would fit on $1, 000 worth of hard drives. NASA alone provides access to more than 17. 5 petabytes of archived data, according to its website (a petabyte is 1, 000 times bigger than a terabyte) over dozens of different data portal systems. And of the links on Data. gov, Mr. Ogden found, take users to a website rather than the actual data, which makes it hard to devise software that can automatically copy it. Even databases that are listed on Data. gov \u2014 and there are more than two million, according to Mr. Ogden's published logs \u2014 often sit behind an interface designed for ease of use but built with proprietary code almost impossible to reproduce. The need to write custom code to extract data from, say, the E. P. A. 's discharge monitoring reports is one reason that, despite having hosted more than two dozen \"data rescue\" events since January, the activist group Data Refuge lists only 158 data sets in its public directory. Andrew Bergman, a graduate student in applied physics at Harvard, along with two physics department colleagues, suspended his studies to help found the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which has also helped to organize the events. \"We have things that are considered really important from NASA, E. P. A. NOAA,\" Mr. Bergman said. \"But in terms of finalized, completed data sets that are actually useful, it's a very small number compared to the total. \" The transition to digital distribution that made government documents more accessible, librarians say, has also left them more at risk. Without physical copies in libraries, the internet's promise of making government information more widely available has made it far more centralized. Except when certain data is the subject of a lawsuit or multiple F. O. I. A. requests, it remains unclear what compels an agency to keep it online. \"Destroying federal records is a crime,\" said Patrice McDermott, who heads a public advocacy organization called Open the Government. \"Taking them off of the internet does not have the same penalty. \" In a recent letter to the federal Office of Management and Budget, Ms. McDermott's group cited a clause in the 1995 Paperwork Reduction Act that requires agencies to \"provide adequate notice when initiating, substantially modifying, or terminating significant information dissemination products. \" But what that means for the age of big data has not been defined. To make secure copies of government research that researchers can trust is no easy task, librarians say. But many of those who have been trying for years to find funding and a system to do it reliably hope to harness the current wave of interest. \"At the moment, more people than ever are aware of the risk of relying solely on the government to preserve its own information,'' two government document librarians, James A. Jacobs, of the University of California, San Diego, and James R. Jacobs of Stanford University, wrote in an essay circulated online last week. \"This was not true even six months ago. '' At the archiving events, participants are typically divided into groups. One uses a web browser extension to flag government web addresses for the Internet Archive, an existing service that operates an automated \"web crawler\" that can make copies of federal websites but typically not the databases that store information in more exotic formats. Another group is tasked with scrutinizing data sets that researchers have identified as particularly useful or vulnerable. Those are \"tagged\" with a description of where they came from and what they are. At one of last month's events, at New York University, many marveled at the breadth and depth of the research they were sorting through, even as they worried about its future. \"Look, you can get temperature and salinity readings from any one of these buoys,'' said Barbara Thiers, the vice president for science at the New York Botanical Garden, another participant. \"This is the raw data for tracking ocean warming. ''","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump called for the NATO alliance to renew their struggle against radical Islamic terrorism, hosting a moment of silence in remembrance of the victims of the attack in Manchester. [\"Terrorism must be stopped in its tracks, or the horror you saw in Manchester and so many other places will continue forever,\" he said during his remarks in advance of a NATO summit in Brussels. Trump called the attacks a reminder of the \"barbaric\" and \"vicious\" evil that the world faced. \"Innocent little girls and so many others were horribly murdered and badly injured while attending a concert,\" he said, describing the victims of the attack. \"Beautiful lives with so much great potential, torn from their families forever and ever. \" Trump made his remarks during an unveiling of the Article 5 and the Berlin Wall memorials, recalling the success of the partnership against communism. The monument includes a section of one of the Twin Tower buildings that were destroyed on which Trump described as \"a painful reminder\" of the threat the world still faced. The president again described the terrorists as \"losers\" that should be obliterated from the world. \"Wherever they exist in our societies, we must drive them out and never, ever let them back in,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"US House Seeks Syria-War Escalation November 22, 2016  Moving to trap President-elect Trump into a war escalation in Syria, the House rushed through a resolution promoting a U.S.-imposed \"no fly zone\" that could spark World War III, reports Rick Sterling.  By Rick Sterling  Late in the day, on Nov. 15, one week after the U.S. elections, the lame-duck Congress convened in special session with normal rules suspended so the House could pass House Resolution 5732, the \"Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act\" calling for intensifying the already harsh sanctions on Syria, assessing the imposition of a \"no fly zone\" inside Syria (to prevent the Syrian government from flying) and escalating efforts to press criminal charges against Syrian officials.  HR5732 claims to promote a negotiated settlement in Syria but, as analyzed by Friends Committee for National Legislation, it imposes preconditions which would actually make a peace agreement more difficult. The West Front of the U.S. Capitol  There was 40 minutes of \"debate\" with six representatives (Ed Royce, R-California; Eliot Engel, D-New York; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida; Dan Kildee, D-Michigan; Chris Smith, R-New Jersey; and Carlos Curbelo, R-Florida) all speaking in favor of the resolution. There were few other representatives present, but the House Foreign Affairs Committee stated that the resolution was passed \"unanimously\" without mentioning these special conditions.  According to Wikipedia, \" Suspension of the rules is a procedure generally used to quickly pass non-controversial bills in the United States House of Representatives \u2026 such as naming Post Offices\u2026\" In this case, however, the resolution could lead to a wider war in the Middle East and potentially World War III with nuclear-armed Russia.  Most strikingly, the resolution calls for evaluating and developing plans for the United States to impose a \"no fly zone\" inside Syria, a sovereign nation, an act of war that also would violate international law as an act of aggression. It also could put the U.S. military in the position of shooting down Russian aircraft.  To call this proposal \"non-controversial\" is absurd, although it may say a great deal about the \"group think\" of the U.S. Congress that an act of war would be so casually considered. Clearly, this resolution should have been debated under normal rules with a reasonable amount of Congressional presence and debate.  The motivation for bypassing normal rules and rushing the bill through without meaningful debate was articulated by the bill's sponsor, Democrat Eliot Engel: \"We cannot delay action on Syria any further. \u2026 If we don't get this legislation across the finish line in the next few weeks, we are back to square one.\"  The current urgency may be related to the election results since President-elect Donald Trump has spoken out against \"regime change\" foreign policy. As much as neoconservatives and their liberal-interventionist allies are critical of President Obama for not doing more in Syria, these Congressional hawks are even more concerned about the prospect of a President who might move toward peace and away from war.  The Caesar Fraud  HR5732 is titled the \"Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act,\" which House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Royce explained was named after \"the brave Syrian defector known to the world as Caesar, who testified to us the shocking scale of torture being carried out within the prisons of Syria.\" U.S.-backed Syrian \"moderate\" rebels smile as they prepare to behead a 12-year-old boy (left), whose severed head is held aloft triumphantly in a later part of the video. [Screenshot from the YouTube video] In reality, the Caesar story was a grand deception involving the CIA with funding from Qatar to sabotage the 2014 Geneva peace negotiations. The 55,000 photos which were said to show 11,000 torture victims have never been publicly revealed. Only a tiny number of photos have been publicized. However, in 2015, Human Rights Watch was granted access to view the entire set. They revealed that almost one half the photos show the opposite of what was claimed: instead of victims tortured by the Syrian government, they actually show dead Syrian soldiers and civilian victims of car bombs and other terror attacks. The \"Caesar\" story, replete with a masked \"defector,\" was one of the early propaganda hoaxes regarding Syria. One of the other big lies regarding Syria is that the U.S. has been doing nothing. Royce said, \" The administration has decided not to decide. And that itself, unfortunately, has set a course where here we sit and watch and the violence only worsens. Mr. Speaker, America has been sitting back and watching these atrocities for far too long. Vital U.S. national security interests are at stake.\"  Rep. Engel said, \"Four years ago I thought we should have aided the Free Syrian Army. They came to us in Washington and begged us for help. \u2026 They were simply looking for weaponry. I really believe if we had given it to them, the situation in Syria would have been different today.\"  That narrative is nonsense. By late 2011, the U.S. was actively coordinating, training and supplying armed opposition groups. When Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan government was toppled in fall 2011, the CIA oversaw the diversion of Libyan weapons to the Syrian armed opposition, as documented in the Defense Intelligence Agency report of October 2012.  These weapons transfers were secret. For the public record, it was acknowledged that the U.S. was supplying communications equipment to the armed opposition while U.S. \"allies\" \u2014 Saudi Arabia and Qatar \u2014 were supplying the weaponry. This is one reason that Saudi purchases of weapons skyrocketed during this time period; they were buying weapons to replace those being shipped to the armed opposition in Syria. It was very profitable for U.S. arms manufacturers.  Huge weapons transfers to the armed opposition in Syria have continued to the present, with the U.S. government even more directly involved. This past spring, Janes Defense reported the details of a U.S. delivery of 2.2 million pounds of ammunition, rocket launchers and other weaponry to the armed opposition.  So, the political claims that the U.S. has been inactive are baseless. In reality, the U.S. has done everything short of a direct attack on Syria. And the U.S. military is starting to cross that line. On Sept. 17, the U.S. air coalition conducted a series of airstrikes on the Syrian Army in Deir Ezzor, killing 80 Syrian soldiers and enabling ISIS to launch an attack on the position. Claims that it was a \"mistake\" are highly dubious.  The assertions by Congressional hawks that the U.S. has been \"inactive\" in the Syrian conflict are part of the false narrative suggesting the U.S. must \"do something\" which leads to a \"no fly zone\" and full-scale war. Ironically, these calls for war are masked as \"humanitarian\" though even proponents, such as Hillary Clinton, privately have acknowledged that large numbers of Syrians, including civilians, would be killed in the U.S. attacks needed to establish the \"no fly zone.\"  And, never do the proponents bring up the case of Libya where the U.S. and NATO \"did something\": destroyed the government and created chaos.  Fact-Free House of Propaganda  With only a handful of representatives present and no dissent, the six Congressional members engaged in unrestrained propaganda and misinformation. Samantha Power, Permanent Representative of the United States to the UN, addresses the Security Council meeting on Syria, Sept. 25, 2016. Power has been an advocate for escalating U.S. military involvement in Syria. (UN Photo)  Engel, said \"We're going into the New Year 2017, Assad still clings to power, at the expense of killing millions of his citizens.\" Even if all the deaths, including Syrian soldiers and civilians killed by anti-government jihadists, were blamed on Assad, this number is way off anyone's charts.  Rep. Kildee said \"The world has witnessed this terrible tragedy unfold before our eyes. Nearly half a million Syrians killed. Not soldiers \u2013 men, women, children killed.\"  The official text of the resolution says, \" It is the sense of Congress that\u2013 (1) Bashar al-Assad's murderous actions against the people of Syria have caused the deaths of more than 400,000 civilians\u2026\"  The above accusations \u2013 from \"millions of citizens\" to \"half a million\" to \"400,000 civilians\" \u2013 are all preposterous lies. Credible estimates of casualties in the Syrian conflict range from 300,000 to 420,000. The opposition-supporting Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates the documented 2011-2016 death toll as follows: killed pro-Syrian forces \u2013 108,000; killed anti-government forces \u2013 105,000; killed civilians \u2013 89,000  In contrast with Congressional and media claims, civilians comprise a minority of the total death count and the heaviest casualties are among those fighting in defense of the Syrian state. In the U.S. political world and the mainstream media, these facts are ignored and never mentioned because they point to the reality versus the propaganda narrative which has allowed the U.S. and its allies to continue funding terrorism and a war of aggression against Syria.  The Congressional speakers were in full self-righteous mode as they accused the Syrian government of \"committing crimes against humanity and war crimes against civilians including murder, torture and rape. No one has been spared from this targeting, even children.\" A naive listener would never know that the Syrian government is primarily fighting the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda including thousands of foreign fighters supplied and paid by foreign governments.  The speakers went on to accuse the Syrian military of \"targeting\" hospitals, schools and markets. A critical listener might ask why they would do that instead of targeting Al Qaeda terrorists and their allies who launch dozens and sometimes hundreds of hell-cannon missiles into the government-held sections of Aleppo every day.  The Congressional propaganda fest would not be complete without mention of the \"White Helmets.\" Royce said \"We (previously) heard the testimony of Raed Saleh of the Syrian White Helmets. These are the doctors, nurses and volunteers who actually, when the bombs come, run towards the areas that have been hit in order to try to get the injured civilians medical treatment. \u2026 They have lost over 600 doctors and nurses.\"  This is more Congressional nonsense. There are no nurses or doctors associated with the White Helmets. The organization was created by the U.S. and U.K. and heavily promoted by a \" shady PR firm .\" The White Helmets operate solely in areas controlled by Al Qaeda's Nusra Front (recently renamed Syria Conquest Front) and associated terrorist groups. The White Helmets do some rescue work in the conflict zone but their main role is in the information war manipulating public opinion.  The White Helmets actively promote U.S.\/NATO intervention through a \"no fly zone.\" Recently, the White Helmets became a major source of claims about innocent civilian victims in east Aleppo.  Given the clear propagandistic history of the White Helmets, these claims should be treated with skepticism. We need to ask exactly what is the evidence?  The same skepticism needs to be applied to video and other reports from the Aleppo Media Center. AMC is a creation of the Syrian Expatriates Organization whose address on K Street in Washington, D.C., indicates it is a U.S. marketing operation.  What's Going On?  The campaign to overthrow the Syrian government is failing and there is possibility of a victory for the Syrian government and its allies. A heart-rending propaganda image designed to justify a major U.S. military operation inside Syria against the Syrian military.  The earlier flood of international jihadi recruits is drying up. The Syrian Army and allies are gaining ground militarily and negotiating settlements or re-locations with \"rebels\" who previously terrorized Homs, Darraya (outer Damascus) and elsewhere. In Aleppo, the Syrian army and allies are tightening the noose around the armed opposition in east Aleppo.  This has caused alarm among neoconservative lawmakers devoted to Israel, Saudi Arabia and U.S. empire. They are desperate to prevent the Syrian government from finally eliminating the terrorist groups which the West and its allies have promoted for the past five-plus years.  \"Pro Israel\" groups have been major campaigners for passage of HR5732. The name of Simon Wiesenthal is even invoked in the resolution. Rabbi Lee Bycel wrote, \"Where is the Conscience of the World?\" as he questioned why the \"humanitarian\" HR5732 was not passed earlier.  Israeli interests are one of the primary forces sustaining and promoting the conflict. Syria is officially at war with Israel which continues to occupy the Syrian Golan Heights; Syria has been a key ally of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance; and Syria has maintained its alliance with Iran. In 2010, Secretary of State Clinton urged Syria to break relations with Hezbollah, reduce relations with Iran and come to settlement with Israel. The Syrian refusal to comply with these Washington demands was instrumental in solidifying Washington's hostility .  Congressional proponents of HR5732 make clear the international dimension of the conflict. Royce explains, \"It is Russia, it is Hezbollah, that are the primary movers of death and destruction. \u2026 It is the IRGC [Revolutionary Guard] fighters from Iran.\"  Engel echoes the same message: \"Yes, we want to go after Assad's partners in violence \u2026 Iranian and Hezbollah forces.\"  In words and deeds Israel has made its position on Syria crystal clear. Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren explained in an interview: \"we always wanted [President] Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren't backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran \u2026 the greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran, to Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc.\"  These statements have been fully backed up by Israeli actions bombing Syrian positions in southern Syria and providing medical treatment for Nusra\/Al Qaeda and other armed opposition fighters.  What Will Happen Now?  If the Syrian government and its allies continue to advance in Aleppo, Deir Ezzor, outer Damascus and the south, the situation will come to a head. The enemies of Syria \u2013 predominately the U.S., Gulf Countries, NATO and Israel \u2013 will come to a decision point. Do they intervene directly or do they allow their \"regime change\" project to collapse? HR5732 is an effort to prepare for direct intervention and aggression.  One thing is clear from the experience of Libya: Neoconservatives do not care if they leave a country in chaos. The main objective is to destabilize and overthrow a government which is too independent. If the U.S. and its allies cannot dominate the country, then at least they can destroy the contrary authority and leave chaos.  What is at stake in Syria is whether the U.S. and allies, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, are able to destroy the last secular and independent Arab country in the region and whether the U.S. goal of being the sole superpower in the world prevails. The rushed passage of HR5732 without any meaningful debate is indicative of that.  Despite Trump's election and his stated priority of taking on Islamic terrorism \u2013 not overthrowing Assad \u2013 the \"regime change\" proponents have not given up their war on Syria. They still seek to escalate U.S. aggression there and hope to box President Trump in.  It's also clear that the U.S. Congress has become a venue where blatant lies can be stated with impunity and where violent actions are advanced behind a cynical and amoral veneer of \"humanitarianism.\"  Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist and member of Syria Solidarity Movement.","label":1}
{"text":"From the Daily News: SAN FRANCISCO &gt&gt \"Sutter\" Brown, a Pembroke Welsh corgi christened California's first dog by his owner Gov. Jerry Brown, died Friday following a brief illness. He was 13. The dog's health had deteriorated rapidly in recent days and the decision was made to say goodbye, the governor's press office said in a statement. He passed away peacefully with the governor and first lady Anne Gust Brown at his side, and was laid to rest at the family ranch in Colusa County, where he \"loved to roam, sniff and play,\" the statement said. While mom dad got to go light the real Capitol Christmas Tree, we got stuck with this fake fir 2 stuffed dogs #Ruff pic. twitter. \u2014 Sutter Brown (@SutterBrown) December 6, 2016, Trick or treat! pic. twitter. \u2014 Sutter Brown (@SutterBrown) November 1, 2016, https: . I may not be able to get a @PNKPL8, but I'm still doing my part. #BreastCancerAwarenessMonth #PowerColor #ThinkPink pic. twitter. \u2014 Sutter Brown (@SutterBrown) October 1, 2015,","label":0}
{"text":"The European Union on Monday urged Saad al-Hariri to return to Lebanon, calling on all political forces inside the country to focus on the domestic agenda and warning Saudi Arabia against meddling. Hariri s resignation, announced from Riyadh, and its aftermath have put Lebanon at the forefront of regional rivalry between Shi ite-led Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia Riyadh in recent days. We appeal first of all to the political forces to focus on Lebanon and what they can deliver to their citizens, Prime Minister Hariri to return to his country and the unity government ... to focus on domestic achievements, the bloc s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, told reporters. We expect no external interference in this national agenda. We believe it is essential to avoid importing into Lebanon regional conflicts, she said after hosting a meeting of all 28 EU foreign ministers in Brussels. She praised the achievements of the Lebanese government under Hariri, who resigned saying he feared assassination. He has criticized the Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is part of his coalition government, for sowing strife in the Arab world and said he could take his resignation back if the group agreed to stay out of regional conflicts. France s foreign minister, speaking on the sidelines of the ministerial gathering in Brussels, also called on other countries not to interfere in Lebanon. We are preoccupied by the situation in Lebanon... we are worried about its stability, we are worried about its integrity, we are worried about non-interference, Jean-Yves Le Drian said. To reach a political solution in Lebanon, all political figures must have complete freedom of movement, he told reporters when asked about Hariri. Germany s Sigmar Gabriel also said Hariri should return as his departure has shaken Lebanon. Their Luxembourgish counterpart Jean Asselborn warned Riyadh that a meltdown in Lebanon would further destabilize the tumultuous Middle East, adding that a hostage crisis, if that is what is happening with the Lebanese Prime Minister in Saudi Arabia, is not very good news for the region.","label":0}
{"text":"\u0413\u043b\u0430\u0432\u043d\u0430\u044f \u00bb News \u00bb Peru proposes its own TPP to Russia Peru proposes its own TPP to Russia Monday, 14 November, 2016 - 10:30  Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said that the TPP project is likely to be revised. At the same time, he stressed that a similar arrangement, but with the participation of Russia and China instead of the United States would be the best opportunity for the countries of this region.  Despite the fact that the Peruvian citizens have been regularly protesting against the TPP, the Liberal President is not said to have decided to do the will of the people. Rather, after the victory of Donald Trump, who doesn't support this agreement and taking into consideration the White House's statements that the Obama administration would not have time to ratify the TPP, Kuczynski has decided to be the first one in occupying a niche near the other major countries in the region, including the \u00abeconomic heavyweight\u00bb- China. Related links","label":1}
{"text":"Will this be the nail in the coffin for the Obama\/Clinton crime families? They ve been able to skate through so many scandals and lawless deeds but this seems so different. Last night, Washington DC Lawyer Victoria Toensing told how the FBI witness ties Obama to the uranium one scandal:Obama knew of the criminality involved with the Russia Uranium One deal because he got daily briefings on it! How is it that Obama knew of this yet he approved the sale of American uranium to the Russians anyway?!The informant is an American businessman who worked undercover as an FBI confidential witness. He was silenced via gag order from exposing what he witnessed.John Solomon: Just a little bit ago before we came on Victoria and I talked and she was able to confirm to me that her client has information that Director Mueller and President Obama and other officials were briefed on this investigation in real time as it was going on Attorney Victoria Toensing: My client was told this information, now maybe the bureau is bluffing but I don t think so because they were very specific. They said that the briefing made it into President Obama s daily briefing papers. So I don t think they made that up.BOOM! LET THIS MAN SPEAK!","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump is having a hard time recovering from his fallen soldier debacle, not only because he continues to make it worse, but because America is tired of his nonsense and demands the truth.It was only yesterday that White House Chief of Staff John Kelly infuriated everyone by criticizing Rep. Frederica Wilson for calling Trump out for disrespecting a Gold Star widow. Kelly also went after Wilson for an old speech in 2015, stating that she d bragged about how she had gotten money for the FBI acknowledging two deceased agents. Little did Kelly know, this lie would ignite a sh*tstorm for the Trump administration.Earlier today, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the unfortunate recipient of the media s frustration with the dishonest Trump administration. Reporters blasted Sanders with questions in the press briefing, directly pointing out that Wilson s FBI speech completely contradicted Kelly s claims. When a reporter boldly pointed out that Wilson had never boasted about funding in her speech, Sanders stumbled through her response: Absolutely, General Kelly was stunned that Representative Wilson made comments at a building dedication honoring slain FBI agents about her own actions in Congress, including lobbying former President Obama on legislation. As he pointed out, if you re able to make a sacred act like honoring American heroes all about yourself, you re an empty barrel. Or as we say in the South, all hat, no cattle. This was hardly the end for Sanders. Because she d defended Kelly despite being faced with facts that challenged his claims, reporters attacked her and asked if she d even seen the speech. Sanders claimed she had, and a reporter pointed out that she should know that Wilson actually praised the FBI agents and didn t talk about funding. Even as her spot was completely blown up, Sanders pathetically defended Kelly.The icing on the cake was when a reporter asked if Kelly would respond to more questions over the matter. When Sanders said he already had yesterday, the reporter pointed out: He was wrong yesterday! As usual, the Trump administration responded with intimidation and bullying. Sanders fired back: If you want to go after General Kelly, that s up to you. If you want to get into a debate with the four-star Marine general, I think that s something highly inappropriate. Go ahead. You can watch Sanders get grilled by reporters below:","label":1}
{"text":"A federal judge in south Texas handed down an prison sentence to a Cuban national who posed as a U. S. Border Patrol agent. The Cuban man attempted to scam a confidential informant into giving him $7, 000 in exchange for permanent resident status documents. [U. S. District Court Judge Randy Crane said he needed to protect the community from Euginio Augustin a Cuban national with Legal Permanent Resident status in the U. S. because of his criminal history of theft and fraud. However, the judge only sentenced the man to 18 months in prison, according to a statement from the Department of Justices' Southern District of Texas. The maximum penalty for the crime of impersonating a federal agent or officer (18 U. S. Code \u00a7 912) is three years in prison. Court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed that introduced himself to a confidential informant (CI) claiming to be an illegal alien. The Cuban man identified himself to the CI as a U. S. Border Patrol agent. He told the CI he could obtain Legal Permanent Resident (LPR) documents for him in exchange for $7, 000. During a call in advance of the meeting, told the CI he would need a copy of his Mexican visa and two passport photos, claiming those documents were what he needed to obtain the LPR documents. The CI gave the suspect a down payment of $2, 800 and the requested documents. U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents from the Office of Professional Responsibility arrested as he left the meeting. The statement from the DOJ revealed that solicited bribes from multiple people seeking legal status in the U. S. Officials stated they expect ICE Enforcement Removal officer to deport to Cuba upon the completion of his sentence in a federal prison. Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX.","label":0}
{"text":"Part of the problem is that organizations are registering people without any proof they are legal American citizens .Leaked funding documents reveal an effort by George Soros and his foundations to manipulate election laws and process rules ahead of the federal election far more expansively than has been previously reported.The billionaire and convicted felon moved hundreds of millions of dollars into often-secret efforts to change election laws, fuel litigation to attack election integrity measures, push public narratives about voter fraud, and to integrate the political ground game of the left with efforts to scare racial minority groups about voting rights threats.These Soros-funded efforts moved through dozens of 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) charities and involved the active compliance with civil rights groups, government officials, and purportedly non-partisan groups like the League of Women Voters.The leaked documents also reveal deliberate and successful efforts to manipulate media coverage of election issues in mainstream media outlets like the The New York Times.IF YOU LIVE IN ONE OF THE STATES BELOW, PLEASE DEMAND THAT VOTER ID IS ENACTED: Although some states require some form of ID before voting, California, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming, and Washington, D.C. all require no identification before voting.Please contact True the Vote for any and all information regarding voter fraud.","label":1}
{"text":"Black mob goes crazy and attacks fair ride operator at the Delta Fair in Tennessee. what they attacked him for is just so lame he wasn t loading kids fast enough. so the poor kids looked on in horror as the ride operator was pummeled. Update: Memphis Police have arrested a man who allegedly started a fight at the Delta Fair Sunday afternoon.24-year old Antonio Butler is the man seen at the center of what appeared to be an all-out brawl in front of a ride at the fair. Police say the fight started because Butler wasn t admitted on the ride because it was full at the time. After Butler was denied he, along with a few others, became irate and the attack began.A fair patron recorded the fight and put the video on Facebook, which has since received millions of views. Many of the comments on the video express concerns about safety at the fair, and whether or not it will return for another year. Sunday was the last day for the fair.Everyone involved in the fight was escorted off the premises shortly after. Butler now faces assault charges.","label":1}
{"text":"Britain has only 10 days left to deliver on all three areas of its divorce terms with the European Union if London wants to start talks on a transition period after Brexit and a future relationship, the chairman of EU leaders Donald Tusk said. We need to see progress from UK within 10 days on all issues, including on Ireland, Tusk tweeted on Friday after a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May in Brussels. Sufficient progress in Brexit talks at December council is possible but still a huge challenge, he said on Twitter. An EU official said that May agreed in the one-hour discussions that Dec. 4 was the absolute deadline to allow the EU s Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to recommend moving onto the next stage on trade and future ties. Tusk presented the timeline ahead of the December European Council, with Dec. 4 as the absolute deadline for the UK to make additional efforts, allowing Barnier to be in a position to recommend sufficient progress, the official said. May agreed to this timeframe, the official said. The official said Tusk had warned that if there was no progress within next 10 days, that would make moving forward impossible. The official said that the way Ireland s border with Northern Ireland functioned after Britain leaves the EU in March 2019 was still an issue. The UK will need to give credible assurances as to how to avoid a hard border before Dec. 4, as it is still unclear how this can be done, the official said.","label":0}
{"text":"Gun safety advocates are pouring tens of millions of dollars into Maine and Nevada to support ballot initiatives that would mandate background checks for gun sales in an effort to clinch state-level victories after years of failed drives in Congress. The avalanche of money spent on supporting such initiatives ahead of the Nov. 8 vote could hand gun control organizations their biggest win since they failed to secure the passage of federal legislation after the massacre of 26 children and educators at a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school in December 2012. Voters in California and Washington state will also cast ballots on gun control initiatives, and opinion polls show the measures are likely to pass in all four states. Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group founded by billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has been leading the charge, throwing its financial weight behind three of the four measures. The organization plans to spend $25 million nationwide on the issue, almost as much as the powerful National Rifle Association has spent on television advertising for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The right to own firearms is protected by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and any efforts to restrict that guarantee are fought vehemently by gun rights advocates, who are highly influential within the Republican Party. Victories by gun control groups in Maine and Nevada would mean that half of the U.S. population would live in states with expanded background checks, including private sales not involving a licensed dealer. Gun control supporters say that would be a symbolic and strategically important threshold. Opponents of the measures say the laws are poorly written, would do little to combat crime and would punish law-abiding gun owners. A University of New Hampshire poll in late October found 52 percent of Maine residents support the measure and 43 percent oppose it. In Nevada, two polls in late October found a 16-percentage-point margin and a 25-point margin in favor of the initiative, respectively. The measures come in a year that voters around the United States will weigh in on 71 citizen-submitted ballot initiatives on topics ranging from marijuana legalization to raising the minimum wage, the largest number in a decade, according to Ballotpedia.org, a website that tracks voting data. Everytown described its strategy as part of an effort to copy the state-by-state tactic that helped legalize gay marriage across the United States, with Congress unwilling to pass universal background check legislation. \"One of the great advantages of going directly to the electorate is that you can go around the legislative bodies and make law,\" said Zach Silk, a consultant who has worked with Everytown in Nevada and previously helped oversee Washington state's 2014 successful background-check ballot initiative. Nevada in particular has become an expensive battleground. Bloomberg has personally donated nearly $10 million to the effort there, and Nevadans for Background Checks had collected $14.3 million as of Oct. 18. That is nearly triple the $4.8 million that the leading opposition group, NRA Nevadans for Freedom, had received, all from the NRA. In Maine, supporters of background checks have outspent opponents by more than 5-to-1, with the Everytown-backed Mainers for Responsible Gun Ownership Fund reporting $5.3 million in contributions as of last week. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment on its campaign spending decisions. Critics have accused Bloomberg of trying to buy victory. \"This law is convoluted and way overregulatory,\" said David Trahan, the executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine and a former state legislator. \"It reflects the person funding this initiative, Michael Bloomberg. His solutions are overkill, and they border on social engineering.\" But Everytown's executive director, John Feinblatt, said it was the gun lobby that has tried to take power away from the citizenry. \"While the NRA can control legislators and the government, they can't control the people,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"The Oregon State Senate has just approved a bill that would increase the state s minimum wage over the next six years in incremental steps.Democrats can be thanked for pushing the measure through on a margin of 16-12, saying that it was necessary to help lift residents out of poverty and handle increasing costs of living. One lone sellout, Democratic Senator Betsy Johnson, voted no along with all Republicans. The bill will raise the minimum wage to $14.75 in Portland, $13.50 in other urban counties, and $12.50 in rural counties to prevent harming business in lower cost of living areas. The current minimum wage in the state is $9.25, which is higher than the federal minimum. However, it still is inadequate, especially in urban areas.The bill passed after a floor debate that lasted six hours. It was introduced by Democratic Senator Michael Dembrow, of Portland. Gradual increases will take place yearly, leading up to the maximum numbers in 2022. The measure is set to move to the State House next, with expectations of approval by Governor Kate Brown.As usual, wealthy wanna-be plutocrats have come out threatening doom and gloom over the attempt to make sure Oregonians are not living in grinding poverty. Jason Brandt, CEO of the Oregon Restaurant and Lodging Association released the following statement: It will kill jobs, harm consumers, force school and government service cuts and hurt Oregon farms and small businesses. We urge the House to defeat this plan that puts election year politics ahead of Oregon s economy. Source: oregonlive.comAll that anyone needs to do is refer to Seattle Seatac, who raised its minimum wage to $15\/hour. The results are amazingly good, with an unemployment rate of only 3.3 percent a rate not seen since 2008. Seatac is also one of the fastest growing airport hubs in the United States, which destroys the myth that a living wage will stifle growth and explode unemployment.One of the most basic concepts of capitalism is lost on literally every Republican who claims to LOVE the system the fact that more money in the hands of consumers equals higher demand which increases the need for employment. Everywhere a minimum wage goes up, unemployment tends to trend down, and the anecdotal accounts of it weeding out already-failed businesses or spiteful greedy owners can t counter the right-wing propaganda anymore. It s happening, and the positive results are not going to stop.Featured image from Twitter","label":1}
{"text":"Two U.S. F-22 fighter aircraft fired warning flares on Wednesday after two Russian Su-25 jets entered an agreed upon deconfliction area in airspace east of the Euphrates river in Syria, the U.S. military said. Eric Pahon, a Pentagon spokesman, said the F-22 aircraft were providing air cover to partnered ground forces when the Russian jets came into airspace near Albu Kamal. The incident lasted for about 40 minutes and coalition officials contacted the Russians through a communication link to avoid a miscalculation. At one point, Pahon said, a Russian jet came close enough that one of the F-22 aircraft had to aggressively maneuver to avoid a midair collision. U.S. officials have said that as the battlefield against Islamic State shrinks, they expect Russian and U.S. aircraft to be in closer proximity. Since early November, Russian jets have flown east of the Euphrates river in the deconflicted airspace about six to eight times a day, according to the U.S. military. It s become increasingly tough for our pilots to discern whether Russian pilots actions are deliberate or if these are just honest mistakes, Pahon said. The Coalition s greatest concern is that we could shoot down a Russian aircraft because its actions are seen as a threat to our air or ground forces, he added. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said the U.S. military will fight Islamic State in Syria as long as they want to fight, describing a longer-term role for U.S. troops after the insurgents lose all of the territory they control.","label":0}
{"text":"The European Union on Wednesday called on President Barack Obama to block a U.S. bill allowing survivors and families of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia, saying it was in violation of international law. \"The possible adoption and implementation of the (bill) would be in conflict with fundamental principles of international law and in particular the principle of State sovereign immunity,\" the European Union delegation to the United States said in a letter to the U.S. Department of State seen by Reuters. The letter said the EU considers that the bill's adoption and its implementation could have unwanted consequences, as other states adopt similar legislation. Congress has overwhelmingly passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, known as JASTA, in reaction to long-running suspicions, denied by Saudi Arabia, that hijackers of the four U.S. jetliners that attacked the United States in 2001 were backed by the Saudi government. Obama in coming days is expected to veto the bill on grounds that other countries could use the law as an excuse to sue U.S. diplomats, service members or companies. But Congress could have the last word if the Senate and House of Representatives each override that veto by a two-thirds vote.","label":0}
{"text":"When Tidjane Thiam took over at Credit Suisse last July, he laid out a new direction for a financial giant with a storied investment banking history: Do less investment banking. And he used forceful language in doing so. He has referred to once core businesses \u2014 such as trading in distressed bonds and derivatives \u2014 as \"ugly ducklings. \" He has suggested publicly that traders increased their investments in risky debt without his knowledge. Instead, Mr. Thiam said, the firm should dedicate itself to cultivating billionaires in China, Indonesia and Africa. The message: The future for the company is in managing the wealth of others. One year in, Credit Suisse stock is down 50 percent. And the investment bank, the second largest in Switzerland after UBS, is in open revolt. Credit Suisse has a wide range of businesses, like overseeing the fortunes of billionaires and managing initial public offerings for technology companies. But for decades, the bank has been dominated, both culturally and financially, by a richly paid banking elite. These deal makers in New York and London are now furious at Mr. Thiam, not just for cutting their pay but also because they resent his blaming them for the $6 billion in losses that the firm has suffered on his watch. Across Europe, banking giants like Barclays, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Royal Bank of Scotland have, to varying degrees, moved away from traditional investment banking activities because of increased regulation and volatile markets. Sluggish growth in large European economies \u2014 not to mention the remarkable phenomenon of negative interest rates \u2014 have not helped matters, either. But what makes the situation at Credit Suisse stand out is that Mr. Thiam appears to have done little to cloak his disdain for these activities. The question is not whether Mr. Thiam is right to grab power and capital from these declining businesses but whether his blunt, domineering style as a change agent will end up alienating bankers instead of winning them over. \"It is never easy to tell people that whole parts of the business that have put bread on their table and bought them a second house have become uneconomic,\" said Guy Moszkowski, a longtime securities analyst at Autonomous Research. By any measure, Mr. Thiam is an unconventional choice to lead an investment bank. Born to a prominent family in Ivory Coast, he cut short a career at McKinsey Company in Paris in 1994 to join a government in his home country as a top banker and minister. Following a military coup in 1999, Mr. Thiam returned to McKinsey, and in 2009, he was named chief executive of Prudential, the British insurance conglomerate \u2014 becoming the first African to head a major listed company in Britain. and snugly tailored, Mr. Thiam has an air about him of not suffering fools. He had a successful run at Prudential (no relation to an American company with a similar name) overcoming an uproar following a failed bid to buy the Asian operations of the American International Group. Along the way, he became one of London's more celebrated executives and a regular on the circuit of global . That he has not bent to the complaints of bankers and traders in unprofitable businesses should not come as a surprise. \"There needs to be a cultural change,\" he said in a televised interview in March, in which he argued that bankers were pursuing risky trades to justify their high pay. \"A lot of the problems in the investment bank are that people are trying to generate revenue at all costs. \" In turn, deal makers in London and New York, who have seen their bonuses slashed by nearly 40 percent, are not hiding their dislike of the man. More than any other bank on Wall Street, Credit Suisse restricts the cash portion of its bonuses, allocating large chunks in company stock, which has halved in value. So when their new chief executive gave a speech in May and said that Credit Suisse's stock price \"reflected reality,\" bankers, especially the many who have worked at the firm for decades, could not believe it. On Credit Suisse's newly renovated trading floor in New York, several bankers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, grumbled that Mr. Thiam had \"lost the building,\" which is Wall Street parlance for chief executives who no longer command the respect of their traders. And when he has appeared on television in recent months, employees loudly vented their frustrations at the screen, according those bankers, who witnessed the events but were not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Thiam was hailed during his first visit to the trading floor in New York last year, but the reception during a more recent appearance was chillier, said two employees who were on the floor during his visits but were not authorized to speak publicly. In particular, many at Credit Suisse find Mr. Thiam's personal style to be jarring at a time when thousands are being laid off and the stock is trading at a multiyear low. This is particularly true when compared with Brady W. Dougan, his predecessor: Mr. Thiam's own dealings with the media are handled by a British firm, Powerscourt. He enjoys a robust social life and has been seen doing the rounds at clubs in London and Davos, Switzerland. And he recently purchased a luxury home in Herrliberg, an exclusive lakeside enclave in Zurich. To be sure, analysts agree that Credit Suisse can no longer rely on trading derivatives with firms like Deutsche Bank as a profit center. Instead, Mr. Thiam is encouraging his deal makers to support the firm's private bankers in Asia, by providing loans to magnates in Indonesia or helping billionaire clients in China with initial public offerings. Mr. Thiam is clearly enamored with the prospect of tapping growth markets in emerging economies. He has been to China and broader Asia at least four times in his new capacity, and his business cards carry a Mandarin translation on the back. Mr. Thiam's defenders say that with the future of Credit Suisse in doubt, he has no choice but to make these painful changes and that resistance from traders and bankers should not deter him. And it is also true that wealth managers in Switzerland and Asia, where Mr. Thiam is adding resources, are embracing the new strategy. Following last year's losses, he also asked his board for a 40 percent cut in his bonus, taking in $4. 5 million for the six months he worked last year. To date, the Credit Suisse board appears to be standing with Mr. Thiam. Indeed, having had two Wall Street chiefs since 2001, the board clearly believes that only a prominent nonbanker like Mr. Thiam can wean the firm off a line of business that has so long defined it. Nevertheless, directors were not happy with his televised comments in March when Mr. Thiam suggested that traders at the bank were hiding losses from him. Mr. Thiam quickly corrected himself at a conference that same day and said no limits were breached, though not without taking another dig at his traders by questioning their judgment. Mr. Thiam also called these traders and offered what a spokeswoman for the bank said was a \"clarification\" of his remarks. \"The board is 100 percent behind the strategy, Tidjane and the executive board,\" said Richard E. Thornburgh, a former Credit Suisse banker with 30 years of experience at the firm who is now chairman of the board's risk committee. With morale in New York at a low point, Mr. Thornburgh has had recent meetings with top bankers and traders, hearing them out and urging them to remain focused on their clients. For many, though, this is easier said than done. It is unusual, after all, for an incoming chief executive to be so publicly critical of employees responsible for a quarter of a firm's revenue. That is particularly true on Wall Street, where punctured vanities can quickly harm a firm, as productive bankers head for the exits in droves. Over the last six months, at least 18 bankers and traders have left the firm, with many of these coming from Credit Suisse's once prestigious technology unit in San Francisco. The culture clash at Credit Suisse recalls a similar dispute at Morgan Stanley a decade ago. Like Mr. Thiam, Philip J. Purcell was a former whiz kid consultant from McKinsey who preferred slow and steady brokers over bankers with big egos and even bigger paychecks. A uprising forced Mr. Purcell's departure, since power on Wall Street was then still in the hands of deal makers and traders. With wealth managers now ascendant, Mr. Thiam seems willing to accept the wounded cries of his own bankers as a painful necessity if his grand plan is to succeed. \"Is there a vision. Is there a direction?\" Mr. Thiam asked aloud last year in a speech introducing his strategy. \"The Germans say that the horrible end is better than horror without end. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Prepared foods are an increasingly important part of the grocery business, delivering fat margins at a time when sales of traditional packaged foods are lackluster. But the strategy also comes with serious risks. In the clearest example yet, the Food and Drug Administration this month sent a stern warning letter to Whole Foods Market, a longtime champion of fresh and healthy foods, saying that the company had failed to address a long list of food safety issues at its food processing plant outside of Boston. Among the problems cited: condensation dripping from the ceiling near food an sanitizer used on a work surface near the preparation of a salad and a failure to separate dirty dishes from . The letter from the F. D. A. is just the latest headache to afflict Whole Foods. Over the last couple of years, the company has struggled with slower growth as competitors have gotten better at copying what it did to distinguish itself in the grocery market. Other wounds have been like last year, when the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs called it out for mispricing some merchandise based on weight. Prepared foods, which have almost double the profit margins of packaged foods sold on grocery shelves, have remained a bright spot at the company \u2014 at least for now. Such foods accounted for almost 20 percent of its sales in 2014, ringing up $2. 7 billion in revenue. But the letter from the F. D. A. is the second black eye for health issues at the plant outside of Boston, known as its North Atlantic Kitchen, and could put some of those sales in peril. Phil Lempert, an expert on grocery store operations and marketing, said that the food safety crisis at Chipotle Mexican Grill late last year should have been a call for Whole Foods and anyone else in the business of preparing fresh foods for sale. \"For Whole Foods to be in this predicament, frankly, there really is no excuse,\" Mr. Lempert said. \"Because Wall Street has put it under such pressure to expand growth, I think Whole Foods has gotten sloppy \u2014 there's no reason anyone should have water dripping into foods. \" Last fall, Whole Foods voluntarily recalled batches of Curry Chicken Salad and Classic Deli Pasta Salad after a sample prepared at the North Atlantic Kitchen tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes, a pathogenic strain of the bacterium. The plant is one of three preparation kitchens that help stock its stores in the Northeast, and South. (Most of the company's foods are prepared at the stores themselves.) In February, the inspectors spent five days at the plant and then shared their findings with Whole Foods, which responded within 15 business days. The company told the F. D. A. that it had retrained employees to address most of the issues the agency raised. That response, however, failed to satisfy the F. D. A. \"We do not consider your response acceptable because you failed to provide documentation for our review, which demonstrates that all your noted corrective actions have been effectively implemented,\" the agency wrote in its June 8 warning letter. Whole Foods said the letter came as a surprise. The company said it had taken steps to correct the problems and would meet on Thursday with the F. D. A. to discuss what the issues are and how to address them. \"What's confusing to us is the fact that the letter identifies issues we've already corrected,\" said Ken Meyer, the company's executive vice president for operations. \"We worked with a consultant and our own global food safety team,\" he said, \"to address their concerns and assumed we were in good standing with them until this letter arrived on Friday. \" Whole Foods now has about two weeks to provide evidence to the F. D. A. that steps it has taken bring the company into compliance. Otherwise, the company might have to pay the agency to reinspect the facility. Groceries have long offered prepared foods like rotisserie chickens and broccoli salad. But as business has declined in the center store, companies have upped their game, adding sophisticated meals that consumers can take home or eat in the store. Research this year from the Food Marketing Institute and Technomic found that sales of prepared foods in groceries increased 10. 4 percent from 2006 to 2014, making the prepared foods department one of the highest performers in the food business. While only 8 percent of the supermarkets responding to that survey reported sales growth of more than 5 percent, more than of them said they had growth at that level or higher in their prepared food businesses. The risk for grocery companies is that preparing food receives a higher level of scrutiny from regulators than selling food made and packaged by others. A bad inspection in one location, or reports of food illnesses, can damage an entire brand. Shares in Whole Foods fell nearly 5 percent on Wednesday. Last year, Costco recalled celery sticks and turkey dinners, King Sooper recalled curried chicken salad and Raley's recalled its Asian Blue Cheese, Potato and Bacon salad after E. coli was found in celery supplied to all by a single supplier. Still, perhaps no company has been more aggressive about integrating prepared foods than Whole Foods. The company has long put bars and restaurants into its stores \u2014 a new store in Hawaii will have about 200 seats for shoppers to sit and enjoy a meal and a drink. \"Whole Foods is one of the pioneers in providing restaurant quality meals to consumers,\" said Joe Pawlak, managing principal at Technomic. Now, stores like ShopRite and Safeway are opening groceraunts, too. The oyster bar at one of the Mariano's groceries in Chicago has become a place for a Friday night date, and a ShopRite in Morris Plains, N. J. added a atrium where people can enjoy a meal. Supermarkets tried moving into the food preparation business in the 1990s, Mr. Pawlak said, but offered too broad a menu and ended up throwing a lot of food away. \"Now what's happened over the last five or six years, they've hired food service professionals who understand restaurants and how items move on a menu,\" he said. \"That's taken the quality up to where I can get just as good a meal at the grocery store as I can in many restaurants \u2014 and for a lot better value. \" An F. D. A. spokeswoman said the agency could not comment on whether its inspection of grocery food preparation operations was increasing. A Yahoo News analysis of the F. D. A. 's food safety recalls in 2015 found that prepared foods accounted for more recalls than any other food category.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday signed a repeal of Obama-era broadband privacy rules, the White House said, a victory for internet service providers and a blow to privacy advocates. Republicans in Congress last week narrowly passed the repeal of the privacy rules with no Democratic support and over the strong objections of privacy advocates. The signing, disclosed in White House statement late on Monday, follows strong criticism of the bill, which is a win for AT&T Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc. The bill repeals regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission under the Obama administration requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google or Facebook Inc. The rules had not yet taken effect but would have required internet providers to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children's information and web browsing history for advertising and marketing. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai praised the repeal in a statement late on Monday for having \"appropriately invalidated one part of the Obama-era plan for regulating the internet.\" Those flawed privacy rules, which never went into effect, were designed to benefit one group of favored companies, not online consumers.\" Pai said the FCC would work with the Federal Trade Commission, which oversees websites, to restore the \"FTC's authority to police internet service providers' privacy practices.\" Republican FCC commissioners have said the Obama rules would unfairly give websites the ability to harvest more data than internet service providers. The action is the latest in a string of reversals of Obama administration rules. On Monday, the FCC reversed a requirement that Charter Communications Inc extend broadband service to 1 million homes that already have a high-speed provider. On Friday, Comcast, Verizon AT&T Inc said they would voluntarily not sell customers' individual internet browsing information. Verizon does not sell personal web browsing histories and has no plans to do so but the company said it has two advertising programs that use \"de-identified\" customer browsing data, including one that uses \"aggregate insights that might be useful for advertisers and other businesses.\" The American Civil Liberties Union said last month Congress should have opposed \"industry pressure to put profits over privacy\" and added \"most Americans believe that their sensitive internet information should be closely guarded.\" Trade group USTelecom Chief Executive Jonathan Spalter in a statement praised Trump for \"stopping rules that would have created a confusing and conflicting consumer privacy framework.\" Last week, 46 Senate Democrats urged Trump not to sign the bill, arguing most Americans \"believe that their private information should be just that.\" Republicans later this year are expected to move to overturn net neutrality provisions that in 2015 reclassified broadband providers and treated them like a public utility - a move that is expected to spark an even bigger fight.","label":0}
{"text":"Don t let Hillary s cheerleaders in the mainstream media convince you that she can beat Trump. Trump has proven himself to be a formidable opponent and don t forget that Hillary was beaten by an amateur Jr. Senator in 2008. I ve consistently said throughout the analysis of this race that I would not want to run against Donald Trump because I think he s the most dangerous candidate. Give me Ted Cruz, give me John Kasich, give me any of the vanquished they re traditional politicians, easy to beat. And, Ted Cruz, in particular, way outside the mainstream, she said. Donald Trump, when you look from what he said the other day about the gender bill and using the bathrooms, it proves that point because he knows how to appeal to not only Libertarians but to Independents who support that, too. So he will be a very, very tough candidate to face in a general election. I think it will be one of the closest elections we see since 2000. https:\/\/youtu.be\/ZqtKc1aPiA4","label":1}
{"text":"The European Commission called on Monday for Poland to seek European legal advice on two draft judicial reform laws put forward by President Andrzej Duda, to check that they comply with European democratic standards. In July, Duda, an ally of Poland s ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, unexpectedly vetoed its plan to overhaul the judiciary, after nationwide protests and warnings from Western allies that the changes would undermine the independence of the courts. Earlier on Monday he presented his own drafts of the two vetoed laws, proposing a greater role for himself over the nomination of judges. The European Commission said Poland should seek the opinion of the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe on the drafts. The commission provides legal advice to its members to help them bring their laws and institutions into line with European standards. It would be extremely helpful if these two draft laws... would be given to the Venice Commission for advice, European Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans told a news conference. We will make our comments on that also once we have analysed it, he said, referring to the ongoing unprecedented process of EU monitoring of Poland s adherence to the rule of law launched at the beginning of 2016. The Venice Commission ruled last year that laws passed by the PiS government on the country s Constitutional Tribunal were incompatible with European standards, prompting the European Commission to launch its rule-of-law monitoring procedure. Timmermans said the Commission s monitoring of Poland s democratic practices had received broad support from national governments, which stressed that the rule of law was fundamental for the functioning of the European Union as a whole. He said he would be happy to receive Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro and Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski in Brussels or himself go to Warsaw to continue the dialogue with Poland that other governments were so keen on. Speaking to reporters after delivering an update on the rule of law monitoring process in Poland to EU ministers, Timmermans said he had broad support to continue. What is most important to me is that everybody around the table said: Rule of law? It is not an option, it is an obligation... it is the fundament of European cooperation... it concerns us all, he said. I was encouraged by the broad, broad support I felt in the Council for trying to find a solution. But there is still a lot, a lot we need to do before we can say that the problem has been solved, Timmermans said.","label":0}
{"text":"These videos are very disturbing. Americans are headed down this path if we don t fight back against the Left who put political correctness before our national security A German court has ruled that Islamists who patrolled a city s streets as Sharia police did not break the law and will not be prosecuted.Here is what a Sharia Patrol looks like:Nine were arrested in September 2014 after patrolling streets in Wuppertal, western Germany. They wore bright orange jackets with the words Sharia police . They told passers-by not to frequent discos, casinos or bars.The court said they had not violated laws on uniforms and public gatherings.Prosecutors have now lodged an appeal.The group of Salafists ultra-conservative Islamists included Sven Lau, a preacher whose passport was seized this year after he visited Syria and a photo surfaced, showing him posing on a tank, with a Kalashnikov rifle slung around his neck. He is suspected of trying to recruit Muslims to join jihadists fighting in Syria or Iraq and has spent some time in prison previously. He said he had gone to war-torn Syria in 2013 on a humanitarian mission.Sharia, the revealed, sacred law of Islam, governs all aspects of a Muslim s life.The group s appearance at night in Wuppertal, in the industrial Ruhr region, triggered sharp criticism in Germany. A film of their patrol appeared on YouTube:The action was condemned by the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, who said it was harmful to Muslims .The group also carried notices proclaiming in English a Sharia Controlled Zone . The notices spelled out prohibitions like those in force in some Gulf Arab countries, outlawing alcohol, drugs, gambling, music and concerts, pornography and prostitution. Activists in the anti-Islam Pegida movement campaigning to stop immigration to Germany demonstrated in Wuppertal last year. They have staged regular marches against the Islamisation of Germany nationwide.","label":1}
{"text":"One of the 44 crew members on board the Argentine submarine that is missing in the South Atlantic is Eliana Maria Krawczyk, who came from a landlocked province to become the country s first female submarine officer. In a Facebook video posted in January by the Defense Ministry, Krawczyk discussed her experience of being the first woman in a traditionally male space. She said that she aspired to become the commander of a navy submarine one day. If you think about being underwater, navigating, and being the only woman, it is strange, but at the same time it is exciting and very challenging, she said in the video. Any woman that wants to can do it. Krawczyk, 35, was born in the northeastern province of Misiones and joined the navy in 2004, after responding to an advertisement online. She rose to become the master-at-arms aboard the ARA San Juan, which went missing last week. She graduated from Argentina s submarine and diving school in 2012 as the first female officer and always loved her job working at sea, according to her sister Silvina Krawczyk. It is like she was born for this, Silvina told Reuters. She really likes to do what she does in the navy. Hopes of discovering the ARA San Juan received a setback on Monday when the navy confirmed that failed satellite calls traced to the area on Saturday did not come from the submarine. With rough seas and high winds hampering the search for the 34-year-old vessel, a navy spokesman said the German-built submarine had surfaced and reported an electrical problem before it disappeared 268 miles (432 km) off the coast. They are working very hard to find them, said Silvina Krawczyk who, like many relatives of the missing crew members, was camped out at a naval base in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, awaiting updates on the search and rescue mission. Besides just the faith one has to maintain in these situations, I truly trust that they are going to find them, Silvina said. The pioneering submariner had been aboard the ARA San Juan - the newest of the three operated by the Argentine navy - when it made the same trip from Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world, to Mar del Plata last year without incident, her sister said. The voyage normally takes around a week, but modest delays due to poor weather are not uncommon. The submarine left Ushuaia on Nov. 13. It is the first time that something like this has happened, said Silvina, who herself is a machinist in Argentina s Merchant Marines. At the entrance to the Mar del Plata base, locals hung signs with messages in support of the crew members and their families on a chain-link fence. Strength for Argentina. We trust in God. We are waiting for you, read one inscribed on a celestial blue-and-white Argentine flag hanging on the fence.","label":0}
{"text":"Is North Korea irrational? Or does it just pretend to be? North Korea has given the world ample reason to ask: threats of war, occasional attacks against South Korea, eccentric leaders and propaganda. As its nuclear and missile programs have grown, this past week with a fifth nuclear test, that concern has grown more urgent. But political scientists have repeatedly investigated this question and, time and again, emerged with the same answer: North Korea's behavior, far from crazy, is all too rational. Its belligerence, they conclude, appears calculated to maintain a weak, isolated government that would otherwise succumb to the forces of history. Its provocations introduce tremendous danger, but stave off what Pyongyang sees as the even greater threats of invasion or collapse. Denny Roy, a political scientist, wrote in a 1994 journal article that the country's \"reputation as a 'crazy state'\" and for \"reckless violence\" had \"worked to North Korea's advantage,\" keeping more powerful enemies at bay. But this image, he concluded, was \"largely a product of misunderstanding and propaganda. \" In some ways, this is more dangerous than irrationality. While the country does not want war, its calculus leads it to cultivate a permanent risk of one \u2014 and prepare to stave off defeat, should war happen, potentially with nuclear weapons. That is a subtler danger, but a grave one. When political scientists call a state rational, they are not saying its leaders always make the best or most moral choices, or that those leaders are paragons of mental fitness. Rather, they are saying the state behaves according to its perceived first of which is . When a state is rational, it will not always succeed in acting in its best interests, or in balancing against gains, but it will try. This lets the world shape a state's incentives, steering it in the desired direction. States are irrational when they do not follow . In the \"strong\" form of irrationality, leaders are so deranged that they are incapable of judging their own interests. In the \"soft\" version, domestic factors \u2014 like ideological zeal or internal power struggles \u2014 distort incentives, making states behave in ways that are counterproductive but at least predictable. North Korea's actions, while abhorrent, appear well within its rational according to a 2003 study by David C. Kang, a political scientist now at the University of Southern California. At home and abroad, he found, North Korean leaders shrewdly determined their interests and acted on them. (In an email, he said his conclusions still applied.) \"All the evidence points to their ability to make sophisticated decisions and to manage palace, domestic and international politics with extreme precision,\" Mr. Kang wrote. \"It is not possible to argue these were irrational leaders, unable to make calculations. \" Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor who served as the Asian affairs director on George W. Bush's National Security Council, has repeatedly argued that North Korea's leadership is rational. Savage cruelty and cold calculation are not mutually exclusive, after all \u2014 and often go hand in hand. States are rarely irrational for the simple reason that irrational states can't survive for long. The international system is too competitive and the drive for too powerful. While the North Korean state really is unlike any other on earth, the behaviors that make it appear irrational are perhaps its most rational. North Korea's seemingly unhinged behavior begins with the country's attempt to solve two problems that it took on with the end of the Cold War and that it should have been unable to survive. One was military. The Korean Peninsula, still in a formal state of war, had gone from a deadlock to an overwhelming tilt in the South's favor. The North was exposed, protected only by a China that was more focused on improving ties with the West. The other problem was political. Both Koreas claimed to represent all Koreans, and for decades had enjoyed similar development levels. By the 1990s, the South was exponentially freer and more prosperous. The Pyongyang government had little reason to exist. The leadership solved both problems with something called the Songun, or \"\" policy. It put the country on a permanent war footing, justifying the state's poverty as necessary to maintain its massive military, justifying its oppression as rooting out internal traitors and propping up its legitimacy with the nationalism that often comes during wartime. Of course, there was no war. Foreign powers believed the government would, like other Soviet puppets, fall on its own, and barring that wanted peace. So North Korea created the appearance of permanently imminent war, issuing flamboyant threats, staging provocations and, sometimes, deadly attacks. Its nuclear and missile tests, though erratic and often failed, stirred up one crisis after another. This militarization kept the North Korean leadership internally stable. It also kept the country's enemies at bay. North Korea may be weaker, but it is willing to tolerate far more risk. By keeping the peninsula on the edge of conflict, Pyongyang put the onus on South Korea and the United States to pull things back. From afar, North Korea's actions look crazy. Its domestic propaganda describes a reality that does not exist, and it appears bent on almost provoking a war it would certainly lose. But from within North Korea, these actions make perfect sense. And over time, the government's reputation for irrationality has become an asset as well. Scholars ascribe this behavior to the \"madman theory\" \u2014 a strategy, coined by no less a proponent than Richard M. Nixon, in which leaders cultivate an image of belligerence and unpredictability to force adversaries to tread more carefully. Dr. Roy, in an interview, said North Korea \"intentionally employs a posture of seemingly acceptance and willingness to go to war as a means of trying to intimidate its adversaries. \" But this strategy works only because, even if the belligerence is for show, the danger it creates is very real. In this way, it is North Korea's rationality that makes it so dangerous. Because it believes it can survive only by keeping the Korean Peninsula near war, it creates a risk of sparking just that, perhaps through some accident or miscalculation. North Korea is aware of this risk but seems to believe it has no choice. For this reason, and perhaps because of the United invasion of Iraq and the NATO intervention in Libya against Col. Muammar it appears to earnestly fear an American invasion. And this is rational: Weak states that face more powerful enemies must either make peace \u2014 which North Korea cannot do without sacrificing its political legitimacy \u2014 or find a way to make any conflict survivable. North Korea's nuclear program, some analysts believe, is designed to halt an American invasion by first striking nearby United States military bases and South Korean ports, then by threatening a missile launch against the American mainland. While North Korea does not yet have this ability, analysts believe it will within the next decade. This is the culmination of North Korea's rationality, in something known as desperation theory. Under this theory, when states face two terrible choices, they will pick the least bad option \u2014 even if that choice would, under normal conditions, be too costly to consider. In North Korea's case, that means creating the conditions for a war it would most likely lose. And it could mean preparing a effort to survive that war by launching multiple nuclear strikes, chancing a nuclear retaliation for the slim chance to survive. North Korea's leaders tolerate this danger because, in their calculus, they have no other choice. The rest of us share in that risk \u2014 vanishingly small, but nonzero \u2014 whether we want to or not.","label":0}
{"text":"Turkish police began an operation to detain 121 former foreign ministry staff across the country on Thursday over their alleged links to the U.S.-based cleric who Ankara says orchestrated last year s attempted coup, state-run Anadolu agency said. It said the ministry personnel were previously dismissed over suspected ties to Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. He has denied involvement in the failed putsch in July 2016. Counter-terrorism police squads began simultaneous raids in 30 provinces to capture the suspects, some of whom were believed to be users of ByLock, an encrypted messaging app which the government says was used by Gulen s network, Anadolu reported. Under a crackdown since the coup, more than 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial over alleged links to Gulen, while 150,000 people have been sacked or suspended from jobs in the military, public and private sectors. The government dismisses rights groups concerns about the crackdown, saying only such a purge could neutralize the threat represented by Gulen s network, which it says infiltrated institutions such as the judiciary, army and schools.","label":0}
{"text":"Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was way out of line and way too political last night when he showed his cards BIGTIME on President Trump. He followed the latest leftist line that Trump isn t fit to serve Yes, the loony left has a new play book that makes the false claim that somehow Trump is unfit to be president.We ve reported on clapper before but his not wittingly comment before the Senate is legend. Remember when he was asked if the NSA spies on Americans and he replied not wittingly ? Yes, well, that was perjury.More recently Clapper bashed President Trump during a discussion on national security and the Trump\/Russia fake scandal.It s clear that Clapper is a political pawn who is out to try and make our president look bad. This is serious Deep State stuff.We re sure this isn t the end of James Clapper s involvement in the opposition to President Trump.","label":1}
{"text":"President Trump on Tuesday nominated Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, elevating a conservative in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia to succeed the late jurist and touching off a brutal, partisan showdown at the start of his presidency over the ideological bent of the nation's highest court. Mr. Trump announced his selection during a evening ceremony that unfolded in prime time at the White House. He described Judge Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge based in Denver, as \"a man who our country really needs, and needs badly, to ensure the rule of law and the rule of justice. \" \"Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline and has earned bipartisan support,\" Mr. Trump said, standing beside the judge and his wife, Louise, as White House officials and Republican lawmakers looked on. \"It is an extraordinary r\u00e9sum\u00e9 \u2014 as good as it gets. \" But Democrats \u2014 embittered by Republican refusals for nearly a year to consider President Barack Obama's choice to succeed Justice Scalia, and inflamed by Mr. Trump's aggressive moves at the start of his tenure \u2014 promised a showdown over Judge Gorsuch's confirmation. Joined by liberal groups that plotted for weeks to fight Mr. Trump's eventual nominee, leading Democrats signaled they would work to turn the Supreme Court dispute into a referendum on the president, and what they contend is his disregard for legal norms and the Constitution. Conservatives and business groups cheered Judge Gorsuch, calling his record distinguished and his qualifications unparalleled. The announcement came at a particularly tumultuous moment in an extraordinarily chaotic beginning to Mr. Trump's presidency. Just a day earlier, he dismissed the acting attorney general for refusing to defend his immigration order that started a furor across the United States over what critics condemned as a visa ban against Muslims. \"Now, more than ever, we need a Supreme Court justice who is independent, eschews ideology, who will preserve our democracy, protect fundamental rights and will stand up to a president who has already shown a willingness to bend the Constitution,\" Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a statement. \"The burden is on Judge Neil Gorsuch to prove himself to be within the legal mainstream and, in this new era, willing to vigorously defend the Constitution from abuses of the executive branch and protect the constitutionally enshrined rights of all Americans,\" Mr. Schumer said. He said he would insist that Judge Gorsuch meet the threshold needed in the Senate to overcome a filibuster for his confirmation to move forward. That would either require eight Democrats to join the Senate's 52 Republicans to advance the nomination, or force Republicans to escalate a parliamentary showdown \u2014 as Mr. Trump has already urged them to do \u2014 to change longstanding rules and push through his nominee on a simple majority vote. Republicans and conservative groups signaled they relished a war over Judge Gorsuch's confirmation. \"I hope members of the Senate will again show him fair consideration and respect the result of the recent election with an vote on his nomination, just like the Senate treated the four nominees of Presidents Clinton and Obama,\" said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader. He noted that the Senate confirmed Judge Gorsuch without opposition in 2006 to his current seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Carrie Severino, the chief counsel for the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group that immediately started a $10 million campaign to defend Mr. Trump's nominee, said the coalition would mount intensive campaigns in crucial states to \"force vulnerable senators to choose between obstructing and keeping their Senate seats. \" If confirmed, Judge Gorsuch would become the 113th justice and take a seat held not only by Justice Scalia, but also by Justice Robert H. Jackson, perhaps the finest writer to have served on the court. As an Episcopalian, Judge Gorsuch would be the only Protestant seated among five Catholics and three Jewish jurists. He would restore the split between conservatives and liberals on the court, returning the swing vote to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose rulings have fallen on both sides of the political spectrum. At 49, Judge Gorsuch (pronounced ) is the youngest nominee to the Supreme Court in 25 years, underscoring his potential to shape major decisions for decades to come. In choosing him, Mr. Trump reached for a reliably conservative figure in Justice Scalia's mold, but not someone known to be divisive. Mr. Trump, who recognized Justice Scalia's wife, Maureen, in the audience as he announced his choice, heaped praise on the \"late, great\" jurist, saying his \"image and genius was in my mind throughout the process. \" Judge Gorsuch said he was humbled by his \"most solemn assignment. \" \"I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great country,\" he said. He also praised Justice Scalia as \"a lion of the law. \" The announcement reopened the bitter wounds that dominated the political battle last year over Mr. Obama's nominee for the seat, Judge Merrick B. Garland. Republicans refused to even consider \u2014 much less support \u2014 his nomination in the thick of a presidential campaign. A Colorado native who was in the same class at Harvard Law School as Mr. Obama, Judge Gorsuch is known for his measured opinions that are normally, though not exclusively, conservative. He holds a doctorate from Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and was a Supreme Court law clerk to Justices Byron R. White and Kennedy. That Judge Gorsuch has a personal connection to Justice Kennedy is no accident. By choosing a familiar figure, several officials said, the White House is sending a reassuring signal to Justice Kennedy, 80, who has been mulling retirement. Choosing a more ideologically extreme candidate, the officials said, could have tempted Justice Kennedy to hang on to his seat for several more years, depriving Mr. Trump of another seat to fill. Still, Judge Gorsuch's conservative credentials are not in doubt. He has voted in favor of employers, including Hobby Lobby, who invoked religious objections for refusing to provide some forms of contraception coverage to their female workers. And he has criticized liberals for turning to the courts rather than the legislature to achieve policy goals. \"It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people's representatives,\" he said on Tuesday. \"A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands. \" Judge Gorsuch is the son of Anne Gorsuch Burford, who became the first female head of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan. He attended Georgetown Preparatory School, outside Washington, before going to Columbia University. There had been some speculation that Mr. Trump would choose someone with a less elite background for the court. The other finalist for the post, Judge Thomas M. Hardiman, was the first person in his family to graduate from college, and helped pay for his education by driving a taxi. The White House stoked suspense over Mr. Trump's court choice in the hours before announcing it. A senior Trump administration official said both Judge Gorsuch and Judge Hardiman were summoned to Washington for the nomination ceremony. But only Judge Gorsuch appeared at the White House gathering shortly after 8 p. m. In an allusion to the intense foreshadowing he and his team did to encourage interest and speculation over the pick, Mr. Trump interrupted his own announcement to marvel at his showmanship: \"So was that a surprise?\" the president said after announcing Judge Gorsuch's name. \"Was it?\" As he looked out into an audience that Democrats had refused to join \u2014 several senior lawmakers declined his invitation to attend the East Room ceremony \u2014 the president expressed hope that he could avoid a partisan battle. \"I only hope that both Democrats and Republicans can come together for once, for the good of the country,\" Mr. Trump said. But progressive groups had already gathered at the steps of the Supreme Court to protest a nominee they predicted would be extreme. Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice called Judge Gorsuch \"a disastrous choice,\" adding that his record showed \"no sign that he would offer an independent check on the dangerous impulses of this administration. \" Conservatives were as ardent in their support. Tom Fitton, the president of the group Judicial Watch, called Mr. Trump's nomination \"a major step in the right direction in defining his presidency and moving the Supreme Court away from dangerous and destructive judicial activism. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The Los Angeles Times \u2014 which did its best, it admits, to ensure that President Donald Trump would not be elected \u2014 has printed a strident, and nearly hysterical, editorial in which it calls the Trump presidency a \"train wreck. \"[Among other things, the Times states: It was no secret during the campaign that Donald Trump was a narcissist and a demagogue who used fear and dishonesty to appeal to the worst in American voters. The Times called him unprepared and unsuited for the job he was seeking, and said his election would be a \"catastrophe. \" Still, nothing prepared us for the magnitude of this train wreck. \u2026 In a matter of weeks, President Trump has taken dozens of steps that, if they are not reversed, will rip families apart, foul rivers and pollute the air, intensify the calamitous effects of climate change and profoundly weaken the system of American public education for all. \u2026 What is most worrisome about Trump is Trump himself. He is a man so unpredictable, so reckless, so petulant, so full of blind so untethered to reality that it is impossible to know where his presidency will lead or how much damage he will do to our nation. His obsession with his own fame, wealth and success, his determination to vanquish enemies real and imagined, his craving for adulation \u2014 these traits were, of course, at the very heart of his outsider campaign indeed, some of them helped get him elected. But in a real presidency in which he wields unimaginable power, they are nothing short of disastrous. The editorial comes just days after Trump's \"unimaginable power\" proved unable to force through a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. There were few, if any, Times editorials criticizing President Barack Obama's narcissism and expansion of executive powers (after promising to curtail the same). Read the whole editorial here. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the \"most influential\" people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.","label":0}
{"text":"WikiLeaks: Neera Tanden has ANOTHER ringing endorsement for Hillary! (No, not really) Posted at 3:21 pm on October 29, 2016 by Doug P.  As emails released by WikiLeaks have revealed, Hillary Clinton adviser and Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden has demonstrated brutal honesty when it comes to the Clintons' dealings, and a new email released today is no different: Neera Tanden knows (and she spells like Trump!): \"Sometimes HRC\/WJC have the worst judgement\" https:\/\/t.co\/hRSAhG2eua pic.twitter.com\/cTs0oGSb4m","label":1}
{"text":"Canada's Liberal Party won a decisive majority of parliamentary seats Monday, ending nearly a decade of Conservative Party rule. Voters gave Liberals nearly 40 percent of the overall vote compared to the Conservatives' 32 percent. The left-leaning New Democrats had just over 19 percent of the vote. Justin Trudeau, a 43-year-old former high school teacher and son of the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, assumes the office his father held from 1968 through 1984 with a short interruption. The youthful Trudeau ran an election that was optimistic in tone, which he said led to his victory. \"We beat fear with hope,\" he said. \"We beat cynicism with hard work. We beat negative divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together. Most of all we defeated the idea that Canadians should be satisfied with less.\" The Associated Press notes the election results could strengthen ties between Canada and the U.S., at least for the remainder of the Obama administration: Conservative Stephen Harper was one of the longest-serving Western leaders. Reporter Dan Karpenchuk in Toronto reports on his loss: Trudeau's election gives Canada an approximation of a political dynasty. His father, also a Liberal, often drew comparisons with President John F. Kennedy. Justin Trudeau was born while his father was serving in office \u2014 in fact more than 40 years ago, then-President Richard Nixon predicted the 4-month-old Trudeau's future: \"Tonight we'll dispense with the formalities,\" he said at a state dinner in Ottawa. \"I'd like to toast the future prime minister of Canada: to Justin Pierre Trudeau.\"","label":0}
{"text":"If there s one thing President Barack Obama isn t threatened by, it s Donald Trump.After the Brexit decision, in which the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, many Americans were left upset and afraid that what had happened overseas could be a sign that Trump might actually win the election. Trump himself has definitely played up those fears in his statements following the decision by making statements such as, I really see a parallel between what is happening here and in the U.S. and voters will have the chance to re-declare their independence in November. Luckily, Obama is setting the record straight.In an interview with NPR s Steve Inskeep, it was clear that Obama wanted Americans to know that there were distinct differences between America and Britain, and that the Brexit vote wasn t a warning about what might happen in November. In fact, Obama was confident enough to actually laugh when Inskeep asked him about Trump s statement that Americans will be able to reject the global elite in the general election. Obama took a swipe at the billionaire business mogul: Mr. Trump embodies global elites and has taken full advantage of it his entire life. So, he s hardly a spokesperson, a legitimate spokesperson for a populist surge of working-class people on either side of the Atlantic. Obama urged Americans to stay calm, saying that he didn t think Brexit would lead to any major, cataclysmic changes. He said: I think that the best way to think about this is, a pause button has been pressed on the project of full European integration. I would not overstate it. There s been a little bit of hysteria post-Brexit vote, as if somehow NATO s gone, the trans-Atlantic alliance is dissolving, and every country is rushing off to its own corner. That s not what s happening. Obama stated that the U.S. and Europe still have similar international interests. He said: The basic core values of Europe, the tenants of liberal market-based democracies; those aren t changing. The interests we have with Europe remain the same, and our concerns internationally remain the same, so Europe can t afford to turn in. Trump might want to sit down, and shut up. You can watch Obama s interview below:","label":1}
{"text":"Three in Florida, Virginia charged with voter fraud Reuters  Officials in Florida and Virginia filed voter fraud charges against three people in apparently unrelated cases on Friday, just 11 days before American voters cast ballots in the hotly contested presidential race.  The charges targeted a Florida woman and a Virginia man accused of filing bogus voter registration forms and a Florida woman alleged to have tampered with absentee ballots she was opening at the Miami-Dade Elections Department.  In the Iowa capital of Des Moines, county election officials referred three cases of suspected voter fraud to police earlier this week, leading to one arrest on Thursday, police said.  Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has charged in recent weeks that the election will be rigged in favor of Democrat Hillary Clinton, though he has shown no proof for these claims and many Republicans have called them unfounded.  Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in Florida said that 74-year-old Gladys Coego had been working as an absentee ballot opener when a supervisor allegedly saw her changing ballots that had been left blank to support a mayoral candidate. Prosecutors said that Coego admitted to marking the ballots and was charged with two felony counts of marking or designating the ballot of another.","label":1}
{"text":"A ruling by Greece s top administrative court that two Syrian asylum seekers can be safely returned to Turkey sets a dangerous precedent for thousands of refugees, according to Amnesty International. About 62,000 refugees and migrants, mainly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis aiming for northern Europe, have been stranded in Greece since European countries closed their borders in March last year. Most live in overcrowded camps. The ruling sets an ominous precedent for many other asylum-seekers who have fled conflict and persecution and are currently stranded on Greek islands, said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International s Europe Director. These decisions breach a very clear principle - Greece and the EU should not be sending asylum seekers and refugees back to a country in which they cannot get effective protection, Dalhuisen said. Greece s Council of State on Friday rejected the appeals of the two Syrians against earlier rulings, declaring their asylum claims inadmissible. The court rejected the Syrians claims that their life and freedom would be in danger if they were returned to Turkey, as the judges opined this did not emerge from any evidence, a court official said, declining to be named. The court s ruling also took into consideration that the two Syrians had links to Turkey, because their families and relatives are there, the court official said. If the two Syrians are deported, it will mark the first formal return of asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey on the basis that Turkey is a safe country since an EU-Turkey deal came into force. The EU-Turkey deal, signed in March 2016, aims to return asylum seekers from Greek islands to Turkey, which receives billions of euros in aid. So far under the EU-Turkey deal, only migrants who do not qualify for international protection have been forced to return. Some Syrians have returned voluntarily, authorities say.","label":0}
{"text":"Obamacare will go into a death spiral on May 22 if the Trump administration chooses not to continue fighting in court to preserve subsidies that were ruled illegal last year. On May 12, 2016, U. S. District Court Judge Rosemary M. Collyer ruled House v. Burwell that the Obama Administration's payment of subsidies without congressional approval was a violation of the Constitution's Appropriations Clause. The Obama odministration appealed the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia District, where it was renamed House v. Price to reflect the current Secretary of Health and Human Services. Monday, May 22 is the last day for the Trump administration to give notice to the Appellate Court if it wants to continue the appeal. If Trump drops the appeal and ends the illegal subsidies, Obamacare Silver Plan healthcare premiums will jump by 19 percent. But the national average for Obamacare Silver Plan patient deductibles would also more than quadruple from $709, to $3, 064, according to the amicus brief filed by America's largest hospital groups. The Congress was happy to pass Obamacare's radical expansion of social justice entitlements, but had little interest in appropriating a $7 billion subsidy for healthcare insurance companies that saw their stock price triple under Obamacare. President Obama then directed the IRS to make \"Section 142 Offset Program\" payments to insurers from the collection of penalties, fees and legal judgments against taxpayers. Congressman Ron Paul ( ) warned in 2010 that the IRS would hire up to 16, 500 new agents to increase audits to generate more penalties and fees to subsidize Obamacare. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare are expected to release their \"Proposed Health Insurance Rate Increases for the 2018 Coverage Year\" on June 1. Obamacare premiums have increased by double digits each year since 2015, and 73 insurers announced last year that they were withdrawing from the program. As a result, many rural areas of the U. S. now only have one provider that can charge any rate it chooses. According to the authoritative ACASignups. net blog, that closely follows state healthcare premium increase requests by insurers in each state, Virginia is looking at a 42. 6 percent increase Maryland a 22. 6 percent increase Oregon a 17 percent increase and Connecticut a 13. 9 percent increase. Covered California, the Golden State's Obamacare exchange, has been mum on what type of premium increase its participating insurers will ask for. But the San Francisco Business Journal reported that the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine estimated that Covered California healthcare premiums for 2018 would rise between 28 and 49 percent, not including the 19 percent added cost if the Trump administration drops the illegal appeal. The hospital groups' argument to the Appeals Court is that without the court allowing illegal subsidies, Obamacare will go into a \"death spiral. \"","label":0}
{"text":"French cement group Lafarge paid close to 13 million euros ($15.2 million) to armed groups including Islamic State militants to keep operating in Syria from 2011-2015, human rights lawyers said on Tuesday. They were speaking at a news conference on the course of French prosecutors preliminary inquiry into Lafarge s operations launched in June on suspicion of financing of a terrorist enterprise . The lawyers for rights group Sherpa said a large part of the money went directly or indirectly into the pockets of Islamic State and that payments lasted until well after the closure of Lafarge s Jalabiya plant in September 2014. They were citing a figure pinpointed by prosecutors examining Lafarge s activities in Syria, in the throes of civil war since 2011, and drawn from an internal report by U.S. law firm Baker and McKenzie for Lafarge. As part of the inquiry, the precise figure retained is 12,946,000 euros paid by Lafarge between 2011 and 2015 to terrorist organizations, including the Islamic State, Sherpa lawyer Marie Dose said. Lafarge became LafargeHolcim, the world s largest cement maker, in 2015 after a takeover by Swiss Holcim. Former LafargeHolcim CEO Eric Olsen resigned in April after the company admitted it had paid armed groups to keep a factory operating in Syria. His lawyer has said Olsen will appeal against being put under investigation. Sherpa and other human rights groups in France as well as the French Finance Ministry have filed suit against Lafarge. Sherpa wants the company to be placed under formal criminal investigation, like Olsen, and also accuses Lafarge of not cooperating with authorities and trying to hide important elements from the investigation. A LafargeHolcim spokeswoman on Tuesday rejected these accusations but would not comment on the 13-million-euro figure. LafargeHolcim fully cooperates with the justice (authorities). Thousands of documents have been given by the group to magistrates or seized during a search, she said. We strongly contest that the company is trying in any way to limit the right of its employees or former employees to defend themselves...or (limit) their capacity to cooperate in a judicial inquiry, she added. Being placed under formal investigation in France means that prosecutors believe they have serious or consistent evidence that could result in prosecution. It is a step toward a possible trial, though the investigation can still be dropped. Last Friday the Paris prosecutor also placed Olsen s predecessor as CEO, Bruno Lafont, and his ex-deputy for operations under formal investigation as part of the inquiry into Lafarge activities in Syria, the two men s lawyers said.","label":0}
{"text":"Here is Elon Musk's True Mars On Earth Plan 11\/01\/2016  GAME N GUIDE  Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX recently held a Reddit Ask Me Anything session at 6:00 p.m. ET on Oct. 23. The session was said to be a follow-up to the executive's speech in Mexico last month. Musk unveiled his plans for a refueling site and eventually habitation in the methane-rich planet. SpaceX is said to have raised more questions lately than it has revealed. The inventor and conglomerate went to Twitter to announce the session, Engadget reported. For instance, the company's plan on colonizing Mars is yet to be discussed as well as the reliability of its space rockets and how it can be improved. In addition, the company also previously revealed that it would be reusing their rockets but have kept mum on how. Previously, Musk had a speech at the International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico in September. In the said Congress, Musk revealed his plans of sending humans to Mars apparently costing a whooping $10 billion each. Moreover he stated that humans will be turned into a multi-planetary species within the span of 40 years to a century. Musk revealed his vision with massive reusable rockets launching into a parking orbit stating that the rockets may be refueled by propellant tankers. Additionally, Musk plans to launch a thousand spaceships with a hundred people each en masse for Mars. He further revealed that a refueling station would be placed on the red planet to harvest methane fuel so settlers may come back to Earth. Hence, the first rocket to be sent is the Dragon spacecraft to search for a site to plant the refueling station followed by a spaceship with equipment to build the refueling station, LA Times reported. Musk went on to describe his ideal vision for human habitation on Mars. Musk revealed that glass panels with carbon fiber frames would be brought to the red planet to build geodesic domes on the planet's surface. Furthermore, several miner and tunneling droids would also be sent to Mars. The droids are expected to be used to build large quantities of pressurized space for industrial operations along with glass domes for green living. Watch Elon Musk's Mars colonization event in 5 minutes.","label":1}
{"text":"Because after all, what s more offensive than choosing to allow your baby to live?The pro-life message can be classified as patently offensive, a federal appeals court ruled last week. The new opinion came as a three-judge panel ruled that New York state was right to reject a Choose Life license plate on the grounds that it may grate on New Yorkers political sensibilities.The judges split on whether New York could deny a pro-adoption group the right to have its own license plate, although the state has in the past allowed plates endorsing political causes associated with the liberal viewpoint, such as environmentalism.Judge Rosemary Pooler, who was appointed by President Clinton, wrote that the state s denial did not harm anyone s right to freedom of expression, because drivers may display a Choose Life bumper sticker or even cover every available square inch of their vehicle with such stickers. That message will resonate just as loudly as if vehicle displayed a Choose Life license plate. Judge Debra Ann Livingston, a President George W. Bush appointee, wrote in her dissent that a proposed custom plate depicting a sun and two smiling children, and bearing the words, Choose Life [thought] to be patently offensive was surprising. Pro-adoption organizations should have the same speech rights as any other organization. While the district court affirmed this basic freedom, the circuit court denied free speech in favor of government censorship, said Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at ADF. The state doesn t have the authority to target The Children First Foundation specialty plates for censorship based on its life-affirming viewpoint. The ruling is the lastest round in a legal battle that has raged for more than a decade and, pro-lifers say, seen state officials repeatedly suppress their First Amendment rights.The Children First Foundation applied for the specialty license plate in 2002, but state officials say the message and design was too controversial. In 2004, the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on CFF s behalf.New York s Department of Motor Vehicles repeatedly denied the Choose Life license plates on the grounds that the message was patently offensive. The same appeals court rejected an effort to suppress the plates made by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and agreed that Albany officials denied the plates based on viewpoint discrimination.","label":1}
{"text":"Clinton Campaign Demands FBI Affirm Trump's Russia Ties  With the 2016 election campaign winding down, the Clinton campaign is ratcheting up demands for the FBI to publicly confirm the campaign's allegations that Republican nominee Donald Trump is secretly in league with Russia. Sen. Harry Reid (D \u2013 NV) went so far as to claim the FBI has secret \"explosive\" evidence of coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government that it is withholding.  FBI officials familiar with their investigations into the allegations, which the Clinton campaign started publicizing around the Democratic National Convention, say they've turned up nothing to connect Trump and Russia , leading FBI Director James Comey to decide against making any statements to that effect.  The Clinton campaign has been making the allegations so long that they have taken to claiming \"everyone knows\" that they are true, and appears unsettled by the FBI's refusal to sign off on the claims simply because they haven't been able to find real evidence corroborating the story.  The Trump campaign has repeatedly denied ties to Russia, but that didn't stop Clinton from calling Trump a \"puppet\" of Russian President Vladimir Putin during the final presidential debate. The calls have grown since Friday's FBI report to Congress about further Clinton emails being sought.  With Clinton's main campaign scandal growing in the waning weeks of the deal, some in her campaign have suggested that affirming Trump as secretly in league with the Russians would only be fair. Absent any evidence, however, it appears that won't be happening.","label":1}
{"text":"Posted by Chris Menahan \"Trump Supporter gets what she's been asking for\u2026 A Beatdown from a Latina.\"  Shocking video out of California shows Hillary Clinton supporters violently attack a homeless woman who was doing all she could to defend Donald Trump's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  Friday, newly surfaced video shared by one of Hillary Clinton's Hillbullies shows an Hispanic thug lay his hands on the brave woman and steal her signs, all while shouting \"GET YOUR ASS OUTTA HERE, B*TCH!\"  Other Hillbullies are then seen spitting on her signs and stomping them with their feet.  As the innocent woman is seen frantically trying to protect herself from the terrorist thug, he violently trips her to the ground.  Hillary supporting onlookers are then seen chastising her and as she lay motionless.  \"Didn't I tell you, about five minutes ago, that somebody was going to walk by here \u2014 and no I won't defend you \u2014 because you spewed hate, and you got hate,\" one Hillbully says. \"You got exactly what you were dishing out, I told, I warned you on that, didn't I?\"  The YouTube video, which was shared by user \"Koali Fikator,\" has this sickening description: \"After Bullying Everyone, Trump Supporter gets what she's been asking for\u2026 A Beatdown from a Latina.\"  All the woman did was hold up signs saying she wants to put Americans first:  She didn't assault anyone, she merely exercised her right to free speech as an American!  These left-wing terrorists used violence to suppress her free speech simply because she supports Donald Trump for president! That's the definition of terrorism!  Get this story out to everyone so they can see how these Hillbullies operate! . @ScottAdamsSays : \"I can't vote for a bully.\" So he endorses Trump. The #Hillbullies have made violence against Trump supporters legitimate. pic.twitter.com\/4nVscp6mki  Courtesy of Information Liberation Don't forget to follow the D.C. Clothesline on Facebook and Twitter. PLEASE help spread the word by sharing our articles on your favorite social networks. Share this:","label":1}
{"text":"Yesterday, Vice President Pence made the decision to leave the Indianapolis Colts game after players on the opposing team kneeled during our national anthem.I left today's Colts game because @POTUS and I will not dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem. Vice President Pence (@VP) October 8, 2017Today, Meghan McCain spent her first day as a co-host in the liberal lion s den, aka The View, defending the flag and attempting to explain why Americans are so offended when NFL players disrespect our flag by kneeling during the national anthem.Anyone who has watched The View since Donald Trump won the election knows, that the show is a safe space for angry liberal women to go, where they can justify their feelings of hate and frustration for President Trump, and anyone who holds an opinion that is counter to theirs. The View has become a laughing stock of mainstream America and is nothing more than a therapy session for women with Trump Derangement Syndrome (women who can t get over Crooked Hillary s loss in 2016 presidential election).Before we sign off, we d like to address the outrage by liberals over the cost for VP Pence to attend the Colt s game in his home state of Indiana. This awesome tweet by Rock Princess pretty much sums up the idiocy of the left and how they re using the cost of Vice President Pence s trip to his home state to distract from the disgust Americans have for the 49 ers who continue to disrespect for our flag:The price tag for transportation for Obama to Los Angeles for the Gwyneth Paltrow fundraiser cost taxpayers $1,011,051.30 cry more, losers https:\/\/t.co\/a3o7pIoD2K RockPrincess (@Rockprincess818) October 9, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Syrians in the besieged enclave of Eastern Ghouta are so short of food that they are eating trash, fainting from hunger and forcing their children to eat on alternate days, the U.N. World Food Programme said in a report on Wednesday. Since September, approximately 174,500 people in the town of Douma in the besieged zone have been forced to adopt emergency coping strategies , the WFP report said. This includes consuming expired food, animal fodder and refuse, spending days without eating, begging and engaging in high risk activities to get food. Moreover, many hunger-induced fainting episodes have been reported among school children and teachers. At least four people have died from hunger, including a child in Douma who took his own life due to hunger, said the report, which was based on a mobile phone survey and information from contacts on the ground. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta since 2012 and Douma has not had a food aid convoy since receiving wheat flour rations in August. Although the area is traditionally agricultural, arable land on the outskirts of Eastern Ghouta is either on the frontline of the conflict or targeted by snipers, the report said. Last week fighting destroyed recently distributed rations in a storehouse, exacerbating shortages. Although Damascus is only 15 km (10 miles) away, 700-grams (25 ounces) of bread is 85 times more expensive in Eastern Ghouta, the report said. The situation is anticipated to deteriorate further in the coming weeks when food stock is expected to be totally depleted and household coping strategies will be highly eroded as a result. Government restrictions meant WFP could only provide a fraction of the food needed. Family food baskets were being shared among six families and were reportedly the only source of food for many female-headed and destitute households, it said. Some households are even resorting to rotation strategies whereby the children who ate yesterday would not eat today and vice-versa. The report quoted a female head of household in Douma as saying she was forced to rotate rations between her 13-year-old daughter and her two- and three-year-old orphaned grandchildren. My daughter cries every time I lock her door cause she knows today is not her turn and will sleep with an empty stomach, she said.","label":0}
{"text":"Protesters clashed with police in western Ivory Coast s cocoa belt on Friday after the death of a youth leader, raising the prospect of more disruptions to the harvest. Nearly 7,000 people have fled illegal plantations and 10 have died in the past month because of land disputes between native groups and migrants from other parts of Ivory Coast and neighboring countries. Ethnically charged conflicts over land in Ivory Coast s fertile west were at the heart of a decade of turmoil that culminated in a brief civil war in 2010-11 that killed more than 3,000 people. Members of the We alliance from the Guere, Yacouba and Wobe ethnic groups have in recent weeks entered the Cavally and Gouin-Debe reserves and threatened ethnic Baoules and migrants from Burkina Faso farming there, hurting cocoa deliveries. Violence flared after well-known We youth leader Modeste Nenonhon was shot dead on Thursday in the village of Beoua, the Red Cross and a government spokesman told Reuters. The house of a local prefect was ransacked by protesters in the town of Guiglo, where many of the farmers have fled, said government spokesman Bruno Kone, adding that an inquiry into the violence and the death were underway. It was not clear who was responsible for the shooting, but thousands of We demonstrators again took to the streets in the towns of Blolequin and Guiglo on Friday. In Guiglo, police fired tear gas to disperse protesters. There is a big march to Blolequin and another one also to Guiglo, said Franck Gaba, an official with the Ivorian Red Cross. Last night, a vehicle was set on fire in the court where Baoule displaced people are set up. Baoule and Burkinabe farmers in the region were on edge, fearing retaliatory attacks after the youth leader s death. We are afraid for our safety in the villages here because ... the youth of the alliance will seek revenge, said Felix Kouadio, who cultivates seven hectares of cocoa in the Gouin-Debe reserve. The volume of cocoa beans from the area has already dropped in recent weeks as farmers flee. Continuing tensions could impact more deliveries just as the cocoa harvest picks up pace this month. The Ivorian Parks and Reserves Office (OIPR) estimates that up to 40 percent of Ivorian cocoa production comes from illegal plantations like the ones impacted by the violence.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump told several lawmakers on Tuesday that he would work with Democrats in Congress to overhaul the nation's healthcare system if Republicans fail to pass a measure to repeal and replace Obamacare, a key lawmaker said. \"On healthcare, he made that clear, that if he didn't get what he wanted, that he was going to work with Democrats on a plan,\" for healthcare and that he wanted bipartisan tax reform, U.S. Representative Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said following panel members' meeting with Trump at the White House earlier on Tuesday.","label":0}
{"text":"Munich prosecutors said on Friday they expect to complete their investigations into Airbus s $2 billion sale in 2003 of Eurofighter combat jets to Austria. The deal has been the subject of investigation by Austrian and German prosecutors for years. Our investigation is about to come to an end. We aim to complete the proceeding soon, a spokeswoman for Munich prosecutors said, but declined to comment on a report by German weekly Der Spiegel that said the authority would file charges soon. The Munich authority is focusing on whether money supposedly spent on so-called offset deals, which are common in large arms deals to provide business for local firms, was instead used to influence decision-makers on the main sale. Munich prosecutors are investigating 16 people on suspicion of breach of trust, according to the spokeswoman. Airbus, which has repeatedly denied all allegations, said when asked for comment: Neither the prosecutors investigations in Munich and Vienna nor our own extensive investigations have led to evidence suggesting bribery in connection with the sale of Eurofighter jets to Austria. Vienna prosecutors are pursuing a separate investigation into allegations of fraud against Airbus and the Eurofighter industrial consortium based on complaints from the Austrian defense ministry, which is seeking up to 1.1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) in compensation. Last month Airbus again denied any wrongdoing in a submission to the Austrian prosecutors and threatened the country s defense minister with legal action. The Munich prosecutors are investigating where millions of euros ended up which Airbus - EADS at the time - paid to a now defunct company between 2005 and 2010, the spokeswoman said. The Austrian proceedings continue independently of the German investigation, a Vienna prosecutor s spokesman said, adding that he could not say when a decision might be taken on whether to file charges. An Austrian parliamentary inquiry into the Eurofighter deal found no evidence of bribery or that Airbus and its partners illegally influenced Austrian politicians.","label":0}
{"text":"Governor's position on gay marriage may reflect and effort to preserve opportunity to run for president in 2016 As activists push states to recognize gay marriages, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie \u2014 conservative Republican governor in a blue state and a 2016 presidential possibility \u2014 is walking a fine line between two electorates and two elections. Christie vetoed same-sex marriage legislation last year and severely criticized the Supreme Court's decision striking down a ban on federal rights for same-sex married couples. At the same time, he is \"adamant'' that same-sex couples deserve equal legal protection, wants a referendum on gay marriage, and vows to abide by a same-sex marriage law if the voters approve it. He's tiptoeing between constituencies. First are the voters of New Jersey: polls show they favor same-sex marriage, and Christie wants them to reelect him in November by a big margin. Then there are Republican caucus-goers in Iowa. Christie needs their backing if he runs for president in 2016; in 2012, evangelical conservatives, who generally oppose gay marriage, made up 57% of Republican caucusgoers in the state, according to exit polls. And there is a third group of voters to think about: swing voters across the nation, who might go for a Republican presidential nominee who is sufficiently centrist. To appeal to those voters, Christie \"will want to not be perceived to be as far right as many Republicans are,'' says David Boaz of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. \"That's a lot of tightropes to walk.'' Christie, who is Roman Catholic, has said he does not believe being gay is a choice, nor is it a sin, and that he has gay friends who argue the issue with him. Marriage, he said last year on CNN, is \"special and unique in society.'' He followed his veto in of the gay-marriage bill in February 2012 with a call for a statewide referendum on whether to allow same-sex marriage by constitutional amendment. \"When you want to change the core of a 2,000 year-old institution, the way to do that is to put it in front of the voters,'' he told reporters July 2. A referendum would allow same-sex marriage to pass in New Jersey without his fingerprints \u2014 or as he said at a town-hall-style meeting last month: \"I don't have to compromise my principles that I believe in and someone else doesn't have to compromise theirs.'' Christie is in the same position as his party. The Republican platform says marriage is only for couples of different sexes, but Chairman Reince Priebus has said that the Republican Party should be open to those who favor same-sex marriage. \"I don't believe we need to act like Old Testament heretics,\" he told USA TODAY in March. Instead, Republicans \"have to strike a balance between principle and grace and respect.'' Garden State Equality, a leading advocate for same-sex marriage in New Jersey, opposes a referendum saying civil rights should not be on the ballot. \"It should never be up to the majority to vote on the rights of the minority,'' spokesman T.J. Helmstetter said. Same-sex marriage advocates are now lobbying New Jersey legislators to override Christie's veto before the end of the year, when the window to do so expires. Christie is too powerful a party leader to let that happen, says Ben Dworkin, director of Rider University's Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. \"I can't envision a situation where the Republican votes that are needed to get the two-thirds override would come, given this administration's history,'' Dworkin says. \"The Christie administration sees no reason why any Republican should really ever override a Republican governor. That's their logic, so I'd be shocked if it ever got to happen.\" Last year, Christie nominated a gay judge (a Republican) to the state Supreme Court, a first for the state. Last month, when the Supreme Court ruled on Defense of Marriage Act, he called it \"insulting\" to the Congress and president which passed the law. Troy Stevenson, executive director of Garden State Equality, said, \"I don't like to pretend I can get inside the mind of the governor, but I think the closer we get to him having future political ambitions the more staunch his opposition gets to marriage equality.\" But Jimmy LaSalvia, a founder of GOProud, a Republican gay-rights group that favors same-sex marriage, gives Christie credit for not trying to change the subject. \"He's one Republican who doesn't say 'I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. We need jobs and the economy is hurting,''' says LaSalvia, who now works with the ACLU trying to pass same-sex marriage state by state. \"He's willing to talk through the issue in a way that no other Republican has the balls to do.'' Christie has to make his political calculus now, even though \"he doesn't know how much public opinion will change between now and 2016,'' Boaz says. \"Will people be more liberal then? Is the country? Yes. But the Republican primary electorate, maybe not so much.'' Public opinion on gay marriage has changed rapidly. Four years ago, 37% of Americans favored same-sex marrage. Now, 51% do, according to the Pew Research Center. Iowa and New Hampshire, traditionally the first states to hold presidential nominating contests, both allow same-sex marriage \u2013 which could mean voters there no longer focus on it as an issue. \"Those people in those states have been living with (same-sex marriage) for a while,'' LaSalvia says. \"I don't think any of us knows how the issue is going to play in 2016 because it's moving so fast.'' An October poll sponsored by the Iowa Republican, a news site, showed Iowans favor gay marriage 49% to 42%. Iowa has allowed gays to marry since a 2009 state Supreme Court decision \u2013 and voters remain conflicted about it, says pollster Ann Selzer, who conducts the Iowa Poll for the Des Moines Register, \"You ask them on the street and nobody can say that their lives have been affected. But you ask them if they like it and they don't.'' In a poll taken a month after the 2012 caucuses, 64% of Republicans favored a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.","label":0}
{"text":"Enda Kenny, Ireland's prime minister since 2011, is facing one of the worst political crises of his career over a convoluted police scandal that has dragged on for more than a decade. The scandal has been compared to the case of Frank Serpico, the detective whose testimony in the 1970s brought to light corruption in the New York Police Department. The matter dates to 2006, when an officer began raising concerns about misconduct within the National Police Service. The officer, Sgt. Maurice McCabe, quickly found himself shunned by his fellow officers. But he persisted, exposing what he said was a practice of deleting penalty points incurred by drivers for minor traffic violations. Eventually, a government inquiry found in his favor. But the case won't go away. Last week, The Irish Examiner and the public broadcaster RTE's \"Prime Time\" program reported that Ireland's child protection agency had created a file on Sergeant McCabe containing a false accusation of child sexual abuse \u2014 a mistake that the agency has attributed to what it called a clerical error. The news organizations also reported that this wasn't the first time Sergeant McCabe had been wrongly accused of such a crime an earlier complaint against him had been made, in 2006, and dismissed. The disclosure that a could face such accusations in apparent retaliation has raised unsettling questions about Ireland's culture of policing and the possible collusion of other agencies, including the child protection agency. The case has affected the highest levels of the Irish government, bedeviling Mr. Kenny. He has been attacked by critics who charge that he missed opportunities to resolve the mess in 2014, and supported the police chief at the time and his justice minister for too long. Mr. Kenny failed at first to give a complete account of when he learned of the false abuse allegations, and has insisted that he knew nothing of a broader smear campaign \u2014 an assertion that his critics in Parliament have contested. There were heated exchanges between Mr. Kenny and Gerry Adams, the leader of the opposition Sinn Fein party. At one point, Mr. Kenny called Mr. Adams an \"absolute hypocrite\" and attacked him for playing down, years earlier, the case of a former Sinn Fein member who said she was sexually abused by IRA members \u2014 a charge that Mr. Adams denies. Mr. Kenny has pledged a new official inquiry into the latest developments in the McCabe case. Late Wednesday night he survived a motion put forward by Sinn Fein. Both Mr. Kenny's party, Fine Gael, and the Fianna Fail party, whose support Mr. Kenny needs, had little appetite for fresh elections that could unsettle their fragile alliance. But observers say the prime minister has been wounded by the scandal, and may not survive long after he returns from a trip to Washington to meet President Trump for St. Patrick's Day. On Wednesday evening, ahead of the vote, Mr. Kenny apologized in Parliament to Sergeant McCabe. He called the allegations against him \"appalling. \" \"He and his family deserve the truth, as do all against whom allegations have been made,\" Mr. Kenny said. \"And I therefore offer a full apology to Maurice McCabe and his family for the treatment handed out to them as exposed in recent programs. \" Sergeant McCabe, and his wife, Lorraine, said in a statement that they had been victims of a \"long and sustained campaign to destroy our characters. \" They added: \"We have endured eight years of great suffering, private nightmare, public defamation, and state vilification arising solely,\" they said, from Sergeant McCabe's determination to ensure that the police agency \"adheres to decent and appropriate standards of policing in its dealings with the Irish people. \" Sergeant McCabe, 55, a father of five from County Westmeath in the center of the country, has been on sick leave since last year. The McCabe case has exposed the secretive and insular nature of the police service. An internal investigation into Sergeant McCabe's complaints found no evidence of corruption, but concluded that some officers had failed to follow procedures. But a police chief, Martin Callinan, stunned the country when he told lawmakers in 2014 that like Sergeant McCabe were \"disgusting. \" (He later took early retirement.) Dermot Walsh, a law professor at the University of Kent in England who has studied police and criminal justice in Ireland, said the uproar \"was not so much what he was complaining about as the fact that he took his complaints outside the force \u2014 in other words, he was seen as not a team player, not a member of the club. \" Professor Walsh added that Sergeant McCabe \"had stepped over to the other side of the line between 'them' and 'us,' \" and compared the case to that of Detective Serpico. He also said the hierarchical organization of the police agency made it resistant to criticism from its lower ranks. In 2014, the justice minister, Alan Shatter, resigned after a report commissioned by the government found that the government and the police had failed to address Sergeant McCabe's allegations adequately. A second report, prepared by a commission led by a judge, Kevin O'Higgins, found that Sergeant McCabe had performed \"a genuine public service at considerable personal cost. \" Now, the case is about to get yet another look. Mr. Kenny has promised to investigate whether a smear campaign targeted Sergeant McCabe. The task was originally assigned to a private commission of inquiry, led by a judge, but after the latest furor, Mr. Kenny agreed to appoint a tribunal, whose proceedings will be open to the public \u2014 something that Sergeant McCabe said he believed was essential. Another Superintendent David Taylor, a former police press officer, has come forward to say that the existence of a smear campaign against Sergeant McCabe was widely known within the police force and by his superiors, including Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan. She has asserted her innocence. \"I have made it clear that I was not part of any campaign to spread rumors about Sergeant McCabe and didn't know it was happening at the time it was happening,\" Commissioner O'Sullivan said in a statement on Monday. Yet another police officer, Superintendent Keith Harrison, has come forward, saying that he stopped a colleague for drunken driving in 2009 and, in retaliation, found his family referred to the child protection agency over a baseless allegation.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump and his campaign know that they stand an ice cube s chance in hell at winning the presidential election unless they can sway some of the minority vote. As it stands now the campaign has next to nothing in the realm of that voting block.So, what is Trump doing to try to get some of that vote? He s pandering to African-Americans and Latinos, of course. However, he s doing a terrible job of it.He s literally asking minority voters: What do you have to lose? As though that s all the reasoning they d ever need to vote for him. As if minority voters are going to show up to the voting booth in November, look at the ballot, and say, eh, why not Trump? What do I have to lose? Well, the answer to that is everything considering Trump is currently endorsed by white supremacists and has regularly compared Latinos to rapists and murderers.Does Trump really think that line is going to work? I mean, he can t be that dumb, right? Who knows, really. Clearly, his current supporters are.Well, not letting Trump get away with being such a pathetic pandering fool, Ana Navarro, a conservative mind you, tells Trump exactly what they have to lose.On CNN Navarro stated: I don t speak for all Hispanics. I speak for myself. Maybe the eighty plus percent of Hispanics who don t approve of him, some of them may agree with me. I think what we have to lose, is our dignity. Our sense of self-worth. I think what we have to lose is our moral compass. I think that if we allow ourselves to vote for a man who has been making textbook racist remarks, and in my book that makes him a racist, for over a year, against Hispanics. Against immigrants. You are voting against your own self-interests. I think that we would lose our political leverage. We would lose any power. If we allow somebody who has been bashing us for over a year to win the presidency. It means the Hispanic vote does not matter. So, that s my answer to Donald Trump. What do we have to lose by voting for you? Our dignity. It really doesn t get more perfect than that. Well said, Ana.Watch Navarro explain what Latinos have to lose by voting for Trump here:.@ananavarro's answer to Donald Trump: \"What we have to lose by voting for you? Our dignity.\" https:\/\/t.co\/rb3lOdtGTV CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) August 23, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"Environment and Energy Policy research fellow at the Heartland Institute, H. Sterling Burnett, spoke with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Tuesday regarding President Trump's position on the Paris Climate Agreement. The Heartland Institute has called for the United States to withdraw. [The press release reads in part: The Paris Climate Treaty puts America last, the exact opposite of what candidate Trump and now President Trump has promised. The treaty would require the United States to make massive reductions in emissions and pay billions of dollars in 'climate reparations' to Third World dictators, while requiring no emission cuts from developing countries including India and China. Why should the United States pay hundreds of billions of dollars to developing countries at a time when the U. S. government is running massive debts, when economic growth is slower for a longer period of time than at any time since the Great Depression, and when American workers are losing out to workers in China and India? Burnett said Wednesday, \"Trump rightly said he was going to withdraw from this, but \u2026 there are two factions in the White House. There are those like Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA, like Steve Bannon, his adviser, that say keep your campaign promise. Withdraw from the Paris Climate agreement. Let America grow. \" \"But then there's the other faction,\" he continued, \"that's led by Rex Tillerson, who has a lot of influence \u2026 as secretary of state, who said we should stay in the agreement. It's led by his daughter and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. \u2026 She wants to make climate change her signature issue. So he's got powerful interests trying to keep him in the agreement, saying not [to] leave it as it is, but renegotiate it. Cut a better deal. \" \"Problem is, there are no terms within the treaty to cut a better deal. You're not allowed within the treaty to cut a better deal. And the worst problem is, is there's no better deal to be had, in the sense that if you're forcing America to cut its emissions, you're having big government intervene in the economy,\" he concluded. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican U.S. presidential hopeful Ted Cruz won all 14 delegates at stake on Saturday in Wyoming, besting rival Donald Trump, who made little effort to win the rural state, and further narrowing the gap in the race for the party's nomination. Cruz is trying to prevent Trump from obtaining the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the Republican nomination at the July convention in Cleveland. By continuing to rack up small wins, Cruz is gaining ground on the New York real estate mogul, who has thus far failed to shift his focus on the local-level campaigning necessary to win delegates. Trump has been critical of the process, again on Saturday calling it \"rigged\" while speaking at a rally in Syracuse, New York. He has repeatedly complained about Colorado, which awarded all 34 of its delegates to Cruz despite not holding a popular vote. Trump said his supporters are becoming increasingly angry with states such as Wyoming and Colorado. \"They're going nuts out there; they're angry,\" Trump said in Syracuse. \"The bosses took away their vote, and I wasn't going to send big teams of people three, four months ago, have them out there.\" While Trump has won 21 state nominating contests to Cruz's 10, the billionaire leads the Texas senator by only 196 delegates (755-559). That means he must win nearly 60 percent of those remaining before the party's political convention in July. Wyoming does not hold a primary vote. Instead, 475 party activists convened in Casper on Saturday to hold a state convention and award 14 delegates. Previously, 12 other delegates had been designated at county-level conventions. Cruz won 10 of those, with one going to Trump and another being elected as \"unbound.\" Cruz spoke at the convention, capping off a months-long effort to organize support in the state. Trump had originally planned to send former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who remains popular among conservatives, as a surrogate, but she canceled at the last minute. Cruz spoke about local issues in Wyoming, the largest coal-producing state. He discussed the Democratic \"attack\" on the fossil fuel, saying President Barack Obama has tried to put the coal industry out of business through government regulations targeting air pollution. \"America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and we are going to develop our industry,\" Cruz said. At the same time, Trump was speaking at a rally in Syracuse, New York, ahead of the state's Republican primary on Tuesday.","label":0}
{"text":"Julian Assange has claimed the Hillary Clinton campaign has attacked the servers being used by WikiLeaks.  Despite the Ecuadorian embassy shutting down his internet until the US election is over, the website will continue publishing, according to Assange.  \"Everyday that you publish is a day that you have the initiative in the conflict,\" Assange said via telephone at a conference in Argentina on Wednesday.  The whistleblowing website has been releasing emails from Clinton's campaign chair, John Podesta, on a daily basis since early October.  Assange claimed the release \"whipped up a crazed hornet's nest atmosphere in the Hillary Clinton campaign\" leading them to attack WikiLeaks.  \" They attacked our servers and attempted hacking attacks and there is an amazing ongoing campaign where state documents were put in the UN and British courts to accuse me of being both a Russian spy and a pedophile,\" he added.  Ecuador's decision to shut down his internet was described by Assange as a \"strategic position\" so that its \"policy of non-intervention can't be misinterpreted by actors in the US and even domestically in Ecuador.\"  He said he was sympathetic with Ecuador, insisting they face the dilemma of having the US interfere with their elections next year if they appear to interfere with the US elections next month.  Assange, who claimed the embassy will be without internet until the election is over to avoid accusations of interference, said he did not agree with Ecuador's decision but did understand it. WikiLeaks will not be affected by the decision as they do not publish from Ecuador, he said.  He did, however, reject the idea that WikiLeaks is interfering with the US election, claiming, \"this is not the interference of electoral process, this is the definition of electoral process \u2013 for media organizations and, in fact, everyone to publish the truth and their opinion about what is occurring. It cannot be a free and informed election unless people are free to inform.\"  He also attacked US TV networks, many of whom he accused of being \"controlled by Clinton supporters.\"  The Podesta emails will make no difference to the election result, according to Assange. \"I don't think there's any chance of Donald Trump winning the election, even with the amazing material we are publishing, because most of the media organizations are strongly aligned with Hillary Clinton,\" he said.  Assange said journalists and people who work in the media are predominantly middle class and view Trump as representing \"what in their mind is white trash.\" NEWSLETTER SIGN UP Get the latest breaking news & specials from Alex Jones and the Infowars Crew. Related Articles","label":1}
{"text":"Saad al-Hariri warned on Sunday Lebanon was at risk of Gulf Arab sanctions because of the Shi ite group Hezbollah s regional meddling and said he would return to Lebanon within days to affirm he had resigned as the country s prime minister. In a television interview, the Saudi-allied Hariri held out the possibility he could yet rescind his resignation if Hezbollah agreed to stay out of regional conflicts such as Yemen, his first public comments since he read out his resignation on television from Riyadh eight days ago. He indicated the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese in the Gulf could be at risk, as well as trade, vital to the stability of the Lebanese economy. Hariri said his resignation was intended as a positive shock to his country, which he saw in danger. Top Lebanese government officials and senior sources close to Hariri believe Saudi Arabia coerced Hariri into resigning and has put him under effective house arrest since he flew to Saudi Arabia over a week ago. Ahead of his interview, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said Hariri s movements were being restricted in Saudi Arabia, the first time the Lebanese authorities have publicly declared their belief that Riyadh is holding him against his will. Hariri said he was a free man. The resignation and its aftermath have thrust Lebanon back to the forefront of the conflict between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran. Aoun refused to accept Hariri s resignation unless he tendered it in person in Lebanon. Hariri, who has not returned to Lebanon since he declared his shock resignation, said he stepped down for the sake of the Lebanese national interest, repeatedly saying the country must stick by a policy of disassociation from regional conflict. I am freely in the Kingdom, and if I want to travel tomorrow, I will travel, Hariri said of his presence in Saudi Arabia. He said he would return to Lebanon within two or three days. When he resigned on Nov. 4, he said he feared assassination. His father, a long-serving former prime minister, was killed by a bomb in 2005. Hariri said he must be sure his security had not been penetrated before returning. Hariri s eyes welled up with tears at one point in the interview. Asked by the interviewer if he would take more questions, Hariri said no because he was tired. We know there are American sanctions (targeting Hezbollah), but (do) we add to them also Arab sanctions? What is our interest (in that) as Lebanese, because we see today interventions in Yemen and Bahrain by Iran and Hezbollah, said Hariri. He added: Disassociation is the foundation of Lebanon s interest. Where do we export our goods, is it not to the Arab states? Where do our sons work ...? We must work to preserve this interest, and this interest was threatened, so for this reason I did what I did, he said. He singled out Yemen, where a Saudi-led alliance is bogged down in a war with Iran-allied Houthi rebels, asking what a Lebanese group was doing there, in reference to Hezbollah. Saudi Arabia has accused Hezbollah of a role in firing a ballistic missile from Yemen towards Riyadh earlier this month. In order for him to go back on his resignation, Hariri said the the diassociation (policy) must be respected and regional interventions by Hezbollah halted. Lebanon cannot bear them, he said. Hezbollah is Lebanon s most powerful group thanks to a powerful arsenal. It has deployed fighters to Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad. The group denies a role in the fighting in Yemen but is fiercely supportive of the Houthis in its statements. Hariri s resignation from abroad and the week of silence that followed has destabilized his country, where Sunni, Shi ite, Christian and Druze factions fought a civil war from 1975-1990, often backed by rival powers around the region. After Hariri announced his resignation, Saudi Arabia accused Lebanon of declaring war against it because of Hezbollah. The Hezbollah leader on Friday said it was Saudi Arabia that had declared war on Lebanon. Western countries including the United States and France have reiterated their long-standing policy of support for the Lebanese government since the Saudi declaration that the Beirut government was a hostile party. Before Hariri s interview, Aoun said Hariri s situation in Saudi Arabia threw doubt over anything that he had said or would say, and his statements could not be considered as an expression of his full free will. Aoun said Hariri was living in mysterious circumstances in Riyadh which had reached the degree of restricting (his) freedom and imposing conditions on his residency and on contact with him even by members of his family . Saudi Arabia has denied Hariri is being held against his will or that he had been forced to resign. It has advised its citizens not to visit Lebanon and those there to leave as soon as possible.","label":0}
{"text":"A German federal judge issued an arrest warrant on Wednesday against a 19-year-old Syrian man detained on suspicion of planning a bombing attack, the Public Prosecutor s Office (GBA) said in a statement. Police detained the man, identified only as Yamen A. under German privacy laws, on Tuesday and prosecutors said they believe he had planned an Islamist-motivated bomb attack with the aim of killing as many people as possible. He had been in contact online with jihadists including one who described himself as a soldier of the caliphate , a spokeswoman for the federal prosecutor s office said. Yamen A. was arrested in the northeastern town of Schwerin. Police searched his home and also those of other people not suspected of being directly involved. The arrest comes one month before the first anniversary of an attack in Berlin by a failed Tunisian asylum seeker who killed 12 people by plowing a truck into a Christmas market. Concrete blocks have been installed around Christmas markets at several central squares in the capital this year before the festive season opens in a couple of weeks.","label":0}
{"text":"By Jonas E. Alexis on October 26, 2016 Philip Giraldi: \"The new Pearl Harbor turned out to be 9\/11.\" \u2026by Jonas E. Alexis  Former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the C.I.A. Philip Giraldi has recently nailed the 9\/11 narrative by saying that \" Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan just for starters may have been involved in or had knowledge relating to 9\/11\u2026\"  We all ought to applaud Giraldi for starting to investigate some of those issues because Giraldi is not just your typical guy. He is a historian. He has a Ph.D. from the University of London in European history and has been working as an investigative journalist for years.  Giraldi was a C.I.A. officer for eighteen years in places like Turkey, Italy, Germany, and Spain. He also speaks several languages, including Turkish, Italian, German, and Spanish. He has written articles for MSNBC, Fox News Channel, National Public Radio, Good Morning America, etc.  According to Giraldi, the 9\/11 attack was almost certainly another Pearl Harbor, which is to say that the government almost certainly had it coming. The Neocons and the Bush administration, says Giraldi, were part of the problem largely because they were \"pushing to increase U.S. military capabilities so that the country would be able to fight multi-front wars. The signatories of the neocon Project for the New American Century paper observed that was needed was a catalyst to produce a public demand to 'do something,' that 'something' being an event comparable to Pearl Harbor. Seventeen signatories of the document wound up in senior positions in the Bush Administration. \"The new Pearl Harbor turned out to be 9\/11. Given developments since 9\/11 itself, to include the way the U.S. has persisted in going to war and the constant search for enemies worldwide to justify our own form of Deep State government, I would, to a large extent, have to believe that PNAC was either prescient or perhaps, more diabolically, actively engaged in creating a new reality.\"  VT writers and editors have been saying that the 9\/11 attack was indeed a covert operation for quite a while. And this is not some kind of \"conspiracy theory.\" Even Fox News, of all places, got it right when they made it quite clear that the Israelis almost certainly had enough knowledge about the 9\/11 attack:  Israel's fingerprints are all over the 9\/11 attack. In 2011 at least 200 Israelis were arrested. 140 of those were detained by the FBI right before the 9\/11 attack. Many of those Israelis \"had used cover stories to gain access to sensitive government buildings and the homes of American officials.\" [1] The Washington Post, [2] the Telegraph, [3] and other media outlets such as the widely read French newspaper Le Monde [4] began to ask why many of those people were arrested. No one was able to answer the question because those Israelis were never prosecuted.  According to John Farmer, former senior counsel to the 9\/11 Commission, the 9\/11 Commission report is unreliable and many who wrote the report were misled.394 These issues prompted a number of physicists and professors\u2014at least 75 of them\u2014to postulate that more evidence was needed for the airplane hypothesis.  One of them, Professor David Gabbard, declared, \"We're academics and we're rational, and we really believe Congress or someone should investigate this.\" [5] These doubters have been labeled \"conspiracy theorists.\" According to Sylvain Cypel of Le Monde, there is no doubt that the Israelis\u2014at least the Mossad\u2014were aware of the 9\/11 attack before it happened. [6]  Giraldi again should be praised for his moral and intellectual candor. The similarities between 9\/11 and Pearl Harbor are quite striking. Former US Senate candidate Mark Dankof and I will be examining the issues revolving around Pearl Harbor tentatively at the end of this year. Giraldi concludes his analysis with a sober thought: \"If it can be demonstrated that the attacks carried out on that day were quite possibly set up by major figures both inside and outside the political establishment it might produce such a powerful reaction that the public would demand a reversal of the laws and policies that have so gravely damaged our republic. It is admittedly unlikely that anything like that could ever take place, but it is at least something to hope for.\"  If Solzhenitsyn is right, then the Powers That Be can't triumph forever. So, there is no need for despair and there is every reason to be hopeful. Solzhenitsyn put it best:  \"Our way must be: never knowingly support lies! Having understood where the lies begin\u2014step back from that gangrenous edge! Let us not glue back the flaking scale of the Ideology, not gather back its crumbling bones, nor patch together its decomposing garb, and we will be amazed how swiftly and helplessly the lies will fall away, and that which is destined to be naked will be exposed as such to the world.\" [7]  [1] Ben Fenton, \"US Arrests 200 Young Israelis in Spying Investigation,\" Telegraph , Mar. 7, 2002.  [2] John Mintz, \"60 Israelis on Tourist Visas Detained Since Sept. 11,\" Washington Post , Nov. 23, 2001.  [3] Fenton, \"US Arrests 200 Young Israelis,\" Telegraph , March 7, 2002.  [4] Sylvain Cypel, \"Vast Israeli Spy Network Dismantled in the US,\" Le Monde , March 5, 2002.  [5] Christina Aquith, \"Who Really Blew Up the Twin Towers?,\" Guardian , September 5, 2006.  [6] Cypel, \"Israeli Spy Network Dismantled,\" Le Monde , Mar. 5, 2002.  [7] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Solzhenitsyn Reader (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2006), 558. Related Posts:","label":1}
{"text":"India remains indifferent towards Kashmiris' problem Wed Oct 26, 2016 3:49PM Kashmiris shout anti-India slogans in a protest in Muzaffarabad on October 26, 2016. (AFP)  Shahana ButtPress TV, Indian-Controlled Kashmir  More than 100 days of street tensions in Indian-controlled Kashmir and residents of the disputed region continue with protests that sparked after the death a pro-independence leader in July. Up until now, almost 100 people have been killed at the hands of Indian security forces in Kashmir. Our correspondent Shahana Butt reports how New Delhi's indifference toward Kashmiri people has strengthened their will to continue their peaceful struggle for a lasting solution to the dispute.","label":1}
{"text":"Pin 4  ( ANTIMEDIA ) Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton escaped further FBI scrutiny over the weekend, just before millions of Americans prepare to cast their vote for president. But according to the latest batch of emails published by WikiLeaks \u2014 and listed as unclassified by the U.S. Department of State \u2014 she won't escape public scrutiny for her crimes in Libya.  In an email from Sidney Blumenthal with the subject line \" H: Lots of new intel; possible Libyan collapse. SID ,\" dated March 26, 2011, Clinton was warned that al Qaeda militants, as well as members of the Muslim Brotherhood, would rise if then-Libyan president Muammar Gaddafi were ousted.  Long before the al-Qaeda-led attack against U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, Clinton was advised that U.S. efforts in the country would lead to internal collapse, as al-Qaeda militants would infiltrate the post-Gaddafi transitional government.  In the same email , Blumenthal told Clinton that \" [a]n extremely sensitive source \" claimed \" the [anti-Gaddafi] rebels are receiving direct assistance and training from a small number of Egyptian Special Forces units, while French and British Special Operations troops are working out of bases in Egypt, along the Libyan border .\"  These troops were in place to oversee \" the transfer of weapons and supplies to the rebels ,\" which included \" radical\/terrorist groups such as the Libyan Fighting Groups and [al Qaeda] in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). \" According to then-French president Nicolas Sarzoky, Blumenthal said in the email , al-Qaeda fighters were \" infiltrating the [Libyan Council (NLC)] and its military command .\"  Blumenthal also asserted that Sarkozy was reaching out to the Israeli government to obtain \" a clear picture of the role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the rebel leadership .\"  In the email , Blumenthal also listed the weapons provided to militants and stocked in Benghazi.  They included \" 82 and 120 mm. mortars; GPZ type machine guns; 12.7mm. machine guns mounted on 4\u00d74 vehicles ; some anti-aircraft batteries type ZSU 23\/2 and 23\/4 as well as Man-Portable Air-Defense Systems (MANPADS) type SAM7; some tanks type T-72; \u2026 Possibly some fixed wing aircraft, and some light transport\/medium helicopters .\" Sign up for the free Anti-Media newsletter the establishment doesn't want you to receive  Blumenthal also reassured Clinton that militants in Benghazi had \" [a] seemingly endless supply of AK47 assault rifles and ammunition (even for systems ZSU 23\/4 and 23\/2) .\"  The email added that French, British, and Egyptian Special Forces troops were training the rebels in Egypt and in the western suburbs of Benghazi.  If anything, this email proves Secretary Clinton was aware of the potential ramifications of U.S. intervention in Libya. Despite the warnings provided by the intelligence sent to her inbox, Clinton and President Barack Obama went along with their plan and, in tandem with other foreign governments , provided aid to rebels with deep and well-known ties with al-Qaeda \u2014 one of the United States' alleged top enemies in the region .  This article ( Hillary Knew She Was Helping Terrorists by Overthrowing Libya's Gaddafi ) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Alice Salles and theAntiMedia.org . Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern\/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to .","label":1}
{"text":"5 Things To Know About Mike Pence Before Tuesday's Debate This post was updated Oct. 1 at 10:19 a.m. Last Monday, the first presidential debate was the most-watched debate ever. A little more than a week later, the Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's vice presidential picks will take the stage. Trump running mate Mike Pence will debate Clinton running mate Tim Kaine Tuesday night at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. Unlike the people at the top of the tickets, Pence and Kaine are relatively unknown to voters. On the Republican side, Pence has been governor of Indiana since 2013. Before that, he served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. House Speaker Paul Ryan has called Pence a \"good movement conservative\" and considers him a good friend. \"I've very high regard for him,\" Ryan said when Pence was chosen as Trump's running mate, an indicator that putting Pence on the ticket might have been an olive branch from the Trump campaign to more traditional conservatives. Here are five other things to know about Gov. Pence ahead of Tuesday's debate: Pence is a born-again Christian \u2014 he became one in college \u2014 and has put his religion in the foreground of his political persona. \"For me it all begins with faith. It begins with what matters most, and I try and put what I believe to be moral truth first. My philosophy of government second. And my politics third,\" Pence said in a 2010 appearance on the Christian Broadcasting Network. And religion has indeed played a large part in his policy decisions. One notable example is his strong opposition to abortion. While serving in the House in 2011, he introduced an amendment to defund Planned Parenthood because the women's health organization provides abortion services. This March, as governor of Indiana, Pence signed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. The law bans abortions due to fetal abnormalities and also requires aborted fetuses \u2014 and those from miscarriage \u2014 to be buried or cremated. Women in Indiana protested the law by calling or tweeting at the governor's office to tell him about their periods, in an effort dubbed \"Periods For Pence.\" Trump and Pence, while different in temperament, have something in common: both men have hosted TV shows. In the 1990s, Pence hosted a Sunday TV show in Indianapolis and also had a radio talk show called The Mike Pence Show. He described himself as \"Rush Limbaugh on decaf,\" meaning while a conservative, he was not as bombastic as the popular Limbaugh, who hosts his own talk show. On his show, Pence discussed the week's news and also his conservative values. In a video from 1997 published this year by Politico, Pence discussed Kelly Flinn, who was the country's first female B-52 pilot. She had just been discharged from the Air Force for disobeying an order to end an affair and for lying under oath about doing so. On the show, Pence discussed the \"normalization of adultery\" and \"whether or not it was time to rethink this whole business of women in the military.\" After losing early campaigns for Congress, Pence wrote an essay apologizing for running negative ads against an opponent, Rep. Phillip Sharp. The Indianapolis Star has reported Pence \"swore off harsh political tactics.\" In the essay, Pence called for \"basic human decency.\" In July, Pence and Trump sat down for a joint interview on CBS' 60 Minutes. Interviewer Lesley Stahl asked Pence how he felt about some of Trump's attacks on his opponents, specifically referencing \"Lyin' Ted,\" Trump's nickname for his last-standing primary opponent, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Pence replied: Trump added that the two men are different people and he doesn't ask Pence to be negative. \"It's probably obvious to people that our styles are different. But I promise you, our vision is exactly the same,\" Pence added. In 2015, he signed into law a controversial \"religious freedom\" bill, which spurred wide backlash. Critics said the bill could allow business owners to ban LGBT customers based on a claim of religious freedom. After \"business, civic and sports leaders ... strongly called for a fix to the legislation,\" USA Today noted, Pence later signed a revised version of the law. But Pence appeared to back the bill in an interview on Fox in March 2015. \"Well let me say first and foremost, I stand by this law,\" he said. \"But I understand that the way that some on the left, and frankly some in the national media, have mischaracterized this law over the last week might make it necessary for us to clarify the law through legislation. And we were working through the day and into the night last night with legislative leaders to consider ways to do that.\" Although his running mate has denied his own early support of the Iraq War, Pence was in Congress at the time and voted in favor of authorizing the use of force in Iraq. In a 2002 interview with CNN leading up to the vote, Pence emphasized that there was \"overwhelming evidence... to suggest a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda,\" which ended up not being the case. When Trump was asked for his opinion on Pence's 2002 vote on 60 Minutes, he answered, \"He's entitled to make a mistake every once in awhile.\" When Pence was asked on Fox News this year about the vote, he said, \"I think that's for historians to debate. I supported President Bush's decision to go into Iraq, as well as to go into Afghanistan. I traveled downrange for 10 years in a row to visit our soldiers in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. I stood strongly through both of them.\"","label":0}
{"text":"2015 has been an eventful year for Barack Obama. He made a historic nuclear deal with Iran, two of his Supreme Court appointees voted to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide, he's fought with the left to advance his trade agenda, and he gave a speech on race and gun violence that was hailed as the best of his presidency. And none of that has caused his approval rating to budge in the slightest, as you can see in this HuffPost Pollster chart: The full trend of Obama's approval throughout his presidency, which you can see here, has had many more ups and downs. This year's rating of 45 percent approval and 50 percent disapproval is mediocre historically, as you can see over at Gallup (it tops George W. Bush and Harry Truman's seventh-year approval, but is well behind Bill Clinton and Dwight Eisenhower's and slightly behind Ronald Reagan's). Obama's rating is slightly better than it was last year, when it was similarly steady at about 43 percent approval and 52 percent disapproval. But the broader change some expected would result from improving economic news isn't evident yet. Political scientist Alan Abramowitz has argued that unless Obama's approval makes it back up to 50 percent, the Democrat who's running to succeed him should be considered a narrow underdog. He predicted that Obama's current approval rating of 45 percent would likely result in the Democratic nominee getting 49 percent of the two-party vote share, and therefore losing. Now, elections aren't simply a referendum on presidential approval (Abramowitz's own \"time for a change\" model also incorporates GDP growth). And of course, it's possible that future news events could change Obama's approval rating. But all such news events this year have, so far, failed to do so.","label":0}
{"text":"So Bill Clinton wants a third term so much that he s coming out to battle Trump. Bringing Bill Clinton in to fight Hillary s battles could be a double edged sword. She might gain some momentum but it s hard to believe that Trump won t come after them with some zingers. The problem with the zingers is that they might earn Hillary some sympathy from the voters. I say that she should fight her own battles but don t you know Bill would love to be sitting in the White House a year from now A new and more combative phase of Hillary Clinton s presidential campaign opens next month when she sends her husband out to stump for her in important early states.Waiting for him will be businessman Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner.The former president has been a low-key figure since Mrs. Clinton entered the race for the Democratic nomination in April, offering private advice and helping her raise money at closed-door fundraisers. In January, the campaign intends to showcase him in public forums in Iowa and New Hampshire, two states where the front-runner is locked in a tight race against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.Speaking to supporters recently, Mrs. Clinton described her husband as a secret weapon. Throwing Mr. Clinton into the mix could further escalate the rhetoric between the Trump and Clinton campaigns. In the 2008 presidential race, the former president would bristle at criticism directed at his wife and got in hot water when he suggested Barack Obama s victory in the South Carolina primary was less significant because of the large African-American vote.This past week saw back-and-forth volleys over whether comments Mr. Trump made about Mrs. Clinton were sexist. He said Mr. Obama schlonged her in the 2008 race and said her brief absence from a recent Democratic debate stage, when she was reportedly using the restroom, was disgusting. In an interview with the Des Moines Register, Mrs. Clinton said Mr. Trump has demonstrated a penchant for sexism. That drew a response from Mr. Trump on Twitter: Hillary, when you complain about a penchant for sexism, who are you referring to. I have great respect for women. In capital letters he then wrote, BE CAREFUL! Asked what Mr. Trump meant, his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, said: Mr. Trump speaks for Mr. Trump and his tweets speak for themselves. And he s very clear about what those tweets say. Another Trump spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, suggested in an interview with CNN that the Trump campaign intends to make Mr. Clinton s behavior an issue should Mrs. Clinton pursue this point. Mr. Clinton, during his presidency, paid $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment case brought by Paula Jones stemming from an encounter when he was governor of Arkansas. His affair with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment by the U.S. House in 1998. He was acquitted by the Senate the following year. Hillary Clinton has some nerve to talk about the war on women and the bigotry toward women when she has a serious problem in her husband, Ms. Pierson told CNN. Representatives for Mr. Clinton and the Clinton campaign declined to comment.Mrs. Clinton holds a commanding lead among Democrats nationally, but polling shows the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire are up for grabs. Losses in both states could potentially alter the dynamics of a race she is dominating.In a conference call with supporters this past week, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta said that Mrs. Clinton was in a dog fight in New Hampshire.","label":1}
{"text":"Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders vowed to nominate Latinos into key cabinet posts in their administrations if elected, according to their answers to a questionnaire organized by the nation's largest Latino coalition. The 20-question survey was submitted by the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda to all U.S. presidential candidates on Feb. 25, but received responses only from the two Democratic contenders and none from the Republicans, according to the results reviewed by Reuters. Latinos and African-Americans have emerged as key voting blocs in the Democratic race for the White House nomination so far, and are likely to play a large role in the outcomes of big contests looming in New York and California. \"From special assistants to cabinet members, Latinos will play a key role in helping to shape my policy priorities and be effectively represented in our agencies,\" former U.S. Secretary of State and Democratic front-runner Clinton wrote. U.S. Senator from Vermont Sanders promised to make his administration \"reflect the diverse make-up of the country... I can think of no place more vital for such diversity than in the cabinet and the Senior Executive Service of the President of the United States of America.\" President Barack Obama has nominated a number of Latinos to cabinet position during his time in office, two of whom are currently serving: Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro. Both Clinton and Sanders have already promised comprehensive immigration reform, appealing to Hispanic voters ahead of presidential nominating contests in minority-heavy states. Leading Republican hopefuls Donald Trump and U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, meanwhile, have promised to tighten up the borders and deport undocumented immigrants. The responses come as the Democratic contest for the party's presidential nomination is poised to roll into a slate of diverse states - including New York later this month and minority-heavy California in June. The NHLA will use the questionnaires to guide voter engagement ahead of the November election, and to hold the winner to promises made during the campaign, said Hector Sanchez, the chairman of the NHLA. \"This is not just a piece of paper that we're going to put out there,\" Sanchez said. \"If they want the Latino vote, they must engage with us.\"","label":0}
{"text":"The bill for compensating families of those who died in the Grenfell Tower fire in London may be as low as 4 million pounds ($5 million), according to several lawyers and a Reuters analysis of how damages laws apply in England. The blaze engulfed a 24-storey social housing block in west London on June 14, killing an estimated 80 people in the country s deadliest fire since World War Two. While similar disasters in the United States have led to massive payouts, any compensation for Grenfell would be far lower because English laws offer less generous damages and don t allow punitive claims, even if companies are found criminally responsible, said Brett Dixon, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers (APIL). The four main firms that have been linked to the Grenfell fire - U.S. companies Arconic Inc. and Whirlpool Corp. and Britain s Harley Facades and Rydon Group - declined to comment on the size or calculation of potential payouts. The Reuters calculation of a bill of 4 million pounds is based on the compensation amounts stipulated in the Fatal Accidents Act of 1976, precedents set in previous cases and the individual circumstances of the 70 victims identified so far. Three personal injury lawyers have verified the methodology used by Reuters and said the estimate for the total payout is reasonable. If the courts find there was no unlawful behavior by any of the companies or public bodies involved, victims will not be entitled to sue for compensation and would only get the financial support and temporary housing already provided by the government and public donations, personal injury lawyers said. The British judicial system is not renowned for being generous, said Rebecca Thomas of law firm Duncan Lewis, which is representing some victims families. It s not about money for the families, said Tim Murphy, whose brother Denis, a disabled former painter who lived on the 14th floor, died in the fire. Nothing can ease our pain, (but) I think it s quite insulting. The U.S. legal system sees punitive damages as a way of encouraging companies to behave lawfully, but British and European governments have taken the view this approach would put excessive burdens on the judicial system, businesses, insurers and state bodies that might be liable, some legal experts say. While APIL said the Grenfell Tower disaster demonstrated the inadequacy of payouts to victims, Duncan Fairgrieve, who has advised the UK government on compensation rules, said more generous payouts could also harm society. They could drive up insurance costs for all and lead to big claims against government bodies such as the National Health Service and the police, he said. There is an affordability issue, said Fairgrieve, a Senior Research Fellow at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. If the courts find someone was wrongfully killed, the claim categories are a flat 12,980 pounds per victim for bereavement, costs such as funeral bills, dependency damages where minors or dependent spouses are left behind, and property damage - all to be paid by the party found responsible. Under the 1976 law, only family members who were supported by those who died can claim dependency damages. Reuters has identified only five people who died leaving dependents who could definitely claim damages - on the basis they were financially dependent on the deceased. Daniel Machover, a lawyer at Hickman and Rose, which is representing some victims families, also said he didn t expect there to be many claims. Most of the others who died in the fire were minors, single or elderly and did not leave family members who were financially dependent upon them. The biggest dependency payout will be for children who lost both parents, said lawyers representing some of the victims. One five-year-old girl, Tasnim Belkadi, lost her mother, father and all her siblings in the fire. Lawyers said she could get 300,000 pounds, based on a share of her parents income and some childcare costs up to her 18th birthday. Her aunt, with whom she now lives, did not respond to requests for comment on the Reuters calculation. Grenfell plaintiffs can also claim expenses they incurred as the result of a death, such as the cost of a modest funeral. Heirs to the deceased could also claim the value of goods lost in the fire. The Association of British Insurers puts the cost of replacing the contents of an average three-bedroom home at 55,000 pounds. However, Thomas said Grenfell claims would probably be less than 30,000 pounds per property because compensation is based on the market value of personal belongings rather than replacement value, and the flats destroyed had only one or two bedrooms. Based on the victims circumstances, Reuters has calculated the payout for dependency damages could be 1.2 million pounds, for property it could be 1.4 million and for bereavement it could come to 1.0 million. Other smaller claims for costs and loss of parental guidance take the total to 4 million pounds. Police said the fire started in a fridge freezer made by a subsidiary of U.S. company Whirlpool and have been investigating whether the tower s cladding, made by U.S. firm Arconic Inc., played a role in the spread of the blaze. Arconic said it was up to contractors to ensure its products were used correctly. Whirlpool said it was investigating the fire. Rydon Group, the contractor that oversaw the refurbishment when the new cladding was added, said it had complied with all regulations. Sub-contractor Harley Facades Ltd said it was not aware of any link between the fire and the cladding. Fears among investors that companies linked to Grenfell could be sued for large sums in the United States hit their shares. Whirlpool s market value fell about $250 million on June 23 when police identified the maker of the appliance as Hotpoint, a brand owned by Indesit, which is a subsidiary of Whirlpool based in Italy. More than $1 billion was wiped off Arconic Inc. s value after Reuters reported in June that internal emails showed it had supplied flammable cladding panels, knowing they would be used on the tower and despite warning in its brochures that only non-combustible panels should be used on tall buildings. Arconic s share price has recovered since its late June lows but it and Whirlpool s stock are below the levels they were at just before the fire, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed 7 percent over the same period. Awards against companies in U.S. courts have run into the tens of millions of dollars per family in some cases. In 1980, a fire blamed in part on inadequate fire safety measures killed 85 people at the MGM Grand Hotel in Nevada and injured hundreds. The hotel operator and contractors agreed to pay victims families and survivors more than $200 million. Foreigners have often tried to sue U.S. corporations in U.S. courts over alleged wrongdoing abroad. However, judges have consistently ruled they lacked jurisdiction in such cases, saying adequate tribunals existed in the plaintiff s own country and that it would be hard for defendants to make their case in the United States. Machover at Hickman and Rose said he was considering whether Grenfell victims could bring a U.S. case on the basis that two of the companies involved were based there. But Thomas at Duncan Lewis and Leigh Day partner Jill Paterson were skeptical that U.S. courts would agree to hear Grenfell claims given the United Kingdom offers a reasonable forum for redress and because the U.S. companies were involved through European-registered subsidiaries. I can t see any circumstances under which they could bring this in the United States, said Thomas. Arconic and Whirlpool declined to comment on the possibility of legal claims against them.","label":0}
{"text":"Flint, Michigan (CNN) It was no Republican debate -- nobody talked about the size of their hands or made up demeaning nicknames -- but Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were ready for action Sunday night. Personal frustration peeked through as Clinton unloaded new attacks on Sanders over his opposition to the auto bailout and Sanders portrayed Clinton as a candidate straight out of Wall Street central casting. Sunday was also '90s night, as the candidates essentially re-litigated major political battles of the era -- including NAFTA, the assault weapons ban and crime bill -- through modern eyes. The debate came two days before Michigan's primary -- a key test of whether Sanders can expand his appeal to a broader and more diverse electorate -- and was shaped by the concerns of voters in this city that is still struggling with a water crisis for which local, state and federal officials share the blame. Here are five takeaways from Sunday's debate: Sanders waved, shouted, eye-rolled, baited and goaded his way through the debate. Clinton laid into his opposition to the auto industry bailout. That measure was part of a broader rescue of the financial industry, a point Sanders was only too happy to make by saying: \"If you are talking about the Wall Street bailout, where some of your friends destroyed the economy \u2014\" And then Clinton said: \"If you're going to talk, tell the whole story.\" Sanders railed against the bailout, saying that he decided to \"let the billionaires themselves bail out Wall Street -- it shouldn't be the middle class\" -- when Clinton tried to interject again. \"Could I finish? You'll have your turn,\" he said. He showed his frustration with Clinton again later, saying: \"Can I finish, please? All right?\" The exchange demonstrated a new level of comfort with the hand-to-hand combat of presidential campaigns. But it was also a risky move, making him sound potentially patronizing or dismissive of a candidate who could become the first female president. This from a candidate who entered the race bragging about never running a negative ad. Sanders might keep their disputes focused on differences of policy -- but at times Sunday night, it looked and sounded personal. When Clinton was asked about fracking, she launched into a nuanced answer that gave credence to localities, state governments, and more. Her bottom line: There wouldn't be many places where it would be OK under her. Sanders had a much simpler answer. \"No,\" he said. He doesn't support it. And he said he doesn't care about all the Democratic governors who support it. This, in a nutshell, is the difference between them. She has nuanced positions that look at the breadth of opinion across the country. She's also keenly aware of the limitations of government, and strains to keep her positions within those limits -- part of what she calls her \"responsibility gene.\" Sanders has definitive positions that take a look at his ideology. That's the Democrat's choice: nuance or no nuance. This same difference showed up when the two delved into the Flint water crisis at the debate's outset. Clinton's big move on stage -- her news-making comment at the debate's outset -- was one she'd resisted for months, arguing it was simplistic. But she went for it Sunday night, saying she agrees with Sanders in saying Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder needs to go. \"I agree the governor should resign or be recalled,\" she said. \"First thing you do is say, people are not paying a water bill for poison water. And that is retroactive,\" he said. So she readied an attack that Sanders didn't seem prepared for, going at the Vermont senator for opposing the auto bailout. \"The money was there and had to be released in order to save the auto industry and 4 million jobs and to begin the restructuring,\" Clinton said. \"I voted to save the auto industry. He voted against the money that ended up saving the auto industry. I think that is a pretty big difference.\" Then, she ticked off a list of states where she thinks that vote will hurt Sanders. \"Given the terrible pressures that the auto industry was under and that the middle class of this state and Ohio and Indiana and Illinois and Wisconsin and Missouri and other places in the Midwest were facing, I think it was the right decision to heed what President-elect Obama asked us to do,\" she said. \"You were either for saving the auto industry or against it. I voted to save the auto industry and I'm very glad that I did.\" The damage was done: When Clinton dropped the auto bailout bomb, the audience audibly ooooohed, highlighting the potency of that argument in the home of the U.S. auto industry. But he had his tone-deaf moments, sparking outrage on social media when he seemed to suggest that black people grow up poor and in ghettos and white people do not -- a particular eye-raiser because he'd been asked about his racial blind spots. \"When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto, you don't know what it's like to be poor,\" Sanders said. For Sanders, this is the central challenge facing his campaign. Clinton blew him out across the South among African-Americans, and Sanders can't withstand her doing so again in big, Midwestern states. Michigan's March 8 primary will be a key test of whether Sanders can win with a more diverse electorate. The following week -- when Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Florida and North Carolina vote -- will be his moment of truth. Near the end of the debate, Sanders also cracked a joke about boosting funding for mental health, saying that \"when you watch these Republican debates, you know why we need to invest in mental health.\" It was the right target (Republicans) and the right audience (liberals) -- but perhaps the wrong topic, as he again risked appearing insensitive. One for the base The debate was a strong sign that both candidates still see room to gain or lose ground among liberal voters. They spent so much time jockeying to get to each other's left that there was virtually no talk of Republicans at all. Clinton and Sanders defended government spending and intervention, teachers' unions, gun control, clean energy programs and efforts to fight climate change. They talked about a beefed-up role for the Environmental Protection Agency. There was no talk about foreign policy, the deficit, entitlements -- subjects always front-and-center at Republican debates. It's a clear sign that the Sanders camp doesn't see the Democratic nominating contest ending anytime soon, with liberal bastions like New York (which votes in April) and California (June) available as opportunities to rack up lots of delegates. Increasingly, Clinton is eyeing the general election on the campaign trail -- axing her usual shots at Sanders from her stump speech, focusing on the economy and laying into Republican front-runner Donald Trump. That wasn't apparent Sunday night.","label":0}
{"text":"The most crooked person to ever run for President The Obama administration is moving to dismiss charges against an arms dealer it had accused of selling weapons that were destined for Libyan rebels.Lawyers for the Justice Department on Monday filed a motion in federal court in Phoenix to drop the case against the arms dealer, an American named Marc Turi, whose lawyers also signed the motion.The deal averts a trial that threatened to cast additional scrutiny on Hillary Clinton s private emails as Secretary of State, and to expose reported Central Intelligence Agency attempts to arm rebels fighting Libyan leader Moammar Qadhafi.Government lawyers were facing a Wednesday deadline to produce documents to Turi s legal team, and the trial was officially set to begin on Election Day, although it likely would have been delayed by protracted disputes about classified information in the case.A Turi associate asserted that the government dropped the case because the proceedings could have embarrassed Clinton and President Barack Obama by calling attention to the reported role of their administration in supplying weapons that fell into the hands of Islamic extremist militants. They don t want this stuff to come out because it will look really bad for Obama and Clinton just before the election, said the associate.In the dismissal motion, prosecutors say discovery rulings from U.S. District Court Judge David Campbell contributed to the decision to drop the case. The joint motion asks the judge to accept a confidential agreement to resolve the case through a civil settlement between the State Department and the arms broker. Our position from the outset has been that this case never should have been brought and we re glad it s over, said Jean-Jacques Cabou, a Perkins Coie partner serving as court-appointed defense counsel in the case. Mr Turi didn t break the law .We re very glad the charges are being dismissed. Under the deal, Turi admits no guilt in the transactions he participated in, but he agreed to refrain from U.S.-regulated arms dealing for four years. A $200,000 civil penalty will be waived if Turi abides by the agreement.A State Department official confirmed the outlines of the agreement. Mr. Turi cooperated with the Department s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls in its review and proposed administrative settlement of the alleged violations, said the official, who asked not be named. Based on a compliance review, DDTC alleged that Mr. Turi engaged in brokering activities for the proposed transfer of defense articles to Libya, a proscribed destination under [arms trade regulations,] despite the Department s denial of requests for the required prior approval of such activities. Turi adviser Robert Stryk of the government relations and consulting firm SPG accused the government of trying to scapegoat Turi to cover up Clinton s mishandling of Libya. The U.S. government spent millions of dollars, went all over the world to bankrupt him, and destroyed his life all to protect Hillary Clinton s crimes, he said, alluding to the deadly Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.","label":1}
{"text":"The Hill reported:The NAACP President Cornell William Brooks is calling on Donald Trump to apologize to Alabama Rep. John Lewis, after attacking the civil rights icon in a series of tweets. By disrespecting John Lewis, Donald Trump dishonored Lewis sacrifice & demeaned Americans & the rights, he nearly died (for). Apologize, Brooks tweeted.More and more Democrats are bailing on the Inaugural Let them! You know they didn t want to go anyway Some of the Dems who aren t going are as radical as they come so why even have them there.Please tell us what John Lewis has done LATELY for America","label":1}
{"text":"You have to love this! A Florida man greeted President Trump today with a question that the president told him to ask the press: Where was Obama on the last hurricane? Then he answered his own question: Obama Was Playing Golf During The Last Hurricane Remember that? Obama didn t want to interrupt his vacation to travel to see hurricane survivors Not one peep from Michelle either. What a difference a presidency makes!FLASHBACK TO MARTHA S VINEYARD: Where was President Obama when the most serious natural disaster happened during his 8 years in office? He was golfing on Martha s Vineyard, and refused to leave his golfing vacation to assess the situation.President Obama is stirring resentment over his refusal to interrupt his Martha s Vineyard vacation to survey the Louisiana flood the worst U.S. natural disaster since 2012 while drawing comparisons to President George W. Bush s hotly criticized response to Hurricane Katrina in the same state.Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson defended Mr. Obama at a press conference Thursday, insisting that the president is closely monitoring the situation but that he will not cut short his two-week breather in the tony Massachusetts resort. The president can t be everywhere, Mr. Johnson told reporters in Denham Springs, Louisiana.Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, backed him up, saying at the press conference that he is not complaining in any way about our federal partnership. Even so, Mr. Obama s lack of urgency is drawing unflattering parallels to the federal response in 2005, when Mr. Bush was branded as uncaring and even racist for not touching down during a flyover two days after Hurricane Katrina. Washington Times","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday there could be unintended consequences from legislation allowing relatives of Sept. 11 victims to sue Saudi Arabia. \"It appears there may be some unintended ramification of that (the law) and I do think it is worth further discussing,\" Republican McConnell told reporters. Congress on Wednesday overwhelmingly rejected President Barack Obama's veto of the legislation.","label":0}
{"text":"Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is reportedly considering a run for U. S. Senate in 2018, when incumbent Sen. Dianne Feinstein ( ) is said to be considering retirement. [Several media outlets report that Schwarzenegger, who recently raised his profile with a series of Twitter clashes with President Donald Trump, is thinking of the political fray after several years' absence. Politico's Carla Marinucci reports: \"The prospect of Schwarzenegger's return to elected politics in a 2018 U. S. Senate run \u2014 possibly as an independent \u2014 is generating increasing buzz in state Republican circles, fueled by the former governor's seeming ability to get under the skin of President Donald Trump on social media. \" Schwarzenegger also opposed Trump in the Republican presidential primary, backing Ohio governor John Kasich instead. If elected, Schwarzenegger could pose a significant opposition threat to the Trump administration on issues such as climate change. California's controversial system was introduced under Schwarzenegger's administration. However, Schwarzenegger will have to confront his own political record along the way. Though he was to a second term in 2006, Schwarzenegger is mostly remembered for leaving the state in a fiscal mess after abandoning the reform agenda that brought him to office in the first place. The East Bay Times recalls: The Republican governor's approval ratings fluctuated while he was in office and were as high as 63 percent in March 2007. But five months after he left office, a Field Poll found that three of four California voters surveyed had a negative image of Schwarzenegger in the wake of revelations he had fathered a boy with a former household staff member while married to TV journalist Maria Shriver. Whether he runs as an independent or as a Republican, Schwarzenegger would face stiff competition from a long line of California Democrats who have been waiting, patiently, to angle for Feinstein's seat. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the \"most influential\" people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.","label":0}
{"text":"A Kurdish referendum for independence has decreased focus on fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting the militant group said. The focus which used to be like a laser beam on ISIS is now not 100 percent there, so there has been an effect on the overall mission to defeat ISIS in Iraq as a result of the referendum, said coalition spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon, using an acronym for Islamic State. Dillon added that there had been no impact on current military operations out of Erbil s airport.","label":0}
{"text":"Three prominent universities were sued on Tuesday, accused of allowing their employees to be charged excessive fees on their retirement savings. The universities \u2014 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and Yale \u2014 each have retirement plans holding more than $3 billion in assets and are being individually sued by a number of their employees in cases seeking status. The lawyer representing the three groups of plaintiffs, Jerome J. Schlichter, is a pioneer in retirement plan litigation. Over the last decade, he has filed more than 20 lawsuits on behalf of workers in 401( k) retirement plans and has been widely credited with lowering plan fees across corporate America. With the suits filed in federal courts on Tuesday, the focus has turned to a corner of the retirement savings market, 403( b) plans, which are named for a section of the tax code. The accounts are similar to 401( k) plans, but are offered by public schools and nonprofit institutions like universities and hospitals. The complaints allege that the universities, as the plan sponsors, failed to monitor excessive fees paid to administer the plans and did not replace more expensive, investments with cheaper ones. Had the plans eliminated their long lists of investment options and used their bargaining power to cut costs, the complaints argue, participants could have collectively saved tens of millions of dollars. \"It is important for retirees and employees of universities to have the same rights and ability to build their retirement assets as employees of companies,\" said Mr. Schlichter, a founding partner of Schlichter Bogard Denton in St. Louis. \"They shouldn't be penalized. \" In a statement, New York University said that it took the welfare of its faculty and employees seriously, including a dignified retirement. \"The retirement plans offered to them are chosen and administered carefully and prudently. We will litigate this case vigorously and expect to prevail,\" said John Beckman, a university spokesman. A spokeswoman for M. I. T. said it did not comment on pending litigation, while Yale said it was \"cautious and careful\" in administering its plans and would defend itself vigorously. More attention is being paid to investment costs shouldered by American workers, who are less likely today to have pension plans. With the strong support of the Obama administration, the Labor Department introduced new rules in April to strengthen investor protections, requiring a broader group of financial professionals to act in customers' best interest when handling their retirement money. The aim is to reduce conflicts of interest and the fees consumers pay. Even modest reductions in costs can have a significant effect on retirees' savings. An example from the Labor Department: Paying one percentage point more in fees over a career \u2014 say 1. 5 percent instead of 0. 5 percent \u2014 could leave a worker with 28 percent less at retirement. An account with $25, 000 \u2014 and no further contributions for those 35 years \u2014 would rise to only $163, 000 instead of $227, 000, at an annual rate of 7 percent. Mr. Schlichter said the three universities' plans were targeted because more people were asking questions about their retirement accounts and \"these involve clear breaches of the law. \" The complaint against N. Y. U. \u2014 which involves two 403( b) plans covering faculty, research administration and the medical school \u2014 centers largely on costs. The complaint said that participants were offered too many investment choices (there were more than 100 options for faculty) and that many of them were too expensive. The suit, filed in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, singles out several investments, including the TIAA Traditional Annuity, which it said has severe restrictions and penalties for withdrawal, as well as variable annuities that have several layers of fees and have historically underperformed. A spokesman for TIAA said it offered plans and investments that provide lifetime income. The suit also argues that even the cheapest funds offered could have been provided for less, given the enormous size and bargaining power of the faculty and medical school plans, which together held $4. 2 billion in assets for more than 24, 000 participants at the end of 2014. The complaint alleges that the university did not use its negotiating powers to select a single record keeper for administrative tasks such as sending statements to employees. It said it also overpaid for these services for many years. The issues concerning Yale's 403( b) retirement plan \u2014 which held nearly $3. 6 billion in assets in the spring of 2014 \u2014 follow a similar pattern: multiple record keepers with excessive fees, costing participants millions of dollars over the last six years too many investments of the same style and the use of funds instead of identical but ones. That case was filed in Federal District Court in Connecticut. Yale eventually consolidated to one provider, TIAA, in April 2015, and swapped in some investments, but the suit claims that the changes did not go far enough to fully protect the interests of its employees. Mr. Schlichter said participants were still burdened with sorting through more than 100 options, many of which were too expensive. The complaints lodged against M. I. T. 's retirement plan (unusually, it is a 401( k) like those used by corporations) are similar but with a twist. The suit alleges that the university, because of its longstanding relationship with nearby Fidelity, did not conduct a thorough search for a plan provider, which might have provided better service for less. The retirement plan offered more than 340 investment options \u2014 including 180 Fidelity funds \u2014 until July 2015, when M. I. T. reduced the lineup to 37 options but still retained Fidelity as the record keeper. The complaint said that Fidelity had donated \"hundreds of thousands of dollars\" to M. I. T. while Abigail Johnson, Fidelity's chief executive, has served as a member of M. I. T. 's board of trustees, giving her influence over the institution's . Had the plan reduced its options to those on the menu it adopted last year, \"participants would have saved over $8 million in fees in 2014 alone, and many millions more since 2010,\" according to the complaint, filed in Federal District Court in Massachusetts. M. I. T. recognized that the plan structure was inefficient, the filing said, since that was part of the reason it said it made the changes. But even after the overhaul, the suit alleges, investment costs could be further reduced. Fidelity, which noted that it was not a defendant in the case, declined to comment. Mr. Schlichter's firm has settled about half of his 20 cases over the last 10 years. His first case involving a 403( b) was against Novant Health, a nonprofit hospital system, which settled last year for $32 million. In a landmark case he argued last year before the Supreme Court, the justices, in a unanimous decision, agreed that plan sponsors had a \"continuing duty to monitor investments and remove imprudent ones. \" A series of suits, from Mr. Schlichter's firm and others, continue to be filed in the corporate world: Several asset managers, including Neuberger Berman and Franklin Resources, among others, have recently been sued for putting their own investments in their employees' 401( k) plans. Some of the more prominent cases against 401( k) plans settled by Mr. Schlichter include a $62 million settlement against Lockheed Martin, $57 million from Boeing and $27. 5 million from Ameriprise, all in 2015. He also settled cases with Cigna, International Paper, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, Bechtel and Kraft. Mr. Schlichter said his firm, which works on a contingency basis, typically collects up to a third of the settlement, while the remainder goes to the plaintiffs and members of the class. He said that his settlements also required employers to make changes to their plans to ensure fees were reasonable in the future.","label":0}
{"text":"Deepwater Horizon Continues to Impact Public Health Deepwater Horizon Continues to Impact Public Health By 1 135  It's hard to believe that the Deepwater Horizon incident, which discharged over 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, happened six years ago. What's not hard to believe is that the environmental health implications of the spill are stubbornly lingering.  Gulf residents of variety of species are paying a high price for it \u2014 so high that litigation against BP for its role in the spill, officially deemed \" negligent ,\" is likely to continue for decades as people fight to get help with ongoing medical expenses.  Last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that the spill was linked to an uptick in dolphin deaths , illustrating that this unprecedented release of petroleum products in the Gulf had a lasting health impact for animals.  Similarly, abnormalities in heart development among fish have also been connected to Deepwater Horizon exposure. Part of the problem is that sediments remain coated in oil and sludge . Because it was impossible to clean up every drop of crude from the Gulf, the oil that settled to the bottom continues to interfere with the embryonic development of a range of fish species.  But humans aren't doing too well either.  In the aftermath of the spill, people were exposed both to crude petroleum and to Corexit , a chemical dispersant used in unprecedented volumes during the cleanup.  Subsequent research has shown that in addition to having some hazardous health effects on its own, the combination of Corexit and the type of crude spilled during the Deepwater Horizon incident packs a hefty punch for marine animals.  In the weeks following the spill, first responders reported symptoms like rashes, respiratory problems, headaches, seizures and depression. In response to the complains, agencies closely monitored these individuals.  As the years went by, enough significant health problems arose for a class action lawsuit against BP. The company eventually agreed to a settlement that included the potential for\u2026","label":1}
{"text":"A sit-down meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel went from painfully awkward to downright offensive when Trump couldn t even muster an ounce of humility and grace. During a photo op, the two world leaders sat in stony silence as photographers did their best to try to capture a picture that showed some warmth between what are supposed to be two close allies. Instead they got Trump looking like his dad just told him they wouldn t be getting ice cream after all and Merkel squirming in discomfort.Trump s obvious irritability was bizarre to begin with, but his refusal to interact with Merkel only got worse. When a reporter suggested the pair give a handshake (as is customary when two leaders meet for the first time), Merkel leaned over to Trump to ask if he wanted to give it a go only to have Trump continue to stare straight ahead, ignoring her. She stared in astonishment, then resignation. The realization that the President of the United States really is this pathetic was written all over her face.Photographers: Can we get a handshake? Merkel (to Trump): Do you want to have a handshake? Trump: *no response* Merkel: *makes awkward face* pic.twitter.com\/ehgpCnWPg7 David Mack (@davidmackau) March 17, 2017Trump could have been in a bad mood for any number of reasons. His healthcare plan is going down in flames. His budget cuts which focus primarily on stripping funding away from the elderly and children in favor of more military spending are getting some of the worst press since his Muslim ban. His second Muslim ban was just shot down by two federal judges. And his plan to accuse the British government of helping Obama wiretap him didn t just blow up in his face, but actually caused an international scandal. Or it could be the fact that Germany has shown zero interest in indulging his tantrums.Whatever the cause, America just got another clear reminder that the damage Trump is doing isn t just domestic. He s undermining relationships with crucial allies in ways that may take decades to repair. And he s not even willing to give a simple handshake to prevent it.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Republican Ted Cruz carefully left the door open to a future run for president on Tuesday after a campaign that outlasted a long list of rivals but could not overcome the anti-establishment appeal of Donald Trump. Cruz, who still holds his U.S. Senate seat from Texas for another two years before facing re-election in 2018, told supporters in Indiana where he lost badly in the state's primary, that his campaign was suspended but that his role in the future of the party was not over. \"I am not suspending our fight for liberty,\" Cruz said. He could be among several Republicans who may resurface in the 2020 presidential campaign after failed bids this time, should the presumptive nominee this year, Donald Trump, falter in the Nov. 8 election. The 45-year-old Cruz became a favorite of evangelicals and the party's conservative wing after he won Iowa's caucuses, the first nominating contest of the race. He built the best organization of any other Republican campaign this year, but his zealous conservatism fell victim to Trump's outsider appeal. In the days leading up to the Indiana vote, Republicans were reminded of Cruz's take-no-prisoners approach in the Senate when former House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner called him \"Lucifer in the flesh\" and the \"most miserable son of a bitch\" he had ever worked with on Capitol Hill. The next test for Cruz will be determining what role he will play in the general election and whether, after months of attacks, he will throw his support behind Trump. Trump clearly would like his support as he tries to unite the Republican Party after a bitter primary battle. \"I want to congratulate Ted Cruz,\" Trump said in New York at a victory rally. \"He's a tough, smart competitor.\" Cruz, the son of a Cuban immigrant, gained prominence in conservative circles as the Texas solicitor general, arguing cases on religious liberty and states' rights. After he was elected to the Senate in 2012, he alienated colleagues but drew national attention for his role in the 2013 government shutdown. In a 21-hour talkathon, in which he sought to convince lawmakers to cut funding for President Barack Obama's signature health-care law, Cruz chided the \"cheap suits\" and \"bad haircuts\" of some politicians and read the children's book \"Green Eggs and Ham\" by Dr. Seuss. Cruz cast himself as the leader of a grassroots conservative army when he jumped into the White House race in March 2015, and he argued he was the only candidate who could unite disparate groups of the Republican Party, such as social conservatives and libertarians. He was buoyed by early wins in Iowa and at home in Texas, and Cruz claimed he was the Republican best suited to take on Trump after candidates favored by the party's establishment, such as Jeb Bush, left the race. As Cruz ended his campaign, vendors hawking campaign-themed apparel outside the Indianapolis event quickly discounted the merchandise bearing Cruz's campaign slogan, lowering prices from $20 a shirt to just $5. Supporters lingered in the remodeled train station where Cruz held his rally, some crying and others hugging one another as the news sunk in. Despite having long odds when he announced his candidacy, Cruz beat expectations. \"Cruz certainly performed better than anyone in Washington expected, and he still has Texas wired. However, no one is stopping the Trump machine now,\" Texas-based Republican strategist Joe Brettell said.","label":0}
{"text":"Former CIA director James Woolsey pitched a $10 million contract to two Turkish businessmen to help discredit a controversial U.S.-based cleric while Woolsey was an adviser to Donald Trump's election campaign, three people familiar with the proposal said. Just eight days after formally joining Trump's campaign as an adviser on national security issues, Woolsey met on Sept. 20, 2016 with businessmen Ekim Alptekin and Sezgin Baran Korkmaz over lunch at the Peninsula Hotel in New York, they said. Woolsey and his wife, Nancye Miller, proposed a lobbying and public relations campaign targeting Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric who lives in Pennsylvania. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses Gulen of instigating a failed coup in July 2016 and wants him extradited to Turkey to face trial. Gulen has denied any role in the coup. In an email memo seen by Reuters, Woolsey and Miller sketched a plan to \"draw attention to the cleric's possible role in the coup attempt\" and encourage an official investigation into his activities. Alptekin, an ally of Erdogan, had already agreed through one of his companies to a $600,000 contract with the consulting firm of Michael Flynn to research Gulen. Flynn was also a Trump campaign adviser and later became his national security adviser before being fired in February. Woolsey was a member of Flynn's firm, the Flynn Intel Group, according to a Justice Department filing by the firm and an archive of the company's website, although a spokesman for Woolsey disputed that characterization, saying he was an unpaid adviser and his affiliation was \"loosely defined.\" At the Sept. 20 meeting, Miller said she and Woolsey were in a better position than Flynn to influence decision-makers about Gulen's alleged role in the coup, according to Alptekin and two other people familiar with the discussion. Bidding for a lobbying or consulting contract with a foreign company or government is not illegal, and Woolsey and Miller did not win the contract in any event. But the previously undisclosed meeting shows for the first time that two Trump aides were competing with each other to win the lucrative business deal with Alptekin. The deal with Flynn is now being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller as part of his wider probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russians who tried to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, declined to comment. Jonathan Franks, a spokesman for Woolsey and Miller, said his clients were not under investigation. Flynn is a central figure in Mueller's investigation because of conversations he had with then-Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak last year and because he waited until March to retroactively register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for the work he did for Alptekin. In that filing, Flynn's lawyer, Robert Kelner, said the work done for Alptekin's company \"could be construed to have principally benefited the republic of Turkey.\" Flynn was fired as national security adviser in February after misleading Vice President Mike Pence about the extent of his conversations with Kislyak. Franks described the Sept. 20 meeting as \"unremarkable\" and said Miller could not locate the email memo or remember writing it. He also said Woolsey had pursued with Turkish interests an \"economic development proposal in the wake of the coup that centered around reassuring folks that Turkey was a safe place to do business\" but that the project's focus was not on Gulen. Alptekin said Woolsey and Miller pursued his business at the Sept. 20 meeting, pitching the project to target Gulen, but he decided to stick to his contract with Flynn's firm. Kelner declined to comment for this story. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. The disclosure in March of Flynn's contract to discredit Gulen sparked intense media scrutiny of people who had worked with Flynn, including Woolsey. Shortly after, Woolsey alleged in media interviews that Flynn and others had, at a Sept. 19, 2016 meeting in New York, discussed with Turkey's foreign and energy ministers the idea of covertly spiriting Gulen out of the United States and to Turkey. Flynn has denied through a spokesman ever discussing such a plan. Alptekin also denied it was ever discussed and said Woolsey's claim was \"all the more astounding\" because he had sought Alptekin's business at a meeting the following day. \"His story is fiction,\" Alptekin told Reuters. Franks said Woolsey stands by his account of the meeting. Woolsey first proposed the $10 million project to Korkmaz, the second Turkish businessman, at a meeting in California in August 2016. The proposal was outlined in an email sent from Miller to Woolsey on Aug. 18, printed out and shown by Woolsey to Korkmaz, who then forwarded it on to Alptekin. Korkmaz, who had known Woolsey for some years, invited Woolsey to the meeting, according to two people familiar with the meeting. Korkmaz told Woolsey that he was looking for someone who could handle a lobbying and public relations project related to Gulen. Korkmaz and Alptekin have no business ties but knew each other through a U.S-Turkey trade group, according to two people with knowledge of their relationship. Anil Leylek, a spokeswoman for Korkmaz's company, declined to comment. Franks confirmed the August meeting but described it as \"brief\" and \"not a pitch.\" Woolsey and Miller's proposal included getting Washington insiders like then-Senator Jeff Sessions, who is now Trump's attorney general, to co-author articles on the situation in Turkey, engaging with influential lawmakers such as Republican Senator Bob Corker, and getting Woolsey on Fox News and CNN, the memo said. \"The cost of this engagement will be $10,000,000,\" it said. Woolsey, who led the CIA for two years under former President Bill Clinton, joined the Trump campaign in September. He was on the transition team after Trump's election victory in November but he stepped down in January. Franks said Woolsey was an unpaid adviser to the campaign, had no obligation to report any efforts to pursue work for Turkish interests, and was now being smeared. \"With growing speculation that indictments could be handed down soon, it's not a surprise that others are attempting to accomplish in the press what they cannot in the grand jury room,\" Franks added.","label":0}
{"text":"People in Thailand celebrated the Loy Krathong or floating basket festival on Friday, following a year of mourning for late King Bhumibol Adulyadej that saw many celebrations muted or canceled. The mourning ended on Monday after a five-day funeral last week, and many citizens have returned to wearing colored garments after having stuck to black for a year. Participants in the festival pay respects to the water spirits, floating small, traditionally-hand crafted rafts carrying flowers, bamboo and candles on waterways in an ancient ritual. The rafts are also thought to carry away bad luck and usher in good fortune during the festival, which is celebrated all over Thailand, but is particularly spectacular in the north. Festivities will stay in a low key this year, out of respect for the late monarch, however, authorities in the capital said. We will not have excessive celebrations but will focus more on showcasing Thai culture, Chalermpon Chotinuchit, of the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA), told Reuters. The BMA urged celebrants to use rafts made from natural materials this year, after environment groups flagged concerns about non-biodegradable components clogging rivers and drains. Festival participants also struck a somber note. It will be a sadder period this Loy Krathong because everyone loves the late King Rama IX, said 23-year-old Nanthicha Sorndee. Safety concerns have prompted national carrier Thai Airways International to cancel some roundtrip flights between Bangkok and Chiang Mai on Friday and Saturday, it said in a statement, without elaborating. The northern Thai city celebrates Loy Krathong alongside Yi Peng, a festival in which brightly lit lanterns are wafted into the sky.","label":0}
{"text":"Irish journalist and documentary filmmaker Ann McElhinney took down a clueless liberal student during a discussion on global warming Ann is the quickest and smartest at debate. This liberal picked on the wrong person The student insults Ann with the following comment: I can t take anything you said seriously because you said that washing machines were more liberating than the birth control pill, the student yelled as a friend tried to calm her. You don t know anything! You are the least credible human being I ve like ever encountered in my life. She then called Ann a Goddamn idiot. Ann proceeded to give this student a BIG reality check on the EU and then American exceptionalism. Bravo Ann!On a side note- If you ever have the chance to hear Ann McElhinney speak, DO IT! She is one of the best speakers around!We ve had the pleasure of hearing her speak and came away very impressed!Her latest project is on the Gosnell abortion case:","label":1}
{"text":"Will shake things up  Media ratings magnet \/ Likely to steal all the thunder  Since Trump's June 2015 announcement speech, every word or phrase listed above describes what the American electorate witnessed or felt during the campaign because, as I said, Trump's consistency has been uncanny.  Now, let's now examine three quotes from the speech and then refer back to the list. All three reinforce the premise in my headline. But it was the following statement that haunted Trump's campaign from the second the words left his mouth:  When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good people.  Watching Trump say that on live television, I immediately thought, \"There goes the Hispanic vote!\" The fact is demographic voter data shows that for a Republican to be elected president, he or she must win at least 47% of the national Hispanic vote. Then poof, in one 20-second rant, Trump destroyed all the Republican Party's Hispanic outreach rendered since Romney won only 27% of the Hispanic vote in 2012.  From the \"impression list,\" Trump's inartful Mexican statement branded him with \"lacks a political filter,\" and \"lacks presidential demeanor\" to put it mildly. These two major negative \"branding phrases\" may have begun with his much-maligned Mexican comments, but later applied to numerous Trump-isms which popped up over the last year slowly undermining and unraveling his chances of ever winning 270 electoral votes.  Next is a Trump foreign policy gem about terrorism:  Islamic terrorism is eating large portions of the Mideast. They've become rich. I'm in competition with them.  What the #@& does that mean? Let's go to the \"impression list\" where we apply incoherent, inarticulate, uninformed, and desperately in need of a speech writer , to name just a few. And once again, repeat after me: \"Aall we need to know we learned\u2026.\"  For my last selection, I chose an example of how Trump, right out of the starting gate, tried to antagonize and denigrate other Republican presidential candidates (and later high-ranking party leaders.) It is important to note that Trump made the following statement within the first minute of his announcement speech:  The other candidates \u2014 they went in, they didn't know the air conditioning didn't work. They sweated like dogs. They didn't know the room was too big because they didn't have anybody there. How are they gonna beat ISIS? I don't think it's gonna happen.  Yikes! That nonsensical statement exploded the \"impression list.\" It was the opening act of an obstinate candidate who, we found out too late, is totally resistant to change even after his campaign began its slow-motion meltdown.  Sadly, Trump's announcement speech stands as living proof that he flunked kindergarten etiquette. Circling back to Flughum's theory, during his campaign, Trump never learned to clean up his own mess and has never said he was sorry after hurting someone (or a group of someones.)  In the end, Trump's likely defeat will be written off as an historical fluke. He will be viewed as a charismatic, untested, one-time outsider candidate who spearheaded a successful movement of fed-up voters. Through his celebrity status, he managed to parlay mass frustration into winning the Republican presidential nomination but, along the way neglected to learn the basics of kindergarten-level political behavior.  The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of the editors.  Cross-posted at RedState","label":1}
{"text":"At least four automakers knew for years that Takata's airbags were dangerous and could rupture violently but continued to use those airbags in their vehicles to save on costs, lawyers representing victims of the defect asserted in a court document filed on Monday. The Justice Department's criminal investigation into Takata's airbags has so far painted automakers as unwitting victims duped by a rogue supplier that manipulated safety data to hide a deadly defect, linked to at least 11 deaths and over 100 injuries in the United States. But the fresh allegations against Ford, Honda, Nissan and Toyota, made as part of a lawsuit in Florida and based on company documents, point to a far deeper involvement by automakers that used Takata's defective airbags for years. Honda vehemently denied the new allegations on Monday. The three other automakers either declined to comment or said a response would come through legal channels. Last summer, The New York Times reported indications that automakers, rather than being the victims of Takata's missteps, had pressed their suppliers to put cost before all else. That report focused on General Motors, which is not named in the Florida case, though plaintiff lawyers said they were preparing to take action against the company. The defect has prompted the nation's largest automotive recall ever, affecting nearly 70 million airbags in 42 million vehicles. The plaintiffs' filing came hours before Takata pleaded guilty, under a deal announced last month, to charges of wire fraud for providing the false data, a rare outcome for businesses accused of wrongdoing. Federal prosecutors also said last month that they had charged three Takata executives with fabricating test data and fined the Tokyo company $1 billion. \"I deeply regret the circumstances that resulted in the agreement today,\" Yoichiro Nomura, Takata's chief executive, said at the federal court hearing in Detroit. The company's actions were \"completely unacceptable,\" he said. \"Takata is fully committed to ensuring such conduct never happens again,\" he added. The allegations in the Florida case came in response to a court document filed by the automakers last week that pointed to Takata's plea deal to argue that the supplier alone was culpable. But the plaintiffs, who could gain from suing the automakers alongside Takata, argue that the automakers were more deeply involved in the handling of the defect. The fines and costs associated with the scandal have also taken a heavy financial toll on Takata, and it has been searching for a financial lifeline \u2014 possibly in the form of a white knight that would effectively take it over. One of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Kevin R. Dean, filed an objection to Takata's plea deal on Monday in Detroit, arguing that the automakers were accomplices in the . He urged the judge to reject the agreement and for the Justice Department to further investigate the automakers' role. The plaintiffs have taken particular issue with the amount set aside for victims in Takata's plea \u2014 a total of $125 million. In contrast, the automakers will have recourse to draw on an $850 million fund to offset continuing recall costs. Judge George Caram Steeh dismissed Mr. Dean's objections, saying that Takata's plea deal was in the best interest of the victims. He said any further action against the automakers should be pursued in civil court, and approved the plea deal as is. Randi Johnston, 26, of Farmington, Utah \u2014 who was injured in September 2015 when the airbag in her 2003 Honda Civic ruptured and metal shards struck her throat \u2014 attended the hearing and said afterward that she was shocked by the judge's decision. The shards severed most of her vocal cords, leaving her able to speak only in a whisper. \"I really don't have any words right now,\" said Ms. Johnston, a plaintiff in the Florida case. The filing by the plaintiffs says emails and internal documents turned over by Honda show that in 1999 and 2000, the automaker was intimately involved in developing a problematic propellant, or explosive, used in Takata's airbags. The propellant is housed in a steel container called the inflater, which in the Takata case can rupture, shooting metal fragments toward the car's driver or passengers. That propellant, based on a volatile compound, raised concerns internally at Takata at the time, and long plagued the company's engineers. During testing of Takata's inflaters in 1999 and 2000 at Honda's own facilities, at least two inflaters ruptured, according to the filing. Still, Honda pushed a particularly problematic configuration of the propellant over Takata's objections, the filing said. Honda chose Takata's airbags because of their relative \"inexpensiveness,\" the filing quoted Honda documents as saying. The first recalls of Takata's airbags did not take place until almost a decade later, when Honda recalled 4, 000 vehicles in 2008. The Times has reported that Honda and Takata became aware in 2004 of an airbag explosion in a Honda Accord in Alabama that shot out metal fragments and injured the car's driver. But the two companies deemed it \"an anomaly\" and did not issue a recall or seek the involvement of federal safety regulators. On Monday, Honda strongly y denied the allegations in the plaintiffs' filing. When it installed Takata's airbags, it said in a statement, \"Honda reasonably believed, based on extensive test results provided by Takata, that they were safe. \" Honda said it believed it reacted \"promptly and appropriately\" in handling known airbag defects. It also said Takata's airbags had not necessarily been cheaper than those of its competitors. \"Sometimes they were more expensive, sometimes less,\" the carmaker said. The filing also cites internal documents from Ford, Nissan and Toyota indicating that cost considerations influenced the automakers' decision to adopt Takata's airbags in the early 2000s, despite safety concerns. Toyota used Takata's airbags \"primarily\" for cost reasons, even though the automaker had \"large quality concerns\" about Takata and considered the supplier's quality performance \"unacceptable,\" the filing said. In 2003, a Takata inflater ruptured at a Toyota facility during testing, the court filing said. In 2005, Nissan began investigating the use of adding a drying agent to Takata's airbag inflaters out of concern that exposure to moisture made the propellant particularly unstable, the filing says. Takata engineers had long known that its explosive was sensitive to moisture and adopted it despite internal concerns over its safety. Although patents show that its engineers have long struggled to tame the propellant, the company still maintains that the explosive can be stabilized to withstand moist conditions. Ford chose Takata's inflaters over the objections of the automaker's own inflater expert, who opposed the use of Takata's propellant because of its instability and sensitivity to moisture, the filing said. Ford overrode those objections because it thought Takata was the only supplier that could provide the large number of inflaters Ford needed, the filing says. The filing says that Ford, Honda, Nissan and Toyota were also aware of instances of ruptures years before any recalls. It also mentions the German carmaker BMW and points to circumstantial evidence that BMW was similarly involved in what federal prosecutors, in their criminal complaint and in announcing the Takata agreement, have called a . But BMW has so far refused to submit documents in the case, the filing says. Representatives of Nissan and BMW said the companies could not comment on active cases. A Toyota representative also declined to comment. A Ford spokeswoman said the automaker would respond through appropriate legal channels.","label":0}
{"text":"Former vice-presidential nominee and governor of Alaska Sarah Palin made her first foray into the 2016 presidential race Tuesday by announcing she is endorsing Donald Trump. \"I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States of America,\" Palin said in a statement from the Trump campaign announcing the endorsement. She later appeared alongside Trump at a campaign event at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa \"You're putting relationships on the line for this country because you're willing to make America great again,\" she said at the rally. \"I am here because like you, I know it's now or never.\" \"I'm in it to win it because we believe in America,\" she added. Trump told supporters he was \"greatly honored\" to receive Palin's support. \"She's the woman that from day one I said I needed to get her support,\" he said. Palin, who became a symbol of the Tea Party movement following the 2008 presidential election, is the highest-profile backer for a Republican contender so far in the race. In her endorsement speech, Palin praised Trump for bringing up controversial issues to create \"a good, heated primary,\" while taking aim at what she called \"establishment candidates\" in the race. \"They've been wearing political correctness kind of like a suicide vest,\" she said. The endorsement comes less than two weeks ahead of the critical lead-off Iowa caucus, where Trump is locked in a dead heat with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. In the statement announcing the endorsement, Trump's campaign described Palin as a conservative who \"helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement.\" The statement also quoted Cruz as once saying he \"would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin...She can pick winners.\" Campaigning in New Hampshire, Tuesday, Cruz responded to Palin's endorsement of Trump, saying \"regardless of what Sarah intends to do in 2016, I will remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin.\" Trump's national political director Michael Glassner previously worked with Palin, who was a virtual newcomer to the national political arena when McCain named her as his running mate. Palin is expected to join Trump on Wednesday for campaign events in Norwalk, Iowa and Tulsa, Okla. \"Even with a record number of candidates and internal calls to become more inclusive as a party, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin remain two of the GOP's most influential leaders,\" Mark Paustenbach, Democratic National Committee Press secretary, said in a statement responding to the endorsement. \"Their divisive rhetoric is now peddled by everyone from Ted Cruz to Marco Rubio. Americans deserve better than what Trump and Palin have to offer, but it seems like the other Republican candidates would rather follow in their footsteps,\" the statement continued. Palin's endorsement was not the only one Trump received Tuesday. While campaigning at Iowa's John Wayne Birthplace Museum, he received an endorsement from the western film actor's daughter, Aissa Wayne. Wayne said the country needs a strong and courageous leader like her father, and that he would be offering his endorsement if he were still alive. Trump said he was a big fan of Wayne and that the actor represented strength and power \u2014 which, he said, the American people are looking for. The Associated Press contributed to this report.","label":0}
{"text":"Former President George W. Bush made an appearance today at the Southern Methodist University football field in Dallas, where his wife, the former first lady Laura Bush is an alumni. SMU is also the home of the George W. Bush Presidential Center. The former President talked to the players and coaches about the devastating floods their families may be dealing with. He also offered his support and encouragement to the players.G.W. stood in the middle of the field and spoke to the players and coaches, as he tried to reassure them that they would recover: I know there s some people from Houston here, and the Houston area. And I know you re going through a really tough time. And just know that there ll be a lot of people that are gonna help, help the people down there a lot. The country, right now, they re recovering, and so the key thing on the recovery is to keep people safe. And then it s gonna be the rebuilding. And if you re from that area, you d be amazed at all the people who come down there to help all kinds of people. And so, the days are dark now, but they re gonna get better. If anyone knows about hurricanes, and what is required to rebuild entire neighborhoods and cities, it s former President George W. Bush. The media destroyed the former president for not acting fast enough to help the Hurricane Katrina victims where severe flooding affected residents from Gulfport, Mississippi to New Orleans, Louisiana, and areas in between. Now the media is criticizing President Trump for visiting the victims too soon.Watch Bush s remarks here from the SMU Football Twitter account:Thank you President Bush for coming to practice today to offer support to our players from the Houston area!@TheBushCenter pic.twitter.com\/7lQRfWGrjQ #PonyUpTempo (@SMU_Football) August 29, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Afghan President Ashraf Ghani sacked the chairman of the country s Independent Election Commission on Wednesday, raising doubts over whether parliamentary and council ballots scheduled for next year will take place as planned. Najibullah Ahmadzai, head of the body charged with organizing the elections, had faced growing pressure following repeated delays to preparations for them and had lost the support of both Ghani and disillusioned foreign donors. The 2018 votes are seen as dry runs for a presidential election in 2019 and a key test of the progress made by Afghanistan s Western-backed government towards establishing durable democratic institutions. Following a contentious presidential election in 2014, marred by allegations of massive voter fraud on both sides, international donor countries have laid heavy emphasis on the need for successful elections next year. But planning has been beset by a mix of technical and political problems that have made the officially scheduled date of July 2018 increasingly unrealistic. Five members of the seven-member IEC wrote to Ghani this week accusing Ahmadzai of was incompetence. Ambitious plans for a biometric voter registration system had to be abandoned and squabbling between members of parliament and Ghani s fragile National Unity Government over issues including who sits on the election commission have caused months of delay. The problems underline the fragility of the political institutions created in Afghanistan since a U.S.-led campaign brought down the Taliban in 2001. The bitter 2014 presidential election produced no agreed winner and led to a U.S.-brokered deal which saw former rivals Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah forced into an uneasy coalition that has struggled to win popular support. District council elections have never been held, despite being mandated in the 2004 constitution, while the current parliament s term was supposed to end in June 2015 but has been extended due to the difficulty of holding new elections. Last month, officials from international partners including the United Nations told the Afghan government that even under the most favorable conditions, the earliest date on which an election could feasibly be held was Oct. 2018. Many Western diplomats believe even that date is impossible. If not ready by October, Afghanistan s mountainous terrain, bad roads and lack of security mean that registering voters and setting up balloting stations across the country are likely to face severe delays over the winter months, potentially pushing the date into the following year.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was moved to tears on Thursday after visiting a nearly decade-old camp for Congolese displaced by violence in the country's east, and insisted there has to be a way to hold \"safe and fair elections.\" Haley, the most senior member of President Donald Trump's administration to visit Democratic Republic of Congo, traveled by helicopter to Mungote camp in Kitchanga, home to some 15,000 displaced people. Dozens of excited children waved as Haley left on a U.N. peace-keeping helicopter to return to the provincial capital of Goma. She was visibly upset. \"The reason I got emotional today was the hundred-plus kids that were chasing our cars and seeing us off,\" Haley told reporters after the visit. \"All I kept thinking was, what's going to happen to them? The sad reality, as it looks now, is that they are going to end up just like their parents.\" A single mother named Angelique told Haley she had been raped twice. \"It's hard for her when she sits in the kitchen with her seven children because they watched her getting raped,\" Haley said as she recounted what Angelique told her. \"She doesn't know what to say to them,\" Haley said. \"No one should live like this. We can't turn a blind eye to all of this,\" Haley said. Congo is the final stop on Haley's week-long Africa visit, which has also taken her to Ethiopia and South Sudan, where she met with President Salva Kiir. On Friday she is due to meet with Congolese President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power since 2001 when he took over from his father. Congo has never had a peaceful transition of power, and Kabila refused to step down when his second elected term ended in December, fueling insecurity in a country where millions died in conflicts between 1996-2003, most from hunger and disease. Under an accord struck on Dec. 31 between Kabila's representatives and opposition leaders, Kabila is barred from trying to change the constitution to stand for a third term. \"We have to find a way to have a peaceful situation,\" Haley said. \"We have to find a way for them to have safe and fair elections, so we that we can get some leaders that know how to handle this situation and get these armed groups to stop.\" The Congolese electoral commission said earlier this month that an election to replace Kabila cannot take place before April 2019, a delay that the opposition said would cause an impatient population to \"take matters into its own hands.\" The largest U.N. peace-keeping mission is deployed in Congo, costing more than $1 billion annually. Haley is reviewing all operations in a bid to cut costs, as the United States is the largest contributor, paying 28 percent of the budget. The 193-member U.N. General Assembly agreed in June to a $7.3 billion peace-keeping budget, a cut of some $600 Million. The Congo operation has to cut $93 million. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned that any further budget cuts could harm the U.N. mission in Congo. \"The state is still absent from many parts of the country and all too often preys on the citizens it is meant to protect,\" Guterres wrote in a report to the 15-member Security Council last month Peace-keepers kept watch while Haley was at Mungote camp in Kitchanga, where she also visited a small bakery started by 50 women. \"They're making a profit and they just bought a sheep with the profits that they made,\" she said. \"So it's inspiring to see they're not just sitting here complaining, they're trying to make the best of the life that they have.\"","label":0}
{"text":"George W. Bush was famously attacked with flying shoes. So was Hillary Clinton. William Kristol was hit in the face with a cream pie. Last month, Donald Trump barely escaped being hit with tomatoes.The takeaway? American projectiles are lame.In order to see how it s really done, we have to travel by video to New Zealand where Minister Steven Joyce was hit in the face this week with a flying rubber dildo hurled by a protester. Joyce is a conservative member of the island nation s House of Representatives who supports the infamous trade agreement known as TPP the Trans-Pacific Partnership.The unknown dildo-tossing protester was arrested by law enforcement.Joyce was holding a press conference in Waitingi on the North Island during which he was discussing the benefits of the TPP. That s when the dildo smacked point-blank in Joyce s face.After being hit, Joyce said astutely, It would be unfortunate for being known for this incident. As the New York Post quipped: too late.Of course, I stand by my position that assaulting public officials with projectiles or blood-red paint or, for that matter, sex toys is bad form and only serves to underscore how the respective protesters are clearly incapable of verbally expressing their dissatisfaction. Which case, they probably should seek out other hobbies because activism isn t their bag. But, I will admit, seeing a stuffy conservative politician get hit in the face with a flying penis is never not funny.Now that I m really thinking about it, part of me wishes this had been Ted Cruz? If there s one man in the United States who s in desperate need of being hit in the face with a giant rubber dick, it s Ted Cruz. Best case: Cruz getting hit in the face with a penis while he s doing his awful misquoted JFK impression. (I m joking of course. Hitting Ted Cruz in the face with a penis is wrong and illegal.)","label":1}
{"text":"The use of the #NeverTrump hashtag grew on Twitter on Monday as detractors of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump fretted over his momentum on the eve of Super Tuesday election contests. On Twitter, the top influencer, or person who received the most engagement on their #NeverTrump tweets, was Trump rival Marco Rubio, according to online research firm Hashtagify.me. The senator from Florida and real estate billionaire Trump are engaged in an increasingly personal battle of insults on social media before voters in more than a dozen states select their party's nominee to run for the White House in November. Rubio began using the tag on Friday, tweeting: \"Donald Trump is a con artist - and he cannot be our nominee. #NeverTrump.\" The tweet received more than 8,000 \"likes\" and 5,100 retweets. He repeated the tag in three more tweets over the weekend, with each one getting several thousand likes or retweets. A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not immediately return calls for comment. Another major influencer on the tag was conservative commentator Glenn Beck (@glennbeck), even though he has used it just once, on Sunday. Beck supports U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas in the campaign. Still, Beck's post - \"Praying for this great country. Praying for a true constitutionalist! God bless (an emblem for the American flag). #NeverTrump #CruzCrew\" - proved influential, getting retweeted nearly 1,000 times and liked nearly 2,000 times. Traffic on the hashtag was dominated by users who identify as conservative or Republican, most expressing vexation with the front-runner. Many tweets focused on Trump's CNN interview on Sunday, when he declined to repudiate an endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Trump later said he did not hear the question properly because of a defective ear piece. Whitney Westerfield (@KyWhitney), a Republican state senator from Kentucky, tweeted on Monday, \"Wow. Trump blaming his failure to repudiate the hatred & extremism of the KKK on a #BadEarpiece. #NeverTrump.\" \"No, the white supremacist\/David Duke\/KKK question isn't hard. Reject their support & denounce their hate. Again & again & again. #nevertrump,\" said Stephen Hayes (@stephenhayes), a writer for the Weekly Standard, a weekly conservative magazine. Trump supporters have countered with their own hashtag: #AlwaysTrump. \"We must continue to fight on social media, the Peoples Revolution, the strongest tool right now! #TRUMP2016 #AlwaysTrump,\" wrote Trump supporter Linda Alexander (@noopdoggy). Still, the #NeverTrump hashtag was winning the trending battle, seeing roughly twice the traffic as #AlwaysTrump on Monday, according to social media analytics firm Zoomph. (Reporting by Gina Cherelus; Editing by Dan Burns and Grant McCool) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.","label":0}
{"text":"In the September issue of W magazine, Rihanna was cast as Tomorrow, an otherworldly warrior queen and champion of the downtrodden, resplendent in diamonds and foil. A month earlier, at the MTV Video Music Awards, Beyonc\u00e9 projected a similarly astral vibe. Flanked on the stage by twin columns of attendants, she was a galactic goddess in a white ermine cape. In November, on \"Saturday Night Live,\" her sister, Solange Knowles, flaunted a headdress of crystals and braids, looking every inch a regal visitor from distant planet. Each was in her way a beacon of Afrofuturism, a social, political and cultural genre that projects black space voyagers, warriors and their heroic like into a fantasy landscape, one that has long been the province of their mostly white counterparts. [See more Year in Style articles] Familiar to some, exotic to others, the term refers loosely to an unlikely fusion of parts: Egyptian and other mythologies, mysticism and magical realism with Afrocentricity, modern technology and science fiction. A freighted concept in more ways than one, it gained traction this year, muscling its way into the pop cultural mainstream via the intertwined worlds of entertainment, art and style. In part, Afrofuturism, an aesthetic dating roughly from the 1970s, has taken on a new public face through a new generation of recording artists \u2014 Erykah Badu, Missy Elliott and Janelle Mon\u00e1e among them \u2014 who have given it not only a voice, but also a look. You will likely know it when you see it: a of cyborg themes, loosely tribal motifs, android imagery and gleaming metallics that might be appropriate for a voyage to Pluto's outer reaches. Its latest incarnation seems timely, if not downright inevitable. \"With the diversity of the nation and world increasingly standing in stark contrast to the diversity in futuristic works, it's no surprise that Afrofuturism emerged,\" writes Ytasha L. Womack, who chronicled and popularized the evolution of the genre in her 2013 book, \"Afrofuturism: The World of Black and Fantasy Culture. \" \"But when, even in the imaginary future,\" she goes on, \"people can't fathom a person of descent a hundred years into the future, a cosmic foot has to be put down. \" The internet has lent the movement a force unknown in previous incarnations. A visual metaphor for empowerment on sites like the Afrofuturist Affair and influential Instagram accounts like Inkrayable_girafe, it permits black men and women to take charge of their image. Today, Ms. Womack writes, \"a fledgling filmmaker can shoot his web series on a $500 DV cam, post it on YouTube, and promote it on Instagram and Twitter. \" Lina Iris Viktor, a artist in New York who paints queenly with a futuristic edge, picked up the thread. \"The internet democratized the playing field,\" she said. \"Now the voices you hear are authentically ours. Instead of everybody else telling you stories, explaining to you what our work is about, we are telling you what it's about. \" An Afrofuturist narrative is embedded as well in a recent flurry of museum shows. On view through November at El Museo del Barrio were the fashion illustrations of Antonio Lopez, a pioneer in the genre whose works of the '70s and '80s featured a multiracial cast of robotlike figures and astronauts propelled into a Tomorrowland. It is a brave new world, as a review in The New York Times noted in June, \"in which race and gender were fluid, and existing social inequities corrected or transcended. \" Afrofuturism is a current in the multimedia installations of the artist Saya Woolfalk, whose utopian universes and Empathics, a future race fusing \u2014 and all but erasing \u2014 racial and ethnic boundaries, were featured this year in shows at the Brooklyn Museum, a light show in Times Square and, just this month, an installation at Art Basel Miami Beach. Afrofuturist allusions crop up less overtly in the sprawling canvases of Kerry James Marshall, whose exhibition at the Met Breuer, through Jan. 29, includes idealized portraits of Boy and Girl Scouts wreathed in halos of the kind often seen on heroes. This summer, the movement flexed its muscle at the megaplex, where \"Captain America: Civil War\" featured the Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) a superhero who in 2018 will star in \"Black Panther\" as the king and protector of the imaginary nation of Wakanda. Afrofuturism's resurgence could not be more timely, arriving as it does in a climate perceived as indifferent, if not downright inimical, to racial and ethnic minorities. In her book, Ms. Womack recalls a time when black or brown characters were all but invisible in the culture at large. As a girl, she would fantasize that she was Princess Leia of \"Star Wars. \" \"While it was fun to be the chick from outer space in my imagination,\" Ms. Womack writes, \"the quest to see myself or browner people in this space age, galactic epic was important to me. \" It was in the absence of minorities from pop lore, she goes on, \"that seeds were planted in the imaginations of countless black kids who yearned to see themselves in spaceship too. \" Count among them Tim Fielder, a New York graphic artist and animator whose illustrations, produced over a span, drew visitors last spring to \"Black Metropolis,\" at the Gallatin Galleries at New York University. Mr. Fielder's pioneering cartoon narratives \u2014 notably those of \"Matty's Rocket,\" his spirited black female cosmonaut, who will lift off next year in graphic novel form \u2014 are particularly relevant now, he maintained: \"They let young artists know that they're not on dangerous turf, that someone has gone there before them. \" Afrofuturism's epic imagery offers youth a mirror, Mr. Fielder said. \"These kids are able now to see themselves in environments that are expansive, both technologically and in terms of social mores and gender,\" he said. They also see themselves newly reflected in the comic books that remain a potent form of Afrofuturist expression. Last spring, the Black Panther, lately of \"Captain America,\" was resurrected by Marvel as the noble protagonist of his own comic book series, written by Coates, the author of \"Between the World and Me. \" And this year, Riri Williams, an teenage superheroine with an M. I. T. degree, will slip into the fabled power suit in the \"Iron Man\" comic series. Such vanguard characters can trace their genesis to early champions of Afrofuturism, paramount among them Sun Ra, the jazz composer, poet and philosopher who incorporated themes into his music and his seminal film, \"Space Is the Place,\" a tale of interplanetary time travel. Afrofuturism owes as important a debt to the writer Octavia Butler, whose 1979 \"Kindred,\" posits an alternate reality in which an heroine is transported from Los Angeles to early Maryland. It owes a debt as well to the music of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, with their prophetic lyrics in \"Mothership Connection\": Time to move on Light years in time Ahead of our time. Afrofuturist themes were revisited in the '90s, but still as a genre without a name until the cultural critic Mark Dery formally christened it in his 1994 essay \"Black to the Future,\" after which it flourished for a time before retreating to the shadows. Now the movement has returned in force, beamed down to the concert stage. Last month, the '70s disco diva Grace Jones, Afrofuturism's mascot, toured in the British Isles, her stage persona, covered in tribal paint and feathers, a reprise of her performance at the Afropunk Fest in Brooklyn last year. On a broadcast of \"The Tonight Show\" in February, the singer FKA Twigs seemed to alight from the clouds swathed in a incandescent white. Her costume, in crystals, was created with Grace Wales Bonner, a London designer whose work in the past has been rife with Afrofuturist allusions. In her \"Lemonade\" album, released in April, Beyonc\u00e9 reigns in an utopia, leading a phalanx of women in ethereal white dresses that simultaneously conjure ancient and societies. The style world, too, has now embraced the movement, if only, perhaps, to reinforce its stature as an arbiter of cool. For the W September cover and editorial feature shot by Steven Klein, Rihanna's costumes were cobbled from scratch. \"She's a a queen,\" said Edward Enninful, the magazine's fashion and style director. \"A queen does not wear clothes off the runways. \" Instead she wears an otherworldly pastiche of vanguard creations by Gareth Pugh, Prada, Proenza Schouler and others, clothes conceived, Mr. Enninful said, to emphasize Rihanna's majestic persona. \"It's a look that many young black females out there haven't seen before,\" he said. Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy was among the first to integrate Afrofuturist imagery into his runway shows. Two years earlier, he signed Ms. Badu as the face of the brand. Mr. Tisci followed up repeatedly, most recently with a fall 2016 line replete with cosmological symbols, including that familiar Afrofuturist talisman, the Egyptian Eye of Horus. Calvin Klein released a fall advertising campaign starring the rapper Young Thug, dressed in flares and a fitted pinstripe chasuble, its neckline embellished with an orb. A recent campaign from Chanel featured Willow Smith festooned in Afrofuturistic jewels. Others are advancing this aesthetic in more subtle ways, thrusting aside clich\u00e9s as they go. \"Afrofuturism has to become something more than just an idea of black people in shiny metallic clothing,\" said Michelle Busayo Olupona, the designer behind Busayo NYC, a label incorporating Afrofuturist themes in a abstract way. \"In my own work, I try to create an aesthetic and style evocative of the past but very much grounded in the now. \" Ms. Olupona said her abstract, Afrocentric designs, some incorporating fantasy fauna and futurist imagery, \"suggest ways in which we can differentiate ourselves. \" \"What they say about the future,\" she continued, \"is that we're always going to be here. \" Another showcase for contemporary, less literal interpretations of Afrofuturism is 9J, a boutique and gallery recently sprung up on Bruckner Boulevard in the South Bronx. It aims to usher in the movement's next wave, with items like a ribbed sweater worthy of \"Star Wars,\" created by a local designer Jesenia Lopez Birkenstock platforms covered in feathers and Swarovski \"gems\" and an outsize headdress of spiraling silver wire. These pieces mingle technology, fantasy and Afrocentric themes with a streamlined opulence. The shop's owner, Jerome LaMaar, whose line, 5:31 J\u00e9r\u00f4me, has drawn clients like Beyonc\u00e9 and the model Hailey Baldwin, wore goggles the other week while presiding at the opening of Africollision, an installation at 9J that eschewed the hallmarks of old school Afrofuturism. \"We want to play with the idea of what is tribe, what is Africa, what is the future, and mix it all up without being predictable. \" Mr. LaMaar insisted. \"Who wants to see what's already been done?\"","label":0}
{"text":"The Washington Post just got called out BIG TIME on a fake story they published This is a screenshot of the article:THE BIG LIE FROM WASHINGTON POST: President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in a White House meeting last week, according to current and former U.S. officials, who said Trump s disclosures jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.They tried to discredit President Trump in his dealings with Russia by saying President Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russians .NOT TRUE! They got caught and then called out by the Trump administration s National Security Advisor.This is awesome:National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster made a statement saying, The story that came out tonight, as reported, is false. Natl Security Adviser McMaster made a statement denying a report that @POTUS revealed classified info to Russia. https:\/\/t.co\/LB3P3BgT10 pic.twitter.com\/gRNcLlZNvC Fox News (@FoxNews) May 15, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"RT October 27, 2016  The number of wild animals on Earth could fall by more than two-thirds in the 50 years to 2020, according to a new report which places the blame on the destruction of habitats, hunting and pollution. The forecast could lead to major consequences for humans.  The Living Planet Report 2016 says that animal losses are on track to reach 67 percent in the 50 years to 2020. The report's authors also took into consideration a recent trend in animal population decline, citing a 58 percent plummet between 1970 and 2012.  The researchers analyzed the changing presence of 14,152 monitored populations of the 3,706 vertebrate species \u2013 mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles among them.  According to the paper, the biggest cause of the plummeting animal populations is the destruction of wilderness areas by farming and logging. Pollution was also mentioned as a significant problem. Vaccine-laden M&M's to be distributed via drone for endangered ferrets https:\/\/t.co\/wm4DUucNxn pic.twitter.com\/9a6F9x3raG  \"Humanity's misuse of natural resources is threatening habitats, pushing irreplaceable species to the brink, and threatening the stability of our climate,\" said WWF's director of science, Mike Barrett. A d v e r t i s e m e n t  Animals across the planet are expected to be affected. However, rivers and lakes are the hardest-hit areas. Barrett noted that global warming is exacerbating the pressures.  \"We are no longer a small world on a big planet. We are now a big world on a small planet, where we have reached a saturation point,\" the Stockholm Resilience Center's Professor Johan Rockstr\u00f6m said in a foreword for the report.  The decline in wildlife, along with climate change, is part of the proposed notion of Anthropocene, a term which suggests a new era in which humans have managed to have a significant global impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems.  The notion \u2013 which has yet to be officially approved as a term used to explain geological time \u2013 can lead to major consequences.  \"The richness and diversity of life on Earth is fundamental to the complex life systems that underpin it. Life supports life itself and we are part of the same equation. Lose biodiversity and the natural world and the life support systems, as we know them today, will collapse,\" WWF Director-General Marco Lambertini said, as quoted by the Guardian.  In fact, the report states that humans could be anything but happy if the forecast comes to fruition, noting that the predicted situation could provoke serious competition.  \"Increased human pressure threatens the natural resources that humanity depends upon, increasing the risk of water and food insecurity and competition over natural resources,\" the report states.  There does, however, appear to be some hope. Some species are beginning to recover, suggesting that conservation efforts could help tackle the crisis.  However, Barrett noted that in order for such efforts to take place, society must largely change how it consumes resources.  \"You'd like to think that was a no-brainer in that if a business is consuming the raw materials for its products in a way that is not sustainable, then inevitably it will eventually put itself out of business,\" Barrett said.  \"The report is certainly a pretty shocking snapshot of where we are,\" he added. \"My hope though is that we don't throw our hands up in despair \u2013 there is no time for despair, we have to crack on and act. I do remain convinced we can find our sustainable course through the Anthropocene, but the will has to be there to do it.\"  The new report comes less than two months after a similar analysis found that Earth has lost one-tenth of its wilderness sites since the early 1990s. 6:41","label":1}
{"text":"The leaders of a far-right British political group, Britain First, were charged with causing religiously aggravated harassment on Wednesday, police said. Paul Golding, 35, and his deputy Jayda Fransen, 31, both from southeast London, were arrested in May over the distribution of leaflets in Kent to the east of London, and online videos they posted during a court trial. The case involved a number a Muslim men who were later convicted of rape. Both were bailed to appear at Medway magistrates in Kent on Oct. 17. The fringe group, which is opposed to all mass immigration and says it is not a racist but a loyalist movement, has staged a number of demonstrations around Britain, usually attracting a few hundred protesters.","label":0}
{"text":"A congressional tax oversight committee will not seek U.S. President Donald Trump's tax returns despite calls from Democrats for a review to determine possible business ties to foreign countries including Russia, the panel's Republican chairman said on Monday. Defying decades of precedent, Trump has refused to release his tax documents, which Democrats say could show whether his business empire poses any conflicts of interest as he moves forward on issues ranging from tax reform to foreign relations. \"If Congress begins to use its powers to rummage around in the tax returns of the president, what prevents Congress from doing the same to average Americans?\" House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady told reporters. \"Privacy and civil liberties are still important rights in this country, and (the) Ways and Means Committee is not going to start to weaken them.\" The Texas Republican was responding to questions about a Feb. 1 letter from Representative Bill Pascrell, a Ways and Means Democrat who asked Brady to obtain Republican Trump's returns from the U.S. Treasury so the committee could review them in closed session and vote on whether to make them public. Pascrell later said he continued to hope for action, saying: \"Our committee must respond by using its legal authority as Congress has in the past to provide proper oversight. This is Checks and Balances 101.\" Experts say federal law authorizes the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation to examine individual tax returns. The two other panels are headed by Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican who dismissed the idea of seeking Trump's returns last week. House Republicans contend that the authority to examine tax returns was meant to ensure the proper administration of the tax code. Brady said his panel was doing just that in 2014, when it released confidential tax data during a probe of IRS treatment of conservative group applications for nonprofit status. Pascrell's letter said Trump's business empire involves state-owned enterprises in China and the United Arab Emirates, Russia and Saudi Arabia. \"It is imperative for the public to know and understand his...financial positions in domestic and foreign companies,\" Pascrell wrote. Brady said the letter misrepresented the law's intent to promote confidentiality and privacy. \"I've read his letter and I disagree with all of it,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"A new video investigation released Monday by James O'Keefe's Project Veritas Action shows how Democratic-aligned organizations used a tactic called 'bird-dogging' to incite violence and chaos at Trump rallies for media consumption. A key Clinton operative is captured on camera saying, \"It doesn't matter what the friggin' legal and ethics people say, we need to win this motherfucker.\"    In the video, Democratic activists Robert Creamer and Scott Foval reveal their strategy to create a sense of \"anarchy\" in and around Donald Trump events over the course of the campaign. Foval tells an undercover operative: \"One of the things we do is we stage very authentic grassroots protests right in their faces at their own events. Like, we infiltrate.\"    \"So the term bird dogging: You put people in the line, at the front which means that they have to get there at six in the morning because they have to get in front at the rally, so that when Trump comes down the rope line, they're the ones asking him the question in front of the reporter, because they're pre-placed there,\" explains Foval. \"To funnel that kind of operation, you have to start back with people two weeks ahead of time and train them how to ask questions. You have to train them to bird dog.\"    In another undercover interview, Creamer tells Project Veritas that his organization, Democracy Partners, has daily check-ins with the Clinton campaign in order to coordinate efforts. \"I just had a call with the campaign and the DNC, every day at one o'clock,\" says Creamer subordinate Zulema Rodriguez in the video.    Foval explains to O'Keefe's undercover journalist how the web of Democratic organizations is designed to subvert laws preventing Super PACs and political action groups from organizing directly with campaigns: \"The campaign pays DNC, DNC pays Democracy Partners, Democracy Partners pays the Foval Group, the Foval Group goes and executes the shit on the ground... Democracy Partners is the tip of the spear on that stuff.\"    \"We're consultants so we're not the official entity and so those conversations can be had between consultants,\" Foval explains, \"The campaigns and DNC cannot go near [Democratic super PAC] Priorities [USA], but I guaran-damn-tee you that the people who run the Super PACs all talk to each other and we and a few other people are the hubs of that communication.\"    One event specifically mentioned by the Democratic operatives to have been 'bird-dogged' was the September incident in North Carolina where a 69-year-old woman was supposedly assaulted by a Trump supporter. In reality, the woman was \"trained\" by Foval as part of his operation. \"She was one of our activists,\" he says.    \"I'm saying we have mentally ill people, that we pay to do shit, make no mistake,\" says Foval in the video. \"Over the last twenty years, I've paid off a few homeless guys to do some crazy stuff, and I've also taken them for dinner, and I've also made sure they had a hotel, and a shower. And I put them in a program. Like I've done that. But the reality is, a lot of people especially our union guys. A lot of our union guys\u2026they'll do whatever you want. They're rock and roll. When I need to get something done in Arkansas, the first guy I call is the head of the AFL-CIO down there, because he will say, 'What do you need?' And I will say, I need a guy who will do this, this and this. And they find that guy. And that guy will be like, Hell yeah, let's do it.\"    \"It doesn't matter what the friggin' legal and ethics people say, we need to win this motherfucker,\" Foval also said.     Update: James O'Keefe Demands The Corporate Media to Report Veritas        In this video, James O'Keefe explains how the corporate media, including Fox News, are allowing themselves to be intimidated by the Clintons and the DNC and are refusing to air the bombshell investigative video released by Project Veritas Action.","label":0}
{"text":"FBI Obtains Warrant To Search Huma Abedin's Emails zero hedge  While we explained earlier today why the DOJ and FBI had found themselves in the awkward position of knowing that Anthony Weiner's computer contained thousands of Huma Abedin emails sent from Hillary Clinton's private server, yet were unable to access them, we noted it was only a matter of time before this particular hurdle was rectified. A few hours later, according to CBS' Jeff Pegues, in the matter of the FBI having much needed access to begin poring over Weiner's emails, which we now know number roughly 650,000 (and thus will take the FBI months to pore over), the FBI has just obtained the needed warrant.  \u2014 Jeff Pegues (@jeffpeguescbs) October 30, 2016  As NBC confirms , the FBI obtained a warrant to search emails related to the Hillary Clinton private server probe that were discovered on ex-congressman Anthony Weiner's laptop. The warrant came two days after FBI director James Comey revealed the existence of the emails, which law-enforcement sources said were linked to Weiner's estranged wife, top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The FBI already had a warrant to search Weiner's laptop, but that only applied to evidence of his allegedly illicit communications with an underage girl.  The warrant came moments after Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid scolded Comey, saying in a letter that he \" demonstrated a disturbing double standard for the treatment of sensitive information, with what appears to be clear intent to aid one political party over another. \"  Reid added that his office determined that Comey may have violated the Hatch Act, which bars government officials from using their authority to influence elections.  The following screengrab from WaPo, perhaps summarizes best how the democrats' take on things has changed dramatically over the past few weeks:  Meanwhile, the CBS reporter also noted that according to law enforcement sources HumaAbedin Is cooperating and \"seemed surprised that emails were there.\" #developing #law enforcement sources also say #HumaAbedin Is cooperating and \"seemed surprised that emails were there.\"  \u2014 Jeff Pegues (@jeffpeguescbs) October 30, 2016  Finally, Pegues also points out that after having fieled much pressure from Democrats for the past 48 hours, FBI Director Comey has been quietly reaching out to members of Congress as pressure mounts on him. #BREAKING News #FBI Director #Comey has been quietly reaching out to members of #Congress as pressure mounts on him.  \u2014 Jeff Pegues (@jeffpeguescbs) October 30, 2016  So will the FBI promptly announce that nothing of material important was found among Weiner's emails, or will it now begin a protracted, intensive investigation? Will Comey resigns? Will Huma quit from her role in the Clinton campaign? Will Loretta Lynch take some of the blame? We hope to have some of these much needed answers in the coming days as the FBI's reopened probe begins gaining traction. Share This Article...","label":1}
{"text":"Shock report! 650,000 emails were found on Anthony Weiner's laptop that he shared with his wife Huma Abedin. Abedin is Hillary Clinton's longtime personal assistant. That's a lot of emails! Zero Hedge reported: Yesterday, we reported that the FBI has found \" tens of thousands of emails \" belonging to Huma Adein on Anthony Weiner's computer, raising questions how practical it is that any conclusive finding will be available or made by the FBI in the few days left before the elections Now, according to the WSJ , it appears that Federal agents are preparing to scour roughly 650,000 emails that, as we reported moments ago were discovered weeks ago on the laptop of Anthony Weiner , to see how many relate to a prior probe of Hillary Clinton's email use, as metadata on the device suggests there may be thousands sent to or from the private server that the Democratic nominee used while she was secretary of state, according to people familiar with the matter. As the WSJ adds, the review will take weeks at a minimum to determine whether those messages are work-relatedemails between Huma Abedin, a close Clinton aide and the estranged wife of Mr. Weiner, and State Department officials; how many are duplicates of emails already reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and whether they include either classified information or important new evidence in the Clinton email probe, which FBI officials call \"Midyear.\" And, as we further reported earlier today , the FBI has had to await a court order to begin reviewing the emails, because they were uncovered in an unrelated probe of Mr. Weiner, and that order was delayed for reasons that remain unclear. More stunning is just how many emails were found on Weiner's computer. And while one can only imagine the content of some of the more persona ones, the WSJ writes that the latest development began in early October when New York-based FBI officials notified Andrew McCabe, the bureau's second-in-command, that while investigating Mr. Weiner for possibly sending sexually charged messages to a minor, they had recovered a laptop with 650,000 emails. Many, they said, were from the accounts of Ms. Abedin, according to people familiar with the matter. ** One-Third of likely voters are less likely to vote for Hillary Clinton following the announcement of a new FBI criminal investigation. Democrats are going psycho right now as they are in full panic mode. Expect ANYTHING from them now, BUT disregard and ignore any stunt they may pull. Remember this was a prophetic prediction and warning! Source","label":1}
{"text":"For four months, the Republican Party and its many presidential hopefuls have laid into likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton over donations to a family foundation. That these attacks contradict the GOP's broader stand on campaign finance -- and call into question their own weighty burden of donor conflicts -- hasn't troubled them at all. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called contributions to the nonprofit Clinton Foundation \"thinly veiled bribes.\" The nation can't afford the \"drama\" represented by those donations, according to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina asked Clinton to explain why contributions to the foundation \"don't represent a conflict of interest.\" And the Republican National Committee has made the donations a central part of its campaign against Clinton. In embracing this critique of the Clinton Foundation, Republicans are investing in a view of money in politics that they have otherwise rejected in recent years: that spending money to gain influence over or access to elected or appointed officials represents a conflict of interest or an appearance of corruption or could even lead to outright corruption. Since 2010, the conservative Supreme Court majority has rejected this argument as a reason to regulate campaign finance in their Citizens United, McCutcheon and Williams-Yulee decisions. Most leading Republican federal officeholders now take the view that spending of any sort on campaigns should not be impeded by legal restrictions as fears of corruption are overblown. So the critical piling on Clinton Foundation donations creates a problem for Republicans, especially those running for president. If contributions to the foundation, a 501(c)(3) entity not involved in political campaigns, create a valid source of corruption concern, then what are we to make of the hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed donations to 501(c)(4) nonprofits that have worked to elect Republicans over the past three elections? Since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision opened the door for unlimited corporate, union and, ultimately, individual spending on elections, Republicans have maneuvered to use so-called dark money nonprofits to fund large portions of their electoral efforts. Dark money spending on federal races exceeded $400 million in the 2012 presidential election and $200 million in the 2014 midterms with the vast majority of those dollars going to aid Republican candidates, according to previous analysis by The Huffington Post. The public is not privy, however, to the sources of funds fueling a large part of the Republican electoral apparatus and a smaller part of Democratic efforts. Party leaders and wealthy donors have increasingly worked through nonprofits that are not required to disclose their funding sources. Republicans, including those now running for president, defend dark money groups as a means to protect what they argue is the First Amendment right of donors to engage in political activity without \"retaliation.\" Perhaps, that retaliation would come in the form of stories informing the public about how those donors are seeking to influence public policy. The very limited record on dark money shows that those funding these groups -- just like those funding super PACs, which must identify their donors -- include many high-powered corporate and individual interests with well-connected lobbyists in search of favors. HuffPost reports have found that dark money groups tightly connected to congressional and party leadership, both Democratic and Republican, have received large sums from pharmaceutical, insurance, banking and online payday lenders seeking specific policy changes while retaining lobbyists previously employed by those very leaders. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has his Right to Rise Policy Solutions, which is playing an increasingly important role in his not-yet-declared, super-PAC-centered presidential campaign. Rubio's advisers run the Conservative Policy Solutions group in collaboration with an affiliated super PAC. And potential candidates like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal are all running around the country fueled by funding from undisclosed nonprofit groups. In 2012, Walker faced a recall election after labor unions in his state rebelled over legislation gutting public employee union rights. His recall campaign coordinated with a band of nonprofit political groups, led by the Wisconsin Club for Growth, to promote Walker and his policies in a positive light. Walker aides worked closely with the outside groups, and the governor directly raised undisclosed contributions for the effort. John Menard Jr., considered the wealthiest man in Wisconsin, was another big donor to the save-Walker effort. The billionaire owner of the chain store Menards gave $1.5 million to the Wisconsin Club for Growth, according to a report by Yahoo News. During Walker's term in office, Menard's company received $1.8 million in tax credits from an economic development corporation led by the governor. He also received help in his battle with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as Walker defanged the watchdog agency. The same failure to see their own conflicts applies to candidates elected since the Citizens United decision precipitated the dramatic rise in dark money. Both Paul and Rubio were elected to the Senate in 2010 with $2.3 million and $2.7 million, respectively, in allied spending by groups that do not disclose their donors, including the Karl Rove-founded Crossroads GPS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Thanks to its bankruptcy filings, it is known that for-profit Corinthian Colleges made contributions to Crossroads GPS. While the dates and amounts of those donations are still hidden, Rubio's strong support for Corinthian is well-established. In 2014, he pleaded with the Department of Education for leniency for the company as it faced a fraud investigation. No one doubts that huge sums of dark money will again be spent supporting presidential candidates in the 2016 election. While the public will be able to consider whether the corporations, billionaires and foreign governments that contributed to the Clinton Foundation would hold undue sway over a Clinton White House, they will not even know the identities of those pouring in the secret donations.","label":0}
{"text":"One of Afghanistan s most powerful regional politicians was ousted as governor of the northern province of Balkh on Monday, setting up a confrontation that adds to the uncertainty around President Ashraf Ghani s Western-backed government. Atta Mohammad Noor is one of the leading figures in Jamiat-e-Islami, a party which mainly represents Afghanistan s Tajik ethnic group, and has used his position in Balkh, on the northern border of the country, as a powerbase to push for a major role on the national stage. His removal, at a time when tensions between Tajiks and Pashtuns, Afghanistan s two biggest ethnic groups, have been rising, injects extra uncertainty to the already fractured political landscape ahead of presidential elections in 2019. My dismissal has no legal or legitimate basis, Noor said on Afghan national television. For now we are only resorting to civil action but if this atrocity continues, there are many other options. Atta Noor is one of a clutch of powerful regional and ethnic leaders whom Ghani has struggled to control since he came to office after the disputed election of 2014. Ghani, a Pashtun, has tried previously to remove him but also discussed a possible role in the government for him. He submitted his resignation several months ago but the move never took effect until Ghani approved it on Monday, announcing at the same time that Mohammad Daoud, also from Jamiat, would become the next governor of Balkh province. The Afghan president has accepted Atta Mohammad Noor s resignation and announced Engineer Mohammad Daoud as the new governor, Shah Hussain Murtazawi a spokesman for Ghani said. In his remarks on Monday, Atta Noor, who has demanded a number of senior positions in the government for some of his allies, said the resignation had been offered with conditions attached and said these had not been respected. Since they didn t meet their responsibilities, I don t accept it, he said. Ghani s national unity government, formed after the 2014 election forced him into an uneasy power-sharing arrangement with his former rival Abdullah Abdullah from Jamiat, retains the support of the international community and the United States. But it has faced mounting criticism from a growing array of opposition groups. Parliamentary elections originally due to be held next year are in doubt and former President Hamid Karzai has called for a loya jirga, or traditional grand council of political leaders and elders to decide the future of the government. The confrontation with Atta Noor comes several months after a standoff with Vice President Rashid Dostum over accusations of the sexual abuse of a political opponent. Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek leader and veteran of decades of Afghan politics, has been in Turkey since May, ostensibly for medical treatment.","label":0}
{"text":"With just three days until Inauguration Day, Donald Trump is desperately trying to convince everyone that it will be the most attended inauguration in history and that everyone likes him.For months, Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to get big-name entertainers to perform at the ceremony, with many even backing out after accepting the invitation. So far, Trump has only managed to get a reality show singer and a has-been band to commit.Experts predict that Trump s inauguration attendance will be smaller than President Obama s but that isn t stopping Trump from trying to convince everyone otherwise.People are pouring into Washington in record numbers. Bikers for Trump are on their way. It will be a great Thursday, Friday and Saturday! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017Except Trump is delusional as usual.Not only are experts predicting that Trump s inauguration crowd will be far less than the record set by President Obama in 2008 at 1.8 million, he seems to be forgetting that many of those who are attending are going there to protest against him.In fact, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to participate in the Women s March on Washington, and it s being predicted that the demonstration will be bigger than the inauguration itself while also making history as the largest demonstration ever organized in the United States. Meanwhile, the Bikers for Trump that Trump bragged about are expected to only draw 5,000. And ticket scalpers are struggling to sell tickets to the inauguration. That s how unpopular Trump is right now.So once again, Trump s ego apparently took control of his Twitter account.And Twitter users shattered it.@realDonaldTrump they re protestors Mike Denison (@mikd33) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Do you really believe that your pee-wee band of trump grunts will out number the protesters sweetie? aww thats cute Diva (@sammypolsen12) January 17, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Hate to break it to you, but more people will be protesting your inauguration than celebrating it. https:\/\/t.co\/koIEU3A7iw Al x Young (@AlexYoung) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Over a million less pouring in than Obamas inauguration Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 17, 2017.@realDonaldTrump We have a clip pic.twitter.com\/aDRpodgIMa Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) January 17, 2017Reminder We the people DIDN T elect his KIDS 2 run OUR country.Actually We the people by a majority DIDN T elect @realDonaldTrump either. pic.twitter.com\/bTkzxpoBy0 Lil Kim Ms. G.O.A.T (@killerbee805) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Does it makes you sad to be this historically unpopular? Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Oh. pic.twitter.com\/wcD06GfHIJ Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) January 17, 2017Featured Image: Alex Wong\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump s plans to step up air strikes on Islamist militants in Afghanistan risk increasing civilian casualties and stirring resentment, despite an initial welcome by Afghan officials and international allies. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has avoided vocal criticisms of errant air strikes, but in previous years they sparked intense friction and soured ties between his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, and the international coalition in Afghanistan. With the U.S. set to resume a more active role in the war, many analysts expect a rise in the U.N.-documented first-half figure of 232 civilian casualties from international and Afghan air operations, a spike of 43 percent from a year earlier. The issue about air strikes is part of a broader package of concerns, said one Western official. I don t hear Western diplomats saying, How many bombs should we drop? I hear them saying, Why are we bombing? What are we doing here, in general? During the 16 years since a U.S.-led campaign toppled the Taliban from power in 2001, resentment has repeatedly been fueled by coalition missteps that undermined hard-won progress on the political or military fronts. The exact contours of Trump s plan remain uncertain, but officials of several coalition nations told Reuters they feared more civilians could be harmed, despite avoiding the subject in public remarks. Additional airstrikes can be a double-edged sword for leaders looking to stem Taliban offensives, said Christopher Kolenda, a former U.S. Army officer who served in Afghanistan and worked on American military strategies for the conflict. Better air support for Afghan forces on the ground will limit gains Taliban can make, and that s helpful in negotiations, he said. The downside is if this creates a rise in civilian casualties, then you run a high risk of creating a cascade of negative perceptions among Afghans. There is no question Ghani cares deeply about protecting Afghan civilians, Kolenda added, but domestic political challenges and future elections make it inevitable that he will have to address any rise in civilian casualties. By the government s count, civilian casualties have dropped in recent years, a spokesman for Ghani said. The Afghan government and its international partners main aim is to provide a secure environment for its people, Shah Hussain Murtazawi told Reuters, adding that Afghan forces coordinate with foreign troops to protect non-combatants. Even as overall civilian casualties by pro-government forces dropped this year, casualties from aerial operations spiked 43 percent in the year s first half, the United Nations says. In the first six months, the U.N. recorded 29 civilian deaths and 85 injuries from Afghan air force strikes, and 54 deaths and 31 injuries in strikes by international warplanes. The prospects of more air strikes provoked mixed feelings in areas hardest hit, where many leaders fear attacks by Taliban or Islamic State, but also worry about the threat to residents. Air strikes will not bring long-term security, said Abdul Jabbar Qahraman, a lawmaker from the restive southern province of Helmand. They can defeat enemies when Afghan forces are under a huge attack, but they can also promote hatred between locals and government. In the eastern province of Nangarhar, where Islamic State made its greatest gains before being targeted by joint Afghan-U.S. offensives, the governor s spokesman, Attaullah Khogyani, agreed. Air strikes are important and helpful in many situations, but if they cause civilian casualties repeatedly that may hurt government legitimacy. U.S. Air Force aircraft dropped 503 weapons in August, in the most monthly air strikes since August 2012. American warplanes are also more likely to launch air strikes this year, with the Air Force dropping weapons during one of roughly every four close air support sorties, up from one in every eight last year, and one in every 14 in 2015. International advisers have also pushed the Afghan Air Force to take a greater role in the air war, boosting the number of civilians killed or injured by Afghan bombs and rockets. Pressure will probably grow for Ghani to ensure the Afghan forces take measures to protect civilians, Kolenda added. Civilian casualties is one of many problems that is damaging the legitimacy of the government, he said.","label":0}
{"text":"Charles Goyette https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/lrc-blog\/running-hillary-ticket-let-ask\/  Unless you think \"What's your favorite color?\" is a hard question, you shouldn't expect much from lapdog press interviews of Statist candidates.  In a Wall Street Journal column this morning, James Freeman, an editorial page editor, notes that getting candidates in races below Donald Trump on the Republican ticket to denounce him has become a regular sport in the media. But he wonders why reporters \"don't force down-ballot Democrats to take a position on each new Clinton email revelation.\"  That would be fine. Although there is nothing we didn't suspect, thanks to WikiLeaks, we have more details than ever about Clinton venality and political corruption.  But there is a line of questioning that is even more important.  Why shouldn't other candidates on the Democrat ticket be asked to endorse or disavow Hillary's regime change wars in Libya and Syria?  Shouldn't they be made to own the jihadist-generating carnage she champions? Wouldn't it be wise to tie political supporters to her war trajectory with Russia as well, so that if she has her way the survivors will know who was to blame? 1:20 pm on October 28, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States should use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques when questioning terror suspects, and renewed his call for tougher U.S. border security after the attacks in Brussels. The billionaire businessman said authorities \"should be able to do whatever they have to do\" to gain information in an effort to thwart future attacks. \"Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding,\" Trump said on NBC's \"Today\" program, adding he believed torture could produce useful leads. \"You have to get the information from these people.\" Waterboarding, the practice of pouring water over someone's face to simulate drowning as an interrogation tactic, was banned by President Barack Obama days after he took office in 2009. Critics call it torture. Trump's main Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, suggested heightened police scrutiny of neighborhoods with large Muslim populations. \"We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized,\" he said in a statement. Trump also called for increased law enforcement surveillance of mosques in the United States. \"You need surveillance. You have to deal with the mosques, whether we like it or not,\" Trump told Fox Business Network. \"These attacks ... they're not done by Swedish people, that I can tell you.\" Islamic State claimed responsibility for Tuesday's suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital which killed at least 30 people. Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, urged tougher measures to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, particularly Syrian refugees, into America. \"As president ... I would be very, very tough on the borders, and I would be not allowing certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation,\" said Trump, campaigning to become the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election that will decide on Obama's successor. The Brussels attacks brought national security back to the top of the presidential election agenda, possibly sharpening the division between Trump's isolationist approach to foreign policy and his Republican rivals' more traditional interventionist outlook. On Monday, Trump expressed skepticism about the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and said the United States should significantly cut spending on the defense alliance. Cruz criticized Trump's NATO proposal. \"The way to respond to terrorist attacks is not weakness. It's not unilateral and preemptive surrender. Abandoning Europe, withdrawing from NATO, as Trump suggests, is preemptive surrender,\" Cruz told reporters in Washington. Earlier attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have pushed security issues to the forefront of the White House campaign debate. When 130 people were killed in Paris in November, the threat of terrorism jumped from fifth to first on a Reuters\/Ipsos poll list of the country's most important problems and remained there until the economy moved back to the top of the list in mid-January. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said U.S. military leaders have found techniques like waterboarding are not effective. \"We've got to work this through consistent with our values,\" she said on NBC, adding officials \"do not need to resort to torture, but they are going to need more help.\" Clinton's Democratic rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, backed stronger intelligence-sharing and monitoring of social media in the fight against Islamist militants, but opposed bolstered surveillance of Muslim communities. \"That would be unconstitutional, and it would be wrong. We are fighting a terrorist organization, a barbaric organization that is killing innocent people. We are not fighting a religion,\" Sanders told reporters. Walid Phares, named by Trump this week as one of his foreign policy experts, told Reuters the Brussels attacks would force Europe and the United States to \"reassess\" counter-terrorism strategies in \"identifying the radicalized elements and also the type of protection soft targets need.\" Trump looks to take another step toward winning the Republican presidential nomination in contests in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday, aiming to deal another setback to the party establishment's flagging stop-Trump movement. He has a big lead in convention delegates who will pick the Republican nominee, defying weeks of attacks from members of the party establishment worried he will lead the Republicans to defeat in November. In Arizona, one of the U.S. states that borders Mexico, Trump's hardline immigration message is popular and he leads in polls, while in Utah Trump lags in polls behind Cruz. In addition to the temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, Trump has called for the building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to halt illegal immigration.","label":0}
{"text":"France called on all sides to show restraint and reject violence after soldiers killed at least eight people and wounded others in Cameroon s restless English-speaking regions on Sunday, during protests by activists calling for its independence. France is following the situation in Cameroon carefully and is preoccupied by the incidents that took place over the weekend, foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne told reporters in a daily online briefing on Monday. We call on all the actors to show restraint and reject violence, she added.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump's portrayal of Japan as a free-rider on security is stirring worries in Tokyo about damage to its U.S. alliance, and could embolden hardliners keen to bolster Japan's military in the face of a rising China. The U.S.-Japan alliance has been the lynchpin of Tokyo's security policy for decades, but worries have simmered in recent years as to whether Washington will continue to be willing and able to defend its key Asian ally. Comments from the Republican Party frontrunner have done little to allay those fears. \"If somebody attacks Japan, we have to immediately go and start World War III, okay? If we get attacked, Japan doesn't have to help us,\" Trump said at a campaign speech late last year. \"Somehow, that doesn't sound so fair.\" Trump has also accused Japan of stealing jobs and criticized the U.S.-led 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact that Tokyo sees as vital for strategic as well as economic reasons. \"If you listen to his comments (on security), the United States would become isolated so I think there is great anxiety for allied countries,\" Itsunori Onodera, who served as defense minister under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, told Reuters. Last year, Abe spent considerable political capital enacting controversial legislation that allows Japan's military to defend friendly countries under attack, a major reinterpretation of the country's pacifist constitution. \"It is incumbent on Japan to protect itself and its defense is necessary for the alliance to be maintained in the best possible posture,\" said a source close to Abe. Abe also wants to formally revise the post-war charter to further loosen limits on military action overseas. \"Most people consider Trump bad news, but for those who want to revise the constitution and strengthen the military, it actually provides a boost for their position,\" said a former Western diplomat still in touch with Japanese policymakers. As host to around 50,000 U.S. troops, Japan is vital to Washington's \"rebalance\" of its economic and security focus to the Asia-Pacific region. Trump did not respond to requests for comments about the U.S.-Japan alliance. Both Washington and Tokyo are alarmed by China's increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea, where Beijing has territorial rows with several Southeast Asian nations. Japan has a separate dispute with China over tiny islands in the East China Sea. Like many Trump observers around the world, Japanese policy makers at first watched with amusement and then disbelief as the reality TV star and property tycoon garnered growing momentum. Only in recent weeks have they begun taking Trump's chances seriously and are now scrambling to find out who is advising him on security, another government source said. Japanese policymakers have not geared up specifically to counter what they see as his misleading rhetoric, which seems to hark back to an outdated 1980s vision of Japan, the source close to Abe said. \"I think it's too early. Number one, he has not made it known even to the American voters whom he counts on as far as foreign policy goals,\" the source said, adding they expected Trump would change if elected. \"We are fully aware campaign rhetoric is dramatically different from real policies pursued by incumbents.\" For now, though, Japanese government insiders say they are betting that if Trump becomes the Republican nominee and goes on to win the Nov. 8 presidential election, he would surround himself with experts who would draft more realistic policies. Publicly, Japan is playing it politely. Asked about Trump's candidacy on Wednesday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters: \"We are of course watching this because of the impact such a large country has, but we cannot otherwise comment on another country's election.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Vladimir Putin at the Valdai International Discussion Club : \u00abShaping the World of Tomorrow\u00bb by Vladimir Putin Voltaire Network | Sochi (Russia) | 27 October 2016 fran\u00e7ais \u0440\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439 Tarja, Heinz, Thabo, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, It is a great pleasure to see you again. I want to start by thanking all of the participants in the Valdai International Discussion Club, from Russia and abroad, for your constructive part in this work, and I want to thank our distinguished guests for their readiness to take part in this open discussion. Our esteemed moderator just wished me a good departure into retirement, and I wish myself the same when the time comes. This is the right approach and the thing to do. But I am not retired yet and am for now the leader of this big country. As such, it is fitting to show restraint and avoid displays of excessive aggressiveness. I do not think that this is my style in any case. But I do think that we should be frank with each other, particularly here in this gathering. I think we should hold candid, open discussions, otherwise our dialogue makes no sense and would be insipid and without the slightest interest. I think that this style of discussion is extremely needed today given the great changes taking place in the world. The theme for our meeting this year, The Future in Progress: Shaping the World of Tomorrow, is very topical. Last year, the Valdai forum participants discussed the problems with the current world order. Unfortunately, little has changed for the better over these last months. Indeed, it would be more honest to say that nothing has changed. The tensions engendered by shifts in distribution of economic and political influence continue to grow. Mutual distrust creates a burden that narrows our possibilities for finding effective responses to the real threats and challenges facing the world today. Essentially, the entire globalisation project is in crisis today and in Europe, as we know well, we hear voices now saying that multiculturalism has failed. I think this situation is in many respects the result of mistaken, hasty and to some extent over-confident choices made by some countries' elites a quarter-of-a-century ago. Back then, in the late 1980s-early 1990s, there was a chance not just to accelerate the globalisation process but also to give it a different quality and make it more harmonious and sustainable in nature. But some countries that saw themselves as victors in the Cold War, not just saw themselves this way but said it openly, took the course of simply reshaping the global political and economic order to fit their own interests. In their euphoria, they essentially abandoned substantive and equal dialogue with other actors in international life, chose not to improve or create universal institutions, and attempted instead to bring the entire world under the spread of their own organisations, norms and rules. They chose the road of globalisation and security for their own beloved selves, for the select few, and not for all. But far from everyone was ready to agree with this. We may as well be frank here, as we know full well that many did not agree with what was happening, but some were unable by then to respond, and others were not yet ready to respond. The result though is that the system of international relations is in a feverish state and the global economy cannot extricate itself from systemic crisis. At the same time, rules and principles, in the economy and in politics, are constantly being distorted and we often see what only yesterday was taken as a truth and raised to dogma status reversed completely. If the powers that be today find some standard or norm to their advantage, they force everyone else to comply. But if tomorrow these same standards get in their way, they are swift to throw them in the bin, declare them obsolete, and set or try to set new rules. Thus, we saw the decisions to launch airstrikes in the centre of Europe, against Belgrade, and then came Iraq, and then Libya. The operations in Afghanistan also started without the corresponding decision from the United Nations Security Council. In their desire to shift the strategic balance in their favour these countries broke apart the international legal framework that prohibited deployment of new missile defence systems. They created and armed terrorist groups, whose cruel actions have sent millions of civilians into flight, made millions of displaced persons and immigrants, and plunged entire regions into chaos. We see how free trade is being sacrificed and countries use sanctions as a means of political pressure, bypass the World Trade Organisation and attempt to establish closed economic alliances with strict rules and barriers, in which the main beneficiaries are their own transnational corporations. And we know this is happening. They see that they cannot resolve all of the problems within the WTO framework and so think, why not throw the rules and the organisation itself aside and build a new one instead. This illustrates what I just said. At the same time, some of our partners demonstrate no desire to resolve the real international problems in the world today. In organisations such as NATO, for example, established during the Cold War and clearly out of date today, despite all the talk about the need to adapt to the new reality, no real adaptation takes place. We see constant attempts to turn the OSCE, a crucial mechanism for ensuring common European and also trans-Atlantic security, into an instrument in the service of someone's foreign policy interests. The result is that this very important organisation has been hollowed out. But they continue to churn out threats, imaginary and mythical threats such as the 'Russian military threat'. This is a profitable business that can be used to pump new money into defence budgets at home, get allies to bend to a single superpower's interests, expand NATO and bring its infrastructure, military units and arms closer to our borders. Of course, it can be a pleasing and even profitable task to portray oneself as the defender of civilisation against the new barbarians. The only thing is that Russia has no intention of attacking anyone. This is all quite absurd. I also read analytical materials, those written by you here today, and by your colleagues in the USA and Europe. It is unthinkable, foolish and completely unrealistic. Europe alone has 300 million people. All of the NATO members together with the USA have a total population of 600 million, probably. But Russia has only 146 million. It is simply absurd to even conceive such thoughts. And yet they use these ideas in pursuit of their political aims. Another mythical and imaginary problem is what I can only call the hysteria the USA has whipped up over supposed Russian meddling in the American presidential election. The United States has plenty of genuinely urgent problems, it would seem, from the colossal public debt to the increase in firearms violence and cases of arbitrary action by the police. You would think that the election debates would concentrate on these and other unresolved problems, but the elite has nothing with which to reassure society, it seems, and therefore attempt to distract public attention by pointing instead to supposed Russian hackers, spies, agents of influence and so forth. I have to ask myself and ask you too: Does anyone seriously imagine that Russia can somehow influence the American people's choice? America is not some kind of 'banana republic', after all, but is a great power. Do correct me if I am wrong. The question is, if things continue in this vein, what awaits the world? What kind of world will we have tomorrow? Do we have answers to the questions of how to ensure stability, security and sustainable economic growth? Do we know how we will make a more prosperous world? Sad as it is to say, there is no consensus on these issues in the world today. Maybe you have come to some common conclusions through your discussions, and I would, of course, be interested to hear them. But it is very clear that there is a lack of strategy and ideas for the future. This creates a climate of uncertainty that has a direct impact on the public mood. Sociological studies conducted around the world show that people in different countries and on different continents tend to see the future as murky and bleak. This is sad. The future does not entice them, but frightens them. At the same time, people see no real opportunities or means for changing anything, influencing events and shaping policy. Yes, formally speaking, modern countries have all the attributes of democracy: Elections, freedom of speech, access to information, freedom of expression. But even in the most advanced democracies the majority of citizens have no real influence on the political process and no direct and real influence on power. People sense an ever-growing gap between their interests and the elite's vision of the only correct course, a course the elite itself chooses. The result is that referendums and elections increasingly often create surprises for the authorities. People do not at all vote as the official and respectable media outlets advised them to, nor as the mainstream parties advised them to. Public movements that only recently were too far left or too far right are taking centre stage and pushing the political heavyweights aside. At first, these inconvenient results were hastily declared anomaly or chance. But when they became more frequent, people started saying that society does not understand those at the summit of power and has not yet matured sufficiently to be able to assess the authorities' labour for the public good. Or they sink into hysteria and declare it the result of foreign, usually Russian, propaganda. Friends and colleagues, I would like to have such a propaganda machine here in Russia, but regrettably, this is not the case. We have not even global mass media outlets of the likes of CNN, BBC and others. We simply do not have this kind of capability yet. As for the claim that the fringe and populists have defeated the sensible, sober and responsible minority \u2013 we are not talking about populists or anything like that but about ordinary people, ordinary citizens who are losing trust in the ruling class. That is the problem. By the way, with the political agenda already eviscerated as it is, and with elections ceasing to be an instrument for change but consisting instead of nothing but scandals and digging up dirt \u2013 who gave someone a pinch, who sleeps with whom, if you'll excuse me. This just goes beyond all boundaries. And honestly, a look at various candidates' platforms gives the impression that they were made from the same mould \u2013 the difference is slight, if there is any. It seems as if the elites do not see the deepening stratification in society and the erosion of the middle class, while at the same time, they implant ideological ideas that, in my opinion, are destructive to cultural and national identity. And in certain cases, in some countries they subvert national interests and renounce sovereignty in exchange for the favour of the suzerain. This begs the question: who is actually the fringe? The expanding class of the supranational oligarchy and bureaucracy, which is in fact often not elected and not controlled by society, or the majority of citizens, who want simple and plain things \u2013 stability, free development of their countries, prospects for their lives and the lives of their children, preserving their cultural identity, and, finally, basic security for themselves and their loved ones. People are clearly scared to see how terrorism is evolving from a distant threat to an everyday one, how a terrorist attack could occur right near them, on the next street, if not on their own street, while any makeshift item \u2013 from a home-made explosive to an ordinary truck \u2013 can be used to carry out a mass killing. Moreover, the terrorist attacks that have taken place in the past few years in Boston and other US cities, Paris, Brussels, Nice and German cities, as well as, sadly, in our own country, show that terrorists do not need units or organised structures \u2013 they can act independently, on their own, they just need the ideological motivation against their enemies, that is, against you and us. The terrorist threat is a clear example of how people fail to adequately evaluate the nature and causes of the growing threats. We see this in the way events in Syria are developing. No one has succeeded in stopping the bloodshed and launching a political settlement process. One would think that we would have begun to put together a common front against terrorism now, after such lengthy negotiations, enormous effort and difficult compromises. But this has not happened and this common front has not emerged. My personal agreements with the President of the United States have not produced results either. There were people in Washington ready to do everything possible to prevent these agreements from being implemented in practice. This all demonstrates an unexplainable and I would say irrational desire on the part of the Western countries to keep making the same mistakes or, as we say here in Russia, keep stepping on the same rake. We all see what is happening in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and a number of other countries. I have to ask, where are the results of the fight against terrorism and extremism? Overall, looking at the world as a whole, there are some results in particular regions and locations, but there is no global result and the terrorist threat continues to grow. We all remember the euphoria in some capitals over the Arab Spring. Where are these fanfares today? Russia's calls for a joint fight against terrorism go ignored. What's more, they continue to arm, supply and train terrorist groups in the hope of using them to achieve their own political aims. This is a very dangerous game and I address the players once again: The extremists in this case are more cunning, clever and stronger than you, and if you play these games with them, you will always lose. Colleagues, it is clear that the international community should concentrate on the real problems facing humanity today, the resolution of which will make our world a safer and more stable place and make the system of international relations fairer and more equal. As I said, it is essential to transform globalisation from something for a select few into something for all. It is my firm belief that we can overcome these threats and challenges only by working together on the solid foundation of international law and the United Nations Charter. Today it is the United Nations that continues to remain an agency that is unparalleled in representativeness and universality, a unique venue for equitable dialogue. Its universal rules are necessary for including as many countries as possible in economic and humanitarian integration, guaranteeing their political responsibility and working to coordinate their actions while also preserving their sovereignty and development models. We have no doubt that sovereignty is the central notion of the entire system of international relations. Respect for it and its consolidation will help underwrite peace and stability both at the national and international levels. There are many countries that can rely on a history stretching back a thousand years, like Russia, and we have come to appreciate our identity, freedom and independence. But we do not seek global domination, expansion or confrontation with anyone. In our mind, real leadership lies in seeing real problems rather than attempting to invent mythical threats and use them to steamroll others. This is exactly how Russia understands its role in global affairs today. There are priorities without which a prosperous future for our shared planet is unthinkable and they are absolutely obvious. I won't be saying anything new here. First of all, there is equal and indivisible security for all states. Only after ending armed conflicts and ensuring the peaceful development of all countries will we be able to talk about economic progress and the resolution of social, humanitarian and other key problems. It is important to fight terrorism and extremism in actuality. It has been said more than once that this evil can only be overcome by a concerted effort of all states of the world. Russia continues to offer this to all interested partners. It is necessary to add to the international agenda the issue of restoring the Middle Eastern countries' lasting statehood, economy and social sphere. The mammoth scale of destruction demands drawing up a long-term comprehensive programme, a kind of Marshall Plan, to revive the war- and conflict-ridden area. Russia is certainly willing to join actively in these team efforts. We cannot achieve global stability unless we guarantee global economic progress. It is essential to provide conditions for creative labour and economic growth at a pace that would put an end to the division of the world into permanent winners and permanent losers. The rules of the game should give the developing economies at least a chance to catch up with those we know as developed economies. We should work to level out the pace of economic development, and brace up backward countries and regions so as to make the fruit of economic growth and technological progress accessible to all. Particularly, this would help to put an end to poverty, one of the worst contemporary problems. It is also absolutely evident that economic cooperation should be mutually lucrative and rest on universal principles to enable every country to become an equal partner in global economic activities. True, the regionalising trend in the world economy is likely to persist in the medium term. However, regional trade agreements should complement and expand not replace the universal norms and regulations. Russia advocates the harmonisation of regional economic formats based on the principles of transparency and respect for each other's interests. That is how we arrange the work of the Eurasian Economic Union and conduct negotiations with our partners, particularly on coordination with the Silk Road Economic Belt project, which China is implementing. We expect it to promote an extensive Eurasian partnership, which promises to evolve into one of the formative centres of a vast Eurasian integration area. To implement this idea, 5+1 talks have begun already for an agreement on trade and economic cooperation between all participants in the process. An important task of ours is to develop human potential. Only a world with ample opportunities for all, with highly skilled workers, access to knowledge and a great variety of ways to realise their potential can be considered truly free. Only a world where people from different countries do not struggle to survive but lead full lives can be stable. A decent future is impossible without environment protection and addressing climate problems. That is why the conservation of the natural world and its diversity and reducing the human impact on the environment will be a priority for the coming decades. Another priority is global healthcare. Of course, there are many problems, such as large-scale epidemics, decreasing the mortality rate in some regions and the like. So there is enormous room for advancement. All people in the world, not only the elite, should have the right to healthy, long and full lives. This is a noble goal. In short, we should build the foundation for the future world today by investing in all priority areas of human development. And of course, it is necessary to continue a broad-based discussion of our common future so that all sensible and promising initiatives are heard. Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I am confident that you, as members of the Valdai Club, will actively take part in this work. Your expertise enables you to understand all angles of the processes underway both in Russia and in the world, forecast and evaluate long-term trends, and put forward new initiatives and recommendations that will help us find the way to the more prosperous and sustainable future that we all badly need. Thank you very much for your attention. Vladimir Putin","label":1}
{"text":"It had been decades since I'd flown over a pair of handlebars. One moment I was bouncing along, in sagebrush, mind reeling from all the natural beauty zipping by, and the next I'd caught a wheel on a rock and gone sailing into that familiar somersault: butt rising from the saddle, shoulders twisting violently, hips lurching heels actually clicking midair, sunglasses and water bottle and Clif Bar hurtling into the trees, the ground closing in. Because I was aimed steeply downhill, partway into a gully, I landed more or less on my feet, like a gymnast, before flopping onto my stomach with an \"Ugh!\" and briefly bodysurfing. Miraculously unscathed, I dusted myself off and glanced around. Out here, alone in the wilderness, at least nobody was watching. Looking back, it seems strange that I kept going. I was just of the way into a trip with an old friend, Dacus, whom I had abandoned an hour earlier with a broken chain. It wasn't even my first wipeout. My shins were already pulped after crashing through a wall of thistle. Most alarmingly, I had scant cellphone reception. But the thought of returning the way I had come \u2014 wading a murky creek and huffing up a rutted cow path choked with wood ticks \u2014 was more depressing. Besides, it had been my idea to cycle the Maah Daah Hey Trail, the longest and arguably most grueling mountain biking route in the United States. I was an unlikely candidate for the trip: I had never ridden a mountain bike before, or even camped much. But I'd read about the trail \u2014 a doorstep to the lush, vertiginous, sunstruck vastness of the North Dakota Badlands, which Theodore Roosevelt called \"a place of grim beauty\" \u2014 and was sold. Dacus, a neophyte living in New Orleans, took some convincing. But in early June, we arrived in the striving tourist town of Medora, a point for the trail. At Dakota Cyclery, an excellent bike shop and outfitter, we rented sturdy mountain bikes, trail maps and bike bags for carrying our gear, and booked a shuttle ride to a northern trailhead, all for a reasonable $375 apiece. With four days of food and clothing lashed to our bikes, and with the vaguest notion of what awaited us, we started pedaling. Something I didn't know about mountain biking, at least on a trail this challenging: You cannot look up. Even for a second. To do so is to court ruin. Forget about the scenery, all that peripheral beauty gone by in a flash, the profound silence, the bliss of seclusion. Was that a bull elk up ahead or merely a juniper? Oh, how the rings of morning light smolder over that ridgeline . .. Wake up! Dial it in, man! Head down! Eyes locked on the trail! Let your mind drift and you are toast. Unfortunately for me, on the Maah Daah Hey, the temptation to look up is endless. The North Dakota Badlands are sometimes compared to the loping greenery of New Hampshire's White Mountains \u2014 but that's apt only if the greenery had been painted on top of canyon land. At its edges, the Badlands flatten into farm country, but their heart is the swaying, steppe of the Little Missouri National Grassland: more than a million acres of astonishingly beautiful, infernally punishing terrain. At every turn, it induces a wandering eye. Bridging the north and south sections of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, the Maah Daah Hey is 144. 7 miles all told, but Dacus and I were tackling only the first 96, departing from Bennett camp, just outside the north section. From the very start, it was all up, up, up. With an elevation gain of 8, 600 sidewinding feet, it began to feel Dantean. Everywhere were wonderful reminders of our mortality: sheer drops into river bottoms eroding hillside ledges that slid away in our wake cows with a knack for materializing around blind turns and at road crossings, careening oil trucks. Had I been in a morbid frame of mind, I might have chucked it all at Mile 3, when Dacus's chain broke. The plan at that point was to reconnect farther along, after Dacus had hiked back to the trailhead, called Dakota Cyclery for help, and had them drop him off around Mile 10. I rolled on, feeling abruptly, utterly alone. We'd seen no one else all morning, and our first campsite was still 22 miles away. My prevailing concern, however, was staying on my bike. Before my acrobatic dismount, I'd narrowly missed being brained by a lolling branch. Later, I had screeched to a halt at the lip of a sharp declivity and, unable to find a foothold, simply timberrrrrrrrred into the sagebrush. But it was a warm day, in the low 80s, with a delicious tailwind. Wildflowers crowded my wheels: blue flax and sego lily, golden pea and spiderwort. Prairie grasses of muted yellows and olives bristled under a heartbreakingly blue sky. I startled a pronghorn, a relative of the antelope, which took off, kicking up sparks of dirt I trailed it across several hundred yards of upland meadow, until it was a bead in the distance. I had been reading a biography of Sitting Bull, the great Lakota holy man, and knew that far to my left was a siltstone butte called Killdeer Mountain, where in the summer of 1864, the United States Army attacked a peaceful Indian encampment, killing around 150 Santee and Lakota Sioux, though Sitting Bull survived. As they retreated and regrouped for the Battle of the Badlands \u2014 fought later that summer at the trail's midsection near Medora \u2014 the Sioux very likely passed not far from where I was riding. Straddling a $2, 000 mountain bike, and with three liters of cold water in my insulated hydration pack, it was humbling to think of Sitting Bull, a fugitive in his own home, short on water and horses, trying to lead his people to safety over this broken ground. Onward I slogged, from tabletop plain to forests of pinyon and juniper to gravel culvert and back again. Where the trail crossed County Road 50, the outfitter's van appeared with Dacus grinning in a window. A doctored chain, a and we were off again. And then, within minutes, we were lost. While mostly well marked, with signposts placed every 500 feet or so, the Maah Daah Hey can devolve into a latticework of tracks \u2014 some of them cow paths, some blazed by backcountry regulars \u2014 forking this way and that, and ebbing into voids. I the map and scanned its stupefying squiggles for a clue. Which way was north again? And then there it was, in the dirt at my feet: Some benevolent soul had scrawled an arrow with a fingertip, pointing the way ahead. We soon crossed Beicegel Creek, where petrified cedar stumps stood in the shallows, a reminder that western North Dakota had once been subtropical wetlands, like today's Everglades. I gazed down at fossilized abalone and nautilus shells. Toward dusk, we found ourselves flying through an immense pasture, scattering herds of black cows and calves, the light running out behind us. It felt like a reward for a very patchy first day, perched in our pedals and roaring across the beautiful emptiness, tilted slightly downhill with the wind in our faces. After 25 hard miles, our campsite was just minutes away. Now I got this whole mountain biking deal. We were ripping! Until Dacus went airborne. He lacked the luck I'd had earlier and bounced off his head before crashing onto his tailbone. Somehow he walked away, but with the air of a sky diver whose chute had only partly opened. We inspected his helmet. It had a crack down the middle. \"Wow,\" I said. \"You O. K.?\" \"I think so,\" he said, woozily. \"What happened?\" \"It was so beautiful, I decided to look around for a second. \" \"Big mistake. \" We camped that night next to creek called Magpie, in a copse of ash and cottonwood. It was shady down in there, so cool and quiet. I crawled on all fours into my tent and sat plucking ticks from my legs. I was spent, my body a factory of pain. But as I stared into the woods, into the fields beyond, I felt . The Maah Daah Hey was a long time in coming. Originally conceived as a horseback trail, it took the Forest Service a decade to stitch together the inaugural 96 miles in 1999 \u2014 a patchwork of federal, state and private lands \u2014 and in 2014 they finished a second section, called the Deuce, which tacked on 48. 7 miles (there are more miles to come, pending federal financing). For mountain bikers, who caught wind of the trail early on and now make up the vast majority of its 15, 000 annual users, the wait was worth it. The Maah Daah Hey ranks with the storied Slickrock Trail in Utah and the McKenzie River Trail in Oregon as among the country's greatest . It laps both by more than 100 miles. But the landscape of the Maah Daah Hey has a deeper meaning. The trail happens to run straight through what until the late 19th century had been home to scores of Badlands tribes, principally the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, but also the Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Chippewa, Crow, and Oglala and Lakota Sioux (\"maah daah hey\" is Mandan for grandfather). In fact, the trail is part of an ancient, intertribal trading and hunting network that once stretched all the way to South Dakota, Montana and the Knife River Indian villages near Stanton, N. D. where in 1804, Lewis and Clark met Sacagawea while wintering among the Mandan. On the heels of Lewis and Clark's visit, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara were nearly wiped out by smallpox. The survivors banded together and endured, but like all Badlands natives, they were eventually forced to forsake their ancestral lands for reservation life. Before arriving in North Dakota, I had spoken to Gerard Baker, a and former superintendent of the Mount Rushmore National Monument. It was Mr. Baker who had named the trail \u2014 at the Forest Service's request \u2014 partly inspired by stories his late father, Paige Baker Sr. had told him about the longstanding presence there. \"I wanted to name it 'maah daah hey' because grandfathers are always supposed to be around,\" Mr. Baker said. \"From a clanship standpoint, we Indians have a lot of grandfathers, and whether you're having hard times or good times, they're supposed to be there for you. That's what the trail means. You can go out there by yourself and cry and nobody will hear you except the spirits, and they'll help you. \" Mr. Baker had little interest in mountain biking, and saw the trail more as a symbol of his secular and spiritual bond with the Badlands. \"This is an area that the associate with our spirits and our history,\" he said, adding that the trail's northern end is a short drive from the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara reservation at Fort Berthold. \"The Badlands were closed off to us for so long. Now they're open to us again. We have a lot of spirits that still live out there, and we feel an ownership to the land. Deep in our hearts, it's still ours, man. \" At Mr. Baker's suggestion, I had placed a clump of tobacco on the trail as Dacus and I had set out, praying to the four directions \u2014 North, South, East, West \u2014 for our safe delivery. Whether or not it was working seemed to be an open question. Each morning we wondered what the day would bring. The wind was constantly at our backs, like a gentle hand pushing us. Rain that had churned the ground into impassable sludge days earlier was nowhere to be seen. Pronghorn sprung from crowns of gamagrass and foxtail barley. Western meadowlarks and bobolinks shot over the fields. At a place called Devils Pass, we gingerly negotiated a gangplank of shattered stone as the trail narrowed over a shadowy gorge. But then the Maah Daah Hey mellowed into flatlands, veering southwesterly and roughly paralleling the Little Missouri River. We crossed the shallows carrying our bikes on our shoulders, wading the reddened, sluggish water up to our thighs. Dacus, hankering for a swim, plopped down in the middle and flapped his legs, style. We cruised into a maze of huge cottonwoods, a rare length of shade where the grass grew up past our saddles. This was the best part of the trail. The air was stunningly crisp, birdsong flaring and fading. The going was easy. I found a deer antler, a tiny forked thing that I stuffed into my pack, and a little farther on, a hawk feather, fluted rustling across the grass. We headed up again, a dizzying climb in equatorial heat, past the tree line, then stopped for lunch on an alcove with amphitheater views. Miles and miles of rough country rolled to the horizon, a leafy sandstone valley sprouting interior courtyards and alleyways, the swollen sun overhead. Scattered incongruously on distant bluffs were several pumpjack oil drilling rigs, most of them inactive, poised over the earth like herons. Western North Dakota has some of the richest oil and natural gas reserves in the world \u2014 part of the vast Bakken Formation, a geologic superfund of sorts holding billions of barrels of oil, almost all of it reachable only through controversial fracking. During the height of its oil boom from 2006 to 2012, North Dakota produced over a million barrels per day, more than any state besides Texas. When the price of oil dropped in 2014, many rigs went idle. By 3 p. m. we had put 22 miles behind us. Whooping and shouting, we rode a rushing swell of grass, birds in orbit all around, then dropped into a draw, snaking through shoals of boulders. One boulder turned out to be a dead cow, its face and hindquarters eaten away. It was hard not to think of it as an omen. Our camp was a wide basin a mile or two from Elkhorn Ranch, where a young Theodore Roosevelt lived from 1884 to 1887. Roosevelt loved the Badlands. He came to rely on their restorative qualities after wearying stints back East. As an avid hunter, partly what he loved was the chance to shoot the bison, elk and bighorn sheep. Evenings, he'd sit on his veranda with a rifle close at hand. But the Badlands eventually changed Roosevelt, giving shape to a conservationist credo. Sickened by the ravages of hide hunters, he protected 230 million acres of public land during his presidency, including a stunning parcel of North Dakota Badlands. My notes from Day 3 are mostly unprintable here. miles of blistering, infuriating, jackknifed rock. We pushed and pulled and lugged our oppressive, bikes over nearly every inch of ground, cursing and sputtering. We couldn't get enough water. I have an image of Dacus slumped on the trail, febrile and panting, handkerchief covering his face, madly gulping from his water bottle while turkey vultures circled overhead. We decided to ration the four liters apiece we carried, just in case. When we reached a spot with some shade, Dacus lay down for a nap and I scrambled to the top of a butte, that I'd check my cell reception to see if I could call for a medevac. As I sat there, a mule deer clomped into the clearing below me twitching its big khaki ears. Far off, wavering on the thermals, two golden eagles swung into view. With twilight approaching, we found ourselves in a petrified forest, swerving wildly to avoid the blackened stumps. Camp had to be close by, we reasoned. But our map showed we were still an hour out. We weren't quite in tears, but we were close. Sooner or later, the Maah Daah Hey Trail, we had to admit, turns grown men into simpering mama's boys. It's a place for stern, bushwhacking cyclists and not for city kids after a fleeting nature fix. Dacus put our problem succinctly: \"I think what we're finding is our skill levels just aren't very high. \" It was almost dark when we arrived in camp, plumb out of water and near the brink of physical and emotional collapse. By good fortune, four experienced mountain bikers were riding the trail that week, and they greeted us with restorative beers and a dinner. It was a deciding to wimp out on the last day. A shortcut via a graded service road, we realized, would put us back in Medora by lunchtime, nearly halving the trail's last 28 miles. With a cloud of dust in our wake, we were in town by noon, sharing a large Hawaiian pizza and guzzling pints of beer. As we sat toasting our accomplishment, I felt a twinge of pride. It hadn't been pretty, and I was glad it was over, but we'd ridden the Maah Daah Hey Trail, or a good chunk of it anyway, and lived. \"Thanks for inviting me along,\" Dacus said. \"It was amazing. One of the most incredible trips of my life. And I'll never do it again. \" But I thought happily of our last night in camp, of those gifted cans of Canadian beer, and of some Maah Daah Hey advice that Gerard Baker had given me: \"Don't just look, but listen. Stand out there in the middle of the night and listen. Listen to the trees and to the grass, because you'll hear a lot in those Badlands. \" And I did. I stood in the darkness sipping beer and missing my wife, listening to the chirr of summer insects while the stars brightened, trying to tune my ears to the unknown.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Congress taking office on Tuesday remains almost as overwhelmingly Christian as it was in the 1960s even while the share of American adults who call themselves Christians has dropped, according to Pew Research Center analysis. A report from the nonpartisan group said that 91 percent of lawmakers in the Republican-dominated 115th Congress described themselves as Christians, down slightly from 95 percent in the 87th Congress in 1961 and 1962, the earliest years for comparable data. By contrast, the portion of American adults who call themselves Christian fell to 71 percent in 2014, the Pew report said. While Pew did not have numbers for the early 1960s, a Gallup survey from that time found that 93 percent of Americans described themselves as Christian. \"The most interesting thing is how little Congress has changed over the past several decades, especially in comparison with the general public,\" Aleksandra Sandstrom, the report's lead author, said in a telephone interview. The biggest gap between Congress and other Americans was among those who said they have no religion. Only one lawmaker, Democratic Representative Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, called herself religiously unaffiliated. The Pew survey found that 23 percent of Americans described themselves the same way. The percentage of Americans who have no religion has grown, but the portion of voters who said in exit polls that they have no religion is lower than the share of the general public, said Greg Smith, a Pew expert on the U.S. religious landscape. \"The political power of that group might lag their growth in the overall population,\" he said. Among the 293 Republicans elected to the new Congress, all but two identify as Christians. The two Jewish Republicans \u2013 Lee Zeldin of New York and David Kustoff of Tennessee \u2013 serve in the House. The 242 Democrats in Congress are 80 percent Christian, but that side of the aisle includes 28 Jews, three Buddhists, three Hindus, two Muslims and one Unitarian Universalist. The share of Protestants in Congress has dropped to 56 percent today from 75 percent in 1961, while the portion of Catholics in Congress has risen to 31 percent from 19 percent. The U.S. population in 2014 was 46.5 percent Protestant and 21 percent Catholic, the Pew survey showed. The survey was based on data gathered by CQ Roll Call through questionnaires and phone calls to members of congress and candidates' offices.","label":0}
{"text":"The number of women infected with the Zika virus during their pregnancies in the continental United States has risen to 234, health officials said on Thursday. Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declined to say how many of the women had given birth, citing confidentiality concerns for the women and their families. But they did cite six cases with abnormalities \u2014 three babies with birth defects and another three who died before birth with evidence of defects. The numbers raised more questions than answers. Without knowing the total number of births, officials cannot know if the babies with birth defects represent a tiny fraction of the total, or a large part. The agency said some of the defects were related to microcephaly, a condition linked to Zika that causes brain damage and abnormally small heads. Others, like eye problems, were but not caused by microcephaly. Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, one of the leaders of the pregnancy and birth defects team, which is part of the C. D. C. 's Zika response effort, said the release of the numbers was the first in what will be weekly updates on birth outcomes in Zika pregnancies. As the number of births rises, she said, the agency will be able to release more detailed information. \"We're sort of in a hard place,\" Dr. Jamieson said. \"We can't provide a lot of information about where these women are in their pregnancy. We don't want to inadvertently disclose information about difficult decisions these women are making about their pregnancies. \" She said the numbers included the nine pregnant women the C. D. C. had reported on in February. Of the babies in those cases, at least one was born with microcephaly. The C. D. C. also reported on Thursday that the total number of pregnant women who had been infected with Zika in United States territories, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, was 189. But the agency did not report birth outcomes for that group. \"Microcephalic babies are beginning to be born,\" Dr. Jamieson said. \"The disease seems to be very similar no matter where it is. \" Dr. Jamieson said some of the microcephalic births they were seeing were among women who had no symptoms of Zika, a troubling pattern. Roughly 80 percent of people who contract the virus never display symptoms. She estimated that the approximate risk of having a baby with birth defects \u2014 based on findings from Brazil, Colombia and other countries, including the United States \u2014 was between 1 percent and 15 percent. A study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine found no cases of microcephaly among infants born to women in Colombia who were infected in the third trimester of pregnancy. \"The pattern we are seeing in other places is the same as in U. S. travelers \u2014 that Zika is causing birth defects is real,\" she said. \"It's not confined to one location or one time period. \"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Democratic Senator Al Franken will announce his resignation on Thursday, a day after a majority of his Democratic Senate colleagues called for him to step down following a string of sexual misconduct allegations against him, CNN reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted narrowly to repeal regulations requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google (GOOGL.O) or Facebook Inc (FB.O). The vote was along party lines, with 50 Republicans approving the measure and 48 Democrats rejecting it. The two remaining Republicans in the Senate were absent and did not cast a vote. According to the rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission in October under then-President Barack Obama, internet providers would need to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children's information and web browsing history for advertising and internal marketing. The vote was a victory for internet providers such as AT&T Inc (T.N), Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), which had strongly opposed the rules. The bill next goes to the U.S. House of Representatives, but it was not clear when they would take up the measure. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate was overturning a regulation that \"makes the internet an uneven playing field, increases complexity, discourages competition, innovation, and infrastructure investment.\" But Democratic Senator Ed Markey said, \"Republicans have just made it easier for American's sensitive information about their health, finances and families to be used, shared, and sold to the highest bidder without their permission.\" FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said consumers would have privacy protections even without the Obama administration internet provider rules. In a joint statement, Democratic members of the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission said the Senate vote \"creates a massive gap in consumer protection law as broadband and cable companies now have no discernible privacy requirements.\" Republican commissioners, including Pai, said in October that the rules would unfairly give websites like Facebook, Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) or Google the ability to harvest more data than internet service providers and thus dominate digital advertising. The FCC earlier this month delayed the data rules from taking effect. The Internet and Television Association, a trade group, in a statement praised the vote as a \"critical step towards re-establishing a balanced framework that is grounded in the long-standing and successful FTC privacy framework that applies equally to all parties operating online.\" Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel for advocacy group Consumers Union, said the vote \"is a huge step in the wrong direction, and it completely ignores the needs and concerns of consumers.\"","label":0}
{"text":"The White House said on Friday that it will continue to work with the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress on a \"legislative piece\" to address the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. White House spokesman Sean Spicer made the comment as President Donald Trump prepared to sign executive actions to direct a review of the Dodd-Frank Act and put the brakes on a retirement advice rule.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump s army of deplorables are viciously attacking First Lady Michelle Obama because she dared to condemn his predatory sexual behavior towards women.On Thursday, Mrs. Obama took a powerful swing at the Republican nominee over his comments about sexually assaulting women and his predatory behavior that makes him totally unfit to be president. This is not something we can ignore, she said. It s not something we can sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season.Because this was not just a lewd conversation. This wasn t locker room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior. And actually bragging about kissing and groping women. Using language so obscene that many of us are worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV. To make matters worse, it now seems very clear this isn t an isolated incident. It s one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life.The First Lady also urged parents to reject Trump because rewarding him with the presidency will only send a bad message to children, especially boys. In our hearts we all know that if we let Hillary s opponent win the election, then we are sending a clear message to our kids that everything they re seeing and hearing is perfectly okay. We are validating it, we are endorsing it. We are telling our sons that it is okay to humiliate women, telling our daughters that this is how we deserve to be treated, that bigotry and bullying are perfectly acceptable. Is that we want for our children? Let s be very clear, strong men, men who are truly role models don t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful. Michelle Obama is no stranger at being attacked for any little thing she does and this time was no different as conservatives swarmed the internet to smear her as much as possible with all sorts of horrendous remarks.@CNNPolitics @CNN too bad her husband isn t a decent man. Wonder if she actually knows any. Oh her! She s a decent man! Deplorable Tiffany (@1tiffanyl) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN @MichelleObama How do you feel about your sleazy husband flaunting his erection to other women? Just curious. FRAUD ALERT!! (@redco2012) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN Michelle Obama is an embarrassment! I can t wait until your go Deplorable Marmy #DT (@Loofie68msncom2) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @benshapiro And exposing her daughters to revolting rappers and music about bitches and ho s that have been welcomed to WH sal (@tevet) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN nothing like our own first lady standing in front of millions of you as she supports fraud, corruption n destabilization ? Trump STRONG (@allabouttrump) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN your husband is an insult to all Americans!! Deporable American (@wendytogo34) October 13, 2016@CNNPolitics @CNN Oh please Michelle Obama @FLOTUS with your fake half cry and faux outrage .don t you have packing to do??? Ferkslaw (@ferkslaw1) October 13, 2016And these are just the tip of the iceberg.Conservatives somehow STILL support Donald Trump despite the fact that he is an admitted sexual predator and creepy pervert. And in order to defend their hero, they repeatedly bring up Bill Clinton even though he was never charged with committing a sex crime and is NOT running for president.Hillary Clinton was absolutely right. Trump s supporters are deplorable.Featured Image: Spencer Platt\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump's son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has hired a prominent trial lawyer to help represent him in inquiries linked to Russia, the New York Times reported on Monday citing another member of his legal team. Kushner took on Abbe D. Lowell, the newspaper said, joining other senior administration figures including U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Vice President Mike Pence and Trump himself in hiring private attorneys. The White House has come under increased scrutiny since Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Mueller and a number of congressional committees launched investigations into whether there were ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 election campaign team. Trump and his key aides have repeatedly denied any collusion with Moscow. Mueller is examining Kushner's meetings with the Russian ambassador and a Russian banker as part of a broad enquiry, the New York Times said. But there are no signs that Kushner is the target of an investigation and Kushner has promised to cooperate, the newspaper added. The 36-year-old Kushner, a real estate developer with no previous government experience, had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, seven current and former U.S. officials told Reuters in May. When Mueller became special counsel in May, he left a job at WilmerHale, a legal firm that also employs another lawyer for Kushner, Jamie Gorelick. \"When Bob Mueller left WilmerHale to become special counsel and three of our colleagues joined him, we asked Mr. Kushner to get independent legal advice on whether to continue with us as his counsel,\" Gorelick said in a statement to the Times. \"He engaged Abbe Lowell to advise him and then decided to add Mr. Lowell to the team representing him in the various inquiries into the Russia matter,\" she said. Trump on Monday demanded that investigators apologize for looking into Russian interference and possible collusion with his election campaign, accusing predecessor President Barack Obama of having \"colluded or obstructed,\" but he did not provide evidence. Russia has said it did not interfere in the vote.","label":0}
{"text":"Volition stakes its Seoul on the success of this successor to the world of Saints Row, but Agents of Mayhem doesn't leave a great first impression. [Agents of Mayhem takes place in a Row future, though it's unclear just how much influence that the purple gangsters of developer Volition's previous crime series have had on the \"MAYHEM\" . Still, their membership includes both Pierce and the (and presumably resurrected) Johnny Gat from previous Saints games, so we aren't straying too far from Volition's ongoing universe of sandbox mayhem. After the viral success of Saints Row 4's hijinks, the development team has decided to double down on slapstick anarchy. Agents of Mayhem offers at least ten different playable characters, each with their own skills, strengths, weaknesses, and upgrade paths. Choosing the right three for a given mission, which you can then switch between playing as on the fly, into a futuristic parody of Seoul will be crucial to success. Mission difficulty is extremely scalable, allowing you to balance risk versus reward before you've pulled the trigger. On the ground, swapping between said squadmates is instantaneous and allows for powerful combinations of both active and passive abilities. It's more than choosing the right weapon for the job \u2014 knowing who is better at disrupting shields, who can punch through armor, and who has a penchant for computer hacking is an important part of deciding who hits the streets. Vehicle gameplay doesn't look especially impressive or robust, but it remains present. Whether or not it's worth the time to slip into one of the many vehicles on the streets of Seoul remains to be seen, but Saints Row 4 rendered automotive transportation utterly pointless with its hijinks so there may not be much reason for concern. Agents of Mayhem recalls nothing so much as an especially crude Saturday morning cartoon, with easily as many as bullets. Volition's recent games have always had a sense of humor that can be hit or miss, but the humor is (mostly) endearing. Agents of Mayhem doesn't stick with me as much as past efforts in the demo I played, but I could see myself growing attached to members of the crew given time. Unfortunately, the game's promise seems to have stalled after the concept stage. When I sat down to actually play, I found a game that felt like the leftover missions from an title, with none of the freedom that implies. Though my team was aesthetically different, playing each of them was an exercise in holding down the trigger until the bloated life bars of faceless enemies depleted, and I moved to the next checkpoint. There were hints of progression \u2014 you can collect vehicles, experience, and shards. But the vehicles felt pointless, and I didn't have enough time with the game to stretch my legs with some of the advancement. Switching between characters has all the gravity of weapon swapping. On one hand, it wasn't cumbersome. On the other, it just didn't seem to matter very much. The game's visuals were similarly uninspired. Everything is just a little too smooth. Character models are simple, stiffly animated, and overly shiny, making the game feel more like an HD remake of a title than the heir apparent to a beloved franchise. The animated cutscenes felt more like a storyboard for real cinematics than something to ship with a finished title. As an ardent fan of the Saints Row franchise, Agents of Mayhem felt criminally underwhelming. Given some time in the open world, with a wider variety of team members and the opportunity to play with the character advancement system, my opinion could change. For now, however, all it did was make me wish for a true successor to the absurdly creative GTA knockoff that inspired it.","label":0}
{"text":"Israel is expanding ties throughout the Middle East but not with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday, accusing his country s arch-foe of trying to dominate the region. Addressing a Jerusalem diplomatic conference, Netanyahu said Israel has relations with nearly every single one of nations that do not formally recognize it, due to their growing need for its economic and security expertise. See that country in red? By the way that s not on our list of diplomatic allies, he said, pointing to Iran on a regional map. He deemed Iran an aggressive regime seeking nuclear arms and a land bridge via its allies to the Mediterranean sea.","label":0}
{"text":"Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST every Wednesday. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Andy Nowicki from Alt Right Blogspot, ACR\/21Wire contributor Randy J and Stewart Howe. In this broadcast we re going off the rails and off the cuffs, listeners will be hearing us go around the BOILER ROOM on a myriad of topics tonight including relief booths in the city, Sarah Palin s endorsement of Donald Trump, whether or not there is any hope in the political system, reported sexual assaults in Cologne, the Oregon standoff and El Chapo owning Fast and Furious weapons. If you want to participate, bring something interesting to throw into the boiler Join us in the ALTERNATE CURRENT RADIO chat room.BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! Live ACR player below Show goes live at 6 PM PSTThis week s topics:","label":1}
{"text":"Pakistan s government on Saturday called on the military to help police break up a sit-in by religious hardliners who have blocked the main routes into Islamabad for more than two weeks, state television reported. Army called in to control law and situation in capital, official Pakistan TV reported, citing an Interior Ministry notification. Pakistani police fought running battles on Saturday with stone-throwing activists of the ultra-religious Tehreek-e-Labaik party but failed to dislodge the activist who are blocking roads into Islamabad. By nightfall new demonstrators had joined the camp as protests spread to other main cities with activists brandishing sticks and attacking cars in some areas.","label":0}
{"text":"Or, how to stop worrying and love staving off the dystopian nightmare that threatens. Trump's victory party By Liam Miller \/ filmsforaction.org  Here we are. President Trump.  I'm going to say it again. The pain will stop sooner. We have to toughen ourselves up.  President Trump.  Look. I'm not surprised.  Turnout was low. Trump and Clinton each got 58 million votes and change. But it was enough to hurl Trump into office.  The polls were close; but Clinton's supporters just haven't been passionate enough, while Trump's supporters are all too.  We're looking at a bad situation. Potentially nightmarish. But we're also looking at the one situation that can get people to start working together who might otherwise have simply continued to jockey for power. (I'm looking at you, establishment Democrats.)  Mind you. It's still wretched. But look at it this way: now, we can deal with our racist, sexist, patriarchist history head on.  Every Sanders supporter is, deep inside, saying \"I told you so\". And they're right.  Virtually every poll had Bernie thumping Trump soundly. All the arguments people make in favor of Trump, which they seemed to think outweighed his flaws, included bucking the system. All of those people would have voted for Bernie. Someone very close to me, who had been a Republican for four decades, registered Democrat to vote for Bernie in the primary; and they voted for Trump yesterday.  Bernie was the people's candidate; independents (who now comprise 45% of the electorate) favored him 2:1. There's no doubt he would have trounced Trump; but there is also no doubt that Bernie's ideas are America's ideals. We just can't let these lunatics have their way with the country.  So look. There's really no time to lose. Let's get the ball rolling. The midterms are two years away; we need to win big. Trump has a Republican Congress; dear lord, the horror. There's a presidential election to win two years after that. Local elections up and down the line. And a lot of grassroots organizing, fundraising, and door-knocking to accomplish.  At least the Koch brothers and most of the establishment Republicans hate him too.  Pull together, people. We got this. This work is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License 3.5 \u00b7","label":1}
{"text":"MOSCOW (AP) \u2014 A trial for the blogger who is accused of inciting religious hatred for playing \"Pokemon Go\" in a church has begun in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. [advertisement","label":0}
{"text":"Tweet Widget A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon  Under President Obama, Democrats threw away their mandate to fight for health care for. Instead they let insurance companies concoct Obamacare, sketchy policies, skimpy coverage, high deductibles and co-pays for half the uninsured and empty promises for the other half. A Gallup Poll confirms that 58% of Americans want to see Obamacare replaced with a single payer system to guarantee health care, not health insurance for everybody. Time For the Real Left To Double Down on Single Payer Medicare For All A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon  The Affordable Care Act, which President elect Trump promises to repeal and replace with nobody knows what, was never all it was cracked up to be.  The promise to deliver affordable health care was a key campaign issue in 2007 and 2008. But while most Americans demanded a single payer system to replace the private insurance companies, and guarantee health care for everyone, the 44 th president his corporate funded Democrats instead delivered Obamacare \u2013- billions in tax dollars to insurance companies for policies with skimpy coverage and such high co-pays and deductibles that many families cannot afford to use their new health insurance. Worse still, Obamacare only provided these sketchy policies to about half the uninsured leaving the rest to the tender mercies of state governments which control Medicaid.  Ever since 2009 corporate Democrats have justified their treachery with claims that single payer Medicare For All was impossible to get through even the majority Democratic Congress of 2009 and 2010. Hillary Clinton also declared single payer dead on arrival should she be elected. But Hillary was not elected, and even though this is the fourth consecutive Republican dominated Congress, and Republican politicians hate Medicare For All just as much as their Democratic rivals, the popular mandate for single payer health care is very much alive.  A May 2016 Gallup Poll confirms that \"...58% of U.S. adults favor the idea of replacing the law (Obamacare) with a federally funded healthcare system that provides insurance for all Americans.\" The question for the left, however you read that term is what do we do about this? The answer has to be that we fight for what we know people want and need with all the means at our disposal. In the present era, the willingness to organize, to agitate, to educate, to demonstrate and to demand health care \u2013- not health insurance, but health care for everybody as a human right is one of the markers by which we can tell actual flesh and blood leftists and their organizations from those who merely fake the funk until the next Democrat takes office. It's worth noting that the Green Party' candidates Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka were the only ones in this election calling for single payer health care.  A 2009 study by the National Nurses Union reveals that adoption of Medicare For All would create 2.6 million new jobs, from doctors and nurses to a host of health care professionals and technicians. That's as many jobs as were lost in the 2007-2009 recession. It would inject #75 billion per year into the US economy, including $100 billion in wages alone. President Trump won in part because he told people he'd \"bring back the jobs.\" But steel mill jobs are imaginary, fictitious. Health care jobs are real.  The tens or hundreds of thousands in streets each night justifiably protesting the ascension of a crotch grabbing racist con man to the White House would be well advised to not repeat the mistake of Occupy a few years ago. They and others who want to be relevant in this new era urgently need to put forth some concrete demands which if struggled for will make them opinion leaders, and if won will improve the lives of millions. Quality single payer health care NOW is one of those demands.  Trump's threat to dismantle Obamacare is an invitation for us to reopen the struggle for health care as a human right. And this time we know we're struggling against Republicans AND Democrats.  For Black Agenda Radio I'm Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com . Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and serves on the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. He can be reached via email","label":1}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says Republican candidate Donald J Trump will be the 45th President of the United States.History has been made, as he will be the first person ever to hold office despite having no previous political or military experience Trump s victory was definitive. By breaking through the seemingly impregnable Blue Wall in the northern rust belt of Wisconsin and Michigan, Trump effectively ran the table on Democrat favorite Hillary Clinton in what pundits are calling one of the biggest political realignments in decades. It s time for America to bind the wounds of division, said Trump in front on a crowd of thousands at his acceptance speech at the Hilton in downtown Manhattan.Trump s victory over Clinton is now regarded as the most stunning upset in US political history upending the establishment s false polling and the mainstream media s collusion with the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign. Neither the polls or the pundits saw this coming.It s reported that Hillary Clinton called Trump to concede the race before he addressed his supporters. I ve just received a call from Secretary Clinton, said Trump. She congratulated us, it s about us, on our victory. And I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign. I mean, she fought very hard. Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a very long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country. And I mean that very sincerely. Earlier this week, Trump predicted his victory, likening it to the UK s surprise BREXIT vote this past summer, saying it would be Brexit Plus Plus. After being written off by the media and the party establishment in the GOP primaries, and then again in the general election, Trump still managed to capture the imagination of one of the biggest insurgent voting blocks in electoral history. Before the results came in, yesterday 21WIRE editor Patrick Henningsen commented on the key to Trump s success, explaining: Granted, half of the American population have been conditioned to hate Trump for various reasons. But many of them are missing the key point in the Trump story, just like they did in the Sanders story. Trump offered millions of voters something profound: the idea that even in today s insulated political fortress that is Washington DC, anything is still possible in American politics where an outsider can come in and shake up a stale and corrupt ruling class. Stay tuned for more updates.READ MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"Who didn t see this coming? Four more women have come forward to charge Bill Clinton sexually assaulted them This could get interesting You know, with Hillary coming out last week with a lecture on standing up for women Will she stand by her man or not?Edward Klein is the former editor in chief of the New York Times Magazine and the author of numerous bestsellers including his fourth book on the Clintons, Guilty as Sin, in 2016. His latest book is All Out War: The Plot to Destroy Trump was released on October 30, 2017. Bill Clinton is facing explosive new charges of sexual assault from four women, according to highly placed Democratic Party sources and an official who served in both the Clinton and Obama administrations.The current accusations against the 71-year-old former president whose past is littered with charges of sexual misconduct stem from the period after he left the White House in 2001, say the sources.Attorneys representing the women, who are coordinating their efforts, have notified Clinton they are preparing to file four separate lawsuits against him.As part of the ongoing negotiations, the attorneys for the women are asking for substantial payouts in return for their clients silence.A member of Clinton s legal team has confirmed the existence of the new allegations.Back in the late 1990s, Clinton paid $850,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit by Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state employee whose case led to Clinton s impeachment in the House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal by the Senate in 1999. The negotiations in the new lawsuits are said to have reached a critical stage. If they fail, according to sources in Clinton s inner circle, the four women are said to be ready to air their accusations of sexual assault at a press conference, making Clinton the latest and most famous figure in a long list of men from Harvey Weinstein to Kevin Spacey who have recently been accused of sexual assault.The new allegations refer to incidents that took place more than 10 years ago, in the early 2000s, when Clinton was hired by Ron Burkle, the playboy billionaire investor, to work at his Yucaipa companies. Clinton helped Burkle generate business and flew around the world with a flock of beautiful young women on Burkle s private jet, which was nicknamed Air F**k One. The four women, who have not yet revealed their identities, were employed in low-level positions at the Burkle organization when they were in their late teens and claim they were sexually assaulted by the former president.","label":1}
{"text":"Wouldn t it be nice if we could just kick bigots out of our country? Well, that s exactly what happened when anti-gay Arizona pastor Stephen Anderson stopped by Botswana for a visit and decided to preach hate.Anderson s road to Botswana was an eventful one, with the United Kingdom banning him from so much as getting on a connecting flight in their country. This forced him to find a roundabout way to get to Botswana, where he intended to spend quite some time preaching. But after he suggested that homosexuals be stoned to death in a radio interview, Anderson learned that his hatred is not tolerated everywhere. I have identified Steven Anderson as an undesirable person to travel to South Africa, Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba told the BBC. The country s Constitution, unlike ours, prohibits hate speech against, among other things, the gay community (even though homosexual acts are illegal in Botswana) and if you ve ever listened to Anderson speak for five minutes straight, you know hate speech is kind of his thing. The government even tweeted to inform everyone he had been declared a prohibited immigrant :Pastor #StevenAnderson, a #USA citizen has been declared a Prohibited Immigrant and as such is being deported from #Botswana Botswana Government (@BWGovernment) September 20, 2016What prompted his removal was a radio interview in which he said homosexuals should be stoned to death. Anderson also repeated his praise of the Pulse nightclub shooter. While he says he doesn t advocate violence, the victims were disgusting homosexuals who the Bible says are worthy of death, the Bible says the government should put them to death, so why would I be sad if these horrible people died that the Bible says should die anyway. Anderson told his interviewer, who pointed out that the Bible supports slavery, that while he doesn t believe the Bible condones slavery (it does), if it did then yes I would condone it because the Bible is always right and I am not smarter than God. In the past, Anderson has blamed the terrorist attacks in France earlier this year on the country s acceptance of f*ggots, has called the Orlando massacre good news because a bunch of f*ggots died (he later expanded on that by adding that perfect Christians would bathe in the blood of the slaughtered innocents while singing praise to God), has prayed for the death of President Obama and asked God to rip out Caitlyn Jenner s heart and even suggested executing every gay person in the world to cure AIDS. You can watch Anderson getting snagged by immigration officials below. If you re anything like me, you ll play it on repeat and laugh.You can see an interview with his camera guy here:","label":1}
{"text":"They tease terrorists. The prophet Muhammad cries. A devout Muslim woman shows some leg, and more. They take on Pope Francis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. There are nuns, priests, rabbis and imams. They laugh at death itself. The latest edition of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper attacked last week by Islamist extremists for lampooning the prophet Muhammad, became a symbol of freedom of expression as soon as it hit newsstands Wednesday \u2014 selling out millions of copies before dawn. Yet, in a country that mobilized Sunday by the millions in support of the paper's right to mock, France also found itself facing a mounting debate over the limits of free speech within its borders. French authorities on Wednesday detained and charged a notorious comedian, Dieudonn\u00e9 M'bala M'bala, with \"glorifying terrorism\" for an ambiguous Facebook post Sunday that, to some, appeared to show support for the gunman who killed four people in a kosher market Friday. Since last week's attacks, at least 54 people have faced similar charges \u2014 including several underage pranksters and drunken louts who were mouthing off. Authorities have used a beefed up anti-terrorism law passed last year to expedite their cases and issue harsher jail sentences \u2014 with one offender arrested Saturday already receiving a four-year sentence. The Justice Ministry has also issued fresh orders for prosecutors to crack down on \"anti-Semitic and racist acts or speech.\" Laurent L\u00e9ger, an investigative journalist for Charlie Hebdo who survived the attack, said there was no comparing the newspaper to Dieudonn\u00e9 \u2014 a French showman of Cameroonian descent who popularized a Nazi-like salute and who jokes about the Holocaust. \"Dieudonn\u00e9 does not know the Charlie spirit,\" L\u00e9ger said. \"Charlie never glorified terrorism. Dieudonn\u00e9 is a bit too quick when he claims that his freedom of speech is being hampered. His attitude is just making things worse by continuing the confusion that is destroying this country.\" Yet others disagreed, saying France was in danger of trouncing the very right it is aiming to protect: freedom of expression. \"We can definitely talk about hypocrisy here,\" said Adrienne Charmet, campaign coordinator for La Quadrature du Net, a Paris-based Internet rights group. \"In the past days, we have seen a lot of people condemned for putting out words, no matter how condemnable those words, and receiving sentences that seem quite exaggerated.\" \"French opinion is split in two,\" she added. \"Some see it as the worst possible response to last week's attack, because many of those who have said these things were drunk, or teenagers, who did not know the weight of their words. But there is another segment of the population that does agree, because they feel these people are making themselves accomplices to terror. Either way, this crackdown on freedom of speech is a betrayal of last Sunday's march.\" Charlie Hebdo was undoubtedly the hottest property in town Wednesday, with lines snaking for blocks as Parisians clamored for copies that sold out within minutes. An initial print run of 3 million copies was expanded to 5 million when kiosks across the country ran out. Surviving staff members, who worked day and night after the Jan. 7 attack to ensure the issue came out on time, produced the paper. With their offices still roped off as a crime scene, the staff worked out of a conference room at the left-wing daily Lib\u00e9ration. The offices there are being guarded around the clock by an extraordinary number of police officers and private security guards. There was plenty inside the paper to stir controversy. The 16-page edition brims with the sort of irreverent, off-color humor that made Charlie famous \u2014 and infamous. No one is spared ridicule. In one cartoon, two hooded terrorists are pictured in heaven, with one asking the other, \"Where are the virgins?\" \"They're with the Charlie staff, loser,\" his accomplice replies. Another pictures a harried and exhausted cartoonist hunched over his desk, with a caption that reads, \"Cartooning at Charlie Hebdo, it's 25 years of work.\" The next panel shows hooded gunmen mowing people down with a Kalashnikov, accompanied by the words, \"For a terrorist, it's 25 seconds of work.\" As ever with Charlie Hebdo, the goal is to provoke, to stir debate and to make people laugh \u2014 while also reminding anyone who might think otherwise that reading Charlie can be distinctly discomfiting. The paper's lead editorial offers a vigorous defense of secular values, saying that staffers laughed when they heard that the bells of the Cathedral of Notre Dame would ring in their honor. \"The millions of anonymous people, all the institutions, all the world leaders, all the politicians, all the intellectuals and media figures, all the religious dignitaries who proclaimed this week that 'I am Charlie' need to also know that that means, 'I am secularism,' \" the editorial says. Delphine Ravion-Casalta, 39, spent an hour and a half visiting three newsstands Wednesday morning before she found her Charlie. She sipped coffee at a cafe, her copy proudly spread out before her, eagerly taking in every word. \"In France, we're still fighting for our freedom,\" she said. \"We had revolution for our freedom. A lot of revolutions. And great men like Voltaire and Rousseau. The fight for those ideas continues.\" The rush for copies of Charlie Hebdo came as French authorities detained and charged Dieudonn\u00e9, 48. After the unity march that brought 1.5 million people onto the streets of Paris on Sunday, the comedian wrote: \"After this historic, no legendary, march, a magic moment equal to the Big Bang which created the Universe, or in a smaller way comparable to the crowning of the [ancient king] Vercing\u00e9torix, I am going home. Let me say that this evening, as far as I am concerned, I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly.\" Charlie Coulibaly is a reference to both Charlie Hebdo and Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman who killed four people in a Paris kosher market on Friday. The comedian, in a second Facebook post Monday, sought to clarify his remark, saying his purpose was \"to make people laugh, and to laugh at death, since death makes fun of us all, as Charlie very well knows.\" He concluded by saying, \"They consider me to be Amedy Coulibaly when I am no different from a Charlie.\" Valls, speaking in the National Assembly, sought to draw a distinction between the creative caricatures of Charlie Hebdo and the comedian's hate-based humor, while insisting that France was not compromising freedom of speech. \"There is a fundamental difference between the freedom to be impertinent, and anti-Semitism, racism, glorification of terrorist acts and Holocaust denial, all of which are offenses, all of which are crimes, that justice should punish with the most severity,\" he said.","label":0}
{"text":"This is the age of street style, an era when we talk about \"the show outside the show\": the people who dress to be photographed by the growing hordes of snappers on the sidewalk waiting to capture the exaggerated fashions necessary to stand out from the peacocking crowd and bestow upon them their 15 minutes, or seconds, of fame. Go to any fashion show and you can see it: a woman or man in a colorful, kooky swarmed by photographers jostling for the best shot and calling, \"Look over here!\" and, \"Who are you wearing?\" \u2014 lemmings in the land of the . But Bill Cunningham, who began it all, was never among them. Since his death on Saturday, many of the memorials and the hagiographies that have poured out over the internet have dubbed Bill (I can't call him Mr. Cunningham, as I've known him, and been squeezed up next to him on fashion show benches, for too long) the father of street style, and rightly so. Still, a more accurate way to think of him might be as someone who applied the tenets of visual journalism to fashion. He began his career as a reporter, after all, and his photographs were simply another expression of the same discipline: They weren't filtered, airbrushed or staged. He was among the first to recognize the value of observing what people wore in their everyday life, and to understand that it was a reflection of identity and culture, a means of communication used by all, and thus a crucial historical record. Before there was Scott Schuman, a. k. a. \"The Sartorialist,\" or Tommy Ton, or Phil Oh, there was Bill, riding his bicycle, reporting on what he saw: the idiosyncratic and the ubiquitous, but above all, the honest. His subject was not what was manufactured to catch his eye, but what people wore to feel part of the group, or to stand out from the group, or to otherwise telegraph their place in the world \u2014 be it at a charity ball or at a popular shopping street corner, no matter. Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, has often been quoted as saying, \"We all dressed for Bill. \" It's a lovely and genuine sentiment \u2014 both fashion and society are peppered by women whose dream was to be photographed by Bill, and having him take your picture became a seal of approval \u2014 but the truth is, he wouldn't have wanted anyone to dress for him. He wanted to understand and record how they dressed for themselves. He himself dressed the part. He created his own uniform years ago, calculated to take himself out of the (bigger) picture: a blue French worker's jacket, khakis and sneakers. It spoke, proclaiming very loudly, \"This is not about me. \" But it was about his eye. He taught me (his pictures taught me) that while what was on the catwalks was interesting, it was what happened to the clothes afterward \u2014 how they were used, or not used \u2014 that really mattered. It wasn't that he rejected fashion he loved it, with a enthusiasm for discovery. But he understood that its power was personal. Clothes are the front line of communication they are the first thing we say about ourselves to each other, and the first judgment we make in turn. That was his story. And it is why his videos and columns were so obsessively interesting. Harold Koda, the former head of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, once told me that the debate over whether fashion belonged in the museum had been resolved when the powers that be started seeing fashion as a decorative art that represented popular attitudes and mores \u2014 toward beauty, craft and society \u2014 at a specific moment in time. This belief also drove Bill, whose thousands of pictures now comprise an invaluable portrait of popular identity in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They recorded the casualization of life, the rise of the cause ribbon, the advent of the \"It\" bag and the problem of global warming (What the hell do you wear when it's summer in January and snowing in April? ). Street style has become an increasingly ersatz game, less about unique and the revelatory than marketing, with brands shipping clothes to popular stars to wear in theoretically shots \u2014 clothes they have not chosen, mind you, but been given (or even paid to wear). In the same way that the red carpet has become an advertising vehicle, so, too, have many sidewalks. Bill represented the truth behind all of that. His legacy is our reality, and we should not forget.","label":0}
{"text":"Well, this is embarrassing! The NFL commissioner was getting help from a helicopter wife who set up a fake twitter account to counter any negative press on her husband. It s pretty shocking because his wife is former Fox analyst Jane Skinner Goodell who should know better because she s in the news business. Did she really think people wouldn t find out who was constantly tweeting support for Goodell?Roger Goodell s wife set up a secret Twitter account to clap back at the NFL commissioner s detractors, according to the Wall Street Journal.The Twitter account, under the name Jones smith, has no followers, no profile picture and has been virtually dormant for long periods since its creation in 2014.@forargument is no longer active as of Thursday afternoon but according to the report, it was owned and operated by Goodell s wife, Jane Skinner Goodell, and often clashed with sports media outlets that produced content critical of the commissioner.Under the fake name Jones Smith, the account defended Goodell on several issues including the NFL s recent handling of national anthem protests.An example of the mysterious account standing up for Goodell took place earlier this month in response to an ESPN story chronicling the chaos that swept across the league when President Donald Trump went to war with anthem protesters. Reads like a press release from players union. You can do better reporting. (D Smith sounds like D Trump with the inaccurate firebombs), @forargument tweeteed to ESPN writer Seth Wickersham. D Smith was likely a reference to NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith.Goodell s wife, who is a former broadcast journalist with Fox News, has also taken aim at WSJ columnist Jason Gay and other sportswriters, according to the Journal.The Journal said it traced a series of clues back to Mrs. Goodell, including how the account in question followed four accounts associated with their twin daughters high school.Goodell s wife coming to his digital defense is nothing new in sports and media, though it is embarrassing. Thin-skinned Kevin Durant was recently accused of running a fake Twitter account to take on negative news and opinion about him on social media.Wives and girlfriends of pro athletes have never been shy about standing up for their famous husbands online. From Kate Upton sticking up for Justin Verlander not winning a Cy Young last year to Miko Grimes cheerleading for her husband, cornerback Brent Grimes, on social media, plenty of athletes have gotten a digital assist from their significant others. However, those women did not hide behind a fake Twitter account to make their feelings known.Goodell has earned plenty of negative press in his more than 10 years running the NFL, including the league s handling of domestic violence and concussion issues, Deflategate, and most recently, the anthem protests.Just be nice about what you say about him on Twitter, because his wife might clap back at you.","label":1}
{"text":"A former U.S. Justice Department official has become the latest lawyer to join special counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, a spokesman for the team confirmed. Greg Andres started on Tuesday, becoming the 16th lawyer on the team, said Josh Stueve, a spokesman for the special counsel. Most recently a white-collar criminal defense lawyer with New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, Andres, 50, served at the Justice Department from 2010 to 2012. He was deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division, where he oversaw the fraud unit and managed the program that targeted illegal foreign bribery. Mueller, who was appointed special counsel in May, is looking into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the election, among other matters. Congressional committees are also investigating the matter. That Mueller continues to expand his team means the probe is not going to end anytime soon, said Robert Ray, who succeeded Kenneth Starr as independent counsel for the Whitewater investigation during the Clinton administration. \"It's an indication that the investigation is going to extend well into 2018,\" said Ray. \"Whether it extends beyond 2018 is an open question.\" The special counsel last month asked the White House to preserve all of its communications about a June 2016 meeting that included the president's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. Russian officials have denied meddling in the U.S. election, and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign. Among the cases Andres oversaw at the Justice Department was the prosecution of Texas financier Robert Allen Stanford, who was convicted in 2012 for operating an $8 billion Ponzi scheme. Before that, Andres was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn for over a decade, eventually serving as chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney's office there. He prosecuted several members of the Bonanno organized crime family, one of whom was accused of plotting to have Andres killed. A graduate of Notre Dame and University of Chicago Law School, Andres was a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin from 1989 to 1992. He is married to Ronnie Abrams, a U.S. district judge in Manhattan nominated to the bench in 2011 by Democratic President Barack Obama. Others on the special counsel team include Andrew Weissmann, chief of the Justice Department's fraud section; Andrew Goldstein, former head of the public corruption unit at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan; and James Quarles, who was an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate investigation that helped bring down President Richard Nixon. (Story refiles to correct typographical error in paragraph 11 to Andres instead of Andrews.)","label":0}
{"text":"Warren Buffet, one of the richest men in the world and someone who actually does know a lot about money, has known this whole time what drove Trump s campaign finances into the ground. He didn t say as much, because at the time Buffett revealed this, it was 1991 and he was talking about Trump s bankrupt Taj Mahal. What he said then can apply now, though, and the state of Trump s campaign finances backs it up.Back when Trump filed for bankruptcy on the Taj Mahal, Buffett was giving speeches to undergrad students at Notre Dame when someone asked him where Trump went wrong. Buffett said: He simply got infatuated with how much money he could borrow, and he did not give enough thought to how much money he could pay back. That s so Trump, especially when faced with the possibility that he can t do what he wants because of consequences. So is this: The big problem with Donald Trump was he never went right. He basically overpaid for properties, but he got people to lend him the money. He was terrific at borrowing money. If you look at his assets, and what he paid for them, and what he borrowed to get them, there was never any real equity there. No, he never did go right. Trump has six bankruptcies total in his history, which is a lot, even over 25 years. He owes at least $100 million to Deutsche Bank. One has to wonder whether he got over his infatuation with borrowing, or whether he learned anything from his bankruptcies. He certainly hasn t learned to think about the consequences of anything he does.His campaign is more than $40 million in the hole with just over $1 million in the bank, and he just sent out his first desperate email begging his constituents for money. He ll need those donations to keep his campaign running, not pay off debt. Perhaps he thinks the debt will walk quietly away?This is significant because, if he s as in love with debt as he is with himself, he very well could make our national debt skyrocket despite his more than impossible promise to have it paid off within eight years. He s far more likely to actually bankrupt the U.S. than any other candidate if he s mired in this notion that he can borrow money indiscriminately.Buffett and Trump are polar opposites in the way they do business, and even in the way they see government. For instance, Trump has bragged about the low tax rate he pays, as if that s something to be proud of when the government is talking about cutting needed services because there isn t enough money. Buffett, on the other hand, has called for higher taxes on the wealthy repeatedly.That makes Buffett the smart one of these two, but then, we already knew that.Trump keeps saying he can change his tune anytime he wants, but the few paltry efforts he s made have failed spectacularly within just a few days. It s a good bet that he ll remain addicted to borrowing money, even as president. He has his eye on the prize, and the prize is a destroyed U.S., and a fat wallet for himself.Featured image by Paul Morigi\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Despite the recent move of the Raiders from California to gambling mecca Las Vegas, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has reaffirmed the league's stance against gambling. [With the move to Vegas and the growth of sports betting websites such as Draft Kings, many have wondered just how hard the NFL will continue the fight to restrict gambling. But, Goodell's recent comments seem to answer that question, at least for now, USA Today reports. \"I would probably tell you that I think society has probably had a little bit of a change with respect to gambling in general,\" Goodell said at the league's annual meeting in Arizona on Tuesday. \"I think we still strongly oppose it in that room, and otherwise, legalized sports gambling. The integrity of our game is No. 1. We will not compromise on that. \" Even with that negative assessment, Goodell did admit that Vegas isn't the same, crooked city it once was. \"But I also believe that Las Vegas is not the same city it was 10 years ago or 20 years ago. It's a much more diverse city. It has become an entertainment mecca. It's the city in the country,\" he added. \"So I think when you look at it today versus what it was a decade or two ago, I think it's a much different city. And they made a very compelling proposal, which the owners obviously approved overwhelmingly. \" Indeed, many polls have shown an increased tolerance for gambling among the pubic. Polls last year revealed that nearly half of respondents were in favor of legalizing sports betting. Governments are also hungrily eyeing sports betting as a likely new source of tax revenue, as well. Consequently, various bills have been introduced in Congress to lift the federal ban on sports betting. But, other signs pointed to new problems in the internet age when sports fan sites like Draft Kings and Fan Duel came under fire for corrupt practices last year. Yet, even with the controversies, it was reported that several pro sports leagues are looking to work closer with the gambling industry. Unlike the NFL's Goodell, NBA chief Adam Silver recently went in the opposite direction on sports betting by softening his league's stance against gambling. But, there is still faint hope for gamblers looking for football to favor them. In the end Goodell noted that the NFL reserves the right to change rules whenever it makes sense to do so. Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail. com.","label":0}
{"text":"He went there. We all knew he d go there, but on Monday Donald Trump deigned it appropriate to attack Meryl Streep after she made some rather pointed remarks about accepting others in her speech at the Golden Globes. Without naming Trump by name, she managed to twist the knife deep in The Donald s abdomen with very little effort. There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart, Streep said, referencing Trump s attacks on a disabled New York Times reporter last year. Not because it was good, there was nothing good about it, but it was effective and it did its job. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, she continued. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it and I still can t get it out of my head because it wasn t in a movie, it was real life, Streep said. This instinct to humiliate when it s modeled by someone in the public by someone powerful, it filters down into everyone s life because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same. Calling on the press to hold power to account, Streep very correctly pointed out that When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. Naturally, this was too much for Trump to handle. In an interview with the New York Times Monday morning, Trump denied mocking anyone at all. I was never mocking anyone, Mr. Trump said. I was calling into question a reporter who had gotten nervous because he had changed his story. Trump, of course, was referencing a 15-year-article written by Serge F. Kovaleski that he had attempted to use to prove that Muslims were celebrating in the streets.In reality, Kovaleski correctly reported that police, swept up in the paranoia directly following 9\/11, had detained a number of people who had allegedly celebrated. Ultimately, there was one account of people celebrating in the streets at the time and it was five young Israeli men, who were certainly not Muslims. People keep saying I intended to mock the reporter s disability, as if Meryl Streep and others could read my mind, and I did no such thing, he told the Times. And remember, Meryl Streep introduced Hillary Clinton at her convention, and a lot of these people supported Hillary. He then took to Twitter to attack Streep as one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood and a Hillary flunky who lost big. Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn't know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a .. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never \"mocked\" a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him . Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017\"groveling\" when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017Just for reference, this is Donald Trump not mocking anyone :Naturally, Twitter erupted in fury both at Trump s revisionist claim that he had not mocked anyone and his attack on a woman who simply said that the guy sitting at the head of the table shouldn t be a dick to the dinner guests:Trump reacting to anything, basically pic.twitter.com\/U8pxgNb0yM Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Why didn't you just say \"I appreciate Meryl's thoughts and I will strive to be a great president\"? God I miss Obama already! Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 9, 2017 @realDonaldTrump yeah, who do we believe you or our lying eyes? ? Kevin (@TheKevinDent) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Yes you did. https:\/\/t.co\/yOgLRef99T Louis Dor (@LouisAlexDore) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Yeah you did, you cowardly, lying gnat. Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Everyone saw you do it, you fucking idiot. Lie about something else. Dan Rebellato (@DanRebellato) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump No, no, you quite clearly mocked his disability. You're fucking disgusting. Brendan Maclean (@macleanbrendan) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump as a disAbility rights advocate, this \"defense\" is INDEFENSIBLE. Do you even have the capacity to ask for forgiveness? Joseph Amodeo (@josephamodeo) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump nope. you're a piece of shit pic.twitter.com\/1rjAfV0Y8J Josh Mikel (@Joshua_Mikel) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump Everyone saw you mock him, you cowardly pathetic bully. You are the worst thing to happen to America since Limp Bizkit. Andrew W Chamings (@AndrewChamings) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump tagging this so all your teenage followers can send me good megadrive cheats christian mccrea (@christianmccrea) January 9, 2017@realDonaldTrump yeah, those videos that clearly show you mocking the reporter are SO dishonest. Alyssa Hertzig (@alyssahertzig) January 9, 2017Donald Trump our President in less than a week is the sort of person to whom facts don t matter. He s the type of guy who will mock someone on video and lie to you about it as the video plays. His presidency is going to be an unpresidented (to use his word) disaster, and there is no chance our nation will not suffer for his arrogance and stupidity.But, hey, at least we get to learn Russian! .","label":1}
{"text":"Is the Republican establishment is in panic mode over Trump s staying power in nationwide GOP polls? Instead of sitting around gnashing their teeth, perhaps they should let the voters decide you know,try something new and actually listen to the American people Your thoughts?A Republican National committeeman delivered a call-to-arms against Donald Trump during a closed-door GOP meeting on Thursday, urging his colleagues to take a forceful stand against those who he said are destroying the party s brand.At a breakfast at the RNC winter meeting, Holland Redfield, an RNC committeeman who represents the minority-rich Virgin Islands, rose to address party Chairman Reince Priebus. In the five-minute impromptu speech, a video recording of which Redfield provided to POLITICO, Redfield did not explicitly mention Trump s name. But he made clear that angry voices in the party pose a grave threat to the GOP s future, and expressed alarm at what he described as crushing pressure to play nice. You can argue with me, but we re almost terrorized as members of our party. Shut up. Toe the line, embrace each other, and let s go forward. I understand that. But there is a limit to loyalty. I am loyal to this party by speaking out on these very issues, he said at the private breakfast meeting.At one point, Redfield essentially argued that those in the room have been held hostage by Trump s threat to run as a third-party candidate if the party hierarchy treats him unfairly.","label":1}
{"text":"Close your eyes and picture Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) telling a white radio host that he wouldn t rule out an all-white party. Now picture his political career and his personal life being destroyed. Will the same thing happen to Maxine Waters, the woman the Democrat Party is talking about electing as their next leader?Waters joined The Breakfast Club radio show on Monday morning and was asked if it was time for black people to form their own political party. No, not at this point, Waters said. You have to show that you re willing and you re able to put the numbers together and exercise your influence. We still are not voting our influence yet, she continued. What we should do is organize our power, exercise our power, particularly in the Democratic Party because that s where most of us are. Waters then suggested that when black people are strong enough they may branch out into their own party. Daily CallerWATCH:","label":1}
{"text":"Emotions around the nation are raw due to the rash of violence that we have experienced in the past week. First, there were back to back shootings of black men at the hands of police, first Alton Sterling in Louisiana, and then Philando Castile in Minnesota. Of course, the world is watching in both cases. To top it all off, a deranged individual with military training and an ax to grind decided to target police during a peaceful protest in Dallas, Texas. Therefore, it is important that visitors to these tense areas treat the situation with sensitivity. However, that doesn t seem to be the order of the day for one Fox reporter.A video was taken of a protest in St. Paul, Minnesota, where it seems a Fox reporter is attempting to bait protesters. The video is little more than a hit piece, with a reporter who clearly does not care about the protesters or why they are there. Understandably, the protesters tell the reporter to leave, but he refuses. The confrontation becomes more and more heated as he shoves the microphone into the protester s face. Here is the footage. (WARNING: NSFW language):As if that weren t bad enough, particularly the fact that the video is clearly cut to be a total hit piece, the comments are even worse. Many even call for the deaths of black people. Again, these images are NSFW and contain offensive language:This is beyond despicable. These people are testament to just how racist the opposition to #BlackLivesMatter really is. These are people who are literally protesting for lost lives, and here these imbeciles are calling for more deaths. We have a lot of work to do when it comes to racism in America, no matter how much so-called evidence there is from the right wing that racism is over.","label":1}
{"text":"Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf s spokesman on Monday denied allegations from her own party that she meddled in this month s presidential election. The dispute has cemented a falling out between Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and her party s leadership after 12 years in power that saw the country consolidate a post-war peace but draw sharp criticism over alleged corruption and underdevelopment. At a news conference on Sunday, leaders from Johnson Sirleaf s Unity Party accused the president of holding inappropriate private meetings with election magistrates before the Oct. 10 vote. They accused her of showing greed in its most callous form with the intent of disrupting the fragile peace of Liberia , and backed a challenge to the first round results brought by other parties before the country s election commission. Unity Party s candidate, Vice President Joseph Boakai, placed runner-up in the first-round with 28.8 percent of the vote to front-runner George Weah s 38.4 percent, setting up a second round run-off scheduled for Nov. 7. The office of the president wishes to state unequivocally that these allegations are completely baseless and an unfortunate attempts by agents provocateurs to undermine Liberia s democratic process, Johnson Sirleaf s spokesman, Jerolinmek Piah, told reporters. He said that all of the president s meetings with election officials were consistent with her constitutional role to ensure that the process was supported . These allegations fall in the category of hate speech and inciting language which should be condemned by all peace loving Liberians, Piah added. Liberia s economy has quadrupled under Sirleaf s watch, but the forested country remains impoverished and many have no access to reliable drinking water and electricity. Tired of the monied elite that they say Johnson Sirleaf represents, many voters see Weah as the candidate for change. Boakai has served as Johnson Sirleaf s vice president since her inauguration in 2006 but Johnson Sirleaf declined to endorse him and he distanced himself from the last administration. The election commission was expected on Monday to hear the challenge to the first round results brought by the Liberty Party of third-place candidate Charles Brumskine with the backing of Unity Party and the All Liberian Party of businessman Benoni Urey.","label":0}
{"text":"While Donald Trump's political fortunes were rising, his net worth was dropping to a mere $3.5 billion, or roughly a third of what he claimed during his successful campaign for the U.S. presidency, according to the latest Forbes list of the world's billionaires. Trump tumbled more than 100 spots to No. 544 on the magazine's 31st annual list, largely because of the impact of the slumping New York real estate market on his holdings. \"Midtown Manhattan real estate is down; therefore, so is Donald Trump's fortune,\" the business magazine said in a statement. The developer-turned-politician, who ranked No. 205 last year, fell further behind to Bill Gates, the list's perennial leader. Gates, the philanthropic co-founder of Microsoft Corp, was followed this year by Berkshire Hathaway Inc Chairman Warren Buffett at No. 2 and Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos at No. 3. While Trump's net worth slipped, more people were qualifying for the list. This year Forbes ranked a record 2,043 billionaires. \"Booming stock markets, higher commodities prices and plain old-fashioned entrepreneurship helped make this a record year in terms of wealth creation around the globe,\" Forbes editors Luisa Kroll and Kerry Dolan said. Trump's current $3.5 billion net worth compares with $3.7 billion in October, when Forbes published its list of the 400 wealthiest Americans and a month before his Election Day upset against Democrat Hillary Clinton. While campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in May, Trump's team filed a personal financial disclosure form that said his net worth was more than $10 billion. Critics have said he has inflated the true value of his wealth, saying his tax returns would provide a more accurate snapshot of his financial status. But Trump has defied convention and refused to release his returns. Neither the White House nor the Trump Organization, which Trump's sons have run since their father's inauguration, immediately responded to a request for comment on the Forbes list. Gates maintained his No. 1 spot for the fourth year in a row, with his $86 billion fortune up from last year's $75 billion. Buffett, the legendary value investor known as the \"Oracle of Omaha,\" reclaimed the No. 2 berth after a two-year hiatus. His net worth surged to $75.6 billion from $60.8 billion. Third place went to Bezos, who apparently was the biggest winner on the 2017 list. His wealth jumped to $72.8 billion, a gain of $27.6 billion from last year, Forbes said.","label":0}
{"text":"Mali and Niger, two of the West African nations worst affected by jihadist violence, appealed on Wednesday for international funding for a regional force they have set up to counter Islamist insurgencies. Mali s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Niger s Mahamadou Issoufou said the force assembled by the G5 Sahel bloc Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad was crucial to fighting a threat that went well beyong their borders. We bring this combat against terrorism not only to protect our own people and countries but for the whole world, Issoufou told a news conference in Niger s capital Niamey. For terrorism knows no border. It will go to Europe, it will go to the United States, he said. The world has to be mobilized. The idea of the G5 force was first dreamed up in 2015, but only in July last year did the countries set it up. It is expected to comprise around 5,000 troops. French President Emmanuel Macron has said he expects it to be operational by the autumn. Islamist groups, some with links to al Qaeda, seized Mali s desert north in 2012. French-led forces scattered them the following year but they still attack peacekeepers, soldiers and civilian targets in Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast. Issoufou said a multinational force in the Lake Chad region, including soldiers from Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon, had had some success against Islamist Boko Haram militants, but that this was financed by Africa s biggest economy, Nigeria, whereas no country in the G5 had sufficient resources. It is important that the international community takes note of this and gets together to give us resources to ensure our mission can be accomplished, he said. Analysts see the G5 force as the basis of an eventual exit strategy for around 4,000 French troops deployed to the region on counter-insurgency missions, mostly in Mali. We have only limited means, but if we mutualize our power, our sovereign elements will have more force, more vitality than we imagine, Malian President Keita said. Issoufou said the force would be divided into three deployments across the Sahel region: an eastern one consisting of Chadian and Nigerien forces, a central one with forces from Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, and a Western one with troops from Mali and Mauritania.","label":0}
{"text":"If you were bored on Thursday night at around 7pm ET and felt the need to peruse President Trump s Twitter feed, you might ve instead encountered a blue page bearing the message, Sorry, that page doesn t exist! , eventually just replaced with an even more generic-looking response:Yes, for a whole 11 minutes Donald Trump s Twitter account was down.Twitter is sometimes seen as that one avenue where voyeurs and sociopaths can coexist so it comes as no surprise that the medium is a favorite of President Trump s, as well as his supporters and critics alike. It is where we get to see the truly uncensored leader, not following a script, just posting exactly what comes to mind and digging his hole deeper with every tweet. A normal day for Trump generally begins by taking to Twitter to attack Democrats, North Korea and, of course, kneeling NFL players before he starts his presidential duties.However, some have grown tired of Trump s early morning poop-tweets and one person decided to take action. That s right, this wasn t the result of some glitch of sorts, but was actually an inside job. To be more specific, it was the work of a heroic Twitter employee on their last day on the job. Twitter initially released a statement saying the President s feed was inadvertently deactivated due to a human error, but it didn t take long for the truth to come out.Earlier today @realdonaldtrump s account was inadvertently deactivated due to human error by a Twitter employee. The account was down for 11 minutes, and has since been restored. We are continuing to investigate and are taking steps to prevent this from happening again. Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017Through our investigation we have learned that this was done by a Twitter customer support employee who did this on the employee s last day. We are conducting a full internal review. https:\/\/t.co\/mlarOgiaRF Twitter Government (@TwitterGov) November 3, 2017Naturally, the Twittersphere initially went into conspiracy mode when they couldn t access Trump s account, with the common assumption being that the President had finally been booted from the platform. Many have requested that President Trump be banned from Twitter under the belief that his tweets about North Korea could be bringing the United States closer to the brink of nuclear war, something Twitter has declined to do, claiming they must weigh the newsworthiness of Trump s tweets with its violent rhetoric.Instead, on this occasion, it was just a Twitter employee having the intestinal fortitude to do what many have probably fantasized about doing on their last day of work.","label":1}
{"text":"It s no secret that team Trump is all in a tizzy over Jill Stein s recount attempts in multiple states, but Eric Trump may have just entered a whole new level of idiocy with what he just said and posted on Twitter.He tweeted a link to a Forbes article entitled, The Cost Of Stein\/Clinton s Wisconsin Vote Recount Could Have Saved At Least 5,000 Children s Lives, which says nothing about the legitimacy of the recount at all, and is simply a fun clickbait fallacy for the right wing to circlejerk around. And he tweeted it with the caption, The Sad Truth: The Cost Of Stein\/Clinton s #Wisconsin Vote Recount Could Have Saved At Least 5,000 Children s Lives. Here s the tweet in question: The Sad Truth: The Cost Of Stein\/Clinton s #Wisconsin Vote Recount Could Have Saved At Least 5,000 Children s Lives https:\/\/t.co\/sMNQJDfppt Eric Trump (@EricTrump) December 4, 2016In case you are struck speechless, much as I was, don t worry; Twitter has us covered. Below are some fantastic and all-too-true responses: @EricTrump @Forbes says the guy that literally sits on golden chairs in a house made of gold Truthbomb (@KramerTruthbomb) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump So could the 24-karat gold-plated seatbelt buckles on your dad s plane. But, Democracy. Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump you know what else helps saving people s lives? paying taxes Special Kebab (@SoTiredzzz) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump Are You Fucking Kidding Me?!? Pot, Meet Kettle. Hypocrite! #NotMyPresident #Resist #AuditTheVote https:\/\/t.co\/scn7VE5tFC ? #NotMYPresident! (@HelloMittyKitty) December 4, 2016 @HelloMittyKitty @Hc2016Now @EricTrump You have that kind of cash. Don t see you saving 5k lives.Killing big game is better,right? BeTheChange (@SeekingNotLost) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump How many lives could be saved with the money required to protect your family in NY? https:\/\/t.co\/Q6udu2QWzo A Good Stoic (@AGoodStoic) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump How much is your daddy s bullshit idea to move Mommy 3 and half-brother Barron into the WH gonna cost, Junior Mister Burns? James Schlarmann (@JamboSchlarmbo) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump @Forbes think how many children s lives could be saved with the taxes your dad doesn t pay Truthbomb (@KramerTruthbomb) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump @Forbes think of how many endangered animals you would save if you d quit poaching them. Truthbomb (@KramerTruthbomb) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump your foundation could have too but paintings of your dad were more important. #fraud margo (@omimargo) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump Let s see you dad s tax returns to see how charitable he is. HRC+2.59M (1.9%) PV (@szorowitz) December 4, 2016 @EricTrump Oh please share with us your wisdom on the ways of giving. Perhaps a glance at your taxes to show all your charitible donations? The Saddest American (@martinichaser15) December 4, 2016All great points!","label":1}
{"text":"By Allison Vincent Election 2016 , News , Politicians Behaving Badly , Politics , Racism October 29, 2016 CNN's Van Jones Has Some Reality For Trump: If He Were Black We'd Call Him A 'Thug' (VIDEO)  On Wednesday night, Donald Trump had a black man kicked out of his rally in North Carolina.  \"We have a protester! Were you paid $1500 to be a thug?\"  Well, the joke was on Trump, because the man he called \"thug\" was actually there supporting him, and for some odd reason\u2026he still is.  RELATED: Trump Calls Black Man At Rally A 'Thug,' Kicks Him Out \u2013 Except There's One Big Problem  On Friday night's episode of Real Time With Bill Maher , CNN's Van Jones sat down with Maher, one on one, and addressed the issue of Donald Trump's dangerous, racist rhetoric and said that if Trump were black, people would be hearing his words in a completely different way.  \"If Trump were black, we'd be calling him a thug!\"  Bill Maher took that point further saying that if Barack Obama were caught on tape saying, \"Give me a tic tac\", because when you're a \"community organizer,\" they'll just let you do whatever you want \u2013\"grab em by the p*ssy,\" people would be outraged.  Let's face it \u2014 President Obama wouldn't have gotten anywhere near the White House if he did the things that Trump has been caught doing, and would likely be under indictment (or possibly in prison) for sexual assault. Why does it continue to be acceptable for Trump to behave this way and get away with it? The double standard is really getting old.  Watch the full interview here:","label":1}
{"text":"This is an article from Turning Points, a magazine that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. Turning Point: Though the first fatal crash involving an autonomous car took place in July 2016, vehicles have been adopted around the world. In 2016, cars made inroads in several countries, many of which rewrote their laws to accommodate the new technology. As a writer, it's my duty to warn the human race that the robot revolution has begun \u2014 even if no one has noticed yet. When a few autonomous test cars appeared on the roads over the last few years, we didn't think of them as robots because they didn't have the humanoid shape that movies taught us to expect. In 2016, they were adopted widely: as buses in the United Arab Emirates and the Netherlands, taxis in Singapore and private cars in the United States and China. There was a fatal accident in Florida involving an autonomous car, which caused some concerns, but this did not significantly affect our embrace of this technology. Instead of arming ourselves against this alien presence, as some of my fellow writers have fearfully suggested, we gawked as the vehicles pulled up to the curb. The driverless vehicles, some of which had no steering wheels or gas pedals, merged into traffic and stopped at stop signs, smoothly taking us to our destinations. We lounged in comfort, occasionally taking selfies. Machine learning has been an important tool for autonomous car companies as they develop the systems that pilot their vehicles. Instead of rigidly following programming as an app on your phone does, an A. I. system can try to learn to do a task itself, using techniques borrowed from human learning, like pattern recognition and trial and error, and may use hardware modeled on the architecture of a human brain. Currently, the responsibilities of artificial intelligence are mostly limited to tasks like translating texts, helping with medical diagnoses and writing simple articles for media companies. But we can expect to see unimaginable progress in this field in future \u2014 and the widespread use of the autonomous car is going to accelerate that process as automobile and technology companies invest ever more resources in its development. Let's try to envision that future. As during every other technological revolution, the robots will first transform our economy. People who drive for a living will lose their jobs \u2014 around 3 million in the United States alone. may experience further booms because of automation, and car ownership is likely to become nearly obsolete as more targeted car sharing and public transportation systems are developed. Eventually, the robot cars could be integrated with other transportation systems. Say that you live in New York City and want to go to China's Henan Province: You will enter the address into an app, a car will take you to your plane at the airport, and after you land, another will take you directly to your destination. Robots will begin to creep into other areas of our lives \u2014 serving as busboys or waiters, for example \u2014 as our investments in robotic transport improve their prowess in areas such as environmental detection and modeling, problem solving and applications. With every advance, the use of A. I. robots will expand into other fields: health care, policing, national defense and education. There will be scandals when things go wrong and backlash movements from the new Luddites. But I don't think we'll protest very much. The A. I. systems that drive our cars will teach us to trust machine intelligence over the human variety \u2014 car accidents will become very rare, for example \u2014 and when given an opportunity to delegate a job to a robot, we will placidly do so without giving it much thought. In all previous technological revolutions, people who lost their jobs mostly moved to new ones, but that will be less likely when the robots take over. A. I. that can learn from experience will replace many accountants, lawyers, bankers, insurance adjusters, doctors, scientific researchers and some creative professionals. Intelligence and advanced training will no longer mean job stability. Gradually the A. I. era will transform the essence of human culture. When we're no longer more intelligent than our machines, when they can easily outthink and outperform us, making the sort of intuitive leaps in research and other areas that we currently associate with genius, a sort of learned helplessness is likely to set in for us, and the idea of work itself may cease to hold meaning. As A. I. takes over, the remaining jobs may dwindle to a fraction of what they were, employing perhaps 10 percent or even less of the total population. These may be highly creative or complex jobs that robots can't do, such as senior management, directing scientific research or nursing and child care. In the dystopian scenario, as jobless numbers rise across the globe, our societies sink into prolonged turmoil. The world could be engulfed by endless conflicts between those who control the A. I. and the rest of us. The technocratic 10 percent could end up living in a gated community with armed robot guards. There is a second, utopian scenario, where we've anticipated these changes and come up with solutions beforehand. Those in political power have planned a smoother, gentler transition, perhaps using A. I. to help them anticipate and modulate the strife. At the end of it, almost all of us live on social welfare. How we will spend our time is hard to predict. \"He who does not work, neither shall he eat\" has been the cornerstone of civilizations through the ages, but that will have vanished. History shows that those who haven't had to work \u2014 aristocrats, say \u2014 have often spent their time entertaining and developing their artistic and sporting talents while scrupulously observing elaborate rituals of dress and manners. In this future, creativity is highly valued. We sport ever more fantastic makeup, hairstyles and clothing. The labor of past ages seems barbaric. But the aristocrats ruled nations in the A. I. era, machines are doing all the thinking. Because, over the decades, we've gradually given up our autonomy, step by step, allowing ourselves to be transformed into A. I.'s docile, fabulously pampered pets. As A. I. whisks us from place to place \u2014 visits to family members, art galleries and musical events \u2014 we will look out the windows, as unaware of its plans for us as a poodle on its way to the groomer's.","label":0}
{"text":"This article is uncensored and contains very offensive language.The tiny town of Riverhead, New York, just across the Peconic Bay from The Hamptons, is on fire. No, not literally. It s not on fire like the California cities Donald Trump has seemingly forgotten about. But it wouldn t surprise me to find out that Trump knows more about Riverhead on Long Island than he does about Fountaingrove or Coffey Park in Santa Rosa. Especially now that officials are on their heels defending town attorney Bob Kozakiewicz and his wife, Dianne Delaney, after she posted possibly the most racially offensive rant I have ever seen.After visiting a local pizza parlor, Delaney took to Facebook to complain about the perceived treatment of her waitress by some black people whether they were fellow patrons or employees is unclear and it went south after just two sentences:Also unclear is how someone gets elected (yes, elected) town attorney without the deep-seeded racism clearly apparent in his family coming to light before now.Delaney is just the attorney s wife, so she will, of course, face no consequences. But Kozakiewicz is being defended by the town after some began calling for his resignation. Kozakiewicz and town supervisor Sean Walter blamed Delaney s rant on alcoholism, which may have played a part in the lack of inhibition required to publicly post something like that. But whether her uncensored feelings were set free by liquor or not, nobody but an unabashed racist could even come up with these things to say, drunk or sober.Kozakiewicz told his local paper Monday morning that his wife s rant in no way, shape or form reflects my views. That s an assertion that s slightly undercut by the fact that shortly before deleting his own Facebook page, the most recent post of his own was a share of a video by noted racist and alt-right Nazi Mike Cernovich:The town of Riverhead isn t quite ready to let Bob go, though. In addition to asking those following this story to pray for Dianne, town supervisor Walter laid equal blame at the feet of anyone who posted screen captures of the episode: It is unmitigated hatred that should never be reposted. If you see it and you repost it you re just as guilty in my opinion about propagating that hatred. So I guess I now share the blame for Dianne Delaney and her husband Bob being horrible, garbage humans.I can live with that if it eventually gets this asshole fired.","label":1}
{"text":"Palestinian secular and Islamist factions on Wednesday called a general strike and midday rallies to protest U.S. President Donald Trump s announcement that he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel s capital, they said in a joint statement. Answering the call for strike on Thursday, the Palestinian education ministry declared a day off and urged teachers as well as high school and university students to take part in the planned rallies in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Palestinian areas in Jerusalem. In a speech in Washington, Trump said he had decided to recognize Jerusalem as Israel s capital and move the U.S. embassy to the city. Arabs and Muslims across the Middle East condemned the U.S. decision, calling it an incendiary move.","label":0}
{"text":"After claiming the lives of more than a quarter of a million people; causing the biggest refugee crisis since World War II; and fueling the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the civil war in Syria, which started in 2011 as a peaceful protest against President Bashar al-Assad but later turned into an international proxy war, is today, signaling World War III. At least, that's what the West and the mainstream media want you to believe . However, the truth is the United States and its allies are using the \"war crimes\" and \"crimes of historic proportions\" in Syria to prolong the proxy war, overthrow Assad, and annex an independent country. Sadly, the United Nations, Amnesty International, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and other \"concerned parties\" (including the mainstream media), support the West in its malicious intent. The Western Claim \"Russia and the Syrian regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities and children and women,\" US Secretary of State John Kerry recently commented. Kerry begged for an investigation of the Russian and Syrian military strikes against civilians and medical facilities in Aleppo, as war crimes. \"There is clear and abundant evidence the Assad regime and the Russian government are committing crimes that include, but are not limited to, deliberate attacks on civilians, collective punishment, starvation as a tool of war, torture, murder, inhumane treatment of prisoners and the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield,\" asserted The Washington Post . \"The ancient city of Aleppo, a place of millennial civility and beauty, is today a slaughterhouse \u2014 a gruesome locus of pain and fear, where the lifeless bodies of small children are trapped under streets of rubble and pregnant women deliberately bombed,\" observed the UN human rights' chief, seeking a war crimes inquiry. The Western Evidence 1. A commission for International Justice and Accountability \u2014 a non-profit organization funded by western states including the UK, US, the EU, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Canada and Denmark \u2014 smuggled over 600,000 top-secret Syrian government documents brought to Western Europe . An analysis of some 400 documents \"linked the systematic torture and murder of tens of thousands of Syrians to a written policy approved by President Bashar al-Assad, coordinated among his security-intelligence agencies, and implemented by regime operatives.\" Current status: Neither the documents nor the evidence has been made public. 2. A decorated American journalist and a former CIA officer, Adam Ciralsky wrote about the 53,275 photos that \"Caesar\" (a Syrian military photographer turned war crimes whistleblower, who fled the country in August 2013) took as grisly evidence of Assad's brutality. \"The pictures, most of them taken in Syrian military hospitals, show corpses photographed at close range \u2014 one at a time as well as in small groupings. Virtually all of the bodies \u2014 thousands of them \u2014 betray signs of torture: gouged eyes; mangled genitals ; bruises and dried blood from beatings; acid and electric burns; emaciation; and marks from strangulation,\" Ciralsky explained. Current Status: The treasure trove, as well as the photographer \"Caesar,\" is hidden from the public eye. 3. In 2015, Amnesty International documented the systematic and widespread \"unthinkable atrocities\" war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed by Assad's regime, in a 74-page report (including indiscriminate use of explosive weapons, arbitrary arrests, torture, and enforced disappearances). The 'heartbreaking' research involved merely 78 residents (mostly former) and 29 professionals working in Aleppo . 4. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights \u2014 the London-based monitoring group, often Quote: d as the most authoritative source of information about human rights abuse in Syria \u2014 is a tool of Western propaganda run by one man who last visited Syria in 2000 (11 years before the armed conflict began). He relies on \"intelligence\" allegedly gathered by around 200 \"activists\" who he has never met. Current Status: Whatever the SOHR claims, the mainstream media reports as truth without verifying its nature \u2013 because the SOHR does not reference any sources. The Western Lies Why is the angry and (nowadays) concerned world not asking the United States and the mainstream media a few pertinent questions? What is the West doing in Syria? Why is the peace-loving West prolonging the war? Why is the West backing the rebels in a foreign country? Why is the West funding and arming ISIS? Why are the Western forces not being held accountable for war crimes like bombing a hospital? Why is the mainstream media, the NGOs and the UN not holding the West accountable for crimes committed on their own land, or in Israel, Africa or Yemen? One reason may be because of the abundance of natural gas under Syrian soil, and that this may very well be another 'petrodollar' war . The US had long had its gaze set on Syria \u2013 years before the civil war and the 2011 \"revolution.\" Leaked WikiLeaks cables show the US ambassador to Syria (2004-2007) William Roebuck discussing a plan to remove Assad from power, in December 2006 . While the Russian and Iranian forces entered Syria on Assad's request to fight against ISIS and armed rebels, the Western military invaded Syria \u2014 a sovereign country and United Nations member state \u2014 to violently overthrow the Syrian government. Why didn't the West invade Saudi Arabia to initiate \"humanitarian intervention\" and save innocent citizens from its brutal dictator? Saudi Arabia remains a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council and a U.S. ally, despite its poor human rights record \u2014 if attacking an independent harmless country is justified, why did the US act against Osama bin Laden? The Western effort to annex Syria has relied on a series of crudely-spun lies and media-generated talking points. In September, RT dared to expose the top 10 Western lies about Syrian conflict that the mainstream media are trading in, to fool the Western public into backing yet another failed 'nation-building' project (after Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya). Obviously, the fear mongering media didn't find it profitable to give the lies much, if any, coverage in the West. From calling the conflict a fault of wicked Assad, and Assad a brutal dictator who enjoyed no popular support, to portraying him as an uncompromising President interested only in 'killing his own people' \u2013 and not in peace and reconciliation, the list is endless. From accusing the Syrian government and Russia for helping ISIS and terming the Western interventions in Syria as humanitarian, to claiming Russia was acting out of self-interest and that the West was on the side of the 'good guys' in Syria, can you be certain of the 'truth'? Realistically, the West hasn't been fighting 'terror' in Syria, it has aided it. Remember the American journalist Serena Shim, who was killed in October 2014, after she revealed the ISIS-Turkey-US link that proved the West was assisting ISIS in Syria? The Syrian Reality Henry Lowendorf, a member of the Executive Board of the U.S. Peace Council's Peace and Fact-Finding Delegation to Syria \u2013 who returned from Syria in August \u2013 noted: \"What we saw in Syria goes against everything we read in the United States.\" Before 2011, illiteracy in Syria had been wiped out; the life expectancy was 75.9 years and the government spent massive amounts of money on improving the nation. Developing irrigation, electricity, water and road building projects, and expanding the health services and education to rural areas, all occurred; and China invested hundreds of millions of dollars to modernize Syria's aging oil and gas infrastructure.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday he expects a funding request from the Trump administration for disaster relief for Puerto Rico by mid-October. McConnell told reporters he met with the island territory s representatives on Tuesday and discussed Puerto Rico s needs after Hurricane Maria.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Thursday to discuss political and security issues during an unannounced trip to Baghdad, state television said. The trip is the first time that Biden, the point person for the White House on Iraq, has visited the country since the United States withdrew its forces in 2011. He is the third and highest-level U.S. official to visit Iraq this month.","label":0}
{"text":"Even as a new party under a populist female leader scrambles the outlook for Japan s general election next month, one thing is clear: the winner will loosen a grip on the government s runaway debt as lawmakers forego higher taxes or boost spending. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to use the revenue from a planned sales-tax hike not to pay down debt but to spend more on education and other popular programmers. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, whose Party of Hope is challenging Abe s ruling coalition by effectively absorbing Japan s largest opposition party, wants to put off the tax hike altogether. Japan has yet to emerge from deflation as consumption, which makes up a large portion of the economy, remains weak, she told a briefing on Thursday, criticizing Abe for doing little to prop up household income. The debate is shifting to how much more to spend and in what areas, rather than on what is acceptable within the limits set by Japan s public debt, which at well over twice the size of its economy is the biggest among industrialized nations. Regardless of who wins, there will be increased spending because that s how you win votes, said Koichi Haji, chief economist at NLI Research Institute. Very few lawmakers call for fiscal reform, Haji added. That may be fine now, but there s no telling when loss of market trust in Japan s finances could trigger a spike in bond yields. Japan s ballooning public debt has not bothered the bond market much so far, as investors trust the country can repay public debt with its huge current account surplus and abundant domestic savings. But the long-term risk is that snowballing social security spending for a fast-ageing population will strain government finances, making it more vulnerable to a sudden spike in borrowing costs that would hurt the economy. Japanese government bond (JGB) prices tumbled on Thursday, with the benchmark futures posting their biggest fall in three months, as investors braced for bigger spending. Abe came into office in 2012 vowing to eradicate two decades of economic stagnation with Abenomics his three policy arrows of fiscal spending, monetary stimulus and structural reforms. While the fiscal and monetary support reflated the economy, critics say Abe has made little progress on structural reforms. In announcing a snap election for Oct. 22, Abe said he will proceed with the sales tax hike in 2019 but divert more proceeds to education and child care, and less on debt payment. He acknowledged it was now impossible to fulfill his promise to balance the budget excluding debt service and new bond sales by March 2021 as planned. Finance Minister Taro Aso said Japan will delay the timing for meeting the target by several years, with a new deadline to be set by the middle of next year. What s worrying is that the delay (in achieving the fiscal target) would make it impossible for the government to put the brakes on spiraling fiscal spending, said Hideo Kumano, chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute. The government may resort to bigger fiscal stimulus if a pull-back in demand after the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games pushes the economy into a downturn. Finance ministry officials charged with drafting the state budget are relieved Abe will proceed with the tax hike, but stress the need to set a new deadline to keep spending in check. It s a good thing that the premier has stuck with a primary balance goal, even with a delay, a senior ministry official said. Japan s fiscal discipline will remain intact as long as we set a new timeframe. Koike s new party, on the other hand, calls for freezing the sales tax hike, makes no mention of balancing the budget and proposes boosting wise spending - without giving details. An opposition win would mean even bigger spending and a collapse of Japan s fiscal discipline, said a ruling party lawmaker close to Abe. Critics say the Bank of Japan s ultra-easy policy is partly to blame for a lack of discipline in Japan s fiscal spending. Politicians so far are paying no price for being lax about spending because the BOJ pins the 10-year bond yield at zero, essentially letting the government borrow for free. BOJ Governor Haruhiko Kuroda says his bank isn t printing money to bankroll public debt. But some policymakers worry that the central bank could be forced to maintain its ultra-easy policy for longer than it wants, for fear that slowing its bond buying could trigger a spike in bond yields and push up government borrowing costs. Once the economy slumps, there will be demands for more fiscal spending. Lawmakers may pressure the BOJ to keep its monetary spigot open, said a former BOJ executive who retains close contact with incumbent policymakers. Rating agency S&P says Abe s decision to ditch the fiscal target timeframe won t affect Japan s sovereign debt ratings. But Kim Eng Tan, senior director of sovereign ratings at S&P in Singapore, warns against complacency. I have no real concern right now about delaying the primary budget target, he said. However, it does prolong the period in which finances are at risk to a sudden increase in interest rates.","label":0}
{"text":"Instead of convening a summit on the ongoing civil war in Syria, or the migrant crisis threatening Europe, or the rampant plaguing its own country, France on Sunday held a convention attended by over 70 nations to affirm the international community's commitment to creating a Palestinian state. [At the end of the farcical display, and with neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority in attendance, the Paris summit representatives released a brief concluding declaration unanimously agreed to after negotiations between the countries. Reports here credited Israeli diplomats with helping to water down the language of the final declaration, calling the text a \"significant weakening\" and \"less harsh than was initially expected. \" Still, the text was anything but fair. Here are five offenses in the final declaration: 1 \u2014 The text draws a moral equivalency between \"violence,\" which would include Palestinian terrorism targeting civilians, and \"settlement activity,\" meaning Israelis building homes in the West Bank or eastern sections of Jerusalem. The text states: They emphasized the importance for the parties to restate their commitment to this solution, to take urgent steps in order to reverse the current negative trends on the ground, including continued acts of violence and ongoing settlement activity, and to start meaningful direct negotiations. 2 \u2014 The declaration calls for Israel to \"fully end the occupation that began in 1967,\" language that seems to mean that Israel would need to withdraw from the entire West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and thus shrink the country to indefensible borders. Those are the territories that Israel captured in the defensive war of 1967. Withdrawing \"fully\" would seem to imply that Israel should evacuate those territories in their entirety. Some of the holiest sites in Judaism are located in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank, including the Western Wall and Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron, which was home to the oldest continuous Jewish community in the world until the Jews of Hebron were massacred and expelled the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem and Joseph's Tomb in Nablus \u2014 biblical Shechem. The diplomats who convened in Paris, however, seem unaware of the text of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which today's declaration affirms as the basis of a future deal. After stating that Israel should \"fully end the occupation that began in 1967,\" the Paris declaration then references Resolution 242. The declaration states: They reiterated that a negotiated solution should meet the legitimate aspirations of both sides, including the Palestinians' right to statehood and sovereignty, fully end the occupation that began in 1967, satisfy Israel's security needs and resolve all permanent status issues on the basis of United Nations Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) and also recalled relevant Security Council resolutions. Resolution 242 calls on Israel to withdraw under a future solution \"from territories occupied\" as a result of the 1967 Six Day War. The resolution does not call for a withdrawal from \"all territories,\" a designation deliberately left out to ensure Israel's ability to retain some territory for security purposes under a future deal. The Jewish Virtual Library explains: The Security Council did not say Israel must withdraw from \"all the\" territories occupied after the War. This was quite deliberate. The Soviet delegate wanted the inclusion of those words and said that their exclusion meant \"that part of these territories can remain in Israeli hands. \" The Arab states pushed for the word \"all\" to be included, but this was rejected. They nevertheless asserted that they would read the resolution as if it included the word \"all. \" The British ambassador who drafted the approved resolution, Lord Caradon, declared after the vote: \"It is only the resolution that will bind us, and we regard its wording as clear. \" 3 \u2014 The declaration patronizes Israel by calling on both parties to \"restate\" their commitments to the solution. Only one side has not been committed to peace. Israel has offered the Palestinians a state in much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a shared capital in Jerusalem numerous times. These offers were made at Camp David in 2000, Taba in 2001, the Annapolis Conference in 2007, and more offers were made in 2008. In each of these cases, the PA refused generous Israeli offers of statehood and bolted negotiations without counteroffers. The PA has failed to respond to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's unprecedented attempts to negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state, including freezing Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem and releasing Palestinian prisoners. 4 \u2014 The declaration gives credibility to the Arab Peace Initiative, which threatens Israel's security. The declaration states: \"They underscored the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002 as a comprehensive framework for the resolution of the conflict, thus contributing to regional peace and security,\" states today's declaration. This reporter previously exposed the Saudi \"peace\" initiative: The Saudi Initiative, originally proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002, states that Israel would receive \"normal relations\" with the Arab world in exchange for a full withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip, West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem, which includes the Temple Mount. \u2026 The Saudi plan also demands the imposition of a U. N. resolution that calls for Palestinian refugees who wish to move inside Israel to be permitted to do so at the \"earliest practicable date. \" Palestinians have long demanded the \"right of return\" for millions of \"refugees,\" a formula Israeli officials across the political spectrum warn is code for Israel's destruction by flooding the Jewish state with millions of Arabs, thereby changing its demographics. When Arab countries attacked the Jewish state after its creation in 1948, some 725, 000 Arabs living within Israel's borders fled or were expelled from the area that became Israel. Also at that time, about 820, 000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries or fled following rampant persecution. While most Jewish refugees were absorbed by Israel and other countries, the majority of Palestinian Arabs have been maintained in 59 U. N. camps that do not seek to settle its inhabitants elsewhere. There are currently about four million Arabs who claim Palestinian refugee status with the U. N. including children and grandchildren of the original fleeing Arabs Arabs living in Jordan and Arabs who long ago emigrated throughout the Middle East and to the West. According to Arab sources close to the Saudi Initiative, Arab countries are willing to come to an agreement whereby Israel absorbs about 500, 000 \"refugees\" and reaches a compensation deal with the PA for the remaining millions of Palestinians. 5 \u2014 The Paris declaration \"welcomed\" UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which passed last month when the U. S. abstained and refers to the entire West Bank and eastern Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territories while demanding a complete halt to all Israeli construction in those areas. Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, \"Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. \" Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump has absolutely no evidence that President Obama wiretapped him, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper knows it.On Saturday, Trump made wild accusations against President Obama after reading a conspiracy theory on Breitbart.Trump says that Obama illegally wiretapped Trump Tower and compared it to Watergate. On Sunday, Trump demanded that Congress start an investigation against Obama and declared that he would refuse to answer further questions about Russia until they comply.Of course, Trump is clearly trying to distract the media and Congress from investigating the Russia scandal he has been embroiled in for months.While there is plenty of evidence against Trump to justify investigations into his ties to Russia, Trump has offered no proof to back up his accusations against Obama.And if anyone would know about a wiretap against Trump, whether legal or illegal, it would be former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who served in the position from 2010 until this year.During an interview with Chuck Todd, Clapper flatly denied that President Obama wiretapped Trump.Todd began by asking if he would have been aware of such a wiretap and Clapper shut down the accusation. I would certainly hope so, Clapper replied. I will say that the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw the DNI there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president the president-elect at that time or as a candidate or against his campaign. When asked if other agencies would have requested a FISA court order to wiretap Trump Tower, Clapper said that that s exactly what they would do.In the end, Clapper told Todd that he can clearly deny that President Obama ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower because it did not happen. I can deny it, Clapper said.Here s the video via Twitter.James Clapper: There was no such wire tap activity amounted against Donald Trump. #MTP pic.twitter.com\/eNGFKe0vxY Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 5, 2017President Obama should file a lawsuit against Trump. By not providing any evidence of his claims, Trump is slandering President Obama s good name and there should be consequences for these wild unfounded accusations.If Trump is willing to stoop this low to distract from his Russia scandal, then he must be really desperate. That means Congress should be investigating Trump, not Obama.","label":1}
{"text":"Two former staffers of Hillary Clinton's unsuccessful presidential run have launched a campaign to try and decrease Donald Trump's sizeable Twitter following and promote progressive organizations instead. [On Sunday evening, Signal Boost, run by former Hillary Clinton staffers Jess McIntosh and Zerlina Maxwel, unveiled a \"call to action,\" where they encouraged their readers to unfollow both Donald Trump's Twitter accounts and to instead \"follow someone working towards the progress we all still believe in. \" The newsletter asked people to announce via Twitter who they have chosen to follow instead of Trump, using the hashtag #MuteMonday, and was consequently endorsed by other former Clinton staffers, former Department of Labor Secretary Tom Perez, as well as actress Jamie Lee Curtis. D\u00eda 3 de la Resistencia: Deja de seguir a @realDonaldTrump y @POTUS para #MuteMonday. Sigue a alguien que valga la pena. \u2014 Jorge_Silva (@Jorge_Silva) January 23, 2017, And for the most important part of #MuteMonday, we're going to honor who are working their hearts out for progress. \u2014 Tom Perez (@TomPerez) January 23, 2017, Trending now #MuteMonday unfollowing @realDonaldTrump @POTUS and listening to and following the lead of @CoryBooker! #wisdomfromthepain, \u2014 Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) January 23, 2017, Trump is known for his prolific use of Twitter, regularly using it to convey his opinions and share proposed policies, despite expressing reservations about the service. \"Look, I don't like tweeting, I have other things I could be doing,\" Trump said in an interview with FOX News last week. \"But I get very dishonest media, very dishonest press. And it's my only way that I can counteract. \" He currently has 21. 6 million followers on his personal account, and has attained 14. 3 million followers on the official @POTUS account. At the inauguration ball on Friday, Trump asked the audience whether he \"should keep the Twitter going or not. \" \"I think so,\" he said. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"Thomas Frank Explores Whether Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party Will Address Inequality  By KiMi Robinson  Thomas Frank's writing about electoral politics and and its impact on American culture has been published for decades in places like Harper's Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and his 2004 novel, \"What's the Matter with Kansas?\" In his latest book, \"Listen Liberal: Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?\" the journalist and political analyst tackles the question of what changed within the Democratic party to make it become a \" liberalism of the rich .\"  \"The Democratic Party itself has changed,\" Frank told Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer during an episode of \" Scheer Intelligence \" this year. \"What's changed about them is the social class that they answer to, that they respect, that they come from.\"  The trend has gotten worse.    \"Democrats look at Wall Street, and they see people like themselves,\" he said in an interview with Scheer during the Democratic National Convention in July.  On Tuesday night, Frank will join Scheer at the University of Southern California to discuss \"Listen Liberal\" and his analysis of Hillary Clinton during this election cycle, from her public views on inequality in United States to her promises to tamp down greed on Wall Street. The conversation will be live streamed on our Facebook page at around 7 p.m. PDT.  In March, Frank summarized his complex investigation of the Democratic Party and the answers he found:  And you know, we call it inequality; it is the one great problem that we have. And so my, the question in the book is [\u2026] the Democrats have been talking about inequality forever. This is why they exist as a party, is to take this on. Why haven't they been able to do anything about it? And the answer isn't what you think. You know, it's not just because Republicans are so diabolically clever and stop them all the time. And it's also not just because of the money that is sloshing around in politics, although that's [\u2026] a huge part of the story. But the answer is because the Democrats aren't who we think they are. You know, they talk about inequality, but their heart really isn't in it. Income inequality is really not something that they have cared about for a very long time. You know, there are individuals here and there who do, but you talk about people like the Clintons\u2014I mean, Hillary Clinton, her concern for inequality is, this is, I would say is almost completely feigned.  Frank also joined Scheer earlier this week to promote \"Listen Liberal.\" Watch a portion of the discussion below:  <\/p><p>","label":1}
{"text":"Bank of England governor to be replaced with bucket full of stupid suggestions 31-10-16  BANK of England governor Mark Carney is to be replaced with a bucket filled with random suggestions from Theresa May and her idiot friends.  Carney stressed he had intended to see out his contract until 2021, but changed his mind after realising that in five years time the UK economy will focus on trading glass beads with passing fishing boats.  Carney said: \"I'm off to Canada, which will hopefully be far enough away that I can't hear the sound of this shithole country sliding into the Atlantic.  \"Being Bank of England governor has been like driving along the edge of a cliff with no brakes in a bus full of drunk chimps who keep trying to grab the wheel.  \"Shove your stupid pound up your arse.\"  Trade secretary Liam Fox said: \"Let's make tenners massive so they're worth more.\"  Share:","label":1}
{"text":"Norwegian Government to Deport White Patriot While Nation is Swamped by Tens... Norwegian Government to Deport White Patriot While Nation is Swamped by Tens of Thousands of Non-White Invaders By 0 129  Seven policemen searched Norwegian Nordic Resistance Movement member Ronny B\u00e5rdsen's apartment to find the Norwegian-Russian nationalist Yan Petrovskiy (also knnown as Veliki Slavian; pictured). He will be deported from Norway. The police informed Petrovskiy that he has two days to get a flight ticket and five to leave the country.  The police wanted to see Petrovskiy's passport and know if he accepts the decision and leaves Norway voluntarily or if he has to be forced. Petrovskiy answered that according to the advice of his lawyer, Nils Christian Nordhus, he doesn't keep the passport in his apartment, and he will talk with his lawyer before giving an answer concerning his departure.  After this Petrovskiy attempted to call his lawyer while the police were waiting, but because his lawyer didn't pick it up, the police decided to arrest Petrovskiy and search B\u00e5rdsen's apartment. Petrovskiy has lived in the address for some time and has been registered as a Norwegian resident.  The real reason behind the search was to acquire Petrovskiy's passport, as without it he cannot be deported. Despite the efforts of the police, the passport was not uncovered.  The decision about the deportation was made by the Directorate of Immigration (Utlendingsdirektoratet) after the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) sent a letter to the directorate. In the letter PST stated that Petrovskiy was \"a threat to national security.\" The police \u2014 in Norway, Rotherham, or anywhere\u2026","label":1}
{"text":"Members of the House Intelligence Committee are saying that Donald Trump and his treasonous cronies could find themselves behind bars. Two Democrats on the committee said today that jail time could very likely be the outcome of the investigation into Russia s interference in the 2016 election and Trump s possible collusion with them.On Tuesday, Rep. Joaquin Castro told CNN s Wolf Blitzer that he wouldn t be surprised after all of this is said and done, that some people end up in jail. Blitzer pressed him on whether he meant not just one individual, but people, plural. The congressman wouldn t point to anyone in particular but did say his impression was that more than one person could find themselves behind bars. You re confident that at least some Trump associates will wind up in jail? Blitzer sked. If I was betting, I would say yes, Castro replied.Congressman Denny Heck, another Democrat on the committee, went a step further than Castro during an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday evening while speaking with Chris Matthews. I want to respectfully disagree with my dear friend Joaquin Castro, next to whom I sit on the intelligence committee. He said he would not be surprised if people ended up going to jail. I will be surprised if people don t end up going to jail, Heck said.Matthews asked about FBI Director James Comey s announcement that a special unit was being formed to handle the investigation of Trump s shady ties with Russia. Heck replied that he was sure anybody associated with the Trump orbit that was involved in Russia s financial entanglements probably was calling their lawyer today. You can watch Castro s interview with CNN here:And Heck s interview with MSNBC here:","label":1}
{"text":"Don't those democratic reps have any cajones? They can have the mighty obozo write up an executive order besides him being CIC after all.","label":1}
{"text":"Twitter refuses to verify the official account of WikiLeaks' founder and editor Julian Assange, despite his accumulation of over 100, 000 followers. [\"This is absurd,\" Assange tweeted on Wednesday, along with a screenshot of Twitter's verification rejection. \"We've been trying to verify this account since early October. \" @jack This is absurd. pic. twitter. \u2014 Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 14, 2017, @CoCoCousine @AssangeFreedom @jack We've been trying to verify this account since early October. \u2014 Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 14, 2017, Assange criticized Twitter's verification standards, adding, \"Twitter has binary class system with proximity to power represented by 'blue tick' insignia. I am enjoying being one of its deplorables. \" Twitter has binary class system with proximity to power represented by 'blue tick' insignia. I am enjoying being one of its deplorables. \u2014 Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 15, 2017, As explained by Mashable, \"Twitter typically verifies celebrities and accounts 'determined to be of public interest' with a tick,\" letting users know that it is the real account of the individual or company. Though WikiLeaks' account is verified, Assange has been repeatedly denied a verification badge on his own account of over 113, 000 followers. Breitbart Tech has reached out to Twitter for comment. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"Go to Article  Filmmaker Michael Moore made an appearance on the Clinton News Network to clarify an audio clip from his Trumpland documentary that has gone viral, in which he sounds like he's defending Trump supporters and explaining why The Donald will be the next president.","label":1}
{"text":"Ford will spend $640 million to replace door latches on nearly 2. 4 million cars, trucks and vans because the doors can pop open while the vehicles are moving. On Thursday, the company announced it would add 1. 5 million vehicles to the growing recall, which has become so costly that Ford had to cut its estimated pretax profit to $10. 2 billion from at least $10. 8 billion. Customers have been complaining about the problem, which has affected much of Ford's North American model lineup, since 2014. At least three million vehicles have been recalled after a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation found 1, 200 customer complaints about doors failing to latch. Thursday's announcement came under pressure from the highway safety agency, which deemed an Aug. 4 recall of about 830, 000 vehicles inadequate. Ford said in a regulatory filing that the $640 million would cover the cost of both the Thursday recall and the one announced Aug. 4. The latest recall includes the Ford Focus, the Ford Escape and the 2015 Ford Mustang and Lincoln MKC and the Ford Transit Connect small van. Ford says a spring tab in the door latches can break, and the doors either won't close or could pop open. Dealers will replace the latches without charge. The company said it knows of one crash and three injuries that may be related to the problem. The Aug. 4 recall was limited to Mexico and 16 states with high temperatures and sunlight exposure because, Ford said, the rate of reports of failure was higher. Customers can check whether their vehicle is included on ford. com by clicking on safety recalls and entering their vehicle identification number.","label":0}
{"text":"Can anyone imagine a sitting Republican Senator calling for violence or fighting in the streets in opposition to a newly elected Democratic President? On Tuesday Democratic Senator Time Kaine told the Morning Joe in an interview that Democrats need to fight the Trump administration including online and on the streets in addition to the ballot box.Partial Transcript:MIKA BRZEZINSKI, CO-HOST MORNING JOE : So, broad question about the future of the Democratic Party, especially given your firsthand experience with what we ve all been through. There s so much going on here that we clearly see, you know, places where you we can criticize what the administration is doing, but how does the party rebuild? How do you prevent overreach in a situation like this? How do you prevent a continuation of the bubble in a situation like this, and how does the party reclaim its reach across the country while fighting these battles? SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): So, the way we get outside the bubble is we take advantage of this tremendous public outcry against the administration. What we ve got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box, and now there s the momentum to be able to do this. And we re not afraid of the popular outcry, we re energized by it and that s going to help us do our job and do it better. -GPListen to faux man Tim Kaine call for fighting on the streets here. Pay special attention to his comment about the Women s March that was organized under a grassroots label.' It sounds like Kaine s admitting that it was organized under a grassroots label but that it wasn t really grassroots at all. Why didn t he just come out and admit that it was organized by Soros, Obama and Planned Parenthood?We could also add the DNC s California Chair: In a sign of the vigor of the party s distaste for the president, outgoing party Chair John Burton, a longtime Democratic lawmaker and powerbroker known for his blunt and profane manner, extended two middle fingers in the air as the crowd cheered and joined him. F Donald Trump, he said:Outgoing @ca_dem chair @Johnburton gets standing O w final words to his party, finger upraised: F@ck Donald Trump! pic.twitter.com\/VIqNQlhDJc Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) May 20, 2017And we though Tom Perez was bad: Tom Perez must not have taken the class about winning friends and influencing people. How can you win over voters with such bitterness and anger? The Democrat Party has sunk to a new low with this classless thug. Who goes out there and speaks like this? We reported (see below) on the last speech Perez gave and he said the same nasty things. What gives? Are the deems so desperate that they re now resorting to profanity-filled speeches that make false claims about Republicans and President Trump? We think it s a losing strategy!","label":1}
{"text":"Maine Governor Paul LePage said on Friday he would reject the latest budget deal by a bipartisan group of legislators, warning that most of the state government would shut down without more spending cuts. The second-term Republican said repeatedly this week that he would be ready to close down non-essential government services as the July 4 holiday weekend starts if the lawmakers cannot agree on a $7.055 billion two-year budget that would require no new taxes. The deal reached late on Thursday called for $7.1 billion in spending. \"I'm out of ink,\" LePage told reporters in the state capital of Augusta. \"There will not be a signature on a budget that increases taxes.\" The full legislature was due to vote on Friday, the day after a six-member bipartisan budget committee reached a deal that would repeal a measure that voters approved in November to impose an additional 3 percent income tax on state residents who earn more than $200,000 a year. The proposed budget also increases public education funding by $162 million. The leaders of Maine's Democrat-controlled House of Representatives and Republican-controlled Senate supported the measure, but it was unclear if they could garner the two-thirds support needed for passage. Even if they do, state law gives the governor 10 days to respond to any budget passed by the legislature. LePage said on Friday that he was ready to wait that long before vetoing any budget that raises taxes. Most of the government would shut during that time. Without a shutdown, \"I lose all my leverage for negotiation for the next 10 days,\" LePage said, adding that he did not think lawmakers could reach a budget deal on Friday that he would accept. State police, parks and all offices responsible for collecting revenue would continue to operate during a shutdown, LePage has said. The state's Democratic House speaker urged lawmakers to back the budget deal. \"In a divided government, compromise is the only option,\" Speaker Sara Gideon said in a statement. A Maine advocacy group sued the state in federal court on Thursday, seeking an order that would ensure that public assistance payments continue uninterrupted to the 450,000 people, about one in three residents, who receive them. In 1991 Maine's government shut down for several weeks due to a budget impasse, and lawmakers reached a deal only after furloughed state workers picketed the capitol.","label":0}
{"text":"A rebel former governor of Aden who is leading a movement for southern Yemen s secession has said an independence referendum would be announced soon and a parliamentary body set up to administer the territory. Aidaroos al-Zubaidi, who was sacked as Aden governor by President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, set out his secessionist plans to thousands of supporters gathered on Saturday in Yemen s main southern city to mark 54 years since the October 1963 uprising against the British. Zubaidi, who has previously declared a council that seeks secession for southern Yemen, said in a television interview late on Friday that an independence referendum would be held soon. Speaking to supporters on Saturday, Zubaidi said a new 303-member parliamentary body, the National Association, would act like a small parliament to represent Yemenis from all areas of the south. Zubaidi announced in May a new council formed by senior tribal, military and political figures. The council seeks the secession of southern Yemen and is looking to establish a political leadership under his presidency that would administer the south. The move threatens more turmoil in the impoverished Arabian Peninsular country where the internationally-recognized government is forced to sit in Aden because Houthi rebels control the capital Sanaa. The council was born out of a power struggle between the southerners and President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi that has undermined regional power Saudi Arabia s efforts to coordinate a military campaign against the Tehran-supported Houthis. Hadi s government has rejected the formation of the council, saying it would deepen divisions and play into the hands of the Houthi rebels. Many southerners feel that officials in the north have exploited their resources and cut them off from jobs and influence.","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump signed an order on Monday that will seek to dramatically reduce federal regulations, but the policy will not apply to most of the financial reform rules introduced by the Obama administration. Trump's latest executive action will require that agencies cut two existing regulations for every new rule introduced and it will set an annual cap on the cost of new regulations. For the rest of fiscal 2017, the cap will require that the cost of any additional regulations be completely offset by undoing existing rules. But, the move does not cover independent agencies that crafted many of the rules required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the White House said. It also would not apply to rules mandated by statutes. \"There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be normalized control,\" Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office, surrounded by a group of small business owners. During a meeting with the business owners, Trump described the Dodd-Frank law as \"a disaster.\" He asserted that it was \"almost impossible now to start a small business and it's virtually impossible to expand your existing business because of regulations.\" The creation of new U.S. businesses has actually climbed steadily since 2010, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (bit.ly\/2jnU32o) White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday called the executive order a \"first step\" and said the administration would work with Congress to begin making changes to Dodd-Frank. Implementing the new regulatory order may be difficult alongside the Trump administration's push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, said Tom Bulleit, head of the healthcare practice in the Washington D.C. office of law firm Ropes & Gray. As the Congress passes new legislation on healthcare, there will need to be new rules, Bulleit said. \"There's a great deal of regulation that is either expressly required by legislation or is necessary to make the legislation work,\" he said. Consumer groups and environmentalists criticized the push to peel back regulations, arguing that it would remove important protections for the public. Major regulations are typically reviewed by the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) before they are issued. That review will continue under this new measure, but agencies will also have to identify what two regulations will be repealed to offset the costs of any new rule. Harvard Law School Professor Jody Freeman said the new order was \"entirely unnecessary,\" given similar cost-benefit regulatory directives made by past presidents and existing agency processes for reviewing older rules. \"Even it is fairly toothless in the end, it will be a weapon that OMB can use to harass agencies and slow regulation,\" Freeman said. The new order does not require that the repeal of the two regulations be done simultaneously with the release of additional rules. \"This vests tremendous power and responsibility in the OMB director to ensure the president's direction in how we manage this across the government,\" a White House official told reporters before the signing. Certain categories of regulations will be exempt from this new policy, including those dealing with the military and national security. The OMB director will also have the ability to waive this policy in certain instances. Trump has tapped U.S. Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina to lead the OMB.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican Mitt Romney made an impassioned statement in support of President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday to try to erase doubts about him among Trump's supporters and remain in contention for U.S. secretary of state. Romney, a fierce critic of Trump during the Republican presidential primary battle, stopped short of an outright apology but his intention to wipe the slate clean was clear. The former Massachusetts governor, who was the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 and lost, praised Trump for a \"message of inclusion and bringing people together\" since his Nov. 8 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Noting the appointments Trump has made to fill key cabinet positions for his administration and his desire for greater unity among Americans, Romney said that \"all of those things combined give me increasing hope that President-elect Trump is the very man who can lead us\" to a better future. Romney made his remarks after a lengthy meal with Trump and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus at a French restaurant at a Trump hotel in Manhattan. They dined on garlic soup with frog legs, scallops, steak and lamb chop. Since Trump began to seriously consider Romney as a potential secretary of state, some on Trump's team have voiced doubts about bringing in a former critic and rallied around their preferred candidate, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a long-time Trump friend and loyalist. Leading this effort in an unusually public way has been senior Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, who told a round of television interviews on Sunday that Trump supporters would feel \"betrayed\" if Romney was picked. Trump, however, has kept Romney in contention for the secretary of state position, and a Republican source close to the transition effort said Priebus has been pushing for Romney behind the scenes. \"I had a wonderful evening with President-elect Trump,\" Romney said in remarks to reporters after the dinner. \"We had another discussion about affairs throughout the world and these discussions I've had with him have been enlightening, and interesting, and engaging. I've enjoyed them very, very much.\" A senior Trump aide described Romney's remarks as \"solid.\" Trump is to meet on Friday for the second time with retired Marine Corps General John Kelly as part of his secretary of state search, the aide said. Trump is also considering U.S. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Corker met Trump at Trump Tower earlier on Tuesday and told reporters afterward that Trump \"needs to choose someone that he's very comfortable with and he knows there's going be no daylight between him and them.\" \"The world needs to know that the secretary of state is someone who speaks fully for the president and again, that's a decision he's going to have to make,\" Corker said.","label":0}
{"text":"The team of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, now both senior federal government officials, has been alongside President Trump as the White House has hosted dozens of chief executives and a handful of world leaders in recent weeks. It is a rarefied crowd, one that has included the top executives of some of the world's largest automobile, airline, chemical, pharmaceutical and tech companies. Mr. Kushner will continue to keep such select company now that he has helped create a new office that Mr. Trump is calling the White House Office of American Innovation. But the financial disclosure report released late Friday for Mr. Kushner, which shows that he and his wife still benefit financially from a real estate and investment empire worth as much as $740 million, makes clear that this most powerful Washington couple is walking on perilous legal and ethical ground, according to several prominent experts on the subject. Unlike Mr. Trump, who is exempt from conflict of interest laws, both Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump \u2014 who took a formal White House position this past week \u2014 are forbidden under federal criminal and civil law to take any action that might benefit their particular financial holdings. \"Donald Trump can evade legal responsibility even if the conflicts of interest remain,\" said Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal nonprofit group. \"His daughter and don't have that escape hatch. \" Mr. Kushner did resign from more than 200 positions in the partnerships and limited liability companies that make up the real estate business. But the financial disclosure report shows that Mr. Kushner will remain a beneficiary of most of those same entities. Jamie Gorelick, who served as deputy attorney general at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration and is now advising Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump on government ethics issues, said that the couple could continue to hold on to so many of their assets because most of the value is tied up in buildings. \"The real estate assets that Kushner is holding on to are unlikely to pose the kinds of conflicts that would trigger the need to divest,\" Ms. Gorelick, a partner at WilmerHale, the law firm, said in a statement on Friday. \"The remaining conflicts, from a practical perspective, are pretty narrow and very manageable. \" But real estate projects like the Kushner Companies' deals have become a magnet for opaque foreign money \u2014 often from parts of the world that present thorny policy questions, such as China, where Mr. Kushner's company has actively sought investors, as well as the Middle East and Russia. As part of his exceptionally broad portfolio in the White House, Mr. Kushner has been a crucial figure in arranging the visit of the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, on Thursday in Florida. The mystery behind many real estate investments involving foreigners prompted the Treasury Department last year to push for additional disclosures as a way to combat money laundering. While Mr. Kushner may face a potential ethical minefield, the disclosure form makes it difficult to determine exactly where those mines might be situated. The form, which runs 54 pages and lists hundreds of entities, reveals few details about the underlying investments that make up the Kushner empire, such as the addresses of buildings, sources of financing and names of partners. John Pudner, a conservative who has helped elect Tea Party candidates to Congress and now runs a nonprofit group called Take Back Our Republic, said that Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump, if they wanted to serve in the White House, would have been better off if they had taken the difficult step of liquidating their holdings. \"A for the president's family and everyone else is if there were no question anytime a decision is made that it's being done for the good of the country,\" he said. The actions by Mr. Kushner stand in contrast to the moves by some other top aides to Mr. Trump, such as Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon Mobil, who before he was sworn in agreed to liquidate all of his stock holdings and his ownership stake in Exxon, putting his assets mostly into Treasury bonds and other permitted investments, such as diversified mutual funds, which make formal financial conflicts unlikely. Mr. Kushner, by contrast, continues to hold lines of credit from institutions such as Citigroup and Deutsche Bank, while companies he is still a beneficiary of have billions of dollars in additional loans from heavily regulated institutions. Richard W. Painter, who served as a White House ethics lawyer in the Bush administration, said that Mr. Kushner's financial holdings would complicate any interactions he might have with such banks. \"The one thing Jared really ought to stay completely away from is anything having to do with \" Mr. Painter said, referring to the 2010 law that increased capital reserve requirements and instituted many other regulatory changes that affected the nation's banks. Mr. Trump has already said he hopes to roll back the law, with the help of Congress and his top aides. Several of the companies that are in business with Kushner Companies have faced scrutiny by federal law enforcement. Deutsche Bank, for example, reached a $7. 2 billion settlement last year with the Justice Department over its sale of toxic mortgage securities. Mr. Kushner, who frequently speaks with world leaders and is tasked with overseeing Middle East peace negotiations, also has an unsecured line of credit worth as much as $5 million from Israel Discount Bank. Kushner Companies has also taken out at least four loans from Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank, though they are not disclosed in the filing. That firm is the subject of a Justice Department investigation into whether it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes with undeclared accounts. Another potential conflict rests in Ms. Trump's continued stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, a project that has drawn protests from ethics experts who worry that people representing special interests could stay there or host events there to gain influence with the White House, which is just a few blocks away. Ms. Trump has rolled her fashion brand into the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust, which is overseen by her Josh Kushner, and Nicole Meyer. The documents released on Friday valued the trust at more than $50 million. Discussions about changes in federal tax law \u2014 a major agenda item for Mr. Trump that could affect issues such as depreciation on Mr. Kushner's buildings and clothing imported for Ms. Trump's brand \u2014 could also pose problems, or force them to recuse themselves from participating. \"They are going to have to walk a fine line between matters they are involved with financially and the policies they are helping create and legislation they may be advocating,\" said Scott H. Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit group. The federal ethics regulations formally prohibit federal employees from being involved in any \"particular matter that will have a direct effect on a financial interest, if there is a close causal link between any decision or action to be taken in the matter and any expected effect of the matter on the financial interest. \" But Mr. Painter said that most administrations had interpreted the law more broadly, so that officials who own stakes in individual industries do not participate in even broad policy decisions affecting that sector, unless they seek a formal ethics waiver, as certain officials did during the first George Bush administration, given that they owned energy industry stocks and were participating in the decision to enter the war against Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait. Federal employees, under ethics rules that Mr. Trump imposed, are also prohibited, for at least two years after they arrive in the government, from working on particular matters that involve former employers or clients, even if these actions do not directly financially benefit the federal employee. The disclosures by Mr. Kushner and other White House officials released on Friday demonstrate just how complicated it is going to be to police these rules, given the vast and extremely complex financial assets not only within the Trump family but also among dozens of aides they have selected. The National Economic Council director, Gary Cohn, as well as the top White House aides Christopher P. Liddell and Reed Cordish, collectively reported assets with a maximum value of more than $1 billion. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's chief strategist, reported assets worth as much as $53. 9 million. Even Mr. Bannon's aide Julia Hahn, who is 25, reported investments worth between $1 million and $2. 1 million, according to a tally by The New York Times, while Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, had assets worth between $11 million and $44 million. Some of those financial holdings are already creating questions. Mr. Liddell, an assistant to the president and the director of strategic initiatives, has participated in White House meetings since January that involved several companies in which he continued at least through February to own stock in, including International Paper and General Motors. Mr. Bannon disclosed more than $500, 000 in income from entities linked to the hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and his daughter, Rebekah Mercer, major Republican donors who were crucial figures in Mr. Bannon's appointment as the Trump campaign's chief executive last year. Mr. Bannon is selling off some of these assets, his financial disclosure report says, including shares in Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm, and Breitbart News, the website. But Mr. Bannon, even after joining the White House, has continued to interact with certain reporters at Breitbart, at times to express frustration with the site's coverage of the White House or to discuss coverage, editors there have said. Even Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former hedge fund manager, wrote a letter on Friday to the Office of Government Ethics saying he should not have made a supportive remark about a film, \"The Lego Batman Movie,\" that one of his companies helped produce. The comment was viewed by some as a commercial endorsement of the film. \"The White House staff's massive businesses are creating so many possible conflicts of interest it seems almost impossible for them to avoid running into trouble as they mix their former business interests with their new professional duties,\" Mr. Bookbinder said.","label":0}
{"text":"We have always known that the Republican Party is filled with xenophobic, racist, misogynist, Islamophobic, everythingphobic imbeciles. When President Obama was elected in 2008, this became very, very obvious as right-wingers went full-on racist because an African-American man was suddenly the most powerful leader in the world. However, while we saw this hate all across the internet and sometimes on bumper stickers, they managed to sort of keep it under wraps. Donald Trump changed that all last year when he skyrocketed to first place in the GOP primary by running on a platform made solely of the hate mentioned above. In fact, he is so vile and divisive that the Huffington Post reminds their readers of it on every single article they publish about him.I was recently reading an article about Trump on the HuffPo s website when I noticed this at the bottom of the piece:Editor s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims 1.6 billion members of an entire religion from entering the U.S.This struck me as odd, so I investigated it a little further and saw the Trump disclaimer on every article about the billionaire.While HuffPo has always been left-leaning, it is a well-respected news organization that is read by people across the political spectrum, that s what makes this editor s note so shocking. When POLITICO asked the organization about their decision to add this to their articles, a spokesperson responded: Yes, we re planning to add this note to all future stories about Trump. No other candidate has called for banning 1.6 billion people from the country! If any other candidate makes such a proposal, we ll append a note under pieces about them. There is no doubt that this disclaimer will make some Republicans declare the Huffington Post biased, but that s because they can t face the fact that it is true. Trump is a serial liar, he lies seventy-six percent of the time. He is a rampant xenophobe, just listen to what he has to say about Mexicans and refugees. The frontrunner hates women, his feuds with conservative, Fox mouthpieceMegyn Kelly shone a bright, glaring spotlight on that. And we all know that his proclamations about President Obama not being a real American is what originally made Trump so popular.The Huffington Post should be commended for this decision, they are the only mainstream media organization to do something this bold.Bravo, HuffPo, bravo.","label":1}
{"text":"Trump's True Mission----Lance The Boil By David Stockman. It can't be emphasized enough. On Tuesday night the Wall Street\/Washington ruling elites got fired and their policies of war, debt and bubble finance got ash-canned. But Donald Trump was just the agent of the voters' dismissal order not the recipient of a programmatic mandate ala beltway briefing books or even the airy nostrums of standard party platforms.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Tuesday delivered his most aggressive call yet to woo African-American voters, vowing to restore law and order, only days after a fatal police shooting of a black man sparked more street violence. Speaking a few miles from Milwaukee, which was rocked by weekend riots, Trump accused his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton of \"bigotry\" and vowed to protect the jobs of minorities from immigrants. Trump has been repeatedly called a \"bigot\" by his Democratic opponents. \"I'm asking for the vote for every African-American citizen struggling in our society today who wants a different and much better future,\" Trump said. \"Jobs, safety, opportunity, fair and equal representation: We reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton which panders to, and talks down to, communities of color and sees them only as votes \u2013 that's all they care about \u2013 not as individual human beings worthy of a better future.\" Earlier, Trump held three events in Milwaukee, a city still reeling from violent protests after the death of Sylville Smith, 23. Authorities said Smith was stopped for acting suspiciously and was shot by police because he was carrying an illegal handgun and refused orders to drop it. Trump encountered only a handful of peaceful protesters while in the city, including some at a closed fundraiser. He held a brief meeting with veterans and law enforcement, including Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and Inspector Edward Bailey. But news media representatives were escorted out and not permitted to hear the discussions. Clarke, who is black and spoke at last month's Republican National Convention, has criticized the protests, writing in an opinion piece for The Hill that they were \"a collapse of the social order, where tribal behavior leads to reacting to circumstances instead of waiting for facts to emerge.\" Trump also taped a town hall meeting with Fox News, in which he blamed President Barack Obama for what he sees as hostility toward police. \"He has not been good to the police, simply, and the police are not big fans of his,\" Trump said. Trump traveled 45 minutes outside of Milwaukee, which is 40 percent black, to deliver his appeal to African-American voters in the suburb of West Bend, Wisconsin, a community that is 95 percent white. He spoke before an almost entirely white audience. \"A vote for her (Clinton) is a vote for another generation of poverty, high crime and lost opportunities,\" Trump said. \"Crime and violence is an attack on the poor and it will never be accepted in a Trump administration.\" Clinton won the Democratic nomination in part thanks to her large victory margins among minorities in nearly every state, including overwhelming support from African-Americans in the South. \"With each passing Trump attack, it becomes clearer that his strategy is just to say about Hillary Clinton what's true of himself,\" Clinton spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said. \"When people started saying he was temperamentally unfit, he called Hillary the same. When his ties to the Kremlin came under scrutiny, he absurdly claimed that Hillary was the one who was too close to Putin. \"Now he's accusing her of bigoted remarks - we think the American people will know which candidate is guilty of the charge.\" Trump also took aim at Clinton's past acceptance of large speaking fees, saying he would force top administration officials to sign a pledge not to accept speaking fees from corporations with registered lobbyists or foreign countries for five years after leaving office. Police violence against African-Americans has set off intermittent, sometimes violent protests in the past two years, igniting a national debate over race and policing in the United States and giving rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. Trump said critics of the police \"share in the responsibility for the unrest in Milwaukee and other places in our country.\" \"The war on our police must end and it must end now,\" Trump said. \"The war on police is a war against all peaceful citizens.\" The shooting of Smith was likely justified, Trump argued in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday morning. \"But the gun was pointed at his (a police officer's) head, supposedly ready to be fired. Who can have a problem with that? That's what the narrative is,\" Trump said. \"Maybe it's not true. If it is true, people shouldn't be rioting.\" Officials from the Office of Director of National Intelligence are expected to give Trump a briefing on national security issues this week, an adviser to Trump and a source familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Presidential candidates are entitled to a briefing of classified information after formally securing the nomination, which Trump did last month. Hillary Clinton, Trump's Democratic rival for the Nov. 8 election, is also entitled to receive a briefing if she requests one. Democrats have criticized Trump's positions on foreign policy and national security, besides some freewheeling remarks. Democratic President Barack Obama has called Trump \"unfit\" for the presidency and this month warned the Republican candidate that briefing information must be kept secret.","label":0}
{"text":"Trump s hastily organized White House Easter Egg Roll went from bad to worse after he almost managed to botch the national anthem on camera.After avoiding the children s event on the White House lawn for several hours so he could finish watching Fox and Friends (yes, really), Trump revealed that he wasn t prepared to handle even the basic responsibilities he was given for the event. In contrast to former President Obama, Trump declined to read to the children, so Melania had to instead. For some time Trump lingered on a railed balcony, separated from the gathered families on the lawn.When it came time to do the National Anthem, Trump seemingly forgot that it is customary to place one s hand over one s heart. While a member of the military band sang, Melania and Barron noticed that the President of the United States was just standing casually with arms at his sides. Melania can be seen nudging Trump s arm, and he finally realizes his mistake.*national anthem begins*Melania & Barron place hands over heart*Melania nudges Trump to do the same**Trump raises hand* pic.twitter.com\/X59uYNg7rW Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) April 17, 2017It s possible that Trump s heart wasn t in the event because he had already thrown a private egg roll the night before for dues-paying members of Mar-a-Lago. Unlike the egg roll on the White House lawn, the one at Mar-a-Lago consisted of only rich families.And this ~color~ from pool reporter @Jordanfabian: pic.twitter.com\/ov0L3J8lxf Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) April 16, 2017From pictures shared by excited attendees, Trump was much more willing to rub elbows with these families.VIPs come first pic.twitter.com\/75hLNSIFk2 southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) April 16, 2017In other news, this delightful clip of President Obama s 2015 egg roll has been going viral again. It seems people are desperate to remember a time when America had a president capable of going a few hours without embarrassing the country.Happy Easter from 2015 pic.twitter.com\/qmhfLIf5Rb NowThis (@nowthisnews) April 16, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"Texas and four other states sued the Obama administration on Tuesday over extending its healthcare nondiscrimination law to transgender individuals, saying the move \"represents a radical invasion of the federal bureaucracy into a doctor's medical judgment.\" Texas, along with Wisconsin, Nebraska, Kentucky and Kansas sued on behalf three medical organizations, two of which are affiliated with Christian groups. They argue the medical groups would be forced to violate their religious beliefs \"and perform harmful medical transition procedures or else suffer massive financial liability,\" according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, named as a defendant in the suit, was not immediately available for comment. On Sunday, a judge for the same district blocked an Obama administration policy that public schools should allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choice, granting a nationwide injunction sought by 13 states, led by Texas. The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was passed in 2010 and included anti-discrimination provisions to prevent insurers from charging customers more or denying coverage based on age or sex. That law left some areas open to interpretation and thousands of consumers complain each year about being discriminated against, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said last year. The U.S. government said in September it would broaden its nondiscrimination law to transgender individuals and require health insurers and medical providers to treat all patients equally, regardless of sex.","label":0}
{"text":"A Miami doctor has been fired after a video of her assaulting and screaming profanities at an Uber driver went viral.Jackson Health System announced on Friday that they are terminating Anjali Ramkissoon, 30, a four-year neurology resident for her actions in the video. They released a statement that said: Jackson Health System is moving forward with the termination of Dr. Anjali Ramkissoon, a resident doctor. She is entitled to an appeal process. The assault took place in January and the doctor was initially put on probation. In the video, an extremely drunk Ramkissoon is seen hitting, kicking and cursing at the driver. The Uber driver is seen trying to restrain her, but after she kicked him he threw her to the ground and ran to his car. Ramkissoon got up, went to the car, opened the door and started throwing things out of his vehicle. There is absolutely no excuse for my actions. I am so sorry. I have hurt so many people with this. My family, my friends, my job, the Uber driver. Nobody deserves to be treated that way. That s not me. Unfortunately for her, the apology was not enough to save her job and rightfully so. I have been drunk many times and have never used it as an excuse to assault another human being. At thirty years old, she should know how to handle herself. While I understand that alcohol makes some people act a fool, as a neurologist she should know what happens to her brain when she drinks too much it makes her actions even less excusable.Hopefully, she has learned how to control herself. It would be a shame to see all of that education go to waste.Watch the assault:","label":1}
{"text":"SEE ALSO: ORLANDO KNOWN WOLF Watched by FBI, Worked with DHS, Amid Crisis Actors, Drills & CI s21st Century Wire says The Orlando Shooting. Many things are just not right with this story, including the father of the alleged shooter Omar Mateen, an Afghan-American, Seddique Mateen, who is closely linked to some of the most powerful leaders and agencies in Washington DC.Below is a photo of Omar s father after a meeting at the US State Dept. in Washington DC where he met with officials , but oddly, no log of his visit is available in the public record. Image Credit: facebook.com\/seddique.mateenThe alleged shooter s father played an absolute key role in setting up the entire hate crime narrative by inserting this quote into the MSM machine during the immediate aftermath of the sensationalized media event. Seddique Mateen said: We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music, and he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry. They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that. And they we were in the men s bathroom and men were kissing each other. For the media, and every other political leader in the US, this was now classified as a hate crime , and so case closed. In other words, a simple story line with real traction was now baked firmly into this event about a homophobic, ISIS-inspired, crazed lone gunman who went postal in a Orlando gay nightclub, and coincidentally, on the eve of an international Gay Pride celebration day.Pictured below is Seddique Mateen with California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher. Rohrabacher (R-CA) was initially elected to Congress in 1988, with the fundraising help of friend Oliver North.Rohrabacher s decades-long involvement in all things Afghan eventually earned him the nickname Gunga Dana. Today he chairs the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats.This morning President Obama called him a home-grown terrorist. In a series of phone interviews Monday morning, Donald Trump responded that there s something going on with the President s reaction to the Orlando shooting.I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day. It s like calling Blackwater XE Orlando shooter Omar Mateen s father said his son was not motivated by Islamist radical ideology, but in a Facebook video posted early Monday he said, God himself will punish those involved in homosexuality. My own suspicion was first awakened on Monday morning when U.S. news outlets uniformly reported that the father s TV show aired on a U.S.-based Afghan satellite channel. That sort of circumlocution is typical when something is being hidden which the corporate media prefers we not ask questions about.The name of the nameless Afghan satellite channel, Payam Afghan, is said to be widely-known in Southwest Asia as a CIA-Pakistani ISI construct, as this picture from Flicker shows.The identification of shooter Omar Mateen also involved deception. He was said to work for a security company called G4S, which few have ever heard of. However, G4S is merely a re-branded Wackenhut Corporation, a name with a storied reputation for scandal in the U.S. and around the world.Rohrabacher has stated that he sees radical Islam as the source of a major terrorist threat to the U.S.Calls to his office today to request comment on whether he views CIA assets relocated in the U.S. as a terrorist threat have not been returned.SEE FULL REPORT: ORLANDO KNOWN WOLF Watched by FBI, Worked with DHS, Amid Crisis Actors, Drills & CI sHelp support us by becoming a 21WIRE Member at: 21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"The ruling Communist Party s flagship newspaper on Thursday provided more evidence that President Xi Jinping should be regarded as China s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong after this week s party congress. Xi s official portrait dominated the People s Daily s front page report on the unveiling of the party s new top leadership. Below that was a smaller group photograph of the new top leadership - the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee including Xi. It is a stark departure from recent precedent, with Mao Zedong the last leader to be granted such status on the front page after the party conclave - which is held once every five years. The People s Daily did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Since Deng Xiaoping introduced collective leadership three decades ago to ward off the rise of another Mao-like cult of personality, the official portraits of all newly-selected Politburo Standing Committee members have been presented together on the front page in a grid. The portrait of the party s top leader, the general secretary, is usually only slightly more prominent; reflecting his position as the first among equals. Xi is the party s general secretary, chairman of the Central Military Commission, and president of the country. In Thursday s People s Daily, the portraits and biographical information of the six other standing committee members - Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng - were relegated to the inside pages. That s definitely the first time since Mao, said Ryan Manuel, a China expert at the University of Hong Kong, referring to Xi s oversized portrait on the front of the paper. The People s Daily is closely parsed by party cadres and others, and sets the tone for media coverage in state-run newspapers at the provincial level. Manuel said the paper closely followed regimented rules and norms and would have done so especially meticulously for its most important front page in five years . It s a strict system, he said. The rules of placement and the rules of what type of photos you put on there are incredibly tightly argued and defined. Xi s status as China s most powerful leader since Mao was underlined on Wednesday when the party, in another break with precedent, revealed a new leadership line-up without naming an obvious successor to him. There has been persistent speculation Xi could seek to stay on in some capacity beyond the end of the customary second five-year term in power, which ends in 2022. During the congress, Xi became the first leader since Mao to have a political ideology bearing his name enshrined in the party s constitution while in office.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump is a racist. That is a fact that cannot be disputed. He has the support of white supremacists and other professional bigots, and yet the GOP elite continue to line up behind him, all while swearing they aren t racists. Well MSNBC political commentator Michael Eric Dyson has had enough.During a conversation with Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, Dyson unloaded and pointed out that Trump is promoting white nationalism during a conversation regarding the United Kingdom s Brexit vote. It is, in fact the same sort of dangerous xenophobia, racism, and nationalism that caused people in Britain to vote pro-Brexit. As we are now seeing, it is not a good thing in the United Kingdom, and that same sort of nationalism that drives Trump s political success is not a good thing here in America either. Here is a transcript of the exchange, via Media Matters:ALEX CASTELLANOS: The Brexit vote is a vote for the idea of nationhood.MICHAEL ERIC DYSON: It s nationalism.CASTELLANOS: Right, in Europe you ve destroyed borders. You can travel anywhere. Immigration has destroyed borders. There are no economic borders now. Greece can spend money that Germany has to pay back. The British looked at this and said, we think being a nation is a good idea and that we ought to be one.DYSON: But nationalism is not the answerCASTELLANOS: Of course it is.DYSON: I m saying nationalism within AmericaCASTELLANOS: There were nations before the EU. There will be nations afterwards. This is not a crisis. And when Donald Trump talks about building a wall DYSON: For who?CASTELLANOS: what people are hearing is we ought to have a real nation for all of us.DYSON: Donald Trump s nation doesn t represent all of us. When he keeps saying he wants to ban Muslims. He wants to keep immigrants out. He wants to build a wall. And look, at his rallies, when black people are pushed around, he then says, I will pay for the legal fees. Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism that reeks terror on the American democratic experiment.Dyson is right. Trump s divisive, violent, racist rhetoric only serves to prey on people s fears, ignorance, and prejudices. It divides rather than unites. Diversity is a beautiful thing, but if Donald Trump has his way, there will be no such thing.Watch the exchange below, again via Media Matters:","label":1}
{"text":"Little did we know at the time of this recording just how accurate our guest s comments would become.In last week s Episode #179 of the SUNDAY WIRE, host Patrick Henningsen speaks to author and global affairs analyst, F. William Engdahl, to discuss his recent article about the new US-Israeli oil wars in the Golan Heights in Syria and how this is connected to the West s hidden agenda to create Safe Zones in Syria.In prophetic fashion, Engdahl then goes on to describe Donald Trump as a tool of establishment, placed into the US presidency by America s Deep State in order to fast-track a destructive geopolitical agenda.NOTE: This interview was recorded 5 days before the US missile strikes on Syria SUPPORT OUR WORK SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TVREAD MORE SYRIA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Syria Files","label":1}
{"text":"The Trump administration will make cost-sharing payments to insurance companies under Obamacare for August, a White House spokesman said on Wednesday, but the announcement did little to quell long-term concerns about the insurance market. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has repeatedly threatened to stop the payments, which are made directly to insurance companies to help cover out-of-pocket medical expenses for low-income Americans enrolled in individual healthcare plans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The payments are estimated to amount to $7 billion in 2017. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also said on Wednesday that two counties were projected to have no insurer in 2018 selling plans on the individual market created under former Democratic President Barack Obama's healthcare policy, down from 40 earlier this year. Both announcements could bring some short-term stability to insurance markets, but the long-term outlook is uncertain, said Cynthia Cox, policy researcher and associate director at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Over the past several months, Trump and Republicans lawmakers who control both chambers of Congress, regularly pointed to the number of expected so-called bare counties in 2018 to argue for a bill repealing and replacing Obamacare. Insurers are still unsure whether Republicans will again try to repeal or replace the law when they return in September from a recess and whether the Trump administration will permanently make the insurer payments. They also do not know whether the administration will enforce a requirement of the ACA that all Americans buy health insurance or else pay a fine. It is unclear whether the federal government played a role in providing incentives to insurers to offer plans in bare counties, many of which were at risk because Anthem Inc, one of the largest remaining Obamacare insurers, pared back its offerings in several states, said Cox. State officials and insurance commissioners have worked to provide incentives and Centene Corp has filled in many of the gaps. \"Health plans have been working hard with insurance commissioners and state leaders to ensure that Americans who buy their own coverage have options that are as affordable as possible,\" said Kristine Grow, spokeswoman for insurer lobbying group, America's Health Insurance Plans. \"This is a demonstration of that commitment.\" The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday estimated that health insurance premiums for many customers on the Obamacare individual insurance markets would be 20 percent higher in 2018 if Trump stopped the insurer payments.","label":0}
{"text":"How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? The Times's fashion director and critic discusses the tech she uses. As a fashion critic, what's your favorite tech product that helps you spot and keep track of fashion trends? My iPhone 5, embarrassing as that is to say, and my laptop. I am stuck with my iPhone 5 because I have a keyboard attachment for it that turns it into a BlackBerry, and which I love because during fashion shows I file reviews on my phone and they can be 1, 000 words long. I can't do that on a touch screen. I hate lugging anything bigger than the phone around since I carry so much else. I also use the gadgets mostly to surf around Instagram and Facebook and various news sites to see what regular people are wearing during their everyday lives in places I am not. For runway trends, I just use my eyes. You've written a lot about wearable technology. Are smartwatches ever going to be fashionable enough to replace normal watches? I am sure they will be at some point, but who knows when that will be. The problem is they just look too much like gadgets \u2014 or like wannabe traditional watches. Someone has to come up with a third paradigm. Then whoever does that will be in clover. Beyond your job, what tech product are you currently obsessed with using in your daily life? My Kindle. It's really the only other tech product I use. I have gone through iPad and tablet phases, and smartwatch moments, but they all end up in the back of a drawer somewhere or my kids take them. I am really interested in tech that is efficient and functional and solves problems that are real problems, not theoretical ones. After that, I find it hard to get worked up. What do you and your family do with it? Read! Plus a Kindle is very good to take to shows, because I am lugging a heavy bag full of stuff all day, and it is light and takes up almost no room. And it gives me something to occupy my mind during the endless minutes I spend waiting for shows to start. What could be better about it? The light. Shows have very complicated lighting plans and sometimes that makes it hard to read. What is your children's favorite piece of technology and why? The favorite app for my and daughters are Snapchat and SoundCloud. That's because they can use Snapchat to connect with their friends and stay in touch with those that are far away, and SoundCloud because it is easy and a good way to find new music and fun remixes. For my son: Spotify, because he loves listening to music. Favorite piece of technology (from all of them): their iPhones. It is like another limb for them.","label":0}
{"text":"A 10-year-old girl smacked down Donald Trump, and it was amazing.On Saturday, the Huffington Post interviewed Lexi, an adorable Hillary Clinton volunteer who had absolutely no problem shredding the Republican billionaire when asked how she feels about him.Lexi slammed Trump for having zero experience in government and compared him to her brother who thinks he knows everything. Number one, he doesn t have any experience, at all, Lexi said. And he sits there and thinks, Oh I m Mr. Donald Trump, I know everything, which is sort of like my brother. She also broke the bad news to Trump s supporters that if they think they ll get money by voting for Trump, they are sorely mistaken. He s just rich, a lot of people just vote for him because they think they ll get some money, too. But that s not it. You think you re going to get the money, but that s not the case. Lexi then took aim at Trump s xenophobia and racism and made it clear what parents who vote for Trump can expect of their children s future should he get in the White House. Oh, and she also had positive things to say about Bernie Sanders, who she sees as someone who is building an environment for the kids. It s ridiculous because I mean, look at these people, your best friend you may not know is Muslim or Jewish. And Bernie Sanders, he s Jewish. You don t see anybody talking about that. He s just building an environment for the kids, their parents are voting for Donald Trump, but little do they know that their kids will grow up not having a good education and not having good jobs. Lexi then warned that if people fail to show up and vote on Election Day in November, it could mean a Trump victory. And she thinks his hair is gross. If you don t vote, then Mr. Donald Trump will be president. I don t think that s his real hair, being president. His hair, look at it! Look at it! It s gross. I can t believe that s his real hair. Here s the video via Huffington Post. Lexi s interview can be found at the 7:30 mark.\/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ \/\/ < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/sdk.js#xfbml=1&#038;version=v2.3\"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); \/\/ ]]&gt;HuffPost s Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani takes us through Hillary HQ with chicken & waffles on primary day in S.C. (Yes, chicken & waffles.)Posted by HuffPost Politics on Saturday, February 27, 2016Donald Trump just got his ass handed to him by what he fears most: an intelligent young girl who is going to be a strong woman when she grows up.","label":1}
{"text":"Sweden's Vattenfall will invest 3 billion Swedish crowns ($349 million) in a Scottish offshore wind farm that U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump tried to stop being built near his luxury golf course in Scotland. State-owned utility Vattenfall, which will take 100 percent ownership of the project from Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group, described its investment as a vote of confidence in Britain after the nation's decision to leave the European Union. \"The decision to invest ... comes only a few weeks after the British referendum on leaving the EU and demonstrates Vattenfall's continuing long-term commitment to wind power in Great Britain,\" the company said in a statement. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said she would not rule out the possibility of Scotland remaining in the EU. Sturgeon said that a second independence referendum is now a possibility, though she has also emphasized that another vote would not take place until it is clear that most Scots are in favor of breaking from the United Kingdom. Vattenfall said the wind farm will have capacity of 92.4 megawatts, which could potentially supply about 130,000 households with energy. It will also serve as a center for testing and developing new technologies for offshore wind power. In December last year Britain's top court threw out a bid by Trump to stop the 11-turbine wind farm from being built near his multimillion-dollar resort. The Trump Organization had denounced the Scottish government as \"foolish, small minded and parochial\". The Scottish National Party's foreign affairs spokesman Alex Salmond replied that Trump was \"three times a loser\". Construction is expected to start in the latter part of 2017, with the wind farm expected to start generating electricity in spring 2018. Onshore construction activity will start later this year.","label":0}
{"text":"As we all know, Trump told Access Hollywood host Billy Bush in 2005 that he made unwanted advances on a married woman and bragged that he walks up to beautiful women and just starts kissing them and grab them by the p*ssy. Seriously. It s all on tape. Had the tape been turned over to police they might have opened a sexual assault investigation.On Sunday morning, CNN anchor John King said that Trump should be in jail instead of being the Republican nominee for president.King began by playing part of the clip of Trump talking about how he pursued a married woman by taking her furniture shopping. And then he talks about moving on that b*tch. I said what you re about to see was some graphic language, King said. That s one of the tamest parts. And the point, if you go on in this tape, that s he s talking about making unwanted advances on a married woman. He also talks about conduct that is a crime. If he did it. People go to jail for the things that he was talking about doing, groping women. That was the dam opening. Indeed, it is a crime and that why many Republicans are desperately trying to distance themselves from Trump.The outrage was so bad that Trump was forced to apologize for the remarks, but King noted that it took Trump s aides hours to get him to actually do it. King proceeded to slam Trump for it and pointed out that what Trump said is not mere locker room talk. It s a confession to committing crimes. In his video released Saturday night, after it took his aides hours to convince him this was a big deal, that s important here too. He doesn t say in the video that I never did this. He never says he never did this. I m going to say it one more time: he s bragging about things that people go to jail for. I ve been to a lot of locker rooms. Men say stupid things in locker rooms. Men say inappropriate things in locker rooms. Men do not talk about committing crimes in locker rooms or, if anybody brings it up, the grown-up on the team pushes that guy against the locker and tells him to shut up. Here s the video via VidMe.In other words, Trump should have been investigated by law enforcement and should have been arrested, tried, sentenced to serve time in jail, and required to register as a sex offender. He certainly should never have been elevated to the leadership of a major political party and been allowed to get this close to becoming the most powerful person in the world. Republicans own this and they need to pay a price for it in November.","label":1}
{"text":"Trump Tower Surrounded By Dump Trucks In Anticipation Of Violence 11\/09\/2016  DAILY CALLER  The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has surrounded the perimeter of Trump Tower with reinforced dump trucks in anticipation of Election Day violence.  The dump trucks flank the skyscraper on all sides, and are supplemented by guardrails and heavily armed police officers. This morning, the building was not open to the general public and traffic crawled through a narrow corridor of trucks and police. On the street, supporters and protesters stood for interviews with a burgeoning press corps camped across the street. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump lives in a penthouse near the top of the building, which also serves as headquarters for his presidential campaign. (RELATED: Election Day Voting Has Begun \u2013 Who Is Winning?)  Police told The Daily Caller News Foundation that the dumping beds are filled with sand, which adds weight to each truck, in effect making it impossible to run the barrier. Police decided to circle the Tower with trucks as a hedge against car bombs, or some such similar incendiary munition delivered by car. The fleet of trucks will travel with Trump this evening to surround the New York Hilton Midtown Manhattan Hotel, where Trump is hosting his victory rally. The NYPD maintained a presence around the hotel for several days, which is also closed to the public.  Guests staying in the hotel on unrelated business must present their keycards at a security check-point before entering the premises.  Similar security measures will attend Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's headquarters at the Javits Convention Center in Hell's Kitchen this evening.","label":1}
{"text":"The two countries keep dozens of intercontinental nuclear missiles pointed at each other's cities. Their frigates and fighter jets occasionally face off in the contested waters of the South China Sea. With no shared border, China and the United States mostly circle each other from afar, relying on satellites and cybersnooping to peek inside the workings of each other's war machines. But the two strategic rivals are about to become neighbors in this patch of East African desert. China is constructing its first overseas military base here \u2014 just a few miles from Camp Lemonnier, one of the Pentagon's largest and most important foreign installations. With increasing tensions over China's efforts in the South China Sea, American strategists worry that a naval port so close to Camp Lemonnier could provide a seat to the staging ground for American counterterror operations in the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa. \"It's like having a rival football team using an adjacent practice field,\" said Gabriel Collins, an expert on the Chinese military and a founder of the analysis portal China SignPost. \"They can scope out some of your plays. On the other hand, the scouting opportunity goes both ways. \" Established after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Camp Lemonnier is home to 4, 000 personnel. Some are involved in highly secretive missions, including targeted drone killings in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, and the raid last month in Yemen that left a member of the Navy SEALs dead. The base, which is run by the Navy and abuts Djibouti's international airport, is the only permanent American military installation in Africa. Beyond surveillance concerns, United States officials, citing the billions of dollars in Chinese loans to Djibouti's heavily indebted government, wonder about the durability of an alliance that has served Washington well in its global fight against Islamic extremism. Just as important, experts say, the base's construction is a milestone marking Beijing's expanding global ambitions \u2014 with potential implications for America's longstanding military dominance. \"It's a huge strategic development,\" said Peter Dutton, professor of strategic studies at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, who has studied satellite imagery of the construction. \"It's naval power expansion for protecting commerce and China's regional interests in the Horn of Africa,\" Professor Dutton said. \"This is what expansionary powers do. China has learned lessons from Britain of 200 years ago. \" Chinese officials play down the significance of the base, saying it will largely support antipiracy operations that have helped quell the threat to international shipping once posed by marauding Somalis. \"The support facility will be mainly used to provide rest and rehabilitation for the Chinese troops taking part in escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia, U. N. peacekeeping and humanitarian rescue,\" the Defense Ministry in Beijing said in a written reply to questions. In addition to having 2, 400 peacekeepers in Africa, China has used its vessels to escort more than 6, 000 boats from many countries through the Gulf of Aden, the ministry said. China's military has also evacuated its citizens caught in the world's trouble spots. In 2011, the military plucked 35, 000 from Libya, and 600 from Yemen in 2015. As China's navy has assumed these new roles far from home, its commanders have struggled to maintain vessels and resupply them with food and fuel. Capt. Liu Jianzhong, a former political commissar of a Chinese destroyer plying the Gulf of Aden, said the lack of a dedicated port in the region took a toll on personnel forced to spend long stretches at sea. \"For six months, we didn't reach the shore, and a lot of sailors had physical and psychological problems,\" he told the China Military Online. To that end, the new base will include a gym, the ministry said. Professor Dutton said Beijing would most likely try to \"acclimatize\" the world by using the facility for commercial purposes when it begins operating this year and then gradually increase the number and variety of warships that dock there. \"It will be relatively incremental in the forward deployment of naval power. You are not going to see a Yokosuka,\" he said, referring to the base for the United States Seventh Fleet in Japan. In its written answers, the ministry said that China was not budging from its \"defensive\" military policy and that the base did not indicate an \"arms race or military expansion. \" In recent years, China has moved aggressively to increase its power projection capabilities through the rapid modernization of its navy. Military spending has soared, with Beijing's defense budget expected to reach $233 billion by 2020, more than all Western European countries combined, and double the figure from 2010, according to Jane's Defense Weekly. In 2016, the United States spent more than $622 billion on the military, Jane's said. These days, Chinese naval vessels, including nuclear submarines, roam much of the globe, from contested waters of the Yellow Sea to Sri Lanka and San Diego. China's decision to establish an overseas military installation comes as little surprise to those who have watched Beijing steadily jettison a principle of noninterference in the affairs of other countries. The shift is an outgrowth of China's evolution from an impoverished slumbering introvert to mercantilist with economic interests across the globe. Half of China's oil imports sail through the Mandeb Strait, the choke point off Djibouti that connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. Across Africa, companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in railways, factories and mines. And the millions of Chinese citizens who live and work overseas have come to expect that the government will look out for their interests \u2014 a point driven home in recent years when Beijing was forced to rescue Chinese nationals from Libya and Yemen. \"The facility in Djibouti is a very interesting lens through which to view China's growing capabilities and ambitions,\" said Andrew S. Erickson, an expert at China's maritime transformation at the Naval War College and the editor of the book \"Chinese Naval Shipbuilding. \" \"Not only will it give them a huge shot in the arm in terms of naval logistics, but it will also strengthen China's image at home and abroad. \" A encampment built adjacent to a new commercial port, the base is designed to house up to several thousand troops and will include storage structures for weapons, repair facilities for ships and helicopters, and five berths for commercial ships and one for military vessels. At the base's front gate recently, Chinese workers in construction helmets waved away a reporter who tried to ask questions. China's Defense Ministry declined a request to tour the site. American officials say they were blindsided by Djibouti's decision, announced last year, to give China a lease for the land. Just two years earlier, Susan Rice, the national security adviser under President Barack Obama, had flown here to head off a similar arrangement with Russia. Shortly afterward, the White House announced a lease renewal that doubled its annual payments for Camp Lemonnier, to $63 million, and a plan to invest more than $1 billion to upgrade the installation. If the Pentagon's current base restrictions are any guide, American and Chinese troops are unlikely to be sharing beers any time soon. American officials, citing possible security threats, keep most personnel confined to the rectangle of scrubland, which is a drive from the center of Djibouti city. It is a policy that stirs some discontent among those who often spend yearlong stints at Camp Lemonnier without venturing outside. By contrast, French military personnel can often be seen jogging through the city and socializing with locals. Americans who work for the United States Embassy also live in the community and say they feel little threat to their safety. Life on base can be monotonous, broken up by visits to the fitness center or meals at the camp's Subway sandwich outlet. Capt. James Black, the camp's commanding officer, said one of his primary challenges was to provide salubrious distractions for those stationed here. The distractions include free a movie theater, Texas Hold 'em tournaments and the occasional soccer match with Italian and German troops. \"We're like a landlocked aircraft carrier,\" Captain Black said during a recent tour of the installation, which is blasted in summer by broiling heat. \"Part of my job is to create opportunities to give people a break and attend to their mental health needs. \" Local residents also crave more face time with the Americans. Some say Camp Lemonnier personnel could play a more active role in helping to alleviate Djibouti's crushing poverty by building schools, painting hospitals or simply taking part in language exchanges. Others, like Mohamed Ali Basha, the owner of a restaurant that serves grilled fish and massive discs of baked flatbread, said he would welcome business from military personnel. \"I don't understand why the Americans are so obsessed with security here, but I would be happy to close the restaurant for them if they would come,\" Mr. Basha, 26, said. \"Just call in advance. \" In interviews, Djiboutian officials expressed little concern that two strategic adversaries would be sharing space in a country the size of New Jersey. It helps that the Chinese are paying $20 million a year in rent on top of the billions they are spending to finance critical infrastructure, including ports and airports, a new rail line and a pipeline that will bring desperately needed drinking water from neighboring Ethiopia. Critics say the surge of loans, which amount to 60 percent of the country's gross domestic product, raises concerns about China's leverage over the Djibouti government should it fall behind on debt payments. \"Such generous credit is itself a form of control,\" said Mohamed Daoud Chehem, a prominent government critic. \"We don't know what China's intentions really are. \" But on the city's dusty, potholed streets, most people are pleased to see China joining the club of a foreign militaries that have a presence here, among them Japan, Italy and Britain. Also here is a large contingent of French soldiers who stayed on after 1977, when the colony formerly known as French Somaliland gained independence. Abdirahman M. Ahmed, who runs Green Djibouti International, an environmental social enterprise, said many people viewed foreign militaries as a stabilizing force, given their country's diminutive size, its lack of resources and the potential threats from neighbors like Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea, where expansionist sentiments continue to burble. \"We don't see any problem having the Chinese here,\" he said. \"They provide revenue and help play a deterrence to those who would love to annex Djibouti. \" The plethora of foreign troops, some say, also served as a bulwark against the jihadist violence that has destabilized other countries in the region. Djibouti, whose population of 900, 000 embraces a moderate form of Sunni Islam, has not been entirely spared: In 2014, a double suicide bombing at a downtown restaurant popular with foreigners killed a Turkish national and wounded 11 people. The Shabab, the militant group, later claimed responsibility, saying the attack was motivated by the presence of so many Western troops in Djibouti. For American military strategists, the security implications of the Chinese base are unclear, though practically speaking, many experts say the military threat is minimal. \"A port like this isn't very defensible against attack,\" said Philip C. Saunders, director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University. \"It wouldn't last very long in a war. \"","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday to cut red tape to speed up approval of infrastructure projects and said his overhaul could top $1 trillion on roads, tunnels and bridges, one of his 2016 election campaign promises. Trump, a real estate businessman before he was elected, did not provide further details on the amount or where the money would come from when he spoke to a White House meeting of 50 chief executives and other business leaders. U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said at the forum that the administration plans to release a legislative package in May. Investors have become more skeptical that the plan would win approval this year in Congress, which is controlled by Republicans who are traditionally wary of big spending. Trump said building a highway can require dozens of approvals and take 10 to 20 years, a process he vowed to speed up. Trump said he would not fund projects that cannot be started within 90 days. The administration wants to improve the electrical grid and water systems, rebuild airports, bridges, roads and potentially hospitals for military veterans and broadband. National Economic Council director Gary Cohn told executives that privatizing air traffic control, which the administration proposed in its budget outline in March, \"is probably the single most exciting thing we can do.\". Cohn, an investment banker with Goldman Sachs before he became Trump's top economic adviser, said it could help speed flight times and reduce fuel use. Cohn said if cities \"sell off\" or privatize infrastructure assets, the administration could provide financial support. \"We're not on the cutting edge of this,\" Cohn said. \"We've got to get a little more comfortable with public-private partnerships.\" Cohn touted an idea of electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk to use tunnels to speed rail transit on the densely populated east coast and also to cut traffic congestion in Los Angeles. A Tesla spokesman declined comment.","label":0}
{"text":"The European Union and Britain made progress in the latest round of divorce talks, but not enough to move to the next phase of discussions on a transition period after Brexit or a future trade deal, top negotiators said on Thursday. We have had a constructive week, yes, but we are not yet there in terms of achieving sufficient progress. Further work is needed in the coming weeks and months, chief EU negotiator Michel Barnier told reporters, praising a new dynamic created by concessions made last week by Prime Minister Theresa May. She had hoped that a speech she made in Florence on Friday would unblock the three-month-old talks and pave the way for the EU to open discussions on a post-Brexit free trade deal, by allowing Barnier to tell EU leaders that there is sufficient progress on three key divorce issues - rights for expatriate citizens, the Northern Irish border and Britain s exit bill. Differences over the role of the European Court of Justice and how much London will owe Brussels remain major obstacles. Officials involved said there had been a better atmosphere this week. One EU official said May had averted the train crash which might have resulted from another week of stubborn deadlock. That would have increased risks of Britain simply crashing out of the Union into legal limbo in March 2019. British Brexit Secretary David Davis said the talks achieved considerable progress over the four days in Brussels. He repeated his eagerness to move on to discuss what happens after Brexit and the two-year transition period which May requested, during which Britain would remain in the EU single market. We must never forget the bigger picture. Britain wants to be the European Union s strongest friend and partner, he said, echoing May. I leave Brussels optimistic about this future. Officials said transition issues were not raised this week. Barnier said he would take stock of progress with leaders of the other 27 EU states at a Brussels summit in three weeks time, a week after the next negotiating round. But he gave no indication of how likely he is to recommend opening trade talks. And sufficient progress has been deliberately left undefined. EU diplomats doubt Barnier will be satisfied by October and many see a December summit as a more likely moment to open the trade negotiations. However, officials said there could be some blurring of the EU refusal to discuss post-Brexit issues if the sides narrow differences and gain confidence in settling terms. Barnier highlighted two key areas of disagreement - on the legal protection for the rights of the 3 million EU citizens in Britain and on a pre-Brexit settlement from Britain for a share of outstanding financial commitments made during its membership. New figures from EU auditors on Thursday showed that the sum at stake may be growing as talks continue, simply due to delays in the bloc s spending of already agreed payments. May said on Friday that Britain would ensure the other 27 were not out of pocket in the current EU budget period and that it would honour commitments . Barnier expressed disappointment that negotiators had made clear she meant to end those budget payments in 2020, even though payments from the current 2014-20 budget will go on for some years beyond that. And London had given him no detail on what other commitments it would meet. On citizens rights, he welcomed Davis confirmation that the treaty guaranteeing them should now have direct effect in British law. That tightens a link between what the EU negotiates and what its citizens can count on in future in British courts. But the Union continues to demand that people also have the right to pursue grievances at the EU s own court in Luxembourg - a red line for a British government keen to show voters who backed Brexit last year that they have taken back control. Welcoming a guarantee that Britain would safeguard rights in a way consistent with EU law , Barnier said: We failed to agree that the European Court of Justice must play an indispensable role in ensuring this consistency.","label":0}
{"text":"Saudi Arabia will train women to work as air traffic controllers, state media reported, as the conservative Islamic kingdom seeks to create more jobs for women as part of a reform push to wean the economy off oil. Its Vision 2030 plan aims to increase employment and diversify revenue sources as low oil prices have hit the finances of the world s top exporter. Some of the planned changes, like increasing the number of women in the overall workforce to 28 percent from 23 percent and quadrupling their presence in senior civil service roles to 5 percent, would transform a society where employment has traditionally been the preserve of men. State-owned Saudi Air Navigation Services (SANS) announced on Sunday that it was offering theoretical and practical training to 80 women per year to prepare them for work in the air traffic control sector. The applicants began taking admissions exams on Sunday for the Saudi Academy of Civil Aviation and will undergo a number of editorial tests, state news agency SPA said in a report late on Sunday. Applicants must have a high school diploma with high marks and be between 18 and 25 years old, it said. Saudi Arabia is the only country where women are forbidden to drive, making it harder for them to get to work. Most employed women work for the kingdom s vast public sector, primarily in health and education, but authorities say they seek to encourage more hiring by private firms as part of the 2030 plan. Regulations bar women from certain professions, while rules on gender mixing in shops and businesses further limit job opportunities. Until 2012, even lingerie shops were mostly staffed by men. Female employment has been a battleground for years between social conservatives and reformers, but the balance has tipped toward change since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took on wide-ranging powers role two years ago. Last year a senior cleric said women should be allowed to work as paramedics and opticians, and last month women staffed an emergency call center at the haj pilgrimage for the first time.","label":0}
{"text":"Kenya s education minister said on Monday that arson was to blame for a weekend blaze that killed nine pupils at a girls boarding school, part of a rising trend of deliberate school fires. It was not an accident, it was arson, Minister Fred Matiang i said of the fire on Saturday at Moi Girls School in Nairobi. The Kenya Red Cross said on its Twitter feed there had been three other school fires reported in different parts of the country on Monday. Many of the fires were set by students protesting harsh discipline, poor teaching and corruption, said Canadian Elizabeth Cooper, assistant professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University, who spent four years researching the subject. Students she interviewed complained about poor food, scarce teaching materials, harsh teachers, and management that ignored their concerns. Many compared their schools to prison and said they destroyed their schools so they could go home. In one case, boys had drained water tanks and cut phone lines before setting fire to their principal s car and pushing it into his home. They were angry that he had been collecting money from their parents for three years for a school bus, but had not bought it. If a pupil needed hospital treatment, the principal drove them himself and charged the family, she said. In another case, girls smeared butter on their curtains and beds before setting them alight, Cooper said. Fires peak just before exams and mock exams. The students always say, no one listens to our concerns . Around 350 Kenyan schools caught fire from 2015 to 2016, according to the government. This compared, according to one academic source, with 76 fires from 2011 to 2013. It was not clear how many fires were deliberate. Numbers for 2014 were not available. Cooper said some schools set on fire have dismissed their principals afterward. There have been few successful prosecutions. Kenya frequently sees deadly protests, including after the presidential elections held last month. Cooper said students sometimes cited violent protests by slum residents or university students that successfully publicized their causes, and sought to emulate them. Students learn that authorities don t respond until they present a threat, she said. It s one way for voiceless citizens to be heard. But Matiang i said some arson attacks were also related to fights over staff appointments in schools, where senior positions can bring financial rewards. Some of the fires we have faced before in the sector are related to that kind of thing, politicization of school headship, politicization of responsibility in the education sector. It is not right, he said in a televised press conference. Kenya is East Africa s largest economy but unemployment is high and corruption is rife, making life difficult for many ordinary people. Control of a school can mean not just a government salary but an opportunity to extort extra money from students and parents in fees or other charges.","label":0}
{"text":"An earthquake, believed to be the strongest to hit Italy since 1980, struck the center of the country on Sunday, four days after two quakes severely damaged buildings and left thousands homeless in the area. The temblor on Sunday also caused fresh damage to the towns destroyed by a quake that killed nearly 300 people in August. The quake, which had a magnitude of 6. 5, according to Italy's national geophysical and volcanology institute, struck at 7:41 a. m. with its epicenter near Norcia. It was felt as far away as Bolzano in northern Italy and Puglia in the south, according to Italian news reports. Most of the towns in the area had already been evacuated after the recent seismic activity, so there were no immediate reports of deaths. About 20 people were injured but none killed, said Fabrizio Curcio, the head of Italy's civil protection department. \"It was an important earthquake,\" he said. Helicopters were taking people to hospitals because some roads had been closed off, Mr. Curcio said. teams were converging on the area, he added, and mayors were verifying the conditions of residents in smaller hamlets. As night fell, emergency teams worked to transfer residents of the stricken areas to temporary dormitories and hotels in outlying areas, overcoming the resistance of those who preferred to remain near their homes, Mr. Curcio said. \"This was a 6. 5 \u2014 we haven't had an earthquake of this magnitude since 1980 \u2014 so there are a series of controls we have to carry out,\" he said, adding that people would be assisted better outside the earthquake areas. Electrical power was out for many thousands of residences, many roads were blocked by debris or cracks, and several sections of the Via Salaria, the most important highway in the area, were not accessible, Mr. Curcio said. Emergency workers were preparing to work through the night to clear roads of debris. \"It will be a difficult night,\" Mr. Curcio said after meeting with the mayor of Norcia, Nicola Alemanno, and Vasco Errani, the government's point man for the earthquake reconstruction program in Norcia. Mr. Curcio said he hoped people would not spend the night in their cars or in makeshift camps and would opt for more stable accommodations. \"There is no reason to suffer,\" he said. Mr. Alemanno estimated that at least 3, 000 residents of the town had been left homeless. Other mayors were still tallying numbers of those left homeless in their own towns. Mr. Errani, who was appointed after the August quake, said Sunday's earthquake had \"changed the scenario, and even more the spirit and the soul of people,\" he said. \"We must remain calm to face the situation,\" he added. Aftershocks continued throughout the day, and the geological institute registered about 200 in the first 10 hours after the morning 6. 5 quake, at least 15 of them with a magnitude measuring over 4. The mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, ordered schools to remain closed Monday to allow for checks on their stability. At a news conference, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi vowed to rebuild damaged areas. \"We will rebuild everything \u2014 homes, churches, businesses,\" he said. Italy has been urging the European Commission to give it more leeway in meeting targets for its budget deficit, citing greater costs incurred by its response to the migrant crisis and to the fallout of the earthquakes. The Italian government allocated 40 million euros, about $44 million, to the stricken zones after Wednesday's quakes, and on Sunday Mr. Renzi said more would be set aside to deal with the fresh damage. \"We will broaden the crater zone so no town must fear it might be left out,\" he said. \"We can't give back a smile to those who in this moment think they have lost everything,\" said Mr. Renzi, who noted that the earthquake had been felt by many Italians. He called on citizens to be strong and show solidarity. \"Italy has its limitations and defects, but in these circumstances it gives the best of itself,\" he said. Italian news media showed images of the cathedral and basilica of St. Benedict in Norcia, where damage to the historic center was extensive. \"Right now, the most important thing is to assist people,\" Mr. Curcio said. Television crews for the Italian state network RAI and Sky News had remained in the area after Wednesday's tremors, and provided live images with billows of dust from crumbled buildings in the background. The few residents of Norcia who had remained in town because their houses had withstood the previous quakes wandered the streets, startled and frightened. One television broadcast showed a group of nuns running into the main square where they later led prayers, with residents kneeling around them, in front of a statue of St. Benedict. The earth continued to tremble in the first minutes after the quake as reports of damage in various towns began to be tallied. In Ussita, a town near the epicenter of Wednesday's quake, \"90 percent of the houses have crumbled,\" Mayor Marco Rinaldi told Italian television. In Amatrice, the town hardest hit in the August earthquake, the facade of the church of Sant'Agostino collapsed. \"Everything has been destroyed. The towns no longer exist,\" said Aleandro Petrucci, the mayor of Arquata del Tronto, another ghost town since the August quake. In Rome, both of the main subway lines were temporarily closed to check for damage, Italian news outlets reported. Paolo Messina, the director of the Institute of Environmental Geology and Geoengineering at Italy's National Research Council, said Sunday's earthquake was linked to the quakes in August. \"It's a complex situation, where a fault is breaking in sections,\" he said. On one hand, the repeated quakes were positive, \"because if it occurred all at once the magnitude would be much higher,\" he said in a telephone interview. \"At the same time, it is causing terrible damage. \" It was impossible to determine the course of the seismic activity, he added. \"We don't know how much energy has accumulated in this fault over the centuries, so we don't know how much needs to be discharged,\" he said. One shaken resident of Ussita, who had already lost her home, told the Italian news media: \"We don't know what to do anymore. \" The earthquake wants to kill us. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Speaking to Breitbart News during a trip to Israel, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee hailed President Donald Trump's historic trip to Israel and urged the president to fulfil his campaign promise to move the U. S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem despite pressure against such a move. [\"I think this is a historic trip,\" said Huckabee. \"He made the first ever flight from Riyadh to Tel Aviv. We had the first sitting U. S. president go to the Western Wall and offer a prayer. I think that is incredibly significant. \" Huckabee said that Trump has been \"very vocal in his support for Israel and I think that the people here sense it. \" Continued Huckabee: I also hope with all my heart that he will keep his campaign promise to move the U. S. embassy. I know there is enormous pressure for him not to do that. The rationale is that it will make certain people unhappy. Whoever those people are, they are unhappy already. They are not going to be made happy by the location of the U. S. embassy. Huckabee said Trump's visits to Israel and Saudi Arabia have demonstrated that a \"very strong America is much better than a weak America. This is so incredibly different from the eight years of Barack Obama's administration. \" \"The reception that Trump received in Saudi Arabia was a stunning contrast to the one received by Barack Obama,\" he continued. \"In Obama, they [the Saudis] saw a weak American leader, whereas with Trump they see someone who exhibits strength. Whose strength in leadership is out front. They might not have agreed with everything that Trump said [in his address in Saudi Arabia] but they have to respect that he spoke the truth. \" Huckabee, who ran against Trump in the 2016 presidential election before endorsing him, is in Israel on a brief tour with American activist Dr. Joseph Frager. On Sunday night, Huckabee and Frager went for a nighttime visit to Joseph's Tomb, Judaism's third holiest site, located in a complex controlled by the Palestinian Authority. \"It's an amazing experience to have to come to this type of difficulty just to be able to come to a holy site for Jews and frankly even for Christians, who pay tribute to Joseph,\" Huckabee said at the site, according to Ynetnews. \"To have to do it in the dead of night, under armed guard, with the smell of tear gas in the air, burning tires along the route, it's a stark reminder [of how different] it is in the heart of Israel, where the Israeli government protects every Muslim that accesses their holy site,\" he added. \"In Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] Jewish people do not have unhindered access to holy sites without having to go to extraordinary lengths in order to be able to access these places. \" Huckabee will also attend the annual Moskowitz Prize for Zionism reception. The prize was \"established in recognition of the people who put Zionism into action in today's Israeli society \u2014 at times risking their own personal security, placing the collective before personal needs and doing what it takes to ensure a strong, secure Jewish homeland. \" It was established by the late Irving Moskowitz, whose wife Cherna continues the family's philanthropy. U. S. law requires the relocation of the embassy to Jerusalem. However, President Obama signed successive waivers delaying the move. The current waiver expires on June 1. Numerous reports in recent days cited White House officials saying that Trump is not expected to use the visit to announce an embassy move. Still, that prediction is subject to change. Even if Trump does not announce an embassy move, there are that could be put into place, including the possibility of David Friedman, the U. S. ambassador to Israel, setting up shop at the U. S. consulate in Jerusalem instead of the beachfront embassy building in Tel Aviv. Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, \"Aaron Klein Investigative Radio. \" Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"Comments  Special to Occupy Democrats by Carlos Miller of PINAC News.  It was only last month that Scott Michael Greene accused a group of black teenagers of being \"cop haters\" because they did not stand for the National Anthem during a high school football game. This morning, he shot and killed two cops in cold blood as they sat in their patrol cars. Greene, 46, was arrested a few hours later after an intense manhunt.  Below is a video he posted on YouTube, along with a screenshot of his comment referring to the black teens as cop haters for not standing during the national anthem at high school game, which caused him to throw a fit of rage leading to him eventually being kicked out of the stadium.  He was angry at police after they had kicked him out of the football game for waving a Confederate flag in front of a group of black students in Urbandale on October 14, 2016. Two days later, he posted the infamous video to YouTube from the encounter titled, \"Police Abuse, Civil Rights Violation at Urbandale High School 10\/14\/16.\"  Of course, neither Trump nor his campaign have said anything about the killings except a tweet offering the old tired \"thoughts and prayers.\"  In the video, he tries to explain to the cops kicking him out that he was doing nothing more than expressing his First Amendment rights to wave the Confederate flag. He also said he was assaulted and had his flag stolen from him. However, police said he was causing a disturbance and that he would be arrested for trespassing on school property if he did not leave. They also returned his flag to him.  While they agreed he had a Constitutional right to wave the flag, they informed him that on school grounds, he was subject to school policies that did not allow the waving of the Confederate flag. Less than a week ago, he stated in the comments section of his video that he was \"offended by the blacks sitting through our anthem\" and referred to them as being \"cop haters.\" Now, he is a suspected cop killer. Greene has a long history of arrests, including one incident where he threatened to kill a black man after calling him a racial slur. He also went though mental evaluation and was placed on medication.  According to the Des Moines Register:  He was charged with a simple misdemeanor count of interference with official acts on April 10, 2014, when he resisted an attempt by officers to pat him down for weapons at an Urbandale residence on Colby Parkway, according to a criminal complaint. The officers wanted to search Greene after noticing that he had a pouch on his belt that resembled a holster.  Greene was \"noncompliant, hostile, combative and made furtive movements toward his pockets\" before the arrest, Officer Chris Greenfield wrote in the complaint. Greene pleaded guilty to the charge about two weeks later.  The complaint does not indicate why officers initially came into contact with Greene. But two days later he reportedly threatened to kill a man in the parking lot of the same apartment complex and he was charged with first-degree harassment, according to another complaint.  In that incident, Greene was accused of approaching a man in the parking lot and shined a flashlight in his eyes. Greene, who lived in the apartments, called the man the N-word and told the man \"I will kill you, (expletive) kill you,\" according to the complaint. Greene pleaded guilty to a lesser harassment charge on June 30, 2014, and was sentenced to one year of probation.  In a discharge report filed in June 2015 a probation officer wrote that Greene had received a mental health evaluation and \"reports to have complied with the medication recommendations.\"  Watch this confederate flag obsessed cop-killer's YouTube video:","label":1}
{"text":"Donald J. Trump belittled the parents of a slain Muslim soldier who had strongly denounced Mr. Trump during the Democratic National Convention, saying that the soldier's father had delivered the entire speech because his mother was not \"allowed\" to speak. Mr. Trump's comments, in an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News that will air on Sunday, drew quick and widespread condemnation and amplified calls for Republican leaders to distance themselves from their presidential nominee. With his implication that the soldier's mother had not spoken because of female subservience expected in some traditional strains of Islam, his comments also inflamed his hostilities with American Muslims. Khizr Khan, the soldier's father, lashed out at Mr. Trump in an interview on Saturday, saying his wife had not spoken at the convention because it was too painful for her to talk about her son's death. Mr. Trump, he said, \"is devoid of feeling the pain of a mother who has sacrificed her son. \" Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, a rival of Mr. Trump's in the Republican primaries who has refused to endorse him, castigated him on Twitter. \"There's only one way to talk about Gold Star parents: with honor and respect,\" he wrote, using the term for surviving family members of those who died in war. And Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump's Democratic opponent, said he \"was not a normal presidential candidate. \" \"Someone who attacks everybody has something missing,\" she told a crowd at a campaign stop in Youngstown, Ohio. \"I don't know what it is. I'm not going to get into that. \" Mr. Khan's speech at the convention in Philadelphia was one of the most powerful given there. It was effectively the Democratic response to comments Mr. Trump has made implying many American Muslims have terrorist sympathies or stay silent when they know ones who do. Mr. Trump has called to ban Muslim immigration as a way to combat terrorism. At the convention, Mr. Khan spoke about how his son, Humayun Khan, an Army captain, died in a car bombing in 2004 in Iraq as he tried to save other troops. He criticized Mr. Trump, saying he \"consistently smears the character of Muslims,\" and pointedly challenged what sacrifices Mr. Trump had made. Holding a copy of the Constitution, he asked if Mr. Trump had read it. Mr. Khan's wife stood silently by his side. Mr. Trump told Mr. Stephanopoulos that Mr. Khan seemed like a \"nice guy\" and that he wished him \"the best of luck. \" But, he added, \"If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably \u2014 maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say, you tell me. \" Mr. Trump also told Maureen Dowd of The New York Times on Friday night, \"I'd like to hear his wife say something. \" In a statement late Saturday, Mr. Trump called Captain Khan a \"hero,\" and reiterated his belief that the United States should bar Muslims from entering the country. \"While I feel deeply for the loss of his son,\" he added, \"Mr. Khan, who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things. \" Even given Mr. Trump's reputation for retaliating when attacked, his remarks about the Khans were startling. They called to mind one of his earliest counterpunches of the campaign, when he responded to criticism from Senator John McCain of Arizona, once a prisoner of war in Vietnam, by saying at a forum in Iowa, \"I like people that weren't captured. \" But Mr. McCain has a long history in the public eye. The Khans, before their convention appearance, had none. \"Trump is totally void of any decency because he is unaware of how to talk to a Gold Star family and how to speak to a Gold Star mother,\" Mr. Khan said on Saturday. Ms. Khan did speak on Friday to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, saying she \"cannot even come in the room where his pictures are. \" When she saw her son's photograph on the screen behind her on the stage in Philadelphia, she said, \"I couldn't take it. \" \"I controlled myself at that time,\" she said, while choking back tears. \"It is very hard. \" In his interview with The Times, Mr. Khan said his wife had helped him craft his convention speech, and told him to remove certain attacks he had wanted to make against Mr. Trump. But on Saturday, he unmuzzled himself. \"Unlike Donald Trump's wife, I didn't plagiarize my speech,\" Mr. Khan said, referring to how several lines from a Michelle Obama speech found their way into Melania Trump's address at the Republican National Convention. \"I also wanted to talk about how he's had three wives, and yet he talks about others' ethics and their religion,\" Mr. Khan said. \"She said, 'Don't go to his level. We are paying tribute to our son. '\" Mr. Trump's comments provoked another avalanche of criticism on social media, and again put Republican leaders in a difficult position, facing new demands that they repudiate their presidential nominee. Even before Mr. Trump's remarks to ABC News, Mr. Khan had asked that Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Paul D. Ryan, the House speaker, denounce Mr. Trump. On Saturday, neither directly addressed Mr. Trump's new comments. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, referred to Mr. McConnell's response last year that a ban on Muslims entering the United States would be unacceptable. AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ryan, delivered a similar response: \"The speaker has made clear many times that he rejects this idea, and himself has talked about how Muslim Americans have made the ultimate sacrifice for this country. \" In the same ABC News interview, when Mr. Stephanopoulos said that Mr. Khan had pointed out that his family would not have been allowed into the United States under Mr. Trump's proposed ban, the candidate replied, \"He doesn't know that. \" And when asked what he would say to the grieving father, Mr. Trump replied, \"I'd say, 'We've had a lot of problems with radical Islamic terrorism. '\" Mr. Stephanopoulos also noted that Mr. Khan said that Mr. Trump had \"sacrificed nothing,\" and had lost no one. \"I think I've made a lot of sacrifices,\" Mr. Trump replied. \"I've worked very, very hard. I've created thousands and thousands of jobs. \" Some of the fiercest condemnations on Saturday came from Republicans who have argued \u2014 unsuccessfully to date \u2014 that Mr. Trump is unfit to be president. Tim Miller, a former communications director for Jeb Bush's presidential campaign, called Mr. Trump's comments \"inhuman. \" \"Memo to Trump supporters,\" Peter Wehner, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, wrote on Twitter. \"He's a man of sadistic cruelty. With him there's no bottom. Now go ahead defend him. \" Reihan Salam, a conservative writer for National Review and a frequent Trump critic, said that Mr. Trump had an opportunity to declare remorse for the Khans while still holding to his own views as a candidate. \"He might have asked why Humayun Khan had died in the first place \u2014 because of a war that many, if not most, Americans regard as a tragic blunder,\" he said. \"There was really no benefit for Trump in suggesting that Ghazala Khan had been muzzled,\" he added, \"because she could easily come out and say that she had been too to speak, which she did. \" Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesman for the Council on Relations, said on Saturday, \"It's really despicable that anyone, let alone a presidential candidate, would choose to dishonor the service of an American who gave his life for this nation. \" Ms. Khan, he said, \"was obviously there to support her husband, who was offering what many people believe was the most impactful speech of the entire convention. \" As is often the case, Mr. Trump, who has had no campaign events this weekend, managed with a few words to overshadow Mrs. Clinton, who was making several stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania with her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. In the ABC News interview, Mr. Trump also hedged over whether he would participate in the three scheduled debates with Mrs. Clinton. He insinuated that she had worked to schedule two during football games so viewership would be lower, and said that the National Football League had sent him a letter complaining about the timing. The debates were scheduled in September of last year by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. And while Joe Lockhart, a spokesman for the National Football League, said the league was not thrilled about the scheduling, \"we did not send a letter to Trump. \"","label":0}
{"text":"An attempt to change the law in Northern Ireland to allow abortions in cases of rape, incest or serious malformation of the fetus started in the UK Supreme Court on Tuesday with harrowing accounts of women s experiences. A socially conservative province where the Catholic and Protestant faiths exert strong influence, Northern Ireland allows abortion only when a mother s life is in danger. The penalty for undergoing or performing an unlawful abortion is life imprisonment. As a result, women facing tragic circumstances such as a pregnancy resulting from rape or a diagnosis of fatal fetal abnormality, meaning that a baby will not survive outside the womb, have been forced to carry their pregnancies to term. The impact of the criminal law in Northern Ireland does amount to inhuman and degrading treatment by the state, said Nathalie Lieven, lead counsel for the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission which is spearheading the legal action. The commission, an independent body, launched legal action against Northern Ireland s government in 2014, arguing that the law violates the human rights of women and girls. The case has been working its way through the courts ever since. A panel of seven Supreme Court judges in London will hear arguments for and against the proposed changes during a three-day hearing. They will give their judgment at a later date. Lieven began by giving the judges an overview of detailed evidence provided by several women and girls. One of them, Ashleigh Topley, was told when she was four-and-a-half months pregnant in 2013 that her baby s limbs were not growing and she was going to die. Topley was told there was nothing to be done and she had to carry on with the pregnancy until her baby died inside the womb, or until she went into labor which would cause the baby to die. Topley had to endure 15 weeks of anguish as the pregnancy progressed. She has described how people would ask her if it was her first child, if she wanted a boy or a girl, and other well-meaning questions which exacerbated her suffering. In the end, Topley went into labor at 35 weeks and the baby girl s heart stopped. Other cases described to the judges included that of a girl under 13 years old who was pregnant as a result of sexual abuse by a relative. After police and social services got involved, the distraught girl had to be taken outside of Northern Ireland for the first time in her life to have an abortion. Northern Ireland s elected assembly voted against changing abortion laws in February 2016. The law is far less restrictive in the rest of the United Kingdom, and hundreds of Northern Irish women travel to England every year to have unwanted pregnancies terminated. As well as the parties in the case, the court will hear from organizations that support changing the law, such as Humanists UK, Amnesty International and a United Nations working group on discrimination against women. It will also hear from groups who oppose any reform, such as Catholic bishops from the province and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which describes the legal action as a crusade against disabled babies . (This version of the story includes updates with details from the hearing)","label":0}
{"text":"It's no secret that Obama and his puppets are doing everything they possibly can to rig the election against Trump. Positive Trump polls are coming all the time, so it's all hands on deck from the Democrats to do whatever it takes to hand the election to Hillary. Obama's latest move involves registering immigrant voters who will most likely be voting for Hillary in November and he's spent TONS of your taxpayer money doing it. From Judicial Watch : Months after the Obama administration spent $19 million to register new immigrant voters that will likely support Democrats in November, it's dedicating an additional $10 million in a final push as the presidential election approaches. The money is distributed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the Homeland Security agency that oversees lawful immigration, to organizations that help enhance pathways to naturalization by offering immigrants free citizenship instruction, English, U.S. history and civics courses. Officially, they're known as \"citizenship integration grants.\"[\u2026] Judicial Watch went on to say\u2026 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been aggressive in promoting its citizen integration grant program this year, offering large sums to recruit new groups that can offer immigrants the services they need to become citizens. Clearly, the ultimate goal is qualifying as many immigrants as possible to vote since they tend to cast ballots for Democrats. \"We intend to award about $1 million to first-time recipients in the Citizenship and Integration Grant Program for fiscal year 2016,\" the agency's grant announcement states. \"If you represent one of these organizations, or know of an interested organization, we strongly encourage that organization to consider applying. Additionally, another $9 million will fund programs that provide both citizenship instruction and instruction and naturalization application services.\" Some might consider this a cash giveaway.[\u2026] Practically every federal agency is participating in the effort by contributing resources and creating programs to help immigrants. For example the Department of Labor (DOL) is implementing \"new workforce programs\" for the \"new Americans\" and the Department of Education is promoting \"funding opportunities\" to assure that the immigrants \"are provided the tools they need to succeed.\" The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is collaborating with other agencies to release a career and credentialing toolkit on \"immigrant-focused career-pathways programs.\" The Department of Justice (DOJ) and USCIS are making sure the new Americans have worker rights and protections and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is launching a two-year pilot to assure that non English speakers have \"meaningful access to housing programs\" subsidized by American taxpayers. Obama likes to pretend that he's doing this for the greater good of America, but the truth is it's just part of the overall agenda to do whatever it takes to make sure Democrats run Washington and continue to drive our country into the ground. Source: End the Fed  More from Breitbart\u2026 Schweizer: Obama's DOJ 'Transferring Money to Left-wing Groups' 'to Influence This Election' By John Hayward On Wednesday's edition of Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM , Clinton Cash author and Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President Peter Schweizer discussed the latest GAI report about the Obama Justice Department's funneling of money to left-wing groups using fines levied against financial institutions. Breitbart Editor-in-Chief and SiriusXM host Alex Marlow described the report as exposing the Justice Department of \"quite literally extorting companies to fund left-wing activists.\" \"When I first joined Breitbart,\" Schweizer recalled, \"There was a scandal called Pigford where the federal government was basically taking taxpayer money and giving it to people who were claiming to be victims who were not victims and giving them billions of dollars. This is in that tradition.\" He explained: What's really happening here is simple. You've got large financial institutions on Wall Street, you've got banks like Bank of America, who have in some cases committed financial crimes. I think some of them are real, some of them may not be, but set that aside for a minute. The Department of Justice has gone after them and basically said, 'You committed these offenses, you've got to pay restitution in the form of billions of dollars.' Okay, they committed the crime, they ought to pay that. Now, ostensibly that money, those billions of dollars, are supposed to go to the victims of their financial crimes. If your Wall Street broker committed fraud, you're supposed to be made whole with this money, and the rest of it is supposed to go to taxpayers. The problem is the Obama Justice Department has been diverting literally more than $650 million to left-wing groups. They do it under the guise of, \"Well, you know, if this bank discriminated against lenders racially, we're going to give this money to these left-wing quote-unquote housing groups to help deal with the problem.\" But that's not what's going on. These housing groups are advocacy groups. They're left-wing organizations. They are registering voters and getting voters out to the voting booth. And they specifically target what they call quote-unquote progressive voters. So this is taking the Department of Justice, which we've experienced so much in recent years has been politicized by this Administration, even further to where now the Department of Justice is transferring money to left-wing groups \u2014 in an effort, frankly I think, to influence this election. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern. LISTEN:  Source: Breitbart","label":1}
{"text":"The mainstream media is clearly a leftist clique united against the Trump administration. On Thursday, Spicer called on Simendinger during a heated press briefing.Instead of asking her own question, Alexis snarked: Could you help us all by calling on Peter right now? Could you call on the New York Times, please? https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=-dT68A4lQXU","label":1}
{"text":"A leading conservative Republican, who helped block President Donald Trump's healthcare bill, said on Thursday that Congress should begin rigorous debate on tax reform now if it hopes to pass legislation before an August deadline. The quest to revamp the tax code moved to the top of Trump's legislative agenda after a Republican push to repeal and replace President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law failed in the House of Representatives on March 24 in a humiliating defeat for the president and his party. To tackle the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax code since the Reagan era quickly, House Republicans need to avoid the political fault lines that sank their healthcare bill, partly by having conservatives on board. House Republicans hope to vote on a tax reform bill before they leave for summer recess at the end of July. \"We can get it done before August as long as we are real serious about having real debate... debate has to be about changing policy,\" said Representative Mark Meadows, chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about three-dozen staunchly conservative lawmakers. \"I'm optimistic on tax reform, if we do it differently than we did healthcare,\" he told a forum hosted by Politico. Freedom Caucus members complained that House Republican leaders held no healthcare hearings this year before legislation was introduced and kept their bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act under wraps until just before it was introduced. Meadows said the tax reform debate boils down to a decision between a controversial \"border adjustment tax\" plan backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan and deficit-funded reforms. He did not take a position on Thursday but recently said his group could support reforms that are not revenue neutral. \"We need to go ahead and start having those discussions today. Let's look at legislative text,\" he said. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady plans to hold public hearings on tax reform issues in coming weeks. On Thursday, Brady offered no indication that legislation was imminent but said he understood the need for rank-and-file members to have input. \"We continue to work toward spring action from the Ways and Means Committee and continue to work to get this done in 2017,\" Brady told reporters. \"One lesson we learned in the healthcare debate is that members of Congress want plenty of time, not just to review the bill but to have input into tax reform.\"","label":0}
{"text":"A pawn working for Donald Trump claimed that women respect and are voting for the Republican nominee in November, and S.E. Cupp took her to the woodshed for it.During a panel discussion on CNN with Carol Costello, Cupp began by explaining the stark reality that the only voters Trump can count on right now are old white men, which is not nearly enough to catapult him to victory over Hillary Clinton. There s no outreach anymore, Cupp said. It s as if he s given up on them. And I just wonder if there are enough old male guy old white guys in the country to elect him. I don t think so. But Trump supporter Tana Goertz, who appeared on the Donald s reality show The Apprentice, made the absurd claim that not only is Trump s campaign reaching out to women but that the effort is succeeding. How? Cupp asked. No you re not, actually you re not, she continued. There s math. There s polls. Indeed, polls show Trump is getting destroyed by Hillary Clinton right now and women are leading the way. Over 70 percent of women view Trump unfavorably and if the election were held today Hillary would win a higher percentage of women than President Obama did in 2012.But Goertz continued to pretend that their effort is working, citing her role in the campaign as proof. Oh, really? Oh, I m sorry, I m on the campaign and I m actually part of the women s initiative, so that s weird, Goretz said, which drew a truthful jab from Cupp: There s polls that show you re not reaching women. That s just math. I m sorry to break it to you. Costello jumped in and asked Goertz for specifics on how Trump is reaching out to women, and her answer left a lot to be desired. The answer to that is he is having people like myself, his lovely daughter Ivanka, other strong Republican leaders, hold leadership conferences where we are getting out in front of large audiences of women who would like to hear why women like myself, why women like Ivanka, why other wonderful strong independent women who are making their own living, who are successful, who are highly educated, are voting and respect and are working for Donald Trump. In short, Goertz could only name herself and Trump s daughter as examples of women who support Donald Trump. And Cupp was quick to jump all over her for it. That s what we call anecdotal evidence. That s anecdotal and of course, there s some women supporting Donald Trump, that s a fact. But to ignore the fact that 70 percent of women do not like Donald Trump and that he has a huge gap between him and Hillary Clinton among women voters is a fantasy land. Here s the video via YouTube.Trump s campaign is still in denial that they are getting their asses handed to them in the polls. And the fact that Trump and his supporters are so delusional that they really believe women are coming around to supporting him is further proof that Trump s campaign lives in the fantasy land Cupp mentioned.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would not bail out Puerto Rico if he were in the White House. Asked in an interview with CNN what he would do to help the U.S. commonwealth, Trump said \"No, I would not bail out Puerto Rico,\" saying it had too much debt. Puerto Rico's Government Development Bank on Monday defaulted on a $422 million debt payment. The government faces $70 billion in debt overall, a 45-percent poverty rate and a shrinking population. It owes another $1.9 billion on July 1 that Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla says it cannot pay.","label":0}
{"text":"France is working to normalize the situation in Lebanon and Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri can come to France whenever he wants, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves le Drian said on Thursday. Hariri, who I will see later, is invited to France with his family by President Macron. He will come to France when he wants and as soon as he wants. He will be welcome as a friend, Le Drian told a news conference in Riyadh. He gave no further details as to when he would travel to France or whether Hariri had accepted the invitation.","label":0}
{"text":"Dominican Republic closed most of its ports ahead of Hurricane Maria, but the country s 34,000-barrel-per-day refinery was still running, the government said on Wednesday. Ports that suspended operations under the red alert declared for extreme weather conditions are La Romana, Samana, Arroyo Barril, Puerto Plata and Manzanillo, the Dominican Port Authority said in a statement. Maria was a Category 4 hurricane when it hit Puerto Rico earlier on Wednesday. The ports of San Souci and Haina, which serve the country s sole refinery, also halted operations on Wednesday, according to operators of those facilities. The port of Caucedo has not declared its status. State-run refining company Refidomsa last week lifted a force majeure declaration on its fuel deliveries due to Hurricane Harvey, which limited its imports of oil from the U.S. Gulf Coast to be processed at the facility. The refinery s docks temporarily closed earlier in September due to Hurricane Irma, but they resumed operations days later. Refidomsa, owned by the island s government and Venezuela s state-run oil firm Petr leos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) [PDVSA.UL], this week issued a yellow alert to the industry ahead of Maria, which means it will monitor the storm to decide on further action, the Dominican firm said. Puerto Rico s Yabucoa terminal operated by Buckeye Partners suspended operations on Tuesday. The company is monitoring the storm to decide whether to close its Bahamas terminal, the largest in the Caribbean. NuStar Energy has not reopened its terminal on the island of St. Eustatius after Hurricane Irma damaged some tanks.","label":0}
{"text":"Comments  Famed actor and funnyman Will Ferrell returned to Comedy Central to reprise his caricature of despised President George W. Bush to hilarious effect.  \"First of all, I'd like to say something about my cousin Billy Bush. He's been in the news a lot lately. Him and that disgraced pumpkin, Donald Trump, talking on the bus. I just want to say ONE thing, we Bushes don't act like that, okay? We have standards, and we're raised certain way. We would never, under any circumstances, ride a bus. When you're a Bush, you ride in a limousine or a jump jet, or maybe a monster truck called Sasquatch Express. Never a bus.\"  Ferrell then goes on point out that somehow, the utterly abhorrent character of Republican has whitewashed Bush's less viscerally appalling but equally reprehensible legacy.  \"This dunderhead is making me look great. I destabilized an entire region [Iraq], but no one seems to care anymore thanks to the Bozo Trump here. Folks forgotten how I tanked the economy or how I didn't get Bin Laden.\"  Nobody should forget how the Great Recession was engineered and executed under the watch of George W. Bush or how the wars he began mortgaged our nation's future and led to the deaths of millions around the world. One shudders to think of what a President Trump would do to this country and the safety of the free world.  Watch it here:","label":1}
{"text":"There is something decidedly odd about the California State Legislature's decision to hire former Attorney General Eric Holder, now back at the prestigious Covington Burling law firm, to fight the incoming administration of Donald Trump. [The weirdness goes beyond the fact that it may be unconstitutional for the legislature to have hired Holder, given that the state already has its own attorneys who are certainly capable of doing what the state government requires. One of those attorneys is none other than Gov. Jerry Brown's nominee for Attorney General, Rep. Xavier Becerra ( ). He has a long track record of fighting Republicans on issues like immigration and entitlement reform, and has has made clear he intends to fight the Trump administration every step of the way to protect California's state and its \"progressive\" policies. He is also, as the local media noted appropriately at his nomination, California's first Latino Attorney General. So why does California need Holder? Does the California State Legislature believe somehow that Becerra lacks the ability to do the job? Probably not, since a committee of the State Assembly approved his nomination this week in a vote. Does Holder bring something special to the job of representing the state that Becerra does not? They are both Washington creatures and know how to fight on the national stage. Is there some reason to pay both of these men, working separately? Note that California has some recent, and bad, experience with duplicating government functions. Much of last year's political energy was spent in a pointless feud over gun control between Senate President pro Tem Kevin de L\u00e9on ( Angeles) \u2014 the first Latino to serve in that role in more than a century \u2014 and Lieutenant Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic favorite for governor in 2018 against formidable challenger Antonio Villaraigosa, who served as the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles. Newsom wanted to legalize marijuana via referendum. But then he decided to add a gun control referendum, Proposition 63, which bans ammunition magazines and requires ammunition purchasers to undergo a background check. Sen. de L\u00e9on championed his own gun control efforts through the legislature, triggering a nasty spat. The potential for clashes between the executive and legislature, even on common policies, is clear. Why would California risk repeating history? Come to think of it \u2014 why did Newsom insist on credit for both the marijuana and the gun control initiatives, without finding any room for de L\u00e9on to share the \"progressive\" accolades? The L\u00e9on fight happened at the same time as the race for U. S. Senate between Becerra's predecessor, Kamala Harris, and Rep. Loretta Sanchez ( ) pitting the state's first black and Hispanic candidates for the seat against each other. Before she faded down the stretch, Sanchez had carried the hopes of California's rising Latino constituency. But Harris clinched the biggest endorsements and donors very early in the race. Over and over again, California's emerging Latino leadership has offered new leaders to the state. And in each case, the state's existing Democratic Party establishment has maneuvered to block them. Eric Holder, who has no roots in California, walked into his new job with no confirmation hearings Becerra has to jump through the hoops. What is the message there? One hesitates even to touch the Democratic Party's identity politics game. Perhaps the real rivalry is between Northern and Southern California: the San Francisco Bay Area has a stranglehold on statewide office, and most of the state's Latino stars hail from L. A. and Orange County. Still, it is odd that the California State Legislature decided that as qualified as he is, Rep. Becerra needs a \"double\" \u2014 at a cost of $25, 000 per month \u2014 from a law firm on the other side of the country. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the \"most influential\" people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.","label":0}
{"text":"\"Top Five Clinton Donors Are Jewish\" - How Anti-Semitic Is This Fact? Published: October 29, 2016 Source: Moon of Alabama  Top five Clinton donors Are Jewish, campaign tally shows.  Something is wrong with the above statement. Isn't it anti-semitic? Did Trump say that? Readers of that statement may assume, somewhat reasonably, that there is a club of rich Jewish people controlling the Clinton campaign and, maybe, Clinton herself. That sounds like it was taken from the fake Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It clearly must be anti-semitic.  It is also true .  Facts have no bias. They can't be anti-semitic (or can they?). But while facts as such can not have a racial-religious bias, openly stating them surely can. Thus the above statement is anti-semitic. The fact itself isn't bad, reporting it publicly is bad, bad, bad.  Who but an alt-right rag would report such at all? And for what purpose if not for spreading anti-semitism?  Well - quot licet jovi, ...  Jewish papers are of course allowed to report such a fact. That isn't anti-semitic. It is solely to brag about Jewish powers. Within the club that is not only allowed, but welcome. Thus Haaretz writes (sourced to the the Jewish Telegraph Agency) under the identity defining headline at the top of this post: Haim Saban, George Soros and others stand at the head of a list of wealthy donors who contributed mainly via super PACs.  The Washington Post analysis, posted October 24, named the top donors, who are contributing $1 of every $17 of the over $1 billion amassed for the Democratic nominee's presidential run.  They are Donald Sussman, a hedge fund manager; J.B. Pritzker, a venture capitalist, and his wife, M.K.; Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment mogul, and his wife, Cheryl; George Soros, another hedge funder and a major backer of liberal causes, and Daniel Abraham, a backer of liberal pro-Israel causes and the founder of SlimFast.  Many of the big Clinton campaign donors also give to the Clinton Foundation which at times is a washing machine to put money into the Clinton's private accounts. It is kind of difficult to understand where Clinton Inc begins and where it ends. Campaign funds, Clinton foundation, speech fees, private accounts - does it even matter? Surely those who pay, to whatever Clinton entity, expect a service in return. Given the Clinton's occupations as Senator, Secretary of State and President the ask in return is unlikely to be commercial. It will be political.  And here is why it matters that the five top donors to Clinton's campaign are Jewish, and all big supporters of Israel. (Haim Saban: \"I'm a one-issue guy, and my issue is Israel.\") They surely will ask for political favors in the interest of the Zionist entity. This is also the reason why Haaretz, an Israeli paper, finds the strong racial-religious bias at the top Clinton campaign tally newsworthy. Big money paid to a Clinton entity can directly effect U.S. policies towards Israel. It buys its acquiescence to Israeli escapades even when those are not consistent U.S. interests.  Clinton's positions towards Syria, Iran and Russia (which limits Israel's freedom of action) are surely not independent of Israeli interests.  But that is of course, anti-semitic speculation ...","label":1}
{"text":"It was the year politics took over our closets, and clothes went beyond products to become positions. From the moment in early February when Beyonc\u00e9 strode onto the field at the Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. for the Super Bowl 50 halftime show followed by an army of backup dancers in outfits that paid homage to the Black Panthers to perform \"Formation,\" a song that was called the anthem of the Black Lives Matter movement, it was clear \"fashion statement\" was going to take on a whole new meaning in 2016. No longer was it enough to simply tell others what you believed you had to show them, too. And the simplest, most powerful, most public way to do that was via what you wore. In a world of white noise and factional cacophony, a world where the first line of communication is visual, clothes are our shared language. Whether you like what you see or not, you can read it. Once upon a time \"political dress\" meant the dress of the political class. In 2016, it became a term donned by everyone \u2014 and damned by some. Practically every month. In April, Laurence Rossignol, the French minister for women's rights, fired the first salvo at what became the fashion lightning rod of the summer: the Burkini. Ms. Rossignol scolded designers from Marks Spencer to Dolce Gabbana for catering to the Muslim market by offering swimsuits and hijabs, accusing them of \"promoting women's bodies being locked up\" to bolster their own coffers. Soon Pierre Berg\u00e9, the outspoken of Yves Saint Laurent, stepped into the fray. A particular item of dress had become a symbol of the debate over the balance between enlightenment values and civil society, and whether freedom includes the freedom to wear whatever you want. By August, the issue had gone global and viral. Islamic women increasingly demanded they be accorded equal respect and treatment when it came to their clothing choices. The fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad became the first Olympic athlete to compete for the United States while wearing a hijab. Then Anniesa Hasibuan, an Indonesian, became the first designer to pair a hijab with every look of her show during New York Fashion Week. Cond\u00e9 Nast International started Vogue Arabia. [See more Year in Style articles] It was but one sartorial story in a summer where wardrobes spoke as loudly as any words (and in turn spurred a lot of them). In May, in a nod to the opening of Cuba, Karl Lagerfeld took the Chanel Cruise show to Havana, becoming the first brand to stage a show in the country. The decision was not without controversy, since the average Cuban wage at the time was $25 a month and the brand had, it admitted, \"zero business\" there \u2014 but the trip did serve in focusing the attention of the 1 percent, at least for a moment, on the island nation. In June, British designers began to publicly declare their \"Brexit\" stance using the London men's wear shows as their soapbox, with one designer, Daniel W. Fletcher, not only staging a outside the official show site but also dressing his protesters in \"stay\" hoodies and and the Sibling designers Sid Bryan and Cozette McCreery likewise donning slogan tees to take their bows. In July, W. N. B. A. teams led by the Minnesota Lynx and then the New York Liberty started swapping their usual uniform for black emblazoned with the slogans #blacklivesmatter and #Dallas5, among others despite individual and team fines from the league, the players persisted. Around the same time, a photo became a national symbol when a young woman in a flowing sundress faced down police in Baton Rouge, La. at a protest over the killing of Alton Sterling, and the visceral visual contrast between the Louisiana State Police troopers' black riot gear and her graceful, nonrevolutionary summer frock crystallized the fault lines developing around the country. That month also saw the election of Theresa May, who became Britain's second female prime minister, causing a torrent of stories about her fanciful footwear, which she proudly proclaimed was a tactical \"icebreaker\" in meetings. And it was when Hillary Clinton formally accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for president. Standing onstage at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Mrs. Clinton made history as the first woman to be a major party nominee for president, but in case you missed the import, her white Ralph Lauren pantsuit underscored the message. It squared the circle first drawn by suffragists in 1913 when they adopted white as one of their signature colors, and later traced by Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan in 1978 when they wore white to the women's rights march on Washington, and then by Geraldine Ferraro with her white suit accepting the Democratic nomination in 1984. And so it went. By September, there was no holding back: The look of autumn was the look of the American election. New York Fashion Week kicked off the day with a benefit for Mrs. Clinton featuring a runway show for which Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue, was a host Ms. Wintour wore a dress designed by Jason Wu featuring a mosaic of the different states in varying shades of blue. Opening Ceremony recast its presentation as a \"pageant of the people\" featuring not only models in shirtdresses and bomber jackets but also Natasha Lyonne and Whoopi Goldberg talking electoral issues \u2014 both accessorized by Rock the Vote volunteers. In Paris, Stella McCartney splashed female empowerment and antifur slogans such as \"Thanks Girls\" and \"No Leather\" over her lace and cotton loungewear. In October, the \"pantsuit power\" flash mob, 170 dancers strong, took to the streets in New York's Union Square wearing, natch, a rainbow of pantsuits to demonstrate their support of Mrs. Clinton the resulting video has been seen over 91, 000 times. And on Nov. 8 those women who intended to vote for the first female president adopted both sartorial stratagems, and went to the polls in pantsuits or white or both to cast their votes. You didn't even need to see the boxes they checked on their ballots to know where they were coming from. Though their candidate lost, the point remained, embedded in the fabric of social media and, now, recent history. The year may be over. But the change in our wardrobes \u2014 the change in how we think about the fabric of our lives \u2014 is just beginning.","label":0}
{"text":"Wed, 26 Oct 2016 13:42 UTC Dead blue whale A dead whale was spotted floating near a beach in Daly City on Wednesday afternoon. Around 12:30 p.m., the whale was found floating about a quarter-mile off shore from Thornton State Beach in Daly City. The whale has now since drifter closer to shore, spokesperson Giancarlo Rulli said. The Marine Mammal Center was notified around 1:00 p.m., however they are unable to do anything until the whale has come ashore. According to the Marine Mammal Center, though the whale is only about a quarter mile offshore, they cannot predict when or where the whale will wash up. Researchers have determined that the whale is a male blue whale. Officials from the center have sent a team member to look at the whale but at this time, the age and size of the whale is unknown. The center, along with its partners including the California Academy of Sciences, have decided to not send a necropsy team out until the next day, on Thursday, as there are only a few hours of daylight left today. With the tide expected to rise Thursday, scientists hope the whale gets pushed up the beach so they will have more access to it, Rulli said.","label":1}
{"text":"In clandestine corners of the world, the elite come together in secrecy. Some of them don't mind that we know of these society meetings, while others maintain that they do not organize at all. Yet doormen speak to their friends, initiation rites are leaked, people peek in windows, chanting in far underground lairs can be heard by a passerby. Conspiracy theorists have long held that someone, and not the Fates, is manipulating our world, and perhaps in these secret societies the strings are being pulled. Here is a list of seven groups so secret some members will never admit to their involvement, and their meeting places hiding in plain sight. NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT  Ivy league Yale University is considered to be one of the most selective higher educational institutions in the United States, if not the world. Its motto lux et veritas translates to \"light and truth.\" On the historic campus in New Haven, Connecticut, there is a building where \"light and truth\" are reserved for carefully selected members and alumni. What is known about the Skull and Bones secret society is minimal. The organization started in 1832. An official roster of its members was published up until 1971. Bonesmen, as members are called, have been heads of corporations, senior government officials, Supreme Court justices, and even presidents. Theories about what the Skull and Bones actually do range from its members controlling the Central Intelligence Agency, being a part of a global network aimed at world domination, to being a branch of the Illuminati. It's also unknown exactly what happens in The Tomb, the group's headquarters, but there are strange rumors of what is contained in the windowless sandstone building. The Egypto-Doric style of the structure makes it appear as an immense sepulcher. The tomb is thought to hold secret documents containing the roster of all members, ritual details, as well as multiple stolen relics. Some of the bones rumored to be in The Tomb include the skulls of Geronimo, Pancho Villa, Martin Van Buren, and the gravestone of Elihu Yale, the school's founder. Bonesmen are also known to take other societies' belongings in a show of thievery and cunning known as crooking. OOSTERBEEK, NETHERLANDS  Hotel de Bilderberg. (Photo: Michiel1972\/CC BY-SA 4.0 )  In November of 1954, 50 delegates from 11 countries in Western Europe and 11 Americans spent three days in Oosterbeek, Netherlands, at the Hotel de Bilderberg . The purpose of the meeting was said to foster conversations between Europe and North America. Those in attendance included a prince, a prime minster, and the head of the CIA. Since that meeting, each year a group of international leaders in the fields of politics, business, media, and communications have met to discuss\u2026 we're not exactly sure. There is no agenda, no resolutions are proposed, no voting of any kind is executed, and no positions or policy statements are issued. The meetings are held in a different location each year and each year the topics of the meeting are up for the general public to theorize over. The roster of attendees is never officially made public, but there have been leaks over the years. Conspiracy theories abound, especially because of the group's intense level of secrecy. Many believe the group is conspiring to impose capital domination, a world government, or a planned economy. What is certain is that the more prominent you are, the more likely you'll be to get an invitation to next year's Bilderberg conference. TREMENTINA, NEW MEXICO  Trementina Base, New Mexico. (Photo: Google Earth )  Scientology is most visible today because of celebrity members like Tom Cruise and John Travolta, yet the organization has been aggressive over the years in tackling critics and maintaining its secrets. One of the most controversial religious groups, some characterize the movement as a cult. Basic Scientology belief holds that humans are immortal beings who have reincarnated and have lived on other planets before finding themselves now on Earth. One of the things that makes the religion controversial is its assertive nature, often turning to character assassination or litigation in dealing with skeptics and critics who question their practices. The church is also extremely secretive, holding many of its teachings from members until they have made it through multiple levels. Scientology operates several churches called Celebrity Centres that are opened to the public, but are primarily meant for \"anyone with the power and vision to create a better world.\" The Church of the Spiritual Technology, or CST, is reserved for the most trusted of members. Many of these members manage elaborate bases including the Trementina Base . The official word from the church is that the base is a location used to preserve Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's writings, which are said to be engraved on steel sheets and encased in titanium cases. It's thought that Trementina is more than just a location to archive Hubbard's works, however. Trementina contains underground dwellings and tunnels, but what's most interesting about the base is what you see from the outside. Aerial photographs above the base show huge images dug into the Earth. The images are that of the church's logo. Former members have claimed that the symbols are to mark the return point for members when they travel into the future. Other members have stated that this is the place where Hubbard is supposed to go when he returns. The Illuminati: Domus Sanctae Marthae  VATICAN CITY, VATICAN Pope Francis entering Domus Sanctae Marthae (Photo: Pufui Pc Pifpef I\/CC BY-SA 3.0 )  Established in 1776 in Bavaria, Germany, this group of freethinkers, humanists, and academics opposed superstition, prejudice, religion, and its influence over the public, and they supported the advancement of women. The Illuminati were a shadowy group, believed capable of influencing movements in government and the arts. The group was infiltrated and shut down a decade after its founding, or so the official record goes. Conspiracy theorists have long been obsessed that the world has been controlled by the Illuminati for generations. There are many modern groups that claim to be the descendants of the original Bavarian Illuminati; they go so far as to use the name \"Illuminati\" in their title, but there is no evidence that these recent organizations are tied to the original. Besides its actions, what is a major mystery of this group is the location of its headquarters. Theorists have claimed many prominent locations are the headquarters of the Illuminati from Disney World in Orlando, Florida, the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Big Ben in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and, among many others, the Vatican. The theory that the Illuminati headquarters is located at the Vatican is especially interesting due to the group's opposition to the church. It's believed by conspiracy theorists that the church was long ago infiltrated by the society and so that would make its leader, the pope, one of the Illuminati's highest ranking members. Today, the pope resides in a simple room at Domus Sanctae Marthae , a guest house adjacent to St. Peter's Basilica. The five-story building containing 106 suites and 22 single rooms is for clergy who are in town on official Holy See business, or perhaps for an Illuminati meeting or two. Ordo Templi Orientis: Bay Area Thelemic Temple  OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA Mural of Aleister Crowley at the Abode of Chaos . (Photo: Thierry Ehrmann\/CC BY 2.0 )  The Order of the Temple of the East was founded between 1895 and 1906 in either Austria or Germany. It is believed wealthy industrialist, Carl Kellner, began the religious movement, but it was famed occultist Aleister Crowley whose name and additions to the group shrouded it in curiosity and mystery. OTO was modeled somewhat after another secret society, Freemasonry. But Crowley added a layer, his own self-created belief system called Thelema. Thelema's practices and beliefs are written out in a book titled The Book of Law and its core belief is: \"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.\" Ideas from occultism, and Eastern and Western mysticism, found their way into Thelema and thus OTO. The religion is highly secretive and members move through the order in a series of rites and rituals, moving up levels in the forms of initiations. Levels have curious names such as Minerval, Master Magician, Illustrious Knight, Grandmaster of Light, and so on. There are two components at the core of OTO: magical rituals, which have been rumored to include tantric sex, the summoning of angels and demons, and astral projection. Then there is the gnostic mass, reminiscent of a Catholic mass only because it contains a host and wine toward the end. The gnostic mass includes elaborate costumes, and at the climax of the mass it's believed that the host turns into the Body of God and the wine the Blood of God. There are multiple locations of worship called camps, oases, or lodges. The majority of them keep their locations secretive to the greater public. The relatively small location in Oakland is an oasis . They hold a weekly gnostic mass in a temple decorated in candles and Egyptian imagery. It's unknown exactly what takes place during initiation ceremonies and what knowledge is shared during these events. According to Crowley's autobiography, The Confessions of Aleister Crowley : \"the OTO is in possession of one supreme secret. The whole of its system [is] directed towards communicating to its members, by progressively plain hints, this all-important instruction.\" Priory of Sion: Biblioth\u00e8que Nationale de France  PARIS, FRANCE National Library of France Reading Room. (Photo: Vincent Desjardins\/CC BY 2.0 )  The secret of this secret society is that many people believe in its existence, but scholarly claims have repetitively stated the group is a complete myth, constructed by the imagination of a madman. The myth begins that the Priory of Sion was a group charged with protecting the descendants of Jesus of Nazareth and Mary Magdalene who eventually went on to settle in France. It was leaked in the 1970s that the Biblioth\u00e8que Nationale de France in Paris, the French National Library, was in possession of a file calledDossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau that pointed to the Priory of Sion being located in France. The file contained an introduction, maps of France, genealogies, newspaper clippings, letters and a list of grand masters of the Priory of Sion that included Sir Isaac Newton, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo Da Vinci. The authenticity of these files has been questioned ever since they were left at the library. Eventually, they were traced to Pierre Plantard. It is believed Plantard planted the document at the library in order to perpetuate an elaborate hoax. He himself claimed to be a descendant of Jesus' bloodline. Academics went on to agree that the Priory of Sion was a hoax constructed by Plantard. Yet, books, articles, and movies continue to be made about this group. Whether or not there is a secret society dedicated to protecting a family descendant from biblical times we may never know. Rosicrucianism: Rosicrucian Park  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum grounds. (Photo: Ginabovara\/Public Domain )  Several manifestos were anonymously published in the early 17th century that told of legends, mysticism, alchemy, and the Order of the Temple of the Rosy Cross. One of these documents was the Fama Fraternitatis which was published in Cassel, Germany. The Fama spoke of the 15th century German doctor and mystical philosopher Christian Rosenkreuz who traveled through parts of the Middle East where he learned esoteric wisdom, studying in places such as Turkey and Egypt. There, he claimed to learn extensive knowledge regarding nature and the universe. When he returned, he attempted to share what he learned but he was dismissed. He then formed a like-minded group called the Fraternity of the Rose Cross. The year of his birth and death remain shadowy, but some documents claim he lived over 106 years. The group upheld Christian beliefs, but strongly opposed Roman Catholicism, and was also said to have influenced Freemasonry along with hundreds of other groups, many of which have adopted titles with similar names throughout modern times. At its simplest form, the group aimed to promote a \"Universal Reformation of Mankind.\" Some reports claim that the requirement for membership was that one must have been capable of using more than the average amount of brain power. During Rosenkreuz's life, the group was thought to have only consisted of a handful of members, each of whom was a doctor. All members took an oath to remain bachelors, and also to treat the sick without payment and to find a replacement for themselves before they died. Interest in the group peaked between 1607 and 1616 with the appearances of the anonymous works that included the Fama Fraternitatis which ranged with content that included mysticism and apocalyptic warnings. Whether Rosenkreuz's original idea continued is unknown. One of the hundreds of groups claiming to be tied to the original is the Ancient Mystical Order Rosea Crucis that has some connection to occultist Aleister Crowley. AMORC claims to be devoted to the \"study of elusive mysteries of life and the universe.\" They utilize ideas from major philosophers, including Thales and Pythagoras, healing techniques, alchemy, symbolism, and mysticism. The group claims its history can be traced to pharaoh Thutmose III in 1477. The AMORC headquarters is located at Rosicrucian Park in San Jose, California, which spans a city block and includes several structures. The park is home to elaborate gardens, a research library, a planetarium, a temple, and it houses the ashes of Harvey Spencer Lewis, founder of the secret society. By Cynthia Pelayo, Atlas Subscura SOURCE","label":1}
{"text":"Myanmar has accused Reuters reporters Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, of breaching the country s Official Secrets Act, a little-used hangover from colonial rule. Sam Zarifi, secretary general of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), said the law can ensnare working journalists at any time . The two reporters were arrested on Tuesday evening after they were invited to meet police officers for dinner in the north of Yangon. The Ministry of Information said they had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media , and published a photo of the pair in handcuffs standing behind a table with documents laid on it. The law dates back to 1923, when Myanmar, then known as Burma, was a province of British India. At the time British administrators worried that rival powers could seek to exploit anti-colonial unrest in its South Asian empire. The act, which amended earlier anti-spying legislation, was controversial in India even at the time, according to a history published in 2009 by the United Service Institution of India, a New Delhi-based think tank. British military officers pushed for the stronger law over concerns about an increase in Bolshevik activity , along with geopolitical threats including the possibility of racial war between Japan and the USA affecting India , the history said. The Official Secrets Act covers trespassing in prohibited areas, handling documents deemed secret and communicating with foreign agents . It carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison. Zarifi of the Geneva-based ICJ - a human rights group made up of 60 senior international judges, lawyers and legal academics - said the definition of an official secret in the act is incredibly broad . Just about anyone in possession of unpublished government documents could find themselves facing prosecution and the harsh penalties a conviction may carry, Zarifi said. Under this law many good journalists could be prosecuted at any time. In India, where the same law also remains on the statute book, courts have ruled that it even applies to parliamentary papers such as budget proposals if they are leaked before they are presented in the legislature. Legal experts say prosecutions under the act have been rare in Myanmar in recent decades. The military junta that ruled until 2011 frequently used other laws or the Penal Code - also inherited from the colonial era - to lock up its critics alongside common criminals. The sprawling code was drafted in 1860, and gives magistrates more than 500 sections under which to charge alleged offenders. In 1990, a military court sentenced two leaders of the then opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) to 10 years in prison under the Official Secrets Act after they passed an official letter to foreign embassies. The prosecution was part of a broad crackdown following an election won by the NLD that the junta ignored. They were freed in 1992, in an amnesty, according to a New York Times report at the time. Reports of at least two other cases brought under the act are recorded in the online archives of the Asian Human Rights Commission in 2009 and 2010. The first case involved a man jailed for trespassing on military land and recording video footage to allegedly send abroad. He had been helping a farmer file a land grab complaint against the military. The second concerned a former army officer who was jailed in 2010 for allegedly having secret information on his laptop that he passed to foreign news agencies. The most well-documented recent case involving the Official Secrets Act came in January of 2014, when the Yangon-based weekly, Unity Journal, published a front page article it said exposed a secret chemical weapons factory run by the military in central Myanmar. Police arrested the newspaper s CEO and four journalists involved in publishing the story, raided its offices, and attempted to seize all copies of the edition from newsstands. A civilian court in Pakkoku, near the alleged factory, sentenced them in July 2014 to 10 years in prison with hard labor - later reduced to seven years. The case was widely seen by the domestic media as a warning that military affairs remained off-limits even though direct military rule had ended. The Unity Five were released in an amnesty in April 2016, soon after the NLD, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, had come to power following an election in 2015. The Unity Journal subsequently closed. Reuters was unable to reach government legal officials over the weekend and a Monday public holiday to request details of any other past cases in which the Official Secrets Act was used. Little is known of the allegations against the two Reuters journalists, other than that police said they were arrested for possessing important and secret government documents related to Rakhine State and security forces and are charged under Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act. Two policemen are also being investigated in the case, according to police. Section 3 covers entering prohibited places, taking images or handling secret official documents that might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy . Human Rights Watch in 2016 said Section 3 defines the offence of spying extremely broadly . Where a military establishment is involved, section 3(2) of the statute effectively places the burden on the defendant to prove that they are not guilty, the group said. In May 2016, the month after Suu Kyi took power, the 1975 State Protection Act that had been used to keep her under house arrest for years was repealed. The Emergency Provisions Act, introduced in 1950 and frequently used against activists after the military seized power in a 1962 coup, was swept away in October the same year. But the Official Secrets Act and other laws, such as the 1908 Unlawful Associations Act, that have been used to jail journalists and activists, remain in force. Reuters was unable to reach Suu Kyi s spokesman to seek comment from Suu Kyi on the use of the Official Secrets Act to detain the two Reuters journalists.","label":0}
{"text":"The horrific story of the unarmed Walter Scott's death at the hands of Officer Michael Slager continues to reverberate. Aside from the incontrovertible evidence on the tape that the accused officer shot him in the back as if he were doing target practice, there has since emerged more tape of the traffic stop itself and audio of the officer speaking with his superiors on the phone raising even more questions about his state of mind at the time of the shooting. But as journalists have gone back and studied the officer's record and found that he was previously investigated for taser abuse. And on even further investigation it was found that this jurisdiction is known as \"Taser town\": Until the eight shots heard 'round the world, cops in North Charleston, South Carolina, were primarily distinguished by their zesty use of Tasers. As computed by a local newspaper in 2006, cops there used Tasers 201 times in an 18-month period, averaging once every 40 hours in one six-month stretch and disproportionately upon African Americans. The Charleston Post & Courier did the tally after the death of a mentally ill man named Kip Black, who was tasered six times on one occasion and nine times on another. Black died immediately after the second jolting, though the coroner set the cause of death as cocaine-fueled \"excited delirium syndrome.\" It's important to note that Taser International has spent large sums convincing local coroners that this syndrome (which primarily seems to kill people in police custody) makes it the victim's responsibility if they have the bad luck to die from being shot full of electricity with a taser. It's not just illegal drugs in the system which can allegedly cause it. Adrenaline can as well. So if a person fails to remain calm in face of an arrest and finds the feeling of 50,000 volts going through their system to be stressful they have no one to blame but themselves if they die. Those who have been following the story of Walter Scott understand the significance of the taser. It's not just that the officer evidently lied about Scott taking his taser, thus somehow justifying his using lethal force, or the fact that he appears to have tried to plant the taser next to the slain man's body to cover his tracks. The man who filmed the shooting said this: It's not unusual for people to try to escape from a taser if they can. It is, quite literally, a torture device designed to force compliance with terrible pain. The people of Taser Town, particularly African American men, undoubtedly understand exactly what is going to happen if they find themselves in the custody of a police officer. Here's one example of how it would likely go down, as reported by The Guardian: Slager is among three patrolmen named in a lawsuit filed by Julius Wilson, who said he was arrested after being stopped in his car in August last year. Wilson is also suing the city of North Charleston, the city police department and police chief Eddie Driggers. Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Wilson described Slager and his colleagues as \"bad, corrupt cops\". He said: \"The use of excessive force or punishment to torture suspects is not something that should be tolerated by the North Charleston police department.\"[\u2026] Wilson, who has a criminal record, said he was stopped on 25 August because his vehicle had a broken tail light. Scott, 50, was stopped for the same reason on 5 April before fleeing and being shot dead by Slager. Wilson was stopped by an Officer Edwards, he said, who was joined 10 minutes later by Slager and an officer Clemens despite Wilson calmly \"making small talk and laughing\". After refusing to step out until he was told why he was being arrested, Wilson claimed, he was forcibly pulled out of his vehicle by Slager and the two other officers. The three then \"forcibly restrained Wilson on his stomach on the pavement face down,\" the lawsuit stated. Despite Wilson \"not moving, nor resisting\" and lying with his hands above his head, the lawsuit claimed, Slager broke a silence among the officers by shouting: \"Watch out! I'm going to tase!\" He then allegedly \"shot his NCPD-issued taser into Wilson's back\". The lawsuit alleged Wilson \"writhed in pain from the electric shock\". It said when Slager warned his colleagues he was about to fire his taser, \"Wilson was cooperating fully\" and allowing the two other officers to place his hands behind his back. Tasers guidelines vary by department and jurisdiction, but generally their use is only considered reasonable when the subject poses a safety threat. Clearly, shooting an unarmed 50-year-old man when he runs from the taser is not one of those cases. The video of the Scott incident shows that Officer Slager is confused on that issue, to say the least. And it's just as clear, based on that same standard, that nobody could ever claim such force is justified when presented with an unarmed suspect facing down on the ground, with his hands behind his back. Using a taser in that situation is simply a form of unofficial street justice, a little torture at the hands of the authorities to make a point. Tasers are not simply used in place of lethal force, and they're not always used to force compliance. They are very often used as on-the-spot punishment by police who want to teach citizens a lesson. Take the now notorious California incident that happened to be filmed by a local news station, in which a man on horseback led police on a chase through the desert. When he fell from the horse, police swarmed and he very clearly laid down on his stomach and put his hands behind his back. Then the police beat the hell out of him and tasered him repeatedly. This footage has garnered widespread criticism because of the beating, and for good reason. It's brutal, primitive behavior. But you won't find many people expressing outrage about the electric shocks being administered to this man over and over again. Here's a typical news report of the incident: In video captured by cameras aboard a helicopter for KNBC, deputies gather around the man after he falls from a horse he was riding to flee from them. The video shows deputies using a stun gun on him and then repeatedly kicking and hitting him. KNBC reported that the man \u2014 identified by authorities as Francis Pusok \u2014 appeared to be kicked 17 times, punched 37 times and hit with a baton four times. Again, if you look at the footage, Pusok was on the ground, face down with his hands behind his back before anyone tasered him or physically assaulted him. And yet the tasering is apparently considered a-ok. At the very least, it isn't mentioned as something that shocks the conscience the way the beating does.Perhaps this is because the searing pain of electro-shock doesn't leave much in the way of a mark. But hideously painful it is. Yet for some reason, delivering this particular agony to a suspect is not something people reject when there is no danger to police or bystanders, and the suspect is compliant. But police do it routinely, and are rarely sanctioned for it. Some of this undoubtedly stems from the fact that popular culture has turned tasering into slapstick comedy. Movies and TV shows and countless Youtube videos portray it as a hilarious joke. \"Don't tase me bro\" became as national catch phrase. But it's not funny. Tasers can kill people. And regardless of what level of respect and compliance one thinks police are entitled to get from the public, they are not entitled to torture and punish citizens to teach them a lesson. Walter Scott ran from the pain of the taser and he was shot in the back numerous times for doing it. Francis Pusok was compliant and was tasered and beaten repeatedly anyway. It appears that such shootings and beatings, when captured on film anyway, are still considered beyond the pale in America these days. In both cases, officers will have to face some sanction for their behavior. Slager is facing a murder charge. It's unknown what the California cops will face, but the FBI is investigating, so there may be some federal civil rights charges. It will be very interesting if any of the officers are charged with assault for using the taser. Let's just say it will be among the vast minority of cases ever brought if they are.","label":0}
{"text":"The message that we re all hoping to send is that not standing for the national anthem does nothing but disrespect every service member and their family members who ever fought for this country. Iraq war veteran Matt KeilTHIS hits the nail on the head! Thank you to the veterans! Thank you for your service!Yesterday, the cameras were focused on the NFL players kneeling during our national anthem. What we d like to highlight is what paralyzed veterans have been doing since this disrespectful kneeling started:Paralyzed Army Vet, Dan Rose, stands for National Anthem at Lincoln Financial Field for an Eagles Game. SoldierStrong provided the suit that allowed him to stand. Dan is why you stand for the American flag.Matt Keil stood for the anthem outside Bronco s stadium:The Iraq War veteran, paralyzed from the chest down by a sniper s bullet, gathered with family and friends outside Mile High before Sunday s Broncos-Chargers game. The message that we re all hoping to send is that not standing for the national anthem does nothing but disrespect every service member and their family members who ever fought for this country, Keil said.As the strains of the national anthem could be heard from the stadium loudspeakers, Keil raised his specialty wheelchair into the standing position.Thank you for showing all Americans why we stand for our flag and national anthem.","label":1}
{"text":"Open Line 223 Deciding America's Future  The present presidential election boils down to a decision concerning America's future. Will we continue down the path to global governance or will we reverse our direction and see the restoration of American sovereignty? Will we return to the Judeo-Christian values upon which this nation was built or will we merge America into a New Secular Order? Some people have expressed that only a miracle can reverse the damage that has been done to the American dream and to return us to the right path. Millions are praying that God will grant to us just such a miracle. Could God send a miracle at this critical time? Eleven days from now, we will all find out. It's open line today on End of the Age.","label":1}
{"text":"The US Supreme Court is set to decide the first major abortion case in nearly 10 years as well as critical decisions on immigration, affirmative action and voting rights. Will the Republican party have the spine to stand up to these reprobates and demand that we wait until after the election to appoint a new US Supreme Court Justice? Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Saturday that the Senate should wait until a new president is elected to confirm a replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia, whose sudden death Saturday shook Washington and threatened to reshape the 2016 presidential race.Democrats said that with 11 months left in Mr. Obama s tenure, the Senate has enough time and indeed an obligation to confirm a replacement. The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president, the Kentucky Republican said in a statement.News of Scalia s death was just hours old before the debate heated up.With the court now divided between four Republican-appointed justices and four Democratic picks, Mr. Obama would have a chance to tilt the bench decidedly to the left, and liberal lawmakers said he should have that chance.","label":1}
{"text":"Papua New Guinea s Supreme Court rejected an application on Tuesday to restore water, electricity and food supplies to an Australian-run detention center for asylum seekers where nearly 600 men have been barricaded for a week. The men in the remote Manus Island facility have defied attempts by Australia and Papua New Guinea to close the camp, refusing to move to three transit centers despite having little food or drinking water. Dozens of them also need medical help, three asylum seekers said, in a stand-off that the United Nations has described as a looming humanitarian crisis . The men have repeatedly said they would not move to the transit camps because they feared PNG residents on the island may attack, or that the will be resettled elsewhere in PNG or another developing nation. The court rejected the challenge on behalf of one of the detainees because it said power, water and food were available at the three transit centers, Ben Lomai, a lawyer for the detainee who lodged the application, told Reuters. Kate Schuetze, Pacific researcher for rights group Amnesty International, warned conditions could deteriorate catastrophically . The lives of these men, who are only asking for their rights to dignity and safety, are at serious risk, Schuetze said in a statement. The men, who include asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Iran, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Syria, were last given food on Oct. 29 and have been relying on sporadic aid from Manus island locals and rainwater. Several of the detainees told Reuters Papua New Guinea s navy had blocked access for islanders trying to deliver supplies in the past few days. Representatives for Papua New Guinea Immigration Minister Petrus Thomas did not respond immediately to a request for comment about the claim. Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist from Iran who has been detained on Manus island for more than four years, said 90 of the men were sick and required urgent medical treatment. They have infection, stomach ache and diarrhea because of dirty water, Boochani told Reuters. Despite the conditions, several of the men said they would continue to defy efforts to get them to leave, frustrating Australia s attempts to close one of two controversial detention centers it uses to detain asylum seekers who arrive by boat. The Manus island camp, and another on the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, have been the cornerstones of Australia s controversial immigration policies, which has been strongly criticized by the United Nations and rights groups. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said before the court ruling on Tuesday the men were only refusing to move to the new transit centers on the encouragement of advocates. There are alternative facilities available of a very high quality with food and all of the facilities, Turnbull told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. The relocation of the men is designed to give the United States time to complete vetting of candidates as part of a refugee swap deal that Australia hopes will see it no longer responsible for the detention of nearly 1,400 asylum seekers who have been classified as refugees. Turnbull negotiated the deal with former U.S. President Barack Obama last year. Under the deal, Australia will accept refugees from Central America.","label":0}
{"text":"Russia, India will expand military cooperation with focus on Navy projects 26 October 2016 TASS The Russian defence minister pointed out that the progress of joint production of Ka-226 helicopters, BrahMos and S-400 indicates technical cooperation with India should be expanded. Facebook india , russia , shoigu Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, right, and Defense Minister of India Manohar Parrikar at a ceremony of signing a final protocol of the meeting of the Russian-Indian Inter-Governmental Commission on Cooperation in Military Industry, in Delhi. Source:Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation  The Russian and Indian defence ministries have been instructed to expand military and military-technical cooperation, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Wednesday.  \"The extra tasks set in the course of the meeting Russian and Indian leaders held on October 15-16 indicate that we should expand the sphere of our military-technical cooperation,\" Shoigu said as the Russian-Indian inter-government commission for military-technical cooperation met in session for the 16th time.  India could get delivery of the S-400 in 2020  The parties have already begun a discussion of all issues that are related to the post-warranty maintenance and life cycle contracts for the military technologies to be provided or provided earlier, Shoigu said.  \"It goes without saying that we have noted with great satisfaction the progress achieved in our major projects, such as the joint production of Ka-226 helicopters, missile systems BrahMos and air defence systems S-400 ,\" he said.  Source: mil.ru  There is a special major program for naval ships, including submarines, Shoigu added.  \"I believe that today there is a good opportunity for reviewing the results of the previous year and identifying targets for next year. We are ready to discuss all crucial problems, issues and prospects for our military and military-technical cooperation,\" Shoigu concluded. Fight against terrorism  Kadakin: Russia with India. Terrorism is greatest human rights violation  The struggle against international terrorism requires consolidation of all forces and rules out double or triple standards, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu said on Wednesday.  \"What is absolutely unacceptable in the struggle against terrorism is the use of double and sometimes triple standards. Those who are terrorists on Monday cannot turn into moderate opposition on Tuesday. There will have to be fundamental consolidation of all sound forces in the struggle against this ill of the 21st century,\" Shoigu said at a meeting of the Russian-Indian inter-governmental commission for military-technical cooperation.  He pointed out that the struggle against terrorism was a major issue.  First published by TASS .","label":1}
{"text":"$23 Russell Brand's Back on 'The Trews' and He's Got Quite a Bit to Say About the U.S. Elections (Video) Posted on Nov 2, 2016  The comedian and political activist reveals his views on both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, neither of which he thinks should be president, and posits that both of their campaigns, with their ultimately meaningless slogans, are nothing but reality TV.","label":1}
{"text":"Ah, Trump and voter fraud. The subject that he can t let go because, on his warped planet, he s so beloved by everyone that there s no way he lost the popular vote. Donald Trump is just not a loser in any way, shape or form. So why is it that so many people around him are guilty or caught up in one of the things he himself decries: Being registered to vote in more than one state? His chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is guilty of that, which is bad enough.What s worse is that the person Trump is getting his 3 million people voted illegally and if it weren t for them I d have won everything information from is likewise registered to vote in multiple states.The Associated Press has learned that Gregg Phillips, who praised True the Vote for allegedly uncovering thousands of duplicate records and registrations of dead people, is registered to vote in Alabama, Texas, and Mississippi. Three states.This is proof that voter fraud is rampant? Har de har har don t make us laugh too hard. It hurts.Now, Gregg Phillips isn t exactly a unique name. What the AP found, though, was that all three of these registrations had identical Social Security numbers. That makes it a little harder to claim that these registrations are to three different people who all happen to have the same name.This is the guy who tweeted, back in November, that he had evidence of three million people voting illegally and then never provided or published said evidence, but Trump jumped on it anyway, which is dangerous as hell.Phillips is on Twitter now, pretending that it s voter fraud in every case except for his:AP just wrote and said I am still registered to vote in MS, a place I haven t lived for 20 years. Makes my point, elections are broken. Gregg Phillips (@JumpVote) January 30, 2017While that s a fair point, what Phillips totally fails to mention (because of course he does) is that it also illustrates the fact that being registered to vote in multiple states isn t indicative of voter fraud at all. Instead, it shows that the states aren t psychic. Most people registered to vote in multiple states didn t do that intentionally they moved away (or died) and the states didn t realize that.All these people vote multiple times except for the two anal pustules known as Trump and Phillips.Sure. Right. There is no proof there, and if Trump wants to pretend there is, then he s got to find better evidence than one man who s registered to vote in three states.Trump and his little bestie here (at least, insofar as voter fraud is concerned) need to shut their goddamn mouths on this once and for all.Featured image by Andrew Harrer via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said on Monday a special counsel should be appointed to investigate Democrats over a uranium deal during the Obama administration and a dossier compiled on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. \"I think probably as a layman looking at this kind of thing we need to find someone who is very, very objective who can get to the bottom of these accusations,\" Kelly said in an interview on Fox News. A special counsel would be appointed by the Justice Department. Republicans in Congress last week launched an investigation into an Obama-era deal in which a Russian company bought a Canadian firm that owned some 20 percent of U.S. uranium supplies. Some Republicans have said Hillary Clinton's State Department approved the deal after her husband's charitable foundation received a $145 million donation. The New York Times has reported that Clinton, a Democrat who lost to Republican Trump in the 2016 election, did not participate in the decision. Republicans have also raised questions about whether Democrats funded a dossier put together during last year's presidential campaign that detailed accusations about Trump's ties to Russia. The Washington Post reported last week that Marc Elias, a lawyer for Clinton, used campaign funds to hire Fusion GPS, the firm behind the dossier. Kelly's call for a special counsel to investigate Democrats comes as a probe by special counsel Robert Mueller into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians produced its first charges and a guilty plea. A grand jury impaneled by Mueller indicted former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and aide Rick Gates on Monday. A third former Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleaded guilty in early October to lying to the FBI, it was announced on Monday.","label":0}
{"text":"Trump warned us we d be sick of winning Who knew CNN would be sick of winning before Trump even officially assumes his role of President? The big surge on November 7 snapped a nine-day losing streak for stocks that many attributed to Donald Trump s newfound momentum. Wall Street had decided Clinton was going to be the next president and they wholeheartedly approved.So the fact that the market continued to rally last week after Trump won is, in some respects, even more surprising than the fact that he won in the first place.A Republican in the White House and Republicans keeping control of Congress increases the chances of a bill being passed that would lead to more infrastructure spending. There may also be less regulations on health care stocks and financials.Trump s anti-immigration stance could also be a big problem for U.S. tech companies, which have attracted a lot of talented foreign workers due to the H1-B visa program. Will Trump seek to end that?That may be one of the reasons why big tech giants Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Amazon (AMZN, Tech30), Facebook and Google owner Alphabet all fell last week. Silicon Valley is very wary of Trump and probably with good reason.After all, Trump waged a Twitter war with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos because he wasn t happy with the coverage he was getting from the Bezos-owned Washington Post.A Trump war on tech could be bad news for the market and economy. The tech sector is now one of the most important industries in the United States. Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are among the most valuable companies on the planet.So even though tech stocks zigged while the rest of the market zagged last week, that probably can t go on indefinitely. Prolonged weakness for big tech companies would have a negative impact on the whole market over the long haul. There s also the issue of how much Trump will actually be able to accomplish.Yes, Republicans control Congress. But House Speaker Paul Ryan wasn t exactly the biggest Trump supporter during the campaign. There could be more roadblocks to Trump s plans than expected on Capitol Hill. It is also hard to believe that Trump won t experience opposition in implementing policy. Trump and opposition are words that go hand in hand, said Mike O Rourke, chief market strategist of JonesTrading, in a report Monday.The title of O Rourke s report also summed up the rapid shift in sentiment. Trumpageddon to Trumptopia. Now this isn t to say that the market definitely is due for a crash during the Trump administration. But experts think investors may now need to take a step back and remember that there still isn t a lot that the market knows about possible Trump policies. There remains a great deal of uncertainty over what type of president Trump will actually be. In an election that was dominated by coverage of tweets, videos and emails, policy questions received surprisingly little airtime, said Andrew Sheets, a strategist with Morgan Stanley, in a report Sunday. Those questions are now crucial for markets. To a remarkable extent, investors we ve spoken to both before and after November 8 disagree on what President-elect Trump will actually do, Sheets added.That is scary. CNN Money","label":1}
{"text":"Chris Black November 9, 2016 3 Remedies From Medieval Europe To Heal The Common Cold  I think it was Hippocrates who said something along these lines: \"let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food\".  Today's article is about trying to find a cure for the common cold or, more precisely, reviving ancient remedies from medieval Europe.  And speaking of cures for cold, there's another saying in my neck of the woods: if you take cold medicine, you'll get better in seven days, otherwise you'll be sick for a week.  Do you see where this is going?  Let me tell you another interesting little story: despite the fact that there are only a small number of basic ingredients to be found in OTC (over the counter) cold-medicine\u2014around ten, give or take (ephedrine, ibuprofen, paracetamol, aspirin, pseudo-ephedrine etc.)\u2014the number of cold-related drugs in your pharmacy is in the hundreds.  Each major pharmaceutical company that has a hand in the cold industry typically has at least 10 different types. Many have 20 or 30 or even more.  That's pretty confusing, especially when you're knocked out by a bad case of flu or cold , you can't think straight, and you just want something to get you out of your misery. You'll gladly spend a bunch of money to feel better.  Little do you know you're wasting it on pure crap. Do you think I am exaggerating?  Basically, in the cold medicine racket, the name of the game is making money via marketing and brainwashing. Have you noticed the huge number of drug-ads on TV? 70% of the money a television is making outside an election is from Big Pharma, so let that sink in really well.  I am writing this article because last week I suffered from a bad case of cold, which rendered me pretty much useless until I started making and drinking an old cold\/cough remedy that I learned from my grandmother.  Onion tea  It worked from day one, put me back on my feet, allowed me to think straight, to breathe and to write; you know what I mean.  And then I realized that for us preppers, knowing ancient remedies for a disease that is wreaking havoc this time of the year would make for an interesting article. So, if you're into staying healthy without taking drugs, keep reading.  Let me tell you how it all began: awake at 4 AM. Can't think, can't write, can't breathe, stuffy nose , sore throat. Does it sound familiar?  Well, I managed to crawl to my car and hit a local pharmacy. I bought some stuff pompously titled \"cold medicine\", got home, medicated myself, hit the bed, and woke up 3 hours later still feeling horrible.  Then, it hit me: my grandmother used to make onion tea when I was little and I had a bad case of cold. I remember it smelled awful and tasted like rotten pig guts, but if I was a good boy and drank a lot of it, it worked.  With these things in mind, I went to the kitchen, gathered 3 onions, washed'em up pretty good, and put them in the kettle to boil.  The idea is to take 2-3 small onions and boil them slowly in a full kettle until the water is reduced by half via evaporation, then drink the tea as hot as you can stand it .  Trust me folks, it really works: sore throat-gone, stuffy nose-gone, I was alive again. It does taste hideous, unless you're a die-hard onion lover, but it's a small cost to pay.  Basically, with this magic potion you'll be able to function, to be active: to be alive, so to speak, from day 1.  You must drink two 3\/4 cups of tea per day, essentially one in the morning and one before bed, that's important.  If you manage to squeeze 3 more in during the day, it will work like a Swiss watch.  If all you have in the house are big-fat onions, you'll just have to cut them in half before boiling it, but remember: don't remove the peel. That's essential; just wash the onion thoroughly.  How does onion tea work? I really don't know. There aren't any \"official\" studies that I know of, probably because you can't patent onions and sell them for 5 bucks a pop. It just does, provided you drink it hot as hell and you follow the recipe above.  Vitamin C  Besides onion tea, supplementing with vitamin C and D3 is also very important when it comes to mitigating colds and flu (these vitamins play an essential role in immunity overall), but it's important to take big doses. The RDA is a joke.  For example, I am talking about 2-3 grams of vitamin C per day, together with eating lots of fruit: oranges, grapefruits, lemons, kiwis, apples and, again very important, raw onions and garlic (natural antibiotics).  The RDA is the minimal amount of Vitamin C (or whatever) to be taken daily in order to avoid getting scurvy (speaking of vitamin C). To be healthy, it takes for much more than that; remember that.  Tomato Tea  Another way of naturally treating a stuffy nose\/nasal congestion is tomato tea.  The recipe is: 1 cup of tomato juice , (but I'd use 2-3 tomatoes cut in half instead of tomato juice) a teaspoon of fresh garlic (basically a clove) half a teaspoon of chili sauce (I'd use a small red hot chilli pepper instead) one teaspoon of lemon juice (again, I'd use a whole fruit instead).  Add a pinch of salt into the mix and heat them together in the kettle until they start boiling, then drink the tea as hot as you can take it.  During the day, you can drink a mix of green tea and ginger tea with honey, as these ingredients boost the immune system and they break up phlegm naturally (the drugs are called expectorants).  Streptococcal pharyngitis or strep throat is a common occurrence when it comes to seasonal colds and flu, and besides my aforementioned magic onion tea recipe, you should try 2 additional tricks if you want to get better ASAP: first, gargle with apple cider vinegar after you dilute it in a glass of warm water (1-3 teaspoons of vinegar in 8 oz of water).  Second, gargle with salt-water and if you're hardcore, you can try rubbing your infected tonsils with salt (using your finger that is). It's not a pleasant experience, but it works amazingly well. You can boost the recipe's effectiveness by adding powdered cayenne pepper into the mix.  Add one teaspoon of cayenne pepper plus one teaspoon of salt in an 8 oz. glass, and mix well together, obviously. Gargle vigorously with this formula until you get better. It will definitely break up the bacteria coating in your throat so expect to spit profusely for a couple of minutes afterwards.  It's very important to use high-quality, organic salt; not refined\/processed stuff. I would recommend Himalayan salt (the pink variety), or salt-mine salt (the one that looks dirty). Processed, refined, snow white salt doesn't work too great as it's stripped of its essential trace elements.  I hope the article helped and I can't wait to see your comments in the dedicated sections below, AFTER trying my onion tea, obviously.  Stay healthy folks and click the banner below to discover more ancient secrets that helped our ancestors survive harsh times.   Chris Black for Survivopedia. 25 total views, 25 views today","label":1}
{"text":"State-run Chinese tabloid Global Times warned U.S. President-elect Donald Trump that China would \"take revenge\" if he reneged on the one-China policy, only hours after Taiwan's president made a controversial stopover in Houston. Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen met senior U.S. Republican lawmakers during her stopover in Houston on Sunday en route to Central America, where she will visit Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. Tsai will stop in San Francisco on Jan. 13, her way back to Taiwan. China had asked the United States not to allow Tsai to enter or have formal government meetings under the one China policy. Beijing considers self-governing Taiwan a renegade province ineligible for state-to-state relations. The subject is a sensitive one for China. A photograph tweeted by Texas Governor Greg Abbott shows him meeting Tsai, with a small table between them adorned with the U.S., Texas and Taiwanese flags. Tsai's office said on Monday she also spoke by telephone with U.S. senator John McCain, head of the powerful Senate Committee on Armed Services. Tsai also met Texas Senator Ted Cruz. \"Sticking to (the one China) principle is not a capricious request by China upon U.S. presidents, but an obligation of U.S. presidents to maintain China-U.S. relations and respect the existing order of the Asia-Pacific,\" said the Global Times editorial on Sunday. The influential tabloid is published by the ruling Communist Party's official People's Daily. Trump triggered protests from Beijing last month by accepting a congratulatory telephone call from Tsai and questioning the U.S. commitment to China's position that Taiwan is part of one China. \"If Trump reneges on the one-China policy after taking office, the Chinese people will demand the government to take revenge. There is no room for bargaining,\" said the Global Times. Cruz said some members of Congress had received a letter from the Chinese consulate asking them not to meet Tsai during her stopovers. \"The People's Republic of China needs to understand that in America we make decisions about meeting with visitors for ourselves,\" Cruz said in a statement. \"This is not about the PRC. This is about the U.S. relationship with Taiwan, an ally we are legally bound to defend.\" Cruz said he and Tsai discussed upgrading bilateral relations and furthering economic cooperation between their countries, including increased access to Taiwan markets that would benefit Texas ranchers, farmers and small businesses. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang on Monday urged \"relevant U.S. officials\" to handle the Taiwan issue appropriately to avoid harming China-U.S. ties. \"We firmly oppose leaders of the Taiwan region, on the so-called basis of a transit visit, having any form of contact with U.S. officials and engaging in activities that interfere with and damage China-U.S. relations,\" Lu said. In a dinner speech Saturday to hundreds of overseas Taiwanese, Tsai said the United States holds a \"special place in the hearts of the people of Taiwan\" and that the island via bilateral exchanges has provided more than 320,000 jobs directly and indirectly to the American people, her office said on Monday. Tsai said Taiwan looked to create more U.S. jobs through deeper investment, trade and procurement. Tsai's office said James Moriarty, chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, which handles U.S.-Taiwan affairs in the absence of formal ties, told the Taiwan president in Houston that the United States was continuing efforts to persuade China to resume dialogue with Taiwan. China is deeply suspicious of Tsai, who it thinks wants to push for the formal independence of the island. The Global Times, whose stance does not equate with government policy, also targeted Tsai in the editorial, saying that the mainland would likely impose further diplomatic, economic and military pressure on Taiwan, warning that \"Tsai needs to face the consequences for every provocative step she takes\". \"It should also impose military pressure on Taiwan and push it to the edge of being reunified by force, so as to effectively affect the approval rating of the Tsai administration.\"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch warned on Tuesday of dire consequences if Congress fails to repeal Obamacare, including the collapse of health insurance markets. \"Among other things, it means a congressional bailout of failing insurance markets, probably before the end of 2017,\" Hatch said in a statement. \"Frankly, that ship may have sailed on that one after last night's developments. We're probably looking at an insurance bailout one way or another.\"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Senate Democrats, seeking to capitalize on growing disclosures about the Trump campaign's contacts with Russia, urged a top Republican lawmaker on Tuesday to obtain President Donald Trump's tax returns as a matter of national security. It was the second request for Trump's returns by Senate Democrats in as many weeks, part of a Democratic campaign to pressure Republicans in Congress into obtaining the documents that could reveal conflicts of interest posed by the president's global business empire. Trump has defied decades of precedent by refusing to release his tax returns, saying his tax affairs were under federal audit. The Internal Revenue Service has said that is no obstacle to releasing them publicly. In a letter on Tuesday to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, two of the panel's leading Democrats said Trump's tax returns should be pursued in light of \"critical national security implications\" posed by contacts between Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak and Trump associates, including U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. \"There is no debate that the conflicts in question pose a threat to American national security and the integrity of the government of the United States, and more and more keep coming to light,\" wrote Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee's top Democrat, and Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan. Hatch and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady rejected a request for the returns last Wednesday by Senate Democrats, saying congressional actions that target individual tax returns would constitute an abuse of authority and set a dangerous precedent. On Tuesday, a Hatch spokesman said the Utah Republican had no further comment. The two Democratic lawmakers said national security had long been a focus of the Senate Finance Committee oversight of issues involving trade, Iran and terrorism. They also said the panel previously sought the tax returns of former Enron Corp executives, oil and gas companies and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, as part of its oversight duties. Wyden and Stabenow said they wanted the committee to hold a closed session in which lawmakers could conduct a bipartisan review of Trump's returns. They added: \"If committee members identify ties or relations to foreign governments within these documents, we will respectfully request the chairman and members of the committee hold a vote to make that information available to the public.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) dropped a bombshell on Tuesday morning. During a press conference, they announced what Cummings described as a major problem for the Trump administration: it looks like former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn committed a felony. We received a response from the White House refusing to provide any of the documents we requested, Cummings said. The White House has refused to offer a single piece of paper in response to this committee s bipartisan request. According to the congressman, classified military documents have revealed that Flynn failed to disclose payments he received from foreign governments before he became Trump s National security advisor. This is a major problem, Cummings said. I believe these documents should be declassified to the fullest extent possible without compromising sources or methods, he added.Cumings also noted that Flynn s illegal actions could land him in prison for up to five years. Chaffetz said that if these documents are correct, then Flynn s actions were clearly illegal and there will be consequences. As a former military officer, you simply cannot take money from Russia, Turkey or anybody else, Chaffetz said. And it appears as if he did take that money, it was inappropriate, and there are repercussions for it as a violation of the law. The congressmen, who both serve as senior members of the House Oversight Committee, said that so far, they haven t seen a shred of evidence to suggest that Flynn actually followed the law and got permission from the federal government before taking cash from multiple foreign governments.You can watch video of their press conference, here:","label":1}
{"text":"On Thursday's Breitbart News Daily, former U. N. ambassador John Bolton told SiriusXM host Raheem Kassam that he would \"absolutely\" have fired FBI Director James Comey if the decision was his to make. [\"My only criticism of the Trump administration decision was that they should have fired him on January the 20th,\" Bolton added. \"I speak as an alumnus of the Department of Justice in the Reagan and early Bush 41 administrations. I was assistant attorney general first for the head of the Office of Legislative Affairs, and then head of the Civil Division, the department's largest litigating division. I've dealt with the FBI when I was at Justice. I've dealt with them continuously in my days at the State Department on counterintelligence and other issues. I've dealt with them in their background investigation of judicial nominees. It was one of my principal responsibilities in legislative affairs at the Justice Department,\" he recalled. \"I know the FBI well, and I have enormous respect for it. James Comey disgraced the FBI by his conduct of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and many, many other things that have never become public, but that agents talk about in private conversations,\" Bolton declared. \"This was always about the greater glory of Jim Comey,\" he said. \"It's perfectly clear that the way he handled the Clinton email investigation, both in terms of his erroneous legal interpretation of the applicable statutes, but also most critically his July 5 news conference and his subsequent letters to Congress in October and November, reopening and then closing the investigation, were a gross violation of unambiguous Department of Justice policies about not commenting on ongoing investigations. \" \"It applies to investigators as well as prosecutors, and there's a reason for this,\" Bolton explained. \"It's not just a policy that you don't talk about investigations and prosecutions. The rule is, you either indict someone or you close the file. \" \"Why is that important?\" he asked. \"I think it has constitutional foundations: the presumption of innocence for the average citizen, the requirement that guilt be proved beyond a reasonable doubt, that an accused defendant have the right to confront witnesses against him. There's nothing in that series of constitutional projections that allows prosecutors or investigators to comment on the behavior of an individual citizen, other than in a court to prove up an indictment. \" \"I have nothing good to say about Hillary Clinton's conduct on the email scene, but it was not James Comey's business to give a review of her behavior,\" Bolton declared. \"That's the real interference in the election. Subsequent the letters and things that flowed from that really all come from that initial mistake. That's why honestly it's the case that if Hillary had been elected, she would have been justified in firing Comey on the 20th of January. \" \"All of this business about the firing being an effort to somehow undercut the Russia investigation is utter nonsense. Jeff Sessions, who was a campaign surrogate for the Trump campaign, is recused from the Russia investigation. The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, who is a career Justice Department prosecutor, is acting Attorney General for that purpose. The FBI investigation has not been impeded at all. There is absolutely no evidence of that. This is all media speculation and hype,\" he said. \"I just hope that the Department of Justice and the White House stand firm on this, because there is an important principle at stake. Substantively, it was right to fire Comey for the protection of 300 million presumed innocent until proven guilty Americans, that investigators and prosecutors don't get to dish on you in public if they feel they can't indict,\" he maintained. Bolton said there was no question Hillary Clinton, or perhaps outgoing President Barack Obama, would have fired Comey if she had won the election. \"What Comey did, as outlined in Rosenstein's memo that accompanied the Sessions recommendation to the president that Comey be fired, is unanswerable,\" Bolton contended. \"And you can bet that the media and the Democratic politicians who are condemning Trump today would have leapt to her defense and said it was entirely justified. \" \"I hope that my own principles would have sustained me to the point where I would agree because it would have been justified,\" he added. \"It's Comey's conduct here that's the center of the issue. It's not whether Trump had an effective media strategy on Tuesday night. It's not whether they should have gotten Comey on the phone first. It's not because he was meeting with the Russian foreign minister the next day. \" \"Look, timing is never good on these things,\" Bolton said. \"The best timing was January the 20th. Every day that goes on after that is a little bit worse. The idea that Trump should have waited 90 or 180 days before firing Comey \u2026 \" He laughed as Kassam interjected and said Trump's critics might as well insist he give the FBI director four years' notice. \"Let's not leave him in there, precisely,\" Bolton concurred. Bolton said the Comey firing is \"not even close to\" a scandal, as some critics have claimed. \"I know those people at the FBI. They are tough, they are patriotic. They tend to skew conservative in their voting patterns,\" said Bolton. \"But when it comes to law enforcement, nothing gets between them and the truth. The idea that the Trump administration or anybody else from a political background could affect them, could intimidate them, is just ludicrous. It's just ludicrous. \" \"This whole notion that you have to have an independent counsel and an independent set of investigators is just a way to politicize prosecutions,\" he said. \"The fact is, this investigation of Russia \u2014 the Trump campaign connection, whatever it is \u2014 will go on utterly unimpeded, and if anything with even more determination on the part of the career prosecutors and FBI investigators that they're not going to be interfered with. They're going to get to the truth, whatever the truth is. This will strengthen their resolve. \" \"Why not appoint Eric Holder the independent counsel? I mean, let's get right to it. How about Loretta Lynch? They're both unemployed now,\" Bolton suggested sarcastically. Kassam turned to international news, asking Bolton about Turkey's strenuous objections to the Trump administration's stated plan to arm and support Syrian Kurdish forces in the upcoming battle to recapture the Islamic State capital of Raqqa. Turkey maintains the Syrian YPG militia is linked to the violent PKK separatists in Turkey, and could pass American weapons to them. \"I would not arm them,\" Bolton said. \"I understand what the logic is, that we have armed Kurds in Iraq against the Islamic State. But the fact is, not all Kurds are equally favorable toward a Western view of responsible government. The PKK is a terrorist and communist organization. \" \"I think this is simply carrying on unfortunately from the Obama policy of how to destroy ISIS, and I think it's the wrong way to go,\" he advised. \"I don't have much sympathy, if any, for Erdogan,\" he said of Turkey's president. \"I do have sympathy for Turkey, and I'm very worried these same weapons we're giving them now are going to be turned against Turkish civilians down the road. We've got a very difficult alliance management problem here with Erodgan. I do think he has authoritarian tendencies. I worry that he's being seduced by Putin. But I think we've got to grit our teeth and think of Turkey rather than Erdogan, and see if we can see it through here. \" \"I think we need a completely new strategy to defeat ISIS,\" Bolton recommended. \"I don't think we want to do it in any kind of way that strengthens other terrorist groups, including those among the Syrian opposition. I don't think we want to do it in a way that strengthens the Iranian axis of power \u2014 including the Baghdad government sadly, the Assad regime, and Hezbollah, which is pretty much the direction that the Obama strategy was going in. \" \"There's a lot to correct here. I certainly share the view that we want to destroy the caliphate at the earliest possible opportunity, but arming this particular group I think is a mistake,\" he said. Kassam asked Bolton what he thought of Henry Kissinger's presence in the Oval Office on Wednesday when President Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. \"I've spoken to him before. In the interests of full disclosure, I try and speak to him fairly frequently myself,\" Bolton said of Kissinger. \"I think hearing his insights is a plus for any president. That doesn't mean that I agree with him on everything, and I rather doubt that President Trump agrees with him on everything. But few people have been through what Kissinger went through and have the insight. Anybody who's got some spare time should read all three volumes of his memoir of his days in the White House and the State Department. \" \"What got me most about that meeting was the instant pivot by Democrats and the press to say, 'There it is! Henry Kissinger, tainted by his association with Richard Nixon!' They just can't restrain themselves,\" Bolton marveled. Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a. m. to 9:00 a. m. Eastern.","label":0}
{"text":"GENERALLY, VENEZUELANS DO NOT EAT RABBITS AND SEE THEM AS PETS The Venezuelan government just urged its citizens to eat their pet rabbits so they won t starve to death. A severe food crisis is part of the socialist utopia that just keeps going downhill. What s next? Cannibalism?President Nicolas Maduro unveiled a government program called Plan Rabbit at a meeting with his agriculture minister, Freddy Bernal, that was broadcast on Periscope, CNN Money reported. It s a plan to distribute rabbits to communities across Venezuela to breed and eat. Maduro noted that rabbits breed quickly and are a good source of protein, but not cholesterol.GOVERNMENT PUSHES A CHANGE IN CONSUMPTION PATTERNS The rabbit isn t a pet, it s only two and a half kilos of meat, Bernal stressed in the streamed announcement. He then invoked President Donald Trump to push the program. Trump s attack against the Venezuelan people is an opportunity to revise and change cultural consumption patterns, he said.Venezuelan opposition leaders immediately slammed the move. Are you serious? asked former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles in a video response. You want people to start raising rabbits to solve the problem of hunger in our country? A 2016 study found that three-fourths of Venezuelans had lost almost twenty pounds on average over the course of the year. Meat is particularly scarce in the South American nation, with citizens even resorting to butchering zoo animals, according to police.Most economists agree the mass hunger is the result of socialist government policies spearheaded by former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and Maduro, his successor. Chavez instituted price controls on many food items, which helped lead to shortages and massive inflation.We ve previously reported on shortages of food and even toilet paper in Venezuela.BYOTP! NO TOILET PAPER AND NO FOODSocialism doesn t work but I guess Venezuela didn t get the memo. No toilet paper? No food? Yes, it s come to that in this socialist hellhole Venezuela s product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday . It s an extreme situation, says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. For over a year we haven t had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared. Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market smugglers who charge up to 6-times the regular price. But smaller, family-run hotels can t always afford to pay such steep prices, which means that sometimes they have to make do without.READ MORE: WFB","label":1}
{"text":"in: Multimedia , Politics (image: Gage Skidmore) Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall (King James Bible). Throughout recorded history, hubris has been the Achilles' Heel of political despots. Hillary Clinton and her political crime machine has been operating above the law for decades, stretching back at least to when Bill Clinton was Governor of Arkansas. \"Hillary Clinton is a toilet scrubber for Goldman Sachs\" \u2013 John Titus on the Shadow of Truth During her 2016 Presidential Campaign, it became routine for her get in front the public and lie with convincing ease. In Greek tragedy, \"hubris\" was an anti-hero's excessive pride toward or defiance of the gods, leading to the character's unforeseen demise. When Hillary was deposed by the FBI about the 33,000 emails on her private server that were wiped clean forever using BleachBit, she assumed her tracks were irrevocably covered up. But it wasn't just 33,000 emails that were incinerated, reams of evidence including laptops, server back-ups and Blackberries either \"disappeared\" or were wiped clean. But out of the blue, as if sent to earth from a Higher Power, the FBI in its child pornography investigation of Anthony Weiner stumbled on to a laptop with 650,000 emails that appeared to have been downloaded from Hillary Clinton's private server. It is highly probable that among this treasure trough of emails will be copies of the 33,000 emails that Hillary arrogantly assumed were wiped from the Universe. Hubris gets 'em every time. But it gets better than that. 650,000 is decade's worth of emails. It's also possible that Weiner's laptop will finally shed the light of Truth on Benghazi. \"Jim Comey did not re-open this investigation of to go over old ground. Worse infractions were discovered.\" \u2013 John Titus In addition to exposing Hillary to all sorts of felonies, here statement to the FBI under oath could be undermined by this unforeseen \"Black Swan\" event that has engulfed her campaign. The Shadow of Truth is pleased to present John Titus of Best Evidence productions and his unique insight into this event. The two-part podcast covers analysis that has not been presented in either the mainstream or alternative media: Part 1","label":1}
{"text":"Mrs. Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. JUDGE NAPOLITANOIn the course of my work, I am often asked by colleagues to review and explain documents and statutes. Recently, in conjunction with my colleagues Catherine Herridge and Pamela Browne, I read the transcripts of an interview Ms. Browne did with a man named Marc Turi, and Ms. Herridge asked me to review emails to and from State Department and congressional officials during the years when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state.What I saw has persuaded me beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that Mrs. Clinton provided material assistance to terrorists and lied to Congress in a venue where the law required her to be truthful. Here is the backstory.Mr. Turi is a lawfully licensed American arms dealer. In 2011, he applied to the Departments of State and Treasury for approvals to sell arms to the government of Qatar. Qatar is a small Middle Eastern country whose government is so entwined with the U.S. government that it almost always will do what American government officials ask of it.In its efforts to keep arms from countries and groups that might harm Americans and American interests, Congress has authorized the Departments of State and Treasury to be arms gatekeepers. They can declare a country or group to be a terrorist organization, in which case selling or facilitating the sale of arms to it is a felony. They also can license dealers to sell.Mr. Turi sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms to the government of Qatar, which then, at the request of American government officials, were sold, bartered or given to rebel groups in Libya and Syria. Some of the groups that received the arms were on the U.S. terror list. Thus, the same State and Treasury Departments that licensed the sales also prohibited them.How could that be?That s where Mrs. Clinton s secret State Department and her secret war come in. Because Mrs. Clinton used her husband s computer server for all of her email traffic while she was the secretary of state, a violation of three federal laws, few in the State Department outside her inner circle knew what she was up to.Now we know.She obtained permission from President Obama and consent from congressional leaders in both houses of Congress and in both parties to arm rebels in Syria and Libya in an effort to overthrow the governments of those countries.Many of the rebels Mrs. Clinton armed, using the weapons lawfully sold to Qatar by Mr. Turi and others, were terrorist groups who are our sworn enemies. There was no congressional declaration of war, no congressional vote, no congressional knowledge beyond fewer than a dozen members, and no federal statute that authorized this.When Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, asked Mrs. Clinton at a public hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 23, 2013, whether she knew about American arms shipped to the Middle East, to Turkey or to any other country, she denied any knowledge. It is unclear whether she was under oath at the time, but that is legally irrelevant. The obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to Congress pertains to all witnesses who testify before congressional committees, whether an oath has been administered or not. (Just ask Roger Clemens, who was twice prosecuted for misleading Congress about the contents of his urine while not under oath. He was acquitted.)Here is her relevant testimony:Mr. Paul: My question is is the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons buying, selling anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?Mrs. Clinton: To Turkey? I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody s ever raised that with me. I, I .Mr. Paul: It s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons and what I d like to know is the [Benghazi] annex that was close by . Were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons and were any of these weapons transferred to other countries any countries, Turkey included?Mrs. Clinton: Senator, you will have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. And I will see what information is available and ahhhh .Mr. Paul: You are saying you don t know .Mrs. Clinton: I do not know. I don t have any information on that. VIDEO OF THIS TESTIMONY IS BELOW: This secret war and the criminal behavior that animated it was the product of conspirators in the White House, the State Department, the Treasury Department, the Justice Department, the CIA and a tight-knit group of members of Congress. Their conspiracy has now unraveled. Where is the outrage among the balance of Congress?","label":1}
{"text":"Former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta believes that Donald Trump has doomed the entire planet. [\"Make no mistake, the Trump administration's rampage against the environment presents an existential threat to the entire planet,\" Podesta wrote in the Washington Post on Wednesday. The former failed campaign manager, a passionate warrior for global warming, appeared distraught after Trump signed an executive order to ratchet back the environmental regulations that choked businesses and job growth. Podesta appears unwilling to let go of the fact that Clinton lost the election, again citing the popular vote in 2016 as a reason to fight Trump's agenda. \"Winning the popular vote by nearly three million votes was not enough for Hillary Clinton to win the White House, but those votes nonetheless reflect the voices of a majority of Americans,\" he said. He urged Americans to work against the administration's environmental agenda. \"As Americans, we need to do all we can to stop the Trump administration and Republican leaders in Congress from implementing the most agenda in decades,\" he said, adding that \"resistance works. \"","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump has nominated Christopher Wray as the new FBI director. [\"I will be nominating Christopher A. Wray, a man of impeccable credentials, to be the new Director of the FBI,\" the president announced on Twitter on Wednesday morning. \"Details to follow. \" Wray served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General in former President George W. Bush's administration and was promoted to the assistant attorney general for the criminal division, before he left to work in the private sector as a partner at the Washington law firm King Spalding. During his time in government, he oversaw the highly publicized Enron case and oversaw the legal aspects of the war on terror after according to King Spalding's website. He also served as Governor Chris Christie's personal attorney during the bridgegate scandal. Last week, Christie praised Wray as an \"outstanding lawyer,\" after it was revealed that he was under consideration. \"He has absolute integrity and honesty, and I think that the president certainly would not be making a mistake if he asked Chris Wray to be FBI director,\" Christie said. Trump's choice earned praise from Norm Eisen, a Brookings Institute fellow and former ethics czar for former president Obama. \"Good choice. Oversaw Enron case, which I also spent years of my life on,\" Eisen wrote on Twitter. \"He was very fair. I endorse. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The terrorist attack that killed 49 and wounded 53 in Orlando, Fla. was the largest mass killing of gay people in American history, but before Sunday that grim distinction was held by a largely forgotten arson at a New Orleans bar in 1973 that killed 32 people at a time of pernicious stigma. Churches refused to bury the victims' remains. Their deaths were mostly ignored and sometimes mocked by politicians and the media. No one was ever charged. A joke made the rounds in workplaces and was repeated on the radio: \"Where will they bury the queers? In fruit jars!\" Outpourings of grief from politicians and everyday people have followed the Orlando shooting, but for those who remember the fire in the New Orleans bar, the UpStairs Lounge, its lonely memory has loomed large over conversations about the carnage this week at the Pulse nightclub. Mike Moreau, 72, who lost several friends in the fire, said he was struck by all the differences between then and now, but also by the familiarity of tragedy's dull ache. \"What happened to us had to be kept so private,\" said Mr. Moreau. \"The public didn't want to know about it, and if they heard about it they didn't care \u2014 'Thank God, they're gone, they deserved it. '\" \"To see the outpouring of love and support that these poor families have gotten is fantastic,\" he added about the Orlando massacre. \"They are hurting the same way we hurt, but at least they know that the world supports them and understands their grief. \" Mr. Moreau was with friends at a nearby bar on June 24, 1973, when an arsonist doused the stairs of the UpStairs Lounge with lighter fluid, set it aflame and rang the doorbell. When someone answered the door, a fireball burst into the room. One group of patrons fled out a back exit, but another was trapped across the room, caught between the flames and windows fitted with metal bars. When firefighters extinguished the blaze, they found a pile of charred bodies, some embracing and others pressed against the windows. Congregants from the New Orleans chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church, an L. G. B. T. group, were meeting there after services. The Rev. Bill Larson was among the dead. His charred body was left slumped against the window bars in full view of for hours. He was one of many who died without ever coming out to their families, and his mother would not deal with his remains, said Robert L. Camina, who directed a documentary, UpStairs Inferno, about the blaze. \"His mother refused to collect his ashes because she was too embarrassed that she had a gay son,\" Mr. Camina said. \"And that is just one example. There are three people who were never identified at all. Why? Somebody has to miss them. \" Those three were buried in unmarked graves in a potter's field along with a fourth person, Ferris LeBlanc, whose family did not know his fate until last year, Mr. Camina said. \"They dug a hole in the ground and put a bag in it and covered it back up,\" Mr. Moreau said. Public figures were unsupportive. The mayor, Moon Landrieu, did not cancel his vacation. Forty years later, a son of his, the current mayor, Mitch Landrieu, declared a day of public mourning for the fire's victims on its anniversary. \"L. G. B. T. people have a place at the table now that they did not have then,\" said Clayton who wrote a book about the arson that was published in 2014. The fire was an open wound for the gay community in New Orleans for years. No one was charged with the attack, and a man viewed by many as the primary suspect was never arrested. He committed suicide a year after the blaze. \"There was never any sense of justice,\" said Sebastian Rey, the president of the L. G. B. T. Community Center of New Orleans. Survivors had to deny any connection to the fire, including the loss of loved ones, because they could lose their jobs or apartments if bosses and landlords suspected they were gay. Mr. Rey said people who lived through that period did not talk about it for decades. As time passed, the tragedy became \"a rumor\" to new generations of L. G. B. T. people, he said. Johnny Townsend, who interviewed survivors in the late '80s and finally published their accounts in 2014, said the 40th anniversary commemoration gave it a kind of public attention it had not had before. \"People now feel more of a sense of their own history,\" he said. For Mr. Moreau, the outpouring of support for the victims in Orlando has been an \"uplifting\" sign of progress, he said. \"In Orlando, those poor people know at least that the whole world is behind them,\" he said. \"Nobody cared about us. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Teaching kids all across America that bringing fake bombs to school on 9-11 really pays off Is it possible the radical Muslim family who became famous when their son took a fake bomb to school on 9-11 has discovered the cost of living in Qatar is higher than they anticipated? Or is it possible they just miss being in the spotlight? We re thinking America may have a slightly different attitude about the Muslim clock boy post Paris tragedy You know what they say timing is everything .(pun intended).Give us $15 million or else.That s the demand from the family of the world s most famous clockmaker, Ahmed Mohamed, to the City of Irving and Irving ISD. The city and district were each sent letters on Monday demanding money or else a lawsuit would be filed.The family wants $10 million from the City of Irving and $5 million from Irving ISD for damages it claims Ahmed and the family suffered after the teen was arrested. The family also wants an apology from the two entities.Mohamed, 14, was arrested by Irving police in September after he brought a homemade digital clock to school that was mistaken for a bomb by Irving MacArthur High School faculty. The subsequent fallout made international headlines.Mohamed and his immediately family are now overseas in Qatar and enrolling in school after a foundation has offered to pay for his education. The letter demanding money from the city and district says that the family wants more than anything to come home to Irving.The letter gives both the city and the district 60 days to pay up or else face a lawsuit.City and district officials didn t have any immediate comment on the letter.","label":1}
{"text":"Kazakhstan is to change its official alphabet for the third time in less than 100 years in what is seen in part as symbolic move to underline its independence. President Nursultan Nazarbayev ordered his office on Thursday to prepare for a switch to a Latin-based alphabet from a Cyrillic one, distancing itself, at least graphically, from Russia. The oil-rich former Soviet republic of 18 million has very close ties with Moscow, its main trading partner, but is also wary of Russia s ambitions to maintain its political influence throughout the region. Kazakh, a Turkic language, used to be written in Arabic script until the 1920s when the Soviet Union briefly introduced a Latin alphabet for it. This was later replaced by a Cyrillic one in 1940, based on the Russian alphabet. Part of the latest switch relates to modern technology. The currently used Cyrillic alphabet has 42 symbols, making it cumbersome to use with digital devices - a standard Kazakh keyboard utilizes almost all number keys in addition to letter and punctuation keys. The latest version of the proposed Latin alphabet works around that by using apostrophe signs to modify letters. The country s official name would thus be spelled as Qazaqstan Respy blikasy. According to a statement published by Nazarbayev s office, he has ordered his chief of staff to draft an executive order introducing the new alphabet. The switch will be gradual, it said. Alhough Kazakh has been the state language since Kazakhstan became independent in 1991, only 62 percent of the population said they were fluent in both written and spoken Kazakh during a the most recent national census in 2009. Russian is more widespread with 85 percent claiming fluency in the same census. Russian is recognized as an official language in Kazakhstan. Several other Turkic nations, including Turkey itself, ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, have also switched to Latin alphabets.","label":0}
{"text":"Looking for a Trump bump in the economy? Keep waiting. After two months of stellar job creation that convinced administration officials that President Trump's policies were paying off immediately, employers pulled back sharply on hiring in March. The economy added 98, 000 jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday, fewer than half the monthly number for January and February. The report contained some notable good news: The unemployment rate fell to 4. 5 percent, the lowest level in almost a decade and a milestone in the long road back from the Great Recession. The rate was 4. 7 percent in February. Wages also continued to rise. But the disappointing number of new jobs was jarring for the administration, and well below what economists had expected. It comes as the stock market surge, which followed the November election, subsides and amid signs that economic growth in the year's first quarter proves weak. Economic perceptions, as well, may not be playing out in reality. Sentiment among consumers and businesses rose after Mr. Trump's election, but so far, it has not been matched by a comparable increase in spending by either group. \"We've given up on waiting for hard data to improve,\" said Rob Martin, an economist at Barclays. \"It's been five months since confidence increased. If consumption were going to improve, it would have already. \" Industries that Mr. Trump emphasized in his campaign \u2014 particularly manufacturing \u2014 continued to add jobs last month, but at a slower pace. Payrolls in the retail sector, meanwhile, declined further, shedding tens of thousands of jobs. The response from the White House, which crowed last month after more than 200, 000 jobs were produced in Mr. Trump's first full month in office, was muted Friday. Gary D. Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who is director of the White House's National Economic Council, emphasized the decline in the unemployment rate. \"When you look at the jobs report as a whole, I think there's an awful lot of good news in here,\" he told Fox Business Network. Congressional Democrats took a dimmer view. Also watching closely are the policy makers of the Federal Reserve, which has begun to reel in its stimulus. It raised interest rates last month and said it planned to do so twice more this year. But signs of a sluggish economy could affect how quickly the central bank moves. \"This raises the stakes for the April report,\" said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR, a research firm. \"You need to see things pick up in April, or else March won't look like aberration. \" The market reaction, in any case, was sanguine, with stocks essentially flat for the day. Barclays has said it expects the economy to actually slow in the first half of 2017, before rebounding modestly in the second half. \"Given this data today, we see downside risk in our already soft expectations for the first half,\" Mr. Martin said. The consensus view on Wall Street is that the economy expanded at an annual rate of 1 percent last quarter, with the pace of growth in the current second quarter rising to 3. 5 percent. The March report represents a snapshot of the economy, not an oil painting. And snow and cold weather in many parts of the country clearly took a toll on the construction sector, which barely grew after gaining a total of more than 90, 000 jobs in January and February. \"January and February were abnormally warm, so they were pumped up, and you had some payback in March exacerbated by the harsh weather,\" Mr. Shapiro said. On Capitol Hill, Republicans acknowledged a view of the report. \"The economy clearly should be generating higher job growth,\" said Representative Pat Tiberi, an Ohio Republican who is chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. \"However, the unemployment rate fell to the lowest rate since before the recession. \" The top Democrat on the committee, Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, ignored the new jobless rate and focused instead on the disappointing payroll gain. \"Today's jobs numbers show there are still challenges ahead that this administration must address,\" Mr. Heinrich said. \"President Trump promised that he would be 'the greatest jobs producer that God ever created.' Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee will hold him to this promise. \" Last month, when February's payroll gain turned out to be much better than expected, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, claimed credit for Mr. Trump. Mr. Spicer called the job creation a result of \"the surge in economic confidence and optimism that has been inspired since his election. \" Part of the problem for the administration is that its legislative accomplishments in the first hundred days are falling far short of the expectations \u2014 notably, for tax cuts and infrastructure spending \u2014 since the election. Whether or not they support Mr. Trump, mainstream economists say it will take many months for policy shifts in Washington to move a economy with 153 million workers. What is more, the tepid numbers for March mask pockets of strength. For example, a few sectors like professional and business services are holding up well, adding 56, 000 jobs last month. Hyland, a business software designer in Westlake, Ohio, plans to hire at least 300 people this year, Bill Priemer, its chief executive, said. That is a 15 percent increase in head count at the company, and it is a sign of just how quickly demand is growing for new technologies like content management, one of Hyland's specialties. \"We are growing faster than the economy and the enterprise software sector overall,\" Mr. Priemer said. \"Digital transformation is a big buzzword, but it's just fancy terminology to describe how business can use technology to streamline their operations. \" On the other hand, new technologies are upending venerable industries like retailing, as consumers shift to shopping online and department stores close. The retail sector lost almost 30, 000 jobs last month, after a decline of about 31, 000 in February. The headline numbers for hiring and the unemployment rate are derived from separate surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of establishments, the other of households. Although the two tends to converge over time, they can vary widely from month to month, and March was one of those times. So while businesses showed an anemic gain of 98, 000 jobs in terms of payrolls, households reported a 472, 000 increase in employment, without any fall in labor participation. That explains why the unemployment rate could fall by 0. 2 of a percentage point, even as the number for job creation was far short of expectations. \"I think the headline number was clearly impacted by the weather,\" said Michelle Meyer, head of United States economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. But at some point she said, rosy economic expectations are likely to catch up with a more sober reality. \"Sentiment surveys moved sharply higher after the election on expectations of policies and tax reform,\" she added. \"So far, that hasn't happened, and the big question is whether confidence can remain as strong. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The president says he doesn t think Obamacare is going anywhere just yet. In an interview on ABC s This Week, Obama said he doesn t think the Affordable Care Act will be fully repealed quite like Republicans hope and millions of Americans fear.President Obama said that although there is definitely the risk of a full repeal, he simply doesn t think the GOP can come up with a viable replacement plan. After all, he explained with amusement, they have been trying to do so for seven full years and have always failed. But when asked directly if he thought his signature health care legislation would survive, the president said he had faith that the ACA would endure. I think it will, he said. It may be called something else. And as I said, I don t mind. If in fact the Republicans make some modifications, Obama continued. Some of which I may have been seeking previously, but they wouldn t cooperate because they didn t want to make the system work, and re-label it as Trumpcare, I m fine with that. Obama said he isn t worried about having his name attached to the ACA, he is worried about the millions of Americans who depend on the legislation for their medical care. He noted all the letters he gets from real people whose lives have literally been saved because of Obamacare and said that this is what matters to him. This is his legacy, he insisted, not having his name stamped on it.Republicans are still bound and determined to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something better. However, as Obama points out, this isn t necessarily what the American people want. He notes that many Trump voters have said they never really believed that Donald Trump would take away their health care. Obama is hopeful that the will of the American people can keep the ACA around for a long time to come, even if it is called Trumpcare.Watch what President Obama had to say about Obamacare today, here:","label":1}
{"text":"Charles Oakley has strong feelings about comped tickets. They are not freebies, he said in a recent interview. Instead, they are the vehicle through which teams show respect for former players. The Knicks have not offered Oakley free tickets for a long time. Worse, Oakley said, is the feeling that the organization has been scrubbing him from its history. This season, for example, the Knicks are celebrating their 70th anniversary, and Oakley has not been invited to participate in any of the events. It seems unlikely that any of that will change now. Mounting losses and a dysfunctional relationship between Carmelo Anthony and the team's president, Phil Jackson, are no longer enough for the Knicks. On Wednesday night, a franchise with an addiction to needless drama raised the bar when Oakley, one of the franchise's most beloved former players, was removed from Madison Square Garden in handcuffs after a fracas involving security personnel. If the episode was the product of years of festering animosity between Oakley and James L. Dolan, the team's owner, then the fallout was swift, with the public and a number of prominent N. B. A. players quickly siding with Oakley. He was charged with three counts of assault and one count of criminal trespass, all misdemeanors, and came out of the encounter more revered than ever among the team's many frustrated fans. Even before the Knicks wrapped up their loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night, the hashtag #FreeOakley began to circulate on social media. A police officer at the Manhattan precinct where Oakley was being processed stood on the steps and shouted, \"Free Charles Oakley!\" Passing motorists rolled down their windows and complained about how he had been treated. Several N. B. A. stars were quick to express their support for Oakley on social media. The Clippers' Chris Paul, who was not at Wednesday's game because of a thumb injury, bristled at the Knicks' statement on Wednesday night that Oakley needed some sort of help, and Paul described him as \"the realest person our league has seen. \" The Chicago Bulls' Dwyane Wade and the Cleveland Cavaliers' LeBron James posted photographs of Oakley from his playing days with the Knicks on their Instagram accounts. James called him a legend. And Reggie Miller, a former star with the Indiana Pacers and a player who had legendary playoff duels with Oakley's Knicks in the 1990s, weighed in on Twitter with vehement criticism of the franchise. He questioned why any N. B. A. free agent would want to sign with the Knicks and \"play for an owner who treats the past greats like this or a president who stabs star player in the back?\" The latter part of the tweet was, of course, a reference to Jackson, whose efforts to force Anthony out of New York have been overshadowed by the Oakley episode \u2014 at least for the moment. The Knicks are, by any objective measure, a mess, and Miller may be right that they are taking on a toxic reputation around the league. The Knicks are even making the Nets, with their record, look like the most stable basketball organization in New York City. Less clear, though, is what actually occurred Wednesday night that resulted in Oakley's ejection. At the start of the game, Oakley was sitting with several friends, and they were not far from Dolan's usual seat, which is in the front row in the corner of the court. Accounts of Oakley's behavior at that point vary widely, with some fans saying they didn't hear or see Oakley saying or doing anything inappropriate, or trying to provoke Dolan, and others suggesting he seemed somewhat combative. In any case, when security guards approached Oakley, he clearly became angry, unleashing a string of profanities and becoming physical with at least two of them. As he was then removed from the arena, the crowd chanted his name, a moment that may come to symbolize an increasingly disastrous season. Shortly after the encounter, the Knicks issued a statement that ended with the hope that Oakley would get \"some help,'' a suggestion that offended many people in addition to Paul. On Thursday, the Knicks issued a statement in which they more explicitly stated that numerous Garden employees and New York City police officers had witnessed \"abusive behavior'' by Oakley as the episode unfolded. It dismissed his contention that he had done nothing wrong as \"pure fiction. '' Madison Square Garden officials provided one employee's description of the encounter to The New York Times, identifying her as a woman who was an \"order taker'' in the section in which Oakley was sitting. According to the statement by the woman, whom the Garden did not name, Oakley was agitated when he sat down, asking where Dolan was and why security guards were looking at him. She said she urged him to calm down, to no avail. Oakley played for the Knicks for 10 seasons and through much of the 1990s, when the Knicks were a tough, competitive team and Oakley's determined physical presence near the basket epitomized everything the Knicks were about. Dolan did not become the chairman of the Garden until Oakley had already left the Knicks. Nevertheless, the two men have managed to become adversaries in the years that followed. In a recent interview, Oakley said that he tried to approach Dolan at the 2014 N. B. A. Game in New Orleans but was rebuffed. Dolan, he said, refused to shake his hand. Oakley said that he was later told that he had said \"something in the paper\" that had infuriated Dolan. Oakley said he had no idea what he said to offend Dolan. Oakley has been a vocal critic of the team \u2014 and of Dolan, in particular \u2014 for years. His insistence that he does not know why the team treats him so poorly is, at the very least, disingenuous. He has been miffed that the Knicks did not offer him a coaching position. He has cursed Dolan through the news media, largely for Dolan's refusal to meet with him. And he has continued to channel many fans' frustrations by venting about the team's poor play. Oakley is no stranger to confrontation. As a player, he once punched Charles Barkley in the face during a preseason game. He was the consummate enforcer in an era of physical play. It has become clear, through some of his actions in retirement, that his approach to the game was really who he is. And that has caused some problems. In 2010, he was involved in a scuffle at a Las Vegas casino that left him with a broken arm. More recently, after Game 7 of last season's N. B. A. finals, Oakley screamed at security personnel in Oakland, Calif. who were trying to prevent him (with varying degrees of success) from entering the Cavaliers' jubilant locker room. The Cavaliers had just won their first championship after defeating the Golden State Warriors, and Oakley, who grew up in Cleveland, wanted to join the celebration. \"They was just mad they lost,\" Oakley said in a recent interview, referring to the Warriors. Friends describe Oakley as loyal, generous and protective. But he is also sensitive to slights, perceived and real. Over lunch with this writer in November, he reflected on his playing days with the Knicks and lamented how the team, he thought, had refused to market anyone except Patrick Ewing. \"They probably never sold my jersey in New York until I left,\" he said. Oakley added that he still attended three or four Knicks games every season, always paying his own way. And every time, he said, he would be watched by security personnel. He said that Dolan was behind their actions. \"Anytime I go into the Garden, they have to call him and tell him where I'm at,\" he said. \"They got to let him know, 'Oakley is in the building. '\" He added: \"It's so disrespectful. I bought my tickets. And you're going to tell someone he can't walk around?\" Oakley sounded most upset when he said that the Knicks had tarnished his relationships with many of his former teammates. Oakley recalled a game at the Garden last season when he bumped into a former teammate near the court. The teammate, Oakley said, apprehensively urged him to keep his voice down. \"The guys I played with,\" Oakley said, \"they can't even talk to me or be around me. \" On Thursday, in an interview on ESPN Radio, Oakley apologized for his role in Wednesday's episode. \"I feel sorry for the fans,\" he said. The fans, in turn, seem to be on Oakley's side. Welcome to the world of the Knicks.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. military said on Friday it carried out airstrikes on Nov. 20 in Yemen s al Bayda province that killed five militants from al Qaeda s affiliate there, including Mujahid al-Adani, whom it described as one of the group s leaders. Al-Adani maintained a significant influence within AQAP as well as close ties to other AQAP senior leaders, the U.S. military s Central Command said in a statement, using an acronym for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.","label":0}
{"text":"Washington (CNN) If you're running for President, get used to becoming hung up over Iraq. Because barring a miracle, whoever wins the White House will become the fifth consecutive American president ensnared by a nation that has consumed trillions of U.S. dollars and thousands of American lives. It has also blighted a string of high-flying political careers. If the last week on the 2016 campaign trail has proved anything, it's that American politics is still nowhere near purged of the bitter political divides of a war undertaken 12 turbulent years ago, somewhat like the Vietnam War that reverberated through successive presidencies. Leading Republican candidates have suddenly been tripped up by the most basic question -- was President George W. Bush right to invade Iraq way back in 2003? And no doubt Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton will yet again have to answer for the vote she cast in favor of the war while in the Senate. The American entanglement with Iraq started under President George H.W. Bush when Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein marched into Kuwait in 1989, evolved into a standoff and occasional air strikes under President Bill Clinton and erupted into a full-scale invasion under George W. Bush. And now under President Barack Obama a quarter of a century later, America's misadventure in the fractured Middle Eastern nation has transformed into a slog against the bloodthirsty Sunni radicals of ISIS. With no end in sight. Senior administration officials have already admitted that the fight against ISIS will go beyond the current presidency -- in the process hinting at one of the great disappointments of the Obama era. In 20 months, the President who was elected perhaps more than anything else to end the Iraq war, will bequeath to his successor a new phase of that same intractable conflict. Despite declaring the war over -- and bringing home the last U.S. soldier in December 2011 -- Obama has been sucked back in. Just this weekend, an ISIS surge into the key Iraqi city of Ramadi and a U.S. Special Operations raid into Syria to kill one of the group's top leaders have shown that American involvement has not ended, and that the engagement is proceeding without any clear sign of victory. Iraq's enduring power to confound American presidents -- and to reverberate in successive presidential campaigns -- is a reminder that when America goes to war abroad, anything but a swift, clear-cut victory unleashes an unpredictable cascade of political consequences at home. \"Failed wars always hurt the president fighting them, but also continue to impact the party of the presidency for decades after they are gone,\" said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history at Princeton University. Iraq has become a political issue akin to Vietnam, as politicians seize on the aftermath of an inconclusive war to eviscerate their rivals' handling of foreign policy. Democrats make a case that the 2003 invasion invalidated an entire school of Republican political thought -- neoconservatism -- and say the war proves the GOP cannot be trusted with U.S. national security. Republicans meanwhile insist the war was all but won in 2009 by Bush's belated troop surge and blame Obama for being more concerned with honoring a political promise to end the war than the reality of the deeply unstable nation he left behind. Still, Mark Atwood Lawrence, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, argues that political fallout from the Iraq war could prove to be less radioactive than that of Vietnam, which took decades to play itself out. One reason for that is the bipartisan consensus now forming that the war was a mistake given that Hussein's weapons of mass destruction -- used as a justification for war -- did not exist. It's perhaps a surprise that politicians took so long to catch up to this predominant view given that citizens made up their minds long ago. In a New York Times\/CBS News poll last year, 75% of those asked said the Iraq war was not worth the loss of American lives. The findings are consistent with other opinion surveys. The GOP reluctance to criticize the decision to go to war stems in part from the candidates' desire not to alienate conservative primary voters thirsting for tough-talking foreign policy. And calling the war a mistake raises the treacherous question of whether the deaths of more than 4,000 U.S. troops were a waste. But it still perplexed many political insiders that it took former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush a week of painfully groping for answers to come up with a satisfactory, and some believed obvious, response: that had he known then that U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was flawed, he would not have gone to war in 2003. Jeb Bush was at least trapped between his own political fortunes and loyalty to his brother. But Republican candidate Marco Rubio, a Florida senator, had no such family ties to blame for his trouble putting to rest questions about his views on the topic. Rubio got into a heated dispute on Fox News Sunday after denying that he had flip-flopped by now concluding that the Iraq war was a mistake. Their apparent confusion has provided an opening for fellow Republican Rand Paul, a Kentucky senator and presidential candidate, to renew his argument for a foreign policy derided by critics as isolationist but in tune with the majority of voters who now view the Iraq war as a mistake. Paul said at a GOP dinner in Iowa this past weekend that the notion that the Iraq war should never have been fought is \"a valid question, not just because we're talking about history, but we are talking about the Middle East, where history repeats itself.\" It isn't only Republicans who are vulnerable on the issue. Hillary Clinton needs no reminder of the capacity of Iraq to crush political dreams, after her 2002 Senate vote to authorize the Iraq war cost her primary support and paved Obama's way to the presidency. Clinton, conscious of the consequences of admitting her judgment on national security was flawed, never said during her 2008 White House bid that her Senate vote on Iraq was a mistake. But in last year's book \"Hard Choices,\" in which she provided a blueprint for how supporters could defend her record, she was much more clear. \"I got it wrong. Plain and simple,\" she wrote. Some U.S. foreign policy veterans are warning that the political debate in Washington is hampering hopes of meeting the challenge to U.S. security posed by ISIS and finally closing America's book on Iraq. Where once it was politically difficult to oppose the use of force in Iraq, now that position has become toxic. \"Now Iraq poses a threat -- it didn't 10 years ago,\" said James Rubin, an assistant secretary of state under Clinton, referring to ISIS and its efforts to export its ideology and terror tactics to the West. \"It's a shame that the politics, the pendulum of our political system, has swung so far to the other direction that our President and others are not prepared to take some modest steps to defeat a genuine threat, not the fake threat that was exaggerated 10 years ago,\" Rubin told CNN.","label":0}
{"text":"A Vietnamese woman accused of killing the half-brother of North Korea s leader was captured on camera making an aggressive attack on him, two days after a similar act on another person, a police investigator told a Malaysian court on Tuesday. Doan Thi Huong, 28, is charged along with Siti Aisyah, an Indonesian woman, with killing Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with VX, a chemical poison banned by the United Nations, at Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb. 13. There was a stark difference in Huong s movements in two closed circuit television recordings made in the airport s third level departure hall, said police official Wan Azirul Nizam Che Wan Aziz. The first recording on Feb. 11 showed Huong approach an unidentified member of the public from behind to wipe something on the person s face in a soft manner , he said. She then appeared to apologize, placing her hands together and bowing her head, before retreating slowly, added Wan Azirul, a member of the airport district s Criminal Investigations Department. But a similar act carried out on Kim Jong Nam was quite rough and seemed more like an attack, Wan Azirul said. For me, the act seemed aggressive. Other differences I saw were in her movements - compared to before, the accused Doan moved in a quick and rushed manner, he said, using Huong s first name. The women have pleaded not guilty, saying they thought they were involved in some sort of prank for a reality TV show. They face the death penalty if convicted. Chemical weapons expert Raja Subramaniam said degradation products of VX were found on Huong s fingernails but not on the rest of her hands. Traces of VX were found on the clothes worn by both accused women, Subramaniam said in court last week. On Tuesday, Subramaniam also declared impossible a theory that the VX was created by combining together two non-poisonous chemicals, saying it would have required large amounts of heat in order to work. Experts had earlier suggested the women had each been given a non-lethal substance that formed a deadly combination after being smeared on the victim s face. Hisyam Teh, Huong s lawyer, argued during cross-examination that she could not have known that she was handling VX. No sane person, having been made aware that a liquid was VX, basically the deadliest of all nerve agents, would put out his hand for VX to get administered, he added. The trial will resume on Wednesday.","label":0}
{"text":"Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov said Moscow had not had high-level contacts with the new North Korean leadership but they were possible, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday. In theory they (contacts) are possible, Interfax quoted Morgulov as saying. Morgulov said Russia had many communication channels with North Korea, which in one way or another are bearing fruit .","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump will announce next week his choice for who will lead the Federal Reserve, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Friday.","label":0}
{"text":"The Polish Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a government request to extradite Roman Polanski, the filmmaker, to the United States over a conviction for having sex with a girl. The decision almost certainly ends the legal battle in Poland over how to deal with Mr. Polanski, although as a practical matter, even a ruling in favor of the government would have had little effect. Mr. Polanski, a dual citizen of France and Poland, lives in France, which does not extradite its citizens. Judge Michal Laskowski ruled that a lower court's verdict was not a \"flagrant violation of the law,\" as the request for an appeal had claimed. \"The regional court of Krakow considered and verified all evidence exceptionally carefully,\" Judge Laskowski said. The legal effort reflects a broader push by the conservative Law and Justice government, which since coming to power a year ago has been calling for a return to Roman Catholic values in Poland, to try to reinforce its reputation as a party. The ruling on Tuesday came six months after the chief prosecutor and justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, asked the court to overrule the earlier verdict as the government sought to extradite Mr. Polanski, whom authorities in the United States have wanted for decades. A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said that Mr. Ziobro \"accepts and respects\" the Supreme Court's decision, although he still \"takes the position that proceedings concerning sexual abuse of minors should be enforced consistently\" regardless of who committed the crime, or when it occurred. Mr. Polanski was arrested in 1977 on charges that included the rape of the teenager at the Los Angeles home of Jack Nicholson, the actor. In 1978, Mr. Polanski left the United States on the eve of sentencing under an agreement by which he was to plead guilty to a count of statutory rape. In October 2015, a judge in Krakow, Poland, ruled that turning over Mr. Polanski would be an \"obviously unlawful\" deprivation of liberty, saying that the State of California, where he was convicted, was unlikely to conduct a fair trial and provide humane conditions of confinement for the director, who was 82 at the time. The Krakow prosecutor's office, which had sought Mr. Polanski's extradition on behalf of Los Angeles County, said a month later that it would abide by the judge's ruling. But Mr. Ziobro appealed the decision to the Supreme Court at the end of May, calling the trial judge's ruling \"incomprehensible\" and a \"serious breach\" of the extradition agreement between Poland and the United States. Mr. Ziobro said in an interview with Polish state radio in May that Mr. Polanski had received preferential treatment because of his fame. \"If he was just a regular guy, a teacher, doctor, plumber, decorator, then I'm confident that he'd have been deported from any country to the U. S. a long time ago,\" he said. In his opening statement on Tuesday, Jan Olszewski, a lawyer for Mr. Polanski, recalled how the Swiss authorities had declined in 2010 to extradite Mr. Polanski, who directed \"Chinatown,\" because of doubts over the conduct of the judge in his original trial. Jerzy Stachowicz, another lawyer for Mr. Polanski, argued in court that his client had not technically fled the United States because he had never been prohibited from leaving. \"Mr. Polanski didn't flee, as it is believed,\" Mr. Stachowicz said. \"He simply bought a plane ticket, checked in his luggage and boarded a plane. It was not fleeing. \" Referring to Mr. Ziobro's argument, Mr. Stachowicz said, \"If Mr. Polanski were not a celebrity, a famous filmmaker, but he was an average Joe, this case would have been over long ago, and nobody would have ever heard of it. \" The Supreme Court ruling means that Mr. Polanski, now 83, would be free to work in Poland. He has been planning to make a film about Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew who was wrongly accused of spying and whose case raised a debate in the late 19th century about prosecutorial misconduct. The film, \"An Officer and a Spy,\" was to be shot in Poland, but it was announced in June that Mr. Polanski had decided to make it in France. That prompted speculation that his legal problems had led him to move production of the film, but Robert Benmussa, the film's producer, attributed the decision to French tax incentives, according to The Los Angeles Times. Mr. Polanski, who lives with his wife in France, was not in court on Tuesday. \"This is just too emotional for him,\" Mr. Stachowicz said by telephone on Monday, before the ruling. \"This has been going on for such a long time. A ruling against overruling the first verdict would be a great relief for him. \" After the ruling, Mr. Olszewski, the lawyer, said that he had spoken with Mr. Polanski on the phone. \"He is currently in France, where he is shooting his new film,\" Mr. Olszewski said. \"He is beyond happy that this is finally over. At least in Poland. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Election Day: No Legal Pot In Ohio; Democrats Lose In The South Tuesday is \"off year\" Election Day in parts of the country. Legalizing marijuana is on the ballot in Ohio, Houston voters will decide on an equal rights ordinance and San Francisco weighs short-term rentals in what's being called the \"Airbnb Initiative.\" Elsewhere, eyes are on governor races in Kentucky and Louisiana, and whether Democrats can make any progress in the South. Here's a look at some of the races: Houston voters will decide whether to keep an equal rights ordinance that was approved by the City Council last year. The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity \u2014 criteria not covered by national anti-discrimination laws. The ordinance is hotly debated, particularly after some opposition ads were released. The ads claim that the ordinance would allow men who identify as women to assault women and young girls in bathrooms. Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for the ordinance on Oct. 29, writing: \"No one should face discrimination for who they are or who they love \u2014 I support efforts for Equality in Houston & beyond. #HERO #YesOnProp1 -H\". A White House spokesman said that President Obama and Vice President Biden were \"confident that the citizens of Houston will vote in favor of fairness and equality.\" Update from Houston Public Media: Houston's voters strongly rejected the anti-discrimination measure, with about three-fifths of voters opposed. Republican Matt Bevin and Democrat Jack Conway are running to replace retiring Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat. Although Republicans have aggressively been spending money in the hope of retaining the governor's mansion, Conway has outspent Bevin 4 to 1. This race has been characterized by both candidates accusing each other of lying about their records. Update from WFPL in Louisville: Conway conceded the race \u2014 the returns late Tuesday night showed Bevin winning with about 53 percent of the vote \u2014 and Republicans generally performed well in the state. Louisiana has a gubernatorial election this year but it doesn't work the way you might expect. Louisiana's election system relies on what's called a \"jungle primary.\" In a jungle primary, all candidates regardless of party appear on one ballot. If no one wins 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates face each other in a runoff election. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat and state legislative leader, earned roughly 40 percent of the vote. He now will face Sen. David Vitter, a Republican, in the runoff election on Nov. 21. Vitter has had a tough race so far. His critics have continuously cited his involvement in a 2007 prostitution scandal, in which Vitter's telephone number was found in the records of the so-called D.C. Madam, Deborah Palfrey. Palfrey was accused of running a prostitution ring that made more than $2 million over 13 years. The \"Clean Elections Initiative\" would increase public funding for candidates to up to $3 million in order to make them more competitive against privately-funded candidates, according to Reuters. The existing law makes up to $2 million available to candidates for state office. The ballot measure would also increase disclosure requirements and increase the penalties for campaign finance violations. Update from the Portland Press Herald: The measure passed, with 55 percent of the vote as of late Tuesday: Republican Gov. Phil Bryant is up for reelection and faces opposition from an unlikely candidate \u2014 truck driver and political unknown Robert Gray. According to The Associated Press, Gray didn't even tell his closest relatives that he had signed up to campaign for governor. Bryant has spent roughly $2.7 million this year and reportedly has $1.4 million in the bank. Gray has spent about $3,000 on his campaign in the past three months. Update from Mississippi Public Broadcasting: Gray will presumably be back on the road after losing, 67 percent to 32 percent. Ohio voters vote on two ballot measures with constitutional amendments that could dramatically change marijuana laws in their state. Issue 3, as one of these two measures is called, would enable landowners or operators of 10 predetermined sites the right to grow commercial marijuana. That's in contradiction to the second measure, Issue 2, which would prohibit monopolies from being enshrined in the state constitution. If both measures pass, there's sure to be lots of confusion. Update from WCPN in Cleveland: Voters rejected legal and medical marijuana, with two-thirds voting against Issue 3; Issue 2, the measure rejecting the proposed marijuana oligopoly, was passing 54 percent to 46 percent. San Franciscans heading to the polls Tuesday will get to vote on Proposition F, colloquially known as the \"Airbnb Initiative.\" The initiative is a ballot measure that would strengthen regulation on the short-term rental of houses and apartments. While Airbnb is likely the biggest company in that niche market, the Los Angeles Times points out that there are other vacation rental companies that would be affected. Right now, residents can rent out their apartment or home for 90 days in a year. Proposition F would limit that rental period to 75 days. The measure is viewed as an attempt to discourage people from taking units off the housing market and using them as short-term apartment rentals. San Francisco has an acute housing shortage. Update from KQED in San Francisco: Voters rejected the measure, Proposition F, 55 percent to 45 percent. Seattle voters will decide on a campaign finance measure that's being touted as a national model for campaign finance reform. Ballot initiative I-122, if passed, would create a public financing model in the city. Every resident would receive a $100 voucher to give to the candidate of their choosing. The measure would also limit election campaign contributions from entities receiving city contracts of $250,000 or more, or from people spending more than $5,000 on lobbying. Update from KUOW in Seattle: Voters overwhelmingly passed the measure, 60 percent to 40 percent. All 140 seats of Virginia's General Assembly are up for election today. Republicans currently control the state Senate, 21 seats to 19. Expecting low turnout, both parties have been trying to drive their message home to voters. Republicans are expected to retain their majority in the GA. Democrats hope to take control of the state Senate. Update from the Richmond Times-Dispatch: Republicans have kept their majority in the Senate, and their strong control of the General Assembly.","label":0}
{"text":"Apparently, male Tennessee Republican lawmakers are so sleazy and horny that the female House Speaker has warned interns to stay far away from them.In the wake of state GOP Rep. Jeremy Durham resigning his position as Majority Whip after getting caught creepily sexting female interns, House Speaker Beth Harwell is instructing the Director of the Internship program to institute new rules to keep interns safe from the wandering eyes of male lawmakers. As a precautionary measure, I have instructed the Director of the Internship program that interns are not to attend receptions or events related to the legislature, and they are not to give their cell phone numbers to members, she announced on Monday.Harwell also announced the formation of a committee to review the 20-year-old sexual harassment policy that somehow hasn t been changed over the years. If any personnel have suggestions for improvement, I urge them to give the committee their recommendations, Harwell said. At the conclusion of this review, the members will go through sexual harassment training. But Talking Points Memo reports that Democrats are criticizing the new rules because they appear to be blaming the female interns for the behavior of male lawmakers instead of focusing on keeping the lawmakers in check. Signaling out one group of women and asking them to change their behavior is a completely inadequate and inappropriate response to a problem with alleged behavior by a lawmaker, Rep. Mike Stewart said.Stewart does have a point. At the very least, new restrictions could be instituted regulating how lawmakers interact and behave around female interns. Instead of focusing on just the interns, focus on the lawmakers equally.As for Durham, Harwell and other GOP leaders have called for him to reign his seat entirely. If the rumors I continue to hear regarding Representative Durham are true, Representative Durham needs to focus on his family and receiving the help he needs, Harwell said.GOP Chairman Ryan Haynes also called for Durham to step down. In light of these recent revelations, I do think it is important that Representative Durham step down from his position as a member of this body so that the legislators can continue to focus on the important work that Tennesseans expect us to focus on. Seriously, Tennessee. You need to get your act together because this is just embarrassing. Featured image from Twitter","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump s biggest claim to fame, The Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice, were endangered last year when he revealed himself to be nothing but a horrible, childish bigot in presidential candidates clothing. At that time, NBC fired him and began looking at who might replace him, and now they have their answer, along with a very insulting tagline.NBC tapped Arnold Schwarzenegger to replace Trump last fall, but made it official with a new promo they released over the weekend. It says, on The Apprentice s YouTube channel: Brains, brawn and business acumen we re building a better boss. [emphasis mine]Ouch. That can be taken several different ways the most obvious being that they think Schwarzenegger s more rounded personality is a better fit than Trump ever was.That s insulting enough. However, NBC specifically fired Trump over his comments about Mexican immigrants last year, at the same time other companies cut ties with him for the same reason. So this could also be seen as a dig at him for what s proven to be his severe lack of even a modicum of professionalism pretty much anywhere.NBC also won t bring Trump back, even if he loses the election and comes crawling back on his hands and knees. NBC s entertainment chair, Robert Greenblatt, said earlier this month: No. He would never be back on Celebrity Apprentice, as long as I m here. Woe to Trump if whatever new business ventures on which he embarks after losing in November fail, just like so many of his other businesses have failed.Rumors are swirling that Trump may be using this election cycle to help launch his own television network, rather than making a serious run at the White House. However, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump University, Trump Taj Mahal, and more, were all such dismal failures it s a wonder Trump thinks he can even pull off a new business venture. Despite possibly having help from Roger Ailes and Steve Bannon, a Trump television network might fail just as hard.Oh, Trumplestiltskin. His days of fame are numbered, and NBC is trying to make that number shrink. Watch the promo for Celebrity Apprentice below:","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday avoided direct mention of a pipeline that has provoked high-profile protests from Native Americans but urged tribal leaders to use the spotlight to continue pushing for recognition even after he leaves office. Obama spoke at his eighth and final Tribal Nations Conference, which he created during his first year in office. Leaders of more than 560 Native American tribes gathered for the Washington event as one of the largest Native American protests in decades continues in North Dakota. In his remarks, Obama acknowledged that Native American tribes have unified around the demonstrations led by the Standing Rock Sioux, a tribe that he visited in 2014. \"I know that many of you have come together across tribes and across the country to support the community at Standing Rock and together you are making your voices heard,\" he said. \"This moment highlights why it's so important that we redouble our efforts to make sure that every federal agency truly consults and listens and works with you, sovereign to sovereign.\" In recent weeks, protests against the Dakota Access pipeline have drawn international attention, prompting the U.S. government to temporarily block its construction on federal land. Tribal leaders say the pipeline will desecrate sacred land and pollute water. When fully connected to existing lines, the 1,100-mile (1,770 km) pipeline would be the first to carry crude oil from the Bakken shale directly to the U.S. Gulf. The $3.7 billion project is being built by the Dakota Access subsidiary of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners LP. Obama discussed the progress made by his administration over the last eight years to improve relations with tribal nations, and urged leaders to keep fighting for more visibility and input regardless of who succeeds him in the White House next year. \"Our progress depends in part on who sits the in Oval Office, and whether they're setting the right priorities, but lasting progress depends on all of us, not just who the president is.\" Various Obama administration officials unveiled initiatives aimed at upholding Native American sovereignty at the conference. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced a forthcoming memorandum from Obama that would require federal agencies to consider Native American treaty rights in decision-making on natural resource projects, hoping to avoid future conflicts with tribes such as the current Dakota Access dispute. The Justice and Interior Departments also announced settlements with 17 tribes that had sued the U.S. government, accusing them of mismanaging monetary assets and natural resources that the government held in trust for the tribes. The \"vast majority\" of all such disputes have been settled, according to the government, which has paid $1.9 billion to resolve the cases since April 2012. Those settlements characterize the Obama administration's effort to mend ties \"where we have failed in the past in our trust responsibilities,\" said Lawrence Roberts, assistant secretary for Indian Affairs at the Interior Department, on the sidelines of Monday's conference. Regan Dunn, 15, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, delivered opening remarks at the conference. Dunn said afterward she had never imagined a company might try to build a pipeline through her homeland, but that the wide opposition among various tribes - including some she had not previously heard of - has been \"heartwarming.\" Brian Cladoosby, president of the National Congress of American Indians, which represents more than 500 tribes, praised Obama's legacy on Native American issues and warned the assembly that \"there is no guarantee going forward there will be the same commitment from the next administration.\" When the Justice Department, Interior Department and the U.S. Army temporarily blocked the pipeline's construction on Sept. 9, the administration called for \"a serious discussion\" about how tribes are consulted by the government on decisions over major infrastructure projects. The Army, Interior and Justice departments will hold hearings on the shortcomings of the present process on Oct. 11, and formal discussions with tribes in six U.S. regions from Oct. 25 through Nov. 21. The deadline for written comments will be Nov. 30, the agencies announced. On Thursday, the chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, Dave Archambault, told a House of Representatives panel there was no \"meaningful consultation\" before permits were issued to bring the pipeline through his tribe's territory. Archambault is scheduled to speak on Monday evening at a rally of pipeline opponents.","label":0}
{"text":"A teenager who moved to Britain after his parents were killed in Iraq will go on trial in March over a bomb attack on a packed commuter train that injured 30 people in London in September. Ahmed Hassan, 18, is accused of intent to kill and cause serious injury by planting a home-made bomb at Parsons Green station in London. The bomb shot flames through a carriage but failed to fully explode. Hassan appeared via video link at London s Central Criminal Court on Friday where a judge said a two week trial would start on March 5. He is set to appear in court next on Jan. 19.","label":0}
{"text":"Following Wednesdays presidential debate Pentagon officials found themselves completely dumbfounded as to why former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would feel it appropriate to announce U.S. Special Access Program intel on national television. According to sources within the Department of Defense speaking under anonymity, Clinton likely violated at least two Dept. of Defense SAP protocols during the debate by announcing on live television the United States Governments response time for a nuclear launch.To the dismay of intelligence officials, the fact that this top secret information is now publicly known not only proves that Clinton is unfit to be commander-in-chief, but it also poses a direct threat to national security. One high ranking intelligence official explained that any time frame calculated pertaining to a US nuclear launch would have merely been an educated hypothesis, absent leaked documents and there have been no such breaches prior to Clintons admission Wednesday. Via TruePundit Secretary Clinton proved tonight she is unfit to be commander-in-chief, a top-ranking DOD intelligence source said. What she did compromises our national security. She is cavalier and reckless and in my opinion should be detained and questioned so we can unravel why she did what she did. According to Pentagon sources, the information Clinton disseminated publicly is Top Secret intelligence governed under the U.S. Special Access Program (SAP) which dictates safeguards and protocols for accessing and discussing highly classified and Top Secret intelligence. The specific details of the countrys nuclear response time discussed by Clinton, sources said, are only known by a handful of individuals outside top military brass Targeting options by ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missiles), air or sea, launch order, launch procedures and response are some of the most secretly guarded tenets of national security and nuclear war policy, a Pentagon source said. Its truly incredible that (nuclear) response time as part of an ERO (Emergency Response Option) is now out there in the public domain to our adversaries. U.S. Defense sources said according to developed U.S. counterintelligence, military officials in China, North Korea, Syria, Russia, Iran and even actors like ISIS had no previous definitive intelligence to determine the U.S. nuclear response time, especially during an ERO, prior to Clintons admission Wednesday night. Sources reluctantly acknowledged her calculations were accurate.","label":1}
{"text":"US In Danger of Losing Allies In Asia Philippines President turning his country away from the US and pivoting in the direction of China.  Often called the Donald Trump of the Philippines, this new President is turning away from America as an ally and is embracing China.  This threat to national security cannot be overstated. If we lose the Philippines as an ally, China will have free military reign of Asia. South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and Vietnam will be in grave danger. An analysis of this potential threat is contained in the following video.","label":1}
{"text":"The United States Attorney's Office Southern District of New York announced on Wednesday that the entire administration of the Luchese Family, 19 members in total, are being charged for their alleged roles in racketeering, murder, narcotics, and firearms offenses. [The arrests \u2014 including captains, soldiers, and associates \u2014 were part of a multiagency effort conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) New York Police Department (NYPD) and the Waterfront Commission of the New York Harbor. Angel M. Melendez, special agent in charge of HSI New York, noted the impact that the Luchese Family had on the New York City area. \"The Luchese Family and its associates are alleged to be linked to guns, drugs, racketeering, and murder. They are also alleged to have used their criminal enterprise to launder money, tamper with witnesses and extortion,\" said Melendez. \"It is clear that this 'family' business is of no benefit to its community or to this great city. HSI will continue to strengthen its partnership with the FBI and NYPD to ensure that alleged criminals like the Luchese Family face the consequences of their actions. \" Authorities arrested 15 of the 19 defendants on Wednesday the other four defendants were already in custody. Seventeen of the defendants, if convicted, are facing life sentences. Those charged in the superseding indictment are (potential sentence): The members of the Luchese Family worth noting are Matthew Madonna, the alleged street boss Steven Crea Sr. the alleged underboss Steven Crea Jr. an alleged captain and Joseph Dinapoli, the alleged consigliere of the Luchese Family. La Cosa Nostra is considered by authorities to be alive and well in the U. S.: La Cosa Nostra operates through entities known as \"Families. \" In the New York City area, those families include the Genovese, Gambino, Luchese, Bonanno, Colombo, and Decavalcante Families. Each Family operates through groups of individuals known as \"crews\" and \"regimes. \" Each \"crew\" has as its leader a person known as a \"Caporegime,\" \"Capo,\" \"Captain,\" or \"Skipper,\" who is responsible for supervising the criminal activities of his crew and providing \"Soldiers\" and associates with support and protection. In return, the Capo typically receives a share of the illegal earnings of each of his crew's Soldiers and associates, which is sometimes referred to as \"Attribute\". Each crew consists of \"made\" members, sometimes known as \"Soldiers,\" \"wiseguys,\" \"friends of ours,\" and \"good fellows. \" Soldiers are aided in their criminal endeavors by other trusted individuals, known as \"associates,\" who sometimes are referred to as \"connected\" or identified as \"with\" a Soldier or other member of the Family. Associates participate in the various activities of the crew and its members. In order for an associate to become a made member of the Family, the associate must first be of Italian descent and typically needs to demonstrate the ability to generate income for the Family and the willingness to commit acts of violence. In August 2016, Breitbart reported the FBI arrested 46 alleged members of the Italian mafia along the east coast of the U. S. accused of \"engaging in extortion, arson, fraud, illegal gambling, firearms trafficking and assault. \" Ryan Saavedra is a contributor for Breitbart Texas and can be found on Twitter at @RealSaavedra.","label":0}
{"text":"Wikileaks Just Released Her Full Isis Donor List With Names!  WikiLeaks just finished the job that started few months ago! Hillary just got killed! She is not going to survive this! It's too much! Pure treason!  According to Conservative Daily Post: Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Clinton are the founders of ISIS. We have proven that through emails and documents leaked from WikiLeaks, but liberal media outlets still refuse to cover it.  After all, they are still more focused on what Trump said eleven years ago than what Hillary has actually done.  Because of brave patriots like Julian Assange, we have been given more evidence that Hillary Clinton is more connected to ISIS than we originally believed.  An email was leaked between Clinton and John Podesta indicating that: \"Western intelligence, US intelligence and sources in the region\" to accuse Qatar and Saudi Arabia of \"providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL [or ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.\"  Citing the need to \"use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets,\" said Hillary to Podesta while arguing the current developments in the Middle East were \"important to the U.S. for reasons that often differ from country to country.\"  Odd that Clinton argues Saudi Arabia and Qatar are helping fund ISIS when Hillary's largest donations come from those two countries.  In another correspondence from 2012, the Director of Foreign Policy at the Clinton Foundation, Amitabh Desai, set up a meeting with Bill Clinton for five minutes in exchange for a $1,000,000 \"birthday check.\"  The email adds that the small but rich nation occupying the Qatar Peninsula would \"welcome the Clinton Foundation's suggestions for investments in Haiti \u2014 particularly on education and health.\" Desai added that while Qatar had already \"allocated most of their $20 million \u2026 they were happy to consider projects we suggest.\" Like this? Share it now.","label":1}
{"text":"Obama has waisted billions on green energy but the free market wins in the end with the success of fracking and natural gas. You won t hear this from Obama because it doesn t further his agenda to spread the wealth of American taxpayers. Obama plans on spreading our tax dollars to India Yes, India! He s pledged billions to India to increase green energy. We know better than that though it s just another scam to give your hard earned dollars to a failed industry that can t make it in the free market. President Barack Obama is poised to repeat his history of weak-handed negotiations on the world stage when nearly 200 countries gather in Paris on Monday to consider an international response to climate change. According to the president, rejecting the Keystone XL oil pipeline and piling regulations on the fossil fuel and power industries in the United States are necessary to preserving America s credibility as a leader on the world stage.But by doing this, Obama ignores the strongest card in America s hand as he steps to the table: the advances our energy sector has made to reduce carbon emissions while simultaneously acting as the lone bright spot in our economy.In essence, his rhetoric is blind to the true story of American energy. But this story cannot be ignored.According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, monthly power sector carbon dioxide emissions reached a 27-year low in April 2015. But, the progress does not stop there. Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are also declining. According to data available from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions dropped 9 percent between 2005 and 2013 the largest reduction from any country.So what has made these positive developments possible? The answer is America s oil and natural gas renaissance, as well as our insatiable appetite to innovate. Despite Obama s efforts to stop oil and natural gas development on federal lands and the introduction of unnecessary regulations that increase the cost of production and consumption, American production has been growing at an astounding rate. Natural gas production hit nearly 91 billion cubic feet per day an increase of about 27 billion cubic feet since August 2006, or enough gas to power up to 290,000 homes per year.A Manhattan Institute study concluded that the increase in clean natural gas production is the greatest contributor toward declining U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, carbon emissions in America are down to where they were a quarter century ago, though our population has been growing.Even EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy has recognized the important contributions of American natural gas to reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, saying hydraulic fracturing has created an opportunity for a shift into natural gas, and that shift has been enormously beneficial from a clean air perspective, as well as from a climate perspective. It is important to note that this progress wasn t driven by arbitrary benchmarks or government mandates, but rather by the free market and natural consensus for a freer, safer, and more economically prosperous future. The conclusion the president should draw from this and bring to the table with the international community is clear: only by embracing the free market can we improve the world s environmental outlook while also strengthening our economies.To demonstrate true leadership, Obama should start emphasizing the important role of hydraulic fracturing and natural gas development across the globe. America would then be standing for policies with proven results rather than for ideas that may sound good, but just don t work. Developing nations desperate for economic growth would be particularly enthusiastic with this proposition as an alternative to the economically disastrous policies currently in vogue.And this is exactly the vision the Republican-led Congress intends to project to the world. We are listening to the American people, who largely do not support the president s regulatory agenda and who understand that there is a better way.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald J. Trump will allow corporations and wealthy individuals to make large donations to fund the activities surrounding his inauguration, complicating his promise to eliminate special interests from influencing his government. Mr. Trump plans to ban money from registered lobbyists, whom he has purged from his transition team and barred from working for his administration. But the restrictions will be lighter on corporations and individuals \u2014 the groups that have traditionally provided a vast majority of funding for the festivities surrounding the transfer of power. The restrictions, which members of the Presidential Inaugural Committee cautioned have yet to be finalized, represent a continued march back from standards set in 2009, when Barack Obama banned gifts from lobbyists, political action committees and corporations, and put a cap of $50, 000 on individuals. Mr. Obama relaxed his own rules in 2012, after what was then the most expensive presidential campaign in history had depleted his donor base, lifting the ban on corporate gifts and restrictions on the size of those from individuals. Mr. Trump, who like Mr. Obama campaigned on reducing the influence of money in politics, appears poised to relax them further. Officials planning the inauguration said Mr. Trump would solicit corporate donations up to $1 million and allow money to be transferred from political action committees on a basis. The inaugural committee has not reached a decision on where to cap gifts from individuals, if at all. All told, Mr. Trump hopes to raise roughly $65 million to $75 million to fund the parade, balls and other festivities surrounding his as president, according to several people involved in the planning efforts. Such a total, if it materializes, would easily surpass the $43 million Mr. Obama's team raised for his 2013 inauguration and the $53 million, a record, that it raised for his first inauguration in 2009. Thomas Barrack Jr. a private equity investor who is heading the committee responsible for planning the events surrounding Mr. Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, said the decision to limit donations from certain groups was \"in line with the 's thoughts on ethics reform. \" But campaign finance experts said the restrictions left much to be desired, targeting groups that traditionally provide little funding for the occasion while seemingly letting bigger donors \u2014 including corporate interests that Mr. Trump took aim at on the campaign trail \u2014 off the hook. \"For the most part, they are illusory, because they are restricting money that doesn't really play any significant role in funding the inauguration,\" said Fred Wertheimer, a longtime advocate of campaign finance overhaul, referring to the restrictions on lobbyists and foreign interests. The corporate and individual money that does traditionally play a significant role, he added, would be allowed to flow more or less unabated, leaving the potential of undue influence in place. \"You can't have a more ideal opportunity to buy influence and ingratiate yourself with a new administration than by giving a huge contribution to pay for their inauguration,\" Mr. Wertheimer said. Bob Biersack, a senior fellow at the Center for Responsive Politics, was more forgiving toward Mr. Trump, but he said it would take a fundamental change in the way inaugurations were funded to meaningfully root out special interests. \"I don't find it fundamentally inconsistent with what he is saying,\" he said. \"I just think the rhetoric and the reality are different. \" Presidential transition committees, which coordinate and finance most of the festivities that surround the federally funded ceremony, face few of the restrictions campaigns do, and their practices vary from president to president. President George W. Bush did not restrict who could support his inaugural festivities, but he put caps on gifts. The committee is still in the early stages of assembling what will be an operation employing hundreds of people responsible for planning dozens of events. As of Wednesday morning, the packages that are typically used to solicit donations were still being vetted by lawyers, and subcommittees were still taking shape to handle issues like security and entertainment. \"It's like putting on the Olympics in 61 days,\" Mr. Barrack said, adding that the committee was racing to finalize plans by the end of the week. Two people working with the committee said it planned to roll out tiered giving packages next week, most likely ranging from $25, 000 to $1 million, that will reward donors with progressively more access to more intimate events with Mr. Trump and his team. The committee is planning to hold two official balls, according to two people involved in the planning. By comparison, Mr. Obama attended 10 official balls in 2009. Mr. Trump is not expected to donate to the festivities himself, as he did to the campaign, according to members of the committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that had not been finalized. Sara Armstrong, a longtime Republican National Committee official who helped plan the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this summer, has been appointed chief executive and is leading the team that Mr. Barrack said would eventually total 350 people out of an office building just off the National Mall. As of Wednesday, the committee had hired about 100 people, he said. The committee includes generous donors to Mr. Trump's campaign, like Woody Johnson, the owner of the New York Jets Gail Icahn, the wife of the investor Carl Icahn and the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. Several stalwart backers of Republican causes, like Stephen A. Wynn and Lewis M. Eisenberg, are on the committee, as is Brian Ballard, Mr. Trump's longtime Florida lobbyist. The overall cost of the inauguration and related festivities is likely to run to as much as $200 million. Most of that burden will fall on taxpayers, though, who fund everything from security to the ceremony and inaugural luncheon organized by a joint committee of Congress. Mr. Trump's team said it was expecting two million to three million people to flood Washington for the ceremony, a crowd that could surpass the 1. 8 million estimated to have been on hand for Mr. Obama's first inauguration, which was a record. Planners are also expecting more protesters than usual around the event. Mr. Barrack said Mr. Trump had instructed him to plan events tailored to the political moment. \"It's one of the greatest opportunities that this president has to put his fingerprints on bridging the divide,\" Mr. Barrack said on Wednesday. Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service, which controls the Mall and other public spaces where the inauguration will take place, said on Monday that the Park Service did not expect to meet with officials from the group until after Thanksgiving. But across Washington, the physical preparations for Jan. 20 are well underway, even as the city's political establishment is struggling to come to terms with the election outcome. Capitol architects have been hammering away since September on the more than inaugural platform overlooking the Mall. And outside the White House, Park Service staff members are at work on the presidential reviewing stand where Mr. Trump will review his inaugural parade.","label":0}
{"text":"Wednesday's broadcast of MSNBC's \"Morning Joe\" declined to discuss comedian Kathy Griffin taking and apologizing for a photo depicting her holding up President Trump's severed head on the grounds that it is \"too gross. It's just not worth doing. \" The show then teased discussion of President Trump's \"covfefe\" tweet. During a discussion on Americans going out to lunch less often, the Griffin news came up. Brzezinski remarked, \"We're not talking about it. \" She added, \"I'm sorry, it's too gross. It's just not worth doing. \" Brzezinski then teased the show's next hour by previewing discussion of Trump's \"covfefe\" tweet. ( Mediaite) Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett","label":0}
{"text":"If cities want to try and help their workers get paid sick leave, the Arizona state government will punish them with harmful budget cuts.Most sane people agree that it makes sense for workers to have paid sick leave. After all, who wants to eat food prepared by a worker who has the flu but came to work anyway because they can t afford to take an unpaid day off?The minimum wage in Arizona is $8.05 an hour, one of the lowest in the nation. And of course, Arizona is controlled by Republicans who couldn t give a flying f*ck if their citizens are so underpaid that they have to go to work sick or risk not being able to pay the rent that month.Cities once attempted to raise the minimum wage for workers, but Arizona Republicans shut them down with a law forbidding them to do so. But the people got pissed and overturned the law via referendum, which angered Republicans so much that they tried to pass another law limiting minimum wage. You know, because serfs shouldn t be able to rise up against feudal lords. But once again, the people of Arizona got the law struck down in court which has caused Republicans to hold a grudge against the peasants ever since.So when Tempe, Arizona made an effort to pass a mandatory paid sick leave law, Arizona Republicans in the state legislature reacted immediately to make sure big corporations don t have to pay a cent to help the workers who work so hard to make the company rich.Bloomberg reports:Arizona s House passed a bill on March 1 specifying that cities aren t allowed to require private employers to provide paid sick leave or vacation. The state Senate has passed companion legislation that would cut state funds, used to pay for services like police and firefighting, for cities that try to supersede state laws.Arizona Republicans are literally threatening cities across the state with critical budget cuts that fund critical services if they dare lift a finger to help workers. Governor Doug Ducey also supports the legislation so it could very well become law.And if you aren t quite pissed off enough yet, just wait till you read what Arizona GOP Senator Andy Biggs had to say about his party s effort to make workers feel like slaves.According to Biggs, cities think that they re an independent and sovereign entity from the state, which is not true they re a creature of the state. You can t put a municipality in jail, nor would we. What we re really seeking to do is provide a deterrent effect. Yeah, the kind of deterrent that says Republicans are flaming hypocrites when it comes to saying they support small government. Instead of cheering on local governments for making decisions themselves, Arizona Republicans have declared that the state is a mini-tyranny where only the state gets to make the rules and good luck getting any money for your city or town to protect yourself against bands of thieves, killers, and fires if you rebel against King John in an effort to help the working poor.Seriously, where s Robin Hood when you need him?","label":1}
{"text":"Citing an \"erosion of human rights guarantees\" and corruption in Venezuela, President Obama issued an executive order Monday imposing sanctions on members of the country's military and intelligence services. The White House says the executive order builds on the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014, part of a response to a violent crackdown on government protests. Obama also invoked his emergency powers to declare \"a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela.\" U.S. relations with Venezuela are currently in tatters, even as it attempts to forge new ties to Cuba. As NPR's Parallels blog reported Sunday, \"President Nicolas Maduro accuses the U.S. of plotting a coup against him, and is expelling most U.S. diplomats from Venezuela. He is also demanding that Americans secure visas to enter the country.\" President Obama's executive order freezes the assets of seven individuals, ranging from Gustavo Enrique Gonz\u00e1lez L\u00f3pez, the director general of Venezuela's national intelligence service, to the head of Venezuela's Bolivarian National Police, Manuel Eduardo P\u00e9rez Urdaneta. Like several others on the list, the two men are charged with being involved with \"significant acts of violence or conduct that constitutes a serious abuse or violation of human rights.\" The White House's list also includes prosecutor Katherine Nayarith Haringhton Padron, who is accused of charging members of Venezula's opposition with crimes such as \"assassination\/coup plots based on implausible \u2014 and in some cases fabricated \u2014 information.\"","label":0}
{"text":"European banks have rushed to cut deals with prosecutors over longstanding claims that they pushed toxic mortgage securities in the years before the financial crisis. The payouts are steep: Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse said that they would disgorge nearly $13 billion combined to settle with the United States Justice Department. But with the clock ticking before Donald J. Trump takes over, there appears to be an eagerness in Washington to conclude cases before a new, potentially more sympathetic, administration begins. As a result, these banks may have benefited from paying billions less than once proposed. The $7. 2 billion settlement with Deutsche Bank was a relief on Friday to its investors, who were rattled when it emerged in September that prosecutors were seeking a penalty of as much as $14 billion. Shares of Deutsche Bank rose as much as 5 percent in Frankfurt, before settling up 0. 8 percent. A smaller player in the securities market, the British bank Barclays, appears to be willing to take its chances under the administration of Mr. Trump. Barclays said on Thursday that it would \"vigorously defend\" itself in court against a complaint brought by the Justice Department after settlement talks collapsed. Its shares fell 0. 9 percent in London trading as investors weighed the legal risk. The government says that Barclays, which like Deutsche Bank has significant operations in New York, sold more than $31 billion in mortgage securities that turned out to be \"catastrophic failures. \" A decade ago, bundling and structuring mortgages on American homes into securities to be sold to investors around the world was a hugely profitable business for Wall Street banks, American and European. But as risky mortgages began tumbling into default, the securities turned toxic, and the resulting panic led to a global financial crisis in 2008. Holding the banks accountable for that meltdown continues to be debated in political campaigns, books, articles and movies like \"The Big Short. \" The crackdown on banks for those tainted securities was the Obama Justice Department's biggest and most prominent legal effort by far. Banks, most of them American, have paid more $100 billion in settlements with the government. Yet the Obama administration has been criticized for allowing banks to write big checks to settle claims and for not prosecuting Wall Street executives. Now, as the end of the administration nears, recent legal setbacks may have emboldened Barclays. (The Swiss bank UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland remain in settlement talks with the Justice Department.) In May, a federal appeals court overturned a $1. 27 billion penalty against Bank of America over the sale of troubled mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The appeals panel found that prosecutors did not provide sufficient evidence that either the bank's Countrywide unit or a former Countrywide executive had committed fraud in a loan program known as \"the hustle. \" For its fight with the Justice Department, Barclays is bringing in a team of lawyers from Williams Connolly who represented Bank of America in that case. Barclays will also rely on its usual counsel at Sullivan Cromwell. Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse have been eager to move past their troubled legal legacies and overhaul their respective banks. Credit Suisse said on Friday that it would pay $5. 3 billion over its role in mortgage securities. For Deutsche Bank, a settlement lifts a cloud that had been hanging over the bank, and making it all the more difficult for its leader to break with its past. In recent years, its legal woes have surpassed mortgage securities to include manipulating benchmark interest rates and allegations of Russian money laundering. Since taking over in John Cryan, Deutsche Bank's chief executive, has been trying to undo this legacy. But the settlement does not dispel doubts about whether Mr. Cryan can retain membership among the world's top investment banks. Especially in the United States, Deutsche Bank's ability to compete with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase is likely to be hampered by the costly settlement. And no institution can call itself a global investment bank without a strong presence on Wall Street. \"It's the most important market for investment banking,\" said Ingo Speich, a fund manager at Union Investment in Frankfurt. \"If they want to offer investment banking services globally, they can't get around the U. S. \" One American tie of Deutsche Bank has drawn attention lately. In a financial disclosure form filed in 2015, Mr. Trump said that the wealth management division of the bank was among the firms that managed his stock investments. His transition team has since said it had sold the 's stock holdings. In that same filing, Mr. Trump said that his businesses have loans or mortgages from Deutsche worth as much as $125 million. Some critics have suggested that Mr. Trump's business and personal dealings with Deutsche Bank could pose a conflict of interest. As for Mr. Cryan, he is trying to pull off several transformations. He has been hacking away at a catalog of charges of wrongdoing and litigation that, in the bank's most recent quarterly report, required more than eight pages to explain. Other charges include violating international embargoes against countries like Iran and manipulating currency markets. In addition, Mr. Cryan has been trying to infuse the bank with a stronger sense of ethics to avoid future scandals. He also has been shrinking the bank's assets \u2014 the sum of its outstanding loans, derivatives and other holdings \u2014 to reduce its need for capital and meet stricter regulatory requirements. And he has been trying to cut costs and improve efficiency, including laying off thousands of workers and bringing order to the bank's Balkanized information technology systems. As Deutsche Bank made acquisitions over the years to expand its services, it acquired a variety of computer systems that were never properly integrated. American regulators have criticized Deutsche for not being able to provide information because of antiquated technology. Most important, Mr. Cryan has been trying to convince investors and demoralized employees that Deutsche Bank can find new sources of profit and growth despite its setbacks. Only then can it avoid the fate of European rivals that have slashed their investment banks, like Credit Suisse. Deutsche Bank's supporters say it still has many strengths. It ranks among the top currency traders. With its operations in Frankfurt and London, the bank could benefit as clients shift financial operations to the Continent because of Britain's vote to leave the European Union. The bank may also be well positioned to take advantage of growth in Europe's corporate bond markets. Companies in Europe tend to rely on traditional bank loans, but increasingly are turning to debt markets, as is already the case in the United States. Deutsche Bank is a leading issuer of corporate debt. And some clients are wary of the dominance of the big American investment banks and are eager to do business with a European bank instead. But efforts to capitalize on those opportunities are likely to be hampered for years by past errors. \"The question is how many risks are still in the pipeline,\" Mr. Speich of Union Investment said. \"It's too early to say the worst is over. \"","label":0}
{"text":"When it comes to Europe's lengthy investigations into Google, Margrethe Vestager, the region's competition chief, is hoping that the third time's a charm. Ms. Vestager announced on Thursday a new round of antitrust charges against the company \u2014 the third set since early 2015 \u2014 claiming that some of the company's advertising products had restricted consumer choice. The efforts are part of her continuing push to rein in Google's activities in the European Union, where the Silicon Valley company has captured roughly 90 percent of the region's online search market. \"Google's conduct, based on our evidence, is harmful to consumers,\" Ms. Vestager told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. \"Google's magnificent innovations don't give it the right to deny competitors the chance to innovate. \" The announcement represents a setback for Google, which vigorously denied any wrongdoing in two previous European antitrust charges linked to Android, its popular mobile operating system, and some of its dominant online search services. It also comes at a difficult time for Europe's competition authorities, which have been unable to land a knockout punch against Google's perceived abusive activities in the region, despite investigations that date back to 2010. The stakes are high. Google could face fines of up to 10 percent, or about $7 billion, of its global annual revenue if it is found to have broken Europe's tough competition rules. For months, both sides have been jockeying for position, with Google already filing lengthy legal arguments about why it believes its European activities are lawful. Ms. Vestager's antitrust charges are just one of a number of regulatory challenges to Google's activities in Europe, ranging from tax investigations in France and Spain to concerns that Google does not fully protect people's online privacy rights. The company denies any wrongdoing. Other Silicon Valley technology companies, including Amazon, Apple and Facebook, have also faced regulatory investigations in Europe, raising questions over whether the region's lawmakers are specifically focusing on these American giants, which have come to dominate much of the digital world. European officials deny any such bias. Google said in a statement on Thursday that it would provide a detailed response to Europe's latest charges, but it added, \"We believe our innovations and product improvements have increased choice for E. U. consumers and promote competition. \" The company has until the fall to respond. American competition officials have also reviewed claims that Google abused its market position to favor its services over those of rivals, though the Federal Trade Commission has yet to find any violations. Europe's new antitrust charges represent a further ratcheting up of the region's often frosty relationship with Google. In particular, European antitrust officials are taking aim at some of the company's online advertising tools \u2014 the main engine for Google's $75 billion in annual revenue. They say that the company may have abused its dominant market position when offering some of its search products on companies' websites. These businesses \u2014 including publishers and online retailers \u2014 can use Google's search engine on their sites so that people can find information like newspaper articles or promotions. Such agreements with companies, which date to 2006, also include showing advertising next to search results, often provided by Google. Ms. Vestager said on Thursday that the technology company may have abused its dominance \u2014 it holds roughly an 80 percent market share in this type of niche search \u2014 by forcing companies to sign onerous contracts that limited competition and reduced consumer choice. Since 2009, Google has made it easier for advertising rivals to show their offerings alongside its services. But Europe's competition chief said that Google still required companies to show a minimum number of ads on their site. The Silicon Valley company also requires businesses using the service to ask for approval on where some rivals' ads may be shown on their websites. \"All these restrictions allowed Google to protect its market share and stifle competition,\" Ms. Vestager said. Europe's antitrust authorities have also doubled down on a previous competition charge, announced last year, which claimed that Google had diverted traffic from competitors in favor of its own site. On Thursday, Ms. Vestager said her team had found new evidence to buttress their claims, adding that because of Google's actions, European consumers may not have access to the most relevant search results when looking online for goods and services. Yet when asked about the failure of European antitrust authorities to order fines or changes to the way Google does business, despite several years of investigations, Ms. Vestager said she aimed to ensure the charges against the company stood up in European courts. \"Speed is of the essence,\" but \"the other side of that coin is quality,\" Ms. Vestager said on Thursday. \"Sometimes that kind of quality comes at the cost of speed. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Sarah Sanders hit back at criticism that General Kelly was fabricating his account of Rep. Frederica Wilson grandstanding during an event to dedicate a new FBI office in Texas. The press was all over Sanders who clarified that Rep. Wilson made comments during the event about how she got the funding for the FBI office by picking up the phone and calling Barack. She was grandstanding and making the event about her, according to Kelly. The fake news is saying Sanders said the press couldn t speak to Kelly but when you listen to what she said it s clear she said to go ahead if they want to challenge Kelly. She NEVER said the press couldn t talk to him.In case you missed the wonderful message from Chief of Staff Kelly:White House Chief of Staff John Kelly says he was stunned to learn that Congresswoman Frederica Wilson listened in on the president s call to a fallen soldier s wife. He came into the White House press briefing and let the press have it too. He goes through the steps of what happens when someone in the military is killed. He says that the members of our military are the best 1% of our population. He said he was brokenhearted when he found out what a member of congress did. This is a heartfelt moment that is amazing:KELLY DOES A GREAT JOB OF CUTTING THROUGH THE BS FROM THE PRESS:The retired general who lost his own son in Afghanistan said the call to Sgt. La David T. Johnson s wife should have been sacred. It stuns me that a member of congress would have listened in on that conversation. Absolutely stuns me. I thought at least that was sacred, he said.The White House official found himself at the center of a charge that President Barack Obama didn t make calls to the families of fallen soldiers this week after President Trump claimed that Obama didn t call Kelly when his son Robert died.Kelly said Thursday at a White House news conference that it s true but he wasn t offended.In fact, Kelly says he counseled Trump not to call Gold Star families and to instead write letters.","label":1}
{"text":"What we all should be doing first thing in the morning A simple, cheap and effective way to jump start your metabolism, weight loss and improve your health  What if I told you that by doing this every day, making it part of your morning routine just like brushing your teeth, would help you to lose weight, flush out toxins, hydrate your body and skin, improve brain function, give you more energy and decrease your appetite, would you do it?  Drinking water upon rising in the morning can have huge health benefits! Some people call it water therapy and has its origination in Ayurvedic medicine. It is purported to help with numerous diseases such as cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes and migraines.  To reap the benefits, drink the water upon waking (ideally 45 minutes before you eat) and make it part of your morning routine. Most us are walking around in a dehydrated state. So, start your day off the right way!  Ideally filtered water that is void of chemicals and fluoride is best. I personally like the Berkey filter system as this is affordable for many instead of a whole house system. Most water pitchers are ineffective for removing most of the chemicals in our water but there are a couple good ones out there such as the \"Clearly Filtered\" pitcher. But even if you don't have a water filter system, it does not mean you should not drink up.  For most people 16 oz. of water in the morning is the right amount. Others say to drink double this amount. This may be a lot of water to consume for most people first thing in the morning. My suggestion would be to start out with 8 oz. and slowly work your way up to the higher amount and see how you feel. Moderation is key as too little or too much water is never a good thing.  The 8 glasses filled with 8 oz. of water is a myth and no science behind this reasoning. Another simple rule is to divide your body weight in half and drink this amount in ounces. But if you are a large person, this may feel like you are spending your day drinking water!  Instead focus on getting that glass of water first thing in the day and then add in water, herbal teas, fruits and vegetables during the day. If your urine is very pale yellow throughout the day, then you are hydrated. If it is a bright yellow to orange, drink up! Riboflavin, a B vitamin can make your urine a bright yellow. Benefits to drinking water first thing in the morning It can jump start your metabolism  It can increase your metabolism by 24% for the first 90 minutes after consuming that glass of water. Another study showed that it can increase your metabolic rate by 30% for the next 40 minutes after the water is consumed. Hydration This is more important that you think. When dehydrated, we may experience brain fog, lack of energy and metal clarity. Hydrating in the morning can increase the flow of oxygen which is energizing. Hydrating will also help the skin to look younger. Flushes out toxins  Support your kidneys by helping them to flush out toxins and give your body the water it needs first thing in the a.m. Speed up the detox process by adding a tablespoon of lemon juice to your morning water. This is best done prior to brushing your teeth in the morning as the film on your teeth will protect the enamel from the acidity in the lemon juice. Support brain health  Your brain tissue is 75% water. Not having enough water can make you feel tired, drained and can cause mood swings. Prevent you from overeating Just by drinking water you feel full. Studies show that those who consume water before every meal lost an average of 4.5 pounds over a three-month period. That's with no dieting, not changing your eating habits-just adding in water. Less colds and Flu  Staying hydrated helps to maintain the health of your lymphatic system which also affects how your body fights off infection.  If you are looking for a simple, cheap and effective way to improve your health and stimulate weight loss, then this is it!  Sources  Bauman, E. & Friedlander, J. (2014) Therapeutic Nutrition. CA: Bauman College.  Carroll, A. (8\/24\/15) No, you do not have to drink 8 glasses of water a day. http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/08\/25\/upshot\/no-you-do-not-have-to-drink-8-glasses-of-water-a-day.html","label":1}
{"text":"The commander of the Taliban s special forces branch, known as the Red Unit, was killed last week in Helmand province by Afghan forces, according to Afghanistan s main intelligence agency. The National Directorate of Security (NDS) said Mullah Shah Wali, also known as Mullah Naser, was killed in an air operation in Helmand. The province is a Taliban stronghold in the heartland of Afghanistan s lucrative drug trade. Wali became the commander of the Taliban s Red Unit as well as deputy shadow governor of Helmand province three years ago and was directly involved in Taliban offensives, the statement said. The Red Unit is thought to be equipped with advanced weapons, including night vision scopes, 82mm rockets, heavy machine guns and U.S.-made assault rifles, according to the Afghan military. Wali was killed alongside a suicide bomber and two other Taliban commanders in Helmand s Musa Qala district, according to the NDS. The United States has worked hard to build up Afghan air support and attack capabilities since they were found inadequate after most foreign forces withdrew three years ago.","label":0}
{"text":"California gained an embassy in Russia last weekend, at least in the eyes of those who have promised to seek a statewide vote on secession, nicknamed Calexit, in 2018.Louis Marinelli, a San Diego resident who is the leader of the group promoting an effort to turn the state into an independent country, organized the Moscow event that was publicized on social media. We want to start laying the groundwork for a dialogue about an independent California joining the United Nations now, he said in an email Monday.","label":1}
{"text":"A Syrian fighter pilot who was detained after crashing in southern Turkey in March has returned to Syria after a Turkish court released him on Friday, Syrian TV reported. The pilot, Mehmet Sufhan, faced trial in Turkey charged with espionage and violating border security after he crashed in the border province of Hatay. He was found by a search team, treated at a local hospital and detained. Turkish media said on Friday that a criminal court in Hatay had released him, but that legal proceedings were continuing. Several hours later Syrian TV reported that Sufhan was back in Syria, saying his return was the result of vigorous attempts and intensive efforts. It was not immediately clear whether Sufhan would come back to Turkey for his trial, which was set for Oct. 25, according to Sufhan s attorney, Anil Cevahir Can. Sufhan s release will hopefully help rebuild bridges of friendship between Syria and Turkey, Can added.","label":0}
{"text":"Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Jay Dyer from jaysanalysis.com, Jamie Hanshaw author of Weird Stuff, Branko Mali of Kali Tribune, Randy J of 21Wire 72nd episode of BOILER ROOM. Dim the lights, dawn the headphones and indulge in some Boiler Room with the crew. .Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! LISTEN TO THE SHOW IN THE PLAYER BELOW ENJOY!Reference Links:","label":1}
{"text":"The United States will transfer an observation blimp to the Philippines to help it track maritime activity and guard its borders amid rising tensions in the South China Sea, a U.S. diplomat said on Monday. Philip Goldberg, U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, said Washington would give Manila, its oldest Asia-Pacific security ally, $42 million worth of sensors, radar and communications equipment. \"We will add to its capability to put sensors on ships and put an aerostat blimp in the air to see into the maritime space,\" Goldberg said in an interview with CNN Philippines, The blimp is a balloon-borne radar to collect information and detect movements in the South China Sea, a Philippine military official said. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, believed to have huge deposits of oil and gas. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims to parts of the waters, through which about $5 trillion in trade is shipped every year. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter visited the Philippines last week to reaffirm Washington's \"ironclad\" commitment to defend Manila under a 1951 security treaty. China has been expanding its presence on its seven artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago and on Monday landed a military plane for the first time on one of them, Fiery Cross Reef. It comes ahead of a planned U.S. freedom of navigation patrol this month near the Spratlys. Carter's visit also signals the start of U.S. military deployment in the Philippines, with 75 soldiers to be rotated in and out of an air base north of Manila. Goldberg said the two allies had agreed to set up a system for \"secure and classified communications\" as part of a five-year, $425 million security initiative by Washington in Southeast Asia. Manila will receive some $120 million in U.S. military aid this year, the largest sum since 2000 when the American military returned to the Philippines for training and exercises after an eight-year hiatus. They signed a new deal in 2013 allowing increased U.S. military presence on a rotational basis and storage of supplies and equipment for maritime security and humanitarian missions.","label":0}
{"text":"British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said on Tuesday that his remarks about a jailed aid worker in Iran could have been clearer, after opponents said his comments might provoke the Islamic Republic to hand the dual national a longer jail term. As Prime Minister Theresa May heads toward a 2019 EU divorce that will shape Britain s prosperity and global influence for generations, her minority government has stumbled into several controversies that risk undermining her remaining authority. In the latest misstep, Johnson came under pressure to retract remarks made on Nov. 1 that Iranian-British aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been teaching people journalism before her arrest in April 2016. Zaghari-Ratcliffe s employer, the Thomson Reuters Foundation, said Johnson s comment was incorrect, while opposition British lawmakers said the remarks could land the aid worker a longer term in jail. Johnson called Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Tuesday to discuss the case, and made clear that he had been seeking to make the point that he condemned the Iranian view that training journalists was a crime, a spokesman said. The UK government has no doubt that she was on holiday in Iran when she was arrested last year and that was the sole purpose of her visit, Johnson told parliament. My point was that I disagreed with the Iranian view that training journalists was a crime, not that I wanted to lend any credence to Iranian allegations that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been engaged in such activity, he said. I accept that my remarks could have been clearer in that respect and I am glad to provide this clarification. Johnson said he would travel to Iran in the coming weeks and discuss all consular issues there, and would try to meet Zaghari-Ratcliffe while there. May s spokesman expressed confidence in Johnson, adding that the he was doing a good job . Monique Villa, Thomson Reuters Foundation CEO, said Zaghari-Ratcliffe was a project manager in the media development team. Villa said Zaghari-Ratcliffe was not a journalist and had never trained journalists in Iran. We welcome UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson s clarification of his comments, Villa said. It s time now for the Foreign Secretary to meet Nazanin in jail. Johnson is not the only one distracted. At the weekend, May s deputy, Damian Green, denied an allegation made in The Sunday Times newspaper that police found pornography on one of his computers in the Houses of Parliament in 2008. On Monday, international development minister Priti Patel apologized for failing to disclose meetings with senior Israeli officials during a private holiday. Besides her government s sometimes contradictory signals on Brexit, May has faced criticism from opponents for her handling of other issues: from a deadly apartment block fire in June to a sexual harassment scandal in parliament that prompted Michael Fallon, her loyal defense secretary, to resign. In my lifetime, I have never experienced a British government which seems to be so shambolic, said Simon Hix, a professor of political science at the London School of Economics. They are in the midst of one of the greatest challenges of the last 50 years Brexit and they have sexual harassment scandals in parliament, the Paradise Papers and then now on top of that the behavior of May s ministers. On Tuesday, Johnson came under pressure from opponents to retract his comments about Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is serving a five-year jail sentence after being convicted of plotting to overthrow Iran s clerical establishment. She was brought again into court on Saturday, three days after Johnson s remarks, and accused by a judge of spreading propaganda against the regime . The British Foreign Office quoted Zarif as saying that Johnson s comments had nothing to do with the weekend court appearance. The charges against Zaghari-Ratcliffe were denied by her family and the Foundation, a charity organization that operates independently of Reuters News. By suggesting Nazanin was in Iran teaching people journalism , Boris Johnson has endangered the cause to secure her release, Tulip Siddiq, a lawmaker for the opposition Labour Party, said.","label":0}
{"text":"A Los Angeles County sheriff s deputy accidentally shot himself while chasing a suspect on February 10.According to the Los Angeles Times, the unnamed deputy sustained a gunshot wound to the calf. He was taken by ambulance to a local hospital, where he received medical treatment for non-life threatening injuries.According to the L.A. Times, the officer attempted to stop a vehicle at around 4:00 in the morning, when the driver fled the scene. The deputy ran after the suspect and accidentally shot himself. Police have not released further details on how the shooting took place.Here s more on the story from KTLA.Just over a week ago, the L.A. County Sheriff s Department mistakenly released a murderer.According to Fox 11, 37-year-old Steven Lawrence Wright was accidentally released from jail at about 1:00 in the afternoon, on Saturday, January 30.Wright was arrested on murder charges and was awaiting trial.The Sheriff s department finally realized that Wright had been mistakenly let out of jail at 9:30 pm on January 31, more than 32 hours later.Wright was finally recaptured on February 8, nine days after he was first allowed to walk out of the jail. Not surprisingly, the accused murderer had fled the state of California. He was taken into custody in Boulder City, Nevada.But ineptitude isn t the only thing that is troubling the L.A. County Sheriff s Department this week.The department has been under intense public scrutiny over the past several years. A five-year-long federal investigation has resulted in the convictions of more than a dozen officials on a wide-range of brutality, abuse and corruption charges.Those convicted include Undersheriff Paul Tanaka and former Captain William Thomas Carey, along with a list of other former department officials and deputies.On February 10, the L.A. Times reported that former sheriff Lee Baca, who retired in 2014 during the height of the abuse and corruption scandal, pled guilty to making false statements to investigators.Baca struck a plea agreement with prosecutors, who promised to drop additional charges in exchange for the guilty plea. Under the agreement, he will serve no more than six months in prison for his crimes.The almost unbelievable ineptitude and corruption in the L.A. County Sheriff s Department should serve as a warning to all of us.Police are not infallible. Sometimes they make stupid mistakes, like accidentally shooting themselves in the leg or mixing up their prisoner list. Sometimes they abuse their power and violate the nature of their oath.We don t do our society any favors when we put cops on a pedestal or automatically assume that having a gun and a badge makes them infallible. Featured image from screen capture via KTLA","label":1}
{"text":"This news should be enough to end Hillary s obsession with becoming our next President. The Democrats may be willing to ignore all of her criminal and immoral activities, but are they willing to accept Hillary and Bill turning our White House into an assisted living facility? Is Hillary Clinton fit to be president?Putting aside her various scandals and shoddy record as secretary of state, what about her health? Is she physically up to the job?In my new book, Unlikeable: The Problem With Hillary, I devote five pages to Hillary s health. As far as I can tell, however, I am the only journalist who is interested in this important subject.Given the immense stress and strain of being president, Hillary s health is an issue that demands a thorough exploration.Last July, Hillary s longtime personal physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, released a short, two-page letter that appeared to give Hillary a clean bill of health. She does not smoke and drinks alcohol occasionally, Bardack wrote. She does not use illicit drugs or tobacco products. She eats a diet rich in lean protein, vegetables and fruits. She exercises regularly, including yoga, swimming, walking and weight training. According to Dr. Bardack, Hillary had completely recovered from the fainting spell, concussion and blood clot in her brain that she suffered while she was secretary of state.But Dr. Bardack s letter was hardly a detailed medical history. According to sources close to Bill and Hillary Clinton, the letter wasn t the full story then and it s not the full story now.To this day, Hillary still suffers from many of the troubling symptoms that I wrote about in Unlikeable: blinding headaches, exhaustion, insomnia, and a tremor in her hands. As a precaution against the spectacle of fainting in public, which could easily doom her candidacy, Hillary now travels with a personal physician on all her major campaign trips.There have been several incidents in which she has nearly collapsed. For example, after her 11-hour testimony before the Trey Gowdy Benghazi committee, Hillary swooned as she walked to a waiting car. She had to be supported in the arms of her aides and helped into the back seat.Tension headaches continue to plague her and often make it hard for her to maintain her grueling schedule. Huma Abedin, deputy chief of staff and her closest adviser, frequently orders campaign aides to alter Hillary s schedule at the last moment so the candidate can catch her breath and take out time for naps. This may explain why Hillary is often as much as two hours late for a campaign appearance. She no longer has the stamina for 18-hour campaign days that she was once capable of doing, said a source close to Hillary.","label":1}
{"text":"The Comedy Central roasts of celebrities are well known and hilarious, for the most part. While it doesn t look like the roastees know what s going on, and that everything is entirely off-the-cuff, the truth is that there is a lot of preparation ahead of the actual roast. Roastees get some input, even getting to tell the comedy writers what subjects are off-limits for jokes, but, beyond that, they don t dictate very much.And then there s Donald Trump. Putting his roast together seems to have been one long, horrific chore for the Comedy Central team assigned to it. In fact, that roast is perhaps some of the strongest evidence we ve got that Trump is unconscionably thin-skinned, and will continue to be after the election. Roastees for the Comedy Central roasts know what s involved. They know they re going to be skewered. If they don t like the idea, they don t have to do it.It makes us want to look at Trump and say, DUH! At Comedy Central, Trump apparently wanted to dictate everything, all the way down to the level of beauty in the women who were to escort him on stage. According to the stage manager: The proposed woman [who would take his coat onstage], Trump said, was not somebody he wanted to be associated with at that moment, Ferkle recalled. In other words, she was not pretty enough. To appease Trump, Comedy Central moved the actress elsewhere on the stage, Ferkle said. The show went on. That s fairly typical Trumpian misogyny, so not all that surprising. What s perhaps more surprising were the other ways that Trump drove the staff up the wall. For instance, he was apparently giving the show s writers and producers hell over whether jokes about his hair were allowed. The lead writer, Ray James, tried working with Trump on why hair jokes were a necessary part of the roast. Trump resisted, because of course he did: I had to explain to him why he needed to have some jokes about his own hair. I said, You have to own it. If you have a great hair joke, you will be impervious to hair jokes.' Instead, Trump kept nixing the hair jokes, and wanted to replace one of them with a simple, Look how great [my hair] looks. Because that s just hilarious. But perhaps the most annoying thing was that the writers had to draft multiple rebuttals for Trump. The rebuttal comes at the end of the roast, when the roastee gets up and turns it all back on his or her roasters. Trump was returning scripts marked up entirely with black Sharpies, including blacking out punchlines.Nobody blacks out punchlines, according to the roast s producers and writers. One writer, Jesse Joyce, said: I have done this a long time and nobody blacks out punchlines. [Scrapping punchlines represents] a classic lack of an understanding of how a joke works. And Trump couldn t be consistent about his edits (if, indeed, they can be called that), either. He took out some opportunities to be crass while wallowing in others. He also changed some of the jokes from funny to not funny; again, showing a fundamental unwillingness to even try and understand what was being put before him: Trump made a few lackluster attempts at cracking wise. He changed a joke meant to slam [Seth] MacFarlane from: The only way you ll ever draw a crowd is with a pencil. Trump s revision: The only crowd you ll attract is flies.' He also wanted to roast the entire dais at once by, well, being entirely himself. How this is even a joke is beyond us, since everything he does is to feel superior to everyone on the planet: Their [sic] all losers and I like associating with loser because it makes me feel even better about myself. It got to the point where Ray James just wanted to destroy Trump in any way possible: I begged any writer to get on board, James said. Let s write jokes about this guy having a small cock. I wanted to destroy this man and expose him as having a tiny penis because that will hurt him more than any jokes about his family or orange skin.' That didn t work. Furthermore, given the fact that Trump just had to talk about his penis size in response to Rubio s jab about his tiny hands during a televised debate, it s likely the dick jokes probably wouldn t have made it in anyway. If they had, he probably would have lost it up onstage.The entire roast was classic Trump. He sat on the stage with a tight smile, not really responding, much the same way he did at the 2011 White House correspondents dinner when Obama roasted him. Despite knowing what was coming, he couldn t take anyone making fun of him and probably relished trying to hurt them back.Comedy Central s president sees the roast as prophetic of what s happening today: It is impossible to not see how absurd the whole thing is. If you go back and watch the roast, there re probably a lot of oddly prophetic things being said that are relevant today. But just the idea that someone who did a Comedy Central Roast [is] a major party [nominee] for president is pretty shocking. Especially when that person couldn t handle being criticized, teased, or otherwise treated as anything other than the god he thinks he is.Featured image by Andrew H. Walker\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"If not for the second amendment, this woman would be dead pic.twitter.com\/QKLST51VaF Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) September 23, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"The Republican presidential candidates and the far-right echo chamber have made \"politically correct\" an all-purpose dismissal for facts and opinions they don't want to hear. Take Donald Trump's claim that when the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 9\/11, \"I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.\" The Post's Fact Checker columnist, Glenn Kessler, found no evidence to support Trump's claim and gave him Four Pinocchios, reserved for the most baldfaced lies. PolitiFact gave the statement a Pants on Fire rating, denoting extreme mendacity. But when ABC's George Stephanopoulos pressed the GOP front-runner to explain himself, noting that \"police say it didn't happen,\" Trump resorted to what has become a familiar dodge. \"I know it might not be politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down,\" Trump said. Ben Carson, running second in the national polls, is even more fond of the political-correctness allegation \u2014 so much so that it could be considered a central theme of his campaign. It is unclear whether he actually knows or cares what \"political correctness\" means. The phrase is just more verbal romaine to add to the word salad that is Carson's discourse. He used it when challenged on his stance that a Muslim should not be president, even though the Constitution explicitly states there can be no \"religious test\" for public office. \"Political correctness is imposed by the secular progressives and those who wish to fundamentally change our society,\" he said. \"Therefore, they make things off-limits to talk about, but you know what? I'm going to talk about it anyway.\" In other words, he considers the framers of the Constitution a bunch of \"secular progressives,\" since they're the ones who put a candidate's faith off-limits. That's not the loopiest thing Carson has said (his attempts to discuss financial reform are in a class of their own) but it's in the top 10. The renowned neurosurgeon took the same route Sunday when Stephanopoulos \u2014 who had a busy morning \u2014 asked him to react to Trump's call for the United States to resume harsh interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding. \"I agree that there's no such thing as political correctness when you're fighting an enemy who wants to destroy you and everything that you have anything to do with,\" Carson said. \"And I'm not one who is real big on telling the enemy what we're going to do and what we're not going to do.\" But Carson is a medical doctor who took an oath to heal and alleviate suffering. Or maybe he believes that Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, was just another PC lemming, blindly following the secular progressives who are leading us to our collective doom. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, asked about his view that the United States should accept no Syrian refugees, said we should not bow to \"political correctness, the elites in Washington or the editorial pages of major newspapers.\" Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), asked this summer whether he thought the term \"anchor baby \" was offensive, told reporters \"we need to stop this politically correct nonsense.\" Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, after making a joke about transgender people that some found offensive, responded that \"everybody wants to be politically correct, everybody wants to be loved by the media and loved by the left and loved by the elitists.\" And it's not just GOP candidates who have the anti-political-correctness bug. Many conservative commentators have been quick to condemn the \"politically correct\" Princeton University students who demand that the school remove symbols honoring Woodrow Wilson \u2014 a onetime Princeton president \u2014 because of his racism. These critics ignore the historical fact that Wilson was racist not just by today's standards but by those of his time. He wrote that African Americans were an \"ignorant and inferior race.\" He lavishly praised the Ku Klux Klan and pined for the Confederacy. As president of the United States, he ordered that integrated federal government workplaces be segregated; NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois wrote of one black clerk who \"had a cage built around him to separate him from his white companions.\" Yes, I'm being politically correct. But also truthful. Read more from Eugene Robinson's archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.","label":0}
{"text":"Below are people mentioned as contenders for senior roles as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump works to form his administration before taking office on Jan. 20, according to Reuters sources and media reports. Trump has already tapped a number of people for other top jobs in his administration. For a list of posts already filled, see. * Mitt Romney, 2012 Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor * Rudy Giuliani, Republican former mayor of New York City * Bob Corker, Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee * David Petraeus, retired general and former CIA director who pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information that he shared with his biographer, with whom he was having an affair * Jon Huntsman, former Republican Utah governor and ambassador to China under President Barack Obama, ran for Republican presidential nomination in 2012 * James Stavridis, retired Navy admiral * John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, foreign policy adviser to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney * Rex Tillerson, president and chief executive officer of Exxon Mobil * Joe Manchin, Democratic U.S. senator for West Virginia * Dana Rohrabacher, Republican U.S. representative of California and senior member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs * Michael McCaul, Republican U.S. representative from Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee * David Clarke, Milwaukee County sheriff and vocal Trump supporter * Retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, former leader of the military's Southern Command * Joe Arpaio, who lost his bid for re-election as Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff, and has campaigned for Trump * Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state * Frances Townsend, who was homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to President George W. Bush * Jeff Holmstead, energy lawyer, former EPA official during George W. Bush administration * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Leslie Rutledge, Republican Arkansas attorney general * Carol Comer, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management * Scott Pruitt, Republican Oklahoma attorney general * Kevin Cramer, Republican U.S. representative from North Dakota * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors * Heidi Heitkamp, Democratic U.S. senator from North Dakota * Joe Manchin, Democratic U.S. senator from West Virginia * Gary Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc * Larry Nichols, co-founder of Devon Energy Corp * James Connaughton, CEO of Nautilus Data Technologies and a former environmental adviser to President George W. Bush * Rick Perry, Republican former Texas governor * Forrest Lucas, founder of oil products company Lucas Oil * Heidi Heitkamp, Democratic U.S. senator from North Dakota * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in Gryphon * Cathy McMorris Rodgers, U.S. representative from Washington state and House Republican Conference chair * Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee * Jan Brewer, former Republican Arizona governor * Mary Fallin, Republican Oklahoma governor * Ray Washburne, CEO of investment company Charter Holdings * Navy Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency * Ronald Burgess, retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former Defense Intelligence Agency chief * Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency * Pete Hoekstra, Republican former U.S. representative from Michigan * Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor * Debra Wong Yang, former U.S. attorney for California's Central District, appointed by former President George W. Bush * Ralph Ferrara, a securities attorney at Proskauer * Paul Atkins, Republican former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins who is heading Trump's transition team for independent financial regulatory agencies, including the SEC * Daniel Gallagher, Republican former SEC commissioner * John Allison, a former CEO of regional bank BB&T and former CEO of the Cato Institute * Paul Atkins, former SEC commissioner * Thomas Hoenig, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp vice chairman * Dan DiMicco, former CEO of steel producer Nucor Corp * Robert Lighthizer, a Washington trade attorney and former deputy U.S. trade representative during the Republican Reagan administration * Andrew Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants * Lou Barletta, Republican U.S. representative from Pennsylvania * Victoria Lipnic, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission member and former Labor Department official during the George W. Bush administration * Gary Cohn, Goldman Sachs Group Inc president * Mick Mulvaney, Republican U.S. representative from South Carolina * David Malpass, former chief economist with investment bank Bear Stearns and a senior Trump adviser who also served in the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush presidential administrations * Scott Brown, former Republican U.S. senator from Massachusetts * Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor * Jeff Miller, former Republican U.S. representative from Florida who was chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee The Trump transition team confirmed the president-elect would choose from a list of 21 names he drew up during his campaign, including Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah and William Pryor, a federal judge with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.","label":0}
{"text":"Republican Donald Trump trails Democrat Hillary Clinton by 10 points in the 2016 presidential campaign, according to a poll released on Tuesday, showing little change from a week ago and suggesting his comments about a Mexican-American judge had yet to affect his standing in the race. The latest Reuters\/Ipsos poll came after several days in which Trump faced sharp criticism over his insistence that a federal judge who was born in Indiana to Mexican parents was biased in a case involving the celebrity billionaire. But the fallout from Trump's comments appeared to have done little to help Clinton build her lead over the presumptive Republican nominee. The online survey showed that 44.3 percent of likely voters said they would vote for Clinton, compared with 34.7 percent who would support Trump. A further 20.9 percent said they would not vote for either candidate. The results were little changed from last week's survey. The poll was conducted from Friday to Tuesday, starting shortly after Trump's first comments about U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, who is overseeing fraud lawsuits against Trump University, the New York businessman's defunct real estate school. Trump has suggested that Curiel's heritage is influencing the judge's opinion about the case because of Trump's campaign rhetoric about illegal immigration. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan called Trump's comments textbook racism on Tuesday, while Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Trump should stop attacking minority groups. Bowing to pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump said on Tuesday he would no longer talk about the judge, adding that his previous remarks about Curiel had been misconstrued. Other events, including news that Clinton had secured enough delegates and superdelegates to become the first female presidential candidate of a major U.S. political party, occurred toward the end of the poll. The poll included 1,261 respondents and had a credibility interval of 3.2 percentage points. See the poll results in Reuters' Polling Explorer. [polling.reuters.com\/#poll\/TM651Y15_13\/filters\/LIKELY:1\/dates\/20160401-20160607\/type\/day] For most of the year, Clinton has maintained an edge over Trump in the Reuters\/Ipsos poll of likely voters. That edge briefly disappeared in May after Trump's remaining rivals for the Republican nomination dropped out and party leaders started to line up behind his campaign. Trump's level of support has since eroded as he sparred with his party's leadership and continued to be dogged with questions about Trump University. The Reuters\/Ipsos poll differs from others that are often days removed from when their data was collected. As a result, the Reuters\/Ipsos poll often detects shifts in opinion well ahead of other surveys. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Polling Explorer (Clinton versus Trump) polling.reuters.com\/#poll\/TM651Y15_13\/filters\/LIKELY:1\/dates\/20160401-20160607\/type\/day ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday made a passionate case for mobile devices to be built in a way that would allow the government to gain access to personal data if needed to prevent a terrorist attack or enforce tax laws. Speaking at the South by Southwest festival in Texas, the president said he could not comment on the legal case in which the Federal Bureau of Investigation is trying to force Apple Inc. to allow access to an iPhone linked to San Bernardino, California, shooter Rizwan Farook. But he made clear that despite his commitment to Americans' privacy and civil liberties, a balance was needed to allow some government intrusion if necessary. \"If technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there's no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer, how do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot?\" he said. \"What mechanisms do we have available to even do simple things like tax enforcement because if in fact you can't crack that at all, government can't get in, then everybody is walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket.\" Last month, the FBI obtained a court order requiring Apple to write new software and take other measures to disable passcode protection and allow access to Farook's iPhone. Apple, which declined to comment on Obama's remarks on Friday, has not complied. It said the government request would create a \"back door\" to phones that could be abused by criminals and governments, and that Congress has not given the Justice Department authority to make such a demand. Obama's comments were his most expansive on the subject since the dispute. He acknowledged skepticism about the government in the wake of the revelations about U.S. surveillance programs by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. But he pressed his point that a compromise that respected civil liberties and protected security had to be found. That solution would likely be a system with strong encryption and a secure \"key\" that is accessible to the \"smallest number of people possible\" for issues that were agreed to be important. \"Setting aside the specific case between the FBI and Apple ... we're going to have to make some decisions about how do we balance these respective risks,\" Obama said. \"My conclusion so far is you cannot take an absolutist view.\" Adding to his argument, the president listed airport security and stops for drunk drivers as examples of measures that were intrusive but accepted. He also warned against \"fetishizing\" phones. \"This notion that somehow our data is different and can be walled off from those other tradeoffs we make I believe is incorrect,\" he said. Top White House officials have lobbied the industry aggressively to work with the government on the issue, which was brought to a head by the California shootings. The FBI says Farook and his wife were inspired by Islamist militants when they shot and killed 14 people on Dec. 2 at a holiday party in California. The couple later died in a shootout with police.","label":0}
{"text":"PALM BEACH, Fla. \u2014 The Trump administration is planning to roll out its first concrete measures against China on trade, administration officials said on Thursday, hardening its position toward America's largest trading partner just as President Trump welcomed President Xi Jinping of China to his seaside club here for their first meeting. Sometime after Mr. Xi leaves the United States, these officials said, Mr. Trump plans to sign an executive order targeting countries that dump steel into the American market, an aggressive measure aimed mainly at China. It is unclear exactly what the order would do or how harsh it would be, but it would be designed to begin to make good on Mr. Trump's promise during the campaign to redress China's huge trade surplus with the United States. In addition, an official said, the White House is moving out a senior economy policy official, Andrew Quinn, who had helped negotiate the Partnership, former President Barack Obama's signature trade initiative. Mr. Quinn had become the subject of a battle between two camps in the White House: economic nationalists, who wanted him out, and more mainstream backers of free trade, who defended him. Taken together, these developments constituted a potentially significant victory for the coming off a string of setbacks in their efforts to persuade the president to deliver on the most combative planks of his presidential campaign. But the ultimate outcome of this policy debate is still far from clear, several officials said. Mr. Trump does not plan to confront Mr. Xi with the most aggressive of his campaign threats: a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods. Nor is the United States likely to designate China a currency manipulator, something he promised to do as a candidate. Holding back those moves suggests Mr. Trump is also heeding the more moderate voices among his advisers, who argue that the United States cannot afford to ignite a trade war with China. \"The nativist and nationalist forces certainly have influence,\" said Nicholas Lardy, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Peterson International Institute for Economics. \"But it looks like it's dwindling rapidly. \" Mr. Lardy said cases on steel were mostly symbolic, since American imports of steel from China accounted for only a few percentage points of the trade deficit. The Obama administration filed multiple cases with the World Trade Organization. Still, the pitched battle over trade policy, on the eve of Mr. Trump's meeting with Mr. Xi, injected an unpredictable note into an encounter that has been billed mostly as a session for the two leaders. Mr. Trump made it clear the informal setting would not prevent him from confronting his guest with the chronic imbalances between the United State and China. \"We have been treated unfairly and have made terrible trade deals with China for many, many years,\" he said to reporters on Air Force One. \"That's one of the things we are going to be talking about. \" Mr. Xi arrived in Florida on Thursday afternoon, stepping off his Air China flight into the humid air of Palm Beach. On Thursday evening, he attended a formal dinner at Mr. Trump's estate. A series of meetings were scheduled for Friday morning, followed by a working lunch. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson greeted Mr. Xi and his wife, who walked on a red carpet, flanked by an honor guard carrying flags of both countries. Mr. Trump, who arrived from Washington later, greeted Mr. Xi in an arrival ceremony at the front steps of the estate. Speaking to reporters afterward, Mr. Tillerson said the president was prepared to demand an \"economic relationship that is fair on both sides\" and said the chief goal of the nation's trade policy would be fashioned after the president's \"America First\" credo. \"To that end,\" he said, \"we will pursue economic engagement with China that prioritizes the economic of the American people. \" For weeks leading up to this meeting, China has served as a kind of proxy for Mr. Trump's advisers to play out their clashing worldviews. The contingent \u2014 led by the president's chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, and the director of the National Trade Council, Peter Navarro \u2014 squared off against the more traditional group, which included two former Goldman Sachs executives, Gary D. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, and the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. Mr. Mnuchin, one official said, has gravitated in recent days toward a tougher line on China. Mr. Bannon, officials said, pushed hard for the removal of Mr. Quinn, a special assistant for international trade, investment and development. Mr. Quinn had the support of his boss, Mr. Cohn, a Democrat who has emerged as an influential voice with Mr. Trump on economic policy. But he was unable to save Mr. Quinn, who will return to his previous post with the Office of the United States Trade Representative. In a conciliatory gesture, the two countries are expected to announce they will continue to hold an annual dialogue on strategic and economic issues, which began during the George W. Bush administration and continued under Mr. Obama, though there has been some talk of elevating the session to the level of Vice President Mike Pence. Among the sensitive topics that may come up is American concern about the possibility that Chinese investors might seek to purchase the nuclear power business of Westinghouse Electric Co. Westinghouse, once a symbol of America's leadership in nuclear energy, was forced to file for bankruptcy in late March, in the face of mounting losses. Though many of its wounds were \u2014 a disastrous deal for a construction business proved too costly \u2014 broad market and industry forces have also changed the economic calculus for nuclear energy. American officials are profoundly concerned about the potential national security implications of a purchase of Westinghouse by interests with ties to the Chinese government, including the danger that a sale could deliver sensitive nuclear secrets to that nation. A White House official said Thursday that the administration is watching the potential sale closely but declined to comment on options that the United States government might have to block the sale to Chinese interests. Bloomberg News first reported about the government's concern about the sale. Discussions about the issue are underway among top American officials at the Department of Energy, the State Department and the Treasury Department. Even before the bankruptcy, Westinghouse's Japanese parent was already moving away from the business of building nuclear power plants, focusing instead on maintaining existing reactors and developing reactors. It follows a broad pattern in the business, as big companies reassess the viability of nuclear and the field of players shrinks. General Electric has pared its nuclear operations, while the French builder Areva is going through a major restructuring. China has been moving to fill the void, as it increasingly develops its nuclear abilities and pushes homegrown players to look for opportunities beyond their borders. But China's increasing presence in nuclear energy has raised security concerns in some countries.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. government on Friday said it was temporarily waiving a law that limits the availability of cargoes on the U.S. coasts, a step that will ensure enough fuel reaches emergency responders during Hurricane Irma and in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. The Jones Act mandates the use of U.S.-flagged vessels to transport merchandise between U.S. coasts. The Department of Homeland Security waived the requirement for one week. This will allow oil and gas operators to use often cheaper, tax-free, or more readily available foreign-flagged vessels. Harvey, which hit Texas with record floods, had a wider effect of disrupting fuel distribution across Florida, Georgia and other Southeastern states by shutting refineries and pipelines. With Hurricane Irma, one of the most powerful Atlantic storms in a century, expected to hit Florida in days, the region will experience one of the largest mass evacuations in American history and see historic levels of restoration and response crews, said Elaine Duke, acting secretary of Homeland Security. Waiving the Jones Act will ensure there is fuel to support lifesaving efforts and restore services and infrastructure in the wake of the storm, Duke said.","label":0}
{"text":"Russia-US Plutonium Deal No Longer In Effect 11\/02\/2016  RUSSIA TODAY President Vladimir Putin has signed an act suspending a 2000 agreement between the US and Russia on reprocessing weapons-grade plutonium extracted from decommissioned warheads.  The bill has already been published on Russia's official legal information website, meaning it's now in force.  It mentions that a decision to restore the agreement can only be made by Russia's president.  The deal between Moscow and Washington was ratified in 2000. As a means to safely utilize weapons-grade plutonium, it suggested a specific procedure to turn it into nuclear plant fuel. Starting from 2018, it was planned to reprocess 34 tons (68,000 pounds) of plutonium, which would have been enough to produce thousands of nuclear weapons, RIA Novosti reported.  Yet, while Russia has prepared the infrastructure necessary for the process, the US said it found the procedure too costly and instead opted for mixing plutonium with special dilutants to store it indefinitely.  Russia suspended the deal \" due to drastic changes of circumstances, the rise of threat to strategic stability as a result of hostile actions of the US towards the Russian Federation and the inability of the US to provide for the accepted obligations to utilize the excess weapons-grade plutonium in accordance with the agreement ,\" the new bill read.  For the agreement to be resumed, Washington should reduce the US military presence on the territory of NATO members that joined the bloc after 2000, cancel its Magnitsky Act which bans entry to the US to a list of Russian citizens, as well as lift other anti-Russian sanctions and compensate the loss Moscow suffered as a result of such policy.  The bill on suspension \u2013 which is a \" forced measure ,\" according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov \u2013 was first submitted by the president's office earlier this month and then approved by parliament.  Commenting on the suspension of the deal, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said that it would not affect any of Moscow's other commitments related to international nuclear security and does not interfere with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.","label":1}
{"text":"Who knew the Middle East had a prestigious school for fake inventors who bring fake bombs to school on 9-11? Clock kid Ahmed Mohamed and his family announced Tuesday in a news release that they will move to Qatar, less than 24 hours after the 14-year-old met with President Barack Obama at the White House. Our family has been overwhelmed by the many offers of support we have received since the unfortunate incident of Ahmed s arrest. From the White House to Sudan, to Mecca, we have been welcomed by a variety of individuals, businesses and educational institutions, which have all provided Ahmed with real encouragement and the ambition to continue to work hard, the family said in a statement. After careful consideration of all the generous offers received, we would like to announce that we have accepted a kind offer from Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) for Ahmed to join the prestigious QF Young Innovators Program, which reflects the organization s on-going dedication to empowering young people and fostering a culture of innovation and creativity, the family continued. This means that we, as a family, will relocate to Qatar where Ahmed will receive a full scholarship for his secondary and undergraduate education, the family concluded.Mohamed said he was really impressed with everything that Qatar Foundation has to offer and the campuses are really cool. I got to meet other kids who are also really interested in science and technology, he said after accepting the scholarship. I think I will learn a lot and also have lots of fun there.","label":1}
{"text":"The Donald Trump campaign is relying heavily on a 12 year old to help open a field office in one of the most important counties in the swing state of Colorado. You read that right. A 12-year-old is being relied upon to ensure that the thin-skinned man-baby candidate obtains keys to the White House.Weston Imer is co-chair of the campaign in Jefferson County, but his mother, the official field coordinator, said that she gave her son the bulk of the work in order to help teach him responsibility.Weston sits in the office instructing volunteers on what to do, as well as making phone calls to Trump supporters. Get involved kids need to be educated, Weston said, according to KDVR. Parents have the responsibility to educate their kids, Laurel Imer said.Weston will be at the field office every day until he has to start school in September. At the tender age of 12-years-old, Weston is likely in the 7th grade. Do you want to be President of the United States one day? a reporter asked Weston. Definitely, 2040 watch for me and Baron Trump if you re watching. I ll take ya as my running mate, Imer said.Watch:[youtube https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Tn9Zx8yUkXY]The 12-year-old would like to become President of the free world one day. We re pretty sure that Donald, his idol, never dreamed he would get this close to the White House since he s done everything possible to discourage that.Donald trails Hillary Clinton by ten points in Colorado, according to a Fox News poll. Again, we re talking about a Fox News poll. It s not exactly surprising since Donald s campaign doled out $7.7 million to his family and Trump-owned companies. Instead of increasing spending on staff or organizing like in crucial states such as Colorado the campaign spent $1.8 million on hats and other merchandise.It s commendable that Mrs. Imer wants to teach her child responsibility but this is a presidential election in important battleground territory. Aside from that, educating her child while using Donald as a model for responsibility is counterproductive. Donald is a scam artist, nothing more.Image via screen capture.","label":1}
{"text":"The authorities in Florida said Friday that Omar Mateen, whose June 12 rampage at an Orlando nightclub left 49 other people dead, was shot at least eight times by police officers who responded to the deadly mass shooting. The Orange County medical examiner's office released its report of Mr. Mateen's autopsy on Friday, the same day local officials began to distribute their findings about the victims of the attack, during which Mr. Mateen pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State. The 32 death reports released on Friday were the first time that the authorities so publicly cataloged and detailed the injuries of the dead. The medical examiner's office said in a statement that it had begun notifying family members on Thursday that the reports would be released under the state's public records law. The office said it expected to publish all of its assessments by Wednesday night. Officials reported their findings about the deaths of 28 men, including Mr. Mateen, and four women. The youngest victim whose autopsy was published was an woman the oldest was a man. Most of those who were killed died of multiple gunshot wounds, the autopsies showed. The placing of the shots varied some people were wounded in the head, while others were shot in the torso, and still others were struck in their arms, neck or lower extremities. It was not clear on Friday whether anyone besides Mr. Mateen had been killed from police gunfire. Citing the continuing inquiry, a spokeswoman for the Orlando police referred a request for comment to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which did not respond to a message. But Orlando's police chief, John Mina, left open the possibility in June, when he said, \"That's part of the investigation, but here's what I will tell you: Those killings are on the suspect. \" The reports had a certain uniformity \u2014 each person's death, for instance, was declared a homicide \u2014 but the scores of pages also carried small hints about individual lives. One man had been wearing two beaded bracelets when he was gunned down, while another young woman had worn \"an elaborate yellow metal necklace\" to Pulse. Another person had carried his photo identification from the Y. M. C. A. Mr. Mateen, his autopsy report noted, had been dressed in tan pants, a holster attached to a black belt. He was struck by gunfire in several places, including the chest, the abdomen and the foot. Mr. Mateen died after a protracted standoff with the police, who feared that he would set off explosives, as he had threatened to do. Once the authorities gained access to the nightclub with the aid of an armored vehicle, officials traded gunfire with Mr. Mateen, who was 29. The medical examiner's office said Friday that it would not discuss individual cases. But in an interview in June, the county's chief medical examiner, Dr. Joshua D. Stephany, said it appeared that all of the victims had died quickly. \"It doesn't appear anyone suffered,\" he said. \"Everyone went down where they were. I don't think anyone had prolonged suffering. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Apple is rethinking what it plans to do about cars, just as other big tech companies appear ready to plow ahead with competing efforts. In a retrenchment of one of its most ambitious initiatives, Apple has shuttered parts of its car project and laid off dozens of employees, according to three people briefed on the move who were not allowed to speak about it publicly. The job cuts are the latest sign of trouble with Apple's car initiative. The company has added resources to the project \u2014 Titan \u2014 over the last two years, but it has struggled to make progress. And in July, the company brought in Bob Mansfield, a highly regarded Apple veteran, to take over the effort. Apple is not the only big tech company pursuing autonomous driving technology. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has tested cars on the road for years, but its focus has been on designing the underlying software and systems to make that technology work. Tesla has a feature within its cars that has come under scrutiny in recent months after a fatal accident was connected to its use. Separately, Uber, in a limited test in Pittsburgh next week, plans to start picking up passengers in cars. Last month, Uber also acquired the Otto for about $700 million, a purchase that brought with it some of the top minds in robotics and autonomous technology. And automakers like Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler have all said they expect to put a number of vehicles on the road in five years or less. But Apple has stood out from the others mainly \u2014 as is often the case with the company \u2014 for its secrecy. Apple has never acknowledged that it is working on a car, though Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, has said the automotive industry is undergoing a drastic change and, earlier this year, he seemed to confirm the existence of the car project at its annual shareholders meeting. \"Do you remember when you were a kid, and Christmas Eve, it was so exciting, you weren't sure what was going to be downstairs?\" Mr. Cook said at the meeting. \"Well, it's going to be Christmas Eve for a while. \" Apple employees were told that the layoffs were part of a \"reboot\" of the car project, the people briefed on it said. An Apple spokesman declined to comment. Under Mr. Mansfield, Apple changed the focus of the project, shifting from an emphasis on designing and producing an automobile to building out the underlying technology for an autonomous vehicle. Bloomberg earlier reported the strategy change. Electric cars rely not on the internal combustion engine, but on technologies more prevalent in the consumer electronics world: batteries, sensors and software. In addition, cars could change the traditional notions of public transportation and car ownership. Apple started looking seriously into building an electric car about two years ago. It expanded the project quickly, poaching experts in battery technology and machine vision, as well as veterans from the automobile industry. The team also pulled in staff members from other divisions across Apple, growing to more than 1, 000 employees in about 18 months. But as the project grew rapidly, it encountered a number of problems, and people working on it struggled to explain what Apple could bring to a car that other companies could not, according to the people briefed on the project. Steven Zadesky, a longtime Apple employee initially charged with heading the car effort, left the company for personal reasons this year. His departure opened the door for Mr. Mansfield, who worked closely with Apple's Steve Jobs, but left the company's executive team in 2013. He had all but retired from Apple except for the occasional visit to the company's headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. He was coaxed into coming back to oversee the project, which could represent a new market for Apple as sales of its flagship iPhone are slowing. Apple has also made some headway in the space. The company has a number of fully autonomous vehicles in the middle of testing, using limited operating routes in a closed environment, according to people briefed on the company's plans. Like other companies in the space, that technology is likely a number of years away from seeing mainstream consumer use, they added.","label":0}
{"text":"The police raided dozens of sites across Belgium and brought in 40 people for questioning in an operation to interrupt a terrorist plot to attack fans gathering to watch a televised soccer match between the Belgian and Irish national teams, government officials said on Saturday. Three Belgians were charged with an attempt to commit terrorist murder and participation in the activities of a terrorist group, the Belgian federal prosecutors' office said. The others brought in for questioning were released by Saturday evening. Prime Minister Charles Michel did not provide specifics in his comments after an emergency national security meeting. But Justice Minister Koen Geens and Deputy Prime Minister Kris Peeters, questioned by the Flemish broadcaster VRT, confirmed that the police had learned of a plot to attack fans gathering to watch the game Saturday on large screens in Brussels's squares or at bars. The police did not turn up guns or explosives, a statement said, and spectators watched the game without incident. Belgium won the game, in Bordeaux, France. The scale of the raids and arrests, three months after the attacks in Brussels that killed 32 people, suggested in part that the Belgian authorities were working to dispel doubts about their dedication to rooting out potential terrorists. It also suggested that they believed they were in a race to prevent attacks. An earlier statement from the prosecutors' office on Saturday said the situation required \"immediate intervention. \" Investigations are continuing into the Brussels attacks on March 22 and those in and around Paris in November, which killed 130 people and wounded hundreds. The plot to attack soccer fans, however, did not appear to be related directly to the Paris and Brussels attacks. The prosecutors' office identified each of the three arrested suspects by his given name and an initial for his surname: Samir C. 27 Moustapha B. 40 and Jawad B. 29. Before the raids Friday night, the most recent detention in Belgium had come earlier in the week, when federal prosecutors announced the detention and investigation of a man identified as Youssef E. A. 30, in connection with the March attacks in Brussels. He was charged on Friday with \"participation in a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempted terrorist murders as a perpetrator, or accomplice. \" This month, another man, Ali E. H. A. 31, was similarly charged. The broadness of the charges in both cases suggests that the authorities have yet to determine what role the two men may have played. After the Paris attacks, the Belgian authorities were accused of being insufficiently vigilant when it emerged that the attacks had been planned in Belgium and that the explosives had been manufactured there. Most of the attackers were Belgian or French citizens. Adding to the pressure on the Belgian authorities was information disseminated this month by the Belgian Coordinating Body for Threat Analysis. That government body, which evaluates intelligence and other information, sent an alert to the police saying extremists who had fought in Syria were headed for Belgium and France. While the warning was based on \"raw intelligence,\" according to the Belgian authorities, its wide distribution to police services and its leak to a Belgian newspaper suggested that it was being taken very seriously. In the course of questioning detainees thought to be connected to the Paris and Brussels attacks, investigators in Belgium have picked up several references to the possibility of attacks during the Euro 2016 soccer tournament in France, which lasts through July 10. Both France and Belgium are on high alert. Meanwhile, in the case of a police officer and his female companion who were stabbed to death in France on Monday night, the prosecutors' office announced that it had opened an investigation and placed two people in preventive detention: Aberouz and Saad Rajraji. Both men had been sentenced along with the presumed killer of the couple \u2014 Larossi Abballa, who was fatally shot \u2014 in a 2013 terrorism case but were released from prison. They are facing preliminary charges of participation in a terrorist group that intended to commit one or many crimes.","label":0}
{"text":"Donald Trump, in his speech on immigration in Phoenix on Wednesday, pressed his approach to illegal immigration, even as he backed off a previous pledge to forcibly remove 11 million immigrants here illegally. \u2022 Build the wall. \u2022 End the catch and release policy for undocumented immigrants and instead return them to their country of origin. \u2022 Have zero tolerance for undocumented immigrants who have committed a crime, and deport them. \u2022 Triple the number of deportation officers at the department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. \u2022 Repeal President Obama's executive orders that temporarily protected undocumented immigrants from deportation and authorized them to receive work permit \u2022 Stop issuing visas to any country where \"adequate screening cannot occur\" that might endanger national security. \u2022 Ensure foreign countries take back deported immigrants from the United States (Mr. Trump said 23 countries refuse to do so). \u2022 Complete a biometric entry and exit visa tracking system under development. \"It will be on land, it will be on sea, it will be in the air,\" he said. \u2022 Mr. Trump made the case that Washington elites and the media have put the focus, wrongly, on the plight of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, rather than the Americans impacted by their presence. \"Anyone who tells you that the core issue is the needs of those living here illegally has simply spent too much time in Washington. Only the out of touch media elites think the biggest problems facing American society today is that there are 11 illegal immigrants who don't have legal status. \" \u2022 Trump ticked through the names of three Americans who were killed by undocumented immigrants. These are staples of his speeches and familiar to his audiences at this stage of the campaign. He has held them up as examples of an immigration system run amok with tragic consequences. \u2022 Comparing himself to Hillary Clinton, who he maligned throughout the speech, Mr. Trump asked: \"What do you have to lose? Choose me. \" It was an echo of a much mocked question he asked black voters recently. \u2022 \"Maybe they'll be able to deport her. \" Mr. Trump wondered provocatively, whether it's possible to send Mrs. Clinton out of the country. \u2022 A memorable passage from this speech: \"Our message to the world will be this: You cannot obtain legal status or become a citizen of the United States by illegally entering our country. Can't do it. This declaration alone will stop the crisis of illegal crossing. You can't just smuggle in, hunker down and wait to be legalized. Those days are over. \" \u2022 Mr. Trump invited onto the stage the mothers and fathers of Americans whose children were killed by undocumented immigrants. He asked each to describe their children and how they died. He then kissed many of them on the cheek. It was the most emotional moment of the speech. \"If you don't vote Trump, we won't have a country,\" one of the mother told the audience. Mr. Trump, first reading slowly from a statement and then speaking more freely in response to a question, said he now considered Mr. Pe\u00f1a Nieto a friend and heaped praise on Americans of Mexican descent. Mr. Trump said, were \"beyond reproach\" and \"spectacular, people. \" But Mr. Trump said he also told Mr. Pe\u00f1a Nieto directly that he felt Mexico had benefited disproportionately from its trade agreements with the United States, and that he had described illegal immigration as a problem for both countries. Mr. Trump said the two did not discuss the issue of forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall \u2014 one of the signature promises of his campaign. Mr. Pe\u00f1a Nieto did not challenge the idea during the news conference but later posted on Twitter that, during his meeting with Mr. Trump, he had made it clear that Mexico wouldn't pay for the wall. Mr. Pe\u00f1a Nieto pushed back in the gentlest of terms on several of Mr. Trump's claims on Nafta, citing U. S. Chamber of Commerce statistics to argue that free trade had been beneficial for both countries and stressing the economic importance of easy movement across the border. Without mentioning specific remarks by Mr. Trump, Mexico's president said that hurtful comments had been made. \"Mexican nationals in the United States are honest people, working people,\" he said, adding, \"Mexicans deserve everybody's respect. \" But Mr. Pe\u00f1a Nieto stopped well short of scolding Mr. Trump on the international stage. On the contrary, he expressed optimism that they could work together if Mr. Trump was elected president, \"even though we do not agree on everything. \" The showing was something of a surprise, considering the sense of betrayal among many Mexicans, who feel that their president sold them out to the worst possible person. By the start time of 11 a. m. there were dozens of journalist but only a few protesters. A later, the number of protesters \u2014 at least those being vocal and carrying signs \u2014 seemed stuck at four, including a guy wearing a Mexican wrestling mask, while the number of journalists topped 50. By 12:30 p. m. there were no more than 10 demonstrators, while the journalist pack continued to balloon. Still, the protesters did their best to represent the anger and disappointment that many Mexicans have expressed toward Mr. Trump as well as toward Mr. Pe\u00f1a Nieto, who is struggling with low approval ratings and a string of scandals. He has spoken out sharply against Mr. Trump in the past, saying in a television interview last month that there was \"no way\" Mexico would pay for a border wall, and earlier comparing Mr. Trump's campaign to the rise of Hitler. \"The president didn't represent the Mexican people, he didn't consult with us,\" said the demonstrator in the wrestling mask, who called himself \"Maldito Perro\" \u2014 Damned Dog \u2014 though later said his real name was Diego Garcia. He admitted to being disappointed by the anemic turnout. Social media activity, he lamented, seemed to be replacing the tradition of the street protest.","label":0}
{"text":"Irony alert! What's Paul Krugman trying to say about the election with this James Comey slam? Posted at 3:07 Share on Facebook Share on Twitter  FBI Director James Comey's announcement that the email would continue in light of new information. Going to be fun watching people who said \"rigging\" talk was an attack on our democracy now attack the integrity of the FBI.  \u2014 Jason C. (@CounterMoonbat) October 28, 2016  As we reported earlier, Paul Krugman was among the lefties who thought the FBI director's decision and how it was handled was \"shameful.\" Krugman also added this: If we don't hear more from Comey, we just have to conclude that he was trying to swing election. And *that* should be the story.  \u2014 Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) October 28, 2016  Is that so? In other words: @paulkrugman You mean it's rigged, nutboy?","label":1}
{"text":"A diagnosis of breast cancer at age 27 is shattering for anyone. But for Eli Oberman, it came with extra layers of anxiety. He is a transgender man, who was born female but began taking male hormones when he was 19 to change gender. Like many transgender people, Mr. Oberman switched gender without having surgery to change his body. The cancer was a stark reminder that he was still vulnerable to illnesses from his original anatomy \u2014 and that the medical world has blind spots in its understanding of how to take care of trans men and women. \"I just felt overwhelmed on all levels,\" Mr. Oberman said. \"Overwhelmed about facing the diagnosis, overwhelmed about the irony of it being this part of my body that was already so fraught for me. \" About 1. 4 million adults in the United States report they are transgender, according to a recent analysis of federal and state data. That figure is twice the previous estimate, and as awareness has increased, the health care system has begun scrambling to meet their needs. The government lifted a ban on Medicare coverage for transgender surgery and hormone treatment in 2014, and in 2015 New York State ended a similar ban for Medicaid patients. This year, a rule under the Affordable Care Act banning discrimination in health care specifically included protection for transgender people. Hospitals and professional schools have begun training employees and students on transgender medicine, and on basic etiquette like addressing trans men and women by the name and pronoun they prefer. At the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, which recently opened a Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, about 8, 000 employees had such training last year. \"When I think back to the earlier days and think where we are now, it's unbelievably better,\" said Barbara E. Warren, a psychologist and the director for L. G. B. T. programs and policies at Mount Sinai. But there are still struggles. Dr. Warren and other experts said it was common for transgender people to avoid screenings and other medical care for parts of their bodies associated with their original gender. If problems do arise, they may find themselves in situations like Mr. Oberman, who suddenly became the lone male patient in waiting rooms full of women, and a target of curiosity or scorn from some health workers. Mr. Oberman, now 33, was treated for the cancer six years ago, but decided just recently to speak about it publicly in hopes of helping to improve care for others. He has big, dark eyes, thinning hair, a warm smile and a leafy tattoo wreathing one arm \u2014 the kudzu vine, he said, because it is \"so unstoppably alive. \" He lives in Brooklyn, has a degree in poetry and education, and plays violin in a rock band called the Shondes (\"Disgraces,\" in Yiddish). His day jobs have included managing a database for a nonprofit organization. He began taking testosterone when he was 19 for its masculinizing effects \u2014 these include increased facial and body hair, a lower voice, more muscle and, usually, an end to periods. But he never had surgery to change his body. Many trans people do not, and so many trans men still have ovaries and vaginas, and trans women, prostate glands and penises. Early in his transition, Mr. Oberman wanted \"top surgery\" \u2014 breast removal \u2014 but could not afford it, so he wore binders to flatten his chest. Gradually, he became more comfortable with his body and lost interest in the surgery. He first noticed a breast lump in 2010. It was not easy to feel, and cancer at his age just didn't seem possible. He let six or eight months go by before having scans and a biopsy. Those tests required leaving the safety of his usual clinic, which specialized in L. G. B. T. patients, and plunging into the world of mainstream medicine, where he said doctors treated him with respect, but other workers did not. \"I had some horrible experiences,\" he said. During one procedure, when Mr. Oberman had his shirt off, a male technician, seeing that he was transgender, exclaimed: \"Why would you do this to yourself? It's disgusting. \" Mr. Oberman never reported the episodes. \"I'm not proud to say I didn't complain,\" he said, adding that he wished he had done so for the sake of other patients. But he was facing a disease. The cancer was aggressive. He would need both breasts removed, and then chemotherapy. \"I felt guilty, able to get free surgery I didn't want because I had cancer, and so many others want it and can't get it,\" he said. He soon learned that mastectomies, which remove as much breast tissue as possible, differ from top surgery, which preserves enough to give the chest a contour. Because he had cancer, top surgery was not a safe option: It would leave too much breast tissue, and too much risk of recurrence. Friends who have had top surgery were stunned to find out they still had a risk of breast cancer because of the tissue left behind, he said. Before surgery, thinking that testosterone might interfere with healing, Mr. Oberman's doctors advised him to stop taking it for a month. He followed their advice, but soon, he said, \"I went insane. I wasn't rational. I was lying on the floor, crying. \" Back on the hormone, he became himself again. Chemotherapy gave him a \"definitionless moonface,\" he said, and it coarsened his features and thinned his hair permanently. It had taken him years to feel comfortable in his trans identity, and now, he said, \"It felt like starting all over again. \" He would have liked to join a support group, but feared he would not be accepted. His reluctance to deal with the health care system has lingered. Just last year, at 32, he finally had his first Pap smear to screen for cervical cancer. It was about 10 years overdue, according to current guidelines. Doctors had nagged him to be tested, and one even threatened to withhold his testosterone unless he complied. He kept putting it off because he feared being treated badly in a gynecologist's office. Trans friends who had called for appointments were challenged by receptionists who assumed that a deep voice meant they did not belong. Trans men often avoid gynecologists, said Dr. Asa Radix, Mr. Oberman's physician and the senior director of research and education at the Community Health Center in New York, which provides health care for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. \"Imagine, if you're a trans man, and you're going to the gynecologist,\" Dr. Radix said. \"You go to the front desk, and you have to out yourself. Everyone can hear what's going on. You just want to run out the door. \" In addition, some trans people are conflicted about their bodies, \"and may not want to think they have the anatomy they have,\" Dr. Radix said. He added that pelvic exams could be physically uncomfortable for a transgender man because testosterone can dry out vaginal tissue. It can also change the cervix in ways that make a Pap test hard to read, necessitating a second round. Mr. Oberman said that in \"moments of dark paranoia,\" he wondered if taking testosterone might have caused his cancer \u2014 or if it was unrelated and the tumor might have developed anyway. His mother and her mother had both had breast cancer \u2014 though well after menopause. There is no evidence that trans men or women who take hormones have increased risks of any type of cancer, Dr. Radix said. Studies in Europe have found no increased risk, but it is not clear that the results apply to the United States, where the population is less homogeneous and many transgender people obtain hormones via the internet or other sources outside the health care system. Zil Goldstein, a nurse practitioner and program director at Mount Sinai's transgender center, said that while she had concerns about the safety of transgender hormones, she worried more about the possible harm from not prescribing them \u2014 researchers report that 41 percent of transgender people attempt suicide. The hormone question concerns Mr. Oberman's oncologist, Dr. Paula Klein, who specializes in breast cancer at Mount Sinai Beth Israel (not the same hospital where he had his biopsies and surgery). She said trans men with breast cancer were often urged to stop taking testosterone. One reason is that the body converts some testosterone to estrogen, which can speed the growth of many breast tumors. And some breast cancers may also be stimulated by testosterone, she said. But there is no solid data to guide trans patients, and Mr. Oberman does not want to stop taking the hormone. Dr. Klein was an author of a journal article in 2011 about two other trans men with breast cancer. Both took testosterone and, like Mr. Oberman, chose to stay on it. Few other cases have been reported. Dr. Klein has been suggesting that Mr. Oberman have his ovaries removed. Part of her reasoning was that he had stopped taking tamoxifen, a drug commonly prescribed to prevent breast cancer recurrence. Taking out the ovaries would mean lower estrogen levels, which would help prevent a recurrence of breast cancer. \"You would definitely benefit,\" she said during an office visit in September. \"It's a slam dunk for someone like you, taking away all your female parts,\" Dr. Klein said, adding: \"We thought you'd eat that up. A transgender gift. \" \"Except I don't want it,\" Mr. Oberman said. He did not want more surgery or the hormonal jolt that removing his ovaries would bring. He thought the mastectomies and chemotherapy had very likely cured him. Dr. Klein backed off, saying, \"Look, the odds are that you're going to be fine. \" He hugged her on the way out. It seemed likely that they would have this conversation again.","label":0}
{"text":"Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio took federal authorities to the woodshed on the House floor over their failure to do their job and arrest the armed terrorists led by Ammon Bundy.As you probably already know, Bundy and his band of right-wing militants illegally seized the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge two weeks ago. Ever since then, they ve destroyed government property, snooped through government files, struck fear into the hearts of the local citizens, and have broken several laws in the process. But law enforcement has done very little to remove the armed occupation, which is a stark contrast to the way law enforcement treats unarmed black men in this country.And DeFazio wants that to change right now. The heat and the lights are on at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, illegally occupied by ultra-rightwing anti-government extremists, but you gotta wonder if the lights are on or is anybody home down there at the Justice Department, DeFazio said.DeFazio then angrily demanded that federal authorities take down the militants and end the standoff so that people can move on with their lives. Hello! I don t think there s anybody there. I believe that this illegal occupation, this destruction of federal property was directly emboldened by the fact that their father of the two leaders, Cliven Bundy, stood down the government two years ago when he owed a million dollars other ranchers paid their grazing fees, he refuses to do it. And he was grazing in areas that were prohibited. And he stood down the government at the point of a gun, and he s still grazing and nobody, nobody at the Justice Department has seen fit to raise a finger against him.He celebrated the anniversary of the takeover and said this is how it s done. And now his sons are replicating that in my state of Oregon, where we abide by the laws. Yeah, we disagree over a lot of federal policies, but we abide by the laws.It s time for the Justice Department to take some action. Wake up down there! Here s the video via YouTube.Indeed, so far, the only militants who have been arrested were caught driving a federal vehicle to town in search of snacks. Meanwhile, the rest of the militants have been allowed to come and go as they please and they ve even been allowed to destroy federal fence lines and access government computers. Furthermore, the militants broke the law by carrying firearms on federal property and their seizure of a government building is an act of domestic terrorism that should not be tolerated.If this were a group of African-Americans or Muslims, law enforcement would have already shot up the place and killed every one of them by now. But because these gunmen are white rednecks, authorities are treating them with kid gloves, which perfectly demonstrates that law enforcement truly has different rules for different people. These militants are costing taxpayers millions of dollars, and they are interrupting the daily lives of citizens who do not want them there. Their actions are illegal and they should be treated like any other terrorist. It s time for law enforcement to do the job they are paid to do or they should resign in disgrace so that we can hire people who will actually do it.","label":1}
{"text":"Sean Spicer might be in a little bit of a trouble after an off-camera Wednesday press briefing. Though President* Trump and Spicer himself have been pushing The Donald s baseless conspiracy theory that President Obama tapped the wires at Trump Tower, Spicer accidentally admitted they were just making sh*t up. There is no reason that we should that we have to think that the President is the target of any investigation whatsoever, Spicy told reporters just minutes after he implied that he was unsure if the President was the target of a counter-intelligence investigation. I think that s what we need to find out. There s obviously a lot of concern, Spicer had said. But at the end of the briefing, he was handed a sheet of paper, from which he read his revised answer verbatim.The wiretapping allegations, clearly intended to distract from and detract from any ongoing investigations into Team Trump s connections to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, have become quite uncomfortable for Trump, who demanded that Congress waste time, resources, and effort looking into them, as just like everything else our alleged President says they are a lie one that is quickly getting out of hand.Last Thursday, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sheldon White House (D-RI) sent a letter tp the Justice Department asking for any evidence of Trump s ridiculous claim: We request that the Department of Justice provide us copies of any warrant applications and court orders redacted as necessary to protect intelligence sources and methods that may be compromised by disclosure, and to protect any ongoing investigations related to wiretaps of President Trump, the Trump Campaign, or Trump Tower. All I can say is that the country needs an answer to this, Graham told CNN. The current President has accused the former President of basically wiretapping his campaign. Unfortunately, this is the norm for Donald Trump. Whenever things get too uncomfortably close to the truth, he starts a political forest fire that distracts the nation long enough for everyone to forget about it or at least to provide Trump sufficient time to figure out how to explain away whatever the current issue is.It is imperative that our elected officials stop falling for this and keep their eyes on what really matters that we have a President whose staff both during the campaign and during his presidency was caught colluding with a hostile foreign power.Here s the video:","label":1}
{"text":"Hillary Immediately Runs From Media After What Camera Caught Outside Plane Posted on October 28, 2016 by Amanda Shea in Politics Share This Aboard Hillary Clinton's plane (left), \"Hill Force One\" (right)  While Hillary Clinton was en route to Cedar Rapids, Iowa for what ended up being a very uncomfortable campaign stop, she got some bad news. The FBI is taking another look at her emails \u2014 which could likely end her. Media rushed to the runway after her arrival, where cameras caught what she tried to hide outside her private airplane.  The FBI announced that they are looking into Hillary's previously undisclosed emails as she was mid-air and blissfully unaware and unable to prepare. Knowing what's in those documents, she's more aware of the ramifications than the rest of us, but because it was sprung on her, she wasn't fully prepared for questions about it since she requires practiced answers that she receives ahead of time before talking to the public.  However, forced to face the music upon landing, Hillary couldn't escape the press pool waiting for her as she made a beeline for her getaway car from the airplane. That's when she did something very telling of her guilt. JUST IN: Hillary Clinton arrives in Iowa amid news the FBI is taking another look at her email server https:\/\/t.co\/uH00LebKTe pic.twitter.com\/rxFkJZXEvo  \u2014 CNN (@CNN) October 28, 2016  Knowing that there was no way around the reporters, Hillary hid in Hill Force One with her advisors for about 30 minutes, who we can only imagine were calming the raging candidate down before she faced the public. Our guess is, she had a moment of meltdown with the news, screamed, yelled, and then was given a shot of her favorite liquor before exiting the aircraft, where she was met with a barrage of questions about the investigation. Rather than responding, which an innocent person would do, she flashed a fake smile and wave and didn't say a single word.  It would take too much explanation to lie, and she'd only further incriminate herself, so she gave the press the silent treatment instead, which actually spoke volumes. No matter how much Hillary ignores this, it's not going away, as the truth will prevail against her and, hopefully, land her in the jailhouse \u2014 not the White House.","label":1}
{"text":"The first presidential debate was Monday and let s just say that Donald Trump had a very bad night. One of the GOP candidate s easiest lies to expose was his insistence that stop and frisk wasn t ruled unconstitutional. He s wrong, it absolutely was.Debate moderator Lester Holt asked Trump about his recent arguments in favor of stop and frisk and mentioned that the court has declared the practice unconstitutional on the grounds that it is discriminatory. Stop and frisk was ruled unconstitutional in New York, because it largely singled out black and Hispanic young men Trump cut Holt off mid-sentence: No, you re wrong. It went before a judge who was a very against police judge. It was taken away from her and our mayor, our new mayor, refused to go forward with the case. They would have won an appeal. Factcheck: U.S. District Court Judge Shira A. Scheindlin ruled stop and frisk to be unconstitutional August 12, 2013. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, Judge Shira Scheindlin found the NYPD s practices to violate New Yorkers Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and also found that the practices were racially discriminatory in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, The Bloomberg administration did appeal the ruling. The order was then suspended by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the case was sent back to be tried again with a new judge presiding over the proceedings. However, the court shot down the city s motion and decided not to vacate Scheindlin s decision. The appeal was eventually dropped by the de Blasio administration.Trump, who has run a bigoted campaign right from the start, was completely undeterred by Holt s assertion of the facts and continued to argue vehemently in favor of the discriminatory policing practice.Watch Trump wrongly argue that stop and frisk wasn t ruled unconstitutional, even though it was, here:","label":1}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says Nevada Assemblywoman Michele Fiore reports for Newsmax TV in Las Vegas, about the ongoing federal trial involving rancher Cliven Bundy and his family. In this video report, Fiore claims to have new inside information regarding the federal criminal case which continues to be extended by federal authorities, and where Bundy and his family have been held in federal custody for over 18 months now.According to Fiore, the FBI actually have no evidence to prosecute the Bundys ( based on a raft of inflated charges piled into the original federal complaint here: 298981770-Criminal-Complaint-re-Cliven-Bundy-pdf ), and are relying solely on pressuring fringe actors in the case who are also in custody, in order that they might testify against the Bundys.If Fiore s claims are true, then this could mean good news for the family. Meanwhile, the public must wait and see what will happen next. WATCH: .STAY TUNED FOR MORE UPDATES.READ MORE BUNDY RANCH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Bundy Ranch FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"Having not yet recovered from the severe earthquakes of recent months, central Italy was struck by 10 earthquakes in succession over a period Wednesday, all of them registering over 4. 0 on the Richter Scale. [Wednesday's earthquakes varied in magnitude between 4. 1 and 5. 7, and several lasted a significant amount of time. The first quake, measuring 5. 3, struck the beleaguered city of Amatrice at 10:25am local time, and the shock waves could be felt in contiguous regions and all the way south in Rome. Amatrice had already been laid waste by a powerful earthquake last August 24, which destroyed the town and left nearly 300 dead. After the quake, the mayor of Amatrice announced: \"The town is gone. \" The second quake \u2014 the strongest of all \u2014 hit just a few miles from the epicenter of the first, 45 minutes later. In all, five of the 10 quakes struck within five miles of Amatrice. The bell tower of the church of Sant'Agostino was one of the few monuments in Amatrice to survive last summer's earthquake, but Wednesday's quakes finished the job, bringing the tower crumbling to the ground. To add insult to injury, central Italy had been covered with snow prior to the quakes and was suffering from exceptionally cold temperatures. Civil Protection Chief Fabrizio Curcio said that the wide scope of the tremors, along with the snow, made a comprehensive assessment of the situation difficult. \"The situation is quite complicated,\" Curcio said. \"We are receiving reports from all over the nation. Obviously the quake was felt clearly all over the center, as far as the capital. \" In Rome, children were sent home from school at mid morning, public buildings were evacuated and authorities shut down the subway system. Wednesday's seismic activity was the third major event of its kind in Italy in less than half a year. The August 24 earthquake demolished several towns of central Italy, including Amatrice, and three more quakes during the night of Oct wreaked still more devastation and displaced thousands of persons. The October earthquakes reportedly shook Rome's world heritage ancient buildings, including the Colosseum and Pantheon, and some of the damage has not yet been repaired. Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome","label":0}
{"text":"Poland s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party said on Friday it planned legal changes to enhance democracy ahead of local elections next year but analysts said the measures aimed to boost the party s electoral prospects. The party came third at the last local election in 2014 and its proposals, to be debated in parliament this month, would smooth a path for candidates supported by parties such as itself and make it harder for independent candidates backed by citizens committees. Opinion polls show the nationalist party is supported by 37 percent of the electorate and many voters say its policies fight inequality. The European Union, however, says that its policies undermine democracy and the rule of law. We will introduce two terms for mayors and presidents starting from 2018. (We also plan) to replace majority electoral law with a proportional system, PiS deputy Lukasz Schreiber told a news briefing. Critics say many voters appreciate the PiS welfare program and so turn a blind eye to changes it has made to the judiciary and media aimed at cementing its rule. The party wants changes including scrapping single-member constituencies in which the candidate with the most votes wins, party representatives told reporters in parliament on Friday. PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski says the present system is undemocratic and creates scope for abuses. Kaczynski has no formal post in the government but is seen as the ruler of the former communist country of 38 million people. On Friday, state television showed a quote from Kaczynski from last month in which he said the system of single-member constituencies was undemocratic because it led to entrenched local leaders all-but certain to win re-election. There are some places in Poland where we (PiS) received 40 percent of votes (in local elections) but we have nothing or almost nothing. It is undemocratic. It creates a danger of abuses ... and one needs to eliminate this, he said. Local elections are expected in late 2018. Many town leaders elected in 2014 had the support of local committees rather than established parties. The leaders are called presidents in cities and mayors in towns. The biggest opposition party Civic Platform, which is centrist, came second in that election while the PiS was third. Initial information suggests that the PiS project favors big parties as it scraps single-member constituencies. This looks like politicizing the local election, said Anna Materska-Sosnowska, a political analyst at Warsaw University. Critics say the party has taken control over state companies, institutions, media, and the judiciary in order to strengthen its power and improve party s chances in future elections.","label":0}
{"text":"President Barack Obama said on Monday that he was pleased with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Texas abortion law. \"As the brief filed by the Solicitor General makes clear and as the court affirmed today, these restrictions harm women's health and place an unconstitutional obstacle in the path of a woman's reproductive freedom,\" Obama said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. Justice Department said it had no evidence to support the unsubstantiated claim made in March by President Donald Trump that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. There has never been any evidence to support Trump's assertion on Twitter that \"Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower just before the victory,\" despite continued insistence from some conservative websites and commentators. But in a court filing late on Friday, the Justice Department added itself to the list of entities debunking the allegation. The FBI and the Justice Department's National Security Division \"confirm that they have no records related to wiretaps as described\" by tweets from Trump posted on March 4, the department said in a court filing in Washington. The filing was in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by American Oversight, a government watchdog group. Trump Tower, a mixed-used New York skyscraper, is home to one of Trump's private residences and served as his campaign headquarters during the election. The surveillance claim, which first appeared in conservative media before being picked up by Trump, prompted a rare rebuke by Obama, who responded at the time through a spokesman to denounce the idea that he had ordered surveillance against then-candidate Trump as \"simply false.\" In a statement, American Oversight said the Justice Department filing \"confirmed in writing that President Trump lied when he tweeted that former President Obama 'wiretapped' him at Trump Tower.\" Asked for comment, a White House spokeswoman said on Saturday, \"This is not news. We answered this weeks ago.\" Despite the lack of evidence, the White House for several weeks attempted to bolster the baseless claim, and it helped fuel an also unsubstantiated inquiry by Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee, into whether the Obama administration improperly \"unmasked\" surveillance intercepts of phone conversations Trump associates had with foreigners.","label":0}
{"text":"Myanmar wants to continue working with the United Nations on human rights but its investigator must be fair, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, a day after special rapporteur Yanghee Lee was barred from visiting the country. Myanmar is still cooperating with the special rapporteur mechanism, said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Kyaw Moe Tun. But Ms Yanghee Lee s undertakings don t have impartiality and objectivity, he said, adding that Myanmar had asked the United Nations to replace her with someone who knows Myanmar well and is both fair and impartial. Lee had been due to visit Myanmar next month to assess human rights across the country, including alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, but on Wednesday she said she had been barred from visiting for the rest of her tenure. She called for stronger international pressure to be exerted on Myanmar s military and said in a statement that the ban suggested something terribly awful was happening in the country. More than 650,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping counter-offensive by the army and Buddhist vigilantes. Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug 25, the aid group said last week. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place. Myanmar has rejected accusations of ethnic cleansing, blaming most of the violence and torching of Rohingya villages on the Rohingya insurgents who attacked the security forces. Lee had planned to use her visit to find out procedures for the return of Rohingya refugees, and to investigate increased fighting in Kachin State and Shan State in northern Myanmar, where the army is battling autonomy-seeking ethnic minority insurgents. Kyaw Moe Tun, who is director general of the foreign ministry s International Organizations and Economic Department, said a statement released by Lee after her last visit in July was not objective and not impartial . If she comes again and does that, it is not easy to cooperate with us and have a positive attitude, he said. Lee said in July that activists and journalists continued to be followed and questioned by state surveillance agents, and that her visit was beset by official snooping and access restrictions. The office of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said at the time that it was disappointed with Lee s end-of-mission statement, which contained many sweeping allegations and a number of factual errors . It did not give any details and did not directly address the issues of access or surveillance.","label":0}
{"text":"Earlier this month, the Trump campaign posted on its website an advertisement seeking election observers to monitor locations. The move, which is unusual for private campaigns, comes from the irrational fear that should Hillary Clinton win, the election would be rigged. So Trump s solution? Have his rabid, conspiracy theory believing supporters intimidate voters in poll lines.In Pennsylvania, where polls have Clinton ahead by as much as nine points, Trump claims the only way Clinton could win is if she cheats or those in the Democratic Party rig the election in her favor. So his initial call was to have his supporters monitor the stations in the predominantly black and minority -voting urban areas of the state.It was very reminiscent of the 1960s Jim Crow intimidation of the South.After facing some backlash for the dangerous and archaic call to suppress and intimidate voters, Trump doubled down on his claim that the election will be rigged and that supporters should watch the polling locations very closely on election day:You ve got to get every one of your friends. You ve got to get every one of your family. You ve got to get everybody to go out and watch. And go out and vote. And when I say watch, you know what I m talking about, right? You know what I m taking about. I think you got to go out and you got to watch.The question is just what should his people be watching for? Should they be watching and observing people of color? Should they be monitoring young, college-aged millenials? Should they be asking voters their personal information so they can play Sherlock Holmes?Once again, Trump sounds his dog whistle. When he tells his predominantly white audience, you know what I m talking about, the innuendo could not be more clear: watch, intimidate and disenfranchise minority voters.Of course, Republicans, who have been pushing the now widely debunked myth of rampant voter fraud, will be mum on this. In justification, they will point to the said myth that is rampant voter fraud as why they support this dangerous, racist and damaging call to action.Trump s call to intimidate voters should be a warning to all Americans: don t get complacent. Get out, vote, and take this monstrosity down.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump has placed gag orders on multiple federal agencies, telling them to not only cut off communication with the public and the press but also with members of Congress. Go figure, that didn t sit very well with some people, especially since that happens to be illegal. And two House Democrats have decided to take action.Rep. Elijah Cummings and Rep. Frank Pallone sent a letter to the White House Counsel asking that they take immediate action to remedy the Trump Administration s apparent violations of multiple federal laws by imposing gag orders on federal employees that prevent them from communicating with Congress. The letter explained that the gag orders appear to violate the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act as well as the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 because they do not include a mandatory statement explaining that employees are still allowed to talk to members of Congress and Inspectors General.The letter points out that the Consolidated Appropriations Act also states that if a federal employee tries to stop another federal employee from speaking to Congress about anything job related, they forfeit their salary.Cummings and Pallone cite a memo issued by the Acting Secretary of the Department of Health and human Services on President Trump s first day in office, which states: No correspondence to public officials (e.g. Members of Congress, Governors) or containing interpretations or statements of Department regulations or policy, unless specifically authorized by me or my designee, shall be sent between now and February 3. The congressmen write that this memo and similar restrictions placed on federal agencies such as the Departments of Interior, Transportation, and Agriculture, appears to violate all of these laws. Cummings and Pallone then urged the Trump administration to immediately rescind all of the illegal gag orders. They added that because of the magnitude of these problematic directives, we request that the President issue an official statement making clear to all federal employees that they have the right to communicate with Congress and that he and his Administration will not silence or retaliate against whistleblowers. Featured image by Alex Wong via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Facebook has reinstated the popular \"Polandball\" comedy page, following coverage of their \"permanent suspension\" by Breitbart News. [The page, which focuses on \" satire,\" was originally notified by Facebook that they would be permanently deleted on Saturday for unknown reasons. \"We're very sorry about this mistake,\" said a Facebook spokesman in an email to Breitbart Tech. \"A post was removed in error, which led to the removal of the page. Both the post and page have been restored. \" Polandball announced on their reinstated Facebook page that they would be keeping both the original and the backup page in case they are removed by error again in the future. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.","label":0}
{"text":"A recent outbreak of measles is the latest public health problem among Somalis who live in metropolitan . Paul, Minnesota, home to the largest Somali community in the country. [Measles now joins active tuberculosis as a public health problem within Minnesota's Somali community. \"During the five years between 2010 and 2014, 732 cases of active TB were diagnosed in Minnesota. Of these, 81 percent, or 593, were . Of cases, 50 percent, or 296, were refugees, according to \"The Epidemiology of Tuberculosis in Minnesota, \" a report published by the Minnesota Department of Health,\" Breitbart News noted in October. \" percent of the 593 cases of active TB diagnosed in Minnesota [between 2012 and 2015] or 161, were attributed to Somali born migrants. Almost all Somali migrants to the United States have arrived under the federal refugee resettlement program,\" Breitbart News reported at the time. \"The Hennepin County measles outbreak grew to 20 cases Monday, after eight new infections were confirmed. State health officials said all the cases have occurred within the community, and they urged parents to get the measles vaccine for themselves and their children if they are unvaccinated,\" the Star Tribune reported last week: The outbreak is expected to produce many more cases and could exceed the 2011 outbreak of 26 cases, according to Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease director at the Minnesota Health Department. So far, all of those who have caught the measles in this outbreak are 5 years old or younger. Exposure has occurred at several day care centers. Since the first case was detected two weeks ago, health investigators have been trying to identify anyone unvaccinated exposed to the virus, which is highly contagious. It can take up to three weeks for measles symptoms to develop. \"The Health Department recommended Monday that the schedule for a second dose be accelerated for any children who had received the initial shot, which they said is a common practice during outbreaks,\" the Star Tribune reported: The eight new infections in this outbreak include for the first time at least one baby under 12 months, an age group that has been of concern to public health officials because they typically lack immunity protection. Investigators have examined the vaccination records of 16 of those infected, and none of them had received the MMR shot. Records for the other four are still being collected. Measles symptoms include coughing, a sore throat, fever and a blotchy skin rash. It can lead to pneumonia and encephalitis, or swelling of the brain, and in same cases is fatal. \"According to a health department official, Minnesota's Somali immigrant community has been a particular target of the movement, colloquially known as '' \" Mic. com reported last week: \"They're very much engaged with and targeting this community,\" Kris Ehresmann, infectious disease division director at the Minnesota Health Department, said in a phone call Wednesday. According to Ehresmann, groups began to target the Somali community around 2008, amid concerns about autism among children. groups started reaching out to the Somali community and showing up at community health meetings, she said, disseminating misinformation linking autism to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, or MMR. Since then, the population has seen a \"steady decline in MMR vaccine rates. \" \"At least one figure in the movement has made special trips just to speak to Somali immigrants. In 2011, Andrew Wakefield, a man who has been called the \"father of the movement,\" showed up in Minnesota in the midst of what was then the state's first major measles outbreak in years, the Star Tribune reported at the time,\" Mic. com added. Ehresmann said that wasn't Wakefield's first trip to speak to Somali families in Minnesota \u2014 she believes he visited once before, in 2008, when were first arriving to spread misinformation. Wakefield, the British doctor who published a widely shared and subsequently discredited paper implying a link between vaccines and autism, traveled to Minneapolis to hold a private forum for Somali immigrants. The meeting was described at the time as a \"support group\" for families of autistic children, the Star Tribune reported. Hennepin County is also the site of two recent cases of active tuberculosis at local public high schools, as Breitbart News reported in February: Another case of active tuberculosis (TB) has been diagnosed in Hennepin County, Minnesota public schools, local officials confirmed on Wednesday. The new case has been diagnosed in \"a person at Central Middle School in Eden Prairie,\" KARE TV reports. This marks the second time in two months Hennepin County Department of Health officials have confirmed that a person at a public school in the county has been diagnosed with active TB. In January, Hennepin County Public Health Department officials reported that a person at St. Louis Park High School had been diagnosed with active TB. The letter to parents from St. Louis Park Public Schools informing them of the case of active TB in January was sent in three languages: English, Spanish, and Somali, Breitbart News reported.","label":0}
{"text":"Media Blackout: Hundreds Of Black Teens Attack Temple Students, Police And A Horse (Video) Media Blackout: Hundreds Of Black Teens Attack Temple Students, Police And A Horse (Video) October 27, 2016, 6:24 pm by Guest Author Leave a Comment 1  By: Renee Nal | New Zeal Still photograph of Temple university attack  In a story that predictably did not make the mainstream media, and with video surveillance very difficult to find, a massive mob of black teens viciously attacked white Temple University students, police officers and even a police horse in Philadelphia on Friday night.  And their apologists are in full force.  In the limited local coverage this story did receive, the race aspect was generally avoided. It is way past time to take back the media, and fill it with truth-tellers, not apologists.  \"More than 150 teens, spread out in groups of 20 or 30, descended upon the campus at around 8:30 p.m. Friday \u2014 wreaking havoc for nearly two hours before eventually dispersing,\" according to NBC 10 . Temple News reported that \"multiple students were hurt and businesses had to close Friday evening due to a 'flash mob' of nearly 200 minors that flocked North Broad Street near Main Campus, police said.\"  But there is a reason for all of this horror, according to Solomon Jones of Philly.com . It evidently boils down to the socialist Gulag-wide Bulletins from Sovereignty Unbound We respect your privacy, time, and inbox. Track us Down @GulagBound Like the Gulag There are many important matters that Gulag Bound itself is not treating on a daily basis. For that reason we suggest The Globe & Malevolence and the sites shown under \"Key Links in our Chains,\" below. Your Daily Intelligence Brief MattSkosh on Secret Service Agents Pay a Visit to Anti-Obama Artist Sabo Tags activism Agenda 21 anti-American revolution authoritarianism Barack Hussein Obama II candidate eligibility collectivists & propaganda communisty organizations corruption crisis strategy Democrat finance & banking fraud George Soros globalism - NWO global Marxist-fascist movement government domination of resources history illegal immigration Islam Islamism jihad jihadism Israel kleptocracy labor unions Marxism Marxofascism Marxstream media Military Mitt Romney Obamacare health control Occupy Wall Street race-baiting\/racism Republican Right of Private Property Russia Sovereignty Tea Party terrorism U.S. Congress U.S. Constitution U.S. Presidency (POTUS) United Nations (UN) video violence voting youth & education Sabotage What good will it do, to protect the United States of America, or our presumed interests against the aggressiveness of China, Russia, or Islam, if, partially in fear of these threats, we lose our free and independent nation to the stealth imperialism of transnational and global governance? As America threatens to shatter, we must see how a semi-covert, global, cartel collective and their NWO in the USA (\"progressive\" neo-Marxists and neo-fascists corporatists, updated with 21st Century techniques and technology) intentionally perpetrate this sabotage, while we patriots try to prevent it. Have a look around our camp, as we struggle to survive. - your tour guide Archives Militarization in America About DHS militarization, see the new, breakthrough analysis from James Simpson, \" Police Militarization, Abuses of Power, and the Road to Impeachment \" and our earlier, \"Marxist President's Military Exercises in These U.S. Cities; Yours One?\"  About the trajectory of this, we must pray, communicate, keep calm, and do not become the first to engage. If it comes to it, do not even respond in kind, until after the after the first times that extreme, anti-American violence is done by them. It calls for an attitude of self sacrifice -- first cheek, second cheek, then no more.  And speak out about the potential and strategic \"sense\" of the Obama\/NWO's DHS carrying out false flag missions of violence, blaming it on American patriots, perhaps upon our militia movements.  We are in a real war, right now (of which others and I have been trying to alert fellow Sovereign Citizens for years) and the prime war is for the minds, hearts, and wills of the American People. We are opposed by an anti-American insurrection using any means of power (see Gramsci, Frankfurt School) including government power, as they are granted that opportunity.","label":1}
{"text":"The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said on Wednesday his panel was likely to strip out language imposing sanctions against North Korea from legislation that contains sanctions against Russia and Iran. Republican Senator Bob Corker told the Washington Post in an interview that doing so would ensure the measure could pass. Corker said the bill was likely to become law \"very, very soon.\"","label":0}
{"text":"For months, U.S. President Donald Trump's national security adviser and his chief strategist have battled for influence behind the scenes, and their feud may force another shake-up at the White House. The dispute between Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster and political strategist Stephen Bannon has reached a level of animosity that is destabilizing Trump's team of top advisers just as the administration tries to regain lost momentum, three senior officials said. Under pressure from moderate Republicans to fire Bannon, Trump declined to publicly back him on Tuesday, although he left his options open. \"We'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon,\" he told reporters at Trump Tower in New York. Whatever Trump decides could chart the fate of a nuclear-weapons deal with Iran, U.S. troop deployments to Afghanistan and White House staffing decisions - all issues over which Bannon and McMaster have sparred. Bannon has been in a precarious position before but Trump has opted to keep him, in part because his chief strategist played a major role in his election victory and is backed by many of the president's most loyal rank-and-file supporters. \"The president obviously is very nervous and afraid of firing him,\" a source close to the White House told Reuters. The source floated the possibility that Bannon could be demoted instead of fired, noting that he might turn into a harsh critic of the administration if he is forced out of the inner circle. Two other senior officials, both supporters of McMaster who asked not to be identified, said he blames Bannon for a series of attacks against him by right-wing website Breitbart News, which Bannon used to lead, and other far-right conservative groups. In recent weeks, Breitbart has published a series of articles making a case for McMaster's ouster on the basis that he is not a strong ally of Israel and that he has staffed the National Security Council with holdovers from the Obama administration. One of the senior officials said McMaster's anger over the campaign \"is known to the president\" but declined to say whether the national security adviser had told Trump directly or through General John Kelly, an ally and the president's new chief of staff. \"McMaster isn't saying Bannon is the mastermind behind the campaign, but he does think Bannon could stop it if he wanted to,\" said one of McMaster's defenders. In a television interview on Sunday, McMaster repeatedly declined to answer when asked if he could work with Bannon. About their feud, Bannon declined to comment and McMaster was unavailable for comment. Instead of firing Bannon, Trump could move McMaster into a position outside the White House, possibly back to an active military command role, or keep both men where they are and insist on some form of truce. Bannon has survived other White House power struggles this year and established a detente with Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner after a scolding from the president. The two senior officials who support McMaster said Kelly is angry that the anti-McMaster campaign has made the White House appear chaotic, reflecting badly on him as he was brought in as chief of staff two weeks ago to restore order and discipline. Bannon sees himself as the defender of Trump's nationalist base and has advocated for both an end or renegotiation of trade deals and a more isolationist approach to foreign affairs than McMaster. He has pushed to scrap the 2015 nuclear-weapons agreement with Iran, which McMaster argues should remain in place, and has also proposed using contractors to fight the war in Afghanistan rather than expanding U.S. forces there, as McMaster has advocated. McMaster is part of a more pragmatic group that Bannon likes to label \"globalists.\" He drew the fury of Bannon's supporters by recently overhauling the White House's National Security Council, pushing out four staffers who were seen as close to Bannon. Conservative commentator Mike Cernovich is a Bannon ally and has been a vocal critic of McMaster, even leveling personal attacks against him. Cernovich says he does not talk directly to Bannon but praises him as an important counterweight to McMaster. He also warns that the president would alienate his most loyal supporters if he fires Bannon. \"I don't think that people who like Trump are suddenly going to say, 'We're going to fight Trump.' Instead they'll say, 'What's the point of supporting him?'\" Cernovich told Reuters. The conservative Jewish-American and pro-Israel group Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which also has close ties to Bannon, has been one of McMaster's sharpest critics, urging Trump to reassign him away from policy areas dealing with Israel and Iran. Trump has himself backed McMaster, saying he was a \"good man and very pro-Israel\". A source close to the ZOA bristled at the suggestion that Bannon was influencing its approach and said it would not tone down the campaign against McMaster, despite entreaties by Bannon to do so. \"We find it remarkably offensive that anyone would suggest that Steve Bannon or anyone else tells us what to say or what not to say,\" the source said. \"It makes me feel awful that he's getting blamed for this, but there's nothing I can do about it.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Naser Oric, the Bosnian Muslim commander who led the defense of Srebrenica during the 1992-95 war, was cleared of war crimes against Serbs on Monday, a ruling greeted by both celebration and condemnation in the divided state. Bosnian Muslims, who largely see Oric as a hero, broke into applause as he and a fellow soldier left the courtroom free men. Cheering crowds massed around them outside. Families of Bosnian Serbs killed in the war, who see Oric and his troops as criminals, walked out of the hearing in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo in protest. This is horrific, this is a scandal. Everybody expected that he will be punished. Is this a justice? I am speechless, said Radojka Filipovic from Bratunac, near Srebrenica. She said Oric s forces killed at least six of her relatives. Milorad Dodik, the president of Bosnia s autonomous Serb Republic, called on Serb lawyers to withdraw from the shared national legal system. The justice minister of neighboring Serbia, Nela Kuburovic, called the ruling shameful . The case went to the heart of fractured Bosnia, haunted by ethnic divides and long-running grievances that have blocked its progress to joining the European Union and NATO. Bosnia was hit by a devastating war in the 1990s after the Bosnian Serbs, helped by Serbia, tried to carve out a separate statelet following the break up of Yugoslavia. Bosnian Serbs have accused Oric and his men of killing about 3,000 of their people in the Srebrenica area during the conflict. Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks, hailed his role in defending Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb forces later killed more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys - widely seen as Europe s worst atrocity since World War Two. After the war, the country was divided into two autonomous regions, the Serb Republic and the Bosniak-Croat Federation, linked via a weak central government. Serbs cannot accept this and this proves this country and its judiciary should not exist, Serb Republic President Dodik said in the town of Banja Luka after the verdict. I call on all Serbs in the court and prosecution to pull out from these institutions. Dodik has long disputed the authority of the national legal system, which he says was established on the order of Bosnia s Western peace envoys, and has repeatedly threatened to secede if his region s autonomy is undermined. Dodik said the verdict would likely revive the idea of holding a referendum on the state court - the last attempt to hold a referendum on the status of the state court, in 2015, was halted amid Western warnings. Bosnia s three-man presidency chairman Dragan Covic, a Bosnian Croat, said negative rhetoric over the case could be a setback for Bosnia s progress. Oric was acquitted of war crimes against Serbs by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2008, but was arrested again in June 2015 in Switzerland on a warrant from Serbia accusing him of killing three Bosnian Serb prisoners of war early in the conflict. It was only just to acquit Oric of war crimes charges, Hatidza Mehmedovic, a Bosnian Muslim who lost her husband and two sons in the Srebrenica massacre, told the Fena news agency. It was a great injustice to drag him in courts from The Hague to here. Oric did not speak to reporters outside the court. Dozens of Bosnian Serbs, including senior political and military leaders, have been sentenced by the ICTY and a Bosnian war crimes court over the Srebrenica massacre, which was declared genocide by two international courts. Millions of people were displaced and more than 100,000 died in the war.","label":0}
{"text":"Good morning. Here's what you need to know: \u2022 A South Korean court announced the arrest of the de facto leader of Samsung, Lee on bribery accusations connected to the corruption scandal that had engulfed the government. Above, Mr. Lee as he arrived at a detention center ahead of the court's decision. Prosecutors say Samsung paid almost $38 million to groups connected to a presidential friend and adviser, Choi to win the government's backing for a merger of two Samsung units. _____ \u2022 The crisis facing the White House over questions about its connections to Russia made for an awkward inaugural trip abroad for Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. Conventional joint statements with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, at a gathering in Germany could not overshadow the growing distance with European counterparts on immigration, refugees, defense and trade. In Washington, President Trump held a news conference that turned into an extraordinarily raw bemoaning \"the false, horrible fake reporting\" on his administration. Here's the video. _____ \u2022 Mr. Trump's plans to have Stephen A. Feinberg, above, a billionaire investor with no intelligence experience, review the U. S. intelligence agencies has the agencies' top officials on edge. They were already worried by Mr. Trump's response to reports of contacts over the last year between Trump aides and Russian intelligence officials: trying to focus public attention on the source of intelligence leaks rather than their content. Today's episode of The Daily podcast asks, did the Trump campaign collude with Russia? Listen from a computer, on an iOS device or on an Android device. _____ \u2022 The investigation into the apparent assassination of the half brother of North Korea's leader Kim is widening. The Malaysian police detained two more people \u2014 a woman with an Indonesian passport, above, and her Malaysian boyfriend \u2014 and said they were looking for four male suspects. Airport surveillance images showed how one suspect ended up waiting at a taxi stand. Mr. Kim's body is expected to be sent to North Korea. It's not clear whether the Malaysian autopsy results will be made public. _____ \u2022 In environmental news, a Greenpeace report tied the toxic waves of air pollution sweeping northern China to an increase in already excessive steel production last year, made counter to promised cuts. Scientists are also coming to understand the crucial importance of the vast, and endangered, seagrass meadows that surround every continent except Antarctica. And Mr. Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, heads to a confirmation vote today amid an extraordinary wave of protest from former E. P. A. staff members. _____ \u2022 Snapchat's parent company is aiming for a valuation of more than $20 billion as it nears what's expected to be the biggest initial public offering in the tech world since Alibaba and Facebook. \u2022 Speaking of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg posted a update of his founder's statement that expressed alarm over growing rejections of globalism and argued that \"progress now requires humanity coming together not just as cities or nations, but also as a global community. \" \u2022 Asian financial conglomerates, including SoftBank of Japan or HNA Group of China, are scouring the U. S. for management expertise to help them invest their cash stockpiles. \u2022 European markets ended a rally. Here's a snapshot of global markets. \u2022 The Islamic State claimed a suicide attack on a dance celebration at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan's Sindh Province that killed at least 70 worshipers and injured more than 250. It was the worst act of terrorism in the country in months. [The New York Times] \u2022 ISIS also claimed the deadliest attack in Baghdad in at least a month, a car bombing in a crowded Shiite Muslim neighborhood that killed more than 50 people and injured scores. [The New York Times] \u2022 The Catholic Church in Australia has paid more than $200 million in compensation, treatment, legal and other costs in sexual abuse cases since 1980, according to information presented to a government investigation. [BBC] \u2022 In China, a ethnic Korean faces prison for criticism of the authorities that included posting a photo of himself in a calling President Xi Jinping \"Xitler. \" [The New York Times] \u2022 Tens of thousands of nomadic herders in Mongolia face hunger and another bout of the extreme winter conditions known as a \"dzud. \" [Reuters] \u2022 South Africa is debating whether a minimum wage of about $1. 50 an hour would help reduce poverty and inequality or worsen already high unemployment. [The New York Times] \u2022 The cute Kumamon stuffed bear racked up more than $1 billion in sales last year, partly thanks to a surge of supportive purchases after its home prefecture, Kumamoto, was struck by earthquakes. [The Asahi Shimbun] \u2022 Cake for breakfast? Yes, please. \u2022 A cat named Tammany was living at New York's City Hall in the 1930s. Then came talk of eviction proceedings \u2014 but the cat emerged victorious. \u2022 Recipe of the day: End the week with these simple fish tacos. \u2022 For 17 years, Hugh Jackman has been synonymous with Wolverine, a mutant with a metal skeleton and a tormented past. But the Australian actor may be popping the 's adamantium claws for the final time. \u2022 In Taipei, a growing number of restaurants are riding the \"eat local\" movement. That can mean cured mullet roe, lily stems, purple taro and honeycombed pong tang (that's candy). \u2022 Ready for \"cutthroat\" golf? This week in Australia, the Perth World Super 6 is debuting a format \u2014 a last round, with match play and a special hole \u2014 to adapt the sport to changing times. Happy Birthday to Michael Jordan. The basketball legend turns 54 today. He won't be competing at this weekend's N. B. A. dunk contest, but three decades ago he helped elevate the competition with slams from the line. Jordan's seemingly effortless flights to the basket made him one of the most instantly recognizable faces in the world. Years later, he even managed to dunk from in the partly animated movie \"Space Jam. \" C. G. I. though, wasn't needed in 1984 to capture Jordan leaping, legs in an airborne split. \"It may be the most famous silhouette ever photographed,\" Time Magazine said as it designated the image one of the 100 most influential of all time. The image lives on as the inspiration for the logo of Nike's Air Jordan shoes. Jordan, who is now a billionaire, and his brand have thrived despite his lackluster second career in baseball, criticism over his reluctance to discuss politics (though he spoke last year about police brutality) and the popularity on social media of the Crying Jordan meme, which our culture writer says \"takes one of America's biggest sports stars and makes him small. \" \"Michael actually thinks it's funny,\" his spokeswoman said. Des Shoe contributed reporting. _____ Your Morning Briefing is published weekday mornings. What would you like to see here? Contact us at asiabriefing@nytimes. com.","label":0}
{"text":"White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday was confronted by ABC s This Week host George Stephanopoulos on the conflicting stories coming from the White House regarding Donald Trump Jr s meeting with a Russian lawyer. The amateur president s lawyer, Jay Sekulow, added to that to say that Trump was not involved in writing a letter to defend his son. However, it was just after that when White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump weighed in as any father would. The White House and the president s lawyer said he wasn t involved at all, Stephanopoulos told Conway. They didn t tell the truth. You know, George, I know there s this whole thing about Conway replied. About telling the truth, the ABC host shot back. Let s talk about telling the truth, Conway said, as if she s even familiar with that concept. Let s talk about [President Barack Obama] looking Americans in the eye who are still suffering eight years later. If you like your plan you can keep it, if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. Benghazi happened because of a video. Kellyanne, you re simply changing the subject, Stephanopoulos said. You are changing the subject going back to President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Don Jr. responded to an email that said he was going to get Russian government information on Hillary Clinton, he continued. That was not out during the campaign. That was revealed just in the last several weeks. But what came of that meeting, Conway replied. Nothing. Watch:Well, we hate to burst Kellyanne s bubble (we love bursting her bubble) but no one knows about the meeting since it was held in secret at Trump Tower except for the people who attended it, including Russians and we all know how truthful they are. What we do know is that Don Jr. released copies of his email chain about that meeting with the subject line reading, Russia Clinton private and confidential. Junior was thrilled to take that meeting in order to help his father win the election. I love it! he wrote.And that has nothing to do with the 2012 Benghazi attack, thankyouverymuch.Image via screen capture.","label":1}
{"text":"Trump is not the only U.S. leader in Europe right now. Former President Obama is also there, and he met with German chancellor Angela Merkel before the big NATO summit. Merkel is up for re-election, and Obama gave her a strong endorsement, which made her Christian Democratic base happy. Unlike Trump, Obama remains very popular in Germany.And Politico, in covering this particular story, decided to throw a bit of shade in Trump s direction over Obama s meeting. Their headline for the story reads: Merkel meets popular US president before seeing Trump. That was the caption on their tweet of the story as well:Merkel meets popular U.S. president before seeing @realDonaldTrump https:\/\/t.co\/eQ6endyszF via @POLITICOEurope pic.twitter.com\/s55txBKAQn POLITICO (@politico) May 25, 2017Seriously, Politico did that. And it s hilarious in light of the fact that Merkel and Obama continue to have a very strong relationship, while she really just can t stand Donald Trump. Obama received a warm welcome, and the two of them discussed the lessons of the Berlin Wall while in front of tens of thousands of cheering Germans at the 250-year old Brandenburg Gate. Trump, however, was greeted curtly and coolly in Brussels barely two hours later.Against the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate, which survived WWII despite much of the rest of Berlin being destroyed, Obama himself threw a little shade at Trump over his isolationist, America First ideas: In this new world we live in, we can t isolate ourselves. We can t hide behind a wall. He also took aim at Trump for being a narcissistic prick: If I become so convinced that I m always right, the logical conclusion of that often ends up being great cruelty and great violence. In Brussels, Trump yelled at our allies again, claiming they aren t paying their fair share of defense expenses for NATO. Trump believes that our NATO allies are shoving their expenses off on us, and doesn t understand the treaty well enough to know that s not how it works.So Politico decided to demonstrate what Germany or at least Angela Merkel thinks about Obama versus what she thinks about Trump. Trump is ridiculous, and it s clear that at least some of our allies wish we still had Obama in office.Featured image by Stefan Rousseau Pool via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"We have to agree that the left is suffering from Trump derangement because just about anything the POTUS does is met with derision from the Democrats. There is no middle ground but only division that continues with the leaders of the left stirring the pot. Think about it. Without the division, the left has nothing Well, the The chairman of Democrats for Trump reacted to repeated calls for the president s impeachment and obstructionist behavior by members of his party. I think it s Trump derangement, former New York City Council President Andrew Stein said on Fox & Friends. Ed Henry played video of Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) introducing articles of impeachment and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) telling a crowd that President Trump s motives and actions are contemptible. Impeach 45 every day, she later said.Stein said he doesn t know why his fellow Democrats think Trump is a bad guy. Stein thinks President Trump should just continue to take his message to the people. We have to agree that the president needs to go around the lying media to deliver his message.The latest example of lying from the media is the poor treatment of First Lady Melania Trump. The media bombarded Melania with fake news about a tree that needed to be cut down. The press made it seem like evil Melania demanded that the tree be removed. In reality, the 200-year old tree had become a hazard. The media conveniently left that part out.Via Fox News Insider:","label":1}
{"text":"Right-wing ideologues are at it again with voter suppression. When not passing discriminatory voter ID laws and striking down the Voting Rights Act, they are passing off half-assed, offensive journalistic philosophy as legitimate commentary.Enter right-wing libertarian columnist David Harsanyi and his op-ed in the Washington Post.Titled We must weed out ignorant Americans from the electorate, the article at first glance seems innocent yes, we all wish people we deemed stupid didn t vote. Liberals wish conservatives didn t vote, and conservatives wish liberals didn t vote.However, when reading deeper, one quickly finds out that Harsanyi has an extremely nefarious way to achieve this forcing voters to pass a civics test if they wish to vote.Saying to voters, Unfortunately, we can t trust you, Harsanyi says Let s give voters a test. The citizenship civics test will do just fine. The reason? The writer thinks the American public is too ignorant to vote:At the same time, let s also remember that checking a box for the candidate whose campaign ads you like best is one of the most overrated obligations of the self-governed. If you have no clue what the hell is going on, you also have a civic duty to avoid subjecting the rest of us to your ignorance.The questions? Simple (if you have the privilege to from an educated background:Admitting that he believes the school system and society fails to teach the public proper civics, Harsanyi says he doesn t care. He s made up his mind. He doesn t seem to know (or maybe he just doesn t care) that his civics test, banking on the fact that people will fail it, would disproportionately affect black and Hispanic voters, Americans who don t speak English, and voters with intellectual or learning disabilities. All these people, regardless of what Harsanyi thinks, are Americans who are all entitled to vote without any discriminatory barriers.But Harsanyi addresses that:Of course, we also must remember the ugly history of poll taxes and other prejudicial methods that Americans used to deny black citizens their equal right to vote. Any effort to improve the quality of the voting public should ensure that all races, creeds, genders and sexual orientations and people of every socioeconomic background are similarly inhibited from voting when ignorant.CAUSE THAT JUST MAKES EVERYTHING BETTER, DOESN T IT!? That was the same thing the racist bigots in the South said when passing their discriminatory Jim Crow laws.This attack on the basic dignities of voters and their absolute right to vote without barriers is disgusting, but we shouldn t put it past a libertarian, or rather faux-libertarian considering actual libertarians are for freedom with no barriers.","label":1}
{"text":"Two million people in the contested Syrian city of Aleppo lack access to running water because of escalated fighting, the United Nations said Tuesday, beseeching combatants to declare a humanitarian pause to permit emergency deliveries of aid and to fix damaged pumps. \"The U. N. is extremely concerned that the consequences will be dire for millions of civilians if the electricity and water networks are not immediately repaired,\" the organization said in a statement. \"The U. N. stands ready to assist the civilian population of Aleppo, a city now united in its suffering,\" the statement said. \"At a minimum, the U. N. requires a or weekly humanitarian pauses to reach the millions of people in need throughout Aleppo and replenish the food and medicine stocks, which are running dangerously low. \" The statement also denounced the military targeting of hospitals and clinics, which it said \"continues unabated, seriously jeopardizing the health and welfare of all citizens of Aleppo. \" The fighting in Aleppo, Syria's largest city before the civil war that began more than five years ago, escalated sharply over the weekend, when rebel forces and their jihadist allies challenged the government's siege of districts. They severed the primary government supply route to Aleppo, effectively isolating the entire city. Roughly 275, 000 people in eastern Aleppo have been under siege by Syrian forces and their Russian military partners since July. The rebel advance put civilians in western Aleppo at risk, increasing the total population under threat to about two million. The crisis worsened as the United Nations Security Council was briefed privately on Tuesday by the special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, and the top humanitarian aid official, Stephen O'Brien. Mr. de Mistura, who has been seeking to restart peace talks, did not speak publicly afterward, but diplomats later told reporters that he did not foresee a resumption of talks in August. \"He doesn't want any preconditions to exist, he wants to be able to control the process, he wants to decide about the timing,\" said Alexis Lamek, France's deputy ambassador. \"I don't see how we can have meaningful talks if there is not the minimal conducive environment for that. \" Samantha Power, the United States ambassador, was also pessimistic: \"We're in reverse gear\" on the issues of humanitarian access and a cessation of hostilities in the conflict, she said, the two conditions for peace talks to resume. \"So we've always understood that these were three legs on a stool, and in order for the stool to be upright, all of the legs have to be stable,\" she said. \"And from what we heard, we're a long way from that. \" Mr. O'Brien, who spoke outside the council's chambers after his appearance, said he had told council diplomats of \"the horrific humanitarian situation in Aleppo, where fighting rages and two million people live in fear of besiegement. \" He said children were especially vulnerable from the water crisis and that wells drilled in the city were \"not nearly enough to sustain the population. \" Mr. O'Brien also said there had been no emergency deliveries to Aleppo this month, despite a previously negotiated agreement for humanitarian access. \"This was not in line with the plan,\" he said. Aid delivery teams for the United Nations were \"ready to roll\" if a humanitarian pause could be enforced, Mr. O'Brien said, but for now it was too dangerous \"even for the very brave people on the ground \u2014 they are brave, but they are not suicidal. \" Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Syria and millions displaced since the conflict began in March 2011 as a peaceful opposition movement against President Bashar . The Syrian Center for Policy Research, a group, estimated earlier this year that the death toll was at least 470, 000.","label":0}
{"text":"Bill Maher and Barney Frank totally schooled Republicans on Friday night.The Real Time host began by asking his panel to help explain why Senate Republicans are being complete pricks about President Obama picking the next Supreme Court Justice.Maher pointed out that Republicans have wobbled since Obama picked centrist Judge Merrick Garland to replace recently deceased Justice Antonin Scalia. Now they are saying they want to wait until the lame-duck period after the election to make a final decision.Of course, we all know why they want to do this all of a sudden. A centrist like Garland may be the best Republicans can get, especially if the Democrats retain the White House in November. If that happens we can expect Republicans to eagerly confirm Garland in order to prevent a more liberal nominee from being nominated. And if Republicans win the White House they ll wait until 2017 so a more conservative nominee can take the position instead.In other words, Republicans are playing a duplicitous game of politics and the GOP consultant on board the panel actually had the stones to admit that his party is playing politics in an effort to keep the Republican Party from blowing apart. Because if they balk now, they risk pissing off their conservative base. Mitch McConnell knows one thing very clearly, Rick Wilson said. If they allow an Obama justice to go forward at this point it will blow a gigantic hole in the Republican coalition like we have never seen before. They have drawn a bright line, they have sworn this is a line they re not going to cross After Wilson said he s a shameless political guy, Maher chimed in by asking, Aren t you an American first? Wilson responded by saying there is nothing in the Constitution keeping Republicans from doing what they are doing and that GOP leadership is telling the base that they ve drawn a line to keep President Obama from having a lasting legacy on the Supreme Court.Well, that didn t impress former longtime congressman Barney Frank. I spent 40 years as an elected official. I ran for office 20 times, Frank told Wilson. I understand the role of politics, but I am disappointed, Rick. The explicit elevation of the need of keeping your coalition together over the functioning of the federal government is awful. Frank went on to say that there is a need for an odd number of Justices on the Court because an even number could lead to tied rulings that don t settle cases and agreed that this is about restricting President Obama to a three year term. Yes, it s in the Constitution that Obama gets to make an appointment, Frank continued. And what McConnell is putting forward is a nonsense theory, namely that it s only a 3-year term. Frank also expressed his hope that Republicans would have taken the opportunity to to pull back from their rabid base a little bit because of Donald Trump but it appears they have no intention of doing that. Instead, they appear to be doubling down on their allegiance to the base at their peril.Maher then re-introduced a word he came up with years ago known as blacktracking, which is when Republicans change their mind because President Obama agrees with them. As it turns out, it happened again this week because Republicans had no problem with Merrick Garland being nominated for the Supreme Court until President Obama nominated him this week.Here s the video via Twitter.Watch @BillMaher and the #RealTime panel discuss the GOP s blacktracking over @POTUS s SCOTUS nomination.https:\/\/t.co\/5iiG9vrtBp Real Time (@RealTimers) March 19, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"Putin Foes Caught in Malicious Fabrications about Kremlin Insider Lesin's Death  Coroner's final decision reveals all. Print  A US Senator and a Russian opposition figure are among those who have tripped themselves up with their fabrications about Mikhail Lesin's 2015 death. Lesin was a former Russian media advertising tycoon, state media minister, and later head of the Gazprom-Media holding company. He died in Washington DC amid circumstances that went unexplained fully until October 28 of this year.What did Putin's foes first have to say about Lesin's death?Russian opposition figure and Putin foe Alexei Nevalny had a lot to say. On March 13, 2016 the Independent ran the headline: \"Mikhail Lesin death: Vladimir Putin's propaganda chief reportedly flew out of LA 40 days after his death. The story claims Alexei Navalny, a Putin opposition leader, said the incident 'smells of a witness protection programme.'\" The Daily Mail reported that that Navalny claimed to have proof.Was Lesin's reported demise just a coverup?But a month later, Navalny seemed to have backed away from that allegation. According to the Voice of America \"Navalny said he had no 'proof' or definitive evidence, but indicated that Lesin may have died because, 'as they say in detective stories, he knew too much.'\"So Navalny had come to believe that Lesin was indeed dead after all. But now Navalny intimated that perhaps Putin was to blame.While making a case to VOA that Putin is corrupt, Navalny said he was convinced \"that Lesin knew a lot. Not just about corruption in the highest echelons of power, but [he] was one of the organizers of a corruption scheme in which Putin himself was personally complicit. And against the backdrop of his death, against the backdrop of the strange things that were happening around him, it's a more than reasonable assumption that, in any contacts he may have had with the federal authorities in the United States, Lesin may have been asked about it.\"Other theories in the news claimed:--Lesin's death was connected with his alleged role as a CIA informer.--His demise was related to a secret romantic tryst gone wrong.--Lesin's body was cremated to destroy evidence of what really happened.Many of the news reports mentioned Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker who considered Lesin to be a very suspicious character. He very well may have been. Once while having lunch with Ivan Laptev, Lesin's ministerial predecessor, I joked about when I saw Lesin at a New York meeting in the early 2000s. I first mistook him for some kind of Russian mafia guy, just based on how he was dressed and the gorgeous gun-moll looking young lady that accompanied him.In July 2014 Wicker seemed to have more serious concerns. He was moved to tip off the US Attorney General. It wasn't based on Lesin's appearance. Wicker had become aware that Lesin owned expensive residential property in California. He believed that meant something sinister was afoot. Wicker said about Lesin, \"He acquired multiple residences at a cost of over $28 million.\"\"That a Russian public servant could have amassed the considerable funds required to acquire and maintain these assets in ... the United States raises serious questions,\" Wicker told ABC News.Wicker wasn't fond of Putin either. In March 2014 he had written an article for the Washington Examiner titled, \"Hillary Clinton was right about Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler the first time.\" Clinton has been quoted many times likening Putin to Hitler.Wicker was and is a member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. I find it very disturbing that a member of that influential committee could be espousing ideas so distant from reality as these. A simple google search could have told him that Lesin was no simple government service worker pulling down a measly salary. Lesin's Video International business had a near-monopoly grip on the media advertising business in Russia years ago. In fact when he was Putin's media minister, many critics mused that he was the \"minister\" of his own business sector.Was Wicker's research so lame that he knew nothing of Lesin other than his role in the Russian bureaucracy? Was he that stupid? Or is there something sinister about Wicker's interest in Lesin? I don't know whether there is or isn't. But the incongruity of his factless demonization of Putin, and his seemingly malicious letter to the Attorney General about Lesin, throw up a red flag. Maybe the Attorney General should look into Wicker's business dealings to see if something fishy is going on there.So what's the truth about Lesin's death?The final coroner's verdict is that he was dead drunk in his hotel room, fell multiple times, injuring his lower and upper torso, and inflicted a fatal blow to his head.I don't know whether that is the honest truth or not. But if we are to believe people like Navalny and Wicker it would seem that the Washington coroner is in the bag for Putin. Wow, what an accusation.","label":1}
{"text":"If he doesn't want us there then pull out. That 200 million dollars a year we give and and troop support. Pull it all, the hell with them. When the country goes Coomie they will come crawling back asking for intervention.","label":1}
{"text":"What if you threw a party and most of the people who would otherwise attend avoided it like a particularly virulent strain of syphilis had gone airborn in a ten-mile radius surrounding the National Mall? At this point, the festivities surrounding the inauguration of the United States next Grand Wizard, Donald Trump, are shaping up to be a complete disaster that will be referenced in every non-Texas history book for generations to come.A minority of Americans and a broken system with a special helping hand from Vladimir Putin and James Comey may have barely elected Donald Trump President, but he remains the least popular person to step into the Oval Office since Osama bin Hitler took office in 1897 in an alternate timeline (that s right, we had to reach outside reality to find something to which we could compare Trump s yuge level of unpopularity).Trump may be bragging about the record-setting turnout he is expecting, but the truth is that he is crying on the inside. Officials are expecting 800,000 to 900,000 people to show up to see Trump being sworn in as our next President. On their own these numbers may seem impressive, but Obama s inauguration attracted double that a whopping 1.8 million people showed up for him and as we all know, Trump desperately needs to feel like he has beaten Barack Obama at everything.Trump is so desperate that he has taken the rather interesting approach: shamelessly spending money to beg Americans to show up and adore him well, people over the age of 27 who live in New York, anyway. F*ck the rest of you.imagine being so disliked that 4 days before your inauguration you start paying to send desperate FB ad invites to \"person, 27+\" pic.twitter.com\/UQ0m4D7vg4 mah ree nah (@marinarachael) January 17, 2017? ? #Trump Is So Pathetic DesperateTo Fill His #Inauguration Seats He's Put An Ad On His #Facebook Page Inviting People @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com\/L9jChYlxdU Marsha (@Whippenz) January 17, 2017Trump is paying $$$ to place a Facebook ad asking (begging) people (ages 27 + up) to attend his Swearing In Ceremony.Pathetic & So Sad . pic.twitter.com\/MogbRNrmLj J Reed (@EarthlingJR) January 17, 2017.@Facebook keeps serving me a video ad where Trump invites me to #Inauguration but @TrumpInaugural website doesn't work. No \"form below.\" pic.twitter.com\/d4FLFaaEZd Alex Howard (@digiphile) January 15, 2017How bad is it for Trump? Ticket scalpers are losing money on tickets to the event, which promises to be exactly as exciting as the average county fair (with matching entertainment). Trump has managed to snag obsolete one hit wonder pop band Three Doors Down and country artist who is known for showing up to concerts so drunk that he forgets the lyrics to his own songs. Other performances include a 16-year-old reality show contestant, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, a marching band from Louisiana s most racist high school, and whichever of the Rockettes decides to show up to this abortion of an event. Basically, if I just got my Klan robes back from the drycleaner is not a part of your vernacular, you re gonna have a bad time at this thing.Recently, Trump hate-tweeted the majority of Americans who are not OK with Russia hacking his political opponents on his behalf, calling them stupid people and fools. And he wonders why no one wants to come to his Sweet 16.","label":1}
{"text":"By Nathaniel Mauka Congress overwhelmingly voted for the Patriot Act nearly 16 years ago, and our civil liberties have never been the same since. As if this singular bill, passed by George W. Bush, wasn't invasive enough, allowing big banks to demand our internet data, and more \u2014 the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act ( CISA ) makes cyber-spying by the shadow government and the financial entities controlling it, a forgone conclusion. As with most shadow government legislation, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act is packed with hidden surveillance allowances. CISA was quietly passed to allow government to demand that private companies hand over personal information to them at will. It also allows companies to mine data, under the auspices of government-created urgency. The mere fact that this act passed in late 2015 is monumental, since it has been before Congress in different forms for over a decade . The election seems to have offered the perfect cover, as Americans and activists were too busy arguing over Trump vs. Hillary.  Scott Talbott, senior vice president of government relations at the Electronic Transactions Association believes the value of sharing our personal data as a means to be alerted of 'cyber threats' outweighs any hazard to our civil liberties. Talbott states , \"The value is that everyone can be alerted to cyber threats and take precautionary countermeasures before they materialize and spread,\" he said. \"Before CISA, corrective measures could be taken only after the cyber threat had done its damage. CISA allows each company to serve as an early warning system to the entire economy.\"  Who exactly would be determining if someone is a 'threat' is the meat of the sandwich, though. CISA is ripe for abuse, just as the Patriot Act has been. The Patriot Act has made it legal for law enforcement to spy on people, without probable cause \u2013 to enter their homes, or even to strip search them before they've been to court, had the opportunity to argue a case, or given 'authorities' a motive for this type of interrogation. The stated purpose of the Patriot Act was to deter terrorist acts in the United States, but what do you do when the terrorists have already taken over your country? CISA simply expands the reach of a shadow government which has already been proven to reach beyond the boundaries of constitutional law. More importantly, who specifically is CISA targeting? After multiple hackers have infiltrated computer systems at the White House , the State Department , the Pentagon , and the Office of Personnel Management, along with the Democratic National Committee , and numerous multinational banks run by the cabal, is the shadow government simply trying to create a stop-gap before their most elusive, yet damning information is made public? CISA certainly will expand the reach of government surveillance on citizens as it has been conducted by the the National Security Agency (NSA) before former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed it. \"I think this bill was meant to be a surveillance bill from the start,\" said Justin Harvey, CSO of Fidelis Cybersecurity, adding that he is dubious that the stated intent of the bill \u2013 to use collective intelligence to warn of potential cyber attacks and possibly stop them before they occur \u2013 will result. Under the guise of 'sharing cyber threats' CISA allows companies to wholesale-collect information that may not even be a threat \u2013 and then pass it along for government bodies to determine if it is, indeed a threat. If this sounds like circular logic \u2013 it is just the beginning of the odd verbiage within the bill. It's justifications for entering every possible orifice for data-gathering are more confounded than an octopus in a straight jacket. The government can already enter your personal property including your home, your body , your cell, and your computer , but now they will have a legal in-roads to declare you a cyber-threat, simply for sending an email . This begs the question \u2013 who is the real cyber-bully? CISA seems to be nothing more than a prevarication, covering the acts of an elite few who don't want their secrets exposed. Nathaniel Mauka is a researcher of the dark side of government and exopolitics, and a staff writer for Waking Times .  Source: Waking Times","label":1}
{"text":"The United States and India signed an agreement on Monday governing the use of each other's land, air and naval bases for repair and resupply, a step toward building defense ties as they seek to counter the growing maritime assertiveness of China. The agreement, a relatively mundane one concerning day-to-day military logistics, is nonetheless a milestone in the U.S.-India defense relationship because of the outsized political importance it had taken on in India, where it had touched on domestic sensitivities, experts said. The signing of the agreement will \"make the logistics of joint operations so much easier and so much more efficient,\" U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a news briefing with Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. The agreement will allow the Indian and U.S. navies to have an easier time supporting each other in joint operations and exercises and when providing humanitarian assistance, Parrikar said. Washington's desire for deeper security cooperation with India had been complicated without the signing of the logistics agreement as well as two other pacts that would allow for secure communications and the exchange of nautical and other data. The agreements are considered routine between the United States and its other defense partners. But India has had concerns such an agreement would commit it to hosting U.S. troops at its bases, or draw it into a military alliance with the United States and undermine its traditional autonomy. Carter and Parrikar reached an agreement \"in principle\" in April, but had yet to finalize the details. Carter has made closer military ties with India a priority, and established a special unit within the Pentagon last year to promote cooperation with that country. Parrikar's visit to Washington this week marks the sixth interaction between the two top defense officials. The signing of the logistics agreement indicates the priority the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi places on a closer defense relationship with the United States, said Benjamin Schwartz, until last year the India country director at the Pentagon. \"For years, there has been tremendous misinformation put out into the Indian press about these agreements,\" said Schwartz, now with the U.S.-India Business Council, which promotes trade ties between the two countries. \"What the signing of this shows is that the Modi government is willing to take and suffer the short-term political criticism of signing these things for the longer-term benefit of building the defense relationship with the United States.\" Both Carter and Parrikar went to pains on Monday to make clear that the logistics agreement did not allow for basing of U.S. troops in India. \"It's not a basing agreement of any kind,\" Carter said. The debate over the logistics agreement had served as a vehicle for the distrust some of India's political class has towards the United States, said Shane Mason, a research associate at the Stimson Center. The United States had previously imposed sanctions on India related to its 1998 nuclear test, although the sanctions were eased later. \"From the U.S. perspective this was kind of a low hanging fruit,\" Mason said. \"We have logistic support agreements with many, many other countries and in most cases it's a relatively uncontroversial thing.\" The U.S. military has made clear it wants to do more with India, especially in countering China, which U.S. officials say is risking stoking conflict through its claims in the South China Sea, a vital trade waterway. Without naming China, both Carter and Parrikar mentioned the importance of the free flow of trade to both countries. \"India and the United States have a shared interest in freedom of navigation and overflight and unimpeded commerce as part of rule-based order in (the) Indo-Pacific,\" Parrikar said. China hoped cooperation between India and the United States would be \"constructive and positive\" for the region's peace and stability and development, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular briefing on Tuesday. \"So, we look favorably on this sort of normal relationship between India and the United States,\" Hua said.","label":0}
{"text":"Maha 's family is divided. She immigrated to New York City in 2014, reuniting with her three sons who had arrived earlier. She expected that her husband, Husham and her two other sons would soon join her from Amman, Jordan, finally bringing the family together after a tumultuous decade of surviving the Iraq war, fleeing to Jordan and then searching for a permanent home. But on Friday, the family was dealt another blow, after President Trump approved a sweeping executive order on immigration that, among other things, blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries including Iraq, where members of the family are citizens. Her husband and two sons in Jordan are for now locked out of the United States, and Ms. Obaidi cannot travel away, or risk being denied . \"Now our family in the U. S. can't even come to visit us, nor can we visit them,\" Mr. Qadhi said on Saturday in Amman. \"We just sit and watch like the rest of the world what is happening, and our fate is being decided for us, in front of our eyes. \" The family lived in Baghdad as American tanks, troops and missiles tore into the Iraqi capital in 2003. It stayed for several years, despite gunfire and bomb blasts outside its house and the kidnapping of several family members. The family helped American soldiers even though other Iraqis targeted it for doing so. One of the sons in Amman, Thabit said he and his father had run a snack bar on an American base in Baghdad, serving candy and soft drinks to troops, and operated a internet cafe, which required them to be vetted and approved to begin work. After Thabit was kidnapped in 2006 by Qaeda terrorists and eventually released, he said, he reported details about the episode to American officials in the hope that they would be caught. And on his way home from the Baghdad base one day, he came upon four American troops injured along the road, and he said he had loaded them into his car and driven them to the Green Zone. \"America has abandoned its responsibility to protect those who protected and cooperated with the Americans,\" he said. \"It's a decision solely based on my religious faith. It's discrimination solely on religious grounds. \" He added: \"This is the wrong decision. Is it even constitutional?\" The family's home was along one of Baghdad's major highways, an entry point for American troops during the invasion. The family huddled in a windowless section of the home for 10 days, as bullets shattered windows and rockets blazed through the sky, until the United States took control of Baghdad. In the years after the invasion, the family remained in Iraq, even as unrest spread, militants took up arms and tensions between Sunnis and Shiites flared up. In addition to Thabit Ms. Obaidi's husband was also kidnapped, on two separate occasions. The family members recalled the lengths to which they went to get them freed, how they stuffed $60, 000 in Iraqi dinars into garbage bags and were instructed by cellphone to travel to a series of locations before dropping off the ransom. \"It was like in the movies,\" Ms. Obaidi said in an interview this month. Fearing more attacks, the family left Iraq for Jordan. It joined many other Iraqi refugees, including extended family members. Ms. Obaidi and her husband used their savings to buy a home in Amman. Employment opportunities were scarce for Iraqis, leading three of her sons, starting in 2010, to venture to the United States to find work. When Ms. Obaidi later followed them, she hoped that her entire family could apply for asylum and unite in America. She made the trip despite a number of concerns. \"At first, I felt afraid,\" she said. \"How can I live in this country? It is a foreign country. It is very far from my culture. How will I be compatible with the community?\" To her surprise, Ms. Obaidi found New York to be unlike its gruff stereotypes. People smiled as she walked down the street. Men helped her haul heavy bags up stairs. Others offered her seats on the subway. \"Everybody in America is very nice,\" she said. \"They are very polite, helpful people, nice people, always with a smile on their face. That is my experience. \" She has found additional support from the International Rescue Committee, a global humanitarian aid, relief and development nongovernmental organization based in New York. Founded in 1933, the organization is the newest organization supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, and the only one of the eight groups whose work extends beyond the New York area. It operates in 29 cities in the United States and in more than 40 countries. The organization was instrumental in helping Ms. Obaidi adjust to her new life and connecting her with a number of social services, including health insurance and food stamps. It helped her obtain a Social Security card, navigate New York's streets and understand its transportation system. The group also helped her study for her driver's license permit exam, among other services. \"I feel I am not lonely,\" she said. \"I have somebody. I have somebody to support me. \" She shares a home in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens with two of her sons, Saif and Qaed . Her third son, Tameem and his wife, Melissa Forstrom, also live in the neighborhood. \"I have a nice life,\" Ms. Obaidi said. \"Even though my apartment is small, I feel happy in it. I like it. \" But it is a home with some notable, painful absences. \"I've divided myself,\" Ms. Obaidi said. \"Some part is there in Jordan, and some parts \u2026 \" She trailed off, overcome with emotion. In Amman, Thabit her oldest son, lives with his wife and son across the street from Ms. Obaidi's husband, Husham, and their youngest son, Omar . They have been denied asylum in the United States. In October 2015, Husham was sent a conditional acceptance letter for asylum in the United States. About a year later, he received a second letter, denying him resettlement. Omar who works at Unicef to help provide water, sanitation and hygiene to Syrian refugees in Jordan, was also denied resettlement. \"We have lived here as if we were waiting for something, as if everything was temporary, but now we no longer know what we are waiting for,\" Omar said in his apartment in Amman. Thabit who has traveled to New York several times to visit his family, has not received the same denial letters for resettlement in the United States. His tourist visa was renewed, but a week later, an officer at the American Embassy in Amman told him that his visa had been canceled, and his case for resettlement was denied. Whether they will ever get approval to move to the United States is even more uncertain now. Thabit said that Mr. Trump's order was particularly painful and that he felt America was turning its back on Iraqis who had risked their lives to help soldiers during the war. \"At the end we realized we were no longer welcome, neither from the Iraqis because we worked with the Americans, nor from the Americans because we were Iraqi,\" he said. Like many Iraqis, Thabit is living in Jordan on a conditional basis. He must renew his permission every year, and it is dependent on the family's financial means. \"Nothing is guaranteed in business,\" he said. \"Today, my trade company here is successful, but if one day the business fails, then what will happen? Where do I go?\" In the United States, his siblings, even with employment and legal immigration status, live in a similar state of unsteadiness and concern. For three years, Tameem 's only proof of his legal status was an record known as an form, a document without a photo of him and only his name and identification numbers. It has hindered his attempts to travel even within the United States. Visas for Saif 's wife and children were approved recently after a wait of more than two years. They were booked on a plane expected to arrive Feb. 7, but Friday's executive order by Mr. Trump has dashed those plans. \"The kids, they grow up far from their father,\" Saif said. \"All of a sudden, I told them 'I'm sorry, something changed. I may not be able to see you soon. '\" He and his wife are distraught by the development, which leaves them in a precarious position. In anticipation of the move, their children were taken out of their private school and the lease on their apartment in Amman is to expire on Feb. 1. \"I'm watching the news every second,\" Mr. Qadhi said. Ms. Obaidi's children have been able to acclimate to their new surroundings and establish a rhythm in their lives. Tameem owns a cellphone store in the East Village in Manhattan, Qaed works as an information technology manager, and Saif is an Uber driver. Ms. Obaidi stays busy by volunteering at the Masjid Dar mosque. The family gathers as often as work schedules and other responsibilities allow, most often on Sundays, when Ms. Obaidi prepares a large meal. They all await the day when more chairs can be placed around the table. Halfway across the world, the other half of the family shares that sentiment. Omar said he missed his brothers, but especially his mother. \"It just feels weird that we are now split, and the future looks grim,\" he said. \"We are travelers on a journey with no destination, and my family is so far away. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Actually: The Big Bang didn't happen at a place it happened at a time. \"Where did the Big Bang happen?\" I am often asked, as if the expansion of the universe was like a hand grenade going off and the solar system and our Milky Way galaxy were shards sent flying. The universe didn't start at a place, it started at a time, namely 13. 8 billion years ago, according to the best cosmological data. It's been expanding ever since \u2014 not into space because the universe by definition fills all space already, so much as into time, which as far as we know is . It is true that everything we can see now, out to 13. 8 billion years of time, was once the size of a grapefruit, buzzing with hideous energies, but that grapefruit was already part of an infinite ensemble with no edge, except one made up of time. When we look out, we look into the past, the farther we look, the more deeply into the past we see. At the center is the present. Alas there is no direction in which we can look to see the future \u2014 except perhaps into our own hearts and dreams. All we know is right now. So where is the center of the universe? Right here. Yes, you are the center of the universe. When Albert Einstein married space and time in his theory of relativity back in 1905, he taught us that our eyes are time machines. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, the cosmic speed limit, and so all information comes to us, to the present, from the past. And so Einstein's relativity teaches us that the center of the universe is everywhere and nowhere. It is the present, surrounded by concentric shells of the past. History racing at you at 186, 282 miles per second, the speed of light, the speed of all information. Your eyes are the cockpit of a time machine, filmy wet orbs looking in the only direction any of us can ever look: backward. Everything we see or feel or hear \u2014 now that gravitational waves have been discovered \u2014 took some time to get here, and so comes to our senses from the past. The moon, hovering over the horizon, is an image of light that left its cratered surface traveling at the speed of light a second and a half ago. The sun that burns your skin is eight minutes and nineteen seconds in the past. The Jupiter we see, glowering orange at the zenith these nights, is about 414 million miles out there as of this writing, or 37 minutes away in the past. The light from the center of the Milky Way, hiding behind the thick star clouds and dust lanes of Sagittarius, takes 26, 000 years to get here. While it was on the way the first primitive ice age villages grew into skyscrapered metropolises. Your lover, brushing your lashes with his or her breath, is a nanosecond gone. This is more than poetry. Mathematically, in Einsteinian terms, all the information and history available at any one place in the universe is known as a light cone. Everybody has one and everybody's is slightly different, which means in effect that everyone's universe is a little different. There will always be some piece of information that has reached your lover but not yet you, let alone E. T. over in the next galaxy. It gives a new definition to being alone with your thoughts. As T. S. Eliot put it: As a result every spot in the universe is unique. There will always be a piece of it you haven't seen yet and a piece that you have seen but that nobody else has. There is no place to stand if you want to claim universal knowledge. We all need each other in order to overlap our knowledge. We don't have to stay in our prisons. Working together and sharing, we can know everything. Or as Bob Dylan once put it, \"I'll let you be in my dreams, if I can be in yours. \"","label":0}
{"text":"It s good to know Hillary s Campaign Chairman has such extraordinary ties with a top official involved in the reopening of Hillary s FBI probe Will this woman ever get the justice she deserves for decades of criminality? With all of her ties and crooked connections, is it even a possibility? The Justice Department official in charge of informing Congress about the newly reactivated Hillary Clinton email probe is a political appointee and former private-practice lawyer who kept Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta out of jail, lobbied for a tax cheat later pardoned by President Bill Clinton and led the effort to confirm Attorney General Loretta Lynch.Peter Kadzik, who was confirmed as assistant attorney general for legislative affairs in June 2014, represented Podesta in 1998 when independent counsel Kenneth Starr was investigating Podesta for his possible role in helping ex-Bill Clinton intern and mistress Monica Lewinsky land a job at the United Nations. Fantastic lawyer. Kept me out of jail, Podesta wrote on Sept. 8, 2008 to Obama aide Cassandra Butts, according to emails hacked from Podesta s Gmail account and posted by WikiLeaks.Kadzik s name has surfaced multiple times in regard to the FBI s investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for using a private, homebrewed server. After FBI Director James Comey informed Congress on Thursday the FBI was reviving its inquiry when new evidence linked to a separate investigation was discovered, congressional leaders wrote to the Department of Justice seeking more information. Kadzik replied. We assure you that the Department will continue to work closely with the FBI and together, dedicate all necessary resources and take appropriate steps as expeditiously as possible, Kadzik wrote on Oct. 31.The DOJ is responsible for approving the bureau s warrant applications and ultimately for convening a grand jury.Fox News has previously confirmed the Justice Department was opposed to Comey making public the latest Clinton revelations. FOX News","label":1}
{"text":"Catalonia s ousted leader Carles Puigdemont agreed on Tuesday to a snap election called by Spain s central government when it took control of the region to stop it breaking away, but he said the fight for independence would go on. Spain s High Court issued a summons for Puigdemont and 13 members of his sacked administration to testify in Madrid on Thursday and Friday as the court starts processing charges of rebellion, sedition and breach of trust against them. Under Spain s legal system, a judge will then decide whether Puigdemont should go to jail pending a comprehensive investigation and potential trial. Puigdemont travelled to Brussels after the Catalan regional parliament issued a unilateral declaration of independence on Friday, and it was not immediately clear if he would heed the summons to appear before the Madrid court. Belgium s crisis centre said it was evaluating whether Puigdemont needed to be protected by Belgian authorities while he was staying in the country, Belga news agency reported. He had said earlier on Tuesday he would return to Spain only when given unspecified guarantees by the Spanish government. Puigdemont s announcement that he would accept the regional election on Dec. 21 signalled the Madrid government had for now at least gained the upper hand in the protracted struggle over Catalonia, a wealthy northeastern region that already had enjoyed considerable autonomy. Resistance to the central government s imposition of direct control on Catalonia failed to materialise at the start of the week and the secessionist leadership is in disarray. But a poll released on Tuesday showed that support for the creation of an independent state of Catalonia rose to an almost three-year high in October. Spain s Constitutional Court on Tuesday blocked the independence declaration - a largely symbolic move that gained no traction and led to the assembly s dismissal by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy less than an hour after it was made. I ask the Catalan people to prepare for a long road. Democracy will be the foundation of our victory, Puigdemont told a news conference in Brussels, where he showed up after dropping out of sight over the weekend. He also said he was not seeking asylum in Belgium. Rajoy, who has taken an uncompromising stance throughout the crisis, is gambling on anti-independence parties taking power in the regional parliament and putting the brakes on the independence drive. Puigdemont will hope a strong showing for the independence camp will reboot the secessionists after a tumultuous few weeks. The Spanish government said at the weekend Puigdemont was welcome to stand in the election. The judicial process was a separate matter, it said. The Supreme Court also began processing rebellion and sedition charges against Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell and other senior leaders on Tuesday. The political crisis, Spain s gravest since the return of democracy in the late 1970s, was triggered by an independence referendum held in Catalonia on Oct. 1. Though it was declared illegal by Spanish courts and less than half Catalonia s eligible voters took part, the pro-secessionist regional government said the vote gave it a mandate for independence. The United States, Britain, Germany and France have all backed Rajoy and rejected an independent Catalan state, although some have called for dialogue between the opposing sides. Puigdemont, Vice President Oriol Junqueras and other Catalan leaders had said previously they would not accept their dismissal. But their respective parties, PdeCat and Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, said on Monday they would take part in the election, a tacit acceptance of direct rule from Madrid. The struggle has divided Catalonia itself and caused deep resentment across the rest of Spain, although separatist sentiment persists in the Basque Country and some other areas. Two recent opinion polls showed support for independence may have started to wane. But an official regional survey published on Tuesday showed some 48.7 percent of Catalans believe the region should be independent, up from 41.1 pct in June and the highest since December 2014. Based on 1,338 interviews, the Centre d Estudis d Opinio poll was the first survey released since the independence declaration though the bulk of it was taken before then, between Oct. 16 and Oct. 29. Despite his dash to the European Union s power centre, Puigdemont s hopes of engaging the bloc in his cause seem forlorn. Member states have asserted their support for Spanish unity and EU institutions in Brussels say they will deal only with Madrid and that the dispute remains an internal matter. Our position remains unchanged, EU Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said in Brussels on Tuesday. But some analysts believe the dispute is not going to fade away anytime soon. Spain is heading for a period of disruption, and like the UK and Brexit, having its policy agenda dominated by one political issue while other key challenges fade into the background, said Raj Badiani, an economist at IHS Markit in London. A more tangible impact from the crisis could evolve from early 2018, with the uncertainty set to build as Catalans push harder for a legally binding referendum. Influential Catalan business lobbies have backed direct rule and called on firms to stay in the region. The crisis has prompted more than 1,000 businesses to switch their legal headquarters from Catalonia, which contributes about a fifth of Spain s economy, the fourth-largest in the euro zone. Spain s IBEX fell slightly as Puigdemont began speaking in Brussels but then rose again. For some in Barcelona, the overwhelming emotion appears to be exasperation. It s a farcical and completely ridiculous situation, said Ernesto Hernandez Busto, 42, an editor. This extreme nationalism, this separatism, has taken Catalonia to the most absurd situation and the worst inconvenience we have had in the last 40 years.","label":0}
{"text":"We're not electing a drinking buddy, we're electing a president. Likeability is a smoke screen. And yes, it's sexist besides. With her latest primary wins, Hillary Clinton is all but guaranteed the Democratic nomination. But exit polls in some of the states where she has been victorious indicate that she is far from guaranteed the presidency. More pointedly, polls make it clear that if Hillary wants to win she may have to find the courage to admit something most women are afraid to. While a majority of recent Democratic voters deemed Clinton trustworthy, Democrats who ranked honesty as the most important quality in their decision chose Bernie Sanders. Additionally more than half of Americans hold an unfavorable opinion of her. Clinton's favorability numbers are still better than Donald Trump's. But the question is not really whether a majority of American voters will choose Donald Trump. They won't. The question is whether enough voters opposing his candidacy will turn out\u2014on Election Day and as volunteers beforehand\u2014 for Hillary Clinton to win. The even larger question, however, is why so many voters have such strong negative reactions to Hillary Clinton in the first place. After all, many of the same voters who disdain her for being \"dishonest\" will cheer for her husband. You know the one who actually did lie to all of us. Remember \"I did not have sexual relations with that woman\"? Of course for many the distinction between how the two Clintons are viewed is clear. He's a man and she's a woman. We've all heard it said before, \"A woman is called 'difficult' for behavior that gets a man hailed as 'assertive.'\" Bill Clinton is not seen as a liar, but simply as a mischievously rakish leader who was economical with the truth. Hillary, on the other hand, is a lying harpy. I'm sure that sexism has played a role in how Hillary Clinton is perceived and critiqued by some. Because no woman in the public eye as much as she is or as long as she has been is immune to sexist critiques. (I get them regularly.) But the reality is that the real difference between Bill and Hillary Clinton is a difference all of us have faced in life, whether in junior high, or the office. Bill is simply more likable. In the same way George W. Bush was seen as more fun and friendly than his more intellectually accomplished and responsible brother Jeb, Bill is preferred by most people with a pulse over his more responsible wife. Every election we hear about the importance of the so-called \"beer test,\" as in \"who do voters want to have a beer with?\" Hillary Clinton screams a lot of things, but person you want to chill with in your free time is not one of them. (Which is why President Obama's backhanded compliment of Clinton as \"likable enough\" landed like the diss that it was.) But I believe the real problem for Hillary Clinton is not that her husband is more likable than she is, but that it is obvious that she cares so much\u2014like a lot of women do. I remember a conversation I had with a female friend just before an important meeting I was supposed to have with a prominent media person. I was nervous because for a variety of reasons I suspected the person I was meeting with might not be a personal fan of mine. When I finished laying out my concerns my friend\u2014who is significantly more successful said: \"This is the difference between men and women. Why do you care if he likes you or not? You got the meeting because his boss's boss thinks you're qualified, and if they tell him to work with you, he will.\" This may sound like a fairly unimportant anecdote in the context of a presidential campaign but for some of the women I've shared it with over the years it is revelatory. The reason: because women are taught early on to spend much of our time, energy and social capital pleasing others. Boys are taught to be smart. Girls are taught to be smart\u2014but not at the expense of being popular, and certainly not at the expense of being pretty. Because after all, accomplishments ultimately mean very little in the big scheme of things if when it's all said and done you're a woman who is perceived as unattractive, unlovable and unlikable. Hillary Clinton, the candidate voters don't trust, was deemed the most trustworthy presidential candidate on terror following the recent Brussels attack. But of course that's not quite the same as being loved or liked, but it does seem to indicate that plenty of Americans know that the job of president is far too serious to be decided the same way we decide who we want to sit with in the cafeteria in high school. Instead of trying desperately to generate laughs on \"Saturday Night Live\" or \"Broad City\" or some other outlets her team of advisors have convinced her are essential to making her likable enough to win, she should finally do something most of us would never have the courage to do but wish that we did, which is to say this: \"I know I'm not what you'd call likable and that you may not like me or think of me as a fun beer date. But I'm really qualified, and for a job this serious I think that's what should matter. After all, do you care whether your heart surgeon is likable?\"","label":0}
{"text":"On Friday, the White House released its 2015 National Security Strategy, an official document defining the administration's approach to international politics. A lot of the document is pretty uninformative; the ratio of substance to platitudes (\"our economy is the largest, most open, and most innovative in the world\") is low. But this sentence, pretty early on in the report, is actually a pithy but insightful encapsulation of President Barack Obama's core approach to foreign policy: This cuts to the core of what can often confuse people about Obama's approach to the world. Though he's constantly intervening in foreign crises \u2014 toppling Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, bombing al-Qaeda in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and so on \u2014 he's also deeply invested in reducing America's involvement in major wars like Iraq and Afghanistan. To understand this approach, you have to look at each half of the above sentence in turn. Each reflects a core tenet of the way the Obama administration approaches the world. Let's focus on the first half of the sentence: \"there are no global problems that can be solved without the United States.\" That's meant pretty literally. On basically every major world crisis \u2014 containing the fallout from the global financial crisis, rolling back climate change, combating ISIS, punishing Russian expansionism, or curing Ebola \u2014 the United States has played a major role in organizing the international response. That's because Obama, like basically every president since the Cold War began, has bought into what's now called the \"bipartisan consensus\" on foreign policy. To most people, the consensus is basically invisible. That's because almost no one on either side of the aisle bothers to debate its basic premises. But nonetheless, it's defined American foreign policy for decades. It rests on basically three ideas: If these statements sound banal, it's because, for the most part, they are. Foreign policy intellectuals on both the left and the right regularly criticize these ideas, but no one with serious power in the US government does (at least in public). You see this pretty clearly in Obama's actions. Bombing ISIS, organizing a coalition to end Libya's civil war, and sending US troops to West Africa to help stop the spread Ebola are all premised on the assumption that the world's problems are also America's. The general consensus on principles obviously doesn't translate into bipartisan agreements on specific policy issues. That's where the second part of the sentence comes in: there are \"few [global problems] that can be solved by the United States alone.\" This is a pretty unmistakable reference to the Bush administration. Obama rode to power as a critic of the Iraq war; a core part of his administration's strategic doctrine is to avoid Bush's aggressive, unilateral uses of American power. If Bush pushed the hawkish bounds of the bipartisan consensus, Obama is at times \u2014 though not always \u2014 somewhere on the dovish end. In some cases, that means avoiding military action and trusting in multilateral diplomacy and deterrence to resolve conflicts (Iran, East Asia). In others, it means relying on non-military means of punishing bad actors (Iran again, Russia). In others still, it means marshaling global coalitions, but limiting America's up-front military role as much as possible and consistent with the mission's objectives (Libya, ISIS). Obama's approach to each of these global crises is shaped by a keen desire to avoid Bush-style protracted wars. Even in cases where Obama really does act unilaterally, such as with targeted killings or the Afghanistan surge, he tries to put limits on those actions to keep them from escalating beyond control. You might think this approach is too cautious \u2014 or, for many critics of the consensus, too aggressive still. But one thing it's not is \"withdrawing from the world\" or \"abandoning America's allies,\" as some critics have alleged. By virtually every statistical measure imaginable, the United States is the world's leading power, and deeply entangled in political conflicts around the world. Obama has done nothing to change that. His approach may or may not be to your liking on specific issues but, as the NSS reinforces, the broad strokes of his approach are pretty consistent with what America has been doing in the world for decades.","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. President Barack Obama and his family escaped the blistering heat of the Chihuahuan Desert on Friday when they went through a maze of ancient caverns where the only sound was the drip-dripping from stalactites. The subterranean adventure was the first stop on a working vacation during which Obama will spend some time with his teenaged daughters while making the case for more spending on conservation and curbing climate change. It was just like any other family holiday, except the entourage of Secret Service agents, aides and press who follow Obama wherever he goes had to descend the 754 feet (230 m) on elevators in eight shifts. \"How cool is this?\" he said to the press in the dark, damp alien landscape of the \"Big Room,\" the best known of the labyrinth of limestone caves that actor Will Rogers once called the \"Grand Canyon with a roof on it.\" The president is helping celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service while highlighting his plan to reduce climate-changing carbon emissions, which he sees as part of the legacy of his time in office. The White House has said the changing climate evidenced by droughts, increased flooding and wildfires and stronger storms has put national parks at risk. The Obamas were due to fly west later on Friday to the Sierra Nevada mountains and Yosemite, the country's oldest national park and one of its most popular landmarks. Visits to national parks have surged due in part to lower gasoline prices. Still, roads, sewer systems and visitor centers in national parks are aging, and the government is grappling with a $11.5 billion backlog of maintenance projects. At Carlsbad, elevators broke down in 2015, though they seemed in good shape for the Obamas' descent. During his time in office, which will end on Jan. 20, 2017, Obama has added 20 sites to the national park system, protecting more than 265 million acres of public land and water and historic sites with new parks, monuments and restrictions for development, more than any other president. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said national park visits in 2016 were on pace to beat last year's record of 307 million. Tourists contributed an estimated $300 billion to the economy, supporting about 2 million jobs, she told reporters. She wants Congress to remember those numbers as it considers investments in public lands. Republicans have slammed Obama for adding sites at a time when the government does not have enough funding to look after existing ones. \"To me, there is little point in conserving lands or allowing the federal government to acquire even more land if we are not going to take proper care of them,\" Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska who is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said last year.","label":0}
{"text":"King Edward VIII sacrificed his throne and Queen Elizabeth s sister Margaret gave up her one true love, but for Prince Harry marrying a divorcee is no longer a bar to being a royal or following his heart. On Monday, Harry, fifth-in-line to the British throne, announced he was to wed his girlfriend, divorced U.S. actress Meghan Markle, with the blessing of his grandmother, the queen. British social attitudes have been transformed in recent decades but the monarchy has been bound by a more traditional set of Christian values. So the queen s approval is a stark demonstration of how much the monarchy has also changed and modernized in the last 80 years when the idea of a royal marrying someone who was divorced was inconceivable. It s extraordinary how far we ve come since the 1930s, said royal biographer Claudia Joseph. In less than a century times have changed beyond all recognition. Famously, Harry s great-great-uncle Edward VIII set off a constitutional crisis in 1936 by insisting on marrying twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson to the horror of the British establishment, the government and the Church of England, which the monarch nominally heads. It was dubbed the greatest love story of the 20th century and Edward abdicated after just 11 months on the throne and ended up living in France, meaning Elizabeth s father George VI unexpectedly became king. You must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love, Edward said in his abdication speech. Such attitudes were still prevalent two decades later. In 1955, Elizabeth s younger glamorous sister Margaret was forced to call off her proposed marriage to a dashing air force officer, Group Captain Peter Townsend. Although a royal equerry, Townsend was still deemed an unsuitable husband for the queen s sister because he was divorced and he was sent off to Brussels by Buckingham Palace. I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend, Margaret said in a sad announcement to the nation. Mindful that Christian marriage is indissoluble and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others. While divorce was considered unfathomable in those days, it has since become a common feature for the Windsors. Of Elizabeth s four children, three of their marriages have ended in divorce, most spectacularly that of Harry s father, heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and his first wife Princess Diana. They divorced in 1996, 15 years after their fairytale wedding and a year before she was killed in a car crash in Paris and Charles went on to wed another divorcee Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005. Camilla was someone who he had first considered marrying in the early 1970s but who royal courtiers had considered unacceptable while she was not keen on taking on the role herself at the time. However Charles and Camilla could not marry in church, and the queen, who holds strong religious beliefs and has taken her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England very seriously, declined to attend the civil ceremony. The Church of England had only ruled three years earlier that a divorced person could in exceptional circumstances marry again in church while their former spouse was still alive. Joseph said Charles s second marriage had paved the way for Harry. I think the dilemma came when Prince Charles married the Duchess of Cornwall, she told Reuters. That was a hard thing for the queen to deal with. Somehow they had to marry without compromising her role as head of the church. Harry and Meghan s union, like all those of the first six royals in direct line of succession, must be approved by the queen under the 2013 Succession to the Crown Act, which replaced an even more prescriptive law dating back to the 18th century. The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh are delighted for the couple and wish them every happiness, Buckingham Palace said in a statement.","label":0}
{"text":"German politicians visited their country s troops at an air base in Turkey on Friday but some lawmakers said they would not extend the airmen s mission to take part in NATO air patrols unless an underlying dispute over visiting rights was resolved. Germany s armed forces are under parliamentary control and Berlin insists lawmakers must have access to them, but Turkey has repeatedly prevented visits from taking place. Friday s visit was arranged by NATO, sidestepping Ankara s objections. Some of the lawmakers, who were flown to the Konya air base on a NATO plane from the alliance s Brussels headquarters, said Germany s parliament would only extend the troops mandate if future visits were more straightforward. The current mandate expires at the end of this year. The conflict over visiting rights must be dealt with before parliament votes again on the mandate, said Green lawmaker Tobias Lindner, a member of the delegation. Flying via Brussels cannot be a long-term solution. Relations between Ankara and Berlin were already strained by Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan s crackdown on opponents after a failed coup last year, and Turkey s refusal to let German members of parliament visit airmen based in the country has exacerbated tensions. It must be possible for us to visit our soldiers serving abroad, said Henning Otte, a lawmaker for Chancellor Angela Merkel s ruling conservative party. Germany has a parliamentary army. Seven German lawmakers visited the handful of German troops serving in a NATO air surveillance mission at Konya. The delegation was led by NATO s Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller. There are usually around 25 German soldiers based in Konya although only a handful were present at the base on Friday. Some more arrived with the lawmakers in the NATO plane. Turkey had objected particularly strenuously to the participation of a member of Germany s far-left Left party whom Ankara accuses of supporting terrorists. Repeated refusals by Ankara to let lawmakers visit German soldiers at Incirlik, another base in Turkey, prompted Berlin to relocate those troops to Jordan in July. Turkey and Germany are also at odds over Berlin s refusal to extradite asylum seekers Ankara accuses of involvement in last year s failed coup against Erdogan, while Berlin is demanding the release of an imprisoned Turkish-German journalist. The deterioration in relations has led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to say she will seek to end Turkey s membership talks with the European Union.","label":0}
{"text":"Britain's opposition Labour Party, already reeling after voters defied its advice and chose to leave the European Union, was plunged further into crisis on Tuesday when its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, overwhelmingly lost a motion among his fellow lawmakers. The measure, which passed by a vote of 172 to 40, opens the way for a challenge to Mr. Corbyn's leadership. It technically changes nothing, as Mr. Corbyn has refused to step down, though it underscores his loss of authority among colleagues in Parliament. \"I was democratically elected leader of our party for a new kind of politics by 60 percent of Labour members and supporters, and I will not betray them by resigning,\" Mr. Corbyn said after the vote by Labour members of Parliament. \"Today's vote by M. P. s has no constitutional legitimacy. \" He added: \"We are a democratic party with a clear constitution. Our people need Labour Party members, trade unionists and M. P. s to unite behind my leadership at a critical time for our country. \" In the aftermath of Britain's vote to leave the European Union, Mr. Corbyn has been hit by the mass resignation of most of his leadership team. About of Parliament members opposed leaving the union, including the overwhelming majority of Labour members and a smaller majority of members from the governing Conservative Party. Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Friday, the day after the referendum, that he would resign, and a power struggle has begun within the Conservative Party over who will succeed him. Given the disarray in British politics, many Labour lawmakers are worried that a general election may be held soon, and they fear that, with Mr. Corbyn at the party's helm, they will face even bigger losses than they did in the May 2015 election. A Mr. Corbyn was elected last year by an overwhelming majority of party members and supporters, but his support was very shallow among lawmakers. Discontent at Mr. Corbyn's performance was crystallized by his campaign in the referendum on European Union membership, in which the party's policy was to remain within the bloc. While Mr. Corbyn, a lifelong euroskeptic, did urge Labour supporters to vote to remain, critics regarded his campaign as lackluster, and his message as lukewarm. Mr. Corbyn's staunch ally John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor of the Exchequer and the party's top spokesman on economic issues, has said that Mr. Corbyn is \"not going anywhere,\" and even vowed to run Mr. Corbyn's campaign if there were a new election among Labour Party members. Supporters of Mr. Corbyn have called on his critics to either shut up or challenge him in a formal leadership contest. Under the Labour Party system, the final choice lies with party members and supporters, and Mr. Corbyn's allies, who include influential activists, are confident that he would win despite some indications that support for him is weakening.","label":0}
{"text":"In a rare interview, Red Bull boss and Austria's richest man Dietrich Mateschitz has slammed mass migration and political correctness, warning they threaten to destroy Europe's true cultural diversity. [Speaking to Kleine Zeitung, the Formula 1 investor called the decision of key politicians to open the borders \u2014 which resulted in Europe's migration crisis \u2014 \"unpardonable\" noting that \"if a company were to make mistakes on the same scale, it would have gone broke\". Highlighting the \"hypocrisies\" of what he called the \"refugees welcome brigade\" with regards to migration, Mateschitz said: \"I am talking about the fact that none of the people shouting 'refugees welcome' or [Chancellor Angela Merkel's famous phrase] 'we can do it' were preparing their own guest rooms or tents in their gardens to accommodate half a dozen migrants. \"Even then it was clear to everyone that most of the people [arriving in the continent] did not correspond to the definition of the refugee. In any case, not the Geneva Convention\". In the interview, Mateschitz took a stand against the \"destabilisation of Europe\" which he said threatens the \"uniqueness of [the continent's] diversity and individuality with its different cultures and languages\". \"I hope I'm not the only one who's worried that one of the highest officials in Brussels said that countries which aren't multicultural should be wiped off the map\" Mateschitz told the newspaper, possibly alluding to comments made by European Commission Frans Timmermans in 2015. \"Any society, anywhere in the world, will be diverse in the future \u2014 that's the future of the world,\" Timmermans said, demanding that Eastern and Central EU nations undergo similar demographic transitions to Western Europe. Of political correctness, Mateschitz said: \"It seems that no one dares to tell the truth, even if everyone knows what the truth is. \"\"The elites want citizens to be frightened, and easily manipulated,\" he added. The Red Bull founder said he sees numerous problems plaguing the European Union (EU) the architects of whom he fingered as belonging to a \" intellectual elite\" with nothing to contribute to the continent. \"Policies which are steeped in political correctness have been imposed in the name of a intellectual elite who have nothing to contribute to our country neither economically nor culturally despite their best intentions,\" he said. Mateschitz also poured scorn on how Russia has been framed as the EU's nemesis by large parts of the media and Western liberal establishment, telling Kleine Zeitung: \"I do not need anyone to tell me who my enemies are. \"Criticising attempts to destroy the former Soviet superpower through economic sanctions, the Formula 1 investor pointed out that \"for Europe as a whole [this policy] results in losing billions of Euros\". Challenged by the Austrian newspaper with the assertion that he too is an 'elite' Mateschitz hit back, describing himself as a \"humanist\" but \"someone who basically opposes any dogma\". Speaking about banning the Islamic veil, a talking point in Austria currently, the Red Bull boss said: \"I can't bring myself to think that this is really a matter of any importance \u2026 It's silly to make a political issue out of something like this when there are far more pressing matters. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Defying a new Swedish law that prohibits full face coverings at public events, such as political rallies and sports matches, keen football (soccer) fans donned Islamic garments at the game instead. [Members of the AIK Ultras, the dedicated fans of Stockholm's Allm\u00e4nna Idrottsklubben (AIK) team, also unfurled a giant banner at the match in Sweden Sunday thanking the law for a religious provision loophole. Swedish law specifically bans people in \"a public place attending a public meeting under the Public Order Act\" if there is a disturbance of the peace, or \"immediate danger of such a breach\" \u2014 making full face coverings generally illegal at football games. Those breaking the law can be fined or imprisoned for up to six months. Yet understanding of particular religious minorities in Sweden means the second paragraph of the face covering law created an exception: \"The ban does not apply to covering the face for religious reasons. \" La Su\u00e8de ayant interdit le port de masques et cagoules dans les stades, les ultras portent d\u00e9sormais des niqabs \u2026 . dont le port est l\u00e9gal. pic. twitter. \u2014 PassionFootball Club (@PassionFootClub) April 4, 2017, Making the most of the new law intended to curb antisocial behaviour at football games, large numbers of AIK Ultra members were seen at the game wearing niqabs \u2014 the full face covering cloth which forms part of the Islamic hijab. The colossal banner held by fans in the stands made reference to the Swedish politician who introduced the ban, Anders Ygeman. It read: \"AIK's ultras are well meaning, we're now wearing masks for religious reasons. Freedom for ultras is the goal, thanks Ygeman for the loophole. \" Speaking to bestselling Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet's Sportbladet section, Minister of Home Affairs Ygeman said he found the episode \"pretty funny\" and said the fans clearly had a sense of humour \u2014 but said if fans continued to use the religious exception the courts may decide the legal loophole doesn't apply on a basis if they found men up before them. The minister confirmed that police would not require football fans turning up to matches in niqabs to prove their religion on the spot. While the Swedish mask ban was introduced to deal with particular problems, including violence at matches, this is not the first time European football fans have invoked Islam to make political points. Breitbart London reported in 2015 when Polish football fans unfurled a giant 'stand and defend Christianity' banner at a premier league match. Running to thousands of square feet, the banner depicted an armed crusader standing over Europe repelling migrant boats carrying terrorists.","label":0}
{"text":"posted by Eddie Censorship by Facebook has become a thorn in the side of nearly anyone with an opinion differing from the narrative touted by the corporate press \u2014 for instance, sentiments not praising Hillary Clinton \u2014 and now, through both a new report from Reuters and emails published by Wikileaks, we have insight into why certain posts are targeted. Facebook relies on a combination of artificial intelligence and human judgment to remove posts deemed offensive, violent, or otherwise unacceptable to its community standards \u2014 but precisely how the ultimate call to take down posts, pages, and groups are made remains unknown. And Facebook takedowns, no matter the improvements to the process the social media behemoth claims to make, have been no less controversial or questionable \u2014 and those whose posts are censored have little if any recourse to argue their case. Recent examples of head-scratchers which led to an international uproar, include Facebook's removal of the iconic Vietnam War photograph of Phan Th\u1ecb Kim Ph\u00fac \u2014 who, at just 9-years-old, was captured on film by an Associated Press photographer fleeing the aftermath of an errant napalm attack near a Buddhist pagoda in the village of Trang Bang. That photograph helped cement in the collective American mind the horrors of the war, and ultimately fueled the success of the anti-war effort \u2014 but Facebook arbitrarily pulled the image for nudity \u2014 and proceeded even to ban the page of the Conservative prime minister of Norway for also posting the image. Ultimately, the social media company reversed course in that case \u2014 but not before also taking down the equally iconic image of civil rights leader Rosa Park's arrest. But taking down of the image of Kim Ph\u00fac might not have been simply an error of AI, since it had been used as a specific example in training the teams responsible for content removal, two unnamed former Facebook employees told Reuters . \"Trainers told content-monitoring staffers that the photo violated Facebook policy, despite its historical significance, because it depicted a naked child, in distress, photographed without her consent, the employees told Reuters.\" In the final decision to reverse that censorship, Facebook head of the community operations division, Justin Osofsky, admitted it had been a \"mistake.\" According to Reuters , to whom many current and former Facebook employees spoke on condition of anonymity, the process of judging which posts deserve to be remove and which should be allowed will, in certain instances, be left to the discretion of a small cadre of the company's elite executives. In addition to Osofsky, Global Policy Chief Monika Bickert; government relations chief, Joel Kaplan; vice president for public policy and communications, Elliot Schrage; and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg make the final call on censorship and appeals. \"All five studied at Harvard, and four of them have both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the elite institution. All but Sandberg hold law degrees. Three of the executives have longstanding personal ties to Sandberg,\" the outlet notes. Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg also occasionally offers guidance in difficult decisions. But there are others. Company spokeswoman Christine Chen explained, \"Facebook has a broad, diverse and global network involved in content policy and enforcement, with different managers and senior executives being pulled in depending on the region and the issue at hand.\" For those on the receiving end of what could only be described as lopsided and inexplicable censorship, recourse is generally limited and can be nearly impossible to come by. Often, the nature of posts and pages removed insinuates political motivations on the part of the censors. Indeed, and once again flaring international controversy, Facebook disabled , among others, the accounts of editors of Quds and Shehab New Agency \u2014 prominent Palestinian media organizations \u2014 without explanation or even a specific example given for justification. Although three of four Palestinian-focused accounts were restored, Facebook refused to comment to either Reuters or the accounts' owners why the decision was reversed, except to say it had been an 'error.' In fact, although Chen and other Facebook insiders spoke with Reuters directly about contentious content removal policies and procedures, many details of the processes remain covert and sorely intransparent to the public who is so often forced to cope with the consequences. Earlier this year, an expos\u00e9 by Gizmodo showing Facebook's suppression of conservative outlets via its \"Trending Topics\" section appeared to evidence extreme bias in favor of liberal and corporate media mainstays. Alternative media, too, which provides reports counter to the mainstream political and foreign policy paradigm, has often been the subject of controversial take-downs, censorship, and suppressive tactics \u2014 either directly by Facebook, or through convoluted algorithms and artificial intelligence bots. However, considering Sheryl Sandberg and her loyalists populate the top-level group deciding the fate for content removal complaints, it would appear Wikileaks could provide answers for both post censorship and suppression of outlets not vowing complete fealty to the preferred, left-leaning narrative. In a June 4, 2015, email to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta \u2014 an enormous cache of whose emails are still being published on a daily basis by Wikileaks \u2014 penned by Sandberg in response to condolences on the death of her husband, states , in part, \"And I still want HRC to win badly. I am still here to help as I can. She came over and was magical with my kids.\" After a wave of post removals and temporary page bans, it appears Facebook has begun to come to its senses for what actually violates community standards \u2014 and what might have political worth contrary to the views of its executives. Senior members of Facebook's policy team recently posted about the laxing of rules governing community standards, which \u2014 though welcome \u2014 might only provide temporary relief. Quoted by the Wall Street Journal , they wrote : \"In the weeks ahead, we're going to begin allowing more items that people find newsworthy, significant, or important to the public interest\u2014even if they might otherwise violate our standards.\" While the social media giant deems itself a technology, and not news, platform, Facebook is still the bouncing off point for issues of interest for an overwhelming percentage of its users. Although it perhaps has some responsibility in regard to the removal of certain content, putting censorship in the hands of only a few individuals in certain instances is a chilling reminder of the fragility \u2014 and grave importance \u2014 of free speech. source:","label":1}
{"text":"Watch this young man relay his experience that he calls, disgusting outside of the Deploraball, the event the SJ20 group has been planning to disrupt for quite some time:https:\/\/twitter.com\/willthethinker\/status\/822310509525381120DC Police form line at Press Club as angry Anti-Trump protesters taunt, jeer supremacist attendees. #disruptj20 #TrumpInauguration pic.twitter.com\/tVBOTCDPPA DCMediaGroup (@DCMediaGroup) January 20, 2017I hope George Soros (or whatever radical leftist group) got a great deal on all of those pre-printed signs for his spontaneous or grass roots protesters. BREAKING: DC police mace, teargas anti-Trump protests outside National Press club. Video: #disruptj20 pic.twitter.com\/cdIKHUlUg9 DCMediaGroup (@DCMediaGroup) January 20, 2017A popular Youtuber and candidate for Conservative Republican National Chair James Allsup was attacked outside of the Deploraball. After this interview he was hit in the back of the head with a flagpole and his head was split open:Quick interview with the pro-Trump supporter who got punched in the protest. Police pulled him away before I could ask his name pic.twitter.com\/gUEh4ASpbm Nick Corasaniti (@NYTnickc) January 20, 2017Here s what happened to James Allsup after he was assaulted by the first anti-trumper. His story is below:This is the photo @FoxNews got. More graphic photos coming from my cam. #Deploraball pic.twitter.com\/QsEt0WszrN James Allsup (@realJamesAllsup) January 20, 2017I hear \"die Nazi\" being yelled. Crowd begins chasing us. I know this is not good. 11\/? James Allsup (@realJamesAllsup) January 20, 2017Next thing I know ears are ringing. I turn and see white male, approx 5ft11,with flagpole in hand. I knew. 12\/? James Allsup (@realJamesAllsup) January 20, 2017I pull MAGA cap off, run hand through hair. Hand is full of blood. Now I know it's serious. 13\/? James Allsup (@realJamesAllsup) January 20, 2017Bit of a blackout here. Don't exactly remember what happened. Cops pulled me and Nico out. Bring us through building. 14\/? James Allsup (@realJamesAllsup) January 20, 2017An intrepid reporter may find the officer who saw the pole attack and FOIA the bodycam footage. James Allsup (@realJamesAllsup) January 20, 2017About to get head stapled. Thanks all for good wishes. James Allsup (@realJamesAllsup) January 20, 2017Inauguration protest organizers are drowning in a deluge of death threats at the behest of conservative media. https:\/\/t.co\/KjPZfh9d5A Jack Smith IV (@JackSmithIV) January 19, 2017","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump on Thursday embraced a suggestion from the Senate's top Democrat to end congressional battles over the U.S. debt ceiling, a day after he stunned fellow Republicans by striking a major budget deal with the opposition party. Testing his new opening with Democrats, Trump also reached out on another tricky issue, the fate of 800,000 so-called Dreamers, young adults brought illegally to the country as children. He even honored a request by Nancy Pelosi, the top House of Representatives Democrat, to publicly reassure the Dreamers they do not face imminent deportation. The Senate voted 80-17 to approve the deal Trump reached with Democrats on Wednesday, which would raise the federal debt limit and fund the government through Dec. 8. The legislation included $15.25 billion in aid for areas affected by Hurricane Harvey and other natural disasters. The bill now goes to the House for final congressional approval, where it faces opposition from conservatives who traditionally favor raising the ceiling while also cutting spending. Representative Bill Flores, a Republican helping round up votes for the deal, said his count of party members intending to vote yes on the legislation \"didn't look very good.\" Trump voiced support on Thursday for the idea of eliminating the statutory cap on the U.S. Treasury Department's authority to borrow. \"For many years, people have been talking about getting rid of debt ceiling altogether, and there are a lot of good reasons to do that,\" Trump told reporters. \"It complicates things, it's really not necessary.\" \"So certainly that's something that will be discussed,\" he added. Legislation that would end the need for Congress to regularly authorize debt ceiling increases came up during a White House meeting Trump had on Wednesday with Pelosi, top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, people familiar with the meeting said. Schumer proposed eliminating the limit, and Trump and Vice President Mike Pence said they liked the idea, one source said. Schumer said the parties should canvass rank-and-file lawmakers to gauge support for getting rid of the ceiling ahead of the next deadline to raise it, in December, the source said. The meeting's participants did not say whether they would seek to repeal the cap or revert to a practice of automatic increases tied to Congress approving its annual budget, the sources said. Republican Ryan said he opposed any effort to do away with lawmakers' role in approving debt limit increases, citing the powers given to Congress under the U.S. Constitution. The United States spends more than it raises through taxes and other revenue, and issues debt to make up the difference. The limit on how much it can borrow is the debt ceiling. Congress must regularly vote to raise the cap, which frequently sparks nasty political fights that spook financial markets over the prospect of an unprecedented U.S. default. Representative Barry Loudermilk, a member of the conservative Republican Study Committee, said the proposal to scrap the debt ceiling was worth exploring. \"This is something that just comes up over and over again and we've never done anything to fix it,\" he said, adding lawmakers should have a conversation about finding a permanent fix that also leads to cutting deficit spending, such as a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. But Republican Representative Joe Barton, who belongs to the party's right-wing Freedom Caucus, said scrapping the debt ceiling was wrong and he hoped Trump \"reconsiders his position.\" Schumer said on Thursday he hoped the meeting was \"a ray of hope for both parties coming together on the big issues.\" Pelosi said Trump also made clear he wanted Congress to act on the Dreamers issue. U.S. lawmakers for years have failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation. On Tuesday, Trump rescinded a program created by his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, that protected the immigrants from deportation and provided them work permits. Trump gave Congress six months to work on an alternative by delaying implementation until March. Democrats want a bill addressing the Dreamers without other issues attached, but Pelosi did not rule out including border security measures that Trump and Ryan want. Pelosi said \"we have a responsibility to secure our borders,\" but that does not include Trump's planned wall along the U.S.-Mexico border that many Democrats oppose. \"We want to do it as soon as possible to strike while the iron is hot, because public opinion is so much in favor,\" Pelosi told reporters. Pelosi said she told Trump the Dreamers needed his assurance he was not planning a six-month-long roundup for deportation. Trump subsequently wrote on Twitter: \"For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about - No action!\"","label":0}
{"text":"Jack Links, which is a very popular maker of beef jerky, just released a brand-new ad that is absolutely disgusting. It s supposed to give you facts about building muscle, and how beef jerky can aid you in that endeavor, but it does so as a direct appeal to Nazis and other white supremacists. Seriously.The 30-second spot features Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews, who literally says the following, word for word, at the beginning of the ad: I m the product of hard work, superior genetics, Norse mythology, and protein. The ad also shows primates putting muscle fibers back together, which could be seen as promoting slavery and anti-Semitism, since racists and anti-Semites have traditionally used monkeys to disparage black people and Jews. Watch below: Superior genetics is what white supremacy and anti-Semitism are all about. Sure, on their planet, people are people, but whites have superior genes and built the whole world, and everyone needs to understand that. Adolf Hitler s Aryan race was all about superior genetics, the white supremacists and Nazis in this country push that, so there s no getting away from the fact that the term is a dog whistle to white supremacy.What about the Norse mythology claim, though? Most of our Nazis and white supremacists want to preserve western European genetics. Norse mythology is Scandinavian, so what the hell? It turns out that this is also an appeal to a very racist brand of Odinism, which, unfortunately, does have a fairly strong history in the U.S. among the white supremacist hate groups.This brand of Odinism was popular in Nazi Germany, and it s popular among today s white supremacists, including Nazis, KKK members, skinheads, and others. The reason for that is it sings the virtues of the tribe, or folk, strongly emphasizing genetic closeness. And it credits whites with building civilization and an ethic of individual responsibility, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. That s exactly what white supremacists want. No more mixing of races because that s white genocide, and an acceptance that whites are the superior race above all others.Odinism is likely more appealing to these people than Christianity because Christianity (attempts) to emphasize inclusion and love of all, not the racial division they want. It also fits better with the anti-Semitism these hate groups harbor than Christianity does. However, many in these hate groups still call themselves Christian and pervert Christianity to suit their own needs, which those who actually promote Christian ethics say is a problem. It s possible that particular conflict can drive white supremacists to Odinism.Jack Links has a serious problem on its hands with this ad. They just branded themselves as openly white supremacist with a desire to appeal to the worst elements of our society. One might try to claim that they re just ignorant of the current social and political environments, but that s about as likely as Trump not knowing who David Duke is.","label":1}
{"text":"Jordan s King Abdullah on Wednesday rejected any attempt to change the status of Jerusalem or its holy sites, and said peace would not come to the region without a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All violence... is a result of a failure to find a peaceful solution to the Palestinian issue, he told an emergency summit of Muslim leaders in Turkey. King Abdullah s Hashemite dynasty is custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, making Amman particularly sensitive to any changes of status after the Trump s administration s decision to recognize it as Israel s capital.","label":0}
{"text":"Kid Has 'Birthday Surprise' For Church, Does The Unexpected While Inside Alisha Rich in Religion Share This  A teenager recently celebrated his birthday in Harriman, Tennessee. However, the kid isn't so fond of his yearly celebration and finally became fed up with it, devising a plan not many would consider. In fact, he came up with a \"birthday surprise\" for a local church, and onlookers spotted him doing the unexpected after he walked inside. Ryan Nelson  Ryan Nelson, 13, had explained to his parents that he didn't want to celebrate his birthday. Although most kids would like to invite all of their friends, open gifts, and eat some birthday cake, Ryan didn't want to spend his special day that way. Instead of having a huge ordeal for himself, he devised a plan that not many people would ever consider. He was going to give a \"birthday surprise\" to a church.  Ryan decided to take the money his parents would have spent on a party, as well as all of his birthday money, and he donated it to a local church. \"He also packed up and donated canned soups, ramen noodles and lots of clothes and blankets,\" according to WVLT . His donations will go to the M-14 Ministries' \"Dry Bones\" shelter.  \"The community, in my opinion, has given me so much,\" Ryan explained. \"So I think this year, on my birthday, it's time to give back to the community.\" Ryan's donations  The director of the shelter, Dwayne Linger, was overwhelmed by Ryan's generosity. \"I just hope that other kids see what he's done and follow his lead,\" Linger said. \"I think it's a great blessing, what he's done.\" Ryan admitted that he came up with the idea after he watched his mother donate to another church earlier this year.  It's great to see that some of those in the younger generation can think about someone other than themselves. We need to ensure that our children realize how much of an impact their beliefs and actions will have on our country's future.","label":1}
{"text":"October 30, 2016 at 4:49 pm  Quite possible that Trump is surfing a much more significant phenomenon, powered by the total penetration by internet, the neural system of the world.  to keep insisting that it is just business as usual is like claiming that because no earthquake happened for the last observed 100 days, it will never happen.  An aside, regarding the gatekeeping: i am quite certain that the jew has covered the entire gamut from outrageous lying of pam geller through restrained lying of alex jones and veterans today to deep sayanim sites that to this date have never failed to speak nothing but the truth, yet only wait to start their siren call to the ever sly deception. remain vigilant.","label":1}
{"text":"All this non-GAAP activity should be disclosed in the footnotes. Where is the confusion coming from? Peeps who can't read a 10Q? Also Tesla's auditors should have required a period-to-period crosswalk of the numbers both pre-adjusted and post-adjsuted just so they can compare apples to apples. Did this not happen? Anyway, just rely on the opinion, and sue if it all goes south. That's why auditors get paid to perform the same test work period after period after period....","label":1}
{"text":"On Thursday, Donald Trump eased sanctions against Russia s spy agencies following a phone call last week with brutal Russian dictator and Trumpfriend Vladimir Putin. Details of the call have been scarce, limited to a vague, one-paragraph statement posted on the White House website:President Donald J. Trump received a congratulatory call today from Russian President Vladimir Putin. The call lasted approximately one hour and ranged in topics from mutual cooperation in defeating ISIS to efforts in working together to achieve more peace throughout the world including Syria. The positive call was a significant start to improving the relationship between the United States and Russia that is in need of repair. Both President Trump and President Putin are hopeful that after today s call the two sides can move quickly to tackle terrorism and other important issues of mutual concern.Many have been wondering why information about the specifics of the call has been so scarce. According to Ian Berman, vice president of the conservative-leaning American Foreign Policy Council, the reason is simple Trump turned off the recording. On Wednesday, Bergman said at a forum on Russian-Turkish relations at the Bipartisan Policy Center that there was no readout of the Trump-Putin call because [the] White House turned off recording. .@ilanberman: \"there was no readout of the Trump-Putin call bc WH turned off recording\" Kremlin readout is very positive @BPC_Bipartisan pic.twitter.com\/oi4v1R5dN0 ilhan tanir (@WashingtonPoint) February 1, 2017The Kremlin s clearly sanitized readout sounds very nice, if one ignored the fact that multiple intelligence agencies have confirmed that Putin personally spearheaded a massive hacking and propaganda campaign on Trump s behalf or that he began receiving his quid pro quo when The Donald eased sanctions against his spy agencies. According to a statement on the Kremlin s website, both sides expressed their readiness to make active joint efforts to stabilise and develop Russia-US cooperation on a constructive, equitable and mutually beneficial basis and The sides stressed the importance of rebuilding mutually beneficial trade and economic ties between the two counties business communities, which could give an additional impetus to progressive and sustainable development of bilateral relations. In other words, Putin and Trump talked about how our own fascist dictator intends to repay Russia s leader for his help in securing the Oval Office.While it is yet unconfirmed that the recording does not exist, it seems this is the case given the vague readout and the clear attempt to keep information from Americans. If he did indeed shut off recording, why would he do that? There is only one answer plenty was said that would be uncomfortable if the American people learned the details.We as Americans need to demand a full release of every call Trump has had with world leaders. We need to demand answers because we will not get them otherwise.","label":1}
{"text":"Ostracized by the government and mistrusted by much of the public, Cuba's dissidents are hoping to receive a clear message of support from U.S. President Barack Obama when he visits the island next month. Obama plans to meet dissidents during his March 21-22 visit, the first by a sitting U.S. president since 1928. It follows the rapprochement of December 2014, when Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro ended more than five decades of Cold War-era animosity. Cuba's Communist government has long considered the dissidents a tiny and illegitimate minority funded by U.S. interests, while anti-Castro groups hold them up as champions of democracy. Political opponents say a public blessing from Obama might improve their standing and the cause of human rights in Cuba. \"It's possible the visit will help raise the hopes of the Cuban people, which is important because Cuba is short on many things, most of all hope,\" said Elizardo Sanchez, leader of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which monitors arrests of political opponents. Sanchez said Cuba is holding about 90 political prisoners, including some convicted hijackers and spies and 11 former prisoners out on parole. Cuba says it has no political prisoners. In addition Cuban officials briefly detain an average of more than 700 dissidents a month, the commission says. Obama's Republican critics have called the visit a capitulation, while Cuban dissidents are mostly supportive. \"Any gesture of solidarity, any words or gestures, any contact with the peaceful opposition would be well received by the majority of the population,\" said Jose Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, which says it has about 3,000 members, making it the largest opposition group in Cuba. Cuban Foreign Ministry official Josefina Vidal said Cuba hoped Obama would meet with \"the real Cuban civil society,\" a term making a distinction between most Cubans and anti-government activists. Some Cuban dissidents prefer the previous U.S. policy of isolating Cuba and say Obama has failed them. The Ladies in White, who march each Sunday in Havana, say Obama is unwelcome unless he responds to their request that he denounce the repression of activists and calls for amnesty for political prisoners. \"If he makes a strong statement repudiating these human rights violations, then we will consider it an advance in human rights,\" said Berta Soler, leader of the group. \"In practice, we have not seen a thing.\"","label":0}
{"text":"There's a reason David Brock, founder of the liberal group Media Matters for America, chooses to house an unregistered professional solicitor in his office to raise money for his conglomerate of super PACs and nonprofits. Professional solicitors are required to disclose their active solicitation contracts. Brock wants his unregistered solicitor, the Bonner Group, to keep its client list hidden for a very specific reason. David Brock is laundering money    Related Stories Consumers Need Protection From New Consumer Protection Bureau Rule Here's What The Markets Are Telling Us\u2026 Exposed: Profiteers Of Governing \u2013 And These Are The Ones Who Got Caught! Brock has seven nonprofits, three super PACs, one 527 committee, one LLC, one joint fundraising committee and one unregistered solicitor crammed into his office in Washington . Uncovered records expose a constant flow of money between these organizations. The Bonner Group, his professional solicitor, works off a commission. Every time money gets passed around, Bonner receives a 12.5 percent cut.   Follow the money  Nonprofits are required to disclose to whom they give cash grants. But they aren't required to disclose who gives them cash grants. This weak system of one-way verification is being abused by Brock. He's been cycling money between his organizations for years, and the Bonner Group's 12.5 percent commission gets triggered after every pass.   Trending Stories Frustrated With Media Bias, Trump Campaign Takes Its Case Directly To Voters With Nightly Show On Facebook RNC Official Takes CNN Host To Task For Claiming There Is No Media Bias Hannity Proposes A Sendoff For Obama In The Event Of A Trump Presidency In 2014, Media Matters for America raised more than $10 million. The Bonner Group was credited for raising these funds. Media Matters paid it a $1.1 million commission. That same year, Media Matters gave a $930,000 cash grant to Brock's Franklin Education Forum , an organization that shares office space with Media Matters. In 2014, the Franklin Education Forum reported $994,000 in total contributions, and 93.6 percent of that total came from Media Matters. Surprisingly, though, the Franklin Education Forum gave full credit to Bonner for raising that money. It paid the fundraiser a $124,250 commission in 2014. Notice what happened?  Brock's Media Matters gave a $930,000 cash grant to Brock's Franklin Education Forum. Brock's Franklin Education Forum credited the Bonner Group for raising those funds, triggering the 12.5 percent commission. Brock paid the Bonner Group a $124,250 commission to solicit a cash grant \u2026 from himself! It doesn't stop there  After the Franklin Education Forum retained $869,750, it sent a $816,224 cash grant to Brock's Franklin Forum .  Note: The Franklin Education Forum is a 501(c)3, and The Franklin Forum is a 501(c)4. They are not the same company.  The Franklin Forum 501(c)4 paid Bonner a commission in 2013 , so it's safe to assume the fundraiser received a $102,028 commission in 2014. Unfortunately, it's hard to tell for sure. It still hasn't filed its taxes for 2014! Let's recap  Say, for example, you donate $1,062,857 to Media Matters for America. This is how David Brock would have used your charitable donation in 2014: Media Matters would receive your $1,062,857 donation. The Bonner Group would earn a $132,857 commission. Media Matters would retain $930,000. Next, Media Matters would give what's left of your entire donation , $930,000, to the Franklin Education Forum. The Bonner Group would \"earn\" a $116,250 commission. The Franklin Education Forum would retain $813,750. The Franklin Education Forum would then forward the remaining $813,750 to The Franklin Forum. The Bonner Group would \"earn\" a $101,718 commission. The Franklin Forum would retain $712,031. In the end, Brock's solicitor would have pocketed $350,825, almost a third of your initial donation. That's a far cry from the advertised 12.5 percent commission. As bizarre as that scenario may sound, this is exactly what Brock did in 2014. How can we be sure this is intentional?  Brock is the chairman for each of these organizations. How could he not know what's going on? He's a hands-on chairman. According to their tax returns, Brock allocates time, weekly, to his organizations: Media Matters: 31.50 hours per week Franklin Education Forum: three hours per week The Franklin Forum: one hour per week Furthermore, The New York Times reports that Brock shares a summer rental in the Hamptons with Mary Pat Bonner, the president of the Bonner Group. Brock would have a hard time claiming ignorance on this. These transfers are intentional. He vacations with his solicitor. Case closed. Still not convinced?  Brock didn't even bother to give his organizations different phone numbers. They all share the same number. What if \u2026?  We even located the Bonner Group's solicitation agreement with Media Matters on Florida's Gift Givers' Guide . Clarification on the commission can be found on page 2: In English: Contractually, Brock has the option to exclude certain contributions from triggering the commission. In spite of this option, he intentionally chooses to trigger the 12.5 percent commission for money grants between his organizations. Note: Yes, we are making the assumption that all of Brock's organizations have the same solicitation agreement with the Bonner Group. Given that his organizations share the same address, board members and telephone number, we feel it's safe to assume they also share the same solicitation agreement.  This barely scratches the surface  Utilizing public-facing tax returns, along with records submitted to the Federal Election Commission, we mapped out all the significant money transfers from 2014 that took place in Brock's office: Summary  This is all from just one year! No further commentary required. We understand this may be hard to believe. We first came across this in July, and are still having a hard time wrapping our heads around it. All of the data referenced in this article originated from publicly accessible sources. Check for yourself \u2014 we provided links to the source material in our article exposing the organizations operating in Brock's office. These data have been sitting out in the open, gathering dust for years.  If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. We've spent months trying to find some sort of loophole to justify this activity. But there aren't any loopholes. David Brock has something to hide. Just last month, The Daily Caller reported the following: \"Brock's former long-time live-in boyfriend William Grey (whom Brock has thanked in several of his books) threatened to go to the IRS with damaging information about how Brock was running his Media Matters empire. What did Brock do? He paid Grey $850,000 to keep quiet. Brock reportedly had to sell his home in Rehoboth, Delaware, to come up with the money. This certainly seems to indicate that Brock was terrified about what the authorities would uncover.\" Adding to this, Fox News reported the following: \"Grey accused Brock of 'financial malfeasance' and threatened to undermine Brock's fundraising efforts. \"'Next step is I contact all your donors and the IRS,' Grey wrote in an email dated May 19, 2010. 'This is going to stink for you if you do not resolve this now.'\" We believe that the information presented in this article is what has Brock so terrified. We feel confident in saying, with close to absolute certainty, that David Brock is laundering money through his Media Matters conglomerate. This article first appeared at The Citizens Audit .  The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website.  What do you think?","label":1}
{"text":"Evidence Building Against Soros George Soros Funded Trump Protests: http:\/\/sjlendman.blogspot.com  This one might be wishful thinking: http:\/\/usdefensewatch.com\/2016\/11\/putin-issues-international-arrest-warrant-for-george-soros-dead-or-alive\/  A reader writes that Soros \"is involved in destabilizing and overthrowing democratically elected governmenbts all over the world. He is not just a political and social threat to Russia and Ukraine, but evidently now to the USA and Western Europe, where he has been behind the mass influx of immigrants to destabilise those countries as well.  \"It is clear that Trump and Putin have a lot of threats in common to deal with. The shadow government is currently rattled, but will strike back soon. After the recent violent events, Trump should join the Russian government and also call for the immediate arrest of Soros for his treasonous activities and confiscate all his assets in the West, appoint special prosecutors to deal with the neocon war criminals and break up the bought and paid for press and media monopolies that are the corrupt and mendacious whores of the oligarchy. Furthermore, he should also shut down the oligarchs' Fed and create a national bank to issue debt- and interest-free US money to fund infrastructure and the rebuilding of the US economy. That would critically weaken the opposition and strengthen his position in dealing with the shadow government.  \"These forces will be eternal enemies not just of him, but of the Western people. They represent a cancer that is killing the host. Not reconciliation, but deep and thorough cleaning is required to rout out this den of vipers.\" The audacity of George Soros is extraordinary. How does he get away with it? The post Evidence Building Against Soros appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org .","label":1}
{"text":"Go to Article  They had to know they had it coming\u2026  Donald Trump scolded media big shots during an off-the-record Trump Tower sitdown on Monday, sources told The Post.  \"It was like a f\u2013ing firing squad,\" one source said of the encounter.  \"Trump started with [CNN chief] Jeff Zucker and said 'I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed,' \" the source said.  \"The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,\" the source added.  A second source confirmed the fireworks.  \"The meeting took place in a big board room and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks,\" the other source said.  \"Trump kept saying, 'We're in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong.' He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was [a] network of liars,\" the source said.  \"Trump didn't say [NBC reporter] Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate \u2013 which was Martha Raddatz who was also in the room.\"  The stunned reporters tried to get a word in edgewise to discuss access to a Trump Administration.  \"[CBS Good Morning co-host Gayle] King did not stand up, but asked some question, 'How do you propose we the media work with you?' Chuck Todd asked some pretty pointed questions. David Muir asked 'How are you going to cope living in DC while your family is in NYC? It was a horrible meeting.\"  Here's a sampling of Trump hitting back at the dishonest media while he was on the campaign trail. Trump did something no other presidential candidate has ever done before, he won the election in a landslide, in spite of the entire fake news empire working together to take him down:  Trump spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway told reporters the gathering went well.  \"Excellent meetings with the top executives of the major networks,\" she said during a gaggle in the lobby of Trump Tower. \"Pretty unprecedented meeting we put together in two days.\"  The meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations.  The hour-long session included top execs from network and cable news channels. Among the attendees were NBC's Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC's James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz,  Also, CBS' Norah O'Donnell John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham and King, Fox News' Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace, Suzanne Scott, MSNBC's Phil Griffin and CNN's Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett. -Via : NYP","label":1}
{"text":"Pinterest  As the Syrian Civil War rages on, the Russians continue to back the Assad regime in the fight against myriad rebel groups. The bloody conflict has garnered international attention, including a refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe (which is quickly spreading to the United States, as well).  The United States has been involved in several military actions to aid the rebel groups in Syria, though much of this help has aided the rise of ISIS (smuggling weapons to these groups fighting Assad, only to end up with ISIS). Given US involvement, and Russian backing of the Assad regime, tensions between the two superpowers have risen to near Cold War levels.  One recent event demonstrating just how volatile the situation was a near-collision between two fighter jets, one American and the other Russian, in Syrian airspace. #BREAKING Russian, US jets had near miss over Syria: US officials  Zero Hedge has details:  The near miss occurred late on October 17, when a Russian jet that was escorting a larger spy plane maneuvered in the vicinity of an American warplane, Air Force Lieutenant General Jeff Harrigan said. The Russian jet came to \"inside of half a mile\", he added. Another US military official, speaking on condition of anonymity , said the American pilot could feel the turbulence produced by the Russian jet's engines.  \"It was close enough you could feel the jet wash of the plane passing by,\" the official said.  The incident appears did not take place out to malice, as the Russian pilot had simply not seen the US jet, as it was dark and the planes were flying without lights according to AGP. This incident was deemed unsafe, but not necessarily unprofessional, officials said. \"I would attribute it to not having the necessary situational awareness given all those platforms operating together,\" Harrigan said.  The incident raises serious questions about the extent to which pilots are able to track the complex airspace they operate in.  The US-led coalition has set up a hotline with Russian counterparts so the different militaries can discuss the approximate locations and missions of planes, and avoid operating in the same space at the same time. In this case, the American pilot tried unsuccessfully to reach the Russian jet via an emergency radio channel.  This close-call is one of several similar incidents in the past six weeks or so. The Russians have become increasingly brazen in the past few months, especially in the Syrian arena. Anything that threatens the Russo-Syrian alliance is not taken too well by the Kremlin, and responses are bold, dastardly, and provocative.  Luckily, there have not been any full-blown engagements between American and Russian military forces, but the number of close-calls in recent days is cause for concern. These are two of the world's most prominent nuclear superpowers, one of whom is becoming more and more brazen and willing to incite conflicts when it suits their interests.  The other is a regime with massive military superiority, yet weak and flaky leadership.  At this point it is not totally clear what the Russians will do next. Undoubtedly, they will continue to prop up the Assad regime and bomb anywhere rebel forces may be, but whether or not they will harass American military forces in the area remains to be seen (though I predict that it will only continue to further escalate).","label":1}
{"text":"By Amanda Froelich at trueactivist.com The new \"right to disconnect\" law mandates that a company with 50 employees or more cannot email an employee after typical work hours. If you've ever been with friends or family members over the weekend then received an urgent email from work, you're aware of the dread that fills your stomach and causes your mood to dip. Being unable to fully disconnect from work can have mental and physical health implications, which is why unwarranted contact by the workplace is soon to become illegal in France. Credit: Wall Street Journal Already, the country gives its employees 30 days off a year and 16 weeks of full-paid family leave; this latest initiative is only making France more popular. According to BBC News , the new \"right to disconnect\" law will mandate that a company with 50 employees or more cannot email an employee after typical work hours. The amendment is largely a result of studies showing that people have an increasingly difficult time distancing themselves from the workplace. Good relays that the law seeks to make sure the French citizens are able to fully enjoy their time off. Said Benoit Hamon of the French National Assembly:","label":1}
{"text":"America does not have a king. America is not a monarchy. But Donald Trump apparently thinks otherwise and the American people are NOT happy about it.When President Obama visited England for the first time, he declined the gold-plated carriage the Royal family offered for his use during the state visit, opting instead to ride in a motorcade. The motorcade was not only easier to provide security for, it was less expensive and demonstrated that Obama was truly a man of the people.Donald Trump, however, is demanding that the horse-drawn gold-plated carriage be rolled out for him and that a parade be organized down the Mall to Buckingham Palace in October.Of course, we all know that Trump is NOT a man of the people no matter how much he makes that claim. After all, we re talking about a man who continues to live in a gold-plated penthouse in Trump Tower.Trump literally thinks he s a f*cking king and he is demanding to be treated like one even though the Constitution makes it clear that such titles of nobility are not recognized in this country.The cost of security is going to be massive and it s the American taxpayers who are going to be picking up the tab.As news of Trump s ridiculous demand spread, Americans took to Twitter to virtually tar and feather him in the public square of social media.While enjoying the spoils of stealing an election, The Trump Royal Crime Family requests a gold-plated carriage ride with the Royal Family. https:\/\/t.co\/uRSrPoULCD UNITE & FIGHT (@stopthenutjob) April 15, 2017@kurteichenwald They should give Trump his ride on gold carriage off a cliff. Seriously, they must have a spare gold carriage. Barry Rosen (@BAR0ke) April 15, 2017This is a man of the people? Trump demanding ride in queen s gold carriage during Buckingham Palace visit: report https:\/\/t.co\/mxFnx9ycPL Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) April 15, 2017[Cut to #Trump looking over at Ivanka,] There isn t enough gold on that carriage to represent my status! Ivanka: Let s call @Nigel_Farage! https:\/\/t.co\/QYirm1uugh TrumanDem (@TrumanDem) April 15, 2017#trump ego is expensive & a burden. @realDonaldTrump demands $ be wasted on ridiculous gold carriage but cuts meals for hungry kids at home pic.twitter.com\/ZuKXSYG6SL Doodledevotee (@doodledevotee) April 15, 2017Man of the people demands gold carriage! https:\/\/t.co\/cTbympSmN9 mrs panstreppon (@mrspanstreppon) April 15, 2017I keep thinking the bar for vulgarity has been buried. He keeps proving otherwise. https:\/\/t.co\/Hb7yvjK0A1 Nancy Nall Derringer (@nnall) April 15, 2017The Living Like a Coal Miner Saga Continues: Emperor @realDonaldTrump demands a gilded carriage ride in England https:\/\/t.co\/QrMrsxz4eX Col. Morris Davis (@ColMorrisDavis) April 15, 2017Perhaps we could do a Cinderella in reverse. Gold plated carriage turns in to a pumpkin. Trump turns in to one of the rats. https:\/\/t.co\/4I6J0a29Hz Glynis Elliott (@Chiclanagirl) April 15, 2017https:\/\/t.co\/D8gIwGQjPf This must be stopped. It could be very dangerous for the horses and the carriage could be damaged from an attack. Frederick Parsonage (@FParsonage) April 15, 2017#Trump s idea of #MealsOnWheels. Melania feeding their (then) baby a bottle in his 24 KT Gold Baby Carriage. They should be ashamed.#Wheels pic.twitter.com\/ygpDMgY36n Annemarie Weers (@AnnemarieWeers) March 16, 2017Trump wants a gold-plated carriage for when he visits the Queen? Golden carriages, golden showers he expects A LOT when he visits Europe! Cyrus McQueen (@CyrusMMcQueen) April 15, 2017He s a child, right? Needs a fancy carriage ride to prove some weird, I m important view. https:\/\/t.co\/9BhfAKSTJO Fat Tony (@anthonysorro) April 15, 2017Would it be beneath her majesty if she told him to fuck off? https:\/\/t.co\/FKh5sf0CMY Erik Huey (@ErikHuey) April 15, 2017At this point, the world and the American public should all tell Trump to f*ck off. He s an embarrassment who has turned our nation into a laughingstock around the world. Trump is not acting like a president, he s a petulant child pretending that he is a monarch. That s as un-American as it gets.Featured Image: Alex Wong\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"A Caddo Nation tribal leader has just been freed after spending two days behind bars in North Dakota. Family members say she was simply an innocent bystander in a clash between police and protesters, and was not guilty of anything the police claimed.  Via AlternativeNews  Jessi Mitchell, of local News 9 reports that \"family members of Caddo Nation chairwoman Tamara Francis-Fourkiller said an anonymous donor paid $2.5 million late Saturday afternoon to release everyone arrested on Thursday at the Dakota Access Pipeline site.\" They added, however, that Francis-Fourkiller was never supposed to have been arrested in the first place. \"An expert on sacred burial grounds , Francis-Fourkiller was one of the tribal leaders visiting the Sioux of Standing Rock to advise them during negotiations with the Dakota Access Pipeline construction team,\" Mitchell continues. \"Remains were being desecrated in this pipeline, so they had asked a bunch of people to come up there, so there's a big conference,\" Francis-Fourkiller's sister Loretta Francis explained. On the visit , Francis said her sister and other leaders decided to tour the protest camps. They never thought they would wind up in jail. Francis said her sister had no access to her medication while in custody in Cass County, North Dakota, and now faces charges of conspiracy and rioting. \"Part of my family was removed on the Trail of Tears and they came here to Oklahoma and they suffered,\" said Francis. \"I always feel like each generation \u2013 our parents, our grandparents \u2013 try to make it better for the next generation and they certainly didn't want this for my sister.\" Dozens of Native Americans from Oklahoma tribes had gathered Saturday afternoon at the state Capitol, according to Mitchell, with the purpose of voicing their \"anger at the treatment of the protesters in North Dakota, pointing out this week's acquittal of armed protesters at an Oregon wildlife refuge earlier this year.\" \"We're not holding guns. We're not armed, and when we see the military right here in the US use that on us, it's shameful,\" Comanche Nation tribal council member Sonya Nevaquaya explained. One of the fundamentals of all Native American tribes is the protection of the land. Chanting \"Water is life!\" Saturday, the Oklahoma demonstrators hope to rally people from around the country to stand with those in North Dakota and stop construction on the pipeline project. \"These pipelines, you hear of a lot of bursts and leaks and it contaminating the waters. What happens when all of our waters and resources are gone?\" Nevaquaya explained. Francis-Fourkiller says she will be traveling back to her home in Norman as soon as possible.","label":1}
{"text":"He [Obama] makes me want to wrap a suicide vest around my head and text BOOM to my brain On the Brit s desire to be politically correct about Muslims invasion of UK: You are too busy gazing at the fluff in your navel to see the gangrene in your foot Trump is terrifying. We have seen the future and it is bleak said one reporter.In turn, thousands are busy clicking on a hideously impotent petition to BAN TRUMP FROM GREAT BRITAIN .What exactly are they achieving? Having their say? Joining in the outrage bus?No doubt petition sites like change.org are on their web favourites, right up there with erectile dysfunction.co.uk. and single.com.They may as well calm down. We are not banning Donald from the UK.And even if Trump were elected President, he wouldn t be able to ban Muslims from his shores even if he wanted to.Ask yourself: how could he possibly make it work?America struggles to control its southern border as it is. It is not going to be able to change the global passport system and get your religion stamped on your passport or your head to establish your faith.What s the Christianity test going to be? Snurfling a hot dog whilst singing Give me joy in my heart, keep me praising ? After a Muslim couple gunned down 14 residents of San Bernardino, California, Americans looked for strong leadership. Just like after 9\/11 when Bush made like a dog of war and took the fight to the terrorists.They didn t get from dreary Obama. He makes me want to wrap a suicide vest around my head and text BOOM to my brainDon't demonise Trump. He speaks for millions of Americans.And who can blame them for not wanting to end up like us?https:\/\/t.co\/5SaKwd02Hu Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) December 9, 2015It took the President a couple of days to even admit the attack was terror and when he did finally address a nervous nation on Sunday night his tone-deaf message was that Muslims were their friends, neighbours and sports heroes. In contrast, Trump IS providing leadership. He knows some of his grand-standing is hot air. But he is articulating a sentiment held by millions and reinforcing himself as a protector of the American people.It s the reason Trump is the Republican front runner. He has spent just $330,000 on broadcasting to Jeb Bush s $42.5 million which is indicative of how much America is enthralled by this new voice.I hear cries that he is a blithering idiot. I have often been called a deranged fool. But if this were true you could ignore me, ignore us, imaging the two of us shouting naked at the rain.It s because we articulate sentiments repressed by the politically correct consensus that we have a voice.Trump said: We have places in London so radicalised that police are afraid for their lives. Within moments the Met Police, Prime Minister David Cameron, and the clownish Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, jumped to defend the reputation of the UK and distance themselves from this glaring truth.Yet, at the time of writing, no less than five bobbies on the beat have come forward to confirm that there ARE estates where they will only patrol out of uniform.There is fear among the police AND the public.I work with a team of cameramen in town who text their wives and partners on the hour to confirm they are safe.My family is not keen for me to be in the capital.Some friends will no longer come to London.How do you feel about the security of the city s shopping centres right now, after what happened in Paris?I watch the BBC news, our national broadcaster, ramming home messages of inclusiveness.Today they gave platform to a representative of the Muslim community telling Trump he is an Islamophobe and is not welcome here.But that s not my voice. That is not the voice of a nation. All Brits don t think that way.Being force-fed multi-culturalism brought us to this place. When the only permitted message is acceptance, any views to the contrary result in a label to shame you into silence.Racist! Islamophobe! Nazi!Don t just stick a label it. Be curious. Wonder, how has Trump come to articulate the views of a majority of Republicans across the States?Because I don t buy into the clear divide between extremist Muslims and peaceful ones. I don t see these as two separate entities. It is a sliding scale, a spectrum. From utterly peaceful, to ambivalence to sympathising, to extremist, to a man blowing up buses in Woburn Place.It is the same slippery slope which sees regular mosque attendees from Luton slip off to Syria to join ISIS. And suddenly a tight knit Muslim community knows nothing.Not the local imam, not local families, no one. No one denouncing terrorism. Just a wall of silence. In our country.Hate hidden behind walls we are told to accept and tolerate because we are multi-cultural. Repeat after me. Multi-cultural.History teaches us lessons were refuse to learn.The IRA would not have enjoyed decades of success without many among the Northern Irish Catholic population acting just the same way as the imams and family and friends of extremists in Luton today.We have gone too far and lost control of vast swathes of our country. In part we ARE a radicalised nation and it does nobody any favours to deny the obvious.Trump wants to call a temporary halt to Muslim immigration until America figures out what is going on.Adversaries may be quick to jump on Trump and make him the problem.But look around. You are too busy gazing at the fluff in your navel to see the gangrene in your foot.You lost sight of terrifying.It isn t a big, brash American untroubled by the need to be loved. It is the march of ISIS and the so-called Islamic State.You may want to distance yourself from Trump. You may want to carry on navel gazing.But for many Americans, Europe is rapidly becoming an example of everything they never want to be.","label":1}
{"text":"European and African ministers agreed on Monday to try to improve conditions for migrants in Libya and seek paths such as scholarships for Africans to reach Europe legally, to cut the death toll from smuggling across the Sahara and Mediterranean. The deadly trek across the desert from sub-Saharan Africa through Libya and over sea to Italy is now the main route used by refugees and other vulnerable migrants heading to Europe, after Turkey closed the other main route via Greece that brought in nearly a million people in 2015. Almost 115,000 migrants have landed on Italian shores so far this year. Almost 2,750 are known to have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean, the U.N. International Organization for Migration said on Friday, and the death toll in the Sahara desert is thought to be at least twice as high. European and African officials say the numbers reaching Europe have finally been falling over the past few months due to better efforts to fight smuggling. But that has also left tens of thousands of migrants trapped in Libya, often detained in conditions rights groups say are dangerous and inhumane. Interior ministers belonging to the Central Mediterranean contact group met in Switzerland to discuss the crisis. While they talked about law enforcement measures to combat smuggling, their final statement focused more on efforts to alleviate the journey s harm. Ministers from Algeria, Austria, Chad, France, Germany, Italy, Libya, Malta, Niger, Slovenia, Switzerland, Tunisia and Mali were among those backing the statement. We had a very intensive exchange, because the questions we are dealing with are very demanding issues, Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said after the meeting. This is why we concentrated on protecting refugees. We had many people with different viewpoints sitting around the table, but nonetheless, on this point we all agreed.... We want to improve the situation of migrants and refugees, particularly in Libya. Sommaruga said an improvement in the situation on the central Mediterranean route would be possible only if countries joined together to help stabilize Libya. The ministers said they would work closely with Libyan authorities to ensure detained migrants and refugees were held with respect for human rights and humanitarian standards, and promised to secure priority release from detention for vulnerable people such as children and victims of torture. They also pledged to create economic alternatives to smuggling, including pilot projects for pathways for Africans to reach Europe legally, such as scholarships and apprenticeships. We risk this time to be seen as a dark chapter in European history. If we wish to change that situation, we must get together with those states which themselves are very severely affected by migration, Sommaruga said.","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says Our weekly documentary film, curated by our editorial team at 21WIRE.This film documents a series of early scandals and state corruption surrounding Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. The film came under heavy criticism in the US media at the time, with Democratic Party officials and mainstream media labelling it as a partisan hit piece. While Clinton proponents and critics of this film maintain that it s part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, this film produced by Citizens for Honest Government does cover actual events which took place in and around Arkansas during the Clinton s reign as Governor there, and contains numerous facts and revelations regarding those events including a massive cocaine smuggling operation into Mena, Arkansas under the watch of the Clinton governorship. Watch:https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=35mG57pUy80 . Run time: 1 hr 41 min Director: Patrick Matrisciana Producer: Patrick Matrisciana Released: 1994SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERE SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"A spokesman for Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said on Wednesday he had been informed that the police had almost completed their investigation of two Reuters journalists arrested over a week ago, after which a court case against them would begin. Zaw Htay said the two reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, would then have access to a lawyer and be able to meet members of their families. It will not be long. The investigation is almost done, he said by telephone. The spokesman said the Ministry of Home Affairs and police told him on Tuesday that the two men were being detained in Yangon, were in good condition and had not been subjected to illegal questioning. A number of governments and human rights and journalist groups have criticized Myanmar s authorities for holding the pair incommunicado since their arrest, with no access to a lawyer, colleagues and family members. Asked if the police were respecting their human rights, Zaw Htay replied, Yes, yes, I have told them not to do those things. I told them to act according to the law. They guaranteed that they will act only according to the law, said Zaw Htay, who was not more specific. Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, have been in detention since Dec. 12. There have been no details on where they were being held as authorities proceeded with an investigation into whether they had violated the country s colonial-era Official Secrets Act. The act carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years. The two journalists had worked on Reuters coverage of a crisis in the western state of Rakhine, where an estimated 655,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled from a fierce military crackdown on militants. The United States and the United Nations have described the campaign as ethnic cleansing of the stateless Rohingya people. The Myanmar military has said its own internal investigation had exonerated security forces of all accusations of atrocities in Rakhine. The two journalists were arrested on Dec. 12 after they were invited to dine with police officers on the outskirts of Myanmar s largest city, Yangon. The Ministry of Information said last week that they had illegally acquired information with the intention to share it with foreign media . A number of major governments and political leaders, including the United States, Canada and Britain, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, have called for the journalists release. Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that the detentions appeared to be aimed at stopping independent reporting of the ethnic cleansing campaign against the Rohingya. Their secret, incommunicado detention lays bare government efforts to silence media reporting on critical issues, Brad Adams, the group s Asia director, said in a statement. Separately, the U.N. independent investigator into human rights in Myanmar said on Wednesday she had been told by the government that it would not cooperate with her or grant her access to the country for the rest of her tenure. Yanghee Lee, U.N. special rapporteur, said she had been due to visit in January to assess human rights, including allegations of abuses against Rohingya in Rakhine state. This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country, she said in a statement. Myanmar government and foreign ministry spokesmen were not immediately available for comment on the criticism from Human Rights Watch and on Lee s status. In Washington, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee called for the immediate release of the Reuters journalists. This is outrageous, said Senator Ben Cardin, who has introduced with 14 other lawmakers legislation that seeks through targeted sanctions and visa restrictions to hold senior Myanmar military officials accountable for human rights abuses.\\ It just brings back the memory of the horrible practices with the repressive military rule. The Myanmar Press Council, some of whose members are government-appointed, told a news conference in Yangon that it would like to mediate in the case of the Reuters journalists. Thiha Saw, the council s secretary, told Reuters that the arrests were not aimed at muzzling the media. I don t agree that this is to silence the voices of the journalists attempting to cover the Rakhine issue independently ... We don t want to generalize things, he said. Critics have characterized the arrests as an attack on press freedom in the former Burma and, although this is not a view widely held in Myanmar, about one-third of the roughly 100 journalists at the news conference were dressed in black as a protest against the detention of the Reuters reporters. Myanmar has seen rapid growth in independent media since censorship imposed under the former junta was lifted in 2012. Rights groups were hopeful there would be further gains in press freedoms after Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi came to power last year amid a transition from full military rule that had propelled her from political prisoner to elected leader. However, advocacy groups say that freedom of speech has eroded since she took office, with many arrests of journalists, restrictions on reporting in Rakhine state and heavy use of state-run media to control the narrative. If the government continues to ratchet up the pressure on the independent press, media freedom in Aung San Suu Kyi s Burma will look a lot more like the media repression during the military junta, Human Rights Watch s Adams said. Myo Nyunt, deputy director for Myanmar s Ministry of Information, told Reuters on Saturday that the case against Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had nothing to do with press freedom, and said journalists have freedom to write and speak.","label":0}
{"text":"In June of 2017, it was reported that the newly-crowned NBA champions the Golden State Warriors were preparing a political statement by refusing an invitation to the White House to visit President Donald Trump.The Oakland-based basketball team, led by head coach Steve Kerr, decided immediately after Trump s election on November 9 that it would shun the new president if it won the NBA championship, according to Comcast SportsNet.Golden State Warrior player Kevin Durant bragged about not visiting President Donald Trump at the White House if the NBA champion Golden State Warriors are invited. Nah, I won t do that, said Durant, the 2017 NBA Finals MVP. I don t respect who s in office right now. Yesterday, Stephen Curry bragged about not visiting the White House. Stephen Curry doesn't hold back on whether he'll vote to visit White House. pic.twitter.com\/n2PBAtYQdA Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) September 22, 2017Today, President Trump who is clearly sick and tired of all of these overpaid athletes spewing a completely bogus narrative about him being a racist or supporting racism, shot back and rescinded Stephen Curry s invitation to the White House. In his tweet, President Trump reminding Curry that it s a privilege to be invited to celebrate their victory with the President. Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team. Stephen Curry is hesitating, therefore invitation is withdrawn! Going to the White House is considered a great honor for a championship team.Stephen Curry is hesitating,therefore invitation is withdrawn! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017President Trump should have also reminded the petulant Stephen Curry that there s a high likelihood most of his fans couldn t care less about his political opinions, and that whining to the media about not wanting to go visit the President (who was elected by the majority of Americans) at the White House will probably not help his brand for future marketing gigs.If Americans are fed up with professional sports turning into political arenas, they can start by turning off so-called Sports networks like Disney owned ESPN, whose hosts are nothing more than political hacks promoting the hate and giving these overpaid athletes political views more attention than they deserve. Americans need to start turning off programs with controversial, race-obsessed hosts like Chris Hayes (who tweeted Curry s statement) and Trump-hating Jemele Hill who are more concerned about starting a race war in America than discussing sports.","label":1}
{"text":"Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell will face a court hearing in Australia next year to answer what police have described as historical sexual offences , a magistrate said on Friday, the most senior Roman Catholic official to face such accusations. Pell, 76, a top adviser to Pope Francis, did not speak as he was escorted to and from Melbourne Magistrates Court by police through a group of media, protesters and supporters. He was not required to enter a plea. Australian police said in June Pell had been summoned to appear on charges of historical sexual offences from multiple complainants. Details of the charges have not been made public. Pell s lawyers have said at a previous hearing he will plead not guilty to all charges. He is not required to enter a formal plea until a magistrate determines whether there is cause for a full trial. At a 20-minute hearing on Friday, a magistrate said the matter should return on March 5 for a committal hearing to determine whether it should proceed to a full trial. The magistrate set aside four weeks for the committal hearing. Pell is on a leave of absence from his Vatican role as Francis economy minister, which he started in 2014. The pontiff has said he will not comment on the case until it is over.","label":0}
{"text":"A British ship escorted a Russian vessel as it passed near UK territorial waters over Christmas, Britain s defense ministry said on Tuesday, adding that Russian naval activity near Britain had increased in the holiday period. The frigate HMS St Albans departed on Dec. 23 to track the new Russian warship Admiral Gorshkov as it moved through the North Sea. The Royal Navy vessel monitored the Russian ship over Christmas and will return to dock in Portsmouth later on Tuesday. UK defense minister Gavin Williamson said in a statement after the incident that he would not hesitate in defending our waters or tolerate any form of aggression . Relations between Britain and Russia are strained, and UK foreign minister Boris Johnson said there was abundant evidence of Moscow meddling in foreign elections during a trip to Russia last week. His counterpart Sergei Lavrov said there was no proof for Johnson s claim. While Johnson said he wants to normalize relations with Russia, Moscow blames London for the poor state of relations between the countries. Britain s defense ministry said another ship, HMS Tyne, was called to escort a Russian intelligence-gathering ship through the North Sea and the English Channel on Christmas Eve. A helicopter was subsequently dispatched to monitor two other Russian vessels.","label":0}
{"text":"The latest batch of emails released by WikiLeaks provides a rare glimpse into how Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign handles money from U.S. lobbyists who are registered agents for foreign interests. In an email chain with the subject, \"Re: Foreign registered agents,\" various figures in her presidential campaign discuss the best way to handle donations from U.S. lobbyists who are registered agents for foreign parties. The chain features Dennis Cheng, national finance director for the Clinton campaign, asking, \"We really need make a policy decision on this soon \u2013 whether we are allowing those lobbying on behalf of foreign governments to raise $ for the campaign. Or case by case.\" The emails continue with a debate about the best way to manage lobbyists working for foreign interests who want to raise money for the campaign. Jesse Ferguson, deputy national press secretary and senior spokesman for Clinton, tries to understand just how much money is up in the air. \"Is there anyway to ballpark what percent of our donor base this would apply to (aka how much money we're throwing away) Cost benefits are easier to analyze with the costs. :)\" The emails feature a list of foreign agents that the Clinton campaign was worried about possibly excluding from fundraising, including people lobbying on behalf of Somalia, United Arab Emirates, Kurdistan, the Transitional Government of Libya, and the Republic of Iraq, among others. Later, Cheng seems worried about losing this potential fundraising, writing, \"Hi all \u2013 we do need to make a decision on this ASAP as our friends who happen to be registered with FARA are already donating and raising. I do want to push back a bit (it's my job!): I feel like we are leaving a good amount of money on the table (both for primary and general, and then DNC and state parties)\u2026 and how do we explain to people that we'll take money from a corporate lobbyist but not them; that the Foundation takes $ from foreign govts but we now won't. Either way, we need to make a decision soon.\" Finally, Robby Mook, campaign manager for Clinton, writes, \"Marc made a convincing case to me this am that these sorts of restrictions don't really get you anything\u2026that Obama actually got judged MORE harshly as a result. He convinced me. So\u2026in a complete U-turn, I'm ok just taking the money and dealing with any attacks. Are you guys ok with that?\" Jennifer Palmieri, director of communications for Clinton's campaign, responds to that email, \"Take the money!!\" Editor's note: This post has been updated Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].","label":0}
{"text":"By Shem El-Jamal For almost a decade, many of us have heard about the concept and process of Disclosure . This is the complete release of formerly secret, official and governmental information through the public media. We have heard about the numerous possibilities of the truth of past events which exists behind closed doors\u2014locked away in secret files protectively stamped with the word \"Classified.\" We know that to a very large extent, we as the common public know very little about the truth behind roughly a century of government and corporate secrecy on matters of high technology, ET life, and the heinous crimes committed for the sake of maintaining this secrecy. The subjects within the topic of disclosure are extremely dense and weighty to consider. One could spend hours digesting just one of these topics, which are commonly considered fringe in today's society. However, we are here to discuss a different and yet parallel subject. This is the subject of individual choice, or more specifically, the choice to know . In order to see Disclosure, we must make the choice to be aware and have the courage to face the possibilities behind the truth which the disclosure will bring to light. Many of these truths will be unconventional, considering the fact that secrecy has defined convention for the past century. This does not mean that we should abandon our responsibility of thorough research and verification. It simply means that from vigorous research and diligent scrutiny, we must have the courage to face the information we encounter. Conscious Life Expo \u2013 David Wilcock \u2013 Page 1 \u2013 New Intel, The Human Evolutionary Leap, Sacred Geometry, Illuminati Secrets, and More  This article is dedicated to examining the concept of the partial disclosure , or the hindrance of the Disclosure process for the sake of a few financial interests. It is my hope that this article will help each and every one of us to discern and to face the truth the moment it is revealed. The Balance of Power There is one main reason for the need for a full-disclosure event to revolutionize the various societies of this planet. This Full Disclosure is to end the entirety of the secrecy for the sake of respect for the equality of all people. This disclosure is an acknowledgment to our right to know about all that affects our daily lives and represents the balancing of power among all people around the globe. With this balance in mind, it is important for us to know what power truly is. When we speak of power , many ideas may come to mind. Some of us may believe this word refers to one's ability to control others. Others may think of it as a matter of economic influence, and there are those who simply think of power as one's own ability to make their own choices. The truth is that all of these are valid definitions. To clarify, let's check the definition from Merriam-Webster for the word \"power.\" the ability or right to control people or things political control of a country or area a person or organization that has a lot of control and influence over other people or organizations http:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/power  If we consider these definitions of this word, we may notice something. Aside from the definitions which refer to mathematical applications, there seems to be no reference to human equality of any kind. It seems that in this official definition, the modern English language has all but completely done away with the fact that true power comes from the individual, and in essence, is equally distributed among all people. Let's consider a few examples. American Mind Control: The Cost of Secrecy Part 1 \u2013 Examining the Effects of Secrecy, Propaganda, and Organized, White-Collar Crime  Most of us are familiar with the concept of governmental monarchy. This is of course, the form of centralized government in which a single figurehead holds complete control over an area, province, or country. Yet even though this one individual supposedly holds all of this power, they would have no control at all unless everyone else agreed to allow them that control. Jacques Louis David \u2013 The-Coronation of Napoleon In every ancient monarchical government structure, no single ruling figure could have held any such authority without the entire kingdom agreeing that they should. Generally speaking, if the people do not decide to follow, no authority can lead anyone in any way. A king or queen has dozens of servants, maids, butlers, cooks, groundskeepers and gardeners, craftsmen, and guards. They have advisers and clergymen who direct their political decisions, and armies of thousands who obey their every whim. However, not a single order of this monarchic figure would ever mean anything if the people chose not to follow them. Full Disclosure and Ascension \u2013 Commentary of the Latest Article from David Wilcock  In the common social interaction in which equality of power is acknowledged, there is no hierarchy. When one person starts giving orders to another, they probably won't get much from the person (except maybe the finger and\/or some choice words). Now take these same two people\u2014one giving the order and the other receiving that order\u2014and place beside these two, five other people who are following the orders. Due to this situation, the compulsion to obey is somewhat increased. Now add in 10, 20, 50, or even an entire country of people doing as they are mandated to do by some unseen authority, and the compulsion to obey is compounded. Add in the ability of the authority to order punishment upon those who disobey, and this control is solidified.We as human beings have the conditioning to conform to whatever social situation we find ourselves in. This is not to say that this tendency cannot be overcome. It is merely to say that we are raised to conform to the collective of society. This social conformity may have a few positive aspects up to a certain point. However for those who appreciate independent thought and the freedom to choose for themselves, this pull to conform can be somewhat of an annoyance. The above example of this social tendency to conform demonstrates the psychological concept of social conditioning , or what many in modern days refer to as the sheep effect . Psych Central \u2013 \"Herd\" Mentality Explained  The sheep effect could be described as the tendency of a person to automatically do whatever those around them are doing. This could simply be initiated by one person repeating an action, or it could be an entire group practicing . Eventually, you may have a large group of people doing the same thing over and over again without knowing why. The following clip comes from a show which airs on the National Geographic channel called Brain Games , and demonstrates a prime example of the sheep effect in action. Brain Games \u2014 Social Conformity What Lies Beyond the Haze of Social Conditioning?  So as we can see, it seems fairly easy to subtly coerce a suggestible person into following a social norm even though they have no logical reason for doing so. To be fair, this woman most likely reasoned to herself that the bell had something to do with being called for her appointment. What is interesting to see is that she never actually asked about why the group kept standing. There seems to have simply been the rationalization, immediately followed by conformity. This tendency of social conformity is a pervasive phenomenon which seems to grip the entirety of developed societies around the world. In fact, this conformity may be the one of the main reasons why large civilizations have developed in the way that they have. It is very likely that this coercion to conform has been used to create various facets of society, and to build that which has been built. However, as we may have seen, modern society doesn't serve all people equally. Instead the supposedly civilized world appears to be designed to use the individual for their entire lifetime. When society has taken the best years of life of the individual, it discards them while at the same time, it grooms their children to be used in the exact same way. Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock \u2013 Illuminati Salvage Plan \u2013 The Cabal's Attempt at Damage Control from the World of Entertainment  Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock \u2013 \"The Cabal's Downward Spiral\" \u2013 Assessing the Final Days of a Crumbling Cabal, and a Prelude to Breakthrough  This grossly exploitative societal structure appears to have been designed by those who benefit from it most. These benefactors don't work. They don't contribute, but in many ways they use and enjoy the spoils of everything that we the people work for. Due to their elitist mentality and upbringing, these manipulators have, in a sense, domesticated the rest of humanity to work as their own servants, and have collectively assumed the position of the monarch of ancient times\u2014creating an oligarchy. So what's the significance of these discoveries, and what do they have to do with to partial disclosure? The Nature of Unbalanced Power The bottom line is that a partial disclosure would serve as a prime opportunity for more elitists to assume even more influential positions, and to seize more power than they deserve. Just like we have seen over the last century, any excess of power only compounds, and eventually corrupt those who hold it. Who's Investing in the Dakota Access Pipeline? Meet the Banks Financing Attacks on Protesters \u2013 Extended Commentary and Links Included  Over time, the common people will typically adapt to their lower societal positions\u2014becoming more and more comfortable and increasingly dependent upon the state to direct their lives. At the same time, the common people will become less and less self responsible. Eventually, the people become so dependent and the state becomes so domineering and power-drunk that the people will submit to any plan\u2014no matter how foolish or ridiculous\u2014simply so that they can avoid self-awareness and self-responsibility. It is a historical trend that when ethical integrity of a government dips farthest, nationalistic propaganda is most heavily promoted. Report: At least 50 teams were paid by Department of Defense for patriotic displays  Immature, centralized dependency upon the state can have some fairly horrendous results. As we have seen throughout history, this dependency has lead to the horrors of the Holocaust. This blind submission of the people led to one of the most notorious and most destructive governmental and military developments of the modern world. This blind conformity has also enabled virtually every war fought in the last century, and has lead the United States to its sad and violent role as world terrorist nation . Four Unicorn Riot Journalists Face Charges for Covering #NoDAPL \u2013 Links and Commentary Included  Today in America, we have a state of social conformity that seems to have abandoned all common sense ages ago. The acting governance has become so overgrown, so over-privileged, overconfident, and self-consumed that many of those who hold positions of governmental and legal power have abandoned their actually duty entirely, and have instead used their positions to serve themselves. Many of the citizenry of the United States have become so complacent, so inattentive to the real world, and so thoroughly dependent upon the State that they care nothing about what the State actually does. We have seen policies written to benefit only the banks and the corporation of America\u2014receiving dozens of tax break\u2014while the common people are left to pay the bill. Controlled Demolition \u2013 A Peer-Reviewed Scientific Analysis of the World Trade Center Collapses by Europhysics News  We have seen dangerous trends of militarized law enforcement which have converted many of our police departments into domestic armies. These armies have shown themselves to be severely lacking in human decency, and who behave as storm-troopers who create just as many problems as they solve. We have also seen this domestic army assault the supposedly free people of this country for little more than speaking out against rampant, common-place injustice. The corporate criminals who orchestrated the societal problems and hired crooked police take further and further steps to increase their own power by taking more and more from the common people through fear and violence. The Media and Emotional Manipulation We may have noticed how music and entertainment have become so negative, so centered on the idea of hopelessness, fatalism, and despair that it is difficult to find any other theme in music in modern times. These outlets used to have a wide verity of choices of themes and genres. Now entertainment seems to have become a gateway to clinical depression and perpetual fear. However, when observing these trends, we may wonder, \"Why would any entertainment company choose to depress and demoralize its audience?\" The answer is simple. Studies have shown that the plethora of corporate media sources are actually a highly centralized conglomerate of corporations all with the same ownership at the very top. These corporations have close relationships with government interests who often use corporate media outlets as their own person mouthpiece to disseminate whatever message is most politically advantageous for the masses to believe. Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock \u2013 Business not as Usual \u2013 Examining Clear Signs of Progress toward Planetary Liberation  It seems that the people are conditioned to accept and maintain these corporately approved belief systems for as long of a time is necessary to achieve the intended political agenda. This message is maintained until it becomes convenient to change the corporate rhetoric to a different script. (This has been seen numerous times in the recent tendency of NASA to report on whatever hints at ET life when in the past, the subject of ETs was never communicated as anything but a joke.) So corporate media pushes the message that is most advantageous to the corporate world\u2014keeping the people dependent upon corporate sources for their sense of comfort and security. However, more often than not, this comfort is grossly misplaced. In modern times, we have an American governance which claims to spread peace around the world and to have a goal of defeating terrorism, but this governance is funding and aiding this terrorism while claiming the continued aid is accidental. Unmasking Fascism \u2013 The United Nations Makes a Shocking Admission about Syria and Western Corruption \u2013 Commentary and Links Included  We see the United States waging war around the world\u2014war which has lasted over a decade with no sign of ceasing. We have seen human rights all but completely abandoned in the United States, and we have seen nothing but empty promises for positive change from the mouths of these acting political parties. These officials have many nice things to say, but behind the words, they seem to have little or no desire to improve the status quo for the people. Time has proven that the addiction to wealth and power are just too strong to break without outside influence. So what does this mean for each of us? Misplaced Power The key reason why a partial-disclosure scenario would not be to the greatest benefit of the planet its people is simple. This reason is that power in essence is equally distributed among all sentient beings. This individual power is an aspect of the equality of each individual, and represents our right to make our own choices and to act in ways that benefit us in the greatest way possible. (This power is, of course, exercised as we respect the rights of others.) This is the concept of Human Rights \u2014the rights the United States Constitution claims to uphold. BREAKING: FBI in Revolt \u2014 Top FBI Official Exposes Massive Corruption Which Let Clinton's Crimes Slide  Each individual has the power to guide their own lives the way they see fit. However, in modern days this principle is ignored and substituted with something far less beneficial; something which holds little respect for human rights at all. This is the concept known as collectivism . Within a collectivist society, there is no such thing as the individual. There is only the sacrifice of individuality for the sake of the collective. Within collectivism, human rights are commonly ignored while the good of the collective is emphasized. However, within these types of societies, the people are rarely the true benefactors of the societal structure. Just as we have seen in modern times, in a collectivist society, the rights of the people to life, freedom and prosperity are steadily eroded away by those who seek only to gain for themselves. These self-serving political and financial figures speak flowery words from behind the podium every chance they get, but their true nature is commonly seen in their actions. They work only toward their own gain and to the benefit of their elitist cohorts. This has been the state of America for over half a century. However, this debilitated condition of the country has not been so obvious until more recently. Dakota Access Pipeline \u2013 The Standoff between Corporate Kleptocracy and the Enduring Spirit of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe  From the podium, freedom and liberty are praised as staples by politicians who set comfortably in the pockets of financial interests. These interests have done everything in their power to attack and destroy American freedom from the shadows. This condition has infuriated many among the population\u2014causing them to speak out. Others become pacified by the propaganda and become agreeable to any and every ideology that this propaganda pushes onto them. This could be considered to be the doing of the acting American governance as well as the complacent among the population who allow such crimes against humanity to continue the same way German citizens did during the rise of the Nazi regime.There is little need to prove this is possible because Nazi ideals can easily be seen in our world at present. Due to the excessive psychopathic corruption of Western corporations, much of the world has become a wasteland of bombed-out structures, broken and\/or murdered families, genocidal foreign leaders, and terror groups who wait for orders from their Western puppet masters. So with all this in mind, what could all of this have to do with partial disclosure? The End of Ignorance The prospect of a disclosure comprised of little more than a laundry list of half-truths is not at all preferable in my view. This is because it would leave the door wide open for all of the violence, the violations of humanity and human rights, the war crimes, and all of the corruption to be reborn later on. These crimes would have the opportunity to gradually and subtly take root the exact same way they did during the last century. The only difference this time around would be that these crimes would have a new face. Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock \u2013 The Ceres Pyramid \u2013 A Brazen Statement from an Anxious Cabal  It is true that a partial disclosure which was composed of only the existence of ET life and alternative energy technology would be a step toward change. However, the world needs much, much more in order to ensure that the Nazi regimes that have come out of Germany, the United States, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia do not have a chance to rise again. Crimes against humanity are no small issue to deal with. If we allow those responsible to escape without full restitution for their crimes, this leaves the door open for either them or their peers to attempt the same thing again. This is not to say that those guilty of these crimes should all be executed. It is to say that all of their crimes should be brought out into the open and the people of the world should learn 100% of the ways in which such criminals seize power. This mass revelation of truth would also open the door to countless advancements in human and social development. The populations of the world have been under the hypnotic spell of commercial propaganda for over a century of time. Virtually everything the people presently believe has been twisted in some way by corporate powers to the advantage of those corporate powers alone. The rights of we the people to think and choose for ourselves has been all but completely ignored. To hand the people the respect we have always deserved would allow the equality and freedom (presently praised during live national speeches) to actually mean something. Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock \u2013 NASA's Quiet Disclosure Part 1  As stated before, the main reason for the need for a full disclosure is to ensure that the true nature of power\u2014the nature which the official definition seems to deliberately omit\u2014is respected and upheld. This is the fact that each and every one of us possesses our own power to be used and enjoyed by ourselves and no one else. The only reason monarchs and figureheads ever had power is because they, their families, and their cohorts tricked their respective populations into thinking that the common people did not have any power. (This is the secret behind any large totalitarian regime.)It is the choice of the people to behave like sheep and to get in line without ever knowing why they are doing so. As the State encourages this thoughtless tendency of the people, manipulative leaders ensure their continued harvest of power from them. The Disclosure Project \u2013 \"The Lakenheath-Bentwaters Incident\" \u2013 An Eye-Witness Account of one of the Most Significant Events in UFO and Military History  Full Disclosure is the only way to ensure that this world becomes and remains free. By my observation, there is no other way of preventing the Neo-Nazi, Zionistic, and genocidal barbarism that has plagued our world for centuries. Only when we the people observe, think and act by our own efforts will this world remain free. Only in a society where there is individual maturity and independent intellect can the people truly be free. The alternative is the continuation of some form of thoughtless dependency on whatever ideology is thrown at us. Only some form of collectivist conformity results for those who gradually agree to do less, to think less, and to accept less responsibility. The choice is clear. Do we choose to know, or do we risk prolonging the age of ignorance? The only way to ensure that everyone becomes aware of this choice is to realize the variety of ways this choice has been denied. Only through a full disclosure can this full revelation be achieved, and only in a society of courageous people with open eyes can this realization be complete. Source: Discerning the Mystery","label":1}
{"text":"Dozens of supporters of US President Donald Trump rallied on the Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, Saturday, a day ahead of the Academy Awards ceremony, in order to defend the president and protect his star on the Walk of Fame.One arrest was made after clashes erupted as some by-passers confronted the protesters, breaking one of their placards. Protesters campaigned for Trump to build the wall at the southern US border with Mexico and displayed signs such as Mexicans for Trump, California for Trump and women for Trump. Watch:The organizer of the rally Matthew Woods stressed that Trump supporters are boycotting many actors and film directors who have an anti-America agenda. A few of the pro-Trump supporters who were present at the rally explained why they supported him: I m Latino and I say, build that wall. These illegal immigrants. I actually have a friend whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant. They re losing and it s the price they re going to pay. They re losing support of the arts and the films. We re boycotting many actors and film that have an anti-American agenda, a globalist agenda or an anti-Trump agenda.","label":1}
{"text":"Crooked Hillary Campaign Used A Green Screen At Today's Low Turnout Rally In Coconut Creek FL When you watch this video of Crooked Hillary's speech from yesterday here in Florida, you will see some amazing things. First, you will see a background section that is in 2-D and not 3-D, like a projected image on a wall would look. Why would that be? Well, that happens in what we call green screen technology, and in this case, poorly done green screen. 26, 2016 Crooked HIllary holds phony rally with pretend background people via green screen  When you watch this video of Crooked Hillary's speech from yesterday here in Florida, you will see some amazing things. First, you will see a background section that is in 2-D and not 3-D, like a projected image on a wall would look. Secondly, you see when anyone steps in front of that background, there appears a darkened halo around them. Why would that be? Well, that happens in what we call green screen technology , and in this case, poorly done green screen. Hillary Clinton Rally in Coconut Creek, Florida using green screen:  Start watching at the 1:03:00 mark to see where Crooked Hillary starts speaking.  Another salient clue that she used a green screen is that when she turns around to wave to these people, they are mere feet away and yet she shakes hands with none of them. Why, because they weren't there. Liberal news rag CNN is infamous for pretending to be in a location but in reality it's nothing more than green screen. CNN did it here , here , and also here . The handheld video camera exposes the lie:  Look in the viewfinder of the video camera filming Crooked Hillary \u2013 it's black behind her yet in the official video it's filled with people. Hmm\u2026awake yet, America?  Lastly, if you look close at the end of the video , you will see the real people behind her with cameras, but then the main group of people behind them are flattened out in 2-D because they are not actually there. Hillary's rally was uber-tiny so it's little wonder they had to resort to green screen: Clinton supporters beginning to enter Broward College for Hillary Clinton early voting rally in Coconut Creek #tcpalm pic.twitter.com\/8HhLkFltks  \u2014 Eric Hasert (@TCPalmHasert) October 25, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says CNN s Chris Cuomo (image, above) is certainly one of America s most maligned and gaff-prone mainstream media pundits. But are these really gaffs, or is there more to this media operative?This week, Cuomo went into full establishment mode, by attempting to scare the American public into NOT viewing Wikileaks emails online.Cuomo declared this week, Also interesting is remember, it s illegal to possess, ah, the stolen documents it s different for the media. So everything you re learning about this, you re learning from us. After Cuomo s fatal misstep, he quickly began back-pedaling and obfuscating his troubling position regarding public access to items that are in the public interest:What is even more disturbing about Cuomo s off-hand legal declarations here, is that he is doing so in defense of Hillary Clinton s presidential run whose numerous scandals are pervasive throughout the Wikileaks emails. This is hardly the role of a journalist. NEWSFLASH FOR CNN: If the leaked documents are about elected and appointed public officials (especially those seeking the presidency), and the content exposes illegal and unethical activities and is clearly in the public interest (which these emails are) then any decent journalist worth their salt (no such thing at CNN) would publish them and even encourage the public to comb over the documents, unless the media outlet in question functions as a gatekeeper (which CNN does). SEE ALSO: Congressman Jim Jordan stops CNN gatekeeper Chris Cuomo on Benghazi cover-upAs the son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo, and the brother of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Chris is part of a political dynasty family and member of an elite establishment. It s doubtful he would ve been given such a prominent position in a major broadcast network if he wasn t part of that establishment.Last year, 21WIRE ran a scathing report criticizing CNN s Cuomo over his reliance on dubious ISIS and al Qaeda online magazines for his news breaking news reports. After a bomb brought down a Russian Metrojet Airbus A321 leaving Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Cuomo cited an ISIS Monthly aka DABIQ Magazine claiming that a Schweppes Bomb brought down the airliner.21WIRE tweeted the CNN host our critique and in response, Chris Cuomo then blocked @21WIRE from viewing his Twitter page:For a self-described journalist hosting a major broadcast TV network program, is Cuomo so insecure that he blocked a small independent news site for criticizing a CNN report which relies on ISIS as its source?Q: Is Chris Cuomo a media gatekeeper? A: In the case of the above Wikileaks story, the answer is YES. It is well documented that the CIA has a number of media infiltration and propaganda programs, including Operation Mockingbird.Is Cuomo participating in such a program, in this case, being run out of CNN?*** SEE ALSO: CNN s New Source is ISIS Magazine Claims a Schweppes Bomb Brought Down Russian AirlinerREAD MORE WIKILEAKS NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Wikileaks Files","label":1}
{"text":"This is a brilliantly written piece by Nick Short of Politically Short on the successful indoctrination our youth. He explains what has led the to rabid support Bernie Sanders, an avowed Socialist and a true disciple of Saul Alinsky, Hillary Clinton In his book The Snapping of the American Mind, David Kupelian asks the following painful question that millions of Americans like myself have pondered for years and will ponder for some time to come as America slowly rips itself apart. Kupelian writes, How could it be that hundreds of thousands of Americans fought and bled and many died on foreign shores to contain an evil and metas-tasizing ideology variously called communism, Marxism, socialism, collectivism, or statism, and yet now, just a few years later, we would gaze up at the pinnacle of power in our own country and behold leaders in thrall to essentially the same core ideology we fought and died to protect strangers from? The answer to this is can be found within the culture itself and more specifically within Americas youth who have seemingly embraced the concept of socialism with little to no understanding of what socialism even is. Yet, like frogs slowly boiling to death in the cesspools that have become our college campuses, our nations youth collectively embrace the ideology that will destroy them while demanding that they be protected from opinions that run contrary to their beliefs. For instance, after the outspoken conservative and feminist critic Milo Yiannopoulos gave a speech at Rutgers University the college responded in a way that has become typical in the cesspools that are our academia. Writing in the Rutgers campus newspaper, The Daily Targum, Noa Halff notes:Students and faculty gathered in the Paul Robeson Cultural Center on Busch campus to generate dialogue about Yiannopoulos s visit and the protest that occurred during his lecture. A variety of different organizations and departments were present to listen, answer questions and show support.Representatives from the Rutgers University Police Department, the Office of Violence Prevention and Victim Assistance, Counseling, Alcohol and other Drug Assistance Program and Psychiatric Services and the Bias Prevention and Education Committee were present. Members from the Black Student Union, the Asian American Cultural Center, Center for Latino Arts and Culture, College Student Affairs and many more were also in attendance.In short, this official response to a conservative speaker from what was once one of America s most prestigious universities is a damning indictment of a generation that has been primed for totalitarianism. The fact that this isn t an isolated example is bad, but what s worse is that these very same college students have become champions of government regulated speech so long as the speech being regulated emanates from the right. This is happening while at the same time students are actively discouraged from thinking for themselves. It s a testament to how successful the left has been in capturing our nations schools that today analytical thinking, once the basis of our education system, is virtually gone.It s a symptom of progressivism to see that the supposed college educated today have become fierce proponents for government regulated speech, but progressivism itself is not the underlying root cause. The cause itself can be found in the ideology known as liberalism which has been carried to its logical and practical extreme, totalitarianism.As James Burnham explained in his 1964 classic, Suicide of the West, liberalism has always operated most naturally as a tendency of opposition to the prevailing order, to the status quo, the ancien r gime, the Establishment in general or in its several parts. Liberalism, continues Burnham, has always stressed change, reform, the break with encrusted habit whether in the form of old ideas, old customs or old institutions. Thus liberalism has been and continues to be primarily negative in its impact on society. What is different today though is that liberalism now controls all the powerful institutions of culture, from the media to education and everything in between, while at the same time it faces literally no opposition. The left controls the culture and given that political issues are often decided at the cultural level before they even reach the political realm, the opposition is almost always rendered defenseless. Or in the case of college campuses, the opposition isn t even permitted to make its case.It is outright totalitarianism that is taking place today within American society from the silencing of conservatives on college campuses to forcing Christian business owners to pay excessive fines and face prison sentences for holding true to their beliefs in traditional marriage. The nation has fractured into two separate Americas that continue to drift further and further apart with half the nation seemingly convinced that their rights stem from the government while the other from God. The former seeks not only to control the latter but to see to it that the latter is utterly destroyed. To accomplish this, liberalism functions as all totalitarian movements have functioned in the past, by subjecting individuals to unbearable stress, conflict, and crisis until each is broken. Whether the means to do so are accomplished financially, spiritually, culturally, or psychologically matters little as it always justifies the end. The end of course being the destruction of the will of each and every American so that liberalism can remake the individual from the ashes in which it has destroyed them.Liberalism wants you to snap, it wants to challenge your sanity and destroy your belief system so that it can remold you in its image of dependency. First and foremost though, it must extinguish those institutions in which we hold dear. It is why, since his first day in office, Barack Obama has relentlessly attacked the cultural, moral, and religious institutions that those of us on the right hold dear. Yet, even Obama himself is not solely the one to blame for he represents the logical extreme of liberalism; He is a symptom of the progressive creation and his rise to the pinnacle of power in this nation represented a turning point for the worse as the government has been infused with an ideology of totalitarianism. Take a look at any government agency functioning today and you d be hard pressed to find just one that isn t completely politicized into attacking the ideological opponents of progressivism. In turn, you can do the same exact thing with our culture itself and you ll find the same results. Wherever the progressives are in power, from the government to the culture to the academia and the media, the hatred of Western values dominates.Popular discourse today sees the West in general as being guilty of genocidal crimes against civilization for Western values seen through the lens of liberalism represents the greatest repository of racism, sexism, xenophobia, antisemitism, fascism, and narcissism. As the Father of the New Left Herbert Marcuse so eloquently put it, American society is oppressive, evil, and undeserving of loyalty. With this notion in mind, liberalism places a new emphasis on liberating all men and women from the evil repression and tyrannical values that Western civilization was built upon. To bring this about, progressives have designed numerous strategies to discredit and smear the values that had forged and sustained the West for the past 2,000 years. The left, no matter what they call them-self today, breeds the ideology the totalitarianism as every single proposed and forced through reforms serves to reduce human personality to its most primitive levels and to extinguish the highest, most complex, and God-like aspects of human individuality. Even equality itself, while serving as a powerful appeal to the masses with its great promises of each according to his need , turns out to signify not equality of rights, of opportunities, and of external conditions, but equality of complete uniformity in thought and condition.The total implementation of the principles espoused by liberalism deprives human life of individuality and simultaneously deprives life of its meaning and attraction. America isn t at this point yet, but it is coming as reflected in a generation that is at best negligent and at worst complicit in the march towards totalitarianism. How do I know for certain that this is where we are headed? Because what iv e been calling progressive totalitarianism is what was once called socialism. And following the basic tendency of socialism, liberalism is hostile toward human personality not only as a category, but ultimately to its very existence. In the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death. Socialism masquerading as progressivism is really totalitarianism that will inevitably lead to the total destruction of the American spirit and to a leveling of America into death.","label":1}
{"text":"Socialism doesn t work but I guess Venezuela didn t get the memo. No toilet paper? No food? Yes, it s come to that in this socialist hellhole Venezuela s product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday . It s an extreme situation, says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. For over a year we haven t had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared. Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market smugglers who charge up to 6-times the regular price. But smaller, family-run hotels can t always afford to pay such steep prices, which means that sometimes they have to make do without. Camacho says she refuses to buy toilet paper from the black market on principle. In the black market you have to pay 110 bolivares [$0.50] for a roll of toilet paper that usually costs 17 bolivares [$ 0.08] in the supermarket, Camacho told Fusion. We don t want to participate in the corruption of the black market, and I don t have four hours a day to line up for toilet paper at a supermarket . Recently, Venezuelan officials have been stopping people from transporting essential goods across the country in an effort to stem the flow of contraband. So now Camacho s guests could potentially have their toilet paper confiscated before they even make it to the hotel. Shortages, queues, black markets, and official theft. And blaming the CIA. Yes, Venezuela has truly achieved socialism.But what I never understood is this: Why toilet paper? How hard is it to make toilet paper? I can understand a socialist economy having trouble producing decent cars or computers. But toilet paper? And soap? And matches?Sure, it s been said that if you tried communism in the Sahara, you d get a shortage of sand. Still, a shortage of paper seems like a real achievement.","label":1}
{"text":"The domestic terrorists who staged an armed takeover of a federal facility have been given a not guilty verdict by a jury in Portland, Oregon. Despite their actions not being in dispute the group led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy have just become the latest example of a justice system bending over backwards for some, while punishing others.Ammon and Ryan Bundy and five of their followers, charged in the armed takeover of a federally owned Oregon wildlife sanctuary in January, were acquitted Thursday of federal conspiracy and weapons charges.The verdict brings to a close a case that gripped the nation earlier this year with its public debate about government powers, public lands and constitutional rights.The brothers and their followers took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and held it for six weeks. Their extreme demands were that the federal government surrender control of the 188,000-acre property.The brothers also issued a call to arms to fringe militia groups across the country, asking them to stand with them on the property in the apparent hope that they could trigger another dangerous standoff with the government like Ruby Ridge or Waco, which both ended in death.The Bundy brothers came to national prominence after their father Cliven Bundy refused to pay the Bureau of Land Management after his livestock had grazed on federal property for years. Bundy, an extreme right-winger, believes that the government does not have proper jurisdiction over federal lands. But in fact, repeated court decisions show his position to be in an extreme minority.Initially, mainstream Republican and conservative figures rallied to Bundy s side, including Senator Rand Paul and Fox News host Sean Hannity. But that support faded away when video surfaced of Bundy musing that blacks may have been better off as slave instead of having government assistance.","label":1}
{"text":"Take a look at the crime statistics for just one state, Texas. A 2017 report by the Texas Department of Public Safety reveals that over the period from June 1, 2011 to February 28, 2017, the 215, 000 criminal aliens who were booked into Texas jails were collectively charged with 566, 000 offenses, including 1, 167 homicides and 6, 098 sexual assaults, with a total of 257, 000 convictions. [By the way, Texas has less than half the criminal alien jail and prison population of California, which has over 100, 000 criminal aliens occupying facilities supported by California taxpayers. (For 2009 incarceration numbers for each state, see Appendix III of the 2011 GAO report, here.) It's no secret that progressive politicians in hundreds of cities and counties are opposing the Trump administration initiatives to end \"sanctuary\" policies. What those politicians never talk about is the fact that those policies continue to allow tens of thousands of criminal aliens to go free instead of facing deportation proceedings as prescribed by federal law. According to a summary report on sanctuary policies from Federation for American Immigration Reform and numerous media reports, it's not just San Francisco, New York and Chicago that are obstructing federal deportation of violent criminals. About 300 local city and county jurisdictions have adopted official policies to refuse cooperation with immigration enforcement in open violation of federal law. And California is not the only place with a statewide sanctuary policy. For a map of principal sanctuary jurisdictions, go here. You might think that Texas is a state with uniform cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, but you would be wrong. The capital city of Austin recently announced it will defy President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security and the Governor of Texas by continuing its sanctuary policies. Yes, there's a new sheriff in town, and citizens will soon have new protections if the new federal policies are followed. President Trump's January 25 executive order is only the beginning of the fight, and we can expect the ACLU and other open borders advocates will challenge new enforcement policies in federal courts. Here is the political reality. Sanctuary policies across the country are an important pillar of the \"Obama Legacy,\" so progressives and the leaders of the Democratic Party are not going to abandon that legacy. This commitment by progressives makes immigration enforcement and the end of local sanctuary policies far more of a political issue than in the past. Until Obama's election in 2008, there were only a handful of sanctuary cities across the nation, but the number skyrocketed after 2008 and now numbers over 300 according to a recent report from the Center for Immigration Studies. A 2016 report by the Inspector General at the U. S. Department of Justice found 155 jurisdictions that limit or restrict cooperation with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. But as we said, there is a new sheriff in town \u2014 and his deputies have been busy. Trump's January 25 Executive Order was followed on February 20 by a Department of Homeland Security Memorandum titled, \"Enforcement of the Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interest. \" It is well worth reading in full. This directive has many features that have already been welcomed as a breath of fresh air in the ranks of the officers of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One section of the DHS Memorandum that has been largely overlooked by the media could well serve as a giant spotlight on the devastation in local communities caused by sanctuary policies. A 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report revealed that the typical criminal alien inmate in federal prisons had been arrested 12 times for various offenses. On page 17 that GAO report is a summary of the arrest data for the criminal aliens in state and federal jails: They were arrested for a total of about 2. 9 million offenses, averaging about 12[each] \u2026 slightly lower than the 13 offenses per criminal alien we reported in 2005. The Texas DPS report cited above said criminal aliens arrested over that period had been arrested for an average of 2. 5 crimes. Taking the average number of crimes committed by ARRESTED criminal aliens as five, and extrapolating from the data on the total number of criminal alien inmates in state and local jails in 2016, the approximately 300, 000 criminal aliens in state and local jails are responsible for over 1, 500, 00 crimes. In Colorado, the 2, 039 criminal aliens in the state prison system in 2016 were 14. 7 percent of a prison population of 13, 873. The 2016 annual report on the criminal aliens in the Colorado state prison system is here. The 14. 7 percent can be easily calculated from the 2, 039 inmates in a total prison population of 13, 873 found in this document. This 14. 7 percent is over four times the illegal alien population share of total state population, estimated at 200, 000 in 2013 by the Pew Hispanic Center. It is true that even under Obama's lax policies on enforcement and deportations, local ICE offices routinely intercepted criminal alien felons being released from state prisons and deported the most violent among them. But it was a far different story for the thousands of criminals released from LOCAL jails in dozens of sanctuary jurisdictions, where federal ICE detainers were not being honored and violent criminals were routinely released to commit other crimes. Even the Denver Post could not ignore two recent cases where an ICE detainer request was ignored and illegal aliens were released by the Denver jail and then arrested for homicide only weeks later. One case was a accident that left a young woman dead, and the second was a brutal murder at a light rail stop. Unfortunately, our nation's intrepid journalists are not routinely reporting on the thousands of crimes committed by criminal aliens who have been in police custody but then released because of sanctuary policies. It is conceivable that at least a half million serious crimes annually could be prevented if all illegal aliens convicted of felonies were deported \u2014 and then prevented from returning by effective border controls.","label":0}
{"text":"The Trump administration will continue to pay subsidies for low-income Americans receiving healthcare coverage under Obamacare, but no decisions have been made about future funding, a White House official said on Wednesday. \"While we agreed to go ahead and make the ... payments for now, we haven't made a final decision about future commitments,\" the official said.","label":0}
{"text":"The idea of a Donald Trump presidency has been terrifying from the second he rode down that escalator and announced that he was running for president. However, his behavior in recent weeks has been so completely unhinged that people on both sides of the political aisle have been questioning his mental stability. Even the sitting president did something completely unprecedented and came out and said that Trump is quote, unfit to serve as president. Now, a Democratic congresswoman from California, Karen Bass, has done what no one has had the courage to do, and started a Change.org petition calling for Donald Trump to undergo a mental health evaluation. Bass, who had a career in healthcare prior to running for office, says of her decision to move forward with what is surely to be a controversial move regarding the other party s standard-bearer in her petition: Donald Trump is dangerous for our country. His impulsiveness and lack of control over his own emotions are of concern. It is our patriotic duty to raise the question of his mental stability to be the commander in chief and leader of the free world.Mr. Trump appears to exhibit all the symptoms of the mental disorder Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Mental health professionals need to come forward and urge the Republican party to insist that their nominee has an evaluation to determine his mental fitness for the job. Also, in case people had any doubt about what Narcissistic Personality Disorder is and how Trump fits the profile, Rep. Bass laid all of that out as well. From The Hill:In her petition, Bass laid out the nine symptoms of NPD, which are a grandiose sense of self-importance, a preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, a belief that he or she is special and can only be understood by others with a similar status, a requirement of excessive admiration, a sense of entitlement, interpersonal exploitation, lack of empathy, envy of others and arrogant or haughty behavior.Well, that definitely describes Trump s public behavior to the letter, and therefore Rep. Bass s request is completely justified. Hopefully, the GOP leadership heeds this warning and even if it is done privately has Trump evaluated, if for no other reason than the fact that they actually care about the American people they represent.You can sign this very important petition here at Change.org.","label":1}
{"text":"CHARLESTON, S. C. \u2014 Joseph C. Meek Jr. a friend of Dylann S. Roof's who spent time with him in the weeks before nine people were killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church here, was sentenced Tuesday to 27 months in prison for hampering and misleading the federal authorities in the aftermath of Mr. Roof's racist massacre. The punishment, handed down by Judge Richard M. Gergel of Federal District Court, was at the low end of the sentencing guidelines, which called for Mr. Meek to spend from 27 to 33 months in prison. The months that he spent in a county jail after his arrest will count toward his federal sentence. Before the sentence was announced, a tearful Mr. Meek said he was not sure whether he would survive prison, and he apologized to family members of Mr. Roof's victims, some of whom had gathered for the hearing. \"I'm really sorry a lot of innocent lives were taken,\" said Mr. Meek, who had previously expressed remorse in handwritten letters in which he asked for forgiveness. But Judge Gergel, speaking at a hearing that lasted more than two hours, said Mr. Meek's crimes warranted prison. \"The danger he exposed to the community is extraordinary,\" he said. Mr. Meek's lawyer, Deborah B. Barbier, expressed concern that her client would be forced to spend his sentence in solitary confinement because of security risks. Judge Gergel said the federal Bureau of Prisons could be trusted to protect him. \"It's an odd, inverse logic that I should not incarcerate him because inmates think so lowly of him,\" the judge said. Mr. Meek, 22, pleaded guilty last April to two federal counts related to the truthfulness of his responses to the F. B. I. in interviews shortly after the shooting on June 17, 2015 \u2014 misprision of a felony and making a false statement to a law enforcement officer. Misprision refers to the failure to report a known crime. The government did not prosecute Mr. Meek for failing to disclose knowledge of Mr. Roof's plans to attack the church, although it asserted in court filings that his silence \"did deprive law enforcement of the opportunity to intervene. \" During a night of drinking and drug use about a week before the shootings, Mr. Roof told Mr. Meek that he wanted to kill black people at a historic African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston in order to start a race riot, according to F. B. I. summaries of interviews with him. Mr. Meek was concerned enough to hide Mr. Roof's handgun after he fell asleep but later returned it and did not report the threat to law enforcement. \"Certainly defendant's failure to make an earlier report is tragic and deeply regrettable, but his failure to report was not a violation of federal criminal law,\" Judge Gergel wrote last week in an order that denied prosecutors' request to give Mr. Meek a longer term than recommended in sentencing guidelines. Ms. Barbier said in a presentencing filing that it was \"hypocritical and disingenuous\" for prosecutors to suggest that Mr. Meek was somehow to blame for the killings. \"Joey's failure to appreciate the seriousness of Roof's statements is not unusual in today's shock value culture,\" she wrote. In court on Tuesday, a defense witness said Mr. Meek's connection to the Charleston massacre would make him a \" target\" in prison. \"He'll have to be kept separate from other inmates \u2014 not because of what he did, but because he has some relationship to a heinous crime,\" said the witness, James Aiken, a former warden for the South Carolina prison system. The case against Mr. Meek matters both as a lesson about reporting suspicions and for the insight he provides into Mr. Roof, who represented himself at times at trial and blocked the admission of any evidence about his background or psychology. As a result, the trial in December and January, which ended in a death sentence for Mr. Roof, provided little information about what may have incited him to act so violently on his racist beliefs. Mr. Meek has said in various law enforcement interviews and court appearances that he first met Mr. Roof, who grew up near Columbia, S. C. in middle school. They largely lost touch when Mr. Roof moved away but reconnected via Facebook on May 22, 2015, less than a month before the massacre. Mr. Roof began hanging out at the trailer where Mr. Meek lived with his girlfriend and other family members. One night in early June, after consuming vodka, marijuana and cocaine, Mr. Roof told Mr. Meek of his support for segregation and his desire to \"do something big and put South Carolina on the map,\" Mr. Meek told the F. B. I. He said that he had been planning the attack for six months and that he hoped to carry it out on a Wednesday because fewer people would be at church. He told Mr. Meek he would then kill himself. Mr. Meek dismissed the seriousness and did not notify the authorities. Mr. Meek learned about the shootings soon after Mr. Roof opened fire and discussed his fears with a friend, Dalton Tyler, telling him not to contact the police. Mr. Tyler held off that night. But the next morning, as a photograph of Mr. Roof from a church security camera began circulating, Mr. Tyler became the first person to call a police tip line and identify the gunman, according to a search warrant. Mr. Roof was arrested later that morning in North Carolina with the murder weapon in the back seat. In his initial F. B. I. interview, Mr. Meek denied having known of Mr. Roof's plans and said Mr. Roof had not spoken of a target for his attack, according to Assistant United States Attorney Julius N. Richardson. But in a second interview, Mr. Meek admitted that he had lied, according to an F. B. I. synopsis of the session. He also admitted that on the night of the shootings, after concluding that Mr. Roof was responsible for the attack, he told others not to contact law enforcement. In his conversations with investigators, Mr. Meek described Mr. Roof as a shy former altar boy who did not have many friends but was not a social misfit. His parents, who were divorced, lived in houses with swimming pools and gave him most anything he wanted, Mr. Meek said. He did not perceive Mr. Roof as depressed or as having an anger problem. When Mr. Meek was first charged and agreed to a plea deal, the expectation was that he would testify in Mr. Roof's trial about the killer's premeditation and planning. But the government's case on that score was strong without Mr. Meek, and neither side called him as a witness. Mr. Richardson declined to comment on Tuesday, as did the relatives of Mr. Roof's victims who attended the sentencing. Mr. Meek, who will remain free on bond until he reports to prison, has told the authorities that he thinks about the carnage every day and that he has trouble sleeping nearly two years after Mr. Roof's killing spree. \"I truly in my heart didn't take him seriously and I wish I would have,\" Mr. Meek, a dropout who worked in construction, said in a written statement. \"I didn't believe he could do something so awful and cruel. \"","label":0}
{"text":"I dont know guys , i must say that attack looks mighty fake , i didnt see anyone firing back , it looked very staged . I think the idea of fake terror is to give reason for the Gov around the world to have an exuse to change laws and terrorise the polulation so they need\"\" the armies to protect them . They mentioned that in the white paper of a world without war , because without armies the people might overthrow the crooks in power . No one appeared to be really stressed in that video . Lets face it not one country has ever exposed all the false flags of other nations . Rothschild has a central bank in everycountry except 2 or three =he controls all of them . They do all war game together and have immunity for all their spooks which only leaves the public as an enemy . There are no good guys in the elites and if you think they would let anyonecontrol them in any way your dreaming . You wont see them on the front line they are far too busy counting the profits and partying on . The human rights clatter is only directed against the west , so are the chemtrails , and green c02 fraud , its not hard to work out . And only the west has made it law to force the deadly vaccines on people .","label":1}
{"text":"Amateur president Donald Trump is donating his second-quarter salary to the Department of Education, the White House announced Wednesday. During her daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who was besieged with questions about Trump s Twitter announcement saying that he s banning transgender Americans from serving in the military, told everyone about the $100,000 donation. Huckabee Sanders then handed the check signed by the former reality show star to Education Secretary Betsy Devos, a billionaire.Now, while they may seem generous on the surface, Trump has proposed slashing the Education Department by $9.2 billion. That s a 14 percent reduction so $100,000 is a mere drop in the bucket.And while he s profiting from his businesses, typically every weekend when the 71-year-old needs a break, he threw his relatively meager salary at the very department he s stripping funding from.DeVos announced that the money would go toward hosting a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics camp for children at the department. We want to encourage as many students as possible to pursue STEM fields, DeVos said.Trump's donation to Dept of Education: $100,000.Spending cut to education in Trump's proposed 2018 budget: $9,200,000,000. Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) July 26, 2017Trump donated his first quarter salary of about $78,000 to the National Park Service. Just like Huckabee Sanders did today, Sean Spicer made a big show of handing over the Trump s salary to benefit the National Park Service, but his budget slashes the Department of the Interior by 12 percent.Trump s first paycheck of $78,333 went to a department he planned to slash by $1.6 billion in funding. We see a pattern here!Shortly before Trump s inauguration, Mar-a-Lago doubled its annual membership fee to $200,000. He s literally profiting from his presidency by using his Florida resort for official government business. Each weekend Trump spends at one of his businesses, the visit generates revenue for the alleged president. And we, the taxpayers, are footing the bill.But hey, he gave departments which he s slashed funding for his paycheck, so he s a really good guy, right? Here, have a penny while I take a billion dollars from you. It s all good.It does make a good photo-op, though.","label":1}
{"text":"Ever the self-absorbed, narcissistic candidate, Donald Trump has nevertheless been reduced to doing what every other candidate in any race does sending out fundraising emails asking for donations. His first email, though, doesn t feel like a sincere attempt at raising money. Instead, it s full of the same language he uses to talk about how great he is, with a little twist thrown in to remind everyone of how rich he is, too.Our three-ring political circus began his very first fundraising email with this: I m going to help make it the most successful introductory fundraising email in modern political history by personally matching every dollar that comes in WITHIN THE NEXT 48 HOURS At most, that will raise $4 million, and only if everything goes exactly as planned, including the number of people he believes will donate the needed dollars. Considering that Ben Carson s failure of a campaign has more cash on hand than he does, this fundraising effort already isn t off to the best of starts. It doesn t seem to matter to him, though, as long as he comes off sounding like the winner we all know he s not: Even without this match, this initial effort would have been the most successful first fundraising email in history. I am certain of this. Oh, please. What a prognosticator he is! He then gets into his typical insulting rant, attacking Hillary Clinton and alluding to this delusion he s got that, once he s president, America will win so much that we ll all be sick of it: The bottom line Crooked Hillary has been a DISASTER for our country, and we must win against her this fall.Let s make history again, and keep winning, by making this the most successful first fundraising email ever. And if it s not, he ll get up on a stage somewhere, stand behind a podium, and claim he raised ten times the amount of money he actually raised just so he can look successful. For May, his campaign only raised $3 million, compared to the $26 million that Hillary raised. Hillary also has $40 million more in cash than Trump does. Yet he told NBC News, I understand money better than anybody. Sure he does. So he ll raise $4 million if he s very lucky and claim he raised $40 million. Or at least, that he outraised Hillary even if it s not true. As Slate writer Elliot Hannon said, It will be interesting to see if the email moves the needle. At all.Featured image by Branden Camp\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"There's no question Mr. Trump's Campaign has energized many new voters, but, the problem is . . . the BRAIN-DEAD-RNC (probably) are still too arrogant and ignorant to capitalize on the \"greatest opportunity\" since President Reagan. .","label":1}
{"text":"The new U.S. administration of President Donald Trump said on Friday its trade strategy to protect American jobs would start with withdrawal from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. A White House statement issued soon after Trump's inauguration said the United States would also \"crack down on those nations that violate trade agreements and harm American workers in the process.\" The statement said Trump was committed to renegotiating another trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was signed in 1994 by the United States, Canada and Mexico. \"For too long, Americans have been forced to accept trade deals that put the interests of insiders and the Washington elite over the hard-working men and women of this country,\" it said. \"As a result, blue-collar towns and cities have watched their factories close and good-paying jobs move overseas, while Americans face a mounting trade deficit and a devastated manufacturing base.\" The statement said \"tough and fair agreements\" on trade could be used to grow the U.S. economy and return millions of jobs to America. \"This strategy starts by withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and making certain that any new trade deals are in the interests of American workers.\" If NAFTA partners refused to give American workers a fair deal in a renegotiated agreement, \"the President will give notice of the United States' intent to withdraw from NAFTA,\" the statement added. The TPP, which the United States signed but has not ratified, had been the main economic pillar of the Obama administration's \"pivot\" to the Asia-Pacific region in the face of a fast-rising China. Proponents of the pact have expressed concerns that abandoning the project, which took years to negotiate, could further strengthen China's economic hand in the region at the expense of the United States. Australia's position that a change of heart remains possible in the U.S. and that the trade deal can proceed, is unchanged despite the White House statement, Damon Hunt spokesman for the Australian prime minister, told Reuters on Saturday. Trump has criticized China's trade practices and threatened to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese imports. The Chinese government said on Thursday that China and the United States could resolve any trade disputes through talks, while a Chinese newspaper warned that U.S. business could be targets for retaliation in any trade war ushered in by Trump. Trump has sparked worries in Japan and the rest of the Asia-Pacific with his opposition to the TPP and his campaign demands for allies to pay more for their security. (This version of the story was refiled to correct day of China government comment in 13th paragraph)","label":0}
{"text":"Ivanka Trump said she was surprised by the level of viciousness in Washington, D. C. after her family moved to the city to join her father President Donald Trump in the White House. [\"It is hard and there is a level of viciousness that I was not expecting,\" she admitted in an interview with Fox and Friends. \"I was not expecting the intensity of this experience. \" Trump made an appearance on the network to discuss her work on job training and skills based education to help people looking for work. \"I'm trying to keep my head down, not listen to the noise and just work really hard to make a positive impact in the lives of many people,\" Trump said, reminding viewers that life was more difficult for people who were laid off or for a mother that lost their child to opioid abuse. \"My father's administration intends to be transformative and we want to do big, bold things. We're looking to change the status quo,\" she said. President Trump will travel with his daughter Ivanka to a technical school in Wisconsin this week to highlight the importance of education and apprenticeships. Ivanka Trump said she was also surprised by the amount of photographers outside her home in Washington, D. C. \"That is a weird experience,\" she laughed. \"I'm looking for alternative routes out of my home but you know, there is a scrutiny and there is an interest that exceeds anything that I've ever experienced before. \"","label":0}
{"text":"People always wonder why black people are so reluctant to call the police for help, but here is yet another example in a long line that demonstrates just why we are so wary of law enforcement, even when we are the victims.19-year-old Chicago resident Quintonio LeGrier called 911 three times in an emergency, only to have dispatchers hang up on him. When police arrived, as happens in so many of these cases, he was fatally shot by the very people charged with serving and protecting him. From The Root:According to ABC News, audio of the 19-year-old s 911 calls made Dec. 26 were released late Monday by Chicago s Independent Police Review Authority, which is investigating both LeGrier s death and the death of his neighbor Bettie Jones. Jones, 55, was also shot and killed by police after she opened their apartment building door to let police in.Earlier that day, LeGrier called 911 asking that a police officer be sent to his address. The first call was made at 4:18 a.m., and the last call was made three minutes later. There s an emergency, can you send an officer? LeGrier can be heard saying on one of the calls.During one call, LeGrier didn t respond to the 911 operator s questions and the dispatcher hung up on the teen, ABC reports.However, instead of providing assistance, the cops came, after Quintonio s father, Antonio LeGrier, told a 911 operator, My son has freaked out. I need an officer. When the supposed help arrived, the child was shot dead. Police, of course, are covering their asses. The statement they released regarding the incident reads: Upon arrival, officers were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer s weapon, fatally wounding two individuals. Quintonio LeGrier was not the only person the cops murdered that night. A woman named Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old mother with five children, was also executed.This is why black people do not trust the police. I don t care what kind of trouble I am in, they are the last people I d call for help because said help just might cost me my life.Watch a video news report on the incident below:","label":1}
{"text":"Germany wants to reach out to the future U.S. administration under President-elect Donald Trump to safeguard essential trans-Atlantic relations, Chancellor Angela Merkel's foreign policy advisor Christoph Heusgen said on Wednesday. Speaking to lawmakers in Merkel's conservative party, Heusgen also said Germany would have to shoulder more international responsibilities in future. He said Germany would steadily increase military spending towards the NATO goal of 2 percent of gross domestic product. Earlier, Merkel said there would be contacts at all levels with the United States in the run up to meetings of the Group of 20 this year of which Germany is the chair.","label":0}
{"text":"After General Powell s email server was hacked it seems that Hillary and Trump were not the only ones he attacked with insults and nasty rhetoric.Powell went after retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a top Trump military adviser. Powell called Flynn a jerk who is unchained and a right-wing nutty. Powell however had to admit once called on the insults that he has actually never even met Flynn nor did he ever serve with him.He responded by stating, Talking to people in the know, his real problem was leadership and management issues at DIA. Senior staff was in incipient revolt. He has been over the top in his comments, conduct unbecoming. But he is unchained. He continues by saying, Pattern of behavior which is why he was fired. Real question is how he got that far in the Army. Flynn did respond during an interview on the Kelly File. I ve actually been called worse things by my little sister. He went on to say, Colin Powell, he s an amazing guy, amazing service, but he s actually, you know, as a footnote in history, he s going to be always struggling for his credibility because of the statement that he made to the United Nations that brought us into the war in Iraq. After the disparaging remarks towards Hillary, Trump, Flynn and a even a few other service members were highlighted as having been said by Powell, Flynn did caution that prominent individuals need to be more careful about what they send electronically.H\/T [ Fox ]","label":1}
{"text":"Here's Pence getting booed as he gets to his seats at Hamilton pic.twitter.com\/IRQG68x1sB David K (@dkipke12) November 19, 2016Yes #MikePence was at @HamiltonMusical here's what we had to say pic.twitter.com\/YIjt7JZ3gF G R E G O R Y (@ghaney22) November 19, 2016#BoycottHamilton. @MikePenceVP I amTotally disgusted that ppl in myOwnCntry wouldBhave inThis most disrespectful way 2 r new Vice President Carolina Covfefe (@TweetiePieKC54) November 19, 2016#BoycottHamiltonTrump Flash Mob at Hamilton Theater Today! 226 W 46th St, NYC pic.twitter.com\/ljEX964rZJ Jack Posobiec (@JackPosobiec) November 19, 2016how you gonna #BoycottHamilton when you can't afford tickets in the first place? Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) November 19, 2016the KKK endorsed our future President. is that specific enough for you? @LilPrincessSoSo Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) November 9, 2016Here are a couple examples of Ramsey s racist videos used to white shame young viewers:","label":1}
{"text":"Top5darkests 0  Throughout our history and our media, Cemeteries and graveyards have been the classic venue to bring on the scariest environment settings. Nearly everyone can slightly agree some cemeteries can possibly seem to be a little creepy, but when looking into our history, what about the scariest cemeteries in the world? would you be able to handle walking into them? In this video, we cover the most haunted and scariest cemeteries in the world. Enjoy. Tags","label":1}
{"text":"The new U.S. immigration curbs have cast uncertainty over the futures of thousands of Iranian students in the United States, with many losing hope of being able to finish their studies or find a job in the country. President Donald Trump's executive order bans travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries including Iran for three months, and there is little certainty of what will happen after that. Many of the students have spent their families' life savings to pay for an American higher education, which they hope will be a ticket to a well-paid job in the West or Iran. Now they fear if they leave the country, they will not be allowed back in. They also do not know what status they will have after the three months are up, and whether they will be allowed to study, live or work in the United States. Amin Amouhadi, 32, studies at the University of Georgia. His girlfriend, who is also Iranian, is about to finish her PhD in Canada. \"We were planning to get married in a month and move in together but the current ban and its possible consequences have put the future of all our plans in jeopardy,\" he told Reuters. \"I might quit my PhD program, (and) try to find a university in Canada to apply for. I can't think of any other plan.\" The United States is the most popular destination for Iranians studying abroad, despite decades of hostility between the two countries. The trend goes right to the top; Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's cabinet boasts more U.S. doctorates than did the cabinet of Trump's predecessor Barack Obama. About 8,700 Iranian students were at U.S. universities in 2014, a fifth of the estimated 50,000 Iranians studying abroad, according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. More than 3,000 Iranian students have received PhDs from American universities in the past three years, over 7,000 U.S. academics including 40 Nobel Laureates said in a petition against the order signed by Trump on Friday. They said the ban could lead to the departure of many talented individuals. Mohammadreza Jalaeipour, a post-doctorate student at Harvard University, has canceled a study visit to Oxford University in Britain because he was afraid he would not be able to return. The 34-year-old said he was not hopeful of extending his studies in another American university or receiving a visa for a job in the United States. \"This discriminatory and inhumane order is targeted to harm Iranian society. It shows that the U.S. government is dishonest when it says they have no problem with the Iranian people and they are only against the Iranian government,\" he said. Medical students could be among the hardest hit. Roozbeh Esfandiari is an Iranian who studied medicine in the United States before gaining a job as a researcher at Harris County psychiatric center in Houston. He said U.S. medicine school qualifications could not be easily transferred to other countries, so it would be a major blow for Iranian graduates if they were unable to work in the United States after several years of study. \"This news (Trump's order) is a headache for Iranian doctors applying for residency,\" he said. The Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates said on its website that it was aware of the executive order and was evaluating the potential impact on international medical students and graduates. Even before Trump's order, the road to American higher education has always been a tough one for Iranians. Since there is no U.S. embassy in Iran, students must travel to embassies or consulates in other countries to apply, which can cost them thousands of dollars. Student visas can take many months to secure. Because of security concerns, Iranians can face background stiff checks. Zahra Razavi, a computer science student at the University of Rochester, said her husband had applied for a U.S. visa several times under the Obama administration, with no success. The Trump order has crushed their lingering hopes of living together in the United States, she added. \"This disaster has caused depression and deep anxiety in me. It's impossible to continue this way. I have no choice but to say goodbye to my dreams and quit my studies.\" Shirin Sajadi, an Iranian psychotherapist in Boston, wants to help shell-shocked students from her homeland by offering them free psychotherapy sessions. \"There's a sense of facing crisis and the need to make sense of the chaos surrounding us,\" she told Reuters. \"Many immigrants have come to this country when they had nothing but hope for a better life. They've worked hard, played by the rules and hoped to succeed. But now that hope is gone.\"","label":0}
{"text":"News Bulletin Andy Murray of Great Britain returns the ball during a tennis match against Martin Klizan of Slovakia at the ATP Tennis tournament in Vienna, Austria, October 26, 2016. \u00a9 AFP  Britain's Andy Murray has booked his spot in the second round of the Erste Bank Open by defeating Slovakia's Martin Klizan 2-1 in Vienna. Andy Murray. \u00a9 AFP  Murray was tested in the Wednesday match as he managed to overcome his opponent after 2 hours and 22 minutes.  The Scot won the opening set 6-3, but the Slovakian kept up with him all the way in the second and came out on top to take it 7-6 and tie the match at 1 a-piece. Martin Klizan. \u00a9 AFP  The number 1 seed, however, produced some master class performance in the 3rd and didn't let Klizan to even win a game as he advanced into the last 16 with a bagel. He'll next face Frenchman Gilles Simon. Loading ...","label":1}
{"text":"The leaders of Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF party will meet on Sunday to approve the dismissal of President Robert Mugabe, the only leader the southern African nation has known since independence 37 years ago, two party sources have said. An extraordinary meeting of the party s central committee is expected to convene around 10:30 a.m. (0830 GMT) to consider removing the 93-year-old, four days after a military seizure of power ostensibly aimed at criminals within his entourage. Separately, state television said Mugabe would meet military commanders on Sunday, quoting the Catholic priest who has been mediating in negotiations with the president. On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets of Harare, singing, dancing and hugging soldiers in an outpouring of elation at Mugabe s overthrow. ZANU-PF s central committee is also expected to reinstate Emmerson Mnangagwa as party vice-president, resurrecting the political career of the former security chief, nicknamed The Crocodile, whose sacking this month triggered the military s intervention. Mugabe s wife, Grace, will be fired as head of the ZANU-PF Women s League, the sources told Reuters, completing the demise of a 52-year-old former government typist who just a week ago stood in pole position to succeed her husband after Mnangagwa s dismissal. The pair s stunning downfall is likely to send shockwaves across Africa, where a number of entrenched strongmen, from Uganda s Yoweri Museveni to Democratic Republic of Congo s Joseph Kabila, are facing mounting pressure to step aside. In scenes reminiscent of the downfall of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989, men, women and children ran alongside the armored cars and troops who stepped in this week to oust the man who has ruled since independence from Britain in 1980. Under house arrest in his lavish Blue Roof compound, Mugabe has refused to stand down even as he has watched his support from party, security services and people evaporate in less than three days. His nephew, Patrick Zhuwao, told Reuters the elderly leader and his wife were ready to die for what is correct rather than step down in order to legitimize what he described as a coup. But on Harare s streets, few seemed to care about the legal niceties as they heralded a second liberation for the former British colony and spoke of their dreams for political and economic change after two decades of deepening repression and hardship. These are tears of joy, said Frank Mutsindikwa, 34, holding aloft the Zimbabwean flag. I ve been waiting all my life for this day. Free at last. We are free at last. The crowds in Harare have so far given a quasi-democratic veneer to the army s intervention, backing its assertion that it is merely effecting a constitutional transfer of power, which would help it avoid the diplomatic backlash and opprobrium that normally follow a coup. The United States, a long-time Mugabe critic, said it was looking forward to a new era in Zimbabwe, while President Ian Khama of neighboring Botswana said Mugabe had no diplomatic support in the region and should resign at once. For a graphic on Zimbabwe struggles, click","label":0}
{"text":"When Kim Jong Un inherited power in North Korea in late 2011, then-Chinese president Hu Jintao was outwardly supportive of the untested young leader, predicting that traditional friendly cooperation between the countries would strengthen. Two years later, Kim ordered the execution of his uncle Jang Song Thaek, the country s chief interlocutor with China and a relatively reform-minded official in the hermetic state. Since then, ties between the allies have deteriorated so sharply that some diplomats and experts fear Beijing may become, like Washington, a target of its neighbor s ire. While the United States and its allies - and many people in China - believe Beijing should do more to rein in Pyongyang, the acceleration of North Korea s nuclear and missile capabilities has coincided with a near-total breakdown of high-level diplomacy between the two. Before retiring this summer, China s long-time point man on North Korea, Wu Dawei, had not visited the country for over a year. His replacement, Kong Xuanyou, has yet to visit and is still carrying out duties from his previous Asian role, traveling to Pakistan in mid-August, diplomats say. The notion that mighty China wields diplomatic control over impoverished North Korea is mistaken, said Jin Canrong, an international relations professor at Beijing s Renmin University. There has never existed a subordinate relationship between the two sides. Never. Especially after the end of the Cold War, the North Koreans fell into a difficult situation and could not get enough help from China, so they determined to help themselves. A famine in the mid-1990s that claimed anywhere from 200,000 to three million North Koreans was a turning point for the economy, forcing private trade on the collectivized state. That allowed the North a degree of independence from outside aid and gave credence to the official Juche ideology of self-reliance. China fought alongside North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War, in which Chinese leader Mao Zedong lost his eldest son, and Beijing has long been Pyongyang s chief ally and primary trade partner. While their relationship has always been clouded by suspicion and mistrust, China grudgingly tolerated North Korea s provocations as preferable to the alternatives: chaotic collapse that spills across their border, and a Korean peninsula under the domain of a U.S.-backed Seoul government. That is also the reason China is reluctant to exert its considerable economic clout, worried that measures as drastic as the energy embargo proposed this week by Washington could lead to the North s collapse. Instead, China repeatedly calls for calm, restraint and a negotiated solution. The North Korean government does not provide foreign media with a contact point in Pyongyang for comment by email, fax or phone. The North Korean embassy in Beijing was not immediately available for comment. China s foreign ministry did not respond to a faxed request for comment. It has repeatedly spoken out against what it calls the China responsibility theory and insists the direct parties - North Korea, South Korea and the United States - hold the key to resolving tensions. Until his death in 2011, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il made numerous entreaties to ensure China would back his preferred son as successor. While then-President Hu reciprocated, the younger Kim, in his late 20s at the time, began to distance himself from his country s most powerful ally. There s a lot of domestic politics in North Korea where this young leader who isn t well-known, he s not proven yet, especially has to show that he s not in the pocket of Beijing, said John Delury of Seoul s Yonsei University. I think he made the decision first to keep Hu Jintao and then (current President) Xi Jinping really at bay. Within months of coming to power, Kim telegraphed North Korea s intentions by amending its constitution to proclaim itself a nuclear state. The execution of Jang in 2013 sealed Beijing s distrust of the young leader. Of course the Chinese were not happy, said a foreign diplomat in Beijing focused on North Korea. Executing your uncle, that s from the feudal ages. In an attempt to warm ties, Xi sent high-ranking Communist Party official Liu Yunshan to attend the North s October 2015 military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Workers Party of Korea. Liu hand-delivered a letter from Xi praising Kim s leadership and including congratulations not just from the Chinese Communist Party but Xi s personal cordial wishes in a powerful show of respect. Xi s overture has been repaid with increasingly brazen actions by Pyongyang, which many observers believe are timed for maximum embarrassment to Beijing. Sunday s nuclear test, for example, took place as China hosted a BRICS summit, while in May, the North launched a long-range missile just hours before the Belt and Road Forum, dedicated to Xi s signature foreign policy initiative. Mao Zedong s description of North Korea s relationship with China is typically mischaracterised as being as close as lips and teeth . His words are better translated as: If the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold, a reference to the strategic importance of the North as a geographical security buffer. Despite its resentment at the pressure North Korea s actions have put it under, Beijing refrains from taking too hard a line. It said little when Kim Jong Un s half-brother was assassinated in February at Kuala Lumpur s airport. The half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, had been seen as a potential rival for power in Pyongyang and had lived for years in Beijing, then Macau. An editorial in China s influential Global Times warned after Pyongyang s latest nuclear test that cutting off North Korea s oil would redirect the conflict to one between North Korea and China. Zhao Tong, a North Korea expert at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center in Beijing, said North Korea was deeply unhappy with China s backing of earlier UN sanctions. If China supports more radical economic sanctions that directly threaten the stability of the regime, then it is possible that North Korea becomes as hostile to China as to the United States. (This story has been refiled to remove reference to uncle in paragraph 18)","label":0}
{"text":"One person was shot at an anti-Trump demonstration in Portland on Saturday as protesters crossed the Morrison Bridge, police said. \"Everyone needs to leave the area immediately,\" police said on Twitter, and they asked witnesses to come forward.","label":0}
{"text":"John Cena popped the question to Nikki Bella on one knee. The Undertaker put one foot in the grave. And if you don't know the significance of these two events, you are not one of the millions of fans who watched Sunday night as the 33rd annual WrestleMania event unfolded. About 75, 000 attended the live show in Orlando's Camping World Stadium. The \"Showcase of the Immortals\" \u2014 as World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. likes to market the card \u2014 fulfilled its usual role of celebrating and capstoning a year of storytelling for the insular and bombastic world of wrestling entertainment. And make no mistake, that world is a big one: The WWE is a $1. 65 billion dollar company that has 750 million social media followers across multiple platforms and reports at least 3 million weekly television viewers. The major news of the evening for those who keep track of wrestling story lines had little to do with the main events in the ring. All five championship belts changed hands. But a proposal and a retirement were the most significant developments. Mr. Cena, a longtime WWE performer (and burgeoning movie star) proposed to his girlfriend and fellow wrestler, Stephanie Nicole better known to fans as Nikki Bella. The proposal and presentation of a giant engagement ring came in the middle of the ring, but only after the couple successfully performed in a mixed bout with matching finishing moves. She said yes. The Twitter account she shares with her sister, Brie, spread the news. The biggest news was saved for the finale when another longtime WWE performer, the Undertaker, made a dramatic, prolonged exit from the stadium to close the broadcast. Modern professional wrestling traces its lineage back through cable wars, territory fights, Vaudeville and carnival \"strong man\" contests. Throughout, performers who break the fourth wall talk of retirees \"going out on their back\" to make sure that favorable fan impressions of heroism are passed on to the next generation. And so it was last night when the anointed next big star, Roman Reigns, pinned the fabled Undertaker clean in the middle of the ring. Retirement for the performer, known in civilian life as Mark William Calaway, was never explicitly stated by the announcers on the broadcast or posted to the throbbing oversized screens in the stadium. But in a modern nod to the old tradition, chants of \"Thank you, Taker\" filled the arena, and corresponding hashtags flooded social media after the Undertaker left his fighting gloves, hat, and duster jacket in the middle of the ring. That these were the two most noteworthy events of wrestling's most highly publicized night is curious. Both Mr. Cena and the Undertaker have been performers for the WWE at this point, showing up every couple of weeks or monthly. Other performers work weekly on televised programming and at regional \"house\" shows. Over the last decade, the WWE has developed a formula of using high profile performers like this for major events. For instance, the MMA competitor Brock Lesnar will drop in for a several monthslong engagements and just as quickly disappear from known story lines. This year three of the most established performers were notably absent: Dwayne \"The Rock\" Johnson, \"Stone Cold\" Steve Austin and Hulk Hogan. These absences opened up prominent places in the spotlights for emerging performers at WrestleMania like A. J Styles and Kevin Owens. It was not clear if this was part of a planned changing of the guard or other palace intrigue engineered by Vince McMahon, the founder and owner of the wrestling empire. Fans will have to search for the truth amid the innuendo found in trade publications, or the lore of \"kayfabe,\" the pro wrestling community's phrase for the staged story lines that may or may not speak to underlying rivalries. On Sunday night, the mass entertainment value was on full display. Mr. McMahon is known to enjoy connecting his wrestling product to mass culture by drawing celebrities to the event. Muhammed Ali, Liberace and Cyndi Lauper appeared at the first WrestleMania. So many other names have appeared since to fill a pretty robust Wikipedia page dedicated to chronicling special appearances \u2014 including one in 2007 by Donald J. Trump. This year's iteration was no exception. Rob Gronkowski, the star tight end of the New England Patriots, jumped in from the crowd to get involved in a Battle Royal match. The pop stars Pitbull and Flo Rida performed. Al Roker took a turn as ring announcer for a match. For the fans, this was their Super Bowl, their Oscars. And now it is done for another year until the next annual WrestleMania event in New Orleans, when the only seeming certainty is that for the first time in 25 years, no gong over the loudspeaker will announce the entrance of The Undertaker. Of course, this being professional wrestling, never say never.","label":0}
{"text":"The tried and true Donald Trump supporter doesn t care what the fuhrer does as long as he keeps saying catch phrase like we re gonna make America great again and we re gonna build a wall. As long as they can feel superior to Mexicans, Muslims and anyone with an education as they join in beating them up for wearing an offensive shirt that claims science is real to a Trump rally. No matter how much of a bump he gets afterwards and no matter how many times he declares himself victorious, the one thing Ted Cruz has on the Donald are his debating skills.Cruz isn t exactly a master. His shrill voice and the condescending look he gets on his face are enough for almost anyone to be willing to risk a night in jail for hauling off and punching him. At the end of the GOP debates, however, Cruz always got himself a nice little push in the polls. It s amazing that the smartest guy in the Republican room ended up being the least likeable guy in Washington. To call Ted Cruz smart in any other context is an insult to smart people.Cruz s big plan, then, is to challenge Donald Trump to another debate. He doesn t seem to be getting the memos. Trump is the only candidate with a mathematical chance of a secure nomination. He s polling high in every major contest left. His worst case scenario seems to be if the RNC screws him from his nomination with a contested convention, in which case the Republican party implodes anyway. The whole thing really has been glorious to watch.The one thing Cruz has going for him is The Donald s over-inflated ego. It may not allow Trump to simply back down from a senseless debate that can serve no purpose to Trump other than the loss of even more supporters. It s a noble move on Cruz s part; bold even to suggest another debate this late in the game. Unfortunately for him, his opponent has already kicked his political teeth down his throat and stands to gain nothing by accepting.That, of course, won t stop Ted Cruz from trying, so hopefully there are a few days of good Twitter name calling. That s far more interesting to cover than anything the GOP buffoons are still yammering about.","label":1}
{"text":"The White House put Iran \"on notice\" on Wednesday for test-firing a ballistic missile and said it was reviewing how to respond, taking an aggressive posture toward Tehran that could raise tensions in the region. While the exact implications of the U.S. threat were unclear, the new administration signaled that President Donald Trump intended to do more, possibly including imposing new sanctions, to curb what he sees as defiance of a nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 by then-President Barack Obama. The tough talk commits the administration to back up its rhetoric with action, which could cast doubt on the future of the Iran agreement and sow further uncertainty in an already chaotic Middle East, experts said. Trump has frequently criticized the Iran nuclear deal, calling the agreement weak and ineffective. Officials declined to say whether the military option was on the table, although Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood said: \"The U.S. military has not changed its posture in response to the Iranian test missile launch\" on Sunday. A fiery statement from Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, marked some of the most aggressive rhetoric by the administration that took office on Jan. 20, making clear that Obama's less confrontational approach toward Iran was over. Flynn said that instead of being thankful to the United States for the nuclear deal, \"Iran is now feeling emboldened.\" \"As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,\" he told reporters in his first appearance in the White House press briefing room. He said the launch and an attack on Monday against a Saudi naval vessel by Iran-allied Houthi militants off the coast of Yemen underscored \"Iran's destabilizing behavior across the Middle East.\" Iran confirmed it had tested a new missile but said it did not breach a nuclear accord reached with world powers or a U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the pact. Analysts said Iran could interpret Flynn's warning as bluster given that the Trump administration is still formulating a response. \"It's a vague way of drawing a line in the sand,\" said Mark Fitzpatrick, executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies-Americas. \"Taken literally, it could mean: 'You do this one more time and you'll pay for it.' But how would the U.S. respond?\" The warning could foreshadow more aggressive economic and diplomatic measures against Iran. Three senior U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a range of options, including economic sanctions, was being considered and that a broad review was being conducted of the U.S. posture toward Iran. One official said the intent of Flynn's message was to make clear the administration would not be \"shy or reticent\" toward Tehran. \"We are in the process of evaluating the strategic options and the framework for how we want to approach these issues,\" the official said. \"We do not want to be premature or rash or take any action that would foreclose options or unnecessarily contribute to a negative response.\" \"Our sincere hope is that the Iranians will heed this notice today and will change their behavior,\" he said. Iran has test-fired several ballistic missiles since the nuclear deal in 2015, but the latest test was the first since Trump became president. The issue came to the forefront on the same day that the U.S. Senate confirmed former Exxon Mobil Corp Chief Executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Trump told Tillerson at his swearing-in ceremony that \"although you inherit enormous challenges in the Middle East and around the world, I believe we can achieve peace and security in these very, very troubled times.\" Simon Henderson, a Gulf expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said there was a danger of a miscalculation by Washington or Tehran. \"The question now is will the Iranian logic be: 'My goodness, this guy is serious, we'd better behave ourselves?'\" he said. \"Or do they say: 'Why don't we tweak him a bit more to see what he really means, maybe test him.'\" The administration's tough statement came midway through a three-day exercise by 18 U.S., French, British and Australian warships and an undisclosed number of aircraft close to Iranian waters in the Gulf, according to a statement by U.S. Central Command. Trump is due to hold talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a strident critic of the Iran nuclear deal, at the White House on February 15. The U.S. president and Saudi Arabia's ruler, King Salman, spoke by phone on Sunday and were described by the White House as agreeing on the importance of enforcing the deal and \"addressing Iran's destabilizing regional activities.\" Sunni Muslim-dominated Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca and other Islamic holy sites, and Shi'ite Muslim-majority Iran are regional rivals.","label":0}
{"text":"At a town hall in Frost, Texas last week a voter expressed concerns about violence against women but Rep. Joe Barton was not interested in hearing them.The constituent asked Barton to work with Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat, to sponsor legislation that could combat violence against women a topic that has not much interested the Congressman in the past: Given your voting record opposing legislation protecting women from violence, will you make a commitment to us today, make a promise that you will reach out to Congresswoman Jackie Speier and work with her to see this bill successfully through Congress? Barton says he voted against the bill because he believes violence targeting women which happens literally everywhere is a state issue, not a federal issue. His audience was not pleased. The crowd responded with a chrous of boos. Violence against women, that s a national issue! one person yelled in response. That s an issue that impacts everyone everywhere, not only in this country, but everywhere! But Barton wasn t done. Pointing his finger at the man who had the audacity to suggest that he take a moment to care about women, he demanded: You, sir, shut up. You don t tell anybody to shut up! the man shouted back. You work for us! Close to 1,000 people attended the town hall. It s safe to say that most of them left knowing for whom they are not voting in the next election. Watch it below:","label":1}
{"text":"Less involvement by the United States in international affairs under President Donald Trump will have an impact on Germany and its European neighbors, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said on Tuesday, warning of a shifting world order. The withdrawal of the United States under Donald Trump from its reliable role as a guarantor of western-led multilateralism accelerates a change of the world order with immediate consequences for German and European interests, Gabriel said.","label":0}
{"text":"( ANTIWAR ) Complaining about Western \"hysteria\" surrounding repeated predictions of Russian military attacks on NATO member nations, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to resolve two solid years of predictions to that effect with a straightforward assurance that \" Russia is not going to attack anyone .\" Putin accused Western nations of having \"mythical, dreamt-up problems,\" and insisted the idea that Russia was going to attack the West was \" simply stupid and unrealistic .\" He added that he believes the idea is being played up to justify bigger military spending. The Russian president also sought to dismiss allegations that he is plotting to rig the US elections to his own benefit, noting that the US is a great power and not some banana republic with an easily manipulated political system. Russia has repeatedly denied involvement in such plots. NATO has played up the Russian threat to justify sending over 40,000 ground troops to the Russian border, with ever-growing numbers announced all the time. Such predictions started after the ouster of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine led to a civil war in that country's east, with NATO military leaders repeatedly predicting Russian tanks rolling across Ukraine into NATO countries.","label":1}
{"text":"By Matt Agorist Students at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan got a hefty dose of the police state this week as they were...","label":1}
{"text":"RT  The record shows Hillary \"We Came, We Saw, He Died\" Clinton is the 'Queen of War'.  She is fully supported by virtually the whole US establishment; a bipartisan, neocon\/neoliberalcon, regime change\/\"humanitarian\" imperialist axis.  On the opposite side, for all his personal pathology problems and incoherent twitter-mouth ramblings, Donald Trump seemed to be on the money when he said that if elected, Hillary would use Syria to unleash WWIII.  To check out if that holds, let's start with an essential backup.  The 'Queen of War', at the final US presidential debate in Las Vegas: \"A no-fly zone [in Syria] can save lives and hasten the end of the conflict.\"  The 'Queen of War', in one of her 2013 speeches to Goldman Sachs, published by WikiLeaks: a no-fly zone would \"kill a lot of Syrians.\"  The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: a no-fly zone in Syria \"would require us to go to war, against Syria and Russia.\" why_hillary_won_t_unleash_wwiii_-_rt_op_edge.png  Predictably, the Clinton (cash) machine has been relentless promoting Hillary's no-fly zone. Whenever cornered, the machine switches the narrative to Russian hacking of the DNC. Edward Snowden, who knows a thing or two about cyberwarfare, stresses there is no solid proof Russian intel hacked the Democratic\/Clinton machine. And if they actually did it, the NSA would know. The fact the NSA is mum reveals this is no more than information war.  Pass the missile launchers, please  Trump seems to have been more on the money when he insisted how Hillary will be outsmarted \u2013 as she already was in the past \u2013 when dealing with President Putin, who she has demonized as Hitler.  I have shown how Hillary will be prevented from launching WWIII because her no-fly zone is already implemented in Syria by Russia. And the Pentagon \u2013 reflecting Dunford's comments - knows it, no matter how emphatically soon-to-be-unemployed Pentagon head Ash Carter threatens \"consequences.\"  The Pentagon ranks Russia and China as the number one and two \"existential threats\" to US national security, in that order. And the US government reserves for itself the privilege of a nuclear \"first-strike\"\u2013 which Hillary supports (but not Trump); this is part of the 2002 Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.  The relentless hysteria now crystallized as Cold War 2.0 has led scores of analysts to game the actual \u2013 terrifying - possibility of a US-Russia hot war. As much as the Cold War MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine may now lie in the dust \u2013 exactly because Washington refuses to back down from \"first-strike\"\u2013 only armchair Dr. Strangeloves get their kicks with the possibility of fighting a nuclear power. Dunford does not seem to be one of them.  What Hillary Clinton will certainly do is to double down on proxy wars, Vietnam\/Afghanistan-style. So expect a President Clinton to authorize full weaponization of those Beltway-loved \"moderate\" Al-Qaeda-in-Syria rebels with plenty of shoulder-held missile launchers. This could easily get out of control \u2013 with lethal, yet not nuclear, consequences.  That's exactly the point made by Mikhail Rostovsky in Moscow daily Moskovsky Komsomolets; if Hillary ratchets up tensions, \"things could get out of hand.\"  Also expect not so proxy ratcheting up of tension in the South China Sea; after all it was Hillary who claimed 'mothership' of the pivot to Asia; and it was Hillary who steered intra-South East Asian maritime disputes into the boiling cauldron of wider US-China competition.  And if that was not hard boiled enough, US frustration will be at an all-time high after Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's own pivot to China.  Say hello to my new Sarmat  A case can be made that official Moscow is carefully getting ready to work with a Clinton \u2013 as in Obama III \u2013 presidency, with Hillary, a devil they know well when she was Secretary of State, to be dealt with as a pragmatist, unwilling and unable to plunge US-Russia relations into total incandescence.  A Clinton presidency for its part should know better than overestimate Russia's financial \"weakness.\"  The national debt of Russia is only 17.7 percent of GDP; for the US it is a whopping 104.17 percent of GDP, or $19.2 trillion. Russia in 2015 had a trade surplus of $150 billion, while the US had a trade deficit of $531.5 billion. The current account surplus of Russia was 5.1 percent of GDP, or 65.8 billion, while the US ran a current account deficit of 484.1 billion, or 2.7 percent of GDP.  Besides, Russia has all the natural resources it needs; unlike the US government, which believes it needs an empire of bases overseas and ten aircraft carrier task forces to secure the resources it lacks.  Moreover, as much as the Pentagon may continue to be infested by neocon cells, sound generals are also able to identify key Russian signals \u2013 such as the unveiling of the RS-28 Sarmat nuclear missile, which NATO calls Satan 2. The Sarmat delivers monster warheads of 40 megatons; boasts a top speed of seven kilometers per second; and is able to outfox any anti-missile shield system anywhere.","label":1}
{"text":"FOR decades, automakers have been able to count on a fundamental fact of American life: You pretty much need a car to get around. But lately, novel technologies, including services like Uber and advances in cars, are creating new alternatives for commuting, shuttling children and going to the store \u2014 particularly in urban settings. There are also demographic and economic trends in play. Many younger Americans do not consider owning a car a goal or necessity \u2014 or a necessary expense. So carmakers are looking ahead to a day when the automobile plays a smaller role, or even no role at all, in many people's daily routines. \"The historical model is you buy a car and it's in your garage most of the time,\" said Glen DeVos, vice president for engineering and services at Delphi Automotive, a big developer and supplier of automobile technology. \"It's the expensive thing you buy after your home, so if you can get around without owning a car, there are a lot of economic reasons people may not own a car, or own only one instead of two. \" One clear sign of the shift is the increasing energy that carmakers are devoting to a design category the auto industry refers to as the \"the first mile\" challenge. It refers to the short distances some people must travel from home or work to a local destination, often a mass transit station. Not so long ago, this challenge was strictly a matter for transportation authorities, and barely registered with automakers. \"People really didn't think of the first mile issue because the car was the primary way to get around,'' said Erica Klampfl, the global future mobility manager at Ford Motor Company. \"You just drove your car to your destination. '' In many ways, the industry's race to solve the challenge involves the development of vehicles, an effort involving various carmakers, technology companies and firms. General Motors and its partner, Lyft, an Uber rival, are about to begin testing a fleet of cars ferrying passengers short distances in Detroit and other cities. Uber already has similar trials underway in Pittsburgh and has just expanded its tests to San Francisco. Next year, Delphi Automotive expects to have Audis providing rides to mass transit stations in a section of Singapore. Ford, meanwhile, has vowed to begin producing a car, with no steering wheel and no pedals, by 2021. The vehicle would be intended for services in large cities. If these types of cars and services proliferate, Mr. DeVos at Delphi said, people will have more freedom to not own automobiles. Monica Manjarres, a college student, is embracing that freedom. She lives in Azusa, Calif. 24 miles east of Los Angeles. In the last year, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority has opened miles of new light rail extensions to its subway system, including a light rail link to Azusa. \"If I want to visit my sister in Pasadena, I can walk to the train and it's a to ride,\" Ms. Manjarres said. \"If you drive, the traffic is usually horrible. \" After she graduates this semester from Azusa Pacific University with a degree in exercise science, Ms. Manjarres says, she hopes to find a job she can reach by train. \"I can confidently say I don't really need a car,\" she said. Kelly Skow has all but come to the same conclusion. A video producer, Ms. Skow lives in Hollywood and commutes on the Los Angeles subway using the new Expo rail extension that goes to Santa Monica, where her office is. She usually covers the first and last mile of the trip on foot. \"I only drive maybe once a week, usually to go shopping on weekends,\" she said. During the week, her boyfriend uses her car to get to his job. \"I had barely ridden the subway before the Expo Line opened, but now I'm using it a lot more and it's great. Parking in L. A. is a nightmare and you don't have to deal with that. \" The twist in Ms. Skow's story: She works for TrueCar, a website that provides automotive pricing and information to help connect consumers with and dealers. Forecasters expect people in metropolitan areas to own fewer cars in the future. But they are not ready to predict a big drop in the total number of vehicles sold, which this year will total more than 17 million cars and light trucks in the United States and about 75 million globally. That is, in part, because so many people have more than a last mile to cover. Automakers are generally betting that sales of vehicles to fleet services will offset any decline in sales to individual consumers. Boston Consulting Group predicts that 44, 000 cars will be sold to fleets in North America in 2021, more than making up for an expected net decline in consumer sales of about 8, 000 vehicles. The bigger impact might be on how the automotive industry \u2014 not just carmakers, but also fleet service operators, parts makers and the like \u2014 makes its money in years to come. According to the consulting firm PwC, the global automotive industry generates about $400 billion a year in profits about 41 percent of that \u2014 or about $164 billion \u2014 comes from new vehicle sales. By 2030, PwC forecasts that even as overall automotive profits grow to about $600 billion, only about 29 percent of that will come from new vehicle sales. By then, PwC predicts that \"mobility services'' \u2014 including and other types of transportation services \u2014 will represent 20 percent of the automotive industry's profits. Ford is among the automakers angling to be in position if that shift occurs. \"We are on the cusp of a revolution,\" Mark Fields, Ford's chief executive, said at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November. Cars, he said, \"are no longer our entire game. \" The company sees mobility services as potentially more profitable than its traditional business of making and selling cars. Manufacturing vehicles requires billions of dollars in investments in plants and engineering \u2014 costs that are often difficult to recoup. Mobility services would require less upfront investment, Robert Shanks, Ford's chief financial officer, said in an interview. \"Margins could be more like 20 percent instead of the 8 percent we are trying to get to today,\" he said. Some of Ford's mobility efforts don't involve cars at all. Ford is sponsoring a program in the San Francisco area, with the goal of having 7, 000 blue, bikes in operation by 2018. In recent months, the company has also begun demonstrating a motorized conveyance device, created by its engineers, to help people cover the last mile \u2014 especially if they are carrying luggage or groceries that would make walking a challenge. Called the it looks like a giant white hockey puck. The passenger stands on it as it travels to her destination, or she can set a parcel on it and have the follow along. Ford has no plans to put it into production, but the company says it represents the unconventional ways it is thinking about the transportation future. Glimpses of a less future, and the emergence of new options, are evident in Southern California, where the new rail system has given many more people easy access to mass transit. Ms. Skow and other residents of Santa Monica, population 92, 000, can now hop on the Expo Line and ride all the way from the coast to downtown Los Angeles, 16 miles to the east. Although Ms. Skow walks to the train, the Santa Monica municipal government has tried to make it easier to reach any of the city's three Expo Line stops without using a car. Its bus network was completely reorganized to deliver passengers to the stations in time to catch trains. For service, after buses stop running, riders can get discounted cab rides. The last mile is more of a challenge in Azusa, a city of about 48, 000 that is less compact and walkable than Santa Monica and does not have as big a bus network. Ms. Manjarres, the college student, lives only a short walk from a station. But so many commuters still drive their cars to the train that the city doesn't have enough parking for them. Theirs is more than a gap to bridge. \"People coming to the train will park in residential neighborhoods or retail parking lots,\" said Troy Butzlaff, Azusa's city manager. That is why the city is building an solution: a parking garage.","label":0}
{"text":"There s been development with Trump s Muslim ban and it s not good.On Monday, the Supreme Court not only decided to hear the Trump Administration s challenge against the ruling that blocked his Muslim ban executive order but will allow enforcement of parts of the Muslim ban while the case moves forward.According to The Guardian, the court said the ban on visitors from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen could be enforced as long as those people lack a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. So refugees that don t already have ties in the U.S. (that will be a majority of the refugees) won t be able to come into the U.S. Because of the few, many are punished.Trump has championed this ban far and wide, instilling Islamphobia left and right. He believes that by restricting travel from six predominantly Muslim countries, it will protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks.Because, you know, we are perfectly safe and never have any sort of violence going on by our own citizens. Nope. Perfectly, 100% safe and serene and we need to keep it that way.CNBC reminds us that critics and some federal court rulings have argued that it targets immigrants based on religion, after Trump called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S. as a candidate.Yes, that is exactly what it s doing. It s painting all Muslims are evil and dangerous. It s awful and disgusting. For the record, more Americans are killed by their furniture than Islamic terrorists. To heat things up further, three justices including Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch said they would have let the executive order go into effect in full.With that in mind, who knows what the outcome of the Muslim ban hearing will be. We will find out soon, however, as the hearing will take place in the fall.","label":1}
{"text":"Lawmakers brawled in Uganda s parliament for a second day running on Wednesday over a fiercely disputed move to change the constitution to let long-ruling President Yoweri Museveni run for re-election after age 75. MPs exchanged blows and kicks, with some using microphone stands as crude weapons in the melee, and at least two female lawmakers were carried out of the chamber after collapsing, a Reuters journalist on the scene said. At least 25 MPs opposed to the proposed constitutional amendment to prolong Museveni s tenure were forcibly ejected on orders of the speaker for involvement in fighting on Tuesday. All other like-minded MPs then walked out. After calm returned, ruling party MP Raphael Magyezi introduced the contested motion authorizing parliament to draft and present a bill that would lift the constitution s age cap on presidential candidates. The motion passed, parliament communications director Chris Obore told Reuters, adding that Magyezi would have about a month to submit the bill to a first reading in the House. Under the existing constitution, eligibility to stand as a presidential candidate in the East African country has an age ceiling of 75. That makes Museveni, 73, in power since 1986 and increasingly accused of authoritarianism and a failure to curb corruption, unqualified to seek re-election at the next polls in 2021. Removing the age cap would erase that barrier. The proposal, echoing steps by other veteran African leaders to void legal limits on their rule, has stirred widespread resistance from rights activists, opposition parties, religious leaders and even some members of Museveni s party. Fisticuffs first broke out in the Kampala parliament on Tuesday, leading Uganda s communication regulator to ban live broadcasts of events inciting the public . In a notice on Wednesday, the Uganda Communications Commission said radio and television stations should stop live broadcasts of events that are inciting the public, discriminating, stirring up hatred, promoting a culture of violence ... and are likely to create public insecurity. No station aired Wednesday s proceedings, but some posted clips of the brawls on their Twitter feeds. Uganda s two major privately owned TV stations, including a local unit of Kenya s Nation Media Group, and some radio stations carried Tuesday s parliamentary session live. Critics said the authorities action to ban live broadcasts underscored a crackdown on anyone questioning the planned constitutional amendment. Since last week, when a motion to kick-start the amendment process was supposed to be read but never made it to the floor, both police and military personnel have been deployed around the parliament and many parts of the capital. Protests by students and opposition activists and supporters in Kampala against the amendment, sometimes broadcast live, have been put down with tear gas and arrests of scores of people. Media in Uganda routinely complain of harassment by security personnel. Journalists say they have been beaten, detained or their equipment damaged or confiscated during coverage of anti-government demonstrations. On Tuesday, anti-government protests also occurred in other parts of the country, including in the northern town of Lira. Three local journalists there were arrested as they covered the protests, according to Hudson Apunyo, an official in a journalists association in the area. Robert Ssempala, national coordinator for Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda, said banning live broadcasts was to shut out Ugandans and keep them in the dark on the age limit debate after the measure met broad resistance.","label":0}
{"text":"The Cuban and American delegations sat at parallel tables, eight wary diplomats on each side, facing each other across a distance of about six feet and a gulf filled with more than a half-century of grievances. In separate news conferences afterward, at the end of their first round of talks Thursday, both sides pronounced it \"productive,\" respectful and positive. But both acknowledged that \"profound differences\" remain. \"What you have to recognize,\" U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson said after the initial session, \"is that we have . . . to overcome more than 50 years of a relationship that was not based on confidence or trust.\" Josefina Vidal, Jacobson's counterpart at Cuba's Foreign Ministry, stressed the importance of approaching each other on the basis of \"equal sovereignty\" and \"avoiding any interference in [each other's] internal affairs.\" Like Jacobson, Vidal stressed that reopening embassies that were closed in 1961 was just the first step in a complicated process of normalizing relations. Even that will require further negotiation. For example, Vidal said, \"it would be very difficult to explain that there has been a resumption of diplomatic relations . . . while our country unjustly continues to be included on the [U.S.] list of state sponsors of terrorism.\" The sober descriptions of what still divides the two governments deflated some of the enthusiasm for rapid change that has been building on both sides. But the delegations said they would set an early date for another meeting and were committed to the public pledge made by President Obama and Cuban President Ra\u00fal Castro last month to restore diplomatic relations and then begin to tackle other areas of discord. If body language and ease of public presentation was any guide, Vidal, clearly on her own turf, seemed far more forthcoming than Jacobson in addressing the dozens of U.S. journalists who have traveled to Cuba to cover the talks along with other international news media. She took more questions than Jacobson and translated her own Spanish into fluent English. But her remarks were also more specific on areas of discord, including what subjects they discussed. Obama, who announced relations would be restored in a Dec. 17 speech, has said that U.S. human rights concerns would be directly raised in conversations with Cuba. After the morning session, Jacobson said she had raised the issue; Vidal said it did not come up. During a second session in the afternoon, the talks moved away from the embassies to areas of current and future cooperation, including counter-narcotics, law enforcement, the environment and international health issues. But in a statement distributed in Spanish after the talks ended at 7 p.m., the U.S. side said it had \"pressured\" Cuba on issues of human rights and free expression. In a solo evening news conference, Vidal said the word \"pressure\" was not spoken in the afternoon session. \"That's not a word used in these kinds of communications,\" she said, and \"Cuba has a long history of not responding to pressure.\" Vidal said that Cuba had some concerns of its own about human rights in the United States and had renewed a proposal it made a year ago for a separate dialogue in which each country could express its views on the subject. U.S. officials later said they had erred in using the Spanish verb \"presionar,\" meaning to pressure, in the statement. The English version said that \"we pressed the Cuban government for improved human rights conditions, including freedom of expression and assembly.\" Vidal also said that Cuba was still studying the new trade and travel rules the Obama administration announced last week, particularly those opening the door for U.S. telecommunication companies to do business in Cuba. Havana, she said, was \"willing to . . . explore possibilities of doing business [with them] that would benefit both sides.\" After the Thursday morning meeting on embassies, Vidal said that a complete lifting of the 1960 U.S. embargo was \"essential\" for further normalization but that Cuba recognizes \"the willingness of the U.S. president to have a serious and honest debate\" with Congress about it taking action to lift the embargo. But the terrorism list is a different story. Obama has the power to remove Cuba from the list if he determines that Havana has not engaged in terrorism in the recent past and is unlikely to do so in the future. He has asked the State Department to review Cuba's status and provide a recommendation. Its presence since 1982 on the list, which includes Iran, Sudan and Syria, is more than a significant irritant to Cuba. Based on an uptick of Obama administration penalties imposed on foreign banks whose business with Cuba has passed through U.S. financial institutions \u2014 a practice banned for all on the list \u2014 Buffalo-based M&T Bank dropped the Cuban Interests Section in Washington last year as a client. Since then, U.S. banks have decided to err on the side of caution in avoiding any dealings with Cuba, and none has been willing to open an account for the U.S.-based diplomats, who must conduct all of their transactions in cash. If its officials were unable to conduct U.S. bank transactions for diplomatic purposes, Vidal and other Cuban officials said, the United States would not be complying with the international conventions on diplomatic practices that both delegations on Thursday said they had agreed would govern their new embassies. Once he receives State's recommendation, Obama must transmit his decision to Congress. Assuming a positive outcome, there is a 45-day waiting period before implementation of any removals from the list. In the streets of Havana this week, Cubans seemed to talk of little else but the opening between the two governments. Cuban news media covered the statements of both sides Thursday and those issued following lower-level talks Wednesday on migration issues. After the Americans had departed the conference hall, Vidal was asked what she thought was the main news of the day. \"The news is that Cuba and the United States met for the first time,\" she said, and were checking their calendars to schedule the next session.","label":0}
{"text":"Iraqi forces have entered al-Qaim, one of the last remaining territories in the country still held by Islamic State militants, the Joint Operations Command said on Friday. Units from the Iraqi army, Counter-Terrorism Services, Sunni tribal and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation forces (PMF) are participating in an offensive to recapture al-Qaim and Rawa, two towns which lie on the border area with Syria. Iraq s security forces retook a border crossing with Syria from the militants, hours after entering al-Qaim, according to the Joint Operations Command. The road runs through al-Qaim in Iraq and Albu-Kamal in Syria, two towns which are very close to each other on opposite sides of the border in the last important territorial stronghold of Islamic State. Welcoming the offensive, the U.S.-led international military coalition, which has run an air campaign against Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq since 2014, said in a statement that approximately 1,500 Islamic State fighters were estimated to remain in the immediate vicinity of al-Qaim. Operations to clear the militants from their final strongholds in Iraq have continued, despite a concurrent military advance on Kurdish-held territory in the north. Iraq s central government launched an offensive on Oct. 16 to seize disputed territories, claimed by both Baghdad and the Kurds, in retaliation for a referendum on Kurdish independence held on Sept. 25. In a lightning strike, central government forces swiftly recaptured large areas, including the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, from the Kurds, who had seized these areas when Islamic State swept across northern Iraq in 2014. On Thursday, Iraqi forces threatened to resume military operations against the Kurds, accusing them of delaying the handover of control of borders and taking advantage of negotiations to bolster their defenses.","label":0}
{"text":"With violence escalating in Aleppo and elsewhere across Syria, the United Nations said Saturday that the number of children trapped in besieged areas had doubled in less than a year to half a million. A report by Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, said the children were among hundreds of thousands of civilians in 16 areas under siege across the country who had been \"almost completely cut off from sustained humanitarian aid and basic services. \" The report said some of these areas had received little or no aid in nearly two years, despite repeated efforts by international relief agencies to provide food and medicine. \"This is no way to live,\" Unicef's executive director, Anthony Lake, said in the report. The report estimated that 100, 000 of the trapped children were among the civilians pinned down in eastern Aleppo, the portion of what had been prewar Syria's commercial epicenter. Eastern Aleppo is now a focal point of the war, pitting an array of insurgents and militant jihadists against the forces of President Bashar of Syria and their Russian allies. The top United Nations diplomat seeking a negotiated end to the Syrian conflict, Staffan de Mistura, has repeatedly pleaded for a humanitarian halt to the fighting in Aleppo and has even offered to escort the militants out of the city. But Mr. Assad and his subordinates have said they intend to retake all of Aleppo, apparently regardless of the cost in lives and destruction, as he feels increasingly emboldened that the nearly war is moving in his favor. The Russian forces who have been assisting Mr. Assad for more than a year have been escalating their bombings against insurgent targets in northern Syria since . Syrian state news media reported Saturday that government troops had captured the Hanano district of eastern Aleppo, which was among the first to fall to insurgent control when fighting broke out in the city in 2012. In another indication of the deprivations confronting residents of eastern Aleppo, the Middle East coordinator of the World Food Program, the United Nations agency, said people had been scrounging through garbage for food scraps since the last rations, delivered in July, were distributed a few weeks ago. The coordinator, Muhannad Hadi, said in an interview with The Canadian Press that \"people are looking through garbage to find something to eat \u2014 that's if they find garbage in Aleppo. \" Mr. Hadi made the remarks during a visit to Ottawa to brief Canadian officials on the Syria crisis.","label":0}
{"text":"Ottawa | Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is getting prepared to accommodate nearly 250,000 American refugees if Donald Trump is to be elected US president in November. The Prime Minister was keen to stress the possibility of a mass exodus of American citizens on Canadian soil in case the controversial Republican candidate for the US presidency wins his presidential election.  In the event of a mass exodus of American citizens, Canada will always be a hospitable country for people persecuted or fleeing difficult living conditions   Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada We reach out to refugees of all countries living under dictatorships and persecution, he reiterated during a press conference this morning. immigration Immigration Minister, the Honorable John McCallum, expects up to 1,000,000 American refugees by 2017 if Donald Trump is elected president Immigration requests exploding Immigration Canada claims to have received more than 350,000 requests for information on Canadian citizenship status since Super Tuesday when Donald Trump won several important states. The more Trump advances, the more we are overwhelmed, assures spokesperson for Immigration Canada, Amanda Singh. Our whole 2016 budget is already gone since it was necessary to enroll extra workforce to successfully process all applications and even then, it is far from sufficient for the task she admits, visibly under stress. But Ottawa has promised us its full cooperation on this question, she assured. Miley Cyrus ready to leave the country Several celebrities including Miley Cyrus, Macaulay Culkin and Nicolas Cage have threatened to leave the country in case of a victory by Donald Trump. If Trump is elected, it makes me sad, but I have no choice, commented Miley Cyrus to the Rolling Stones magazine this week. I could never live under a president like him, it would be like living under the Soviet dictatorship of Hitler, she explained. According to information confirmed by the Hollywood Inquirer this week, a number of celebrities such as Miley Cyrus and Kanye West have shown interest in purchasing houses in the Toronto area and have already contacted real estate agents in the region.","label":1}
{"text":"Fifty interesting facts about Russia 31.10.2016 Print version Font Size 1. Russia is the largest country in the world. The country has 17,075,400 square kilometers, which makes Russia 1.8 times larger than the United States of America. The territory that Russia takes on planet Earth practically equals the surface area of planet Pluto.2. Russia is home to the world's largest active volcano - Klyuchevskaya Sopka. Its height is 4 kilometers 850 meters. The volcano shoots columns of ash up to eight kilometers high and becomes even taller with every eruption. Klyuchevskaya Sopka volcano erupts for the past 7,000 years.3. The subway system (metro) of St. Petersburg is the deepest in the world. Its average depth - 100 meters.4. The number of bridges in St. Petersburg exceeds the number of bridges in Venice three times. 5. The oldest Christian church on the territory of Russia is the ancient temple of Thaba-Yerdy located in Ingushetia, Jeirakh District. It was built in VIII-IX centuries. Three oldest of existing churches are located in the village of Nizhny Arkhyz in Karachay-Cherkessia. The temples were built in the X century.6. The Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest railway in the world. The Great Siberian Way, connecting Moscow with Vladivostok, is 9,298 kilometers long. The railway crosses eight time zones, passes through 87 cities and towns and crosses 16 rivers, including the Volga.7. Lake Baikal in Siberia is the deepest lake in the world and the largest source of fresh water on the planet. Baikal holds 23 cubic kilometers of water. All the world's major rivers - the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, the Yenisei, the Ural, the Ob, the Ganges, the Orinoco, the Amazon, the Thames, the Seine and the Oder would have to flow for almost a year to fill the basic, equal to the volume of Lake Baikal.8. Russia is the only country whose territory is washed by 12 seas.9. Russia is only four kilometers far from America. The is the distance between the island of Ratmanova (Russia) and the Kruzenshtern Island (USA) in the Bering Strait.10. The distance from Moscow to Chicago is smaller than the distance from from Chicago to Rio de Janeiro.11. In the cultural capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, there are 2,000 libraries, 221 museums, 100 concert organizations, more than 80 theaters, 80 clubs and houses of culture, 62 cinemas and 45 art galleries.12. The Ural Mountains are the oldest mountains in the world. The Karandash Mount located in the Kusinsky area near the village of Aleksandrovka was formed 4.2 billion years ago. The historical names of the Ural Mountains are - the Big Rock, the Siberian Rock, the Earth Belt, the Belt Rock.13. In Moscow, there are seven exactly the same high-rise buildings: two hotels, two office buildings, two residential buildings and the University. In English, this ensemble is known as the Seven Sisters, whereas in Russian, the buildings are known as Stalinist skyscrapers. The style, in which the skyscrapers are built, is called the Stalinist gothic.14. The Moscow Kremlin is the world's largest medieval fortress.15. The total length of the Kremlin walls is 2,235 meters.16. In Moscow, there is a large fountain that contains drinking water. The fountain is part of the architectural group \"Alexander and Natalie\" with a sculptural composition of Pushkin and Goncharova in a graceful rotunda.17. St. Petersburg is the world's northernmost city with a population of over one million people.18. The area of Siberia is 9 million 734.3 thousand square kilometers, which accounts for nine percent of the world's land.19. Russia borders with 16 countries: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, North Korea, Japan and the United States. Russia also borders on two unrecognized states: South Ossetia and Abkhazia.20. The number of Kalashnikov assault rifles in the world is larger than the number of all other assault rifles combined. 21. Russia proclaimed equal rights for men and women before the United States. In Russia, the right to vote was granted to women in 1918, in the United States - in 1920.22. Russia had never known slavery. The period of the most distinguished form of feudal dependence, serfdom, was shorter in Russia than, for example, in England and most of Europe. Serfdom in Russia had milder forms. Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861, whereas the United States abolished slavery in 1865.23. On January 16, 1820, the Russian expedition led by Thaddeus Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev discovered Antarctica.24. The most famous computer game -Tetris - was created by Russian programmer Alexey Pazhitnov in 1985. This game became popular in the Soviet Union, and then, in 1986, in the West.25. Ivan the Terrible was not a tyrant, his rule was unprecedentedly mild for his time. During his rule, Russia's size was equal to that of Europe, but Ivan the Terrible executed 100 fewer people in comparison with European kings during the same period of time - 3-4 thousand people against 300-400 thousand.26. Ivan the Terrible did not kill his son.27. Trains of the Moscow metro run more often than in any other subway system in the world. At rush hours, intervals between trains is only 90 seconds. There are stylized trains in the Moscow metro, for example, a train called \"Watercolors\" that represents a traveling exhibition of paintings.28. In Peterhof, near St. Petersburg, there are 176 fountains, 40 of which are huge and five are built as cascades.29. The Russian samovar is an ancient version of the electric kettle. The samovar was powered by coal, but its function was to boil water. 30. In the Russian town Oymyakon, the lowest temperature of air was recorded. The cold record was set in 1924, when temperates dropped to -71.2 \u00b0C.31. In the Novosibirsk Institute of Cytology and Genetics, there is a monument to the laboratory mouse that knits the DNA.32. During the Second World War, metro stations were used as bomb shelters. As many as 150 babies were born there during air raids. 33. In Russia, there are many beautiful excursion and hiking routes. The most famous one of them is the so-called Russian Golden Ring, as well as the Silver Ring of Russia and the Great Ural Ring.34. The total length of 12 lines of the Moscow metro is 310 kilometers.35. In the 18th century, Russia was the third largest empire in the history of mankind, occupying the territory from Poland in Europe to Alaska in North America. 36. The West Siberian Plain is the largest plain in the world.37. The Hermitage is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. The Hermitage stores three million works of art from the Stone Age to the present. If a visitor pays only one minute of their attention to each exhibit, it would take them 25 years to see all the exhibits of the Hermitage. 38. A half of the city of Chelyabinsk is located in the Urals, whereas the other half - in Siberia. Strangely enough, the coat of arms of Chelyabinsk depicts a camel. It turns out, however, that Chelyabinsk used to take caravans of camels 200 years ago. 39. A while ago, Moscow had more billionaires than any other city in the world.40. The Russian Public Library is the largest library in Europe and the second largest in the world after the United States Library of Congress. The Russian Public Library is located in Moscow, it was founded in 1862.41. On the opening day of a 700-seat McDonalds restaurant on Pushkin Square in Moscow, the line of people willing to go there made up 5,000 individuals at 5 a.m. During the first day of work, the restaurant served 3,000 customers. To this day, the McDonald's on Pushkin Square remains the most visited McDonald's in the world.42. The State Hermitage Museum keeps a flock of cats against rodents. Each cat of the Hermitage has a passport with a photo.43. In Altai, there are more than 820 glaciers that occupy a total area of 600 square kilometers.44. In Russia, a new sport has recently emerged in Russia - helicopter golf. Two helicopters, equipped with 4-meter sticks, play two balls one meter in diameter. Each team consists of five people.45. Russia regularly appears on lists of least friendly countries in the world, but this is just a misconception based on cross-cultural differences. In Russia, children are taught not to smile for no reason, as this kind of behavior displays light-mindedness. In fact, the Russians are friendly and are always ready to help a foreigner.46. In 2002, the city of Yekaterinburg was put on UNESCO's list of 12 perfect cities in the world.47. The largest bell ever cast is the Russian Tsar Bell made by Ivan Motorin and his son Mikhail. The weight of the Tsar Bell is 12,327 puds and 19 pounds, or 201 tons and 924 kilograms. The Tsar Bell is 6 meters 14 centimeters tall. 48. The city of Suzdal takes only 15 square kilometers of land and has the population of a little over 10,000 people. Yet, there are 53 churches in Suzdal. 49. The Russian Federation consists of eight federal districts, which are divided into 83 regions -subjects of the Federation, including 21 national republics. According to the Constitution, each republic is assigned to a titular ethnic group. The Russian republics take 28.6% of the territory of Russia, which is home to 16.9% of the population of the country. Ethnic Russians account for approximately 83% of the Russian population. However, the Russian Constitution does not contain a word about the Russian people. This legal mishap is one of the most pressing domestic problems of the Russian Federation, and it will be settled sooner or later.50. A myth about a myth: the Russians think that Americans think that bears walk in the streets of Moscow. In fact, bears do not appear in Russian city streets, and the Americans do not have a stereotype of the wild Russia.Newsinfo","label":1}
{"text":"John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's former presidential campaign chairman, has claimed there was a \"failing\" by mainstream media to protect American democracy during the 2016 presidential election. [\"The fact that there was substantiation that the Russians had hacked my emails, the DNC emails, that Wikileaks was an instrument of an attempt by Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation to undermine our democracy, that could have been reflected in the press and I don't believe it was,\" Podesta said in an interview with the BBC's Evan Davis. \"And I think that was actually a failing on behalf of the mainstream media and particularly some of the major news outlets in our country like The New York Times,\" he continued. However, there is little evidence to support Podesta's claims, given that mainstream news outlets such as The New York Times, CNN, and The Washington Post all gave extensive coverage to potential Russian interference in the election and did not fully report the range of explosive revelations that emerged from the Wikileaks releases. \"The [mainstream media] decided it was more interesting, maybe more titillating, to get into the kinda campaign gossip which was what those emails were,\" Podesta continued. Podesta's claims are also undermined by the vigorous support Clinton received from nearly all the mainstream media, earning endorsements from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, New York Daily News, The Los Angeles Times, and nearly all metro and regional newspapers across the country. Furthermore, emails revealed by Wikileaks actually showed extensive collusion between mainstream media journalists and Clinton's campaign, principally via Podesta, without revealing this to their audience. Prominent examples of that collusion include CNBC's Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood regularly emailing Podesta to congratulate him on primary wins, former POLITICO reporter Glenn Thrush asking Podesta to approve a story he wrote pertaining to Clinton's campaign, while The New York Times' political correspondent Maggie Haberman was described by the campaign as a \"friendly journalist\" who \"teed up\" stories and \"never disappointed\" the Clinton campaign. A study in the run up to the November election also found that 96 percent of campaign donations from persons in the media went toward Hillary Clinton. Discussing the future of the Democratic Party, Podesta added that he was now \"fully into the resistance\" against Donald Trump and the new administration. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com","label":0}
{"text":"The head of the U.S. Senate's Armed Services Committee, John McCain, has proposed $7.5 billion of new military funding for U.S. forces and their allies in the Asia-Pacific, where tensions have been rising over China's territorial ambitions. The funds, $1.5 billion a year for five years to 2022, could be used to boost U.S. munitions stocks in the region, build new military infrastructure, such as runways, and to help allies and partner countries increase their capabilities, an aide to McCain and a U.S. military official said. The funding proposal was contained in a White Paper issued by McCain last week entitled \"Restoring American Power.\" His committee is expected to discuss it at a budget hearing on Tuesday. \"Senator McCain believes the United States must sustain its enduring commitment to the security and prosperity of the Asia-Pacific region,\" a spokesman for McCain, Dustin Walker, said. \"The Asia-Pacific Stability Initiative ... would ... make U.S. regional posture more forward-learning, flexible, resilient, and formidable,\" he said. \"These funds would boost operational military construction, increase munitions procurement, enhance capacity building with allies and partners, and expand military exercises and other training activities.\" An official in the administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump, who took office on Friday, said he believed McCain's proposal was \"very much in general alignment with the administration's goals in the region.\" Trump has vowed to take a tougher line with China and to build up the U.S. military, although it is unclear whether he will succeed in lifting caps on defense spending that have been part of \"sequestration\" legislation. A U.S. military official, who did not want to be identified, said the funds could go to construct new military runways in countries such as Australia and the Philippines and to make up a shortfall of munitions that the head of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Harry Harris, complained of last year. \"There's a shortfall in the total number of munitions and also a quality gap,\" the official said, adding that more sophisticated missiles were needed in the region to counter China's \"anti-access, area-denial\" strategy. On Monday, the new U.S. administration raised the prospect of worsening tensions with China when it vowed to prevent Beijing from taking over territory in international waters in the South China Sea, something Chinese state media has warned would require Washington to \"wage war.\"","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump denounced reporting from the New York Times and the Washington Post that said his campaign was communicating with Russia. \"Information is being illegally given to the failing New York Times and Washington Post by the intelligence community,\" he wrote on Twitter, suggesting that the NSA and the FBI might be responsible. \"Just like Russia,\" he added. The New York Times cited law enforcement and intelligence agency sources that intercepted communications from people close to Trump during the presidential campaign with Russian intelligence. \"The real scandal here is that classified information is illegally given out by 'intelligence' like candy,\" Trump wrote. \"Very !\" That news is leading coverage of the president on cable and network news stations, prompting Trump's reaction on Twitter. \"The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred,\" Trump wrote. \"MSNBC and CNN are unwatchable. Fox and Friends is great!\" Trump called the reports \" \" and said they were \"merely an attempt to the many mistakes made in Hillary Clinton's losing campaign. \" He also praised Bloomberg columnist Eli Lake, for discussing his latest column on Fox News, pointing out that the damaging intelligence leaks were the kind of behavior seen in \"banana republics. \" \"We trust the NSA and the FBI to use these powers to catch criminals and terrorists but that should not interfere in our politics, and that stuff is interfering right now in our politics,\" Lake said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. \u2014 @realDonaldTrump referring to this @EliLake segment on @seanhannity last night that was on @foxandfriends this morning pic. twitter. \u2014 Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) February 15, 2017, Trump reminded the world that Russian President Vladimir Putin's unchecked aggression began during the Obama administration. \"Crimea was TAKEN by Russia during the Obama Administration,\" he wrote. \"Was Obama too soft on Russia?\"","label":0}
{"text":"A breakthrough in U.N.-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva this week seems hardly more likely than in seven failed earlier rounds as President Bashar al-Assad pushes for total military victory and his opponents stick by their demand he leave power. U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura said on Monday the Syrian government had not yet confirmed that it would attend the talks. A Syrian newspaper reported that the government delegation would delay its planned Tuesday arrival in Geneva because of the opposition s insistence Assad step down. The opposition s stance is seen by Damascus and its allies as divorced from reality after the government s steady march of victories since Russia entered the war in 2015. The rebels have been forced from all Syria s big cities and their hopes of toppling Assad by military means look finished. The opposition has also accused the government of refusing to seriously engage. The Assad regime must not be allowed to play for time while people are being besieged and bombed, Yahya al-Aridi, newly appointed head of the opposition s negotiating committee, said on Sunday. Aridi was chosen last week after the opposition rejigged its negotiations committee - jettisoning as its leader a more hardline opponent of Assad in what some speculated might be a move towards softening its position. But the statement it put out after meeting on Friday reiterated its demand that Assad go before the start of a political transition under any peace deal. Last week a senior Assad adviser said talks could succeed only if rebels laid down their arms. Over the weekend, air strikes on the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta district near Damascus intensified, killing 41 people on Sunday and Monday, according to a war monitor. You cannot expect very much, said Nikolaos Van Dam, a former Dutch diplomat in Damascus and author of two books about Syria. The regime doesn t want to really negotiate. They want to reconquer every inch of Syrian territory and then negotiate. But then the opposition would have no bargaining chips, he said. The Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and caused the world s worst refugee crisis, driving 11 million from their homes. All previous diplomatic initiatives have swiftly collapsed over the opposition demand that Assad leave power and his refusal to go. Troops from Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States, as well as Shi ite militias from Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, have all now joined arrived on the battlefield. Russia has pushed its own parallel track of diplomacy since early this year, bringing together Assad s other main ally Iran, and Turkey, which has been one of the biggest rebel supporters. Russia has elections next year and President Vladimir Putin wants to show progress towards a political deal after two years of fighting far from Russian soil. Moscow has already said it will bring many troops home from Syria by the end of the year. Putin may also seek to tout diplomatic progress as he angles for the West to take some of the burden of Syria s post-war reconstruction, now likely to fall on Russia, Iran and China. Western foreign ministers said in September their support hinges on a credible political process leading to a genuine political transition , a process they have said requires the involvement of the opposition. Russia wants the end of the war but it wants its ally intact. So what would be the compromise that is acceptable to the opposition or to the other countries? It s not clear to me, said Van Dam. Moscow now plans a Syrian Congress , bringing together the government and some opposition groups to write a new constitution leading to elections. The main opposition rejects the idea, saying all talks must come under the United Nations. But the government has said it backs the congress, as has Turkey, which has some sway over rebel groups in the northwest. There is an acceleration in the political solution on the basis of a unified Syria headed by Bashar al-Assad, with amendments to the constitution and in the election law, a senior, pro-Assad official in the region said. The Syrian government declared on Sunday it would support the formation of a committee that will discuss the constitution and is expected to be set up at the congress. It also said it would support U.N. participation in legislative elections to be held after that discussion. Ultimately Russia s objective is to dress up a limited military victory for the Assad regime and the Iranians in Syria as a diplomatic one, said Andrew Tabler, a Syria specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank. Because the regime and the Iranians don t have the manpower to completely occupy all Syria, or to rebuild Syria, or the money to rebuild Syria, they need international buy-in, he said. I don t think it will be easy for them because the United States and others know what they are trying to do. This week s Geneva talks will focus on the issues of elections and a constitution, Ramzi Ramzi, the deputy United Nations special envoy for Syria said in Damascus on Saturday. De Mistura said on Monday negotiations should take place at Geneva and without any preconditions, and all other initiatives should support the U.N. mediation process. After recapturing the last major rebel urban stronghold in East Aleppo a year ago, and advancing across central and eastern Syria against Islamic State this year, the government now controls far more territory than any other force in the country. But rebels still hold a swathe of northwest Syria next to Turkey, and an enclave in the southwest near Israel and Jordan. They have other pockets near Damascus and Homs. Kurdish groups and allied Arab militia backed by the United States also hold the northeast and are holding elections there this week for local councils in an effort to cement autonomy. They have not been invited to the Geneva talks and are regarded by Syria s neighbor Turkey as enemies. Assad has sworn to recover all of his state, and visiting Iranian officials have indicated that new military campaigns may soon start against both the rebels and the Kurds.","label":0}
{"text":"When Donald Trump's administration put together its controversial executive order on immigration, it was Steve Bannon \u2013 the populist firebrand fast emerging as the president's right-hand man \u2013 pushing a hard line. Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) interpreted the order to mean that lawful permanent residents - green card holders \u2013 who hailed from the seven Muslim-majority countries targeted in the immigration order would not face additional screening when they entered the country. But they were quickly overruled by Bannon, who is Trump's chief strategist and oversaw the drafting of the executive order along with White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a close ally of Bannon's, the officials said. \"They were in charge of this operation,\" one senior DHS official said, adding that the experts were \"almost immediately overruled by the White House, which means by Bannon and Miller.\" A senior national security official described the pair as a \"tag team\" pushing Trump's key policies, including the immigration order which bars the entry of refugees and places a temporary hold on people from seven countries - Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia and Libya. The inclusion of green card holders from those countries intensified opposition to an executive order that sparked legal challenges, protests at airports and sharp criticism from inside the Republican Party, including from some Trump allies. DHS officials say there was little or no White House consultation with immigration, customs and border security agencies on the immigration policy change, causing widespread confusion over how to implement Trump's order. A senior administration official said the order went through a review by \"key people\" at DHS and the White House National Security Council, and that several immigration staff on Capitol Hill were involved in drafting the order. But officials said Bannon was the driving force throughout. The White House declined to comment on his role. Critics have accused Bannon of harboring anti-Semitic and white nationalist sentiments. Under Bannon's leadership, his Breitbart website presented a number of conspiracy theories about Trump's Democratic rival in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, as well as Republicans deemed to be lacking in conservative bona fides. Bannon has ascribed his interest in populism and American nationalism to a desire to curb what he views as the corrosive effects of globalization. He has rejected what he called the \"ethno-nationalist\" tendencies of some in the movement. After becoming chief executive of Trump's election campaign in August, the former Goldman Sachs banker and Navy veteran helped lead him to victory over Clinton. He was then appointed by Trump as senior counselor and chief strategist - jobs not subject to U.S. Senate confirmation. He has been an almost constant presence by Trump's side in the first 10 days of the administration - in the White House for a meeting with American manufacturers, at CIA headquarters the day after Trump was sworn in, and in the Oval Office during British Prime Minister Theresa May's visit. He appears to have greatly expanded his power in the first 10 days of Trump's presidency. Trump gave him an unprecedented seat in the NSC's top-level meetings and potentially narrowed the role played by the director of national intelligence (DNI) and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Bannon has also asserted authority over almost all written statements from the White House and the NSC and has sent back documents for rewrites as he sees fit, one NSC official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Critics, including four senior U.S. intelligence officers, called the decision to formalize Bannon's role at the NSC meetings a mistake, saying it risks politicizing decisions on national security. White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday defended Bannon's inclusion in the NSC. Susan Rice, the former national security adviser in former President Barack Obama's administration, tweeted on Sunday: \"This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy.\" Bannon and Miller are drowning out the opinions of more moderate advisers like White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, said a senior DHS official and two people in Washington who work closely with the White House on immigration and a range of other issues. One of those people and the DHS official said Priebus felt he had placed enough of his fellow moderate Republicans in key positions at the White House as a counterbalance to Bannon and Miller, but he has been frustrated at their outsized influence so far, especially on issues of immigration and national security. The White House dismissed the views of the officials as gossip.","label":0}
{"text":"Attackers set fire to vehicles beneath a housing complex for police and their families in a suburb of Grenoble, eastern France, on Thursday. Police said a fence around the building was closed off in an apparent attempt to prevent residents escaping and rescuers getting in, but all 24 people inside escaped unharmed. Nobody claimed responsibility for the assault, which was the latest in a series of arson attacks against police and police vehicles. Attacks like this can be tantamount to terrorism, Grenoble prosecutor Jean-Yves Coquillat told reporters, adding that the method used was similar to other recent attacks by far-left groups. Last month, such a group claimed responsibility for an arson attack on a police building in Grenoble that destroyed a warehouse and several cars. The group said the fire was a protest against the trial of nine far-left activists accused of firebombing police in an assault on two officers in Paris in May 2016 that was caught on camera. Last month, five police cars were set on fire in Limoges, central France. French police are on high alert after a series of Islamic State-inspired attacks that have killed more than 240 people in the past three years. Aside from the Islamist threat, far-left and far-right militancy has also not let up. Police this month arrested 10 far-right militants suspected of planning attacks on mosques and politicians.","label":0}
{"text":"If Kansas Republicans have their way, they will have the power to impeach state Supreme Court judges who disagree with the conservative agenda.A Kansas Senate committee has already recommended SB439 for passage so it can be voted on by the full Senate, which is controlled by conservatives.According to the Kansas City Star, the bill would make attempting to usurp the power of the Legislature or the executive branch grounds for impeachment. In other words, if a judge rules a law passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature unconstitutional, Republicans would legally have the power to then impeach that judge and replace him or her with a judge who will rule the way Republicans want them to rule.Governor Sam Brownback and his Republican cohorts in the statehouse have had their schemes to defund public schools foiled by the state Supreme Court in recent years after the GOP tried to use the funds to pay for a disastrous budget shortfall created when Brownback gave rich people a massive tax cut.So far, the state Supreme Court has blocked such a move as unconstitutional since the Kansas Constitution plainly states that the legislature shall provide for intellectual, educational, vocational and scientific improvement by establishing and maintaining public schools, educational institutions and related activities which may be organized and changed in such manner as may be provided by law. Furthermore, the Kansas Constitution says the legislature shall make suitable provision for finance of the educational interests of the state. That means the Kansas Supreme Court has made the right call by denying Brownback and Republicans the ability to screw over the public school system to benefit the wealthy.But if Republicans pass this bill into law, they would be able to overthrow the judicial branch so they can pass whatever laws they want even if they are unconstitutional. They would be effectively rigging the court in their favor.And Kansas Republicans haven t exactly made this a secret.The Star reports:Impeachment has been a little-used tool to challenge judges who strike down new legislation, said Republican Sen. Dennis Pyle, a sponsor of the measure. Maybe it needs to be oiled up a little bit or sharpened a little bit. Courts have the ability to harm society with their decisions, GOP state Senator Mitch Holmes claimed in defense of the bill according to the Topeka Capitol Journal. And impeachment was what our founders intended to be a check and a balance on an unchecked system, or what has evolved into an unchecked system. But once again, Republicans are wrong. Not only is their bill unconstitutional on the grounds that the state constitution does not list disagreement as a legitimate reason for impeachment, it would make the court system a puppet institution with the sole purpose of allowing Republicans to do whatever they want in the legislative and executive branches without a judicial branch that can check their power. Basically, it is the executive and legislative branches that would become an unchecked system. Article 2 of the state constitution clearly states grounds for impeachment.The governor and all other officers under this constitution, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.So unless Republicans want to literally make disagreeing with them a crime, which would violate the First Amendment and the independence of the judiciary, they would be well-advised to trash this bill and never let it see the light of day again.This is the exact kind of government overreach that Republicans have hypocritically whined about for decades, and yet here they are trying to overthrow the state Supreme Court so that Brownback can stack it with judges who will do his bidding. Just imagine if this scheme actually worked. How long would it be before Republicans try the exact same thing at the federal level so that they can keep the court conservative forever? This is serious power play that needs to be squashed by the people of Kansas before they no longer have a fair court system to rely on.","label":1}
{"text":"Isn t it unbelievable that these so-called experts get to spout off their hatred towards President Trump on a regular basis via MSNBC? This village idiot connects Mosque burnings to Trump when anyone with half a brain knows the Muslims are vandalizing their own Mosques (see below)! They don t even know who burned the Minnesota Mosque!The blame has been put on President Trump but could it be that the Muslims set fire to these Mosques to produce a backlash? some of the arson cases have not been solved so why is Buzzfeed blaming the attacks on anti-Muslim arsonists?BUZZFEED MAKES FALSE CLAIMS:In the past seven weeks, four mosques across the country have caught fire, according to BuzzFeed News. Three of those fires have been ruled arson, authorities stated.On Jan. 7, the Islamic Center of Lake Travis in Austin, which had been under construction, caught on fire. A week later, on Jan. 14, the Islamic Center of Eastside in Bellevue, Washington, burned.Two weeks after that, on Jan. 28, several hours after President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, a fire destroyed the Islamic Center of Victoria in Texas.According to BuzzFeed News, the Daarus Salaam Mosque near Tampa, Florida, caught on fire this past Friday, marking the fourth mosque in to go up in flames in fewer than two months. Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he s never seen anything like this, calling them part of a series of dramatic attacks against Muslims.WHAT THEY DON T REPORT ON: MUSLIMS TORCHING THEIR OWN MOSQUE!Police in Iowa arrested a 22-year-old woman suspected of starting a small fire at an Iowa mosque Thursday morning.Security cameras in the mosque showed a woman, later identified as Aisha Ismail, pouring lighter fluid on the carpet and then starting the fire, said Des Moines police spokesmanTHE TEXAS CASE:HOUSTON, Texas The Muslim charged with arson of his own mosque on Christmas Day 2015 has pleaded guilty to felony arson in a Harris County (Houston) district court and was sentenced to prison. The charging instrument stated that Gary Nathaniel Moore started a fire with the intent to destroy and damage a place of worship the Savoy Masjid Mosque in Houston. Moore said he attended the mosque every day up to five times a day for five years. The Houston Fire Department (HFD) responded to the fire about 2:47 p.m. on Christmas Day.THE MOST DISTURBING CASE IS A FAKE HATE CRIME CASE:Have you heard about the Texas case where the Muslim community pushed for a hate crime charge and got it. The lawyer for the defendant, Mr. Di Carlo, contested the basic premise of the hate crime charge: This was not a mosque, this was an Islamic learning center and there was a mosque therein, he said.","label":1}
{"text":"Republican Senator Marco Rubio signaled his support for a sweeping tax bill on Friday, saying changes that had been made at his urging to increase the refundability of a child tax credit marked \"a solid step toward broader reforms.\" \"Increasing the refundability of the Child Tax Credit from 55% to 70% is a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker,\" Rubio, who had threatened to vote against the bill, said on Twitter.","label":0}
{"text":"- Advertisement -  Here's the thing:Today, October 27, 2016, I, like many of you, watched live feeds of the events going down at Standing Rock.I am at a loss to define my feelings. Anger, outrage, pity, fear  ...One phrase kept going through my mind, like a mantra- This is not my America. This is not my America. This is not my America. protests at DAPL License DMCA  And then in counter-point was the thought- But it is. But it is. But it is.Over one hundred heavily armed cops in riot gear, supported by military assault vehicles and helicopters forced peaceful, prayerful water protectors from their own land, ceded to them in the Treaty of 1851. The police are nothing more than a mercenary army protecting the interests of the owners of the DAPL. There was the wail of sound cannons aimed at the protectors, there was tear gas. There were rubber bullets being fired into the crowd.And in my mind- This is not my America (But it is) This is not my America (But it is) This is not my America (But it is) This is about water. There's no political ideology here. We cannot live without water. Decisions are being made that effect the future, and the lives of our children and our grandchildren.This effects all of us. It's not just happening \"out there\" in the Dakotas or in Iowa or in Texas or in New Mexico. It's everywhere. For god sake, there are already over 2.5 million miles pipeline already installed in the continental United States. Just the other day, mere miles from where I live a Sunoco pipeline leaked over 55,000 gallons of gasoline into the Susquehanna River, endangering the water for over 6 million people down river. Where I live, in northeastern Pennsylvania, there are fracking wells all over the place. And an average of 2.8 million of gallons of clean water were filled with known poisons and toxins and pumped under pressure into the aquifer beneath my feet. There are places within miles of where I live that people can set fire to their water.It's too late for anyone to avoid the destruction, here where I live. We have to deal with the aftermath. The after the fact poisoning of our water and the inevitable leaks and the illnesses and the pockets of strange cancers. This is a shameful day, for all of us. I am sick, in heart, mind and spirit, but I have hope.The battle hasn't even started. Now is when decisions must be made. Hard decisions that will impact on our own sense of comfort and will demand that we risk that comfort, or lose the future. To do nothing is to accept that our children,and our grandchildren will have no clean water to drink, no clean air to breathe, no clean land to live on.This is not overstating the things. It is not alarmist. It is the simplest of truths. - Advertisement -","label":1}
{"text":"CNN devoted not one, but two segments on how President Trump got two scoops of ice cream while his dinner guests only got one as the network tried to pass off a \"scoop\" about the president's eating habits as news.[ In a segment titled, \"Two scoops for Trump,\" CNN's Jeanne Moos talks about Trump's \"executive privilege\" for receiving two scoops of ice cream while the three TIME magazine correspondents he had dinner with only got one. The TIME magazine correspondents made sure to take note of the disparity between the food given to the president and the food they were served in a profile called \"Donald Trump After Hours,\" the profile the segment was based on. \"At the dessert course, he gets two scoops of vanilla ice cream with his chocolate cream pie, instead of the single scoop for everyone else,\" TIME's Michael Scherer and Zeke Miller wrote. \"With the salad course, Trump is served what appears to be Thousand Island dressing instead of the creamy vinaigrette for his guests,\" they added. But this was not the only segment CNN devoted to the subject. CNN also gave airtime to an interview between CNN's Brooke Baldwin and CNN political reporter and Chris Cillizza with the headline, \"President Gets Two Scoops of Ice Cream, Everyone Else One. \" \"The President gets two scoops, you know, everyone around the table gets one, and no word if there were sprinkles,\" Baldwin commented. \"Right, well, the broader point here is, the White House staff has adapted to Donald Trump's case,\" CNN political reporter and Chris Cillizza responded. \"So, when everyone else gets water, he gets a diet coke. When everybody gets one scoop of ice cream, he gets two. \" Fox News host Sean Hannity mocked CNN for its \" coverage. \" Thanks for the hard hitting news on your network @jaketapperhttps: . #Hannity, \u2014 Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) May 11, 2017, \"Thanks for the news on your network,\" Hannity wrote on Twitter. Others, however, thought Trump's ice cream habits were worth mentioning. @davidfrum a man unable to restrain his urges, \u2014 Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) May 11, 2017, \"This explains a lot,\" the Atlantic's David Frum wrote on Twitter, to which Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post responded saying that Trump is \"a man unable to restrain his urges. \"","label":0}
{"text":"From the mouths of moms or something like that Even Barbara Bush agrees with me.A video posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Aug 24, 2015 at 10:15am PDT","label":1}
{"text":"Here are a few facts explaining who the DACA recipients really are. The National UnDACAmented Research Project was compiled by Harvard University researcher Roberto G. Gonzales and published by the Center For Immigration Studies (CIS):In April 2016, the Washington Times reported that a massive anti-deportation infrastructure had emerged to try to protect illegal immigrants from President Trump s crackdown, with advocacy groups coaching potential deportees on how to massage encounters with police, and lawyers and judges working to shield them from charges that would make them priorities for deportation.A video released Monday by a coalition of advocates instructs illegal immigrants not to open the door to federal agents, what proof to demand if they are being arrested and what to say if accosted outside their homes.Meanwhile, attorneys are working to lower charges from some illegal immigrant criminals, hoping to blunt their crimes so they don t show up as high-priority deportation targets.The Washington Times reported on a recent case in California, where an immigrant from India was accused of abusing his wife. The Santa Clara prosecutor told The Daily Beast that he reduced a felony assault charge to a felony accessory after the fact charge in order to spare the man a sentence that would have made him a deportation risk.IJR- The same day that President Donald Trump rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) held a joint press conference in which they reintroduced legislation that would see Congress tackling many of the issues that DACA comprises. What Senator Graham and I want to deliver is the message today, is that we need to do our job right here in the United States Senate, Durbin said. We need to pass, in this month of September, a DREAM Act, a permanent law in this country, that says that these young people will have their chance to become part of America s future. The DREAM Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act has been circling Congress for more than a decade, having first been introduced by Durbin and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) in 2001. The legislation has failed to pass each time it has been introduced.Durbin then took a moment to speak directly to the DREAMers, saying, Do not give up hope. If you are one of those DREAMers, Durbin continued, one of those protected by DACA, you need to be part of America in its future. We made a promise to you that if you gave this information to our government about you and your family, it wouldn t be used against you. I don t want that to ever happen. Durbin then turned over the podium to Graham, who said right out of the gate, speaking to the DACA participants, you have done nothing wrong. You ve demonstrated your ability to be beneficial to the country now and in the future, Graham said. The only thing that stands between you and certainty in your life is the Congress. That cannot be that reassuring. Congress is going to have to up its game, Graham opined.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald J. Trump's campaign released an open letter on Tuesday from about 90 retired generals and military officials endorsing his presidential campaign, urging a \"long overdue course correction in our national security posture. \" The letter in support of Mr. Trump, signed by 88 retired military figures, comes as the campaign prepares for a week focused on national security, with a forum hosted by NBC and MSNBC on Wednesday evening alongside Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. \"The 2016 election affords the American people an urgently needed opportunity to make a long overdue course correction in our national security posture and policy,\" the letter states. \"As retired senior leaders of America's military, we believe that such a change can only be made by someone who has not been deeply involved with, and substantially responsible for, the hollowing out of our military and the burgeoning threats facing our country around the world,\" the generals and admirals write. \"For this reason, we support Donald Trump's candidacy to be our next commander in chief. \" Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, is seeking to blunt an edge that Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state, has established either from retired military figures like Gen. John R. Allen, or from the tacit boost she could receive from Republican national security and foreign policy experts who have denounced Mr. Trump. And Mr. Trump's reorganized campaign is looking to craft an image of him as a palatable commander in chief, particularly ahead of his first debate with Mrs. Clinton on Sept. 26. The group of signatories was put together by Maj. Gen. Sidney Shachnow of the Army, a Holocaust survivor, and Rear Adm. Charles Williams of the Navy. \"I think it more than trumps\" the list of people backing Mrs. Clinton, said Keith Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general who is advising Mr. Trump on national security. Describing the group as \"national security professionals for Trump,\" Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, a retired Army officer who had been under consideration to be Mr. Trump's running mate, said it came together organically. \"We had to stop accepting names because we were running out of time,\" he said. \"These were people that have been passing us ideas from national security to education ideas. \" Some of the people listed on the letter had supported Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in the 2012 campaign, in the to Election Day. Some were among those who had urged Congress to reject the nuclear deal with Iran. Still others have been known for making controversial statements, like Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin of the Army, who was criticized by President George W. Bush for describing the battle against Islamist terrorists as a religious proxy fight between a \"Christian nation\" and the \"idol\" of Islam. For Mr. Trump, who has proposed a ban on Muslim immigrants to halt the spread of the Islamic State, such comments are in line with his own over the last year. Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney of the Air Force, who is also listed on the letter and is a Fox News military analyst, has previously submitted court documents challenging President Obama's eligibility to serve as president, accusing him of not having been born in the United States, an accusation Mr. Trump himself once raised. General Kellogg declined to evaluate past remarks from the military figures, saying they had served their country and had earned their right to speak. In the letter, the group expresses concern that the government will persist \"in the practices that have brought us to this present pass\" after a series of budget cuts. \"For this reason, we support Donald Trump and his commitment to rebuild our military, to secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order domestically,\" they write. \"We urge our fellow Americans to do the same. \" Mr. Trump, who often mentions veterans in his campaign speeches, said in a statement, \"I thank each of them for their service and their confidence in me to serve as commander in chief. Keeping our nation safe and leading our armed forces is the most important responsibility of the presidency. \"","label":0}
{"text":"U.S. Senate Republicans unveiled a so-called skinny Obamacare repeal bill on Thursday, hours before an expected vote could determine whether their latest effort to overturn the Affordable Care Act succeeds. The eight-page measure appeared on the website of the Senate Budget Committee.","label":0}
{"text":"Dialing back the Volcker Rule that limits banks' ability to engage in speculative investments is a top priority for President Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, according to a document seen by Reuters on Monday. In written responses to questions posed by members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, Mnuchin said he would use his role as head of the interagency Financial Stability Oversight Council to give the Volcker Rule a stricter definition of proprietary trading. In \"prop trading\" a financial firm uses its own money to invest in privately held companies, hedge funds and similar vehicles. The Volcker rule was designed to limit the type of risk-taking activities that helped land banks in trouble during the financial crisis. \"As Chair of FSOC I would plan to address the issue of the definition of the Volcker Rule to make sure that banks can provide the necessary liquidity for customer markets and address the issues in the Fed report,\" Mnuchin wrote in the document, which also included senators' questions and was verified by a Senate aide. During his confirmation hearing with the Senate Finance Committee last week, Mnuchin cited a recent Federal Reserve report that found the rule, part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law, was limiting market liquidity. The committee has not yet scheduled a date to vote to send the nomination to the full chamber for approval. Regulators have applied proprietary trading prohibitions to too many activities, he said. The Fed report found that ambiguity and gray areas in the rule were pushing dealers to conservative strategies to ensure they did not cross the line on the prohibitions. In the responses Mnuchin also made it clear he believes the rule should only apply to \"a bank that benefits from federal deposit insurance.\" The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guarantees retail deposits at about 6,000 banks, including the consumer banking arms of the country's largest investment banks. The law currently applies to banks that have access to the Federal Reserve's discount window or other government backstop. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat who serves on the Finance Committee, wrote that uninsured investment banks also pose risks that the rule, named for former Federal Reserve Chair Paul Volcker, was supposed to address. \"As we saw during the financial crisis, when nonbanking affiliates of FDIC insured banks failed, they were rescued by their insured affiliates, which in turn were forced to be rescued by taxpayers,\" she wrote. \"This was the case with State Street Bank, and your former employer, Goldman Sachs, which converted to a bank holding company in order to be eligible for federal bailout funds.\" Mnuchin reiterated that an updated version of the 1933 Glass-Steagall law that had long separated commercial and investment banking should be instated to reduce risks. The law was repealed in 1999. Mnuchin has not shared details of his \"21st Century Glass-Steagall,\" but hinted it would be looser than the original. \"A bright line between commercial and investment banking, although less complicated, may inhibit the necessary lending and capital markets activities to support a robust economy,\" he wrote.","label":0}
{"text":"Since he was captured on Monday, Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man accused of carrying out bombings last weekend in Manhattan and on the Jersey Shore, has been hospitalized in Newark, recovering from gunshot wounds he sustained in a confrontation with the police. From his bed at University Hospital, he has been charged by three different prosecutors: the United States attorneys in Manhattan and New Jersey, for his alleged role in the bombings and the Union County, N. J. prosecutor, for allegedly trying to kill police officers who tracked him down on Monday in the city of Linden. A New Jersey judge has ordered him held on $5. 2 million bail on the state charges. Yet despite the burst of legal proceedings and litany of charges made public this week, Mr. Rahami has not had a lawyer for almost the entire time he has been in custody, and even now, the question of his legal representation remains unsettled. On Thursday, Peter A. Liguori, a state public defender in Union County, sought to meet with Mr. Rahami but was prevented by a lawyer with the Union County prosecutor's office, according to a filing Mr. Liguori submitted to a judge in Superior Court in Elizabeth, the county seat. \"I attempted to meet with or at least see Mr. Rahami to confirm his condition,\" Mr. Liguori wrote to the judge, Regina Caulfield. But, he said, a prosecutor, Ann Luvera, told him that Mr. Rahami was \"unconscious and unable to speak,\" and she \"would not give me permission to visit. \" Earlier in the week, Mr. Liguori had said that neither Mr. Rahami nor his family had sought representation from the public defender. But since then, Mr. Rahami's father had asked the office to represent his son, who had been found to be eligible as an indigent defendant, Mr. Liguori said In the court filing, Mr. Liguori said he was formally entering his appearance in the case, the latest twist in a flurry of unusual activity to secure legal representation for Mr. Rahami. Usually when people are arrested on federal or state charges, they are taken to court promptly, informed of their rights and, if they cannot afford a lawyer, appointed one. But the delay in providing Mr. Rahami a lawyer has raised concerns among legal rights advocacy groups as well as lawyers who have been seeking to represent him. \"It is outrageous that the prosecutor is refusing to give permission to the public defender to visit Mr. Rahami,\" said Udi Ofer, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, which is not involved in the case. \"It is vital that the public defender be given access to his client so that Mr. Rahami's medical condition may be verified and his rights are protected. \" A spokesman for the Union County prosecutor's office could not be reached for comment late Friday afternoon after the public defender's filing was released by a court official. It could not be learned on Friday whether Judge Caulfield had acted on Mr. Liguori's request to represent Mr. Rahami. But much of the debate over the bombing suspect's legal representation has come amid great mystery about his medical condition. Law enforcement officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the continuing investigation, have said that Mr. Rahami was shot multiple times. He remained intubated as of Thursday. When was he taken to the hospital, a senior law enforcement official said, investigators questioned him briefly in the ambulance, asking for his name and whether he had any weapons, but gathered little useful information. The official said Mr. Rahami was not questioned under the public safety exception to the Miranda rules. Under the exception, investigators interrogate a suspect for intelligence purposes without advising the suspect of his rights, a tactic used in previous terrorism cases. A suspect is only then advised of his rights and questioned for law enforcement purposes. David E. Patton, the chief federal public defender in New York City, where Mr. Rahami is expected to be prosecuted first on the federal charges, wrote to a judge in Manhattan on Tuesday, asking that Mr. Rahami be brought there \"at the earliest possible time\" for a court appearance. If he was unable to travel because of his medical condition, Mr. Patton said, the office could meet with him in the hospital and represent him via videoconference. The office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, opposed the request, arguing that Mr. Rahami had not been arrested on federal charges and therefore the right to a speedy court appearance and to a lawyer had not been triggered. A magistrate judge, Gabriel W. Gorenstein, ruled for the government, agreeing that there had been no federal arrest. On Wednesday, Richard Coughlin, the federal public defender for New Jersey, made a similar request in the United States District Court in Newark. The office of Paul J. Fishman, the United States attorney for New Jersey, opposed that request, and it was denied on Friday by a magistrate judge, Mark Falk. Mr. Liguori, in his letter to Judge Caulfield, noted that but for Mr. Rahami's \"apparent incapacity, he was due to be produced before the court for his original appearance\" on Thursday. \"Except for these extraordinary circumstances, I would have entered my appearance\" at that proceeding, he wrote. Mr. Patton, the public defender in Manhattan, said the questions surrounding Mr. Rahami's representation were \"starting to look like a game of monte. \" \"I don't care where his lawyer comes from,\" he added. \"He just needs a lawyer. \"","label":0}
{"text":"The Hungarian government has passed a new regulatory law on foreign organisations (NGOs) such as those funded by billionaire George Soros. The law means tougher rules to make the organisations more transparent. [The new legislation, passed by 130 votes to 44 in the Hungarian parliament, will see NGOs with an annual revenue of more than 7. 2 million Hungarian forints ($ \u00a320, 000) be made to register as a \" organisation. \" The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) has expressed outrage at the new law and has already announced plans for civil disobedience the Budapest Business Journal reports. The spokesman for the Hungarian government Zoltan Kovacs defended the new law noting the government had gone to the European Commission for Democracy through Law, also known as the Venice Commission, who had seen no problems with it. The Venice Commission wrote a report on the new law saying it, \"pursues a prima facie legitimate aim and can be considered to be necessary in a democratic society in the interest of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. \" Kovacs also rejected accusations that the law was mimicking a similar law in Russia saying that the Hungarian law does not require NGOs to register as \"foreign agents\" and does not take away their public funding. The does, however, force NGOs to say where their funds are coming from and be more transparent. The law is largely seen by many as a continuation of the Hungarian government's crackdown on international NGOs financed by billionaire George Soros. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has slammed Soros in the past saying that he has agitated within Hungary through NGOs to open the borders for the mass migration of millions into Europe. In a speech at the European Parliament in April, Orban said, \"George Soros and his NGOs want to transport one million migrants to the EU per year. He has personally, publicly announced this programme and provides a financial loan for it. You could read this yourselves. \" The Hungarian government has also passed a law that some have charged as targeting the Central European University (CEU) which was founded by Soros. Orban said that it was unfair for the university to be able to issue U. S. degrees without having a campus in the U. S. as it gave it an advantage over all other Hungarian universities. Hungary joins a growing number of other Eastern European countries who have come out against Soros and his NGO network including establishment figures in Romania, Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria and Slovakia. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) have said they will plan civil disobedience in reaction to the NGO law saying it goes against the constitution of Hungary itself.","label":0}
{"text":"Once again, it seems as though someone associated with the Trump campaign will receive special treatment. According to reports, the billionaire s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, will not face the music for manhandling former Breitbart reporter (we use that term loosely, given the nature of the right-wing garbage dump), after roughly grabbing her during a campaign event after mistaking her for a member of the liberal media. Palm Beach County State Attorney David Aronberg says that, despite the attack being caught on video, the billionaire s right-hand man will not be prosecuted for what is clearly a crime because reasons.After Fields asked Trump a question, Lewandowski grabbed her, apparently attempting to throw her to the ground. Fields says she was able to maintain her balance, but she was left with bruises after the attack.Lewandowski initially denied the allegations, but after video surfaced he had no choice but to admit to what he did. But, of course, he says it was OK to physically assault a woman because he thought she was a member of the mainstream media he hates so much. Prosecutor s office told me they would inform me of decision tomorrow. If reports true, guess they decided to leak to reporters first. Ugly, Fields tweeted after news of the decision leaked. For those asking, office of prosecutor asked 2 weeks ago if I d be ok with an apology from Corey. I said ya but haven t heard back about it. With evidence of the attack, an admission, and a video that clearly shows the assault, one must wonder why Aronberg would refuse to prosecute Lewandowski, who was charged with a misdemeanor count of battery last month.You can bet that if it was anyone else, that person would have had to face what he did.Watch the attack below:","label":1}
{"text":"If there is one thing going for the American people against Trump s assault on decency, liberties, and intelligence it s that he and his team are so incompetent that they can t even do the simplest things without humiliating themselves. An obvious example of that sheer stupidity comes at us from this pro-Trump ad, which he recently proudly posted to his Facebook page.Thanks to the crack team over at the White House, a simple spelling mistake turned Trump s coal fetish into a call to relax child labor laws. In boasting about his efforts to kill clean energy and bring back coal, he promised to put our minors back to work. The word he was looking for was miners. Apparently, nobody at Trump s White House noticed the typo. It s been six hours and nobody has bothered to fix it, either.This would be a funny gaffe if it weren t so depressingly common. Trump has issued statements misspelling the names and titles of foreign leaders. Trump has misspelled words as simple and varied as Denmark (Denmakr), honored (honered), among (amoung), and unprecedented (unpresidented).A White House statement bragging about Betsy DeVos spelled education wrong. She s the Secretary of Education.The Library of Congress gift shop had to pull a poster honoring Trump s inauguration when people noticed it, too, had an ridiculously simple typo.No joke: Purchasable copy of Trump's Inauguration Print, direct from the Library of Congress site. A 5th grader would've spotted this typo. pic.twitter.com\/zomWsMojYV Jules Winnfield (@paulm4749) February 12, 2017Meanwhile, Trump s minor\/miner gaffe has another unfortunate side effect for his administration reminding us that his good friend Newt Gingrich actually wants to repeal child labor laws. As writer Parker Molloy points out, Newt, a full-time moron who moonlights as a part-time shithead on evenings and weekends, once called child labor laws truly stupid and suggested poor kids be encouraged to become janitors at their schools, picking up the trash of their classmates to earn lunch money.Speaking at the John F. Kennedy school, Gingrich said that children in the poorest neighborhoods are trapped in child laws that prevent them from earning money. Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school, Gingrich said according to a CNN video.Trump hasn t gone that far. He s only hinted that he would prefer children work. During Obama s administration when he was eager to pretend the unemployment rate was sky high he would sometimes count children as part of his inflated unemployment figures.Instead of worrying about coal miners and school-aged minors, Trump, who was born rich and stayed that way, might want to invest in some additional schooling for himself. Basic grammar and spelling would be a good place to start.","label":1}
{"text":"Remember the blind Bulgarian mystic who predicted 9\/11 and the rise of ISIS? Well, she's got some bad news for, dare I say it, Commander in Chief Donald Trump.  Via UsualRoutine  Baba Vanga, who's known to her followers as the 'Nostradamus of the Balkans', has claimed Obama is the last President of the United States of America. Vanga allegedly called the election of Barack Obama as well, predicting the 44th president of the United States would be an African American \u2013 also making the chilling claim that he would be the 'last U.S. president'. Usually, I'd be happy to dismiss the reaction to Vanga's prophetic prediction as the public clinging onto a ray of hope in today's new political climate, but actually, the blind mystic has a pretty great track record with her visions. The prophetess, who died aged 85 in 1996, is alleged to have made hundreds of predictions about the future with an 85 per cent accuracy rate, from her home in Petrich, Bulgaria. These prediction include climate change and the melting of the polar ice caps, which she allegedly foresaw back in the 1950s, saying: \"cold regions will become warm \u2026 and volcanoes will awaken\". Vanga's followers also say she predicted the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, warning a 'huge wave' would descend on a \"big coast, covering people and towns and [causing] everything to disappear under the water\". Back in 1989 she warned that the 'American brethren' will be attacked by 'two steel birds', a possible reference to the Twin Tower attacks in 2001. She also warned that a group of Muslim extremists would invade Europe by 2016, foreseeing a 'great Muslim war' that would be kick-started by the Arab Spring in 2010 and play out in Syria, eventually resulting in the establishment of a caliphate by 2043 with Rome at the center. According to The Mirror she claimed this '2016 invasion by Muslim extremists' across Europe would mean the continent would 'cease to exist' by the end of the year. She specifically said: \"[Extremists] would use chemical warfare against Europeans.\" Vanga's political predictions take on a new poignancy posthumously; could her assertions about the elusive 45th President equate to predicting an assassination attempt, or simply that Donald Trump is, as previously expected, a cyborg? Baba Vanga for President? Anyone?","label":1}
{"text":"It won't be the old car or the thousands of tobacco leaves or even the leaping crocodile model that will greet visitors when they walk into \"\u00a1Cuba! ,\" the first major exhibition the American Museum of Natural History has ever organized about that island nation. Guests will be welcomed instead by photographs of Cubans from Cuba and New York, alongside quotations that display a variety of views and aspirations. Although this is not a political exhibition, the nature of Cuba's relationship to the United States means that politics cannot \u2014 and should not \u2014 be avoided, said Christopher J. Raxworthy, curator of the museum's department of herpetology and a curator of \"\u00a1Cuba!\" \"We wanted the exhibition to be very honest,\" he said, to allow the diversity of Cuba, both environmental and political, to come through. \"\u00a1Cuba! ,\" opening Nov. 21 and running through Aug. 13, 2017, will be one of the largest exhibitions on Cuba's biodiversity, natural resources and culture ever presented in the United States. It will also be the museum's first fully bilingual show. All the senses will be brought into play. The scent of tobacco leaves will waft through part of the exhibition. Videos of Cuban music \u2014 and perhaps even live performances \u2014 will play at the end of what looks like a typical Cuban street, with cafes (no food or drink, but guests can sit down and play a game of dominoes to the aroma of coffee). The timing is both serendipitous and not. It comes about 16 months after President Obama announced the of diplomatic ties, which were severed by the Cuban missile crisis more than 50 years ago. Legal commercial flights to Cuba began just this summer. But the museum's ties to Cuba go deep. \"We have a relationship with Cuban scientists and paleontologists going back 100 years,\" Dr. Raxworthy said. While the museum had long had an interest in doing something on Cuba, \"the normalization awakened people's interest,\" he said. The political shift also made it easier to invite Cuban colleagues to help and accelerated visas, said Ana Luz Porzecanski, director of the museum's center for biodiversity and conservation and a curator of the exhibition. While it takes a minimum of two years to create something of the complexity and size of \"iCuba! ,\" this has been a little more rushed. \"We have had just under two years,\" Dr. Raxworthy said. Nothing is being shipped from Cuba because of the tight controls on the movement of biological materials. In any case, Dr. Porzecanski said, it is common for the museum to make models the exhibition needs to be hardy enough to travel, as it might be shown in different museums over the next 10 years. So in the bowels of the museum, an entire kaleidoscope of Cuban life has been created. It took 25 volunteers and several staff members to make the 4, 000 tobacco leaves out of construction paper. They are with acrylic in varying shades of brown and green, complete with tiny holes mimicking insect damage. Stems made of hardened hot glue are attached. Then they are crinkled, bundled together and hung over drying poles. \"It's taken from April to the end of August\" to finish the leaves,\" said Andrea Raphael, a model maker for the museum. There's a shed for the leaves that will demonstrate the tradition of and a of a throne used for the spiritual tradition known as Santeria, with information on how both have shaped the island nation. Also displayed are 30 original posters created over the last decade, which show \"the breadth and vitality of Cuban art,\" said Catharine Weese, director of exhibition graphic design. Michele Miyares Hollands, a Cuban artist who created some of the posters, was brought in to help develop that part of the show. An interactive exhibit allows museumgoers to explore the country's art, fashion and dance worlds. A 1955 Chevy will be on display as a tool to explain Cuban restrictions on imports and sales of American cars after 1959, as well as the ingenuity Cubans used in keeping their ancient automobiles running. But of course, the natural world is an important part of the exhibition, and that means an enormous amount of work has been done to recreate accurately everything from the prehistoric giant owl to the bee hummingbird, the tiniest bird in the world. Wetlands, rain forests and coral reefs all come to life. The plywood, foam and resin model of the Garden of the Queens coral reef alone took about six months to make, complete with a shark, which once lived in the museum's Ocean Life hall and had been banished to storage. \"Cuba has some of the best sea corals in the Caribbean,\" Dr. Raxworthy said. The giant owl, which went extinct about 6, 000 years ago and might have been the largest flying bird, stands about three feet tall and was created by sculpturing epoxy, applied over foam and a steel armature form. Its piercing glass yellow eyes were flown over from Wales because no one in the United States had the right size in the right color, said Jason Broughan, a model maker who was working on the owl. \"It was hard to flesh out the whole body \u2014 we had to do a lot of inference,\" he said. Rebecca Meah, who created the model of the endangered Cuban crocodile \u2014 known for leaping in the air to catch small animals hanging from tree branches \u2014 used the skull of a Cuban crocodile that lived in the Bronx Zoo for many years to shape its head. Working with clay over urethane foam, Ms. Meah said it was the details \u2014 such as recreating exactly how the skin lies on the bone \u2014 that make the animal seem real. \"Otherwise, it looks like a stuffed animal,\" she said. The reuse of bits and pieces from other parts of the museum is typical. The fur of the Cuban solenodon \u2014 which looks like a shrew with a very long snout \u2014 was repurposed from a polar bear and painted rusty brown. And some live animals, including the Cuban tree frog and Cuban boa, will also be on view. The hope, Dr. Raxworthy said, is that visitors will \"learn and have fun\" And, he said, \"for who haven't been back in a long time, it could be emotional. \"","label":0}
{"text":"In a stinging rebuke to President Donald Trump, a U.S. appeals court refused on Thursday to reinstate his travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations, calling it discriminatory and setting the stage for a showdown in the Supreme Court. The decision, written by Chief Judge Roger Gregory, described Trump's executive order in forceful terms, saying it uses \"vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.\" Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement that the government, which says the temporary travel ban is needed to guard against terrorist attacks, would seek a review of the case at the Supreme Court. \"These clearly are very dangerous times and we need every available tool at our disposal to prevent terrorists from entering the United States and committing acts of bloodshed and violence,\" said Michael Short, a White House spokesman. MORE FROM REUTERS * Kushner under FBI scrutiny in Russia probe: media reports * Ireland looks set to elect gay premier in social, generational shift * EXCLUSIVE: Kim Jong Un's 'rocket stars' He added that the White House was confident the order would ultimately be upheld by the judiciary. In its 10-3 ruling, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said those challenging the ban, including refugee groups and individuals, were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violates the U.S. Constitution's bar against favoring one religion over another. Gregory cited statements by Trump during the 2016 presidential election calling for a Muslim ban. During the race, Trump called for \"a total and complete shutdown of Muslim's entering the United States\" in a statement on his website. The judge wrote that a reasonable observer would likely conclude the order's \"primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs.\" The government had argued that the court should not take into account Trump's comments on the campaign trail since they occurred before he took office on Jan. 20. But the appeals court rejected that view, saying they provide a window into the motivations for Trump's action in government. The appeals court questioned a government argument that the president has wide authority to halt the entry of people to the United States. \"Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute. It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the President wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation,\" the majority opinion said. The Virginia-based appeals court was reviewing a March ruling by Maryland-based federal judge Theodore Chuang that blocked part of Trump's March 6 executive order barring people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government put in place stricter visa screening. A similar ruling against Trump's policy from a Hawaii-based federal judge is still in place. That ruling went farther than Chuang's order, blocking a section of the travel ban that also suspended refugee admissions for four months. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is still reviewing that decision. Trump has lashed out at the judges and courts that have ruled against him, saying the 9th Circuit has a \"terrible\" record and calling its rulings on his policies \"ridiculous.\" The March ban was Trump's second effort to implement travel restrictions through an executive order. The first, issued on Jan. 27, led to chaos and protests at airports before it was blocked by courts. The second order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but it was blocked by judges before it could go into effect on March 16. In an opinion that concurred with the majority on Thursday, Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote that the administration did nothing to distance itself from the first order, describing the revised ban as \"the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing.\" Chief Judge Gregory, who wrote the majority opinion, was first installed in a recess appointment by Democratic President Bill Clinton and then nominated to the same post by Republican former president George W. Bush. Nine other judges appointed by Democrats agreed to block the travel ban, while three Republican-appointed judges dissented. \"This to us is a complete win and overwhelming in terms of the votes,\" said Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project, who argued the case in the 4th Circuit. The dissenting judges said the executive order was constitutional and a valid exercise of presidential authority, and that Trump's campaign statements should not have come into play. The order itself \"contains no reference to religion whatsoever,\" Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote. The White House also pointed to a dissent by Judge Dennis Shedd that said \"the real losers in this case are the millions of individual Americans whose security is threatened on a daily basis by those who seek to do us harm.\" Two other 4th Circuit judges, both appointed by Republicans, were recused from the case.","label":0}
{"text":"Tucker Carlson interviews Jose Antonio Vargas, CEO of Define America He gave Vargas a reality check!Vargas takes offense to the way Carlson is framing this? It s difficult for this illegal to face reality.He says, I was an undocumented immigrant in this country yet he doesn t think he s illegal.Vargas: My protest yesterday was as an undocumented immigrant, one of 11 million who are viewed as criminals, let s pause here for a moment . . . that is one illegal immigrant too many and you ARE criminals . . . now we ll continue, my own way of protesting was just actually very quietly and respectfully thinking about what it means to be an immigrant in the Trump era, right? So that, that, that was my way, he stutters on smugly.Tucker replied, Okay, well thank you for not breaking anything . . . I m not accusing you of setting fires, I m merely saying: where are people who agree with these folks standing up and saying you re not allowed to do this, you can t block traffic, you can t break things, you can t set fires , it pretty simple. Vargas replies, This issue is not just quote-un-quote political, it s personal we re talking about millions of people who are related to undocumented people that you call criminal illegals everyday, right? Tucker aptly jumps in and asks of Vargas, What should I call people who are here illegally? Should I pretend they re not here illegally? Vargas, in a flustered state, tries to belittle Tucker, You ask me to come on your show, pretty much once a week, and I come here as an undocumented person . . . Tucker interrupts Vargas: You may be overstating it a little bit, I think this is the third time but here s the point, Tucker begins before Vargas cuts him off, Here s the point, I am here illegally . . . But I, as a person, am not illegal. Tucker jumps in with a perfect line, But I robbed a liquor store yesterday, which is illegal, but I m not illegal . . . I don t even know what the point you re making is, I m not saying you re a bad person, I m saying your status is in violation of the law. The way your framing it Carlson then says, actually I was just playing video from yesterday TRUTH! Spare me the nonsense! Tucker Carlson","label":1}
{"text":"The Trump administration will unveil a tax reform plan very soon and expects it will be approved by Congress this year whether a healthcare overhaul happens or not, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Thursday. \"It will be soon, very soon,\" Mnuchin told a conference on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank spring meetings in Washington. Mnuchin said the Treasury was working on tax reform options \"day and night\" but he gave few specifics. \"It will be sweeping, it will be significant and it will create a lot of economic growth,\" he said. President Donald Trump campaigned on promises to lower taxes and boost economic growth. Trump, who took office in January, suffered a setback last month when the Republican-controlled Congress pulled a proposal to overhaul health care rules that would have generated savings for public coffers. Trump has since said the administration will continue trying to replace health care legislation enacted by his predecessor, Barack Obama, though Mnuchin said tax reform will move forward even if health laws stay the same. \"Whether health care gets done or health care doesn't get done, we're going to get tax reform done,\" he said, Trump's tax plan would lower rates but most of the revenue lost under that plank of the reform would be gained back by boosting economic growth, Mnuchin said. \"The plan will pay for itself with growth.\"","label":0}
{"text":"21st Century Wire says Failing US magazine Newsweek once again finds itself on the ropes.For the last year, US mainstream media outlets have given themselves license to freely spray any and all slanderous accusations regarding Russia into the public domain, and about Russian-based media outlets in particular. One of the primary motivations for this festival of defamation is of course political. Early on in the general election the Russian conspiracy theory was promulgated by the White House and the Clinton campaign and the mainstream media in order to damage Trump s credibility. After Clinton s epic loss, legions of Democratic Party affiliated journalists and Hillary Clinton supporters in the media are still angry and upset about their election loss and do not accept Donald Trump as their President. As a result, many journalists are still using their positions in media to act out in public, and mostly with the full backing of their like-minded editors and media executives.While most of the endless scapegoating and lies about Russia and Trump continue as annoying background noise, some of the US liberal establishment s fake news and libelous claims, like stories made-up by CNN are beginning to be challenged in the courts which is causing a panic on many mainstream editorial news desks across America.This latest challenge to Newsweek and its shamed staff writer Kurt Eichenwald follows on the current blow-back trend line RT International reports Sputnik and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan commented on the removal by Newsweek of false stories about Trump conspiring with Russia, saying it deleted the lies about us, fearing court proceedings. We ll continue explaining to various newsweeks that lying is bad, Simonyan told Sputnik.Her comments come after Newsweek was forced to take down two erroneous articles by journalist Kurt Eichenwald, claiming that US President Donald Trump had conspired with Russia, as well as smearing former Sputnik editor William Moran.On Friday, Moran said that a settlement had been reached, but did not provide any further details, saying that the deal was confidential between the two sides.In October, Moran mistakenly attributed an article by Eichenwald to Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal and, realizing his mistake, deleted the article 20 minutes later. However, while the piece was online, Eichenwald saw it and imagined collusion between the Trump campaign, Sputnik, and Wikileaks.At the time, numerous media outlets (some usually quite critical of Russia) spoke out against Eichenwald. The Washington Post said that Eichenwald is at best misleading, while BuzzFeed proved that Trump and Moran quoted the same erroneous tweet, which was widespread online.Moran then contacted Eichenwald, attempting to clarify the situation and expecting Eichenwald to retract the story.That, however, did not happen. Instead, Eichenwald asked him to stay silent in exchange for a job as political reporter with The New Republic, and warned him about the potential consequences if the young journalist refused. Moran turned down the offer and went public with his version of events.Moran has left the field of journalism and is currently pursuing a law degree, Sputnik news agency said. Newsweek is an established brand of 80 years and yet it is not even in Sputnik s league in terms of global web traffic and performance, Patrick Henningsen, geopolitical analyst and executive editor at 21stCenturyWire.com, said. News outlets like RT and Sputnik are winning in the ratings battle with many US and UK English language media platforms, he said, and explained why this is happening. It is simply because the Russia-based English language outlets are filling a demand for real international news and edgy opinion. They are simply feeding a massive audience out there which has been intentionally neglected for decades by Western establishment media conglomerates who have always enjoyed a monopoly on the global English language market. A network like RT, and a website like Sputnik, are only filling a demand which was always there. READ MORE ABOUT MSM DISINFORMATION AT: 21st Century Wire Media Cog FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV","label":1}
{"text":"November 7, 2016 'We never denied Israel's right to Jerusalem, Temple Mount'  Levy quizzed him about those controversial issues as well as his support for Syrian President Basher Assad and charges that his country had intervened in the US elections.  How does Russia explain its support of the UNESCO vote \"to disregard the historic connection between the Jewish people and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem,\" Levy asked Medvedev.  The issue had been blown out of proportion, he responded speaking in Russian, with a Hebrew translation by Channel 2.  There have been some ten votes by UNESCO Boards and Committees on such Jerusalem resolutions, Medvedev said.  \"There is nothing new here,\" he said, as he dismissed the significance of UNESCO texts that refer to the Temple Mount solely by its Muslim name of Al Haram Al Sharif.  \"Our country has never denied the rights of Israel or the Jewish people to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount or the Western Wall,\" Medvedev said.  \"Therefore there is no need to politicize this decision,\" Medvedev said, adding that such resolutions, were \"not directed against Israel.\"  Similarly, he said, there was nothing contradictory in Russia's sale and shipment of the advanced S-300 advanced surface to air missile defense system to Iran.","label":1}
{"text":"Is it any wonder veterans are getting behind Donald J. Trump in huge numbers? Isn t it about time we took care of our veterans the way they deserve to be taken care of? The VA under the Obama administration has never been more dysfunctional and corrupt. Hillary is nothing more than Obama in a pants suit. Our veterans deserver better than 4 more years of the most disrespectful Commander In Chief our nation has ever known. This corrupt VA has to be completely overhauled. Every American should demand nothing less!Hundreds of veterans have died while waiting to get care from the Department of Veterans Affairs, all while the department spent millions of taxpayer dollars on high-end art.According to an investigation by COX Media Washington, D.C. and American Transparency, the VA has spent $20 million on high-end art over the last 10 years, $16 million of that spent during President Obama s tenure.The investigation found one particularly egregious example: $670,000 combined spent on two sculptures at a VA center for the blind.Other examples include $21,000 spent on an artificial Christmas tree, $610,000 spent over five years for a new facility in Puerto Rico and more than a million dollars combined on three art projects in Palo Alto, Calif. Instead of hiring doctors to help triage backlogged veterans, the VA s bonus-happy bureaucracy spent millions of dollars on art, Andrew Andrzejewski, founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, writes in Forbes. Washington Examiner","label":1}
{"text":"Sometimes you get the feeling that Paul Ryan has forgotten exactly who he works for. Despite the fact that while campaigning, Donald Trump had his supporters chant Lock her up! in reference to Hillary Clinton using a private email server, Ryan believes that Republicans wouldn t call for the impeachment of a Democratic president accused of actions similar President Trump s.While James Comey confirmed in his hearing before a senate committee that he has no doubt that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and that Trump tried to influence a criminal investigation, in response to a question from a reporter at his weekly Capitol press conference as to whether Republicans would be in favor of impeachment at this point, Ryan s answer was one of simple denial. No. I don t think we would, actually. I don t think that s at all the case, Ryan said, despite belonging to a party that impeached a president over oral sex.Ryan admitted on MSNBC the previous night that it was obviously inappropriate to ask for the then-FBI director s loyalty, but claimed during the Capitol press conference that he felt sympathy toward Trump when it came to the topic of James Comey telling the president that he personally wasn t under investigation. What I got out of that testimony is, we now know why he was so frustrated when the FBI director told him three times there s no investigation of him, yet that speculation was allowed to continue, said Ryan.Maybe if the president wasn t so self-centered and perhaps a little smarter he would ve reworded his question, because Comey made the point clear during his testimony The FBI has no individual file on Donald Trump, thus Trump himself wasn t personally under investigation. His campaign, on the other hand, is and that consists of more people than just Donald Trump. And if Trump became a person of interest and was directly under investigation, it would create a duty to publicly correct the record.But since when has Donald Trump ever really thought about anybody besides Donald Trump?","label":1}
{"text":"Two U.S. senators are seeking details from Goldman Sachs Group Inc's (GS.N) chief executive on the extent to which the bank's employees were involved in drafting of the recent executive orders on banking and fiduciary regulations. In a letter to CEO Lloyd Blankfein dated Feb. 9 and made public on Friday, Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin asked for details on \"lobbying\" activities in the bank related to review of the Dodd-Frank Act and the Obama-era fiduciary rule on financial advice. Blankfein was also asked to detail the profits Goldman would make if these reforms came into effect. \"We've had no involvement in the drafting of any executive orders,\" a Goldman spokesman said on Friday. In December, Trump appointed Gary Cohn, former Goldman president and chief operating officer, to head the White House National Economic Council, a group that coordinates economic policy across agencies. Trump last week ordered reviews of major banking rules that were put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, drawing fire from Democrats who said his order lacked substance and squarely aligned him with Wall Street bankers. \"The executive orders released by President Trump on Friday last week raise our concerns about the degree to which Cohn's advice to Trump is good for Wall Street, but bad for Americans,\" the senators wrote on Thursday. \"Goldman Sachs would be a major beneficiary of these efforts to deregulate the financial industry,\" they added in the letter. Trump also named former Goldman partner Steven Mnuchin as his pick for Treasury secretary in December. The senators have asked for any communication between the bank's employees and Cohn, Mnuchin, nominee for the SEC chair Jay Clayton and chief strategist Steve Bannon.","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump has concluded interviews with the five candidates he is considering to chair the Federal Reserve and could announce a decision as early as next week, a source familiar with the process said on Thursday. Trump met with current Fed chair Janet Yellen on Thursday. That meeting \"went well,\" the source said, adding that Trump had not made up his mind one way or the other about his list. \"I don't think he's leaning yet,\" the source said. Other contenders to lead the U.S. central bank are top Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn, Fed Board Governor Jerome Powell, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh and Stanford University economics professor John Taylor. [nL2N1MS2D8] Powell, who is viewed as representing a continuation of Yellen's gradualist approach to raising interest rates, along with Warsh, are seen as the top contenders. Despite his time as Fed Governor under Chair Ben Bernanke, Warsh is seen as a less well-known nominee. He has criticized the Fed's bond-buying program and advocated changes in its inflation target. U.S. Treasury yields briefly renewed their drop late Thursday after Politico reported that Trump was leaning toward nominating Powell for the job. Trump leaves on Nov. 3 for a tour of Asia and is expected to announce his choice before that trip. The president told reporters on Tuesday that he likes all five candidates. \"I'll make a decision over the next fairly short period of time,\" Trump said. Meanwhile, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives' Freedom Caucus mounted a campaign to kill any chance of a second term for Yellen, the latest sign conservative Republicans want a fresh face at the helm of the Fed, which sets U.S. monetary policy. Representative Warren Davidson, a Republican on the House Financial Services Committee's monetary policy panel, is among those who want a change. He is circulating a letter opposing Yellen's reappointment, the Ohio congressman's spokesman said. \"Davidson is very passionate about this process,\" the spokesman said, adding that the lawmaker is particularly concerned about the impact Fed policy has had on the ability of small firms to raise operating funds. Members of the Freedom Caucus, the most conservative Republican grouping in Congress, have been critical of Yellen, with some accusing her of keeping monetary policy too loose. Key members of the House Financial Services Committee also have backed ideas proposed by contenders to replace Yellen. Taylor's research, for example, figured prominently in a House-passed bill requiring the Fed to explain its actions through a strict set of rules. The House, however, has no direct control over the appointment of a Fed chief. The Senate decides whether to confirm the president's nominee. Trump has criticized Yellen in the past and vowed to \"drain the swamp\" in Washington by naming new people to top jobs and embracing different ideas. But his economic agenda could benefit from the steady economic conditions fostered by Yellen's Fed. Cohn's chances of getting the job were thought to have dimmed after he publicly criticized the president's response to a white supremacist rally in Virginia. But the top White House economic adviser, who is helping to lead the administration's push for tax reform, has since gotten back into Trump's good graces.","label":0}
{"text":"As more and more women line up to tell their stories about sex with Bill Clinton both consensual and forced there is one who is unable to relive the details of her alleged affair.Penthouse Pet Judi Gibbs died in a mysterious house fire in 1986 amid rumors that she had pictures that proved she and the then-Governor of Arkansas had been regular sex partners.And even now, 30 years after she died alongside her much-older other lover, doubts remain about how and why Gibbs and her long-time beau Bill Puterbaugh met their grizzly deaths.But now DailyMail.com has pieced together the life and death of Judi Gibbs, telling for the first time how the auburn-haired woman from a pin-prick of an Arkansas town managed to bed the man who went on to be one of the most powerful men in the world.And the question remains unanswered: Was Judi Gibbs killed because Bill Clinton and his advisers feared the affair was about to become public? I have always been convinced that Bill Clinton was responsible for the fire, but I have no proof, Gibbs older sister Martha, who still lives in Sims, Arkansas, told DailyMail.com. And what would happen if I had proof you can t touch those people. At the time of her death, Gibbs was 32 and living with 57-year-old developer Puterbaugh in a large isolated home a quarter-mile drive opposite a tiny airport outside Fordyce, Arkansas.Their bodies were both found in the huge master bedroom. They died of smoke inhalation.Puterbaugh s son, Randy, who followed him into the real estate business, tells a similar story to Martha Gibbs, even though the two have not spoken since the days following the double death. There are so many pieces of the puzzle. Puterbaugh said. I believe it is a possibility that Bill Clinton was involved in their deaths. I know I wish I had hired my own private investigator but I didn t, so I guess I will never know. Judi Gibbs and Bill Puterbaugh died on January 3, 1986. According to a report in the local Fordyce News-Advocate, Gibbs called the fire department at 2.26 am wailing in her Marilyn Monroe-type voice: Bill Puterbaugh s house is on fire, hurry, you all, hurry. Puterbaugh s body was found by a window. Gibbs was still clutching the phone right next to the king-sized bed.Local fire chief Roy Wayne Moseley has no explanation as to why the lovers did not manage to get out of the house. The only reason I can think why they didn t is they were overrun with smoke so quick and so fast, he said. It was a real tragedy. As far as residential fires go, that was the worst we ve had, added Moseley, now 80 and still chief of the Fordyce Volunteer Fire Department a post he has held since 1960.Many people around the Clintons have died in unusual circumstances over the years, leading conspiracy theorists to claim they could be connected.As DailyMail.com reported earlier this year, five deaths in a six-week span between June 22 and August 2 this year had connections to the former first family. I m not saying the Clintons kill people. I m saying a lot of people around the Clintons turn up dead, Larry Nichols, who worked with the former First Family before turning against them, told DailyMail.com.And the names of Judi Gibbs and her lover Bill Puterbaugh could be added to that list.Gibbs was the sixth of seven children born to a hardscrabble family in Sims, a two-hour drive west of Little Rock.In her teens, she was lured into prostitution by her brother-in-law Dale Bliss, who is now 85 and 32 years into a life prison sentence for child rape. Daily Mail","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is expected to announce a new probe into imported aluminum, CNBC reported on Wednesday. The probe will be similar to the one the White House launched last week regarding steel, CNBC reported, citing an administration official. (cnb.cx\/2q8oDQl) Ross on Tuesday told the Wall Street Journal the Trump administration may undertake trade actions to protect the U.S. semiconductor, shipbuilding and aluminum industries, citing national security concerns.","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement Thursday marked a decisive win for Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, as reported by the New York Times. [From the Times: advertisement","label":0}
{"text":"Videos 'We The People' Against Tyranny: Seven Principles For Free Government \"As I look at America today, I am not afraid to say that I am afraid.\"\u2014 Former presidential adviser Bertram Gross | November 7, 2016 Be Sociable, Share! Dozens of protestors demonstrating against the expansion of the Dakota Access Pipeline wade in cold creek waters confronting local police, as remnants of pepper spray waft over the crowd near Cannon Ball, N.D., Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2016.  As history teaches us, if the people have little or no knowledge of the basics of government and their rights, those who wield governmental power inevitably wield it excessively. After all, a citizenry can only hold its government accountable if it knows when the government oversteps its bounds.  Precisely because Americans are easily distracted\u2014because, as study after study shows, they are clueless about their rights\u2014because their elected officials no longer represent them\u2014because Americans have been brainwashed into believing that their only duty as citizens is to vote\u2014because the citizenry has failed to hold government officials accountable to abiding by the Constitution\u2014because young people are no longer being taught the fundamentals of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, resulting in citizens who don't even know they have rights\u2014and because Americans continue to place their trust in politics to fix what's wrong with this country\u2014the American governmental scheme is sliding ever closer towards a pervasive authoritarianism.  This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past fifty years regardless of their political affiliation.  Big government has grown bigger and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.  However, there are certain principles\u2014principles that every American should know\u2014which undergird the American system of government and form the basis for the freedoms our forefathers fought and died for.  The following seven principles are a good starting point for understanding what free government is really all about.  First, the maxim that power corrupts is an absolute truth. Realizing this, those who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights held one principle sacrosanct: a distrust of all who hold governmental power. As James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, proclaimed, \"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.\" Moreover, in questions of power, Thomas Jefferson warned, \"Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.\" As such, those who drafted our founding documents would see today's government as an out-of-control, unmanageable beast.  The second principle is that governments primarily exist to secure rights, an idea that is central to constitutionalism. In appointing the government as the guardian of the people's rights, the people give it only certain, enumerated powers, which are laid out in a written constitution. The idea of a written constitution actualizes the two great themes of the Declaration of Independence: consent and protection of equal rights. Thus, the purpose of constitutionalism is to limit governmental power and ensure that the government performs its basic function: to preserve and protect our rights, especially our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the government today has discarded this principle and now sees itself as our master, not our servant. The obvious next step, unless we act soon, is tyranny.  The third principle revolves around the belief that no one is above the law, not even those who make the law. This is termed rule of law. Richard Nixon's statement, \"When the President does it, that means it is not illegal,\" would have been an anathema to the Framers of the Constitution. If all people possess equal rights, the people who live under the laws must be allowed to participate in making those laws. By that same token, those who make the laws must live under the laws they make. However, today government officials at all levels often act as if they are royalty with salaries and perks that none of the rest of us are afforded. This is an egregious affront to the citizenry.  Fourth, separation of powers ensures that no single authority is entrusted with all the powers of government. People are not perfect, whether they are in government or out of it. As history makes clear, those in power tend to abuse it. The government is thus divided into three co-equal branches: legislative, executive and judicial. Placing all three powers in the same branch of government was considered the very definition of tyranny. The fact that the president today has dictatorial powers would have been considered a curse by the Framers.  Fifth, a system of checks and balances, essential if a constitutional government is to succeed, strengthens the separation of powers and prevents legislative despotism. Such checks and balances include dividing Congress into two houses, with different constituencies, term lengths, sizes and functions; granting the president a limited veto power over congressional legislation; and appointing an independent judiciary capable of reviewing ordinary legislation in light of the written Constitution, which is referred to as \"judicial review.\" The Framers feared that Congress could abuse its powers and potentially emerge as the tyrannous branch because it had the power to tax. But they did not anticipate the emergence of presidential powers as they have come to dominate modern government or the inordinate influence of corporate powers on governmental decision-making. Indeed, as recent academic studies now indicate, we are now ruled by a monied oligarchy that serves itself and not \"we the people.\"  Sixth, representation allows the people to have a voice in government by sending elected representatives to do their bidding while avoiding the need of each and every citizen to vote on every issue considered by government. In a country as large as the United States, it is not feasible to have direct participation in governmental affairs. Hence, we have a representative government. If the people don't agree with how their representatives are conducting themselves, they can and should vote them out. However, as the citizenry has grown lazy and been distracted by the entertainment spectacles of modern society, government bureaucrats churn out numerous laws each year resulting in average citizens being rendered lawbreakers and jailed for what used to be considered normal behavior. Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people's reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it. Without local institutions a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty.  Unfortunately, we are now governed by top-heavy government emanating from Washington DC that has no respect for local institutions or traditions.  These seven vital principles have been largely forgotten in recent years, obscured by the haze of a centralized government, a citizenry that no longer thinks analytically, and schools that don't adequately teach our young people about their history and their rights.  Yet here's the rub: while Americans wander about in their brainwashed states, their \"government of the people, by the people and for the people\" has largely been taken away from them.  The answer: get un-brainwashed.  Stand up for the founding principles.  Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.  Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.  Most of all, do these things today.  If we wait until the votes have all been counted or hang our hopes on our particular candidate to win and fix what's wrong with the country, \"we the people\" will continue to lose.  Whether we ever realize it not, the enemy is not across party lines, as they would have us believe. It has us surrounded on all sides.  Even so, we're not yet defeated.  We could still overcome our oppressors if we cared enough to join forces and launch a militant nonviolent revolution\u2014a people's revolution that starts locally and trickles upwards\u2014but that will take some doing.  It will mean turning our backs on the political jousting contests taking place at all levels of government and rejecting their appointed jesters as false prophets. It will mean not allowing ourselves to be corralled like cattle and branded with political labels that have no meaning anymore. It will mean recognizing that all the evils that surround us today\u2014endless wars, drone strikes, invasive surveillance, militarized police, poverty, asset forfeiture schemes, overcriminalization, etc.\u2014are not of our making but came about as a way to control and profit from us.  It will mean \" voting with our feet \" through sustained, mass civil disobedience.  As journalist Chris Hedges points out, \"There were once radicals in America, people who held fast to moral imperatives. They fought for the oppressed because it was right , not because it was easy or practical. They were willing to accept the state persecution that comes with open defiance. They had the courage of their convictions. They were not afraid.\"  Ultimately, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People , it will mean refusing to be divided, one against each other, by politics and instead uniting behind the only distinction that has ever mattered: \"we the people\" against tyranny. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Mint Press News editorial policy. Be Sociable, Share!","label":1}
{"text":"Panama s government will send an immigration and security delegation to China, the country s president said on Tuesday, as part of the lifting of visa restrictions for Chinese visitors. Chinese visitors to Panama will now need an electronic visa stamped in a consulate instead of a restricted visa obtained through a lawyer to visit the country, part of measures the government hopes will promote tourism and investment. The security and migration delegation will travel to China for the opening of the Panamanian consulate, though there was no exact date yet, said President Juan Carlos Varela. In June, Panama established diplomatic ties with China, breaking with self-ruled Taiwan in a major victory for Beijing, the second most important customer of its key shipping canal.","label":0}
{"text":"October 29, 2016 Before: The tears of a 16-year-old Ethiopian waiting to be registered to leave for an asylum centre. After: The tears of an Ethiopian waiting to be registered to leave for an asylum centre.  In its weepy coverage of the dismantling of the Jungle invasion staging camp, the publicly-funded FranceInfo propaganda service realised it had gone a bit too far.","label":1}
{"text":"How Hillary Clinton Locked Up The Democratic Nomination In 10 Steps The primary season isn't quite wrapped yet (six states hold Democratic contests Tuesday), but Hillary Clinton has now secured the number of delegates needed (2,383) to become the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee. Speaking Monday night, Clinton said, \"according to the news, we are on the brink of a historic, historic, unprecedented moment. But we still have work to do, don't we?\" It wasn't easy for Clinton to emerge from this campaign season victorious \u2014 she got there by applying lessons from her failed 2008 bid and forming strong alliances with Democrats, President Obama and voters of color. And by surviving an epic 11-hour congressional hearing. Here's a look back at the Democratic primary and 10 steps Clinton took to climb to the nomination: On June 7, 2008, four days after the final votes were cast in the lengthy and contentious Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton gave quite possibly the best political speech of her career. She was bowing out of the race, conceding what news organizations had already called. Barack Obama had won more pledged delegates and had more so-called superdelegates lined up behind him. He was going to be the party's nominee. Depending on how you counted, Clinton had won the popular vote and could have taken the fight all the way to the convention. But instead, she brought her supporters together at the Building Museum in Washington, D.C., to mourn what could have been and look ahead. Gone (at least visibly) was the bitterness of the campaign, replaced with a message about all they had accomplished. \"Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it's got about 18 million cracks in it,\" Clinton said to the roaring crowd. \"And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time.\" And seemingly, it has been a little easier for her this time. Clinton appears more comfortable nodding to her chance at making history than she was in 2008, usually with a joke about her hair or as a rebuttal to the idea that she's too establishment. Her supporters frequently talk about it, saying things like \"it's time.\" In dozens of interviews with Clinton backers, excitement about having a woman make it to the White House is almost always preceded or followed by mention of Clinton as the \"most qualified\" or \"experienced\" candidate in the race. And whatever you do, don't suggest they're just voting for her because she's a woman. So-called superdelegates are a pretty good stand-in for the Democratic Party establishment. They are elected officials and party leaders, and they overwhelmingly support Hillary Clinton. Back in November, when NPR first looked at the declared allegiances of these superdelegates, Clinton had a 45 to 1 advantage over her most serious opponent, Bernie Sanders. Clinton had the endorsement of all but one Democratic woman in the Senate, and Sanders won the endorsement of only one of his Senate colleagues, Jeff Merkley. Endorsements don't necessarily sway voters, but they do indicate institutional support and in this case a coalescing behind a single candidate. Clinton's shadow loomed large over the Democratic field \u2014 so large that many big names in the party didn't even think about running in 2016. Elizabeth Warren didn't run. Joe Biden stayed out (though the death of his son likely had more to do with that than concern about taking on Clinton). The nation's most popular sitting Democratic governors sat out, too (Maryland's recently former Gov. Martin O'Malley did run, but his campaign never took off). That meant Clinton's biggest competition was a 74-year-old independent senator from Vermont who described himself as a Democratic socialist. The Democratic National Committee and its chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, have never admitted it, but many looked at the Democratic debate schedule and saw an advantage for Clinton. There were initially only a handful of debates scheduled, and the first one wasn't until October, meaning lesser-known candidates like O'Malley and Sanders weren't able to get a nationally televised audience for their message until a big part of the campaign (and even some voter registration deadlines) had passed. Sanders was able to draw huge crowds, raise massive sums of money and win an impressive number of states. But the Democratic Party establishment never wavered in its support of Clinton. There was no love lost between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the primary in 2008. But when it was over, Clinton endorsed her opponent and even called for the end of the roll call vote at the convention, moving that Obama win the nomination by acclamation. She worked hard to make sure that her supporters, even those known as PUMAs (\"party unity my a**\"), came around to supporting Obama. She and her husband, Bill, campaigned tirelessly for Obama through the fall. And then, when Obama asked, she agreed to join the Obama administration as secretary of state. She then worked tirelessly in that position, traveling to more than 100 countries promoting Obama's agenda. Why does this matter? Because her loyalty didn't go unnoticed by voters who supported and continue to support Obama. \"She was a fighter, but she knew when to let go,\" said Paulette Roca, who saw Clinton speak at the National Action Network convention, organized by civil rights activist Al Sharpton. \"And now? She's going to be OK now. She has respect. When black women respect you, you've got respect\" (see No. 4 for more on this). In the primary, Clinton was able to ride Obama's coattails, while at times (Wall Street regulation, campaign cash) using him as a human shield against attacks from Sanders. Black women love Hillary Clinton. At least that's what exit polls from state after state will tell you. In Alabama, 93 percent of black women voted for her. In Virginia, it was 85 percent. And this is no small thing because in 2008 and 2012, African-American women were the most reliable Democratic voters. This support was a critical part of Clinton's firewall against Sanders in the early voting states of Nevada and South Carolina, and made a big difference for her in the March 1 Super Tuesday states and beyond. How did Clinton earn such overwhelming support? Years and years of relationships. One of Clinton's first jobs was working with Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund. And in more recent years, she has quietly reached out to the mothers of young African-Americans killed in gun violence or encounters with police. \"When you're openly grieving and the secretary of state steps to you, you'd better endorse her, because she's already endorsed you,\" said Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland, a woman who died in her jail cell last year. Reed-Veal and other \"mothers of the movement\" were campaigning for Clinton. Clinton had no surrogates more powerful than those mothers. In 2008, Clinton was the candidate with town halls that were too big, infighting advisers, and an operation that didn't get into the nitty-gritty details of delegates and missed the political phenomenon about to overtake her. In 2016, Clinton's campaign purposely kept the events small and emphasized listening. She hired a no-drama campaign manager and brought on Obama's polling and delegate gurus. The campaign's mantra has been, \"We're working for every vote and taking nothing for granted.\" Even if no one believed them at first, the 2016 Clinton campaign has always operated like it was expecting a tough primary (it got one from Sanders) and a challenging general election fight, too. Compared with Sanders' big rallies, her small town halls and coffee chats have seemed puny and low on energy. But for those who attend, there's a real connection. \"I think she works the room like this like nobody can,\" said Adrienne Press, a supporter who attended a small Clinton rally in Manhattan. Afterward, Clinton worked the rope line for a long time, shaking hands and taking selfies. \"You see the real Hillary in this situation, and that fires people up. It fires me up.\" The campaign has played to Clinton's strengths (her wonk flag flies at town hall-style events) and emphasized winning the most delegates possible in every contest, helping her build up a massive lead Sanders was never able to substantially dent. Clinton and her team knew from the start that economic populism was running strong through the Democratic electorate. In the very first remarks of her campaign, Clinton called for a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision on campaign finance, and she decried the growing separation between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else. \"I think it's fair to say that as you look across the country, the deck is still stacked in favor of those already at the top,\" Clinton said at a campaign stop in Iowa. \"And there's something wrong with that.\" This didn't stop Sanders from getting into the race a month later. Now, more than a year later, she is pitching herself to Sanders supporters, saying their differences really aren't all that great. Clinton has a mountain of policy papers and more on the way. They cover everything from opioid addiction and mass incarceration to paid family leave and Alzheimer's. If there's an issue Clinton has heard about on the campaign trail, she likely has a plan to address it. It's something she says people mock her for (though it's not clear who). \"Some people have commented like, 'Enough with the plans, Hillary. We don't want to hear anymore plans,' \" she said with a smile at a rally in April. But she argued that the plans were a critical part of her campaign, of letting voters know what they are signing up for. \"It is easy to diagnose the problems facing America,\" she said to cheers. \"We need solutions that we work together to achieve.\" This praise of plans may not sound all that inspiring, but spend a little time talking to Clinton supporters, and it seems like each one cites a different plan as something that really hits home for them and motivated them to volunteer for the campaign. All those plans also allowed Clinton to deliver her message to people in places where they wouldn't necessarily find politics, like a Facebook group for families of children with autism. Sanders had been gaining steam throughout the summer, but the campaign hit a wall in October 2015. That's when Clinton turned in a strong debate performance and then a week later made it through an epic 11-hour hearing of the House special committee investigating the attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans including the ambassador to Libya. The Benghazi attack was one of the darkest moments of Clinton's time as secretary of state and has been a weight on her ever since, through multiple congressional investigations and a raft of conspiracy theories about what really happened. The hearing also focused on Clinton's exclusive use of a private email server for official business while she was secretary of state. When the hearing was over, the reviews were nearly unanimous: Clinton had performed well under pressure, and the committee's Republicans failed to find any smoking guns. The committee has still not released its investigative report and has largely been quiet since the hearing. It was perhaps Sanders' most memorable line of the entire campaign. It came in the first Democratic debate of 2015, and it largely neutralized one of Clinton's largest liabilities, at least for the primary. \"The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,\" Sanders said to applause. Clinton responded saying: \"Thank you. Me too, me too.\" She let out a big laugh. Sanders' larger point that the emails were a distraction from the important issues facing Americans was lost. He had just seemingly let her off the hook. Now, the email issue is far from over. The inspector general for the State Department recently released a highly critical report saying Clinton hadn't followed department protocol and that she and her team didn't cooperate with his investigation. And the FBI has an ongoing investigation into her use of a private server for official business. But, thanks in part to Sanders, Clinton's email problem was more of a nuisance than a deal breaker in the Democratic primary. There were the photo lines with volunteers before and after public events, the calls to superdelegates, the trips to states she had no chance of winning, with the hope of narrowing the margin and securing a few more delegates. That's what Clinton did. Her campaign's volunteers and staff held house parties, they knocked on doors in snowstorms (people are extra friendly then) and spent hours making phone calls. Organizing isn't glamorous. It's the grunt work of campaigning. But her campaign credits that hard work with her narrowest-of-margins win in the Iowa caucuses. The demographics of the state favored Sanders, but she was able to pull out a win. Barely. In short, Hillary Clinton and her campaign never took it easy.","label":0}
{"text":"Federal health officials on Monday urged pregnant women to stay away from a Miami neighborhood where they have discovered additional cases of Zika infection \u2014 apparently the first time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised people not to travel to a place in the continental United States. Florida officials said the number of Zika cases caused by local mosquitoes had risen to 14 from the four announced on Friday: 12 men and two women. They declined to say whether either woman was pregnant. All of the cases have been in one neighborhood. Health officials said they still did not expect the number of local cases to grow into anything comparable to the epidemic that has raged across Latin America in recent months. The 10 newly identified patients were most likely infected weeks ago, as early as the officials said. But the new information casts doubt over the effectiveness of weeks of intensive efforts in South Florida and raises questions about tourism in the state, which drew more than 100 million visitors last year. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the C. D. C. said that the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the Zika virus, has proved to be a wily adversary in Wynwood, a crowded, urban neighborhood in north Miami where all the cases were found. The mosquito may be resistant to the insecticides being used or may be able to hide in standing water. \"Aggressive mosquito control measures don't seem to be working as well as we would like,\" he said in a press briefing on Monday. The authorities had expected additional cases of Zika infection linked to the neighborhood, he said. But officials were particularly concerned by indications over the weekend that \"moderately high\" numbers of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and their larvae were still being found in a section in Wynwood, an area of warehouses, art galleries, restaurants, bars, apartments and condominiums. \"We advise pregnant women to avoid travel to this area,\" Dr. Frieden said, \"and pregnant women who live and work in this area and their partners to make every effort to avoid mosquito bites and practice safe sex. \" Pregnant women who traveled to the neighborhood on or after June 15 should talk with their doctors about getting tested for possible infection, he said. In addition, said Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, a leader of the C. D. C. 's pregnancy and birth defects team, \"we are recommending women who are considering pregnancy not get pregnant for up to eight weeks after returning from that area. \" No mosquito found in the neighborhood has tested positive for the virus, but this species has a short life span. Health officials said the Florida mosquitoes carrying the virus had probably acquired it by biting an infected traveler from Latin America or the Caribbean. At the request of the state, the C. D. C. has dispatched an emergency response team of eight experts in fields including birth defects and mosquito control. Dr. Frieden said mosquitoes in the neighborhood would be tested for resistance to the insecticides being used, which he said were two different types of pyrethroids. In a sign that the Zika cases might affect tourism in Florida, Britain's health agency, saying the risk was moderate, advised pregnant women on Saturday to \"consider postponing nonessential travel to affected areas until after the pregnancy. \" Jack Ezon, the president of Ovation Vacations in New York, said that his agency received 22 reservation cancellations on Monday for trips to Florida over the next six months, and that about four times as many people called for information about the travel advisory. \"Yesterday, the news was terrorism. Today, the news is Zika,\" he said. The airline JetBlue said in a statement that it would allow refunds for people with \"concerns of traveling to areas confirmed by the C. D. C. \" But Ross Feinstein, a spokesman for American Airlines, which has a hub in Miami, said no refunds would be issued, even for pregnant women. \"The C. D. C. advisory doesn't tell people they shouldn't travel to Miami,\" he said. Abraham Pizam, the dean of the Rosen College of Hospitality Management, said that if the travel advisory had any effect on tourism, it would be only \"for a very short period of time\" and would not put a big dent in the diverse range of tourists who visit Florida. Gov. Rick Scott said in a statement that the Florida health authorities had tested people in three locations in and Broward Counties and ruled out transmission by local mosquitoes in two of those locations. Six of the 10 newly identified cases were asymptomatic and discovered through the testing. Dr. Frieden said 12 of the 14 cases were linked to a area around two workplaces where the initial two cases were identified in July. Since July 7, when Florida began investigating what turned out to be the first diagnosed local transmission, more than 200 people in and Broward Counties who live or work near the Wynwood neighborhood have been tested, Mr. Scott said. Mosquito experts said Aedes aegypti thrives in tiny pockets of water \u2014 a bottle cap, a storm drain \u2014 making for a notoriously elusive foe. \"Very little historically has worked on Aedes aegypti, owing to its stealthy and domestic behavior,\" said Phil Lounibos, a professor of entomology at the University of Florida. Aerial spraying is largely ineffective in an urban setting like Wynwood. Instead, mosquito control employees have conducted 621 property inspections there, treated 21 properties for mosquito breeding and used portable sprayers against adult mosquitoes on 100 properties, said Gayle Love, the spokeswoman for the County Department of Solid Waste. Spray trucks were also sent to the neighborhood, but were legally allowed to spray only at night, while Aedes aegypti mosquitoes tend to bite during the day, said Michael S. Doyle, the executive director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District. \"Most of the chemicals that are available for mosquito control are not effective against Aedes aegypti \u2014 they are resistant,\" he said. On Monday, in Wynwood, there was little obvious concern. \"I haven't seen any panic,\" said Virgil Cant\u00fa, 22, a bartender at the Bar Next Door. Melanie Hernandez, 20, who was working Monday at the Marine Layer clothing store in Wynwood, said she was worried, even though she did not plan to get pregnant anytime soon. \"I looked up the symptoms online after I heard that Wynwood is ground zero for Zika,\" she said. \"Obviously you're scared, because you never know. \"","label":0}
{"text":"Some, but not all, foreign Islamic State fighters have left Syria s Raqqa city on Sunday as part of a withdrawal deal with U.S.-backed militias, a local official told Reuters on Sunday. Omar Alloush, a member of the Raqqa Civil Council, would not say how many militants remain in the city, where the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have hemmed them into a small enclave. An SDF spokesman said earlier that a group of Syrian Islamic State fighters without foreign militants had evacuated Raqqa overnight, taking civilians with them as human shields.","label":0}
{"text":"Washington (CNN) As Vice President Joe Biden continues to contemplate a late entry into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, he faces obstacles toward arriving at yes -- not least of which is his own emotional state three months after his son's death. After a week of meetings with key Democrats -- including influential Sen. Elizabeth Warren and labor leader Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO -- Biden on Friday didn't appear any closer to making a decision, which advisers still expect is weeks away. He'll have more chances to consult members of his party next week, when he heads south to rally support behind the administration's nuclear deal with Iran. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, invited Biden to make the case for the agreement in person in south Florida on Thursday. The DNC has kept Biden and his political team abreast of debate schedules heading into the fall, and most Democratic operatives say the vice president must decide by the first forum -- a CNN-sponsored event on Oct. 13 -- whether or not he's running. Biden still faces the daunting proposition of raising enough campaign cash to compete with the tens of millions already collected by Hillary Clinton, and carving out support among key Democratic voting blocs to make a dent in her front-runner status. But weighing heaviest, friends say, is the grueling toll a third presidential campaign could exact on his family. He told a conference call of Democrats this week that he was still in the process of determining \"whether or not there is the emotional fuel at this time to run,\" just months after his eldest son Beau Biden lost his battle with brain cancer. Associates say the vice president's son Hunter supports a bid, and Beau encouraged his father to join the race before he died. But having weathered two previous presidential bids, the Biden family is intimately familiar with the withering pace and barbed attacks that would come with becoming a candidate again. His wife, Dr. Jill Biden, is said to be apprehensive about joining another run for president as her family continues to grieve. \"I've given this a lot of thought and dealing internally with the family on how we do this,\" Biden told Democrats on the conference call this week, as first reported by CNN. \"The calculus for this has been evaluating his personal feelings, having just come off Beau's passing,\" said James Smith, a South Carolina state legislator who's a supporter of Biden's. Deciding whether to run for president \"has little to do with a calculation of his own ambitions,\" Smith said. A Quinnipiac survey this week showed Biden faring well against potential Republican challengers; in potential general election match-ups against Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, he performs better than Clinton. His favorability rating was higher than any candidate actually running for the Democratic nomination. And even though he has yet to declare his intentions, he's still running ahead of former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chaffee or former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb. But even those numbers may not be enough to convince Biden that jumping into the race is worth it. Politicians merely contemplating a bid -- and not yet subject to the attacks of their rivals or scrutiny from opposition researchers -- often poll better than when they become full-blown candidates. Case in point: Clinton, whose favorability stood near 60% last fall as she contemplated a run, but had dropped to 44% in the latest CNN\/ORC survey taken in mid-August. Clinton's campaign this week attempted to flex its organizing muscle by unveiling endorsements in key early voting states, including from former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, currently serving alongside Biden in the Obama administration as agriculture secretary. Vilsack was the first cabinet secretary to declare an allegiance in the Democratic primary, though other key figures within the Clinton orbit were also signaling wariness about a Biden run. \"Running for office is one thing. You have to also have the energy for that process,\" said Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as Obama's first chief of staff and supports Clinton in the primary. \"You also have to have the energy for the job.\" Former Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, another Clinton supporter, told The New York Times this week that Biden has \"served the country so well\" but that making a run for president \"I just don't think ... would be a wise move.\" Clinton, speaking at the summer meeting of Democrats in Minnesota, said she wanted to give Biden the \"space and time\" to make up his mind. \"I have the greatest affection and admiration for the vice president,\" she said during a press conference in Minneapolis. \"This is a difficult decision for him to make.\" As she spoke, members of the \"Draft Biden\" group were eagerly making the case for a Biden candidacy to Democratic Party members and so-called \"superdelegates.\" Their pitch: that it's \"too early to anoint\" a front-runner in the Democratic race and that influential party members should remain open-minded about selecting a candidate to support. \"While the vice president is working through his process on whether or not he actually wants to run for president ... we continue to make the public case for why we think he's the best candidate for our party to put up for the presidency,\" said Steve Schale, an adviser to the group. A key mission: developing a campaign infrastructure in early voting states Biden could utilize if he decides to jump in. 'Going to be up to the American people' For Biden, the decision on entering the race risks dividing loyalists to President Barack Obama, who has repeatedly praised Biden's work as vice president while also proclaiming Clinton an exemplary secretary of state. Some White House aides have expressed concern a Biden bid -- at this point, still a longshot against Clinton -- could end poorly, damaging the vice president's political legacy. Obama discussed the potential of Biden joining the race during a regularly scheduled lunch with the vice president Monday, and hasn't dissuaded the vice president from running as he's publicly weighed a run over the past several months. Asked this week about potentially having to decide between his vice president and his former top diplomat, Obama offered his typical demurral. \"Joe and Hillary are wonderful people and great friends,\" he told CNN Philadelphia affiliate WPVI during an interview at the White House Wednesday. \"Joe's been as good a vice president as I think we've seen in American history. Been at my side on every tough decision I've ever made.\" Clinton, meanwhile, \"was one of our best secretaries of state and helped work on a whole range of important issues,\" Obama said. \"The truth is, though, the great thing about American democracy is it's not up to me. I'm just one voter. It's going to be up to the American people.\" The White House says Obama will indeed vote in the Illinois Democratic primary next year, and hasn't ruled out a presidential endorsement in the race.","label":0}
{"text":"navy , RBTH Daily , spain , syria Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov in international waters off the coast of Northern Norway on Oct. 17, 2016. Source: Reuters  Madrid has decided not to allow the Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov to refuel in the port of Ceuta, a Spanish enclave on the North African coast, reneging on a previous agreement with Moscow.  On Oct. 26, the warships of the Northern Fleet's aircraft carrier group led by the cruiser Admiral Kuznetsov , having passed the English Channel, were moving toward Gibraltar.  Their route and tasks, according to presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, are \"in a sealed envelope marked 'Top Secret'.\"  As the Spanish Foreign Ministry said earlier, the ships were to arrive on Oct. 28 in the port of Ceuta (a Spanish enclave in Morocco). The permit, as Madrid noted, was issued in September.  However, when the news of the imminent arrival of the ships in Ceuta made the press, Spain came under heavy criticism from its NATO allies.  NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that he would not have had anything against the refueling of Russian ships in other circumstances, but now he was extremely concerned that they could be used to attack Aleppo. Similar statements were made by politicians and military figures from the UK and the U.S.  In Spain itself, the Republican Left of Catalonia was most vocal in protesting against the arrival of the Russian ships in Ceuta. Their press service confirmed to Kommersant that members of the Congress of Deputies of Spain from the party had demanded that acting Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo and acting Defense Minister Pedro Morenesa explain why Russian ships involved in the Syrian operation were being serviced in the territory of a NATO country. 9 intriguing facts about the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier  Initially, the Ceuta authorities were confused about the situation. Since 2011, the enclave's port has been visited, according to the newspaper El Pais, by 60 Russian vessels.  \"The normal criteria for accepting the visits was 'the safety of the surroundings, population and port',\" The Spain Report said, citing sources in the port's administration. But under the barrage of criticism, the Spanish Foreign Ministry announced yesterday that it was reviewing \"the decision following consultations.\"  But by the middle of the day, El Pais quoted diplomatic sources as saying permission would be revoked if it was confirmed that the ships were heading to Syria. Without waiting for the outcome, the Russian authorities themselves abandoned the idea. \"We affirm that the ships will not enter the port of Ceuta, because the route has changed,\" the Russian Embassy in Spain said. Moscow's reaction  Speaking to Kommersant, the Embassy's press secretary Vasily Nioradze Embassy urged the media not to dramatize the situation. \"Approval of such stopovers is a routine process,\" he said. \"We send a request in advance, and the decision is made based on international law and the requirements of the host country. Now this decision was made, in other cases it will be different.\"  Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov chose to place a different accent on the incident: According to him, the Russian military department provided for the possibility of \"a technical stopover [in Ceuta \u2013 Kommersant] of individual ships or a supply vessel from the group of ships, in agreement with the Spanish side.\"  However, according to him, no official request from the Defense Ministry was sent to Madrid.  \"The representatives of the Spanish leadership said that due to the pressure on them from the U.S. and NATO, the entry of the Russian ships in the port of Ceuta would be inappropriate,\" said Konashenkov. Publicly, however, the Spanish authorities did not make such statements. Russian experts: Cruiser is on training mission  Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (TsAST), does not view the change of the Admiral Kuznetsov 's route as a disaster.  \"We might as well refuel in Algeria or Malta, I'm betting on Algeria since Malta is an EU member state and it will face the same problems as Spain,\" he told Kommersant. Russia to establish a permanent naval base in Syria  At the same time, according to Pukhov, the arrival of the Admiral Kuznetsov in Syria is unlikely to radically change the balance of forces in the region, but it will allow Russia to increase its international prestige.  \"The French use an aircraft carrier in that region, because they do not have a base, while we do have one,\" he said. \"The purpose of the Kuznetsov 's mission is likely to be training. Pilots of deck aircraft need to train, and Syria provides an opportunity to do it in combat conditions.\"  TsAST expert Andrei Frolov added that the Admiral Kuznetsov 's mission has \"an advertising component.\"\"India is thinking about buying MiG-29K\/KUB deck fighters for future aircraft carriers, and a demonstration of their capabilities in Syria will help it decide sooner,\" he said. Subscribe to get the hand picked best stories every week Subscribe to our mailing list Facebook","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed a move by Saudi Arabia s future king that tightened his grip on power through the arrests of royals, ministers and investors in an anti-corruption purge. The endorsement cemented a U.S.-Saudi relationship that has improved dramatically under Trump s presidency, partly because of both leaders vision of confronting Riyadh s arch-rival Iran more aggressively in the region. Trump tweeted on Monday that he had great confidence in King Salman and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia following the mass arrests - the biggest such purge of the kingdom s affluent elite in its modern history. Trump also tweeted that they know exactly what they are doing, adding: Some of those they are harshly treating have been milking their country for years. The purge was the latest in a series of dramatic steps by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MbS as he is commonly referred to in Western circles, to assert Saudi influence internationally and amass more power for himself at home. A U.S. official who declined to be named told Reuters that MbS has become the primary driver of Saudi policy-making. He has moved aggressively to sideline opponents, concentrate decision-making authority, and establish himself as the undisputed heir to the al Saud legacy. He seeks to reinvigorate the public s confidence in the Saudi monarchy by diversifying the economy, loosening religious restrictions, and carrying out wide ranging social reforms, the official said. Trump s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the president s senior adviser, who has cultivated a close relationship with MbS, recently returned from Saudi Arabia, fuelling speculation on whether he may have had wind of MbS plans. The White House said at the time the trip was reported that it was within the context of Kushner s efforts on Israeli-Palestinian peace conversations. Among those arrested were billionaire investor Alwaleed bin Talal, who is one of the kingdom s most prominent businessmen and whose investments in companies like Twitter make him the most recognized Saudi name on Wall Street. It s an impressive feat to have basically neutered virtually all of the sources of potential opposition, dissent rivalry, whether it s religious, media, political, military, said Rob Malley, vice president for policy of the International Crisis Group. On the other hand... it s always risky to make too many enemies at the same time. It s not clear how those enemies can react, said Malley, a former senior adviser on Middle East affairs under President Barack Obama. Also detained was Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, who was replaced as minister of the National Guard, a pivotal power base rooted in the kingdom s tribes. That recalled a palace coup in June that ousted Mohammed bin Nayef as heir to the throne. A former senior U.S. intelligence official cautioned that given the National Guard s loyalties, MbS could face a backlash. I find it difficult to believe that it (National Guard) will simply roll over and accept the imposition of new leadership in such an arbitrary fashion. ANTI-IRANIAN CONFRONTATION U.S.-Saudi ties had been strained under Obama, who Riyadh felt considered their alliance less important than negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. But the Trump administration has vowed to confront Iran much more aggressively in the region, where it shares the Saudi view that Tehran is fomenting instability via a number of proxies in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen among other countries. Tehran denies the allegations. Events in Saudi Arabia in recent days appeared to open the prospect for a sharper confrontation with Iran and its proxies. Saudi Arabia accused Lebanon on Monday of declaring war against it because of what it called aggression by the Iran-backed Lebanese Shi ite group Hezbollah. Saudi-allied Lebanese politician Saad al-Hariri quit as prime minister on Saturday, announcing his resignation from Riyadh and blaming Iran and Hezbollah in his resignation speech. Also on Saturday, Saudi Arabia s air defense forces intercepted a ballistic missile fired from warring Yemen over the capital, Riyadh. The Pentagon praised Saudi Arabia for exposing Iran s role in Yemen and Tehran s provision of missile systems to Houthi militia fighting there. Between that (Hariri s resignation) and the missile launch on Riyadh ... the coincidence of those two does mean that the prospect of some escalation, some strike either against Hezbollah or against Iran or against both is more likely, certainly than it was a few days ago, Malley told Reuters.","label":0}
{"text":"The international \"March for Science\" appears to have Earth Day, casting \"social justice\" as \"science. \"[The Earth Day Network that owns the international rights to the annual \u2014 and celebration of Vladimir Lenin's birth \u2014 artfully sought to rebrand its messaging by having protestors in 610 locations around the planet swap their shirts for the patina of scientific truth associated with white lab coats. The festivities began in the wee hours of April 22 in New Zealand, then followed the sun to circumnavigate the globe. The event's blog reported 50 celebrants showed up at Antarctic research stations, and 2 very intrepid souls showed up in degree weather at the North Pole. Although it seemed that the media in many locations outnumbered the demonstrators, San Francisco and Washinton, D. C. both produced about 5, 000 marchers. The March for Science website in January trumpeted, under \"Diversity and Inclusion Principles\": \"Colonization, racism, native rights, sexism, ableism, econ justice are scientific rights. \" But as the event neared, the scientific communism of Marx and Engle's Das Capital morphed into Principals and Goals: \"Our wealth of personal experiences and perspectives is our greatest strength. In putting the people who do science at the forefront of this discussion, we can show that scientists come from all cultural backgrounds, belief systems, orientations, genders, and abilities. \" Honorary Bill Nye the Science Guy said, \"We march forward to ensure a better world for people all over the world. \" But he and Senator Bernie Sanders ( ) made it clear in their February Facebook Live \"Conversation on Climate Change\" that they believe all skeptics of climate change are suffering from cognitive dissonance. The most interesting coverage of the event came from Science magazine, which the events with about 60 posts over 24 hours. Demonstrating the tenuous connection between the \"March for Science\" and actual scientists, the first April 22 speaker at the New Zealand event was leftist Green Party James Shaw, who is a former accountant with no science background. Shaw said, \"When politicians use their belief systems to override the facts, the scientific facts, we are all in for a whole world of hurt. \" Shaw then droned on about his social justice belief system that New Zealanders needed to stand up against the U. S. political discourse questioning climate change.","label":0}
{"text":"Jeffrey Gundlach, the widely followed investor who runs DoubleLine Capital, foresees a \"global growth scare\" between now and the end of the summer, triggered by a presidential nomination of Donald Trump. \"That is where I see the vulnerabilities,\" Gundlach said in a telephone interview on Monday. Trump's protectionist policies could mean negative global growth, Gundlach warned. \"As he gets the nomination, the markets and investors are going to worry about it more. You will see a downgrading of global growth based on geopolitical risks. You must factor this into your risk-management.\" Trump has blamed currency devaluations around the world for hurting the U.S. economy and costing American jobs, and has called for a tougher U.S. stance on trade. \"We just sit back and do nothing,\" Trump said earlier this month. \"That's getting to be very dangerous as far as I'm concerned.\" A more effective economic move than devaluations would be charging a tax on products made abroad and sold in the United States, particularly those from China, Trump said. Gundlach, who oversees $93 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine Capital, said it isn't premature to think about a Trump nomination. \"You have to entertain the hypothetical.\" Phone calls and emails to Trump's spokeswoman were not returned. For its part, stock markets, which moved into positive territory after the U.S. Federal Reserve's dovish move last week, will continue to track oil prices, Gundlach said, who was prescient in his call for $40 per barrel. \"I think oil will have a hard time moving up to $45,\" Gundlach said. The risk-reward proposition is \"so bad right now because you had this easy rally\" in risk markets, Gundlach said. He added: \"No way I would buy junk bonds at this level.\" Gundlach also criticized Fed officials for changing their stance on interest rates. \"They've been flip-flopping like crazy over the past few months,\" he said. Just three days after the Fed held interest rates and cautioned \"global economic and financial developments continue to pose risks,\" Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said on Monday that the United States may be in line for an interest rate hike as soon as April given \"sufficient momentum\" in U.S. growth. Gundlach said it's become obvious Fed officials are seeking guidance from markets. \"If it is going to be about the markets, they should just come out and say, 'If the S&P hits 2,100 we will tighten - and if it goes to 1,900 we will ease,\" Gundlach said.","label":0}
{"text":"Trump Warns That By Attacking Assad, US Will 'End Up Fighting Russia' By RT November 13, \" RT \" - US President-elect Donald Trump has confirmed that he will most likely abandon the Obama administration policy on Syria to seek a possible rapprochement with Russia on the issue of Assad. \"I've had an opposite view of many people regarding Syria,\" the 70-year-old Republican told the Wall Street Journal in his first interview since the election. From the start of the Syrian war, Barack Obama's foreign policy has been focused on the support and training of the so-called \"moderate\" rebel groups who were supposed to defeat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS\/ISIL) terrorists, and survive to eventually overthrow Assad. That approach became deadlocked this year when Washington failed to honor its obligations under an agreement with Moscow to separate their moderate rebel forces from internationally-recognized terrorists. Trump, on the other hand, said on Friday that the US should be focused on fighting Islamic State, instead of pursuing regime change in Syria. \"My attitude was you're fighting Syria, Syria is fighting ISIS, and you have to get rid of ISIS. Russia is now totally aligned with Syria, and now you have Iran, which is becoming powerful, because of us, is aligned with Syria... Now we're backing rebels against Syria, and we have no idea who these people are.\" It has been widely documented and reported that American weapons supplied to the moderate rebels are often obtained by extremists in Syria. Those weapons, in turn, are being used by the jihadists to strike civilian positions and deploy them against Syrian forces. The president-elect warned that if the US attacks Assad, \"we end up fighting Russia, fighting Syria.\" The US coalition bombing of Syrian Army positions near the city of Deir el-Zour on September 17 led to the collapse of the US-Russian peace initiative. Rapprochement in US-Russia ties could, however, be on the horizon after Trump admitted receiving a \"beautiful\" letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump said a phone call between them is scheduled shortly. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are \"very much alike... in their basic approaches toward international affairs,\" Dmitry Peskov told the Associated Press earlier. \"[Trump] has been a very firm supporter of the idea of a good relationship between our countries, because we do carry a joint responsibility for strategic stability in the world, strategic security,\" the spokesman said. Immediately after Trump's victory, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Moscow looks forward to restoring bilateral relations with the United States. The US military establishment, however, already seems to be working against Trump's policies. In an interview with CBS This Morning, Defense Secretary Ash Carter leveled a barrage of accusations at Russia. He said the Russian campaign in Syria \"fuels the fires\" of ongoing violence in the country, claiming \"they're not doing what we need to do and think needs to be done [in Syria].\" \"What the Russians said, if you'll remember, was that they were going to come in and fight terrorism and help remove Assad,\" Carter said. \"They haven't done either of those things. They haven't done any of that.\" While Moscow has been undertaking efforts to eliminate Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front terrorists in Syria, it never said it would take part in the forcible removal of President Bashar Assad. When the anchor Norah O'Donnell said \"They're helping Assad?\" Carter continued, \"Exactly. Which in turn simply fuels the fires of the Syrians civil war. So the Russians have been completely backwards there, in what they've been doing. \"So we have not been able to, and I have not been in favor, and am not recommending to the president that we associate ourselves with or work with the Russians until they start doing the right thing,\" Carter concluded.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump s son-in-law Jared Kushner has found himself at the focus of the Russia scandal which has gripped the administration. It s always the quiet ones you have to worry about, as they say. Kushner released an 11-page statement earlier in which he appeared to throw Donald Trump Jr. under the bus.Then Kush (I can call you Kush, right?) spoke for two hours in a closed-door session with Senate Intelligence Committee staff members investigating Russia s interference in the 2016 presidential election. After that, Kushner proceeded to talk to reporters, but didn t take any questions. I did not collude with Russia and I do not know of anyone else in the campaign who did so, Kushner said outside the White House.Kushner insisted that he has been fully transparent which is totally untrue, according to the written statement he issued just hours earlier.In that statement, Kushner said he had four contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign and transition and declared that none of them were improper, even though they were not disclosed previously.Even most Republicans agree that Donald Trump Jr. should not have held that controversial meeting with a Russian lawyer, which was attended by Kushner and former campaign manager Paul Manafort.According to Kushner, it s all cool because he said he did not read emails that showed that Junior enthusiastically accepted the meeting with the idea that he would receive damaging information about Hillary Clinton.Kushner went on to deny that Russians financed some of his business interests in the private sector. However, it s been revealed that Trump s son-in-law bought part of old New York Times building from a Soviet-born oligarch who is allegedly tied to money laundering. There are many other instances we could cite, too. Like, for example, Kush s meeting with Russian banker Sergey Gorkov. That bank is sanctioned so it s alarming that he would even take the 30 minute meeting.But since Kush feigns to be transparent, he can prove that right now.USA Today reports:Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., called on Kushner to testify in public under oath, and said his written statement raised more questions about his relationships with Russians. He noted that the White House senior adviser has repeatedly concealed information about his personal finances and meetings with foreign officials. There should be no presumption that he is telling the whole truth in this statement. At the very least, said Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Va., the transcript from Kushner s meeting with staff members should be made public. Make everything as transparent as possible, Manchin told reporters. All of my actions were proper, he said outside the White House. So, the four undisclosed meetings (that we know about so far) were proper ?When Kushner sought top-secret security clearance which would give him access to some of the nation s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years, but he failed to do so. You know, because he s so transparent. He or she who has not had undisclosed contacts with Russian officials, let them cast the first stone.Photo by Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"Marijuana legalization is on the cusp in America. There are proven medical benefits and evidence that it s more effective as a painkiller for people with chronic pain than opiates. It relieves nausea in cancer patients and stress related to PTSD. it s a nifty plant, whose commercial counterpart also offers an array of revolutionary products that are cheaper and stronger.Marijuana is here to stay. As more states move to legalize, cases will begin moving through the courts of citizens being denied their 14th Amendment right from a state where pot is a crime. In order for that to happen, however, pot has to really NOT be a crime. When you get to the federal level, it simply is. Marijuana is in the same class as cocaine and heroin, two drugs known to destroy peoples lives with serious psychological and physical addiction.Eric Holder, former attorney general, told PBS that he thinks that is wrong. Holder said in a recently released Frontline interview: You know, we treat marijuana in the same way that we treat heroin now, and that clearly is not appropriate. So at a minimum, I think Congress needs to do that. Then I think we need to look at what happens in Colorado and what happens in Washington. What is unfortunate is that at one time, Eric Holder actually did have the power to at least initiate unilateral marijuana legalization through studies done by Health and Human Services. In the case of marijuana, there are two options to legalize:Courtesy of Brookings Yes, that means that Eric Holder had the keys to the shiny new pot plant but he never used them. He passed them on, instead, to Loretta Lynch, who has stayed out of the marijuana issue completely.No that it really matters at this point. Marijuana has far too many benefits. You re talking medicinal, production, research, retail counter. All of those things equal jobs which equal revenue. It means people doing life for a half pound of schwag can be let go. It means our upside-down legal system is going to have find something other than a little bit of pot to keep their machine running.It also takes the dealer out. Nobody needs them, their cartels, their smuggling operations none of it. Now that pain pills have brought the war on drugs into wealthy white neighborhoods where the evolution from Oxycontin to shooting up heroin is a shocking revelation, Law enforcement and treatment professionals can focus their attention where it belongs.It seemed when the drugs were reserved for low-income and minority neighborhoods the answer was jail. Now all of a sudden it s treatment. As long as everyone benefits then so be it.Featured image from Wikipedia","label":1}
{"text":"Share on Facebook Do you remember jumping on your parents bed when you were really young? They probably told you that it was very dangerous and warned you not to ever do it, so you did it anyways! When things were off-limits because mom and dad said so, they became even more fun than they already were. It's not just kids who have a super awesome, fun time jumping around on the bed, dogs also love to mess around! The little Dachshund puppy featured in this video is named Pepper and he's normally not allowed to go on his owner's bed. However, this time his human set up a hidden camera and captured his hilarious antics. The little cutie is a furry ball of energy as he zips around in circles across the bed. He gets completely carried away and the look on his face is priceless, you just have to see it for yourself! About halfway through the clip Pepper's fellow doggy friend Margo makes an appearance. She jumps up and joins him on the bed for some fun, taking her plushy raccoon along with her. The pair are sweet as can be and by the end of it all they're both completely tuckered out. Check them out and prepare to smile and say awww because that's the normal reaction to these adorable types of videos! Related:","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump is likely to rescind an Obama-era policy that protects nearly 600,000 immigrants who entered the country illegally as children and are known as \"Dreamers,\" according to media reports on Friday. Trump's decision on whether to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, policy could be announced as early as next week, reported ABC News, citing multiple sources. Attorney General Jeff Sessions discussed the program with senior White House officials on Thursday, according to an administration official. Department of Homeland Security spokesman David Lapan denied reports that the department had made any recommendations on DACA to the White House. \"There have been continuing discussions about DACA but nothing has been determined,\" Lapan told Reuters. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters on Friday that the program continues to be under review. A White House spokesperson told Reuters that only Congress can legislate a permanent solution for the plight of children who are currently protected from deportation by DACA. Trump had pledged on the election campaign trail to scrap all of former President Barack Obama's executive orders on immigration, including DACA. Immigrant advocates reacted to the news with a flurry of statements, promising to defend the program with protest and legal action. \"Immigrant youth fought to create the DACA program and we will fight like hell to defend it,\" said Greisa Martinez Rosas, Advocacy Director and DACA-beneficiary of United We Dream said in a statement. Civil rights groups said ending the program could increase racial divisions in the country in the wake of the recent violence in Charlottesville. Ten Republican state attorneys general in June urged the Trump administration to rescind the DACA program, while noting that the government did not have to revoke permits that had already been issued. If the federal government did not withdraw DACA by Sept. 5, the attorneys general said they would file a legal challenge to the program in a Texas federal court. The 10 who signed the letter represent Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. A larger coalition of 26 Republican attorneys general had challenged the Obama-era policy covering illegal immigrant parents, known as DAPA, that had been blocked by the courts before it took effect. The Department of Homeland Security rescinded that policy earlier this year.","label":0}
{"text":"Maybe the Queen of Incompetence isn t as popular as she had hoped with the Socialist Party of America, aka the former Democrat Party It s not just Republicans who get riled by the thought of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton ascending to the presidency. Some people on the left lock horns over Clinton often enough to suggest that Team Hillary still has a long way to go before she has shored up the traditional base of progressive voters.A controversial book cover is the latest flashpoint to lay bare the divisions in the Democratic base over the Clinton candidacy. The forthcoming book, My Turn, by Nation Magazine Contributing Editor Doug Henwood, critiques the former secretary of state s decades-long political career, calling out her foreign policy positions and purported connections to big-money interests, among other contentious points.And the book cover s flamboyant illustration featuring a stoic Hillary Clinton, in a blood-red dress, pointing a gun at the reader has sparked a heated debate among her supporters and detractors.Salon editor Joan Walsh and former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett both called the drawing gross. The leftist rag Salon.com has this to say about the new Hillary Clinton book: A stink bomb into liberals certainty : Doug Henwood on his anti-Clinton crusade.Here is a portion of Salon.com s review of Henwood s My Turn book:In this regard, Harper s latest (paywalled) cover story a cri de coeur against Hillary Clinton from economist, radio host, author and Left Business Observer founder Doug Henwood is no exception. A mix of biography and political analysis, Henwood s essay depicts the likely 2016 presidential candidate as a relatively unaccomplished conformist and careerist, one who s far more interested in acquiring power (and protecting the interests of her wealthy funders) than making real the progressive vision. What is the case for Hillary? Henwood asks. It s hard to find any substantive political argument in her favor. Even the author and the artist have different takes on the imagery. People often see in texts what they want to see. The reaction to this cover, which has been circulating less than 48 hours, has been a vivid reminder of this, Henwood told MSNBC. When I first saw the design I knew it would attract a lot of attention. But I couldn t have predicted the diversity of reactions. Where Henwood sees ruthlessness and hawkishness, in the image, the artist, Sarah Sole told the International Business Times she sees it as pulpy and sexy. Henwood is a well-known Clinton critic on the left who skewered the former secretary of state, senator and first lady in a controversial 2014 Harper s Magazine cover story titled Stop Hillary. In it he wrote:What is the case for Hillary (whose quasi-official website identifies her, in bold blue letters, by her first name only, as do millions upon millions of voters)? It boils down to this: She has experience, she s a woman, and it s her turn. It s hard to find any substantive political argument in her favor. She has, in the past, been associated with women s issues, with children s issues but she also encouraged her husband to sign the 1996 bill that put an end to the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC), which had been in effect since 1935. Indeed, longtime Clinton adviser Dick Morris, who has now morphed into a right-wing pundit, credits Hillary for backing both of Bill s most important moves to the center: the balanced budget and welfare reform.1 And during her subsequent career as New York s junior senator and as secretary of state, she has scarcely budged from the centrist sweet spot, and has become increasingly hawkish on foreign policy.What Hillary will deliver, then, is more of the same. And that shouldn t surprise us. As wacky as it sometimes appears on the surface, American politics has an amazing stability and continuity about it. Obama, widely viewed as a populist action hero during the 2008 campaign, made no bones about his admiration for Ronald Reagan. The Gipper, he said,changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt [that] with all the excesses of the Sixties and the Seventies, government had grown and grown, but there wasn t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.Now, the excesses of the Sixties and the Seventies included things like feminism, gay liberation, the antiwar movement, a militant civil rights movement all good things, in my view, but I know that many people disagree. In any case, coming into office with something like a mandate, Obama never tried to make a sharp political break with the past, as Reagan did from the moment of his first inaugural address. Reagan dismissed the postwar Keynesian consensus the idea that government had a responsibility to soften the sharpest edges of capitalism by fighting recession and providing some sort of basic safety net. Appropriating some of the language of the left about revolution and the promise of the future, he unleashed what he liked to call the magic of the marketplace: cutting taxes for the rich, eliminating regulations, and whittling away at social spending.What Reagan created, with his embrace of the nutty Laffer curve and his smiling war on organized labor, was a strange, unequally distributed boom that lasted through the early 1990s. After the caretaker George H. W. Bush administration evaporated, Bill Clinton took over and, with a few minor adjustments, kept the party going for another decade. Profits skyrocketed, as did the financial markets.But there was a contradiction under it all: a system dependent on high levels of mass consumption for both economic dynamism and political legitimacy has a problem when mass purchasing power is squeezed. For a few decades, consumers borrowed to make up for what their paychecks were lacking. But that model broke down once and for all with the crisis of 2008. Today we desperately need a new political economy one that features a more equal distribution of income, investment in our rotting social and physical infrastructure, and a more humane ethic. We also need a judicious foreign policy, and a commander-in-chief who will resist the instant gratification of air strikes and rhetorical bluster.Is Hillary Clinton the answer to these prayers? It s hard to think so, despite the widespread liberal fantasy of her as a progressive paragon, who will follow through exactly as Barack Obama did not. In fact, a close look at her life and career is perhaps the best antidote to all these great expectations.But the intimidating image glaring out from the front of My Turn was created long before Henwood penned the book, which he says was developed out of the Harper s piece and goes into greater detail about her long history in shaping the New Democrat agenda, an agenda which she now purports to be running against, Henwood told MSNBC.And then there s Sole, a diehard Clinton supporter and also a fan of Henwood s, according to International Business Times.Sole debuted the painting, along with other similarly themed pieces, last year. Later, the pieces were published in Politico magazine under the headline Extremely Ready for Hillary, according to the International Business Times. I love Hillary Clinton, I support Hillary Clinton, I very much want her to be president. I will certainly vote for her, Sole told International Business Times. What I don t get is the reaction that calls the cover sexist, Henwood told MSNBC. Hillary is tough and determined, characteristics that shouldn t be seen as off-limits to women. The political question is what she or anyone else does with toughness and determination, and that s what my criticism of her focuses on. I have no problem with ball-busting women, Henwood continued. I kinda like them, in fact. I just don t like [Hillary Clinton s] politics.","label":1}
{"text":"Maxine is the worst enemy of the black community and Americans! She needs the struggle to continue so she can be reelected. Wouldn t it be dangerous to her reelection if Donald Trump was successful at helping the black community? The fear mongering is how she gets reelected! Remember the housing crisis? Maxine was responsible for much of the crash in housing yet she s never taken responsibility for it. She and Barnie Frank pushed and pushed to get home loans for people who should have never owned a home! The black community should run this woman out of town! In the period 1989-2008, topping the list of recipients of contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Dodd (D-Connecticut), who received $165,400. Second on the list is Sen. Obama (D-Illinois), receiving $126,349 with only three years in the Senate. Rep. Frank (D-Massachusetts), received $42,350.February 1990Madeline Talbott, a well-known radical ACORN leader and banking industry agitator, challenged the merger of a Chicago thrift, Bell Federal Savings and Loan Association, who responded that they were being bullied into irresponsible affirmative-action lending policy. 1991ACORN interfered with a House Banking Committee meeting for two days protesting a move to bring CRA reform.1992Enforcement of CRA was sporadic, as the Washington Times notes, until a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study asserted that there were substantially higher denial rates for black and Hispanic applicants than for white applicants. Co-author Lynn Browne was approached by co-author Alicia Munnell to do the study because community activists were complaining that mortgage loans were not being made in minority communities. According to the Times, however, the study had mishandled statistics on minority default rates. When the errors were accounted for, the same study showed no evidence that nonwhite mortgage applicants were being discriminated against. Frank Quaratiello, writing in the Boston Herald, cites Stan Liebowitz, My guess is that they were interested in finding a particular result. Said Liebowitz, Richard Syron was head of the Boston Fed at the time. He went on to be the head of Freddie Mac. They were looking for mortgage discrimination and they found it. According to Quaratiello, Syron became Freddie Mac CEO and chairman in 2003 and faced increasing pressure to buy up more and more risky mortgages, some of which the Boston Fed s guide had, in effect, served to legitimize. Regarding Syron s total compensation in 2007 of $18.3 million, Liebowitz reportedly quipped, Nice reward for presiding over unprofessional research behavior, bankrupting Freddie Mac and crippling our financial system, all in the name of politically correct lending. September 1992The Chicago Tribune described the ACORN agenda as affirmative action lending. And, writes Kurtz, ACORN was issuing fact sheets bragging about relaxations of credit standards that it had won on behalf of minorities. October 1992Congress, enacting the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992, allowed legislation to amend and extend certain laws relating to housing and community development. The Act created the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) within HUD to ensure that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are adequately capitalized and operating safely. It also established HUD-imposed housing goals for financing of affordable housing and housing in central cities and other rural and underserved areas. Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa) warned about the impending danger non-regulated GSEs posed. As the Washington Post reports, his concern was that Congress was hamstringing the regulator. Complaint was that OFHEO was a weak regulator. Leach worried that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were changing from being agencies of the public at large to money machines for the stockholding few. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) countered, as the Post reports, the companies served a public purpose. They were in the business of lowering the price of mortgage loans. September 1993The Chicago Sun-Times reports an initiative led by ACORN s Talbott with five area lenders participating in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories. Kurtz notes that the initiative included two of her former targets, Bell Federal Savings and Avondale Federal Savings, who had apparently capitulated under pressure.July 1994Represented by Obama and others, Plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit alleging that Citibank had intentionally discriminated against the Plaintiffs on the basis of race with respect to a credit transaction, calling their action racial discrimination and discriminatory redlining practices. November 1994President Clinton addresses homeownership: I think we all agree that more Americans should own their own homes, for reasons that are economic and tangible and reasons that are emotional and intangible but go to the heart of what it means to harbor, to nourish, to expand the American dream. . . . I am determined to see that you have the opportunity and together we can make that opportunity for the young families of our country. I am committed to a new and unprecedented partnership between industry leaders and community leaders and Government to recommit our Nation to the idea of homeownership and to create more homeowners than ever before. June 1995Republicans had won control of Congress and planned CRA reforms. The Clinton Administration, however, allied with Rep. Frank, Sen. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) and Rep. Waters (D-California), did an end-around by directing HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo to inject GSEs into the subprime mortgage market.As Kurtz notes, ACORN had come to Congress not only to protect the CRA from GOP reforms but also to expand the reach of quota-based lending to Fannie, Freddie and beyond. What resulted was the broadening of the acceptability of risky subprime loans throughout the financial system, thus precipitating our current crisis. The administration announced the bold new homeownership strategy which included monumental loosening of credit standards and imposition of subprime lending quotas. HUD reported that President Clinton had committed to increasing the homeownership rate to 67.5 percent by the year 2000. The plan was to reduce the financial, information, and systemic barriers to homeownership which was amplified by local partnerships at work in over 100 cities. Kurtz concludes, Urged on by ACORN, congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration helped push tolerance for high-risk loans through every sector of the banking system far beyond the sort of banks originally subject to the CRA. So it was the efforts of ACORN and its Democratic allies that first spread the subprime virus from the CRA to Fannie and Freddie and thence to the entire financial system. Soon, Democratic politicians and regulators actually began to take pride in lowered credit standards as a sign of fairness and the contagion spread. Attorney General Janet Reno, with a number of bank lending discrimination settlements already, sternly announces, We will tackle lending discrimination wherever it appears. With the new policy in full force, No loan is exempt; no bank is immune. For those who thumb their nose at us, I promise vigorous enforcement, reiterated Reno.1997HUD Secretary Cuomo said GSE presence in the subprime market could be of significant benefit to lower-income families, minorities, and families living in underserved areas . . . 1998By falsifying signatures on Fannie Mae accounting transactions, $200 million in expenses was shifted from 1998 to later periods, thereby triggering $27.1 million in bonuses for top executives. James A. Johnson received $1.932 million; Franklin D. Raines received $1.11 million; Lawrence M. Small received $1.108 million; Jamie S. Gorelick received $779,625; Timothy Howard received $493,750; Robert J. Levin received $493,750.April 1998HUD announced a $2.1 billion settlement with AccuBanc Mortgage Corp. for alleged discrimination against minority loan applicants. The funds would provide poor families with down payments and low interest mortgages. Announcing the Accubank settlement, Secretary Cuomo said, discrimination isn t always that obvious. Sometimes more subtle but in many ways more insidious, an institutionalized discrimination that s hidden behind a smiling face. October 2003Fannie Mae discloses $1.2 billion accounting error.November 2003Council of the Economic Advisers Chairman Greg Mankiw warned, The enormous size of the mortgage-backed securities market means that any problems at the GSEs matter for the financial system as a whole. This risk is a systemic issue also because the debt obligations of the housing GSEs are widely held by other financial institutions. The importance of GSE debt in the portfolios of other financial entities means that even a small mistake in GSE risk management could have ripple effects throughout the financial system, from a White House release.Mankiw explains that any legislation to reform GSE regulation should empower the new regulator with sufficient strength and credibility to reduce systemic risk. To reduce the potential for systemic instability, the regulator would have broad authority to set both risk-based and minimum capital standards and receivership powers necessary to wind down the affairs of a troubled GSE, says a White House release.February 2004Fiscal Year 2005 Budget again highlights the risk posed by the explosive growth of the GSEs and their low levels of required capital, and called for creation of a new, world-class regulator: The Administration has determined that the safety and soundness regulators of the housing GSEs lack sufficient power and stature to meet their responsibilities, and therefore . . . should be replaced with a new strengthened regulator, reports a White House release.Mankiw cautions Congress to not take [the financial market s] strength for granted. Again, the call from the Administration was to reduce this risk by ensuring that the housing GSEs are overseen by an effective regulator, says a White House release.June 2004Deputy Secretary of Treasury Samuel Bodman spotlights the risk posed by the GSEs and called for reform, saying We do not have a world-class system of supervision of the housing government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), even though the importance of the housing financial system that the GSEs serve demands the best in supervision to ensure the long-term vitality of that system. Therefore, the Administration has called for a new, first class, regulatory supervisor for the three housing GSEs: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banking System, the White House reports.September 2004OFHEO reported that Fannie Mae and CEO Raines had manipulated its accounting to overstate its profits. Congress and the Bush administration sought strong new regulation and authority to put the GSEs under conservatorship if necessary. As the Washington Post reports, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac responded by orchestrating a major campaign by traditional allies including real estate agents, home builders and mortgage lenders. Fannie Mae ran radio and television ads ahead of a key Senate committee meeting, depicting a Latino couple who fretted that if the bill passed, mortgage rates would go up. Again, GSE pressure prevailed.October 2004Rep. Baker again warned about the coming crisis in the Wall Street Journal: Then there s the lesson of a company, Frankenstein-like, seemingly grown so powerful that it can intimidate and arrogantly flout all accountability to the very government that created it. Baker adds, Although their bonds bear the disclaimer not backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, the market does not believe it and looks right past the companies risk strategies to the taxpayers pockets. In a subcommittee testimony, Democrats vehemently reject regulation of Fannie Mae in the face of dire warning of a Fannie Mae oversight report. A few of them, Black Caucus members in particular, are very angry at the OFHEO Director as they attempt to defend Fannie Mae and protect their CRA extortion racket.Chairman Baker (R-Louisiana): It is indeed a very troubling report, but it is a report of extraordinary importance not only to those who wish to own a home, but as to the taxpayers of this country who would pay the cost of the clean up of an enterprise failure. . . . The analysis makes clear that more resources must be brought to bear to ensure the highest standards of conduct are not only required, but more importantly, they are actually met. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California): Through nearly a dozen hearings where, frankly, we were trying to fix something that wasn t broke. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California): Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York): And as well as the fact that I m just pissed off at OFHEO, because if it wasn t for you I don t think that we d be here in the first place, and now the problem that we have and that we re faced with is: maybe some individuals who wanted to do away with GSEs in the first place, you ve given them an excuse to try to have this forum so that we can talk about it and maybe change the, uh, the direction and the mission of what the GSEs had, which they ve done a tremendous job. There s been nothing that was indicated that s wrong, you know, with uh Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac has come up on its own. And the question that then presents is the competence that, that, that, that your agency has, uh, with reference to, uh, uh, deciding and regulating these GSEs. Uh, and so, uh, I wish I could sit here and say that I m not upset with you, but I am very upset because, you know, what you do is give, you know, maybe giving any reason to, as Mr. Gonzales said, to give someone a heart surgery when they really don t need it. Rep. Ed Royce (R-California): In addition to our important oversight role in this committee, I hope that we will move swiftly to create a new regulatory structure for Fannie Mae, for Freddie Mac, and the federal home loan banks. Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Missouri): This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines. Rep. Ed Royce (R-California): There is a very simple solution. Congress must create a new regulator with powers at least equal to those of other financial regulators, such as the OCC or Federal Reserve. Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-New York): What would make you, why should I have confidence? Why should anyone have confidence, and uh, in, in you as a regulator at this point? Armando Falcon, OFHEO Director: Sir, Congressman, OFHEO did not improperly apply accounting rules. Freddie Mac did. OFHEO did not fail to manage earnings properly. Freddie Mac did. So this isn t about the agency engaging in improper conduct. It s about Freddie Mac. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut): And we passed Sarbanes-Oxley, which was a very tough response to that, and then I realized that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac wouldn t even come under it. They weren t under the 34 act, they weren t under the 33 act, they play by their own rules, and I and I m tempted to ask how many people in this room are on the payroll of Fannie Mae, because what they do is they basically hire every lobbyist they can possibly hire. They hire some people to lobby and they hire some people not to lobby so that the opposition can t hire them. Rep. Artur Davis (D-Alabama): So the concern that I have is you re making very specific, what you have correctly acknowledged, broad and categorical judgments about the management of this institution, about the willfulness of practices that may or may not be in controversy. You ve imputed various motives to the people running the organization. You went to the board and put a 48-hour ultimatum on them without having any specific regulatory authority to put that kind of ultimatum on em. Uh, that sounds like some kind of an invisible line has been crossed. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut): Fannie Mae has manipulated, in my judgment, OFHEO for years. And for OFHEO to finally come out with a report as strong as it is, tells me that s got to be the minimum not the maximum. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts): Uh, I, this, you, you, you seem to me saying, Well, these are in areas which could raise safety and soundness problems. I don t see anything in your report that raises safety and soundness problems. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California): Under the outstanding leadership of Mr. Frank Raines, everything in the 1992 Act has worked just fine. In fact, the GSEs have exceeded their housing goals. What we need to do today is to focus on the regulator, and this must be done in a manner so as not to impede their affordable housing mission, a mission that has seen innovation flourish from desktop underwriting to 100% loans. Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Missouri): I find this to be inconsistent and a and a rush to judgment. I get the feeling that the markets are not worried about the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae as OFHEO says that it is, but of course the markets are not political. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts): But I have seen nothing in here that suggests that the safety and soundness are at issue, and I think it serves us badly to raise safety and soundness as kind of a general shibboleth when it does not seem to me to be an issue. Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Illinois): Mr. Raines, 1.1 million bonus and a $526,000 salary. Jamie Gorelick, $779,000 bonus on a salary of 567,000. This is, what you state on page eleven is nothing less than staggering. Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Illinois): The 1998 earnings per share number turned out to be $3.23 and 9 mills, a result that Fannie Mae met the EPS maximum payout goal right down to the penny. Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Illinois): Fannie Mae understood the rules and simply chose not to follow them that if Fannie Mae had followed the practices, there wouldn t have been a bonus that year. Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Connecticut): And you have about 3% of your portfolio set aside. If a bank gets below 4%, they are in deep trouble. So I just want you to explain to me why I shouldn t be satisfied with 3%? Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae CEO: Because banks don t, there aren t any banks who only have multifamily and single-family loans. Franklin Raines, Fannie Mae CEO: These assets are so riskless that their capital for holding them should be under 2%. January 2005-July 2006Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Nebraska), co-sponsored by Sens. Sununu and Dole and later Sen. McCain, re-introduced legislation to address GSE regulation. The bill prohibited the GSEs from holding portfolios, and gave their regulator prudential authority (such as setting capital requirements) roughly equivalent to a bank regulator. In light of the current financial crisis, this bill was probably the most important piece of financial regulation before Congress in 2005 and 2006, reports the Wall Street Journal.Greenspan testified that the size of GSE portfolios poses a risk to the global financial system. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to bail out the lenders [GSEs] . . . should one get into financial trouble. He added, If we fail to strengthen GSE regulation, we increase the possibility of insolvency and crisis . . . We put at risk our ability to preserve safe and sound financial markets in the United States, a key ingredient of support for homeownership. Greenspan warned that if the GSEs continue to grow, continue to have the low capital that they have, continue to engage in the dynamic hedging of their portfolios, which they need to do for interest rate risk aversion, they potentially create ever-growing potential systemic risk down the road . . . We are placing the total financial system of the future at a substantial risk. Bloomberg writes, If that bill had become law, then the world today would be different. . . . But the bill didn t become law, for a simple reason: Democrats opposed it on a party-line vote in the committee, signaling that this would be a partisan issue. Republicans, tied in knots by the tight Democratic opposition, couldn t even get the Senate to vote on the matter. That such a reckless political stand could have been taken by the Democrats was obscene even then. April 2005Treasury Secretary John Snow again calls for GSE reform, Events that have transpired since I testified before this Committee in 2003 reinforce concerns over the systemic risks posed by the GSEs and further highlight the need for real GSE reform to ensure that our housing finance system remains a strong and vibrant source of funding for expanding homeownership opportunities in America. . . . Half-measures will only exacerbate the risks to our financial system, from a White House release.May 2005At AEI Online, Wallison warned that allowing Fannie and Freddie to continue on their present course is simply to create risks for the taxpayers, and to the economy generally, in order to improve the profits of their shareholders and the compensation of their managements. It is a classic case of socializing the risk while privatizing the profit. January 2006Chairman Greenspan, in a letter to Sens. Sununu, Hagel and Dole, warned that the GSE practice of buying their own MBS creates substantial systemic risk while yielding negligible additional benefits for homeowners, renters, or mortgage originators. He stated, . . . the GSEs and their government regulator need specific and unambiguous Congressional guidance about the intended purpose and functions of Fannie s and Freddie s investment portfolios. March 2006Sens. Sununu and Hagel introduced an amendment to a Lobbying Reform Bill directing GAO to study GSE lobbying and requiring HUD to audit the GSEs annually.May 2006After years of Democrats blocking the legislation, Sens. Hagel, Sununu, Dole and McCain write a letter to Majority Leader William Frist and Chairman Richard Shelby expressing demanding that GSE regulatory reform be enacted this year to avoid the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the Housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. May 2006Sen. McCain (R-Arizona) addressed the Senate, Mr. President, this week Fannie Mae s regulator reported that the company s quarterly reports of profit growth over the past few years were illusions deliberately and systematically created by the company s senior management. . . . Fannie Mae used its political power to lobby Congress in an effort to interfere with the regulator s examination of the company s accounting problems. . . . OFHEO s report solidifies my view that the GSEs need to be reformed without delay. McCain stressed, If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. I urge my colleagues to support swift action on this GSE reform legislation. April 2007Sens. Sununu, Hagel, Dole, and Mel Martinez (R-Florida) re-introduced legislation to improve GSE oversight.April 2007In A Nightmare Grows Darker, the New York Times writes that the democratization of credit is turning the American dream of homeownership into a nightmare for many borrowers. The newfangled mortgage loans called affordability loans represent 60 percent of foreclosures. September 2007President Bush: These institutions provide liquidity in the mortgage market that benefits millions of homeowners, and it is vital they operate safely and operate soundly. So I ve called on Congress to pass legislation that strengthens independent regulation of the GSEs . . . the United States Senate needs to pass this legislation soon. 2007-2008The housing bubble began to burst, bad mortgages began to default, and finally the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac portfolios were revealed to be what they were, in collapse. And the testimony is evident as to why. As Wallison noted, Fannie and Freddie were, I would say, the poster children for corporate welfare. September 2008Rep. Arthur Davis, whose testimony is found above in October 2004, now admits Democrats were in error: Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong. Today 2008The narrative is of another socialist experiment failed, this time a massive federal effort, imperiling the whole US banking industry. Facing this economic disaster, will an informed American people put their trust Obama s socialist ideology to bring remedy? To do so is to trust in an acetylene torch to put out the fire.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump told Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday that he believes, like Xi, that there is a solution to the North Korea issue. It was too bad that past U.S. administrations let trade get out of kilter but we will make it fair to both sides, Trump also told Xi as they begun formal talks at Beijing's Great Hall of the People.","label":0}
{"text":"Election crossroads: Socialism or capitalism? Exclusive: Jane Chastain explains impact of Dems' 'living wage' proposal Published: 20 mins ago Jane Chastain About | | Archive Jane Chastain is a Southern California-based broadcaster, author and political commentator. Despite her present emphasis on politics, Jane always will be remembered as the nation's first female TV sportscaster, spending 17 years on the sports beat. Jane blogs at JaneChastain.com. She is a pilot who lives on a private runway. Print  Our country is at a crossroads. Never before have we faced such an obvious fork in the road. One road, the one favored by politician Hillary Clinton and her Democratic colleagues, promises to lead us to a socialist utopia. The other, favored by businessman Donald Trump and some of his Republican colleagues, promises to get us back on the road toward free-market capitalism.  It is no secret that most career politicians lean toward a socialist system. In this system they control the lion's share of our money and, in turn, hand out favors. In this system, they make the major decisions that affect our lives. As the government accumulates more and more power, we invariably end up with less. Statistics show that the longer a politician stays in power, the more of our hard-earned money he or she spends. Yet we keep electing the same people over and over and over again, expecting a different result.  We've been headed down the road toward socialism for quite some time, and this could be the last fork in the road we will have to get us back to the free-market system that has given this country the highest standard of living in the world. No, it isn't perfect, but it works for everyone who is willing to work hard and wants to improve his or her life.  Notice what I didn't say is \"simply willing to work hard.\" There is the belief by some that if you simply work hard, you should have what these politicians now call a \"living wage\" \u2013 the income necessary to support a family of four and supply all its basic needs, which is around $85,000 a year in some parts of the country. The Democrats want to replace the minimum wage, which is a training wage, with this living wage. That completely kicks the bottom rungs out from under the economic ladder Americans have traditionally climbed to reach their goals and live independently.  Ideally, it would mean that you could take a job flipping hamburgers and never gain any skills or accept any responsibility, and live as comfortably as the guy or gal who does.  Unfortunately, this so-called living wage will destroy jobs. It will cause companies to automate, and those that cannot will begin moving offshore at an even faster rate.  But this living wage is only part of what the Democrats want to do in the name of fairness.  This, no doubt, appeals to many in this poor economy who have lost all hope, so they are lulled into thinking that the socialist road is much better.  Wages have remained flat for far too long, but the Democrats are proposing raising taxes even higher on businesses and job creators.  Most people simply do not understand that businesses don't pay taxes. They are passed down to consumers in the form of higher prices. And when the price of the necessary goods and services becomes too high, such as we've seen in Obamacare, there is a large outcry. That's when the government steps in and takes over the means of production and the control of those services. That's when the door to socialism\/communism slams shut.  They tell us if we take this socialist road there is nothing to fear. Our benevolent government will take care of us. They are offering us free college \u2013 or almost free loans \u2013 in order to get the job we want at a salary we think we deserve. And if we don't get that job, the government is going to give us free health care, free food and free housing. Under President Hillary, there will be free child care, free preschool and paid family leave. What a country!  If we don't reach our goals, everything will be OK because Social Security and Medicare will be there to finance our retirement, and if that isn't enough, the government will put us in a retirement center where we live out the remainder of our years playing checkers or watching television.  What about the fact that Social Security and Medicare are going broke? How long can we keep printing money to keep us afloat before our economy collapses? They never talk about that.  As British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once said, \"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.\"  Don't be fooled: This election is about a lot more than the two personalities at the top of the ticket. It's an important fork in the road: One fork requires hard work and sacrifice but offers freedom. The other offers a free lunch.  Media wishing to interview Jane Chastain, please contact . Receive Jane Chastain's commentaries in your email BONUS: By signing up for Jane Chastain's alerts, you will also be signed up for news and special offers from WND via email. Name *","label":1}
{"text":"The debacle in Congress last week over President Barack Obama's trade agenda was further evidence that domestic political wrangling is harming U.S. leadership in the global economy. By failing to pass Trade Adjustment Assistance, which provides help to American workers affected by international trade, Congress has raised doubts about the U.S.'s ability to conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an agreement with 11 other Pacific Rim economies. It also dims the prospects for the negotiations on the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe. It wasn't the first time recently that Congress sought to derail an agreement the executive branch had successfully advanced abroad. In recent months, lawmakers have again failed to approve reforms to the International Monetary Fund that were crafted by the administration, approved by most of the fund's global membership and are in the U.S. national interest (and they entail neither additional financial obligations nor an erosion of U.S. influence, representation and veto power on major IMF decisions). As with trade, congressional blockage of IMF reforms had less to do with the merits of the case than with the posturing of individual lawmakers as they prepare to seek re-election. The dysfunction reflects a legislative branch that has been operationally undermined not just by extreme polarization of the two parties, but also by the influence of the extremes within the parties as they set up the terms of the debate for the next presidential-nomination primaries. Outside the U.S., the image of an uncooperative Congress has also been fueled by the Republican lawmakers who took the unprecedented step of sending a letter to Iran's leadership warning that the nuclear agreement being pursued by Obama could well be overturned after the November 2016 elections. To be fair, such signals to the rest of the world haven't been emitted by Congress alone. The administration itself slipped in its handling of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Ignoring advice to join this new institution and seek to shape and influence it from within, the U.S. embarked on a concerted public campaign to block it. Those efforts were thwarted as U.S. allies joined the China-led initiative, forcing a rather embarrassing retreat. All this justifiably worries those who believe that effective U.S. economic leadership is essential to a well-functioning global system. This is especially true now, when world growth is struggling, there are genuine concerns about currency wars and countries have fallen further behind in dealing with some collective challenges, including environmental ones. Historically, the U.S. has been the most effective in coordinating crisis management efforts, pushing forward multilateral reforms and enabling global policy cooperation. Moreover, there is no credible alternative to U.S. leadership on the international economic stage. The Group of Seven isn't representative of the realities of recent global economic realignments. The G-20 is unwieldy and lacks sufficient continuity. Europe, with its endless challenges, is too internally focused and preoccupied. China is hesitant to step up to broader international responsibilities. And too many international institutions are burdened with longstanding legitimacy and credibility deficits related to outmoded representation and governance features. After Congress's loud statement last week, many hope that lawmakers will find a way to put trade authorization back on track this week. Yet such a stop-go strategy is far from cost-free. It does little to restore confidence in Congress, whose public approval rating languishes at or close to record lows. And it suggests to the rest of the world that, due to seemingly endless internal political polarization and dysfunction, the U.S. cannot be relied on to play its natural role as the world's economic conductor. Congress would be well advised to take note of this before turning other international economic initiatives into spectacles. And, while it is at it, it should really move to approve IMF reforms that are in both the national and global interest. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. To contact the author of this story:  Mohamed A. El-Erian at melerian@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story:  Max Berley at mberley@bloomberg.net","label":0}
{"text":"The U.S. State Department said on Thursday it was concerned that a non-binding independence referendum planned this year in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region will distract from \"more urgent priorities\" such as the defeat of Islamic State militants. While saying it appreciated the \"legitimate aspirations\" of the people of Iraqi Kurdistan, the State Department said in a statement it supports a \"unified, federal, stable and democratic Iraq\" and had voiced concerns about the planned September referendum to Kurdish authorities. \"We ... encourage the regional authorities to engage with the government of Iraq on the full range of important issues, including the future of relations between Baghdad and Erbil, on the bases of the Iraqi constitution,\" the department said.","label":0}
{"text":"Is our government telling us certain hate groups are more acceptable than others?Does the Ku Klux Klan have a constitutional right to adopt a highway ?That question was at the center of a high-profile battle Monday before the Georgia Supreme Court, where the Klan is challenging the state s refusal to let it participate in the popular Adopt-A-Highway program.The hate group, with the American Civil Liberties Union by its side, is casting its bid as a free speech issue. The government cannot be a censor of free speech, Alan Berger, an attorney for the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said.But the Georgia Department of Transportation has resisted the KKK s efforts ever since 2012 to join the program.For its part, GDOT maintains it should be allowed to exclude certain groups from the program and stands by its claim that the KKK s long rooted history of civil disturbance would cause a significant public concern. Monday s arguments centered around Georgia s claim of so-called sovereign immunity a legal doctrine that shields the state from civil suit or criminal prosecution. The state had appealed a lower court decision by Judge Shawn LaGrua, who ruled Georgia was not protected against the KKK suit because the group claimed the discrimination involved a violation of its constitutional rights. The state denied the application, not because of safety hazard or some other compelling government interest, but because the state disagrees with what the KKK represents, Maya Dillard Smith, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, told FoxNews.com. It is precisely this kind of government action the Constitution prohibits. While Smith admits that many people who hear about the case have a visceral reaction to it, she warns its outcome could have a dangerous ripple effect. What may seem as chipping away only at the KKK s free speech right, will, in fact, open Pandora s box and create legal precedent that justifies curtailing the free speech rights of religious evangelicals, abortion protestors and even Black Lives Matter supporters and opponents, she said.A judgment is not expected for a couple of months, Berger told FoxNews.com following Monday s oral arguments. In the meantime, GDOT has suspended Adopt-a-Highway applications.This isn t the first time a state has gone rounds with the white supremacist group.In 1994, Missouri tried to block the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from participating in its Adopt-A-Highway program.The group which excludes anyone who is black, Jewish, Mexican or Asian had requested a half-mile section of road on Interstate 55, one of the routes that had been used to bus black students to school as part of desegregation efforts near St. Louis.The state denied the KKK s request.In that case, lawyers for the state unsuccessfully argued that it had a right to control its own speech and that allowing the Klan to participate would violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act s ban on racial discrimination in federally funded programs.The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thereby forcing the state to allow the group to take part in its Adopt-A-Highway program. However, the state later kicked the group out, saying it failed to do its job and pick up the litter on its adopted stretch of highway. So what about the YMCA which houses the Fred Hampton Aquatic Center on former Oak Street In Maywood, IL that was officially named after Black Panther, Fred Hampton who was slain in a police raid in 2007. September 9, 2007From now on, Oak Street in Maywood will be known as Fred Hampton Way.Relatives of the slain Black Panther leader joined congressmen, activists and Maywood residents Saturday to dedicate the street and a statue of Hampton that now sits in front of the Fred Hampton Family Aquatic Center.Last year, efforts to name a street on Chicago s West Side for Hampton failed amid controversy that Hampton and the Panthers advocated violence against police.But there was no such debate in Maywood, whose mayor, Henderson Yarbrough, said the village council unanimously, proudly voted to give Hampton his due. There ought to be some footprints in the sand in relation to this man, said the Rev. Al Sampson, one of about 75 people at the ceremony. Fred Hampton represents part of the tradition of liberation freedom fighters. Killed in police raid in 69 Maywood s police chief attended the event, along with U.S. Representatives Danny Davis and Bobby Rush, a co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party.Hampton, who grew up in Maywood, and fellow Panther Mark Clark were gunned down by Chicago Police in a 1969 raid at Hampton s apartment. Hampton had helped bring the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to national prominence and also brokered a nonaggression pact between gangs.","label":1}
{"text":"The man charged with murdering the British lawmaker Jo Cox made his first court appearance on Saturday, telling the court when asked his name, \"My name is death to traitors, freedom for Britain. \" Thomas Mair, 52, had been charged earlier Saturday with murder and several other offenses, including inflicting grievous bodily harm and possession of a firearm. Mr. Mair, of the town of Birstall, appeared briefly at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. Once charges have been brought, British media law prohibits any reporting about the case that might prejudice a trial. Ms. Cox, 41, a member of Parliament who advocated for immigrants' causes, was gunned down on Thursday outside a library in Birstall, a town near the city of Leeds in northern England, as she was wrapping up a meeting with constituents. A man was also slightly injured in the attack. Her death came just days before a referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union, and it led to an immediate suspension of campaigning on both sides out of respect for her memory. But Vote Leave, which supports Britain's departure from the bloc, said Friday that it would resume campaigning over the weekend. Issues of immigration and national identity have been central to the occasionally bitter clashes over the referendum, and critics say the tone of the debate has verged on racism and xenophobia. The killing of Ms. Cox \u2014 the first of a sitting member of Parliament since the Irish Republican Army assassinated Ian Gow, a Conservative lawmaker, in 1990 \u2014 elicited an outpouring of sympathy in Britain, where gun ownership is strictly regulated. Ms. Cox, a member of the opposition Labour Party, was elected to Parliament to represent the area of Batley and Spen only in May 2015. But she had already established a strong reputation. Prime Minister David Cameron and his rival Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, both praised her as a rising star in British politics. President Obama was reported to have called Ms. Cox's husband to offer condolences. \"The president noted that the world is a better place because of her selfless service to others, and that there can be no justification for this heinous crime, which robbed a family, a community, and a nation of a dedicated wife, mother, and public servant,\" Sky News reported, citing the White House.","label":0}
{"text":"Even before Sunday night's vicious presidential debate, Republican Donald Trump was losing ground in many of the states he needs to win to capture the presidency, according to the latest Reuters\/Ipsos States of the Nation Project analysis released on Monday. The project estimates that if the election had been held at the end of last week, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had at least a 95 percent chance of winning enough states to reach the minimum 270 Electoral College votes needed to become the next president, based on polling between Sept. 30 and Oct. 7. _________________________ STATES OF THE NATION What would it take for Donald Trump to turn the map red? _________________________ Those odds had steadily grown from about 60 percent on Sept. 15 to almost 90 percent on Sept 30. In the last four weeks, her estimated margin of victory has grown from about 14 votes to 118, according to the project. The polling did not capture reaction to Trump's performance in Sunday's debate or the release on Friday of his 11-year-old sexually aggressive comments about women. The results, however, mirrored other estimates of her chances of winning the campaign. Statistical analysis outfit FiveThirtyEight, for example, put Clinton's chance of victory in the election at about 55 percent three weeks ago. Currently, they estimate the odds of a Clinton win at 82 percent. In the same period, the New York Times' estimates of the odds of a Clinton victory have also increased, from about 70 percent to 84 percent. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada and Florida are now leaning toward the Democratic candidate, according to the Reuters\/Ipsos project, an online survey of about 15,000 people every week. Arizona and Iowa are in the too-close-to-call category after being considered likely Trump states. More broadly, the state-by-state results show how Trump's support is sliding. In the last week, he has lost ground in at least 21 states, including in seven of the 18 states where he is leading, while improving his position in 19 states. Meanwhile, Clinton lost ground in 12 states, including in three of the 23 states where she is leading, and improved her standing in 30 sates. Based on these results, Trump's best hope for a victory would require a precipitous drop in the number of Democratic voters going to the polls on Nov. 8 from expected levels, combined with a similarly large increase in Republican turnout. LOCKER-ROOM TALK Trump's crude comments about groping women and aggressively pursuing a married woman, captured on an open microphone, have sent his campaign into turmoil. The recording, first reported by The Washington Post, was made in 2005, in advance of a cameo appearance on a soap opera. Over the weekend, numerous Republican elected officials and candidates responded by calling for Trump to step aside. Trump responded to his waning support among some Republicans by calling them hypocrites. During Sunday's debate he apologized but said the comments were just \"locker-room talk.\" He also attacked Bill Clinton's treatment of women and said Hillary Clinton should be in jail for her use of a private email server while secretary of state. Trump said that, if elected, he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate her. A nearly yearlong FBI investigation into the emails concluded earlier this year that no charges should be filed, although FBI Director James Comey said Clinton had been careless in her handling of sensitive material. The sexually explicit comments controversy followed published reports suggesting the Republican Party leadership was having an internal debate about shifting resources away from the presidential race and into U.S. House and Senate races. The Republicans currently control both branches of Congress. Many experts think control of the Senate could shift to the Democrats, although few are predicting the Republicans will lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Even before the weekend, the Trump campaign had struggled through two weeks of negative news coverage that began with the campaign's first presidential debate on Sept. 26, which Reuters\/Ipsos polling suggested Clinton had won. Shortly after the first debate, the New York businessman also attacked \u2013 in tweets that began in the early hours of the morning \u2013 a former Miss Universe whom Clinton had referred to during the debate as an example of Trump degrading women. Also during that period, a New York Times report detailed how Trump lost nearly $1 billion in 1995, a loss that could be used to avoid paying federal taxes for up to 18 years, depending on his annual income. Clinton has had her share of woes as well, including the release of hacked emails last week of comments she appeared to have made to banks and big business. In the 2014 comments, she pushes for open trade and open borders, and takes a conciliatory approach to Wall Street, both positions she later backed away from.","label":0}
{"text":"While the media is focused on the horserace that will help determine politics for the next eight years, they re pretty much ignoring the fact that Washington is still in business and Republicans are busy being Republicans, which is to say that the rich will be getting richer while everyone else will be getting poorer.Ryan, who s not sure he can back Donald Trump, likely because Trump dares say the things that Republicans generally say behind closed doors, has released a new domestic plan, called, A Better Way. Ryan calls it his antidote to anger and division. The only problem is that if anyone pays attention to the plan, they will be angry at how he divides Americans into tax brackets, and as usual, the top tax brackets win.His plan includes a lot of Republican staples, like more military, less regulation, repealing Obamacare and deep cuts for poor people. In other words, same old cold-hearted Ayn Rand I got mine, now f*** you GOP themes. Perhaps the worst part, though, is the tax plan. There are a lot of tax cuts (mostly at the cost to poor people) and nearly all of those 99.6 percent go to the top one percent.A typical Republican tax cut will give about 40 percent of its tax cuts to the richest one percent. Ryan s plan, according to a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center, will give three-quarters of its tax cuts to the richest one percent in the first year. And that s only because the cuts are slowly phased in. By 2025, the highest-earning one percent will enjoy 99.6 percent of the tax cuts. The remaining 0.4 percent will be divided up among the other 99 percent of the country. The new Paul Ryan tax cuts make the Bush tax cuts look like socialism.Source: NY MagazineHere s the video:While Ryan likes to separate himself from Donald Trump, his plan proves his policies are no less racist and classist than the worst Trump can imagine. He s just hoping we won t notice.","label":1}
{"text":"There is no debating the fact that tensions between the United States and North Korea have reached a boiling point. But what s still being continuously debated is how to handle these tensions.President Trump threatened to use fire and fury against North Korea after it was revealed that North Korea successfully created a miniaturized nuclear weapon designed to fit inside its missiles. In an interview with NBC s Tim Russert in 1999, then businessman Donald Trump voiced his support for a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea.Trump told Russert that if he was President, a Trump administration would negotiate like crazy to get the best deal possible. If a deal was not possible, Trump said he would order a pre-emptive strike. He went on to successfully predict that that they re [North Korea] are going to have those weapons pointed all over the world and specifically at the United States. He goes further by saying that it only does the U.S. minimal good to discuss the economy and Social Security without addressing the biggest problem: nuclear proliferation. He also calls out previous politicians including Jimmy Carter for not facing this situation head on and negotiating properly.Following President Trump s warning North Korea over further provocations, the Hermit Kingdom has announced it is considering striking Guam. The North Korean military warned it may carry out a preemptive operation once the US shows signs of provocation , and that it is seriously considering a strategy to strike Guam with mid-to-long range missiles. As Trump moves forward, this interview serves as evidence that his strategy will hold up against North Korea.","label":1}
{"text":"Advocacy groups launched petitions and sent letters on Wednesday urging two of the biggest U.S. public pension funds to divest from an investment fund unless it stops paying one of President Donald Trump's companies to run a New York hotel. Reuters reported on April 26 that public pension funds in at least seven U.S. states periodically send millions of dollars to an investment fund that owns the upscale Trump SoHo Hotel and Condominium in New York City and pays a Trump company to run it, according to a Reuters review of public records. Two legal advocacy groups sent petitions to half a million of their members and letters urging state officials who oversee the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the New York State Common Retirement Fund to reconsider their investments in CIM Fund III, which owns the Trump SoHo. \"The money used for this investment comes from mandatory deductions from the paychecks of public employees. These employees are thus forced to indirectly subsidize President Trump beyond the Constitution's mandate of a fixed salary,\" said the letters from Free Speech for People in Newton, Massachusetts, and Courage Campaign in Los Angeles. Article II of the U.S. Constitution bars the president from receiving additional payments beyond his salary from state governments. The fees that public pension funds pay CIM may fall into that category, several constitutional lawyers have told Reuters. The White House in June rejected the allegation that government payments to Trump's businesses violated the Constitution and said \"partisan politics\" had motivated lawsuits challenging Trump's continued ownership of his businesses. The advocacy groups urged the pension funds either to divest from the CIM fund or work with other investors to demand that CIM end its relationship with the Trump Organization. CalPERS declined to comment, but CalPERS officials disclosed in response to a public records request that the pension fund paid CIM $1,722,418 in management fees for the first three months of 2017. In a statement, a spokesman for New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli noted that the CIM fund was in the process of gradually selling off the properties it owns and said the New York state pension fund \"has limited rights as an investor and does not make or control CIM's investment choices.\" CIM said in a statement that it \"is committed to creating attractive investment opportunities for its investors and then overseeing those investments to produce the best outcomes possible for the funds it manages.\" It added that the Trump SoHo was underperforming and said it was \"working hard to restore its performance before we bring it to market.\" The White House and the Trump Organization did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Democratic officials and lawmakers have also raised concerns over the payment chain between the public pension funds and the Trump SoHo. The public pension funds' investments in CIM Fund III were cited in a June lawsuit that the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia filed against Trump, alleging that government payments to his businesses violated the Constitution. In May, the top Democrat on the Senate committee overseeing pensions asked the U.S. Office of Government Ethics to assess the constitutionality of the payments. The office said it was not authorized to probe presidential actions.","label":0}
{"text":"Country music star Blake Shelton apparently had a lot on his mind earlier this week, as he took to Twitter and delivered a rather awesome message to young people about learning to think for yourself and watching out for media bias.With the entertainment industry stuffed to the gills with brain dead liberal wackos, it s super refreshing to hear this message coming from someone with this kind of cultural clout.To all you young people out there. Make up your own minds about this country and the rest of the world. Listen, read, watch and decide. Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 201And remember that Hollywood celebrities opinions or mine for that matter are no better than yours.. In fact I d rather hear yours.. #truth Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 2015 Microphones only make a voice louder Not powerful. Remember that. https:\/\/t.co\/k4ild1HLfI Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 2015 Oh and lastly.. When you watch the news channels, try to watch ALL of them. Every single one of them has an affiliation\/agenda. Every one. Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 2015 Ok sorry about the lecture Now back to my regularly scheduled drinking. Blake Shelton (@blakeshelton) May 11, 2015 Nice.Shelton is absolutely right.Too many young people today are ready and willing to have their minds made up for them on important issues by going with popular opinion or being swayed by what celebrities think on a certain topic.Celebrities may have really cool jobs, tons of money, and large platforms with which to spread a message, but that doesn t mean their opinion is more important than anyone else s, nor does it mean their views are right.Young folks today aren t taught to engage the world with critical thinking anymore. They re taught to go along with the progressive program, and whenever a student dare think outside the box, teachers and cultural figures are there to shame them back into their proper place.The media today is absolutely biased, and paying attention to what all the networks are doing is a good way to stay on top of differing sides of an issue, although some outlets are so far to the left it s enough to turn off even the most objective, political centristLet s hope Shelton s message hit home and inspires some in the younger generation to start thinking more for themselves rather than just going with the flow of popular opinion.","label":1}
{"text":"Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has asked to meet with the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is conducting an investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, Politico reported on Thursday, citing unnamed sources. Politico said Rosenstein was seen in the vicinity of the panel, which was holding a separate meeting on security issues. Rosenstein's reported request comes days after President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey in a move that the White House has said followed a memo from Rosenstein.","label":0}
{"text":"The upper house of Spain s parliament on Friday authorized the government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to rule Catalonia directly from Madrid, minutes after the restive region declared independence from Spain. Rajoy is now expected to convene his cabinet to adopt the first measures to govern Catalonia. This could include firing the Barcelona government and assuming direct supervision of Catalan police forces.","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump will be presented with multiple options regarding the future of the Iran nuclear deal ahead of an Oct. 15 deadline to certify whether Tehran is complying with the pact, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday. Tillerson did not disclose details about the kinds of options he will present to Trump. He also declined to directly answer a question about whether he shared Defense Secretary Jim Mattis assessment to Congress on Tuesday that Iran was fundamentally in compliance with the accord. We ll have a recommendation for the president. We re going to give him a couple of options of how to move forward to advance the important policy toward Iran, Tillerson told reporters at the State Department. A collapse of the 2015 deal, which Trump has called an embarrassment, but which is supported by the other major powers that negotiated it with Iran, could trigger a regional arms race and stoke Middle East tensions. A senior U.S. official said last month that Trump was leaning toward not certifying that Iran is complying with the pact. Trump himself has said he already had made up his mind whether to keep the pact, but has declined to disclose his decision. If Trump declines to certify Iran s compliance, U.S. congressional leaders would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran suspended under the accord. Unlike Mattis, who publicly suggested Trump should consider sticking with the agreement, Tillerson has been highly critical of the accord and said it must be changed. He has taken aim at the deal s so-called sunset clauses, under which some of the restrictions on Iran s nuclear program expire over time. Tillerson on Wednesday suggested that whatever path the United States chooses on the nuclear accord known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), it would only represent one component of America s broader policy toward Iran. The JCPOA represents only a small part of the many issues that we need to deal with when it comes to the Iranian relationship, he said. So it is an important part of that, but is not the only part. And I ve said many times, we cannot let the Iranian relationship be defined solely by that nuclear agreement.","label":0}
{"text":"According to what White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, Trump requested the resignation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn due to the erosion of trust. Flynn lied to the administration regarding discussions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump literally fired Flynn but he s now calling the scandal fake news. The amateur president has been lashing out at networks reporting on the scandal, calling them fake news, too. Thursday morning, Trump went on quite a tweet-storm. FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and sources, is far more effective than the discredited Democrats but they are fading fast!, Trump tweeted.FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and sources, is far more effective than the discredited Democrats but they are fading fast! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017In the following tweet, he wrote, The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story RUSSIA. Fake news! The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story RUSSIA. Fake news! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017Trump is clearly unhinged. Trump has previously admitted that Russia engaged in cyber attacks during the U.S. presidential election. And again, he fired Flynn for lying to the administration about talks with the Russian ambassador about sanctions. Regardless, today he s calling it fake news.The Internet pounced after Trump unleashed his crazy-time tweets and fact-checked him.@realDonaldTrump And Russia was not INVENTED by the Dems, it s been confirmed by the FBI that your aides had contact w\/ Russian intelligence Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com\/UvI5RGNyPl Khary Penebaker (@kharyp) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump Your PHONE RECORDS show your campaign had contact with Russian Intelligence. Who invented that? Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump It s not fake news when three of your advisers are forced to resign because of exposed Russian ties. Ruwayda Mustafah (@RuwaydaMustafah) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump It s not fake news when foreign banks such as Deutsche bank start to investigate your account for Russian links. Ruwayda Mustafah (@RuwaydaMustafah) February 16, 2017 It can t be leaked information and fake news. @realDonaldTrump yesterday you were saying it was leaked information . It can t be leaked information and fake news. Matt Haig (@matthaig1) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You know what s not fake news? Your approval rating https:\/\/t.co\/MOjPG26MIu Brandon Neely (@BrandonTXNeely) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You should release your taxes to prove to the Dems and failing\/lying media you have ZERO financial entanglement with Russia Evan Dashevsky (@haldash) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump #TrumpLied? #FlynnGhazi #RiggedElection #WaterGate #maddow pic.twitter.com\/k2NYaW8e3B Diva (@sammypolsen12) February 16, 2017.@mikd33 @jules_su @realDonaldTrump General Mattisjust CONFIRMED Russian involvement in election.You gonna ask for HIS resignation too? JustJanis (@jsavite) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump but the FBI isn t the democrats Brandon Keating (@BrandonTalks) February 16, 2017.@mikd33 @jules_su @realDonaldTrump General Mattisjust CONFIRMED Russian involvement in election.You gonna ask for HIS resignation too? JustJanis (@jsavite) February 16, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Russia, if you re listening, I hope you re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. https:\/\/t.co\/3tMzMn2EN6 Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You have literally fired 3 advisors because of their ties to Russia. The only fake news is you being a legitimate president Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) February 16, 2017 You fuck nut. @realDonaldTrump you fuck nut nicholasstoller ?? (@nicholasstoller) February 16, 2017Trump won t even take questions about Flynnghazi from reporters. And by the way, there s a Russian spy ship patrolling off the coast of the U.S. Presently, it s near Virginia. So naturally, Trump is planning to hold a rally in Florida.Photo by Isaac Brekken\/Getty Images with added tweet.","label":1}
{"text":"Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday the situation on the Korean Peninsula is critical and that a peace agreement is the \"only right choice\" in the nuclear dispute with North Korea. \"Peaceful settlement of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula through dialogue and negotiations represents the only right choice that is practical and viable,\" Wang told reporters at the United Nations before a ministerial meeting of the 15-member Security Council.","label":0}
{"text":"A U.S. court struck down two Republican-drawn U.S. congressional districts in Texas on Tuesday, saying they were discriminatory and ordering a remedy ahead of elections in 2018, court papers showed. In the case that has been contested in federal courts for about six years, a three-judge panel at U.S. District Court in San Antonio ruled lawmakers drew up the districts to undermine the influence of racial minority voters, who plaintiffs argued typically show more support for Democrats than Republicans. The court also said that the maps laying them out must either be fixed by the state or the courts. The court said the 27th and 35th congressional districts were drawn in violation of the U.S. Voting Rights Act. Texas has 36 districts, with Republicans holding 25 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and Democrats 11. The court also faulted the state's legislature for not heeding previous judicial plans and for making inadequate fixes to the maps drawn in 2011. \"The discriminatory taint was not removed by the Legislature's enactment of the Court's interim plans,\" the judges said in their decision. Texas Democrats saw the decision as a victory. \"Republicans initiated a deceitful legal strategy to deliberately silence Texans from having a voice in their own government. Today, the Court unanimously agreed,\" Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa said in a statement. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the court did rule in Texas' favor in finding that one contested district, District 23, was lawful. However, Paxton said in a statement the state has been abiding by the law and prior court guidance and he intended to ask the U.S. Supreme Court whether Texas \"had discriminatory intent when relying on the district court.\" In court, lawyers for Texas argued that the boundaries were drawn for Republican partisan advantage, which they said is legal. They dismissed claims the districts were drawn illegally with the intention to disenfranchise racial and ethnic groups.","label":0}
{"text":"Hillary Clinton got back on the campaign trail on Thursday after taking three days off for pneumonia, and the Democratic presidential candidate faced a more challenging political landscape, with Republican rival Donald Trump rising in opinion polls. Senior Clinton aides said they always expected the race to the Nov. 8 election to be close. But it was clear from a raft of new polls that Trump had halted a summer swoon after taking steps to give a less freewheeling, more polished performance on the stump. Clinton, 68, appeared in good health on a visit to her campaign plane's press cabin while flying to Greensboro, North Carolina, for a rally where she sought to refocus her campaign on the plight of the working class - which has turned out to be a potent theme for Trump. Leaving the stage to the tune of James Brown's \"I feel good,\" Clinton told reporters she kept her pneumonia diagnosis last Friday quiet, telling only senior staff, because she thought she would be able to \"power through\" the illness and keep campaigning. \"From my perspective, I thought I was going to be fine and I thought that there was no reason to make a big fuss about it,\" she said. On Sunday, Clinton nearly collapsed while leaving a ceremony marking the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York. Her illness coincided with a mini-surge by Trump, who has drawn even or taken a slight lead in national polls. Polls in battleground states where the race is likely to be decided showed Trump now leading in Iowa, Ohio, Florida and Nevada, and tied in North Carolina. Following her appearance in North Carolina, Clinton was scheduled to appear at a Washington dinner. Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, said the candidate and her aides expected the contest to be close. \"We always expected the race to tighten up, we still feel like we're in a strong position with organizational advantage in Florida and Ohio,\" Podesta told reporters on Thursday. \"They call these states battlegrounds for a reason.\" In a speech at the New York Economic Club, Trump stuck to his script, avoiding the more improvisational style that has produced a cornucopia of controversies. Trump pushed a package of tax cuts he said would help power the U.S. economy to an annual growth rate of 3.5 percent. The New York businessman said his goal would be 4 percent growth, a target originally championed by Republican primary rival Jeb Bush. Trump said the growth would generate 25 million new jobs. His economic package resurrected a decades-old debate on whether tax cuts can generate sustainable growth. But the overarching impression left by his speech was one of Trump talking about substantive issues and avoiding the frivolous. Bob Shrum, a Democratic strategist who managed 2004 candidate John Kerry's unsuccessful campaign, said Clinton remained the favorite to win the White House, with demographic changes favoring her over Trump, who is heavily reliant on white voters. What has hurt Clinton, Shrum said, is not the time taken off from the campaign trail but rather her decision to keep her diagnosis secret until forced to disclose it - which reinforced a perception among voters that she has a penchant for secrecy. \"Fairly or unfairly, what this was taken as was more evidence that she was not transparent and that's what hurts her,\" Shrum said. \"She been far more transparent than Trump but she hasn't gotten any credit for it.\" Democrats have sought to pressure Trump to release his tax returns, but the Republican has said he will not release them until a federal government audit has been completed. Clinton has released her tax records. With the candidates' health in the spotlight, Trump, 70, on Thursday released details of a recent physical examination, a day after Clinton released specifics on her medical condition. Trump's campaign said the results of his physical showed the fast-food fan has normal cholesterol with the help of a statin drug, weighs 236 pounds (107 kg) and has normal blood pressure. In a not-so-subtle slap at Clinton, the Trump campaign said his medical report showed he \"has the stamina to endure \u2014 uninterrupted \u2014 the rigors of a punishing and unprecedented presidential campaign and, more importantly, the singularly demanding job of president of the United States.\" Trump also appeared on the \"Dr. Oz Show\" to discuss his health in an interview with host Mehmet Oz, a surgeon. Top Clinton aide Jennifer Palmieri said \"one upside\" of Clinton's unplanned break was the chance to \"sharpen the final argument Clinton will present to voters in these closing weeks.\" \"Our campaign readily admits that running against a candidate as controversial as Donald Trump means it is harder to be heard on what you aspire for the country's future, and it is incumbent on us to work harder,\" Palmieri said in a statement. Trump backers on Capitol Hill said they were heartened by the tightening race after a call on Thursday morning with his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, who mapped out what the campaign was doing. She promised a more policy-driven approach from Trump in the race's final stretch. \"The poll numbers are just looking phenomenal as you move away from registered voters to likely voters,\" Republican U.S. Representative Blake Farenthold of Texas said.","label":0}
{"text":"October 28, 2016 Susan Rice: U.S. Must Integrate LGBT Rights into Gov't and Foreign Policy  National Security Advisor Susan Rice told students at American University in a speech on LGBT rights Wednesday that the \"United States must continue to integrate LGBT rights into our government and foreign policy,\" including \"creating a more diverse national security workforce.\"  \"This is an issue that I'm particularly passionate about, and one that President Obama has prioritized,\" Rice said, \"because without tapping America's full range of races, religions, ethnicities, social and economic experiences\u2014without embracing people of every sexual orientation and gender identity\u2014we're leading in a complex world with one hand tied behind our back.\"  Rice, who once served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said that \"whether we are talking about race, religion, sexual orientation or gender identity, this fight for equal rights is what our history and values demand.\"","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, a senior U.S. official said on Friday. U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that as the 2016 presidential campaign progressed, Russian government officials devoted increasing attention to assisting Trump's effort to win the election, the U.S. official familiar with the finding told Reuters on Friday night, speaking on condition of anonymity. The president-elect's transition office released a statement that exaggerated his margin of victory and attacked the U.S. intelligence community that Trump will soon command, but did not address the analysts' conclusion. \"These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction,\" the statement said. \"The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It's now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'\" Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are calling for a full investigation into Russia's election year activities. \"Protecting the integrity of our elections is hindered when President-elect Trump and his transition team minimize or dismiss the intelligence assessments themselves,\" Representative Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in a statement issued on Saturday. Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Washington Post reported on Friday that intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks. U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves office on Jan. 20, the White House said on Friday. Obama's homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters the report's results would be shared with lawmakers and others. \"The president has directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process ... and to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of stakeholders, to include the Congress,\" she said during an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. As summer turned to fall, Russian hackers turned almost all their attention to the Democrats. Virtually all the emails they released publicly were potentially damaging to Clinton and the Democrats, not Republicans, the official told Reuters. \"That was a major clue to their intent,\" the official said. \"If all they wanted to do was discredit our political system, why publicize the failings of just one party, especially when you have a target like Trump?\" A second official familiar with the report said the intelligence analysts' conclusion about Russia's motives does not mean the intelligence community believes that Moscow's efforts altered or significantly affected the outcome of the election. Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election. A Central Intelligence Agency spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the matter. The hacked emails passed to WikiLeaks were a regular source of embarrassment to the Clinton campaign during the race for the presidency. U.S. intelligence analysts have assessed \"with high confidence\" that at some point in the extended presidential campaign Russian President Vladimir Putin's government had decided to try to bolster Trump's chances of winning. The Russians appear to have concluded that Trump had a shot at winning and that he would be much friendlier to Russia than Clinton would be, especially on issues such as maintaining economic sanctions and imposing additional ones, the official said. Moscow is launching a similar effort to influence the next German election, following an escalating campaign to promote far-right and nationalist political parties and individuals in Europe that began more than a decade ago, the official said. In both cases, said the official, Putin's campaigns in both Europe and the United States are intended to disrupt and discredit the Western concept of democracy by promoting extremist candidates, parties, and political figures. In October, the U.S. government publicly accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Obama has said he warned Putin about consequences for the attacks. \"I don't believe they interfered,\" Trump told Time magazine about Russia in an interview published this week. \"That became a laughing point, not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say, 'Oh, Russia interfered.'\"","label":0}
{"text":"Hillary Clinton has said a lot of things that stick deep in the craw of honest, hardworking Americans before but this time she may have actually gone too far. In a seemingly innocent remark about how staying home and resting has brought her closer to the American people.Apparently laying in bed in one of many mansions with a staff to take care of her every need, and absolutely no worry of how she is going to pay her rent next month equals what it is like for a normal citizen to be suffering from illness in this day and age. I certainly feel lucky when I am under the weather, I can afford to take a few days off. Millions of Americans can t. They either go to work sick or they lose a paycheck. They toss back some Tylenols, chug some orange juice and hope the cough or the virus goes away on its own. I have met so many people living on a razor s edge, one illness away from losing their job, one paycheck away from losing their job. That goes against everything we stand for as Americans, because some things should not come down to luck. So while she was being pampered and waited on hand and foot we are supposed to believe that she was honestly contemplating that her situation in any way matched that of any hard working American going through being sick? All I heard was her throwing her wealth and status back into our faces.Maybe she realized that her diatribe wasn t working so she decided to quickly change focus and throw her own campaign staff under the but to deflect. You know, my campaign has said they could have been faster and I agree with that. I certainly expect them to be as focused and quick as possible, but I have to say from my perspective, I thought I was going to be fine and I thought that there wasn t really any reason to make a big fuss about it. So I should have taken time off earlier. I didn t, now I have, and I m back on the campaign trail. Hillary also dodged a question about whether she ever bothered to tell her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, that she was sick.Clinton responded by saying that her senior staff knew, and the information was provided to a number of people, but she did not say whether Kaine was one of those people. When a second reporter asked about why Kaine was not informed, and whether that has hurt their partnership, Clinton said she was not going to go into our personal conversations. Will this woman ever answer anything with a straight answer? Probably not, but we can all continue to be amused that she actually thinks any of us believe what she says.Keep powering through, Hillary.H\/T [ Info Wars ]","label":1}
{"text":"(image credit: AP\/Charlie Neibergall) Dallas elections officials say allegations \"likely false or instances of user error\" Over the past few weeks corporate news media have interpreted Donald Trump's repeated claims of a \"rigged\" election as exaggerated. The Republican presidential candidate's response in the third presidential debate of perhaps not accepting the election result was met with similar bluster by the major punditocracy. The experience of voters in Texas and other states may be bearing out Trump's warning as multiple reports are surfacing of electronic voting machines changing virtual ballots from Republican to Democratic presidential candidates. Because Texas law prohibits videos and photos in polling places many voters in that state explain the apparent polling shenanigans on social media. As The Economic Collapse Blog observes , [A] number of voters in Texas are reporting that the voting machines switched their votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. The odd thing is that none of the other choices were affected when these individuals attempted to vote for a straight Republican ticket. If Hillary Clinton is declared the winner of the state of Texas on election night, a full investigation of these voting machines should be conducted, because there is no way that Donald Trump should lose that state. I have said that it will be the greatest miracle in U.S. political history if Donald Trump wins this election, but without the state of Texas Donald Trump has exactly zero chance of winning. So those living down in Texas need to keep reporting anything unusual that they see or hear when they go to vote. Here are several social media posts from the Dallas Morning New s article at the I Am A Texan blog . The Dallas Morning News similarly reports : Early voters in Texas have claimed that voting machines in Dallas, Collin, Tarrant and other counties changed their presidential votes from Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. The allegations follow a similar pattern: Voters say they voted straight-ticket Republican, but when they reviewed their ballots, they reflected they had voted for Hillary Clinton for president, not Donald Trump. Their votes for Republicans in down-ballot races were not affected, according to the complaints. But elections officials say the allegations are more than likely false or instances of user error. Garland City Council member Stephen Stanley said he went to an early voting station at Nicholson Memorial South Branch Library on Tuesday morning while campaigning for candidates on the ballot. He said around noon a woman came out of the library and told him she had tried to vote straight ticket Republican but the machine said she had voted straight Democrat. The woman told him a poll worker apologized that the machine wasn't working and instructed her to use another one. Stanley said he was worried about people who didn't double-check their ballots. \"My question is how many other people didn't know,\" Stanley said. Dallas County elections administrator Toni Pippins-Poole encouraged all voters to double-check their ballots before submitting them. She said she's received second-hand reports of malfunctioning machines, but no one has logged an official complaint and she doesn't have any names to go with the claims. H\/t Matrix Bob","label":1}
{"text":"Turkey must be present in Syria s Idlib province until the threat from there toward Turkey is over, Defense Minister Nurettin Canikli was reported as saying by CNN Turk and other broadcasters on Tuesday. Turkey has said it will provide assistance to rebels it has long backed as it implements a de-escalation agreement to reduce fighting in Idlib. A Turkish army reconnaissance team scouted the region on Sunday before an expected military operation.","label":0}
{"text":"Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6 PM PST | 9 PM EST every Wednesday. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher, & Spore along with Andy Nowicki from Alt Right Blogspot, Jay Dyer of Jays Analysis & ACR contributor Randy J and Boiler Room Presidential Candidate select: Stewart Howe. In this broadcast listeners will be hearing us go around the BOILER ROOM on a veritable feast of topics including Donald Trump steamrolling the GOP and gatecrashing Glenn Beck s Cruz Caucus event, some esoteric analysis with Jay Dyer in the realms of serial killers, Dune and more, the Clinton Epstein connections and the usual conversational holes the Boiler crew somehow seems to dig themselves in and out of. If you want to participate, bring something interesting to throw into the boiler Join us in the ALTERNATE CURRENT RADIO chat room.BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE!","label":1}
{"text":"They laughed at us when we said @realDonaldTrump would win This morning they're too devastated to get out of bed.#MAGA #TrumpTrain pic.twitter.com\/A0xApdid7K Harlan Z. Hill (@Harlan) November 9, 2016","label":1}
{"text":"Shock!!!! Hasn't this been in the news for years??? Businesses were finding that Chinese chips had built in vulnerabilities allowing Chinese intelligence easy access??? Why is there a big surprise?? Obama and the Libs have dropped the US's drawers and presented a willing posterior for the Chinese, (who Soros favors most, and Obama second after Shiia Theocracies).","label":1}
{"text":"Russian businessman Suleiman Kerimov, arrested in France earlier this week by tax fraud investigators, will be presented to a judge with a view to formally placing him under judicial investigation, a public prosecutor said on Wednesday. Under France s legal system, being formally placed under investigation often but not always leads to a person being sent to trial.","label":0}
{"text":"Email  Well, Donald Trump certainly has cause for celebration today.  Despite having a multi-billion-dollar net worth, an international real estate company, and a primetime television show, Donald Trump's ambitions were still set higher. The one trophy he'd spent his entire life trying to claim for his mantle of accomplishments had always evaded him\u2014until today. By winning the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump is finally able to kick the nation's most powerful black family out of their house.  One can only imagine the immense joy Donald's wife and children feel for him today.  Trump has been preparing for this moment ever since the Trump Organization first started buying buildings throughout New York City and raising rent for African-Americans until he could toss them out for no longer being able to afford it. Now, after decades of practice and determination, the president-elect will see his magnum opus arrive in the form of booting the incredibly influential and powerful Obama family out of the home they've lived in for the past eight years.  Ejecting black people from their residences has been a lifelong passion for Donald. From practicing discriminatory housing policies that prevented black people from moving into Trump buildings to tagging black people's rental applications with a separate sheet of paper marked \"C\" for \"colored,\" Donald has never lost focus on his goal. But that was all just warm-up for Trump, who clearly wanted to challenge himself by attempting to evict a wealthy black family of international renown. And when he sends President Obama, Michelle, Malia, Sasha, and all their boxed-up belongings packing from their house in January, Trump will have done just that.  What a truly stunning feat. With the biggest item on his bucket list now firmly checked off, Trump would be more than justified in resting on his laurels to soak in the consummation of all his dreams. It's hard to imagine an even more powerful and famous black family Donald could evict, but knowing Trump, he will continue to push himself. Whatever his plans are now, the world will be watching in anxious anticipation.","label":1}
{"text":"As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continues to prove that he s an all-around amazing person, he s become admired far beyond Canada s borders.Earlier this week, Trudeau was confronted by some very passionate Americans while stopping at a deli in New York City, which Trudeau was visiting to announce that Canada would seek a UN Security Council seat in 2021. Having spotted the Prime Minister and desperate to escape the horrifying U.S. presidential election, these Americans spoke for many of us when they approached Trudeau and asked, Could you run for president here? And why wouldn t they want him to help rescue us from the possibility of Republican front runner Donald Trump?! He s the exact opposite: he s already increased taxes on the wealthy, welcomed Syrian refugees into his country, become an outspoken feminist and is just as interested in climate change as President Barack Obama. The prospect of President Trump is such a threat, that another candidate in addition Democrat candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would be a tremendous relief.Trudeau gently explained to those two Americans why a presidential run wasn t a possibility for him: It s very simple, I m not American-born. But these Americans weren t ready to take no for an answer. One of them quickly countered, Ted Cruz can do it. Trudeau reminded them that Cruz was born as an American because although Cruz was born in Canada, his mother was an American citizen.Then Trudeau s admirers began to get desperate. One of the men said, All our guys are so bad, you ve gotta believe us. We ve met em all they re so terrible. Please. His companion added, They re boring, weird. We have to settle for them. Please. Trudeau stood firm and said, You know what, I have tremendous confidence in the American people. Then, both men literally dropped down to their knees and pleaded with Trudeau: We ll do anything. We re begging you. We re literally begging you. Trudeau simply responded, I don t know if you noticed, but I actually have a job, and it s a pretty good one. He then patted one of the kneeling men on the back and continued on his way.This just happened to @JustinTrudeau in a NYC cafe: @cnn @ABC @HuffingtonPost @FoxNews pic.twitter.com\/BuceWMnGge Stephen Ward (@_stephenward) March 17, 2016Here s another view:Justin Trudeau dans un resto de Manhattan. Ces 2 Am ricains le supplient de se lancer dans la course pr sidentielle! pic.twitter.com\/QgrrEdVaIj Marie-Jo lle Parent (@mariejoelle) March 17, 2016CBC News believe it s possible that the two men in the clips are actually pranksters that have shown up at other U.S. presidential campaign events (putting the statement We ve met em all into context). The duo resembles the two men who wore Nazi-like armbands to a Trump event (with a pro-Trump logo instead), a man who interrupted a Marco Rubio rally to accuse the Florida senator of stealing his girlfriend, and a man who sat behind Hillary Clinton with a Settle for Hillary. Whether or not this was a stunt, it very much reflects where America is at right now. Most of us are looking to anyone who could save this country from Donald Trump and judging from the amount of supporters Trump has gathered, we wish we had as much faith in our fellow Americans as Trudeau does.","label":1}
{"text":"Is Trump winning? The future of America depends on a few states 09.11.2016 | Source: AP photo Republican Donald Trump has 95 percent of chances to become the next US president, The New York Times wrote on the basis of preliminary voting results. Donald Trump has surprisingly managed to win the support of 168 electors, while his rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton, has succeeded to the votes of only 109 electors. Trump is projected to win the election in a number of \"wavering\" states, such as Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Carolina. To win the election, a candidate needs to enlist the support of 270 electors. The procedure for their formal vote will be held on December 19, while on January 6, 2017 Congress will approve its results. The inauguration is scheduled for January 20, when the US president-elect takes office. Pravda.Ru","label":1}
{"text":"Democrats are consoling themselves by claiming Donald Trump's election is illegitimate, but they'll do themselves and the nation a favor if they consider their own faults \u2014 including the corruption in their own party and political strategy. [1. The Democrats' rigged primary: Democrats should begin by accepting the obvious truth of a rigged primary revealed by WikiLeaks. The party's key leaders \u2014 not the party's voters \u2014 picked and promoted Hillary Clinton, meaning she was secretly coronated before the primary ever began. Her rival Bernie Sanders never had a chance. The \"nomination\" contest was theater designed to make Sanders voters accept Clinton. His voters ought to be furious at Sanders for playing along with this farce, which he most certainly did. When Party elders shriek about nefarious Russian interference in the election process, they're trying to distract from what the leaked DNC emails actually said, and the fact that we now know those emails are 100 percent genuine, despite early Democrat statements to the contrary. One of those shrieking claims came from Donna Brazile, who was directly involved in doctoring a primary debate by leaking questions to Clinton, not to Sanders. 2. The Democrat superdelegate system: Then there's the openly rigged element of the Democratic primary, the superdelegate system. It is a political instrument specifically designed to shut down insurgencies and make the interests of Democrat voters secondary to the judgment of party elites, and the powerful lobbyists who manipulate them. Hillary Clinton was chosen by donors who had already spent a fortune currying favor with her, as demonstrated by the instantaneous collapse of the Clinton \"charities\" the instant the Clintons had no more favors to sell. 3. The Democrat money machine: Building a titanic campaign war chest was the paramount concern of the Democrats in 2016, because they thought it \u2014 and their media allies \u2014 would give them an unbreakable headlock over the public debate. So Joe Biden was told he could not afford to get into the race. Same for Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who barely raised enough cash to pay for a Philly cheese sandwich. Their financial kneecapping allowed Clinton to suck up hundreds of millions in campaign cash, sometimes in legally questionable ways, even as she railed against the influence of money in politics. 4. The media was part of Clinton's campaign: It's fun to watch Democrats wail about Russian spies using WikiLeaks to influence the election, when it's clear the mainstream media was able to downplay the actual contents of those emails enough to keep most voters in the dark. Sure, outfits like Breitbart News did everything we could to report those revelations, but that's nothing compared to the influence wielded by the establishment media when it gets a \"narrative\" avalanche rolling. Of course the establishment media was an active participant in the rigged primary scandal. Those leaked emails from the DNC and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta reflected very, very poorly on the press. That's something Democrats could fix \u2014 there's no reason for illegitimate coordination between their candidates and the media. Democrat voters also should demand an end to the incestuous relationship between the media and Democratic politics because it has become as much a liability. Sure, it's helpful to have the media in your hip pocket, but the value of that advantage is severely degraded when the public knows about it, and has lost faith in the establishment press as a result. Worse, the media enabled a weak, candidates like Clinton to capture the Party nomination. 5. The law was bent and broken to keep Clinton in the game: Democrat voters also should be questioning the legitimacy of Clinton's nomination because the rule of law was corrupted to preserve her political viability. Her candidacy should have ended when the email server story broke. (Really, it should have ended with the publication of Clinton Cash, but the Democrats incorrectly believed their controlled media could insulate her from the fallout of those astounding revelations.) The politicized Obama Justice Department did Democrats no favors by staving off indictments that would have taken Clinton out of the game, or by the email investigation until her replacement became prohibitively difficult. The Obama administration perfected tactics for dragging scandal investigations out until they became \"old news,\" but they miscalculated and prolonged Clinton's email scandal until it blew up like a string of demolition charges throughout the 2016 election. Before they began howling about Russian espionage, Democrats were pushing the narrative that FBI Director James Comey sabotaged Clinton's election hopes by speaking at length about her \"extremely careless\" actions when he announced no charges would be recommended, and then kneecapped her again by reviving the Clinton investigation briefly during the last days of the presidential campaign. As with their narrative about WikiLeaks, Democrats are complaining that Clinton was \"sabotaged\" because people revealed the truth about her. They're saying their presidential candidate could only win if damaging facts were concealed, false media narratives were perpetuated, and special exemptions from the law were granted to her. That sounds like the very definition of an illegitimate candidacy. 6. Democrats try to hack the electorate: We might also challenge the legitimacy of a political strategy that relies so heavily upon using immigration to hack the demographics of the American electorate. Before Clinton's defeat shocked them into silence, liberal analysts were beginning to churn out a fresh wave of \"Emerging Democratic Majority\" pieces about how GOP voters would never win a national election again. One of the reasons Democrats subjected the Electoral College to one of their tantrums is that the EC makes it harder for them to hack the presidential vote with mass immigration. That's the true significance of the observation that Clinton's \"victory\" came entirely from California. Before the 2016 election went down, it was commonly observed that Republicans might have won the previous two presidential contests if they were still running with Ronald Reagan's electorate this observation was used to mock Trump as foolish for pursuing an obsolete electoral strategy that could never work in the new, America. That observation also lies behind the Democrats' decision to downplay the economic concerns of struggling Americans, and to largely ignore the distastefully electorates of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania in favor of outreach to immigrants, racial subgroups, gays, professionals, unmarried women, and other element of the 'Emerging Democratic Majority.' If Democrats didn't believe they had a reserve army of immigrant voters for Clinton, they might have nominated Biden or Sanders to instead win ordinary Americans to their side. Amusingly, if those immigrants didn't exist, American voters' incomes would be higher \u2014 and fewer would have been angry enough to shift their votes to the GOP's candidate. To sum it all up, everything about Clinton's nomination and campaign stinks to high heaven. That's why Democrats should try to reform their own corrupt party before they lose again in 2020, if only because they can't overthrow the Constitution or persuade the military to install their next candidate. As President Barack Obama would say if the shoe was on the other foot, reform of the Democratic Party is the legitimate thing to do. As for Republicans, they know that there are many other techniques that Democrats use to hack the electorate, including the Democrats' control over the media and education systems. That's why Republicans should work hard and fast to disable all of them, permanently, because they have a sworn duty to protect the legitimacy of our voting system.","label":0}
{"text":"President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he thought Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen was \"excellent\" but declined to say who was his pick to lead the U.S. central bank ahead of a planned announcement on Thursday afternoon. \"I think Janet Yellen is excellent,\" Trump told reporters during a meeting with cabinet officials. Asked if Yellen was his choice to keep leading the Fed, Trump said: \"I didn't say that. I think she's excellent.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Rose Evansky, a British hairdresser who liberated women from the prison of the domed dryer when she invented styling at her London salon in the early 1960s, died on Nov. 21. She was 94. Her death was reported only recently by the British news media. There was no information on where she died. Mrs. Evansky, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, set up as a hairstylist soon after World War II. She and her hairdresser husband, Albert, opened a small shop in Hendon, a London suburb, and did so well that, in 1954, they moved to Mayfair, where the city's elite paid top money for styling. One day in 1962, as she faced a tedious morning of chemical and tight curling, tasks she disliked, inspiration struck. \"I'd been wandering past a barbershop in Brook Street around the corner from our salon in North Audley Street, and I saw the barber drying the front of a man's hair with a brush and a dryer,\" she told W magazine in 2012. \"And this image \u2014 of the barber with the dryer \u2014 flashed through my mind and I thought, 'Why not for women? '\" She experimented on one of her clients, a Mrs. Hay. \"I picked up a spiky plastic hairbrush and a hand dryer and started rolling a wet section of her hair around the brush, followed by warm air from the hand dryer held in my left hand,\" she wrote in a memoir, \"In Paris We Sang\" (2013). \"The more sections of wet hair I rolled over the brush, the easier it became, and soon part of Mrs. Hay's curly hair looked smooth, as if it had been brushed through from a set. Exciting!\" One day by chance, Lady Clare Rendlesham, the editor of the British edition of Vogue, dropped by the salon and, witnessing a in progress, stopped dead in her tracks. \"What are you doing, Rose?\" Mrs. Evansky recalled her shouting. Lady Clare immediately tipped off her friend Barbara Griggs, the fashion editor of The Evening Standard, who came in to behold the soft and flowing style. That afternoon, the newspaper trumpeted the news of \"the blow wave\" to its readers. \"This instantly earned her a reputation as one of the top hairdressers in London and went on to become the norm in hair drying,\" Hairdressers Journal International wrote in 2012, celebrating the industry's pioneers. Mrs. Evansky took quiet pride in getting women out from under the sizzling heat of the dome, and in the durability of her invention. \"I always look at the prices of hairdressers now, and I say, my God, it's still there: ''\" she told an interviewer for the beauty brand Space NK in 2013. \"How wonderful, 50 years later. \" She was born Rosel Lerner on May 30, 1922, in Worms, south of Frankfurt. Her parents were immigrants from Poland. In 1938, when the family was living in Ludwigshafen, her father was arrested and imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp. Speaking only German and Yiddish, she was sent to Britain on one of the last Kindertransport trains that carried Jewish children out of Germany. She lived briefly with a family in Dudley, in the West Midlands, before moving to London, just in time for the Blitz. There, she apprenticed for a barber in Whitechapel, and distinguished herself with her zeal. \"I worked and practiced till late at night on anyone who'd let me get at their hair,\" she wrote in her memoir. As World War II raged, she embarked on her career, finding work at a salon near Regent Street. In 1943, she married Albert Evansky. When their marriage ended in divorce, her husband bought her share of the business. He sold it in the early 1980s. What Florence was to painting and sculpture during the Renaissance, Mayfair was to the art of hairstyling in the 1950s and '60s. Mrs. Evansky sat atop the heap, the lone woman in a field monopolized by men. In \"Vidal: The Autobiography,\" Vidal Sassoon called her \"without question the top female stylist in the country and the equal of any man. \" Her prot\u00e9g\u00e9s included Leonard Lewis, known professionally as Leonard of Mayfair, who died on Nov. 30. Mrs. Evansky was in the forefront of the Mayfair style, which emphasized \"freedom and movement, rather than contrived waves and curls,\" Kim Smith of the University of East London wrote in her doctoral dissertation on West London hair salons. The Mayfair look led directly to the internationally celebrated styles associated with Swinging London and the likes of Jean Shrimpton, Julie Christie and Twiggy, who was a client of Mr. Lewis. In 1965, soon after leaving her husband, Mrs. Evansky married the playwright Denis Cannan, took his last name and moved with him to the countryside in East Sussex. He died in 2011. She is survived by two stepsons, Alexander and Nicholas Cannan a stepdaughter, Crescy Cannan and two . Her own hair was naturally . \"My hair is best described as 'windswept,' as I live near the sea,\" she told W magazine. \"I've never colored it, and I cut it myself. Why would I let anyone else when I can do it myself?\"","label":0}
{"text":"Report Copyright Violation Easy to know what is up - link For you unlightened guys, there are people who knows how to do this shit and get down on the realities of life.","label":1}
{"text":"U.S. President Donald Trump expects by the end of the year \"real progress\" among NATO allies to step up their defense spending toward the minimum criteria of two percent of their economic output, Vice President Mike Pence said on Monday. Speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Pence said: \"America will do our part but European defense requires European commitment as much as ours... The president expects real progress by the end of 2017.\"","label":0}
{"text":"The Non-Existent Trump Mandate November 14, 2016  Republicans are claiming a mandate to speak for the \"silent majority,\" but the actual numbers show that not only did Donald Trump fail to win a plurality, his vote total largely matched other recent GOP candidates, notes Nicolas J S Davies.  By Nicolas J S Davies  Within days of the U.S. general election, central elements of the result have already entered into American mythology: the revenge of the \"white working class voter\"; the unprecedented anti-establishment character of the President-elect; the populist revolution that led to Trump's victory; and the years in the wilderness now facing Democrats and progressives in America.  But the endless repetition of these themes by the corporate media deserves a great deal more skepticism and scrutiny before they worm their way into all our heads to form the established and accepted narrative of this election. Let's first review some basic facts about what happened on Nov. 8: Donald Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. (Photo credit: Grant Miller\/RNC)  Who Voted Republican?  Though Donald Trump prevailed in the Electoral College, he failed to secure a plurality of the total ballots cast, getting a bit over 60 million votes to Hillary Clinton's 61 million votes, according to The Associated Press tally . Meanwhile, only 55.6 percent of 219 million eligible voters, or 50.4 percent of the voting-age population , actually voted, placing the U.S. 33rd out of 35 advanced (OECD) countries in national voter turnout , above only Chile and Switzerland.  Only 27 percent of eligible voters or 24 percent of the voting-age population voted for Trump. Roughly the same number, about 60 million, voted for both John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012. The result was different because Barack Obama received 69 million votes in 2008 and 66 million in 2012, while Hillary Clinton could only muster only a shade more than Trump, Romney and McCain.  As Sen. Bernie Sanders repeated in every stump speech during the Democratic primaries, \"Let us never forget, Democrats and progressives win when voter turnout is high. Republicans win when people are demoralized and voter turnout is low.\"  So, Trump deserves credit for finding a few new Republican voters to replace those who have died in the past fou4 years, and for a successful strategy to gain votes in the right states to win the Electoral College. But the more decisive difference with 2008 and 2012 was the dramatic failure of the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, to turn out the vote. This was despite, or maybe even because of, unprecedented SuperPAC money and overwhelming support from political, business and media elites.  Democratic Hopes  If the Democrats hope to do better in future elections, they must confront this reality. Grassroots Democrats should insist that party leaders finally abandon the long obsolete Reagan\/Thatcher-lite Democratic Leadership Council model of politics based on fund-raising, propaganda, corporate welfare and militarism, and welcome the kind of new, progressive leadership that inspired 47 percent of Democratic primary voters to vote for Senator Bernie Sanders. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaking to one of his large crowds of supporters. (Photo credit: Sanders campaign)  This was all the more significant and impressive in the context of party leaders' monolithic support for Clinton and their shameful campaign to stage a coronation instead of organizing a free and fair primary election.  We will find out more about who actually voted for Trump, but the pollster Nate Silver already exposed \"The Myth of Trump's 'Working Class' Support\" in a fivethirtyeight .com article on May 3. Silver's article analyzed a survey of the average household income of people who voted in the 23 primaries up to that point. The average Clinton or Sanders primary voter had a household income of $61,000, while the average Trump voter earned $72,000, about the same as Cruz's supporters but less than Kasich's.  The 70 percent of eligible voters who did not vote in either primary had an average household income of $52,000. In broad terms, this tracks the traditional pattern of U.S. politics, with wealthier Americans leaning Republican, the middle-class favoring Democrats and few of the poor African-Americans and immigrants who make up much of the real U.S. working-class voting at all.  These figures were for primary voters, but they suggest that Trump's supporters were, well, Republicans, like Romney's, McCain's, Bush's and so on. The Republican Party has continually rebranded itself over the past 50 years, generating great fanfares from deferential or captive corporate media for the Silent Majority, the Reagan Revolution, the Moral Majority, the Christian Right, the Contract With America, the Tea Party and now Trump's Deplorables, but behind these well-funded P.R. campaigns, Republican voters remain roughly the same people or class of people. Edward Bernays, the father of modern propaganda and advertising, would approve their ever-changing public message!  What is Trump's agenda?  Despite contradictory pronouncements on many issues, Donald Trump's published plan for his first 100 days in office contained more policy details than Hillary Clinton's campaign web site, which followed the DLC model of appealing to principles most Americans believe in without pinning the candidate down to anything detailed enough for most voters to disagree with.  In Clinton's case, this includes voluminous treatises on a wide array of subjects, but the blizzard of words was short on actual policy details, leaving the formerly presumptive president plenty of room to do whatever she and her corporate and military-industrial colleagues really planned to do after the coronation. As Wikileaks revealed, one of the few things Clinton's staff and financiers were clear on was the necessarily wide gap between her public and private positions .  Warmed-Over GOP Fare  On the other hand, Donald Trump's plan for his first 100 days in office includes more specifics and is, for the most part, a pretty standard wish-list of policies the Republican Party has backed for decades. That still leaves plenty of room for smoke and mirrors: President Obama in the Oval Office.  \u2013On Trump's first day in office, he plans to cancel every \"unconstitutional\" action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama; to cancel federal funding to cities that provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants; to begin deporting 2 million undocumented immigrants \"with criminal records\" (somehow expanding that group from the 178,000 counted in a 2010 Congressional report before Obama's mass deportations reduced it still further); to stop issuing U.S. visas to people in countries that won't accept unlimited numbers of U.S. deportees; to suspend immigration from \"terror-prone\" regions; and to begin work on selecting a new Supreme Court justice.  \u2013The legislative portion of Trump's agenda starts with \"massive tax reduction,\" including an across-the-board 15 percent corporate tax rate, which drops to 10 percent for repatriated offshore earnings to reward the outsourcing he condemned on the campaign trail. This is balanced politically by a vague promise of unspecified new tariffs to penalize future outsourcing.  \u2013\"The American Energy and Infrastructure Act\" will declare open season on the environment and the climate, stimulating \"energy infrastructure\" projects like the Keystone XL pipeline with tax cuts and corporate welfare, and ending U.S. payments to the U.N. climate fund.  \u2013A national school voucher program will expand the privatization of public education, while Trump also pays lip service to local control, reducing college tuition and ending common core.  \u2013Trump wants to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a new program based on health savings accounts, along with similar programs for childcare and elder care; states will be allowed to make unprecedented cuts in Medicaid; and he wants the Food and Drug Administration to speed up approvals for 4,000 new drugs.  \u2013As well as funding Trump's wall on the Mexican border, new draconian immigration laws will impose mandatory 2- and 5-year federal prison sentences on previously deported immigrants who try to reenter the U.S.  \u2013New \"national security\" and \"community safety\" laws will blast military spending past Obama's post-World War II record , and throw more money at local police to combat imaginary increases in \"crime, drugs and violence\" at home. Liberal state marijuana laws may be \"trumped\" by this new national \"stop and frisk\" program.  \u2013Trump wants term limits in Congress to get rid of popular progressive legislators like John Conyers and Patrick Leahy. He also wants a federal civilian hiring freeze and sweeping deregulation under which any new federal regulation must be offset by canceling two existing regulations.  Controlling the Levers  The most critical factor in the Republicans' new-found power is that they now control the White House and both houses of Congress, as they did from 2003 to 2006 and for a shorter spell in 1953-54. This does not usually end well for them. The last time the Republicans held full control of the U.S. government for more than 4 years was in the 1920s, and that ended even worse. President George W. Bush speaks on the phone in the Oval Office, Oct. 7, 2008, with Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, discussing efforts to solve the spreading global financial crisis. (White House photo by Eric Draper)  If the Republicans exploit the support of 24 percent of Americans \u2013 not even a plurality of those who voted \u2013 to ram through their extreme right-wing agenda, they will deserve to be slung out on their ears in 2018 and 2020, as they were in 2006 and 2008.  If rank-and-file Democrats can force their party's corrupt leaders to quickly hand over power to new progressive leadership who will represent the other 76 percent of Americans, this should not be a tall order.  In the meantime, progressives can contain the damage by countering every part of the Republicans' (and corrupt Democrats') agenda with clear, intelligent progressive proposals for real solutions to the serious problems facing our country and the world and building a popular movement around them.  This will all be a real test for the Democrats, but it is one they have brought on themselves, and the radical clean-up required is what progressives have been demanding of the Democratic Party for a long time.  Nicolas J S Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq . He also wrote the chapters on Obama at War in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama's First Term as a Progressive Leader . He has also served as a local chapter leader and national team leader on war and peace issues for Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) .","label":1}
{"text":"Cher has certainly used her power, money, and influence to help the people who are suffering from their water being poisoned by Michigan s Republican Governor Rick Snyder. She has already gifted water to the residents of Flint, and now she is using her influence on social media to remind the whole world just what a travesty the whole situation is.First, the superstar singer-turned-activist reminded everyone of her own humble beginnings. You see, Cher wasn t always rich and famous. She was, in fact, quite poor, as she reveals in one tweet. However, she also says that no matter how destitute they were, her mother was never afraid to let her drink or bathe in the water flowing from their taps:I remember my mom crying because she couldn't make ends meet,I was sick & she couldn't afford Dr BUT..SHE WAS NEVER AFRAID OF OUR WATER Cher (@cher) January 23, 2016She also posted picture of the water that the residents of Flint had been assured was safe until this scandal broke, and they are nothing short of absolutely horrifying. It looks more like mud than water, and is clearly unsafe. However, considering that Flint s residents are mostly destitute African Americans, we can be assured that their situation didn t matter to the right, white GOP governor Rick Snyder and his emergency management people who made this nightmare a reality.How would U like 2 wake up Tomm & have nothing but water 2 give your kids 2 DRINK,BATHE IN WASH CLOTHES IN pic.twitter.com\/lxhkhSAB72 Cher (@cher) January 23, 2016Cher then tweeted a photo of the water running into a washing machine to wash a family s clothing. It is nothing short of deadly, and that is why people are dying and children who have been drinking and bathing in that water have elevated lead levels in their young bloodstreams, which will likely affect them for the rest of their lives.Cher, Flint s own native son Michael Moore, and many other people in positions of power and influence are just as outraged by this as the rest of us. Luckily, they have the money, power, know-how, and resources to actually do something about it. And they are.Hopefully, the next step will be to get this disgusting excuse for a human being and a governor, Rick Snyder, out of office, and into the dustbins of history with other rightfully disgraced politicians.","label":1}
{"text":"Georgia Congressman John Lewis is a living legend. At 76 years old, and as someone who was beaten nearly to death fighting for civil rights, he has the right to say anything he likes. Therefore, the idea of attacking him, as Donald Trump has been doing all through his Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend, is nothing short of repulsive.Those attacks have led to a massive boycott of Trump s inauguration, especially among Democratic lawmakers. The latest to announce that he will skip Trump s party is Rep. Keith Ellison, who is also in the running to become the head of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison says of the decision:I will not celebrate a man who preaches a politics of division and hate. I won't be attending Donald Trump's inauguration. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Rep. Ellison also made it clear that he is on the side of John Lewis, and is just as appalled as all decent people at Trump s attacks on the civil rights icon. Prior to tweeting his decision regarding Trump s inauguration, Ellison also tweeted:No question I am #StandingwithJohnLewis and the millions of people around the country who have been targeted by @realDonaldTrump. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017The time is always right to do what is right. And in the face of so much hate, the right thing to do is reject it. Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Medical price-gouger Martin Shkreli is headed to DC for President-elect Trump s inauguration. Another reason to #StandWithJohnLewis Rep. Keith Ellison (@keithellison) January 16, 2017Rep. Ellison is clearly ready to battle Donald Trump, along with other Democrats on Capitol Hill. Trump really crossed the line with his attacks on John Lewis, and he did the biggest favor ever for progressives by showing his true colors. Some people and events are untouchable, and attacking a living civil rights legend on Martin Luther King, Jr., weekend is at the top of that list.Godspeed, Rep. Ellison. Thank you for standing up for what is right.Featured image by Joe Raedle via Getty Images","label":1}
{"text":"President Donald Trump opened the door on Tuesday to a broad overhaul of the U.S. immigration system and vowed to pursue massive tax relief for the middle class in a speech to Congress as he sought to rebound from a chaotic start to his presidency. Trump said he was open to a broad overhaul of the U.S. immigration system, a shift from his hardline campaign rhetoric. He emphasized his desire to focus on problems at home by boosting the U.S. economy with tax reform, a $1 trillion infrastructure effort and an overhaul of President Barack Obama's signature healthcare law, known as Obamacare. BRIAN REYNOLDS, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, NEW ALBION PARTNERS, NEW YORK \"The speech showed the softer side of the President, but I think the media had let investors know this would be the case, so no surprise for markets on that front. \"The speech lacked specifics as it related to financial markets. Again I don't think that is a surprise. \"With no surprises and few financial specifics, it is likely that equity investors will focus on how many of his themes can be passed by Congress given how late it is getting in the legislative calendar. Skepticism over the likelihood of policy enactment may create a brief pullback in stocks at some point. \"There was nothing in the speech, or in the President's agenda, that is likely to alter the behavior of corporate bond investors, who have been driving this equity bull market for eight years via debt-fueled buybacks. They bought a strong $18 billion of new corporate bonds on Tuesday in advance of the speech, and they will likely be back at work on Wednesday, putting their cash flows to work. I believe that these flows are likely to keep any stock market pullback brief and shallow.\" BUCKY HELLWIG, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, BB&T WEALTH MANAGEMENT, BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA: \"The speech was a summary of Trump's policies. Stocks could move higher tomorrow as nothing has changed and stock investors are still expecting infrastructure build out, tax and regulatory relief, and changes in Affordable Care, but the timetable has not been clarified for these. Republican constituents may pressure Congress to step up the pace in moving the Trump agenda forward. \"Some specifics: pressure on drug margins, completion across state lines for healthcare organizations, military expenditures increasing \u2013 but nothing new here. \"Fed policy will get more attention this week and next. Manufacturing PMI tomorrow and employment report next Friday (March 10) will be watched. Yellen will be speaking this Friday. Fed funds futures showing a higher probability of an increase at the FOMC March 15 meeting.\" J.J. FELDMAN, PORTFOLIO MANAGER AT MIRACLE MILE ADVISORS IN LA: \"There was nothing really new,\" he said. \"It was a good speech in that it was more uniting than divisive but from the market perspective it was status quo,\" \"This probably wasn't the venue but if new details on tax reform are not coming soon there's going to be disappointment for sure.\" JUAN PEREZ, SENIOR CURRENCY STRATEGIST, TEMPUS CONSULTING, WASHINGTON: \"Trump said a lot of things that are positive for financial markets such as spending a huge amount for infrastructure. Overall there were no real surprises as these are pronouncements that we have heard before. However, I expect that market gains from his speech would be subdued by the continued tone of protectionism in his statements. Anytime, you attack trade deals as Trump did, the market gets nervous.\" PAUL CHRISTOPHER, HEAD GLOBAL MARKET STRATEGIST AT WELLS FARGO INVESTMENT INSTITUTE IN ST. LOUIS, MO. \"I was impressed though, or at least relieved, that it wasn't like his inauguration speech, it wasn't a challenge or a gauntlet thrown down to the opposition or to other countries. It was a speech that was more balanced and more presidential-sounding. \"But even as a state of the union address, which it sounded a lot like, it wasn't very specific. It especially and could have and didn't prioritize all of these different things he was talking about. Some of the policies are going to be very expensive - a trillion dollars for infrastructure, $100 billion a year, extra defense spending - the budget may not have room for all of that. \"He didn't talk at all about how they were going to fund any of that. He also didn't talk about tax reform, which I expected he would give Congress some marching orders in terms of what he wants - he hardly said anything about tax reform. \"He talked about the Affordable Care Act but again he didn't talk about any of the directives of are we going to repeal and replace now or repeal and replace later. He did say he wanted continuity but moderate Republicans are not convinced the conservative Republicans have that as a priority. So it may be even difficult to pass the ACA repeal in this budget bill. \"He was effective at reaching out to the other side, he was effective at times in being able to connect items. For example, connecting education as the way to break the cycle of poverty and then morphing or transitioning into violent crime and cutting down on that. Those were effective points and effective transitions. But again not enough detail for investors and certainly the markets were chopping around while he was speaking. It wasn't a big market mover and we still have to wait for the details. I don't think we are going to see much change. \"There is no reason to sell, he didn't throw water on any of the agenda, he simply didn't clarify it any.\" \"I think the market is going to be positive. The market continues to see him as a good-for-business president. He's very pragmatic when it comes to business. In terms of getting these grand visions done, I don't think the market gives so much importance to that. When he spoke about cost cutting, that immediately resonates with everyone on Wall Street. That's easy stuff. That's low hanging fruit. It's really hard to grow revenues. But it's really easy to cut costs. There is so much fat. It's so over regulated. This is easy stuff. He said enough of that during the speech that he will resonate well. \"I think some people were probably looking for some meat on the bones. He definitely covered everything. It was more of a laundry list. There wasn't a lot of details. \"To me, the tax reform is something everybody wants. Repatriation of money abroad is something that ever wants. Why not take care of those and then take care of the dicey things? Like Obamacare and immigration.\" OMER ESINER, CHIEF MARKET ANALYST AT COMMONWEALTH FOREIGN EXCHANGE IN WASHINGTON DC \"(Trump's) mention of historic treaties and NATO specifically was reassuring for our allies globally, and in that sense it was probably reassuring for global financial markets as well.\" \"(The speech) was still probably light on actual details on the fiscal side of things. We got mention of a trillion dollar infrastructure spending package. I think it's very early so I wouldn't necessarily hang my hat on that number. It was largely absent of any major focus on the tax side of things. In terms of overall details, on the fiscal side of the equation, it was probably pretty light. But I think despite that on some level the market might be reassured by the more or less balanced tone of the speech. It was much more presidential than some of the previous speeches and commentary we've gotten from the president.\" PAUL NOLTE, PORTFOLIO MANAGER AT KINGSVIEW ASSET MANAGEMENT IN CHICAGO \"The devil is going to be in the details and I think that's why you didn't see the futures move too terribly much. The markets are still, show me what you are going to do, how is this all going to work and how are we paying for it. That's going to take probably a couple weeks to a couple months to get laid out.\" \"Everybody is looking for more details and we're still waiting.\" \"I think expectations right now are really high all the way around and it's going to be a process. We're going to have to wait to see some of this develop.\" STEVE MASSOCCA, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AT WEDBUSH SECURITIES IN SAN FRANCISCO \"I thought it went pretty well, certainly no land mines or explosions.\" \"From an investor's perspective there was no new information, no surprises good or bad. From the perspective of where money goes tomorrow, I don't see what we have learned that's new or different. ... But he burnished his image, so there's a positive there. He's a pro business president so that's a good thing.\" RANDY FREDERICK, VICE PRESIDENT OF TRADING AND DERIVATIVES FOR CHARLES SCHWAB IN AUSTIN, TEXAS \"He pretty much didn't say anything he hadn't said before so markets have no reason to react overly positively or overly negatively ... Would the market have liked details sure, but I don't think it was expecting them.\" \"If anything the market might move moderately higher tomorrow. It pulled back moderately today. The uptick in volatility today was a preparation for the potential for a downside move ... It was a little bit of hedging going on before an event that could move the market.\" A key focus for Wednesday will be Personal Consumption Expenditures, a key inflationary measure that the U.S. Federal Reserve watches, Frederick said. BRIAN JACOBSEN, CHIEF PORTFOLIO STRATEGIST AT WELLS FARGO FUNDS MANAGEMENT IN MENOMONEE FALLS, WISCONSIN: \"He was surprisingly detailed about what to replace Obamacare with. It's likely Congress will be able to take that up shortly as part of the 2017 budget and then quickly pivot to the 2018 budget which will deal with tax reform. That plan is much less developed, but he has time.\" On taxes, Jacobsen said: \"Every deduction and credit that would need to be eliminated to lower tax rates in a budget-neutral way has strong defenders. That's how those deductions and credits got there. So, we'll just have to watch and wait to see which special interests President Trump will take on.\" TIM GHRISKEY, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER OF SOLARIS GROUP IN BEDFORD HILLS, NEW YORK. \"It seemed to be a somewhat kinder and gentler Trump. He wasn't attacking individuals like he often does.\" \"This remains a very pro-growth agenda and the markets like that, but I didn't hear anything new that would make it necessarily move ahead, except that he stuck to his guns to make his agenda items happen.\" STOCKS: U.S. stock futures were stronger at the start of Trump's address, with major indices 0.3 percent higher. They eased those gains as he spoke, with the S&P 500 E-mini futures last up 0.2 percent. BONDS: U.S. Treasury futures TYv1 dipped slightly ahead of his speech, and were last down 0.4 percent. FOREX: The dollar erased its earlier gains in Asia, with the market jittery as Trump's speech was short on details on his economic stimulus. The dollar\/yen eased to around 112.80 yen JPY= from the day's high of 113.375 yen hit earlier, on hopes the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates this month.","label":0}
{"text":"A U.S. congressional panel next month will hold a hearing on violent extremism, including threats from domestic militants, following a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly. The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, Republican Michael McCaul, announced the Sept. 12 hearing in a letter to the panel's top Democrat, Bennie Thompson. The committee holds a hearing once a year, around the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, to discuss worldwide threats. A committee aide said the Charlottesville protests had prompted the decision to broaden the hearing to include threats from domestic militants. But Thompson said the move was \"not adequate or appropriate\" to address his request for a hearing on threats from white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups. \"The September 12 hearing to cover worldwide threats is an annual hearing that was already scheduled prior to the domestic attacks this weekend,\" Thompson said. \"It will not allow us to go into the depth necessary to address the far-ranging and multifaceted aspects of the threat posed by domestic terrorist threats from white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.\" The Homeland Security Committee will invite leaders of the Homeland Security Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Counterterrorism Center, McCaul said. \"We must stand together and reject racism, bigotry, and prejudice, including the hateful ideologies promoted by neo-Nazis, the KKK, and all other white supremacy groups,\" McCaul wrote in his response to Democrats' request for a hearing. A 32-year-old woman was killed on Saturday in Charlottesville when a car plowed into a rival protest to white supremacist demonstrators. A 20-year-old Ohio man said to have harbored Nazi sympathies has been charged with murder. President Donald Trump on Tuesday said both sides were to blame for the violence, drawing condemnation from both fellow Republicans and Democrats for failing to single out the white nationalists.","label":0}
{"text":"A senior Texas health official who co-authored a report that criticized the state's funding cuts to Planned Parenthood for reducing access to reproductive healthcare will retire from his post next month, a Texas commission said on Friday. Rick Allgeyer, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission's director of research, faced criticism from the state's Republican leaders over the report published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine this month. The report said state funding cuts to Planned Parenthood and its affiliates had an adverse effect on family planning for lower-income people. Allgeyer is eligible to retire and decided to do so effective on March 31, the commission said. Allgeyer, who has been at the commission for 16 years and was one of the study's five listed authors, declined to comment. In 2011, the Texas state legislature cut Planned Parenthood out of one family-planning program and revamped the way another program hands out funds, placing it and other private clinics at the bottom of the list. Top Texas political leaders have said after cutting off funding for Planned Parenthood that the state has been able to rebuild its safety net. Independent health experts dispute the claim, saying Texas still has a long way to go before it can provide the level of service it did when Planned Parenthood was an integral part of its family planning efforts. The Texas plan has garnered attention among Republicans in the U.S. Congress who are looking to defund the nation's largest family-planning provider at the national level. The study said the cuts appeared to lead to an increase of unintended pregnancies among lower-income residents and a decrease in access to long-acting reversible contraception. It also said the cuts appeared to increase the rate of childbirths covered by Medicaid. Some Texas Republicans said it was inappropriate for a state employee to be involved in such a study and that its results were flawed, putting political pressure on Allgeyer.","label":0}
{"text":"What hyperbole did you see in my post? Please be specific. I will wait for the list. You can't think of anything? Nothing? I didn't think so. You should go back to AlterNet and MotherJones. You will have more Hillarybots there to console you.","label":1}
{"text":"When Bernie San\u00adders launched his long-shot bid for the presidency 10 months ago, there were two words that rarely crossed his lips: Hillary Clinton. Now he can't seem to stop talking about her \u2014 and not much of what he has to say is very nice. During a boisterous rally here, the senator from Vermont dinged Clinton for supporting a series of \"disastrous\" trade deals. He mocked her for refusing to release transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Wall Street firms. He said she was wrong to vote for the Iraq War in 2002. The transformation has been stark. What's less clear is whether Sanders's rhetoric helps explain his lasting power in a nominating contest that appears likely to drag on for weeks, considering the mounting number of victories he has scored in key states. So far, the evidence is mixed. In Michigan last week, Sanders won a surprising though narrow victory after closing a gap of more than 20 percentage points in the polls. He was relentless in the days before the election in criticizing Clinton on trade. But Sanders also got trounced the same day in Mississippi \u2014 albeit a state where he didn't mount much of a campaign. Tuesday \u2014 a day when five states hold primaries \u2014 should give a better indication of whether Sanders's tough talk is paying off. One of those contests is in Illinois, and Sanders isn't holding back as he campaigns here. In Chicago on Friday, Sanders even took aim at Clinton for her close association with Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D), whose approval ratings are in the tank, particularly among black Chicagoans. \"I want to thank Rahm Emanuel for not endorsing me. I don't want his endorsement!\" Sanders screamed, to the delight of a crowd estimated at 9,000 people. \"I don't want the endorsement of a mayor who is shutting down school after school and firing teachers.\" To drive home his point, San\u00adders held a news conference the next day devoted entirely to Emanuel. He told reporters that if he were Clinton, he would have refused the mayor's support. Compared with the Republican presidential race and other elections in past years, the Democratic contest remains relatively tame. But the Bernie Sanders who is fighting to remain relevant in the delegate chase against Clinton sounds quite different from the Sanders whose chief antagonist was the \"billionaire class\" when he debuted on the campaign trail last spring. Analysts say Sanders's decision to attack Clinton more aggressively is understandable: It's what candidates who are behind tend to do. But in Sanders's case, he risks damaging his brand as an anti-establishment politician who has boasted about never running negative television ads and pledged to stay positive in his bid for the Democratic nomination. \"When you're promising to run a different kind of campaign, it's never good to look like you're running the same kind of campaign that other politicians do,\" said Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University. \"It's a risk, but it's a calculated risk, and one they seem willing to take.\" In an interview, Sanders acknowledged that he's adopted a tougher tone but said he has tried to stick to the issues and not engage in character attacks. To the extent that the race has turned more negative, Sanders said, Clinton is to blame. \"We're responding,\" Sanders said. \"I find it disappointing when the secretary mischaracterizes my record.\" Sanders was particularly galled, he said, by Clinton's assertion during their recent debate in Flint, Mich., that he had opposed releasing funds to bail out the automobile industry \u2014 an issue of keen interest to voters in Michigan, given Detroit's long history as the capital of the auto industry. Most fact checkers who looked into Clinton's statement concluded she wasn't telling the whole story. In 2008, Sanders voted for an unsuccessful stand-alone bill to provide aid to the auto industry. The bill Clinton referenced came later, and its primary purpose was to bail out Wall Street, something Sanders staunchly opposed. Some money authorized in the bill wound up flowing to major U.S. automakers, though. \"To say that Bernie Sanders, who has perhaps the strongest pro-worker voting record in the United States Congress, does not support automobile workers in their time of need . . . is totally absurd,\" Sanders said. \"It's unfortunate that she made that statement.\" Sanders and his aides have tried to argue that none of his TV ads mention Clinton by name. But some leave little to the imagination. On Friday, Sanders debuted a pair of ads in Illinois and North Carolina, another state that votes Tuesday, that say that \"while his opponent has flip-flopped on trade deals, Bernie has fought them and stood with American workers.\" Clinton's positions on some trade deals, including the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership, have, in fact, evolved. As secretary of state, she called the TPP \"the gold standard\" of trade deals. Last fall, she announced her opposition, which she stated even more strongly over the weekend. She has said she now has a fuller picture of what's being proposed. In the interview, Sanders said voters have a right to know where he and his opponent diverge. \"The differences are becoming fairly clear to the American people, and the more the differences between her views and my views get out there, the better we'll be,\" he said. Clinton doesn't see it that way. During an appearance Saturday in St. Louis, she said Sanders \"has decided to close this election by attacking me and misrepresenting my record and his.\" Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson said Clinton's campaign thinks Sanders has \"broken his word\" about running a positive race. During a rally Saturday in Springfield, Mo., Sanders continued to hammer Clinton on trade, saying their views diverged on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was approved when her husband was in the White House in the 1990s. \"I understood at the end of about three seconds that what this trade deal was about was forcing American workers to compete against very, very poor people in Mexico,\" Sanders told his audience. \"I have voted against every one of these disastrous trade agreements,\" he said. \"Secretary Clinton's position has been different. She has supported virtually every one of these trade agreements.\" Boos filled the arena at the mention of Clinton's position. Sanders has also raised questions about Clinton's judgment, zeroing in on her decision to deliver a series of paid speeches to corporate interests in the run-up to her presidential bid. That included some addresses to the Wall Street firm Goldman Sachs, which paid her $225,000 for one speech. On that subject, Sanders hasn't hesitated to take a snide tone. \"The way I see it, if you're going to give a speech and get $225,000, it must be a really brilliant speech,\" Sanders told a crowd at the University of Illinois on Saturday. \"It must be opening new vistas of human thought.\" He also knocked Clinton for refusing to release transcripts of those speeches to the public. She has said she would do so when other candidates are held to the same standard. \"Let me make a dramatic announcement to all of you here today,\" Sanders sarcastically told his crowd. Saying he was ready to release transcripts of his Wall Street speeches, he swung open his arms to reveal nothing. \"Here they are!\" he said. The danger for Sanders, Elleithee said, is not that he will lose die-hard supporters with his tougher tone but that it could be harder to attract new ones \u2014 including some who like Clinton and are still weighing whether to vote for her. Some Sanders fans, including Samuel Nebinger, who turned out Saturday night to see the candidate in Springfield, say they're not bothered by the more pointed rhetoric. Nebinger said he welcomes it. Nebinger, 21, recently dropped out of Missouri State University, he said, because it was too expensive, and he now works at a local call center. He was wearing a shirt that said \"Help Us, Bernie, You're Our Only Hope.\" \"He wanted to run it clean at first,\" Nebinger said. \"But he needed to go on the offensive, because she's been doing so many corrupt things. She did that to herself.\"","label":0}
{"text":"Much like the Republican front runner himself, Donald Trump s supporters also have a tendency to invoke violence any chance they get, as we ve seen proven time after time.On Tuesday, Ohio pastor and Trump fan Darrell Scott went on CNN to discuss Trump s plan for the U.S. border wall, and in no time caused the segment to completely derail. In speaking to fellow panelists Ben Ferguson and Margaret Hoover, Scott started by giving an absurd example of how Trump would force Mexico to pay for the wall (even though Mexico s president has flat-out refused and basically told Trump to f*ck off). Scott said: Mexico is going to pay directly, or Mexico is going to pay indirectly. It reminds me of a friend that I had years ago, OK? Let me say this for the record. He said, You re going to give me my money or I m going to break your legs and you re going to give me my money. Mexico will pay for the wall or Trump will break them down. Ferguson was quick to point out just how ridiculous Scott s example was as he fired back, We re not 12 years old. This is not your lunch money. Scott completely missed the valid point and continued on: I m tired of that 12-year-old stuff. They re gonna pay it directly, or they re gonna pay it indirectly. And putting a tax on Western Union transfers is not unreasonable. These comments came just shortly after Trump s campaign stated that if the business mogul wins the election, the candidate would ban money transfers from the United States into Mexico unless Mexico contributed $5-10 billion for his precious wall.Scott and Ferguson got into a heated back-and forth, and Ferguson told the ignorant pastor, You have no idea what you re talking about. You can watch the chaotic segment below, in which all the panelists get themselves all worked up over Trump:","label":1}
{"text":"A look at the university's new mission. October 28, 2016 Jack Kerwick  Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology at New York University, argued in a recently published essay that while its traditional \"telos\" (end or goal) has been truth, within the last few decades the university has assumed another: Social Justice.  The university, however, can only have one telos.  The conflict between these two goals has raged for decades, Haidt claims. Last year, though, it became unmanageable when student groups at 86 universities and colleges around the country issued \" demands \" to administrators, demands for Social Justice that, by and large, were met.  The following statement is posted at BlackLiberationCollective.org :  \"We demand at the minimum, Black students and Black faculty to be reflected by the national percentage of Black folk in the state and the country.  We demand free intuition for Black and indigenous students.  We demand a divestment from prisons and an investment in communities.\"  A statement of \"principles\" follows. The Black Liberation Collective (BLC) opposes \"anti-Blackness;\" \"sexism;\" \"ableism;\" \"capitalism;\" \"White privilege;\" \"inequality;\" and \"heteronormativity.\" It rejects as well non-violence considered as a principle in contradistinction to a tactic .  \"Anti-Black racism is woven in the fabric of our global society,\" says the BLC. \"When social systems are racialized by white supremacy, whiteness becomes the default of humanity and Blackness is stripped of its humanity, becoming a commodity, becoming disposable.\"  The BLC is \"anti-sexist\" insofar as it affirms \"the value of all Black women's lives whether cisgender, transgender, or genderqueer.\" In addition to rejecting \"Eurocentric beauty standards that are made to lessen the beauty of Black women and Black women's features,\" being \"anti-sexist\" also means realizing that \"police brutality, the prison industrial system, school to prison pipeline\" and the like are aspects of \"structural racism\" that affect black women as much as they impact black men.  Black liberation entails \"queer liberation\" and \"trans liberation.\" \"We also seek to destroy the heteronormative norms that dehumanize Black queer people,\" the BLC asserts. The \"homophobia\" within \"the Black community\" comes by way of \"the same hands responsible for white supremacy.\"  Presumably, \"transphobia\" within the black community is also a legacy of white supremacy. In cooperation with \"cissexism\" and \"the gender binary,\" \"transphobia\" has \"been used as a means of invalidating and erasing our trans+ family members.\" The BLC pledges to \"eliminate\" such systemic biases.  These Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) are staunch opponents of \"the capitalist notions of infinite profit, homogenized markets, and a privatized means of production.\" Capitalism, they insist, \"is the economic system\" that's been \"used to justify\" the \"oppression,\" \"marginalization,\" and \"exploitation\" of blacks.  Nor is the solution to this \"oppression\" to be found in supporting black-owned businesses. The BLC explains that \"we cannot adopt the patriarchal, exploitative tools of our oppressors as we seek liberation.\" Rather, the solution is to \"dismantle anti-Black capitalist corporations that benefit from our oppression.\"  It isn't only the \"capitalist corporations\" that these students want destroyed. They demand as well \"the eradication of all institutional practices and policies that discriminate against the black community\" and \"the removal of all federal, state, and local government officials who do not abide by our principles.\"  \"The State and all its institutions that deny Black humanity and Black agency must be dismantled and replaced with those that produce Black liberty.\"  Concerning its attitude toward America, the BLC is clear: \"This country was built to systematically oppress groups of people, and the Black Liberation Collective will not stand for it.\"  Haidt misspeaks in characterizing 2015 as the year when the university experienced a crisis of identity, an unmanageable conflict of goals. To judge from the vast majority of liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences departments, Social Justice long ago eclipsed truth as the raison d'etre of the academy. Interestingly, it is these SJW demands from last year that bear this out.  Perhaps it is because I've spent the last couple of decades in the academy in the capacity of both student and faculty that I may be more privy to this than are some others, but it's painfully obvious that these student activists did not come up with these demands on their own. If they didn't have their professors actually write the demands for them, then the Black Liberation Collective unquestionably derived the concepts and language of their statement of demands from their mentors.  To put it bluntly, one must attend college, major in the liberal arts and humanities, and study under far left professors in order to think in the terms that are characteristic of Social Justice Warriors.  Leftist ideologues are training their students to bend the university to their will. This is the first point. There is, though, another, a rich irony that is lost upon these self-styled radicals.  For all of their bluster over \"systemic racism\" and \"structural white supremacy,\" i.e. phenomena that are omnipresent and, hence, largely unconscious, these black students, their white collaborators, and their professors fail to realize that their thinking (for lack of a better term) on these issues is about as Eurocentric as one can get. The \" critical race theory \" to which the BLC subscribe is a version of Marxism, the philosophical vision of a 19 th century German-Jewish man. The Marxist tradition within which they are enmeshed was fleshed out over a span of generations by mostly white heterosexual men.  But there's more to it than this.  The idea that \"racism,\" \"sexism,\" \"homophobia,\" \"transphobia,\" \"ableism,\" and the like against which SJWs rail are evils to be defeated is itself peculiar to the moral traditions of European civilization. If these \"isms\" and \"phobias\" are immoral it can only be because those who are guilty of them fail to judge the individual as an individual. Color, gender, sexual orientation, ability, and so forth are neither constitutive of nor essential to the moral identity of the individual\u2014but only if the framework of the doctrine of individualism is accepted.  Yet this conception of the sacrosanct individual is as Eurocentric as the proverbial \"apple pie\" is American.  The Social Justice Warriors' intellectual landscape is as much a European \"colony\" as was any West African country in the 19 th or early 20 th centuries. Those in the Black Liberation Collective have most definitely internalized the modes of thought of their \"oppressor.\"  Now, they would have been well aware of all this had they received a genuine education in college rather than a training in Social Justice.","label":1}
{"text":"Donald Trump just unleashed an attack on any and all Americans who have a problem with his cozy relationship with Putin. Sure, Russia in an effort directly spearheaded by the Russian dictator hacked our election with the intent of effectively installing Donald Trump in the Oval Office. Sure, this has been confirmed by more than a baker s dozen intelligence agencies. Sure, Trump, who very publicly asked Russia to hack his opponents, has been informed of this himself. But according to him, all that matters is that we kiss Vladdy Poot s (we imagine this to be his cute little nickname for his Russian sugar daddy) ring and you re stupid if you feel otherwise. Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only stupid people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We .. Trump tweeted, still failing to grasp the intracacies of the use of ellipses (It s three dots, not four or twelve, Donald!), have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and . He added in a third tweet, both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD! Having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. Only \"stupid\" people, or fools, would think that it is bad! We .. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017have enough problems around the world without yet another one. When I am President, Russia will respect us far more than they do now and . Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017both countries will, perhaps, work together to solve some of the many great and pressing problems and issues of the WORLD! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 7, 2017Of course, one of the world s problems is that Russia directly interfered with a sovereign nation s election at an unprecedented level, according to the report Trump received. Naturally, Americans who have a problem with a foreign power interfering especially at this level in our election don t exactly enjoy the President-elect calling them stupid for caring about the integrity of the electoral process:@realDonaldTrump Russia just made a mockery of the US election. Only a \"fool\" would think that's the sign of a good relationship. Letters of Note (@LettersOfNote) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump So now you are calling Americans stupid. Fannnntastic! Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Only someone without real friends (you!!!) would solicit the friendship of a dictator like Putin. Ben Berkon (@BenBerkon) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Donald, they hacked the US. The only reason you re cheerleading for Putin is because he gave you the win. Emma Kennedy (@EmmaKennedy) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump a good relationship is one thing. Being in the pocket of, is quite another. What do they have on you? Helen Kennedy (@HelenKennedy) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump We've come to the conclusion that you'd be better off w a pacifier, blankie and straitjacket. Certifiably batsh*t CRazY?? ErinHazel??#RESIST (@ErinRHazel) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Yeah, yeah. We get it. You're besties with Putin. pic.twitter.com\/yHraRUHYkQ Jordan Uhl (@JordanUhl) January 7, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Do two countries have \"a good relationship\" when one country tries to influence the free and fair elections in the other? Simon Hedlin (@simonhedlin) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Most of my good relationships don't involve the other person HACKING INTO MY PRIVATE DATA AND SABOTAGING MY FUCKING LIFE. pic.twitter.com\/dVfI8RbhHA Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump Lets see, who else might applaud the idea that Americans who stand up for their sovereignty are \"stupid\" people or fools? pic.twitter.com\/FeDrxi8KEB Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) January 7, 2017Look, we get it. Your love for Russia and disdain for our intelligence agencies is clear. But why constantly reminded us? @realDonaldTrump Big Lee ?? (@RejectTrump) January 7, 2017.@realDonaldTrump they interfered in our election. Why would we want 2 have a good relationship w\/them? Kelly Herself ? (@Kelly_Herself) January 7, 2017.@realDonaldTrump also, calling Americans who disagree with you \"stupid\" is not awesome. Kelly Herself ? (@Kelly_Herself) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump We want a good relationship with Russia, you idiot. Part of that is them not interfering in our elections! Tom Coates (@tomcoates) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump The Russians interfering with our election defines a terrible relationship. Only a fool fails to see this. Keith Fitzgerald (@Oldfitz) January 7, 2017Mr. Trump, I want you to stop insulting me and my family. And my fellow patriots. #MAGA @realDonaldTrump Greg Laden (@gregladen) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump You want to get in bed w\/ Putin a murderous thug? Is that so he won't spill the beans about your Russian business dealings? Not Maureen Dowd (@MaureenDowdTwit) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump There's a difference between diplomacy and sleeping with the enemy! You're still in Putin's bed. Auntie B (@b_auntie) January 7, 2017@realDonaldTrump You sure are working hard clutching your ankles for Putin. Shameful traitor. Kay (@karleenflem) January 7, 2017Yes, ideally, we should want a good relationship with every country, but Trump somehow doesn t consider it a problem that Putin directly ordered an interference in our election that likely helped him win. To Trump, his personal benefit is more important than the good of our nation. And we re stupid, right?","label":1}
{"text":"Cyber attack techniques used by the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State could also be used by other countries, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on Wednesday. Speaking in California, Carter told reporters that the U.S.-led coalition used electronic techniques to disrupt and degrade the jihadist force's ability to organize and said an unspecified number of other countries could do the same in other conflicts. \"These are not capabilities that only we have,\" Carter said at a news conference at the Santa Clara headquarters of Intel Corp's security wing. \"That is why good, strong cyber defenses are essential for us.\" The remarks add more detail to a campaign that has only recently been acknowledged. The conference was also attended by the U.S. Secretaries of Homeland Security and Commerce. The cabinet secretaries had gathered for a day-long presidential security advisory board meeting that was the first to be held in Silicon Valley since the group's inception more than 35 years ago. The officials used their remarks at the event to call for greater cooperation between the government and private sector, especially to confront rising cyber security threats. Carter said he was expanding the Pentagon's technology innovation unit by adding an office in Boston and hiring a recruiter to attract tech company leaders to temporary military jobs. The so-called Defense Innovation Unit Experimental was formed to help get ideas and products from Silicon Valley into the Defense Department quickly. National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers told the group that the government's largest intelligence workforce had moved from almost exclusively defending Pentagon networks to protecting the civilian government five years ago and was increasingly assisting the Department of Homeland Security in efforts to help safeguard private companies. \"The part that frustrates me is, why are we coming in after the fact,\" as with the destructive hacking of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a unit of Sony Corp, instead of acting earlier on information gathered about attacks in the works, Rogers said. Tensions between U.S. technology companies and the government continue to flare over President Barack Obama's call for encryption that can be pierced at the government's request. The three cabinet secretaries stood behind the call for flexible encryption during the press conference. The National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee did not address the subject during its public sessions at Intel on Wednesday. Tech and security company officials and prominent venture capitalists said at the meeting they hoped the government would continue to hasten the adoption of private-sector innovation in such areas as robotics and machine learning and the officials said that they would. White House cyber security policy coordinator Michael Daniel said cooperation was critical to avoid the massive economic, social and intelligence benefit of the Internet for the West becoming a liability.","label":0}
{"text":"Nepalis vote on Sunday to choose a new parliament and seven state assemblies hoping to end years of fickle coalitions and complete a tumultuous transition, more than a decade after the end of a civil war. The two-phase election is also expected to determine the path the country takes in balancing ties with China and India, both of whom are pushing hard to expand influence in the buffer state. Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba s centrist Nepali Congress party faces a tight battle against a left alliance between the main group of Maoist former rebels and the opposition Communist UML party. About 15.4 million eligible voters are tasked to pick a 275-member parliament - 165 through first-past-the-post and 110 through proportional representation - the first under a new constitution agreed after years of wrangling. Simultaneously, voters will choose representatives to seven provincial assemblies for the first time after Nepal turned into a federal republic and abolished monarchy in 2008. These elections will firmly put the country on the path of stability and prosperity, Deuba, the country s tenth prime minister in as many years, told Reuters. Counting of votes will begin after the second round of polling on Dec 7 and complete results may not be known until the middle of December because of cumbersome counting procedures. Political analysts say that the left alliance is likely to open up the country further to Chinese investments if they were to come to power in the election. Already, the UML has said it would hand back the country s biggest hydro-electric project to China after the Deuba-government, seen as more pro-India, canceled the deal citing lapses in the contract. Our government will revoke the decision after the election, UML general secretary Ishwar Pokharel said, adding there was nothing wrong in the $2.5 billion deal with China Gezhouba Group Corporation to build a 1,200 megawatt plant. Soon after the cancellation of the deal, the chairman of Indian state-run power company NHPC Ltd said it could bid for the project, underlining Delhi s attempts to claw back ground in a country which it has long considered its backyard. The performance of the two largest communist parties in the elections could determine the course of Chinese investment in infrastructure projects in Nepal, said Guna Raj Luintel, editor of the Nagarik daily. In March, Nepal received letters of intent worth $8.4 billion from Chinese investors compared with $300 million received from Indian delegates at an investment summit, officials said. Deuba s Nepali Congress has struck a loose-knit alliance with ethnic Madhesi minority groups who live in the southern plains and have long complained of being sidelined by the Kathmandu-based main political parties. Madhesis account for one third of Nepal s 28 million people and Deuba has promised to amend the constitution to address their grievances if the alliance won the election. Aid and tourism dependent Nepal, recovering from a devastating earthquake that killed 9,000 people in 2015, is among the world s poorest. The economy, which saw zero growth last year due to instability and the earthquake, is expected to expand by 6.9 percent this year because of improved power supply and agricultural production, officials said.","label":0}