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Jan 19, 2020
Iran said Sunday that two newly constructed satellites have passed pre-launch tests and will be transported to the nation's space center for eventual launch, without elaborating. Iran has not said when it will launch the satellites, but often coordinates its launches with national holidays. Iran's largely state-run media say the 90-kilogram (200-pound) Zafar satellites each have four high-resolution color cameras and will monitor and transmit data on natural resources as well as agricultural and environmental developments.
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Jan 19, 2020
China will negotiate with American companies and increase imports of U.S. goods and products according to market principles, an official with its state planner said on Sunday. The United States has high quality supply in the fields of energy, manufactured goods, agricultural products, medical care and financial services, said Meng Wei, spokesperson for China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), at a press conference on Sunday. China will boost purchases of U.S. goods and services by $200 billion over two years in exchange for the rolling back of some tariffs under an initial trade deal between the world's two largest economies.
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Jan 19, 2020
Vanessa Smallwood of Maple Shade, N.J., was 46 at the time of her disappearance. She was identified in a statement from New Jersey State Police.
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Jan 18, 2020
Mexican troops urged some 1,500 Central American migrants to maintain "order and respect" on Saturday after the group attempted to force entry into the country from Guatemala in the hopes of trekking onward to the United States. Standing on the wall above the Rodolfo Robles International Bridge that connects Mexico with its southern neighbor, National Guard General Vincente Hernandez told migrants they would be allowed to cross the border in a "controlled" manner.
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Jan 18, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- House Democrats distilled their case for impeaching President Donald Trump into a 111-page document that will serve as a playbook for the Senate trial beginning on Tuesday.The report, released on Saturday, lays out their findings related to Trump's actions toward Ukraine from weeks of impeachment hearings in the House, outlining their accusations of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.The White House also released its first formal response to the president's impeachment, offering a terse six-page brief assailing Democrats for trying to reverse the outcome of the 2016 election.Here are the key takeaways:Incorporating new evidenceThe House managers cited new developments since the House's Dec. 18 impeachment vote. Most notable in Saturday's brief was a government watchdog finding that the Trump administration broke the law by withholding congressionally approved aid for Ukraine.The report from the Government Accountability Office released Thursday undercut a Republican talking point that Trump and his administration didn't commit any crimes. The GAO found that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act prohibits Trump from superseding Congress's power of the purse for his own policy priorities.However, new material from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, was only mentioned in a footnote. Parnas, who was arrested and indicted for campaign finance violations, turned over additional documents and phone records to House investigators this month.Citing the Mueller reportDemocrats referenced former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election to establish an "ominous pattern" of behavior from Trump. They used it t
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Jan 18, 2020
At first, no one in the Iraqi Kurdish capital Arbil would drink the bitter coffee at Syrian refugee Abdussamad Abdulqadir's cafe. Since conflict broke out in Syria in 2011, many ethnic Kurds living in the country's northeast fled across the border to Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. When Abdulqadir fled his northeast Syrian hometown of Qamishli six years ago, he settled in Arbil and opened a cafe in its bustling market.
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Jan 18, 2020
America heavily relies on its elite special forces.
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Jan 18, 2020
Argentines paid tribute Saturday to a prosecutor on the fifth anniversary of his unsolved death while probing the bombing of a Jewish community center -- an attack in which he alleged a presidential cover-up to shield Iran in exchange for trade. Prosecutor Alberto Nisman led the probe of the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association headquarters, which left 85 dead and 300 wounded. In 2015, his body was found in his Buenos Aires apartment with a gunshot wound to the head, delivered at close range from a handgun found at his side.
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Jan 18, 2020
Defiant women who have been blocking a New Delhi highway for more than four weeks in protest against a bitterly disputed citizenship law have inspired thousands across India to copy their challenge to the Hindu nationalist government. Nearly all pay tribute to the 200 grandmothers and housewives and students who sit and sleep across the main road in the Shaheen Bagh district of Delhi, fighting a law that would give passports to "persecuted" religious minorities from three neighbouring countries but only non-Muslims. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in rallies across India since parliament passed the Citizenship Amendment Act on December 11.
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Jan 18, 2020
The U.S. government says it will deport a Honduran mother and her two sick children, both of whom are currently hospitalized, to Guatemala as soon as it can get them medically cleared to travel, according to court documents and the family's advocates. The family's advocates accuse the U.S. of disregarding the health of the children, ages 1 and 6, to push forward a plan currently being challenged in court to send planeloads of families to different countries so that they can seek asylum elsewhere. Both children have been hospitalized in recent days in South Texas' Rio Grande Valley.
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Jan 18, 2020
Staff Sgt. Ian McLaughlin, 29, of Newport News, Virginia, was killed Jan. 11 by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.
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Jan 18, 2020
Federal authorities are turning to a new tactic in the escalating conflict over New York City's so-called sanctuary policies, issuing four "immigration subpoenas" to the city for information about inmates wanted for deportation. "This is not a request — it's a demand," Henry Lucero, a senior U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, told The Associated Press. Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration said Saturday the city would review the subpoenas.
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Jan 18, 2020
The remains of a paratrooper who was killed a week ago in Afghanistan have been returned to his family in the U.S. The family of Staff Sgt. Ian McLaughlin greeted his flag-draped casket at Pope Army Airfield at Fort Bragg on Saturday, The Fayetteville Observer reported. The 29-year-old from Newport News, Virginia, was killed Jan. 11 by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan.
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Jan 18, 2020
Police detained 185 protesters in central Brussels on Saturday after the environmental protest group Extinction Rebellion staged demonstrations at a car show in protest at the auto industry's role in CO2 emissions that cause climate change. The protest came only days after the European Commission unveiled ideas on how to finance its flagship Green Deal project that aims to make the European Union a CO2 emissions-neutral area by 2050, in part through the transformation of the car industry. A member and former spokesman for the group, Christophe Meierhans, said Extinction Rebellion targeted the car industry because it told "a lot of lies in order to sell more cars".
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Jan 18, 2020
The head of Puerto Rico's emergency agency has been sacked following the discovery of a warehouse filled with supplies dating back to Hurricane Maria.Governor Wanda Vazquez said the goods had sat unused since the September 2017 disaster, which killed an estimated 3,000 people.
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Jan 18, 2020
World War III is no joke...
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Jan 18, 2020
The federal Bureau of Prisons is moving some MS-13 gang members in its custody into more restricted housing at certain high-security facilities across the U.S. after a gang stabbing in a Virginia prison, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Saturday. A brawl broke out Wednesday at the prison known as USP Lee between the MS-13 leader and a fellow inmate associated with the Mexican Mafia, and the gang member was stabbed, the people said. The Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that the inmate was injured but survived the attack.
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Jan 18, 2020
People in a southern Puerto Rico city discovered a warehouse filled with water, cots and other unused emergency supplies, then set off a social media uproar Saturday when they broke in to retrieve goods as the area struggles to recover from a strong earthquake. With anger spreading in the U.S. territory after video of the event in Ponce appeared on Facebook, Gov. Wanda Vázquez quickly fired the director of the island's emergency management agency. The governor said she had ordered an investigation after learning the emergency supplies had been piled in the warehouse since Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in September 2017.
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Jan 18, 2020
Law enforcement is using a database of billions of photos scraped from social media sites, likely against policy, by an unknown startup company.
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Jan 18, 2020
The National Archives said Saturday it made a mistake when it blurred images of anti-Trump signs used in an exhibit on women's suffrage. The archives said the photo in question is not one of its archival records, but rather was licensed for use as a promotional graphic in the exhibit. The exhibit about the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, blurred some anti-Trump messages on protest signs in a photo of the 2017 Women's March in Washington.
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Jan 18, 2020
Clashes between police and Lebanese protesters wounded more than 220 people on both sides Saturday in the highest such tally in three months of anti-establishment demonstrations. The sound of ambulance sirens rang out across Beirut as the Red Cross reported 80 wounded had been taken to hospital and 140 more were treated on site. The protest movement rocking Lebanon since October 17 revived this week as a deepening economic crisis increases pressure to form a new government.
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Jan 18, 2020
The U.S. State Department said on Saturday it had imposed sanctions on a general of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who commanded units blamed for a massacre of protesters in November. The U.S. State Department has said previously it had received videos of the Revolutionary Guards opening fire without warning on protesters in Mahshahr county in southwest Iran.
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Jan 18, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusolgu slammed Greece for inviting military commander Khalifa Haftar to Athens last week and said it was trying to sabotage efforts for peace in Libya in a bid to impose its own maritime claims on the country."Greek efforts to derail the push for peace in Libya are in vain," Cavusoglu said in a post on Twitter. "The legitimate government of Libya signed a memorandum of understanding with us to protect their rights."His comments come ahead of an international conference in Berlin on Sunday that aims to broker an end to a civil war in Libya. Turkey supports the UN-backed government in Tripoli, which is fighting off an advance by Haftar's forces. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with Haftar on Friday.Tensions between Turkey and Greece jumped after Ankara signed a contentious agreement with Tripoli in November that delineates maritime borders -- and affirms claims of sovereignty -- over disputed areas of the energy-rich Mediterranean sea.Last week, Greece warned it may try to block any Libyan peace deal that doesn't resolve the dispute. Turkey will issue new exploration licenses in the eastern Mediterranean now that it's set a maritime border with Libya, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday.To contact the reporter on this story: Constantine Courcoulas in Athens at ccourcoulas1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net, ;Alex Nicholson at anicholson6@bloomberg.net, James Ludden, Matthew G. MillerFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P. |
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Jan 18, 2020
But the trade war is far from over.
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Jan 18, 2020
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will need to be protected at taxpayers' expense against the threat of terror attacks and kidnap for years to come, security experts have said. Police and former security chiefs fear the couple will continue to be at risk from organised terror groups, political fanatics and lone obsessives long after they separate from the Royal family. Talks are understood to be taking place at senior levels over the best way of providing protection for Meghan and Prince Harry as they divide their time between Britain and their new life in North America. But there are fears among some experts that palace and government officials may be underestimating both the potential threat and what is required to protect the couple against it. Dai Davies, who was Head of Royal Protection from 1994 to 1998 and former Chief Superintendent (Divisional Commander) Metropolitan Police Service, said: "We have to learn the lessons of history and act on them. Anyone in charge of security has to think the impossible and then think it again and I fear there is not enough of that going on by the experts currently in charge. "One thing you can be sure of is that terrorists and others who pose a threat are thinking about it all the time." Mr Davies said the three main threats come from jihadist terrorists targeting Prince Harry, who also served in Afghanistan; lone ‘fixateds' and royal obsessives; and right wing extremists with an hatred of Meghan as a woman of colour marrying into the royal family. M
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Jan 18, 2020
Tara Houska ‘humiliated' by TSA agent who ‘snapped my braids like reins' during screening at Minneapolis-St Paul airportThe federal Transportation Security Administration has apologized to a Native American woman who said an agent at Minneapolis-St Paul international airport "pulled her braids" and said "giddy up!" when she took a flight from there this week."The agent said she needed to pat down my braids," tweeted Tara Houska, an indigenous rights advocate and attorney. "She pulled them behind my shoulders, laughed and said ‘giddyup!' as she snapped my braids like reins. My hair is part of my spirit. I am a Native woman. I am angry, humiliated. Your ‘fun' hurt."Houska, who is Ojibwe, added: "When I informed the middle-aged blonde woman who had casually used her authority to dehumanize and disrespect me, she said, ‘Well it was just in fun, I'm sorry. Your hair is lovely.'"That is NOT an apology and it is NOT OK."According to the Washington Post, women of color have long experienced problems at TSA checkpoints, because natural, braided or twisted hair prompt "flags" on security devices, spurring "more invasive screenings".Bring Me The News, a Minnesota website, appeared to have been first to report Houska's experience.In a statement to the Guardian, the TSA said it had been "made aware of allegations made by a traveler about her screening experience at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport [on] Monday morning."TSA officials investigated the incident and on Tuesday afternoon, TSA's f
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Jan 18, 2020
Archives staff blurred the word "Trump" on marchers' signs that read "God Hates Trump" and "Trump & GOP — Hands Off Women."
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Jan 18, 2020
Authorities issued alerts for areas across the Northeast as blizzard conditions were forecasted to New York and New England over the weekend.
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Jan 18, 2020
Police in Brussels said they arrested around 150 people at the Brussels Motor Show on Saturday after Extinction Rebellion campaigners smeared cars with fake blood and staged die-ins around the displays. The activists would be released once they had given their identity, a police spokesman told AFP. "This action of mass civil disobedience aims at denouncing the many lies which car manufacturers keep selling to the public to increase their sales at the cost of the environment, people's health and social justice," the statement added.
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Jan 18, 2020
Rod Rosenstein said he authorized the release of the Lisa Page and Peter Strzok messages because he thought they would become public anyway.
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Jan 18, 2020
Mexican prosecutors are investigating the discovery of a burned-out vehicle containing the charred bodies of 10 people in the southwestern state of Guerrero, authorities said late on Friday. Police made the grisly discovery on a country road in the municipality of Chilapa de Alvarez after locals saw the vehicle on fire and alerted authorities, state security spokesman Roberto Alvarez said in a statement published on Facebook.
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Jan 18, 2020
Piers Morgan leaked a private message that he claimed was sent to him by Meghan Markle in 2015, in which the then actress said she was a "big fan" of the television host.
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Jan 18, 2020
There's something powerful about finally seeing a famous landmark or natural wonder in person instead of on a postcard (or on Instagram).
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Jan 18, 2020
Central American migrants entered Mexico from Guatemala in small groups on Saturday after brief clashes earlier in the day when dozens of people tried to force their way across the border and were pushed back by Mexican security forces. Hundreds of people who entered Guatemala from Honduras in recent days have been arriving at the Mexican border, with the bulk of them still advancing in a larger caravan, testing the resolve of Mexico to heed U.S. demands to contain migrant flows. President Donald Trump has threatened to hurt Mexico and Central American countries economically if they allow large groups to reach the U.S. border.
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Jan 18, 2020
Scuffles briefly broke out on the Guatemala-Mexico border on Saturday morning as a group of several hundred mostly Honduran migrants pressed forward to cross, only to be pushed back by Mexican security forces. Scores of people who entered Guatemala from Honduras in recent days have been arriving at the Mexican border, with the bulk of them still advancing in a larger caravan, testing the resolve of Mexico to heed U.S. demands to contain migrant flows. President Donald Trump has threatened to hurt Mexico and Central American countries economically if they allow large groups to reach the U.S. border, and the latest exodus from Honduras has been accompanied by U.S. border agents.
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Jan 18, 2020
The messages provide key new evidence that Nunes' team was aware of and involved in Trump's efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden.
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Jan 18, 2020
A stern message to China.
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Jan 18, 2020
Drones and more.
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Jan 18, 2020
A winter storm that brought snow and sleet to the Midwest and Plains created travel headaches Saturday after airlines canceled flights and officials shut down major roads. The storm system began moving through the Plains and Midwest on Friday, leading to trouble at airports in Chicago and Kansas City. Blizzard conditions with powerful winds were reported in some areas, and officials in North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Iowa were urging people to stay inside if possible on Saturday.
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Jan 18, 2020
The oath is administered any time the Senate considers impeachment. Previous trials show lawmakers have used their own judgment to follow its intent.
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Jan 18, 2020
European leaders are talking openly about loosening Europe's alliance with the United States as President Donald Trump alienates long-standing allies.
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Jan 18, 2020
Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani who worked as his envoy in Ukraine, communicated with a top aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) about an effort to find damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden, documents released Friday night by House Democrats revealed.The evidence shows Derek Harvey, a former White House official and top aide to Nunes, communicated extensively with Parnas and sought to speak with Ukrainian prosecutors who were giving Giuliani information about Biden, reports The Washington Post. The documents corroborate Parnas' own claims about Nunes's office's involvement in the scheme.Parnas has said President Trump and his associates were working to push Ukraine into announcing an investigation into Biden. The messages, the Post writes, "indicate Nunes's office was aware of the operation at the heart of impeachment proceedings against the president — and sought to use the information Parnas was gathering." Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, did not comment on the documents.Read more at The Washington Post and NBC News.More stories from theweek.com Trump calls Iran's Supreme Leader 'not so supreme' in threatening tweet Mindhunter just got Netflixed Trump just ran a two-year trade war experiment. It failed.
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Jan 18, 2020
As Democrats marched the articles to the Senate, the president basked in policy success. Many think re-election is comingIt was, the White House tweeted on Friday, "an incredible week" for Donald Trump. On that, no one could disagree. But what kind of incredible depended on which end of Pennsylvania Avenue you were standing.At the Capitol, the third impeachment trial of a US president got under way in hushed solemnity as senators contemplated the ultimate sanction, removing Trump from office. It was a day his most ardent critics had long awaited and some thought inevitable.Yet the White House, less than two miles away, might have been in a different cosmos. The president held a boisterous ceremony to sign a trade agreement with China, "the biggest deal anybody has ever seen", and celebrated as Congress passed another deal with Canada and Mexico. He toasted stock market records, low unemployment and a sustained fall in illegal crossings at the southern border.It had the makings of an election year narrative of "promises made, promises kept" that Trump's campaign hopes will resonate more than a Senate litigation of his dealings with Ukraine which, in any case, appears certain to lead to his acquittal."He seems determined to check as many boxes as he can," said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. "If you look at the three pillars of the distinct outlook he brought with him to the White House - getting tough on immigrants, leaning hard against unbalanced trade relationships
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Jan 18, 2020
Elon Musk's SpaceX is going to make one of its own rocket boosters explode to prove that its Crew Dragon spaceship is ready to send people to space.
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Jan 18, 2020
Not enough money?
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Jan 18, 2020
Thought experiment No. 1: Suppose Bob Mueller's probe actually proves that Donald Trump is under Vladimir Putin's thumb. Fill in the rest of the blanks with your favorite corruption fantasy: The Kremlin has video of the mogul-turned-president debauching himself in a Moscow hotel; the Kremlin has a bulging file of real-estate transfers through which Trump laundered racketeering proceeds for Putin's favored mobsters and oligarchs; or Trump is recorded cutting a deal to drop Obama-era sanctions against Putin's regime if Russian spies hack Democratic accounts.Thought experiment No. 2: Adam Schiff is not a demagogue. (Remember, this is fantasy.) At the very first televised hearing, when he alleged that President Trump told Ukrainian president Zelensky, "I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent . . . lots of it," Schiff was not defrauding the public. Instead, impeachment's Inspector Clouseau can actually prove that Trump was asking a foreign government to manufacture out of whole cloth evidence that Vice President Biden and his son were cashing in on the former's political influence (as opposed to asking that Ukraine look into an arrangement so objectively sleazy that the Obama administration itself agitated over what to do about it).What do these two scenarios have in common, besides being fictional? Answer: If either of them were real, we'd already be talking about President Pence's upcoming State of the Union address.This is the point that gets lost in all the endless chatter over impeachment strategy and procedure. Everything that is happening owes to the fact that
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Jan 18, 2020
Iran, you might want to read this.
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Jan 18, 2020
The Taliban are aiming to reach a withdrawal agreement with the US by the end of January and are prepared to "scale down" military operations ahead of signing the deal, according to their chief spokesman. The statement by Suhail Shaheen to Pakistani daily Dawn comes as the group and the US held discussions in Doha this week, after insurgent sources told AFP they had offered to initiate a brief ceasefire. "We have agreed to scale down military operations in days leading up to the signing of the peace agreement with the United States," Shaheen told Dawn in a report published Saturday.
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Jan 18, 2020
A Chinese woman sparked social media outrage in her country by posting photos of herself and a friend with a Mercedes-Benz on the grounds of Beijing's Forbidden City. The reaction prompted an apology from the management of China's 600-year-old former imperial palace. Vehicles have been banned since 2013 to protect the cultural dignity of the vast site and its hundreds of historic buildings, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
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Jan 18, 2020
From fiction to reality.
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Jan 17, 2020
President Trump has stirred tensions before a gun rally in Virginia - a demonstration the state governor said carried credible "threats of violence" - by claiming that Americans' Second Amendment rights are "under attack". Thousands of pro-gun activists are expected to march on Virginia's State Capitol on Monday to protest about the state's new gun controls. The rally in Richmond has provoked fears of violence and unrest. Governor Ralph Northam declared a state of emergency this week, banning guns from the site of the rally, amid concerns that the protest will be flooded with extremists, anti-government militias and white supremacists. Activists in favour of gun control have reported receiving death threats online. The FBI announced on Friday that it had arrested several members of The Base, a neo-Nazi group who were planning to attend, and seized their weapons. Authorities said the group were planning violent acts at the rally, similar to the "Unite The Right" white supremacist rally in nearby Charlottesville in 2017, in which one counter-protester was murdered. Trump told protesters that Democrats will "take your guns away" Credit: AFP/GETTY IMAGES Mr Trump said on Friday that the US Constitution was being attacked by Virginia, where lawmakers have approved three gun control bills that could be passed next week. The rules limit the purchase of handguns, stipulate new background checks, and permit local authorities to ban guns in publi
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Jan 17, 2020
Members of a congressional delegation described the squalid conditions faced by the asylum-seeking families and children they met in Matamoros, Mexico.
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Jan 17, 2020
Every morning Abulrahman leaves his normal primary school lessons in Vienna and joins about 20 other children for three hours to learn to read, write and speak German. Despite conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's new coalition partners, the Greens, having expressed concerns about the controversial policy, it looks set to continue. Kurz has pledged to maintain his anti-immigration reforms -- with junior partner, the Greens, conceding -- including the special classes, which the government argues allow children with weak German skills to learn at their own pace without holding others back.
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Jan 17, 2020
Teachers at an elementary school outside of Los Angeles, California are suing Delta after a plane dropped fuel on area schools, causing 60 injuries.
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Jan 17, 2020
Dominic Kpadeh heaves a hammer over his head to crack a half-tonne rock in a northern suburb of Liberia's capital Monrovia, knowing his hard labour earns him far less than a year ago. Stories such as Kpadeh's are common in Liberia, where rampant inflation has left many people struggling and increasingly turning their anger on President George Weah. A former football icon whose goals for AC Milan and Paris St Germain dazzled fans, Weah came to power in January 2018, promising to invest in education and create jobs.
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Jan 17, 2020
Democrats released texts exchanged between Parnas and Rudy Giuliani and another set between Parnas and a staffer for Representative Devin Nunes.
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Jan 17, 2020
New documents turned over to the House Judiciary Committee on Friday night include messages between Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas and Derek Harvey, an aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA). The Daily Beast was first to report that Parnas helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Harvey in 2018 to help the lawmaker's investigative work, and it appears the practice continued into 2019.The exchanges between Parnas and Harvey, which span several months in early 2019, show the two arranging several meetings and phone calls to discuss two claims that have been central to Trumpworld's dirt-digging mission in Ukraine and the president's subsequent impeachment: supposed corruption by former Vice President Joe Biden and a plot against Trump by Ukrainian officials during the 2016 election. "We need to set a time for Skype w your four people," Harvey wrote in an April 2019 message to Parnas, apparently referring to former Ukrainian officials claiming to have information on Biden. "It looks like we can get all the interviews set up for Tuesday or Wednesday whatever works better for you," Parnas wrote back."Wednesday would be best here," Harvey wrote. "It allows me to prep a staff lawyer to assist. Any suggested line of questions? Full names of who we will interview?"Parnas responded, "Sounds good will put together there (sic) names and questions that I recommend."Parnas then sent Harvey a list of names including several widely discredited former Ukrainian officials who were shown to
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Jan 17, 2020
The Trump administration on Friday took another step toward dismantling Michelle Obama's school nutrition guidelines, proposing a new rule that could lead to more pizza and fries and less fruit and a smaller variety of vegetables on school menus. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who announced the rule changes on Obama's birthday, said they were needed to give schools more flexibility and reduce waste while still providing nutritious and appetizing meals. "What a shameless, embarrassing capitulation to lobbyists at the expense of American children and their well-being," said Sam Kass, who served as executive director of Obama's "Let's Move" campaign to combat child obesity.
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Jan 17, 2020
Officials in Richmond are taking extra security precautions after threats of violence by extremists who plan to attend the pro-gun rally.
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Jan 17, 2020
Rain and thunderstorms doused long-burning bushfires across much of eastern Australia Saturday, but they also brought a new threat of flooding in some areas. Major bushfires continued to rage in regions of the south and southeast of the country that have so far missed out on the rain, including in wildlife-rich forests on Kangaroo Island off the southern coast. The fire service in New South Wales (NSW) state, the country's most populous and the hardest hit by the crisis, said 75 fires continued to burn Saturday, down from well over 100 a few days earlier.
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Jan 17, 2020
Musk said he would send 1,000 Starships full of people into Earth orbit, then rocket them all to Mars during an opportune 30-day window.
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Jan 17, 2020
Republicans for the Rule of Law is launching a $1 million ad campaign aimed at pressuring Senate Republicans into calling witnesses during President Trump's impeachment trial.
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Jan 17, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- The Senate will be ready to begin Donald Trump's impeachment trial on Tuesday after House prosecutors and the president's lawyers file their trial briefs over the weekend.Here are the latest developments:Parnas Messages to Be Part of House Filing (6:36 p.m.)House Democrats plan to include material from Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, as part of the official impeachment record accompanying the brief they will file before Trump's trial starts Tuesday.The brief will argue for admitting evidence not presented during the House investigation -- such as the material from Parnas -- as well as for calling witnesses not heard during the House probe, Democrats said in a briefing.Documents released earlier this week by House Democrats contained messages to Parnas from GOP congressional candidate Robert Hyde suggesting that someone had then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch under surveillance near Kyiv in March 2019.Additional Parnas material that will be part of the record was released by House Democrats Friday night, including a transcript of a Jan. 16 interview of Parnas on CNN, in which he says he's willing to testify at the trial.Democrats said they will argue that blocking witnesses goes against the history of impeachment trials, and that even Mitch McConnell spoke in favor of a request for three witnesses during President Bill Clinton's 1999 trial.The seven House managers plan to work through the weekend to prepare for the trial, and will do a walk-through of the S
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Jan 17, 2020
"Your 2nd Amendment is under very serious attack in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia," the president tweeted on Friday evening.
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Jan 17, 2020
President Donald Trump warned Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to be "very careful with his words" after Khamenei called him a "clown"
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Jan 17, 2020
All you want to know.
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Jan 17, 2020
You can restart your Windows Explorer browser on your computer in three steps, and possibly solve any performance issues. Here's how.
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Jan 17, 2020
Iran's supreme leader lashed out at Western countries as he led Friday prayers in Tehran for the first time in eight years, dismissing "American clowns" who he said pretend to support the Iranian nation but want to stick their "poisoned dagger" into its back. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used his rare appearance at the weekly prayers to deliver a fiery address in which he insisted Iran would not bow to U.S. pressure after months of crushing sanctions and a series of recent crises — from the American killing of a top Iranian general to Iran's accidental shootdown of a Ukrainian passenger plane. Khamenei said the mass funerals for Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike earlier this month, show that the Iranian people support the Islamic Republic despite its recent trials.
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Jan 17, 2020
The Democratic National Committee on Friday announced its criteria for the first debate to be held after voting begins in the 2020 presidential campaign, including a new pathway to the stage based off delegate pledges. As they have before, qualifiers will need to meet polling and grassroots funding thresholds to participate in the Feb. 7 debate in Manchester, New Hampshire. Party officials are relying on the same polling and grassroots thresholds as for the January debate in Des Moines, Iowa: either receiving 5% in at least four national or early-state surveys approved by the party, or receiving 7% in two polls in early voting states.
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Jan 17, 2020
The Trump administration has proposed new school lunch rules that critics say would allow for more pizzas, burgers and french fries to be served to children across the country instead of veggies — a cut to former first lady Michelle Obama's signature achievement to try and make school lunches healthier.The timing is also notable; the latest rule proposals were announced on Mrs Obama's birthday.
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Jan 17, 2020
Yes, it's a trial — but the Senate's impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump won't resemble anything Americans have seen on Court TV. In Trump's trial, the Senate will serve as both judge and jury. COURTROOM TRIAL: Federal trials, both civil and criminal, are presided over by District Court judges who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
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Jan 17, 2020
Before Kensington Palace, Frogmore Cottage, and declaring a pursuit of financial independence, Meghan Markle already lived like a queen.
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Jan 17, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson backed away from crowdfunding for the ringing of Big Ben to mark the U.K.'s departure from the European Union on Jan. 31, opting instead for muted commemorations his office said would seek to "heal divisions and re-unite communities."Johnson will take his cabinet for a meeting in the north of England on the day and government buildings will be lit up, his office said in an email.The statement made no mention of ringing the bell, in a clock tower over the Houses of Parliament in London, just four days after Johnson encouraged people to give money toward it -- even though there was no plan in place.Members of the public have already given more than 225,000 pounds ($293,000) toward the 500,000-pound cost of pausing urgent repair work and installing a temporary floor and equipment to enable the bell to ring.The House of Commons authorities said they have no mechanism for accepting the money and that preparations to ring the bell would delay vital refurbishment. That intervention sparked fury from Brexiteers, who accused bureaucrats of plotting to spoil their celebrations.Johnson's office, which has spent the week trying to cover up the prime minister's blunder, appeared to accept that the bell won't ring, saying instead that a clock will be projected onto the walls of the prime minister's office in Downing Street as the country counts down to Brexit at 11 p.m on Jan. 31.To contact the reporter on this story: Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Stuart BiggsFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay
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Jan 17, 2020
Kaylen Ward says she raised $1 million for Australia, sending nudes to people who donated. Now she is doing the same, raising money for Puerto Rico.
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Jan 17, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration announced a rollback of Michelle Obama's signature initiative for healthy school lunches on Friday, coinciding with the former first lady's birthday.Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced a proposed new regulation that would make it easier for school cafeterias to offer a la carte entrees to students and allow more varieties of vegetables to be used to meet nutrition requirements.Perdue said the proposed rule will offer schools more flexibility to serve meals that appeal to student's preferences, reduce food waste and cut administrative burdens on administrators."Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students nutritious and appetizing meals," Perdue said. "We listened and now we're getting to work."But nutrition advocates attacked the proposal as undercutting the nutrition requirements in the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, a major project of the former first lady, who turned 56 on Friday."School kids now could eat pizza, hamburgers, french fries and cookies for lunch every day in place of the healthier, balanced school lunch now offered," said Colin Schwartz, deputy director of legislative affairs for the Center for Science in the Public Interest.Nutritional StandardsCurrently, school lunch menus have to meet weekly nutritional standards. Pizza or hamburgers can appear on the menu one day, as long as the weekly menu overall meets standards for calories, fat and saturated fat, Schwartz said. Entrees can also be offered separately the day before they appear on the menu and the day after, but not every day under current rules
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Jan 17, 2020
A Massachusetts judge is considering whether to revoke bail in a protective order case against a Connecticut man who has emerged as a figure in the impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. A prosecutor made the request to revoke Robert F. Hyde's bail during a hearing in Malden District Court on Thursday, with police accusing Hyde of repeatedly violating a civil protective order obtained by a political consultant, The Hartford Courant reported. The consultant obtained the restraining order last summer, accusing Hyde of harassing and stalking her.
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Jan 17, 2020
A painting found stashed inside a wall at an Italian museum has been confirmed as the stolen "Portrait of a Lady" by Austria's Gustav Klimt, prosecutors said on Friday, two decades after the artwork went missing. The century-old painting was discovered concealed in an external wall by gardeners at the Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art in Piacenza, northeast Italy, last month. "It is with no small emotion that I can tell you the work is authentic," prosecutor Ornella Chicca told reporters.
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Jan 17, 2020
The USDA announced they plan to roll back school lunch regulations championed by Michelle Obama to allow schools "more flexibility" in what they serve because "because they know their children best."
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Jan 17, 2020
Must the 538 members of the Electoral College vote for their states' winning candidates, or can they exercise independent judgment?
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Jan 17, 2020
Hillary Clinton pleaded for Democratic voters to be practical with their primary vote in the coming election this year. That's because, she argued, nothing could be worse than a second term for President Trump.
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Jan 17, 2020
Dozens of trucks have started dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of sand on Miami Beach as part of US government measures to protect Florida's tourist destinations against the effects of climate change. "We have erosion hotspots," said Stephen Leatherman, an expert on beaches and the environment at Florida International University. Leatherman -- known locally as "Dr Beach" -- said that rising sea levels, triggered by climate change, are causing the accelerated erosion of the famous beach, as well as coastal storms and in particular hurricanes.
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Jan 17, 2020
A century ago, the government effectively banned booze. The details are much weirder than what you remember from history class.
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Jan 17, 2020
The new Fateh-class vessel was unveiled by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani late last week, at a ceremony held at the Bandar Abbas naval base.
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Jan 17, 2020
Collin Clabaugh has been living with his grandparents in a 55-and-over gated community in Arizona since last year, when both of his parents died.
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Jan 17, 2020
As the 2020 race heats up, the Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a dispute involving the complex U.S. presidential election system focusing on whether Electoral College electors are free to break their pledges to back the candidate who wins their state's popular vote, an act that could upend an election. The Supreme Court will take up appeals in two cases - from Washington state and Colorado - involving electors who decided to vote in the Electoral College process for someone other than Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 even though she won the popular vote in their states.
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Jan 17, 2020
A California teen who had been drugged and kidnapped was rescued by police this week after using Snapchat to alert her friends to her abduction. One man was arrested as he left the motel in San Jose, in northern California, where the girl was being held and two other suspects were taken into custody on Wednesday, police said in a statement.
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Jan 17, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the Trump administration's bid to give employers and universities the broad right to claim a religious or moral exemption from the Obamacare requirement that they offer free birth control through their health-care plans.Agreeing to re-enter a fractious debate over contraceptive coverage, the justices said they will decide whether a federal appeals court was right to put President Donald Trump's policy on hold. The high court will likely hear arguments in April and rule by late June. The Trump opt-out expanded a narrower religious exemption offered by President Barack Obama's administration as part of the Affordable Care Act.The Supreme Court considered the Obama contraceptive policy in 2016, when religious groups said it violated their rights. With the court shorthanded at the time, the eight justices ducked the core issues and told the litigants to try to work out their differences.The latest case is as much about administrative agency power as religious rights. The Philadelphia-based appeals court said the administration lacked authority under two federal statutes to issue the exemption. The panel also said the rules were tainted because the government didn't give the public a chance to comment on an earlier, interim exemption.Pennsylvania and New Jersey are challenging the Trump policy and urged the Supreme Court not to hear the appeal.Obama had offered objecting employers two options: They could shift responsibility onto their insurer by providing it with a specified form, or they could notify the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services of their objection and provide contact information for their insurer.But a number of relig
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Jan 17, 2020
Forecasters say blizzards are expected for the Upper Midwest. By Saturday, snow is expected in Pennsylvania, New York and much of New England.
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Jan 17, 2020
A man accused of sexually assaulting a woman at his own wedding reception pleaded guilty to misdemeanours after more serious charges against the New Jersey groom were dropped, keeping him out of prison.In a Pennsylvania court on Thursday, 32-year-old newlywed Matthew Aimers received six years of probation as part of a plea agreement on misdemeanour charges of simple assault, indecent exposure and disorderly conduct during his November 2018 reception. Charges of indecent assault, imprisonment of a minor and harassment were dropped.
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Jan 17, 2020
Some Iranians reacted angrily Friday to a speech by the country's supreme leader, which they said sought to downplay days of protests after a tension-filled month in the Islamic republic. "He didn't even try to calm the people and totally ignored the protesters," said one activist in Iran. Protests erupted after the Iranian government admitted to having accidentally shot down a Ukrainian jet on January 8, killing all 176 people on board.
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Jan 17, 2020
The Duchess of Cambridge addressed the possibility of more children during a Wednesday visit to the city of Bradford on Wednesday.
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Jan 17, 2020
(Bloomberg) -- The Environmental Protection Agency flouted ethics requirements meant to ensure regulators overseeing industrial pollution and chemical safety aren't doing favors for former employers and clients, congressional Democrats alleged Friday.Newly released documents show the EPA allowed senior officials to avoid or delay completing required ethics forms, top Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said in a letter to the agency."In the absence of a functioning ethics program, EPA cannot reasonably assure that political appointees are making unbiased decisions when carrying out the governmental responsibilities entrusted to them by the American people," said Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Harley Rouda. Maloney, a Democrat from New York, is the head of the panel, while California's Rouda leads one of its subcommittees.At issue are ethics and recusal requirements meant to ensure political appointees steer clear of conflicts of interest and don't get deeply involved in issues they handled recently in private practice. Under a 2017 Trump administration ethics policy, appointees must recuse themselves from matters involving former employers and clients for two years. However, that requirement can be waived where the need for an appointee's expertise is deemed to outweigh conflict-of-interest concerns.The ethics pledges matter, the Democrats say, because they are designed "to build and sustain an ethical culture in the executive branch, including among political appointees who constitute top agency mana
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Jan 17, 2020
But they behave just like stars.
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Jan 17, 2020
The Taal volcano roared to life last weekend for the first time in more than 40 years, sending a massive plume of volcanic ash towering over the Philippines.This was the first time that Taal has erupted since 1977, an event that marked the end of an active period for the volcano that had begun in 1965. Taal did show signs of unrest periodically throughout the 1990s, but it did not erupt during that period, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.The eruption, which began on Jan. 12, 2020, has forced more than 125,000 people to evacuate the Philippine province of Batangas, where the volcano is located. A state of calamity has been declared for the zone surrounding the volcano, according to The Associated Press. People watch as Taal Volcano erupts Sunday Jan. 12, 2020, in Tagaytay, Cavite province, outside Manila, Philippines (AP Photo/Aaron Favila) During the height of the eruption, a large plume of searing hot volcanic ash blossomed approximately 50,000 feet, about 9.5 miles, into the atmosphere, with some materials making it into the stratosphere, according to observations from NASA. The eruption was accompanied by incredible displays of volcanic lightning, which made for breathtaking video footage, fountains of scalding lava and more than 400 earthquakes.The aftermath of the eruption had the country's president, Rodrigo Duterte, using no uncertain terms to describe the impact on the surrounding communities."It is now a no man's land," Duterte declared, according
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Jan 17, 2020
Former Vice President Joe Biden is still promising "If you like your insurance, you can keep it" — with a twist.In his endorsement interview with The New York Times published Friday, Biden is asked about that phrase both he and former President Barack Obama have said in the past. And after accepting that he actually did say it, Biden promised that "if you like your plan, you can keep it," provided "your employer doesn't take it away from you."While the ObamaCare mantra of keeping the insurance you like ended up not exactly being true, Biden still modified it in a July 2019 primary debate to say under his presidency, "If you like your health care plan, your employer-based plan, you can keep it. If in fact you have private insurance, you can keep it." There's video proof of Biden saying that but, when confronted with it in his Times interview, Biden replied with "I didn't say that, by the way."The interview moved on, and Biden was asked about how if there was a public health insurance option, employers may stop offering insurance altogether. The new Biden pitch: ‘If you like your private insurance, you can keep it, assuming your employer doesn't take it away from you' pic.twitter.com/65Xtvw2gNr — Andrew Perez (@andrewperezdc) January 17, 2020That all devolved into what Biden saying something that would look perfect on a campaign coffee mug as long as it fits: "If you like your plan, you can keep it, assuming — I should add the obvious — if your
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Jan 17, 2020
The Trump administration warned European officials in three countries that if they didn't put Iran on notice about nuclear deal violations, the US government would slap a 25% tariff on all European cars.
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Jan 17, 2020
Virginia lawmakers took another step toward enacting tougher gun laws, and gun-control activists reported a growing number of online death threats ahead of Monday's rally by arms enthusiasts that authorities have sought to keep from becoming violent. The Virginia Senate late on Thursday passed bills to require background checks on all firearms sales, limit handgun purchases to one a month, and restore local governments' right to ban weapons from public buildings and other venues. Virginia, where Democrats promising stronger gun laws took control of the legislature, has become the focal point for the contentious American debate around the right to bear arms.
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Jan 17, 2020
The owner of a tourist duck boat that sank in a Missouri lake, killing 17 people, has settled its final pending lawsuit for an undisclosed amount. Thirty-one lawsuits have been filed against Ripley Entertainment since the former World War II amphibious vehicle sank in July 2018 at Table Rock Lake near Branson. A joint motion for approval of a confidential settlement was filed Thursday in the final pending suit, which was filed by Joseph and William Strecker.
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Jan 17, 2020
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador offered 4,000 jobs Friday to migrants in a new caravan currently crossing Central America toward the United States. The caravan, which formed in Honduras this week and is making its way across Guatemala, currently has around 3,000 migrants, Lopez Obrador said. According to Guatemala's new President Alejandro Giammattei, Mexico has vowed to use "everything at its disposal" to stop them.
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Jan 17, 2020
The Maine Senator's net approval rating has dropped 10 points since the end of September, leaving her with a 52 percent disapproval rating
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