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Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” host Joe Scarborough reacted to President Donald Trump’s interview a night earlier with Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly prior to the kickoff of Super Bowl LI. In that interview, Trump was reluctant to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin and for that Scarborough insisted that Trump must come out publicly and state that he opposes assassinating journalists and political rivals, as Putin has been accused of doing in the past. “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 he thinks it’s OK to assassinate journalists?” Scarborough said. “Does that suggest he thinks it’s OK to jail political opponents? To assassinate political opponents? If you don’t condemn, after being repeatedly asked to condemn these actions, at some point you go back to the ‘he who does not deny admits’ story. And it suggested he does. I suggest somebody at the White House get him to write a statement — 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. ” Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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Gun rights supporters in Texas counted down the hours, minutes and seconds to New Year's Day, because when the clock strikes midnight, licensed firearms owners in the Lone Star State can openly carry their handguns in public.
The non-profit group Open Carry Texas, which supports the law, posted a countdown on its website.
Texas already allows openly carrying rifles and shotguns, but has banned having handguns visible since just after the Civil War. On New Year's Day, it'll be the 45th and largest state to sanction some form of open carry, with California, Florida, Illinois, New York and South Carolina still banning it.
Activists with Open Carry Texas say they support the law, but that it should go farther. "Our ultimate goal will always be constitutional carry - if you can legally own and purchase a gun, you should be able to legally carry that gun without begging for government permission in the form of a license and 2nd Amendment tax," they say on their website.
Texas had nearly 826,000 concealed license holders in 2014, which ranks among the nation's highest. Openly carrying a gun will require obtaining the same license concealed weapons holders have -- be at least 21, have clean criminal and psychology records, complete a training course and pass a shooting test. Concealed handguns are even allowed inside the Texas Capitol, where license holders can bypass metal detectors.
Under the new law, businesses can bar guns from their premises if they post approved signs outside.
Texas also has the country's most federal firearms license holders, from manufacturers to dealers, and the state cites its relaxed gun ownership rules in lobbying gun makers to move here. The National Rifle Association has traditionally pumped tens of thousands of dollars into Texas' state political races, more than it spent many other places, though contribution totals look to be waning recently.
The original open carry bill included a "no-stop" provision barring police from demanding to see the license of someone simply for openly carrying their gun. Tea party legislators didn't want 2nd Amendment rights infringed, while Democrats worried about racial profiling, concerned that blacks and Hispanics might be asked for their licenses more than their white counterparts.
"If I get a gun, I guess I'd better put my hands up," state Sen. Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democrat who is black, said when the measure was debated on the Senate floor.
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo was an outspoken critic of the "no-stop" provision, saying it would effectively bar police from doing their jobs while endangering the public. Under pressure from Acevedo and other police chiefs, as well as state law enforcement organizations, that language was stripped from the final open carry bill.
But Michael, who is readying Acevedo's force for the new law, said he doesn't expect many officers to ask for licenses. The department is even training its dispatchers to educate the public on the law change, anticipating a barrage of 911 calls about someone openly carrying a gun.
"The call-taker will say it's now legal to do that," said Michael, who said his department has been discussing preparations for open carry for months with police departments across Central Texas.
Police "don't want to not act and then have something devolve into a mass shooting incident, but harassing every person with a holster gun isn't going to solve that," said Shannon Edmonds, director of governmental relations for the Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
"The irony is that you saw many law enforcement agencies lobby strongly against that provision that would have restricted them outright from ever asking if someone had a license absent other evidence of a crime," Edmonds said, noting that's changed after a number of those same agencies talked with their legal counsels.
Not demanding to see licenses, though, could also make it easier for unlicensed Texas residents to take advantage of the don't-ask environment.
"We've changed things here a lot and we've not thought this through," said Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, the state's largest law enforcement officers' union. "People will drive without a license and we can sure count on them to carry a weapon without training or license."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - North Korea s latest missile launch is a further unacceptable violation of its international obligations, a spokeswoman for the European Union foreign affairs chief said on Tuesday. North Korea fired a missile that landed close to Japan in the early hours of Wednesday, the first test by Pyongyang since a missile fired over its neighbor in mid-September. The Pentagon said its initial assessment was that it was an intercontinental ballistic missile. This launch represents a further grave provocation, and a serious threat to international security, a spokeswoman for Federica Mogherini said.
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Barack Obama recently kicked 35 Russian diplomats and their families out of the US, and announced sanctions over allegations that have yet to be proven, that the Russian government hacked John Podesta, Hillary s campaign chair s emails. HILLARY Clinton is facing a backlash in Germany after it was revealed the country s taxpayers handed over 4million to her foundation via the government at the height of the US elections.According to reports, the failed Democratic nominee s US-based charity received the cash to help plant trees in Africa at exactly the time she declared Angela Merkel her favourite politician.But the revelation of the financing arangment has been met with scorn.In October, around the same time the transaction was made, it was revealed that Mrs Clinton said the German Chancellor was one of her favourites when asked about who she admired in global politics.According to reports, the failed Democratic nominee s US-based charity received the cash to help plant trees in Africa at exactly the time she declared Angela Merkel her favourite politician.But the revelation of the financing arangment has been met with scorn.In October, around the same time the transaction was made, it was revealed that Mrs Clinton said the German Chancellor was one of her favourites when asked about who she admired in global politics.According to reports the tome alleges foreign groups and governments gave money to Mrs Clinton s charity in return for access to the State Department while she was Secretary of State.Now eyebrows are being raised after it was revealed German taxpayers handed over millions in the third quarter of the year, during the period Mrs Clinton was running for President while at the same time being investigated by the FBI.And it has been claimed the foundation s donors list shows the Federal Ministry of the Environment had made the transaction. Express UK
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Cori Langdon, a Las Vegas cab driver recorded her harrowing experience as she entered the Mandalay Bay Casino at about the same time gunshots were first being fired into the crowd at the Rt 91 country music festival in Las Vegas.Langdon was using her phone to videotape, as she was pulling into the Mandalay Bay Casino, when she heard gunshots. She can be heard telling the dispatch operator for her cab service that she hears what sounds like automatic gunfire. Cori Langdon hears more gun fire, and tells her dispatch operator that the gun shots sound like they re coming from a completely different area: Now it sounds like its coming from farther away. After listening to Langdon s video recording of the event as it unfolded, one can t help but wonder if it s possible there was more than one shooter. Automatic gunshots are still being heard from the cab. Langdon tells her dispatch person: Somethings going on. I m not sure why people aren t running, but. There s a security guard, what s he doing? Ya know, for there being gunfire, it sure doesn t seem like people are runnin . Oh, shit! Seriously? I don t know what s goin on? Where are the cops at? I m right here by the porch of Mandalay Bay, and everything seems to be normal here. More and more rapid-fire gunshots are heard. The radio dispatcher replies, Remember, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. And everything seems normal when it s not. Langdon and the other drivers are then warned by another driver that claims he just got details from the metro police at the airport, Do not go to Mandalay Bay! Langdon then says she s leaving, I m leaving. I don t know why people aren t leaving. This is insane. Everyone s just standing around, it doesn t seem like anybody s uh moving. She then gets a message on her radio telling her, Shots fired. They don t even know the details yet. I just talked to the Metro here at the airport and they re still getting the details, but there s multiple injuries and uh (inaudible) That s all they re saying though. They re saying stay away from there, uh, they re shutting the whole place down. Langdon continues to have a conversation with her dispatch people on the radio in her car. She is remarkably calm amongst the chaos going on around her. Langdon tells dispatch, Alright, I m oughta here , as she speculates that she believes the shots are coming from the 10th floor of the hotel. As she s attempting to leave the premises, some panicked concertgoers, who appear to be injured, enter her cab at the Mandalay Bay Casino. The passengers get into the car screaming, Broken leg, broken leg! Drive, broken leg! Let s go, let s go Langdon asks the passenger where they want to go, to which they reply, Anywhere! Langdon asks the passengers, Is there somebody out there? to which the passengers reply, Yes, yes, and active shooter. The passengers reply, Heck yeah! Go, go, go! Langdon: Oh, oh, and active shooter? Alright. Passengers: Go, go, go! Langdon: Go, okay. Alright, alright. Oh g*d, alright, there is an active shooter then. The female passenger replies: Yes, so many people are dead! Langdon asks: Are you kidding me? The passengers appear to be in pain and are screaming in the back seat.Langdon yells at them: Okay, close the door, close the door! The passengers yell: Okay, lock the doors! Go, go, please drive! Langdon: Oh my g*d, okay. Alright, alright, I m going, I m going, okay. Oh shit! Where are we going? The male passenger is freaking out and asks: Are you going as fast as you can? Are you f*cking videotaping this?Langdon replied: Yeah, I am. I didn t know it was so bad! Okay. The female passenger implored Langdon to get out of the area: Thousands of people are dead! Everybody s dead, c mon! and go! and get out of the area.Next, the passengers begin to panic, as Langdon isn t leaving the scene fast enough, not understanding how many people are running in front of her cab to get away from the scene.Langdon calmly drives people out of the scene as she relays the situation to her dispatch unit, and the passengers relay the horrific scene of dead people everywhere! to their parents on their cell phones.Watch:
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In an effort to give back to his hometown community in Florida, Carol City, the star Rick Ross decided to fulfill a childhood dream: He bought a Checkers franchise. Why a Checkers? One reason seemed to rise above them all. “The No. 1 fries in the game,” Mr. Ross says in a video released in December. The video shows Mr. Ross driving around town in his Ford truck, puffing cigars and relating stories from his childhood in the downtrodden community, which is in the Miami area. At a certain point, Mr. Ross begins talking about the burger joint he frequented as a teenager, across the thoroughfare from the carwash where he worked. There was a McDonald’s that was closer, but Checkers, he says, was more affordable. “I made $30 a day from 8 in the morning to 8 at night,” Mr. Ross says. “I went to Checkers. ” Checkers does not typically pursue celebrity endorsements. But when Mr. Ross applied to purchase the Carol City franchise last summer, he seemed so genuine in his affection for the chain that Checkers recognized a marketing opportunity as straightforward as a . Still, it did not want a typical campaign. Scott Wakeman, director of marketing for Checkers Restaurants Inc. and the company’s ad firm, Fitzgerald Company in Atlanta, turned to the digital media upstart Woven Digital. The firm has heavy traction among Mr. Ross’s primary audience — young men — on the entertainment sites that it owns, like Uproxx, Dime and BroBible. Woven has also specialized in productions that, on the surface, do not feel like ads. To Mr. Wakeman, it seemed like a perfect way to take advantage of Mr. Ross’s charisma and authenticity. “It just felt like such a unique opportunity,” he said. The video, which is 3 minutes 31 seconds long, was filmed over two days in Carol City in late September, mostly as Mr. Ross drove his truck around. Spliced in is footage of pickup basketball games and bikers popping wheelies. The first mention of Checkers comes about halfway through the video. Checkers invests the bulk of its annual marketing budget, about $20 million, in standard television spots, Mr. Wakeman said. By contrast, the Rick Ross ad has been distributed only on social media channels and Uproxx. But Mr. Wakeman said he believed the unusual authenticity of the video — and the compelling way Mr. Ross related his story — would resonate with viewers more than anything Checkers had tried in the past. “We don’t think of it as an advertisement,” Mr. Wakeman said, adding of Mr. Ross, “We wanted to create a piece of content that captured his love for the brand. ” Last year, Woven teamed up with MillerCoors on a series of short documentary videos that profiled entrepreneurs with expertise in making items like watches and surfboards, or, in one case, doing calligraphy. The series, sponsored by Coors Banquet beer and run across Uproxx, was intended to reach an audience that has become adept at avoiding traditional advertising. According to Brad Feinberg, senior director of media and digital marketing for MillerCoors, it was a success, receiving more than 33 million views. “This is content that people want to see they’re intrigued by it, they seek it out,” Mr. Feinberg said. “And putting it in long form is something you can do in the digital space that is very cost prohibitive in other places. ” storytelling might sound incompatible with the attention spans of millennials, but it can have its advantages. Young men in particular have demonstrated a willingness to sit through longer pieces of content if it aligns with their values and gives them something of value in return, said Leah Swartz, senior content specialist for FutureCast, a part of the Barkley agency of Kansas City, Mo. that focuses on research into millennials. Her team considers this a rewriting of the old ABCs of sales. Rather than the mantra “always be closing,” brands must now think about how they can “always be helping. ” “You have to think about helping your consumer, what you’re providing, what benefits you’re giving, how you’re making their lives more fulfilled,” Ms. Swartz said. For Checkers, turning a story about a hit rapper’s upbringing into a selling point for hamburgers and chicken wings was a bit of a gamble, Mr. Wakeman said. In the video, there are only a couple of references to Checkers’ products, such as Mr. Ross’s unequivocal praise of the French fries. But Mr. Wakeman said the documentary format allowed Mr. Ross’s true voice to shine through. “Food and value are our two big brand pillars, and I think they come through in the spot, in a cool way,” Mr. Wakeman said. “It wasn’t a script. It was just Rick talking about what he loves” about the place. The video also captures moments of spontaneity. The producers originally intended just to film Mr. Ross outside the Checkers, but on the way there, he sent out a message on Instagram offering free burgers to any fans who wanted to meet him in Carol City. About 200 people showed up, and the cameras rolled as he shook hands and ripped open bags of food. Benjamin Blank, the chief executive of Woven, said the company was not trying to conceal that the video was an advertisement. But he said he thought the content itself was meaningful and captivating enough that viewers ultimately would not mind being sold to. “There were plenty of things Rick could have gotten involved with from a business standpoint,” Mr. Blank said. “But his reason for getting involved with Checkers was a great story. ”
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Medal of Honor recipient @Dakota_Meyer asking you to stand up against those who disrespect the flag #NeverOutgunned https://t.co/n8Fb9SjwAn FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) May 5, 2015
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A homeless man allegedly broke into four houses of worship in New York during a three week period because he wanted to get revenge at God. [Joseph Woznik, 23, is accused of breaking into an Episcopal church, a Romanian Orthodox church, a Hindu temple, and a Roman Catholic church in Queens starting March 21, the Daily Mail reported. “I’m mad at God. I don’t like church no more. I don’t want to deal with religion. I’m sick and tired of hearing about religion. I don’t break into houses, only churches. I break in to get back at God,” Woznik allegedly told police. Woznik was arrested Tuesday and charged with multiple counts of burglary and grand larceny as hate crimes, the New York Post reported. If convicted, Woznik faces up to 15 years behind bars, police said. Police also said Woznik was caught on two video cameras during the burglaries and confessed to his crimes. Woznik is also wanted in a February 26 church burglary in Winter Garden, Florida, police said. Rev. Paul Lai of the St. James Episcopal Church in Flushing, Queens, said his parish was struck three times, once on March 23, once on April 2, and again on Monday. “He needs help,” Lai told the New York Daily News. “It’s hard to say why he has such hatred against God. … We don’t have anything here now. ” Woznik took $1, 800 the first time, a Canon digital camera the second time, and three checks from the church’s checkbook on his third Lai said. The first burglary was at the Bangladesh Hindu Mandir Temple in Flushing, where an employee of the temple, upon arriving at work on March 21, discovered three donation boxes forced open and cleaned out, officials said. The suspect also allegedly targeted Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians Church on Monday, using a hammer to break into a donation box. Reportedly, he also took $20 that was beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary. Police said he was finally caught on Tuesday, a day after allegedly stealing a communion tray from St. Mary Romanian Orthodox Church in Elmhurst. At his arraignment hearing in Queens Criminal Court Wednesday night, a judge ordered that Woznik be held on $200, 000 bail, placed on suicide watch, and remanded to face similar charges in Florida.
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MADRID/BARCELONA (Reuters) - The jailed leader of Catalonia s main pro-independence party has backed away from demands for unilateral secession from Spain, days before a regional election that polls suggest will produce a hung parliament. The independence drive has tipped Spain into its worst political crisis since the return of democracy in the 1970s, dividing opinion in the region, denting an economic rebound and prompting a business exodus to other parts of the country. In reply to written questions from Reuters passed to him in prison where he is being held on allegations of rebellion and sedition, Oriol Junqueras struck a conciliatory tone. He wrote that he would continue to pursue independence if he became Catalonia s next president, but also build bridges and shake hands with representatives of the Spanish state. I can assure you that we are democrats before we are separatists and that the aim (of gaining independence) does not always justify the means, he said in comments that appeared to drop his party s earlier demand for unilateral secession. Junqueras Esquerra Republicana (Republican Left) party is tipped to become the largest separatist force in parliament in Thursday s ballot, but surveys suggest neither the pro-independence nor the pro-unity camp will win a majority. He was deputy leader of the Catalan government that was sacked in October after the regional assembly unilaterally declared independence following a referendum that central authorities had deemed illegal. Madrid also dissolved the assembly and called fresh elections. The Spanish justice system s actions against the region s leaders has since then hamstrung the pro-independence camp and further muddied the electoral waters before Thursday s vote. Catalonia s ex-president Carles Puigdemont is campaigning from self-imposed exile in Brussels and Junqueras doing so from jail along with several other politicians. It is unclear if many of those likely to be elected will be able to attend parliament. At separatist rallies across the capital Barcelona in recent days, many supporters appeared to recognize that forcing independence without Spain s consent was no longer an option. Instead, many favored pressuring Madrid into talks and gaining European Union approval for a negotiated split. We can t continue unilaterally. We might lose more than we would gain, said Carles Ortega, a 58-year-old consultant, at a rally at a sports center in Barcelona s outskirts that Puigdemont addressed via videolink. Final polls for the election expected to attract a record turnout showed Esquerra running neck-and-neck with pro-unity party Ciudadanos (Citizens), with both far short of the 68 seats needed to hold a majority. Esquerra previously formed a coalition government with Puigdemont s own center-right party, which leads the Junts per Catalunya platform (Together for Catalonia) which is seen coming third in the vote. The key for unionist and separatist factions will be winning over the regional offshoot of anti-austerity party Podemos, which supports unity but wants a referendum. Its leader favors a left-wing alliance across parties that both back and reject independence. There is a rising risk that pro-independence parties fall a bit short and need to include Podemos and we get a softer push for independence within the institutions, Peter Ceretti, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said. The movement would rumble on, he said, and press Madrid on long-held demands for it to return more of Catalonia s tax revenue and recognize the region as a nation, rather than a nationality, in the Spanish constitution. Many Catalans worry about how the independence drive has obscured all other social issues and could harm the wealthy region s position as Spain s primary driver of economic growth and a magnet for foreign investment. Junqueras said if he was elected regional president he would pay heed to voters who opposed independence. I would tell them everybody has to be respected and that differences always have to be resolved in a democratic way, he said.
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@Midnight host Chris Hardwick found it very amusing to listen to Melania Trump complain about how damaging social media is to children when her own husband says incredibly offensive and outrageous things on Twitter every day. Yesterday, Anderson Cooper interviewed former divorcee Melania Trump and asked her what she d try to accomplish if she becomes First Lady, Hardwick began his show on Tuesday night before playing a clip of Melania talking about how she wants to change social media. The social media, it s very damaging for the children, she claimed. We need to guide them and teach them about social media because I see a lot of negativity on it. Yeah, that s right. Melania Trump actually wants to focus her time as First Lady cleaning up the negativity on social media. But does that include her own husband s Twitter account?Because as Hardwick proceeded to point out, Donald Trump has been posting remarks that go far beyond negative ever since he joined the platform in 2009. I wonder why she thinks there s a lot of negativity on social media, Hardwick said before scrolling through images of Trump s Twitter posts. I don t know, maybe it s because one of the only people she follows does stuff like call other people unattractive both inside and out, or a low class slob, or a dopey clown, or a total asshole, or a p*ssy, or they look like shit, or disgusting with nipples protruding.' Hardwick then delivered the perfect advice to Melania if she really wants to make social media less negative. Why would Melania wait until she s First Lady to reduce negativity on social media when she could just as easily replace her husband s phone with an exploding Samsung Galaxy Note 7. Hardwick then turned to the comedians on the panel and asked them what other goals Melania has, which included designing grab-proof women s underwear and whatever goals Michelle Obama has. Here s the video via Comedy Central.Just like her husband, Melani Trump should really stop talking. Because every time they open their mouths, comedians get new material to mercilessly mock them with.Featured Image: Screenshot
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YAOUNDE (Reuters) - The government of one of Cameroon s Anglophone regions ordered its border with Nigeria closed this weekend in response to calls by activists for protests to demand more rights for the country s English-speaking minority. The move on Thursday represents an escalation in a crackdown on months of protest spurred by complaints about political and economic discrimination in the Anglophone regions of the predominantly Francophone country. Security forces killed six protesters and arrested hundreds of others following calls for reforms by lawyers and teachers last year, and the internet was shut down in Anglophone regions from January to April. The Anglophone regions have strong ties to eastern Nigeria, and authorities may fear that allowing the border to remain open during protests offers the demonstrators a rear base and makes it harder to maintain order. Anglophone activists have called for renewed protest on Sunday after thousands took to the streets last week, with some hoisting separatist flags. In a statement, Southwest region s governor, Bernard Okalia Bilai, said the border would be closed from 9 p.m. (2000 GMT) Friday until 7 a.m. Monday following persistent threats of destabilization through manipulation by individuals acting from outside the national territory. The order also banned inter-city transportation, gatherings of more than four people in public locations and all port activity during that same period. It was not clear whether similar restrictions would be imposed in Northwest, Cameroon s other Anglophone region. The unrest has presented a fresh challenge to the government of President Paul Biya, which has faced international criticism for its response to the demonstrations. In a statement on Thursday, a U.N. spokesman said Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was deeply concerned about tensions ahead of Sunday s demonstrations and urged the government to address the grievances of English speakers. The Secretary-General supports upholding the unity and territorial integrity of Cameroon and urges all parties to refrain from acts that could lead to an escalation of tension and violence, the statement said. The country s linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the League of Nations divided the former German colony of Kamerun between the allied French and British victors. After independence in 1960, the English-speaking part opted to join French Cameroon instead of Nigeria.
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Remember Joni Ernst? Conservatives were so excited to see her win a Senate seat in Iowa. You may be surprised to see who this patriot supported with her vote(below).Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015Senate Vote 218 Advances Trade Promotion AuthorityResult: Cloture Motion Agreed to by a margin of 0 votes Date of Vote: June 23, 2015 Time of Vote: 11:04 a.m. Roll Call Number: 218 Yes Votes (60) Lamar Alexander R TN Kelly Ayotte R NH John Barrasso R WY Michael Bennet D CO Roy Blunt R MO John Boozman R AR Richard M. Burr R NC Maria Cantwell D WA Shelley Moore Capito R WV Thomas R. Carper D DE Bill Cassidy R LA Daniel Coats R IN Thad Cochran R MS Christopher A. Coons D DE John Cornyn R TX Tom Cotton R AR Michael D. Crapo R ID Steve Daines R MT Michael B. Enzi R WY Joni Ernst R IA Dianne Feinstein D CA Deb Fischer R NE Jeff Flake R AZ Cory Gardner R CO Lindsey Graham R SC Charles E. Grassley R IA Orrin G. Hatch R UT Heidi Heitkamp D ND Dean Heller R NV John Hoeven R ND James M. Inhofe R OK Johnny Isakson R GA Ron Johnson R WI Tim Kaine D VA Mark Steven Kirk R IL James Lankford R OK John McCain R AZ Claire McCaskill D MO Mitch McConnell R KY Jerry Moran R KS Lisa Murkowski R AK Patty Murray D WA Bill Nelson D FL David Perdue R GA Rob Portman R OH Jim Risch R ID Pat Roberts R KS Mike Rounds R SD Marco Rubio R FL Ben Sasse R NE Tim Scott R SC Jeanne Shaheen D NH Dan Sullivan R AK John Thune R SD Thom Tillis R NC Patrick J. Toomey R PA David Vitter R LA Mark Warner D VA Roger Wicker R MS Ron Wyden D ORNo Votes (37) Tammy Baldwin D WI Richard Blumenthal D CT Cory Booker D NJ Barbara Boxer D CA Sherrod Brown D OH Benjamin L. Cardin D MD Bob Casey D PA Susan Collins R ME Ted Cruz R TX Joe Donnelly D IN Richard J. Durbin D IL Al Franken D MN Kirsten E. Gillibrand D NY Martin Heinrich D NM Mazie K. Hirono D HI Angus King I ME Amy Klobuchar D MN Patrick J. Leahy D VT Joe Manchin III D WV Edward J. Markey D MA Jeff Merkley D OR Barbara A. Mikulski D MD Christopher S. Murphy D CT Rand Paul R KY Gary Peters D MI Jack Reed D RI Harry Reid D NV Bernard Sanders I VT Brian Schatz D HI Charles E. Schumer D NY Jeff Sessions R AL Richard C. Shelby R AL Debbie Stabenow D MI Jon Tester D MT Tom Udall D NM Elizabeth Warren D MA Sheldon Whitehouse D RIDid Not Vote (3) Bob Corker R TN Mike Lee R UT Robert Menendez D NJVia: NYT s
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WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered a cruise missile strike against a Syrian regime military airbase, in response to a chemical weapons attack carried out by the regime earlier this week. [At 8:40 p. m. EDT, the U. S. launched 59 Tomahawk land attack missiles at the Shayrat Airfield located in the Homs Governorate in Western Syria, according to Pentagon officials. The strike lasted minutes. “This was in response to the Syrian chemical weapons attack April 4th in Khan Sheikhoun … That attack killed and injured hundreds of innocent Syrian people, including women and children,” said Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis. “The strikes were intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again,” he said. The missiles were launched from U. S. destroyers USS Porter and Ross, which were in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea at the time, he said. The missiles hit aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage areas, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems and radars, he said. Davis said the U. S. military took care to avoid any human casualties. It notified Russia — and “many countries” — of the planned strikes ahead of time. There were Russian troops at the airbase, although it’ is not clear if they were still there during the strikes. Davis said the U. S. struck an area where Russian and Syrian troops were not located. “In this case in particular, every precaution was taken to execute these strikes with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield,” Davis said. The strike was aimed at deterring another chemical weapons attack by the regime. The airbase was the same one the regime used to carry out the chemical weapons attack, Davis said. The U. S. military said it tracked the two aircraft that the regime used to conduct the attacks. The airbase also housed one of Syria’s main chemical weapons storage facility prior to 2013, he said. Trump had hinted on Wednesday during a Rose Garden briefing with the King of Jordan that he would take action against the regime. He said the attack had crossed “many, many lines, beyond a red line — many, many lines. ” “That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me. Big impact,” Trump had said. “That was a horrible, horrible thing, and I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that. ” Trump reportedly spoke with lawmakers before the strike. Sen. Rand Paul ( ) called on the president to come to Congress to seek congressional authorization for military action in Syria. “While we all condemn the atrocities in Syria, the US was not attacked,” he said in a statement. “The President needs congressional authorization for military action and I call on him to come to Congress for a proper debate on our role. Our prior interventions in this region have done nothing to make us safer and Syria will be no different. ” Sen. Ted Cruz ( ) called Syrian President Bashar a “monster” and a “puppet of Russia and Iran” but said he looked forward to the president “making the case to Congress and the American people” in the days ahead. Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic defense hawks praised the airstrikes. “Unlike the previous administration, President Trump confronted a pivotal moment in Syria and took action,” said Sens. John McCain ( ) and Lindsey Graham ( ). “I think it was an important step,” Sen. Marco Rubio ( ) said on CNN. “This was not some symbolic measure. ” “I support the admin’s strike on the air base that launched the chemical attack. I hope this teaches Assad not to use chemical weapons again,” said Sen. Bill Nelson ( ). In a statement, President Trump explained the urgency behind the strikes: My fellow Americans, on Tuesday, Syrian dictator Bashar launched a horrible chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians. Using a deadly nerve agent, Assad choked out the lives of helpless men, women and children. It was a slow and brutal death for so many, even beautiful babies were cruelly murdered in this very barbaric attack. No child of God should ever suffer such horror. Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the airfield in Syria from where a chemical attack was launched. It is in the vital, national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons. There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons, violated its obligations under the chemical weapons convention and ignored the urging of the U. N. Security Council. Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically. As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies. Tonight I call on all civilized nations to join us in seeking to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria and also to end terrorism of all kinds and all types. We ask for God’s wisdom as we face the challenge of our very troubled world. We pray for the lives of the wounded and for the souls of those who have passed and we hope that as long as America stands for justice, that peace and harmony will, in the end, prevail. Good night and God bless America and the entire world. Thank you.
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Donald Trump is rising in the polls, has the media wrapped around his little finger, and people are starting to take him seriously. With all these things going in his favor, with 50 days left until the election, you d think he would stick to staying on script.But, as always, he screws it up.Just hours after denouncing birtherism (and then falsely accusing the 2008 Clinton campaign of starting it), Trump delivered another off-color, off script speech in Miami where he (yet again) hinted at Hillary Clinton s assassination.After incorrectly claiming that Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment (which she can t do), Trump said: I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons. They should disarm. I think they should disarm immediately, what do you think, yes? Take their guns away, she doesn t want guns. Take them, let s see what happens to her. Take their guns away, okay. It will be very dangerous. And just like that, Trump basically called for an assassination of Hillary Clinton, and the basket of deplorables cheered like the rabid dogs they are.Just five weeks ago, Trump hinted that angry gun rights supporters could take matters into their own hands assassinating Hillary Clinton should she win the presidency: Hillary wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the Second Amendment people maybe there is, I don t know. After those comments were made, Trump received intense backlash from both the left and the right. Although his people maintain he was not advocating for assassination, but rather them getting out to vote, his campaign promised to stay on script the remainder of the race.Clearly they aren t following their own advice.Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head at a constituents meeting thus forcing her to resign from Congress demanded Trump apologize and disavow his dangerous comments: In his more stable moments, Mr. Trump has said he regrets some of the ugly insults and dangerous threats he has leveled during the course of this campaign. We call on him to immediately renounce these comments, apologize to Hillary Clinton, and acknowledge that once again he has gone dangerously too far. If anyone knows the danger of stoking political violence, no matter how innocent it may seem, it s Gabrielle Giffords. Republicans, Independents, and weary Democrats should ask themselves: is this who they want representing them? A man who makes a casual reference to violence against Hillary Clinton?Any presidential candidate who is so cowardly he has to call on his opponent to essentially be assassinated should in no way even remotely be considered for the job. Perhaps Trump s secret service agents should have a word with the Republican candidate about jokes regarding death.When will the American people stand up and say enough is enough. Enough of the off-script jokes, enough of the blatant disregard for cordial campaigning, enough of the deplorable and reprehensible comments.Featured image via Joe Readle/Getty Images
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(Reuters) - The Louisiana legislature on Wednesday passed a bill requiring women to wait three days before receiving an abortion, tripling the state’s existing waiting time in one of the most stringent regulations of its kind nationally. Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, has said he plans to sign the bill championed by anti-abortion groups. It passed with wide support from the Republican-controlled legislature. The bill requires a woman to wait at least 72 hours after a state-mandated ultrasound for the procedure. The current waiting time is 24 hours, the same as in most states with waiting periods. Only five other states require 72-hour waiting periods: Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah. The measures are among a wave of laws being adopted by states as conservatives seek to chip away at the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision to legalize abortion. Advocates of extending the Louisiana waiting period say women need more time to consider alternatives and the consequences of ending a pregnancy. “Many of them come to regret their decision later in life,” Deanna Wallace, legislative director for Louisiana Right to Life, said in a telephone interview. The measure is “empowering them with additional time to consider all of the options.” Opponents of the legislation see it as the latest attempt to block women’s access to abortions. “Politicians in Louisiana have made it their mission to restrict access to safe and legal health care — with women in the state left to pay the price,” Amanda Allen, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement, urging the governor to veto the measure. Louisiana also requires women to make two separate visits to a clinic to obtain an abortion, seen as an additional burden on women forced to take extra time off work and away from families, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health policy. Missouri, South Dakota and Utah have similar policies, while North Carolina and Oklahoma allow women to receive the initial counseling by phone. The Louisiana legislation includes an exception for women living 150 miles or farther from an abortion clinic. They will remain under the current 24-hour waiting requirement.
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BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Friday that its people today enjoy the greatest level of political and civil rights ever, in a report issued just days after the European Union and United States expressed extreme concern over a deterioration in human rights in China. In the last five years, Chinese president Xi Jinping has presided over what rights groups decry as an elevated crackdown on the country s rights activists and lawyers, with dozens arrested and hundreds detained. Ahead of Human Rights Day last Sunday, the European Union and the United States released statements saying they were extremely concerned about a deterioration of human rights in China, citing measures such as internet restrictions and detentions of lawyers. Chinese citizens have never before enjoyed as ample economic, social, cultural, as well as civil and political rights, as they do today, the State Council, China s cabinet, said in an annual white paper. The paper heralded a new era where greater legal protection ensures human rights in China, citing as evidence the ruling Communist Party s recent establishment of a central leadership group to guide legal reform. Rights group says the lack of an independent judiciary to keep a check on the ruling party leads to abuse of rights. China rejects criticisms of its human rights record, saying that the critics place too much emphasis on political and civil rights, without recognizing the social and economic freedoms being provided to its citizens. Diplomats from liberal democracies say that the Chinese definition is overly broad and ignores aspects like free speech that are essential to the accepted definition of human rights used by the United Nations. China considers its human rights successes to include, for example, using law to control infringement on the health and property rights of its citizens by closing down polluting companies, according to the report. Controversial legislation on spying, counter-espionage and internet security, as well as others in a series of new laws to bolster China s national security, are also cited as helping to protect citizen s security and property. The paper further says that China is actively working to promote human rights overseas and to build a international legal system to protect them. Up to August 2017, 36,000 Chinese military peacekeepers have been sent abroad to take part in UN peacekeeping operations and now have a standing force of 8,000 troops, the paper said.
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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — During the next few days, the Mets and General Manager Sandy Alderson will have to weigh whether Yoenis Cespedes, one of the team’s best players over the past year and a half, gives them the best chance of winning. “From a fan standpoint, from a team standpoint, from a variety of different standpoints, possibly,” Alderson said on Monday, the first day of the annual general managers’ meetings. “But there are always alternatives. ” On Monday, the Mets made the first strategic move in keeping two of their best hitters from last season: They extended to Cespedes and second baseman Neil Walker $17. 2 million qualifying offers ahead of an evening deadline. Cespedes, a top free agent this winter, and Walker were among 10 players who received qualifying offers for 2017. The list also included Justin Turner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Ian Desmond of the Texas Rangers and Edwin Encarnacion and Jose Bautista of the Toronto Blue Jays. The players have a week to either accept the offers or reject them and test free agency. Although Major League Baseball and the players’ union have been negotiating a new agreement because the current one expires next month, the system of qualifying offers was expected to be retained in some form. Under the current system, if a player rejects a qualifying offer and signs elsewhere, his former team receives a draft pick from his new one. Alderson said the Mets were keen on keeping Cespedes and Walker for next season. On Saturday, Cespedes exercised the clause in the contract he signed with the Mets last forfeiting $47. 5 million and two years on his deal in the hope that he could land a more lucrative payday. Cespedes, 31, hit . 280 in 2016, with 31 home runs, 86 R. B. I. and an . 884 plus slugging percentage, so he may be able to earn more he was expected to reject the qualifying offer. He was a key force for the Mets not only because he provided power and experience but also because he batted in a lineup dominated by . Alderson has been reluctant to hand out large contracts to free agents, and the Mets have had financial problems during his tenure. But Alderson said the Mets had already had one “very preliminary” conversation with Cespedes’s agent about keeping him in New York. “I wouldn’t have indicated our interest in having him back if we didn’t have the resources to make that possible,” Alderson said. Alderson said Cespedes’s agent had indicated a desire to strike a deal with a team sooner rather than later, and the Mets hoped to resolve the situation one way or the other within the next month. “There are some additional moving pieces that we have to consider, and I’m sure there is the market he has to consider,” Alderson said. With Walker, on the other hand, the Mets know he could accept the qualifying offer. Walker, 31, hit . 282, with 23 home runs and an . 823 O. P. S. but he had surgery to repair a herniated disk in his back in September. Walker, however, would require a smaller financial commitment than Cespedes. The Mets felt comfortable about Walker’s back when they made the qualifying offer, which players have traditionally rejected. “We may not have made the offer if we weren’t interested in having Neil on a basis,” Alderson said. “We looked at the possibility of him accepting, and we looked at the possibility of him being with us longer than a year. Both of those possibilities are of interest to us. ” INSIDE PITCH General Manager Sandy Alderson said the Mets were “disappointed and frankly shocked” that the closer Jeurys Familia was arrested on Oct. 31 on accusations of domestic violence. Alderson said the team did not know more about Familia’s involvement beyond the police report. Alderson said the Mets had been interested in adding relief help before Familia’s arrest. … Alderson said the Mets intended to tender first baseman Lucas Duda a contract, even though he played only 47 games because of a back injury. Duda, who is eligible for his final season of arbitration before free agency, made $6. 72 million in 2016. “Right now, he’s our first baseman,” Alderson said.
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MADRID/CARACAS (Reuters) - Spanish authorities arrested a former Venezuelan deputy minister and three former executives at Venezuelan state companies for alleged links to money laundering and international corruption, Spain s Civil Guard said on Friday. The operation was carried out with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The District Court for South Texas has issued an international detention order for extradition for involvement in criminal acts related to money laundering and international corruption, the Civil Guard said in a statement. The statement does not specify the names of those arrested but does include their initials and the position of one of them. It says that person is a former energy vice minister. Venezuela and its state oil company PDVSA have been involved in several corruption scandals in recent years. Neither PDVSA nor the Venezuelan government responded immediately to requests for comment. About 10 people have pleaded guilty as part of a U.S.investigation into a $1 billion bribery plot involving payments to PDVSA officials, which became public with the arrest of two Venezuelan businessmen in 2015.
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Former DEA Prescription Head Drops a BombShell — Congress Protects Big Pharma & Fuels Opioid Crisis Source: Claire Bernish Congress would rather protect the profits of pharmaceutical companies than the health of those addicted to dangerous opioid drugs, says a former head of the DEA responsible for preventing abuse of medications.
Joseph Rannazzisi, former Deputy Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, asserts Big Pharma and its lobbyists have a “stranglehold” on legislators in Congress and have engineered the protection of a $9 billion per year industry over the health of American citizens, according to a report from the Guardian .
“Congress would rather listen to people who had a profit motive rather than a public health and safety motive,” he said, according to the outlet. “As long as the industry has this stranglehold through lobbyists, nothing’s going to change.”
Rannazzisi explained lobbyists have spent millions thwarting legislative and policy efforts to provide guidelines for reducing the prescribing of opioid medications closely related to heroin — and helped limit the DEA’s powers to discipline those who dispense unusually high dosages of the same.
A pharmacist himself, Rannazzisi severely criticized lawmakers he claims hold a double standard — publicly vowing to combat the opioid epidemic, while essentially working on behalf of pharmaceutical companies to ensure the industry’s profits.
“These congressmen and senators who are using this because they are up for re-election, it’s a sham,” he told the Guardian . “The congressmen and senators who are championing this fight, the ones who really believe in what they’re doing, their voices are drowned out because the industry has too much influence.”
With the unique insight of having been an insider, Rannazzisi excoriated the duplicity evidenced between legislators’ public lamentation of addiction and deaths from the opioid crisis during election years, and private efforts to protect drugmakers from liability.
And he would know. According to Rannazzisi’s LinkedIn profile, as Chief of Diversion, he had been tasked with “oversight and control of all regulatory compliance inspections and civil and criminal investigations of approximately 1.6 million DEA registrants”— but if the standards are lowered by Congress to allow greater leeway in prescribing opioids, the threshold of criminality is raised.
As the Guardian points out, legislation to fight the opioid epidemic, Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act , did, in fact, pass in July — but partisan controversy erupted when Republicans failed to provide funding to give the law sharp teeth. Democrats then issued a report titled “ Dying Waiting for Treatment ” in response, which “likened the Republican response to the opioid crisis to ‘using a piece of chewing gum to patch a cracked dam.’”
Indeed the report sharply criticized the bill, equating its policies to ‘empty promises’ for the lack of financial follow-through.
As the Washington Post detailed in a report earlier this month, the DEA launched an aggressive campaign to rein in distribution of opioids by pharmaceutical manufacturers to illegal ‘pill mills’ and corrupt pharmacies, who cared little whether the drugs wound up on the streets.
Headed by Rannazzisi, the Office of Diversion Control sent investigators into the field, and began issuing hefty fines and filing lawsuits against the distributors responsible for the proliferation of opioids on the streets.
But the disproportionately powerful pharmaceutical industry — fearing a potential significant loss in profits — fought back. Hard.
According to the Post , the deputy attorney general summoned Rannazzisi to a meeting in 2012, concerning the cases of two unnamed major drug companies.
“That meeting was to chastise me for going after industry, and that’s all that meeting was about,” the now-retired DEA official told the Post .
Then, in 2014, came what constituted a hand out to the pharmaceutical industry by the Department of Justice and congressional legislators: the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act — legislation initiated by the Healthcare Distribution Management Association — the industry group representing distributors at the heart of the controversy.
An analysis of lobbying records by the Post found “the Healthcare Distribution Alliance, spent $13 million lobbying House and Senate members and their staffs on the legislation and other issues between 2014 and 2016.”
Rannazzisi argued his case to congressional staffers in a phone conference in July 2014, and recalled telling them, “This bill passes the way it’s written we won’t be able to get immediate suspension orders, we won’t be able to stop the hemorrhaging of these drugs out of these bad pharmacies and these bad corporations.”
Stunned at the massive — and ultimately successful — effort to take the bite out of DEA attempts to hold distributors and drugmakers responsible for their role in an epidemic estimated to take 19,000 lives every year, Rannazzisi likened the legislation to a “free pass” for legal drug pushers.
“This doesn’t ensure patient access and it doesn’t help drug enforcement at all,” he told the Guardian. “What this bill does has nothing to do with the medical process. What this bill does is take away DEA’s ability to go after a pharmacist, a wholesaler, manufacturer or distributor.”
“This was a gift. A gift to the industry,” he added.
After heading the diversion office for a decade, Rannazzisi retired in 2015 — likely disgusted over legislators’ dedication to the legal drug industry, rather than the people whose interests they’re ostensibly obligated to protect.
“The bill passed because ‘Big Pharma’ wanted it to pass,” he told the Guardian in no uncertain terms. “The DEA is both an enforcement agency and a regulatory agency. When I was in charge what I tried to do was explain to my investigators and my agents that our job was to regulate the industry and they’re not going to like being regulated.”
Big Pharma relies overwhelmingly on lobbyists filling the coffers of politicians to ensure they ignore the crisis gripping the nation. As the Center for Public Integrity found , the Guardian noted, Purdue Pharma — at the heart of the epidemic for its highly-addictive drug introduced in the late 1990s, OxyContin — spent a breathtaking $740 million in the last ten years on congressional lobbying efforts.
However, Big Pharma’s power to influence policy and legislation extends far beyond simple but effective lobbying — the government-run Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (IPRCC) has been accused by Sen. Ron Wyden of being a tool to “weaken” CDC guidelines for limiting overprescribing of opioids.
Wyden wrote to Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell of his concerns the IPRCC had been staffed with ‘experts’ with conflicts of interest for their close ties to Big Pharma, including a scientist with a $1.5 million endowment from Purdue, reported the Guardian .
“You’ve got a panel that’s certainly got a fair number of people that have a vested interest in this problem of overprescribing. That’s something you’ve got to root out,” Wyden asserted . “The role of the pharmaceutical companies on these advisory panels troubles me greatly. Science is getting short shrift compared to the political clout of these influential interests.”
Families of countless addicts and victims of the opioid industry would undoubtedly find the direct influence of Big Pharma’s pro-opioid cash appalling — yet it continues to this day. Policies and legislation have not yet been given the appropriate funding needed to effectively combat the problem, which swirls out of control while politicians and drugmakers reap blood-tainted profits.
“Corporations have no conscience,” Rannazzisi flatly told the Guardian . “Unfortunately, with my job, I was the guy who had to go out and talk to families that lost kids. If one of those CEOs went out there and talked to anybody, or if one of those CEOs happened to lose a kid to this horrible, horrible domestic tragedy we have, I’d bet you they’d change their mind.
“When you sit with a parent who can’t understand why there’s so many pharmaceuticals out in the illicit marketplace, and why isn’t the government doing anything, well the DEA was doing something. Unfortunately what we’re trying to do is thwarted by people who are writing laws. Share This Article...
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0 комментариев 0 поделились источник Pravda.Ru
Как пишет Wall Street Journal, ссылаясь на свои источники, санкционные репрессии могут быть направлены против министров и их заместителей из правительства Сирии.
По данным издания, в ЕС не будут тянут время, и, скорее всего, список будет расширен уже на следующей неделе.
Отметим, в настоящее время в санкционных сирийских списках Европейского союза находятся более 200 человек и около 70 организаций. Напомним, недавно еще пять стран, не входящие в ЕС, но поддерживающие политику Брюсселя, продлили еще на полгода санкции против России . В список этих стран вошли Украина, Черногория, Албания, а также Лихтенштейн и Норвегия, входящие в Европейское экономическое пространство.
Что заставило руководителей этих стран принять такое решение, рассказал Pravda.Ru старший научный сотрудник Института славяноведения РАН Петр Искендеров.
- Какие у этих стран причины для присоединения к санкциям?
- Позиция Черногории связана с позицией правящей элиты, которая одержала победу на днях на очередных парламентских выборах, - конкретно, премьер-министра Мило Джукановича. Он провозгласил вступление в ЕС и НАТО своим ключевым внешнеполитическим приоритетом. И понятно, что внешняя политика Черногории полностью находится в русле Брюсселя.
Если говорить об Албании, то эта страна уже является членом НАТО. Она тоже активно пытается продвинуть свою заявку на вступление в Европейский союз и четко солидаризируется по внешнеполитическим вопросам с ключевыми лидерами ЕС, такими как Франция, Германия и Италия. А поскольку все эти страны пока официально не блокируют антироссийские санкции, подобного нельзя ожидать и от Албании. Ее внешняя политика полностью солидаризируется с политикой ЕС.
Лихтенштейн - это карликовое государство, которое финансово и экономически связано с государствами Центральной Европы, прежде всего со Швейцарией, Австрией, Бельгией, Голландией, Германией. Поэтому от этого государства ожидать самостоятельности во внешней политике не приходится.
В Норвегии другая ситуация. Эта страна полностью самодостаточная и в политическом, и в энергетическом плане, она не является членом ЕС, но связана с Брюсселем торгово-экономическими соглашениями. Кроме того, Норвегия является одним из конкурентов России в том, что касается освоения Арктического шельфа, это наш конкуренты на энергетическом рынке, в плане снабжения Европейского союза газом. И в принципе, Норвегия среди скандинавских стран традиционно занимает наиболее ярко выраженную антироссийскую позицию, по сравнению даже с Финляндией и Швецией.
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When people say What happens in Las Vegas, stays in Las Vegas. they apparently aren t kidding around Suspicion about what is going on in the Las Vegas massacre investigation is at an all-time high. Americans want to know, and frankly, we have a right to know what happened in Las Vegas the night of the Rt. 91 Music Festival, where 59 people were killed and 527 were injured. It s almost eery how quickly the Las Vegas investigation has fallen off the radar of the mainstream media, who don t seem to be interested in finding out what really happened, and even appear to be giving up on using the massacre to promote their gun-control agenda.A worker at the Mandalay Bay hotel said Wednesday that he warned staff at the complex to report an active shooter before gunman Stephen Paddock launched his massacre on crowds at a music festival below the venue.The revelation has added to doubts about the initial timeline given by authorities about what happened Oct. 1. They had said the assault began with Paddock opening fire on concertgoers at the Route 91 Festival.But the new account alleges that an unarmed guard Jesus Campos who was initially believed to have approached and been shot by Paddock during his massacre was shot before the assault, with that gunshot heard by a maintenance worker.JESUS IS BEING PROTECTED BY AN ARMED SECURITY GUARD WHO REFUSES TO SAY WHO S PAYING HIMIndependent investigative journalist Laura Loomer paid a visit to the home of the hero Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort security guard who was allegedly shot by the Las Vegas shooter Steven Paddock. Loomer can be seen having a conversation with a paid security guard who refused to say who was paying him to stand in front of Campos home. Who is this guy and why is he there?Watch:Investigative Journalist Laura Loomer visits Mandalay Bay "Hero" Security Guard Jesus Campos @ His House @miketokes https://t.co/6L0T6ADzPa Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) October 12, 2017JESUS CAMPOS DOESN T APPEAR TO BE REGISTERED AS A SECURITY GUARD IN LAS VEGAS AS REQUIRED BY LAWEvery security guard in the state of Nevada has to register as an armed or unarmed guard with the state s Private Investigator s Licensing Board (PILB). This entity s records are publicly searchable at: nevadapilb.glsuite.us.There s no Jesus Campos licensed with the PILB. Here s a close up look at the NV PI Licensing Board:The document above was released by pol News Infinity who has done some amazing investigative work on a number of cases. The pol News Infinity Twitter account has since been SUSPENDED.JESUS CAMPOS IS A NO SHOW FOR PRESS CONFERENCE AND SEAN HANNITY INTERVIEWThe same day that Loomer paid a visit to Campos home, Jesus Campos had a press conference and interview with Sean Hannity scheduled for later in the day. Campos abruptly canceled the press conference and the interview with Sean Hannity.Media scrum tonight as we learn security officer shot in Vegas attack, Jesus Campos whereabouts are unknown. pic.twitter.com/Jk09tRlPsX Stephanie Wash (@WashNews) October 13, 2017We were in a room and we came out and he was gone, Campos union president told reporters, according to ABC News Stephanie Wash.Campos is represented by the International Union, Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America, which did not respond to requests for comment from Fox News earlier this week.Fox News Sean Hannity tweeted out that Campos, who was scheduled to appear on Hannity Thursday night, cancelled his appearance.He cancelled. https://t.co/fWCb4X8cNQ Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) October 13, 2017JESUS CAMPOS AGREES TO GIVE A SCRIPTED INTERVIEW WITH ELLEN DEGENERES ON HER SHOW. HIS APPEARANCE ON THE SHOW IS SHOCKINGLY DIFFERENT THAN THE IMAGE THAT S BEEN CIRCULATING OF HIM IN THE MEDIAAn announcement was made last week that Jesus Campus would appear on the Ellen Show. Jesus did appear on the show, but given the original photo of Campos that was being used in the media and a quick snapshot from his appearance on the Ellen Show, two things really jump out. The first thing that jumps out is the incredible 1-week weight gain that Campos had experienced, and the second is the missing moles that were very prominent in the photo below, that was allegedly taken only one week before his performance on the Ellen Show.#Jesuscampos in 5 days, gained 50 LB, had moles removed from his face, has no injury to forehead but had bandage on it 5 days before? pic.twitter.com/TlT6Mt0eyZ Fed Up Lilly (@FedUpLilly) October 21, 2017MGM ADMITS TO ALLOWING CAMPOS TO ONLY APPEAR ON THE ELLEN SHOW IN AN EFFORT TO MAKE SURE HE KEPT HIS STORY STRAIGHTFearing Jesus Campos would spill the beans about the timeline of the shooting if he was grilled by proper journalists, MGM, which owns the hotel where deranged gunman Stephen Paddock shot 600 people, insisted that security officer appear ONLY on only appear on Ellen, DailyMail.com has learned exclusively.MGM is worried that families of the 58 people murdered as well as many of the 546 injured in the Mandalay Bay massacre will launch lawsuits potentially worth billions of dollars against the company, sources tell DailyMail.com.And they thought Campos might not keep his story straight under the pressure of the TV lights and tough questioning.That is why Campos, 25, appeared on a daytime chat show hosted by a fast-talking, dancing comedienne, rather than take questions from TV hardhitters such as Fox News Sean Hannity, CNN s Wolf Blitzer or MSNBC s Rachel Maddow. MGM was behind the decision to call off all the interviews and did a deal with Ellen, knowing she would not play hardball on the timeline as long as she had the exclusive, a TV insider told DailyMail.com.Here s a closer look at the images:And now, citizen journalist Mike Tokes has uncovered what is indeed a very suspicious development. Tokes traveled to the Las Vegas coroners office to see if he could get some answers from the Clark County Coroner and Medical Examiner John Fudenberg. What Tokes got when he attempted to enter the Las Vegas Coroner s office was a woman by the name of Laurie who informed him that the coroner s office was on lockdown and would remain on lockdown at least until the end of the week . When Tokes asked if it was unusual for the office to be on lockdown, she replied, We ve never had a situation like this. Watch:VIDEO PROOF: Las Vegas Coroner's office on LOCKDOWN with police units stationed on each side of the building.This is very suspicious. pic.twitter.com/CMBnWzmFRp Mike Tokes (@MikeTokes) October 21, 2017Cori Langdon, a Las Vegas cab driver recorded her harrowing experience as she entered the Mandalay Bay Casino at about the same time gunshots were first being fired into the crowd at the Rt 91 country music festival in Las Vegas.Langdon was using her phone to videotape, as she was pulling into the Mandalay Bay Casino when she heard gunshots. She can be heard telling the dispatch operator for her cab service that she hears what sounds like automatic gunfire. Cori Langdon hears more gunfire, and tells her dispatch operator that the gunshots sound like they re coming from a completely different area: Now it sounds like its coming from farther away. After listening to Langdon s video recording of the event as it unfolded, one can t help but wonder if it s possible there was more than one shooter.Automatic gunshots are still being heard from the cab. Langdon tells her dispatch person: Somethings going on. I m not sure why people aren t running, but. There s a security guard, what s he doing? Ya know, for there being gunfire, it sure doesn t seem like people are runnin . Oh, shit! Seriously? I don t know what s goin on? Where are the cops at? I m right here by the porch of Mandalay Bay, and everything seems to be normal here. More and more rapid-fire gunshots are heard. The radio dispatcher replies, Remember, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. And everything seems normal when it s not. Watch, as Ed Rusiackas dissects what happened as Langdon approached the Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort, giving what many believe is evidence that there was more than one shooter:Here s the video in its entirety:Here s the Ellen Show interview in entirety:
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Brussels prosecutors will hold a news conference at 1300 GMT on sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont, the subject of a European arrest warrant issued by Spain, a spokesman for the Belgian authority said on Sunday. Warrants for rebellion, sedition, misuse of public funds, disobedience and breach of trust relating to Catalonia s independence campaign concern Puigdemont and four of his associates who fled to Belgium after Madrid s central government imposed direct rule in the autonomous region. We will give a press conference at 2 p.m. (local time). I can t confirm the arrests of the five people, spokesman Gilles Dejemeppe said. According to Belgian procedures, prosecutors must bring suspects to a judge, who has 24 hours to decide whether or not to approve the arrest warrant. Appeals can stretch the process to as long as 45 days.
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If I were a European and was forced to deal with the massive influx of Muslim refugees from Syria, I d be pointing the finger at President Obama, who clearly can t himself when it comes to caving to Iran.Foreign Affairs journalist for the Wall Street journal, Jay Solomon told MSNBC s Andrea Mitchell that Iran actually threatened to end nuke talks if Obama enforced his red line threat with Iran:.@WSJSolomon: Iran threatened to end nuclear talks if @POTUS enforced red line against Assad after chemical attack: pic.twitter.com/czFeFA2K10 Kenan Rahmani (@KenanRahmani) August 22, 2016
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BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged her country’s continued commitment to the Paris climate agreement in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawal, saying the deal was a “cornerstone” of attempts to stop global warming. Merkel, one of the strongest advocates of the global pact to curb emissions of gases that speed climate change, said there was no turning back from the path that began with the 1997 Kyoto climate protocol and led to 2015’s Paris deal. “The decision of the U.S. to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement is very regrettable, and I’m expressing myself in a very reserved way when I say that,” she said, adding that the deal was needed to protect the environment. “We need this Paris agreement to preserve our Creation,” she said - a rare use of religious imagery by Merkel, a pastor’s daughter who is usually intensely private about her faith. “Nothing can or will stop us from doing that,” she added. Trump’s decision would not stop those who feel committed to protecting the planet, she said: “On the contrary, in Germany, in Europe and in the world, we will join forces to take on and successfully tackle big challenges facing humanity.” She said the agreement, which Trump rejected because he said it would impose “unfair” costs on U.S. industry, would ultimately result in more prosperity and greater opportunities for the world. “To everyone for whom the future of our planet is important, I say let’s continue down this path so we’re successful for our Mother Earth,” she said. German industry associations also criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw from the climate deal, warning that the move would harm the global economy and lead to market distortions. Germany’s DIHK Chambers of Commerce and the VDMA engineering industry association warned that U.S. companies could gain short-term advantages by Trump’s decision. “Climate protection can be pushed forward in an effective and competetion-friendly way only by all states,” said DIHK President Eric Schweitzer. Schweitzer said other countries should stick to their commitments, but warned that attempting to compensate for the U.S. withdrawal by other countries redoubling their commitments would be self-defeating.
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HOMESTEAD, Fla. (Reuters) - This sprawling suburb on Florida s southern tip was nearly wiped flat by one hurricane 25 years ago. Now its residents hope they have rebuilt strong enough to withstand another. With Hurricane Irma churning toward Florida on Friday, many people in Homestead prepared to hunker down in houses that are substantially more fortified than those that were swept aside when Hurricane Andrew came ashore in 1992. Barreling ashore with winds of up to 165 miles (265 km) per hour, Andrew ripped roofs off houses and stripped palm trees bare. The Category 5 hurricane was responsible for 61 deaths and $26.5 billion in property damage, making it one of the most expensive storms in U.S. history. But a tough new building code approved after the storm required structures to be built to withstand wind speeds of at least 111 miles per hour. So-called hurricane impact windows, which are now common, must be made with shatterproof glass and cheap materials like particle board can no longer be used on roofs. Even construction cranes, a common sight in downtown Miami, must be able to withstand winds of up to 145 miles per hour. No one knows where Irma, a Category 4 storm with top sustained winds of 155 miles an hour late on Friday, will strike the hardest when it makes its projected landfall in south Florida on Sunday. But fortified roofs and other measures to secure buildings have persuaded people like Joy McRae of Homestead, which includes a major agricultural area, to stay put rather than join the hordes trying to escape for safer ground north on the Florida Turnpike and Interstate 95. I convinced myself that it s not going to be so bad, said McRae, 56, as she listed the features of her concrete house, built in 2007, including both shatterproof windows and aluminum hurricane shutters. Though McRae was worried about possible flooding - many new neighborhoods in Homestead are built in low-lying areas - she said she did not expect a repeat of 1992, when Andrew tore the roof off her house and flattened entire neighborhoods nearby. We ve got everything battened down, we re just getting some food and we re ready to ride it out, she said. If south Florida is sturdier now than it was 25 years ago, it also presents a bigger target, however. The population has grown by more than one-third since Andrew, to 2.7 million, as high-rise condos have sprouted in downtown Miami and potato fields have been transformed into subdivisions in outlying areas like Homestead. Homestead s population has more than doubled since 1992 to 67,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and all that growth could lead to more devastation. Insurer Swiss Re, in one estimate, said Irma would cause between $50 billion and $60 billion in damages if it were to take an identical path to Andrew. That concerns some longtime residents, who say they are worried less by the prospect of property damage than by how their neighbors might behave in the chaos. Schoolteacher Michael Littman, 51, recalls hearing gunshots at night after Andrew blew through his neighborhood. Police struggled restore order for several days, he said, adding that he plans to keep his cellphone, wallet and Smith & Wesson pistol close by this time around. I ve seen anarchy before, Littman said. It s shocking to see what happens when you strip away the thin veneer of civilization.
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A shocking victory 53% LEAVE 47% STAYIt was at three o'clock in the morning that it became clear that Leave would win https://t.co/23HHvtL3I9 John Rentoul (@JohnRentoul) June 24, 2016Watch HERE to see the outspoken UKIP Party leader, Nigel Farage only months ago destroy EU elitist leaders, Germany s Angela Merkle and France s Francois Hollande on their willingness to open their borders to economic migrants and people who have no intention of assimilating in their countries.As results poured in, a picture emerged of a sharply divided nation: Strong pro-EU votes in the economic and cultural powerhouse of London and semi-autonomous Scotland were countered by sweeping anti-Establishment sentiment for an exit across the rest of England, from southern seaside towns to rust-belt former industrial powerhouses in the north. A lot of people s grievances are coming out and we have got to start listening to them, said deputy Labour Party leader John McDonnell.With more than 16 million of an expected 30 million votes counted, the result was closely split, with the leave ahead by a few hundred thousand votes and remain underperforming analysts expectations. Few remain strongholds are doing better than expected, said John Curtice, a University of Strathclyde political scientist and BBC election analyst. There are far more places where leave are doing better than expected. It may be possible that the experts are going to have egg on their face later on tonight, he said.A vote to leave the EU would destabilize the 28-nation trading bloc, created from the ashes of World War II to keep the peace in Europe. A remain vote would nonetheless leave Britain divided and the EU scrambling to reform.The British pound plunged to a 31-year low on Friday as results in the country s European Union referendum gave the leave side a small but growing lead.The figures delivered a deep shock to financial markets, overturning earlier anticipation of a narrow victory for remain . The pound initially soared as polls closed and two opinion surveys put remain ahead and two leading supporters of the leave campaign said it appeared the pro-EU side had won.But it then suffered one of its biggest one-day falls in history, plummeting from about $1.50 to below $1.35 as results suggested a strong possibility the UK would vote to quit the bloc. As results poured in, a picture emerged of a sharply divided nation: Strong pro-EU votes in the economic and cultural powerhouse of London and semi-autonomous Scotland were countered by sweeping anti-Establishment sentiment for an exit across the rest of England, from southern seaside towns to rust-belt former industrial powerhouses in the north.Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, has declared June 23 Britain s Independence Day . Via: UK Daily Mail Birmingham votes to Leave. Full results: https://t.co/4hLZofNaC7 #EURef pic.twitter.com/6m86YJwgSF BBC Election (@bbcelection) June 24, 2016 Here is a screen shot of the BBC s most recent polling results: For live updates, go here: BBC Nigel Farage had said even if the Leave campaign loses the referendum we will win this war . Nigel Farage is a BIG winner today!The UKIP leader said Eurosceptics had been dismissed as fringey and fruitcakes in the past but would attract around 50% of votes cast.While Remain might edge a win, he said: The Eurosceptic genie is out of the bottle and will not be put back .Of the EU, he said: If we do stay part of this union it s doomed it s finished anyway. The UK voted on Thursday in a referendum on to leave or remain part of the European Union.Outspoken UKIP Party leader Nigel Farage has won! The UK has voted to break free from the globalistVia: BBC
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(Reuters) - A federal judge in Wisconsin dealt the first legal blow to President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban on Friday, barring enforcement of the policy to deny U.S. entry to the wife and child of a Syrian refugee already granted asylum in the United States. The temporary restraining order, granted by U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison, applies only to the family of the Syrian refugee, who brought the case anonymously to protect the identities of his wife and daughter, still living in the war-torn Syrian city of Aleppo. But it represents the first of several challenges brought against Trump’s newly amended executive order, issued on March 6 and due to go into effect on March 16, to draw a court ruling in opposition to its enforcement. Conley, chief judge of the federal court in Wisconsin’s western district and an appointee of former President Barack Obama, concluded the plaintiff “has presented some likelihood of success on the merits” of his case and that his family faces “significant risk of irreparable harm” if forced to remain in Syria. The plaintiff, a Sunni Muslim, fled Syria to the United States in 2014 to “escape near-certain death” at the hands of sectarian military forces fighting the Syrian government in Aleppo, according to his lawsuit. He subsequently obtained asylum for his wife and their only surviving child, a daughter, and their application had cleared the security vetting process and was headed for final processing when it was halted by Trump’s original travel ban on Jan. 27. That executive order sought to ban admission to the United States of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries - Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and Iraq - for 120 days and to suspend entry of all refugees indefinitely. The original travel ban, which caused widespread chaos and protests at airports when first implemented, was rescinded after the state of Washington won a nationwide federal court order blocking further enforcement of the policy. The modified executive order reduced the number of excluded counties - removing Iraq from the list - and lifted the indefinite refugee travel ban for Syrians. But opponents from several states have gone to court seeking to halt its implementation as well. “The court appreciates that there may be important differences between the original executive order, and the revised executive order,” Conley wrote in his decision. “As the order applies to the plaintiff here, however, the court finds his claims have at least some chance of prevailing for the reasons articulated by other courts.” In a related development on Friday, the federal judge in Seattle who imposed a nationwide injunction on enforcement of the original travel ban refused a request to apply that order to the revised policy, saying that lawyers from states opposed to the measure needed to file more extensive court papers.
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HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN HAS SOUR GRAPES ABOUT TRUMP Isn t this about the will of the people and not the party? Instead of embracing the movement that is so amazing with the Trump campaign, Ryan says he just isn t ready to endorse Trump. This is just ridiculous!TRUMP RESPONDS: Donald Trump responds to Paul Ryan: I am not ready to support Speaker Ryan s agenda. Perhaps in the future we can work together and come to an agreement about what is best for the American people, Trump said . They have been treated so badly for so long that it is about time for politicians to put them first! House Speaker Paul Ryan: I m just not ready to support Donald Trump as the GOP nominee https://t.co/xzLaxvkTPe https://t.co/MmTYbECt6N CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 5, 2016 I m just not ready to endorse Paul Ryan
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Posted on October 30, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog
Zero Hedge reports that Twitter, Facebook, Buzzfeed and Snapchat appear to be censoring the biggest bombshell of this election cycle … that the FBI re-opened its investigation of Clinton’s emails 11 days before the election.
I can add that I’ve been checking Reddit’s front page – the top 25 stories – every day, and there hasn’t been a single reference to the FBI, Clinton or emails since the FBI made its announcement.
As we’ve documented for years , social media is manipulated by the powers-that-be to prevent news that challenges the status quo from going viral.
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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 Bohème,” 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. ”
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So much for that whole diversity thing I'm thrilled to announce my running mate, @TimKaine, a man who's devoted his life to fighting for others. -H pic.twitter.com/lTVyfztE5Z Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 23, 2016Much like his new boss, Governor Kaine is fond of gifts while acting as a public servant. Unlike Hillary, his gifts don t seem to have been from wealthy Arab nations who top the list of Human Rights abusers, or the same Wall Street donors Hillary pretends to be fighting against. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine took advantage of the state s lax gift laws to receive an $18,000 Caribbean vacation, $5,500 in clothes and a trip to watch George Mason University play in the NCAA basketball Final Four during his years as lieutenant governor and governor, according to disclosures he filed.Now a leading contender to be Hillary Clinton s running mate, Kaine reported more than $160,000 in gifts from 2001 to 2009, mostly for travel to and from political events and conferences, according to disclosures compiled by the Virginia Public Access Project. The givers included political supporters, a drug company that soon after bought a facility in Virginia, and Dominion, the state s biggest provider of electricity. Via: Politico
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SEOUL (Reuters) - The more sanctions the United States and its allies impose on North Korea, the faster it will move to complete its nuclear plans, the reclusive nation s official KCNA news agency said on Monday, citing a foreign ministry spokesman. The latest sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council represent the most vicious, unethical and inhumane act of hostility to physically exterminate the people of the DPRK, let alone its system and government, the spokesman said on Monday, using the North s official name, the Democratic People s Republic of Korea. The U.N. Security Council unanimously passed a U.S.-drafted resolution a week ago mandating tougher new sanctions against Pyongyang that included banning textile imports and capping crude and petrol supply.
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Once again, Bette Midler has outdone herself in her lambasting of the insane Right Wing. From conservatives embrace of firearms admid a gun violence epidemic, to Donald Trump s strange ability to bring out the worst in the absolute worst people, to a number of hilarious and brutal jabs aimed at Fox News, Benghazi truthers, Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, and other right-wing icons, whenever the need is there, she is ready to blast the hell out of whatever is the current wrong in society.Recently, Donald Trump has been embarrassing himself on a regular basis. The billionaire s campaign staff recently misspelled Oklahoma while announcing a campaign stop in the state (and Oklahoma City when they corrected it). Trump himself managed in a single night to misspell honor , choker , and lightweight. His staffers even failed to spell Sarah Palin s name correctly on their website when listing her as someone who has endorsed the 2016 hopeful.Rubio tried and failed miserably to capitalize on these flubs, telling a crowd that Trump is learning how to spell, ending with what, to him, probably seemed like an epic one-liner: Donald Trump likes to sue people; he should sue whoever did that to his face. After Rubio s pathetic attempt to bring down the hammer, The Divine Miss M couldn t resist having a bit of fun with the situation. Rubio attacks Trump for his incoherent, poorly-spelled tweets, she tweeted Saturday night. What a showdown: the grammar Fascist versus the ACTUAL uh . Once again, a brilliant observation by Midler and another humiliating blow struck to the Stupid Part of America. This observation is, of course, accurate. Trump has endorsed some fairly horrific ideas like Muslim concentration camps and nation database registries, bans on Muslims entering the country, a f*cking wall to keep brown people out, and other horrific policies adored by Adolf Hitler. And Rubio well, he s Rubio.Featured image via screengrab
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If MSNBC had referred to Donald Trump as a rich asshole, Fox News would have thrown a collective hissy fit about it. But the conservative network has no problem insulting the former Secretary of State with a level of vitriol that does not belong in broadcast news.After interrupting Hillary s live speech on Wednesday, in which the Democratic nominee was talking about how real successful businessmen are able to succeed without destroying the lives of others to achieve their goals, Fox turned the commentary over to Antonio Sabato, Jr., who was eager to disrespect her. Just give her a broom so she can fly away, that witch, he said. Oh, we cannot stand her and please stop talking. I m not sure who the we he was referring to is, but the Calvin Klein model then demonstrated why he is paid to keep his mouth shut and pose for the pretty picture by professing his support of the racist Republican nominee. She s talking about Trump, she s talking about mistakes. What has she created? What has she done in the last in her entire life, she s done absolutely nothing. I can t stand her talk anymore and I think the American people have to wake up. Donald Trump is the only way. Here s the video via YouTube.It s outrageous that this kind of rhetoric is allowed to be used during a live news broadcast. It s even more outrageous that there were four women sitting with Sabato, Jr. and none of them bothered to smack him down for using such a term to describe the potential first female President of the United States.Make no mistake, this was a sexist attack against Hillary Clinton by a Donald Trump shill who seems to have no problem with Trump s anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant stances despite the fact that he and his parents are immigrants and his maternal grandmother was a Jew who survived the Holocaust.It doesn t get more hypocritical than that.Featured image via screenshot
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The video begins with a clearly agitated pro-illegal alien female approaching Trump supporters. After a few of the agitators who were part of her group began to act in a hostile and threatening manner, police officers stepped in to form a barrier between the groups. The human barrier they formed was clearly not okay with the agitators who were looking to use physical force to shut up and shut down their opponents. Shortly after the police officer explained that the Trump supporters had a permit (which means nothing to people who have no regard for the law and are actually protesting on behalf of lawbreakers), another man who appears to be Hispanic, wearing a hoodie began to aggressively approach the crowd. We re not sure if these people were being paid to threaten the pro-Trump supporters or if they just happened to be angry supporters of illegal aliens, and were in the area.The Hispanic man on the pro-Trump side in the background, who was holding a Deport Illegals sign can be heard telling the pro-illegal agitators that he s a legal American citizen and he stands by President Trump. He hilariously follows up his comment with, Homies for Trump. The same man can be seen last night at a pro-Trump rally on Hollywood Blvd. prior to the Oscar Award ceremony in the video below where things did actually get violent and one obnoxious anti-Trump agitator got a surprise right hook from a pro-Trump woman after she was assaulted.Watch:Watch the video of the chaos that took place last night on Hollywood Blvd in Los Angeles just prior to the Oscar Award ceremony. The legal Hispanic American seen in the video above is also present at this rally:
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Stoicism is a philosophy for your mind that helps you deal with suffering and misfortune. In this podcast, I review stoicism’s strongest points as presented by three powerful thinkers (Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius) by using direct quotes from their most important works. I also share how I’ve used stoicism to reduce pain in my own life and how you can do the same through an effectively four-point strategy.
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Previous Podcast: What Travel Can And Can’t Give A Man
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■ Optimism is easy to come by in the offseason, but maintaining it in the regular season for even two games can be far more difficult. Just ask the Jaguars ( ) the Raiders ( with 69 points allowed through two games) and the Buccaneers ( after being crushed by the Cardinals). ■ Cam Newton can still dominate any team other than the Broncos. The Panthers quarterback moved his record against teams to over the last two seasons with a dismantling of the 49ers. And his news conference may have resurrected the boater (see below). ■ No lead is ever safe for the Cleveland Browns, who were up over the Ravens in the first quarter before a missed was returned to the opposite end zone, giving Baltimore two points. The Ravens proceeded to methodically storm back to a victory. ■ It apparently does matter who plays quarterback for the Patriots. The team’s offense fell off a cliff when Jimmy Garoppolo was knocked out of the game with a shoulder injury. Jacoby Brissett, a rookie out of North Carolina State, replaced Garoppolo, and New England barely hung on to win. ■ There is no place like (new) home. The Rams beat the Seahawks in their return to Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum after 36 years in other stadiums, and the Vikings beat the Packers in their first game in the U. S. Bank Stadium. The future looked bright on Sunday night in Minnesota. The Vikings finally got to play a regular season game in U. S. Bank Stadium, their gleaming new home. Their fans were thrilled by a dominant performance from young receiver Stefon Diggs. And a convincing victory over the Green Bay Packers even made the prospect of losing Adrian Peterson to a serious knee injury feel like a footnote. Diggs exploded for career highs with 9 catches for 182 yards. He caught 9 of the 10 passes thrown his way, and seemed able to get open at will against the Packers. Getting Diggs the ball was Sam Bradford, the underachieving veteran quarterback the Vikings traded for two weeks ago after starter Teddy Bridgewater was injured. Bradford, plagued by injuries and inconsistency in his career in St. Louis and Philadelphia, was excellent Sunday, playing through a badly bruised left hand while completing 22 of 30 passes for 286 yards and 2 touchdowns. Minnesota’s passing game helped offset a running game that struggled even before Peterson went down. After leading the N. F. L. in rushing last season, the Peterson now has just 50 yards combined through the first two games of the season on 31 carries. While no official announcement has been made regarding Peterson’s status going forward, he was shown being unable to put any weight on the knee as he was helped off the field. With or without Peterson, the Vikings are and in first place in the N. F. C. ’s North Division. For the Packers, who struggled all game with pass protection and ball security, the loss dropped the team to . Aaron Rodgers struggled all night to connect with his receivers and was intercepted by Trae Waynes late in the fourth quarter to end the Packers’ rally. Rodgers also fumbled three times, losing one of them. Anyone questioning why the Denver Broncos gave Von Miller nearly $70 million in guaranteed money after a long set of contract negotiations this offseason got their answer on Sunday. Miller dominated the Indianapolis Colts, sacking Andrew Luck three times, including a clutch play that staved off a comeback attempt and sealed Denver’s victory. When it was over, Miller walked off the field in Denver to a chorus of “M. V. P” chants from Broncos fans. Miller was the Super Bowl M. V. P. thanks largely to his ability to punch the ball out while sacking a quarterback, and in the closing minutes of Sunday’s game, as Luck tried to rally his team to a victory, it was Miller, perhaps the heart and soul of the Broncos, who came through with the play of the game, sacking Luck and stripping the ball free. The fumble was recovered by Shane Ray and returned for a touchdown. Game over. There was concern this offseason that losing Peyton Manning would put too much pressure on the Broncos’ defense, but under coordinator Wade Phillips they look nearly as strong as a year ago. On top of Miller’s big play, Aqib Talib returned an interception for a touchdown, helping the Broncos’ defense offset an uneven performance by the offense. Manning’s replacement, Trevor Siemian, completed 22 of 33 passes for 266 yards, but was kept without a touchdown. The Broncos are now in the era. Cam Newton threw his 122nd touchdown pass on Sunday, but all anyone wanted to talk about was his hat. Following Carolina’s win over the San Francisco 49ers, the reigning N. F. L. M. V. P. came out for his news conference in a straw boater hat and bow tie that set Twitter ablaze with comparisons to everything from carnival barkers to barbershop quartets to Lyle Lanley, the monorail salesman from “The Simpsons. ” The first question from the media was about where Newton got the anachronistic hat, but he smiled, and chose not reveal the source, saying “Undisclosed. But shoutout to my connect. ” Carolina, the league’s offense from a year ago returned to form Sunday, led by Newton, who threw for 353 yards and four touchdowns. The Panthers turned the ball over four times, but still managed to pile up 529 yards on offense. Here’s how the Panthers won. The quarterback situation in New England got even more complicated this week when Jimmy Garoppolo, who had been thriving in place of the suspended Tom Brady, went down with an injury to his throwing shoulder in the second quarter and was ruled out for the rest of the game. The Patriots struggled without Garoppolo, but held on to beat the Dolphins, behind quarterback Jacoby Brissett. Here’s how Brissett looked against the Dolphins. Prior to the hit by the Dolphins’ Kiko Alonso that crushed him into the turf, Garoppolo was shredding the Miami defense, having completed 18 of 27 passes for 234 yards and 3 touchdowns. With Brady suspended through Week 4, the emergence of Garoppolo had taken a great deal of pressure off of New England, as he opened the season with an upset win on the road over Arizona and got the team off to a host start this week as well. The injury, which could potentially keep Garoppolo out for multiple weeks, leaves the Patriots with a thin depth chart at the game’s most important position. Jacoby Brissett took over for Garoppolo. Behind a conservative game plan, Brissett completed 6 of 9 passes for 92 yards. Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski missed a late field goal to put the game away, but the Dolphins came up short on their final drive. Professional football returned to Los Angeles, or at least something resembling it did, as the Rams held on to beat the Seattle Seahawks in their home opener at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Beating the Seahawks, an N. F. C. West rival, for the third consecutive time likely felt good, but that was tempered by the fact that the Rams have failed to score a touchdown through two games. Here’s our report from the Coliseum. The focus before the game was on the injured ankle of Russell Wilson, but the Seahawks may want to be more concerned about the team’s running game. Traditionally a strength for Seattle, Seattle’s runners combined for just 67 yards on the ground, averaging 2. 8 yards an attempt. And Seahawks running back Christine Michael lost a fumble late in the fourth quarter to seal the victory for the Rams. This is the second consecutive season that the Seahawks have gotten off to a rough start, with the team going last year before going to close the season. It did not live up to the slugfests these teams are known for, but the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals once again clashed, and in a game that was in doubt until the final seconds, the Steelers held on for a narrow victory. Tensions were undoubtedly high between the teams, but poor field conditions, caused by rain earlier in the day, led to a sloppy game in which neither Antonio Brown of the Steelers nor A. J. Green of the Bengals — two of the best receivers in the N. F. L. — cracked 40 yards receiving. Brown in particular struggled, catching just 4 passes on 11 targets, staring at his hands in disbelief at one point after an uncharacteristic drop. During an interview at halftime, Coach Mike Tomlin of the Steelers attributed the sluggish play of both offenses to the familiarity the teams have for each other. They have now played each other four times in ten months. The Steelers defense, which has struggled against the pass in each of the last two seasons, allowed Andy Dalton to pass for 366 yards, but they limited the Bengals just enough for Ben Roethlisberger’s three touchdown passes to lead Pittsburgh to victory. The Bengals had plenty of opportunities, but fumbled twice late in the game, including one on an attempted lateral by Giovani Bernard with 8 seconds remaining to seal their fate. ■ Prescott Strong for Cowboys: Discussing Dak Prescott after the rookie quarterback’s first NFL victory, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones managed to throw in references to folks such as Troy Aikman, Tom Brady and Ben Roethlisberger — QBs with nine Super Bowl victories combined. Not bad company for a guy who was a draft pick and is only playing because Tony Romo is out with an injured back. Prescott ran for a TD went 22 for 30 for 292 yards, and showed a veteran’s poise in the pocket, helping the Cowboys beat the Washington Redskins on Sunday as he stayed as a pro so far. Here’s how Dallas won. ■ Titans Rally to Beat Lions: Marcus Mariota converted a fourth down with a perfectly lofted touchdown pass to Andre Johnson with 1:13 left, lifting the Tennessee Titans to a win over the Detroit Lions on Sunday. Mariota dropped the pass over linebacker Tahir Whitehead to Johnson just before safety Rafael Bush could get to the veteran receiver to potentially break up the pass. The Titans ( ) ended a losing streak, dating to last December, after Mariota threw two TD passes in the fourth quarter after trailing . — Associated Press ■ The Browns Continue to Be Bad: The Cleveland Browns looked to be moving along just fine without Robert Griffin III, starting Week 2’s matchup against the Baltimore Ravens with touchdowns on the first three drives of the game and grabbing a lead. But that old Browns luck kicked in immediately following the third touchdown, as Patrick Murray’s extra point attempted was blocked, and Tavon Young recovered the ball and returned it to the other end zone for two points. It was just the second recovery for a score in N. F. L. history. From that point forward it was all Baltimore, with Joe Flacco rallying his team to a victory on the road. Anyone expecting a shootout similar to the one when the Giants and Saints met last season was disappointed. On Sunday, neither team scored an offensive touchdown until the early fourth quarter. A dreary game came down to a humdrum field goal by the Giants Josh Brown that broke a tie and gave the Giants a victory. Here’s how the Giants beat the Saints. ■ P. J. Williams, a cornerback for the Saints, went down in a brutal collision and appeared unable to move as he was carted off the field and taken to the hospital. Williams, a rookie, came in low to try and tackle Larry Donnell of the Giants early in the first quarter, and had his neck snapped from in the collision. Fox broadcasters reported that Williams regained movement in his extremities, and the Saints announced he was being evaluated for a concussion.
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According to the NRA, good guys with guns across the nation are the last line of defense between some unspecified threat that could occur anywhere at any time, and something else. But who will protect the world from the responsible gun owners who prove themselves to be anything BUT responsible?In the latest instance of responsible gun ownerness, a Utah man found himself beaten to a pulp by people who were leaving a party at his home after he shot his girlfriend. According to ABC4 Utah, everyone was enjoying the all-night party until the unnamed man began fighting with his significant other. Overcome by emotion, he responsibly pulled out a handgun and demanded that partygoers leave his home.Obviously, confronted by a presumably drunk individual who thinks a gun is the best way to get people to leave a party, those present quickly left but as they were in the driveway, they heard gunshots. Unified Police Department spokesperson Lex Bell says that the heroic individuals rushed back inside and pummeled the shooter, who left his victim with gunshot wounds to her ankle and hand, until he was unconscious.In an apparent effort to protect the shooter, the girlfriend told police that she accidentally shot herself while cleaning the gun but law enforcement says that she was likely shot while trying to wrestle the gun away from her violent and crazy significant other. A friend who drove her to the hospital confirmed that her story was false. Fortunately, her injuries are not serious, though she may need surgery on her hand.According to area residents, the couple recently moved into the neighborhood and after learning about their new neighbors, they are a bit concerned. One man, identified as Dan, called the incident troublesome because he has a family whose safety is placed at risk by the new responsible gun owners in the neighborhood.No charges have yet been filed, but Bell says that those who rushed in and heroically beat the living hell out of the shooter were likely, legally, justified.Watch a report on the attack below:Featured image via screengrab
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We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] Cher Finally Cracks Time Travel October 28, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS Share 0 Add Comment
AFTER over 27 years of research into quantum mechanics and temporal displacement technology, pop icon Cher has finally found a way to turn back time, WWN can exclusively reveal.
Cher, mostly aged 70, made the stunning announcement at a press conference held outside her particle physics collider facility in Miami, while on break from her busy schedule of Las Vegas residency shows and Einstein-Rosen bridge construction.
The legendary singer announced that as of 3:47am eastern time, the barrier separating humankind from the ability to journey backwards through the clouds of time, to meddle with the past and perhaps find a way to take back terrible things said to a loved one in a moment of anger, undoing any pain and hurt caused in the process.
“It’s time travel, baby, please listen,” said Cher, surrounded by a complex network of computers and shit.
“I’m going to be the first, baby, to travel through time, baby, please listen. Ever since the late 80s, baby, I’ve been wanting to turn back the clock, and after all these years, baby, you have to listen, I’ve found the key to stepping into a vortex travelling at greater than the speed of light, vanishing in front of your eyes but reappearing instantaneously at a pre-determined point in the pa-ah-ast”.
The singer gave a quick rendition of the Shoop Shoop Song and then dematerialised.
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Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is adding a veteran New Hampshire political operative to his team as he continues mulling a possible 2016 presidential bid, the latest sign that he is seriously preparing to launch a campaign later this year.
Jim Merrill, who worked for former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and ran his 2008 and 2012 New Hampshire primary campaigns, joined Rubio’s fledgling campaign on Monday, aides to the senator said.
Merrill will be joining Rubio’s Reclaim America PAC to focus on Rubio’s New Hampshire and broader Northeast political operations.
"Marco has always been well received in New Hampshire, and should he run for president, he would be very competitive there," Terry Sullivan, who runs Reclaim America, said in a statement. "Jim certainly knows how to win in New Hampshire and in the Northeast, and will be a great addition to our team at Reclaim America.”
News of Merrill’s hire was first reported by The New York Times.
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Remember when the US had a President who took the lead in the war on terror? Russia has carried out a series of deadly airstrikes against the terrorist group and Vladimir Putin has now sent the country s most elite special forces team into the war zone.And speculation is heightening that offensive will be bolstered by the China s People s Liberation Army, following a number of reports of military movements in the region backed up by strong words from a senior government member at a United Nations meeting.Reports emanating from the Middle East last week said China was planning on joining the fight against ISIS in the coming weeks , according to a Syrian army official.While Beijing insists it will abide by the United Nations (UN) in the region, hints of an action were backed up when it spoke strongly about a coordinated response to the rising terrorist threat.Speaking of the Syrian crisis China s foreign minister Wang Yi said at the UN Security Council session in New York: The world cannot afford to stand by and look on with folded arms, but must also not arbitrarily interfere. He added that nations should stand united against violent extremist ideology .Mr Wang and his opposite number in Russia, Sergey Lavrov met at length last week and afterwards Mr Lavrov said the two countries are in similar positions on many domestic and international issues.China has also shown solidarity with Syria, joining Russia in vetoeing UN proposals against Bashar al-Assad, which are likely to prevent him being referred by the council to the International Criminal Court.The latest actions at the UN conference have come amid reports, citing key military sources, Chinese warships have made their way to Syrian shores through the Suez Canal.It was said China s J-15 warplanes would launch from an aircraft carrier for attacks on ISIS.Russian media followed that up by quoting Igor Morozov, a member of the Russian Federation Committee on International Affairs, confirming Chinese aircraft carrier, Lianoning, and a guided missile cruiser were heading to the area, and adding Chinese military advisers were already in the region.Mr Morozov said: It is known that China has joined our military operation in Syria. The Chinese cruiser has already entered the Mediterranean, followed by its aircraft carrier. These reports have not been verified by China and satellite images show the Syrian port of Tartus, currently empty.However, China come under threat from ISIS in recent months increasing the theory an attack is in the pipeline. Via: Express UK
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It can be said that Donald Trump was less than pleased that he came in second to Ted Cruz in the Iowa Caucus. However, that s putting it mildly. From his expressionless concession speech, to his next day blame game, to his temper tantrum against Cruz, he s been pretty much a loose cannon.Although, leave it to Jimmy Fallon to show Trump s true reaction to coming in second place that likely happened in a dream on Trump s flight from Iowa to New Hampshire. On Wednesday s edition of the Tonight Show, Fallon donned the infamous Trump wig and did his spot-on impersonation once again to have Trump declare he s the winner and champion of second place. He then tells everyone, In case you re wondering, the J stands for genius. Then after declaring victory, he says: It s just like children say: First is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the hairy chest . Marco Rubio get that taken care of. I wouldn t want your hair to make you look ridiculous. Fallon then goes through how many wonderful things in life have the number two in them or come in twos, thus making him equally as spectacular. Of course.He ends by telling everyone: From now on, when you think Donald Trump, I want you to think YUGE No. 2 So watch out New Hampshire, because the deuce is loose. And it s true, Trump often does appear to be a giant piece of sh*t more often than not, so it fits.It will definitely be interesting to see what happens in New Hampshire after their primary vote next week. Will Trump still be the champion of second place? Or will he be able to finally declare a true victory? We ll just have to wait and see. Video/Featured image from YouTube
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Not a day goes by when a prominent figure on the Right doesn t remind us that good guys with guns basically anyone carrying a firearm at any given moment will act as our saviors whenever a bad guy threatens. These glorious figures, Sent from God herself, act as paladins of justice, dispensing it in the form of hot pieces of lead at a speed of 2,500 feet per second. Unfortunately, at a moment s notice, someone thought to be a good guy could easily reveal himself to be anything but that.Police in Murray, Utah were called after a McDonald s drive-thru customer pulled a gun out and threatened to shoot employees. The unidentified man can be seen on video arguing with an employee. At first, a white Subaru Outback can be seen pulling away, but the vehicle stops about 40 feet from the window. Three men exit the car and the driver of the vehicle walks back to the window, pointing his gun inside. I don t need this, the gunman yelled, apparently failing to realize that he probably didn t need to bring a Second Amendment Solution to an argument over food.Fortunately, one of his friends pulls him away before he has a chance to open fire. It makes you think, if he was going to shoot one person, how do we know he wasn t going to jump through and do the rest, employee Michela Spikes told FOX13. I ve got a 15-month-old son I got to think about. Watching the video, she remarked that it looks like he was actually serious about to do something right before the man in the gray-hooded sweatshirt pulls the angry ammosexual away from the confrontation.It s nice to think that the average human is responsible enough to carry around a weapon that can end numerous lives in seconds. Unfortunately, all too often guns are used to resolve minor conflicts, to chase down shoplifters, end abortion forever, solve disputes over roadkill, express displeasure at getting stuck behind a snow plow during a blizzard, or check who s downstairs. Everyone wants to think of themselves as a good guy. In fact, in many situations, the bad guy still views himself as the opposite. Think about it: the average man can t be trusted to put the toilet seat down reliably, and we re trusting him to carry around something that gives him the power to decide life or death? [Author s Note: If you accept this as a scientific argument, you re an idiot.]A study published in the American Journal of Public Health notes that for each percentage point increase in gun ownership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9%. Researchers could not determine causation, but found that states with higher rates of gun ownership had disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides. Of course, it s also important to consider that the presence of a gun in the first place increases the likelihood of this sort of incident. Guns not only permit violence, they can stimulate it as well, Leonard Berkowitz, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Wisconsin, said after conducting a 1967 study on the effect of weapons on aggression. The finger pulls the trigger, but the trigger may also be pulling the finger. Psychology Today notes:In 1967, Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage conducted a fascinating study. First, participants were angered by a person pretending to be another participant (called a confederate). Next, participants were seated at a table that had a shotgun and a revolver on it or, in the control condition, badminton racquets and shuttlecocks. The items on the table were described as part of another experiment that the researcher had supposedly forgotten to put away. The participant was supposed to decide what level of electric shock to deliver to the confederate who had angered them, and the electric shocks were used to measure aggression. The experimenter told participants to ignore the items on the table, but apparently they could not. Participants who saw the guns were more aggressive than were participants who saw the sports items. This effect was dubbed the weapons effect. Fortunately a good guy without a gun stepped in and prevented his friend from doing real harm.Watch a report on the incident below:Featured image via screengrab
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Sen. Ted Cruz argued Saturday that Democrats have become so extreme and "intolerant" of religious views that "there is no room for Christians in today's Democratic Party."
"There is a liberal fascism that is dedicated to going after believing Christians who follow the biblical teaching on marriage," the Texas Republican said in his speech before a Christian conservative audience in Waukee, Iowa.
Cruz joined eight other presidential candidates and potential contenders on stage at the Iowa Faith and Freedom summit, where speakers railed against what they see as threats to religious liberty. For his part, Cruz alluded to business that faced pushback for declining to cater to same-sex weddings.
Many of the speakers also pointed to the recent debate over an Indiana religious liberty law that was designed to protect those who objected to participating in same-sex marriage ceremonies. But the law came under fire from critics who said it was discriminatory against same-sex couples, and its language was subsequently tweaked.
As the Supreme Court gets ready to hear oral arguments on whether to overturn same-sex marriage bans in states, Cruz introduced legislation last week that would protect bans in place.
Cruz urged the audience to "fall on our knees and pray" ahead of the Supreme Court's final ruling on the issue, which is expected this summer. "We need leaders who will stand unapologetically in defense of marriage," he said.
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A video from a Chicago concert may show Malia Obama smoking a joint is she following in her father s footsteps? She was also seen pulling her dress up and twerking at the same concert: MALIA OBAMA Flashes Her Booty In Front Of Huge Crowd At Chicago Concert
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cyber security experts and U.S. officials said on Monday there was evidence that Russia engineered the release of sensitive Democratic Party emails in order to influence the U.S. presidential election. The FBI said it was investigating a cyber intrusion at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which has led to discord as the party’s convention in Philadelphia opens on Monday to nominate former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton as its candidate. Although the hacking of the DNC was known to officials and cyber security experts a month ago, the timing of the release of the contents of communications within the party is what is causing concern for U.S. authorities. A U.S. official involved in the investigation said that the classified information collected on the hack so far “indicated beyond a reasonable doubt that it originated in Russia.” The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the timing of the release of emails “has all the hallmarks of a classic intelligence operation intended to damage a perceived adversary.” The official said, however, that it may be impossible to prove definitively that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government directed the attack. The emails, released by activist group WikiLeaks at the weekend, appeared to show favoritism within the DNC for Clinton over U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who ran a close race for the nomination for the Nov. 8 election. The committee is supposed to be neutral and the disclosure forced chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman from Florida, to resign. The U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee has been briefed and will seek information on any potential connection to Russia or any other state, said Representative Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the panel. “That foreign actors may be trying to influence our election - let alone a powerful adversary like Russia - should concern all Americans of any party.” Schiff said in a statement. On Sunday, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told CNN that the campaign had been told by “experts” that the emails were released by suspected Russian hackers to help Republican Party nominee Donald Trump. The businessman’s campaign dismissed the allegation as absurd. Trump has often praised Putin, calling him a “strong leader.” Trump is a critic of NATO and last week he told The New York Times that he might not back countries in the alliance if they were attacked by Russia, unless he was sure they had made sufficient contributions to the group. Russia has long been considered among the most elite U.S. adversaries in cyberspace, though its actions are generally viewed as efforts at covert intelligence gathering. “Usually, the Russians are not ham-handed,” said Jim Lewis, a cyber security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. He said Russia was believed to have hacked Democratic and Republican campaigns in 2008, but that it did not leak material. “It would be a bold move to try and shape the election, but we can’t rule it out,” Lewis said. CrowdStrike, a cyber firm that helped clean up the breach, said last month it had identified two hacking groups that infiltrated the DNC and that both were believed to be working on behalf of two competing arms of the Russian government. Its findings were later supported by similar conclusions reached by FireEye’s (FEYE.O) Mandiant unit and Fidelis, two other U.S.-based cyber companies. Experts said that forensic analysis of the breach also links the same hackers to attacks at the White House, the State Department, the German Bundestag and private companies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to say when its probe of the hack began. “A compromise of this nature is something we take very seriously, and the FBI will continue to investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace,” it said in a statement. WikiLeaks released more than 19,000 DNC emails on Saturday. On Twitter it rejected as speculation claims made that Russia was the source of the cache. The group also said that there would be more leaks related to the U.S. election. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he could not speak to the veracity of private sector conclusions pointing to Russia as the culprit in the DNC hack, but that he was confident the FBI would thoroughly investigate the matter.
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(Reuters) - Donald Trump’s inauguration as U.S. president on Friday was greeted with notes of caution by some foreign leaders. Here is some of the reaction: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto congratulated Trump on his inauguration, saying he would like to strengthen ties, but that sovereignty, national interest and protection of Mexicans would be paramount. Pena Nieto, criticized for meeting Trump last year even after the New York businessman had insulted Mexicans in his election campaign, said on Twitter he would seek “respectful” dialogue with the new U.S. government.[nL1N1FA1G8] Canada’s government, eager to sidestep potentially protectionist U.S. policies, said it was confident Trump would see that working closely with Canada benefited both nations. “We are confident the new Administration will see that Canada’s partnership with the U.S. mutually strengthens our two nations and provides real opportunities to grow our respective economies,” Joseph Pickerill, spokesman for Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, said in a statement.[nL1N1FA1A3] Germany will need a new economic strategy geared toward Asia should the new U.S. administration start a trade war with China, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said, warning against protectionism hours after Trump was sworn in. “What we heard today were high nationalistic tones,” Gabriel said in an interview with the public broadcaster ZDF, the first official German reaction to Trump’s inauguration. “I think we have to prepare for a rough ride.” [nL5N1FA52T] Pope Francis urged Trump to be guided by ethical values, saying he must take care of the poor and the outcast during his time in office. [nL5N1FA4YF] Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in a statement posted in his name on the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, congratulated Trump. He added, “I look forward to working with him for the sake of peace, security and stability in a world that is troubled and in a region that lives a tragic era, and to contribute to creating a safe future for everyone.” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former NATO chief and now an adviser to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, said in a telephone interview with Reuters that, “I had hoped and also expected a more internationally oriented speech. Instead we got a very domestically oriented, anti-establishment speech. “As president of the United States, he should also realize he has become the leader of the free world - that’s why people all over the globe are watching his inauguration speech. And that’s why I had hoped that he would also address the need for determined American global leadership.”
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ROME/TUNIS (Reuters) - A powerful armed group, known for smuggling people from Libya, is seeking legitimacy and state security jobs from the Tripoli government in exchange for stopping migrant boats from leaving the coast of Sabratha for Italy, a senior group member said. The group, the Anas al-Dabbashi brigade, struck a deal with Libya s United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) this summer to clamp down on trafficking, the senior brigade member, who gave his name as Mohamed, told Reuters. The need for the GNA to strike such a deal would illustrate the power of armed groups in western Libya, which continue to hold the real influence locally as they have since a 2011 uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi. The revelation would also throw light on the fragility of the sharp recent reduction in migrant arrivals from Italy, which took over from the Aegean route as the main focus of European concerns in the crisis. The GNA did not respond to requests for comment. Local sources, who declined to be named, said there had been at least one meeting between government officials and Ahmed al-Dabbashi, identified as one of the main facilitators of human smuggling in Libya in a U.N. report earlier this year. Mohamed said there had been a number of such meetings, and that the brigade was also offered the possibility of an amnesty for past smuggling activity. To show it could uphold the deal with Tripoli, the several-hundred-strong brigade has cracked down on departures with the help of the coastguard leading to an 80 percent fall in the arrival of rescued migrants in Italy last month, Mohamed said. With a national election looming in the first half of next year, the government in Rome, which welcomed the sudden decline shown in official data, is under pressure to show it can stop, or at least slow, migration from the oil-producing desert state. Libya remains split between rival political camps and armed alliances. The GNA has struggled to impose its authority on Tripoli and other parts of western Libya, and has been rejected by factions that control the east of the country. Mohamed said the GNA, under pressure from Italy to halt the migrant flows, had exerted pressure on the Dabbashi brigade. The GNA said that they would gather all the cities west of Tripoli against us, and they would come and fight us. On the other hand, they have offered to let us join the police, and let us join the military, Mohamed said. If this plan goes forward and the (Tripoli) government was telling the truth ... in six months time everybody in this battalion will be like normal police. A second source in Sabratha spoke to Ahmed al-Dabbashi, who confirmed that Mohamed was a member of the brigade. It is the first time a brigade member has spoken at length about why the group suddenly shifted from smuggling to policing, a change first reported by Reuters last month. Some international media reported that Dabbashi had received five million euros directly from Italy s secret services to stop the migrant boats, but Mohamed denied this. Italy has also denied any direct payments to armed groups. The fragility of the security situation in Sabratha was underscored by territorial clashes that erupted there over the weekend, with Dabbashi s group battling cross-town rivals in some of the heaviest fighting the city has seen in recent years. Explosions could be heard as far away as the port of Zawiya, 22 km (14 miles) away. Both sides in the fighting claim to have the backing of the Tripoli government, and both battled together to drive Islamic State forces out of the area last year. With Italy and the EU offering millions of euros to local authorities in Libya who can put a cap on trafficking, armed groups have an interest in proving that they are the only ones who can police the territory. This smuggling thing everybody knows that Libya is not going to be like this forever, Mohamed said. If you are just a little bit smart, you will go with the government. As a result of the policing by Dabbashi and coastguard interceptions, arrivals of rescued migrants in Italy fell 50 percent in July from a year earlier, and declined more than 80 percent in August two months that had been peak periods during the previous three years. Overall, there have been more than 100,000 arrivals in Italy this year, a decline of more than 20 percent compared to 2016, official Italian data show. To rein in smuggling, Italy has spearheaded efforts to bolster the Libyan coast guard, and it is dealing directly with local governments to try to offer incentives for them to shut it down, including with Sabratha s mayor, Hussein al-Thwadi. Thwadi sought support directly from Italy, meeting the ambassador earlier this month and Interior Minister Marco Minniti in July. The Dabbashi brigade, which also guards an oil and gas facility west of Sabratha run jointly by Libya s National Oil Corporation (NOC) and Italian firm Eni, denied any direct contacts with Italy. It is allied to Brigade 48, a group of some 300 soldiers aligned with the GNA. We only have deals with the (Tripoli) government, Mohamed said. They said they might forgive all of what we have done in the past, he added, referring to people smuggling. But it is unclear if Tripoli can deliver on its promises to integrate Dabbashi s men, or whether any group can hold the line against forces who want to keep smuggling. On Saturday, Libyan coastguard officials said they had turned back more than 1,000 migrants traveling in at least eight boats. On the same day, the Dabbashi brigade intercepted about 3,000 more, said Mohamed. More than 1,500 were rescued at sea and brought to Italy. A lot of people are pressuring us to stop this, Mohamed said of Dabbashi s crackdown on departing migrant boats. They want to start (human trafficking) again.
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I write to you in your capacity as debate negotiator for Republican presidential candidates. I understand you may have an opening for a moderator for your Feb. 26 debate. Please consider this letter my application for the job.
I applaud Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus’s decision to suspend NBC as a debate host because of the “mean” and “gotcha” questions CNBC asked at last week’s debate. I feel passionately that a debate is neither the time nor the place for hard questions, and as debate moderator I will rigorously adhere to gentle and affectionate questioning.
I also share Donald Trump’s outrage that Telemundo, a Spanish-language outlet, would be allowed to co-host the February debate even though a Telemundo journalist had the gall to challenge Trump about the rapists and criminals he says Mexico sends to America. Let me assure you that, as debate moderator, I would not challenge Trump or any other candidate on this or any factual matter. I do not even speak Spanish, a claim that had the enthusiastic concurrence of my high school Spanish teacher, Señora Sopanoff.
Furthermore, I have read your draft letter proposing requirements for future debate moderators, and I wholeheartedly and unreservedly commit to abide by every one of them. Specifically, I pledge to meet the following demands you listed:
● Not to allow the temperature in the room to exceed 67 degrees at any time.
● Not to ask any candidate to raise his/her hand at any time.
● Not to ask yes/no questions.
● Not to engage in any “lightning round” questioning.
● Not to allow any camera angles that show the candidates using notes.
● Not to show an empty lectern if a candidate is late in returning from a bathroom break.
● Not to show any “reaction shots” of audience members or of me, the moderator.
● Not to broadcast any graphics or biographical information without the express pre-approval of the candidates.
Additionally, per your list of requirements, I promise:
● To allow all candidates to make opening and closing statements of at least 30 seconds each.
● To allow the candidates unlimited time to rebut one another whenever their names are mentioned.
● To ask an equal number of questions of each candidate, and to guarantee that each candidate receives an equal amount of response time.
As a further inducement to hire me as your moderator, I will go beyond the above-mentioned requirements cited in your letter. You also posed questions about standards for inclusion in the debate, debate length, use of “gong/buzzer/bell,” debate format, stage design, and the type and size of the audience and clothing worn by audience members.
In order to guarantee that this debate will be the thoroughly enjoyable experience for the candidates that we all want it to be, I plan to allow all 15 candidates to debate on the stage at the same time and not to cut off candidates if they exceed their time limits. At the same time, I pledge to hold the overall debate length to 30 minutes, including opening and closing statements, in order to minimize time for gaffes and unscripted remarks. To avoid unhelpful reactions from the audience, I promise to have no audience. I will pipe in artificial applause of precisely the same pre-agreed length and decibel level for all candidates after all answers.
I will submit my questions in advance for pre-approval by the campaigns. No questions will be asked about women, racial minorities or any other issue that might cast the Republican Party in an unfavorable light. There will be no questions about any candidate’s past statements or actions, including but not limited to: bankruptcies, financial difficulties, missed votes and inconsistencies. Candidates will not be required to perform math or to provide supporting evidence for claims. Candidates will be seated in Barcaloungers. If candidates feel overheated, the moderator will fan them while they answer and provide them with their choice of lemon or cucumber ice water. I will begin each question with the phrase “Mother, may I,” and I will address candidates as “Your Excellency,” “Your Eminence” or another honorific approved by the campaigns.
I hope this application meets with your approval. I believe the format outlined above will, after the CNBC debate debacle, truly Make Republicans Look Great Again and return journalists to their proper role as palace courtiers. I am hopeful that I can convince my colleagues at washingtonpost.com to live-stream the debate. Though I cannot promise you that any network will broadcast the debate, I believe this should not be a major impediment. Under the requirements you proposed, very few people will be watching anyway.
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Republican Presidential front runner Donald Trump has one of the worst honesty ratings of any politician evaluated in the history of Politifact. Yet, he has just launched an attack on Ted Cruz asking: How can Ted Cruz be an evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest? How can Ted Cruz be an Evangelical Christian when he lies so much and is so dishonest? Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2016Firstly, asked by a candidate of integrity, or a voter, this is a totally acceptable question. Ted Cruz and the entire Christian Conservative movement fly in the face of the teachings of Jesus. Turning the other cheek, forgiveness, compassion, charity, community, the corrupting influence of wealth, the baselessness of individuality all of these teachings were totally abandoned. Republican Jesus is actually evangelical libertarian Ayn Rand, and their bible is her book, Atlas Shrugged.However, for trust fund tycoon Donald Trump, this attack is nothing short of the single most hypocritical question of the campaign. Donald Trump is a lying liar who lies. Don t take our word for it. Check out his file on fact checking site Politifact.Just 1% of claims made by Donald Trump are true. One percent! Meanwhile, 3 out of every 5 statements he makes are absolute lies. Let s take a look back at some of those lies:They just keep on coming.And on the matter of faith, Donald Trump is now claiming to be some sort of born again evangelical. Yet, Trump has been married three times, pokes fun of Holy Communion as eating the little cracker , claims he has never asked God to forgive his sins in his life, and could not name a single passage of the Bible when pressed for his favorite piece of scripture.Trump is about as devout a Christian as Bill Nye.And yet, he is winning evangelical support in droves. Why? Because the evangelical, Christian Conservative movement has zero to do with faith in God, and everything to do with a fanatical conviction in right-wing principles of crony capitalism, white supremacy, homophobia and sexism.If this was not the case, Trump would be the LAST candidate that appealed to Evangelicals. To any right-thinking Christian, he is the 21st century incarnation of the Whore of Babylon.If this contest is going to come down to Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, the Republican party is really being asked whether to die by lethal injection or firing squad. Either way, the party is going to end up dead.Featured Image via T. J. Hawk (Flickr Creative Commons)
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30 Views November 18, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
With continued weakness in the precious metals markets, did this major divergence just trigger a bottom in gold and silver?
The gold and silver markets are now showing a huge divergence which may prove to be a key in terms of seeing the bottom of this correction in the metals. Below we see that the price of gold (GLD used as a proxy) is hitting new lows (see chart below).
At the same time, the price of silver is also hitting new lows (see chart below). Unlocking The Key: Here Is The Major Divergence
Meanwhile, the HUI (Gold Mining Index) is diverging by trading above recent lows (see chart below).
And the XAU (Gold Mining Index) is also diverging by trading above its recent lows (see chart below).
KWN also spoke with one of the top mining CEO’s today and he said, “The selling in the mining stocks is looking very tired right now and they are just looking for an excuse to rally.”… IMPORTANT… To find out which company is set to become one of the highest grade producing gold mines on the planet CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
The divergence in the HUI and XAU mining indexes vs gold and silver is a major clue that a bottom may be forming. If the miners can hold above the recent lows that will give the signal that the correction has now officially come to an end and the uptrend in gold, silver, and the mining shares will resume. I t will be very interesting to see if this divergence did in fact mark a bottom in gold and silver in the days ahead.
Look At These Markets Seeing Massive Waterfall Declines As Chaotic Global Trading Continues
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CLEVELAND (Reuters) - A staff writer of the Trump Organization, the company owned by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, has claimed responsibility for inserting passages in a speech given at the Republican National Convention by Trump’s wife Melania that resembled parts of a 2008 speech by first lady Michelle Obama. The woman, Meredith McIver, released a statement on Wednesday apologizing for using the language, which she said Melania Trump recited to her in a phone call, without checking to see how closely it matched Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention eight years ago.
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ROME (Reuters) - Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni remains Italy s most trusted leader while the 5-Star Movement s Luigi Di Maio has moved into second place, overtaking former premier Matteo Renzi for the first time, according to a poll published on Wednesday. The Ixe survey of the leaders of the main parties said 39 percent of voters had confidence in Gentiloni, who took office in December after Renzi resigned following defeat in a referendum on constitutional reform. Italy is due to hold national elections by May and Renzi says he will be candidate for prime minister for his Democratic Party (PD). Gentiloni, also a PD member, is expected to fall back into the ranks when parliament is dissolved. Some 27 percent said they had faith in Renzi, against 32 percent backing for Di Maio, who was picked to be the prime ministerial candidate for the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement in September, boosting his profile and standing. In the last Ixe leadership survey in August, Gentiloni had an approval rating of 32 percent, Renzi was on 25 percent and Di Maio on 18 percent. People probably find Gentiloni s composure reassuring, Roberto Weber, who carried out the Ixe poll, told Rai Radio. Matteo Salvini, the far-right leader of the Northern League party, had a rating of 27 percent, and Giorgia Meloni, head of the rightist Brothers of Italy party, was on 26 percent. Their ally Silvio Berlusconi, who sees himself as the natural head of the centre-right bloc, was adrift on 21 percent. In the previous survey, he and Meloni were both on 17 percent. Opinion polls put the 5-Star and PD parties roughly neck-and-neck on around 27 percent, with the Northern League on 15 percent, Berlusconi s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) party on around 13 percent and Brothers of Italy on just under 4 percent. A new electoral system voted into law last month is likely to produce a hung parliament at the forthcoming ballot, with no one party or coalition coming anywhere close to winning enough seats to govern alone.
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MADRID (Reuters) - Spain s King Felipe VI said on Tuesday he was committed to the unity of Spain as he accused Catalan leaders, who staged a banned independence referendum on Sunday, of shattering democratic principles and of dividing Catalan society. In a televised address to the nation, the king said the irresponsible behavior of the Catalan leaders had undermined social harmony in Catalonia. Today Catalan society is fractured and in conflict, he said. He said the Spanish crown was strongly committed to the Spanish constitution and to democracy and underlined his commitment as king to the unity and permanence of Spain.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump met Monday at the White House with leaders of construction, carpenters, plumbers and sheet metal unions, the White House said. According to the White House, participants included North America’s Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey, Laborers’ International Union of North America President Terry O’Sullivan, SMART sheet metal workers’ union President Joseph Sellers, United Brotherhood of Carpenters President Doug McCarron and Mark McManus, president of the United Association that represents plumbers, pipefitters, welders and others. The union meeting also included several local union officials and follows a gathering of 12 chief executives of large companies at the White House to discuss revitalizing the U.S. manufacturing economy. Earlier this month, Trump held separate meetings with Teamsters President Jim Hoffa and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in New York. On Monday, Trump signed an order to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, a deal that was harshly criticized by organized labor. “This is a group I know well,” Trump said at the meeting with union members, noting as a businessman he hired thousands of union workers for construction projects. Not all major unions were invited to Monday’s event. A spokesman for the United Steelworkers union, Wayne Ranick, said the union was not invited. “We are always interested in such discussions given that 100,000s of our members work in manufacturing and (are) affected by trade,” he said in an email. Trump sparred with a local steelworkers union president Chuck Jones in December over the number of jobs United Technologies Corp agreed to save at a Carrier plant in Indiana. Nearly all major unions endorsed Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, during the presidential election campaign. During the campaign, Trump appealed to blue collar workers in Midwestern states vowing to bring jobs back from Mexico, which helped him win crucial states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. A CNN exit poll said Trump carried 42 percent of voters in union households compared with 51 percent for Clinton. He did far better among union members than Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney did in 2012.
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I have been reporting for weeks now about the D.C.-based “pizza pedophilia” ring that is being exposed based on thousands of “Podesta emails” released by Wikileaks in the past month or two.
As of last week, the case became even more explosive.
— Thomas Bernpaine (@ThomasBernpaine) November 11, 2016
Now, don’t get nervous because it looks like computer mumbo-jumbo. You only need to remember two things.
1 – Every picture file is actually a code/pattern of numbers that our computers “translate” into images on the screen.
2 – Some “extra” information has been discovered in at least one picture code/pattern from a Wikileaks email.
I reported weeks ago about this “pedo ring” something called “photo steganography,” which is just the fancy term for the two points I explained just now.
The image (.jpg) of the two girls eating pizza was discovered as an attachment in the Podesta emails by Wikileaks. Data can be hidden in a .jpg file. In that image, a zipped directory (PK) was hidden inside. That doesn’t happen by accident. The directory likely contains illegal imagery and/or discussion. It is highly suggestive of illegal activity connected to child pornography, child exploitation, and child abuse.
Some have objected that the pizza.jpg file size is simply too small to contain any useful data (like an image, a link, a message, etc.), but the point is this: all the file would have to “smuggle” is a short password to open a secret website or .zip file. The hidden data could literally just be a few bits of information but it could open up thousands of gigabytes of data in the right website or compressed file. That’s how the users would access the dirty pictures, videos, messages, etc.
So, from a technical angle, this method is very possible, and it makes sense of why the Podesta emails include so many strange photo attachments. Are all those attachments little “Trojan ponies” for sharing images, videos, passwords, payment resources, etc.?
WATCH (Language/NSFW Warning):
“Why do we even have an FBI? Is the FBI just covering for these people?”
Let me be honest:
I have researched corruption cases like this for many years, whether in current events or from historical records. So, I believe I have a somewhat thick skin when it comes to facing human sinfulness and evil like this.
Last Friday night, however, I won’t lie: I totally lost it.
All of a sudden, too many lightbulbs went off at once, too many connections hit me at once, too many implications dawned on me at once–and I just went into a kind of panic attack about how massive this whole cartel is, how well protected it is, and how truly destructive it is in real children’s lives.
If you want to get an idea of what set me off, let me show you three images.
BUT I WARN YOU: When you understand the context, these images are EXTREMELY DISTURBING.
First, here is a photo of Tony Podesta’s favorite work of art in his home:
Tony Podesta is a big fan of “The Arch of Hysteria”
Next, here is an ad from Ping Pong Pizza, a restaurant in D.C. that has numerous, very disturbing connections to pedophilia and D.C. elites like the Podestas.
Another “arch of hysteria”?
Next we come to a police photo from the Jeffrey Dahmer case.
VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED:
I wonder if Tony Podesta would also like this “arch of hysteria”…
Finally, here is the logo for Comet Pizza, another D.C. restaurant with deep connections to Ping Pong Pizza and the Podestas.
Can you see now why I “lost my [bleep]” last Friday?
Worse, in terms of how protected this satanic ring of perverts is, I recently reported that even the DOJ is compromised .
A man named Arun Rao has shown a disturbing interest in some sexually “creepy” images and expressions that are connected to the Podestas and this pedo ring. The problem is that Rao is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the DOJ.
Specifically, Rao is Supervisor of the Southern (“Greenbelt”) Division office for the DOJ’s District of Maryland in Chevy Chase, Maryland. This means that Rao’s district is virtually on top of the area in D.C. where Besta Pizza operates. In addition, Besta Pizza and two other associated properties are directly over abandoned underground tunnels, many of which could easily connect to Chevy Chase.
On top of his social and geographical proximity to Alefantis, Rao’s DOJ division handles cases that seem tailor-made for busting—or covering up—the dark circles that sex traffickers hide in: federal racketeering, conspiracy, national and international fraud and corruption, immigration violations, counterfeiting, and —wait for it—child pornography .
In closing I will leave you with three “infographics.”
They are very complicated and “dense” so I don’t expect everyone to examine them.
However, even if you don’t look into the details yourself, I want you to be aware of how vast this whole network of evil is, and, therefore, of how many hands and prayers we need on deck to expose it and bring it down.
(NOTE: You don’t have to download these images to view them. You can just right-click open them in a separate internet browser tab, and click “+” to zoom in.)
— Thomas Bernpaine (@ThomasBernpaine) November 11, 2016
First, a diagram of “key players” in the pizza restaurant side of the pedo ring. You can see the diagram for yourself here .
Second, a much larger diagram of how this pizza-pedo ring connects to international kidnapping (esp. the Madeleine McCann case) and other DNC allies like “spirit cooker” Marina Abramovic.
This is an ongoing investigation so stay tuned for more.
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Ruline Steininger wants to participate in an historic election that could result in the first female President of the United States, and she isn t going to vote for national disaster Donald Trump.Steininger is 103 years old, and was only seven years old in 1920 when women won the right to vote with the passage and ratification of the 19th Amendment.Throughout her life and the lives of every woman in America since the founding of our country there has never been a woman president and Hillary Clinton is now poised to break that unfortunate streak since becoming the first woman to become the presidential nominee of a major political party.During an interview with CNN s Christiane Amanpour, the Iowa native expressed her delight that she has the chance to finally cast her vote for a woman in the upcoming presidential election in November, especially if it means blocking Donald Trump from stepping foot in the White House next year. She s our only hope, Steininger said of Clinton. We certainly don t want Trump for a president. Hillary is the best qualified candidate we have had in a long long time. I never thought we d see a woman president of the United States, but this is the year. Back in December, Steininger sent her family a Christmas card vowing that she will do whatever it takes to stay alive long enough to cast her vote in this crucial election. The chances are high that my vote will be absent, she wrote. After giving this problem much serious thought and consideration, I ve come to the decision that I must live to do my part November 2016. I can die later. Voting to put a woman in the White House is not the only reason she decided to cheat death for another year. She s genuinely shocked that Donald trump has gotten this far and that people genuinely think he s a qualified candidate to lead the country. I don t know what has gotten into people, she told Amanpour. If he s elected president, it s going to be a national disaster which we will likely take years to recover from. The only way to stop Trump is to vote for Hillary. Here s the video via YouTube.And by voting for Hillary, Steininger will be voting for history AND against the end of America as we know it.Featured image via screen capture
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FBI insiders are spreading the word, Hillary Clinton deliberately broke the law and charges are warranted. However, there is little confidence the Obama administration will actually indict her.Hillary Clinton broke the law, knowingly sending and receiving classified information on a private server, according to FBI insiders. However, this isn t the right question. Instead, the right question is, why are FBI insiders spreading rumors?The answer is because they do not think the political establishment will play its role in any case, leaving Hillary Clinton to get away with thumbing her nose at the law. Via: Catholic OnlineAccording to the Daily Mail Any evidence that the FBI uncovered has still not been made public.The government says no final decision has been made, however the case is clearly progressing as Clinton aide Bryan Pagliano, who worked on her private server, was granted immunity by the Justice Department earlier this month. You don t start granting people close to Clinton immunity unless you are seriously looking at charges against your target, one of Gasparino s sources said.Clinton has publicly said that using a private email account attached to a homebrew server was a mistake. Mainly because it s caused all this uproar and commotion. As FBI director, however, Comey can only recommend charges to the Justice Department, led by Obama appointee, Attorney General Loretta Lynch.Insiders told the New York Post that evidence would have to be overwhelming for Comey to make such recommendations and for Obama s Justice Department to pursue them.But agents also suggest that the investigation is solid enough for Comey to quit if the Justice Department doesn t listen to him on the matter of Clinton.Barack Obama s decision to publicly ask donors to support Hillary speaks volumes about his decision to back her as the Democrat Party s Presidential candidate. Barack s former AG, Eric Holder s endorsement of Hillary Clinton is further proof that Hillary has the full backing of this corrupt administration:Eric Holder I think what people have to understand is that what we have to do is protect the Obama legacy. We ve made really substantial progress in the last eight years it ll be eight years at the end of 2016 and the question is who is best situated to protect that legacy and not let the progress that we have made get rolled back. And there is no question that there are going to be attempts to roll back the Affordable Care Act, they sent [President Obama] a bill the week before last that he had to veto. There will certainly be efforts to counter the executive actions that he s taken on immigration issues, when it comes to gun safety issues and his foreign policy. You need somebody who s got a record on those issues that s consistent with the positions that the president took, and Hillary Clinton is that person, there s no question. They are in lockstep when it comes to gun safety issues. Sen. [Bernie] Sanders, quite frankly, is not. So to the extent that people are a bit of a nostalgic, wistful feeling, I think that ought to be converted into a concern for the future and for the preservation of all the great work that President Obama and his administration did. Here s the only clear record that Hillary has to show for her decades of public service :
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They’ve called each other names. They’ve mocked, belittled, skewered and slimed.
And now that oddest of couples — Donald Trump and Fox News — is engaged in a tit-for-tat feud like none seen in the annals of modern American politics.
The greatest show on Earth — or at least in Iowa.
If things go as promised, Trump won’t be there Thursday when Fox hosts the final Republican debate before Monday’s Iowa presidential caucuses. He says he’s backing out because of a taunting statement from Fox, though his detractors accuse him of dodging a last showdown with his chief rival, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.). Instead, Trump has made plans to materialize elsewhere in Iowa, hosting a benefit for wounded veterans — counterprogramming on a Trumpian scale of swagger.
His threatened absence from the debate stage is a demonstration of Trump’s perception of his own self-worth, his verifiable status as a ratings-generating gargantuan whose screen persona can translate into millions of advertising dollars. In a sense, it’s an act of subversion by a candidate who has broken all the normal rules of modern campaigns. But it’s also a manifestation of Trump’s philosophy about getting what he wants when he wants it.
“The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have,” Trump wrote in his career-
defining and profile-elevating 1987 bestseller, “Trump: The Art of the Deal.” “Leverage is having something the other guy wants.”
Fox, a network that has reigned as a kingmaker in Republican politics, now seems faced with an adversary who is acting as if he’s already the king and doesn’t need it.
The sniping peaked this week when the billionaire developer appeared to taunt Fox by polling his social media followers on whether he should appear at the debate. He also stepped up his attacks on Fox anchor Megyn Kelly, whom he wanted to have removed as debate moderator.
The poll and the Kelly criticism irked Fox News chairman and chief executive Roger Ailes, according to an executive at Fox, and the network chief personally crafted a statement in response: “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.”
According to the Fox executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, Ailes “put together a tongue-in-cheek statement to take the heat off Megyn.”
On Wednesday, Trump — via Twitter, naturally — said Fox went too far.
“It was the childishly written & taunting PR statement by Fox that made me not do the debate, more so than lightweight reporter, @megynkelly.”
While publicly feuding with Trump, the cable news behemoth also seemed to be at cross-
purposes with itself, toggling between the competing goals of taking a hard line with the recalcitrant candidate and wooing him.
Fox executives did not respond to multiple interview requests.
Trump and Fox have been poking at each other for months. Their needling and gnashing began face-to-face at the first Republican presidential debate in August, when Kelly pressed Trump about calling women “fat pigs” and other derogatory names. Trump parried back the next morning by huffing that Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever.” Critics said that was a reference to the anchor’s menstrual cycle, but the candidate said it was merely a reference to her demeanor.
The tangle soon devolved into long-distance warfare, a series of snippy news conferences and social media taunts, periodically interrupted by detentes. Even as Trump has pounded away at Kelly, retweeting claims that she is a “bimbo” and calling her “average in everyway,” he has frequently appeared on Fox News programs.
A defiant Trump appeared on Fox host Bill O’Reilly’s show Wednesday night, his 133rd appearance on the network since announcing his presidential run, according to a Fox tally. When O’Reilly suggested that Trump was making a mistake by skipping the debate, the GOP front-runner said, “I think you’re wrong.”
Trump’s camp denied that the candidate was afraid to debate. “He loves debating. He has participated in six debates,” said Trump spokesman Corey Lewandowski. “He welcomes the opportunity to debate.”
Fox has claimed that the Trump spokesman leveled a threat against Kelly on Saturday in a conversation with one of the network’s executives. “Lewandowski stated that Megyn had a ‘rough couple of days after that last debate’ and he ‘would hate to have her go through that again,’ ” a Fox spokeswoman said in a statement. “We can’t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees.”
When asked about the Fox claim, Lewandowski said: “I didn’t do anything of the sort. . . . I did not threaten anyone.”
Jill Olmsted, a journalism professor and media critic at American University, said the cable channel’s “unnecessarily snarky comments” mean that “Trump has won this round with Fox — big time.”
“They took the low road and made Mr. Trump look like he is being targeted by Fox,” she said. “I am quite surprised that grown-up media spokespersons for a major media outlet didn’t know better, or at least weren’t more practiced in holding their tempers when giving public comment.”
But John Carroll, a communications professor at Boston University, said: “This may be a situation where Donald Trump was too clever by half. It may have been a gambit to get concessions, but when Fox rightly told him to take a hike, he was boxed in. To save face he had almost no choice.”
Rush Limbaugh, the influential nationally syndicated radio host, concluded that Fox is underestimating Trump.
“I heard people on Fox last night talking about this. ‘Who does he think he is? He can’t control the media,’ ” Limbaugh said on his program Wednesday. “I got news for you: He is controlling the media, and it’s his objective . . . He controls the media when he’s not on it. He controls the media when he is on it. He controls the media when he’s asleep. Nobody else has been able to do anything like this short of the Kennedys, and they’re pikers compared to the way Trump is doing this.”
For the umpteenth time in this strange Republican primary season, Trump has made the race all about one thing: Trump.
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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday she believed there was a good chance that the next phase of Brexit negotiations could begin. Progress has been made regarding the exit of Great Britain, but there are some open questions so it is good that we will talk about it tomorrow, she said before a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. She said she welcomed the work the EU s chief Brexit negotiator had made on agreeing an outline deal on divorce issues. Therefore I see a good chance that we can now begin phase two, she said.
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The left is trying to push the narrative that the Republican candidates are a bunch of whiners, but if you watched the debate you d know it was a win for the Republicans against leftist media.
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple-hundred years, you’ve heard at least one person complain that black people need to go “back to Africa.” Even the President of the United States, unfortunately, is not immune to this treatment. For years, Barack Obama has weathered a barrage of race-based hatred, with people who would become Trump’s Basket of Deplorables calling him “monkey” and “ape” and “n*gger”— and, yes, complaining that President Obama (who was born in Hawaii) needs to go “back to Africa.” In this case, Deplorable Fox News contributor Sean Hannity told the President to get on a plane to Kenya after the election and never return.
“I have an offer for the President. I will charter a plane for you and your family,” Hannity said on his radio show. “I will charter it to the country of your choice. You want to go to Canada? I’ll pay for you to go to Canada. You want to go to Kenya? I’ll pay for you to go to Kenya. Jakarta, where you went to school back in the day, you can go back there.”
“I will charter Donald Trump’s plane if he’ll let me,” Hannity added, noting that there is “one stipulation”—“You can’t come back!”
Naturally, this message of “go back to Africa and stay there” resonated with conservatives, with many chiming in to offer their own suggestions on right-wing lie-factory Western Journalism’s comment section . Some suggested he be flown to Guantanamo Bay to be tortured for 50 years. Others suggested outright assassination. One man even made a creepy remark about stalking Malia Obama in the bathroom:
All of these people will be voting for Mr. Deplorable on November 28. Make sure you’re out there on November 8, when it’s actually Election Day. Listen to Hannity’s remarks below:
Featured image via screengrab/Getty Images(Chip Somodevilla) Related Written by John Prager John Prager is an unfortunate Liberal soul who lives uncomfortably in the middle of a Conservative hellscape. John is the managing editor of Winning Democrats . He moonlights as a counselor at one of Barry Soetoro's FEMA re-education camps and as a HAARP weather control coordinator. John's life's aspiration is to rule the world with an iron fist, or find that sock he's been looking for. Feel free to email him at [email protected] if you have any questions or comments -- or drop him a line on Twitter or Facebook . SEARCH THE SITE
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In a brand-new expos on Mother Jones, investigative journalist Ari Berman delves into an aspect of the 2016 election that has been largely ignored in the shadow of controversies over internal DNC politics, shifting blame, and what is now known to be concrete Russian interference: Voter suppression.On the heels of a report Berman summarized back in September, his article for the November-December issue of the liberal stalwart magazine continues where he left off. Anecdotal evidence of individual voters who were prevented from voting in Wisconsin during the presidential election all adds up to a picture that explains the numbers in the University of Wisconsin-Madison study that Berman cites in his summary.The study, completed by UW-Madison s professor of Political Science, Kenneth Mayer, shows a survey in two large counties in Wisconsin that asked whether respondents were either prevented or deterred from voting in 2016 by the new Voter ID law in effect for the first time in that election. The results of the survey were stunning: More than 11 percent of respondents said they were deterred, and that 6 percent more than half of the nonvoters were prevented entirely. If those sound like small numbers, bear with me.In the course of research, voters were asked why they didn t vote, how engaged they were in the election, what types of ID they possessed, how confident they were in the final vote count, and their general demographics. The survey never required any respondent to answer who they may have voted for.Possibly the most distressing part of the findings was how disproportionately the Voter ID law affected low-income and minority voters: More than 21 percent of households under $25,000 of income per year were deterred; that number dropped to just over 7 percent for those above that line. The demarcation between white and black voters was even more stark, with just of 8 percent of white voters reporting trouble and 27.5 percent of African-Americans reporting the same.What does all that add up to?As Berman notes in the new piece for MJ, Wisconsin showed the second-highest voter turnout in the United States in both 2008 and 2012, but just four years later, participation was the lowest it had been in 16 years.So let s get back to those numbers.In just the two counties that were surveyed, Dane and Milwaukee, the percentage of registered voters who were adversely affected by the new Voter ID law represents a low estimate of nearly 17,000 and an upper estimate of 23,252 voters. In fact, the study points out, the 11.2 percent nonvoter estimate is actually low in itself, as it doesn t take into account voters who were deterred from even registering by the new law.If every single one of those in the study who answered that they were deterred or prevented from voting had actually cast a vote that counted, voter turnout would have increased by 2.24 percent. And that seems like an incredibly small number, until you extrapolate that across the state. The Wisconsin Election Commission estimated that 3.1 million voters turned out for the 2016 presidential election. That means 69,440 voters under a conservative estimate were disenfranchised entirely by the new Voter ID law.Donald Trump s margin of victory in the state? Less than a third of that.Given that the vast majority of disenfranchised voters, although they were not asked their political affiliations, were demographically more likely to vote for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump, it hardly requires extrapolation to conclude that, at least in the state of Wisconsin, Trump was right.The vote was rigged.Featured image via Scott Olson/Getty Images
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Russia blocked a Western-led effort at the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to condemn last week’s deadly gas attack in Syria and push Moscow’s ally President Bashar al-Assad to cooperate with international inquiries into the incident. It was the eighth time during Syria’s six-year-old civil war that Moscow has used its veto power on the Security Council to shield Assad’s government. In the latest veto, Russia blocked a draft resolution backed by the United States, France and Britain to denounce the attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun and tell Assad’s government to provide access for investigators and information such as flight plans. The toxic gas attack on April 4 prompted the United States to launch missile strikes on a Syrian air base and widened a rift between the United States and Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that trust had eroded between the two countries under U.S. President Donald Trump. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson echoed that comment after meetings with Russian leaders in Moscow, saying that relations are at a low point with a low level of trust. Tillerson called for Assad to eventually relinquish power. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, called on Moscow to stop protecting Assad and said the United States wants to work with Russia toward a political solution for Syria. “Russia once again has chosen to side with Assad, even as the rest of the world, including the Arab world, overwhelmingly comes together to condemn this murderous regime,” Haley told the 15-member Security Council. “If the regime is innocent, as Russia claims, the information requested in this resolution would have vindicated them.” Russia’s deputy U.N. envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, said the draft resolution laid blame prior to an independent investigation. “I’m amazed that this was the conclusion. No one has yet visited the site of the crime. How do you know that?” he said. He said the U.S. attack on the Syrian air base “was carried out in violation of international norms.” Syria’s government has denied responsibility for the gas attack in a rebel-held area of northern Syria that killed at least 87 people, many of them children. A fact-finding mission from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) is investigating the attack. If it determines that chemical weapons were used, then a joint U.N./OPCW investigation will look at the incident to determine who is to blame. This team has already found Syrian government forces were responsible for three chlorine gas attacks in 2014 and 2015 and that Islamic State militants used mustard gas. China, which has vetoed six resolutions on Syria since the civil war began, abstained from Wednesday’s U.N. vote, along with Ethiopia and Kazakhstan. Ten countries voted in favor of the text, while Bolivia joined Russia in voting no. U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking at an event in the White House, said he was not surprised by China’s abstention. Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told the Security Council that samples taken from the site of the April 4 attack had been analyzed by British scientists and tested positive for the nerve gas sarin. He said Assad’s government was responsible. Diplomats said that Russia has put forward a rival draft resolution that expresses concern at last week’s gas attack and condemns the U.S. strike on Syria. It was unclear if Moscow planned to put the text to a vote.
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Argentine president Mauricio Macri's office rebutting a report from an Argentinian journalist that set off waves in the American media.
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A prolific Trump foe found viral fame after boasting about abandoning a driver stuck in the snow as punishment for supporting the President-elect.Troy Brown, from Winchester, Ohio, shared an image of a car that had slid off the road and was pointing into a ditch, with no obvious way to escape unaided.He captioned the image: I was going to help her but she has a #Trump sticker on her car #CallYoPresident. It was shared approvingly some 1,700 times.Brown posts extensively about political issues like Black Lives Matter on his Facebook page:He then tried to capitalize on his fleeting celebrity by advertising merchandise with the photo on it. Heatstreet
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By wmw_admin on October 29, 2016 Morgan Chalfant — Washington Free Beacon Oct 28, 2016
U.S. and Russian military jets reportedly had a close encounter in Syrian airspace several days ago.
AFP, citing U.S. officials, reported Friday morning that a Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. jet in airspace over eastern Syria on Oct. 17, nearly two weeks prior.
A Russian jet escorting a larger spy aircraft flew into the vicinity of the U.S. warplane, moving to “inside half a mile” from the American plane, according to Air Force Lieutenant General Jeff Harrigian. #BREAKING Russian, US jets had near miss over Syria: US officials
— AFP news agency (@AFP) October 28, 2016
“I would attribute it to not having the necessary situational awareness given all those platforms operating together,” Harrigian further stated, according to AFP.
An unnamed defense official said that the Russian aircraft “was close enough you could feel the jet wash of the plane passing by.”
The U.S. and Russia have set up a line of communication to avoid clashes in airspace over Syria. In this incident, the American pilot reportedly attempted to communicate with the Russian warplane but was unsuccessful.
Harrigian also reported an increase in close encounters between American and Russian military jets in the region in the past six weeks. He said that Russian jets have intentionally flown close to U.S. warplanes about once every 10 days.
Tensions between the United States and Russia have been exacerbated over the situation in Syria in recent weeks, following a failed ceasefire deal and suspension of communications between the two countries.
Russian and Syrian jets have bombed civilians and U.S.-backed rebels in Aleppo, drawing ire from America. Moscow has threatened to shoot down coalition jets that target Bashar al-Assad’s forces with air strikes in Syria, after reports indicated that the Obama administration would consider targeting Syrian government forces with strikes.
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BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany needs a stable government as soon as possible in order to respond to proposals for reforming the European Union and to deal with an uncertain global environment, Chancellor Angela Merkel told a news conference on Monday. Speaking after a meeting of her Christian Democrat (CDU) party s leadership, she said she would hold meetings with the Social Democrats (SPD), leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), who have agreed under pressure to enter coalition talks with Merkel s camp after first refusing to do so. There are European elections in 2019 ... so there is a big expectations that we take positions, she said, referring to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker s and French President Emmanuel Macron s proposals on the future governance of the currency and economic union. She also mentioned conflict in the Middle East, tensions with Russia and relations with the U.S. as factors that meant Germany needed to be capable of acting .
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation by Congress to deliver a State of the Union address on Jan. 30, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Thursday. U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan extended the invitation to Trump earlier on Thursday to make the address to Congress. The speech, typically given every year of a president’s term except the first, reports on the current condition of the United States and allows the leader to outline legislative and other priorities. (This story corrects date of address in 1st paragraph to Jan. 30, not Jan. 20)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Thursday tapped Fed Governor Jerome Powell to become head of the U.S. central bank, breaking with precedent by denying Janet Yellen a second term but signaling a continuation of her cautious monetary policies. Powell, 64, a lawyer and investment banker appointed to the Fed board in 2012 by then-President Barack Obama, emerged as Trump’s choice from a slate of possible nominees that included Yellen and others who may have pursued a sharp policy shift. In an announcement at the White House, Trump described the soft-spoken Powell as a smart and committed leader who would build on Yellen’s achievements in steering the U.S. economy after the recovery from the 2007-2009 financial crisis. “If we are to sustain all this progress, our economy requires sound monetary policy and prudent oversight,” Trump said as Powell looked on. “We need strong and steady leadership at the U.S. Federal Reserve ... He will provide exactly that.” Powell has worked alongside Yellen for the past five years, backing her direction on monetary policy and, in recent years, sharing her concerns that weak inflation justified a continued cautious approach to raising interest rates. Yellen’s four-year term as Fed chief ends in early February 2018. She will be the first U.S. central bank chief not to be renominated to a second term since 1979. Trump on Thursday lauded Yellen’s stewardship but did not say why he decided to pass her over for another term. The Republican president said he was impressed by Powell’s experience in the private-sector and “real-world perspective” to government. “He understands what it takes for our economy to grow,” Trump said. Powell, who in the last 25 years has done a prototypical Washington circuit of government, private, and think tank jobs, pledged to be attuned to emerging financial risks and the impact the Fed has on average Americans. He will take over an economy that has been expanding for more than eight years and one that boasts an unemployment rate at more than a 16-1/2-year low. “Monetary policy decisions matter for American families and communities. I strongly share that sense of mission and am committed to making decisions with objectivity and based on the best available evidence,” Powell said in brief remarks after Trump’s announcement. His nomination now goes to the Republican-controlled Senate for confirmation. “I’m encouraged by President Trump’s choice,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement that pledged “timely” consideration of the nomination. There was little apparent market reaction to Powell’s nomination, which had been expected. Investors were largely focused on the release of details of a Republican plan to broadly change the U.S. tax code. By setting benchmark short-term interest rates, the Fed broadly influences borrowing and lending conditions in the economy. Since the crisis, the central bank has gained more power over the financial sector, while becoming more concerned about issues like income inequality. Yellen, a Fed veteran who has served at all levels of the sprawling central bank system, said in a written statement that she would work with Powell “to ensure a smooth transition.” Trump’s decision, after a broad and very public search, offers what analysts said was a classic compromise, allowing him to select his own Fed chief while getting continuity with the policies of the Yellen-run central bank. “The kernel of what this boiled down to is that in selecting Powell, (Trump) has all but selected Yellen,” said Sarah Binder, a political science professor at George Washington University and author of a recent book on Fed politics. “There is not really much daylight, if any.” In June, Powell laid out both a defense of the Fed’s gradualist path and a critique of those, including some of his competitors for the Fed job, who argued the central bank had increased the risk of high inflation and other problems. Trump on several occasions has said he would prefer rates to stay low, a position apparently at odds with some of those who were on his short list, particularly Stanford University economist John Taylor and former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh. Top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn also was a contender. Powell has been a reliable supporter of the consensus forged by Yellen on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, and likely will be seen as a less risky choice with the economy growing solidly and U.S. stock markets near record highs. The Fed has raised rates twice this year and is widely expected to do so again next month. But Powell has gone further than his colleagues in calling to relax some of the stricter regulations imposed after the crisis, also important to Trump. Powell can now pursue that end along with Trump appointee Randal Quarles, the Fed’s new vice chair for supervision. Though he will be the first Fed chief since the late 1970s without an advanced degree in economics, Powell brings market insights, Fed board experience and Republican ties that analysts say will likely make for a smooth confirmation and transition. Under President George H.W. Bush, Powell oversaw policy on financial institutions and debt markets as an undersecretary of the Treasury. From 1997 to 2005 he was a partner at the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, and focused on public debt dynamics while at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. Yellen is entitled to remain as a Fed governor until 2024, though previous central bank chiefs have traditionally not stayed once a successor was in place.
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico’s government welcomed the upcoming renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Thursday after the Trump administration gave notice it was kicking off the process with a letter to Congress. In a brief statement, Mexico’s economy ministry said NAFTA had been a boon to Canada, the United States and Mexico, and that all three nations deserved a modern pact to regulate trade. “Mexico expects a constructive negotiation that allows more cooperation, economic integration, and boosts regional competitiveness,” the ministry said in the statement.
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Home › US NEWS › FBI LAUNCHES PROBE AFTER OWN TWITTER ACCOUNT LEAKS DOCUMENTS – REPORT FBI LAUNCHES PROBE AFTER OWN TWITTER ACCOUNT LEAKS DOCUMENTS – REPORT 0 SHARES [11/3/16] An internal investigation has reportedly been launched by the FBI into one of its automated Twitter accounts after a series of documents were released.
The Twitter bot ‘FBI Records Vault’ had not been in use for over a year, but suddenly released several documents on October 30.
The FBI is now investigating the account, according to Judd Legum, editor of Think Progress . TP is a project of the Center for American Progress, the Democratic think tank founded by John Podesta, campaign chairman for Hillary Clinton.
The account’s puzzling activation was referred to the FBI’s Inspection Division for an “investigation” by Candice Will, the assistant director for the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Following the investigation, it will then be referred back to Will’s department for “adjudication,” according to Legum.
A complaint is said to have been filed by Jonathan Hutson, a former employee of the Center for American Progress and a public-relations consultant, leading to the investigation. Post navigation
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Russians didn t hack ANY votes. Period. #ComeyHearing pic.twitter.com/yz6c76frz1 Tennessee (@TEN_GOP) March 20, 2017
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Watch:. @Jordanfabian If there is no #VoterFraud, how come 2 #DNC operatives resigned/ were fired over the @PVeritas_Action hidden cam videos? pic.twitter.com/7vHuQPejC0 James O'Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) November 28, 2016
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Anyone who s paying attention to the stunning final acts by this President should not be shocked by this potential threat to the world s freedom of speech. He is anything but a lame duck The United States could give control of one of the internet s underlying systems to the United Nations after pledging not to, it has been claimed.The government has announced plans to relinquish control of the online addressing and numbering system, turning it over to a private international organization.For years, the US Department Of Commerce has been responsible for managing URLs and ensuring they lead to the proper web pages.It has subcontracted the task to a private nonprofit, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann).But the US government, which funded much of the internet s early development, has so far retained veto power.Although the US role has been minimal over the years, many foreign governments have complained that the internet can never be truly international if the US retains veto power.They have sought instead to shift responsibility to an inter-governmental body such as the UN International Telecommunication Union.But business, academic and civil-society leaders balked, worried that UN involvement would threaten the openness that has allowed the internet to flourish.Concerns were also raised that UN control would give authoritarian states like China and Iran equal votes among other countries in influencing policies that affect free speech.Lawrence E. Strickling, assistant secretary for communications and information at the Commerce Department, said the endorsed plan won t replace Commerce s role with a government-led or inter-governmental solution.But the UN could end up managing the addressing system after all, according to Wall Street Journal columnist L Gordon Crovitz. He based his theory on an inquiry by Americans For Limited Government, an advocacy group that sent a Freedom Of Information Act request related to Icann s future.Icann had asked for all records relating to legal and policy analysis concerning antitrust issues for Icann, Crovitz reported. Icann currently benefits from an antitrust exemption because it operates under government control, he said.The contract between Icann and the US government is expected to expire on September 30. Via: Daily Mail
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Malia Obama is taking a party gap year before she begins school at the prestigious Harvard University. Even though it was reported that Barack Obama was furious with the pot smoking, twerking, Malia Obama after she was caught at a rowdy party that was reportedly busted by the police on Martha s Vineyard it doesn t seem to have slowed her down The idea that Malia is embarrassing the family is laughable, given the antics of her father and mother over the past 8 miserable years A picture circulating on social media appears to show Malia Obama near an item that resembles a large bong.The image was taken at a University of Pennsylvania fraternity house on Sunday, according to Radar Online.The 18-year-old is wearing the same distinctive Smoking Kills T-shirt that she was seen sporting at the Budweiser Made in America festival in Philadelphia that day.The teenager, who is taking a gap year and will attend Harvard in 2017, also sported a crimson baseball hat with an H on it a nod to her future alma mater. Daily Mail
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ATHENS (Reuters) - The Athens Metro came to a standstill on Thursday when workers in the Greek capital began a 24-hour strike to oppose the possible privatization of the rail operator. The strike disrupted the daily commute for thousands of Athenians and caused gridlock on streets leading to the city center. Metro workers are protesting the transfer of Attiko Metro operator and other state-owned enterprises to a sovereign wealth fund set up under the latest international bailout with the EU and the IMF. Proceeds from the fund, known as the Hellenic Corporation of Assets and Participations, will help Greece cut its debt burden and fund investments. Privatizations have been a pillar of Greek bailouts since 2010 but have reaped poor revenues so far amid bureaucracy and opposition by politicians and unions. Greece is aiming for 5.5 billion euros from state asset sales by 2018, when its bailout expires. Big tickets this year include the sale of a 66 percent stake in the natural gas grid DESFA and a 67 percent stake in the port of Thessaloniki.
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LONDON (Reuters) - Iran s Tasnim news agency reported on Friday that the country had unveiled a new ballistic missile with range of 2,000 km (1,200 miles), capable of carrying several warheads. The report, which gave few other details, quoted the head of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace division, Amirali Hajizadeh, speaking on the sidelines of a military parade in Tehran.
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You Are Here: Home » Health News » Quit Smoking! Smoking Cigarettes Causes 150 Genetic Mutations and Cancer Quit Smoking! Smoking Cigarettes Causes 150 Genetic Mutations and Cancer Prev post Next post
Breakthrough research discovered that smoking one pack of cigarettes every day can lead to 150 cell mutations in a year. These mutations can occur in different regions of the body, increasing the risk of smokers to develop cancers not just in areas that are in direct contact with inhaled chemicals.
A comprehensive study, the first of its kind, probed deeper into the effects of smoking on the human body through the use of a pattern recognition program. The methodology is likened to recording the noise in a roomful of people and then separating individual voices to better hear them.
A group of collaborating researchers studied and compared 5,000 cancerous tumors from those who are habitual smokers and those who have not smoked a single cigarette in their life. The results were staggering with 150 different kinds of mutations in different parts of the body. The Main Reasons to Quit Smoking Quit Smoking Now!
You reduce your risk of getting serious disease no matter what age you give up. However, the sooner you stop, the greater the reduction in your risk. In fact, researchers have found that if you quit smoking before the age of 50 your risk of dying is virtually reduced to that of a non-smoker.
Even if you give up after the age of 60, your risk of dying at any given age is reduced by about 39% compared to a person who carries on smoking. If you stop smoking you: Reduce the risk of getting serious smoking-related diseases such as heart disease, cancers, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and peripheral vascular disease. Reduce the risk of getting various other conditions which, although not life-threatening, can cause unpleasant problems. For example: Erection problems (impotence). Optic neuropathy – this is a condition affecting the nerve supplying the eye. Cataracts. A breakdown of the tissue at the back of the eye (macular degeneration). A skin condition called psoriasis. Gum disease. ‘Thinning’ of the bones (osteoporosis). Raynaud’s phenomenon – in this condition, fingers turn white or blue when exposed to cold. Reduce the risk of pregnancy complications if you are pregnant. If you have smoked since being a teenager or young adult: If you quit smoking before the age of about 35, your life expectancy is only slightly less than it is for people who have never smoked. If you stop smoking before the age of 50, you decrease the risk of dying from smoking-related diseases by 50%.
It is never too late to quit smoking to gain health benefits. Even if you already have COPD or heart disease, your outlook (prognosis) is much improved if you quit smoking.
Planning and support can help you quit smoking for good. Before your quit day, take time to prepare for challenges. Make a plan for quitting. Know what to expect in the first days of being smokefree. Identify your reasons for quitting and plan how to ask for help if you need it. Quit Smoking! Smoking Cigarettes Causes 150 Genetic Mutations and Cancer
Breakthrough research discovered that smoking one pack of cigarettes every day can lead to 150 cell mutations in a year. These mutations can occur in different regions of the body, increasing the risk of smokers to develop cancers not just in areas that are in direct contact with inhaled chemicals. A comprehensive study, the first […] How to Detox the Lymphatic System
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If you’re looking to get some bang for your buck, lavender oil is a godsend.! by Elizabeth Seward – Staff Writer Whether you want to use the fragrant essential oil for practical purposes around the house or holistic healing, lavender oil is packed with health benefits and everyday uses that shouldn’t be ignored. The oil, which is […] Homemade Body Wash Recipe
Try this awesome homemade body wash recipe today! by Jillee – Onegoodthingbyjillie.com When I was growing up…I don’t think we ever bought “body wash”. It was Ivory or Dove bar soap…or nothing at all. 🙂 Even after I first got married we still did the bar soap thing…because I remember trying to convince the hubster that Dove soap was better than Irish Spring. lol. (I still try to convince him […] Chia Seeds Health Benefits
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by April McCarthy – Preventdisease.com The modern diet of processed foods, takeaways and microwave meals could be to blame for a sharp increase in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, including alopecia, asthma and eczema. A team of scientists from Yale University in the U.S and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, in Germany, say junk food diets […] Cancer Drug Melts Away Deadly Cancer Cells in 80% of Patients
A new breakthrough cancer drug has been shown to significantly reduce or even completely destroy cancer cells in almost 80% of patients with an advanced form of leukaemia in a four-year clinical trial. In 20% of patients, it caused complete remission of the disease. “Many patients have maintained this response more than a year after […] Pneumonia cured in 3 hours using natural medicine
Pneumonia is a deadly disease caused by both bacteria and viruses, but what if one simple vitamin could cure the disease in only 3 hours!! by Jonathan Landsman – Naturalhealth365.com The numbers are staggering. The eighth leading cause of death, in the United States, is pneumonia and influenza – killing over 50,000 people per year. Conventional […] Join For Free! Discover Little Known Health Secrets and Useful Tips For Healthy Living! First Name
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Hillary would never have labeled one of her largest donors, longtime friend, and the financier of violent anti-American protesters around the world an enemy of the state. But fortunately for America, Hillary s not our president. Fortunately for America, both the Senate and the House are controlled by Republicans who understand we have a lot to lose if they continue to sit back and let this radical billionaire throw hundreds of millions of dollars at these violent, anti-American groups. Soros goals are not consistent with those of our Founding Fathers. His agenda is counter to protecting our freedoms and defending our national security. It s time our legislators consider taking the same steps as Israel and Hungary to send George Soros a message that we consider him an enemy of the state, and that we re not going to just sit by and watch him force his radical agenda on America. Israel s foreign ministry has issued a statement denouncing U.S. billionaire George Soros, a move that appeared designed to align Israel more closely with Hungary ahead of a visit to Budapest next week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew who has spent a large part of his fortune funding pro-democracy and human rights groups, has repeatedly been targeted by Hungary s right-wing government, in particular over his support for more open immigration.In the latest case, Prime Minister Viktor Orban has backed a campaign in which Soros is singled out as an enemy of the state. Let s not allow Soros to have the last laugh say billboards next to a picture of the 86-year-old investor, a campaign that Jewish groups and others say foments anti-Semitism.Soros, who rarely addresses personal attacks against him, has not commented on the billboards. But Hungarian Jewish groups and Human Rights Watch, an organization partly funded by Soros, have condemned the campaign, saying it evokes memories of the Nazi posters during the Second World War . ReutersThere s one big problem with the statement by Soros Human Rights Watch group, Soros admitted he was no friend to the Jews during the Holocaust in a 1990 interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes . The interview was suspiciously scrubbed from the internet for some time, but has just recently resurfaced. Knowing there were problems ahead for the Jews, Soros father, who was a successful lawyer, bribed a government official to take 14 year old George Soros in and say he was his Christian godson. While hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being shipped off to the death camps, George Soros accompanied his appointed godfather around confiscating property from Jews. George admitted it wasn t difficult at all to take part in taking property from the Jews. Kroft asked Soros if it bothered him?Soros: It created no problem at all.Kroft: No feeling of guilt?Soros: No.Why should Israel tread lightly when it comes to this monster who had no feelings of guilt about taking property from fellow Jews during the Holocaust?Watch:Soros was born in Hungary, they are interestingly, the second nation to consider George Soros to be an enemy of the state. Fox News When Soros talks of chaos, it s a subject he knows well. The only question is his involvement.Most everywhere Soros, his foundations or his investment money has gone, trouble has followed.He s helped start revolutions, undermined national currencies and funded radicals around the world.Soros has been convicted of insider dealing in France and fined $3 million, fined another $2 million in his native Hungary.His foundations have been accused of shielding spies and breaking currency laws and his investing strategy has been targeted for harming several national currencies.That s not the story the broadcast networks have been telling about Soros for the past five years.There were 29 mentions of Soros during that time but only one gave any hint at trouble, and that was merely to mention he was still known as the man who broke the Bank of England. But ABC followed that description up with: That was all legal. Only a sex scandal with a 28-year-old Brazilian actress gave Soros any negative publicity at all.But there have been lots of negatives in Soros s past as he s spread his influence around the world. Soros wears criticism like a badge of honor. I have now come under attack in several countries: in Hungary from Hungarian nationalists; in Romania from the Vatra Romanesca; in Slovakia from the communist party newspaper Pravda; in the Soviet Union by the organ of the hard-liners Sovietskaia Russiya, he claims in Underwriting Democracy. Soros s Open Society Fund was created in 1979 as a charitable lead trust. Even its creator admitted his motives were basically selfish and he wanted a tax gimmick. He did it as a trust for his children While Soros has been known worldwide for his investment skills, he hasn t always managed to stay clear of the authorities.He was found guilty in France of an insider trading case about 20 years ago and has repeatedly failed at having that news pulled from his record.According to The New York Times, in September 2011, a French panel upheld his conviction because he had bought and sold shares of Soci t G n rale in 1988 with the knowledge that the bank might be a takeover target. He was fined $3 million.His fund ran into problems in Hungary, where Soros was born and lived till his late teen years. At issue was how he handled an investment into the the country s largest bank : OTP. His fund was fined $2 million by Hungarian regulators last week for having manipulated OTP s stock price, wrote The New York Times in 2009.
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It is extremely important to vet the people we put in charge of our children especially in positions of power. Apparently, a Chowchilla, California school, along with the local police department, failed to do so when it came to school resource officer Timothy Hormel.Hormel is currently on administrative leave because of allegations that he had sex with a minor. The 35-year-old cop was arrested by the Mandera County Sheriff s office after the accusations surfaced. As per usual, the police department is conducting an internal investigations in the Hormel s allegedly criminal actions. According the Sheriff s department, the minor was not a student at any school Hormel was assigned to.What makes this all so frustrating is that a predator like that never should have been anywhere around school children, especially not in a position of power. There s a reason there are age of consent laws: children do not have the mental and psychological capacity to consent to sex with adults. Further, Hormel could have used his power as an officer of the law to coerce the sex, if it did indeed happen.Either way, this guy needs to go to jail if he did this, and that Sheriff s department and local school system need to be investigated.Watch a video news report below, via ABC 30:Featured image from video screen capture
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We ve written numerous articles on the horrible human rights record in Saudi Arabia and how the U.S. keeps pushing them as arbiters of great human rights. It s very puzzling!Saudi Arabia is not only horrible when it comes to all human rights, they are especially abysmal when it comes to women s rights (see list below). Electing Saudi Arabia to protect women s rights is like making an arsonist into the town fire chief Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch.So why did the UN just vote to make Saudi Arabia a member of the Women s Rights Commission? The Economic and Social Commission of the United Nations voted for this but it s not clear which countries voted for this because the vote was held behind closed doors.This is one more example of why we need to turn the United Nations building into condos and shut it down!Even Obama s State Department s recent human rights record on Saudi Arabia says that women s rights there remain less than satisfactory:Women continued to face significant discrimination under law and custom, and many remained uninformed about their rights. The law does not provide for the same legal status and rights for women as for men, and since there is no codified personal-status law, judges made decisions regarding family matters based on their interpretations of Islamic law. Although they may legally own property and are entitled to financial support from their guardian, women have fewer political or social rights than men, and society treated them as unequal members in the political and social spheres. The guardianship system requires that every woman have a close male relative as her guardian with the legal authority to approve her travel outside of the country. A guardian also has authority to approve some types of business licenses and study at a university or college. Women can make their own determinations concerning hospital care. Women can work without their guardian s permission, but most employers required women to have such permission. A husband who verbally (rather than through a court process) divorces his wife or refuses to sign final divorce papers continues to be her legal guardian. Can you believe it? Women in Saudi Arabia were just allowed to vote! Can you also believe that Saudi Arabia is head of the human rights council at the United Nations even though this barbaric place is one of the biggest human rights offenders around? Yes, the beheadings this year are in record numbers for this barbaric Middle Eastern country. We recently posted rare footage of a tour bus catching a public execution on the side of the road.Oh, the amazing thing is that Saudi Arabia has accepted ZERO refugees except guest workers. They have a tent city set up for millions (yes, millions) but refuse to let the refugees into their country. Human rights my ass!Here are 7 things that women in Saudi Arabia still can t do:1. Go anywhere without a male guardian.Saudi women must accompany a male relative, known as a mahram , whenever they venture out of the house. Mahram accompanies the women at all times, including for shopping trips and visits to the doctor.2. Drive a car.Although there is no official law that bans women from driving, the country s deeply held religious beliefs prohibit it, with some clerics argue that female drivers undermine social values. 3. Wear clothes that show off their bodySaudi women s dress code is governed by a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Women must wear a long black cloak and a head scarf. Religious police would stop them if they expose too much flesh or wear too much makeup.4. Interact with menSaudi women are expected to limit their interactions with men other than their family members or relatives. The majority of public buildings including offices, banks and universities have separate entrances for men and women. Public transportation, parks, beaches and amusement parks are also segregated in most parts of the country. Unlawful mixing will lead to criminal charges.5. Go for a swimSaudi women are not expected to swim in public swimming pools or used by male members.6. Compete in sportsWomen athletes are looked down upon by the conservative Saudi society. It s generally hard for women to compete freely in sports. Though they are allowed to participate, they had to be accompanied by a male guardian and wear a Sharia-compliant sports kit that covered their hair.7. Try on clothes when shoppingSaudi women are not expected to try on clothes while shopping. Doing so, may attract punishment.Via: Zee News IndiaTHOUSANDS SHARED THIS CARTOON SHOWING HOW RIDICULOUS SAUDI LAWS ARE FOR WOMEN:
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Democrats in Congress refused to stand while a Navy SEAL’s widow was acknowledged by President Trump in his speech before a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. [Sen. Bernie Sanders ( ) Sen. Al Franken ( ) Rep. Nancy Pelosi ( ) and Sen. Patty Murray ( ) among others, remained firmly seated and did not applaud at all while the rest of the room gave Carryn Owens a standing ovation, IJR reported. “We are blessed to be joined tonight by Carryn Owens, the widow of a U. S. Navy special operator, Senior Chief William ‘Ryan’ Owens. Ryan died as he lived: a warrior, and a hero — battling against terrorism and securing our nation,” Trump said, introducing the widow. Ryan was killed in the line of duty during a raid on a terrorist haven in Yemen. His widow Carryn was seated next to First Daughter Ivanka Trump, clearly distraught as she took the national spotlight. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer ( ) Sen. Al Franken ( ) and other Democratic members of Congress did stand and applaud on the second round of ovations, but many others still refused to stand. Sobbing widow of slain Navy Seal receives 2 minute standing ovation. Debbie Wasserman Schultz Keith Ellison stay firmly seated, no claps, — Benny (@bennyjohnson) March 1, 2017, FOR THE RECORD: Carryn Owens had 2 ovations. DWS Ellison stood for her intro. The really long, emotional 2 min one, they did not stand. — Benny (@bennyjohnson) March 1, 2017, Former DNC Chair and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz ( ) and Rep. Keith Ellison ( ) were among the Democratic leaders who remained seated during the second emotional standing ovation for Carryn Owens, though they did stand for her introduction. While Democratic congressional leaders were reluctant to show respect during the speech, former Obama adviser Van Jones had a different take on the moment, calling it “one of the most extraordinary moments” of American politics. Trump’s speech was by the American public and media outlets normally adversarial towards the president. A poll showed that 69 percent of American viewers felt “optimistic” about the country after the speech, while 28 percent felt “pessimistic” after the speech. The Washington Post called Trump’s speech the “best ‘big’ speech” from the president.
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Attorney Dario Navarro was one of several leftists who were all of a sudden concerned about the constitutionality of President Trump s actions.If Trump issued pardon with specific intent to obstruct justice, it could be challenged as unconstitutional abuse of discretion. #Dems pic.twitter.com/1p9981yyMD Dario Navarro (@darionavarro111) June 15, 2017Even the New York Times, who helped to sell Barack Obama s horrific Obamacare plan is concerned about Sheriff Joe Arpaio s pardon.Good case for #ArpaioPardon to be considered unconstitutional.Of course, we'd need a congress with a spine first https://t.co/8Z5M1rVr8u Dimitri (@DimitriWillert) August 26, 2017On July 25, 2016, America s Sheriff Joe Arpaio was found guilty of misdemeanor criminal contempt without the benefit of a jury of his peers.Here are a 6 interesting facts that Breitbart News laid out, regarding the Sheriff Joe Arpaio case, that every American crying foul over President Trump s pardon yesterday needs to know: The US District judge who tried the case against Sheriff Arpaio was a Bill Clinton appointee. 1. The guilty ruling, by Bill Clinton-appointed U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, is the latest chapter of a nearly decade-long saga of legal proceedings against Sheriff Joe initiated by leftist groups opposed to his aggressive policing of illegal aliens.The charges against 85 year old Arpaio stem from a civil rights suit demanding he cease racial profiling in his Maricopa County Sheriff s Office s immigration enforcement operations. After a federal judge issued an order demanding certain practices, Arpaio was charged with contempt for continuing to try to enforce the law as he saw fit.The misdemeanor charge was a ploy to prevent Sheriff Arpaio from having a jury trial. 2. Because Arpaio was charged only with a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of six-months in jail, the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee him a right to trial by a jury of his peers. Arpaio and his attorneys repeatedly petitioned for a jury, only to be denied by Judge Bolton in March and again in May. Sources familiar with the proceedings have told Breitbart News the decision to charge only the misdemeanor was likely a ploy by federal prosecutors to avoid a jury trial in the community where Arpaio served as sheriff for more than 20 yearsAccording to the NCPD President, the DOJ had no evidence to make their case against Sheriff Arpaio.3. National Center for Police Defense (NCPD) President James Fotis, who was present in the courtroom, was highly skeptical a Phoenix jury could have ever found Arpaio guilty. He told Breitbart News:I sat through three days of testimony and it was clear from the beginning that the DOJ had no evidence to make their case. In fact, all of the DOJ s witnesses made it clear that Judge Snow s order was unclear and ambiguous. There is no way a jury would have determined that the Sheriff willfully and intentionally violated the judge s order. Judge Bolton s ruling has caused me to lose my faith in the court system and the federal judicial system, Fotis added in a NCPD press release.Over 40,000 signatures were gathered on a petition by current and former law enforcement officers in support of Sheriff Joe Arpaio who they claimed spent his entire career upholding and defending the Constitution. 4. Fotis was hardly the first or only commentator to question the impartiality of Arpaio s prosecution. In June, his group managed to assemble over 40,000 signatures from current and former law enforcement officers in support of Arpaio, delivering them to the Department of Justice in Washington, DC. After devoting 56-years of his life to upholding and defending the Constitution, Sheriff Arpaio deserves our nation s eternal gratitude not jail time, those petitions read.The Judge in the case should have recused himself, but refused to do so. 5. The initial racial profiling suit that eventually led to this conviction also took on political dimensions and its conduct was criticized. The judge in that case, G. Murray Snow, ignored calls to recuse himself based on the fact his brother-in-law is a partner at Covington & Burling, the firm representing those suing Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff s Office.President Obama spent much of his 8 years in office trying to find a way to take down America s toughest Sheriff on illegal immigrants, who also headed up an independent investigation into the alleged fake birth certificate that would prove Barack Obama was not born in the United States. 6. The decision to criminally prosecute Arpaio was taken while the DOJ was run by Attorney General Loretta Lynch. It would be highly unusual for new leadership to intervene and drop an ongoing prosecution, and no such step was taken, despite the aforementioned petitions.
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BRENTWOOD, N.Y. (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump expressed dismay on Friday that the Senate tried to repeal his predecessor’s healthcare program overnight but failed to do so, saying lawmakers had been working on it for seven years but “we’re going to get it done.” “They should have approved healthcare last night, but you can’t have everything,” Trump told law enforcement officers in Brentwood, New York, on Long Island. “Boy, oh boy, they’ve been working on that one for seven years, can you believe that? The swamp. But we’ll get it done. We’re going to get it done.”
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - 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.
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Today, President Trump came one step closer to dismantling Obamacare. He signed an executive order that would allow Americans to purchase insurance across state lines. The time has come to take action to IMPROVE access, INCREASE choices, and LOWER COSTS for HEALTHCARE! https://t.co/mz5fdveTVh pic.twitter.com/dDZLsKuNSe Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2017Congressional Democrats said Thursday that President Trump s executive order to relax insurance rules is the latest evidence of Republican sabotage against Obamacare.The president signed the order that directs federal agencies to examine regulations that would make it easier for people to band together to get association health plans and buy more short-term insurance. Democrats quickly criticized the order as a back door to attack protections for people with pre-existing conditions and increase junk insurance plans. I do know it is a sabotage of the Affordable Care Act and quite frankly a disservice to the American people, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a press conference Tuesday.She also said Trump knows very little about healthcare legislation. Washington ExaminerPerhaps a little trip down memory lane is in order for Nancy. Remember when Nancy Pelosi coined her most memorable line in the long list of memorable Nancy Pelosi lines? Remember when Nancy attempted to explain the Obamacare legislation to a large audience, telling them, But we have to pass the bill, so that you can, uh, find out what s in it. ?Even one of her most reliable media allies, David Gregory of NBC News, who was clearly on the same team as Nancy, questioned her sanity and most especially, her knowledge of what was in the Obamacare bill, following her curious remarks:We re pretty sure that most Americans are more confident in President Trump s knowledge of the benefits to Americans, once they are able to purchase insurance across state lines than they were in Nancy s ability to understand the 20,000 page Obamacare legislation.
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LONDON — She is known in the British civil service as Theresa May, or Maybe Not. But after months in which she has provided little clue as to how she intends to negotiate Britain’s exit from the European Union, Mrs. May could soon have a harder time dodging the question. Mrs. May, the surprising successor as prime minister to David Cameron, who said a day after losing the June referendum on membership in the bloc that he would step down, has largely kept her own counsel. Although she was a quiet and perhaps lukewarm supporter of staying in the European Union, she has made it clear that she views the vote as democratic and that there would not be a . Mrs. May got through the summer by saying, “Brexit means Brexit,” a gnomic statement that raised countless questions left cabinet ministers trying to shape the debate to their own, often diverging, views and annoyed her counterparts in Europe, who are eager to get on with the negotiations. The leaders of the 27 other European Union nations will meet on Friday in Bratislava, Slovakia, but Mrs. May has been conspicuously excluded from the gathering, intended to begin discussing the shape and direction of the bloc after a British exit. Like much of Britain, the European leaders are still trying to discern her priorities and to size up her approach to carrying out a historic and complex rupture. If Mrs. May has signaled any strategy, it is to play for time, giving her government — well stocked with members who were among the most prominent supporters of an exit — a chance to hash out a negotiating position, and perhaps to allow the political passions of the spring and summer to subside somewhat. Despite pressure from Brussels to move quickly, she has said that Britain will not invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, formally notifying an intention to quit the bloc and beginning a negotiation process, until the first quarter of 2017. The choices ahead are extremely complex and contentious, and for now, Mrs. May is letting various members of her cabinet set their own priorities, while emphasizing that the government — namely, she — has not yet taken official positions. She has no intention, she told Parliament, of giving “a running commentary” of the negotiations. In her cabinet, she put prominent advocates of leaving the European Union in central positions to manage that exit: Boris Johnson, the popular former London mayor who was the face of the campaign to leave the bloc, as foreign secretary David Davis, a veteran Conservative lawmaker, as secretary of state for exiting the European Union and a former defense secretary, Liam Fox, in charge of international trade. Mrs. May then set them, and some of their more colleagues, against one another. They have been fighting over turf, and over how many Foreign Office staff members could be sent to work at the other ministries. And she ruled that all three should share the use of Chevening House, a country mansion in Kent that is traditionally assigned to the foreign secretary, but that is now nicknamed Brexit Towers. While Mrs. May has remained nearly mute on the subject of the path leading to a British exit, her ministers have managed to inject their views into the public debate. Mr. Johnson, for one, wrote her a “private” memo setting out his position, which was promptly leaked. In it, Mr. Johnson, reflecting concern among campaigners from the “Leave” camp that Mrs. May would water down their victory by negotiating a break from Brussels, laid down four red lines: control over immigration from European Union countries, an end to British contributions to the European budget, ceasing the application of European legislation to Britain, and removing the country from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Mr. Johnson has also thrown his support behind a new lobbying group, Change Britain, introduced over the weekend and intended to maintain pressure on the prime minister to have what is known as a “hard exit” from the European Union, with control over immigration and no attempt to bargain with it to preserve access to the single European market of 500 million people. Other supporters include prominent Conservatives like Michael Gove, the former justice minister, and Nigel Lawson, a former chancellor of the Exchequer under Margaret Thatcher. At some point, Mrs. May’s studied silence risks creating a leadership vacuum or feeding into the economic uncertainty that has hung over Britain since the referendum. The most fundamental decision may be how much to prioritize control over immigration, one of the clear demands from the referendum, and ending the freedom of movement and labor that membership in the European Union requires. While those favoring a British departure promised during the referendum campaign that immigration could be controlled and that Britain could retain access to the single market, agreement by the other 27 countries is nearly inconceivable, as it would overthrow one of the basic tenets of the bloc: that market access and freedom of movement are inextricably linked. While reclaiming control over the nation’s borders seems to be the priority for many of the voters who favored leaving the bloc, many business interests in Britain — not least the financial services industry in the City of London and big manufacturers — want to retain access to the single market. That and the degree to which Britain would be willing to make other concessions to Europe to retain market access, is likely to be the trickiest issue confronting Ms. May. Mr. Johnson aside, would Britain be willing to pay into the European Union budget as a nonmember, as Norway does, and if not, what kind of trade deal could Britain negotiate, sector by sector, and how long would that take? When Mr. Davis told the House of Commons this month that it was “very improbable” that Britain would remain in the single market, Mrs. May, through her spokeswoman, chided him and said he was only “setting out his opinion. ” “The prime minister’s view is that we should be ambitious and go after the best deal we can,” said the spokeswoman, Helen Bower. Britain’s financial sector, which represents 10 percent of gross domestic product, wants to preserve “passporting rights,” the ability to offer services throughout the rest of the bloc, including in the 19 countries that use the euro. The chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, who backed remaining in the European Union, also wants to preserve passporting rights. But French officials like Emmanuel Macron, the former economy minister and a possible presidential candidate, are dead set against that. In an interview in London, Mr. Macron said that financial institutions based in Britain must be prevented from selling their services in the eurozone after the country leaves the European Union. Passporting is an integral part of the single market, he said, and “should not be seen as a technical issue but a matter of sovereignty. ” He continued: “We have the eurozone. Could we accept to be cleared, regulated and de facto have inflows and outflows from a country that has decided to leave the E. U.? For me, definitely not. ” In the meantime, Mrs. May and her country are getting a taste of what it will mean to be outside Europe. While the summit meeting of the other European Union leaders on Friday in Bratislava is expected to produce little of substance, its theme is “security,” including borders, migration, terrorism and further defense cooperation. These are issues in which Britain, still a full member of the European Union, has a considerable interest and stake. How much cooperation will Britain after its departure want or expect from the European Union on such matters as policing, intelligence sharing, arrest warrants, extradition? Mrs. May, Britain’s home secretary for six years, will have to make some choices there, as well.
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On Thursday afternoon, the world was treated to yet another Donald Trump press conference the topic of which was to announce his latest Labor Secretary pick. He did that, but he did so much more. Reporters are in shock. It was combative. It was bombastic. It was nuts, and not in the cute way. This is a man who s clearly not fit to be president of a PTA, let alone President of the United States.For the moment, though, he is President of the United States and even Republicans are secretly mortified at the prospect of having this insane monster at the helm for the next four years. One even texted CNN during the press conference, saying that Trump should see a therapist. I got a text from a couple of Democrats during the thing, who of course are not inclined to like him, King said Thursday, But I got a text from a Republican senator who said in this text, He should do this with a therapist, not on live television. How bad was it? Well, like most days since Trump was elected, he boasted about it and lied about the win. He complained about the media. He suggested that an African-American reporter is friends with the Congressional Black Caucus and should set up a meeting between Trump and the caucus. Here s a partial video:This Senator, who is remaining nameless, is not the first to suggest that Trump needs medical help. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) has gone so far as to require a mental health professional be on staff for the president. His disconnection from the truth is incredibly disturbing, he said. When you add on top of that his stifling of dissent, his attacks on the free press and his attacks on the legitimacy of judiciary, that then takes us down the road toward authoritarianism. That s why I ve concluded he is a danger to the republic. Source: CosmoAnd this was before today s press conference. The bill, if passed (it likely won t get through the GOP Congress) would not just be for Trump. It would be for all future presidents. First, though, we need to do something about the madman with access to the nuclear codes. We need to do it now. The anonymous Republican knows it. They all do.Featured image via Mario Tama/Getty Images
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A congressional candidate who formerly worked in IT but was replaced by an guest worker says Americans should have “some input” over their jobs being outsourced. [After being profiled by Breitbart Texas, Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District candidate Craig Diangelo appeared on the Fox Business Network where he explained that currently, Americans have no if their company wants to replace them with an foreign worker. “In the very beginning we did not know that we would be training our replacements,” Diangelo told Fox Business’ Charles Payne. “We had been called down to what they had called a ‘town hall meeting’ and this was in October of 2013. ” “The CIO, said that she would hold a town hall meeting to discuss the future of IT at our particular company, which at that time was known as Northeast Utilities,” Diangelo said. “We all got into the room, all 220 of us, and she proceeded to tell us that ‘Well folks, what we’re going to do is we are going to outsource IT infrastructure and IT development. We have chosen two companies, Infosys and Tata, and the reason that we’re doing this is because global workers can adjust to change a lot faster than the American worker. ’” “Now when you take a look at this, isn’t the American worker also a global worker?” Diangelo said. “Don’t we have some input into what’s we say or what gets said in regards to a global economy? After all, we are a very large market. ” Diangelo also said the foreign workers replacing the Americans, in his experience, were not the types that the open borders and big business lobby often tout. “As they were bringing over 220 employees, we were told that we would do knowledge transfer to these individuals coming over here,” Diangelo said. “As we found out and as our company, our company at that time found out, the people coming over here from Southeast Asia did not have the job skills to actually take our positions. ” As Diangelo mentioned in an interview last week with Breitbart Texas, he is now looking to unseat Rep. Elizabeth Esty ( ) saying he wants to revive the region of the state which was hit hard by multinational trade deals like NAFTA. “I identify with the America First agenda,” Diangelo said at the time. “This really is a big issue. ” John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart Texas. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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(Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said he intends to continue campaigning through the Republican National Convention in July after a report on Thursday said he planned a major downsizing of his flagging campaign. The Washington Post reported that Carson planned to eliminate 50 staff positions, or nearly one-half his staff. Carson, in an appearance on the Fox News Channel, said the cuts have been months in the making after an examination found “inefficiencies” in his campaign. “It’s the same kind of thing I would do as president,” the retired neurosurgeon said. “There is a lot of money being wasted, a lot of inefficiency in government and just because you have the funds to continue that inefficiency doesn’t mean that you should do it.” The bulk of the cuts will come from his field offices and headquarters in Virginia, the Washington Post said, citing an internal memo and campaign officials. Carson will also reduce salaries for campaign workers, it said. Carson finished fourth among Republican presidential hopefuls in the Iowa caucuses on Monday with less than 10 percent of the vote. The newspaper said other cost-saving measures included possibly using commercial flights instead of private planes and limiting Carson’s travel team to a select few advisers. “We will be able to continue the campaign right until Cleveland,” Carson said, referring to the convention. “But obviously you always make appropriate adjustments to make sure you can accomplish your goal.” His most senior staffers will remain on the campaign team, according to the Post. (Reporting by Clarece Polke; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Jeffrey Benkoe) 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.
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HANOI (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump has written to Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang to promote more cooperation between the two countries, the government website cited Quang as saying. Vietnam and the United States had advanced ties to a new level under the Obama administration amid a dispute with China over South China Sea issues, while Trump has also expressed his hope for a stronger relationship. Trump sent a letter to Quang “affirming his wishes to promote cooperation on economics, trade, regional and international issues”, the Vietnamese government website said. Quang made the remarks during a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam on Friday. Quang emphasized that Vietnam welcomes U.S. efforts to improve cooperation with countries in the region to maintain the freedom of navigation and aviation. U.S. Ambassador Ted Osius was reported as saying that Trump is considering attending the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam this year. Vietnam had been expected to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal which Trump pulled the U.S. out of in January, but Hanoi has also been building links with the United States amid a maritime dispute with China. China claims most of the South China Sea, while Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei claim parts of the sea that commands strategic sea lanes and has rich fishing grounds along with oil and gas deposits. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said last month he was ready to visit the United States to promote ties, particularly trade.
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ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - At least five people were killed in a town in Ethiopia s restive Oromiya region on Thursday after police opened fire during a protest, witnesses said. Protesters had blocked the main road in Ambo, some 130 km (80 miles) west of the capital Addis Ababa, to demonstrate against sugar shortages, before police arrived to disperse the crowd. They (police) then fired live rounds. We know of ... five people who died from gunshot wounds, one of the protesters told Reuters. Another witness said he saw up to 10 wounded people taken to hospital. The regional government s spokesman confirmed that deaths had occurred, but did not give details. Demonstrations happening in Ambo have resulted in death and injuries, Addisu Arega Kitessa said in a Facebook statement, adding that they were organized by enemies of the region. The province was wracked by protests for months in 2015 and 2016. Nearly 700 people were killed last year in one bout of unrest provoked by plans to implement a development scheme for Addis Ababa that opponents said amounted to a land grab, according to a parliament-mandated investigation. Broader anti-government demonstrations over politics and human rights abuse then followed, forcing the government to impose a nine-month state of emergency that was finally lifted in August. Separately, ethnic clashes killed at least 11 people this week in the same region. Another bout of violence along Oromiya s border with the country s Somali region last month displaced hundreds of thousands of people. The developments highlight tensions in the country where the government has delivered high economic growth but it often accused of curbing political freedoms. The government denies clamping down on free speech and blames rebel groups and dissidents abroad for stirring up violence.
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971 Views October 31, 2016 23 Comments Moveable Feast Herb Swanson
2016/10/31 15:00:02Welcome to the ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’. The ‘Moveable Feast’ is an open thread where readers can post wide ranging observations, articles, rants, off topic and have animate discussions of the issues of the day.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s hardline rhetoric on immigration might not trigger the surge in Latino voter turnout for which many activists are hoping, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Tuesday. About 89 percent of Latino registered voters who were surveyed said they planned to vote in the Nov. 8 election, down from 91 percent who said in October 2012 that they were planning to vote in that year’s election. The decrease was within the survey’s plus or minus 4.6 percent margin of error. The Pew report was based on a bilingual telephone survey of 1,507 Latino adults, including 804 registered voters, from Aug. 23 through Sept. 21. In July 2008, four months before the presidential election that year, 94 percent of respondents said they planned to vote. According to previous Pew research, about 81.7 percent of Hispanic registered voters cast ballots in 2012, the year Democratic President Barack Obama ran successfully against Republican Mitt Romney. That turnout was down from 84 percent in 2008, when Obama ran against Republican John McCain and won. The latest Pew survey found that Democrats continued to maintain an edge as the party “more concerned” for Latinos. Hillary Clinton is relying on a coalition of minority voters to help her against Trump, who launched his presidential bid last year by calling some Mexican immigrants rapists and promising to build a wall to stop them entering the United States. Latinos, a growing segment of the U.S. electorate with rising influence in closely fought states like Florida and Nevada, tend to lean Democratic and favor Clinton heavily over Trump. According to the survey, some 58 percent support Clinton compared to 19 percent for Trump. Another 10 percent favor Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and 6 percent prefer Green candidate Jill Stein. Turnout among Latinos tends to run well below that of whites and African Americans, blunting their impact in political races. A number of civic groups opposed to Trump have been working to ensure Latinos get to the polls. Pew said that 27.3 million Latinos were eligible to vote. However, knowing how many of those people are registered is harder to measure because many states do not capture information such as race or ethnicity along with voter registration information. In 2012 an estimated 11.2 million Latinos voted in the presidential election, according to Pew. In 2008 that figure was 9.7 million Latino voters. While one must be a U.S. citizen to cast a ballot in U.S. elections, requirements for voter registration can vary by state. Immigrants’ rights group America’s Voice, for example, launched a new Spanish language radio ad in Miami and Orlando for the next two weeks bashing Trump’s hardline immigration proposals, which include deporting all undocumented foreigners and making it harder for would-be immigrants to get visas. In Nevada, the Culinary Union, which is heavily Latino, is working to ensure its members get to the polls, helping them with logistics like finding their polling stations and arranging transport. “It could make the difference between a one point loss and a one point win,” said Yvanna Cancela, the union’s political director. Sergio Garcia-Rios, a professor of Latino studies at Cornell University, said Clinton could be missing an opportunity to drive voter turnout further by not engaging Latino voters enough on policy. “We can’t just rely on an anger reaction to Donald Trump,” he said. The challenge is “to create enthusiasm for Latinos to get out and vote.”
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Broadway rang out 2016 with a very big bang. The 33 plays and musicals running last week brought in a whopping $49. 7 million, making it the week in Broadway history. It was also the week on record, with 359, 495 people seeing Broadway shows. All around Times Square, records were toppled like pins in a bowling alley: It was the best week ever for shows like “Chicago,” “Jersey Boys” and “The Lion King” the most money ever grossed at multiple theaters built more than a century ago (for example, $911, 000 by “Oh, Hello” at the Lyceum, which was built in 1903) the most performances ever by a single show during a period (17, by “The Illusionists”) and the most money ever grossed by a single show ($3. 3 million, by “Hamilton”). An astonishing 24 shows grossed more than $1 million last week, including seven that grossed more than $2 million, according to figures released Tuesday by the Broadway League. Three shows topped the $3 million mark: “Hamilton,” “Wicked” and “The Lion King. ” The grosses for the week ending Jan. 1 were 63 percent higher than the previous week, and 15 percent higher than the same week the previous year (even though there were five more shows playing at the same time last year). Why? The most significant factor appears to be pricing: The base prices for many Broadway shows are high, and the premium prices charged over the holiday period were even higher. shows had an average price over $100. And for “Hamilton,” now the industry leader in pricing, the average price was $310, and the top price was $998. (That’s the price charged by the box office the first time a ticket was sold many people paid higher prices purchasing from resellers.) There were other factors contributing to the Broadway bonanza. New York City was wrapping up a banner year for tourism: an estimated 60. 3 million visitors, up from 58. 5 million the previous year, according to Christopher Heywood, a spokesman for NYC Company, the city’s tourism agency. The period between Christmas and New Year’s is always popular for tourists — and lucrative for Broadway — but especially so this winter, because Christmas and New Year’s fell on weekends, and many people took off work the week in between. Multiple shows that aim heavily at tourists did extraordinarily well. For example: Cirque du Soleil’s first Broadway venture, “Paramour,” had its best week yet, at $1. 9 million, and “The Phantom of the Opera,” the Broadway show and a reliable barometer for tourist traffic, had its best week too, also at $1. 9 million. Broadway took advantage of the expected high tourism last week by staging more performances. The usual Broadway schedule sees shows staged eight times a week, but last week 25 shows had nine performances. And then there was “The Illusionists,” a holiday season magic show, which managed to have 17 performances by scheduling shows three times a day Monday through Friday, and then twice on Sunday. Other factors: Broadway is on an upswing. Grosses and attendance have been growing for several years, and the current season has already featured strong starts for three new musicals: “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” “A Bronx Tale” and “Dear Evan Hansen. ” “The record just broken for both attendance and grosses for the last week reflects the continuing success of the range of theater being produced on Broadway,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League. Several shows that had announced closing dates had a surge of patrons. “Matilda” closed on Sunday after its best week ($1. 9 million) and “Jersey Boys,” which closes on Jan. 15, set a record, too ($1. 8 million). Some plays benefited as well: “The Humans,” which won the Tony for best new play last year, grossed an impressive $815, 000 as it prepared to close on Jan. 15. Of course, the good news is not likely to last. January and February are generally soft months for Broadway. Thirteen shows are scheduled to close between Dec. 31 and Jan. 29, as theaters clear the decks for a round of openings in late winter and spring.
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Of course tomorrow morning, the Democrat Party will put their heads together and after hours of damage control, they will tell Americans Wasserman-Schultz didn t really mean what she said. What is it about women in the Democrat Party (Hillary) who don t really mean what they say?The Democratic National Committee has released a statement about the shooting of 11 police officers in Dallas tonight. The shooting took place at a Black Lives Matter protest against the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile at the hands of police this week. In a press conference, the chief of the police department clearly said that there is no known link between the snipers and the protesters.Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz didn t get that memo. The statement from the DNC looks like this:Pay attention to that penultimate paragraph. The last line, in particular, is noteworthy. And while most protesters have made their voices heard peacefully, tonight s shooting of officers in Dallas is unacceptable and a reminder that the time to address these tensions and find common ground is long overdue. What are you implying here, DWS?Image via: TwitterVia: Mediate
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BEIJING (Reuters) - China s top anti-graft watchdog has said that a multi-year campaign against corruption is consolidating and would continue to develop, according to a work report released at a key leadership summit. The Central Commission of Discipline Inspection said in the report given to reporters on Monday as part of the closing ceremony of the 19th National Party Congress that the campaign has been built into a crushing tide . President Xi Jinping s has vowed to battle deep-seated graft in the Party saying that a failure to stop corruption could damage the Party s future.
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Buses carrying evacuated Islamic State fighters reached Syria s Deir al-Zor on Wednesday in return for releasing a Hezbollah prisoner, a commander in the pro-Damascus alliance told Reuters. Damascus and Hezbollah allowed nearly 300 lightly armed militants and 300 relatives to leave the Syria-Lebanon border in a surrender deal, after an offensive there last month. The transfer marked the first time Islamic State publicly agreed to such an evacuation from territory it held. A U.S.-led coalition had stopped the 17 buses from reaching Deir al-Zor for weeks and the convoy split in two. It was not immediately clear if all the buses arrived in Islamic State territory in the eastern Syrian province on Wednesday. The deal has been completed, said the commander in the military alliance fighting in support of the Damascus government. The buses took the route between the town of al-Sukhna and Deir al-Zor, a main road that the Syrian army and allied forces captured in recent days, the commander said. Along the route, the combatants swapped the evacuees for a Hezbollah prisoner who had been in Islamic State captivity, the non-Syrian commander added. Under the evacuation deal in August, Islamic State militants left their border foothold after a week-long battle in return for safe passage to Deir al-Zor province in Syria. Iran-backed Hezbollah has played a major role in fighting Sunni militants along the border. Since early in the six-year Syrian conflict, it has sent thousands of fighters to support President Bashar al-Assad s government. Lebanon s Shi ite Hezbollah retrieved the remains of some of its forces killed in Syria as part of the swap, and was meant to get back one of its fighters that Islamic State held captive. The deal included recovering the bodies of nine Lebanese soldiers that Islamic State captured in 2014. The transfer ended any insurgent presence from the Syrian war on the frontier, where the Lebanese army also fought the militants in a separate offensive on its side. But the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State blocked the convoy from entering IS territory in east Syria, near the border with Iraq, by cratering roads and destroying bridges. The convoy split in two, with 11 buses remaining in the open desert and others retreating into government territory. Last week, the U.S. coalition said its surveillance aircraft moved away from the buses in the no-man s land after pro-Syrian government forces advanced past the convoy. Damascus was responsible for the evacuees, it said. The Syrian army and its allies reached Deir al-Zor city, breaking an Islamic State siege of an enclave there that had lasted three years. U.S.-backed Syrian militias have also launched a separate assault in another part of Deir al-Zor province, which has become Islamic State s last major foothold in Syria.
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During the annual White House Easter Egg Hunt, President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump stood with their son Baron on the White House balcony and addressed the crowd. President Trump spoke briefly and then announced that as soon as they were finished with the activities, he and Melania, and their son Baron would be heading downstairs to sign cards they planned to send to our troops. It was very touching to see Melania go out of her way to thank the military band and all of the staff and volunteers who worked tirelessly to make sure everyone had memorable experience. Melania then delivered a sincere and heartfelt message of gratitude to our troops, I want to thank all of the military with us today, and all of the great military in this nation and service men and service women all around the world who is keeping us safe. Compare Melania s speech to this video of Michelle and Barack s final speech at the Easter Egg Roll in 2016: Today is a little bit bittersweet for us, because this is the Obama administration s last Easter Egg Roll (pauses for reaction from crowd) yeah. Michelle continued, And if we think about what we ve accomplished over the past 7 years, it s pretty incredible. Because when Barack and I first got here, one of the goals that we had was to open up the White House to as many people from as many backgrounds as possible. To open it up to our kids to our musicians, to explore our culture, to expose families to healthy living and to just to have fun. Because what s more fun than being a kid and going to the White House for an Easter Egg roll and hearing the First Lady drone on about healthy living? After several minutes of listening to Michelle drone on about all of her and Barack s achievements in diversity and bringing their culture to the White House, Barack had to interrupt her to remind her to mention the troops. He can be seen at least 2 times saying, military families behind her before Michelle finally responded, And also to our military families I ve got the peanut gallery back here remaining me of stuff. Laughs Our theme this year, in our final year is pretty simple, it s Let s celebrate. Let s celebrate all the good work that we ve done, all the great messaging that we ve had, all the amazing change that we ve seen in this country.
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