NewsReutersConstitution's 'excessive fines' ban bolstered by U.S. high court
The nine justices ruled unanimously in favor of an Indiana man named Tyson Timbs who argued that police violated his rights by seizing his $42,000 Land Rover vehicle after he was convicted as a heroin dealer. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, back on the bench for a second straight day after undergoing lung cancer surgery in December, wrote the court's opinion, which clarified the applicability of the "excessive fines" prohibition contained in the Constitution's Eighth Amendment. "For good reason, the protection against excessive fines has been a constant shield throughout Anglo-American history.
- NewsThe Independent
MAGA hat student sues Washington Post for $250m over coverage of confrontation with Native American man
A student involved in a viral confrontation with a Native American man is suing the Washington Post for $250m (£191m) over its coverage of the incident. The defamation lawsuit, filed by Covington Catholic High School pupil Nick Sandmann, claims the newspaper “wrongfully targeted and bullied” him due to its “biased agenda” against Donald Trump. The 16-year-old was wearing one of the president's signature Make America Great Again hats when he attended an anti-abortion rally in Washington in January along with classmates from his Kentucky school.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Sanders campaign says it raised nearly $6 million on 1st day
Sen. Bernie Sanders's campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination raised nearly $6 million in its first 24 hours, per information provided by the campaign. The independent senator from Vermont launched his campaign early Tuesday morning with an email blast, earning $5.9 million in donations from just under 225,000 people with an average donation of $27, according to a Sanders campaign release. As a comparison, Sen. Kamala Harris of California raised $1.5 million from 38,000 donors in the first 24 hours of her campaign following a January launch, her team said.
- U.S.KTRK – Houston
Parents dead in murder-suicide at Sugar Land home as 16-year-old daughter slept inside
Their family says they were involved in volunteering and believed in giving back before they died.
NewsAFPCanada looks to reunite Syrian family after fire claims seven kids
Canada is looking to quickly bring over siblings of a Syrian refugee distraught over the loss of her seven children in a Halifax house fire, the prime minister said Thursday. "The immigration minister is seized with this particular case," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said when asked if Ottawa would fast-track the immigration or asylum process to bring the woman's brothers to Canada in order to provide her with family support. The family was among tens of thousands of Syrian refugees welcomed by Canada over the past four years.
- WorldBloomberg
With Top Investor in Jail, Putin Hits at Business Climate
Russian President Vladimir Putin said honest business people shouldn't have to live under “constant fear of criminal prosecution,” days after the arrest of one of the country's top foreign investors. Echoing previous exhortations to officials and law-enforcement to stop harassing business, which have produced few results, Putin said Wednesday in his annual state-of-the-nation address that “detention is often extended without good reason” and almost half of cases “don't even make it to court. But he didn't mention Baring Vostok Capital Partners Founder Michael Calvey, the American private equity investor who's in pre-trial detention as the latest prominent business figure to face prosecution.
- BusinessUSA TODAY
Johnson & Johnson stock price falls after federal subpoena on alleged asbestos in baby powder
The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating Johnson & Johnson over concerns the company's baby powder may have contained asbestos. The agencies subpoenaed the health care product maker in the wake of several jury awards to plaintiffs who claimed the company's talc products were tainted with asbestos and caused their cancers. The agencies seek documents about those matters and other suits Johnson & Johnson faces filed by shareholders and pension holders over the situation.
- NewsAssociated Press
Gory details emerge about missing woman's suspected demise
After months of mostly silence from authorities investigating the disappearance of a Colorado mother on Thanksgiving Day, grim details about her suspected demise emerged this week, including accusations that the woman's fiance beat her to death with a baseball bat while their baby was in the next room. Testimony from investigators at a court hearing Tuesday also revealed that Patrick Frazee had repeatedly asked an Idaho woman with whom he was having an affair to kill Kelsey Berreth, the mother of Frazee's 1-year-old daughter. When she refused, he did it himself, authorities said.
- BusinessThe National Interest
Meet the 'New' F-21 Fighter: An F-16 On Steroids (With F-22 and F-35 DNA)?
In fact, the F-21 is an F-16 that Lockheed has upgraded with new cockpit displays, conformal fuel tanks, a larger airframe spine that can accommodate additional electronics, fittings for towed radar decoys, a new infrared sensor and a refueling probe that's compatible with India's Russian-made aerial tankers.
WorldReutersDays before summit, Trump raises prospect of easing North Korea sanctions
A week before a second summit with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, U.S. President Donald Trump held out the prospect of an easing of tough sanctions on the country, but only if it does "something that's meaningful" on denuclearization. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Wednesday, Trump also said he expects to meet with Kim again after their Feb. 27-28 summit in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital. Trump said he did not think North Korea was reluctant to denuclearize, in spite of a lack of concrete progress since he and Kim met for a first summit in Singapore in June.
- LifestyleCar and Driver
Every Photo From Our EV Battle Between the 2019 Chevrolet Bolt EV and 2019 Hyundai Kona Electric
But wait. Maybe don't cancel that Tesla Model 3 reservation just yet. From Car and Driver
- PoliticsThe Independent
Trump panel to examine whether global warming affects national security will include climate change denier
President Donald Trump is preparing to establish a panel to examine whether climate change affects national security, despite existing reports from his own government showing that global warming is a growing threat. According to a White House memo dated 14 February, Mr Trump's staff members have drafted an executive order to create a 12-member committee, which will include a White House adviser, William Happer, whose views are at odds with the established scientific consensus that carbon dioxide pollution is dangerous for the planet.
WorldReutersFrench TV cuts Facebook live feed from Jewish cemetery after anti-Semitic abuse
"Our country is confronted with a resurgence of anti-Semitism undoubtedly without precedent since the Second World War," President Emmanuel Macron said later on Tuesday in an annual speech to Jewish leaders in France. France 3 television said it went live from the first cemetery in the village of Quatzenheim on Tuesday as President Emmanuel Macron was visiting to pay his respects after more than 90 graves were vandalized with swastikas and anti-Semitic abuse. "We are talking about explicit death threats, comments that were openly anti-Semitic and racist, including "Heil Hitler", "dirty Jew" or "dirty Jews", comments that were addressed at Emmanuel Macron and representatives of the Jewish community," the channel said in a statement explaining its decision.
WorldAFPPakistani-held Kashmir on alert as tensions with India rise
Bunkers are being rebuilt and a blackout has been ordered, but schools and bazaars remained open Thursday in Chakothi, a border village in Pakistani-held Kashmir, after a deadly attack sent tensions with neighbouring India soaring. Residents were worried but life was going on in the village of some 3,000 inhabitants just three kilometres (two miles) from the "Line of Control", the de facto border which divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, have been fighting for seven decades over the Himalayan region of Kashmir, now one of the most militarised zones in the world.
- WorldBloomberg
Pinera's Colombia Border Trip Carries Risks for Chilean Leader
Chilean President Sebastian Pinera is taking a risky bet with his announced trip to Cucuta, Colombia on Friday to deliver humanitarian aid at the border with Venezuela. Pinera, a center-right politician and steadfast opponent of the government of Nicolas Maduro, is gambling with his political capital, according to political scientist Patricio Navia. Pinera is investing in a Trump-controlled project,” Navia said in a phone interview.
- BusinessUSA TODAY
United Airlines: Three new routes for fast-growing Denver hub
United Airlines will add three new domestic routes at its Denver hub. Daily flights to Greenville/Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Syracuse, New York, will begin June 6 and will operate year-round. All three of the new routes will go head-to-head against service offered by Denver-based budget rival Frontier Airlines.
WorldAssociated PressSearing testimony heard at Vatican sex abuse summit
The day began with an African woman telling an extraordinary gathering of Catholic leaders that her priestly rapist forced her to have three abortions over a dozen years after he started violating her at age 15. In between, Pope Francis began charting a new course for the Catholic Church to confront clergy sexual abuse and cover-up, a scandal that has consumed his papacy and threatens the credibility of the Catholic hierarchy at large. Opening a first-ever Vatican summit on preventing abuse, Francis warned 190 bishops and religious superiors on Thursday that their flocks were demanding concrete action, not just words, to punish predator priests and keep children safe.
- PoliticsNational Review
Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders Have a Plan to Kill the Stock Market
Senators Chuck Schumer of New York and Bernie Sanders of Vermont want to penalize “self-indulgent” corporations that buy back their own stock. In a recent article in the New York Times,they argued that when companies repurchase shares, not only do the vast majority of Americans not benefit, but income inequality is exacerbated since only wealthy shareholders and corporate management profit. Despite decades of extraordinary success that the United States has enjoyed and that we enjoy today, Schumer and Sanders believe that something sinister is taking place in the corporate world.
- BusinessThe National Interest
You're Dead: The F-35 Is Crushing Enemy Fighter Jets in Air War Simulations
As enemy fighters closed in on a US Air Force 4th Generation fighter aircraft, blinding the jet with electronic warfare attacks, an experienced pilot faced unseen life-threatening attackers closing in -- during an air-combat Red Flag exercise closely replicating actual warfare scenarios. The 5th-Gen, multi-role stealth fighter then used its long-range sensors and weapons to “kill” the enemy aircraft, according to an Air Force news report. Air Force Col. Joshua Wood, 388th Operations Group Commander was part of the exercise.
U.S.FOX News VideosAttorney for Nicholas Sandmann says the Washington Post gave online bullies a megaphone to tarnish his client
Lin Wood explains the Covington Catholic High School student's $250 million lawsuit against the Washington Post.
- WorldThe Independent
Trump demands 6G technology in rant against American companies: 'We must be the leader in everything we do'
Donald Trump has called on American companies to become leaders around the world in "5G, even 6G" technology in a series of tweets. “I want 5G, and even 6G, technology in the United States as soon as possible,” the president tweeted on Thursday morning. “I want the United States to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies.
- WorldReuters
Britain, EU closer to possible agreement on Brexit: EU diplomats
The European Union and Britain are moving towards a separate legal statement in which the bloc would again stress the temporary nature of the so-called Brexit backstop for the Irish border, diplomats in Brussels said. They spoke of a "parallel declaration" or "interpretative instrument" on the backstop, a day after British Prime Minister Theresa May and the head of the European Union's executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, met in Brussels to seek a way out of the Brexit deadlock. The backstop is an insurance policy designed to avoid border controls between EU member Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland after Brexit.
WorldAFPIS teen 'shocked' after UK revokes her citizenship
A British teenager who joined the Islamic State group in Syria said Wednesday she was shocked by a government decision to revoke her citizenship and was considering applying to settle in The Netherlands, the homeland of her husband. Shamima Begum, who travelled to Syria in 2015 and now wants to return to Britain after giving birth in a refugee camp in Syria last week, said the order was "unjust". "I am a bit shocked," she told ITV News after learning of the move, which was announced in a letter Tuesday from the British government to her mother in London.
- LifestyleArchitectural Digest
20 Affordable Indoor Planters We Love
Instant upgrades for your home's green scheme
PoliticsUSA TODAYCarbon dioxide in our atmosphere may soar to levels not seen in 56 million years
Emissions of carbon dioxide – the greenhouse gas most responsible for global warming – could soar to levels not seen in 56 million years by the middle of next century, scientists warned in a study Wednesday. Though it won't happen in our lifetimes, it could very well happen in the lives of our grandchildren or great-grandchildren. "You and I won't be here in 2159, but that's only about four generations away," said study author Philip Gingerich, a University of Michigan paleoclimate researcher.
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