Trump impeachment hearings: 3 key takeaways from Yovanovitch's testimony

The impeachment investigation into President Trump continued Friday with testimony from Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine who Trump recalled earlier this year. Yovanovitch is a longtime diplomat, having been appointed by President George W. Bush as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan and then Armenia and as ambassador to Ukraine by President Barack Obama. Although Yovanovitch didn't have direct knowledge of Trump's phone calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, she was firm in her belief that Trump's pressuring of Zelensky for investigations that would benefit his reelection campaign was improper.

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  Rep. Dingell on the first two public impeachment inquiry hearings: I'm deeply disturbed

  FOX News Videos
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  5 key takeaways from testimony by former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch

  ABC News

Man caught at Houston airport with 35 pounds of liquid cocaine in shampoo bottles

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston caught an airline passenger trying to smuggle 35 pounds of liquid cocaine in shampoo bottles into the country earlier this week, the agency said in a press release. The CBP said officers discovered the bottles containing cocaine valued at more than $400,000 in the checked luggage of a 26-year-old Colombian citizen Monday after observing him at baggage claim and conducting a bag search. “Our officers are the first line of defense at our ports of entry, so they are trained in the various smuggling methods people use to bring illicit goods into the U.S.,” CBP Port Director Shawn Polley said in the press release.

Marine deserter’s mother names him in fatal shooting

The mother of a wanted Marine told investigators that she saw her son kill her boyfriend, according to a federal criminal complaint. The criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Virginia, on Wednesday shows Vanessa Hanson told a U.S. Marshal that she witnessed Michael Alexander Brown, 22, fatally shoot her boyfriend, Rodney Wilfred Brown, last Saturday at a home in Hardy. The vehicle was later found near Clarendon County, South Carolina, about four hours southwest of Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina, where he had been stationed as a U.S. Marine until leaving his post last month.

An expert in fraternity hazing deaths says coddling parents are part of the problem

Five young men have died in incidents that appear to be connected to fraternities at colleges across the country so far this fall. Hank Nuwer, a journalist who has been compiling a database on fraternity deaths for decades, believes over-indulgent parents are partly to blame for a recent uptick in dangerous behavior. "Parents want to show their love by giving everything — everything but old-fashioned lessons in self-restraint," he told Insider.

Chile police stopped rescue workers helping dying protester: human rights watchdog

Chile's independent human rights watchdog said on Saturday it would file a formal complaint for murder against police officers who allegedly prevented paramedics from attending a heart attack victim amid a protest Friday. Security forces firing tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons made it impossible for rescue workers to properly treat the victim, Chile's publicly-funded National Institute for Human Rights said. Twenty-nine year old Abel Acuna died shortly after at a nearby Santiago hospital.

Australia intel chair blocked from China after criticising Beijing

Australia's parliamentary intelligence committee head, who has previously criticised Beijing, said he had been blocked from entering China due to his "frankness about the Chinese Communist Party". Andrew Hastie warned several months ago that the world's approach to containing China's rise resembles the "catastrophic failure" to prevent the advance of Nazi Germany. Hastie, along with fellow government politician James Paterson, had planned to travel to China for a study tour next month but both have been banned from entering the country.

• China Urges Australian Lawmakers to ‘Repent’ Over Past Criticism

  Bloomberg
• Australian MP says he and colleague barred entry to China

  Associated Press

Palestinian militant groups come to blows over Israel diplomacy

Tensions between Gaza's two largest Palestinian militant groups have spilled into the open as Islamic Jihad supporters angrily accused Hamas of not coming to their aid in this week's fighting with Israel. Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group backed by Iran, fired more than 400 rockets into Israel this week in retaliation for Israel's assassination of one of their senior leaders. Senior Hamas officials were accosted by Islamic Jihad supporters when they tried to visit a mourning tent for Baha Abu al-Ata, the assassinated Jihad commander.

Penultimate C7 Corvette Being Enshrined At National Corvette Museum

The final Corvette – a black Z06 – was auctioned off earlier in the year for $2.6 million to a software company CEO, but the second to last Corvette isn't going far. This car will be delivered at and then donated to the National Corvette Museum, which is right across the street from the Corvette's assembly plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky. This penultimate C7 was purchased by the NCM's lifetime member and supporter, Ivan Schrodt, who will take delivery of the car on November 20th via Chevy's museum delivery program.

Forgotten Genocide: How a Quarter of Europe’s Roma Were Murdered by the Nazis, then Erased From History

An eyewitness account by a Holocaust survivor—unearthed for a new exhibition in London—describes the conditions in the “gypsy” section of Auschwitz as even more inhumane than the rest of the appalling facility. “The conditions were worse than in the other camps,” wrote eyewitness Hermann Langbein in 1945. The gypsies were still wearing the clothes that they had been given upon arrival… footwear was missing… The latrines were built in such a way that they were practically unusable for the gypsy children.

Trump impeachment narrative gathers steam as diplomats fill in details

In the first week of public impeachment hearings, three witnesses, all veteran U.S. diplomats, added details of what they knew of President Trump's efforts to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a plan whose unraveling threatens his presidency. While the fundamental partisan dynamics of the inquiry continue to hold — Democrats who control the House appear poised to impeach the president, while Republicans in the Senate are unlikely to convict him — this week's developments shed new light on the months-long effort by the Trump administration to procure investigations from a foreign government.

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  Ousted ambassador: Removal aided ‘shady interests’

  USA TODAY
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  Marie ​Yovanovitch says attacks have had a "chilling effect" on diplomats

  CBS News Videos

Chicago gang leader accused of attempting to help Islamic State

A purported street gang leader from Chicago who allegedly became radicalized in prison faces federal charges accusing him of seeking to provide money to Islamic State militants in Syria, according to a complaint unsealed Friday in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

See Photos of the 2020 Nissan Titan

Despite an updated powertrain and loads of new tech features, Nissan's half-ton pickup still lags behind the competition of domestic brands. From Car and Driver

Why Russian Fighter Jets Are Threatening NATO In The Baltics

Key point: Russia and NATO's military buildup in the Baltics is creating a tense situation. In the most recent illustration of ongoing Russia-NATO military tensions over Baltic airspace, recently released footage shows a Russian Su-27 fighter making a sharp turn into an American F-15C. It is unclear when the video was filmed, with some speculating that it occured during a prior NATO BAP (Baltic Air Policing) mission. When viewed in that light, this incident seems to fall into the trend of what US officials have previously described as “unsafe” Russian interceptions and “aggressive maneuvers” in high-tension airspace.

S. African asylum-seekers held on trespassing charges

South African police detained more than 180 foreign nationals for storming the UN refugee agency in Pretoria, where they had been staging a sit-in protest, police said Saturday. Hundreds of asylum-seekers started camping in front of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on October 8, asking to be relocated to another country after a spate of xenophobic violence in September. Protesters broke into the UNHCR premises on Thursday after they were informed of a court order giving them three days to vacate the site.

Scientists Are Fighting Over One of the Hottest Places on Earth

Two recent studies came to opposite conclusions about the same evidence of life in a caustic pool in Ethiopia. Extreme environments on Earth may model habitats on other planets, like the moon Titan. The evidence of life found in Ethiopia is DNA from archaea, an organism similar to bacteria.

3 judges drunkenly fight at an Indiana White Castle, leaving 2 shot. Now, they're suspended

Three judges involved in a fight at an Indiana White Castle in May, which ended with two of the judges shot, have been suspended without pay after the Indiana Supreme Court determined they committed judicial misconduct. In an opinion issued Tuesday, the court said judges Bradley Jacobs, Andrew Adams and Sabrina Bell "engaged in judicial misconduct by appearing in public in an intoxicated state and behaving in an injudicious manner and by becoming involved in a verbal altercation." Adams' whole blood-alcohol level was approximately 0.157 upon admission to the hospital, and Jacobs' was approximately 0.13, according to the opinion.

Man who shot, wounded school bus driver sentenced to prison

A Minnesota man who shot and wounded a school bus driver on a Minneapolis freeway during a snowstorm has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison. Thirty-two-year-old Kenneth Lilly, of St. Paul, pleaded guilty in August to first-degree assault for the February attack that left Thomas Benson deaf in one ear and unable to continue working as a bus driver due to nerve damage in his hand. Lilly was sentenced Friday to 86 months.

After Roger Stone conviction, star witness against him feels 'horrible'

The conviction of Roger Stone Friday on seven felony counts of lying to Congress, obstruction and witness tampering represents a capstone to special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, establishing that one of President Trump's longtime political advisers did everything he could to conceal the truth from congressional investigators. The conviction takes on added importance because, in the course of a week-and-a-half trial, prosecutors presented fresh evidence that Stone was in repeated contact with senior members of Trump's campaign, who regarded him as an “access point” to WikiLeaks as the website was about to release emails damaging to Hillary Clinton.

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  Jim Carrey Slaps Roger Stone With A Cartoon Warning For The Kids

  HuffPost
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  WATCH: From Nixon to WikiLeaks, Roger Stone’s Scandalous Career

  The Daily Beast

North Korea says Trump is running out of time for peace talks, and warns of dire consequences

North Korea's state-run news agency, KCNA, published an address from the country's State Affairs Committee warning the US that it was running out of time to negotiate with Pyongyang. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned during his annual address to the country that he would seek a "new way" forward in North Korea's relationship with the US should diplomatic talks fail. While the statement promises harsh consequences for actions North Korea sees as hostile, it doesn't indicate what it will do to retaliate, although further testing of longer-range ICBMs and space testing are not off the table, according to one expert.

No More Air: How An Entire Chinese Submarine Crew Died a Tragic Death in 2003

On April 25, 2003 the crew of a Chinese fishing boat noticed a strange sight—a periscope drifting listlessly above the surface of the water. At the time, some commentators expressed surprise that Beijing acknowledged the incident at all, and speculated it was obliquely related to contemporaneous criticism of Beijing's attempts to downplay the SARS epidemic. Read the original article.

Armed men storm Guaido party headquarters in Venezuela

Armed men stormed the party headquarters of Venezuela opposition leader Juan Guaido on Friday, one day ahead of a protest against President Nicolas Maduro, Guaido and witnesses said. Dressed in black and carrying pistols and rifles, the hooded men forced their way into the offices of Guaido's Voluntad Popular party in the east of the capital Caracas. "They were victims of a kidnapping, of intimidation," Guaido, who is recognized as Venezuela's acting president by about fifty countries, told journalists after arriving at the site minutes after the men left.

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  Venezuelan opposition party says armed men raid its office

  Associated Press
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  Venezuelans March in Biggest Anti-Maduro Protest in Months

  Bloomberg

Black South Carolina Leaders Distance Themselves from Buttigieg Campaign’s ‘Douglass Plan’

Several black leaders in South Carolina who were listed as supporters of the Buttigieg campaign's “Douglass Plan” distanced themselves from the proposal and the campaign when pressed for comment, saying that the campaign was “intentionally vague” in asking for their endorsements. According to a report from The Intercept, three South Carolina black leaders — Columbia City Councilwoman Tameika Devine, Rehoboth Baptist pastor and state Representative Ivory Thigpen, and Johnnie Cordero, chair of the state party's Black Caucus — all expressed misgivings over the way that the Buttigieg campaign featured their names prominently in an open letter published in the the HBCU Times touting the plan's details.