- PoliticsHuffPost
President Donald Trump Says He's Not Worried About Getting Impeached
President Donald Trump shot down reports Tuesday that he was worried about being impeached, telling Reuters that he had engaged in no wrongdoing. The remarks come the same day CNN reported that Trump was feeling quite the opposite. According to an unidentified source who spoke with the cable news outlet, the president sees impeachment as a “real possibility” now that Democrats have regained control of the House.
WorldAssociated PressTurkey vows to take on US-backed Kurdish militia in Syria
Turkey will launch a new military operation against U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters in Syria "within a few days," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday, a move likely to further strain ties between NATO allies Turkey and the United States. In recent months, Turkey has shelled Kurdish positions across the border in Syria, east of the Euphrates River, and has threatened to drive out the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG. The YPG is the main component of a Kurdish-led militia in Syria that rolled back the Islamic State group with the help of the U.S.-led coalition.
WorldReutersMain suspect in Strasbourg attack killed in gun battle with police -officials
The suspected gunman who killed three people at a Christmas market in the French city of Strasbourg was shot dead on Thursday in a brief gun battle with police after being on the run for 48 hours, police sources said. Cherif Chekatt, 29, was killed in the Neudorf/Meinau area of the city shortly after a big police operation was launched around 2100 hrs (2000 GMT) on Thursday about 2 kilometers from where he launched his attack on Tuesday. Chekatt was killed after firing on police officers, who returned fire, one of the sources said.
WorldAFPWashington says observation posts in place on Syria-Turkey border
The Pentagon announced Tuesday that American observation posts in northern Syria, meant to prevent altercations between the Turkish army and US-supported Kurdish militia, have been erected, despite Ankara's request to scrap the move. US support for the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) has strained relations with Turkey, which fears the emergence of an autonomous Kurdish region on its southern border. "At the direction of Secretary (James) Mattis, the US established observation posts in the northeast Syria border region to address the security concerns of our NATO ally Turkey," Department of Defense spokesman Rob Manning said.
WorldAssociated PressSuspicious optics said to have exposed Israeli raid in Gaza
A month after a heavy round of Israel-Hamas fighting, the undercover Israeli operation that sparked the battle remains clouded in mystery. The Israeli army has kept mum, while Hamas officials aren't talking while they investigate. With each side protective of its secrets, and possibly keen to spread disinformation, the full story may never be known.
BusinessUSA TODAYRep. Steve King makes Apple iPhone complaint to Google CEO, demands list of employees
WASHINGTON – Rep. Steve King demonstrated Tuesday in a House Judiciary Committee hearing that politicians often aren't exactly the sort of folks you want picking up the phone when you call the IT department for help. In an effort to show an example of the anti-conservative bias that King and other Republican lawmakers believe is at the heart of large tech companies, the Iowa congressman told Google CEO Sundar Pichai about an incident where one of his grandchildren came across unflattering language about him while using a smartphone. I have a 7-year-old granddaughter who picked up her phone before the election, and she’s playing a little game, the kind of game a kid would play, King said.
- LifestyleArchitectural Digest
Introducing the 2019 AD100
Meet today's top talent in architecture and design
- BusinessAOL.com
Man quits his job with epic rant over the store's PA
A disgruntled employee at a Canadian Walmart decided that he wasn’t going to quit quietly. In a video posted to Facebook on Friday, a 17-year-old worker named Jackson Racicot grabbed the PA mic and told everyone in the store what he really thought about working there. Racicot then dove into individual grievances, starting with his manager who apparently had called him “a waste of time.” He goes on to say that promises had been made and not kept, and details the story of how he was given only benefits of a part-time employee even though he worked full-time.
NewsAFPAt least $9bn in insurance claims from California fires
Insurance claims from the recent devastating California wildfires that killed at least 89 people and destroyed 19,000 homes and businesses have reached at least $9 billion, the state's insurance commissioner said Wednesday. "The devastating wildfires of 2018 were the deadliest and costliest wildfire catastrophes in California's history," said California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. Most of the insurance payouts -- some $7 billion -- concern the Camp Fire in Northern California, which wiped out the town of Paradise and killed 86 people, making it the deadliest wildfire in recent California history.
- PoliticsHuffPost
Stephen King Has Explicit Suggestion For What Donald Trump Can Do With His Border Wall
Stephen King suggested Wednesday exactly what President Donald Trump should do with the money he wants to spend on a U.S.-Mexico border wall. And the bestselling horror author didn’t mince his words: King proposed Trump scrap his “vanity project” and “do something good for once” ― by instead splashing taxpayer cash on “at-risk children who don’t have lunches and vets who can’t get proper medical and psychological treatment. King’s entreaty followed his Tuesday tweet in which he mockingly asked Trump who would be paying for the proposed barrier that the president repeatedly promised would be funded by Mexico.
WorldAssociated PressUS military identifies 5 dead in warplanes crash off Japan
The U.S. military has identified five Marines who were declared dead after their refueling plane collided with a fighter jet last week off Japan's southern coast. Search and recovery operations have ended after finding only one survivor, who was aboard the fighter jet. The five crew members identified Wednesday were on a KC-130 Hercules refueling aircraft that collided with an F/A-18 Hornet during regular training.
WorldReutersPolice hunt across eastern France for Strasbourg Christmas market attacker
Police searched through eastern France on Wednesday for a man suspected of killing at least two people in a gun attack on a Christmas market in Strasbourg and who was known to have been religiously radicalized while in jail. Witnesses told investigators the assailant cried out "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greater) as he launched his attack on the market, the Paris prosecutor said. The prosecutor, Remy Heitz, also suggested the suspect may have chosen his target for its religious symbolism.
WorldReutersGunman kills three people in French Christmas market, flees
Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said the shooter had evaded a police dragnet and was on the run, raising concerns of a follow-up attack. "The government has raised its security threat to the highest level and is bolstering border controls," Castaner told a late-night news conference. "We will also reinforce security at all Christmas markets to prevent copycat attacks." With France still on high alert after a wave of attacks commissioned or inspired by Islamic State militants since early 2015, the counter-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation.
- WorldThe National Interest
The Sources of Iranian Conduct
The Trump administration’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran so far shows no sign of inducing any desirable change in Iranian policy. The administration has given the Iranian regime no realistic proposition to which it could say “yes” even if it were so inclined, instead issuing a list of broad and unrealistic demands that would amount to Iran rolling over and playing dead. The sanctions the administration has imposed—unlike those that preceded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the multilateral nuclear agreement on which the administration has unilaterally reneged—lack international support, and they hurt the Iranian people more than they hurt hardline elements in the regime.
- PoliticsUSA TODAY
Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams, narrowly defeated in race for governor, says she will 'certainly' run again
ATLANTA – Stacey Abrams, the charismatic Georgia Democrat who came up short last month in her bid to become the first black woman governor in the nation, plans to run again for office – perhaps as soon as 2020. Abrams, Georgia's former House minority leader, attracted national attention, endorsements and money this year with a progressive campaign that energized new voters in the deep red state. The Yale-trained lawyer won the most votes of any Democratic candidate in Georgia history, but lost the bitterly fought election to Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp by 1.39 percentage points.
- U.S.KSWB - San Diego
Raw Sewage Spill in Mexico Floods Southern California Beaches
A sewage spill has sent millions of gallons of raw sewage flowing into the Tijuana River.
WorldAssociated PressJailed former Venezuela oil minister dies in state custody
Nelson Martinez, the jailed former head of Venezuela's state-run oil giant PDVSA who was arrested last year as part of anti-corruption purge, died in state custody Wednesday, authorities said. The chief prosecutor's office said Martinez suffered from a serious and chronic illness that led to his death at a medical facility where he was undergoing treatment. The death is likely to focus attention on the conditions in which authorities are holding key opponents and former government officials.
- WorldBloomberg
Modi's Terrible 24 Hours Boosts India Opponents Before 2019 Vote
The results reveal the declining political stock of Narendra Modi going into the national elections,” said Katharine Adeney, director of University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute. The opposition will be heralding this as a significant victory, but these results are as much a negative vote against the BJP’s failure to deliver on their economic promises and alleviate rural poverty. The results in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh make Modi look more vulnerable ahead of the federal poll next year, while the central bank governor’s exit gives ammunition to opponents who accuse him of weakening institutions that check the government.
- NewsHuffPost
Middle School Student Dumps Trump From His Name After Relentless Bullying
A middle school student in Delaware has been allowed to change his surname after enduring relentless bullying from his peers. Joshua Trump, who is not related to President Donald Trump, will now be known at school as Joshua Berto after dropping his mother’s surname for his father’s. The 11-year-old’s parents told ABC affiliate WPVI that the bullying of their son had been relentless and first started when Donald Trump began his presidential campaign.
NewsAssociated PressAlaska moose poacher fined $100,000, sentenced to jail
An Alaska man who poached three moose and left most of the meat to rot has been sentenced to nine months in jail and fined more than $100,000. Rusty Counts, 39, of Anchor Point, shot the moose near his community over two weeks in September. He pleaded guilty Nov. 6 to 21 misdemeanor wildlife counts and violations, including wanton waste, exceeding bag limits and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
- BusinessAutoClassics
Irish police home in on classic car scam with four arrests
img class="editorial" src="http://media.zenfs.com/en-US/homerun/autoclassics_668/f4e831bbec8c6705350e26645e35ad64"/ It’s not just modern cars that are stolen by society’s ill-mannered heavies. The theft of older vehicles remains far from uncommon, with custodians of classic cars having to endure no-end of insurance rate hikes and scaremongering from flailing specialist media. Thugs are rarely caught, but a breakthrough in County Limerick, Ireland has caught four men red handed.
WorldReutersGunman kills at least two in French Christmas market and flees
With France still on high alert after a wave of attacks commissioned or inspired by Islamic State militants since early 2015, the counter-terrorism prosecutor opened an investigation. Amid fast-moving, confusing scenes it was not clear if the suspect, identified by police as Strasbourg-born Chekatt Cherif, 29, had been cornered by commandos or had slipped the dragnet. "There was confusion initially but they locked the front doors pretty soon after the gunshots," said U.S. citizen Elizabeth Osterwisch, who was sheltering on the top floor of the Galeries Lafayette department store.
WorldAFPYemen peace talks in Sweden go down to the wire
Talks between Yemen's government and Huthi insurgents focused on the country's main airport and port went down to the wire Wednesday with just hours left in negotiations. Taiz, the southwestern city controlled by the government and surrounded by the rebels, is no longer under discussion at the talks, scheduled to close on Thursday. Intense talks, however, were continuing on Sanaa airport, shut down for years in the war between the Saudi-backed government and northern rebels linked to Iran.
LifestyleUSA TODAYHoliday tipping: Here's who you should include and how much you should give them
All of those parcels have presented her with one dilemma that she took to social media to solve: "How much should you tip your mail carriers for the holidays?" she posted on Facebook. It's a common question during the festive season.
- PoliticsABC News Videos
Michael Flynn asks judge to spare prison sentence
President Trump's former national security adviser, asked a judge to spare him a prison sentence after cooperating for more than a year with the special counsel's office.
