A group of House Democrats is mounting a renewed push to strip J. Edgar Hoover's name off the FBI headquarters in the wake of a powerful new film that highlights one of the bureau's worst abuses under his leadership: a secret, decades-long program known as COINTELPRO that was aimed at discrediting civil rights activists, and which ultimately led to the 1969 killing by law enforcement of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. “You take a poll and I would bet 90 percent of the society has no clue what COINTELPRO was,” said Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, who, along with 22 co-sponsors, has reintroduced a bill to remove the longtime FBI director's name from the bureau's headquarters building in Washington, D.C. “This is an ugly part of our past that is not well known.”
Three Palestinian fishermen were killed on Sunday when their boat exploded off the Gaza Strip, a blast that a human rights group said was likely caused by errant Palestinian rocket fire. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights said the boat was two miles offshore when the shell hit and "completely destroyed it". "The center condemns the incident, which indications suggest mostly likely occurred as a result of resistance training," said the statement, referring to Palestinian militant groups.
Now the measure, in all likelihood, will go to the Senate to die. Under the rules of the 100-member Senate, it takes 60 votes to end debate and move most bills to a vote. A filibuster used to mean a senator actually had to stand and speechify, refusing to give up the floor and thus keeping a bill from coming to a vote.
A suspected missile strike on an oil-loading facility used by Turkey-backed opposition forces in northern Syria sparked a massive blaze across a large area where oil tankers are normally parked, aerial and satellite images show. Syrian opposition groups and at least one war monitor blamed Russia for the strike Friday night near the towns of Jarablus and al-Bab, near the border with Turkey. In a report, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said Russian warships in the Mediterranean had fired three missiles that struck primitive oil refineries and tanker trucks in the region.
Austrian authorities have suspended inoculations with a batch of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine as a precaution while investigating the death of one person and the illness of another after the shots, a health agency said on Sunday. "The Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) has received two reports in a temporal connection with a vaccination from the same batch of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the district clinic of Zwettl" in Lower Austria province, it said. One 49-year-old woman died as a result of severe coagulation disorders, while a 35-year-old woman developed a pulmonary embolism and is recovering, it said.
An official from Aung San Suu Kyi's party has died in custody in Myanmar after being arrested during raids by security forces in Yangon. On Sunday the body of U Khin Maung Latt was released to his family, who were reportedly told that he had died after fainting. The UN says more than 50 people have been killed since the military detained Ms Suu Kyi, Myanmar's democratically elected leader, on 1 February.
Authorities in Indian-controlled Kashmir have sent at least 168 Rohingya refugees to a holding center, police said Sunday, in a process that they say is for the deportation of thousands of the refugees living in the region. The move began Saturday following a directive from the region's home department to identify Rohingya living in the southern city of Jammu, said Inspector-General Mukesh Singh. “All of them are illegally living here and we have begun identifying them,” Singh said.
A Trump appointee arrested on Capitol riot charges has appealed to a judge over his sleeping arrangements, asking if he could stay somewhere “I don't have cockroaches crawling over me”. Former State Department aide Federico Klein, 42, was arrested on Thursday. According toThe New York Times, the charges included obstructing Congress and law enforcement, unlawful entry, violent and disorderly conduct, and assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon.
Centrist Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, a pivotal vote in the U.S. Senate, on Sunday advocated making the procedural maneuver called the filibuster more "painful" to do, with Democrats concerned about Republicans obstructing President Joe Biden's legislative agenda. Some Democrats have advocated eliminating the filibuster to prevent Republicans from blocking Biden's initiatives. White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield made clear on Sunday that the president is not calling for ending the filibuster.
Russia's boast in August that it was the first country to authorize a coronavirus vaccine led to skepticism at the time because of its insufficient testing. Six months later, as demand for the Sputnik V vaccine grows, experts are raising questions again — this time, over whether Moscow can keep up with all the orders from the countries that want it. Slovakia got 200,000 doses on March 1, even though the European Medicines Agency, the European Union's pharmaceutical regulator, only began reviewing its use on Thursday in an expedited process.
Sri Lankan Roman Catholics attended Mass dressed in black on Sunday, with prayers and protests calling for justice for those killed in coordinated suicide bomb attacks on Easter Sunday two years ago. Church bells tolled and prayers were chanted at 8:45 a.m., the time when bombs were detonated almost simultaneously at two Roman Catholic churches and a Protestant church during Easter services on April 21, 2019. More than 260 people, including 171 from the two Catholic churches, were killed in the attacks, which were blamed on two local Islamic extremist groups that had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.
When lawyers asked Donald Trump more than a decade ago to identify who estimated values on some of his signature properties, he pointed to his longtime accountant, Allen Weisselberg.
An estimated 4,300 people received less of the Pfizer vaccine than they should have, KTVU reported. Too little of the vaccine was administered due to a problem with new syringes, the media outlet said. California health officials have said patients will be informed "immediately" if they need a booster.
French billionaire Olivier Dassault was killed on Sunday in a helicopter crash, a police source said, with President Emmanuel Macron paying tribute to the 69-year old conservative politician. Dassault was the eldest son of late French billionaire industrialist Serge Dassault, whose namesake Dassault Aviation, builds the Rafale war planes and owns Le Figaro newspaper. "Olivier Dassault loved France.
A pair of B-52 bombers flew over the Mideast on Sunday, the latest such mission in the region aimed at warning Iran amid tensions between Washington and Tehran. The flight by the two heavy bombers came as a pro-Iran satellite channel based in Beirut broadcast Iranian military drone footage of an Israeli ship hit by a mysterious explosion only days earlier in the Mideast. While the channel sought to say Iran wasn't involved, Israel has blamed Tehran for what it described as an attack on the vessel.
Human rights groups called on the Philippine government to investigate what they said was the use of "lethal force" during police raids on Sunday that left at least nine activists dead. The raids in four provinces south of Manila resulted in the death of an environmental activist as well as a coordinator of left-wing group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, among others, and resulted in the arrest of four others, activist groups said. "These raids appear to be part of a coordinated plan by the authorities to raid, arrest, and even kill activists in their homes and offices," Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said in a statement.
The youngest suspect charged in the Capitol riots wrote a letter begging a judge to release him. Bruno Joseph Cua, 18, previously boasted on Instagram of storming the Capitol and fighting inside. Bruno Joseph Cua, 18, faces a slew of federal charges related to the January 6 insurrection, including assault on a federal officer, engaging in physical violence, violent entry or disorderly conduct, and civil disorder.
Dubai's airport, the world's busiest for international travel, can already feel surreal, with its cavernous duty-free stores, artificial palm trees, gleaming terminals, water cascades and near-Arctic levels of air conditioning. It's the latest artificial intelligence program the United Arab Emirates has launched amid the surging coronavirus pandemic, contact-less technology the government promotes as helping to stem the spread of the virus. Dubai's airport started offering the program to all passengers last month.
A new executive order from President Joe Biden directs federal agencies to take a series of steps to promote voting access, a move that comes as congressional Democrats press for a sweeping voting and elections bill to counter efforts to restrict voting access. His plan was announced during a recorded address on the 56th commemoration of “Bloody Sunday,” the 1965 incident in which some 600 civil rights activists were viciously beaten by state troopers as they tried to march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama. Every eligible voter should be able to vote and have it counted,” Biden said in his remarks to Sunday's Martin and Coretta King Unity Breakfast before signing the order.
Yemen's Houthi forces fired drones and missiles at the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry on Sunday, including a Saudi Aramco facility at Ras Tanura vital to petroleum exports, in what Riyadh called a failed assault on global energy security. Announcing the attacks, the Houthis, who have been battling a Saudi-led coalition for six years, also said they attacked military targets in the Saudi cities of Dammam, Asir and Jazan. The Saudi energy ministry said an oil storage yard at Ras Tanura, the site of an oil refinery and the world's biggest offshore oil loading facility, was attacked with a drone coming from the sea.
The Duke of Sussex is determined to stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother at the unveiling of a statue of their mother Diana, Princess of Wales, whatever the fallout from his interview with Oprah Winfrey. Prince Harry hopes that the brothers can present a united front at Kensington Palace on July 1, which would have been the Princess's 60th birthday, in an attempt to move past their rift. A source close to Prince Harry insisted that whatever had been said and done, he desperately hoped to attend the event and considered it a priority.
Israel reopened most of its economy Sunday as it removed many of its remaining coronavirus lockdown restrictions, lifted by its successful vaccination campaign and giving a boost to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's re-election hopes. The easing of restrictions comes after months of government-imposed shutdowns and less than three weeks before the country's fourth parliamentary elections in two years. Israel, a world leader in vaccinations per capita, has fully immunized nearly 40% of its population in just over two months.
Scores of Libyan parliament members from both sides of the divided country arrived in the frontline city of Sirte on Sunday for a session this week to debate a proposed unity government. The parliament has been split - as have most state institutions - since soon after it was elected in 2014, as Libya broke between warring factions in the east and west. It is meeting this week to debate giving confidence to a government announced by Abdulhamid Dbeibeh, who was designated as prime minister last month through a political dialogue held in Geneva by the United Nations.
A family is suing a grocery clerk after she posted allegations about their roles in the Capitol riots. Katheryn and Thelma Cagle had helped organize buses from Georgia to DC, according to the Washington Post. Grocery clerk Rayven Goolsby confronted them on Facebook after seeing videos of them at the rally.
The Saudi-led coalition fighting Iran-backed rebels in Yemen said Sunday that it had launched a new air campaign on the country's capital and other provinces, in retaliation for a series of missile and drone strikes targeting key military and oil facilities across Saudi Arabia. “The targeting of civilians and civilian facilities is a red line,” Col. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the coalition, was quoted as saying by the official Saudi Press Agency. It was the first time in months that Sanaa was bombed by Saudi warplanes, an escalation that comes as the kingdom grapples with a major increase in cross-border strikes on its own infrastructure, including an attack on a major offshore oil loading facility late Sunday.
“Taking humans to Mars would require an investment astronomically out of kilter with the possible benefits.”
“Can a Mars settlement be a freer society than we enjoy on Earth? Maybe.”
“What we learn...may spark the next revolution that will make life in 2071 beyond anything we can imagine right now.”
“Our presence on Mars could jeopardize one of our main reasons for being there — the search for life.”
“The future of geologic investigation of other worlds lies with highly improved versions of our Mars rovers.”