Conservative group known for hardball tactics leads charge in Kavanaugh defense

A conservative group that has aided the confirmation of President Trump's judicial nominees is now leading the Republican Party's charge against the most recent allegation of sexual assault against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. On Sunday afternoon, the Article III Project, led by Mike Davis, a key attorney in shepherding Kavanaugh's confirmation, sent talking points to the White House. He also sent the memo to key congressional offices and a number of outside GOP groups in an effort to discredit reporting from the New York Times alleging that, while at Yale, classmate Max Stier witnessed Kavanaugh “push his penis into the hand of” a female student.

• 
  Another classmate accuses Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct, reigniting calls for impeachment

  Meredith Videos
• 
  New Kavanaugh allegation unlikely to prompt impeachment

  Associated Press

'A war zone': Propane explosion kills firefighter, injures 8 others, levels building in Maine

A firefighter was killed and eight people were injured Monday when a powerful propane explosion destroyed a new building in Farmington, Maine. Fire crews were responding to a call reporting the smell of gas in the building, which was evacuated, Farmington Town Selectman Scott Landry said. The blast had such force that only debris remained from the two-story building, which housed a nonprofit group called LEAP that serves people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities.

• 
  Blast in Maine kills firefighter, levels special-needs

  ABC News Videos
• 
  Propane explosion in Maine kills firefighter, injures 6 others

  Yahoo News Video

Iran charges three detained Australians with spying

Iran has charged three detained Australians with spying, a judiciary spokesman said on Tuesday, after the reported arrest of a travel-blogging couple and an academic. Two of the Australians were alleged to have used a drone to take pictures of military sites, while a third was accused of spying for another country, spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili told reporters. It was the first official confirmation that Australians have been detained in Iran after the families of three of them said last week they had been arrested in the Islamic republic.

20 dead as truck falls off cliff in southern Philippines

Twenty villagers were killed and 14 others were injured when the truck they were riding in lost control and fell off a cliff Tuesday in a remote mountain village in the southern Philippines, police and the Red Cross said. Provincial police chief Joel Limson said the truck was negotiating a downhill road in Tboli town in South Cotabato province when its brakes apparently failed and plummeted down a ravine, pinning 15 people to death. Police, Red Cross volunteers and villagers retrieved the 15 bodies from the wreckage at the bottom of the ravine.

A flight in India was delayed when a swarm of angry bees covered the cockpit window and attacked staff who tried to remove them

A domestic flight in India was delayed by two hours after a swarm of bees settled on the cockpit window, obscuring pilots' vision and attacking staff who tried to remove them. The Air India flight was about to take off when the bees landed on the window. Staff tried fruitlessly to shoo them away and disperse them with the aircraft's windscreen wipers before calling the fire brigade.

• 
  Swarm of angry bees attach themselves to plane windshield delaying flight for two hours

  The Independent
• 
  Air India flight delayed after swarm of bees lands on cockpit window

  The Telegraph

Netanyahu's Dangerous Accusations of Anti-Semitism Against HBO Show 'Our Boys'

In the midst of his reelection campaign, fighting to maintain a lead in the polls, the Israeli prime minister has found a new rival to defeat: a TV drama. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged a boycott of the “fake” Channel 12 and HBO production Our Boys, calling the series anti-Semitic. Israeli right wing fury against Our Boys has been partly because of its emphasis on the death of a Palestinian boy, while the Israeli victims are mentioned but not as prominently onscreen.

• 
  Benjamin Netanyahu's fate uncertain after exit polls show no clear winner in Israel vote

  USA TODAY
• 
  Into the Unknown for Israel as Netanyahu’s Election Gamble Fails

  Bloomberg

Best Bar Tools for Your Home Bar

Be sure to stock up. From Popular Mechanics

Andrew Yang gets why Donald Trump won. He won't be president but he deserves attention.

So I'm not writing this to suggest that the political oddsmakers should be taking Yang's dark-horse candidacy more seriously, or that Yang would be getting more respect if the average Democratic voter were as farsighted as he is. Automating away millions of jobs I simply want to acknowledge that he is the only candidate talking about an issue that seems likely to loom larger in presidential campaigns to come, and suggest that critics who scoff at his signature proposal for a universal basic income may feel compelled to examine it more closely in the decade ahead — especially if Yang's forecast of an artificial intelligence-induced tsunami of unemployment proves prescient.

• 
  Andrew Yang says Freedom Dividend is "catching on like wildfire"

  CBS News Videos
• 
  At Philadelphia rally, Andrew Yang casts himself as underdog

  Associated Press

French boy, 10, dies 8 years after supermarket burger poisoning

A French boy aged 10, who fell gravely ill in 2011 after consuming a beef burger from supermarket discounter Lidl that was infected with E.coli bacteria, has died of complications stemming from his poisoning, the family's lawyer said. The boy, Nolan, died on Saturday "as a consequence of his poisoning", the family's lawyer Florence Rault told AFP on Sunday. Lidl's French arm said in a tweet on Monday: "We share the pain of Nolan's family and will seek to assure our support during their suffering."

• 
  10-year-old dies after being sickened by supermarket burger: 'His limbs became deformed'

  AOL.com
• 
  Ten-year-old boy dies after eating contaminated burger patty from Lidl

  The Independent

What Were the Mach 10 UFOs That Iran's Jets Encountered?

Key point: Iran has encountered really strange flying objects that might be an unknown, secret American spy plane. Iran is the only other country besides the United States to operate arguably history's most powerful interceptor aircraft, the F-14 Tomcat. The F-14s played a major role in Iran's war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988.

20 arrested, 18 charged in Minneapolis beatings

Minneapolis police chief, assault victim talk to Fox News about arrests in downtown beatings; Matt Finn reports.

Sheriff indicted for plotting to kill deputy who had tape of his 'racially offensive' remarks

A North Carolina sheriff has been indicted for allegedly plotting to kill one of his deputies after learning the man had a tape of him making "racially offensive" comments. Granville County Sheriff Brindell Wilkins was indicted Monday on two counts of felony obstruction of justice for withholding knowledge of a credible threat made against Joshua Freeman and failing to take appropriate law enforcement action. The indictment came after a ten month investigation by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation and the FBI, according to a release from Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman.

In leaderless Hong Kong movement, Joshua Wong just 1 voice

Overseas, Joshua Wong has emerged as a prominent face of Hong Kong's months-long protests for full democracy. While not diminishing the importance of that role, other protesters say Wong does not speak for what is purposefully a leaderless movement. "Not that nobody cares about what he says, but it's just that Joshua Wong alone cannot represent the whole of Hong Kong," said Sean Au, a 17-year-old student.

• 
  Hong Kong protests: PR firms refuse to help restore city’s image

  The Independent
• 
  Train Passengers Walk to Station After Derailment in Hong Kong

  Storyful

Book Review: Justice Neil Gorsuch’s A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Just over 30 years ago, President Ronald Reagan nominated a former Yale law professor, then serving as a D.C. Circuit judge, to the Supreme Court. The nominee's constructive criticism of the mainstream of legal analysis was its failure to show allegiance to the actual language of the Constitution. “I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools.

Putin Loses Legendary Approval-Rating Crown to His New Neighbor

Vladimir Putin takes great pride in his sky-high approval rating. While pushing a raft of popular reforms, Zelenskiy, 41, remains in his honeymoon period, while cries he's too close to a local billionaire grow louder. The 66-year-old Putin, meanwhile, is approaching two decades as Russia's leader.

Exclusive: Russia carried out a 'stunning' breach of FBI communications system, escalating the spy game on U.S. soil

On Dec. 29, 2016, the Obama administration announced that it was giving nearly three dozen Russian diplomats just 72 hours to leave the United States and was seizing two rural East Coast estates owned by the Russian government. The Obama administration's public rationale for the expulsions and closures — the harshest U.S. diplomatic reprisals taken against Russia in several decades — was to retaliate for Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Both compounds, and at least some of the expelled diplomats, played key roles in a brazen Russian counterintelligence operation that stretched from the Bay Area to the heart of the nation's capital, according to former U.S. officials.

• 
  Russia reportedly breached encrypted FBI comms in 2010

  Engadget
• 
  Exclusive: Russia carried out a breach of FBI communications system

  Yahoo News Video

Earth warming more quickly than thought, new climate models show

Greenhouse gases thrust into the atmosphere mainly by burning fossil fuels are warming Earth's surface more quickly than previously understood, according to new climate models set to replace those used in current UN projections, scientists said Tuesday. The new calculations also suggest that the Paris Agreement goals of capping global warming at "well below" two degrees, and 1.5C if possible, will be challenging at best, the scientists said. "With our two models, we see that the scenario known as SSP1 2.6 -- which normally allows us to stay under 2C -- doesn't quite get us there," Olivier Boucher, head of the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace Climate Modelling Centre in Paris, told AFP.

• 
  Suddenly, TV News Is Warming Up to Climate Change

  Variety
• 
  New models show that the earth is warming faster than first thought

  Engadget

The Story of the 160 Victories Scored by Iran's F-14 Tomcats

Departing from 8th [Tactical Fighter Base] Isfahan as Dragon 5 flight piloted by then-major Amir Aslani to perform the day's [combat air patrol] over oil facilities near Kharg Island, we were vectored by ground based radar controllers to sweep the skies in anticipation of enemy intruders,” Moradi told Ryan. From the book: Most of the time our combat air patrols were done within the distinct shapes of parallel triangles. The base of the triangle was towards our own soil, while the two other arms of the triangle faced the enemy territory.

Boy Scout leader sang naked in front of kids, and organization failed to investigate: Lawsuit

A Boy Scout leader who was accused of singing naked in front of several young boys was not investigated by his troop despite multiple complaints, according to NBC News. Michael Kelsey, who in 2016 was found guilty of first-degree sexual abuse for molesting two children in his Boy Scout troop, was accused of misconduct long before his conviction, according to a $320 million civil lawsuit filed in March 2017. The ongoing lawsuit — which has emerged with new information thanks to interviews with the plaintiffs by NBC News— details a number of troubling accusations against Kelsey, who was an assistant scoutmaster in Troop 95 of Fishkill, NY.

Blaming shelters and street sleeping, Donald Trump blasts California for homeless crisis

LOS ANGELES – Taking direct aim at California, a new report from President Donald Trump's administration says homelessness could be dramatically reduced by slashing restrictions on housing construction and being less tolerant of people sleeping on the streets. The Council of Economic Advisers' report was released as Trump takes a two-day swing through California for speeches and fundraising, while taking aim at liberal policies on homelessness. We can't let Los Angeles, San Francisco and numerous other cities destroy themselves by allowing what's happening,” Trump told reporters Tuesday aboard Air Force One.

• 
  Trump Says Homeless Californians Are Ruining Cities' 'Prestige'

  HuffPost
• 
  Trump administration exploring police crackdown on homeless people

  The Guardian

Belgian F-16s scrambled to intercept 2 Russian nuclear-capable supersonic bombers over the Baltic Sea

The Belgian Air Force is policing Baltic airspace as of September 3; on Tuesday, it intercepted two Russian Tu-160 Blackjack supersonic, nuclear-capable bombers. Belgium took over the Baltic policing mission from Hungary which, along with Spain and the UK, was policing Baltic airspace when Russian Su-30 Flanker fighters flew near Baltic airspace twice over two days in June. US and UK aircraft have been sending clear messages to Russia — US B-2 Spirit stealth bombers flew their first missions in the Arctic earlier in September, and the B-2s flew with non-US F-35s for the first time in August.