- BusinessBloomberg
China Warns About ‘Unwavering Resolve’ to Fight U.S. ‘Bullying’
Trump upped the ante in his trade dispute with China last week, announcing moves to curb Huawei’s business that are starting to have ramifications for other companies around the world. "This is wrong behavior, so there will be a necessary response," Zhang Ming, China’s envoy to the EU, said in an interview in Brussels on Monday.
- NewsUSA TODAY
'Nowhere for the water to go': Tornadoes, floods hit central US day after 20 tornadoes
A tornado tore through a neighborhood near Tulsa International Airport on Tuesday as a powerful storm triggered flash flooding and washed out roads across parts of Oklahoma.
PoliticsReutersOcasio-Cortez says it is time to open impeachment inquiry against Trump
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has so far resisted calls for Democrats to launch impeachment proceedings, instead backing continued investigations of Trump and his administration by numerous congressional panels instead. "I think it’s time for us to, at the very least, open an impeachment inquiry ... we’ve been given no choice I think, in this scenario," Ocasio-Cortez said outside the House of Representatives. The report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller stopped short of declaring that the president obstructed justice, but it also did not exonerate him.
WorldAFPEiffel Tower climber 'admitted to psychiatric unit'
A man, believed to be Russian, who sparked a mass evacuation of the Eiffel Tower by scaling the iconic Paris landmark has been admitted to a psychiatric unit, legal sources said Tuesday. The man caused chaos Monday and the closure of the monument to tourists by spending six hours clinging to the outer metal framework of the Eiffel Tower. An investigation has been opened for unauthorised entry into a cultural monument, a judicial source said.
- Lifestylemotorious
Is It Cheaper To Buy A 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback From Britain?
This immaculate 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback is estimated to sell at British auction for $95K. It’s hard not to whisper Steve McQueen’s name when presented with a Ford Mustang 390 GT Fastback, even if it isn't a 1968 model. The American classifieds may provide evidence of eye-watering sums being traded for healthy Fastback specimens, but it’s not always the case in Great Britain.
- U.S.KABC – Los Angeles
Baby cut from teen mother's womb in Chicago opens eyes for the first time while being held by dad
Marlen Ochoa Lopez's baby has opened his eyes for the first time since being cut out of the 19-year-old's womb in Chicago.
- NewsAssociated Press
The Latest: Capital murder charge filed in police shooting
AUBURN, Ala. (AP) — The Latest on shootings of police officers in Auburn, Alabama (all times local):
NewsUSA TODAYGuatemalan teen dies at Border Patrol station, 5th minor to die in US custody in 6 months
Customs and Border Protection said the 16-year-old from Guatemala was found unresponsive during a welfare check in the Rio Grande Valley.
- BusinessThe National Interest
Huawei to the Danger Zone: Chinese Telecommunications Company Threatens Britain's National Security
The news that the United States has put Huawei on the Entities List comes as the Henry Jackson Society publishes a report on the prospect of including Huawei into the United Kingdom’s build of 5G. I coauthored this report alongside Member of Parliament Bob Seely and Professor Peter Varnish. My job was to look into claims around Huawei’s place within China’s foreign-policy strategy. We have all seen claims around it being too close to the PLA or China’s security services, but were they actually true? Were these claims just an overly-protectionist America seeking to discredit a successful Chinese tech competitor to Apple and Silicon Valley? This whole discussion took place in the wake of a UK National Security Council meeting in late April, during which time—if the Telegraph newspaper is to believed—the council decided that Huawei could take part in a limited part of the UK’s 5G network.Our findings were absolutely clear: Huawei was constrained, influenced and directed by the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese state in a multiplicity of ways.Economic Direction
- PoliticsBloomberg
Trump’s Defiance Fuels Impeachment Push as McGahn Skips Hearing
It’s a dilemma that only grew more pressing on Tuesday, when former White House Counsel Don McGahn defied a congressional subpoena by declining to testify before the House Judiciary Committee at the direction of the White House. The impeachment process would strengthen Democrats’ legal case for enforcing subpoenas, but it would open them to political attacks from Republicans who already say they are rushing toward a predetermined outcome -- and one that would be rejected in the GOP-controlled Senate. The White House has been goading Democrats into opening an impeachment proceeding by fighting many of the current subpoenas on the grounds they’re not related to a clear legislative purpose.
- WorldThe National Interest
China's Navy Is Growing So Fast Its Running Out of Names For Its Warships
China’s navy has a new problem: not enough names for its rapidly growing fleet of warships.“China is running out of provincial capitals to name new destroyers, and it might have to turn to other big domestic cities, which reflects the country's rapid naval development in recent years,” according to Chinese newspaper Global Times.The People’s Liberation Army Navy recently named its first Type 055 destroyer the Nanchang, which is the capital city of East China's Jiangxi Province.One of the three other Type 055 destroyers will be named Lhasa, the capital of Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region, according to Chinese media. That just leaves Nanning and Taipei as the names of provincial capitals for destroyers (Taipei is Taiwan’s capital, though Taiwan has not yet declared independence as a separate nation from China).Which means non-capital cities will have to bequeath their names to Chinese destroyers. The latest destroyer is named Qiqihar, which is a non-capital city in in Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. A few ships have been named after major cities, such as the Shenzen, a Type 051 destroyer.“Chinese destroyers and frigates should be named after big and medium Chinese cities, according to the naval vessels naming regulation,” Global Times said. “This means naming of destroyers does not necessarily have to use provincial capitals, as it was a non-binding tradition.”
- WorldThe Telegraph
Ukraine's Zelenskiy calls early elections as he disbands parliament in first act as president
Ukraine’s new president dismissed parliament and called a snap election just moments after being sworn into office on Monday. Volodymyr Zelensky, whose Servant of People party has no representation in the current parliament, also used his inaugural address to promise an end to the war in the east of the country and asked MPs to fire several key officials including the current defence minister. “All my life I tried to do all I could so that Ukrainians laughed,” Mr Zelensky, a television comedian, told MPs during a ceremony in the parliament in Kiev. “Now I will do all I can so that Ukrainians at least do not cry any more.” Mr Zelensky, 41, won the presidency last month with a landslide run-off victory against incumbent Petro Poroshenko, who had been in power since 2014. He had no prior political experience, and he was mostly known for his role in a television comedy ‘Servant of the People’, in which he played a school teacher who accidentally becomes president of Ukraine after ranting against corruption. He named his party after the TV show. Zelenskiy greets his supporters as he walks to take the oath of office ahead of his inauguration ceremony Credit: REUTERS Critics say he has given few specific details about his plans for presidency and have questioned his links to Ihor Kolomoisky, a billionaire oligarch who had fallen out with the previous government. On Monday he dispensed with the traditional motorcade and arrived at the parliament building on foot, he stopping to pose for selfies and high-five his cheering supporters who gathered outside. Inside, he delivered a punchy and at times confrontational speech in which he said his priority would be ending the war, which has claimed at least 13,000 lives since Russia sent troops across the border to support a separatist uprising in 2014. "I'm ready to do everything so that our heroes don't die there," he said. "I'm ready to lose my popularly and, if necessary, I'm ready to lose my post so that we have peace," he said. He said he would begin by demanding Russia release Ukrainian prisoners. When one MP heckled for switching from Ukrainian into Russian in an appeal to residents in the east, he snapped back: "Thank you for continuing to divide our people". He also spoke against a deep-rooted culture of corruption among the government officials, saying politicians themselves had created “the opportunities to bribe, steal and pluck the resources.” He suggested the MPs should lift their own right to immunity from prosecution and demanding the dismissal the defense minister, the head of the Security Service, and the prosecutor general. The next elections for the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s single-house parliament, were scheduled to take place in October. Mr Zelensky said they would be brought forward to July. The move appears designed to help his party win a majority of seats before the surge of popularity on which he rode to office dissipates. In a symbolic move Volodymyr Groysman, the current prime minister, said he would resign Wednesday, inviting Mr Zelenskiy to take full responsibility for the country. If parliament accepts his resignation, he will remain as a caretaker prime minister until the snap election. Russian media reported that no officials were invited to the ceremony from Moscow. The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin would not congratulate Mr Zelensky on his electoral victory until there was progress in ending the war.
- LifestylePopular Mechanics
9 Cool Things We Learned Driving the Spectre Land Rover Defender
Created by the custom shop Himalaya, this Defender is a Land Rover like you've never seen before-complete with a Chevy V8 and a Jeep steering box.From Popular Mechanics
NewsAFPAlabama rape victim speaks out against anti-abortion bill
After being raped by a co-worker two years ago, Samantha Blakely had an abortion. The 25-year-old Blakely is among women speaking out after the conservative southern US state adopted the toughest anti-abortion legislation in the country. The Alabama bill, which takes effect in November unless it is blocked in the courts, places a near-total ban on ending a pregnancy, even in cases of rape and incest.
- BusinessReuters
UPDATE 2-French widow sues Boeing for at least $276 mln over Ethiopian crash
A French woman whose husband died in the crash of a Boeing 737 MAX airliner in Ethiopia has filed a U.S. lawsuit against the planemaker, seeking at least $276 million in damages. The crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 in March killed all 157 passengers and crew aboard and followed the death in October of 189 people on a Lion Air 737 MAX which plunged into the ocean off Indonesia in similar circumstances. Dozens of families have sued Boeing over the Lion Air crash, and several lawsuits have been lodged over the Ethiopian crash near the capital Addis Ababa, which led airlines around the world to ground the Boeing 737 MAX.
- Lifestylemotorious
1967 Ford Mustang Fastback Restoration Is A Work Of Art
The Ford Mustang is an American automotive icon known the world over. Ford’s pony car is the four-wheeled embodiment of the American dream. Petty’s Garage is well-known for its work on modern Mustangs, enhancing their performance and producing limited edition special models.
NewsAssociated PressProsecutors: Agent called migrants savages before hitting 1
PHOENIX (AP) — A Border Patrol agent in Arizona sent texts calling immigrants "savages" and "subhuman" the month before using his patrol vehicle to knock over a Guatemalan man who was trying to flee, prosecutors say.
- PoliticsUSA TODAY
Trump says he doesn't want war with Iran. Is John Bolton driving the US into a conflict anyway?
The view that John Bolton is driving Trump into military confrontation with America's principal foe in the Middle East is spreading across the globe.
- PoliticsThe Guardian
Don McGahn defies subpoena as Trump clash with Congress intensifies
White House had blocked former counsel from testifyingHouse Democrats push leadership to impeach The former White House counsel Don McGahn had been summoned to appear before the House judiciary committee on Tuesday morning. Photograph: Chris Wattie/Reuters Democrats faced another brazen attempt by Donald Trump to stonewall their investigations on Tuesday, this time with former White House counsel Donald McGahn defying a subpoena to appear before Congress on orders from the White House. The House judiciary committee held a brief hearing on Tuesday morning in McGahn’s absence, with an empty chair where he was supposed to sit. Trump blocked McGahn from testifying before Congress about the special counsel’s report on Russian election interference, prompting sharp criticism and fresh threats of impeachment. The committee chairman, Jerry Nadler, said the House would hold the president accountable “one way or the other” and the committee was ready to hold McGahn in contempt. The committee will hear McGahn’s testimony, “even if we have to go to court”, Nadler said. McGahn’s move leaves the Democrats without yet another witness – and a fuelled growing debate within the party about how to respond. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, backed by Nadler, is taking a step-by-step approach to the confrontations with Trump. Democrats were encouraged by an early success on that route, as a federal judge ruled against Trump on Monday in a financial records dispute with Congress. The ranking Republican on the House judiciary committee, representative Doug Collins, said Democrats were “trying desperately to make something out of nothing”. In a legal opinion released on Monday, the justice department said lawmakers on Capitol Hill could not compel McGahn, who was subpoenaed by the House judiciary committee, to answer their questions under oath. “The Department of Justice has provided a legal opinion stating that, based on long-standing, bipartisan, and constitutional precedent, the former counsel to the president cannot be forced to give such testimony, and Mr McGahn has been directed to act accordingly,” the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, said in a statement. “This action has been taken in order to ensure that future presidents can effectively execute the responsibilities of the office of the presidency.” McGahn is a central figure in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, often standing in the way of Trump’s efforts to obstruct justice. According to investigators, McGahn threatened to resign when the president ordered him to have Mueller fired. McGahn was also dispatched by Trump to convince the former attorney general Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation. (Sessions did not heed the president’s demands.) Some members of the judiciary panel feel Pelosi should be more aggressive and launch impeachment hearings that would make it easier to get information from the administration. Such hearings would give Democrats more standing in court and could stop short of a vote to remove the president. The issue was raised in a meeting among top Democrats on Monday evening, where some members confronted Pelosi about opening up the impeachment hearings, according to three people familiar with the private conversation who requested anonymity to discuss it. The Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin made the case that launching an impeachment inquiry would consolidate the Trump investigations as Democrats try to keep focus on their other work, according to the people. Pelosi resisted, noting that several committees were doing investigations already and they had been successful in one court case. But the members, several of whom have spoken publicly about the need to be more aggressive with Trump, are increasingly impatient with the careful approach. Other Democrats in the meeting siding with Raskin included David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California and the freshman Colorado representative Joe Neguse. Just before the start of the meeting, Cicilline tweeted: “If Don McGahn does not testify tomorrow, it will be time to begin an impeachment inquiry of @realDonaldTrump.” In the hours after the discussion, Pelosi and Nadler met privately. Shortly after emerging from that meeting, Nadler said “it’s possible” when asked about impeachment hearings. But he noted that Democrats had won a court victory without having to take that step. “The president’s continuing lawless conduct is making it harder and harder to rule out impeachment or any other enforcement action,” Nadler said. McGahn’s refusal to testify is the latest of several moves to block Democratic investigations by Trump, who has said his administration will fight “all of the subpoenas”. The judiciary committee voted to hold the attorney general, William Barr, in contempt earlier this month after he declined to provide an unredacted version of the Mueller report. And the House intelligence committee is expected to take a vote on a separate “enforcement action” against the justice department this week after Barr declined a similar request from that panel. McGahn’s lawyer, William Burck, said in a letter to Nadler that McGahn was “conscious of the duties he, as an attorney, owes to his former client” and would decline to appear. Still, Burck encouraged the committee to negotiate a compromise with the White House, saying that his client “again finds himself facing contradictory instructions from two co-equal branches of government”.
- LifestyleCar and Driver
View Photos of the 2020 Land Rover Discovery Sport
The downsized Discovery looks better, has more luxury choices, and can be had as a hybrid.From Car and Driver
- BusinessThe National Interest
Could One of America's Allies Take Down the F-35 Program?
What does America need to save its troubled F-35 stealth fighter?Turkey, that’s what.Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan recently warned that the multinational F-35 program, of which Turkey is a member, would fail if Turkey were excluded. Turkey is facing sanctions, including being dropped from the F-35 program if it goes ahead with purchasing Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, which has raised Washington’s fears that F-35 secrets might be leaked to Russia. The U.S. has stopped shipping equipment to Turkey for that nation’s planned purchase of 100 F-35s, while the first two aircraft officially delivered to Turkey are still in the United States.For its part, Ankara is adamant that it has a right to purchase both American stealth fighters and Russian anti-aircraft missiles, despite the fact that the S-400 is one of the most likely Russian weapons to be used against the F-35. “We were surely not going to remain silent against our right to self-defense being disregarded and attempts to hit us where it hurts,” Erdogan said at a Turkish defense trade show. “This is the kind of process that is behind the S-400 agreement we reached with Russia.”“Nowadays, we are being subject to a similar injustice - or rather an imposition - on the F-35s ... Let me be frank: An F-35 project from which Turkey is excluded is bound to collapse completely.”
- NewsNational Review
Bernie Sanders Launches a Deeply Misguided Attack on Charter Schools
One of the great benefits of living life well outside the Beltway is that it’s easy to take my eyes off the swamp, look to the states surrounding me, and see places where politics actually function as they’re supposed to. I can even, occasionally, see those issues on which Democrats and Republicans might work together, united in common purpose, for the common good.Exhibit A: the charter-school movement. It’s granted an invaluable degree of educational choice to families who long lacked the flexibility that prosperous suburban and upper-middle-class parents take for granted, and its extraordinary growth is a bipartisan achievement.There are times when it seems like everyone likes charter schools. The Trump Department of Education has issued hundreds of millions of dollars in charter-school grants. The Obama administration invested in charter schools. As Newark mayor, Democrat Cory Booker “bet big” on charter schools, and athletes and celebrities have personally invested in their success, often with outstanding results.Of course, not every charter school is good. Not every charter school is a success. But if there has ever existed anything like a broad point of left–right agreement in the American education debate, it’s that charters represent a vital piece of the educational puzzle, an option that can and does transform students’ lives.So why did Bernie Sanders announce last week that, if elected president, he would declare war on charter schools? His poorly named Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education (after all, urban, nonwhite students are among the prime beneficiaries of charter-school choice) would “ban for-profit charter schools,” and “halt the use of public funds to underwrite new charter schools” until they complied with a series of federal conditions that would change their governance and facilitate their unionization (many charter-school faculties aren’t unionized). In so doing, it would remove many of the distinctive qualities that helped make charter schools truly competitive with conventional public schools.It’s tempting to explain the plan as little more than coalition politics, Sanders’s effort to cozy up to the teachers’ unions at the expense of student welfare. But that’s unfair. I know enough people in the greater Bernie orbit to know that they sincerely believe a unionized public-school monopoly in K–12 education represents the best chance for new generations of kids. They believe that, properly funded and led, such a system would facilitate academic achievement and social cohesion.But here’s the core problem: The interest in a collective solution to a series of individual educational challenges understates the reality that choice, by itself, is a vital value in a child’s education. And the power of choice cannot be measured by test scores alone, even though the best charter schools yield spectacular results.I think about my own parenting experience. Like many millions of American families who take their power over their kids’ education for granted, we enjoy multiple privileges a poor family doesn’t. We have the job flexibility to live in any number of places, and we can afford housing in a good school district. If we lived in a county or town with a struggling school district, we could afford modest private-school tuition. And back when we lived in Center City, Philadelphia — at a time when we couldn’t easily move and couldn’t afford private school — we were fortunate enough to win a lottery to put our oldest child in an outstanding charter elementary school.With each of the choices we’ve made for our kids’ education over the years, test scores were among the least important factors we considered. We wanted to know the culture of the school and the character of the teachers. We wondered about athletic opportunities. We were concerned with peer and parental influence. The school was going to play a part in raising our children, and a slight percentage change in a math or language test score was meaningless compared to our concern with the growth and development of their personal characters.The Sanders approach wouldn’t take away choice from parents like us. We could still find private schools. We could still move to better school districts. We could still home school. Charter schools exist in the suburbs and in rural America, but they haven’t had the same impact there that they’ve had in American cities. We’d barely feel the effects of the Sanders policy; its brunt would instead be borne by America’s most vulnerable families. Sanders’s plan tells those families that he knows what’s best for them, that his partners in the unions know how to build the schools they need better than they do.This is anything but equity. It’s anything but fairness. One of the enduring challenges of American public life is the sad reality that children face fundamentally different educational opportunities through the accident of birth. The existence of choice itself is a luxury. It’s a thing of immense value, and many millions of parents can’t even comprehend a life where they don’t have the true, final word over their child’s education.I’m writing these words as I fly to give a series of speeches in Texas sponsored by the Texas Charter Schools Association and the National Review Institute. I’ve been writing and speaking about school choice for much of my adult life. I’ve been litigating on its behalf for just as long. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the desire to choose what’s best for one’s own child crosses racial, religious, and partisan lines. It’s a broadly felt human need.Bernie Sanders makes his intentions crystal clear. In his plan, he writes, “We do not need two schools systems; we need to invest in our public schools system.” This is exactly wrong. One size does not fit all. Sanders looks at parents and declares that he knows best. Parents should look back at him and respond, quite simply: I know my child, and I want to shape his destiny. Your collective solutions cannot meet my family’s needs.Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article contained a reference to the success of LeBron James’s I Promise school in Akron, Ohio, as an example of celebrity support for charter schools. The I Promise School is not a charter but a nontraditional public school that operates within the Akron public-school system. We regret the error.
LifestyleAFP Relax NewsMountain region of Slovakia named best destination in Europe 2019: Lonely Planet
A wild, rugged, mountainous region of Slovakia dotted with plunging waterfalls and lakes and hiking trails has been named the top European destination of 2019 by the travel experts at Lonely Planet.
- BusinessReuters
Exclusive: Google suspends some business with Huawei after Trump blacklist - source
Holders of current Huawei smartphones with Google apps, however, will continue to be able to use and download app updates provided by Google, a Google spokesperson said, confirming earlier reporting by Reuters. "For users of our services, Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices," the spokesperson said, without giving further details. The suspension could hobble Huawei's smartphone business outside China as the tech giant will immediately lose access to updates to Google's Android operating system.
BusinessAFPFord to cut 7,000 jobs, 10% of global salaried staff
Ford plans to cut 7,000 jobs, or 10 percent of its global salaried workforce, as part of a reorganization as it revamps its vehicle offerings, the company said Monday. The downsizing will involve some layoffs and reassignments of white-collar staff and should be complete by the end of August, a Ford spokeswoman said. Ford has been phasing out most sedan models in the United States as more consumers have opted for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles.
