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.

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

  Meredith Videos
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  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.

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  Blast in Maine kills firefighter, levels special-needs

  ABC News Videos
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  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.

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

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

  The Telegraph

20 arrested, 18 charged in Minneapolis beatings

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

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.

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

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

  Associated Press

Wisconsin brothers charged with operating counterfeit vaping cartridge operation

According to the criminal complaint: Tyler Huffhines admitted starting his THC vape cartridge business on Jan. 28, 2018, the same day he took a picture of his business to post on Instagram. He told detectives that he didn't smoke marijuana but saw a good business opportunity by purchasing THC vape cartridges in California for $2.50 each where they are legal and bringing them back to Wisconsin to sell for $15 apiece. Tyler Huffhines admitted he figured out he could boost profits by buying empty vape cartridges and jars of liquid THC and paying 10 workers to fill them.

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  Teens Won’t Listen to Warnings About Vaping — So One Doctor Is Using TikTok

  Rolling Stone
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  New York Bans Sale of Flavored E-cigarettes, the First State in the U.S. to Do So

  Time

Best Bar Tools for Your Home Bar

Be sure to stock up. From Popular Mechanics

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."

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

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

  The Independent

Wisconsin man accused of making THC cartridges charged

A Wisconsin man suspected of running an illegal operation to manufacture vaping cartridges flew to California last month to get THC oil in bulk to fill thousands of cartridges to sell, prosecutors said Monday in charging documents. Authorities in Kenosha, Wisconsin, arrested 20-year-old Tyler Huffhines on Sept. 5 after parents tipped off police when they saw their teenage son with one of the cartridges. Prosecutors say Huffhines employed 10 people to fill the cartridges with THC oil at a condo he rented with a stolen identity.

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  Flavored Vape Ban: NY Outlawing Flavored E-Cigarettes

  InvestorPlace
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  California campaign will warn public of vaping dangers

  Associated Press

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.

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.

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  Russia reportedly breached encrypted FBI comms in 2010

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

  Yahoo News Video

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.

Afghan president sees his chance after collapse of U.S.-Taliban talks

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had no more than 20 minutes to study a draft accord between the United States and the Taliban on pulling thousands of U.S. troops out of his country, but upcoming elections could put him back at the heart of talks to end decades of war. What he read in the draft outlining the now collapsed deal left Ghani and his officials - who were shut out of the talks by the Taliban refusal to negotiate with what they considered an illegitimate "puppet" regime - badly shaken and resentful, said a senior Kabul official close to the Afghan leader. "Doesn't this look like surrender to the Taliban?" Ghani asked Zalmay Khalilzad, the veteran Afghan-born diplomat who led negotiations for Washington, at a meeting the two held immediately afterwards, according to the source who was present.

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  Afghanistan suicide bomb attack near president's rally kills at least 24

  The Independent
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  Green Beret's death in Afghanistan comes amid increased Taliban violence

  CBS News Videos

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.

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  Trump Says Homeless Californians Are Ruining Cities' 'Prestige'

  HuffPost
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  Trump administration exploring police crackdown on homeless people

  The Guardian

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.

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.

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  Suddenly, TV News Is Warming Up to Climate Change

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

  Engadget

Video shows burglars kick in California family's front door, before being scared away

Two masked-man kicked in the front door of a Pleasanton home in an attempted home-invasion -- and it was all caught on surveillance video.

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  Homeowner shoots and kills 3 masked men in possible 'stand your ground' case

  ABC News
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  Georgia homeowner kills three teens wearing masks in possible 'stand your ground' case

  USA TODAY

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.

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.