Joe Biden came out swinging on the campaign trail this week, calling out a hostile questioner as a “damn liar” and rolling out a campaign ad meant to hit Donald Trump where it hurts him most — his ego. After enduring criticism about his measured response to Republican charges that he was implicated in a corrupt scheme to promote his son Hunter's business interests in Ukraine, Biden confronted a voter in Iowa who parroted that claim. “You're a damn liar, man,” Biden snapped at an attendee at a rally in New Hampton who accused him of landing his son a seat on the board of the energy company Burisma Holdings to profit from his position in the Obama administration.
Two customs agents and an information technology worker appeared in a court on Thursday charged with drug offenses over Australia's largest seizure of methamphetamine, which had been smuggled to Melbourne from Bangkok in stereo speakers. Police estimate the 1.6 metric tons (1.7 U.S. tons) of the drug also known as ice and crystal meth had a street value of AU$1.197 billion ($818 million). The 37 kilograms (82 pounds) of heroin also seized was the largest haul of that drug in Australia since 2017, police said.
The U.S. Navy will need a new “sixth-generation” warplane eventually to follow the F-35C stealth fighter that's just beginning to enter service. The Navy in February 2019 declared its first front-line F-35C squadron “ready for flight.” Strike-Fighter Squadron 147, based in California, in 2021 is slated to embark on the aircraft carrier USS Vinson for the type's first deployment. The fleet aims to integrate a 10-plane F-35C squadron into each of its nine carrier air wings, which embark on the 11 Ford- and Nimitz-class carriers.
The devastating Japanese attack began Sunday at 7:48 a.m., eventually killing 2,402 Americans and wounding many others, sinking four battleships and damaging many more. The Pearl Harbor attack spurred America into World War II. Here are photographs from the attack and its immediate aftermath. December 7, 1941 began as a perfect Sunday morning for the troops serving the US fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Turkey's majority state-owned Halkbank said on Friday that it will use all its legal rights to challenge a U.S. Federal Court ruling that it must enter a formal plea to charges that it helped Iran evade sanctions. Halkbank said it requests the right to defend its position that the U.S. court lacks jurisdiction over claims made against the bank as Halkbank does not have any branch or physical operation in the United States. The bank has so far declined to make a formal appearance in the case.
South Bend, Ind., city councilman-elect Henry Davis Jr. said on Thursday that it “is not an excuse at this point” for mayor Pete Buttigieg to claim he was “slow to realize” desegregation in city schools had not been successful during an interview Thursday, in the latest African-American criticism leveled at the Democratic presidential candidate. Davis, who ran against Buttigieg for mayor in 2015, said in an interview with Hill.TV that Buttigieg's remark sounded contrived. “It sounded like that he wasn't from here,” Davis said of Buttigieg, who was born and raised in South Bend.
Pakistan has declined to pursue a sprawling case against Chinese sex traffickers due to fears it would harm economic ties with Beijing, the AP reported on Wednesday. Pakistan has been seeking closer ties with China for years as Beijing continue to make major investments in the country's infrastructure.
Millions of children are at risk of flu amid a drop in uptake of vaccinations, after deliveries were delayed, officials have warned. New figures show the number of people hospitalised because of flu has tripled in a fortnight, with the virus spreading before many of the most vulnerable have been protected. Last night health officials urged parents to come forward and ensure children receive vaccinations.
The Philippines' north has been hit by some of its worst flooding in decades, with torrents of muddy runoff forcing 66,000 from their homes and prompting rescues of trapped locals, authorities said Friday. Luzon island, the nation's largest, has been hit by a string of storms that have battered its northern tip while monsoon rains were intensified by the passage of Typhoon Kammuri this week. "This is one of the biggest floods in decades," Rogelio Sending, information officer for Cagayan province in the northeast of Luzon, told AFP.
While defending her call to pursue articles of impeachment against President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi clashed with a reporter who asked if she hates the president. As she was leaving her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill, the reporter, James Rosen of Sinclair television, asked, “Do you hate the president, Madame Speaker? Pelosi stopped, turned and pointed to him.
For officers, pulling over a fellow cop can be an awkward dilemma, one that's magnified when it's the head of one of the nation's largest police departments. It's a worst-nightmare situation for a police officer to encounter their superior or chief who has been drinking,” said Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. They're damned if they do, and they're damned if they don't in terms of how they respond or act.
Key point: Washington has wanted to expand NATO's anti-missile capabilities for a while now. A key NATO missile-defense site in Romania on Aug. 9, 2019 completed a three-month upgrade process that had forced operators to take the system offline. To fill the resulting gap in coverage, the U.S. Army in May 2019 deployed to Romania one of its seven Terminal High-Altitude Area-Defense missile-interceptor batteries.
Rouge robots, deep space planets, and a voice assistant love story. From Popular Mechanics
A Russian court unexpectedly freed a prominent student protester on Friday after handing him a three-year suspended jail sentence on extremism charges in a case that has caused outcry among the Kremlin's critics. Yegor Zhukov, a 21-year-old student and politics blogger on YouTube, was among more than 1,000 people detained in Moscow on July 27 in one of the biggest crackdowns of recent years. The court on Friday found him guilty of inciting extremism on his YouTube channel and banned him from using the Internet for two years.
A Virginia state commission released a report Thursday calling for the official repeal of “deeply troubling” state laws still on the books that contain “explicitly racist language and segregationist policies. The Commission to Examine Racial Inequity in Virginia Law published a lengthy report saying that the outdated laws should not “remain enshrined in law” despite no longer being in effect. The commission believes that such vestiges of Virginia's segregationist past should no longer have official status,” the report states.
There is no better demonstration of this farce than the sad fate of Bloomberg News, a global media organization that has the unfortunate distinction of also being a billionaire's plaything. Michael Bloomberg, who is worth more than $50bn, is running for president. A cadre of political consultants who will get rich if he runs have urged him to run, and a potential wealth tax under President Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders would cost him a much greater portion of his fortune than the relatively small sliver he'll spend on his doomed campaign.
Tesla declined to help local authorities with an investigation into stolen copper wire at its factory in Sparks, Nevada, out of fear that it could make the electric-car maker look bad, the Reno Gazette Journal's Benjamin Spillman reported, citing a police report from June 2018. Tesla security employees reportedly told the Storey County Sheriff's Department that the contractor who first alerted authorities about the stolen copper wire was fired after making the report. Tesla declined to assist authorities on other occasions amid reports of "rampant crime" in 2018, according to the Reno Gazette Journal's report.
Before she went missing last month, a St. Louis woman looked up “what to do if you husband is upset you are pregnant” on her phone, according to search warrants. Beau Rothwell, 28, reported the disappearance of his six-weeks-pregnant wife, Jennifer Rothwell, on Nov. 12, after she failed to show up for work at a chemical engineering firm. Two days later, authorities charged him with second-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence in connection with his 28-year-old wife's slaying.
Donald Trump once said Prince Andrew was "a lot of fun to be with" despite claiming on Tuesday that he doesn't know him. "He's not pretentious," Trump told People magazine in an article published on November 20, 2000, adding "he's a lot of fun to be with." Trump made the comments after attending the same Halloween party as the prince in New York.
The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that a newspaper cannot use the state's fair report privilege law as a shield against a defamation lawsuit for a story that was based on a one-on-one interview with a police detective. The case concerns Jeffery Burke, who was accused in 2013 of stealing money from a White County football team's cookie dough fundraiser. The original trial court judge found that the story fell under Tennessee's fair report privilege, a law that shields reporters from defamation suits when they report fairly and accurately on an official action or proceeding, even if that information turns out to be inaccurate.
In 1950, as U.S. forces retreated from China's onslaught across the Yalu River, General Douglas MacArthur called for strategic air attacks against China. Many believed that this would necessarily include the atomic bomb, America's “asymmetric advantage” of the time. America's large arsenal of atomic weapons, and the fleet of strategic bombers necessary to deliver those weapons, was the central military advantage that the US enjoyed over the Soviet Union in 1950.
In our first report, we take you to India, a country where modern technology is blending with centuries-old marriage traditions. One of the most spectacular shows on Earth, taking place on the outskirts of New Delhi, isn't a music video, or even a Bollywood movie; the high-end production is an Indian wedding celebration. Amidst all the food, fireworks and fanfare, here in India centuries-old traditions, like arranged marriages, remain alive and well.
A Navy warship has seized a “significant cache” of suspected Iranian guided missile parts headed to rebels in Yemen, U.S. officials said Wednesday, marking the first time that such sophisticated components have been taken en route to the war there.
TBILISI, Dec 6 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Oil-rich Azerbaijan planted more than half a million trees on Friday to celebrate a 14th century poet, an initiative the government said would help tackle climate change but some environmental activists called "a waste of money". The Azeri ministry of ecology said 650,000 trees were being planted across the country to mark the 650th anniversary of the birth of Seyid Imadeddin Nesimi, whose work touched on the relation between man and nature. The campaign) will have a positive impact on further greening of our country, reducing the effects of global climate change, as well as absorbing carbon dioxide, the ministry said in a statement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff is urging Russia to support the investigation of a killing prosecutors say appears to have ordered by Russian or Chechen authorities, and says he has “no understanding" for outraged reactions from Moscow. Germany expelled two Russian diplomats on Wednesday over the brazen killing of a Georgian man on the streets of Berlin in August. German federal prosecutors said evidence suggested the slaying was ordered either by Moscow or authorities in Russia's republic of Chechnya.