U.S.Yahoo News86% of Air Force pilots are white men. Here's why this needs to change.
This fighting force should be highly capable while reflecting the diversity of the country we serve. Before I even took command of my service's recruiting efforts this spring, Air Force leadership made it clear to me that improving diversity would be on the top of my to-do list. And recent national events only serve as an accelerant as we take aim and tackle this vexing issue.
WorldYahoo NewsAs White House eyes 'herd immunity,' Sweden's no-mask approach is failing to contain COVID-19
But in hard-hit Spain, which has the highest cumulative number of COVID-19 cases in the European Union and where, with national cases surging over 13,000 a day, capital Madrid is again under lockdown and new restrictions are going into effect all over the country, that behavior was considered outrageous, driving at least one patron out of the restaurant and home, he said, to shower. Now Sweden has the lowest COVID rate in all Europe,” the visitor boasted, though statistics refute his claim. Not to mention that he was ignoring even the recommendations that the Swedish Public Health Agency did make, including social distancing, frequent washing of hands and coughing into elbows.
PoliticsMiami HeraldAnti-Trump group targets Rubio with $450,000 ad buy in Florida on Supreme Court
Republican senators who previously opposed the nomination of a Supreme Court justice during an election year, yet support the appointment of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, are the latest target in a contentious confirmation battle. Advertisments set to run Tuesday that are funded by Republicans for the Rule of Law — a project of the anti-Trump group Defending Democracy Together — will remind voters of GOP senators' objections in 2016 to Judge Merrick Garland's nomination by former President Barack Obama. The spots say that Republicans such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio “blocked” a new Supreme Court justice four years ago, saying that the American people deserved to have their voices heard.
WorldThe Daily BeastNigeria’s Protests Over Police Torture and Killings Go Viral
ABUJA, Nigeria—On October 3, a horrific video went viral on social media, which showed officers from Nigerian police force's notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) dragging two young men from a hotel in Lagos and executing one of them in the street. The government, after years of inaction on the violent unit, has finally been forced to disband it—but critics say the worst offenders are just being moved to different roles. Reports of brutality by SARS are common in Nigeria.
PoliticsYahoo NewsNew Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Half of Trump supporters believe QAnon's imaginary claims
A full 50 percent of President Trump's supporters now believe the bizarre, made-up claims about an international ring of child sex traffickers at the core of the extremist conspiracy theory known as QAnon, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll — a disturbing sign of how susceptible partisans have become to bogus stories in an age of rampant polarization and unbridled social media. The survey, which interviewed 1,583 registered voters from Oct. 16 to 18, shows that most of the registered voters (55 percent) say they've never heard of QAnon, including 44 percent of Trump supporters. Trump himself demonstrated this dynamic during his NBC town hall event last Thursday when he refused to disavow the conspiracy theory even after moderator Savannah Guthrie told him that it involves baseless lies about “satanic” Democratic pedophile rings.
WorldAssociated PressFounder of UAE state-run WAM news agency dies at 78
Ibrahim al-Abed, the founder of the United Arab Emirates' state-run WAM news agency and a pioneering media figure as the oil-rich nation grew into a regional power, died Tuesday. Al-Abed long served as the head of the country's National Media Council, a government regulatory body. “Five decades Ibrahim spent working tirelessly until the last day,” Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum wrote on Twitter.
LifestyleArchitectural Digest12 Everyday Household Items That Are Worth the Investment
Small objects with big impact Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
PoliticsThe IndependentFlorida company warns employees they might lose jobs if Trump doesn’t win
Employees at a Florida manufacturing company got letters along with their pay stubs warning they might lose their job if President Trump isn't re-elected. While sending out letters like these is legal, the move was controversial enough it helped one employee decide to quit. "If Trump and the Republicans win (the election), DMC will hopefully be able to continue operating, more or less as it has been operating lately,” read the letter, which went out to the 170 or so employees of aerospace supplier Daniels Manufacturing, Orlando's WESH reported.
WorldMiami HeraldAn idle Venezuelan tanker with millions of gallons of oil is creating panic in Trinidad
More than 20 months after a Venezuelan oil tanker carrying nearly 55 million gallons of crude oil was abandoned off the country's northern coast following tightened U.S. sanctions, inspectors from neighboring Trinidad and Tobago will finally get a chance to see for themselves if the idle vessel's cargo could lead to a major ecological disaster off the Caribbean coast of South America. Trinidad and Tobago's energy and foreign ministers both confirmed to the Miami Herald that a team will head out Tuesday to visit the Venezuelan-flagged floating storage and offloading vessel Nabarima, which environmentalists say is taking on water and threatening to spill 1.3 million barrels of oil into the gulf between both countries. The ship is in the Gulf of Paria, between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago.
PoliticsYahoo NewsTrump's health care plan is always two weeks away. Now the election is too.
For much of his first term, President Trump has claimed that significant proposals would be coming “soon” or “in a few weeks” or, often, “two weeks” — notably health care. He has been saying a cheaper health plan that would provide better coverage for all Americans than the Affordable Care Act has been just around the corner since the early days of his campaign in 2015. With two weeks until Election Day — and millions of votes already cast — the clock is ticking for Republicans as Democrats reprise their successful midterm strategy of warning that the administration and the GOP want to end mandated coverage for preexisting medical conditions.
WorldBBCTaiwan charges Chinese captain over killing of 'Somali pirates'
Prosecutors in Taiwan have charged the captain of a fishing boat with ordering the killing of four suspected Somali pirates eight years ago. The suspect said the alleged Somali pirates shot at his boat and three other boats fishing in the area, before one of the fishing boats managed to knock the men into the sea. Despite knowing the men had no way of defending themselves at this point, the suspect told officials he ordered his Pakistani security guards to shoot them so that they could not get away and ask other pirates to hijack his vessel, prosecutors said.
U.S.Associated PressLarge earthquake off Alaska prompts tsunami fears, fleeing
A magnitude 7.5 earthquake prompted a tsunami warning Monday for a nearly thousand-mile stretch of Alaska's southern coast, with waves over 2 feet at the nearest community as the threat subsided. The quake was centered near Sand Point, a city of about 900 people off the Alaska Peninsula where wave levels late Monday topped 2 feet (0.61 meters), according to the National Tsunami Warning Center. “It was a pretty good shaker here,” said David Adams, co-manager of Marine View Bed and Breakfast in Sand Point.
U.S.Business InsiderUS Marines in remote corner of Australia are practicing to guide Air Force bombers to targets across the Pacific
During exercises in Australia in August, US Marines teamed up with Australian troops to guide Air Force bombers to targets using drones. The exercise used Australian training ranges to simulate islands hundreds of miles apart, reflecting the Corps' preparations for what it expects to face if a future war breaks out in the Pacific Ocean. At remote ranges in northern Australia this summer, US Marines and Australian troops trained to guide US bombers to targets on far-flung islands, illustrating the Corps' increasing focus on a potential war in the Pacific.
- WorldReuters Videos
France orders closure of mosque outside Paris.
The Grand Mosque of Pantin, a low-income suburb on the capital's northeastern outskirts, had shared a video on its Facebook page before the attack that vented hate against history teacher Samuel Paty. Police plastered notices of the closure order outside the mosque as the authorities promised a tough response against the disseminators of hate messages, preachers of radicalized sermons, and foreigners believed to pose a security threat to France. The six-month order was "for the sole purpose of preventing acts of terrorism," the notice issued by the head of the Seine-Saint-Denis department read.
WorldAssociated PressNATO to set up new space center amid China, Russia concerns
It's central to space communications at NATO — the biggest and most modern of four such stations the military alliance runs. Around 2,000 satellites orbit the earth, over half operated by NATO countries, ensuring everything from mobile phone and banking services to weather forecasts. NATO commanders in places like Afghanistan or Kosovo rely on some of them to navigate, communicate, share intelligence and detect missile launches.
PoliticsThe IndependentSenate challenger raises nearly $2M after opponent mispronounces Kamala Harris's name
Republican senator David Perdue, who is running for reelection in his home state of Georgia, inadvertently boosted his rival's campaign after mocking Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Afterward, the Georgia senator's Democratic opponent, Jon Ossoff, said his campaign raked in nearly $2 million in donations. Mr Ossoff tweeted on Saturday that his campaign raised $1 million after Mr Perdue "disgraced himself with bigoted mockery of Kamala's name."
- U.S.Associated Press
Man who wanted to see Trump gets time served in standoff
A Washington state man who said he was traveling to see President Donald Trump has been sentenced to time served for assaulting Secret Service special agents in West Virginia. Joshua Wills, 31, of Bremerton, Washington, was sentenced in federal court in Charleston to the 23 months already served since his arrest in November 2018, U.S. Attorney Mike Stuart said Tuesday. "Federal, state and local law enforcement put themselves in harm's way to protect each and every one of us,” Stuart said in a statement.
WorldReutersIsrael uncovers tunnel from Gaza, military says holds Hamas responsible
Israel discovered a new cross-border tunnel from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday that its military said extended "dozens of metres underground" and into southern Israel. The military said its engineers discovered the tunnel using underground sensors attached to a concrete barrier that, once completed, will run 65 kilometres (40 miles) around Gaza. Soon after the announcement, a rocket was fired from Hamas-ruled Gaza toward Israel and intercepted by its Iron Dome anti-missile system, the military said.
PoliticsThe IndependentIvanka Trump accused of ‘violating critical ethics law’ eight times in two days by US watchdog
Ivanka Trump has been accused of breaking ethics regulations eight times in the space of two days on Twitter by a United States watchdog. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) claimed that Ms Trump who is a senior advisor to the president, broke the Hatch Act numerous times. The watchdog criticises Ms Trump for eight tweets from 11 October to 13 October in which she promoted her father's re-election campaign.
U.S.The Daily BeastMaskless White People Are Fueling a Massive New Coronavirus Surge in Mississippi
Wayne Moak isn't sure who first brought the coronavirus into the congregation at Clear Branch Baptist Church in rural Wesson, Mississippi, but when it got there in September, “it spread fast,” he told The Daily Beast. Within weeks, more than two dozen members of the congregation were sick, including Moak, his wife, son, and all three other staff members, he recalled. Of course, this was exactly the scenario he'd been hoping to avoid when the church decided, in the early days of the pandemic, to set up his pulpit on the bed of a 20-foot trailer and conduct parking lot services.
WorldAssociated PressFrom 'role models' to sex workers: Kenya's child labor rises
The teenage girls cannot remember how many men they have had to sleep with in the seven months since COVID-19 closed their schools, or how many of those men used protection. From their rented room in Kenya's capital, the girls say the risk of getting infected with the coronavirus or HIV does not weigh heavily on them in a time when survival is paramount. According to UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency, recent gains in the fight against child labor are at risk because of the pandemic.
PoliticsThe New York TimesThe Big Role That Big Donors Still Play, Quietly, for Biden
One Monday evening last month, Hillary Clinton and Sen. Kamala Harris, and two actors who portrayed them on “Saturday Night Live,” Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph, gathered for a virtual fundraiser benefiting the Biden campaign. While Biden's campaign has trumpeted the small donations flooding in at record rates, the elite world of billionaires and multimillionaires has remained a critical cog in the Biden money machine. It has raised almost $200 million from donors who gave at least $100,000 to his joint operations with the Democratic Party in the last six months — about twice as much as President Donald Trump raised from six-figure donors in that time, according to an analysis of new federal records.
WorldReutersChina says U.S. should stop meddling after exiled Tibetan leader visits State Department
China's foreign ministry said the United States should immediately stop interfering in its internal affairs, after the leader of the head of the Tibetan government-in-exile met a U.S. State Department official in Washington. Lobsang Sangay, the president of the Tibetan Central Administration (CTA), met the new U.S. special coordinator on Tibet last week. Sangay said it was the first time that the head of the CTA had been received at the State Department.
TechnologyBBCFake naked photos of thousands of women shared online
Faked nude images of more than 100,000 women have been created from social media pictures and shared online, according to a new report. Clothes are digitally removed from pictures of women by Artificial Intelligence (AI), and spread on the messaging app Telegram. Some of those targeted "appeared to be underage", the report by intelligence company Sensity said.
U.S.Associated PressMissouri city to remove disputed Confederate general marker
The City Council in Missouri's capital city has approved removing a Civil War marker dedicated to a Confederate general amid a dispute about the accuracy of its description. Jefferson City Council members voted 8-2 Monday to remove the marker dedicated to Confederate Gen. Sterling Price. The marker said Price intended to attack Jefferson City on Oct. 7, 1864 , but decided against the plan and spared the city, The Jefferson City News-Tribune reported.
“Until solar and wind power take more of the energy load, I like not paying an arm and a leg to heat my house.”
“It is imperative to ramp down greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible.”
“Any kind of ban on fracking would cause severe damage to our stressed economy.”
“Climate scientists are urging us to leave all fossil fuels in the ground so that they’ll never be burned. That includes natural gas.”
“Any immediate economic repercussions to the economy can be offset if oil-and-gas companies are made to pay their fair share.”