Indian border officials on lookout for fugitive cosmic guru

Indian border officials and embassies have issued an alert for a fugitive guru accused of rape, the government said, days after the holy man announced the creation of his own "cosmic" country. Swami Nithyananda -- one of many self-styled Indian "godmen" with thousands of followers and a chequered past -- is wanted by police for alleged rape, sexual abuse, and abduction of children. Earlier this week, he announced online that he has created his own new country -- reportedly off Ecuador's coast -- complete with cabinet, golden passports, and even a department of homeland security.

Booker slams Democratic debate rules as he ends Iowa tour

Fighting to be in the next Democratic presidential debate, Cory Booker concluded a nearly 800-mile, 12-county tour of Iowa on Sunday by criticizing the Democratic party for allowing “elites" and “money" to control who gets on stage and urging voters to offer his name when pollsters call. “Iowa never lets elites decide," he told a crowd at his campaign office in Cedar Rapids on Sunday. Just six candidates are qualified for the Dec. 19 debate, and Booker is not one of them.

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  Cory Booker: failure to engage black vote could hand White House to Trump

  The Guardian
• 
  Cory Booker: 'A Lot Of People Hurt' Over Kamala Harris Dropping Out

  HuffPost

3 Guard members killed in Minnesota Black Hawk crash identified

The Minnesota National Guard identified Saturday morning the three people who died Thursday in a Black Hawk helicopter crash southwest of St. Cloud. Killed were Chief Warrant Officer 2 James A. Rogers Jr., age 28; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Charles P. Nord, 30; and Sgt. Kort M. Plantenberg, 28, the Guard announced in a series of tweets and in a press release. All three soldiers were assigned to Company C, 2-211th General Support Aviation Battalion, based in St. Cloud, which is where the flight began.

Whistleblower goes public after leaked documents reveal China's crackdown on Uighur Muslims

A Uighur woman living in the Netherlands has gone public about helping to leak secret Chinese government documents regarding human rights abuses in China's Xinjiang province because of fears for her safety. Asiye Abdulaheb told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant that she was involved in last month's leak of papers to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which highlighted the Chinese government's crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang. The reveal, which followed an earlier document leak to the New York Times, showed how the Chinese government has indoctrinated and punished over a million Muslims, mainly members of the Uighur ethnic minority, in internment camps.

• Congress just kicked Trump's trade deal in the teeth for all the right reasons

  Business Insider
• 
  Mysterious automated calls, vanished relatives, and sinister Facebook comments: How China intimidates Uighurs who don't even live in the country

  Business Insider

The Pensacola Navy base shooter reportedly used a loophole to buy his gun legally

The Saudi national who fatally shot three people at a Florida Navy base on Friday bought his gun legally even though people designated as "nonimmigrant aliens" are not typically allowed to do so, NBC News reported. But the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says there are exceptions for those with a valid hunting license or permit, and those from "a friendly foreign government entering the United States on official law enforcement business." NBC News cited sources that said the shooter had a license and bought his weapon from a dealer in Pensacola.

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  After Pensacola attack, Pentagon to review screening of foreign officers who train at U.S. bases 

  Yahoo News
• 
  Military bases on alert after Naval Air Station Pensacola attack

  FOX News Videos

Polyamorous 20-year-old is dating 4 men while pregnant with her first child

Tory Ojeda is a 20-year-old woman from Jacksonville, Fla. who is in a polyamorous relationship with four men. She is now expecting her first child with one of her partners.

Could Mexico's Version of the Marine Corps Crush the Cartels?

Compared to their counterparts in the United States, the United States Navy and Marine Corps, the Mexican Navy is small— around sixty-six thousand. The Mexican Naval Infantry, their Marine Corps, is even smaller— numbering only about eighteen thousand. In contrast to the United States Marine Corps and the United States Navy, the Mexican Navy's main missions have typically been coastal protection, which in the United States would fall to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Warren Says She Made $1.9 Million as Bankruptcy Lawyer

Elizabeth Warren on Sunday said she made about $1.9 million working as a bankruptcy lawyer over three decades, a disclosure that comes after requests from the media and Pete Buttigieg for her to release her tax returns. Warren had previously released the names of the clients and cases she took on during her tenure as a professor at Harvard and other law schools, as well as 11 years of tax returns, dating back to 2008. The documents released Sunday cover her compensation between 1985 and 2009, but don't include tax returns.

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  Elizabeth Warren discloses she made nearly $2 million in legal work

  ABC News
• 
  Warren: Voters ready for female ticket

  USA TODAY

13 Mythical Creatures, Ranked

Did your favorite make the list? From Popular Mechanics

North Dakota county may become US's 1st to bar new refugees

Reuben Panchol was forced to leave war-torn Sudan decades ago as a child, embarking on an odyssey that eventually brought him to the American Midwest and left him eternally grateful to the country that took him in. “I am an American citizen, a North Dakotan,” said Panchol, a 38-year-old father of four. If they vote to bar refugees, as expected, Burleigh County — home to about 95,000 people and the capital city of Bismarck — could become the first local government to do so since President Donald Trump issued an executive order making it possible.

New Jersey journalist re-arrested in Nigeria after brief glimpse of freedom

The New Jersey resident imprisoned in his home country of Nigeria since August was re-arrested in a courtroom Friday by Nigerian state police, after briefly being freed from state custody Thursday. Omoyele Sowore, who lives in Haworth, had been scheduled to stand trial Friday on charges stemming from his Aug. 3 arrest while he was organizing a peaceful pro-democracy protest in the city of Lagos. "My 10-year old has on his Christmas list one of things he wants is for his dad to be home for Christmas," said Opeyemi Sowore, speaking at an impromptu news conference at the Newark office of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.

Pearl Harbor veteran interred on sunken ship

With speeches and salutes, veterans and officials on Saturday commemorated the 78th anniversary of the 1941 sneak attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor, which brought a previously reluctant United States into World War II. A ceremony in Hawaii honoring survivors was attended by US Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Washington's ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris. It was held within sight of the sunken USS Arizona, which was bombed in the opening moments of the attack that killed more than 2,400 Americans.

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  Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day: A look back at December 7, 1941

  KGO – San Francisco
• 
  What If Imperial Japan Sunk America's Aircraft Carriers at Pearl Harbor?

  The National Interest

An American trucking giant is slated to declare bankruptcy — and it may leave more than 3,200 truck drivers stranded and jobless

The trucking "bloodbath" of 2019 is ending on a remarkably sour note. Celadon, a truckload carrier that grossed $1 billion as recently as 2015, will file for bankruptcy on Dec. 11 or earlier, inside sources told leading industry publication FreightWaves on Dec. 6. It's poised to be the largest truckload bankruptcy in history — and its drivers are already getting slammed.

Democrats Must Not Have an All-White Debate—and the White Candidates Should Say So

But that should be up to the voters, and not the DNC by means of their debate inclusion practices. Those candidates can, however strike a blow for diversity. They should band together and threaten to boycott the December Democratic debate unless the DNC and media partners agree to not exclude candidates who have shown measurable public support before the voting begins.

China Is Building Its Very Own Stealth Bombers: Meet the H-20 and JH-XX

China is developing not one but two new stealth bombers, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency claimed in a January 2019 report. While the People's Liberation Army has not been shy about discussing the H-20 strategic bomber that the Xian Aircraft Industrial Corporation is developing for the PLA Air Force, there are many fewer public references to the other stealth bomber, which apparently carries the designation JH-XX. If the report is accurate and China completes development of the JH-XX, the Chinese air force could become the first air arm in the world to deploy a radar-evading fighter-bomber whose main mission is long-range ground-attack.

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley Says South Carolinians Saw the Confederate Flag as 'Service' Before Dylan Roof 'Hijacked' It

Former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley told conservative commentator Glenn Beck Friday that white supremacist Dylan Roof “hijacked” the Confederate flag, which she said South Carolinians saw as representing “service and sacrifice and heritage. Haley was speaking about the 2015 mass shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C., in which Roof murdered nine Black churchgoers in in the name of white supremacy. Photographs emerged of Roof posing with the Confederate flag.

The 25 Best Tower Defense Games

Build those structures. Keep them from harm. Collect that loot.

Airstrikes in northwest Syria kill at least 18 people

Airstrikes on areas in the last major rebel stronghold in northwest Syria on Saturday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and wounded others as a three-month truce crumbles, opposition activists said. The airstrikes on Idlib province have intensified over the past few weeks as the government appears to be preparing for an offensive on rebel-held areas east of the province to secure the main highway that links the capital Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria's largest and once a commercial center. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 people were killed in Idlib province while the opposition's Syrian Civil Defense said 18 lost their lives.

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  Air strikes kill 19 civilians in northwest Syria: monitor

  AFP
• Air strikes kill at least 20 in Syria's Idlib - Observatory, activists

  Reuters

French murder suspect emerges from coma after swallowing poison

The suspect for the rape and murder of a young woman in northern France almost two decades ago was slowly emerging from a coma while under guard in hospital Saturday after he swallowed pesticide in an apparent suicide bid following his conviction. Willy Bardon, on trial over the murder of Elodie Kulik in 2002 in a case that has attracted strong interest in France for years, ingested the substance at the courthouse in the northern city of Amiens late on Friday. He is "progressively emerging from a coma" but is still in critical condition, prosecutor Alexandre de Bosschere told AFP.

The acting Navy secretary promises he'll fix the Ford aircraft carrier because he's tired of it being a 'whipping boy for why the Navy can't do anything right'

Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly said this week that fixing the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is now a top priority, Military.com reported. Explaining at an event in DC that the president is very concerned about the Ford, which is over budget, behind schedule, and still experiencing problems with certain key technologies, Modly reportedly said that the Navy needs "to fix that ship and make sure that it works." He said that there is "nothing worse" than having this ship out there in its current condition, as it is able to be used as a "whipping boy for why the Navy can't do anything right."

Trump says Rudy Giuliani will give information about Ukraine to Justice Department, Congress

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said Saturday his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, will provide the Justice Department information on his investigation of Ukraine, the country at the center of the impeachment investigation of Trump. "He has not told me what he found, but I think he wants to go before Congress ... and also to the attorney general and the Department of Justice," Trump told reporters at the White House. Giuliani has said he has been in Ukraine talking to officials and ex-officials there about former Vice President Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden, who has had business interests in the country.

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  Trump Says Rudy Giuliani Will Tell Congress About His Recent Ukraine Trip

  HuffPost
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  'This a trap that Giuliani and Trump literally walked into': Russia may know more about the Ukraine scandal than we do

  Business Insider

Russia's Su-57 Would Be A Game-Changer If It Wasn't So Expensive

Key point: A fancy photo shoot can't reverse an economic slump, nor can it magically conjure hundreds of new stealth fighters. The Russian defense ministry staged an impressive video shoot with four of its Su-57 stealth fighter prototypes. But the dramatic display doesn't make the Su-57 any more relevant.