White House says bin Laden son killed in US operation

The White House announced Saturday that Hamza bin Laden , the son of the late al-Qaida leader who had become an increasingly prominent figure in the terrorist organization, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. A statement issued in President Donald Trump's name gave no further details, such as when Hamza bin Laden was killed or how the United States had confirmed his death. Administration officials would provide no more information beyond the three-sentence statement from the White House.

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  Trump confirms death of Osama bin Laden's son

  Politico
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  Rep. Gonzalez's message to terrorist groups: We will hunt them down in any corner of the world

  FOX News Videos

Virginia Attorney General Concludes Race Information Is Not Necessary for Marriage Licenses

More than 50 years after the Supreme Court struck down Virginia's laws against interracial marriage, the state has effectively negated race identification requirements in marriage license applications. Facing a federal lawsuit over a state law requiring couples to identify their races in marriage applications, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has reinterpreted the statute. In a memo forwarded to TIME, Herring clarified to staff that while clerks are still obligated to ask about race, respondents should not be denied marriage licenses for refusing to answer.

Saudi Arabia battles market jitters after oil plant attacks

Saudi energy giant Aramco is battling to reassure markets after devastating attacks on two oil plants, where a prolonged shutdown risks roiling investor confidence ahead of the state-owned giant's mega stock listing, analysts say. A wave of drones struck Abqaiq –- the world's largest oil processing facility –- and the Khurais oil field in eastern Saudi Arabia, knocking out nearly half of the kingdom's crude production and exposing the vulnerability of its energy infrastructure. While Tehran-backed Yemeni rebels claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn strike on Saturday, Washington blamed Iran for what it called an "unprecedented attack on the world's energy supply".

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  U.S. shale seen unlikely to quickly replace barrels lost in attack on Saudi facilities

  Reuters
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  U.S. tapping into oil reserves after drone strikes on oil fields in Saudi Arabia

  CBS News Videos

Scores of tigers rescued from infamous Thai temple have died: media

More than half of the tigers that Thai authorities confiscated in 2016 from an infamous Tiger Temple tourist attraction have died from a viral disease because their immune systems were weakened by inbreeding, media reported. The Buddhist temple west of Bangkok was a tourist destination where visitors took selfies with tigers and bottle-fed cubs until authorities removed its nearly 150 tigers in 2016 in response to global pressure over wildlife trafficking. The confiscated animals were taken to two state-run sanctuaries but it soon became apparent they were susceptible to canine distemper virus, said a senior official from the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.

Second British-Australian woman jailed in Iran identified as Middle East researcher Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert

A British-Australian woman who has been sentenced to 10 years in a notorious Iranian prison has been identified as Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a Cambridge-educated academic specialising in Middle Eastern politics. Dr Moore-Gilbert, who was working as a lecturer and researcher for Melbourne University's Asia Institute and has published work on authoritarian governance and activism in the Middle East, was jailed in October 2018. However, her detention had not been reported in case it harmed the prospects of her release.

The Future of Design: Transportation

AD uncovers the world's leading innovations in travel, transportation, cities, home, and the workplace Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest

Tropical Storm Humberto likely to become a hurricane after skirting Bahamas

Tropical Storm Humberto, churning westward in the Atlantic on Saturday, was heading just north of the storm-ravaged islands of northwest Bahamas but was not expected to strengthen into a hurricane until moving back out to sea Sunday night. The National Hurricane Center said the storm was expected to take a sharp turn to the northeast on Monday and move well off the east coast of Florida. Kwasi Thompson, minister of state for Grand Bahama, warned that the system would affect the entire island and urged people to seek shelter.

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  Tropical Storm Humberto expected to drift away from US coast

  FOX News Videos
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  Tropical Storm Humberto dumps rain on hurricane-hit Bahamas

  AFP

Judge rules Confederate statues will remain in Charlottesville despite deadly white nationalist rally

A pair Confederate statues will remain standing in the city of Virginian city Charlottesville where clashes over their removal left a young woman dead. After city officials decided to remove statues of Confederate American Civil War generals Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, one resident filed a lawsuit to prevent this. It was submitted months before August 2017's “Unite the Right” rally, which saw hundreds of white supremacists descend on the city.

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  Confederate statue that prompted Charlottesville rally must stay, judge rules

  USA TODAY
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  Charlottesville Confederate Statue Defender Sues Paper, Prof, for Reporting His Family’s Slaveholding History

  The Daily Beast

VIDEO: Would-be burglars kick in front door of Bay Area house, scared off by homeowner

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.

Courts free more suspects in case of disappeared students

Courts have exonerated another 24 people implicated in one of the country's most notorious crimes, the disappearance of 43 students, a federal official said Sunday. The Interior Secretary said that 21 of the detainees were freed the previous evening after courts found various violations of due process in their cases, including torture and arbitrary detention. Seventy-four of the 142 people arrested in the case have now been freed, according to an updated statistic released by the Interior Secretary on Sunday afternoon.

Jeered over attacks, S.Africa's president apologises at Mugabe funeral

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa was jeered and whistled at on Saturday during his speech at Zimbabwe ex-leader Robert Mugabe's funeral before he apologised for recent xenophobic attacks. At least 12 people have been killed this month in a surge in violence and mob attacks against foreign-owned businesses in and around Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city. A wave of jeers, boos and whistles interrupted Ramaphosa at the Harare national stadium as he started his eulogy at the state funeral for Mugabe, who died age 95 last week.

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  Robert Mugabe's funeral takes place in Harare at quarter-full stadium

  Yahoo News UK
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  Empty seats give Robert Mugabe fitting farewell in stadium funeral

  The Telegraph

How to Sink a 'Battleship': Why Sea Mines Can Sink Any Navy in a War

Indeed, since the end of the Second World War, sea-mines have damaged or destroyed more U.S. Navy ships than any other type of threat. “Sea mines, one of the oldest weapons in the naval inventory, are often the cheapest and most available form of anti-access/area denial weapons to a vast number of maritime nations,” said retired U.S. Navy Capt. Jerry Hendrix, director of the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program at the Center for a New American Security.

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  Saddam Hussein Thought He Knew How to Sink U.S. Battleships

  The National Interest
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  How America's Last Battleships Could Come Out of Retirement

  The National Interest

County lines epidemic blamed as number of children missing or linked to drugs gangs doubles

County lines drug networks have been blamed for a huge spike in the number of children identified as having links to gangs, after the figure more than doubled in three years. A similar trend was found in the number of children who went missing during the same period - from 8,850 to 16,070 - which is considered a trait of county lines networks. Drugs gangs increasingly recruit vulnerable children to ferry narcotics from cities to smaller towns, with around 2,000 operations believed to be operating across the UK.

Climate Activists Don’t Know How to Talk to Christians

This story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 220 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. Religious Christians are the key to America taking action on global warming. And yet, the way climate activists frame the issue often alienates the very people they most need to persuade.

UAW-represented janitors at some GM plants go on strike; impact on auto production unclear

The four-year contract between General Motors and the United Auto Workers expired early Sunday as janitors employed by Aramark who are represented by the union walked off the job at GM locations in Michigan and Ohio. The move could disrupt some vehicle production as soon as Sunday if GM autoworkers also represented by the UAW honor the janitors' picket lines.

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  The Latest: GM, UAW to resume talks; strike still planned

  Associated Press
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  GM workers to go on nationwide strike for first time in 12 years

  Reuters Videos

Jerry Falwell's Liberty University dogged by growing claims of corruption

And this week, the stakes were raised even higher amid accusations of corruption and Falwell's own demand for an FBI investigation. Falwell, it alleges, “presides over a culture of self-dealing, directing university resources into projects and real estate deals in which his friends and family have stood to make personal financial gains”. Jim Guth, politics and international affairs professor at Furman University and an expert on the religious right, said: “There's becoming a lot of unease within the Liberty network among people in response to all of these kinds of reports that have been circulating for the last couple of years and seem to be becoming more serious, and I think that in some wa...

Idle mines portend dark days for top US coal region

Blackjewel furloughed most of its Wyoming employees and shut down Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr mines, the first idled by hardship since coal mining in the Powder River Basin exploded in the 1970s. It's a big hit to the region straddling northeastern Wyoming and southeastern Montana, where coal has quietly supported the economies of both states for decades and fuels a shrinking number of power plants in 28 states. Negotiations that could reopen the two Wyoming mines under new ownership are stalled more than two months later.

Iran inks deal to develop gas field in tense Gulf

Two Iranian companies signed a $440 million agreement Saturday to develop a gas field in the sensitive Gulf, with the oil ministry saying it showed arch-foe the United States could not stop the country with sanctions. Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the deal reached between two government-owned firms, Pars Oil and Gas Company and PetroPars, to develop the Balal field would be the first of many. Tensions have soared in the Gulf since last year when the US began reimposing sanctions on Iran after unilaterally withdrawing from a 2015 deal that put curbs on its nuclear programme.

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  Iran says it will adopt maximum crude output policy if U.S. lifts sanctions

  Reuters
• UPDATE 1-Iran signs $440 mln deal with local firm to develop Gulf gas field

  Reuters

Cars Worth Waiting For: Arriving 2020 to 2025

This almanac seeks to provide the reader insight into which future cars are worth holding out for. From Car and Driver

How Argentina Can Prevent an Economic Crisis: Dollars

It's not hurricane season in South America, but yet another currency crisis has slammed into Argentina. It has arrived just as President Mauricio Macri is running for re-election. Since Argentina's return to democracy in the early 1980s, the Peronist party has never permitted a non-Peronist to complete a full term in office.