'Alter your course': Dramatic audio released of Iran seizing British ship

An audio recording released Sunday reveals the tense moments before a British-flagged oil tanker was seized by Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces rappelling from helicopters to the ship's deck. The Stena Impero tanker "was confiscated by the Revolutionary Guards ...  for failing to respect international maritime rules," the Iranian forces said after the seizure Friday. Video posted online showed Iranian soldiers in black ski masks sweeping onto the ship in the Strait of Hormuz. In the audio recording released Sunday by the security risk firm Dryad Global, the voice of an apparent Iranian official warns the tanker's crew to alter course.

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  UK Prime Minister holds emergency session on how to respond to Iran-seized tanker

  KFSN – Fresno
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  Iran oil tanker crisis: Mike Pompeo says ‘responsibility falls to UK to take care of its ships’

  The Independent

U.S. Navy Identifies Missing Sailor Who Reportedly Went Overboard from Aircraft Carrier

Task and Purpose Security, A sad day. The Navy has identified the missing sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as Aviation Electronics Technician 2nd Class Slayton Saldana, who was assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 5, with Carrier Air Wing 7. Saldana has been listed as Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown since July 17.

Black Georgia Lawmaker Alleges White Man Told Her to 'Go Back Where You Came From' in Grocery Store Confrontation

A black lawmaker in Georgia says a white man verbally harassed her and told her to “go back where you came from” during a confrontation at a Publix grocery store on Friday. Erica Thomas, a Democrat and Georgia state representative, alleges that the man cursed at her and called her “ignorant” and “lazy” because she was checking out in an express lane with more than 10 items. Thomas' young daughter was present at the time.

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  200 Years Before the 'Send Her Back' Chants, This U.S.-Backed Effort Tried to Send Free Black Americans 'Back'

  Time
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  Trump rips media over chant

  FOX News Videos

10 Surprising Moon Facts! (That Were Totally Wrong)

There are plenty of conspiracy theories, recent discoveries, and just plain old misconceptions about the moon. From Popular Mechanics

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  India counts down to new bid to launch Moon mission

  AFP
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  What Would a 21st Century Moon Base Look Like?

  Popular Mechanics

Sanders campaign announces it will cut hours to pay staffers $15 minimum wage

Democrat presidential candidate Bernie Sanders will cut staffers' hours so they can effectively be paid the $15-an-hour minimum wage he champions on the campaign trail.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders shows up to govs shindig as Arkansas rumors swirl

Sarah Huckabee Sanders made an appearance Sunday at an exclusive Republican Governors Association-hosted retreat, further stoking anticipation that the former White House press secretary may pursue a bid for statewide office. Sanders, who is seen as a possible 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial candidate, attended a dinner hosted by the family of the late Fred Malek, a major GOP donor and former RGA finance chairman who died in March. The dinner kicked off a two-day retreat the RGA is hosting in Aspen, Colo., which is expected to draw an array of GOP governors and donors.

French submarine lost in 1968 found at last in Mediterranean

A French submarine that went missing in the western Mediterranean in 1968 has been found, officials said Monday, ending a 51-year wait for families of the crew who continue to seek answers to the naval disaster. The diesel-electric Minerve submarine was lost off France's southern coast with 52 sailors on board on January 27, 1968. "We found the submarine Minerve last night located 45 kilometres (30 miles) south of Toulon, about 20 kilometres further south than where it was searched for in 1968," the French maritime prefect of the Mediterranean, Vice Admiral Charles Henri du Che, told reporters in Toulon.

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  Missing for more than 50 years, wreckage of submarine is finally found

  USA TODAY
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  Vessel Finds French Submarine That's Been Lost for 50 Years

  Popular Mechanics

Louisiana police officer's Facebook post says Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 'needs a round,' report says

WASHINGTON – A Louisiana police officer last week said in a Facebook post that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a "vile idiot" who should be shot. A screenshot of the post by veteran Gretna police officer Charlie Rispoli was taken by The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. In it, Rispoli shares a blog post that falsely claims the New York Democrat said "We pay soldiers too much."

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  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: President Trump enjoyed crowd saying, 'Send her back!'

  WABC – NY
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  Cops Fired For Facebook Post Suggesting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Should Be Shot

  HuffPost

Millions of Barrels of Iranian Oil Are Piled Up in China’s Ports

Two and a half months after the White House banned the purchase of Iran's oil, the nation's crude is continuing to be sent to China where it's being put into what's known as “bonded storage,” say people familiar with operations at several Chinese ports. The store of oil has the potential to push down global prices if Chinese refiners decide to draw on it, even as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies curb production as growth slows in major economies.

Hong Kong police seize explosives as rival camps rally

Police in Hong Kong discovered a stash of a powerful homemade explosive as the semi-autonomous Chinese city readied for another major pro-democracy protest on Sunday following a pro-Beijing rally that attracted thousands. Materials voicing opposition to an extradition bill that has sparked more than a month of demonstrations in Hong Kong were found at the site, local media said, but a police spokesman said no concrete link has been established and that the investigation is continuing. In a rally that aimed to counter the pro-democracy movement, thousands of people filled a park in central Hong Kong on Saturday to support the police, who have been accused of using rough tactics on protesters.

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  Hong Kong’s New Reality

  The Atlantic
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  Hong Kong 'triad' gang attack in train station 'an attempt to silence voice of the people', says protest leader

  The Independent

Trump has not built single mile of new border wall since taking office

It was the controversial campaign promise that Donald Trump built his 2016 electoral success on: to build what he called a “big beautiful wall” on the US border with Mexico. Now, it has emerged that not a single new stretch of border wall has been built since Mr Trump took office in January 2017. A statement released by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency confirmed the 51 miles of fencing completed since Mr Trump took power has simply replaced barriers that already existed.

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  President Trump goes after Fed on Twitter: ‘Don’t miss it again!’

  Yahoo Finance Video
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  Potential for July rate cut

  Yahoo Finance Video

2020 Candidates Delayed Paying Staff to Look Richer on Paper

For months, Sen. Amy Klobuchar's (D-MN) presidential campaign made regular payments to its staff and vendors, with varying daily expenditures that never exceeded $335,000. By putting off the payments until then, Klobuchar was able to put the best possible spin on her presidential campaign's financial position during the previous three months. A Daily Beast review of campaign finance records indicates that the delayed-expenses strategy has continued through the just completed cycle, and has involved payments to campaign staffers as well.

F-35s Go to War: Why Israel's Strike on Syria Was so Successful

The Israeli Air-force had apparently been waiting for a provocation as the resulting counterattack against the launchers and the Iranian military infrastructure was an overwhelming one. On May 9th the Iranian Quds force that belongs into the Revolutionary Guards Corps launched a rocket salvo against the Israeli forces in the Golan heights. The IDF had anticipated the move and placed several Iron Dome batteries to protect the region, so the attack did very little damage and several rockets were shot down.

Ousted Planned Parenthood chief called abortion ‘the fight of our time’

Deposed Planned Parenthood chief Leana Wen vowed in a memo before taking her post that she would treat abortion “as the fight of our time,” calling into question her claim that she was ousted as CEO last week for seeking to depoliticize Planned Parenthood's signature issue. “We are facing [the] real probability that 1/3 of women of reproductive age—25 million—could be living in states that ban or criminalize abortion,” Wen wrote in an October 2018 internal memo where she laid out her agenda. The memo was given to POLITICO by a former Planned Parenthood official.

Putin gives Russian citizenship to Novatek's finance chief, a U.S. national

President Vladimir Putin handed Russian citizenship to gas producer Novatek's veteran finance chief Mark Gyetvay on Monday, a move that could potentially help the U.S. national bypass some sanctions restrictions. U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014 ban U.S. nationals and companies from helping organize long-term funding for some major Russian firms, including Novatek. When the U.S. and the EU imposed sanctions on Russia, executives with foreign passports at companies affected including Novatek - the country's largest non-state natural gas producer - and state bank VTB handed over responsibility for organizing new debt or equity issuance to colleagues without EU or U.S. passports.

US sanctions Chinese oil trader for violating Iran restrictions: Pompeo

The United States is placing a leading Chinese oil importer on its sanctions blacklist for trading in Iranian crude, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday. "As part of that maximum pressure campaign, I am announcing that the United States is imposing sanctions on the Chinese entity Zhuhai Zhenrong and its chief executive Youmin Li," Pompeo said in a speech. "They violated US law by accepting crude oil," he said.

India launches 'historic' flight bound for the moon

Days after the United States celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first human steps on the moon, India on Monday launched an unmanned flight bound for the far side of the moon. If Chandrayaan2's lander Vikram touches down as scheduled on Sept. 7, India will join the U.S., Russia and China as nations to land on the moon. India hopes to complete a manned mission to the moon within three years.

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  Europe space agency to join new race to the moon

  The Telegraph
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  Original Apollo 11 landing videotapes sell for $1.8M

  TechCrunch

There's a Warning for the Thousands Who Signed Up to 'Storm Loch Ness' Because 'Nessie Can't Hide From Us All'

As the world—and the U.S. military—waits to see if any of the nearly two million people who signed up on Facebook for the Area 51 raid actually show up to invade the military installation to hunt for aliens, the viral story seems to have inspired a similar event overseas. Over 19,000 people have signed up to “Storm Loch Ness” on Facebook, saying that “Nessie can't hide from us all” and that “The time is now for us to find dat big boi”. The volunteer Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) crew who monitors Loch Ness really hopes that no one actually shows up, according to the BBC, as they don't have the resources of the U.S. military, which is fully prepared to fend off any jokester planning to actually storm Area 51.

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  Storm Loch Ness: RNLI issues warning after thousands of monster hunters vow to 'find dat big boi'

  The Independent
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  RNLI urges Loch Ness monster 'spotters' against Area 51 style plan to storm the area

  The Telegraph

Correction: Military-Hyperfit Women story

In a story July 21 about a U.S. military study of "hyperfit" women, The Associated Press reported erroneously that a vo2 Max score measures how many millimeters of oxygen are used per kilogram of body weight per minute. ARMY SOLDIER SYSTEMS CENTER, Mass. (AP) — In the nearly four years since the Pentagon announced it was opening all combat jobs to women, at least 30 have earned the Army Ranger tab, two have graduated Marine infantry school and three have passed the grueling initial assessment phase for Green Beret training. "We're really interested in those elite women that are the first to make it through physically demanding training," said Holly McClung, a nutritional physiologist at the Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Massachusetts.

Vigilante Armies Are Fighting Mexican Drug Cartels, but Whose Side Are They Really on?

The men in the trucks are members of the United Front of Community Police of Guerrero State, better known by its Spanish acronym of FUPCEG. Tonight FUPCEG's shock troops are on their way to assault the nearby town of El Naranjo, which is currently held by the forces of an organized crime group called the Cartel del Sur. “We fight to free communities that have been isolated by the criminals,” says a squad leader who asks to be identified only as “El Burro” in an interview with The Daily Beast.

Britain tells UN tanker seizure was 'illegal interference'

A top British representative to the United Nations has declared in a letter to the Security Council that Iran's seizure of a British-flagged tanker amounted to "illegal interference," and he rejected Tehran's version of events. Iranian authorities impounded the Stena Impero with 23 crew members aboard after patrol boats of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized it Friday in the highly sensitive Strait of Hormuz. Iranian officials said the tanker had turned off its transponder after hitting an Iranian fishing boat and was detained after failing to respond to distress calls.

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  UK Prime Minister holds emergency session on how to respond to Iran-seized tanker

  KTRK – Houston
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  Video Shows Iranian Commandos Rappelling onto British Tanker in Strait of Hormuz

  The National Interest

Who are the Chinese 'triads' accused of attacks on Hong Kong protesters?

The ancient gangs have been associated with the suppression of protesters and troublemakers in both Hong Kong and parts of southern China in recent years, where they act as thugs for hire. Sunday's attacks were carried out in plain view of security cameras, and with a mysterious lack of police presence. The most prominent triad gangs in Hong Kong are 14K and Sun Yee On, and there have been claims that the Wo Sing Wo group are behind Sunday's attack.

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  UK will keep 'close eye' on Hong Kong violence probe

  AFP
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  Groups of Men in White Attack People in Hong Kong's Neighborhood of Yuen Long

  Meredith Videos