Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., on Sunday said it would play to the “president's advantage” to have his top administration officials, in an “out-of-the-box strategy,” testify in the upcoming impeachment hearings. “As it relates to the other members of the executive branch, the president has to make decisions not only for him but for the presidency,” he continued.
Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden said his son Hunter will not be engaged in any foreign business if the former vice president is elected in 2020. Hunter Biden raised eyebrows when it came to light that he held a lucrative position on the board of a Ukrainian gas company while his father was fighting corruption in Ukraine as vice president. The set-up prompted Trump to ask Ukraine to investigate the Bidens while temporarily withholding U.S. military aid, an alleged quid pro quo that became the basis for the impeachment inquiry against Trump.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a novel case by Arizona seeking to recover billions of dollars that the state has said that members of the Sackler family - owners of Purdue Pharma LP - funneled out of the OxyContin maker before the company filed for bankruptcy in September. The justices declined to take the rare step of allowing Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich to pursue a case directly with the Supreme Court on the role the drugmaker played in the U.S. opioid epidemic that has killed tens of thousands of Americans annually in recent years. The lawsuit accused eight Sackler family members of funneling $4 billion out of Purdue from 2008 to 2016 despite being aware that the company faced massive potential liabilities over its marketing of opioid medications.
Family and friends are honoring a UPS driver who was killed in a shootout between Florida police and the robbery suspects who had hijacked his delivery truck. Loved ones and coworkers of Frank Ordonez gathered at a UPS Customer Center in Miami Sunday night with candles and flowers, and they wrote messages on UPS slips they stuck to a car at the vigil. Other UPS workers also joined in — one group from London expressed support by tweeting a photo showing uniformed workers holding up letters that together spelled #ONE UPS and RIP Frank Ordonez.
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.
For months, Carlos Lopez's mind has been endlessly spinning with the fears and anxiety of leaving his home country of Honduras, traveling 1,700 miles with his 13-year-old son to this Mexican border town and the day-to-day survival of living in a squalid tent city. “All the bad thoughts went away,” Lopez, 41, said, as he emerged from his 45-minute-long acupuncture session. Lopez is one of a growing number of migrants stuck on the border under President Donald Trump's Migration Protection Protocols policy – which sends migrants to Mexican border towns to await their immigration court hearing in the U.S. To help the migrants pass the time and deal with stress, teams of volunteers led by Acupuncturists Without Borders, or AWB, a nonprofit that treats people in disaster zones and refugee camps and trains other acupuncturists around the world, are providing Lopez and others with free acupuncture treatment at border towns in Mexico.
China is waging a widespread, coordinated mass crackdown on its Uighur Muslim minority. Though the brutal campaign is most active in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, the Uighurs' homeland, many Uighurs abroad say they have also been targeted by Chinese agents. Members of the Uighur diaspora described receiving mysterious automated calls, eerie Facebook comments, and being threatened by Mandarin Chinese speakers in real life.
Russian diesel subs chased a British nuclear sub off the Syrian coast, according to British media. The incident reportedly involved one or two Russian Kilo-class diesel-powered submarines, which have been dubbed the "Black Hole" by Western navies because they are remarkably quiet. "Two Russian frigates and an anti-submarine aircraft are also thought to have been searching for the British boat as it maneuvered to put its Tomahawk cruise missiles within range of Syrian military targets," according to The Times of London."The Astute-class submarine is believed to have spent several days trying to evade detection in a tense and dangerous contest." The British sub did not fire its Tomahawks during last week's strike by American, British and French forces against Syrian chemical weapons sites, leading to speculation that the British boat was driven off by the Russian subs.
Build those structures. Keep them from harm. Collect that loot.
The Citizenship Amendment Bill was introduced amid opposition protests and government cheers in the Lok Sabha or lower house of Parliament on Monday. It is listed for debate later in the day. The proposed changes will allow citizenship for Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who illegally migrated to India from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan.
When Democrats won a Senate seat in Alabama two years ago, their chairman declared that “black women are the backbone of the Democratic party, and we can't take that for granted”. Unless something changes quickly, there will be no candidates of colour at all. “It's galling for people that are on the stage to not acknowledge and speak to black women's issues,” said Aimee Allison, the founder and president of She the People, a network dedicated to elevating the political power of women of colour.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a free speech challenge brought by a trade group against a regulation issued by the California city of Berkeley that requires cell phone retailers to tell customers of certain radiation risks. The justices left in place a July 2019 decision by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that refused to block the 2015 regulation that industry group CTIA appealed. CTIA said the regulation violates the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects free speech rights, because the government, without the necessary justification that supports other types of regulations, is forcing retailers to spread a message they disagree with.
Almost hidden among the throngs of demonstrators who marched in Hong Kong on Sunday was one woman who crawled, literally on hands and knees on the rough road surface — an apt metaphor for the arduous path traveled by Hong Kong's protest movement in the past six months. Dragging bricks and empty soda cans on pieces of string behind her, the young woman elicited shouts of encouragement from fellow protesters. "Her performance art is about the difficulty, or the repetitiveness, of demonstrations," said one of her friends, who walked alongside and identified herself by her surname, Chan.
The rise of 'volcano tourism' – a disaster waiting to happen Subscribe for just £1 per week - 50% off British citizens are among those missing or injured following an eruption on a volcanic island, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said. Five people have died, eight people are missing and 31 remain in hospital following the eruption on White Island, 30 miles off the east coast of the country's North Island. It is thought there were about 50 people on the island when the volcano erupted on at 2.11pm local time on Monday spewing an enormous plume of ash into the air.
Twin 4-year-old girls escaped a fatal car crash by unbuckling their car seats and hiking for help, Washington state officials confirmed. The crash killed their father, Corey Simmons, 47, at the scene after the car careened off a winding road Friday evening and down into a wooden area 200 feet away, KING-TV and CNN reported. Simmons sustained traumatic head injuries. The twins unbuckled their booster seats, extricated themselves from the wreckage by climbing out of the broken back window of the vehicle — a 2017 Nissan Sentra —and climbed 200 feet up an embankment back to the road on Whidbey Island, located 34 miles north of Seattle, Trooper Heather Axtman told USA TODAY.
A Saudi national at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida recorded the shooting from in front of the building where it took place, according to The New York Times. A person briefed on the investigation into the incident told The Times that the Saudi national who recorded the incident said that he and two others had coincidentally been there during the shooting and had gotten "caught up in the moment." The shooting took place on Friday when 21-year-old 2nd Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani of the Royal Saudi Air Force opened fire in a classroom, killing three young service members.
Designed to minimize civilian casualties, the ninja missile is a specially modified Hellfire—without a warhead. The Hellfire missiles weigh in the 100 to 110 pound range, including a 20-pound warhead and are guided through a millimeter wave radar seeker, or by laser. Years after their development, Hellfire missiles have become the armament of choice in the war on terror, and are often used on Reaper and Predator drones in strikes against militants in crowded, urban environments.
The chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee said Sunday that if the impeachment case against President Trump were put to a jury, there "would be a guilty verdict in three minutes flat."
Top officials for the predominately Muslim region of Xinjiang made the claim Monday during a briefing to promote policies they said were responsible for ending a spate of terrorist attacks. The briefing came less than a week after the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would sanction Chinese officials over percieved human rights abuses in the region, including what the United Nations says is the detention of as many as 1 million mostly Uighur Muslims. “All the students in the centers studying the national common language, law, vocational skills and de-radicalization courses have all graduated,” said Shohrat Zakir, Xinjiang's governor and No. 2 official.
Following reports that Amazon plans to open a new office in New York City, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that the Trump administration "should focus more on cutting public assistance to billionaires instead of poor families."
Attorney General William Barr has reportedly warned President Donald Trump that his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is becoming a liability, sources told The Washington Post. Giuliani's role in seeking announcements from Ukraine about two criminal investigations that Democrats allege would have benefitted the president politically is one of the chief focuses of the House impeachment probe. Giuliani has denied any claims of wrongdoing in either his work in his efforts to secure the Ukraine investigations, claiming he was simply acting in defense of his client, Trump.
For decades, criminals in Saudi Arabia were lined up after Friday prayers at a central Riyadh plaza and beheaded by sword in a gruesome public spectacle overseen by the religious police. Such jarring contrasts are accompanying the rapid social changes under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, like lifting bans on women driving, gender mixing and public entertainment. Many Saudis embrace the new openness, but even supporters worry it might be coming too quickly and risks provoking a conservative backlash.
An Ohio legislator who said he had “no knowledge” of a rightwing Christian bill mill called Project Blitz is, in fact, the co-chair of the state branch of an organization behind the campaign. The Ohio state representative Timothy Ginter sponsored a bill called the Student Religious Liberties Act. The Guardian revealed the bill was nearly identical to one promoted by Project Blitz, a state legislative project guided by three Christian right organizations, including the Congressional Prayer Caucus (CPC), WallBuilders and the ProFamily Legislators Conference.
A young female local news journalist has spoken out after she was apparently groped by a runner while reporting live on a race in Savannah, Ga. Alexandrea Bozarjian, a WSAV3 journalist, was reporting on the Enmarket Savannah Bridge Run on Saturday as runners rush by her, waving to the camera, according to footage of the incident. Suddenly, a man throws back his arm, turns to her and appears to deliberately hit her on the rear end.
A man has been arrested after a would-be thief tipped a woman out of her wheelchair on a train and attempted to steal it. CCTV footage of the incident shows a man dressed in a red jacket and reindeer slippers, who lept out of his seat and grabbed the handles of the wheelchair as the train approached a station. The woman sitting in the chair can be seen desperately grabbing onto the railings inside the carriage as the attacker attempts to steer her out of the open doors.