U.S.USA TODAYComputer repairman who claimed he gave Hunter Biden data to Giuliani closes shop as laptop saga gets stranger
Weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election, the world's political intrigue turned to a Wilmington computer repair shop after the New York Post revealed that its owner gave a copy of a laptop hard drive he believed belonged to Hunter Biden to a lawyer representing Rudy Giuliani. A slew of new information has surfaced in the weeks since, including details about the laptop's journey from the repair shop to Giuliani's office. The story claimed that President-elect Joe Biden, while vice president in 2015, held a meeting with an executive from Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company that employed his son, Hunter Biden.
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Russia chases off U.S. warship in row over waters in Sea of Japan
Russia said on Tuesday one of its warships caught and chased off a U.S. destroyer operating illegally in its territorial waters in the Sea of Japan, but the U.S. Navy denied wrongdoing by its vessel and accused Moscow of making excessive maritime claims. The Admiral Vinogradov, a Russian destroyer, verbally warned USS John S. McCain, a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer, and threatened to ram it in order to force it to leave the area, prompting it to return to neutral waters, Moscow said.
U.S.Associated PressIsraeli leader tells convicted spy: 'We're waiting for you'
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday phoned Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. Navy analyst convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s, telling him: “We're waiting for you.” The U.S. Justice Department announced last Friday that Pollard had completed his parole, clearing the way for him to move to Israel 35 years after he was arrested. “You should have now a comfortable life where you can pursue, both of you can pursue your interests,” Netanyahu said in a conversation with Pollard and his wife Esther.
WorldBBCJoshua Wong and fellow activists plead guilty in Hong Kong protests trial
Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong and two fellow campaigners are facing the prospect of prison after pleading guilty to unlawful assembly during last year's mass protests. Mr Wong, Ivan Lam and Agnes Chow appeared in court on Monday. Mr Wong said he expected to go to jail, possibly facing five years behind bars.
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Trump campaign drops lawyer Sidney Powell
President Donald Trump's legal team has parted ways with Sidney Powell, a former federal prosecutor who has aided his flailing effort to contest the results of the U.S. election. In a statement released on Sunday, Trump's other campaign lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis said "Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own... She is not a member of the Trump Legal Team."
PoliticsThe Daily BeastBiden Weighs Mike Morell as His CIA Chief. A Key Dem Senator Says Don’t Bother.
President-elect Joe Biden is strongly considering Mike Morell, the former acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, to run the CIA, according to four individuals familiar with the matter. Morell served as deputy CIA director for three years under President Barack Obama and also worked as acting director of the agency twice. According to three of the four sources familiar with the matter, the president-elect was considering both Morell and Avril Haines, another former deputy CIA director, for the position.
U.S.Associated PressCoastal harm from invading saltwater ‘happening right now’
Four Native American tribes on Louisiana's Gulf Coast requested United Nations assistance this year to force action by the U.S. government on invading salt. “That strips us of not only being able to generate an income to provide for ourselves, it also strips us of our ability to feed ourselves healthy,” Shirell Parfait-Dardar, chief of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, said in an interview. The tribes' plight offers an extreme example of a lesser-known but fast-growing impact in the climate crisis: saltwater intrusion.
WorldReutersGermany has started reducing troops in Taliban stronghold of Kunduz: military
Germany is reducing its military presence in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz, a stronghold of the Taliban where German troops have been advising Afghan forces on the fight against the insurgents for years, the military said on Tuesday. The move was planned by NATO's mission in Kabul in late summer and is not a reaction to the United States' announcement last week that it will cut U.S. forces in Afghanistan to 2,500 from 4,500 by mid-January, a spokesman for Germany's Joint Operations Command said. The drawdown of foreign forces, even though peace talks for the country are stalled, could mean greater influence for the Taliban in Afghanistan, marking further challenges for a nation torn by two decades of war and now ravaged by COVID-19.
PoliticsThe IndependentTrump says he ‘will never concede’ and transition process has nothing to do with election result
Having come closer than ever to accepting the 2020 election results on Monday night, by officially launching the transition process, Donald Trump again took to Twitter in the small hours of Tuesday to insist that he “will never concede”. The president reiterated his unsubstantiated claims that the 3 November vote had been “the most corrupt election”, saying he will keep challenging the result in court and hitting out at “fake ballots and 'Dominion'” - a reference to a brand of voting machines. Twitter once again flagged the post almost immediately as “disputed”, hiding it with a warning from people's feeds.
EntertainmentArchitectural DigestClever’s 2020 Gift Guide Is Here and It Just Wants You to Have a Nice Time
We rounded up a mix of gifts that help others, keep folks healthy, and add a little something-something to the home Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
PoliticsAssociated PressBiden win over Trump in Nevada made official by court
The Nevada Supreme Court made Joe Biden's win in the state official on Tuesday, approving the state's final canvass of the Nov. 3 election. The unanimous action by the seven nonpartisan justices sends to Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak results that will deliver six electoral votes from the western U.S. battleground state to Biden. The court action drew extra scrutiny amid legal efforts by the state GOP and Trump campaign to prevent sending vote-by-mail ballots to all 1.82 million active registered voters and then to stop the counting of the 1.4 million votes that were cast.
BusinessBusiness InsiderElon Musk has surpassed rival Bill Gates as the world's second-richest person. Here's where their simmering feud began and how it's escalated amid the pandemic.
Elon Musk and Bill Gates have been feuding over everything from the coronavirus to electric vehicles. Musk has said Gates doesn't know what he's talking about, and Gates has said he bought a Porsche electric car over a Tesla. Gates called Musk's comments on the outbreak "outrageous," and Musk recently described Gates as a "knucklehead."
PoliticsThe IndependentTrump worried Giuliani and legal team are ‘fools making him look bad’, report says
President Donald Trump is reportedly worried that he is being embarrassed by his campaign legal team, led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who have been unsuccessful in a string of cases challenging the results of the US election. Three weeks after the vote on 3 November, Mr Trump continues to complain about widespread irregularities without providing evidence, and his campaign has brought cases across several key swing states. Now, according to NBC News, the president is worried that his campaign's legal team is made up of “fools” whose failures and outlandish press appearances are “making him look bad”, a source said.
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Kurdish and Turkey-backed fighters clash in Syria, 18 killed
Clashes between Kurdish fighters and Turkey-backed opposition gunmen in northern Syria left at least 18 fighters dead in some of the most intense fighting in weeks, an opposition war monitor and a Kurdish news agency said Tuesday. Exchanges of fire and shelling between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and Turkey-backed opposition gunmen who identify as the Syrian National Army have not been uncommon since Turkish troops invaded parts of northern Syria in October last year. The clashes began before midnight Monday near the town of Ein Issa and were triggered by an assault from Turkey-backed gunmen on SDF positions, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, and the Kurdish ANHA news agency.
ScienceReutersChina calls launch a success as robotic spacecraft heads to moon
China hailed as a success its pre-dawn launch on Tuesday of a robotic spacecraft to bring back rocks from the moon in the first bid by any country to retrieve lunar surface samples since the 1970s, a mission underscoring Chinese ambitions in space. The Long March-5, China's largest carrier rocket, blasted off at 4:30 a.m. Beijing time (2030 GMT on Monday) in a launch from Wenchang Space Launch Center on the southern Chinese island of Hainan carrying the Chang'e-5 spacecraft. The China National Space Administration (CNSA) called the launch a success and said in a statement that the rocket flew for nearly 37 minutes before sending the spacecraft on its intended trajectory.
HealthBBCCovid: 'Entire families in hospital after coronavirus surge'
On 14 October, Farah Husain, a critical care specialist in Delhi's largest Covid-19 hospital, heaved a sigh of relief. Doctors fear that Delhi may well become the epicentre of India's first wave of winter infections. Delhi is now recording more cases a day than any state.
PoliticsAssociated PressTrump vents about election as agencies aid Biden transition
President Donald Trump insisted Tuesday that he is not giving up his fight to overturn the election results, but across the federal government, preparations were beginning in earnest to support President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration. Within hours of the General Services Administration's acknowledgement Monday evening of Biden's victory in the Nov. 3 election, career federal officials opened the doors of agencies to hundreds of transition aides ready to prepare for his Jan. 20 inauguration. An administration official said logistics on when and where Biden will first receive the briefing were still being worked out.
WorldAssociated PressOil-rich Kuwait faces reckoning as debt crisis looms
Its break-even price for this year's budget was $86 a barrel, double current sales figures, putting its finances under strain. That's not to say Kuwait will be begging for aid at international summits any time soon. The Kuwait Investment Authority holds assets of $533 billion, according to the Las Vegas-based Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, making it the world's fourth-largest such fund.
PoliticsReutersInterior Department contender says Biden would target Trump Arctic drilling push on first day
President Donald Trump's last-minute push to allow drilling in a pristine part of Alaska's Arctic will be an early target for the next administration, according to Senator Tom Udall, a contender to lead the Interior Department under Joe Biden. The New Mexico Democrat was speaking of the Trump administration's plan to pull off a sale of oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge before Biden, who wants to ban new drilling on all federal lands and waters as part of a strategy to fight climate change, becomes president on Jan. 20.
WorldAssociated PressGerman defense minister rejects Turkey complaint over search
Germany's defense minister on Tuesday rejected Turkey's complaints over the search of a Turkish freighter in the Mediterranean Sea by a German frigate participating in a European mission, insisting that German sailors acted correctly. Sunday's incident prompted Turkey to summon diplomats representing the European Union, Germany and Italy and assert that the Libya-bound freighter Rosaline-A was subjected to an “illegal” search by personnel from the German frigate Hamburg. The German ship is part of the European Union's Irini naval mission, which is enforcing an arms embargo against Libya.
WorldAssociated PressTaiwan's leader launches production of domestically made sub
Taiwan's president inaugurated the production of domestically made submarines Tuesday in the southern city of Kaohsiung, in a step forward for the island's defense strategy at a time of elevated tensions with China. “This submarine is an important part of allowing our navy to develop asymmetric warfare and to intimidate and block enemy ships from surrounding Taiwan's main island,” said President Tsai Ing-wen. “Now, with the construction of the submarine to its future commission, we will certainly let the world know our persistence in safeguarding our sovereignty.”
LifestyleUSA TODAY30 amazing gifts you can get at Anthropologie that anyone would love
The slight tinges of gold make it an especially lovely gift for Christmastime, and the neutral cream and black tones will match anyone's decor. For the one who got into puzzles this year: Jiggy Puzzle These Jiggy Puzzles are so beautiful, they're essentially pieces of art that deserve to be framed when finished. Coming in different themes like “A Walk in the Woods” and “Emerald Eden,” these puzzles feature work by emerging female artisans and come with their own tube of glue and straight-edge tool for a professional finished product.
PoliticsReutersFactbox: Trump suffers major defeat in legal battle to overturn the election, but presses on
On Saturday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania said Trump's challenge to mail-in ballots in the state had been "haphazardly stitched together" like "Frankenstein's monster." Several Trump campaign lawsuits have been dismissed, and legal experts said the remaining cases do not give Trump, a Republican, a viable path to overturning the election results. The Trump campaign sued on Nov. 9 to prevent Biden, a Democrat, from being certified by election officials as the winner in Pennsylvania.
U.S.Associated PressArmy Corps of Engineers grants final federal Line 3 permit
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Monday approved the final federal permit for Enbridge Energy's planned Line 3 crude oil pipeline replacement across northern Minnesota, bringing the project a step closer to construction. In a release from its St. Paul office, the Corps said it determined the Line 3 project “is compliant with all federal laws and regulations.” Col. Karl Jansen, commander of the St. Paul District, said the decision followed “an exhaustive review” and extensive work with federal and state regulators, Native American tribes, environmental groups and Enbridge.
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IS teenager is a security risk, UK top court hears
A British-born woman who joined Islamic State as a teenager should not be allowed to return to Britain because she poses a security risk, the UK's top court heard on Monday (November 23). Shamima Begum was born to Bangladeshi parents and left London in 2015 when she was 15 years old. She went to Syria via Turkey with two school friends.
“Donald Trump defeated Donald Trump.”
“The victory was a vindication of a style of American politics that many feared was gone forever.”
“Mr. Biden’s victory — and Mr. Trump’s defeat — is a testament to the resilience of American democracy.”
“Trump’s 2020 reelection bid was doomed by his boorish behavior. Time and again, he refused to act like a president.”
“Biden took the opportunity to unite the Democratic Party.”