- WorldThe Telegraph
UK 'asked US not to sabre rattle over tanker seized by Iran'
Mr Trump had already spoken to Boris Johnson on Thursday, although it was not clear whether they discussed Iran. The following day, when asked about the Stena Impero, Mr Trump did not give his usual full-throated response to acts of Iranian aggression, instead saying he had "heard about it" and would "work with the UK" Mr Pompeo was asked about Iran during an interview in Argentina late on Friday, but aid only: "We're doing everything we can in the United States to de-escalate with Iran. We want them simply to cease being the world's largest state sponsor of terror."
- NewsThe National Interest
Alleged American ISIS Sniper Brought Home by the Defense Department to Face Charges
An American citizen who allegedly served as a sniper for ISIS and became a leader for the terrorist group is expected to appear in federal court on Friday after being returned to the United States by the Defense Department, officials said. Ruslan Maratovich Asainov, who was born in Kazakhstan and became a naturalized U.S. citizen, is charged with providing and attempting to provide material support to ISIS, the Justice Department announced on Friday. A U.S. official confirmed to Task & Purpose that the Defense Department had transported Asainov from Syria to the United States.
- NewsAssociated Press
3 sentenced for violence at Virginia white nationalist rally
Three members of a white supremacist group were sentenced Friday to between two and three years in prison for punching, kicking and choking anti-racism protesters at a white nationalist rally in Virginia and political rallies in California. Members of the now-defunct Rise Above Movement were caught on camera assaulting counterprotesters before a planned "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. Benjamin Daley, Michael Miselis and Thomas Gillen each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to riot.
WorldAFPPhilippine police seek sedition charges against VP, Duterte critics
Philippine police have recommended sedition charges against the vice president and other opposition figures, a move slammed Friday as an attempt to stifle dissent under President Rodrigo Duterte. Police allege Vice President Leni Robredo, Catholic Church leaders and opposition politicians plotted to destabilise the Duterte government by implicating him in the narcotics trade. Duterte launched a war against the drug trade when he came into power three years ago.
- NewsUSA TODAY
Gabbard, AOC join lawmakers to call on Puerto Rican governor to resign over corruption scandal
WASHINGTON – Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, has joined a growing chorus of lawmakers including Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., in calling for the resignation of Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló over a corruption scandal involving leaked text messages between the governor and top aides. In a Twitter video sent from San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Friday, Gabbard called "on all Democrats running for President to come here to Puerto Rico and show support for our fellow Americans" against corruption, and called for Rosselló's resignation.
PoliticsFOX News VideosBernie Sanders campaign reportedly resists unionized staff demands for $15 per hour
Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has pledged that he will raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour if he wins the White House in 2020.
- BusinessThe Daily Beast
Ex-NRA Ad Firm: Um, Wayne LaPierre is Lying
In a new filing against the National Rifle Association, lawyers for ad agency Ackerman McQueen suggest that longtime NRA executive Wayne LaPierre is lying about a critical moment in the gun rights group's recent leadership shake up. At issue is multi-million-dollar litigation between the NRA and its ex-ad firm. In court filings of its own, the NRA has alleged that Oliver North, the groups's former president, was ousted in part because he withheld information from the NRA about payments he took from Ackerman McQueen, which had served as the gun rights group's primary ad contractor until just months ago.
- NewsReuters
Ahead of U.S. deadline, Mexico minister has fulfilled migration enforcement pledge
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Friday that Mexico has followed through on its commitment to the United States to reduce migration from Central America, as a deadline in a bilateral pact approaches. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to travel to Mexico City to discuss migration and trade with Ebrard on Sunday, a day before the end of a 45-day period in which the Mexican government pledged to significantly lower the number of people trying to cross the U.S. border illegally. Mexico struck the deal in June to avert punitive trade tariffs.
- WorldTime
A Passenger Was Fined $105,000 and Banned for Life for 'Extremely Disruptive Behavior' on an Airplane
An unruly passenger has been billed $105,000 after her “extremely disruptive behavior” caused a flight to be diverted with a military escort. British budget carrier Jet2 accused passenger Chloe Haines of “a catalogue of aggressive, abusive and dangerous behavior,” including trying to open the aircraft door, during a flight from the U.K. to Turkey. The airline said in a statement Haines was restrained by crew with the help of other passengers as two military fighter jets escorted the aircraft back to London Stansted.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Trump fumes over Ilhan Omar's 'welcome home' crowd
After claiming he wasn't happy that his supporters broke into a “send her back” chant at his rally in North Carolina, President Trump on Friday fumed over the media coverage of Rep. Ilhan Omar's return to Minnesota, where she was greeted by a crowd cheering “Welcome home. In a series of tweets, the president complained that the media had become “crazed” over the chant, which came after he questioned Omar's loyalty to the United States, yet “is totally calm & accepting of the most vile and disgusting statements made by the three Radical Left Congresswomen. Trump has been very publicly feuding with four — not three — congresswomen.
- LifestyleCar and Driver
See the 2020 Chevy Corvette C8 Driving on the Road Undisguised
Our spy photographers caught two different versions of the C8 out on the road with no camouflage for the first time. From Car and Driver
- WorldAssociated Press
Funeral service held for 86 Muslims killed by Serbs
PRIJEDOR, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Several thousand people attended a funeral service in Bosnia on Saturday for 86 Muslims who were slain by Serbs in one of the worst atrocities of the country's 1992-95 war. Relatives of the victims, religious leaders and others gathered at a soccer stadium near the eastern town of Prijedor, standing solemnly behind lines of coffins draped with green cloths. The Serbs later threw bombs onto the bodies, which made identifying the victims difficult.
WorldAFPSqueezed by sanctions, Iranians seek day jobs in Kurdish Iraq
Mostly Kurds themselves, they have sought day jobs in construction and other menial labour in Iraq's northern Kurdish region to make up for the deteriorating economic situation at home. Wearing mesh hats and canvas bags around their waists, they wait in Arbil's industrial quarters to be picked up by people needing help with removals or construction foremen looking for labourers. "With a full day's wage in Iran, I can only buy a chicken -- but a family's need is more than just a chicken," said Rostam, 31, a worker from Iran's Urmia.
- NewsThe National Interest
The War Over America’s Past Is Really About the Future
The summer season has ripped off the thin scab that covered an American wound, revealing a festering disagreement about the nature and origins of the United States. The San Francisco Board of Education recently voted to paint over, and thus destroy, a 1,600-square-foot mural of George Washington's life in San Francisco's George Washington High School. Victor Arnautoff, a communist Russian-American artist and Stanford University art professor, had painted “Life of Washington” in 1936, commissioned by the New Deal's Works Progress Administration.
- PoliticsUSA TODAY
Court docs show Hope Hicks in contact with Michael Cohen during hush-money discussions
WASHINGTON – New court filings show Hope Hicks, then press secretary of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, might have been present for discussions about hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress who had claimed to have had an affair with Trump – potentially contradicting Hicks' June 2019 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee. In the filings, authorities laid out a timeline of emails, text messages and phone calls – some involving Trump himself – that "concerned the need to prevent" Daniels from going public with her claims.
- NewsThe Daily Beast
The Return of the Godfather: The Old Mafia Is New Again
Central command for the joint operation sent officers to the Dominican Republic and redoubled their surveillance in New York and Sicily, launching the investigation dubbed “New Connection” that netted 19 men in raids of both crime syndicates this week in Palermo, Brooklyn, Staten Island and New Jersey. Among those arrested in Italy was Thomas Gambino who happened to be back in Sicily for a “family vacation. The police used WhatsApp, the encrypted international messaging service, to launch the raids.
- WorldReuters
Irish, EU governments sound out Johnson to avoid no-deal Brexit: Sunday Times
Ahead of Boris Johnson's likely election next week as Britain's prime minister, EU countries are secretly wooing him in a bid to thrash out a new Brexit plan that would avoid a no-deal disaster, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. Senior Irish politicians and diplomats have held talks with two of Johnson's cabinet allies in recent days, it said. German and French figures as well as the Dutch and Belgian governments have also established contact with Johnson's team and signaled an intention to do a deal, it added.
- NewsNational Review
For Planned Parenthood, No Doctors Need Apply
For the longest time, Planned Parenthood has insisted that it's a health-care organization, and it only cares about abortion — supposedly a tiny share of its business — insofar as it's a function of health care. Whenever Republicans have threatened Planned Parenthood's funding over abortion, the response was, Abortion? The hiring of Wen as president seemed the natural extension of this line of argument.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Trump impeachment 'wishful strain of thinking' by Democrats, Steve Kornacki says
As more Democrats push to impeach President Trump, MSNBC journalist and author Steve Kornacki said some on the left are misinterpreting the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. I think there's a wishful strain of thinking out there among Democrats … [that] Republicans impeached Clinton and then they won the [2000] election because of it. I think they won the election in spite of it,” Kornacki, who has researched the 1990s rebuke of Clinton, said in an interview on “The Long Game,” a Yahoo News podcast.
- TechnologyThe National Interest
The Navy's 6th Generation Fighter Could Put the F-35 in a Museum
New much-longer range sensors and weapons, incorporating emerging iterations of AI, are expected to make warfare more disaggregated, and much less of a linear force on force type of engagement. The Navy is currently analyzing air frames, targeting systems, AI-enabled sensors, new weapons and engine technologies to engineer a new 6th-Generation fighter to fly alongside the F-35 and ultimately replace the F/A-18. The Navy program, called Next-Generation Air Dominance, has moved beyond a purely conceptual phase and begun exploration of prototype systems and airframes as it pursues a new, carrier-launched 6th-Gen fighter to emerge in 2030 and beyond, service officials explained.
- NewsAssociated Press
Lawsuit: North Dakota officers used 'violence' on protester
A man who was injured during protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in January 2017 has filed a lawsuit accusing North Dakota law enforcement of using "excessive violence." Marcus Mitchell, 24, filed the lawsuit Thursday against Morton County, the city of Bismarck and state Highway Patrol officers. The lawsuit says officers fired shotgun beanbag rounds at peaceful, unarmed protesters, including Mitchell.
NewsAFPNearly 150 mn people sweltering through deadly US heat wave
The United States was sweating through a weekend of dangerously hot weather, with major cities including New York, Philadelphia and Washington experiencing temperatures approaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). An oppressive heat wave stretching from the Midwestern plains to the Atlantic coast had nearly 150 million people struggling to stay cool amid scorching temperatures. Heat index values -- combining the effect of heat and humidity -- could reach 110 to 115 degrees, particularly in the east, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.
- NewsAOL.com
Five guys arrested for fighting at Five Guys burgers in Florida
An appropriate number of guys were arrested when a fight broke out at a Five Guys restaurant in Florida on Wednesday. Police apprehended three juvenile males and two adult males — a total of five guys — following a lunchtime brawl at the burger chain's location in Stuart, Fla. according to the Orlando Sentinel.
- WorldThe Telegraph
Iran crisis: How a British oil tanker was seized by Iran's balaclava-clad Revolutionary Guards
Allahu akbar”, or God is great, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard marine was heard shouting off camera as the group took control of the British-flagged Stena Impero. Scaling down ropes onto its bow, the balaclava-wearing hijackers made a daring - and seemingly well-rehearsed - raid of the oil tanker, as seen in alleged footage released by Fars news agency last night. The wind was choppy, the skies overcast.
- PoliticsUSA TODAY
Kentucky host Matt Jones yanked amid speculation he'll challenge Mitch McConnell
Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones is losing his television show until the outspoken media personality makes a decision on running for U.S. Senate in 2020, according to a Lexington station. LEX 18's General Manager Pat Dalbey announced on Tuesday that Jones is taking a leave of absence as host of "Hey Kentucky!" as he considers entering the Democratic primary for a chance to take on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
