- NewsYahoo News
FBI warned six months ago about loophole Pensacola shooter used to obtain a gun
WASHINGTON — More than six months before the Dec. 6 shooting at a naval base in Pensacola, Fla., where a Saudi gunman used a weapon obtained using a hunting license exemption, the FBI issued a report warning about precisely this loophole. The FBI warning, dated May 22 and titled “Federal Hunting License Exception Could Be Exploited by Extremists or Criminal Actors Seeking to Obtain Firearms for Violent Attacks,” was sent from the bureau's Office of Private Sector, according to a copy reviewed by Yahoo News.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Yang says massive ad buys by Bloomberg and Steyer are 'going to be a dud'
Businessman Andrew Yang cast skepticism on the recent massive ad buys by billionaire Democratic rivals Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer Thursday morning. “I'm less upset than some of the other candidates at Tom and Mike spending all this money because I think it's going to be a dud,” Yang told a small gaggle of reporters riding aboard his campaign bus through central Iowa. Other candidates, such as Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., have been more critical of Bloomberg's and Steyer's $164 million ad blitz to date.
- PoliticsPolitico
'Pot calling the kettle black': Rep. Gaetz gets scolded for bringing up Hunter Biden's substance abuse
Rep. Matt Gaetz, one of President Donald Trump's fiercest defenders, set off a dust-up during the Judiciary Committee's markup of articles of impeachment when he brought up Hunter Biden's history of substance abuse, prompting a Democratic colleague to scold him. The remarkable exchange took place when Gaetz (R-Fla.) introduced an amendment that would have stricken former Vice President Joe Biden's name from one of the articles and inserted that of his son Hunter Biden and Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company on whose board he sat. As proof of his assertion that Hunter Biden was "corrupt" and unqualified to sit on Burisma's board at all, much less with a five-figure monthly paycheck he was reportedly collecting, Gaetz held up Biden's much-documented struggles with substance abuse.
- BusinessYahoo Finance
Nearly 20% of workers illegally fired for union activity: report
Employers are increasingly preventing employees from forming unions in the workplace, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank. Employers were found with violating federal law in roughly 42% of all union election campaigns, with 20% involving a charge that a worker was “illegally fired” for union activity. Christian Sweeney, deputy organizing director of the AFL-CIO, says that in reality, these numbers are likely an underrepresentation.
- WorldAssociated Press
New Zealand volcano vents steam, death toll now at 16
New Zealand medical staff were continuing to work around the clock Thursday treating severely burned survivors of a volcanic eruption as police announced two more victims had died in hospitals, bringing the death toll to 16. The enormity of the task facing doctors in burn units around the country became clear when Dr. Peter Watson, a chief medical officer, said at a press conference that they had needed to order extra skin from American skin banks. Most of those who survived the eruption at White Island on Monday suffered burns, and 28 patients remain hospitalized, including 23 in critical condition.
- NewsBusiness Insider
The FAA said the Boeing 737 Max had a high risk of crashing, but let the plane continue flying anyway
The Boeing 737 Max was found to have a high likelihood of future crashes in a November 2018 FAA analysis, after the first crash of the plane type. Sign up for Business Insider's transportation newsletter, Shifting Gears, to get more stories like this in your inbox. An internal FAA analysis after the first Boeing 737 Max crash found a high likelihood of future crashes.
- WorldReuters
Bolivia's Morales lands in Argentina, will be granted refugee status
Bolivian ex-president Evo Morales arrived on Thursday in Argentina where he will be granted refugee status, Argentine Foreign Minister Felipe Sola said. Morales was granted asylum to travel to Argentina and had made the request for refugee status to stay, Sola said on news channel TN. Four other people had also requested asylum, Sola said.
- NewsYahoo News
AOC explains why she won't go on Fox News: 'Unmitigated racism'
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., lashed out at Fox News hours after host Tucker Carlson and a guest had criticized her climate policy proposals, while suggesting her district is “dirty” due to its immigrant population. On Tuesday, Carlson and his guest Seth Barron, an editor at the City Journal, a conservative urban policy magazine, took aim at Ocasio-Cortez while playing a video of trash littering the streets of her New York district.
- EntertainmentArchitectural Digest
The Real Locations That Inspired 13 Famous Paintings
From Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône to Pablo Picasso's Au Lapin Agile Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
- NewsThe New York Times
Saudi Family of Pensacola Gunman: 'Even We Don't Know the Truth' of Motive
Not long before a 21-year-old Saudi Royal Air Force trainee shot and killed three American sailors Friday at a naval base in Pensacola, Florida, he called his mother and his brother back home. What was missing was any hint of what was to come: opening fire in a classroom building at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, shooting three fatally and wounding eight more before being killed by a sheriff's deputy. Alshamrani seemed utterly normal in that last conversation, his family insisted in interviews this week in Saudi Arabia.
- WorldThe Guardian
Outrage after Colombia riot police force young woman into unmarked car
Outrage has erupted in Colombia after a young woman participating in anti-government protests was grabbed by riot police in body armour, forced into an unmarked vehicle and driven away. Video of the incident showed the woman sobbing and screaming “Help! The police have kidnapped me!
PoliticsUSA TODAY'Total nonsense': Democrats rip McConnell on delaying USMCA vote until after impeachment trial
What is not possible obviously would be to turn to an impeachment trial or to do USMCA in the Senate before we break for Christmas,” McConnell stated while laying out the agenda for the remainder of the year. Striking an agreement between House Democrats and Trump to revise the trade deal with Mexico and Canada delivered a win for the president on a top legislative priority on the same day House Democrats announced two articles of impeachment against him. Trump has been pushing Congress to ratify the USMCA before the end of the year.
NewsAFPSix dead in hours-long New York-area shootout
Six people including a police officer and two suspects were killed during an hours-long shootout across a New York suburb not far from the Statue of Liberty, local officials said. "Our officers were under fire for hours," Jersey City Police Chief Michael Kelly told reporters after the latest high-profile US shooting. In addition to the officer and the suspects, three civilians were killed in the incident that began around midday at a cemetery and ended in a store, Kelly said.
WorldYahoo News VideoTurkey set to retaliate against any U.S. sanctions
Turkey said on Wednesday it would retaliate against any U.S. sanctions over its purchase of Russian defense systems, adding that with Britain it had agreed to speed up a joint fighter jet program to meet Turkish defense needs.
- NewsAssociated Press
Oink oink, cha-ching: $3 million found in barrels of pork
Barrels of raw pork shoulder were riding fat in a tractor trailer pulled over by North Carolina deputies. Approximately $3 million in cash was recovered from the barrels Saturday, the Cleveland County Sheriff's Office said in a Facebook post Tuesday. The driver of the tractor trailer was accused of failing to maintain his lane and impeding the flow of traffic on Interstate 85.
- WorldReuters
'She is speaking out to us': Māori leader says volcano eruption was a message
Pouroto Ngaropo, standing on an ancient settlement site overlooking the island of Whakaari, recites his ancestry back thousands of years, back to the volcano which erupted there on Monday. "Whakaari is my connection to the ocean, to the land, and to the environment around me ... we are one and she's our ancestor,” said the 51-year old Māori spiritual leader whose genealogy is depicted in the tattoo art known as a 'tā moko' adorning his face. The morning after the eruption, Ngaropo went out with two others at 4 a.m. - the time when he says the connection with the spiritual world is strongest.
- PoliticsBusiness Insider
How 16-year-old Greta Thunberg — Time's 2019 person of the year — became the face of climate activism in just one year
Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old activist from Sweden, has become the face of the youth climate movement. In the summer of 2018, Thunberg started sitting outside the Swedish parliament every Friday. On September 20, 2019, Thunberg led the largest climate strike in history, which included an estimated 4 million people across 161 countries.
- WorldTime
Russia Retaliates by Expelling Two German Diplomats Over Berlin Murder Probe
Russia's foreign ministry said Thursday that it has expelled two German diplomats in retaliation for Germany doing the same last week. The Russian Foreign Ministry said that it was making the move “due to the reciprocity principle” and ordered them to leave the country within the next seven days. The German Foreign Ministry expelled two employees of the Russian Embassy in Berlin last Wednesday, after Russian authorities didn't answer requests by Germany to help shed light on a brazen daylight slaying of a Georgian man in Berlin.
- WorldThe National Interest
Meet the Navy's Small Warships That Help to Deter Iran
The U.S. Navy should acquire small, heavily-armed missile corvettes and deploy them like modern versions of World War II torpedo boats. “The U.S. Navy has long identified threats in the littorals and the need to fight within these close waters, but it still struggles with creating a capable fighting force that provides speed, lethality and a deterrent,” Smith wrote. The Navy in the 1970s developed a class of missile-armed hydrofoils, but canceled acquisition of the type after building just six.
- WorldPopular Mechanics
The Aging B-1 Bomber Can No Longer Fly Like It Used To
Wear and tear to the airframes from decades of flight means the Air Force may restrict the B-1s from flying low. The U.S. Air Force may soon have to restrict one of its bombers from a key mission profile: flying low. The B-1B Lancer bomber fleet is growing old and the Air Force is considering restricting its ability to fly low, which is reportedly hard on the aircraft, in order to keep the big airplanes flying.
- NewsNational Review
Pentagon Watchdog to Review Border-Wall Contract Awarded to Company Repeatedly Praised by Trump
Following a request from Democratic lawmakers, the Pentagon's watchdog will audit a recent Army Corps of Engineers decision to award a $400 million border-wall contract to a North Dakota company that was repeatedly praised by President Trump. According to NBC News, which reviewed a copy of the letter sent from the Department of Defense (DoD) inspector general to the House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), the audit has been initiated and will be formally announced soon. Thompson sent a letter to the DoD on December 4 requesting an audit over “concerns about the possibility of inappropriate influence.” On December 2, the DoD announced that North-Dakota-based firm Fisher Sand and Gravel won the $400 million contract to build a 31-mile wall in Arizona's Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge over the next year.
- NewsReuters
UPDATE 1-Texas executes inmate convicted of killing prison supervisor
Texas on Wednesday executed an inmate convicted of killing a prison boot factory supervisor because he was upset he had to work as a janitor. Travis Runnels, 46, was put to death by lethal injection at the state's death chamber in Huntsville for the 2003 murder of 40-year-old Stanley Wiley, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said in a statement. Runnels' death was the final execution scheduled in the United States for 2019, bringing the total to 22 this year, according to the Catholic Mobilizing Network, which opposes the death penalty.
- NewsUSA TODAY
Virginia counties are declaring themselves 'sanctuaries' for Second Amendment. Will it affect gun laws?
A wave of counties and towns in Virginia are declaring themselves "sanctuaries" for the Second Amendment, but the resolutions are largely symbolic, legal experts say. The push comes in anticipation of a Democrat-controlled General Assembly that will take office in January. State lawmakers, along with Gov. Ralph Northam, have promised Virginians a host of stricter gun laws as Democrats take full power in the state for the first time in decades.
U.S.Yahoo News VideoOcasio-Cortez: U.S. parental leave 'treats people worse than dogs'
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. has stark opinions on U.S. paid family leave policies, saying 'the market' treats people worse than dogs.
- StylePopular Mechanics
The Best Trimmers for Keeping Your Facial Hair Under Control
Shave well, look good. From Popular Mechanics
