| New audio shows UK could not prevent Iran takeover of tanker Posted: 21 Jul 2019 09:05 AM PDT  The release Sunday of an audio recording has shed new light on the seizure of a British-flagged tanker at the hands of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as tensions flare in the strategic Strait of Hormuz. The audio released by maritime security risk firm Dryad Global shows that a British frigate was too far away from the targeted tanker to keep it from being diverted into an Iranian port despite U.K. efforts to keep it from being boarded. On the recording, a stern-voiced British naval officer insists that the U.K.-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero must be allowed to sail through the Strait of Hormuz even as Iranian paramilitary forces demand — successfully — that the vessel change course.
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| Meet the woman who ties Jeffrey Epstein to Trump and the Clintons Posted: 21 Jul 2019 04:00 AM PDT  Heiress Ghislaine Maxwell paved the way to presidents.
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| Universal Orlando reopens after police respond to report of a gunman in parking garage Posted: 21 Jul 2019 07:51 AM PDT  Universal Orlando went under temporary lockdown Saturday night after police received a report of a gunman spotted in a parking garage.
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| Compton boy loses arm after neighbor hands him firework on 10th birthday Posted: 20 Jul 2019 07:07 PM PDT  A man is in custody after handing his young neighbor a firework that blew up, causing the boy to lose his arm on his 10th birthday.
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| Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe Posted: 21 Jul 2019 07:17 AM PDT ![Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe]( "Japan undecided on response to U.S. plan for Mideast maritime coalition -PM Abe") Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Sunday he had not yet decided on how to respond to an expected U.S. request to send its navy to join a military coalition to safeguard strategic waters off Iran and Yemen. "We've started to hear the United States' thinking on this and we want to keep listening carefully," he said on national television as votes were being counted for the upper house election. "At the same time, Japan also has friendly ties with Iran," Abe added.
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| Iraq Kurds arrest two suspects in killing of Turkish vice consul Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:19 AM PDT  Iraqi Kurdish authorities announced Saturday they had arrested two suspects involved in the murder of three people, including a Turkish diplomat, in the regional capital Arbil this week. The autonomous region's security council first said its counterterrorism unit had arrested "the main perpetrator" Mazloum Dag, a 27-year-old from Turkey's Diyarbakir region. The council had put out a wanted notice for Dag a day earlier in connection to Wednesday's killing of Turkish Vice Consul Osman Kose and two Iraqi nationals.
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| 10 Surprising Moon Facts! (That Were Totally Wrong) Posted: 21 Jul 2019 06:00 AM PDT |
| Tsai Says Taiwan’s 2020 Election Will Be a Test of Its Democracy Posted: 20 Jul 2019 07:37 PM PDT ![Tsai Says Taiwan's 2020 Election Will Be a Test of Its Democracy]( "Tsai Says Taiwan's 2020 Election Will Be a Test of Its Democracy") (Bloomberg) -- Taiwan's presidential election next year will be a test of its democracy and value system, President Tsai Ing-wen said at the end of a U.S. trip that drew rebuke from China."Voters in Taiwan will be focused on the future of our country, especially whether we can keep our democratic and freedom way of life," she said at a press conference in Denver on Saturday, and televised at the Presidential Office in Taipei.Seeking a second term, Tsai will face Kuomintang nominee Han Kuo-yu -- a firebrand mayor who advocates closer ties with China -- in the election on Jan. 11. She, on the other hand, dismisses Beijing's claims to sovereignty over Taiwan and has strengthened the island's informal alliance with America.The president has also sought to bolster Taiwan's defense capabilities against a potential Chinese invasion with a series of military-hardware purchases. Taiwan and China have been governed separately since 1949, and only 17 countries have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party advocates formalizing Taiwan's independence.Tsai stopped over in Denver after an official trip to four Caribbean countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan. She was also in New York City before visiting Haiti, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent & the Grenadines and Saint Lucia.To contact the reporter on this story: Chinmei Sung in Taipei at csung4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Samson Ellis at sellis29@bloomberg.net, Shamim Adam, Stanley JamesFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Vatican college space holds bones of dozens, expert says Posted: 20 Jul 2019 11:38 AM PDT  The expert, Giorgio Portera, said the "enormous" size of the collection under the Teutonic College was revealed when Vatican-appointed experts began cataloguing the remains, which were discovered last week . "We didn't expect such an enormous number" of bones and other remains which "had been thrown into a cavity," Portera said. "We want to know why and how" the bones ended up there.
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| Apollo 11 anniversary should rekindle Americans' excitement about space: Readers sound off Posted: 20 Jul 2019 04:00 AM PDT  From Apollo 11, to Trump tweets, to the Electoral College, readers sound off on recent headlines.
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| Britain warns Iran of 'serious consequences' if British-flagged oil tanker not released Posted: 20 Jul 2019 06:29 PM PDT  Iran's seizure of a British oil tanker potentially marks a major escalation in tensions between Iran and the West since they began rising in May.
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| O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All' Posted: 20 Jul 2019 04:22 PM PDT ![O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All']( "O'Rourke and de Blasio spar over 'Medicare for All'") Health care policy has become a primary focus among the Democratic candidates ahead of the second set of debates July 30-31.
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| The Air Force Has Sent Stealth F-22 Raptors to Qatar to Deter Iran Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:00 AM PDT  Since becoming operational in 2005, the F-22 has achieved roughly a 50-percent readiness rate, on average -- one of the lowest rates of all U.S. fighter types. The Raptor's complex systems and delicate, radar-absorbing coating require intensive maintenance.The U.S. Air Force on June 27, 2019 deployed F-22 Raptor stealth fighters for the first time to Qatar as part of a build-up of forces ahead of a possible clash with Iran.The Air Force did not specify how many F-22s traveled to Qatar. Photographers spotted 12 of the radar-evading jets with "FF" tailcodes indicating they belong to the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.The F-22s could fly alongside stealthy F-35s that the Air Force deployed to the United Arab Emirates in April 2019.(This first appeared in June 2019.)Raptors previously flew from the UAE for missions over the Persian Gulf, Syria and Iraq. But a readiness crisis in March 2019 compelled the Air Force to return the F-22s to the United States.Since becoming operational in 2005, the F-22 has achieved roughly a 50-percent readiness rate, on average -- one of the lowest rates of all U.S. fighter types. The Raptor's complex systems and delicate, radar-absorbing coating require intensive maintenance.Hurricane Michael didn't help. The October 2018 storm devastated Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida's panhandle region. Tyndall at the time housed two squadrons together flying 55 F-22s. the 43rd Fighter Squadron is a training unit. The 95th Fighter Squadron is a combat unit.
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| Iran's Zarif calls for 'prudence and foresight' as tensions mount Posted: 21 Jul 2019 04:32 AM PDT ![Iran's Zarif calls for 'prudence and foresight' as tensions mount]( "Iran's Zarif calls for 'prudence and foresight' as tensions mount") Iran's top diplomat said on Sunday that only "prudence and foresight" could alleviate tensions between his country and Britain after Tehran's seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker. "Having failed to lure @realDonaldTrump into War of the Century, and fearing collapse of his #B_Team, @AmbJohnBolton is turning his venom against the UK in hopes of dragging it into a quagmire," Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter.
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| The Return of the Godfather: The Old Mafia Is New Again Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:47 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyROME–Five fleshy, bare-chested men in tight swimsuits on a dinghy doesn't normally garner much attention in the bay of Palermo, Sicily. But it did last August when American mobster Thomas Gambino, 47, and Italian mafioso Tomasso Inzerillo, 72, were among those on board. They were overheard discussing how to divvy up the profits from the suspicious sale of Caribbean property that New York-based Gambino crime family boss Francesco "Franky Boy" Cali had recently unloaded. Hitman Handed License Plate to Mob Boss Before Shooting Him to DeathItalian investigators working with the FBI had planted bugs to catch anything they might say. Now, finally, the joint operation had a solid lead to a connection between the once omnipotent American crime family and the power-hungry Sicilian clan.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. "In Palermo, it's 3am, and muggy. In New York, it's 9pm and looks like it might rain," the Palermo anti-mafia police said at a press conference about the arrests. "A WhatsApp message is sent to the joint squad. It's the sign the Italian police and their FBI colleagues have been waiting for because from Sicily to the U.S., the old Mafia has returned."What the cops uncovered during the investigation that led to this week's arrests was a growing link between the Sicilian and New York mobs that centered on money laundering, drugs and extortion. At one point in phone taps over the last year Gambino can be heard telling his Sicilian counterparts, "We can definitely do business here," according to police transcripts seen by The Daily Beast. But the criminal collaboration—and the joint Italian-FBI investigation—was nearly thrown into chaos when Cali was gunned down in front of his Staten Island, New York, home last March. In the hours after the hit, investigators on both sides of the Atlantic were concerned that it could have been a Sicilian mobster warning the American clan to stay away. But as it turned out Cali was gunned down by a Donald Trump-supporting MAGA flunky, Anthony Comello, who allegedly just wanted to date his daughter."It was a huge relief that it was so random," an Italian anti-Mafia investigator told The Daily Beast.The Boss of Bosses Dies. Will Sicily's Mafia Turn to the U.S. for Leadership?Cali, who was born in Sicily and married into the Inzerillo family at a young age, was known as the "Ambassador" between clans in New York and Palermo. He was the tie that bound the Gambino crime family and the Cosa Nostra's once powerful Inzerillo clan, and police waited to find out what his death ultimately would mean. With Cali's support from America, the Inzerillo family was on a trajectory back to power after the boss of bosses Salvatore 'Toto' Riina died in prison in late 2017. In the 1980s, before his arrest, Riina launched what is known as the Second Mafia War, ordering deadly hits on the heads of the strongest Palermo crime families who threatened his dictatorial power. Among those he killed was the then-powerful Palermo crime boss Salvatore Inzerillo, whose family then fled in self-imposed exile to New York. While in the States, investigators say, the Inzerillo mobsters worked covertly with the Gambino crime family to line their pockets and help fund their return to power in Sicily one day—all the while allegedly promising the Gambino crime family its due reward for the help. Riina was serving out several life sentences in solitary confinement when he died, but he still held sway among the Cosa Nostra's fractious clans, and he still wanted all the Inzerillos dead. Riina's death finally provided the opening the Inzerillos had been waiting for to make a grab for power. Several Gambino crime family members had already moved to Palermo permanently after Riina's death to reap the benefits of the close ties that were sure to come with the Inzerillo clan's return to power. It was all going to plan until "Franky Boy" Cali was killed. "It could have gone either way, they could have severed ties or made them stronger in his memory," the anti-Mafia police source said. "In the end they worked harder 'for Franky'."The merged clans soon strengthened their hold on companies dealing with wholesale food supplies, gambling outlets and online betting through which they engaged in extortion, loan sharking and money laundering. More than a dozen businesses, from casinos to car dealerships in Sicily and New York state, were sequestered as part of the "New Connection" joint operation. "The investigation has registered the strong bond established between Cosa Nostra of Palermo and U.S. organized crime, with particular reference to the powerful Gambino crime family of New York," Italian investigating prosecutor Roberto Tartaglia said in a statement after this week's arrests. "Those Riina wanted dead were creating a special link between Palermo and New York."Even with the 19 arrests, no one assumes the battle against organized crime is over. "They were the losers who ran away so they wouldn't be killed by Riina," Palermo police commissioner Renato Cortese said when he announced the arrests. "They continue to be losers." Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| SOS Mediterranee relaunches migrant rescue missions off Libya Posted: 21 Jul 2019 08:44 AM PDT  Humanitarian group SOS Mediterranee said Sunday it has relaunched rescue efforts off Libya seven months after it abandoned operations using its ship Aquarius and despite a refusal by European ports to accept the migrants. The Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking will "conduct search and rescue activities in the central Mediterranean" for SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials MSF), the group said in a statement.
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| Booker Says He Could Confront Biden on Race at Detroit Debate Posted: 21 Jul 2019 09:41 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Presidential Democratic candidate Cory Booker on Sunday suggested he could confront former Vice President Joe Biden on racial issues during the second round of debates next week.Booker, a New Jersey senator, said it would be "fair" to bring up the 1994 crime bill, which Biden supported in the Senate and has called the "Biden crime bill." Booker said the measure put "mass incarceration on steroids" for African Americans."Yeah, it is fair," Booker said on CBS News's "Face the Nation," when asked by host Margaret Brennan whether he would be more aggressive on race at the forums in Detroit on July 30-31. "I want people like Joe Biden, which he finally did, thank God, to stand up and say, 'I was wrong, that bill did a lot of harm.'"Booker was among Biden's most vocal critics last month when the former vice president spoke about the "civility" in the Senate that allowed him to work with segregationist lawmakers in the 1970s. Another Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Kamala Harris, seized the spotlight at the first set of debates last month in Miami by confronting Biden on his opposition to busing as a senator.Biden will face off against Harris, Booker and seven other Democratic candidates on July 31, the second night of the debates in Detroit.To contact the reporter on this story: Max Berley in Washington at mberley@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Max Berley, Mark NiquetteFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| 1 killed, 4 injured when Alaska flight aborted on takeoff Posted: 19 Jul 2019 06:53 PM PDT ![1 killed, 4 injured when Alaska flight aborted on takeoff]( "1 killed, 4 injured when Alaska flight aborted on takeoff") A Maryland man visiting Alaska with his family was killed and one of his three children was critically injured Friday after their floatplane's takeoff was aborted. Alaska State Troopers identified the deceased man as Joseph Patenella, 57. The critically hurt child was flown to Anchorage for treatment, along with two other family members.
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| Trump racist tweets: Democrat Elijah Cummings says constituents are ‘scared’ of president Posted: 21 Jul 2019 08:07 AM PDT  Elijah Cummings rebuked Donald Trump's continued attacks against four Democratic congresswomen of colour during an interview on Sunday, calling the president a racist and saying his constituents tell him they're "scared of their leader".The Maryland congressman spoke to ABC News' George Stephanopoulos about the House voting last week to condemn Mr Trump's "racist comments" after the president told the congresswomen to "go back" to their countries – despite all four being US citizens and only one having been born outside the US. "What I'm hearing over and over again from my constituents, is 'please save our democracy, please save our country,'" Mr Cummings said. "And you know something else they say George? They say 'I'm scared.'"He added, "I have never in my total of 37 years in public service – ever, heard a constituent say that they were scared of their leader."When asked if he believed the president was racist, Mr Cummings said, "Yes. No doubt about it." He added, "I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I got to tell you George … when I think about what [Mr Trump] said to these young ladies who are merely trying to bring excellence to government and trying to make sure that generations yet unborn have an opportunity to experience a true democracy, when I hear those things it takes me back."Mr Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, condemned Mr Trump's attacks throughout last week as the president spent several days hurling insults towards Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley, claiming the congresswomen don't love the United States. He said in a statement during the House vote last week he was "disappointed" the president "would share these racist sentiments," adding, "We are still working to fight against redlining, voter intimidation, hate crimes, and mass incarceration. Our country deserves better than this. The world deserves better than this."The congressman later recalled facing similar racist taunts as a child in an interview with NBC News. "I could not help but think about when I was 11 years old, trying to integrate ... We were taunted. Stones were thrown at us. Bottles. They said the same words. They said, 'Go back to your neighbourhood. Go back to where you came from.'"Mr Cummings' statements echoed that of thousands Americans of colour who also recalled memories of being told to "go back" to where they came from.At least 16,000 people shared their experiences of dealing with the old racist trope to the New York Times after the president made the incendiary comments last week.
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| 9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:27 AM PDT ![9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines]( "9-year-old girl dies after bounce house blown into power lines") A 9-year-old Reno girl has died from injuries she suffered when strong winds blew an inflatable bounce house with three children inside into power lines last weekend.
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| France braces for second heatwave amid fears of pollution spike Posted: 21 Jul 2019 11:11 AM PDT  As France braces for its second heatwave this summer, with air pollution expected to spike again, Marseille has imposed speed limits on ships entering its port in an effort to curb emissions. Cruise liners cause more nitrogen dioxide pollution in the Mediterranean city than cars, according to a recent survey by a government-approved air quality monitoring organisation. Marseille has lowered the speed limit for ships entering its port from 10 to 8 knots. Jean-Marc Fornieri, the head of the port authority, claimed: "A reduction of two knots is equivalent to one third less pollution." However, he acknowledged that in practice it would be difficult to measure the impact of the lower speed limit. France's second-largest city is also investing €20 million (nearly £18m) on a plan to offer all ships electrical connections from the quayside, so they do not keep their engines running to supply onboard power while docked. Hundreds of cruise liners visit Marseille each year, carrying 1.7 million passengers, compared to only 19,000 in 1996. It is an increasingly popular destination for cruise passengers on Mediterranean tours. Tourists visit its spectacular calanques, or narrow inlets along the coast, and travel on to historic towns elsewhere in Provence such as Avignon and Arles. Heatwaves exacerbate air pollution because intense sunshine produces higher levels of ozone, a pollutant. Scientists say there is a direct correlation between extremely high temperatures and respiratory problems. Last month a record temperature of 46 degrees Celsius was recorded in Vérargues, a southern village. This week most of France will again swelter in temperatures of at least 40 degrees Celsius. Brittany alone will be spared, with relatively balmy temperatures in the high 20s.
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| Good News for Trump and GOP: RNC Stomped DNC In June Fundraising Posted: 21 Jul 2019 01:39 AM PDT  The Democratic National Committee raised $8.5 million in June and has $9.3 million in the bank, according to campaign finance records released late Friday.Both figures are far behind what the Republican National Committee said it has raised. The GOP said it raised $20.8 million in June, and has $43.5 million cash on hand, Fox News reported Wednesday. Republicans also said the party has no debt, while the DNC has $5.7 million in debt, according to FEC records. (RELATED: Bad News For DNC: The Democrats' And GOP's Money, By The Numbers)June doesn't appear to be an anomaly. Republicans say they've raked in $51 million in the past three months. The RNC has been posting record fundraising numbers so far in 2019. In February, the party raised $14.6 million, a record high for that month in a non-election year.The RNC, which has yet to file its official campaign finance documents, shared its strong showing in an email blast Saturday.
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| Libya halts loading at key oil terminal as pipeline closed Posted: 21 Jul 2019 10:16 AM PDT  Libya's National Oil Company said it had stopped loading crude at a key government-controlled shipping terminal, declaring "force majeure" after a pipeline closure halted operations at its main oil field. The NOC "hereby declares a state of force majeure on crude oil loadings at Zawiya port," it said in a statement on its website late Saturday. "This is the result of an unlawful Sharara pipeline valve closure by an unidentified group between Hamada and the Zawiya port (on Friday evening), resulting in production being suspended," it said.
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| Bernie Sanders' campaign staff demanding a 'living wage' and health care Posted: 20 Jul 2019 05:07 AM PDT  Bernie Sanders pushes for a $15 minimum wage during his campaign; reaction from 2016 Sanders campaign staffer Tezlyn Figaro.
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| 5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:11 PM PDT ![5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach]( "5 shot dead, 6 wounded in Acapulco bar near beach") Gunmen killed five men and wounded six other people at a popular bar in Acapulco on Sunday, the latest in a string of violent incidents for the once-glamorous Pacific Coast resort city that has fallen on hard times. The Guerrero state prosecutor's office said the shootings took place in the morning at a watering hole called Mr. Bar, which is on the city's broad coastal avenue across the street from high-rise beachside hotels. Acapulco is full of summer vacationers, and days earlier authorities launched a security operation for the tourist season.
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| Trump adviser Stephen Miller says outrage over 'racist' remarks meant to 'silence and punish' Posted: 21 Jul 2019 07:43 AM PDT  "I fundamentally disagree with the view that if you criticize somebody and they happen to be a different color of skin, that happens to be a racial criticism," he said.
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| Electric Cars 101: The Answers to All Your EV Questions Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:00 AM PDT  Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming increasingly common, with many manufacturers currently offering models that plug in. There are dozens more models expected to hit the market over the next few...
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| Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019 Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:04 PM PDT ![Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019]( "Murders in Mexico surge to record in first half of 2019") Murders in Mexico jumped in the first half of the year to the highest on record, according to official data, underscoring the vast challenges President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador faces in reducing violence in the cartel-ravaged country. There were 14,603 murders from January to June, versus the 13,985 homicides registered in the first six months of 2018, according to data posted over the weekend on the website of Mexico's national public security office. Mexico is on course to surpass the 29,111 murders of last year, an all-time high.
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| Kentucky host Matt Jones yanked amid speculation he'll challenge Mitch McConnell Posted: 20 Jul 2019 08:27 AM PDT ![Kentucky host Matt Jones yanked amid speculation he'll challenge Mitch McConnell]( "Kentucky host Matt Jones yanked amid speculation he'll challenge Mitch McConnell") Sports radio host Matt Jones is being pulled from his "Hey Kentucky!" anchor job until he makes a decision on running for U.S. Senate in 2020.
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| Britain urges Iran to free seized tanker Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:58 PM PDT  Britain on Saturday urged Iran to de-escalate tensions in the Gulf by releasing a UK-flagged ship it said had been illegally seized in Omani waters in an "utterly unacceptable" gambit. Tehran was defiantly ignoring mounting European appeals to free the captured oil tanker and its mostly Indian crew, as the United States prepared to redeploy troops to Iran's regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it seized the Stena Impero ship on Friday for breaking "international maritime rules" in the Strait of Hormuz, a Gulf choke point for about a third of the world's sea-borne oil.
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| Booming Philippine Markets Pin Hopes on Duterte for Next Rally Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:00 PM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- When President Rodrigo Duterte delivers his annual speech to the nation on Monday, he'll have plenty to brag about. The Philippine economy is among the fastest-growing in the world and markets are booming.But global risks are rising amid the prolonged trade war, and investors looking for the next leg of the market rally will scrutinize Duterte's economic priorities as he embarks on the last half of his six-year term. Top on their minds are the $180 billion infrastructure program and new tax policies."If Duterte hits the right notes, markets would have another leg to rally on," said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank Inc. "There's great interest in these measures to be prioritized to sustain the kind of growth rates we've been seeing."Duterte is scheduled to speak before lawmakers at about 4 p.m. in Manila., after market close.PesoIf history is any guide, there's a big chance the peso will rise the day after the State of the Nation Address. The currency has risen in nine of the last 10 years, posting an average gain of 0.15%."We remain bullish on peso and we would like to sell the dollar-peso on rallies," said Qi Gao, a Singapore-based currency strategist at Scotiabank. The currency is among those that will benefit the most as the Federal Reserve's dovish stance lures inflows, he said.The peso closed at 51.04 per dollar on Friday, near its strongest level since January 2018. The currency's next resistance is at the 50 pesos a dollar, Gao said.StocksFor stocks traders, it may be bad news first before good news, according to three decades of data. On the day of the president's speech, the benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange Index retreated about two-thirds of the time, and posted an average loss of 0.4%.The gauge recovered more than half of the time the day after since Congress was restored in 1987, posting an average gain of 0.3%. The trend will likely hold and given the current market momentum, the index will hit 8,500 sooner than later, according to Jun Calaycay, head of research at Philstocks Financial Inc., who called the bull market a week before it happened."The market is used to Duterte's controversial antics," Calaycay said. "But should he start talking about policy, regulation and his legislative agenda then that would be a plus."Local BondsPhilippine peso bonds are outperforming peers in emerging-markets as the central bank embarks on interest-rate cuts. Ten-year bond yields fell below 5% this month from more than 8% in October."Relative to the rest of EM world, the Philippines is an island of stability, continuing a pace of high growth and foreign investment," said Edwin Gutierrez, head of emerging-market sovereign debt at Aberdeen Standard Investments in London, who remains long on Philippine bonds.Meanwhile, the government's push to cut corporate income taxes will attract more foreign investors while the move to tax foreigners working in the offshore gaming sector will generate additional annual revenue, said Alan Atienza, treasurer at Philippine Bank of Communications in Manila.\--With assistance from Lilian Karunungan.To contact the reporters on this story: Ditas Lopez in Manila at dlopez55@bloomberg.net;Ian Sayson in Manila at isayson@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Cecilia Yap at cyap19@bloomberg.net, ;Tomoko Yamazaki at tyamazaki@bloomberg.net, Karl Lester M. Yap, Lianting TuFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Facebook’s Former Security Chief Says It’s ‘Reasonable’ To Assume China Is Infiltrating Google Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:32 AM PDT  Facebook's former security chief Alex Stamos suggested Tuesday that it is very possible that China and Russia have subverted Google's employees."It is completely reasonable to assume that MSS and SVR have subverted employees at all the major tech companies," Stamos said in a Twitter threadTuesday, noting tech billionaire Peter Thiel's accusations that China's Ministry of Security "likely" infiltrated Google."This is part of the threat model for all competent tech security teams when building internal controls, monitoring and response," he added. Thiel, a high-profile supporter of President Donald Trump, criticized Google's work with the Chinese during a speech Sunday to the inaugural National Conservatism Conference."How many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI? Does Google's senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence?" Thiel asked at the conference.He added: "Is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the U.S. military." Thiel, who sits on the board of Facebook, suggested his questions warrant the attention of federal investigators.
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| 2020 Democrats Are Starting to Turn Obama’s Legacy Against Biden Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:09 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyFormer Vice President Joe Biden has used Barack Obama's beloved status among Democratic voters to insulate him from criticism from the massive field of candidates jockeying to be the next president. But in recent weeks, the Democratic frontrunner has had that legacy used against him, with his competitors pointing the to shortcomings of the last Democratic administration as evidence that Biden's not up to the task of leading the next one. "Barack Obama, personally, is incredibly popular among Democratic primary voters," Karthik Ganapathy, a progressive consultant now running his own firm, told The Daily Beast. "And also at the same time, there's a growing recognition that income and wealth inequality got worse under his eight years, the climate crisis got worse during his eight years, deportations went up during his time in office, and so on."Can the Obama Coalition Outlast Obama?The idea that the Obama legacy would be anything other than a massive positive for Biden as he navigates the 2020 Democratic party has been treated as indisputable within Democratic circles. And for good reason. A CNN poll taken in early 2018 found that he had a 97 percent favorable rating among Democrats. For a while, fellow Democrats running for the White House seemed content to simply avoid challenging the former VP as he repeatedly referenced his time in the Obama administration when touting his work on health care and beating back attacks over his record on race relations. But that hesitancy has softened in recent weeks. On issues stemming from immigration to health care and foreign policy, the 2020 candidates have been increasingly critical in their public assessments of the Obama administration. And they've used opportunities from the debate stage to candidate forums to try and turn Biden's ties to the former president from an overwhelming asset into something more complicated.Senator Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) campaign has used Obama's own words to challenge Biden's notion that Obamacare simply needs to be built upon. Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) challenged Biden over the Obama administration's deportation policies. Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) backed off support for the Obama administration's 2015 Iran nuclear deal as originally written. And Governor Jay Inslee (D-WA) has attacked Biden for a naivete about dealing with Republicans—in what has been interpreted as an implicit rebuke of Obama's own failure to fully grasp GOP recalcitrance. The subtle targeting of Biden has come as Democratic activists and progressives have continued to grapple with the Obama legacy as well. In particular, the Trump administration's family separation policy and inhumane conditions in detention facilities has sparked a broader conversation among Democratic voters about whether the Obama administration's own deportation policies laid the groundwork for the current controversies. Biden to Get Rematch With Harris in Detroit Democratic DebateAt least two times in the last month, protesters have faced down Biden to demand an apology for the three million deportations that occurred during the Obama administration. Activists with Movimiento Cosecha, an immigrants rights organization, held a protest at Biden's Philadelphia campaign headquarters over a week ago and subsequently confronted him at a New Hampshire campaign stop. Through their "Dignity 2020" plan, they called on Biden and his other competitors in the field to pledge to end detention and deportation, immediately legalize the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and reunite families separated during the current and past administration. "We wanted the general public to understand that just defeating Trump in 2020 is only part of the solution," Carlos Rojas Rodriguez, an organizer with the group, told The Daily Beast. "And there's a lot of people that think that if Trump was no longer in the White House that the immigration crisis would go away and that's just not true." Rodriguez, who is now a citizen but lived undocumented for 10 years, said they're closely tracking how other candidates have been responding to questions about Obama's immigration record and are tentatively planning to have a presence in Detroit leading up to the next Democratic presidential debate. Already, they've seen some candidates take a harder look at the legacy. During the first Democratic debate in Miami in late June, Sen. Harris made a point of voicing dissent with President Obama's use of the Secure Communities program, which allowed for local authorities to share fingerprints of those in jail with federal authorities. Obama ended the practice in 2014 but Trump restored it in 2017. "On this issue, I disagreed with my president, because the policy was to allow deportation of people who by ICE's own definition were non-criminals," Harris said, though the degree to which she did is somewhat questionable. More recently, Julián Castro who served as the secretary of housing and urban development under Obama, said that he believed the administration had been too harsh when it came to immigration, a shift from prior stances. "I have learned the lessons of the past. It seems like Vice President Biden hasn't," he was quoted as saying at the League of United Latin American Citizens convention last week. Warren, Biden Campaigns Appear to Find Loophole Around Paid InternshipsBut the criticism has extended beyond the issue of immigration. In the first debate, Booker said that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, a landmark foreign policy achievement in Obama's second term, could have been better. Many, including Biden, have also introduced sweeping climate change plans with hallmarks of the Green New Deal and taken a No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, which activists have seen as a necessary corrective to the Obama administration's lack of action on the drastic threat of climate change. "We would love to see candidates pressure Biden on that legacy, specifically looking at the increase in oil and gas drilling on public lands, in the U.S. in general," Garrett Blad, a spokesperson for the climate action group Sunrise Movement, said, noting that a climate-only debate could foster these kinds of discussions. "And question him on those things. We're glad to see that Biden has taken the No Fossil Fuel money pledge and has done what Obama didn't do in denying that influence of the oil and gas executives and lobbyists on his campaign." And this past week, as Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have offered differing plans for the nation's health-care system, the latter has pointed to Obama's own language about Medicare for All being a "good new idea" and hit the former vice president for being too timid in his desire to build off of Obamacare. Biden's campaign declined to respond on the record. But some Obama veterans have not been surprised that the legacy they build is now being more directly challenged. But while they encouraged candidates to have a conversation about improving on the Obama administration, they also cautioned that it needed to be done carefully. "It's imperative for all candidates to offer an agenda that builds on what Barack Obama accomplished and there is room for good faith criticism of the things we didn't do or could have done better," Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to the president said. "However, Obama has a 96-percent approval rating among Democrats so a strategy to beat Biden by going after the Obama legacy seems unlikely to succeed."But the demands of the moment, from inequality to mounting student loan debt and a global climate crisis, have led a majority of the field to aim even higher than the lofty ambitions of Obama's first presidential campaign."If in 2008, we needed change, in 2020 we need results," Rebecca Katz, a longtime progressive Democratic consultant, said. "That's the difference." Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| Horse kicks man in groin at popular Maryland beach Posted: 21 Jul 2019 11:02 AM PDT  A tourist was kicked in the crotch by a wild horse on the beach of Assateague Island, located off the coast of Maryland, after the man attempted to pet the animal.
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| Indiana police identify body of Detroit woman found in 1999 Posted: 21 Jul 2019 01:44 PM PDT ![Indiana police identify body of Detroit woman found in 1999]( "Indiana police identify body of Detroit woman found in 1999") Authorities on Sunday identified a Michigan woman who was found dead 20 years ago in a northeastern Indiana field, renewing the investigation into her "suspicious" death. The Steuben County Sheriff's Department said they followed hundreds of leads to try to identify the woman over two decades, including using an FBI lab in Virginia, the National Missing Persons DNA Database and a genetic genealogy database. Authorities were able to identify the woman — Tina L. Cabanaw of the Detroit area — through a family tree and confirm it after a DNA test of her daughter, Jessica Gallegos of Colorado.
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| Amid Dangerous Heat Wave, Hundreds of Thousands of Michigan Homes Are Without Power After Severe Storms Posted: 21 Jul 2019 12:36 PM PDT  DTE Energy says it hopes to restore power to 80% of affected customers by Monday
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| UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says Posted: 20 Jul 2019 07:34 PM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says]( "UPDATE 1-Suspected Japan arsonist a reclusive, quarrelsome gamer, neighbour says") The man suspected of killing 34 people in an arson attack in Japan lived alone, hundreds of kilometres from the torched Kyoto Animation studio, where he played video games non-stop and had "terrified" his neighbour just days earlier. Police late on Saturday issued an arrest warrant for 41-year-old Shinji Aoba, suspected of causing Japan's worst mass killing in two decades on Thursday when he went to the studio in western Japan, poured fuel around the entrance and shouted "Die" as he set the building ablaze, according to public broadcaster NHK. Aoba lived alone on the ground floor of a two-floor apartment building on the outskirts of Omiya, a commuter suburb of Tokyo and some 500 km (310 miles) east of Kyoto.
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| Deadly N.H. motorcycle crash leads Mass. governor to push tougher driver's license regulations Posted: 20 Jul 2019 08:43 AM PDT  Drivers who have been suspended at any point over the past three years wouldn't be eligible to receive a commercial driver's license in Massachusetts.
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| Is a new US-led war looming with Iran? Posted: 20 Jul 2019 10:17 AM PDT  The United States is deploying troops in Saudi Arabia as tensions soar with its arch-rival Iran raising concerns over navigation in the Gulf's strategic Strait of Hormuz. It will be the first deployment of its kind since 2003, when American forces withdrew from the kingdom after a 12-year presence and two US-led wars with Iraq that culminated with the toppling of dictator Saddam Hussein. Separate statements from Riyadh and the US Central Command, or CENTCOM, say the Saudi deployment aims to ensure stability in the turbulent Gulf.
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| How Quickly Can an Attached Tick Make You Sick? Posted: 21 Jul 2019 03:03 AM PDT  For a tick bite to make you sick, the tick must be attached to you and feeding for a certain amount of time. For some diseases, this can take a day or more. For others, it takes just minutes. We...
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| The U.S. Government Has Found a Devious Way to Hire More Bureaucrats Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:22 AM PDT  These salaries are underwritten by the $235 billion the federal government lays out to nonprofits each year. To constrain the growth of central government, conservatives have fought to keep down the number of federal bureaucrats.This strategy has failed.Since the 1960s, the number of federal employees has remained constant at about 2 million, yet federal power has greatly expanded.This phenomenon arises because Washington has outsourced many civil service functions to contractors, nonprofit groups, and lower levels of government.According to New York University professor Paul Light, the true size of the federal government's "blended workforce" is now somewhere between 7 million and 9 million people.The biggest portion of the blended federal workforce consists of federal contractors. Today, there are about 3.7 million federal contractors—almost twice as many as there were in the 1960s.These contractors fill a wide range of functions: security in war zones, statistical analyses, janitorial services, management consulting, and almost everything in between. Many of these functions were once performed by the largely blue-collar federal workforce of the mid-20th century.
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| Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote Posted: 20 Jul 2019 05:28 AM PDT ![Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote]( "Putin Hints at Rapprochement With Ukraine on Eve of Vote") (Bloomberg) -- Virtually on the eve of Ukraine's parliamentary elections, the Kremlin released comments by President Vladimir Putin, saying that the two countries will mend ties despite their five-year conflict.Putin went as far as to say that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. "We have many things in common, we can use this as our competitive advantage during some form of integration," Putin said, according to the transcript of a June 19 interview with American film director Oliver Stone. "Rapprochement is inevitable."Ties between the former allies deteriorated after protesters in Kiev unseated the country's Kremlin-backed leader in 2014 and Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea before fomenting a war in which he still denies involvement. A party backed by Ukrainian businessman Viktor Medvedchuk, whose daughter counts Putin as her godfather, is campaigning for the Sunday elections and he met with Putin on Thursday to discuss potential cooperation.President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a former comedian elected in April, entered into his first negotiations with Putin earlier this month as he seeks to diffuse the conflict and negotiate the release of 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia in 2018.Speaking about another election, Putin said it was "nonsense" to assume that comments by Russians on social networks could have influenced the result of the 2016 U.S. presidential vote."No matter what our bloggers –- or whoever's job it is to comment on the internet -– might say about the situation in the U.S., this could not have played a decisive role," he said. But Russia's "sympathies" were with Donald Trump "because he said he wanted to restore normal relations with Russia," Putin said.To contact the reporter on this story: Anatoly Medetsky in Moscow at amedetsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Lynn Thomasson at lthomasson@bloomberg.net, Andrew Davis, James AmottFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| US heatwave: National Weather Service bakes biscuits inside hot car in safety warning about leaving children or pets Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:08 AM PDT  The National Weather Service has baked biscuits inside a hot car, in a safety message about the peril of leaving children or pets inside a vehicle.As a heatwave takes grip of large swathe of the US, with up to 200m people expected to be affected by a heat index of up to 115f degrees (46c), the officials performed the experiment inside a car in Nebraska to show how hot vehicles can become when left unattended. To demonstrate the dangers, the NWS staff set about baking the biscuits in the city of Omaha, using only heat from the sun."If you are wondering if it's going to be hot today, we are attempting to bake biscuits using only the sun and a car in our parking lot," NWS Omaha said on Twitter. "We will keep you posted with the progress."CNN said four biscuits were placed on a baking sheet on the dashboard of a car and left to sit in the sun. After 60 minutes, the pan had reached 175.2f (80c) and the tops of the biscuits reached 153f. The back seat registered 120.4f in the shade.It said, four hours later, the tops of the biscuits were nearly finished baking, but the bottoms remained doughy.The car had to be turned around to adjust for the changing angle of the sun.> Biscuits are starting to get a slightly golden tinge to them. pic.twitter.com/ptL24RHQfs> > — NWS Omaha (@NWSOmaha) > > July 18, 2019The experiment was carried out to warn people about the dangers of leaving children or pets inside vehicles, even for for a short period of time. US summers frequently come with stories of tragic deaths as a result of a toddler or baby being left in a car.CBS News said six people had died in connection with the heat – four people in Maryland, one in Arizona, and another in Arkansas.Several events were cancelled in New York City, including OZY Fest and the NYC Triathlon.The NWS said the east coast and midwest are likely to see temperatures in the upper 90s, combined with high humidity. Experts are urging people to limit their time outside and drink lots of water. Cities in Vermont and New Hampshire are opening shelters where people can cool off. Some power outages have been reported in Philadelphia and after storms in Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Police in Braintree, Massachusetts, asked residents "to hold off" all criminal activity until the extreme heat is over."Folks. Due to the extreme heat, we are asking anyone thinking of doing criminal activity to hold off until Monday," the department wrote on Facebook. "It is straight up hot as soccer balls out there. Conducting criminal activity, in this extreme heat is next level henchmen status, and also very dangerous."Additional reporting by Associated Press
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| Vigilante Armies Are Fighting Mexican Drug Cartels, but Whose Side Are They Really on? Posted: 21 Jul 2019 02:27 AM PDT  Jorge Lopez/ReutersFILO DE CABALLOS, Mexico—The assault force rolls through this small mountain town not long after dark. Traveling in a fleet of pick-ups with about 15 men in each truck, they are dressed in pixelated camouflage uniforms and ballistic vests and at first glance they look like official army units, but their weapons give them away. Many of these commandos carry AK-47 model assault rifles, which aren't used by the Mexican armed forces.The logo stamped on the doors of the trucks shows a figure from the Mexican Revolution wearing a sombrero and brandishing a rifle astride a charging horse. Below that are the words Policia Comunitaria, or community police, and a phrase which, roughly translated from Spanish, reads: "Death before surrender or humiliation."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. "Everyone has a right to security. And to economic freedom. Campesinos [small farmers] and their children shouldn't suffer under the rule of bandits," Burro says. "The people of this town have asked us for help, and so that's what we're going to do."El Burro says he got his nickname, which means "the donkey," because he can bear heavy loads a great distance despite his slight stature. In his backpack he carries several cans of tuna and crackers and canteens of water. His battle harness holds some 300 rounds of ammunition for his AK-47. Later tonight he'll lead his squad on foot through the dense pine forests that surround El Naranjo, until they reach the pre-assigned rendezvous point. From there the coordinated strike force will crawl on their bellies until they're in sight of the cartel stronghold, then wait for dawn to attack.Burro is a veteran of a dozen such engagements with the comunitarios and says he's personally registered 20 confirmed kills of sicarios, the cartels' contract killers. A former farmer, he joined the movement "because I was tired of hearing the people's cries for help go unanswered."The Cartel del Sur is known for its brutal tactics, including torturing prisoners, and for that reason Burro says he prefers death on the battlefield to being captured by los contras, as he calls members of the Cartel del Sur."Will I come back from where I go tonight?" he asks rhetorically. "And if I don't," he says, "will my family understand what I died for?" * * *'We Have To Protect Ourselves'* * *FUPCEG is an alliance of civilian autodefensas, or self-defense groups, that boasts about 11,700 fighters across 39 municipalities in Guerrero, meaning they're now present in about half the state. Similar communitario movements have sprung up across Mexico over the last decade, but FUPCEG is by far the largest of its kind.The spike in vigilante militias has polarized public opinion. Some observers see them as noble freedom fighters who succeed where traditional law enforcement has failed. Critics claim the autodefensas and comunitarios (the words are often used interchangeably in Mexico) are at best undisciplined mobs and at worst cartel patsies who do the criminals' grunt work for them. Either way, their power is growing. A new study by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission suggests vigilante activity is up by more than 300 percent since the start of 2018, and blames the increase on "insecurity, violence, and impunity."Mexico's Game of BonesIn fact, violence in Mexico has reached historic levels this year, with the country averaging an all-time high of 94 killings a day through the first half of 2019. Both 2017 and 2018 also broke previous murder records. As one autodefensa fighter put it, repeating what has become a kind of mantra, "If the government can't protect us, then we have no choice left but to protect ourselves."FUPCEG's founder and leader is 40-year-old Salvador Alanis. A Guerrero native, Alanis is something of a polymath. An economist by training, he's also worked as an electrical engineer in North Carolina, and at one time owned several successful fruit and cattle ranches in his home state. Those ranches are gone now. Some were sold off to help fund Alanis's crime-fighting endeavors, while others have been seized by the mafia groups he opposes."I spent 12 years working in the U.S.," Alanis says during an interview in the FUPCEG base in the strategically vital town of Filo de Caballos, high in the sierra of central Guerrero. "In the States I came to know a better life, a better world. I came to take safety for granted," he says, "but there's no security like that in Mexico."The lack of security is even more pronounced in Guerrero, which is Mexico's leading exporter of opium and heroin, and perennially listed as one of the country's most dangerous and politically corrupt regions. It doesn't help that government law enforcement here is undermanned."We have an insufficient number of police officers to go around," says Roberto Álvarez Heredia, the state's security spokesperson. "We need about three times as many cops and public prosecutors as we have," he says, "and the ones we do have need better salaries."Recently elected President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, has touted his newly created Guardia Nacional as a solution to peacekeeping efforts in places like Guerrero, but Alanis remains unimpressed:"So they just sent 3,500 Guardias to Guerrero," he says, when asked about the new policing initiative. "The last president sent 5,000 soldiers and they couldn't do anything against the cartels, because the criminals just paid them off. Everyone has a price," he adds.Still, Alanis is willing to give the Guardia a chance."We're going to let them in [to our territory] and see if they behave themselves. See if they're corrupt, or if they abuse their power. In the past the soldiers used to enter and search any house they pleased, and that's why we had to run them out. We're glad to be friends [with the Guardia], but we won't be their slaves."* * *A Question of War* * *As protection against a cartel counter thrust, FUPCEG troops man fortified checkpoints at regular intervals all along State Road 196. Here in Filo, Alanis and his command crew are headquartered in what used to be the largest hotel in town. The long, two-story building was abandoned when FUPCEG occupied Filo after a prolonged firefight back in November of 2018. Pocked by bullet holes inside and out, the building no longer has running water, and electricity is intermittent, but the community kitchen in the lobby is always full of gossip and the smell of spicy cooking. During this interview, Alanis sits in what was once the hotel's main office. He's stockily built, dressed in a sky-blue Oxford shirt left open at the throat and wearing square-rimmed photochromic glasses. Clear mountain sunshine drifts in through the shot-up windows. In one corner of the room stands a derelict arcade game titled, coincidentally enough, Streetfighter II.When he came back in 2010, Alanis says he found his home town of Ocotito overrun by organized crime."Murder, kidnapping, extortion, theft. The cartels ruled the state and they'd packed the government and police forces with corrupt officials, so there was no one to challenge them," he says. After surviving two kidnapping attempts, Alanis decided to take matters into his own hands to "restore justice" to Guerrero.At first it was just himself and a handful of other ranchers, but slowly the movement gathered support. By 2015 their forces numbered several hundred comunitarios operating out of a string of liberated communities around the state capital of Chilpancingo. But he'd made a number of powerful enemies in the process, including capos from the Rojos, Tequileros, and Guerreros Unidos cartels. When those crime groups launched a series of counter-attacks aimed at taking back the newly freed townships, Alanis' civilian militias were quickly overwhelmed. "We had an army of shop owners and farm workers," he says in the office of the ramshackle hotel. He unholsters a chrome-plated 10 mm pistol to make himself more comfortable and sets it on the desk before him. "Many of our men didn't really know how to use their weapons. Meanwhile, we were facing off against experienced and well-armed sicarios, and we couldn't beat them in battle. It was a question of war, and we weren't up to the task. We were weak and lacking strategy."Those factors—along with the defection of some of his most trusted officers, one of whom ran off with his wife—combined to spell defeat for Alanis. His forces scattered and, still hunted by the cartels, he fled to the mountains and went into hiding."They took everything from him," says Jackie Pérez, an independent journalist based in Chilpancingo, and an expert on the state's autodefensa groups. "Salvador lost his livestock, his farmland, even his wife," she says. "But he's very intelligent and very patient. He was able to persevere, and come back stronger than ever."Pérez goes on to compare Alanis to Mexican freedom fighters of the past like Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, at least in terms of tactics. "He doesn't want to overthrow the government," she says. "But he is willing to go outside the system to fight for the people's right to freedom from certain forms of oppression."In order to continue that fight after being drubbed by the contras, Alanis knew he'd have to change his game plan."We'd been outnumbered and defeated," he says. "Now it was time to change strategies." Part of that strategic shift involved developing a broad network of spies and informants, many of them women, to keep him informed of his enemies' movements and activities."Know your enemy as you know yourself," he quotes Sun Tzu from memory, "and in a hundred battles you will never be defeated."* * *Controlling The Sierra* * *Alanis isn't the first comunitario leader forced to revamp his approach after an initial setback. Many other grassroots vigilante groups have cropped up in Mexico to oppose organized crime, only to find they lack the manpower and budget to keep up the fight over time. Unfortunately, that often leads to alliances with well-heeled drug lords, who then use the militias as proxy groups to wage war on their rivals.Guerrero expert Chris Kyle, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says that pattern has been in play for years."Since 2013 there's been an explosion of community policing groups in Guerrero," says Kyle in a phone interview with The Daily Beast. While villages with native indigenous populations that pre-date the Spanish conquest are legally allowed to form such units under Mexico's constitution, the proliferation of non-indigenous figures "claiming to be community police has baffled authorities."The swift spread of the comunitarios is related directly to a lack of effective security measures, according to Kyle."If the state would provide security, many of these groups would likely stand down," he says. In the absence of state power, however, and due to a lack of sufficient resources to operate long-term on their own, many vigilante squads become co-opted."The drug trafficking organizations take advantage of them," Kyle says, because the community police provide the cartels with "a semi-legitimate wing that extends their reach."Alanis's FUPCEG umbrella group includes both indigenous and mestizo, or mixed race, cells from all over the state, including the Regional Coordinator for Community Authorities (CRAC), the oldest and most respected such organization in Mexico. Even so, Alanis admits that part of his revised strategy involved aligning with certain deep-pocketed backers. He claims that instead of working on behalf of a crime syndicate, he's merely defending free enterprise.This may strike drug enforcement authorities in the United States as a distinction without a difference, but here in Guerrero such distinctions matter.Alanis says that in fact he is not opposed to campesinos growing poppies, since that's the only crop that pays enough to support many families in the sierra. What he's opposed to, as he puts it, is how the Cartel del Sur seeks to drive out competitors, keep prices low, and control poppy farmers through violence and intimidation."The people should be able to grow [poppies] if they want to. Or not, as they see fit. That's up to them. But nobody should be forced to sell [opium gum] at an unfair price to a single buyer. Nobody should be threatened or forced to worry about their family's safety. All we want is for the people to live in peace," he says, back in his bullet-riddled HQ."The Cartel del Sur wants to control the whole sierra," he adds. "They want to own a monopoly on poppy gum and heroin production, and also extort from shop owners, taxi drivers, you name it. Other businessmen I know want an open market for poppies up here, and they understand that requires healthy local economies. So that's why they help us fight the contras."To launch a full-scale assault like the one that liberated Filo would be impossible without outside financial support, according to Alanis. The Filo battle involved some 3,000 comunitarios and hundreds of trucks to ferry them, he explains. When the cost of ammunition, gas, and fighters' salaries are factored in, a single campaign can cost about 300,000 pesos [about $15,700] per hour. And the Filo firefight alone last for more than seven hours."We need their help," he says, referring to those independent opium gum buyers who help fund FUPCEG's efforts, "but they need us too. If part of the money to liberate the people must come from opium, I'm willing to accept that equation," the economist by training says.* * *Terrorizing The Resistance* * *During a series of independent interviews conducted in Filo de Caballos and surrounding communities it becomes clear that, prior to liberation by Alanis and his cohorts, local citizens had suffered greatly under rule by the Cartel del Sur.Run by Isaac Navarette Celis, one of Mexico's most wanted men, the Cartel del Sur specializes in the production and northbound transport of China White, a particularly potent form of heroin. Navarette is a relative newcomer to Guerrero's populous criminal underworld, first announcing his arrival back in 2016. Younger drug lords like Navarette often are especially bloodthirsty as they attempt to carve out a competitive niche against established rivals. Residents in the swath of towns and villages formerly under Navarette's control describe a reign of terror that included kidnappings for ransom, forcing young people to work as sicarios under threat of death, mass killings, crippling extortion rates, and random violence that caused schools, clinics, and small businesses to be shuttered indefinitely."We denounced the criminals to the police many times but they never did anything to help us," says Reina Maldonado, 53. Maldonado was married to the comisario, or sheriff, of a village called Corralitos. Last June several sicarios from the Cartel del Sur kidnapped Reina's husband from their home and brought him to a local safehouse. "He wouldn't back down from them. He defied their orders and bribes, so they took him," she said. When Maldonado's husband's body was found, she explains, he showed signs of having been tortured and had been shot multiple times."They killed him to terrorize the village against resistance," the sheriff's widow says, "but that didn't work." Hours after the comisario was reported missing, Alanis arrived with hundreds of comandos to battle it out with those responsible for his murder. Four cartel members were killed in the ensuing firefight, and the rest fled in armored vehicles. According to Maldonado, they haven't been back to Corralitos since."Life here is much better now," she says, as she walks around the ruins of the house where her husband's body was found. Many of the families that had fled Corralitos under cartel rule have since returned, and the shops and fruit stands that line the small main street are again open for business."We're still poor," Maldonado says, "but at least now we're safe."* * *Government Silence* * *Ruperto Pacheco Vega, 44, the mayor of Filo de Caballo, agrees with Maldonado's assessment:"Many businesses were completely shut down under [Navarette's] cartel," he says. "There was no commerce, nobody could move. The store owners couldn't make a profit due to extortion, and many people were out of work."Even worse, Vega says, was the cartel's habit of impressing young men into its service. "They wanted our boys to join them, put on their colors, and fight against Salvador and the comunitarios." To decline the cartel's "invitation," he says, was punishable by death. In contrast, the mayor explains that Alanis has helped local communities diversify their economies. The financial backbone of the region has long been poppy cultivation to produce opium gum to sell to the cartels to make heroin. But a recent drop in the price of heroin (apparently due to U.S. users preferring synthetic opioids like Fentanyl) has caused a backlash among growers. According to Vega, Alanis has been instrumental in helping the farmers develop detailed crop substitution plans in order to replace illicit poppy plots with legal alternatives like avocado, peaches, pears, and lemons."The government says we mustn't grow poppies, and that's fine with us. So we sent them precise and detailed petitions asking for basic subsidies until the [fruit] trees reach maturity," says Vega, riffing through signed and stamped copies of the official documents addressed to various politicians in Mexico City, including President López Obrador. As with local authorities who ignore cartel malfeasance, it seems the bid for federal assistance to produce legal crops has also fallen on deaf ears."Their offices acknowledged receipt of our requests," Vega says, "but we never heard anything back from them."* * *A Question Of Ethics* * *For all the careful planning put into it, El Burro's assault on the cartel-held town of El Naranjo didn't go as expected."Somebody must've talked because they were waiting for us," says El Burro, in the aftermath of the failed offensive. "They had a damned mortar and belt-fed machine guns. We killed a few of them but we then we had to pull back."Now rumors are swirling around town that Navarette's men are planning a counter-attack to retake Filo. Comunitarios run in and out of the lobby of the bombed-out hotel, fetching weapons and ammunition from stockpiles in the armory. Meanwhile Alanis sits surrounded by cell phones and a half-dozen radios, diligently coordinating with units in the field and his mysterious financial backers.In answer to a question about the ethics of his current line of work, Alanis waxes philosophical."I used to have a different idea about ethics," he says, putting down his phone. "I never accepted any drug money back when I first began to oppose [the cartels]." But, he adds, that's also why he lost the first time around. "You see suffering like this," and he waves his hand as if to take in the whole sierra: "You see people without work. People without health care. Children starving. Kids with no future. And you ask me about ethics?"In Alanis's estimation, "Our worst enemy is the state, due to their alliance with organized crime. There is no democracy in Guerrero" because the cartels "rig elections" and "control the politicians," he says."We came up with a plan to eliminate 65 percent of the poppy plants in our territories and replace them with legal orchards, but the politicians never even answered our letters." Alanis picks up his phone again. "Why don't you ask them about ethics?" he says.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
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| British Airways, Lufthansa suspend Cairo flights Posted: 20 Jul 2019 05:48 PM PDT  British Airways and Lufthansa both said Saturday they were suspending flights to Cairo for unspecified reasons related to safety and security. The British carrier said it was canceling flights to the Egyptian capital for a week. Lufthansa said it was suspending its flights as a precaution, mentioning "safety" but not "security" as its concern.
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