| UPDATE 1-Kremlin says Islamic State leader's death a boost for Trump if true Posted: 28 Oct 2019 04:39 AM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Kremlin says Islamic State leader's death a boost for Trump if true]( "UPDATE 1-Kremlin says Islamic State leader's death a boost for Trump if true") The Kremlin said on Monday that U.S. President Donald Trump will have made a major contribution to the fight against international terrorism if a U.S. assertion that Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead is true. Trump on Sunday announced that Baghdadi had killed himself during a daring overnight raid by elite U.S. special operations forces in Syria and thanked Russia, among others, for its support. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to say on Monday if the United States had informed Russia about the operation in advance or provide other details.
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| Congresswoman's exit prompts question of equity amid scandal Posted: 28 Oct 2019 02:56 PM PDT  The resignation of a female Democratic congresswoman over a consensual, sexual relationship with a campaign aide has sparked questions about whether women are held to higher standards in public life. At the center of the controversy is Katie Hill, a first-term lawmaker from California and a rising Democratic Party star. In a video released Monday, Hill said she was stepping down because she was "fearful of what might come next" following the online publication of explicit pictures that outed her relationship with a female staffer.
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| Former Boston College student charged in suicide death of boyfriend, echoing Michelle Carter case Posted: 28 Oct 2019 03:08 PM PDT  A former Boston College student was charged in connection with the suicide death of her boyfriend, drawing comparisons to the Michelle Carter case.
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| Manhunt launched for teenager in ‘extreme danger’ abducted from bedroom Posted: 28 Oct 2019 02:52 AM PDT  A manhunt has been launched to find a 14-year-old girl in "extreme danger" who is believed to have been abducted from her bedroom by a 33-year-old man, US authorities said.An amber alert has been issued to find Isabel Shae Hicks and her suspected abductor Bruce William Lynch Jr.
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| Ex-CIA spy flees from Italy to U.S. fearing for her safety: paper Posted: 27 Oct 2019 06:04 AM PDT  A former U.S. spy, pardoned by Italy in connection with the CIA kidnapping of a terrorism suspect in Milan, has fled from Italy to the United States fearing for her safety, Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera on Sunday quoted her as saying. Sabrina de Sousa is one of 26 people convicted by Italy in absentia over the 2003 abduction of Egyptian cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, but the only one to spend any time in prison for the operation, in which she denies involvement. De Sousa was still due to carry out community service in Italy until next year after the Italian president commuted her four-year prison sentence but she decided to flee the country after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and CIA Director Gina Haspel visited Rome in October, Il Corriere said.
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| De Blasio Ordered Top NYPD Officers to Drive Son to Yale Posted: 28 Oct 2019 08:07 AM PDT  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered members of his NYPD security detail to drive his son to Yale University and back multiple times, the New York Daily News reported Monday.Former members of the Executive Protection Unit with direct knowledge of the matter said detectives from the unit ferried de Blasio's son Dante to Yale several times during his freshman year. Dante decided in his sophomore year that he would rather ride the train to the university, and officers would pick him up upon his return to Penn Station."If you were told to bring him home from Yale, that's what we did," one former unit member said."If the commanding officer of the 75 (precinct) said, 'move my kid to college,' do you really think that wouldn't kill his career?" another former member commented. "But because it's the mayor, everyone just does it."The reports come after city officials admitted in August that Executive Protection Unit officers helped move de Blasio's daughter Chiara out of her apartment to the mayor's residence while on duty."Members of the family's detail were standing by and offered to help," the mayor's press secretary Freddi Goldstein insisted at the time. "Their involvement was strictly voluntary."The NYC Department of Investigation is probing the current incident but has so far refused to elaborate on the details."DOI is aware of the matter and declines further comment," a DOI spokesperson told the Daily News.De Blasio ended his presidential campaign earlier this year after consistently underperforming in polling. An August survey found the mayor had a lower approval rating than President Trump in deep-blue New York City.New York City's largest police union slammed de Blasio when he announced the end of his presidential bid."This campaign proved that it doesn't really matter whether Mayor Bill de Blasio is speaking to empty rooms in Iowa or spinning his wheels in a Park Slope gym. What matters to New Yorkers is that he isn't doing his job," union head Patrick J. Lynch said in a statement.
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| Argentina’s President-Elect Picks Mexico For First Trip Abroad Posted: 28 Oct 2019 08:03 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- Argentina's president-elect Alberto Fernandez will go to Mexico in his first trip abroad, signaling an interest in aligning himself with like-minded leftist leaders in Latin America such as Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.Fernandez is set to travel to meet the Mexican president next week, according to a person with knowledge of the decision. The exact dates of the trip have yet to be confirmed, the person said, declining to be named because he is not authorized to speak publicly.AMLO, as the Mexican president is known, said during his daily press conference that he will speak to Fernandez on the phone Monday but stopped short of confirming the encounter, just saying the meeting "is very likely."After winning Argentina's presidential election on Sunday, Fernandez wasted no time in touting the old guard of Latin America's leftist leaders. He congratulated Evo Morales for winning a contested fourth term in Bolivia and called for the liberation of Brazil's former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a hero for the Latin American left, from prison, drawing the disapproval of current leader Jair Bolsonaro.The trip to Mexico to meet AMLO is another step suggesting Fernandez will change Argentina's foreign policy after four years of the pro-business administration of Mauricio Macri.Fernandez didn't mention Venezuela in his speech which has been a major regional issue due to the huge flow of migrants leaving the country due to the severe economic crisis. Macri was a strong critic of President Nicolas Maduro.Fernandez takes office on Dec. 10.(Update with AMLO comment in 3rd paragraph.)\--With assistance from Lorena Rios.To contact the reporter on this story: Jorgelina do Rosario in Buenos Aires at jdorosario@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Daniel CancelFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| US police sergeant told to 'tone down the gayness' wins $20m in damages Posted: 28 Oct 2019 09:20 AM PDT  Keith Wildhaber, who was allegedly passed over for promotion 23 times, wins discrimination lawsuit against St Louis county policeSergeant Keith Wildhaber. Jurors in St Louis county court also heard that a police captain had called Wildhaber 'fruity'. Photograph: Cristina M Fletes/APA gay Missouri police sergeant has been awarded nearly $20m in damages after he was told if he wanted to be promoted he should "tone down the gayness".Keith Wildhaber, a sergeant with St Louis county police, filed a lawsuit against the department in 2017, after allegedly being passed over for promotion 23 times. Jurors in St Louis county court also heard that a police captain had called Wildhaber "fruity"."I was sickened by it," Wildhaber told the court last week, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch."I think I said: 'I can't believe we are having this conversation in 2014.' It was devastating to hear."Wildhaber said he was told to "tone down the gayness" by John Saracino, a former St Louis county police board of commissioners member. Saracino has denied it.Donna Woodland, a witness in the trial, supported Wildhaber's complaint, the Post-Dispatch reported. Woodland testified that she had heard the St Louis county police captain Guy Means say Wildhaber was "way too out there with his gayness and he needed to tone it down if he wanted a white shirt [be promoted]".She also recalled Means saying: "You know about him, right? He's fruity."The jury awarded Wildhaber $1.9m in actual damages and $10m in punitive damages on the discrimination allegation, according to the Post-Dispatch. It also found Wildhaber had been the victim of retaliation after filing his lawsuit, adding $999,000 in actual damages and $7m in punitive damages for that charge."We wanted to send a message," the jury foreman, who was not named, told reporters. "If you discriminate you are going to pay a big price … You can't defend the indefensible."The St Louis county executive, Sam Page, said in a statement he would appoint new members to the police board."Our police department must be a place where every community member and every officer is respected and treated with dignity. Employment decisions in the department must be made on merit and who is best for the job," Page said."The time for leadership changes has come and change must start at the top."
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| Chair of Joint Chiefs doesn’t know source of Trump’s ‘whimpering and crying’ remark about al-Baghdadi Posted: 28 Oct 2019 11:33 AM PDT  At a Pentagon briefing, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said two men were captured and are in U.S. custody after the raid on a compound where ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hiding and died. Gen. Milley also said he didn't know where the president received the information stating that al-Baghdadi was "whimpering and crying," as Trump described on Sunday, when faced by U.S. troops.
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| U.S. Spies Say Turkish-Backed Militias Are Killing Civilians As They Clear Kurdish Areas in Syria Posted: 28 Oct 2019 02:24 PM PDT  Officials fears the groups could be using American-made weapons to conduct potential war crimes
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| Kentucky gov's race stirs clash over casino suicide claims Posted: 27 Oct 2019 02:36 PM PDT  Entering the final days of Kentucky's bitter race for governor, Republican incumbent Matt Bevin exposed himself to a new attack by flatly denying his recorded claim that suicides happen nightly in casinos. Telling a debate audience Saturday night that the truth matters, Bevin challenged his opponent to produce a tape proving his denial wrong. Democrat Andy Beshear offered up the audiotape Sunday.
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| With raging fires, high winds and blackouts, California is living a disaster movie. Is this the 'new normal'? Posted: 28 Oct 2019 07:20 AM PDT  Californians have come to expect the fall fires. The power outages are a new — and unwelcome — twist to a reality that's playing out like a bad movie.
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| Chicago teachers strike continues after talks fail to break impasse Posted: 28 Oct 2019 12:15 AM PDT  Classes were canceled for about 300,000 students in Chicago for an eighth day on Monday as the teachers' union and public school district failed over the weekend to resolve a deadlock in contract talks over class sizes, support staff levels and pay. Each side blamed the other for the impasse in the third-largest U.S. school district, where the strike began on Oct. 17, and the union, which represents the city's 25,000 teachers, has been without a contract since July 1. The strike is the latest in a wave of work stoppages in U.S. school districts in which demands for school resources have superseded calls for higher salaries and benefits.
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| Vietnam collects DNA samples from relatives of UK missing Posted: 27 Oct 2019 09:36 AM PDT  Vietnamese officials collected DNA samples on Sunday from relatives of those feared among 39 people found dead in a truck in Britain, a security source and a family member told AFP, as villagers held emotional prayers for the victims. The 31 men and eight women found dead were initially identified as Chinese, but several Vietnamese families have come forward saying they believe their relatives are among the dead. The grim case has cast light on the extreme dangers facing illegal migrants seeking better lives in Europe.
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| Why Aren’t Women’s Groups Talking About Katie Hill’s Resignation? Posted: 28 Oct 2019 11:00 AM PDT  Caroline Brehman/CQ Roll Call/GettyThe resignation of Rep. Katie Hill was the talk of Capitol Hill this weekend, but you wouldn't know it from the glaring lack of public statements by women's rights groups or Hill's fellow Democrats. Even two years after the explosion of the MeToo movement, Hill's unique case proved too complicated for many anti-harassment advocates to address.Hill—one of a record number of women elected to Congress in 2018, and the first openly bisexual representative in history—resigned her seat Sunday after the House Ethics Committee opened an investigation into allegations that she had an affair with a congressional staffer. Hill has denied that but admits to engaging in a three-person relationship with a campaign staffer and her then-husband. Hill claims the now-estranged husband was involved in the publication of nude photos of her in conservative news outlet RedState, complicating what could have been a straightforward story about an elected official's alleged abuse of power. Some women's rights advocates said the leak and publication of the photos amounted to revenge porn, the distribution of someone's nude images without their consent.Swirling Scandal Forces Rep. Katie Hill to Resign From CongressHill also leaned in to this narrative on Sunday, vowing to pursue "all of our legal options" against those who had "weaponized" her personal images."Those of you who know me personally know that I'm a fighter," Hill wrote in a letter. "Now, my fight is going to be to defeat this type of exploitation that so many women are victims to and which will keep countless women and girls from running for office or entering public light."A chorus of voices on social media protested Hill's resignation, with many suggesting she was being held to an unfair standard because she is a woman or because she is bisexual. Some pointed to Rep. Duncan Hunter, who was indicted for misappropriation of campaign funds—allegedly to finance affairs with two Republican congressional staffers. Hunter has not resigned. Others pointed to President Donald Trump, who has been accused of sexual harassment or assault by more than 20 women."Donald Trump has sexually harassed or assaulted dozens of women," tweeted Jenna Lowenstein, deputy campaign manager for Cory Booker's campaign. "Katie Hill had, as far as we know, some consensual relationships and an ex with an affinity for revenge porn. Don't let anyone tell you men and women are held to the same standards."Others compared Hill's resignation to that of Al Franken, the Democratic senator who resigned last year over allegations of sexual misconduct. Some said the allegations—groping in Franken's case, and what appeared to be a consensual relationship in Hill's—were insufficient to warrant resignation. ("The injustice here is so over the top," tweeted Shaunna Thomas, founder of women's rights group UltraViolet.)Even some Republicans jumped to Hill's defense. Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz called the Ethics Committee's investigation "absurd" and suggested that the only person with a complaint was the congresswoman's "soon-to-be ex." Heather Nauert, a former State Department spokesperson and current White House staffer, said that Hill would not have resigned if she were a man. "I appreciated her willingness to reach out to both parties to discuss/debate policies," Nauert added.Many of Hill's fellow Democrats, however, were silent on the issue. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a short statement acknowledging Hill's "great contribution to the Freshman Class" but adding that the congresswoman's "errors in judgment" made her continued service "untenable." None of the women in Hill's notoriously Twitter-friendly freshman class spoke out publicly.One Democratic staffer attributed the silence to lawmakers' indecision around the issue, telling The Daily Beast that the addition of the revenge porn angle "makes it, for lack of a better term, messy." Carly Mee, a senior staff attorney for the victim's rights organization SurvJustice, said women's rights groups faced the same challenge. "The hesitation is that in my opinion, is the nuance that she both was wronged and did something wrong," Mee told The Daily Beast. "It comes from an inability to say that someone can be hurt and can also hurt others. Someone can victimized and also be a victim." "We like to think of that as really black and white—you're a victim or you're a perpetrator," she added. "And it's uncomfortable to say you can be both."Campus anti-rape group Know Your IX—one of the few organizations that commented publicly—emphasized this dichotomy, tweeting that allegations of Hill's inappropriate relationships came "after a campaign of harassment and revenge porn from an abusive ex-husband.""We need to talk about both pieces," the organization tweeted.Jaslin Kaur, a student engagement organizer for Know Your IX, told The Daily Beast the group was troubled by the allegations against Hill, but that she should have been able to admit to them "on her own terms." The leak of Hill's private information and photos, she added, was a "textbook case" of abuse and manipulation."It just really shows that you can comply with investigations, you can still do everything to promote progressive cause, but you will still be vilified because your abuser has the power to turn world against you," Kaur said.Hill's husband did not reply to a request for comment.After publication, the National Organization for Women responded with a statement saying Hill had been "slut-shamed" and "run out of office based on rumor and innuendo."Mee, meanwhile, compared the discussion about Hill to that around Asia Argento, the Weinstein accuser who was subsequently accused of sexually assaulting a teenager. She said many anti-rape advocates were silent about the later accusations at the time, because they simply "didn't know what to do about it." But in order for the MeToo movement to move forward, Mee said, advocates need to learn how to address these multifaceted issues. "We just have to be consistent and not remain silent, because part of changing the culture around this is acknowledging the complexity around it," she said. "It's a very common thing for there to be overlap, and we do a disservice to this work if we don't acknowledge that."Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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| View Photos of FCA's New Vehicle Simulator Posted: 28 Oct 2019 02:52 PM PDT |
| New York Doesn’t Need a Smoking Gun to Win the Exxon Climate Trial Posted: 28 Oct 2019 01:00 AM PDT  (Bloomberg) -- The trial of New York's $1.6 billion securities-fraud lawsuit against Exxon Mobil begins its second week Monday, after a series of witnesses failed to provide any concrete evidence that the oil giant knowingly misled shareholders about its climate change accounting.Testimony by investors and employees did show a potential lack of clarity as to the difference between two measures of climate costs used by the energy giant. One is a public "proxy cost" for the impact of climate-change regulations on future energy demand, and the other a greenhouse gas (GHG) cost used internally to decide how to spend on new projects like drilling and oil sands.The "proxy cost," New York claims, made it look to investors like Exxon had a more sober view of sinking demand and tougher regulations than was actually applied internally.And under New York law, how things look to shareholders—rather than what Exxon intended—may be what decides the case.Last week, witnesses were confronted with dozens of internal emails and reports about the two accounting gauges, as well as the company's communications with shareholders. Those shareholders had demanded as far back as 2013 to know how Exxon was calculating the cost of climate change. New York has argued that Exxon intentionally misled investors by publicizing a "sham" proxy cost, tricking the market and thus inflating the company's stock price. Exxon contends that the two costs are used for different purposes, and that New York is conflating them to show a discrepancy where there is none."We're not trying to trick ourselves with our own internal documents," Robert Bailes, Exxon's former greenhouse gas manager, testified on Friday. Indeed, none of the documents discussed at trial so far appeared to show an intentional scheme like the one New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges. Read More: How Exxon's Climate Change Trial Became a Battle Over NumbersTo be sure, the state is far from resting its case and the court has yet to hear from several witnesses, including former Exxon Chief Executive Officer Rex Tillerson. It's also possible that New York could unveil some heretofore unseen email or document that provides evidence of a smoking gun. The attorney general, however, doesn't need one.James sued under New York's Martin Act, which empowers officials to target a wide range of corporate behavior that may negatively impact shareholders. While New York claims Exxon intentionally misled shareholders, under this securities law it doesn't have to prove intent to win."This is precisely why New York is pursuing Exxon under the Martin Act," said James Fanto, a professor at Brooklyn Law School. "New York could prevail if it showed that Exxon's disclosure had a kind of fraudulent effect in misleading shareholders.""The dispute is in how that was portrayed to the investors."New York Supreme Court Justice Barry Ostrager, who is presiding over the nonjury trial in lower Manhattan, alluded to this Wednesday when he asked the lawyers if confusion among Exxon's shareholders was enough to trigger a Martin Act violation."Would you agree that if the disclosures that Exxon made confused investors with respect to the utilization of these two different costs, then there would be a Martin Act violation?" the judge asked Exxon's lawyer Theodore Wells."No, your Honor," Wells responded. "I would state that under the law that there's a difference between somebody being confused and a statement being misleading. I think you have to look at it in context. I think the concepts are different."Kevin Wallace, a lawyer for the attorney general, rejected Wells' premise, arguing that the case turns on what Exxon disclosed to the public "and what the investors understood.""There's no dispute on the grounds about the existence of the two systems," Wallace said. "The dispute is in how that was portrayed to the investors."The state's first witness, activist investor Natasha Lamb, testified that she wrote to Exxon in 2013 on behalf of clients who were concerned that climate change posed a financial risk to the company.She sought a shareholder resolution demanding the company disclose how it was managing those risks, according to a copy of the letter, displayed on large screens in the courtroom.Exxon ultimately agreed to issue a report on the matter in 2014, which Lamb, a managing partner at Arjuna Capital LLC, testified wasn't an accurate representation of the financial threats facing the fossil fuel company. Lamb, who helped make Exxon's proxy cost public, said she didn't know at the time that Exxon used a different measure, the GHG cost, internally."My understanding is they were being used interchangeably," Lamb testified of the two accounting measures.But under cross-examination by Exxon attorney Justin Anderson, she was asked whether anyone at the company had told her that the public and internal numbers were interchangeable. "No one said that sentence, no," Lamb responded, adding "I don't know how I would understand it in any other way.""The dispute is in how that was portrayed to the investors."Ostrager expressed some skepticism about New York's use of Lamb, a frequent Exxon critic, to begin its case on behalf of shareholders, briefly interrupting her testimony to ask her, "why didn't you just sell your Exxon shares and buy Apple stock?"But the judge's displeasure was not necessarily to Exxon's advantage. Much of the testimony—both Lamb's and that of earlier witnesses—wasn't required for New York to prove Exxon violated state law, Ostrager said. At one point, Ostrager appeared to lose his patience with another lawyer for the state, Jonathan Zweig, as he questioned Exxon executive Guy Powell, a greenhouse gas manager, about alleged discrepancies in the company's proxy costs."Mr. Zweig, before we go through anymore of this agonizing, repetitious questioning about the documents that are not being disputed; the chronology of which are not in dispute: What is it exactly that you are trying to elicit from this witness?" the judge asked. "This is a Martin Act case. Intent is not an element of the Martin Act case."To contact the author of this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: David Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Joe Biden's changing looks have reportedly become a 'minor obsession of the White House' and Trump Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:47 AM PDT  Early on, Trump was worried about Joe Biden. Privately, he doesn't like his 'look,' or the plastic surgery he thinks Biden has had done.
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| More severely obese kids should get surgery, MD group says Posted: 28 Oct 2019 06:11 AM PDT  The guidance issued Sunday by the American Academy of Pediatrics is based on a review of medical evidence, including several studies showing that surgery in teens can result in marked weight loss lasting at least several years, with few complications. In many cases, related health problems including diabetes and high blood pressure vanished after surgery. While most of those studies involved teens, one included children younger than 12 and found no ill effects on growth, the policy says.
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| Impeachment: DOJ appeals order to release secret evidence gathered by Robert Mueller in Russia investigation Posted: 28 Oct 2019 01:08 PM PDT  The Department of Justice says it shouldn't turn evidence over to a House committee contemplating Trump's impeachment because it wouldn't be kept confidential.
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| China's Very Own B-2 Bomber? Meet the H-20 Stealth Bomber Posted: 27 Oct 2019 01:00 AM PDT  Coming in the 2020s?
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| UPDATE 7-Fire threatens posh L.A. homes as blaze in California wine country rages on Posted: 28 Oct 2019 05:07 AM PDT ![UPDATE 7-Fire threatens posh L.A. homes as blaze in California wine country rages on]( "UPDATE 7-Fire threatens posh L.A. homes as blaze in California wine country rages on") Wind-whipped flames chased thousands of residents from wealthy Los Angeles neighborhoods and threatened the city's famed Getty Center museum on Monday, the latest outbreak in a wildfire season that has triggered mass evacuations and power outages across California. The new conflagration broke out at around 1:30 a.m. PDT near the Getty Center on the west side of Los Angeles, hundreds of miles (km) from where crews were fighting the state's biggest and most destructive fire, the Kincade, north of San Francisco.
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| Romania, Hungary recruit in Asia to fill labour shortage Posted: 27 Oct 2019 08:11 PM PDT  Sporting yellow safety helmets, about 30 men are busy at work on a construction site south of Bucharest, exchanging a few words in Vietnamese. Faced with a growing labour shortage which threatens their economies, Romania and Hungary are courting Asian workers, going against Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban's anti-immigration rhetoric. "My friend, my friend," a Romanian worker says to his Vietnamese colleague in English at the Bucharest construction site, trying to break the language barrier.
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| Sinkhole swallows half of Pittsburgh bus during rush hour Posted: 28 Oct 2019 07:50 AM PDT  A bus has fallen into a sinkhole in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after ground gave way beneath the vehicle as it waited at a traffic light during rush hour.Video and pictures of the scene show the bus with its rear end in the ground where the road cracked and fell, and the front of the vehicle several feet off the ground.
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| Refugees poured into my state. Here’s how it changed me. Posted: 28 Oct 2019 04:05 AM PDT  Muslim immigrants have helped revive, and change, a former mill town. Here's a look at the deepening bonds between Lewiston's natives and newcomers.
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| Zimbabwean girl, 11, says she poked crocodile's eyes to save friend's life Posted: 28 Oct 2019 09:01 AM PDT  A girl aged 11 claimed she jumped on the back of a crocodile and gouged its eyes as it was trying to eat her friend near their homes in north-western Zimbabwe . Rebecca Munkombwe, a schoolgirl in Hwange town, 200 miles northwest of Bulawyo, rushed to a stream at the sound of screams. Her friend, Latoya Muwani, nine, was struggling to stay afloat as the crocodile latched its jaws around her. Rebecca jumped on to the creature and dug her fingers deep into its eyes, she told Bulwayo's Sunday News. The crocodile loosened its grip on Latoya and slipped away under the water, allowing Rebecca to drag her friend - who only suffered minor injuries - to the bank. "We had just left the water when we heard Latoya, who was left alone swimming near the deep zone, screaming that something was biting her," Rebecca said. "I jumped on top of the crocodile and started beating it with my hands before using my fingers to poke its eyes until it released her. Once she was free, I swam with her to the bank where the other children pulled her out of the water." She feared the crocodile would return to attack as they clambered to safety, but it was not seen again. Latoya was admitted to nearby St Patrick's Hospital. Fortune Muwani, Latoya's father, described his daughter's survival as "miraculous", adding: "I was at work when I learnt that my daughter had been attacked by a crocodile while swimming. "For a moment I thought of the worst before I learnt that she had survived after being saved by Rebecca. How she managed to do that I don't know but am grateful to God. Latoya is recovering well here at St Patrick's and we expect her to be discharged soon." Steve Chisose, a local councillor, said attacks were on the rise because problems with water supplies were driving more people to use unprotected, crocodile-infested streams. "We have challenges accessing water which forces women and children to use unprotected sources such as these crocodile-infested streams. The women are usually accompanied by their children who get naughty and end up swimming," he said. He appealed to Zimbabwe's Parks and Wildlife Management Authority to remove crocodiles from local rivers. "They cause serious harm or death," he added.
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| Over 40 skulls found in den of Mexico cartel suspects Posted: 28 Oct 2019 12:04 PM PDT  Police found more than 40 skulls, dozens of bones and a fetus in a glass jar next to an altar in the den of suspected drug traffickers in Mexico City during a raid this week, authorities said on Sunday.
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| Nunes Aide Is Leaking the Ukraine Whistleblower’s Name, Sources Say Posted: 28 Oct 2019 05:02 PM PDT  Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast / Photos GettyA top aide to Rep. Devin Nunes has been providing conservative politicians and journalists with information—and misinformation—about the anonymous whistleblower who triggered the biggest crisis of Donald Trump's presidency, two knowledgeable sources tell The Daily Beast. Derek Harvey, who works for Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, has provided notes for House Republicans identifying the whistleblower's name ahead of the high-profile depositions of Trump administration appointees and civil servants in the impeachment inquiry. The purpose of the notes, one source said, is to get the whistleblower's name into the record of the proceedings, which committee chairman Adam Schiff has pledged to eventually release. In other words: it's an attempt to out the anonymous official who helped trigger the impeachment inquiry.On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that GOP lawmakers and staffers have "repeatedly" used a name purporting to be the whistleblower during the depositions. The paper named Harvey as driving lines of questioning Democrats saw as attempting to determine the political loyalties of witnesses before the inquiry. A former official told the Post that Harvey "was passing notes [to GOP lawmakers] the entire time" ex-NSC Russia staffer Fiona Hill testified. "Exposing the identity of the whistleblower and attacking our client would do nothing to undercut the validity of the complaint's allegations," said Mark Zaid, one of the whistleblower's attorneys. "What it would do, however, is put that individual and their family at risk of harm. Perhaps more important, it would deter future whistleblowers from coming forward in subsequent administrations, Democratic or Republican." Zaid has represented The Daily Beast in freedom-of-information lawsuits against the federal government. More Potential Whistleblowers Are Contacting CongressThe whistleblower is not Harvey's only target. Another is a staffer for the House intelligence committee Democrats whom The Daily Beast has agreed not to name due to concerns about reprisals against the staffer. Harvey, both sources said, has spread a false story alleging that the whistleblower contacted the staffer ahead of raising internal alarm about President Trump's July 25th phone call attempting to get a "favor" from Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky to damage Trump's rival Joe Biden. In right-wing circles, contact with Schiff is meant to discredit the whistleblower as partisan. The eagerness of Republicans to go after the intelligence committee staffer so alarmed Democrats that they raised the issue with GOP leadership, according to a senior official on the intelligence committee."We are aware of these unsupported and false attacks on a respected member of our staff," the official told The Daily Beast. "It is completely inappropriate, and we have previously urged the Republican leadership to address this situation."The official would not comment on any aspect of the depositions' proceedings. Trump, who has called the whistleblower treasonous, has speculated baselessly that Schiff is the source of the whistleblower's account of the Zelensky call, even though Schiff was not on the call and Trump's own summary of the call corroborated the whistleblower's second-hand account. Derek Harvey's career has been extraordinary. As a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, he played an important role in the 2007-8 troop surge in Iraq. David Petraeus kept Harvey aboard for an intelligence billet at U.S. Central Command. Harvey aligned with another member of the counterinsurgency coterie, DIA Director Mike Flynn, and followed Flynn onto Trump's White NSC from there, Harvey became a crucial aide to Nunes, a pivotal Flynn and Trump ally. There is no reasonable definition of a Deep State that excludes Derek Harvey from elite membership.Harvey did not respond to a request for comment. The staffer declined to comment. A spokesperson for Nunes did not respond to a request for comment.Despite hearing of the Trump-Zelensky call secondhand, the whistleblower's account of Trump's pressure campaign against Ukraine has been corroborated by numerous witnesses before the impeachment inquiry, as well as Trump's own of the July 25 call. Sources believe the persistent conservative focus on the whistleblower is both an attempt at deterring other would-be whistleblowers and discrediting the impeachment as politically motivated, though it is unclear what misconduct the whistleblower is alleged to have engaged in. Influential conservatives have claimed that the whistleblower's identity is no secret at all. On Oct. 24, Fred Fleitz, formerly chief of staff of the NSC under John Bolton and a CIA official before that, claimed on CNN that OANN, Breitbart, the House intelligence committee, CNN and the White House "has the name." Fleitz asserted as well that "the president knows who he is." Fleitz cited no source for his information. Harvey has a history of passing on information to damage colleagues. As The Daily Beast reported in March, an April 2017 email senior State Department official Brian Hook sent to himself, titled "Derek notes," contained descriptions of State Department officials suspected of disloyalty or troublesomeness. Examples of such disloyalty included "butter[ing] up to Clinton people," Hook wrote. The email is currently being examined by a State Department inspector general investigation into department politicization.Harvey is not the only Nunes ally involved in the Ukraine story. A former Nunes staffer who now works on the NSC, Kash Patel, gave Trump damaging information about Ukraine, Politico recently reported. Patel was a driving force behind Nunes' efforts in 2017 and 2018 to discredit the origins of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign's connections with Russian election interference.Far right news groups like the Gateway Pundit blog and the OANN TV network have run pieces naming their guess at the whistleblower's identity. The official identified by OANN and Gateway Pundit has been a target for fringe conservative media figures even before the whistleblower filed his complaint to the DNI Inspector General's office.GOP criticism of the whistleblower has focused on their contact with Democratic investigators as people like Harvey spread the idea that they were in cahoots. That line of attack went into overdrive on Oct. 2, when Schiff's camp confirmed that the whistleblower reached out to the Intelligence Committee before filing a formal complaint in order to get "guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the intelligence community." But the whistleblower, per a spokesman for Schiff, did not tell the chairman the content of the complaint nor the identity of the whistleblower. Still, that seemed to contradict Schiff's statement in late September that Democrats had "not spoken directly" with the whistleblower, a remark the congressman later told The Daily Beast he regretted he did not make "much more clear."Trump's Plan to Save His Presidency: Take a Hatchet to Adam SchiffThose statements have provided fuel for allegations from Trump and his allies that the whistleblower and Democrats were engaged in some unseemly coordination before the fact, or that they did not follow the proper whistleblower laws. Zaid, meanwhile, has stressed that the whistleblower acted properly and without any kind of coordination or interference. "The whistleblower drafted the Complaint entirely on their own. Legal counsel Andrew Bakaj provided guidance on process but was not involved in the drafting of the document and did not review it in advance," Zaid told ABC News on Oct. 2. "In fact, none of the legal team saw the Complaint until it was publicly released by Congress," Zaid said. "To be unequivocally clear, no Member or congressional staff had any input into or reviewed the Complaint before it was submitted to the Intelligence Community Inspector General."That inspector general, Michael Atkinson, has said in letters to top lawmakers that the whistleblower's complaint was credible and urgent. Though Joseph Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence, did not believe he had to notify the Intelligence committees of the complaint as required by law, he nevertheless testified before lawmakers on Sept. 26 that the whistleblower "followed the steps every step of the way."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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| Meet the LRASM: The U.S. Navy's Powerful New Missile Posted: 28 Oct 2019 01:00 PM PDT  It's a killer.
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| Angry at criticism, Philippines' Duterte dares vice president to take over law enforcement Posted: 28 Oct 2019 04:08 AM PDT ![Angry at criticism, Philippines' Duterte dares vice president to take over law enforcement]( "Angry at criticism, Philippines' Duterte dares vice president to take over law enforcement") Philippine leader Rodrigo Duterte on Monday lashed out at Vice President Leni Robredo for criticising his war on drugs, and offered to put her in charge of law enforcement. The president has a frosty relationship with opposition leader Robredo, who was elected separately from Duterte, whose drugs crackdown has killed thousands, stirring global alarm, although polls show strong domestic support for the campaign. It was not immediately clear if Duterte's offer was meant sarcastically, although he said he would send a letter to Robredo, a former human rights lawyer.
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| Kamala Harris Argues Racism, Sexism Jeopardize Her Electability Posted: 28 Oct 2019 09:47 AM PDT  Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris described electability as the "elephant in the room" of her campaign and pondered whether America is ready for a woman of color to be commander in chief."Essentially, is America ready for a woman and a woman of color to be president of the United States?" Harris said in an interview with Axios on HBO. "There is a lack of ability or a difficulty in imagining that someone whom we have never seen can do a job that has been done 45 times by someone who is not that person."The same conversation happened when Barack Obama ran for president, the California senator added.Harris has been especially vocal about both racial justice and women's rights during her 2020 campaign. During this month's debate, she accused the debate moderators and fellow contenders for the Democratic nomination of failing to adequately prioritize the discussion of abortion rights. The former California attorney general also made headlines during the first Democratic debate in June when she called out former vice president Joe Biden for remarks he made praising two segregationist senators."It was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and careers on the segregation of race in this country," Harris said from the debate stage."It was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing," she continued. "There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me."Biden made the offending remarks several weeks earlier when he reminisced about bygone days when politics was characterized by a higher level of civility, citing his ability to get along with two segregationist senators despite their differences as an example."At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn't agree on much of anything," Biden said. "But today you look at the other side and you're the enemy."Harris is currently polling in fifth place behind former vice president Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders, and South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg.
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| NRA leadership thought its own TV channel was airing 'distasteful and racist' content Posted: 28 Oct 2019 11:22 AM PDT  "One particularly damaging segment featured children's cartoon characters adorned in Ku Klux Klan hoods," the court filing stated.
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| Coast Guard to the rescue: Man in pain taken from cruise ship near Atlantic City, New Jersey Posted: 28 Oct 2019 05:46 AM PDT ![Coast Guard to the rescue: Man in pain taken from cruise ship near Atlantic City, New Jersey]( "Coast Guard to the rescue: Man in pain taken from cruise ship near Atlantic City, New Jersey") Coast Guard personnel took a man suffering severe abdominal pain off a cruise ship traveling about 20 miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey.
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| First wildcat kittens in new reintroduction project to be released in England for first time in 150 years Posted: 27 Oct 2019 07:48 AM PDT  The first wildcat kittens in a new project to protect the species will be released in England for the first time in 150 years. While the wildcat was once abundant across England and Wales, persecution by gamekeepers and interbreeding with feral domestic cats meant the animal has not been seen in the wild in more than a century. A small population of a few dozen remains in Scotland, but the animal is at risk of extinction, and according to the UK's biggest conservation charities, it is one of the creatures most at risk. Now, one conservationist has started his own breeding programme in Devon after obtaining some wildcats from a zoo. Devon sheep farmer Derek Gow proudly showed his Twitter followers a picture of the kittens, seen for the first time at England's first dedicated wildcat breeding complex. He wrote: "Wildcat kittens bred this year have just been vaccinated and are looking well. 3 males 1 female. The captive population is essentially all that now remains. "Is make or break time for the species in the UK. This breeding group needs to grow fast now to provide any kind of future". As well as wildcats, he has bred beavers for wildlife trusts to keep in fenced areas, and water voles to be released into the wild. His aim is to have a population large enough to breed 150 wildcat kittens every year, but for now he has four, which he hopes to release into the wild when they become adults. His project is part-funded by Ben Goldsmith, an environmentalist and the brother of Defra minister Zac Goldsmith. Ben Goldsmith told The Telegraph: "The British reputation for loving wildlife belies the fact that we have been more successful at eradicating our own than almost any other country on Earth. However a new movement for piecing back together our fragmented natural heritage is growing up around us, with the support of the Government whose own 25 Year Environment Plan calls for the creation of an ambitious national nature recovery network. "Water voles, pine martens, beavers, wild boar, white-tailed eagles, cranes, great bustards and white storks have all returned to Britain in recent years centuries after we wiped them out. "Wildcats were once widespread across Britain, but were extinguished from England and Wales by gamekeepers during the nineteenth century. A tiny remnant population managed to cling on in Scotland, somehow. I couldn't be more excited about this project to breed wildcats in captivity for the purpose of reintroducing them back into the English and Welsh landscape, where they belong". Defra is creating a code of best practice for releasing the animals into the wild, but because the wildcat is still found in the wild in Scotland, a licence will not be required to release them in England. A source at the department said the government is "enthusiastic" about the return of the wildcat. The British wildcat resembles the domesticated animal, but is larger with a wider face and thicker fur. And while next door's puss might rub up against your leg, the wildcat is wary of humans. Farmers have raised concerns in the past about the effect of a large wild population of the cats near agricultural areas, but Mr Gow has said he will work with them to make sure these fears are unfounded. It is also thought that the cats will serve a purpose in controlling the grey squirrel population.
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| Anomalies in Trump situation room photo spark online conspiracy theories it was staged Posted: 28 Oct 2019 06:26 AM PDT  In 2011, 10 years after the terrorist attacks in New York which destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Centre, the architect of the hijackings, Osama bin Laden, was killed by US special forces in a raid in Pakistan.The US Navy Seals carrying out the raid relayed live footage to the White House, and a photograph of president Barack Obama alongside his national security team witnessing the operation was used on the front pages of newspapers around the world.
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| Man pleads not guilty in deaths of 4 sleeping on NYC streets Posted: 28 Oct 2019 12:03 PM PDT  A homeless man charged in the beating deaths of four men as they slept on the New York City streets may pursue a mental health-related defense, his lawyer told a judge Monday at his arraignment. Randy Santos, 24, pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges during a brief excursion to court from the psychiatric ward, where he has been held since shortly after his arrest in the Oct. 5 killings in Manhattan's Chinatown neighborhood. Santos appeared in an orange jail suit and gray undershirt with his hands cuffed behind his back and a Spanish interpreter by his side.
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| U.S. military envisions broad defense of Syrian oilfields Posted: 28 Oct 2019 03:46 PM PDT ![U.S. military envisions broad defense of Syrian oilfields]( "U.S. military envisions broad defense of Syrian oilfields") The United States will repel any attempt to take Syria's oil fields away from U.S.-backed Syrian militia with "overwhelming force," whether the opponent is Islamic State or even forces backed by Russia or Syria, the Pentagon said on Monday. The U.S. military announced last week it was reinforcing its position in Syria with additional assets, including mechanized forces, to prevent oilfields from being taken over by remnants of the Islamic State militant group or others. U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper offered some of his most detailed remarks to date about the mission at a news briefing on Monday.
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| Britain's World War II Experience Inspired The U.S. Military's "Mother Of All Bombs" Posted: 27 Oct 2019 11:58 PM PDT  The biggest, non-nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal.
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| Ukrainian Oligarch Seethed About ‘Overlord’ Biden for Years Posted: 28 Oct 2019 01:13 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by Sarah Rogers/The Daily Beast/Photos GettyIndicted Ukrainian gas oligarch Dmytro Firtash spent more than $1 million hiring key figures in Republican efforts to investigate the Biden family. His lawyers—who often go on Fox News to defend President Trump—say they needed the dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden to demonstrate that Firtash's prosecution was politically motivated. But the two men have a history. Two Ukrainian gas industry experts say the gas-market reforms pushed by Biden and others in 2014 and 2015 hit Firtash in the wallet, and badly. One knowledgeable outside observer estimated that the 2014 and 2015 gas reforms and legislation cost him hundreds of millions of dollars. On Dec. 9, 2015, Biden gave a speech to Ukraine's parliament. He praised the protesters who forced out Ukraine's Russia-friendly president, he recited Ukrainian poetry, and he called for reforms to Ukraine's gas market, too. "The energy sector needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles—not sweetheart deals," he said, basking in the audience's repeated applause.Firtash, who built his fortune in part through a rather sweet gas-trading deal, hated it. Earlier this year—more than three and a half years after the talk—he was still seething. Firtash told The Daily Beast that the Ukrainian parliamentarians in the audience were humiliatingly subservient to Biden. "He was the overlord," Firtash said. "I was ashamed to look at this. I was repulsed."Now people linked to Firtash are at the heart of Republicans' efforts to find dirt on Biden, and a document Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has said is key to his theory of Biden World malfeasance was produced for Firtash's legal team. The reporter who published that document, The Hill's John Solomon, is a client of Firtash's new lawyers, Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova. Over the summer, Trump pressured Ukraine's president to cooperate with Giuliani's efforts. That pressure stunned many Republicans and gave House Democratic leadership the impetus they had long sought to announce an impeachment inquiry. And two Giuliani associates reportedly brought up Firtash's name when talking about their plans for Ukraine's energy sector. Those two associates also worked with Giuliani to find dirt on Biden, and they've both been charged with financial crimes. On top of that, Firtash's lawyers say one of them, Lev Parnas, has worked as a translator for his legal team. Firtash's blunt assessment of Biden's speech at the parliament and influence on Ukraine—shared earlier this year with The Daily Beast and published here in full for the first time—highlights how a battle over the future of Ukraine bled into the highest levels of American politics. Firtash's company did not respond to requests for comment. Biden's campaign called Firtash "a Kremlin-friendly Ukrainian oligarch who's been wanted on bribery and racketeering charges in the U.S. since 2014."* * *Gas Man* * *Firtash was born in Ukraine and—like many other up-and-coming oligarchs—grew rich in the rubble of the Soviet Union. After spending some time in Moscow, he started trading gas from Central Asia to Ukraine. His renown as a gas trader grew, and he made deals with Russia's state-owned giant Gazprom to move Russia's abundant gas to energy-hungry Ukraine. With Gazprom's blessing, he got deals widely characterized as of the sweetheart variety: Firtash bought cheap gas from Russia, sold it for a lot more in Ukraine, and profited. He then bankrolled Russia-friendly politicians in Ukraine. One such politician was Viktor Yanukovych, who hired Paul Manafort. American diplomats at the time saw Firtash as a vector of Russian influence—part of the connective tissue between the Kremlin and Kyiv. And American law enforcement saw him as a crook. On April 2, 2014, the Justice Department announced that he had been indicted for authorizing $18.5 million in bribes to Indian government officials. The case involved efforts to mine for titanium that would be used in Boeing planes. Austrian authorities arrested Firtash a few weeks before the DOJ's announcement. He posted about $174 million in bail and has since been living in Vienna, fighting extradition from his palatial corporate offices there. And while the allegation isn't part of the DOJ's indictment of Firtash, U.S. government lawyers have said in court that he's an "upper echelon" associate of a Russian criminal organization. Firtash says the claim is baseless. In June of this year, an Austrian judge greenlit his extradition to the U.S. But his high-powered legal team is still fighting. And this July, that team got some new oomph: DiGenova and Toensing, a husband-and-wife duo who have worked on a host of contentious fights and have deep ties in Washington's tight-knit conservative legal community. They even reportedly secured a meeting about Firtash's case with Attorney General Bill Barr—a sit-down many criminal defense lawyers would kill for. Firtash's team has long argued he's the victim of a political prosecution and that the U.S. government only targeted him to blunt his influence in Ukraine. That's where Biden comes in. * * *Direct Hit* * *In 2014, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians took to the streets in protest. After Yanukovych's government killed dozens of protesters, he was forced out and fled to Russia. He left behind a $20 billion hole in Ukraine's economy, and the country teetered on the brink of fiscal collapse. Enter Biden. The vice president helmed America's Ukraine policy, traveled to the country multiple times while in office, and said he spoke to the country's president and prime minister "probably on average once a week if you average it out over the last year." Kyiv was desperate for billions in support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where the U.S. holds sway. The Americans and the IMF pushed Ukraine to roll out a host of reforms to get the cash. "The Obama administration, and Vice President Biden in particular, led the international community to help advance gas sector reforms in Ukraine," said a former State Department official with knowledge of the dynamics. "The thinking of the United States was that establishing an open, transparent gas sector would be vital to Ukraine's fight against entrenched oligarchic corruption and would shore up the country's strategic stability in the face of Russian aggression." "Mr. Firtash's control of RosUkrEnergo, which exerted monopolistic control over regional gas distribution, would have been threatened by these reforms," the official added.Biden has touted his leverage over Kyiv, including successfully pushing for the ouster of the country's then-chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Biden wasn't the only one pushing for Shokin to leave as part of Ukraine's anti-corruption efforts. The prosecutor had put in anemic performance charging powerful and well-connected kleptocrats while in office and the IMF, the European Union, and Ukrainian anti-corruption activists all urged his ouster.Shokin had also scrutinized a gas company whose board included Biden's son Hunter Biden, a fact that Trump and his allies have cited as evidence of corruption. They note that Shokin's replacement wasn't much better. But the reporter who broke the Hunter Biden story years ago reported that Joe Biden's overall anti-corruption push in Ukraine likely endangered the company his son was linked to.The Americans and the IMF also pushed for a series of reforms to Ukraine's energy sector, including the gas industry. In 2014 and 2015, the Ukrainians unveiled a variety of changes: Kyiv changed the corporate governance of its state-owned gas company, Naftogaz; it passed its "Natural Gas Market" law, which the prime minister touted as having "de-oligarchized and de-monopolized" the gas market; and it rolled out a basket of regulatory changes to its gas sector—with Biden cheerleading along the way. In a July 2015 speech, Biden praised Ukraine for "closing the space for corrupt middlemen who rip off the Ukrainian people." "Middleman" was an epithet often aimed at oligarchs like Firtash, whose gas business had raked in millions by acting as a broker between Ukraine's state-owned gas company and Russia's Gazprom. "There is one of the biggest state-owned enterprises, which is Ukrainian Naftogaz, a gas company, that had very shadowy and non-transparent deals with middlemen and with the Russian Federation," Arseniy Yatseniuk, the country's prime minister at the time, said in a speech just two days after Biden's. "So last year we eliminated this middleman. His name is Mr. Firtash. He is under FBI investigation and expected to be extradited to the United States."Oleksandr Kharchenko, the director of the Center for Energy Industry Research Center in Kyiv, said the changes damaged Firtash's business interests. "It hit him directly," he said. * * *Yessed to Death* * *Firtash, for his part, saw in Biden a swaggering politician overstepping his bounds—and a Ukrainian audience embarrassingly enchanted with what they saw."When Biden came to Ukraine and he spoke in parliament, I was reminded of an old story from the Soviet Union when the first secretary of the ObKom [the regional committee of the Communist Party] came, and on the one side all the komsomoltsi [youth members of the Communist Party] lined up, and on the other the communists, and they all took loyalty oaths. You understand? That's how approximately it was with Biden," Firtash told The Daily Beast in February.Biden's influence in Ukraine, he added, was "enormous."Firtash saw Yatseniuk, the prime minister at the time, as a pawn of Biden and other Americans. "Who appointed whom, and who actually governed the country?" he said. Firtash has also sparred with Andriy Kobolyev, who became CEO of Naftogaz under Yatseniuk. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman—the indicted Giuliani associates—reportedly discussed an effort to oust Kobolyev earlier this year. Reuters has reported that Firtash financed their work. Firtash's lawyers say scrutiny of Biden's role is necessary for his criminal defense. "The U.S. and Austrian legal teams have always been focused on Dmitry Firtash's innocence," a spokesperson for DiGenova and Toensing said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. "The U.S. Justice Department has submitted false and misleading statements about Mr. Firtash and the evidence in his case to the Austrian courts. In the context of reopening the extradition case, the Austrian legal team sought former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin's sworn statement as one of numerous statements and other evidence submitted to the Austrian court. The former Vice President's role in Mr. Firtash's extradition is materially relevant to the Austrian lawyers' argument that the prosecution is political."The 2015 reforms appear to have cost Firtash a lot of money. It's difficult to estimate how much, as the oligarch's finances are quite opaque. Victoria Voytsitska was a member of the eighth convocation of the Ukrainian parliament and a member of its committee on Fuel Energy, Nuclear Policies, and Security. She told The Daily Beast that the gas market reforms have likely cost Firtash about $215 million to $400 million a year since their 2015 rollout. "Firtash really was pushed out of Naftogaz's financial flow," Kharchenko said. That said, many caution against overestimating the significance of the reforms Ukraine implemented. Firtash remains immensely wealthy and powerful, and controls Ukrainian gas distribution networks, known as oblgazes. And in the wake of the Maidan Revolution, he kept control of his assets in Ukraine. Oligarchs still dominate Ukraine's energy sector, which is far from a bastion of transparency.Ed Chow, an energy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Biden and the U.S. didn't push hard enough for major, structural changes. "To be fair, Biden was the most senior U.S. official interested in Ukraine," he said. "Without Biden, even less would have happened in terms of the U.S. government pressuring Ukraine. Ukrainians would have moved forward even less on reform. I would give the U.S. government a mixed grade." An American political consultant who's worked in Ukraine for years and spoke anonymously because of client sensitivities said Kyiv has honed its ability to satisfy Westerners without upending the status quo. "The Ukrainians, if you look at their history, they've always been at the edge of one empire or another," the consultant said. "They were used to dealing with viceroys, representatives of the sultan, representatives of the Lithuanian empire, the Polish empire, the Russian and Soviet empires. They're masters at paying lip service to the guy who comes to town for a week. They will yes him to death, and then the minute he leaves, it's business as usual."But business changed for Firtash after 2015. And Biden stayed on his mind.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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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| Poll finds over 80% in Japan back female emperor Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:07 PM PDT  The vast majority of Japanese voters back allowing women to inherit the Chrysanthemum Throne, a new polls shows, as the royal family struggles with a dearth of male heirs. The survey, conducted in the wake of last week's enthronement proclamation ceremony for Emperor Naruhito, found 81.9 percent favour Japan having a woman take the throne, with 13.5 percent opposed. The Kyodo News agency poll, carried out over the weekend, comes as there is renewed debate about succession in the royal family, with inheritance of the throne limited by law to male members of the imperial line.
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| Car crash stopped red light runner from hitting couple with stroller, traffic cam shows Posted: 27 Oct 2019 10:49 AM PDT  Shannon Vivar was driving a Chevrolet Cruz when it crashed into a vehicle that ran a red light, possibly saving the pedestrians.
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| Every person alive today descended from a woman who lived in modern-day Botswana about 200,000 years ago, a new study finds Posted: 28 Oct 2019 09:38 AM PDT  Modern humans emerged in Africa around 200,000 years ago. Now, a research team has figured out where on the continent our ancestors originated.
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| Cory Booker Gets Something Wrong and Right about Abortion Posted: 28 Oct 2019 03:30 AM PDT  Cory Booker recently tweeted something he couldn't possibly have read. It was a link to a Glamour magazine piece about men and abortion, and he wrote: "Women shouldn't be solely responsible for sharing their personal stories as evidence of their humanity. When reproductive rights are in danger, it's on all of us to join the fight. Thanks to these men for sharing how abortion has impacted their lives."First of all, the wording: "evidence of their humanity." It was a little like an Elizabeth Warren tweet around the same time, in which she said, "Access to safe, legal abortion is a constitutional right. Every time we deny access to safe, legal abortion, we put lives in danger." Note that she drops the word "rare." Bill Clinton made it a part of our political rhetoric, even while vetoing a ban on partial-birth abortion, saying that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." The phrase captured most Americans' discomfort with abortion and was an acknowledgment that it is not a good.And of course, in abortion, there is no question that we are dealing with people's lives. It's Planned Parenthood, with abortion as a business model and a chokehold on politicians, that dehumanizes. It's our coarse politics that pours salt on open wounds. It should be an unwritten campaign rule that if you're not going to say something life-giving about abortion -- something that acknowledges pain and touches on hope and healing -- then don't say anything at all. It's simply not a humane reaction to reading that Glamour piece to say "When reproductive rights are in danger, it's on all of us to join the fight." Michael Wear, who did faith-based outreach in the Barack Obama administration, has written that the Democratic party needs to express some moral lament about abortion. Tweets like Booker's and Warren's seem to do the very opposite.Because abortion has become so core to the Democrats, it probably was a little brave for Booker even to acknowledge the existence of men in the scenario -- and some responses to the tweet expressed outrage that he, without a uterus, would share an article that included testimony from a man who wished his girlfriend had consulted him before getting an abortion. There was some real human misery revealed in the Glamour piece.The testimonies in the piece run the gamut. One man even expressed his belief that "abortion is wrong." He regretted that his girlfriend didn't talk to him before getting an abortion. He said, in part:> I'm hurt that that baby never had a chance. I'm hurt that my girlfriend thought that was the right decision to make, especially without consulting with me. Because even though America says this is a women's issue, it's as much a man's issue because it takes a man and a woman to make a baby. And that's something that we're both going to carry the rest of our lives, the memory of what could have happened. I think about that baby — not, like, every day or every week — but I think about that baby a lot.And there's also this in the feature:> It was so scary through the whole process. Getting the sonogram and seeing that she was actually pregnant, [I was] more sentimental than I thought I would get about it. Seeing that life that's there, it doesn't make it any easier than we thought it was going to be. A lot of old-school tropes really came into play, like, Are we killing this kid?And:> One of the little things that starts to get to you is all the thoughts of what could have been with the baby. In your brain, you know this isn't the right time. In your heart, you start imagining and dreaming about what could have been.And there's a description of a child who was delivered and left to die. It's an excruciating story to read. A woman who identifies as a man tells of being gang-raped -- what was called a "corrective" rape by the cruel perpetrators. The point is that these are piercing stories, some of them. Even the shortest reflection, a seemingly callous remark, appeared to betray an impact the speaker couldn't quite communicate.It is not only politically unwise to ignore this, but it's as if we've aborted our human compassion, any sense of empathy, and any reverence for human life to read those stories and simply go on as is, with our same old miserable, intractable abortion politics. George Mason University law professor Helen Alvaré uses the word "immiseration" to describe what abortion has done to women; it's also a cultural condition. And so, of course, we would see it on social media, which has been known to exacerbate some of our worst tendencies. But we can and need to do better. And even if Cory Booker -- or his staff person who thought that tweet was a good idea -- missed the humanity bleeding all over the Glamour piece, he managed to prompt a much-needed reflection.This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal's Newspaper Enterprise Association.
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| South Dakota asks court to let execution proceed Posted: 28 Oct 2019 02:57 PM PDT  The state of South Dakota asked a judge Monday to reject an inmate's objection to the lethal drug scheduled for use in his execution. Charles Russell Rhines is scheduled to die next week for the 1992 fatal stabbing of a 22-year-old doughnut shop worker during a robbery. Rhines moved last week to block the execution by arguing that pentobarbital, commonly used to euthanize animals, doesn't act quickly enough.
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| Progressives, Hispanics are not 'Latinx.' Stop trying to Anglicize our Spanish language. Posted: 28 Oct 2019 06:28 AM PDT  Hispanic Americans face plenty of challenges as it is. The last thing we need are English-speaking progressives 'wokesplaining' how to speak Spanish.
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