| Trump: 'I'll do whatever I want' during Senate impeachment trial Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:02 AM PST  President Trump said Friday that he hasn't decided whether to wage a long or short impeachment defense in the U.S. Senate, but either way, he expressed confidence in the outcome.
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| Sanders retracts controversial endorsement less than 24 hours after making it Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:03 PM PST  Sen. Bernie Sanders retracted his endorsement of congressional candidate Cenk Uygur on Friday, less than 24 hours after making it, as allegations of sexism hit the former online talk show host.
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| U.S. sanctions on Iran violate international law: Mahathir Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:52 PM PST  The American sanctions imposed on Iran violate the United Nations charter and international law, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad told a conference in Qatar on Saturday. ''Malaysia does not support the reimposition of the unilateral sanctions by the US against Iran,'' he told the Doha Forum, also attended by Qatar Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.
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| 2 children dead after being swept away in Arizona floodwaters Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:34 AM PST  The bodies of two children were found about three miles from the crash scene.
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| The CEO of a Silicon Valley startup was quietly fired after allegedly spending over $75,000 at strip clubs and charging it to a company credit card Posted: 14 Dec 2019 04:25 PM PST  Turvo named a new CEO in November named Scott Lang. The company was last valued at $435 million, according to Pitchbook.
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| Kamala Harris flames out: Black people didn't trust her, and they were wise not to Posted: 14 Dec 2019 02:00 AM PST  Younger blacks and black progressives took a deeper, dispassionate dive into Kamala Harris' real-world record. They didn't like what they found
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| Man gives DNA to find out if he's Detroit boy missing since 1994 Posted: 13 Dec 2019 11:30 AM PST  A Michigan man give a DNA sample to the Livonia Police Department to find out if he is D'Wan Sims, a boy who has been missing for 25 years.
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| Nazi Germany's 'Stealth Fighter' Could Not Stop Hitler From Losing World War II Posted: 12 Dec 2019 08:00 PM PST  A sign of things to come.
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| Ex-DOJ official: Trump was 'vulnerable' to foreign intelligence agencies Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:44 PM PST  Mary McCord, the top Justice Department official who oversaw the FBI investigation into Donald Trump's ties to Russia in its early stages, talks to the Yahoo News "Skullduggery" podcast.
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| Brazilians arrive in waves at the US-Mexico border Posted: 13 Dec 2019 11:28 AM PST  Growing up along the U.S.-Mexico border, hotel clerk Joe Luis Rubio never thought he'd be trying to communicate in Portuguese on a daily basis. The quiet migration of around 17,000 Brazilians through a single U.S. city in the past year reveals a new frontier in the Trump administration's effort to shut down the legal immigration pathway for people claiming fear of persecution. Like hundreds of thousands of families from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, known collectively as the Northern Triangle, Brazilians have been crossing the border here and applying for asylum.
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| Iran Demands $6 Billion Oil Payment From South Korea: Chosun Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:47 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Iran's Foreign Ministry called in the South Korean ambassador last month to demand payment of 7 trillion won ($6 billion) for oil it sold to the Asian country, Chosun Ilbo reported, citing officials it didn't identify.Iran expressed "strong regret" over Seoul's failure to complete the payment, which has been deposited at two South Korean banks without being transferred to Iran's central bank for years due to U.S. sanctions against the Middle Eastern country, the newspaper said. It added that other Iranian authorities including the central bank also complained.South Korea sent a delegation to the Middle East late last month and explained that the country will cooperate with the U.S. to successfully complete transfer of the payment, it added.To contact the reporter on this story: Kanga Kong in Seoul at kkong50@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Sara Marley, Siraj DatooFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Lindsey Graham invites Rudy Giuliani to Judiciary panel to discuss recent Ukraine visit Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:32 PM PST ![Lindsey Graham invites Rudy Giuliani to Judiciary panel to discuss recent Ukraine visit]( "Lindsey Graham invites Rudy Giuliani to Judiciary panel to discuss recent Ukraine visit") "Rudy, if you want to come and tell us what you found, I'll be glad to talk to you," Lindsey Graham says.
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| Body of 21-year-old vet recovered from volcano island as family fight for survival in hospital Posted: 14 Dec 2019 09:02 AM PST  Krystal Browitt, an Australian veterinary student from Melbourne who had just turned 21, was sightseeing with her sister and father on the island of Whakaari when toxic ash clouds spewed rocks and dust high into the air. Her mother stayed on the cruise ship, safe from the hot blanket of fumes and stones that rained down on the group of tourists hoping to see inside the crater of one of the country's most active volcanoes. The body of Ms Browitt was finally recovered from the island in a daring mission by elite military bomb squads on Friday. She was formally identified as among the 15 to have died so far on Saturday morning. The closure is likely to be little comfort for her mother Marie who was on Saturday keeping a bedside vigil for her surviving daughter, Stephanie, 23, and husband Paul fighting for their lives among the critically injured in hospital. Fourteen people remain hospitalised in New Zealand, 10 of whom are in critical condition with horrific burns. Thirteen others have been transported to Australia for treatment. One person succumbed to their injuries on Saturday morning, officials said. Police divers prepare to search the waters near White Island off the coast of Whakatane Credit: NZ Police Some patients have burns to up to 95 per cent of their bodies. Surgeons ordered 1.2 million sq cm of donor skin from the US earlier in the week in a desperate attempt to keep victims alive. It is understood that two British women are among the injured in hospital. The nature of the gas meant that survivors were found with third-degree burns to their skin but their clothing largely intact, and many suffered burnt lungs from inhaling the superheated gas, made up of sulphur dioxide and hydrogen chloride. Dr Watson said the gases would have reacted with the eyes, skin and mucous membranes, causing agony to the victims. Two people are missing, assumed dead, on the island itself. A team of nine from the Police National Dive Squad resumed their search at 7am on Saturday for a body seen in the water. Deputy Commissioner Tims said the water around the island is contaminated, requiring the divers to take extra precautions to ensure their safety, including using specialist protective equipment. "Divers have reported seeing a number of dead fish and eels washed ashore and floating in the water," he said. "Each time they surface, the divers are decontaminated using fresh water."
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| Dems: Postponing impeachment vote was tactical Posted: 13 Dec 2019 06:37 AM PST  After a marathon session of debate, the House Judiciary Committee abruptly postponed a historic vote late Thursday on articles of impeachment against President Trump.
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| Turns out I'm Jewish after all Posted: 13 Dec 2019 02:45 AM PST ![Turns out I'm Jewish after all]( "Turns out I'm Jewish after all") Being Jewish has become hard again.After decades when Jews in America permitted themselves to believe they had finally found a welcoming home in a majority Christian, creedally universalist country, things have begun to shift in familiar and terrifying ways. Jews have been murdered in synagogues and kosher delis in the United States. They are regularly harassed and beaten on the streets of American cities. Swastikas scrawled on walls, acts of attempted arson and vandalism at synagogues, shouted slurs — the stories add up, amplifying one another and mixing with similar and worse stories from abroad.Over a hundred gravestones in a Jewish cemetery in France were spray-painted with swastikas earlier this month. It was the latest in a seemingly endless series of incidents across the continent. And of course leaders (and would-be leaders) of nations, along with prime-time TV pundits, now actively encourage such demonization, turning Jewish philanthropists into scapegoats, blaming them for a wide range of injustices. As enemies of the Jewish people have always done.It's a painful spectacle for anyone committed to liberal ideals of pluralism and tolerance. But it's especially, existentially, agonizing for Jews themselves — even for bad, part-time Jews like me.I was born Jewish — my father is the son of orthodox Jewish immigrants from Central Europe (Poland and Austria), and my mother a convert — but for much of the past two decades, that hasn't much mattered. I grew up identifying as a Jew, but we never worshipped at a synagogue (even on high holy days). I received no Jewish education. There was no Hebrew school. No bar mitzvah.By the time I started to sense religious stirrings in my late 20s, I knew far more about Christian, and especially Catholic, theology and moral teaching than I did about Judaism. Plus, by then I'd gone and done what American Jews are often warned against doing (and yet increasingly do anyway): I married a non-Jew. That my wife's family hoped and expected our children to be raised Catholic made the path forward obvious. I would repudiate my upbringing by converting to Catholicism.As regular readers know, the conversion didn't take. After 17 years, in August 2018, I publicly renounced Catholicism. The decision was mainly motivated by disgust at the church's systematic sexual perversion and corruption. But there was also something else going on.Exploration of existential possibilities is relatively easy in good times. When I turned away from my birthright, I knew it was a rejection — a turning of my back on my family, an act of disregard for the demographic fate of the Jewish community, which would lose me and my progeny forevermore. But I would still express love for my family in other ways, and my rejection of Judaism seemed like the infliction of a very small harm. True, there aren't that many Jews in the world. But really, how important was little old me, my kids, and those who would follow us? And anyway, the Jews were doing just fine — in the U.S., in other liberal democracies around the world, in Israel. My contribution seemed pretty close to infinitesimal, utterly irrelevant in the grand scheme of Jewish history.But things look and feel very different in dark times. Not that I'm now deluded enough to think the fate of Judaism in the world depends in any measurable way on whether or not I call myself a Jew or rise in defense of Jews when they face threat or come under outright attack. Of course it doesn't. I'm as infinitesimal and irrelevant as ever. Yet the fact remains that my youthful shirking of my inheritance no longer feels like a liberation. It feels more like an act of cowardice, perhaps even an expression of decadence, a sign that I took certain things for granted that no Jew should ever treat as a given.I also fear that at some level I was trying to hide, conceal, or camouflage myself by seeking to blend in so thoroughly and completely to the default Christianity of the surrounding culture. At the time of my conversion, in the center-right circles where I then worked, that culture was maximally welcoming of my spiritual decision while also treating the Judaism I left behind with a great deal of sincere respect. The borderline between traditions and faiths felt porous. Permeable.But not anymore. Walls are going up. Hard edges and irreconcilable differences are returning all over the liberal democratic world, raising a serious question about whether and to what extent that world will remain liberal and democratic. It would be nice if the cosmopolitan universalism that prevailed in the decade or so following the conclusion of the Cold War — during the era when so many of us permitted ourselves to believe that history had come to a peaceful end — could continue to feel compelling in the face of this threat. But it doesn't. It feels like foolishness. The world has changed, and we are changing with it. And we don't know how far the change is going to go.Turns out I'm Jewish after all. However malformed and badly enacted that Jewishness is and has been. The times are no longer compatible with, they no longer afford me the luxury of, denying it. Anything else would be irresponsible.That certainly doesn't mean I'll stop being infuriatingly, unreliably contrarian in my judgment of political issues and disputes. I'll continue to judge Israel's settlement policies and some of its punitive actions against the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza to be acts of moral and strategic idiocy. But I'll also continue to defend Israel's unconditional right to exist and defend itself against military threat. I'll continue to view President Trump's gestures of support for Jews with considerable skepticism — as incompatible with free speech and as doing little to compensate for the much greater harm precipitated by his intolerant and inflammatory rhetoric, which has done so much to activate previously dormant racism and anti-Semitism in the country. But I'll also continue to think of Judaism as a nationality or ethnicity as well as a religion. (Otherwise I could never have been considered a Jew in the first place.)But then what does my reaffirmation of my own Judaism amount to?All it means is that if things get worse — and who would dare try to reassure a Jew that it won't? — I will know exactly how and where I'll be taking my stand: in proud, defiant self-defense with my fellow Jews.More stories from theweek.com Trump's pathological obsession with being laughed at The most important day of the impeachment inquiry Jerry Falwell Jr.'s false gospel of memes
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| Judge's decision may shine light on secret Trump-Putin meeting notes Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:49 AM PST  A district court judge in Washington, D.C. has ordered administration lawyers to explain why, for more than two years, the White House has refused to turn over to the State Department an interpreter's notes from a meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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| Challenge to immigration law is tossed on eve of enactment Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:47 PM PST  A law that will allow New Yorkers to get driver's licenses without having to prove they are in the country legally weathered a second court challenge Friday, days before its enactment. A federal district judge ruled against Rensselaer County Clerk Frank Merola, saying he lacked the legal capacity to bring the lawsuit. Merola, a Republican, had argued that the state law conflicts with federal immigration law.
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| Satellite evades ‘day of reckoning' to discover puzzling weather phenomenon on Jupiter Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:51 PM PST  At first glance, these newly released images by NASA may look like lava churning in the heart of a volcano, but they reveal otherworldly storm systems whirling in a way that surprised scientists.The swirls in the photos are cyclones around Jupiter's south pole, captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft on Nov. 3, 2019. Juno has been orbiting the solar system's largest planet since 2016 and has seen these polar cyclones before, but its latest flight over this region of the planet revealed a startling discovery - a new cyclone had formed unexpectedly. Six cyclones can be seen at Jupiter's south pole in this infrared image taken on Feb. 2, 2017, during the 3rd science pass of NASA's Juno spacecraft. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM) Prior to its early November pass, Juno had photographed five windstorms arranged in a uniform, pentagonal pattern around one storm sitting stationary over the south pole."It almost appeared like the polar cyclones were part of a private club that seemed to resist new members," said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.It is unclear when exactly the new cyclone formed, but it changed the arrangement of the storms from a pentagon to a hexagon.Winds in these cyclones average around 225 mph, according to NASA, wind speeds higher than any tropical cyclone ever recorded on Earth. An outline of the continental United States superimposed over the central cyclone and an outline of Texas is superimposed over the newest cyclone at Jupiter's south pole give a sense of their immense scale. The hexagonal arrangement of the cyclones is large enough to dwarf the Earth. (Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM) The discovery of this evolving meteorological phenomenon almost didn't happen as Jupiter itself almost caused the mission to end abruptly.Juno is a solar-powered spacecraft that relies on constant light from the sun to keep the craft alive. Flying through Jupiter's enormous shadow would take about 12 hours to complete, which would cut off the power source, drain the spacecraft's battery and potentially spell the end of the mission."Our navigators and engineers told us a day of reckoning was coming, when we would go into Jupiter's shadow for about 12 hours," said Steve Levin, Juno project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.To avoid the potential mission-ending eclipse, Juno fired up its engine (which was not initially designed for such a maneuver) and adjusted its trajectory just enough to avoid the icy grip of Jupiter's shadow. Jupiter's moon Io casts its shadow on Jupiter whenever it passes in front of the Sun as seen from Jupiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Tanya Oleksuik, (C) CC BY) "Thanks to our navigators and engineers, we still have a mission," said Bolton. "What they did is more than just make our cyclone discovery possible; they made possible the new insights and revelations about Jupiter that lie ahead of us."NASA scientists will continue to study these polar vortices in future flights over Jupiter's south pole to better understand the atmosphere over this part of the planet."These cyclones are new weather phenomena that have not been seen or predicted before," said Cheng Li, a Juno scientist from the University of California, Berkeley. "Nature is revealing new physics regarding fluid motions and how giant planet atmospheres work. Future Juno flybys will help us further refine our understanding by revealing how the cyclones evolve over time."
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| ‘Move to Canada’ searches spike after Tories win general election Posted: 13 Dec 2019 06:08 AM PST  Online searches for 'move to Canada' surged 49-fold in the wake of the Conservative's general election victory, according to data from Google.People seemingly unhappy with the prospect of another five years of Tory rule began searching for alternative countries as soon as the exit poll results were published on Thursday evening.
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| Russia raises concerns over new U.S. ballistic missile test: RIA Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:21 AM PST ![Russia raises concerns over new U.S. ballistic missile test: RIA]( "Russia raises concerns over new U.S. ballistic missile test: RIA") Russia said on Friday it was alarmed after the United States tested a ground-launched ballistic missile that would have been banned under the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the RIA news agency reported. The United States carried out the test on Thursday. Washington formally withdrew from the 1987 INF pact with Russia in August after determining that Moscow was violating the treaty, an accusation the Kremlin has denied.
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| Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warns Iran of 'decisive response' if harm in Iraq Posted: 13 Dec 2019 03:52 PM PST  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday warned Iran of a "decisive" response if U.S. interests are harmed in Iraq, after a series of rocket attacks on bases.
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| The 25 Best Survival Games Posted: 14 Dec 2019 06:00 AM PST |
| Warren, slumping in the polls, attacks Biden and Buttigieg Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:39 PM PST  With polls showing her once steady rise to the top tier of the Democratic race stalling, Elizabeth Warren went on the attack in New Hampshire.
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| Johnson's win may deliver Brexit but could risk UK's breakup Posted: 14 Dec 2019 06:30 AM PST  Leaving the European Union is not the only split British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has to worry about. Johnson's commanding election victory this week may let him fulfill his campaign promise to "get Brexit done," but it could also imperil the future of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland and Northern Ireland didn't vote for Brexit, didn't embrace this week's Conservative electoral landslide -- and now may be drifting permanently away from London.
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| Death toll from New Zealand eruption rises to 14 after authorities conduct harrowing mission to retrieve bodies from the island Posted: 12 Dec 2019 08:14 PM PST  New Zealand police said that two people remain missing and are presumed dead after one of New Zealand's most active volcanoes erupted on Monday.
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| Will the Navy's New LRASM Missile Change the Balance of Power? Posted: 13 Dec 2019 08:00 PM PST  Or will it keep the status quo?
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| Crashed Chile plane had emergency in 2016: Air Force Posted: 14 Dec 2019 05:31 PM PST  The Chilean Hercules C-130 plane that crashed on its way to Antarctica, killing all 38 people on board, suffered an emergency three years ago on the same route, the Air Force said Saturday. In a statement, the Chilean Air Force said the plane shown in the footage is the same one that crashed during a crossing of the Drake Passage connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, en route to a Chilean airbase. As it approached the Antarctica base in 2016 "the crew realized that the left main gear of the aircraft did not travel to the down position and secure when activating the landing gear," the statement said.
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| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wholeheartedly embraced the UK Labour Party hours before they suffered a massive defeat Posted: 13 Dec 2019 06:49 AM PST  Ocasio-Cortez reposted a campaign video from UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, noting its overlap with her own message. Corbyn then lost, badly.
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| EF1 tornado flips over camper, leaves a path of damage, downed power lines Posted: 14 Dec 2019 11:12 AM PST  Thunderstorms erupted in parts of the southeastern United States, which spawned an EF-1 tornado Saturday morning in Flagler County, Florida.Numerous trees are down and several structures have been damaged, according to WOGX. There are also reports that a tree has gone through a home."A tornado touched down on the south side of Flagler Beach this morning at approximately 5:45 a.m. There have been no reported injuries and a camper was overturned in Gamble Rogers State Park. SRA1A is open and there was no damage to the Pier or any Dune Walkover," The Flagler Beach Police Department said in a Facebook post. The tornado overturned a camper in Flagler County, Florida. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department Officials said in a press release that 'significant damage' was found from south of Bunnell to the Gamble Rogers area of Flagler Beach."A cold front pushing south and east across northern Florida early this morning helped initiate a squall line during the pre-dawn hours, and one of these thunderstorms was able to take advantage of strong winds in the upper atmosphere to produce a tornado," AccuWeather Meteorologist Randy Adkins said.> We found EF1 damage consistent with 110 mph winds from the tornado this morning in Flagler County. Read more in our Public Information Statement below. https://t.co/nXgmFSfJK2> > -- NWS Jacksonville (@NWSJacksonville) December 14, 2019The Flagler Beach Police Department posted photos of tornado damage on social media, including one that appeared to show a camper overturned. A camper was blown on its side during the tornado. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department Tornado damage of a road sign that was knocked over in the tornado. Image via The Flagler Beach Police Department
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| Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing Posted: 12 Dec 2019 07:49 PM PST ![Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing]( "Salvadoran man murdered in Mexico waiting U.S. asylum hearing") A Salvadoran man seeking asylum in the United States was kidnapped and murdered in the Mexican border city of Tijuana where he was sent to wait for his asylum court hearing under a migrant protection program instated by President Donald Trump. Critics of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) have argued that the migrants affected by the initiative, mostly from the impoverished and violence-plagued countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, are at risk in Mexico. The 35-year-old Salvadoran man, father of two, had waited for four months in Tijuana where he had found a job at a pizzeria, said his widow.
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| Man gets life for killing 2 engaged doctors in their condo Posted: 13 Dec 2019 07:52 AM PST ![Man gets life for killing 2 engaged doctors in their condo]( "Man gets life for killing 2 engaged doctors in their condo") Bampumim Teixeira, 33, requested not to be in the courtroom when the sentence was handed down because he said he wouldn't control himself. Teixeira declined to address the court, but the victims' families gave impact statements. Field's brother, Jason Field, delivered a tearful speech in which he described his brother as his "life adviser and best friend," the best man at his wedding and his roommate in college.
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| Afghanistan papers detail US dysfunction: 'We did not know what we were doing' Posted: 14 Dec 2019 02:55 AM PST  A key theme of the trove of documents published this week was the lack of coherence in Washington's approach to Afghanistan from the outsetIn the midst of Barack Obama's much-vaunted military surge against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2010, Hayam Mohammed, an elder from Panjwai near the Pakistani border confronted an officer from the US 101st Airborne who had come into his village."You walk here during the day," the elder told the soldier bitterly as the Observer listened. "But at night [the Taliban] come bringing night letters" – threats targeting those collaborating with foreign forces.That surge, which like so many other initiatives in Afghanistan's long war was celebrated as a huge success, today serves only as a grim reminder of the deception and failure revealed in the explosive Afghanistan papers published by the Washington Post this week.Comprising more than 600 interviews with key insiders collected confidentially by the Office of Special Inspector General for Reconstruction in Afghanistan [Sigar], and published after a three-year court battle, the trove has been compared in significance to the Pentagon Papers, the secret Department of Defense history of the Vietnam war leaked in 1971.Graphic: US bases in AfghanistanLike that secret history, the Afghanistan Papers' accumulated oral history depicts a war mired in failure – in sharp contrast to the "misleading" story told to the US and British publics by officials in massaged figures and over-optimistic assessments.But even if that deception has been the main focus of reporting, the hundreds of interviews – with senior generals and Afghan governors, with ambassadors, aid officials and policy advisers – also tell another story: how successive presidents from Bush through Obama to Donald Trump, publicly rejected "nation-building" but created a violent, corrupt and dysfunctional state only barely propped up by US arms.They detail too how – like the Soviet Union before them – the US and its allies came so badly unstuck in Afghanistan through a combination of hubris and ignorance, and with a political leadership – both under Obama and Bush – more concerned with domestic politics than the impact of their decisions on Afghanistan.Reading at times like an extended exercise in blame, the interviews trace a widespread desire among participants to nail down an original sin for the failures in Afghanistan; even to seek an exculpation for a conflict that has cost $1tn and the lives of tens of thousands over almost 20 years.From the shortcomings of the US military's newly rewritten counter-insurgency doctrine – described by one interviewee as "colonial" in its conceit – to a tolerance of widespread corruption and "warlordism" blamed for fueling the resurgence of the Taliban, a key theme of many of those who spoke to Sigar was the lack of coherence in Washington's approach to Afghanistan from the outset.From the very beginning, as Richard Haas – the former US government policy coordinator for Afghanistan – confided in his interview, there was little enthusiasm in George W Bush's White House for the country once the Taliban was driven out in 2001."I remember that we were around the table and there was the president [George W Bush]. The feeling was that you could put a lot into it and you wouldn't get a lot out of it. I would not call it cynical, I would call it pessimistic about what the relationship [was] between investment and return in Afghanistan."Other interviewee subjects, however, place the initial failure even further back: with the original decision to elide the Taliban with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida in the wake of the September 11 attacks.Among people like Jeffrey Eggers, a former US Navy Seal and staffer on the National Security Council in the George Bush and Obama administrations, this the key point."Why did we make the Taliban the enemy when we were attacked by al-Qaida? Why did we want to defeat the Taliban? Why did we think it was necessary to build a hyper-function[al] state to forgo the return of the Taliban?"For Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for south and central Asian affairs between 2006 and 2009, the contradictions in the aims framed a mission that appeared founded on impossibility."If we think our exit strategy is to either beat the Taliban – which can't be done given the local, regional, and cross border circumstances – or to establish an Afghan government that is capable of delivering good government to its citizens using American tools and methods, then we do not have an exit strategy because both of those are impossible."His summation, however, was even more scathing: "We did not know what we were doing."The lack of vision at the war's start, which left the US and its allies racing to catch up as US attention turned quickly to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was only exacerbated by the decisions that would belatedly get made in response to the rapidly resurgent Taliban in the middle of the last decade.Among the handful of Britons identified by name in the papers is Gen David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2007. "There was no coherent long-term strategy," Richards told the Sigar interviewers, adding that the countries involved in the International Stabilisation Force [Isaf], under Nato command, had insufficient troops to do the job."Every nation was in charge of protecting an area larger than they had forces to do so with, and if you don't have enough forces to protect what you're trying to do, stabilization can't be done.""No individual is to blame," he added bleakly: "The system let everyone down."But if there is one issue with the Afghanistan papers, however, it is that they represent the views of a selection of insiders who were at one time or another invested in the success of the war, often unable to step outside the sometimes arcane disagreements they were steeped in.Austin Wright, an academic who specialises in Afghanistan at the University of Chicago, and has made a study of the declassified military records of the war, offers an outsider's perspective from his reading of the interviews.Wright notes that many in the media have picked up on the acknowledgment by the head of Sigar, John J Sopko, asserting the US public was "misled" consistently by official accounting of progress of the war. But he believes that focus misses the fact that many in leadership positions also misinterpreted their own data concerning the nature, intentions and capabilities of the Taliban at key points in the conflict in their desire to see signs of victory.Wright points to US military and Nato surveys that indicated that at key points, including after their initial defeat, the Taliban simply withdrew either to regroup or instill a false sense of progress, echoing the observation made by village elder Hayam Mohammed at the height of the 2010 surge."The Taliban are strategic and patient," says Wright. "They are also skillful at manipulating the information being seen in the field to maximise any political process."What you see – during the Obama era handover of leadership to Afghan forces for example – is a significant reduction in violence across large areas where there are foreign forces. But what the survey data also showed was a continuing Taliban presence, not necessarily fighting but not going away."Then, when you see the actual physical withdrawal of US troops, you see an increase in violence again. What that tells you is that they have been sitting it out to until the cost of re-intervention becomes too high."The sense of overdue re-evaluation is not confined to just those interviewed by Sigar but shared by many who served in senior roles in Afghanistan."I remember thinking at the time I was running around Helmand that we should be able to do this, whatever that thing was," a former British diplomat who served in the region told the Observer."But in retrospect, it was not realistic because while we were pissing into sand in Helmand you have to look at bigger picture."Looking back, [then-Afghan president Hamid] Karzai had already given up on the west when Bush went into Iraq."And by the time people realised that the Taliban were coming back it was too late."A very reasonable question was what would have happened if the international community had delivered the investment and committed the resources in 2003-04 that were delivered 2008-10.The diplomat responds to a point made by Gen Dan McNeill, the former US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, Dan McNeill, who in his interview with Sigar complained that even before his first deployment in 2002 he could not find anyone able to give him a definition of what "winning meant"."If you can't define 'winnable' how do you define if the war is lost. What is clear," he added looking to the future, "is that there is going to be an ongoing low level of commitment for a long time to come in terms training and in terms of trying to prevent Afghanistan becoming a serious problem again."You can argue that you are preventing Afghanistan being used as an operational base for the really bad guys, but then there are plenty of other options for them. In terms of what we were trying to achieve does that mean loss?" He thinks for a moment."It probably does. Certainly we took a bloody nose."
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| Would China Try to Claim Most of the Pacific Ocean? Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:11 PM PST  Nine-dash line? How about two hundred and fifty? Some fake news freaked an academic conference out several years ago.
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| Cholera kills over 27,000 pigs in Indonesia Posted: 14 Dec 2019 01:56 AM PST  More than 27,000 pigs have died in a hog-cholera epidemic that has struck Indonesia, with thousands more at risk, an animal welfare official said. Thousands of pigs have died in more than a dozen regencies across North Sumatra over the past three months, and the pace of deaths is increasing, authorities said.
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| What went so badly wrong for the Liberal Democrats? Posted: 13 Dec 2019 04:45 AM PST  Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson went into the general election predicting numerous gains but ended up losing her seat.
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| Indigenous boy stabbed to death in Amazon amid wave of rainforest racism Posted: 14 Dec 2019 12:14 PM PST  An indigenous 15-year-old boy has been stabbed to death in an Amazonian reserve in Brazil, the latest in a string of murders which have heightened tensions in the region.Erisvan Soares Guajajara's body was found on Friday in the Amarante do Maranhão city, on the edge of an increasingly deforested indigenous reserve on the fringes of the Amazon rainforest.
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| A 91-year-old was arrested for blockading a Home Depot. He was upset about his generator Posted: 13 Dec 2019 10:29 AM PST ![A 91-year-old was arrested for blockading a Home Depot. He was upset about his generator]( "A 91-year-old was arrested for blockading a Home Depot. He was upset about his generator") Edward Hayden was arrested in November at a Home Depot after he blockaded a door with his pickup. "I don't like to be stepped on," he said.
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| An Invisible Menace to the Climate, Revealed in Infrared Posted: 13 Dec 2019 12:07 PM PST  To the naked eye, there is nothing out of the ordinary at the DCP Pegasus gas processing plant in West Texas, one of the thousands of installations in the vast Permian Basin that have transformed America into the largest oil and gas producer in the world.But a highly specialized camera sees what the human eye cannot: a major release of methane, the main component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas that is helping to warm the planet at an alarming rate.Two New York Times journalists detected this from a tiny plane, crammed with scientific equipment, circling above the oil and gas sites that dot the Permian, an oil field bigger than Kansas. In just a few hours, the plane's instruments identified six sites with unusually high methane emissions.Methane is loosely regulated, difficult to detect and rising sharply. The Times' aerial and on-the-ground research, along with an examination of lobbying activities by the companies that own the sites, shows how the energy industry is seeking and winning looser federal regulations on methane, a major contributor to global warming.Operators of the sites identified by The Times are among the very companies that have lobbied the Trump administration, either directly or through trade organizations, to weaken regulations on methane, a review of regulatory filings, meeting minutes and attendance logs shows. These local companies, along with oil-industry lobby groups that represent the world's largest energy companies, are fighting rules that would force them to more aggressively fix emissions like these.Next year, the administration could move forward with a plan that would effectively eliminate requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. By the Environmental Protection Agency's own calculations, the rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025, enough to power more than 1 million homes for a year.In the air, Times reporters surveyed an area in and around two counties in the heart of the Permian with the help of specialists in methane detection."This site's definitely leaking," said Paolo Wilczak, a scientist and the pilot of the two-seater aircraft, as a laptop monitor hooked up to the equipment registered a blip in methane levels. "And that one, too."The reporters drove to the sites armed with infrared video gear that revealed methane billowing from tanks, seeping from pipes and wafting from bright flares that are designed to burn off the gas but sometimes fail to do so completely. At one site, a worker walked directly into a methane plume unprotected.Tim Doty, a former senior official at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality who is trained in infrared leak detection, examined and helped analyze the findings. "That's a crazy amount of emissions," he said. "It takes a little bit of investigative work, but with an infrared camera, you can see it."Oil and gas companies were committed to driving down emissions "while delivering affordable, reliable energy to American families," said Howard Feldman, senior director of regulatory and scientific affairs at the American Petroleum Institute, a major industry lobby group. Its members believed that regulations should be improved, however, to provide clarity for businesses, avoid duplicating state rules and drive industry innovation, he said.The regulatory rollback sought by the energy industry is the latest chapter in the administration's historic effort to weaken environmental and climate regulations while waging a broad-based attack on climate science.Scientists say that, in weakening the rules, the Trump administration underestimates methane's global climate effects. It also disregards research that suggests methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure are far larger than previously estimated.The findings address the mystery behind rising levels of methane in the atmosphere. Methane levels have soared since 2007 for reasons that still aren't fully understood. But fracking natural-gas production, which accelerated just as atmospheric methane levels jumped, is a prime suspect.Methane leaks from oil and gas production threaten to erode the advantage that natural gas has over coal in meeting the world's energy needs, scientists say. When burned for electricity, natural gas produces about half the carbon dioxide that coal does. But if methane is not burned off when released, it can warm the planet more than 80 times as much as carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.Methane also contributes to ground-level ozone, which, if inhaled, can cause asthma and other health problems."It's increasingly clear that fossil fuel production has dramatically increased global methane emissions," said Robert Howarth, an Earth system scientist at Cornell University and author of a study estimating that North American shale gas production may be responsible for about a third of the global increase in methane emissions over the past decade.A bright red-and-white plane pirouetted above the Texas scrub, banking so sharply it were as if the tiny aircraft was spinning on a wingtip. Wilczak, a pilot and flight scientist for Scientific Aviation, an aerial leak-detection company, executed tight circles above an oil installation.Tiny tubes affixed to the wings siphoned air to a sensitive spectrometer, jammed behind the seats, capable of detecting and measuring methane. Wilczak said it takes about seven seconds for the air to pass through and register a reading on a computer balanced on the lap of the only passenger.Detecting methane emissions is difficult work that often begins with flights like these. Oil and gas sites are not required to install round-the-clock emissions monitors, and flights are one of the ways to spot trouble.In the course of about four hours of flying, we found at least six sites with high methane-emissions readings, ranging from about 300 pounds to almost 1,100 pounds an hour, including at DCP Pegasus, which is part owned by energy giant Phillips 66.Those readings would very likely put those sites in the category of "super emitters," a term used by scientists to describe large-scale releases that are responsible for a disproportionately high share of methane emissions from oil and gas sites. In a 2017 study of the Barnett shale basin in Texas, methane releases of about 60 pounds or more an hour were classified as super emitters, making up just 1% of sites but accounting for nearly half of total emissions.On the ground, the Permian is a landscape of parched cotton fields, bobbing pump jacks and dirt roads that stretch for miles. We drove out to photograph the emissions we had detected from the air with a specialized infrared camera fitted with a lens made not of glass, but metal.At the DCP Pegasus plant, south of Midland, the camera transformed a tranquil scene into a furnace. Hot columns of gas shot into the air. Fumes engulfed structures.The camera sees several types of gases, including methane and ethane, both greenhouse gases, as well as pollutants called volatile organic compounds. Any emissions are likely to contain a mixture of the gases. Doty, who now runs a consultancy, said the emissions appeared to be from vapor combustors, compressors and storage tanks.According to Texas regulatory records, DCP has reported more than 250 unpermitted emissions events this year in the Permian Basin and is among the area's bigger emitters. State rules allow facilities to report irregular emissions without penalties.Sarah Sandberg, a spokeswoman for DCP, which operates several pipelines and almost 50 gas processing plants nationwide, said she had "many questions regarding the accuracy of your assessment and assumptions." She did not respond to repeated follow-ups.Phillips 66 declined to comment.At the EagleClaw Midstream gas processing plant just south of Pecos, we found emissions spewing from the top of a wastewater tank. The plant's manager, Justin Bishop, walked over to look at what we were filming. "We didn't know it was leaking," he said.A worker went to check on the tank, climbing some stairs and walking into the plume.He said the emissions were simply water vapor. "There's no problem," he said. "We aren't reporting it."But Doty, the former Texas emissions regulator, said water vapor would have been visible to the naked eye. "That isn't water," he said. "That's a whole lot of emissions."In a statement, EagleClaw said its workers had discovered that the tank's valve did require maintenance and that the problem had been fixed 30 minutes later."The amount of gas that leaked was determined, by our experts, to be well below any legal reportable limits," Todd Carpenter, the company's chief compliance officer, said in an email. He added that the safety and security of EagleClaw's employees, and of the public, "was of primary concern." The company has not filed an emissions event report this year.As early as March 2017 -- just months after the presidential inauguration -- fossil fuel companies made contact with the Trump administration to argue for a rollback of methane emissions rules.They held repeated meetings with federal officials, including an important one in November 2018, when lobbyists for DCP, EagleClaw and other oil processing companies met with officials from the EPA to discuss a critical topic: unintended or "fugitive" methane emissions.Representatives of the lobby group, GPA Midstream, argued that the EPA should relax monitoring requirements for fugitive emissions at gathering and compressor facilities, according to regulatory records reviewed by The Times. GPA Midstream met with Trump administration officials at least three times on the matter."More frequent monitoring would not be cost-effective," GPA lobbyists later said in comments filed with the agency, and stricter regulation was "costly and burdensome."The efforts were part of a broader industry push to reverse Obama-era rules that would have forced operators to more aggressively monitor and repair natural gas leaks while reducing flaring.Earlier, at a March 2018 meeting, lobbyists for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents thousands of oil and gas companies nationwide, circulated material that forcefully rebutted the scientific evidence of large fugitive emissions from drilling sites. The lobbyists said the data "create the illusion" that super emitters pose a problem, according to a handout from the meeting.The petroleum association vice president, Lee O. Fuller, said in an interview that for smaller operators, which often run low-producing wells, the costs of excessive regulations could be crippling. They "could put many out of business," he said.The companies found an administration willing to listen. Before his appointment to the post of assistant administrator at the EPA overseeing air pollution, William L. Wehrum lobbied on behalf of oil and gas producers, including gas processors and petroleum refineries.Wehrum resigned from the agency in June and is under investigation for his contacts with former clients. His former boss, Andrew Wheeler, the EPA administrator, also lobbied for energy companies earlier in his career.By this August, the EPA had proposed a broad rollback, including rescinding direct regulations of methane emissions completely. Volatile organic compounds, a separate but related category of gases, would remain regulated, which would have a side effect of limiting some methane emissions.In a statement, an EPA spokesman, Michael Abboud, said methane was a valuable resource, so the industry already "has an incentive to minimize leaks." He added that EPA staff members work with ethics officials "to ensure they are in compliance with all ethics rules." Wehrum did not respond to a request for comment.Energy giants including BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell have, to varying degrees, publicly supported methane regulation. However, trade associations representing all three, including the American Petroleum Institute and the Independent Petroleum Association of America, have fought against direct regulation.A spokesman for BP said the company wanted to maintain the direct regulation of methane, and an official from Exxon said the company was making voluntary efforts to reduce methane, including infrastructure upgrades. A Chevron spokesman, Sean Comey, said the company "supports global efforts to reduce flaring and methane emissions." Shell said it supported the continued direct regulation of methane and more frequent leak inspections.Some companies are starting to use infrared cameras, drones and other technology to detect methane leaks. BP said recently it would use drones and surveillance cameras to monitor for fugitive emissions at new oil and gas projects. Shell is testing solar-powered technology to watch for leaks.As the boom-and-bust oil business goes through another one of its financial gyrations -- production in the Permian is expected to slow as a glut of gas and rock-bottom prices take their toll -- there are concerns that investments in methane detection won't be a priority, particularly for smaller operators.One site where we identified leakage with the infrared camera was an unmanned well pad with a battery of gray tanks. "There's a lot of volume coming out of there," Doty later said of the images. "If this is going 100% of the time, that's a lot of emissions."The site was owned by MDC Texas Operator, which we discovered had filed for bankruptcy that very day.Calls to the company went unanswered, and its bankruptcy lawyers didn't return requests for comment. It is unknown whether the tank is still spewing gas.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company
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| Harvey Weinstein seen without zimmer frame amid accusations of 'playing for sympathy' Posted: 13 Dec 2019 09:12 AM PST  Harvey Weinstein has been photographed walking unassisted around a supermarket near his New York home, days after arriving at a court hearing dishevelled and using a zimmer frame. Weinstein, 67, shocked onlookers on Wednesday as he arrived for a bail hearing looking a shadow of his former self. Hunched over, scruffy and shuffling along with a zimmer frame, he was almost unrecognisable. Donna Rotunno, his lawyer, said Weinstein was using the medical equipment at the insistence of his legal team. "We wanted him to use a walker last week, and Mr Weinstein didn't want the press to think he was seeking sympathy," she said. She said that, on Thursday, he would undergo a three-hour operation on for a back injury sustained during a car crash in August. Harvey Weinstein inside the Manhattan court on Wednesday "He had a bilateral laminectomy and is now recovering, and will be remaining one night in the hospital," a representative said. On Thursday night The New York Post published an undated photograph of Weinstein, which the paper claimed was taken recently, standing tall inside a Target store near Mount Kisco, in upstate New York. Weinstein's adversaries suggested that the disgraced film producer was using the zimmer frame to curry sympathy, a suggestion refuted by his lawyers. It has been widely reported that Weinstein has been intent on "producing" his legal fight to specifically win over the court of public opinion. Weinstein has seen a swift turnover of lawyers as it is rumoured that his legal team have repeatedly disagreed with his "stage managing" tactics. The New York-born producer, who is due to go on trial for rape and sexual assault on January 6, is currently on his third set of lawyers. Benjamin Brafman, who headed up Weinstein's first legal team until he was dismissed in January, has said that Weinstein sends his lawyer dozens of emails a day, and he leaves voice mails if he doesn't hear back. "He's a hands-on client," he said. "He's relentless." At Wednesday's hearing his bail was increased from $1 million in cash to a $2 million bond, after Weinstein was accused by prosecutors of having 57 violations involving his ankle monitor. His lawyers told the judge that any issues with the ankle monitor were due to technical glitches. Later that evening it was reported that a $25 million settlement had been reached between Weinstein and more than 30 women who accused him of sexual assault in a civil case. Under the terms of the deal Weinstein does not admit any wrongdoing, and will not personally pay for the damages, as the finance comes from insurance firms. Weinstein's accusers reacted with dismay to the settlement, but many said they had been advised it was the best they could hope for.
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| Israel welcomes Belgian parade's removal from UNESCO list Posted: 14 Dec 2019 11:35 AM PST ![Israel welcomes Belgian parade's removal from UNESCO list]( "Israel welcomes Belgian parade's removal from UNESCO list") Israel on Saturday welcomed a decision by the U.N.'s educational, scientific and cultural agency to drop a famous Belgian carnival off its heritage list after protests over displays of anti-Semitism. Israel's rare appreciation of UNESCO came a day after the organization removed the Aalst carnival from its Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
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| Boris Johnson's victory is 'catastrophic warning' to Democrats: Bloomberg Posted: 14 Dec 2019 08:37 AM PST  Boris Johnson's election victory is a 'catastrophic warning' to Democrats in the United States, presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg has warned.
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