| 'Horrific for all': Pentagon intelligence chief says Iran does not want war Posted: 19 Jul 2019 04:19 PM PDT  A U.S. Marines helicopter takes off from the flight deck of the USS Boxer during its transit through Strait of Hormuz. ASPEN, Colo. — As tensions in the Persian Gulf continued to ramp up on Friday afternoon amid news that Iran had seized a British oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Army Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, concluded that Iran does not want to start a war with the U.S. or its allies. Answering a question posed by CNN national security correspondent Jim Sciutto in Aspen, Colo., about the latest incident, Ashley declined to give a specific response to the news, but later said that none of the United States' major adversaries or competitors, including Iran, China and Russia, wants to start a war.
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| A Group of German Leaders Tried to Kill Hitler in 1944. Here’s Why They Failed Posted: 19 Jul 2019 07:27 AM PDT  The Führer was dead, and Europe was potentially freed from the Nazi scourge. Or so it initially seemed
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| S. Korean man kills himself as dispute with Japan escalates Posted: 19 Jul 2019 02:52 PM PDT  An elderly South Korean man died on Friday after setting himself on fire outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul as a bitter diplomatic dispute over wartime forced labour compensation took a fatal turn. The row has seen Tokyo restrict exports of chemicals vital to Seoul's world-leading chip and smartphone industry in an escalation of a decades-long dispute over Japanese forced labour during World War II.
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| Alleged American ISIS Sniper Brought Home by the Defense Department to Face Charges Posted: 20 Jul 2019 01:49 AM PDT  An American citizen who allegedly served as a sniper for ISIS and became a leader for the terrorist group is expected to appear in federal court on Friday after being returned to the United States by the Defense Department, officials said.Ruslan Maratovich Asainov, who was born in Kazakhstan and became a naturalized U.S. citizen, is charged with providing and attempting to provide material support to ISIS, the Justice Department announced on Friday.A U.S. official confirmed to Task & Purpose that the Defense Department had transported Asainov from Syria to the United States. Asainov had been in the custody of Syrian Democratic Forces.No further information about the military's role in transporting Asainov, to the United States was immediately available.Asainov is accused of leaving Brooklyn in December 2013 to fight for ISIS in Syria, a Justice Department news release says. After becoming an ISIS sniper, he was promoted to become an "emir" in charge of training fighters how to use weapons and also tried to recruit someone else to leave the United States and become an ISIS fighter.Prosecutors claim Asainov tried to buy a scope for his rile by paying roughly $2,800 to a confidential informant, the news release says."Asainov subsequently sent the confidential informant two photographs depicting the defendant holding an assault rifle fitted with a scope," the news release says. "He messaged one associate exclaiming, in reference to ISIS, 'We are the worst terrorist organization in the world that has ever existed' and stating that he wished to die on the battlefield."
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| 41 Low-Carb Breakfasts You'll Actually Want To Eat Posted: 19 Jul 2019 12:20 PM PDT |
| Pittsburgh marks its 4th alligator sighting since May Posted: 19 Jul 2019 02:09 PM PDT  A baby alligator was found far from the tropics in the parking lot of a grocery store outside Pittsburgh on Friday morning, the fourth alligator discovered near the city since May. An employee found the 2-foot-long (60-centimeter-long) creature near a garbage can at the Giant Eagle grocery store in Shaler, about 10 miles (15 kilometers) north of Pittsburgh. "It looks like a little baby alligator," Shaler Township Police Lt. Dave Banko told the Tribune Review newspaper.
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| Ex-NRA Ad Firm: Um, Wayne LaPierre is Lying Posted: 19 Jul 2019 10:46 AM PDT  Lucas Jackson/ReutersIn a new filing against the National Rifle Association, lawyers for ad agency Ackerman McQueen suggest that longtime NRA executive Wayne LaPierre is lying about a critical moment in the gun rights group's recent leadership shake up. At issue is multi-million-dollar litigation between the NRA and its ex-ad firm. In court filings of its own, the NRA has alleged that Oliver North, the groups's former president, was ousted in part because he withheld information from the NRA about payments he took from Ackerman McQueen, which had served as the gun rights group's primary ad contractor until just months ago. The NRA claims North kept the nature of his deal with Ackerman McQueen a secret from LaPierre and the gun group's leadership. But in a July 16 filing that was reviewed by The Daily Beast, Ackerman McQueen alleges that LaPierre himself helped negotiate the deal between their firm and North. And they hint that they have documentation to prove it. In a statement, the NRA denied the suggestions. "The facts are clear – Mr. LaPierre and the NRA had no idea that Col. North was negotiating to become an employee of Ackerman McQueen," said Andrew Arulanandam, managing director of NRA Public Affairs. "And to the extent Col. North was pushing a contrived narrative about Mr. LaPierre and the NRA, he was conflicted. He was an employee of Ackerman at the time he was allegedly scheming with the agency to unseat Mr. LaPierre." It's a messy new chapter in the months-long legal battle between the NRA and the ad firm it used for more than three decades. And it comes as the gun group has jettisoned senior staff and faced revolts from grassroots activists and donors. "LaPierre negotiated the terms of the North Contract directly with Lt. Col. North and a detailed term sheet was sent to AMc [Ackerman McQueen] for completion of the formal agreement," the filing reads. The NRA's then-treasurer, Wilson "Woody" Phillips, also reviewed and approved North's contract with the firm, according to the filing, and the NRA board's audit committee green-lit the contract as well. "On at least two occasions, counsel for the NRA has reviewed the North Contract," the filing adds. NRA Pulls the Plug on NRATVAckerman McQueen's insistence that NRA officials were aware of the contract with North is directly at odds with the contention the NRA made in a suit it filed against the ad agency in April. North was ousted from the NRA that month during the group's annual meeting and has since accused LaPierre of gross mismanagement and making highly questionable expenditures. The NRA, meanwhile, has alleged that North tried to oust LaPierre in a coup. And in a separate suit in May, it accused Ackerman McQueen of breach of contract by leaking information about both LaPierre and the NRA's finances. Ackerman McQueen had been a central force behind the NRA's evolution from a gun rights group to a conservative cultural institution. As part of that mission, the ad firm helped launch and manage NRATV, the NRA's recently shuttered internet-video arm. The NRA has alleged in court that Ackerman McQueen had refused to share its analytics with the gun group. But In its July 16 filing, Ackerman McQueen claims that the opposite is true. "Two days before the lawsuit was filed, LaPierre was in AMc's office and was in attendance for the presentation of the NRATV analytics," it reads. "LaPierre walked out of the meeting." A spokesperson for the NRA's legal team did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The filing indicates that the fight between the NRA and Ackerman shows no signs of losing steam. Earlier this week, longtime NRA director of public affairs Jennifer Baker left the group. And a month ago, the group parted ways with its longtime top lobbyist, Chris Cox. 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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| For Planned Parenthood, No Doctors Need Apply Posted: 19 Jul 2019 03:30 AM PDT  Poor Leana Wen. She took Planned Parenthood's propaganda a little too seriously. And now she's out of a job.For the longest time, Planned Parenthood has insisted that it's a health-care organization, and it only cares about abortion — supposedly a tiny share of its business — insofar as it's a function of health care.Whenever Republicans have threatened Planned Parenthood's funding over abortion, the response was, Abortion? Don't be silly. We are all about Pap tests and breast exams.The hiring of Wen as president seemed the natural extension of this line of argument. How serious is Planned Parenthood about health care? For the first time in a half a century it had a physician, with "Dr." in front of her name, one who was once the health commissioner of Baltimore, leading the organization.BuzzFeed wrote a mostly favorable piece on Wen's ascension eight months ago headlined, awkwardly in order to honor the trope that abortion is health care, "Planned Parenthood's New President Wants to Focus on Nonabortion Health Care."The first sign of trouble should have been that Wen felt compelled to immediately tweet that the headline misconstrued her vision. "Our core mission," she wrote, presumably under internal pressure, "is providing, protecting and expanding access to abortion and reproductive health care."But Wen, it turns out, wasn't single-mindedly devoted to abortion enough. With her ouster, Planned Parenthood's mask, never very firmly in place to begin with, has slipped. No matter its political spin during fights over its funding, no matter what its glossy printed materials say, no matter how dishonestly it presents the statistics related to its services, the organization is about abortion first and last, now and forever.In a letter tweeted after her firing, Wen cited "philosophical differences" with the leadership of the board. Namely, she had come to Planned Parenthood "to run a national health care organization." The board wanted "to double down on abortion rights advocacy."It's truly extraordinary to have this breach out in the open, given how vested Planned Parenthood has been in its image as a mere health-care provider. When Barack Obama became the first — and one hopes, the last — president to address a Planned Parenthood conference in 2013, he talked almost entirely about health care. In fact, he didn't mention the word "abortion" once.Planned Parenthood always says abortion is only 3 percent of its services, an absurd factoid designed to mislead. Providing pregnancy tests and performing abortions are both Planned Parenthood services, although one is obviously much more consequential and central to its mission than the other.The more telling way to look at it is that Planned Parenthood performs roughly a third of all abortions in the country, about 330,000 a year, according to its annual report.If performing a significant share of the country's abortions were merely incidental to its mission, it would gladly give it up. If you told any other federally funded group that it might have to forswear a small sliver of its business to continue to get public dollars, it wouldn't be a difficult choice. Or, if Walmart had to decide between, say, selling Bounty paper towels and everything else on its shelves, it wouldn't be a close call.The internal complaint about Wen was that she was too concerned with what is, if we take Planned Parenthood's spurious accounting seriously, 97 percent of its business. So what's wrong with that? The context of her ouster is the continued pressure on Planned Parenthood from the Trump administration and in Republican states, which, if nothing else, is smoking Planned Parenthood out. The firing of Wen, coupled with the decision to forgo Title X funding rather than stop providing abortion referrals in keeping with a new Trump administration rule, makes the group's true priority obvious, if there were any doubt.An interim president has been named, and the implicit guideline for filling the permanent role will surely be: No doctors need apply.© 2019 by King Features Syndicate
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| 'Send Him Back': Virginia Democrats vow to boycott Jamestown celebration if Trump attends Posted: 20 Jul 2019 11:43 AM PDT  Virginia state Democrats say they'll boycott an event commemorating representative democracy in America if President Donald Trump comes.
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| UPDATE 1-Britain says seizure of two vessels by Iran is unacceptable Posted: 19 Jul 2019 01:04 PM PDT ![UPDATE 1-Britain says seizure of two vessels by Iran is unacceptable]( "UPDATE 1-Britain says seizure of two vessels by Iran is unacceptable") Britain said Iran's seizure of a British-flagged vessel and a Liberian-flagged vessel in the Strait of Hormuz was unacceptable and called for freedom of navigation in the Gulf. "I'm extremely concerned by the seizure of two vessels by Iranian authorities in the Strait of Hormuz," Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said. "I will shortly attend a COBR (national security) meeting to review what we know and what we can do to swiftly secure the release of the two vessels - a British-flagged vessel and a Liberian-flagged vessel," he said.
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| A Passenger Was Fined $105,000 and Banned for Life for 'Extremely Disruptive Behavior' on an Airplane Posted: 19 Jul 2019 01:09 PM PDT  She was also banned for life by British budget carrier Jet2
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| Philippine police seek sedition charges against VP, Duterte critics Posted: 19 Jul 2019 06:14 AM PDT  Philippine police have recommended sedition charges against the vice president and other opposition figures, a move slammed Friday as an attempt to stifle dissent under President Rodrigo Duterte. Police allege Vice President Leni Robredo, Catholic Church leaders and opposition politicians plotted to destabilise the Duterte government by implicating him in the narcotics trade. Duterte launched a war against the drug trade when he came into power three years ago.
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| Biden's son Hunter makes his 1st 2020 campaign appearance Posted: 19 Jul 2019 05:11 PM PDT  Joe Biden's son Hunter made his 2020 presidential campaign trail debut with his father Friday, two weeks after the former vice president praised him for battling through "tough times," including years of drug and alcohol abuse. The younger Biden's appearance at a fundraiser in Southern California on Friday was a sign the former vice president and his campaign see him as an asset to the campaign despite a series of personal problems that had kept him in the background. Hunter Biden, 49, attended the event with his new wife, Melissa Cohen, and his daughter Finnegan at the home of Pasadena City Councilmember John Kennedy.
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| Funeral service held for 86 Muslims killed by Serbs Posted: 20 Jul 2019 10:10 AM PDT  PRIJEDOR, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Several thousand people attended a funeral service in Bosnia on Saturday for 86 Muslims who were slain by Serbs in one of the worst atrocities of the country's 1992-95 war. Relatives of the victims, religious leaders and others gathered at a soccer stadium near the eastern town of Prijedor, standing solemnly behind lines of coffins draped with green cloths. The Serbs later threw bombs onto the bodies, which made identifying the victims difficult.
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| China hits back at 'hypocritical' US over religious freedom Posted: 19 Jul 2019 04:07 AM PDT  Beijing on Friday criticised US Vice President Mike Pence and top diplomat Mike Pompeo as "hideous" and "hypocritical" after they called for religious freedom in China at a major meeting in Washington. Secretary of State Pompeo said Thursday that Washington will create a new international body to campaign for religious freedom, speaking after a conference where he called China's mass incarceration of mostly Muslim Uighurs "the stain of the century". At a press briefing in Beijing on Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang rebuffed the criticism.
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| Biscuits bake inside excessively hot car Posted: 19 Jul 2019 09:49 AM PDT  A meteorologist proved how hot cars can get in this dangerous heat wave.
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| Here's Trump hating on America. Is it time for him to leave? Posted: 19 Jul 2019 05:28 AM PDT  The president says if Democratic congresswomen criticize the US, they should go elsewhere. But mocking America is one of his own favorite pastimesAt a campaign rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, the president's attacks against four progressive congresswomen of color culminated in his most overt attack yet. Referring to Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib as "hate-filled extremists", he continued his tirade to the delight of his supporters."They're always telling us how to run it, how to do this, how to do that. You know what? If they don't love it, tell 'em to leave it," Trump said to the crowd, who soon erupted into a chant of "send her back".Yet Trump himself has repeatedly denigrated and criticized America, perhaps more so than any other presidential candidate in recent memory. If he holds himself to his own standards, perhaps it's time for him to leave and "go back home"?Here are some examples of Trump's attacks on the US. Make America great againA longtime critic of Obama, Trump has said he came upon his famed slogan the day his predecessor was elected to his second term. The Maga slogan implied that America was no longer great, something he also repeatedly and explicitly stated in much starker terms in the years before and during his run. Speaking to the Washington Post in 2017, he said:> I looked at the many types of illness our country had, and whether it's at the border, whether it's security, whether it's law and order or lack of law and order. Crippled AmericaTrump's 2015 book, Crippled America, was rife with critical quotes, referring to the country as "this mess" and "Uncle Sucker", among other things, and took great pains to point out just how weak we had become.> The idea of American Greatness, of our country as the leader of the free and unfree world, has vanished … I couldn't stand to see what was happening to our great country. This mess calls for leadership in the worst way. American carnageOn the day he took office in 2017, Trump painted a picture of America as a dystopian nightmare.> Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.> > This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. Laughing stockThe idea that criticizing the country is grounds for being dismissed from it would be news to the Donald Trump of the Obama years, when he described our collective humiliation many dozens of times.Stretching back to 2011, he regularly tweeted about which countries and other political bodies were laughing at us and Obama, from Opec to "the mullahs", Sudan, and, most frequently, China and Vladimir Putin.> US Gov't is on the hook for more than a third of the world's entire debt & we wonder why China & OPEC are laughing all the way to the bank!> > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2012> Thanks to @BarackObama rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline, China has become Canada's biggest oil consumer. China is laughing at us!> > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 13, 2012> Lets fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us.> > — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 7, 2012 Lots of killersWhen asked during an interview with Bill O'Reilly in 2017 about his praise for Putin, Trump said America wasn't much better. But was Putin was "a killer", O'Reilly said. Trump replied:> There are a lot of killers. You think our country's so innocent? InfrastructureTrump has not only often referred to the symbolic collapse of America, he's also pointed out its literal state of disrepair. His speech to the 2016 Republican national convention was a laundry list of things that he found shameful about the country, including our infrastructure. He told the crowd:> Our roads and bridges are falling apart, our airports are in third-world condition.
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| Iran tanker crisis 'ominous' for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, husband says Posted: 20 Jul 2019 11:59 AM PDT  The husband of jailed British-Iranian charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has said he is worried her future has become "more uncertain and ominous" after Iran's seizing of a UK tanker in the Gulf. Richard Ratcliffe has expressed concerned for his wife, whom he has not heard from since she was moved on Monday from Tehran's Evin prison to a psychiatric hospital. Mr Ratcliffe said Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 40, who had recently ended a 15-day hunger strike, has not been allowed contact for almost a week. "We were hoping now it is the start of a new week in Iran that we might at least get access. Nazanin's dad is going down today again to try," Mr Ratcliffe told the Telegraph. "I told the Foreign Office yesterday that in my view we should now regard Nazanin as held incommunicado." He said it was not known what treatment she was receiving or how long she was expected to remain in hospital. At Evin prison, she had been allowed regular phone calls to Mr Ratcliffe and her lawyer. "With the tankers, obviously everything feels rather more uncertain and ominous," he said. "It reminds me of the very earliest days when she disappeared under IRGC control," he added. "But I have promised myself I will wait a full week before really panicking." Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose British nationality is not recognised by Tehran, is serving a five-year sentence for espionage, charges she denies. Days before she was transferred, she told relatives: "Three and a bit years later (...) look at me now - I ended up in an asylum. It should be an embarrassment. "Prison is getting harder and harder for me. I hate being played in the middle of a political game. I just hate it." Mr Ratcliffe said he was concerned what the decision by Iran's Revolutionary Guards to move her to hospital meant, as when they were involved "bad stuff happens". It was the powerful Revolutionary Guard which on Friday seized the British-flagged Stena Impero after warning it would retaliate the UK's "unlawful" impounding of an Iranian ship. Amid statements on the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, Jeremy Hunt, Foreign Secretary, tweeted on Saturday that he was "very concerned about this week's transfer of Nazanin to an IRGC (Revolutionary Guard Corp) hospital. "We'd hoped this meant she was getting medical treatment she needs but the fact that she has been cut off from contact with her family is giving us huge cause for concern." The Foreign Office has tried to keep separate Mrs Zaghar-Ratcliffe's case and the military manoeuvrings in the Persian Gulf, but there are concerns they are being linked by the Islamic Republic.
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| See the 2020 Chevy Corvette C8 Driving on the Road Undisguised Posted: 19 Jul 2019 12:37 PM PDT |
| Will Taiwan Get the New F-16V Fighters It Desperately Wants? Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:00 AM PDT  On July 8, the U.S. State Department announced it would approve a $2.2 billion arms deal with Taiwan including 108 Abrams main battle tanks and 250 Stinger man-portable surface-to-air missiles—a deal which elicited new sanctions from Beijing on the companies involved. But the announcement was more notable for what the approval didn't include—a nearly done-deal for sixty-six F-16V jet fighters built fresh off the F-16 production line in Greenville, South Carolina.This would have been the first sale of new Western combat jets to Taiwan since 1992—a fact not unrelated to Beijing's claims that sales of jet fighters to the "renegade province" constitute a redline.This stance caused three prior U.S. presidents to shy away from additional jet sales, but from the beginning, the Trump administration has proven consistently willing to disregard Beijing's sensitivities regarding Taiwan. The absence of the F-16V deal from the July 8 approval was likely linked to U.S.-China negotiations to end a simmering trade war. Perhaps the Trump administration delayed or canceled the F-16V approval to avoid sabotaging the talks, or is withholding the jets as a possible bargaining chip to extract concessions from Beijing.For now, the deal's fate remains uncertain as Taipei and its allies in Congress lobby strongly for it to proceed.Taiwan's Precarious Status
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| Gabbard, AOC join lawmakers to call on Puerto Rican governor to resign over corruption scandal Posted: 20 Jul 2019 09:19 AM PDT  Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has joined a growing chorus of lawmakers calling for the resignation of the Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosselló.
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| Florida sheriff to investigate Epstein's work release Posted: 19 Jul 2019 06:28 PM PDT  A Florida sheriff launched an investigation Friday into whether his department properly monitored the wealthy financer Jeffrey Epstein while he was serving a sentence for soliciting prostitution from underage girls. The inquiry will focus on whether deputies assigned to monitor Epstein in a work-release program violated any rules or regulations, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said in a statement. Under a 2008 plea deal, Epstein was allowed to spend most of his days at the office of his now-defunct Florida Science Foundation, which doled out research grants, rather than in the county jail.
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| Irish, EU governments sound out Johnson to avoid no-deal Brexit: Sunday Times Posted: 20 Jul 2019 03:16 PM PDT  Ahead of Boris Johnson's likely election next week as Britain's prime minister, EU countries are secretly wooing him in a bid to thrash out a new Brexit plan that would avoid a no-deal disaster, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. German and French figures as well as the Dutch and Belgian governments have also established contact with Johnson's team and signaled an intention to do a deal, it added. In a limited extract released on Saturday evening ahead of publication, the paper reported that Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney has indicated Dublin is prepared to compromise.
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| Trump impeachment 'wishful strain of thinking' by Democrats, Steve Kornacki says Posted: 19 Jul 2019 10:30 AM PDT  Democrats who think impeachment is a political winner are overinterpreting the lessons of the Clinton impeachment in the late '90s, said a journalist who wrote a book on the era.
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| Mother wrongly diagnosed with breast cancer has double mastectomy before doctors realise their mistake Posted: 19 Jul 2019 10:29 AM PDT  A mother who was wrongly diagnosed with breast cancer underwent a double mastectomy and chemotherapy before the NHS hospital realised its mistake. Sarah Boyle has been left traumatised after doctors at Royal Stoke University Hospital misdiagnosed her with triple negative breast cancer at the end of 2016. The hospital only recognised the error several months later in July 2017, by which time the 28-year-old had already received several rounds of gruelling treatment and major surgery. The mother of two also had to cope with the knowledge that the breast implants may put her at added risk of developing cancer. Her lawyers said the mistake occurred because a biopsy sample was incorrectly recorded. Mrs Boyle has suffered psychological trauma as a result the ordeal and also continues to endure ongoing symptoms caused by the unnecessary treatment. She was initially told that her cancer treatment may harm her fertility. The patient was ultimately able to have a second child, who is now seven months old, but she was unable to breastfeed him due to the treatment. The trust has since admitted liability and apologised to Mrs Boyle, although legal proceedings are continuing. "The past few years have been incredibly difficult for me and my family," she said. "Being told I had cancer was awful, but then to go through all of the treatment and surgery to then be told it was unnecessary was traumatising. "And while I was delighted when I gave birth to Louis, it was really heartbreaking when I couldn't breastfeed him." "As if that wasn't bad enough, I am now worried about the possibility of actually developing cancer in the future because of the type of implants I have and I am also worried about complications that I may face because of my chemotherapy." Mrs Boyle worries her breast implants may increase her future cancer risk Credit: SWNS The case emerged weeks after health chiefs warned that 11,000 patients a year may be dying as a result of NHS blunders. A new strategy was unveiled last month with an aim of saving 1,000 lives a year within five years by ensuring all staff, however, junior, are trained to act if they spot risks. Mrs Boyle was aged 25 when she was misdiagnosed. She was later informed by her treating doctor, Mr Sankaran Narayanan, that her biopsy had been incorrectly reported and that she did not have cancer. Sarah Sharples, from Irwin Mitchell solicitors, which is representing Mrs Boyle, said: "This is a truly shocking case in which a young mother has faced heartbreaking news and a gruelling period of extensive treatment, only to be told that it was not necessary. "The entire experience has had a huge impact on Sarah in many ways. "While we welcome that the NHS Trust has admitted to the clear failings, we are yet to hear if any improvements have been put in place to prevent something like this happening again. "We are also deeply concerned following reports surrounding the type of implants Sarah has, with suspicions over their potential link to a rare form of cancer. A spokesman from the University Hospital of North Midlands NHS Trust said: "A misdiagnosis of this kind is exceptionally rare and we understand how devastating this has been for Sarah and her family. He added: "Ultimately the misreporting of the biopsy was a human error so as an extra safeguard all invasive cancer diagnoses are now reviewed by a second pathologist." The trust said it had shared the findings of its investigation with Mrs Boyle.
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| Here's What Happens When People Actually Approach Area 51 Posted: 19 Jul 2019 08:16 AM PDT  Everyone wants to go visit Area 51 in Nevada. Here's what it actually looks like when you get there, according to people who have gone.
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| Secrets: Everything You Wanted to Know About Israel's Nuclear Weapons Posted: 20 Jul 2019 12:00 PM PDT  The Iranian nuclear nonproliferation agreement has been the top foreign policy issue throughout Washington for the past two months. Approving or disapproving the deal was the first order of business for the U.S. Congress until the very last day of congressional action under the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (September 17). Hours of debate have been conducted on the floors of the House and Senate, both chambers have held roll call votes, and Senate Democrats bonded together to filibuster a motion of disapproval — a resolution that would have prevented President Obama from providing the Iranians sanctions relief.The Obama administration's main selling point for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is based on the theory that forcing Tehran to downgrade its nuclear program will make the threat of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East — the world's most frenetic and violent region even without nuclear weapons— far less urgent. Yet we should remember that there is in fact a state in the region that already possesses nuclear weapons. That state happens to be Washington's closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.(This first appeared in September 2015.)There are a lot of mysteries surrounding Israel's nuclear arsenal. That is partly due to the Israeli security establishment's unwritten rule of never speaking about the country's nuclear weapons program in public in order to preserve the principle of deterrence. But there are indeed some basic elements of Israel's nuclear program that are acknowledged by defense analysts in the United States and around the world.1. The Number is in Doubt:
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| Lawmaker describes 'unacceptable' border detention conditions, meets with US citizen in Border Patrol custody Posted: 20 Jul 2019 12:46 PM PDT  A U.S. lawmaker described 'unacceptable' border detention facilities while meeting with a U.S. citizen in Border Patrol custody.
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| Slim chance of ever finding Chinese scholar's body Posted: 19 Jul 2019 02:54 PM PDT  Brendt Christensen, a former doctoral student in physics at the University of Illinois, abducted Yingying Zhang in 2017 from a bus stop. In filings before the trial began in June, prosecutors acknowledged they considered a plea deal with Christensen after his arrest in late 2017 in which they would abandon plans to seek the death penalty if he divulged what he did with the remains and where they could be found. State and federal officials conducted widespread searches for Zhang's remains for months to no avail, according to an FBI agent who testified at the trial.
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| 3 sentenced for violence at Virginia white nationalist rally Posted: 19 Jul 2019 03:19 PM PDT  Three members of a white supremacist group were sentenced Friday to between two and three years in prison for punching, kicking and choking anti-racism protesters at a white nationalist rally in Virginia and political rallies in California. Members of the now-defunct Rise Above Movement were caught on camera assaulting counterprotesters before a planned "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. Benjamin Daley, Michael Miselis and Thomas Gillen each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to riot.
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| EU plans to offer Boris Johnson no-deal Brexit extension: The Guardian Posted: 19 Jul 2019 11:02 AM PDT  "It will be described as a technical delay to save Boris from political embarrassment but then we will have time to find an agreement," a senior EU diplomat told the newspaper http://bit.ly/2xWScq9. Johnson could maintain the stance of being on course to leave EU without an agreement while keeping open the option of coming to a deal with the bloc, according to the proposal cited by the Guardian. EU leaders are discussing steps to be taken in the event Johnson presses ahead with exiting the European Union without a transition deal on Oct. 31, the newspaper said.
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| Trump fumes over Ilhan Omar's 'welcome home' crowd Posted: 19 Jul 2019 06:46 AM PDT  After claiming he wasn't happy that his supporters broke into a "send her back" chant at his rally in North Carolina, President Trump on Friday fumed over the media coverage of Rep. Ilhan Omar's return to Minnesota.
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| The Mystical Megachurch Ruling Over Soccer Star Megan Rapinoe’s Hometown Posted: 20 Jul 2019 02:41 AM PDT  Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyIn the hours after Megan Rapinoe and the U.S. women's national soccer team's World Cup victory, the footballer celebrated on Instagram with a photo of her hometown paper, the Record Searchlight. The caption read: "Hometown love is the best kind of love." Rapinoe grew up in the small logging town of Redding, California, and has maintained a close relationship with the community. She runs spring soccer clinics, regularly comes home for the annual Redding Rodeo, and even spearheaded a fundraiser after the Carr Fire destroyed several local homes. In the past, the town has celebrated their homegrown celebrity: in 2015, Redding declared July 21 "Megan Rapinoe Day," named a street in her honor, and changed the address of their soccer field to "15 Rapinoe Way," after her jersey number. But Redding's relationship with Rapinoe has grown uneasy. In a recent Record Searchlight letter to the editor, a resident called the soccer player "a selfish unpatriotic bigot and a total disgrace to our national team." In a follow-up article, an ex-firefighter told the Searchlight he "hope[s] she breaks her legs." As a general rule, Redding skews conservative. Shasta County, represented by Republican Doug LaMalfa in the House, is one of the most solidly red counties in California—roughly 64 percent of local voters are registered Republicans and in 2016, the county turned out overwhelmingly for Trump, including Rapinoe's father. In June, when Rapinoe kneeled during the National Anthem in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, she irked many of her old neighbors. That sentiment compounded when Rapinoe announced she would not go to the White House if she won the World Cup, and joined the roster of public figures singled out on the president's Twitter. "The team being invited to the White House, Americas house, is an honor," said Karen Margrave, a Redding realtor who first expressed her anger on Facebook. "It doesn't matter whether or not you like the President, you're representing Americas Soccer Team! Everything doesn't have to be political."How 'Walking Protest' Megan Rapinoe Became U.S. Soccer's Middle Finger to TrumpRapinoe's international celebrity has put Redding and its political fault lines in the spotlight. But the politics of Redding are complicated beyond simple party affiliations, in part because the town is also home to another divisive, wildly successful, cultural claim to fame: the Bethel Church. The multimillion-dollar revivalist megachurch has stirred controversy in Rapinoe's hometown and throughout the religious world for its embrace of consumerist Christianity, extensive gay conversion therapy programs (Rapinoe is an out lesbian), and semi-mystical practices. Bethel members believe that miracles can occur on earth, and YouTube is filled with footage of their efforts: from faith healing, to "fire tunneling" (where members form a "tunnel" with two lines and speak in tongues to people passing through), to "grave sucking"—where someone lies on a grave to "suck up" the dead person's blessings. Bethel wields immense local influence: of Redding's 90,000 residents, 11,233 are Bethel members, according to a report from northern California magazine A News Cafe. They maintain an extensive media presence—including a TV subscription service with 19,000 subscribers, two weekly podcasts with downloads in the millions, several well-attended annual conferences, and a music production arm with multiple chart-topping hits. (Justin Bieber is a fan; last year, he covered one of their singles, "Reckless Love"). Media and product sales alone earned Bethel some $23 million last year, according to A News Cafe, but the registered "nonprofit" organization also generates income from a K-8 academy called Bethel Christian School, an online and summer program called WorshipU, the Bethel School of Technology, the Bethel Conservatory of the Arts, and recently announced plans for the Bethel Business School. Most famously: they operate the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, where each year some 2,000 students pay $12,050 to study at the unaccredited three-year seminary, also known as "Christian Hogwarts."Bethel plays a unique role in the political landscape of Redding. The town's mayor, Julie Winter, serves on Bethel's Board of Elders and the church—which reported earnings of $60.8 million last fiscal year, in an area with a $46,389 median income—has funded several city initiatives. In 2011, when Redding considered closing its civic auditorium for financial reasons, Bethel offered to lease and manage it for the town, putting in some $1 million for repairs and paying an annual rent of $750,000, according to a press release from last year. In 2017, when the police force faced budget cuts, Bethel donated $500,000 to the unit, and then an additional $740,000 to pay the salaries of four officers. Just months later, the council unanimously voted to approve construction for a new, $96-million church campus, despite widespread local concern. As an enthusiastic article in Zôcalo Public Square put it: "Bethel's engagement with Redding is big and broad, touching almost every aspect of civic life."The church's strengthening grip on the town has bred suspicion and resentment among non-Bethel residents which far exceeds any angst over Megan Rapinoe. Spokespeople for the Bethel Church, the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, Bethel President Bill Johnson and Bethel Senior Associate Leader Kris Valloton declined to speak with The Daily Beast for this story. In a statement provided by email, a Bethel representative wrote: "We celebrate the US Women's Soccer Team's historic fourth win of the World Cup and join in applauding our hometown's talented athlete, Megan Rapinoe, and the success she has achieved on the world stage!"The roots of Bethel date back to 1954, when the church opened in Redding as an affiliate of a two-year-old Pentacostal congregation called the Assemblies of God. For years, Bethel existed as a modest offshoot. That changed in 1996, when a pastor named Bill Johnson signed on to lead the ministry. According to Johnson's personal biography, he accepted the job on a single condition: "I was born for revival and would pursue revival—this was not negotiable." Once he took over, the church began to grow and, as Johnson put it, "to see many healings including multiple cases of cancer healed." In 1998, Johnson and an auto repairman-turned-prophet named Kris Vallotton opened the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. The goal, according to an alumni report, was to "equip and deploy revivalists who passionately pursue worldwide transformation in their God-given spheres of influence." The first class had 36 students; by 2010, there were 1,500. Now, the school boasts more than 10,000 alumni. Creative CommonsMuch of the local resentment toward Bethel involves their practice of "faith healing," or the belief that physical ailments can be cured by prayer. According to Redding residents, it's common for Bethel members to approach pedestrians and offer to help with minor ailments. "They stop you and ask to pray for something that they think is wrong with you," said Nathan Blaze, a 15-year Redding resident and the administrator of two Redding-themed meme pages: "Redding Be Like" and "Bethel Memes." But Bethel members direct faith healing at more serious and permanent conditions. Will Smith, a former Bethel member who lives in the Bay Area, said congregants often approach his friend's son, who lives with cerebral palsy, offering to cure his illness—a gesture the child and his parents find distressing. Faith healers believe all health concerns are curable with enough effort, from cancer to HIV to actually being dead—Bethel maintains something called a "Dead Raising Team." In a survey of Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry alumni from 2018, graduates claimed to have healed 50,000 people since last year, "including several dead raisings!" It's a practice that secular citizens have found traumatic: In 2008, a Shasta County man sued a Bethel student over an accident which left him paraplegic. The man claimed she had pushed him off a cliff and, upon thinking he had died, attempted to faith heal him rather than call 9-1-1 (a judge later ruled in favor or the student).Still, the practice continued. On January 2, 2014, a 15-year-old boy named Orian LeBlanc suffered from an asthma attack and collapsed in the street. A Bethel student named Andrea Martin found his body. According to the boy's grandmother, Donna Zibull, doctors said LeBlanc was still alive when she found him—he had passed out from lack of oxygen and cardiac arrest. But in a post on Facebook, Martin claimed the boy had already died and that after she'd prayed, paramedics had revived him. LeBlanc spent six days in the hospital in a vegetative state before passing away on January 8, 2014. According to Zibull, the Dead Raising Team visited him there and spent four days chanting, speaking in tongues, claiming they saw God in the room, and promising his mother Orian would come back. "I know it's a hard call for anyone to come upon that situation, but afterwards, the Bethel lady brought several people up to [Orian's] room," Zibull said. "They were up there for like four days, trying to revive him... It got too out of control. We had to just ban them from the room." After her grandson's death, Zibull got involved with a small group of Redding residents and started a Facebook page called "Concerned Citizens About Bethel." They started with about 40 people, but the group quickly grew to several thousand members. In 2017, Zibull took over the group and renamed it "Investigating Bethel." Zibull held meetings, passed out stickers, and scheduled protests around Bethel's faith healing conferences. The group began keeping count of local businesses owned by Bethel members. And they started getting concerned about an idea at the crux of the church's ideology: the "Seven Mountain Mandate."Megan Rapinoe of the USA celebrates after scoring during the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup France Quarter Final match between France and USA at Parc des Princes on June 28, 2019, in Paris, France.Richard Heathcote/GettyThe "Seven Mountain Mandate" is the belief, held across several Pentacostal and Charismatic movements, that in order for Jesus to return to earth, churches must influence and infiltrate the seven major pillars of society: government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family, religion, and business. In the book The Rise of Network Christianity, which includes deep investigations into Bethel's practices and ideology, Brad Christerson and Richard Flory claim that the goal of the mandate is to radically transform cities, ethnic groups, and nations as opposed to just individuals. "If Christians permeate each mountain and rise to the top of all seven mountains," they write, "society would have biblical morality, people would live in harmony, there would be peace and not war, there would be no poverty."It's a stance that helps explain Bethel's investment in producing their own media, opening schools, sponsoring local arts, and expanding local businesses. It also is why Zibull, Blaze, Smith and others grew concerned over the church's role in local and national politics. Colton Redwine, a former Bethel student who was dismissed from the school after coming out as gay, pointed to the church's political track record on legislation related to homosexuality, which it opposes and believes can be altered with conversion therapy. In 2018, Bethel came down hard against three bills in the California state legislature: AB 1779, AB 2119 and AB 2943, which aimed to restrict gay conversion in California, including prohibiting licensed mental health officials from offering conversion therapies. The church released statements and sent letters to legislators opposing the bills. In a live-streamed lecture called "What Would Jesus Do In A PC World?," Bethel's second-in-command, Kris Vallotton, urged the congregation to reach out to officials and get the bills withdrawn. When Investigate Bethel led a protest rally, Vallotton walked back his comments, but maintained opposition to the bills. Smith, a former Bethel member, said he left the church after its president, Bill Johnson, and his wife, Beni Johnson, made public statements of support for Trump following the 2016 election, citing their opposition to abortion, "open border policies," welfare, same-sex marriage, socialism, and higher taxes, among other things. "I had always picked up on little subtle conservative points in their sermons, but it didn't bother me," Smith said. "It was really around 2016, when Trump started becoming a big figure in the election, that my thoughts on Bethel started to change. People call Megan Rapinoe political, but it became clear to me that they were very politically motivated."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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| Immigrants seeking asylum leave home countries because of 'unlivable conditions' Posted: 19 Jul 2019 01:44 PM PDT  Eitan Pelen, manager of UNICEF USA's Child Migration & Protection, explains why immigrant families seek asylum and why action must be taken to protect them.
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| An Open Secret: Russia Will Never Become a Stealth Fighter 'Superpower' Posted: 19 Jul 2019 03:09 PM PDT  Speaking on May 15, 2019, Putin said the Kremlin would buy scores of Su-57s over the next eight years. If Putin is serious and the Russian defense ministry follows through on the pledge, Russia soon could possess a meaningful number of stealth fighters. But there are good reasons to be skeptical.But buying into the Su-57 program won't magically solve the program's problems. The Su-57 is an immature design whose production line is small and inefficient. That won't quickly or cheaply change.Russian president Vladimir Putin made a big show on May 14, 2019 of visiting the 929th Chkalov State Flight-Test Center in Russia's Astrakhan region.(This first appeared in May 2019.)Six Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighters -- fully half of the Su-57s that Sukhoi has built since the type first flew in 2010 -- escorted Putin's Il-96 VIP plane on the trip from Moscow to Astrakhan.Speaking on May 15, 2019, Putin said the Kremlin would buy scores of Su-57s over the next eight years. If Putin is serious and the Russian defense ministry follows through on the pledge, Russia soon could possess a meaningful number of stealth fighters.But there are good reasons to be skeptical. The Su-57 still isn't a mature design. It lacks key combat systems. Sukhoi hasn't set up a big, efficient production line for the type. And Moscow almost certainly doesn't have the money to buy a large number of stealth fighters.
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| Court docs show Hope Hicks in contact with Michael Cohen during hush-money discussions Posted: 19 Jul 2019 08:44 AM PDT  Potentially contradicting her congressional testimony, Hicks might have been present for discussions about hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels.
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| Parents told they could lose kids over unpaid school lunches Posted: 19 Jul 2019 10:53 AM PDT ![Parents told they could lose kids over unpaid school lunches]( "Parents told they could lose kids over unpaid school lunches") A Pennsylvania school district is warning that children could end up in foster care if their parents do not pay overdue school lunch bills. The letters sent recently to about 1,000 parents in Wyoming Valley West School District have led to complaints from parents and a stern rebuke from Luzerne County child welfare authorities. The letter claims the unpaid bills could lead to dependency hearings and removal of their children for not providing them with food.
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| Mob in India kills three on suspicion of cattle theft, three arrested Posted: 19 Jul 2019 02:56 AM PDT  A mob on Friday beat to death three men suspected of trying to steal cattle in India's eastern state of Bihar, police said, the latest in a spate of attacks that have provoked alarm among religious minorities. In recent years angry mobs have lynched many people from marginalized groups in India, especially Muslims and the Dalits who occupy the lowest rung of the ancient caste system, often over suspicions of cow slaughter. The three men were caught by some villagers early on Friday while trying to load cattle on a pickup truck, police official Har Kishore Rai said.
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| US offers $7 mn to find Hezbollah agent wanted for Argentina attack Posted: 19 Jul 2019 09:35 AM PDT  The United States on Friday offered a $7 million reward to find a Hezbollah operative accused of masterminding a deadly 1994 attack on a Jewish center in Buenos Aires, as it vowed to bring together Latin American nations to fight the militant group. The United States also imposed sanctions on the Hezbollah figure, Salman Raouf Salman, in tandem with Argentina's announcement on the 25th anniversary of the attack that it is designating the Lebanese Shiite movement as a terrorist group. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was visiting Argentina to commemorate the attack and lit a candle at the site of the devastated Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, known by its Spanish acronym AMIA.
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| Mueller probe witness now faces child sex trafficking charge Posted: 19 Jul 2019 12:29 PM PDT  A businessman who served as a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation now faces a charge of child sex trafficking in addition to transporting child pornography. An indictment made public Friday in federal court in Alexandria charges Lebanese-American businessman George Nader, 60, with transporting a 14-year-old boy from Europe to Washington, D.C., in February 2000 and engaging in sex acts with him. It details his efforts to serve as liaison between a Russian banker close to Russian President Vladimir Putin and members of President Donald Trump's transition team.
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| Why ‘Adversity’ Shouldn’t Be a New Advantage in College Admissions Posted: 20 Jul 2019 12:57 AM PDT  "It's misleading. How do you measure an 'adversity score' anyway?"Martin Smith, a professor at Rowan University and an alumnus from the University of Pennsylvania, shared his thoughts over the College Board's recent unveiling of an "overall disadvantage level"—in shorthand, an "adversity score"—to supplement students' SAT scores."You can't manufacture equal outcomes when everyone isn't given the same resources," he said.Smith hails from a small town in rural Tennessee, a place that knows disadvantage all too well, yet he was less than optimistic about the new score supplement that's meant to help less-privileged students stand out compared with their better-off peers during the college admissions process.On a scale of 1 and 100, a student's adversity score will indicate several factors that colleges should take into account when considering a candidate for admission.The purpose of the adversity score is to be an indicator to college admissions officers of the socioeconomic difficulties that a particular candidate might have faced during his or her formative school years.Any setbacks that might result in a seemingly low score might actually accrue to a student's advantage when realizing the student's comparative disadvantage relative to other national and international candidates.An op-ed essay in the Atlantic magazine argues that despite the problems the new adversity score faces, it is a "long-overdue" innovation and a step in the right direction.
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