| Trump rages at Democrats over vote on war powers at Ohio rally Posted: 09 Jan 2020 06:01 PM PST  President Trump went after his Democratic critics at a raucous campaign rally hours after the House of Representatives passed a resolution that sought to limit his ability to wage war in Iran.
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| Australian animals face extinction threat as bushfire toll mounts Posted: 09 Jan 2020 09:11 PM PST  When volunteer Sarah Price found a baby kangaroo frightened but miraculously alive in the pouch of its dying mother surrounded by the embers of Australia's bushfires, it seemed fitting to name him Chance. The furry pair had survived flames that have ripped through much of southeastern Australia, but the mother's organs later collapsed from acute stress -- making her one among the more than one billion animals estimated to have died in the crisis so far. Chance is slowly recovering, getting regular food and water and hiding out in a bag in a darkened room -- a rare success story amid a disaster that has shocked even volunteers accustomed to Australia's frequent bushfires and prolonged droughts.
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| A North Korean woman is under investigation after saving her 2 kids from a house fire — but not her portraits of the Kim family Posted: 09 Jan 2020 04:54 PM PST  Daily NK adds that the unnamed woman hasn't been able to care for her kids in the hospital because of the investigation.
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| U.S. military tried to take out another Iranian leader, but failed Posted: 10 Jan 2020 12:38 PM PST  The U.S. military tried, but failed, to take out another senior Iranian commander on the same day that an American airstrike killed a Revolutionary Guard commander, U.S. officials said Friday.
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| The 7 Coolest Automotive Technologies Unveiled at CES Posted: 10 Jan 2020 09:01 AM PST |
| Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said he likely fell for a phishing scam. Here's how phishing scams work and how to avoid them. Posted: 09 Jan 2020 07:56 AM PST  Krugman tweeted that he received a phone call indicating that hackers downloaded child pornography on his WiFi network.
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| Canada prosecutor says essence of Huawei CFO case is fraud Posted: 10 Jan 2020 04:17 PM PST  Canada's Department of Justice said Friday the allegation against a top Chinese executive arrested at the United States' request would be a crime in Canada and she should be extradited to the United States on fraud charges. Canada arrested Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei's founder, in Dec. 2018 in a case that sparked a diplomatic furor among the three countries and complicated high-stakes U.S.-China trade talks. China detained two Canadians in apparent retaliation for the arrest Meng.
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| Ocasio-Cortez Refuses to Pay DCCC Dues, Frustrating House Dems Posted: 10 Jan 2020 10:58 AM PST  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has exasperated her fellow House Democrats by announcing that she will not pay dues to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect Democrats to the House."For me personally, I'm not paying D-trip dues" for a "myriad of reasons" the freshman progressive congresswoman from New York said, using a nickname for the DCCC.According to records, she has so far not paid her $250,000 in dues despite leveraging her massive social media following to raise millions for her own reelection, Fox News reported.Ocasio-Cortez said her gripe with the party's official House campaign organization relates to the DCCC's practice of not supporting newer progressive candidates in order to insulate incumbent Democrats."One, I don't agree with the policy around blacklisting groups that help progressive candidates," she said. "I think we need to evolve as a party and make room for that.""I want to help frontline members by putting that money straight into their pocket," Ocasio-Cortez explained.The progressive 30-year-old has made good on that promise, pulling in more than $300,000 last year for candidates of her choosing, including $18,000 for Marie Newman, who seeks to oust longtime Illinois congressman Dan Lipinski, a rare pro-life Democrat."To have people try to purify the caucus because they don't agree with them – 100 percent, I certainly don't agree with that," said Texas Representative Henry Cuellar, one of the Democrats Ocasio-Cortez is trying to replace with a more progressive candidate, in this case Jessica Cisneros, for whom she raised $35,000."Hopefully, we will start to get away from this circular firing squad," Cuellar said.Ocasio-Cortez complained earlier this week that the Congressional Progressive Caucus's standard for lawmakers is too low, saying, "They let anybody who the cat dragged in call themselves a progressive."DCCC Chairwoman Cheri Bustos highlighted the party campaign arm's strong fundraising numbers even without Ocasio-Cortez's contribution."That's always up to individual members so I guess I don't think about it one way or another," Bustos said of Ocasio-Cortez's decision to withhold dues. "We're raising record amounts of money from our members."
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| Nancy Pelosi lost the impeachment standoff Posted: 10 Jan 2020 12:35 PM PST  After nearly a month of dithering, Nancy Pelosi is finally accepting defeat in her standoff with Mitch McConnell over impeachment. Despite insisting as recently as Thursday that she would wait to transmit the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate until she was confident that the trial in the upper chamber would proceed on terms favorable to her party, she quietly backed down on Friday morning. Her letter to Democratic colleagues in the House announced that the articles would be sent next week even though McConnell has made it clear that none of her demands — testimony from additional witnesses, for example — would be honored or even considered.Is anyone actually surprised by this outcome? How likely was it that Pelosi was ever going to change McConnell's mind? All of the leverage has been on his side from the beginning. He would be the one to decide how the trial would proceed, when it would begin, and how long it would last. Having to surrender the fate of judicial proceedings to the opposing party was how this was always fated to end.Was a delay actually in her party's interest? It could be argued that she hoped to persuade a handful of Republican senators to insist upon subpoenas for witnesses and documents. This did not happen, nor was it ever very likely. By the time Pelosi acknowledged that McConnell had the upper hand, Senate Democrats had been publicly begging her to surrender for days. "I think the speaker should send the articles regardless," Senator Chris Coons (Del.) said on Tuesday. "I think the time has passed."It is worth pointing out that Pelosi's letter arrived amid McConnell's decision to sign on to a resolution introduced by Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri that would have dismissed the articles of impeachment 25 days after their adoption on the grounds that they had not been transmitted. It is unclear exactly what the constitutional implications of such a move would have been, but one thing that is clear is that it would have added many months of legal wrangling to the impeachment process. Forget about having presidential candidates in Washington when they should be in New Hampshire or South Carolina — a Supreme Court case over the constitutionality of a Senate dismissal of impeachment articles may well have dragged on into the summer, during which time Trump (and many constitutional scholars) could have argued that impeachment had never taken place. Could this possibly have forced her hand? We may never know.Which brings us back to the mystery that has been at the center of Trump's impeachment since the beginning. Why did Pelosi, a sober-minded, no-nonsense centrist who declared over and over again that impeachment was not worth pursuing, finally change her mind? Why did she wait to do so until last October, at which point it would have been obvious that the process would overlap with this year's caucuses and primaries? Why did she agree to draft and adopt articles of impeachment before she had secured the testimony of all the witnesses she and her members considered relevant? And why, finally, did she seem to have no coherent response prepared for the not exactly remote contingency in which McConnell refused to give her and her Senate colleagues the sort of trial they wanted? To quote an eminent anti-Boomer philosopher: "No thought was put into this."Though it is difficult to see what motivated Pelosi, especially in her decision to stall the inevitable handover of the process to the Senate, it is hard not to imagine that she had some sort of plan in mind. It just doesn't seem to have been a very good one.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Rush's Neil Peart dies at age 67 Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive
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| What Do You Do When Neo-Nazis Crash Your Anti-War Rally? Posted: 09 Jan 2020 02:00 AM PST  They showed up to anti-war protests in Pittsburgh and Atlanta on Saturday waving signs and distributing flyers. They live-streamed from a Monday night anti-war demonstration in Austin. But they weren't associated with the left-wing crowd who organized pushback on the U.S. assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani last week. They were far-right activists, some of them affiliated with known extremist groups.FBI Got Warrants for 'Unite the Right' Organizer Jason Kessler, Antifa ActivistsIn the days after Soleimani's assassination, leftist-organized rallies drew hundreds of attendees each—fewer than the tens of thousands who showed up to some of the most visible anti-war protests against the Iraq War, but sizeable pockets of discontent nonetheless. At the same time, some right-wing figures have also made their presence felt in the emerging anti-war scene. Some are hecklers, just looking to crash a rival protest. But others, including overt neo-Nazi groups and Republican pundits like Tucker Carlson, who has voiced opposition to war on Fox News, represent an anti-interventionist wing of an otherwise hawkish conservative movement.The apparent ideological overlap has some lefties wondering what, if anything, they should do about the far-right figures at their rallies in the era of Unite the Right and "very fine people on both sides."The first of the faceoffs appears to have come Saturday, when five far-right demonstrators reportedly showed up at an anti-war protest in Pittsburgh's Schenley Plaza. Although they chanted along with anti-war slogans, the men carried anti-Semitic signs blaming Jews for wars. Leftist demonstrators drove the group away with a "Nazis out" chant.One of the interlopers was later identified as Greg Conte, a white nationalist who has worked closely with racist organizations. Conte made national headlines in 2018 when it was revealed that he worked as a substitute teacher. (On Twitter, former students accused him of bigotry in the classroom. Conte previously told the Washington Post that he did not "openly preach" his views at school but sometimes questioned students on whether hate could be acceptable, or why diversity was good.)The same day, at least one member of the white supremacist group Patriot Front distributed flyers at an anti-war protest in Atlanta, according to an activist involved in anti-fascist organizing in that city who spoke on condition of anonymity.A fascist presence at an anti-war rally might strike some observers as surprising. But certain fringes of the right have historically cozied up with anti-imperial movements."People often confuse the far right with other conservatives," Spencer Sunshine, a writer and lecturer long focused on the far right, told The Daily Beast. But unlike more mainstream Republicans, "the far right, traditionally, is very isolationist. The original America First committees were opposed to U.S. entry in WWII. Generally, these groups are opposed to U.S. intervention overseas. They'll often say they're proxy wars for Israel. You find this stuff a lot more among groups that are highly anti-Semitic, or are third-positionist.""Third position" describes fascist ideology that often fuses some left-wing economic and anti-war policy with overt white supremacy and opposition to immigration, feminism, and LGBTQ rights. The National Policy Institute, a racist thinktank where Conte used to work alongside white nationalist Richard Spencer, could be classified as third-positionist, Sunshine noted.On Twitter, Spencer has voiced opposition to attacks on Iran, but framed his argument in terms of protecting "Aryan heritage sites" from "Zionist" forces. At least one subsequent tweet denouncing President Donald Trump around the time Iran struck military bases in Iraq on Tuesday was picked up by hosts of The View, where audience members applauded the white nationalist who recently made headlines for screaming racist and anti-Semitic slurs.Actors on the far right often use wars to invoke anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, either overtly accusing American Jews of orchestrating them (as Conte's crowd reportedly did in Pittsburgh) or speaking more euphemistically about Israel or "Zionists" fueling the war efforts."It's been a long-standing tactic of the far right in the U.S. to try to recruit from left-wingers, or to create a coalition," Sunshine said. Occasionally those efforts are successful. "There are some people on the left who want to have a left-right coalition of anti-war people… They want to have a bloc of all anti-imperialists and they don't really care who it is."The far right's favorite Fox News pundit, Tucker Carlson, also made anti-war gestures after Soleimani's assassination, claiming that war with Iran would be a distraction from cracking down on immigration. Although the stance placed Carlson at odds with most of his network, his comments were in line with previous salvos against people of color, according to Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the liberal organization Media Matters."The argument he's making there is that it's a bad idea to get involved in an escalating situation with Iran because it's going to get attention off of what he calls the 'invasion' of the southern border," Gertz told The Daily Beast. "That language of invasion, like the language of 'Great Replacement' that he uses, are frequent tropes of white nationalists, and part of the reason that white nationalists really appreciate Tucker Carlson's show and think he's a big asset to their movement."When the missiles actually drop, some supposedly anti-war Republicans fall into pro-war party lines. This summer, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz enjoyed bipartisan buzz for his work on an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have cut off federal funding for military actions on Iran that were not approved by Congress. The bill would have also barred the use of the 2001 or 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to justify attacks on Iran. (The White House's best legal defense of the strike on Soleimani rests on a shaky combination of both AUMFs, Lawfare reported.) The bill passed in the House, but was dropped from the final text of the NDAA. Despite his previous support of the bill, Gaetz was a vocal supporter of the strike on Soleimani. "The President correctly *responded* to violence & ongoing threats against US personnel after repeated warnings and admirable restraint," Gaetz tweeted. "He did *not* start a regime change war."The day after Soleimani's assassination, left-wing Rep. Ro Khanna and Senator Bernie Sanders announced plans to reintroduce the bill. Gaetz's name was notably absent from the press release."Gaetz's staff and our staff are in touch for the Sanders/Khanna bill but no decision has been made yet on partnership," a Khanna spokesperson told The Daily Beast on Monday. A Sanders spokesperson said the senator and presidential candidate was interested in working across the aisle to pass the bill. Gaetz's office did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.Already, questions about how to respond to far-right incursion are dogging leftist anti-war groups. In Atlanta, an anti-fascist group has begun circling a flyer warning activists to "look out for facist entryism at antiwar protests." The group advised protesters to photograph interlopers or confront them directly.Protesters Across U.S. Condemn Trump's 'New War' After Soleimani KillingAlthough footage of Pittsburgh demonstrators expelling interlocutors went viral, some social media users alleged that a number of rally attendees did little to oppose Conte's crowd. In Austin on Monday, two people said to be associated with the far-right group Texas Nomads SAR crashed a Democratic Socialists of America anti-war rally while live-streaming. Anti-fascists on Twitter accused the DSA of being too slow to respond to the disruption.Madeline Detelich, a member of the Austin DSA leadership, said the two live-streamers were there to antagonize protesters, not co-opt the rally, and that DSA members tried blocking their cameras with anti-war signs. Nevertheless, her chapter will be "strategizing" for future clashes, she said."We're thinking a lot about the best way forward. My own view is that numbers are our best friend."Sunshine also characterized the conflict as a numbers game. "The really far-right people don't have the numbers," he said. "Their presence is just to be a parasite on the organization."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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| India's road-block women vow to fight on against citizenship law Posted: 10 Jan 2020 05:24 PM PST  Every night, 75-year-old Noornissa braves the freezing cold to help block one of the main roads into the capital of India, in a protest that is at the forefront of a rising challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. For nearly four weeks, Noornissa and more than 200 other women have sat and slept across the four-lane road between Delhi and the satellite city Noida, gaining nationwide attention as protests erupted across India over a controversial citizenship law that critics say is anti-Muslim. Men stand guard as the women, from the mainly Muslim area of Shaheen Bagh, sing the US civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" and chant against the Citizenship Amendment Act, passed last month by Modi's Hindu nationalist government.
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| North Korea's Underground Bunkers And Bases Are A Nightmare For America Posted: 10 Jan 2020 03:31 AM PST  What lies within them?
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| U.S. rebuffs Britain's extradition request for diplomat's wife after fatal crash Posted: 10 Jan 2020 12:57 PM PST  WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday rejected a formal request from Britain for the extradition of a U.S. diplomat's wife who left the country last year after a road collision that killed 19-year-old Briton Harry Dunn. British prosecutors are seeking the extradition of Anne Sacoolas over the crash last August in which Dunn was killed while riding his motorbike. "Following the Crown Prosecution Service's charging decision, the Home Office has sent an extradition request to the United States for Anne Sacoolas on charges of causing death by dangerous driving," a UK Home Office spokesman said in a statement on Friday.
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| French Unions Keep Pressure on Macron to Abandon Pension Reforms Posted: 09 Jan 2020 02:46 AM PST |
| Egyptian restores historic synagogue, but few Jews remain Posted: 10 Jan 2020 11:47 AM PST  Egypt reopened a historic synagogue on Friday in the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria after a yearslong government renovation. The country's Jews largely left more than 60 years ago amid the hostilities between Egypt and Israel. The two-story Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue in Alexandria partially collapsed in 2016.
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| A brokered convention is more likely than Elizabeth Warren winning the nomination, FiveThirtyEight forecasts Posted: 10 Jan 2020 09:41 AM PST  The Democratic nominee is starting to take shape in FiveThirtyEight's 2020 vision.The data-driven news site gives former Vice President Joe Biden the best chance of locking down the 2020 Democratic nomination in its primary forecast that debuted Thursday. But things get more complicated beyond the top two candidates, with FiveThirtyEight predicting the Democratic National Committee could arrive at its convention without a nominee.Democratic candidates need to win more than half of pledged delegates ahead of the convention to land the presidential nomination. Biden has a two in five chance of earning that majority, FiveThirtyEight says, while Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) has a one in five chance.But the next most likely outcome isn't that prominent candidates Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg win the nomination. It's that no one gets a majority of delegates at all, FiveThirtyEight predicts. The chances of ending up with a contested convention are one in seven, FiveThirtyEight forecasts. Warren meanwhile gets a one in eight chance of locking up the nomination, Buttigieg gets 1 in 10, and all the other Democrats out there get a collective one in 40.Find more of FiveThirtyEight's primary predictions here.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Rush's Neil Peart dies at age 67 Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive
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| Boy kills teacher, self in Mexico school shooting Posted: 10 Jan 2020 05:28 PM PST  Torreón (Mexico) (AFP) - An 11-year-old boy shot and killed his teacher Friday at a school in northern Mexico and wounded six other people before killing himself, authorities said. As shocked Mexicans searched for explanations for the school shooting -- a rare event for the country -- officials said they were investigating a possible link to the Columbine High School massacre in the US in 1999. Panicked parents rushed to the private elementary school, the Colegio Cervantes, in Torreon as officials evacuated the trim brick building and police and soldiers put it on lockdown.
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| Thousands of Australians are calling for their prime minster's resignation. He's vowed to keep exporting coal, despite the link between fires and climate change. Posted: 10 Jan 2020 09:30 AM PST  Since September, 25 million acres of Australia have caught fire. The resulting smoke plume stretches 1.3 billion acres.
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| Army to consider returning award to Matthew Golsteyn, soldier pardoned by Trump Posted: 09 Jan 2020 03:58 PM PST  President Trump intervened in the case of retired Maj. Matthew Golsteyn and two others. Golsteyn wants his special forces membership reinstated.
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| U.S. Army plans to expand Asian security efforts to counter China Posted: 09 Jan 2020 11:16 PM PST  The U.S. Army plans to deploy two specialized task forces to the Pacific capable of conducting information, electronic, cyber and missile operations against Beijing, a Pentagon official said on Friday. The task forces were slated to deploy over the next two years, U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy said at an event https://brook.gs/39VM3fS in Washington. The units, called Multi-Domain Task Forces, would help neutralize some capabilities China and Russia already possess.
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| U.K. to ‘Hold the Line’ in U.S. Trade Talks on Food, Environment Secretary Says Posted: 09 Jan 2020 08:40 AM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Sign up to our Brexit Bulletin, follow us @Brexit and subscribe to our podcast.Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers said the British government will "hold the line" in post-Brexit trade talks with the U.S. and refuse to allow chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef into the U.K."We will defend our national interests and our values, including our high standards of animal welfare," Villiers said in an interview with the BBC. She said both products are banned under European Union law, and the U.K. will maintain that regulation after it leaves the bloc.Villiers's comments threaten to complicate any trade deal with the U.S. because President Donald Trump's administration has been pushing the British government to ditch EU regulations entirely. U.S. hygiene rules allow chicken to be washed in chlorine to kill off bacteria that can be harmful to humans.To contact the reporter on this story: Stuart Biggs in London at sbiggs3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Robert Hutton, Edward EvansFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| Modi is resurrecting the most horrifying episode of his career to crush dissent Posted: 10 Jan 2020 06:12 AM PST  When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to bring his Gujarat Model to the rest of the country, everyone thought he meant the pro-growth reforms that had allegedly done wonders for the economy of his home state. But the events of last week suggest that the real Gujarat Model that Modi had in mind was something else entirely: Government looking the other way as private militants violently attack disfavored groups. It's a model that infamously resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 men, women, and children, mostly Muslims, over the course of a few days in 2002 when Modi was its chief minister.And now Modi has done a mini re-enactment at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a prestigious college in the heart of New Delhi whose opposition has long irritated him. This is no doubt a warning shot to the growing youth resistance against his "papers, please" citizenship law.Here's what happened at JNU:Sunday evening, 40 to 50 hoodlums, mostly men but also a few women, faces partially wrapped in scarfs, armed with clubs, iron rods, and sledgehammers, stormed the campus. Eyewitness accounts and video footage suggest that several of these people were members of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), a student union associated with Modi's party. They approached a group of students protesting a sudden, massive fee hike and began thrashing them. They bloodied the student president, Aishe Ghosh, and many others.Then, chanting that the students were traitors who deserve to be shot for opposing the administration, the attackers barged into dorm rooms and went on a rampage, taking care to spare rooms that sported ABVP posters. Muslim students were of course fair game. And so was a blind Hindu student, a Sanskrit scholar and a student of Hinduism no less, whose wall sported a picture of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India's reformist founding father. (Ambedkar has fallen from grace in pro-Modi circles because he was a vigorous opponent of the caste system and other regressive Hindu practices and his thought is fueling the constitutional case against Modi's Hindu nationalism.)JNU's vice-chancellor, who is appointed by the central government, failed to mobilize campus security to stop the mayhem. Meanwhile, the Delhi police, which is under the command of the Modi government rather than local authorities, ignored the frantic calls of students for over an hour. There was a veritable battalion of cops standing right outside the campus gates, but not a single one of them went in to stop the attack. As if this is not shocking enough, the cops even stood by as ambulances were vandalized right in front of them.Modi hasn't said a word condemning the violence at JNU. No assailant has yet been charged or arrested. The police claim they're zeroing in on some suspects, but judging by how they have handled cow vigilantes lynching Muslims suspected of consuming beef, the culprits will face no more than a slap on the wrist.Incredibly, at the exact same time that the JNU students were getting bashed, the cops were preparing a rap sheet against some of them, including Ghosh, for allegedly vandalizing university computer servers the day before to stop students from registering. Ghosh denies that allegation. Meanwhile, a video that ABVP circulated — and no less than the vice chancellor retweeted — showing that the Sunday violence was triggered by a prior episode when a "lefty student" punched an ABVP member turned out to be the opposite: an ABVP supporter appears to be attacking a "lefty student."All of this — law enforcement standing by as private militants allied with the ruling party go on a violent spree, criminalizing the victims, spreading disinformation to confuse the public — was precisely Modi's modus operandi in Gujarat. But the ominous parallels with that grisly episode don't stop there.The Gujarat carnage was preceded by a long vilification campaign against Muslims, a strategy he is replicating in miniature against the university. Modi has long castigated JNU students and faculty as communists and traitors who want to break up the country — never mind that last year's Nobel Prize recipient in economics along with two of Modi's own cabinet ministers hail from the university. His Home Minister and right-hand man, Amit Shah, known for his brass knuckles politics, has repeatedly said the university's "tukde tukde gang" — meaning the gang that wants to dismember India piece by piece — needs to be "taught a lesson." Modi popularized this moniker a few years ago when some of JNU's firebrand student leaders harshly protested the abrupt hanging of a Muslim man who had allegedly attacked the Indian parliament.Such statements signaled to Modi and Shah's most extreme supporters that they wanted the university targeted, without having to bother with actually giving orders to law enforcement authorities.Not that the duo is shy about doing so when necessary.A few weeks ago, cops appeared to vandalize Jamia Millia University, a Muslim university in New Delhi. But Modi's comrade, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, went even further. His police showed up at Aligarh Muslim University and roughed up students protesting Modi's faith-cleansing policies that'll strip an untold number of Indian Muslims of citizenship. Over 60 students were injured, three critically. Several students have just disappeared. A Muslim female journalist who was covering a protest in nearby Lucknow was arrested and allegedly assaulted by police.But such tactics are backfiring spectacularly. The anti-government protests, especially on college campuses, are spreading like wildfire. Students at many elite colleges have gone on strike and are holding candle light vigils to protest the events at JNU and AMU along with Modi's nefarious citizenship law.A normal politician would back off in the face of such public opposition and extend an olive branch, especially given how quickly Modi's carefully cultivated squeaky-clean image is getting trashed in India and abroad. But Modi and Shah are doubling down.Previously, they had dubbed secularists defending religious freedom as "Muslim appeasers." Now, even moderate free-market conservatives or middle-of-the-road liberals expressing concern over the direction of the country are being branded as the radical left, Madhvan Narayanan, a veteran Indian journalist, told The Week.Why is Modi doing this? What's his end game?Many fear he is deliberately baiting protesters and fomenting widespread unrest to build an excuse to cancel elections in Delhi next month and put the city under the president's rule. His party is expected to lose handily just as it has done in other state elections in recent months, thanks to the growing dismay over his assaults on citizenship. There is even speculation that he is preparing to suspend India's constitution and declare an emergency, just as Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi notoriously did in 1975.That may or may not be the case. But one open question about Modi always has been whether he was pushing an extreme Hindu nationalist agenda to gain power or vice versa: pursuing power to push his agenda. His growing enemies list — and the private and state violence he will apparently deploy against those on it — suggests that the former might be the case.This means no one outside of Modi's band of merry brothers is safe in India anymore. All of India is Gujarat now. Dissent is out. Violence is in.As one poster at a protest noted: "First AMU. Then JNU. Next You."Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Rush's Neil Peart dies at age 67 Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive
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| Pope warns of risks from US-Iran tensions in policy speech Posted: 09 Jan 2020 02:38 AM PST  Pope Francis warned Thursday that increasing tensions between the U.S. and Iran are setting the stage for a broader conflict in the Mideast while jeopardizing efforts to rebuild Iraq. Francis listed the "particularly troubling" deterioration of U.S.-Iran relations following the U.S. strike that killed Iran's top general in his annual foreign policy address that also touched on climate change and nuclear proliferation. Speaking to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, Francis denounced the "pall of silence" among world leaders about the long-running war in Syria, the humanitarian crisis in Yemen and the intensified fighting in Libya in his global roundup of areas of concern for the Catholic Church.
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| Zimbabwe's VP wife sues husband over access to children, house Posted: 10 Jan 2020 09:17 AM PST  The wife of Zimbabwe's vice president, who faces charges of attempting to murder her husband, has sued over access to their children and home, court papers showed Friday. Marry Mubaiwa, 38, who is the wife of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, 63, was arrested last month on allegations of attempted murder, fraud and contravening currency laws by transferring about $1 million abroad. According to an affidavit filed Thursday, she has not seen her children, and troops have barred her from their matrimonial home.
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| There's a glaring loophole in Trump's latest claim that Soleimani was plotting to attack US embassies when he was assassinated Posted: 10 Jan 2020 02:14 PM PST  Why wasn't Congress informed about Soleimani's alleged attacks when administration officials briefed them on the strike this week?
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| Pakistan mosque blast kills at least 13: police Posted: 10 Jan 2020 07:40 AM PST |
| Japan Orders Deployment of Navy Destroyer to Middle East Posted: 10 Jan 2020 02:22 AM PST |
| Elizabeth Warren: 'I never wash my face' Posted: 09 Jan 2020 09:04 AM PST  Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) might want to consider a big, structural change to her skincare routine.Sure, the 2020 candidate discussed health care policy, the ongoing Iran crisis, and student loan debt in an interview with Cosmopolitan published Thursday. But one of the most standout revelations stemmed from a signature Cosmo question: "What's your skincare routine?""Pond's Moisturizer," Warren concisely responded. "Every morning, every night. And I never wash my face."> Wait. WHAT??! https://t.co/piedy2An49 pic.twitter.com/8FYucV9S8Y> > — Eugene Scott (@Eugene_Scott) January 9, 2020Warren went on to explain she didn't exactly get her tips from Cosmo's pages, but rather from "a much older cousin named Tootsie:"> Years ago, I was, I guess probably somewhere in my 20s, and we're at a big family reunion. And Tootsie was beautiful. I looked over at her, and I said, "Toots, how do you have such gorgeous skin?" She said, "Pond's Moisturizer every morning, every night, and never wash your face." So from Tootsie to me to you.Find Warren's whole interview with Cosmopolitan here.More stories from theweek.com Trump reportedly admitted impeachment played a big role in his Soleimani decision Rush's Neil Peart dies at age 67 Donald Trump is behaving like the guiltiest man alive
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| Virginia lawmaker wants to ban NRA's shooting range Posted: 09 Jan 2020 02:38 PM PST |
| Israel hails 'breakthrough' towards laser air defence system Posted: 10 Jan 2020 02:47 AM PST  The Israeli defence ministry has hailed a "breakthrough" in the development of cheaper laser-based air defences, as tensions soar in the region after Iran hit US targets in retaliation for a high-profile assassination. The lasers, still under development, would be capable of intercepting "everything" fired at Israel, including long and medium range missiles, rockets, mortar rounds and drones, an official told AFP on Thursday, asking not to be identified. The new technology, which Israel hopes to test later this year, uses electricity to power the lasers, doing away with the need for stocks of munitions, the official said.
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| Prepare for severe weather this weekend: Massive storm to bring tornadoes, floods, snow, ice Posted: 10 Jan 2020 11:32 AM PST  A large, powerhouse storm is poised to deliver a variety of nasty weather across the U.S. starting this weekend.
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| College Professor Out After Joke Suggesting Iran List U.S. Cultural Targets Posted: 09 Jan 2020 08:59 AM PST  An adjunct professor is no longer on staff at Babson College in Massachusetts after what he described as a "bad attempt at humor" in a Facebook post, in which he said Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei "should tweet a list of 52 sites of beloved American cultural heritage that he would bomb." The prof suggested those targets might include Minnesota's Mall of America and a home of the Kardashian family, among other locations.The since-deleted Facebook post by Babson's director of sustainability Asheen Phansey has been widely circulated on social media and was first reported by Turtleboysports.com on Tuesday.The Wellesley school said in a statement Thursday that it had suspended Phansey with pay "pending the completion of our investigation" and that the college "condemns any type of threatening words and/or actions condoning violence and/or hate." Hours later, Babson sent another statement, writing: "Based on the results of the investigation, the staff member is no longer a Babson College employee. As we have previously stated, Babson College condemns any type of threatening words and/or actions condoning violence and/or hate."Phansey told local news outlets he regretted making his ill-received "attempt at humor," which was an apparent response to a tweet from President Donald Trump on Saturday warning that, if Iran retaliated for the drone strike killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, it could face attacks from the United States on 52 Iranian sites, including those of cultural significance, a number the president said was symbolic of the 52 American hostages "taken by Iran many years ago."Leaders inside the United States and across the world, including Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, condemned Trump's tweets and accused him of threatening a "war crime," as well as breaching established norms of international law. Days later, Trump grudgingly backed down from that threat after the Pentagon said the U.S. military planned to follow international law.Phansey told The Boston Herald his post was an attempt to "juxtapose our 'cultural sites' with ancient Iranian churches and mosques" and that he is "an American, born and raised."WHDH-TV reported that Phansey was working with a public relations firm to handle the negative press after the post began circulating. "I am completely opposed to violence and would never advocate it by anyone," he told the Herald. "I am sorry that my sloppy humor was read as a threat. I condemn all acts of violence," he said."I am particularly sorry to cause any harm or alarm for my colleagues at Babson, my beloved alma mater and the place where I have enjoyed teaching students and serving as its sustainability director," Phansey added.Phansey's "professional experience spans the software, aerospace, and biotech sectors," according to Babson's website, which also said he holds a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University and an MBA from Babson, where he frequently lectures.For his part, Adam Steinbaugh, director of the the advocacy group FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program, which focuses on student and faculty speech rights, defended Phansey on Thursday. Before news of the professor's ouster broke, Steinbaugh wrote that his post amounted to "core political speech, protected under any principled understanding of freedom of expression" and that, "while Babson College is a private institution not bound by the First Amendment, it has committed itself to principles of academic freedom and freedom of expression." "Babson has betrayed those principles," Steinbaugh said.Lawmakers Fume About Trump Admin's Lack of Iran Explanation After 'Insulting' BriefingRead 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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| Iraq's prime minister told the US to start making plans to withdraw its troops from the country Posted: 10 Jan 2020 06:10 AM PST  Iraq's prime minister told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo the US should send delegates to Iraq to "prepare a mechanism" for a US troop withdrawal.
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| Thailand asks Malaysia to help find Rohingya who escaped detention center Posted: 09 Jan 2020 04:32 AM PST |
| Mexican man slits throat at U.S. border after being denied entry Posted: 09 Jan 2020 02:34 PM PST  A Mexican man has died after slitting his own throat when he was denied entry to the U.S., according to Mexican officials.
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| Former Abe Aide Dismisses Ghosn’s Allegations of Japan Plot Posted: 10 Jan 2020 01:19 AM PST |
| Jennifer Dulos case highlights common scourge, advocates say Posted: 10 Jan 2020 08:22 AM PST  Long before she disappeared, Jennifer Dulos told the court handling her divorce case that her husband was verbally abusive and she feared for her life. In Connecticut and around the country, advocates say the case has helped bring attention to the scourge and highlighted questions about how to improve the family court system. "Jennifer Dulos' experience is that which is experienced by so many survivors of intimate partner violence in the family courts," said Karen Jarmoc, CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
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| McConnell Says Senate Will Move on if Pelosi Does Not Submit Impeachment Articles by Week’s End Posted: 09 Jan 2020 11:20 AM PST  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell warned Thursday that the Senate would move on and "get back to the people's business" if the House continues to withhold the articles of impeachment through the end of the week."This conversation is over," McConnell said from the Senate floor. "Should future House majorities feel empowered to waste our time with junior varsity political hostage situations? Should future Speakers be permitted to conjure up this sword of Damocles at will and leave it hanging over the Senate unless we do what they say? Of course not."House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she expects to send the two impeachment articles the House passed against President Trump, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, over to the Senate for a trial "probably soon.""I'm not holding them indefinitely. I will send them over when I'm ready, and that will probably be soon," Pelosi said Thursday at her weekly press briefing, explaining that House Democrats are waiting to see what the Senate's "terms of engagement" will be.McConnell remained loath to accept the Speaker's explanation for the delay, however."Look. There is real business for the American people that the United States Senate needs to complete," the Kentucky Republican said. "If the Speaker continues to refuse to take her own accusations to trial, the Senate will move forward next week with the business of our people. We will operate under the assumption that House Democrats are too embarrassed to ever move forward."Pelosi has faced increasing pressure to send the articles to the Senate, including from members of her own party."If it's serious and urgent, send them over. If it isn't, don't send it over," remarked California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein."I think the time has past. She should send the articles over," Senator Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said."The Speaker of the House has managed to do the impossible. She has created this growing bipartisan unity here in the Senate in opposition to her own reckless behavior," McConnell quipped.House Democrats have initiated "one of the most grave and most unsettling processes in our Constitution and then refused to allow a resolution of it," the Senate majority leader said before accusing the lower chamber of subjecting the country to an "unending Groundhog Day of impeachment without resolution."
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| All the Insane Surveillance Tools the Government (Maybe) Has Posted: 10 Jan 2020 11:44 AM PST |
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