Your home holds the most valuable things in your life, so make sure it’s protected with a security system. A camera security system gives you peace of mind as it deters break-ins and allows you to visually monitor what’s happening around your home.
Blink XT cameras are weatherproof and work for both indoor and outdoor protection. They have a built-in motion sensor alarm that alerts your smartphone and records a short clip of the triggering event. Read more...
After intense public pressure, Amazon raised its minimum wage. Now it’s challenging other companies to do the same.
On Tuesday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos published his annual letter to shareholders, and the most interesting tidbit may have been a statement directed at other companies, not Amazon.
Bezos patted Amazon on the back for raising its minimum wage to $15 per hour late last year in the letter, calling it as much of a moral imperative as it was a good business decision.
"We strongly believe that this will benefit our business as we invest in our employees. But that is not what drove the decision," Bezos wrote. "We had always offered competitive wages. But we decided it was time to lead – to offer wages that went beyond competitive. We did it because it seemed like the right thing to do." Read more...
Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey are collaborating on a multi-part documentary series to inspire viewers to have a "honest conversation about the challenges each of us faces." Their series will premiere on Apple’s newest video streaming service, Apple TV+, in 2020. Oprah recently announced her partnership with Apple and her plan to use the platform for erasing the stigma surrounding mental health. Read more...
For more than a year, some of the biggest tech companies in the U.S. have been competing for a $10 billion dollar cloud-computing contract with the U.S. Defense Department.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon announced who the two finalists for this extremely lucrative deal are: Amazon and Microsoft.
Tech giants have been seeking out the U.S. government contract for joint enterprise defense infrastructure, or JEDI, since it was first announced in 2017. It is considered to be “one of the largest federal information technology contracts in history” according to the New York Times.
Amy Poehler is all set to make her directorial debut with Wine Country, in which she also stars alongside Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch, Ana Gasteyer, Emily Spivey, Paula Pell, and Tina Fey.
The comedy follows a group of friends as they travel to Napa for a weekend getaway to celebrate Rebecca's (Dratch) big 50th.
There's alcohol, gossiping, lots of introspection, and the cast of my dreams? Count me in.
Wine Country premieres on Netflix May 10. Read more...
Spotty WiFi coverage can be absolutely infuriating — especially when it’s happening in your own home. If you can’t connect to the internet, how else are you going to stream HBO and catch up on Game of Thronesbefore the final season starts this weekend? What you need to do is replace that crappy WiFi router that you skimped on when you first moved into your place.
You can grab a Google Home WiFi System for $40 off on Amazon — it comes with a set of three WiFi points that you can place all over your home, keeping everything connected at once. Read more...
Even though you may have been slurping down ice-cold caffeine all winter, iced coffee season is *officially* upon us. Don’t drop all your money grabbing a venti from Starbucks every morning — instead, invest in a good coffee maker that can give you that delicious cold liquid you crave.
You have a variety of brewing options with the Ninja Coffee Brewer: Choose your size of either cup, travel mug, half carafe, or full carafe, and decide if you want a classic, rich, or over-ice brew. The coffee maker features a single-serve cup platform, so you can brew your favorite grounds directly into your mug without any splashback. Read more...
Jealous of your smart TV-owning friends who spend their nights bundled up watching Netflix in glorious 4K while you’re stuck catching up on Queer Eye on your laptop? Wouldn’t it be so great if you could just transfer your computer screen over to your television seamlessly? Google has you covered with Chromecast, and not one, but *two* of their latest models are currently on sale at Walmart.
And while there's a tremendous amount of excitement for devices like Samsung's Galaxy Fold and Huawei's Mate X, what if they've got it all wrong? What if, instead of a phone transforming into a tablet, the future is a regular-sized phone display that folds in half into a smaller device that fits better in your pocket?
At MWC 2019 earlier this year, TCL teased a handful of foldable phone concepts. Some looked similar to the Galaxy Fold and Mate X with form factors that folded open into larger tablets. But the most intriguing design was for a device with a screen that bent in half like a stack of cash. Read more...
A dependable pair of active noise-canceling headphones is a must for long flights, car rides, and obnoxious conversations from nearby strangers — or you'll be arriving in a foreign airport with no sleep and a massive headache.
Your wallet is likely already hurting from paying for the vacation in the first place, and dropping $350 on headphones isn't the move right now. What is the move is snagging the Audio Technica SonicPro Active Noise Canceling Headphones (ATH-MSR7NC), which are $134 off and just $165 on Amazon today.
In any busy household, you actually have to plan your cleaning schedule around your family's sleep, work, or TV-watching timetable. You would think that if you're doing the housework, then your time should take priority, but just see how that works out when you start vacuuming in the early hours of the morning. You'll definitely hear about it.
If you're tired of this nonsense, then the Eufy RoboVac robotic vacuum range might be a good fit. Unlike a loud and potentially conflict-inducing manual vacuum, the Eufy RoboVac range is quiet — even in the high suction mode.
The Eufy RoboVac works on both hardwood floors and carpet, utilises infrared obstacle sensors, and has two power options that can be operated by a remote control. The Eufy RoboVac 11C and RoboVac 11S are also on sale right now, with no code required to access the discount: Read more...
Chrissy Teigen isn't afraid to swear, and she's encouraging all women to join her in frequently dropping the F-bomb.
On Monday, Teigen and her husband John Legend helped kick off a three-day policy retreat for House Democrats by speaking about politics, their feelings about Trump and social media, and, of course, the one phrase Teigen feels women should say more often.
At one point during the discussion, moderator and political commentator Melissa Harris-Perry noted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi encouraged women start saying "no" more. Harris-Perry asked Teigen what she'd like to hear women say more often, and she bluntly replied, "Fuck you." Beautiful. Read more...
Because there aren't enough things in the world to worry about, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones made his return to YouTube on Wednesday courtesy of Logan Paul and his Impaulsive podcast.
For over two hours, Jones held court, talking about he loves being a "super-villain" and declaring his innocence in regards to the Sandy Hook conspiracies. While Paul and his co-hosts offer some soft pushback on a few items, they mostly give Jones free rein to pontificate on his theories, including Pizzagate and the claims the Sandy Hook shooting was a false flag.
Not that anyone would expect hard-hitting journalism from Logan Paul, but giving such a wide-open platform to Jones is one of his more egregious acts yet. Jones and his outlet, InfoWars, were banned from YouTube last fall for violating its community guidelines. Read more...
A good hand mixer is vital if you bake on the reg, but there’s no need to dish out a large chunk of change for one when less expensive models can handle your ingredients.
The Pioneer Woman vintage floral hand mixer from Hamilton Beach gets the job done and is on sale for just $14.99, down from $29.96. Plus, the design adds a pretty touch to your kitchen.
This mixer has a slow speed that’s actually slow, which means your ingredients won’t go flying everywhere when you turn it on. But it also rotates fast enough to whip up airy meringue.
Even if you have known someone for years, they can still surprise you. Your colleague might announce one day that they can play the bassoon, or your old school friend could show you their enormous cat tattoo. We all have our secrets.
You might think you know Amazon pretty well, but are you familiar with Amazon Warehouse? Amazon's very own cat tattoo specialises in offering great deals on returned, warehouse-damaged, used, or refurbished products that are in good condition but do not meet Amazon's rigorous standards as "new".
All of the products are backed by Amazon's satisfaction guarantee, so if you are unsatisfied with the product for any reason, you can still return the item so long as it's in accordance with Amazon's Returns Policy. Everything is thoroughly tested though, with each product given a specific grade before being sold. So you should feel assured that what you are getting is a quality product. Read more...
Not everyone feels the warm and fuzzies for cold-blooded creatures.
A YouTube video posted by Ashley Robine shows what happens when an unstoppable force (a lizard, chilling) meets an immovable object (someone with a fear of lizards).
"My brother came to visit, when he was not paying attention we put our bearded dragon Rico on him," the description says. "This was his reaction."
The man immediately starts yelling "Pick him up! Pick him up! Pick him up!" repeatedly in a panic. "You are FIRED!" he says to the small child who did not pick up the lizard.
Poor Rico. He just wanted to give him a hug. Read more...
We all use them. Single-use plastic bottles are readily available and inexpensive to buy, so it's easy to see why so many people drink water from them all the time. In fact, the entire world goes through about a million (yes, that's one million) plastic bottles a minute, with only less than 9 percent of them finding their way into recycling bins after use. It's estimated that about half a trillion plastic bottles will be sold around the world by the year 2020.
Meanwhile, the end result of all this inexpensive convenience is a floating island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean that's estimated to be three times the size of France. Clearly, drinking bottled water is a nasty habit that has to stop, so why not break the cycle and get a reusable water bottle instead. Read more...
As it does with almost everything, Game of Thrones is bringing fan art to the next level with Create For The Throne, giving fan artists around the world the chance to reimagine Game of Thrones props.
The full collection of art will soon debut on Game of Thrones' social channels as well as partially at a Game of Thrones premiere party in New York.
HBO worked with advertising agency 360i on CFTT, part of the larger #ForTheThrone marketing campaign for Season 8. They enlisted artists from around the world to jumpstart this project, including the U.S., U.K., Japan, and more. Read more...
Whether you’re starting a new fitness plan, resolving to get healthy this year, or just trying to watch your weight, it’s time to ditch your old analog scale and upgrade to a smart scale.
Typical scales only measure your weight — which is fine if that’s all you’re looking for. Smart scales provide you with extra data that can help you tailor your weight-loss plan. These scales have apps or online services to track various metrics and store the information for you. Most of the apps are compatible with other fitness apps such as Fitbit, Apple Health, and Google Fit, so you can sync your data where you want it. Read more...
The Secret Lives of Pets 2 trailer is here to prove that nothing is better than emotional, extremely cute animated pets.
A sequel to the 2016 comedy, Pets 2 continues the adventures of a Jack Russell Terrier named Max (Patton Oswalt) and his assortment of animal friends after they've been left alone for the day by their owners.
The cast also includes Jenny Slate, Tiffany Haddish, Kevin Hart, Ellie Kemper, Nick Kroll, Lake Bell, and Eric Stonestreet.
The Secret Lives of Pets 2 hits theaters June 7. Read more...
If you've ever tried to choose between supporting similar campaigns for the same worthy cause on GoFundMe, you know it can be challenging to pick just one.
That's why the crowdfunding site launched GoFundMe.org Causes on Thursday. The initiative allows donors to support several campaigns related to one of six causes: animal rescue, mental health, environment, kindergarten through high school classrooms, veterans, and kid heroes.
The company knows its donors are passionate about these issues, said Raquel Rozas, chief marketing officer of GoFundMe. New topics will be added in the future.
A single donation to one cause will be distributed to multiple individuals and nonprofit organizations vetted in part by the new GoFundMe.org, an independent public charity working with GoFundMe. Read more...
For the past five years, Jess Kurti has been trying to finish what she dubbed the "Beast of Burden Challenge."
That moment finally arrives Thursday, when Kurti volunteers at the Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank in Virginia. The day of service, which includes distributing food boxes to elderly recipients and people with disabilities, ends her quest to volunteer at all 200 of the food banks in the Feeding America network. The domestic hunger-relief organization says that, to its knowledge, Kurti is the first person to ever accomplish this feat.
Kurti, 47, had volunteered at her local food bank before setting out on what amounted to a years long road trip to volunteer at hundreds of them. After a period of "soul searching" that followed losing her job as a meter reader in Fort Myers, Florida, in 2012, Kurti wanted a drastic change. She recalled how good it felt to know her efforts at a food bank directly helped someone in need. Read more...
Who should end up on the Iron Throne? We've got some ideas.
OK folks, it's time to get seriousGame of Thrones Season 8 is almost here and some of you are still operating under the illusion that there's some kind of happy ending in the making for any of these characters.
Put aside the betrayal of the Starks, the fall of Winterfell, the Red Wedding, the existence of Ramsay Bolton, and all the other horrible shit that's happened since the show startedGame of Thrones is a reflection of reality, and in reality the bad guys win a lot of the time.
It's National Pet Day. Today is the day to give some extra love to your pets. Why not treat your fur babies to a Barkbox plush toy bundle which is available for small, medium, and large dogs for only $24.99 todayAmazon is also offering 30% off on Wellness Core dry dog food, so that you can give your dog an extra tasty, nutritious dinner this week.
Someone invented a condom to promote consent in relationships. Problem is, the people behind the product seem to have a very limited understanding of consent and sexual assault.
And the problems don't end there. Women have been voicing their concerns on Twitter about the condom's gamification of consent through the product's resemblance to a Rubick's Cube. Some have also raised concerns that the product appears designed to "protect men from rape accusations" rather than protecting women from sexual violence.
A team of researchers at UC Berkeley built a low-cost robotic arm that is safe for humans to work alongsideBLUE's creators hope that its $5,000 price tag will make it affordable enough to allow more people to experiment with AI-powered robotics. Read more...
We're about halfway through the Amazon Spring Sale, and there hasn't been much that has escaped the cut. We have seen deals on TVs, smartphones, speakers, headphones, and more.
The focus of this deals round-up is on smart home devices and personal care products, alongside a hand-picked selection of the very best offers on everything else. You can save on top brands like Oral-B, Logitech, Wahl, and Nokia. You can also find a wide range of discounted Amazon devices, like the Echo, Echo Dot, and Fire TV Stick.
These are the best deals from across the internet for April 11.
Best of the best
Take your pick from the very best deals in the Amazon Spring Sale for April 11, including Logitech gaming accessories, Withings/Nokia smartwatches, and De'Longhi coffee starter kits. Read more...
There are two ways to catch up on Game of Thrones before the start of the final Season: 1) lock yourself in a room and binge-watch every single one of the show's 67 episodes, or 2) watch a fairly entertaining rap of all the key points, courtesy of James Corden.
Frankly this is Game of Thrones we're talking about, so in an ideal world you should pick option one. But we won't judge you if you'd rather go for the rap instead. Read more...
Xfyro has made the first-ever fully waterproof wireless earbuds. They're comfortable, secure, and magnetically connect to the battery case so you can enjoy a total listening time of 20-30 hours before having to recharge your case.
To see how text predictors work in action, we will predict tweets by four Twitter accounts: Barack Obama, Justin Timberlake, Kim Kardashian and Lady Gaga.
Access a wealth of amazing, free HDTV with this paper-thin ANTOP 30-Mile Antenna. With its massive range, you can access channels like ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox, Univision, and much more.
"I'd never heard of anybody being taken by an online romance, I'd only heard the good stuff. So I kind of went into it trusting that what was going to happen would be good."
A million dollars is more money than most people have, or ever will possess at any one time. But it is not more money than anyone could ever need — not if their source of household cash stops flowing in, and money starts flowing out in earnest.
By March 2018, a year after Google thought it had been vanquished, Chamois hit an all-time high, infecting 20.8 million devices. Now, a year after that zenith, the Android team has whittled that number back down to fewer than 2 million infections.
Nearly a year ago, the Lakers upended the NBA by signing LeBron James, with Magic Johnson engineering the deal. Now, the team ends the season in chaos and far from its championship era.
A cold-case squad in Virginia Beach identified Mr. Broadnax, who is in his 80s, as a suspect by using technology that did not even exist when the women, Lynn Seethaler and Janice Pietropola, both 19, were killed inside a motel cottage near the oceanfront.
Gabe Reed was a failed rock star who reinvented himself as a concert promoter. Now he's in prison for defrauding fans and rock's elite out of $1.7 million.
Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces stand guard over veiled women in al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, which houses relatives of Islamic State group members
Baghdad in talks with US to receive remnants of terror group held in detention centres in Syria.
Baghdad and Washington are in talks to transfer and place on trial tens of thousands of suspected Isis fighters and their families from detention centres in Syria to prison camps in Iraq, with Iraqi officials seeking a multibillion dollar fee to receive remnants of the terror group captured over five years of war.
Discussions about what to do with Isis members, among them thousands of foreign men, women and children, have been pushed intensively by US officials, who have also lobbied coalition partners to remove their citizens from two cramped detention centres in Syria's north-east, which one former senior US official described as a "volcano".
SteveM1989MREInfo has tried rations from the American Civil War to the 21st century.
A YouTuber dedicated to reviewing soldier rations, past and present, has finally run into one pack of military chow even he can't eat.
Steve1989MREInfo has reviewed rations from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, in conflicts from the American Civil War (believe it) to those feeding troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He's reviewed scores of military rations from countries as diverse as the U.S., Russia, Spain, the U.K., South Korea, Belarus, France, New Zealand, Finland, Canada, Japan, Slovenia, and Indonesia. "Steve" has eaten it all...or tried to.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara wave as Netanyahu speaks following the announcement of exit polls in Israel's parliamentary election at the party headquarters in Tel Aviv. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
A new blackout across large parts of crisis-hit Venezuela, including the capital Caracas, forced many to spend another night in the dark on Tuesday.
The electricity shortage -- the biggest in a week -- hit a large section of the capital, with social media posts from residents across the country suggesting significant areas in at least 20 of the 23 states of Venezuela were also affected.
An hour after the lights went out, some areas of the capital regained power.
No reason for the blackout was immediately given by the government or the state electricity company Corpoelec.
The company set up to confront the crisis "is working to reestablish the service", said state TV channel VTV.
Deploying troops to the U.S.-Mexico hasn't hurt Marine Corps readiness as much as previously reported, Commandant Gen. Robert Neller told lawmakers on Tuesday, directly contradicting the "unacceptable risk" to readiness the Corps' top officer had explicitly detailed in a pair of internal memos that leaked last month.
Neller testified before the Senate Armed Service Committee that despite the "unacceptable risk to Marine Corps combat readiness and solvency" posed to Marines by "unplanned/unbudgeted" exigencies detailed in the leaked memos in March, Trump's border deployments hadn't actually affected Marines.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo leaves his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he called for China to be included in the next START nuclear reduction treaty with Russia
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that China should join in the next START treaty on curbing nuclear warheads as Washington prepares for talks on an extension with Russia.
The New START treaty, which caps the number of nuclear warheads well below Cold War limits, is set to expire in 2021 at a time of high tensions between Russia and the United States.
Pompeo said that Russia and the United States have both shown "large compliance" with New START -- unlike the separate INF treaty on medium-range missiles from which Washington this year said it would pull out, accusing Moscow of violations.
WNU Editor: China has said no in the past. In the current environment, I do not see China joining any talks that will expose its current nuclear posture.
The advance of a rogue militia on Tripoli, the capital city of Libya, has forced the hasty evacuation of U.S. troops from that country, highlighting the lack of a cohesive strategy for ongoing U.S. military operations in Africa and a seeming White House ambivalence about the continent, according to former officials.
For several years, from a handful of outposts in Libya, U.S. special operators have been conducting counterterrorism missions with names like Obsidian Lotus and Odyssey Resolve. These are just two of dozens of named operations that, largely unknown to the American public, have been launched from a string of bases across the northern half of Africa, according to information obtained by Yahoo News via the Freedom of Information Act.
Attorney General Barr on Mueller Report: "I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016…I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal." pic.twitter.com/uz4tIqGIaa
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Wednesday he would look into whether U.S. agencies illegally spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, bringing criticism from Democrats who accused him of promoting a conspiracy theory.
Barr, who was appointed by Trump, is already facing criticism by congressional Democrats for how he has handled the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report into the Russia probe and his comments about surveillance brought more derision from Democratic senators.
His testimony echoed longstanding allegations by Trump and Republican allies that seeks to cast doubt on the early days of the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in an apparent attempt to discredit Mueller, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
"This is a night of an incredible, incredible victory" proclaimed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his triumphant speech late Tuesday night. And Netanyahu's victory in this election was historic indeed. He is now poised to become Israel's longest serving prime minister; in a few months, exceeding the tenure of founding father David Ben Gurion. Netanyahu won despite facing indictment on multiple corruption charges and a quartet of challengers that included three former IDF chiefs of staff (who should have easily trumped Netanyahu's self-self-appointed monicker of "Mr. Security," but did not .)
Indians will head to the polls on Thursday to vote in the first phase of a general election that is being seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Tens of millions of Indians across 20 states and union territories will cast their votes in 91 constituencies.
The seven-phase vote to elect a new lower house of parliament will continue until 19 May. Counting day is 23 May.
With 900 million eligible voters, this is the largest election ever seen.
* A Humvee sporting a cannibalized armored-car turret was spotted in Libya. * The souped-up battlewagon appeared to in the service of a militia that's involved in a recent increase in fighting in the war-torn country.
There's really only one message you can send when you roll up in your neighborhood with a 90mm cannon on the back of your vehicle: I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass...and I'm all out of bubblegum.
A Humvee with what appears to be a heavily-modified turret from an armored car was spotted cruising through the Libyan town of Wadi al Rabith just south of the capitol of Tripoli over the weekend.
Eastern forces and troops loyal to the government in Tripoli continue to fight on outskirts of Libya's capital as the battle forced thousands of residents to flee their homes.
The Libyan National Army (LNA) forces of eastern commander Khalifa Haftar had taken up positions in the suburbs about 11 km (7 miles) south of the centre, with steel containers and pickups with mounted machine-guns blocking their way into the city.
Residents reported LNA planes buzzing Tripoli and the sound of clashes in outskirts of the city.
In central Tripoli, there were no signs of military and security vehicles or personnel on the streets. But shops and cafes have been closing earlier than usual in the evening and residents were apprehensive about the prospect of violence.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey warned on Wednesday that it could buy jets and additional air defense systems from Russia if it cannot get Patriot missile shields and F-35 jets from Washington, raising the prospect of ever deeper defense ties between Moscow and a NATO member.
President Tayyip Erdogan's existing plans to buy Russian S-400 missile defenses have already alarmed the United States, which says they are not compatible with NATO systems and would compromise the security of F-35 jets Turkey is due to receive.
Washington has offered Ankara both carrot and stick in response, proposing to sell it the Raytheon Co. Patriot systems instead of the S-400s, while at the same time warning of sanctions and a halt in the F-35 fighter jet sales if the Russian deal goes ahead.
Theresa May could be forced to step down as early as 2 May 2019 if the Conservatives suffer poor results in local elections. Photograph: Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters
The next few months present a gauntlet of hurdles at which the PM could finally fall
Theresa May has agreed to step down as prime minister before the next election and said she would resign sooner if MPs backed her withdrawal agreement. This has prompted cabinet members to begin jockeying for position to replace her. But the race will not start for real until May formally quits, and she is keeping everyone guessing on when that will be.
The next few weeks and months present a number of hurdles where she could finally fall.
European Union leaders are set to grant Britain a long extension of Article 50 — the mechanism that notifies the EU that the UK will leave the bloc — at an emergency summit on Wednesday.
UK prime minister Theresa May went on a whistle-stop tour of Germany and France on Tuesday to shore up support from two of the 28-nation bloc's most influential officials to delay Brexit until 30 June. However, as European Council chief Donald Tusk stipulated earlier this month, as well as Tuesday night in a formal letter on the eve of the summit, he is pushing for member states to offer a one-year "flexible" extension to Article 50 with the option to withdraw any time during that period, if UK parliament comes to an agreement.
* Trump: Netanyahu's victory is good sign for peace * Likud, Kahol Lavan tied with 35 seats each, but the right leads 65-55 * Netanyahu makes celebratory speech: 'A night of great victory' * Gesher, Zehut, Hayamin Hehadash fail to enter Knesset
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has all but secured a 5th term on Wednesday morning, after more than 95 percent of the votes gave the right-wing bloc a 10-seat lead over the left.
Netanyahu's Likud tied with Benny Gantz's Kahol Lavan party with 35 seats each. Both leaders made victory speeches after the exit polls, vowing to be "everyone's prime minister."
But almost all right-wing parties have said they would recommend to the president that Netanyahu form the next ruling coalition. Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked's Hayamin Hehadash, as well as the far-right Zehut party led by Moshe Feiglin and Orly Levi-Abekasis' Gesher did not make it past the electoral threshold.
* President took an angry victory lap as Attorney General Bill Barr prepares to release Mueller report * Told reporters at the White House that the Russia probe was 'illegal' and its organizers and leaders were guilty of 'treason' * 'This was an attempted coup. An attempt to take down the president. And we beat them,' he said at the White House * The president said he hopes Barr investigates how he was targeted by an 'illegal' probe that he has called a 'witch hunt' * 'There is a hunger for that to happen in this country like nothing I've ever seen before'
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Justice Department officials who organized and conducted Special Counsel Robert Mueller's 'illegal' 22-month probe into Russian election interference were trying to seize the reins of the U.S. government from him.
'This was an attempted coup. An attempt to take down the president. And we beat them,' he told reporters as he left the White House for a Texas fundraiser.
Trump's newly aggressive victory lap comes as Attorney General Bill Barr is expected in the coming days to release Mueller's final report, a document Trump hasn't read and says he doesn't care to.
* Barr testified in the Senate during his second day in the Capitol * He was asked about his statement that he was reviewing FBI conduct * He told senators he was looking at surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2016 * His comment came shortly after Trump complained of an 'attempted coup' and blasted the Mueller investigation as 'illegal' * The president also invoked 'treason' * Barr said 'spying did occur' and that 'spying' on a campaign is a 'big deal' * Said he is assembling a team to look at the matter
Attorney General Bill Barr said there was U.S. 'spying' against President Trump's 2016 campaign, telling senators Wednesday it was a 'big deal' as he announced he was assembling a team to review investigative conduct during the elections.
'I think spying did occur,' Barr said at a Senate hearing in response to a question from Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.
Although he was non-specific about what he was referring to by spying, Barr mentioned the intelligence community.
He spoke moments after President Trump complained of an 'attempted coup' against him, invoked 'treason,' and blasted the Mueller investigation as 'illegal' – while calling for looking back at how it 'all started.'
* Chinese researchers say US military, including Indo-Pacific Command, has been given more decision-making authority by Trump administration * It comes amid an increase in the frequency and intensity of activities in the disputed waterway
There may be a greater risk of incidents between the United States and Chinese navies in the South China Sea because the US military has been given more decision-making authority, a Chinese think tank warned on Tuesday.
In a report, the think tank said the White House National Security Council had become less involved in US military activities in the disputed region, despite an increase in their frequency and intensity. "The US military will continue intensifying military operations in the South China Sea , constantly exploring the grey zones between peace and conflict, and probing China's bottom line, which will inevitably push the threshold of small-scale armed conflict and war," according to the report released by Peking University's South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative.
US move puts Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief on same level as ISIS fugitive Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the commander of Iran's Quds Force, Maj Gen Qassem Suleimani, is a terrorist and will be viewed the same way as extremists including ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi.
Washington designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group on Monday. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain added the organisation to their terrorism lists in October last year.
It is not clear if that makes Maj Gen Suleimani a military target of the Gulf states.
"He's a terrorist. Qassem Suleimani has the blood of Americans on his hands, as do the forces he leads," Mr Pompeo told US broadcaster Fox.
Increasingly, moves by governments to filter and restrict content are threatening to fragment the system created with the promise of connecting the world with a largely unified body of content.
China for years has walled off some western services, and the fragmentation may be accelerating with regulations being imposed elsewhere, say analysts.
This is leading to a "splinternet," a term circulated for a decade or more but gaining more traction in recent months.
"The internet is already fragmented in material ways, but each regulator around the world thinks they know how to fix the internet," said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University.
"I think we will see a tsunami of regulations that will lead to a further splintering of the internet."
WNU Editor: I did a post about a decade ago where I felt that the golden age of the internet, with its diverse content and freedoms, was coming to an end. Governments by their nature like to control and regulate human activities, and the internet was a frontier that they had no control of when it exploded in the 1990s until now.
A new op-ed in Bloomberg Quint has noted what the United States should really be worried about regarding Beijing's intentions after a year of tense China-US Navy encounters in the South China Sea. This potential threat, which is "far harder to discern," involves the world's some 380 underwater cables carrying more than 95% of all data and voice traffic between the continents. Could China be stealthily hacking them? It is certainly now in a better position to do so.
President Donald Trump will face a difficult, potentially dangerous, decision when he meets with South Korean president Moon Jae-In at the White House today, three U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell TIME.
The U.S. intelligence community has advised the White House that Moon will ask Trump to ease some of the economic sanctions imposed on North Korea for its rogue nuclear and missile programs, the officials say.
If Trump says Yes, that could help restart diplomatic talks that have stalled since his failed Hanoi summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un last February. But even a modest concession on sanctions could solidify Pyongyang’s status as a nuclear weapons power, leaving U.S. allies in northeast Asia vulnerable and potentially launching a regional arms race.
Trump could avoid that outcome by saying No to Moon’s request. But that risks a return to the saber rattling, or worse, that marked the early days of Trump’s tenure, when fears of war with North Korea spiked. Kim recently signaled his readiness to return to confrontation, despite Trump’s public assertions that the two leaders are good friends.
The Catch-22 is the result of bad diplomacy by both Trump and Kim, the U.S. officials say.
Trump continues to believe that a combination of personal diplomacy and economic pressure will eventually get Kim to abandon his nuclear arsenal, the officials say. Trump is still ignoring the unanimous assessment of intelligence, defense and State Department officials that Kim never will.
Kim, for his part, remains wedded to the idea that Trump will accept an agreement that implicitly concedes North Korea’s nuclear status in exchange for a formal end to the Korean War after 66 years. Trump, Kim is betting, cares more about claiming credit for a diplomatic win than actually solving the problem of a nuclear North Korea.
Kim may be right. Even without a deal, Trump has taken a few small steps in Moon’s direction, including last month calling off two major joint military exercises with U.S. and South Korean forces. Trump also has claimed that he has eliminated the nuclear threat from Pyongyang. That claim that has fallen on deaf ears in Tokyo, Seoul, and U.S. forces in Northeast Asia, all of whom lie within range of a potential missile strike from North Korea.
Administration hawks worry that giving North Korea even symbolic sanctions relief now would remove some of the diplomatic pressure on Russia and China to crack down on Pyongyang. China reportedly just opened a new bridge to North Korea.
However, continuing to demand that Kim has to eat his meat before he can have any pudding, as Trump did at his summit with Kim in Hanoi, risks North Korea launching its response from the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground and ending its moratorium on missile testing, as Kim has threatened to do. That, in turn, could escalate tensions, sparking a return to Trump threats of military action and an end to the North’s moratorium on nuclear and missile testing.
Japan, whose relationship with South Korea remains troubled and whose confidence in the U.S. has been shaken by Trump’s transactional approach to international alliances, moved on Tuesday to extend its sanctions on North Korea for another two years.
There may be a way out for Trump, the U.S. officials say: punt the problem to Moon. The South Korean leader has staked his presidency on mending fences with the North. Saying neither yes nor no—that is, stalling—could buy time for Moon to cook up an interim deal that saves face for both Trump and Kim.
Even that option isn’t a solution to the problem, however. Handing the radioactive hot potato to Moon might result in better relations on the Korean Peninsula in the medium term, but it is unlikely to address the longer-term challenges that come from North Korea’s nuclear and conventional threats.
But at least, the U.S. officials say, punting to Moon would be better than conceding a nuclear North Korea, or threatening war to prevent it.
The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has been arrested by U.K. police at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been holed up since 2012.
Assange, 47, received diplomatic asylum from Ecuador after breaching bail in the U.K. during an investigation into sexual assault allegations in Sweden. Sweden has since rescinded its arrest warrant for Assange, though the case is not closed. Ecuador withdrew asylum on Thursday morning.
The WikiLeaks founder shot to prominence in 2010 when his site published a cache of leaks from the U.S. military provided by Chelsea Manning. He has argued that if he were extradited to Sweden then he could be arrested by the U.S.
The U.S. has not publicly stated that Assange is facing charges, but in November a court filing appeared to mistakenly refer to charges filed against him in secret by the Department of Justice.
Britain today is consumed by its relationship with Europe. Almost three years after 52% of U.K. voters opted to leave the European Union, lawmakers and the public are still struggling to decide what they want their future relationship with the bloc to look like, forcing Prime Minister Theresa May to repeatedly ask other E.U. leaders for an extension of the exit date. On April 10, they set a new deadline of October 31. “Please do not waste this time,” European Council president Donald Tusk warned British lawmakers.
Many Brits want a Brexit deal that keeps them close to the E.U., allowing deep trade links, free migration and shared regulations. Others would prefer, if no satisfactory plan emerges, to crash out of the bloc with no deal in place, and instead forge a new national identity outside of Europe. Others still, millions of them, are calling for an new referendum.
But Brexit is far from the first time Britain has questioned whether it really belongs with the continent that surrounds it. For centuries, from the Roman invasion to the joining of the E.U.’s predecessor in 1973, Britain has alternated between moving closer to and pulling away from Europe. TIME spoke to British historian Jeremy Black, a Professor at Exeter University and author of Britain and Europe: A Short History, about five key chapters in the history of that relationship, and what they might reveal about the U.K.’s current existential crisis.
The Roman invasion
Britain’s first major contact with the continent across the sea came around 55-54 BC, when Julius Caesar arrived and began incorporating much of modern-day England and Wales into the sprawling Roman empire. A century later, in 43 AD, a full-scale invasion followed. From then, for almost 400 years, southern Britain was ruled from Rome. (However, the invaders never managed to tame unruly Scotland, and in 128 AD Emperor Hadrian built at 73-mile coast-to-coast wall on the northwest edge of its territory to keep the northerners out.)
DEA / M. BORCHI—De Agostini via Getty ImagesHadrian’s Wall (UNESCO World Heritage Site, 1987), seen near Housesteads, U.K.
Black says that during this period indigenous pagan religions began to be “amalgamated” with Roman cults, while elites forged cultural ties with Rome. Meanwhile, trade with the rest of the Roman-ruled continent “developed greatly.” Crucially, Roman traders traveling to Europe spread the story of Jesus. Though Christianity remained a marginal faith in Britain for hundreds of years, once it took hold, the religion — and the question of how it should be practiced — would become the defining factor in Britain’s relationship with Europe, tying them together for centuries after the end of Roman rule in around 410 AD.
The Reformation
By the beginning of the 1500s, England had been looking to the Pope for religious authority for almost 1,000 years, ever since church rulers had in the 600s opted to follow the rules and regulations of Roman Catholicism, rather than those preached by Irish monks. The Reformation — “Britain’s greatest-ever break with Europe,” Black says — would change that.
In Western Europe, German monk Martin Luther was speaking out about the corruption and excess he perceived in the Catholic Church. By the mid-1520s, his ideas had sparked fierce debate among academics in England. Some were beginning to see papal authority as an affront to English sovereignty. Around the same time, King Henry VIII had his own grievance with the church: Pope Clement VII had refused to annul his marriage to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, which he needed in order to marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn. Henry decided to break with Rome and Catholicism, forging ahead with his divorce, founding the Christian Church of England in 1534 and dissolving monasteries across the country.
“The Reformation was highly divisive,” Black says. “Minorities who remained Catholic objected to the Reformation, of course, and Protestants objected to Catholics having, as they saw it, a loyalty to a foreign jurisdiction.”
Black argues that the Reformation debate in some ways resembles the U.K.’s current struggle with Brexit. “During both episodes, people on both sides focus a lot more on identity, emotion [and] a sense of commitment than we see in normal British politics, which is more about compromise,” he says. “These aren’t areas where people seem to find it very easy to compromise.”
War with France and the rise of the British Empire
After the Reformation, Britain — as the country became known in 1707 with the parliamentary unification of England, Wales and Scotland — couldn’t just ignore its European neighbors. That much is clear from the series of wars with France, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and others that punctuated Britain’s 17th and 18th Centuries and early 19th Centuries. The bulk of these conflicts were sparked by disagreements over commercial interests or who should control seas and territories. The Seven Years War (1756-63), for example, plunged Britain and a dozen other European countries into war after the Austrian Habsburgs tried to take back a province from Prussia. Later, Britain and France took different sides in the American Revolution (1775-1783), with France making a decisive contribution to the Americans’ victory and incurring heavy debts in the process.
Britain’s continental conflicts in this period ended at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815; the British defeated French Military leader Napoleon Bonaparte, who famously envisaged a proto-E.U., saying in 1805 he wanted to create “a European legal system, a European appeal court, a common currency, the same weights and measures, the same laws.”
National Museum & Galleries of Wales Enterprises Limited/Heritage Images/Getty ImagesThe battle of Waterloo’, 1813-1869. Artist: George Jones.
Far from Napoleon’s vision of tightening European links, over the next century the continent became less and less important to Britain, Black says, because it had a new overseas priority: the British Empire. Starting in the 15th Century and ramping up in the 18th Century, Britain colonized so many countries and territories that, at its peak in the early 1900s, it covered one quarter of all the land on earth, stretching from Canada to India to Australia.
The wealth and influence generated by the empire, and the time and attention it required to maintain, distracted Brits from events geographically closer to home, Black says. After seeing off Napoleon, the British didn’t send an army to the continent for almost a century, when the First World War broke out in 1914. “During the period of empire, Britain was looking economically, culturally and politically across the oceans,” Black says. “In, say, 1850, when most British people picked up their newspapers, they would know more about what was going on in the United States or in Canada than they did about what was going on in Helsinki or Warsaw, or even places closer in.”
In one sense, the World Wars forced Britain to see itself as part of a wider European community. It was drawn into both World Wars I and II because it had made public promises to protect other European countries (Belgium in 1914 and Poland in 1939) from German aggression, Black points out. But in the latter case, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was keen to stress that Britain’s involvement was about more than Europe.
“This is not a question of fighting for Danzig [Gdansk] or fighting for Poland,” he told Parliament as they debated a declaration of war in 1939. “We are fighting to save the whole world from the pestilence of Nazi tyranny and in defense of all that is sacred to man.”
After the horrors of WWII, which ended in 1945, countries in Western Europe hoped that stronger ties between neighbors could be a way of preventing future wars. So, six of them formed the first of the E.U.’s predecessors. But Black says Britain wasn’t ready to follow them. “There was still view in the late ’40s in Britain that winning the war was an affirmation of what they’ve been doing, how they’ve been organized,” he says. “There wasn’t the same sense of ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to change things’ as there was in Europe.”
Hulton Deutsch/Corbis/Getty ImagesLondoners read the newspapers headlines about Britain’s entry to the Common Market, January, 1973.
British decline and joining the EEC
The two decades after WWII were a tough time for Brits who wanted to see themselves as world leaders. By the 1960s, most of the empire’s former colonies — along with those of other European nations — had become independent countries. And the 1956 Suez Crisis, in which the U.S. refused to support Anglo-French attempts to retake the Suez canal after the Egyptian government nationalized it, left the U.K. feeling abandoned by its most powerful ally.
The desire to reclaim lost influence, Black says, drove British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to finally apply join the rest of Europe in what was by then called the European Economic Community, which it finally did in 1973. “They saw it as a potential way to regain their status as a world power,” he says.
Reporting on an 11-day “Fanfare for Europe” event organized by the government to celebrate the U.K.’s entrance into the bloc, TIME noted that “most Britons were more inclined to view the event with resignation, opposition or, like TV comedian Benny Hill, as an occasion for satire […] English housewives worry that their food prices will skyrocket to Common Market levels.”
While Britain’s enthusiasm for the E.U. seemed to have grown by 1975, when 67% of voters in a referendum opted to remain in the bloc, the country never adopted the shared currency, the euro, which was put into use by 11 member states in 1999. Nor did it joined the Schengen agreements, which abolished border controls and allows people to move freely across 25 states. British politicians have long resisted further integration with Europe — most famously, in Margaret Thatcher’s 1990 response to calls for more centralized control of Europe: “No, no, no.”
“Britain has always viewed itself as a semi-detached member of the E.U,” Black says, citing both the British Isles’ geographical separation and the “outward looking” legacy of imperial ties to countries like the U.S. and Australia as reasons for that mindset.
That semi-detachment may be about to become a lot more pronounced. But however Brexit ends, history suggests it won’t be the end of Britain’s tussle with its European identity.
(CAIRO) — Sudan’s armed forces were to deliver an “important statement” and asked the nation to “wait for it” on Thursday, state TV reported, as two senior officials said the military had forced longtime President Omar al-Bashir to step down.
The circumstances of al-Bashir’s apparent ouster and his current whereabouts remained unclear, however.
State TV said an army statement was imminent amid swirling reports of a coup to replace the president of 30 years following mass street protests against his rule. The announcement raised expectations it was a sign al-Bashir was relinquishing power or was being removed by the military.
The two officials, who hold high positions in the government and the military, said the army was now in talks about forming a transitional government. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Pan-Arab TV networks also carried unconfirmed reports that al-Bashir had stepped down and that top ruling party officials were being arrested. They aired footage of masses heading toward the presidential palace in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, waving the national flag, chanting, and clapping.
Al-Bashir, who is a pariah in many countries, is also wanted by the international war crimes tribunal for atrocities in Darfur.
Eyewitnesses in Khartoum said the military had deployed at key sites in the city to secure several installations since the morning hours.
Armored vehicles and tanks are parked in the streets and near bridges over the Nile River, they said, as well as in the vicinity of the military headquarters, where thousands were anxiously awaiting the army statement. The witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals.
Organizers of the protests urged crowds to converge and join an ongoing sit-in underway in Khartoum since the weekend. They issued a statement vowing to remain in the streets until the “regime steps down completely and power is handed to a civilian transitional government.”
Thousands of protesters, including women carrying their children, were making their way toward the military headquarters, clapping and ululating, many flashing “V” for victory. There were also unconfirmed reports that the airport in the Sudanese capital had been closed.
Ahead of the expected army statement, Sudanese radio played military marches and patriotic music. State TV ceased regular broadcasts, with only the brief announcement saying that there will be an “important statement from the armed forces after a while, wait for it.”
The development followed deadly clashes between Sudanese security forces and protesters holding a large anti-government sit-in outside the military’s headquarters in Khartoum, which also include a presidential residence. There were several attempts to break up the sit-in, leaving 22 dead since Saturday.
On Tuesday, Sudanese security forces tried again to disperse the sit-in, which began over the weekend, killing at least 14 people, activists behind the demonstration said. The government said 11 died. The fatalities so far have included five soldiers who protest organizers said were defending the sit-in.
The months of protests have plunged Sudan into its worst crisis in years. The demonstrations initially erupted last December with rallies against a spiraling economy, but quickly escalated into calls for an end to embattled al-Bashir’s rule.
Security forces have responded to the protest movement with a fierce crackdown, killing dozens. Al-Bashir banned unauthorized public gatherings and granted sweeping powers to the police since imposing a state of emergency last month. Security forces have used tear gas, rubber bullets, live ammunition and batons against demonstrators
The protests gained momentum last week after Algeria’s President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in power for 20 years, resigned in response to weeks of similar protests.
On Saturday, marches in Khartoum marked the 34th anniversary of the overthrow of former President al-Nimeiri in a bloodless coup. It was one of the largest turnouts in the current wave of unrest.
The military removed Nimeiri after a popular uprising in 1985. It quickly handed over power to an elected government. The dysfunctional administration lasted only a few years until al-Bashir — a career army officer — allied with Islamist hard-liners and toppled it in a coup in 1989.
Since the current protests began Dec. 19, the military has stated its support for the country’s “leadership” and pledged to protect the people’s “achievements” — without mentioning al-Bashir by name.
Army troops have deployed to protect vital state installations but have not tried to stop protests and, in some cases, appeared to offer a measure of protection for the demonstrators.
All that raised the possibility that what was playing out in Khartoum on Thursday was a military takeover and removal of al-Bashir.
Thai authorities said Wednesday that they will prosecute social media users who share pictures and videos of “indecently dressed” women and transgender individuals during the country’s Songkran celebrations this weekend.
The Bangkok Post reports that those found guilty could face a maximum of five years in jail, a fine of more than $3,000, or both. People seen acting inappropriately in pictures and videos have been warned that they could also face charges of committing obscene acts in public.
Thailand’s traditional New Year, known as Songkran, is commonly celebrated with what is known as the world’s biggest water fight. The three-day-long holiday is marked by revelers splashing water over each other.
The warnings over photo sharing come just days after organizers of the annual Songkran party on Bangkok’s Khao San Road announced that the celebrations were being canceled this year to make way for the coronation of King Maha Vajiralongkorn. The party at the famed tourist strip normally draws large throngs of travelers and locals alike, with establishments providing provide vats of water and an assortment of water guns and buckets for their use.
Although many people commemorate the festival with water fights, Songkran, has a more subdued, spiritual side with devout Thais visiting temples to pour water over Buddha statues, and over the hands of the elderly, as a ritual of blessing and purification.
Siriwat Dipho, the deputy commander of the police’s Technology Crime Suppression Division, told the Bangkok Post that pictures of scantily-clad party-goers were not in keeping with “good Songkran tradition.”
Officers are also enforcing laws to curb traffic violations, including drink driving, which claims annually hundreds of lives during the festive period. In 2018, there were 418 traffic-related deaths during Songkran, up from 390 in 2017, according to the country’s Road Safety Center.
(NEW DELHI) — Polls opened Thursday in the first phase of India’s general elections, seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party.
A festive spirit prevailed as men and women in colorful clothes made their way to heavily guarded voting stations in large numbers.
In the world’s largest democratic exercise, voters in 18 Indian states and two Union Territories are casting ballots on Thursday, the first day of a seven-phase election staggered over six weeks in the country of 1.3 billion people.
Modi supporters say the tea seller’s son from Gujarat state has improved the nation’s standing. But critics say his party’s Hindu nationalism has aggravated religious tensions in India.
Thursday’s voting is important for the BJP as it had won only 32 of 91 seats in the previous 2014 elections. It is seeking to improve its tally this time.
Voting also began for two parliamentary seats in the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir amid tight security and a boycott call by Muslim separatists who say the polls are an illegitimate exercise. Armed police and paramilitary soldiers in riot gears guarded polling stations and nearby roads.
Shops, businesses and most schools were closed on Thursday in response to a strike called by separatist leaders who challenge India’s sovereignty over Kashmir and seek right to self-determination for the entire territory as demanded by United Nations resolutions.
In the northern Baramulla area, many people said they came out to vote only against Modi’s BJP, calling it an “anti-Muslim” and “anti-Kashmiri” party. They opposed the BJP’s election manifesto, which promised to scrap decades-old special rights for the Kashmiris under India’s Constitution. The special status prevents outsiders from buying property in the territory.
“I didn’t want to vote but then there’s an imminent threat by politicians like Modi who are up in arms against Kashmiris,” said Abdul Qayoom, a voter in Baramulla town. “They’ve taken our rights, now they want to dispossess us from our land. We want to stop people like Modi.”
The voting follows a sweeping crackdown with police arresting hundreds of Kashmiri leaders and activists. Authorities also banned the movement of civilian vehicles on a key highway to keep it open exclusively for military and paramilitary convoys two days a week during India’s general election.
Some 900 million people are eligible to cast ballots at around a million polling stations across India. They will decide 543 seats in India’s lower house of Parliament. Voting concludes on May 19 and counting is scheduled for May 23.
Modi came to power in 2014 and the party invoked its Hindu nationalist roots before the elections, with Modi at the forefront against the threat of Pakistan, India’s Muslim-majority archrival. Hindus comprise about 80% of India’s 1.3 billion people.
Even though India continues to be one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, the Modi-led government’s performance on the economy has come under criticism.
The first item in the opposition Congress party’s election manifesto describes a plan for creating jobs. It also promises an income subsidy program for the poorest families and for farmers.
Kim Jong Un urged a “severe blow” to those sanctioning North Korea and called on ruling party officials to continue “self-reliance,” signaling his determination to hold the line in talks with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Kim made the remarks Wednesday during a meeting with top leaders of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said Thursday. He was quoted as telling officials that the country should strike at those who thought they could make it surrender with sanctions, without elaborating.
The meeting comes as Trump prepares to host South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House in an effort to rescue nuclear talks that have sputtered since the U.S. leader walked out of a summit with Kim on Feb. 28. The negotiations broke down after North Korea made demands for sanctions relief that the U.S. side believed exceeded the regime’s disarmament offers.
The allies want to discourage Kim from any actions that could provoke Trump and return the two sides to the familiar cycle of threats and counter-threats. North Korea is planning to celebrate the birth of its founder — Kim’s grandfather Kim Il Sung — on Monday, an occasion that the regime has sometimes marked with shows of military might.
A top North Korean diplomat told reporters in Pyongyang last month that Kim would decide “in a short period of time” whether to continue his freeze on nuclear bomb and missile tests.
(BRUSSELS) — European Union leaders and Britain on Thursday agreed to a Brexit extension that will allow the U.K. to delay its EU departure date until Halloween.
Leaders of the 27 remaining EU member states met for more than six hours before agreeing after midnight to postpone Brexit until Oct. 31.
European Council President Donald Tusk presented the offer to May, who had asked for a delay only until June 30.
Tusk said in a tweet that the British leader had agreed to the longer “flexible” extension, which means Britain can leave before October if it ratifies a withdrawal deal with the EU.
“This means additional six months for the UK to find the best possible solution,” Tusk wrote.
Just two days before Britain was due to leave the EU, its leaders spent a long dinner meeting wrangling over whether to save Britain from a precipitous and potentially calamitous Brexit, or to give the foot-dragging departing nation a shove over the edge.
May pleaded with them at an emergency summit to delay Britain’s exit, due on Friday, for a couple more months while the U.K. sorts out the mess that Brexit has become.
Some were sympathetic, but French President Emmanuel Macron struck a warning note shortly before the European leaders met.
“Nothing is decided,” Macron said as he arrived at the summit, insisting on “clarity” from May about what Britain wants.
“What’s indispensable is that nothing should compromise the European project in the months to come,” he said.
May said a June 30 deadline was enough time for Britain’s Parliament to ratify a Brexit deal and pass the legislation needed for a smooth Brexit.
But British lawmakers have rejected her divorce deal three times, and attempts to forge a compromise with her political opponents have yet to bear fruit.
May spoke to the 27 EU leaders for just over an hour, before they met for dinner without her to decide Britain’s fate. In contrast to some testy recent summits, there were signs of warmth and even humor. May and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were filmed laughing over a tablet bearing an image showing the two of them speaking to their respective Parliaments on Wednesday wearing similar blue jackets.
Many leaders said they were inclined to grant a Brexit delay, though Macron had reservations after hearing May speak. An official in the French president’s office said the British leader hadn’t offered “sufficient guarantees” to justify a long extension.
Others suggested a longer delay would likely be needed, given the depth of Britain’s political disarray.
May signaled she would accept a longer extension, as long as it contained a get-out-early cause should Britain end its Brexit impasse.
“What is important is that any extension enables us to leave at the point at which we ratify the withdrawal agreement,” May said as she arrived in Brussels.
She added that she was hopeful it could be as soon as May 22 — a key date since that would avoid the need for Britain to participate in elections for the European Parliament.
Several months have passed since May and the EU struck a deal laying out the terms of Britain’s departure and the outline of future relations. All that was needed was ratification by the British and European Parliaments.
But U.K. lawmakers rejected it — three times. As Britain’s departure date of March 29 approached with no resolution in sight, the EU gave Britain until Friday to approve a withdrawal plan, change course and seek a further delay to Brexit, or crash out of the EU with no deal to cushion the shock.
Economists and business leaders have warned that a no-deal Brexit would lead to huge disruptions in trade and travel, with tariffs and customs checks causing gridlock at British ports and possible shortages of goods.
A disorderly Brexit would hurt EU nations, as well as Britain, and all want to avoid it.
May’s future, meanwhile, is uncertain.
She has previously said that “as prime minister” she could not agree to let Britain stay in the EU beyond June 30, and she has also promised to step down once Brexit is delivered. Many Conservative Party lawmakers would like her to quit now and let a new leader take charge of the next stage of Brexit. But they can’t force her out until the end of the year, after she survived a no-confidence vote in December.
Every British initiative to get a deal has floundered so far. Several days of talks between May’s Conservative government and the main opposition Labour Party aimed at finding a compromise have failed to produce a breakthrough. Labour favors a softer Brexit than the government has proposed, and wants to retain a close economic relationship with the bloc. The two sides said they would resume their discussions Thursday.
Two European officials say EU leaders are offering to allow Britain to extend Brexit until Oct. 31 and are awaiting the U.K.’s response.
The officials said that the European leaders agreed at an emergency Brexit summit early Thursday in Brussels that part of the offer is that the EU would assess the situation June.
The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.
British Prime Minister Theresa May was expected to meet with EU Council President Donald Tusk to discuss the offer.
May had come to the summit requesting a delay until June 30 but had acknowledged she would be willing to extend that date. The British Parliament has repeatedly rejected a withdrawal deal negotiated with the EU, leading to today’s deadlock over Britain’s long-awaited departure.
(NEW YORK) — Fossil bones and teeth found in the Philippines have revealed a long-lost cousin of modern people, which evidently lived around the time our own species was spreading from Africa to occupy the rest of the world.
It’s yet another reminder that, although Homo sapiens is now the only surviving member of our branch of the evolutionary tree, we’ve had company for most of our existence.
And it makes our understanding of human evolution in Asia “messier, more complicated and whole lot more interesting,” says one expert, Matthew Tocheri of Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
In a study released Wednesday by the journal Nature, scientists describe a cache of seven teeth and six bones from the feet, hands and thigh of at least three individuals. They were recovered from Callao Cave on the island of Luzon in the northern Philippines in 2007, 2011 and 2015. Tests on two samples show minimum ages of 50,000 years and 67,000 years.
The main exodus of our own species from Africa that all of today’s non-African people are descended from took place around 60,000 years ago.
Analysis of the bones from Luzon led the study authors to conclude they belonged to a previously unknown member of our “Homo” branch of the family tree. One of the toe bones and the overall pattern of tooth shapes and sizes differ from what’s been seen before in the Homo family, the researchers said.
They dubbed the creature Homo luzonensis.
It apparently used stone tools and its small teeth suggest it might have been rather small-bodied, said one of the study authors, Florent Detroit of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
H. luzonensis lived in eastern Asia at around the same time as not only our species but other members of the Homo branch, including Neanderthals, their little-understood Siberian cousins the Denisovans, and the diminutive “hobbits” of the island of Flores in Indonesia.
There’s no sign that H. luzonensis encountered any other member of the Homo group, Detroit said in an email. Our species isn’t known to have reached the Philippines until thousands of years after the age of the bones, he said.
But some human relative was on Luzon more than 700,000 years ago, as indicated by the presence of stone tools and a butchered rhino dating to that time, he said. It might have been the newfound species or an ancestor of it, he said in an email.
Detroit said it’s not clear how H. luzonensis is related to other species of Homo. He speculated that it might have descended from an earlier human relative, Homo erectus, that somehow crossed the sea to Luzon.
H. erectus is generally considered the first Homo species to have expanded beyond Africa, and it plays a prominent role in the conventional wisdom about evolution outside that continent. Some scientists have suggested that the hobbits on the Indonesian island are descended from H. erectus.
Tocheri, who did not participate it the new report, agreed that both H. luzonensis and the hobbits may have descended from H. erectus. But he said the Philippines discovery gives new credence to an alternate view: Maybe some unknown creature other than H. erectus also slipped out of Africa and into Europe and Asia, and later gave rise to both island species.
After all, he said in an interview, remains of the hobbits and H. luzonensis show a mix of primitive and more modern traits that differ from what’s seen in H. erectus. They look more like what one what might find in Africa 1.5 to 2.5 million years ago, and which might have been carried out of that continent by the mystery species, he said.
The discovery of a new human relative on Luzon might be “smoke from a much, much bigger fire,” he said.
Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, said the Luzon find “shows we still know very little about human evolution, particularly in Asia.”
More such discoveries will probably emerge with further work in the region, which is under-studied, he said in an email.
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Lok Sabha election Phase 1: 10.6 per cent voting till 9 am in Telangana Telangana and Andhra Pradesh Governor ESL Narasimhan and K Kavitha were among the prominent people who cast their vote in their respective constituencies early.
Election in India 2019: What should mutual fund investors do before and after election results The election in India is underway. Should MF investors focus their investment portfolio on elections?
India has scope for reducing untargeted food, fertiliser subsidies: IMF "Certainly, when one looks at the case of India, there is a lot of scope for reducing untargeted food and fertilizer subsidies, and for enhancing revenue administration, including for the GST, which was a transformational positive reform. But, again, even there, improved tax compliance would be a priority," Mauro said.
Violence, Hate, Fear': Rahul Gandhi urges voters to vote for soul of India "You vote today for the soul of India. For her future. Vote wisely," he said on Twitter. "No 2 Crore JOBS. No 15 Lakhs in Bank A/C. No ACCHE DIN. Instead: No JOBS. DEMONETISATION. Farmers in Pain. GABBAR SINGH TAX. Suit Boot Sarkar. RAFALE. Lies. Lies. Lies. Distrust. Violence. HATE. Fear," he also said.
PSU IPO woes continue after Rail Vikas Nigam makes tepid debut; lists at Rs 19 on BSE Shares of state-run Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd made a tepid debut on the exchanges on Thursday morning, even as the shares listed at Rs 19, flat as compared to its IPO price of Rs 19.
For Congress, a battle for existence in West Bengal this Lok Sabha election Battered and bruised by factionalism, a seemingly unending quest for a credible and effective leadership, and organisational frailty, the Congress in West Bengal was relegated to a distant fourth position with little over nine per cent vote share in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Lok Sabha election Phase 1: BJP's Sanjeev Balyan alleges fake voting by women clad in burqas in Muzaffarnagar, demands repoll BJP candidate from Muzaffarnagar, Sanjeev Balyan, on Thursday stoked a controversy with his allegations that women clad in burqas were casting fake votes.
Lok Sabha election Phase 1: Mohan Bhagwat, Bhaiyyaji Joshi among first to cast vote in Nagpur "Voting is necessary and a sacred responsibility of all. Vote for national security, development and identity," he said. On the None of the Above (NOTA) option available to voters on the electronic voting machines (EVMs), he said one has to say what he/she wants. "Being quiet does not work, you have to say yes or no," he said.
3-year-old kid locks his father's iPad for 48 years, Twitter suggests time travel as solution Apple has a lockout feature inbuilt in every Apple device which kicked after the child tried to enter the password resulting in the device getting locked for 48 years.
Lok Sabha election Phase 1: PM Modi, Amit Shah appeal to people to vote in large numbers Voting began in the first phase of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections on Thursday morning across 91 Lok Sabha constituencies spread over 20 states and Union Territories.
Alibaba's Jack Ma scores another big win with Ant's health plan Ant's Xiang Hu Bao, which means mutual protection, has attracted 50 million people since its October inception, or more than five times the population of New York City.
Brexit will be delayed as French President Emmanuel Macron plays hardball The blueprint hashed out during six hours of talks in Brussels allows the U.K. to stay in the bloc until Oct. 31, with a review of progress to be held in June.
IPL 2019, MI vs KXIP: Pollard fashions sensational win for Mumbai IPL 2019: Pollard single handedly brought his side back in the game with his 31-ball knock punishing the Punjab bowlers with 10 sixes and three fours.
What will steer the market today: Lok Sabha Elections Phase 1 voting, IT results and other key things to watch out for The Indian headline indices- Sensex and Nifty, are likely to open positive tracking positive global cues on Thursday morning. Lok Sabha elections, IT results are among the key things to watch out for.
Why India's superpower status is at stake in elections Don't blame Modi and the BJP: This sort of unearned confidence is characteristic of Indian expectations of the future.
MahaRERA's bench begins hearing plaints via video conferencing The trial was on for a quite some time now, and finally, it was brought into effect and on Wednesday close to a dozen of such cases were heard by MahaRERA member, Vijay Satbir Singh via video conferencing.
Gujarat High Court asks former IPS Sanjiv Bhatt to furnish details of witnesses Notably, the former cop had moved the high court after the trial court rejected his plea to summon nearly 40 witnesses in the case
Dombivli organisation celebrates Gudi Padwa with a social message In the second year of the procession, Kilbil Creche, Nerurkar school and Dombivli Past Students organization participated in the yearly carnival.
