The world is focused on the Bahamas, where thousands are just beginning the long and painful struggle to rebuild their lives after Hurricane Dorian.
International search-and-rescue teams are spreading across Abaco and Grand Bahamas islands looking for survivors. Crews have started clearing the streets of debris to set up emergency food and water distribution centers.
The U.S. Coast Guard and British Royal Navy have ships docked off the islands, and the United Nations is sending in tons of ready-to-eat meals and satellite communications equipment.
The Royal Caribbean and Walt Disney cruise lines, which usually carry happy tourists to Bahamian resorts, are instead using ships to deliver food, water, flashlights and other vital aid.
Death toll at 30
The death toll on the Bahamas stood at 30 late Thursday, but with entire villages and marinas wiped off the map, officials say they have no doubt that number will rise.
Bahamian Prime Minister Hubert Minnis calls the damage left by Dorian one of the greatest crises in his country’s history.
“As prime minister, I assure you that no efforts will be spared in rescuing those still in danger, feeding those who are hungry and providing shelter to those who are without homes,” he said. “Our response will be day and night, day after day, week after week, month after month until the lives of our people return to some degree of normalcy.”
Dorian spent Thursday pummeling North and South Carolina with strong winds and heavy rain, along with causing more than a dozen tornadoes and waterspouts that led to additional damage.
Dorian landfall forecast
Forecasters do not expect Dorian to make a direct landfall Friday but will instead skirt the North Carolina coast, bringing life-threatening storm surges to North Carolina and southern Virginia before moving away from land.
Dorian will remain a potent storm straight into the weekend, however, with tropical storm warnings posted as far north as Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, according to the National Hurricane Center.
An American woman who attempted to carry a 6-day-old baby out of the Philippines hidden inside a sling bag has been arrested at Manila’s airport and charged with human trafficking, officials said Thursday.
They said Jennifer Erin Talbot was able to pass through the airport immigration counter on Wednesday without declaring the baby boy but was intercepted at the boarding gate by airline personnel.
Talbot, from Ohio, was unable to produce any passport, boarding pass or government permits for the baby, airport officials said.
Clad in an orange detainee shirt and in handcuffs, Talbot, 43, was presented to reporters in Manila on Thursday. She kept her head low and appeared at times to be on the verge of tears. She did not issue any statement.
Talbot had planned to board a Delta Air Lines flight to the United States with the baby, airport officials said.
“There was really an intention to hide the baby,” immigration official Grifton Medina said by telephone.
After discovering the baby, airline staff called immigration personnel, who arrested Talbot at the airport. She was later turned over to the National Bureau of Investigation and the baby was given to government welfare personnel.
The investigation bureau said Talbot presented an affidavit at the airport, allegedly from the baby’s mother, giving consent for the baby to travel to the U.S., but it had not been signed by the mother.
Officials said no government travel approval had been issued for the baby, prompting them to file human trafficking charges against her. The charges carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
U.S. Embassy officials have been notified of her arrest.
Officials are searching for the baby’s parents, who have been charged under a child protection law.
Like whisperers in a tempest, conservative-minded officials across the breadth of Donald Trump’s government are letting it be known what they think of him, and some of it isn’t pretty.
But they are speaking oh so softly, in a kind of code, to a country that may only hear shouting.
Jim Mattis is just the latest in a string of leading lights from the conservative establishment to throw shade at Trump. As with others — the chief justice, a special counsel, various Republican lawmakers who hope to have a political future — the ex-Pentagon chief’s words are subtle, filtered through notions of duty, decorum, deference to history, the greater good.
Crack the code and you can sometimes see deep discomfort with Trump, the contours of a searing repudiation. In the view of many institutionalists of the right as well as the left, he is bulldozing values that America holds dear.
Yet the negativity is couched in words of moderation and caution. What effect does that have in Trump’s America?
These are sober, restrained players in a fracas produced, directed and dominated by an in-your-face president.
“The well-informed public understands what they’re saying and how deeply concerned they are,” said Cal Jillson, a political science professor and historian at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “The rest of the public might not get it.”
Says Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management specialist who has studied Trump’s rise in business and politics: “In a fight between crassness and discretion in the new millennium, crassness will win every time.”
Washington’s well-known partisan fever coexists with a more decorous tradition in some quarters — of raising eyebrows instead of raising hell, of saying things in so many words without actually using the words. People such as Mattis, former special counsel Robert Mueller and Chief Justice John Roberts are steeped in those ways.
FFILE – Escorted by a security detail, former special counsel Robert Mueller arrives to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in Washington, July 24, 2019.
When certain people let down their guard, history can happen. So it was when Joseph Nye Welch, a lawyer representing the buttoned-up U.S. Army, assailed Sen. Joseph McCarthy in a 1954 congressional hearing remembered for his putdown of the senator’s scorched-earth pursuit of men and women he deemed communist sympathizers in government and society:
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
In the McCarthy and Richard Nixon eras, “it took a long time for congressional leaders for the Republican Party to see the damage to their party and step in,” Jillson said, and no such tipping point has been reached in Republican ranks. If it comes, he said, “that’s when they’ll talk and then everybody will hear them.”
“Republicans will not do it while they think there are still gains to be made through the Trump presidency,” he said. But if the fear that was stirred by 2018 losses and Trump’s behavior since then “consolidates into wide-eyed terror,” that’s “when they cut their people loose,” loyalty fractures and more in the GOP abandon the president.
For now, censure comes in coded form from power players in the nonpartisan world — as well as frontally from a few Republican lawmakers as they exit their careers and from, predictably, Democrats.
“Mattis, Mueller and others have lived in a world of consequences which, combined with their natures, has made them discreet,” says Dezenhall, the crisis-management specialist. “They’re not about to blast Trump because they view it as dishonorable.” But they hint at what they think.
When The Associated Press asked the chief justice last fall to address Trump’s criticism of judges who had ruled against his wishes — like the “Obama judge” who had just rejected his migrant asylum policy — it did not really expect an answer. It got one.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” the Republican-nominated Roberts responded in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.” He added: “The independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
His words were both startling and circumspect, no more provocative on the surface than a civics lesson, yet a rare engagement by the high court in the fray.
Roberts had never addressed Trump’s past personal criticisms, whether as president or pundit (“Congratulations to John Roberts for making Americans hate the Supreme Court because of his BS,” Trump tweeted in 2012). But when Trump rhetorically charged through the firewall of the independent judiciary, the chief justice subtly called him out.
Among the elites, those without robes also maintain stoicism through slings and arrows, to a point.
Trump-nominated Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell bites his lip in silence when the president, upset that interest rates aren’t lower, takes on a target that past presidents only jousted with obliquely. “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powel or Chairman Xi?” Trump demanded in a tweet misspelling the Fed chairman’s name and referring to China’s president.
Mueller’s mastery of restraint drove Trump’s opponents batty in hours of congressional testimony about his special counsel investigation of Russia’s attack on the 2016 election and its contacts with the Trump campaign. Democrats pressed him to say what they wanted to hear, but he talked the code.
“Problematic is an understatement,” is how the longtime Republican characterized his view of Trump’s 2016 encouragement of Russia to find missing emails of his political opponent, Hillary Clinton.
“I hope this is not the new normal, but I fear it is,” Mueller said of the idea of a U.S. campaign embracing help from a foreign government. “It is not a witch hunt,” he said of a probe that Trump repeatedly attacked as just that. He was no more animated than the stone statues of the Capitol.
Through the two years of his investigation, Mueller never responded to any of Trump’s attacks, never updated the public on his work and certainly never offered a glimpse of any personal view of the president. Yet his final report had damning detail, wrapped in legalese, about Trump’s efforts to get Mueller fired, to get aides to lie on his behalf, to get an attorney general he perceived as a loyalist to take control of the investigation — all while stopping short of accusing Trump of a crime.
Mueller’s fellow Marine, Mattis, quit as defense secretary before Trump assigned him an insulting nickname, though the president came close in branding Mattis “sort of a Democrat.” Mattis resigned over differences with Trump on Syria and the fight over the Islamic State and is known to have objected to Trump’s disparagement of traditional allies.
Months later, Mattis is promoting his new book, “Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead,” which is not a tell-all about Trump despite the title. And, for now, he’s speaking the code.
“He’s an unusual president, our president is,” he said blandly in an interview for “CBS Sunday Morning,” adding elliptically, “just the rabid nature of politics today, we’ve got to be careful.”
Then there was this exchange on “PBS NewsHour” this week when Mattis was asked whether he would say so if he thought Trump or any president wasn’t fit for office.
“Yes.”
So he thinks Trump is fit to be president?
“No, I’m not saying that. I don’t make political assessments one way or the other. I come from the Defense Department.”
In interviews for an article in The Atlantic magazine, Mattis, a student of history, cited the French concept of “the duty of silence” to explain why he won’t say whether he thinks Trump is fit to be in charge.
“I may not like a commander in chief one fricking bit,” he said. But: “When you leave an administration over clear policy differences, you need to give the people who are still there as much opportunity as possible to defend the country.”
Yet it seems that the man with the Marine-flavored nickname Trump once loved — Mad Dog — will someday break his leash and growl.
“There is a period in which I owe my silence,” he told the magazine. “It’s not eternal. It’s not going to be forever.”
Arguments over a Texas law requiring that health care clinics bury or cremate fetal remains from abortions and miscarriages are set for a federal appeals court in New Orleans.
A Texas judge blocked the law last year. U.S. District Judge David Ezra ruled that many clinics would be unable to meet the law’s requirements, thus creating unconstitutional obstacles for women seeking abortions. He also found that violated constitutional equal protection requirements by exempting in-vitro fertilization clinics and some laboratories.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments Thursday.
The Supreme Court has upheld similar law in Indiana. But opponents of the Texas law note that the Indiana ruling case did not address the issue of whether the law created an unconstitutional burden on abortion rights.
Despite tensions between the United States and Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump says a negotiated solution is possible. Trump told reporters Wednesday that Iranians “want to talk” and make a deal. His remarks came a day after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country will never negotiate with the United States but may consider multilateral talks if Washington removes all the sanctions on Iran. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the United States announced new measures against Iran Wednesday.
A large car bomb rocked the Afghan capital Thursday, and smoke rose from a part of eastern Kabul near a neighborhood housing the U.S. Embassy, the NATO Resolute Support mission and other diplomatic missions.
Firdaus Faramarz, a spokesman for Kabul’s police chief, told The Associated Press that the explosion took place in the city’s Ninth Police District. It appeared to target a checkpoint in the heavily guarded Shashdarak area where the Afghan national security authorities have offices.
There was no immediate word on casualties. An Associated Press reporter on the phone with the U.S. Embassy when the blast occurred heard sirens begin there.
Interior Ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said a car bomb had exploded on a main road and police were sealing off the area. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
The blast occurred as U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad has been in Kabul this week, briefing the Afghan government and others on a deal he says has been reached “in principle” with the Taliban on ending America’s longest war.
A Taliban suicide bombing in eastern Kabul on Monday night, which the insurgents said targeted a foreign compound, killed at least 16 people and wounded more than 100, almost all of them local civilians.
Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis is pledging to do whatever is necessary to carry out rescue and recovery efforts after Hurricane Dorian devastated the Caribbean archipelago.
Thursday will likely bring more grim news as people get a better look at what the storm left behind after spinning over Grand Bahama and Abaco islands for nearly two days with flooding rains and storm surge, as well as winds of up to 195 kilometers per hour.
Minnis said at a Wednesday news conference the confirmed death toll was at 20 on Abaco Island, and that officials expected the number to rise.
“As prime minister, I assure you that no efforts will be spared in rescuing those still in danger, feeding those who are hungry and providing shelter to those who are without homes,” he said at a Wednesday news conference. “Our response will be day and night, day after day, week after week, month after month until the lives of our people return to some degree of normalcy.”
A hotel room in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian on the Great Abaco island town of Marsh Harbour, Bahamas, Sept. 4, 2019.
Speaking to the magnitude of the challenge the Bahamas faces, Minnis called it “one of the greatest national crises in our country’s history.”
Entire villages are gone and beaches usually packed with tourists are instead covered with parts of buildings, destroyed cars, and the remains of people’s lives.
“Right now there are just a lot of unknowns,” Bahamian lawmaker Iram Lewis said, adding, “We need help.”
U.S. President Donald Trump has sent the Coast Guard and urban search and rescue teams to help. The British Royal Navy, Red Cross, and United Nations are also rushing in food, medicine and any kind of aid that may be needed.
The White House says Trump spoke to Prime Minister Minnis Wednesday, assuring him the United States will provide “all appropriate support,” and sent American condolences to the Bahamian people for the destruction and loss of life.
A man searches for his wife in the Marsh Harbour Medical Clinic in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian on the Great Abaco island town of Marsh Harbour, Bahamas, Sept. 4, 2019.
U.N. Humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock was in Nassau Wednesday meeting with Minnis. Lowcock says 20% of the Bahamian population has been affected and 70,000 people need food.
“Nothing of this sort has been experienced by the Bahamas before,” Lowcock said, adding that he is immediately releasing $1 million from the U.N. central emergency fund for water, food, shelter and medical services.
Dorian, again a Category 3 storm, is moving up the southeastern coast of the United States with potent strength as it drops heavy rain and threatens coastal areas with what the U.S. National Hurricane Center says is “life-threatening storm surge with significant coastal flooding.” It had maximum sustained winds of 185 kilometers per hour Thursday morning.
Those threats will endure for the next few days with forecasters expecting the center of the storm to move near or over the coast of South Carolina on Thursday and the coast of North Carolina on Friday before accelerating off to the northeast as Dorian weakens.
Britain’s political turmoil is again making headlines across the English Channel, with a number of European commentators criticizing Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s handling of Brexit.
But others, like conservative French lawmaker Nicolas Bay, saluted Johnson for standing firm, and honoring Britain’s 2016 referendum to leave the European Union.
In Brussels, European Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva said the EU’s position toward Brexit has not changed.
“There may be twists and turns in political developments in London right now, but our position is stable,” she said. “We are willing to work constructively with Prime Minister Johnson and to look at any concrete proposals as long as they’re compatible with the withdrawal agreement.”
The commission is freeing up millions of dollars in disaster funds for farmers, workers and companies to cope with a potentially chaotic or hard Brexit — although governments and the EU parliament must sign off on the plan. It also published a checklist for European businesses trading with Britain to prepare for Brexit — and a citizens’ hotline.
Europeans have been preparing for months for a potentially chaotic Brexit. In France, where roughly 20,000 businesses export to Britain, the key port city of Calais is conducting simulations to prepare for both deal and no-deal scenarios. France, along with Belgium and the Netherlands, has hired hundreds more customs agents to cope with expected backlogs.
Experts predict Brexit will deal an economic blow to the EU as well as Britain — at a time when countries like Germany and Italy are braced for economic slowdowns.
Illegal drug use is on the rise around the world according to a new UN report. How bad is it and what is being done to stop the spread of dangerous and increasingly deadly drugs? Former US “Drug Czar” Gil Kerlikowske and Ben Westhoff, author of “Fentanyl Inc.” weigh in with Greta Van Susteren. Recorded September 4, 2019
The U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Burundi said Wednesday that the country, following years of political turmoil, was primed for a genocide.
The commission’s warning, contained in its latest report on human rights in Burundi, was based on an analysis developed by the U.N. Office for the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect.
The three-member panel found that eight common risk factors for criminal atrocities leading to a possible genocide were present in Burundi.
Factors included an unstable political, economic and social environment; a climate of impunity for human rights violations; a weak judicial system; and the absence of an independent press and freedom of expression.
Commission member Francoise Hampson said the criteria identified by the Genocide Prevention Committee indicated that in countries where these factors were present, there was a risk the situation could deteriorate.
“On top of that, our own report shows the continuation of violations of human rights law based on human security,” she said. “So, things like arbitrary killings, torture, arbitrary detention. And this year, a deterioration … freedom of expression, freedom of association. Now that is actually already getting worse compared to last year.”
Nkurunziza campaign
Burundi has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a third term in 2015, defying critics who said he was violating constitutional term limits. Violence prompted more than 300,000 to flee the country.
Hampson said the crisis in Burundi was essentially a political one. She noted that targeting people because of their political affiliation does not come within the definition of genocide, according to the Genocide Conventions.
However, she said, “There are elements on occasion where there is an ethnic dimension. There are sometimes taunts of people in detention. And, there have in the past been the chants of the Imbonerakure [the youth wing of the ruling party] when they have been gathering, which have got hateful content.”
The U.N. report documented widespread human rights violations by the Imbonerakure, including intimidation and harassment of political opponents, activists, journalists and human rights defenders.
After the report’s release on Wednesday, Willy Nyamitwe, a senior adviser to Nkurunziza, tweeted a message that said, “Burundi is no longer interested in responding to lies and manipulation of opinion on the part of some Westerners whose aim is to destabilize Burundi.”
A federal judge will discuss plans Wednesday for unsealing a new trove of court records involving sexual abuse allegations against Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who took his own life last month while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska scheduled the hearing after an appeals court in New York ordered her to carefully review the records and release “all documents for which the presumption of public access outweighs any countervailing privacy interests.”
While it’s not clear who is named in the records, an attorney for a John Doe warned in court papers Tuesday that the documents may contain “life-changing” disclosures against third parties not directly involved in the litigation. The attorney, Nicholas Lewin, requested the opportunity to be heard on the matter, citing his unnamed client’s “reputational rights.”
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has already made public more than 2,000 pages in the since-settled defamation lawsuit. Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, filed the case against Ghislaine Maxwell , a former Epstein girlfriend. Giuffre has accused Maxwell of recruiting young women for Epstein’s sexual pleasure and taking part in the abuse— allegations Maxwell has vehemently denied.
The first release of court records— unsealed the day before Epstein’s jailhouse suicide in Manhattan— contained graphic claims against Epstein and several of his former associates. Giuffre alleges she was trafficked internationally to have sex with prominent American politicians, business executives and world leaders.
Giuffre filed the lawsuit in 2015, alleging Maxwell subjected her to “public ridicule, contempt and disgrace” by calling her a liar in published statements “with the malicious intent of discrediting and further damaging Giuffre worldwide.” The lawsuit sought unspecified damages.
About one-fifth of all documents filed in the case were done so under seal— a level of secrecy the 2nd Circuit ruled was unjustified. However, the appellate court, in unsealing the records, issued an unusual warning to the public and the media “to exercise restraint” regarding potentially defamatory allegations contained in the depositions and other court filings.
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Democratic presidential candidates are releasing their plans to address climate change ahead of a series of town halls on the issue as the party’s base increasingly demands aggressive action.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and former Obama Cabinet member Julián Castro laid out their plans Tuesday. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar released hers over the weekend.
The release of the competing plans comes as issues of climate and the environment have become a central focus of the Democratic primary. On Wednesday, 10 Democrats seeking the White House will participate in back-to-back climate town halls hosted by CNN in New York. A second set of climate-focused town halls will be televised by MSNBC later in the month. Liberals had demanded that the Democratic Party focus at least one debate on climate change, but a climate debate resolution was defeated at the Democratic National Committee’s summer meeting last month.
The issue is so urgent among Democratic voters that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee made action to limit the worst extremes of climate change the core of his presidential bid. But Inslee dropped out of the presidential race in August after failing to earn a spot in the September primary debate. Warren says Inslee’s ideas “should remain at the center of the agenda,” and she met with him in Seattle when she visited the state for a rally before Labor Day, according to two people familiar with the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting.
Warren’s clean energy proposal builds on Inslee’s 10-year clean energy plan in seeking to implement 100% clean energy standards in three key sectors of the American economy. Warren says she will increase her planned spending on research and investment to cut carbon emissions to $3 trillion. She embraces tough deadlines for sharply cutting or eliminating the use of fossil fuels by the U.S. electrical grid, highways and air transit systems, and by cities and towns. That includes making sure that new cars, buses and many trucks run on clean energy _ instead of gasoline or diesel _ by 2030 and that all the country’s electricity comes from solar, wind and other renewable, carbon-free sources by 2035.
Booker’s $3 trillion plan includes nearly a dozen executive actions to reverse Trump administration moves. He says that by no later than 2045, he wants to get the U.S. economy to carbon neutral _ a point at which carbon emissions are supposedly canceled out by carbon-cutting measures, such as planting new forests to suck up carbon from the atmosphere. Booker also urges massive restoration of forests and coastal wetlands as carbon sponges and as buffers against rising seas. He sets a 2030 deadline for getting natural gas and coal out of the electrical grid. He would get there partly by scrapping all subsidies for fossil fuels, banning new oil and gas leases, phasing out fracking and introducing a carbon fee.
If elected, Booker says, he will propose legislation creating a “United States Environmental Justice Fund,” which, among its areas of focus, will replace all home, school and day care drinking water lines by the end of his second term.
Castro’s $10 trillion plan aims to have all electricity in the United States be clean and renewable by 2035. He wants to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045 and at least a 50% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. And, like Booker, he focuses on environmental racism, in which people of color are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards. Castro says that within the first 100 days of his presidency he would propose new legislation to address the impact of environmental discrimination.
Among Democrats seeking the presidency, there is little disagreement that climate change is a building disaster. Candidates’ primary differences are over how aggressively the U.S. should move now to cut fossil fuel emissions to stave off the worst of the coming climate extremes.
Last month, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders toured a California mobile home park ravaged by wildfires as he introduced his $16 trillion plan to fight global warming, the costliest among the Democratic field. His plan declares climate change a national emergency, calls for the United States to eliminate fossil fuel use by 2050 and commits $200 billion to help poorer nations reckon with climate change.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has proposed $1.7 trillion in spending over 10 years, on clean energy and other initiatives with the goal of eliminating the country’s net carbon emissions by 2050. Biden has been less absolute than some other Democratic candidates on stamping out consumption of oil, natural gas and coal, calling for eliminating subsidies for the fossil fuels rather than pledging to eliminate all use of them.
The relatively minor differences among Democrats on climate change come in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump, who has dismissed and mocked the science of climate change and has reversed course on U.S. climate policy. Trump made pulling the country out of the Paris climate accord one of his administration’s first priorities, and his wholehearted support of the petroleum and coal industries has been one of the enduring themes of his presidency
Nationally, 72% of Democratic midterm voters said they were very concerned about the effects of climate change, and 20% were somewhat concerned. That’s according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters nationwide.
Oprah Winfrey is taking her motivational spirit on the road early next year with an arena tour to promote a healthier lifestyle.
The talk-show host and chief of OWN television network said Wednesday that she will launch the “Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus” tour starting Jan. 4 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She is working with Weight Watchers Reimagined to offer a full-day of wellness conversations during the nine-city tour.
It’s her first speaking tour in five years.
Winfrey says she wants to empower audiences to “support a stronger, healthier, abundant life.” She will be joined by high-profile guests. The names will be released at a later date.
Winfrey’s previous speaking tours include “Oprah’s Life Class” and “Oprah’s The Life You Want Weekend” in 2014.
Facebook said Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would be violating the company’s rules if agents create fake profiles to monitor the social media of foreigners seeking to enter the country.
“Law enforcement authorities, like everyone else, are required to use their real names on Facebook and we make this policy clear,” Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Pollack told The Associated Press in a statement Tuesday. “Operating fake accounts is not allowed, and we will act on any violating accounts.”
Pollack said the company has communicated its concerns and its policies on the use of fake accounts to DHS. She said the company will shut down fake accounts, including those belonging to undercover law enforcement, when they are reported.
The company’s statement followed the AP’s report Friday that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had authorized its officers to use fake social media accounts in a reversal of a previous ban on the practice.
Homeland Security explained the change to the AP in a statement Friday, stating that fake accounts would make it easier for agents reviewing visa, green card and citizenship applications to search for fraud or security threats. The department didn’t provide comment when asked Tuesday.
The plan would also be a violation of Twitter’s rules. Twitter said Friday that it’s still reviewing the new Homeland Security practice. It did not provide further comment.
The change in policy was preceded by other steps taken by the State Department, which began requiring applicants for U.S. visas to submit their social media usernames this past June, a vast expansion of the Trump administration’s enhanced screening of potential immigrants and visitors.
Such a review of social media would be conducted by officers in the agency’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate on cases flagged as requiring more investigation. The privacy assessment notes that officers can only review publicly available social media available to all users on the platform — they cannot “friend” or “follow” an individual — and must undergo annual training.
The officers are also not allowed to interact with users on the social media sites and can only passively review information, according to the DHS document.
While lots of social media activity can be viewed without an account, many platforms limit access without one.
Facebook said it has improved the ability to spot fake accounts through automation, blocking and removing millions of fake accounts daily.
Twitter and Facebook both recently shut down numerous accounts believed to be operated by the Chinese government using their platforms under false identities for information operations.
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday challenged her rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to commit to transition the United States fully to clean energy over the next decade for electricity, vehicles and buildings.
Warren, one of 20 Democrats vying to take on President Donald Trump in November 2020, issued the challenge in a comprehensive clean energy plan released ahead of a 7-hour CNN Town Hall on Wednesday at which 10 candidates will discuss how they would tackle climate change.
Her climate strategy weaves together several policies she has sprinkled into other proposals she has rolled out, from agriculture to tribal lands to manufacturing. It also incorporates a clean energy plan she adopted from Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who made climate change the centerpiece of his White House bid before dropping out of the race late last month.
Inslee’s clean energy strategy — which had been billed as the gold standard by environmental advocates — set a 10-year plan to achieve 100% clean energy by slashing carbon emissions from U.S. electricity generation, vehicles and buildings.
“While his presidential campaign may be over, his ideas should remain at the center of the agenda,” Warren wrote in a post for the website Medium.
“Today I’m embracing that goal by committing to adopt and build on Governor Inslee’s 10-year action plan to achieve 100% clean energy … and I’m challenging every other candidate for President to do the same,” she wrote.
All of Warren’s Democratic rivals who will participate in the climate change town hall have at least committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But each advocates different steps to get there.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, for example, calls for the electricity and transportation sectors to be fueled by 100% percent renewable energy by 2030. Former Vice President Joe Biden’s climate plan calls for 500,000 more electric vehicle charging stations nationwide by the end of 2030.
Warren’s proposal would commit $3 trillion over 10 years, in part paid for by reversing Republican tax cuts passed in 2017 that largely benefit businesses and the wealthy. It aims to bolster efforts to reach 100% zero-carbon pollution for all new buildings by 2028, 100% zero emissions for most new vehicles by 2030 and 100% zero emissions in electricity generation by 2035.
Jamal Reed, a spokesman for Inslee, said the governor’s staff had advised Warren’s campaign and others on climate issues and Inslee is “particularly impressed that Senator Warren is adopting his aggressive targets.”
Warren, a Massachusetts senator, noted that her push to transition to clean energy would require retrofitting buildings, re-engineering the electrical grid and adapting manufacturing.
“For too long, there has been a tension between transitioning to a green economy and creating good, middle class, union jobs,” she wrote.
Warren said her administration would not ask coal and other workers to make the “impossible choice” between jobs with good wages and benefits and “green economy” jobs that pay less, with fewer benefits. The jobs created by her climate plan would be unionized, and training, early retirement benefits and other protections would be provided to current coal workers.
She would also overhaul the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the U.S. electrical grid, replacing it with a Federal Renewable Energy Commission charged with reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Also on Tuesday, presidential candidate Julian Castro, a former housing chief for President Barack Obama, released a $10 trillion climate plan to transition to clean energy and create 10 million jobs. Castro, among the candidates participating in Wednesday’s town hall, also seeks to guarantee health care and pensions for coal miners.
“Harry Potter” actor David Thewlis plays a father desperate to understand his adult daughter’s choices in “Guest of Honour,” an exploration of a family relationship with hidden secrets.
The movie, directed by Atom Egoyan, begins with Veronica, a former high school music teacher recently released from jail, meeting a priest to discuss her father’s funeral.
Over the course of the meeting, the priest (Luke Wilson), asks Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira) to describe her father Jim and she looks back on his life.
A widowed restaurant inspector with particular attention to detail, Thewlis’s Jim is frustrated by Veronica’s decision to go to jail after a failed hoax sees her falsely convicted of abusing her position towards a student.
The young teacher, however, feels the need to be punished for an earlier crime from her past. Her determination to stay in jail soon begins to impact Jim’s work.
The drama, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday, sees both father and daughter conduct their own investigations about each other at different times.
“There is the investigation that his daughter is conducting in the present day but there are several investigations that are happening at different points that he’s conducting while he was alive, that she’s conducting as she remembered it and that he’s positioning it as it actually happened,” Egoyan said.
“It sounds complicated … even though there is five different periods I think it’s very clear at all times where you are in the film,” he added, speaking at a news conference.
“Guest of Honour,” which Egoyan also wrote, addresses suspicion and guilt as both father and daughter try to understand each other better.
“She’s very influenced by the experiences she’s had growing up,” De Oliveira said of her character, Veronica.
“There’s loss there, and so she carries that guilt … or that darkness with her for most of her life and so which leads her to do something that she ultimately feels is right for herself.”
The movie is one of 21 competing for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, which runs until Sept. 7.
US officials on Tuesday declared New York’s worst measles epidemic in nearly 30 years officially over after months of emergency measures that included mandatory vaccinations.
About 654 people, many in areas with large Orthodox Jewish communities, were infected since October last year but there have been no new cases since mid-July, the city government said.
The official end of the outbreak, 42 days since the last reported case, comes before the start of the US financial capital’s new school year Thursday.
Schools and nurseries were the focal points of government efforts to stop the spread of the disease.
“To keep our children and communities safe, I urge all New Yorkers to get vaccinated. It’s the best defense we have,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a statement.
Authorities declared measles eliminated in the United States in 2000 but there have been 1,234 cases of the potentially deadly disease reported in the country this year, the worst since 1992 according to the Center for Disease Control.
The rise comes as a growing anti-vaccine movement gains steam around the world, driven by fraudulent claims linking the MMR vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella, to a risk of autism in children.
New York city officials made vaccinations mandatory in the worst affected areas in April to help stem the epidemic. Schools were also allowed to turn away children who had not been vaccinated.
Those measures have been lifted, but a New York state law passed in June outlawing religious exemptions that had allowed parents to circumvent school-mandated vaccination remains in place.
“There may no longer be local transmission of measles in New York City, but the threat remains given other outbreaks in the US and around the world,” said New York’s health commissioner Oxiris Barbot.
The city government spent over $6 million and mobilized more than 500 employees to fight the outbreak.
Last month, the World Health Organization said there were 89,994 cases of measles in 48 European countries in the first six months of 2019.
That was more than double the number in the same period in 2018 when there were 44,175 cases, and already more than the 84,462 cases reported for all of 2018.
A convicted hacker who’s serving 10 years in prison for breaking into computer systems of security firms and law-enforcement agencies has been called to testify to a federal grand jury in Virginia.
Supporters of Jeremy Hammond, part of the Anonymous hacking group, say he’s been summoned to testify against his will to a grand jury in Alexandria on Tuesday. Hammond, who admitted leaking hacked data to WikiLeaks, believes the subpoena is related to the investigation of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. Assange is under indictment in Alexandria and the U.S. is seeking extradition.
Prosecutors declined comment.
Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was also called to testify to the WikiLeaks grand jury. She refused and is now serving a jail sentence of up to 18 months for civil contempt.
Hammond’s supports say he’ll also refuse to testify.
Hammond was sentenced in 2013 to 10 years in prison for carrying out cyberattacks that targeted Texas-based Strategic Forecasting Inc., known as Stratfor, as well as the FBI’s Virtual Academy, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, and the Jefferson County, Alabama, Sheriff’s Office.
He argued at his sentencing that the hacks were civil disobedience to expose the pervasiveness of government and private surveillance.
Hammond’s supporters, the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee, say he was scheduled to be released at the end of the year after receiving credit for ongoing participation in a drug-abuse program. That participation has now been disrupted and his supporters worry his incarceration could now be extended by more than two years.
“The government’s effort to try to compel Jeremy to testify is punitive and mean-spirited. Jeremy has spent nearly 10 years in prison because of his commitment to his firmly held beliefs. There is no way that he would ever testify before a grand jury,” the group said in its statement.
Five years ago, for her 27th birthday, Lorelei Bandrovschi gave up drinking for a month on a dare. She was a casual drinker and figured it would be easy. It was, but she hadn’t banked on learning so much about herself in the process.
“I realized that going out without drinking was something that I really enjoyed and that I was very well suited for,” she told The Associated Press. “I realized I’m a pretty extroverted, spontaneous, uninhibited person.”
And that’s how Listen Bar was born on Bleecker Street downtown. At just under a year old, the bar Bandrovschi opens once a month is alcohol-free, one of a growing number of sober bars popping up around the country.
Booze-free bars serving elevated “mocktails” are attracting more young people than ever before, especially women. The uptick comes as fewer people overall are drinking away from home and the #MeToo movement has women seeking a more comfortable bar environment, said Amanda Topper, associate director of food-service research for the global market research firm Mintel.
Mocktails aren’t just proliferating at sober bars. Regular bars and restaurants are cluing into the idea that alcohol-free customers want more than a Shirley Temple or a splash of cranberry with a spritz.
Alcohol-free mixed drinks grew 35 percent as a beverage type on the menus of bars and restaurants from 2016 to this year, according to Mintel. Topper said 17 percent of 1,288 people surveyed between the ages of 22 to 24 who drink away from home said they’re interested in mocktails.
The interest, she said, is also driven in part by the health and wellness movement, and higher quality ingredients as bartenders take mocktails more seriously.
“It really started a few years ago with the whole idea of dry January, when consumers cut out alcohol for that month,” Topper said. “It’s shifted to a long-term movement and lifestyle choice.”
Listen Bar recently hosted a mocktail competition for mixologists, who whipped up drinks that included The Holy Would, comprised of citrusy, distilled, non-alcoholic Seedlip Grove 42, palo santo syrup, low-acid apple juice, lemon and lime bitters produced with glycerin, and verjus, the pressed juice of unripened grapes. The drink is the brainchild of Fred Beebe, a bartender at Sunday in Brooklyn. The restaurant isn’t alcohol-free, but Beebe helped create an extensive mocktail menu that goes well beyond the sugary choices of yore, using unique ingredients.
Palo santo, for instance, is a tree native to Peru, Venezuela and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that loosely translates to “holy wood” and is widely used in folk remedies.
“Everybody should be able to have a delicious drink at a bar,” Beebe said. “Hospitality is making sure everybody has a good time. Alcohol, for me, is not the most important part of a cocktail anymore. The cool juices and syrups and tinctures and mixtures and all that stuff makes a lot of the fun.”
Listen Bar has enjoyed packed houses every month. Photographer Zach Hilty, 40, was a first-time customer on competition night. He said he drinks alcohol occasionally.
“My girlfriend and I are interested in the health benefits of different botanicals and such,” he said.
Cat Tjan, 27, of Jersey City, New Jersey, was also on hand and brought a colleague, Ammar Farooqi, 26, from Williamstown in southern New Jersey. Neither drinks alcohol. Tjan said Listen Bar is the only sober bar she could find in Manhattan, where she works for a drug company.
“I have no interest in it,” she said of booze. “It’s not particularly fun. It’s very expensive. There are better ways to have a good night out.”
Many bartenders will mix up regular cocktails and just leave out the alcohol if you ask, but that’s different than choosing something conceived as virgin from a separate menu, Farooqi said. Mocktails generally cost a few dollars less than cocktails, but separate menus are still hard to find.
At the sober bar Getaway in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, mocktails go for $13 a pop. There’s the Paper Train, with lemon juice, tobacco syrup (from the leaf and containing no nicotine), vanilla and San Pellegrino Chinotto. And there’s A Trip to Ikea, a mix of lingonberry, lemon, vanilla, cardamom and cream. Getaway opened in April in a permanent space.
“Weekends are generally really busy,” said co-owner Regina Dellea. “My business partner’s brother is in recovery, and when he first got sober they missed having a space to hang out in at night, where you can meet up and just talk.”
Mainstream suppliers are catching on. Beer companies are experimenting with alcohol-free selections, and Coca-Cola North America gobbled up the popular Topo Chico premium sparkling mineral water. The U.K.’s Seedlip brand bills itself as the world’s first non-alcoholic spirits. It comes in three flavor profiles with ingredients like hand-picked peas from founder Ben Branson’s farm in the English countryside.
At Listen Bar, Tjan and Farooqi sipped on a mocktail dubbed Me, A Houseplant, a green concoction comprised of Seedlip’s Garden 108 variety (the one with the peas), cucumber, lemon and elderflower. Each glass was garnished with a hefty cucumber slice. It was thought up by Jack McGarry, co-founder of the booze-serving Dead Rabbit bar in lower Manhattan and a well-known mixologist.
McGarry is also three years sober. At Listen Bar’s “Good AF Awards,” he was one of the judges, clipboard in hand.
“Alcohol-free used to be very simplistic with, like, homemade lemonades and ginger ales. People are wanting more diverse offerings,” he said. “I’m intrigued at how it will all shake out. I’ve seen lots of trends come and go. When people come in asking for non-alcoholic drinks, we have a bunch of drinks that have been thought out.”
Chris Marshall in Austin, Texas, has been sober since 2007. He was once a drug and alcohol counselor whose clients often shared their frustration at not having an alcohol-free nightspot to frequent. They were his motivation for founding Sans Bar in Austin, with pop-ups all over the country, including Anchorage, Kansas City, Washington, D.C., Portland, Seattle, New York, Nashville and St. Louis.
“The response is just overwhelming,” he said. “We’re taking out community spaces, coffee shops and places like that. The lack of a social circle is the one thing so many of my clients lacked after treatment.”
Marnie Rae Clark, who lives outside Seattle, is also a recovering alcoholic. She’s experienced the struggle of socializing while sober and started a blog about the sober lifestyle in 2017. She founded National Mocktail Week this year. Part of her mission is to encourage bars and restaurants to up their mocktail games.
“I just want to be able to go out with my friends and have a nice grown-up sophisticated cocktail,” said the 51-year-old Clark. “It’s really about promoting inclusion and connection in the hospitality industry.”
People in the Bahamas experienced another hellish night as the center of powerful Hurricane Dorian sat stationary on the northern edge of Grand Bahama Island and pounded the area with fierce winds and the flooding effects of heavy rains and storm surge.
Dorian made landfall on the island late Sunday night and barely moved throughout the day Monday. Forecasters expect the storm to finally move away during the day Tuesday and threaten the U.S. state of Florida.
“We are in the midst of a historic tragedy in parts of northern Bahamas,” said Prime Minister Hubert Minnis. “Our mission and focus now is search, rescue, and recovery. I ask for your prayers in those in affected areas and for our first responders.”
He told reporters at a Monday news conference there were five confirmed deaths on Abaco Island, where Dorian struck before moving to Grand Bahama. Minnis said initial reports from Abaco were of devastation that is “unprecedented and extensive.”
What the storm did to Grand Bahama will become more clear as it moves away and authorities are able to survey the island.
Strong winds from Hurricane Dorian blow the tops of trees and brush while whisking up water from the surface of a canal that leads to the sea, in Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas, Sept. 2, 2019.
“We know that there are a number of people in Grand Bahama who are in serious distress and we will provide relief and assistance as soon as possible after the Met (Meteorology) Department has given the all clear. I strongly urge the residents of Grand Bahama to remain indoors and be as safe as possible until the all clear is given by the appropriate authorities,” Minnis said.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Dorian had weakened from its peak strength, but remained a extremely powerful storm with maximum sustained winds of 205 kilometers per hour early Tuesday.
Forecasters expect Dorian to drift “dangerously close” to the east coast of Florida by late Tuesday and the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina on Wednesday and Thursday.
Hurricane warnings are posted from just north of Miami to the Florida-Georgia border. Millions from Florida to South Carolina have been ordered to evacuate.
A National Guard spokesman says there has been almost no resistance from people being told they have to get out.
“People do understand that Dorian is nothing to mess around with,” he said.
Even if Dorian does not make landfall on the Atlantic Coast, the storm’s hurricane-force winds extend 56 kilometers to the west. Towns and cities can still expect up to 25 centimeters of rain, life-threatening flash floods, and some tornadoes.
Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management Jared Moskowitz says “Hurricane Dorian is the strongest storm to ever threaten the state of Florida on the East Coast. No matter what path this storm takes, our state will be impacted.”
