Top News

Nancy Pelosi outlined 5 agenda items if Democrats retake House
2018-10-16 23:02:56 UTC
WASHINGTON (AP) — Projecting confidence about her party’s chances, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi outlined five of the top 10 agenda items Democrats will pursue if they retake the House in next month’s election. Lowering health care costs, rebuilding infrastructure and running the House chamber with more transparency and openness are near the top of the Democratic agenda, Pelosi said during a talk Tuesday at Harvard’s Institute of Politics. Democrats would also prioritize giving legal status to young immigrants, known as Dreamers, and strengthening background checks on gun purchases, she said. Democrats need to gain 23 seats to wrest c...
Brexit: The Irish border has become a sticking point
2018-10-15 16:25:14 UTC
LUXEMBOURG (AP) — Britain and the European were still both refusing to blink Monday over the question of the Irish border in Brexit talks — only two days ahead of a summit once seen as the moment when they would have to reach deal on Britain’s divorce from the bloc. A flurry of diplomatic meetings over the weekend had raised hopes for a Brexit agreement, but they were derailed by the issue that has dogged the talks for months — how to ensure that no hard border is created between the EU’s Ireland and Britain’s Northern Ireland once Brexit happens on March 29. The EU has proposed a “backstop” solution that would keep Northern Ireland ...
Alec Baldwin Urges To Vote: It's time To Overthrow The Government of Donald Trump
2018-10-15 16:09:39 UTC
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Actor Alec Baldwin followed up his latest parody portrayal of President Donald Trump with a serious call Sunday night for voters to use the Nov. 6 midterm elections to peacefully “overthrow” the government. After reprising his role as Trump on “Saturday Night Live,” Baldwin flew to New Hampshire, where he was the keynote speaker at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual fall fundraising dinner. “The way we implement change in America is through elections. We change governments here at home in an orderly and formal way,” he said. “In that orderly and formal way and lawful way, we need to overthrow the gove...
Facebook says hackers accessed data from 29 million accounts
2018-10-12 17:50:55 UTC
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook says hackers accessed data from 29 million accounts as part of the security breach disclosed two weeks ago. The exact number hadn’t been known before. Originally Facebook said 50 million accounts could have been affected, but Facebook didn’t know if they had been misused. The hackers accessed name, email addresses or phone numbers from those 29 million accounts. For 14 million of those accounts, hackers got even more data, such as hometown, birthdate, the last 10 places they checked into or 15 most recent searches. One million accounts were affected but hackers didn’t gain information. The social media servic...
Critical Journalist 'killed inside Saudi consulate': Proof
2018-10-12 17:29:39 UTC
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s government has told U.S. officials it has audio and video proof that missing Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the Washington Post reported Friday. The newspaper, for which Khashoggi is a columnist, cited anonymous officials as saying the recordings show a Saudi security team detained the writer when he went to the consulate on Oct. 2 to pick up a document for his upcoming wedding. The Associated Press was not immediately able to confirm the report, and Turkish officials would not comment. A delegation from Saudi Arabia arrived in Turk...
Washington State to abolish death penalty
2018-10-11 21:54:12 UTC
(Reuters) - Washington became the 20th U.S. state to abolish capital punishment when its Supreme Court struck down the death penalty on Thursday, saying in a unanimous decision that its application was arbitrary and racially biased. “The death penalty, as administered in our state, fails to serve any legitimate enological goal,” the Washington Supreme Court said, adding it “is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” <blockquote> After the court decision, Democratic Governor Jay Inslee tweeted, “Equal justice is a hallmark of democracy and assuring equal justice is the state’s responsibili...
US Stock Markets In A Free Fall
2018-10-11 21:54:02 UTC
NEW YORK — The Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 fell sharply again Thursday after both indexes on Wednesday logged their largest losses on a percentage basis since Feb. 8. The S&P 500 has closed lower for five straight days. The Nasdaq declined on Thursday, a day after the tech-heavy index had its biggest percentage drop since June 2016. <blockquote> Stocks in Asia closed sharply lower on Thursday following the selloff on Wall Street. Tokyo's Nikkei 225 declined 3.9%, and the Shanghai Composite index sank 5.2%. Banks and health care companies are taking some of the worst losses while technology companies are slightly h...
Dominated by men: Amazon scraps tool that showed bias against women
2018-10-11 21:53:47 UTC
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) machine-learning specialists uncovered a big problem: their new recruiting engine did not like women. The team had been building computer programs since 2014 to review job applicants’ resumes with the aim of mechanizing the search for top talent, five people familiar with the effort told Reuters. Automation has been key to Amazon’s e-commerce dominance, be it inside warehouses or driving pricing decisions. <blockquote><h2>Amazon’s experimental hiring tool</h2>The company’s experimental hiring tool used artificial intelligence to give job candidates scores ranging from one to fiv...
Wall Street faces worst day since February
2018-10-11 21:53:35 UTC
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks on major world markets slid to a three-month low on Wednesday, with the benchmark S&P500 stock index falling more than 3.0 percent, its biggest one-day fall since February. Technology shares tumbled on fears of slowing demand, while bond yields ended lower after seeing multi-year highs earlier this week. Major equity indexes in Europe fell more than 1.0 percent, also pulled down by technology shares, and gold prices inched up as some investors sought refuge in the metal. “The S&P 500 is looking very weak and negative and that is putting fear into investors,” said Michael Matousek, head trader at U.S. Gl...
Russian "black operations" becoming active as East-West confrontation worsens
2018-10-09 19:03:47 UTC
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s military spies are being mocked abroad as bunglers but the army’s influence over Kremlin foreign policy is growing and there is little likelihood it will halt its “black operations”. The GRU military intelligence agency is blamed by the West for several botched attacks this year, including attempting to kill former spy Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury and trying to hack the global chemical weapons watchdog in the Netherlands. <blockquote><img alt="A_met_police_cctv_still_of_suspects_ruslan_boshirov_and_alexander_petrov_in_salisbury_in_march_(met_police)" src="/system/image...
US: Deported migrant parents can lose custody of their kids
2018-10-09 17:44:47 UTC
Araceli Ramos sheds a tear as she describes her battle to be reunited with her 5-year-old daughter. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) AP — As the deportees were led off the plane onto the steamy San Salvador tarmac, an anguished Araceli Ramos Bonilla burst into tears, her face contorted with pain: “They want to steal my daughter!” It had been 10 weeks since Ramos had last held her 2-year-old, Alexa. Ten weeks since she was arrested crossing the border into Texas and U.S. immigration authorities seized her daughter and told her she would never see the girl again. What followed — one foster family’s initially successful attempt to wi...
Laser Trio Win Nobel Prize In Physics
2018-10-02 18:38:17 UTC
STOCKHOLM/LONDON (Reuters) - A trio of American, French and Canadian scientists won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for breakthroughs in laser technology that have turned light beams into precision tools for everything from eye surgery to micro-machining. They include the first female physics prize winner in 55 years. Canada’s Donna Strickland, of the University of Waterloo, becomes only the third woman to win a Nobel for physics, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963. <blockquote><img alt="Nobel_prize_for_physics_2018_award_winners_(l-r)_arthur_ashkin_of_the_u.s.__gerard_mourou_of_france_and_donna...
Angela Merkel, Most Respected Global Leader
2018-10-03 00:02:37 UTC
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the most respected global leader and the image of the United States has gotten worse since Donald Trump took office, a leading survey showed. The survey of 25 nations by the Pew Research Center also showed that respondents from across the globe have less confidence in Trump’s ability to lead than they do in Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping. Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has pulled the United States out of international agreements like the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear deal, cozied up to authoritarian leaders like Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and criticized ...
California Gov. Jerry Brown signs gun control bills into law
2018-09-29 20:39:10 UTC
(Reuters) - California Governor Jerry Brown signed several gun control bills into law on Friday, including one measure that raises the minimum age for buying rifles and shotguns from 18 to 21. The new laws come seven months after a gunman opened fire with a semiautomatic assault-style rifle at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 14 students and three adults, the second-deadliest mass shooting at a public school in U.S. history. The rampage, which authorities say was carried out by a former student who was 19, has spurred unprecedented activism by victims and their families to prevent future gun violence...
Brexit: UK politicians remain deeply divided
2018-09-28 18:31:42 UTC
More than two years since the 2016 EU referendum, the United Kingdom, its politicians and its business leaders remain deeply divided over Brexit while Prime Minister Theresa May has yet to clinch a divorce deal with the EU. Opponents of Brexit are exploring ways to stop what they say is Britain’s biggest mistake since World War Two. Miller is leading a campaign to have another referendum, but she said if the government manages to successfully navigate an exit deal then politicians must be allowed to focus on domestic issues without the distractions of a debate about Britain’s relationship with Europe. “Whatever happens at the end ...
Kavanaugh: "I am innocent," but don't investigate me
2018-09-27 22:49:51 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fighting to salvage his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh angrily and tearfully denied on Thursday a university professor’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her 36 years ago after she told a dramatic U.S. Senate hearing she was “100 percent certain” he did it. Christine Blasey Ford, her voice sometimes cracking with emotion, appeared in public for the first time to detail her allegation against Kavanaugh, a conservative federal appeals court judge chosen by President Donald Trump for a lifetime job on the top U.S. court. Ford told the committee she feared Kavanaugh would rape and accidenta...
Kirsten Gillibrand: GOP is sending the worst possible message to girls
2018-09-27 01:37:48 UTC
<blockquote>On Wednesday, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York delivered a scathing speech on the Senate floor, criticizing her Republican colleagues for their “disappointing” response to the sexual-assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. “This process is sending the worst possible message to girls — and boys — everywhere,” Gillibrand said in her speech. “It’s telling American women that your voice doesn’t matter. It’s telling survivors everywhere that your experiences don’t count, they’re not important and they are not to be believed. We are saying that women are worth less than a man’s promotion.” Refer...
Milk and mushrooms may prevent metabolic diseases
2018-09-26 21:37:16 UTC
<blockquote>Recent research conducted at Pennsylvania State University in the US studied the effect of mushrooms on glucose production in the body. Mushrooms are a probiotic food, which means they positively influence the bacteria in the gut. In a study with mice, researchers discovered that the regular consumption of white button mushrooms boosted the growth of certain bacteria which produce substances that influence glucose production. The researchers believe that white button mushrooms may be especially helpful for people with diabetes, due to the fungi's role in glucose production. Like mushrooms, milk also seems to regulate b...
Refugee children making a new life in Germany
2018-09-23 22:08:49 UTC
Hailing from Syria, Afghanistan and Eastern Europe, they attend the same integration class in their new home. Despite different backgrounds, these high school students all have one thing in common: motivation to succeed. "I have been in Germany for two years. I took off on foot, then someone gave me a ride in their car, after that I continued by bus and train and then finally on foot again. In Austria, a friend and I simply boarded a train to Munich. I couldn't speak any German." The events that Aziz Ahmad Noori is referring to took place two years ago. He was 15 at the time. He fled Afghanistan – fled violence – without his parents. ...
UNHCR: 4 million refugee children can't go to school
2018-09-23 22:16:47 UTC
Four million refugee children around the world are excluded from education, according to a United Nations report. A solution should be to allow refugees to attend regular schools, the UNHCR has demanded. With more and more children forced to leave their homes, the number of refugees out of education has topped four million, according to the UN's Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The figure represents more than half of all school-age refugees around the world, according to the report named "Turn the Tide: Refugee Education in Crisis." <blockquote><h2>Key takeaways from the report</h2><blockquote><I> • There are now 7.4 million school-age refu...
California professor Christine Blasey Ford to testify on Thursday
2018-09-23 06:06:10 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - California professor Christine Blasey Ford has tentatively agreed to testify before a Senate panel on Thursday, according to media reports. The agreement is in the works for California professor Christine Blasey Ford to possibly testify on Thursday, but details have yet to be finalized, CNN and other media reported late on Saturday. The report said that her lawyers will talk again on Sunday with Senate officials. U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley had set a Saturday afternoon deadline for Ford, who has accused Kavanaugh of sexual assaulting her at a high school party 36 years ago, to decide...
Schoolmates discussed 'Kavanaugh's attempted rape' around campus
2018-09-20 22:04:18 UTC
Intensifying calls for a complete FBI investigation into Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's claim that Trump Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape her while they were in high school, a former schoolmate of Ford wrote in a Facebook post that she recalls hearing discussion of the alleged sexual assault around campus. "This incident did happen. Many of us heard a buzz about it indirectly with few specific details," Cristina Miranda King—who says Ford was "a year or so behind her"—claimed in Facebook post that she deleted after being overwhelmed with media inquiries. "However, Christine's vivid recollection should be more than enoug...
Green crabs from Nova Scotia threaten coastal ecosystem
2018-09-19 05:21:29 UTC
BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — Canadians are known as friendly folks, but these crabby brutes migrating from Canadian waters are better suited for the hockey rink. Green crabs from Nova Scotia are the same species as their cousins that already inhabit Maine waters, but are ornerier and angrier, threatening to accelerate harm to the coastal ecosystem by gobbling up soft-shell clams and destroying native eel grass, a researcher said. The docile green crabs shrink from a threat, while the newcomers are more apt to wave their pincers and charge. “What we’re seeing is this insane level of aggressiveness,” said Markus Frederich, a professor at...
Migraine is misunderstood by those who don't suffer symptoms
2018-09-19 05:10:47 UTC
Migraine is a debilitating neurological disease that is often misunderstood by those who do not suffer symptoms, according to the Migraine Impact Report, a new survey recently released by Eli Lilly and Company and conducted by Nielsen. The report showed that respondents without the disease underestimate the pain and duration of a typical migraine. Ninety one percent of respondents with migraine further agreed that those who do not experience migraine pain do not have a complete understanding of the severity of the disease. <blockquote><img alt="Migraine_is_misunderstood_by_those_who_do_not_suffer_symptoms" src="/system/images/22229...
Professor Blasey Ford details attempted rape by Kavanaugh
2018-09-16 23:33:35 UTC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A woman who had anonymously accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in the early 1980s went public on Sunday, prompting Republicans to plan further discussions about his nomination before a committee vote this week. In an interview with the Washington Post, Christine Blasey Ford said that as a high school student in suburban Maryland decades earlier, a “stumbling drunk” Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her and attempted to remove her clothing. Last week, Kavanaugh, Republican President Donald Trump’s second nominee for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court, sa...