Owensboro

Pelosi describes Trump's 'very serious meltdown' during White House meeting on Syria

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi walked out of a meeting with Donald Trump about the crisis in Syria Wednesday after she said the president had had a "very serious meltdown" and insulted her in front of other congressional leaders.

At tense congressional hearing, Democrats argue for expanding the Voting Rights Act

Amid what experts are calling a surge in voter suppression measures, Democrats are sending a clear signal they want to restore portions of the Voting Rights Act that were removed by the Supreme Court in 2013, as well as expand the law’s reach.

The Latest: Woman denies link to Alabama child abduction

A woman described as a person of interest in the abduction of a 3-year-old Alabama girl is denying any involvement. Attorneys for 29-year-old Derick Irisha Brown of Birmingham released a statement Friday saying she had no role in the kidnapping and hopes for the safe return of Kamille "Cupcake" McKinney. Brown and a man were arrested earlier this week after being described as persons of interest in the child's abduction from a birthday party last weekend.

New ICE Program Exposes Hundreds of Fraudulent ‘Family Units’ Trying to Cross The Border

U.S. immigration authorities have discovered hundreds of instances at the border of “family unit fraud,” or unrelated individuals posing as families, over the last six months thanks to a new investigative initiative.Authorities exposed 238 fraudulent families presenting 329 false documents, according to the results of an investigation run by Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations unit in El Paso, Texas, the results of which were announced Thursday.More than 350 of those individuals are facing federal prosecution for crimes including human smuggling, making false statements, conspiracy, and illegal re-entry after removal. Authorities have referred 19 children to U.S. Health and Human Services as a result of this investigation. Another 50 migrants fraudulently claimed to be unaccompanied minors."Some of the most disturbing cases identified involve transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) and individuals who are increasingly exploiting innocent children to further their criminal activity," ICE said in a statement.In some cases, criminal organizations made deals with the children's biological parents to transfer children as young as 4 months old to the U.S. and pose as a family unit either for human smuggling purposes or to fraudulently obtain immigration benefits, ICE said.“These are examples of the dark side of this humanitarian crisis that our Border Patrol and HSI agents are working tirelessly to identify,” said El Paso Sector Interim Chief Gloria Chavez. “We will pursue the highest of judicial consequences for those who commit fraud and exploit innocent children.”The Trump administration has attempted to end the "catch and release" policy for migrant family units, which provides migrant families an expedited release into the U.S. as their asylum cases are being processed.Then–acting Homeland Security secretary Kevin McAleenan said last month that the vast majority of migrant families who enter the country illegally will no longer be eligible for “catch and release” due to the implementation of stricter policies. One such policy, the Migrant Protection Protocols, requires that migrants wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are being adjudicated.

Archaeologists have located an ancient city hidden in the Cambodian jungle. The discovery was 150 years in the making.

For centuries, the ancient city of Mahendraparvata has been covered by dense trees that make it hard to observe.

Track-Ready Dodge Challenger ACR Could Be on Its Way

Dodge is rumored to be working on a 50th-anniversary Challenger that would wear the ACR badge.

Warren Left $30 Trillion Short of Paying for Her Health Plan

(Bloomberg) -- Elizabeth Warren took a lot of flak at this week’s Democratic presidential debate for being evasive about the taxes needed to pay for the $30 trillion Medicare for All plan she champions. There’s a reason for being vague: Her team hasn’t yet figured out how to pay for it.“Her taxes as they currently exist are not enough yet to cover fully replacing health insurance,” University of California, Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez, who advised the Warren campaign when developing the wealth tax, told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.Warren -- who campaigns on the theme that she has a plan for everything -- is relying on the wealthy and big corporations to pay for her vision of restructuring American society, including funding student debt, free college, universal childcare, green energy and affordable housing plans.She has promised to fully cover those costs with her big ideas -- a wealth tax, corporate surtax, an increase in the estate tax and the elimination of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts.But she has made the strategic decision to adopt Bernie Sanders’ government-run health care plan rather than develop one of her own. Sanders acknowledged in Tuesday’s debate that “taxes will go up,” but neither of them have detailed how much or who those taxes would hit, prompting the toughest criticism she has faced from her Democratic primary rivals, including Joe Biden, with whom she is tied for the lead in most polls.The Warren campaign said they are continuing to review revenue options to fund Medicare for All and would support pay-fors that prioritize reducing costs for the middle class.Warren has made it a hallmark of her campaign to demonstrate how she’d pay for her dozens of policy proposals. Her 2% wealth tax on America’s richest would be one of the biggest sources of revenue, bringing in about $2.75 trillion over a decade.That would finance some of her most ambitious plans: $1.07 trillion for universal childcare, $610 billion for free college, $640 billion for eliminating student debt, and among others, $100 billion to combat the opioid crisis. All told, Warren’s wealth tax would pay for her plans with some room -- $303 billion -- to spare.That’s true for the rest of her plans. In total, she’s proposed an agenda that she estimates would cost nearly $6 trillion, according to her campaign. She’s offset those costs with more than $7.3 trillion in tax increases, according to Warren’s estimates and projections from the non-partisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.“She is offering a Medicare for All plan and not offering even close to enough to pay for it,” said Kyle Pomerleau, the chief economist at the conservative Tax Foundation. “One place she hasn’t gone yet is raising the existing individual income tax for top earners.”However, he added, even that would only garner a fraction of what she’d need to fully fund a health care plan.Warren has been reluctant to make Sanders’ point about taxes going up. Instead, she argues that overall costs for middle class families will go down, but big corporations and the wealthy will pay more. When asked to answer “yes or no” during Tuesday’s debate whether taxes would go up, Warren again focused on the overall costs.“Costs will go up for the wealthy, they will go up for big corporations and for middle-class families, they will go down,” Warren said on stage in Ohio Tuesday. “I will not sign a bill into law that does not lower costs for middle-class families.”She added later, “We know that they are a lot of different cost estimates for Medicare for All and they vary by trillions and trillions of dollars. We know there a lot of different revenue streams.”Even a conservative economist agreed with her costs argument.“I think the statement of costs going down is quite likely be true, said Alan Viard, a resident scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “But it would nevertheless be true that most people would be paying more in taxes.”Warren argues her taxes correct a system in which the wealthy and corporations weren’t paying their fair share. Even with what remains after raising those taxes, there wouldn’t be enough revenue from top earners and corporations to fund the estimated $30 trillion 10-year cost for Medicare for All. She’d have to find more revenue streams and that would have to include increasing taxes on the middle class, according to public finance experts across the political spectrum.Saez said that eliminating health care premiums for individuals who are covered through their employers could be transformed into higher wages that would more than cover any tax increase. “It’s true that we might have to pay an extra tax but it can be structured in a way that we gain in extra wages, bigger than whatever extra tax will be there,” he said.Warren rivals Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Biden chided her Tuesday for not being straightforward about funding health care.“I don’t want to pick on Elizabeth Warren but this is ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous,” Biden told reporters in Ohio on Wednesday. “It’s fascinating that the person who has a plan for everything has no plan for the single most consequential issue in this election in the minds of the American people across the board. And you know, credibility matters.”\--With assistance from Jennifer Epstein.To contact the reporters on this story: Laura Davison in Washington at ldavison4@bloomberg.net;Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou in Washington at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Moms Demand Action founder says advocacy group is not anti-gun

Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts spoke with CBS News' Major Garrett for this week's episode of "The Takeout"

Here's the Deadline Countdown for Every Trump Impeachment Subpoena Issued So Far

We're updating this live as more subpoenas are issued

YIKES: Saudi Arabia Does Have Chinese-Built Ballistic Missiles

But they aren't exactly the best or most accurate.

Police arrest 2nd suspect in case of isolated Dutch family

Dutch police said Thursday that a group of people discovered on an isolated farm this week may have been kept there against their will for up to nine years, as they arrested a 67-year-old man who says he is the father of the group. The man who raised the alarm after walking into a local bar and ordering five beers for himself also says he belongs to the family. While the six people on the farm and the man who raised the alarm say they are all from the same family — a father and six siblings all now young adults — police say they are still investigating their exact relationship as none of the siblings appears to have been registered with authorities.

Mexico flies 300 Indian migrants to New Delhi in mass deportation

Mexico has deported more than 300 Indian nationals to New Delhi, the National Migration Institute said late on Wednesday, in what it described as an unprecedented transatlantic deportation.

U.N. Investigates Possible Chemical Weapons Use by Turkish Forces in Syria

United Nations chemical-weapons inspectors announced that they are investigating whether Turkish forces used chemical weapons in their invasion of Syria, the Guardian reported Friday.The Kurds have accused Turkey of using white phosphorous during their recent incursion into northeastern Syria. The Kurdish Red Crescent claims that six patients, including civilians and military members, have been hospitalized in the city of Hasakah due to burns from "unknown weapons."The organization could not confirm chemical-weapons usage, saying it was "working together with our international partners to investigate this subject." However, a British chemical-weapons expert who examined a photo of one of the victims said the burns on the victim were likely from a chemical weapon."The most likely culprit is white phosphorus," said Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former commander of Britain's chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear regiment. "It is a horrific weapon, and has been used repeatedly during the Syrian civil war; unfortunately its use has become increasingly normalized."White phosphorous can be used legally as a smokescreen or as an incendiary at night to illuminate the battlefield, and is held by militaries worldwide. The use of white phosphorous as a weapon, however, is illegal under international law because it causes severe burns upon contact with skin.While some Kurdish officials alleged that Turkey used "unconventional weapons" in Syria, Turkey denies this."It is a fact known by everyone that there are no chemical weapons in the inventory of the Turkish armed forces," said Turkish defense minister Hulusi Akar.Turkey invaded northeast Syria on October 9 to clear a "safe zone" in which to resettle 3.6 million Syrian refugees residing in Turkey, as well as to combat Kurdish groups in the region it considers terrorist organizations. Some of these Kurdish groups were instrumental in the U.S.-led fight against ISIS in Syria.Syrian president Bashar Assad has repeatedly used chemical weapons against Syrian citizens in that country's civil war.

Washington Group Fighting Affirmative Action Used Proud Boys As Guards

John Rudoff/GettyAn anti-affirmative action campaign used members of the Proud Boys for security—and is now claiming it didn’t realize its protection team was an organization labeled a hate group.On Nov. 5, voters in Washington state are set to decide on the future of Referendum 88, a measure that would allow affirmative action hiring in public jobs. The measure has support from civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), but faces opposition from a state veterans group and the organization Washington Asians for Equality, which claims the measure would lead to preferential treatment for some groups. This summer, some of those opponents partnered with a more notorious organization: the Proud Boys, who featured the signature drive in a recently surfaced propaganda video.The Proud Boys—designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—prioritizes street fights and has extensive connections to more explicit white supremacist organizations. But unlike many other extremist groups, the Proud Boys frequently cozy up to the more mainstream right. Their current leader, Enrique Tarrio, is a Florida director of Latinos for Trump, despite marching in 2017’s deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.Republicans Are Adopting the Proud BoysIn the August video, a Washington Proud Boy claims Referendum 88 backers solicited the Proud Boys’ help in delivering signatures to the secretary of state’s office.The group “gave us a call asking for security to help take the signatures for Referendum 88 down to the capitol building,” he says in the video, which referendum supporters like the group Washington Fairness surfaced this week.The video goes on to show the group riding in a truck with the signatures and speaking into walkie-talkies for reasons that are not immediately apparent. The clip concludes with an advertisement for gas masks, which the Proud Boy says he used during a summer brawl with anti-fascists in Portland, Oregon.Reject Ref. 88, the organization that allegedly hired the Proud Boys, disavowed knowledge of them.“The Referendum 88 petition drive worked with many volunteers during the signature gathering phase,” organizer Linda Yang said in an email. “We didn’t know the association of these individuals you refer to, nor did they tell us. The Reject Ref.88/I-1000 campaign welcomes people from all walks of life who believe in equality for all, regardless of race. Those who don’t believe in that principle—be they on the far left or the far right—are not welcome in this campaign.”But as the Seattle Stranger noted, Yang even appeared in the Proud Boys’ video, explaining her opposition to Referendum 88. In the video, she gives different account of her group coming to work with the Proud Boys. After trying and failing to hire a security company to help deliver referendum signatures, “I got a call saying ‘hey there’s a group, they’re willing to help,’” she said in the video. “I said ‘we’ll take it.’”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Joe Biden digs at Elizabeth Warren after debate: Polls don't show 'anybody else as a frontrunner'

"You know, I haven't seen any polling showing that nationally, on average, that anybody else is a front-runner," Joe Biden said.

Mexico Throws $900 Million at Labor to Entice Democrats on USMCA

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is pledging close to $1 billion to implement a law to improve labor conditions that U.S. Democrats say is key to passing a stalled North American trade accord.Mexico’s Finance Ministry will ask lawmakers to boost the budget that was already presented to congress by $69 million for next year, Lopez Obrador stated in a letter he sent to U.S. Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He promised another $830 million over the following three years to fund the labor overhaul.The expensive pledges seem to be working, as both the White House and House Democrats are becoming increasingly upbeat about the stalled U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, known as USMCA. But AMLO’s steep austerity measures for most of his other ministries amid a stagnant economy present a challenge to his carrying out those promises.Neal said he was very pleased with Mexico’s demonstration of good faith, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer separately told a Bloomberg Government audience on Thursday that Democrats are “working hard to get to yes.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she’s “optimistic” about finishing work on the accord, although “we are not there yet.”AMLO, as Lopez Obrador is known, also said he’d tell the relevant authorities to carry out a “frontal attack” against labor impunity.To contact the reporter on this story: Nacha Cattan in Mexico City at ncattan@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Robert JamesonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Nancy Pelosi took a photo that Trump tweeted to accuse her of having a 'meltdown' and made it her cover photo

The photo was taken at a meeting after the House voted to condemn the US withdrawal from Syria. Pelosi also said the president had a "meltdown."

Israel envoy demands probe after effigy of Jewish tycoon left at Ukraine synagogue

The Israeli ambassador to Ukraine asked police on Thursday to find and punish people who left a red paint-spattered effigy of tycoon Ihor Kolomoisky, who holds a Ukrainian Jewish community leadership post, on the steps of the main synagogue in Kiev. Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine's richest men, is in the public eye over his business ties to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who came to fame as the star of TV show on a channel Kolomoisky owns. Kolomoisky is president of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine, one of several Jewish community bodies in the country.

Ex-Nazi guard, 93, on trial as accessory to 5,230 murders

Case against Bruno Dey could be one of the last of its kind, which is fine with American plaintiff Judy Meisel – she just wants one answer

APNewsBreak: Skeleton unearthed beneath California peak

The climbers were closing in on the top of California's second-highest peak when they came upon the grisly discovery of what looked like a bone buried in a boulder field. Tyler Hofer and his climbing partner moved rocks aside and discovered an entire skeleton. The discovery a week ago beneath Mount Williamson unearthed a mystery: Who was the unfortunate hiker?

A woman sues San Antonio after a police officer pulled out her tampon in public

The city of San Antonio will vote this week on a proposed settlement that would award a woman $205,000, after she accused a police officer of inappropriately searching her and pulling out her tampon in public.

Backlash grows over 'Abominable' film's disputed S. China Sea map

A scene in the film "Abominable" featuring a map with Beijing's disputed South China Sea claims sparked a growing regional backlash Friday, with Malaysia cutting the segment just days after Vietnam pulled the movie entirely. The animated film about a Chinese teenager helping a yeti return to his home shows a chart featuring the "nine-dash" line which sets out Beijing's expansive claims to the flashpoint waters. China's claims overlap those of several other states, and it has been building military outposts on small islands and atolls in the area, while frequent patrols by US warships to assert the right to free navigation have added to tensions.

Say Cheese! Satellite Photos Reveal China’s New Aircraft Carrier

High-resolution, commercial satellite images of China’s Jiangnan shipyard in September 2019 provided the clearest glimpse yet of the Chinese navy’s third and largest aircraft carrier.

Long-extinct Tasmanian tigers spotted at least eight times, officials say

Between 2016 to 2019, the report notes seven sightings of the Tasmanian tiger. It "had black stripes on the back side of the body."

Nunes Tries to Use Steele Dossier to Defend Trump During Closed-Door Hearing

Chip Somodevilla/GettyDuring a closed-door impeachment meeting on Capitol Hill, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) brought up a topic that surprised some attendees: the Steele dossier. The context, according to three sources familiar with the episode, was his effort to explain why President Trump might be “upset” about Ukraine. Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee that is leading the impeachment probe, said some of the dossier’s contents dealt with Ukraine, and that the Clintons paid for it. Some attendees said it seemed oddly divorced from the topic at hand–namely, whether Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate one of his political opponents.“It was nutso,” said one person familiar with the exchange. “It was awkward.” That source added that Ambassador Gordon Sondland—America’s envoy to the European Union, who was questioned at the meeting—appeared perplexed by Nunes’ commentary. A Nunes spokesperson said the congressman has made the argument described above in public.The dossier is at the crux of Republicans’ argument that the intelligence community conspired to take down Trump in 2016, and the president has tweeted about it dozens of times. Democrats view their focus on the document as conspiratorial and odd.Democrats called Sondland to Capitol Hill to answer questions about his role helping Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, develop a shadow foreign policy on Ukraine focused on pressuring its government to investigate the Bidens. Democrats were particularly interested in a series of text exchanges, which former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker gave them last week, that reveal alarm from the top American diplomat in Ukraine over the possibility of a quid pro quo involving $400 million in U.S. security aid. Sondland testified that Trump directed him to send a message to Volker and Bill Taylor, the charge d’affaires in Kyiv, explicitly stating there was “no quid pro quo.” He also discussed his high opinion of ousted Amb. Marie Yovanovich and his discomfort with Giuliani’s Ukraine work.Given the focus on Trump’s relationship with Ukraine, Nunes’ decision to bring up the dossier generated some raised eyebrows. But, in Nunes’ view, the dossier’s connection to Ukraine helps explain Trump’s frustration with the fragile Eastern European democracy. The dossier discussed, among many other things, Paul Manafort’s work in Ukraine. (Manafort was later convicted on tax and bank fraud charges, along with a charge of failing to disclose a foreign bank account.)The dossier is a series of documents assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele, working on contract for the research firm Fusion GPS. Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, in turn, funded some of that Fusion GPS work. The dossier made a host of allegations, including that the Russian government had compromising material on Trump. Many of the dossier’s claims are unverified. But it circulated among high-level U.S. government officials, and alarmed them. Then-FBI Director James Comey discussed its contents with Trump two weeks before his inauguration. The counterintelligence investigation scrutinizing Trump associates for Russia ties was already underway when the dossier began circulating in government. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court cited Fusion GPS’ work when it authorized surveillance of people affiliated with the Trump campaign. Republicans argue that this is evidence that the Intelligence Community conspired with the Clinton campaign to surveil Trumpworld and boost Clinton’s candidacy. The claim is widely rejected. Conservative talk show hosts, especially Sean Hannity, have made a cause célèbre of investigating the origins of the Russia probe, as well as the dossier itself. Attorney General Bill Barr has dispatched John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, to scrutinize the matter. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Syria Truce Shaky as Erdogan, Kurds Disagree on What It Means

(Bloomberg) -- Kurdish fighters say they have no intention of withdrawing from Syria’s entire northeastern border -- but that’s exactly what Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expects to happen under the cease-fire accord brokered by the U.S. on Thursday.The conflicting interpretations point to the fragility of the five-day truce deal, which is already being tested with reports of continuing skirmishes between Turkish forces and Syria’s Kurdish YPG militia, which is part of an autonomous administration in the northeast.Ankara says the YPG is linked to Kurdish separatists that it has battled for decades, and launched an offensive into northeastern Syria more than a week ago to push the group back from its border.After days of fighting, Turkey’s army now controls less than 120 kilometers (75 miles) of the frontier between the Syrian towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. But it wants to create a buffer zone on hundreds more, stretching from the Euphrates River in the west to the Iraqi border in the east.The deal struck by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Erdogan -- under which American troops would guide a YPG exit -- was vague on detail. But Turkey has made its interpretation clear.Turkish officials including Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu were quick to boast that they had been given pretty much all they desired.With the ink on the agreement barely dry, Erdogan made it clear that the Kurds must leave a zone 444 km long and as deep as 32 km.“If their promise is not kept the minute when the 120th hour ends, then our operation will continue with even more determination from where it was left off,” Erdogan said in Istanbul on Friday.Turkey, U.S. Agree to Brief Cease-Fire to Allow Kurdish RetreatBut the commander of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, General Mazloum Abdi, sees it differently. He said Thursday night the cease-fire deal was limited to the 120-km stretch between Tal Abyad and Ras Al-Ayn.Jim Jeffrey, the U.S. special envoy for the Syria conflict who was with Pence in Ankara, highlighted the potential obstacle to a lasting deal.“The Turks talk about an aspirational safe zone,” he said, while the U.S. has only defined a central section of the northeast corridor, where Turkish forces have penetrated as deep as 30 kilometers. With Kurdish-led forces vowing not to accept a “Turkish occupation of Syrian territory,” the fighting might not be over yet.Amid differing views on the zone, there were reports of sporadic clashes, airstrikes and Turkish shelling in the area, resulting in the death of 14 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.Most of the fighting in northeast Syria has stopped, a U.S. official said, asking not to be identified. It will take time for things to completely quiet down, which is usually the case in situations like this, the official said.(Updates on casualties, U.S. official view on truce.)\--With assistance from Justin Sink.To contact the reporter on this story: Selcan Hacaoglu in Ankara at shacaoglu@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Onur Ant at oant@bloomberg.net;Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net;Kevin Whitelaw at kwhitelaw@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Cartel gunmen terrorize Mexican city, free El Chapo's son

Heavily armed fighters surrounded security forces in a Mexican city on Thursday and made them free one of drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman's sons, after his capture triggered gunbattles and a prison break that sent civilians scurrying for cover. Security Minister Alfonso Durazo said a patrol by National Guard militarized police first came under attack from within a house in the city of Culiacan, 1,235 km (770 miles) northwest of Mexico City. After entering the house, they found four men, including Ovidio Guzman, who is accused of drug trafficking in the United States.

Deep-sea explorers find sunken warship from key WWII battle

Deep-sea explorers scouring the world's oceans for sunken World War II ships are focusing in on debris fields deep in the Pacific, in an area where one of the most decisive battles of the time took place. Hundreds of miles off Midway Atoll, nearly halfway between the United States and Japan, a research vessel is launching underwater robots miles into the abyss to look for warships from the famed Battle of Midway. Weeks of grid searches around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands already have led the crew of the Petrel to one sunken warship, the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga.

Why Mexico Is Cooperating with Us on Immigration

One of the reasons border apprehensions have dropped from their alarming peak in May is that Mexico has been pretty aggressive in stopping third-country nationals from traversing its territory on their way north to make bogus asylum claims so they can be released into the U.S.But why has Mexico been willing to work with us like this? It's especially curious because in the past, Mexico was not at all eager to help us limit illegal immigration, a pattern we might have expected to intensify with last year’s election as president of left-wing populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (commonly known as AMLO, pronounced as a word rather than initials).No doubt President Trump's tariff threats had some effect. Three-quarters of Mexico's exports go to the U.S., and despite increased integration of our economies over the past couple of decades, they still need us a lot more than we need them. Also, Trump's mercurial temperament clearly has the Mexicans worried that he could do something rash (similar to Iran's fears about Reagan if the hostages weren't released before he was inaugurated).But it's unlikely that these things would be enough to move a sometimes touchy nationalist like AMLO. Rather, I think a big part of the explanation is that the current flow of illegals is mainly made up of foreigners, not Mexicans. Earlier waves of mass infiltration across our southern border consisted mainly of Mexicans, and while Mexico quickly took back its people who had been nabbed by the Border Patrol, it did little if anything to reduce the flow. They did establish a police-like unit of the country's immigration agency called Grupo Beta, which worked on Mexico’s northern border (opposite our southern border), but its remit was to help potential illegals with water and first aid and protect them from criminals.But the current flow is very different. Yes, there are still a significant number of Mexicans sneaking across the border, but fewer than there used to be. Mexico's economy has grown and developed to a point where fewer people see the need to emigrate. Also, there just aren't that many able-bodied, working-aged people left in rural areas of Mexico, which is now about as urbanized as the U.S.The current illegal flow, by contrast, is mainly non-Mexican, mostly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador (the “northern triangle” countries of Central America), but with growing numbers from Haiti, Cuba, various African countries, and even the Middle East. There had always been a small number of what the Border Patrol calls OTMs (Other Than Mexicans), but they now constitute the majority of the flow.When the first caravan to catch the world's attention passed through Mexican towns on its way north in spring 2018, it was often welcomed with mariachi bands, offers of food and water, and even medical checkups. But as more caravans arrived, plus many migrants in smaller groups, all drawn by loopholes in American law that facilitated their release into the U.S., the welcome started to wear out. As the Washington Post wrote this spring:> But six months and several caravans later, much of that welcome has dried up. Most media have left. And the people of Mapastepec, and other places that have been overwhelmed, are showing their fatigue with the growing stream of migrants.> > "People . . . previously opened their doors to these migrants, but they do not have much extra money here," said Roberto Sarabia, 56, who works at a small grocery store. "What little they could give, they’ve already given."Exhaustion has turned to resentment. As the Central American illegals started piling up in Tijuana, preparing to cross to San Diego, local residents last November staged a protest; the NPR report offered a sense of the mood:> Demonstrators held signs reading "No illegals," "No to the invasion" and "Mexico First." Many wore the country's red, white and green national soccer jersey and vigorously waved Mexican flags. The crowd often slipped into chants of "Ti-jua-na!" and "Me-xi-co!" They sang the national anthem several times.Tijuana's mayor at the time, who was in political hot water generally (he subsequently lost his bid for reelection), rushed to try to take advantage of the situation by sporting a "Make Tijuana Great Again" red baseball cap.> Con ustedes el alcalde de Tijuana, Juan Manuel Gastélum, capaz de decir “que me perdonen las organizaciones defensoras de DH, pero los derechos humanos son para humanos derechos” … CaravanaMigrante pic.twitter.com/DkSuKeFBaF> > — Risco (@jrisco) November 16, 2018And it's not just Tijuana. The El Paso Times recently wrote about the newly developed Cuban community across the river in Juarez. Many Cuban illegals are giving up on their U.S. asylum gambit and deciding to settle down in Juarez (proving they were really economic migrants all along). And it's creating resentment. As a burrito seller said of the Cubans, "They don't get along with Mexican people. They get in a little group by themselves. A lot of people don't like them here." And a business consultant complained, "There are people who are coming looking for a handout, who want us to help them, when they could also look for work."The flow of illegals passing through Mexico to make bogus asylum claims in the U.S. has grown so large that some of them aren't bothering to head all the way to the border and are applying for asylum in Mexico instead. The number of asylum applications submitted to Mexico's refugee agency (COMAR) more than tripled in the first eight months of this year compared to the same period in 2018. The asylum burden seems to have gotten so bad that the refugee agency has removed the helpful video it used to host on its website explaining how to apply.And over the weekend, a large group of illegal aliens from Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America tried to set out on another caravan in southern Mexico, but were stopped by police and the National Guard (a new paramilitary force established by AMLO specifically for border control). Most telling was this bit of video from a Mexican news outlet, showing the commander of a National Guard platoon addressing his men before confronting the latest caravan. He starts his pep talk by saying, "No one will come to trample our country, our land!"> “Nadie va a venir a pisotear nuestro país, nuestra tierra”, son las palabras de un comandante de pelotón de la GuardiaNacional durante la redada de hoy contra migrantes haitianos y africanos.> > @Chechetc corresponsal de @WRADIOMexico pic.twitter.com/9YexXMqMsF> > — Salvador Zaragoza A. (@SalvadorZA) October 13, 2019None of this is to say that our border has been fully secured, or that we don't need to plug the loopholes that sparked this flow in the first place, or that interior measures such as E-Verify, workplace enforcement, and curbing sanctuary cities are no longer needed. And it's entirely possible that if Mexico hits a serious economic road bump in the future, a new Mexican-illegal surge will take place, and the political calculus will be very different.But for now, the United States and Mexico have a confluence of interests in stopping the flow of third-country "asylum-seekers" heading for the American border. Mexicans love their country, as they should, and they're tired of foreigners using it as a doormat.

Return of Argentine Peronism throws shadow over Falklands

Argentina is going to the polls on October 27 with a Peronist politician backed by former president Cristina Kirchner expected to win an outright majority, something that has got Falkland Islanders worried. The Falklands have been in British hands since 1833 but Argentina has waged a diplomatic battle -- that spilled into economic and then actual warfare -- since the 1960s to try to gain control of the archipelago. Argentine troops invaded the windswept islands for 74 days in 1982, before Britain swiftly defeated them.

America's Enemies Aren't Ready for the New B-21 Stealth Bomber

A stealthy upgrade to its predecessor.

Actress Felicity Huffman won't serve her full 14-day prison sentence

The former "Desperate Housewives" star, who reported for her 14-day prison sentence on Oct. 15, will reportedly serve only 13 days behind bars. People magazine cited the Federal Bureau of Prisons' inmate locator when reporting the news. She'll be released on Oct. 27.

Plans pushed back to explode 2 cranes in New Orleans

Plans have been pushed back a day to bring down two giant, unstable construction cranes in a series of controlled explosions before they can topple onto historic New Orleans buildings, the city's fire chief said Friday, noting the risky work involved in placing explosive on the towers. Making it happen, putting people back in danger," McConnell said. Light, intermittent rain and winds were complicating efforts Friday as workers in buckets suspended from another crane worked to prepare the site, McConnell said.

This 5-Hour Window Could Be Key to Trump’s Impeachment Inquiry

"I asked the President: “What do you want from Ukraine?”

Macron Says U.K. Shouldn’t Get New Delay If Johnson Loses Vote

(Bloomberg) -- French President Emmanuel Macron heaped pressure on the British Parliament to back Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, saying the U.K.’s departure from the European Union shouldn’t be delayed a moment longer.With Parliament due to vote on the revised agreement on Saturday, Macron’s remarks echoed the message Johnson himself has been sending to reticent MPs: it’s now or never. "I don’t think a new extension should be granted," Macron told reporters after a summit of EU leaders in Brussels, where the deal had been rubber stamped. "The Oct. 31 deadline must be met."Macron’s stance increases the risk that the U.K. will crash out of the EU without a deal on Oct. 31. But the reality is more nuanced, according to EU diplomats who doubt the bloc will ever throw the U.K. off a cliff without a safety net. The pound dipped on the comments, and then recovered.Selling the DealAfter sealing a revised deal with the EU on Thursday, Johnson is spending Friday frantically talking to politicians from his own and other parties as he tries to rustle up a majority. The prime minister needs to add 61 votes to the tally his predecessor Theresa May managed when her version of the Brexit deal was defeated for a third and final time in March.The new agreement differs from May’s agreement because only Northern Ireland rather than the whole U.K. will continue to apply the EU’s customs rules. That’s upset the province’s Democratic Unionist Party whose MPs say they won’t back Johnson’s deal on Saturday.If Johnson loses the vote, he’s obliged by law to request from the EU another extension by the end of the day. But any postponement must be approved unanimously by the EU’s 27 leaders so Macron would have a veto.EU officials were expecting such an intervention by Macron, who made similar noises before approving a Brexit delay in April, but they said that it’s very unlikely that he or any other leader would prevent another one, particularly if the U.K. was headed for a general election. While the bloc is just as keen to get Britain’s departure over the line as Johnson, it considers a no-deal exit in two weeks a far worse prospect than another postponement.Envoys from the 27 remaining countries and the European Commission are due to meet on Sunday to discuss next steps should Johnson’s deal fall.The French have consistently taken a hard line in Brexit negotiations and Macron argues that the tight deadline he insisted on the last time the process was extended helped force Johnson into concessions. Several EU governments privately now regret delaying Brexit from April until October, acknowledging that it took the pressure of the U.K. to pass a deal."I was alone and I don’t think I was wrong," Macron said, referring to the decision six months ago.Other leaders were more circumspect on the issue, with Leo Varadkar, the prime minister of Ireland, which stands to be affected most by a no-deal Brexit, saying a delay isn’t guaranteed and Luxembourg premier Xavier Bettel insisting the ball was now in the U.K. Parliament’s court.“We have done our job,” he said. “There’s a plan A, but there’s no plan B."(Updates with context throughout.)\--With assistance from Stephanie Bodoni.To contact the reporters on this story: Helene Fouquet in Paris at hfouquet1@bloomberg.net;Ian Wishart in Brussels at iwishart@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Atatiana Jefferson's neighbor thought he asked police to do a wellness check, but the police didn’t investigate it that way

Atatiana Jefferson, 28, was killed in her home on Saturday by Aaron Dean, a Fort Worth police officer who has resigned and been charged with murder.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg Drops Fundraiser Tied to Laquan McDonald Coverup

REUTERSMayor Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign announced Friday that the co-host of a controversial campaign fundraiser was dropping out amid sharp public criticism over the role he played in delaying the release of a video of an infamous 2014 shooting death of a black teenage boy.The would-be co-host, Steve Patton, is a former Chicago city attorney who pushed to withhold video depicting the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald until after a contentious mayoral runoff election, more than a year after a judge had ordered the video to be released. Patton already donated $5,600 to Buttigieg in June—a donation that the South Bend mayor’s campaign said it would be returning. “Transparency and justice for Laquan McDonald is more important than a campaign contribution,” Chris Meagher, the Buttigieg campaign’s national press secretary, told The Daily Beast. “We are returning the money he contributed to the campaign and the money he has collected. He is no longer a co-host for the event and will not be attending.”Patton’s role in the Friday fundraiser, first reported by the Associated Press, prompted sharp criticism of Buttigieg, including from the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the city’s most prominent civil rights leader, who called on the Democratic nominee to “adjust his schedule.”Buttigieg’s campaign had initially declined to comment on the story, directing the Associated Press to his “Douglass Plan” to end systemic racism.Buttigieg, who is struggling in the polls among black voters, has had difficulty trying to reconcile his sweeping proposals for deconstructing structural racism with his record as the mayor, where he fired the city’s first black police chief and has conceded that he has failed in diversifying the city’s law enforcement. South Bend’s police department is 90 percent white while the city itself is 27 percent black.In June, Buttigieg left the campaign trail following the shooting death of a black man, Eric Logan, by a white police officer. At a town hall discussing the shooting, Buttigieg was heckled by angry South Bend residents who demanded that he focus on the city’s problems with racism in its police force rather than his run for the White House.“I just want you to know that we’re not running from this,” Buttigieg said at the time. “Of course I’m upset. A man died in this city at the hands of one of the people in charge of protecting the city.”Other president campaigns were quick to jump on Patton’s participation in the fundraiser as evidence of misplaced priorities. Rob Flaherty, digital director for Buttigieg rival Beto O’Rourke, tweeted that it was “good to see that despite The Pete Pivot, he’s remaining consistent on some things.”According to Federal Election Commission filings, Patton donated $2,700 to O’Rourke’s 2018 campaign for the U.S. Senate.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

China signs deal to 'lease' Pacific island in Solomons

A Chinese company signed an agreement to lease an entire island in the Solomon Islands a day after Beijing recruited the Pacific nation as its latest ally in the strategically important region, according to documents obtained by AFP Thursday. The leaked papers reveal that the Solomons' Central Province made a "strategic cooperation agreement" on Tulagi island, which has the type of deep-water harbour coveted by the military, with the state-owned China Sam Group on September 22. A day previously, China and the Solomons officially established diplomatic relations after Beijing persuaded the impoverished Pacific nation to sever ties with arch-rival Taiwan and become its ally.

U.S. Navy Submarines Are Losing Their Stealth Coatings. Who’s to Blame?

A former employee of Huntington Ingalls Industries, the Virginia-based shipbuilder that helps to construct all of the U.S. Navy’s submarines, has sued the company in federal court, claiming that the firm lied about problems with the external coating on Virginia-class attack subs.

The ATF Has Been Enforcing a Rule That Does Not Exist

Anyone else sick to death of watching the Democrats debate each other already? Tuesday saw them rehash numerous conversations they've already had, and there are still eight excruciating nights of such television for us to endure.Beto O'Rourke, for instance, once again loudly and obnoxiously announced his intention to confiscate semiautomatic "assault weapons" from their lawful owners. He said he “believes” that compliance will be forthcoming.If I really need to engage with this nonsense, I'll go ahead and note that the American people don't support gun confiscation — even in polls where they endorse banning sales of new assault weapons; that compliance with gun bans is low pretty much everywhere; that his policy would violate the Second Amendment; and that there's little solid evidence that blanket gun bans are effective in reducing crime. We’re not going to pass this law, we wouldn’t comply with it if we did, and the courts might not allow it anyway.But with that out of the way, let's address what should be an elephant in the room: While Beto was rambling on about his bizarre fantasies in which docile AR-15 owners happily identify themselves to the government and dutifully surrender their arms, our actual legal regime for regulating these guns came under serious threat from a case out of California — because the folks who are supposed to enforce the gun laws have royally messed up for decades.To understand what's going on here, you need a little bit of background. There are lots of rules about making and selling guns in this country: If you sell guns regularly as a business, you need to get a license and conduct background checks on your buyers; each gun a manufacturer creates for sale needs a serial number; etc. However, it's generally legal to sell firearm parts without following those rules.The exception is the "receiver." Federal law treats this part — the frame that holds the gun’s guts, basically — the same way it treats an entire firearm. It needs to have a serial number and so on even when it's sold by itself, preventing people from evading the law by simply buying and selling firearms piece by piece.But this creates an issue for AR-15s, whose receivers themselves are divided into two parts. For these guns, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives treats the bottom part — the "lower receiver" — as the firearm for regulatory purposes. The only way to skirt the law is to sell "80 percent lowers," hunks of metal mostly made into lowers but still requiring some machining. (It’s legal to finish these off yourself, but only for personal use.)But wait a minute: Could the ATF’s usual practice be wrong? Is it actually flat-out legal to sell a completed lower with no serial number and no background check? That's the issue raised by the recent case.You can read the whole story over at CNN, and find the judge's order here, but for our purposes, these are the important facts: A guy named Joseph Roh illegally manufactured and sold AR-15s and other guns through a slapstick scheme to avoid the law. A judge issued a tentative order against Roh — but in the process held that lower receivers are not firearms under current regulations, thus acquitting Roh of some of the charges. The government decided to let Roh off with a slap on the wrist rather than pursue the matter further, to prevent the order, as CNN puts it, from “becoming permanent, drawing publicity, and creating case law that could hamper ATF enforcement efforts.” It ended up on CNN’s website regardless, and anyone prosecuted for selling AR-15 lowers going forward will be tempted to try Roh’s defense.How did this happen? Vague laws and poorly crafted bureaucratic rules.Congress's law on this matter simply refers to a "receiver"; it doesn't define the word. The definition is found instead in the Code of Federal Regulations:> That part of a firearm which provides housing for the hammer, bolt or breechblock, and firing mechanism, and which is usually threaded at its forward portion to receive the barrel.This is very bad, for the reason noted above: AR-15s don't have a single receiver. The bolt and threading are found in the upper receiver, while the hammer and firing mechanism are in the lower. Neither, in other words, by itself meets the definition of “receiver” in the regulation — and for decades the ATF has been enforcing, via its opaque in-house classification process, a rule that doesn’t exist in the official rulebook. As a result, someone who carefully reads both the law and the regulation is not on notice that it's illegal to sell a lower receiver without a serial number and background check, and cannot rightfully be punished for doing so.The upshot? Here's how the government put it in a filing noted by CNN, warning the judge about the consequences of enforcing the rule as written:> Unregulated parts could be manufactured, sold, and combined with other commercially available parts to create completed, un-serialized firearms which would not be subject to background checks, and which would be untraceable.It also stressed that the problem is common to many semiautomatic guns, not just AR-15s and their variants.This isn't the first time a court has noticed this problem, surprisingly enough. In 2016's U.S. v. Jimenez, a court found similarly when faced with wording like this in a related part of the regulatory code. It further noted that the ATF itself was confused about how to handle split receivers when it discussed them internally in the 1970s.This might be a loophole the executive branch can plug fairly easily, since the problem lies mainly in the regulation and not the statute passed by Congress — though prosecutors could lose cases against illegal gun sellers in the meantime. It’s also possible that other courts will let the agency get away with pretending that the rule means something other than what it says. (See, for instance, ATF’s decision to ban “bump stocks” by administrative fiat despite the fact the statute at issue clearly does not cover them.)But you have to ask: If Congress and the ATF can’t write rules clearly ensuring that our basic gun laws apply to AR-15s, how well could Beto’s confiscation drive possibly go?

Mitch McConnell warns Republicans in private meeting that Trump's impeachment trial could start as soon as November

McConnell explained how the impeachment process would work during a private weekly lunch meeting with GOP lawmakers.

Hundreds of police officers have been labeled liars. Some still help send people to prison.

Across the USA, prosecutors aren't tracking officer misconduct, skirting Supreme Court "Brady" rules and sometimes leading to wrongful convictions.

EU Sends U.S. New Warning of Retaliatory Tariffs Over Boeing Aid

(Bloomberg) -- The European Union pledged to impose tit-for-tat tariffs against the U.S. in a longstanding transatlantic dispute over illegal aid to aircraft manufacturers.The renewed vow by European trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom came as President Donald Trump’s administration triggered duties on $7.5 billion of EU goods ranging from planes to spirits in retaliation over market-distorting subsidies to Airbus SE.Malmstrom said the EU would apply its own levies on a range of U.S. products “in due course” as a result of unlawful aid to Boeing Co., signaling the bloc will hold its fire until the World Trade Organization fixes the damages sum in a decision due next year. The EU has drawn up a plan for countermeasures worth $12 billion.“This step leaves us no alternative but to follow through in due course with our own tariffs in the Boeing case, where the U.S. has been found in breach of WTO rules,” Malmstrom said in an emailed statement on Friday in Brussels.Europe has been gearing up for an escalation of the 15-year-old fight over aircraft subsidies while warning the Trump administration against resorting to tariffs and urging it to seek a negotiated solution.“The EU and the U.S. have a joint responsibility to sit down and negotiate a settlement that is balanced and compliant with the WTO,” Malmstrom said on Friday. “Imposing tariffs on each other serves nobody’s long-term interest. It will inflict very significant damage to the highly integrated supply chain of the aircraft sectors in the U.S. and the EU and will result in collateral damage to many other sectors already suffering under the current trade tensions.”To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Stearns in Brussels at jstearns2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Peter ChapmanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.