Medina

As Trump says news about COVID should be illegal, WH chief of staff says goal is to 'defeat' virus, not 'control' it

While President Trump’s chief of staff on Monday attempted to clarify the assertion that the United States is “not going to control” the coronavirus crisis, the president himself complained that the media is too focused on the pandemic.

Man charged in burning of ballot drop box in Boston

A man was charged with setting a Boston ballot drop box on fire and damaging dozens of ballots, police said Monday. Worldy Armand, a 39-year-old Boston resident, was taken into custody late Sunday, hours after he started a fire inside a drop box outside the Boston Public Library in the city's Back Bay neighborhood, authorities said. The box contained more than 120 ballots.

Trump supporting write-in candidate declares herself governor of Ohio after discussing plot to kidnap Mike DeWine

A woman who ran as a write-in candidate against Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has unlawfully declared herself governor of the state and been implicated in a plot to kidnap and prosecute Mr DeWine. Renea Turner, who ran against Mr DeWine as a write-in candidate in 2018, posted a video to her Facebook on Thursday in which she places her hand on a Bible and proclaims herself the governor of Ohio. "Ohio is free from Tyrannous leadership," she wrote in a Facebook post following the stunt.

Mitch McConnell’s Conservative Challenger Gets a Boost... From Dems

In a last-ditch effort to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a deep-pocketed Democratic group has begun airing ads backing the Libertarian candidate in Kentucky’s U.S. Senate contest.A new super PAC called True Kentucky Patriots started buying television and digital ads last week in support of Libertarian Brad Barron, calling him “Kentucky’s true conservative for U.S. Senate,” in the words of one thirty-second spot. “Barron is one hundred percent pro-Second Amendment, one hundred percent pro-life, and one hundred percent pro-term limits. Sorry Mitch, 36 years is too long.”The group is clearly designed to peel off conservative votes from McConnell, who faces a challenge from Democrat Amy McGrath. Federal Election Commission records show that True Kentucky Patriots is affiliated with one of the Senate race’s largest independent spenders, a pro-McGrath group called the Ditch Fund.True Kentucky Patriots also shares a treasurer with the Ditch Fund, and both groups have paid a Democratic firm called Beacon Media to produce and place their respective digital ads.It’s not uncommon for political operatives to attempt to boost third party candidates that they hope will act as spoilers and split an opposing ideological coalition’s votes to the detriment of one major party candidate or the other. But it’s less common for groups doing so to disclose those efforts in publicly available campaign finance filings.True Kentucky Patriots hasn’t been around long enough to reveal any of its donors, and it won’t have to do so until nearly three weeks after election day. But pro-McGrath forces have already attempted to promote Barron’s candidacy through other means. Another anti-McConnell super PAC, Fire Mitch Save America PAC, has sent mailers promoting Barron’s Senate bid.FEC filings also show that Democrats have sought to boost Barron directly. At least five of Barron’s donors have also given to McGrath’s campaign. One of them, a New York-based Microsoft employee, even donated to both McGrath and Barron on the same day.Polling in the Kentucky Senate contest has shown McConnell with a consistent lead, though his margin has varied from as little as five points to as much as twelve. The most recent poll of the race has McConnell with a nine-point lead over McGrath, and just four percent saying they support Barron’s candidacy, meaning the Libertarian likely will not draw enough votes to tilt the election. The race has nonetheless drawn massive investments from both parties. McConnell and McGrath have together spent nearly $115 million, with outside groups dropping another $26 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.Kentucky isn’t the only state where Democrats have attempted to boost a third party spoiler in a tight Senate contest. In South Carolina, Democrat Jaime Harrison’s campaign has run ads ostensibly attacking an obscure Constitution Party candidate by calling him too conservative for the state. It appears to be an effort to encourage support for the more right-wing contender among the state’s more conservative voters—to the detriment of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham.But the most famous would-be spoiler candidate of the 2020 election cycle is Kanye West. A number of Republican operatives have lined up behind his dead-end presidential campaign in an effort to draw votes from Democratic nominee Joe Biden in some key battleground states.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.

France may be at 100,000 virus cases daily as Molotov cocktails thrown at German public health agency

Pressure in France for local lockdowns is increasing after the government's chief scientific advisor estimated that the country is seeing 100,000 new coronavirus cases every day. On Sunday, 52,000 new Covid-19 infections were reported in France, another daily record - but yesterday Jean-François Delfraissy, the government's chief scientific advisor, said the true figure was probably twice as high. Dr Delfraissy joined other senior doctors in urging the government to introduce local lockdowns or a weekend lockdown that would effectively extend the current 9pm curfew in force in much of the country to weekends in order to limit social contacts.

Protesters storm churches in Poland on the 4th day of unrest after a court ruling tightened the country's already-strict abortion laws

The court banned abortion in the case of fetal defects, making abortion legal only in cases of incest, rape, or danger to the mother's life.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is heavily favored to win her reelection race. Her challenger has still raised $10 million because Republicans are desperate to beat her.

"I guarantee you 75% of his contributors don't know anything about him," a Republican strategist told The New York Times.

Court Ruling Could Kill Uber and Lyft in California

Just days before Californians themselves were set to decide on the matter, a state appeals court has ruled that app-based ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft must comply with state law AB5 and classify all of their drivers as employees rather than contractors. The ruling raises the possibility that the companies will simply end operations in the state altogether, both having stated previously that their business model depends on the flexibility of using contractors.The companies claim, and drivers often confirm, that the flexibility of contract work is key to their operations. Employers are required under federal and state law to schedule and track their employees’ hours for overtime, unemployment, and other purposes. That’s not case with contractors, who are legally considered independent businesses.Critics of the ride-sharing companies, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, claim that’s just a dodge to get out of paying overtime and complying with other workplace regulations. Labor unions have pushed for the drivers to be classified as employees, since contractors cannot join unions.A three-judge state appeals court panel on Thursday agreed, rejecting the companies’ arguments out of hand. The panel was in full crusader mode, calling the case a “reminder that the foundation of interim injunctive relief lies in equity comes from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was renowned for her expertise in procedure long before she became the national icon known as RBG.”The panel said that there was just no reason to assume that forcing ride-sharing companies to operate as traditional employers would in any way hurt their business model, even as it conceded that that model was built around contractors.“We recognize that defendants’ business models are different from that traditionally associated with employment, particularly with regard to drivers’ freedom to work as many or as few hours as they wish, when and where they choose, and their ability to work on multiple apps at the same time,” it said.The “multiple apps” point, in particular, is worth noting, because that refers to the ability of drivers to work for multiple different app-based companies at the same time. In other words, the drivers can work for a company and its direct competitor, a situation no traditional employer would tolerate. But a business cannot automatically restrict a contractor from doing that. The ride-sharing companies don’t even try. If you’ve ever taken a ride in an Uber or a Lyft, you’ve probably also seen a sticker for the other service in the drivers’ window.The panel nevertheless argued the companies were employers because the ride-sharing service they provided was the core of their business model, rather than an incidental activity, pointing to a Supreme Court ruling called Dynamex. As for the possibility that the companies cannot function as traditional employers, the panel asserted that just couldn’t possibly be true.“The People counter, correctly, that a party suffers no grave or irreparable harm by being prohibited from violating the law,” the panel said.That is not true in the real world, however: An ill-conceived law can cause great damage. A good example can be found in the case of AB5 itself. In addition to scaring off many employers who use contractors, the law reined in contract work generally, strictly limiting what even traditional freelancers like photographers or musicians could do. State lawmakers were forced to amend the law and carve out exemptions for numerous professions. That’s clear proof that they had overreached. Freelancers still claim it’s too restrictive.It may yet get worse for Californians. If the state ballot’s Proposition 22 to roll back AB5 fails and the panel’s ruling stands, the companies have said they’ll simply stop operating the state. Customers throughout the state will have limited transportation options — a potential public safety issue, as Mothers Against Drunk Driving has warned. Meanwhile, numerous drivers will be left without a way to make the additional money that ridesharing offers at a time when Californians need the opportunity. The national unemployment rate is 7.9 percent, but the Golden State’s rate is 11 percent. California’s unemployment has been consistently higher than the national average throughout the year, and the state’s effort to reign in gig-economy companies has likely been a factor.

18-year-old freshman at University of Dayton apparently dies from Covid-19

Michael Lang, 18, died on Thursday “apparently due to complications from" coronavirus after a long hospitalization, officials at the Ohio school said.

Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn't Buy It.

By early October, even people inside the White House believed President Donald Trump's reelection campaign needed a desperate rescue mission. So three men allied with the president gathered at a house in McLean, Virginia, to launch one.The host was Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to Trump's eldest son, Donald Jr. The guests were a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and a former deputy White House counsel, Stefan Passantino, according to two people familiar with the meeting.Herschmann knew the subject matter they were there to discuss. He had represented Trump during the impeachment trial early this year, and he tried to deflect allegations against the president in part by pointing to Hunter Biden's work in Ukraine. More recently, he has been working on the White House payroll with a hazy portfolio, listed as "a senior adviser to the president," and remains close to Jared Kushner.The three had pinned their hopes for reelecting the president on a fourth guest, a straight-shooting Wall Street Journal White House reporter named Michael Bender. They delivered the goods to him there: a cache of emails detailing Hunter Biden's business activities, and, on speaker phone, a former business partner of Hunter Biden's named Tony Bobulinski. Bobulinski was willing to go on the record in The Journal with an explosive claim: that Joe Biden, the former vice president, had been aware of, and profited from, his son's activities. The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president.The Journal had seemed to be the perfect outlet for a story the Trump advisers believed could sink Biden's candidacy. Its small-c conservatism in reporting means the work of its news pages carries credibility across the industry. And its readership leans further right than other big news outlets. Its Washington bureau chief, Paul Beckett, recently remarked at a virtual gathering of Journal reporters and editors that while he knows that the paper often delivers unwelcome news to the many Trump supporters who read it, The Journal should protect its unique position of being trusted across the political spectrum, two people familiar with the remarks said.As the Trump team waited with excited anticipation for a Journal expose, the newspaper did its due diligence: Bender and Beckett handed the story off to a well-regarded China correspondent, James Areddy, and a Capitol Hill reporter who had followed the Hunter Biden story, Andrew Duehren. Areddy interviewed Bobulinski. They began drafting an article.Then things got messy. Without warning his notional allies, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now a lawyer for Trump, burst onto the scene with the tabloid version of the McLean crew's carefully laid plot. Giuliani delivered a cache of documents of questionable provenance -- but containing some of the same emails -- to The New York Post, a sister publication to The Journal in Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Giuliani had been working with the former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who also began leaking some of the emails to favored right-wing outlets. Giuliani's complicated claim that the emails came from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned, and his refusal to let some reporters examine the laptop, cast a pall over the story -- as did The Post's reporting, which alleged but could not prove that Joe Biden had been involved in his son's activities.While the Trump team was clearly jumpy, editors in The Journal's Washington bureau were wrestling with a central question: Could the documents, or Bobulinski, prove that Joe Biden was involved in his son's lobbying? Or was this yet another story of the younger Biden trading on his family's name -- a perfectly good theme, but not a new one or one that needed urgently to be revealed before the election.Trump and his allies expected the Journal story to appear Monday, Oct. 19, according to Bannon. That would be late in the campaign, but not too late -- and could shape that week's news cycle heading into the crucial final debate last Thursday. An "important piece" in The Journal would be coming soon, Trump told aides on a conference call that day.His comment was not appreciated inside The Journal."The editors didn't like Trump's insinuation that we were being teed up to do this hit job," a Journal reporter who wasn't directly involved in the story told me. But the reporters continued to work on the draft as the Thursday debate approached, indifferent to the White House's frantic timeline.Finally, Bobulinski got tired of waiting."He got spooked about whether they were going to do it or not," Bannon said.At 7:35 Wednesday evening, Bobulinski emailed an on-the-record, 684-word statement making his case to a range of news outlets. Breitbart News published it in full. He appeared the next day in Nashville, Tennessee, to attend the debate as Trump's surprise guest, and less than two hours before the debate was to begin, he read a six-minute statement to the press, detailing his allegations that the former vice president had involvement in his son's business dealings.When Trump stepped on stage, the president acted as though the details of the emails and the allegations were common knowledge. "You're the big man, I think. I don't know, maybe you're not," he told Biden at some point, a reference to an ambiguous sentence from the documents.As the debate ended, The Wall Street Journal published a brief item, just the stub of Areddy and Duehren's reporting. The core of it was that Bobulinski had failed to prove the central claim. "Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden," The Journal reported.Asked about The Journal's handling of the story, the editor-in-chief, Matt Murray, said the paper did not discuss its newsgathering. "Our rigorous and trusted journalism speaks for itself," Murray said in an emailed statement.And if you'd been watching the debate, but hadn't been obsessively watching Fox News or reading Breitbart, you would have had no idea what Trump was talking about. The story the Trump team hoped would upend the campaign was fading fast.The Gatekeepers ReturnThe McLean group's failed attempt to sway the election is partly just another story revealing the chaotic, threadbare quality of the Trump operation -- a far cry from the coordinated "disinformation" machinery feared by liberals.But it's also about a larger shift in the American media, one in which the gatekeepers appear to have returned after a long absence.It has been a disorienting couple of decades, after all. It all began when The Drudge Report, Gawker and the blogs started telling you what stodgy old newspapers and television networks wouldn't. Then social media brought floods of content pouring over the old barricades.By 2015, the old gatekeepers had entered a kind of crisis of confidence, believing they couldn't control the online news cycle any better than King Canute could control the tides. Television networks all but let Donald Trump take over as executive producer that summer and fall. In October 2016, Julian Assange and James Comey seemed to drive the news cycle more than the major news organizations. Many figures in old media and new bought into the idea that in the new world, readers would find the information they wanted to read -- and therefore, decisions by editors and producers, about whether to cover something and how much attention to give it, didn't mean much.But the past two weeks have proved the opposite: that the old gatekeepers, like The Journal, can still control the agenda. It turns out there is a big difference between WikiLeaks and establishment media coverage of WikiLeaks, a difference between a Trump tweet and an article about it, even between an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal suggesting Joe Biden had done bad things, and a news article that didn't reach that conclusion.Perhaps the most influential media document of the past four years is a chart by a co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, Yochai Benkler. The study showed that a dense new right-wing media sphere had emerged -- and that the mainstream news "revolved around the agenda that the right-wing media sphere set."Bannon had known this, too. He described his strategy as "anchor left, pivot right," and even as he ran Breitbart News, he worked to place attacks on Hillary Clinton in mainstream outlets. The validating power of those outlets was clear when The New York Times and Washington Post were given early access in the spring of 2015 to the book "Clinton Cash," an investigation of the Clinton family's blurring of business, philanthropic and political interests by writer Peter Schweizer.Schweizer is still around this cycle. But you won't find his work in mainstream outlets. He's over on Breitbart, with a couple of Hunter Biden stories this month.And the fact that Bobulinski emerged not in the pages of the widely respected Journal but in a statement to Breitbart was essentially Bannon's nightmare, and Benkler's fondest wish. And a broad array of mainstream outlets, unpersuaded that Hunter Biden's doings tie directly to the former vice president, have largely kept the story off their front pages, and confined to skeptical explanations of what Trump and his allies are claiming about his opponent."SO USA TODAY DIDN'T WANT TO RUN MY HUNTER BIDEN COLUMN THIS WEEK," conservative writer Glenn Reynolds complained Oct. 20, posting the article instead to his blog. Trump himself hit a wall when he tried to push the Hunter Biden narrative onto CBS News."This is '60 Minutes,' and we can't put on things we can't verify," Lesley Stahl told him. Trump then did more or less the same thing as Reynolds, posting a video of his side of the interview to his own blog, Facebook.The media's control over information, of course, is not as total as it used to be. The people who own printing presses and broadcast towers can't actually stop you from reading leaked emails or unproven theories about Joe Biden's knowledge of his son's business. But what Benkler's research showed was that the elite outlets' ability to set the agenda endured in spite of social media.We should have known it, of course. Many of our readers, screaming about headlines on Twitter, did. And Trump knew it all along -- one way to read his endless attacks on the establishment media is as an expression of obsession, a form of love. This week, you can hear howls of betrayal from people who have for years said the legacy media was both utterly biased and totally irrelevant."For years, we've respected and even revered the sanctified position of the free press," wrote Dana Loesch, a right-wing commentator not particularly known for her reverence of legacy media, expressing frustration that the Biden story was not getting attention. "Now that free press points its digital pen at your throat when you question their preferences."On the Other Side of the GateThere's something amusing -- even a bit flattering -- in such earnest protestations from a right-wing movement rooted in efforts to discredit the independent media. And this reassertion of control over information is what you've seen many journalists call for in recent years. At its best, it can also close the political landscape to a trendy new form of dirty tricks, as in France in 2017, where the media largely ignored a last-minute dump of hacked emails from President Emmanuel Macron's campaign just before a legally mandated blackout period.But I admit that I feel deep ambivalence about this revenge of the gatekeepers. I spent my career, before arriving at The Times in March, on the other side of the gate, lobbing information past it to a very online audience who I presumed had already seen the leak or the rumor, and seeing my job as helping to guide that audience through the thicket, not to close their eyes to it. "The media's new and unfamiliar job is to provide a framework for understanding the wild, unvetted, and incredibly intoxicating information that its audience will inevitably see -- not to ignore it," my colleague John Herrman (also now at The Times) and I wrote in 2013. In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified "Steele dossier," in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience.This fall, top media and tech executives were bracing to refight the last war -- a foreign-backed hack-and-leak operation like WikiLeaks seeking to influence the election's outcome. It was that hyper-vigilance that led Twitter to block links to The New York Post's article about Hunter Biden -- a frighteningly disproportionate response to a story that other news organizations were handling with care. The schemes of Herschmann, Passantino and Schwartz weren't exactly WikiLeaks. But the special nervousness that many outlets, including this one, feel about the provenance of the Hunter Biden emails is, in many ways, the legacy of the WikiLeaks experience.I'd prefer to put my faith in Murray and careful, professional journalists like him than in the social platforms' product managers and executives. And I hope Americans relieved that the gatekeepers are reasserting themselves will also pay attention to who gets that power, and how centralized it is, and root for new voices to correct and challenge them.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

Family’s dog turns ‘vicious’ and kills infant as parents slept, Virginia police say

The dad killed the dog as soon as he saw what happened, police say

7 held for suspected tanker hijack after UK commando raid

Seven stowaways seized when British naval special forces stormed an oil tanker in the English Channel have been arrested on suspicion of hijacking, police said Monday. Hampshire Police said the men, believed to be from Nigeria, were being held at several police stations on suspicion of “seizing or exercising control of a ship by use of threats or force.” Special Boat Service commandos were lowered by rope from helicopters onto the tanker, whose crew had locked themselves in a secure part of the ship known as the citadel.

Report: If re-elected, Trump will immediately fire FBI Director Christopher Wray

Should President Trump win a second term, he plans on immediately firing FBI Director Christopher Wray, two people who have discussed the matter with Trump told Axios. Trump is also expected to quickly replace CIA Director Gina Haspel and Defense Secretary Mark Esper. They aren't the only three people on the chopping block, the sources said, but they are at the top of the list. One official said Trump hasn't fired any of them because of the optics of doing so before the election.Haspel and Wray do not have any fans in Trump's inner circle, Axios reports, with one person saying the "view of Haspel in the West Wing is that she still sees her job as manipulating people and outcomes, the way she must have when she was working assets in the field. It bred a lot of suspicion of her motives." As for Wray, Trump became enraged in September when the FBI director testified that there are no signs of widespread election fraud, despite Trump claiming otherwise.Privately, Trump has complained about Attorney General William Barr, and he's never been too enamored with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, but there are no formal plans to remove them, Axios reports. In a statement, White House spokesman Judd Deere said, "We have no personnel announcements at this time nor would it be appropriate to speculate about changes after the election or in a second term."More stories from theweek.com The very different emotional lives of Trump and Biden voters The 19 greatest and worst presidential campaign ads of the 2020 election The Trump administration has surrendered to the pandemic

Australia condemns intimate examination of female travellers over baby abandoned at Doha airport

Australia on Monday condemned Qatar authorities' treatment of women passengers on a flight to Sydney who were subjected to internal examinations after a newborn baby was found abandoned at a Doha airport. The women, including 13 Australians, were examined at Hamad International Airport on October 2 after Qatar Airways Flight 908 to Sydney was delayed. Australia's foreign affairs department described the treatment of the women as inappropriate and beyond circumstances in which they could give free and informed consent. "This is a grossly, grossly disturbing, offensive, concerning set of events," Foreign Minister Marise Payne said. "It's not something that I've ever heard of occurring in my life, in any context. We have made our views very clear to the Qatari authorities on this matter." Australia would await a report from the Qatari government before "we will determine the next steps", Ms Payne said. She said the incident had been reported to Australian Federal Police, but did not explain which action police might take.

Prince Harry says he 'had no idea' that unconscious bias existed until he met Meghan Markle

The prince made the observation during a virtual conversation with the Black Lives Matter activist Patrick Hutchinson.

Head of Virginia military academy resigns amid report of racist culture

J. H. Binford Peay III, who had been the institute's superintendent for 17 years, told its board he was stepping down after learning on Friday that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and "certain legislative leaders had lost confidence in my leadership ... and desired my resignation." "You have profoundly changed our school for the better," John William Boland, president of the school's Board of Visitors, said in a letter to Peay. Last week, Northam and several top elected officials and lawmakers wrote to the board to express concern "about the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism" at the college.

'Worst time to resign' says under-fire Barca president

Under-pressure Barcelona president Josep Maria Bartomeu suggested Monday that "now would be the worst time" to leave his post.

Atlanta rapper Silento charged with driving 143 mph

Atlanta rapper Silento was arrested on Friday and accused of driving 143 mph on Interstate 85, according to authorities.

Democrats planning 30-hour 'digital filibuster' to try to stop Amy Coney Barrett being confirmed

Senators including Kamala Harris and Chuck Schumer will deliver messages as part of a campaign of protest against the woman set to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court

American Airlines is planning a charm offensive to reassure skeptical fliers the Boeing 737 Max is safe, report says

American Airlines is planning ways to soothe passenger fears about flying on the Boeing 737 Max plane, CNBC reported.

CNN's Jake Tapper presses White House chief of staff after new round of coronavirus cases among top officials

CNN’s Jake Tapper grilled White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after it was revealed that top aides to Vice President Pence tested positive for COVID-19. Under CDC guidelines, this development would call for Pence, who has been in close contact with them, to self-isolate. But Pence is still hitting the campaign trail.

Brothel loophole, ice rink outbreaks, White House Halloween: News from around our 50 states

How the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting every state

First nest of Asian 'murder hornets' vacuumed out of tree in United States

Agricultural department workers wearing protective suits have eradicated the first nest of giant "murder hornets" discovered in the United States, vacuuming them out of a tree in Washington state. The nest of Asian giant hornets was found on Thursday by Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) entomologists on a property in Blaine, near the border with Canada, the agency said. They spent weeks searching for the nest, trapping hornets and tracking them, using dental floss to tie tiny radio trackers on the insects, which are nearly two inches (five centimeters) in length and have a painful sting. Before dawn on Saturday, a team of workers dressed from head to toe in protective suits vacuumed the insects out of their nest in the cavity of a dead tree. "Got 'em. Vacuumed out several AsianGiantHornets from a tree cavity near Blaine this morning," the state agriculture department said on Twitter later Saturday, along with a video showing a mass of hornets in a transparent container. It said removal of the nest appeared to have been successful and more details would be provided at a press conference on Monday. Scientists in Washington state have been actively searching for the Asian giant hornet since the first such insect was detected in December 2019 and after one of the wasps was trapped in July in Whatcom County, where Blaine is located. Canada also found Asian giant hornets in two locations in neighboring British Colombia. Several more of the invasive pest not native to the US were subsequently caught, all in the same region. The WSDA believes there was a good chance that there are more nests and "stopping this cold is very crucial," said Sven Spichiger, an entomologist with WSDA, during a press conference on Friday. "If it becomes established, this hornet will have negative impacts on the environment, economy, and public health of Washington State," the WSDA said.

Texas boy, 3, dies after accidentally shooting himself in the chest at birthday party

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said its "thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of this tragic accident."

Pakistan opens first metro line after years of delays

Pakistan's first metro line began operations Monday in the eastern city of Lahore following years of delays, in a country severely lacking public transport or modern infrastructure.

Opinion: Why L.A.'s archbishop might have been passed over for a cardinal's hat

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles has been passed over by Francis not just this year, but in four previous announcements of new cardinals.

Trump’s ‘epic meltdown’ on 60 Minutes revealed as CBS releases full interview with president

Clip of president cutting short ill-tempered exchange has been millions of times on Twitter alone

These restaurants are giving out free treats to celebrate Halloween. What to know

Ice cream and doughnuts and pancakes, oh my!

How the name 'Karen' became a stand-in for problematic white women and a hugely popular meme

The "Karen" meme depicting women who ask to "speak to the manager" has become nearly ubiquitous online. Here is the meme's history and origin.

Afghan bombing: Kabul education centre attack kills at least 24

The suicide attack outside the private facility in the Afghan capital has wounded dozens more.

Turkey's Erdogan says it's time for two-state solution in Cyprus

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday it was time for a realistic proposal about a two-state solution on the divided island of Cyprus to be discussed, and added that the parameters of the current talks were not sustainable. Cyprus was split after a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup. The European Union admitted the island into the bloc in 2004, represented by the internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government in the south.

Teacher's elevator death blamed on human error

Officers found 38-year-old Carrie O'Connor in the elevator on September 14.

Seattle woman still missing three weeks after traveling to Dallas, Texas

Marisela Botello, 23, was last seen leaving her ex-boyfriend’s house in Dallas, Texas on October 4, 2020. She took a Lyft alone to the entertainment district Deep Ellum. Her family said security video reportedly shows her leaving the Select Start bar at 1 a.m. with an unknown man. Her cell phone and debit card haven’t been used since that night and her other belongings were left behind at her ex-boyfriend’s house where she had been visiting from Seattle for the weekend. She missed her flig

Canadian policeman describes arresting Huawei exec Meng

A Canadian police officer testified Monday about his arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou on a US extradition warrant, revealing that Washington had requested that data on her phone and laptop be secured so that it could not be "erased remotely."

Trump supporter pulls gun on protesters after unknown liquid is dumped on him

The man was not cited or arrested for pointing his gun at a group of young anti-Trump protestors

Teen watching sunset with girlfriend fatally shot – possibly by hunter, PA police say

The 18-year-old was sitting next to his girlfriend by a lake when he was shot, police say.

A Florida man drove a stolen bulldozer through a neighborhood and destroyed Biden-Harris campaign signs, police say

James Blight, 26, was arrested and charged with grand theft auto and trespassing in Haines City, Florida, in connection to the incident.

German embassy in Bangkok becomes flashpoint as demonstrators pressure Berlin on Thai king's legal status

The German embassy in Bangkok became a new focal point of Thailand’s months-long pro-democracy rallies on Monday as thousands marched on the building to petition Berlin to investigate the Thai king’s use of his powers while residing in Bavaria. Since 2007, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, who ascended to the throne in 2016, has spent long periods of time in southern Germany. But his extended presence on German soil has become a diplomatic headache for Berlin during Thailand’s nationwide rallies, where some protest leaders have made bold demands for the monarchy to be reformed – long a taboo subject in the Southeast Asian nation because of strict lese majeste laws. In Germany, Heiko Maas, the foreign minister warned the king against using the country as a base to conduct Thai politics. “We are monitoring this long-term,” Mr Maas said. “It will have immediate consequences if there are things that we assess to be illegal.” His comments came as the embassy’s premises in central Bangkok turned into a potential flashpoint between rival protest groups on Monday.

Rats help clear minefields in Cambodia – and suspicion of the military

Editor’s note: Dr. Darcie DeAngelo is a medical anthropologist at the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (I-GMAP) at Binghamton University, State University of New York. In this interview, she explains the relationship between locals who live near minefields in Cambodia and the mine detectors, often former military combatants, who are viewed with suspicion because of divisions caused by the series of civil wars between the 1970s and 1990s. Why are there so many unexploded bombs and minefields in Cambodia?Cambodia is known for being the site of U.S. bomb droppings during the Vietnam War and for the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime, which also planted land mines from 1975 to 1979. Today a majority of Cambodia’s population is age 35 or younger, which means most of the population has grown up since the Khmer Rouge regime ended in 1979. This statistic fails to take into account the uneven distribution of the regime’s end in the country as fighting continued in the northwest of the country where the Vietnamese and their Cambodian allies fought to keep the Khmer Rouge army out of the country. Most of the land mines in Cambodia were planted between 1985 and 1989, when the Vietnamese-allied government installed a “bamboo curtain” against the invading Thai and Khmer Rouge along the Thai-Cambodia border in the northwest. This area, called the K5 belt, remains the most densely land-mine-contaminated region of the world, a 1,046-kilometer (650-mile) strip of land with “up to 2,400 mines per linear kilometer.” Cambodia’s problem of millions of undetonated land mines makes it the country with the highest population of amputees in the world. On average it has 100 land mine accidents per year. Why are the military and other de-mining organizations viewed with suspicion by the locals?Land mine clearance requires a huge amount of military infrastructure. Decontamination, which is the term used for removal of land mines, depends on the same military skill sets that contamination depends on. So people who are de-miners are often soldiers or former combatants in Cambodia, and the divisions from the civil war still run deep. The largest de-mining organization in the country is part of the military branch of government. The current Cambodian state has been running operations to clear the land mines since the 1990s, but the state is also rumored to grab village lands, disappear people who disagree with the ruling party, and quell legitimate protests, so de-miners carry a stigma of military corruption. After war and mass atrocity, the state loses legitimacy. And so what happens is the villagers distrust even peacekeeping efforts, so even efforts to decontaminate the country result in a kind of mistrust. When you distrust the state, you need to build state legitimacy, and de-mining offers a real opportunity for states to do so. They can rehabilitate soldiers and build relationships between villagers and soldiers. But in Cambodia, I heard from villagers that they distrusted the de-miners and found them untrustworthy. They didn’t think that their land would be returned to them when the land mines were cleared, which causes some problems when it comes to information about where the land mines are. How does mine clearing with rats work?Rats are being used in de-mining because of their incredible sense of smell, relatively low cost of maintenance and ease of transport. Just like dogs, they don’t detect any false positives, as a metal detector would.In the minefield, the rat is connected to two de-miners who walk on cleared corridors with the decontaminated area in between them. The de-miners step down the field in unison as the rat sniffs for mines in the pit, scratching twice when it smells TNT. Then the de-miner maps the location, and clicks a clicker, telling the rat it can go get its reward, a delicious banana. The rats don’t get blown up by the mines because they’re so light. The rats each weigh 1 to 3 pounds, so they are weightless to a land mine, which usually requires a minimum of 11 to 35.3 pounds of pressure to activate. How did the introduction of rats to de-mining change how it is viewed in Cambodia?Rats have successfully been used to decontaminate Mozambique in Africa, and as for their import into Cambodia, the success story really lies in the fact that the organizations using them have been able to obtain donations and become independent so that they can work on demilitarizing the de-mining industry.Rats don’t fit in with the military aesthetic of de-mining, unlike dogs, which are military aid animals and have been used within militaries for centuries. The image of a soldier proudly standing next to his dog is very different from a soldier cradling a small rat in his arms. So when the villagers first saw the rat, they were a little bit puzzled, but I actually think the rat humanized the de-miners in a way that demilitarized them. When they see the rat with a soldier, it’s more of this kind of absurdity. So it make them pause and think, “OK, what is a rat doing there?” Villagers have said in interviews that they wondered about it and it made them take a second glance. It undermines the kind of villainous characterization of the de-miners for the villagers. APOPO, an organization that uses the rats in de-mining, posts publicity photos where the rats snuggle with their handlers. Since then the land mine detection dog organizations have started posting photos of their dogs being playful, and pictures of the puppies. So there is an effect which pervades other organizations, and demilitarization is seen as something to be valued, even in a highly militarized industry. These are opportunities for demilitarization of de-mining for the country itself, for the state and for people’s trust in authorities.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Darcie DeAngelo, Binghamton University, State University of New York.Read more: * Rise of the super rat: rodents detect landmines, sniff out TB, find disaster victims * Cambodia has come a long way in 25 years of peace – but it’s far from perfectDarcie DeAngelo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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