At first glance, it was possible to miss the puncture at the waterline of the Andrea Victory, a 600-foot Norwegian oil tanker anchored off the United Arab Emirates.
The damage appeared relatively minor, and no one has been officially blamed.
And yet, there are growing fears that this mysterious, obscure incident could become a catalyst — accidental or otherwise — that inflames the already knife-edge tensions between the United States and Iran.
The Andrea Victory was one of four ships damaged in what officials are calling a coordinated sabotage attack carried out early Sunday.
Two of the ships were from Saudi Arabia, and one of them was set to deliver crude oil to the U.S., according to Riyadh’s energy ministry. A fourth vessel nearby was also damaged.
There does not appear to be any official, publicly released information implicating Iran in the incident, save the country’s proximity some 60 miles across the Gulf of Oman.
“The available data on the incident is still too scant to pin blame,” according to Mohammad Shabani, a researcher at SOAS University of London.
Nonetheless, at a moment of acute tension with Washington, Iran has quickly become the focus of the fallout.
Since his election in 2016, President Donald Trump and his team have consistently taken a more hawkish stance toward the country than the Obama administration.
The president withdrew from a landmark deal designed to curb Iran’s nuclear program last year. Trump complained that, although Iran was complying, the agreement was too soft.
Then the U.S. deployed an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf last week to counter alleged threats from Tehran.
It also warned that there was an increased risk of Iran “targeting commercial vessels, including oil tankers, or U.S. military vessels” in the region.
On Monday, Trump stopped short of blaming the country directly for this incident.
“We’ll see what happens with Iran. If they do anything, it will be a very bad mistake,” he told reporters. “If they do anything, they will suffer greatly.”
Separately, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday blamed Yemeni rebels aligned with Iran for launching explosives-laden drones at oil facilities. State oil company Aramco shut down pumping on one of its pipelines and oil prices rose sharply, but no injuries or deaths were reported.
The rising temperature has prompted some politicians and experts in Europe to urge calm — particularly when so much seems unclear about who carried out the attack.
“We are very worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident,” British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said at a summit in Brussels with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Hunt said he was concerned about “an escalation that is unintended really on either side but ends with some kind of conflict.” He called for “a period of calm to make sure that everyone understands what the other side is thinking.”
It was the latest sign of daylight between the U.S. and its European allies on their policies regarding Iran. While the European Union shares some of Washington’s concerns about the Islamic republic, the 28-country bloc still backs the nuclear deal and wants to salvage it.
What worries some experts in Europe is the bellicose rhetoric being exchanged between the U.S. and Iran.
Never mind who was behind Sunday’s attack, it is the mere uncertainty surrounding it, combined with the warlike words exchanged by both sides, that escalates the risk for some misunderstanding leading to war, so this theory goes.
“Regardless of whether these ships got hit by Iranians or not, the Americans and the Iranians have gotten themselves into this cycle where neither seems to be able to back down from making belligerent statements,” according to Michael Stephens, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.
The tough talk employed by Trump, Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton carries significant and perhaps unintended and unforeseen risks, Stephens said.
“If that’s what drives the Iranians to the negotiating table, then it’s a successful tactic,” he said. “But it really is playing with fire, and all it takes is for one thing to go wrong because the Middle East is a tinderbox.”
The crux of all this is the debilitated Iran nuclear deal.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned last week that his country might restart enrichment of higher grade nuclear fuel if other nations do not help get around the restrictions imposed by Trump after he pulled out of the agreement.
“The crunch point is whether Iran decides to pull back from its commitments on the nuclear deal,” Stephens said. “If it does that, then I think all bets are off really.”
For its part, Iran has denied all involvement in Sunday’s maritime sabotage. While information is scant, some analysts believe the country would be reluctant to sanction such a direct assault and risk triggering a war it would surely lose.
Iran’s foreign ministry echoed the conspiracy theories bouncing around some corners of the internet, suggesting it may have been some kind of false-flag operation staged as a convenient pretext to war.
Spokesman Abbas Mousavi spoke of a vague “conspiracy orchestrated by ill-wishers” and “adventurism by foreigners,” according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
As the New Yorker magazine pointed out Monday, the U.S. does have “a long history of provoking, instigating, or launching wars based on dubious, flimsy, or manufactured threats.”
Perhaps the most famous of these were the disputed Gulf of Tonkin attacks in 1964 that led to the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
Another possibility is that a militant group such as Al Qaeda carried out the assault.
Whoever is responsible, the lack of information is doing little to calm the red-hot tensions that have risen in this part of the world since Trump’s inauguration.
“Everyone is being really careful because the implications can be as dangerous as the facts,” said Sanam Vakil, senior research fellow at Chatham House, another London think tank.
“Everybody’s posturing,” she added, “but with all this heightened rhetoric and movement of military equipment, of course anything could happen and that’s what makes this so dangerous.”
Source Article from https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ship-sabotage-mystery-raises-fears-accidental-conflict-iran-n1004876
Amid controversy and criticism from religious groups on the right and left about their decisions in recent death penalty cases, the U.S. Supreme Court’s five-man majority is striking back.
Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
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Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
Amid controversy and criticism from religious groups on the right and left about their decisions in recent death penalty cases, the U.S. Supreme Court’s five-man majority is striking back.
Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
The bitter battle over the death penalty continued Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court with the highly unusual release of explanatory statements from the court’s conservatives as to why they reached such apparently contradictory decisions in two death cases in February and March.
On Feb. 7, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote that Alabama could go ahead with its execution of a Muslim prisoner convicted of murder. The newly energized five-man conservative majority overruled the temporary stay put in place by the lower court because Alabama allowed only a Christian minister in the execution room and refused to allow the condemned man’s imam to be present.
The decision was widely condemned by religious groups on the left and right, not to mention the blistering dissent from the court’s liberals, who called the decision “profoundly wrong.”
Then, just seven weeks later, the court stayed the execution of a Buddhist Texas death row inmate, who similarly claimed that he was denied the right to have his spiritual adviser in the death chamber. This time only two justices — Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — noted their dissents.
The two apparently conflicting decisions were so puzzling that they left even the lawyers involved in the cases scratching their heads.
A pre-dawn dissent
Then two weeks later, the court was again deeply and emotionally divided in a death case that had the members of the court up late into the pre-dawn hours. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent for the court’s liberals that castigated the conservative majority for refusing to block an execution even after the state had decided it was too late to go forward with it.
“To proceed in this way calls into question the basic principles of fairness that should underlie our criminal justice system,” Breyer wrote. “To proceed in this matter in the middle of the night without giving all Members of the Court the opportunity for discussion tomorrow morning is, I believe, unfortunate.”
The case that provoked the late-night fury involved not the spiritual adviser question or the death penalty itself, but the method of execution. Christopher Price, convicted of a brutal murder, wanted to be executed in Alabama by nitrogen gas, instead of lethal injection, which he maintained would cause him severe pain and needless suffering.
As it happens, Alabama had authorized execution by nitrogen gas in 2018, and state officials were close to finalizing the nitrogen gas protocol. The only remaining question was whether Price could meet the criteria of recent Supreme Court decisions requiring that he show that death by nitrogen gas would be substantially less painful than death by lethal injection. And the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found that he had met that burden of proof.
But, as the scheduled date of execution neared, a jurisdictional question arose, and on April 11, two hours before the scheduled execution, Price’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court to stay the execution and grant review of the issues in the case.
Breyer then asked that no action be taken on the case until the justices could discuss the matter at their conference the next day. He acknowledged that the delay would mean the execution would have to be rescheduled for at least 30 days later.
Court refuses to block execution even when Alabama cancels it
But even as all this was taking place, the state of Alabama was throwing in the towel, canceling the execution, in the face of the ongoing litigation.
The conservatives on the high court, however, were undaunted. They refused to grant the stay, even though Price’s execution had already been temporarily put on hold by the state. And, on Monday of this week, the court refused to grant further review of the case.
Monday’s announcement gave conservatives a chance to explain their decision in the Price case and in the apparently conflicting decisions in the Muslim and Buddhist execution cases.
Apparently stung by public criticism of their actions, the court’s conservatives released a series of explanatory opinions. In Monday’s Price opinion, Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Gorsuch, wrote to rebut Justice Breyer’s 3 a.m. dissent from April 12. Thomas related the brutal details of Price’s crimes and then went on to challenge the 11th Circuit’s finding that Alabama could have planned to execute Price by nitrogen gas instead of lethal injection.
“Even if all the equipment were available on Amazon.com” as Price alleged, said Thomas, “many details remained unanswered, particularly regarding the actual process of administering the gas and, critically, the safety of the state employees administering it.”
Conservative justices accuse defense lawyers of deliberate delays
But the ultimate point Thomas wanted to make was that, in his view, Price’s lawyers had played the system, deliberately delaying at every turn, in order to prevent the execution from going forward.
Price’s “strategy is no secret, for it is the same strategy adopted by many death row inmates with an impending execution: bring last-minute claims that will delay the execution, no matter how groundless,” he said.
“Perhaps those who oppose capital punishment will celebrate the last-minute cancellation of lawful executions. But … by enabling the delay of petitioner’s execution on April 11, we worked a ‘miscarriage of justice’ on the State of Alabama, [and the victims of the crime.]”
Thomas’ mantra of deliberate delay by death penalty lawyers was echoed in two other opinions, both relating to the stay of execution that the court granted in the case of the Buddhist death row inmate on March 28.
Justice Alito, who had not previously noted his dissent, released a 14-page dissent from the court’s decision to grant a stay of execution in the case of the Buddhist, Patrick Henry Murphy.
Alito said that Murphy’s lawyers should have known six years ago what the protocol was in Texas and should have challenged it then. And even if they didn’t know in 2013, he said, they certainly should have known by the time Murphy’s execution date was set last November.
Murphy’s lawyers did, in fact, seek permission for his spiritual adviser to be present in the execution chamber, and they blamed the state for foot dragging on a reply. Alito found that explanation wanting.
“By the time they got around to filing in federal court, it was March 26, two days before the scheduled execution date,” Alito said. “If the tactics of Murphy’s attorneys in this case are not inexcusably dilatory, it is hard to know what the concept means.”
Alito observed that the court receives an application to stay virtually every execution. And, he said, these stay applications “are almost all filed on or shortly before the scheduled execution date; and in the great majority of cases, no good reason for the late filing is apparent. By countenancing the dilatory litigation in this case, the Court, I fear, will encourage this damaging practice.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately for himself and Chief Justice John Roberts to distinguish between the Texas case involving Murphy, the Buddhist, whose execution was temporarily blocked by the court, and the Alabama case involving the Muslim, Domineque Hakim Ray, whose execution was allowed to go forward.
Murphy, he said, made the proper equal-treatment claim in court, while Ray’s lawyers did not, leaving it to the appeals court to come up with that argument. And, disagreeing with Alito, Kavanaugh noted that 30 days before his scheduled execution, Murphy properly requested that his spiritual adviser be allowed in the execution room and that the state dragged its feet in providing a timely reply.
This was the second time Kavanaugh has opined on the Murphy case. When the court granted the stay of execution in March, Kavanaugh wrote a short concurring opinion in which he said that “in equal treatment cases of this kind,” the government has two choices: Either allow all inmates to have a religious adviser of their faith in the execution room or allow all inmates to have a religious adviser only in the viewing room, but not the execution room. And he noted that states have a strong security interest in controlling the execution chamber.
On Monday, weighing in again, Kavanaugh was joined this time by the chief justice. Kavanaugh noted that five days after the March 28 stay of execution, Texas “changed its unconstitutional policy” to allow all religious ministers only in the viewing room and not in the execution room.
“Put simply, this Court’s stay facilitated the prompt resolution of a significant religious equality problem with the State’s execution protocol,” he wrote. And that, he added, “should alleviate any future litigation delays or disruptions that otherwise might have occurred.”
Maybe. But with tempers high on the subject of the death penalty, disagreements profound, and the issue centering literally on life and death, the reality is that the justices of the Supreme Court likely will be back in combat soon on this subject.
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/722868203/supreme-courts-conservatives-defend-their-handling-of-death-penalty-cases
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may be a former Harvard Law professor, but her campaign strategy is utterly absurd. Consider Warren’s tweet thread on Tuesday, in which the Democratic 2020 presidential hopeful explained her rejection of a Fox News invitation for a town hall event.
Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists—it’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life and death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren)
May 14, 2019
Having ruled that Fox News is a modern day equivalent to the Nazi propaganda newspaper Der Stürmer (side note: Warren’s comments represent an attack on the press matching the worst of President Trump’s excesses), the senator continued:
I’m running a campaign to reach all Americans. I take questions from the press and voters everywhere I go. I’ve already held town halls in 17 states and Puerto Rico—including WV, OH, GA, UT, TN, TX, CO, MS & AL.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren)
May 14, 2019
Help me with something.
If Warren is “running a campaign to reach all Americans,” why is she so determined to insult Americans who watch Fox News? Whatever you think of that network, it retains the highest share of cable news viewers across the nation, and by quite a long way. That’s why, even though he disagrees with much of Fox News’ coverage and commentary, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., decided to join a recent town hall with the network. Sanders knows he needs to maximize his ability to persuade Americans to vote for him.
Warren’s outburst reflects a campaign that is caught between the hard realities of angry primary voters, far-left policies, and a not-so-impressive candidate.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/elizabeth-warren-making-campaigns-ironic-again
Updated 7:56 AM ET, Tue May 14, 2019
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.
New York (CNN Business)The United States and China don’t just coexist. Their massive economies are deeply intertwined in ways that make the intensifying trade war unsustainable.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/14/business/china-united-states-economy-trade-war/index.html
The TAKE with Rick Klein
The invisible primary is about to burst into the open.
A confluence of factors are inserting a sense of urgency into the Democratic primary race, making it feel later than the calendar would suggest.
Montana Gov. Steve Bullock’s entry into the race Tuesday morning gives Democrats 22 major candidates and counting. That means the 20-person, two-night first debates at the end of the June will likely exclude current or former members of Congress and/or current or former governors.
Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden’s solidifying status as a front-runner has forced others to recalibrate their strategies. Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke are among the top-tier contenders who are suddenly doing a whole lot more national interviews. O’Rourke will be on live on ABC’s “The View” on Tuesday.
Lesser-known candidates are getting fresh attention too. Andrew Yang’s campaign is boasting of 5,000 RSVPs for a rally Tuesday in New York City, as the entrepreneur’s online “Yang Gang” gets some in-real-life notice.
The battle for votes will come. For now, the fight among Democrats is for a most valuable commodity in the Trump era: attention.
The RUNDOWN with MaryAlice Parks
With a Democratic base hot on the notion of “electability,” Montana’s Bullock enters the crowded Democratic presidential primary with a unique appeal.
“As a Democratic governor in a state Trump won by 20 points, I don’t have the luxury of only talking to people who agree with me,” Bullock said in his video announcing his candidacy.
Though he is the 22nd Democratic candidate to jump in, Bullock argues that he is the only one who won in 2016 in a red state, on the ballot next to President Donald Trump, and that his experience and success in Montana could be more important in 2020than personality.
Bullock will zero in on top-line accomplishments, too, as he launches his campaign, including legislative wins on key Democratic issues, such as net neutrality, women’s health, public education and fighting dark money in politics.
Though he is far from the only candidate positing he could win in red and purple parts of the country — cue former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro — his track record stands out. Now, he will need to convince voters that Montana is not just an oddity and that there is reason to make time to learn about yet another candidate.
The TIP with with Ben Siegel
As Democrats tangle with Attorney General William Barr over access to the full Mueller report — and have threatened to hold him in contempt of Congress — five House chairmen have reiterated their requests for documents and testimony related to the administration’s decision not to defend the Affordable Care Act in court against a challenge from GOP attorneys general.
Last week, the administration officially declared its opposition to the law, arguing that it is unconstitutional. In the letter — sent the same day as House lawyers squared off against Trump’s legal team in federal court over a subpoena for his financial records — Democrats suggested that they would seek compulsory compliance if the Justice Department ignores the request.
The letter comes as Democrats plan to take up a number of proposals on the House floor this week focused on health care and prescription drug costs.
THE PLAYLIST
ABC News’ “Start Here” podcast. http://apple.co/2HPocUL
Tuesday morning’s episode features ABC News Senior National Correspondent Terry Moran on China’s new tariffs against the U.S. Then ABC News’ Devin Dwyer explains why liberals are alarmed by a Supreme Court decision to overturn a 41-year-old precedent. http://apple.co/2HPocUL
ABC News’ “The Investigation” podcast. https://apple.co/2GjL25N
In this episode of “The Investigation,” as Democrats in Congress continue their battle with the Trump White House, Jane Sherburne, former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, joins the podcast and tells Senior Executive Producer and Co-host Chris Vlasto that when it comes to how the Trump White House is responding to Congress, “Just saying no … was not something in our lexicon.” Using her own experience, managing the team that responded to an ethics investigation during Clinton’s first term, Sherburne tells “The Investigation” that we could be living through a constitutional crisis if the Trump White House is “really serious about stiffing Congress.” Sherburne shares her thoughts on impeachment proceedings and the big mistake she thinks House Democrats are making. Senior Congressional Correspondent Mary Bruce also updates on all the latest happenings on Capitol Hill.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY
Download the ABC News app and select “The Note” as an item of interest to receive it every weekday.
Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/note-democrats-face-urgency-visibility/story?id=63009786
Apple has fallen prey to this trade war-triggered market sell-off, but a propitious development in its charts could signal a massive rally, one technical analyst says.
Trading Nationread more
Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/14/oil-jumps-as-saudi-energy-minister-reports-drone-terrorism-against-pipeline.html
AG Barr assigns U.S. attorney John Durham to investigate the origins of the Russia probe.
Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia investigation and determine if intelligence collection efforts targeting the Trump campaign were “lawful and appropriate,” a person familiar with the situation told Fox News on Monday evening.
John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, will conduct the inquiry, the source said. The move comes as the Trump administration has pushed for answers on why federal authorities conducted the surveillance — as well as whether Democrats were the ones who improperly colluded with foreign actors.
Two sources told Fox News earlier today that Barr was “serious” and had assigned DOJ personnel to the probe. Durham is known as a “hard-charging, bulldog” prosecutor, Fox News is told.
Sources familiar with matter say the focus of the probe includes the pre-transition period — prior to Nov. 7, 2016 — including the use and initiation of informants, as well as potential Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses.
An informant working for U.S. intelligence posed as a Cambridge University research assistant in September 2016 to try extracting any possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia from George Papadopoulos, then a Trump foreign policy adviser, it emerged earlier this month. Papadopoulos told Fox News the informant tried to “seduce” him as part of the “bizarre” episode.
Durham previously has investigated law enforcement corruption, the destruction of CIA videotapes and the Boston FBI office’s relationship with mobsters. He is set to continue to serve as the chief federal prosecutor in Connecticut.
ROSENSTEIN BLASTS ‘ANGRY’ COMEY, SAYS HE’S BECOME A DISAPPOINTING PARTISAN HACK
U.S. Attorney John Durham has been assigned to probe the origins of the surveillance of the Trump campaign, a source told Fox News.
(Justice Department)
In January, House Republican Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows wrote to Durham seeking a briefing, saying they had “discovered” that Durham’s office was “investigating [former FBI General Counsel James Baker” for unauthorized disclosures to the media.”
Durham’s new review would exist alongside the ongoing probe by DOJ Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz, who is continuing to review potential surveillance abuses by the FBI — an investigation that began last March and that Fox News is told is nearing completion.
Republicans also have been looking for answers from U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber, who was appointed a year ago by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to review not only surveillance abuses by the FBI and DOJ, but also authorities’ handling of the probe into the Clinton Foundation.
Huber, Republicans have cautioned, apparently has made little progress and has spoken to few key witnesses and whistleblowers. But, in January, then-Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker reportedly indicated at a private meeting that Huber’s work was continuing apace.
FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: INTERNAL FBI TEXTS SHOW DOJ PUSHED BACK ON ‘BIAS’ IN KEY FBI FISA SOURCE
Durham’s appointment comes about a month after Barr told members of Congress he believed “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign in 2016. He later said he didn’t mean anything pejorative and was gathering a team to look into the origins of the special counsel’s investigation.
Democrats have pummeled Barr in frustration following revelations in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russian actors, despite numerous offers by Russians to assist the campaign. Mueller’s final report has led to a bitter D.C. battle over the limited number of redactions in the report, which the DOJ says are legally necessary because they pertain to grand jury matters.
In obtaining a secret FISA warrant to surveil former Trump aide Carter Page, the FBI copy-pasted directly from a disputed Washington Post opinion article to suggest the Trump campaign may have been compromised. The bureau also repeatedly assured the court that it “did not believe” British ex-spy Christopher Steele was the direct source for a Yahoo News article implicating Page in Russian collusion.
But, London court records showed that contrary to the FBI’s assessments, Steele briefed Yahoo News and other reporters in the fall of 2016 at the direction of Fusion GPS — the opposition research firm behind the dossier. Fusion GPS was retained by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee (DNC), a piece of information not stated in the FISA application.
The FISA application cribbed word-for-word from the Washington Post article that claimed the Trump campaign had “worked behind the scenes” to “gut” the GOP platform on Russia and Ukraine. The FBI apparently did not conduct its own independent assessment of the piece, which was labeled an “opinion” column by the Post, and Mueller’s probe ultimately found no wrongdoing by the Trump team.
Additionally, internal FBI text messages exclusively obtained by Fox News earlier this year showed that a senior DOJ official raised concerns about the bias in a key FISA warrant, but that FBI officials pressed on.
“There’s a document that’s classified that I’m gonna try to get unclassified that takes the dossier — all the pages of it — and it has verification to one side,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” this weekend. “There really is no verification, other than media reports that were generated by reporters that received the dossier.”
Graham specifically cited the report from The Hill’s John Solomon that the FBI was expressly told that Steele, the bureau’s confidenial informant, had admitted to a contact at the State Department that he was “keen” to leak his discredited dossier for purposes of influencing the 2016 election.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with Steele was apparently sent to the FBI, according to records unearthed in a transparency lawsuit by Citizens United.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/politics/barr-us-attorney-connecticut-surveillance-trump-campaign
Anthony Weiner wrapped up the last leg of his prison sentence for sexting an underage girl on Tuesday morning, walking out of a Bronx halfway house a free man.
“It’s good to be out,” the disgraced former congressman said. “I hope to be able to live a life of integrity and service. I’m glad this chapter of my life is behind me.”
Weiner, who will still be registered as a Level 1 sex offender, had called the halfway house on Creston Avenue home for three months following his transfer from a Massachusetts lock-up as part of a federal re-entry program.
He walked out shortly after 6 a.m. wearing khaki pants, red Nike running shoes and a sweater. His release came early after getting three months shaved off for good behavior.
The Post revealed last month how he is now hoping to land a book deal.
After sinking his political career in a series of salacious sexting scandals with adult women, the married ex-pol was busted in 2017 for sending obscene messages to a 15-year-old North Carolina high schooler.
Weiner wept and called himself a “very sick man” at his sentencing, where he was ordered to serve 21 months behind bars, pay a $10,000 fine and to register as a sex offender upon his release.
He started his time in Nov. 2017 in Federal Medical Center in Devens, Mass., a former Army base about 40 miles northwest of Boston and just one of two sites that offer residential treatment for sex offenders.
He was transferred to the Bronx in mid-February — where The Post caught him ordering a hearty pasta take-out.
Source Article from https://nypost.com/2019/05/14/anthony-weiner-released-from-bronx-halfway-house/
The U.S. Supreme Court seen with the sun shining behind it last month.
Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
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The U.S. Supreme Court seen with the sun shining behind it last month.
Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images
The bitter battle over the death penalty continued Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court with the highly unusual release of explanatory statements from the court’s conservatives as to why they reached such apparently contradictory decisions in two death cases in February and March.
On Feb. 7, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote that Alabama could go ahead with its execution of a Muslim prisoner convicted of murder. The newly energized five-man conservative majority overruled the temporary stay put in place by the lower court because Alabama allowed only a Christian minister in the execution room and refused to allow the condemned man’s imam to be present.
The decision was widely condemned by religious groups on the left and right, not to mention the blistering dissent from the court’s liberals, who called the decision “profoundly wrong.”
Then, just seven weeks later, the court stayed the execution of a Buddhist Texas death row inmate, who similarly claimed that he was denied the right to have his spiritual adviser in the death chamber. This time only two justices — Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — noted their dissents.
The two apparently conflicting decisions were so puzzling that they left even the lawyers involved in the cases scratching their heads.
A pre-dawn dissent
Then two weeks later, the court was again deeply and emotionally divided in a death case that had the members of the court up late into the pre-dawn hours. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent for the court’s liberals that castigated the conservative majority for refusing to block an execution even after the state had decided it was too late to go forward with it.
“To proceed in this way calls into question the basic principles of fairness that should underlie our criminal justice system,” Breyer wrote. “To proceed in this matter in the middle of the night without giving all Members of the Court the opportunity for discussion tomorrow morning is, I believe, unfortunate.”
The case that provoked the late-night fury involved not the spiritual adviser question or the death penalty itself, but the method of execution. Christopher Price, convicted of a brutal murder, wanted to be executed in Alabama by nitrogen gas, instead of lethal injection, which he maintained would cause him severe pain and needless suffering.
As it happens, Alabama had authorized execution by nitrogen gas in 2018, and state officials were close to finalizing the nitrogen gas protocol. The only remaining question was whether Price could meet the criteria of recent Supreme Court decisions requiring that he show that death by nitrogen gas would be substantially less painful than death by lethal injection. And the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found that he had met that burden of proof.
But, as the scheduled date of execution neared, a jurisdictional question arose, and on April 11, two hours before the scheduled execution, Price’s lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court to stay the execution and grant review of the issues in the case.
Breyer then asked that no action be taken on the case until the justices could discuss the matter at their conference the next day. He acknowledged that the delay would mean the execution would have to be rescheduled for at least 30 days later.
Court refuses to block execution even when Alabama cancels it
But even as all this was taking place, the state of Alabama was throwing in the towel, canceling the execution, in the face of the ongoing litigation.
The conservatives on the high court, however, were undaunted. They refused to grant the stay, even though Price’s execution had already been temporarily put on hold by the state. And, on Monday of this week, the court refused to grant further review of the case.
Monday’s announcement gave conservatives a chance to explain their decision in the Price case and in the apparently conflicting decisions in the Muslim and Buddhist execution cases.
Apparently stung by public criticism of their actions, the court’s conservatives released a series of explanatory opinions. In Monday’s Price opinion, Justice Thomas, joined by Justices Samuel Alito and Gorsuch, wrote to rebut Justice Breyer’s 3 a.m. dissent from April 12. Thomas related the brutal details of Price’s crimes and then went on to challenge the 11th Circuit’s finding that Alabama could have planned to execute Price by nitrogen gas instead of lethal injection.
“Even if all the equipment were available on Amazon.com” as Price alleged, said Thomas, “many details remained unanswered, particularly regarding the actual process of administering the gas and, critically, the safety of the state employees administering it.”
Conservative justices accuse defense lawyers of deliberate delays
But the ultimate point Thomas wanted to make was that, in his view, Price’s lawyers had played the system, deliberately delaying at every turn, in order to prevent the execution from going forward.
Price’s “strategy is no secret, for it is the same strategy adopted by many death row inmates with an impending execution: bring last-minute claims that will delay the execution, no matter how groundless,” he said.
“Perhaps those who oppose capital punishment will celebrate the last-minute cancellation of lawful executions. But … by enabling the delay of petitioner’s execution on April 11, we worked a ‘miscarriage of justice’ on the State of Alabama, [and the victims of the crime.]”
Thomas’ mantra of deliberate delay by death penalty lawyers was echoed in two other opinions, both relating to the stay of execution that the court granted in the case of the Buddhist death row inmate on March 28.
Justice Alito, who had not previously noted his dissent, released a 14-page dissent from the court’s decision to grant a stay of execution in the case of the Buddhist, Patrick Henry Murphy.
Alito said that Murphy’s lawyers should have known six years ago what the protocol was in Texas and should have challenged it then. And even if they didn’t know in 2013, he said, they certainly should have known by the time Murphy’s execution date was set last November.
Murphy’s lawyers did, in fact, seek permission for his spiritual adviser to be present in the execution chamber, and they blamed the state for foot dragging on a reply. Alito found that explanation wanting.
“By the time they got around to filing in federal court, it was March 26, two days before the scheduled execution date,” Alito said. “If the tactics of Murphy’s attorneys in this case are not inexcusably dilatory, it is hard to know what the concept means.”
Alito observed that the court receives an application to stay virtually every execution. And, he said, these stay applications “are almost all filed on or shortly before the scheduled execution date; and in the great majority of cases, no good reason for the late filing is apparent. By countenancing the dilatory litigation in this case, the Court, I fear, will encourage this damaging practice.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote separately for himself and Chief Justice John Roberts to distinguish between the Texas case involving Murphy, the Buddhist, whose execution was temporarily blocked by the court, and the Alabama case involving the Muslim, Domineque Hakim Ray, whose execution was allowed to go forward.
Murphy, he said, made the proper equal-treatment claim in court, while Ray’s lawyers did not, leaving it to the appeals court to come up with that argument. And, disagreeing with Alito, Kavanaugh noted that 30 days before his scheduled execution, Murphy properly requested that his spiritual adviser be allowed in the execution room and that the state dragged its feet in providing a timely reply.
This was the second time Kavanaugh has opined on the Murphy case. When the court granted the stay of execution in March, Kavanaugh wrote a short concurring opinion in which he said that “in equal treatment cases of this kind,” the government has two choices: Either allow all inmates to have a religious adviser of their faith in the execution room or allow all inmates to have a religious adviser only in the viewing room, but not the execution room. And he noted that states have a strong security interest in controlling the execution chamber.
On Monday, weighing in again, Kavanaugh was joined this time by the chief justice. Kavanaugh noted that five days after the March 28 stay of execution, Texas “changed its unconstitutional policy” to allow all religious ministers only in the viewing room and not in the execution room.
“Put simply, this Court’s stay facilitated the prompt resolution of a significant religious equality problem with the State’s execution protocol,” he wrote. And that, he added, “should alleviate any future litigation delays or disruptions that otherwise might have occurred.”
Maybe. But with tempers high on the subject of the death penalty, disagreements profound, and the issue centering literally on life and death, the reality is that the justices of the Supreme Court likely will be back in combat soon on this subject.
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/722868203/supreme-courts-conservatives-defend-their-handling-of-death-penalty-cases
Democrats claim that they are tougher than President Trump in countering Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But they really aren’t.
Consider their reaction to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s White House visit on Monday. Take, for example, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the House Intelligence Committee chairman and a leading Democratic Party voice against Putin.
Read this article about Hungary under Viktor Orban, and then ask why the leader of the free world would fête this aspiring dictator at the White House.
Rather than reward Orban for crushing Hungary’s democracy, we should be pressing him to reject the path to autocracy. https://t.co/OnVaL65kkl
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff)
May 13, 2019
To answer Schiff’s question, Trump is right to “fête” Orbán for a simple reason: in order to counter Russia.
Hungary is a NATO member state near the top of Putin’s list of states to sever from the Western alliance. Putin has seen Orbán surrounded by EU officials condemning his every move and has wisely offered friendship, albeit with a price. He has dangled energy deals and other investments in return for Russian influence over Hungary and access to Western Europe.
That should concern us, a lot. Hungary isn’t just any country. Sitting just atop Russia’s favored playground for instability, the Balkans, just east of Russia’s favorite intelligence playground in Western Europe, Austria, and just west of Ukraine, Hungary offers a geo-strategic jewel for Putin’s foreign policy. Trump is thus absolutely right to try and pull Orbán back into the U.S.-led NATO orbit. A White House visit serves that interest by granting Orbán public respect without sacrificing American interests. After all, the nationalist leader’s political power is rooted heavily in perceptions of Hungarian pride and power.
What better choice do we have? Orbán responded to former President Barack Obama and the EU’s disdainful attitude by doubling down on his autocratic impulses and moving even closer to Russia. Wooing Orbán toward more confidence in America, Trump has the chance to guide him toward a more democratic style of leadership, or at the very least, to keep Orbán out of Putin’s pocket.
This visit is a small price to pay for the policy possibilities it offers.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/furious-about-viktor-orbans-white-house-visit-democrats-prove-theyre-not-too-worried-about-russia
Trump, who campaigned on cracking down on unfair trade practices, has stirred trade conflict with China, Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
Politicsread more
Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/14/chinas-new-tariffs-are-hitting-us-farmers-at-every-single-angle.html
At least three people are dead after two floatplanes with a
total of 16 people on board crashed Monday afternoon in the George Inlet area
near Ketchikan. At least ten of those people survived.
U.S. Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Matthew Schofield said
Monday afternoon that rescue crews are searching for the three who are still
missing.
“Right now, we know there’s 10 people that are accounted for and they are receiving medical care,” he said. “The extent of their injuries right now is unknown. We do know now that three people are confirmed deceased, and we are looking for three unaccounted for people right now.”
According to a news release from the Ketchikan Gateway
Borough, the patients suffered “severe to life-threatening” injuries.
Earlier Monday, U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Jon-Paul
Rios said that they received notice of the accident a little before 1 p.m.
“We immediately launched multiple assets to include an
MH-60 from Air Station Sitka, which is one of our helicopters, along with two
small boats from Coast Guard Station Ketchikan.”
A Coast Guard news release states that preliminary reports indicate the crash was the result of a mid-air collision.
Jerry Kiffer of Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad told KRBD
that the DeHavilland Beaver and Otter both were in the water when rescue crews
arrived at the scene.
“Both of them were near shore: One on one side of George
Inlet, one on the other side,” he said.
Kiffer says the Beaver was upside down in saltwater near
the beach close to Mahoney Lake. The Otter was on the other side of the inlet,
with 10 people on shore nearby.
Kiffer says there were various injuries among those passengers.
He says some were taken to town by an Allen Marine boat. Others were taken to
town by helicopter, and then to the hospital by ambulance.
Kiffer declined to identify which airlines own the planes.
According to a statement from Princess Cruise Lines, the Otter was operated by
Taquan Air, and carried guests from the Royal Princess. The second plane was an
independent tour and had four Royal Princess guests on board.
A statement from Taquan confirmed that one of the planes
was theirs, and was returning from a Misty Fjords National Monument tour. It
carried 10 guests and the pilot. Taquan has suspended flights while the crash
is investigated.
There were rumors of a helicopter crash in the Mahoney Lake
area at the same time. Kiffer says that is just a rumor.
In addition to the Coast Guard and KVRS, all three local fire
departments, Alaska State Troopers, the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies
are assisting in the rescue efforts.
Last summer, a Taquan Air plane crash landed on its way to
Ketchikan from Prince of Wales Island. All 11 on board survived. In June of
2017, seven people survived an Alaska Seaplane Tours floatplane crash in Misty
Fjords National Monument.
In 2015, nine people died when a Promech Air tour plane
went down in Misty Fjords.
Floatplane tours of the monument are a popular shore
excursion for summertime visitors. On Monday, about 11,000 cruise passengers
were in Ketchikan.
Source Article from https://www.krbd.org/2019/05/13/two-planes-down-in-george-inlet/
Spyware crafted by an “advanced cyber actor” infected multiple targeted mobile phones through the popular WhatsApp communications program without any user intervention through in-app voice calls, the company said.
The Financial Times identified the actor as Israel’s NSO Group, and a WhatsApp spokesman later said “we’re certainly not refuting any of the coverage you’ve seen.”
The malware was able to penetrate phones through missed calls alone via the app’s voice calling function, the spokesman for the Facebook subsidiary said late Monday. An unknown number of people — an amount in the dozens at least would not be inaccurate — were infected with the malware, which the company said it discovered in early May, said the spokesman, who was not authorized to be quoted by name.
John Scott-Railton, a researcher with the internet watchdog Citizen Lab, called the hack “a very scary vulnerability.” ”There’s nothing a user could have done here, short of not having the app,” he said.
The WhatsApp spokesman said the attack had “all the hallmarks of a private company that has been known to work with governments to deliver spyware that has the ability to take over mobile phone operating systems.”
The spokesman said WhatsApp, which has more than 1.5 billion users, immediately contacted Citizen Lab and human rights groups, quickly fixed the issue and pushed out a patch. He said WhatsApp also provided information to U.S. law enforcement officials to assist in their investigation.
He said the flaw was discovered while “our team was putting some additional security enhancements to our voice calls” and that engineers found that people targeted for infection “might get one or two calls from a number that is not familiar to them. In the process of calling, this code gets shipped.”
“We are deeply concerned about the abuse of such capabilities,” WhatsApp said in a statement.
Spokespeople for NSO Group did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment.
The revelation adds to the questions over the reach of the Israeli company’s powerful spyware, which can hijack smartphones, control their cameras and effectively turn them into pocket-sized surveillance devices.
NSO’s spyware has repeatedly been found deployed to hack journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders and dissidents. Most notably, the spyware was implicated in the gruesome killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last year and whose body has never been found.
Several alleged targets of the spyware, including a close friend of Khashoggi and several Mexican civil society figures, are currently suing NSO in an Israeli court over the hacking.
Monday, Amnesty International — which said last year that one its staffers was also targeted with the spyware — said it would join in a legal bid to force Israel’s Ministry of Defense to suspend NSO’s export license.
That makes the discovery of the vulnerability particularly disturbing because one of the targets was a U.K.-based human rights lawyer, the attorney told the AP.
The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity for professional reasons, said he received about several suspicious missed calls over the past few months, the most recent one on Sunday, only hours before WhatsApp issued the update to users fixing the flaw.
Source Article from http://time.com/5588733/whatsapp-spyware-israel/
President Donald Trump welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the White House in Washington on Monday.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
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Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
President Donald Trump welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the White House in Washington on Monday.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
President Trump hosted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at the White House on Monday, a gesture that two past presidents have avoided granting to the hard-right European leader.
“People have a lot of respect for this Prime Minister,” said the president in a photo-op in the Oval Office before their meeting. Trump went on to warmly praise the Hungarian leader. “He’s a respected man. And I know he’s a tough man, but he’s a respected man. And he’s done the right thing, according to many people, on immigration.”
Orbán is on record calling Syrian refugees “Muslim invaders,” and many human rights activists are concerned about the signals Trump is sending with this meeting, as NPR’s Michele Kelemen reports:
“Hungarian Human Rights Lawyer Marta Pardavi is worried about where her country is heading. She’s watched Victor Orbán’s government demonize groups like hers — the Hungarian Helsinki Committee–which provides legal services for asylums seekers and for Hungarians.
” ‘We’ve had clients in the past few years who’ve been fired from their jobs for simply expressing a political opinion that was not supportive of the current government,’ she says.
“Pardavi says the Orbán government has been passing laws that have no place in a democracy. But she wasn’t holding her breath that President Trump would raise any of that, even with a NATO ally.”
Trump said he and Orbán would discuss trade and NATO issues as he brushed off a question from a reporter about democratic backsliding in Hungary.
“Don’t forget they’re a member of NATO, and a very good member of NATO,” Trump said.
For his part, Orbán reminded reporters “that so many Hungarians contributed to the tremendous progress of the United States.”
“We are proud to stand together with the United States on fighting against illegal migration, on terrorism, and to protect and help the Christian communities all around the world,” Orbán added.
Orbán had not visited the White House under Presidents Obama or Bush.
Trump’s meeting with Orbán fits a pattern, former State Department official Rob Berschinski told NPR’s Kelemen.
“Everyone from the Egyptian president to the Russian president to Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines to Erdogan in Turkey. Trump certainly sees Orbán as an ideological ally. Orbán was essentially running a political platform on the basis of an anti-immigration message,” said Berschinski, now a senior vice president at Human Rights First.
Franklin Foer, staff writer for The Atlantic, describes how Hungary had been considered “one of the great success stories of post-Soviet times.”
“It was a country that made its way into the European Union, that created democratic institutions, that housed a robust press,” Foer said in an interview with NPR’s Ari Shapiro.”But over the term of Viktor Orbán’s presidency, the institutions have started to weaken and then disappear. And public opinion has started to shift.”
“The week that I was in Hungary, CNN published a poll showing that Hungarians had become the most anti-Semitic country in the whole of Europe,” Foer said. “One of the pro-government publications published a magazine that had a cover featuring the head of the Jewish federation. And his face was put against a black backdrop, and money was raining down.”
Before their meeting, Trump underscored Orbán’s defense of Christianity.
“You have been great with respect to Christian communities,” Trump said. “You have really put a block up, and we appreciate that very much.”
Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2019/05/14/723077179/trump-greets-hungarys-hard-right-leader-in-oval-office
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var r=n(24),i=n(138),o=n(69),a=n(49)(“IE_PROTO”),u=function(){},s=”prototype”,c=function(){var t,e=n(53)(“iframe”),r=o.length;for(e.style.display=”none”,n(141).appendChild(e),e.src=”javascript:”,(t=e.contentWindow.document).open(),t.write(“
Source Article from https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/stephen-breyer-hyatt-dissent-roe-v-wade-kavanaugh-supreme-court.html
Top Homeland Security Department officials opposed a secret White House proposal to arrest thousands of migrants before they were shoved out of the Trump administration.
Seven current and former DHS officials told the Washington Post that the White House devised a plan to arrest thousands of parents and children in 10 major U.S. cities, to prove that the administration would detain and deport recent migrants, even if they had children.
Under the proposal, immigration court cases would be expedited so the government could receive deportation orders for those who failed to appear for their hearings.
But Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Ronald Vitiello pushed back on the plan due to concern that U.S. ICE agents were insufficiently prepared to take on the task. They were also worried about backlash and pulling resources from the border. According to DHS officials, the opposition was primarily logistical and didn’t involve ethical red flags.
“There was concern that it was being hastily put together, would be ineffective, and might actually backfire by misdirecting resources away from critical border emergency response operations,” one DHS official told the Post.
Among those people in the administration pushing for the proposal were senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller and ICE Deputy Director Matthew Albence. The plan is still under consideration. Cities on the list include New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Officials at ICE and DHS declined to provide the Post with comment, as did Miller through a White House spokesperson. Vitiello and Nielsen, who were pushed out of the administration, did not respond to requests for comment.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/kirstjen-nielsen-opposed-secret-white-house-plan-to-arrest-thousands-of-migrants
Trump, who campaigned on cracking down on unfair trade practices, has stirred trade conflict with China, Canada, Mexico and the European Union.
Politicsread more
Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/14/trump-three-to-four-weeks-to-know-if-china-trade-talks-successful.html
Attorney General William Barr told a Senate panel that he believes “spying did occur” on Trump campaign. He said “it’s my obligation” to explore that.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Attorney General William Barr tapped Connecticut’s chief federal prosecutor, John Durham, to assist in an investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation and the FBI’s surveillance activities, a person familiar with the matter said Monday.
The person, who is not authorized to comment publicly, said that Durham has been assisting the attorney general for at least a couple of weeks to determine whether federal investigators acted appropriately in the early stages of the now-completed inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Barr announced that he had launched the review last month during an appearance before a Senate subcommittee. He expressed concern about the FBI’s use of surveillance involving associates of then-candidate Donald Trump as authorities sought to understand Russia’s interference efforts, though Barr also said he did not know whether officials had done anything wrong.
“Spying on a campaign is a big deal,” Barr told lawmakers then. “I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”
At that time, the attorney general said he planned to examine the “genesis and the conduct” of the FBI’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
“I am not saying that improper surveillance occurred,” Barr told the Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “I am concerned about it. There is a basis for my concern.”
Democrats have seized on Barr’s use of the term “spying,” asserting that the attorney general has sided with President Trump to disparage the 22-month investigation that the president has repeatedly described as a “witch-hunt.”
As recently as last week, however, FBI Director Christopher Wray said he was unaware of any evidence indicating that the FBI had abused its surveillance authority, distancing himself from the attorney general. “That’s not the term I would use,” Wray told the same Senate committee, referring to the “spying” reference.
Rod Rosenstein, until recently the department’s second-in-command, said in a speech Monday that based on what he knew in 2017, “the investigation of Russian election interference was justified, and closing it was not an option.”
The review involving the attorney general and Durham, a longtime Justice Department official, marks the third such inquiry into aspects of the Russia investigation that was led by special counsel Robert Mueller. It was first reported late Monday by the New York Times.
The department’s inspector general is conducting a review of surveillance warrants authorities used to eavesdrop on a former campaign aide, Carter Page, in October 2016. Barr has said that effort should be completed by late May or perhaps June. The chief federal prosecutor in Utah, John Huber, also is in the midst of a separate review.
Trump and Republicans in Congress have complained repeatedly that the FBI targeted the president’s campaign for political reasons, revealing text messages between two senior officials involved in the probe who expressed their personal contempt for Trump. And they have focused on the FBI’s reliance on information from a former British spy who had been hired indirectly by Clinton’s campaign to conduct research on Trump before the election.
During his long career at the Justice Department, Durham has taken on a number of special investigations, including an appointment during the George W. Bush administration to investigate the CIA’s destruction of videotapes depicting the torture of terror suspects.
“Snitty.” That’s the way William Barr described a letter from Robert Mueller expressing concerns about his portrayal of the Russia probe. (May 1)
AP
Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/13/attorney-general-barr-john-durham-us-attorney-connecticut-review-trump-russia-investigation-origin/1195462001/
Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds.
Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/13/us/alaska-plane-collision/index.html
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var r=n(24),i=n(138),o=n(69),a=n(49)(“IE_PROTO”),u=function(){},s=”prototype”,c=function(){var t,e=n(53)(“iframe”),r=o.length;for(e.style.display=”none”,n(141).appendChild(e),e.src=”javascript:”,(t=e.contentWindow.document).open(),t.write(“
Source Article from https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/stephen-breyer-hyatt-dissent-roe-v-wade-kavanaugh-supreme-court.html