How to Stop Iran’s Maritime Misadventures

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- European nations, alarmed by Iran’s capture of a British oil tanker, are mounting a response to protect their commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf. The Royal Navy has started to escort British ships, and a plan for a European naval mission has been endorsed by Denmark, France and Italy.It’s a promising start. But effectively curbing Iran’s misbehavior and safeguarding ships in the region will require a more ambitious —and truly international — effort. Most important, it needs to involve the U.S. Navy.The Europeans are wary of combining their fleets with a nearby American operation for fear of being identified with President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. France’s foreign minister says a separate effort is needed to reduce tensions and “create the conditions for inclusive regional talks on maritime security.”This is both naïve and shortsighted. A disjointed naval effort increases the likelihood of accidents and miscalculations. It might leave open gaps that could be exploited by the marauding speedboats of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And it creates unnecessary quandaries for ship captains: If, say, an American tanker with British nationals aboard were attacked while under U.S. Navy protection, would the HMS Duncan not respond to a call for assistance, for fear its intentions might be misconstrued by the Iranian regime?QuicktakeThe World’s Oil FlashpointFar better to present a united front. By fully joining their resources, the Americans and Europeans would be better able to police sea lanes and respond to provocations. In fact, they should be working together to recruit other countries — India, for instance — into a unified coalition, akin to the multinational task force formed to counter Somali pirates a decade ago. That effort, first headed by the U.S., drastically reduced attacks, helped strengthen local navies and coast guards, and safeguarded commercial traffic and humanitarian missions.Mounting such a response in the Gulf may sound politically difficult. But Europe should remember that the capture of the British ship, the Stena Impero, had essentially nothing to do with the nuclear deal: It was retaliation for the British Navy’s seizure of a vessel carrying Iranian crude to Syria, in contravention of European Union sanctions. Iran should’ve contested the seizure through legal processes. Instead, it’s holding the British ship hostage and demanding as ransom the release of its own tanker — and the freedom to keep sending oil to Syria, in support of the dictator Bashar al-Assad.It’s yet another reminder of how Iran’s misconduct threatens the entire region, and part of a disturbing pattern. In recent weeks, the regime has attacked ships and oil installations, shot down an American drone, restarted its uranium enrichment program, and even test-fired a ballistic missile, all while refusing good-faith efforts at mediation. It’s lashing out in the hopes that it can intimidate the world into doing what it wants.The U.S. and Europe shouldn’t give in to this kind of aggression. They should instead be united in opposing it. The waters of the Persian Gulf would be a good place to start.—Editors: Bobby Ghosh, Timothy Lavin.To contact the senior editor responsible for Bloomberg Opinion’s editorials: David Shipley at davidshipley@bloomberg.net, .Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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'Passive aggression. It's a lifestyle': Ocasio-Cortez responds to a GOP congressional critic

Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., accused Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of having "deliberately misled the American people" about the treatment of migrants in detention.

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Afghan soldier killed two US troops: official

An Afghan soldier was responsible for the killing of two American troops a day earlier, an official told AFP Tuesday, in what appears to be the latest example of an insider attack. The US military on Monday said two of its troops had been killed in action in Afghanistan, but did not provide any additional details, pending notification of next of kin. Mohammad Qasam, a deputy police chief in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan, said the attack took place at an Afghan army base during a visit by US forces.

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Motive for slayings at California festival still unclear two days later

California police on Tuesday were still trying to determine why a teenager went on a shooting rampage over the weekend at a popular food festival south of San Jose, killing a 6-year-old boy, a 13-year-old girl and a man in his 20s. The police have since obtained search warrants for a home in Gilroy associated with the suspect and the car they believe he drove to the festival, a decades-old annual event celebrating the produce farmed in the countryside of California's Santa Clara Valley.

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Princess Haya, Dubai ruler’s wife, urges UK court to grant a forced marriage protection order

Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein, the youngest wife of the multi-billionaire ruler of Dubai, has urged a British court to protect one of her ­children by granting a forced marriage ­protection order. The Jordanian princess, who fled to Britain in May with her two children “in fear for her life”, is fighting an ­application from her husband, Sheikh Mohammed, for the “summary return” of the youngsters to the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Jordanian princess is also seeking a non-molestation order, a process normally used to protect someone who claims they have been subjected to ­domestic violence. However, the ­details surrounding the order, ­including to whom it applies, cannot be reported. The children are living with their mother in her £85 million home in Kensington, west London. The princess has applied successfully for them to be wards of court, and any decisions about their ­future cannot be made without the approval of the presiding judge, Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the Family Courts Division. Princess Haya, 45, attended the first day of the preliminary hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. It is the first time she has been seen in public since she left her family home in the Gulf last month. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Princess Haya bint Al Hussein attend Derby Day at Ascot in 2016 Credit: David M Benett/Getty In what is likely to be one of the most expensive child welfare cases in British family court history that may reveal how women are treated in the Dubai royal household, Princess Haya sat next to her lawyer, Baroness Shackleton, and stared intently, listening to proceedings. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, 70, the founder of the Godolphin horse racing stable and thought to be worth £9 billion, is not in court but is represented by Lady Helen Ward, a family and divorce lawyer. He and his estranged wife are both friends with the Queen, due to their shared love of horses. A court order is in place which means the names, ages and gender of their two children and details of the case cannot be reported. However, according to the Government’s website, the “forced marriage protection order” the princess is seeking for one of her children is commonly used to prevent someone “threatened with a forced marriage” leaving the country. The former Olympic equestrian, who became the sheikh’s sixth wife in 2004, was said to have flown on a private jet to Germany, before making her way to the UK. While the exact details of why she left are not known, some have said it stemmed from the earlier treatment of two of the sheikh’s princess daughters who also tried to flee. Princess Latifa, 33, ran away from Dubai last year to try to seek asylum. Princess Haya bint al-Hussein greeting Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 at Royal Ascot Credit: Jason Dawson However, she was seized off the coast of India by commandos and returned to Dubai. She recorded a video before her capture in which she warned her life was a sham and claimed she had suffered abuse. In December last year, Princess ­Latifa was pictured alongside Mary Robinson, the former president of ­Ireland and friend of Princess Haya, in the Dubai family home in what was largely seen as a publicity stunt. In 2000, Princess Shamsa ran away from her father’s estate near Chobham in Surrey. It is believed she was later abducted and returned to Dubai. It has been claimed Princess Haya, the half-sister of King Abdullah II of Jordan, fled Dubai because she learnt “the truth” about Princess Latifa. The sheikh, the vice-president and prime minister of the UAE as well as leader of Dubai, is said to have 23 ­children by his different wives. A poem recently appeared on his ­official Instagram page thought to have been written by him which accused an unnamed woman of “treachery and ­betrayal”. The judge on Tuesday allowed the ­media to report how Princess Haya had applied for wardship of their children, as well as for a forced marriage ­protection order and a non-molestation order. Rejecting an application by Sheikh Mohammed’s lawyers for those details to be subject to reporting restrictions, Sir Andrew ruled that “there is a public ­interest in the public understanding, in very broad terms, proceedings that are before the court.” The hearing continues.

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Pelosi, Schumer Stand Firm in Opposing Impeachment

Senator Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that he stands with House speaker Nancy Pelosi in opposition to impeachment proceedings despite pressure from the caucus to move forward.“I believe that . . . Speaker Pelosi is handling this appropriately,” Schumer said in reference to Pelosi's strategy of encouraging Democratic House committee chairmen to continue their probes into President Trump and his campaign but hold off on impeachment.After former special counsel Robert Mueller's testimony to Congress last week, Pelosi stated that the House does not yet have the evidence necessary to open an impeachment inquiry. “We will proceed when we have what we need to proceed,” she said. “Not one day sooner.”Meanwhile, two members of Senate Democratic leadership have come out in favor of proceeding with impeachment. Assistant Democratic Leader Patty Murray of Washington called for an impeachment inquiry “to determine whether the president’s actions necessitate impeachment,” and Senator Debbie Stabenow, the chair of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, on Monday said she agreed.Minorities of the Democratic caucuses in both chambers support spearheading the impeachment process. Only twelve Democratic senators say they back impeachment, while over 100 but still fewer than half of the 235 Democratic House members agree.Despite consistent demands to begin the impeachment process against Trump among some Democratic lawmakers and voters, the movement has been largely kept at bay thanks to Pelosi.“I’m not for impeachment,” the speaker said in March. “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country."

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Police investigate after man says he found baby in freezer

A St. Louis man says a box that had been in his mother's freezer for decades contained the mummified remains of a newborn baby, which he discovered while cleaning out her home after she died. Adam Smith told St. Louis media outlets that he opened the cardboard box Sunday expecting to find something like the top of his mother's first wedding cake or money because she never had a bank account. St. Louis police confirmed that they are investigating a "suspicious death" involving an "unknown infant" found inside the home and that autopsy results were pending.

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Women taking photos of themselves without headscarves face 10-year prison sentence in Iran

Iranian women who post photos of themselves online without their headscarves on could face up to 10 years in prison.They face the punishment for posting images or video online, and for sending them to Masih Alinejad, a US-based activist who founded the “White Wednesdays” campaign in Iran to oppose the compulsory hijab.The campaign encourages women to post photos of themselves without headscarves.The semi-official Fars news agency quoted the head of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, saying “those who film themselves or others while removing the hijab and send photos to this woman ... will be sentenced to between one and 10 years in prison.”Wearing the Islamic headscarf is mandatory in public for all women in Iran. Those who violate the rule face up to two months in prison and a fine of £20.Scores of women in Iran have been arrested for removing their headscarves as part of the “White Wednesdays” campaign.Last year, an Iranian woman was sentenced to two years in prison and 18 years probation for removing her headscarf in a protest.Shaparak Shajarizadeh said she had been sentenced for “opposing the compulsory hijab” and “waving a white flag of peace in the street”.

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A 33-year-old woman who used to work for Amazon is the suspect in the massive Capital One hack — meet Paige Thompson

Thompson is accused of stealing data from millions of Capital One customers, including Social Security numbers and linked bank accounts.

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Whither Evangelical Purity Culture? Thoughts on the Legacy of a Lost Pastor

If you don’t live in Evangelical-world, you probably missed this news. An influential Evangelical author and pastor named Joshua Harris announced on Saturday that he was in the process of “deconstruction.” His statement was clear. “By all the measurements I have for defining a Christian,” he said, “I am not a Christian.” He apologized to the LGBT community for not affirming gay marriage and for the ways that his writing and speaking “contributed to a culture of exclusion and bigotry.”For Christians, it’s a sad statement, but it’s also full of real integrity. Rather than try to jam Christianity into his evolving worldview, he respects orthodoxy by opting out.Harris burst into prominence as a young Christian with every author’s dream: a giant, influential first-book bestseller. It was called I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and it sold almost a million copies. If anything, however, the sales numbers understated its influence. It was part of the foundation of Evangelical “purity culture,” and it revolutionized parenting and dating for countless Christian parents and families.I remember it well. I was a youth pastor for a few memorable months at the height of the courtship craze. The year was 1998, I was a youth volunteer at a small church in Georgetown, Ky., when our youth pastor left. Until we could find a new youth pastor, I was in charge. I preached the youth service every week, I led the youth Sunday school, and I led the youth prayer groups. I was also a commercial litigator in a big law firm, and suddenly I had two full-time jobs. It was one of the best times of my life.But we also had a problem. The youth ministry had gone all-in on purity culture. The previous youth pastor had even declared “no date ’98,” placing a moratorium on every kid in the youth group: not even a single date for the entire year. When it came to relationships, it would be “courtship” (tersely defined as parental-supervised visits and outings) or nothing.This wasn’t wanton repression or cruelty. Many parents had entered adulthood wounded by past broken relationships. They regretted the mistakes of their youth and desperately wanted their kids to avoid similar heartbreak. Also — and this is crucial for understanding purity culture — they fervently believed in a specific earthly reward for their child’s youthful obedience. Courtship represented the best method of ensuring a healthy, sexually vibrant marriage to a faithful spouse.This is what writer Katelyn Beaty called the “sexual prosperity gospel,” an “if/then” transactional relationship with God that manufactures a series of promises from scripture and then creates a form of Christian entitlement and expectation. “I did what you asked, Lord, now may I see my reward?”Beaty’s critique is well taken, and it’s certainly true that purity culture built a series of (often wildly unrealistic) expectations about the marriage relationship that awaited kids who courted. But I think it did something even darker — in its effect (if not its intent), it reversed the gospel message, teaching Christian kids that they risked being defined by their sins, not by Christ.It worked like this — sexual sin stained young persons, even if Christ forgave them. They would walk into marriage diminished in some crucial ways. The white dress, fundamentally, was a lie. And the message wasn’t confined to sexuality. Did you drink? Did you smoke a joint? Each one of those things altered a person’s self-definition. They were no longer “pure.” They could never be “pure” again.All too many times, I saw the despair. A young person would come to me and say, “I screwed up.” They would really mean, “I’m ruined.” Their storybook dreams were dead. A 17-year-old with (God willing) 70 years of life ahead of him would approach me carrying the awful burden of thinking that he had defined his life forever. He was no longer — and never would be — the person he wanted to be.Sometimes the despair would trigger wild rebellion. If they’re “ruined,” then why should they care about obedience? There are two states of being — virgin or not, teetotaler or not — and if you’re not, then you might as well indulge yourself. Other times the despair would trigger constant, nagging guilt and regret. A girl would walk down the aisle to marry a man who loved God and loved her, and she’d feel a shadow on her soul.In point of fact, the gospel message rests first on bad news, then on indescribably good news. The bad news is simple: You were never “pure.” It’s not as if sex or drink or drugs represent the demarcation line between righteous and unrighteous. They are not and were never the “special” sins that created particularly acute separation from God. Yes, they could have profound earthly consequences, but they did not create unique spiritual separation.The indescribably good news is that from the moment of the confession of faith, believers are not defined by their sin. They’re not defined even by their own meager virtues. They’re defined by Christ. Moreover, they find that “for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” This does not by any stretch mean that past sin wasn’t sin — one of my best friends is an eleven-years-sober addict who did dreadful things during his worst days — but it does mean that their past now gives them a unique ability to reach suffering people. Their terrible stories and past pain have been redeemed, transformed into instruments of grace and mercy.One of my first acts as youth pastor was to lift the ban on dating. Ending legalism is not the same thing as sanctioning sin, and I have no idea if there was more or less extramarital sex as a result of the dating ban or the purity rings. But it was incumbent upon me — in the limited time that I had in leadership — to tell the truth, and the truth was that legalism is its own kind of sin. To create burdens where Christ did not is an act of arrogance. It’s deeply harmful. And, sadly, it’s a way of life in all too many Christian churches.Harris has famously repented of his past legalism, and that makes his departure from the faith particularly poignant. He helped define young people by their sin, and then he left. He separated from his wife, and he rejected Christianity itself. He is like an inadvertent arsonist, who flees the burning house rather than helping fight the fire he helped ignite. I’m sad to see him go. I’m sadder still to see the pain he caused when he was present.

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Jamnagar, south Gujarat bear brunt of monsoon; more in store: Met

The highest rainfall was recorded in Jamnagar taluka which saw 152mm of rain from 6 am to 8 pm.

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I have to grow up and plan for the future, says Jamuna Boro

Ma's Home: Rising boxing star Jamuna Boro puts hardships behind her

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Fill court vacancies by Dec: Supreme Court to states

The bench of CJI Gogoi, Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose observed that filling up the judicial officers' posts is top priority, considering the fact that over 2.76 crore cases are pending in trial courts across the country.

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Everyday, Delhi man suffers 300 Sunny Leone fans' calls

In the film, Leone can be heard sharing a phone number with actor Diljit Dosanjh, which as it turns out, is Puneet Agarwal's number

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DNA IMPACT: Remove Mumbai University affiliation, branding from ads - Garware Institute to NAEMD

Garware Institute tells NAEMD to remove the word 'Affiliation' with respect to Mumbai University and pull back all ads that use MU's branding

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IAF Wing Commander Tarun Chaudhri creates history with wingsuit skydive

He jumped from an IAF Mi-17 V5 helicopter for the wingsuit skydive from an altitude of 8,500 feet

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Joint Chiefs nominee denies assault allegations, enlists key support

Sen. Martha McSally — a retired Air Force pilot who revealed this year that she was raped by a superior officer — came out with a staunch defense of Air Force Gen. John Hyten.

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The president is right about Baltimore. Are Democrats really prepared to defend failure?

Baltimore is one of the least livable, most dangerous cities in America. It's not racist to point that out.

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3 dead, including 2 children, and at least 12 hurt: What we know about Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting

A gunman opened fire at the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival on Sunday killing three people and injuring at least 12 others. Here's what we know.

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Ben Carson says President Trump would be happy to work with Elijah Cummings to bring relief to Baltimore

HUD Secretary Ben Carson praises Trump administration efforts to rehabilitate America's distressed areas.

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रेलवे ग्रुप डी परीक्षा के लिए आवेदनों को गलत तरीके से अस्वीकार किया गया, उम्मीदवारों को मिल सकता है दूसरा मौका

रेलवे ग्रुप डी परीक्षा के लिए जिन उम्मीदवारों के आवेदन अस्वीकार किए गए हैं,...

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Pakistan’s Hasan Ali all set to tie knot with Haryana aeronautical engineer

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Israelis cleared of rape to sue British accuser in Cyprus

Israeli tourists released from custody in Cyprus after having been cleared of gang rape charges plan to sue the British woman who accused them, their lawyer said Monday. Twelve Israeli youths were arrested on July 12 after a 19-year-old British tourist said she was raped in a hotel in the resort town of Ayia Napa, in southeast Cyprus. Five of the accused were released last Thursday and the other seven on Sunday, as a police source said the Briton was "facing charges of giving a false statement over an imaginary offence".

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CORRECTED-UPDATE 2-Britain tells Iran: release ship to 'come out of the dark'

Britain told Iran on Monday that if it wants to "come out of the dark" it must follow international rules and release a British-flagged oil tanker seized by its forces in the Gulf. Iranian commandos seized the Stena Impero near the Strait of Hormuz, the world's most important waterway for oil shipments, on July 19. "If the Iranians want to come of the dark and be accepted as a responsible member of the intentional community they need to adhere to rules-based system of the international community," Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told Sky News.

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Another tourist injured by bison at a national park; second such incident in a week

Park regulations require that visitors stay at least 25 yards away from large animals such as bison, elk, deer and horses.

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'Stay inside and lock your doors': Tiny Canadian village on lockdown as teenage murder spree suspects spotted scavenging for food

A massive police manhunt has been launched in a remote part of northern Canada for a pair of teenager double murder suspects.The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been chasing Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, for weeks since the pair were connected to two separate killings in British Columbia earlier this month.The teenagers have been tracked in a series of stolen cars as they have travelled thousands of miles across Canada, from its Pacific coast in the west all to the way east to rural Manitoba.Police helicopters, a plane, drones, dog units and armed officers have flooded the area around York Landing, a small village in remote northern Manitoba, where a local indigenous neighbourhood watch group had spotted the duo.Officers tweeted residents in York Landing should stay inside and lock all their doors and windows while the heavy police presence searched their community.James Favel from the Bear Clan Patrol, the First Nations group which reported the sighting, said some of his volunteers spotted two young men who matched the description of Mr McLeod and Mr Schmegelsky.The pair immediately stood out in the small, close-knit village while scavenging for food near a dump and ran away as soon as they realised they had been seen, he added.RCMP units had already been searching the nearby town of Gillam and believe the pair have been cornered in this region of rural Manitoba.But the intense police presence was leaving its mark on the locals. “Up here, all the towns and communities, they look like ghost towns,” said Wade Taylor, another volunteer with the Bear Clan Patrol.“Like, everyone’s inside. There’s a high level of stress, anxiety and fearfulness because they’re being kept in their houses.“Some of the people, you can tell by their voice that they’re almost at the point of breaking down crying. You could say it’s traumatic.”The manhunt saga began on 12 July when Mr McLeod and Mr Schmegelsky, childhood friends, left their home in Port Alberni on Vancouver Island and travelled 1,500 miles north to Whitehorse, in the Yukon, to look for work.But on 15 July police discovered the bodies of a young couple near Liard Hot Springs, back in British Columbia and the RCMP has said the teenagers are suspects in the case and wanted for questioning.A few days later a burnt-out truck driven by the pair was discovered, along with the body of Leonard Dyck. Mr McLeod and Mr Schmegelsky have been charged with his murder and chased across Canada by the RCMP ever since.The duo are believed to be armed and the public has been warned not to approach them.The father of Mr Schmegelsky has told reporters he believes his son is on a “suicide mission” and expects him to eventually die in a confrontation with the police. “A normal child doesn’t travel across the country killing people,” he said. “A child in some very serious pain does.”

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China to weigh in on deepening Hong Kong crisis

After weeks of increasingly violent protests, China's top policy body on Hong Kong affairs was set to hold an extremely rare press briefing Monday on the crisis engulfing the financial hub, where dozens of protesters were arrested in weekend clashes with police. What began as a mass display of opposition to an extradition bill two months ago has morphed into a wider pro-democracy movement that has thrown down the most significant challenge to Beijing's authority since the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. While China has issued increasingly shrill condemnations of the protests in the last two weeks, it has largely left the city's pro-Beijing administration to deal with the situation.

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'There was no clown': Cruise company, police deny reports that fight broke out because of a clown

Following reports that six people were assaulted on a cruise ship in a brawl with a clown, police and P&O; Cruises are setting the record straight.

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'Pink Lady Bandit' and her accomplice arrested in Charlotte

Circe Baez, 35, and Alexis Morales, 38, were arrested in connection with multiple bank robberies in three different states.

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Baltimore paper blasts Trump after his attacks on city: 'Better to have a few rats than to be one'

The Baltimore Sun editorial board lit up President Trump Saturday night for his Twitter tirade against its city and Rep. Elijah Cummings, the powerful Democrat who represents Maryland’s Seventh District.

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Punjab Special Task Force seizes heroin worth Rs 1.2 crore

A drug peddler, named Balwinder Singh alias Billa, was nabbed by the Ludhiana Police Force

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Ahmedabad: Man held for raping 9-year-old daughter

The girl then told her mother that her father first raped her four months ago.

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'High on life only', Bihar babus take a spirited oath

NO TO CHEERS: Govt officials to accept punishment if found guilty of consuming alcohol

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Enforcement Directorate attaches assets worth Rs 246 crore in Tamil Nadu gutkha scam

The seized assets include 174 immovable properties, shares and vehicles

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Srinagar mosques now under Home Ministry scanner

Defence Ministry sources says the move is aimed at further strengthening the ongoing counter-terror operations in the Valley

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Bihar: Flood victims discover 'relief' in salt, rice

No Gas, No Food: Long wait for ration for Villagers in Bihar's Muzaffarpur

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Eye on dragon, India & Myanmar ink defence pact

The maritime cooperation will help both the countries in combating insurgent groups in both the countries and most importantly keep an eye on China's maritime expansion plans

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Kin dead, Unnao rape survivor still critical; MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar booked for murder

On July 13, the rape survivor's mother had written to the Unnao police alleging that her family was being threatened by the jailed legislator's aides.

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Maryland’s Republican Governor Condemns Trump’s Baltimore Remarks

Republican Governor Larry Hogan of Maryland on Monday denounced President Trump's criticism of Baltimore as "outrageous and inappropriate" after the president attacked Representative Elijah Cummings, calling his Baltimore-area district a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess."Why are we not focused on solving the problems and getting to work?" Hogan said on the C4 radio show. "Instead of who's tweeting what [and] who's calling whom names.""Washington is just completely consumed with angry and divisive politics," the governor lamented. "We're doing a lot of things, but we sure could use some help from the White House and from the Congress."Baltimore Mayor Bernard Young agreed, calling Trump's criticism of the city "childish.""If he really wants to, he needs to send us the federal assistance -- not only to Baltimore, to cities around this country that are in the same situation that Baltimore is in -- but he's so interested in childish tweets," Young said."Rep. Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous," Trump wrote over the weekend.The president continued, calling Baltimore's 7th congressional district "the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States," where "no human being would want to live.""The Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded," he added.Cummings, who is black and represents a majority-black district, responded that it is his duty to critique the Trump administration."Mr. President, I go home to my district daily. Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors," he wrote on Twitter. "It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch. But, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents."Cummings' colleagues came to his defense, condemning the president's remarks as racist."We all reject racist attacks against him and support his steadfast leadership," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Trump's attacks on Cummings.Baltimore has a higher rate of college-educated residents than the national average, but the city had the highest homicide rate of the nation's 50 largest cities in 2018.

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US senator helps pregnant migrant with life-threatening condition apply for asylum at US-Mexico border

A pregnant Mexican woman suffering complications was told by immigration officers that they couldn’t process her family’s asylum claim at the US border on Saturday before a US senator intervened to persuade the officers to take the woman to a Texas hospital.While visiting a migrant shelter on Saturday, Ron Wyden grew concerned about a woman who was 38 weeks pregnant and suffering from pre-eclampsia and other complications.The senator and his staff decided to take the woman, her husband and 3-year-old son to a port of entry to make their asylum claim.At the Paso del Norte Bridge linking Juárez and El Paso, the family approached two US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, presented their identification and said they wanted to request asylum.They then heard the words that tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been told for more than a year at the US-Mexico border: “We’re full,” a CBP officer told them.Mr Wyden, who had followed behind the family along with an entourage of staff members and friends from Oregon, then stepped forward and identified himself.He told the officers that Mexicans are exempt from the “metering” programme CBP has used to strictly control the number of people allowed to request asylum at ports of entry.He also told the officers the woman was late term in her pregnancy and suffering complications.The officers called a supervisor, who arrived minutes later, and allowed the family to go to the port of entry to make their asylum claim.Mr Wyden was clearly shaken by his two-day visit to the border, which included a tour of CBP holding cells and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility.At the Juárez shelter, he met a 3-year-old boy who had stopped speaking after being held with his father by the US Border Patrol and then sent back to Mexico.Mr Wyden spoke with families who were required to stay in Mexico for six months before their first US immigration court hearing.“These policies that I’ve seen are not what America is about. And in fact what we saw with respect to the woman who is here today is just a blatant violation of US law,” Mr Wyden said, referring to the pregnant woman.He said he believed the CBP agents would have turned away the family if he had not intervened, a sentiment echoed by Taylor Levy, an El Paso immigration attorney who took Mr Wyden and his staff to Juárez.“I feel very confident that if the family had tried to present alone, they would not have been allowed in,” Ms Levy said.A CBP spokesman said the officer would not have told the family that asylum processing was at capacity if they had explained that they were Mexican and that the mother was pregnant.However, the family gave the officer, whose uniform identified his last name as Loya, a folder that contained their Mexican birth certificates and identification.Shaw Drake, the policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Border Rights Centre in El Paso, Texas, said he asked the officer afterward if the family had identified themselves as Mexican asylum seekers, and the officer said they had.Mr Wyden was also critical of a CBP officer who told the senator’s staff they were not allowed to take photos or video on the bridge.The ACLU’s Mr Drake said the officer, whose name tag identified him as Castro, was wrong, and he told the staff they could continue to record.“Certainly it looked like it had the potential for not going well. The ACLU folks talked about their legal rights to be able to record the [processing], and one of the officers said, ‘We have a situation’,” Mr Wyden said.“So having done this for a while, those are the kinds of things that concern you and might suggest it’s not going well.”Metering is used as a way to cap the number of people allowed to apply for asylum at ports of entry.Mexicans are supposed to be exempt from metering under US asylum laws, Mr Drake said. He said he had seen CBP agents turning back Mexican asylum seekers before.“If someone arrives on our border and expresses a fear of return to their home country, the government is barred from returning that person to their home country until a process has been followed to determine whether they have the right to remain in the United States as an asylee or a refugee,” he said.“And so turning a Mexican away at the border, back into Mexico, is directly returning an asylum seeker to the country from which they’re fleeing persecution with no process to determine whether they have a fear of returning to that country.”Mr Wyden met the family, who asked not to be identified, at a shelter that houses about 250 migrants in Juárez. They were sharing a small room with 11 other migrants.They said they were from the Mexican state of Guerrero and wanted to seek asylum because they feared violence from drug cartels and their government allies.“There’s a lot of insecurity, and the government is involved and corrupted with the cartels. There’s just no way to survive,” the father told Mr Wyden.The family showed Mr Wyden their number for the metering list, which is kept by the Chihuahua State Population Council in Juárez.The number 17,647 was handwritten on a slip of paper. More than 5,000 people were ahead of them on the list, meaning they faced a four- or five-month wait before being allowed to come to a US port of entry and seek asylum.The family said they had not previously gone to a port of entry because they thought they had to get on the metering list.Lauren Herbert, an Oregon paediatrician who accompanied Mr Wyden on the border tour, said she became concerned when talking to the mother.“She had a previous diagnosis of preeclampsia, which already places her at high risk,” Herbert said after the family crossed the border.“And then she described two days of leaking fluid,” which could indicate a ruptured membrane that threatened the life of mother and unborn child. “This is a high-risk pregnancy, and she needs to be seen by a doctor. Now.”After Mr Wyden met the woman and her family, Ms Levy, the immigration attorney, and Mr Drake urged the senator to push CBP to get the woman to a hospital as soon as possible.“The US government keeps saying that they don’t put Mexicans on the metering list and that Mexicans will always be accepted because they’re fleeing Mexico,” Ms Levy said. She suggested Mr Wyden approach the border officers along with an ACLU representative and lawyers.“That’s what we’re going to do,” Mr Wyden said.About an hour later, the family was undergoing initial processing by CBP to begin their asylum claim. CBP officials told Mr Wyden that the mother would quickly be taken to a hospital for evaluation. Their status was not clear on Saturday night.Ian Philabaum, programme director for the legal group Innovation Law Lab who accompanied the senator on his two-day border tour, said the family’s plight would have been much different without Mr Wyden’s assistance.“If not for the presence of a US senator, another asylum-seeker would have been sent back to dangerous conditions in Mexico, the same country she is fleeing, and despite the fact that she is pregnant and in dire need of medical attention,” he said..Washington Post

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The Latest: Police: Too early to tell if victims targeted

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Trump doubles down on Cummings attacks, shares vulgar comment about Baltimore on Twitter

President Trump doubled down on his attacks against House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, whose district he called a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess,” by retweeting a comment from a British columnist who referred to Baltimore as a “proper sh*thole.”

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Follow the law, get pulled over: Why a police plan to 'ticket' drivers backfired in Arizona

Tempe Police Department started a "Positive Ticketing Campaign" initiative to hand out Circle K drink coupons for following traffic laws.

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Julian Castro Is ‘Hypercritical’ Of Trump Immigration Policies He Once Praised Under Obama

Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro, a fervent opponent of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, was called out for his past praise of former President Barack Obama’s immigration enforcement policies.“I want to ask you about immigration which you have made a part of your campaign focus,” said “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan Sunday. “When you were mayor of San Antonio, you testified before Congress and you called for increased border security measures and you praised the Obama administration’s actions.”Brennan then played a clip of Castro speaking before a congressional hearing in February 2013. In the clip, then-San Antonio Mayor Castro is seen lauding the Obama administration’s success at removing “dangerous individuals” after beefing up security along the U.S.-Mexico border.“In Texas, we know firsthand that this administration has put more boots on the ground along the border than at any other time in our history which has led to unprecedented success in removing dangerous individuals with criminal records,” he said during a 2013 House Judiciary committee hearing.“Why did you praise that policy then but when the Trump administration adopt similar language and policies you’re hypercritical of them?” Brennan asked.Castro, who went on to serve as secretary of Housing and Urban Development under the Obama administration, maintained that his position has not changed, and that he’s always been in favor of removing criminal illegal aliens from the U.S.“I talked about people who committed serious crimes, dangerous criminals. I haven’t changed at all. If there are people who have committed serious felonies in the United States who are immigrants or who come to the border … they should be deported,” he said in response.

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FBI, police search for missing 2-year-old after parents died

The Medford Police Department and the FBI are searching for a 2-year-old boy whose parents were involved in an apparent murder-suicide in Montana. Officers are trying to find Aiden Salcido, the son of Daniel Salcido and Hannah Janiak, the FBI said in a news release Friday night. The boy's parents were found dead Wednesday in Kalispell, Montana, after police stopped them following a chase because they had felony burglary warrants for their arrest.

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Boko Haram kills 23 mourners after Nigeria funeral

Boko Haram gunmen on Saturday killed 23 mourners in Borno state in Nigeria's restive northeast after they attended a funeral, local militia and residents said. At around 1030 GMT, the attackers on three motorbikes opened fire on a group of men as they walked back from a funeral in Nganzai district near the state capital Maiduguri, local militia leader Bunu Bukar Mustapha said.

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Eight killed as quakes hit far northern Philippines

Eight people were killed and dozens injured when a series of earthquakes struck islands in the far northern Philippines early Saturday, toppling historic buildings and sending terrified locals fleeing their homes. The tremors hit the province of Batanes, a group of sparsely populated islets north of the nation's largest Luzon island, tearing deep cracks in roads and forcing the evacuation of a hospital.

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Trump news - live: President rages over Mueller in Fox News-inspired Twitter storm, amid impeachment push and bid to force tax returns release

Donald Trump has warned that the antifacist movement Antifa could be declared a terrorist organisation and branded the Mueller investigation a “witch-hunt hoax” in a series of late-night tweets.As the prospect of a push in congress for his impeachment grows, the US president’s tirade comes after a US House judiciary committee asked a judge to force the release of grand jury evidence from the special counsel's wide-ranging probe.The request, filed on Friday, explicitly referenced congress’ impeachment powers and is a major step forward in the Democrats' legal fight against Mr Trump.Please allow a moment for the liveblog to load:Meanwhile, California Governor Gavin Newsom is reportedly on the verge of a move that could force Mr Trump to release his tax returns if he wants to appear on the state’s ballot in the 2020 elections.Earlier on Saturday, Mr Trump was widely-criticised for a series of tweets accusing Democratic congressman Elijah Cumming of being a “brutal bully” from a “rat-infested district”.The attacks appeared to have been inspired by a Fox & Friends report that aired minutes before the president’s outburst, which criticised living conditions in Mr Cummings’ district.Nancy Pelosi led Democratic representatives in defending Mr Cummings, accusing the US president of “racist attacks”.

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Blast, gunbattle at Afghan VP candidate's office, 2 dead

The political office of the Afghan president's running mate was hit by a large explosion and stormed by several gunmen who remained holed up inside, Afghan officials said Sunday. The attack in the capital, Kabul, killed at least two people and came on the first day of campaigning for presidential elections, scheduled for late September. Vice-presidential candidate and former intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh was "evacuated from the building and moved to a safe location," said Nasrat Rahimi, the interior ministry spokesman.

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Baltimore to Trump: Knocking Our City Is Our Job, Not Yours

By NICHOLAS BOGEL-BURROUGHS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2K1neUJ

लश्कर को फंड पहुंचा रहे सीधी के युवक काे यूपी एटीएस ने दबोचा

Interpol has refused red corner notice against Zakir Naik, claims IRF

The decision was taken by the Interpol's Commission in its 109th session held on 1 to 5 July 2019

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Odisha schoolkids have their lunch under umbrella cover

UMBRELLA TIME: Appalling conditions at Odisha primary school

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Leaders mourn Congress' great orator S Jaipal Reddy

1942-2019: Remembered as an articulate man, he never compromised on values

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Pakistani army spokesman posts misleading clip

On Feb 27, Ghafoor claimed Pak had captured two IAF pilots but later said only one, Abhinandan, was in their custody

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NIA raids continue in Baramulla in terror-funding case

Raids come days after the probe agency carried out searches at seven locations in the south Kashmir district of Pulwama and Srinagar

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Off-duty LAPD officer killed, 1 other person wounded in Lincoln Heights shooting

An off-duty Los Angeles police officer was killed in a Lincoln Heights shooting that left a second victim wounded, authorities said.

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Dan Coats, intelligence chief who clashed with Donald Trump, 'to step down'

Dan Coats, the US director of national intelligence who clashed repeatedly with Donald Trump, is reportedly to step down from his position within days.  Mr Coats, 76, had disagreements with the president over Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Brexit. Mr Trump was said to be considering replacing him with John Ratcliffe, a Republican congressman who has been a staunch loyalist, according to the New York Times.  Mr Ratcliffe sits on the House judiciary committee, and Mr Trump was said to have been impressed by his recent aggressive questioning of special counsel Robert Mueller. Mr Coats, who was appointed by Mr Trump, has served in the role since March 2017. He clashed with Mr Trump early on, taking a hard line toward Russia that sharply contrasted with the conciliatory approach the president pursued with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. Earlier this year Mr Coats told Congress that North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons, contradicting Mr Trump's statement that Pyongyang no longer posed a threat. He also told Congress that Iran had continued to comply with a nuclear deal that Trump abandoned. Mr Coats, a former Republican senator, served in Mr Trump’s cabinet. He was previously US ambassador to Germany under George W Bush.  The role he holds was created after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, and he has overseen the work of America’s 17 intelligence agencies. Mr Coats was also out of step with Mr Trump on Brexit. In January Mr Coats made clear his opposition to a no-deal Brexit. He said: "The possibility of a no-deal Brexit, in which the UK exits the EU without an agreement, remains. This would cause economic disruptions that could substantially weaken the UK and Europe."

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Montana searchers find body of missing Oregon child

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Bernie Sanders denounces 'greed' of American drug companies

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused American pharmaceutical companies Sunday of letting diabetic patients die out of "greed," after he accompanied a group of Americans to Canada to buy insulin. Sanders joined the group, which took a bus from the US city of Detroit to Windsor, Ontario to restock on insulin, which costs 10 times more in the United States than in its northern neighbor. "How come the same exact medicine, in this case insulin, is sold here in Canada for one-tenth of the price it is sold in the United States?" Sanders demanded after visiting a Windsor pharmacy.

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Trump’s asylum deal with Guatemala threatens to plunge country into political crisis, analysts warn

In pressuring Guatemala to accept a deal to absorb vast numbers of asylum-seekers, the Trump administration has embarked on a dramatic and risky strategy to slash the number of Central Americans flooding the US-Mexico border.The accord – which was negotiated in secret and signed at the White House on Friday – could plunge Guatemala’s young democracy into a constitutional crisis, analysts warn.It could also saddle one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries with tens of thousands of Salvadoran and Honduran migrants who would be barred from making their claims in the United States.The agreement is one of the boldest steps yet taken by Donald Trump to stanch the flow of migrants to the US border.It aims to close off the US asylum system to the migrants who have crossed through Guatemala en route to the United States. They would instead have to seek protection in Guatemala.But the agreement is built on a fragile political and legal base.Guatemala’s constitutional court ruled earlier this month that President Jimmy Morales needed approval from the Guatemalan Congress to sign the accord – something he has not received.The Guatemalan president has sharply criticised the court decision, saying on Friday that “as far as we understand, this doesn’t have to go before Congress”.Some analysts said Mr Morales could get around the ruling with his argument that the deal is simply a cooperation agreement, not a treaty. But others note Mr Morales has at times simply shrugged off court rulings he dislikes.“This leaves a legacy we won’t be able to recover from, that the country’s constitution can be flagrantly violated without any kind of reaction or penalty,” said Renzo Rosal, an independent political consultant.The agreement is also likely to be challenged in US courts by opponents who say that Guatemala does not qualify as a “safe” country, because of high levels of violence.Whatever happens with the courts, the agreement has little political support in Guatemala.Mr Morales, who finishes his four-year term in January, is highly unpopular.Among the top Twitter hashtags in Guatemala in recent days has been Jimmyvendepatrias – Jimmy the sellout – as a dig at the country’s leader.Guatemalans were startled by a widely published photo showing their government minister, Enrique Degenhart, signing the agreement as Mr Trump loomed over his shoulder, an image suggesting the Central American country’s submission.On Saturday, hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the presidential palace in Guatemala City to protest the agreement, the Associated Press reported. The protesters carried Guatemalan flags and called for Mr Morales’ resignation.Guatemalan analysts have suggested Mr Morales made the deal with Mr Trump in hopes of winning support from the US government.Mr Morales faces allegations of financial crimes related to his 2015 electoral campaign but has been shielded by presidential immunity, which he loses in January. He says he is innocent.Mr Morales said the agreement would help Guatemala by “putting us in a privileged position” with the country’s top trading partner and most important ally.Guatemala holds a run-off presidential election on 11 August, and both candidates have criticised Mr Morales’ negotiation of such a broad agreement in secret.The accord “is unlikely to be sustainable”, Stephen McFarland, a former US ambassador to Guatemala, wrote in a tweet on the eve of the agreement’s unveiling.“A bitter US ‘win’ would put at risk US goals in democracy and law enforcement with the current and next governments.”While the next Guatemalan government could cancel the agreement, it would face intense pressure from the Trump administration to not do so.Mr Morales’ government signed the pact after Mr Trump threatened severe penalties on Guatemala – tariffs, a travel ban or taxes on the billions of dollars in remittances sent home by migrants in the United States.Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland Security secretary, said the administration plans to start the “safe third country” programme with Guatemala in August.Human rights groups, Democratic lawmakers and immigration experts have said Guatemala is too poor and underdeveloped to handle a flood of asylum applicants.Last year, Salvadoran and Honduran migrants filed nearly 58,000 applications for asylum in the United States. That same year, Guatemala received just 259 asylum applications overall.Guatemala is the number one source of irregular migration to the United States, with citizens fleeing poverty, violence, low coffee prices and drought.Eric Schwartz, head of Refugees International and a former top refugee official at the US State Department, said in a statement that the agreement “would represent a grotesque violation of both US law and human decency” and “would put at risk the lives of thousands of Central Americans”.Sonia Lucia Valenzuela, a constitutional law expert in Guatemala, said the Constitutional Court ruling was clear in instructing Mr Morales to send the agreement to Congress but that political pressures could determine what happens next.The migration agreement has been strongly supported by Guatemala’s influential business groups, who had feared US tariffs. But many current and former politicians oppose it.“If the opposition to this accord continues, that’s a sign this will escalate,” she said.Washington Post

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Emmett Till memorial will be made bulletproof after photo of gun-toting students surfaces

Emmett Till's memorial will be bulletproof after outrage over a photo of three gun-toting Ole Miss students posing in front of the sign.

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Trump signs ‘cruel and illegal’ deal with Guatemala to stop asylum seekers getting to US

The Trump administration has struck a highly controversial deal with Guatemala, which will prevent some migrants fleeing their home countries from submitting asylum applications to the US.Refugees travelling to the US who enter Guatemala, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, will now be required to apply for asylum protection from the Central American nation instead of at the US border.Under the deal Guatemala has been declared a so-called “safe third country”.The Central American nation and the US have been negotiating the deal for months.Donald Trump earlier threatened to place trade tariffs on Guatemala if an agreement wasn’t reached.“We’ll either do tariffs or we’ll do something. We’re looking at something very severe with respect to Guatemala,” the US president said on Wednesday.Jimmy Morales, Guatemala’s president, said the agreement would allow the country to avoid “drastic sanctions ... many of them designed to strongly punish our economy, such as taxes on remittances that our brothers send daily, as well as the imposition of tariffs on our export goods and migratory restrictions.” As part of the agreement the US will increase access to the the H-2A visa program for temporary agricultural workers from Guatemala. The country’s government said its labour ministry would, in the coming days, ”start issuing work visas in the agriculture industry, which will allow Guatemalans to travel legally to the United States, to avoid being victims of criminal organisations, to work temporarily and then return to Guatemala, which will strengthen family unity.”“We have long been working with Guatemala and now we can do it the right way.” Mr Trump said.“This landmark agreement will put the coyotes and smugglers out of business.”Despite the president’s optimism it remains unclear how the agreement will take effect. Guatemala’s constitutional court has granted three injunctions preventing its government from entering into a deal without approval of the country’s congress and Mr Morales himself has questioned the concept of a “safe third country”, which forms the basis of the agreement.“Where does that term exist?” he asked reporters on Friday, hours before the deal was struck.”It does not exist, it is a colloquial term. No agreement exists that is called ‘safe third country.”Rights groups have condemned the deal, with multiple experts questioning its legality.Jordan Rodas, a human rights prosecutor, said his team was studying the agreement and whether Enrique Degenhart, Guatemala’s interior minister, had the authority to sign it.Amnesty International condemned the deal, saying ”any attempts to force families and individuals fleeing their home countries to seek safety in Guatemala are outrageous.”Rights groups and student organisations rallied against the agreement in Guatemala City, gathering in front of the constitutional court.Many believe the nation, which is mired in poverty and unemployment, has no capacity to take in refugees.The problems of homelessness, severe drought, gang violence and unemployment which are endemic in El Salvador and Honduras are also present in Guatemala.Eliot Engel, a Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs said Mr Trump’s decision to sign the agreement was “cruel and immoral.”‘’It is also illegal,” he added. “Simply put, Guatemala is not a safe country for refugees and asylum seekers, as the law requires.”The president was asked on Friday if he expected to reach similar agreements with Honduras and El Salvador.He replied, “I do indeed.” Additional reporting by agencies

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Girl's murder sparks outcry and protests in Romania

Several thousand protesters rallied in Bucharest on Saturday after Romania's police chief was fired over the murder of a 15-year-old girl who had made three emergency calls to report her own kidnapping and given clues to her whereabouts. Centre-right President Klaus Iohannis said earlier the "resignations of all those who mishandled this case which had such dramatic consequences are obligatory".

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मध्यप्रदेश: आईबी ने सोशल मीडिया पर बच्चा चोरी की अफवाहों को लेकर किया अलर्ट

खुफिया ब्यूरो (आईबी) ने मध्यप्रदेश की अपनी क्षेत्रीय इकाइयों को बच्चा चुराए...

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15 फीसदी अदालत परिसरों में महिलाओं के लिए नहीं हैं टॉयलेट, 16 हजार परिसरों की सर्वे रिपोर्ट में खुलासा

देश के 16,000 अदालत परिसरों में से लगभग 15 प्रतिशत में महिलाओं के लिए टॉयलेट नहीं...

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BJP misusing government agencies to rope in opposition leaders: Sharad Pawar

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Enforcement Directorate arrests Satish Sana Babu, a witness in graft case

The ED is probing a case regarding purported purchase of shares worth Rs. 50 lakh of a company linked to Qureshi.

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M Venkaiah Naidu expresses anguish over unruly behaviour of MPs & MLAs

Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu on Saturday expressed his anguish and said it was not in our culture to disrespect women.

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Chandigarh: Charging Rs 67.50 GST on two bananas costs JW Marriott Rs 25,000

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Senior Congress leader Jaipal Reddy passes away

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Maharashtra: Rains, stranded trains keep NDRF personnel busy

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UP governmemt to lay foundation stone for 250 projects

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The Mueller Report’s Fundamental Dodge

Editor’s Note: This is the first article in a two-part series; the second will appear tomorrow.Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony was such a bumbling fiasco that it was easy for a viewer to be confused -- and stay that way -- about the main bone of Democratic contention regarding his report: the “OLC guidance” that prevents the Justice Department from charging a president with crimes while he is in office. Specifically, how did it factor into the special counsel’s decision -- or, rather, non-decision -- on the main question he was appointed to answer: Did President Trump obstruct justice? How did the special counsel’s dubious reliance on it as a rationale for abdicating on this question affect the publication and ramifications of the Mueller report?We’ve plowed this ground before, but it is worth revisiting. We will do that in this weekend’s two-part series. This is Part 1.The OLC GuidanceThe OLC is the Office of Legal Counsel, the lawyers’ lawyers in the Justice Department who formulate policies that guide federal prosecutors throughout the United States. The OLC guidance at issue in the Mueller investigation is the prohibition on indicting a sitting president. This rule is said to be derived from constitutional and prudential considerations.I do not believe the guidance is sound. But that’s beside the point: The guidance is binding on Justice Department lawyers, period. That means it is also binding on special counsels. By regulation, they are firmly in the Justice Department chain of command.Consequently, the OLC guidance applied to Mueller’s investigation of President Trump. In particular, it was relevant to the obstruction aspect of the probe, which was always a criminal investigation. (For reasons that need not divert us, the “collusion” part of the case was pretextually conducted as a counterintelligence investigation.)Because (a) the president was the principal subject of the obstruction probe and (b) the objective of such a criminal investigation is to indict wrongdoers, the pertinence of the OLC guidance is obvious. The question is: What is the effect of its application?Until Mueller’s investigation, I would have thought this was straightforward. The president may not be indicted while in office. Notice: This does not mean the president may not be investigated while in office; nor does it mean the president may never be indicted. The investigation may proceed while a president serves his term; if the prosecutor finds sufficient evidence to charge a criminal offense, an indictment may be obtained from the grand jury as soon as a president is out of office.That is, just as in any other case, the criminal allegation must be investigated, and a charging decision must be made. The only difference is: If the case is judged worthy of indictment, the indictment must be deferred until a president leaves office. This is key: The point of the guidance is not to give presidents a special defense that is unavailable to other Americans. Presidents are not above the law. The guidance is not of substantive significance; it is merely a matter of timing: In deference to the awesome responsibilities of the presidency, we do not permit the chief executive to be burdened during his term by the consuming effort and anxiety of defending against a criminal charge. Presidents are not spared forever from these burdens that other accused persons must bear, just while in office.Democrats Push Mueller to Contradict ReportThat, however, is not how the OLC guidance was construed by Mueller -- or, I should say in light of Mueller’s patent unfamiliarity with the Mueller probe, by whoever on the special counsel staff was actually running the investigation.The staff took the position that the OLC guidance did not just forbid the indictment of a sitting president. Its logic, they insisted, rendered it impermissible even to consider whether there was sufficient evidence to indict a sitting president.That’s ridiculous. But before we come its incoherence and disingenuousness, let’s deal with why the special counsel’s theory was critical to Mueller’s testimony.Democrats would like to impeach the president. The best way to lay the groundwork for that would be to establish Trump’s commission of a felony. To be sure, presidential misconduct need not qualify as a penal-law felony to qualify as an impeachable offense. Yet, if an abuse of power does amount to a felony, the case for impeachment is much stronger. Therefore, Democrats want to be able to argue that Mueller, the renowned prosecutor who vigorously investigated for nearly two years, authoritatively concluded that Trump committed felony obstruction.Of course, Mueller made no such finding. For Democrats, the next best thing is to establish that Mueller in effect concluded that Trump committed felony obstruction but was prevented from filing charges by a technicality. That is, they wanted Mueller to testify that if it were not for the OLC guidance, he would have called for the president’s indictment.The problem: That’s not what Mueller’s report says. In the report, the special counsel took the position that, because of the OLC guidance, it would have been impermissible for prosecutors even to consider indicting the president. So, he did not, in effect, find felony obstruction. If you believe the report on this (I don’t, by the way), the special counsel’s staff never weighed the evidence for purposes of making a charging decision, one way or the other.The main reason Democrats foolishly pressured Mueller into testifying was the hope that he would abandon the restraint of his report. They calculated that they could push him or trick him into saying that but for the OLC guidance, he would have charged the president.Fleetingly, after a couple of excruciating hours, Democrats got this concession out of the badgered and befuddled special counsel during questioning by Representative Ted Lieu (D., Calif.). But Representatives Debbie Lesko (R., Ariz.) and John Ratcliffe (R., Texas) swooped in to clean up the mess. So did the special counsel himself. Right after the lunch recess, having clearly been coached regarding his blunder, Mueller clarified (if you can call it that) that he had misspoken, and he reaffirmed “his” report. Bottom line: Mueller would not testify that, if not for the OLC guidance, the president would have been indicted. He says his team never considered indicting Trump, never evaluated whether there was enough evidence to charge obstruction.The Distortion of the OLC Guidance by Mueller’s StaffLegally, Mueller’s interpretation of the OLC guidance is absurd. A prosecutor has only one job: to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This is elucidated by federal regulations: The special counsel must prepare “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions.” There is no third way. There is no authorization to evade what Mueller’s transgressive staff described as the “traditional,” “binary” prosecutorial decision to charge or not to charge.The regs design the special counsel to be an ordinary federal prosecutor. When I was a line prosecutor, my boss was the district U.S. attorney. Analogously, the special counsel is a line prosecutor whose boss is the attorney general. My job was to investigate cases and make a recommendation to my chain of command to indict or decline prosecution. Mueller’s job was to make that same recommendation to the AG. If Mueller had found sufficient evidence to file charges, it would then have been up to the AG to decide (a) whether to accept that recommendation and (b) whether to delay indictment until the president left office, in accordance with the OLC guidance.That is to say: The OLC guidance on the timing of an indictment has nothing to do with whether there is a prosecutable case. There is no justification for freighting the charging decision with the timing issue.Again, the OLC guidance does not say the president may never be indicted, just that he may not be indicted while in office. Plainly, then, regardless of when an indictment is filed, somebody has to make the decision about whether an indictment should be filed. Under Mueller’s harebrained theory, we should not expect the prosecutor who spends $40 million investigating the case for two years to make this call; rather, some other prosecutor should reinvent the wheel -- retrieve the file, reassemble the evidence, get up to speed on the record, re-interview all the witnesses, etc. -- after Trump leaves office, whether that’s a year and a half or five and a half years from now. We should just pretend the ride Mueller & Co. have taken us on since May 2017 never happened.That’s batty. So what is Mueller’s rationale for such a procedure? Well, that’s even more laughable: Mueller would have you think he’s just trying to protect President Trump.A likely story, no? We’ll see when we explore it in Part 2, tomorrow.

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Russian police crack down hard on Moscow election protest

Russian police cracked down hard Saturday on demonstrators in central Moscow, beating some people and arresting hundreds of others protesting the exclusion of opposition candidates from the ballot for Moscow city council. OVD-Info, an organization that monitors political arrests in Russia, said 638 people were detained. Moscow police earlier said 295 people had been taken in, but did not immediately give a final figure.

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US, Guatemala sign agreement to restrict asylum cases

The Trump administration signed an agreement with Guatemala that will restrict asylum applications to the U.S. from Central America. The "safe third country" agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the U.S. to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the U.S. border. It could potentially ease the crush of migrants overwhelming the U.S. immigration system, although many questions remain about how the agreement will be executed.

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Massive manhunt in Canadian wilderness for teen murder suspects

Two teen triple murder suspects on the run in the central Canadian wilderness -- perhaps holed up in thick, insect-infested forest inhabited by wolves and bears,-- were staying one step ahead of a massive police manhunt Friday. Since Tuesday, the village of Gillam near Hudson Bay has been on the alert for Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, who are wanted for three murders. The fugitives wound up near the Manitoba province village located 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) north of Winnipeg after an epic 2,000-mile chase across three provinces that began in British Columbia, on the Pacific coast, where their three victims were discovered earlier this month.

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A look at the 5 federal death row inmates facing execution

The Justice Department announced Thursday that it will resume executing death row prisoners for the first time in nearly two decades. At the direction of Attorney General William Barr, the federal Bureau of Prisons has scheduled the executions of five inmates being held on death row at USP Terre Haute, a high-security penitentiary in Indiana. Danny Lee, of Yukon, Oklahoma, was convicted in the 1996 deaths of an Arkansas family as part of a plot to set up a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.

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Uttar Pradesh cop flaunts guns in viral clip, transferred

In the video, the police inspector is seen flaunting a gun in his hand with background music.

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Kargil visit was like a pilgrimage to me: Prime Minister Narendra Modi

PM Modi says India won't succumb to pressure in matters of national security

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Madhya Pradesh village goes for bizarre ritual to appease rain god

Invoking Indra: Residents say they have not received sufficient rainfall as a punishment

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In Bihar school, 6 classes with 300 kids study in one big hall

The hall has been divided into two - with students from Class 1 to 6 in one half of the room and lectures for Class 7 and 8 being taken in the other half.

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Migration deal with US meets mixed reactions in Guatemala

US President Donald Trump, who has pushed hard to slow the flow of migrants, said Friday that the "safe third country asylum" agreement would require would-be asylum seekers traveling through Guatemala to seek refuge there, not in the United States. Anyone failing to do so would be sent back to Guatemala.

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UPDATE 1-Eight killed in quake, aftershocks in Philippines, 60 injured - agency

An earthquake and aftershocks struck islands off the north of the Philippines on Saturday killing eight people and injuring 60, disaster officials said. An initial quake of magnitude 5.4 that struck the Batanes islands was followed shortly by an aftershock of magnitude 5.9, according to Philippine government data. Another big aftershock struck a little later.

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Trump news - live: Unprecedented impeachment call issued as president renews attack on Mueller and invents imaginary word

Donald Trump has continued to lash out in the wake of Robert Mueller's explosive testimony in front of Congress, while taking the time to make up words and tweet about the imprisonment of A$AP Rocky.The president is trying to undo the damage from the hearings involving Mr Mueller, who said he was not able to say that his report had cleared Mr Trump of any wrongdoing.He has also been wrapped in another controversy after he spoke in front of a bizarre version of the presidential seal, which included references to the Russian flag and a set of golf clubs.Yet more footage has emerged from that same Turning Point USA event, which showed the president being introduced by a bizarre campaign video that highlighted Mr Trump's sporting prowess and popularity among friends.It also comes as the president's administration announced it would begin federal executions for the first time in more than 15 years.Please allow a moment for the live blog to load

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