Anthony Scaramucci piles on to his Trump bashing, revealing his plans to start and fund a political action committee to "dismantle" Trump.

Ex-US marine says injured by Russian prison guards

A former US marine who was arrested in Moscow on espionage charges said Friday he has been injured by guards in the prison where he is being held awaiting trial. "I was injured in the prison... the prison doesn't want to tell you," Paul Whelan told journalists from an accused's cage in a Moscow court, which was to decide on whether to extend his provisional detention. Whelan arrived in the court handcuffed and escorted by two security guards wearing black masks and plain clothes.

Beto O’Rourke: As president, I’d institute a mandatory buyback of assault weapons

Only America has more guns than people. Follow the lead of moms demanding action and students marching for their lives, writes candidate Beto O’Rourke

Sanders campaign boss concedes he may not win New Hampshire

The campaign manager for Bernie Sanders emphasized Thursday that New Hampshire is a critical presidential primary state he expects Sanders to win, but he's leaving room for a scenario in which Sanders falls short. Faiz Shakir said he doesn't "like the language of must-win," though he does believe it is an important early voting state.

Chinese state media says fentanyl abuse is entirely U.S. responsibility

Chinese state media on Friday hit back at claims by U.S. officials that China was failing to crack down on the flow of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances into the United States, saying that responsibility for opioid abuse lay with users. The United States was "pushing responsibility" for fentanyl abuse to China and ignoring that Beijing had implemented strict controls on the highly addictive synthetic opioid, reported The People's Daily newspaper, published by the ruling Communist Party.

Buttigieg Caters to the Abortion-Rights Constituency

‘They’re so busy attacking Planned Parenthood. I’d like to know what they think of unplanned parenthood, because there’s going to be a lot more of that if they keep this up,” intoned South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, swiping at GOP politicians during a town hall in Iowa on Wednesday afternoon.Perhaps his moronic attempt at wordplay could be forgiven considering the presidential hopeful’s audience: The town hall was hosted by NARAL Pro-Choice America, one of the most prominent pro-abortion groups in the country. And it’s not powerful in the abortion-advocacy world alone. Like Planned Parenthood, NARAL exercises a high degree of influence over the Democratic party; its support or lack thereof can make or break a candidate.Buttigieg’s half-baked dud of a laugh line, then, was an effort to ally himself with a core constituency of the Left — progressive, abortion-minded feminists — and to prove that, even as a white male with all sorts of privilege to disavow, he understands their concerns. Unfortunately for the mayor, that decidedly not-clever comment was the high point of his speech, which droned on for about 20 minutes and took his audience through a highlight reel of the GOP’s supposed animosity toward women and their freedoms.One has to feel a bit of pity for him. After getting a bump in the polls during March and April, Buttigieg has since run out of steam, languishing in the second tier behind Senators Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) — both of whom have considerably more feminist bona fides than he does, starting with the simple fact that they’re both women.Capturing the NARAL vote is considerably easier for anyone who can’t be told, “No uterus, no opinion.”Even so, the mayor can’t be accused of failing to try. His remarks on Wednesday ran the gamut from pandering to pathetic, as he called himself a feminist and insisted that “men running for president [must] be twice as vocal about this issue at this time.”Throughout the primary thus far, though, Buttigieg has shied away from questions about when and whether he’d limit abortion in any way, instead punting to vague platitudes about “trusting women.” He tried this again in the town hall: “If we mean business when it comes to freedom, that means defending reproductive freedom and the rights of women to make their own health-care decisions.”But, of course, abortion isn’t a “health-care decision” at all, as much as supporters of the “right to choose” would like us to believe it is. Abortion is a medical procedure that ends a distinct human life. Any policy conversation that ignores the central question of whether this particular type of killing ought to be legal ignores the heart of the controversy.Thus far, and likely by design, Buttigieg’s attempts at conversing about abortion have been nothing but dodges. “Even among people who have different views about where to draw the line, we have reached a decision about who should draw the line,” he said, invoking polls that show majority support for the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade. A Harvard graduate, Buttigieg is surely intelligent enough to know that support for Roe — a widely misrepresented and misunderstood ruling — is not the same as support for taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, the federal abortion policy he advocates.But Buttigieg knows his crowd. He knocked Vice President Mike Pence for his pro-life views, begging the audience, “Please don’t judge my state by our former governor.” He attacked the Trump administration for “forcing Planned Parenthood to withdraw” from the Title X family-planning program, a malicious twisting of the facts designed to hide Planned Parenthood’s dedication to profiting from abortion.And he had lots of promises for viewers, vowing to “ensure access to abortion care and proactively expand access to reproductive health,” eliminate the Hyde amendment that prohibits direct federal funding for abortion, and appoint judges “who understand that reproductive freedom is an American right.”But the most egregious part of his speech came at the end, when he distorted the story of an abortion controversy during his time as mayor. Last spring, as a Whole Women’s Health abortion clinic tried to open in South Bend — delayed by an ongoing health-and-safety investigation of its clinic in another state — a local pregnancy-resource center sought to open a new location next door.The Women’s Care Center (WCC) was founded in South Bend in 1984 to offer resources to help women with unexpected pregnancies carry their children to term, and today it operates the largest network of pregnancy-resource centers in the country. In every city where the WCC has a location, it opens next to an abortion clinic, so that pregnant women who don’t want an abortion will know there are other options.As mayor, Buttigieg vetoed the WCC’s request to open next to the Whole Women’s Health clinic, claiming that it would endanger the community. Here’s how Buttigieg characterized the incident in his speech on Wednesday:> For several years we’ve gone without a provider at all in my community, and then a Whole Women’s Health clinic sought to open in South Bend, the first to make abortion services available since 2015. I know how important this is in our area, even as the state puts up all kinds of invented licensing and bureaucratic hurdles to block them. And no sooner did they get established than we had a crisis-pregnancy center propose to move into a location immediately next door. They already had half a dozen locations in our area, but it had to be here, this new one, right smack next door. They insisted that the law be changed on zoning to allow them to do it on a residential property. By a one-vote margin, the council voted to send it to my desk.He went on to insinuate that allowing WCC to locate next door would lead to women being traumatized, despite the fact that there has never been an instance of violence or confrontation at a single WCC location.In the end, though, the moral of his story wasn’t about the abortion clinic or the Women’s Care Center; instead, it was a tale of his own heroism. He was, he assured his audience, “under extraordinary pressure to sign off on changing the law to facilitate the crisis-pregnancy center,” because according to him, WCC supporters “were among some of the most powerful and popular people in the community.”“It was a lonely day in the mayor’s office,” Buttigieg lamented. “But it was very clear what to do. I got out the veto pen and did the right thing.”But was it really the right thing? Each WCC location offers free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds, counseling, referrals for prenatal care, parenting classes, and children’s clothing, diapers, and toys, serving 26,000 women annually. As of April, more than 16,000 babies during the previous year had been saved from abortion at the Women’s Care Center.His veto wasn’t right for women and families in South Bend. But it was the right thing, surely, for his political aspirations. And his choice to use the incident as a stump-speech anecdote catering to NARAL’s voters reveals that he issued that veto caring much less about the fate of women in his city than he did about how his decision would affect his political fate.

Amazon fires: Bolsonaro actively trying to devastate rainforest, leaked documents show

Jair Bolsonaro hopes to sabotage conservation efforts in the Amazon, leaked documents show.A series of powerpoint slides reveal that Brazilian government officials intend to build a bridge, motorway and hydroelectric plant through the rainforest.

Drivers in Idaho keep harassing busloads of immigrants' children on their way to pre-school

One driver reported experiencing threatening incidents with other drivers while she was driving a busload of children under the age of five.

Chaotic scene as DNC votes down climate change debate at San Francisco meeting

The move sparked loud and angry backlash from climate change activists who believe the Democratic Party should change the rules to allow for a debate focused solely on climate issues.

Trump dismisses recession warnings: 'I always find a way to win'

The president has crowed about the state of the economy despite words of caution from within his administration.

Russia launches floating nuclear reactor in Arctic despite warnings

Russia will launch the world's first floating nuclear reactor and send it on an epic journey across the Arctic on Friday, despite environmentalists warning of serious risks to the region. Loaded with nuclear fuel, the Akademik Lomonosov will leave the Arctic port of Murmansk to begin its 5,000 kilometre (3,000-mile) voyage to northeastern Siberia. Nuclear agency Rosatom says the reactor is a simpler alternative to building a conventional plant on ground that is frozen all year round, and it intends to sell such reactors abroad.

Yale failed to stop professor who sexually assaulted students over decades, report says

A report commissioned by Yale says a professor assaulted at least five students, and an investigation in 1994 failed to stop him.

North Dakota court overturns life term in cut from womb case

A judge overstepped by giving a life prison sentence to a man whose girlfriend cut the baby from the womb of an unsuspecting neighbor, the North Dakota Supreme Court ruled Thursday, ordering that the man be resentenced. William Hoehn, of Fargo, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit kidnapping in the August 2017 attack on Savanna Greywind, who died of her injuries but whose baby survived. Hoehn's girlfriend, Brooke Crews, admitted that she sliced Greywind's baby from her womb.

U.S. will aggressively enforce sanctions over Iran tanker: State Department official

The United States will aggressively enforce its sanctions to prevent the private sector from assisting an Iranian oil tanker that is traveling through the Mediterranean and that Washington wants seized, a State Department official said on Thursday. "The shipping sector is on notice that we will aggressively enforce U.S. sanctions," the official told Reuters days after warning countries not to allow the tanker to dock. Ship tracking data has shown the ship, Adrian Darya, formerly called Grace 1, last heading toward Greece, although Greece's prime minister said it was not heading to his country.

Radical gun reform may finally have a voice in Washington

An ambitious agenda by the March for Our Lives activists may be the first time the majority of Americans get real representationA young girl looks on as she attends a vigil for the victims of the recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio. Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesMarch for Our Lives, the national youth gun violence prevention movement founded by survivors of last year’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, released a sweeping gun reform agenda this week.The agenda calls for significantly raising the standards for gun ownership in America, and reducing by about 100m the total number of guns in circulation.It’s a dramatic, ambitious plan. And it may represent the first time in decades that the majority of Americans will get any real representation in the gun control debate in Washington.March for Our Lives’ young activists endorsed an Australia-style mandatory government buyback and destruction of “assault weapons”. They want to decrease the number of guns in circulation by 30% – which would mean roughly 100m fewer firearms in American hands. They proposed regulations that would dramatically raise the bar for who is allowed to purchase a gun, putting US law much more in line with European countries. And they want to revisit the 2009 supreme court decision, District of Columbia v Heller, which enshrined a pro-gun interpretation of Americans’ second amendment right to bear arms.These proposals are substantially more aggressive, and more ambitious, than anything the Democrats in Washington have fought for in years. In fact, for decades, gun control groups and progressive politicians have done a poor job at representing the majority of Americans in Congress when it comes to gun control. A surprising voidDemocrats have fought for minor new restrictions on gun buying – and been defeated by the Republican party’s gun absolutists – but, fundamentally, the Democratic party has remained supportive of gun ownership.Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to “ban assault weapons”, for example, have not meant an actual ban on these guns, but only a ban on future sales, meaning that Americans could keep the millions of military-style rifles they already own. President Obama’s signature gun control legislation after the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a compromise bill that would have closed just a few of the gaping loopholes in the nation’s background check system – a measure so weak it’s doubtful whether it would have had any effect on gun violence at all.The country’s largest gun control groups, too, have made great efforts to portray themselves as pro-“gun safety”, not anti-gun. They routinely advertise themselves as supporters of Americans’ second amendment right to bear arms. And they have focused on “commonsense reforms,” such as getting what activists see as particularly extreme weapons off the streets, or requiring a criminal background check before every gun sale.This lack of any explicit anti-gun side in the American gun debate is strange.Although many Americans may not realize it, gun owners are a minority in the United States. American civilians overall own an estimated 300m to 400m firearms, more than one gun per person. But this frequently cited statistic obscures how concentrated American gun ownership is.In recent surveys, roughly 70% to 80% of Americans said they do not personally own a gun, and a majority said that nobody in their household owns a gun. Just 3% of American adults own half the country’s guns, according to a definitive 2015 survey. This small group of gun super-owners have an average of 17 guns each.Gun absolutists – the activists who oppose any gun control measures, who want Americans to be able to own any kind of gun, and carry them everywhere – are a minority within that minority. According to the best available estimates, fewer than 10% of American gun owners overall are members of the National Rifle Association.There appear to be at least as many Americans who are vehemently anti-gun as there are NRA members.Recent Gallup polls have found that 28% of American adults say they would support a law banning handgun ownership, except by the police and other “authorized persons”. A 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that 9% of American adults believed that “almost no one” should be legally allowed to own guns – about the same proportion as the number of adults who believed that “almost everyone” should be able to own them.A coalition of 9% of American adults would translate into more than 20 million people. That’s a group four times larger than the NRA, which claims between 5 million and 6 million members.Only a minority of Americans oppose most private gun ownership. But there’s strong majority support for much tougher gun control laws than the ones currently on the books.A 2017 Pew survey found 68% supported banning assault-style weapons. 71% supported having a federal database to track all gun sales. A 2018 Gallup survey found 68% of respondents supported raising the legal age to buy certain guns. A Quinnipiac poll in May found 77% of respondents were in favor of requiring people to obtain a license before being able to purchase a gun.It’s not hard to find Americans who oppose the country’s current gun culture. They show up at gun control rallies, holding signs that say things like “Repeal the Second Amendment”. They live in neighborhoods burdened by decades of daily gun violence. They’ve lost family members or friends to shootings. They keep asking: Why can’t we just get rid of the guns?But for years, these Americans’ views have not been well represented by America’s “gun safety” groups, and they have had virtually no representation in Congress.This may finally be starting to change. Moving the gun debateIn 2016, a progressive activist launched Guns Down America, a small organization that advocates not simply for “gun sense laws”, but for “a future with fewer guns”. Following the Parkland shooting, the young March for Our Lives activists have advocated unapologetically for bold reform, though they, like other American gun control activists, say they’re not anti-gun and their proposals for stricter regulation represent the interests of “responsible gun owners”.It’s not yet clear how much the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates will move towards embracing these majority opinions on gun control policy. But there’s already been movement towards the actual middle of the debate.In 2016, Obama argued in a CNN Town Hall that “issues like licensing, registration, that’s an area where there’s just not enough national consensus at this stage to even consider it”. This year, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker made gun licensing the center of his 2020 gun control platform.After the mass shooting targeting Latino families in El Paso, former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke said he endorsed not just an assault weapon ban, but a mandatory federal buyback of assault weapons. On Wednesday, he became the first Democratic 2020 candidate to tweet that he supported March for Our Lives’ new policy agenda.O’Rourke’s campaign did not back away from the most controversial elements of the youth activists’ plan, including their desire to revisit the supreme court’s current interpretation of the second amendment, enshrined in the Heller decision.“While Beto agrees with the court’s holding that the second amendment allows for regulation, he does not agree with the entirety of the Heller decision,” said Aleigha Cavalier, O’Rourke’s national press secretary. “One piece of the Heller case Beto believes should be revisited is the court’s decision to strike down DC’s safe storage requirements.”America’s gun debate may soon actually have two sides.

2020 Chevy Bolt EV Gets More Driving Range

The Bolt goes from 238 miles to 259 and leapfrogs rival EVs from Tesla, Hyundai, and Kia.

L.L. Bean's Huge End-of-Summer Sale Is Taking Up to 70% Off

Modi Ally Calls for Boycott of China Companies on Kashmir, Trade

(Bloomberg) -- Terms of Trade is a daily newsletter that untangles a world embroiled in trade wars. Sign up here. Indians should stop buying from Chinese companies and the government should reconsider trade concessions to its biggest neighbor after China allied with Pakistan on Kashmir, according to an economic policy group linked with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.Companies like technology giant Huawei Technologies Co. should be barred from accessing the Indian market in the future and Chinese companies should be banned from state tenders, Ashwani Mahajan, co-convenor of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, affiliated to the ruling party’s ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh said in an interview Thursday.“Not just in Kashmir, we believe that Chinese companies are a security threat to India especially in telecom,” Mahajan said by phone. “Not just in consumer goods, they’re a threat in telecom because their companies have massive support from the state, are allowed to vastly underbid Indian companies and win tenders for critical infrastructure.”The group met Indian telecom companies on Aug. 17 to discuss strategies to be used to curb Chinese industry. The organization had also written a letter to Prime Narendra Modi seeking action against China, Mahajan said. Calls made to the Prime Minister’s Office seeking comment went unanswered.This isn’t the first time that the Swadesh Jagran Manch has called for a ban on Chinese goods and companies. The group, along with the Confederation of All India Traders had called for a similar ban in March this year after China blocked the blacklisting of Pakistan-based Maulana Masood Azhar, founder of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, at the U.N. Security Council.A ban called by both organizations during the festival of Diwali in 2016 wasn’t successful, although traders anticipated the sale of Chinese products would fall by 30%, the Press Trust of India reported. India has a trade deficit of over $53 billion with China.To contact the reporter on this story: Archana Chaudhary in New Delhi at achaudhary2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ruth Pollard at rpollard2@bloomberg.net, Abhay SinghFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

Trump claim doctors treating mass shooting victims 'were coming out of operating rooms' to meet him dismissed by hospitals

Two hospitals have denied Donald Trump’s claim doctors “were coming out of operating rooms” to meet him when he travelled to Texas and Ohio to console victims of two mass shootings."At no time did, or would, physicians or staff leave active operating rooms during the presidential visit,” University Medical Center (UMC) spokesperson Ryan Mielke told local TV station KVIA. “Our priority is always patient care."

Chinese state media accuses Hong Kong metro of aiding protesters

China's state-run media have launched a co-ordinated attack on the company that runs Hong Kong's train network for its perceived support of pro-democracy protesters, echoing a campaign against Cathay Pacific. As hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the financial hub approach their third month of rallying around democratic reforms, Beijing has upped its rhetoric against the movement -- and any organisation appearing to support it. On Thursday, Chinese state-backed outlets accused Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) company of abetting protesters by offering them a free and "exclusive" train to escape police, after a sit-in to mark a mob attack by suspected triad gang members one month earlier.