Jennifer Erin Talbot arrested at Manila airport after hiding six-day-old baby in a sling bag
A US woman who attempted to carry a six-day-old baby out of the Philippines hidden inside a sling bag has been arrested at Manila’s airport and charged with human trafficking.
Jennifer Erin Talbot was able to pass through the airport immigration counter without declaring the baby boy but was intercepted at the boarding gate by airline personnel.
Continue reading...US president says Jason Greenblatt will be leaving to pursue work in the private sector after three years in administration
A CNN analyst neatly summarized Joe Biden’s continued dominance in the polls despite a series of embarrassing gaffes that many commentators predicted would affect his front-runner status.
Average of all polls this year of Biden v. Trump? Biden by 8. Average of all August polls, after all the gaffes? Biden by 10. That's the same as it is in the RCP average. Clinton lead in the RCP average against Trump at this point? 2.4 points... (1/?)
Maybe, it will change. Heck, we're over a year out. But the difference between what the numbers are saying and conventional wisdom (at least in some quarters) is stunning.
Meanwhile, Trump is still refusing to acknowledge that he was wrong when he tweeted Sunday about the threat Hurricane Dorian posed to Alabama.
Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it! pic.twitter.com/elJ7ROfm2p
I was with you all the way Alabama. The Fake News Media was not! https://t.co/gO5pwahaj9
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Sarah St George, chairman of the Grand Bahama Port Authority, told the Guardian that the “force and size” of Dorian took everyone by surprise, a situation made worse by the hurricane stalling over the archipelago.
“Grand Bahama is not in good shape at all because 70% of it was under water,” St George said. “On the north side of the island the water was coming up to the second floor of their houses. My assistant Tammy was on the roof of her house for 30 hours hanging on to a coconut tree with her 8-year-old daughter Ariana. Her grandmother lost her grip and slipped off the roof and drowned. There was no way of getting to them. They’ve lost everything.”
In the president’s continuing battle against his own incorrect statement that Alabama was under threat from Hurricane Dorian, which has left at least 23 people dead, he has just now been tweeting what he claims is evidence he knew what he was talking about.
It is not.
Just as I said, Alabama was originally projected to be hit. The Fake News denies it! pic.twitter.com/elJ7ROfm2p
I was with you all the way Alabama. The Fake News Media was not! https://t.co/gO5pwahaj9
Over the weekend, projections for #HurricaneDorian have continually skewed further north and east, leaving Alabama outside the anticipated path. While we are thankful for that, we remain #AlwaysReady to help our sister states. #OneTeamOneFight #OneGuard pic.twitter.com/7TbFKpd2Zh
Continue reading...The 36-year-old New York musician tweeted that she’s ‘decided to retire’ from the music business
Rap star Nicki Minaj has announced she’s leaving the music business because she wants to make family life her priority.
The 36-year-old Trinidadian rapper, who grew up in New York and is known for her outlandish outfits, bizarre alter egos and fast flow, made the announcement in a tweet on Thursday morning.
Continue reading...The ‘ultimate deal’ for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is due to come out after the Israeli elections on 17 September
Jason Greenblatt, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Middle East peace, tasked with working on the “ultimate deal” for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is to leave the post, it has been announced.
Greenblatt may stay in the role until the publication of the long-delayed plan, which is now due to come out some time after Israeli elections on 17 September. However, if those elections bring about the fall of Donald Trump’s close ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, the plan could be shelved indefinitely.
Continue reading...Trial testimony wraps up in case of Joshua Boyle and Caitlan Coleman, who married in 2011 and were kidnapped in Afghanistan
A Canadian man once held hostage with his American wife in Afghanistan denied assaulting her following their release, in trial testimony that wrapped up on Thursday.
Joshua Boyle, 35, was arrested and charged with assault, sexual assault and forcible confinement at the end of 2017 just two months after he and his wife Caitlan Coleman, 33, returned to Canada after their five-year hostage ordeal.
Continue reading...Turkish president threatens to ‘open the gates’ in face of footdragging from US and EU
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is threatening to “open the gates” to allow Syrian refugees to leave Turkey for western countries unless a controversial “safe zone” inside Syria is established soon.
Erdoğan’s comments come amid growing tension with Washington over delays in establishing the safe zone – first proposed by Donald Trump – not least over the fate of a key US-allied Kurdish militia, the YPG, which Ankara regards as a terrorist organisation.
Continue reading...Some vacationers ‘too depressed by UK politics’ are heading to Iowa, the state with an outsized importance in the nominee process, to witness the primary elections
For many people, a vacation to the US means heading up New York’s Empire State Building, descending into the Grand Canyon in Arizona or splashing about in the Pacific Ocean in California.
Some, however, are choosing to whet their appetites differently, by instead traveling to Iowa, in the middle of the US, to witness the presidential primary elections in person.
Continue reading...We learn to lie as children, between the ages of two and five. By adulthood, we are prolific. We lie to our employers, our partners and, most of all, one study has found, to our mothers. The average person hears up to 200 lies a day, according to research by Jerry Jellison, a psychologist at the University of Southern California. The majority of the lies we tell are “white”, the inconsequential niceties – “I love your dress!” – that grease the wheels of human interaction. But most people tell one or two “big” lies a day, says Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire. We lie to promote ourselves, protect ourselves and to hurt or avoid hurting others.
The mystery is how we keep getting away with it. Our bodies expose us in every way. Hearts race, sweat drips and micro-expressions leak from small muscles in the face. We stutter, stall and make Freudian slips. “No mortal can keep a secret,” wrote the psychoanalyst in 1905. “If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips. Betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”
Continue reading...Candidates warn of ‘irreparable damage’ in marathon town hall but can’t agree on how aggressively to tackle problem
Democrats vying for president revealed a fundamental split over how aggressively the US should tackle climate change in a seven-hour town hall meeting on Wednesday.
Bernie Sanders painted an apocalyptic future wreaked by the climate crisis and pledged to wage war on the fossil fuel industry. A high-energy Elizabeth Warren urged optimism for building a better America and the former vice-president Joe Biden, who has a pitched a more moderate proposal, said he would push other nations to recommit to stronger action.
Continue reading...The information was stored in an online server that was not password protected, according to a report from TechCrunch
Hundreds of millions of Facebook users’ phone numbers were exposed in an open online database, the company confirmed Wednesday, in the latest example of Facebook’s past privacy lapses coming back to haunt its users.
More than 419m Facebook IDs and phone numbers were stored in an online server that was not password protected, the technology website TechCrunch reported. The dataset included about 133m records for users in the US, 18m records for users in the UK and 50m records for users in Vietnam.
Continue reading...To the annals of American political scandal, we must now add Sharpiegate.
Related: Floridians still divided over climate crisis as Dorian rages
Continue reading...Plastic pollution has entered the fossil record, research shows
Plastic pollution is being deposited into the fossil record, research has found, with contamination increasing exponentially since 1945.
Scientists suggest the plastic layers could be used to mark the start of the Anthropocene, the proposed geological epoch in which human activities have come to dominate the planet. They say after the bronze and iron ages, the current period may become known as the plastic age.
Continue reading...HHS inspector general concluded children affected by Trump’s family separation policy exhibited more fear and post-traumatic stress
Bernie Sanders dismissed concerns that there was not enough room in the Democratic presidential primary for both him and Elizabeth Warren, given that the two progressive senators espouse similar ideals.
“Elizabeth is a friend of mine. She and I have known each other well over 20 years. She’s going to run her campaign and I will run my campaign,” Sanders told ABC’s “The View.”
"Elizabeth is a friend of mine. She and I have known each other well over 20 years. She's going to run her campaign and I will run my campaign," Bernie Sanders tells @TheView when asked if there's room in the Democratic Party for himself and Sen. Warren. https://t.co/QXHJ4vE89I pic.twitter.com/FBemYsKdPn
Imagined as a Venn diagram, there is common ground between Warren and Sanders voters but each has their own distinct base. A survey by the Pew Research Center this month found that about seven in 10 of Warren’s supporters are white, compared to about half of Sanders’ backers. Warren’s supporters are substantially more likely to have a college degree compared with supporters of [Joe] Biden and Sanders.
John Zogby, a pollster and author, said: ‘Because of progressive ideology there is some sort of overlap, but they are different. Warren picks up support among women that ordinarily Sanders would not get, including former Clinton supporters who regard her as the bearer of the torch to get a woman elected.’
Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson sent (and deleted) a tweet implying that the path of Hurricane Dorian could be altered with “the power of the mind.”
Marianne Williamson has deleted this tweet pic.twitter.com/YdLRD7UfoZ
Prayers for the people of the Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. May the peace of God be upon them and their hearts be comforted as they endure the storm.
Continue reading...The monster storm is expected to bring intense rainfall and flooding after causing devastation in the Bahamas
A handy guide from the Federal Emergency Management Agency on dealing with the storm:
If you're sheltering from #Dorian & the power goes out:
Unplug appliances & electronics to avoid damage from electrical surges
❄ Keep the refrigerator & freezer closed so food lasts longer
⚠ Only use generators outside, away from windows
Tips: https://t.co/xGiYRfN5oB pic.twitter.com/fFbx1CeF3o
Approximately 396,000 residents are under mandatory evacuation orders, according to North Carolina’s joint information center spokeswoman Laura Leonard.
On Monday Henry McMaster, the governor of South Carolina, ordered 830,000 to leave areas likely to be effected by the storm. Charleston was among the mandatory evacuation zones, along with parts of counties to the north.
Continue reading...FTC has fined Google $136m and company will pay an additional $34m to New York state to resolve similar allegations
Google’s video site YouTube has been fined $170m to settle allegations it collected children’s personal data without their parents’ consent.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Google $136m and the company will pay an additional $34m to New York state to resolve similar allegations.
Continue reading...It’s unclear who’s named in records, but attorney for unnamed client says they may name people not involved in litigation
A federal judge will discuss plans on Wednesday for unsealing a new trove of court records involving sexual abuse allegations against Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who took his own life last month while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Related: Prince Andrew 'knows what he's done', says Jeffrey Epstein accuser
Continue reading...Environmental groups rate Democrats’ plans and records ahead of CNN’s town hall focusing on the climate crisis
Democrats will pit their climate plans against each other on Wednesday at a seven-hour CNN town hall, as world scientists warn the window is narrowing to prevent catastrophe.
With the planet already about 1C warmer than before industrialization, the United Nations’ climate panel says that keeping the increase to 1.5C would require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”.
Continue reading...Video shows the scale of catastrophe as the storm continues to move away from the Bahamas and towards Florida
Kari Paul logging off for the evening. Please stay tuned tomorrow for more updates as Dorian reaches the US coast and the picture of effects on the Bahamas become clearer.
Here are the latest updates from this afternoon:
The death toll for Hurricane Dorian climbed to seven, Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said on Tuesday night, according to CNN. The death toll, which was at five earlier in the day, has been expected to climb as survivors of the natural disaster face ongoing food and medicine shortages.
Continue reading...A mother posted that her three daughters, their father and his wife were among 34 people still missing after the blaze
A devastated mother posted on her Facebook page that her three daughters, their father and his wife were among those presumed dead after flames engulfed a dive boat off southern California over the holiday weekend.
“It is with a broken heart ... 3 of our daughters were on this boat. As of now they are still missing,” Susana Rosas of Stockton, California, wrote on Tuesday morning. “The authorities do not have much to say to us.”
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