Trump Campaigns for House Candidate in Closely Watched North Carolina Race

By BY ANNIE KARNI AND MICHAEL CROWLEY from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2A57s5C

The Taliban Shouldn’t Get within 5,000 Miles of Camp David

The best thing to be said for the planned Camp David meeting with the Taliban is that it didn’t happen.President Trump has a weakness for the grand gesture. Hosting the leadership of a vicious, terrorist insurgency that aided and abetted September 11 and is trying to kill Americans as we speak certainly would have been . . . memorable.The invitation was part of the effort to bring to a conclusion negotiations that were close to a deal, although not one favorable to the interests of the United States.The deal envisioned the U.S. reducing its current troop presence of roughly 15,000 down to zero about 16 months from now, at which point any commitments the Taliban had made would be worthless. We understand the frustration with a war that has lasted 18 years, but it would be foolish to end the “endless war,” or our part of it, with the Taliban once again in position to threaten Kabul and harbor international terrorists who mean us harm. We’ve had recent experience with a president following through on campaign pledge to end a war no matter what — and, of course, Barack Obama had to order troops back to Iraq when ISIS took over a swathe of the country.If and when the Afghan civil war ends, it will involve a settlement with the Taliban and the Afghan government. This was not even close to that. The Taliban agreed to begin talking only to the Afghan government, and the deal didn’t even entail a ceasefire. There were reportedly conditions in an annex that the Taliban would be very unlikely to meet, giving us the leeway to put the brakes on our withdrawal. But if we don’t want to get out — and we shouldn’t — why ink a deal that creates even more doubt about our staying power and legitimizes the Taliban?Indeed, the negotiations had only emboldened the Taliban. President Trump cited a Taliban suicide car-bomb attack that had killed a U.S. soldier as the reason for pulling the plug on the Camp David meeting. As in his Hanoi summit with Kim Jong-il, Trump at least is willing to short-circuit his own theatrical diplomacy when it clearly makes no sense.Now we should put aside the negotiations and work on a sustainable strategy for preserving a presence in Afghanistan. We should be looking to minimize our troop commitment within reason (the number the administration has talked about of 8,600 is probably workable), although what will likely be a renewed Taliban offensive should forestall any immediate drawdown. Unlike other terrorist hot spots, land-locked Afghanistan is not accessible to us from surrounding countries. A presence there doesn’t just stabilize the Afghan government, it gives us the option of launching operations into Pakistan (we never would have killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan if we hadn’t been in Afghanistan).The fear that the Afghan war will be “endless” shouldn’t push us into ending it badly.

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A new 2020 Democratic primary poll shows Warren surging alongside fellow frontrunners Biden and Sanders

The new poll from ABC News and The Washington Post found Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders slumping, Elizabeth Warren gaining, and Kamala Harris falling.

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Texas Republican Predicts McCabe Will be Indicted for Lying to Investigators

Representative John Ratcliffe (R., Texas) predicted Sunday that former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe will soon be indicted for lying to investigators about his role in the leaking of classified information.McCabe was fired from the FBI in March 2018, one month after the release of an inspector general report that detailed multiple instances in which he “lacked candor” when questioned by investigators about his role in the leaking of classified information related to the Clinton email probe.Ratcliffe told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo that the Department of Justice must indict McCabe or face accusations of partisanship and hypocrisy“Here, you have the inspector general stating that Andrew McCabe did that multiple times, and the magic words, did so intentionally and knowing,” Ratcliffe said during an interview on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “I think the Department of Justice is going to have to indict Andy McCabe, simply because to do otherwise would be to admit that there are separate standards for people doing the same thing for the same conduct.”The 21-year FBI veteran was made a CNN analyst last month despite the existence of an ongoing investigation into his conduct that may still result in criminal charges. He maintains that he did not intentionally mislead investigators and continues to suggest that he was acting within his authority as deputy director when he authorized the leaking of information about the Clinton email investigation to a Wall Street Journal reporter.In a lawsuit filed last month, McCabe alleges his firing at the hands of former attorney general Jeff Sessions was politically-motivated.McCabe's attorneys met with deputy attorney general Jeffrey Rosen last month, according to an August 26 New York Times report. The meeting has been widely-interpreted as evidence that McCabe will soon be indicted.

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The hardest-hit communities in the Bahamas look apocalyptic after Hurricane Dorian, with wrecked homes and corpses left to rot in the hot sun

A New York Times reporter was shown the bodies of six hurricane victims in a tour of Marsh Harbour's poorest neighborhoods this weekend.

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Following Neanderthals' footsteps to learn how they lived

Like modern humans and primates, Neanderthals -- our closest evolutionary cousins -- are thought to have lived in groups, but their size and composition have been difficult to infer from archeological and fossil remains. Now, though, scientists have reported the discovery of 257 footprints along the Normandy shore in France that were immaculately preserved over 80,000 years, offering major new clues into the social structures of its prehistoric inhabitants. Jeremy Duveau, a doctoral student at France's National Museum of Natural History and one of the study's co-authors, told AFP the footprints were left in muddy soil, then quickly preserved by wind-driven sand when the area was part of a dune system, creating a snapshot in time.

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Border chief: Mexico must step up immigration enforcement

The border chief added that the U.S. continues to discuss a possible safe third country asylum deal with Mexico.

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Hurricane Dorian: Jet skiers rescue 100 people trapped in flooded homes in the Bahamas

Jet skiers in the Bahamas braved the devastating flooding caused by Hurricane Dorian to rescue around 100 people trapped in their homes.The official death toll from the most powerful hurricane on record to hit the Bahamas has climbed to 43 and is likely to keep rising amid worries a ”staggering” number of lives have been claimed.

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Zimbabwe announces Mugabe funeral amid row over burial site

Zimbabwe’s government has announced a date for Robert Mugabe’s funeral amid a row over where the former president will be buried.  A government memo declared the funeral will be at Harare National Sports stadium on Saturday, September 14th but gave no location for the burial to follow the next day.  Members of Mr Mugabe’s family are battling with the ruling Zanu PF party over its plan to bury Zimbabwe’s liberator-turned-despot in a cemetery for heroes of the liberation war in the capital.  The deceased dictator has a grave ready next to his first wife Sally in Heroes Acre, a North-Korea designed graveyard also home to prestigious Zanu PF supporters.  However, elements of Mr Mugabe’s family want him interred in their rural village in Zvimba district, about 50 miles northwest of Harare.  “We want him buried here. Heroes, for what?” Mr Mugabe’s cousin, Josephine Jorincha, told AFP in the village of Kutama.    Josephine Jaricha, 72, in Kutama Credit: AFP Mr Mugabe’s nephew, Leo, who is the family’s head of burial preparations, told the Telegraph that he was negotiating with village chiefs over the final site.   He said that Mr Mugabe’s toppling in a 2017 coup by his former right-hand man Emerson Mnangagwa had rendered the 95-year-old ambivalent about being buried in the Zanu PF shrine.   However, Leo said that he believed Mr Mugabe would eventually be buried in Heroes’ Acre.  “I am sure he will be buried at Heroes’ Acre,” he said, but “we are with the chiefs, we have to consult.” There is some surprise at the village chiefs’ importance in the burial negotiations as Mr Mugabe’s father was from Malawi, and deserted his family, meaning his son had no role within traditional Shona society. Jealousy Mawarire, a senior Mugabe loyalist said that although he believed Heroes’ Acre would be the burial place, there were “disturbances” within the family because of Mr Mugabe’s wishes to be buried “at home.” A report appeared in a privately-owned Zimbabwe weekly recently which claimed Mr Mugabe told family members he wanted to be buried next to his mother in Kutama. The former president led an uprising against white minority rule in the 1970s but left the economy in tatters over an increasingly despotic 37-year reign characterised by corruption and repression.

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Democrats: Americans Won’t Pay Your Carbon Taxes

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Much has been made of the willingness of Democratic presidential candidates to risk taking positions that aren’t popular with voters at large in order to boost themselves in the primaries. Democratic politicians and strategists are aware that most people don’t want to see private health insurance banned, for example, but such leading contenders as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have come out for it anyway.There has been less focus on the political risks of the candidates’ approach to climate change. In part that’s because so many Republicans have taken their own unpopular stance on the issue: denying that there’s a problem. Gallup finds that nearly two-thirds of voters believe that human activity is causing the globe to get warmer, and that percentage has been rising over the years. Young voters are especially concerned about the issue. It’s part of the reason that some Republicans, such as Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, have broken with many of their colleagues on the matter. “I think history will judge very harshly those who are climate deniers,” he said.But the Democrats may be getting overconfident. At last week’s “climate town hall” on CNN, Senator Warren, former Vice President Joe Biden, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg all endorsed a carbon tax. Senator Kamala Harris did, too, although she called her tax a “fee.” All of these candidates are breaking with past Democrats. Neither President Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton endorsed a carbon tax. A memo for the Clinton campaign estimated that a carbon tax of $42 per ton on greenhouse-gas emissions would raise annual energy costs by $478 for the average household, and by $268 for the poorest fifth of households.When considering that number, keep in mind another poll finding. In November 2018, the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research ran a survey about climate change that found, in line with other polls, that most Americans believe it is happening and that human activity is causing it. Nearly half of respondents said that recent extreme weather events had influenced their thinking on the issue. But 68 percent opposed paying even $10 extra in their monthly utility bills to address the issue.The Clinton campaign’s memo also noted that the revenues from the tax could be rebated so that only the highest-earning fifth of households ended up with a net tax increase. But this should be less reassuring to Democrats than it appears. For one thing, several of the candidates either aren’t promising to rebate the taxes or aren’t emphasizing the point to deflect the inevitable attack on them. When asked about carbon taxes, Warren and Biden didn’t say they would have a rebate. Harris said that some of the money would go “to empower those communities that for too long have been ignored,” which doesn’t sound like a tax rebate.Even a tax increase on the top fifth of households is a heavier political lift than Democrats have been prepared for. A household with an annual income of $130,000 is in that fifth. The tax increases of the last two Democratic presidents kicked in at a much higher threshold. And the gross cost may matter politically, not just the net cost. Even if the Democrats promise a rebate, Republicans can sow doubt that voters will actually see one.Washington State’s relatively liberal electorate has rejected carbon taxes twice in recent years. In 2016, a carbon tax was paired with a sales-tax cut and drew the opposition of 59% of voters. In 2018, on a generally good day for liberal causes, 56% opposed a carbon tax with no rebate.You can approve or disapprove with the public’s low tolerance for higher costs in the fight against global warming. (I myself favor lower-cost alternatives to carbon taxes.) But even those who consider it shortsighted have to reckon with it. Resistance to the costs of taxes and regulations is likely to be a bigger obstacle to climate plans, in the end, than disbelief in global warming.The journalists at Vox did one of those round-ups of who won and lost from the climate town halls. (Winner: CNN; loser: meat.) But they ignored someone who might turn out to be the biggest winner: President Donald Trump, who will surely hit the cost issue hard as we get closer to the election.To contact the author of this story: Ramesh Ponnuru at rponnuru@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Tobin Harshaw at tharshaw@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a senior editor at National Review, visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and contributor to CBS News.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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MIT scandal highlights thorny ethics of university donations

While MIT grapples with new allegations about its financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein, other universities that accepted donations from the disgraced financier say they have no plans to return the money. The turmoil at MIT has sent shockwaves through the world of education and highlights the challenges universities face as they screen potential donors and decide whether to keep money that's tainted by its benefactor's misdeeds. Epstein was arrested in July on federal sex-trafficking charges, drawing new attention to old allegations that he had sexually abused women and girls.

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The GOP lawmakers disgusted by Trump’s invitation to the Taliban are the latest sign his foreign policy is in shambles

The Taliban invitation and subsequent backlash adds to an expanding list of foreign policy controversies and failures for Trump ahead of 2020.

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The Taliban at Camp David: Trump Says Why Not?

By BY KATIE ROGERS from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2N6AWIH

Israeli Leader Says Iran Hid a Nuclear Weapons Site

By BY DAVID M. HALBFINGER AND DAVID E. SANGER from NYT World https://ift.tt/2Q3pQGF

The Latest: 2 dead, 3 injured in plane crash at airport

Authorities say a small private plane that crashed near a Nevada airport, killing two, was bound for Southern California. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in an emailed statement that the single-engine Beechcraft Sierra plane carrying four people was set to fly to the Gillispie Field airport in El Cajon, California. Two people died and three others were injured when the propeller plane crashed Saturday and caught fire soon after taking off from Henderson Executive Airport.

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McConnell backs short-term spending bill to avert shutdown

“A major focus of the Senate this month will be ... passing a temporary continuing resolution for the outstanding parts of the government," McConnell says.

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Man charged in 31-year-old cold case murder. Police suspect he may have killed others

Lawrence Gene 'Larry' Timmons was charged Friday with the 1988 slaying of a 31-year-old Missouri woman. Other cold cases now being looked at.

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North Korea willing to resume U.S. talks this month, but calls for new approach

SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea said on Monday it was willing to restart nuclear talks with the United States in late September, but warned that chances of a deal could end unless Washington takes a fresh approach. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed in a June 30 meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump to reopen working-level talks stalled since their failed February summit in Hanoi, but this has yet to happen in spite of repeated appeals from Washington. In a statement carried by North Korea's official KCNA news agency, Vice North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said Pyongyang was willing to have "comprehensive discussions" with the United States in late September at a time and place agreed between both sides.

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Hurricane Dorian victims fleeing devastation kicked off boat headed for US ‘because they did not have visas’

Bahamians attempting to flee the devastation wrought by Hurricane Dorian have been kicked off a boat headed to the US.People from the Caribbean nation are normally allowed into the US without a visa as long as they fly there, have a passport and hold a clean police record.

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MIT Media Lab chief out after 'deeply disturbing' link to Jeffrey Epstein

The fallout comes three weeks after another senior lab employee quit in protest over revelations lab director Joi Ito took money from Epstein.

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U.S. eyeing sanctions over Turkey's S-400 buy: Mnuchin

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Monday that the Trump administration was considering imposing sanctions on related to Turkey's purchase of the Russian-made S-400 air defense missile system, but no decisions have been made. "We're looking at that, I'm not going to make any comments on any specific decisions, but we are looking at it," Mnuchin told reporters outside the White House when asked if the Treasury was considering such sanctions. Turkey's dollar-denominated sovereign bonds,, fell after Mnuchin's comments.

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UK lawmakers reject PM Johnson's request to hold an early election

Britain's parliament on Tuesday rejected Prime Minister Boris Johnson's call for a national parliamentary election, voting against the government's request for a national ballot.

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Britain says travelers to EU will have duty-free shopping after no-deal Brexit

Britain on Tuesday said there would be a return of duty-free shopping for travelers to the European Union if the country leaves the bloc without a deal.

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