Saturday, August 3, 2019

India denies Pakistan's claims of illegal bombs amid renewed tensions over Kashmir

India denies Pakistan's claims of illegal bombs amid renewed tensions over KashmirKARACHI/ISLAMABAD, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Pakistan accused India on Saturday of using illegal cluster bombs, killing two civilians and wounding 11, in the contested Kashmir region that both countries claim. In the latest flare-up of tensions between the two countries, India denied it had used such weapons. Pakistan's military released images of what it said were bombs used by India during shelling along the contested border in Kashmir on July 30 and 31, and photos of civilians, including a 4-year-old boy, who it said were killed and injured by the weapons.




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'#ThanksObama': 2020 Democrats walk back Obama criticisms

'#ThanksObama': 2020 Democrats walk back Obama criticismsSeveral 2020 Democrats took aim at former President Barack Obama during the primary debates this week but seemed to have a change of heart in the days since.




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El Salvador’s new president celebrates country’s first day without a murder for two years

El Salvador’s new president celebrates country’s first day without a murder for two yearsEl Salvador’s new president has touted a rare day without a homicide in the small Central American nation where such violence is a part of daily life. The last day of July proved somewhat of an exception, when not a single killing was recorded – only the eighth murder-free day in 19 years.The last time it went a full day without was more than two years ago – on 13 January 2017, and again two years previously on 22 January 2015, with another in 2013 and two in 2012, Al Jazeera previously reported. President Nayib Bukele, who is in his second month in office, announced the occasion for his often violent-riddled nation. The attorney general’s office and the mortuary confirmed the president’s comments that there were no homicides on Wednesday 31 July. Justice minister Rogelio Rivas said there were a total of 154 killings in July – down from 291 during the same month last year.Criminologist Ricardo Sosa said a murder-free day has only been witnessed eight times since the year 2000.Mr Sosa said while this could be seen as a sign that Mr Bukele’s efforts against gang violence were working, the challenge would be sustaining the results.The new president, who announced he’d won the elections in February this year, ahead of assuming office in June, has pledged to improve security and encourage youth away from a path of crime. In July, he launched a new security strategy called “Secure El Salvador” to tackle crime and violence. The plan, which Mr Bukele had flagged earlier in the year, has five objectives; to prevent crime and violence; improve the justice system; do more to rehabilitate criminals; provide greater protections for victims; and strengthen institutions keeping citizens safe. The security plan would be carried out over the next few years, starting in Ciudad Delgado where it was launched, before expanding into other cities and municipalities. El Salvador has what Human Rights Watch has described as one of the world’s highest homicide rates. The organisation said gangs played a large part in this as they exercised territorial control. “Gangs kill, disappear, rape or displace those who resist them, including government officials, security forces, and journalists,” it said. “Security forces have been largely ineffective in protecting the population from gang violence and have committed egregious abuses, including the extrajudicial execution of alleged gang members, sexual assaults, and enforced disappearances.”The government attributes the cause of the violence on turf wars between the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) gang and its rival gang Barrio 18, who it said were involved in drug trafficking and organised crime.It also estimated there are about 60,000 gang members across El Salvador.Additional reporting by Associated Press




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India accuses Pakistan-backed militants of targeting Hindu pilgrims in Kashmir

India accuses Pakistan-backed militants of targeting Hindu pilgrims in KashmirSRINAGAR/NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian security officials on Friday said they had found evidence of attacks planned by Pakistani military-backed militants on a major Hindu pilgrimage in the disputed Muslim-dominated region of Kashmir. Tension has run high in the mountainous region since a vehicle laden with explosive rammed into an Indian police convoy on Feb. 14, killing 40 paramilitary policemen, and leading to aerial clashes between the two nations. Indian officials said a mine with Pakistan ordinance marking was among caches of ammunition, explosives and weapons retrieved following intelligence reports of likely attacks on routes used by hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus who trek to the region's holy Amarnath cave every year.




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Almost 30 people jump off boat into shark-filled waters after fire: 'All hell broke loose'

Almost 30 people jump off boat into shark-filled waters after fire: 'All hell broke loose'About 30 passengers and crew members on a small boat in the Galapagos had to jump into shark-filled waters last month after a fire broke out on board.




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2020 Vision: Republicans becoming ever more a party of white men

2020 Vision: Republicans becoming ever more a party of white menAfter Rep. Will Hurd’s retirement, the next Congress will have exactly one black Republican: Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.




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Democratic senator warns of Trump involvement in Pentagon contract

Democratic senator warns of Trump involvement in Pentagon contractTrump in July had said in July that Amazon's bid for the contract, called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud, or JEDI, was being reviewed. A Pentagon spokeswoman said on Thursday that Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who assumed his role on July 23, was reviewing accusations of unfairness.




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Sharp rise in Brazilian deforestation undeniable, says sacked research chief

Ricardo Galvao, the sacked head of Brazil’s space research agency, said on Saturday the trend of sharply rising deforestation was undeniable, a day after he was fired following a public spat with President Jair Bolsonaro over data published by the agency.


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Democratic Candidates Praise Labor — and the Obama Legacy, Too


By KATIE GLUECK and KIMBERLEY McGEE from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2OFdHXV

New Details Emerge From Trump’s Asylum Deal With Guatemala

New Details Emerge From Trump’s Asylum Deal With GuatemalaThe chief of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) visited Guatemala on Wednesday and Thursday in a bid to persuade the country’s leaders to remain in a recently signed asylum agreement.Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of Homeland Security, held a series of meetings with Guatemalan government leaders, and discussed the merits of President Donald Trump’s widely touted “safe third country” deal that was reached in late July. Details of the meetings emerge as Guatemala will soon elect a new president, and the small country’s public stands heavily against the deal’s guidelines.Under the terms of the agreement, migrants claiming asylum at the southern border will be screened to determine whether they crossed Guatemala during their route to the U.S. If so, migrants would be given a choice to either return to Guatemala or their home country. Asylum seekers claiming fear of persecution or torture in Guatemala would be additionally screened to determine if their claims are legitimate.The safe third country agreement largely affects illegal immigrants coming from El Salvador and Honduras — two countries where most migrants pass through Guatemala on their route to the U.S. Illegal immigrants from the country of Guatemala itself are not affected by the agreement.In the beginning phase, a smaller number of migrants will be returned, according to an internal document reported by the New York Times. Single men will be deported first, then single women, and then family units.




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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, spokesman leave her congressional office

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff, spokesman leave her congressional officeRep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's chief of staff was previously criticized by some Democrats for posts on Twitter that attacked centrist members of the party.




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Exiled Thai critic attacked with chemicals in Japan

Exiled Thai critic attacked with chemicals in JapanAn exiled Thai critic of the country's military and monarchy said he was attacked in his home in Japan last month and believes Thai authorities were behind the incident, an accusation that was ridiculed by the kingdom's army chief. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a 48-year-old associate professor at Kyoto University, said he was asleep with his partner when a man broke into their home last month at about 4 a.m. and sprayed the couple with a substance that burned their skin. Neither was seriously hurt, but Pavin said they have been told by police not to return home.




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Punches thrown outside Donald Trump rally in Cincinnati. Crowd chants 'lock him up' as police detain man

Punches thrown outside Donald Trump rally in Cincinnati. Crowd chants 'lock him up' as police detain manOne man was detained Thursday after he punched another man outside U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati as President Donald Trump held a rally inside.




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900 asylum seekers returned to wait in Mexican border city

900 asylum seekers returned to wait in Mexican border cityThe United States government has sent about 900 mostly Central American and Cuban migrants back to this northern Mexico border city since expanding its controversial "remain in Mexico" program to the easternmost point on the shared border two weeks ago, Mexican authorities say. Under the program, migrants who turn themselves over to U.S. authorities and, in most cases, request asylum, are returned to Mexico after being given a court date.




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Death of Saoirse Kennedy Hill from an apparent overdose the latest tragedy to befall the US political dynasty

Death of Saoirse Kennedy Hill from an apparent overdose the latest tragedy to befall the US political dynastyThe Kennedy family has been hit by yet another tragedy as Saoirse Kennedy Hill, granddaughter of Robert Kennedy, died from an apparent overdose at her family's compound aged 22. It was the latest in a long line of horrific events to befall the American political dynasty in what has become known as the "Kennedy curse." Miss Kennedy Hill, who had suffered from mental illness, was the child of Courtney Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's daughter. Her father Paul Hill is one of the Guildford Four, who were wrongly convicted of the 1974 IRA pub bombings in Guildford. Mr Hill married Courtney Kennedy shortly after his release from prison. They named their daughter Saoirse, meaning "freedom" in Gaelic, and she spent some of her childhood in Ireland. In a statement the Kennedy family said: "Our hearts are shattered by the loss of our beloved Saoirse. Her life was filled with hope, promise and love. She lit up our lives with her love, her peals of laughter and her generous spirit." Saoirse Kennedy Hill wearing a Bobby Kennedy t-shirt Miss Kennedy Hill died at the sprawling six-acre Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, along Nantucket Sound, which was known as President John F. Kennedy's "summer White House". It is now home to Robert Kennedy's widow Ethel. 91, who owns the house where Miss Kennedy Hill was found. In a statement Ethel Kennedy said: "The world is a little less beautiful today." The litany of tragedies that have hit the Kennedy clan include the assassinations of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1963, and of his brother Robert Kennedy five years later when he was running for the White House.  Joseph Kennedy Jr, their brother, died in the Second World War, and their sister Kathleen Cavendish perished in a plane crash in 1948. The main home in the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port Credit: AP John F. Kennedy Jr, the son of the former president, died with his wife and sister-in-law in a  small plane crash not far from Hyannis Port in 1999.  David Anthony Kennedy, one of Robert Kennedy's sons, died of a drug overdose in Florida, aged 28, in 1984. Another of his sons, Michael Kennedy, died in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, in 1997, aged 39. This year is the 50th anniversary of a a fatal car crash in which Edward Kennedy, then a presidential hopeful, drove off a bridge at Chappaquiddick, not far from Hyannis Port. His passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, died. Miss Kennedy Hill was studying communications at Boston College and was due to graduate net year. She was vice president of the student Democrats, and had marched against gun violence. While at Deerfield Academy, an elite private school in Massachusetts, she had written about her struggles with depression and mental illness. Saoirse Kennedy Hill, as a child, places a white rose at the Eternal Flame, President John F. Kennedy's gravesite Credit: AP In 2016 she wrote: "My depression took root in the beginning of my middle school years and will be with me for the rest of my life.I totally lost it after someone I knew and loved broke serious sexual boundaries with me. "I did the worst thing a victim can do, and I pretended it hadn’t happened. This all became too much, and I attempted to take my own life." Local police said they responded to a "reported unattended death" on Thursday afternoon. Miss Kennedy Hill was taken to Cape Cod Hospital and pronounced dead. The Kennedy family did not confirm the cause of death but audio from a police scanner, which was picked up by US media outlets, indicated officers had been responding to a report of an overdose. A spokeswoman for the local district attorney’s office said: "The matter remains under investigation."




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Ex-trooper pleads to manslaughter in MSU athlete's death

Ex-trooper pleads to manslaughter in MSU athlete's deathA former Mississippi Highway Patrol officer has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 2017 death of a Mississippi State University track athlete but will not face prison time. Kyle Lee entered the plea Friday in Oktibbeha County Circuit Court, news outlets reported. Lee faced a culpable negligence manslaughter charge for the death of 22-year-old Kaelin Kersh, who was killed when Lee's police unit hit the car in which she was a passenger.




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Hong Kong arrests eight protesters including prominent activist

Hong Kong arrests eight protesters including prominent activistHong Kong police arrested eight people, including a prominent political activist, suspected of possessing offensive weapons, fuelling further anger among the millions of anti-government protesters who have taken to city streets all summer.  Police raided an industrial building on Thursday and arrested seven men and a woman, including Andy Chan, the founder of the Hong Kong National Party, a political group banned by city authorities last September.  Supporters gathered late at night at a police station in the neighbourhood of Sha Tin, where the suspects were thought to be held, egging the building and chanting, “Free the martyrs!” Officers also raided a flat and seized 30 smoke bombs, though it remains unclear what the explosives were for and whether the cases were related. Earlier this week, someone shot fireworks at protesters gathering outside another police station in a drive-by attack.  Hong Kong is embroiled in its worst political crisis since the former British colony was returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Protesters first called for the formal withdrawal of an extradition proposal that would send suspects to face trial in mainland China, where the ruling Communist Party influences the courts. Despite a pledge from city leaders to suspend the bill, demands have grown to include wider political reforms and ire is also being directed at the police for using increasing force.  Tensions are running high and many in the city are growing weary, including protesters, public transit workers, police officers, health workers and first responders.  But the demonstrations show no sign of waning – the territory is going into its ninth consecutive weekend of mass rallies, which now often end with police firing tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the crowds. The turmoil has led many to become more politically engaged, reflected in a surge of registered voters this year – nearly 386,000 people signed up to vote, the most since at least 2003, according to official figures. More than four million people are registered to vote in the city of about seven million. The unrest has also galvanised young people, many of whom have been on the frontlines. Those aged 17 to 35 registering to vote spiked more than 12 per cent in 2019.  Hong Kong is gearing up for district council elections in the fall, the first citywide polls to be held since the city erupted in protests. More rallies are planned for this weekend, starting with civil servants gathering Friday night in the main business district. The government issued a statementon  Thursday reminding civil servants to remain politically neutral. “At this difficult moment, government colleagues have to stay united and work together to uphold the core values of the civil service and not to affect the effective operation of the government because of personal beliefs as this may undermine public confidence in the impartial discharge of duties by civil servants,” authorities said in a statement.




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Erick Erickson, It’s Time to Get Out of Pete Buttigieg’s Bedroom

Erick Erickson, It’s Time to Get Out of Pete Buttigieg’s BedroomWilliam B. Plowman/NBC/NBC NewsWire via GettyErick Erickson really doesn’t like that presidential primary candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg is gay, and refuses to “repent” for his sin of having gay sex.Erickson has much to say about it, an exhausting amount. For all that they profess their disgust about it, isn’t it strange, the amount of time anti-gay folks like to spend obsessing about the sex gay people have?The conservative blogger, radio host, and former CNN commentator was back on his anti-gay, anti-Buttigieg crusade again Wednesday in a column on his blog Resurgent, where he also made the startling claim that Buttigieg has less humility than that well-known trepidatious wallflower President Trump.Why Does Anyone Take Erick Erickson Seriously?Noting that Trump “has said more than once he has never felt the need to repent for anything,” and why this should lead evangelicals to question their cheering “everything he does,” Erickson added: “Pete Buttigieg is a practicing homosexual who willfully refuses to recognize Holy Scripture identifies that as a sin.”On Friday, Erickson will be joined by Vice President Mike Pence on stage at the Resurgent Gathering in Atlanta, for a conversation “about the Trump administration’s policies and plans for a second term.” Whether Buttigieg and LGBT-related matters will be raised remains to be seen.According to my colleague Adam Rawnsley, Erickson has written at least 19 tweets referencing Buttigieg since April—it’s hard to tell how many precisely because he has deleted his recent Twitter history. On Resurgent Erickson has written six times about Buttigieg since April, with five columns written on April 8 and April 9, and the sixth this week. (He has written about Joe Biden seven times.)The tweets, columns, and condemnation suggest Erickson is truly vexed not just by Buttigieg and his sexuality, but also furious that he invokes his own faith when challenging Trump and his supporters.Buttigieg’s resonant faith message is to remind fellow Christians what the meaning of that faith is in terms of their duty to treat fellow humans decently. What really rankles Erickson, and others like him, is that it is a gay man doing the truth-telling. When it comes to homosexuality, evangelical Christians like Erickson hate gay sex (which they seem bizarrely focused on), and like the sinner to know their place. Buttigieg is a total mind-scramble for them: out, proud, partnered, married, and using his own Christian faith to call out faith-based prejudice, and to question evangelicals’ support of Trump.This week, Erickson said Trump was different from Buttigieg in that he “does not lecture Christians about their faith and Buttigieg has made it a central part of his campaign.”Erickson also tweeted about it, in case we hadn’t heard: “Trump has said he has never felt the need to repent. Buttigieg doesn’t feel the need to repent of his sexual sins. Between them, only Trump possesses the humility to not lecture Christians about their faith given his unrepentant state.”Erickson also linked to a clip from the first Democratic debate this week, where Buttigieg said: “The minimum wage is just too low. And so-called conservative Christian senators right now in the Senate are blocking a bill to raise the minimum wage when scripture says that ‘Whoever oppresses the poor taunts their maker.’”Cue more Erickson pique: “Hey Mayor Pete, you know what else scripture says?” he tweeted. If this wasn’t yet another tired yowl about sinful gay sex, maybe Erickson could enlighten us otherwise.The April flurry of homophobic spite came after Buttigieg had spoken about the anti-LGBT Pence: “If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade. And that’s the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: that if you got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me—your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.”Buttigieg had also queried evangelicals’ support of the president. “It’s something that really frustrates me because the hypocrisy is unbelievable,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press on April 7. “Here you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in scripture in church.”On April 8, all this seems to have made Erickson’s head start spinning wildly. He accused Buttigieg of hypocrisy, because apparently as a gay man, he had no business lecturing anyone else about Christian anything. Or as Erickson put it: “Buttigieg wants to use the social obligations as Christians against the President, but wants to avoid any implication on the personal obligations of Christians in terms of clear Biblical sexual ethics.” On the same day, under the drily disingenuous headline,“I Actually Wasn’t Going To Say This Because I’ve Offended Enough People Today, But…”, Erickson opined: “No sin is immutable. Buttigieg has decided his sin is and, in trying to reconcile his faith to his sexuality, has departed from orthodoxy in determining his sin is therefore not sin despite the very plain and clear teachings of scripture.” And then, in a third column in one day, he puzzlingly accused Buttigieg of “trying to have it both ways” around abortion, and refugees, and the poor.On the same day—April 8 seems to have been a really big bad gay day in Erickson-ville, our embattled protagonist buffeted by rainbow flags—in a now-deleted tweet, Erickson began defending poor defenseless Pence. “Mike Pence has said nothing about Buttigieg. Pence lives rent free in the man’s head. His willingness to use Pence as the basis for his unprovoked attacks on orthodox Christianity suggests Buttigieg is not really the Christian he claims to be.”Mike Pence’s animus towards LGBT people is well-documented. Buttigieg wasn’t attacking his faith; he was questioning Pence’s use of that faith to rationalize prejudice and enact harmful laws against LGBT people. In his anti-LGBT prejudice, Pence, Buttigieg said, was also challenging God.Erickson wasn’t done that day. “I mean if Buttigieg thinks evangelicals should be supporting him instead of Trump, he fundamentally does not understand the roots of Christianity. But then he is an Episcopalian, so he might not actually understand Christianity more than superficially.”For Erickson, being Episcopalian seems to count as Christianity lite, and as such is another useful weapon to attack Buttigieg with.When Buttigieg said, “The Vice President is entitled to his religious beliefs. My problem is when those religious beliefs are used as an excuse to harm other people,” Erickson responded via Twitter: “Declining to bake a cake for a wedding isn’t harming anyone, particularly when the business will bake the same person anything else.” On that basis, presumably, Erickson would be fine about cake shops, hotels, whoever, refusing service to straight people, just because they feel like it. So, any business that wants to refuse service to Erick Erickson, go ahead—he supports your right to do so, and he’s happy to buy whatever it is he needs someplace else.On April 9, Erickson wrote a column, his fourth in two days about Buttigieg, accusing him of being intolerant about Mike Pence’s “faithful” Christianity. “Buttigieg is just another in a long line of Democrats who are willing to punish Christians for living out their faith,” Erickson concluded.No, people who object to “religious liberty” being used as a battering ram against LGBT people are doing so because it is precisely that: It uses faith to blanket-justify discrimination. It uses faith to exclude and demean people. “Religious liberty” is an abuse of good faith.On the same day, in his fifth column in two days about Buttigieg, Erickson wrote in response to a religion-based inquiry from my colleague Scott Bixby (who went on to write this piece): “Buttigieg attacks the President for not governing as a moral person on one hand and on the other claims we cannot govern morally when it comes to abortion. He has married another man, which runs contrary to scripture, and he not only thinks it is not sin, but thinks God made him that way, all of which is contrary to Christian orthodoxy.”Again, all that Erickson has are mythical Bible passages—there are none about marriage equality—and poisonous, personal insults about Buttigieg’s sexuality and beliefs. Cheap, ungodly insults at that.“Opposition to Buttigieg should not be about his religion or his sexuality,” Erickson wrote (how kind and reasonable—even though that is what he had been relentlessly invoking himself!), “but should be because he masks his far left positions behind a smile.”Another spurious insult. Of all the candidates, Buttigieg, whether you agree with him or not, states his views with sober clarity.On July 27, Erickson tweeted a video clip and article from The Hill, in which Buttigieg opined, utterly calmly: “My generation saw this country elect its first black president and then turn around and elect a racist to the White House and we ought to call that what it is.”Erickson’s tweet read: “Notice how Butter Judge is getting more heated in his rhetoric as he starts getting left behind in the polls.” There is nothing “heated” about Buttigieg’s delivery in the clip; quite the opposite.For many years, and now in the Trump administration with Pence at their vanguard, evangelical Christians have sought to influence anti-LGBT law-making. The Trump administration has, as The Daily Beast has reported, been very receptive to them—President Trump wants the evangelical vote, and for him LGBT people and rights are necessary casualties in securing it.Trump and Pence are fully signed up to the “religious liberty” agenda, which seeks to deny LGBT rights and equality via the weird notion that by according LGBT people equal access in the buying of wedding cakes and other goods and services, this somehow counts as persecution against anti-LGBT Christians who should have every right—by dint of their faith—to discriminate against LGBT people.What seems to upset Erickson and his ilk is that a gay man of faith is calling them out on these hypocritical perversions of faith. And Buttigieg is using his own faith and his beliefs to call them out. Rarely are religious bigots challenged so squarely on their own turf by someone they’re usually so comfortable in condemning. If they bothered listening to Buttigieg, they would realize that he—with an impressive amount of patience and open-heartedness, given the bigotry he has faced from the likes of Erickson—was reminding them what the true meaning of faith and Christianity is.Possibly, this is the first salvo in a wider Republican Party return to the old dirty playbook of using someone’s sexuality against them. But sadly for Erickson and Co., Buttigieg is open not just about who he is but also who he loves. Indeed this openness has been questioned by some LGBT people, who have wondered if Buttigieg is “gay enough.” Perhaps those critics of Buttigieg, when they read the words of authors like Erickson, will realize that now is not the time to fight over slices of liberal-piety cake. The more immediate bogeyman is, sadly, an old and all-too-familiar one: pure and simple prejudice. Pete Buttigieg is the target of those who seek to hurt people, to diminish them, to encourage people not to vote for them, because they are gay. That’s it. This hoary, dusty relic is one apparently we must confront again. You may not want to vote for Buttigieg, you may disagree with him about his policies, you may wish he was “gayer” on and off the debate stage. But he is also a gay man in public life having to put up with crude, homophobic attacks. Hopefully that is “gay enough” to count as a reason to speak up for him—alongside common decency.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.




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Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is again the most-searched candidate on Google during Democratic debate

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is again the most-searched candidate on Google during Democratic debateBeing the most searched candidate during the first round of the debate in Miami didn't translate into a boost in the polls for Gabbard.




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Head-To-Head: Russia, Japan, South Korea, and China Face-Off in the Skies over the Pacific

Head-To-Head: Russia, Japan, South Korea, and China Face-Off in the Skies over the PacificThe South China Sea cauldron has been at a full boil now for nearly a dozen years, chiefly over the significance of various obscure reefs and rocks. But, thankfully, the occurrence of shooting among the claimants and external powers has been extremely rare, underlying the obvious risks that such a course would entail. Thus, it came as a surprise to many that South Korean interceptors fired warning shots at a Russian military aircraft over the Sea of Japan on the morning of 22 July.With four major powers suddenly appearing to lock horns in that same dispute, the incident would seem to be further evidence of the “great unraveling” in the world order. Indeed, the episode is bizarre in numerous respects, not least because the Russia-South Korea dyad has been one of the least conflictual in this volatile region over the last decade. In fact, as a symbol of these strengthening ties, President Moon Jae-in took the unusual step of making the long trip to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin last summer. Moreover, the dangerous aviation encounter last week had the similarly strange effect of, at least temporarily, stealing the thunder from Pyongyang’s recent missile tests that were apparently intended as “a warning to South Korean warmongers.”




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Navy identifies Lemoore pilot killed in crash in Death Valley National Park

Navy identifies Lemoore pilot killed in crash in Death Valley National ParkThe Navy has identified the Lemoore pilot killed in a crash in Death Valley National Park earlier this week.




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2020 Vision: Republicans becoming ever more a party of white men

2020 Vision: Republicans becoming ever more a party of white menAfter Rep. Will Hurd’s retirement, the next Congress will have exactly one black Republican: Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.




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After Protests, Will Real Change Come to Puerto Rico?


By FRANCES ROBLES and PATRICIA MAZZEI from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/31jtInU

Guardian identified for small child found wandering Sunday morning by Fort Myers police

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