Mississippi Man Charged with Setting Girlfriend on Fire, Kidnapping Child

Family members and neighbors were shaken to learn a 42-year-old man allegedly set his girlfriend on fire before kidnapping a child and leading police on a chase.

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British woman dies after being strangled and set on fire in Barbados

A British woman has died in Barbados after being strangled, doused with a flammable substance and set alight while lying in bed.Natalie Crichlow, 44, was visiting family members when she was attacked by an unknown intruder in her room, her family said.The mother-of-three suffered 75 per cent burns to her body during the assault, which took place on 28 July. She later died in hospital on 6 August.“The intruder broke in the house, then strangled her and then set her alight,” Ashley Best, Ms Crichlow’s niece, said.“I do not understand why it happened and we are all in a state of shock.“She went into hospital and died of her injuries.”“For someone who had battled through so much to just be taken in this way and lose their life is just beyond understanding,” Ms Best said.“It is all just a shame.“She said she wanted to live life to the fullest because her life had nearly been taken from her.”Stabroek News in Barbados reported that police are on the hunt for a man who “barged into a house, choked a woman, doused her with a flammable substance and then set the house on fire”.Ms Crichlow, of Colindale, north London, was openly gay and had three children, aged 10, 20 and 26 years old.A GoFundMe campaign has been set up to try and raise the money needed to bring her body back to Britain.Family friend Mitra Wikes remembered Ms Crichlow as “a true survivor and warrior who endured so much in life but always kept going and had a true passion for living life to the max no matter what she had gone through”A Foreign Office spokesman said: “Our staff are supporting the family of a British woman following her death in Barbados, and are in contact with the Barbados police force.”No arrests have been made in the case, a spokesperson for the Royal Barbados Police Force said.Additional reporting by agencies

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Trump doubles down on baseless conspiracy theory linking Bill Clinton to Jeffrey Epstein's death

President Trump said Tuesday that he has “no idea” whether a conspiracy theory he promoted on Twitter claiming that former President Bill Clinton was somehow responsible for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s death in a New York federal prison is actually true.

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Satellite photos: Chinese armored vehicles near Hong Kong

Satellite photos show what appear to be armored personnel carriers and other vehicles belonging to the China's paramilitary People's Armed Police parked in a sports complex in the city of Shenzhen, in what some have interpreted as a threat from Beijing to use increased force against pro-democracy protesters across the border in Hong Kong. The pictures collected on Monday by Maxar's WorldView show 500 or more vehicles sitting on and around the soccer stadium at the Shenzhen Bay Sports Center just across the harbor from the Asian financial hub that has been rocked by more than two months of near-daily street demonstrations.

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Russians killed in missile test blast were working on 'new weapons'

Russia's nuclear agency chief on Monday confirmed that five scientists killed last week were developing "new weapons" and vowed to continue testing despite the explosion. The accident took place at an Arctic military facility on the coast of the White Sea on Thursday, but Russian authorities only admitted its nuclear nature on Saturday. The explosion caused a spike in radiation levels.

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Trump defends sharing baseless conspiracy theory about Epstein’s death by man who pretended to hang himself with toilet roll to prove Clintons were involved

Donald Trump has insisted he was justified in promoting a baseless conspiracy theory about Jeffrey Epstein’s death because the man he retweeted “has half-a-million followers”. The US president shared a tweet on Saturday by right-wing commentator Terrence K Williams, who baselessly suggested in the video post that the Clinton family had the paedophile financier killed due to former president Bill Clinton’s past association with him. “He had information on the Clintons, and the man ended up dead,” Mr Williams said in a rambling two-minute diatribe. It was posted the same day Epstein was found hanged in his New York prison cell in what the FBI said was an "apparent suicide". On Tuesday, it was reported two guards fell asleep briefly on the night of the 66-year-old's death, then attempted to falsify records. Epstein was facing new sex trafficking and conspiracy charges over allegations he operated an international child sex trafficking ring. He was set to stand trial next year and was facing 45 years in jail if convicted. Asked by reporters outside his New Jersey golf resort on Tuesday to clarify his retweet of Mr Williams, Mr Trump said: “He’s a big Trump fan. That was a retweet, it wasn’t from me, that was from him, but the man has half a million followers, a lot of followers.” The president also said Mr Williams was a “very highly respected conservative pundit”. > Died of SUICIDE on 24/7 SUICIDE WATCH ? Yeah right! How does that happenJefferyEpstein had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead > > I see TrumpBodyCount trending but we know who did this! > > RT if you’re not SurprisedEpsteinSuicide ClintonBodyCount ClintonCrimeFamily pic.twitter.com/Y9tGAWaAxX> > — Terrence K. Williams (@w_terrence) > > August 10, 2019Mr Trump's comments came after Mr Williams doubled down on his conspiracy theorising when he sarcastically pretended to try and hang himself on video with toilet roll to purportedly show Mr Epstein could not have killed himself.Last year, Mr Williams was cut short by Fox News during an interview for being too racist, when he called an Asian-American New York Times journalist "Crazy-nese" and said there was "something wrong with them fortune cookies that Ling Ling's eating".Asked by one reporter if he really believed the Clintons were involved in Epstein’s death, Mr Trump suggested there was merit to the conspiracy theory when he said he had “no idea” if it was true, but that Mr Clinton had been on Epstein’s private plane.Mr Trump also noted attorney general William Barr had ordered an investigation into Epstein's death, adding: “I want a full investigation, and that's what I absolutely am demanding."Epstein’s death came a day after new legal documents, unsealed by a court, provided more details about the numerous young girls the financier is said to have abused over several decades.The documents related to a defamation lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, who said she was abused over a period of years by Epstein and members of his circle, which included a number of high-profile men from the worlds of business and politics.

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'Sorry for the inconvenience': Hong Kong protesters apologized to furious passengers after the city's airport was paralyzed for a second day

Hong Kong protesters used carts to block departure gates, sending a message to the government and drawing attention to alleged police brutality.

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UPDATE 2-Russia flies nuclear-capable bombers to region facing Alaska

* State media says it shows Moscow can deploy close to U.S. MOSCOW, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday it had flown two nuclear-capable TU-160 bombers to a far eastern Russian region opposite Alaska as part of a training exercise that state media said showed Moscow's ability to park nuclear arms on the United States' doorstep.



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New York Times columnist turned down Jeffrey Epstein's request for him to write his biography

"After his arrest and suicide, I'm left to wonder: What might he have told me," journalist James Stewart wrote in The New York Times.

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Malaysian police find body of Irish girl missing from jungle resort

Police on Tuesday found the unclothed body of an Irish teenager who went missing from a jungle resort in Malaysia 10 days ago, though it was not yet clear what caused her death. Fifteen-year-old Nora Anne Quoirin, who had suffered learning difficulties, was reported missing on Aug. 4 after her family arrived at the Dusun rainforest resort in Seremban, about 70 km (44 miles) south of the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur. "The family has been brought in to identify the body found today and they have confirmed that the body is indeed Nora Anne," said state police chief Mohamad Mat Yusof.

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Inside locked down Kashmir, a reporter finds fear and chaos

On a normal day, it would have been a smooth journey from the airport in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, to my family home in the northern town of Baramulla. The part that India controls is now under an unprecedented security crackdown to prevent an uprising after the central government in New Delhi unexpectedly stripped the region's special constitutional status, the last vestige of real autonomy for the predominantly Muslim region that is claimed by both India and Pakistan.

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Cardi B to Bernie Sanders: 'What are we going to do about wages in America?'

Rapper Cardi B has been outspoken on social media about her politics, particularly about her support for Sen. Bernie Sanders who is again seeking the Democratic nomination for president.

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The Promise and Pitfalls of Universal Background Checks

Much as we did after Sandy Hook, we find ourselves debating background checks in the wake of killings that would not have been prevented by one. More than 60,000 Americans died by gun homicide between 2013 and 2017, but our attention is drawn only to the rarest, most spectacular, and most unusual incidents, those where a half-day or so’s worth of fatalities happen all in one place -- and in those, it is usually the case that the deranged killer bought his guns legally or took them from someone else who did.But then again, now is as good a time as any to talk about measures that could affect the killings where that is not the case. And as far as gun-control proposals go, universal background checks are among the better ones: They are politically feasible, might actually reduce gun violence on the margins, and would not unduly burden law-abiding gun owners. There are countless reasons to be less trigger-happy about them than their most ardent supporters are, but if political pressure forces Republicans to give ground on something big, this might be the best way to go.*   *   *Most murders are committed by people who are not legally allowed to have firearms, whether because they have disqualifying criminal records or because they are too young. Obviously, though, they don’t pay much attention to the laws barring them from gun possession. The idea behind background checks is to leverage the law-abiding nature of other people who might stop guns from falling into these folks’ hands.Under federal law, licensed gun dealers have long been required to conduct background checks on all buyers and store the resulting records for two decades (so that each gun can be traced to its original buyer via its serial number). However, this rule does not apply to private individuals who sell guns from their personal collections. Much ink has been spilled arguing over exactly what percentage of gun sales are completed without a background check, but frankly the overall number is irrelevant. What matters is simply whether private sales are common enough to be easily accessible to the small fraction of gun buyers with criminal intentions, which they are.In addition, the current system makes it hard to trace guns that have changed hands many times, and hard to prosecute someone who sold a gun to a criminal. In effect, you have to show that the seller knew the buyer wasn’t allowed to have the gun. It’s not enough to show that he transferred a gun to a complete stranger with no questions asked.The individual criminals roaming the streets with guns typically get their weapons informally, through friends and black-market sellers who are not likely to comply with a background-check law. But since just about every gun in the U.S. begins its life with a legal sale from a gun store, it’s clear that each crime gun must transition from the legal market to the illegal one at some point. Unfortunately, precise data on this process are hard to come by: The ATF has numbers on where traced crime guns were bought and where they ended up, which reveal a flow of guns from states with liberal gun laws to states with strict ones, but the steps in between are hard to nail down without a thorough investigation of each individual case. Often the crossover point takes the form of theft, but trafficking is a problem as well — where individuals procure guns through legal sales and then divert them to the illegal market.At least in theory, universal checks could stop private sellers from inadvertently selling their guns to traffickers with criminal records. And greater documentation of private sales could deter traffickers from getting guns this way even if they could pass the checks.Some states have already passed laws like this, but unfortunately, state-level background-check laws are destined to be limited in their effectiveness — for the simple reason that it’s easy enough to cross state lines with a bunch of guns in the trunk. Research on their effects is inconclusive. (I’ve discussed studies on both sides here and here.)But there’s at least a decent logical case that universal checks could make a difference, especially on the federal level, which is more than we can say for a lot of other anti-gun policies. And let’s face it: “Please make sure the person buying your gun is not a felon” is really not that much to ask.*   *   *That’s the promise. There are also pitfalls. Here I’ll reproduce and update a list of questions about how to structure a background-check law that I first wrote in 2015.How are we going to enforce this? One recent study looked at the effects of background-check laws in Washington, Colorado, and Delaware. The stunning result: In the first two of those states, a background-check law didn’t even measurably increase background checks. Obviously, if you pass a background-check law and everyone ignores it, it won’t make a difference. For this law to work it would need to be enforced, including in areas of the country where neither the population nor local law enforcement has any interest in doing so. Is the federal government going to do sting operations trying to buy guns via private sales throughout the U.S.? Will it aggressively pursue those whose guns wind up at crime scenes and make an example of them? Will we also require gun owners to report thefts, so they can't wait until the ATF is at their door to claim their weapon was stolen?Which gun transfers require checks? Manchin-Toomey, the bipartisan background-check bill that came to the fore after Sandy Hook and is being bandied about once again today, is limited to sales that took place at gun shows or were advertised publicly. A requirement of background checks in a broader swath of transfers, while difficult to enforce in real time and harder to sell politically, would aid the prosecution of those who transfer guns to criminals. Other tricky issues include how to permit inheritances, gifts, and the temporary borrowing of guns among family and friends without creating loopholes or making criminals of innocent people. (For a detailed discussion of how this might be achieved, see David Kopel’s “Background Checks for Firearms Sales and Loans: Law, History, and Policy.”)Are records kept? Under Manchin-Toomey, gun dealers conducting checks on behalf of private sellers would keep records the same way they do when selling their own inventory. Without records of these sales, police would have less of a paper trail to follow. The objection to keeping such records is that they constitute a de facto gun registry, albeit a scattered one, that the government could use to track down and confiscate legally purchased firearms. This seems rather unlikely, but, in fairness, gun confiscation has happened in other modern Anglosphere nations: Australia, the U.K., and Canada.Who keeps the records? Currently, records are spread through countless gun stores, and getting to them involves tracing the gun through manufacturers, importers, and wholesalers. When stores go out of business, their records are transferred to the federal government, which must not organize them into a searchable database because doing so would create a registry (which would be illegal under current federal law). All this would become even more complicated with private sales in the mix — different sales of a gun would be documented at different stores, and the gun’s various owners would need to point police to each new dealer. One solution would be to have gun manufacturers, rather than stores, keep track of who has purchased their guns: If the gun is a Ruger, Ruger has its records. Another would be for stores to report the serial numbers of the guns they’ve sold, but not the buyers’ information, to a searchable federal database. This would quickly point investigators to the correct gun store without compromising the privacy of those not under investigation. Of course, these approaches would heighten concerns about a registry.Who pays? Manchin-Toomey allows those conducting the checks to charge fees. If the government decides to require these checks of people exercising a constitutional right, it should pick up the tab.*   *   *I’ve long described myself as a “squish” on background checks: You’ll pry my 15-round magazines and semiautomatic handguns from my cold, dead hands, but I won’t lose much sleep over something like this. Before enacting them, though, we should think hard about the details and the tradeoffs we’re striking.The last time around, Manchin-Toomey was watered down substantially and still couldn’t pass. If the political will for this still isn’t there, and it’s not at all clear to me it is, it’s better to focus on something smaller than to botch universal background checks. (Red-flag laws are one option; another is to expand and fund voluntary checks on private sales.) Perhaps this is the kind of policy Republicans should accede to when they are powerless to resist, rather than something they should pass when they control both the Senate and the White House.

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Sheriff: Deputy was on duty when he tried to have sex with minor in predator sting

The deputy showed up in his patrol car, but it wasn’t a teenage girl waiting, Sheriff Leon Lott said.

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14-year-old girl killed by falling rocks in Montana’s Glacier National Park

The family was traveling west on Going-to-the-Sun Road when the vehicle was hit by rockfall at around 7 p.m., according to a Glacier Park release.

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Republican Sen. Martha McSally wants to make domestic terrorism a federal crime

Arizona Sen. Martha McSally wants to create law in the federal criminal code to address domestic terrorism after mass shootings in El Paso and Gilroy.

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Risk of clashes at rally mobilizes Portland, Oregon, police

Portland police are mobilizing to prevent clashes between out-of-state far-right groups planning a rally here and the homegrown anti-fascists who oppose them as America's culture wars seep into this progressive haven. Saturday's rally — and the violence it may bring — are a relatively new reality here, as an informal coalition of white nationalists, white supremacists and extreme-right militias hones its focus on Oregon's largest city as a stand-in for everything it feels is wrong with the U.S. At the top of that list are the masked and black-clad anti-fascists who turn out to violently oppose right-wing demonstrators as soon as they set foot in town. "It's Portlandia, and in the public mind it represents everything these (far-right) groups are against," said Heidi Beirich, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

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China Refuses to Allow U.S. Warships to Make Port Calls in Hong Kong

(Bloomberg) -- China has refused port visits to Hong Kong by two U.S. warships amid continued trade tensions and diplomatic spats between the two sides over pro-democracy protests in the Asian financial hub.The Chinese government denied permission for the USS Green Bay and the USS Lake Erie to visit Hong Kong in the coming weeks, Commander Nate Christensen, a deputy spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, said. The Green Bay is an amphibious transport dock while the Lake Erie is guided-missile cruiser.“The U.S. Navy has a long track record of successful port visits to Hong Kong, and we expect them to continue,” Christensen said. “We refer you to the Chinese government for further information about why they denied the request.”China’s foreign ministry said in a statement Wednesday that the country has always approved port visits by U.S. warships “case by case, on the basis of sovereignty principles and specific situations,” without elaborating. The move comes as the U.S. and China spar in a protracted trade war and American lawmakers criticize the Hong Kong police’s tactics against demonstrators who have protested for more than two months. China has accused the U.S. of instigating protesters to violence, citing communications between American officials and activists -- a claim Washington denies.President Donald Trump said in a tweet Tuesday that reports from U.S. intelligence agencies show the Chinese government is moving troops to its border with Hong Kong, stoking fears of a possible intervention. “Everyone should be calm and safe!” Trump said, without providing details about when he received the information.Beijing last refused a U.S. naval port call to the former British colony in September, when it denied a visit to the amphibious assault ship the USS Wasp days after Washington sanction the Chinese military over Russian arms purchases.(Updates with Chinese response in fourth paragraph.)\--With assistance from Wendy Hu.To contact the reporter on this story: Iain Marlow in Hong Kong at imarlow1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Karen LeighFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Another dog has died after swimming in a lake infested with toxic blue-green algae

Tamra Massey, a woman from Boerne, Texas, believes her dog, Fina, ate toxic blue-green algae and died.

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NYPD officer kills himself amid rash of police suicides

A New York Police Department officer died by suicide in Yonkers today, the eighth such death for the department in 2019.

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China requests removal of additional tariffs as per Osaka consensus -Global Times editor in chief

China is asking that it and the United States remove all additional tariffs in line with a consensus reached between the two sides in Osaka, Japan, at the G20 summit at the end of June, the editor in chief of China's Global Times newspaper wrote on Wednesday. "As far as I know, the Chinese side requests that both sides respect the consensus reached at Osaka summit, which is removing all additional tariffs, not delaying some.

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Immigrants Citing ‘Horrific Conditions’ in Texas Sue for Release

(Bloomberg) -- Immigrants along the Texas-Mexico border, citing indefinite detention in “horrific conditions,” have asked a federal judge to order the U.S. to improve the conditions, give them access to lawyers and release them after 72 hours.U.S. Customs and Border Protection “has intentionally packed these people into filthy holding cells for lengthy periods of time, where they routinely sleep on concrete floors or concrete benches and are denied access to adequate food, water, medical and sanitation facilities,” according to the complaint, filed Monday in federal court in Brownsville, Texas.The administration has pursued an increasingly aggressive course on immigrants from Latin America, staging workplace raids right after the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that targeted Latinos and, more recently, proposing rule changes for green card applications that would favor wealthier applicants. Last month it moved to narrow protections for asylum seekers if their relatives have a criminal history.The conditions at U.S. detention facilities along the southern border have been the subject of intense scrutiny. In recent months, at least seven children in CPB custody have died, the petition says.The case is Gonzalez-Recinos v. McAleenan, 19-cv-95, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas (Brownsville).To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Gerald Porter Jr. in New York at gporter30@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter JeffreyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Wife's body found after police kill estranged husband

A missing woman was found dead in Arkansas hours after police fatally shot her estranged, rifle-toting husband near a popular shopping area in Kansas City, Kansas, authorities said Wednesday. The body of 49-year-old Sylvia Ussery-Pearson was found Tuesday night in northwestern Arkansas' Benton County, police said during a news conference in Overland Park, Kansas, where she was from. The discovery was made hours after Charles Pearson, a 21-year veteran Army Ranger who had completed two combat tours in Iraq, walked into a Country Inn & Suites and told the general manager that he killed his wife.

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