Biden stumbles over words, struggles to deliver his message to voters

Joe Biden was making an impassioned case for protecting immigrants in the country illegally one recent Sunday when he abruptly stopped himself. “There’s many more things, but —” he said before trailing off at a union forum. Six months into his presidential campaign, Biden is still delivering uneven performances on the debate stage and on the campaign trail in ways that can undermine his message.

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The Latest: Man accused of arson in California wildfire

Authorities say a man was arrested and accused of arson after a crew responded to a report of a wildfire in Northern California. A CalFire statement said engine crews were able to quickly contain the small fire in the Sonoma County community of Geyserville and identified a potential suspect. Authorities reported progress Wednesday in battling the Kincade fire in Sonoma County that started last week outside of Geyserville and forced the evacuation of the entire community, home to about 900 people.

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Troops, armored vehicles enter Syria to protect oil fields from ISIS

The Pentagon moved troops and armored vehicles into Syria Thursday to protect oil fields from exploitation by ISIS.

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Exxon, Chevron Begin Pushing Back Against Warren’s Fracking Ban

(Bloomberg) -- America’s two biggest oil companies are starting to push back against the fracking ban touted by the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, which may become one of the most consequential flashpoints for energy markets during the election campaign.Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. executives spoke out publicly against the proposals for the first time on Friday, saying they would shift profits from crude production from the U.S. to other countries, and may increase prices for consumers while doing nothing to reduce oil demand or greenhouse-gas emissions.It’s a line of attack that’s likely to feature heavily in debates in the year ahead as the energy industry and Republicans seek to counter the Democratic Party’s green wing. To be sure, whoever gets elected next year will find it difficult to end fracking. Presidential powers to enact a ban only extend to federal lands, something that would be certain to face immediate legal challenges. A wider restriction would need to go through Congress.“Any efforts to ban fracking or restrict supply will not remove demand for the resource,” Neil Hansen, Exxon’s vice president of investor relations, said on a conference call with analysts. “If anything it will shift the economic benefit away from the U.S. to another country, and a potentially impact the price of that commodity here and globally.”Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, two front-runners in the race to be the Democratic candidate, are keen to stop America’s reliance on fossil fuels, and they also want to end what they say is Washington’s subservience to corporate interests. They also know how to hit Exxon and Chevron where it hurts. Five years ago, both companies produced little crude from fracking and might have even have benefited from a ban if it led to higher oil prices. But now fracking is the fastest-growing part of their global businesses and a key profit driver.Hydraulic fracturing of shale rock is pushing U.S. oil production to record highs, touching 12.4 million barrels a day in August. Exxon said Friday its output from the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico had boomed by more than 70% in the third quarter from a year earlier. Chevron, a bigger Permian producer, saw its output there climb 35%.That wave of supply has ensured lower gasoline and energy prices for domestic consumers, bolstered economic growth for states such as Texas and North Dakota, and restored the country to ranks of the world’s major crude exporters.“It’s really unlocked an economic huge economic benefit for the country, as well as for the companies involved,” Jay Johnson, the boss of Chevron’s upstream business, said during the company’s earnings conference call.But fracking also has costs, particularly in terms of the climate. Cheap fossil fuels typically mean people use more of them, causing higher emissions. Hansen said that while Exxon shares concerns about climate change, “there are more effective policies” such as a revenue-neutral carbon tax and technology initiatives.To contact the reporter on this story: Kevin Crowley in Houston at kcrowley1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Simon Casey at scasey4@bloomberg.net, Joe CarrollFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Ex-beauty queen accuses former Gambia president of rape

A Gambian former beauty queen on Thursday accused former President Yahya Jammeh of raping her to punish her for rejecting his marriage proposal, in evidence to the country's truth and reconciliation commission. "What he wanted to do was to teach me a lesson, what he wanted to do is manifest his ego," Fatou Jallow said. "There were words like 'who do you think you are?', that he is the president and that he gets any woman that he wants," Jallow told Gambia's Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC).

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Beto O’Rourke Drops Out of 2020 Race

REUTERSFormer Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) is ending his presidential campaign after struggling for months to gain sustained momentum, as the crowded Democratic primary thins out less than 100 days before the Iowa caucus. “Though it is difficult to accept, it is clear to me now that this campaign does not have the means to move forward successfully,” O’Rourke wrote in a Medium post announcing his move on Friday. “My service to the country will not be as a candidate or as the nominee. Acknowledging this now is in the best interests of those in the campaign; it is in the best interests of this party as we seek to unify around a nominee; and it is in the best interests of the country.”Rumors about O’Rourke’s candidacy began shortly after his Senate campaign concluded. But for months, he put off making a decision, leaving top Democratic operatives who may have signed on with him to look elsewhere. The entrance into the race of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, perceived to occupy the same lane for a young, fresh-faced outsider, appeared to further dull the allure of O’Rourke’s bid. When he finally launched he did so with much fanfare. A Vanity Fair article timed to his announcement marketed his bid as a second chance at political greatness for the former Texas congressman after failing to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. O’Rourke was featured on the magazine cover’s standing on a dirt road, outside a pick-up truck with the words, “Beto’s Choice” written in bold over his left shoulder and the quote, “I want to be in it. Man, I was born to be in it.” And he was, for a few weeks, anyway.  In the first 18 days of his candidacy, O’Rourke raised an impressive $9.4 million. But his star began to fall as quickly as it rose. A lack of fully formed policy positions and a series of lackluster debate appearances contributed to his failure to harness the same energy that that was seen during his Senate campaign. A mass shooting at a Walmart in his hometown of El Paso took him off the campaign trail briefly in August as he mourned with his community. When he returned to the race, O’Rourke, 47, called for a mandatory buyback program of assault-style weapons, which ignited loud applause during a Democratic primary debate in his native Texas in September. Days later, his unofficial campaign slogan became “hell yes”—a line from his debate performance that if he were elected president, he would buy back such weapons. Beto O’Rourke’s Finest Hour Came Off the Presidential Campaign Trail, in El PasoWhile the move helped rally some progressives in key voting states, his promise proved to be politically risky and was met with some skepticism among his fellow Democrats and guns rights activists, who argued he was giving fuel to Republicans by calling for such drastic measures. By the end of his campaign, O’Rourke was at approximately 2 percent nationally. And while he made his plans to withdraw from the presidential race public on Friday, he has consistently ruled out running for any other office in 2020, including challenging Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX). “Oh no, Beto just dropped out of race for President despite him saying he was “born for this.” I don’t think so!,” President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday afternoon. Just hours before he suspended his bid, his campaign released official plans to file for the New Hampshire primary and return to the state on Nov. 8. “Beto will be joined by local supporters at the New Hampshire State House for the filing event,” the release reads. Ultimately, O’Rourke pledged to help elect the party’s nominee to take on Trump in the general election. “We will work to ensure that the Democratic nominee is successful in defeating Donald Trump in 2020,” he wrote. “I can tell you firsthand from having the chance to know the candidates, we will be well served by any one of them, and I’m going to be proud to support whoever that nominee is.”Beto Going Bust: The Once Great Dem Hope Is Among the Many 2020ers Struggling for CashRead 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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Bad news for Boeing: Company says more 737 NGs found to have wing cracks

The FAA ordered the inspections in 737 NG's that have flown many thousands of flghts

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Democrats' decision to televise Trump impeachment hearings could prove politically perilous

Democrats in the U.S. Congress took a major step toward impeaching President Donald Trump this week when they agreed on the rules for publicly televised hearings after weeks of testimony behind closed doors. Leaders of the Democratic-run U.S. House of Representatives believe that putting the main witnesses on TV will convince independent voters and other doubters that Trump was wrong in asking the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on a political rival, Democrat Joe Biden, who hopes to be the candidate to oust Trump in the 2020 election. While Republicans and the president face great political risk in the hearings, so do Democrats.

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The ‘Whimpering’ Terrorist Only Trump Seems to Have Heard

By BY PETER BAKER AND ERIC SCHMITT from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/33eFwsY

As Government Officials Testify Against Trump, Critics Question Why an Author Stays Anonymous

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Guantánamo Testimony Details Initial Handling of Prisoners Accused of Plotting 9/11

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Energy Secretary Perry refuses to testify before Trump impeachment inquiry: spokeswoman

Energy Secretary Rick Perry will refuse to appear before a closed session of House of Representatives committees investigating President Donald Trump for possible impeachment, an Energy Department spokeswoman said on Friday.

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Five hundred goats save the Ronald Reagan library from wildfires

Animal team charged with eating through 13 acres of scrubland that could have fueled California’s Easy fireGoats are released at the Ronald Reagan library in Simi Valley, California, during a similar crisis in 2012. Photograph: Juan Carlo/APDiligent work by a team of 500 goats has helped save the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library from wildfires that are ravaging parts of California.The library deployed the goat squadron during the spring in order to munch their way through around 13 acres of scrubland around the library that could’ve provided tinder-like fuel to a wildfire.This preventive action created a fire break between the library and the Easy fire, which has menaced thousands of homes in the Simi Valley near Los Angeles. More than 1,000 firefighters are tackling the blaze, which caused flames to approach the presidential library from a nearby hillside. Treasures saved include a piece of the Berlin Wall and Air Force One.“We actually worked with the Ventura county fire department in May and they bring out hundreds of goats to our property,” Melissa Giller, a spokeswoman for the library, told ABC. “The goats eat all of the brush around the entire property, creating a fire perimeter.”The goats were sourced from a firm called 805 Goats, which oversees an army of horned contractors, including Vincent van Goat, Selena Goatmez, Goatzart and, more prosaically, Oreo. The company charges fire-threatened clients about $1,000 per acre of goat-cleared land. It plans to expand its herd to cope with a growing wildfire threat in California, fueled by the climate crisis.Goats are growing in popularity as a tool to combat wildfires across the western US, as they are viewed as cheaper and more environmentally friendly than teams of human workers using chemicals. They are also used for general weed clearance in other parts of the country, such as in New York City’s Prospect Park.A heavy dependence upon goats does carry risks, however, as residents of West Boise, Idaho, found out to their cost last year when a herd of more than 100 goats rampaged through the neighborhood. The invaders caused carnage in flowerbeds and lawns before breaking a fence and it took two hours for the goats to be rounded up.

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Despite break in winds, Maria Fire north of Los Angeles becomes fast-moving blaze, prompting evacuations

Despite a break in the Santa Ana winds, the Maria Fire exploded overnight north of Los Angeles, prompting evacuations.

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Police officer retires after far-right group ties revealed

A Connecticut police officer has retired after a civil rights organization raised concerns about his membership in a far-right group known for engaging in violent clashes at political rallies, a town official said Friday. Officer Kevin P. Wilcox retired from the East Hampton Police Department on Oct. 22, according to Town Manager David Cox. Wilcox had been an East Hampton police officer since 1999.

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Maskless Merkel braves severe Delhi smog

German Chancellor Angela Merkel got a toxic welcome to India on Friday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi treated her to a military parade in New Delhi's severely polluted air. Ignoring medical advice to the choking megacity's 20 million inhabitants, Merkel and Modi reviewed a guard of honour at the presidential palace without pollution masks. The European Union's longest-serving leader is due to step down in 2021.

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Syria's Assad calls Trump the 'most transparent president'

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Thursday hailed Donald Trump as the “best American president” for his “transparency” regarding his stated desire to maintain U.S. control of the Middle Eastern nation’s lucrative oil fields. “I tell you, he’s the best American president. Not because his policies are good, but because he’s the most transparent president,” Assad said in a state television interview, according to a translation of his remarks by NBC News.

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Seniors at California complex 'abandoned' during blackout

One woman in her 80s tripped over another resident who had fallen on the landing in a steep stairwell. At least 20 seniors with wheelchairs and walkers were essentially trapped, in the dark, in a low-income apartment complex in Northern California during a two-day power shut-off aimed at warding off wildfires. Residents of the Villas at Hamilton in Novato, north of San Francisco, say they were without guidance from their property management company or the utility behind the blackout as they faced pitch-black stairwells and hallways and elevators that shut down.

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Mattis’ aide says the general ‘did not want me to write’ the memoir about his tense relationship with Trump

"I stand behind everything in the book. I'm very pleased with how it turned out," Snodgrass told Insider.

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Barack Obama thinks 'woke' kids want purity. They don't: they want progress

The former president took black and progressive movements to task, without understanding his own failure to deliver change • Call-out culture: how to get it right (and wrong)Former president Barack Obama speaks with actress, model, and activist Yara Shahidi during the Obama Foundation summit in Chicago, on 29 October. Photograph: Ashlee Rezin Garcia/APOn Tuesday, in Chicago, former president Barack Obama joined actress Yara Shahidi in a conversation with activists from his Obama Foundation program. Over the nearly 1.5-hour Obama Foundation summit event, the beloved political figure deployed his trademark charm and humor while discussing the challenges of movement politics.Media attention has focused on a particular part of the conversation – Obama’s criticism of call-out culture and what he perceived as an excessively strident activist left. “We can’t completely remake society in a minute,” Obama said, “so we have to make some accommodations to the existing structures.”He added, “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws. People who you are fighting may love their kids and share certain things with you.”He then made a separate point about social media activism:“If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself. ‘Man you see how woke I was, I called you out.’” But “that’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change.”On its face, these are fair remarks. During the session, both Obama and Shahidi drew from examples of the nonviolent civil rights movement of the early 1960s, which required enormous faith, patience and compromise from its activists in the face of threats to their lives and livelihood. Today, as social justice activists’ material conditions have relatively improved, they will encounter people in positions of power with wealth and access, and they have to learn to work with them on some level, Obama implied. And no, tweeting about a verb probably won’t bring about change.However, we can’t look at Obama’s remarks in a vacuum. From 2016 – as he prepared to exert his influence over who would be the next Democratic nominee – to the present, Obama has often aimed his political critiques at youth-led, black and progressive movements. While upholding the necessity of nuance, Obama himself seems to force these movements into a box, cherry-picking anecdotes for a strawman: that these movements expect purity and demand perfection.> This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke … you should get over that. The world is messy. There are ambiguities> > Barack ObamaIn an early instance of this ideological pattern, at a 2016 youth town hall in London, Obama spoke generally of Black Lives Matter while referring to the handful of activists who confronted the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her role in criminalizing black youth:“Once you’ve highlighted an issue and brought it to people’s attention … then you can’t just keep on yelling at them. And you can’t refuse to meet because that might compromise the purity of your position. The value of social movements and activism is to get you at the table, get you in the room.”A few months later in a Howard commencement address, with Chicago protests of the police killing of Laquan McDonald not far in the distance, he told the audience of mostly black students about his criminal justice reform as a state senator:“I can say this unequivocally: without at least the acceptance of the police organizations in Illinois, I could never have gotten those [criminal justice reform] bills passed … If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you’re not going to get what you want.”And earlier this year, Obama again raised the amorphous specter of purity politics as people have embraced a leftward policy shift:“One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States … is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be’ and then we start … a ‘circular firing squad’, where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues.”Obama has offered these platitudes without much evidence that progressives, Black Lives Matter activists or young voters expect purity. Impatience with the status quo is not purity. A consistent political project is not purity. And being patient has its limits.> For many Americans, the normalization of genuinely leftwing policies is providing the hope and change Obama campaigned onYou can gather from the general direction of Obama’s career, from turning down a route in corporate law to his community organizing, that he has some commitment to social justice. However, his remarks indicate discomfort with more radical tactics in achieving it, reducing them to petulant zeal and not a legitimate strategy among the broad scope of tools needed to dismantle oppressive systems.While discussing Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King as examples of patient progress, he freezes them in time. He failed to note either King’s or Parks’s evolutions. Over time King became more radicalized and questioned integration. When Parks was forced to Detroit to retreat from the backlash against her bus boycott activism, she became a proponent of the Panthers’ self-defense demands and identified Malcolm X as her personal hero.Obama also failed to discuss how, despite King’s strategies negotiating with Lyndon Johnson to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Congress waffled in passing further civil rights measures until the 1968 riots after King’s assassination, when Congress was forced to swiftly pass the Fair Housing Act.Or go back further: despite the negotiations and patience of abolitionists in the 1800s, it was a steady stream of black uprisings, and an entire civil war, that gave abolition laws and the Emancipation Proclamation any teeth.Obama’s fundamental problem is in confusing a strategy of pragmatism with the strategy. Pragmatic approaches can coexist with more radical politics. But Obama’s pattern of dismissing radical demands altogether shows a serious unwillingness to appreciate the times. Obama is committed to a notion of reaching across the aisle that may have seemed necessary in 2012, but not so much in 2019.Americans in the throes of economic struggle and social oppression have been advised to hold their nose for so long that they’re suffocating. The labor movement is experiencing more worker strikes now than in the past 40 years. We’re in a 1968 moment, not 1963. But Obama has not accepted this evolution.As people demand universal policies for basic needs of shelter, food, freedom from police terror, and economic security, and when wealth inequality is the worst in a century, Obama has to reckon with his own questions. How is his form of calling out – scolding black, young and progressive movements – bringing about change? Is he part of the solution or part of the problem?For many Americans, the normalization of genuinely leftwing policies is providing the hope and change Obama campaigned on. This is the time for him to finally help achieve it.

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How The B-1 Lancer Went From A Nuclear Bomber To an ISIS Killer

Priorities and capabilities change with time.

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Honduras joins El Salvador in obtaining protected status extension in U.S

The U.S. government has extended temporary protection for Hondurans living in the United States by a year, Honduran officials said on Friday, following a similar extension for Salvadorans in a rollback of U.S. plans to end the program. U.S. President Donald Trump last year said he would shut down temporary protected status (TPS) for Hondurans and Salvadorans after a January 2020 expiration, amid a slew of measures meant to crack down on growing numbers of migrants from Central America. "On our part, we will keep working to find a permanent and humane solution for our Honduran brothers," Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez said in a Tweet on Friday, adding that TPS covers more than 40,000 Hondurans.

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Energy Secretary Perry asked to testify in Trump impeachment inquiry

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry and White House budget office acting Director Russell Vought have been asked to testify next week in the impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump, an official working on the inquiry said on Friday.

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