Voting concluded in India on Sunday in the final phase of a weeks-long election. With more than 900 million registered voters, the final results expected Thursday will decide if Prime Minister Narendra Modi stays in power,
says @gettleman of @nytimeshttps://t.co/uolF4SaOgJ
Is a city still a city if urban living is a luxury good?
"In 2000, the nearby Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene had a combined black population of about 45,000 and a white population of about 37,000. By 2015, there were 32,000 black residents and 62,000 whites." https://t.co/jH9LQeucJ1
950 taxi drivers ended up in bankruptcy after buying NYC medallions, many at the goading of unscrupulous lenders who saw immigrant strivers as easy marks for brazenly predatory loans. An infuriating expose: https://t.co/MrJlPVVWKk
Fentanyl is killing so many longtime drug users, especially older African-Americans in cities like Baltimore, that many are now pining for less-deadly heroin, which is increasingly hard to find. A harrowing, dystopian piece by the great @abbygoodnough: https://t.co/7wDe30ETAw
No one is happier about the Supreme Court’s rebranding of corruption than sketchy politicians, argues Brennan Center Fellow Ciara Torres-Spelliscy.
Anyone who tries to tell you that corruption is only a Republican problem or only a Democratic problem is a partisan hack. Two recent scandals show that corruption is a bipartisan problem, writes Brennan Center fellow @ProfCiara. https://t.co/r5qqPHLrOi
"Gallagher faces war crimes charges. His accusers are fellow Navy SEALs—not pantywaist factotums in Washington. The SEALs allege that Gallagher was an out-of-control killer who shot women and old men as well as combatants. "https://t.co/1wWsV7gAmB
As of 2017, more people have been forced by violence and conflict to flee their homes than live in the U.K. or France.
Why it matters: That's upwards of 60 million people — a global nation of refugees. If all of these asylum-seekers, internally displaced people and refugees were a country, they'd be the 21st most populous nation in the world, according to UNHCR estimates. More than half of refugees are under the age of 18.
The big picture: The crisis is the worst its been since World War II, and it's not getting better [....]
In Peru's gubernatorial elections in late 2018, the toxic influence of the timber trade was again evident. The elections became a runoff between two timber barons, Edwin Vásquez and Francisco Pezo.https://t.co/bNwhHBgrGQ
[....] Amateur video posted online showing Iranian schoolchildren dancing to a song by a U.S.-based underground rap singer has angered conservatives. The critics include a deputy speaker of parliament, Ali Motahari, who has said the schools' principals should be fired and the education minister held accountable.
Domestic media reported that the dancing appeared to have been part of recent Teachers' Day celebrations at schools across the country. In the clips, mostly divided classes of girls and boys dance to the hit song Gentleman by U.S.-based Sassan Heydari-Yafteh, who also goes by the names Sasy or Sasy Mankan. Sasy posted several of the videos on Instagram for his 2 million-plus followers and challenged Motahari to listen without dancing himself [....]
Here are my principal conclusions:
1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.
2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.
3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.
4. Few members of Congress have read the report.
Michael German — Brennan Center expert and former FBI agent who infiltrated white supremacist groups — discusses the need for a significant shift in how the FBI approaches white supremacist violence. https://t.co/DjBcSQubiK
I love it when @CIA doesn't pay attention to consistency & it reveals their BS to the Court. In today's example, the same page was inconsistently redacted in two places, revealing that the "classified intelligence source & method" they're withholding is "sending a hooker." pic.twitter.com/vbTK5mA71d
— National Security Counselors (@NatlSecCnslrs) May 18, 2019
The crumbling of Venezuela’s economy has now outpaced the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s unraveling in the 1990s and Zimbabwe’s collapse under Robert Mugabe.
Shortages of food, water and medication have sunk most of the population into a deepening humanitarian crisis.
The hospital in Toas Island is empty — its last patient died
without care. Nearby, two-year-old Anailin, left, is wasting
away from severe malnutrition and treatable muscular
paralysis. Credit: Meridith Kohut for The New York Times
[...] Venezuela’s fall is the single largest economic collapse outside of war in at least 45 years, economists say. “It’s really hard to think of a human tragedy of this scale outside civil war,” said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “This will be a touchstone of disastrous policies for decades to come.” To find similar levels of economic devastation, economists at the I.M.F. pointed to countries that were ripped apart by war, like Libya earlier this decade or Lebanon in the 1970s [....]
Venezuela has lost a tenth of its population in the past two years as people fled, even trekking across mountains, setting off Latin America’s biggest ever refugee crisis.
Venezuela’s hyperinflation, expected to reach 10 million percent this year according to the I.M.F., is on track to become the longest period of runaway price rises since that in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1990s. “This is essentially a total collapse in consumption,” said Sergi Lanau, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance [....]
A group of Democratic lawmakers with roles on committees overseeing the Treasury Department have sent a letter to Steve Mnuchin saying they are "deeply alarmed" by Russian aluminum factory Rusal's investment in Kentucky and want a review of the investment. https://t.co/os5ZdEWdHJ
Romania under Ceausescu created a dystopian horror of overcrowded, filthy orphanages, and thousands died from back-alley abortions. opponents of the restrictive abortion laws currently being considered in the United States don’t need to look to fiction for admonitory examples of where these types of laws can lead. For decades, communist Romania was a real-life test case of what can happen when a country outlaws abortion entirely, and the results were devastating.
[....] Representatives of both parts of the governing coalition, the centre-right People’s party (ÖVP) and the far-right Freedom party (FPÖ), have made it clear that despite its wide description, the law is targeted at the Islamic headscarf.
The FPÖ education spokesman, Wendelin Mölzer, said the law was “a signal against political Islam” while the ÖVP MP Rudolf Taschner said the measure was necessary to free girls from subjugation [....]
As the frontman of KISS, Gene Simmons occupies rarefied air — a rock star who entertains arenas filled with adoring fans. On Thursday, Simmons joined another exclusive club, conducting only the second on-camera press briefing at the Department of Defense in the last year [...]
Simmons was on hand Thursday to address Department of Defense personnel and meet with outreach officials as part of a Pentagon initiative to engage the broader public with regards to military activities. He also paid a visit to the White House later in the day [....]
The last time a press secretary briefed reporters on camera at the Pentagon was May 31, 2018 [...]
Photo caption: Gene Simmons at the Pentagon Briefing Room podium (Credit: Ryan Browne and Barbara Starr)
Iran’s most prominent military leader has recently met Iraqi militias in Baghdad and told them to “prepare for proxy war”, the Guardian has learned.
Two senior intelligence sources said that Qassem Suleimani, leader of Iran’s powerful Quds force, summoned the militias under Tehran’s influence three weeks ago, amid a heightened state of tension in the region. The move to mobilise Iran’s regional allies is understood to have triggered fears in the US that Washington’s interests in the Middle East are facing a pressing threat. The UK raised its threat levels for British troops in Iraq on Thursday.
While Suleimani has met regularly with leaders of Iraq’s myriad Shia groups over the past five years, the nature and tone of this gathering was different. “It wasn’t quite a call to arms, but it wasn’t far off,” one source said. The meeting has led to a frenzy of diplomatic activity between US, British and Iraqi officials who are trying to banish the spectre of clashes between Tehran and Washington and who now fear that Iraq could become an arena for conflict [....]
While I'm in general fine with quotas and admissions procedures that account for different backgrounds, for testing I kust want them to administer the goddamn tests - and make sure people *aren't* cheating.
1/ Today, @snopes reporter @alexkasprak published an investigation into a network of at least 24 political Facebook pages that promote Islamophobia and conspiracy theories while purporting to represent the views of a diverse set of Americans. https://t.co/Jmo26IeWlkpic.twitter.com/uevUZG9YJh
The intra-Palestinian meeting in Moscow has precedent
Russia's hosted such meetings in the past, most recently Feb 2019
Russia has long lamented the US' "monopolization" of the peace process & tried to carve out a niche for itself: mediating among the disunited Palestinians/2
Events: Heavy gunfire is occuring around the area of the U.S. Embassy and residential compounds adjacent to the Trutier area of Tabarre. All Embassy personnel have been instructed to remain indoors and shelter-in-place until further notice. All others should avoid the area.
Actions to take:
Avoid the area;
Avoid demonstrations and any large gatherings of people;
Do not attempt to drive through roadblocks; and
If you encounter a roadblock, turn around and get to a safe area.
All eyes on #Chad right now
Chad has two internet trunks coming into the country: One from the Red Sea via Sudan; the other from Cameroon. Not possible for the totality of the country's internet network to be shut unless done centrally. A lot of rumors swirling; few facts. https://t.co/N6bDJZ2ixO
BREAKING: Three loss prevention employees in Macy’s across the street from Philadelphia City Hall stabbed, one of them has died from stab wounds, @PhillyPolice sources tell me. Police converged on the store as the three workers were rushed to Jefferson Hospital. pic.twitter.com/4U1eKycL4W
You don’t get it.
It’s not about an UNRWA teacher who held an Israeli kid hostage in his house.
It’s all about how for 75 years you have destroyed the future of generations of Palestinians, including my family.
My cousins in Arab countries are still not citizens - not even the… https://t.co/nv6anubGhc
It's wild that Venezuela is now holding a vote on whether 2/3 of Guyana actually belongs to them! Analysts suggest that Modoru may want military action to pump up his sinking popularity.
The lack of a cohesive delegation has allowed attention-seeking lawmakers to act on their own.
McCarthy: “You have [Rep. Matt] Gaetz, who belongs in jail…”
Gaetz: “Tough words from a guy who sucker punches people in the back. The only assault I committed was against Kevin’s fragile ego.”https://t.co/LctPuz6Pcf
"Both the AU and the intl community place more weight on whether elections are held than whether they are free and fair. Sanctions/expulsions occur when there is a coup but not necessarily when elections are rigged or if an “institutional coup” occurs." https://t.co/m9dNimJP0D
By Tom Kludt @ CNN Business, May 16