Canton

Bloomberg pledges $70 billion to bolster black America in new plan

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his presidential campaign's plan for bolstering economic opportunity for black Americans.

Republican senator on Trump soliciting foreign interference: 'Things happen'

Republican Senator Richard Shelby defended an argument from President Trump’s legal team that soliciting foreign interference in an election is not an impeachable offense, saying, “things happen.”

Five die in Russian hotel after boiling water floods basement

Five people, including one child, were killed in the Russian city of Perm on Monday when a hot water pipe exploded in the night and flooded a basement hotel room with boiling water. At least three other people were taken to hospital with burns after the incident in the Mini Hotel Caramel, which is located in the basement of a residential building, the region's investigative committee said. A doctor treating the victims, Andrei Babikov, said a 33-year-old woman had burns covering 35% of her body.

Body of woman who was missing for almost 6 years found in car submerged in NJ river

Vanessa Smallwood of Maple Shade, N.J., was 46 at the time of her disappearance. She was identified in a statement from New Jersey State Police.

Illegal crossings plunge as US extends policy across border

Adolfo Cardenas smiles faintly at the memory of traveling with his 14-year-old son from Honduras to the U.S.-Mexico border in only nine days, riding buses and paying a smuggler $6,000 to ensure passage through highway checkpoints. Father and son walked about 10 minutes in Arizona's stifling June heat before surrendering to border agents. Instead of being released with paperwork to appear in immigration court in Dallas, where Cardenas hopes to live with a cousin, they were bused more than an hour to wait in the Mexican border city of Mexicali.

Biden pulls ahead in new Iowa poll

There's some indication of fallout for Sanders and Warren over their recent spat.

Ex-Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Line workers reveal the things they couldn't live without on board

Workers for cruise lines like Carnival and Norwegian might be away from home for over six months, so they need to be thoughtful about what they pack.

Asia steps up defences as China virus hits 291 people, kills six

Asian countries on Tuesday ramped up measures to block the spread of a new virus as the death toll in China rose to six and the number of cases jumped to almost 300, raising concerns in the middle of a major holiday travel rush. From Australia to Thailand and as far as Nepal, nations stepped up fever checks of passengers at airports to detect the SARS-like coronavirus, which first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Fears of a bigger outbreak rose after a prominent expert from China's National Health Commission confirmed late Monday that the virus can be passed between people.

Two More Bodies Found at Tijuana Property Where Missing California Couple Were Buried Under the Dirt Floor

Two more bodies have been discovered at a Tijuana, Mexico, property where investigators earlier found the remains of a missing California couple buried under the dirt floor of a house on Friday. Jesús Rubén López Guillén, 70, a U.S. resident, and his wife Maria Teresa Guillén, 65, a naturalized U.S. citizen, were reported missing by their daughter Norma López after they traveled from Garden Grove to Tijuana on Jan. 10 to collect more than $6,400 in overdue rent from their 37-year-old son-in-law. Police in Garden Grove launched a missing persons investigation after López said she could no longer track her parents’ movements through the Find My Phone app. She said the last signal she received before their phone went dead was at the property they owned where her husband was living in southern Tijuana, about 4 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Their bodies were found buried under the dirt floor of one of the property’s three homes late Friday.While conducting an investigation into the circumstances of the Guilléns’ murder, Mexican investigators say they discovered the bodies of another couple buried in the property. It is not known if they were found in the same house as the Guilléns’ remains. The new victims have not yet been identified, but police in Mexico say they also may have been involved in a monetary dispute with the son-in-law.The son-in-law, a Mexican national who was deported from the U.S. in 2012 and identified only as “Santiago” in court documents, was first charged with the California couple’s disappearance and taken into custody while the property was searched. Baja California state prosecutor Hirán Sánchez confirmed that when his in-law’s bodies were found, he was charged with their murder.Sanchez told reporters that when the son-in-law was first questioned about what happened to his in-laws, he offered up a “series of contradictions” including a tale that they had walked across the border and that he had picked them up. López says her parents had instead driven their own pickup truck to retrieve the money. The son-in-law also told police that he first took them to their property and then they went together to a bank to exchange currency he paid them, after which he said he drove them back to the border. Instead investigators say that the son-in-law tried to extract money with the couple’s bank cards.“The Guilléns drove themselves to their houses, not Santiago,” Sanchez said at a news conference. “They never left.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get 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.

CNN poll: 51 percent want Senate to remove Trump from office

A new CNN poll out Monday shows that 51 percent of Americans think the Senate should vote to convict and remove President Trump from office during his upcoming impeachment trial.Meanwhile, 45 percent believe the Senate should vote against conviction and removal. Almost 69 percent say the trial should include testimony from new witnesses who did not appear before House impeachment investigators. Republicans are split on whether there should be witnesses in the trial — 48 percent are in favor of new witnesses, while 44 percent are not.This was the first major national phone poll conducted since the articles of impeachment were sent to the Senate and Lev Parnas, the indicted Rudy Giuliani associate, appeared on cable news shows and implicated Trump in the Ukraine pressure campaign. The poll was conducted by SSRS from Jan. 16 to 19, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.More stories from theweek.com Dershowitz tells CNN he wasn't wrong about Clinton's impeachment but is 'far more correct' defending Trump The strongest case for Joe Biden Under McConnell's rules, Trump's impeachment trial could last well past midnight or end immediately

'I stayed alive to tell' - Auschwitz's dwindling survivors recount horrors of Nazi death camp

A strip of skin tattooed with the Auschwitz death camp number 99288 sits in a silver frame on a shelf in Avraham Harshalom's living room. As the 75th anniversary of the camp's liberation on Jan 27, 1945, nears, Harshalom, 95, is very clear about why he kept it. Harshalom is one of some 200,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel today.

Leopard runs into house before being captured in south India

A leopard that ran into a house and sparked a frantic search and a frenzy of attention in southern India on Monday has been caught and tranquilized. The big cat emerged from the Kamdanam forest and ran into a house in Shadnagar town in Telangana state, said Dr. Mohammad Abdul Hakeem, a wildlife official. Deadly conflict between humans and animals has increased in recent years in India largely due to shrinking forest habitats and urban expansion.

Indonesia says 5 citizens kidnapped by Philippine militants

Indonesian authorities said Tuesday that five of the country's citizens have been kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippines.

Prince Harry banned from wearing military uniform after stepping back from armed forces

Harry, Duke of Sussex, will be barred from wearing his military uniform after he agreed to step back from his armed forces appointments.

The 11 most expensive cities to live in around the world in 2020

The 16th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey reveals cities bordering the Pacific Ocean are the most expensive.

Iran confirms two missiles fired at Ukraine airliner

Iran has confirmed two missiles were fired at a Ukrainian airliner brought down this month, in a catastrophic error that killed all 176 people on board and sparked angry protests. The country's civil aviation authority said it has yet to receive a positive response after requesting technical assistance from France and the United States to decode black boxes from the downed airliner. The Kiev-bound Ukraine International Airlines plane was accidentally shot down shortly after takeoff from Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport on January 8.

China's Navy Warships Are Now Armed With Land-Attack Missiles

China says its newest destroyer is capable of launching land-attack missiles.

Kellyanne Conway Claims Martin Luther King Would Be Against Trump Impeachment

Kellyanne Conway on Monday responded to a question on how the president is observing Martin Luther King Day by claiming the civil-rights leader would oppose the impeachment of President Donald Trump.During a press gathering at the White House, NBC News correspondent Geoff Bennett asked the senior Trump aide how the president was observing Martin Luther King Day, prompting Conway to first note that Trump was preparing for his trip to Davos before saying the president “agrees with many of the things that Dr. Martin Luther King stood for.”From there, it only got more bizarre.Adding that the president and Dr. King would see eye-to-eye on “unity and equality,” Conway complained that it’s not the president who is “trying to tear the country apart through an impeachment process and a lack of substance that really is very shameful at this point.”“I’ve held my opinion on it for a very long time, but when you see the articles of impeachment that came out, I don’t think it was Dr. King’s vision to have Americans dragged through a process where the president is not going to be removed from office, is not being charged bribery, extortion, high crimes and misdemeanors,” she continued.After declaring that anyone who cares for the phrase “and justice for all” should appreciate that the president has a “full-throttle defense” when it comes to impeachment, Conway concluded by linking herself with MLK.“I, this morning, was reading some of the lesser-known passages by Dr. King and I appreciate the fact that we as a nation respect him by giving him his own day,” she proclaimed.“I’m happy to share a birthday with this day,” Conway concluded.Kellyanne Conway Melts Down Under Grilling by Fox NewsRead 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.

Trump's Russia adviser 'escorted from White House' amid investigation

President Trump's latest Russia expert has reportedly been escorted from the White House amid claims of a security-related investigation.

China repeats call on Canada to release Huawei CFO Meng

China repeated its call on Monday for Canada to release detained Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL] Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou as soon as possible, ahead of the executive's first extradition hearing later in the day. "The resolve of the Chinese government to protect Chinese citizens' proper legal rights is firm and unwavering," foreign ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, told reporters during a daily briefing. Meng, daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, was arrested at Vancouver International Airport on Dec. 1, 2018, at the request of the United States, where she is charged with bank fraud and accused of misleading the bank HSBC about Huawei Technologies' business in Iran.

Hail, floods, dust hit Australia amid raging wildfires

Dust storms, hail and flash floods have battered beleaguered Australian cities in recent days, extreme weather that has diminished the threat from scores of wildfires that continue to blaze across the country’s southeast. A hail storm in the national capital Canberra on Monday damaged public buildings, businesses, homes and cars, cut power to some suburbs, brought down trees, caused flash flooding and injured two people, emergency services officials said.

John Roberts Has More Power Than Mitch McConnell Would Like You to Think. But Will He Use It?

If John Roberts deems it relevant to call witnesses during the impeachment trial, he, as presiding officer, has the power and the duty to do so, whatever Mitch McConnell thinks.

A Drexel University professor has been charged with stealing $185,000 in government grant money to spend on Philadelphia strip clubs and iTunes

The Philadelphia district attorney's office charged Chikaodinaka Nwankpa with theft by unlawful taking and theft by deception last week.

Photos surface showing convicted Nazi guard Demjanjuk at Sobibor

New photos have emerged which for the first time show convicted Nazi guard John Demjanjuk at the Sobibor death camp, a Berlin archive confirmed Monday, although he always denied ever being there. Ukrainian-American Demjanjuk was convicted of being an accessory to the murder of nearly 30,000 Jews at Sobibor by a German court in 2011. According to the Berlin-based Topography of Terror archive, photos of Demjanjuk are among a newly discovered collection of more than 350 snaps which give "detailed insight" into the camp in German-occupied Poland.

China confirms human-to-human transmission as SARS-like virus spreads

A SARS-like virus that has spread across China and reached three other Asian nations is contagious between humans, a government expert said Monday, fuelling fears of a major outbreak as millions travel for the Lunar New Year holiday. The new coronavirus strain, first discovered in the central city of Wuhan, has caused alarm because of its connection to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003. The total number of people diagnosed with the virus rose to 218, as Beijing and Shanghai confirmed their first cases on Monday while more than a dozen more emerged in southern Guangdong province and and 136 new ones were found over the weekend in Wuhan, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Mexico Murders Rise to Record in AMLO’s First Year in Office

(Bloomberg) -- Murders in Mexico rose to a new record in 2019, the first full year of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s presidency, posing a challenge to the popular leader to make good on a campaign promise of reducing violence.Slayings, often fueled by the nation’s drug cartels, climbed to 34,582, compared with 33,743 a year earlier, according to data released by the national public security system. The 2.5% increase represents the least since homicides fell in 2014 and compared with increases of 17% to 28% in the previous three years.“What’s relevant is that homicides continue at an extremely high level, and the only change is the height of the wave,” said Vidal Romero, a professor of political science at Mexico’s Autonomous Institute of Technology, or ITAM, and co-director of the Center for the Study of Security, Intelligence and Governance. “Things haven’t changed, and there’s no policy that’s getting to the root of the problem.”Drug traffickers pose a shared threat to the U.S. and Mexico. Murders in the Latin American nation are often carried out with weapons smuggled in from the U.S. Meanwhile, American overdose deaths, from drugs that frequently originate in or travel through Mexico, surged to about 70,000 annually in recent years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.While Lopez Obrador, known popularly by the abbreviation AMLO, has managed to maintain his approval at 72%, according to a poll by newspaper El Financiero published earlier this month, voters probably would hold his Morena party responsible for poor security results at mid-term congressional elections in 2021, Romero said.Two high-profile episodes late last year focused attention on Mexico’s security challenge. In October, Lopez Obrador’s security cabinet decided to release the captured son of kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to avoid a firefight and bloodshed between authorities and criminals that the government worried would affect civilians. In November, nine members of a Mormon family with dual American-Mexican citizenship were killed in an attack by cartel gunmen.President Donald Trump has pushed Mexico to do more to confront drug gangs, calling for the nations together to “wage war” on the cartels. In November he floated classifying them as terrorist organizations. In December, after a visit to Mexico City by U.S. Attorney General William Barr, Trump said he was holding off “temporarily” on the proposal at the request of Lopez Obrador.Read More: Trump Pushes Mexico to Step Up Efforts to Battle Drug GangsSo far, Mexico has resisted a heavy-handed approach, wishing to avoid the level of militarization that took place when Felipe Calderon was president from 2006 to 2012. Mexico’s efforts have been focused on deploying tens of thousands of members from its new National Guard, a force that officially began work in July and still isn’t at full strength.Lopez Obrador’s strategy also includes education and subsidies for young people. But the phrase he has used at times to summarize his philosophy, “hugs, not shots,” has been criticized by many security analysts as naive and Pollyannish.(Updates with comments in third paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Eric Martin in Mexico City at emartin21@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Nacha Cattan at ncattan@bloomberg.net, Walter Brandimarte, Dale QuinnFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Local Governments May Soon Be Forced To Rethink How They Use Private Property

An upcoming court case could be very impactful.

2 more Puerto Rico officials fired after warehouse break-in

Gov. Wanda Vázquez fired the heads of Puerto Rico’s housing and family departments Sunday in the latest fallout over the discovery of a warehouse filled with emergency supplies dating from Hurricane Maria. The removal of Housing Secretary Fernando Gil and Department of Family Secretary Glorimar Andújar came a day after the governor fired the director of Puerto Rico’s emergency management agency. Vázquez fired him hours after a Facebook video showed angry people breaking into the warehouse in an area where thousands have been in shelters since a recent earthquake.

Erdogan says Somalia has invited Turkey to explore for oil in its seas: NTV

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Somalia had invited Turkey to explore for oil in its seas, after Ankara signed a maritime agreement with Libya last year, broadcaster NTV reported. Turkey has been a major source of aid to Somalia following a famine in 2011 as Ankara seeks to increase its influence in the Horn of Africa to counter Gulf rivals like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Pair of storms to unleash rain, snow across Middle East this week

More unsettled weather is set to grip the Middle East this week after several storms have battered the region in recent weeks.The first of two storms to impact the area this week has dampened locations from the Mediterranean coast to Iraq on Monday. This slow-moving system will continue to bring wet weather to the region on Tuesday and Wednesday.The steadiest rainfall is expected from northern Israel and Lebanon into southern Syria and central Iraq. Downpours are possible in Beirut, Damascus, Homs and Baghdad. Rain will also spread into the lower elevations of western Iran with snow falling in the mountains. In the higher terrain of Lebanon and Syria, snow accumulation can be expected.On the southern side of this storm, showers may briefly dampen southern Jordan, far northern Saudi Arabia and Kuwait from Tuesday into Wednesday. This storm will then push into eastern Iran with rain and high-elevation snowfall on Thursday.CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APPA second storm will race southward from Turkey into the Middle East late Thursday into Friday, bringing soaking rain and mountain snow to Syria, Lebanon and Israel on Thursday night through Friday morning.The storm will then lash Jordan, Iraq and northwest Iran on Friday with impacts continuing into Friday night in Iraq and Iran.Local downpours and high-elevation snowfall may result in travel impacts across the region, before drier weather builds across the Middle East this weekend.Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.

Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats declare open season on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg

Former Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used to be Facebook's friends. Things have changed.

The US Air Force recently acquired a new $64 million Gulfstream private jet for VIP government officials — see inside

The US president isn't the only government official that flies in a VIP plane operated by the US Air Force.

Palestinian family pledge appeal over Jerusalem eviction ruling

A Palestinian family pledged on Monday to appeal an Israeli court order to evict them from their home in a mainly-Palestinian east Jerusalem neighbourhood in a case lodged by a settler organisation. The Israeli anti-settlement NGO Peace Now said a Jerusalem magistrates court ruled Sunday in favour of evicting the Rajabi family from their home in the Silwan neighbourhood following a lawsuit filed by members of the pro-settlement Ateret Cohanim organisation. The three-storey building houses 17 Palestinians, the family said.

How Trump Twisted Iran Intel to Manufacture the ‘Four Embassies’ Threat

When President Donald Trump publicly claimed earlier this month that he had seen intel showing Iran’s now-deceased top military leader Qassem Soleimani was plotting attacks on “four [American] embassies,” senior officials in Trump’s national security apparatus shook their heads. They weren’t sure exactly why the president leaned on that particular talking point, and scrambled in the following days to formulate answers to a barrage of questions from the media on exactly what the president had meant. Other officials wondered aloud whether the president had misrepresented the intelligence. “There were definitely questions [at the time, internally] about whether he had just made it up on the spot,” recalled one White House official.It turns out Trump—technically—didn’t get his eyebrow-raising claim out of nowhere, The Daily Beast has learned. According to three sources familiar with the matter, the president had simply seized on a small part of what he’d heard in private briefings, exaggerated that aspect of the intelligence, then began sharing the inflated intel to the American public during his post-Soleimani victory lap. In doing so, President Trump generated yet more confusion and discord among the national security brass that had already struggled to sell the American people on its case for the strike that just brought Iran and the United States to the precipice of all-out warfare. For weeks the Trump administration had struggled to get on message in talking about why the U.S. decided to strike Soleimani and what it would do in the future to manage any diplomacy with Tehran. Trump’s embassy claim didn’t help, officials said.The White House did not comment on the record for this story.Shortly before he began announcing to the media and rally-goers that the Iranian general was planning assaults on multiple U.S. embassies, the president received briefings at the White House from both national security officials and communications staffers. The purpose of some of these meetings were to prepare Trump on how best to talk to the press regarding his administration’s justifications for killing Soleimani. The president received a briefing shortly before he entered the Roosevelt Room Jan. 9 and said Iran was “looking to blow up our embassy.” According to two people familiar with this briefing, Trump was told that following the killing of Soleimani, Iran could retaliate against American assets in the region. The president was again told this in a subsequent briefing that day, one of these sources added. However, embassies were a part of a long list of American outposts and bases potentially under threat from Iran but sources familiar with those internal briefings do not remember the number four ever being specified, and they certainly do not recall any imminent danger to those embassies.When administration officials briefed Trump, they mentioned possible targets for Iranian retribution; they were not discussing intel on what anyone in the regime was actively plotting against U.S. interests, the sources noted.However, the moment he heard the word “embassies,” Trump immediately chimed in, interrupting the meeting to grill his briefers on that issue, according to one U.S. official. From there, he began to treat this possible threat as a near-certain danger. Trump received another intelligence briefing shortly before his interview with Fox’s Laura Ingraham Jan. 10 where he repeated the claim that Iran probably would have attacked four embassies. When the president started publicly trotting out his claims of “four embassies,” national security aides were dumbfounded. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Trump’s “four embassies” talking point clashed with intelligence assessments from Trump’s own officials. CNN also reported that security officials at the State Department weren’t even notified of an imminent danger to any specific set of four American embassies.Secretary of Defense Mark Esper himself admitted during an interview on the CBS Sunday show Face the Nation that while “the president said that he believed that it probably could have been attacks against additional embassies,” Esper personally “didn’t see [a specific piece of evidence] with regard to four embassies.”Esper added, “What I’m saying is I shared the president’s view that probably, my expectation is they were going to go after our embassies.”At that point, the U.S. embassy in Baghdad had of course already been stormed by an Iranian-supported militia, but that was prior to Soleimani’s death.Senior Trump administration officials have canceled several of their past scheduled briefings with Congress on specific threats to U.S. embassies pre-Soleimani strike. Briefers were also supposed to delve into more detail about what exactly U.S. intelligence said prior to the strike. The administration has held two briefings so far with both the House and the Senate, but sessions left lawmakers frustrated and overwhelmingly uninformed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rescheduled his briefing on the embassy threats with the House Foreign Affairs committee for next week.‘OK, Now What?’: Inside Team Trump’s Scramble to Sell the Soleimani Hit to AmericaBut people close to Trump say his embassy fixation lies in his obsession with avoiding the kind of catastrophes that befell his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush. President Trump, who has long bashed Obama for the 2012 Benghazi attack and Bush for the Hurricane Katrina response, is particularly concerned with opening himself up to accusations of having suffered “Trump’s Benghazi” or “Trump’s Katrina,” according to two sources who’ve spoken to the president about this. “Multiple times I’ve heard him talk about how you don’t want a Katrina moment,” said a former senior White House official. “You can’t do anything about what weather is going to do, but you can certainly manage the response and the optics of what you’re doing in addition to the substance of what you’re doing.”With Trump’s shambolic, even scandalous, handling of the response and relief efforts to the hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico, this president seems to have already had his “Katrina.” He is, however, determined not to experience a direct parallel to Benghazi. Indeed, on New Year’s Eve, the president took to Twitter to enthusiastically brand the embassy attack that occurred on his watch “The Anti-Benghazi!” 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.

Sweden Readies for Diplomatic Crisis With China Over Free Press

(Bloomberg) -- Sweden’s government has demanded a meeting with the ambassador from China after he lambasted Swedish media.Ambassador Gui Congyou caused a diplomatic furore over the weekend after giving an interview to Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT, in which he said that some local media representatives “have a habit of criticizing, accusing and smearing China.” He then went on to compare the relationship between Swedish media and China to one in which “a 48kg weight boxer keeps challenging an 86kg weight boxer to a fight.”Three parties in Sweden’s parliament have now called for Gui Congyou to be thrown out of the Nordic country, adding to tensions ahead of a meeting scheduled to take place with the ambassador at the foreign ministry in Stockholm on Tuesday.Sweden’s foreign minister, Ann Linde, has already ruled out the option of expelling Gui Congyou. But she also made clear Sweden won’t accept veiled threats from China. Relations between the two countries have soured recently over jailed Chinese-born Swedish publisher Gui Minhai, who was honored last year by the Swedish chapter of PEN International with its annual Tucholsky Award.Gui Minhai, who has written several books that are critical of China’s leadership, has been detained since late 2015 by Chinese authorities, who accuse him of crimes including “operating an illegal business.” Gui Congyou says Minhai is a “lie-fabricator” who “committed serious offenses in both China and Sweden.” He also said Swedish media “is full of lies” about the case and that the Tucholsky Award, which was handed out by Sweden’s minister of culture, would result in Chinese “countermeasures.”The spat comes amid a more assertive diplomatic stance from China, which dominates global export markets and is one of Sweden’s most important trade partners. In neighboring Norway, the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 to Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo led to a deep-freeze of diplomatic relations that lasted more than half a decade and hurt trade. In 2018, Sweden exported goods and services to China worth 67 billion kronor ($7 billion), making it the Nordic country’s eighth-largest export market.Gui Congyou, who was appointed ambassador to Sweden in 2017, has repeatedly angered lawmakers in the country with his remarks over the years. Commenting on Swedish media’s coverage of Gui Minhai, Gui Congyou in December cited a Chinese proverb: “We treat our friends with fine wine, but we have shotguns for our enemies.”The ambassador’s latest remarks prompted the nationalist Sweden Democrats as well as the Christian Democrats and the Left Party to demand that he be thrown out.To contact the reporter on this story: Niclas Rolander in Stockholm at nrolander@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Tasneem Hanfi Brögger at tbrogger@bloomberg.netFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Hypersonic Missiles? The Old Supersonic Ship-Killer Missiles Are Just As Deadly

Despite all the fuss about hypersonic weapons being game-changers, the older, slower supersonic weapons are still a menace to surface ships.

UK's Johnson, France's Macron reiterate commitment to Iran nuclear deal

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated their commitment on Sunday to the Iran nuclear deal and agreed a long-term framework was needed, Downing Street said on Sunday. "On Iran, the leaders reiterated their commitment to the JCPoA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) and also acknowledged the need to define a long-term framework to prevent Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon," a Downing Street spokeswoman said in a statement after the two met on the sidelines of a Libya summit in Berlin.

Photos of starving lions in Sudan spark campaign to save them

One of the five lions at Khartoum's Al-Qureshi Park is believed to have died.

Mountain lion attacks, injures 3-year-old boy in California wilderness park

The attack occurred in Whiting Ranch, where a mountain biker died in a similar attack in 2004. The adult female lion was shot by authorities.

Intelligence officials: New ISIS leader is one of its founding members

The Islamic State's new leader is Amir Mohammed Abdul Rahman al-Mawli al-Salbi, one of the terrorist organization's founding members, intelligence officials told The Guardian.Last October, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid in Syria, and officials said Salbi replaced him just hours after his death. Born to an Iraqi Turkmen family, Salbi has a background as an Islamic scholar, and came up with the ISIS religious rulings authorizing the enslavement of Iraq's Yazidi minority. Salbi met Baghdadi in 2004, when both were detained by U.S. forces at Camp Bucca in Iraq.There aren't many founding members of ISIS left, and the group doesn't have nearly as many fighters as it did during its peak in the mid-2010s. ISIS no longer controls vast swaths of Iraq and Syria, but they are still behind assassinations and roadside bombings in northern Iraq, a senior Kurdish official told The Guardian. There are rural networks that "remain very much intact," the official said. "After all, ISIS members in Iraq still receive monthly salaries and training in remote mountainous areas. That network allows the organization to endure, even when militarily defeated."Salbi's whereabouts are unknown, but intelligence officials believe it's likely he is near Mosul, Iraq. There is a $5 million bounty on his head.More stories from theweek.com Dershowitz tells CNN he wasn't wrong about Clinton's impeachment but is 'far more correct' defending Trump The strongest case for Joe Biden Under McConnell's rules, Trump's impeachment trial could last well past midnight or end immediately

Signs of life at 'no-man's land' around Philippine volcano

A desolate landscape of ash dunes and bare trees left by the eruption of the Philippines' Taal volcano lay in contrast with a few signs of life at ground zero of the disaster on Tuesday. The island site was buried by massive deposits of ash when Taal erupted last week and remains under a mandatory evacuation order due to a feared bigger blast. Authorities have said any outward signs of an imminent eruption have been weak over the past several days.

Prosecutors seek prison terms for accused in gold coin heist

German prosecutors are seeking lengthy prison terms for four men accused of staging the brazen theft of a 100-kilogram (221-pound) Canadian gold coin that disappeared from a Berlin museum almost three years ago. The dpa news agency reported Monday that prosecutors have asked Berlin's region court to sentence two of the men to seven years in prison and the two others to six and five years each. Prosecutors claim the men, aged 21 to 25, stole the “Big Maple Leaf” coin worth about 3.75 million euros ($4.33 million) from Berlin's Bode Museum in March 2017.

A Surge of Migrants Rushes a Mexican Border Crossing

CIUDAD TECÚN UMÁN, Guatemala -- After days of walking and hitchhiking, a crowd of migrants rushed a bridge at Guatemala's border with Mexico on Saturday and clashed with Mexican police who used pepper spray and closed the crossing's large metal gates to keep them out.More than 1,000 migrants were trying to cross the bridge spanning the Suchiate River, which delineates a section of the border between Guatemala and Mexico. After calm was restored, small groups of 20 or so migrants, many of them women and children from Central America, were allowed to file through in orderly fashion and register with Mexican migration officials.The melee was the latest test of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's resolve to get tougher on undocumented migration and stop the flow of migrants illegally entering Mexico, many of them trying to make their way to the United States.The governments of Mexico and several Central American countries, the source of many of the undocumented migrants who have sought to cross the southwest border of the United States in recent years, have been under pressure from President Donald Trump to help stem the flow. Trump temporarily withheld development aid and threatened tariffs to try to force his counterparts in the region to take a tougher stance.The showdown on the southern border of Mexico on Saturday involved the vanguard of a mass mobilization of migrants, most of them Hondurans who set off from the northern city of San Pedro Sula earlier in the week as part of a new caravan. They are part of a tradition of mass migrations that have offered safety in numbers to participants.Over the years, such caravans have usually numbered in the hundreds and have mostly passed unnoticed. But in fall 2018, a caravan that at one point numbered more than 7,000, according to the Mexican authorities, caught the attention of Trump. He turned the matter into a campaign issue, warning against an invasion along the American border.By some estimates, the current mobilization is also in the thousands. The Guatemalan authorities say that more than 4,000 migrants, part of this scattered caravan, have entered Guatemala from Honduras since Wednesday. Many of them had been expected to arrive in the small Guatemalan border city of Tecun Uman on Saturday or Sunday.In recent days, as the caravan approached the Guatemalan border with Mexico, the Mexican authorities announced that only migrants who registered with proper documentation seeking asylum, work permits or other protections would be allowed to enter. Once registered in Mexico, migrants were transported on white unmarked buses to another location to continue their application process.Lopez Obrador said Friday that 4,000 jobs in southern Mexico needed to be filled, which seemed to raise hopes among migrants here that they would be offered employment at the border. But at the same time, the Mexican government also stepped up its enforcement.On Saturday, dozens of armed guards lined the banks of the Suchiate River across from Tecun Uman to prevent migrants from slipping across. A recording warned migrants over a loudspeaker that the United States would not be granting asylum and would instead send them back to Guatemala."Mexico will offer opportunities of employment in your country of origin," the message added.On Friday night, Alex Valladares, 28, sat on a sidewalk with other migrants bedding down on plastic and cardboard in Tecun Uman. He said he had worked for years in Indianapolis as an undocumented mechanic until he was discovered by the authorities and sent back to Honduras, his home country."I'm searching for a better life, employment," Valladares said.At one time, his heart was set on returning to the United States. But now, Valladares said, he sees more opportunity in Mexico. A friend who had also been deported from the United States had called to offer him a job as a mechanic in Veracruz, a Mexican city on the Gulf of Mexico. All he had to do was get there."Better that I can stay in Mexico where they'll give me papers to work legally," he said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

S. Korea naval unit to expand operations to Strait of Hormuz

A South Korean anti-piracy unit has temporarily expanded its mission to the Strait of Hormuz, a vital global oil route at the center of soaring tensions between Iran and the United States. South Korea’s Defense Ministry announced the expansion Tuesday, saying it was meant to help ensure the safe passage of South Korean vessels and nationals through the waterway. South Korea has conducted anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden since 2009 and is expanding to the strait that connects the Gulf of Oman and Persian Gulf.

Why Iran Should Fear Israel's Tricked Out F-15 Fighter

The Point: This fighter jet is not to be messed with. Ever.

Cult slayed pregnant woman and five of her children in Panama

A religious sect whose members believed to be “anointed by God” forced a pregnant woman and five of her children to walk through fire as part of a cult ritual, according to local residents.