Lafayette

Trump to veto Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez resolution blocking national emergency unless Republicans lend support

Donald Trump is prepared to issue the first veto of his presidency over a national emergency declaration his critics have slammed as an unconstitutional power grab, a senior White House official said on Sunday. White House senior adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News Sunday that “the president is going to protect his national emergency declaration”. The president declared the emergency Friday in an effort to go around Congress to fund his border wall.

Family: UK teen who joined Islamic State has baby in Syria

LONDON (AP) — The family of a British teenager who ran away to join the Islamic State group and now wants to return to the U.K. said Sunday she has given birth to a baby boy.

Saudi prince starts Asia tour with deals to invest $20 bn in Pakistan

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan signed a raft of investment deals Sunday worth up to $20 billion for the cash-strapped South Asian country, as Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman launched his Asia tour seeking to emerge from the Khashoggi affair. Pakistan is facing a serious balance of payments crisis and hopes the deals -- seven separate agreements and Memorandums of Understanding -- will provide welcome relief to its teetering economy. The crown prince, widely known as "MBS", is staging the high-profile three-country visit five months after he came under intense pressure following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Factory shooting rampage victims include HR manager, college intern and forklift operator

Gary Martin, a 15-year veteran of Henry Pratt, was fired Friday. Three of the victims were killed in the meeting where officials gave him the bad news; two others were killed elsewhere in the warehouse.

Here’s What’s Open and Closed on President’s Day 2019

Find out if banks, schools and the post office are open on President's day

Investigation into alleged attack on US actor has 'shifted': police

An investigation into an alleged attack on an openly gay black actor has "shifted" and police are now seeking a follow-up interview with the "Empire" cast member, a spokesman said Sunday. Jussie Smollett, 36, reported to police on January 29 that two men beat him, yelled racial and homophobic slurs, poured bleach on him and tied a rope around his neck while he walked downtown in the third-largest American city. "The information received from the individuals questioned by police earlier in the Empire case has in fact shifted the trajectory of the investigation," Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.

Amazon pays zero federal taxes for second year in succession despite doubling profits, says new report

Amazon has paid zero federal taxes for the second year in succession, despite a doubling of its profits, according to a new report. Although the tech giant founded by Jeff Bezos saw its profits grow from $5.6bn (£4.3bn) in 2017 to $11.2bn (£8.7bn) in 2018, it will actually receive a tax rebate of $129m (£100m). “The company’s newest corporate filing reveals that, far from paying the statutory 21 per cent income tax rate on its US income in 2018, Amazon reported a federal income tax rebate of $129m,” said the report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), which describes itself as a “non-partisan, non-profit think tank”, based in Washington DC.

Merck, Pfizer drug combo extends kidney cancer survival: study

Nearly 90 percent of patients who received the combination therapy were still alive after 12 months compared with about 78 percent of patients who were alive after a year when treated with the older drug Sutent, data showed. Merck on Monday released interim data from the trial, saying the combination reduced the risk of death by 47 percent compared with Sutent. The findings add to an arsenal of positive clinical data for Keytruda, which is approved to treat several types of cancer, making it by far Merck's most important growth driver.

Queens Chamber of Commerce president on Amazon scrapping plans to build second headquarters in New York

Thomas Grech on lawmakers opposing Amazon in New York.

Polish PM cancels Israel visit amid new Holocaust tensions

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki canceled his plans to attend a meeting of central European leaders in Israel starting Monday amid new tensions over how Polish behavior during the Holocaust is remembered and characterized.

U.S. Appeal for NATO Personnel in Syria Brushed Off by Spain

Vice President Mike Pence told reporters at the Munich Security Conference that the U.S. is asking NATO members and other partners to provide "the resources and the support and the personnel" required to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State once U.S. operations conclude. "Requests between countries aren’t made in press releases or conference comments," Spain’s Josep Borrell said at a briefing in Munich on Saturday.

The Latest: Cardinal calls McCarrick punishment 'important'

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Latest on the defrocking of former U.S. cardinal Theodore McCarrick (all times local):

Iran summons Pakistan's envoy over deadly suicide bomb attack: Tasnim

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran has summoned the Pakistani ambassador to protest about a suicide bombing that killed 27 of its elite Revolutionary Guards near the border earlier this week, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Sunday. The Sunni group Jaish al Adl (Army of Justice), which says it seeks greater rights and better living conditions for the ethnic minority Baluchis, claimed responsibility for the attack on Wednesday. Iran says militant groups operate from safe havens in Pakistan and have repeatedly called on the neighboring country to crack down on them. (Writing by Parisa ...

Hong Kong economy stalls amid trade dispute: finance chief

Hong Kong's economy stalled last year as the ongoing China-US trade dispute and retail woes dragged down local business, the city's financial chief said Sunday. Beijing and Washington have already imposed duties on more than $360 billion in two-way trade, roiling global financial markets and weighing heavily on manufacturing output in both countries. "The impact of China-US trade frictions on Hong Kong's exports has clearly emerged at the end of last year," said finance secretary Paul Chan.

Potato rösti

This potato rösti is the perfect way to use up that last bit of cheese in the fridge.  SERVES Two INGREDIENTS 500g potatoes, ideally a nice waxy chip potato 1 small onion, finely sliced 1 garlic clove, crushed and chopped Pinch of dried chilli 50g butter 120g mixed grated cheese such as cheddar, gruyere or comté (a great opportunity to use up leftovers) Large pinch of fresh or dried sage METHOD Peel the potatoes and coarsely grate them into a bowl. Add the onion, garlic and chilli and season well. Tip onto a tea towel and squeeze them tightly to remove any excess liquid, then return to the bowl and mix in 25g of the butter, diced. Add 15g of the butter to a large non-stick and ovenproof frying pan (large enough to hold the potato mixture) and allow to melt. Press the potato mixture into the pan and cook over a medium heat until the underside starts to crisp – from around six to 10 minutes. When ready, flip the rosti onto a plate (cooked side up), melt the rest of the butter in the pan and slide the rosti into it to cook on the other side for about 10 minutes, until browned and cooked through. To finish, preheat the grill and sprinkle the rosti with the grated cheese and sage, along with a good grinding of black pepper. Place until the grill until the cheese melts and bubbles. Serve with a crisp green salad. RECIPES | Angela's budget-friendly dishes

NASA posts image of ghostly blue objects, deep in the cosmos

When a star is born, a chaotic light show ensues.  NASA's long-lived Hubble Space Telescope captured vivid bright clumps moving through the cosmos at some 1,000 light years from Earth. The space agency called these objects clear "smoking gun" evidence of a newly formed star — as new stars blast colossal amounts of energy-rich matter into space, known as plasma.  Seen as the vivid blue, ephemeral clumps in the top center of the new image below, these are telltale signs of an energy-rich gas, or plasma, colliding with a huge collection of dust and gas in deep space. As NASA says, these blue masses are transient creations in the cosmos, as "they disappear into nothingness within a few tens of thousands of years." Bright lights inside a nebula. Image: ESA/Hubble/NASA/K. Stapelfeldt These blue clumps are traveling at 150,000 mph toward the upper left direction (from our view, anyhow). In total, there are five of these ghostly clumps, hurtling through space.  SEE ALSO: Opportunity rover's last picture is as grim as it is dark NASA doesn't identify the new star itself, called SVS 13, perhaps because it's obscured by thick clouds of cosmic matter. This collection of dust and gas is part of a distant nebula, which are often the remnants of exploded stars swirling through the infinity of space. WATCH: Ever wonder how the universe might end?

US ‘tells India it respects its right to self-defence’ after cross-border militant attack kills 44 paramilitary police

The US has supported India’s right to “self defence” against cross-border terrorism after an attack claimed by Pakistan-based militants killed at least 44 police officers in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In comments that will please Indian hawks but also raise fears that tensions between India and Pakistan could escalate yet further, US national security advisor John Bolton reportedly told his counterpart in Delhi, that America “offered all assistance to India” to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice. Mr Bolton and Ajit Doval also “resolved to hold Pakistan to account for its obligations under UN resolutions”, India’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

Potential privacy lapse found in Americans' 2010 census data

WASHINGTON (AP) — An internal team at the Census Bureau found that basic personal information collected from more than 100 million Americans during the 2010 head count could be reconstructed from obscured data, but with lots of mistakes, a top agency official disclosed Saturday.

Israel to withhold $138 mln from Palestinians over prisoner payments

Israel said its security cabinet on Sunday decided to withhold $138 million (122 million euros) in tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority over its payments to prisoners jailed for attacks on Israelis. A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said the withheld cash would be equal to that paid by the PA last year to "terrorists imprisoned in Israel, to their families and to released prisoners". Israel alleges the payments encourage further violence.

Sex abuse survivors say Vatican summit must deliver action

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Roman Catholics who were sexually abused by clergy are insisting that decisive actions to confront the decades-long problem of pedophile priests and church cover-ups must come out of an upcoming Vatican summit.

Venezuela denies EU lawmakers entry given 'conspiratorial motives'

Venezuela denied a group of European Parliament deputies entry into the country on Sunday, arguing they had "conspiratorial motives" for flying to Caracas in the throes of a political crisis. The European Parliament last month joined a slew of Western nations in recognizing Venezuelan opposition chief Juan Guaido as interim head of state after President Nicolas Maduro won a second term in an election last year that critics denounced as a sham. The four deputies from the center-right European People's Party (EPP) were traveling to Venezuela to meet with Guaido, one of them said in a video distributed via social media.

U.K. Lawmakers Recommend Harsher Penalties for Tech Companies

Damian Collins, the policy maker who spearheaded the inquiry, called for Parliament to create new laws to help a proposed regulator oversee the industry, with fines for companies to be calculated based on their revenue. “Companies like Facebook exercise massive market power which enables them to make money by bullying the smaller technology companies and developers who rely on this platform to reach their customers,” Collins said in a statement Monday.

Iran launches 'cruise missile capable' submarine

Iran on Sunday launched a new locally-made submarine capable of firing cruise missiles, state TV said, in the country's latest show of military might at a time of heightened tensions with the US. The launch ceremony, led by President Hassan Rouhani, took place in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas. "Today, the Islamic Republic of Iran is fully self-reliant on land, air and sea," Rouhani said.

Japan's New F-3 Fighter: Why Not Just Buy More F-35s?

We have a look at what Tokyo is planning.

Saudi crown prince begins Asia tour with $20 billion Pakistan investment pledge

Kicking off his tour of South Asia and China with a far higher Pakistan investment than expected, the crown prince said the $20 billion figure represents only the start of an economic tie-up that would bring the historic Muslim allies even closer. "It’s big for phase 1, and definitely it will grow every month and every year, and it will be beneficial to both countries," said the crown prince. "We have been a brotherly country, a friendly country to Pakistan.

Gone in a New York minute: How the Amazon deal fell apart

NEW YORK (AP) — In early November, word began to leak that Amazon was serious about choosing New York to build a giant new campus. The city was eager to lure the company and its thousands of high-paying tech jobs, offering billions in tax incentives and lighting the Empire State Building in Amazon orange.

Assad warns Syria's Kurds that US will not protect them

President Bashar al-Assad warned Syria's Kurds Sunday that their ally the United States would not protect them against any Turkish offensive as Washington looks to withdraw it troops. The US is set to pull out its soldiers from Syria after allied Kurdish-led forces capture the Islamic State group's last holdout in the war-torn country. Any withdrawal risks leaving the Kurds exposed to a long threatened attack by neighbouring Turkey, which views Kurdish fighters as "terrorists".

Santa Ana: At least 4 killed in suspected DUI crash

At least four people are dead and one other is in critical condition following a violent two-vehicle crash in Santa Ana early Sunday.

Ann Coulter after Trump's order: ‘The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot’

President Donald Trump's announcement Friday that he was declaring a national emergency wasn't received well by all Republicans, none more vocal than Ann Coulter.

Aurora shooter's permit was revoked but gun wasn't seized

AURORA, Ill. (AP) — An initial background check failed to detect a felony conviction that should have barred the man who killed five co-workers and wounded six other people at a suburban Chicago manufacturing plant from buying the gun.

Victoria Beckham goes 'retro' at London Fashion Week show

Exaggerated collars, leopard print and a strong colour palette: British designer Victoria Beckham turned to "pinches of the '70s" as she showcased her latest collection Sunday at London Fashion Week. The former Spice Girl chose the rarified galleries of the Tate Britain museum, a neoclassical building home to some of the country's most treasured art, for only her second catwalk show in the British capital. "I have been thinking about what women want, about modern femininity," she told audiences in show notes describing her autumn/winter 2019 collection.

Thousands of Venezuela volunteers begin preparing US aid entry

Thousands of volunteers in Venezuela will begin mobilizing on Sunday to bring American aid into their crisis-hit country despite a blockade by President Nicolas Maduro who claims the assistance could be cover for a US invasion. Once-wealthy Venezuela is gripped by a power struggle between socialist leader Maduro and Juan Guaido, the head of the National Assembly who proclaimed himself interim president last month and now has the backing of more than 50 countries.

Iran rejects anti-Semitism allegation by Pence

Iran on Saturday rejected accusations of anti-Semitism leveled against it by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, saying it respected Judaism but opposed Israel, which Tehran said was acting like a "killing machine against the Palestinians". Pence accused Iran of Nazi-like anti-Semitism on Friday after visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, maintaining his harsh rhetoric just a day after attacking European powers for trying to undermine U.S. sanctions on the Islamic Republic. "Iran's historic and cultural record of coexistence and respect for divine religions, particularly Judaism, is recorded in reliable historic documents of various nations," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi said.

Germany's SPD climbs in polls after welfare rethink

Support for Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) has hit its highest level in almost six months, a poll showed on Sunday, a week after the center-left party outlined new welfare plans aimed at winning back working class voters. Ahead of European elections in May and four regional votes this year, the Emnid poll for the Bild am Sonntag newspaper put support for the SPD, which shares power with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, on 19 percent, up 2 points from a week ago.

Medical emergency triggers stampede at San Francisco theater

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Chaos broke out during a performance of the musical "Hamilton" at San Francisco's Orpheum theater Friday night after audience members mistook a medical emergency for a shooting.

Seven killed in new Kashmir battle

Indian troops suffered new losses Monday in a fierce battle with Kashmir militants that left at least seven dead just days after a suicide bomber killed 41 paramilitaries in the troubled territory, officials said. The confrontation piled more pressure on the Indian government, which has blamed Pakistan for Thursday's suicide attack on a paramilitary convoy that sparked widespread calls for action against the country's neighbour and nuclear arch-rival. Shooting continued for hours after military and police sources reported that four soldiers, two militants and a civilian were killed in Pulwama district, south of Srinagar, the main city in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Average tax refunds fall for second straight week, creating political flashpoint

The average refund in the second week of the filing season was $1,949, down 8.7 percent from $2,135 a year earlier.

Collusion: The Criminalization of Policy Disputes

What a weasel word “collusion” is.In Washington, Senator Richard Burr (R., N.C.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, has now seen fit to pronounce that, after two years of investigation, the panel has found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian regime. Meanwhile, in a nearby courtroom, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s senior staffer, Andrew Weissmann, told a federal judge that an August 2016 meeting between the then-chairman of the Trump campaign and a suspected Russian intelligence officer “goes . . . very much to the heart of what the special counsel is investigating” -- which sure sounds like Mueller’s collusion hunt is alive and well.What gives?Readers of these columns know that the “collusion” label has been a pet peeve of your humble correspondent since the media-Democratic “Putin hacked the election” narrative followed hard on the declaration of Donald Trump’s victory in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, November 9, 2016.The reason for the collusion label is obvious. Those peddling the “Putin hacked the election” story have always lacked credible evidence that Trump was complicit in the Kremlin’s “cyber-espionage.” They could not show a criminal conspiracy. Connections between denizens of Trump World and Putin’s circle might be very intriguing, and perhaps even politically scandalous. But only a conspiracy -- an agreement by two or more people to commit an actual criminal offense, such as hacking -- would be a reasonable basis for prosecution or impeachment.This dearth of proof was significant. The Russians apparently started hacking operations in 2014, long before Trump entered the race. The FBI first warned the Democratic National Committee about penetration of its servers in September 2015. By the time Trump won, the Bureau and U.S. intelligence agencies had been working hard to understand the nature and extent of Kremlin-directed hacking operations for two years. The investigation was so high-level, so intense, that shortly before the election, there were confrontational conversations between CIA director John Brennan and his Russian counterpart, FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov, and later between President Obama and Russian president Putin.Yet, as thorough as the investigation was, no one could credibly say Trump was a participant in Russia’s malfeasance. The best Obama’s notoriously politicized CIA could say was that Trump was Putin’s intended beneficiary.Unable to establish conspiracy, Trump’s opposition settled on collusion. It is a usefully slippery word. Collusion just means concerted activity -- it can be sinister or benign. It can refer to a conspiracy or to any arrangement people have together, including those that may be sleazy but non-criminal.This commitment to ambiguity came in handy for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein when he appointed Robert Mueller to be special counsel. After President Trump fired FBI director James Comey on May 9, 2017, and then shamefully talked Comey down for the consumption of Russian diplomats visiting the White House the next day, Rosenstein came under intense pressure. Because he had written the memorandum originally used to justify Comey’s dismissal, congressional Democrats slammed him for complicity in what they portrayed as Trump’s obstruction of the Russia probe. Rosenstein wanted to appease them by appointing the special counsel they were demanding.Special counsels, however, are not supposed to be appointed unless there is a solid basis to believe a crime has been committed. Rosenstein was lawyer enough to know that a president’s firing of an FBI director -- a firing that Rosenstein himself had argued was justified -- could not be an obstruction crime. And he knew that there was no proof that Trump had conspired in Russia’s cyberespionage. So . . . how to justify appointing a special counsel?Easy: Make it a counterintelligence probe. That way, there would be no need for a crime, since such investigations are just intelligence-gathering exercises.What’s that? You say there’s no basis in the special-counsel regulations to appoint one for counterintelligence? You say the Justice Department does not appoint prosecutors for counterintelligence investigations, which are the FBI’s bailiwick? So what? The special-counsel regulations expressly say that they create no enforceable rights enabling anyone to challenge the Justice Department’s flouting of them. Rosenstein knew he could ignore the rules and there was not a thing anyone could do about it.So instead of a prosecutor investigating a crime of conspiracy, we have a bloated staff of prosecutors gathering intelligence about “collusion”: Every contact between anyone connected to Trump and anyone connected to Russia.Some of this could be valuable information. That brings us back to that August 2016 meeting Andrew Weissman was talking about, between Trump’s campaign chairman and a suspected Russian intelligence operative. Paul Manafort, the campaign chairman, had high-level contacts and conducted multi-million-dollar business with oligarchs close to the Kremlin. Konstantin Kilimnik, his partner in Kiev, certainly is suspected of having a “relationship with Russian intelligence,” as Weissmann obliquely put it in the court session.That “relationship,” however, goes back to the early 1990s, when the Soviet Union fell and the United States was quite content to do business with lots of people who had “relationships” with Russian intelligence, the Kremlin, and even the Communist party. One of Kilimnik’s first jobs when he left the Russian military was to work for the International Republican Institute -- the democracy-promoting enterprise that Senator John McCain ran for over 20 years. Kilimnik started there as a translator -- hired for the skills he’d learned at the military academy that prepared translators for service in Russian intelligence. It didn’t seem to bother anyone -- by the early 2000’s, Kilimnik was running the IRI’s Moscow office.My point is not to defend Kilimnik. Not only has Mueller already him indicted for witness-tampering conspiracy in Manafort’s case (a charge to which Manafort has pled guilty). Kilimnik also hovers as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case of Samuel Patten, a lobbyist friend of Manafort’s who has pled guilty in a separate Justice Department case to being an unregistered agent of Ukraine and to violating the prohibition against foreign contributions to political campaigns -- enabling Kilimnik and two Ukrainian oligarchs to donate to the Trump presidential-inaugural committee and attend the inauguration festivities.The point is that if we are going to obsess over collusion rather than the actual crime of conspiracy, then we need to evaluate the Russian contacts of Trump associates in the context of everyone who has interacted with Russia in the last quarter-century. Under administrations of both parties, Washington has maintained that post-Soviet Russia was a perfectly fine country to partner with and do business with. Did the Trump campaign hope to tap Kremlin-connected sources for campaign dirt on Hillary Clinton? That seems undeniable. But it is not a crime per se. How does it rank on the scale of unsavory political behavior? You’d have to compare it to, for example, Democratic-party entreaties to the Kremlin -- back when the Russians were our Cold War Soviet antagonist -- for help in the campaigns against Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.I did not like candidate Donald Trump’s blandishments toward the Putin regime. It was part of why Trump was closer to the bottom than the top of my preferred GOP candidates. I thought his performance as president in the meeting with Putin in Helsinki was appalling. But we are talking here about policy disputes. Trump has a right to be wrong, even seriously wrong, on a policy matter. That does not make him a Russian agent.If members of Trump’s campaign were corruptly selling accommodations (such as sanctions relief) to Russia, then by all means prosecute them to the full extent of the law. But if the campaign was exploring whether sanctions relief could be traded for Russian actions in America’s interests -- just as Obama told us sanctions relief for Iran was being bargained in exchange for what he claimed were advances of America’s interests -- that might have been wrong-headed or naïve, but it wasn’t criminal.Apparently Senator Burr thinks of “collusion” as criminal conspiracy, and he thus realizes that there was not one. Special Counsel Mueller, by contrast, has been unleashed to probe collusion not just in the form of criminal conspiracy, but in whatever form: All manner of contacts with a regime that, just the blink of an eye ago, President Obama was mocking Mitt Romney for regarding as a geopolitical foe, even as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton helped Moscow build its version of Silicon Valley -- notwithstanding Defense Department and FBI worries that we were thus improving their military and cyber capabilities.What is “collusion,” then? Increasingly, it looks like the criminalization of policy disputes.

Nigeria delays its election; candidates rush back to capital

YOLA, Nigeria (AP) — Nigerians awakened on Saturday to find the presidential election delayed a week until Feb. 23 because of what the electoral commission called unspecified "challenges."

Russia pioneering return of 'ISIS children'

As the end nears for the IS enclave in Syria and the fate of jihadists' family members becomes a prescient issue, Russia can be seen as a pioneer in systematically returning children of Islamist fighters home. A potential homecoming of the many foreign women who have gone to live in the IS "caliphate" and their children, many of whom were born there, has been a subject of debate in Russia, with some security chiefs seeing them as potential threats. Earlier this month, 27 children, from four to 13 years old, were flown from Iraq to the Moscow region.

Iran's Zarif accuses Israel, U.S. of seeking war

Addressing the Munich Security Conference, Mohammad Javad Zarif, also criticized the U.S. administration after Vice President Mike Pence this week called on European powers to pullout of the nuclear deal with Iran. Zarif urged France, Germany and Britain to do more to save that accord. "Certainly, some people are looking for war ... Israel," Zarif said.

Irish backstop can't be changed for Brexit deal: Estonian president

There can be no changes to the Irish "backstop", an arrangement to avoid a hard border between European Union member Ireland and British-ruled Northern Ireland after Brexit, Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid told Reuters. Many British lawmakers, especially in Prime Minister Theresa May's governing Conservative Party, fear the backstop will trap the UK in a permanent customs union with the EU after Brexit.

UN envoy arrives in Yemen to discuss truce around port city

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — U.N. envoy Martin Griffiths arrived on Sunday in the capital, Sanaa, to discuss the "complex situation" in and around the key port city of Hodeida, Yemeni security officials said.

No smoke without fire: Tobacco companies in quiet return to Formula One

Tobacco giants Philip Morris and British American Tobacco have formed partnerships with their scientific research subsidiaries and Formula 1 teams Ferrari and McLaren more than a decade after cigarette advertising was banned from the sport. US giant Philip Morris International (PMI), whose Marlboro brand was long associated with Ferrari, re-entered the sport last October, branding Ferrari cars with "Mission Winnow" and a logo that hints at the white-on-red triangles of the old Marlboro packs.

Email Address Given to Ocasio-Cortez Beau Sparks Heated Exchange

“While you were having a nice Valentine’s Day, @AOC decided to put her boyfriend on staff -- drawing a salary on the taxpayer’s dime. Nice to see her adapting to the swamp so quickly,” the conservative magazine’s Luke Thompson said on his Twitter feed. Other conservative voices piled on, with Katrina Pierson, an adviser to President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, who suggested that “her jobs for everyone starts with her boyfriend.

US military planes land near Venezuela border with aid

CUCUTA, Colombia (AP) — The U.S. military airlifted tons of humanitarian aid to a Colombian town on the Venezuelan border Saturday as part of an effort meant to undermine socialist President Nicolas Maduro and back his rival for the leadership of the South American nation.