UPDATE 1-Israel says Arrow-3 missile shield passes U.S. trials, warns Iran

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Off-duty LAPD officer killed, 1 other person wounded in Lincoln Heights shooting

An off-duty Los Angeles police officer was killed in a Lincoln Heights shooting that left a second victim wounded, authorities said.

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Dan Coats, intelligence chief who clashed with Donald Trump, 'to step down'

Dan Coats, the US director of national intelligence who clashed repeatedly with Donald Trump, is reportedly to step down from his position within days.  Mr Coats, 76, had disagreements with the president over Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Brexit. Mr Trump was said to be considering replacing him with John Ratcliffe, a Republican congressman who has been a staunch loyalist, according to the New York Times.  Mr Ratcliffe sits on the House judiciary committee, and Mr Trump was said to have been impressed by his recent aggressive questioning of special counsel Robert Mueller. Mr Coats, who was appointed by Mr Trump, has served in the role since March 2017. He clashed with Mr Trump early on, taking a hard line toward Russia that sharply contrasted with the conciliatory approach the president pursued with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. Earlier this year Mr Coats told Congress that North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons, contradicting Mr Trump's statement that Pyongyang no longer posed a threat. He also told Congress that Iran had continued to comply with a nuclear deal that Trump abandoned. Mr Coats, a former Republican senator, served in Mr Trump’s cabinet. He was previously US ambassador to Germany under George W Bush.  The role he holds was created after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, and he has overseen the work of America’s 17 intelligence agencies. Mr Coats was also out of step with Mr Trump on Brexit. In January Mr Coats made clear his opposition to a no-deal Brexit. He said: "The possibility of a no-deal Brexit, in which the UK exits the EU without an agreement, remains. This would cause economic disruptions that could substantially weaken the UK and Europe."

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Bernie Sanders denounces 'greed' of American drug companies

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders accused American pharmaceutical companies Sunday of letting diabetic patients die out of "greed," after he accompanied a group of Americans to Canada to buy insulin. Sanders joined the group, which took a bus from the US city of Detroit to Windsor, Ontario to restock on insulin, which costs 10 times more in the United States than in its northern neighbor. "How come the same exact medicine, in this case insulin, is sold here in Canada for one-tenth of the price it is sold in the United States?" Sanders demanded after visiting a Windsor pharmacy.

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Man Who Claims He Started ‘Storm Area 51’ Facebook Page Reveals Identity

The reported creator of the viral Facebook page “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” revealed his identity to KLAS-TV of Las Vegas on Thursday.Matty Roberts, a California resident, claimed he created the satirical Facebook page, which calls on people across the nation to raid Area 51, the top-secret Air Force facility in Nevada on Sept. 20, 2019. Roberts said he never expected the page to attract so much attention. Since its launch on June 27, 1.6 million people responded they would attend the public invasion, while another 1.2 million are “interested.”The Facebook page invites attendees to meet up at the Area 51 Alien Center tourist attraction in order to coordinate the entry, an area that has been surrounded by secrecy for decades.“If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets. Lets see them aliens,” the event description reads.“I posted it on like June 27th and it was kind of a joke,” Roberts said. “And then it waited for like three days, like 40 people and then it just completely took off, out of nowhere. It’s pretty wild.”Roberts said he initially intended for it to be a “meme” page and got the idea after watching podcaster Joe Rogan interview Bob Lazar, an Area 51 whistleblower, about hidden UFO technology in the Nevada desert, according to the KLAS-TV segment.“It’s entirely satirical, though, and most people seem to understand that,” he said.Roberts was hesitant to come forward as the creator, fearing that the FBI would show up to his house.

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Trump’s asylum deal with Guatemala threatens to plunge country into political crisis, analysts warn

In pressuring Guatemala to accept a deal to absorb vast numbers of asylum-seekers, the Trump administration has embarked on a dramatic and risky strategy to slash the number of Central Americans flooding the US-Mexico border.The accord – which was negotiated in secret and signed at the White House on Friday – could plunge Guatemala’s young democracy into a constitutional crisis, analysts warn.It could also saddle one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries with tens of thousands of Salvadoran and Honduran migrants who would be barred from making their claims in the United States.The agreement is one of the boldest steps yet taken by Donald Trump to stanch the flow of migrants to the US border.It aims to close off the US asylum system to the migrants who have crossed through Guatemala en route to the United States. They would instead have to seek protection in Guatemala.But the agreement is built on a fragile political and legal base.Guatemala’s constitutional court ruled earlier this month that President Jimmy Morales needed approval from the Guatemalan Congress to sign the accord – something he has not received.The Guatemalan president has sharply criticised the court decision, saying on Friday that “as far as we understand, this doesn’t have to go before Congress”.Some analysts said Mr Morales could get around the ruling with his argument that the deal is simply a cooperation agreement, not a treaty. But others note Mr Morales has at times simply shrugged off court rulings he dislikes.“This leaves a legacy we won’t be able to recover from, that the country’s constitution can be flagrantly violated without any kind of reaction or penalty,” said Renzo Rosal, an independent political consultant.The agreement is also likely to be challenged in US courts by opponents who say that Guatemala does not qualify as a “safe” country, because of high levels of violence.Whatever happens with the courts, the agreement has little political support in Guatemala.Mr Morales, who finishes his four-year term in January, is highly unpopular.Among the top Twitter hashtags in Guatemala in recent days has been Jimmyvendepatrias – Jimmy the sellout – as a dig at the country’s leader.Guatemalans were startled by a widely published photo showing their government minister, Enrique Degenhart, signing the agreement as Mr Trump loomed over his shoulder, an image suggesting the Central American country’s submission.On Saturday, hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the presidential palace in Guatemala City to protest the agreement, the Associated Press reported. The protesters carried Guatemalan flags and called for Mr Morales’ resignation.Guatemalan analysts have suggested Mr Morales made the deal with Mr Trump in hopes of winning support from the US government.Mr Morales faces allegations of financial crimes related to his 2015 electoral campaign but has been shielded by presidential immunity, which he loses in January. He says he is innocent.Mr Morales said the agreement would help Guatemala by “putting us in a privileged position” with the country’s top trading partner and most important ally.Guatemala holds a run-off presidential election on 11 August, and both candidates have criticised Mr Morales’ negotiation of such a broad agreement in secret.The accord “is unlikely to be sustainable”, Stephen McFarland, a former US ambassador to Guatemala, wrote in a tweet on the eve of the agreement’s unveiling.“A bitter US ‘win’ would put at risk US goals in democracy and law enforcement with the current and next governments.”While the next Guatemalan government could cancel the agreement, it would face intense pressure from the Trump administration to not do so.Mr Morales’ government signed the pact after Mr Trump threatened severe penalties on Guatemala – tariffs, a travel ban or taxes on the billions of dollars in remittances sent home by migrants in the United States.Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland Security secretary, said the administration plans to start the “safe third country” programme with Guatemala in August.Human rights groups, Democratic lawmakers and immigration experts have said Guatemala is too poor and underdeveloped to handle a flood of asylum applicants.Last year, Salvadoran and Honduran migrants filed nearly 58,000 applications for asylum in the United States. That same year, Guatemala received just 259 asylum applications overall.Guatemala is the number one source of irregular migration to the United States, with citizens fleeing poverty, violence, low coffee prices and drought.Eric Schwartz, head of Refugees International and a former top refugee official at the US State Department, said in a statement that the agreement “would represent a grotesque violation of both US law and human decency” and “would put at risk the lives of thousands of Central Americans”.Sonia Lucia Valenzuela, a constitutional law expert in Guatemala, said the Constitutional Court ruling was clear in instructing Mr Morales to send the agreement to Congress but that political pressures could determine what happens next.The migration agreement has been strongly supported by Guatemala’s influential business groups, who had feared US tariffs. But many current and former politicians oppose it.“If the opposition to this accord continues, that’s a sign this will escalate,” she said.Washington Post

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Kenya governor of president's home area held for corruption

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Emmett Till memorial will be made bulletproof after photo of gun-toting students surfaces

Emmett Till's memorial will be bulletproof after outrage over a photo of three gun-toting Ole Miss students posing in front of the sign.

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Trump signs ‘cruel and illegal’ deal with Guatemala to stop asylum seekers getting to US

The Trump administration has struck a highly controversial deal with Guatemala, which will prevent some migrants fleeing their home countries from submitting asylum applications to the US.Refugees travelling to the US who enter Guatemala, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, will now be required to apply for asylum protection from the Central American nation instead of at the US border.Under the deal Guatemala has been declared a so-called “safe third country”.The Central American nation and the US have been negotiating the deal for months.Donald Trump earlier threatened to place trade tariffs on Guatemala if an agreement wasn’t reached.“We’ll either do tariffs or we’ll do something. We’re looking at something very severe with respect to Guatemala,” the US president said on Wednesday.Jimmy Morales, Guatemala’s president, said the agreement would allow the country to avoid “drastic sanctions ... many of them designed to strongly punish our economy, such as taxes on remittances that our brothers send daily, as well as the imposition of tariffs on our export goods and migratory restrictions.” As part of the agreement the US will increase access to the the H-2A visa program for temporary agricultural workers from Guatemala. The country’s government said its labour ministry would, in the coming days, ”start issuing work visas in the agriculture industry, which will allow Guatemalans to travel legally to the United States, to avoid being victims of criminal organisations, to work temporarily and then return to Guatemala, which will strengthen family unity.”“We have long been working with Guatemala and now we can do it the right way.” Mr Trump said.“This landmark agreement will put the coyotes and smugglers out of business.”Despite the president’s optimism it remains unclear how the agreement will take effect. Guatemala’s constitutional court has granted three injunctions preventing its government from entering into a deal without approval of the country’s congress and Mr Morales himself has questioned the concept of a “safe third country”, which forms the basis of the agreement.“Where does that term exist?” he asked reporters on Friday, hours before the deal was struck.”It does not exist, it is a colloquial term. No agreement exists that is called ‘safe third country.”Rights groups have condemned the deal, with multiple experts questioning its legality.Jordan Rodas, a human rights prosecutor, said his team was studying the agreement and whether Enrique Degenhart, Guatemala’s interior minister, had the authority to sign it.Amnesty International condemned the deal, saying ”any attempts to force families and individuals fleeing their home countries to seek safety in Guatemala are outrageous.”Rights groups and student organisations rallied against the agreement in Guatemala City, gathering in front of the constitutional court.Many believe the nation, which is mired in poverty and unemployment, has no capacity to take in refugees.The problems of homelessness, severe drought, gang violence and unemployment which are endemic in El Salvador and Honduras are also present in Guatemala.Eliot Engel, a Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs said Mr Trump’s decision to sign the agreement was “cruel and immoral.”‘’It is also illegal,” he added. “Simply put, Guatemala is not a safe country for refugees and asylum seekers, as the law requires.”The president was asked on Friday if he expected to reach similar agreements with Honduras and El Salvador.He replied, “I do indeed.” Additional reporting by agencies

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Girl's murder sparks outcry and protests in Romania

Several thousand protesters rallied in Bucharest on Saturday after Romania's police chief was fired over the murder of a 15-year-old girl who had made three emergency calls to report her own kidnapping and given clues to her whereabouts. Centre-right President Klaus Iohannis said earlier the "resignations of all those who mishandled this case which had such dramatic consequences are obligatory".

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Brad Pitt says Harvey Weinstein scandal shook Hollywood as much as Manson family murders - The Independent

Brad Pitt says Harvey Weinstein scandal shook Hollywood as much as Manson family murders  The Independent

Brad Pitt has suggested that the scandal around Harvey Weinstein shook Hollywood as much as the Manson Family murders. The actor stars opposite Leonardo ...

View full coverage on Google News

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Daily Crunch: Yep, Apple is buying Intel’s modem business - TechCrunch

1. Daily Crunch: Yep, Apple is buying Intel’s modem business  TechCrunch
2. Apple lost the 5G battle, but it paid Intel $1 billion to win the war  CNBC
3. Solution Providers: $1B Apple-Intel Smartphone Modem Deal Undermines Qualcomm  The Biggest Tech News For Channel Partners, Solution Providers And The IT Channel
4. Apple Got a Sweet Deal on Intel's 5G Modem Business  Motley Fool
5. Intel (INTC) Beats on Earnings in Q2, Inks Deal With Apple  Yahoo Finance
6. View full coverage on Google News

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Lil Nas X On How He'll Celebrate Beating Mariah Carey's Billboard Record - TMZ

1. Lil Nas X On How He'll Celebrate Beating Mariah Carey's Billboard Record  TMZ
2. Lil Nas X Declines Potential Pete Buttigieg Collaboration  insidehook.com
3. Lil Nas X Jokes About How He'd Celebrate Beating Mariah Carey's Billboard Record  Billboard
4. View full coverage on Google News

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Sweden rebuffs Trump over US rapper charges, saying courts independent

Sweden on Friday dismissed an angry outburst from U.S. President Donald Trump after prosecutors charged U.S. rapper A$AP Rocky with assault, saying the country's judicial system was independent of political interference. Best known for his song "Praise the Lord", the 30-year-old performer, producer and model, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was detained about three weeks ago following a street altercation with two men in Stockholm on June 30. Trump added: "We do so much for Sweden but it doesn't seem to work the other way around.

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2 North Carolina bomb squad agents injured in explosion

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Why Democrats Are Further Away From Impeachment Than Ever

On Friday afternoon House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) filed a petition to obtain secret grand jury information currently redacted from the Mueller Report. With articles of impeachment under consideration, this informational probe is “in effect” the same as an impeachment inquiry, according to Nadler, who also called the information “critically important.” Next week Nadler is also expected to file a lawsuit to attempt to enforce a subpoena against former White House counsel Donald McGahn. But how significant are Nadler’s moves now that special counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony on Capitol Hill is widely acknowledged to have fizzled, left-wing activists such as billionaire and Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer are turning their attention back to climate change—and Congress is heading toward a six-week-long recess?Fred Wertheimer, a veteran ethics activist and president of Democracy 21, believes Nadler’s move is only a cosmetic change to reflect changing party sentiments. “That’s what they’ve been doing since March. When they announced they would investigate three areas regarding the president: obstruction of justice, public corruption, and abuses of power. They have had articles of impeachment pending referred to the committee months and months ago . . . the investigation they have been conducting since March is the equivalent of an inquiry into whether they should consider impeachment,” he told the National Interest.

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Moscow police arrest hundreds at rally for fair elections

Russian police arrested more than 300 people as they gathered in Moscow on Saturday to demand free and fair elections, a monitor said, following a crackdown on the opposition. The rally comes a week after the capital's biggest demonstration in years, when some 22,000 people protested the authorities' decision to block opposition candidates from standing for the city council in September. Investigators raided the homes and headquarters of several disqualified candidates in the run-up to the fresh rally on Saturday.

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Mueller’s Testimony: A Complete Disaster for Liberals

If Democrats believed that Robert Mueller would provide them with additional ammunition for an impeachment inquiry, they made an extraordinary miscalculation.Not only was Mueller often flustered and unprepared to talk about his own report—we now have to wonder to what extent he was even involved in the day-to-day work of the investigation—but he was needlessly evasive. In the end, he seriously undermined the central case for impeachment of President Donald Trump.The very first Republican to question him, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Rep. Doug Collins, forced Mueller to correct his own opening statement. In it, the former FBI director had asserted that the independent counsel “did not address collusion, which is not a legal term.”Stressing the difference between the criminal conspiracy and the colloquial “collusion” is a popular way of obscuring the fact that the central conspiracy pushed by Democrats, one that plunged the nation into two years of hysterics and fantasy, had been debunked by Mueller.Moreover, as Collins pointed out, Mueller’s own report stated that “collusion” and criminal conspiracy were basically “largely synonymous.”When asked to explain this contradiction, Mueller stammered for a few minutes before saying he would “leave it with the report.” Collins pointed out that, yes, the report stated that the terms “collusion” and “conspiracy” were synonymous, Mueller was forced to admit, “Yes.”It didn’t get better from there. Mueller didn’t know where some of the most infamous quotes in his own report had emanated. He claimed to be unfamiliar with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele, the Clinton—and DNC—funded contractors who originated and then propelled the Trump-Russian collusion theory.

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The Secret History of Washing Machines

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Climate change warning as Arctic Circle burning at record rate

An unprecedented outbreak of wildfires in the Arctic has sent smoke across Eurasia and released more carbon dioxide in two months than the Czech Republic or Belgium does in a year. As 44C heatwaves struck Europe, scientists observed more than 100 long-lasting, intense fires in the Arctic in June, the hottest month on record, and are seeing even more in July, according to Mark Parrington of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. Mostly in Alaska and Russia, the infernos have collectively released more than 120 million tonnes of CO2, more than the annual output of most countries. It is the most carbon emitted since satellite monitoring began in the early 2000s. This will further exacerbate climate change and has sent smoke pouring toward more populated parts of the world. Pollutants can persist more than a month in the atmosphere and spread thousands of kilometres. “You ask people about the Arctic, they think ice, polar bears, a clean environment, but clearly that's changing and that's no longer the case,” Mr Parrington said. “It should be an alarm bell that something isn't right, but the way it could directly affect them is the long-range transfer of smoke pollution. I don't think it's getting as far as western Europe just yet but that could happen.” The huge amounts of carbon from the fires will exacerbate climate change Credit: Maxar Technologies via AP While some have estimated that up to half a million kilometres have burned worldwide this year, Russia has been especially hard hit. Already, dangerous levels of smoke pollution have been reported this week in the cities of Chelyabinsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk, where a curtain of smog turned the daytime sun a deep red. The number of patients in some cardiac wards have reportedly doubled. Fires first erupted in the peatlands of northern Siberia in June and have been joined by blazes in the massive boreal forests south of the Arctic circle. More than 30,000 square kilometres of Russian territory are currently burning, already about as much as in 2018 and twice as much as in 2017. This has created a 4.5 million square kilometre “smoke lid” that reaches as far east as the Pacific Ocean and as far south as Kazakhstan. To the west, thick smoke haze has drifted into more populated parts of the country, obscuring the streets of cities like Yekaterinburg and Perm and being detected all the way in Kazan on the Volga River. “This morning I thought a rubbish bin was burning outside the window, but it hasn't passed, the smoke is staying there,” Yekaterinburg resident Yevgenia Panasyuk told local television. Impressive extent of heavy smoke across much of central Russia/Siberia, Alaska & Canada from numerous intense boreal & Arcticwildfires shows up in latest Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service aerosol optical depth forecast https://t.co/N5E33mccshpic.twitter.com/br0kkT02HY— Mark Parrington (@m_parrington) July 24, 2019 Once rare in the cold, wet tundra and forests, fires in the Arctic, which is warming at twice the world average, have been flaring up with increasing frequency. The Copernicus satellite system has observed an average of 50 to 60 Arctic hotspots on summer days since it began monitoring in 2003. This summer it has been seeing about 250 per day. And while in the past Arctic blazes would typically go out in a few days, the duration of this year's fires, many of which of have been burning for nearly two months, is shocking, Mr Parrington said. The long-term effects could be dire. Already in June, fires began to deposit soot known as “black carbon” on Arctic sea ice, accelerating its melt. Russia has mobilised 2,715 personnel and 28 aircraft but they are only fighting fires in about 1,500 square kilometres of territory. A brush fire burns in South Anchorage, Alaska Credit: Loren Holmes/Anchorage Daily News via AP Like in Alaska and Canada, not all fires here receive a response. Since 2015, Russia has declined to combat blazes in vast, remote “control zones” unless they threaten towns. “The logic is clear, we need to save money,” the head of the Krasnoyarsk region said this month. But the policy of leaving fires alone until they spread to populated areas has resulted in an “environmental disaster at a national level,” Greenpeace Russia said on Friday. It claimed that hundreds of villages were within the control zones, calling on these boundaries to be redrawn and for the government to send additional firefighting forces to defend villages. Also on Friday, a study published in Science found that some Alaskan glaciers were melting 100 times faster than previously thought. Drawing on data about the terminus of a glacier in LeConte Bay collected by local high students since 1983, scientists scanned the glacier with sonar, radar and time-lapse cameras for two summers to discover that the underwater part of it was melting up to 16 feet per day in August. Their results have demonstrated that glaciers are more sensitive to warming ocean temperatures than researchers had known.

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Family speaks out after girl with special needs was brutally attacked by multiple teens in viral video

The family of a 15-year-old Chicago girl with special needs said she is doing OK after she was brutally beaten by a group of teenagers.

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Student group says Harvard failed to address racist messages

An association of black students at Harvard Law School says the university "woefully failed to act" after four students received offensive emails and text messages from an anonymous sender. The Harvard Black Law Students Association issued a statement on Friday criticizing the school after it was unable to determine who sent the "hateful, racist and sexist" messages, and after officials refused to share details of an investigation with students who received the messages. Harvard officials say the case was investigated by university police, information technology officials and an outside law firm hired by the school, but they have been unable to determine who was behind the messages.

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3 Dividend Aristocrats to Buy and Hold Forever - Motley Fool

3 Dividend Aristocrats to Buy and Hold Forever  Motley Fool

Air Products & Chemicals, Ecolab, and McCormick generate gobs of cash, pay handsome dividends, and are likely to survive for decades to come.

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The Mueller Report’s Fundamental Dodge

Editor’s Note: This is the first article in a two-part series; the second will appear tomorrow.Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony was such a bumbling fiasco that it was easy for a viewer to be confused -- and stay that way -- about the main bone of Democratic contention regarding his report: the “OLC guidance” that prevents the Justice Department from charging a president with crimes while he is in office. Specifically, how did it factor into the special counsel’s decision -- or, rather, non-decision -- on the main question he was appointed to answer: Did President Trump obstruct justice? How did the special counsel’s dubious reliance on it as a rationale for abdicating on this question affect the publication and ramifications of the Mueller report?We’ve plowed this ground before, but it is worth revisiting. We will do that in this weekend’s two-part series. This is Part 1.The OLC GuidanceThe OLC is the Office of Legal Counsel, the lawyers’ lawyers in the Justice Department who formulate policies that guide federal prosecutors throughout the United States. The OLC guidance at issue in the Mueller investigation is the prohibition on indicting a sitting president. This rule is said to be derived from constitutional and prudential considerations.I do not believe the guidance is sound. But that’s beside the point: The guidance is binding on Justice Department lawyers, period. That means it is also binding on special counsels. By regulation, they are firmly in the Justice Department chain of command.Consequently, the OLC guidance applied to Mueller’s investigation of President Trump. In particular, it was relevant to the obstruction aspect of the probe, which was always a criminal investigation. (For reasons that need not divert us, the “collusion” part of the case was pretextually conducted as a counterintelligence investigation.)Because (a) the president was the principal subject of the obstruction probe and (b) the objective of such a criminal investigation is to indict wrongdoers, the pertinence of the OLC guidance is obvious. The question is: What is the effect of its application?Until Mueller’s investigation, I would have thought this was straightforward. The president may not be indicted while in office. Notice: This does not mean the president may not be investigated while in office; nor does it mean the president may never be indicted. The investigation may proceed while a president serves his term; if the prosecutor finds sufficient evidence to charge a criminal offense, an indictment may be obtained from the grand jury as soon as a president is out of office.That is, just as in any other case, the criminal allegation must be investigated, and a charging decision must be made. The only difference is: If the case is judged worthy of indictment, the indictment must be deferred until a president leaves office. This is key: The point of the guidance is not to give presidents a special defense that is unavailable to other Americans. Presidents are not above the law. The guidance is not of substantive significance; it is merely a matter of timing: In deference to the awesome responsibilities of the presidency, we do not permit the chief executive to be burdened during his term by the consuming effort and anxiety of defending against a criminal charge. Presidents are not spared forever from these burdens that other accused persons must bear, just while in office.Democrats Push Mueller to Contradict ReportThat, however, is not how the OLC guidance was construed by Mueller -- or, I should say in light of Mueller’s patent unfamiliarity with the Mueller probe, by whoever on the special counsel staff was actually running the investigation.The staff took the position that the OLC guidance did not just forbid the indictment of a sitting president. Its logic, they insisted, rendered it impermissible even to consider whether there was sufficient evidence to indict a sitting president.That’s ridiculous. But before we come its incoherence and disingenuousness, let’s deal with why the special counsel’s theory was critical to Mueller’s testimony.Democrats would like to impeach the president. The best way to lay the groundwork for that would be to establish Trump’s commission of a felony. To be sure, presidential misconduct need not qualify as a penal-law felony to qualify as an impeachable offense. Yet, if an abuse of power does amount to a felony, the case for impeachment is much stronger. Therefore, Democrats want to be able to argue that Mueller, the renowned prosecutor who vigorously investigated for nearly two years, authoritatively concluded that Trump committed felony obstruction.Of course, Mueller made no such finding. For Democrats, the next best thing is to establish that Mueller in effect concluded that Trump committed felony obstruction but was prevented from filing charges by a technicality. That is, they wanted Mueller to testify that if it were not for the OLC guidance, he would have called for the president’s indictment.The problem: That’s not what Mueller’s report says. In the report, the special counsel took the position that, because of the OLC guidance, it would have been impermissible for prosecutors even to consider indicting the president. So, he did not, in effect, find felony obstruction. If you believe the report on this (I don’t, by the way), the special counsel’s staff never weighed the evidence for purposes of making a charging decision, one way or the other.The main reason Democrats foolishly pressured Mueller into testifying was the hope that he would abandon the restraint of his report. They calculated that they could push him or trick him into saying that but for the OLC guidance, he would have charged the president.Fleetingly, after a couple of excruciating hours, Democrats got this concession out of the badgered and befuddled special counsel during questioning by Representative Ted Lieu (D., Calif.). But Representatives Debbie Lesko (R., Ariz.) and John Ratcliffe (R., Texas) swooped in to clean up the mess. So did the special counsel himself. Right after the lunch recess, having clearly been coached regarding his blunder, Mueller clarified (if you can call it that) that he had misspoken, and he reaffirmed “his” report. Bottom line: Mueller would not testify that, if not for the OLC guidance, the president would have been indicted. He says his team never considered indicting Trump, never evaluated whether there was enough evidence to charge obstruction.The Distortion of the OLC Guidance by Mueller’s StaffLegally, Mueller’s interpretation of the OLC guidance is absurd. A prosecutor has only one job: to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This is elucidated by federal regulations: The special counsel must prepare “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions.” There is no third way. There is no authorization to evade what Mueller’s transgressive staff described as the “traditional,” “binary” prosecutorial decision to charge or not to charge.The regs design the special counsel to be an ordinary federal prosecutor. When I was a line prosecutor, my boss was the district U.S. attorney. Analogously, the special counsel is a line prosecutor whose boss is the attorney general. My job was to investigate cases and make a recommendation to my chain of command to indict or decline prosecution. Mueller’s job was to make that same recommendation to the AG. If Mueller had found sufficient evidence to file charges, it would then have been up to the AG to decide (a) whether to accept that recommendation and (b) whether to delay indictment until the president left office, in accordance with the OLC guidance.That is to say: The OLC guidance on the timing of an indictment has nothing to do with whether there is a prosecutable case. There is no justification for freighting the charging decision with the timing issue.Again, the OLC guidance does not say the president may never be indicted, just that he may not be indicted while in office. Plainly, then, regardless of when an indictment is filed, somebody has to make the decision about whether an indictment should be filed. Under Mueller’s harebrained theory, we should not expect the prosecutor who spends $40 million investigating the case for two years to make this call; rather, some other prosecutor should reinvent the wheel -- retrieve the file, reassemble the evidence, get up to speed on the record, re-interview all the witnesses, etc. -- after Trump leaves office, whether that’s a year and a half or five and a half years from now. We should just pretend the ride Mueller & Co. have taken us on since May 2017 never happened.That’s batty. So what is Mueller’s rationale for such a procedure? Well, that’s even more laughable: Mueller would have you think he’s just trying to protect President Trump.A likely story, no? We’ll see when we explore it in Part 2, tomorrow.

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UPDATE 1-Eight killed in quake, aftershocks in Philippines, 60 injured - agency

An earthquake and aftershocks struck islands off the north of the Philippines on Saturday killing eight people and injuring 60, disaster officials said. An initial quake of magnitude 5.4 that struck the Batanes islands was followed shortly by an aftershock of magnitude 5.9, according to Philippine government data. Another big aftershock struck a little later.

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US, Guatemala sign agreement to restrict asylum cases

The Trump administration signed an agreement with Guatemala that will restrict asylum applications to the U.S. from Central America. The "safe third country" agreement would require migrants, including Salvadorans and Hondurans, who cross into Guatemala on their way to the U.S. to apply for protections in Guatemala instead of at the U.S. border. It could potentially ease the crush of migrants overwhelming the U.S. immigration system, although many questions remain about how the agreement will be executed.

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Massive manhunt in Canadian wilderness for teen murder suspects

Two teen triple murder suspects on the run in the central Canadian wilderness -- perhaps holed up in thick, insect-infested forest inhabited by wolves and bears,-- were staying one step ahead of a massive police manhunt Friday. Since Tuesday, the village of Gillam near Hudson Bay has been on the alert for Kam McLeod, 19, and Bryer Schmegelsky, 18, who are wanted for three murders. The fugitives wound up near the Manitoba province village located 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) north of Winnipeg after an epic 2,000-mile chase across three provinces that began in British Columbia, on the Pacific coast, where their three victims were discovered earlier this month.

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'Unprecedented': more than 100 Arctic wildfires burn in worst ever season

Huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska are producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from spaceThe Arctic is suffering its worst wildfire season on record, with huge blazes in Greenland, Siberia and Alaska producing plumes of smoke that can be seen from space.The Arctic region has recorded its hottest June ever. Since the start of that month, more than 100 wildfires have burned in the Arctic circle. In Russia, 11 of 49 regions are experiencing wildfires.The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations’ weather and climate monitoring service, has called the Arctic fires “unprecedented”.The largest blazes, believed to have been caused by lightning, are located in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Buryatia. Winds carrying smoke have caused air quality to plummet in Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia.In Greenland, the multi-day Sisimiut blaze, first detected on 10 July, came during an unusually warm and dry stretch in which melting on the vast Greenland ice sheet commenced a month earlier than usual.In Alaska, as many as 400 fires have been reported. The climatologist Rick Thomas estimated the total area burned in the state this season as of Wednesday morning at 2.06m acres.Mark Parrington, senior scientist with the Climate Change Service and Atmosphere Monitoring Service for Europe’s Copernicus Earth Observation Programme, described the extent of the smoke as “impressive” and posted an image of a ring of fire and smoke across much of the region.Thomas Smith, an environmental geographer at the London School of Economics, told USA Today fires of such magnitude have not been seen in the 16-year satellite record.The fires are not merely the result of surface ignition of dry vegetation: in some cases the underlying peat has caught fire. Such fires can last for days or months and produce significant amounts of greenhouse gases.“These are some of the biggest fires on the planet, with a few appearing to be larger than 100,000 hectares,” Smith said.“The amount of [carbon dioxide] emitted from Arctic circle fires in June 2019 is larger than all of the CO2 released from Arctic circle fires in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together.”In June alone, the WMO said, Arctic fires emitted 50 megatonnes of CO2, equal to Sweden’s total annual emissions.

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Trump news - live: Impeachment chances grow after bid to unseal grand jury evidence, as president attacks Macron and threatens Obama probe

Democrats have again raised the prospect of Donald Trump’s impeachment as the US House judiciary committee asked a judge to force the release of grand jury evidence from the Mueller investigation.The request, filed on Friday, explicitly referenced Congress’ impeachment powers and is a major step forward in the Democrats' legal fight against the US president.It comes as Mr Trump threatened to investigate Barack Obama “the way they’ve looked into me”. Please allow a moment for the liveblog to load:In statements given in the Oval Office, the US president suggested the attention given to his ties to Russia and possible obstruction of justice could apply to other presidents. Mr Trump also hit out at French president Emmanuel Macron, accusing him of “foolishness” after Paris announced a tax aimed at US technology companies.He also hinted that he would tax French wine in retaliation, adding that he preferred American wine despite being a know teetotaller.Meanwhile, the US Supreme Court gave his administration the green light to spend $2.5bn from a military budget on building a border wall.A trial court had previously said the money could not be switched from the Pentagon towards construction of a wall on the US-Mexico border. But on Friday the nation’s highest court permitted constriction to continue while litigation over the issue played out.

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CORRECTED-WIDER IMAGE-Reuters photo captures Guatemalan mother begging soldier to let her enter U.S.

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