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Dec 29, 2019

Biden clarifies remark that he will not comply with Senate subpoena - Fox News

Biden clarifies remark that he will not comply with Senate subpoena Fox NewsView full coverage on Google News

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Theon Greyjoy's Body Double on 'Game of Thrones' Died on Christmas Eve - TMZ

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Week 17 NFL odds, picks, schedule, how to watch and stream: Expert picks against the spread, lines and more - CBS Sports

Week 17 NFL odds, picks, schedule, how to watch and stream: Expert picks against the spread, lines and more CBS Sports
Giants vs. Eagles: Week 17 staff picks and predictions Giants Wire
Key questions for NFL Week 17 msnNOW
Week 17 NFL Picks Against the Spread and Over/Under BettingPros
NFL Playoff Picture: What to Watch for, What’s at Stake in Week 17 Sports Illustrated
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Lakers' LeBron James, Kyle Kuzma Spoke About Trainer's Social Media Comments - Bleacher Report

Lakers' LeBron James, Kyle Kuzma Spoke About Trainer's Social Media Comments Bleacher Report
Clippers' Kawhi Leonard honored as AP male athlete of the year for 2019 ESPN
A 6'10'' Anthony Davis Stumbling Into Kevin Hart's Lap Has Created The Perfect Holiday Meme Blavity
Trainer of Kyle Kuzma, Kawhi Leonard takes shots at LeBron James ClutchPoints
Former Aztecs star Kawhi Leonard named AP Male Athlete of Year The San Diego Union-Tribune
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Rocket fire kills US contractor in Iraq, raises fears of escalation

A rocket attack in Iraq killed a US civilian contractor, raising fears on Saturday that violence could escalate in the protest-hit country already engulfed in its worst political crisis in decades. Washington recently promised "a decisive US response" to a growing number of unclaimed attacks on its interests in Iraq, which it blames on pro-Iran factions. US-Iran tensions have soared since Washington pulled out of a landmark nuclear agreement with Tehran last year and imposed crippling sanctions.

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The Democratic candidates whose supporters are most pro-impeachment are not who you expect

There's some variation in support for impeachment among the Democratic presidential candidates' supporters, according to recent Insider polling.

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Japan police find human remains in boat suspected from North Korea: Coast Guard

Japanese police found the remains of at least five people in a wooden boat suspected to be from North Korea on the coast of one of Japan's outlying islands on Saturday, a Coast Guard official said. Police made the discovery in the wooden boat's stem around 9:30 a.m. (0030 GMT) on Saturday on Sado island, which is off the coast of Japan's northwestern prefecture of Niigata, Coast Guard official Kei Chinen said.

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Netanyahu’s Big Win Means His Party Is in Real Trouble

JERUSALEM—After weeks of bad news, Thursday was a very good night for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who faced the first serious challenge to his leadership of the Likud party since 2005.At the end of a tense, stormy primary day, in which Netanyahu’s side emitted text messages with invented commandments—“thou shalt not betray”—and supporters of his opponent, Gideon Saar, cried foul over electoral misbehavior, Netanyahu won, convincingly.The final result was 72.5 percent for Netanyahu, and 27.5 percent for Saar, a former minister who ran on a nationalist agenda a notch harsher than Netanyahu’s and argued for a return to civility and decency in politics.The only way to guarantee the continuation of the right-wing’s monopoly over the Israeli government was for new leadership to take over in the Likud, Saar said.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Will Be Indicted. But Will He Step Down?Netanyahu failed to win a majority of votes in two successive elections held this year, in April and in September, and has presided over the Israeli government as an interim prime minister, with limited powers, for a full year.A ruthless political operator, Netanyahu has never nurtured successors. Most of the men who have served him, including former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and former Education Minister Naftali Bennet found themselves out of the Likud when their popularity began to threaten Netanyahu.Saar is the only prominent Likud figure with the courage to state out loud what the Israeli public already knows: there is no path for Netanyahu to form a new government after the national elections on March 2, 2020.In fact, the exuberance at this victory among the party faithful could fade as early as Sunday, when Avichai Mandelblit, the Israeli attorney general, has been forced to produce his opinion on a legal conundrum never before seen here.In November, Mandelblit announced a raft of corruption charges against Netanyahu, including bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.In order to protect a legally elected head of government from frivolous legal challenges, an Israeli Basic Law—a constitutional act—allows an indicted prime minister to serve out his or her term in office even while facing trial.But another law legislated by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, does not allow any indicted person to be appointed to high office.Neither of these laws has ever been tested. Israel’s Supreme Court, which is grappling with several petitions claiming Netanyahu cannot legally remain in office, has compelled Mandelblit to present his decision on Netanyahu’s ability to continue in office, a sort of forced amicae curiae, by Sunday.In the coming months, the court will rule on Netanyahu’s fitness for office as a candidate under criminal indictment.Blue and White—the Likud’s opposition in the general election, which bested Netanyahu’s party in September—is led by the centrist former army chief, Benny Gantz, who ran on clean government platform. Throughout the failed coalition talks, he said his party hoped to form a broad national unity government with the Likud— but would not serve with an indicted criminal.Saar, during the primary, claimed that Gantz would win the March vote if the Likud was not able to renew its leadership, offering a new coalition government, and that Netanyahu’s stubborn hold on power would bring defeat.Knowing he faced serious charges, Netanyahu has been scrambling to evade judgement. The law allows him to remain in office, but not to evade trial. During the last year, Netanyahu has tried to pass a personal immunity law through the Knesset and, created an even greater public uproar, tried to pass a law that would override supreme court decisions.But having failed, but he will now run a scorched earth campaign aimed at a single target: a large enough parliamentary majority to pass an immunity law.Before the primary results were even announced, Netanyahu confidant Miki Zohar, a rambunctious Knesset member for the Likud, said, “Netanyahu got the answer about whether he should ask for immunity.”But Netanyanhu’s big night may result in very bad news for his party, the Likud, who will be running an indicted candidate who’s twice lost and wants only one thing: legal immunity, which the voters hate. Israelis are generally indulgent about Netanyahu’s various offences and peccadillos, but deeply oppose parliamentary immunity, and Gantz accuses him of seeking only an “immunity government,” not a real governing coalition, and of holding the nation hostage to his legal imbroglios. Netanyahu Is Using Trump's Tactics to Try to Survive His Corruption and Bribery ScandalIn May, when Netanyahu presented the initial bills, 62% of the Israel public opposed immunity for Netanyahu. Recent polls show that figure now above 70%, from voters across the political spectrum.Netanyahu has until January 1 to request immunity against the criminal charges, but would need a majority of members to support it—and, for now, he hasn’t got it. The primary victory is expected to emboldened him to demand parliamentary support from the entire right wing block.If Netanyahu does not succeed whipping a majority of Israel's 120 lawmakers to support immunity, he will be put on trial in Jerusalem immediately after the next government is formed.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.

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Pete Buttigieg's Christmas tweet inadvertently sparked a war over whether Jesus was a poor refugee

Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and top-tier 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, tweeted a Christmas message: "Today I join millions around the world in celebrating the arrival of divinity on earth, who came into this world not in riches but in poverty, not as a citizen but as a refugee. No matter where or how we celebrate, merry Christmas." In 2019, those are apparently fighting words.Some conservative Christians protested that Joseph, the terrestrial father of Jesus of Nazareth, wasn't poor — though it's hard to see how a carpenter from an otherwise insignificant village in Galilee would be well-off — or faulted Buttigieg for not saying "Jesus" in his tweet. "But it was perhaps Buttigieg’s classification of Jesus as a refugee — a common line among the Christian left — that received almost immediate pushback from evangelicals," says The Washington Post's Eugene Scott.The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh tied the criticisms together in one tweet, and he got some pushback from Jack Jenkins, a religion reporter with a master's degree in divinity from Harvard.> Hi! Religion reporter here. > > Christians who argue Jesus was a refugee are typically referring to what happened AFTER Jesus was born, when Mary, Joseph, and the newborn child fled to Egypt. > > This exegesis is easily Google-able. Or you could just, you know, read it in the Bible. https://t.co/DBL1by2maW> > — Jack Jenkins (@jackmjenkins) December 26, 2019Walsh, who is Catholic, argued back that Jesus wasn't a refugee because Galilee and Egypt were both part of the Roman Empire. Fr. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who's nobody's idea of a theological conservative, explained in 2017 why Jesus and his family were clearly refugees, at least according to the Gospel of Matthew. And fellow Jesuit priest Jeremy Zipple noted that Pope Benedict XVI — nobody's idea of a liberal — disagrees with Walsh, as did Pope Pius XII.> What an absurd position to take. Here’s Pope Benedict XVI quoting Pope Pius XII on this question. https://t.co/V7WXrIPUJr https://t.co/7Ee8CziytK pic.twitter.com/XTUlm0lXda> > — Jeremy Zipple (@jzipple) December 26, 2019Jesus' citizenship status "has real implications for how Christians on both sides of the aisle conduct policy" and view President Trump's hardline, restrictive immigration and refugee policies, Scott reports. And Buttigieg dropped his Christmas tweet into a tender moment for evangelicals being internally challenged to square their faith with their fealty to an unrepentantly flawed president. Read The Week's Bonnie Kristian on how evangelicals might fix this moral dissonance.More stories from theweek.com The evangelical resistance? The best novels published in 2019 Trump retweets, deletes post containing alleged whistleblower's name

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Australia fires: Minister says up to 30 per cent of koalas may have been lost in bushfire crisis

One of Australia’s most famous animals is now a threatened species, with the country’s bushfire crisis wiping out huge numbers of koalas. Sussan Ley, the environment minister said Friday that the Mid North Coast of New South Wales, home to a sizeable part of Australia’s koala population, may have lost 30 per cent of its koalas. In an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Ms Ley said 30 per cent of koala habitat had been destroyed in the region. She added: “We will know more when the fires are calmed down and a proper assessment can be made”. Before the fire crisis began it was estimated that up to 28,000 koalas lived in the Mid North Coast. Eight people have died in New South Wales alone, and about 3.4million hectares and almost 1,000 homes have been lost to the long-running bushfire crisis. Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia have also faced large, emergency-level fires this fire season. Australian wildfire status Early on Friday the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) issued a “very high fire danger rating” for many parts of the state. In a statement, the RFS said there were “almost 1,300 firefighters in the field. Over 70 bush and grass fires, 33 uncontained”. Late in the day, it warned that Saturday would see “widespread very high fire danger”. South Australia’s Country Fire Service (CFS) assistant chief officer Brenton Eden told The Advertiser that the state is extremely dry and the conditions and coming heatwave poses a serious threat. “We are seeing fire behaviour across SA, Victoria and NSW that we haven’t seen and experienced for a long time… These fires are now travelling immense distances and covering an enormous amount of the landscape before people are prepared either to defend their property or to get out,” he said. “Cudlee Creek has been the most classic example recently, together with Yorketown, of fires that have started from a very small ignition source… The CFS responded within minutes to them and had no capacity to bring them under control.” Mr Eden warned that the two fires that have burnt through a total of 42,300 hectares of land at Cudlee Creek in the Adelaide Hills, and in Duncan, on Kangaroo Island, would continue to burn for weeks. “It’s tinder dry and ready to burn and that’s what we’re seeing at the moment,” he said. As the crisis continues there is renewed pressure on Scott Morrison, the prime minister, to reform Australia’s firefighting services and infrastructure. Weeks after he rejected calls to transform Australia’s largely volunteer bush firefighting services into professional organisations, one of Mr Morrison’s own senior Ministers has called for change. As three large fires raged in his electorate of Gippsland, Victoria, Veterans' Affairs Minister and Nationals MP Darren Chester said this week that there is strong support among his constituents to pay volunteers when they worked for extended periods. Veteran NSW fire fighter Brendan Hurley, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, said: “I've been a firefighter for 20 years and these fires have delivered the worst conditions I've ever faced. We have been responding to bushfires since the end of September and it is fair to say that as we move further into the campaign fatigue is setting in.” And one week after the uproar over Mr Morrison's Hawaiian holiday, New South Wales Emergency Services Minister David Elliott is leaving the country for a trip to the UK and France. His office said the Minister would not cancel his trip, but in a statement Mr Elliott said he would return home, “if the bushfire situation should demand it”. Mr Morrison’s Liberal Party is also in power at a state level in New South Wales.

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'The Issue Is Not What I Did.' Joe Biden Says He Would Not Comply With Subpoena to Testify in Trump Impeachment Trial

"The reason I wouldn’t is because it’s all designed to deal with Trump doing what he’s done his whole life: trying to take the focus off him," Joe Biden said.

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Philippines bans two U.S. senators, considers tighter entry restrictions for U.S. citizens

The Philippines has banned two U.S. lawmakers from visiting and will introduce tighter entry restrictions for U.S. citizens should Washington enforce sanctions over the detention of a top government critic, President Rodrigo Duterte's spokesman said on Friday.

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Photos show scenes of devastation after a plane carrying 98 people crashed in Kazakhstan, killing at least 12

The Bek Air flight from Almaty to Nusultan plunged into a building in the village of Almerek just after take-off on Friday, amid foggy conditions.

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Russia and Ukraine drop mutual gas claims worth millions

The gas companies of Ukraine and Russia have agreed to drop all financial claims worth billions of pounds against each other in the latest rapprochement between the two nations bitterly divided by a separatist conflict. Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said in an interview broadcast on Russian state television on Friday that the two countries are withdrawing all of their lawsuits against each other after they agreed on a gas transit deal last week. Russian gas giant Gazprom, which relies on Ukraine as its single largest transit route to Europe, last week agreed to pay out $2.9 billion (£2.2 billion) to Ukraine stemming from a previous dispute over transit fees. The parties will now withdraw all financial claims that run up millions of pounds on both sides. Ukraine, for one, has managed to secure a freeze of Gazprom’s assets in several countries such as Great Britain, Switzerland and the Netherland. Those assets will now be released. Mr Novak on Friday hailed the deal as “mutually beneficial” and said that courts would otherwise have taken years to rule on those claims. A Gazprom petrol station in Moscow “It’s a good thing,” he said in the interview. “It was important for us to start our relations with a clean slate on January 1.” The two neighboring countries have been hostile to each other since 2014 when Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and threw its weight behind separatists in eastern Ukraine. Moscow still claims the annexation of Crimea was legal and denies reports of sending troops and weapons to back the separatist rebels. Both countries have, however, been making small steps towards rapprochement since Ukraine elected its new president, former comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy in April. Mr Zelenskiy and Russian President Vladimir Putin negotiated a major prisoner exchange earlier this year and agreed at a summit meeting earlier this month to release more prisoners by the end of the year.

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Dec 28, 2019

U.S. Contractor Is Killed in Rocket Attack on an Iraqi Base

(Bloomberg) -- A rocket attack on an Iraqi military base killed an American contractor and wounded several U.S. and Iraqi military personnel, the Defense Department said on Friday evening.Iraqi security forces were “leading the response and investigation” following the Friday night assault on the base in Kirkuk, where coalition forces are based, the Pentagon said in a statement.The names of the contractor and the wounded Americans were not immediately released, and the statement did not provide any further details.Rocket assaults on or near Iraqi installations that host American troops and personnel have occurred since the fall, and Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Mark Esper, have expressed increasing concern about Iranian involvement.Those attacks occurred as widespread anti-government protests intensified, eventually leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi.Tensions have been rising across the region, with Iran violently putting down its own protests, and Turkey invading Kurdish territory in northern Syria after President Donald Trump announced a pullout of American forces there.Early this month, rockets were fired at two Iraqi air bases where American forces are stationed. Seven rockets struck the perimeter of the Al Asad base, and five projectiles landed inside Balad. At Al Asad, the Iraqi army later found a truck rigged to fire rockets with seven empty tubes and eight unfired projectiles.No one was hurt in those attacks, which were believed to be the work of militants with ties to Iran, according to a U.S. official.On Thursday, Iraqi President Barham Saleh offered to resign as weeks of deadly protests showed no sign of easing. Mahdi remains in office until a successor is found. Protesters rejected one nominee, and Saleh rejected the candidacy of a second.Some 500 people have died in clashes between security forces and protesters since Oct. 1, according to Iraq’s independent High Commission for Human Rights. Iraqis, mostly from the Shiite majority population, are protesting against corruption, poor services, and Iran’s sweeping influence in the country.\--With assistance from Khalid Al-Ansary and Tony Capaccio.To contact the reporter on this story: John Harney in Washington at jharney2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Larry Liebert, John HarneyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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Living the High Life on the Autoworkers' Dime

On a single day in December 2015, Gary Jones, who resigned last month as president of the United Auto Workers, spent more than $13,000 of the union's money at a cigar store in Arizona. His purchases included a dozen $268 boxes of Ashton Double Magnums and a dozen boxes of Ashton Monarchs at $274.50 each. "Hi Gary, Thank you & Happy New Year," read a handwritten note from the store.The purchases, documented by a federal complaint filed against a union leader in September, were part of more than $60,000 in cigars and cigar paraphernalia that Jones and other UAW officials expensed to the union between 2014 and 2018. And the cigar purchases were in turn just a small portion of the roughly $1 million in union money that court filings say UAW officials spent on golf outings, four-figure dinners and monthslong villa rentals during regular retreats in Palm Springs, California, and elsewhere.The scandal comes on top of an investigation into company and union officials' improper use of millions of dollars from a joint Fiat Chrysler-UAW training center. Jones' predecessor as president, Dennis Williams, is accused of encouraging the use of Fiat Chrysler funds meant for worker education as a way to pay for the extravagant spending in Palm Springs and other places.In direct financial terms, the scandals don't approach the scale of the corruption that plagued organized labor in the 1960s and '70s.But the stakes are nonetheless enormous, given the UAW's outsize influence over auto manufacturing, a pillar of the U.S. economy that generates hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue and employs hundreds of thousands of workers. The union's 40-day strike against General Motors this year cost the automaker an estimated $3 billion in profit. Last month, GM contended in a lawsuit that Fiat Chrysler had bribed the UAW to help it undermine GM by manipulating labor costs.And no one in the union had more influence over the industry than its two flawed former presidents.Williams, 66, who was president from 2014 to 2018, is a former welder and by most accounts a committed progressive but also a man susceptible to the perquisites of power. According to court documents, Williams and his team celebrated a Fiat Chrysler labor agreement they negotiated in 2015 with a $7,000 dinner paid for by the company. The agreement was so disliked by rank-and-file members that they soon took the highly unusual step of rejecting it.Jones, 62, a union accountant known both for asking colleagues to pray and for lashing them with profanity, is said to have used the illicit Palm Springs spending to win over union power brokers and help him secure the top job in 2018. As president, Jones led the UAW into its recent GM strike just weeks after federal agents raided his house and hauled away more than $30,000 in cash.Of the more than 15 current or former UAW officials interviewed for this article, most declined to comment on the record, citing an ethos of silence at the union or a fear of retribution. But together with government documents, the picture they paint of Jones and Williams suggests a leadership that has at times aspired more to the role of fat cat than defender of workers. The consequences for the rank and file may take decades to tally fully."There was a culture of corrupt activities spanning years. That's what we're trying to turn around," said Matthew Schneider, the U.S. attorney in Detroit, who is leading the investigation into the UAW. "The purpose of the union is not to serve the leadership. It is to serve the members."Jones and Williams have not been charged and appear in court filings only as "Official A" and "Official B," pseudonyms that two union officials told The Times refer to them, a fact that other news organizations have also confirmed. In an email, Bruce Maffeo, a lawyer representing Jones, dismissed the accusations as stemming "from public documents in which Gary was not charged."A person close to Williams rejected the accusation, first reported in The Detroit News, that he urged the diversion and misuse of training center funds.The 'Master Account'At the heart of the UAW embezzlement scandal, which dates back at least to 2013, was an elaborate hospitality tab known as the "master account." Union officials opened such accounts at hotels like the Renaissance Palm Springs, the site of an annual series of conferences. According to the federal complaint, union officials billed to this account not just rooms and food that they bought at the hotel but also a variety of other expenses weeks before and after the conferences.Union officials did conduct work at the meetings, including discussing contract enforcement and upcoming negotiations. But the gatherings also appeared to be a pretext for power brokers to enjoy a comfortable winter getaway.Among the expenses charged to the master account were the villas, which were tucked away in a gated community and cost about $5,000 a month, and dinners that ran into thousands of dollars. The bill for one meal at LG's Prime Steakhouse topped $6,500 and featured a $1,760 charge for four bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne.Union officials also spent more than $80,000 at the Indian Canyons Golf Resort in Palm Springs for green fees, shoes, golf bags, sunglasses, shirts and "fashion shorts," according to the complaint. They shipped many of these items home to Michigan on a semitruck.Williams, who was the UAW president for much of this period, was often the gravitational center of the Palm Springs sabbaticals. According to the federal complaint, the union paid for a monthlong stay for Williams at a villa in the winter of 2013-14. Two years later, the union paid for more than three months.In interviews, union officials said Williams would spend his days in Palm Springs conferring with aides and colleagues on the phone and in person, sometimes while playing golf. Nights were frequently given to socializing.Two former UAW officials recalled a night in which a few dozen people, including the wives of male officials, gathered at Williams' villa for pizza. The men gathered around a fire on the back patio where they smoked cigars, drank whiskey and discussed car restoration projects.The federal complaint said that friends of Williams who had "no legitimate reason to attend" union events joined him in Palm Springs on the UAW's dime.The arrangement helped create an in crowd and an out crowd at the union. Officials who were uneasy with the cigar-and-whiskey atmosphere in Palm Springs were left out and had more limited interactions with Williams. Three former officials said in interviews that they rarely saw him in Detroit during the winter.Other UAW officials, including those tasked with negotiating the union's contract with Fiat Chrysler, spent far more time in Palm Springs over the winter. These officials charged more than $25,000 in Palm Springs meals to the company in January 2015 alone, according to court documents.A person close to Williams said that Williams was frequently traveling away from Palm Springs on union business during the dates in which the villas were rented on his behalf. The person also said that no one enjoyed special influence over Williams as a result of additional face time with him.An Expansive FiefAccording to documents filed by prosecutors, the orchestrator of the master account was Jones, the UAW president who resigned in November.Jones spent more than a decade as an accountant and senior aide at the union's headquarters before 2004, when he became assistant director of the union's Region 5, then one of 11 geographic units.The UAW's regions are often run like fiefs, but Region 5, which was based in Missouri but sprawled all the way to the West Coast, was more fieflike than most.According to two Region 5 officials, the region's longtime director, Jim Wells, had a knack for extracting cash from members and staff, and there were few constraints on how he spent it. They said that under Wells, staff members were expected to buy a Region 5 jacket every four years at a cost of $1,000, ostensibly to support Wells' campaign for reelection as director.Elizabeth Bunn, who served as the UAW's second-ranking officer from 2002 to 2010, said that under Wells, Palm Springs was known as a place where officials could enjoy themselves at union expense for well beyond the length of a conference, although the behavior may have been legal. Bunn also recalled facing internal pressure while investigating wrongdoing in the region."A lot of people saw things and did not react with the moral clarity that they exercised in every other situation," she said.Wells died in 2012. A UAW press officer declined to comment on those complaints.Jones did not appear to blanch at this culture of financial laxness. At least as early as 2010, according to court filings, Jones and a colleague began submitting receipts that had already been reimbursed, or that they had manufactured, to a fund that supports the union's political efforts. The two men would split the reimbursement. Jones personally received hundreds of thousands of dollars from this scheme from 2010 to 2017, according to prosecutors.After Jones became regional director in 2012, he took an active role in directing the Palm Springs spending, prosecutors have asserted. UAW officials who wanted to play golf or buy golf apparel were told to charge the purchase to the Gary Jones "group," and the bill would flow to the master account at the Renaissance Hotel. The hotel declined to comment.A crucial purpose of the spending by Jones was to "curry favor with UAW 'Official B,' who also enjoyed the lavish lifestyle," according to the federal complaint, referring to Williams.In interviews, three union officials said it was clear that Jones was courting Williams in order to succeed him as president. One Region 5 official noted that Jones, who was not previously a regular cigar smoker, turned himself into a cigar aficionado in the mold of Williams after becoming regional director. The official said Jones acquired a few humidors for the regional headquarters in Hazelwood, Missouri.Colleagues said that despite their expensive tastes, Jones and Williams were a study in contrasts. Williams told fellow officials in the 2000s that he was a socialist. As union president, he hired consultants to bolster the union's organizing efforts in areas like higher education and technology, including those at the electric carmaker Tesla.Jones, by contrast, appeared to be more conservative and less interested in new organizing opportunities. He blocked a promising effort to organize thousands of research assistants within the University of California system, according to two officials.The officials said Jones feared that adding members in higher education would threaten his power base among blue-collar workers. When Jones would meet with graduate students, according to two Region 5 officials, he would often joke that "my major was partying" as a way to belittle their academic experience.In the end, the power of UAW regional directors is such that Williams, normally a charismatic leader, was unable to move Jones on some of his top organizing priorities, three current and former officials said. Jones also later pushed to let most of the union's Tesla organizers go."Gary started as a factory worker for Ford and dedicated over 40 years of his life as a member and officer of the UAW to improving the lives of that union's members and their families," said his lawyer, Maffeo.But Jones' intransigence did not stop his ascent within the union.When the union's board discussed whom to back for president in fall 2017, its members were aware that Williams supported Jones, according to several people close to the situation. They said the rest of the board quickly backed Jones as well, all but ensuring that he would take over the union at its convention the following June.These people said in interviews that Jones was the only viable candidate by this point, but two also said that Williams' support had helped ensure that this was the case.'Deliver a Clean Union'Since Jones resigned as president last month, the UAW board has replaced him with Rory Gamble, who previously oversaw the union's negotiations with Ford. Gamble has put forth reforms to "deliver a clean union on solid footing" by the time he retires from the post in 2022.They include regular audits of spending by programs run jointly with automakers, a new ethics officer and an ethics hotline. Gamble also announced that Jones' former region would be split into two pieces that would each be merged into another region.And he has indicated that he intends to press for more, unspecified changes. "We have a lot more stuff we're going to be doing," Gamble said in an interview.But many current and former UAW officials say that to be truly effective, the reforms must reduce the power of the union's board members. They said that cozy relationships among union leaders may have led them to tolerate questionable behavior by one another.Bob King, who was the union's president from 2010 to 2014, confronted colleagues about improper training center spending, according to court documents. He said in an interview that he had not sufficiently scrutinized Jones' former region, partly because he was focused on preserving unity among leadership."I do feel anger and responsibility," King said. "I should have been looking at some stuff more closely. I would really encourage the current board to not make the same mistakes."King said he supported the union's current reform efforts but urged it to go further. "They have to figure out how to create a system that is more open and transparent," he said. "It's not about a few bad apples."This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2019 The New York Times Company

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Quake strikes near Iran nuclear power plant

An earthquake struck Iran on Friday less than 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the country's only nuclear power plant, monitors said. The US Geological Survey said the 5.1 magnitude quake struck 44 kilometres (27 miles) from the southwestern city of Borazjan and at a depth of 38 kilometres. Its reported epicentre is 45 kilometres east of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, on the southwest Gulf coast.

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S Korea court rejects attempt to repeal Japan sex slave deal

South Korea’s Constitutional Court on Friday rejected a petition seeking the repeal of a 2015 deal with Japan settling a bitter dispute over Korean women enslaved for sex by the Japanese military during World War II. Friday’s ruling was in response to a petition by former sex slaves and their families who say the deal, which was made without their consent, undermined their dignity and infringed on their rights to participate in negotiations and seek fuller Japanese government compensation. The issue of sex slaves, euphemistically called "comfort women," has been a major source of friction between the two countries, both staunch U.S. allies.

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Japan hangs a Chinese man convicted of the murder of a family

Japan on Thursday hanged a Chinese man convicted of the murder of a family of four whose bodies were found handcuffed and weighted down with dumbbells in a bay, the justice minister said.

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Elizabeth Warren shakes up campaign style with more candid events, but still shies away from attacks

"I've just tried to change the proportion, so I just get more opportunity to hear what's top of mind for people," Elizabeth Warren told reporters.

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Reports: UK family drowned in Spain didn't know how to swim

Spanish news reports said Thursday that a member of the British family whose father and two children died in a swimming pool on Christmas Eve has told police that none of the three knew how to swim. Spanish private news agency Europa Press and other media outlets said the family member testified before Civil Guard police. No one was immediately available at the Civil Guard to comment on the report.

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Blumenthal: Some GOP 'have very severe misgivings' about McConnell impeachment strategy

Richard Blumenthal stated he believes some Senate Republicans are concerned with McConnell working with the White House on Trump's impeachment trial.

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President Trump shares article outing alleged Ukraine whistleblower on Twitter - Salon

President Trump shares article outing alleged Ukraine whistleblower on Twitter Salon
Trump Pushes Out Tweet Naming Alleged Whistleblower The Daily Beast
Hispanic voter: Don't think Trump has said racist things CNN
Whistleblower attorney demands Marsha Blackburn resign from protection caucus over hostile remarks Salon
Trump highlights article naming alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella Washington Examiner
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Military on high alert for North Korea 'gift' after Christmas passed without one - CNN

Military on high alert for North Korea 'gift' after Christmas passed without one CNNView full coverage on Google News

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Two Democratic senators banned from traveling to the Philippines - Washington Examiner

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The Secure Act changes the way people will inherit money — are you affected by the new rules? - MarketWatch

The Secure Act changes the way people will inherit money — are you affected by the new rules? MarketWatch
The 9th Tax Day of Christmas: The Roth Conversion Mark J Kohler
Inheriting a parent’s IRA or 401(k)? Here’s how the Secure Act could create a disaster MarketWatch
Why now might be a good time to save in a Roth 401(k) or Roth IRA CNBC
Week’s Best: The Secure Act and Roth Conversions Barron's
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