Palm Desert

Court filing: Manafort faces more than 19 years in prison

WASHINGTON (AP) — Paul Manafort, the one-time chairman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign, could spend more than 19 years in prison on tax and bank fraud charges, prosecutors said Friday.

Iran general says Pakistan backs group behind suicide bomb

Iran's Revolutionary Guards accused "Pakistan's security forces" of supporting the perpetrators of a suicide bombing that killed 27 troops on Wednesday, in remarks state TV aired Saturday. "Pakistan's government, who has housed these anti-revolutionaries and threats to Islam, knows where they are and they are supported by Pakistan's security forces," said Revolutionary Commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, referring to jihadist group Jaish al-Adl ("Army of Justice").

How Shamima Begum and two other schoolgirls from Bethnal Green became jihadi brides living under a deadly regime

According to her older sister Sahima, Shamima Begum was like any other 15-year-old girl, with the same hobbies, the same worries and infatuations which preoccupy the minds of most British teens. “She was into normal teenage things,” Sahima said. “She used to watch Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” At 15, Shamima’s young mind was filled with much more than the affairs of the most famous family in Hollywood. Four months before she was due to sit her GCSEs, Shamima — the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, by all accounts a “sensible girl” and a “talented and dynamic” student at the high-flying Bethnal Green Academy — was secretly planning to leave her family and the only home she had ever known in London’s East End, and travel to Syria to become a jihadi bride. Two of her school friends, Kadiza Sultana, then 16, and Amira Abase, 15, planned to accompany her, with the girls aiming to join another friend, Sharmeena Begum (no relation of Shamima), who had successfully travelled to Syria the year before. In an embarrassment for Scotland Yard, police had pulled a fifth girl from the group off the same flight Sharmeena was on without spotting the other girl. Two months later, it was the turn of the remaining three to make their escape. When CCTV footage emerged of three girls wearing hooded winter coats and thick-rimmed glasses, strolling through Gatwick Airport with smiles on their faces, they appeared so calm and casual they looked as if they might be going on a school trip, not about to board a one-way flight to the most dangerous corner of the world. Their secret plan to leave Britain had been formulated and executed with meticulous precision. The girls stole jewellery from family members which they sold to cobble together the money for flights (it’s thought they spent upwards of £1,000 on their one-way tickets — an amount their families said at the time they could have never afforded alone). They bought their tickets from a local travel agent, making sure there was some money left over. They had to make sure there was something left to pay the men who would smuggle them over the border into the Syrian war zone where Isil was carving out its caliphate. The Spring half term began and on the morning of February 17 2015, Shamima, Kadiza and Amira told their families they were going out for the day. One had a wedding, another said she was popping into school to do some work. Instead, they packed a small bag of hand luggage each, and headed to Gatwick, where they would board Turkish Airlines flight TK1966 at 12:40pm to Istanbul. A shopping list found in one of the girls’ bedrooms featured a reminder to pack underwear and a mobile phone. British teenagers Kadiza Sultana, Amira Abase and Shamima Begum in Raqqa Under the noses of the counterterrorism police who had spoken to them two months earlier after their friend Sharmeena fled to Syria, the girls began their journey. Four years later, one of them, Kadiza, is now known to have been killed in a Russian airstrike. Shamima, now 19, is alive and preparing to give birth to her third child (her first two died in infancy) in a refugee camp in northern Syria, having escaped Isil’s last remaining stronghold. Amira and Sharmeena were last seen alive in June in the remaining pocket of Isil-held territory. Shamima has lost two babies, her fighter husband is in captivity, and though she says she doesn’t regret coming to Syria, she has abandoned Isil at the 11th hour in an attempt to protect herself and her unborn child. For four years she has lived the life of a jihadi bride, witnessing the casual brutality of the regime on a daily basis and somehow escaping death herself. Now, she wants the ordeal to be over. She wants to come back home to Britain. Four years ago, almost to the day, the girls arrived in Istanbul and took a bus to the southern town of Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border. CCTV footage taken from a bus station showed them waiting with their bags. Another video, filmed by a smuggler called Mohammed Rashid (an Isil double agent who reportedly passed intelligence to the British and Canadian governments and was subsequently arrested by Turkish authorities), showed the girls clad in long black tunics trudging through a snowy landscape and clambering into a car. Renu, eldest sister of Shamima Begum, 15, holds her sister's photo  Credit: PA Calling one of the girls “Sis”, Rashid gave them Syrian passports and tested codenames they had apparently been given. “Who is Um Ahmed?” he asked, before telling them to “hurry” and assuring them they would be in Syria in “one hour”. They were taken to an illegal crossing point known as Abu Zella, north of Tal Abyad, where they were handed to a Saudi jihadist known as Abu Mohareb al-Jazrawi. He was part of an Isil cell charged with helping transport would-be foreign jihadists into Raqqa. He took the girls to a safe house which was used for new volunteers who had yet to be vetted. There, they checked the girls’ papers and confiscated their passports and identity cards. They stayed in the house for a day or two before another Isil smuggler, calling himself Abu Fahad, transferred them to Raqqa. The girls spent their first days in Isil’s caliphate under lock and key in an apartment in what was then the jihadists’ stronghold city. They were put in the care of a woman handler known as Um Laith — “Mother of the Lion” — tasked with “purifying their Western minds” by instilling the practices of Isil’s hardline vision of sharia law. Kadiza Sultana 16, Amira Abase 15 and Shamima Begum 15 Credit: Metropolitan Police  In their first weeks in the city the girls were not trusted by Raqqa’s Isil rulers, and were forbidden to leave their apartment without their chaperone. An Isil leader confirmed to the Telegraph at the time that they were being kept together and watched. “Until now we don’t trust them,” he said. Speaking to The Times from the refugee camp where she is now awaiting the birth of her baby, Shamima recalled asking to be taken to the maqar – the female-only communal lodging for unmarried or widowed women where they believed their old school friend was living. “We kept asking his wife ‘why are we here?’ We want to go to the house of women, we want to see our friend. She didn’t say anything to us and then afterwards we found out it was because they suspected we were spies.” All three girls were quickly married off. Kadiza is said to have wed a western Isil fighter of Somali heritage, but after he was killed in battle decided to try to return to the UK. Shortly after, however, in May 2016, she was reported killed in a Russian airstrike, aged 17. Amira married an 18-year-old Australian jihadist, Abdullah Elmir, in July 2016. Elmir, who was described in Australian media as the “Ginger Jihadi”, was later reported by intelligence agencies to have been killed in coalition airstrikes. Shamima, meanwhile, married a Dutchman who had converted to Islam. For a while, she says, life was “normal”. “Like the life that they show in the propaganda videos. It’s a normal life but every now and then there are bombs and stuff.” She didn’t witness any executions, but she did see “a beheaded head in the bin”, she told a journalist calmly from the refugee camp on Wednesday. “Yeah, it didn’t phase me at all.” The young woman who can be heard talking on the interview recording is composed and unemotional. She is asked if it was hard to lose two children. “It came as a shock,” she replies, calmly. “It just came out of nowhere, it was so hard.” It’s why she is “really overprotective of this baby”, she says. “I’m scared that this baby is going to get sick in this camp, that’s why I really want to get back to Britain because I know it will be taken care of, like healthwise at least.” She talks about her school friend Kadiza, who is now known to have died in a Russian airstrike. “Her house was bombed because underground there was some secret stuff going on and a spy had… they figured out that something was going on so her house got bombed. And other people got killed as well.” Kadiza’s elder sister, Fahmida Khanam refused to discuss her suspected death in an air raid, or the fate of her surviving companions. Abase Hussen, father of Amira, who was last seen in June, said he hoped his daughter was still alive. “She could always make us laugh,” he said. “That’s how I want to think of her, not what happened after. I hope she is still alive, but I don’t really know whether she is.” Islamic State losing its grip on Syria Mr Hussen has said before that he cannot understand his daughter’s descent into radicalisation, telling MPs in 2015 that he could think of “nothing” to explain the change in her. After she travelled to Syria, video emerged of Mr Hussen beside a burning US flag at the front of a rally organised by the hate preacher Anjem Choudary. In June 2015, Amira spoke to an undercover reporter from a Sunday newspaper after 30 Britons were shot dead by an Isil jihadist in Tunisia, mocking the victims. She appeared to be grooming the reporter, giving tips on how to reach Syria and what to bring. Last summer her mother, Fetia Hussen, said she had lost contact with her and feared she had died, but Shamima has confirmed to The Times that she was seen alive last June, along with Sharmeena Begum. On Wednesday night, Shamima’s sister Renu — who in 2015 said her sister was “young” and “vulnerable”, and she hoped she had gone to Syria to bring back Sharmeena, not to join Isil herself — pleaded with the government to allow her to come home. “She's pregnant and vulnerable, and it’s important we get her out of al-Hawl camp and home as soon as possible," she said. "We hope the British Government will help us bring her home to us where she belongs. "I’m so relieved that my sister has been found, safe and sound. We are aware that she has been trying to get out. We lost contact with her for the longest of time. We are happy to know that she is okay.” The father of Sharmeena Begum told the Telegraph yesterday [THURS] that his family had been left distraught by her decision to travel to join Isil. Mohammad Nizam Uddin said he had been unable to reconcile himself to her disappearance from home. Speaking from his flat on the top floor of a tower block overlooking London’s East End, the 42-year-old told The Telegraph: “We have heard nothing from her since she left. We do not know where she is. “As a father I urge the British Government to let these girls back into the country. Please let them come back. I want to see my daughter again. It is terrible she is not here, it is terrible for us.” Mr Uddin added: “I think they should be allowed to come home. When they went to Syria they were not mature and they had been radicalised.” They travelled out to Syria together, but as Isil loses its remaining grip on the region, just one of the girls from Bethnal Green is living in relative safety. Taken on a coach filled with fleeing Isil families to the camp in al-Hawl, Shamima is now waiting to deliver her third baby, and to learn of her fate, desperate to return to Britain. “The caliphate is over,” she says. “There was so much oppression and corruption that I don’t think they deserved victory.” Her friends would be “ashamed” of her if they are alive and have learnt that she has fled. “They made their choice as single women. For their husbands were already dead. It was their own choice as women to stay.” Now, she says, her priority is her baby. “I know what everyone at home thinks of me as I have read all that was written about me online. But I just want to come home to have my child. That’s all I want right now. I’ll do anything required just to be able to come home and live quietly with my child.”

The Ocasio-Cortez Party Turns Amazon’s NYC Plans Into HQ0

Amazon’s decision to pull out of a planned mega-campus in Long Island City, Queens, is more than a loss for Cuomo. Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio—two Democrats who rarely agree on anything—brokered a truce to put together a $3 billion tax break for Amazon.com Inc. that helped secure one half of a second headquarters.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Interviewed by Special Counsel’s Team

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sat for an interview with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators, she revealed Friday."The president urged me, like he has everyone in the administration, to fully cooperate with the special counsel. I was happy to voluntarily sit down with them," Sanders said.While the details of the interview are not public, one area investigators are interested in is how Trump crafted his public statements on the investigation, a matter Sanders would have knowledge of. As a public face of the administration, Sanders has made numerous statements defending the president's conduct as it pertains to the investigation.Former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former White House communications director Hope Hicks, former press secretary Sean Spicer, and other White House officials have also answered questions from Mueller's team.Mueller is expected to soon wrap up his investigation into Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 election. Then-acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker said in January that the investigation is "close to being completed."

Parkland shooting victims are remembered in silence

PARKLAND, Fla. (AP) — Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High and other schools across the U.S. bowed their heads in a moment of silence and took part in volunteer projects Thursday to mark the anniversary of the shooting rampage that claimed 17 lives. But for many Parkland students, the tragedy was still so raw they couldn't bring themselves to set foot in the building.

It Looks Like the Land Rover Discovery SVX Is Dead

This looks like another miss from Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations.

NASA mulls buying new rides to space from Russia amid program delays

The U.S. space agency has since had to rely on Russia's Roscosmos program to ferry astronauts to the orbital space station at a cost of roughly $80 million per seat, NASA has said. After 2019 there are no seats available on the spacecraft for U.S. crew, and a NASA advisory panel recommended on Friday that the U.S. space program develop a contingency plan to guarantee access to the station in case technical problems delay Boeing and SpaceX any further. A NASA spokesman on Friday characterized a solicitation request NASA filed on Wednesday as a contingency plan.

US senate passes border bill as Trump prepares to declare national emergency

The US Senate has passed a major spending bill that would effectively avoid another federal government shutdown, sending the legislation to the president’s desk for a signature. Now, the only question is whether Donald Trump intends to sign it. The bipartisan measure is the product of weeks of negotiations after the longest government shutdown in history, in which Mr Trump demanded billions of dollars towards his campaign promise of building a wall sprawling across the entirety of the US-Mexico border.

$100 million in humanitarian aid pledged to crisis-hit Venezuela

Twenty-five countries have pledged $100 million in aid to Venezuela, a top US official said Thursday, as the crisis-hit country's Supreme Court took aim at oil executives appointed by the opposition. Venezuela is plagued by hyperinflation and major shortages of basic goods, and two men -- opposition leader Juan Guaido and President Nicolas Maduro -- are vying for control of the country. The United States is among more than 50 countries that have recognized Guaido as interim president, but Maduro -- backed by the country's military as well as Russia, China and dozens of other states -- has so far refused to relinquish his office.

Amazon drops New York headquarters plan amid protests

Amazon abandoned plans for a new headquarters in New York City on Thursday, blaming opposition from community leaders angry at the huge subsidies being offered to one of the world's most successful companies. The online retail giant had promised the sprawling complex in the borough of Queens would create 25,000 jobs in exchange for nearly $3 billion in state and city incentives -- which had riled some New Yorkers. "While polls show that 70 percent of New Yorkers support our plans and investment, a number of state and local politicians have made it clear that they oppose our presence and will not work with us to build the type of relationships that are required to go forward with the project," Amazon said in a statement.

Sources: Jussie Smollett staged attack with help of others, allegedly being written off 'Empire'

Multiple sources have told ABC7 Eyewitness News that police are investigating whether Smollett and the two men staged the attack allegedly because Smollett was being written off of "Empire."

U.S. court dismisses Energy Transfer Partners lawsuit against Greenpeace

ETP had sued https://reut.rs/2SASoIv Greenpeace and other environmental groups in 2017, accusing them of racketeering and defamation with the aim of blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline. In the lawsuit, ETP argued that the environmental groups' actions and negative publicity against it, its sister company Energy Transfer Equity LP and other firms caused billions of dollars in damages.

California braced for mudslides and torrential rain after devastating storm

Authorities have warned of the threat of mudslides after a damaging storm struck California, trapping people in floodwaters, triggering a debris flow which destroyed homes and forcing residents to flee communities scorched by wildfires last year. The powerful system swept in from the Pacific Ocean and unleashed rain, snow and wind across the US west coast into Wyoming and Colorado after walloping northern California and southern Oregon. The National Weather Service reported staggering rainfall amounts across California, including more than 24cm over 48 hours at one location in the San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles.

During a school lockdown, 7-year-old writes note on her arm in case she dies

A second-grader wrote a chilling note to her parents on her arm during school lockdown.

`Going Away Party` for School Shutting Down Because of Student`s Death Causes Controversy

Some parents are outraged a California school for kids with special needs is holding a "going away party" after one of its own students died after being restrained by staff.

Denver teachers back at work after winning deal with raises

DENVER (AP) — Denver teachers ended a three-day walkout and returned to their classrooms Thursday, greeted by hugs and high-fives, after their union reached a tentative deal raising their pay, the latest win in a national movement by educators to raise their wages and advocate for changes in schools.

Iranians cry 'revenge' at funeral of suicide bomb victims

Tens of thousands of Iranians called for "revenge" Saturday at the funeral of 27 Revolutionary Guards killed in a suicide attack perpetrated by jihadists that Tehran accuses Pakistan of supporting. "The government of Pakistan must pay the price of harbouring these terrorist groups and this price will undoubtedly be very high," said Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, referring to jihadist outfit Jaish al-Adl ("Army of Justice"). "The Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer observe the previous reservations and will directly act to counter such acts," Jafari told mourners gathered at the city of Isfahan's Bozorgmehr Square.

Former U.S. Cardinal McCarrick defrocked for sex crimes

Pope Francis has decided that the ruling, which followed an appeal by McCarrick, a power-broker as Archbishop of Washington, D.C. from 2001 to 2006, was now final. A Vatican statement said his crimes were made more serious by "the aggravating factor of the abuse of power". The 88-year-old, who in July became the first Roman Catholic prelate in nearly 100 years to lose the title of cardinal, has now become the highest profile church figure to be dismissed from the priesthood in modern times.

Isil bride Shamima Begum has a legal right to return to the UK, head of MI6 says

The British Islamic State (Isil) bride Shamima Begum has a legal right to return to the UK the Head of MI6 has said. The Director General of MI6 has said that British citizens have a right to return home from Syria, even though they may still present a threat to national security. Alex Younger, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service - better known as MI6 - said he was "very concerned" about returning British nationals that had fought for or supported the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). Speaking ahead of the Munich Security Conference which started on Friday, Mr Younger said: "All experience tells us that once someone's put themselves in that sort of position they are likely to have acquired both the skills and connections that make them potentially very dangerous. "Anyone who has put themselves in this situation can expect to be questioned and investigated and potentially prosecuted if they return to our jurisdiction." When asked about the case of Ms Begum, the heavily pregnant 19-year-old Londoner who travelled to Syria four years ago to become an Isil bride and who now wants to return to the UK to have her baby, Mr Younger said: "British nationals have a right to come to the UK." Kadiza Sultana, left, Shamima Begum, center, and Amira Abase going through security at Gatwick airport Credit: Metropolitan Police Britain’s intelligence chief cautioned about showing triumphalism at the demise of Isil, saying such an approach led to hubris. "The military defeat of the caliphate does not represent the end of the terrorist threat that we face," he said. "You can’t use military force to kill and idea." Mr Younger warned that Isil was already in the process of trying to grow elsewhere around the world, even as its fighters are defeated in Syria, and that the threat from al-Qaeda had not been completely extinguished. He said: "Daesh [Isil] is a resilient organisation and it is reorganising, returning to its natural state as an asymmetric transnational terrorist organisation. We see it morphing, spreading out. "Al-Qaeda...has undergone a certain resurgence as a result of the degradation of Daesh and it is a force that should also be taken seriously. It is definitely not done out, and is something we should remain focused on." Mr Younger was keen to stress the "strength and unconditional nature of the UK security offer" and said Brexit would not harm enduring partnerships. "Britain’s commitment to the security of the European continent is unconditional," he said. "Our aim is to strengthen our security partnerships in Europe, alongside our other intelligence partnerships across the globe, because that is the inescapable logic of a world of increasingly international hybrid threats." The ability to "operationalise" partnerships with other intelligence organisations was critical in preserving our way of life, he said, and was used to great effect after the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury last year. Referring to the intelligence sharing relationships with France and Germany he said: "There are people alive in our three countries today because of terrorist attack plans that we have successfully disrupted, showing the value and importance of cooperation to all sides. This is not a one-way street." "Even in the past year...people’s lives have been saved in all of our countries as a result of this cooperation. The counter terrorist machine is working as it should. Bombs haven’t gone off as a result of our capacity to exchange data with each other. "Brexit doesn’t fundamentally alter those relationships."

Watch a space harpoon impale a piece of space debris

The U.S. government tracks 500,000 chunks and bits of space junk as they hurtle around Earth. Some 20,000 of these objects are larger than a softball.To clean up the growing mess, scientists at the University of Surrey have previously tested a net to catch chunks of debris. Now, they've successfully tested out a harpoon.The video below, released Friday by the university's space center, shows a test of the experimental RemoveDEBRIS satellite as it unleashes a harpoon at a piece of solar panel, held out on a 1.5-meter boom.The harpoon clearly impales its target. "This is RemoveDEBRIS' most demanding experiment and the fact that it was a success is testament to all involved," Guglielmo Aglietti, director of the Surrey Space Centre at the University of Surrey, said in a statement. Next, the RemoveDEBRIS team -- made up of a group of international collaborators -- is planning its final experiment: responsibly destroying the satellite.In March, the RemoveDEBRIS satellite will "inflate a sail that will drag the satellite into Earth's atmosphere where it will be destroyed," the university said a statement. This is how the group intends to vaporize the future dangerous debris it catches. SEE ALSO: Trump fails to block NASA's carbon sleuth from going to spaceHuman space debris hurtles around Earth faster than a speeding bullet, with debris often traveling at 17,500 mph, or faster. The threat of collisions is always present, though in some orbits the odds of an impact are significantly lower than others. The International Space Station, for instance, is in a relatively debris-free orbit, but even here there is the threat of "natural debris" -- micrometeors -- pummeling the space station.Other orbits have considerably more debris spinning around Earth. In 2009, a derelict Russian satellite slammed into a functional Iridium telecommunication satellite at 26,000 mph, resulting in an estimated 200,000 bits of debris. In 2007, the Chinese launched a missile at an old weather satellite, spraying shrapnel into Earth's orbit.This risk amplifies as more satellites are rocketed into space. SpaceX now has government-approved plans to launch thousands of its Starlink satellites into orbit -- perhaps by the mid-2020's, should they amass money for the pricey program. This would double or triple the number of satellites in orbit."It is unprecedented," said Kessler, NASA's former senior scientist for orbital debris research told Mashable. "The sheer number, that's the problem."Kessler has long warned about the potential of catastrophic chain reactions in Earth's orbit, wherein one collision creates enough weaponized debris to create a cycle of destruction. Designs to harpoon dangerous chunks of debris are just being tested in space today, but the technology could prove critical as Earth's orbit grows increasingly trafficked with large, metallic satellites.   WATCH: Ever wonder how the universe might end?

Trump, Xi Hail Progress in Trade Talks as Tariff Deadline Nears

Trump’s comments signal the two sides may be approaching a deal after two days of high-level talks in Beijing. The two countries said they are working toward an initial written agreement, and will continue negotiations next week in Washington. “It’s going extremely well,” Trump said, referring to the negotiations that wrapped up Friday in Beijing.

Honda Ridgeline Recalled for Carwash Sensitivity

The mid-size pickup truck's fuel pump could be damaged by carwash soap.

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.

Best Presidents Day TV Deals

Consumer Reports is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping consumers. When you shop through retailer links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission—100% of the fees w...

Potential privacy lapse found in Americans' 2010 census data

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 encrypted data, but with lots of mistakes, a top agency official disclosed Saturday. The Census Bureau is now scrapping its old data shielding technique for a state-of-the-art method that Abowd claimed is far better than Google's or Apple's. Some former agency chiefs fear the potential privacy problem will add to the worries that people will avoid answering or lie on the once-every-10 year survey because of the Trump administration's attempt to add a much-debated citizenship question.

Officials: Suspect caught in Illinois shooting

Police arrested a suspect in a shooting on Friday at a manufacturing plant in Aurora, Illinois, but the area remained under lockdown, officials said.

Pence visits Auschwitz after saying Iran plotting 'new Holocaust'

US Vice President Mike Pence on Friday paid homage to victims of the Holocaust at the former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, a day after he accused Iranian authorities of plotting a "new Holocaust". More than a million European Jews perished at the site located in then German-occupied southern Polish town of Oswiecim during World War II. Pence passed through the Auschwitz camp's infamous wrought-iron "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free") gate before laying a wreath at the death wall where the Nazis executed thousands of people.

The U.S. Navy Just Bought Four Giant, Robot Submarines from Boeing

Orca could help to fill a yawning gap in the American submarine fleet. In December 2016, the U.S. Navy announced it needed 66 nuclear-powered attack subs, or SSNs, to meet regional commanders' needs.

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.

Polestar teases next-gen electric car again ahead of Geneva launch

Just two weeks before the official online reveal on February 27, Volvo's Polestar gave us another glimpse of the Polestar 2 just a couple of weeks after the first announcement. While the latest official teaser of the Polestar 2 isn't nearly as informational as the first announcement made a few weeks ago, we have still been graced by another image of a discernible part of the exterior body: the top, left-hand side of the rear end. The white Polestar logo blends into the white body to avoid distracting onlookers from the snappy and chic design.

Amazon invites Ocasio-Cortez for tour, calls worker claims untrue

A senior Amazon.com Inc executive on Friday disputed claims raised by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that Amazon workers face "dehumanizing conditions" as being untrue and invited her to take a tour of company facilities. Amazon abruptly cancelled the plan on Thursday.

Sunken WWII U.S. carrier discovered in Pacific

At a depth of nearly 17,500 feet, a research vessel funded by the late Seattle billionaire Paul Allen has discovered the wreckage of an American aircraft carrier sunk in the South Pacific during World War II. (Feb. 14)

The Latest: US cardinal hails pope's leadership on abuse

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

Papa John's serves up college tuition benefit to employees of pizza chain

Troubled pizza chain Papa John's will pay college tuition for its employees and assistance for franchisees.

US Facebook fine over privacy could be in billions: reports

A US investigation into privacy violations by Facebook could result in a record fine running to billions of dollars, media reports said Friday. The Federal Trade Commission is negotiating the terms of the penalty stemming from its investigation into whether Facebook violated a 2011 settlement with the regulator on protecting user data, the Washington Post and New York Times said, citing unnamed sources. The FTC reopened its investigation following revelations last year that personal data from tens of millions of Facebook users was hijacked by the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica as it worked on Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Pompeo visits Iceland as US-EU rift on Iran grows

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrapped up a five-nation tour of Europe in Iceland on Friday after the Trump administration launched a scathing attack on the European Union over its approach to Iran.

Stacey Abrams calls voter suppression 'the crisis of our day'

Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams said Friday that “voter suppression … has to be considered the crisis of our day,” a clear rebuke to Trump's declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border.

BofA Says a ‘Real’ Trade Deal Could Vault S&P 500 to Record High

The firm’s model on corporate earnings and equity valuations suggests that the market has priced in “a partial deal,” one where only some of the issues get resolved in favor of corporate America, according to strategists led by Savita Subramanian. In a best-case scenario, the S&P 500 could climb 5 percent to 10 percent when a “real deal” is struck. Companies from 3M Co. to Stanley Black & Decker Inc. have slashed their guidance this year, citing either trade tensions or weakening demand in China.

Amazon invests in electric vehicle startup Rivian

Electric vehicle startup Rivian on Friday announced a $700 million investment round led by Amazon, which recently pumped money into a young self-driving car technology firm. Details of Amazon's stake in US-based Rivian were not disclosed, but the company said it will remain independent. The potential Tesla rival late last year unveiled an electric pickup truck and an electric sport utility vehicle at an auto show in Los Angeles.