- WorldYahoo News
White House warns Syria may be readying chemical attack
The White House charged late Monday that Syria seemed to be making preparations for a chemical attack and warned strongman Bashar Assad that he and his regime “will pay a heavy price” for any mass slaughter of civilians. The unusual statement, attributed to press secretary Sean Spicer, did not include any details of how or what the United States knew about the possible attack, nor how confident U.S. officials were that Assad might carry it out. “The United States has identified potential preparations for another chemical weapons attack by the Assad regime that would likely result in the mass murder of civilians, including innocent children,” Spicer said.
- BusinessYahoo View
Kushner Meeting With Russian Bank Is Weird
Rachel Maddow relays a description of Russia's state-run VEB bank as not being a bank in the traditional way, making Jared Kushner's meeting with the chairman of that bank during the Trump transition all the weirder.
PoliticsYahoo NewsAl Franken: Democrats ‘gotta stop riding in limousines’
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., says the Democratic Party has a clear messaging problem. Franken was asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday how members of “the corporate wing” of the party might be able to erase the “limousine Democrat” image in the minds of some voters. “We gotta stop riding in limousines,” Franken replied.
NewsAssociated PressCalifornia man isn't asked, doesn't say where missing son is
A California father told a judge on Tuesday that he wasn't hiding from authorities when he was arrested in Las Vegas, and will not fight his transfer in custody to Los Angeles to face a murder charge in the disappearance of his 5-year-old son. Andressian stood alone in court in shackles, said he will not fight extradition to Los Angeles, and referred to the 47 days he spent in Las Vegas while authorities in California have looked for Aramazd Andressian Jr.
- PoliticsForeign Policy Magazine
Basically Everyone but Russia Now Looks on the U.S. Less Favorably
“We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us any more,” U.S. President Donald Trump said in a speech announcing his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement earlier this month. Whether or not other nations respect the United States more is up for debate, but they certainly seem to be taking a dimmer view of the country under Trump’s leadership. The survey of 37 countries shows that only 49 percent take a favorable view of the United States, compared with 64 percent at the end of U.S. President Barack Obama’s time in office.
- PoliticsYahoo View
Trump and the 'honest' Question
Kurt Andersen and Lawrence O'Donnell discuss Donald Trump's many lies in office and a new poll that shows only 36% now view the American president as "honest" – which comes as the Trump White House has decided to pick a fight with the press
- WorldMashable
China's verdant 'forest city' will fight pollution with a million plants
If tree-covered skyscrapers act like enormous air filters, this cluster of buildings will be a clean air oasis. China has broken ground on a "forest city" in the southern city of Liuzhou. The development, which will span two-thirds of a mile along the Liujiang River, involves blanketing offices, apartments, hotels, and schools with more than a million plants and about 40,000 trees.
NewsAFPChinese passenger chucks coins into plane's engine for luck
A superstitious passenger delayed a flight from Shanghai for several hours Tuesday after throwing coins at the plane's engine for good luck, Chinese officials said. The elderly woman was detained by police at Shanghai Pudong International Airport following the bizarre incident, forcing nearly 150 passengers to be evacuated from the plane bound for Guangzhou in southern China. The 80-year-old threw nine coins at an engine of China Southern Airlines flight CZ380 as she was boarding on the tarmac.
- WorldYahoo News Photo Staff
Dozens missing after Colombian tourist boat sinks in reservoir
Nine people died and 28 are missing after a multidecked tourist boat carrying about 170 passengers sank in Colombia’s Penol-Guatape reservoir on Sunday during the long holiday weekend, a government official said. Ninety-nine people were rescued, Margarita
PoliticsYahoo NewsWhite House adviser Ivanka Trump: ‘I try to stay out of politics’
Ivanka Trump, President Trump’s daughter and senior adviser, says she speaks up when she disagrees with her father on certain issues — but not when it comes to his tweeting. “I try to stay out of politics,” Ivanka Trump told “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt in an interview that aired Monday morning. Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, played key roles in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and the pair moved their family from New York to Washington, D.C., to take up official posts in the White House.
- NewsPopular Mechanics
Hypoxia Threatens Navy and Air Force Pilots, and the Threat Is Growing
Navy and Air Force pilots are running short on oxygen. In the last five years, the number of "physiological events" (PEs) where Navy pilots flying the T-45 Goshawk advanced trainer jet experienced oxygen deprivation (aka hypoxia) have risen four-fold. Caused mainly by failures of the airplane's onboard oxygen system, hypoxia can make a pilot dizzy, confused, and potentially incapable of flying an aircraft.
- PoliticsYahoo News
Former GOP Rep. Jolly: Affordable Care Act gave me a ‘safety net’
While members of his party scramble to repeal the Affordable Care Act, former Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., praised it as a “safety net” for unemployed people with pre-existing conditions — as he recently was. Appearing on MSNBC’s “The Last Word With Lawrence O’Donnell” Monday, Jolly alluded to the backlash against the House and Senate health care bills, saying “the politics of Obamacare in 2017 are different than 2013.” Jolly ran on an anti-Affordable Care Act platform, winning a special election in 2014 before losing his seat in 2016. “On January 4, I was a former member of Congress, unemployed, with no health insurance, and a pre-existing condition,” Jolly, who is 44, said.
- NewsAssociated Press
Philando Castile's family reaches $3M settlement in death
The mother of Philando Castile, a black motorist killed by a Minnesota police officer last July, has reached a nearly $3 million settlement with the city that employed the officer, avoiding a federal wrongful death lawsuit that attorneys said could have taken years to resolve. The settlement to be paid to Valerie Castile, who is the family's trustee, was announced Monday and comes less than two weeks after officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted of manslaughter and other charges connected to her son's death. Castile, a 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria worker, was shot five times by Yanez during a traffic stop after Castile informed the officer he was armed.
WorldReutersNigeria's Buhari sends first message since taking sick leave on May 7: presidency sources
By Felix Onuah ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari has delivered an audio message to mark the Islamic Eid al-Fitr holiday, two senior presidency sources said, his first public statement since he left for Britain on medical leave on May 7. Buhari, a Muslim from the north, made the address, calling for peace and unity, in the Hausa language spoken widely in that part of the country. The presidency did not release video footage or photographs of Buhari making the recording heard by Reuters in which the president's voice sounds weak.
- WorldThe Independent
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman will block all US arms sales to Saudi Arabia and five other countries
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker has announced he will block any future arms sales to six Gulf Region countries while they are engaged in a major dispute over funding for terrorism. Five Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members voted to cut ties with fellow Council member Qatar earlier this month. The states, including Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, claim Qatar has been funding Sunni Islamic terrorism and working on behalf of Iran.
- U.S.People
Connecticut Woman Commits Suicide After Trying To Strangle Her 8-Year-Old Daughter
A Connecticut woman has committed suicide after trying to strangle her 8-year-old daughter
- NewsAssociated Press
Mystery of missing Chinese scholar shakes up Illinois school
Yingying Zhang, the daughter of a working-class factory driver from China, took the same career path as many other young Chinese academics before her: She travelled to a university in the U.S. with dreams of one day landing a professorship and being able to help her parents financially. The case has shaken staff and students at Illinois' flagship public school in Urbana-Champaign. Zhang's father, Ronggao Zhang, travelled to the university from the family's home in Nanping, China, to await word on his daughter.
- NewsMashable
'Handmaid's Tale' protesters are back, and this time they're at the Capitol
Handmaids in red robes and white bonnets stood in front of the Capitol Tuesday to protest the latest iteration of the GOP health care bill that's up for a vote in the senate. The protesters — clad in uniforms from Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale — are demonstrating against a struggling senate bill that would overhaul Obamacare. It would affect women and reproductive health — and not in a good way.
- BusinessYahoo View
Kushner Hires Lawyer With Scandal Experience
Rachel Maddow reports that Donald Trump son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner has hired a famed defense lawyer Abbe Lowell, who has represented a litany of clients through high profile political scandals and prosecutions.
- LifestyleBusiness Insider
The Ritz-Carlton just debuted a luxury cruise line for the '1% of global travellers' and it looks insane
This week the Ritz-Carlton Hotel revealed plans for its luxury cruise line, with three ships aimed to set sea starting in late 2019. Somewhere between a private superyacht and a small ocean liner, these ships will accommodate the “the 1% of global travellers,” according to Bloomberg. With larger rooms, more dining options, and common space for guests to relax onboard, the new The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection has been designed in an attempt to defy all cruise ship stereotypes.
WorldAFPIsrael strikes Hamas bases in Gaza after rocket: officials
Israeli airstrikes hit a series of targets in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip overnight, officials said, hours after a rocket from the Palestinian enclave landed in the Jewish state. Strikes were recorded in at least three locations in Gaza, Palestinian security sources and eyewitnesses said, with Hamas bases struck near the southern city of Rafah and Gaza City, as well as open land southeast of Gaza City.
- NewsInside Edition
Woman Stabbed to Death While Walking Home Through Park Behind School: 'No One Deserves That'
Police are searching for the person or persons responsible for the brutal murder of a Philadelphia woman who was viciously attacked on the shortcut she regularly took home. Debra Gulliver, 33, was on her way home after a night out with friends when she walked through a park behind Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School at about 2:30 a.m., Philadelphia Police Homicide Unit Captain James Clark told reporters.
WorldReutersHong Kong wealth gap at its widest in decades as handover anniversary nears
By Pak Yiu and Stefanie McIntyre HONG KONG (Reuters) - As Hong Kong marks 20 years since the former British colony was handed back to China, vegetable seller Lau Mei-tin is in no mood to celebrate. "The situation in Hong Kong is terrible," she said. Income inequality has reached its highest level in more than four decades, according to government data, as a red-hot property market squeezes the city's most vulnerable people and risks fuelling social tensions.
- WorldReuters
In Mosul's Old City, Iraqi soldiers on foot fight last pocket of Islamic State
By Stephen Kalin MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - Peering through a lookout hole at the Mosul frontline on Tuesday, Iraqi soldiers clad in black uniforms surveyed the last remaining patch of land controlled by Islamic State in the city's historic center. Just steps away in no-man's land stands the stump of the Hadba minaret, which towered above the city for 850 years until the militants rigged it with explosives and razed it to the ground last week. Getting this deep into Mosul's Old City means soldiers from the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) must dismount from their armored Humvees and walk for 10 minutes down a maze of narrow alleyways which at some points are barely wider than a man.
NewsAssociated PressObama and family go river rafting during Indonesia vacation
Former U.S. President Barack Obama and his family were seen on a river rafting trip Monday as they vacationed in Indonesia, where he lived for several years as a child. Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, rafted on the Ayung River on the resort island of Bali, where the family arrived Friday. Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo had invited Obama to take a holiday in the country after leaving office, and has invited the family to visit the presidential Bogor Palace in West Java during their nine-day trip.
