Retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright. President Obama gave a full pardon Tuesday to retired Gen. James “Hoss” Cartwright, who was convicted of lying to the FBI during an investigation into a leak about American efforts to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program. The pardon followed an intense lobbying campaign on behalf of Cartwright that included expressions of support, relayed by Cartwright’s lawyer, from former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, according to sources familiar with the effort.
More than 40 Democratic lawmakers have announced they intend to skip Donald Trump’s inauguration this week to protest the president-elect’s plans for the country. The boycotters now make up one in five of all House Democrats, and their decision to protest represents a break with tradition that they say is warranted by Trump’s agenda. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., told Yahoo News she decided she couldn’t celebrate Trump’s inauguration because of his comments during the campaign about temporarily barring Muslims from entering the country and his vow to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The man who shot and severely beat an Arizona state trooper last week was a former member of the Mexican federal police who was in the country illegally, authorities said. Leonard Pennelas-Escobar opened fire on Trooper Edward Andersson early Thursday after the officer had stopped on the interstate and set up flares in a bid to get motorists to slow down. Pennelas-Escobar said something unrecognizable in Spanish before shooting the trooper, and then he started landing blows with his fists and beating the trooper's head on the ground, Department of Public Safety Director Frank Milstead said Monday.
A Virginia inmate was executed on Wednesday for murdering two young sisters during a 2006 killing spree, after the Supreme Court denied a stay request where he argued the use of compounded lethal drugs violated his constitutional rights. Ricky Gray, 39, died by lethal injection at 9:42 p.m. at the Greensville Correctional Center, Virginia Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Kinney said in an emailed statement. Gray's lawyers filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court on Tuesday, saying that the three-drug combination could cause Gray unnecessary suffering and thereby violate constitutional guarantees against cruel and unusual punishment.
Italy was hit by four earthquakes in four hours Wednesday, killing one and bringing terror to snowbound mountain areas still recovering from last year's series of deadly tremors. The quakes, all measuring more than five magnitude, struck close to Amatrice, the mountain town devastated by an August earthquake that left nearly 300 people dead. The body of one victim was found under the debris of a building in the town of Castel Castagna, in the province of Teramo, local authorities said in a statement.
From billowing dresses and maternity corsets intended to conceal a woman's baby bump to the bodycon trend seen on expectant mothers today, see how pregnancy fashion has changed over the years.
The deep-sea sonar search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 may not have found the plane but will reveal more about how land beneath the Indian Ocean formed over millions of years and where oil fields could lie. National geoscience agency Geoscience Australia will soon release detailed sonar mapping of 120,000 square kilometers (46,000 square miles) of seabed that was searched for the wreckage of the Boeing 777 that vanished with 239 passengers and crew on March 8, 2014. The unique information about plate tectonics would interest geoscientists as well as oil and gas explorers, said Australian National University marine geologist Neville Exon, who has advised Geoscience Australia on the sonar data.
Startling surveillance video posted to Twitter this week shows a woman in New York being hit by a school bus, which then runs her over. The victim was crossing a Brooklyn intersection when she was struck by a yellow mini-bus. She suffered non-life-threatening
The first direct freight train service from China to Britain arrived in London Wednesday, another leg in Beijing's plans for closer trade ties with Europe along a modern-day Silk Road. The 18-day trip saw dozens of containers packed mainly with clothes and household goods transported from the city of Yiwu in eastern China to a freight terminal in Barking in east London, via Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland and western Europe. The train entered Britain from France through the Channel Tunnel, completing a journey of some 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers).
President Barack Obama's decision to commute former Army Private Chelsea Elizabeth Manning's prison sentence lifted the unprecedented responsibility for treating the transgender woman's gender dysphoria from the Defense Department’s shoulders, the New York Times reported. Manning was among the 209 prison inmates to whom Obama granted clemency Tuesday. Manning—who was responsible for the largest leak of U.S. military information in history and, in part, for WikiLeaks’ rise to notoriety—was expected to walk out of the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, military prison May 17.
The Israeli army on Wednesday received new ballistic missile interceptors that significantly upgrade the Jewish state's aerial defence systems in the face of "emerging threats", the defence ministry said. The Arrow 3 interceptor, designed to shoot down missiles above the atmosphere, was handed to air force bases in Israel after successful testing by Israel and the United States at the end of 2015. A defence ministry statement said Israel and the US were dedicated to the continued development and enhancement of ballistic missile defence systems as "threats continue to grow and new emerging threats surface".
The woman charged with kidnapping a baby 18 years ago and raising the child as her own daughter, appeared briefly in court and was ordered to be held without bail. Gloria Williams, who appeared in a Jacksonville courtroom Wednesday, is charged with kidnapping and other counts related to the 1998 abduction of Kamiyah Mobley, who was just eight hours old. No attorney has been listed for Williams.
By Andrew Chung WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Senate Democrats are gearing up for a potentially ugly fight over Donald Trump's U.S. Supreme Court pick, with some liberal activists urging them to do everything possible to block any nominee from the Republican president-elect. Democrats are still seething over the Republican-led Senate's decision last year to refuse to consider outgoing President Barack Obama's nomination of appeals court judge Merrick Garland for a lifetime post on the court. The action had little precedent in U.S. history and prompted some Democrats to accuse Republicans of stealing a Supreme Court seat.
By Philip Pullella ROME (Reuters) - A series of strong earthquakes hit snowbound central Italy on Wednesday, a region devastated by deadly tremors last year, killing one man and forcing schools and rail links to close. Much of the area had already been abandoned after last year's earthquakes. Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said soldiers would help rescue teams get to the affected villages.
We’ve got some terrific sales on iPhone and iPad apps for you to check out today, including one app that will record your iPhone’s screen while you browse the web so you can share those recordings with friends or use them to explain things to someone
Astronaut Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17 and the last man to walk on the moon, died Jan. 16, 2017. Cernan was one of 14 astronauts selected by NASA in October 1963. In May 1969, he was the lunar module pilot of Apollo 10, the first comprehensive lunar-orbital qualification and verification test of the lunar lander.
Istanbul resident Ali Haydar Demir knew something was wrong when he heard a noise at midnight in his apartment block on 911 Street in the far-flung Istanbul district of Esenyurt. Demir was witnessing the start of the raid by dozens of Turkish police to capture alive Abdulgadir Masharipov, the suspected Uzbek jihadist accused of massacring 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub on New Year's Eve. Unbeknown to Demir and other residents of the block, they had been living next door to the most wanted terror suspect in Turkey, a man who according to the authorities is a trained killer who learned his trade in Afghanistan.
The FBI in Seattle has recruited a band of amateur sleuths to help solve its 45-year-old head-scratcher of America’s most notorious skyjacker – D.B. Cooper. The amateur scientists, who call themselves Citizen Sleuths, are asking for the publics’ assistance as they gather new leads that may link Cooper to The Boeing Company as either an employee or a contractor hired by the tech giant in the 1970s. The Citizen Sleuths analyzed the clip-on tie discovered aboard the hijacked Northwest Orient passenger jet in November 1971.
Car horns rang out across Puerto Rico and people celebrated in the streets Tuesday after President Barack Obama announced he had commuted the prison sentence of 74-year-old nationalist Oscar Lopez Rivera. Many Puerto Ricans have long demanded his release, and some wept with emotion upon hearing the news while others headed to all-night parties announced on social media. Lopez belonged to the ultranationalist Armed Forces of National Liberation, which claimed responsibility for more than 100 bombings at public and commercial buildings during the 1970s and '80s in New York, Chicago, Washington and other U.S. cities.
Impoverished Indian children watch a performance as part of advocacy against child labor in Allahabad, India; women loyal to the Houthi movement parade to show support to the movement in Sanaa, Yemen; and dogs are blessed by a priest outside San Anton
Gambian president-elect Adama Barrow was to take power Thursday, capping weeks of tension over Yahya Jammeh's refusal to quit which has seen Senegalese and Nigerian troops massing at the border and tourists racing to leave. With Senegalese troops backed by Nigerian forces and fighter jets gathering, the country appeared on the brink of a military crisis although the army chief insisted his soldiers would not get involved in a "political dispute" nor prevent foreign forces from entering The Gambia. Despite a midnight (0000 GMT) deadline for the expiry of Jammeh's term, the situation remained calm in the city overnight, witnesses said following a last-minute mediation attempt by the Mauritanian president.
The number of abortions performed in the United States has fallen to the lowest rate since 1974, the year after the Supreme Court legalized the practice in the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, according to a new study. The report comes from the Guttmacher Institute, which researches sexual and reproductive health-related policy. The total number of abortions performed in 2014 hovered around 926,000, showing a gradual, yet consistent, downward trend over the past two decades.
By Pedro Fonseca RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian police used rubber bullets and tear gas on Tuesday to break up a renewed clash between drug gangs in a prison where 26 inmates were butchered by rivals in recent days. Major Eduardo Franco, spokesman for police in the state of Rio Grande do Norte where the Alcaçuz prison is located, said authorities managed to keep the rival gangs apart and so far prevent another massacre. Brazil has been hit by a wave of deadly gang clashes in prisons in the north and northeast regions of the country since Jan. 1.
Donald Trump enters the White House on Friday just as he entered the race for president: defiant, unfiltered, unbound by tradition and utterly confident in his chosen course. In the 10 weeks since his surprise election as the nation's 45th president, Trump has violated decades of established diplomatic protocol, sent shockwaves through business boardrooms, tested long-standing ethics rules and continued his combative style of replying to any slight with a personal attack — on Twitter and in person. Trump spent much of his transition making clear he sees things differently: Rather than change for the office, he argues, the office will change for him.
If you believed everything you saw on the internet, you'd be a prime target for the latest panic spreading about the iPhone: that receiving a text with a simple string of emoji crashes the handset. This story, which originated in a YouTube video, is getting reported as fact on a number of major tech websites, and is a prime example of what you might call Fake News.