WASHINGTON, D.C. — Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer said President-elect Donald Trump is disturbed by President Obama’s decision to commute the prison sentence of convicted leaker Chelsea Manning. “I think the president-elect is troubled by this action,” Spicer said during a Wednesday news conference at Trump’s presidential transition team headquarters. Spicer was also asked if Trump wanted to see WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange make good on a promise to allow himself to be extradited to the United States if Manning was given a deal.
Pressed by Democratic senators for his views on the causes of climate change, the Trump administration’s choice to run the Environmental Protection Agency insisted at his confirmation hearing Wednesday morning that his “personal opinion” was “immaterial” to how he would do his job. Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee questioned Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt closely on his history of suing the agency he has been nominated to lead, his statements questioning mainstream climate science and his close ties to the oil and gas industries. Republicans were much friendlier, mostly lamenting the impact of regulations on fossil-fuel industry jobs, something Pruitt promised to take into account.
Ricky Gray was pronounced dead at 9:42 p.m. following a lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. Gray showed no emotion as he was walked into the execution chamber wearing blue jeans and handcuffs. Gray was condemned to death in 2006 for the murders of 9-year-old Stella Harvey and 4-year-old sister Ruby, and sentenced to life in prison for the slaying of their parents, Bryan and Kathryn Harvey.
Rescue workers in Tehran were desperately hunting for firefighters trapped under the rubble after a fire Thursday led to the collapse of Iran's oldest high-rise, the 15-storey Plasco building. Officials had yet to confirm if anyone had been killed, but Tehran mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf told state television that between 20 and 25 firefighters were thought to be inside when the building fell. Three people were pulled alive from the rubble and taken to hospital, the head of Tehran's emergency services said, according to the ISNA news agency.
Islamic State militants put at least 12 people to death in execution-style killings in the ancient city of Palmyra, which they re-captured from the government for a second time in December, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Thursday. The jihadist group beheaded four of the people - state employees and teachers - outside a museum, the group said. The eight others - four of them government soldiers and four of them rebel fighters captured elsewhere in Syria - were shot.
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.
A video of a massive alligator walking through a reserve near Lakeland, Florida, had people speculating earlier this week whether it was a hoax. The video, which was uploaded Sunday to Facebook by Florida resident Kim Joiner, shows the massive reptile appearing out of a nearby bush at the Circle B Bar Reserve in Polk County and then casually walking on the reserve's Marsh Rabbit Run. Officials for the county's natural resources division said that while they appreciate the attention the nature reserve has been getting, they are also worried about the safety of visitors and wildlife.
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
As Constitution Daily counts down to Inauguration Day, we look back at three presidential ceremonies from the 1800s that ended very badly. Mobs descend on Jackson’s White House. For example, there were constant rumors that Abraham Lincoln would be killed at his 1861 inauguration.
A high-rise building in Tehran engulfed by a fire collapsed on Thursday, killing at least 30 firefighters and injuring some 75 people, state media reported. The disaster struck the Plasco building, an iconic structure in central Tehran just north of the capital’s sprawling bazaar. Iran’s state-run Press TV announced the firefighters’ deaths, without giving a source for the information.
Woman arrested after accosting Bella Hadid with Palestinian flag, Nancy Sinatra destroys Trump for using ‘My Way’ at inauguration, Kanye apparently wasn’t invited to perform at the inauguration, and Gigi Hadid fuels engagement rumors after wearing a ring on *that* finger. Get all the details at MarieClaire.com!
At his final press conference as president of the United States, Barack Obama defended his controversial decision this week to commute convicted leaker Chelsea Manning’s sentence. Obama was asked if he feared that commuting her sentence might send a message that leaking classified information might send the wrong message to groups like WikiLeaks. The Obama administration has accused Russian hackers of sharing information with WikiLeaks to interfere in the U.S. election.
President-elect Donald Trump is known to have an itchy Twitter finger, and says he plans to continue his use of the social media platform after he takes the oath of office. The survey, conducted Jan. 12 to 15, found a vast majority of Democrats (89 percent) have a negative view of Trump’s use of Twitter. In November, Trump said he would be “very restrained” in his use of Twitter as commander in chief, but will reserve the right to use it as a “method” to combat what he perceives as negative stories about him.
An affidavit, filed with the Orange County Clerk of Courts a day after 41-year-old Markeith Loyd was arrested in an abandoned home, shows authorities want to make sure he remains in custody, as is customary for a fugitive facing murder charges. Loyd was arrested Tuesday night after a manhunt that lasted more than a week. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said Wednesday that President-elect Donald Trump had a phone conversation with Clayton's husband.
Four strong earthquakes on Wednesday shook the same region of central Italy that suffered deadly temblors last year, sending quake-rattled residents into panic and further isolating towns that have been buried under more than a meter (3 feet) of snow for days. Premier Paolo Gentiloni said it appeared no one was killed, but that it was a "difficult day" for Italy. Several towns and hamlets in the quake zone had already sounded the alarm in recent days that they were without electricity and were isolated from highways due to the unusually heavy snowfall that has blanketed much of central Italy.
More than 80 Islamic State jihadists were killed in a US aerial blitz on training camps in Libya, including fighters involved in plotting attacks in Europe, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Thursday. The Pentagon made the highly unusual decision to conduct the air strikes with a pair of B-2 stealth bombers that flew to North Africa on a 34-hour mission from their base in Missouri in America's Midwest. The last time the distinctive, bat-shaped planes were used in Libya was in 2011 during the mission that led to the ouster of longtime leader Moamer Kadhafi.
By Elaine Lies and Megumi Lim TOKYO (Reuters) - A Japanese hotelier's denial of a 1937 massacre by Japanese troops in the Chinese city of Nanjing has prompted Chinese social media calls for a boycott of travel to Japan, threatening tourist arrivals days before the Lunar New Year holidays. The furor erupted over books by Toshio Motoya, the president of Tokyo-based hotel and real estate developer APA Group, which contain his revisionist views and are placed in every room of the company's 400-plus APA Hotels. In one, printed in English and Japanese and entitled "The Real History of Japan", he says the "Nanking Massacre story" was "impossible", blaming looting and killings on members of a branch of the Chinese military who had shed their uniforms.
“I love her,” 18-year-old Alexis Manigo told Inside Edition. Manigo said she had a “fantastic” and “normal” life while living with Williams, who she believed to be her mother. While she is learning about her biological family, Manigo says she will still recognize Williams as her mother.
Late last year, UAW representative Bill Johnson said something he possibly shouldn't have-the Bronco and the Ranger are coming back. For Ford fans who want a midsize pickup or a competent off-roader, this was huge news. Americans can't get enough trucks and SUVs right now, making it a perfect time for Ford to expand its lineup.
ABC News' Charli James stops by the National Mall in Washington, D.C to chat with the riders. From the Washington monument behind me and I am here with officer Jack evil and his horse. Guinness I'm they are part of the United States park police mounted.
By Tim Cocks and Emma Farge BANJUL/DAKAR (Reuters) - Gambia's President-elect Adama Barrow will be sworn in at the Gambian embassy in neighbouring Senegal on Thursday, officials said, as West African troops prepared to back him in a showdown with a defiant incumbent Yahya Jammeh. The ceremony could trigger a military push into Gambia by West Africa's ECOWAS bloc, which has said it is ready to remove Jammeh by force if he refuses to yield to Barrow, winner of the presidential election in December. Jammeh, in power since a 1994 coup, initially conceded to Barrow before he then back-tracked, saying the vote was flawed and there had to be a re-run.
With and without an exclamation. ‘Keep America Great,’” Trump said. Trump told the Post that he didn’t intend to reveal the presumptuous plan in the interview. It’s the only reason I give it to you,” Trump said.
Russell Yates tells The Associated Press on Wednesday that he doesn't know what his wife told their daughters about him. Yates says he is sorry. A woman charged with abducting her two daughters from Rhode Island in 1985 has pleaded not guilty.
Rescue workers were met with an eerie silence Thursday when they reached a four-star spa hotel struck by an avalanche in a mountainous earthquake-stricken region of central Italy. Guests at the three-story Hotel Rigopiano in the central Abruzzo region alerted emergency workers of the disaster on Wednesday, following a series of quakes in the region. “Help, we’re dying of cold,” one couple wrote rescuers, according to the ANSA news agency.
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).