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.
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.
Months before his death, Osama bin Laden fretted about the Islamic State group's impatient, violent tactics and the fading of Al-Qaeda, documents released by the CIA Thursday showed. The latest release from the trove of documents found when Navy Seals stormed the Al-Qaeda chief's secret Pakistan compound and killed him in 2011 show bin Laden trying to keep his jihadist followers around the world aligned in his war against the United States.
The man accused of killing an Orlando police officer and his pregnant girlfriend said he plans to represent himself at trial, but not without some choice words for the judge. "Y'all portraying this s--t to the news people like I just went there and shot this girl when there were other guns found on the scene," Markeith Loyd told the judge in an unruly first court appearance Thursday. "A gun was pulled on me first, but y'all acting like I just went there and shot her," he said before he was ordered held without bail on charges he murdered his pregnant ex-girlfriend.
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.
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.
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.
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.
President Obama concluded his final press conference as commander in chief the same way his began his candidacy for the office — with a message of hope for the United States’ future. The last question posed to Obama in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the West Wing of the White House concerned a popular speech his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, gave in October that put the stakes of the U.S. presidential election in personal terms. Obama was asked how he was interpreting the meaning of former reality TV show host Trump’s startling victory and how he was discussing the issue with his daughters.
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.
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).
A Pennsylvania woman has been arrested after she allegedly created a GoFundMe account to benefit a Florida mother who lost her 1-year-old son, but kept the money instead. Police said Nicole Leahy, of Lititz, started the campaign in December 2015 and raised $500, but the mother, who said she never authorized anyone to give out family information, said she never received any money. The mom reportedly knew Leahy through a Facebook group “Mothers of Twin Children” of which they were both members.
West African troops entered The Gambia on Thursday to bolster its new President Adama Barrow, as Gambians erupted in celebration at his inauguration to succeed longtime leader Yahya Jammeh, who has refused to quit. Barrow was sworn in at The Gambia's embassy in Dakar in neighbouring Senegal after Jammeh has refused to step down despite international pressure following his December election loss. Dressed all in white, 51-year-old Barrow waved to a crowd of thousands of jubilant Gambians at an inauguration ending Jammeh's 22-year rule.
The U.S. Labor Department has sued Oracle America Inc, alleging that the technology company systematically paid its white, male employees more than other workers and unlawfully favored Asian applicants in its recruiting and hiring efforts. The department in a complaint filed with an administrative judge in Washington said the company was prohibited from engaging in racial discrimination given the hundreds of millions of dollars it receives as a contractor with the federal government. Oracle America is a unit of Oracle Corp. Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger in a statement said the claims were baseless and "politically motivated," and that the company bases employment decisions on experience and merit.
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
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.
By David Randall NEW YORK (Reuters) - When U.S. President-elect Donald Trump criticized United Technologies Corp's Carrier unit in November for its plan to move some 800 jobs to Mexico, the parent-company made a swift decision to keep the factory in Indiana. Instead, the company decided it would move toward automation as a way to cut costs. "What that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs." Swapping robots and software for human labor has underpinned much of the productivity gains in the United States over the last 25 years.
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.
U.S. Air Force B-2 bombers attacked a pair of Islamic State military camps in Libya, killing more than 80 fighters in an unusual mission that may have marked the final demonstration of military force of President Barack Obama's global counterterrorism campaign. The militants targeted in the airstrikes included Islamic State members "actively planning operations against our allies in Europe," Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday. "These were critically important strikes for our campaign and a clear example of our enduring commitment to destroy ISIL's cancer not only in Iraq and Syria but everywhere it emerges," Carter said on his last full day as secretary of defense.
Six carefully selected scientists have entered a man-made dome on a remote Hawaii volcano as part of a human-behavior study that could help NASA as it draws up plans for sending astronauts on long missions to Mars. The NASA-funded project will study the psychological difficulties associated with living in isolated and confined conditions for an extended period. "We're hoping to figure out how best to select individual astronauts, how to compose a crew and how to support that crew on long-duration space missions," said principal investigator Kim Binsted, a University of Hawaii science professor.
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
A leading member of German right-wing populist party AfD sparked an outcry Wednesday by criticising the Holocaust memorial in Berlin and calling for the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. Bjoern Hoecke's comments also exposed a damaging split in the anti-immigration party, just months before Germany heads to the polls. "Up to now, our state of mind is still one of a totally defeated people... We Germans, our people, are the only people in the world who have planted a monument of shame in the heart of the capital," Hoecke told party faithful including youth members, according to a video of the speech circulated online.
The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday on behalf of Pedro Figueroa Zarceno, 32, in federal court in San Francisco against the city and its police chief for violating his right to due process and breaking an ordinance barring municipal employees from cooperating with federal immigration authorities seeking to deport a person. Figueroa walked into a police station in November 2015 to report his car stolen, according to the lawsuit. The civil action comes as San Francisco and dozens of other U.S. cities face pressure from President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Friday, to abandon their policies of limiting cooperation between law enforcement officers and U.S. immigration authorities.