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.
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.
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.
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 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.
There's a Florida company specializing in used military aircraft sales, and boy have they got a deal for you: 20 jet airplanes for less than $250,000. The 20 Fouga Magister trainers are sitting in Israel just waiting for someone of modest means who wants to start his or her private air force. As reported by The Aviationist, Raptor Aviation of Port St. Lucie, FL, is handling the sale of the Magisters.
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.
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.
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.
Just this week the New York Times documented precisely how a recent graduate of Davidson College made $22,000 off a single fake news story about ballots for Hillary Clinton being discovered in an Ohio warehouse. The most notable current fake news target in the developed world happens to be Germany.
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!
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.
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.
A South Korean businessman kidnapped by Philippine policemen under the guise of a raid on illegal drugs was murdered at the national police headquarters in Manila, authorities said Thursday. Philippine police chief Ronald Dela Rosa said he felt deep shame as he announced the latest development in the case, which has fuelled fears about widespread abuse by officers as they prosecute President Rodrigo Duterte's deadly anti-drug war. "They know the whole story of how they took him, brought him to Camp Crame, and strangled him," Dela Rosa said, referring to police officers accused of involvement in kidnapping and murdering the businessman, who was aged in his 50s.
Back in 2015, the U.S. Army partnered with with Mallory Aeronautics with the hope of building a hoverbike, a rectangular prop-powered flying device that could someday theoretically carry both supplies and troops. You'll note that, despite the JTARV's elongated shape that would definitely accommodate a human rider, officials make no mention of that use-case, preferring instead to discuss it as an riderless supply drone. Of course this was coming from an independent contractor, not the Army itself.
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
Verizon is having some trouble getting customers to give up their Galaxy Note 7 devices. Speaking to Fortune in an interview on Tuesday, a Verizon spokeswoman said that the company still has "thousands" of customers that haven't turned in the Galaxy Note 7 and continue to use the ill-fated handset on its network. The person added that they have skirted a Verizon software update that would have left the customers with a bricked Galaxy Note 7.
President Obama says his priorities after leaving the White House are to write, spend time with his family and take some time for quiet reflection. “I’m still a citizen and I think it is important for Democrats or progressives who feel that they came out on the wrong side of this election to be able to distinguish between the normal back and forth, ebb and flow of policy,” Obama said Wednesday during his last press conference in Washington as president. Among them, the president said, are “systematic discrimination,” voter suppression, “institutional efforts to silence dissent or the press” and the targeting of so-called DREAMers, or children who immigrated into the country illegally with their parents.
Banjul (Gambia) (AFP) - Here is a timeline of developments in Gambia since the December election which President Yahya Jammeh lost to opponent Adama Barrow:- Jammeh concedes defeat -- December 1, 2016: Gambians go to the polls to choose their new president
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.
Turkey's parliament on Wednesday embarked on a second round of voting on a contentious package of constitutional amendments that would give President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office new executive powers. Debate on the draft amendments that would turn Turkey's parliamentary system into a presidential system has been tense, resulting in brawls last week between ruling and opposition party lawmakers. Founded by Erdogan, the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, argues that a strong presidency is needed to strengthen Turkey as it confronts multiple terrorism threats.
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 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.
Animal rights activists Wednesday demanded the closure of an Indonesian zoo after skeletal sun bears were pictured begging for food from visitors and eating their own dung. The bears at the zoo in the city of Bandung were shown waving their arms in the air inside their enclosure -- with their ribs visible through their fur -- as people hurled food at them. Bandung zoo came under fire last year after the death of a critically endangered Sumatran elephant.