Massachusetts police on hunt for assault suspect

Police in Waltham are looking for a person man wanted in connection of an ‘unprovoked’ attack at an apartment complex.

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  • Georgia governor, defying Trump, says he'll 'follow the law' on election results

    Georgia officials responded to a barrage of attacks by President Trump by saying they would continue to “follow the law” on counting votes and certifying the election results, which show a narrow win by President-elect Joe Biden.

  • Body of missing Instagram influencer Alexis Sharkey found on Texas road

    There were no visible wounds to the body and a cause of death hadn't yet been determined for the 26-year-old, police said.

  • Charging the 'Beatles': Inside the case against IS militants

    As two Islamic State militants faced a judge in Virginia last month, Diane Foley listened from home through a muffled phone connection and strained to make out the voices of the men prosecutors say kidnapped her son before he was murdered. Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh stand accused of belonging to an IS cell dubbed “the Beatles,” an incongruously lighthearted nickname for British citizens blamed for the jailing, torture and murder of Western hostages in Syria. After geopolitical breakthroughs and stalemates, military actions in Syria and court fights in London, the Justice Department’s most significant terrorism prosecution in years was finally underway.

  • Senate Republicans called out for hypocrisy after complaining about Biden nominee's tweets

    Republicans are already signaling they won't vote to confirm Neera Tanden, President-elect Joe Biden's choice to run the Office of Management and Budget, next year -- and some have even cast doubt on whether she'll receive a committee hearing. One reason for their antipathy is her prolific activity on Twitter, which includes a fair amount of criticism of GOP lawmakers. Indeed, it appears Tanden was expecting this, since she has seemingly deleted a fair number of tweets over the last few weeks.But GOP critics are calling the lawmakers complaining about Tanden's social media presence hypocrites, especially since President Trump and a few of his own appointees haven't shied away from using the platform to ridicule political and personal opponents (and sometimes presumed allies) over his four years in office.> Do republicans feel even the slightest bit sheepish talking about a Biden nominees tweets when they supported a president who governed largely by tweet?> > -- Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) December 1, 2020In fact, throughout Trump's term, it wasn't uncommon for Republican lawmakers to say they hadn't actually seen the president's posts.> Many Republican senators who always professed to be unfamiliar with Trump tweets are very familiar with Tanden tweets https://t.co/xZPi3mivFU> > -- Mike Memoli (@mikememoli) November 30, 2020But, The Washington Post's Paul Waldman argues, the lawmakers likely aren't all that concerned about Tanden's Twitter use, but are instead using it as part of a strategy to make it more difficult for Biden to assemble the Cabinet he wants. > When you hear Republicans air specific concerns about Biden nominees remember that Obama nominated Merrick Garland because Republicans specifically mentioned him as a Supreme Court nominee they'd support. > > This is their rope-a-dope strategy. Don't fall for it. /1> > -- Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) December 1, 2020More stories from theweek.com George Floyd family lawyer Ben Crump recommends Kamala Harris' brother-in-law for attorney general Americans are choosing death over deprivation Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead.

  • 155 MPs write to Carrie Lam, asking her to advocate for better rights for the 'Hong Kong 12'

    An international coalition of more than 150 parliamentarians has urged Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, to guarantee a fair legal process for 12 young people who were detained in China in August after allegedly trying to flee the former British colony to reach Taiwan by sea. The open letter issued on Tuesday by 155 politicians from the UK, US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Myanmar and multiple European nations adds weight to a global campaign that has sprung up since the so-called “Hong Kong 12” were intercepted by the Chinese coastguard and jailed in the mainland city of Shenzhen. They were facing accusations of illegally crossing the border between Hong Kong and China. The group had tried to escape Hong Kong by speedboat, fearing political persecution amid an ongoing crackdown on pro-democracy activists and the introduction in June of a draconian national security law. The law punishes broadly defined crimes such as “secession” with up to life in prison. Beijing imposed the law to curb year-long anti-government protests. Hong Kong's Security Bureau has said all 12 were suspected of committing crimes including manufacturing or possessing explosives, arson and rioting in Hong Kong. The group consists of unnamed individuals aged 16 to 33. Signatories to the letter, who include Tom Tugendhat, the Foreign Affairs Committee Chair, and fellow MPs Iain Duncan Smith, Damian Green, Hilary Benn and John McDonnell, have appealed to Ms Lam to intervene to bring the group back to Hong Kong to face trial in local courts.

  • Turkish exploration vessel back in port ahead of EU summit

    Turkey's seismic exploration vessel Oruc Reis returned to port on Monday from disputed Mediterranean waters, less than two weeks before a European Union summit where the bloc will evaluate possible sanctions against Ankara. NATO members Turkey and Greece have conflicting claims to continental shelves and rights to potential energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean. Tensions flared in August when Ankara sent Oruc Reis to map out energy drilling prospects in waters also claimed by Greece.

  • Project Veritas’ CNN Sting Uncovers Explosive News That Tucker Carlson Is Racist

    All day, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has been hyping the huge revelations the group would be releasing from their latest stunt. In a dramatic video posted Tuesday morning, the conservative activist could be seen unmuting himself and informing CNN chief Jeff Zucker, “We’ve been listening to your CNN calls for basically two months and recording everything. Just wanted to ask you some questions, if you have a minute.”“Do you still feel you are the most trusted name in news?” he asked. “Because I have to say from what I’ve been hearing on these phone calls, I don’t know about that. I mean, we’ve got a lot of recordings that indicate you’re not really that independent of a journalist.”“Thank you for your comments,” Zucker replied, dryly. “So everybody, in light of that, I think what we’ll do is we’ll set up a new system and we’ll be back with you, we’ll do the rest of the call a little bit later.”So what were the supposedly shocking comments O’Keefe uncovered? According to his group’s Tuesday night release, the most damning thing anyone on CNN’s editorial team did was accuse Fox News’ Tucker Carlson of being a racist.“I think it’s unavoidable that you have to talk about the naked racism of Tucker Carlson,” a man Project Veritas identified as CNN digital VP of global programming Marcus Mabry says in one tape. “Because that’s really what drove this anti-diversity push, you know, Trump watches Tucker Carlson's show and then reacts. And just as sort of the white supremacy hour they have on Fox News every night.”Not exactly news for anyone who watches Carlson’s nightly show, including some of his own Fox News colleagues who said as much earlier this year.Without mentioning Project Veritas, Carlson attacked Mabry directly on that show Tuesday night for “lecturing” media companies about the value of diversity. The host laughed out loud at the notion that “there’s a lot of work to do” to make newsrooms more diverse.CNN’s PR Twitter account, meanwhile, responded to Project Veritas with this message: “Legal experts say this may be a felony. We‘ve referred it to law enforcement,” though it’s unclear what laws the group may have broken.Later, that same account revealed that Mabry was not even the staffer who made those comments about Carlson. “James & Tucker, the voice you ID’d tonight as ‘Marcus Mabry’ is actually GA resident & CNN General Counsel David Vigilante. We’re certain you’ll want to correct the record and apologize to the Black executive for assuming he was the voice raising concerns over white supremacy.” The other big revelation from Project Veritas appeared to be that Zucker did not want his staff to “normalize” President Donald Trump’s delusional claims about the election.“This is a president who knows he’s losing, who knows he’s in trouble, is sick, maybe is on the aftereffects of steroids or not, I don’t know,” Zucker said. “But he is acting erratically and desperately, and we need to not normalize that.”“You know, this is what we've come to expect for the last three and a half years, four years, but it clearly is exacerbated by the time that we're in and the issues that he’s [Trump] dealing with,” he added. “I think that we cannot just let it be normalized. He is all over the place and acting erratically, and I think we need to lean into that.”It appears that for Project Veritas, pointing out the reality unfolding in front of Americans’ eyes, whether on Fox News or in the White House, is proof of CNN’s supposed bias. But if anything, their big sting is likely to endear Zucker to those who still like to blame him for elevating Trump during the 2016 campaign.Seth Meyers Brutally Mocks Sidney Powell, the Trump Lawyer ‘Too Insane’ for Tucker CarlsonRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • AP PHOTOS: Animal attacks taking their toll in Kashmir

    Amid the long-raging deadly strife in Indian-controlled Kashmir, another conflict is silently taking its toll on the Himalayan region’s residents: the conflict between man and wild animals. According to official data, at least 67 people have been killed and 940 others injured in the past five years in attacks by wild animals in the famed Kashmir Valley, a vast collection of alpine forests, connected wetlands and waterways known as much for its idyllic vistas as for its decades-long armed conflict between Indian troops and rebels. The Himalayan black bear is at the heart of this trouble.

  • ‘I can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have right now over this’: Georgia election official speaks out about threats against staff

    On Tuesday Gabriel Sterling of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office spoke forcefully against post-election threats and rhetoric directed at election staff.

  • Trump's campaign lawyers turn on Barr

    President Trump's campaign lawyers have an unexpected new enemy.Attorney General William Barr took a surprising step away from Trump on Tuesday, telling The Associated Press the Justice Department has so far not found any major instances of voter fraud. Trump's legal team, including Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, quickly fired back, claiming Barr just doesn't have enough evidence to clear every fraud allegation."With all due respect to the attorney general, there hasn't been any semblance of a Department of Justice investigation" into the allegations of voter fraud Trump's team has gathered. If Barr just looked at Giuliani's "many witnesses" and "audited" some voting machines, the legal team insists he'd find some fraud; Election officials across the U.S. say there's been no evidence of widespread fraud that would change the election outcome.> Trump campaign attorneys fire back against DOJ's statement that there's no evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, citing "ample evidence" (which, somehow, still hasn't made its way to an actual judge). pic.twitter.com/Irm1U0rxnM> > — DJ Judd (@DJJudd) December 1, 2020In an interview with AP, Barr said the department had "not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome" in the presidential election last month. President-elect Joe Biden beat Trump, but the president and most of his team has yet to acknowledge that, levying legal challenges and furthering conspiracy theories in a longshot attempt to overturn the election results. Judges have almost universally knocked down the Trump campaign's challenges and voter fraud allegations.More stories from theweek.com George Floyd family lawyer Ben Crump recommends Kamala Harris' brother-in-law for attorney general Americans are choosing death over deprivation Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead.

  • US Supreme Court asked to block Biden win in Pennsylvania

    Republicans attempting to undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to take up their lawsuit, three days after it was thrown out by the highest court in the battleground state. In the request to the U.S. Supreme Court, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania and the other plaintiffs are asking the court to prevent the state from certifying any contests from the Nov. 3 election, and undo any certifications already made, such as Biden’s victory. Biden beat President Donald Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.

  • Black woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for illegal voting files new appeal

    In 2018, Crystal Mason was sentenced to five-years for voting in the 2016 election. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas is now working with her to appeal the verdict. Mason had no idea she was not allowed to vote in 2016 when she cast her provisional ballot due to the fact that she was on federally supervised release.

  • How China's special forces stack up against the US's special operators

    Chinese special operators are getting more resources and going through more training, but there are something you can't teach.

  • The Electoral College is only getting worse

    The Electoral College is a political abomination. As I have written before, rather than protecting the influence of small states, it grants overwhelming power to a handful of states that randomly happen to have a close partisan balance, which are mostly fairly large. Worse, it allows popular vote losers to win — which has happened twice in the last 20 years. Indeed, theoretically a candidate could lose the popular vote four to one and still win the electoral vote.Moreover, since 2012 the divergence between the Electoral College and the popular vote has been steadily growing. As I'll show below, while Joe Biden won a clear victory in the popular vote, he just barely squeaked through in the Electoral College. This idiotic anachronism must be destroyed.Let's take a look at this over the last two decades. One way to examine this question is to look at the most "efficient" way that losing candidates could have won the Electoral College. In other words, if we add up the state totals for previous elections going back to 2000, how might the losers have won by flipping the least number of votes?Using data from U.S. Elections Atlas, and 2020 data from the The New York Times (including a rough extrapolation assuming Biden wins 80 percent of the mail-in votes that haven't been counted yet in New York state), I calculated how the popular vote losers could have won the Electoral College — or lost, in the case of George W. Bush in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016.In 2000, of course, Bush officially "won" Florida by 537 votes, and therefore the presidency with 271 electoral votes, while Al Gore won the popular vote by about 550,000. (In reality, Gore probably would have won a fair recount in Florida if it hadn't been stopped by a conservative Supreme Court on nakedly partisan grounds, but I'm going to ignore that for the time being since it doesn't matter for this particular argument.) That means a flip of just 269 votes in one state from one candidate to the other would have changed the result. In 2004, Bush won re-election with a margin of about three million votes, and 286 electoral votes. John Kerry famously could have won if he had just flipped Ohio, where the margin was just 118,601 votes. However, it would have been slightly more efficient in vote terms to flip New Mexico, Iowa, Nevada, and Alaska, with a cumulative margin of 117,411. That means a flip of just 58,706 votes would have given Kerry the presidency.In 2008, Barack Obama steamrolled John McCain with a popular vote margin of over 9.5 million, and 365 electoral votes. But it would have taken relatively few vote changes to overturn even that landslide result. Obama won Florida, Colorado, Iowa, Rhode Island, Maine, New Mexico, Nevada, Vermont, Delaware, New Hampshire, Indiana, and North Carolina by a cumulative margin of just 1.436 million votes — therefore flipping just 718,138 would have given McCain an additional 97 electoral votes and victory. Similarly in 2012, Mitt Romney could have won by taking the nine closest states in terms of total votes, requiring only 384,188 flips. Then in 2016, Trump of course squeaked out an Electoral College victory with tiny margins in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania — just 38,868 flips would have given Clinton the win.That finally brings me to 2020. Biden won the popular vote easily, with a margin maybe in the neighborhood of 6.9 million or so (depending on what happens in New York.) But it would have taken just 33,139 flips in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin to deliver a Trump second term.Bringing this all together: If we plot these minimum vote flips to change the Electoral College result as a percentage of the popular vote margin, we can get a sense of how badly it diverges from the principle of one person, one vote:Courtesy: U.S. Elections AtlasWhat this shows is that the Electoral College is routinely on the edge of handing the popular vote loser the presidency even when it doesn't happen — and it seems to be getting worse. In 2008 and 2012, it would have taken a flip of 7.5 percent and 11 percent of the popular vote margin (still not great), but in 2016, flipping just 1.3 percent of the margin would change the result. The 2020 election, meanwhile, is the worst result since 2000 — though Biden did win, a flip of a mere 0.48 percent of the popular vote margin (or something like 0.02 percent of the total vote) would have let Trump win. Moreover, while the 2008 flipping scenario outlined above relies on implausible large percentage swings in small states like Vermont, Biden's victory depended on razor-thin margins in three swing states.All this speaks for itself. But before Republicans get too smug about cooking up justifications for the Electoral College because it happens to help them at the moment, consider that in 2004, flipping just 1.9 percent of the popular vote margin would have delivered the presidency to the Democrat even though Bush got three million more votes. Because the Electoral College's rules are so goofy and arbitrary, it is very easy to imagine demographic trends handing the Dems a near-automatic victory every time — if Texas went solidly blue, for instance. It would be better and fairer for everyone if the presidency simply went to the candidate that got the most votes.More stories from theweek.com Americans are choosing death over deprivation Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead. GOP Sen. Josh Hawley tries to explain how Democrats are both 'Marxists' and 'corporatists'

  • The Latest: Graham: Trump should attend Biden's inauguration

    Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says he thinks President Donald Trump should attend President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration because it would be “good for the country.” The South Carolina senator said he spoke with the president over the weekend and encouraged him to pursue his legal challenges to the election results.

  • U.S. imposes sanctions on Chinese firm accused of undermining democracy in Venezuela

    The United States imposed sanctions on Monday on Chinese firm China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation (CEIEC), accusing it of supporting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's efforts to undermine democracy. The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement the Chinese company supported the leftist government of Maduro in its "efforts to restrict internet service and conduct digital surveillance and cyber operations against political opponents." "The United States will not hesitate to target anyone helping to suppress the democratic will of the Venezuelan people and others around the world," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement.

  • Chicago man accused of fatally stabbing another man over Thanksgiving leftovers

    James Dixon put his bare hands in the food at the home where his victim was the host’s boyfriend. A Chicago man has been charged with murder after a fight over some Thanksgiving leftovers. James Dixon, 28, allegedly stabbed 52-year-old Vincell Jackson as the man was being escorted out of a house following a holiday gathering.

  • The Latest: Biden inaugural committee limits donors to $500K

    The committee raising money for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration will take contributions from individual donors of as much as $500,000 and from corporations of as much as $1 million. The contribution limits for Biden are far lower than those of President Donald Trump in 2017. Trump raised a record $107 million for his inauguration and accepted massive checks from individuals, including $5 million from Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson.

  • Australian soldier pictured drinking beer out of dead Taliban fighter's prosthetic leg

    A photo of an Australian soldier drinking beer from the prosthetic leg of a dead Taliban fighter emerged on Tuesday, as the Chinese and Australian governments continued to trade blows over alleged Australian war crimes in Afghanistan. The photograph of the soldier drinking from an apparent “war trophy” in an unauthorised bar in Afghanistan in 2009 was one of several obtained by Guardian Australia. Another shows two soldiers dancing with the leg. The bar, known as the Fat Lady’s Arms, was set up inside Australia’s special forces base in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Uruzgan province. Some soldiers claimed in the Guardian that the practice was widely tolerated by officers at high levels, and even involved some of them. Taking property without the consent of the owner may be classified as pillaging, a war crime which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. The revelations came as China hit back at the Australian government, which had criticised a social media post by senior official Zhao Lijian featuring a doctored image of an Australian soldier holding a knife to the throat of an Afghan child. The post was a reference to the findings of the Brereton inquiry which implicated Australian forces in the alleged murder of prisoners or civilians in Afghanistan. In a statement, the Chinese Embassy in Canberra said the Australian Government was attempting to deflect attention from war crimes committed by Australian forces, to stoke the fires of “domestic nationalism”, and to pin the blame for the deteriorating relationship between the countries on China. While the Brereton inquiry largely absolved the Australian military’s top brass of responsibility for the alleged crimes, the report noted that a “warrior culture” had developed in the special forces which contributed to offences, a culture of which senior officers could not have been unaware. Australian historian and lecturer on asymmetrical warfare and counter-insurgency, Dr Philip Chilton, told The Telegraph that Australia’s special forces “are bred to have a warrior culture”, and that it is “problematic” that the report appeared to “exonerate the higher command for responsibility for any of this”. While the Department of Defence has not confirmed the authenticity of the photographs, in June 2018 Fairfax Media reported that Australian troops had been using the prosthetic leg taken from an Afghan man as a drinking vessel. The Department of Defence said in a statement that all credible allegations of wrongdoing will be investigated. “The report has been redacted to remove names and details that could identify individuals against whom the Inquiry has found credible information to support allegations of criminal wrongdoing or other misconduct... Where there is information provided to Defence not addressed as part of the Afghanistan Inquiry [headed by Justice Brereton], these matters will be investigated thoroughly and acted on,” a spokesperson said. “It is critical that all matters are considered carefully, and any actions are undertaken according to the ADF’s longstanding and well-established processes, ensuring the rights of individuals to due process and fair hearing are protected.”

  • Leaked documents reveal China severely underreported coronavirus cases as the pandemic spread

    Documents leaked to CNN show that the real tally of coronavirus cases was significantly higher than public figures suggested.