March, 2019

Islamic extremists have been growing in prominence in central Mali since 2015, leading to hundreds of deaths last year.

Armed men dressed as traditional Donzo hunters assaulted people in the central villages of Ogossagou and Welingara, the mayor of the nearby town of Bankass, Moulaye Guindo, told Reuters. The village chief of Ogossogou and his grandchildren are said to be among those slain in the ethnic Peulh community.

The massive demonstration--one of the city's largest protest gatherings in years-- took place with May unable to convince Parliament on a plan for the U.K. to leave the European Union--despite two attempts in the House of Commons.
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London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted a video of himself with demonstrators holding up a 'Put it to the People' banner at the front of the march as it began. Joining him was Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable, who tweeted that there was a "huge turnout of people here from all walks of life."

Although Kraft didn't use his statement to pronounce his guilt or innocence, he did seem to acknowledge that he was caught in a precarious situation. The statement from the Patriots owner came less than 24 hours after his attorney, William Burck, spoke at length about the case for the first time.

Burck told the media on Friday that he believes police violated Kraft's fourth amendment rights by taking surveillance footage of the Patriots owner while he was at a spa in Florida. According to police, the video purportedly shows an employee at the spa performing a sexual act on Kraft.

BLF president Andile Mngxitama charged in a statement that the cyclone, which hit Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi, was “not a natural disaster but a direct consequence of the white, Western system of ecological assault for profits”.

Important pundits and news networks have served up an impressive display of denials, evasions and on-air strokes after learning that Robert Mueller has ended his probe without issuing a single collusion-related indictment.

"My only conclusion is that the President transmitted to Mueller that he would take the 5th. He would never talk to him and therefore, Mueller decided it wasn't worth the subpoena fight." @KenDilanianNBC on Mueller concluding his report. #Hardball pic.twitter.com/MjQYCj13AD

— Hardball (@hardball) March 22, 2019

It’s certainly possible that Trump may emerge from this better than many anticipated. However! Consensus has been that Mueller would follow DOJ rules and not indict a sitting president. I.e. it’s also possible his report could be very bad for Trump, despite “no more indictments”

— Mark Follman (@markfollman) March 23, 2019

What is collusion and why is Robert Mueller unlikely to mention it in his report on Trump and Russia? https://t.co/DPwbGLJhP2 pic.twitter.com/Ukeer48R8r

— Newsweek (@Newsweek) March 23, 2019

For the last two years your network has engaged in a ceaseless, error-ridden, and unhinged effort to tie Trump to a conspiracy w/ Russia. It hasn’t panned out. If you’re not going to own up to that, why say anything?

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 22, 2019

You can't blame MSNBC viewers for being confused. They largely kept dissenters from their Trump/Russia spy tale off the air for 2 years. As recently as 2 weeks ago, they had @JohnBrennan strongly suggesting Mueller would indict Trump family members on collusion as his last act: pic.twitter.com/nPlaq5YVxf

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 23, 2019

Mueller - The name that ended all mainstream media credibility.

No matter what you think of Donald Trump. His unexpected rise to power has educated the entire world about what’s wrong with US politics, the fake news media and the deep state.

— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 23, 2019

It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2019

This was an apparent reference to sanctions the Treasury Department had announced Thursday on Chinese shipping companies doing business with North Korea. Those sanctions prompted swift pushback from the Chinese and North Korean governments.

When asked about the president’s tweet, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said: “President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.”

Barr has told congressional leaders he is "reviewing the report and anticipate that [he] may be in a position to advise [them] of the special counsel's principal conclusions as soon as this weekend." Meanwhile, Mueller has indicated that there are no further indictments expected.

Sydney's mother, Cara Aiello, told CBS Miami her daughter struggled with survivor's guilt and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in the year following the tragedy. And while she reportedly never asked for help, she struggled to attend college classes because she was scared of being in a classroom

A Lake County Circuit Court judge ruled Friday that the village of Deerfield overstepped its authority last year when it enacted a ban on assault weapons five years after the Illinois legislature declared such regulations the exclusive power of the state.

Judge Luis Berrones issued a permanent injunction blocking the village from enforcing its ordinance. In the ruling, Berrones wrote that the plaintiff gun owners have “a clearly ascertainable right to not be subjected to a preempted and unenforceable ordinance” that prohibits possession of assault weapons, imposes financial penalties for keeping them and allows their property to be confiscated.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is waiving the underpayment penalty for more Americans who may have unintentionally underpaid their 2018 tax liabilities.

The Department of Treasury announced on Friday that it was lowering the withholding underpayment threshold to 80 percent – meaning people whose total withholding and estimated tax payments for 2018 are equal to or greater than 80 percent of their taxes owed will not be penalized.

The Saturday protest was the latest in several weeks of demonstrations by supporters of the far-right focusing on corruption.

A journalistic investigation in February reported that figures close to President Petro Poroshenko and a factory controlled by him were involved in an embezzlement scheme. It has become a top issue in the heated campaign ahead of Ukraine's March 31 presidential election.

A week after co-founder Morris Dees was ousted over sexual misconduct claims - with two dozen employees signing a letter of concern over "allegations of mistreatment, sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and racism," the head of the SPLC, Richard Cohen, as well as the organization's legal director, Rhonda Brownstein, resigned on Friday.
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Earlier this week, the SPLC board of directors appointed Michelle Obama's former chief of staff, Tina Tchen - who, in an unrelated matter, unsuccessfully tried to pull strings and have the Jussie Smollett case transferred from the Chicago PD to the FBI. Tchen is heading up the inquiry into the sexual misconduct claims.

“They have BMW, they have Mercedes, they have a lot of very good cars that come in,” he said in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo airing Friday. His “end game” on the issue is that European carmakers will “build their plants in the United States and they have no tariffs.”

Trump said that he would agree to zero-tariff levels on some trade with Europe but wouldn’t on autos without this concession.

Trump answered “well, no” after he was asked whether foreign cars represent a national security threat to the US -- the subject of a Commerce Department study Trump ordered last year. The findings haven’t yet been publicly released.

But he added: “What poses a national security risk is our balance sheet,” apparently referring to the US trade deficit. “We have to have -- we need a strong balance sheet. Otherwise, you don’t have national security.”

This is more than just a public relations nightmare for the banks. At stake is their standing with investors and customers, who have been willing to withdraw business from lenders over their positions on hot-button issues. The banks also face a potential backlash from politicians at all levels of government — including conservatives — who have taken punitive action when the companies take a stand they don’t like. In Louisiana, for example, officials banned Citigroup and Bank of America from a bond sale in response to restrictive gun policies.

Epstein and AIBRT analyzed Google searches linked to three highly competitive southern California congressional races in which Democrats won, and found that Google's "clear democrat bias" may have flipped the seats away from Republican candidates. According to the study, at least 35,455 undecided voters within the three California districts may have been persuaded to vote Democrat due to the biased Google search results.

The agency's misstep has put the survivors of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria and the California wildfires "at increased risk of identity theft and fraud," according to the report from John V. Kelly, acting Inspector General for the Homeland Security Department.
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The 13 types of information compromised included full names, birth dates, partial social security numbers, addresses and financial information, including applicants' bank transfer details. The data was provided to a private contractor managing the transitional shelter program.

Beijing-based Sinogene Biotechnology Company and the Yunnan Agricultural University this week announced the successful cloning of the police sniffer dog in question. The clone, named Kunxun, is already three months old. It is the first step in a plan aimed at “volume production” of similarly cloned police dogs that would presumably lead to reduced training times. The work is supported by the Ministry of Public Security.

Kunxun will now go through the necessary drug detection, crowd control, and evidence searching training. At around 10 months old, the dog will then graduate to the level of official police dog. Training of a police dog usually takes around five years to complete, a report claims. Police dogs are always a risky investment, since there is no guarantee that a dog will take to the work as hoped for. By cloning a successful police dog the idea is that some of this risk may be mitigated.

An enormous federal lawsuit out of New York is the latest and most brazen attempt to explicitly tie the billionaire Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, to the opioid crisis. It accuses them of knowingly misleading the public about the addictiveness of their drugs, as well as turning a blind eye to doctors who were accused of prescribing dangerously high doses or diverting their supply to the black market.

This week, a coalition of over 500 cities, counties, and Native American tribes sued eight members of the Sackler family in the southern district of New York, the Guardian reported.

Indonesia’s flag airline is cancelling its orders for the Boeing Max 737 jet, the first carrier to publicly do so after the aircraft was involved in two crashes in less than five months.

Garuda Indonesia informed Boeing on March 14 that it wished to cancel its remaining order for 49 Max jets. The two sides plan to meet on March 28 for “further discussion,” according to the Wall Street Journal.