A longtime donor of Joe Biden financed a second mortgage for the vice president's younger brother, James, worth $500,000, in order to pay for a Florida vacation home, adding yet another cloud of suspicion over whether the Biden family financially benefited from political connections. According to a Thursday Politico report, the Ukrainian American businessman John Hynansky, who has donated nearly six figures to the former vice president's campaigns over the years, in 2015 lent James Biden the half-million dollar sum for a Florida vacation home on an island only accessible by boat. Read more
Donald J. Trump and some of his allies, in their eagerness to undermine Joe Biden's candidacy, and possibly to deflect attention from their own ethical lapses, have gone to extreme lengths, promoting, without evidence, the dubious narrative that Biden used the office of the Vice-President to advance and protect his son's interests. Read more
(CNN)Pittsburgh police are investigating a "medical situation" that left three people dead and four others hospitalized Sunday morning. All seven people were wearing orange paper wrist bands, which may offer clues, Pittsburgh Director of Public Safety Wendell Hissrich said. He said all are believed to be middle-aged men. Authorities responded to a report of an unconscious man around 2 a.m. Sunday on the city's south side. They found a man dead at the scene, Hissrich said. Shortly later, paramedics responded to another man who was "somewhat conscious" and had symptoms similar to that of the first man. He was taken to a nearby hospital, Hissrich said. Police traced both men back to an apartment in which five more people were found. CNN affiliate KDKA identified the complex as the Southside Works City Apartments. Two of the five people there were found dead, and the three others were hospitalized.
This campaign represents the newest front in the Chinese Communist Party s sweeping rollback of individual religious freedoms, after decades of relative openness that allowed more moderate forms of Islam to blossom. The harsh crackdown on Muslims that began with the Uighurs in Xinjiang is spreading to more regions and more groups.
President Trump on Friday renewed his threat to dump ISIS prisoners back to the European countries they hailed from " saying the US would drop them at the border and the Europeans will "have to capture them again."
The story of south Litchfield is a familiar one in South Carolina three decades after Hurricane Hugo ripped the state. Despite causing $7 billion worth of damage on Sept. 21-22, 1989, Hugo did little to discourage new or more intense development on many stretches of the state's coast.
In places where small beach cottages once stood, magnificent new houses have been erected. Tidal creeks just off the oceanfront are booming with development. And in some vulnerable spots, high-rise condominiums tower above the ocean.
All this is occurring as sea level rises and more powerful storms lash the coast, and as S.C. legislators dismantle regulations to control coastal development.
In what may be a huge milestone in computing, Google says it has achieved "quantum supremacy," an experimental demonstration of the superiority of a quantum computer over a traditional one.
Essentially, Google purports to have pulled off a stunt on a quantum computer that no classical machine"not even the world's most powerful supercomputer"can replicate. If the paper holds up under the scrutiny of the scientific community, it will herald a watershed moment in quantum science. Its central claim counters doubt that some unforeseen law of nature may prevent quantum computers from operating as hoped.
Further, they predict that quantum computing power will "grow at a double exponential rate," besting even the exponential rate that defined Moore's Law, a trend that observed traditional computing power to double roughly every two years. Read more
American-Palestinian supermodel Gigi Hadid handled a New York Fashion Week wardrobe malfunction like a true professional. The 24-year-old was walking for the Marc Jacobs Spring 2020 runway show at Park Avenue Armory when her shoe broke. "there wasn't much we could do other than either fake a non-broken heel or rip off her socks and shoes and send her out barefoot, which we did" Read more
An American national drowned while proposing to his girlfriend underwater during a "once-in-a-lifetime" trip to Tanzania. Steven Weber and his girlfriend, Kenesha Antoine, were staying in a luxury submerged cabin at the Manta Resort, off Pemba Island. Antoine filmed the moment Weber, wearing goggles and flippers, dived under water to ask her to marry him.... Read more
British High Commissioner Thomas Drew has always shared his love for the culinary arts as he can make round rotis. The UK envoy now has showcased his skills in making gajar ka halwa. Drew posted a video to over 69,000 of his followers on Twitter, in which he can be seen making the delicacy. "My second lesson cooking carrot halwa. Easily the most delicious [and most indulgent] dish you can make with carrots," he wrote. Read more
A clever experiment shows it's surprisingly easy to change someone's political views, revealing how flexible we are
The nighttime events are among initial results from the InSight lander, which also found hints that the red planet may host a global reservoir of liquid water deep below the surface.
AT MIDNIGHT ON Mars, the red planet's magnetic field sometimes starts to pulsate in ways that have never before been observed. The cause is currently unknown.
As revealed during a handful of presentations this week at a joint meeting of the European Planetary Science Congress and the American Astronomical Society, the early data suggest the magnetic machinations of Mars are marvelously mad.
Human rights groups say China is holding one million people, mostly ethnic Uighurs, at detention camps - a charge Beijing denies. Online footage purporting to show hundreds of blindfolded and shackled prisoners in a mostly Muslim region of China is believed to be authentic, a European security source has told Sky News.
President Donald Trump has approved a "modest deployment" of American troops and air and missile defense systems to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of last weekend's attack on Saudi oil facilities that the U.S. has blamed on Iran, Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced at a hastily called Pentagon press conference on Friday night.
"[I] Tried a few spiritual things but didn't feel right. Then I called myself an atheist for a while, just kind of being rebellious. I wasn't really. But I kinda labelled myself that for a while. It felt punk rock enough. "And then I found myself coming back around to just belief in- I hate to use the word spirituality, but just a belief in that we're all connected."
It's an ironclad law of presidential primary politics: With increased success comes increased scrutiny. And it looks like Elizabeth Warren is about to get her turn in the hot seat.
After fumbling a Native American DNA test " a misstep that threatened to overshadow her nascent campaign " the Massachusetts senator went on to enjoy a months-long streak of positive press coverage. Her debate opponents mostly declined to attack her, choosing to target frontrunner former Vice President Joe Biden instead. As a result, Warren ticked up steadily in the polls, week after week; now she ranks second nationally in an average of recent polls, a bit ahead of fellow progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders. Read more
