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Mexico has been the largest source of migration to the United States for most of the past half-century. Under Trump, Central American families began crossing in record number, predominantly from Guatemala and Honduras, which Homeland Security officials blame on "loopholes" in U.S. laws that limit the government's ability to detain and rapidly deport migrant families seeking protection. U.S. authorities took nearly one million migrants into custody during the 2019 fiscal year that ended Sept 30, including nearly 500,000 who arrived in family groups. Most of the Mexicans arrested at the border were single adults - often recent deportees caught trying...

Largely autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan is a Sharia-based society, per its own Constitution, (Articles 6 & 7): This Constitution confirms and respects the Islamic identity of the majority of the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. It considers the principles of Islamic Sharia as one of the main sources of legislation… It is not allowed to enact a law inconsistent with the provisions of the fundamentals of Islam. (Articles 6 & 7) Not surprisingly, given historical Sharia mores, the attendant legacy of Islamic attitudes towards non-Muslims, overall, including Jews, and Islam’s own intrinsic theological Jew-hatred, here are the current prevailing conditions for the...

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner will lead a US delegation to Israel at the end of the month to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz, a senior administration official said on Thursday. Kushner has been leading President Donald Trump's effort to develop a peace plan for Israelis and Palestinians. After proposing a $60 billion aid package for the region last summer, he has yet to unveil a proposed political plan that gets at the thorniest issues in the decades-old conflict, with Netanyahu struggling to form a governing coalition. The official, speaking on condition...

A group of conservative veterans is preparing to visit Washington to laud President Trump’s withdrawal of troops from northern Syria and to urge Republicans to back his intention to pull out of Afghanistan and other countries in the Middle East. Wyoming House Majority Whip Tyler Lindholm, who was in the Navy on 9/11, is helping organize the mid-November gathering featuring speeches at the National Press Club and lobbying visits to Congress. "If you listen to the sound clips of the war hawks who say you can’t pull out now because a vacuum will be created, and we can’t pull out...

Bruno Dey, a 93-year-old former SS guard, said on Thursday he was sorry for his actions as he went on trial in Germany for complicity in the murder of more than 5,000 people at a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Dey stands accused of abetting the murder of 5,230 people when he worked at the Stutthof camp near what was then Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland. While he insisted that he did not join the deadly operation voluntarily, he voiced regret for his actions. "That's what he said in his interrogation: He felt sorry for what he did,"...

he Prime Minister has returned from Brussels victorious. The naysayers, the gloomsters and the doomsters said the previous deal could not be reopened. The Prime Minister got it reopened. They said he could not remove the backstop. He has dismantled it and cast it aside. They said he could not get the EU to agree to allowing the UK remain a single customs territory. Under the deal the UK will leave the customs union, entire, whole and perfect. Like Jason in search of the golden fleece, the Prime Minister has overcome the mightiest of obstacles to return with a deal...

Customs The whole of the UK will leave the EU customs union. This means the UK will be able to strike trade deals with other countries in the future. There will be a legal customs border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (which stays in the EU). But in practice the customs border will be between Great Britain and the island of Ireland, with goods being checked at "points of entry" in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland's say Because Northern Ireland will be set apart from the rest of the UK when it comes to customs and other EU...

In the wake of the NBA-China scandal, Toronto Raptors fans are gearing up for a political statement for the team’s home opener. A crowd-funded campaign has raised over $34,000 in five days to print thousands of t-shirts that read “The North Stand with Hong Kong” for Toronto’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans on October 22. “We are able to make 7,000 T shirts, which is 2,000 more than our original target! We will cover 35% instead of 25% of the audience! That’s 1/3 of the arena!” the group’s GoFundMe page reads. The campaign was organized in part by Mimi...

And those are the numbers among the wives, not the husbands. A new survey by non-profit group Sisters in Islam has found that as many as 21 per cent (or around one in five) Muslim women in Malaysia believe their husbands have a right to beat them. “Muslim women have been so thoroughly indoctrinated to obey that it takes a mufti to issue a declaration that women who have been assaulted or violated by their husbands are allowed to leave their homes,” the group wrote on Twitter. But wait, there's a difference between the principle and its application to them....

While touring the Louis Vuitton Factory at it's ribbon cutting in Texas today: FRENCH REPORTER: “You have a very low unemployment rate in the U.S. & we have a very high unemployment rate in France. — How come?” PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Well... maybe we have a better President than you do.”

Former Defense secretary James Mattis responded to the President Trump calling him “the world’s most overrated general” during a meeting with Congressional leaders Wednesday. “I’m not just an overrated general. I’m the greatest, the world’s most overrated," Mattis told the audience at the Al Smith Memorial Foundation dinner Thursday. Mattis was the keynote speaker at the 74th annual event. "I'm honored to be considered that by Donald Trump because he also called Meryl Streep an overrated actress. So I guess I'm the Meryl Streep of generals, and frankly that sounds pretty good to me,” Mattis continued. But Mattis didn’t stop...

This is interesting on the merits but also interesting in that two of the most powerful platforms in right-wing media are promoting it.I suppose one could argue that Trump handing the G7 to his own business isn’t a textbook emolument since it doesn’t really function as a bribe, which is what the constitutional ban is all about. We don’t want the president receiving fat envelopes from foreign dignitaries for fear that that’ll influence his views on foreign policy. Imagine if, say, the president of Ukraine could curry favor with POTUS by telling him that he recently paid for the...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Venezuela was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council on Thursday with 105 votes and a round of applause, despite fierce lobbying by the United States and rights groups, and the late entry of Costa Rica as competition.In a secret ballot by the 193-member U.N. General Assembly, Costa Rica garnered 96 votes despite only entering the race this month, when President Carlos Alvarado declared “the Venezuelan regime is not the suitable candidate.”

CNN claimed Thursday that the White House “admits to quid pro quo with Ukraine.” That appeared to be the opposite, in fact, of what happened during a press conference with acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. Mulvaney told reporters that there had been no quid pro quo, as described by those pursuing his impeachment — that President Donald Trump had not withheld aid from Ukraine until it agreed to investigate his potential 2020 presidential rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Summary: Erdogan's "invasion" of Syria is not what the media is reporting. Turkey has 3.6 million refugees from the Syrian Civil War, and has prevented them from flooding Europe, causing severe economic hardship. This is the largest number of refugees held by any nation. If Erdogan can be believed, and he has been talking about this for a few years, this "invasion" is about creating 20 x 300 mile zone to create a zone to repatriate Syrian refugees. The Kurds are largely unaffected by Turkey's move. Turkey cannot hold millions of refugees forever. They can send them to Syria or...

Almost a year to the day after Bloomberg reported that the US government, Apple, Amazon, and others had their servers compromised by China, a security researcher has shown a similar hack can be pulled off with $190 worth of tools and a $2 chip. Citing six senior national security officials and several higher-ups within Apple and Amazon, Bloomberg claimed that the manufacturing facilities constructing Supermicro motherboards had been infiltrated by a branch of China’s People’s Liberation Army. The PLA was reportedly adding a rice grain-sized chip capable of monitoring and altering communications with the motherboard’s BMC (baseboard management controller). The...

Itinerary for a trip to Ukraine in August organized by the Atlantic Council think tank reveals that a staffer on Rep. Adam Schiff’s House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence held a meeting during the trip with acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor, now a key witness for Democrats pursuing impeachment. The Atlantic Council is funded by and works in partnership with Burisma, the natural gas company at the center of allegations regarding Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Taylor has been called by House Democrats to appear next week to provide a deposition as part of the investigation...

Sen. Mitt Romney on Thursday criticized President Trump’s deal with Turkey for a five-day cease-fire in its conflict with the Kurds in Syria. “The announcement today is being portrayed as a victory. It is far from a victory. Serious questions remain about how the decision was reached precipitously to withdraw from Syria and why that decision was reached,” the Utah Republican said on the floor of the Senate. “Given the initial details of the cease-fire agreement, the administration must also explain what America’s future role will be in the region. What happens now to the Kurds and why Turkey will...

What a terrible betrayal of the Syrian Kurds we saw on Wednesday when the cowards in the U.S. House of Representatives offered up a bipartisan vote of 354 to 60 to condemn President Trump for withdrawing from Syria, including two-thirds of Republicans.

MOSCOW, Oct 17 (Reuters) - The Kremlin on Thursday questioned the tone of a letter sent by U.S. President Donald Trump to his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan, saying it was highly unusual for correspondence between heads of state. The White House on Wednesday released the Oct. 9 letter, in which Trump urged Erdogan to halt Turkey's cross-border offensive into northeast Syria, saying "Don't be a tough guy" and "Don't be a fool!"