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Marie Yovanovitch, who testified during House impeachment hearings against President Trump, will be retiring from the U.S. foreign service less than a year after her removal as ambassador to Ukraine. A source familiar with the situation confirmed Yovanovitch's exit on Friday.

The American film industry changed beyond recognition after the milestone year of 2001, director Oliver Stone told RT, with producers using financial restraints to censor movies challenging the US military or the CIA. “Maybe in the 1980s, when I did ‘Platoon’, ‘Born on the Fourth of July’ and ‘Heaven & Earth’, I could do that, because it was a slightly more relaxed system,” said the award-winning filmmaker, mentioning his famed movies while making his case during former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa’s show on RT Spanish. When the Iron Curtain fell and the Cold War ended, things didn’t change for the...

Roughly 500 protesters convened at Grand Central on Friday night - holding signs that read 'Cops out of MTA', '$2.75 is not worth human life' Besides the action at Grand Central, protesters also vandalized station walls across the city and glued areas where commuters are to swipe their train cards Approximately five people were arrested during the protest in the station

The United States is working to get the Iraqi government's permission to put Patriot missile defense systems in the country to protect U.S. forces there from possible Iranian attacks, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Thursday. “One of the things we need to do is make sure we have permission from the host government, and that’s one of the matters we have to work on and work through,” Esper told reporters at a Pentagon press conference. “We need the permission of the Iraqis.” The U.S. military did not have Patriots deployed at al-Asad airbase in Iraq, which houses American troops, during...

Hiring people based on race or ethnicity is illegal but the University of California seems to have found a workaround (or a woke-around) to this problem. University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne wrote a blog post last month about hiring within the UC system. He explains how it has become more focused on mining the content of mandatory diversity statements than academic qualifications: A document from the University of California tells us how the system worked in six searches in the life sciences, and I find it a bit disturbing—disturbing because the ideology and social engineering is clear, because candidates,...

O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate campaign was fueled by an organizing network of 20,000 volunteers. Can he harness that energy again without being on the ticket?Beto O’Rourke began 2019 as a political phenom, but ended it as an also-ran. The much-hyped former U.S. representative from El Paso initially rode a wave of optimism from his nationally watched Senate campaign, but struggled to gain support in the presidential race. It was an underwhelming end of a chapter for a man who was once viewed as the great hope for Texas Democrats. But even though—to the dismay of many supporters—O’Rourke opted not to jump...

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of its widely celebrated album "Agents Of Fortune", BLUE ÖYSTER CULT performed the seminal album in its glorious entirety at an exclusive concert for the Audience Music Network on Monday April 18, 2016 at Red Studios in Hollywood, California in front of an intimate audience of invited guests. The performance was recorded by an army of cameramen for a DirectTV special, that is now being released on CD/DVD, Blu-ray, and vinyl on March 6 via Frontiers Music Srl. The intense creative vision of BÖC's original core duo of vocalist and lead guitarist Donald "Buck...

For the fourth time in recent weeks we have an upwards revision of the number of Americans injured in the Iranian missile strike at the Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq on January 8th. First the number was 11, then it was 34 and then it was 50. But now the number is 64..... The United States lifting sanctions against a unit of a Chinese company COSCO..... The impeachment trial of President Trump rolling forward on Newsdump Friday with a vote to not call any witnesses.... A woman who figured prominently in the House impeachment inquiry is retiring..... The United States...

Trumpers are going to read that headline and respond, “YES, AND HE ALWAYS WAS,” but I don’t think that’s true. There’s too much for him to lose and too little to gain by casting a vote to remove that’s functionally meaningless to make this an easy call for him. He has almost five full years left in the Senate and may well spend all five having to deal with an embittered Trump administration that won’t do him a single favor if he votes the wrong way here. He’ll piss off thousands upon thousands of Republican constituents back home, some of...

In a long-running case that was revived by the California Supreme Court, appellate judges now rule that the 'Marlon' star's conduct toward a co-worker can be connected to public discourse. In a long-running case that was revived by the California Supreme Court, appellate judges now rule that the 'Marlon' star's conduct toward a co-worker can be connected to public discourse. Most people don't get a chance to taste the victory of an important free speech ruling. On Friday, actor Marlon Wayans experienced success for the second time at California's Second Appellate District. For several years now, Wayans has been defending...

[Catholic Caucus] Francis Will Receive "Drag Queen" Francis will receive the militant homosexual Oliver Knöbel, reports Bild.de (January 31).Knöbel, a German, calls himself "Olivia Jones," and mocks Catholic nuns by dressing up in religious costumes.For his 50th birthday on November 21, he asked for an audience with Francis, obviously in order to perform a publicity stunt.Nevertheless, Archbishop Georg Gänswein replied affirmatively, asking only for a letter of recommendation from Knöbel's local bishop. Knöbel is not a Catholic. He lives in Hamburg where pro-gay Stefan Heße, a protégé of Dubia Cardinal Joachim Meisner (+2017), is an archbishop.Gänswein pointed out that Knöbel...

MADRID (REUTERS) - Spain's National Centre for Microbiology has confirmed the country's first case of coronavirus after a man was diagnosed with the virus on the remote island of La Gomera in the Canaries, the Health Ministry said late on Friday (Jan 31). The patient is part of a group of five people taken into observation on the island and isolated after it was found they had come into contact with a German man diagnosed with the virus.

They found that all four of these spike protein inserts appear as matches to at least one sequence in at least one variant of the HIV virus. The sequences come from the gp120 and Gag proteins in HIV, the former of which is also a viral envelope recognition protein. This has led many to credulously assume that this is evidence, or even a strong indication, that 2019-nCoV was engineered from its bat ancestor by humans inserting HIV sequences. But they’re wrong; it’s still not engineered. An analysis of the paper clearly reveals that: 1. There is nothing remarkable about the...

It was, to quote a certain Victorian author, the best of times and the worst of times at the Sundance Film Festival. Or, in the words of another one of history’s great scribes: “The players gonna play, play, play, play, play and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.” Those, of course, are the lyrics to Taylor Swift’s “Shake it Off.” And while the song isn’t featured in Swift’s documentary “Miss Americana” — most likely, as a result of a legal battle with Scooter Braun, who now owns the catalog of most of Swift’s hits — there was still...

A row over the yeti has pitted experts against officials - and, for once, it is not about whether or not the mythical creature actually exists. Instead, it is how the creature looks. "This is not right. The government can't just do as it wants," passer-by Reshma Shrestha says, shaking her head in front of the 7ft (2.1m) tall statue at the centre of a row. "If you did not tell me, I would not have known that it was a yeti." 'It's a sumo wrestler' The arrival of the first of more than 100 statues emblazoned with the words...

Marco Rubio - @marcorubio #SenateTrial Day 10: Final arguments 11am Monday. Final vote Wednesday at 4pm. Last March Rep. Schiff said there was "little to be gained by putting the country through" the "wrenching experience" of a partisan impeachment. But then they decided to do it anyway. The House admitted they didn’t try to enforce testimony of witnesses in court because it would tie them up in litigation for a year. But then spent weeks demanding the Senate do it now. We were never going to play this stupid game with them The same people to say "how dare Trump...

WashingtonÂ’s Department of Transportation posted a series of photos on Twitter last week claiming a potential Sasquatch sighting near a highway at Sherman Pass. A webcam placed by the department in the stateÂ’s remote northeastern corner captured a shadowy figure resembling what appears to be a person, or Bigfoot, or just a tree trunk with an oddly humanoid figure. The following day, a crew of workers clearing snow in the area stopped by the cameraÂ’s location to see if they could spot anything out of the ordinary. However, if a Sasquach had been there, it apparently made a fast get...

The 31-year-old man didn't notice the mistake right away and pumped $60 of fuel.Mistakenly putting the fuel pump into a fishing pole holder, a Florida man pumped $60 worth of gas onto the deck of his boat and on the ground of a gas station, officials said. SNIP The gas flowed from the fishing pole holder and onto the deck of the 24-foot vessel. The 31-year-old man didn't notice the mistake right away and pumped $60 of fuel. When the man was trying to clean up the mess, the gasoline started to leak from the boat and onto the ground...

A widow with five children in her late 30s, she became a perennial best-seller over the second half of her life, writing or co-writing “A Stranger Is Watching,” “Daddy’s Little Girl” and more than 50 other favorites. Sales topped 100 million copies and honors came from all over, whether a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France or a “Grand Master” statuette back home from the Mystery Writers of America. Many of her books, including “A Stranger is Watching” and “Lucky Day,” were adapted for movies and television. She also collaborated on several novels with her daughter,...

Before there was Robert Pattinson and the Hot Priest, there was Lord Byron. He was the nineteenth century’s answer to a bad boy. Romantic poet, bisexual man, adulterer and divorcee, his personal life was as well-known as his prose. I suppose that’s what happens when you father a love child with your half-sister and keep a bear as a pet. So, if you’re in a Bumble rut or you’ve got a bad case of Tinder finger, you’ve come to the right place. Byron’s private collection is being auctioned in London next month. A total of 93 items are up for...