Free Republic

BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - China has dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation. The trip by the Chinese doctors and officials comes amid conflicting reports about the health of the North Korean leader. Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signaled in terms of Kim’s health. A delegation led by a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department left Beijing for North Korea on Thursday, two of the people said. The department is...

House Democrats have introduced legislation that would expand the federal government’s coronavirus relief cash payments to $2,000 a month until the economy recovers. On Wednesday, Americans who qualify started getting one-time checks from the Treasury Department of up to $1,200 per adult depending on their incomes. But Democratic Reps. Tim Ryan (Ohio) and Ro Khanna (Calif.) introduced a bill on Tuesday that would expand the payments to $2,000 on a monthly basis until employment returns to pre-crisis levels. They argued that the expansion is necessary to keep up with the growing number of Americans facing layoffs, furloughs or pay cuts...

Washington (AFP) - With an aircraft carrier forced into port and staff at bases handling nuclear missiles hit by COVID-19, the US military wants rivals to understand: don't test us, we have not been weakened. Statement after statement from the Pentagon has sought to deliver that message amid questions this week over whether the US fighting force can maintain full readiness, with cases among service members now at 2,031. "We're still capable and we're still ready no matter what the threat," Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley said Thursday. "I wouldn't want any mixed messages going out there to any...

Biggest reinforcement of our collective defence" since the end of the Cold War says Nato. Nato is preparing for its "biggest reinforcement" of its collective defence since the end of the Cold War amid growing tensions with Russia. The alliance's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that hundreds of thousands of troops will be put on a higher state of alert. Nato commanders are also preparing a substantial land force to deter growing Russian aggression. The Times said that although Stoltenberg did not provide exact figures, Sir Adam Thomson, the UK's outgoing permanent representative to Nato, said that he believed the target...

Fwd: Sanders criticism From:re47@hillaryclinton.com To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-05-26 12:04 Subject: Fwd: Sanders criticism This isn't in keeping w the agreement. Since we clearly have some leverage, would be good to flag this for him. I could send a signal via Welch--or did you establish a direct line w him? Begin forwarded message: *From:* Christina Reynolds *Date:* May 26, 2015 at 9:22:07 AM EDT *To:* Robby Mook , Kristina Schake < kschake@hillaryclinton.com>, Jennifer Palmieri < jpalmieri@hillaryclinton.com>, Tony Carrk , John Podesta , Oren Shur , Brian Fallon *Subject:* *FW: Sanders criticism* Following up on our call on Friday, just wanted to...

Internet news mogul Matt Drudge reacted on Sunday to news the FBI had cleared Hillary Clinton by forecasting that a stormy news cycle would dominate the final days of the presidential race. “Comey's head-fake just made the hornets nest even crazier!” the Drudge Report founder tweeted. The conservative news aggregator added: “48 hours of madness upcoming!!” It was not clear to what Drudge was referring, but the Clinton campaign warned on Sunday that any bombshell emails published by WikiLeaks in the final two days of the election would “probably” not be authentic. FBI Director James Comey informed Congress on Sunday...

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has raised far more money from far more people than Donald Trump’s across Maine. But if you break out Clinton’s $1.5 million and Trump’s $153,000 by congressional district, the picture becomes less lopsided. In the 1st District, encompassing southern Maine, Clinton raised more than $13 for every $1 picked up by the Trump campaign. But her lead narrowed in the 2nd District, where the Democrat raised a little more than $4 for every $1 that went to her Republican rival, according to reports covering contributions through Oct. 25. The money race is no predictor of how the...

Washington (CNN)Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 7 points in Iowa, according to a Des Moines Register poll of likely voters released Saturday evening. The poll found Trump with 46% to Clinton's 39%, while Libertarian Gary Johnson and the Green Party's Jill Stein caught 6% and 1% of likely voters, respectively. About 5% of respondents said they did not want to disclose their choice; 2% said they would vote for someone else or not at all, and the remaining 1% said they weren't sure or didn't remember. Sixty eight percent of respondents said they were unhappy with their choices in...

ATKINSON, N.H. – A top Trump surrogate warmed up the crowd here on Friday by joking about President Bill Clinton's sex life minutes before Donald Trump took the stage. "Do you think Bill was referring to Hillary when he said, 'I did not have sex with that woman?'" former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu asked members of the audience, many of whom responded with laughter. Sununu, a former critic of the GOP nominee who said Clinton has made it "easy" for Republicans to come around and support Trump, plans to canvass the Granite State over the weekend ahead of next...

The FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies are examining faked documents aimed at discrediting the Hillary Clinton campaign as part of a broader investigation into what U.S. officials believe has been an attempt by Russia to disrupt the presidential election, people with knowledge of the matter said. U.S. Senator Tom Carper, a Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, has referred one of the documents to the FBI for investigation on the grounds that his name and stationery were forged to appear authentic, some of the sources who had knowledge of that discussion said. In the letter identified as fake, Carper...

Polls show narrowing race Polls show narrowing race 11 Hours Ago | 03:25 A new poll from Quinnipiac University shows a tight presidential race in battleground states, with Donald Trump appearing to gain some ground. Hillary Clinton's October momentum came "to a halt" in the QU swing state poll, according to a Wednesday afternoon release, which said the Democrat had seen her leads shrink slightly in Florida and North Carolina. Trump, meanwhile, vaulted into a 5-point lead in Ohio in the latest poll. "No one has been elected president since 1960 without carrying two of the key swing states, Florida,...

Columbus — Republican Donald Trump holds a 5-point lead over Democrat Hillary Clinton in Ohio, where her support among women is collapsing, according to a new poll released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University. If the election were today, Trump would get 46 percent to Clinton’s 41 percent while independent Gary Johnson would pull 5 percent of the vote and Green Party candidate Jill Stein would get 2 percent, the poll found. Women voters are now split 44-44 in Ohio while 17 days ago Clinton held a 12-point lead in the same poll with female voters. Peter Brown, Quinnipiac University assistant poll...

Attorney General Lynch abdicated her duty in the Clinton probes. Fewer than three of 10 Americans trust government to do the right thing always or most of the time, Gallup reports, and the years since 2007 are “the longest period of low trust in government in more than 50 years.” The details emerging about the multiple investigations into Hillary Clinton explain a lot about this ebbing public confidence in institutions such as the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. *** Start with Attorney General Loretta Lynch. A cavalcade of former Justice heavyweights are now assailing FBI director James Comey...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The longtime Hillary Clinton aide at the center of a renewed FBI email investigation testified under oath four months ago she never deleted old emails, while promising in 2013 not to take sensitive files when she left the State Department. FBI Director James Comey notified Congress on Friday, less than two weeks before the election, that the emails had led agents to re-examine whether classified information was mishandled. That had been the focus of the bureau's earlier criminal inquiry into the former secretary of state's use of a private email server, which Comey said in July didn't...

SEASIDE PARK, New Jersey (WABC) -- Police are investigating an explosion in Seaside Park at the site of a 5K race to benefit Marines and sailors. The incident, which occurred around 9:30 a.m., happened on the route of the Third Annual 5K Semper Five race. The Ocean County Sheriff's Department confirmed that no one has been injured and that there was no damage to the surrounding area. The investigation is still active. Officials said participants in the run to benefit Marines and sailors had been scheduled to pass by the area around the time the blast occurred. But the start...

PHOENIX --A Phoenix woman who has worked for top Arizona Republicans and as a consultant arranging fundraisers for Sen. John McCain is facing numerous felony drug charges after Maricopa County sheriff's deputies raided her home. Sheriff's spokesman Det. Doug Matteson says 35-year-old Emily Pitha was arrested Tuesday afternoon after her live-in boyfriend signed for a package containing more than 250 grams of Ecstasy. The couple shares the home with two children. Authorities were first alerted to possible drug activity by the parcel in transit from the Netherlands, reports the Arizona Republic. Undercover detectives and U.S. Postal Inspectors raided the north-central...

If you have voted in a US election recently, there's a good chance your personal information is included in a trove of voter data found on a publicly available Web server. A misconfigured database has exposed the personal information on more than 191 million US voter records, according to Chris Vickery, a security researcher who made the discovery and shared his findings with Databreaches.net for a story published Monday. The database contains information required for voter registration -- including names, home addresses, date of birth and home phone numbers -- as well as voting history since 2000. By comparison, the...

The Department of Homeland Security has begun preparing for a series of raids that would target for deportation hundreds of families who have flocked to the United States since the start of last year, according to people familiar with the operation. The nationwide campaign, to be carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as soon as early January, would be the first large-scale effort to deport families who have fled violence in Central America, those familiar with the plan said. More than 100,000 families with both adults and children have made the journey across the southwest border...

Federal officials expect to hold a second auction to sell a secluded hilltop home in New Hampshire that has failed to attract bidders – and possibly contains hidden explosives. In August, a US marshal-hosted auction failed to attract a single bidder for the 100-acre property that was once owned by Ed and Elaine Brown, who were based there during a nine-month standoff with federal officials in 2007. Minimum bids for the home were set at $250,000. US marshals are now working out the details for the next auction, while warning that the property could contain landmines or other hidden explosives....

Over the past 20 years, whites and blacks have experienced opposite trends in segregation. Asians, Hispanics and blacks are moving into historically white neighborhoods. Vastly fewer whites live surrounded by just other white people. Whites look around and see multi-ethnic neighbors. They perceive expanded opportunity and integration because that is what they see. And they think everyone else is experiencing the same things. But a Washington Post analysis of Census data shows that the experience in historically African American neighborhoods of major cities has been far different, as they have remained heavily isolated. Whites, Asians and Hispanics are not moving...