Sen. Lindsey Graham warned President Donald Trump on Sunday not to reduce U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan below 8,600, arguing that maintaining a military presence there is key to defending the American homeland. Asked by CBS host Margaret Brennan how many U.S. troops should remain in Afghanistan, Graham said: “The number is gonna be around 8,600. Graham also said he's planning legislation that would require the secretaries of Defense and State to certify to Congress that reducing troop levels below 8,600 would not create an additional national security risk for the homeland.
Bolivian President Evo Morales did an about-face on Sunday and said he was now open to international aid to fight the blazes that have engulfed rural villages and doubled in size since Thursday. Morales is also suspending his campaign for re-election for at least a week, just two months from election day, to focus on the wildfires. The blazes burn unabated across vast swaths of hilly tropical forest and savannah near Bolivia's border with Paraguay and Brazil.
EAST ST. LOUIS, Ill. (AP) An Illinois State Police trooper died from wounds suffered early Friday while executing a search warrant in East St. Louis. Trooper Nicholas Hopkins, 33, of Waterloo, a 10-year veteran of the force, was wounded during an exchange of gunfire while serving the warrant at an East St. Louis home, said State Police Acting Director Brendan Kelly. Police didn't say if anyone else was shot, nor have they revealed the issues addressed in the search warrant.
A British consulate employee in Hong Kong has been freed by China after being detained for 15 days on the mainland amid rising tensions between the former British colony and Beijing. Simon Cheng, 28, a trade and investment officer at the Hong Kong consulate's Scottish Development International section, went missing on August 8 on his way back from a work trip in Shenzhen, a neighbouring Chinese city. It was not until after the UK expressed “extreme concern” about his disappearance that China's foreign ministry broke its silence, confirming Mr Cheng had been detained without releasing further details.
The head of a Mexican news website was found stabbed to death in the center of the country, authorities said Saturday, the 10th such killing this year. The body of Nevith Condes Jaramillo "was found Saturday morning... showing injuries from a sharp object," the state prosecutor said in a statement. Condes Jaramillo, 42, was the head of a local news site in Tejupilco and was also an announcer on a community radio station.
Residents of the commune of Espelette -- known for its spicy dried red peppers -- greeted U.S. first lady Melania Trump warmly on Sunday morning as she browsed in local shops, accompanied by the spouses of other world leaders attending the Group of Seven summit nearby. The sangria was “very good,” Jenny Morrison, the wife of Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed as she exited the tasting, glass still hand. Trump, Macron and Morrison -- along with the first ladies of Chile and Japan, as well as Malgorzata Tusk, the wife of European Council President Donald Tusk -- also visited a textile store, a bakery and a shoe merchant specializing in locally-made espadrilles.
Two women were arrested for allegedly shoplifting baby strollers and accidentally leaving their own baby behind as they tried to get away.
MARYSVILLE, Mich. Marysville City Council candidate Jean Cramer said she doesn't have any plans to back out of the race despite coming under fire for racist comments she made at an election forum Thursday night. Mayor Dan Damman and other local leaders, however, have called for her withdrawal.
The shooting was the first deadly attack linked to the massacres at two mosques in Christchurch – but not the last. On 3 August, a man who declared himself a “supporter of the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto” murdered 22 people in El Paso. And a week later, a gunman who hailed Tarrant as a “saint” launched a failed attack on a mosque in Norway.
div During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump wanted to reveal years of secret work that his one-time real estate adviser Felix Sater d...
Seven people, including two minors, were killed on Sunday in a collision between a helicopter and a light plane on the Spanish island of Mallorca, the regional government said. Five people were on board the helicopter, two of them minors, and they were all likely Germans, the Balearic Islands government said on Twitter. Two adult Spaniards were in the small plane.
Montana enters the upcoming school year back among the handful of states without publicly funded preschool, and the unions and education groups that are otherwise staunch allies of Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock are a big reason why his fledgling pre-kindergarten program fizzled. The state briefly broke from those ranks with a 2017 budget item that provided funding for preschool programs through 10 school districts and seven private providers. Bullock, who is now running for the Democratic nomination for president, touted it as a major win for one of his top priorities of his final term: early childhood education.
Thousands of British Airways passengers faced Bank Holiday chaos as they spent hours on the phone trying to rebook cancelled flights in the wake of the pilot strike. The pilots are on 9, 10 and 27 September, but the airline also told customers with tickets booked on other days that their flights were cancelled. However, it later admitted that these emails were sent in error, after many passengers had already rebooked flights at their own expense.
A Muslim man left in a coma after being interrogated at a notorious Thai detention centre died Sunday, as pressure mounts on the army to release further findings of a probe into the case. Abdulloh Esormusor, a suspected rebel from the country's restive south died early Sunday morning, more than a month after he was taken to the Inkayuth military camp, his cousin Mohammatrahmat Mamu told AFP. Inkayuth is the Thai army's biggest detention centre in the south, where suspects are taken for interrogation and held under emergency laws and where rights groups have documented torture.
French Official Wants to See How Far Talks Can Go (4:43 p.m. The French official was asked if there's any chance Zarif could meet the U.S. delegation. He said that's not planned at the moment.
An Atlanta attorney was indicted for killing a man who may have hit his Mercedes Benz with a golf ball, the district attorney's office said. Bryan Schmitt, 48, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of murder, felony murder and aggravated assault in the death of 60-year-old Hamid Jahangard, Fulton County District Attorney Paul L. Howard, Jr. announced Friday. Schmitt allegedly hit Jahangard, a prominent real estate investor, in the driveway of a rental property owned by the victim. "Jahangard was struck by the vehicle and died two days later of blunt force trauma injuries to the head," the district attorney said in a release.
Republican Gov. Bill Lee has shown no interest in intervening either to stop an execution or end the practice of capital punishment. But conservatives who oppose the death penalty insist that they are on the rise. Republican-sponsored bills to abolish the death penalty came up in 11 states this year, according to Hannah Cox, the national manager for Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.
A teenage girl from New Zealand sick with measles visited Disneyland and other popular tourist stops across Southern California earlier this month, possibly infecting others, local government health officials warned. The alert comes amid the worst outbreak of measles in the United States in a quarter century, with more than 1,200 cases reported across 30 states since October 2018, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is looking to identify others who are at risk for measles and may have been exposed to a non-resident measles case that traveled to Los Angeles County while infectious," the health department said in an advisory on Friday night.
Donald Trump suggested firing nuclear weapons into hurricanes to prevent them hitting the US, reports in Washington claim. The president is said to have raised the idea of bombing hurricanes with senior Homeland Security and national security officials on numerous occasions, dating back as far as 2017. Why don't we nuke them?” one source told US news website Axios the president had asked during a hurricane briefing at the White House.
A psychologist at the federal detention center in New York City where financier Jeffrey Epstein was jailed on sex-trafficking charges had approved his removal from suicide watch before he killed himself, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday. The disclosure came in a letter dated on Thursday from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd and addressed to the leaders of the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, seeking details about the circumstances surrounding Epstein's death earlier this month. Epstein, who was 66, was found dead Aug. 10 in his cell inside a segregated housing unit of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan.
Oregon's criminal justice system would be "overwhelmed" if the U.S. Supreme Court rules in an upcoming case that nonunanimous jury verdicts are unconstitutional, the state's attorney general has told the court. Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in an amicus brief on Friday that if the U.S. Supreme Court finds nonunanimous juries unconstitutional, it could invalidate hundreds or even thousands of convictions in Oregon. Oregon is the only state in America allowing 11-1 or 10-2 jury verdicts in criminal trials, except first-degree murder convictions.
This has meant that instead of praying or enjoying the 1,000-year-old church building, parishioners have been slipping on its floors, art and furniture has been covered in sheeting and volunteer wardens have spent hours scouring pews and floors of bat excrement. Following a pioneering new scheme, entitled the Bats in Churches project, work has been done to fill the gaps in the ceiling to prevent faeces and urine soaking through without harming the animals. All Saints Church was one of the first to benefit from £3.8million of Heritage Lottery Funds to reduce the impact of bats on the buildings across the UK.
A third British warship is heading to the Gulf, the Royal Navy announced Saturday, amid heightened tensions in the region. Britain has already sent the HMS Kent to cover for frigate HMS Montrose while it undergoes maintenance in nearby Bahrain, and is now redirecting the Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender from its mission to the Pacific. "Wherever the red ensign flies around the world, the UK stands by to protect freedom of navigation whenever is it tested," said Defence Secretary Ben Wallace.
Iceland' prime minister is open to a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence during his trip to the Nordic island, should the visit be extended. The option was discussed during a pre-scheduled meeting on Friday between Katrin Jakobsdottir and ambassador Jeffrey Gunter, a government spokesman told Bloomberg. Jakobsdottir, a left-of-center feminist and LGBT advocate, is due to attend a conference by Nordic trade union leaders in Sweden on Sept.
A Riverside, California man attending a firearms training class to get his concealed weapons permit was accidentally shot by a Riverside County Sheriff's Department trainer, the department told The Desert Sun. On Aug. 10, the man, identified only as a civilian, was participating in a course at the Ben Clark Training Center's gun range in Riverside. According to a department news release issued in response to questions from The Desert Sun, gun range staff inspect students' firearms during the course and students are instructed to unload their guns.