Tuesday, Sep 03rd
Last update07:47:44 AM GMT
The United States has approved a $15bn deal to supply Saudi Arabia with the THAAD missile defence system, one of the most capable systems of its kind in the world.
If Congress does not raise an objection within 30 days, the deal will result in a massive windfall for Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest arms producer.
There's a conspiracy that Puerto Rican truck drivers are striking and delaying the delivery of crucial supplies — and Donald Trump may have bought into it.
Right-wing blogs The Conservative Treehouse and The Gateway Pundit recently published stories alleging that local unions were striking following the devastation of Hurricane Maria, preventing the delivery of food, water, and other crucial supplies.
The crux of the issue seems to be a quote from a Huffington Post interview with US Air Force Colonel Michael Valle, reports Snopes.
The U.S. government has ordered 15 staff members from the Cuban Embassy in Washington to leave the country, a State Department official said Tuesday, a step intended to bring diplomatic operations between the two nations into parity after the U.S. cut its staff in Havana last week.
The official said the expulsion of Cuban diplomats should not be taken as an indication of a larger policy shift toward Havana, nor should it be read as the U.S. government blaming its Cuban counterparts for a series of sonic attacks against American diplomatic personnel. It was those attacks that prompted the State Department last week to order more than 60 percent of its embassy staff in Havana to leave the island.
The detention of an unnamed U.S. citizen held by the military as an enemy combatant is increasingly a legal and human-rights emergency, national security lawyers and civil libertarian activists say—and a bellwether case for the unsettled question of what terrorism captures in Donald Trump’s administration will look like.
The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony Romero, wrote on Friday to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to urge the U.S. citizen’s transfer to civilian custody, calling his military detention “unlawful as a matter of domestic law.”
Paul Weismann got the call for help Monday night at his home in Connecticut. By Tuesday afternoon, he was flying to Puerto Rico on his personal plane, with food, water, and power generators as his passengers.
“You fly over Puerto Rico on the way to the airport, and you see the place is wrecked,” Weismann told The Daily Beast. At night, “a few streets and highways are lit up, because of people and businesses with generators. But the rest of the island was just pitch black.”
The coalition said in a statement that during August, it had assessed 185 reports of civilian casualties and found that the additional 50 deaths occurred in 14 incidents that it deemed were credible.
The coalition, battling to defeat Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties.
The mayor of San Juan expressed her dismay after the Homeland Security chief called the federal government's Hurricane Maria response "a really good news story."
“Dammit, this is not a good news story,” Mayor Carmen Cruz said in an interview with CNN. “This is a people are dying story.”
Cruz was responding to acting DHS Secretary Elaine Duke, who told reporters on Thursday, "I know it is really a good news story in terms of our ability to reach people and the limited number of deaths that have taken place in such a devastating hurricane."
The UN human rights commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, has sent letters to an estimated 150 international and Israeli businesses warning them that they may be included in a UN database of companies involved with illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The letters have been sent as part of the legal verification and clarification process to give businesses identified as working in settlements the right of reply before the database is published in December.
President Donald Trump on Thursday waived a federal law to allow relief shipments to reach Puerto Rico, as the island continues to struggle to provide life-sustaining services after Hurricane Maria.
Press secretary Sarah Sanders announced the waiver of the Jones Act, and said it will "go into effect immediately."
Trump granted the waiver after it was requested by Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello, who thanked the president Thursday morning.
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