The Supreme Court has given the Trump administration an immigration policy victory by ruling criminal noncitizens can be detained at any time.The 5-4 ruling states federal officials may detain convicted immigrants indefinitely after they finish serving prison time, even years after.Advocates had argued the law only allowed for detention immediately after immigrants were released from prison.The court's liberal justices dissented from the conservative decision.Tuesday's ruling reversed a lower court decision that had found the existing law to mean federal authorities must detain convicted immigrants within 24 hours of their release from criminal detention.Civil rights lawyers had claimed after that deadline, immigrants should be permitted a bond hearing so they were not forced to remain in custody indefinitely while their deportation case went forward.The Trump administration, however, said the government should be allowed to hold convicted noncitizens at any time - and the conservative-majority top court has agreed.In the conservative opinion, Associate Justice Samuel Alito said the strict ruling was to ensure homeland security officials were not constrained by inappropriate deadlines to detain convicted noncitizens."As we have held time and again, an official's crucial duties are better carried out late than never," he wrote, adding that such a tight deadline was often not feasible logistically speaking. Meet the Supremes - the judges on the top US court Why US top court is more political than UK's Justice Alito also noted that it was not meant to target noncitizens who had served time and continued to lead legal lives in their communities, and said the decision still allows for those individuals to challenge the law on constitutional grounds if they are detained.Associate Justice Stephen Breyer wrote the dissent for the court's liberals - and in a rare move, delivered it from the bench, US media reported."The greater importance of the case lies in the power that the majority's interpretation grants the government," Justice Breyer said in his summary. "It is a power to detain persons who committed a minor crime many years before. And it is a power to hold those persons, perhaps for many months, without any opportunity to obtain bail."The case brought before the top court was a California class-action lawsuit by a group of noncitizens, most with permanent residency cards, whose lawyers argued they should be entitled to a hearing if they were detained by federal authorities more than a day after their release from prison. Six surprising statistics about immigrants in the US Homeland security secretary walks a tightrope for Trump Lead plaintiff Mony Preap was a legal resident who had two convictions involving marijuana possession. He was taken into federal custody in 2013, years after serving his prison time, but eventually won his deportation case, the Associated Press reported.

To seek the origins of Microsoft’s interest in artificial intelligence, you need to go way back–well before Amazon, Facebook, and Google were in business, let alone titans of AI. Bill Gates founded Microsoft’s research arm in 1991, and AI was an area of investigation from the start. Three years later, in a speech at the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Seattle, then-sales chief Steve Ballmer stressed Microsoft’s belief in AI’s potential and said he hoped that software would someday be smart enough to steer a vehicle. (He’d banged up his own car in the parking lot upon arriving at the event.)From the start, Microsoft Research (MSR for short) hired more than its fair share of computing’s most visionary, accomplished scientists. For a long time, however, it had a reputation for struggling to turn their innovations into features and products that customers wanted. In the ’90s, for instance, I recall being puzzled about why its ambitious work in areas such as speech recognition hadn’t had a profound effect on Windows and Office.Five years into Satya Nadella’s tenure as Microsoft CEO, that stigma is gone. Personal determination on Nadella’s part has surely helped. “Satya is–let’s put it very positively–impatient to get more technology into our products,” says Harry Shum, Microsoft’s executive VP of artificial intelligence and research. “It’s really very encouraging to all of us in Microsoft Research.” That’s a lot of happy people: more than 1,000 computer scientists are in MSR’s employ, at its Redmond headquarters as well as Boston, Montreal, Beijing, Bangalore, and beyond.CEO determination, by itself, only goes so far. Microsoft has gotten good at the tricky logistics of identifying what research to leverage in which products, encouraging far-flung employees to collaborate on that effort, and getting the results in front of everyone from worker bees to game enthusiasts.For the record, Shum argues that Microsoft’s old rep for failing to make use of its researchers’ breakthroughs was unfair–but he doesn’t deny that the company is much better at what he calls “deployment-driven research” than in the past. “The key now is how quickly we can make those things happen,” he says.Judging from my recent visit to its campus, Microsoft is making things happen at a clip that’s only accelerating. I talked to Shum and some of his colleagues from across the company about the process of embracing AI as swiftly and widely as possible. And it turned out that it isn’t one process but a bunch of them.Meeting of the mindsOn the most fundamental level, ensuring that Microsoft AI innovations benefit Microsoft customers is about making sure that research and product teams aren’t siloed off from each other. That means encouraging teams to talk to each other, which Microsoft now does in a big, organized fashion. Every six months or so, for instance, an event called Roc is devoted to cross-fertilization between research efforts and Office product development.“We have those two-, three-day workshops where we have 50 people from Microsoft Research, 100 people from Office, all coming together,” says Shum. Everybody shares what they’re working on, and the whole affair ends with a hackathon.Harry Shum [Photo: courtesy of Microsoft]Another ongoing meeting of the minds, the Distinguished Engineering Leadership Lecture Series, brings executives responsible for products to the Microsoft campus’s Building 99, where MSR is headquartered. “I say, ‘You have to come in and do three things for me,'” Shum says. “Number one is tell us your product roadmap. Number two is [list] 10 things you need Microsoft Research to solve for you. And then number three is before you leave the building, commit to one or two projects that we will work on together.”Of course, getting people talking about problems and solutions is just the beginning. The potential for AI to improve everyday Microsoft Office tasks such as formatting a document or plugging data into a spreadsheet is enormous. But it’s also easy to see how automated assistance could feel intrusive rather than helpful. Exhibit A: Office 97’s Clippy assistant, which remains a poster child for grating, unwelcome technology.More than a decade after Office eradicated Clippy, it still wants to detect if you’re performing a task where AI might be useful. It just wants the experience to be subtle rather than intrusive. As Ronette Lawrence, principal product planning manager for Office, says, “One of our core principles is making sure that the human stays the hero.”PowerPoint’s Design Ideas feature can use AI to dress up your slides–but it works hard to stay out of your way unless you want to use it.Lawrence says that nearly everything Microsoft is adding to Office these days has an element of AI and machine learning to it. In PowerPoint, for instance, the company wants AI to be “the designer that works in the cloud for you.” If you’re using a pen-equipped PC such as Microsoft’s own Surface, PowerPoint can convert your scrawled freehand words and shapes into polished text blocks and objects. And if the software notices that you’re entering a sequence of dates, it will realize that it might make sense to lay them out as a timeline.Instead of shoving unsolicited advice in your face, however, “we’re careful to make sure that these kind of suggestions come out as a whisper,” says Lawrence. The “Design Ideas” feature analyzes your presentation in process and shows thumbnails of possible tweaks–such as that timeline layout for a sequence of dates–to the right of your slides. They’re equally easy to implement or ignore.Though many Office features are dependent on Microsoft Research’s latest work, certain brainstorms make their way out the lab more easily than others. “Some of it feels like science fiction,” says Lawrence of AI in its raw form. “And other [examples] feel closer to product readiness.”During one workshopping session between the Office product team and MSR, the fact that people typically rough out Word documents and fill in holes later–or ask coworkers to do some of the filling–came up. What if Word helped wrangle the process?A new to-do feature aims to do that by scanning a document for placeholders such as “TODO: get latest revenue figures” or “insert graph here” and listing them in a sidebar so you remember to take care of them. Microsoft plans to extend the feature so that your colleagues can supply elements you’ve requested by responding to an email rather than rummaging around in your document. It also intends to use AI to suggest relevant content.The first Office users to get access to this to-do feature in its initial form are Windows and Mac users who have signed up for Office’s early-adopter program. (It’s due for general release by the end of the year.) Oftentimes, however, new AI functionality shows up first in Office’s web-based apps, where it’s easier for Microsoft to get it in front of a lot of people quickly–and learn, and refine–than if the company needed to wait for the next release of Office in its more conventional form.“It’s pretty important for us to listen to feedback and see how people are using it to train a model,” says Lawrence. “That is part of the new era of Microsoft, where it isn’t just about the usability of the functionality when you release it. The web gives us that feedback mechanism.”A current series of online ads is devoted to showing that the Office 365 service has an array of handy features that are absent in Office 2019, the current pay-once version of the suite. All these features leverage AI, but the ads don’t mention that. After all, the human is supposed to be the hero.Changing the gameWhen did AI begin to have an impact on the video game business? If you ask Kevin Gammill, partner general manager for PlayFab at Microsoft, he’ll reach back four decades and bring up early computer-controlled opponents such as the flying saucers in Atari’s Asteroids arcade game. “I think AI has been around as long as gaming’s been around,” he says.Tamir Melamed and Kevin Gammill [Photo: Harry McCracken]In 2019, AI’s potential applications in gaming go far beyond making decisions for bad guys. Microsoft–the rare company with deep investments in both games and basic computer research–is well positioned to explore them.That includes useful stuff that makes life better for game players without screaming “Hey, artificial intelligence!” Studies, for instance, have shown that online competition greatly benefits from players being matched with others of roughly comparable skill. “If you go into a game and you just get slaughtered, it’s probably not a good experience,” explains Gammill. “If everyone’s too easy, it’s also probably not a good experience.” Xbox Live has long used an algorithm called TrueSkill (recently updated as TrueSkill 2) to help ensure that contestants are neither bored nor massacred by their opponents.Another piece of practical AI was inspired by the fact that Microsoft “heard for years loud and clear from gamers that they would greatly prefer to spend a lot more time playing games than downloading games,” says Ashley McKissick, who manages the Game Pass service. The company initially tried to let players skip ahead to the action before a download was complete through a system that required some heavy lifting on the part of game publishers and was therefore not universally adopted.Starting last summer, Microsoft replaced this unsatisfactory handwork by humans with a piece of AI-enhanced technology called FastStart. It leverages machine learning to determine which bits of a game to download first, allowing gamers to begin playing up to twice as fast. “We’re not really changing the laws of physics here, but it does make your download much smarter,” says McKissick.Increasingly, Microsoft is formalizing the kind of collaboration that helps AI make its way into games. Similar to the MSR/Office meeting called Roc, a confab called Magneto is designed to cultivate conversation–and outright hacking–between MSR and the gaming group. Along with those two constituencies, “there are people from Bing there, there are people from Windows there, there are people from Azure there,” says Tamir Melamed, Microsoft’s head of PlayFab engineering. “Because there’s a lot of those technologies that we think we can share down the road.”One joint project emerged from Microsoft’s annual companywide hackathon. In 2017, the gaming group was wrestling with the challenge of curating Mixer, a game-streaming service–in the same Zip Code as Twitch, but more interactive–which Microsoft had acquired in the form of a startup called Beam. “We found ourselves with a much larger volume of streams than we had anticipated,” says Chad Gibson, Mixer’s general manager. “And so we were trying to find, ‘How can we provide new, unique ways of allowing players of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds or Fortnite to be discovered?'”Chad Gibson and Ashley McKissick [Photo: Harry McCracken]At around the same time that the Mixer team was asking itself that question, the hackathon was being won by some Microsoft Research staffers who’d devised “Watch For,” an AI system for analyzing live video streams and identifying specific events therein. (Microsoft was so impressed by the technology’s commercial possibilities that it announced the team’s victory without disclosing exactly what it had created.) The two groups collaborated to use Watch For as the basis for HypeZone, a Mixer feature that lets viewers tune in to the most climactic moments in game streams in progress. “It allowed us to do new forms of discovery that we honestly didn’t think were possible,” says Gibson.As long as gaming has its frustrations, AI should provide further ways to mitigate them. Recently, Gammill was engaged in heated competition in the Tom Clancy first-person shooter Rainbow Six Siege against three friends. Then one contestant’s internet connection choked. “Three of us are running around and a frozen character is standing there,” he says. And a frozen character can’t do much except be mowed down.A better scenario would be if the game could use AI to determine that a player had gotten cut off, and then take temporary control of the corresponding character–and play in the same style as that person. “Now we’re very close to scenarios like that actually coming to fruition,” says Gammill.The silicon factorSteve Jobs was fond of saying that Apple was the only computer company that built “the whole widget”–not just software or hardware, but both, integrated so well that the seams of the experience start to fade away. In recent years, that philosophy has reached its ultimate expression as Apple has even designed its own iPhone and iPad processors and optimized them for running Apple software.The same vertical integration that’s a boon for a smartphone or tablet makes sense, on a grander scale, for a data center–such as the ones that power Microsofts Azure services. Enter Project Brainwave. That’s the name for the custom hardware accelerator Microsoft has designed–using Intel field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)–specifically for the purpose of speeding up AI running in the Azure cloud.Microsoft’s move into designing its own hardware for optimal AI is hardly unique. Both Google and Amazon are also moving down the stack from software to silicon for similar reasons. But Microsoft isn’t just hopping aboard a trendy bandwagon. Project Brainwave is the end product of an opportunity Doug Burger began thinking about almost a decade ago–and at first, he did it on his own. “I started the work in 2010 and then exposed it to management after about a year,” remembers Burger, who was a researcher within MSR at the time.Project Brainwave sprang from Microsoft’s realization that embracing AI needed to start at the chip level [Photo: courtesy of Microsoft]Conventional chips know how to execute the computing instructions in their repertoire when they leave the factory, and can never be retrained for a different purpose-such as efficiently running a new machine-learning algorithm. FPGAs, by contrast, are like chameleons, says Burger. “What the FPGAs allow us to do is build stuff really fast and get it into production, and then iterate on a very rapid cadence,” he explains. “So that chameleon is changing colors really fast and getting better every time it changes color.”FPGA technology allows Microsoft to deliver highly efficient deep learning as a service in a way that addresses specific customer requests. “A lot of the problems that they want to solve are around image analysis,” says Ted Way, senior program manager for Azure Machine Learning. “‘I want to look at my manufacturing defects.’ ‘I want to look at whether [products are] out of stock.’ ‘I want to see if people are smoking at my gas station because I’m afraid of fires.’ Doug’s team was able to turn that around and build these convolutional neural networks that ran super fast on the FPGA in just six months or so.” By silicon standards, that’s quick.When Burger had begun his personal investigation of FPGAs in 2010, it wasn’t clear–at least to people who aren’t prescient computer scientists–how quickly AI would go mainstream, let alone that delivering it as a service would become a strategic imperative for a company such as Microsoft. Soon enough, Microsoft understood the value his brainchild could bring to Azure. Last July, after Project Brainwave left the lab, so did Burger and his team. Today, they’re continuing their work as part of the Azure group rather than MSR.Such a segue is not unusual. “One thing about the Microsoft culture now, that boundary between research and product has blurred quite a bit,” says Burger. “The product groups have lots of people who were formerly researchers and are developing new stuff. Research has not only people that do research but engineers building stuff. It’s more of a continuum.” Nadella, he adds, “has done a great job of pushing down this kind of innovation.”Self-serve smartsWith Azure, Microsoft is in a race with Amazon and Google to provide AI and other advanced computing functions to businesses of all sorts as on-demand services. That’s not just good for outside companies; there are also groups within Microsoft that can benefit from pre-packaged AI and machine learning.Case in point: Codie, a multilingual chatbot designed to provide information about coding. An internal Microsoft experiment for now rather than a commercial product, it sprang from the realization that one major obstacle for would-be software engineers is simply having access to information about matters such as commands in the Python programming language and syntax for SQL database queries. The problem is especially acute for non-native English speakers.Matt Fisher, senior data analytics manager for Office 365 and Microsoft 365, and one of Codie’s creators, describes the service as “Cortana’s geekier little sibling.” It emerged from the Microsoft Garage, a program that gives employees encouragement and resources as they pursue ideas they’re passionate about, whether or not they fit neatly into official responsibilities. Fifteen staffers with diverse backgrounds were on the team that created the service, including developers, designers, and marketers. It beat 767 other projects to win the company’s Redmond Science Fair, and took second place out of 5,875 entries in the company’s inclusivity challenge.Afreen Rahman and Matt Fisher [Photo: Harry McCracken]Using text-based input, Codie answers coding questions by drawing information from Microsoft’s Bing search engine and user-to-user tech advice site Stack Overflow. “In 48 hours we had something that was working across five different spoken languages and pulling from a huge database of information so you could ask it a coding question in Spanish and get a technical answer back in Spanish,” says Afreen Rahman, who works on the Microsoft Store in her day job as a software engineer.Though Codie’s creators brought a variety of skills to the enterprise, none of them started out knowing that much about AI. “We used out-of-the-box tools available as part of the AI Suite that Microsoft offers,” says Rahman. “And as devs we were able to pick up the documentation in no time and just get going.”Fisher rattles off the Microsoft cloud offerings that power Codie: “We used everything from the Azure learning service to LUIS language understanding. QnA Maker, the Bing graph, the Microsoft graph, the Azure bot framework, the Azure speech plugin.” There was plenty of Microsoft AI expertise in there; it’s just that it was in ready-to-use form. For Codie–and many other things people want to build–that’s enough.As an effort to leverage AI as an enabling technology for an inspiring purpose, Codie is already a success. The people who built it are thinking about upgrades–one obvious one would be to let users talk rather than type–and how to make it broadly available. “Our goal is that we would like to see it be used outside of Microsoft’s walls,” says Fisher. “We’re working towards what we need to need to do to get there. We have support from this lovely group, the Garage, but this is our second or third job in many cases.”Real problems, real researchOne other thing about Microsoft’s new approach to cross-pollinating research and products: It isn’t just the products that benefit. AI has an insatiable appetite for the sort of data required to train machine-learning algorithms. Microsoft, as one of the largest tech companies in the world, has that data, in anonymized form, by the metric ton. Which means that if there was a time when its research efforts benefited from being walled off from money-making businesses that serve actual human beings, it’s over.“Nowadays, to do a lot of very exciting AI research, you need to get access to real problems and you need to get access to data,” says Shum. “This is where you work together with [product teams]. You build a new model, you train the new model, and then you tweak your new model. Now you have advanced your basic research further. And along the way, you never know–you could get a breakthrough.”

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela’s opposition cried foul on Monday over the ruling socialists’ win in gubernatorial elections, raising the threat of more foreign sanctions following the vote in what the United States called “an authoritarian dictatorship.” President Nicolas Maduro’s candidates took 17 governorships, versus five for the opposition, in Sunday’s nationwide poll, according to the pro-government electoral board. The socialists’ strong showing came despite devastating food shortages, triple-digit inflation, and a collapsing currency. Polls had suggested the opposition would easily win a majority. Dismayed leaders of the Democratic Unity coalition demanded an audit after citing a litany of abuses, including multiple voting, state food handouts on the day of the poll, forced attendance at gunpoint and suspicious phone and power outages. The opposition fell short of offering detailed evidence of outright fraud, however, and there were no conventional foreign observer missions to verify claims of vote-rigging. “This is a process of electoral fraud without precedent in our history,” said opposition spokesman Angel Oropeza. An estimated 1 million voters were blocked from voting, he said, referring to claims the election board skewed results by relocating hundreds of polling places away from opposition strongholds. Many dispirited opposition supporters now see foreign pressure as their only real hope of hurting Maduro ahead of next year’s presidential vote. The United States condemned the elections as neither free nor fair and vowed to keep up pressure on Maduro for the erosion of democracy in the South American OPEC nation. “As long as the Maduro regime conducts itself as an authoritarian dictatorship, we will work with members of the international community and bring the full weight of American economic and diplomatic power to bear in support of the Venezuelan people as they seek to restore their democracy,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. The Trump administration has already imposed sanctions on Maduro and top officials, including election board head Tibisay Lucena. Washington has also struck at the government’s ability to raise more funds via foreign debt. The European Union could also take measures against Maduro, who was narrowly elected to replace the late leader Hugo Chavez in 2013. French President Emmanuel Macron, who has also branded Venezuela a dictatorship, expressed concern at claims of “serious irregularities” and “lack of transparency” in the gubernatorial vote. “France deplores this situation and is working with its EU partners to examine appropriate measures to help resolve the serious crisis,” the French foreign ministry said. Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro (C) speaks during a meeting with government members after the announcement of the results of the nationwide election for new governors in Caracas, Venezuela October 15, 2017. Miraflores Palace/Handout via REUTERSVenezuela’s government, which insisted in advance of Sunday’s vote that it would demonstrate its commitment to democracy, still retains significant support in poorer, rural settings. And it seems unlikely that supporters of the elite-led opposition, which has struggled to capitalize on discontent over the economy, will return to the streets en masse after months of grueling protests earlier this year. The protests failed to pressure the government into holding an early presidential election, freeing scores of jailed activists or accepting foreign humanitarian aid. At least 125 people died, while thousands were injured and arrested in violence. “Obviously, this was a brutal fraud,” said David Osorio, 21, who lost an eye when he was hit by a gas cannister in the clashes. “But I don’t know if going back to the streets is best ... because the same will happen and many are simply not willing.” A few hundred opposition protesters massed in front of the electoral council in the southern Bolivar state, where results were still not given by Monday evening. The National Guard used tear gas to scatter the crowd, according to a Reuters witness. Various opposition leaders acknowledged disillusionment and people staying home had played a big role. “We shot ourselves in the foot,” legislator Jose Guerra said, noting record turnout of 74 percent in a 2015 congress vote, which the opposition won, versus 61 percent on Sunday. Flanked by his powerful wife, soldiers, and red-shirted party members, a jubilant Maduro painted the opposition as sore losers. “When they lose they cry fraud. When they win they shout ‘Down with Maduro,’” said Maduro, 54. Slideshow (23 Images)The opposition pocketed governorships including the turbulent Andean states of Merida and Tachira and the oil-producing region of Zulia. The government, which had previously controlled 20 governorships, took states across Venezuela’s languid plains and steamy Caribbean coast. It won back populous Miranda state, which includes part of the capital Caracas, and also won in Barinas, Chavez’s home state, where his younger brother retained the top job. Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne, Andreina Aponte, Diego Ore, Eyanir Chinea, Corina Pons, Girish Gupta in Caracas, Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo, William Urdaneta in Ciudad Guayana and Arshad Mohammed in Washington D.C.; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Girish Gupta; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Tom BrownOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. (Reuters) - Search-and-rescue teams combed through gutted homes across California’s celebrated wine country on Monday, looking for the charred bodies of those killed in the state’s deadliest wildfires, as survivors slowly began returning home. At least 41 people have been confirmed dead in the week of fires. With 88 people still unaccounted for in Sonoma County alone, local officials said they expected the death toll to rise. “I would expect to find some of the missing in their burned-out homes,” Sonoma County Sheriff Robert Giordano told reporters at a Monday morning news briefing, standing in front of maps and charts of the 14 still-burning blazes. The sheriff said he believed many others had survived the fast-moving flames. Most of the 1,863 people so far listed in missing-persons reports have turned up safe, including many evacuees who failed to alert authorities after fleeing their homes. Hopes for victims known to have been in the direct path of the flames will dwindle as each day passes, Giordano said. The 41 confirmed fatalities make the fires California’s deadliest on record, surpassing the 29 deaths from the Griffith Park fire of 1933 in Los Angeles. The driver of a private water tender died in Napa County in a vehicle rollover on Monday, officials said. Tens of thousands of people who fled the flames in hard-hit Sonoma County and elsewhere were allowed to return home, with about 40,000 still displaced. At least 5,700 homes and businesses have been destroyed by the wildfires that erupted a week ago and consumed an area larger than that of New York City. Entire neighborhoods in the city of Santa Rosa were reduced to ashes. About 11,000 firefighters supported by air tankers and helicopters were battling the flames, which have consumed more than 213,000 acres (86,200 hectares). Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency, was hopeful the blazes would be contained by Friday. An American flag stands in front of a home destroyed after a wildfire tore through Santa Rosa, California, U.S., October 15, 2017. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart Firefighters gained control of two of the deadliest fires in wine country’s Napa and Sonoma counties. The Tubbs fire was 70 percent contained and the Atlas fire 68 percent contained, Cal Fire said. Half of the Redwood Valley fire was extinguished by Monday. “The weather has improved from the high, dry winds we experienced last week, but there’s still winds and high temperatures at high elevations,” said Cal Fire spokeswoman Amy Head. “Even if the winds don’t pick up, it’s really steep country and we could have some issues with embers flying across lines. We’re not out of the woods yet.” Mendocino County authorities said power company PG&E would send low-flying planes to check lines and re-establish power. Richard Vignole, 65, returned to his family’s home in Santa Rosa, which also serves as headquarters for his appliance repair business, and found it destroyed. The backyard pool, a center of activity at their social gatherings, was a black muck. The toll as he walked into what was once the doorway added up: A totaled Harley-Davidson Super Glide, a molten fire safe with its contents smoked away and fire-stained pottery collected by his wife over the years. The beige garage doors had become pink and yellow. A slab of granite outside had warped. “That’s how hot it was,” he said. “It’s a complete and utter loss.” His wife, Debbie Vignole, had not arrived yet to see the damage on Monday. “You probably don’t want to be here for that,” he said. Slideshow (11 Images)About 50 search-and-rescue personnel backed by National Guard troops were going over tens of thousands of blackened charred acres in Sonoma County for bodies, sheriff’s spokeswoman Misti Harris said. Crews checked the wreckage of the Journey’s End mobile home park in Santa Rosa for the remains of two people missing after the blaze. Reporting by Paresh Dave in Santa Rosa, Calif; Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Scott Malone and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

While most Brazilians were still reeling from the devastating fire at the country’s National Museum last week, Luana Santos and fellow museum studies students in Rio de Janeiro had started gathering photos and videos of missing items, and even selfies taken by visitors to the vast archive.Among the 20m items lost in the blaze were Egyptian mummies, the oldest skeleton ever found in Latin America and an irreplaceable collection of indigenous artefacts and research.But at least something could be salvaged for future generations, Santos and her friends reasoned. Within hours, their appeal went worldwide; so far, it has received 14,000 replies – including videos, photos, written recollections and even drawings of favourite exhibits.“[The response] shows the importance of the archive – not just a place of research and history, but as part of people’s lives,” said Santos, 28, who studies at the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro.The group is now in discussions with the same university – which ran the museum – about how to use the material “to show the affection that people had for the museum”, she said.The impact of the fire – and the scale of the loss –reverberated globally. Unesco technicians have arrived in Rio to help recover what is left of the archive, and museums around the world have offered financial assistance.But in Brazil, it has prompted a bout of soul-searching: amid reports of museum budget cuts under successive governments and repeated warnings of fire risks at the collection, Brazilians have been asking what the tragedy said about their country – and its attitude to its history.At least four important public buildings have been hit by fires since 2010. São Paulo’s innovative Museum of the Portuguese Language was destroyed in a 2015 blaze.“It is part of a process of institutional neglect in a country that does not take care of its history,” said Djamila Ribeiro, a leading academic and commentator.She said the loss of the museum’s collection of African art and Amerindian artefacts and research reflected Brazil’s ignorance of its African and indigenous heritage, and its indifference to an ignoble history of slavery and oppression.“The country looks towards Europe. The governing class and middle class think other countries are wonderful,” Ribeiro said.Long before the fire at the National Museum, historians were dismayed at the neglect of the institution, housed in amansion given to the Portuguese royal family after they fled Napoleon’s army and moved to Rio in 1808. “It is a strong metaphor for the moment we are going through in Brazil,” said historian Lilia Schwarcz, co-author of the acclaimed Brazil – A Biography, noting that Brazil found billions of dollars to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. “How much does the Brazilian government value education and research?”The Quinta da Boa Vista park, where the museum is located, is a rare open space in Rio’s crowded North Zone suburbs, which helped make it a destination for people from low-income families, said curator Thainã de Medeiros, who helped found a museum highlighting favela evictions.He asked how Rio found $54m (£41m) to build its futuristic Museum of Tomorrow but couldn’t even pay for a sprinkler system at the National Museum.Laurentino Gomes, author of the history bestseller 1808, about the arrival of the imperial court, said more people lamented the fire than ever visited the museum.According to the BBC, 289,000 Brazilians visited the Louvre in 2017, while 192,000 went to the National Museum.But Gomez argued that the museum’s loss has hit Brazil hard as it lurches through one of the most difficult periods in its recent history, amid soaring violent crime, political disenchantment, recession and calls for a return to military dictatorship.The fire provoked a discussion about national identity at a difficult moment in the country’s history “as if it was a moment of psychoanalysis”, he said. “The museum is a symbol of all of this – of who we were.“There is a big discussion on social networks, in all areas, about what it really means to be Brazilian. It is in the crises that we grow.” Topics Brazil Americas Museums features

FILE PHOTO: European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier arrives for a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium March 21, 2019. REUTERS/Toby MelvilleBRUSSELS (Reuters) - The Good Friday agreement to bring peace to Northern Ireland will continue to apply in all Brexit scenarios, the European Union’s chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Wednesday. Respecting the Good Friday agreement meant preventing the return of a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, he told the European Parliament in Strasbourg. “In all scenarios, the Good Friday agreement will continue to apply. The United Kingdom will remain a core guarantor of that agreement and is expected to uphold it in spirit and in letter,” he said. “The Commission is ready to make additional resources available to Ireland, technical and financial to address any additional challenges,” he continued. Reporting by Clare Roth and Philip BlenkinsopOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Both decisions would almost certainly have come out differently had Justice Gorsuch, Mr. Trump’s first appointee, and Judge Kavanaugh been on the court.“The court’s jurisprudence on affirmative action and abortion have been administered last rites many times,” Professor Driver said. “But if Kavanaugh is confirmed, it is virtually assured that they will be extinguished sooner rather than later.”While Judge Kavanaugh may face few obvious obstacles to his confirmation, his Senate hearings will still be bruising for other reasons. There is lingering bitterness among liberals over the Republican blockade of Judge Merrick B. Garland, President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Democrats argue that they have not seen the documents they need to assess Judge Kavanaugh’s record, a clamor that grew over the weekend as the White House said it was withholding 100,000 pages, citing executive privilege. And some Democrats question the legitimacy of a Supreme Court appointment by a president under investigation over his campaign’s ties to Russia and what critics call obstruction of justice.Judge Kavanaugh is 53. If he joins the Supreme Court, he will most likely serve for decades. His views may shift. Other Republican appointees, including Justices Stevens and Souter, drifted left over time. Even Chief Justice Roberts, in a rare deviation from his conservative track record, voted with the court’s liberals in two cases saving aspects of Mr. Obama’s health care law.But recent appointees have almost never disappointed their supporters, and Judge Kavanaugh is not likely to be an exception.“A dominant narrative of the Supreme Court during the last five decades has been the apostasy of Republican-appointed justices,” Professor Driver said. “Kavanaugh’s confirmation would almost certainly spell the end of that story line, and cement a generation of G.O.P. constitutional orthodoxy.”Thirteen years ago, Chief Justice Roberts’s performance at his confirmation hearings was so smooth and winning that Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said he had “retired the trophy” for an outstanding performance by a judicial nominee.Chief Justice Roberts has since joked about the “odd historical quirk” that gives chief justices only one vote. If Judge Kavanaugh is confirmed, Chief Justice Roberts will still have just one vote. But it will be the crucial one.

The missing Interpol chief, Meng Hongwei, who it was revealed on Sunday has been detained in China for 12 days unknown to his family or employer, has resigned from the international police agency.Interpol said it had received his resignation “with immediate effect” late on Sunday. It was the latest twist in the mystery of Meng’s disappearance last month after he flew from France to China.In a terse statement on Sunday evening, the Chinese authorities had admitted they were holding Meng under investigation by a new government anti-corruption unit for suspected “violations of the law”.That admission came shortly after Meng’s wife Grace, said she had received a message from him suggesting he was in danger.Until the statement from Beijing and the resignation, nothing had been seen or heard of Meng since shortly after he arrived in China on on 25 September.At a press conference in Lyon, Grace Meng told journalists her husband had sent her an emoji of a knife shortly before he disappeared and that she was convinced it was his way of signalling he was at risk.She said she had not heard from her husband since the message, sent on 25 September. Normally, they would be in daily contact when he was away working, she said.Four minutes before he sent the knife image, he sent his wife a text message saying: “Wait for my call.”On Sunday, a statement from China’s ruling Communist party said Meng was “under the monitoring and investigation” of the new anti-corruption unit, the National Supervision Commission, for suspected serious violations of state law. It gave no further information about the reason for his arrest and detention.Meng, 64, who is also a senior Chinese security official, had more than 40 years’ experience in criminal justice, particularly in the field of drugs control, counter-terrorism, immigration and border control, before becoming president of Interpol, the international criminal police organisation based in Lyon, in November 2016. He is a senior member of the Communist party.Interpol has said it is concerned about his apparent disappearance and has made inquiries with China. The organisation’s secretary general, Jürgen Stock, has demanded a “clarification” from Beijing.“Interpol has requested through official law enforcement channels clarification from China’s authorities on the status of Interpol President Meng Hongwei,” Stock said in a statement. “Interpol’s general secretariat looks forward to an official response from China’s authorities to address concerns over the president’s wellbeing.”Earlier Interpol had indicated Meng’s disappearance was “for the relevant authorities in France and China” to deal with. France has opened an investigation.Meng’s wife said he had returned to China, where they are both from, before his disappearance to work, and called on the international community to find her husband.“I don’t know what has happened to him,” she said. “For as long as I can’t see my husband face to face speaking to me, I can’t be very positive.”She read a statement in Chinese and English during the press conference, but kept her back to reporters not allowing them to see her face and refused to be photographed, saying she did not want to be identified as she feared for her safety and that of her two children.Meng’s wife and children had been put under French police protection after they were subject to threats on social media and by telephone, according to France’s interior ministry.“France is looking into the situation of the president of Interpol and is concerned about the threats his wife has received,” the ministry said in a statement.The South China Morning Post reported that Meng was under investigation in China for unspecified reasons. Citing an unnamed source, it said Meng had been “taken away” for questioning by disciplinary authorities “as soon as he landed in China”.Under Chinese law, a suspect’s family and employer must be notified within 24 hours of a detention, except in cases where doing so would hinder an investigation, the paper wrote.After China admitted it had Meng in custody, the paper quoted the Beijing-based political commentator Zhang Lifan, who said: “I guess something urgent must have happened. That’s why [the authorities] chose to take such immediate action at the risk of losing face on the international stage.”Interpol said South Korea’s Kim Jong Yang, currently one of the organisation’s four vice-presidents, would become its acting president until Meng’s successor could be appointed at an Interpol meeting in Dubai in November. Topics China France Europe Asia Pacific news

He also expressed frustration that the F.D.A. had spent years debating policy that would encourage manufacturers to notify the agency of new dietary ingredients but had not yet released it.Dr. Gottlieb said the F.D.A. would create an online watch list of specific ingredients the agency was concerned about.The F.D.A.’s oversight is based on a 1994 federal law, which imposed minimal reporting and labeling requirements on the makers of vitamins, minerals and herbs — a fledgling industry at the time. To prevent a company from selling a product, the law requires the F.D.A. to prove that it is unsafe. The agency says it is difficult to track the myriad products, many of which are sold on the internet.The law also requires businesses to notify the F.D.A. that they are making a dietary supplement, but not to say what’s in it.“That just makes it impossible for the agency to police the market,” Dr. Lurie said.The 25-year-old law has drawn increasing criticism as the sector has grown. There are now between 50,000 and 80,000 dietary supplements on the market, according to the F.D.A. The agency also says that three of every four American consumers now take a dietary supplement regularly. For older Americans, the rate is four out of five.In recent years, the F.D.A. has cracked down on several sectors of the industry, including dietary supplements sold for weight loss, sexual function and energy enhancement. More recently, one of the biggest targets has been kratom, a botanical substance that is marketed as a safe alternative for opioids or to help opioid users’ withdrawal symptoms. The F.D.A. has ordered that kratom imports be seized and told companies not to use it in supplements. The agency has linked several deaths to kratom.Steve Mister, chief executive of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, which represents the dietary supplement business, said he believed the dietary supplements industry was “remarkably safe.” He also said the current law struck the right balance between ensuring safety and giving consumers access to affordable products.“These products are not drugs and should not be regulated like drugs,” he said. Mr. Mister also said his group supported the F.D.A.’s enforcement actions, and had been working with Congress to increase the program’s budget.

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Meng Hongwei, the former Chinese head of Interpol, will be prosecuted in his home country for allegedly taking bribes, China's Communist Party says.He has also been expelled from the party and stripped of all government positions, according to the party's watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Mr Meng's disappearance in September prompted international concern.He was reported missing by his wife during a trip back to China. Wife of ex-Interpol chief seeks France asylum Former Interpol chief's wife 'not sure he's alive' The 65-year-old, who had been living in France, resigned as Interpol president after being detained by the Chinese authorities.In October, Chinese authorities said Mr Meng was being investigated over suspected bribe-taking.Mr Meng is said to have abused his position for personal gain, misusing state funds to finance his family's "extravagant lifestyle" and disregarding Communist Party principles. These charges amount to "serious violation of law and discipline", according to the CCDI, which said it had referred the case to state prosecutors. "Meng Hongwei has no party principles..." the party watchdog said.It added that his allegedly "illegal" income had been seized.Mr Meng is the latest Communist Party official to fall foul of Chinese President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption crackdown. Lu Wei, China's former head of internet censorship, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for bribery on Tuesday.Analysts believe President Xi's hard-line stance on corruption suggests he is manoeuvring to crush threats to his leadership.Mr Meng's wife Grace urged French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss her husband's detention during President Xi's visit to Paris this week.Last year, Mrs Meng told the BBC she was "not sure he's alive" after reporting him missing to French authorities.She has demanded that her husband be allowed legal counsel in a written appeal to Mr Macron.Mrs Meng, who has expressed fears for her life, is under protection in France, where she has applied for asylum.Since Mr Meng's disappearance on 25 September, no details have emerged about his prison conditions. He was elected Interpol president in November 2016, the first Chinese person to take up the post, and was scheduled to serve until 2020.His job was largely ceremonial and did not require him to return to China often. He was one of six vice-ministers in China's public security ministry and had 40 years of experience in China's criminal justice system, so he has much knowledge about senior Communist Party officials. Detained Interpol chief 'took bribes' Where film stars and police chiefs can simply vanish China has not presented any evidence to justify the allegation against Mr Meng.Russia loses Interpol presidency voteIn November Interpol elected South Korean Kim Jong-yang as its new president, rejecting a Russian candidate who had been tipped to succeed Mr Meng.Interpol - the International Criminal Police Organisation - promotes co-operation and shares intelligence between police forces.

JERUSALEM—While much of the world celebrates the impending defeat of Islamic State, Israeli officials look at Syria and see little reason for joy. To them, a lesser enemy is being supplanted by a far more dangerous one—Iran and its allies.Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is consolidating control, and his forces—aided by Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah—are eliminating Islamic State’s final pockets in the country while inching closer to the Israeli-held Golan Heights....

Enlarge this image Teva Pharmaceuticals has reached a settlement with the state of Oklahoma over its alleged role in fueling the opioid epidemic. In March, drugmaker Purdue Pharma agreed to a $270 million settlement. Toby Talbot/AP hide caption toggle caption Toby Talbot/AP Teva Pharmaceuticals has reached a settlement with the state of Oklahoma over its alleged role in fueling the opioid epidemic. In March, drugmaker Purdue Pharma agreed to a $270 million settlement. Toby Talbot/AP An Israel-based pharmaceutical company has agreed to an $85 million settlement with the state of Oklahoma over its alleged role in fueling the opioid crisis. Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter had accused Teva Pharmaceuticals of creating a public nuisance through its production and marketing of opioids. In a statement announcing the settlement, Teva said the agreement "does not establish any wrongdoing on the part of the company." Teva also said it "has not contributed to the abuse of opioids in Oklahoma in any way." The settlement makes Teva the second company to settle with Oklahoma over the opioid epidemic. In March, Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, agreed to a $270 million settlement with the state. Teva, the world's largest generic drugmaker, had been due to appear in court on Tuesday alongside Johnson & Johnson. "Today's announcement is a testament to the state's legal team's countless hours and resources preparing for this trial and their dedication and resolve to hold the defendants in this case accountable for the ongoing opioid overdose and addiction epidemic that continues to claim thousands of lives each year," Hunter said in a statement. Hunter says the money from the Teva settlement will go towards combating the opioid crisis. State attorneys expect it will take between $12.7 billion and $17.5 billion over a 20 to 30-year period to abate Oklahoma's opioid crisis, according to The Oklahoman. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overdoses involving opioids were responsible for more than 47,000 deaths in 2017 alone. The CDC says 36% of those deaths involved prescription opioids. In April, a poll released by NPR and Ipsos found that a third of Americans have been touched directly by the opioid epidemic. The survey found that 57% of Americans felt pharmaceutical companies should be held responsible for making the crisis worse. "It's something, no matter your age, your gender, no matter where you live, your party affiliation, that people believe in large numbers," said Mallory Newall, the lead Ipsos researcher on the survey. Paul Ten Haken, the Mayor of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, tweeted that the "Oklahoma case is being closely watched by plaintiffs in other opioid cases, including South Dakota and 1,850 other mostly municipal and state governments that have sued the same drug makers."Johnson & Johnson will continue to face trial for its alleged role in the opioid crisis, and is scheduled to appear in court this Tuesday. "Nearly all Oklahomans have been negatively impacted by this deadly crisis and we look forward to Tuesday, where we will prove our case against Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries," Hunter said in a statement.

Enlarge this image The remains of Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright are transferred at Dover Air Force Base, Del., in October. Wright and three other American soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger. Pfc. Lane Hiser/U.S. Army via AP hide caption toggle caption Pfc. Lane Hiser/U.S. Army via AP The remains of Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright are transferred at Dover Air Force Base, Del., in October. Wright and three other American soldiers were killed in an ambush in Niger. Pfc. Lane Hiser/U.S. Army via AP Updated at 3:15 p.m. ETThe Pentagon said Thursday that an investigation into the deaths of four American soldiers in Niger last year found "individual, organizational and institutional failures." But it said no sole reason was responsible for the ambush. Niger ambush simulation The Pentagon released this video simulation of the Oct. 4 attack on U.S. troops in Niger. The four Americans were part of a U.S. contingent that has been assisting Niger's military since 2013 in a battle against extremists linked to the Islamic State. A dozen Americans, along with members of Niger's military, came under attack by extremists on Oct. 4 of last year outside the remote southwestern village of Tongo Tongo. Parallels The Military Doesn't Advertise It, But U.S. Troops Are All Over Africa "I take ownership of all the events connected to the ambush," Marine Corps Gen. Thomas Waldhauser, the head of U.S. Africa Command, said at the Pentagon as he discussed the investigation with reporters. "Again, the responsibility is mine."The Americans left their base a day earlier, Oct. 3, on a routine mission to check in with village elders. But that turned into three separate missions over two days, and became more dangerous as the Americans headed to a site recently vacated by an extremist leader and his fighters. Enlarge this image The burial service for U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson is held in Hollywood, Fla., in October. Johnson was among the four killed in Niger last fall. Gaston De Cardenas/AFP/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Gaston De Cardenas/AFP/Getty Images The burial service for U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson is held in Hollywood, Fla., in October. Johnson was among the four killed in Niger last fall. Gaston De Cardenas/AFP/Getty Images However, the Americans "did not conduct pre-mission rehearsals or battle drills with their [Nigerien] partner force," the report said.In addition, "this mission was not approved at the proper level of command," the Pentagon report said, adding that the change needed authorization at a U.S. battalion-level command, which is based in neighboring Chad. Parallels The U.S. Has No Clear Strategy For Africa. Here's Why It Really Needs One After spending the night in the field, the U.S. forces began returning to their base on Oct. 4. They stopped in Tongo Tongo to get water and meet with village leaders. Shortly after they drove off in several military vehicles, the Americans and their Nigerien partners were ambushed by a much larger force."The American and Nigerien forces fought courageously despite being significantly outnumbered by the enemy," the report said.The report cites multiple failures that include "a lack of attention to detail" in planning the mission and "inadequate notification" of higher levels of command. This contributed to a "general lack of situational awareness and command oversight at every echelon." The Two-Way Pentagon Acknowledges Mistakes As It Briefs Families Of Troops Killed In Niger French Mirage jets showed up as the ambush was coming to an end, made several low passes and scattered the extremists, but did not fire. The report says that's because the pilots could not distinguish between friend and foe.The four Americans killed were Staff Sgt. Bryan Black, Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright — both Green Berets — and Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Johnson and Sgt. La David Johnson. Two Americans were also wounded, and five Nigerien troops were killed.Gen. Waldhauser said changes have been made in the wake of those deaths."We are now far more prudent on our missions," he said.NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman spoke with a retired U.S. officer with experience in Africa. He said the American team should have planned better, should have had greater firepower, and needed to be in touch with a medevac helicopter and a quick reaction force in case something went wrong.The U.S. forces in Niger are there to assist the national army but are not supposed to be directly involved in combat. However, missions can and do take them into dangerous areas where fighting breaks out.The U.S. has some 20 military missions in Africa, mostly in the northern half of the continent. The one in Niger is one of the largest, with roughly 800 U.S. troops based there. Most of the Americans work on an existing drone base or on another one that is under construction, the Pentagon said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang speaks at The 44th Singapore Lacture in Singapore, November 13, 2018. REUTERS/Athit PerawongmethaSINGAPORE (Reuters) - China’s Premier Li Keqiang said on Tuesday that Beijing hoped a consultation with Southeast Asian nations on a code of conduct in the disputed South China Sea would be completed in three years, and that such an deal would bolster free trade. China also hopes to come to an agreement on its ongoing trade dispute with the United States based on mutual respect and trust, Li said at a function in Singapore, adding “there are no winners in any trade war”. China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed in August on a working text to continue long drawn-out negotiations over the code of conduct in the South China Sea. Some ASEAN members and China have overlapping claims to islands in the sea, one of the world’s busiest waterways. For years, they have been discussing a pact to prevent an escalation of disputes. “It is China’s hope that the COC (code of conduct) consultation will be finished in three years time so that it will contribute to enduring peace and stability in the South China Sea,” Li said in a lecture. He is in Singapore to attending annual meetings between ASEAN and its partner nations. “China and ASEAN countries will benefit in that process, it will also be conducive to free trade and go on to serve the interests of other parties.” Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged their Chinese counterparts to halt militarisation of the South China Sea, drawing a rebuke from the Chinese for sending U.S. warships close to islands claimed by Beijing. Li also said he hoped to finalize a major trade pact with 15 other countries called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in 2019, and that they would announce “substantive progress” in negotiations at meetings this week. Reporting by Chyen Yee Lee; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Raju GopalakrishnanOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

As allegations of sexual misconduct have rocked the hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s US supreme court nominee, Republicans in Washington have largely struck a defiant tone, accusing Democrats of mounting a “smear campaign” to derail the nomination.But some conservative women are expressing discomfort with Trump’s pick to replace the retiring justice Anthony Kennedy – with potentially grave consequences for a party already struggling to resolve a longstanding problem with gender.And with six weeks remaining before the November midterms, some fear the controversy around Kavanaugh could further energize the left, while suppressing turnout among Republicans. Others fear the implications of supporting a supreme court nominee accused of sexual assault in a political climate where the president’s own treatment of women is under constant scrutiny.“A lot of women on the right feel that, from a professional standpoint, he’s qualified,” said Liz Mair, a Republican strategist, of Kavanaugh. “They are not convinced that he did this.“That said, I think there are a lot of conservative women who can envision how some of what’s being alleged could have happened, given what was deemed to be more culturally acceptable in the late 70s and early 80s.”Until just over 10 days ago, Kavanaugh appeared to be on a path toward swift confirmation to the highest court in America. Then the first shoe dropped: Christine Blasey Ford, a professor, alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party more than three decades ago.The White House and Republicans in Congress were still contending with the fallout of Ford’s claim when a second accuser, Deborah Ramirez, came forward and alleged that she, too, had been harassed by Kavanaugh decades prior. In an interview with the New Yorker published on Sunday, Ramirez said Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a party while attending Yale University in the early 1980s.A third woman is expected to go public with new allegations this week.Kavanaugh has denied the allegations against him and on Monday defended his record in an interview with Fox News, taking a highly unusual step for a supreme court nominee by engaging with the media.“What I know is the truth, and the truth is I’ve never sexually assaulted anyone,” Kavanaugh told Fox News’s Martha MacCallum.“I want a fair process where I can defend my integrity, and I know I’m telling the truth,” the judge added.“I know my lifelong record and I’m not going to let false accusations drive me out of this process.”That Kavanaugh chose to sit down with the president’s preferred network signalled both a play to the Republican base and a tacit admission his nomination might be in peril.A Fox News poll taken in the wake of Ford’s allegation found a record number of voters oppose the Kavanaugh nomination. The survey also found that voters believed Ford’s claims over Kavanaugh’s denials by a six-point margin.Women were more likely to believe Ford by 10 points overall, with the same number climbing to 17 points among suburban women. Men, by contrast, sided with Ford by just one point.Two of the Senate’s most prominent conservative women, senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have been largely silent amid the controversy. Both are regarded as key swing votes who could make or break Kavanaugh’s fate and are being targeted by ad campaigns.Neither of their offices returned a request for comment when reached by the Guardian on Monday about Ramirez’s allegation.Alice Stewart, a former aide to Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, said conservative women were torn. On the one hand, she said, they are intimately familiar with the culture of sexual harassment; on the other, the allegations stood in contrast to what they knew until now of Kavanaugh’s reputation.“They know him as someone with the utmost character and integrity and principle,” Stewart said. “And these kinds of actions are not consistent with the man that they know.”She nonetheless disagreed with efforts to discredit Kavanaugh’s accusers.“The women deserve to be heard, and what they’ve gone through is something tragic and heartbreaking … That’s the most important thing.”The allegations against Kavanaugh have carried echoes of the controversy that engulfed the confirmation process of Clarence Thomas, one of the supreme court’s other conservative justices, in the early 1990s. Thomas was ultimately confirmed, despite being accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, who had worked under him at the United States Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.But the climate has since shifted dramatically, with the MeToo movement having prompted a widespread moment of reckoning around sexual misconduct and gender inequality. Prominent men have been pushed out of powerful positions across multiple industries, including entertainment, media and politics.The MeToo movement was incidentally galvanized in part by the election of Trump, who has been accused by as many as 17 women of sexual assault and once boasted in a leaked tape about groping and kissing women without their consent.Jess McIntosh, a Democratic strategist and founder of the progressive group ShareBlue, said Republicans were underestimating the potential backlash if they moved ahead with Kavanaugh’s nomination.“You don’t get to the kind of levels of opposition to Kavanaugh that we’re seeing with just Democrats,” she said. “The average Republican woman is not pro-attempted rapist on the supreme court.”“Republican women know there is a reason why women wait, why they would choose not to report … We are having louder and larger conversations about the trauma around sexual assault than we have ever had as a country.”Mair agreed that despite the partisan climate on Capitol Hill, sexual assault cut across partisan lines. While she did not believe the evidence against Kavanaugh was necessarily overwhelming, Mair said she could not foresee the Republican party would emerge from the Kavanaugh controversy unscathed.“Some of us are wondering if there isn’t an alternative at this point.” Topics Brett Kavanaugh Christine Blasey Ford US supreme court #MeToo movement Republicans Law (US) news

If you have seen the popular TV series Breaking Bad, you probably remember a scene in which Walter White angrily tosses a pizza onto his own roof.In the years since, fans have travelled to recreate the stunt, landing the real-life owner with hours of cleaning.The show's creator even stepped in in 2015, asking the pranksters to stop.Now the owner has reached breaking point, according to local media, building a 6ft iron fence to keep people, and their pizzas, out. In the programme, actor Brian Cranston chucks the pizza after his wife discovers his drug-dealing alter-ego and refuses to let him in the house.Frank Sandoval, who runs a local Breaking Bad tour company, told local news station Kob4 that he has had to climb onto the roof to pull pizzas thrown by tourists down.Joanne Quintana said her mother, the owner of the house, has had to deal with hundreds of people over the last few years trespassing, taking photographs and even attempting to steal rocks as souvenirs."We feel like we can't leave because when we, do something happens and that's ridiculous," she said.The crime-thriller ended four years ago but creator Vince Gilligan scolded fans on a 2015 podcast about their behaviour while sightseeing."There is nothing original, or funny, or cool about throwing a pizza on this lady's roof," Gilligan said. "It's been done before, you're not the first." Instagram urged to act on sloth selfies Traffic banned on Game of Thrones road 'Selfish' tourists blamed for dolphin death

The reaction was even more intense in the Senate. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, had planned to use the week to publicize his floor vote to force Democrats to take a stand on progressives’ Green New Deal — an important party-building exercise for Republicans after Mr. Trump’s decision to declare an emergency at the border sparked an insurrection in their ranks this month.Members of Mr. McConnell’s leadership team were incensed at Mr. Mulvaney and allies like the acting White House budget director, Russell Vought, for rekindling a fight that served Democrats so well in 2018 and could harm vulnerable incumbents in 2020, according to two senior aides with direct knowledge of the situation. The maneuver may make it much less likely that Mr. Vought, the chief of staff’s handpicked successor to head the Office of Management and Budget, will be confirmed by the Senate, the aides said.And Democrats pressed their advantage.“The equivalent of a nuclear bomb fell on our country when the president said what he said this week,” Representative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California, said Wednesday as her House subcommittee began pushing through health care legislation. “This is deadly serious.”But Mr. Trump doubled down while talking to reporters in the Oval Office. He predicted that the Texas decision would be upheld by the appeals court, then go to the Supreme Court.“If the Supreme Court rules that Obamacare is out, we’ll have a plan that is far better than Obamacare,” he said.[What happens if Obamacare is struck down? Read more.]White House press aides did not immediately respond to a request for comment. And one official, who asked for anonymity to speak about the meetings, insisted that Mr. Mulvaney had simply been convening people with various views so that the president could make his own decision. But Mr. Mulvaney was described as leading the charge to back the suit, in an account of the two meetings that was described by a half-dozen people with knowledge of what took place.Politico first reported that Mr. Mulvaney pushed Mr. Trump to get involved in the suit.Mr. Barr did not favor the move but did not object to the White House decision once it had been made, people familiar with what took place said. And one White House official said the administration faced a deadline imposed by the court if it wanted to support the suit.

Venezuela’s sacked former chief prosecutor has asked the international criminal court to capture and try Nicolás Maduro and other top officials for crimes against humanity over murders by police and military officers. Luisa Ortega, who broke with Maduro this year after working closely with the ruling Socialist party for a decade, was fired in August after she opposed Maduro’s plan to create an all-powerful legislature called the constituent assembly. She fled the country and has traveled the world denouncing alleged acts of corruption and violations of human rights.Ortega said her complaint, filed on Wednesday with the Hague-based tribunal, was prompted by some 8,290 deaths between 2015 and 2017 at the hands of officials who received instructions from the government. “[They happened] under the orders of the executive branch, as part of a social cleansing plan carried out by the government,” she told reporters in the Hague. The government did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. The accusation refers to incidents of torture, extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrest. Some of them took place during a crackdown on anti-government protests that rocked the country between April and July and left at least 125 people dead, some of them at the hands of military and police officers. The Maduro government accused Ortega of turning a blind eye to violence by opposition supporters, and has also leveled a number of corruption charges at her. Ortega’s request also makes reference to killings that took place during police raids known as “Operations to Free the People”, which have been heavily criticized by human rights groups since they began in 2015. “Nicolás Maduro and his government must pay for this,” she said. The complaint also accuses top officials such as the defense minister,, Vladimir Padrino and intelligence chief, Gustavo González, of involvement in the alleged abuses. Ortega’s critics say she was closely allied with Maduro’s efforts to crack down on dissent and, before her break with him, had helped jail opposition leaders on trumped-up charges. Maduro’s government insists it respects human rights and says opposition demonstrations were Washington-backed efforts to violently overthrow him. Venezuela’s government and opposition agreed on Wednesday to a new round of foreign-mediated talks in the Dominican Republic on 1 December. Topics Nicolás Maduro Venezuela Americas news