For iPhone X users who want a perfectly rectangular display, they can now splurge on Notch Remover, a new 99 cent app designed to camouflage the top bar that interrupts the complete edge-to-edge display. Interested in Apple? Add Apple as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Apple news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Apple Add Interest After Apple CEO Tim Cook unveiled the 10th-anniversary edition of the iPhone – pronounced iPhone 10 – in September, the design has generated controversy after its edge-to-edge display included a “notch” at the top, which houses all the technology behind the advanced front-screen camera and Face ID.Apple fans lose sleep in wild dash to grab new iPhone XIPhone X screen repairs could cost as much as $279iPhone X sells out within minutes overnight The notch causes the now most expensive smartphone on the market not to have a completely rectangular display, as most phones do. App developer Axiem Systems, the makers of photo editor applications for both iOS and Android, is the brainpower behind Notch Remover. The app doesn’t actually remove the notch but instead masks it by modifying the wallpaper on the phone to adjust for the notch, Notch Remover’s App Store description reads. Since Notch Remover is available through Apple's App Store, it would have been approved by Apple, according to its developer guidelines that say the company reviews all apps submitted to the App Store. But this innovation may also go against Apple's developer guidelines that instruct companies not to attempt to hide such features as the notch. “Don’t attempt to hide device’s rounded corners, sensor housing, or indicator for accessing the Home screen by placing black bars at the top and bottom of the screen,” Apple’s guideline for app developers reads. “Don't use visual adornments like brackets, bezels, shapes, or instructional text to call special attention to these areas, either.” Apple and Axiem Systems did not immediately responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.

Dr. Blasey, who initially asked Ms. Feinstein to keep her identity confidential, told The Washington Post that the alleged attack changed her life for years and contributed to long-term anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. She knew that putting her name to the allegations — which she felt forced to do after news of her letter was reported last week — would change her life again, and not for the better. Judge Kavanaugh’s defenders have already launched a fusillade of victim-blaming counterattacks, from the predictable to the preposterous:She’s making it up. (If so, she doesn’t fit the profile of a false accuser.)The charge is too old, and anyway, why didn’t she report the assault immediately after it happened? (More likely a girl in the early 1980s would have blamed herself than report it.)This is a coordinated hit job by Senate Democrats desperate to stop Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation. (If so, Ms. Feinstein didn’t get the memo. She had the letter for more than a month and didn’t notify her colleagues of it until last week.)If it’s not a partisan plot then how do you explain Dr. Blasey’s political donations? (From 2014 to 2017, she gave $72 to Democratic candidates and committees.)Judge Kavanaugh’s mother, also a judge, once oversaw a home-foreclosure case involving Dr. Blasey’s parents. (Misleading.)Dr. Blasey is behaving like a schoolgirl who’s upset that a boy in her class made a pass at her. (This one came from that paragon of decency, Donald Trump Jr.)If anyone is still wondering why women don’t speak up about sexual assault sooner, or at all, you have your answer.

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A woman is raped in India every 13 minutes, according to the country's crime statistics but convictions are few and far between. Here is how an investigation by BBC Hindi's Sarvapriya Sangwan led to the first arrest in a two-year-old rape case. Lalitha (name changed on request) is 16 years old but her life is unlike that of most girls her age. She has a one-and-half-year-old son. She became pregnant in 2016 after she was allegedly raped by a friend of her family. Born in a poor Dalit (formerly untouchable) family in a village in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, she is the second of two daughters. Her father, an illiterate daily wage labourer, is a widower. The accused, a 55-year-old friend of her father, allegedly offered to take her to state capital Lucknow in early 2016 to apply for a government scheme that would help pay for her wedding. But he allegedly raped her at knife point during the trip. She did not say anything to her father when she returned home. It was only months later, when her pregnancy became visible and women in the neighbourhood questioned her, that she told them what she says happened."I want him to be behind bars, that's all I want," Lalitha said. Her father lodged a police complaint on 24 June 2016, about six months after the alleged rape. But the accused was only arrested two years later - on 20 June 2018 - a day after BBC Hindi published its investigation into the delays in the case. Was Delhi gang rape India's #Metoo moment? Why India's rape crisis shows no signs of abating Is India really the most dangerous country for women? Until the arrest, BBC Hindi found, no charges had been filed against the accused. The police said they had been awaiting the results of a DNA report. A police officer told me that 5,500 cases were pending in Lucknow alone because of delayed DNA reports. Rape still carries a huge stigma in India - many women still do not report it and those who do spend weeks, if not years, fighting their case. They say the police, the courts and the system as a whole are often painfully slow and indifferent. Analysts said this is partly because the police force is overworked and underpaid, and the courts are stretched thin with a lengthy backlog of cases.Victims like Lalitha, who are poor and illiterate, are worse off. Dalits are among the country's most downtrodden citizens because of an unforgiving Hindu caste hierarchy that condemns them to the bottom of the heap. A recent Supreme Court ruling sought to weaken a law - the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act - designed to protect them. The court said the law had been "misused" in the past but critics said such stringent laws were required because discrimination against the community was entrenched in the system. The law, for instance, mandates that Dalit victims of rape must receive financial compensation - a sum of 500,000 rupees ($7,340; £5,535) - immediately. Victims of gang rape are entitled to 800,000 rupees. The victims receive the money from the state government after police have registered a case. This happens prior to the conviction of the accused. But Lalitha and her father said they had not received any compensation and they did not know that they were entitled to it - they said no-one had informed them about it either.It also emerged that Lalitha had not recorded a statement before a magistrate until 19 July, some 25 days after the police complaint was lodged. But, according to a Supreme Court order, the victim's statement should be recorded within 24 hours and the police must explain in writing to the magistrate the reasons for any delay. I spoke to or met several government officials - from the local police to the district magistrate to the state head of the Dalit welfare commission - to find out why Lalitha's case had not progressed, why her statement had been recorded so late and why she had not been paid compensation. I was sent from one office to another and while they all acknowledged the problem, no-one was able to give me a clear answer. A police officer eventually told me, "We should have paid the compensation two years ago, but it doesn't matter, we'll send it tomorrow."If Lalitha had received the money earlier, it could have helped pay for her delivery, the child's care or legal help.There also appeared to be discrepancies in the police complaint regarding Lalitha's age. According to her father, she was 14 years old when she was allegedly raped. Her statement to the magistrate too mentioned her age as 14. But the police complaint said she had been 20 years old. The police told me that a medical examination at the time had concluded she was 20. What about her father's claim that she was only 14? The medical report cannot lie, a police officer told me. But documents examined by BBC Hindi suggested someone had tampered with the report - a charge the police denied. If the victim is younger than 18, the accused would be charged under an additional law.Lalitha's father said he had no faith in the police investigation. He alleged that the accused had influenced the investigation with "money and power at every step". With help from the head of the village council, he said he had also asked several government institutions for help but no-one had reached out to him in the past two years.Lalitha has since been married off to a relative who paid for her delivery and other medical expenses. Her son is cared for by her father. A day after the story was published by BBC Hindi, the accused was arrested and the investigation has now been reopened. The head of the village council told me that the magistrate had recorded a new statement and arranged for the compensation to be paid to Lalitha. The accused is now awaiting trial.

The 21-year-old was arrested at 11:50 p.m. on Saturday outside Aladdin’s, a fried-chicken shop where he worked, in the outer London borough of Hounslow.His identity was confirmed by his brother — who is named Aladdin but has no connection to the restaurant — as Yahyah Farroukh. In an interview via the messaging app WhatsApp from his home in the Netherlands, Aladdin said that their family had run a bakery in Damascus, Syria, and that he had been detained and tortured by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.Aladdin said that Yahyah had fled to Egypt in the summer of 2013, and then made his way first to Italy and then to Britain.“It is not possible after three years of study and work that Yahyah would bomb himself or get involved in such acts,” Aladdin said. “He was even looking for a girl to marry.”Yahyah Farroukh appears to have had two Facebook profiles, one of which seems to be aimed toward his family. One of his profile pictures shows him at a Lidl supermarket, and the bomb used in the attack appeared to have been placed into a white bucket, wrapped inside a Lidl bag.The Facebook pages offer no suggestions of extremism. Yahyah regularly posted the flag of the Free Syrian Army, a moderate, secular group of fighters opposed to the Assad government. At one point, he posted a video of the singer Ahmed al-Kaseem, an anti-government singer. He was also a fan of the singer-songwriters Ellie Goulding and Justin Bieber, and the rapper and actor Wiz Khalifa.His social media profiles said he worked at two event-planning companies. On Instagram, he posted an image of a slogan declaring, in English, “For a better life, you need to have weed, vodka and drugs,” and underneath, in Arabic, “For a better life, you need to be honest, generous and well-mannered. Those who know English should shut up.” (It appears to be a joke.)

At a time when Donald Trump’s views on race and seem designed to make the US more divided than ever, an attempt at unification is coming from an unlikely source: children’s television.The new season of Sesame Street seems to be the perfect counter to Trump’s rhetoric, as it specifically focuses on “helping kids recognize similarities and celebrate differences – particularly around race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class”.The first episode of Sesame Street’s 48th season sees Elmo, Big Bird and co travel to different, diverse neighborhoods around New York City. The gang travel to Chinatown, to a west African neighborhood, and to a predominantly Mexican area. Mexico, and its citizens, were a particular target of Trump’s ire during his campaign.Sesame Street head writer Ken Scarborough said the show was aiming to expose children to different cultures, through simple ideas like food and dance.“Obviously in this day and age it seems to be a time when differences aren’t celebrated,” Scarborough said. “I think there’s a lot of distress in the world, there’s a lot of things that you look for simple solutions and simple answers to things and a lot of that has to do with ‘the other’.“People aren’t really ‘the other’. So it’s sort of seeing past that blaming other people for something that is not a problem of people per se, but is just a problem of understanding, of education.”The Sesame Street cast travels around New York City in a balloon in the first episode, looking for a magic wand and discovering those new areas. Some of the episode was filmed in Brooklyn, in May, causing quite a stir among regular parkgoers as the puppeteers maneuvered their characters in the hot sun.Scarborough and his team began writing the show in October last year, in the midst of one of the most divisive presidential campaigns in recent history.Trump was particularly critical of Mexicans during his campaign – describing immigrants from Mexico as rapists and drug dealers – and his pledge to build a wall on the US-Mexico border was one of his signature promises.His attempt to ban people from predominantly Muslim countries added to criticisms that he was heightening racial tensions.Sesame Street has proved progressive in other areas over the years by helping children deal with different people and issues they might face. Earlier this year the show welcomed a new character called Julia, who has autism, to the cast.The way the other characters interacted with Julia served to help viewers understand why children with autism might behave in certain ways.Sesame Workshop – the not-for-profit, educational arm of Sesame Street – has also run programs aimed at helping children who have a parent in jail or family members serving in the military.Rosemarie Truglio, vice-president of education and research of Sesame Workshop, stressed that the show was “apolitical” and that the focus was not a direct response to Trump, but said the season would serve as “wonderful opportunity for different children to learn about different races and cultures”.“We don’t want to be myopic,” Truglio said. “We want to be able to open our world to learn more about our world and the people in it.”In a phone interview, Sesame Street character Elmo said he had found the focus on race and ethnicity beneficial.“We meet people from Mexico and Africa and all different places,” Elmo said. “Elmo thinks that you can find friends anywhere. And any time you find a new friend, you learn new things too.”The puppet said he was excited for the new season to begin and to share his experiences with viewers.“Elmo learned that what makes us different is what makes us special,” he said. “Elmo thinks it’s important to celebrate the differences we all have. It’s important to recognize the things we have in common. And not our differences.” Topics Sesame Street Children's TV Television features

Donald Trump has attacked the escalating investigations into 3,000 adverts purchased on Facebook by Russians in the 2016 US presidential, using Twitter early Friday to say the “Russia hoax continues, now it’s ads on Facebook”.He repeated his attacks on the “biased and dishonest” media coverage that he said favored his rival Hillary Clinton.The US president made the comments a day after Facebook said it would provide congressional investigators with the contents of those adverts, following weeks of scrutiny surrounding the social network’s role in influencing elections.There is growing pressure for such digital platforms and Google to have tighter oversight on political adverts more akin to regulations on TV and other media.Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke his silence on the issue in a Facebook live video on Thursday, saying that the company would provide the controversial ads to government officials to support investigations in the US and as part of its renewed efforts to protect the “integrity” of elections around the world.“I don’t want anyone to use our tools to undermine democracy. That’s not what we stand for,” he said. “I wish I could tell you we’re going to be able to stop all interference, but that just wouldn’t be realistic,” Zuckerberg added. “There will always be bad actors.”US congressional investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller are examining alleged Russian election interference, which Moscow has denied. Trump has regularly characterized as a “hoax”and “witch hunt” anything linking his election campaign to evidence or suggestions it sought and obtained help from Russia.Several official US investigations are continuing.Facebook disclosed earlier this month that an influence operation that appeared to be based in Russia had purchased $100,000 in ads to promote divisive political and social messages in a two-year period.The adverts had spread controversial views on topics such as immigration, LGBT rights and race and had promoted 470 “inauthentic” pages and accounts that Facebook later suspended, according to the company. Facebook has said it was cooperating with related federal investigations, and the revelations have lended credence to the findings of US intelligence officials that Russia was involved in influencing the 2016 presidential election.Concerns about the role of political ads on Facebook have not been limited to the US. A series of Conservative party attack ads in the UK were sent to voters in a key marginal constituency and relied on dummy Facebook accounts, the Guardian reported earlier this year.On Thursday, Facebook’s general counsel Colin Stretch said in a statement: “After an extensive legal and policy review, today we are announcing that we will also share these ads with congressional investigators. We believe it is vitally important that government authorities have the information they need to deliver to the public a full assessment of what happened in the 2016 election.”The announcement comes one day after 20 Democratic senators and representatives wrote to the Federal Election Commission to urge it “develop new guidance” for advertising platforms “to prevent illicit foreign spending in US elections”.In his speech, Zuckerberg said Facebook would also create a “new standard” for transparency in political advertising so advertisers must disclose which page paid for an ad and so that the public can visit advertisers’ pages and see the ads they’re currently running to any audience on the site.Zuckerberg said the company had also been working to ensure the integrity of the forthcoming German election and had taken action against thousands of fake accounts. Topics Donald Trump Facebook Russia US politics

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.

A 10-year-old Indian rape victim, who gave birth to a baby girl in August, had been made pregnant by one of her uncles, police say.Police are filing charges against the suspect - who is the second uncle of the girl's to be accused of raping her.The first uncle has already been held and charged with raping the girl.But police began looking for a second suspect after forensic tests revealed that the baby's DNA samples did not match those of the first accused.Chandigarh senior superintendent of police Neelambari Vijay told the BBC that police were now rushing to also file charges against the second uncle - who is the younger brother of the first uncle. "It's true the Baby's DNA sample has matched that of the [second] uncle," she said.The next hearing in the case will be held at a local court later on Tuesday.The first uncle will remain in custody as he is believed to have also abused the child. The pregnant child caught in a media storm No abortion for 10-year-old rape victim Second uncle held for India child rape The harrowing case of the 10-year-old has made headlines for weeks, both in India and globally, says the BBC's Geeta Pandey in Delhi.Her pregnancy was discovered in mid-July when she complained of a stomach ache and her parents took her to hospital.A local court in Chandigarh turned down the abortion plea on the grounds that she was too far into her pregnancy after a doctors' panel advised that termination of the pregnancy would be "too risky". Later, the Supreme Court also refused to allow an abortion for her on similar grounds.Indian law does not allow terminations after 20 weeks unless doctors certify that the mother's life is in danger. The girl was not aware of her pregnancy, and was told her bulge was because she had a stone in her stomach, our correspondent adds. She gave birth in August and the baby was given away to child welfare authorities for adoption.The girl initially told police and child welfare activists that she had been raped several times in the past seven months by the first uncle to be placed under arrest, who is in his 40s. She had also testified to the court by video link and very clearly named the uncle and revealed facts about her abuse.The girl's father had told the BBC that the first uncle had not denied the charges against him. Police also said he had admitted to the allegations.But after his DNA test results did not link him to the baby, police began searching for more suspects - and arrested a second uncle of the girl's in September.The country's courts have received several petitions in recent months, many from child rape survivors, seeking permission to abort.In most cases, these pregnancies are discovered late because the children themselves are not aware of their condition.Earlier this month, a 13-year-old girl was given court permission to terminate her pregnancy at 32 weeks. The boy she was carrying was born alive in Mumbai but died two days later.In May, a similar case was reported from the northern state of Haryana where a 10-year-old, allegedly raped by her stepfather, was allowed to abort. She was about 20 weeks pregnant, doctors said.None of the girls can be named for legal reasons. A child under 16 is raped every 155 minutes, a child under 10 every 13 hours More than 10,000 children were raped in 2015 240 million women living in India were married before they turned 18 53.22% of children who participated in a government study reported some form of sexual abuse 50% of abusers are known to the child or are "persons in trust and care-givers" Sources: Indian government, Unicef

On Saturday afternoon the inevitable finally happened, Brett Kavanaugh was voted on to the bench of the supreme court on the basis of a partisan vote. The only exception was Joe Manchin, the nominally Democratic senator from West Virginia, who did not let his serious concerns about the accusations of sexual assault and Kavanaugh’s temperament stand in the way of supporting his lifetime appointment to one of the most powerful political institutions of the country.As after virtually every political rollercoaster – and there are far too many these days – commentators are quick to claim that the Kavanaugh hearings have changed the country forever. On the liberal side, optimistic liberals claim that Kavanaugh accuser “Christine Blasey Ford Changed Everything”, ie that #MeToo is only beginning and enraged women will no longer stay silent. On the opposite side of the polarized political spectrum, paranoid conservatives claim the hearings have unleashed a “period of neo-McCarthyist witch-trial-style moral panic”.Views that proclaim fundamental change are, of course, far more popular than those claiming much will remain the same. That’s why we read them on an almost daily basis. But they are also usually wrong. Politics do change, but most of the times slowly and steadily, with high-profile events being at best cathartic rather than game-changers.I don’t even think the Kavanaugh hearings were cathartic, except perhaps in the short term. More than anything, they confirmed political processes that have been ongoing for years, sometimes decades, and have become more pronounced, and thereby more visible, during Donald Trump’s presidency.First, and most depressingly, the Kavanaugh hearings showed that absolutely everything is a partisan issue today, even sexual assault. According to a YouGov poll, 73% of Democrats believed Dr Ford, while 74% of Republicans believed judge Kavanaugh. Independents, a growing group, believed neither – only one-third believed either. Moreover, the pollsters found that the hearings had little effect on people’s attitudes.Second, the whole affair confirmed that the Republican party has become Trump’s party. Not that Kavanaugh was a Trumpian candidate. Like virtually every other Trump appointee, Kavanaugh is a mainstream conservative who would also have been in contention under a President Cruz or Rubio. The Trumpian aspect was not the nominee but the nomination. Rather than backing down under pressure, and replace Kavanaugh with one of the many other conservative judges who could deliver the same outcomes on the supreme court, the Republican party embraced the confrontation and defended their candidate by attacking the opposition. Even Kavanaugh himself launched a Trumpian attack on the Democrats in his defense testimony to Ford’s accusation of sexual assault.In these attacks, crazy rightwing conspiracy theories, normally only expressed by radical right fringes of the Republican party, like Steve King and Donald Trump Jr, now became official party position. Republicans from Senator David Perdue of Georgia to the Senate judiciary committee chairman, Chuck Grassley, spoke of “paid protesters” and, parroting the rightwing media frenzy, several high-ranking Republicans, including President Trump, even embraced the antisemitic conspiracy theory that George Soros was behind it all.Third, the Kavanaugh affair again showed that white women will not save the Democrats. The Republican senator Susan Collins once again broke the hearts of many naive liberals, by voting like a Republican rather than a Democrat. But it could also be seen in polls, which show, once again, that education and race, much more than gender, are the key variables in party support. As Lucia Graves pervasively argued in these pages, American women are not a monolith, and (married) white women have been supporting patriarchal and rightwing politics for centuries.But even if the Kavanaugh hearings mainly confirmed the dangerous trend of polarization in America, it could have short-term political effects, most notably with regard to the midterms next month. Again, speculation is rife and highly partisan. Liberals believe Republicans will face a backlash by outraged women in November, while conservatives believe a backlash of angered “mama bears” will hurt the Democrats.Before the Kavanaugh affair, the Democratic base, most notably women, was already fired up by months of nativist and sexist policies and rhetoric. It is doubtful they could be fired up even more. Even worse, some might have become discouraged by yet another political defeat, yet another betrayal by “moderate Republicans” and “white women”.In sharp contrast, before the Kavanaugh hearings, Republicans were worried about a complacent base, comfortable in the Republican party’s complete control of US politics and content with its accomplishments (particularly tax reform), but uninspired by local and regional Republican candidates. The rightwing frenzy over the alleged Democratic “McCarthyism” against a “decent, white, Christian man” has reminded them what is at stake in the midterms.On the upside, this would mean that the Kavanaugh hearings will give a boost to overall turnout in the midterm elections, itself not an unimportant outcome. But in terms of partisan boost, it will do more for conservative rage than liberal outrage. This means that the Kavanaugh nomination not only created a conservative majority in the supreme court, for several decades, but could also put an end to the Democratic dream of taking the House and Senate. Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist Topics Brett Kavanaugh Opinion US politics comment

By Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung and Amanda Becker WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fighting to salvage his U.S. Supreme Court nomination, Brett Kavanaugh angrily denied on Thursday a university professor’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her 36 years ago in a day of dramatic testimony that gripped the country. Christine Blasey Ford, her voice sometimes cracking with emotion, appeared in public for the first time to detail her allegation against Kavanaugh, a conservative federal appeals court judge chosen by President Donald Trump for a lifetime job on the top U.S. court. Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee she feared Kavanaugh would rape and accidentally kill her during the alleged assault in 1982, when both were high school students in Maryland. She said she was “100 percent certain” it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her. Kavanaugh testified after Ford finished her appearance, claiming he was the victim of “grotesque and obvious character assassination” orchestrated by Senate Democrats. He said he “unequivocally and categorically” denied Ford’s allegation and vowed he would not back down. “I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process,” Kavanaugh added. Although they were at no point in the hearing room together, the clash pitted his word against hers. The almost nine hours of intensely emotional testimony came against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault and had millions of Americans riveted to their TV screens and smart phones. Ford has emerged in the eyes of many American women as a compelling figure in the #MeToo movement that is usually associated less with the names of victims and more with a list of high-profile men accused of misconduct. It was not clear, however, if the drama changed the views of any senators. The Senate, controlled 51-49 by Trump’s fellow Republicans, must now decide whether to vote to confirm Kavanaugh after the extraordinary nearly nine-hour hearing. Four senators — Republicans Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Jeff Flake along with Democrat Joe Manchin — are seen as possible swing voters whose decisions will determine whether Kavanaugh is approved or rejected. Kavanaugh was nominated by President Donald Trump and his confirmation would cement conservative control of the Supreme Court with disputes over abortion rights, immigration, gay rights, voting rights and transgender troops possibly heading toward the justices soon. The Judiciary Committee, on which Republicans hold an 11-10 majority, was to meet on Friday morning and several senators said they expected it to vote then. The full Senate could vote within days. Writing on Twitter after the hearing, Trump said of Kavanaugh: “His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting. Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!” Kavanaugh at times choked back tears, especially when he mentioned that his daughter suggested they pray for Ford, when he spoke of his father and when he mentioned women friends who had rallied to support him. Kavanaugh sharply attacked Democratic senators, calling himself the victim of “a calculated and orchestrated political hit” fueled by anger on the left at Trump’s 2016 election win over Democrat Hillary Clinton, his conservative judicial record, and revenge on behalf of Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. “I swear today, under oath, before the Senate and the nation, before my family and God, I am innocent of this charge,” Kavanaugh told the Judiciary Committee. Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, said over four hours of testimony that a drunken Kavanaugh attacked her and tried to remove her clothing at a gathering of teenagers when he was 17 years old and she was 15. “With what degree of certainty do you believe Brett Kavanaugh assaulted you?” Democratic Senator Dick Durbin asked Ford. “One hundred percent,” she replied, remaining firm and unruffled even under questioning by a sex crimes prosecutor hired by the committee’s Republicans. When Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein asked her if it could be a case of mistaken identity, as Kavanaugh and some Republican senators have suggested, Ford replied: “Absolutely not” . U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Kavanaugh on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 27, 2018. REUTERS/Jim BourgMurkowski, one of the three moderate Republican senators who have not announced whether or not they will support Kavanaugh, told Reuters: “I find Dr. Ford’s testimony to be credible.” For his part, Kavanaugh testified he was “100 percent certain” none of the alleged incidents of sexual misconduct occurred. Democrats lauded Ford’s testimony as credible, brave and, in the words of Senator Cory Booker, “nothing short of heroic.” “I want to thank you for your courage. And I want to tell you I believe you. ... And I believe many Americans across the country believe you,” Democratic Senator Kamala Harris said. While some Republicans and Trump have called the allegations by Ford and the two other women part of a smear campaign, Ford told the committee she had no political motivation, adding: “I am an independent person and I am no one’s pawn.” Ford was seated at a table in the packed hearing room flanked by her lawyers, facing a bank of senators. She told the senators she was “terrified” to testify but felt it was her civic duty to come forward. “Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was very inebriated and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit under my clothing. I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help,” Ford said, adding that Kavanaugh and a friend of his, Mark Judge, were “drunkenly laughing during the attack.” Democratic senators sought to score political points during their five minutes apiece of questioning Ford. The panel’s Republican senators, all men, did not question her, assigning that task to Rachel Mitchell, a sex crimes prosecutor. While Mitchell probed Ford’s account looking for gaps, her questioning seemed disjointed. She took turns with the Democratic senators to ask questions in five-minute segments, disrupting her flow. During Kavanaugh’s testimony, Republican senators sidelined Mitchell and asked their own questions. The bitter fight over Kavanaugh’s nomination is unfolding just weeks before the Nov. 6 congressional elections in which Democrats are trying to seize majority control of Congress from the Republicans. It has also deepened the country’s political polarization. Kavanaugh, sitting alone at the witness table, said he wanted to testify as soon as Ford’s allegation emerged last week and was not surprised other allegations followed. “In those 10 long days, as was predictable and as I predicted, my family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional accusations,” he said, as his wife sat behind him. Kavanaugh repeatedly tangled with Democratic senators, interrupting several of them, including Feinstein and Amy Klobuchar, during testy exchanges. When Klobuchar asked him about his teenage drinking, he threw the question back at her, asking her whether she had ever been blackout drunk. He later apologized for the question. Kavanaugh was careful not to denounce Ford, noting he wished her “no ill will.” He said he was not questioning that Ford may have been sexually assaulted by someone in some place at some time, but that he had never assaulted her or anyone else. Some Democrats have called on Kavanaugh to withdraw in light of the allegations. At the hearing, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham castigated Democratic senators, seeking to rally Republicans not to abandon the nominee. “This is the most unethical sham since I’ve been in politics,” Graham said. Ford said Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming during the assault. She added: “This was what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me.” Her strongest memory of the incident, Ford said, was the “uproarious laughter between the two (Kavanaugh and Judge) and their having fun at my expense.” She said the laughter had haunted her ever since. Two other women, Deborah Ramirez and Julie Swetnick, have accused Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct in the 1980s. Slideshow (14 Images)Ramirez accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself during a drunken dormitory party during the 1983-84 academic year when both attended Yale University. Swetnick said she witnessed efforts by Kavanaugh and others to get girls drunk at parties so they could be raped. She said Kavanaugh was present at a 1982 party where she was raped. Trump, who has himself faced accusations of sexual misconduct, chose Kavanaugh to succeed Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired effective in July. Reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Andrew Chung and Amanda Becker; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Makini Brice, Steve Holland, David Morgan and Susan Heavey; Editing by Will Dunham, Kevin Drawbaugh and Peter CooneyOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday he now recalls a meeting in March 2016 that has come under scrutiny as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether President Donald Trump’s election campaign colluded with Russia. In testimony before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, Sessions acknowledged he attended a meeting with George Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser who pleaded guilty last month to lying to the FBI. According to court documents, Papadopoulos told the meeting he could help use his Russian connections to broker a meeting between then-candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Sessions had previously testified to Congress he was unaware of communications between the campaign and Russian officials. Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Warren Strobel; Editing by Alistair BellOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Over the weekend, Khloé Kardashian posted on Instagram about a T-shirt that seemed, at first glance, forgivably mawkish. It encouraged her followers to “love thy neighbor” and listed neighbours of differing levels of disenfranchisement: “Thy black neighbor. Thy gay neighbor. Thy Jewish neighbor,” and so on. The penultimate line read: “Thy racist neighbor.”The internet, unsurprisingly, lost it. It can easily be inferred from the T-shirt that “racist” is a neutral, even misunderstood, status: it suggests that, like being gay or black, it is something you are born with that the world unfairly vilifies. In Kardashian’s mind, a racist’s struggle is comparable to that of a homeless person or an addict (who were also offered a serving of love, as opposed to anything substantial). Her endorsement of that message suggests she sees “racist” as an identity – and a marginalised one at that. This is the logical conclusion of a dangerous rhetoric that posits the intolerant as victims of a system that they seek actively to uphold.Kardashian’s ludicrous faux pas puts to bed the myth that we can befriend our way to a more just world. Although she is a mother to a biracial child, with a number of black ex-beaus (including the basketball players Lamar Odom and Tristan Thompson, the latter of whom is her daughter’s father) and a black best friend (Malika Haqq), it seems her proximity to blackness has not cured her myopia.Of course, in the minds of many, colour-blindness is a type of kindness. Such people believe that acknowledging racism does more harm than racism itself – which is only true if you consider that white fragility is being harmed. Coddling the complicit is hardly new, of course. Colour-blindness allows liberals to lay claim to “wokeness” without doing the work required to undermine white supremacy: how can it even exist if “we’re all just humans, man”?The Kardashians’ babies, besties and boyfriends continue to be human shields against accusations of racism laid at the door of this ever-ignorant family. They devour black culture and spit out the bits that don’t sit well with them – donning cornrows, but acting uncharacteristically demure when it comes to engaging with anti-racist discourse. Khloé Kardashian was accused last year of editing her daughter’s skin colour in pictures to make it appear lighter, a few months after she had hit back at cruel remarks made online about the toddler’s complexion. It is hard to be colour-blind in this society of racists that Kardashian seeks to “love” when these people actively hate others – her daughter included, whether she chooses to see it or not.Would Kardashian have promoted the same T-shirt had it pleaded to love “thy sexist neighbor” or “thy homophobic neighbor”? Probably not. Thanks to Kardashian and her ilk, racism is something that continues to be touted as a cry for help from those who believe their bigotry is unfairly censored. These bigots believe it is their freedom of speech being quashed – making them the ones being oppressed, rather than the oppressors. Topics Women Race comment

(Reuters) - Investors who bet on private prison operators as big winners from Donald Trump’s tough line on crime and illegal immigration are looking back at a bruising year of high hopes and disappointment. Some, however, say the stocks still offer good value even though an anticipated windfall under the Trump administration so far has failed to materialize. FILE PHOTO: Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., December 13, 2017. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File PhotoThey say the two listed operators - Geo Group Inc (GEO.N) and CoreCivic Inc (CXW.N) - stand to win contracts from states struggling with prison overcrowding, such as Kansas and Oklahoma, and have plenty of room to accommodate new demand. Valuable properties owned by the two companies, which operate as prison real estate investment trusts (REITs), and long-term federal contracts with minimum revenue guarantees also make them attractive, they say. The administration’s proposals to bolster the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency could help in the future though it is still unclear how much new money it will bring. “People are focusing on ICE and ignoring the state level opportunities,” said Jordan Hymowitz managing partner Philadelphia Financial Management in San Francisco. Geo and CoreCivic shares soared after Trump won the White House, partly on expectations that detention centers they run for ICE would fill up thanks to an anticipated surge in arrests along the Mexican border. Yet the opposite happened - arrests declined for months after Trump's inauguration because fewer people attempted to cross the border and shares in CoreCivic and Geo reversed course after peaking in February and April respectively. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2BUZlfe) While detentions have been rising from month to month since hitting a year-low in May, the stocks have not yet recovered. CoreCivic now trades 37 percent below its post election high, while Geo is about 32 percent below its 2017 peak. Investors say lack of clarity on how much business they will get from ICE, the companies’ biggest client, is holding the shares back. “People can’t figure out if immigration reform is good or bad for private contractors,” said Eric Marshall, portfolio manager and head of research at Hodges Capital Management in Dallas, Texas. Hodges sold its CoreCivic shares after the post-election rally but still owns Geo. CoreCivic and Geo declined comment on their performance and outlook beyond their comments in earnings calls and statements. The immigration enforcement agency, which cites its average cost per bed at $129 per day, accounted for about a quarter of CoreCivic’s and Geo’s revenue in the first nine months of 2017. Federal, state and local prisons make up most of the remaining revenue. ICE asked Congress for a $1.2 billion funding increase, but the latest budget proposal offered $700 million, according to Geo, and its 2018 funding remains unclear. GEO and CoreCivic make up two-thirds of the roughly $5.3 billion per year U.S. private prison business, according to market research firm IBISWorld. However, potential state contracts promise to boost prison companies’ earnings and make them less controversial. Both the sheer size of the U.S. prison population, by far the world's largest, and the use of privately-run prisons have been a subject of political debate. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2BFI8Sz) As a result, Barack Obama’s administration laid out plans, abandoned under Trump, to phase out outsourcing, citing, among others, safety concerns. Investors said a pending Kansas Department of Corrections proposal for CoreCivic to build a new prison which the state would manage, would address some investor concerns by making the company a landlord rather than a prison operator. If copied by other states, such approach would open new opportunities for the companies, which mostly derive revenue from running their own prisons or government facilities. “There’s a lot of noise around being a private prison operator” said Jamie Cuellar, co-portfolio manager of the Buffalo Small Cap Fund based in Mission, Kansas. “If people start thinking of them more like a government agency REIT than a prison operator it could be helpful to the valuation,” he said. Cuellar noted that Easterly Government Properties (DEA.N), a REIT which leases office buildings to government agencies, trades at a multiple of 15.8 times earnings estimates. In comparison, CoreCivic’s forward multiple is 10.0 and Geo’s is 11.8, according to the latest data. Thousands of vacancies at CoreCivic and Geo facilities should also be viewed as a positive, because they could lift earnings with little extra investment, investors say. Hymowitz estimated that CoreCivic, which has around 15,000 empty beds, could boost by a fifth its funds from operations (FFO) per share if it could fill just a quarter of them. CoreCivic said in November it could add $1 to annual earnings per share (FFO) if it can open its eight idle prisons and boost inmate numbers in partially vacant facilities. Geo said in October that filling 7,000 empty beds could add $50-$60 million to its annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), a roughly 11-13 percent increase to 2018 analyst estimates. Buffalo Funds’ Cuellar has a $45 long term price target for CoreCivic, which last traded around $22. While it would take new business to get there, Cuellar says he can afford to be patient given its steady dividend payouts. “I don’t believe there is a lot of downside from here. Meanwhile, I get paid a 7.6 percent dividend to wait.” (GRAPHIC: reut.rs/2BzSzex) (GRAPHIC: tmsnrt.rs/2y7wgeh) Additional reporting by Noel Randewich and Megan Davies; Editing by Tomasz JanowskiOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

A car was seriously damaged when part of an aeroplane's wing landed on it in the Japanese city of Osaka.The piece, which weighed more than 4kg (9lb), fell from a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines plane shortly after it departed Kansai International Airport on Saturday.It damaged the car's roof and smashed its rear window after falling more than 2,000 metres (6,500ft).No-one was injured in the incident but KLM has launched an investigation.The piece broke off from the wing of a Boeing 777 which had more than 300 passengers on board. The flight landed safely at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport later on Saturday.In a statement, the Dutch airline said: "KLM regrets this incident and has immediately launched an investigation into the causes."They added they were "in close contact with Japanese civil aviation authorities and Boeing".

I am proud of the beauty and the ancient culture of my country, India. I am not proud of the fact that India has been named the most dangerous country in the world for women in a recent Thomson Reuters Foundation survey.Perceptions matter. Perceptions dictate who we like, what happens to the stock market and who becomes the prime minister or president of a country. Perceptions of how women should be treated create a rape culture.It is a jolt to see India scoring worse than war-torn countries such as Afghanistan or Syria or monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, where women have few rights. Everyone expects more and better for women from India, the world’s largest functioning democracy. That is precisely why it shocks.After all, the Indian constitution enshrines women’s rights to equality, including freedom of voice, movement and rights over their own bodies. India’s designation hurts national pride because it is a country where millions of smartly dressed women go to work in high-rise offices every day, where laws have changed to protect women and where women and men have spilled into the streets to protest against the grotesque rapes of toddlers, the gang rape of eight-year-olds, and of young women activists protesting at the trafficking of women.The biggest contribution of the Thomson Reuters Foundation survey is that it reframes questions about the gender gap or gender equality into a question about women’s safety and danger. It is no longer a philosophical issue of rights. It simply asks: are women safe and free? It forces us to consider cultural forces and the implementation of laws that impact how women are actually treated in a culture, despite formal law, education, employment or income.India is in denial of the fact that a majority of its women do not feel safe alone on the streets, at work, in markets, or at home, even though they have learned how to cope with this existential anxiety. When I asked young educated women in Delhi if they feel safe, most said no. And most of those who said yes had learned to modify their behaviours to feel safe – they don’t go out alone unnecessarily; come home at night before dark; get permission to go out; are always careful and alert; and they censor their speech, their clothes and their body posture, including whether or not they look men in the eyes.Indian women are in a constant state of vigilance, like a country on terrorist alert. Satish, a 52-year old banker, told me: “For rape there is no fixed time: always be alert.” No democracy is a democracy when half its population lives in fear.Yet men are surprised when they hear this from women. Their common reaction is: “You must be mistaken.” The paradox is that women have protected men and their families by keeping quiet. This is honourable behaviour, a part of our “honour society”. But National Crime Records Bureau statistics for 2012 to 2016 show that approximately 40% of female reported rape victims were minors and 95% knew the rapist. The rapists belonged to the “circle of trust” of extended family and friends. Young girls have nowhere to go.What rape statistics really reflect is a vicious cultural agreement that women have little value. Which means in turn that girls must be trained to act as if they do not exist, to minimise their presence to survive, to serve men and not inconvenience them. This sounds archaic in this day and age, but it is true in India and to a greater or lesser degree across many cultures, irrespective of wealth or education.The dirty secret about men’s crass abuse of power through sexual violence against women has hit the global press. The #MeToo movement in the US, in which highly successful and wealthy women finally broke the silence about their experiences of sexual violence, have resulted in the US ranking as the 10th most dangerous country for women in the poll of 198 countries. The irony is that without wide media coverage there is no possibility of cultural shift, and with media coverage, the illusion of women’s safety breaks and ratings plunge.India – and the rest of the world – would do well to make women’s safety and freedom central goals of democracy and development, and learn about the science of cultural change.Advertising firms and big data companies know how to change culture. We need to harness these skills to change conversations about what it means to be a man, so women can flourish without being imprisoned in the name of safety.• Deepa Narayan is a social scientist and author of the book Chup: Breaking The Silence About India’s Women Topics India Opinion South and Central Asia Rape and sexual assault Feminism Women Children Protest comment

Iraqi forces have captured Islamic State’s last stronghold in northern Iraq, the military said on Thursday, leaving the militant group holed up in pockets of land by the Syrian border, across which its self-proclaimed “caliphate” once stretched.The town of Hawija and the surrounding areas were captured in an offensive carried out by US-backed Iraqi government troops and Iranian-trained and armed Shia paramilitary groups known as Popular Mobilisation. Some fighting continued to the north and east of the town where the militants were surrounded. With the fall of Hawija, which lies near the Kurdish-held oil city of Kirkuk, the only area that remains under control of Islamic State in Iraq is a stretch alongside the western border with Syria, where the militant group is also in retreat.“The army’s 9th armoured division, the federal police, the emergency response division and (..) Popular Mobilisation liberated Hawija,” said a statement from the joint operations commander, Lt Gen Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah.State TV showed footage of Iraqi forces putting flags in one of the town’s main squares while Humvees patrolled empty streets littered with car wrecks, houses riddled with bullets and shattered storefronts. Thick black smoke continued to rise from areas surrounding Hawija, from oil wells torched by the militants to prevent air detection. The capture of Hawija brings Iraqi forces into direct contact with Kurdish peshmerga fighters who control Kirkuk, a multi-ethnic region claimed by both Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Kirkuk shaped up as a flashpoint last month when the KRG included the city in a referendum on Kurdish independence in northern Iraq. “We don’t want any aggression or confrontations but the federal authority must be imposed in the disputed areas,” Iraq’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, told a news conference in Paris, held with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. Abadi renewed an offer to jointly administrate Kirkuk with the peshmerga, but under the authority of the central government. The Kurds took control of Kirkuk in 2014, when the Iraqi army fled in the face of Islamic State’s advance. Arab and Turkmen communities live alongside a large Kurdish population in Kirkuk, a city claimed by the Kurds for over a century as the “heart of Kurdistan”.Iraq launched its offensive on 21 September to dislodge Islamic State from the Hawija area, where up to 78,000 people were estimated to be trapped, according to the United Nations.The militants continue to control the border town of al-Qaim and the region surrounding it. They also hold parts of the Syrian side of the border, but the area under their control is shrinking as they retreat in the face of two different sets of hostile forces – a US-backed, Kurdish-led coalition and Syrian government troops with foreign Shia militias backed by Iran and Russia. Islamic State’s cross-border “caliphate” in effect collapsed in July, when US-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, in a gruelling battle lasting nine months. Last week the group released an audio recording of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who declared the caliphate from Mosul in mid-2014, indicating he was alive, after several reports he had been killed. He urged his followers to keep up the fight despite the setbacks. Topics Iraq Islamic State Middle East and North Africa United Nations news

编者按：即将在 9 月发售的 iPhone 十周年版本也吊足了众人的胃口，Apple TV 也将在今年的发布会上迎来重大更新，而它的主题将会是“4K”。这一代Apple TV的主题中，“游戏”是一个非常重要的组成部分，而Apple TV发布两年了，Apple TV 游戏却做的不温不火，Apple 究竟做错了什么？Apple TV 游戏还有出头之日吗？当 Raw Fury Games 1月在iOS上发行极简主义策略游戏“王国：新大陆”时，也开发了Apple TV的版本，这是很合理的，iOS代码很容易移植到苹果的机顶盒上，控制方案能够平滑的从触摸屏转换到Siri Remote遥控器。但是在推出五个月后，“王国：新大陆”在 Apple TV 上的销售只有 600，而 iOS 版本则销售量为54000，一年前发布在 Xbox One 的版本则约为 35000 台 ... Raw Fury 联合创始人兼CEO Gordon Van Dyke并没有对平台表示不满，但他表示，发行商不太可能发布任何无法轻松从现有 iOS 应用移植到 Apple TV 游戏。他说：“如果我们只在 Apple TV 上发布，情况会非常困难。”Van Dyke 的评论说明了 Apple TV 作为视频游戏系统的迟钝状态

Indian job seekers may finally have some reason to rejoice.After declining for three quarters, India’s hiring momentum is expected to pick up pace during the October-December period, a recent report by US-based workforce solutions company ManpowerGroup said.The report is based on a survey of 5,005 Indian companies that were asked, “How do you anticipate total employment at your location to change in the three months to the end of December 2017 as compared to the current quarter?”India’s hiring sentiment during the last three months of this year is likely to be better than that of a number of countries, including the US, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia, the report said.The services sector in India is expected to see maximum hiring during the last three months of 2017, while finance, insurance, and real estate are likely to remain laggards in terms of recruitment, according to the report.“With (the) increased focus of the government on the ease of doing business, many MNCs find a conducive investment climate in India, resulting in creation of employment opportunities and business growth,” AG Rao, the group managing director at ManpowerGroup India said. “Looking at the current positive outlook of the economy, e-commerce giants are in the process of ramping up workforce across various functions, particularly engineers and other specialists, with an intention to be technology, product, and engineering-driven companies.”With peak sales season around the corner, Amazon India, for instance, is looking to hire 22,000 temporary workers for its fulfilment centres, sortation centres, and delivery and customer service sites.But while there’s a lot of hope, job seekers do need to step up their skills, because prospective employers are likely to be very picky. “Companies are cautiously hiring and going to ever-greater lengths to identify the candidates who have the right mix of skills. The job-seekers need to have industry knowledge with practical intelligence,” Rao said.

Texas has its own “rainy day fund” estimated at $10 billion, but Mr. Abbott said on Friday that he had no plans to call a special legislative session, which would be required to tap the fund. In a statement, his press secretary, John Wittman, said the governor could call a special session “at any time” in the future.Mr. Wittman and Mr. Abbott say the state is allocating resources and working with the federal government on reimbursement of disaster expenses.“We won’t need a special session for this,” Mr. Abbott said Friday at a news conference. “We have smartly provided a lot of resources, at my disposal, to be able to address the needs between now and the time the next session will begin” in January 2019.In a statement, Mr. Wittman said this was not a moment to allow politics to impinge on the relief effort. “It’s asinine to think that after this catastrophic hurricane, the federal government would not step up to help communities recover and rebuild like it has in the past,” he said.Despite the pervasive anti-Washington rhetoric, Texas relies heavily on the federal government. About 32 percent of the state government’s revenue is federal money, according to an analysis of data from fiscal year 2014 performed by the Tax Foundation. From 1953 to 2011, Texas received 86 major-disaster declarations, the most of any state, according to a 2012 report by the Congressional Research Service.Robert M. Stein, a political science professor at Rice University, said that “most Texans believe they send more tax dollars to Washington than they receive back,” though, in fact, the reverse is true.Opinions about the federal government are far from uniform. Home to Houston, Harris County, the third most-populous county in the country, voted overwhelmingly for the Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, in November.In Houston and elsewhere, secession talk is not unusual, but it usually falls somewhere between a pipe dream and joke, a way to underscore Texas’ brief 19th-century run as an independent republic and a pervasive sense of exceptionalism and independence. Indeed, the idea of Texans as self-reliant and a breed apart is one shared across the political spectrum.“It’s an independent, pioneering people — that might sound corny, but it’s true,” Mr. Berry said.“That’s the positive spirit of it, that we’ve got to rally among ourselves to take care of ourselves,” said Jim Hightower, a Democratic former Texas agriculture commissioner and supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Mrs. Clinton’s main rival in the primaries.More generally, however, anti-Washington sentiment seemed to ratchet up significantly under President Barack Obama. In a February 2015 poll conducted by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, only 23 percent of Texans had a favorable view of the federal government, which ranked last in the poll among a number of American institutions.Texas conservatism, before Hurricane Harvey, manifested itself in ways both typical and sometimes bizarre. The state is one of 19 that have declined to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, saying that doing so would be fiscally irresponsible. Parts of Texas were also gripped in 2015 by fears that a military training operation, Jade Helm, held during the Obama administration, was actually a huge covert operation to steal Texans’ guns and impose martial law.For liberals in Texas and elsewhere, the new mainstream of Texas conservatism is almost as disturbing. Mr. Hightower accuses Mr. Abbott and others of indulging in “laissez-fairyland economics that everybody should just be on their own and the strong people survive.” He added, “They abandoned the essential American notion that we’re all in this together.”Some say that changing that perception will depend, in great part, on the efficacy of the government response. Toward the end of the Obama presidency, FEMA bragged that it had significantly improved its disaster response, compared with the days of Hurricane Katrina, when its performance came in for withering scorn.But other aspects of the federal response to Hurricane Harvey are already under fire. Joe Nixon, a lawyer who served as a Republican representative in the Texas Legislature from 1995 to 2007, had harsh words for the Army Corps of Engineers after he was forced to evacuate his home in the Briargrove Park neighborhood of Houston.The floodwaters were lapping against his door in part because the Corps of Engineers has been releasing water into Buffalo Bayou from the Addicks and Barker Dams all week. “I don’t think they know what they’re doing,” he said. “We survived the storm, but we may not survive the Corps.”Indeed, to some Republicans, the way Texans have banded together and mounted ad hoc rescue operations demonstrated not only the concept of Texan self-reliance but also a conservative principle that there are forces more important than government.“If you’re in America and you’ve been blessed, you have some flexibility in your schedule, and you have some resources, then you know what to do,” said State Senator Bryan Hughes, Republican of Mineola, more than 200 miles from Houston, who patrolled greater Houston in a friend’s boat after the flood, rescuing stranded people. “The government doesn’t have to tell us to. You just know what to do.”But many Texans also acknowledged individual efforts were not enough.In Newton, Tex., last week, the Rev. Joe Miller Jr., a former pastor of a local Methodist church, praised the work of a neighbor named Paul, who was using his smoker to cook barbecue for the victims.“He’s cooking the meals, and this guy is amazing,” Mr. Miller said. “Local people like him, we have that. But he can’t rebuild a hundred homes, or whatever it is out there on the river, or a thousand homes — I don’t know how many it’s going to be — that are under four feet of water. These people have nothing.”