Facebook and Google are becoming carbon neutral businesses, joining competitors Apple and Microsoft in committing to put no excess carbon into the atmosphere, both companies have independently announced.But the details of the two companies’ ambitions differs greatly. At Google, which first committed to going carbon neutral in 2007, the announcement sees the company declaring success in retroactively offsetting all carbon it has ever emitted, since its foundation in 1998. It has also committed to being powered exclusively by renewable energy by 2030.If that sounds familiar, it’s because it is: in 2017, Google became a “net-zero” company, buying renewable energy to match its energy usage, but was unable to fully commit to eliminating carbon-emitting generation entirely.It’s that latter target that Facebook says it will now meet this year, when the company will become 100% supported by renewable energy. Facebook has also announced a further goal for itself, committing to net-zero emissions for its entire “value chain” by 2030, including its suppliers and users.“Over the next decade, Facebook will work to reduce carbon emissions from our operations and value chain,” the company said in a blogpost, “including by working with suppliers on their own goals, helping the development of new carbon removal technologies and making our facilities as efficient as possible.”Both companies’ claims follow similar announcements from Apple and Microsoft. In January, Microsoft led the way, announcing a plan to become carbon negative by 2030, and to remove all of its historical emissions by 2050 – the goal Google says it has achieved today, although Microsoft was already 23 years old when Google was founded in 1998.And in July, Apple announced its own plans to become carbon neutral by 2030. For Apple, that meant not only its entire supply chain, but also the lifecycle of all its products, including the electricity consumed in their use. The company will plant trees equal to the estimated lifetime carbon emissions of the electricity used to charge iPhones, for instance.“The innovations powering our environmental journey are not only good for the planet, they’ve helped us make our products more energy efficient and bring new sources of clean energy online around the world,” Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, said alongside the announcement.The latest announcements place Amazon at the distant back of the pack. In 2019, the company revealed a then-ambitious plan to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, and to use 100% renewable electricity by 2030. But the company’s vast logistics network is a significant hurdle not faced by its competitors: the company has purchased 100,000 electric delivery vehicles, but deploying them to the road will not be complete by 2030. Topics Greenhouse gas emissions Apple Google Facebook Microsoft Alphabet Renewable energy news

Former New York gynecologist Robert Hadden, who has been accused of sexually abusing more than two dozen patients, including the wife of former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, is now facing federal charges.According to a federal indictment unsealed on Wednesday, Hadden, who surrendered his medical license in 2016 in a state plea deal that excluded a prison sentence, faces six counts of inducing others to travel to engage in illegal sex acts.The government accuses Hadden of abusing “dozens” of his patients, including “multiple minors” between between 1993 and 2012.For more than a decade, the indictment said, Hadden “sexually abused dozens of female patients, including multiple minors, under the guise of conducting purported gynecological and obstetric examinations” at his medical office and at hospitals in Manhattan in New York City.“Hadden did so through a process that entailed developing a relationship with his victims and causing them to trust him, before engaging in a course of increasingly abusive conduct, which Hadden attempted to mask under the guise of legitimate medical care”, federal prosecutors allege.Hadden, 62, was arrested Wednesday morning in Englewood, New Jersey, authorities said. He has not yet entered a plea.According to more than two dozen accusers in a separate civil lawsuit against Columbia University and its hospital system, where Hadden worked, he allegedly groped and penetrated patients during vaginal examinations and “mole checks” that served “no medical purpose.”Hadden’s accusers in the civil lawsuit also said the doctor had also made sexually inappropriate remarks and surreptitiously perform oral sex on patients “to satisfy his own prurient and deviant sexual desires.”Among the women who have come forward with sexual abuse allegations is Evelyn Yang, who told CNN earlier this year that she was seven months pregnant when she went for an appointment with Hadden.As she was getting ready to leave, she said, the doctor told her abruptly that he thought she might need a cesarean section. She said Hadden pulled her to him and undressed her, then used his fingers to examine her internally.“I knew it was wrong. I knew I was being assaulted,” Yang said, but she “just kind of froze”.“I remember trying to fix my eyes on a spot on the wall and just trying to avoid seeing his face as he was assaulting me, just waiting for it to be over,” she added.Yang went on to describe as a “slap on the wrist” Hadden’s 2016 plea deal with prosecutors in the office of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, in which Hadden pleaded guilty to one count of forcible touching and one count of third-degree sexual assault. Those counts did nt involve her case.Vance Jr said in a statement, after Yang came forward: “Because a conviction is never a guaranteed outcome in a criminal trial, our primary concern was holding him accountable and making sure he could never do this again – which is why we insisted on a felony conviction and permanent surrender of his medical license.” Topics New York Rape and sexual assault news

Brazil’s conservative president Michel Temer has ordered the army and federal police to clear highways blockaded by striking truck drivers after a protest over soaring fuel prices entered its fifth day.The blockades have paralysed much of the country’s economy and prompted São Paulo, the biggest city in South America, to declare a state of emergency over fuel shortages.“I have actioned the federal security forces to unblock highways and I am asking governors to do the same,” Temer said in a televised address on Friday. “We will not let the population do without its primary needs.”The protests began over fuel prices but have been further stoked by widespread anger over repeated graft scandals involving prominent politicians – including Temer himself.In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, supermarkets and restaurants are running low on supplies. Some factories have shut down, bus services been reduced and even the Refugees World Cup, scheduled to take place in São Paulo on Saturday, has been cancelled. The Folha de S Paulo newspaper site reported that 11 airports including one in the capital city Brasília have run out of fuel, and long queues have built up at gas stations around the country.Behind the scenes, the army – already embroiled in a controversial operation against gang violence in Rio de Janeiro state – is concerned it might not have enough fuel to break the strike, the G1 news site reported.“It is a difficult, delicate mission,” said reserve Gen Augusto Heleno Pereira, who commanded Brazil’s UN military force in Haiti. “The truck driver is a sympathetic figure … we hope there will be negotiation and there will be a deal and that they won’t offer resistance.”The government appeared to believe it had resolved the crisis, but many drivers were unsatisfied with the deal. One of the main unions, known in Portuguese as Abcam and representing 600,000 truck drivers, walked out of the negotiations. “We will not go back to work until our demands are met,” said truck driver José Cicero Rodrigues, speaking by telephone from a protest at Santos, Brazil’s biggest port near São Paulo.Brazil’s federal highway police said that highways continued to be blocked on Friday but would not confirm how many. Local media reported that security forces will be able to enter trucks and remove them from the highways, and the decree is due to come into effect on Friday.Following Temer’s decree the Abcam union said it was telling its members to stop blocking highways, but continue demonstrating peacefully.“We have already shown our strength to the government,” the union said in a statement on its website.Ahead of yesterday’s agreement, Brazilian media reported that some congressmen were fleeing Brasilia to return to their home states before the fuel ran out. Eunício Oliveira, the Senate president who flew back to his home state of Ceará in the North East, was forced to fly straight back to Brasília after a wave of criticism.Videos circulating on WhatsApp showed truck drivers enjoying barbecues on blocked highways and pictures of trucks covered in Brazil flags and banners reading “stop with the thieving or we’ll stop the country”.On Friday striking school bus drivers paraded down São Paulo’s landmark Paulista Avenue in a cacophony of blaring horns. Drivers drew a direct link between their own increased fuel costs and the vast sums of money that politicians of all parties have been accused of stealing.“Nobody can stand any more. This is absurd, so much stealing, so much thieving and we have to pay the bill,” said Anderson Barbosa, 41. “Brazil is indignant.” Topics Brazil Michel Temer Americas news

AL-HOL, Syria — On a barren stretch of desert roadway in northeastern Syria lies the al-Hol refugee camp — a sprawling sea of tents, home to nearly 70,000 people. More than 90 percent of its inhabitants are women and young children, many under 12, according to the United Nations, which has dozens of workers at the camp.The camp is less than 200 miles north of Baghouz on the Iraqi border, the last stronghold of ISIS fighters to hold out against U.S. and allied forces in March, five years after the terrorist group announced its so-called Caliphate.Six months ago ISIS lost all of its territory and tens of thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria, its empire in ruins.But the group is far from gone. There are even signs of it making a comeback, as it transforms into a more covert, decentralized network. And deep in the al-Hol camp are clues to how sympathy and support for the Islamist group can spread and fester.In July a video from al-Hol appeared on social media platforms, showing a group of women and children cheering beneath an unfurled homemade ISIS flag. Shouts of “baqiya” (“remaining” in Arabic) could be heard.Another video showed a group of women, fully covered in traditional black clothing and positioned in front of an ISIS flag, as they called for the return of ISIS rule and threatened: “You think we’re trapped in your rotten camp, we are a ticking time bomb.”“Many of these people came from Baghouz, the ones who stayed with ISIS until the very end, the most dangerous of all, and now they’re in this camp,” said Klistan Oso, the head of the refugee affairs office for the regional administration in northern Syria, who visits al-Hol regularly.It’s not just this camp. According to a report from the inspector general to Congress, covering April to the end of June, the ISIS story is far from over.“Despite losing its territorial ‘caliphate,’ the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and was resurging in Syria,” it said.The report estimated that as many as 18,000 ISIS members remain loyal and active across Iraq and Syria, carrying out “assassinations, suicide attacks, abductions and arson of crops.”Even some of those living inside al-Hol say they’re fearful of their neighbors, as gangs of hardcore believers terrorize fellow camp residents they consider to be straying from the ISIS ideology.According to assessments included in the inspector general’s report, a lack of sufficient security at the camp — in part due to the drawdown of U.S. forces in the region — has allowed a radical ideology to spread “uncontested” among a population that is “susceptible to ISIS messaging, coercion and enticement.”Earlier this year, NBC News interviewed American-born Hoda Muthana, who at 20 left the U.S. and traveled to Syria to join ISIS. Then, in al-Hol, she claimed to regret those actions but said that change of heart had put her life in danger.“There are still some extremists just in this camp. … I feel very scared, frightened, and sometimes I can't even sleep at night because of them,” Muthana said. “It's obvious, obvious who are still radical, who are still dangerous.”Muthana has since been moved to a smaller nearby camp. Her fears, though, may have been justified — in July, a pregnant Indonesian woman was found dead inside al-Hol. The woman, according to local officials, had been beaten to death by a group of female ISIS supporters because of her refusal to wear a niqab. And on several occasions, the tents of those deemed nonbelievers have been set ablaze.Some of the worst offenses have occurred in a section of the camp known as the annex — fenced off, restricted access and guard posts at the exits. In some ways it's more akin to a prison than a refugee camp.Inside the annex, a range of languages and accents can be heard; young children from strikingly diverse backgrounds wander aimlessly, unaccompanied. These are the foreign wives and children of ISIS — more than 10,000 of them, from 60 nations, are confined to the annex.The residents here languish, as their home nations deliberate what should become of them. A resolution for many of these embittered individuals, though, is unlikely to come any time soon.President Donald Trump has repeatedly praised the military victory over ISIS. In July he declared: “We did a great job with the caliphate. We have 100 percent of the caliphate, and we're rapidly pulling out of Syria. … Syria can handle their own problems.”The trouble is, those are some significant problems. And as the U.S. eyes an exit from the conflict, its primary local military allies in Iraq and Syria — the Iraqi Security Forces (I.S.F.) and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (S.D.F.) — are already struggling to manage.Enduring support of ISIS is visible in the violence against S.D.F. guards at al-Hol. Guards are regularly attacked with stones and in at least two incidents have even stabbed by women suspected of ISIS allegiances, according to S.D.F. officials.The conditions at the camp, particularly in the annex, have been called “appalling and sometimes deadly,” according to a Human Rights Watch report that describes open and overflowing sewage, contaminated drinking water and young children suffering from rashes, swollen bellies, and emaciated limbs, some succumbing to potentially treatable illnesses.A new report from the U.N.’s Commission of Inquiry for Syrian Arab Republic, noted that “women and children remain at higher risk of further radicalization” at the camp.With a $25 million bounty on his head, the elusive ISIS leader, the world’s most wanted terrorist, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, remains at large. In a rare audio message, released on Monday, al-Baghdadi vowed to fight on in a global Jihad.It may not be an idle threat.Sizable ISIS factions continue to operate in areas across the continents of Africa and Asia. And with a war chest currently estimated at as much as $300 million, according to U.N. counterterrorism officials, the group has proven it’s still able to carry out major international attacks.ISIS is “very comfortable operating from the shadows,” said Daniel Milton, director of research for the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “The conditions are ripe for a group that is resilient to re-emerge, and they've been laying the groundwork to do that.”“This is an organization that is lying in wait. The recent memory of victory is hopefully not going to cloud the future challenges that are very rapidly emerging.”ISIS has also maintained the ability to attract and inspire new recruits, through an enduring “extensive worldwide social media effort,” U.S. military officials noted, in the inspector general’s report.However, the group may not need to look beyond its former heartland, in Syria, to target the next generation to fill its ranks.The S.D.F.’s military advance, and ultimate territorial victory against ISIS, resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of people, including many ISIS families and sympathizers. The masses uprooted in the fighting were rounded up and relocated to makeshift camps, scattered across the northern stretches of Syria. Understaffed and underfunded, such tent cities have become fertile grounds for ISIS recruitment, American officials have warned.“We have been encouraging member states to repatriate and take on the responsibility toward their national citizens from the camp,” said Hedinn Halldorsson, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “In the past couple of weeks and months, that has not been the case.”While some countries continue to mull the fate of their nationals who travelled to Syria to join ISIS, the massive humanitarian burden of servicing the camp residents has fallen on the S.D.F. and dozens of international aid organizations, whose efforts are frequently hampered by the security issues within al-Hol.“This is not a long-term solution, we cannot cover the humanitarian needs for a long period of time. We are doing the best that we can, but we are still falling short,” said Sara Alzawqari, a Middle East representative for the International Committee of the Red Cross, who’s visited al-Hol several times.Although the conditions have recently improved marginally as the population at the camp has stabilized and services are streamlined, according to Halldorsson, there remains a considerable need for more assistance.Between the overwhelming humanitarian issues and security concerns in al-Hol camp, “it’s like a bomb that can explode at any time — we’re aware of this,” said Oso, who shared her frustrations over a lack of funding and countries' unwillingness to deal for their own citizens.Short of any sweeping resolutions, there’s a risk of creating a radical population that will cause problems for years to come, warned S.D.F and American officials.“I describe it as a petri dish for future extremism in these camps,” Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told an audience in Washington. Addressing these people is a “critical strategic issue,” he said.More on MSNBC’s “On Assignment with Richard Engel,” The Rise and Fall of ISIS, this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.

The US Democratic presidential hopeful Cory Booker has been exposed on Twitter for making the same joke – about loving coffee so much he is “dating it” – almost every year for the past 10 years.The New Jersey senator has tweeted slight variations on the same phrase – that he has “broken up with” sleep and is now “dating coffee” – 14 times over the past decade.The serial joke repeating was exposed in a thread from Anna Fitzpatrick.In the tweets, Booker variously describes coffee as his “hot friend” and a “hot, tall, delicious one”, and jokes that sleep is “serving him divorce papers” due to his love affair with coffee.In May 2009, Booker tweeted: “‘Sleep’ and I broke up a few nights ago. I’m dating ‘Coffee’ now. She’s Hot!”In May 2010, almost a year to the day, he tweeted: “‘Sleep’ and I broke up again tonight. I’m finding comfort with my new special friend ‘coffee’ – she is hot.”Booker continued the tweets throughout his time as mayor of Newark and after his election as a senator for New Jersey. All up, he made the same joke 14 times in 10 years.One tweet from 2009 appeared to be a song called The Sleep Lost Coffee Blues.“4am sleep went away/ Been shacking up with coffee all day/ Black, brown, all different hues/ Slurping my song: ‘The Sleep Lost Coffee Blues,’” Booker tweeted.Another 2009 tweet, arguably a different joke, reversed the premise of the other tweets, casting coffee and sleep as two lovers ignoring Booker.Also in 2009, Booker introduced a third component, saying he was “splitting myself between ‘Coffee’ and ‘M. Dew’ today … no time for ‘sleep’.Booker, 49, is New Jersey’s first black senator, and is running on policies around criminal justice reform – including the decriminalisation of marijuana – and the Green New Deal, which is also popular with other Democratic contenders.Fluent in Spanish, he has been long considered one of the party’s rising stars. He announced he would be seeking the Democratic nomination in February this year. Topics Cory Booker US politics news

A Florida man has been arrested for threatening the prominent Democrats Cory Booker, Rashida Tlaib and Eric Swalwell.According to a criminal complaint issued by the US attorney’s office for the southern district of Florida, John Kless, 49, made phone calls in which he ranted about gun control, immigration, gay people, black people and Muslims including Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman who has been the subject of aggressive criticism by Donald Trump.Kless specifically mentioned the elected officials being killed. He was charged on Friday with making threatening communications, the US attorney said.The arrest came one week after Trump, following controversial remarks about Omar by a number of Republican politicians and media figures, tweeted a selectively edited video that purported to show Omar being dismissive of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.The president was widely criticised for inciting violence against an elected US representative.With Tlaib, Omar is one of the first two Muslim women sent to Congress. A Somali American who came to the US as a child, she is the first person to wear a hijab in the House chamber.Two weeks ago, a New York man who professed support for Trump was charged with threatening to kill Omar.Last weekend, Omar said she had experienced a spike in death threats.On Tuesday morning, Kless called the Washington offices of Swalwell, a representative from California; Tlaib, a representative from Michigan; and Booker, a senator from New Jersey. He left profanity-laden voicemails for each, the complaint said.Swalwell, who is white, and Booker, who is black, are running for president.“The day you come after our guns, motherfucker, is the day you’ll be dead,” Kless said in his message for Swalwell, the US attorney said. Swalwell has focused his campaign on gun control.Kless is also alleged to have said: “You’re gonna die. You’ll be your deathbed motherfucker along with all the rest of you Democrats. So if you want death motherfucker, keep that shit up.”According to the complaint, the messages Kless left for Tlaib and Booker seemed to reference the video shared by Trump and Democrats’ response to it.“You definitely don’t tell our president, Donald Trump, what to say,” Kless said in his message to Tlaib, according to officials.Tlaib responded to Trump’s tweet swiftly, writing: “Enough is enough. No more silence, with [the New York] Post and now Trump taking Ilhan’s words out of context to incite violence toward her, it’s time for more [Democrats] to speak up. Clearly the GOP is fine with this shameful stunt, but we cannot stand by.”According to the complaint, Kless called Tlaib “Taliban” and Omar a “towel head” and said of Omar: “You know what, she’s lucky she’s just getting death threats. So are you. All right? You’re lucky they’re just threats, motherfucker. ’Cuz the day when the bell tolls, whore, and this country comes to a war, there will be no more threats.”He is said to have added that there were “millions of us who hate you motherfuckers, man, for what you done on 9/11” and to have used racial terms in reference to Barack Obama, who he claimed was a Muslim.Investigators traced the phone number to Kless, who lives in Tamarac, Florida, the complaint said. A spokeswoman for the US attorney said some weapons Kless owned had been seized. He appeared in court on Friday and was released on bond, subject to a GPS monitor and a curfew.In February, US Capitol police investigated Kless over a message left for the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi. According to the complaint, the message concerned “Congress taking away his guns, abortion, illegal immigration and Muslims in Congress”. It was not clear what action, if any, was taken.Last week, Pelosi asked Capitol police to review security arrangements for Omar. Topics Ilhan Omar Florida US crime news

Matthew Eleazer, the president of Mr. Sullivan’s local, said at least 10 of his approximately 650 members had recently struggled with opioid use disorders, some with lethal outcomes. One was a single father prescribed opioids for a back injury who accidentally took too many pills. Another was a promising young apprentice found by the side of the road with a needle in his arm on his way to a wedding.Mr. Eleazer said the union tests all members when they join and randomly after that; he often gets reports from employers when a member doesn’t show up for work or is repeatedly tardy.The union told Mr. Sullivan he could return to work if he went into rehab, but there was a problem: He had an arrest warrant out for violating parole from a prior arrest, and the treatment centers would not accept him until he served his jail term.Mr. Sullivan was unwilling to go to jail and disappeared. Union officials tracked him down and called the police to arrest him when he was passed out in his car. The union persuaded a parole officer who helped convince a judge to let him serve his time at a drug treatment facility instead of jail, and union representatives called him several times a week.As promised, they found him a job when he was released in 2017, but this year he was laid off at the end of a construction project and relapsed again. Weeks later, Mr. Sullivan called to say he was living in his two-door Honda, claiming to have been clean for a couple of weeks.“Do you remember what I told you to do when you were in that situation? That I was your first phone call?” Mike Titus, a union official, said to him when they met up at a bar. “Could you pass a drug test right now?”If so, the union had a job for him and he could shower at the union hall until he found a place to live. “Matt and Mike were the first ones who cared enough,” Mr. Sullivan said. “None of my employers gave a [expletive] enough to even ask.”A month later, Mr. Sullivan was back to work on a union job, living in a new home and clean once again.

To be more specific, Heath says that the switch was borne of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s frustration with the fact that the company he founded doesn’t get enough credit for the popularity of Instagram and WhatsApp. It’s true that plenty of fans of those apps aren’t paying attention to who owns them: Heath references two 2018 surveys that found more than half of Americans were unaware of their connection to Facebook. But that arms’-length relationship has long been considered an asset for everyone involved. A few years ago, as teenagers decided that Facebook was no longer cool, the story goes, they showed their disapproval by abandoning it—in favor of Instagram.In the past, the independence of Facebook’s subsidiaries was more than skin deep. After acquiring Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014, the company left the startups’ founders in charge, encouraged them to preserve their own cultures, and generally seemed content with their brands remaining self-contained even if many back-office operations—from ad sales to server infrastructure—were provided by the mothership. But now Instagram and WhatsApp’s founders have all quit, with unhappiness over meddling by Facebook playing either an explicit or reported part in their defections. And while details remain sparse, Mark Zuckerberg has been waxing visionary about a new era in which Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all more tightly integrated into a user experience that spans all three services.Even before such integration is obvious, Facebook is prepping for it. Heath’s report on The Information says that the Instagram team working on that service’s Direct private messaging features is being folded into the group responsible for Facebook’s Messenger service–an act of consolidation that would have been unlikely in years past. It’s hard to understand their motivation for this other than to assume they simply don’t understand that Facebook’s brand is dead. It would be more advisable for them to be changing the corporate name of Facebook to instagram. https://t.co/5DZuWcOoCH — Brent Vanderbrook (@vanderbrook) August 2, 2019The Twitterverse’s gut reaction to the rebrand has been a snarky thumbs-down, which isn’t a shocker. (Some raised the question of whether Facebook is trying to fuse its components before antitrust investigators can break them apart.) But the new naming convention may be of limited long-term significance. After all, teeming masses of actual human beings aren’t going to start dutifully referring to “Instagram From Facebook” or “WhatsApp From Facebook.” At best, they will pay marginally more attention to the two apps’ Facebook affiliation.And in the tech world, branding decisions that stem from overarching corporate strategies don’t have a track record of sticking. More than a decade ago, Microsoft went through a period when it slathered the Windows brand on top of its online efforts, which led to such ungainly product names as “Windows Live Search” and “Windows Live Hotmail.” They lasted only until other priorities rose to the top, whereupon Windows Live Search became Bing and Windows Live Hotmail became Outlook.com. The chances that anyone—including Facebook—will be talking about “Instagram From Facebook” and “WhatsApp From Facebook” in a few years are slight at best.

“They keep coming. Two million illegal immigrants in California.” It was 1994 when California’s Republican governor, Pete Wilson, ran these ads during his re-election bid. “There’s a right way, and there’s a wrong way. To reward the wrong way is not the American way.” Wilson was plugging a ballot measure called Prop 187, which tried to block undocumented immigrants from accessing public services, like education. “We need Pete Wilson as governor.” In the short term, Wilson’s messaging worked. He was re-elected governor. But long term, the fallout from Prop 187 helped turn a generation of Latinos in California into Democrats. Today, the Latino population in California is the largest of any state. And 63% are registered Democrats. And now, the president has given them more reasons to make their voices heard. “These are animals.” “They’re rapists.” “Like we have no border.” “Mexico’s paying for the wall.” Latinos could play a critical role in some of California’s congressional races, potentially flipping seats and helping Democrats regain control of the House. They could also help elect California’s first modern-day Latino governor. But will they go to the polls? Latinos make up 34% of California’s adult population. But they’re only 18% of the state’s voting population. One reason they don’t have the electoral power you’d expect could be that politicians haven’t reached out enough. Antonio Villaraigosa, who is running for governor, is the clearest example of a candidate trying to change that. He’s tapping into fear and anger over Trump’s agenda in a number of ads in English and Spanish. In this one, which could be confused with a Hollywood movie, he and a group of activists leave drinking water for border crossers. “I’m the youngest child of a single immigrant mother.” Another high profile Latino candidate, Kevin de León, also talks about his own life story as a way to engage Latino voters. “I owe it to this single mother. This woman and millions like her, throughout the state, throughout the country, who would do everything within their power to protect their children.” Gil Cisneros is a leading candidate in a heavily Latino House district where the Republican congressman is retiring. This ad focuses on giving Latinos the opportunity to go to college. It’s too early to tell if this messaging will work to awaken what some call the “sleeping giant” of the Latino vote. But in the lead up to the November midterms, we’ll see more outreach and advertising directed at Latinos in this key state for Democrats.

The US government has the legal right to deny residency to people who might require, or have required in the past, public financial assistance, the US Supreme Court ruled this week. The ruling upheld a new policy from the current administration that expands the definition of a “public charge” when it comes to immigration.The new policy says, among other things, that legal immigrants who have used food stamps or been hospitalized for long-term care through Medicaid can now be denied a green card. This is even if they applied for the benefit before the policy was announced.US president Donald Trump’s administration didn’t introduce the concept of a “public charge,” it just further defined it. Prior to the new policy, immigration authorities might label someone a possible public charge if they were likely to receive, or had received, cash handouts. The new definition is much broader.It’s another effort to limit immigration options for lower-income people. But the assumption that those who require government assistance are, or will be, a burden to the United States is misinformed, and potentially damaging to the very economy the policy seeks to protect. The positive economic impact of immigrants of lower incomes is well documented.All this is just as true—if not more so—of immigrants who receive public assistance. A misconception about food programs or Medicaid, for instance, is that they are for unemployed people. In truth, they are often supplementing the resources of people employed in low-income jobs—both among immigrant and native communities. Research from the Center on Budget and Policy Priority (CBPP) found that 93% of immigrants receiving any form of government support between 1999 and 2015 were either employed or married to someone who was employed most of the time.In many cases, the CBPP notes, reliance on government assistance was temporary. Further, NAS research found that the second generation of immigrants born from low-income parents have high upward mobility, and tend to reach higher education levels than children of parents born in the United States.There is perhaps no stronger evidence of the benefit of admitting low-income immigrants to the United States, however, than the history of the country itself.Admitting those immigrants to the United States wasn’t just beneficial to their own lives and futures, it was a boon to American development. Without poor Chinese immigrants, for example, the United States wouldn’t have the transcontinental railroad. And immigrants who fled poverty were instrumental to building the country’s other major infrastructure, like bridges and skyscrapers.The impact immigrants have on the economy isn’t just measured in the present or near future—but in the generations to come. Research has shown that the economic benefit of accepting more immigrants can last for decades after their arrival. In the United States, the counties that took in more immigrants between 1860 and 1920 now have higher wages. A 5% increase in immigrants, in fact, corresponded to a 20% increase in wages.To be sure, those immigrants were typically much poorer than those who would be denied entry today.

Byand March 6, 2020 6:11 pm ET WASHINGTON—AT&T Inc. is working with the Justice Department as the government considers whether to bring an antitrust case against Alphabet Inc.’s Google, two years after the telecommunications giant was at loggerheads with the department over its acquisition of Time Warner, according to people familiar with the matter. AT&T has conferred several times with Justice officials to share its views that Google is stifling competition in the advertising sector, where AT&T is seeking to make inroads with its Xandr division, the people... To Read the Full Story Subscribe Sign In Continue reading your article with a WSJ membership View Membership Options

WASHINGTON ― Republicans now maintain President Donald Trump was completely justified in engaging in a quid pro quo with Ukraine after an extended period of time adamantly denying that it had ever happened at all. Last year, after the White House released a summary of Trump’s infamous July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Republicans insisted that they saw no evidence of a direct link between security assistance to Ukraine and the opening of investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential Trump opponent in the 2020 election. “It clearly isn’t a quid pro quo,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) said in November after several top U.S. diplomats testified before the House that the Trump administration did, in fact, withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for an investigation into a political opponent. Read the call record, they said over and over again, and it’s clear that the aid and the investigations weren’t linked. “If you could show me that Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Axios in October. Their position echoed White House talking points sent to Republicans on Capitol Hill (and mistakenly also to some Democrats) following Trump’s repeated denials on Twitter that there was “no quid pro quo.” “Let’s be clear, there was no quid pro quo for Ukraine to get US aid in exchange for looking into Biden or his son,” said one of the talking points. But Republicans changed their story on the matter this week after The New York Times revealed the existence of a book manuscript from former national security adviser John Bolton. The book, which is due to be released later this year, alleges that Trump told Bolton directly that the aid to Ukraine was tied to the Ukrainian government opening investigations into Biden and his son. The revelation from a first-hand witness threatened to derail Republican desires for a quick acquittal of Trump in the Senate impeachment trial this week and upped the pressure on them to allow witnesses such as Bolton to testify and new documents to be presented during the proceedings. During their opening arguments in the Senate, Trump’s defense team contended that even if Bolton’s account were true, it would not merit the removal of a president during an election year. Their argument opened the door for some Republican senators to acknowledge that Trump did, in fact, withhold Ukraine aid, but that it didn’t merit his removal from office because he was morally justified in seeking investigations into the Bidens. “It is clear to me that there is ample evidence for the President to be concerned about conflicts of interest on behalf of Hunter Biden and that Vice President Joe Biden’s failure to take appropriate action was unacceptable. This combination, in my view, undercut America’s message on reforming corruption in Ukraine,” Graham said in a statement on Wednesday. There’s no evidence that Biden or his son Hunter engaged in corruption in Ukraine. Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, also testified in the House inquiry that he saw no validity to Trump’s allegations against the Bidens. Trump and other Republicans only began inquiring about Hunter Biden’s role on the board of an energy company in Ukraine after his father announced his campaign for president. Other Republican senators were equally dismissive of Bolton’s allegations, maintaining this week that Trump had an official reason to insist on an investigation into the Bidens, rather than a personal one. “Quid pro quo doesn’t matter,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said during an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Tuesday. “[Bolton’s] point is what? That doesn’t tell us anything,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) added in a separate Tuesday interview with Hannity. Asked about Bolton’s book’s account on Wednesday, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said, “I don’t think there was any crime. I don’t think it was an impeachable offense.” Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost Voting Made Easy Register to vote and apply for an absentee ballot today Register now

Lawmakers on Tuesday blasted the British government's decision to allow controversial Chinese telecom firm Huawei to help build its 5G networks, warning that the decision could threaten the long-standing intelligence sharing agreement between the United States and United Kingdom.“Here’s the sad truth: our special relationship is less special now that the U.K. has embraced the surveillance state commies at Huawei,” Sen. Ben SasseBenjamin (Ben) Eric SasseWhy a backdoor to encrypted data is detrimental to cybersecurity and data integrity McEnany says Trump will accept result of 'free and fair election' McConnell pushes back on Trump: 'There will be an orderly transition' MORE (R-Neb.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.“The Chinese Communist Party has infected Five Eyes with Huawei," he added, referring to the intelligence sharing agreement which includes the U.S. and U.K., "right at a time when the U.S. and U.K. must be unified in order to meet the global security challenges of China’s resurgence.”The U.K.’s National Security Council (NSC) decided to continue allowing the use of Huawei equipment in the “periphery” of its 5G networks, while blocking it in “core” networks central to national security.But that decision was a sharp blow to the Trump administration, which had pressured the U.K. to cut the company out entirely from 5G networks and raised red flags about continued intelligence sharing between the two countries.American officials have cited concerns that Huawei, which is one of the largest telecom equipment providers in the world, could serve as a source of intelligence for the Chinese government, and they have urged countries around the world to keep the company out of 5G networks.A senior administration official at the White House told The Hill that the U.S. was “disappointed” by the decision of the British government. “There is no safe option for untrusted vendors to control any part of a 5G network,” the official said. “We look forward to working with the UK on a way forward that results in the exclusion of untrusted vendor components from 5G networks. We continue to urge all countries to carefully assess the long-term national security and economic impacts of allowing untrusted vendors access to important 5G network infrastructure.”But on Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers were more vocal in their criticism of the U.K.’s decision, and its repercussions for intelligence sharing and the “special relationship.”Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who, with Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and John CornynJohn CornynHillicon Valley: Productivity, fatigue, cybersecurity emerge as top concerns amid pandemic | Facebook critics launch alternative oversight board | Google to temporarily bar election ads after polls close Lawmakers introduce legislation to boost cybersecurity of local governments, small businesses On The Trail: Making sense of this week's polling tsunami MORE (R-Texas), sent a letter to UK NSC members on Monday begging them to vote to ban Huawei entirely, called for the U.S. director of national intelligence to conduct a review of U.S.-U.K. intelligence sharing.“Allowing Huawei to build the UK’s 5G networks today is like allowing the KGB to build its telephone network during the Cold War,” Cotton tweeted. “The short-term savings aren’t worth the long-term costs.”Rep. Mike GallagherMichael (Mike) John GallagherGovernment watchdog recommends creation of White House cyber director position Hillicon Valley: 'Fortnite' owner sues Apple after game is removed from App Store | Federal agencies seize, dismantle cryptocurrency campaigns of major terrorist organizations Lawmakers introduce bill designating billion to secure state and local IT systems MORE (R-Wis.), the co-chairman of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, said during an appearance on Hill.TV’s “Rising” program on Tuesday that the UK’s decision on Huawei could mean the U.S. will be forced to reexamine its long-standing and historically close intelligence sharing partnership with the U.K.“It will force legislatures and members of the executive branch to fundamentally reexamine our intelligence-sharing partnership with the UK, and that would be incredibly regrettable because that relationship has paid dividends in recent years,” Gallagher said.Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a key critic of Huawei in the Senate, tweeted that it was a “bad decision by the UK and a bad trend from our European partners.”Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said in a statement that the UK NSC’s decision was “terrible.”“Allowing Huawei access to any part of your network—core or otherwise—is a recipe for disaster as even a non-core door is still a door to a critical communications network,” Rogers said. “I worry that by the time London realizes this, it will be too late to close the barn door and the digital horses will be in Beijing’s stables.”In the U.K., British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tried to calm fears over the impact on intelligence sharing between the U.S. and the U.K. Reuters reported that Raab told lawmakers Tuesday that “how we construct our 5G and full fibre public telecoms networks has nothing to do with how we will share classified data,” and that “intelligence sharing will not be put at risk or would ever be put at risk by this government.”But Raab's words failed to assuage critics, with former Conservative Party Leader Iain Duncan Smith telling ITV News that it “beggars belief” that the U.K. would choose to allow Huawei equipment in 5G networks.“We should be taking them out of the system, every one of our close allies across the world, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America, now we hear Czechoslovakia is doing it, even Vietnam does not want Huawei in,” Duncan Smith said. The U.K. is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network along with the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Both Australia and New Zealand previously decided to ban Huawei equipment from their domestic mobile networks. The U.S. has taken steps to limit federal usage of Huawei equipment, and Canada has not yet made a decision.The concern in Washington on Tuesday was bipartisan. "I am disappointed by the UK’s decision today, especially since the security risks are so well understood,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. “But under current circumstances, I remain committed to working with the UK and other key allies to build more diverse and secure telecommunication options that provide competitive alternatives to Huawei.”Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) pointed to the Huawei decision as a symptom of American's diminished status on the world stage.“America has never been weaker. We have never had less influence,” Murphy tweeted. “Not even our closest ally Britain, with a Trump soulmate in Downing Street, listens to us anymore.”The full impact on intelligence sharing between the U.K. and the U.S. is not yet known, with at least one key official cautioning that the Huawei decision may not be as detrimental as many believe it will be. Christopher Painter, the former State Department cybersecurity coordinator, told The Hill on Tuesday that he “doubts it will substantially change intelligence sharing with the U.K.”“They are too close and old a partner and we share information for our benefit as well as theirs,” Painter added. “There may be additional questions asked about how information will be protected but I don’t expect any real change.”But ahead of the U.K.’s decision, Republican Reps. Jim Banks (Ind.) and Liz Cheney (Wyo.) introduced legislation that would ban the U.S. from sharing intelligence with any countries that allow the use of Huawei equipment in their networks. Both Banks and Cheney reacted strongly against Tuesday's decision, with Banks saying in a statement that the U.K. “has made a colossal mistake” and potentially “damaged our ‘special relationship.’”“By allowing Huawei into their 5G network, @BorisJohnson has chosen the surveillance state over the special relationship,” Cheney tweeted.

The deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, privately complained that he was ordered by president Donald Trump to write the notorious memo justifying the firing of the FBI director James Comey, according to Comey’s former deputy.Andrew McCabe writes in a new book that Rosenstein, who has publicly defended the memo, lamented that the president had directed him to rationalise Comey’s dismissal, which is now the subject of inquiries into whether Trump obstructed justice.Rosenstein made his remarks in a private meeting at the justice department on 12 May 2017, according to McCabe’s memoir, which also accuses Trump of operating like a criminal mob boss and of unleashing a “strain of insanity” in American public life.McCabe recalls Rosenstein being “glassy-eyed”, visibly upset and sounding emotional after coming to believe the White House was using him as a scapegoat for Comey’s dismissal.“He said it wasn’t his idea. The president had ordered him to write the memo justifying the firing,” McCabe writes. Rosenstein said he was having trouble sleeping, McCabe writes. “There’s no one here that I can trust,” he is quoted as saying.McCabe’s book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump, is due on sale later this month. A copy was obtained by the Guardian prior to its release.The account supports reports last year that Rosenstein was left “shaken” by his role in Comey’s firing. It provides the strongest indication so far that Rosenstein’s private view on the memo clashed with his testimony to Congress saying: “I wrote it. I believe it. I stand by it.”His memo was cited by Trump as a reason to fire Comey over his handling of the FBI inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s email use as secretary of state. Trump later said that he in fact fired Comey for pursuing the investigation into his presidential campaign’s links with Russia.At the time, the White House flatly denied that Trump had directed Rosenstein to write a justification for firing Comey. “It was all him,” Sean Spicer, the then press secretary, said of Rosenstein.Five days after his emotional remarks, Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller, the special counsel, to take over the inquiry into whether Trump’s team coordinated with Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. US authorities concluded Russia aimed to help Trump.Mueller is also known to be investigating whether Trump sought to obstruct justice by firing Comey and taking other steps to impede the investigation.McCabe, a 22-year FBI veteran who was fired after internal investigators said he had been dishonest, is scathing about a president he views as posing a threat to the country. He accuses Trump of undermining the FBI out of fear and diminishing the rule of law.In his sharpest criticism, McCabe writes that after firing Comey, Trump and the White House counsel, Don McGahn, acted like mobsters by in effect offering McCabe protection in return for loyalty.“The president and his men were trying to work me the way a criminal brigade would operate,” McCabe writes, recalling an Oval Office meeting soon after his elevation to acting FBI director.He confirms reports that Trump asked him how he voted in 2016. Having been a lifelong registered Republican, McCabe writes, he did not cast a vote for president that year. McCabe was later publicly attacked by Trump, who abused him and his wife in tweets.McCabe portrays Trump and his senior aides as frequently distracted by TV news and suspicions of leakers in the White House. He is also sharply critical of Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general, saying he had trouble focusing, frequently flew into red-faced rages and confused classified intelligence with things he had read in the media.He accuses Trump of using the tactics and rhetoric of totalitarian dictators in persuading loyal “shock troops” that anyone who disagrees with them is a traitor.Trump’s “heedless bullying” and refusal to tolerate any view other than his own is “nurturing a strain of insanity in public dialogue” that is then further amplified by online media, McCabe writes.The book does not reveal new findings from the Trump-Russia investigation but gives a tantalizing detail within what McCabe says is a “hypothetical” that explains FBI protocol.If the bureau learns that someone from a US political campaign and a high-ranking foreign official discussed “possibly colluding”, he writes, then the FBI would be obliged to investigate. Topics James Comey FBI Donald Trump Trump administration news

During the same 48 hours this week in which Facebook agreed to pay the largest corporate fine in the history of the US Federal Trade Commission for massive and repetitive violations of a similar agreement from 2012, and the US justice department announced a sweeping antitrust investigation of Facebook, Google, and Amazon, the company also announced it’s doing better than ever.On Wednesday Facebook reported to its shareholders that it made $16.9bn in the second quarter of 2019 – a 28% increase over the second quarter of 2018. At that rate, it takes Facebook only 27 days to pay the $5bn fine from the FTC.That’s one reason Facebook stock surged on Wednesday after the major announcements of regulatory intervention. Meanwhile, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, the other major target of government scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic keeps moving up both in market capitalization and revenue. No collection of scandals, errors, embarrassments, hearings, threats of regulation, fines, or public scoldings like this one seem to able to stall these two companies in their quest to become the operating systems of our lives.The world has never seen anything like Google. The world has never seen anything like Facebook.When pundits, legislators, and regulators propose interventions to curb the excesses of these companies, they invariably reach back in time for patterns to guide them. They try to compare a mid-20th-century US telephone company like AT&T to a global collection of servers and algorithms that delivers links and advertisements to billions of people who are trying to find driving directions, weather forecasts, or to settle bar bets. They imagine – foolishly – that “data are the new oil” and compare John Rockerfeller’s Standard Oil monopoly of the late 19th century to a social networking service that allows 2.4 billion people to upload text, video, and images about their lives and politics.While financial markets are neither rational nor efficient, they do capture the collective judgements (justified or not) of millions of amateur, professional, and institutional investors around the world. They do offer a rough sense of how seriously to take events in life story of a company. Clearly, those with money on the line understand that the long term belongs to Facebook and Google, even if the headlines in 2019 belong to these company’s critics.The immediate reason these news events did not turn against Facebook or Google is that the FTC folded and gave Facebook everything it could want. Beyond the fine, which would have been significant to all but about the 20 richest companies in the world (and Facebook is number five on that list), the settlement was an effort to avoid taking Facebook to federal court for breaking its 2012 pledges not to collect and share user data promiscuously with third-parties like Cambridge Analytica. The settlement is full of giveaways to and forgiveness of Facebook and its executives who knowingly and consistently violated that agreement (those violations are documented in the text of the settlement).Worst of all, the settlement completely indemnifies the company and its leaders for “any and all claims prior to 12 June 2019”. So, everything. Commissioner Rohit Chopra, who voted to reject the settlement and would prefer to bring Facebook to court, took umbrage at the idea that serial lawbreakers should get off without any sanction. “The grant of immunity for Facebook’s officers and directors is a giveaway,” Chopra wrote. “Facebook’s officers and directors were legally bound to ensure compliance with the 2012 order, yet the proposed settlement grants a gift of immunity for their failure to do so.”Facebook will have to do a better job (there is no way it could do a worse job) reporting its practices and violations to the FTC. So it could face penalties in the future. But those penalties are sure to be more meager fines.This follows on what could have been a major crackdown on Google for its anti-competitive actions back in 2012. After a significant investigation, the FTC staff recommended major penalties and restrictions on Google and that the commission take Google to court over violations of US law. The politically appointed commission itself voted unanimously to reject the staff recommendations and instead gave Google a complete pass. Meanwhile, competition regulators in the European Union have repeatedly found that Google violated the law with similar actions – but issued only meager fines on the company.Nothing about the FTC settlement, the pending justice department investigation, or the newly announced FTC investigation into Facebook’s anti-competitive practices are likely to address the core functions of Facebook or Google – the very reasons they are so special, so unprecedented, and so successful. For both these companies, the prospect of competition from any other service except perhaps WeChat, the largest social media platform in China, is a myth.These companies engage in massive and pervasive surveillance of uninformed users around the world. They take the raw material of sensitive personal data and to manufacture persuasion machines. Most of the time they persuade us to buy goods and services. Often they persuade us to cast a vote, take an action, or perhaps refrain from voting or acting. Mostly, they persuade us to keep going back to them for more and more service until we are completely dependent on them to function as social, commercial, and political animals.Until pundits and regulators take seriously the deep perversions of our public spheres we can’t address the problems these companies have generated. We need radical approaches to these companies. Our responses must be as broad and deep as these companies’ hold on our minds and purses. Siva Vaidhyanathan is a professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia and the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Still, many Western nations have not shied away from their criticism. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called China’s policies “the stain of the century” in July, and that same month, 22 countries, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Japan, signed a letter to the United Nations raising serious concerns about Beijing’s internment of its Muslim minorities. In response, a second letter emerged a few days later, signed by 37 countries endorsing Beijing’s policies in Xinjiang.“It’s certainly a sign of China’s new global position, and it shows the diplomatic effects of [Belt and Road], which is no doubt a goal of the project,” James Millward, a China expert and professor at Georgetown University, told me. “Yet it’s hard to call this a success. Xinjiang has hurt China’s soft power, and they’ve largely been caught off guard by the international attention its received.”In getting Bilash to sign a plea deal, the Kazakh authorities have sucked the air out of the activism around the internment camps. Several former camp detainees I spoke with following Bilash’s arrest in March said the move sent a chill among the community of camp survivors and their families. With Bilash no longer active, former detainees and those with family members still missing in the camps will be far less willing to share their stories, they said, especially given Beijing’s tactic of threatening and targeting the families of activists who still live in China.Gene Bunin, a Russian American writer and translator who runs the Xinjiang Victims Database, a project documenting the testimonies of detainees and their families, told me that Bilash’s deal is a blow to those in the Central Asian country working on the issue. He continues to work with activists in Kazakhstan, and has gathered and published more than 5,000 detailed testimonies in his online database, which he said is a “grassroots weapon” that “China reacts to,” noting how public testimonies have led to interned family members being allowed to contact their relatives or being released from the camps and placed into another form of detention, such as house arrest.But he said that with Bilash no longer active, much of the momentum within the activist community has been slowed. Atajurt, the organization headed by Bilash that once drew global attention to Xinjiang, has been operating at a limited capacity and could shut down without its leader.“What kept them going was hope that he could be freed and things would continue as before,” Bunin said. “I hope I’m wrong.” Reid Standishis a journalist based in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, and a former editor withForeign Policymagazine.

NEW YORK (AP) — A former New York gynecologist accused of sexually abusing more than two dozen patients, including children and the wife of former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, is now facing federal charges. The doctor, Robert A. Hadden, who had avoided prison time but surrendered his medical license in an earlier plea deal with state prosecutors, faces six counts of inducing others to travel to engage in illegal sex acts in a newly unsealed federal indictment. Hadden, 62, was arrested Wednesday morning at his home in Englewood, New Jersey, a community 10 miles outside Manhattan, according to Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for prosecutors. He is set to appear Wednesday afternoon in Manhattan federal court. A message seeking comment was left Wednesday with an attorney who has represented Hadden in the past. The indictment said Hadden had sexually abused dozens of female patients, including multiple minors, “under the guise of conducting purported gynecological and obstetric examinations” at his medical offices and Manhattan hospitals. The charges alleged the crimes spanned from 1993 through at least 2012 as he used his position as a medical doctor at Columbia University to convince his victims that the “sexual abuse he inflicted on them was appropriate and medically necessary.” Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said Hadden “acted as a predator in a white coat,” sexually abusing “dozens of women and girls during OBGYN examinations.” “He used the cover of conducting medical examinations to engage in sexual abuse that he passed off as normal and medically necessary,” Strauss said. “His conduct was neither normal nor medically necessary.” Hadden has faced a growing chorus of accusers in recent years, including some like Evelyn Yang, the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who earlier this year told CNN that Hadden assaulted her in 2012, including when she was seven months pregnant. A lawsuit brought by more than two dozen of accusers says he groped and penetrated patients during vaginal examinations and “mole checks” that served “no medical purpose.” Hadden also made sexually inappropriate remarks and surreptitiously perform oral sex on patients, the lawsuit says, “to satisfy his own prurient and deviant sexual desires.” He took pains to ensure his abuse could continue, prosecutors said, and singled out particularly young women, including at least one he delivered when she herself was born. He sometimes used free birth control “to entice his victims to come back at frequent intervals,” Strauss said. Hadden reached a plea agreement in 2016 with prosecutors in the office of Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, who reopened an investigation into the doctor amid criticism over his handling of a case that included five counts of committing a criminal sexual act. Evelyn Yang, in the CNN interview, called Hadden’s punishment a “slap on the wrist.” “What happened to me should have never happened,” she said. Marissa Hoechstetter, another Hadden accuser, has said Vance’s office misled her about the statute of limitations in Hadden’s case and was already negotiating the plea deal when she was still talking to prosecutors about testifying at a potential trial. The federal indictment Wednesday “only puts into high relief the betrayal I and his other victims experienced by the Manhattan DA,” she said. “I hope that through the course of this, the world will finally see the full extent of Hadden’s decades of sexual abuse and the institutional cowardice that protected and enabled him for so long,” Hoechstetter said in a statement to The Associated Press. “He and his enablers must be held accountable if we are to make change in a system that harms those it is meant to protect.” Danny Frost, a spokesman for Vance, said state prosecutors provided “substantial assistance” leading to the indictment. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is still conducting its own “intensely active” investigation into “potential failures by Dr. Hadden’s employer and hospital to disclose additional incidents of abuse to our office and to regulators when required.” The indictment said Hadden invited his victims to meet with him alone in his office, where he frequently raised “inappropriate and irrelevant sexual topics” by asking “detailed, inappropriate questions about their own sexual activities and sexual partners.” It said he also offered unsolicited advice to some victims regarding inappropriate subjects such as how to groom their pubic hair and how to masturbate or have orgasms. The indictment detailed what it described as the abuse of one minor female and five adult women who traveled from out of state to see Hadden. It said Hadden knew the one patient was under the age of 18 in part because he had delivered her at birth. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! 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Their surrender in effect ends the Syrian civil war with Assad as its victor, Russia as its beneficiary, and the United States one of its losers. The cost of getting any cooperation from potential partners in future conflicts has skyrocketed. The U.S. also accrued both shame and humiliation; we’ve broken our promises, and Russian troops are posting videos of themselves taking over deserted U.S. bases.Trump pretends not to care, tweeting, “Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China, or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7,000 miles away!” Which sounds an awful lot like green-lighting Turkey’s invasion. (And by the way, Osama bin Laden was 7,000 miles away, too.)The price of this latest reckless and destructive folly is dawning on the White House, though: Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper all tried to mop up the mess by denying reality—flatly rejecting that the president had okayed the invasion.When those efforts didn’t stanch the bleeding of the administration’s credibility, the White House dispatched Pence and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien to Ankara to try to find a face-saving solution. Esper will go to Brussels “to press our other NATO allies to take collective and individual diplomatic and economic measures in response to these egregious Turkish actions.”America’s NATO allies are aghast at Turkey’s brutality, but they also consider U.S. actions egregious. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said, “President Trump doesn’t seem to have opposed the operation the Turks are carrying out today, even though much firmer positions are being asserted today.”It is important for U.S. troops and for the U.S. public to hear the Pentagon’s civilian leader explain military policies. And Esper, to his credit, isn’t hiding from the media. But the contortions he’s performing to justify the president’s decisions are painful to watch: “To be clear, we are not abandoning our Kurdish partner forces,” he told reporters, “and U.S. troops remain with them in other parts of Syria. The impulsive action of President Erdoğan to invade northern Syria has put the United States in a tough situation."Both the president and Esper make it sound as though there were no alternatives to either fighting a two-front war against both Syria and Turkey or completely withdrawing U.S. forces. This is the kind of straw man that made Republicans scoff at President Barack Obama and his acolytes, when they suggested they had to either abandon Iraq or avoid Syria. There is a wider range of choices available than doing nothing or landing an invasion force at Normandy, to use Trump’s favorite test of allied worth.

Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said recently that China’s financing is undermining democratic governance and has left countries mired in debt. With this new agency, Mr. Royce said, the United States can offer “a competitive alternative to the state-directed approach of Beijing and Moscow.”The new agency has a powerful champion in OPIC’s chief executive, Ray Washburne, who has close ties to the White House. A Texas-based restaurant and real estate investor, he was vice chairman of the Trump Victory Committee and head of the transition’s commerce team. He meets regularly with the White House, and he asked for and received an enclosed area to process classified information, something no previous OPIC chief executive has had.In its first budget proposal, the Trump administration suggested eliminating OPIC. But Mr. Washburne made it clear that he wanted to build it. “I had a lot of relationships up on the Hill, I had a lot of relationships within the White House from my experience working on the campaign,” he told me in an interview in June. “And so I was able to go in and really sell to the administration what OPIC is and should be and can be.”Mr. Washburne and OPIC’s allies in Congress plan to roughly double its total spending cap to $60 billion, and want to give the new agency the ability to make equity investments and lend in local currency, allowing it to work with a wider range of funding partners and companies.Still, there are significant concerns among development experts about the future of the agency. They notice that Mr. Washburne talks about OPIC as a foreign policy tool, but he rarely talks about how the new agency will improve health, livelihoods or infrastructure. They worry that investment deals will not get the scrutiny they need, and that those close to the administration might get preferential treatment. The legislation proposed for the new OPIC also initially lacked specific language about the future of OPIC’s environmental and social policies that protect local communities. (Those protections were added to the bill in committee.)Increasingly, poor countries want investment, not aid, from the United States. But with more money and more tools, the new OPIC must resist the temptation to focus on investment returns alone. If the agency veers away from its core mission, then the United States, and the world, would lose a potentially powerful tool for improving the lives of millions.

SÃO PAULO—Brazil’s government called in the military Friday in a last-ditch attempt to force truckers to stop blockading highways as a five-day-old strike halted shipments of food, fuel, medicine, and shut down the nation’s auto industry.In protest over surging diesel prices, truckers have blocked highways around Brazil, a country bigger than the continental U.S. with scant railways, leaving more than 10 airports without fuel and hampering schools, as well as scores of businesses and farms.The...