Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Friday called for progress on a stalled buffer zone deal around jihadist-dominated Idlib region ahead of fresh talks aimed at ending his country's eight-year war. Assad met envoy Alexander Lavrentiev from key ally Russia in Damascus to discuss the negotiations due April 25-26 in Kazakhstan. Iran and Russia are the major supporters of the Syrian regime, and along with rebel backer Turkey have sponsored repeated rounds of talks in the Central Asian nation.

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:31:18 -0400

The mobile messaging service BBM, one of the last remnants from BlackBerry’s heyday is about to be closed for consumers.

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 11:16:39 -0400

Two top deputies in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office submit their resignations after charges are dropped in the Jussie Smollett case; Matt Finn reports on the details.

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 10:13:38 -0400

Jerry Nadler issues subpoena for Robert Mueller’s full report and the underlying documents ‘to make informed decisions’ * Mueller report latest – live updates * Support the Guardian’s independent journalism and make a contributionThe House judiciary chairman, Jerry Nadler, on Friday issued a subpoena for the full, unredacted report by special counsel Robert Mueller on Russian interference in the 2016 US election and the Trump campaign.The subpoena seeks not only the “complete and unredacted” report, but also all of the underlying documents referenced in it, including grand jury evidence. The New York Democrat said on Good Morning America that the information was necessary “to make informed decisions” on what happens next.Nadler’s committee, which has the power to launch impeachment proceedings, voted in early April to authorize the subpoena for the report after the attorney general, William Barr, outlined the categories he intended to shield.The 448-page summary of Mueller’s nearly two-year investigation concluded without reaching a verdict on whether the president illegally obstructed justice. But the report catalogues nearly a dozen instances in which Trump attempts to stop the investigation, narrow its scope or influence witnesses involved in the inquiry. Mueller cited legal constraints which prevent the justice department from charging a sitting president with obstruction of justice – and suggested a final say on the matter may lie with Congress.Trump, who left Washington for a long weekend at his Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida after the release of the report, tweeted on Friday to say parts of the “Crazy Mueller Report” were “total bullshit”.The subpoena came as Democrats vowed to continue investigating Donald Trump a day after the report was made public, revealing striking new details about the president’s effort to thwart a federal inquiry he believed threatened his presidency.Shortly after a redacted version of the exhaustive report was released to the public on Thursday, Nadler said it outlined “disturbing evidence that President Trump engaged in obstruction of justice” and the “responsibility now falls to Congress to hold the president accountable for his actions”.Nadler’s sweeping request instructs Barr to hand over “all documents obtained and investigative materials created” by Mueller’s office. It sets Barr a deadline of 1 May, a day before Barr is set to testify before the committee Nadler heads in Congress.This document haul, amounting to all the work created over 22 months by the special counsel’s 19 attorneys and almost 40 other investigators, could well run to more than a million pages.Mueller’s team interviewed about 500 people, issued more than 2,800 subpoenas and obtained hundreds more court orders for records of electronic communications.Barr may decide to fight the request, which would mean Nadler’s committee has to go to court to request that the subpoena be enforced. It is possible that the dispute could eventually reach the US supreme court.In a statement on Friday, Nadler said he was willing to work with the justice department to “reach a reasonable accommodation” but stressed he would not accept a situation that “leaves most of Congress in the dark”.In a letter to colleagues, the Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, declared: “Congress will not be silent.”Sign up for the US morning briefing Republicans viscerally disagreed with the assessment that Congress should pick up where Mueller left off.“Democrats want to keep searching for imaginary evidence that supports their claims, but it is simply not there,” said the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy. “It is time to move on.”But far from turning the page on the investigation, Democrats are opening a new, bitterly partisan chapter. Facing them now is an issue that has already sharply divided the party along ideological and generation lines: impeachment.Democratic leaders see more risk than reward in initiating an impeachment inquiry, especially after Mueller said he found “insufficient evidence” to conclude that Trump conspired with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 election. Without that support, Republicans are unlikely to break with the president, as they did with Richard Nixon after Watergate.“Unless [there’s] a bipartisan conclusion, an impeachment would be doomed to failure,” the House intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, said on CNN. “I continue to think that a failed impeachment is not in the national interest.”A partisan endeavor could risk repeating what Democrats widely view as a historic overreach by Republicans, when they pursued impeachment against Bill Clinton in the late 1990s. Democrats fear that a divisive and unpopular impeachment battle would galvanize Trump’s supporters – as it did for Clinton 21 years ago - and would swamp the party’s policy agenda that they believe is crucial to unseating Trump in the 2020 election and holding on to their majority in the House of Representatives.Still, if the House did move forward with articles of impeachment, every Senate Democrat and 20 Senate Republicans would have to vote to remove Trump from office – an unlikely scenario at this stage.The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, told CNN that impeachment was “not worthwhile” with a presidential election 18 months away. Nadler said that impeachment hearings were “one possibility” but that it was “too early” to discuss it.“We will have to go follow the evidence where it leads,” he said. “And I don’t know exactly where it will lead.”But in a sign that the issue is far from settled, New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most vocal and high-profile members of Congress, said she would sign on to an impeachment proposal offered by her fellow freshman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.Though there are few signs Democrats are preparing to move forward with impeachment, the report has opened several potential avenues for congressional inquiry that are all but certain to consume Washington for at least the next several months.Barr said he was required by law to redact certain pieces of information, including evidence collected as part of a grand jury investigation. He has offered to meet with some congressional leaders to review a less redacted version of the report.Still, Democrats have excoriated Barr for his handling of the release of the Mueller report, accusing him of “deliberately” distorting its findings to protect Trump.Ahead of the public release of the report, Barr held a press conference to assert that Trump’s actions did not meet the legal threshold for obstruction of justice. He repeatedly invoked Trump’s own language – including “no collusion” – to defend him. His performance led some Democrats to call for his resignation.

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 09:23:36 -0400

Unless you stop them, weeds are going to grow in your lawn. Here's what you need to do.

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 08:30:00 -0400

The STAYUMBL license plate is notorious on the road and social media. Folks say the driver behind the wheel will speed up, cut people off and then slam on her brakes, sometimes causing a crash.

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 08:15:19 -0400

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 08:00:00 -0400

Marc Lamparello’s story seemed off from the start.It was nearly 8pm on Wednesday when Mr Lamparello, a 37-year-old graduate student and lecturer on philosophy, entered St Patrick’s Cathedral in midtown Manhattan toting two gasoline cans, lighter fluid and lighters, police said.Hours before, he had purchased a $2,800 (£2,150), one-way plane ticket to Rome, which was set to depart the next day.Mr Lamparello was about 20 feet into the church when ushers approached him and said he could not be inside the building with the cans of gasoline, police said.He explained that he was trying to take a shortcut through the iconic sanctuary to reach his van, which he claimed had run out of gas.Mr Lamparello’s gold minivan, though, turned out not to be out of fuel, police said, and a stroll through St Patrick’s was hardly a shortcut.Denied entry, Mr Lamparello left the sanctuary, sloshing gasoline on the floor as he went, police said. He was stopped outside the church by police officers, who noticed the twin gas cans.The incident came just before Easter and two days after a devastating fire tore through the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.Mr Lamparello, who has addresses in New Jersey and in Brooklyn, was taken into custody on Wednesday night and questioned by detectives, including officers from the Police Department’s intelligence division and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.He was being held on charges of attempted arson and reckless endangerment, senior police officials said.But on Thursday afternoon, he was transported from the Midtown North Precinct to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, police said, and it remained unclear when he would appear in court.It was the second church-related arrest this week for Mr Lamparello.On Monday night, he was arrested inside Newark, New Jersey’s Sacred Heart Cathedral after he refused to leave the sanctuary.He told officers the church was a house of God and should be open at all hours before throwing himself on the floor and vowing to stay.“[He] said, ‘If you want me to leave, you’ll have to take me out in handcuffs',” Armando B Fontoura, the Essex County sheriff, said. He described Mr Lamparello as “very respectful”, if obstinate.Mr Lamparello was taken to a police station that evening and charged with resisting arrest, defiant trespassing and interfering with the administration of law.He was evaluated by emergency medical technicians, who found nothing wrong with him, Sheriff Fontoura said.His mother escorted him that night from the precinct to his parents’ home in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, he said.It remains unclear what may have driven Mr Lamparello to go to St Patrick’s Cathedral on Wednesday. Police officials would not say what, if any, motive he disclosed to officers.“There doesn’t appear to be any connection to a terror group,” said John Miller, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism.Mr Lamparello is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the City University of New York. His mother told New Jersey authorities he had an apartment in New York City.He was a 2004 graduate of Boston College and was listed as teaching courses at Brooklyn College this spring. Police said Mr Lamparello also taught at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.He had written and published a book, Reason and Counterpoint, in 2016. His online biography on Amazon.com suggests an interest in questions of religion and higher powers; it said he was working on a book-length project that would wrestle with the existence of God.At least one of the courses he has taught, Introduction to the Problems of Philosophy, touched on religion.The course included “such topics as the nature and scope of knowledge, meaning and verification, the existence of God, determinism and free will, the mind-body problem, and the nature of moral judgments,” according to an online course description for Brooklyn College.The New York Times

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 07:29:09 -0400

LITTLETON, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado community changed forever by the attack that killed 13 people at Columbine High School moved ahead Thursday with ceremonies marking the anniversary of the tragedy while awaiting more details on what led a Florida teen "infatuated" with the shooting to buy a shotgun and kill herself in the snowy foothills nearby.

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 06:26:02 -0400

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/GettyA New York judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought against the city’s Department of Health by five parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.The dismissal shores up an emergency order declaring the city’s measles outbreak a public health emergency. In addition to mandating the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine for children in zip codes affected by the crisis, it threatened parents with fines of up to $1,000.There have been 329 confirmed cases of the viral illness, mostly among observant Jews in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. “The unvarnished truth is that these diagnoses represent the most significant spike in incidences of measles in the United States in many years and that the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn is at its epicenter,” Kings County Supreme Court justice Lawrence Knipel wrote.Knipel debunked the parents’ arguments, concluding that their medical objections to vaccines ran counter to scientific evidence; their religious objections weren’t supported by doctrine, and were only relevant to school admissions; and their moral objections, such as their insistence on informed consent for vaccines, were misplaced.“A fireman need not obtain the informed consent of the owner before extinguishing a house fire,” he wrote. “Vaccination is known to extinguish the fire of contagion.”Jay Begun, founder of Kindercare Pediatrics in Williamsburg and an instructor in the Department of Pediatrics at Mount Sinai, said the dismissal was a victory for the community.“Now more people will be encouraged to immunize their children, and it will create a safer environment for everyone,” he said. “This proves that the greater good trumps the marginal opinions of a small segment of the population.”But, he added, when it comes to enforcing the order, “the less punitive the better and the more educational the better.”One Hasidic father, who asked that his name not be shared in order to protect his privacy, felt that the dismissal was a step toward safety for his community.“It is still scary to go out with the kids in Williamsburg, but hopefully this will help turn around the situation,” he said.Robert Krakow, the parents’ attorney and a frequent representative of parents who claim their children were injured by vaccines, said he wasn’t particularly surprised by the judge’s decision.Krakow claimed that a new version of the order presented during the hearing said the city could fine parents per day, as opposed to only once, for refusing to vaccinate their children.“Wouldn’t you expect, when the city handed over the order and said the criminal provisions are removed, that they would also highlight any significant changes?” he said. “I didn’t hear them say anything about fines per day. Let’s just say we’re investigating it.”The decision came on the same day that the Health Department announced it had issued summonses to three parents for not vaccinating their children. The department also shut down four yeshivas for not complying with its order that unvaccinated students be forbidden from attending. A daycare that was shut down earlier this week, United Talmudical Academy, reopened today under close supervision by the Health Department.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Fri, 19 Apr 2019 04:48:03 -0400