Month: September 2019

Beto O’Rourke was back at Keene State College, but the large crowd that flocked to see him six months ago was not. Far removed from the whirlwind opening days of his presidential campaign, the former Texas congressman faced a far smaller, quieter gathering. An attempted “Beto! Beto!” chant fizzled and when an elderly voter declared that O’Rourke was “so clear and consistent on what the world needs,” the candidate responded, “Could you travel with us to every campaign stop and say what you just said?” That joke was prophetic since O’Rourke has already undertaken two major campaign reboots since first …

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President repeats false claim that he spent time at ground zero alongside first responders …

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Boeing’s 737 MAX could be brought back into service gradually by government regulators but is still on track to be cleared to fly again in 2019, the company’s CEO said Wednesday. “A phased ungrounding is a possibility,” Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said at an investor conference in California. The aircraft has been grounded since mid-March following two deadly crashes but could return to the air on a staggered schedule in different countries. Muilenburg said the company is still working through a number of questions with the US Federal Aviation  Administration and other regulators but that “all of that work …

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LONDON — Malaria could be wiped out in a generation if $2 billion more every year is invested in tackling the disease, according to a report published Wednesday in the medical journal The Lancet. Malaria kills around 435,000 people every year, most of them children. Significant progress has been made this century in fighting the disease, with the number of deaths cut in half since 2000. But, eradicating malaria won’t be easy, says Professor Jake Baum, who leads the malaria research network at Imperial College London. “You might think that right now, that’s the trajectory. The challenge is in the last …

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Like father, like son? A son of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has caused a stir by questioning democracy in Latin America’s biggest country, which emerged from a two-decade military dictatorship in 1985. “The transformation that Brazil wants will not happen at the speed we are aiming for in democratic ways,” tweeted Carlos Bolsonaro, a close aide to his father and a municipal councilor in Rio de Janeiro. Bolsonaro, 36, did not say what he meant by “transformation,” but his father’s governing party is struggling to implement economic and social changes since it has to form alliances to get a majority …

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Britain’s foreign minister on Tuesday said Iranian tanker Adrian Darya 1 had sold its crude oil to the Assad regime in Syria, breaking assurances it had given not to sell crude to the country. The vessel, formerly named Grace 1, was seized by British Royal Marine commandos on July 4 on suspicion of being en route to Syria. Gibraltar released it on Aug. 15 after receiving formal written assurances from Tehran that the ship would not discharge its 2.1 million barrels of oil in Syria. But Britain’s foreign office said in a statement it was clear Iran had breached those …

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NAIROBI/LONDON — Hundreds of refugees trapped in Libyan detention centers will be evacuated to Rwanda as conflict rages in the north African nation, the United Nations said Tuesday. Vincent Cochetel, special envoy for the central Mediterranean for the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR), said 500 refugees would be evacuated to Rwanda in a deal signed with the small east African nation and the African Union. “The agreement with Rwanda says the number can be increased from 500 if they are satisfied with how it works,” Cochetel told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview ahead of the official U.N. announcement. “It really …

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Argentina’s presidential front-runner Alberto Fernandez is on a tightrope between the interventionist policies of his better-known running mate Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and the stumbling free-market reforms of incumbent Mauricio Macri. Whichever way he leans lies danger, with markets ready to pounce on any hint that he would follow Kirchner’s example as a debt defaulter and voters ready to punish anyone who agrees with Macri’s orthodoxy, which has led the economy to ruin. “He is in a difficult position,” said Martin Vauthier, an economist at the consultancy Eco Go. “He has to deliver messages that in many respects are contradictory.” …

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President Donald Trump’s concern the United States could open its doors to “very bad drug dealers” by easing immigration rules for the storm-hit Bahamas is undercut by administration data showing the Caribbean plays a small role in the narcotics trade. The era of the 1980s Cocaine Cowboys, who used speedboats to ferry vast amounts of that drug into South Florida from the Caribbean, has long since passed in large part because of the cooperation between the United States and nations including the Bahamas. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s most recent assessment of drug trafficking mentions the Bahamas only once in …

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