North Korea will be able to field a reliable, nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile as early as next year, U.S. officials have concluded in a confidential assessment that dramatically shrinks the timeline for when Pyongyang could strike North American cities with atomic weapons.
The new assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which shaves a full two years off the consensus forecast for North Korea’s ICBM program, was prompted by recent missile tests showing surprising technical advances by the country’s weapons scientists, at a pace beyond what many analysts believed was possible for the isolated communist regime.
The U.S. projection closely mirrors revised predictions by South Korean intelligence officials, who also have watched with growing alarm as North Korea has appeared to master key technologies needed to loft a warhead toward targets thousands of miles away.
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According to a confidential assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, North Korea will be able to field a reliable, nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile as early as next year. (The Washington Post)
On Monday night, President Donald Trump jetted to West Virginia to address the annual Boy Scout Jamboree. And oh what a speech it was!
Trump ranged from the current health care bill to stories of a bygone time in New York history to his Electoral College victory in 2016. It was a Trumpian tour de force — one sure to cheer his supporters but leave the rest of the country wondering what, exactly, he is doing and thinking.
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I went through the speech and picked out the 29 oddest, cringiest lines — no easy task given the sheer strangeness of Trump’s speech.
California, which has long been a pioneer in fighting climate change, renewed its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions last week by extending, to 2030, its cap-and-trade program, which effectively puts a price on emissions. It’s a bold, bipartisan commitment that invites similarly ambitious policies from other states, and it sends a strong signal to the world that millions of Americans regard with utmost seriousness a threat the Trump administration refuses to acknowledge, let alone reckon with.
The cap-and-trade program, which had been set to end in 2020, is the most important component of California’s plan to reduce planet-warming emissions by 40 percent (from 1990 levels) by 2030. The extension, along with a companion bill to reduce local air pollution, was passed by a two-thirds majority of the State Legislature, including eight crucial votes from Republicans. They defied a Republican president who has not only reneged on America’s global climate commitments, but has tried to undo every climate policy put into place by former President Barack Obama.
Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist, has examined the brains of 202 deceased football players. A broad survey of her findings was published on Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
Of the 202 players, 111 of them played in the N.F.L. — and 110 of those were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative disease believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head.
C.T.E. causes myriad symptoms, including memory loss, confusion, depression and dementia. The problems can arise years after the blows to the head have stopped.
On June 28th, President Trump convened a roundtable at the White House that included victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. The event was part of the Administration’s push to pass several new immigration bills designed to, in Trump’s words, “close the dangerous loopholes exploited by criminals, gang members, drug dealers, killers, terrorists.” A regular theme of the Trump Administration’s messaging on immigration has been to present undocumented “bad hombres” as an immediate threat to the safety and cohesion of the American family unit.
But some of Trump’s immigration policies, in themselves, have endangered families across America. The stories below, of four mothers who have been targeted for deportation since January, show how. As the director of the Global Migration Project, at Columbia Journalism School, I spent the spring supervising a team of twelve journalists who sought to understand the evolution of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under President Trump. We began by assembling a database of enforcement activity: pulling in information from all fifty states on local raids, family separations, immigration-detention trends, and more. For three months, we scoured law-enforcement blotters, public ICE memos, local news sources, and social-media forums. We then spoke with individuals facing removal proceedings around the country, as well as their attorneys, employers, colleagues, spouses, and children.
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President Trump has portrayed the undocumented as “bad hombres” who threaten the American family unit. But his crackdown has torn some families apart.
President Trump’s speech at the 2017 Boy Scout Jamboree has drawn criticism from former Boy Scouts and current Scout leaders alike, with some comparing the speech to a “political rally.”
During Monday night’s speech, Trump referred to “this horrible thing known as Obamacare,” called for “more loyalty” and recounted the night of his election as “that famous night on television.” Trump also repeated his claims against “fake media” and “fake news,” despite commencing the speech by saying “we’re going to put that aside.”
While the speech was interspersed with applause and chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from the audience, Trump’s comments about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton also elicited boos from the crowd, which was highlighted by users on social media.
A woman accused of killing her fiancé by tampering with his kayak, and then leaving him to drown in the cold and choppy waters of the Hudson River, pleaded guilty on Monday to criminally negligent homicide in a case that drew headlines across the country.
The woman, Angelika Graswald, had been charged with second-degree murder in April 2015, after her fiancé, Vincent Viafore, 46, disappeared when his kayak capsized during a trip on the Hudson that month. A spokesman for the New York State Police said Ms. Graswald had pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of criminally negligent homicide.
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Bannerman Castle on Pollepel Island in the Hudson River, near where Mr. Viafore died while kayaking in April 2015.Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
For much of their son’s short life, Charlie Gard’s parents toggled between two worlds. One was the hospital bedside, where their gravely ill baby was kept alive by machines.
The other was the courts, where Connie Yates and Chris Gard argued passionately that Charlie should be given one more chance to beat the rare genetic condition that his doctors had concluded would inevitably cause his death.
On Monday, the parents gave up their court fight, acknowledging that time had run out and that their son would die within days, not living to see his first birthday on Aug. 4.
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Charlie Gard’s parents ended their legal fight over the terminally ill infant’s treatment July 24. Here’s what you need to know about the legal battle over his life. (Monica Akhtar, Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)
A truck driver accused of smuggling dozens of immigrants across the U.S. border was charged Monday in what appears to be an organized operation that a passenger said had connections to a notorious Mexican gang.
Ten passengers died as a result of being trapped in the sweltering cargo bay of a tractor-trailer, where survivors said some had trouble breathing and passed out from the heat.
A criminal complaint stated that James M. Bradley Jr., 60, who has been charged with illegally smuggling foreigners for “commercial advantage or private financial gain,” drove a trailer filled with more than 100 immigrants up I-35 into San Antonio as temperatures soared into the triple-digits. Prosecutors said Bradley knew the trailer’s refrigeration system did not work, and did not stop as the immigrants frantically banged on the trailer’s walls and shouted for help.
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Police found a truck July 22 near a Walmart in San Antonio that contained at least 39 people suspected of crossing the border illegally. Eight of the people died at the scene, and two died later in a hospital. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, emerged Monday from a private, two-hour-long meeting with congressional investigators and said his meetings last year with Russians were not part of any attempt by Moscow to disrupt the presidential election.
“All of my actions were proper and occurred in the normal course of events of a very unique campaign,” Mr. Kushner said on the White House grounds. “I did not collude with Russians, nor do I know of anyone in the campaign who did.”
He said President Trump won the election because he had a better message and ran a smarter campaign than Hillary Clinton, not because he had help from Russia.
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Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, at the White House on Monday after meeting with the Senate Intelligence Committee.Credit Tom Brenner/The New York Times
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
According to a confidential assessment by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, North Korea will be able to field a reliable, nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile as early as next year. (The Washington Post)
110 N.F.L. Brains
The Obama White House
James' World 2 