And from the moment he became president, Donald J. Trump has unleashed so many of consequence that the public has barely had time to parse their full implication. Words about the dishonest media, the end of Obamacare, the construction of that border wall with Mexico — this is an abbreviated list, and he hasn’t even completed his first week in office.
Amid the verbal deluge, President Trump this week repeated an assertion he made shortly after his election: that millions of ballots cast illegally by undocumented immigrants cost him the popular vote. If true, this would suggest the wholesale corruption of American democracy.
Not to worry: As far as anyone knows, the president’s assertion is akin to saying that millions of unicorns also voted illegally.
But such a baseless statement by a president challenged the news media to find the precise words to describe it. This will be a recurring challenge, given President Trump’s habit of speaking in sales-pitch hyperbole and his tendency to deride any less-than-flattering report as “fake news.”
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Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to President Trump, used the phrase “alternative facts” to describe assertions by the White House.Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Sir John Hurt, who won Oscar nominations for the Elephant Man and captured the hearts of millions for his roles in Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, has died.
The star, one of Britain’s most treasured actors, died aged 77 at his home in Norfolk after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, it was revealed today.
His widow, Anwen Hurt, today said it will be ‘a strange world’ with out the actor, whose death has prompted an outpouring of grief from the showbusiness industry, with director Mel Brooks and J K Rowling among those paying tribute.
Mrs Hurt added: ‘John was the most sublime of actors and the most gentlemanly of gentlemen with the greatest of hearts and the most generosity of spirit. He touched all our lives with joy and magic and it will be a strange world without him.’
Sir John was well known for roles including Quentin Crisp in The Naked Civil Servant, the title role in The Elephant Man and wand merchant Mr Ollivander in the Harry Potter films.
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As Wall Street cheered the Dow hitting 20,000 for the first time in history this week, Donna Coomer just shrugged.
Coomer doesn’t have a cent in the stock market. Sure, she handles a lot of money every day as the manager of a busy Valero gas station in Beattyville, a small town in eastern Kentucky.
But she trusts the bank, not the stock market, with her hard-earned money.
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“I have a little bit in my checking [account], little bit in my savings,” Coomer, a grandma of three who still works 55 hours a week at the gas station, told CNNMoney.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that bans Syrians from taking refuge in the United States, halts the U.S. refugee resettlement program for four months and temporarily blocks people from a handful of unnamed countries from entering the U.S. at all.
“I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America. We don’t want them here,” he said at a swearing-in ceremony at the Pentagon for Secretary of Defense James Mattis. “We don’t want to admit into our country the very threats we are fighting overseas.”
Trump approved the refugee ban amid the biggest refugee crisis in history and on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which honors the millions of people killed during World War II, many of whom tried to flee to the U.S. but were turned away.
It’s not the blanket ban on Muslims that Trump advocated for during his campaign, and it does not single out any country by name other than Syria for its refugees.
Actress Mary Tyler Moore, whose eponymous 1970s series helped usher in a new era for women on television, died Wednesday at the age of 80, her longtime representative Mara Buxbaum said.
“Today beloved icon Mary Tyler Moore passed away at the age of 80 in the company of friends and her loving husband of over 33 years, Dr. S. Robert Levine,” she said. “A groundbreaking actress, producer, and passionate advocate for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Mary will be remembered as a fearless visionary who turned the world on with her smile.”
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show” debuted in 1970 and starred the actress as Mary Richards, a single 30-something career woman at a Minneapolis TV station. The series was hailed by feminists and fans alike as the first modern woman’s sitcom.
On August 31st, 2016, the first commercial flight directly from the United States to Cuba touched down on the once-forbidden island’s soil. It was a tangible result of nearly three years of efforts from the Obama administration to ease 58 years of tension between the U.S. and Cuba by relaxing trade and travel restrictions, restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba and taking the island nation off the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror.
But any security of lasting reparations was short-lived. The 2016 presidential election and the death of Fidel Castro marked November with uncertainty. The former Cuban dictator’s death was the emblematic end of an anti-democratic era for Cuban people, but the impending closure of the Obama era proved to have a far bigger impact – and the relationship with Cuba seemed to grow even more fragile when Donald Trump was elected as the 45th President of the United States on November 8th – only 70 days after that first commercial flight.
On November 9th, the tumult between the two countries churned again. Cuba activated their troops and began a five-day nationwide military exercise to prepare its “troops and population to counter a range of enemy action,” as described by the country’s Ministry of Defense. It was a sign from the Cuban government of a potential emerging diplomatic strain – a signal to the Trump administration that they would be ready, just in case. Ready for exactly what, no one could say.
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How Cuba reacted to Trump’s Inauguration Day. Zach Doleac for Rolling Stone
Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the White House had put forth “alternative facts” to ones reported by the news media about the size of Mr. Trump’s inauguration crowd.
She made this assertion — which quickly went viral on social media — a day after Mr. Trump and Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, had accused the news media of reporting falsehoods about the inauguration and Mr. Trump’s relationship with the intelligence agencies.
In leveling this attack, the president and Mr. Spicer made a series of false statements.
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Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, before speaking live on TV outside the White House on Sunday.Credit Andrew Harnik/Associated Press
Passionate activists are using technology to make the world a safer, more equitable place — and a new video series shines a light on their powerful stories.
“Internet Without Borders” is a four-part series from Jigsaw, the tech incubator at Google’s parent company Alphabet, featuring interviews with activists and technologists who use digital tools to defend human rights in their countries.
Jigsaw, whose mission is to look at how technology can make people safer around the world, filmed the videos at the 2016 Oslo Freedom Forum last May. There, the company sought out people who are “courageously fighting for freedom in diverse communities around the world.”
The first two videos of the series launched on Jan. 19, featuring Afghan tech CEO Roya Mahboob and Egyptian activist and actor Omar Sharif Jr.
“I have a vision to bring equal access to education through technology for the women and girls in Afghanistan,” Mahboob says.
A nor’easter whipped the Northeast on Tuesday with heavy winds and rain, causing street flooding in coastal areas and slowing commutes throughout the region.
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The storm was created by the weather system that spawned deadly tornadoes in the Southeast over the weekend and then moved north. One death has been reported in the Northeast — a 60-year-old man died after being struck by a car lot sign that was knocked down by wind Monday, Philadelphia police said.
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Gusts of nearly 50 mph were reported Tuesday morning in Central Park in New York City and 60 mph gusts were recorded in the Hamptons on Long Island, CNN meteorologist Dave Hennen said. One weather station in east Boston — where a cold rain fell — reported a gust of 52 mph.
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By Tuesday evening much of the precipitation had moved north of Boston, though much of western Massachusetts was under a freezing rain advisory.
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The weather caused the cancellation of flights out of LaGuardia, Newark and JFK airports on Monday and there were more than 1,300 air travel delays and 250 cancellations Tuesday, according to FlightAware.com.
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.
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Trump Targets Muslims
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
Image: Jigsaw / Internet Without Borders
Storms kill at least 22 across the U.S.
James' World 2 