President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Syrian facilities in response to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s reported use of chemical weapons against civilians fulfills Trump’s promise of being tougher than President Barack Obama.
But it’s unlikely to have much impact beyond that ― and will likely be historically judged as a failure on Trump’s own terms.
Trump’s military response alongside France and the U.K. is ostensibly an attempt to deter Assad’s murderous behavior and demonstrate American toughness to Assad’s patrons, Iran and Russia. It won’t serve either of those goals.
Former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, a man whose family was turned upside down by Scooter Libby and other President George W. Bush administration officials, sharply criticized President Donald Trump for pardoning Libby, saying it showed his disregard for America’s national security.
“It has nothing to do with Libby, and it has nothing to do with me,” Wilson told HuffPost Friday. “Libby’s problem was with the Justice Department. He was indicted, tried and convicted on obstruction of justice and perjury charges for basically violating the national security of the United States of America.”
“Now he’s being pardoned for it, which suggests of course that Mr. Trump is willing to allow people to violate the essence of our defense structure, our national security, our intelligence apparatus and essentially get away with it,” he added.
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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Valerie Plame’s cover at the CIA was blown by the Bush administration. Her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, helped show that the administration fabricated intelligence to invade Iraq.
The latest departures include National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton and homeland security adviser Thomas Bossert, who were both forced out when John Bolton became Trump’s new national security advisor.
President Donald Trump’s administration has been marked by a series of exits from high-ranking officials. Appointments expected to last for years have only made it a matter of days, ending in chaotic departures. An analysis of the rate of departures by the Brookings Institution found that Trump’s staff turnover is higher than the five previous presidents.
A family of four taking a West Coast road trip has vanished, and the disappearance coincides with a report of a vehicle sinking into Northern California’s Eel River last week.
Authorities are not connecting the two incidents, but the Thottapilly family was last heard from the day before authorities received reports of a maroon Honda Pilot — the same color and make of the Thottapillys’ SUV — submerging into the swollen river along US Highway 101 north of Leggett, according to local media reports.
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A family member reported Sandeep and Soumya Thottapilly — along with their children Siddhant, 12, and Saachi, 9 — missing Sunday. They had been driving from Portland, Oregon, to their home in Santa Clarita, California, north of Los Angeles, according to the San Jose Police Department.
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The family was traveling in a 2016 Pilot with California tags.
Once again, strawberries top the list of the 12 “dirtiest” fruits and vegetables, according to the Environmental Working Group.
Every year since 2004, the group — a nonprofit, nonpartisan environmental organization — ranked pesticide contamination in 47 popular fruits and vegetables for its Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce.
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Pesticides include a wide array of chemicals that kill unwanted insects, plants, molds and rodents.
Spinach is the second dirtiest item on the “Dirty Dozen” list, followed by (in order of contamination) nectarines, apples, grapes, peaches, cherries, pears, tomatoes, celery, potatoes and sweet bell peppers. Each of these foods tested positive for pesticide residues and contained higher concentrations of pesticides than other produce.
Khloe Kardashian has welcomed a baby girl with basketball player Tristan Thompson, according to multiple outlets.
The reality TV star reportedly delivered her first child on Thursday morning near Cleveland, where she spends some of her time to be closer to Thompson, a center with theCleveland Cavaliers.
Thompson, mother Kris Jenner, sisters Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, as well as best friend Malika Haqq, were by Khloe’s side when she gave birth, according to TMZ.
In a White House known for chaos, the process of developing the U.S. response to the Syrian government’s alleged latest chemical attack was proceeding with uncharacteristic deliberation, including several national security briefings for President Trump.
But then Wednesday morning, Trump upended it all with a tweet — warning Russia, the Syrian government’s backer, to “get ready” because American missiles “will be coming, nice and new and ‘smart!’ ”
White House advisers were surprised by the missive and found it “alarming” and “distracting,” in the words of one senior official. They quickly regrouped and, together with Pentagon brass, continued readying Syria options for Trump as if nothing had happened.
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In a series of tweets on the morning of April 8, President Trump condemned an apparent chemical attack near Damascus on April 7.(Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post)
A small town in Canada’s Saskatchewan province mourned Saturday after a bus carrying a junior hockey team collided with a tractor-trailer, leaving 15 people dead and at least 14 injured.
“This is a dark moment for our city, our community, our province,” Humboldt Mayor Rob Muench said Saturday afternoon at a news conference. “There is no playbook on what to do in cases like this.”
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Members of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team were headed to the town of Nipawin for a playoff game Friday night when the crash happened north of Tisdale, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said.
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Three of the 14 injured people were in critical condition, the RCMP said. Authorities have not identified the victims and would not confirm whether they were players or coaches. Twenty-nine people were on the bus.
The house that Cal built sits on 25 acres of land north of Baltimore, close enough for a short drive to the city but far enough to escape the rest of the world.
It has all the amenities of a modern mansion, plus a few custom touches reflective of the sports legend who owns it — a full-size baseball field, indoor gym, personalized locker room. On the front lawn sits a 2,000-pound rock engraved with the numbers “2131.” Cal Ripken Jr.’s teammates gave it to him in 1995 on the night he broke Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played.
If the baseball field was Ripken’s stage, this house was his laboratory, his refuge, his home base. And in many ways, the key to understanding the man himself.
At 57, his playing days are long past. He’s a little older, a little bigger but still fit. The blue eyes are exactly the same. Now, the Iron Man is moving on, literally and figuratively.
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The Hall of Famer and former Orioles star plans to auction the property in May.
An inspector from the Dutch education ministry arrived at Johan van Hulst’s teacher training institute in Amsterdam on the morning of June 19, 1943. He noticed youngsters and, with SS soldiers standing nearby, asked, “Are those Jewish children?”
“You don’t really expect me to answer that, do you?” Dr. van Hulst replied.
The garden of Dr. van Hulst’s Reformed Teachers’ Training College bordered the garden of a Jewish nursery. Under Dr. van Hulst’s supervision, hundreds of Jewish infants and children had been passed across the hedge and hidden in his school. As Dr. van Hulst recalled, the inspector shook his hand and said, quietly, “In God’s name, be careful.”
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Johan van Hulst in 2015. (Mats van Soolingen)
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Click link belowfor article and galleryremembering those who have died in 2018:
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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James' World 2 