Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid campaigner and former wife of the late President Nelson Mandela, has died at age 81.
The family said in a statement that she passed away at the Netcare Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa after a long illness, for which she had been in and out of hospital since the start of the year.
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“Mrs. Madikizela-Mandela was one of the greatest icons of the struggle against apartheid,” the statement said. “She fought valiantly against the apartheid state and sacrificed her life for the freedom of the country.”
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Her death came as a shock. “None of us had predicted this,” a family spokesman told CNN.
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Nelson and Winnie Mandela raise clenched fists to supporters upon Nelson’s release from jail in February 1990.
It was a fiery end to what was once one of China’s highest profile space projects.
The Tiangong-1 space lab re-entered Earth’s atmosphere Monday morning, landing in the middle of the South Pacific, China Manned Space Agency said.
“Most parts were burned up in the re-entry process,” it added.
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The space lab, whose name translates to “Heavenly Palace”, was launched in September 2011 as a prototype for China’s ultimate space goal: a permanent space station is expected to launch around 2022.
Its demise, though ultimately uneventful, captured public attention in recent weeks, as scientists around the world tracked its uncontrolled descent.
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“It did exactly what it was expected to do; the predictions, at least the past 24 hours’ ones, were spot on; and as expected it fell somewhere empty and did no damage,” said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The U.S. has microwave weapons that proponents believe could stop North Korea from launching missiles by frying their electronics.
The weapons were discussed at an August White House meeting related to North Korea, according to two U.S. officials with direct knowledge.
The microwave weapons, known as CHAMPs, are fitted into an air-launched cruise missile and delivered from B-52 bombers. With a range of 700 miles, they can fly into enemy airspace at low altitude and emit sharp pulses of microwave energy to disable electronic systems.
“These high-powered microwave signals are very effective at disrupting and possibly disabling electronic circuits,” said Mary Lou Robinson, who heads development of the weapons at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Albuquerque, in an exclusive interview with NBC News.
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A CHAMP missile, short for Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project. The 700-mile range missiles are capable of flying into enemy airspace at low altitude, getting close to targets and emitting a series of sharp pulses of microwave energy to disable electronic systems.NBC News
Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse nightclub gunman Omar Mateen, was found not guilty Friday in the only trial to stem from the deadly June 2016 shooting rampage.
Salman, 31, was accused of helping her husband plan his terror assault on the Orlando, Florida, nightclub and of falsely denying her role afterward.
The government equated Mateen’s actions with supporting terrorism, because he repeatedly pledged allegiance to ISIS before and during the attack, which left 49 people dead and 53 injured. For that reason, Salman was charged with aiding him in providing material support to a terror group.
Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul released four previously unseen videos of the 2016 shooting death of 37-year-old black man Alton Sterling.
“The videos you will see and hear are graphic and shocking to the conscience,” Paul said at a press conference on Friday evening.
The graphic videos from two police body cameras, a dashboard camera and a store surveillance camera show Baton Rouge Parish police Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, both of whom are white, confronting Sterling, 37, outside the Triple S Food Mart on July 5, 2016. The officers, Paul said, were responding to a call about a man with a gun.
The footage appears to show Salamoni and Lake attempting to subdue Sterling in front of the store. After a brief scuffle, Salamoni can be heard shouting profanities at Sterling. “I’m going to shoot you in your fucking head,” Salamoni appears to yell, before hitting Sterling with a stun gun.
The news can often be hard to follow, but this week in particular has been a doozy.
There’s the seemingly endless staff changes in the Trump administration, the reported privacy breach and misuse of millions of Facebook users’ data, the death of the bombing suspect in Austin and the police shooting in Sacramento. It’s been a lot.
Here’s a rundown of some of the biggest news that happened in the last seven days.
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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Protesters march in Sacramento, California, on March 22, 2018, after two police officers shot and killed Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man.
The suspected serial bomber who terrorized Austin with a string of exploding packages died early Wednesday after detonating an explosive device in his vehicle as police closed in on him, authorities said.
Austin police and the FBI tracked him to a hotel parking lot in Round Rock, about 18 miles north of Austin, where they found him inside his vehicle, Interim Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said. Officers wanted to wait for tactical units to arrive before engaging the suspect, but he started to drive away.
The man stopped on the side of the Interstate 35 frontage road, and as Austin SWAT officers approached, he detonated a bomb, knocking one of the officers backward and injuring him, Manley said.
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Austin Police confirmed the suspect in the multiple package explosions killed himself with an explosive device on March 21.(Patrick Martin, Amber Ferguson, Taylor Turner/The Washington Post)
Former FBI deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote memos detailing his interactions with President Donald Trump, as well as on some interactions between the president and former FBI Director James Comey, a person with knowledge of the matter told HuffPost.
He has also turned hard copies of the memos over to special counsel Robert Mueller, the source said. The number of memos and their contents are not yet known.
McCabe was set to retire on Sunday, after more than two decades at the FBI. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired him late Friday, a decision that could significantly affect McCabe’s pension.
In a lengthy statement, McCabe said he was fired because his memos could corroborate Comey’s accounts of interactions with the president. Comey wrote similar memos documenting Trump’s behavior before he was fired in May 2017.
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Pete Marovich via Getty Images
Andrew McCabe testifying before a House subcommittee on June 21, 2017. He worked at the FBI for over two decades and was fired on Friday.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions late Friday night fired former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire — a move that McCabe alleged was an attempt to slander him and undermine the ongoing special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign.
Sessions announced the decision in a statement just before 10 p.m., noting that both the Justice Department inspector general and the FBI office that handles discipline had found “that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”
He said based on those findings and the recommendation of the department’s senior career official, “I have terminated the employment of Andrew McCabe effective immediately.”
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe on March 16, shortly before McCabe was set to retire.(Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the Trump administration’s appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that requires the government to keep the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program going.
Under a lower court order that remains in effect, the Department of Homeland Security must continue to accept renewal applications from the roughly 700,000 young people who are currently enrolled in the program, known as DACA. The administration had intended to shut the program down by March 5, but that deadline is now largely meaningless.
In a brief order, the court said simply, “It is assumed the court of appeals will act expeditiously to decide this case.”
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Immigration activists march in front of the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 7, 2018 in Washington. A coalition of activists from across the U.S. demonstrated to pressure Congress to pass legislation protecting “Dreamers” as part of federal budget negotiations.John Moore / Getty Images file
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.
Noor Salman and Omar Mateen
Immigration activists march in front of the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 7, 2018 in Washington. A coalition of activists from across the U.S. demonstrated to pressure Congress to pass legislation protecting “Dreamers” as part of federal budget negotiations.
James' World 2 