Powers Boothe, the Emmy-winning character actor admired as one of Hollywood’s most reliable villains, died Sunday in Los Angeles, his publicist told NBC News. He was 68.
Boothe died in his sleep of natural causes at his home, said Karen Samfilippo of Image Management Public Relations.
Powers Allen Boothe was born June 1, 1948, in Snyder, Texas, and began his acting career with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival before moving to Broadway in 1979.
He broke into the big time a year later in the TV movie “Guyana Tragedy,” for which he won the Emmy for best actor in a limited series. He played the Rev. Jim Jones, the California cult leader who moved his Peoples Temple flock to South America and persuaded 918 of them to commit mass suicide.
. Powers Boothe at the Los Angeles premiere of “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” in Los Angeles in August 2014. Todd Williamson / Invision/AP
The US said Monday it believes the Syrian government has built a large crematorium near the notorious Saydnaya Military Prison in an effort to hide mass atrocities carried out there, and placed the onus on Russia to rein in the regime.
Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, laid out newly unveiled declassified intelligence in a series of photographs and said Russia, a supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, must use its influence to stop Assad’s continued atrocities.
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“Although the regime’s many atrocities are well-documented, we believe the building of a crematorium is an effort to cover up the extent of mass atrocities taking place in Saydnaya prison,” Jones said. “We are appalled by the atrocities taking place in Syria” with the “seemingly unconditional support of Russia.”
Jones said the regime could be killing as many as 50 detainees a day at Saydnaya. In February, Amnesty International alleged that thousands of people have been hanged at the Syrian prison just 45 minutes outside the capital of Damascus in a secret crackdown on dissent.
The attorney general on Friday made an unfortunate announcement that will impact the lives of millions of Americans: he issued new instructions for prosecutors to charge suspects with the most serious provable offenses, “those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.”
Mandatory minimum sentences have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated a generation of minorities. Eric Holder, the attorney general under President Obama, issued guidelines to U.S. Attorneys that they should refrain from seeking long sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
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I agreed with him then and still do. In fact, I’m the author of a bipartisan bill with Senator Leahy to change the law on this matter. Until we pass that bill, though, the discretion on enforcement — and the lives of many young drug offenders — lies with the current attorney general
It looks like a chunk of concrete, can kill with one dose, and it’s got an ominous name — Gray Death.
And it’s the latest killer drug cocktail making headlines in the ongoing war against the national opioid crisis.
So far, it’s been limited to the Gulf Coast and states like Georgia and Ohio and “we are monitoring the potential spread of this deadly combination of drugs,” Russ Baer of the federal Drug Enforcement Agency told NBC News.
“We’ve not yet seen a national proliferation of the ‘gray death’ substance,” the DEA spokesman wrote.
But even as law enforcement is focusing on Gray Death, drug dealers are hard at work on even more lethal drug cocktails made from opioids that are smuggled into the country from Mexico or shipped in by mail from China.
. A forensic chemist prepares a sample of the drug “gray death” to be weighed at the crime lab of the Georgia Bureau of Investigations in Decatur, Ga., on May 4, 2017. Mike Stewart / AP
Donald Trump’s mounting reversals, failures and betrayals make it increasingly clear that he is a fake and a fraud.
For many of us, this is affirmative reinforcement; for others, it is devastating revelation.
But it is those who believed — and cast supportive ballots — who should feel most cheated and also most contrite. You placed your faith in a phony. His promises are crashing to earth like a fleet of paper airplanes.
He oversold what he could deliver because he had no idea what would be required to deliver it, nor did he care. He told you what you wanted to hear so that he could get what he wanted to have. He played you for fools.
That wall will not be paid for by Mexico, if in fact it is ever built. If it is built, it will likely look nothing like what Trump said it would look like. His repeal and replace of Obamacare flopped. That failure endangers his ability to deliver on major tax reform and massive infrastructure spending. China is no longer in danger of being labeled a currency manipulator. The administration is now sending signals that ripping up the Iran nuclear deal isn’t a sure bet.
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A cardboard cutout of Donald Trump used for photo-ops at a campaign event last year.Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times
Conservative pundit Erick Erickson is vouching for the reliability of a least one source who revealed to Washington Post reporters that President Donald Trump disclosed “highly classified information” while meeting with Russian officials last week.
Erickson knows one of the sources and supports their decision to go to the media, he wrote Tuesday in a blog post for his website, The Resurgent.
“This is a real problem and I treat this story very seriously because I know just how credible, competent, and serious — as well as seriously pro-Trump, at least one of the sources is,” Erickson wrote.
“You can call these sources disloyal, traitors, or whatever you want,” he added. “But please ask yourself a question — if the President, through inexperience and ignorance, is jeopardizing our national security and will not take advice or corrective action, what other means are available to get the President to listen and recognize the error of his ways?”
It’s a dim bulb of a star, but its weak light may fall on living beings.
TRAPPIST-1, a red dwarf star that’s a short 39 light-years distant, is hitting the headlines again. It was in the news last year because of the discovery of three accompanying planets. Now a team of astronomers has found four additional worlds in orbit around this ruddy sun.
Remarkably, these planets are of a type that would make them candidates for hosting the dirty chemistry we call “life.” All are roughly the size of Earth, and all receive an amount of sunlight that might make for tolerable temperatures, depending on their atmospheres (if any).
Mind you, this is a planetary system rather unlike our own. It’s more compact than a bonsai bush, and if we could arrange to move all seven of these worlds to our own solar system, they would fit within the orbit of Mercury with oodles of room to spare.
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Artist’s impression of a planet orbiting a red dwarf star. Seth Shostak
We’ve often heard that if you want to succeed in life, you need to subscribe to the idea of “survival of the fittest.” Success, we are commonly told, has to be grabbed; it has to be taken or someone else will get it.
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When I initially presented some of my ideas about the power of compassion in success and achievement, my critics pointed out that Darwinism made my argument weak: It was, in their way of thinking, the Jenga piece that would crash my faulty tower of compassion. I quickly acquired as many of Charles Darwin’s works as possible and carefully read through them searching for the Jenga pieces that could take down my argument.
Instead, I found that most of Charles Darwin’s work, especially “The Descent of Man,” not only supports the general argument of this book; it doesn’t support the idea of what most call Darwinism. Darwin’s research shows that “survival of the kindest” is more correct for explaining which species climb the evolutionary ladder efficiently and effectively.
According to biologists from Darwin to E. O. Wilson, cooperation has been more important than competition in humanity’s evolutionary success. Compassion is the reason for both the human race’s survival and its ability to continue to thrive as a species.
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Close up of two people clasping hands Portra Images / Getty Images
As police stood between opposing crowds, a crew lifted a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from its pedestal before dawn Thursday in New Orleans — the latest in a contentious plan to dismantle four Confederate monuments in the city.
The statue, which stood for 106 years, is the second monument to come down after the New Orleans City Council voted to remove the four landmarks in 2015. After years of heated public debate and legal battles, recent court decisions paved the way for the city to relocate the four monuments.
Dozens of people — a crowd opposed to the monument’s removal as well as those backing it — gathered at the Davis statue before the operation began, at times screaming insults and threats at each other. Police separated the sides with barriers.
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New Orleans begins removing second Confederate monument
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
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.
Powers Boothe at the Los Angeles premiere of “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” in Los Angeles in August 2014. Todd Williamson / Invision/AP
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New Orleans begins removing second Confederate monument
