John Glenn, a war hero who became the first American to orbit the Earth and later served four terms in the U.S. Senate, has died in his home state of Ohio. He was 95.
Glenn’s death was announced Thursday by officials at Ohio State University, where he was being treated at James Cancer Hospital. Glenn had experienced a number of health problems in recent years, including a stroke he suffered two years ago after having had heart valve replacement surgery.
“We are saddened by the loss of Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth. A true American hero,” NASA said. “Godspeed, John Glenn. Ad astra [to the stars].”
The author Tom Wolfe wrote that Glenn, once a small-town American, became “the last true national hero America has ever made.”
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John Glenn worked as a payload specialist aboard the shuttle Discovery from Oct. 29 to Nov. 7, 1998. REX/Shutterstock / Shutterstock
It was dark as the car sped along a small road on the outskirts of the embattled Iraqi city of Mosul. The car was driving fast, but not so fast as to draw attention. That was essential. The lives of the two men in the front seat depended on their ability to keep a low profile and pass through undetected.
In the passenger seat, Khaleel Al-Dhaki was focused on the secret mission he was leading to rescue a Yazidi woman and her child, both of whom were taken by ISIS and dragged into Mosul.
“This kind of operation can’t be done during daytime,” he later told NBC News. “We are basically going in there to kidnap them back from ISIS.”
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The night of her rescue from ISIS Leila reunited with some of her and her husband’s relatives who had also been previously rescued from ISIS captivity. Marc Smith / NBC News
Ben Carson, the former neurosurgeon turned conservative presidential candidate, received a formal pick as secretary of housing and urban development from Republican President-elect Donald Trump this week. Despite his near-total lack of formal qualifications for the role, some Carson supporters touted his rough-and-tumble upbringing as a young black child in Detroit as evidence he understands urban policy — specifically the fact he himself grew up in public housing.
Notable backers of this theory included former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Armstrong Williams, Carson’s close friend and spokesman.
Except the part about public housing isn’t true. In a correction posted to a New York Times article Monday, the Times wrote Williams told the paper the neurosurgeon grew up in subsidized housing, but later changed his story.
A Republican member of the Electoral College from Texas has promised to vote against Donald Trump during the college’s meeting Dec. 19, saying the president-elect “shows daily he is not qualified for office.”
In an op-ed published Monday in The New York Times, Christopher Suprun, a paramedic and first responder to the Pentagon on Sept. 11, laid out a lengthy list of concerns about Trump. He called on fellow electors to “do their job” and unify around an “honorable and qualified” alternative such as Ohio. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.
The Federalist Papers, Suprun wrote, argue that the Electoral College is tasked with ensuring candidates are “qualified, not engaged in demagogy, and independent from foreign influence.” Trump, he said, does not meet these standards, and should therefore be rejected from the White House.
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican electoral college member Christopher Suprun, pictured here before throwing out the ceremonial first pitch at a Texas Rangers baseball game, has promised not to vote for Donald Trump Dec. 19.
President-elect Donald Trump will nominate “tough” former Republican primary rival Ben Carson as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the transition team announced Monday.
A statement described Carson as a “distinguished national leader who overcame his troubled youth in the inner city of Detroit to become a renowned neurosurgeon.”
In the announcement, Trump said he was “thrilled” to nominate Carson, who dropped out of the campaign race in March after a string of disappointing primary finishes on Super Tuesday.
The secretary of the Army Corps of Engineers has turned down a permit for a controversial pipeline project running through North Dakota, in a victory for Native Americans and climate activists.
A celebration erupted following the Sunday announcement at the main protest camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, where the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and others have been protesting against the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline for months.
However it may prove to be a short-lived victory because President-elect Donald Trump has said he supports the project and policy experts believe he could reverse the decision if he wanted to.
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Dakota Access Pipeline to be rerouted, in victory for protesters
A jarring incident at a restaurant that has faced violent threats because of an unfounded and preposterous conspiracy theory raises concerns about the real-world consequences of spreading fake news stories.
Washington, D.C., police on Sunday afternoon detained a man armed with an assault rifle at Comet Ping Pong, a popular pizza restaurant in a busy neighborhood of the city.
According to police, the man, later identified as Edgar Maddison Welch, from Salisbury, North Carolina, entered the restaurant with what police described as “an assault rifle”; there were conflicting reports of gunshots. There were no injuries, but police locked down the surrounding block, which includes other restaurants and shops, including a popular bookstore, Politics and Prose.
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The Washington Post via Getty Images
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A country with men who sacrifice the tranquility and welfare of the country for revenge and love of dominion cause much trouble, the terrible and worse scourge imaginable.
Nothing does more towards the making of a nation an easy prey to a common enemy than intestine broils and contests for the sovereignty.
An unexpected dissenting voice came out Friday against a Trump administration brokered deal to keep a Carrier plant in Indiana and save around 1,000 jobs.
Former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in an op-ed for the Young Conservatives website called the deal, which was reportedly negotiated by Vice President-elect Mike Pence, an example of government intervention that could lead to “crony capitalism.”
Palin said in the op-ed “I am ecstatic for Carrier employees!” But she wrote that while she didn’t yet know the full terms of the deal, the negotiation could signal an abandonment of fiscal conservatism and stimulus packages that, if pursued, would mean the country is “doomed.”
Carrier Corp. had planned to move a factory in Indianapolis to Mexico, taking 1,400 jobs with it.
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Sarah Palin speaks during a panel discussion before a preview of the film “Climate Hustle” on Capitol Hill April 14, 2016, in Washington. AP
When President Barack Obama was making the case for the Iran nuclear deal, he journeyed uptown to American University, where decades earlier John F. Kennedy had delivered a famous address on peace and the future of nuclear negotiations with the Soviet Union.
Hoping to bathe himself in some of the glow of JFK, Obama framed the deal as another critical step forward in the march toward world peace. In 1963, Kennedy had offered the same sense of hope.
“Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament — and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude,” Kennedy said. “I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitude — as individuals and as a nation — for our attitude is as essential as theirs.”
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
President Barack Obama speaks about the nuclear deal with Iran on Aug. 5, 2015, at American University in Washington.
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.
John Glenn worked as a payload specialist aboard the shuttle Discovery from Oct. 29 to Nov. 7, 1998. REX/Shutterstock / Shutterstock
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