Janet Reno, the first woman to serve as U.S. attorney general and the epicenter of several political storms during the Clinton administration, has died. She was 78.
Reno died early Monday from complications of Parkinson’s disease, her goddaughter Gabrielle D’Alemberte told The Associated Press. A niece of Reno’s, Daphne Webb, later confirmed her death to NBC News. Webb said Reno spent her final days at home in Miami surrounded by family and friends.
Reno, a former Miami prosecutor who famously told reporters “I don’t do spin,” served nearly eight years as attorney general under President Bill Clinton, the longest stint in a century.
One of the administration’s most recognizable and polarizing figures, Reno faced criticism early in her tenure for the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, Texas, where sect leader David Koresh and some 80 followers perished.
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President Bill Clinton names Janet Reno as attorney general during a Rose Garden ceremony on Feb. 11, 1993. ROBERT GIROUX / AFP/Getty Images
A 5.0-magnitude earthquake centered near one of the world’s key oil hubs brought down building facades and shattered windows.
The temblor triggered fears that key infrastructure may have been damaged and century-old buildings left unsafe in the latest Oklahoma town rattled by increasingly strong quakes.
Cushing Assistant City Manager Jeremy Frazier told a news conference late Sunday that a few minor injuries were reported. He said the damage appeared to be contained to downtown, where piles of debris sat at the base of some commercial buildings.
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Damage at The Cushing Citizen newspaper building in downtown Cushing, Oklahoma, after an earthquake Sunday night. Cushing Citizen
The body found in a shallow grave on property where Kala Brown was found chained alive has been identified as Brown’s missing boyfriend, a South Carolina sheriff said Saturday.
Spartanburg County Sheriff Chuck Wright and county Coroner Rusty Clevenger announced that the body found Friday was Charlie Carver. Clevenger said the cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds.
Brown, 30, was found chained inside a metal container on property belonging to Todd Kohlhepp, 45, who has been charged with kidnapping and faces a possible murder charge.
Brown told investigators that there were as many as four bodies buried on the property and said she witnessed her captor shoot and kill Carver, her boyfriend who went missing with her in August, local prosecutor Barry Barnette said at a bond hearing Friday.
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Kala Brown and Charlie Carver Finding Kala and Charlie Facebook Page
Donald Trump gave an important and revealing speech in Pennsylvania this week, although the significance may have been less what he said and more who said it with him.
The subject was Obamacare and the supposed havoc that the program is wreaking upon America. Both Trump and vice presidential nominee Mike Pence spoke ― making it one of the few times in this campaign the two have appeared together. Even more telling, however, was the appearance of a half-dozen Republicans from Congress, including Sen. John Barrasso from Wyoming and Rep. Tom Price from Georgia, all talking about the same subject.
Progressives should take note. Trump has spent a lot of time criticizing Republican leaders in Congress, and they have spent a lot of time criticizing him ― on everything from his treatment of women to his pronouncements about Muslims. Trump also deviates from the GOP party line on a few key issues. Most notably, his hostility to international trade agreements puts him at odds with Republican leadership and its backers in the corporate community.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
The U.S. government believes hackers from Russia or elsewhere may try to undermine next week’s presidential election and is mounting an unprecedented effort to counter their cyber meddling, American officials told NBC News.
The effort is being coordinated by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, but reaches across the government to include the CIA, the National Security Agency and other elements of the Defense Department, current and former officials say.
Russia has been warned that any effort to manipulate the actual voting or vote counting would be viewed as a serious breach, intelligence officials say.
“The Russians are in an offensive mode and [the U.S. is] working on strategies to respond to that, and at the highest levels,” said Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014.
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Exclusive: U.S. Intel Prepare for Possible Election Day Cyber Attacks
A somber mood fell upon the hundreds who gathered here Thursday on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Stout to pay their last respects to a friend they lost too soon.
A Saudi flag stood side by side with a U.S flag as more than 20 of Hussain Saeed Alnahdi’s closest friends shared their fondest memories of their “brother” while holding single white candles — honoring a man who “bridged a gap between the Saudi and local community,” in the words of Tommy Hutson, a friend.
There are still many unanswered questions in the violent beating of Alnahdi, 24, a Saudi student at the university who died Monday after he was assaulted and left bloodied near Toppers Pizza on a relatively crowded street early Sunday morning.
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A vigil is held for Hussain Saeed Alnahdi, the Saudi student at the University of Wisconsin-Stout who was attacked and killed early Sunday in Menomonie, Wisconsin. Safia Samee Ali / NBC News
Rudy Giuliani said Friday that he knew the FBI planned to review more emails tied to Hillary Clinton before a public announcement about the investigation last week, confirming that the agency leaked information to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The former New York City mayor and Trump surrogate has recently dropped a series of hints that he knew in advance that the FBI planned to look at emails potentially connected to Clinton’s private server. The agency discovered the messages while investigating former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) for allegedly sexting with a minor. (Weiner’s estranged wife, Huma Abedin, is a top aide to Clinton.)
Giuliani has bragged about his close ties to the FBI for months, mentioning in interviews that “outraged FBI agents” have told him they’re frustrated by how the Clinton investigation was handled. And two days before FBI Director James Comey announced that the agency was reviewing the newly uncovered emails, Giuliani teased that Trump’s campaign had “a couple of surprises left.”
“You’ll see, and I think it will be enormously effective,” he said in an interview with Fox News.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
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New images from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile showed the massive “Pillars of Destruction” in the Carina Nebula, some 7,500 light years from Earth:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The images revealed a “nursery” of new stars, which were wiping out the very clouds from which they formed.
“In an ironic twist, one of the first consequences of the formation of a massive star is that it starts to destroy the cloud from which it was born,” the ESO wrote in a news release.
That destruction led to scenes that looked like the cover of a 1960s psychedelic album. Some of the nicknames even sounded like the titles of those albums, such as the Mystic Mountain, a formation of gas and dust that spans more than three light years:
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ESOA McLeod
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On Nov. 14, skywatchers will be treated to a supermoon so big and bright that it’s being billed as a “super-dupermoon” or an “extra-supermoon.”
Supermoons aren’t especially uncommon, but this will be the nearest that a full moon has come to Earth since January 26, 1948. The full moon won’t get this close again until November 25, 2034.
The term supermoon refers to a full moon that occurs when our planet’s natural satellite is at its closest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit. Astronomers call that point perigee, and so “perigee moon” is another term for supermoon. (The point at which the moon is most distant from Earth in its orbit is known as apogee.)
A supermoon can appear up to 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than an apogee full moon, according to NASA. The effect is most pronounced when the moon is viewed near the horizon.
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pjsells via Getty Images
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Two U.S. service members were killed during a fierce battle with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan early Thursday — which local officials said resulted in the deaths of dozens of civilians.
The Americans were on a “train, advise and assist” mission led by Afghan forces when they came under heavy fire miles north of the restive city of Kunduz, according to U.S. and Afghan officials.
Said Mahmood Danish, spokesman for Kunduz Governor Asadullah Omarkhel, told NBC News that Afghan special forces called in airstrikes to try to beat back the militants, and that 30 civilians were killed in the fighting, many of them children.
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A map showing the Afghan city of Kunduz. Google Maps
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.