| If President Trump wasn’t taking the intense and widespread criticism of his weak Monday performance alongside Vladimir Putin seriously, maybe this will be the wake-up call he needs. Brian Kilmeade, one of the hosts of Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, addressed the president directly Tuesday morning, telling him he got it wrong when he backed Putin’s denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election over the evidence-based conclusions of his own intelligence services. Senior Republicans have been among those saying Trump got it badly wrong at the summit in Helsinki. Addressing Trump directly, Kilmeade said: “When Newt Gingrich, when Gen. Jack Keane, when Matt Schlapp say the president fell short and made our intelligence apparatus look bad, I think it’s time to pay attention and it’s easily correctable from the president’s perspective. Nobody’s perfect, especially [after] 10 intensive days of summits, private meetings, and everything on his plate. But that moment is the one that’s going to stand out unless he comes out and corrects it.” View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet. |
| |
|
| MGM Resorts International has filed federal lawsuits against hundreds of victims of last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas in an apparent bid to pre-empt any compensation claims. MGM, which owns the Mandalay Bay hotel-casino and the venue of the Route 91 Harvest music festival, has argued that any lawsuits holding the company liable for deaths or injuries during the Oct. 1 massacre “must be dismissed” because the company took reasonable precautions to prevent such mass violence. In a statement released Monday, MGM spokeswoman Debra DeShong appeared to portray the lawsuits as an act of compassion for the victims. “Years of drawn out litigation and hearings are not in the best interest of victims, the community and those still healing,” she said, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Fifty-eight people were killed and an additional 850 were injured last year when Stephen Paddock opened fire from inside Mandalay Bay onto a crowd of festival-goers below, in what became the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Robert Eglet, a lawyer representing several of the victims, has called MGM’s lawsuits “outrageous.” “It’s just really sad that they would stoop to this level,” he told the Review-Journal. |
| |
|
| Vladimir Putin is basking in two PR boosts at the moment, one gifted to him by Donald Trump, and another from the successful staging of the World Cup. At least the latter didn’t go entirely to plan. Four protesters from activist group/punk band Pussy Riot who invaded the pitch during Sunday’s World Cup final have been punished for interrupting the match, with each sent to jail for 15 days. Stewards hauled the four protesters off the pitch after they ran on in police-style uniforms, with one managing to high-five star French forward Kylian Mbappé. They were accused of violating the rules for spectators at sporting events and wearing police uniforms illegally. Pussy Riot said it was a protest against human-rights abuses in Russia. Alongside the jail time, the four are also banned from attending sports events for three years. They were named as Nika Nikulshina, Olga Kurachyova, Olga Pakhtusova, and Pyotr Verzilov. Verzilov is the husband of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. who was among the three Pussy Riot members imprisoned in 2012. |
| |
|
| Houston residents have been warned about a “possible serial killer” on the loose after a rash of attacks in the last week. At a Monday night press conference, police identified the suspect as Jose Gilberto Rodriguez, a parolee who cut off his ankle monitor and is believed to have gone on a killing spree. Rodriguez is suspected of killing a 62-year-old homeowner in Harris County before stealing her car. He then allegedly committed a second and third murder at two mattress stores. Two other people were attacked but survived. Police say Rodriguez is armed and dangerous, and he may be going from door to door in residential areas pretending to be looking for someone. “The sooner we can get him into custody, the sooner we can all breathe better,” Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said Monday. |
| |
|
| This Friday, July 20, Orbitz is giving John Collins (also known as the Paper Airplane Guy) the opportunity to break his own record for the world’s longest paper airplane throw. The current record stands at 226 feet, 10 inches. That’s more than five school buses long. That’s ⅗ the distance of a football field! And on Friday, John is going to design an airplane that (hopefully) goes even further. Head to Facebook at 11:45 AM ET, July 20th, to watch the attempt. And book your next trip on Orbitz and experience the most rewarding travel – just like that. |
| |
|
| The U.S. Treasury announced Monday that it would free some politically active nonprofit groups from a requirement to identify their financial donors, a move critics fear will allow organizations like the NRA to receive “dark-money” contributions without scrutiny. Under the new rules, labor unions, issue-advocacy organizations, veterans groups, and other organizations that do not receive tax-exempt funds will not be required to identify their donors to tax authorities. “Americans shouldn’t be required to send the IRS information that it doesn’t need to effectively enforce our tax laws, and the IRS simply does not need tax returns with donor names and addresses to do its job in this area,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement announcing the move. |
| |
|
| The death rate from liver cancer in the U.S. skyrocketed for American adults between 2000 and 2016, according to a new report, because more people are developing the deadly disease than at any time on record. The figures, which come from a report released Tuesday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, are at odds with a decrease in mortality for all cancers combined. Liver-cancer death rates increased for both men and women 25 and older, as well as white, black, and Hispanic people—only Asians and Pacific Islanders saw a decrease in mortality from the disease. “I think the main reason for the increase in liver cancer incidence and death rate in the U.S. is the increase in the prevalence of excess body weight and hepatitis C virus infection in baby boomers,” said Farhad Islami, scientific director of cancer-surveillance research at the American Cancer Society. Throughout the 16 years analyzed, the death rate of liver among men was two to 2.5 times higher than it was for women, according to the report. |
| |
|
| The Nationals’ Bryce Harper slammed out a dramatic victory in baseball’s Home Run Derby in front of a euphoric hometown crowd in Washington, D.C. Monday night. Philadelphia’s Rhys Hoskins kicked off proceedings with 17 dingers as the first batter, making him look like the man to beat in the first round. But Harper sneaked through the round with 13, along with Freddie Freeman of Atlanta with 12. Harper then beat out the Dodgers’ Max Muncy, while an epic second-round battle between Hoskins and Chicago Cub Kyle Schwarber saw the latter emerge, setting up a Harper-Schwarber final. Schwarber went up first in the final and hit an additional 18 out of the park, making Harper’s chances look slim. After a slow start, Harper hit No. 18 in the final seconds of the allotted four minutes. With the 30 extra seconds earned after collecting two 440-foot shots, he took that up to No. 19—sealing a dramatic victory in front of his home crowd. View this cheat in a browser to see this embedded tweet. |
| |
|
| Ten black Washington University students were stopped by police near St. Louis and falsely accused of dining and dashing at an IHOP before being escorted back to the restaurant by six squad cars, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. University officials have reportedly complained to the Clayton Police Department about the incident, which is now the subject of an internal police review. The students—all of them incoming freshmen—were reportedly forced to walk back to the IHOP despite some of them having receipts to prove they paid for their meals. They were let go only after the manager told officers they had in fact paid. University officials have demanded that the police department apologize to the students. “The fact that these 10 students, all of whom are African-American, were scared and humiliated is unacceptable to us,” the university said in a statement Monday. The students “did not really appear to fit the description of the suspects other than being black,” Rob Wild, associate vice chancellor for student transition and engagement, wrote in an email about the incident. |
| |
|
| One of Britain’s leading ethics watchdogs has deemed it “morally permissible” to alter the DNA of a fetus—as long as it gives the child what parents perceive to be the best chances in life. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics said changing the DNA of a human embryo could be allowed if it was in the future child’s interests and did not add to the kinds of inequalities that already divide society, The Guardian reports. “It is our view that genome editing is not morally unacceptable in itself,” said Karen Yeung, chairwoman of the Nuffield working group and professor of law, ethics, and informatics at the University of Birmingham. “There is no reason to rule it out in principle.” The watchdog is not yet calling for a change in the law to allow genetic modification, but has encouraged more research into the safety and effectiveness of the approach, its societal impact, and a widespread debate of its implications. The report has already attracted criticism, with one lobby group accusing the authors of opening the door to the unrestricted use of heritable genetic engineering. |
| |
|
|
|