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“Robin,” he said, “I would like to directly ask you a question. You alleged racist behavior. What exactly was that racist behavior about having my friend of five years over at my house in my living room with her daughter who is best friends with my daughter and her nephew? What is racist about that?”

For the record, I have read White Fragility and How to Be an Antiracist, and I don’t recall any passage in either text that clarifies why it would be racist for a white man to hold a Black baby in his lap. Tanikawa continued, “You can disagree with people. But this is not an ideological difference. This is how Black and Indigenous people and people of color see the world. It’s not for you and me, an East Asian, affluent person, to deny that reality, to deny what these people are telling us.”

Tanikawa responded that his confusion illustrates the need for anti-racism training. “All of us, including myself, don’t have the language to really talk about this in a way that’s constructive,” she said. “I have done my own work. And some of you have done work … but clearly we need more of it.” She told Maron, “I don’t see you doing the work,” explaining, “your actions have not shown to me that you understand what racism is at the structural and institutional level––which is fine because I don’t claim to understand it. I’m still learning.”

If Tanikawa doesn’t believe she fully understands the nature of structural racism, then how can she be so confident that others don’t understand it, or that “work” will help them see the light? Turning back to Hom, she said, “Vincent, there’s no way around it, you have to read. If you’re not willing to read, then you’re not doing the work.”

Broshi stated, “Proximity to color does not mean you’re not racist,” adding, “Did you read Ibram Kendi? Did you read How to Be an Antiracist? All people are capable of racist behavior. We apologize when we offend people of color and they get upset and log out of a meeting immediately because they see white people exhibiting their power over people of color. How can I convince you if you won’t even read a book about white fragility or Ibram Kendi?”

In fact, anti-racism as Tanikawa understands it is an ideology––it is “assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program”––and it is not “how Black and Indigenous people and people of color see the world,” as all those groups are ideologically diverse.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong that went on that night but the fact that middle-aged white women are telling me how to feel. I’m a strong Black woman. I’m a strong, Black young mother. I don’t need anyone to tell me how I feel. I wouldn’t let anyone disrespect my nephew … This is my friend. This is going to continue to be my friend. I’m just a little thrown back that people who are not even Black are telling me that he is offending. Who is he offending? Because there’s not one Black person on the board. So please realize you do not have to speak for me.

no civic council that meaningfully represents a diverse community will ever be unanimous in how it defines anti-racism, what that definition implies for policy making, any other notion of what is just or true, or the proper framework through which to decide.

The self-identified “anti-racist” camp seems convinced only one way forward exists, and everyone must “train” to arrive at the same understanding of race in America. That’s a recipe for conflict.

“If we want better schools for all kids, if we are to work together for children, to remedy the disproportionate outcomes we see … we adults have to talk to each other about race,” a District 2 superintendent, Donalda Chumney, told council members at the end of the June 29 meeting. “We need to permit ourselves to be comfortable in the imperfection of this work. We cannot wait to talk until everybody knows the right words and has assessed the least terrifying public stances to take.”

That’s right. In civic life generally, policing perceived microaggressions should never take priority over or distract from the shared project of improving policies and institutions. “I’m still learning how to have effective conversations about race in settings like this, where both or all parties do not share the perspective of the other,” she added. “We have to call each other into conversations, not push each other out … We need structures and protocols to do that.”

I’d offer one rule of thumb: Anti-racism is a contested concept that well-meaning people define and practice differently. Folks who have different ideas about how to combat racism should engage one another. They might even attempt a reciprocal book exchange, in which everyone works to understand how others see the world. A more inclusive anti-racist canon would include Bayard Rustin, Albert Murray, Henry Louis Gates, Zadie Smith, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Danielle Allen, Randall Kennedy, Stephen Carter, John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Barbara and Karen Fields, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Adolph Reed, Kmele Foster, Coleman Hughes, and others.

As long as sharp disagreements persist about what causes racial inequality and how best to remedy it, deliberations rooted in the specific costs and benefits of discrete policies will provide a better foundation for actual progress than meta-arguments about what “anti-racism” demands.

Instead, the three dissenters mostly confined themselves to saying that state law doesn’t provide the plaintiffs with a remedy.

even the dissenters’ contentions about state law made little sense. Chief Justice Brian Boatright argued that, while Colorado law requires its secretary of state to examine the constitutional qualifications of presidential candidates, it doesn’t allow her to consider whether they are constitutionally disqualified.

Nothing in the state statute suggests that’s the case, and it’s plainly illogical. Every qualification necessarily establishes a disqualification. If the Constitution says, as it does, that you have to be 35 years of age to serve as president, you’re out of luck—disqualified—if you’re 34 and a half. By the same token, if you’ve engaged in an insurrection against that Constitution in violation of your oath to it, you’ve failed to meet the ironclad (and rather undemanding) requirement that you not have done that.

And no stronger is Justice Carlos Samour’s suggestion that Trump was somehow deprived of due process by the proceedings in the district court. This was a full-blown, five-day trial, with sworn witnesses and lots of documentary exhibits, all admitted under the traditional rules of evidence before a judicial officer, who then made extensive written findings of fact under a stringent standard of proof

Samour’s suggestion that Trump was denied a fair trial because he didn’t have a jury is almost embarrassing: Any first-year law student who has taken civil procedure could tell you that election cases are not even close to the sort of litigation to which a Seventh Amendment jury-trial right would attach.

the dissents showed one thing clearly: The Colorado majority was right. I dare not predict what will happen next. But if Trump’s lawyers or any members of the United States Supreme Court want to overturn the decision, they’d better come up with something much, much stronger. And fast.

titled “Tightness-Looseness Across the 50 United States,” the study calculated a catalog of measures for each state, including the incidence of natural disasters, disease prevalence, residents’ levels of openness and conscientiousness, drug and alcohol use, homelessness and incarceration rates.

Gelfand said:Some groups have much stronger norms than others; they’re tight. Others have much weaker norms; they’re loose. Of course, all cultures have areas in which they are tight and loose — but cultures vary in the degree to which they emphasize norms and compliance with them.

states in New England and on the West Coast were the loosest: California, Oregon, Washington, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont.

In both 2016 and 2020, Donald Trump carried all 10 of the top “tight” states; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden carried all 10 of the top “loose” states.

“Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire the World” in 2018, in which she described the results of a 2016 pre-election survey she and two colleagues had commissioned

The results were telling: People who felt the country was facing greater threats desired greater tightness. This desire, in turn, correctly predicted their support for Trump. In fact, desired tightness predicted support for Trump far better than other measures. For example, a desire for tightness predicted a vote for Trump with 44 times more accuracy than other popular measures of authoritarianism.

The 2016 election, Gelfand continued, “turned largely on primal cultural reflexes — ones that had been conditioned not only by cultural forces, but by a candidate who was able to exploit them.”

Along the same lines, if liberals and conservatives hold differing moral visions, not just about what makes a good government but about what makes a good life, what turned the relationship between left and right from competitive to mutually destructive?

Cultural differences, Gelfand continued, “have a certain logic — a rationale that makes good sense,” noting that “cultures that have threats need rules to coordinate to survive (think about how incredibly coordinated Japan is in response to natural disasters).

cultures that don’t have a lot of threat can afford to be more permissive and loose.”

The tight-loose concept, Gelfand argued,is an important framework to understand the rise of President Donald Trump and other leaders in Poland, Hungary, Italy, and France,

The gist is this: when people perceive threat — whether real or imagined, they want strong rules and autocratic leaders to help them survive

My research has found that within minutes of exposing study participants to false information about terrorist incidents, overpopulation, pathogen outbreaks and natural disasters, their minds tightened. They wanted stronger rules and punishments.

The South dominated the tight states: Mississippi, Alabama Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina

Looseness, Gelfand posits, fosters tolerance, creativity and adaptability, along with such liabilities as social disorder, a lack of coordination and impulsive behavior.

If liberalism and conservatism have historically played a complementary role, each checking the other to constrain extremism, why are the left and right so destructively hostile to each other now, and why is the contemporary political system so polarized?

Gelfand writes that tightness encourages conscientiousness, social order and self-control on the plus side, along with close-mindedness, conventional thinking and cultural inertia on the minus side.

Niemi contended that sensitivity to various types of threat is a key factor in driving differences between the far left and far right.

She cited research thatfound 47 percent of the most extreme conservatives strongly endorsed the view that “The world is becoming a more and more dangerous place,” compared to 19 percent of the most extreme liberals

Conservatives and liberals, Niemi continued,see different things as threats — the nature of the threat and how it happens to stir one’s moral values (and their associated emotions) is a better clue to why liberals and conservatives react differently.

Unlike liberals, conservatives strongly endorse the binding moral values aimed at protecting groups and relationships. They judge transgressions involving personal and national betrayal, disobedience to authority, and disgusting or impure acts such as sexually or spiritually unchaste behavior as morally relevant and wrong.

Underlying these differences are competing sets of liberal and conservative moral priorities, with liberals placing more stress than conservatives on caring, kindness, fairness and rights — known among scholars as “individualizing values

conservatives focus more on loyalty, hierarchy, deference to authority, sanctity and a higher standard of disgust, known as “binding values.”

As a set, Niemi wrote, conservative binding values encompassthe values oriented around group preservation, are associated with judgments, decisions, and interpersonal orientations that sacrifice the welfare of individuals

Just as ecological factors differing from region to region over the globe produced different cultural values, ecological factors differed throughout the U.S. historically and today, producing our regional and state-level dimensions of culture and political patterns.

Niemi cited a paper she and Liane Young, a professor of psychology at Boston College, published in 2016, “When and Why We See Victims as Responsible: The Impact of Ideology on Attitudes Toward Victims,” which tested responses of men and women to descriptions of crimes including sexual assaults and robberies.

We measured moral values associated with unconditionally prohibiting harm (“individualizing values”) versus moral values associated with prohibiting behavior that destabilizes groups and relationships (“binding values”: loyalty, obedience to authority, and purity)

Increased endorsement of binding values predicted increased ratings of victims as contaminated, increased blame and responsibility attributed to victims, increased perceptions of victims’ (versus perpetrators’) behaviors as contributing to the outcome, and decreased focus on perpetrators.

For example, binding values are associated with Machiavellianism (e.g., status-seeking and lying, getting ahead by any means, 2013); victim derogation, blame, and beliefs that victims were causal contributors for a variety of harmful acts (2016, 2020); and a tendency to excuse transgressions of ingroup members with attributions to the situation rather than the person (2023).

What happened to people ecologically affected social-political developments, including the content of the rules people made and how they enforced them

Numerous factors potentially influence the evolution of liberalism and conservatism and other social-cultural differences, including geography, topography, catastrophic events, and subsistence styles

Joshua Hartshorne, who is also a professor of psychology at Boston College, took issue with the binding versus individualizing values theory as an explanation for the tendency of conservatives to blame victims:

I would guess that the reason conservatives are more likely to blame the victim has less to do with binding values and more to do with the just-world bias (the belief that good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people, therefore if a bad thing happened to you, you must be a bad person).

Belief in a just world, Hartshorne argued, is crucial for those seeking to protect the status quo:It seems psychologically necessary for anyone who wants to advocate for keeping things the way they are that the haves should keep on having, and the have-nots have got as much as they deserve. I don’t see how you could advocate for such a position while simultaneously viewing yourself as moral (and almost everyone believes that they themselves are moral) without also believing in the just world

Conversely, if you generally believe the world is not just, and you view yourself as a moral person, then you are likely to feel like you have an obligation to change things.

I asked Lene Aaroe, a political scientist at Aarhus University in Denmark, why the contemporary American political system is as polarized as it is now, given that the liberal-conservative schism is longstanding. What has happened to produce such intense hostility between left and right?

There is variation across countries in hostility between left and right. The United States is a particularly polarized case which calls for a contextual explanatio

A central explanation typically offered for the current situation in American politics is that partisanship and political ideology have developed into strong social identities where the mass public is increasingly sorted — along social, partisan, and ideological lines.

I then asked Aaroe why surveys find that conservatives are happier than liberals. “Some research,” she replied, “suggests that experiences of inequality constitute a larger psychological burden to liberals because it is more difficult for liberals to rationalize inequality as a phenomenon with positive consequences.”

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, elaborated in an email on the link between conservatism and happiness:

t’s a combination of factors. Conservatives are likelier to be married, patriotic, and religious, all of which make people happier

They may be less aggrieved by the status quo, whereas liberals take on society’s problems as part of their own personal burdens. Liberals also place politics closer to their identity and striving for meaning and purpose, which is a recipe for frustration.

Some features of the woke faction of liberalism may make people unhappier: as Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have suggested, wokeism is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in reverse, urging upon people maladaptive mental habits such as catastrophizing, feeling like a victim of forces beyond one’s control, prioritizing emotions of hurt and anger over rational analysis, and dividing the world into allies and villains.

Why, I asked Pinker, would liberals and conservatives react differently — often very differently — to messages that highlight threat?

It may be liberals (or at least the social-justice wing) who are more sensitive to threats, such as white supremacy, climate change, and patriarchy; who may be likelier to moralize, seeing racism and transphobia in messages that others perceive as neutral; and being likelier to surrender to emotions like “harm” and “hurt.”

The authors used neural imaging to follow changes in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (known as DMPFC) as conservatives and liberals watched videos presenting strong positions, left and right, on immigration.

there are ways to persuade conservatives to support liberal initiatives and to persuade liberals to back conservative proposals:

While liberals tend to be more concerned with protecting vulnerable groups from harm and more concerned with equality and social justice than conservatives, conservatives tend to be more concerned with moral issues like group loyalty, respect for authority, purity and religious sanctity than liberals are. Because of these different moral commitments, we find that liberals and conservatives can be persuaded by quite different moral arguments

For example, we find that conservatives are more persuaded by a same-sex marriage appeal articulated in terms of group loyalty and patriotism, rather than equality and social justice.

“political arguments reframed to appeal to the moral values of those holding the opposing political position are typically more effective

We find support for these claims across six studies involving diverse political issues, including same-sex marriage, universal health care, military spending, and adopting English as the nation’s official language.”

In one test of persuadability on the right, Feinberg and Willer assigned some conservatives to read an editorial supporting universal health care as a matter of “fairness (health coverage is a basic human right)” or to read an editorial supporting health care as a matter of “purity (uninsured people means more unclean, infected, and diseased Americans).”

Conservatives who read the purity argument were much more supportive of health care than those who read the fairness case.

Liberals who read the fairness argument were substantially more supportive of military spending than those who read the loyalty and authority argument.

In “Conservative and Liberal Attitudes Drive Polarized Neural Responses to Political Content,” Willer, Yuan Chang Leong of the University of Chicago, Janice Chen of Johns Hopkins and Jamil Zaki of Stanford address the question of how partisan biases are encoded in the brain:

society. How do such biases arise in the brain? We measured the neural activity of participants watching videos related to immigration policy. Despite watching the same videos, conservative and liberal participants exhibited divergent neural responses. This “neural polarization” between groups occurred in a brain area associated with the interpretation of narrative content and intensified in response to language associated with risk, emotion, and morality. Furthermore, polarized neural responses predicted attitude change in response to the videos.

The four authors argue that their “findings suggest that biased processing in the brain drives divergent interpretations of political information and subsequent attitude polarization.” These results, they continue, “shed light on the psychological and neural underpinnings of how identical information is interpreted differently by conservatives and liberals.”

While liberals and conservatives, guided by different sets of moral values, may make agreement on specific policies difficult, that does not necessarily preclude consensus.

or each video,” they write,participants with DMPFC activity time courses more similar to that of conservative-leaning participants became more likely to support the conservative positio

Conversely, those with DMPFC activity time courses more similar to that of liberal-leaning participants became more likely to support the liberal position. These results suggest that divergent interpretations of the same information are associated with increased attitude polarizatio

Together, our findings describe a neural basis for partisan biases in processing political information and their effects on attitude change.

Describing their neuroimaging method, the authors point out that theysearched for evidence of “neural polarization” activity in the brain that diverges between people who hold liberal versus conservative political attitudes. Neural polarization was observed in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), a brain region associated with the interpretation of narrative content.

The question is whether the political polarization that we are witnessing now proves to be a core, encoded aspect of the human mind, difficult to overcome — as Leong, Chen, Zaki and Willer sugges

— or whether, with our increased knowledge of the neural basis of partisan and other biases, we will find more effective ways to manage these most dangerous of human predispositions.

actions of a single pilot have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries

United States is protesting with the Russian government.Read More

incident were "not consistent with reality"

encounter comes just days after the U.S. Embassy in Moscow issued formal concerns with the Russian government over an incident last week in which Russian fighter jets flew close to the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic.

ncounters between Russian military aircraft and U.S. warships have become increasing common in recent months

Department of Defense announced it was spending $3.4 billion for the European Reassurance Initiative in an effort to deter Russian aggression against NATO allies following Russia's 2014 intervention in Ukraine.

U.S. has deployed additional military assets throughout Europe

While English classes will still include healthy amounts of fiction, the standards say that students should be reading more nonfiction texts as they get older, to prepare them for the kinds of material they will read in college and careers. In the fourth grade, students should be reading about the same amount from “literary” and “informational” texts, according to the standards; in the eighth grade, 45 percent should be literary and 55 percent informational, and by 12th grade, the split should be 30/70.

Prosecutors said the Hammonds set a fire that burned about 130 acres in 2001 to cover up poaching. They were sentenced to five years in prison.

The group is occupying part of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns after gathering outside for a demonstration supporting Dwight and Steven Hammond, father-and-son ranchers who were convicted of arson.

"This refuge -- it has been destructive to the people of the county and to the people of the area," he said. Read More"People need to be aware that we've become a system where government is actually claiming and using and defending people's rights, and they are doing that against the people."

The Hammonds, who are set to turn themselves in Monday afternoon, have said they set the fire to reduce the growth of invasive plants and to protect their property from wildfires

The Hammonds have been clear in that they don't want help from the Bundy group. "Neither Ammon Bundy nor anyone within his group/organization speak for the Hammond family," the Hammonds' attorney W. Alan Schroeder wrote to Harney County Sheriff David Ward.

He said that over the years, law enforcement has learned how to handle a situation like this; one that hasn't erupted in violence and in which a law may be broken, but there's no immediate threat to anyone's life. The best approach now, Roderick said, is to wait the group out and to figure out how to bring a peaceful end to the situation.

The protest has prompted Harney County School District 3 to call off classes for the entire week, Superintendent Dr. Marilyn L. McBride said. "Schools will open on January 11," she said. "Ensuring staff and student safety is our greatest concern."

After the march Saturday, the armed protesters broke into the refuge's unoccupied building and refused to leave. Officials have said there are no government employees in the building.

"We will be here as long as it takes," Bundy said. "We have no intentions of using force upon anyone, (but) if force is used against us, we would defend ourselves."

Ammon Bundy said that the group in Oregon was armed, but that he would not describe it as a militia. He declined to say how many people were with him, telling CNN on Sunday that giving that information might jeopardize "operational security."

"We are not terrorists," Ammon Bundy said. "We are concerned citizens and realize we have to act if we want to pass along anything to our children."

He wouldn't call his group a militia, but others are. "I don't like the militia's methods," local resident Monica McCannon told KTVZ. "They had their rally. Now it's time for them to go home. People are afraid of them."

When asked what it would take for the protesters to leave, Bundy did not offer specifics. He said he and those with him are prepared to stay put for days or weeks or "as long as necessary."

"We are using the wildlife refuge as a place for individuals across the United States to come and assist in helping the people of Harney County claim back their lands and resources," he said. "The people will need to be able to use the land and resources without fear as free men and women. We know it will take some time."

He did not explicitly call on authorities to commute the prison sentences for the Hammonds, but he said their case illustrates officials' "abuse" of power.

He said the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge has taken over the space of 100 ranches since the early 1900s. "They are continuing to expand the refuge at the expense of the ranchers and miners," Bundy said.

He also said Harney County, in southeastern Oregon, went from one of the state's wealthiest counties to one of the poorest. CNN has not independently corroborated Bundy's claims.

Security forces entered the hotel early Saturday and freed 126 hostages, half of whom were hospitalized, according to Burkina Faso's foreign minister, Alpha Barry.Read More

Of the 29 people who died, 22 have been identified, Ouagadougou prosecutor Maïza Sereme said, according to state broadcaster RTB.

President Roch Marc Christian Kabore told the nation more than 50 people were wounded. The injured included two Burkinabe police officers, one soldier and one service member from France.It was unclear whether the death toll included the three attackers that Kabore said were killed.

Survivors described horrific scenes as the attackers paced and fired in the hotel Friday night.

The West African nation's forces received logistical support from American and French troops. Shortly after the forces stormed the hotel, the sounds of gunshots faded.

The assault appeared well-planned, with some of the attackers coming to the hotel during the day and mingling with guests, authorities said. When darkness fell, more attackers joined them.

Before the hotel assault, they attacked the Cappuccino café across the street, which had about 100 people, according to the state broadcaster. They then took off to the Splendid Hotel, where they seized hostages. Witnesses said the attackers wore turbans and spoke a language not native to Burkina Faso, a former French colony.

Don't they have human feelings? Don't they have hearts?"

t's now a part of his life and an extension of the culture of hospitality on the island. It's not a choice to help or not, he says; it's about being human.

Increasingly intensive Russian airstrikes are pushing thousands of Syrians north, away from the northern outskirts of the once bustling city, according to the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces, the main opposition group.

A sense of panic among those fleeingRead More

<img alt="Aleppo, once a bustling city, has been reduced to rubble in Syria's civil war." class="media__image" src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/151020182337-syria-aleppo-zaidoun-al-zoabi-large-169.jpg">Aleppo, once a bustling city, has been reduced to rubble in Syria's civil war.But the latest video appears to show a sense of panic among the thousands streaming out of the northern outskirts of the city, fleeing for their lives -- bound, most probably, for the Turkish border, 60 miles (97 kilometers) to the north.

"Now 10,000 new refugees are waiting in front of the door of Kilis because of air bombardments and attacks against Aleppo,"

"Sixty to seventy thousand people in the camps in north Aleppo are moving toward Turkey. My mind is not now in London, but in our border -- how to relocate these new people coming from Syria? Three hundred thousand Aleppo people, living in Aleppo, are ready to move toward Turkey."

Innocent civilians 'running for their lives'

"We are cut off from Aleppo City," said David Evans, Mercy Corps' regional program director for the Middle East. "It feels like a siege of Aleppo is about to begin."

"Right now, we are seeing tens of thousands of people make their way to the border with Turkey."

"Innocent civilians are running for their lives," Evans said.

Bundy's son, Ammon, was one of the leaders of the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. He was arrested last month. The refuge's current occupiers said -- during a purported live stream of a conference call between protesters, activists and conservative Nevada lawmaker Michele Fiore -- they were prepared to leave Thursday morning.

Fiore told those on the call that Mike Arnold -- Ammon Bundy's lawyer, who Fiore says was in the car with her -- spoke with the FBI. She said the agency promised it would stand down Wednesday night and allow her to be at the FBI checkpoint on Thursday morning when the occupiers turn themselves in.

According to the agency, one of the remaining occupiers rode outside barricades at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. When agents tried to approach him, he sped off back to the refuge.After that, the FBI said agents "moved to contain the remaining occupiers by placing agents at barricades both immediately ahead of and behind the area where the occupiers are camping."The FBI said no shots were fired and it is continuing to negotiate with those inside the refuge.

Four people are believed to be still occupying the refuge.

Earlier on the call, the occupiers sounded concerned that the FBI planned to move in Wednesday night and that it would lead to their deaths. At times, they seemed to embrace that outcome as fatalistic.

When one woman -- presumed to be Fiore -- asked David and Sandy about their families, a man responded, "God has put us on this path. Our families are already taken care of; they weren't in our lives much before all this because God made sure we didn't have that to weigh us down so that we could do this," one man said.

The people on the phone could be heard debating conditions for which they'd be willing to leave the refuge. At one point late Wednesday night, more than 66,000 people were listening.Wednesday marks day 40 of the occupation.

Ammon Bundy and others started out demonstrating against the sentencing of Dwight Hammond and his son Steven, ranchers who were convicted of arson on federal lands in Oregon.But a January 2 march supporting the Hammonds led to the armed occupation of the refuge, with protesters decrying what they call government overreach when it comes to federal lands.Bundy and other members of his group were arrested during an incident along a highway last month.

At the same time, law enforcement officers shot and killed LaVoy Finicum, one of the protest group's most prominent members.

The centerpiece of Trump's presidential campaign is the plan to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico as a barrier against illegal migration, criminals and narcotics trafficking.

Trump vows to "bomb the hell" out of ISIS in Iraq -- especially the oil wells it's captured there -- to deprive it of income.

Under Trump, the U.S. would also refuse to accept Syrian refugees (and, at least temporarily, all Muslims from anywhere in the world).

Trump would resume the widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding, adding that "it's not really tough enough." He's told voters that "torture works" -- and he would also maintain the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and add more prisoners.

He also wants South Korea to support more of the cost of its American military protection. "We get nothing for this. I'm not saying that we're going to let anything happen to them. But they have to help us," he said. In fact, the US receives more than $800 million annually from South Korea for its troop presence

Trump has both pledged to be "neutral" in trying to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians and also pledged his full support for the Jewish state.

f there is any other theme, it's that Trump speaks his own mind on major international issues -- and sometimes disagrees with his own mind too.

"Under a Trump presidency, foreign policy will be firm and proactive and similar to that of the Reagan's years -- a classic peace-through-economic-and-military strength, rather than the vacillating and dangerous weakness of the current White House," said economist Peter Navarro of the University of California.

Even if he makes it to the White House, Trump would hardly have a free hand. Congress and the courts can stymie the policies of any president. Activists, industry, and myriad interest groups exert their influence. Public opinion generates its own pressures on how America navigates the planet.

Ansar al-Sharia, an umbrella group for al Qaeda militants in Yemen, said it is not responsible for the attacks. It warned journalists to avoid reporting that it is responsible.

"Our honorable people of Aden, we Ansar al-Sharia deny any connection or relation to the operation that targeted the elders' house," the group said in a statement Sunday. "This is not our operation and it's not our way of fight."

The impoverished Muslim nation has faced violence for years, some of it tied to al Qaeda elements that call it home

The latest round of unrest started in 2014 amid angry protests

The Houthi rebels seized the presidential palace in January last year, forcing out President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi on the way to taking over Sanaa, the capital city, and other areas.

In January, he reported over 8,100 casualties, including 2,800 deaths. That number is expected to go up when new numbers are released.

"But I just think these are hypotheticals at this point, there's a long way to go."

At least six businesses or residents called 911 to report the gunman. Read More

evidence indicates that Robertson did fire his .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun in the area.

Some indicate that he was armed. ... And then there were others that indicated not only was he armed, but had actually discharged the firearm several times."

man fired six to seven rounds as he was walking through a residential area

Those 911 calls depict different behaviors of the suspect,"

Robertson turned his body with the gun toward the deputies, who opened fire and killed Robertson.

one deputy fired 17 shots, and another fired 16.

fatal deputy-involved shooting gets independent investigations from the local district attorney's office and the county coroner

Paris Ice Watch is a reminder that the ice is melting as they talk.Read More

It also might get them thinking about the fact that the Arctic is warming about twice the rate of the rest of the planet, thanks to pollution from burning fossil fuels for electricity and heat.

This is likely to be the hottest year on record. If all of Greenland melted, which could happen if we let climate change run amok, global seas would rise perhaps 7 meters.

Since we humans were able to create this mess, he told me, we can fix it.

While Zarhum was bleeding and clearly "helpless" on the ground, one of the charged men, David Moyal, slammed him forcefully with a nearby bench, "with the intention of causing him harm, disability or maiming him," the indictment said.

A bystander moved the bench away, but Cohen and Shamba put it back, before Shamba pushed away an onlooker who asked him to stop and kicked Zarhum again, the indictment states.

In the wake of Zarhum's death, which caused shock and triggered soul-searching in Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on citizens not to take justice into their own hands.

"No one will take the law into his own hands. That's the first rule," he said.

Cruz forcefully responded to Trump's accusations that he isn't eligible to be president because he was born in Canada -- a controversy that Trump has only recently embraced. Read More

"There was nothing to this birther issue."

Rubio slammed his fellow senator for hiding behind the pretense of conservative values.

has repeatedly questioned whether Cruz, whose mother was a U.S. citizen, is a natural born citizen.

Cruz noted that some of the more extreme theories on the topic would conclude that someone can only become president if both parents were born in the United States. Under that standard, Cruz noted

neligible for the presidency because his mother was born in Scotland.

onald, I'm not going to use your mother's birth against you," Cruz said.

"Because it wouldn't work."

"That is not consistent conservatism," he says. "That is political calculation."

"I've said from the beginning, we should take no Syrian refugees of any kind," Christie said.

Trump was more dominant Thursday than in previous debates

Asked to explain what that meant, Cruz said New Yorkers tend to hold "socially liberal" views

"Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan," he said.

"We rebuilt downtown Manhattan and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers. And I have to tell you, that was a very insulting statement that Ted made."

ut if that's the best hit the New York Times has got, they better go back to the well."

"Unfortunately, Gov. Christie has endorsed many of the ideas that Barack Obama supports," the Florida senator said.

It appears that "same someone has been whispering in old Marco's ear, too," Christie said.

Two years ago, he called me a conservative reformer that New Jersey needed. That was before he was running against me."

Trump said, insisting he would not change his mind on the issue.

"All Muslims? Seriously? What kind of signal does that send to the rest of the world?" Bush said.

While there has been plenty of animosity between Trump and most of his rivals, the billionaire businessman and Cruz have been on largely friendly territory for much of the campaign season.

Christie, meanwhile, blasted the actions as inconsistent with democracy.

Fiorina's candidacy has largely been defined by memorable debate performances. And even though she was dropped from the prime-time stage at the debate, she still delivered. Right out of the gate, she dealt a sharp personal attack on Clinton, the Democratic front-runner.

"Despite Donald Trump's bromance with Vladimir Putin ... Russia is our adversary," she said.