Group items tagged

That requirement even applies to “medical abortions”—meaning abortions achieved by giving a pregnant woman two pills, spaced between two and seven days later.

The district court had concluded that the regulations were not imposed for any real medical purpose. Thus, it held, they imposed an “undue burden” (also called a “substantial obstacle”) on the right to choose abortion in Texas. The Fifth Circuit panel, however, reversed that judgment.

Justice Stephen Breyer noted that a colonoscopy (which doesn’t need to be done in an ASC) is 28 times more dangerous than a pre-viability abortion.

“If … this law is upheld,” Verrilli told the Court, “what you will be saying is that this right exists only in theory.”

Bennett, a former Netanyahu aide turned rival, said he was taking the dramatic step to prevent yet another election. While sharing Netanyahu's nationalist ideology, Bennett said there was no feasible way for the hard-line right wing to form a governing majority in parliament.

He urged nationalist politicians who have joined the coalition talks not to establish what he called a "leftist government.

Each of the past four elections was seen as a referendum on Netanyahu — who has become a polarizing figure as he stands trial on corruption charges — with each ending in deadlock.

If his opponents fail to form a government and new elections are triggered, it would give him another chance at seeing the election of a parliament that is in favor of granting him immunity from prosecution. But if they succeed, he would find himself in the much weaker position of opposition leader and potentially find himself facing unrest in his Likud party.

In order to form a government, a party leader must secure the support of a 61-seat majority in parliament. Because no single party controls a majority on its own, coalitions are usually built with smaller partners.

But with Wednesday's deadline looming, negotiations have kicked into high gear. Lapid has reached coalition deals with three other parties so far. If he finalizes a deal with Bennett, the remaining partners are expected to quickly fall into place.

However, if both Democratic candidates win, the parties will be evenly split in the upper chamber, allowing Vice President-elect Kamala HarrisKamala HarrisBiden says GOP senators have called to congratulate him Biden says family will avoid business conflicts Biden says China must play by 'international norms' MORE to cast a tie-breaking vote on legislation.

Democrat the Rev. Raphael Warnock holds a lead over GOP Sen. Kelly LoefflerKelly LoefflerTop Senate GOP super PAC raises million ahead of Georgia runoffs Republican senators introduce bill to protect government workers from being targeted at home Republicans scramble to counter calls to boycott Georgia runoffs MORE (Ga.) in a poll of one of two Georgia runoff races that will determine the balance of the Senate.

Warnock leads Loeffler 52 percent to 45 percent

Democrat John Ossoff is narrowly leading Sen. David PerdueDavid PerdueRepublican senators introduce bill to protect government workers from being targeted at home Republicans scramble to counter calls to boycott Georgia runoffs Georgia Republicans push for photo ID for future absentee voting MORE (R-Ga.) 50 percent to the Republican’s 48 percent in the state’s other runoff election that will take place in January.

White voters in the Peach State gave Perdue a 43-point lead and Loeffler a 37-point lead, according to the poll.

Among Black voters, Ossoff led in his runoff race with an 87-point advantage and Warnock with an 83-point advantage.  

the answer was no, but perhaps only because so many people said so.

The Republican members, William Hartmann and Monica Palmer, said they were concerned about small discrepancies between the number of votes cast in some precincts and the number of people precinct officials recorded as having voted.

After intense backlash, both from election watchdogs and from voters whom Representatives Debbie Dingell and Rashida Tlaib organized to call in to the canvassing board’s meeting, Mr. Hartmann and Ms. Palmer voted to certify the results after all.

Is this sort of dispute normal?In a word, no.

This is basically an accounting task. If the canvassers find possible errors, it is their job to look into and resolve them, but refusing to certify results based on minor discrepancies is not normal.

The Trump campaign has filed a slew of legal challenges in Michigan and other states, but the courts have repeatedly rejected its arguments.

It is also highly abnormal to suggest, as Ms. Palmer did, that canvassers certify the results in one place but not another when there is no meaningful difference between the two in terms of the number or severity of discrepancies.

Before the deadlock was resolved, Ms. Palmer had proposed certifying the results in “the communities other than the city of Detroit.” As Democrats and election law experts noted, nearly 80 percent of Detroit residents are Black

it is extremely rare for members to decline to certify an election that their party lost.

Section 168.822 of Michigan’s election laws says that if a county board fails to certify results, the state board “shall meet immediately and make the necessary determinations and certify the results” within 10 days.

Under federal law, election experts say, a state legislature could potentially step in and appoint electors in a disputed presidential election.

First, the election is not legitimately disputed. Mr. Biden won multiple battleground states by clear margins.

“It’s hard to ignore the potentially racially motivated actions of at least one of the canvassers,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in an interview shortly before the board’s reversal, adding that her group was exploring “all legal avenues” if Republicans continued to disrupt the certification process.

Second, even if Republican state legislators appointed a pro-Trump slate, a Democratic governor could step in and appoint a pro-Biden slate.

The Republican leader of the Michigan Senate has said that the Legislature will not name its own electors.

Several election lawyers said last week that federal law would favor the slate appointed by the governor, including if Congress deadlocked. Congress could also, in theory, toss out Michigan’s electoral votes altogether.

If Congress did that, or if it chose the Republican slate against the will of a state’s voters, the country would be in constitutional crisis territory.

Regardless of the outcome, the fact that the Trump campaign and other Republicans have managed to inject so much chaos into what should be formalities shows how much disruption is possible in the systems that undergird the democratic process.

In other words: The system wasn’t designed for this.

A lesson of the Trump era has been that much of American democracy is built not on laws but on norms, which persist by common consent. The episode in Michigan is an example of what can happen when the consent stops being common.

The extra resources are an acknowledgment, U.S. officials say, that the war can’t be won without a greater level of American involvement.

intense Islamic State fire from the small but strategically important village of Al-Nasr, about 40 miles to the south. It was a reminder, said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman, that “we’ve got a foot on his neck but he’s still got some fight in him."

We have to pause, reset a bit and do some things.”

U.S. officials say they have seen no fallout yet from the fracas in Baghdad, but don’t rule out that there could be one if the political instability continues.

One major effort for which the United States needs Turkish engagement is a faltering offensive against the Islamic State in the northern Syrian countryside of Aleppo province, bordering Turkey.

Cutting the Islamic State’s vital supply route to Turkey is considered an essential prerequisite for any eventual offensive to retake Raqqa.

The recent resumption of fighting around the nearby city of Aleppo has come as a fresh reminder that the war in Syria will continue to draw resources away from the Islamic State fight. Peace talks in Geneva aimed at ending the conflict have deadlocked, eroding hopes that a political solution is in sight.

It was repelled, however, only with the help of intense U.S. airstrikes, underscoring the vital role the United States plays in securing recaptured territory.

But were you to remove that air power and the capabilities the Americans bring, I could imagine them making gains again on the ground.”

Mr. Van der Bellen encouraged supporters to get colleagues, friends and family out for what he said was a vote with huge implications for Austria’s future. He urged voters to support “an open, Europe-friendly, Europe-conscious Austria.”

Mr. Hofer, by contrast, addressed thousands of supporters at a boisterous two-hour rally in one of his party’s Vienna strongholds. He stressed that he welcomed foreigners and migrants to Austria, but only if they obeyed its laws.

Mr Trump holds a commanding lead and is closing in on the nomination

Several senior Republicans said on Wednesday they would not back him, with some saying they would prefer to vote for Mrs Clinton.

Ted Cruz's withdrawal from the race on Tuesday night meant John Kasich's long-shot path to the nomination - deadlocked delegates in a contested convention turning to him as a compromise candidate - was definitively closed.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz dropped out of the race on Tuesday after losing heavily to Mr Trump in the Indiana primary.

Mr. Trump is about to welcome Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, for an extravagant three-day visit

visit that will be closely monitored in China.

president’s commitment to a mutual defense treaty with Japan, which surfaced during the campaign

Mr. Trump said he was prepared to pull back from the pact unless Tokyo did more to reimburse the United States for defending Japanese territory.

Mr. Tillerson specifically rejected the idea, advanced by Mr. Trump, that Taiwan be used as a bargaining chip in a broader negotiation with China on trade, security and other issues.

Relations between Washington and Beijing had been frozen since December, when Mr. Trump took a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen

has not had diplomatic relations with Taiwan since 1979

He also said he “looks forward to working with President Xi to develop a constructive relationship that benefits both the United States and China.”

“This letter means they’re looking for creative ways to stabilize this relationship when Trump and Xi can’t talk due to differences over Taiwan policy,”

Mr. Tillerson, officials said, suggested that Mr. Trump publicly reaffirm his commitment to the One China policy as a way of breaking the deadlock and getting the two presidents back on the phone.

conversation last week with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia turned contentious when Mr. Turnbull urged Mr. Trump to honor an agreement made under Mr. Obama to accept 1,250 refugees from an offshore detention center.

the fact that Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi had not talked since Mr. Trump took office in January has drawn increasing scrutiny.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump advocated a 45 percent tariff on Chinese exports to the United States, complaining that China manipulated the value of its currency.

Jared Kushner, who is a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, met with Mr. Cui before the embassy event, part of a blossoming dialogue between the two men.

relationships between some of Mr. Trump’s advisers and leading Chinese companies with close links to the Communist Party may also be strengthening ties.

The fact that they continue to talk means these are serious discussions. Where this goes, what’s the likely outcome, I think it’s really way too early to predict.”

In contrast to previous rounds of Israeli-Palestinian talks, little has leaked from the negotiating room.

Recent polls show scant optimism on the street. Palestinians are split, with 47 percent supporting the resumption of negotiations and 49 percent opposed, according to a September survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research; 70 percent think they will not lead to an agreement. Sixty-one percent of Israeli Jews back the talks, according to the Israel Democracy Institute’s Peace Index published this month, but 81 percent see no real chance of a deal.

“the negotiations are difficult but they haven’t reached a deadlock.”

“For both sides the current situation is very, very comfortable,” Mr. Beilin said. “All of us are playing the game. Many meetings, very serious, good relationship, all issues are on the agenda, fighting the lunatics on both sides, and it’s beautiful. The only problem is that there will be an end to it in the coming months, and the admission of failure might be devastating.” <img src="http://meter-svc.nytimes.com/meter.gif"/>

The judge scheduled conferences Thursday to "discuss a new trial date," indicating that he expects prosecutors to try Porter again. Williams gave Porter the option to appear Thursday, but he declined.

During arguments, prosecutors focused on what they said was Porter's failure to take care of Gray while he was in custody by not getting him medical care or buckling his seatbelt.

Porter, who took the stand in his defense, said that Gray was "unable to give me a reason for a medical emergency" and that it was not his duty to fasten the seatbelts of people who have been arrested in the van.

"In the coming days, if some choose to demonstrate peacefully to express their opinion, that is their constitutional right," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. "In the case of any disturbance in the city, we are prepared to respond. We will protect our neighborhoods, our businesses and the people of our city."

And in the meantime, Baltimore worked to rebuild and remember.

"With the eyes of the world on Baltimore City, we must ensure that any protests that take place are peaceful, and we must ensure that the process of healing our community continues. We must continue to channel our emotions into strong, positive change, so that, as a city, we truly see our young men of color before it is too late," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, said in a statement. "This is the road to more equal justice in our community."

"I think it went botched, I don't feel as if the prosecution was at tight as it needed to be by virtue of the fact that the jury still had a whole lot of unanswered questions," he said. "To be clear that they were deadlocked on all four charges and got no clarity or consensus on any of them. So I hope that in this retrial they'll be more clear about how it is they present the case."

ers should remain calm. He described the mistrial as "a bump on the road to justice."

In early 2013, a few months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school, a Yale psychologist created an experiment to test how political bias affects our reasoning skills. Dan Kahan was attempting to understand why public debates over social problems remain deadlocked, even when good scientific evidence is available. He decided to test a question about gun control.

Then Kahan ran the same test again. This time, instead of evaluating skin cream trials, participants were asked to evaluate whether a law banning citizens from carrying concealed firearms in public made crime go up or down. The result: when liberals and conservatives were confronted with a set of results that contradicted their political assumptions, the smartest people were barely more likely to arrive at the correct answer than the people with no math skills at all. Political bias had erased the advantages of stronger reasoning skills.

The reason that measurable facts were sidelined in political debates was not that people have poor reasoning skills, Kahan concluded. Presented with a conflict between holding to their beliefs or finding the correct answer to a problem, people simply went with their tribe.

It wasa reasonable strategy on the individual level – and a “disastrous” one for tackling social change, he concluded.

But the biggest distortion in the gun control debate is the dramatic empathy gap between different kinds of victims. It’s striking how puritanical the American imagination is, how narrow its range of sympathy. Mass shootings, in which the perpetrator kills complete strangers at random in a public place, prompt an outpouring of grief for the innocent lives lost. These shootings are undoubtedly horrifying, but they account for a tiny percentage of America’s overall gun deaths each year.

The roughly 60 gun suicides each day, the 19 black men and boys lost each day to homicide, do not inspire the same reaction, even though they represent the majority of gun violence victims. Yet there are meaningful measures which could save lives here – targeted inventions by frontline workers in neighborhoods where the gun homicide rate is 400 times higher than other developed countries, awareness campaigns to help gun owners in rural states learn about how to identify suicide risk and intervene with friends in trouble.

When it comes to suicide, “there is so much shame about that conversation … and where there is shame there is also denial,”

When young men of color are killed, “you have disdain and aggression,” fueled by the type of white supremacist argument which equates blackness with criminality.

Men and women, for the APA, are not intrinsically or naturally different: “When researchers strip away stereotypes and expectations, there isn’t much difference in the basic behaviors of men and women.” As you keep reading, you begin to realize just how saturated psychology has now become with critical gender theory, and its profound rejection of anything we might call “nature.”

Because biology has no influence on sex and gender at all, and testosterone is thereby irrelevant in understanding the psychological nature of men (it is never mentioned in the report), everything is a social construct, and social constructs — a function of patriarchy and white supremacy — can be changed. “If we can change men,” one psychologist tellingly admits, “we can change the world.” If this sounds more like a political project than a guide to therapy, you’re not wrong

What is TMI? The definition varies throughout the document

Here’s one such definition: “anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.” Just weigh that list for a minute — and how expansive it is. Men are exhibiting a dangerous ideology when they seek to “achieve” things, when they risk their lives or fortunes, when they explore unfamiliar territory — and these character traits are interchangeable with violence

As you read the guidelines, you realize that the APA believes that psychologists should be informing men that what they might think is their nature is actually just a set of social constructs that hurt them, murders thousands, and deeply wounds the society as a whole.

There are indeed issues that men today need a help with, and emotional repression is definitely part of it. Aspects of maleness — aggression without virtue, glorification of violence, difficulties with communication and collaboration — are worth understanding better if men are to grapple with an economic and social environment where they are increasingly being left behind.

When you think of the last two Democratic presidents, Bill and Barack, you see the same thing: They both have charisma and, yes, likability, that they deployed to get elected and reelected. That’s how Kennedy beat Nixon; it’s how Reagan defeated Carter. And this is not a gendered thing

When I think back to the modern Democrats who lost, they all have something in common. They regard their unlikability as a kind of achievement, proof that they can win on substance alone, that the media is obsessed with trivia, and that most people are dumb and easily bamboozled.

But the Europeans say they will discuss the Trump administration’s concerns only after the bloc receives a permanent, unconditional exemption from the tariffs. They regard the tariffs as illegal under global rules.“We will not negotiate under threat,” the commission said in the statement Tuesday.

“There is huge frustration with the way the administration is doing business,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director in London for Eurasia Group, a consultancy.

Economists say the biggest danger to the global economy is not so much the tariffs as the insecurity they sow among business managers trying to plan where to buy or sell products that contain steel or aluminum. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Big metals consumers like auto manufacturers and construction firms have been stockpiling supplies, girding for a disruptive trade war. “As a result, there is a visible surge in steel prices in the U.S., which negatively affects manufacturing and many other sectors,” said Max Finne, assistant professor of operations management at the University of Warwick in Britain.Mr. Trump’s provocative approach has fueled anxiety in Europe that the long-awaited economic recovery is losing momentum. The threat of a trade war adds to a list of risks that are making businesses less willing to invest and create jobs, including the imminent end of European Central Bank stimulus, Britain’s planned exit from the bloc and political deadlock in Italy.

The European Union regards the planned tariffs on steel and aluminum as a violation of international treaties and has already complained to the World Trade Organization, normally the arbiter of trade disputes. The complaint lays the groundwork for the bloc to impose retaliatory tariffs on a long list of American products — including bluejeans, bourbon and Harley-Davidson motorcycles — as early as mid-June.

The Obama administration pursued such an agreement for years, but it was largely moribund even before Mr. Trump took office, in part because of popular opposition in Germany.

Europe would be happy to cooperate with the United States to press China on issues such as protection of intellectual property. But in the current climate it seems unlikely that the European Union and United States are capable of joining forces.“The way Trump is going about it may not be the most effective, but he’s put it on the agenda. There is some sympathy for that,” Mr. Rahman said. “But it’s very difficult. The process seems completely broken.”

Trump’s administration has suggested that it sees nuclear weapons as useful against “non-nuclear strategic attacks” on U.S. infrastructure, perhaps including cyber or terrorist attacks.

It proposes two new nuclear-capable systems.

Neither weapon is needed to deter potential adversaries, and would instead raise the risk of the use of a nuclear weapon—whether because an adversary thinks it is being attacked or whether a U.S. president thinks he has to order an attack. As it stands, the Pentagon and the Department of Energy, the institutions that would handle the warhead changes, will struggle to find the funding or the manpower to meet existing modernization requirements. New programs would only compound this uncertainty and endanger core nuclear-modernization priorities. Moreover, developing new warheads creates an unpalatable choice: They will either be deployed without a test or with a test. Both options are bad. Lastly, the draft NPR asserts that its program proposals are affordable, but avoids making fiscal trade-offs between different military priorities. Yet Congress will have to ask whether new nuclear weapons programs are really worth the money, given that there is still no plan to pay the $1.2-trillion bill for nuclear weapons over the next 30 years.

Even as the Trump administration is proposing expanding U.S. nuclear capabilities, it is subverting traditional mechanisms for controlling them.

Today, an astonishing 58 percent of Americans lack confidence in the president’s judgment with the nuclear arsenal. It is difficult to believe that Congress or the American public will quietly acquiesce to a major expansion of U.S. nuclear capabilities and missions. Yet, without concerted pressure, the Trump Nuclear Posture Review will abandon U.S. leadership to reduce nuclear risks and instead follow our adversaries into a world where nuclear competition is commonplace.

He said the Democrats still want something tangible on DACA but said it was problematic because it could run into the February 8 funding deadline.

Earlier Sunday, Trump called for Senate Republicans to change the chamber's rules to resolve the funding impasse as the government shutdown continued into its second day. He tweeted a call for McConnell to invoke the so-called "nuclear option" and thereby remove leverage for Senate Democrats.

When James returned from Ireland in the summer of 1690 he was intent on preparing an invasion of England across the Channel from Normandy. Energetically supported by the leading Jacobites in exile, his negotiations with Louis XIV resulted in the major Franco-Jacobite invasion attempt of June 1692

James calculated, correctly, that these three ingredients would stimulate loyalty and attract visitors to his Court – whether Jacobites already in exile, others impatiently awaiting his return to England, or the many French courtiers who, like Louis XIV himself, regularly made the short journey from Versailles to Saint-Germain

James’s optimism remained with him throughout the period 1690-92, particularly when his able and devoted Secretary of State, the Earl of Melfort, rejoined him from a lengthy embassy to Rome at the end of 1691

He wrote to Louis XIV, blaming himself for bringing bad luck to the French fleet and offering to leave France, so that Louis’ military and naval successes could be resumed. The King of France kindly rejected his offer

Religious nonconformity had been illegal in France since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, so James had to be cautious. He knew perfectly well that Louis had strong feelings on the subject, and that he had refused to allow Anglican and other Protestant services to be held openly, even within the Château de Saint-Germain

The disappointment which James  had experienced in 1692 was repeated in 1696. At the end of February, James left Saint-Germain and travelled to Calais, where an army had been assembled to invade England

The abortive Assassination Plot, an unauthorised attempt by certain Jacobites to break the deadlock by killing William III, resulted in the cancellation of the planned invasion and James’s return (his third) to Saint-Germain

William III used Louis’ recognition of James III as de jure king of England to renew his war with France, but it was no more than a pretext. All English kings, including William himself, claimed to be the de jure kings of France. During the 1690s, James II had been admitted as a Canon of Tours Cathedral because that was a privilege claimed by the English kings as de jure Counts of Anjou

James II decided to establish in the Chapel Royal at Saint-Germain the devotion known as Bona Morte, a confraternity of people who would meet together to contemplate the Passion of Christ

These medals were intended to remind people that his son was the de jure Prince of Wales, and that one day he would unavoidably become King James III

James wanted to be absolutely sure that Louis XIV would recognise his son as James III when he was dead. He need not have worried. Recognition was in no sense contrary to the Treaty of Ryswick, and Louis already knew that it was his religious duty to recognise the legitimate succession

Louis would become the guardian of both of James’s children, and would recognise his son as James III so long as he remained a Catholic. James II recorded Louis’ side of the agreement in a codicil to his will, dated March 5th

In this way it was already settled that Louis would eventually give the same treatment to James III as he was already giving to James II, not in September 1701 – an important point which all historians seem to have overlooked

At the end of the year he was distressed to discover that Louis XIV intended to lay off even more Irish troops and wrote unsuccessfully to dissuade him

The letter contained some confidential comments, as one might expect between two brothers, about the Jacobite sympathies of various Scottish noblemen and the chances of persuading France to resume its support for James II’s claims to the British thrones

All that remained was to remind the prince repeatedly that he must continue to be a Catholic if he was to retain and deserve the support of Louis XIV. James finally died on September 16th. Louis’ recognition of James III, as we have seen, had been arranged long before it finally came into effect

It is extraordinary that the last years of any British king, and particularly one whose life is quite well documented, should have received such little attention from generations of British historians

When England terminated the Treaty of Ryswick by declaring war on France in 1702, Louis XIV was able to resume the support of the Stuarts which he could not do while the Treaty remained in force

The circumstances of his death make James II an ideal subject for the study of royal DNA. His remains are more accessible than those of any other British monarch, and thus allow us to determine definitely, one way or the other, if the porphyria gene which was passed down by Mary, Queen of Scots through James I to his daughter Elizabeth, the ‘Winter Queen’ (and from her to the Hanoverians and their descendants today) was also transmitted by Charles I to the later Stuarts, including James III and Bonnie Prince Charlie.

It's pitted the Sunni power, Saudi Arabia, against the Shia power, Iran - with both sides backing different players to wield influence.

But with this stunning resignation, many Lebanese will now fear that their country is firmly in the crosshairs of the two regional superpowers.