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Category: Politics

Cops worked to put serial sex abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, in prison. Prosecutors worked to cut him a break

Cops worked to put serial sex abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, in prison. Prosecutors worked to cut him a break

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The Miami Herald reports: Long before #MeToo became the catalyst for a women’s movement about sexual assault — and a decade before the fall of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and U.S. Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar — there was Jeffrey Edward Epstein. Epstein, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager whose friends included a constellation of entertainers, politicians, business titans and royalty, for years lured teenage girls to his Palm Beach mansion as part of a cult-like sex pyramid scheme, police in…

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Even from jail, sex abuser, Jeffrey Edward Epstein, manipulated the system. His victims were kept in the dark

Even from jail, sex abuser, Jeffrey Edward Epstein, manipulated the system. His victims were kept in the dark

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The Miami Herald reports: Jeffrey Edward Epstein appeared at his sentencing dressed comfortably in a blue blazer, blue shirt, jeans and gray sneakers. His attorney, Jack Goldberger, was at his side. At the end of the 68-minute hearing, the 55-year-old silver-haired financier — accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls — was fingerprinted and handcuffed, just like any other criminal sentenced in Florida. But inmate No. W35755 would not be treated like other convicted sex offenders in the state…

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U.S. taxpayers have so far paid an estimated $83 million for Donald Trump’s golfing expenses

U.S. taxpayers have so far paid an estimated $83 million for Donald Trump’s golfing expenses

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Quartz reports: The US Secret Service has allocated more than $90,000 for golf cart rentals in South Florida this winter, ostensibly to protect president Donald Trump while he hits the links. According to federal spending data, the agency is set to pay a Delray Beach company as much as $92,740 between now and June for an unspecified number of “golf cars.” The firm supplying the carts, Maddox Joines Inc., does business as “Sunshine Golf Car” and is a straight 24-mile…

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A world stage for unapologetic murderers

A world stage for unapologetic murderers

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Politico reports: The strongmen are rampaging across the world stage with impunity, and they know it. Only moments after European Council President Donald Tusk used a news conference to urge G20 leaders to address Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Saudi Arabia’s evident disregard for human rights, video footage of the leaders’ arrivals showed Russian President Vladimir Putin slapping hands in jovial fashion with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as they took their seats for the summit’s opening session. It…

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America’s systemic failings

America’s systemic failings

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Julian E. Zelizer writes: The federal government released a devastating report last week documenting the immense economic and human cost that the U.S. will incur as a result of climate change. It warns that the damage to roads alone will add up to $21 billion by the end of the century. In certain parts of the Midwest, farms will produce 75 percent less corn than today, while ocean acidification could result in $230 billion in financial losses. More people will…

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No deal or no Brexit if MPs vote down May plan, says Tusk

No deal or no Brexit if MPs vote down May plan, says Tusk

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The Guardian reports: The European council president, Donald Tusk, has said the UK is prepared to either cancel Brexit or to depart with no deal if MPs vote down the settlement secured by Theresa May with Brussels. Speaking at the G20 summit in Argentina, Tusk said there was no other deal on offer and the only alternatives were remaining in the EU or leave with no deal. “The European Union has just agreed an orderly divorce with the United Kingdom,”…

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Trump Organization planned to give Putin $50 million penthouse in Trump Tower Moscow

Trump Organization planned to give Putin $50 million penthouse in Trump Tower Moscow

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BuzzFeed reports: President Donald Trump’s company planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the company negotiated the luxury real estate development during the 2016 campaign, according to four people, one of them the originator of the plan. Two US law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News that Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time, discussed the idea with a representative of Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary. The Trump Tower Moscow…

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How Donald Trump appeals to men secretly insecure about their manhood

How Donald Trump appeals to men secretly insecure about their manhood

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Eric Knowles and Sarah DiMuccio write: From boasting about the size of his penis on national television to releasing records of his high testosterone levels, President Trump’s rhetoric and behavior exude machismo. His behavior also seems to have struck a chord with some male voters. See, for example, the “Donald Trump: Finally Someone With Balls” T-shirts common at Trump rallies. But our research suggests that Trump is not necessarily attracting male supporters who are as confidently masculine as the president…

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40,000 Syrian refugees remain trapped in U.S.-created no-man’s land

40,000 Syrian refugees remain trapped in U.S.-created no-man’s land

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Rozina Ali writes: After months of negotiations, a convoy of sixty-seven aid trucks recently crossed a stretch of desert in southern Syria controlled by the Syrian government and its Iranian allies, before entering territory administered by a small, U.S.-backed rebel group. The trucks carried food, medicine, and winter coats for a fetid refugee camp known as Rukban, home to some forty thousand civilians who have been trapped in a strip of land wedged between Syria and Jordan, and cut off…

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Europe’s Jew hatred, and ours

Europe’s Jew hatred, and ours

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Bari Weiss writes: Paris. Toulouse. Malmo. Copenhagen. Brussels. Berlin. For most people, they are lovely cities where you might happily take a holiday. But for the world’s Jews, they are something else, too. They are place names of hate. Paris for us doesn’t mean just baguettes and Brie but also this year’s murder of a Holocaust survivor in her apartment in the 11th arrondissement and the 2015 siege of a kosher supermarket during which four people were killed. Toulouse is…

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Trump claims climate change isn’t real. My trip to the top of the world proved otherwise

Trump claims climate change isn’t real. My trip to the top of the world proved otherwise

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Eric Scigliano writes: Thirteen U.S. government agencies have just issued an alarming new report predicting that global warming, if allowed to continue unabated, will shrink the American economy by 10 percent by 2100, amid environmental impacts that are, if anything, even more dire. The White House tried to bury the report by releasing it on Friday during the holiday weekend, and President Donald Trump announced he didn’t “believe it.” But its conclusions are inescapable. One need only travel to the…

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How a future Trump Cabinet member gave serial sex abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, the deal of a lifetime

How a future Trump Cabinet member gave serial sex abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, the deal of a lifetime

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The Miami Herald reports: On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz. It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush. Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in…

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Senate defies White House on Saudi support in Yemen

Senate defies White House on Saudi support in Yemen

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Politico reports: The Senate delivered a stunning rebuke to the Trump administration on Wednesday, voting overwhelmingly to advance a measure yanking U.S. support for Saudi-backed forces at war in Yemen. The 63-37 vote, in which 14 Republicans joined every Democrat in voting to move forward on the bipartisan Saudi resolution, came hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis failed to sway key undecided senators with an appeal to hold off lest they upset progress of…

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Remembering Raed Fares, who believed that Syria would be saved by its people

Remembering Raed Fares, who believed that Syria would be saved by its people

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Iyad el-Baghdadi writes: On Friday, Raed Fares — a Syrian revolutionary, citizen journalist and civil society leader — was assassinated in northern Syria by masked gunmen suspected of being affiliated with al-Qaeda. He was 46 years old. Hammoud Jneed, Raed’s friend and photographer, was also killed. The news came as a gut punch to me and many activists around the world: Raed was a friend, an inspiration, and a teacher. If I am to speak about what he taught me,…

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The Khashoggi killing had roots in a cutthroat Saudi family feud

The Khashoggi killing had roots in a cutthroat Saudi family feud

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David Ignatius writes: Behind the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi lies a power struggle within the Saudi royal family that helped feed the paranoia and recklessness of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Eventually, this rage in the royal court led to the death and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist. The opening scenes of this family feud took place in January 2015 in a VIP hospital suite in Riyadh, as King Abdullah lay on his deathbed. According to a Saudi…

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Russia’s latest attack on the Ukrainians is a warning to the West

Russia’s latest attack on the Ukrainians is a warning to the West

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Anne Applebaum writes: On Saturday evening, three small Ukrainian naval vessels left the Ukrainian port of Odessa and headed for the Ukrainian port of Mariupol. Along the way, they had to pass through the Kerch Strait, a sliver of water that lies between the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula and the Russian mainland. The Ukrainian ships were well within their rights to be there — a similar group of ships went through the strait just a month ago, and a 2003 treaty…

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