Justice Department warns of disaster fraud after Irma, Harvey
September 14th, 20170 WASHINGTON, D.C.—The U.S. Justice Department has received more than 400 fraud complaints involving relief aid after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and expects a spike in fraud complaints in the coming months, department officials said on Thursday. The majority of fraud efforts target the federal government itself as people try to...U.S. extends some Iran sanctions relief under nuclear deal
September 14th, 20170 WASHINGTON, D.C.—The United States on Thursday extended some sanctions relief for Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal, the State Department said, but no decision has been made on whether to preserve the deal itself. At the same time, President Donald Trump said that Iran is violating “the spirit” of the Iran nuclear deal and the...U.S. Appeals Court allows extra airport screening of two Arab American locals
September 14th, 20171 DETROIT — The U.S. government did not violate the Constitutional rights of two Dearborn businessmen, Nasser Beydoun and Maan Bazzi, by routinely subjecting them to extra security screening at airports, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday. Beydoun and Bazzi, both U.S. citizens from Dearborn, accused the government of violating...Trump administration sued over phone searches at U.S. borders
September 13th, 20170 WASHINGTON - The Trump administration has engaged in an unconstitutional practice of searching without a warrant the phones and laptops of Americans who are stopped at the border, a lawsuit filed on Wednesday alleged. Ten U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident sued the Department of Homeland Security in federal court, saying...Irma aims full fury at Florida’s Gulf Coast, floods central Miami
September 10th, 20170 FORT MYERS/MIAMI (Reuters) - Hurricane Irma lashed the Gulf Coast of Florida with the brunt of its fury on Sunday afternoon, knocking out electricity to 2.5 million homes and businesses statewide while flooding streets and swaying skyscrapers in Miami. Hours after barreling across the resort archipelago of the Florida Keys, the storm...U.S. House unanimously approves sweeping self-driving car measure
September 8th, 20170 WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Wednesday, the U.S. House unanimously approved a sweeping proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars without human controls by putting federal regulators in the driver's seat and barring states from blocking autonomous vehicles. The House measure, the first significant federal legislation aimed at...Airlines scramble to evacuate residents ahead of Hurricane Irma
September 8th, 20170 MIAMI — Airlines are racing against the clock to clear as many customers as possible from the likely Florida path of Hurricane Irma, as social and political pressure mounted for carriers to play a bigger role in aiding evacuations. As the powerful storm threatened to rip through the Florida coast by Sunday, airlines ramped up the...Filmmaker Michael Moore says Trump will ‘get us all killed’
September 7th, 20170 NEW YORK — Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore is trading screen time for the stage in a one-man show now on Broadway that is a call to action over the current state of U.S. politics. The show, “The Terms of My Surrender”, uses Moore’s satirical brand of humor to target President Trump and encourage liberals to turn resentment...From Michigan to Texas: Harvey victims find refuge among Arab and Muslim Americans
September 7th, 20170 HOUSTON, DEARBORN — Striding strenuously down a freeway, mostly mothers and their children were knee deep in water, making the journey away from their drowned homes. They carried on their shoulders only what they could save. The water rose so fast that few families in Southeast Texas were left unthreatened by Hurricane Harvey's...George and Amal Clooney give $1 million to combat U.S. hate groups
September 6th, 20170 LOS ANGELES - Actor George Clooney and his humanitarian lawyer wife, Amal Clooney, have donated $1 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a U.S. non-profit that monitors extremists and domestic hate groups, in response to protests in Charlottesville, Virginia earlier this month. An Aug. 12 rally in the town organized by neo-Nazis...DOJ: No evidence Obama wiretapped Trump
September 3rd, 20170 WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department said it had no evidence to support the unsubstantiated claim made in March by President Donald Trump that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had ordered a wiretap of Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential campaign. There has never been any evidence to support Trump’s assertion on Twitter that...UN rights chief: Trump attacks on freedom of press may incite violence against journalists
August 30th, 20170 GENEVA - President Donald Trump’s criticism of journalists amounts to an attack on the freedom of the press and could provoke violence against reporters, the United Nations’ human rights chief said on Wednesday. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said Trump had also made worrying remarks about women, Mexicans and Muslims and went on to...Confederate battle flag sales boom after Charlottesville clash
August 30th, 20170 Demand for Confederate flags at Chris Ackerman’s Civil War memorabilia shop in Pennsylvania has surged since violence at a white nationalist rally in Virginia this month reignited the United States’ debate over race and the legacy of slavery. The trend has been similar for other sellers of the Confederate battle flag, retailers...ACLU: ICE plans to start destroying records of immigrant abuse, including sexual assault and deaths in custody
August 29th, 20170 The ALCU reported on Monday, Aug. 28 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently asked the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), which instructs federal agencies on how to maintain records, to approve its timetable for retaining or destroying records related to its detention operations. This may seem like a...Iran rejects U.S. demand for inspection of military sites: In your dream
August 29th, 20170 NEW YORK - Iran has dismissed a U.S. demand for U.N. nuclear inspectors to visit its military bases as “merely a dream” as Washington reviews a 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and six world powers, including the United States. President Donald Trump has called the nuclear pact - negotiated under his predecessor Barack Obama -......
Mosques stay open to aid Harvey victims, while Texas’ largest megachurch closes doors
August 29th, 20172 HOUSTON — A megachurch in Houston is facing a firestorm of criticism for closing its doors in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, which has caused catastrophic flooding and forced thousands to leave their homes. An announcement on Facebook said Pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church had shut due to the storm and asked people to pray...Charlottesville shrouds divisive Confederate statues in black cloth
August 23rd, 20170 CHARLOTTESVILLE- To applause from spectators, workers in Charlottesville, Virginia, covered two statues of Confederate generals with black tarpaulins on Wednesday in honor of the woman who was killed during a rally by white nationalists in the liberal-leaning college town. City councilors voted unanimously to cover the monuments......
Charlottesville to cover Confederate statues after chaotic meeting
August 22nd, 20170 CHARLOTTESVILLE- City council members in Charlottesville, Virginia, voted unanimously on Tuesday to cover two statues of Confederate war generals in black fabric after ejecting spectators from a chaotic council meeting as residents demanded answers over how a recent white nationalist rally turned deadly. Many activists and local...Militant allies: U.S. forces to stay in Syria for decades
August 20th, 20170 AIN ISSA, SYRIA — Washington's main Syrian ally in the fight against ISIS says the U.S. military will remain in northern Syria long after the jihadists are defeated, predicting enduring ties with the Kurdish-dominated region. The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of militias dominated by the Kurdish YPG,...Boston march against hate speech avoids Charlottesville chaos
August 20th, 20170 Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Boston on Saturday to protest a "free speech" rally featuring far-right speakers a week after a woman was killed at a Virginia white-supremacist demonstration. Rally organizers had invited several far-right speakers who were confined to a small pen that police set up in the historic...White supremacist rally stopped in Virginia after factions clash
August 12th, 20170 CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - White supremacists clashed with counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Saturday, prompting the governor to declare an emergency and stop a rally to protest the planned removal of a Confederate general from a public park. Fighting broke out in the city's downtown before noon when hundreds of......
Trump vows to ‘win’ against opioid epidemic, offers no new steps
August 9th, 20170 BRIDGEWATER, N.J. - President Trump promised to win the fight against a U.S. epidemic of opioid drug use, but offered no new steps to do so and did not act on a recommendation made by a presidential commission that he declare a national emergency. Trump spoke at an event he had billed as a "major briefing" on the opioid crisis during a...Minnesota governor calls mosque bombing ‘act of terrorism’
August 7th, 20170 St. Paul ― Minnesota's governor called the bombing of a mosque outside Minneapolis the previous day "an act of terrorism" during a visit to the site on Sunday. Police in Bloomington, Minnesota, were called on Saturday at 5:05 a.m. local time about an explosion at the Dar Al Farooq mosque, after a bomb was thrown through the window of......
Trump declares major disaster in Michigan following severe flooding in June
August 4th, 20170 MICHIGAN — On August 2, President Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Michigan, which makes federal disaster funding available to the areas harmed by severe storms and flooding from June 22 to June 27. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced the availability of assistance, which will aid Bay, Gladwin,...New U.S. student loan system to be in place in 2019: Education Department
August 2nd, 20170 WASHINGTON- A whole new student loan servicing and processing system will be up and running in 2019, the U.S. Education Department said on Tuesday, as it formally unveiled its plan to overhaul the current $1.3 trillion program. The department, led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, announced its intention to change student-loan servicing in May......