U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took lunch orders, served pizza and rocked the cocktail shaker on Friday to promote increased wages for restaurant servers and other tipped workers. The New York Democrat and media sensation, who famously worked as a bartender before getting elected to Congress last year, brought first-hand experience to the debate over the proposed "Raise the Wage Act," which would raise the U.S. minimum wage to $15 an hour and guarantee that minimum for tipped employees. U.S. law exempts restaurants, nail salons and car washes from paying their tipped staff the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, instead creating a "tip credit" of up to $5.12 per hour that allows them to pay as little as $2.13 per hour on the books.
Chicago's top prosecutor gave a new justification in documents released Friday for why she recused herself from the investigation into "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett's claim he was the victim of a hate crime: there were false rumors she was related to Smollett and she didn't want any hint of a conflict of interest. The justification from Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx was contained in 2,000 pages of documents her office released Friday. Foxx says the false rumors circulated as suspicions grew about Smollett's account that he was the victim of a racist, homophobic attack, so she recused herself to avoid "even the perception of a conflict."
Forecasts that populists would score unprecedented gains in elections to the European Parliament proved unfounded, with the center holding and Greens surging. In the U.K., a conservative drubbing in the vote cast a shadow over the parade of hopefuls vying take the place of Prime Minister Theresa May. Elsewhere, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to go to fresh elections after he was unable to form a coalition, while in India, Naredra Modi's thumping election victory has proved costly for the country's oldest political party.
Britain's Border Force has intercepted 74 people, including minors, on eight vessels that were trying to cross the English Channel into Britain. The interceptions came on an exceptionally sunny, warm Saturday for southern Britain. Home Secretary Sajid Javid says the number of migrants attempting to cross the Channel was "deeply concerning," and that he was speaking with his counterparts in France about it.
Twelve people were shot dead, and six injured, as a gunman stormed a public building in Virginia Beach and opened fire indiscriminately in America's latest mass shooting. The gunman, DeWayne Craddock, 40, who also died, was a local utilities engineer formerly employed by the city of Virginia Beach, and was described by police as a "disgruntled employee". “This is the most devastating day in the history of Virginia Beach,” said Virginia Beach Mayor Bobby Dyer.
China will investigate whether FedEx Corp
Veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi was laid to rest Saturday as his son, the president, looked on, following three days of ceremonies honouring his memory. President Felix Tshisekedi was visibly moved as he watched the final ceremony for his father, who died in February 2017 in Brussels at the age of 84. His body was flown back to Kinshasa on Thursday aboard a private jet, ending a protracted battle by his family to secure its repatriation.
Is this why Democrats are fired up about impeachment? American Conservative Union president Matt Schlapp reacts.
According to the internal Monsanto documents Litzenburg has received through discovery, pro-Monsanto narratives are disseminated by individuals and groups that promote the work of journalists who follow Monsanto's desired storylines while seeking to smear and discredit journalists whose work threatens Monsanto. For me, a career journalist who spent 17 years covering Monsanto for the international news agency Reuters, the revelations are not surprising. In 2014, an organization called Academics Review published two scathing articles about my work at Reuters writing about Monsanto's genetically engineered crops and its Roundup herbicide business.
Russia is designing an anti-ship missile for its Su-57 stealth fighter. Deputy Defense Minister Alexey Krivoruchko made the announcement while visiting the Detal Design Bureau, which is developing a new anti-ship missile, according to Russian news agency TASS.
We don't know what higher-performance sedans will be called, but we hear the CT5 has a V-8 and the CT4 has a V-6. From Car and Driver
President Trump's latest effort to crack down on migration at the southern border by imposing punitive tariffs on Mexican goods appears to be driving a wedge between the White House and some of Trump's biggest supporters in the Senate — including immigration hard-liners who ordinarily back him on border security issues. Among Senate Republicans, only Lindsey Graham of South Carolina publicly backed the tariff plan. “I support nearly every one of President Trump's immigration policies, but this is not one of them,” Sen. Chuck Grassley said Thursday evening, shortly after the White House announced its new tariff tactic.
Andrea Leadsom, a prominent Leave campaigner who has thrown her hat in the ring to replace Theresa May as U.K. Prime Minister, has finally unveiled her three-step plan to leave the European Union, according to her commentary in the Sun newspaper. To contact the reporter on this story: Niluksi Koswanage in Singapore at nkoswanage@bloomberg.net For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com ©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Pope Francis braved a rain-soaked, twisting drive through the mountains of Transylvania on Saturday to visit Romania's most famous shrine, urging Romanian and ethnic Hungarian faithful to work together for their future. Storms forced Francis to change his travel plans and add in a three-hour car ride through the Carpathian mountains that he had planned to traverse via helicopter. The steady rains doused the estimated 80,000-100,000 people who gathered for the Mass at the Sumuleu Ciuc shrine, which is dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday disclosed a new problem involving Boeing Co's grounded 737 MAX, saying that more than 300 of that troubled plane and the prior generation 737 may contain improperly manufactured parts and that the agency will require these parts to be quickly replaced. The FAA said up to 148 of the part known as a leading-edge slat track that were manufactured by a Boeing supplier are affected, covering 179 MAX and 133 NG aircraft worldwide. The 737 MAX, Chicago-based Boeing's best-selling jet, was grounded globally in March following a fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash after a similar Lion Air disaster in Indonesia in October.
The longtime Virginia Beach public works employee behind the nation's latest mass shooting put in his two-weeks notice Friday morning, hours before he carried out an attack that killed 12 and wounded four, city officials said Sunday. Virginia Beach city manager Dave Hansen said the shooter's job performance was "satisfactory," he did not face any disciplinary measures before he notified the city that he intended to quit, and he was not fired. "He was in good standing within his department, no issue of discipline ongoing," Hansen said.
Two people were killed and dozens more wounded in Kabul on Sunday as a wave of bombings hit civilian targets -- including a university school bus -- across the Afghan capital. The yellow bus had been heading to Kabul Education University in the western part of the city Sunday morning when it was hit by a sticky bomb -- a growing menace in Kabul, where insurgents and criminals use magnets to slap explosives on vehicles. Initial reports said the bus was carrying university officials, but Kabul police spokesman Firdaws Faramarz later said students had been on board.
It was surprising on Friday to hear Attorney General William Barr use the heroic ethos to explain his decision to spend the twilight of his career obstructing justice. Barr was laughing by the time he got to the part about Homer—genuinely mirthful, unselfconscious laughter, the sort you expect other people to join in with because they're in on the joke.
Mark Episkopos Security, Asia It won't be easy. The Taiwan question has long been in a thorn in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) side. In the decades following the Shanghai communiqué, the CCP's core strategic approach to Taiwan was to bide their time while building up national strength.
Tucked away on the tenth floor of a Hong Kong commercial building sits the world's only museum commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations shut down after Chinese soldiers opened fire on thousands. Museum staffers mill around in black t-shirts: “The People Will Not Forget.” Even three decades later, the crackdown remains one of the most sensitive topics in China, and is still subject to government efforts to erase it from history. The ruling Communist Party continues to resist calls to acknowledge wrongdoing and the number of deaths.
The US is attempting to confirm reports that North Korea has executed its special envoy to America, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said. “We've seen the reporting to which you are referring,” Mr Pompeo told a news conference in Berlin. South Korean media reported that the secretive communist state had executed Kim Hyok-Chol and other foreign ministry workers who steered negotiations for a failed summit between leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump.
A parent reported that a student had videotaped me on his cell phone. So, no doubt if there were a hint of unethical practice — singling a child out for ridicule, touching anyone, or making unreasonable demands — either on the video or in student testimony, my infraction would have been fully detailed. What students apparently objected to was me handing back their papers, hectoring them about language errors. Most of the older students in school know I don't accept "textlish," and they know why — I am panic-stricken for American kids.
It's not often that Thunderbird 2 comes up for sale at £35k ($45k). Well, it's sort of Thunderbird 2... Are you seeking the ultimate head turner?
Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, the space company founded by late billionaire and Microsoft Corp co-founder Paul Allen, is closing operations, cutting short ambitious plans to challenge traditional aerospace companies in a new "space race," four people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The company, a unit of Allen's privately held investment vehicle Vulcan Inc, had been developing a portfolio of launch vehicles including the world's largest airplane by wingspan to launch satellites and eventually humans into space. U.S. government biologists have launched a special investigation into the deaths of at least 70 gray whales washed ashore in recent months along the U.S. West Coast, from California to Alaska, many of them emaciated, officials said on Friday.
A lot has changed for LGBTQ Americans in the 50 years since June 28, 1969, when an uprising in response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Manhattan's West Village neighborhood, kicked off a new chapter of grassroots activism. “We have, since 1969, been trading the same few tales about the riots from the same few accounts — trading them for so long that they have transmogrified into simplistic myth,” Martin Duberman writes in the new preface for the 2019 re-release of his 1994 book Stonewall, widely considered to be the definitive account of Stonewall and the events that followed.