Author: News Desk

Hong Kong students, many wearing banned black masks, chanted slogans at their graduation at the Chinese University on Thursday, with some holding up banners urging “Free Hong Kong, Revolution Now”. The students defied a ban on masks that the government imposed last month in a bid to curb sometimes violent unrest that has rocked the Chinese-ruled city for more than five months. Dressed in formal graduation gowns, many of about 1,000 students chanted as they walked to the hill-top ceremony, near the New Territories town of Sha Tin, calling for the government to respond to protesters’ “five demands, not one…

U.S. congressional committees conducting an impeachment investigation of President Donald Trump are due to hear for the first time on Thursday from a top adviser to Vice President Mike Pence, one of the last witnesses to testify behind closed doors before public hearings start next week. The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees have called Jennifer Williams, a career foreign service officer and special adviser to Pence for Europe and Russia, to testify behind closed doors on Thursday morning. Lawmakers will look to Williams for information about how much Pence knew about efforts by Trump and those…

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday the United States was not fulfilling its pledge to remove a Kurdish militia from a Syrian border region and he will raise the issue when he meets President Donald Trump next week. A month ago, Turkey launched a cross-border offensive with Syrian rebels against Kurdish YPG fighters. After seizing control of a 120-km (75-mile) swathe of territory, it reached a deal with the United States to keep them out of that area. Erdogan is set to discuss implementation of the agreement with Trump in Washington on Nov. 13, after confirming that the visit…

This puppy got his happy ending after all. While photographing the aftermath from last week’s raid on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi — which resulted in his death — Syrian photojournalist Fared Alhor stumbled across a puppy who appeared to be in distress. “I turned around and, accidentally, I saw a puppy standing next to his mom,” Alhor, who posted photos on his Twitter account which showed the young pup standing near the body of its mother, who did not survive, told. “He was howling and sounded sad.” After playing with the puppy in an effort to help him feel better, Alhor enquired…

The chorus of Bronx cheers from New York officials at the news that President Donald Trump changed his primary residence to Florida was confirmation of what friends and advisers have said for months: Resuming his former life in Manhattan would be impossible. But Trump’s decision to shift his home base to his resort in Palm Beach, which a person close to the president said was primarily to escape New York taxes, also comes at a time when the president has been disengaged from daily operations at the Trump Organization, which he once ran from Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Trump…

Donald Trump a Florida man? Not so fast. Despite a stinging “good riddance” tweet from New York’s governor, the president’s home state may not let him go to Florida without a fight. Trump’s plan to shift his permanent residence to Palm Beach will likely be heavily scrutinized by New York state officials, who are notorious for auditing wealthy residents seeking to flee to lower-tax states to make sure such moves are real and not just on paper. Those cases can go on for years. “New York says just because you fill out a piece of paper, that doesn’t make you…

Twitter Inc’s <TWTR.N> decision to scrap political advertising will have little effect on the re-election campaign of U.S. President Donald Trump, the candidate who spent the most on digital ads in the 2020 election, a Trump campaign official said on Thursday. “I never love when a channel, a pipe, is turned off because it eliminates an opportunity,” the senior official told reporters on a conference call the day after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced the ban. “But it won’t significantly impact us.” The Trump campaign and its backers have spent just over $6,000 promoting an official @TeamTrump Twitter account for…

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s quest to be judged as a candidate by the enemies she makes got a boost this week from hedge fund mogul Leon Cooperman, who sent her a five-page letter complaining that she doesn’t know anything about billionaires, or him in particular. “However much it resonates with your base, your vilification of the rich is misguided,” Cooperman, whose fortune has been estimated at over $3 billion, wrote to Warren, in a letter made public Thursday afternoon. He said the Massachusetts Democrat, who is running for president on a platform that includes a wealth tax on large fortunes, has “demonstrated a…

American Jose Torres will have the biggest professional bout of his life in less than two weeks, as he looks to become the first-ever BRAVE CF Flyweight world champion at BRAVE CF 29, set for November 15th, at the Khalifa Sports City Arena, in Bahrain. Before he takes on Marcel Adur for the belt, however, Jose wants to make sure he inspires the youth in his home country of the United States and in Bahrain too. Torres is not ashamed to say that martial arts saved him from a future with no prospects, as he was in a dangerous neighborhood…

They were meant to be futuristic marvels, allowing thrill-seeking tourists to feel like they were walking on air. But China’s growing obsession with glass bridges may be coming to an abrupt end, after a series of accidents led one province to close down all its glass-bottomed attractions. Hebei, a scenic mountainous province in northern China, has quietly closed all 32 of its glass bridges, walkways and mountain viewing platforms over the past year for safety reasons, according to Chinese state media CCTV. Among the attractions that have been closed is Hongyagu glass bridge, which until recently held the title of the…