2019: NEW YEAR – NEW CONTENT – FRESH NEWS
The death toll from a fiery explosion at the site of an illegally tapped fuel line in central Mexico rose Sunday to 79, officials said. Hundreds of people had been drawn to the site in the state of Hidalgo on Friday to gather fuel amid shortages and a government crackdown on pipeline fuel thefts. The cause of the explosion is under investigation, Attorney General Alejandro Gertz told a news conference
Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa broke off a foreign tour Sunday, saying he wanted his country "calm, stable and working again" as criticism grew over a brutal crackdown in response to protests. Mnangagwa appeared to take a more conciliatory approach than his spokesman George Charamba, who said the crackdown was "just a foretaste of things to come", as allegations mount up of shootings, beatings and abductions of opposition figures, activists and ordinary people. The security forces' operation has underlined fears of a return to the violent repression of Robert Mugabe, who was ousted from power by the military 14 months ago.
The Zimbabwean government says the security forces' response to this week's protests in which 15 people reportedly died is just "a foretaste of things to come".
Reality, as I progressively found out, was less pretty. The EU coopted too many too quickly, and made too many “in-but-not-totally-in” concessions. As shown in the EU Members List, Denmark and Sweden keep their own currency (in both cases the krona, same name but not the same), as do Hungary (the forint) and Poland (the zloty). This shows a lack of what jurists felicitously call affectio societatis: “the common will of several legal persons or legal entities to merge into one entity.”
LAST year, Real Housewives executive producer Andy Cohen noticed Donald Trump using so many pot-stirring tactics from the Bravo franchise that he began cataloguing them on Twitter. When the president used social media to cancel a White House invitation that N.B.A. champion Stephen Curry had not yet officially rejected, Cohen tweeted, “HOUSEWIVES PLAYBOOK: rescind invitations liberally! (See: Bethenny re LuAnn, Mexico; Bethenny & Ramona, Mexico).” Trump’s post-election digs about Hillary? “Keep bringing up fights from last season.” Trump’s excuse for not immediately calling Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto following an earthquake? “Blame cell-phone reception.” Trump’s suggestion that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign colluded with the Russians? Tossing out bogus statements in desperate pleas “to stay on the show,” Cohen wrote.
Brexit can be described using a “submarine out of cheese” analogy, believes Harvard Professor Yascha Mounk. The lecturer on Government at Harvard University also commented on how the British media and political class have “closed their eyes” to the “predictable mess” that’s occurred over the last two years. Mr Mounk told France 24: “It’s a strange thing in politics where it can seem for a long time fundamental laws of logic don’t apply. So for years you can go on as if it didn’t apply and people start to believe that the laws of logic don’t apply, and then suddenly they all come home to roost.
Drugs from Mexico are primarily smuggled into the U.S. at official border crossings, not remote lands that can be walled off. His proposal to end the government shutdown implicitly recognizes that reality by proposing money to improve drug-detection technology specifically at land ports of entry. Even so, Trump pitched a wall as a solution to drugs and crime.
