Torpell

California billionaire Tom Steyer has
released an ad as the centerpiece of a $10 million campaign calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment.
“A Republican Congress once impeached a president for far less. And today, people in Congress and his own administration know that this President is a clear and present danger who is mentally unstable and armed with nuclear weapons,” Steyer says in the video, which calls on members of Congress to take steps to remove Trump from office.
Lots of people have called for Trump’s impeachment. What makes Steyer’s campaign different?
Steyer may be relatively unknown to the public, but he loomed large in the 2016 campaign. He was the single biggest spender in 2016 election, after spending more than $75 million to “mobilize millennials for progressive causes,” CBS reported.
Steyer is nothing if not an overachiever.
According to Men’s Journal , he graduated first in his class at Phillips Exeter Academy, then summa cum laude from Yale, where he was also captain of the soccer team. He graduated from Stanford business school, and went on to spend two years at Goldman Sachs . He then founded Farallon Capital, using a multi-faceted, debt-shy approach to make it one of the most successful hedge funds ever created. Forbes puts Steyer’s current net worth at $1.61 billion.
Steyer showed an early interest in politics, serving as a volunteer for the Walter Mondale campaign in the early ’80s. He became a political force in the past 15 years, when students at his two alma maters began critiquing his fund’s investments in firms deemed anti-labor and environmentally unfriendly.
“Behind the scenes, Steyer and his wife [Kat Taylor, who trained as a lawyer] were embarrassed because they were personally committed to social justice and environmental causes,” Men’s Journal reported.
“It was a little flare going off in our minds,” Taylor told the magazine. They thought, “One day we want to be totally aligned. We haven’t earned that moment just yet, but we’re going to get there.”
In 2012, Steyer sold his stake in Farallon and founded NextGen Climate, which this year became NextGen America . Its mission is to “prevent climate disaster, promote prosperity, and protect the fundamental rights of every American,” according to its website.
In 2014, TIME named Steyer one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Former Vice President Al Gore wrote that Steyer was “helping to mobilize young voters and ensure that facts, not antiscience climate denial, have a better chance to prevail in races around the country.”
The impeachment campaign, which is not connected to NextGen, represents a new line of attack for Steyer. The main ad was posted on YouTube last week, and has been viewed over 600,000 times. Commercials have also been running on broadcast stations in New York and California, as well as on cable stations

A Nigerian man, Mayowa Ogunbayo has been found dead in a London flat after being stabbed in the chest.

The 29 year old entertainer and friend of footballer, Mario Balotelli was discovered by paramedics inside his flat in Park Royal, West London and was pronounced dead at the scene.

According to Sun Uk, a post-mortem exam found that he died from a stab wound to the heart.

It was gathered that a 21-year-woman, who was at the scene when officers arrived, has been arrested on suspicion of murder

She was taken to a north London police station.

Mayowa is said to have lived a luxury lifestyle after setting up his own entertainment.

Former US president George H.W. Bush voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and called Donald Trump a “blowhard” who was driven by “a certain ego.”

His son George W. Bush left his ballot blank and said of Trump: “This guy doesn’t know what it means to be president.”

The revelations, contained in historian Mark Updegrove’s “The Last Republicans,” available in bookstores later this month, represent the strongest criticism to date from the Bush clan on why their Republican successor is uniquely unfit to hold office.

“I don’t like him,” the elder Bush told Updegrove in May 2016 before the elections in November of that year, according to excerpts of the book obtained by AFP.

“I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s a blowhard. And I’m not too excited about him being (our) leader.”

While traveling to Tokyo on Air Force One, Trump walked back to the press cabin and responded to the Bushes’ criticism.

“I don’t need headlines. I don’t want to make their move successful,” he said.

‘Doesn’t understand the job’

The younger Bush was skeptical about then-candidate Trump’s chances in a race in which his younger brother Jeb was an early favorite.

“Interesting, won’t last,” was his initial reaction when Trump entered the race.

Once the bombastic billionaire real estate magnate secured the Republican nomination, Bush expressed surprise and worried about Trump’s lack of humility, and thus his inability to recognize his own limitations and surround himself with more knowledgeable people.

“As you know from looking at my family,” Bush said, humility “is a certain heritage, that’s what they expect, and we’re not seeing that” in Trump.

After Trump said, “I’m my own advisor,” Bush quipped: “Wow, this guy really doesn’t understand the job of president.”

The comments are sure to escalate a long-running feud and come after George W. Bush gave a speech last month that condemned bigotry, bullying and lies in US politics in what was widely seen as a broadside against Trump even though the president was not mentioned by name.

The book’s title was inspired by the younger Bush’s concerns that he had been “the last Republican president” — not just because Clinton was seen as favorite to win the election, but because Trump represented a major break from traditional conservatism.

A White House official hit back, telling CNN: “If one presidential candidate can disassemble a political party, it speaks volumes about how strong a legacy its past two presidents really had.”

“And that begins with the Iraq war, one of the greatest foreign policy mistakes in American history,” the official added.

The younger Bush also pushed back hard on the widely-held perception during his time in office that his vice president Dick Cheney and secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld controlled the White House from behind the scenes.

They “didn’t make one fucking decision,” he told Updegrove.

No fewer than 27 people have been killed after a gunman opened fire at a church during Sunday services in United States (U.S.), the police have said.

The attack happened at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, a small town in Wilson County, Texas.

Police official Albert Gamez Jr confirmed the number of fatalities to CBS News.

The gunman, who is reported to have been killed in the aftermath, entered the church and opened fire at around 11:30 local time (17:30 GMT).

"The details are kind of sketchy but what I know right now, what they're telling me, like 27 deceased and over 20, 25 injured," Mr Gamez Jr said.

"They're talking about the shooter is dead also," he added.

About 50 people usually attend the service, locals said. Local media outlets reported that children were among the dead.

Donald Trump, who is on a five-country tour in Asia, tweeted: "May God be w/ the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI & law enforcement are on the scene. I am monitoring the situation from Japan."

Witnesses close to the small church reported hearing a rapid barrage of about 20 shots. Pastor Frank Buford of the neighbouring River Oaks church, just a few blocks away from the scene of the shooting, said relatives of victims had started to congregate at a makeshift community center.

"We're holding up as well as we can – we are a strong community, we are strong in our faith," he told local reporters.

Buford described Sutherland Springs as a close-knit community. "We have a post office, two churches and a dollar store," he said.

His church received word that a shooting was under way at their sister place of worship at about 11.15am local time, he said. "We started praying for everyone involved in it," he said.

The pastor of First Baptist, Frank Pomeroy, and his wife were said to be out of town on Sunday and not present when the shooting happened.

First responders converged on the small town of around 400 people. Television stations KSAT and KENS reported a large police presence. A sheriff's department dispatcher said everyone was at the scene and was unavailable to comment.

KSAT reported that two Airlife helicopters were at the scene and broadcast video of several fire and police vehicles at the church and a photograph of a helicopter that the station said was arriving to take victims to hospitals.

The US mission to Somalia on Saturday urged all of its non-essential staff to leave Mogadishu immediately following a specific threat against them at the capital's international airport.
The warning came just hours after US forces confirmed carrying out their first-ever drone strikes targeting Islamic State (IS) jihadists in the Horn of Africa nation.

"Due to specific threat information against US personnel on the Mogadishu International Airport, the US Mission to Somalia has directed its non-essential US citizen employees to depart Mogadishu until further notice," a statement posted on its website said.

It reiterated warnings that the situation in Somalia was "extremely unstable", saying the threat level against US citizens remained "critical".

In a statement released in Washington late on Friday, the US military's Africa Command (AFRICOM) confirmed the strikes, saying they hit northeastern Somalia and killed "several terrorists".

The first strike occurred around midnight on Thursday (2100 GMT) with the second taking place on Friday morning, some 11 hours later. There were no civilians in the area at the time, a spokesman told AFP.

Quoting an official in the port town of Qandala in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland, a report by Voice of America said six missiles hit an IS base in Buqa village, 60 kilometres (35 miles) away.

In recent months, US forces have repeatedly hit jihadists from the Shabaab rebel group that is aligned with Al-Qaeda, but the drone strikes were the first such strikes targeting IS, the spokesman said.

Several dozen armed men belonging to an IS-linked group briefly seized control of Qandala in October 2016, holding it for around six weeks before Somali forces retook it.

In May this year, the group claimed its first suicide attack in Somalia, killing at least five people in Bosaso, a coastal city some 70 kilometres (45 miles) west of Qandala, as it stepped up activities in a region dominated by the Shabaab.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un a rare message, Pyongyang's official news agency reported Thursday, in his first public communication with his wayward neighbour for more than a year.
The note signalled a possible improvement in their strained relationships, which has soured over Pyongyang's growing weapons ambitions even though Beijing is its longtime ally and economic benefactor.

Xi's message, dated Wednesday, was sent in response to congratulations from Kim last week for securing a second term as the head of China's ruling party.

"I wish that under the new situation the Chinese side would make efforts with the DPRK side to promote the relations between the two parties and the two countries to sustainable soundness and stable development," Xi said, according to the North's KCNA news agency said, addressing Kim as "Comrade Chairman".

In his earlier note, Kim had offered Xi his "sincere congratulations" and expressed his belief that their relations would develop "in the interests of the people of the two countries".

The last time KCNA reported a message from Xi was in July 2016.

Analysts say that such exchanges have become extremely rare under the current leaders, even though Beijing and Pyongyang traditionally sent greetings and congratulations on each other's key anniversaries in the past.

Their relationship was forged in the blood of the Korean War, when Mao Zedong sent millions of "volunteers" to fight US-led United Nations forces to a standstill.

Mao described the allies as close as "lips and teeth", and China has long been accused of failing to enforce United Nations sanctions against the North for its banned nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, even after voting for them in the Security Council.

But Beijing has grown increasingly frustrated by its belligerent neighbour, and rapidly backed a new set of UN measures after a flurry of missile launches by the North and its sixth nuclear test in September.

Professor Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul said the public exchange of messages signalled a willingness on both sides to improve relations.

"The fact that both sides are swiftly trading letters and announcing it carries a symbolic meaning," Yang told AFP.

"If the message was more intimate, we could expect a faster thawing of ties," he added, "but for now, it shows that both sides agree on the need to improve their relations".

The United Nations reported 31 new allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation in three months Friday, with nearly half of those involving staff of the UN refugee agency.
From July to September, there were 12 new cases reported in six peacekeeping missions in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Liberia, Mali and South Sudan.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR reported 15 allegations, while three new cases involved staff at the International Organisation on Migration and one allegation was directed against the UN children's agency UNICEF.

Two cases at UNHCR are under formal investigation, while the others were still being reviewed, according to UN information. In all, 14 investigations have been launched during the three months.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has made fighting sexual abuse by peacekeepers and UN staff a priority of his tenure.

The United Nations has been damaged by a wave of rape cases involving peacekeepers in the Central African Republic, prompting former UN chief Ban Ki-moon to fire the mission commander.

Of the 31 cases, only 12 took place this year, two were from last year and six in 2015. The dates have not been established for the remaining 11 allegations.

Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that the United Nations had set up monitoring of staff who have been involved in cases.