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July 18, 2019 at 12:52 pm
WASHINGTON (WASHINGTON POST) - Uber passengers in multiple cities were startled on Wednesday (July 17) when they were charged 100 times their normal fare for short trips, a glitch that sparked jokes about surge pricing gone wild.
Riders in cities, including Washington and San Diego, took to social media to post about the sky-high rates, a problem Uber confirmed, though it declined to say how widespread the issue was.
Some who ordered food for quick delivery said they were also overcharged.
One social media user reported that Uber maxed out her husband's card with a charge of US$1,905 (S$2,592.25), when it was supposed to be $19.05.
"Not cool, especially on his birthday," she added.
Another woman posted to social media she was charged US$1,308 for a US$13.08 trip. The charge was s...
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July 18, 2019 at 12:32 pm
Washington - House Democrats approved legislation Thursday to raise the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade, to $15 an hour, but the bill has almost no chance in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Passage was assured after centrists won concessions for a slower phase-in, over six years instead of five. They also won assurances the pay hike could be halted midway if a study shows job losses or other adverse effects.
A hike in the $7.25 hourly wage has been a top Democratic campaign promise, intended to address income inequality that’s driving the 2020 political debate. Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said raising the wage is the “right thing to do.”
“America’s workers deserve a raise,” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a pr...
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July 18, 2019 at 12:29 pm
An Alabama police officer was shot and wounded and a suspect was killed after an armed robbery at a local convenience store turned into a deadly shootout Wednesday night.
Police were dispatched to the 500 block of 23rd St. N. in downtown Birmingham at about 6:30 p.m. amid reports of an armed robbery in progress at a convenience store, Birmingham Police Chief Patrick Smith told reporters.
Once on the scene, officers said they saw a man fleeing the area that matched the description of the suspect involved. Smith said the officers encountered the man and attempted to stop him when he pulled out a handgun and began firing.
He fired several rounds and struck Officer Cullen Stafford “multiples times.”
Stafford was seriously injured as fellow officers...
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July 18, 2019 at 12:26 pm
A German woman attempted to buy a vehicle from a car dealership in the southwestern city of Kaiserslautern Friday using counterfeit currency she printed off at home.
She carried a wad of €15,000 ($16,830) to the dealership in Kaiserslautern, only for her plan to backfire as she left the location in handcuffs and riding in the back of a police car.
Exposing the woman’s plan did not require keen investigative skills, after she opted to print the bogus 50 and 100-euro notes via a regular ink jet printer, according to German news outlet DW News.
When police searched the 20-year-old woman’s home in the nearby city of Pirmasens, 21 miles south of Kaiserslautern, they found the printer loaded with freshly printed “money&r...
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July 18, 2019 at 12:22 pm
Washington - U.S. President Donald Trump faced criticism for saying Pakistan’s arrest of the alleged mastermind of the 2008 attacks on Mumbai had come after a 10-year search, as the suspected militant had been living in plain view.
Pakistani authorities on Wednesday arrested Hafiz Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group that is accused by India and the United States of carrying out the Mumbai attacks, on terrorism financing charges.
More than 160 people were killed in the four-day militant attacks. Saeed is designated a terrorist by the United States and the United Nations.
Trump, who is due to host Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for talks at the White House next week, welcomed Saeed’s arrest and said it was the result of pressure from his administration...
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July 18, 2019 at 12:16 pm
Sen. Rand Paul on Wednesday blocked an attempt by Democrats to pass an extension of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand tried to win the Senate’s consent to approve the House-passed bill, which would reauthorize funding until fiscal 2090. The bill cleared the House in a 402-12 vote last week.
But Paul objected, pointing to the country’s growing debt and arguing that any new spending should be offset by cuts to other spending.
He added that if the House bill was brought up for a vote in the Senate he is planning to offer an amendment, “but until then I will object.”
Read more at The Hill.
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July 18, 2019 at 12:16 pm
Washington - The chairman of the House Republican campaign organization says “there’s no place” for the “send her back” chants unleashed at a campaign rally for President Donald Trump.
Rep. Tom Emmer heads the National Republican Congressional Committee. The Minnesota lawmaker is referring to the crowd’s chants Wednesday night in North Carolina that were aimed at Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota. She’s a fierce Trump critic.
At the rally, Trump began by verbally attacking Omar as the crowd chanted “send her back!” Omar came to the United States as a refugee from war-torn Somalia when she was a child.
Emmer tells reporters on Thursday that “there’s not a racist bone in this president’s body.”
And Emmer ...
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July 18, 2019 at 12:16 pm
Des Moines, IA - Authorities say a Guatemalan man charged with killing an Iowa woman and her two children had been deported twice from the U.S. and is believed to be in the country illegally.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Wednesday night that 31-year-old Marvin Oswaldo Escobar-Orellana gave Des Moines police a false name, Marvin Esquivel-Lopez.
Shawn Neudauer, an ICE spokesman, says Escobar-Orellana was deported in 2010 and again in 2011. In 2010, he was convicted of illegal entry into the U.S.
He’s accused of shooting 29-year-old Rossibeth Flores-Rodriguez, her 11-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son. Police say he had been living at the family’s home and that they found no evidence that he had a personal relationship with the victims.
Court records don&rsq...
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July 18, 2019 at 12:15 pm
New York - The first two new Toys R Us stores will open in November as part of a small comeback of the defunct iconic toy chain in the U.S.
Richard Barry, a former Toys R Us executive and now CEO of the new company called Tru Kids Brands, says an online experience will follow. He says brand partners and more details will be announced in coming weeks.
Plans are to open a store in The Galleria mall in Houston, Texas, and in Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey. The first two locations will be about 6,500 square feet — a fraction of the brand’s former big box stores, which were about 30,000 square feet. Barry noted stores opened later will be about 10,000 square feet.
Tru Kids Brands said it has entered a partnership with a startup called b8Ta, an experiential re...
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July 18, 2019 at 12:15 pm
Jerusalem - Israeli plans to demolish Palestinian homes near a military barrier on the outskirts of Jerusalem have drawn international criticism, amid Palestinian fears that a precedent would be set for other buildings along the barrier route.
The deadline for residents of Sur Baher to remove the buildings expired on Friday after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in June that the structures in question violated a construction ban.
Sur Baher is a Palestinian community that lies southeast of Jerusalem’s city center in an area that Israel captured and occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. A sprawling village, it straddles the line between East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Its political geography is further complicated because parts of Sur Baher lie inside the West Bank - but on the ...
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July 18, 2019 at 11:07 am
Berlin - Germany’s Foreign Ministry says it has opened an investigation after learning the head of the country’s mission to the Palestinian territories had “liked” anti-Israeli tweets.
Bild newspaper reported Thursday that the “likes” came from the verified Twitter account of German diplomat Christian Clages.
The multiple “likes” included one for a video praising an attack on Israeli soldiers, and another for an exchange between American white-supremacist David Duke and another user about an alleged massacre of Jews.
Bild reports the Foreign Ministry “emphatically” disassociated itself from the “likes” and called them “unacceptable.”
The ministry, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for ...
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July 18, 2019 at 10:55 am
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar proposed a resolution this week supporting the right to boycott Israel, likening the boycott of the Jewish state to boycotts of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Omar’s resolution seeks to push back against U.S. laws banning the boycott of Israel and affirms the right of Americans to organize boycotts of foreign countries if they so wish.
While the resolution doesn’t explicitly name Israel or the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, she told media outlets that the resolution concerns the Jewish state.
“We are introducing a resolution … to really speak about the American values that support and believe in our ability to exercise our First Amendment rights in regard to boycotting,&rdq...
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July 18, 2019 at 10:50 am
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed reservations about a $5 billion proposal for a highway and railway between the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Trump administration’s Mideast peace deal for Israel and the Palestinians, reported Axios and Israel’s Channel 13 on Tuesday, citing “sources briefed on the matter.”
The idea was proposed as part of the deal’s economic component, which was released last month during the economic summit in Bahrain.
Netanyahu and his aides were briefed about it two weeks before it was publicized, according to the Axios report.
The prime minister’s wariness about the passage is related to security matters, the sources told the outlet.
The report stated, according to the sources, “Israel gave U.S. o...
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July 18, 2019 at 10:49 am
Update: The ordinance about gender-neutral language in Berkeley’s municipal code was approved at City Council Tuesday as part of the consent calendar.
The Berkeley City Council is scheduled to vote Tuesday night on an ordinance that would eliminate masculine and feminine pronouns from the city’s municipal code, changing gender-specific language to gender-neutral language.
The item proposes a revision to the grammatical interpretation of Berkeley’s municipal code, which now mostly uses masculine pronouns. It would switch “he” and “she” to “they” and “them” and assume they/them indicates a single individual, “unless the context indicates the contrary.” The rationale for this change states: &ld...
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July 18, 2019 at 10:43 am
In an interview with Judy Woodruff for “PBS NewsHour,” U.S. Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt wasn’t to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and said that the Jewish state is “trying their best … under very, very trying circumstances.”
Uploaded to the PBS website on Wednesday and broadcast on American television, the interview focused on the U.S. role in mediating its version of peace negotiations, the economic component of which was unveiled at the June “Peace to Prosperity” conference in Bahrain.
Asked what responsibility Israelis bear for the conflict, Greenblatt responded, “I think that Israel is actually more the victim than the party that’s responsible.”
“From the m...
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July 18, 2019 at 10:41 am
Sababa Band feauring Isaac Honig performs "Kohanim" at a Bar Mitzvah in Monroe. Composed by Yossi Green, Isaac added a refreshing twist on "Kohanim" with such Hartz and emotion. The Shira Choir's sweet harmonies added the perfect touch to this beautiful song. Mendy Hershkowitz's arrangements were executed beautifully by the Sababa Band.
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July 18, 2019 at 10:39 am
Baltimore County police are investigating a fatal overnight shooting at the Comfort Inn in Towson Thursday morning.
Police say a call came just before 2:30 a.m.Thursday for reports of a person with a gun at the Comfort Inn on the 8800 block of Loch Raven Boulevard.
The only information confirmed was that the victim was an adult man and the incident is being investigated as a homicide.
Police say that it is currently an active investigation.
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July 18, 2019 at 10:38 am
Traffic could be extremely heavy in parts of Baltimore due to a series of events this week, Baltimore Department of Transportation advised.
BALTIMORE, MD — Several road closures are in effect this week in downtown and midtown Baltimore. The sinkhole that formed in the July 8 floods is still being repaired off Pratt at Howard streets, which may cause traffic snarls as fans come to watch the Orioles play at Camden Yards; and Artscape will be in town Friday, July 19, to Sunday, July 21, prompting a series of road closures in midtown.
After thunderstorms rolled through the region Wednesday night, the Baltimore Department of Public Works reported that stormwater breached the CSX tunnel, and officials were assessing impacts to the hole on Howard Street.
Drivers should give themselves ex...
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July 18, 2019 at 10:37 am
TOKYO (AP) — A man screaming “You die!” burst into an animation studio in Kyoto, doused it with a flammable liquid and set it on fire Thursday, killing 33 people in an attack that shocked anime fans across Japan and beyond.
Thirty-six others were injured, some of them critically, in a blaze that sent people scrambling up the stairs toward the roof in a desperate — and futile — attempt to escape. Others emerged bleeding, blackened and barefoot.
The suspect was injured and taken to a hospital. Police identified him only a 41-year-old man who was not a company employee. They gave no immediate details on the motive.
Most of the victims were employees of Kyoto Animation, which does work on feature films and TV productions but is best known for its mega-hit sto...
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July 18, 2019 at 10:35 am
GREENVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Going after four Democratic congresswomen one by one, a combative President Donald Trump turned his campaign rally into an extended dissection of the liberal views of the women of color, deriding them for what he painted as extreme positions and suggesting they just get out.
“Tonight I have a suggestion for the hate-filled extremists who are constantly trying to tear our country down,” Trump told the crowd in North Carolina, a swing state he won in 2016 and wants to claim again in 2020. “They never have anything good to say. That’s why I say, ‘Hey if you don’t like it, let ‘em leave, let ‘em leave.’”
Full Coverage: Donald Trump
Eager to rile up his base with the some of the same kind of rhetor...
