A marriage's quiet power

March 08, 2016 - Daily News Briefing

Ronald and Nancy Reagan were devoted to each other. That changed both of them – and history.

Subscribe Now to read this post!

To read this post and thousands more articles, subscribe today!

The United States has carried out an air strike in Somalia, killing more than 150 fighters with the Al Qaeda-linked Islamist group Al Shabab, following US intelligence on preparations for a large-scale militant attack, the Pentagon said on Monday.The weekend strike using both manned and unmanned drone aircraft targeted Al Shabab's "Raso" training camp, a facility about 120 miles north of the capital Mogadishu, the Pentagon said. The US military said it had been monitoring the camp for several weeks before the strike and had gathered intelligence, including about an imminent threat posed by the trainees.

One of the deadliest clashes seen so far between Tunisian forces and extremist attackers left at least 45 people dead Monday near Tunisia's border with Libya, the government said. The fighting in the border town of Ben Guerdane in eastern Tunisia comes amid increasing concern that violent extremism in Libya could destabilize the region.

China greenhouse gas emissions may have reached their peak in 2014, which means they are now either stable or in decline. That’s generally good news, except that the country promised in a global warming pact signed in Paris last year, that it would cut emission over the next 15 years so that they would peak around 2030 and then start to decline. The fact that the country peaked much earlier suggests to climate advocates that the country may have set targets that are too easy to meet. Given these findings, China could face pressure to set more ambitious targets, US climate change envoy Todd Stern told Reuters in Beijing last week.

In another sign of the cultural shift in gender rights that continues to sweep the nation, the US Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Alabama’s top court went too far when it refused to recognize a gay woman’s parental rights over her adoption of her partner’s children. The case required the Supreme Court to interpret the Constitution’s decree that states must give “full faith and credit” to legal decisions made in other states. The high court ruled to reverse the Alabama court’s decision without hearing oral argument – a relatively unusual step taken when a ruling is considered to be especially counter to Supreme Court precedents.

To help people decide which American cities and states to move to, a Madison, Wis.-based apartment hunting website, Abodo, has analyzed millions of tweets to try to determine which cities are most and least prejudiced. By tallying derogatory language used on Twitter by residents of US cities and states between June 2014 to December 2015, Adobo found that Louisiana residents used this type of language most often; 1,155 tweets featured a slur out of every 100,000, or 1 in 87 tweets. Nevada was second with 929, and then Texas with 925 such tweets for every 100,000. People tweeting the least derogatory language live in Wyoming (120), Montana (121), and Vermont (176), according to Abodo’s analysis.

Hackers targeted Apple customers using ransomware for the first time over the weekend in a cyberattack that highlights the malware’s growing threat to companies and individuals alike, researchers with Palo Alto Networks, Inc. said Sunday. This particular attack only affects users of the BitTorrent client Transmission. However, the introduction of the malicious code to Mac computers is troubling, because Apple products have long been considered shielded from such attacks.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott on Monday moved forward with an overhaul of the state’s death penalty law, signing a bill that lawmakers hope will clear up remaining legal questions about Florida’s capital punishment code and allow the state to resume executions. Florida’s Legislature passed the measure after the US Supreme Court in January ruled Florida’s sentencing law unconstitutional because it allowed judges to decide whether or not to impose the death penalty in court. The bill, a result of compromise between the state Senate and House, is a nod to the slow but steady shift away from capital punishment nationwide – even as it maintains Florida’s status as one of a handful of states that does not require a unanimous jury decision for an execution.

Subscribe Now to read this post!

Are you sure?

Forgot to add folder?

Tags Error