Amazon land grabbers assail ecotourism paradise in Brazil Brazil’s Alter do Chao, a sleepy village that blends rainforest and beaches, bet on tourism and scored big.Problems rife throughout the Amazon region — land grabbing, illegal deforestation and unsanctioned construction — are plaguing this ecotourism hot spot.One month later, President Jair Bolsonaro, who has pledged to promote development of the Amazon, was inaugurated. Read more

GOP hopeful Supreme Court battle will help shift election Four years ago, the allure of conservative Supreme Court appointments helped persuade skeptical Republicans to support Donald Trump for president.Two years ago, a contentious clash over Trump's choice of Brett Kavanaugh for the court was credited with bolstering GOP gains in the Senate in an otherwise bad midterm election. Read more

US sends armoured vehicles to Syria as UN urges Turkey to probe militia's human rights abuses The US military has sent half a dozen armored vehicles on a 90-day mission to reinforce its troops in eastern Syria, less than a month after four US soldiers were injured during an altercation with Russian troops in the area. The military said fewer than 100 soldiers would accompany the vehicles. There are currently less than 1,000 US troops in Syria, a number that has remained approximately the same since the end of the US military offensive that deprived the Islamic State [IS] of most of the t Read more

Lindsey Graham Is Trump’s Most Important Friend (Bloomberg Opinion) -- Lindsey Graham may be the most misunderstood figure in Donald Trump’s Washington. For the Resistance, the Republican senator from South Carolina is the lickspittle who abandoned his principles for access to a dangerous populist. For the populists, Graham is an interloper, worming his way into the president’s inner circle and persuading him to keep fighting the endless wars Trump campaigned against.Neither version, however, quite captures the role that Graham pl Read more

Iran's rial hits record low as tension spikes with the U.S. The Iranian rial fell to a record low against the U.S. dollar onthe unofficial market on Sunday, a day after the U.S. President Donald Trump's administration declared all United Nations sanctions on Tehran had been restored.The dollar was offered for as much as 273,000 rials, up from 267,800 rials on Saturday, according to foreign exchange site Bonbast.com, which tracks the unofficial market.Iran has dismissed the U.S. move as "void and illegal" andU.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told th Read more

Trump Makes America More Like Russia Every Day Russian spies have undermined America for nearly a century. Their goals during and after the cold war were the same: Subvert the United States, sabotage its power, poison the body politic. They used the weapons of political warfare: deception, disinformation, espionage.Their American agents held positions of power and authority. They infiltrated the Justice Department, the State Department, and all of America’s national-security agencies. Turncoats at the FBI and the CIA gave the Russians Read more

Did Russian Spies Use Diplomatic Cover to Run a Global Cocaine-Smuggling Operation? > This is a joint investigation by The Daily Beast and the Dossier Center.Six men await trial in Moscow and Buenos Aires, charged with operating one of the craziest, most ambitious narco-trafficking rings in history. Russia’s embassy in Argentina was the storage depot and Russian government transport was intended to move a cartel-sized consignment of virtually uncut cocaine from South America to Moscow. It was a transnational crime that astounded and confused the world, not least becaus Read more

AP PHOTOS: Elderly protesters defy Belarus' strongman Thousands of protesters who have flooded Belarusian cities for six weeks of demonstrations to demand an end to the 26-year rule of the country’s authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko include people of all ages, professions and social groups.While younger people make up the bulk of the protests pushing for Lukashenko’s resignation after the Aug. 9 vote that the opposition sees as rigged, many retirees also have joined the daily demonstrations.The 73-year-old former geologist ha Read more

Tropical Storm Beta meandering toward Texas, Louisiana Tropical Storm Beta on Sunday was making a slow crawl to the shores of Texas and Louisiana, casting worries about heavy rain, flooding and storm surge across the Gulf Coast.Beta was one of three named storms whirling in the Atlantic basin during an exceptionally busy hurricane season.If the system makes landfall in Texas — which forecasters predict it will either late Monday or early Tuesday — it would be the ninth named storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. in 2020. Read more

Tropical Storm Beta churns slowly toward Texas, Louisiana Tropical Storm Beta on Sunday was making a slow crawl toward the shores of Texas and Louisiana, stirring worries about heavy rain, flooding and storm surge across the Gulf Coast.Beta was one of three named storms whirling in the Atlantic basin during an exceptionally busy hurricane season.If the system makes landfall in Texas — which forecasters predict it will sometime on Monday — it would be the ninth named storm to make landfall in the continental U.S. in 2020. Read more

Desert communities told to evacuate as winds stoke flames Strong winds stoked a wildfire burning for nearly two weeks in mountains northeast of Los Angeles, prompting authorities to issue new evacuation orders for desert communities that lost some homes a day earlier.Meanwhile, officials were investigating the death of a firefighter on the lines of another Southern California wildfire that erupted earlier this month from a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device used by a couple to reveal their baby’s gender.The death occurred Thursday in San Bernard Read more

Arizona Senate race could impact confirmation of new justice If Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly wins a seat in the U.S. Senate, he could take office as early as Nov. 30, shrinking the GOP’s Senate majority at a crucial moment and complicating the path to confirmation for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee.Kelly has maintained a consistent polling lead over Republican Sen. Martha McSally, who was appointed to the seat held by John McCain, who died in 2018.Other winners in the November election won’t take office until January. Read more

Trump promises to replace Ginsburg with a woman - and soon President Donald Trump is promising to put forth a female nominee in the coming week to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pushing the Republican-controlled Senate to consider the pick without delay.“We win an election and those are the consequences,” said the president, who then seemed to signal that he'd be willing to accept a vote on his nominee during the lame-duck period after the election.Maine’s Susan Collins, who is in a Read more

A rapper, an elevator and an elephant: stories Ginsburg told In recent years Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was surprised to find herself so popular that “everyone wants to take a picture with me.”Ginsburg was invited to speak so often that inevitably she was asked the same questions and delivered the same punch lines, always, it seemed, to a delighted new audience.Ginsburg came to be known as “The Notorious RBG,” a play on the name of the rapper ”The Notorious B.I.G." Ginsburg liked to note they had one important thing in commo Read more

A rapper, an elevator and a camel: the stories Ginsburg told In recent years Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was surprised to find herself so popular that “everyone wants to take a picture with me.”Ginsburg was invited to speak so often that inevitably she was asked the same questions and delivered the same punch lines, always, it seemed, to a delighted new audience.Ginsburg came to be known as “The Notorious RBG,” a play on the name of the rapper ”The Notorious B.I.G." Ginsburg liked to note they had one important thing in commo Read more

US has restored UN sanctions on Iran, says Pompeo The Trump administration declared on Saturday that all UN sanctions against Iran have been restored, a move most of the rest of the world rejects as illegal and sets the stage for an ugly showdown at the world body ahead of its annual General Assembly. The administration said that its triggering of the "snapback" mechanism in the UN Security Council resolution that enshrined the 2015 Iran nuclear deal had taken effect at 8pm Eastern Time. That is 30 days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noti Read more

Thai protesters reinstall plaque symbolizing democracy Anti-government demonstrators occupying a historic field in the Thai capital on Sunday installed a plaque symbolizing the country's transition to democracy to replace the original one that was mysteriously ripped and stolen three years ago, as they vowed to press on with calls for new elections and reform of the monarchy.The mass student-led rally that began Saturday was the largest in a series of protests this year, with thousands camping overnight at Sanam Luang field near the royal palace.A g Read more