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 My son has narrated the last book I wrote.
Please consider listening to it and encouraging others to do so too. (Click on Book Cover) World & Nation Trump says he won’t oppose releasing search warrant documents  Former President Donald Trump said late Thursday that the warrant authorizing the FBI to search his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida should be publicly released. Responding to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s request for a federal court earlier Thursday to unseal parts of the warrant, Mr. Trump said in a statement: “Release the documents now!” “Not only will I not oppose the release of documents related to the unAmerican, unwarranted, and unnecessary raid … I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents,” he said. The former president said he wants the documents released “even though they have been drawn up by radical left Democrats and possible future political opponents, who have a strong and powerful vested interest in attacking me, much as they have done for the last 6 years.”
New coalition fights Biden’s plan for LGBTQ rewrite of education rights: ‘We will block this’  More than 140 advocacy groups formed a new coalition to stop the Biden administration’s proposed rewrite of regulations banning sex discrimination in education, saying the new LGBTQ-slant to the rules will harm children and limit parental rights. The fight is over defining sex or expanding the definition to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The Biden administration says a new, broader definition of sex is needed to protect LGBTQ students, but opponents warn it will curtail free speech and diminish due process for students on college campuses. Biden administration abolishes ICE labor union  The Biden administration delivered a death sentence Thursday to the labor organization that represents thousands of employees at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Federal Labor Relations Authority’s decision erases the National ICE Council and leaves its 7,600 members, mostly deportation officers, without a collective bargaining agreement or union representation, members said. The move also dents a prominent critic of both the administration and the American Federation of Government Employees, the umbrella union that included the ICE Council. AFGE moved to “disclaim” the ICE employees this summer after the council filed a complaint claiming gross mismanagement and hostile intentions at AFGE. AFGE President Everett Kelley said the ICE Council wasn’t a good partner in the labor movement. PUTIN UP A FIGHT Ukraine news LATEST: Madman Vladimir Putin’s failing invasion ‘unlikely to succeed’ after ‘significant’ losses says UK THE UK has declared Vladimir Putin is now unlikely to succeed in his illegal invasion of Ukraine - and revealed Russia's devastating losses. Defence secretary Ben Wallace said that Russia's invasion of Ukraine had "faltered" and was "starting to fail", as he pledged more financial and military support to the eastern European nation's defence. Denmark joined the UK in offering more aid to Ukraine at a conference in Copenhagen on Thursday, co-hosted by Mr Wallace. The Defence Secretary said it was important to understand that fighting and loss of life was still taking place, but added Russia was "starting to fail in many areas". U.S. says Bolton murder plot not enough to call off talks for new nuclear deal with Iran  Not even a plot to assassinate former top U.S. officials on American soil will derail the Biden administration’s push for a renewed nuclear deal with Iran. The State Department on Thursday stood behind the effort to strike a new pact with Tehran to limit the country’s nuclear weapons program. A top diplomatic spokesperson told reporters that Washington is prepared to “immediately” implement an agreement if Iran drops several of its demands. “This administration has been clear that it will ensure Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon, and we believe the best path to achieving that goal is through diplomacy,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters. “And as long as we believe pursuing a [new nuclear deal] that is in U.S. national security interests, we’re going to continue to do so.” He made the comments just 24 hours after the Justice Department charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with plotting to kill former White House National Security Adviser John Bolton, an outspoken Iran hawk who has long been a thorn in the side of the Islamic republic. The assassination plot also reportedly targeted Mike Pompeo, who served as secretary of state under President Trump. CDC drops quarantine, screening, 6 feet spacing recommendations for COVID The nation’s top public health agency relaxed its COVID-19 guidelines Thursday, dropping the recommendation that Americans quarantine themselves if they come into close contact with an infected person. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said people no longer need to stay at least 6 feet away from others. The changes, which come more than 2½ years after the start of the pandemic, are driven by a recognition that an estimated 95% of Americans 16 and older have acquired some level of immunity, either from being vaccinated or infected, agency officials said. Satellite images show Russian warplanes destroyed in Crimea; Latvia names Russia a terrorism sponsor Russia continues its offensive in Ukraine's south and east, while Ukrainian counter-measures far behind enemy lines gain traction. Most notable is its suspected attack on Russian warplanes earlier this week at an airbase in Crimea. Satellite images reveal at least eight Russian planes damaged or destroyed by explosions that hit the base on Tuesday, contrary to Moscow's denials that any aircraft was harmed. Concerns continue to mount over the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. Meanwhile, Britain's Ministry of Defense says Russia's arms export industry is under strain. New York Scraps 'Inmate' in State Law Over Word's Stigma New York has amended several state laws to remove the word “inmate” and replace it with “incarcerated person” to refer to people serving prison time. The changes, signed into law Monday by Gov. Kathy Hochul, are intended to reduce the stigma of being in jail. Prison reform advocates have said the term “inmate” has a dehumanizing effect. Prisoners say it can feel degrading when jail guards refer to them as inmates, especially in front of their families during in-person visits. “Language matters,” said state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Bronx Democrat who sponsored the bill. “This is another concrete step our state is taking to make our criminal justice system one that focuses on rehabilitation, rather than relying solely on punishment.” Ukraine, Russia trade blame for risk of nuclear disaster at frontline plant Ukraine and Russia accused each other on Friday of risking nuclear disaster by shelling Europe's largest nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian forces in a region expected to become one of the next big front lines of the war. Western countries have called for Moscow to withdraw its troops from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and the United Nations called on Thursday for it to be declared a demilitarised zone. But there has been no sign so far of Russia agreeing to move its troops out of the facility they seized in March. The plant dominates the south bank of a vast reservoir on the Dnipro river that cuts across southern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces controlling the towns and cities on the opposite bank have come under intense bombardment from the Russian-held side. Three civilians, including a boy, were wounded in overnight shelling of one of those towns, Marhanets, Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said in the latest in a string of similar reports. More Top NewsIf you thought the Trump raid was a fiasco, turns out you were right The FBI truly thought this wasn't going to be a big deal. Whoops. So they did blunder. The Justice Department and FBI did not understand what they were doing when they ran 30 federal agents and technicians up the gut of Mar-a-Lago Club and into the living quarters of a former president of the United States. They didn’t understand what was instantly obvious to longtime ABC and CBS newsman Jeff Greenfield – that they had engineered a “100 Megaton event.” We know they blundered not from Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has gone into seclusion on this issue. We know it not from FBI Director Christopher Wray, whose only comments were to decry the death threats against his agents. Biden must stop the diplomatic babble and force Iran to release American hostages President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are fond of saying that human rights are at the center of the administration’s foreign policy, but after nearly 18 months in office, Americans are still being held hostage in the Iranian prisons where they found themselves on Jan. 20, 2021. Hostage-taking is a violation of the fundamental principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and, according to the president, a threat to U.S. national security. But the rhetoric, strategy and policy positions of the Biden administration are dangerously out of alignment. Last month, the White House determined that hostage-taking is a “national emergency” posing “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.” Yet President Biden has not taken the necessary steps to bring Americans home from Iran or to stop Iran from taking Americans hostage in the future. Instead, the Biden administration has been serving a steady diet of half-measures and diplomatic babble in which no firm commitments are made. Rather than demanding that Iran release its hostages — including the remains of Robert Levinson — and formally renounce future hostage-taking as a condition for resuscitating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Biden administration has been working in overdrive since its first days in office to restore the original Iran nuclear deal. The 2015 agreement did not secure the release of all hostages who were held at that time or create assurances that the policy of hostage-taking that Iran launched in 1979 would finally end — and while the U.S. was a party to the deal, Iran took more Americans hostage. Reporting on the details of the “final” deal designed by the European Union that is under consideration in Washington and Tehran indicates that it similarly leaves behind the hostages.
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