It came as a surprise and disappointment to many around the world to learn earlier this month that Nintendo was discontinuing production of the NES Classic, especially when demand for it was still so high. However, Nintendo of America president and COO Reggie Fils-Aime has forward this week to explain the company’s decision, also noting that the mini retro console … Continue reading
A woman in rural Kansas was shocked on Wednesday to open up her mailbox and find an abandoned guinea pig inside.
The white and tan-colored female guinea pig was sitting in the box with no food or water. With no idea how the tiny animal got there, the woman contacted the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office.
The guinea pig is now in the care of the Emporia Animal Shelter. Shelter staff determined the guinea big was a healthy young adult, and named her “Rosita” because of her red eyes, the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook. Local news station KVOE reports that Rosita is now “roaming her cage safely.”
The sheriff’s office told the Wichita Eagle that they located a woman suspected of abandoning Rosita in the mailbox. The woman, whose name has not been released allegedly said she could simply no longer care for her pet and will likely face misdemeanor animal cruelty charges. The suspect and the woman who found Rosita reportedly do not know each other.
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The Environmental Protection Agency removed portions of its website related to climate change on Friday evening ― hours before thousands were set to protest President Donald Trump’s environmental policy.
Sections dealing with climate change were only part of what is being reviewed, the agency said in a Friday press release. The EPA was making the changes “reflect the approach of new leadership,” it said.
“As EPA renews its commitment to human health and clean air, land, and water, our website needs to reflect the views of the leadership of the agency,” said J.P. Freire, the EPA’s associate administrator for public affairs, in a statement. “We want to eliminate confusion by removing outdated language first and making room to discuss how we’re protecting the environment and human health by partnering with states and working within the law.”
The Hill noted that pages dealing with climate change and its impacts, climate science, and what readers can do to combat climate change now say they are being updated. The agency has also updated a page on the Clean Power Plan, which the Obama administration had implemented, to reflect the Trump administration’s effort to undo it. The EPA did leave in place a snapshot of the website under the Obama administration, which visitors can see only if they scroll to the bottom of epa.gov.
The EPA made the changes to reflect the agency’s “new direction” under Trump and Administrator Scott Pruitt. Trump has suggested that climate change is a hoax and Pruitt has repeatedly questioned how much human beings are contributing to it.
But the science on climate change is overwhelmingly clear. Ninety-seven of actively publishing climate scientists agree that climate-warming trends are extremely likely due to human activity.
Astrid Caldas, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the changes were deliberately made to coincide with Saturday’s climate march.
“At a time when Americans are increasingly experiencing climate impacts in their daily lives, the administration has seemingly buried its head in the sand,” Caldas said in a statement. “The administration appears to have timed these changes to make information about climate science more challenging to access to coincide with the Peoples Climate March and related news stories, which will likely drive thousands of Americans to visit the EPA website.”
“The facts about climate change have not changed, however, and politics are not a valid reason to archive basic explanations of science,” the statement continued. “While it is unclear what the administration has planned for updating the web page, climate scientists will be watching closely to ensure the scientific accuracy of whatever replaces it, and that the underlying scientific data remain accessible to Americans.”
Officials purged the climate change section a week after Trump released a statement on Earth Day touting his commitment to the environment and scientific inquiry. His administration has taken a number of actions over its first 100 days that threaten the environment.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, questioned why the website needed revision at all.
“It’s hard to understand why facts require revision,” she said.
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As President Donald Trump completes his hundredth day in office, Americans are split on whether or not he is likely to live up to his campaign promises, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov survey.
Nine percent of Americans say Trump has already lived up to most of his campaign promises, while another 31 percent expect him to do so in the future. Forty-four percent say he’s unlikely to ever do so.
Voters who supported Trump in last year’s election remain optimistic, with 22 percent saying he’s already fulfilled most of his campaign promises, 64 percent that he’s likely to do so, and just 8 percent that he’s unlikely to do so. In contrast, 86 percent of voters who supported Hillary Clinton believe Trump is unlikely to live up to his promises.
The public has more faith in some of Trump’s promises than others. Most recognize his accomplishment in naming Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and nearly two-thirds think the Keystone XL pipeline, which Trump pushed forward with an executive order, is likely to be built. A majority also believe Trump will succeed in renegotiating international trade deals, temporarily banning refugees from some Muslim countries and deporting millions of undocumented immigrants, although few yet credit him with reaching any of these goals. Just shy of half think he has or will eventually bring manufacturing jobs back to the country.
But fewer than half of the public now expects Trump to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a feat he promised to accomplish on the first day of his presidency, or to fulfill his perennial pledge to “make America great again.” Fewer than a third thinks the president has or will eventually “drain the swamp” in Washington. And the majority recognize that Trump’s promised border wall, a centerpiece of his campaign, is unlikely to materialize ― and even unlikelier to be funded by Mexico.
Not all these pledges are of equal importance to the public. Asked which three of the listed campaign promises they most want to see the president keep, Trump voters prioritize repealing Obamacare (44 percent) and restoring manufacturing jobs (38 percent). Clinton voters also name restoring manufacturing jobs as a priority (42 percent), along with “draining the swamp” in Washington (28 percent). Trump’s proposed border wall ranks near the bottom of the list, along with the renegotiation of trade deals and the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
While a president’s first 100 days have also become a traditional time to take stock of their early accomplishments, Americans are also divided on the significance of that time period. Thirty-seven percent consider it a meaningful milestone, while 40 percent say it’s a meaningless deadline. The rest aren’t sure. For once, there’s little sign of a partisan divide, with a similar 43 percent of Clinton voters and 45 percent of Trump voters saying the first hundred days are meaningful.
Use the widget below to further explore the results of the HuffPost/YouGov survey, using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroups:
The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted April 26-27 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.
The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls.You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.
Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.
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SHANGHAI, April 29 (Reuters) – China has deported a U.S. citizen who was convicted of espionage this week after being held without trial for two years, removing a source of friction between Washington and Beijing.
Sandy Phan-Gillis was arrested in March 2015 while about to leave mainland China for the Chinese-ruled, former Portuguese colony of Macau. A court on Tuesday ordered her deportation after sentencing her to three-and-a-half years in prison for espionage.
She left China on Friday from the southern city of Guangzhou and arrived in Los Angeles on the same day, her husband said in a statement.
The Chinese government has not released details of the charges against Phan-Gillis. Her lawyer told Reuters on Tuesday he could not reveal details of the case because it involved “state secrets.”
Her husband, Jeff Gillis, said China had accused Phan-Gillis of visiting the country twice on spy missions in 1996 and working with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to capture two Chinese spies in the United States and turn them into double agents.
The deportation comes at a time of warming China-U.S. relations after U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida in early April.
In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Trump called Xi a “good man” and praised him for his efforts to press North Korea to give up its development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
An official of the U.S. State Department said it was aware of the deportation.
“The United States welcomes her home,” said the official, who did not want to be identified by name.
Negotiations to secure the release of Phan-Gillis intensified when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited Beijing in March, according to the San Francisco-based Dui Hua Foundation.
“Sandy is overjoyed to be reunited with friends and family, and sends out her thanks to the many people who worked tirelessly for her release,” Gillis said.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, said Phan-Gillis had been detained on “baseless” charges.
“Today, she is released and free again. This is a day of great celebration for her family and all Texans,” Cruz said in a statement, which applauded the State Department and Trump for securing Phan-Gillis’ release.
(Reporting by John Ruwitch in Shanghai; additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Sandra Maler)
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MOSCOW (Reuters) – A U.S. deployment of ballistic missile defense systems in Romania and plans to place more defense systems in Poland violate an existing arms treaty, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
The United States switched on an $800 million missile shield in Romania nearly a year ago and was planning to create another site in Poland, seeing it as vital to defend itself and Europe from so-called rogue states. In 2016, the Kremlin said it was aimed at blunting its own nuclear arsenal.
The foreign ministry said on Saturday the plans violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty (INFT), signed by Washington and the Soviet Union in late 1980s in an attempt to eliminate nuclear and conventional short-and intermediate range missiles.
“The undeniable fact is that this is a gross violation of the INFT obligations,” the ministry said on its website.
(Reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Editing by Ros Russell)
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The fifth season of “Orange Is the New Black” isn’t supposed to hit Netflix until June 9, but a hacker who claims to have the entire season has gone through with a threat to release them early.
The unidentified hacker or hacking group, operating under the name The Dark Overlord, demanded the streaming service pay an unspecified ransom sum or else the episodes will be leaked. Variety reports that the hacker uploaded the first 10 of 13 episodes to Pirate Bay early Saturday, through multiple media outlets were unable to verify their authenticity.
The hacker initially uploaded the supposed first episode, and then on Saturday posted the following message online: “We’ve decided to release Episodes 2-10 of Orange Is The New Black Season 5 after many lengthy discussions at the office where alcohol was present. Do note that there are 13 episodes. However, we were so early when we acquired the copies that post hadn’t gotten around to Episodes 11-13. Perhaps Netflix will consider releasing the season earlier now that the cat’s out of the bag?”
A Netflix spokesperson confirmed to HuffPost that it was aware of the situation, noting that a small California-based production vendor that several major TV studios use experienced a security breach. Authorities are looking into the situation.
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As a book, David Eggers’ The Circle was a flimsy attack against modern technology culture with occasional bits of insight. As a film, though, it’s so disjointed, ridiculous and dull that even Tom Hanks can’t save it. Sure, it didn’t really have much…
A Star Trek fan in Canada has been forced to turn over his personalized license plate after people complained its message, ASIMIL8, was insulting to indigenous people.
Well, it took 100 days but the EPA has finally removed the climate change section of its website. An agency spokesman explained that the information that has been collected on the page over the last 20 years posed a problem because it contradicted the administration’s denial of man-made climate change.
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