Families gathered at a morgue in Mexico on Tuesday to comb through the remains of more than 150 bodies discovered at graves in southern Veracruz state, hunting for clues that could identify children and siblings who disappeared long ago.
“We still hope we can find her,” Paloma Martinez said of her older sister, now missing for two years.
“My mother and I are here to see if there are ID cards or clothes or any clue that show us that she’s here ... we’ve lived with anguish, and questions without answers.”
Investigators discovered 166 skulls in 32 graves last week on a tip from an unidentified person, Veracruz’s attorney general said on Thursday, adding that the bodies were likely dumped less than two years ago.
Further investigations indicated that the remains belonged to at least 174 bodies, the attorney general’s office said in a statement on Friday, when it showed photographs of findings from the graves to families of missing people.
Violent crime has long plagued Veracruz, a key route for drug gangs sending narcotics north towards the United States.
Authorities last year found more than 250 skulls in unmarked graves in Veracruz, an oil-rich state on Mexico’s Gulf Coast.
Hundreds of bodies in unmarked graves have also been found in states including Tamaulipas, Durango and Morelos during a decade-long drug war led by the military to battle the cartels, which led to increasingly bloody turf wars.
“This is the Veracruz we have, the Veracruz where we line up to see the remains of bodies,” said Lucia Diaz, director of Solecito Collective, a support group for parents of missing children. “Nobody could have imagined it would come to this.”
No family has yet found evidence from the remains in the graves uncovered last week to be able to identify a child, sibling or relative, she said.
Imelda Fernandez, wearing a surgical mask that had been handed to all family members at the morgue, said her son left the house one morning two years ago and never returned, leaving no trace.
“I think of him every day,” she said. “I’d like to find him one day and know what became of him, no matter whether he’s dead or alive.”
Reporting by Tamara Corro; Writing by Daina Beth Solomon
President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order as soon as Wednesday that will slap sanctions on any foreign companies or people who interfere in U.S. elections, based on intelligence agency findings, two sources familiar with the matter said.
Trump’s decision coincides with intelligence agencies, military and law enforcement preparing to defend the Nov. 6 congressional elections from predicted foreign attacks even as Trump derides a special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
Sanction targets could include individual people or entire companies accused of interfering in U.S. elections by cyber attacks or other means, a U.S. official told Reuters.
“The administration is keen to set a new norm in cyberspace,” the official said. “This is a first step in stating boundaries and publicly announcing our response for bad behavior.”
The order represents the latest in a series of Trump administration efforts to look tough on election security before voting in November that will decide whether Trump’s Republican Party can keep its majorities in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.
The order will put a range of agencies in charge of deciding if meddling occurred, led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and including the CIA, the National Security Agency and the Homeland Security Department, the sources said.
Based on a recent draft of the order reviewed by the U.S. official, it will require any federal agency aware of election interference by foreigners to take the information to the office of Director of National Intelligence.
Election interference will be defined in the order as hacking attempts against “election infrastructure,” and efforts to sway public opinion through coordinated digital propaganda or systematic leaks of private political information.
U.S. intelligence officials have found that in the campaign leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Russian hackers breached the Democratic National Committee and leaked confidential information.
The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal previously reported on earlier drafts of the executive order.
Congress has been purposefully left out of the executive order drafting process, the official said, because the administration wants to preempt legislation being considered in the House and Senate that addresses similar issues.
U.S. lawmakers have introduced various pieces of Russia-related legislation, including the “Deter Act,” to set out punishments for election meddling, and what one lawmaker called a sanctions bill “from hell” to punish Moscow for cyber crime and its activities in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.
Both Democrats and Republicans are looking to redress what they consider Trump’s weak stance on accusations of Russian interference in 2016 when he met Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in July. Trump stunned the world by accepting Putin’s denials over the word of his own intelligence agencies.
Congress passed a Russia sanctions bill more than a year ago. Some lawmakers - including some Republicans as well as Democrats - have chafed at what they saw as the administration’s reluctance to implement it. Trump signed the bill only after Congress passed it with huge majorities.
Acting on that law, the U.S. Treasury imposed major sanctions against 24 Russians, striking at allies of Putin in one of Washington’s most aggressive moves to punish Moscow.
Reporting by Christopher Bing and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Mary Milliken and Grant McCool
The powerful Hurricane Florence threatened to bring “days and days” of rain and potentially deadly flooding to the U.S. southeast coast, North Carolina’s governor warned on Tuesday, as some 1 million people were ordered to evacuate their homes.
The storm threatened to hit coastal North and South Carolina with 130 mile per hour (210 kph) winds and massive waves when it makes landfall on Friday, and its rains will take a heavy toll for miles inland, the National Hurricane Center in Miami warned.
“This storm is a monster,” North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper said at a news conference on Tuesday. “It’s an extremely dangerous, life-threatening, historic hurricane ... the forecast shows Florence stalling over North Carolina, bringing days and days of rain.”
Cooper and his counterparts in neighboring South Carolina and Virginia ordered about 1 million people to evacuate coastal homes, including along the Outer Banks barrier islands that protect North Carolina’s shore. Officials in South Carolina reversed the flow of traffic on some highways so that all major roads led away from the sea to speed evacuations.
The slow-moving storm, the most severe hurricane to threaten the U.S. mainland this year, was rated a Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale and located about 905 miles (1,455 km) east-southeast of Cape Fear, North Carolina, at 11 a.m. EDT, according to the NHC.
U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed declarations of emergency for both North Carolina and South Carolina, freeing up federal money and resources for storm response. Officials have declared states of emergency in North and South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.
In addition to flooding the coast with wind-driven storm surges of seawater as high as 12 feet (3.7 m), Florence could drop 20 inches to as much as 30 inches (51 cm to 76 cm) of rain in places, forecasters said.
‘PLANNING FOR DEVASTATION’
“This storm is going to be a direct hit on our coast,” said Jeff Byard, associate administrator for response and recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “We are planning for devastation.”
Not everyone was in a hurry to leave. Charles Mullen, 81, a longtime resident of Hatteras Island, North Carolina, said he had ridden out many storms and that most locals were planning to stay unless Florence took aim at Hatteras.
“If it decides to come here, we’re gone,” he said.
Residents prepared by boarding up their homes and stripping grocery stores bare of food, water and supplies. Some gas stations also ran low on fuel.
“This is still a very dangerous storm,” South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster said at a Tuesday news conference. “We are in a very deadly and important game of chess with Hurricane Florence.”
McMaster lifted an earlier evacuation order for parts of three southern coastal counties but left them in effect for the state’s northern coast and urged residents to flee.
Wall Street was sniffing out companies that could gain or lose at the storm’s hands. Generator maker Generac Holdings Inc rose 2.2 percent and reached its highest price since April 2014.
Insurers Allstate Corp and Travelers Companies Inc were up slightly in early trade after falling sharply on Monday on worries about claims losses.
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Roger Hannah said all nuclear power plants in the area were preparing but that Duke Energy Corp’s Brunswick and Harris plants in North Carolina were most likely to be affected and, if Florence turns north, Dominion Energy Inc’s Surry plant in Virginia.
Plants in the storm’s path are shut down about 12 hours in advance of being hit.
Additional reporting by Gene Cherry in Raleigh, North Carolina, Liz Hampton in Houston, Susan Heavey in Washington, Bernie Woodall in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Alden Bentley in New York and Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee; Writing by Nick Zieminski and Bill Trott; Editing by Scott Malone
China’s foreign ministry said on Monday it would retaliate if U.S. President Donald Trump goes ahead with his plan of imposing tariffs on practically all Chinese imports.
Trump on Friday threatened additional duties on $267 billion of Chinese goods over and above planned tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods.
The following are comments made by U.S. companies after the Trump administration said on July 10 that it would slap tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese imports.
** Apple Inc said a “wide range” of its products including the Apple Watch would be affected by proposed U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods but gave no sign of an impact on its iPhone.
Apple said its MacMini, a low-priced computer that comes without a keyboard or mouse, would be affected. Many Apple accessories, such as mice, keyboards, chargers and even leather covers for iPhones and iPads would also face tariffs, it said.
AirPods headphones, some of Apple’s Beats headphones and its new HomePod smart speaker also face levies. Apple added that computer parts for its U.S. operations would be hit by the tariffs.
** Dell Technologies said the proposed tariffs will increase costs of vital parts and components for its U.S. services and manufacturing operations.
Dell added that the tariffs on desktops/servers, computer parts, network switches could result in “serious damage” to the company and its employees.
** Intel Corp said proposed tariffs would negatively affect U.S. businesses and “stifle advancements” in telecom infrastructure, including next generation technologies like 5G.
The company said the tariffs will raise costs for U.S.-based technology companies that manufacture ICT products such as desktop computers, laptops and servers.
** Fitness tracker maker Fitbit said increased tariffs would compromise its investments in U.S.-based innovation. The company also said tariffs on wearable products would not effectively advance the administration’s goals.
** Agilent Technologies said the increased duties would financially impede its U.S. operations and its end customers in the U.S. and abroad. It added that substantial tariff increases will limit its ability to reinvest in U.S. operations, affecting employees engaged in R&D, design, other support operations.
Agilent also said it does not believe the goods it imports are specifically covered by the “Made in China 2025” industrial policy.
** Office Depot said the tariff proposal, which covers non-household seating and furniture it sells, would lead to immense supply chain disruptions and a likely loss of jobs. Office Depot also said the tariffs would impact small- and medium-sized U.S. companies.
** Newell Brands’ units, including Goody Products and Rubbermaid Commercial Products, said tariffs on items ranging from elastic hair bands to art supplies would hurt American consumers since the tariff prices will be paid by the company and consumers.
They also said consumer goods targeted under tariffs do not come under the scope of “Made in China 2025” program.
** Mattel Inc said the proposed tariff on products such as high chairs and bath seats will result in higher prices as China supplies vast majority of these products with no alternative readily available.
Mattel also said additional tariffs could lead to job losses as the toymaking industry is already suffering from Babies ‘R’ Us/Toys ‘R’ Us closures.
** Whirlpool Corp said proposed tariffs on components from China would increase costs and create supply chain problem for U.S. manufacturers, putting them at a competitive disadvantage.
The company said the administration should remove “critical components” such as parts of refrigerators and mixers from the proposed list and add finished products such as dishwashers to mitigate negative impact on U.S. manufacturing.
** Carrier Transicold, a unit of Carrier Corp/United Technologies Corp, said it was concerned the proposed 10 percent additional duty on various industrial components will reduce its global competitiveness and undercut its U.S. operations.
Carrier asked USTR to exclude items including parts for refrigerators, freezers and other refrigerating or freezing equipment from the proposed tariffs.
Compiled by Arjun Panchadar in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham and Anil D'Silva
Russia is the main suspect in U.S. agencies’ investigation of mysterious illnesses in American personnel in Cuba and China, NBC News reported on Tuesday.
Evidence from communications intercepts has pointed to Moscow’s involvement during the investigation involving the FBI, CIA and other agencies, NBC reported, citing three unidentified U.S. officials and two other people briefed on the probe.
The evidence, however, is not conclusive enough for the United States to assign blame publicly to Moscow, according to the NBC report.
FBI and CIA officials did not immediately return a request for comment on the report.
U.S. officials said in July that they are still investigating health problems at the U.S. embassy in Cuba, and do not know who or what was behind the mysterious illnesses, which began in 2016 and have affected 26 Americans.
Symptoms have included hearing loss, tinnitus, vertigo, headaches and fatigue, a pattern consistent with “mild traumatic brain injury,” State Department officials have said.
The State Department said in June it brought a group of diplomats home from Guangzhou, China, over concern they were suffering from a mysterious malady resembling brain injury.
Cuban officials, who are conducting their own investigation, have denied any involvement or knowledge of what was behind it.
The United States believes sophisticated electromagnetic weapons may have been used on government workers, possibly in conjunction with other technologies, NBC reported.
The U.S. military has been trying to reverse-engineer the weapon or weapons used to harm the diplomats, including by testing various devices on animals, NBC said, citing Trump administration officials, congressional aides and others.
Part of the work is being done at the directed energy research program at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, where the military has giant lasers and laboratories to test high-power electromagnetic weapons, including microwaves, NBC said.
Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Susan Thomas
Having found an ally in the south and an admirer in the east, Donald Trump’s former political strategist Steve Bannon is now looking north for recruits in his crusade to undermine the European Union.
And he believes the timing is perfect after famously liberal Sweden voted in record numbers on Sunday for a far-right party that wants a referendum on leaving the 28-nation bloc.
Bannon, who helped put U.S. President Trump in the White House, wants to pull off a similar anti-establishment revolution in the EU and get eurosceptics from all corners of the union voted into the European Parliament at elections next year.
He has already signed up Italy’s most prominent eurosceptic leader, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, to the cause and his project has been praised by another fierce EU critic, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Bannon is now turning to the EU’s northern member states, where his latest admirer is Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders.
“Sometimes you need a catalyst,” Wilders told Reuters at the annual Ambrosetti Forum conference on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como, where he called for the abolition of EU.
“Any initiative from that comes from (Bannon) is of course to be applauded,” he said on Saturday.
Wilders, who leads his country’s second-largest party, said he planned to meet Bannon for dinner in the Netherlands soon to discuss the idea of a united eurosceptic front.
Bannon calls his project The Movement, a political startup with 15 staff and an enormous ambition: to persuade the continent’s eurosceptic leaders to mount a coordinated campaign in elections for the European Parliament in May.
He wants the populists to topple what he sees as the EU’s liberal establishment and force Brussels to hand back powers to nation states - an outcome EU supporters say would sound the death knell for Europe’s political and monetary unions.
But Bannon says this is not the ultimate aim.
“I don’t think this drive is for the destruction of the European Union,” he told Reuters in Rome on Saturday.
Instead, Bannon’s Movement aims to stack the EU parliament in Strasbourg with parties that can agree on four things: more sovereign rights for EU states, stronger borders, less migration and the eradication from Europe of what it calls radical Islam.
“It is a club, a loose affiliation,” Bannon said, stressing that racist and anti-Semitic parties were not welcome.
“We have spoken to these populist nationalist parties around Europe and one of the things they say to us is that they never get the chance to talk together. They feel alone.”
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE?
The Movement aims to serve as a campaign center, conducting polling and data analysis, offering strategic advice and deploying social media campaigns to mobilize the anti-EU vote for European elections with historically low turnouts.
Bannon said he would invest a “couple of million dollars” in the project and planned to relocate to Europe soon.
However, uniting eurosceptic parties in a U.S.-style campaign could be mission impossible: Salvini and Orban want to weaken the EU but not leave it, Wilders wants to destroy it and France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen wants to reform the EU before putting French membership to a referendum.
Previous attempts to unite the far-right have produced little. After elections in 2014, Le Pen and Wilders forged a far-right parliamentary group, but it’s the smallest with just 35 out of 751 seats. Salvini belongs to it but Orban doesn’t.
Bannon may get a warm welcome from Wilders in Amsterdam but faces a cooler reception in Sweden, despite a big swing toward the far-right Sweden Democrats in Sunday’s election.
“We aren’t following Steve Bannon’s political work. He as a person he is of no interest to us,” a party representative told Dagens Nyheter newspaper in July. Sweden Democrats did not respond on Monday to emailed questions about Bannon’s project.
Bannon, though, is undeterred, saying in an email to Reuters on Monday that the Swedish party’s feat of winning 17.6 percent of the vote had set “an example for populists everywhere”.
‘THE END OF EUROPE’
Pro-EU forces see populist eurosceptics as an existential threat that could lead to the EU’s disintegration and a resurgence of the nationalism that led to two world wars.
Even conservative allies of the eurosceptics are worried.
“They are all extremely different, however they are united by anti-establishment, nationalism and opposition to European bureaucracy,” said Renato Brunetta, a prominent figure in the conservative Forza Italia party which forged an electoral pact with Salvini’s League party at home and is allied with Orban’s group in the EU parliament.
“The result is that these ties risk being sufficient to result in victory for this political atmosphere ... If this were the case, it risks being the end of Europe,” Brunetta said.
The EU parliament cannot propose legislation and needs a majority to block laws and budgets, but it can move amendments. With a third of the seats, Bannon says, anti-EU lawmakers would represent a serious minority to be reckoned with.
He cautions that Europe’s eurosceptics and populists should not get ahead of themselves. The Movement’s goal is not to win a majority in May. That would be unrealistic, he said, appearing to backtrack from some previous statements.
“I am not sure these entities can go from the number of seats they have (now) to absolute control in one fell swoop. I think it might take a couple of iterations.”
Salvini says the elections are “the last chance for Europe” and Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi describes them as the first “real election for the future of Europe”.
Pro-EU parties on the left of European politics are girding for battle as well, although they too are struggling to present a new EU vision that can accommodate calls for more flexible fiscal policy and more controls on migration from Africa.
French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to fight for the pro-EU camp. However, a senior official in Macron’s government said he was worried Salvini’s candidates, in particular, would do very well and that the Italian minister could emerge as the leading light of Europe’s nationalist forces.
Frans Timmermans, first vice-president of the European Commission, said pro-EU parties needed to make a strong case for change next May as the future of the EU was “up for grabs”.
“I think the electorate in all of Europe is still on the fence,” he told Reuters at the Ambrosetti conference.
Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in London, Johan Ahlander in Stockholm and Leigh Thomas in Paris; writing by Mark Bendeich; editing by David Clarke
Seventeen years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida conducted the most destructive terrorist attack in history.
An unprecedented onslaught from the U.S. followed. One-third of al-Qaida’s leadership was killed or captured in the following year. The group lost its safe haven in Afghanistan, including its extensive training infrastructure there. Its surviving members were on the run or in hiding. Though it took nearly 10 years, the U.S. succeeded in killing al-Qaida’s founding leader, Osama bin Laden. Since 2014, al-Qaida has been overshadowed by its former ally al-Qaida in Iraq, now calling itself the Islamic State.
In other words, al-Qaida should not have survived the 17 years since 9/11.
But it has. Why?
The ties that bind
Much of the credit goes to al-Qaida’s extraordinary ability to form alliances and sustain them over time and under pressure.
In my book “Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances,” I examine why a small number of groups, such as al-Qaida and IS, emerge as desirable partners and succeed at developing alliance networks.
Understanding terrorist alliances is critical because terrorist organizations with allies are more lethal, survive longer and are more apt to seek weapons of mass destruction. Though terrorist partnerships face numerous hurdles and severing al-Qaida’s alliances has been a U.S. objective for over a decade, the fact is that these counterterrorism efforts have failed.
It was allies that enabled al-Qaida to survive the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The Afghan Taliban stood by al-Qaida after the attack, refusing to surrender bin Laden and thereby precipitating the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Fleeing, al-Qaida was able to turn to allies in Pakistan to hide its operatives and punish the Pakistani government for capitulating to U.S. pressure to crackdown on the group.
It was alliances that helped al-Qaida continue to terrorize. In October 2002, for example, al-Qaida’s ally in Southeast Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah brutally commemorated the first anniversary of 9/11 by bombing a bar and a nightclub in Bali, killing more than 200 people and injuring an additional 200.
And it was alliances that allowed al-Qaida to project viability. With the “prestige” that came with conducting 9/11, al-Qaida was able to forge affiliate alliances in which partners adopted its name and pledged allegiance to bin Laden.
Al-Qaida’s first and most notorious affiliate alliance, al-Qaida in Iraq, was formed in 2004 with Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Using the standing he accrued through his role in the insurgency in Iraq, Zarqawi then helped al-Qaida acquire its second affiliate in 2006, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. Then, in 2009, al-Qaida designated its branch in Yemen and Saudi Arabia as al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. Its alliances spanned the Middle East and helped it to project power, despite the U.S. war on terrorism.
A lower profile
While al-Qaida still sought affiliates, by 2010, it changed some aspects of the relationships.
Al-Qaida forged an alliance with al-Shabaab in Somalia, but did not initially publicly announce it or ask al-Shabaab to change its name. Bin Laden justified the shift to a less visible form of alliance as a way to prevent an increase in counterterrorism pressure or a loss of funds from the Arabian Peninsula. He privately expressed concerns that al-Qaida’s name “reduces the feeling of Muslims that we belong to them, and allows the enemies to claim deceptively that they are not at war with Islam.” Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, saw the move as bin Laden capitulating to members of al-Qaida who worried about “inflating the size and the growth of al-Qaida.” After bin Laden’s death, Zawahiri publicly announced al-Qaida’s alliance with al-Shabaab, though al-Shabaab still did not adopt al-Qaida’s name.
The “staying power” of Al-Qaida’s allies has helped it remain a threat despite the loss of its founding leader in 2011 and the ascent of a far less capable leader. Zawahiri’s rise to the helm of the group was itself the consequence of an alliance between his original Egyptian group, al-Jihad, and al-Qaida. The alliance culminated in a merger in 2001, with Zawahiri becoming bin Laden’s deputy and successor.
Zawahiri lacks bin Laden’s cachet or diplomatic savvy, and his shortfalls are evident in al-Qaida’s alliances. His poor handling of the strife between jihadist group al-Nusra in Syria and its parent organization, the Islamic State in Iraq – previously al-Qaida in Iraq and now known as the Islamic State – led to the alliance rupture between al-Qaida and its affiliate in Iraq.
Al-Qaida organized a new branch, al-Qaida in the Indian subcontinent, in 2014. The branch in South Asia reflected al-Qaida’s success at expanding beyond its predominantly Arab base, particularly in Pakistan, and has allowed the group to expand its activities in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
Most of al-Qaida’s alliances have proven resilient over time. This is true despite ample reasons for its partners to abandon ties, such as the heightened counterterrorism pressure that comes with affiliation to al-Qaida; the death of its charismatic leader; and the Islamic State’s efforts to court al-Qaida allies. Even the Afghan Taliban has not severed ties, even though doing so would eliminate one of the major reasons that the United States will not withdraw from the “forever war” in Afghanistan.
There is still a window for the U.S. to damage al-Qaida’s alliances: It has a weak leader and major rival. But that window may be closing as the Islamic State adapts to its losses and al-Qaida appears poised for a resurgence with bin Laden’s son as its future, more inspiring leader.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated. The original version ran on Sept. 10, 2017.
Another news outlet has been attacked in the United States.
A man rammed his car repeatedly into Fox affiliate KDFW in Dallas, Texas, on Sept. 5. We can now add this to the growing list of recent attacks on — and violent threats to — the media.
A man recently called The Boston Globe and threatened “to shoot you [expletives] in the head … shoot every [expletive] one of you.” Apparently, the Globe’s defense of quality journalism infuriated him.
Mental illness, isolation, easy access to weaponry, a renewed white supremacy movement and other variables clearly contribute to the increase in both violent rhetoric and actual violence.
But what these occurrences share, and what they’re illustrating, is a profound hatred towards purveyors of journalism.
This isn’t news. Violent acts against the media are as old as our nation. Perhaps Americans are just not accustomed to seeing the violence because most of them grew up in the second half of the 20th century, an era largely devoid of the partisan rancor that was once a hallmark of American journalism – and which seems to have returned.
Ugly history
As media historian John Neronewrites, attacks on the media occur regularly throughout our history.
In the 19th century, attacks on the press were common. Violence and journalism were intertwined in American culture, largely because of the partisan politics most newspapers propagated.
Abolitionist and newspaper editor Elijah Lovejoy was murdered in Alton, Illinois, in 1837. A pro-slavery mob broke into his jail cell – where he had been placed for his protection – and lynched him. One year earlier, in New York City, The New York Herald’s James Gordon Bennettwas savagely beaten by his rival, James Watson Webb. Webb edited New York City’s best-selling newspaper, The Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, and he’d grown tired of Bennett’s attacks in his popular newspaper column.
Lovejoy and Wells-Barnett are remembered because they would later be recognized as civil rights pioneers. But the violent confrontation between two of New York City’s most prominent newspaper editors is less well-known, in part, because it occurred at a time when violence against the press wasn’t uncommon.
In the early days of the Republic, U.S. newspapers were not only observably partisan, they were subsidized by political parties. Because newspapers around the U.S. often represented specific political parties, news reports would be politically framed and competing outlets – often serving the rival political party – would be demeaned.
Countless local editors, like Bennett, were attacked. Some, like Lovejoy, were killed for their work. These attacks on journalists were so common that Mark Twain, who worked as a journalist, lampooned them in his classic short story “Journalism in Tennessee.”
Twain’s satire about press violence tells the story of a young editor reporting to the office of The Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop for his first day of work. When he turns in a brief roundup of local news reported by other outlets, his boss is surprised.
“Thunder and lightning!” he says. “Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!”
The chief editor rewrites the piece, insulting and threatening the editors of the rival newspapers. Calling them scoundrels and liars, he excoriates them for “dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.”
“Now that is the way to write,” his boss says upon completion of the piece. “Peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods.”
The ‘News From Nowhere’
“Mush-and-milk journalism” that outraged Twain’s fictitious newspaper editor is inoffensive, neutral and seemingly objective.
It’s that kind of centrist journalism that developed in the 20th century – what journalist and political scientist Edward Jay Epstein called “News From Nowhere” — that many of us grew up on.
The evolution of technology, commercial imperatives and new modes of distribution combined to create American journalism’s era of objectivity.
Selling newspapers to millions in mass audiences, and transmitting identical reports to newspapers around the U.S. via the telegraph, both required neutering any clearly biased news reporting.
Regulatory mandates like the public interest standard and the Fairness Doctrine followed the development of radio and television. They further enshrined a “just-the-facts” sensibility in American journalism.
From our vantage point as historians in 2018, we can now see this era of objectivity lasted from about 1930 to 2000, beginning with the introduction of broadcast journalism via radio to the emergence of the multichannel cable television universe and the web’s development.
Walter Cronkite delivering the news on May, 24, 1978.
(AP/Richard Drew
In those decades, journalism became less partisan to be more palatable to mass audiences. Every weeknight, CBS broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite soberly told Americans what they needed to know about the events of the day.
And, in this original network era, opinion was separated from reporting and clearly labeled – whether it was on-air commentaries delivered by Eric Sevareid or on specially designated “editorial” or “opinion” pages in newspapers.
Such segregation of reporting and opinion was not the norm in American journalism history. It was a new idea that quickly gained traction because it proved so commercially advantageous.
Creating audiences in the millions, and then the tens of millions – on television – generated unimagined sums of advertising revenue. Removing opinions from most reporting produced enormous profits for television networks, radio stations and daily newspapers. It became commonplace. Americans grew accustomed to it.
Back to the old ways
It appears the cycle has now turned.
Outlets like Fox News, MSNBC, and even some daily newspapers, are no longer as careful about monitoring the injection of subjectivity into journalism.
Partisan cable news hosts Rachel Maddow, a progressive and conservative Sean Hannity, right.
AP photo
But they are not entirely to blame. Today’s audiences feel empowered by their autonomy, because they have an enormous number of available and competing media outlets. They can now watch and consume news that best matches their worldview, rather than an homogenized news product designed to be palatable to the masses.
Noting the higher ratings and subscription numbers that accompany this increasing partisanship, news outlets react accordingly. Even more, social media technologies allow audiences to engage with news media like never before, often cultivating a climate of uncivil online discourse. This only intensifies the partisan rancor mirroring 19th-century levels.
Does the end of the depoliticized mass audience era of journalism directly correlate to what seems to be a return of violence against the media?
Until the four journalists were killed in Annapolis early this year (the fifth staffer was not a journalist), only seven had been killed in the last 26 years.
When consumers of MSNBC are baffled by the apparent ignorance of Fox News viewers, and Fox News viewers are sure MSNBC’s fans are dupes, we’ve returned to the world Twain described.
It might be impossible to return to the more civil, professional and respectful era of journalism that many Americans grew up in. But we can, and should, recognize the historic futility of killing the messenger.
Destroying Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s press did nothing to stop the anti-lynching movement, and the murder of Elijah Lovejoy spread the abolitionist message much further than Lovejoy himself ever could.
And in usual form, Trump had to lie to attack Obama.
Trump tweeted that President Obama once said, "President Trump would need a magic wand to get to 4% GDP."
The only problem is that President Obama never said that.
Speaking about then candidate Donald Trump, President Obama in June of 2016 once asked, "What magic wand do you have?" in response to claims Trump was tossing about.
President Trump has spent a good part of the morning tweeting about the economy, while his surrogates, especially Kellyanne Conway, have been keeping the anonymous New York Times op-ed in the headlines.
That full Obama quote, by the way, comes from a June 1, 2016 town hall President Obama held in Elkhart, Indiana.
He said, Trump says he is "going to bring all these jobs back, well, how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s no answer to it. He just says, well, I'm going to negotiate a better deal. Well, how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually the answer is he doesn’t have an answer."
Trump has not negotiated better deals, not on any front.
Meanwhile, under President Obama, quarterly GDP "hit 4 percent or higher four times, and even exceeded 5 percent once," ThinkProgress reported in July. It also broke 2% 16 times, and "hit 3 percent or higher eight times."
American teenagers are starting to prefer communicating via text instead of meeting face-to-face, according to a study published Monday by the independent organization Common Sense Media.
Some 35 percent of kids aged 13 to 17 years old said they would rather send a text than meet up with people, which received 32 percent.
The last time the media and technology-focused nonprofit conducted such a survey in 2012, meeting face-to-face hit 49 percent, far ahead of texting's 33 percent.
More than two-thirds of American teens choose remote communication -- including texting, social media, video conversation and phone conversation -- when they can, according to the study.
In 2012 less than half of them marked a similar preference.
Notably, in the six-year span between the two studies the proportion of 13 to 17-year-olds with their own smartphone increased from 41 to 89 percent.
As for social networks, 81 percent of respondents said online exchange is part of their lives, with 32 percent calling it "extremely" or "very" important.
The most-used platform for this age group is Snapchat (63 percent), followed by Instagram (61 percent) and Facebook (43 percent).
Some 54 percent of the teens who use social networks said it steals attention away from those in their physical presence.
Two-fifths of them said time spent on social media prevents them from spending more time with friends in person.
The study was conducted online with a sample of 1,141 young people ages 13 to 17, from March 22 to April 10.
Police in Greece are questioning two women suspected of squirting or dabbing oil on artefacts in at least two museums in a ritual the suspects said was dictated by Bible teachings.
The stains, which Greek media reports said had appeared on items such as icons, marble columns and inscribed tablets displayed at the Christian and Byzantine Museum in July, had befuddled authorities. Some smears also appeared at the Benaki Museum about a month later.
But on Sunday, a clerk at the National Historical Museum at Old Parliament House in Athens alerted guards when a woman showed up with a companion with what appeared to be an oily hand.
“I noticed that one of the ladies had a greasy hand ... I alerted the guards and drew their attention to it,” the unnamed clerk told Greece’s Alpha TV.
Police officials said the two women were under investigation for attempting to damage public property. In both cases the damage was minor.
According to Greece’s state run Athens News Agency, the suspects told police they thought the oil had healing properties and that, they said, dousing relics was dictated by the Bible. They had a bottle in their possession when they were arrested.
Both told police they had no intention of causing any damage while one said she was a member of a religious group, judicial sources said on Monday.
The women, who spent a short time in detention before being released, face misdemeanor charges under Greek law.
The two museums said at the time they were investigating the incidents but have not commented publicly since then.
Reporting by Constantinos Georgizas; Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Alison Williams
Hotter, drier conditions have led to more severe wildfires in Yellowstone National Park, while growing numbers of visitors have harmed everything from prized hydrothermal features to its famed grizzly bears, the park said in a report on Monday.
Average temperatures in Yellowstone, which has been designated as both World Heritage and Biosphere Reserve sites by a United Nations panel, are exceeding historical norms even as climate change is blamed for a string of fires that have increased in size and which last longer, according to the study.
The 60-page “The state of Yellowstone vital signs and select park resources, 2017” report is one of just four compiled in the past decade. They are designed to track one of the largest, nearly intact temperate ecosystems in the world.
Yellowstone is celebrated for geothermal areas that contain about half the world’s active geysers, as well as forests, mountains, meadows, rivers and lakes considered a crucial sanctuary for the largest concentration of diverse wildlife in the Lower 48 states. The report shows it has seen warmer summers with less moisture and shorter winters in recent years.
At Mammoth Hot Springs in the northwest of the park, for example, the average annual daily minimum temperature has increased by 3.9 degrees Fahrenheit from 1941 to 2016 even as total annual precipitation has for the most part been below the long-term mean of 15.3 inches and snowpack has generally declined, scientists found.
Researchers noted an increase in the size of wildfires that impact vegetation and degrade air quality and said the future holds more of the same.
“If climate trends continue along their current trajectory, fires within the park will continue to be larger (and) burn for longer durations,” according to the report.
The millions of visitors who flock to Yellowstone each year from around the globe are behind a trend that includes vandalism to unique thermal features.
The thermal features have been subjected to everything from a drone crashing into one of them to crowds surging onto fragile grounds surrounding the features.
And while the grizzly population in the Yellowstone area is considered stable at roughly 700 bears, humans engaged in such pastimes as driving, hiking, camping and cycling can disrupt bear activities and even contribute to their deaths.
Yellowstone, most of whose 2.2 million acres sit in Wyoming but which also encompasses portions of Idaho and Montana, saw a record 4.2 million visits in 2016 and recorded its second busiest year in history in 2017.
Reporting by Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Paul Tait
Russia on Tuesday launched what it has called its largest ever military drills, with hundreds of thousands of Russian troops taking part along with Chinese soldiers in a massive show of force that has rattled the West.
The week-long war games dubbed "Vostok-2018" (East-2018), "have kicked off" in far eastern Russia and on the Pacific Ocean, the defence ministry said in a statement.
It released video footage of military vehicles, planes, helicopters and ships getting into position for the initial stage of the drills.
The drills, which include the Chinese and Mongolian armies, have been condemned by NATO as a rehearsal for "large-scale conflict".
President Vladimir Putin is expected to attend Vostok-2018 after hosting an economic forum in Russia's far eastern city Vladivostok where his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping is one of the prominent guests.
The military exercises come at a time of escalating tensions between Moscow and the West over accusations of Russian interference in western affairs and ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.
The Russian army has compared the show of force to the USSR's 1981 war games that saw between 100,000 and 150,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers take part in "Zapad-81" (West-81) -- the largest military exercises of the Soviet era.
But Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said these exercises are even larger, with 300,000 soldiers, 36,000 military vehicles, 1,000 planes and 80 warships taking part in the drills.
"Imagine 36,000 military vehicles moving at the same time: tanks, armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles -- and all of this, of course, in conditions as close to a combat situation as possible," Shoigu said.
- Latest hardware -
The Russian army is rolling out all of its latest additions for the event: Iskander missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, T-80 and T-90 tanks and its recent Su-34 and Su-35 fighter planes.
AFP / Valentina BRESCHIMap showing planned Russian military manoeuvres for "Vostok-2018" and details of the military hardware involved.
At sea, the Russian fleet is deploying several frigates equipped with Kalibr missiles that have been used in Syria.
Wednesday will see games featuring anti-aircraft technology, while the main event will be on Thursday, the defence ministry told journalists covering the event in eastern Siberia.
NATO said that Vostok-2018 "demonstrates Russia's focus on exercising large-scale conflict".
"It fits into a pattern we have seen over some time -- a more assertive Russia, significantly increasing its defence budget and its military presence," the alliance's spokesman Dylan White said late August.
Last month, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia's "ability to defend itself in the current international situation which is often aggressive and unfriendly to our country is justified, essential and without alternative".
Relations between Russia and the West declined sharply in 2014 with Moscow's annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The Kremlin has also accused NATO of expanding westwards and threatening Russian national security.
Moscow has increased the number of its large-scale military exercises in the Caucasus, the Baltic and the Arctic in recent years.
Russia's previous military exercise in the region, Vostok-2014, was almost half the size, with 155,000 soldiers participating.
The country's war games in Eastern Europe last year, Zapad-2017, saw 12,700 troops take part according to Moscow. Ukraine and the Baltic states said the true number was far bigger.
AFP / Valentina BRESCHI