McCain, even in illness, sparks lively debates
WASHINGTON — John McCain is not signing off quietly.
As in so much of the senator’s extraordinary life, the rebellious Republican is facing this challenging chapter — battling brain cancer — in his own rule-breaking way, stirring up old fights and starting new ones. Rarely has the sickbed been so lively.
McCain is promoting a new book, delivering a counterpunch of ideals contrary to President Donald Trump’s running of the White House. McCain’s long-distance rejection of CIA director nominee Gina Haspel’s history with torture goaded former Vice President Dick Cheney into a fresh debate over waterboarding and other now-banned interrogation techniques. On Friday, friends rallied to defend McCain against a White House official’s cruel joke that his positions don’t matter because “he’s dying anyway.”
If this is Washington’s long goodbye to a sometimes favorite son, it’s also a reemergence of old resentments and political fault lines that continue to split the nation.
Perhaps no one should have expected anything less from the 81-year-old senator, who can be crotchety and cantankerous but is also seen by many, both in and out of politics, as an American hero, flaws and all.
Iran cleric threatens destruction of Israeli cities
TEHRAN, Iran — A prominent Iranian cleric on Friday threatened two Israeli cities with destruction if the Jewish state “acts foolishly” and attacks its interests again, while thousands of protesters demonstrated against President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal with world powers.
The comments by Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami followed a week of escalating tensions that threaten to spill over into a wider conflict between the two bitter enemies, who have long fought each other through proxies in Syria and Lebanon.
Israeli airstrikes struck Iranian military installations inside Syria on Thursday — its biggest coordinated assault on Syria since the 1973 Mideast war — in retaliation for an Iranian rocket barrage on Israeli positions in the occupied Golan Heights. It was the most serious military confrontation between the two rivals to date.
Khatami, who has echoed sentiments of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who says Israel will not exist in 25 years, said the Jewish state could face destruction if it continues to challenge Iran.
“The holy system of the Islamic Republic will step up its missile capabilities day by day so that Israel, this occupying regime, will become sleepless and the nightmare will constantly haunt it that if it does anything foolish, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground,” he said, according to state television.
Walking robot maker prepares to unleash its dog-like machine
BERKELEY, Calif. — A robotics company known for its widely shared videos of nimble, legged robots opening doors or walking through rough terrain is preparing to sell some after more than a quarter century of research.
Boston Dynamics CEO Marc Raibert said Friday that his company plans to begin selling the dog-like SpotMini robot next year, likely to businesses for use as a camera-equipped security guard.
But he thinks other applications for the four-legged contraption will be likely developed by other companies, because the robot has a flat platform to allow other equipment with its own computer programming to be easily mounted on top of it.
SpotMini gets around with the help of cameras on its front, sides and one mounted on its rear — a position that Raibert calls the “butt-cam.”
Boston Dynamics already has made 10 SpotMinis with plans to manufacture about 100 more for additional testing this year before going into mass production by the middle of next year, Raibert said. No price has been set for the robot yet, though Raibert said making the latest prototype costs about one-tenth the price of earlier versions.
Stevie Wonder says Kanye slavery comments are ‘foolishness’
WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Stevie Wonder has called out Kanye West for saying slavery is a choice, calling the idea “foolishness” and likening it to Holocaust denial.
Wonder brought up West without prompting during an interview Thursday after a show at a West Hollywood club.
“There’s been a lot of talk about what was said by Kanye,” Wonder said. “I want people to understand that the truth is the truth and a lie is a lie.
“We all know that slavery was not a choice,” he went on. “So I just think that people need to understand that if you know your history, if you know the truth, you know that’s just foolishness.”
Wonder said saying slavery is a choice is like saying the Holocaust is not real.
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Oklahoma governor vetoes gun carry bill in defeat for NRA
OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed a bill late Friday that would have authorized adults to carry firearms without a permit or training, dealing a rare defeat to the National Rifle Association in a conservative state.
The veto comes after opposition from the business community and law enforcement authorities, including top officials with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation who have said it could erode public safety.
The NRA had supported the bill’s passage and had urged Fallin to sign it.
In a statement announcing her veto, Fallin stressed her support for the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms and noted she had signed concealed and open carry measures in the past.
“I believe the firearms laws we currently have in place are effective, appropriate and minimal,” she said. But she added that the bill would have eliminated the requirement for a training course and reduced the level of background checks to carry a gun.
Moon shines as he drives diplomacy with Pyongyang
SEOUL, South Korea — To his supporters, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is a master negotiator who’s fixing decades of bad nuclear diplomacy with North Korea. To his critics, he’s falling prey to the same old trap that has claimed previous South Korean presidents — but with an important difference: This time the stakes are much higher.
Whoever’s right, it’s hard to ignore Moon’s role as the architect behind a new global push to settle the nuclear standoff with the North. The outcome of his efforts may hinge on a meeting in Singapore next month between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump, who spent months contemplating military strikes against the North before Moon steered him to the table.
Moon, a soft-spoken liberal, last month hosted Kim in a summit that saw them stride hand-in-hand across the border and pledge the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula, an ambitious declaration that was light on specifics.
Moon doesn’t have the power to resolve North Korea’s weapons programs on his own. But in hustling between Pyongyang and Washington to set up the Kim-Trump summit and offering to broker other meetings with Pyongyang, Moon is fulfilling his promise to push South Korea into the driver’s seat in diplomacy with the North.
“South Korea has never had a leader like Moon, who actively embraced a leading role in planning and coordinating a global approach to the North,” said Hong Min, a senior analyst at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification. “He managed to convince Washington that Pyongyang would change course after a year of brinkmanship. He convinced Pyongyang he would be able to move Washington.”
