Trump Fires Rex Tillerson on Twitter

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By NY Times. President Trump on Tuesday ousted his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, extending a shake-up of his administration, 14 months into his tumultuous presidency, and potentially transforming the nation’s economic and foreign policy.

Mr. Trump announced he would replace Mr. Tillerson with Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director and former Tea Party congressman, who forged a close relationship with the president and is viewed as being more in sync with Mr. Trump’s America First credo.

Mr. Tillerson was at the State Department on Tuesday and spoke to reporters, saying that he would surrender his authority at midnight and resign officially at the end of the month.

Mr. Tillerson learned he had been fired on Tuesday morning when a top aide showed him a tweet from Mr. Trump announcing the change, according to a senior State Department official. But he had gotten an oblique warning of what was coming the previous Friday from the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who called to tell him to cut short a trip to Africa and advised him “you may get a tweet.” (Read more from “Trump Fires Rex Tillerson on Twitter” HERE)

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Rex Tillerson: Secretary of State Fired by Trump in Russia Warning

By BBC. Sacked US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has warned of Russia’s “troubling behaviour and actions” in a parting statement after being fired by President Donald Trump.

He pointedly failed to thank Mr Trump or praise his policies.

The former ExxonMobil chief had a series of public rifts with the White House after being appointed last year. . .

Speaking to reporters at the Department of State, Mr Tillerson said good work had been done to have better relations with China, and rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme.

But he added: “Much work remains to respond to the troubling behaviour and actions on the part of the Russian government.” (Read more from “Rex Tillerson: Secretary of State Fired by Trump in Russia Warning” HERE)

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Watch: Rapper Threatens Rowdy Concertgoers With Gun

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Lil Wayne reportedly scared concertgoers over the weekend when he threatened them with firearms after someone threw a water bottle on stage, prompting the rapper to stop his performance and warn the crowd.

Wayne was “performing at the Jumanji Festival in Sydney over the weekend, where all seemed fine until he was almost hit by a flying water bottle,” TMZ reported.

Wayne immediately stopped the concert and warned the crowd they needed to stop throwing stuff on stage because “all my n***ers got pistols and they don’t know who to shoot at.”

(Read more from “Watch: Rapper Threatens Rowdy Concertgoers With Gun” HERE)

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Security Camera Shows Disturbing Act Amazon Driver Committed With Customer’s Package

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An Amazon driver recently delivered a package in a Miami, Florida, neighborhood, but instead of placing it nicely in a potentially secure area at the destination, he allegedly dropped the seven-pound parcel on a puppy.

The employee for the tech giant has since been fired.

Facebook user Roly Andrade, the owner of the young dog, uploaded the video to the social media platform, which has garnered roughly 80,000 views since Thursday.

The delivery man, who was donning a hat and sunglasses, immediately took out his phone after he released the package, perhaps to process the order or to figure out his next step.

His facial expressions are not absolutely discernible. However, he doesn’t seem too concerned about the five-month-old Labrador mix named Rocky who appeared to have been hit with the relatively heavy box.

Brittany Aaron, the partner of Andrade, told the Miami Herald, which was the first to report the incident, that Rocky’s eye is “a little squinty” because it’s possible “the corner of the box got him.”

The dog doesn’t appear to have any other potential injuries, according to his owners.

“Unfortunately, Amazon hires all these random drivers,” Aaron said.

The company reportedly offered to pay for any medical expenses that may be necessary.

“This does not reflect the high standards we have for delivery partners, and this individual is no longer delivering Amazon packages,” a company spokesman told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“We have reached out to the customer with our sincerest apologies and to offer our support.”

The tech conglomerate’s delivery services have caused a number of consequential problems for its customers, including one couple incorrectly receiving a bag of medical waste, and another receiving 65 pounds of marijuana.

With so many deliveries being made on a daily basis, errors will occur, but potentially harming another living animal seems to be beyond a mere gaffe.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

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Activists Demand Justice After Border Agents Arrest Illegal… Then They Learn What She Did for a Living

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An arrest by the U.S. Border Patrol has stirred up outrage in the activist community as a purported example of how President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement policies are unjustly tearing immigrant families apart.

Viral videos posted to Facebook and YouTube on Thursday show Border Patrol agents — some in uniform and some in plain clothes — seizing Perla Morales-Luna as she was walking with her daughters in National City, California, last week.

She is then hustled into the back of a waiting Border Patrol SUV while bystanders plead with agents to release her.

Activists and media organizations immediately seized on the videos as more evidence of heavy-handed immigration enforcement under the Trump administration, which has been accused of breaking up families by detaining illegal immigrant parents.

Immigrant rights groups say the episode shows how immigration agents have a free hand to arrest mothers and fathers who are not threats to public safety.

“It’s really a grotesque way of detaining and enforcing immigration law,” Benjamin Prado, coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee’s San Diego U.S.-Mexico Border Program, told the Los Angles Times.

“It is very quickly accelerating to a very tyrannical form of detention and arrest, snatching people up off the street.”

Morales-Luna is not just an otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrant.

She is also a member of a Southern California-based human smuggling ring, according to Customs and Border Protection.

“Perla Morales-Luna was identified as an organizer for a transnational criminal smuggling organization operating in East County, San Diego,” the agency’s San Diego field division said in a statement.

“She was arrested as a result of a targeted operation on March 3, 2018, in National City for being in the country illegally. She is currently in Border Patrol custody awaiting transfer to ICE for removal proceedings.”

It remains unclear if Morales-Luna will face criminal charges.

She is expected to be placed in deportation proceedings after CBP transfers her to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

News of Morales-Luna’s arrest comes as the Trump administration and California are locked in a legal and political battle over the state’s sanctuary policies.

The Department of Justice sued California Tuesday, along with Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Xavier Becerra, both Democrats.

The state’s laws constitute a “significant intrusion into federal enforcement of the immigration laws,” the DOJ argues.

California officials say none of the laws prevent immigration authorities from doing their jobs.

They have also argued that the federal government cannot require state and local jurisdictions to enforce federal law.

National City, where Morales-Luna was arrested, has stopped short of describing itself as a sanctuary city, preferring to use the term “compassionate community.”

City officials supported the passage of Senate Bill 54, one of the laws at issue in DOJ’s lawsuit against California, reported the San Diego Union-Tribune.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

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Dog Dies After Airline Forces It Into Overhead Bin

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On Monday night, a dog died in a plane after a United Airlines flight attendant forced the dog into an overhead bin.

Maggie Gremminger, a passenger on a flight from Houston to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, uploaded a photo of the dog’s owners on Twitter. “I want to help this woman and her daughter. They lost their dog because of an @united flight attendant. My heart is broken,” reads the image caption.

The Points Guy reports that during their flight, an attendant insisted that the woman put her dog, which was held in a TSA-approved pet carrier, in an overhead bin for the rest of the flight . . .

A United spokesperson addressed the incident in a statement to The Points Guy: “This was a tragic accident that should never have occurred, as pets should never be placed in the overhead bin. We assume full responsibility for this tragedy and express our deepest condolences to the family and are committed to supporting them. We are thoroughly investigating what occurred to prevent this from ever happening again.” (Read more from “Dog Dies After Airline Forces It Into Overhead Bin” HERE)

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Court Upholds Trump’s Expanded Abortion-Pill Exemptions

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When President Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress adopted Obamacare, they required abortion coverage, with no exemptions, to the delight of the abortion industry . . .

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the government to expand those exemptions when it ruled in the Hobby Lobby case, and President Trump widen the exemptions even further.

Now a federal court has ruled the Trump administration’s changes will stand, determining that the state of Massachusetts, which wanted to reverse course, has no standing in the case.

The ruling this week comes from U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton in the state’s lawsuit against several federal agencies and their leaders.

“This court finds that plaintiff has failed to set forth specific facts demonstrating that it is likely to incur an injury caused by defendants’ conduct,” the judge wrote. “Accordingly, the court declines, at this time, to address the merits of the Commonwealth’s statutory or constitutional claims.” (Read more from “Court Upholds Trump’s Expanded Abortion-Pill Exemptions” HERE)

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Judge: Former Trump Campaign Chairman Could Spend Life in Prison

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Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort “faces the very real possibility” of a lifetime prison sentence, according to a federal court order reviewed by Fox News Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, in an order made public Tuesday, wrote that Manafort “poses a substantial flight risk” because of his “financial means and international connections to flee and remain at large.”

“Specifically given the nature of the charges against the defendant and the apparent weight of the evidence against him, defendant faces the very real possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison,” Ellis wrote.

Ellis, who is based in federal court in Alexandria at the Eastern District of Virginia, has been assigned Manafort’s latest indictment brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Manafort pleaded not guilty last month to the superseding indictment, with its 18 counts of tax evasion and bank fraud.

Manafort, who was first indicted in October as part of Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian meddling and potential collusion with Trump campaign associates in the 2016 presidential election, pleaded not guilty to both indictments. (Read more from “Judge: Former Trump Campaign Chairman Could Spend Life in Prison” HERE)

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City With Highest Murder Rate Paying to Defend Illegals

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Baltimore doesn’t have the highest homicide death toll in the nation – Chicago tops the list with 650 in 2017. But Baltimore does have the highest murder rate, with 56 per 100,000 residents.

So city officials are allocating $200,000 this month for what?

The legal defense of illegal aliens who are facing deportation.

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh insisted the objective is for everyone to get due process. . .

The move comes not even a year, the Washington watchdog Judicial Watch noted, after prosecutors in the city told staff members not to charge illegal immigrants with minor, non-violent crimes. (Read more from “City With Highest Murder Rate Paying to Defend Illegals” HERE)

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Proof! Facebook Destroying Conservatives

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It’s no longer speculation that Facebook’s changing algorithms has hurt what is perceived as right-of-center news sites and benefited left-of-center online news outlets, according to a comprehensive analysis by WesternJournal.com.

According to the study, liberal publishers have gained about 2 percent more web traffic from Facebook than they were getting prior to the algorithm changes implemented in early February. On the other hand, conservative publishers have lost an average of nearly 14 percent of their traffic from Facebook.

“This algorithm change, intentional or not, has in effect censored conservative viewpoints on the largest social media platform in the world,” the study concludes. “This change has ramifications that, in the short-term, are causing conservative publishers to downsize or fold up completely, and in the long-term could swing elections in the United States and around the world toward liberal politicians and policies.”

The WesternJournal.com study compares two rival New York publishers — the New York Post and the New York Daily News. The Post is well-known as a right-leaning outlet, whereas the Daily News has an established left-leaning slant. The Daily News saw a 24.18 percent increase in traffic from Facebook, while the right-leaning Post’s traffic dropped 11.44 percent in the same time period.

The report quotes Campbell Brown, a former anchor on NBC and CNN who now leads Facebook’s news partnerships team, who told attendees at a recent technology and publishing conference that Facebook would be censoring news publishers based on its own internal biases: “This is not us stepping back from news. This is us changing our relationship with publishers and emphasizing something that Facebook has never done before: It’s having a point of view, and it’s leaning into quality news. … We are, for the first time in the history of Facebook, taking a step to try to to define what ‘quality news’ looks like and give that a boost.” (Read more from “Proof! Facebook Destroying Conservatives” HERE)

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Solar Storm Could Hit This Week

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A minor solar storm is traveling toward Earth and is expected to hit as early as Wednesday.

If a solar storm is powerful enough, it can damage satellites and cut power. But the incoming storm is said to be minor, even though it may create an impressive display of the Northern Lights.

A major explosion in the sun’s atmosphere known as a flare, which took place on March 6 and 7, triggered the solar storm. Charged particles from the burst are now headed straight for Earth.

Meanwhile, scientists believed the Earth’s magnetic field forms “equinox cracks” around March 20 and Sept. 23 each year. The cracks, which are said to stay open for hours, create weaknesses in Earth’s natural defenses and could leave GPS systems and commercial flights more exposed to the damaging effects of a solar storm.

But the cracks could also create amazing opportunities for stargazers to catch a better view of the Northern lights. (Read more from “Solar Storm Could Hit This Week” HERE)

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