This year's campaign has been one heck of a roller-coaster.
The assassination attempts on President-Elect Donald Trump, the dropping out of His Fraudulency Joe Biden after his disastrous debate performance, the anointment of Kamala Harris and election of Trump are just a few of the things that made the election campaign most interesting.
Time Magazine, for the second time, has named Trump as its "Person of the Year".
Nuclear physicist and famed UFO researcher Stanton Friedman has died at 84, the CBC reports.
Friedman, who devoted his life to researching and investigating unidentified flying objects, was credited with bringing the 1947 Roswell incident to the mainstream – according to Time Magazine, Friedman "painstakingly sought out and interviewed other witnesses, and came to a dramatic conclusion: there had been a cover-up of 'cosmic Watergate' proportions."
The Roswell incident was the first case where the U.S. military and the federal government was thought to have covered up a UFO crash.
Friedman grew up in Linden, New Jersey, and worked as a nuclear physicist for 14 years for General Electric, Westinghouse, and McDonnell-Douglas.
For its cover this week, titled "Welcome to America," Time magazine cropped the picture to show just the girl, juxtaposing it with a picture of Trump, as though he were looking down at her.
On Friday, Time published a correction saying: "The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she (was) taken from the scene. The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together."
In Honduras, Denis Valera said on Thursday that his daughter and her mother, Sandra Sanchez, were detained together in McAllen, where Sanchez has applied for asylum, and they were not separated. Nevertheless, "My daughter has become a symbol of the ... separation of children at the U.S. border," Valera told Reuters in a phone interview.
Honduras' deputy foreign minister, Nelly Jerez, confirmed Valera's version of events.
Trump, a Republican, persistently accuses Democrats of being weak on immigration. He said in a tweet on Friday that "We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the (November) elections."
A little girl shown in a viral photo crying as a U.S. Border Patrol agent detained her mother – and used by TIME magazine to symbolize the Trump administration's family separation policy – reportedly was never separated from her mom.
“Welcome to America,” declared a somber TIME cover, which showed the picture of the Honduran child Yanela Sanchez next to a towering President Trump.
TIME called it “an image America could not ignore” and interviewed the photographer, as did other outlets. TIME followed up with another article entirely about the cover and “the story behind” it.
But multiple outlets interviewed the father of the girl behind the iconic image, and he said he had learned that his two-year-old daughter was detained with her mother at a facility in Texas, and the two were not separated at all. The Honduran government confirmed his version of events to Reuters.
The Washington Post reported that the mother, Sandra Sanchez, had previously been deported in 2013 to Honduras. Her husband told the Post that she left without telling him she was taking Yanela with her and couldn’t contact her. But then he saw the picture on the news.
He also said he did not support his wife’s decision to make the perilous trek to the U.S. and that they have three other children together.
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| Above, the summit of Mount Fuji from the timberline. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
It’ll soon be much easier to share your selfie on Mount Fuji, Japan’s tallest peak. Officials in the local prefectures are installing free wi-fi for all hikers, an initiative designed to spur tourism on the iconic mountain.
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| Above, Roppongi section of Tokyo. Did Time recommend a visit? Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
What is it about Tokyo that can make visitors feel as if the city belongs not in another country, but on another planet? Perhaps it’s the schizophrenia at the heart of what was once Edo—stately, tree-lined Omotesando giving way to the pinball frenzy of Shibuya, Tomorrowland Shinjunku meeting the timeless Meiji Jingu shrine. Tokyo contains multitudes, which we mean literally—the metro are is home to more than 35 million people, and on a muggy day in August you can feel nearly every one of them. Forget about navigating above ground—even the taxi drivers are dependent on GPS. But there is truly no other place on Earth—or elsewhere—like it, and those who can endure the over-stimulus will find themselves drawn back again and again.
Well, well, look who it is. In his interview with Time magazine, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe tackles sensitive subjects including the country’s territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku islands, Japan’s remorse over its ‘brutal wartime record’, and the controversy surrounding reports that he has considered revising the 1993 Kono Statement which recognised the Japanese military’s sexual enslavement of Asian ‘comfort women’.Along with those topics, Abe also discusses Abenomics. It is sure to be an interesting read.
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| Above, the Wako Dept. Store in Ginza today. Photo by Armand Vaquer. |
TOKYO – On a clear night in March 1945, more than 300 U.S. B-29 bombers launched one of the most devastating air raids in history. By dawn, more than 100,000 people were dead, a million were homeless, and 40 square kilometers of Tokyo were burned to the ground. More people were killed in the Tokyo firebombing of March 9-10 than in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki five months later. Yet it remains one of the forgotten horrors of the Second World War. About 700 recently discovered photos of the attack and its aftermath are now on display at a small museum in Tokyo.The article includes a photo of buildings on fire which appears to be next to the Wako Department Store in Ginza.
My opponent has invited serious questioning by announcing a few weeks ago that he would quote — “take off the gloves.” Since then, whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar.
Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms I know. I don’t need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn’t seek advice from a Chicago politician.
My opponent’s touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book. It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.
Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. What was his actual record in the years before the great economic crisis of our lifetimes?
This crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them. Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread. This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis. I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.
Senator Obama was silent on the regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and his Democratic allies in Congress opposed every effort to rein them in. As recently as September of last year he said that subprime loans had been, quote, “a good idea.” Well, Senator Obama, that “good idea” has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
To hear him talk now, you’d think he’d always opposed the dangerous practices at these institutions. But there is absolutely nothing in his record to suggest he did. He was surely familiar with the people who were creating this problem. The executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have advised him, and he has taken their money for his campaign. He has received more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other senator in history, with the exception of the chairman of the committee overseeing them. Did he ever talk to the executives at Fannie and Freddie about these reckless loans? Did he ever discuss with them the stronger oversight I proposed? If Senator Obama is such a champion of financial regulation, why didn’t he support these regulations that could have prevented this crisis in the first place? He won’t tell you, but you deserve an answer.
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Who is the real Senator Obama? Is he the candidate who promises to cut middle class taxes, or the politician who voted to raise middle class taxes? Is he the candidate who talks about regulation or the politician who took money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and turned a blind eye as they ran our economy into a ditch?
Is he the candidate who promises change, or is he the politician who has bought into everything that is wrong with Washington? We can’t change the system with someone who’s never fought the system.
Washington is on the wrong track and I’m going to set it right. The American people know my record. They know I am going to change Washington, because I’ve done it before. They know I’m going to reform our broken institutions in Washington and on Wall Street because I’ve done it before. They know I’m going to deliver relief to the middle class, because that’s what I’ve done.
