Top News Stories for Today – Dec 19, 2018
Top News Stories for Today – Dec 19, 2018
WH signals willingness to avoid shutdown
Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders are huddling on Capitol Hill seeking compromise, as President Donald Trump appears to back away from his threat to force a government shutdown. After saying last week he would be “proud” to partially close down the government over his demands for a border wall, Trump told reporters Tuesday, “We’ll see what happens. It’s too early to say. We need border security.”
The federal government will start winding down nonessential operations Friday if Congress and the White House cannot agree on a long- or short-term spending bill. More than 800,000 federal workers would be furloughed or work for no pay — something nobody wants to see a week before Christmas. Trump wants $5 billion in funding for the wall along the US-Mexico border, but House and Senate Democratic leaders have refused. VOA
EU to reveal no-deal Brexit plans
The European Commission will publish its no-deal contingency plans on Wednesday – an attempt to mitigate the damage if the UK crashes out of the EU. The proposals are designed to limit disruption in certain key areas, such as finance and transport, if Brexit goes ahead in March without a deal.
As PM Theresa May’s proposed exit plan flounders, both sides are preparing for the worst-case scenario. The UK has allocated £2bn ($2.5bn) in funding to government departments. BBC
Sentencing of Flynn delayed
A US judge in Washington on Tuesday sternly rebuked President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for lying to investigators about his contacts with Russia in the weeks before Trump assumed power in early 2017, but delayed his sentencing. “I can’t hide my disgust, my disdain,” US District Judge Emmet Sullivan said of Flynn’s behavior, before later acceding to a request by Flynn’s lawyers to postpone his sentencing.
Flynn acknowledged to Sullivan, “I was aware,” that it was a crime to lie to interrogators when they asked him about his discussions with Russia’s then-ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. The judge told Flynn that his offense was “very serious” and that “arguably, you sold your country out.” VOA
Nevada to have women be majority in Legislature
Nevada is set to become the first state in the nation with an overall female-majority Legislature when its next session opens in the new year. The Clark County Commission on Tuesday appointed Beatrice Duran and Rochelle Nguyen to fill two open state Assembly seats. With the commission’s approval, the Legislature will have 32 women out of a total of 63 seats between the state Assembly and Senate.
The additions will solidify the female majority in the Assembly, with 23 of 42 seats to be held by women. Men still make up the majority of the 21-member state Senate, with women holding nine seats. Los Angeles Times
Facebook let Spotify read private messages
More than 150 companies, including major tech organizations and online retailers, made arrangements with Facebook to have special access to users’ personal data, The New York Times reports. This apparently violated Facebook’s privacy pledges and, potentially, federal regulations. The report is based on a review of 270 pages of Facebook documents plus interviews with more than 50 former Facebook employees and corporate partners.
Under the arrangements, partners were essentially exempt from the usual privacy rules; Netflix and Spotify, for example, were granted permission to read users’ private messages, and Amazon could obtain the contact information of users through their friends. The deals involved the data of hundreds of millions of users every month, and some were still active this year. The Week