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Sean Hannity loses advertisers amid uproar over slain DNC staffer conspiracy theories

Another Conservative being brought down by the damn democrats??

The automotive classified site Cars.com and several other companies pulled advertising from Sean Hannity’s Fox News show after he came under fire for promoting a conspiratorial account of the slaying of a former Democratic National Committee staffer.
“We don’t have the ability to influence content at the time we make our advertising purchase,” Cars.com said in a statement Wednesday. “In this case, we’ve been watching closely and have recently made the decision to pull our advertising from Hannity.”
The mattress maker Leesa Sleep, the exercise company Peloton, and the military financial services company USAA said they, too, were no longer advertising on Hannity’s show. Crowne Plaza Hotels, online mattress retailer Casper, and the video doorbell company Ring, told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that they were backing out as well.

[The life and death of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory]

Ring told BuzzFeed News in a statement: “We are always evaluating and monitoring our advertisements to ensure they align with the Ring brand. As of May 23rd, we have asked our media buying partners not to place Ring ads on The Sean Hannity Show.”
Hannity had been one of the main purveyors of a widely discredited theory that DNC staffer Seth Rich was shot and killed near his home in Northwest Washington last year because he had supplied DNC emails to WikiLeaks. District police say Rich died in a botched robbery. His parents have pleaded with news outlets to stop speculating about his death.

[Opinion | We’re Seth Rich’s parents. Stop politicizing our son’s murder.]

After facing a wave of criticism over its reporting, Fox News retracted an article on Tuesday that said Rich made contact with WikiLeaks before he was shot.
At first Hannity refused to follow suit, telling listeners on his radio show, “All you in the liberal media, I am not Fox.com or Foxnews.com; I retracted nothing.” On his Fox News show Tuesday evening he said he would back off the story “for now,” but continued to post cryptic tweets about Rich’s death.
The left-leaning media watchdog Media Matters published a list of Hannity’s sponsors on Tuesday — a move many interpreted as a call to boycott his show.
Hannity responded in a series of tweets saying “liberal fascists” were trying to bring him down.

“There’s nothing that I did, nothing that I said, except they don’t like my position politically,” Hannity told HuffPost Wednesday. “They’ll try to ratchet up the intensity of their rationale. It does not justify an attempt to get me fired. And that’s what this is. This is an attempt to take me out. This is a kill shot.”
Rich, a 27-year-old data analyst, was gunned down in the early hours of July 10 in Washington’s Bloomingdale neighborhood. Later that month, WikiLeaks published a cache of DNC emails, leading some commentators to speculate that Rich’s death was somehow related.
Investigators have not found Rich’s killer, but they have ruled out any connection to WikiLeaks.
On May 16, Fox News reported that Rich had leaked more than 44,000 DNC emails and more than 17,700 attachments to a now-deceased WikiLeaks director. The stories, which cited “investigative sources,” were widely circulated on social media and among conservative news outlets.
In its retraction on Tuesday, Fox News said in a statement that the article “was not initially subjected to the high degree of editorial scrutiny we require for all our reporting.”
Rich’s parents, Mary and Joel Rich, have described the conspiracy theories surrounding their son’s death as a “nightmare.”
“Seth’s death has been turned into a political football,” they wrote in a Washington Post commentary. “Every day we wake up to new headlines, new lies, new factual errors, new people approaching us to take advantage of us and Seth’s legacy. It just won’t stop.”
Last month, advertisers fled former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly’s show en mass amid allegations that he had sexually harassed several women. Over the course of a couple weeks, dozens of companies pulled out of after a damning New York Times article revealed that he and Fox had paid $13 million over the past 15 years to settle five cases. Fox News ended its 20-year association with O’Reilly on April 19.

Trump meets EU chiefs in Brussels

U.S. President Donald Trump met the heads of European Union institutions in Brussels on Thursday ahead of a summit of NATO leaders at the military alliance’s headquarters in the city later in the day.
Trump, on the fourth leg of his first foreign trip since taking office, was greeted by European Council President Donald Tusk, a former Polish prime minister who chairs meetings of the 28 EU leaders. Also joining the talks will be the bloc’s chief executive, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.
Trump, who voiced scepticism while campaigning about the EU’s value and hailed Britain’s Brexit vote to quit the bloc, will hear a call from European leaders for him to maintain Washington’s longstanding support for integration on the continent, as well to support free trade and efforts to combat climate change.

In first under Trump, U.S. warship challenges Beijing’s claims in South China Sea

A U.S. Navy warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island built up by China in the South China Sea, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, the first such challenge to Beijing in the strategic waterway since U.S. President Donald Trump took office.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the USS Dewey traveled close to the Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, among a string of islets, reefs and shoals over which China has territorial disputes with its neighbors.
China said its warships had warned the U.S. ship and it lodged “stern representations” with the United States. China said it remained resolutely opposed to so-called freedom of navigation operations.
The U.S. patrol, the first of its kind since October, marked the latest attempt to counter what Washington sees as Beijing’s efforts to limit freedom of navigation in the strategic waters, and comes as Trump is seeking China’s cooperation to rein in ally North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
Territorial waters are generally defined by U.N. convention as extending at most 12 nautical miles from a state’s coastline.
One U.S. official said it was the first operation near a land feature which was included in a ruling last year against China by an international arbitration court in The Hague. The court invalidated China’s claim to sovereignty over large swathes of the South China Sea.
The United States has criticized China’s construction of islands and build-up of military facilities in the sea, and is concerned they could be used to restrict free movement.
U.S. allies and partners in the region had grown anxious as the Trump administration held off on carrying out South China Sea operations during its first few months in office.
Last month, top U.S. commander in the Asia-Pacific region, Admiral Harry Harris, said the United States would likely carry out freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea soon.
Still, the U.S. military has a long-standing position that the operations are carried out throughout the world, including in areas claimed by allies, and they are separate from political considerations.
“We operate in the Asia-Pacific region on a daily basis, including in the South China Sea. We operate in accordance with international law,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said in a statement.
The Pentagon gave no details of the latest mission.
‘ERRANT WAYS’
Chinese defense ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang told a monthly briefing two Chinese guided-missile warships had warned the U.S. vessel to leave the waters, and China had complained to the United States.
“The U.S. side’s errant ways have caused damage to the improving situation in the South China Sea, and are not conducive to peace and stability,” Ren said.
Ren was referring to a recent of easing of tension between China and other claimants, in particular the Philippines.
China’s extensive claims to the South China Sea, which sees about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade pass every year, are challenged by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, as well as Taiwan.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said such patrols were “very likely to cause unexpected sea and air accidents”.
Under the previous U.S. administration, the Navy conducted several such voyages through the South China Sea. The last operation was approved by then-President Barack Obama.
The latest U.S. patrol is likely to exacerbate U.S.-China tensions that had eased since Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for a summit in Florida resort last month.
Trump lambasted China during the 2016 presidential campaign, accusing it of stealing U.S. jobs with unfair trade policies, manipulating its currency and militarizing parts of the South China Sea.
In December, after winning office, he upended protocol by taking a call from the president of self-ruled Taiwan, which China regards as its own sacred territory.
But since meeting Xi, Trump has praised him for efforts to restrain North Korea, though it has persisted with ballistic missile tests.
U.S.-based South China Sea expert Greg Poling of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the operation was the first conducted by the United States close to an artificial feature built by China not entitled to a territorial sea under international law.
Previous freedom of navigation operations have gone within 12 nautical miles of Subi and Fiery Cross reefs, two other features in the Spratlys built up by China, but both of those features are entitled to a territorial sea.
Mischief Reef was not entitled to a territorial sea as it was underwater at high tide before it was built up by China and was not close enough to another feature entitled to such a territorial sea, said Poling.
He said the key question was whether the U.S. warship had engaged in a real challenge to the Chinese claims by turning on radar or launching a helicopter or boat – actions not permitted in a territorial sea under international law.
Otherwise, critics say, the operation would have resembled what is known as “innocent passage” and could have reinforced rather than challenged China’s claim to a territorial limit around the reef.

UK police stop sharing information on Manchester attack with U.S. after leaks

Sharing Stopped because of some Democrat Snitch?

British police have stopped sharing information on the suicide bombing in Manchester with the United States, the BBC reported on Thursday, because of fears that leaks in the U.S. media could hinder a hunt for a possible bomb-maker still at large.
If confirmed, the halt to the sharing investigative details with Britain’s most important defense and security ally would underscore the level of anger in Britain at leaks to the U.S. media of details about the police investigation.
British Prime Minister Theresa May will raise the issue with Donald Trump on Thursday, a government source told Reuters, after the New York Times published detailed pictures of the crime scene in Manchester where 22 people were killed.
The pictures included the remains of the suspected bomb, the rucksack worn by the suicide bomber and showed blood stains amid the wreckage.
The BBC said Manchester Police hoped to resume normal intelligence relationships soon but is currently furious.
After the deadliest attack in Britain since July 2005, police are hunting for accomplices whom they suspect helped Salman Abedi build the bomb that killed 22 people on Monday in a crowded concert hall in the northern English city of Manchester.
British police have arrested two more men in connection with the Manchester attack, taking the number of people in custody to eight, Greater Manchester police said.
Britain views the United States as its closest ally, and the two countries also share intelligence as part of the “Five Eyes” network which also includes Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
After Trump defended his decision to discuss intelligence with the Russians during a White House meeting, Prime Minister Theresa May said last week that Britain would continue to share intelligence with the United States.

Shadow Government Cartoons

U.S. starts ‘extreme vetting’ at Australia’s offshore detention centers

U.S. Homeland Security officials have begun “extreme vetting” interviews at Australia’s offshore detention centers, two sources at the camps told Reuters on Tuesday, as Washington honors a refugee swap that U.S. President Donald Trump had called “a dumb deal”.
The Trump administration said last month the agreement to offer refuge to up to 1,250 asylum seekers in the centers would progress on condition that refugees satisfied strict checks.
In exchange, Australia has pledged to take Central American refugees from a center in Costa Rica, where the United States has expanded intake in recent years, under the deal struck with former President Barack Obama.
The first security interviews finished last week at Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island detention center, two refugees who went through the process told Reuters.
The refugees told Reuters that interviews began with an oath to God to tell the truth and then proceeded for as long as six hours, with in-depth questions on associates, family, friends and any interactions with the Islamic State militant group.
“They asked about why I fled my home, why I sought asylum in Australia,” said one refugee who declined to be named, fearing it could jeopardize his application for U.S. resettlement.
The security interviews are the last stage of U.S. consideration of applicants.
Manus Island is one of two Australian-operated detention centers, which hold nearly 1,300 people who were intercepted trying to reach Australia by boat.
Human rights groups have condemned the intercept policy and the harsh conditions of the camps. Australia says offshore processing is needed as a deterrent after thousands of people drowned at sea before the policy was introduced in 2013.
A decision on the fate of the first 70 people interviewed is expected to be reached within the next month, a different source who works with refugees said.
A spokesman for Australia’s immigration minister refused to comment on the resettlement process.
The U.S. State Department and White House did not immediately respond to questions.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans for extreme vetting have extended to those traveling to the United States from Muslim countries.
Australia’s relationship with the new administration in Washington got off to a rocky start when Trump lambasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the resettlement arrangement, which Trump labeled a “dumb deal”.
Details of an acrimonious phone call between the pair soon after Trump took office made headlines around the world. Australia is one of Washington’s staunchest allies and has sent troops to fight alongside the U.S. military in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The relocation of asylum seekers to the United States is designed to help Papua New Guinea and Australia proceed with the planned closure of the Manus detention center on Oct. 31.
But the fate of approximately 200 men deemed non-refugees is uncertain.
Those not offered resettlement in the United States will be offered the chance to settle in Papua New Guinea or return home.
Australia has already offered detainees up to $25,000 to voluntarily return home; an offer very few have taken up.

U.S. delivers patrol boats to Vietnam to deepen security ties

The United States has transferred six patrol boats to the Vietnam coast guard, to help build security cooperation between the two countries, U.S. embassy in Hanoi said in a statement on Tuesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed his hope for a stronger relationship with Vietnam, after the Obama administration put ties on a stronger footing amid Vietnam’s territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea.
The patrol boats, which were included a defense cooperation memorandum agreed in 2011, will help Vietnam in intercoastal patrols and law enforcement, the statement said.
It also added that delivering these vessels deepens cooperation in the areas maritime law enforcement, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance operations within Vietnam’s territorial waters and exclusive economic zone.
“Vietnam’s future prosperity depends upon a stable and peaceful maritime environment. The United States and the rest of the international community also benefit from regional stability,” U.S. Ambassador Ted Osius said.
Vietnam is the country most openly at odds with China over the waterway since the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte took a softer line with Beijing.
China claims 90 percent of the potentially energy-rich South China Sea. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan lay claim to parts of the sea, through which about $5 trillion of trade passes each year.