monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

The death toll from Saturday's missile attack on a military training camp in Yemen has risen to at least 111, the country's government has said.

The missile struck a mosque at the al-Estiqbal camp in Marib where soldiers had gathered for evening prayers.

The government blamed the rebel Houthi movement, but it did not immediately confirm it had launched the missile.

It was one of the bloodiest single attacks since the conflict in Yemen escalated five years ago.

The fighting between the Houthis and forces loyal to the government, which is backed by a Saudi-led coalition, has devastated the country, killed an estimated 100,000 people, and triggered the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

More than 11 million people face a daily struggle to find enough food, and 240,000 people live in famine-like conditions, according to the World Food Programme.

You should worry about your own country.

An air tanker has crashed in a fireball while fighting bushfires in Australia, killing the three people on board.

Officials lost contact with the C-130 Hercules plane shortly before 13:30 local time (02:30 GMT) on Thursday.

The cause of the crash in the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales (NSW) state is not yet known. The victims were American residents.

More than 80 blazes are raging across the state after hot and windy conditions returned.

The plane crashed in an active fire zone two hours south of Australia's capital, Canberra, said the NSW Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS).

"The field reports are that the plane came down, it's crashed and there was a large fireball associated with that crash," said Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.

Baghdad, Iraq - Leaders of several Iraqi Shia armed groups have condemned President Barham Salih's meeting with his United States counterpart President Donald Trump, with some threatening to force Salih to resign.

The meeting between the two presidents took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday.

It came amid rising regional tensions that spilled over in Iraq after the killing of the leader of Iran's Quds Force, General Qassem Soleimani, and the simultaneous assassination of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy leader of the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Forces or PMF) in an airstrike ordered by Trump near Baghdad airport earlier this month.

Al-Muhandis was also the founder of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed armed group that the US targeted in Iraq and Syria on December 30, killing at least 25 fighters and injuring more than 50. The attack was in response to the killing of a US civilian contractor two days earlier.

Supporters and members of Kataib Hezbollah and other paramilitary groups within the PMF, an umbrella organisation of mostly Iran-backed Shia armed groups, responded by storming the US embassy in Baghdad.

Mohammad Mohie, a spokesperson for Kataib Hezbollah, told Al Jazeera that the group considered the Salih-Trump meeting "deeply humiliating and inconsiderate of the loss of Iraqi blood".

"Trump has committed unforgivable crimes against the Iraqi people. How could Salih join hands with someone who has no respect for Iraq's sovereignty and the blood of its martyrs?" Mohie asked.

"He [Salih] has positioned himself against the Iraqi people. We call on him to step down and not return to Baghdad. He is no longer welcome among us."

Echoing those sentiments, Nasser al-Shammari, deputy secretary-general of the al-Naujabaa Brigades, another Shia armed group in Iraq, told Al Jazeera: "The hands of this man [Trump] are covered in Iraqi blood.

"Most Iraqi people consider this [meeting] treacherous. We no longer accept him [Salih] as our representative and won't rest until he's held accountable for going against the will of the Iraqi parliament and disregarding our martyrs' blood.

"He must step down and be banished from Baghdad," al-Shammari added.

Following the meeting, Naeem al-Aboudi, a member of the Sadiqoon parliamentary bloc, the political arm of the Iran-backed Asaib Ahl al-Haq armed group, wrote on Twitter: "A statesman should not violate his country's constitution and sovereignty, or be a reason to infuriate millions of his people."

The PMF, which was legally integrated into Iraq's state security forces last year, did not issue a formal statement on the meeting. Its media representative, Mohannad Hussein, told Al Jazeera: "We are part of the Iraqi government. It is within diplomatic protocols for heads of state to meet."

Critics say some of the armed groups within the umbrella organisation operate independently of Baghdad.

Ahead of the meeting, Kataib Hezbollah had warned that Salih would be "violating the will of the people" if he met Trump.

In a statement ahead of the event, the Shia paramilitary group al-Nujabaa said it hoped Salih "rejects meeting this fool".

You just wanted to pass around some invective.

That's a sad sack move.

North Korea?

China trade imbalance? Impasse sorted.

Iran's insurgency in Iraq?

Rampant insurgency from Mexico?

Local industries being offshored?

(...)

The new rule, written by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, will retain federal protections of large bodies of water, as well as larger rivers and streams that flow into them and wetlands that lie adjacent to them. But it removes protections for many other waters, including wetlands that are not adjacent to large bodies of water, some seasonal streams that flow for only a portion of the year, “ephemeral” streams that only flow after rainstorms, and water that temporarily flows through underground passages.

Legal experts say that Mr. Trump’s replacement rule would go further than simply repealing and replacing the 2015 Obama rule — it would also eliminate protections to smaller headwaters that have been implemented for decades under the 1972 Clean Water Act.

“This is rolling back federal jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act further than it’s ever been before,” said Patrick Parenteau, a professor of environmental law at Vermont Law School. “Waters that have been protected for almost 50 years will no longer be protected under the Clean Water Act.”

That could open millions of acres of pristine wetlands to pollution or destruction, and allow chemicals and other pollutants to be discharged into smaller headland waters that eventually drain into larger water bodies, experts in water management said. Wetlands play key roles in filtering surface water and protecting against floods, while also providing wildlife habitat.

(...)

..it's fine for you nevertrumpers...

Pope Francis significantly shifted the ideological balance of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States on Thursday by replacing one of the country’s most prominent conservative prelates as the archbishop of Philadelphia.

Pope Francis announced in a statement that Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia was retiring, and that Bishop Nelson J. Perez of Cleveland, a former Philadelphian and relative newcomer to the national scene, would assume the role.

...Archbishop Chaput, who was appointed to the position by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, has long been known as a theological and political conservative, often at odds with Francis’ mission to move beyond the culture wars. The move is a sign that the pope, who has installed key allies in Chicago and Newark, is still intent on changing the ideological direction of the American church by directing one of its most traditionalist dioceses toward a more pastoral approach.

Francis recently acknowledged that a good deal of the opposition to his pontificate emanated from the United States, telling a reporter who handed him a book exploring the well-financed and media-backed American effort to undermine his agenda that it was “an honor that the Americans attack me.”

Archbishop Chaput became a favorite among Catholic conservatives for supporting the denial of communion to Catholic politicians who back abortion rights, opposing the legalization of gay marriage and, as archbishop of Denver before gay marriage was legalized nationally, helping defeat legislation that would have legalized civil unions for gay couples in the state...

Cotton knocks House managers for ‘repeating themselves over and over again’

Mitch McConnell has failed the Republican Party
...Observing the behavior of Republican senators during President Trump’s impeachment has shown just how craven the Party of Lincoln has become. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared that “I’m not an impartial juror” before solemnly swearing to do “impartial justice.” Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) once declared Trump unfit for office, called for his exclusion from the Republican Party and tweeted that the best way to make America great again was to “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” But after Trump’s election, Graham quickly fell in line and has likewise stated that “I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here.” ..

The coverup will mostly fail. Here’s why.
Still, time is working against Trump. What has already been demonstrated by House Democrats is incredibly damning. But since the impeachment vote, digging by good-government groups, supplemented by investigative reporting, has shown that concerns inside the administration about the illegality and impropriety of Trump’s corrupt freezing of military aid to extort Ukraine ran far deeper than we knew.

More is coming. The nonprofit group American Oversight just received reams of new emails, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, from the White House budget office showing that on the day Trump pressured the Ukrainian president, White House officials were still working to justify the aid freeze’s legality, creating previously unknown internal tensions.

Wow, what a pile of lies......but lets pretend it was true (it isn't but lets pretend)

President Trump on Wednesday dismissed concussion symptoms reported by several American troops after Iranian airstrikes on Al Asad Air Base in Iraq as “not very serious,” even as the Pentagon acknowledged that a number of service members were being examined for possible traumatic brain injury caused by the attack.

“I heard they had headaches,” Mr. Trump said at a news conference in Davos, Switzerland. “No, I don’t consider them very serious injuries, relative to other injuries that I’ve seen.”

The comments of the president, who avoided the Vietnam War draft with a medical diagnosis of bone spurs, drew swift criticism from veterans’ groups.

“Don’t just be outraged by #PresidentMayhem’s latest asinine comments,” Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, wrote in a Twitter post. “Take action to help vets facing TBIs,” a reference to traumatic brain injury.

The deputy commander of the American-led military operation in Iraq said the Defense Department was putting the service members through medical examinations to see if the headaches and other complaints amounted to traumatic stress injuries. Some of the affected troops were mere feet away from where the Iranian missiles struck, although they were in protective bunkers, Defense Department officials said.

Fox News tells people to not even watch Trump’s impeachment trial: It’s too boring
Clearly, the last thing Fox wants is an informed public

“A solid majority of Republicans who say Trump has probably done illegal things say he should remain in office.”