Trump scolds fellow NATO leaders: Spend more for military ADVERTISING Trump scolds fellow NATO leaders: Spend more for military BRUSSELS (AP) — Surrounded by stone-faced allies, President Donald Trump rebuked fellow NATO members Thursday for failing to meet the military
Trump scolds fellow NATO leaders: Spend more for military
BRUSSELS (AP) — Surrounded by stone-faced allies, President Donald Trump rebuked fellow NATO members Thursday for failing to meet the military alliance’s financial benchmarks, asserting that leaves it weaker and shortchanges “the people and taxpayers of the United States.”
Trump, who has often complained back home about other nations’ NATO support, lectured the other leaders in person this time, declaring, “Many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years.”
The president’s assertion immediately put NATO under new strain and did nothing to quiet questions about his complicated relationship with an alliance he has previously panned as “obsolete.” Notably, he also did not offer an explicit public endorsement of NATO’s “all for one, one for all” collective defense principle, though White House officials said his mere presence at the meeting signaled his commitment.
Fellow NATO leaders occasionally exchanged awkward looks with each other during the president’s lecture, which occurred at an event commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. When Trump tried to lighten the mood with a joke about NATO’s gleaming new home base — “I never asked once what the new NATO Headquarters cost” — there was no laughter from his counterparts.
NATO officials had expected Trump to raise the payments issue during Thursday’s meeting, even preparing Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg for the prospect that the president could try to pull off a stunt like handing out invoices. But one European official said NATO members were still taken aback by the aggressive tone of his speech.
UK bomber said to have pleaded ‘Forgive me’ before blast
MANCHESTER, England (AP) — The suspect in the deadly Manchester concert bombing was driven by what he saw as unjust treatment of Arabs in Britain, a relative said Thursday, confirming he made a final phone call in which he pleaded: “Forgive me.”
Salman Abedi was particularly upset by the killing last year of a Muslim friend whose death he believed went unnoticed by “infidels” in the U.K., said the relative, speaking on condition of anonymity over concerns for her own security.
“Why was there no outrage for the killing of an Arab and a Muslim in such a cruel way?” she asked. “Rage was the main reason,” for the blast that killed 22 at the end of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena on Monday, she said, speaking by telephone from Libya.
The new insight into Abedi’s motivation came as Britons faced stepped-up security, authorities pushed forward with raids and the investigation extended across Europe into Libya, where most of the suspected bomber’s family lived.
The number of arrests in the U.K. ticked up to eight as British Transport Police said armed officers would begin patrols on some trains because of an increased threat of terrorism. Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said, without elaborating, that searches of suspects’ homes brought “very important” clues in the probe of the bombing. But leaks from the investigation were creating a trans-Atlantic diplomatic mess.
Cornell funeral to take place today; widow pens letter
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Late Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell will be laid to rest today during a private memorial service at a Hollywood cemetery that is the final resting place of numerous stars.
The private service at Hollywood Forever Cemetery will be followed by a public memorial that begins at 3 p.m. PDT, during which fans can view Cornell’s burial site.
The services come more than a week after the 52-year-old Seattle native was found unresponsive in a Detroit hotel room hours after performing a show with Soundgarden. Coroner’s officials have said a preliminary autopsy showed Cornell hanged himself. A full autopsy and results of toxicology tests are pending.
The cemetery is the final resting place for numerous stars, including filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, actress Jayne Mansfield, rockers Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone and silent film star Rudolph Valentino.
As Soundgarden’s frontman, Cornell was a leading voice of the grunge movement that came out of Seattle and became mainstream in the 1990s. He achieved success with all his musical endeavors, including the supergroup Audioslave, Temple of the Dog and solo albums.
Monstrous cyclones churning over Jupiter’s poles
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Monstrous cyclones are churning over Jupiter’s poles, until now a largely unexplored region that is more turbulent than scientists expected.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft spotted the chaotic weather at the top and bottom of Jupiter once it began skimming the cloud tops last year, surprising researchers who assumed the giant gas planet would be relatively boring and uniform down low.
“What we’re finding is anything but that is the truth. It’s very different, very complex,” Juno’s chief scientist Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute said Thursday.
With dozens of cyclones hundreds of miles across — alongside unidentifiable weather systems stretching thousands of miles — the poles look nothing like Jupiter’s equatorial region, instantly recognizable by its stripes and Great Red Spot, a raging hurricane-like storm.
“That’s the Jupiter we’ve all known and grown to love,” Bolton said. “And when you look from the pole, it looks totally different … I don’t think anybody would have guessed this is Jupiter.”
Probe: US bomb set off IS-planted devices in Mosul tragedy
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States acknowledged Thursday that bombing an Iraqi building in March set off a series of Islamic-State planted explosives, resulting in more than 100 civilian deaths and underscoring the difficulty of rooting out the extremist group’s fighters from its remaining urban strongholds.
The bomb dropped on a building in the city of Mosul set off explosive materials that IS militants had already been placed inside, causing the structure to collapse, the Pentagon said in describing the conclusion of a two-month investigation. The civilians inside were seeking refuge.
The bombing led to the largest single incident of civilian deaths in the nearly 3-year-old campaign. And it illustrates the difficult urban fight U.S. and coalition forces are encountering, including what U.S. officials describe as IS militants deliberately enticing attacks on buildings where they’ve staged explosives and know civilians are inside. The civilians either enter unwittingly or are forced in and locked up.
The conclusion, said U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Matthew Isler, is that while the U.S.-led coalition takes responsibility for the airstrike, “a coalition munition was not responsible for the structural failure of the building and the deaths of the civilians inside.” He said IS has tried to set up similar incidents since then, prompting Iraqi and coalition forces to adjust combat tactics and watch locations more carefully in advance of strikes.
The battle for Mosul is key to eliminating IS from Iraq. But it has grown riskier for civilians as the battleground shrinks in the highly populated older section of the city. Humanitarian officials have predicted civilian casualties would spike as more than 400,000 civilians were trapped in the city’s west. A similar scenario could emerge in IS’ self-declared capital of Raqqa, Syria, which U.S.-backed militia are expected to start trying to retake soon.
Insurers continue to hike prices, abandon ACA markets
(AP) People shopping for insurance through the Affordable Care Act in yet more regions could face higher prices and fewer choices next year as insurance companies lay out their early plans for 2018.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is asking regulators for a 23 percent price hike next year because it doesn’t expect crucial payments from the federal government to continue. That announcement comes a day after Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City said it will leave the individual insurance market next year, a decision that affects about 67,000 people in a 32-county area in Kansas and Missouri.
The Kansas City company’s decision also will leave shoppers in 25 counties with no options for coverage sold on public insurance exchanges, unless another insurer steps in, according to data compiled by The Associated Press and the consulting firm Avalere. The law’s insurance exchanges are the only place where people can buy coverage with help from an income-based tax credit.
Other insurers around the country, such as Aetna and Humana, have already said they will not offer coverage on exchanges next year, though several, including Centene, say they will.
Options are growing thin in many markets. The Kansas City insurer’s decision means that only 10 of Missouri’s 115 counties will have more than one insurer selling coverage on the exchange next year.
