News Daypop Archives

Twitter notified 1.4 million people that they may have interacted with fake Russia-backed accounts during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the company announced Wednesday afternoon. Twitter identified 3,814 accounts “potentially connected to a propaganda effort by a Russian government-linked organization known as the Internet Research Agency.” According to Twitter, an “interaction” with any of these Russian-linked accounts is identified as either following, retweeting, quoting, replying to, mentioning, or liking those accounts or their content.  Anyone who was actively following any of these accounts was suspended.  ...Read more

A train carrying Republican members of Congress to a legislative retreat slammed into a garbage truck in western Virginia Wednesday morning, killing at least one person and injuring at least five others. The deadly crash occurred in Crozet, Virginia, about 15 miles west of Charlottesville. The Amtrak train carrying the legislators blasted into the garbage truck at about 50 miles an hour, according to lawmakers. The group was headed for The Greenbrier resort in West Virginia. The White House said in a statement that President Donald Trump had been briefed on the accident all morning. Later, in the Oval Office, he said the accident was “very sad.”  ...Read more

President Donald Trump, whose first year in office saw division, said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that he has ushered in an ebullient “new American moment” and issued a summons for “the unity we need to deliver for the people we were elected to serve.” The president set an ambitious agenda for his second year in office, from a $1.5 trillion plan to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure to a four-pronged immigration package to a pledge to reduce prescription drug prices. The president also laid out details of his immigration package, offering citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, who are known as “dreamers,” in return for increased spending on border security, including for his promised wall at Mexico’s border; an end to the visa lottery; and limits on family reunification policies. While Republicans cheered throughout, Democrats sat stonily. . His one-hour, 20-minute speech was the longest since Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address in 2000. ...Read more

President Donald Trump, whose first year in office saw division, said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that he has ushered in an ebullient “new American moment” and issued a summons for “the unity we need to deliver for the people we were elected to serve.” The President set an ambitious agenda for his second year in office, from a $1.5 trillion plan to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure to a four-pronged immigration package to a pledge to reduce prescription drug prices. The president also laid out details of his immigration package, offering citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, who are known as “dreamers,” in return for increased spending on border security, including for his promised wall at Mexico’s border; an end to the visa lottery; and limits on family reunification policies. While Republicans cheered throughout, Democrats sat stonily. His one-hour, 20-minute speech was the longest since Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address in 2000. ...Read more

Hawaii’s emergency management leader has resigned and a state employee who sent an alert falsely warning of an incoming ballistic missile has been fired, officials said Tuesday, after the mistake caused widespread panic earlier this month. Hawaii Emergency Management Agency Administrator Vern Miyagi stepped down Tuesday, state Adjutant General Maj. Gen. Joe Logan said. A second agency worker quit before disciplinary action was taken and another was being suspended without pay, Logan said in announcing results of an internal investigation. The fallout came the same day the Federal Communications Commission revealed that the worker who pushed out the alert thought an actual attack was imminent. The state emergency agency worker believed the attack was real because of a mistake in how the drill was initiated during a shift change, the FCC said in a report. ...Read more

Terrorism was being eyed as a possible motive after a man in a black Honda targeted pedestrians Monday morning in Philadelphia, seriously injuring one person before being shot in the head by an off-duty cop, officials said. The driver, who wasn’t immediately identified, was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said. The driver was initially in “extremely critical condition” after the incident and was taken to the hospital with a gunshot wound to the head. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. said at a news conference Monday evening that while initial reports said the driver attempted to hit multiple people with his car, police have been “unable to confirm that he was trying to strike several people.” Authorities said they were reviewing videos of the incident and looking for more witnesses for more information. ...Read more

Andrew McCabe on Monday left his job as deputy director of the FBI after enduring withering attacks from President Trump and other Republicans. McCabe went on leave from the FBI on Monday, pending the effective date of his retirement in March, said two government officials familiar with the move. McCabe already had intended to retire this spring, and he has been a frequent target of criticism from President Donald Trump. Earlier this month, reports said that Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions pressured FBI Director Christopher Wray to push McCabe out, and a report in the Washington Post said that Trump, after firing former FBI director James B. Comey, asked McCabe how he voted in the 2016 election.  ...Read more

In an interview with Piers Morgan airing Sunday, President Donald Trump covered a wide-range of topics. The President said he usually tweets at breakfast or over lunch before getting down to the work of government in the day, and he insisted he was ‘very popular’ in Britain, despite vows from protesters that his visit to the country will be greeted with huge protests. Trump also sparked a diplomatic row by claiming the Prime Minister had invited him to make two trips to the UK this year, including a State visit in October. However Trump reportedly refused a State visit to the UK after Theresa May criticized him for retweeting videos from British far-Right extremists. The President said he would apologize if the far-right group is seen as being ‘horrible and racist’.  The President also answered the question of whether or not he is a feminist. His answer was a clear ‘no.’ Trump said, ‘no, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist. I mean, I think that would be, maybe, going too far. I’m for women, I’m for men, I’m for everyone.” ...Read more

Four people were killed in a shooting at a car wash in Pennsylvania on Sunday morning and the shooter is in critical condition, state police said. Officials originally reported five people were killed in the shooting, but police later identified the fifth person as the suspected shooter, 28-year-old Timothy Smith. Smith was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to the head and is not expected to survive. Officials said it is possible the gunshot wound was self-inflicted. A woman survived the shooting, but sustained minor injuries from broken glass, as officials believe she was able to duck out of the shooter’s view. Officials said the shooter was armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a 9-millimeter handgun and a 308 rifle and was wearing body armor. Pennsylvania State Troopers said a motive for the shooting had not yet been identified. ...Read more

The engineer on an Amtrak train that derailed in Washington state last month, killing three people, told investigators he mistook a wayside signal for another signal before the track speed dropped to 30 mph, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday. Additionally more than 70 people were injured when Train 501 of Amtrak’s Cascades service from Seattle to Portland derailed and went off a bridge in the city of DuPont on Dec. 18. Both the engineer and conductor suffered “serious injuries” in the crash and couldn’t be interviewed until last week, the agency said. A cause has not been determined. The NTSB investigation is expected to take between one and two years. ...Read more