Georgia police chief defends tasering a grandmother

Police in Georgia were right to electrocute an 87-year-old woman who didn’t understand that they wanted her to drop the knife she was using to cut dandelions, their boss says.

“In my opinion, it was the lowest use of force we could have used to simply stop that threat at the time,” Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge told the local Daily Citizen-News last week. Martha Al-Bishara, a grandmother who doesn’t speak English, “still [had] the ability to hurt an officer,” he said.

Boris Johnson Refuses To Share A Platform With Nigel Farage On Ukip MEP's Brexit Tour

Boris Johnson has ruled out sharing a platform with Nigel Farage as the former Ukip leader tours the country to fight against the government’s plan for Brexit.

HuffPost UK has been told the former foreign secretary will not join forces with the MEP, despite both being opposed to Theresa May’s negotiating stance with Brussels.

Farage announced over the weekend he would join a battle bus tour organised by the Leave Means Leave campaign group, as he feels May’s Chequers agreement “is nothing less than a direct betrayal of everything people voted for.”

Ten Years After the Crash

The financial crisis that broke out a decade ago was a long time in the making, and a long time in the playing out. Over just a few days in September, 2008, Lehman Brothers essentially ceased to exist, the Federal Reserve took over American International Group to prevent a wider collapse, and commercial banks and mortgage lenders around the country failed. The speed and the scale of destruction were so breathtaking that only the direst analogies seemed adequate—the stock market crash of 1929, or an economic 9/11. Citigroup appeared poised to go down next, with General Motors and Chrysler to follow. Everything solid in the American economy turned out to be built on sand. But the crisis took years to emerge. It was caused by reckless lending practices, Wall Street greed, outright fraud, lax government oversight in the George W. Bush years, and deregulation of the financial sector in the Bill Clinton years. The deepest source, going back decades, was rising inequality. In good times and bad, no matter which party held power, the squeezed middle class sank ever further into debt.

Is Democracy Really Dying?

In the middle of the 1970s, Zbigniew Brzezinski approached his friend, Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, with a question: Is democracy in crisis? It was a subject of much concern at the Trilateral Commission, a kind of Rotary Club for members of the international power elite that Brzezinski had co-founded in 1973 with David Rockefeller, head of Chase Manhattan and grandson of the famous robber baron. With the Trilateral Commission’s backing, Huntington and two co-authors produced a survey of democracy’s health in the United States, Europe, and Asia. They found that faith in government had nosedived, political parties were fracturing, and efforts to pacify voters through more public spending had sent both inflation rates and deficits soaring. Too many people—Huntington’s list included “blacks, Indians, Chicanos, white ethnic groups, students, and women”—were demanding too much from politics, rendering the entire system ungovernable.

Labour 'finished' if it backs Brexit in a snap election, says Adonis

A pro-EU Labour peer and former cabinet minister has said the party is “finished” if it contests another election promising to back Brexit, as a new poll suggested the party’s support depends heavily on remain voters who could switch their allegiance to the Lib Dems.

Andrew Adonis, a former transport minister and a vocal critic on Britain’s departure from the EU, said the party could not be seen as an “accomplice to Brexit” should a snap election take place before March 2019.

World Leaders Opt For China's Money Over The Rights Of 1 Million Jailed Muslims

WASHINGTON ― Now that United Nations experts have endorsed widespread reports that China is holding a million members of its Muslim minority Uighur community in internment camps, the Chinese government’s denials of a crackdown look flimsier than ever. Activists and reporters who have documented the repression appear vindicated and awareness about the crisis seems to be growing ― but there’s no certainty of resulting international pressure from governments like the United States that experts see as essential to forcing change.

What may unfold in Syria's Idlib and why is a 'bloodbath' likely?

Just weeks after scoring a major military victory in the south, Syria's President Bashar al-Assad appears set to fully open a new, more complex, front in the country's war - now in its eighth year.

The key northwestern Idlib province is the Syrian opposition's last major bastion in the country. It is currently home to nearly three million people, half of whom are internally displaced, and encloses what was once a major commercial highway linking Syria to Turkey and Jordan.

“Socialism” vs. “capitalism” is a false dichotomy

Suddenly there’s a lively debate on both the left and the right about the specter of socialism in America. According to Gallup, Democrats now view socialism in a more positive light than capitalism. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, became an instant political star after she clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination for the New York 14th District’s House seat.

Denmark says time is running out to avoid no-deal Brexit

Time is running out to strike a Brexit deal, according to the Danish finance minister, who has echoed warnings that there is a 50-50 chance of Britain crashing out of the European Union without an agreement in place.

Kristian Jensen said the window of opportunity for striking a deal that was positive for both Britain and the EU was closing.

Earlier, Latvia’s foreign minister, Edgars Rinkēvičs, claimed the chance of a no-deal Brexit was “50-50”. Rinkēvičs said it was a “very considerable risk” but stressed he remained optimistic an agreement with Britain could be reached.

Corbyn Ally And Union Boss Len McCluskey Turns On Jewish Leaders After Wreath Row

Len McCluskey has hit out at what he calls the “intransigent hostility” of Jewish community leaders and accused “Blairite” Labour MPs of exploiting the anti-Semitism row to provoke a split in the party.

Writing for HuffPost UK on Thursday afternoon, the general secretary of the Unite union and close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, said Labour risked descending “into a vortex of McCarthyism”.