viral newses

A store that sells smoking and vaping material in Georgia says it fired an employee after he yelled profanity at a customer wearing a T-shirt and hat supporting President Donald Trump . The customer, Ian Fergeson, says he went to Xhale City in the Atlanta suburb of Tucker to try to buy vape juice. WAGA-TV reports that Ferguson recorded a video showing the unnamed store worker refusing to wait on him and using several expletives. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the video showed the worker calling Trump and the customer “racist.” In a statement on Facebook and Twitter , the shop says it does not tolerate such behavior by employees and that it fired the worker immediately after Friday’s confrontation. Xhale City did not immediately return a call Monday to The Associated Press. Read More from Viral Newses http://bit.ly/2Sum1qT

President Donald Trump responded to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Monday announcement that she is forming an exploratory committee for a potential 2020 presidential run. During a phone interview with Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth asked Trump whether or not Warren can win. “Well, that I don’t know,” Trump responded. “You’d have to ask her psychiatrist.” Trump made this comment during an interview for Fox News’ “All-American New Year” special that airs on New Year’s Eve. The president also mocked the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who he has repeatedly called “Pocahontas,” because of her claim that she is part-Native American. “Elizabeth Warren will be the first,” Trump said, referring to Warren being the first major Democrat to throw her hat into the ring. “She did very badly in proving that she was of Indian heritage. That didn’t work out too well.” In an apparent attempt to get ahead of attacks related to her claim, Warren released a video discussing a DNA test that she...

Interested in Kevin Spacey? Add Kevin Spacey as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Kevin Spacey news, video, and analysis from ABC News. Former “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey must appear in a Massachusetts court on accusations that he groped a young man in 2016, a judge ruled on Monday. The 59-year-old Oscar-winning actor had argued he should be excused from attending his Jan. 7 arraignment at the Nantucket District Court because his presence would “amplify the negative publicity already generated in connection with this case.” But Judge Thomas Barrett denied Spacey’s request. Spacey has said he will plead not guilty to felony indecent assault and battery. The allegations were first brought in November 2017, when former Boston TV anchor Heather Unruh told reporters that Spacey groped her teenage son during a chance encounter in the crowded bar of a Nantucket restaurant. An attorney for Spacey, Juliane Balliro, had argued that Spacey’s presence at his arraignment...

Venrock partner Camille Samuels is ready to get back to the basics in biotech. “I’m enthused by the correction,” Samuels told Business Insider. Over the past five years, the Nasdaq biotech index is up 25%, though recently stocks have taken a tumble, putting them into correction territory, a term that refers to a 10% or greater decline from a stock’s most recent peak . In 2019, she said, she’s anticipating a return to the basic biotech-business model. That is, instead of a broad platform with six or more potential drugs in the works, a more straightforward focus on one or two lead programs that a company knows super well. The correction in turn will drive that because there will be less available capital pouring into early-stage companies, forcing them to have a more zoomed-in approach. “I remain an optimist on the fundamentals of biotech, but the industry has gotten so enthusiastic as to be undisciplined,” Samuels said. On the policy side, Samuels said she expects to see the bio...

Authorities say a 5-year-old shot in the face in a North Carolina fast-food restaurant drive-thru pulled a gun from a pocket in the back of the car’s passenger seat, where his father put it days earlier while cleaning. Police said in a statement Monday that the boy unbuckled himself from his booster seat outside a Wendy’s restaurant in Randleman on Sunday afternoon and grabbed the .45, which discharged as his mother got set to place an order. The boy was critically injured. Police say the boy’s father told investigators he put his handgun in the seat pocket, without the boy’s mother’s knowledge, as he vacuumed two days earlier and forgot to remove it. At the conclusion of their investigation, police say investigators will meet with prosecutors to determine charges. Read More from Viral Newses http://bit.ly/2CJBD4t

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Democrats unveiled a package of bills Monday that would re-open the federal government without approving funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico, establishing an early confrontation that will test the new power dynamic in Washington. The House is preparing to vote as soon as the new Congress convenes Thursday, as one of the first acts after Democrats take control, according to an aide who was not authorized to discuss the plan and spoke on condition of anonymity. Democrats under Nancy Pelosi are all but certain to swiftly approve the two bills, making good on their pledge to try to quickly resolve the partial government shutdown that’s now in its second week. What’s unclear is whether the Republican-led Senate, under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., will consider either measure — or if Trump would sign them into law. “It would be the height of irresponsibility and political cynicism for Senate Republicans to now reject the same le...

Watch BBC Sport’s top 10 funniest moments of 2018 – from bizarre throw-ins, photobombs, incredible own goals and a nutmeg with a golf ball at 140 mph. Read More from Viral Newses http://bit.ly/2F0c9C7

Video footage leaked to Turkish media shows a Saudi hit team in Istanbul carrying bags reportedly containing the remains of journalist Jamal Khashoggi , whose murder sparked an international outcry and jeopardised the kingdom’s relations with its Western allies. The video shows the arrival of some of the members of the team at the Saudi consul-general’s residence in Istanbul on the day Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate, several hundred metres from the residence. One of the hit team members is seen carrying bags, which according to the Turkish media, may contain body parts of the journalist, who was a critic of Saudi Arabia ‘s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ,  also known as MBS . Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate on October 2 to obtain documents certifying he divorced his ex-wife so he could remarry. He was killed and dismembered inside the consulate, in what Turkey called a “premeditated murder” orchestrated by the Saudi government. Saudi officials have cou...

From massive, multibillion dollar acquisitions to boardroom shake-ups and disturbing scandals, the tech industry had an eventful 2018. Business Insider’s team of tech journalists was first to report some of the most important developments, from the surprise departure of Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene to the internal turmoil at augmented-reality (AR) pioneer Magic Leap and the problems leading up to Uber’s fatal autonomous-car crash. As the tech world moves ahead into 2019, we decided to distill the year’s catalog of exclusive stories and investigations into a list of the nine most important reports. Check out the list below for some great reads you may have missed, or to refresh your perspective and challenge your assumptions as you prepare for the new year in tech. Read More from Viral Newses http://bit.ly/2QgJZno

A Panamanian car carrier heading from Japan to Hawaii caught fire in the Pacific Ocean, with some crew members abandoning the ship and the U.S. Coast Guard and other vessels heading to its rescue Monday. The Coast Guard said in a statement that crew members launched a life raft and four of the 21 mariners aboard left the Sincerity Ace wearing life jackets. The agency could not confirm if they reached the life raft. The remaining 17 crew members stayed on board to fight the fire. The Coast Guard said other commercial vessels were helping with the rescue 1,800 nautical miles (3,333 kilometers) northwest of Hawaii. The statement doesn’t say what caused the fire on the 650-foot (198-meter) ship. “The distance involved here requires any and all available support, we thank the crews of the commercial vessels for volunteering to assist and have Coast Guard air support en route,” Petty Officer 1st Class Les Elliott said in the statement. One commercial vessel had arrived and was assessi...

Revellers around the globe are bidding a weary farewell on Monday to an unsettling year filled with challenges to many of the world’s most basic institutions, including politics, trade, alliances and religion. Here’s a look at how people are ushering in the new year across Asia , Europe , Africa and the Americas as the clock ticks past midnight. Kiribati The Pacific island nation of Kiribati was the first in the world to welcome the new year, greeting 2019 with muted celebrations after spending 2018 on the front line of the battle against climate change. Kiribati is made up of low-lying atolls along the equator which intersect three time zones. Kirbati sacana, tecnicamente seria um dos últimos países à entrar no ano novo, mas decidiram mudar a “linha internacional de data” por questões de turismo. E “monetárias”, afinal o 1º é o 1º. Mas eu ainda quero dar uma volta lá. Feliz 2019 #FelizAnoNovoTrajaza #voubuscarem2019 pic.twitter.com/QXHl2HwgBq — Alexandre Callegaro (@guedxan...

Universal US equity markets rallied Monday after President Donald Trump expressed optimism over the possibility of a trade deal with China. Still, the major averages posted their worst December performance since 1931, with the S&P 500 falling 9.2%. The benchmark index was down 6.2% in 2018. Watch stocks trade live . Stocks soared into the new year, but were unable to stave off their worst December since the Great Depression.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 267 points, or 1.16%, while the S&P 500 was higher by 21 points, or 0.86%, near 2,507. Despite Monday’s gain, the S&P 500 fell 9.6% for the month of December, making it the worst closing month to the year since 1931, when it sank 14.5%. The benchmark index lost 6.2% in 2018, its biggest annual decline since 2008.  Monday’s gains came after President Donald Trump on Saturday tweeted that trade talks between the US and China were progressing, fueling optimism that a deal could be ironed out in J...

Australia’s largest city, Sydney, put on its biggest-ever fireworks display in a spectacular welcome to the New Year, kicking off a wave of celebrations for billions around the world. A record amount of pyrotechnics as well as new fireworks effects and colours lit up the city’s skyline for 12 minutes and dazzled the more than 1.5 million spectators who packed the harbourfront and parks. An earlier thunderstorm did not dampen the spirits of revellers who camped out at vantage points, some since the early hours of the morning. To mark the international year of indigenous languages in 2019, the harbour also hosted a ceremony celebrating Aboriginal heritage that included animations projected onto the bridge’s pylons. Around the world The party atmosphere will sweep across major cities in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas as the clock ticks past midnight. Hong Kong: Glittering fireworks will be sent skyward from five barges floating in Victoria Harbour in a 10-minute display watc...

Henry Romero/Reuters The outlook among manufacturing business executives in Texas worsened in December, underscoring frustrations around trade-related uncertainty within the manufacturing sector nationwide . The latest survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas showed both its general business activity index and company outlook index plunged to their lowest levels since mid-2016. Data for the survey was collected between December 18 and 26, during a particularly volatile time in the financial markets.  “We face great uncertainty for the near future,” one respondent wrote. “The economic policies of President Trump are causing unnecessarily volatile pricing and unpredictable outcomes.”  Executives in Texas have grown more negative in their overall business outlooks, according to the latest reading from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, accentuating broad tariff-related concerns across the manufacturing sector nationwide. Several measures of business activity di...

The UN’s food agency has accused Houthi rebels of stealing food “from the mouths” of hungry Yemenis, hours after an investigation by the Associated Press (AP) news agency found that both sides in the conflict had stolen aid meant for the country’s most vulnerable. David Beasley, the Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), said on Monday that his agency had collected evidence showing the Houthis had diverted shipments of food sent to help alleviate “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis”. “At a time when children are dying in Yemen because they haven’t enough food to eat, that is an outrage,” Beasley said. “This criminal behaviour must stop immediately”. Yemen’s four-year war and ensuing economic collapse have unleashed the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people needing some kind of aid to survive. Food prices have increased by an average of 68 percent, and the price of commodities such as petrol, diesel and cooking gas has increase...

Anything strike you as special about this fish here? Well, it’s worth 1.8 million dollars. It won grand champion at the All Japan Koi Show in 2017, and is the most expensive koi fish ever sold. Koi may just look like an oversized goldfish, but they’re not even remotely related. Koi are actually a type of carp, and today they’re some of the most expensive pet fish in the world. But why? Koi were originally raised in Japan in the 1700s when rice farmers first began breeding them for their distinct colors and patterns, similar to how we breed dogs for their specific traits. And just like prized dog breeds, Japanese people take koi breeding very seriously. There are regular competitions to name the top koi. Judges and buyers pay attention to how healthy its skin looks, its size and body shape, and how gracefully the fish moves in the water. But the most important trait of all is the koi’s coloring. The best koi have a good balance of colors and patterns according to their variety. For e...

For retail in 2018, there was really only one word that was on everybody’s lips: Amazon. Just a mere mention of the online shopping giant sends other companies into a flurry of speculation — whether Amazon competes directly or not. It’s easy to see why: Amazon is seeing incredible growth for a company of its size, making it one of the biggest retailers in the US and the world both online and off. In the US, Amazon will close out the year nabbing nearly half of all online sales, according to analysis by Emarketer , up from a 43.5% in 2017. Amazon will generate $258.22 billion in online retail sales in the US by the end of the year, a staggering increase of almost 30% from the year prior. Read more: Amazon reveals the top-selling items of the season as it announces record-breaking holiday sales But impressive sales aren’t the only thing that Amazon got right in 2018. Amazon Web Services and Amazon Advertising are both also experiencing phenomenal growth, and its Alexa-enabled pro...

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina ‘s Awami League (AL) party has won Bangladesh’s parliamentary vote, the country’s election commission has announced, after the main opposition alliance rejected the violence-marred polls. Three-hundred seats were up for grabs in the 350-member parliament, or Jatiya Sangshad, in Sunday’s elections.Another 50 seats are reserved for women. An AL-led coalition won a massive 288 seats, while the main opposition alliance dominated by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) secured just six. In the last elections four years ago, which were boycotted by the BNP, the AL had won 234 seats. A party needs 151 seats to form a government. “My congratulations to the Awami League,” Helal Uddin Ahmed, secretary of the Election Commission Secretariat, said in a televised address as he read the results. Bangladesh’s ruling party had surged ahead within hours of the counting of the votes – an outcome the  Jatiya Oikya Front, the BNP-led ...

Amazon has plans to open even more Whole Foods stores to make its two-hour delivery service more accessible to customers, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The expansion will bring Whole Foods to suburban and rural areas that it’s been adding customers in since it was acquired by Amazon in 2017. In the Rocky Mountain region, one person familiar with the plans told The Wall Street Journal, Whole Foods employees have visited potential retail spaces in parts of Idaho, southern Utah, and Wyoming, where the grocer doesn’t have stores now. Amazon offers Prime Now, a two-hour delivery service to Prime members that serves more than 60 cities, and online grocery pickup from Whole Foods in nearly 30 cities. Amazon plans on expanding these services to nearly all of its 475 Whole Foods stores, according to The Journal. Amazon also wants to use benefits for Prime members to attract new customers to Whole Foods and draw them back more often. Read more: Amazon dominated retail in 20...

A federal judge in Texas who recently declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional has stayed his ruling to allow for appeals. That means “Obamacare” remains in effect while litigation continues. In a ruling issued Sunday, Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth wrote that he stands by his earlier conclusion that the entire law is invalidated by congressional repeal of its fines on people who remain uninsured, like a house of cards collapsing. However, because “many everyday Americans would … face great uncertainty” if that ruling were immediately put into effect, O’Connor issued a stay to allow for appeals. A group of Republican-led states brought the lawsuit. A coalition of Democratic state attorneys general, led by California’s Xavier Becerra, intends to appeal. Congressional Democrats also plan to appeal. Read More from Viral Newses http://bit.ly/2QXgfkN

A Tokyo court on Monday backed Japanese prosecutors’ request to keep the disgraced former Nissan Motor Company chairman Carlos Ghosn behind bars until January 11, due to the latest allegation of financial misconduct. His previous release date had been set for January 1. Ghosn, initially charged over underreporting his income, has been under lock and key since November. His stay in detention has been extended once again, after another arrest warrant served last week, alleged that Ghosn transferred massive personal investment losses of up to 1.85 billion yen ($17 million) to the Japanese automaker in 2008, The Asian Nikkei Review reported, on Monday. Ghosn has denied all the allegations. Ghosn, a legend in his field, was arrested in Japan last month on allegations of massive financial misconduct when his private jet landed at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The former chairman of Nissan was detained alongside a Nissan director, American Greg Kelly, who is accused of having enabled Ghosn ...

Kim Jong-un will be keeping North Korea watchers busy on New Year’s Day, when he is expected to give his annual address laying out the country’s top priorities for the year ahead. The speech, which is normally broadcast on North Korea’s state-run television network, is often the best gauge of what the North Korean leadership is focused on and what tone it will take in its dealings with the outside world. For 2019, it will be parsed carefully for clues about Kim’s thinking on denuclearisation talks with Washington and a second summit with US President Donald Trump, relations with South Korea and Pyongyang’s efforts to get out from under international sanctions as it tries to build up its domestic economy. A look at Kim’s plate for the coming year: The economy This is Kim’s primary concern. He made that clear in his 2018 News Year’s address and his government has been hammering it home ever since. In his first televised speech, at a military parade in 2012, Kim vowed the nati...

Investigators found a defective metal bracket on the jet bridge that collapsed and injured six people at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, officials said Sunday. Metal brackets will be replaced on the jet bridge that collapsed Saturday and on five other jet bridges made by the same manufacturer, the Maryland Department of Transportation said in a statement. The department said 33 jet bridges made by the manufacturer were inspected and deemed safe to use. The rest of the airport’s jet bridges also will be inspected. All six people injured in the collapse were released from the hospital early Sunday, the department said. Southwest Airlines said the jet bridge failed while paramedics were helping a passenger with a medical problem off Flight 822 after it arrived from Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. Southwest said the jet bridge, which connects the plane to the terminal, failed while medics were helping the passenger outside the aircraft. Remaining passeng...

The number of journalists and media workers killed while carrying out their jobs rose again in 2018, reversing a downward trend of the previous three years, according to a new report by an an international trade association. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) said on Monday that 94 journalists and media workers died in targeted killings, bomb attacks and crossfire incidents this year. The figure, up from 82 killings recorded in 2017, included 84 journalists, camera people and technicians as well as 10 media staff members including drivers and protection officers. Six of the victims were women and there were also another three work-related accidental deaths, the Brussels-based group’s annual report said. Afghanistan: 16 Mexico: 11 Yemen: 9 Syria: 8 India: 7 Pakistan: 5 Somalia: 5 United States: 5 Philippines: 3 Ecuador: 3 Brazil: 3 Colombia: 2 Palestine: 2 Guatemala : 2 The most dangerous place to be a journalist was Afghanistan, where 1...

Outgoing White House chief of staff John Kelly said President Donald Trump has changed his plans for the structure he wants built along the US-Mexico border. “To be honest, it’s not a wall,” Kelly told the Los Angeles Times in a wide-ranging interview. Kelly said the solid concrete wall Trump had touted throughout his campaign and early administration was a past plan, and the president was embracing plans for other types of structures. “The president still says ‘wall’ — oftentimes frankly he’ll say ‘barrier’ or ‘fencing,’ now he’s tended toward steel slats,” Kelly told the Times. “But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it.” Read more : Most Americans would rather spend the $5 billion Trump is demanding for the border wall on infrastructure, education, or healthcare Counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway echoed Kelly’s comments later Sunday, calling outcry over the wall “a silly semantic a...