Now British PM, brash Boris Johnson faces Brexit conundrum
LONDON — Boris Johnson took over as Britain’s prime minister Wednesday, vowing to break the impasse that defeated his predecessor by leading the country out of the European Union and silencing “the doubters, the doomsters, the gloomsters” who believe it can’t be done.
But the brash Brexit champion faces the same problems that flummoxed Theresa May during her three years in office: heading a government without a parliamentary majority and with most lawmakers opposed to leaving the EU without a divorce deal.
Johnson has just 99 days to make good on his promise to deliver Brexit by Oct. 31 after what he called “three years of unfounded self-doubt.”
He optimistically pledged to get “a new deal, a better deal” with the EU than the one secured by May, which was repeatedly rejected by Britain’s Parliament.
“The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts,” he said, standing outside the shiny black door of 10 Downing St.
Judge blocks Trump asylum restrictions at US-Mexico border
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to stop denying asylum to anyone who transits through another country to reach the U.S. border, marking the latest legal defeat for a president waging an all-out battle to stem the flow of migrants entering from Mexico.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco came hours after another federal judge in Washington, D.C., let the 9-day-old policy stand. The California judge’s preliminary injunction halts the policy while the lawsuit plays out in court.
The new policy denies asylum to anyone who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. without seeking protection there. Most crossing the Mexican border are from Central America, but it would apply to all nationalities except countries that border the U.S.
The dramatic change went into effect last week, though there were conflicting reports on whether U.S. immigration agencies were enforcing it.
Top U.S. officials said the policy would discourage migrants from leaving their countries, which they say is necessary to reduce the numbers of people that U.S. authorities are detaining.
Record Facebook fine won’t end scrutiny of the company
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook survived its latest brush with U.S. privacy regulators, at the cost of a record $5 billion fine and other restrictions imposed by the Federal Trade Commission. But it’s far from home free.
While the company looks set to prosper in the wake of the FTC case, it faces a series of other investigations into its privacy practices in Europe and across the U.S. Concerns over the limits of the just-settled probe could fuel efforts to craft tougher privacy laws at the state and federal level.
The social network is also gearing up to fight investigations into its allegedly anticompetitive behavior, such as Facebook’s habit of buying would-be rivals like Instagram and blatantly duplicating features introduced by competing services.
The Department of Justice opened a broad antitrust probe focused on technology companies on Tuesday. On Wednesday Facebook disclosed that it also faces a fresh FTC investigation into alleged anticompetitive behavior. It didn’t provide details of the scope or focus of the probe. Representatives of the FTC confirmed the antitrust investigation but offered no additional information.
The outcome of these investigations may well determine whether the world’s governments can actually rein in a transnational corporation that directly touches almost a third of the world’s population.
Father: Nationwide Canada manhunt will end in son’s death
TORONTO — The father of one of the suspects in the murders of an American woman and her Australian boyfriend as well as the death of another man said Wednesday he expects a nationwide manhunt to end in the death of his son, who is on “a suicide mission.”
The grim prediction came as Canadian police said they were setting up roadblocks around the remote Manitoba town of Gillam, where the two young suspects, 19-year-old Kam McLeod and 18-year-old Bryer Schmegelsky, recently left a burnt-out vehicle they had been traveling in.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police Cpl. Julie Courchaine said police “are coming from all over” to Gillam, which is more than 2,000 miles away from a region in northern British Columbia where an initial burnt-out vehicle was found last Friday and the three people were apparently killed.
Police initially called the search for McLeod and Schmegelsky a missing persons case. But on Tuesday police announced the young men were suspects in the murders of 24-year-old American Chynna Deese and 23-year-old Australian Lucas Fowler, and in the death of another unidentified man.
Schmegelsky’s father, Alan Schmegelsky, said Wednesday his son had a troubled upbringing and is in “very serious pain.” His son struggled through his parents’ acrimonious split in 2005 and his main influences became video games and YouTube, he said.
Actor Rutger Hauer, of ‘Blade Runner’ fame, has died at 75
NEW YORK — Dutch film actor Rutger Hauer, who specialized in menacing roles, including a memorable turn as a murderous android in “Blade Runner” opposite Harrison Ford, has died. He was 75.
Hauer’s agent, Steve Kenis, said Wednesday the actor died July 19 at his home in the Netherlands.
Hauer’s roles included a terrorist in “Nighthawks” with Sylvester Stallone, Cardinal Roark in “Sin City” and playing an evil corporate executive in “Batman Begins.” He was in the big-budget 1985 fantasy “Ladyhawke,” portrayed a menacing hitchhiker who’s picked up by a murderer in the Mojave Desert in “The Hitcher” and won a supporting-actor Golden Globe award in 1988 for “Escape from Sobibor.”
Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro in a tweet called Hauer “an intense, deep, genuine and magnetic actor that brought truth, power and beauty to his films.” Gene Simmons, the KISS bassist who starred opposite Hauer in “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” described his former co-star as “always a gentleman, kind and compassionate.”
In “Blade Runner,” Hauer played the murderous replicant Roy Batty on a desperate quest to prolong his artificially shortened life in post-apocalyptic, 21st-century Los Angeles.