The world’s largest privately owned laser just turned on - TechCrunch

At a rally in Kentucky on Saturday, President Donald Trump reprised familiar attacks on Democrats and predicted a strong Republican showing in the midterm elections. But privately, he has reportedly blamed his aides as polls signal trouble ahead. In a roughly 90-minute speech in Highland Heights, Trump launched into familiar territory, deriding Democrats as “lunatics” and communists intent on allowing men to compete in women’s sports and letting immigrants enter the country illegally. “Who the hell is voting for these people?” Trump asked. “They’re gonna annihilate your borders, decimate Kentucky farms and energies, mutilate your children and give 25 million illegal aliens the right to vote,” he said. Praising a slate of GOP congressional candidates, he added: “The Republican Party is starting to look pretty good.”Behind closed doors, though, the 80-year-old president has struck a different tone, blaming aides and political operatives for a wobbling midterm strategy and voicing doubts about candidate choices, Reuters reported Saturday.

Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s “border czar”, has said that the Republican presidential administration could “of course” strip Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar of her citizenship and deport her. Homan’s comments during a Saturday appearance on Fox News were the first remarks explicitly mentioning denaturalization and deportation in connection with Omar that were attributed by name to a top Trump administration official since federal agents raided the Minnesota US House representative’s home on 12 October. The search of Omar’s home sparked major backlash and accusations that the Trump administration was weaponizing the federal government to target a political rival whom the president and his supporters have openly fantasized about denaturalizing and deporting. The federal government’s investigation into the most prominent Somali American in the US is to see whether Omar or her family violated any laws when obtaining her citizenship. The investigation was launched only weeks before the November midterm elections, in which Omar is on the ballot.

The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has denounced the settler attack that left the Washington Post photojournalist Heidi Levine badly beaten and needing surgery as a “despicable act of terror” and called for the arrest and prosecution of those responsible. Levine, an award-winning journalist who lives in Israel, was set upon last Friday by masked Israeli settlers who used clubs and other weapons to attack Palestinian people attempting to harvest their olives in occupied West Bank towns. The 63-year-old photographer, who is in a hospital in Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv recovering from hand surgery, broken ribs and other injuries she sustained in the attack, said she was beaten for more than 10 minutes by the settlers, who also stole her camera, passport and phone. American photojournalist recounts Israeli settler attack in the occupied West Bank – video“I was attacked, pushed to the ground,” Levine said. “Luckily, I had my flak jacket and helmet, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even be here, because they just kept kicking and kicking me.” She added the attack ended when her Palestinian colleagues intervened to save her.