U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday accused Iran of leading attacks on Saudi oil plants that have cut the kingdom's output roughly in half, as he ruled out Yemeni involvement and denounced Tehran for engaging in false diplomacy. Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group claimed credit for the attacks on two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia's oil industry, including the world's biggest petroleum processing facility. Pompeo, however, said on Twitter that there was no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.

The state has new forms, which let applicants “Declined to Answer” about race

Or North Korea, Russia, China--anyone.

A fire that destroyed a historic synagogue in northeastern Minnesota doesn't appear to have been a hate crime, authorities said Sunday in discussing the arrest of a suspect. Matthew James Amiot, 36, of Duluth, was arrested Friday in the fire last week at the Adas Israel Congregation in downtown Duluth, the city's police chief, Mike Tusken, said at a news conference. Tusken said he has no reason to believe the fire was a hate crime, although the investigation is ongoing.

A pair Confederate statues will remain standing in the city of Virginian city Charlottesville where clashes over their removal left a young woman dead.After city officials decided to remove statues of Confederate American Civil War generals Robert E Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, one resident filed a lawsuit to prevent this.

Strengthening Hurricane Humberto is expected to track close enough to Bermuda to unleash heavy rain, strong winds and pounding seas this week.As of 5 a.m. EDT Monday, Humberto was moving northeast at 5 mph with maximum sustained winds of 85 mph. The storm is expected to continue to strengthen early this week as it stirs rough surf along the East coast of the United States. An upper-level disturbance moving off the East coast will steer Humberto to the east on Monday, and the storm will continue on that course through much of this week, according to AccuWeather Meteorologist Brett Rathbun.AccuWeather meteorologists expect an eventual turn to the northeast late in the week.This path will take Humberto dangerously close to Bermuda around the middle and later part of the week."Interests in Bermuda should begin reviewing their plan of action for a hurricane," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said."Even if Humberto only delivers a glancing blow to the islands, an uptick in showers, thunderstorms and winds are likely from Wednesday into Thursday," he added. Swells will build and rip currents will become stronger and more frequent than usual from Tuesday into Wednesday as Humberto tracks toward Bermuda.There will be an increased danger for beach, fishing and cruise activities in the area during this time. Small craft and swimmers should heed all advisories as they are given.On Humberto's closest approach to Bermuda around midweek, the storm is expected to be a Category 2 hurricane and may be close to Category 3 major hurricane strength.Bermuda's building codes require dwellings to withstand sustained wind speeds of 110 mph (177 km/h), which is the equivalent of a high-end Category 2 hurricane. A majority of properties are made of stone and mortar. As a result, structural damage is likely to be minimal with Humberto, even if its center passes very close to or over Bermuda.However, Humberto's strong winds can toss around loose items like toys and cause them to become potentially deadly projectiles around midweek. Power outages will also be possible."How severe conditions become and the potential for coastal flooding and battering waves will depend on the exact track and strength of Humberto," Sosnowski said.A scenario that brings Humberto directly over or just to the northwest of Bermuda would bring the most adverse conditions to the area. This would put at least a portion of the islands in the strongest parts of the storm, its eye wall and northeastern quadrant.While Humberto is expected to pick up speed on its closest approach to Bermuda, too much rain may fall too quickly and result in urban flooding.Waterspouts and isolated tornadoes may also be possible.Conditions are forecast to dramatically improve across the islands later Thursday into Friday as Humberto tracks farther to the north and northeast.AccuWeather meteorologists will be monitoring any potential impacts from Humberto in Atlantic Canada during the upcoming weekend. However, at this point, the risk of the storm directly impacting the area is low.

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo GettyThis story is part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of more than 220 news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story.  Religious Christians are the key to America taking action on global warming. And yet, the way climate activists frame the issue often alienates the very people they most need to persuade. First, the math. Seventy percent of Americans say they want the government to take action to combat global warming. But the Republican Party has, in the last two decades, gone from accommodating a wide range of perspectives on climate change to marching lock-step to the energy industry’s climate denial tune.Most Republicans, however, don’t work for the energy industry. Over half of Republican voters identify as conservative Christians—either evangelicals, Catholics, or others. These voters may be right-wing on social issues, right-wing on immigration, and right-wing on ‘big government.’ But they’re not necessarily right-wing on allowing the Earth’s climate to be radically disrupted—and if they move, the Republican Party will have to move too.But according to two new studies conducted by the Yale Program for Climate Communication and published in the journal Science Communication, most religious Christians understand global warming in very different terms from others.The first study “found that ‘protect God’s creation’ is one of the most important motivations that Christians report for wanting to mitigate global warming.” Resonant messages included “God made humans responsible for taking care of His creation”; “We can use nature for our benefit, but it is not OK to destroy God’s garden that He entrusted to us”; and the language of “stewardship” over the Earth.And the second study found that framing the issue of global warming in moral and religious terms was crucial for Christians to care about it, because it suggested that “people like themselves” care about the issue.“People derive values, a sense of self, and social norms from the groups to which they belong,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program and a co-author of the two studies. “Messages that resonate with group identities may be especially effective in influencing people’s attitudes.”In other words, we think the way our group thinks. If we believe that no one in our group cares about a certain issue, we’re less likely to care about it. If we believe that our core values have nothing to do with a certain issue, we’re less likely to care about it.Unfortunately, when one turns to how the issue is framed in public, these messaging frames are conspicuously absent.For example, the introduction to next week’s U.N. Climate Action Summit reads, in part:> Global emissions are reaching record levels and show no sign of peaking. The last four years were the four hottest on record, and winter temperatures in the Arctic have risen by 3°C since 1990. Sea levels are rising, coral reefs are dying, and we are starting to see the life-threatening impact of climate change on health, through air pollution, heatwaves and risks to food security.> > The impacts of climate change are being felt everywhere and are having very real consequences on people’s lives. Climate change is disrupting national economies, costing us dearly today and even more tomorrow. But there is a growing recognition that affordable, scalable solutions are available now that will enable us all to leapfrog to cleaner, more resilient economies.If you’re like me—highly educated, privileged, urban-dwelling, and liberal—that language is probably pretty effective. But according to the new Yale studies, it will probably ring hollow for the constituency that’s most central to changing the United States’ current intransigence on climate science and climate action.Indeed, the U.N. language doesn’t even include the “most important reason to reduce global warming” chosen by both Christians and non-Christians in the Yale studies, namely: “Provide a better life for our children and grandchildren.” Instead, it provides a bunch of ecological verbiage about coral reefs and food security.Nor, of course, is the problem confined to the United Nations.The Environmental Defense Fund—one of the more centrist and mainstream of American environmental organizations—likewise only mentions the environmental impacts of global warming on its page “why fighting change is so urgent”: “extreme weather events… chunks of ice in the Antarctic have broken apart… wildfire seasons are months longer… coral reefs have been bleached of their colors… mosquitoes are expanding their territory, able to spread disease.” And yet it doesn’t provide the primary reasons given by people in general (leaving a better world for our children) or Christians in particular (protecting God’s creation). Of course, these omissions make sense in some ways. First, obviously, plenty of atheists, Jews, Muslims, and people of other religious backgrounds care about climate change. Especially anyone with kids or grandkids.But it’s also unlikely that the people writing copy for climate change websites are religious Christians themselves, and are using language that “preaches to the choir,” which in this case means other secular environmentalists. But if no one speaks in terms that Christians, especially conservative Christians, care about, then climate activists are only going to be talking to themselves.Which is exactly what’s happened. Levels of understanding and concern about climate change have more or less plateaued in the last few years. On the political level, nothing is happening. Thirty-four percent of Americans still do not “believe” that global warming is being caused by humans, and only 44 percent of Americans say they “worry a great deal” about it. Another recent Yale study found that voters rank it just 17th among issues of concern.Given the extreme likelihood of an unprecedented refugee crisis brought on by rising seas and changing crop patterns, mass extinctions, and global food shortages, all of those numbers are shocking. According to the World Health Organization, 250,000 people will die each year from 2030-2050 because of increased rates of malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress. Climate denial, meanwhile, is now a billion-dollar industry, with energy-funded think tanks, pseudoscience, lobbying, and media campaigns. The energy industry is using the most persuasive, most effective methods to persuade people about global warming. Why isn’t the environmental movement?Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa was jeered and whistled at on Saturday during his speech at Zimbabwe ex-leader Robert Mugabe's funeral before he apologised for recent xenophobic attacks. At least 12 people have been killed this month in a surge in violence and mob attacks against foreign-owned businesses in and around Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city. A wave of jeers, boos and whistles interrupted Ramaphosa at the Harare national stadium as he started his eulogy at the state funeral for Mugabe, who died age 95 last week.

(Bloomberg) -- New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s leadership is under scrutiny after her Labour Party botched its handling of an alleged sexual assault on a 19-year-old party volunteer.Ardern has been forced to apologize to the woman and take control of an investigation into the allegations, including that she was attacked and groped by a Labour Party staffer in early 2018. The party decided earlier this year that no disciplinary action was necessary, prompting the woman to tell her story to the media. Since then, Labour Party President Nigel Haworth and the man at the center of the allegations, who worked in parliament and hasn’t been identified, have both resigned.“There are no excuses for the handling of the complaints by the Labour Party, and I will offer none,” Ardern said at a post-cabinet press conference in Wellington on Monday, a week after the sexual assault allegation was detailed by website The Spinoff. “We have a duty of care, and we failed in it.”A year out from a general election, the scandal has the potential to undermine support for Labour and Ardern, whose popularity has much to do with her image as a caring leader and champion of the disadvantaged, including women in the workplace. Questions are being asked not only about the culture of the Labour Party, which mishandled a separate sexual assault allegation last year, but also whether Ardern knew about the allegations sooner than she says she did.The Labour Party looked into multiple complaints against the man from several people, including harassment and bullying, but Ardern says she was not aware of the sexual assault claim until The Spinoff article.While Haworth said the woman’s complaint about the man didn’t include the allegation of sexual assault, she insists it did. A lawyer is currently conducting an appeal process, and Ardern said today that an independent third party would review Labour’s handling of the allegations. Ardern has also agreed to meet with the complainants.“While the party has continued to maintain that they weren’t in receipt of the complaints that have since been published in the media, that is secondary to the fact that the complaints made to the party were of significant concern and needed to be heard in a timely way,” she said. “That didn’t happen.”To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Brockett in Wellington at mbrockett1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Matthew Brockett at mbrockett1@bloomberg.net, Edward JohnsonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

The former sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., who gained notoriety for his anti-immigration policies and as an early endorser of Donald Trump, recently said he intends to again seek the office he held for 24 years.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have seized a vessel in the Gulf for allegedly smuggling 250,000 litres of diesel fuel to the United Arab Emirates, Iran's semi-official Students News agency ISNA reported on Monday. "It was detained near Iran's Greater Tunb island in the Persian Gulf...the crew have been handed over to legal authorities in the southern Hormozgan province," ISNA said, without elaborating on the nationalities of the crewmen.

A major strategic blunder.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to hold on to power in Tuesday's historic repeat election as the shadow of various corruption charges loom over his future. Israel's attorney general has recommended pressing criminal charges against him in three separate corruption cases, pending a long delayed pre-trial hearing scheduled for early October — just three weeks after the election.

Kavanaugh Yale classmate: While under pressure from Trump and Senate GOP leaders, the FBI rebuffed me and others when we tried to provide information.

Two masked-man kicked in the front door of a Pleasanton home in an attempted home-invasion -- and it was all caught on surveillance video.

Casey Viner, a 19-year-old gamer who planned a hoax 911 call resulting in an innocent Kansas man's death, was sentenced to 15 months in prison Friday.

According to Mohamed Khairullah, officials asked directly whether he met any terrorists

Vulnerable House Democrats fear the party's drive toward impeachment will undercut them in 2020.

More than half of the tigers that Thai authorities confiscated in 2016 from an infamous Tiger Temple tourist attraction have died from a viral disease because their immune systems were weakened by inbreeding, media reported. The Buddhist temple west of Bangkok was a tourist destination where visitors took selfies with tigers and bottle-fed cubs until authorities removed its nearly 150 tigers in 2016 in response to global pressure over wildlife trafficking.

At least that is the plan.

Democratic strategist Jessica Ehrlich and Republican strategist John Thomas weigh in on the political impact of Beto O'Rourke's plan to confiscate some guns on the Democratic Party.

The White House announced Saturday that Hamza bin Laden , the son of the late al-Qaida leader who had become an increasingly prominent figure in the terrorist organization, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. A statement issued in President Donald Trump's name gave no further details, such as when Hamza bin Laden was killed or how the United States had confirmed his death. Administration officials would provide no more information beyond the three-sentence statement from the White House.

The wife of a murdered activist whose charred remains were found dumped in a Thai reservoir led an emotional memorial Monday, saying their five young children had been left bereft by his death. Thailand is among the most deadly places in Asia for environmental and rights defenders -- the United Nations has counted over 80 cases of enforced disappearances in the country since 1980. The park chief at the time, Chaiwat Limlikitaksor, was one of the last people to see him alive, after Billy was detained for apparently collecting honey illegally.

Hurricanes Michael, Florence, Maria, Irma, and Harvey are still impacting communities across the US, years after touching ground.