NEW CLUE IN SEARCH FOR MISSING SUB
ARGENTINA» Ships MAR DEL PLATA, and planes hunting for a missing Argentine submarine with 44 crew members will return to a previously search area after officials said Wednesday that a noise made a week ago in the South Atlantic could provide a clue to the vessel’s location.
Navy spokesman Capt. Enrique Balbi said the “hydro-acoustic anomaly” was determined by the United States and specialist agencies to have been produced Nov. 15, just hours after the final contact with the ARA San Juan and could have come from the sub.
The sound originated about 30 miles north of the submarine’s last registered position, he said.
Congressman told woman he would report her to Capitol Police if she exposed his secret sex life.
Rep. Joe Barton, who apologized Wednesday for a lewd photo of him that circulated on the internet, told a woman to whom he had sent sexually explicit photos, videos and messages that he would report her to the Capitol Police if she exposed the Republican’s behavior, according to a recording reviewed by The Washington Post.
The woman spoke to The Post after the lewd photo was published Tuesday by an anonymous Twitter account. She shared a secretly recorded phone conversation she had with Barton in 2015 in which he warned her against using the explicit materials “in a way that would negatively affect my career.”
The woman described encounters and contact spanning a five-year period that began online after she posted a message on Barton’s Facebook page in 2011, leading to the sexually explicit exchanges and ultimately a pair of physical sexual encounters in Washington and Texas.
Lebanese PM puts resignation on hold, in surprise reversal.
Prime Minister Saad Hariri walked back his resignation Wednesday after weeks of intensive international diplomacy aimed at restoring the delicate political balance that has kept the country from being pulled apart by regional tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Hariri’s decision to stay on, provisionally at least, is an embarrassment to Riyadh, which is widely seen as having orchestrated the resignation. But the kingdom’s increasingly activist leadership — led by the 32-year-old crown prince who is spearheading the kingdom’s foreign policy — can take solace in having revived the conversation about the formidable influence wielded in Lebanon by the Iranianbacked militant group Hezbollah.
State attorneys general bash plan to hike national parks fees.
A group of state attorneys general on Wednesday urged the National Park Service to scrap its proposal to more than double the entrance fee at 17 popular national parks. The top government lawyers from 10 states and the District of Columbia sent a letter saying the increase could put access to the parks out of reach for many Americans.
Rand Paul’s wife speaks out on “blindside attack” on husband.
The wife of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul says her husband hasn’t taken a single breath without pain since what she calls “a deliberate, blindside attack” by a Kentucky neighbor earlier this month.
Authorities say the Republican was attacked Nov. 3 by Rene Boucher while mowing his lawn. Kelley Paul writes in an essay published by CNN that her husband suffered six broken ribs and fluid in his lungs. Paul says he was diagnosed with pneumonia after returning from Washington last week.