But their target isn't corrupt officials or shady political fixers; it's Rattus Norvegicus, the common Norway Rat.


The nation's capital is facing a spiraling rat infestation, fueled by mild winters and a human population boom. Washington's government is struggling to keep pace, with the pest control department fielding a record number of calls.


On one recent day, Pittman and Cornes, both veteran Health Department employees, are working within sight of the Capitol, shoveling dry ice pellets into suspected rat burrow entrances. On another, they're summoned about six blocks north of the White House, at 16th Street and M, where residents have complained of an outbreak.

"Rats adapt to everything. They can be like geniuses," Pittman said.


On the grounds of a church, Cornes and Pittman poke around, expertly spotting telltale holes and matted dirt trails that signal rat burrows. Cornes uses an instrument like an extra-long Super Soaker to inject poison into the hole, while Pittman watches to see if the white powder puffs up from other holes and then shovels dirt to block those exits.

Russian police are on a manhunt for unknown attackers who reportedly threw a grenade at two police officers near a mall in the southern Republic of Ingushetia. The seriously injured officers have been taken to hospital.

The policemen suffered multiple shrapnel wounds to their hands and legs, a source told TASS. "They remain conscious. Their condition is of moderate severity, non-critical," he added.

The Ingushetia police have confirmed that two of its servicemen were injured outside a shopping center in the city of Nazran on Wednesday.

The officers were trying to detain two men, who resisted arrest and threw a grenade at them. Other reports said the policemen were sitting in a parked car at the time of the attack.

The perpetrators were reportedly killed by return fire and are being identified.

When charges of "racism" and "xenophobia" fail, Democrats' fallback argument against President Trump's proposed border wall is that it simply "won't work," so why waste billions building it? Tell that to the residents of El Paso, Texas.

Federal data show a far-less imposing wall than the one Trump envisions - a two-story corrugated metal fence first erected under the Bush administration - already has dramatically curtailed both illegal border crossings and crime in Texas' sixth-largest city, which borders the high-crime Mexican city of Juarez.

In fact, the number of deportable illegal immigrants located by the US Border Patrol plummeted by more than 89 percent over the five-year period during which the controversial new fence was built, according to Homeland Security data reviewed by me. When the project first started in 2006, illegal crossings totaled 122,261, but by 2010, when the 131-mile fence was completed from one end of El Paso out into the New Mexico desert, immigrant crossings shrank to just 12,251.

Yes, there is rubble, in fact total destruction, in some of the neighborhoods of Homs, Aleppo, in the outskirts of Damascus, and elsewhere.

Yes, there are terrorists and 'foreign forces' in Idlib and in several smaller pockets in some parts of the country.

Yes, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives and millions are either in exile, or internally displaced.

But the country of Syria is standing tall. It did not crumble like Libya or Iraq did. It never surrendered. It never even considered surrender as an option. It went through total agony, through fire and unimaginable pain, but in the end, it won. It almost won. And the victory will, most likely, be final in 2019.

There was no need for the IDF to raid the Palestinian news agency office in Ramallah and use force and tear gas to seize CCTV footage, as they could have asked for it and got it, WAFA editor Maher Abukhater has said.

Israeli soldiers raided the office of the Palestinian news agency WAFA in the West Bank on Monday. According to the agency, soldiers fired tear gas and seized footage from surveillance cameras while searching the building.

Israel gave no reason for the raid, but it is believed the action is connected to the IDF's search for the perpetrator of an attack on Sunday which left seven Israelis wounded.

RT spoke to Maher Abukhater, English desk editor at the Palestinian news agency, who was there at the time of the raid and described how events unfolded.

On 10 October 2018, several American doctors, who were involved in caring for and treating the fairly well-known Otto Warmbier, confirmed the theory, proposed by the student's parents, that Otto's teeth and gums looked as if they had been cut with a saw, and as a result, the US citizen had died from torture inflicted on him. This "medical conclusion" was sent to a court in Washington.

In response, on 27 October, the Head Doctor at a Pyongyang hospital reminded the public that US doctors, who took part in repatriating the student, gave the North Korean side a medical note stating that at the time of transfer he was in normal state of health. The doctor also referred to an article in the American newspaper USA Today from 21 June 2017, which mentioned the fact that a neuropathologist from the US University of Cincinnati carried out a medical examination of Warmbier, and confirmed absence of any signs of starvation or physical abuse, either in the form of fractures or damage to internal organs. In addition, the doctor said that, according to the report by the US network NBC from 27 September 2017, an expert, who conducted the autopsy on Warmbier's body, also did not find any signs of torture, and an examination by forensic odontologists indicated there was no evidence of any trauma to the teeth.

However, if we distance ourselves from yet another attempt by grieving parents to find culprits, responsible for the death of their son, among the North Korean authorities, a very sad picture begins to emerge.

Based on Warmbier's symptoms, it seems very likely that the young man died from after effects of a stroke, or a serious problem with circulation in the brain, which had gone unnoticed, and the treatment, he had received, was not of good quality. This, of course, is connected to the overall state of North Korean medicine, as it is one of the sectors most affected by imposed sanctions.

Terrorists and extremists will be kept separately from other inmates in Russian prisons to avoid recruitment and spread of radical views among the convicts, according to the legislative amendments supported by the State Duma.

Previously, those, sentenced for terrorist and extremist crimes, could have been placed in various types of correctional institution, including mild general regime colonies. But the MPs behind the draft law, which was approved in the first reading on Tuesday, believed it to be a dangerous practice.

In colony settlements, "the convicts are kept in brigades and are able to communicate with a significant number of people, which still allows the spread of extremist ideology," Pavel Krasheninnikov of the ruling Untied Russia Party said.

For those desperately awaiting the Trump presidency's spectacular collapse, Robert Mueller has acquired an almost mythic status - forever looming in the background with astonishing 'bombshells' that could drop at any moment. Mueller himself never speaks, except through terse court filings, which lends his aura a mystical quality. His newfound fans have been known to light votive candles in his honor, wear apparel sporting his heroic visage, and spend day after day speculating on the internet about the time, date, and profundity of his next miraculous intervention.

When I became an anarchist I was 18, depressed, anxious, and ready to save the world. I moved in with other anarchists and worked at a vegetarian co-op cafe. I protested against student tuition, prison privatization, and pipeline extensions. I had lawyer's numbers sharpied on my ankle and I assisted friends who were pepper-sprayed at demos. I tabled zines, lived with my "chosen family," and performed slam poems about the end of the world. While my radical community was deconstructing gender, monogamy, and mental health, we lived and breathed concepts and tools like call-outs, intersectionality, cultural appropriation, trigger warnings, safe spaces, privilege theory, and rape culture.

What is a radical community? For the purposes of this article, I will define it as a community that shares both an ideology of complete dissatisfaction with existing society due to its oppressive nature and a desire to radically alter or destroy that society because it cannot be redeemed by its own means. I eventually fell out with my own radical community. The ideology and the people within it had left me a burned and disillusioned wreck. As I deprogrammed, I watched a diluted version of my radical ideology explode out of academia and become fashionable: I watched the Left become woke.

How could any reasonable person oppose diversity and inclusion in the workplace? Answer: Because "diversity and inclusion" in the work context is actually a euphemism for something else.

During an October 30 summit held by Google, attendees listened to a panel discussion titled, "Beyond Hype, How Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace Maximizes Your Bottom Line." The panelists' comments amounted to a very irregular definition of "diversity and inclusion:" A desire for equal outcomes among all identity groups, and disadvantaging individuals in overrepresented demographic categories.


Adam Berlew, head of Americas Marketing for Google Cloud, moderated the panel, which featured guests Joanna Dees, VP of educational programs at Women in Cable Telecommunications; Maribel Perez Wadsworth, president of the USA Today Network; Tom Kazmierczak Jr., head of diversity and inclusion at T. Rowe Price Associates; and Lori Rosenkopf, vice dean and director of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, undergraduate division.