| Grandparents, uncle charged in beating death, torture of Montana boy Posted: 18 Feb 2020 12:48 PM PST  During the investigation into the boy's death, police seized cellphones belonging to the suspects that showed the family torturing him, the affidavit says.
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| Bloomberg campaign: There are only three viable presidential candidates Posted: 18 Feb 2020 02:51 PM PST  Only three candidates out of the more than half dozen vying for the White House have a viable path to the nomination, a senior official for the Mike Bloomberg campaign told reporters Tuesday.
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| REVEALED: China's Secret Reasons for Imprisoning Uyghurs Posted: 18 Feb 2020 07:39 AM PST  Yet another leak from inside the communist state.
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| Coronavirus: Self-quarantined family shunned as neighbour calls 911 on them Posted: 18 Feb 2020 03:15 PM PST  A California family in self-quarantine over the coronavirus after a visit to China have found themselves shunned, and even had the police called on them.Amy Deng and her eight-year-old daughter, Daisy, have no symptoms, but following a trip to visit family in Guangzhou over Chinese New Year, they are in self-quarantine monitored by local officials in Santa Rosa, The East Bay Times reports.
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| Turkey Court Acquits Businessman Osman Kavala in Gezi Case Posted: 18 Feb 2020 04:23 AM PST |
| Huge locust outbreak in East Africa reaches South Sudan Posted: 18 Feb 2020 08:39 AM PST  The worst locust outbreak that parts of East Africa have seen in 70 years has reached South Sudan, a country where roughly half the population already faces hunger after years of civil war, officials announced Tuesday. Around 2,000 locusts were spotted inside the country, Agriculture Minister Onyoti Adigo told reporters. The locusts have been seen in Eastern Equatoria state near the borders with Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda.
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| The cruise industry has been rocked by the coronavirus. Here's you how can find out if your ship has been impacted. Posted: 18 Feb 2020 11:53 AM PST  Cruise companies like Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Cruises have been affected by the Wuhan coronavirus.
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| U.S. imposes new rules on state-owned Chinese media over propaganda concerns Posted: 18 Feb 2020 11:34 AM PST  The Trump administration said on Tuesday said it will begin treating five major Chinese state-run media entities with U.S. operations the same as foreign embassies, requiring them to register their employees and U.S. properties with the State Department. Two senior state department officials said the decision was made because China has been tightening state control over its media and President Xi Jinping has made more aggressive use of them to spread pro-Beijing propaganda. "The control over both the content and editorial control have only strengthened over the course of Xi Jinping's term in power," said one official.
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| DOJ: Two federal prosecutors are coordinating Ukraine-related matters, including information supplied by Rudy Giuliani Posted: 18 Feb 2020 02:13 PM PST  The Justice Department says anyone, not just Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, can pass on allegations and information related to Ukraine.
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| Missing Milwaukee woman, two daughters found dead in garage Posted: 17 Feb 2020 09:04 AM PST  Amarah Banks, 26, Zaniya Ivery, 5, and Camaria Banks, 4, were discovered after the arrest of Banks' boyfriend, Arzel J. Ivery, in Memphis, Tennessee, authorities said.
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| 'Now We Are Refugees': A Family in Limbo Amid the Coronavirus Outbreak Posted: 17 Feb 2020 11:54 AM PST  These days, Chloe Chang, a Taiwanese woman stranded at the center of China's coronavirus outbreak, says she wakes up every half-hour during the night. Sometimes she breaks down in tears.She and her family are effectively trapped in her grandmother's apartment building, where a man recently died from the virus. Workers in hazmat suits haunt the surrounding streets, and the neighborhood has a strong police presence. There are shortages of food and other essentials throughout Yichang, the Hubei province city of more than 4 million where they have been in limbo for weeks."No household can go out at this time," said Chang, a 26-year-old industrial artist. She said she feared that even a trip for groceries would increase her chances of contracting the virus."My child has eaten nine meals of plain noodles in the past three days," she said of her 2-year-old son.Chang and her family thought they were on the verge of escaping Yichang earlier this month, but the bus taking them to the airport was abruptly turned around.All she can do now is wait -- and hope."The government of Taiwan surely will come to our rescue," her husband, Calvin Fan, who is from Beijing, has reassured her. But the chartered flight they have eagerly awaited to evacuate them has yet to materialize."Neither side wants us," Chang said. "We've given up. Now we are refugees."Taiwan and China each say the other is the reason that she and other Taiwan citizens are unable to leave Hubei, a province under lockdown, where hundreds have died from the coronavirus and tens of thousands have been infected.Chang and hundreds of other Taiwanese people in Hubei had hoped to go home via chartered jet. But last month, after the first plane carrying evacuees landed in Taiwan with an infected passenger onboard, a backlash ensued on the self-governing island, which China claims as part of its territory.Some said Taiwan would not be able to handle an outbreak if more infected people arrived. Others said Taiwan should not help to evacuate mainland Chinese spouses of Taiwan residents.Decades of tensions between the two governments have come to a head over the outbreak, and people like Chang and her husband -- both of who arrived in China last month to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday with family -- have become pawns in a complicated and dangerous game of political chess.Chang said she was told by Chinese officials that she could return to Taiwan on a second chartered flight, scheduled for Feb. 5. That day, her family boarded a bus bound for the airport in Wuhan, the provincial capital, where the coronavirus first emerged.But just as the bus was about to leave, she said, a Chinese official hopped on and announced that the flight would not take off, saying: "Taiwan won't let you go back.""I was really devastated," Chang said.Taiwan had a different explanation. According to officials there, reports in Chinese state media that said a flight was scheduled to leave were untrue -- the two sides had never discussed it.Both governments, and their proxies, have continued to point fingers while Chang and her compatriots languish in Hubei."Taiwan authorities have repeatedly delayed the schedule," Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, said last week. "Let the Taiwan compatriots return home as soon as possible, and stop making up all manner of excuses and rationale to block them from returning."Chen Shih-Chung, Taiwan's minister of health and welfare, said Friday that "China still uses all excuses to delay the evacuation, and refuses our plans and suggestions."Fears of the virus -- and, perhaps, anti-China sentiment -- have led Taiwan to escalate preventive measures in recent days.On Wednesday, Taiwan's Central Epidemic Command Center announced that children who have mainland citizenship but a Taiwanese parent would not be allowed to enter Taiwan for the time being if they were arriving from mainland China, Hong Kong or Macao.Confined to her grandmother's home for so long, Chang has turned to her art as an outlet for the helplessness and resentment she feels.In a satirical cartoon she recently sketched, she portrayed the administration of Tsai Ing-wen, Taiwan's president, as deliberately delaying the evacuation.She depicted the Taiwanese in Hubei as pawns.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
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| Cuba burning tires to power factory as US oil sanctions bite Posted: 17 Feb 2020 12:10 PM PST  The Cuban government has ordered a cement factory to burn old tires to power its operations and save on oil, amid a worsening fuel shortage brought on by US sanctions on the Communist island. On orders of President Miguel Diaz-Canel, the firm Cementos Cienfuegos, located in the center of the country, will receive an increasing supply of used tires to burn, the official daily Granma said Monday. Cuba has been suffering oil shortages since last September, when the administration of President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on ships carrying petroleum to the island from its main fuel supplier Venezuela.
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| John Oliver explains the pros and cons of Medicare-for-all, goes with the pros Posted: 18 Feb 2020 01:15 AM PST  John Oliver kicked off his new season of Last Week Tonight on Sunday by looking at "an issue that has dominated the Democratic primary -- and I'm not talking about why Tom Steyer doesn't look richer" (though he did address that). Mostly, he tackled Medicare-for-all, comparing the "government-funded, single-payer program" proposed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) with the current U.S. system championed by conservatives and, with various degrees of modifications, other Democratic candidates.Conservatives are right, Oliver conceded, that "America does have one of the best health care systems in the world for rich, famous people. Unfortunately, too many people are born in this country with a terrible pre-existing condition called Not Being Beyonce." For so many Americans, "our system is badly broken," he said, not just the 27.5 million with no insurance but also the nearly 44 million underinsured and at risk for bankruptcy from medical expenses.The current system is a patchwork of private insurance, government programs, and crowdsourcing gambles, Oliver said. "Any solution that might put an end to that is worth at least considering, surely, and to be honest, I personally think there is a lot to be said for Medicare-for-all. So tonight, let's take a look at it: Not the politics of whether it can pass, but what it actually is." He focused on the three main objections: Cost, wait time, and choice."I get that big change is scary -- it is human nature to prefer the devil you know over an uncertain alternative -- but the devil you know is still a devil," Oliver said. And for all the U.S. fearmongering about Britain's National health System, "I will be honest with you, I've never had a bad experience and I don't know anyone who has, but since moving to America, I don't think I have met anyone who doesn't have at least one insurance industry horror story." There is a lot of NSFW language -- so much so, it makes sense when Oliver calls the U.S. system "the Kama Sutra of health care." Watch below. More stories from theweek.com Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils The first poll of Susan Collins' 2020 senate race shows her tied with Democratic challenger The Democratic Party is weak. Mike Bloomberg could break it.
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| The Turkish Trap: How Erdogan Made New Enemies and Enraged the Arab Community Posted: 18 Feb 2020 11:48 AM PST  As Recep Erdogan sends Turkish troops and Syrian rebel fighters into Libya, it has become clear that the Syrian forces Turkey-backed were never meant to fight for Assad but instead do Turkey's bidding.
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| Tennessee inmate moved to death watch; attorneys seek stay Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:09 AM PST  Tennessee inmate Nicholas Sutton was placed on a death watch early Tuesday ahead of his scheduled execution later this week for the decades-old killing of a fellow inmate. Meanwhile, Sutton's attorneys made two last ditch appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. Inmates on death watch are kept under 24-hour surveillance in a cell beside the execution chamber, the Tennessee Department of Correction said.
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| Warren: Bernie 'has a lot of questions to answer' about attacks from online supporters Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:37 AM PST  After Sanders supporters allegedly doxxed the leadership of a Nevada hospitality union, Warren called on Sanders to address the online attacks.
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| 'It’s reunion porn': Military wives say Trump’s SOTU stunt disrespected families of servicemen Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:44 AM PST  The State of the Union served as President Donald Trump's moment to grandstand his administration's achievements to Congress while also introducing guests he brought in from across the US.Among them that evening was army spouse Amy Williams and her two children. Mr Trump introduced them to the room towards the end of his speech by commending her for carrying on while her husband, Sergeant Townsend Williams, was deployed in Afghanistan over the past seven months.
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| New Mexico woman who was pregnant with third child still missing three years later Posted: 17 Feb 2020 11:20 AM PST  Elizabeth Brooks Hernandez, 29, was last seen by her boyfriend, Miguel Martinez, who told police he dropped her off at a welfare office in Albuquerque, New Mexico on November 16, 2017. Police suspect foul play, but no arrests have been made. The Albuquerque Police Department is investigating.
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| Hunter Biden Served on Board of Trade Group That Lobbied Obama Admin for Increased Ukraine Aid: Report Posted: 18 Feb 2020 08:28 AM PST  Hunter Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden, was on the board of a trade group that lobbied the Obama administration for increased U.S. aid to Ukraine, according to a report Tuesday.From 2012 through 2018, the younger Biden served as a director for the Center for U.S. Global Leadership and was connected as well with its affiliate, the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, The Daily Caller reported. The two groups, which include about 400 larger corporations and non-government organizations, lobbied for increased spending abroad by the State Department's International Affairs Budget, including a special focus on Ukraine.At the time, Joe Biden was also advocating for increased U.S. spending in Ukraine.Hunter Biden's small private equity firm, Rosemont Seneca, featured other well-connected politicos as well, including his partner Devon Archer, who was a former adviser on Obama Secretary of State John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, and another partner, Kerry's son-in-law Christopher Heinz."Hunter Biden works for [Archer]. So we've got the top level politicos with us. All of my guys, is as top tier as it gets," a businessman named Bevan Cooney wrote in text messages released in connection with an unrelated criminal case against Archer. "You don't get more politically connected and make people more comfortable than that."In 2013, the groups held an event honoring Joe Biden for his work supporting increased spending abroad, an event Hunter Biden was also introduced as having a "very special relationship with our honoree."Biden's separate lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings while his father was vice president and in charge of addressing corruption in Ukraine has also drawn scrutiny and featured prominently in the impeachment proceedings against President Trump. That position earned Biden at least $50,000 a month for his advice on "transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities."During a July 25 phone call with Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump asked Zelensky to help his administration investigate allegations that Joe Biden used his position as vice president to help the Ukrainian gas company avoid a corruption probe soon after Hunter Biden was appointed to its board of directors. That phone call led to an Intelligence Community whistleblower complaint that ultimately sparked a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump's actions.Biden has said that in the spring of 2016, during his tenure as vice president, he called on Ukraine to fire the top prosecutor investigating the energy company paying his son. Biden suggested he would withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine if the country did not fire the prosecutor, who was accused by the State Department and U.S. allies in Europe of being soft on corruption.
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| U.S. flags 5 Chinese media organizations as state entities Posted: 18 Feb 2020 02:20 PM PST  Tensions between the United States and China have seeped into the media sphere.The State Department on Tuesday designated five Chinese media organizations, which are known to be part of the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda apparatus — Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily, Hai Tian Development — as official government entities. In practice, it doesn't do a whole lot besides requiring the organizations to get the State Department's approval to purchase or lease any real estate and provide Washington a list of their current staff with individual's personal information. The organizations won't face any journalistic restrictions, meaning they can still report from pretty much anywhere, including State Department briefings. Ultimately, it's more of a symbolic decision, and one that Washington hopes will shed a light on China's media practices. "It is alerting people to pay attention to the fact that the message that these organizations give out is one that the Chinese Communist Party wants them to hear, not what we consider real, objective journalism," Bonnie Glaser, the director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Washington Post. The State Department was mum on one potential fallout, though. Two officials declined to comment on whether there was any consideration Beijing would retaliate against foreign reporters in China for the decision, the Post reports. They did, however, say they "were painfully' aware of the difficult situation "foreign journalists operate under in China." Read more at The Washington Post.More stories from theweek.com Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils The first poll of Susan Collins' 2020 senate race shows her tied with Democratic challenger The Democratic Party is weak. Mike Bloomberg could break it.
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| Coronavirus Means the Federal Reserve Must Cut Interest Rates Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:37 AM PST  History, and SARS, give us a guide of what could happen. A
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| 'Tiger widows' shunned as bad luck in rural Bangladesh Posted: 17 Feb 2020 11:31 PM PST  Abandoned by her sons, shunned by her neighbours and branded a witch. Women like her are ostracised in many rural villages in Bangladesh, where they are viewed as the cause of their partner's misfortune. "My sons have told me that I am an unlucky witch," she told AFP in her flimsy plank home, in the honey-hunters' village of Gabura at the edge of the Sundarbans -- a 10,000-square-kilometre (3,860-square-mile) mangrove forest that straddles Bangladesh and India.
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| Virginia lawmakers reject assault weapons ban Posted: 17 Feb 2020 08:51 AM PST  Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's push to ban the sale of assault weapons failed on Monday after some of his fellow Democrats balked at the proposal.
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| Missing more than a year, an abandoned 'ghost ship' washed ashore on the other side of the Atlantic Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:50 AM PST  The MV Alta washed ashore in Ireland's County Cork amid Storm Dennis, but the vessel took a more than a year journey from off Bermuda to get there.
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| Group of more than 1,000 judges calls emergency meeting amid Trump concerns Posted: 18 Feb 2020 07:50 AM PST  Judges will meet to address alarm over the president intervening in politically sensitive casesA national association of federal judges has called an emergency meeting to address growing concerns about the intervention of Donald Trump and justice department officials in politically sensitive cases, according to US media reports.Cynthia Rufe, a Philadelphia US district judge who heads the independent Federal Judges Association, which has more than 1,100 members, told USA Today the group "could not wait" until its spring conference to discuss the matter."There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about," Rufe told USA Today. "We'll talk all of this through."The meeting comes after more than 2,000 former US justice department officials, including some of the top government lawyers in the country, called on the attorney general, William Barr, to resign in the wake of the Roger Stone scandal.Alumni of the Department of Justice posted to Medium on Sunday a group letter that tore into Barr for "doing the president's personal bidding" in imposing on prosecutors the recommendation of a reduced sentence for Stone, a longtime friend of Trump who was convicted of lying to and obstructing Congress and threatening a witness in the Russia investigation.Barr, the officials said, had damaged the reputation of the department for "integrity and the rule of law".The spiralling constitutional crisis began last week when Barr imposed his new sentencing memo, slashing a seven- to nine-year proposed prison term suggested by career prosecutors. In the fallout, the four prosecutors who had handled the case resigned in disgust.US district Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who is presiding over the Stone's case, has ordered both sides to participate in a conference call on Tuesday to discuss the status of the case. Following the call, it was confirmed that Stone's sentencing would go ahead on Thursday.Rufe voiced her strong support for Jackson, according to USA Today."I am not concerned with how a particular judge will rule," Rufe said. "We are supportive of any federal judge who does what is required."It was not clear whether the FJA would issue a statement after the emergency meeting. The Guardian contacted the FJA for comment.
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| Boy Scouts of America files for bankruptcy Posted: 17 Feb 2020 10:04 PM PST  The venerable non-profit is following the lead of the scandal-wracked Roman Catholic Church.
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| Murdered Mexico City girl buried amid grief, outrage Posted: 18 Feb 2020 12:02 PM PST  A 7-year-old Mexico City girl whose brutal murder has generated national outrage was buried Tuesday as capital officials pledged to tighten rules for children leaving government schools on their own. Fatima, who was seen on video leaving her school on Feb. 11 with an unidentified woman and found days later dead and wrapped in a plastic bag, was laid to rest in front of grieving relatives and neighbors on Mexico City's south side. In Mexico City, even grade-school students often simply walk out of school after classes to meet parents waiting on the sidewalks, but there have been few controls to ensure someone is there to meet them.
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| The coronavirus is slamming the US travel industry, with experts predicting it will wipe out more than $10 billion in spending from Chinese visitors Posted: 18 Feb 2020 01:51 PM PST  Chinese travelers represented 7% of all visitors to the US in 2019 and 16% of visitor spending. The economic impact is forecast to be worse than SARS.
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| Trouble in the Workers’ Paradise Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:18 AM PST  Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is precisely the sort of campaign surrogate you want, especially if you are Bernie Sanders: She is young, energetic, charismatic, popular (with the people she needs to be popular with, anyway), and, happily, currently ineligible to run for the presidency herself.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is precisely the sort of campaign surrogate you don't want, especially if you are Bernie Sanders: She is callow, flippant, vain, shallow, and prone to making policy pronouncements that are even battier than your own, and she forgets to mention you at all in the course of making appearances that are in theory on your behalf.Senator Sanders is, in his bizarre way, the conservative in the Democratic presidential primary: Republicans are accused of "wanting to turn the clock back" to the 1950s, but Sanders, the confessing socialist, wants to turn the clock back to the 1930s. (The senator himself is culturally a product of the 1970s, which is what his weird little rape-fantasy literary œuvre is all about.) In the New York Times, former economist Paul Krugman poo-poos the idea that Senator Sanders means that he is a socialist when he says he is a socialist, but Sanders's prescriptions do have a certain dustily familiar aspect to them: Health care? Nationalize it by making Medicare an effective public monopoly. Banking? Nationalize it by having the government operate its own banks, i.e. by having the state literally own the means of production.This is not new stuff for the gentleman from Vermont from Brooklyn. He ran for governor of Vermont on a program that included, as those naughty ring-wing radicals over at CNN put it, "nationalization of the energy industry, public ownership of banks, telephone, electric, and drug companies and of the major means of production such as factories and capital, as well as other proposals such as a 100 percent income tax on the highest income earners in America." Then, as now, he talked like a dorm-room radical, speaking of his desire to "create a situation in which the ordinary working people take what rightfully belongs to them." The usual socialist prattle: "If workers do not take power in a reasonably short time this country will not have a future." He now says he no longer supports nationalization of industries, but that is really not quite true: Along with health care and banking, he proposes to effectively nationalize the energy industry (through a so-called Green New Deal) and much else. Like Senator Elizabeth Warren, he favors changes in corporate governance that would allow government to proceed as though it owned the country's largest firms even if they remained technically private. The point, according to the Sanders campaign, is to "shift the wealth of the economy back into the hands of the workers" because "corporate greed is destroying the social and economic fabric of our society and rapidly moving our nation into an oligarchy."Senator Sanders is a politically and intellectually unserious man — which is nothing new to American presidential politics, of course. But he has been a radical left-wing Froot Loop long enough to know that there are practical limits to public Froot-Loopery. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has not been around long enough to appreciate that fact. Which is why, among Democrats who believe that American law-enforcement agencies are Enemies of the People and that our immigration and border-patrol authorities should be liquidated in order to facilitate the uncontrolled flow of people across open borders, she actually says that American law-enforcement agencies are Enemies of the People and that our immigration and border-patrol authorities should be liquidated in order to facilitate the uncontrolled flow of people across open borders.Senator Sanders knows better than to say that. He also knows better than to believe it. In the long-ago days of . . . 2016, Senator Sanders riled up the gentlemen in Iowa's union halls giving frankly nationalist anti-immigration speeches that could have been delivered by Donald Trump. "Open borders," he insisted, were a billionaires' scheme, a "Koch brothers proposal" to flood the United States with cheap Latin American labor and thereby undermine the power of the workers and their efforts to "take power." Somebody has given him the intersectionality talk since then, and he no longer sounds quite so much like Pat Buchanan when he talks about immigration.But Representative Ocasio-Cortez is one step beyond, dismaying the Sanders campaign by using her campaign appearances to, among other things, encourage law-breaking by and for illegal immigrants: "Organizing is about tipping people off if you start to see that ICE and CBP are in communities to try and keep people safe," she says. Organizing to keep law-enforcement agencies from enforcing the law in order to abet illegal behavior isn't politics — it is criminal conspiracy. Senator Sanders may not care much about that, but he does not want to spend 2020 explaining it away, either.That is because Senator Sanders's appeal is a nationalist appeal, and the senator himself is, at heart, a nationalist, as indeed were the Democratic giants of American progressivism who preceded him spiritually: Franklin Roosevelt, above all, but also Woodrow Wilson. Representative Ocasio-Cortez is an anti-nationalist, one whose sensibility (it would be too much to describe her posturing as "ideas") is more oriented toward trans-national class solidarity. Which is to say, her socialism is more of the international variety, whereas Sanders's socialism is more of the nationalist variety, one that is in tune with familiar Democratic appeals to "economic patriotism" and denunciations of "economic traitors," which is what Democrats called Mitt Romney when he ran for president in 2012. As my friend Jonah Goldberg argues, on economic questions, "nationalism" and "socialism" end up meaning the same thing: An industry that is nationalized is one that is socialized, and one that is socialized is one that is nationalized.(Somebody really should think up a handy abbreviation for the combination of nationalism and socialism that characterizes our bipartisan consensus today.)Senator Sanders's camp may not like the way Representative Ocasio-Cortez talks about illegal immigration, but the fact is that the senator has moved her way on the issue rather than moving the Democratic Party his. "Breaking up ICE and CBP" is right there in his campaign literature . . . followed by the words "and redistributing their functions to their proper authorities." Not exactly open borders. Senator Sanders makes the usual noises about the evils of for-profit detention centers, but he despises for-profit activity at scale categorically. So, what to do? "Convene a hemispheric summit with the leaders of Latin American countries who are experiencing migration crises and develop actionable steps to stabilize the region," says the Sanders campaign. Actionable steps? Oh!Compare Senator Sanders's actionable steps to Representative Ocasio-Cortez's stop snitchin' and you have a pretty good indicator of the range of Democratic politics today. Poor old Joe Biden must be wondering what the heck happened. (But he has been doing that for a decade or two.) The question for 2020 is whether the path of least resistance leads Biden-style Democrats to Ocasio-Cortez's ascendant movement or to Donald Trump's — or to a purgatorial apathy, which Republicans would not reject as a consolation prize.
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| U.S. Coronavirus Cases Nearly Double With No End in Sight Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:51 AM PST  Confirmed cases of the new, deadly coronavirus in the United States almost doubled over the holiday weekend thanks to the messy evacuation of Americans from a cruise ship in Japan, while fresh numbers from China suggested the disease might be deadlier than first believed.The U.S. government evacuated 328 American passengers from Tokyo early Monday on two chartered cargo jets, leaving dozens others behind who preferred to stay on the Diamond Princess cruise ship—despite a strong disembarkation recommendation from the federal government. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said over the weekend that it recommended repatriation so that it could take responsibility for care of the Americans and "to reduce the burden on the Japanese healthcare system."All travelers from Japan were screened before boarding the aircraft "to prevent symptomatic travelers from departing Japan," according to the CDC. But 14 people who ultimately proved to be infected with the disease were included in the evacuation anyway, with officials later explaining that the positive results came back as passengers were already heading to the airport.Dr. William Walters, managing director of operational medicine at the State Department, told reporters Monday that authorities evacuated passengers without knowing their test results because it was "unpredictable" when the results would come back. None of the diagnosed evacuees were showing symptoms, and they flew home in separate chambers—made of 10-feet-tall plastic sheets—from the other 314 passengers. The government planned to house all uninfected evacuees for 14 days at federal quarantine sites at Travis Air Force Base in California and Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas.'It Failed': Cruise Ship Coronavirus Snafus Stoke Fears of Global PandemicInfected evacuees, on the other hand, were sent to hospitals in California and at the University of Nebraska for treatment. Another five passengers on the flights had reportedly been put in isolation after developing fevers, a development that was likely to add to public skepticism of the U.S. and Japanese governments' response to the virus, even as officials insisted that the risk to the general American public was still "low."Eiji Kusumi, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases at Navitas Clinic in Tokyo, told The New York Times that the quarantine of the cruise ship, which remained docked in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, was an "unprecedented failure" and that officials should "learn from this lesson that a quarantine on a ship is impossible."The cruise ship has for weeks housed the largest outbreak outside of China, and Japanese health authorities said Tuesday there were a total of 542 confirmed cases on the Diamond Princess—88 new ones since last count—out of 3,700 passengers and crew members. As of Tuesday, 2,404 people on board had tested negative for the virus.The vessel-wide quarantine, which began on Feb. 3, was set to end on Wednesday, but those who bunked with passengers or crew members who tested positive were slated to remain on board for longer. Only about 500 people were expected to be released on Wednesday, while more than 100 total U.S. citizens remained either on board or in hospitals in Japan, according to the CDC.Dr. Anthony Fauci, of the National Institutes of Health, also admitted on Monday that the quarantine on the cruise ship "failed." After weeks of debate about the subject, Japan said it would test everyone aboard the ship before allowing them to disembark.Outside of evacuees from the Diamond Princess, the CDC said there remained 15 confirmed cases in the U.S. on Tuesday out of 467 people under investigation for the coronavirus. Some 392 of those patients tested negative, while 60 remained pending on Tuesday. Several Americans who, before being released Tuesday, were stuck in federal quarantine in San Diego after returning from Wuhan earlier this month voiced concern over the effectiveness and thoroughness of the CDC's response, some going so far as to draft a petition after the government mistakenly reintroduced an infected woman to the general population.Jacob Wilson, a 33-year-old American evacuee who works at a tech start-up in Wuhan, told The Daily Beast that he and his fellow evacuees were "swamped" by press at the airport after they were released."Now hopefully I can get back to some normalcy," he said.Meanwhile, as of Tuesday morning, China had reported 72,528 coronavirus cases, including 1,870 related deaths, according to Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization. Outside of China, there were 804 cases in 25 countries, he added, with 12 other countries having confirmed instances of human-to-human transmission."At the moment, we don't have enough data on cases outside China to make a meaningful comparison on the severity of the disease or the case fatality rate," said Tedros.But as the Times reported, an analysis by Chinese authorities from data on 44,672 patients suggested that about 2.3 percent of cases of the disease had been fatal as of Feb. 11. Nearly 14 percent of people who tested positive for the infection had severe cases, and about 5 percent had critical illnesses, according to Chinese authorities. The data showed that 30 percent of those who died from the virus were in their 60s, 30 percent were in their 70s, and another 20 percent were 80 or older. Since then, daily figures indicated the virus's fatality rate had only increased. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet 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.
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| Watch Russia Test A New Weapon That Can Kill Missiles Posted: 17 Feb 2020 02:00 AM PST  We've got the video.
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| China-led $280 million Kyrgyzstan project abandoned after protests Posted: 18 Feb 2020 03:56 AM PST |
| Chinese authorities arrest a prominent rights activist who called on President Xi Jinping to step down Posted: 18 Feb 2020 06:52 AM PST  Chinese authorities have arrested a prominent rights activist and legal scholar who had called on President Xi Jinping to step down over his handling of crises including the coronavirus outbreak, two fellow activists said on Monday.
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| Skydiving instructor, former Army Ranger dies after skydiving accident in Florida Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:08 AM PST |
| Trump threatens to sue his investigators and demands Roger Stone case be 'thrown out' Posted: 18 Feb 2020 06:10 AM PST  Donald Trump is threatening to drop a string of lawsuits against those involved in investigations into his 2016 campaign and presidency, yet again weighing in on a federal criminal case as he thumbs his nose at concerns he is politicizing the Justice Department.The president used several Tuesday morning tweets to suggest the case of his convicted friend and former adviser Roger Stone -- and any other one stemming from probes of all things Trump -- should be "thrown out." The judge in Mr Stone's case, Amy Berman Jackson, has set a Tuesday teleconference hearing with the Stone camp and federal prosecutors to discuss the status of his case.
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| Suspended sheriff in SC faces 13 more corruption charges Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:58 AM PST  A suspended South Carolina sheriff already indicted on domestic violence charges now faces 13 additional criminal charges including giving alcohol to someone under 21 and using his power to continue a sexual relationship with an employee, authorities said. The new indictments against Colleton County Sheriff R.A. Strickland were unsealed Tuesday. Authorities accuse Strickland of a broad range of misconduct and corruption, ranging from using deputies to do personal work and campaign for him while on duty, giving a $3,000 radio that could access secure police and other emergency radio traffic to someone with no official purpose and using his power to hire, fire and determine salaries to coerce an employee to keep having a sexual relationship, according to the indictments.
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| Kidnappers prey with ‘total impunity’ on migrants waiting for hearings in Mexico Posted: 18 Feb 2020 07:37 AM PST  Report finds 80% of migrants waiting have been abducted by the mafia and 45% have suffered violence or violationA score or so migrants crouch in the dark corridor of the safe house where they have been waiting for a month. Today, their turn has come to go back on the road again – not across the US border, however, but deeper into Mexico, to save their skins.Outside, a minivan pulls up, driven by Baptist pastor Lorenzo Ortiz to take the migrants to relative safety, and away from kidnap, extortion and violation.This is Nuevo Laredo, in the north-west corner of Tamaulipas state, opposite Laredo, Texas, the world's busiest commercial trans-border hub. The people waiting to board the van have already crossed into the USA, but have been sent back under the Trump administration's so-called Migrant Protection Protocols - known as "Remain in Mexico" – whereby would be asylum seekers must await their appointed hearing south of the border.MPP was rolled out in January last year, since when an estimated 57,000 people now wait south of the border for their asylum hearing date. Tens of thousands more are waiting just for the initial application for asylum.These are the faces behind statistics in a shocking report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which found 80% of migrants waiting in Nuevo Laredo under MPP to have been abducted by the mafia, and 45% to have suffered violence or violation. The door of the safe house opens and blinding sunlight beckons those awaiting, as does Pastor Ortiz, who arrives across the border from Laredo each morning to take a vanload to the larger city of Monterrey, Nuevo León.There can be no tarrying, explains another local pastor, Diego Robles, from the First Baptist church. "If they walk to the corner of the block," he says, "they're likely to be kidnapped."Robles knows the risk he runs. Last August, criminals approached Aarón Méndez, a Seventh Day Adventist managing another shelter nearby, demanding he hand over Cubans in his care, whose relatives in the USA might pay high ransoms for their release.He refused – and has not been seen since, joining the 50,000 disappeared in Mexico's undeclared war since 2006. The safe house – its gate kept closed with padlock and chain – is crammed with some 180 people, mostly indoors, some in a back yard enclosed by breeze blocks.Their stories are terrifying and consistent.Moy Eduardo fled his home in El Salvador after members of the MS-13 gang abducted and killed his brother after the family failed to pay sufficient extortion money. He eventually arrived at Nuevo Laredo bus station, only to be forced into a car and taken to a farm some distance from town. There, he was pistol-whipped, while the kidnappers called his cousin in Atlanta and demanded an $8,000 ransom."They said if I didn't pay, they'd hand me over to 'other people in our organisation'," he recalled. Four days later, his desperate relative wired money, and Moy Eduardo was released.He told the story to US authorities when applying for asylum, "but they didn't believe me and sent me back". Moy Eduardo has a court date in April, but is desperate to leave Nuevo Laredo. "I cannot stay here – they said if they saw me again, they'd kill me"."It's become big business," says Pastor Robles "It's a way for the drug cartels to diversify. It is worse in Tamaulipas than other border states, and worse in Nuevo Laredo than anywhere else in Tamaulipas. There's no formula to the abductions and disappearances – they are kidnapped, beaten, women violated; most return, but not all".Nuevo Laredo was for years controlled by the hyper-violent Zetas group, and is now territory of its offshoot, the North-east cartel. But their one-time associate, now rival, the Gulf cartel is knocking at the gates, backed by the Jalisco cartel, eager for access to the city's vast commercial transit routes into the USA. .While the Zetas/North-east cartel control migrant movement within Nuevo Laredo, the Gulf and Jalisco cartels often bring migrants to the city. And each group sees migrants and asylum seekers as a source of easy money."They go after the ones who've been brought here by a rival cartel. They have to pay twice," says Pastor Ortiz "And the Cubans – because they know the Cubans have richer relatives."Inside the safe house, Yaqueline and her daughter Lisbeth, described how she was given a code by their coyote after fleeing gang violence in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.She was told that in Nuevo Laredo, the word "rana" – frog – would ensure safe passage. But when three thugs approached them outside the government migrant registration offices, they were told the word meant they were property of the enemy; mother and child were bundled into an SUV.Relatives north of the border were again contacted. After five days, they were still unable to find the ransom money, and Yaqueline and Lisbeth were released to find their own way to Pastor Robles' church. Asked if she had been maltreated, Yaqueline lowers her eyes, gestures towards the child, and crossed herself. "The gangs were bad in Honduras, but it is even more dangerous here."All these people have US "Notice to Appear" papers for dates months away, when they will re-cross the bridge into Laredo, Texas, and enter a tent court beside the Rio Grande, for a cursory video-link hearing to a judge hundreds of miles away in San Antonio. Less than 1% are granted asylum.Those summoned to court begin gathering on the Mexican side of the bridge before 4am. A group from Cuba and Venezuela assembles first, manifestly nervous.There are 67 on the docket to appear at the tent court, but by 6am, only 29 are shuffled through into the canvas corridor, to plead their case, and await judgment on a screen from 150 miles away. The rest are presumed to have given up and returned home. Reporters have never been admitted into the Laredo tent court."The authorities make no attempt to intervene, says Pastor Ortiz, "the mafia is right there in the open, and there's nothing done to stop them. It's total impunity for the cartels."Local and national governments play down the abduction emergency. Edwin Aceves, the chief investigator for the Office of Disappeared Persons in Nuevo Laredo, said he had received "no reports of kidnapping and extortion of migrants. These are just rumours."Meanwhile, Mark Morgan, acting commissioner for US Customs and Border Protection, told a round-table of reporters last year he was unaware of reports of kidnapping, while Mexico's foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, has said kidnaps were "not a massive number"; his department had information on 20 cases nationally.Mexico's leftwing government cooperates enthusiastically with President Trump's MPP. In contrast to the pastors' buses helping migrants wait in relative safety, government buses chartered depart daily from Nuevo Laredo's state migration centres to take migrants back to the border with Guatemala. Even one of those was hijacked last autumn, surrounded by gunmen aboard pickup trucks, and migrants taken. But here at the safe house, the minivan is ready to take people on a round-trip, to relative safety away from Nuevo Laredo, and then back again to cross the border when their date arrives. The group shuffles out of the front door on to the sidewalk and scrambles onboard. Pastor Robles says a prayer for the road through the front passenger window – and off they go, in the opposite direction to that of their plans, but away from the clutches of the mafia.
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| Yes, China's New DF-100 Anti-Ship Missile Are a Big Problem Posted: 18 Feb 2020 06:45 AM PST  Not good at all.
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| US Boy Scouts files for bankruptcy after abuse scandal Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:35 AM PST  The Boy Scouts of America filed for bankruptcy Tuesday in what it said was an effort to safeguard compensation payouts for sexual abuse victims. The organization has been accused of covering up generations of abuse inflicted on thousands of its young members and failing to do enough to root out pedophiles using the youth movement to prey on minors over its 110-year history. Bankruptcy proceedings will help the Boy Scouts to "equitably compensate" victims through the establishment of a victims' compensation trust and allow the organization to continue at a local level, a statement from the group said.
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| Britain's row with Greece over treasures spills into Brexit tensions Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:25 AM PST  A long-running dispute between Britain and Greece over ancient treasures has spilled into tensions over Brexit after a demand for the return of stolen cultural artefacts was added to the draft of a European Union negotiating mandate. The British Museum in London has refused to return the Parthenon Marbles, 2,500-year-old sculptures that British diplomat Lord Elgin removed from Athens in the early 19th century when Greece was under Ottoman Turkish rule.
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| Why did US break Diamond Princess coronavirus quarantine? 'Something went awry' Posted: 18 Feb 2020 08:33 AM PST  Anthony Fauci shed light on the decision to evacuate passengers from the Diamond Princess, 14 of whom have tested positive for the virus.
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| There’s Zero Chance Bloomberg Would Pick Hillary Posted: 16 Feb 2020 06:24 PM PST  There's no better evidence that Mike Bloomberg's chances of getting the Democratic nomination are on the rise than the fact that the opportunistic Hillary Clinton is already trying to grab a piece of the action.The Drudge Report startled the political world on Saturday by noting that "sources close to Bloomberg campaign" are "considering Hillary as running mate, after their polling found the Bloomberg-Clinton combination would be a formidable force."I have no doubt that Hillary wants back in, and her minions are pushing such rumors. I have no doubt that some of Bloomberg's hundreds of staffers used to work on Hillary's campaign and are pushing the idea internally. I also have no doubt that Mike Bloomberg is smart enough to never go for such a crazy and risky idea.First, Mike Bloomberg needs "woke" progressives behind him and enthused enough to actually voted if he is to win a general election campaign. The last thing he should do is infuriate Bernie Sanders voters by sharing his ticket with the woman they blame for "rigging" the 2016 primaries against him. Recall that 12 percent of Sanders's primary supporters voted for President Trump in the 2016 general election. That is according to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study — a massive election survey of around 50,000 people.Second, the Democratic ticket would be on the old side with a Bloomberg-Clinton ticket. The former New York mayor will be 78 years old at the time of the election this year, and he looks it. Hillary will be 73 years old, and she has a record of not being candid with her health issues. Should something happen to both of them, the next person in line for the presidency, should she remain House speaker, would be 80-year-old Nancy Pelosi.While they would be running against a 74-year-old incumbent president, few would question that Trump projects a vigorous persona. The Democratic Party needs an injection of youth and vitality, not a ticket with two people who barely brush the Baby Boom generation.Third, Hillary Clinton's last job in government was an ethical disaster. Her email scandal, which clearly involved a coverup of just how much she compromised classified information, would have led to her indictment absent an extraordinary amount of political pull in her favor.Then there is the Clinton Foundation. There is extensive evidence that special-interest donors to the foundation sought favors from a responsive State Department. We know from Peter Schweitzer's book Clinton Cash that the State Department helped move along an infamous deal that granted the Russians control of more than 20 percent of the uranium production here in the United States. The company involved in acquiring the American uranium was a very large donor to — you guessed it — the Clinton Foundation.President Obama had actually taken steps to ensure that none of this would happen. Hillary Clinton pledged that she would "avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest" in her work as secretary."How did she do? The Associated Press reported that more than half of the nongovernmental figures who met with Secretary Clinton were Clinton Foundation donors. Huma Abedin, Clinton's closest aide, agreed to help a Clinton Foundation aide get a diplomatic passport. Several key donations went unreported. Many of the emails stored on a private server that could have revealed more errant behavior were permanently destroyed using a program called "bleach bit."In December 2008, the Clinton Foundation and the office of President-elect Obama signed an agreement. In it, the Foundation promised to disclose all of its donors and that foreign governments would not be allowed to contribute to it; Bill Clinton also agreed that he would not personally solicit funds for the Foundation.Many ethics experts scoff at the suggestion that Hillary followed either the letter or spirit of that agreement. Even the New York Times editorial board concluded in 2016 that "the emails and previous reporting suggest Mr. Trump has reason to say that while Mrs. Clinton was secretary, it was hard to tell where the foundation ended and the State Department began."Forget jokes that Mike Bloomberg, if president, would need a food taster if Hillary were his vice president. But could a President Bloomberg be confident that Hillary wouldn't be scarf-deep in scandal and intrigue every day she was his vice president? Could he rely on her word that she would avoid conflicts of interest and other ethical wrongs?Let's not forget that Clinton's shifty record led to a general perception that she was dishonest. A New York Times poll in August 2016, found that 67 percent of registered voters had doubts about her trustworthiness. "It wasn't just emails and the Clinton Foundation," Michael Barone, co-author of the Almanac of American Politics, told me. "When she was First Lady, there was Health-Care Gate, FBI File-Gate, Travel Gate, and Billing Records Gate."Mike Bloomberg has been pressing the notion that scandals have plagued Donald Trump's administration. Why would he want to surrender his claim to the moral high ground by making Hillary his running mate and exposing himself to accurate counterattacks over that by Trump?Michael Bloomberg built his business career and reputation as New York's mayor by sizing up situations dispassionately and coldly. There is no way he is going to look at the prospect of Hillary Clinton joining his ticket as anything other than "risky business."
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| Men linked to white supremacist group plead not guilty Posted: 18 Feb 2020 09:15 AM PST  Three men accused of being members of a violent white supremacist group called The Base pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges in a federal indictment in Maryland. Former Canadian Armed Forces reservist Patrik Mathews, 27; and Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 33, of Elkton, Maryland; entered their pleas during separate arraignments on charges including transporting a firearm and ammunition with the intent to commit a felony. In a court filing, Justice Department prosecutors said Lemley and Mathews discussed "the planning of violence" at a gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia, in January.
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