| Bloomberg 'weathered the storm' during fiery Democratic debate, his campaign says Posted: 19 Feb 2020 10:02 PM PST  Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg came under heavy fire from his rivals during Wednesday's Democratic presidential debate at the Paris Casino but "weathered the storm," his senior adviser Howard Wolfson said.
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| A Google manager has been arrested and charged with murder after his wife was reported missing in Hawaii Posted: 20 Feb 2020 02:11 PM PST  His wife, a Microsoft business program manager, was reported missing Tuesday while the Seattle couple was vacationing in Hawaii.
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| Trump's pardon of Bernie Kerik also apparently wiped out Kerik's $103,300 debt to taxpayers Posted: 18 Feb 2020 10:43 PM PST  President Trump granted a full pardon to former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik on Tuesday, clearing him of his eight counts of tax fraud, lying to federal investigators, and other crimes that accompanied his downfall. Kerik had already served his three years in prison for his crimes, but the pardon wipes out more than his criminal record, the New York Daily News reports. "The pardon cancels out $103,300 in restitution that Kerik still owed the Internal Revenue Service as part of his sentence, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan."The White House credited Kerik's friend and former boss in New York City, Rudy Giuliani — now Trump's personal lawyer and Ukraine fixer — for helping persuade Trump to pardon Kerik. Another friend of both Kerik and Trump, Newsmax chief executive Christopher Ruddy, told the Daily News that Trump's pardon was "a just decision" in light of Kerik's "minor stuff" crimes.One of Kerik's former colleagues in the Giuliani administration, NYC Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, recalled Kerik's multifaceted downfall from heroic 9/11 figure to flamed-out reject for Homeland Security secretary slightly differently back in late 2004, The New Yorker recounted: "Officials have gotten into trouble for sexual misconduct, abusing their authority, personal bankruptcy, failure to file documents, waste of public funds, receiving substantial unrecorded gifts, and association with organized crime figures. It is rare for anyone to be under fire on all seven of the above issues."More stories from theweek.com Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils Buttigieg hits Bloomberg and Sanders in 1 swoop: 'Let's put forth someone who is actually a Democrat' Elizabeth Warren defends Amy Klobuchar for forgetting the name of Mexico's president
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| Coronavirus fears create ghost town in South Korea after church 'super-spreader' Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:07 PM PST  SEOUL/BEIJING (Reuters) - The streets of South Korea's fourth-largest city were abandoned on Thursday, with residents holed up indoors after dozens of people caught the new coronavirus in what authorities described as a "super-spreading event" at a church. The deserted shopping malls and cinemas of Daegu, a city of 2.5 million people, became one of the most striking images outside China of an outbreak that international authorities are trying stop from becoming a global pandemic. In China, where the virus has killed more than 2,100 people and infected nearly 75,000, officials changed their methodology for reporting infections, creating new doubt about data they have cited as evidence their containment strategy is working.
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| Warren Reverses Pledge to Refuse PAC Money, Implies She’s Been Held to Sexist Double Standard Posted: 20 Feb 2020 12:19 PM PST  Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) changed her tune on the nefarious influence of super PACs just days after receiving the backing of a newly formed PAC, telling reporters on Thursday that because "all of the men" in the race refused to rely entirely on individual donors, she shouldn't be expected to either."It can't be the case that a bunch of people keep them and only one or two don't," she said.Warren, speaking to reporters in Nevada, tried to square her past disavowals of super PAC funding with her refusal to disavow a new PAC that made a $1 million television ad buy on her behalf this week. She argued that because she failed to convince other candidates to commit to her proposal of no PAC funding, she was forced to accept PAC support."The first day I got in this race, over a year ago, I said 'I hope every presidential candidate who comes in will agree — no Super PACs for any of us," Warren explained. "I renewed that call dozens of times, and I couldn't get a single Democrat to go along with me."The pro-Warren "Persist" PAC filed with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday and booked $800,000 in television ads to run in Nevada, despite Warren's previous criticisms of PAC money. During the New Hampshire Democratic Debate, she touted her lack of PAC support, saying "everyone on this stage except Amy [Klobuchar] and me is either a billionaire or is receiving help from PACs that can do unlimited spending."The day of the New Hampshire primary last week, Warren tweeted that she "won't take a dime of PAC money in this campaign."> Let's be clear: I won't take a dime of PAC money in this campaign. I won't take a single check from a federal lobbyist, or billionaires who want to run a Super PAC on my behalf. > > And I challenge every other candidate who asks for your vote in this primary to do the same.> > -- Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) February 9, 2019"Senator Warren is the best candidate to take on Donald Trump and win, and we're going to ensure primary voters and caucusgoers hear her message," Persist PAC spokesman Joshua Karp told The New York Times on the new venture. Warren's campaign released a statement on Wednesday in response, which said her stance was "unchanged" on PACs, but did not direct the newly formed PAC to stand down.Speaking Thursday, Warren went further, implying that she could not hold out any longer after "all of the men" still running against her "had either Super PACs, or they were multi-billionaires.""Finally, we reached the point a few weeks ago where all of the men who were still in this race and on the debate stage, all had either Super PACs, or they were multi-billionaires, and could just rummage around in their sock drawers and find enough money to be able to fund a campaign. And the only people who didn't have them were the two women," Warren argued.Warren signaled that after a pro-Klobuchar PAC sprang up earlier this week to support the Minnesota Senator, she was not going to stand in the way."At that point, there were some women around the country who said, 'you know, that's just not right.' So here's where I stand — if all the candidates want to get rid of super PACs, count me in. I'll lead the charge. But that's how it has to be. It can't be the case that a bunch of people keep them and only one or two don't," she stated.> NEW: Here is video of Warren declining to disavow the new super PAC supporting her:> > "If all the candidates want to get rid of super PACs, count me in. I'll lead the charge. But that's how it has to be. It can't be the case that a bunch of people keep them and only 1 or 2 don't." pic.twitter.com/byxQRjGMfs> > -- Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) February 20, 2020The shift in tone comes after Warren slammed former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg during Wednesday's Nevada debate for a history of sexist comments and non-disclosure agreements with female employees.
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| Racist German Shooter Exposes the Global Network of Hate Posted: 20 Feb 2020 10:08 AM PST  BERLIN—Late Wednesday night in the central German city Hanau, a gunman that police have identified as 43-year-old Tobias Rathjen opened fire at two shisha bars. They're the kind of places favored by people who enjoy a laid-back atmosphere as they puff tobacco bubbling through water-filled hookahs, and on any given evening, many of those folks may be from Turkish, Kurdish, or North African backgrounds. They're quiet places for conversation and minding your own business. Do Germans Know a Hate Crime When They See It?But Rathjen just started blowing people away. He first opened fire at a hookah bar called Midnight in the center of Hanau. He then drove five minutes away to the Arena Bar and Cafe, where he opened fire again. He killed nine and injured several others at the two locations, then fled. Police swarmed into the neighborhood. When they tracked Rathjen down and stormed his apartment at 5 a.m., they found his dead body next to that of his 72-year-old mother. Apparently he had shot her, too.Investigators also found a manifesto with racist and ultranationalist views, and the federal prosecutor is treating the case as an example of extreme-right terrorism and it is already clear the shooter was drawing on the international propaganda of hate that has inspired murderers from New Zealand to the United States. It is also apparent that, despite condemnation of the killings by the ascendant far-right German opposition party AfD, or Alternative für Deutschland, it has contributed to this country's increasingly incendiary atmosphere.Witnesses were stunned."I got a call from a colleague that there was a shooting," Can Luca Frisenna, the 24-year-old son of the owner of a convenience store next to the Arena Bar, told reporters in front the taped-off crime scene. "I drove here directly. First I thought that my father had been hit and my little brother... and then I saw both of them, they were in shock, they were crying. Everyone was shocked."Things like this do not happen in this area," Frisenna said. "It's like a film, like a prank. I can't yet believe what has happened. I think all of my colleagues, they are like my family, they cannot believe it either."Both the Midnight and the Arena have owners with Kurdish backgrounds, according to Mehmet Tanriverdi, the chairman of the Kurdische Gemeinde Deutschland, or Kurdish Community in Germany.Tanriverdi said that five of the nine victims have Kurdish backgrounds, but "They are German citizens." One witness, Kenan Kocak, told the television network station NTV, "It's very sad in particular that young people—a young lad, and a young girl about 20 or 25 years old—have died. I was there with them yesterday. Someone who worked there was also taken to the hospital. It looks very bad."The news agency ANF has identified two of the people killed as Ferhat Ünvar and Gökhan Gültekin, both young men. A week ago the killer, who described himself as a bank teller, published a video on YouTube in which he addressed "all Americans." He spoke English in a light German accent and mouthed bizarre conspiracy theories about "underground military facilities" on U.S. soil. He referred repeatedly to 9/11 as an example of the imminent threat. He said that he, for one, has been under surveillance since birth and called on American citizens to wake up and "fight now." The video appeared to have been recorded in a private apartment; a bookshelf in the background was stacked with dozens of binders. Meanwhile, Rathjen uploaded a 24-page text on his personal website. It included long sections of white supremacist, ethno-nationalist rambling. He wrote that "not everyone who owns a German passport is purebred and valuable." He talked about one German Volk—"the people" in the ethno-nationalist sense—which he describes as being the best. Otherwise there are only "destructive races." The "solution to the puzzle," he wrote (misspelling "puzzle"—is that billions of people (he named Arab countries and Israel) be "annihilated."If such demented ravings were limited to one unhinged bank teller with a gun, society might rest easy in spite of the tragedy. But they are not. Last week, police in Germany arrested 12 right-wing extremists who allegedly had been planning terror attacks on mosques across the country, inspired by those carried out in New Zealand last year. They had plans to provoke revenge attacks and bring about a "civil war," authorities said.This often is part of the global hate network's gospel. The young white supremacist who murdered nine black men and women in a Bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina, one evening in June 2015, preached much the same philosophy.Inside the Head of Dylann Roof, Jihadist for White HateRathjen also wrote about the coming "war" on his website, claiming that it would be a double blow, both against the secret organizations that he says are reading his mind, and against the "degeneration of the Volk."Right-wing extremists who turn to terror rely on apocalyptic scenarios ("civil war") to characterize their targets as a threat and thus justify their criminal acts as "self defense."Politicians from Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), now Germany's biggest opposition party, have spurred this narrative by spreading conspiracies about "ethnic replacement" and disinformation campaigns about non-existent crimewaves—as exemplified by campaign posters that accused hookah bars of being places of "rape " and "poison."For Germany's radical right, escalation is the goal. Crime levels in Germany are still at an all-time low. Right-wing terrorism aims to spread fear and potentially bring about authoritarian measures that the AfD cannot implement directly. So of course AfD politicians have condemned the terror attack—one AfD politician wrote on Twitter, "Is this still the 'Germany in which we live well and happily' that Merkel's CDU (Conservative party) conjured up in 2017?"Four months ago, 27-year-old Stephan Balliet tried to commit a terror attack against a synagogue in the city of Halle an der Saale, and killed two bystanders. As was the case with Rathjen, he had not been known to intelligence services prior to his act of terror. Meanwhile, Stephan E., the man accused of murdering conservative politician Walter Lübcke on his front porch in June, was a neo-Nazi in the '90s, but only became active again in the past few years. The German newspaper Die Zeit reported Thursday that police found a New Right book in his apartment that propagates the same ethnic replacement theories AfD politicians have cited. In 2016, 18-year-old student David Sonboly killed nine people in Munich on the fifth anniversary of the terror attack in Norway by Anders Breivik. He had been bullied at school, but turned his resentment and fury on people simply for their appearance, claiming that refugees and immigrants were a threat to Germany's future. In 2018, reporters from the newspaper Taz uncovered a network of people (including soldiers from the German army) who were preparing "kill lists" of left-wing politicians and activists, whom they could execute on the apocalyptic "Day X."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.
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| Don't Sleep on Russia's Super-Fast "Avangard" Hypersonic Missile Posted: 20 Feb 2020 01:00 PM PST  It'll keep you up at night.
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| 'Cheap shot': Sanders fires back when Bloomberg goes after 'socialism' Posted: 19 Feb 2020 08:22 PM PST  Michael Bloomberg attacked Sen. Bernie Sanders at Wednesday's debate in Las Vegas, with the billionaire former New York City mayor claiming the self-described democratic socialist's ownership of multiple homes makes him a hypocrite.
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| Suspects in abduction, murder of 7-year-old Mexican girl detained Posted: 19 Feb 2020 09:52 PM PST  Mexican authorities arrested a couple believed to have kidnapped, tortured and murdered a seven year-old girl on Wednesday, days after the discovery of the victim's body sparked protests in the violence-wracked country. The suspects "were detained in a town in the State of Mexico," Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum tweeted, without giving more detail. Prosecutors on Tuesday released pictures of the two suspects -- identified as Giovana and Mario Alberto "N" -- after searching a house near the victim's home.
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| Trump rape accuser’s lawyers says president is doing ‘everything he can’ to stop her case Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:30 AM PST  Lawyers representing a writer who accuses Donald Trump of raping her in the 1990s have said Mr Trump is doing "everything he can to stop the truth from ever coming out".
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| A police officer was fired and told to immediately turn in his uniform at a town meeting, so he stripped down to his underwear and walked home in the snow Posted: 20 Feb 2020 08:55 AM PST  The Police Chief in Croydon, New Hampshire, was fired Tuesday night and ordered to turn over his uniform. He walked home in his underwear.
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| Coronavirus: CDC issues new travel notices for Hong Kong, Japan Posted: 20 Feb 2020 07:53 AM PST  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new advisories on Wednesday for travelers going to Hong Kong and Japan due to coronavirus.
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| India's Military Is Quite Deadly (China and Pakistan Should Worry) Posted: 19 Feb 2020 04:44 AM PST  Missiles, carriers, and more.
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| Buttigieg attacks Bernie and Bloomberg: 'Let's put forward somebody who's actually a Democrat' Posted: 19 Feb 2020 06:58 PM PST  Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders sparred during Wednesday's debate in Las Vegas, with the former South Bend, Ind., mayor calling the Vermont senator too "polarizing" to be the Democratic nominee, and Sanders taking a jab at Buttigieg's big-money donors.
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| Four things to know about Pope Pius XII's archives Posted: 20 Feb 2020 08:04 AM PST  The March 2 unsealing of the archives of Pope Pius XII, the controversial World War II-era pontiff, whose papacy lasted from 1939 to 1958, has been awaited for decades by Jewish groups and historians. The controversy over Pius XII hinges on whether the head of the Catholic Church, a former diplomat of the Holy See in Germany, remained too silent during the Holocaust, never publicly condemning the Nazis. The most sensitive archives, comprising the World War II period, have already been largely published by the Vatican.
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| Coronavirus: Princess Cruises boss under fire for blowing kisses at ship where two have died and 3,000 have been quarantined for weeks Posted: 20 Feb 2020 01:18 PM PST  The president of Princess Cruises welcomed a coronavirus-quarantined ship by blowing kisses and making heart signs, captured on a video set to upbeat music and posted on social media the same day as reports of the deaths of two passengers had surfaced.In a video posted to the company's social media on Wednesday, Jan Swartz is seen wearing a surgical mask and forming heart hands over her head as the cruise ship finally begins to disembark after its passengers were forced to remain at a port in Yokohama, Japan for several weeks following a shipwide outbreak of the flu-like respiratory virus.
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| Trump Offered Assange Pardon if He Covered Up Russian Hack, WikiLeaks Founder’s Lawyer Claims Posted: 19 Feb 2020 09:15 AM PST  LONDON—A lawyer for Julian Assange has claimed in court that President Donald Trump offered to pardon Assange if the WikiLeaks founder agreed to help cover up Russia's involvement in hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee. Assange's lawyers said on Wednesday that former Republican congressman Dana Rohrabacher offered Assange the deal in 2017, a year after emails that damaged Hillary Clinton in the presidential race had been published. WikiLeaks posted the stolen DNC emails after they were hacked by Russian operatives.The claim that Rohrabacher acted as an emissary for the White House came during a pre-extradition hearing in London.Assange has argued that he should not be extradited to the U.S. because the American case against him is politically motivated. He spent almost seven years hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in Central London claiming that he would be jailed in the U.S. if he wasn't granted asylum. He was kicked out of the embassy last year.His lawyers told the court that Trump's alleged offer to pardon Assange proved that this was no ordinary criminal investigation.Edward Fitzgerald, who was representing Assange in court, said he had evidence that a quid pro quo was put to Assange by Rohrabacher, who was known as Putin's favorite congressman.GOP Lawmaker Got Direction From Moscow, Took It Back to D.C.Fitzgerald said a statement produced by Assange's personal lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, included a description of "Mr. Rohrabacher going to see Mr. Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange... said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks."Rohrabacher weighed in on Wednesday afternoon, insisting he never spoke to Trump about Assange prior to his personally-funded "fact finding mission" to London. He said he told Assange that he would "call on" Trump to pardon him if he was able to say who gave him the hacked emails."I was not directed by Trump or anyone else connected with him to meet with Julian Assange," he said in a statement. "At no time did I offer Julian Assange anything from the President because I had not spoken with the President about this issue at all."Rohrabacher said he spoke briefly with then chief of staff John Kelly after the trip to let him know that Assange would provide information about the hacked DNC emails in exchange for a pardon. "No one followed up with me including Gen. Kelly and that was the last discussion I had on this subject with anyone representing Trump or in his Administration," he said.District Judge Vanessa Baraitser, who is presiding over the pre-trial hearing in Westminster Magistrates' Court, said the allegation would be admissible during Assange's extradition hearing, which is due to begin next week.If Assange appears in court in the U.S., he will face 18 charges including conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, which could total a prison sentence of 175 years.On Twitter, WikiLeaks' verified account claimed there were more "bombshells" to come in the court hearing.Two months after Rohrabacher's trip to visit Assange, the Wall Street Journal reported that he was trying to arrange a deal for Trump to pardon Assange. The White House confirmed at the time that Rohrabacher had spoken to Kelly about the plan to free Assange, but it was not clear if Trump had personally spoken to Rohrabacher either before or after his mission to London. In 2018, Rohrabacher told The Intercept that he had been blocked from discussing the plan with the president because Kelly and other White House staffers were scared it would look like collusion. Rohrabacher, who lost his California re-election fight in 2018, has been accused of helping push Kremlin lines in the U.S. in the past. A few months before he went to London to meet Assange, his staff director was ousted after a report by The Daily Beast exposed close links between Russia and Rohrabacher. The congressman had worked with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met Trump's campaign team at the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting, part of a lobbying operation designed to promote Kremlin aims in Washington.Stephen Colbert Can't Believe Trump Trusts Julian Assange More Than American IntelligenceWhite House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham on Wednesday denied that Trump played any role in the offer of a pardon. "The President barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he's an ex-congressman," she said in a statement. "He's never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject. It is a complete fabrication and a total lie. This is probably another never ending hoax and total lie from the DNC."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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| China says will help manage Mekong as report warns of dam danger Posted: 20 Feb 2020 06:35 AM PST  VIENTIANE/BANGKOK (Reuters) - China on Thursday said it was helping its downstream neighbors cope with a prolonged drought by releasing more water from its dams on the Mekong River, adding it would consider sharing information on hydrology to provide further assistance in the future. The statement came as a new economic report predicted that the building of dams to harness hydropower on the Mekong River would reshape the economies of five countries along the waterway, fuelling long-term inflation and dependence on China. The drought over the past year has severely hurt farming and fishing in Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar and Vietnam, and many blame China's 11 dams on the upper Mekong - which China calls the Lancang River - as well as climate change.
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| The Mormon Church's secretive $100 billion fund revealed huge stakes in Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Here are its 10 biggest holdings. Posted: 19 Feb 2020 09:04 AM PST  Ensign Peak Advisors, the investing arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spilled the beans on its $40 billion stock portfolio.
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| Southwest Airlines urges passengers to report 'any unwelcome behavior' during flight Posted: 20 Feb 2020 02:57 PM PST  The addition to Southwest Airline's pre-flight safety briefing comes amid high-profile claims of sexual assault on airlines.
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| Stone’s sentencing to begin after judge refuses new trial request Posted: 20 Feb 2020 03:39 AM PST  Roger Stone, a longtime ally of President Trump and a self-described political dirty trickster, is set to be sentenced on Thursday for his attempts to sabotage a congressional investigation that posed a political threat to the president.
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| Buttigieg hits Bloomberg and Sanders in 1 swoop: 'Let's put forth someone who is actually a Democrat' Posted: 19 Feb 2020 06:40 PM PST  Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg started Wednesday's Democratic debate in Nevada with a direct hit on two candidates at once.If the party doesn't "wake up" before Super Tuesday, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will likely be the only candidates left in the race, Buttigieg said. "Most Americans don't see where they fit" between those two candidates, seeing as "one wants to burn this party down" and the other "wants to buy this party out ... Let's put forward somebody who's actually a Democrat," Buttigieg said to a roaring crowd, pointing out how Sanders isn't actually a Democrat and Bloomberg just became one a little over a year ago. Sanders countered by pointing out that Buttigieg has a few dozen billionaires supporting his campaign.> WATCH: Buttigieg on Sanders and Bloomberg: "Let's put forth someone who is actually a Democrat." - @NBCNewsNOW DemDebate pic.twitter.com/rrRZEP7Pbi> > — NBC News (@NBCNews) February 20, 2020Buttigieg later piled on to questions about people who claim to be Sanders' supporters attacking a culinary union that questioned his health care proposals. Sanders disavowed anyone who is attacking union leaders and suggested disinformation campaigns like what happened in 2016 could be at play. Buttigieg fired back with a signature one-liner, saying leadership "is about how you inspire people to act."More stories from theweek.com House leaders reportedly learned Russia was trying to get Trump re-elected — and Trump was angry about it The growing crisis in cosmology Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils
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| Body of missing college student found in Georgia, boyfriend arrested Posted: 19 Feb 2020 11:12 AM PST  Anitra Lashay Gunn was a senior studying agriculture at Fort Valley State University. She was found in a wooded area in Crawford County.
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| 'We don't have a history of murdering our citizens': A Saudi official says reports that the Saudi Crown Prince is connected to the death of Jamal Khashoggi are 'ridiculous' Posted: 19 Feb 2020 02:04 PM PST  Saudi Arabia has made "great progress in terms of human rights," Adel al-Jubeir said, urging outsiders to educate themselves better on its state of affairs.
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| Coronavirus is Spreading Rapidly in China (And One Minority Group Is Under Serious Threat) Posted: 20 Feb 2020 02:12 PM PST  If the Chinese government cannot or does not curb the transmission of the novel coronavirus in Xinjiang, it's possible that it will evolve, as the influenza virus did in 1918, to become even more dangerous to humans
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| US military truck caught on camera ramming Russian jeep off the road in Syria Posted: 20 Feb 2020 08:50 AM PST  A video circulating on Twitter shows US military forces in Syria running a Russian military vehicle off the road.
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| Trump decided to replace his top spy chief after his aide told Congress that Russia is interfering in 2020 to help Trump win Posted: 20 Feb 2020 02:27 PM PST  Trump was led to falsely believe that Rep. Adam Schiff was fed exclusive information that could help Democrats if released publicly.
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| Rare Ethiopian crown, hidden for 21 years in the Netherlands, returns home Posted: 20 Feb 2020 08:45 AM PST  Ethiopia's government on Thursday assumed custody of a priceless 18th-century crown that a former refugee had kept hidden in his apartment in the Netherlands for two decades. The handover took place at a ceremony in the capital, Addis Ababa, attended by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Sigrid Kaag, the Dutch minister for foreign trade and development cooperation. Sirak Asfaw, the one-time refugee who is now a Dutch citizen, fled Ethiopia during the late 1970s during the so-called "Red Terror" purges.
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| 'Like a zombie apocalypse': Residents on edge as coronavirus cases surge in South Korea Posted: 19 Feb 2020 05:20 PM PST  Residents of a South Korean city at the centre of a new coronavirus outbreak described empty streets, deserted shops, and a climate of fear as a surge in confirmed cases linked to a church raised the prospect of wider transmission. Malls, restaurants and streets in Daegu, the country's fourth largest city with a population of 2.5 million, were largely empty in scenes that residents and social media users likened to a disaster movie. Korea's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 53 new cases of the virus on Thursday, following 20 a day earlier, taking the total across the country to 104.
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| German gunman calling for genocide kills 9 people Posted: 19 Feb 2020 11:40 PM PST  A German who shot and killed nine people of foreign background in a rampage that began at a hookah bar frequented by immigrants had posted an online rant calling for the "complete extermination" of many "races or cultures in our midst," authorities said Thursday. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the attack exposed the "poison" of racism in the country. The gunman, Tobias Rathjen, 43, was found dead at his home along with his mother, and authorities said they were treating the rampage as an act of domestic terrorism.
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| Michael Bloomberg was mercilessly attacked in his first debate – and he flopped Posted: 19 Feb 2020 09:29 PM PST  Bloomberg was hammered all night over stop-and-frisk, Wall Street, and his opposition to raising the minimum wage. He didn't take it well Before Wednesday night's debate, Mike Bloomberg's critics had been furious with the Democratic National Committee for changing its rules to allow Bloomberg on the debate stage. But it turned out the critics should have been thanking the DNC. Bloomberg was absolutely terrible. His campaign may not literally have ended on the debate stage, but it's hard to see how any viewer could come away believing his pitch that he is "the best candidate to take on Trump".Bloomberg was ill-prepared, uncharismatic and unlikable. The other candidates ran rings around him. Elizabeth Warren sank her teeth in early, interrupting Bloomberg's opening statement to point out how his long history of sexist comments about women made him a lot like Donald Trump. Warren landed even more brutal blows later in the debate, when she challenged Bloomberg to release women from the non-disclosure agreements his company had forced them to sign in sexual harassment lawsuits. Bloomberg mumbled some lame excuse about how the agreements were consensual, but was clearly caught off-guard, and Warren wouldn't let the issue go.Bloomberg looked feeble, and after the debate some Democratic bigwigs were already reportedly concluding that "Bloomberg isn't the answer."Bloomberg was mercilessly attacked all night by the rest of the candidates over stop-and-frisk, Wall Street, his Republican past and his opposition to raising the minimum wage. He did not have any idea how to respond to the barrage. On stop-and-frisk, he simply lied, saying that he had tried to end the policy when in fact he had escalated it. Warren was having none of this, and correctly pointed out that Bloomberg was failing to take responsibility for the consequences his policy had for African Americans. Joe Biden echoed the sentiment, saying that Bloomberg's apologies for stop-and-frisk were insufficient. "It's not whether he apologized or not. It's the policy. And the policy was abhorrent." Biden energetically opposed Bloomberg throughout the night, showing a passion and lucidity that has been missing from the last months of his flagging campaign.It wasn't just Bloomberg who came under fire. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg have never liked each other, and they became downright nasty. Klobuchar once again took the opportunity to point out that Pete has never won a statewide race, while Buttigieg replied with a canned line about how if Minnesotan senators made good nominees, Walter Mondale would have been president. Buttigieg also seized the opportunity to poke at Klobuchar over forgetting the president of Mexico's name. Klobuchar struggled, asking Pete if he was calling her "dumb". Buttigieg is a practiced debater and delivers his lines well, and his polished hokum about how "Washington" doesn't respect small-city rust belt mayors clearly gets on Klobuchar's nerves to no end.> In terms of who the debate served best, Bernie Sanders was the clear winnerWarren was unusually vicious toward other candidates, making direct attacks on nearly every one of her opponents. She was spirited and articulate, and with her memorable exchanges with Bloomberg, she will widely be seen as the "winner" of the debate. But it also seemed as if she was desperate to strike as many blows in as many directions as possible, conscious that her campaign needs a miracle if it is going to survive.In terms of who the debate served best, Sanders was the clear winner. He went into it the frontrunner, and mostly just needed to avoid embarrassing himself. The debate went far better than he could even have hoped. His chief rival, Bloomberg, flopped completely. The other centrists spent time bickering with each other that could have been spent trying to undermine Sanders. Warren did the "dirty work" of eviscerating Bloomberg, allowing Sanders to make a more elevated pitch and somewhat rise above the fray. He was given plenty of time to talk, and while he stuck close to his usual talking points he had above-average energy and was clearly enjoying himself. He was effective in pointing out how Buttigieg dishonestly presents the costs of Medicare For All without mentioning the benefits, and easily parried Bloomberg's absurd attempt to conflate Sanders' democratic socialism with "communism". Bloomberg was a perfect foil for Sanders; Sanders probably wishes Bloomberg had been there all along, a cartoon of an evil billionaire for Sanders to point to as an example of everything wrong with the country.Sanders went into the debate the frontrunner and he left the frontrunner. If Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar were to stand any chance of overtaking Sanders, they needed to make him look foolish, and they didn't. Instead, they looked petty, and he survived. Warren was in good form, but she's simply not going to reclaim the lead over Sanders at this point. Bloomberg was the only serious threat, and he fizzled, showing that the "electability" case for his candidacy is laughable. It's increasingly clear that Sanders has no serious opposition and Democrats are going to need to start reconciling himself to the inevitability of his nomination.But some clearly aren't reconciled. One concerning moment in the debate came at the very end, where each candidate was asked if they believed that the candidate with the most delegates should be given the nomination, or the "superdelegates" should be allowed to intervene. Sanders was the only candidate who would say that the nomination should go to the individual with the most delegates. Every other candidate is apparently leaving open the possibility of the Democratic party overriding the popular vote at the convention, presumably in order to deny Sanders the nomination.Alarmingly, even if Sanders is the clear public favorite, there are still those Democrats who think he needs to be stopped at all costs.
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| Coronavirus updates: 2 passengers die after leaving 'chaotic' cruise ship Posted: 20 Feb 2020 03:09 PM PST  The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak climbed to 2,118 in China. Here is the latest for Thursday.
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| Cop who told driver not to record police demoted Posted: 20 Feb 2020 03:09 AM PST  The North Carolina officers apparently did not know that Jesse Bright was a defense attorney when they told him it was illegal to film cops last month
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| New U.S. Navy Virginia-Class Attack Submarines Will Carry Hypersonic Missiles Posted: 19 Feb 2020 03:58 PM PST  The U.S. Navy has confirmed that the Block V version of its Virginia-class attack submarines will be the first vessels in the fleet to carry a new hypersonic missile the service is developing.
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| Virus Surge in Japan Risks Undoing Abe’s Efforts to Woo China Posted: 20 Feb 2020 05:08 PM PST  (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has so far managed to keep the coronavirus outbreak from damaging his hard-won relationship with China. That's getting even more difficult with each new case confirmed in Japan.Abe has taken a softer approach to China over the virus than the Trump administration, winning Tokyo praise in Beijing. That chimes with his efforts to nurse Japan's relationship with its giant neighbor and biggest trading partner back to health since he took office in 2012 amid the worst crisis in decades.Unlike others including the U.S., Australia and Singapore, Abe's government has avoided a blanket ban on visitors from its neighbor, instead restricting entry from just two provinces. While acting quickly to evacuate its citizens from the virus epicenter of Hubei, Japan also used the planes to fly in aid packages for China.That's contrasted with Japan's counterparts in the U.S., who have questioned China's commitment to transparency during the crisis -- leading to bickering between the two sides. China is also keen to keep ties strong with Abe amid a painful trade war with the U.S. that has battered its economy."Japan's attitude has been very helpful for China," said Noriyuki Kawamura, a professor at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies. "China's initial response to the virus was insufficient. The question is what Japan will do when those problems are exposed. Will it criticize China or close its eyes?"China has shown its appreciation for Japan's approach, marking an unusual interlude in a relationship between Asia's two biggest economies long rocked by disagreements over history and territory. Personal touches like a fragment of ancient Chinese poetry attached to aid packages from a Japanese group and a video of a Tokyo-based ballet troupe singing the Chinese national anthem won widespread praise on Chinese social media.But as coronavirus infections rise in Japan, Abe is likely to find his position harder to maintain, especially given that an earlier alert from China could have slowed the spread of the disease. Before global warning flags were raised, thousands of Chinese tourists visited all parts of Japan and have since been linked to cases of virus transmission. Three people have so far died of the infection in Japan.'Cherry Trees Bloom'Chinese visitors to Japan in January rose 22.6% from a year ago, data released Wednesday showed. Even though infection numbers in China grew dramatically in late January, Abe's government only banned entry from Hubei province on Feb 1.While the virus outbreak initially provided an opportunity for Japan to show solidarity, it's likely to interfere with Abe's plans for a state visit by President Xi Jinping, meant to crown the seven-year slog to restore relations. Japanese officials have repeatedly said there's no change to the plan to treat Xi with full state honors "when the cherry trees bloom" in early April, but both sides may find the trip harder to manage.The virus also appears to be eating away Abe's long-solid voter support. A poll published this week by the conservative Yomiuri newspaper, which generally backs Abe, showed 52% of respondents were dissatisfied with the way the government has been handling the outbreak. His support rate dropped in all three media surveys published Monday.Japan's Abe Arrives in China Vowing to Lift Ties to 'New Level'The opposition Democratic Party for the People has called for a ban on all foreigners visiting from China. Former premier Yukio Hatoyama's Twitter announcement that an organization he heads had donated a million masks to China was met with a barrage of online criticism amid a serious shortage of such items in Japan.Clampdown coming?Some in Abe's own ruling Liberal Democratic Party oppose Xi's state visit, partly because of the ongoing incursions by Chinese ships into what Japan sees as its territorial waters around disputed East China Sea islands.Japan Needs to Do More to Fix China's Image Problem, Xi SaysAn annual poll by think tank Genron NPO published in October found 46% of Chinese had a favorable impression of Japan, the highest since the survey began in 2005, as more tourists experience the country for themselves. Nearly 10 million Chinese visited Japan last year.Almost 85% of Japanese respondents to the same poll said they had an unfavorable impression of China. By contrast, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying said gratitude would bring the two peoples together."Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the Japanese government and people have expressed sympathy, understanding and support to us," she told reporters Feb. 4. "What the virus has done is cruel and will not last. What the people have done is touching and will be remembered forever."She later tweeted in Japanese about China sending testing kits to its neighbor, saying "there are no borders in the fight against the virus."Skeptics point out that there are still deep divisions between the neighbors, including over Japanese citizens detained in China and restrictions on Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang. The territorial dispute over East China Sea islands that brought them close to a military clash in 2012-13 is no nearer resolution."Neither side has reduced its number of patrols close to the islands," said Tsai Hsi-hsun, director of Tamkang University's Graduate Institute of Japanese Political and Economic Studies in Taiwan. "They still don't trust each other in terms of national security and that distrust is deeply ingrained on both sides even though, on the surface, the relationship looks better."(Updates with China spokesperson comment)\--With assistance from Samson Ellis.To contact the reporters on this story: Isabel Reynolds in Tokyo at ireynolds1@bloomberg.net;Dandan Li in Beijing at dli395@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Brendan Scott at bscott66@bloomberg.net, Jon HerskovitzFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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| 'Breathtaking act of corruption': Trump warned against pardoning longtime ally Stone Posted: 20 Feb 2020 11:22 AM PST  Critics of Donald Trump applauded a three-year prison sentence for his longtime pal and political adviser Roger Stone, with a top House Democrat saying a pardon would be a "breathtaking act of corruption."A federal judge sentenced the longtime GOP political operative to 40 months behind bars on Thursday for lying to Congress and obstructing Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III's Russia election meddling probe. During a lengthy statement she read before handing down the sentence, Judge Amy Berman Jackson said bluntly that Mr Stone was convicted of "covering up for the president."
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| Apple has been granted a temporary restraining order against a man it says has been stalking Tim Cook Posted: 20 Feb 2020 02:26 PM PST  Apple alleged the man has been harassing Tim Cook, and has shown up at his house in Palo Alto twice, once with champagne and flowers.
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| Mexican President Lopez Obrador says unaware of probe into ex-President Pena Nieto Posted: 20 Feb 2020 07:22 AM PST  Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Thursday said he is not aware of an investigation into his predecessor, Enrique Pena Nieto, after a media report that law enforcement authorities are probing the former leader. "There is no investigation that I know of against the former president Pena Nieto," Lopez Obrador said in his daily morning press conference.
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| Execution for a Facebook post? Why blasphemy is a capital offense in some Muslim countries Posted: 20 Feb 2020 01:08 PM PST  Junaid Hafeez, a university lecturer in Pakistan, had been imprisoned for six years when he was sentenced to death in December 2019. The charge: blasphemy, specifically insulting Prophet Muhammad on Facebook. Pakistan has the world's second strictest blasphemy laws after Iran, according to U.S. Commision on International Religious Freedom.Hafeez, whose death sentence is under appeal, is one of about 1,500 Pakistanis charged with blasphemy, or sacrilegious speech, over the last three decades. No executions have taken place. But since 1990 70 people have been murdered by mobs and vigilantes who accused them of insulting Islam. Several people who defend the accused have been killed, too, including one of Hafeez's lawyers and two high-level politicians who publicly opposed the death sentence of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman convicted for verbally insulting Prophet Muhammad. Though Bibi was acquitted in 2019, she fled Pakistan. Blasphemy and apostasyOf 71 countries that criminalize blasphemy, 32 are majority Muslim. Punishment and enforcement of these laws varies. Blasphemy is punishable by death in Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Brunei, Mauritania and Saudi Arabia. Among non-Muslim-majority cases, the harshest blasphemy laws are in Italy, where the maximum penalty is three years in prison.Half of the world's 49 Muslim-majority countries have additional laws banning apostasy, meaning people may be punished for leaving Islam. All countries with apostasy laws are Muslim-majority except India. Apostasy is often charged along with blasphemy. This class of religious laws is quite popular in some Muslim countries. According to a 2013 Pew survey, about 75% of respondents in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia favor making sharia, or Islamic law, the official law of the land. Among those who support sharia, around 25% in Southeast Asia, 50% in the Middle East and North Africa, and 75% in South Asia say they support "executing those who leave Islam" – that is, they support laws punishing apostasy with death. The ulema and the stateMy 2019 book "Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment" traces the root of blasphemy and apostasy laws in the Muslim world back to a historic alliance between Islamic scholars and government.Starting around the year 1050, certain Sunni scholars of law and theology, called the "ulema," began working closely with political rulers to challenge what they considered to be the sacrilegious influence of Muslim philosophers on society. Muslim philosophers had for three centuries been making major contributions to mathematics, physics and medicine. They developed the Arabic number system used across the West today and invented a forerunner of the modern camera.The conservative ulema felt that these philosophers were inappropriately influenced by Greek philosophy and Shia Islam against Sunni beliefs. The most prominent in consolidating Sunni orthodoxy was the brilliant and respected Islamic scholar Ghazali, who died in the year 1111.In several influential books still widely read today, Ghazali declared two long-dead leading Muslim philosophers, Farabi and Ibn Sina, apostates for their unorthodox views on God's power and the nature of resurrection. Their followers, Ghazali wrote, could be punished with death. As modern-day historians Omid Safi and Frank Griffel assert, Ghazali's declaration provided justification to Muslim sultans from the 12th century onward who wished to persecute – even execute – thinkers seen as threats to conservative religious rule. This "ulema-state alliance," as I call it, began in the mid-11th century in Central Asia, Iran and Iraq and a century later spread to Syria, Egypt and North Africa. In these regimes, questioning religious orthodoxy and political authority wasn't merely dissent – it was apostasy. Wrong directionParts of Western Europe were ruled by a similar alliance between the Catholic Church and monarchs. These governments assaulted free thinking, too. During the Spanish Inquisition, between the 16th and 18th centuries, thousands of people were tortured and killed for apostasy.Blasphemy laws were also in place, if infrequently used, in various European countries until recently. Denmark, Ireland and Malta all recently repealed their laws.But they persist in many parts of the Muslim world. In Pakistan, the military dictator Zia ul Haq, who ruled the country from 1978 to 1988, is responsible for its harsh blasphemy laws. An ally of the ulema, Zia updated blasphemy laws – written by British colonizers to avoid interreligious conflict – to defend specifically Sunni Islam and increased the maximum punishment to death. From the 1920s until Zia, these laws had been applied only about a dozen times. Since then they have become a powerful tool for crushing dissent.Some dozen Muslim countries have undergone a similar process over the past four decades, including Iran and Egypt. Dissenting voices in IslamThe conservative ulema base their case for blasphemy and apostasy laws on a few reported sayings of Prophet Muhammad, known as hadith, primarily: "Whoever changes his religion, kill him." But many Islamic scholars and Muslim intellectuals reject this view as radical. They argue that Prophet Muhammad never executed anyone for apostasy, nor encouraged his followers to do so.Nor is criminalizing sacrilege based on Islam's main sacred text, the Quran. It contains over 100 verses encouraging peace, freedom of conscience and religious tolerance. In chapter 2, verse 256, the Quran states, "There is no coercion in religion." Chapter 4, verse 140 urges Muslims to simply leave blasphemous conversations: "When you hear the verses of God being rejected and mocked, do not sit with them."By using their political connections and historical authority to interpret Islam, however, the conservative ulema have marginalized more moderate voices. Reaction to global IslamophobiaDebates about blasphemy and apostasy laws among Muslims are influenced by international affairs.Across the globe, Muslim minorities – including the Palestinians, Chechens of Russia, Kashmiris of India, Rohingya of Mymanmar and Uighurs of China – have experienced severe persecution. No other religion is so widely targeted in so many different countries. Alongside persecution are some Western policies that discriminate against Muslims, such as laws prohibiting headscarves in schools and the U.S. ban on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries.Such Islamaphobic laws and policies can create the impression that Muslims are under siege and provide an excuse that punishing sacrilege is a defense of the faith.Instead, I find, such harsh religious rules can contribute to anti-Muslim stereotypes. Some of my Turkish relatives even discourage my work on this topic, fearing it fuels Islamophobia. But my research shows that criminalizing blasphemy and apostasy is more political than it is religious. The Quran does not require punishing sacrilege: authoritarian politics do.[ Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation's newsletter. ]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * Conservative Islamic views are gaining ground in secular Bangladesh and curbing freedom of expression * Imran Khan hopes to transform Pakistan but he'll have far less power than past leadersAhmet T. Kuru is a FORIS scholar at the Religious Freedom Institute.
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| Bloomberg plans to pay people $2,500 a month to text about him Posted: 19 Feb 2020 09:36 AM PST  Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is going all in on social media.His Democratic presidential campaign team is putting out a call for so-called "deputy digital organizers" who will reportedly work for 20 to 30 hours a week and receive $2,500 per month in exchange for promoting Bloomberg via text each week to everyone in their phones' contact list, while making daily social media posts in support of his campaign, The Wall Street Journal reports. They'll also likely have to do some more traditional campaign work every once in a while like phone banking.It's another example of how Bloomberg's wealth gives him a leg up in certain situations. Most campaigns rely on a mix of volunteers and paid staff to phone bank or go door-to-door while encouraging their supporters to promote them over social media, but, per the Journal, experts say Bloomberg's willingness to pay to do all those things is novel. One thing that's unclear is if the social media posts for the digital organizers should qualify as sponsored content on platforms like Facebook, which the Journal notes, is just beginning to grapple with the intersection of political advertising and influencer marketing. The campaign reportedly thinks the posts shouldn't require an advertising label since they consider it to be a new form of political organizing rather than paid influence content. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.More stories from theweek.com The growing crisis in cosmology A new swing state poll paints an ominous picture for Democrats Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils
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| 8 Statement-Making Cabinets to Make Any Room Posted: 20 Feb 2020 05:00 AM PST |
| L.A. announces new strategy for getting homeless into permanent housing Posted: 19 Feb 2020 07:08 AM PST  Los Angeles city and county officials on Tuesday announced a new strategy to speed the process of getting homeless people into permanent housing that is modeled on the federal government's response to natural disasters.
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